Apologetics toolbox: Abortion and the silence of Jesus

[Vice-President Joe] Biden is not wrong on gay and abortion, Jesus NEVER took a stand on either of these issues.  Jesus only talked about love and a belief in him, you people better take a deep look into yourselves because he is coming back soon and not loving your neighbor and not taking care of the poor and the less fortunate goes against everything my lord taught and if you do not do the same you spit on him and I would hate to be in your shoes.

This combox entry appeared in Carson Holloway’s piece, “Paul Ryan, Joe Biden and Liberal False Equivalence”, on CatholicVote.org.  Of course, besides our anonymous troll’s factual error — that Jesus talked about much more than love and faith in him is easily demonstrable from the Gospels — s/he also commits an argument from Gospel silence.  Such arguments, as I’ve said before, can become ad ignorantiam fallacies unless the argument to be made from the silence is consistent with what came both before the Gospels (pre-Christian Judaism) and after the Gospels (the New Testament letters; the writings of the Church Fathers).

And yet, there are those who will insist that Jesus the Compassionate would have understood, and implicitly given his approval to, a woman’s desire to abort her unborn child … especially if she were young, poor and in some sense downtrodden.  Not only is this argument hard to sustain without Scriptural proof-texts, it perfectly illustrates why asking “What Would Jesus Do” is bad moral advice: it invites us to turn the Lord into a sock puppet telling us to do what we want to do anyway.

Democracy, truth and the death of liberalism

©1980 David Horsey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.

—Winston S. Churchill

In First Things, Matthew Schmitz writes an interesting breakdown of some recent social-survey data which indicate that youth support of gay marriage is somewhat soggy and undependable as a sign of the future.  His basic premiss, of course, is that liberals in the media misrepresent the numbers; a couple of years ago I would have argued that the misrepresentation wasn’t all intentional … in fact, on another subject, I did.  (Now, after the blanket party they threw for Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A, not so much.)

As good as it was, I wouldn’t even bring the article up except for a disturbing “drive-by” comment by a person identifying himself as “Dan”:

I realize that this article pertains to generational opinions on marriage equality for gays and lesbians, however a larger issue is being ignored. The USA is the only nation on earth that has allowed the public to decide this important civil rights issue via ballot measures. This is a grossly immoral act which violates every principle of our Republic. Ultimately, the majority has no right to determine the civil rights of minorities. Have we learned nothing from the struggles of women for the right to vote or blacks to attend the same schools? Therefore, whatever young people think regarding this issue is irrelevant [bold font mine].

So much for “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.  Perhaps Dan merely wanted to throw a cold bucket of disillusionment over our grand national fantasy of representative democracy.  Perhaps in reality we were always just token participants in our government; perhaps even the modern cumbersome and expensive primary process is just an elaborate scheme for putting the élite’s Chosen Ones in office and judicial chambers.

Considering Mitt Romney, I half believe it myself.

The road not taken

This morning I saw a Facebook post from my good friend StacyTrasancos:

Judging from the scene in my kitchen this morning, you’d never believe I used to dress in smart business clothes, march through labs where people did exactly what I told them to do, and sit in a quiet and tidy office solving complex problems.  Motherhood can be overwhelming — and sticky — at times.  Sigh.

I could just picture her in sweats, her hair put up carelessly with a comb and two or three pins, trying to exercise some calm and pull order out of chaos as five children noisily and messily ate their breakfasts, perhaps while swabbing up some spilled milk and scooping some free-range Cap’n Crunch off the counter.

But I can also picture the smile she had when she posted that thought.  This is the kind of moment Stacy will reflect upon as her children cross stages to receive diplomas, as they step nervously up church aisles to be wedded, as they themselves try to wrestle some kind of calm out of their own kids’ anarchy while Grandma looks on fondly.  And Time will embroider the scene in threads of gold and silver for her to carry through the rest of her days.

And so I couldn’t help but remember the final stanza of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.[1]

Hurt feelings a “human rights violation”?

“Chick-fil-A faces vandalism, ‘human rights violation’ complaints for defending marriage”

Almost as soon as I read the LifeSiteNews headline, I had to double-check the story.  I knew about the vandalism at the Torrance, Calif., unit, but … human rights violation complaints? Are you freakin’ kidding me?  I simply could not believe it — no, no, LSN had to be exaggerating something, or simply reporting one of the many bogus bits of information that spread like Captain Trips throughout the ‘Net (remember last year, when Jon Bon Jovi died in that New York hotel room — oh, waitaminnit, no he didn’t!).  Nobody could possibly be that petty and hysterical!

But no, the Civil Rights Agenda’s own website confirms the action, reporting sadly that “Chick-fil-A’s ‘intolerant corporate culture’ violates the Illinois Human Rights Act, which prohibits a ‘public accommodation’ from making protected classes ‘unwelcome, objectionable or unacceptable.’”  To get to the story, you have to click on a Photoshopped picture of a Chick-fil-A sign whose marquee proclaims, “YOU & YOUR GAY FAMILY ARE OBJECTIONABLE & UNACCEPTABLE”; the caption sullenly informs you, “Our lawyers are making us say: the above graphic is obviously a parody and what we believe LGBTQ folks see when they look at a Chick-fil-A sign.”

Not only will this story not die a natural death, it doesn’t appear even to be suffering a summer cold.  Could this be the year the left goes so far over the top that they lose all credibility even among those they purport to champion?

Some cold water for your chicken sandwich and waffle fries

Here it is, August 1, and the anti-Chick-fil-A crusade has reached “epic fail” proportions.  Far from hurting Dan Cathy through his pocketbook, the threatened boycott has generated the Atlanta-based QSR (and owner/CEO Cathy) millions of dollars of extra business plus new regular customers, assuring that the boycott will continue to generate revenue even after Mike Huckabee’s anti-boycott fades into memory.

The British Submarine Service used to have a saying: “Never mind your enemies; watch out for your friends.”  That was because a number of subs had been lost at sea when they were struck by surface ships from their own fleets.  Boston mayor Dan Menino and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel did the pro-SSM marriage cause more harm than good by their over-the-top threats to ratchet their zoning and permit laws against the chicken chain.  While other cities have joined the witch-hunt, the ACLU (mirabile dictu) has fired their own shot across the various cities’ bows:  barring Chick-fil-A over the personal views of its owner is an “open and shut” discrimination case.  The Boston Globe and the Chicago Sun-Times, neither of which qualifies as a right-wing paper, have both criticized their local leaders for their threats of repressive tactics, and even AndrewSullivan wrote a we’re-better-than-that piece for the Daily Beast [reposted to his blog on The Dish].  Put simply, the “ban Chick-fil-A” movement will die faster than Huckabee’s candidacy did.

What we’re seeing is an authentically liberal backlash against a budding ersatz-liberal totalitarianism.  However, we have to wonder if the backlash has enough staying power to open up space for traditional-marriage supporters to be heard.  The kids may eat the chicken, but will they listen to us after they’ve munched the last waffle fry?

Mumbles Menino chokes on “Jesus chicken”

Once again, Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy is at the center of a hoopla concerning things he said — or, rather, things people have pretty much lied about him saying — concerning gay marriage.  Reports the unbiased, completely non-partisan Trudy Ring of the neutral SheWired.com:

If Mayor Thomas Menino (pictured) has his way, Chick-fil-A may be banned in Boston.

The fast-food chain, which has donated to antigay causes and whose executives this week admitted to antigay stances while saying the company doesn’t discriminate, is looking for locations in the city.  One is near the famous Freedom Trail, a series of historic sites connected to the American Revolution.  But Menino says that area, or any location in Boston, isn’t appropriate for a business with such policies.

“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston,” Menino told the Boston Herald yesterday.  “You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population.  We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion. … That’s the Freedom Trail.  That’s where it all started right here.  And we’re not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail.”

Menino said Chick-fil-A will find it “very difficult” to get licenses in Boston unless it changes its policies, and he plans to send a letter to the company’s headquarters in Atlanta “telling them my feelings on the matter.”

It has yet to be established that Chick-fil-A discriminates against anyone in their employment or business practices.  No one has been denied employment or fired because of homosexuality; no one has been denied purchase or hospitality because of their sexual preference.  But because Cathy and his family support traditional marriage and family values, Menino wants to economically discriminate against Chick-fil-A.

This is where I came in, almost exactly a year and a half ago.  And the same film is still running.

Matthew 6:7: Vain repetition or babble?

The early teen years are a time when charming misinformation is passed on from kid to kid with the solemn, easy assurance of time-tested wisdom.  “Schnauzer” is a dirty word in German.  The F-word is an acronym meaning “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” (in fact, that became a Van Halen album title towards the end of the Sammy Hagar era).  And KISS, the name of the rock supergroup, stands for “Knights In Satan’s Service”.

Eventually we learn better.  Schnauzer, in fact, comes from Schnauze, meaning “snout”.  Although the actual root of the f-bomb is uncertain, enough cognates abound in the Germanic languages that it most likely comes to us from a common Indo-European stem through Anglo-Saxon.  And, according to Wikipedia, guitarist and founding member Paul Stanley first suggested the name “Kiss” when original drummer Peter Criss mentioned that he’d been in a band named Lips; at one point, founding bassist Gene Simmons claimed it stood for the old rule about sales pitches: “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”

And yet, though we tell ourselves (and each other) that there’s nothing so stupid or counterfactual people won’t believe it if you repeat it often enough, in the main we fail to erect mental checkpoints where new data can wait for validation before they’re added to our lists of “everybody knows that” truths.  I’m sure most of us have listened or read as some blowhard confidently preceded some assertion of patent folly with the words, “Science has proven that ….”  Usually, this means one of three things:

• “Some recent study/experiment, using dubious methods and/or inappropriate measures, claims that …;” or
• “Although this theory can’t be tested under our current technical limitations, some scientists take it for granted that …;” or
• “Famous Scientist says that ….”  (Because, of course, Scientists never get stuff wrong, or speak on subjects about which they know bubkes.)

A queer reflection

And all men kill the thing they love, 

By all let this be heard, 

Some do it with a bitter look, 

Some with a flattering word, 

The coward does it with a kiss, 

The brave man with a sword! 

—Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

Before it’s anything else, the culture war is a word war.  A war of words; a war over words. 

In a sense, control over the language is control over thought: if you have the ability to impose your preferred words and definitions on the rest of the culture, you can control how things are said and, eventually, what is said.  No-no words become no-no thoughts, which become no-no attitudes, values and beliefs.

This is certainly true of the battle against same-sex marriage.  Consider the three theologians who accused Cdl. Timothy Dolan and the USCCB of “misrepresenting Catholic teaching”: former priest Daniel Maguire of Marquette told The Beast, “The bishops will stand with Dolan and the US Catholic Conference, but on this issue, they are in moral schism since most in the Church have moved on [to] a more humane view on the rights of those whom God has made gay.”[*]  A little later, writer Matthew DeLuca tells us that the most recent Gallup polling data says 51 percent of Catholics said gay marriage should be legal.  Which brings up the obvious question: When did 51% become “most”?

More important is what’s happening to the word marriage itself.  DB of Omnia Vincit Veritas puts the matter bluntly:

To be sure, it would be nice if everyone in the world understood and accepted the true meaning of marriage, but …, sadly, the trend is moving toward fewer and fewer people accepting the true and more traditional meaning of marriage.  As a result, the lone term marriage is also no longer being used as a shorthand for true marriage by much of the world.  This is the reality that we must confront and overcome; not simply whine about a misappropriated shorthand and all that goes with it.

A gay saint? Why not?

Over on Patheos, The Blogger Who Must Not Be Named has written a thoughtful, thorough and not-too-incendiary piece about Perry Lorenzo, the late director of education for the Seattle Opera, a gay man of his acquaintance whom he admired and respected as a fellow Catholic.  Indeed, the title is, “A Gay Man I Consider a Saint”.

After you read that, take up Pat Archbold’s defense of the Blogger, who made it quite clear that he didn’t know whether Lorenzo was continent and didn’t really care either: “Not my business. That’s between him and God.” Saith Patrick:

Some of the negative reactions to Mark’s piece bug me. Some people pointed out that the man in question lived with another man. How could Mark point out the holiness of a man who may have [] been actively gay? Scandal! I think some of this reaction is profoundly unfair. Why is it that we treat same sex attraction so much differently than other struggles? Sin is sin.

Would Mark have received the same reaction if he had written the same words about a man who did amazing things for and because of his faith but who also struggled with alcoholism? No, people would try to assume the best, praise what he did well, and hope that he died in friendship with the Lord. They wouldn’t be filling up comboxes with reported bar sightings as everyone would find that extremely rude. But somehow if someone struggles with same-sex attraction it is ok to be rude?

The timing of these posts is excellent, because my last post ended on a more strident, pugnacious note than I would have otherwise preferred.  Because I want to make it clear that Jesus’ love does embrace homosexuals … just not the way Andrew Sullivan would prefer.

What would Jesus say?

Aww, isn't Jesus so cute!

A friend of mine posted the editorial cartoon to your left on Facebook.  I guess it’s not enough to insist that, where my faith and my Church are concerned, I do in fact have a sense of humor.  So let me point out what’s really funny about the cartoon: the nun is wearing a habit.  Definitely not representative of the LCWR.

To be effective at manipulation, you want to keep things simple.  So rather than portray the nun in an ugly pantsuit (far more common), you dress her in the almost-forgotten habit, just as you draw Papa Bene as if he were being cast for the next installment of Grumpy Old Men.  Then, to really demonstrate how shallow your theology is, you draw Christ the Lord as a cute little koala bear of a man with a smiley face, looking nothing at all like someone who could open up a can of whip-ass on moneychangers in the Temple (Jn 2:14-16) or condemn Chorazin and Bethsaida to a fate worse than Tyre and Sidon (Mt 11:21-22).

Of course the cartoon is meant to be ironic, in the sense that it supposedly demonstrates an incongruity or inconsistency in Catholic teaching.  After all, nowhere in any of the Gospels does Jesus say anything about homosexuality — good, bad or indifferent.  So isn’t the Catholic Church concerned with preserving his teachings over all others?

Just like young boys at a matinee movie showing like to supply “dialogue” (i.e., wisecracks, burps and other noises) to fill the gaps in the script, so people like to answer the question, “What Would Jesus Do?”, with all sorts of self-serving mishegoss.  Especially if the Gospels can’t contradict them with a direct quote.  Who cares what Ss. Paul, Peter, John and those other losers said?  Jesus didn’t say it!