New York Times: Abortion Is A Terrible, Traumatic Event, And It Must Remain Legal

There is a really interesting editorial in the Opinion Section of the New York Times.  It is an intensely personal piece written by a woman who had an abortion 20 years ago.  She had become pregnant as the result of an affair with a married man.  She had always been very supportive of abortion rights, and she actually planned to film her abortion and show what a good option this is.

As she writes, she was in for a rude awakening.

You can read the article HERE.   Below is the text of her opinion piece.

I Couldn’t Turn My Abortion Into Art

By LISA SELIN DAVIS

 JULY 2, 2014 8:01 PMJuly 3, 2014 4:15 p

I’d had only one serious boyfriend by this time and recently had been asked for the first time, “Can I buy you a drink?” by a man. (He was an actor in a film I’d worked on the summer before; he asked everybody that question, but still it felt like progress.) Somehow, by that tender age, I had convinced myself that I should take what I could get. So I took the married sound mixer. I had just turned 22 and I had the self-esteem of a squashed toad. This may explain why I was having an affair with a married 36-year-old sound mixer whom I’d met on a film shoot a couple of months earlier.

And then, a few months later, I rolled out of bed at an unreasonably early hour and vomited.

This didn’t seem as big a problem to me as it might have for other young women. This was the mid-1990s. Reared on protest marches, I had a NOW poster affixed to my bedroom wall. I was an unwavering believer in the fierce rhetoric of pro-choice. And now: a poster child.

In addition, in college I had essentially majored in experimental feminist video. I could make art out of anything.

I called my boss — a pretty, perpetually single 35-year-old art director — and confided my situation. She gave me the name of a clinic on Park Avenue. “Whatever you do, don’t go alone,” she said. 

I called. I made an appointment for the next day and checked the price: $350 — slightly more than a week’s pay.

The money intimidated me but the mission didn’t. Not only was this the right I’d marched for, it was an opportunity. It could provide material for the kinds of film I’d voraciously consumed in college, in which women transformed their most traumatic experiences into emotionally stirring and awareness-raising images: Margie Strosser’s “Rape Stories” or “The Body Beautiful” by Ngozi Onwurah, about a mother undergoing a radical mastectomy. An abortion today, a debut at Sundance tomorrow.

The next day was perfect movie material. A blizzard had hit New York City, shutting down the trains. I did something that I considered extravagant at that time: I called a car service. I added it to the mental tally, the bill I’d present to the married man when he returned from working on a film overseas.

I stuffed my Ricoh Hi8 video camera in my backpack, and I went alone.

The driver was Middle Eastern, from some hot and weather-less country, but he did a fair job of steering into the skids. He kept asking me why I was going out in such weather.

“I have to go to the doctor,” I kept telling him.

“Why? You don’t look sick.”

“I have to have a procedure.”

“What? What procedure?”

Finally, I told him. Why not? I was proud and un-conflicted. I was exercising my right. I was making a video.

He pulled over to the side of the road, right there on the Brooklyn Bridge — not only illegal but dangerous. “Please don’t kill the baby,” he said. “Please don’t kill the baby.”

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t kill the baby.” He wouldn’t move the car, though horns blared all around us.

“Keep driving! I have an appointment!” I shook his headrest. This was not part of the script.

“Please don’t kill the baby,” he said again, turning around to face me. He had beautiful big brown eyes — almost black. “I will take care of you and the baby. I work two jobs.”

“Drive,” I told him.

“You are going by yourself?” he asked.

I said, “Drive.”

He drove. The camera wasn’t on. I didn’t have any of it on tape.

At the clinic’s counter, the receptionist asked me what I’d come for. I said, “Um …”

“Termination of pregnancy?” she asked in her best would-you-like-fries-with-that voice. I nodded.

They gave me pamphlets, a paper gown and paper slippers. They sat me in a room filled with women, one of whom told me she’d been there eight times before. “They used to have terry cloth,” she said, lifting her toes in the paper slippers. It had never occurred to me that people had serial abortions, but it confirmed my expectations: abortion — safe, legal, no big deal.

Yet as I looked around the room, my expectations began to shift. This wasn’t the liberating environment I’d expected to enter. The uncomplicated message of those protests led me to think that legal abortion would be light. Lite. I wasn’t prepared for the saturnine cloudiness of the room, all those sad-looking women burying their faces in tabloid magazines.

The video camera stayed sleeping in my lap.

Nurses led me and 10 other women into a room where they talked to us about our anesthetic options — local or general — and had us sign forms. Everyone opted for general except for me. “I want local,” I said. I showed the woman from the clinic my video camera. “I want to be awake and I want to record it.” I said this with a now wavering smile.

She took me aside and informed me that I could not use my video camera in the operating room for legal reasons, and that they did not approve of local anesthesia.

“Why are you giving me the option, then?” I asked.

“We have to,” the woman said. For legal reasons.

My hands shook, the camera wobbling in my grasp. I was freezing inside my paper gown. I checked the “general” box on the form. I put the camera in my bag.

The first thing I thought when I awoke from the anesthesia was that I’d never be pregnant again, that I had just squandered my only chance at motherhood. I was sobbing — I had arisen from the depths of the medication this way — as they rolled me into the recovery room where the other women were lying, almost all of them with a friend or partner or relative to brush their hair back or offer them ice chips. I could not stop crying, big heaves and gulps of it. The nurse came over at first to soothe me and then to quiet me.

“You’re upsetting the other girls,” she said.

“It hurts.”

She sent the doctor over. “Sometimes we have to massage the womb,” he said, inserting his hand inside me and pressing. This did not stop the crying, but eventually it stopped the pain.

Or, at least, it stopped the physical pain. The begging cabdriver and the woman on her ninth abortion and the shocking suction in my womb: It was too traumatic for me to make art of. Or maybe it was just that I wasn’t a good enough artist to transform that level of trauma into something that others could learn from and use. I had been taught that a woman’s right to choose was the most important thing to fight for, but I hadn’t known what a brutal choice it was.

I took a car service home, too, where my brother and his girlfriend met me and we ordered in. “We would have gone with you,” they said, “if you’d asked.”

“I was going to make a video,” I said. Reacting to the way my hands still shook, they tended to me as if I’d just walked miles in that blizzard. I knew then I’d never be a filmmaker.

About motherhood, though, I was wrong. Fifteen years later, happily coupled with a wonderful man, I gave birth to my first daughter; I now have two. I don’t wish I had a 20-year-old. I didn’t want that baby, with that man. Abortion rights, yes, I’ll always support them, but even all these years later, I wish the motto wasn’t “Never again,” but “Avoid this if there’s any way you possibly can, even if it’s legal, because it’s awful.”

I wish that someone had alerted me to the harshness of the experience, acknowledged the layers of regret that built and fell away as the months and years passed. I want my daughters to have the option of safe and legal abortion, of course. I just don’t want them to have to use it.

This opinion piece clearly illustrates the cognitive dissonance that is necessary to hold to a pro abortion position.  As this writer tells us, having an abortion "is awful."  She has illustrated very clearly what a degrading and horrific experience it is to have an abortion.  Yes, she still wants her daughters to have the option of "choice", but she never wants them to use that option. The conflict in the mind of this woman must weigh on her every moment.

The fact that this piece is written some 20 years after the abortion shows that, as Msgr. Philip Reilly often says, having an abortion doesn't mean you're not a mother.  It means you are the mother of a dead baby.  Abortion is performed once, but it never ends in the life of the mother.

Please pray for the direct victims of abortion - the babies.  At the same time, realize that although these little martyrs died horrendous deaths, their suffering has ended.  But the suffering of the mothers and fathers of these babies will continue for a lifetime, and will actually be much greater than the pain experienced by their babies.  Pray that the parents of the babies will seek the forgiveness and mercy which they need and which can only found in Jesus Christ.

Holy Innocents Church Partners With The Devil's Bible

Credit:  theconservativetreehouse.com

In their ongoing attempt to save Holy Innocents Church in Manhattan from being closed, some of those who attend there have given interviews to and cooperated with Hell's Bible, which is the name given to the New York Times by Father John Zuhlsdorf.  However, as Father Z wrote on his blog, The New York Times has ceased being "Hell's Bible" for at least one day.  How did this miraculous transformation come about?  On Friday, June 27, the Times published an article [HERE] which takes the side of supporters of the Traditional Latin Mass at Holy Innocents against the Archdiocese of New York.  

The question is, why would the most liberal newspaper in the nation, which is unceasing in pushing the liberal, secular agenda of gay rights, abortion and all things anti-Catholic, want to throw its support to a couple hundred ultra-orthodox, ultra-conservative Catholics in a small commuter church in the heart of Manhattan?  What would the Times have to gain in this?  

It is no accident that on the day the Holy Innocents article first appeared on the Times website, it was right next to another article concerning an archbishop accused of sexual abuse [HERE].  Per the article, "The Vatican has defrocked its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, an archbishop from Poland who was accused of sexually abusing boys while he served as the pope’s representative in the Caribbean nation."

So here are two articles concerning the big bad Catholic Church whose priests and bishops not only sexually abuse children, but the evil hierarchy of this Church also seems intent on trying to silence and disabuse the most faithful in her midst who wish nothing more than to worship as they have always done. Father Justin Wylie is prominently mentioned and portrayed as a martyr to the cause, as follows:

Father Wylie, a visiting priest, urged parishioners to be obedient but also to speak up, as traditionalist Catholics, for a place in the church, saying they should not be “turned out like squatters.”

It was an unusual moment of open criticism by a Roman Catholic priest of church policy in New York. And the reaction was swift. Within two weeks, Father Wylie was reprimanded by the New York Archdiocese, and in short order he was dismissed from his job at the Mission of the Holy See at the United Nations.

It is unclear how the New York Times came to write this story. We don't know if someone actually contacted them and asked them to do it, or if the paper picked up on it from the Internet, where so many, many Traditional Catholics have discussed this situation and come to the conclusion that Cardinal Dolan is evil, hates Traditionalists and wants to stamp them out. The article is written from the parishioners' point of view and is completely sympathetic to them.

As we saw with Father Z and as is true in all other cases, Traditionalists are joyful that the New York Times has come to their aid, and as a result have suspended their usual condemnation of this paper. I truly do hope that no one from Holy Innocents purposely contacted the Times to write this story.

Picture of Holy Innocents Church
from the New York Times taken from the balcony

But the fact that the picture used in an accompanying article from the Times City Blog [HERE] was taken from the balcony is a sign of clear cooperation with the Times because no one is allowed in the balcony without specific permission. Further, this article specifically states that parishioners cooperated with the newspaper:

Paul McGregor [the same Paul McGregor who has given interviews to both Christine Niles and Michael Voris], a parishioner at the church, provided The New York Times with a transcript of Father Wylie’s remarks, which he said were based on a recording by another parishioner. Several other parishioners who heard the remarks confirmed the transcript’s validity.

As mentioned, the Catholic blogosphere, including the aforementioned Father Z, immediately picked up on the Times article. Father Z had not commented on the subject of Holy Innocents since Father Wylie had his priestly faculties revoked by the New York Archdiocese. However, the Times article seems to have helped Father Z find his voice again, but within limits as he wrote, "I would post many comments, but I fear retribution for my friends." With this simple statement, Father Z is setting up the hierarchy of the Catholic Church as the enemy of the laity, just as Father Wylie did in his sermon.

All of these elements, I fear, may be building up to schism.

In my previous post on this subject, I urged those at Holy Innocents not to allow themselves to become bitter and angry about this situation, but to follow the example of so many others, both saints and biblical figures, who suffered unjustly but allowed Our Lord to work out the situation.  I was blasted for this and told I don't know what I'm talking about, and accused of being both heretical and demonic.

But what are the people of Holy Innocents thinking when they go to the New York Times in order to find justice?  This reminds me very much of the passage in I Corinthians 6:6-7:

"But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers! Now therefore, there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one against another. Why do ye not rather accept wrong? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?"

The New York Times is the paper of record for the entire United States and is the court of public opinion. By cooperating with this newspaper, the people of Holy Innocents have turned their backs on our Lord and instead enlisted the devil in their cause.

Ad from the New York Times

The Times could not care less about the people at Holy Innocents or the Traditional Latin Mass. The Times has an agenda, and that is to see the entire Catholic Church destroyed. This is the Church that stands in the way of everything they care about - abortion, gay rights, contraception, etc. Every other religion will eventually give way to the agenda of the liberals at the New York Times, and they know it. In contrast, they know that the Catholic Church will never change her position on these issues, so the Catholic Church is their eternal enemy.

But now the liberal, anti-Catholic New York Times has found a group of Catholics who agree that the hierarchy of the church is evil. The people at Holy Innocents, in their desire to keep their church, have unwittingly allowed themselves to be used in the cause of those whose main desire is to destroy the Church.

How can anyone at Holy Innocents honestly believe this is going to help them in any way?  Do they think that getting the most liberal paper in the nation to portray them as the poor abused victims of the evil New York Archdiocese is going to somehow soften Cardinal Dolan's heart and make him realize that closing Holy Innocents is a huge mistake?  Or are they figuring that Cardinal Dolan will now have no other choice but to keep Holy Innocents open because not to do so will make everyone realize what a "horrible ogre" he really is?  Do we ever see these kind of tactics used by any biblical figures or any saints down through Church history?

From Mystics of the Church [HERE]:

On one occasion, the Sacred Heart of Jesus made a request to St. Margaret Mary Alocoque, but when she told her Superior this request, her Superior did not approve. Soon afterwards, when Jesus came to her again, she asked Him about this, and He replied: "…not only do I desire that you should do what your Superior commands, but also that you should do nothing of all that I request of you without their consent. I love obedience, and without it no one can please Me" [Autobiography of St Margaret Mary].

Elsewhere in her Autobiography, we read that St Margaret Mary was told by Our Lord: "Listen, My daughter, and do not lightly believe and trust every spirit, for Satan is angry and will try to deceive you. So do nothing without the approval of those who guide you. Being thus under the authority of obedience, his efforts against you will be in vain, for he has no power over the obedient" [cf. -Autobiography] 

As we see in this example, St. Margaret Mary Alocoque's superior forbade her to follow the request of Our Lord Himself. Yet, she was told by Our Lord that she should obey her superior and do nothing without his consent, even when it goes against what she was specifically told by Jesus Christ Himself.

Further examples from the saints:

In the Diary of St Faustina Kowalska we read: "...Jesus says; 'Obedience. I have come to do My Father’s will. I obeyed my Parents, I obeyed My tormentors and now I obey the Priests' ...I understood that our efforts, no matter how great, are not pleasing to God if they do not bear the seal of obedience.... I understand, O Jesus, the spirit of obedience and in what it consists. It includes not only external actions, but also one’s reason, will and judgment. In obeying our superiors, we obey God.." -Diary of Saint Faustina Kowalska

And elsewhere in her diary she writes: "Satan can even clothe himself in a cloak of humility, but he does not know how to wear the cloak of obedience." (Diary, par. 939).

And St Catherine of Siena states- “Oh! How sweet and glorious is this virtue of obedience, which contains all the other virtues! Because it is born of charity, and on it the rock of the holy Faith is founded; it is a queen, and he who espouses it knows no evil, but only peace and rest.”

And for those who feel that it is okay to speak out against a prelate if he is "evil" as many try to portray Cardinal Dolan, they need to look at the example of King David, whom the Bible says was a man after God's own heart (Acts 13:22). David had been anointed King of Israel in place of King Saul, but Saul still sat on the throne. When Saul realized that David was a threat to him, Saul tried very hard to kill David. But David refused to fight against Saul or harm him in any way, even to protect himself. As he said, "Some urged me to kill you, but I spared you; I said, 'I will not lay my hand on my lord, because he is the LORD's anointed." (I Sam. 24:10).

If the people at Holy Innocents were fighting an unjust landlord or even fighting someone in the government, I would applaud them for what they are doing. I would say they need to stand up against those who are trying to destroy them. But Cardinal Dolan is not just another man. He is the Lord's anointed, like it or not. He is a prince of the Church and his power and authority are given to him directly from the Holy Spirit.

That doesn't mean that every decision he makes is correct.  As shown in the example of St. Margaret Mary Alocoque, those in authority can sometimes make decisions that are actually against the will of God.  But unless we are told something that is inherently sinful, we do not have a right to disobey those in authority over us.

Some have made the argument that the laity are not under the same code of obedience that priests and religious are.  That is true, but that still does not give us the right to try to destroy the reputation of Church authorities.  This can never be the work of the Holy Spirit.  And sadly, attempting to destroy the reputation of Cardinal Dolan and other hierarchy of the New York Archdiocese is the main objective of the article in the New York Times.

Also, those who are supporting the parishioners of Holy Innocents in these tactics should also realize that they are not doing Father Justin Wylie any favors. Father Wylie was completely out of line in his harsh criticism of the New York Archdiocese from the pulpit. He is a priest and has taken vows of obedience. 

Father Wylie is walking on very dangerous ground when he publicly criticizes his superiors, especially from the pulpit. He has lost his position at the UN over this and is no longer allowed to make public appearances in New York City. And there can be no doubt that he will face punishment from his own bishop when he returns to South Africa.

It seems that Father Wylie is not backing down from his statements either. According to the Times article:

Father Wylie, reached by email, said, “I am confident of having tried faithfully at all times to serve the best interests of the Archdiocese of New York.”

Father Wylie obviously feels he has done nothing wrong.  All of the cheering from people like Father Z and this article in the Times seems to have only encouraged that sentiment and hardened his attitude against his superiors even more.   I sincerely pray for him.

One person we have not heard from in all of this is Father George Rutler. Father Rutler is the pastor of St. Michael's Church, which is also on the potential hit list, and the administrator of Holy Innocents. He is very affected by all of this, and yet we have not heard one public word from him on the subject. It could very well be that he feels exactly the same as Father Wylie. But he is a good, obedient priest who takes his vows very seriously. I know this from personal experience because Father Rutler heard my confession and convalidated my marriage when I returned to the Church several years ago.

Father Rutler truly loves the Church and loves Our Lord, and no matter what his personal feelings are, he will never speak out publicly against his superiors, and most definitely would never give any kind of statement to the New York Times.  He models his priesthood very closely on that of Blessed John Henry Newman, St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney and St. Padre Pio. Father Wylie and all of the people at Holy Innocents would do well to learn from Father Rutler.

I am increasingly concerned that Holy Innocents Church in Manhattan is fast becoming fertile soil for schism. They are so convinced of their own rightness that they feel anything they do is fair game and that the end justifies the means.

We have seen our first casualty of this fight: Father Justin Wylie. How many more will there be? I know those involved blame the Archdiocese for the sad circumstances in which Father Wylie finds himself, but priests cannot be allowed to publicly speak against Church hierarchy. If that is allowed, chaos and anarchy will most certainly follow. Rebelling against authority is never the work of the Holy Spirit.

Because of the Internet, the situation of Holy Innocents has become a cause célèbre among Traditionalists across the nation and probably around the world.  Those who label themselves "loyal Catholics" are taking direct aim at Cardinal Dolan and the New York Archdiocese, and our enemies are going to eat this up and use it against us.  And now they have worsened the situation by enlisting the "aid" of anti-Catholic New York Times.  I pray that all involved will realize that there is something much bigger going on here than the church at 37th and Broadway and the Latin Mass.

We live in very evil times when sin is no longer considered sin. In fact, those who defend the things of God are persecuted and ostracized as bigots and haters. The devil wants most of all to cause disunity and separation among those who are most opposed to him. His biggest enemy is the Mystical Body of Christ, the Catholic Church. And he will use any means he can to cause disunity and division. He has convinced many Catholics that their greatest enemy is the Church herself. In this case, the devil is using the Traditional Latin Mass to turn Catholics against each other, which he must surely relish.

Proverbs 6:16-19 tells us the following:

There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

I once again implore all those good people at Holy Innocents. Please stop and consider what you are doing. Show that you trust Our Lord to work this out for you. Do not cause any more conflict and disunity. Follow the examples of our saints. It may sound trite, but don't let your suffering go to waste. Offer it up for the souls in Purgatory and then ask them to pray for you. Enlist the help of the saints, not Satan's Bible.

Welcome to Babylon, Tim Tebow!

In a city of 8 million people, we here in the Big Apple have pretty much seen everything and we tend to take it all in stride.  It takes an awful lot to shake up New Yorkers.  But this city has been galvanized by a 24-year old professing Christian named Tim Tebow and the fact that he is now going to be second string quarterback for the New York Jets.  He has been on the front pages of all of the newspapers and the top story in all the rest of the media in New York.  I personally, as a resident of New York City, could not be more thrilled.  As I have posted previously, I am not a pro sports fan.  I couldn't care less who does and does not play for the New York Jets or any other sports team.  It didn't phase me in the least when the New York Giants won the Superbowl. 

But I have made a big exception with Tim Tebow because of his very real belief in Jesus Christ and the wondeful positive message he sends to the world just by being alive.  Even those who have no use for him admit that he is the real deal.  There is nothing phony about Tim Tebow.  And in my mind, his most important message to the world is that of the sanctity of life.  His mother became quite ill while she was pregnant with him, and the doctors strongly advised her to get an abortion because he was going to be severely handicapped.  She refused, and as we can all see, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this strong and healthy young man. 

I don't think it's any accident that Tim Tebow, whom I have called "Gods Answer to Abortion", is now coming to the abortion capital of the United States, where over 40% of all preganancies end in abortion, and where there are approximately 89,000 abortions performed every year.  In the Black community, there are 3 abortions for every 2 live births.  The numbers are staggering.  There is a website devoted solely to the abortions done in New York City called nyc41percent.com. 

None of what I have read or heard about Tim Tebow has mentioned the abortion issue, but I can tell you without a doubt it is in the back of many liberal minds. 

One of the fairest editorials I have read about Tebow coming to New York City is from . . . . THE NEW YORK TIMES!  Yes, folks, that newspaper that so many revile as being the devil's newspaper, and in far too many ways, it is just that.   But once in a while they will surprise, and I was very pleasantly surprised with the following editorial by Ross Douthat:

Tebow in Babylon

By ROSS DOUTHAT

THE Prophet Jonah was sent to Nineveh. St. Paul was sent to Athens, Macedonia, Rome. And now Tim Tebow has been sent to New York City.

There was a moment last week when it looked as if the trade shipping Tebow from the Denver Broncos to the New York Jets might somehow fall through — that Tebow might end up a Jacksonville Jaguar instead, with a guaranteed starting job, a heavily evangelical fan base, and none of the insanity involved in eclipsing Jeremy Lin as the most famous Christian athlete in Babylon-upon-the-Hudson.

O ye of little faith. Did you think that the Lord God of Hosts, having raised Tebow up as a Gideon of the gridiron, would pass up the opportunity to put his faithful servant to the test? Did you think that the angelic screenwriters responsible for scripting last year’s succession of Tebow-related improbabilities had nodded off after the Broncos were dispatched in the A.F.C. playoffs? Did you think that the archons and demiurges who preside over America’s culture war would be content to let Tebow fade into obscurity — some red-state-friendly endorsement deals, a few 6-10 finishes, and then early retirement and a lifetime of under-the-radar charity work?

Above all, did you think that Tebow himself, with his distinctive mix of missionary zeal and “give me the ball” confidence, would duck the Gotham opportunity? That he would pull a LeBron James and take his talents down to Florida instead?

No, this was where the Tebow story was always destined to end up. Denver was his Galilee; New York will be the Roman Colosseum. Or to be pop cultural rather than scriptural: Denver was District 12 in Suzanne Collins’s Panem, and the Meadowlands will be the Hunger Games arena.

New Yorkers are a sophisticated lot, and the Tebow hype will afford them plenty of opportunities for eye-rolling. The sophisticated football fan will tell you that Tebow is a bad-to-mediocre quarterback with a few unusual skills who rode a lucky streak to undeserved fame; the rest is just the standard media fantasy about “intangibles” and “grit” dressed up with spirituality.

The sophisticated atheist will inform you that in a vast and complicated cosmos, there will inevitably be temporary patterns that give the appearance of some divine design. But it would be even more ridiculous for a secular-minded football fan to root against Tebow than for a religious fan to root for him: in a godless, random universe, failure is no more metaphysically significant than success. (Or as Grantland’s Brian Phillips put it: “If you’re against Tebow, you can’t read too much into Tebow’s failures, or else Tebow has already won.”)

The sophisticated Christian, meanwhile, may be a little embarrassed by the whole Tebow business. A sophisticate’s God doesn’t care about trivia like who wins football games. A sophisticate’s theology doesn’t depend on what some musclehead does with the pigskin.

But let’s be unsophisticated for a moment. Why is Tim Tebow such a fascinating and polarizing figure? Not just because he claims to be religious; that claim is commonplace among football stars and ordinary Americans alike. Rather, it’s because his conduct — kind, charitable, chaste, guileless — seems to actually vindicate his claim to be in possession of a life-altering truth.

Nothing discredits religion quite like the gap that often yawns between what believers profess and how they live. With Tebow, that gap seems so narrow as to be invisible. (“There’s not an ounce of artifice or phoniness or Hollywood in this kid Tebow,” ESPN’s Rick Reilly wrote last year of the quarterback’s charitable works, “and I’ve looked everywhere for it.”) He fascinates, in part, because he behaves — at least in public, and at least for now — the way one would expect more Christians to behave if their faith were really true.

But the fascination doesn’t end there. Tebow’s religion doesn’t just promise a path to personal transformation. It claims that every human life is actually a story with an Author, and that a genuinely Christian life should make that divine Authorship manifest.

So in Tebow’s case, the link between faith and football can’t actually be broken. The more that his professional career seems like, well, a storybook — with exciting up and downs, new opportunities and unexpected twists — the more credible his faith in providence becomes.

Note that “a storybook” is not the same as “an inevitable success.” In Christian theology as in young-adult fiction, even the author’s most beloved characters can suffer pain, temptation, failure, exile. The lives of the saints often end in martyrdom. The gentle, brutalized Peeta Mellark is as much the hero of “The Hunger Games” as the indomitable Katniss Everdeen.

So even the most pious of Jets fans shouldn’t expect a Super Bowl title. But if their new quarterback’s story really has an Author, they’re in for a pretty interesting ride.

Ah, Ross, you summed it up beautifully. Despite Cardinal Dolan's protestations that New York City is not modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, it is exactly that.  It can be no accident that the most high profile Christian in the land is now in one of the most secular cities in the world. He needs all the prayers and support he can get, and I intend to support him in any way I can. 

Majority of Births for Women Under 30 Are Out Of Wedlock

The following article was the headline in the New York Times on February 17.  It is actually a very distressing article explaining that for all women under 30, there are now more out-of-wedlock births than babies born to married women.  This paints a very bleak picture for both the women and children involved.  As pointed out in this article, "Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems."  And amazingly enough, this New York Times article also points out that contraception is a direct cause of this problem.  "The forces rearranging the family are as diverse as globalization and the pill." 

There doesn't seem to be any resolution to this nightmare.  The United States is fast descending into hell.  Yet I must give credit to the New York Times for printing this article and not trying to whitewash it in any way, but showing just how tragic it is. 

Again, if the world had just listened to Pope Paul VI when he gave us Humanae Vitae, we would never see headlines like this.  All of those bishops and priests who told Catholics that they could make up their own mind about using birth control have much for which they must answer. 

February 17, 2012

For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage

By JASON DePARLE and SABRINA TAVERNISE

LORAIN, Ohio — It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.

Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.

Among mothers of all ages, a majority — 59 percent in 2009 — are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.

One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education.

“Marriage has become a luxury good,” said Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

The shift is affecting children’s lives. Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems.

The forces rearranging the family are as diverse as globalization and the pill. Liberal analysts argue that shrinking paychecks have thinned the ranks of marriageable men, while conservatives often say that the sexual revolution reduced the incentive to wed and that safety net programs discourage marriage.

Here in Lorain, a blue-collar town west of Cleveland where the decline of the married two-parent family has been especially steep, dozens of interviews with young parents suggest that both sides have a point.

Over the past generation, Lorain lost most of two steel mills, a shipyard and a Ford factory, diminishing the supply of jobs that let blue-collar workers raise middle-class families. More women went to work, making marriage less of a financial necessity for them. Living together became routine, and single motherhood lost the stigma that once sent couples rushing to the altar. Women here often describe marriage as a sign of having arrived rather than a way to get there.

Meanwhile, children happen.

The Safe, Legal, Rare Illusion - The New York Times Shows the Lie Behind Abortion and Contraception

Very few media outlets have promoted abortion as consistently and vigorously as the New York Times.  So when I read this editorial, written by Ross Douthat, who has many times in the past promoted abortion, I could have been knocked over by a feather.  There must be an awful lot of prayers being said on behalf of the pro life cause to produce an editorial like this one in the New York Times.  This article seems to be at least partly the result of the ongoing conflict between the Bishops and the Obama administration.  I wonder what Mr. Douthat would think if he actually took the time to read Humanae Vitae?  Much of what he writes here was written by Pope Paul VI.  Artificial contraception leads directly to abortion.

 

The ‘Safe, Legal, Rare’ Illusion

By ROSS DOUTHAT

AMID the sound and fury of the latest culture-war battles — first over breast cancer dollars and Planned Parenthood, and then over the White House’s attempt to require that religious employers cover contraception and potential abortifacients — it’s easy to forget that there is at least some common ground in American politics on sex, pregnancy, marriage and abortion.

Even the most pro-choice politicians, for instance, usually emphasize that they want to reduce the need for abortion, and make the practice rare as well as safe and legal. Even the fiercest conservative critics of the White House’s contraception mandate — yes, Rick Santorum included — agree that artificial birth control should be legal and available. [I always find it ironic that those who promote abortion as a good thing still say they want it to be done only in rare circumstances.]  And both Democrats and Republicans generally agree that the country would be better off with fewer pregnant teenagers, fewer unwanted children, fewer absent fathers, fewer out-of-wedlock births.

Where cultural liberals and social conservatives differ is on the means that will achieve these ends. The liberal vision tends to emphasize access to contraception as the surest path to stable families, wanted children and low abortion rates. The more direct control that women have over when and whether sex makes babies, liberals argue, the less likely they’ll be to get pregnant at the wrong time and with the wrong partner — and the less likely they’ll be to even consider having an abortion. (Slate’s Will Saletan has memorably termed this “the pro-life case for Planned Parenthood.”)

The conservative narrative, by contrast, argues that it’s more important to promote chastity, monogamy and fidelity than to worry about whether there’s a prophylactic in every bedroom drawer or bathroom cabinet. To the extent that contraceptive use has a significant role in the conservative vision (and obviously there’s some Catholic-Protestant disagreement), it’s in the context of already stable, already committed relationships. Monogamy, not chemicals or latex, is the main line of defense against unwanted pregnancies.

The problem with the conservative story is that it doesn’t map particularly well onto contemporary mores and life patterns [I congratulate Mr. Douthat for his honesty in this statement]. A successful chastity-centric culture seems to depend on a level of social cohesion, religious intensity and shared values that exists only in small pockets of the country. Mormon Utah, for instance, largely lives up to the conservative ideal, with some of America’s lowest rates of teenage pregnancies, out-of-wedlock births and abortions. But many other socially conservative regions (particularly in the South) feature higher rates of unwed and teenage parenthood than in the country as a whole.

Liberals love to cite these numbers as proof that social conservatism is a flop. But the liberal narrative has glaring problems as well. To begin with, a lack of contraceptive access simply doesn’t seem to be a significant factor in unplanned pregnancy in the United States. When the Alan Guttmacher Institute surveyed more than 10,000 women who had procured abortions in 2000 and 2001, it found that only 12 percent cited problems obtaining birth control as a reason for their pregnancies. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of teenage mothers found similar results: Only 13 percent of the teens reported having had trouble getting contraception.

At the same time, if liberal social policies really led inexorably to fewer unplanned pregnancies and thus fewer abortions, you would expect “blue” regions of the country to have lower teen pregnancy rates and fewer abortions per capita than demographically similar “red” regions.


But that isn’t what the data show. Instead, abortion rates are frequently higher in more liberal states, where access is often largely unrestricted, than in more conservative states, which are more likely to have parental consent laws, waiting periods, and so on. “Safe, legal and rare” is a nice slogan, but liberal policies don’t always seem to deliver the “rare” part.

What’s more, another Guttmacher Institute study suggests that liberal states don’t necessarily do better than conservative ones at preventing teenagers from getting pregnant in the first place. Instead, the lower teenage birth rates in many blue states are mostly just a consequence of (again) their higher abortion rates. Liberal California, for instance, has a higher teen pregnancy rate than socially conservative Alabama; the Californian teenage birth rate is only lower because the Californian abortion rate is more than twice as high.

These are realities liberals should keep in mind when tempted to rail against conservatives for rejecting the intuitive-seeming promise of “more condoms, fewer abortions.” What’s intuitive isn’t always true, and if social conservatives haven’t figured out how to make all good things go together in post-sexual-revolution America, neither have social liberals.

At the very least, American conservatives are hardly crazy to reject a model for sex, marriage and family that seems to depend heavily on higher-than-average abortion rates. They’ve seen that future in places like liberal, cosmopolitan New York, where two in five pregnancies end in abortion. And it isn’t a pretty sight. [Can you believe this was printed in the New York Times?!]

Mother Dolores Hart - The New York Times and Maureen Dowd Praise a Holy Catholic Nun

Mother Dolores Hart in her days as a
Hollywood actress with one of her
co-stars, Elvis Presley

Satan must be getting awfully cold down there.  Here is yet another positive article from this weekend's New York Times, this one about Mother Dolores Hart.  Dolores Hart was a young, beautiful Hollywood actress headed for a big Hollywood career, who instead turned away from Hollywood and answered the call to become a Catholic nun.  This story was not just printed in the New York Times, but written by Maureen Dowd, who has basically made a career of attacking the Catholic Church. 

It is not mentioned in the article, but Mother Dolores played the role of St. Clare in the movie, Francis of Assisi.  St. Clare left a comfortable lifestyle to become a nun and one of our greatest saints.  Ironically. St. Clare is the patron saint of television because towards the end of her life, when she was very ill and could not make it to Mass, she saw the Mass projected on her wall.  It would still be several hundred years before TV was invented.

I have to admit that I had tears in my eyes at the end of this article.

Where the Boys Aren’t

By MAUREEN DOWD

HOW do you marry God after you’ve kissed the King?

Easy. Just ask Dolores Hart.

The 73-year-old Benedictine nun is planning to attend the Oscars next Sunday. She will be a lot more covered up than she was the last time she went to the ceremony — in 1959, as a presenter and a gorgeous starlet who had given a blushing Elvis his first screen kiss.

Grace Kelly deserted Hollywood at 26 to become the bride of a prince. Hart, dubbed “the next Grace Kelly,” deserted Hollywood at 24 to become a bride of Christ.

That stunning spiritual elopement is the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary called “God Is Bigger Than Elvis,” a rare look behind the walls of the cloistered abbey in rural Connecticut where Hart has lived for half a century. (It will be shown on HBO in April.)

“God was the vehicle,” she said of her odyssey. “He was the bigger Elvis.”

Nuns in America are a dying breed, and the church’s antediluvian male hierarchy gets more worked up about allowing Catholic women contraceptives than investigating sexual abuse of children by priests. [Maureen just couldn't resist this jab at the church.]

But Hart soldiers on at the bucolic Abbey of Regina Laudis, a Benedictine monastery and working farm in Bethlehem, Conn., which observes three periods of silence a day. She is a mother prioress and spiritual guide to 38 other nuns (and she is the only nun who is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences).

Audrey Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman played luminous nuns in movies, but Hart was the luminous beauty who, in real life, cut her hair and put on the habit. When I was little, we would watch her old movies on TV — especially “King Creole,” “Where The Boys Are” and “Come Fly With Me” — and puzzle over why anyone would leave sparkly Hollywood for a strict nunnery.

The British tabloids considered it such lunacy that they kept trying to scout out the “real” reason, reporting on a rumor that Hart had scurried off to the convent in shame after bearing Elvis’s love child.

“If anybody knew me, I mean, I was just too Catholic,” she said, denying the gossip to ABC’s “20/20” in 2002.

Mother Dolores Hart today

The documentary begins with Hollywood publicity shots and clips showing Hart — with her big blue eyes, creamy voice and lithe figure — draped in furs, gowns and men. Flash forward to the senior citizen in her old-school habit, leavened with a jaunty black beret decorated with three bird pins. As you watch her playing cancan music for a pet parrot, you wonder: Could she be the only woman who starred in movies who has never had any cosmetic enhancements?

Her parents were beautiful too, and tried to make it in Hollywood. But they didn’t flourish in the movies or in their marriage and divorced. They were only teenagers when they had her and could not handle it, she said, noting, “This was a tragedy to my grandmother; she wanted to have me aborted.”

Hart became a star effortlessly, praying for roles and receiving daily Communion. But in 1958, while on Broadway in “The Pleasure of His Company,” she felt fatigued. A friend suggested taking a break at the abbey’s guest cottage.

“And I said: ‘Nuns? I don’t want to go anyplace where there’s nuns,’ ” she recalled. Her friend replied: “Oh, don’t be so stiff. Just try it. They’re contemplative and they won’t talk.” She arrived once in a studio limo yet loved the simplicity, feeling she “could find my inner certitude.”

She confessed to the mother superior that she was worried “that it was wrong as a Catholic to be in the movies because sexually you could be aroused by boys and you could get involved sexually with men. And my leading star was Elvis. She said: ‘Well, why not? You’re a girl. Chastity doesn’t mean that you don’t appreciate what God created. Chastity says use it well.’ ”

She was preparing for her wedding to Don Robinson, a Los Angeles architect, with a dress designed by Edith Head and a home designed by her fiancé, when it hit her that she was in love with God.

She wore a bridal dress and lace veil when she entered the monastery, but it was a rocky honeymoon. The other women considered her, as one put it, “a lightweight.”

“The first night,” Sister Dolores recalled, “I felt like I had jumped off a 20-story building and landed flat on my butt. I had no idea that it was going to mean singing seven times a day, working in the garden, 10 people in one bathroom, the sternness.” She compared it to being skinned alive.

Robinson never married. “I never found a love like Dolores,” he told the documentarians. He came to visit his old love for 47 years until he died in November.

In the last scene, on one of their final walks, the pair hold hands. Afterward, by herself, Sister Dolores’s eyes fill with tears as she makes the sign of the cross.

The Catholic Argument Against Artificial Birth Control - From the New York Times!

The New York Times has been called by many, including yours truly, Satan's bible.   It is one of the most left-leaning newspapers in existence, has seemingly campaigned against traditional value and morals, and has printed article after article bashing the Catholic Church.  But this weekend, something happened at the paper.  Here is the first of several articles from the NY Times that actually shows the negative outcome of liberal, secular values and even shows the Catholic church in a positive light.  As far as I know, hell has not frozen over, but I could be wrong.

The first article is about a priest in New Bedford, Massachusetts who unashamedly defends the Catholic Church teaching on artificial contraception and has even convinced many people in his parish to change from a contracepting life style.  Catholic bishops, priests politicians, and anyone else who is in the public eye would do well to read this article.

The Message on Contraception, Without Apology

By MARK OPPENHEIMER

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — It was last Sunday morning, and the Rev. Roger J. Landry, whose accent is from working-class Lowell, Mass., but whose college degree is from nearby Harvard, had just finished officiating at the 8:30 Mass at St. Anthony of Padua, his church in this old whaling town. After his fiery sermon attacking the Obama administration, several people in the pews applauded — a sound striking for its echoes in the cavernous, awesome church, and for its rarity. One does not applaud in Mass.

But Father Landry did not mind the enthusiasm. He is a traditionalist, and he is eager to share his opinions with his flock. This is a priest who believes official Catholic teaching about contraception, and who is not afraid to say so.

Such men may not be the exception, but it’s not clear that they are the rule [unfortunately, all too true]. As the furor over the Obama administration’s mandate for employee health insurance has made clear, Roman Catholic bishops condemn contraception, equating some forms of it with abortion. But many parish priests are conflicted. Some disagree with the teaching, and others agree with it but avoid discussing the topic, knowing how thoroughly their parishioners have embraced birth control.

Father Landry worries that other priests’ reticence keeps Catholics in the dark on church teachings on contraception. “In most places,” he said, “they don’t hear about it because there are a lot of priests who are conflict-averse, and when you preach in a way that people aren’t pleased, not only do you lose parishioners, but you lose their budget envelopes along with them, and you’ll also get some nasty e-mails and face-to-face conversations.”

Father Landry, 41, is balding, ruddy and blue-eyed, and he speaks quickly and confidently. He gives his parishioners the stiff, 80-proof doctrine: the church hierarchy bans all artificial contraception, and the withdrawal method. The only permissible forms of birth control are abstinence and “natural family planning,” using knowledge of a woman’s cycle to restrict intercourse to times when she is unlikely to conceive.

He was just a small boy at morning Mass, watching the priest give Communion, when he first heard a whisper of a calling: “I just had the little insight as a 4-year-old that the priest must be the luckiest man ever, to be holding God in his hand and giving him to others.” He entered seminary after graduating from Harvard in 1993, and he arrived at St. Anthony’s in 2005, after stints in Fall River and Hyannis, Mass.

As a priest, Father Landry has tried, gently, to lead couples away from contraception. “I know from their having told me that many of the couples here have stopped contracepting,” Father Landry said. “In terms of the numbers, it’s probably between 15 and 20 couples who have explicitly told me that.”

Father Landry gets his message across in several ways. First, he talks to engaged couples about their plans for a family. To facilitate that conversation, he gives them a questionnaire.

“The last question,” Father Landry said, “is always ‘Are you planning to have children? Are you planning to start right away after you’re married?’ The vast majority of couples answer, ‘Yes, we definitely want to have children, but we want to wait two or three years.’ ”

The priest asks if they are aware of church teaching about contraception. “Shockingly, 50 percent of the couples that I prepare for marriage have never heard that the church teaches about contraception,” he said.

Father Landry also gives sermons on contraception, something very few priests do. [When is the last time you heard a sermon on contraception?]  He says he relies on Pope John Paul II’s argument against contraception, which he summarizes. “That God has made us fundamentally for love,” Father Landry said, “and that marriage is supposed to help us to love for real. In order for that to happen, we need to totally give ourselves over to someone else in love, and receive the other’s total self in love.


“What happens in the use of contraception, rather than embracing us totally as God made the other, with the masculine capacity to become a dad, or the feminine capacity to become a mom, we reject that paternal and maternal leaning.”

Father Landry argues that contraception can be the gateway to exploitation: “When that petition is made for contraception, it’s going to make pleasure the point of the act, and any time pleasure becomes the point rather than the fruit of the act, the other person becomes the means to that end. And we’re actually going to hurt the people we love.”  

Many non-Catholics — and many Catholics — see the church’s teaching on contraception as cruel toward women. But Father Landry says it’s women who intuitively get how divorcing sex from procreation allows men to use them; in his experience, it is almost always the woman who moves a couple toward abandoning artificial contraception.

“They have a lot of times experienced having been used in their marriage or their previous relationship,” Father Landry said.

After Mass, during the coffee hour in the church basement, parishioners expressed a range of views on the pastor’s teachings.

One couple with grown children agreed that if they had benefited from Father Landry’s teachings years ago, they would have had more children. “We definitely would not have used contraception,” the wife said, “not if we had it to do over again.”

An older woman with white hair, sitting near the doughnuts being sold for $1, appeared to disagree. “Don’t get me started on him,” she said, rolling her eyes when asked about Father Landry’s teachings on contraception.

Father Landry does not think contraception is the most important issue he faces. He worries about couples living together before marriage, not to mention the poverty and violence that afflict New Bedford. But he sees the Catholic sexual ethic as crucial to his message — and not just the part about contraception.

Last spring, scenes of a movie called “Whaling City” were being shot in St. Anthony’s. During the filming, the priest noticed that the church’s rack of sexuality pamphlets was being depleted.

“I saw all the camera men and sound guys,” Father Landry said, “and in their back pockets, coming down the main aisle, one had one on pornography, the other had ‘Sex and Contraception’ hanging out of his pocket, the other one had ‘In Vitro Fertilization.’ ”

Father Landry aimed his cellphone camera at one of the men and “snapped a photo of his derriere,” he said. “Because it’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”