Christmas 2024, Day 4

 

Image: by Jorge Cocco Santangelo, shamelessly pinched from here.

To read:

• How the visions of St. Bridget of Sweden influenced depictions of the Nativity.
• The higher purpose of children in American society.

Have We Brought Back the Freak Show?

I have some questions for Christian and/ or socially conservative friends on social media. It's not my intent to rebuke anyone, but to raise an issue for reflection. This is probably too heavy a topic for the middle of Easter Week, but it's on my mind because as we try to get a handle on how to oppose the "transing" of America's youth, all my social media feeds have become visually very disturbing, as everyone seems to feel the need to document the deranged people caught up in this movement. It strikes me that every time I have seen a deeply disturbing picture or video of an obviously disturbed individual in the past several years -- the kind of image for which I try to practice old-fashioned custody of the eyes out of protection of my own heart and the other person's dignity-- it has been in the feed not of my progressive friends flaunting sexual transgression and imposing their libertine ways on me (I say that tongue in cheek) but in the feed of "pro-family" or Christian authors tut-tutting the latest outrage. Yes, I am telling you my lefty friends' posts are in a certain respect more wholesome and PG-rated than many of my Christian and pro-family friends.

Here are my questions, in no particular order.

1) I understand the need to educate people about threats or potential threats to civil society and family life. Does every troubled person doing something weird rise to the level of cultural threat? Is it possible that some practices are so isolated and bizarre that they will never catch on as a trend, and it would be better to pass over them in silence than to publicize them? 2) What was wrong with the old-fashioned circus freak shows? Anything? Aren't many of the photos and videos that accompany weird practices of merely prurient interest? What good is served by thrusting those photos in the faces of those who see your posts? 3) Is it possible that that certain notorious transgressive accounts have been exposed enough and don't require further documentation -- we now get what these people are about? Is there a point at which we cross the line from reporting to marketing for the transgressive? 4) When we invite people to gawk at disturbing behavior, often behavior we know or reasonably assume is associated with serious mental illness, isn't that use of a person, betraying his or her human dignity? 5) Similarly, if we illustrate our stories and posts about trends we think are harmful with (possibly) prurient pictures, aren't we guilty of using people?

6) When we easily pass along images that are deliberately intended to shock and disturb, do we have any responsibility to shield our audience in some way so they have an option not to see them? (Twitter, for example, allows you to tag your own photo as possibly disturbing). (Tangentially related: not so long ago a certain sector of Christian twitter got into a discussion about the prudence of the use of foul language if you're an influential evangelical or Catholic writer. Interestingly, some of the folks most adamant that the F-bomb does not befit a professing Christian's social media page are pretty blithe in passing along images that cannot be unseen and I would argue probably shouldn't be seen. Isn't it possible sick images are more powerful and therefore more potentially soul-damaging than an F-bomb?

Sweet Land of Liberty

Image credit: Independence Day, Andrew Wyeth, shamelessly pinched from here. 

The first post-Roe Independence Day, and I'm feeling more hopeful than I have in a while. Not optimistic, mind you, but hopeful! If that great and wicked spell can be broken, so can others. 

I'm not sure why I'm telling you this because I don't expect anyone to understand,  but yesterday at Mass, our genuinely beautiful choir sang America the Beautiful as one of the post-communion hymns. As I've confessed previously, I can't sing that song, especially the later verses, without tearing up, so when it happened it didn't take me by surprise. 

But I was completely overcome with unexpected weeping when we sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic as our recessional hymn. I'm not positive this meaning was intended (though knowing the choir director I think it was), but it felt like a comment on the Dobbs decision, and in an instant, every bit of joy at finally attaining the long-awaited destruction of that wicked legal fiction, every bittersweet memory of all the heroes of the movement who didn't live to see the day, all the sense of alienation from pastors and erstwhile pro-lifers who couldn't muster a bit of happiness or gratitude for the decision came pouring out. I couldn't stop. It was embarrassing! But cathartic. 

Spent yesterday with some old political philosophers and patriots in a small town on the water where they had a great parade and fireworks, and that was also good for the soul. 

For your Independence Day reading: 

Patriotism as A Virtue.  "John Adams calls us to celebrate our country by prayer, parades, and pyrotechnics. I’m with Adams."

My now-perennial posting of Peter Schramm's Born American, but in the Wrong Place. 

Irving Berlin singing God Bless America. 

Oh, and: the first tomato of summer!  Just a cherry tomato, but the promise of things to come! 

 

 

The Dobbs Decision

 

Headline of the Wall St. Journal June 25th, 2022, the day after the decision 

This is an ex post facto post, but it occurred to me I might want to save this for posterity, or at least until Google finds me and shuts me down ;)  A thing I've worked and prayed and hoped and marched and sacrificed for most of my life, and did not expect to see. 

The Dobbs v. Jackson Decision

Update: So many pastors, including our bishops, had a hard time finding anything positive to say about the Dobbs decision, I just wanted, for the record, to show how it should have been done.  Most of this homily is a commentary on the gospel of the day, but the first few moments are about Dobbs. 

A Month of Hearts, Day 20

Image credit:  Sacred Heart being adored by Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart & Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Corrado Mezzana, 1922 

Happy Father's Day!   

I like this post from Fr. Clinton Sensat's FB page.  Today is the beginning of the novena to Ss. Peter & Paul, whose feast is June 29.  Maybe this is a good time to make good on what follows, given that many Catholic politicians have moved to in-your-face defiance regarding their promotion of abortion, etc.: 

As Father's Day nears, I want to ask you all to pray for one very special group of fathers.

I ask you to pray for our bishops.

They are not soulless bureaucrats. They are not spineless politicians. They are not shadowy globalists. They are men. They are priests.

Have they failed, repeatedly, in their tasks? Yes. But so have I. What man hasn't? And their duties are sterner than most.

They are men, and for the most part men of gentle heart and quiet disposition. They are averse to conflict, rightly or wrongly, and now they're being squeezed into a big one.

Let us be clear. Catholics in unrepentant mortal sin MUST NOT receive Jesus in the Eucharist. That is clear in both Scripture and Canon Law. Even more, Catholics in public and flagrant mortal sin must be denied the Eucharist after being warned by those who have their pastoral care.

These two things are not up for a vote. They are not debatable. And they are not political.

Are you the Grand Wizard of the KKK? You must be denied Communion.
Are you pushing to nuke Muslim countries? You must be denied Communion.
Do you publicly and unrepentantly deny Catholic dogmas? You must be denied Communion.
Do you promote homosexual marriage? You must be denied Communion.
Do you enable the slaughter of the unborn? You must be denied Communion.

To this point, rightly or wrongly, the bishops have taken a non-confrontational approach. They would preach the faith, and rely on Catholics who denied that faith to have both the conscience and the common sense to abstain from Communion.

But now they are being publicly challenged on both sides, and I don't think that approach has much of a future.

So please join me in praying for them. They're being squeezed, and hard. They deserve from us something more than our constant criticism, our social media crusading, and our ideological inquisitions. They are our fathers in Christ, and they deserve our prayers.

So on this Father's Day please remember them. You may not like them. You may rage at their faults. But they, too, are truly our fathers. And they deserve our spiritual support. 

Happy Christmas 2019, Day 4

William Kurelek, from A Northern Nativity, shamelessly pinched from here

Continuing the theme of an illustrator's Christmas. I've just discovered Kurelek, a Canadian illustrator and convert to Catholicism. You will see more of him this week, and from his book in which a boy imagines Jesus being born into various "Northern" situations. Merry Christmas!

On this feast of the Holy Innocents, a most worthy meditation on innocence from Bill McGurn.

Gosnell: Low-Rent Spotlight, A Story You Should Know

Went to see Gosnell Thursday evening. I expected it to be an awful piece of dreck, and went solely to stick it to the man (Kickstarter suppressed the effort to fund the movie and its advertising has been hampered by press bias.)

Was pleasantly surprised however. (Well, I use "pleasant" advisedly). I expected the film to use gore to tell the story (here, look at a lot of baby parts and be horrified!), but it's admirably restrained in that respect. Instead, it's a bit like a prolonged episode of Law & Order. Starts with a drug bust, which leads to the raid of an inner city abortion clinic, where filthy conditions and more sinister things appear. And we, as audience, just see and experience alongside the cops and attorneys.

The film tells the story of how politics (no one -- including a GOP governor-- wanted to appear to be anything other than "pro-choice") and racism (we need not let anything happening in the inner city disturb us) prevented anyone from investigating numerous complaints from clients and doctors over decades. In this case, a very creepy man made use of this very atmosphere for cover.

I won't argue that it's a great film (overall it feels like "dark Hallmark"), but it's a story people should know given that our times are full of crimes that go un-investigated for fear of giving comfort to "the enemy," or wishing to protect our own. It's something of a low-rent "Spotlight" in that sense: with the major difference that in this case even the press took no interest until it was shamed into it by an intrepid blogger and a twitter army. Taken together, the two films have something to teach us about how tribal politics trumps too many people's interest in evidence and justice and can allow evil to thrive in plain sight. 

Earl Billings as Gosnell

Thriller-writer Andrew Klavan co-wrote the script, and he and director Nick Searcy mostly (though not entirely) avoid the ham-handedness that often mars this kind of story-telling. For the most part the action tells the story, devoid of moralizing exposition. Though uneven, the film has some powerfully affecting scenes that are so precisely because of restraint, with the viewer left to draw her own conclusions. The grand jury and court room scenes in the script are taken largely from actual transcripts -- it's the relationships and personalities of the cops and attorneys that are fictionalized. (In fact, one of the most effective parts of the movie is the credit roll, where they show you actual photos from the crime scenes, and you see that the film was not exaggerating.)

Earl Billings as Gosnell gives a terrific performance -- chillingly avuncular. I would like to see more of him in future parts.

And on another note, it struck me as I was watching that apart from Black Panther, I don't recall seeing a recent movie that showcased so many black actors, with parts where they are treated as people doing what people do, not as self-conscious exemplars of their race.

Free Love, But No Lovers

I will try to say this delicately as I'm still of the mind that certain topics are not for mixed company -- and plus, my mom might be reading. 

Among the things that make me sad about the apparently bottomless pit of unseemly revelations about our celebrities (in every field) is that for all of "free love's" promise of beautiful, healthy, unrepressed sexual experiences, the actual experiences people are having are ugly, tawdry, solipsistic, and self-ruining. Co-eds getting massively drunk to force themselves (for what reason?) to be with men they can't look at sober; and men who because of their positions wouldn't lack for willing partners, yet can't approach a woman in normal fashion -- they can only seek admiration for themselves in bizarre ways. 

I mean, forget anti-harassment training. How about just sisterly advice: she does not want to see that. Even if she likes you and wouldn't mind being seduced, she doesn't. If you were a lover and not Narcissus, you would know that.

I try to be a nice Catholic girl, so I'm not on board with extra-marital sexual expression in the first place. I think the much-mocked traditional morality does a much better job of allowing sex to be beautiful and guilt-free and life-giving in both the literal and emotional senses. But this behavior isn't merely immoral, it's inhuman and degraded. It's libido turned inward towards the self instead of outward towards the other. 

My godfather used to say that if you're going to go to hell, you should go first class. This ain't it. This is more like a vision of hell itself. And it makes me feel terribly sad.

A Nation of Corrie Ten Booms

Mr. W. and I were just talking about how difficult it is not to simply absorb the culture in which you live because no one can really stand outside his own time. Maybe a little, in flashes, but not really. Now here comes Anthony Esolen with a little essay about that: Holier than Them.

He allows his friend Robbie George to set up the problem:

the inestimable Robert George, likes to ask his college students how many of them, if they lived in the South before the Civil War, would have opposed slavery. They all raise their hands. “Bless their hearts,” says he, and then he advises them what their opposition would have cost them: ridicule from the most visible political and intellectual leaders of their society; slander of their motives; incomprehension at best from their families; loss of employment; loneliness; and scant gratitude from the people they aimed to help.
Nor is it clear how they could form a moral position running athwart so much of what they must have taken for granted from the time they were born

We all like to think we'd have worked the underground railroad or housed priests in Reformation England or hidden Jews from the Nazis or stood like Sakharov. And the truth is, no, we wouldn't. Mostly we'd have been shaped by the relentless propaganda campaign and the fear of retribution. If we even saw the evil at all, most of us would sigh and be silent and keep our heads down.

Esolen uses his piece to mock the virtue signaling of our time, where our pieties cost us nothing:

we are not called to oppose, notionally, comfortably, the characteristic evils of other ages, basking in the glow of a righteousness that costs nothing. We are called to suffer in opposing the characteristic evils of our age. And we will not begin even to conceive of how such a thing is possible, if we do not obey an authority that transcends mankind.

He has in view the sexual revolution:

What is the public evil of our time? What single “good” will cost you the most, through public ridicule or persecution, if you reject it and act accordingly?

He highlights a particular instance of cowardice masquerading as bravery that caught my eye as well. A pastor in Rhode Island fired his music director for getting gay married with the full knowledge of parishioners. So the parishioners, to protest, sang "All Are Welcome" in place of the Creed. 

What struck me about their protest was not so much the empty "bravery" of it, but how unwittingly apt their chosen gesture is: "We easily jettison the actual precepts of faith by which Christ's disciples live in favor of a fuzzy feeling folk song of our choosing." 

Esolen heaps deserved scorn on such folk, who imagine they are being brave and defiant when they are actually being swept along by the currents of the time. But I think his earlier point is more important -- the part about how difficult it is to stand against evil -- and not just because of cowardice, but because the water you're swimming in is so hard to see. 

That is what frightens me most about more years of Progressive rule and what mystifies me about some of my Christian #nevertrump friends who think any of the Christian institutions from which they plan to mount their counter-assault on the culture will withstand another four or eight or twelve or sixteen years of HHS mandates and transgender bathroom rules and the like. I think most of us who write about these things now will not think the same with eight or twelve more years of this. 

People seem to write as if the coming (already here in vanguard) soft persecution of Christians will be good for the Church -- it will purify us, awaken the sleeping giant, etc. I suppose that might happen.  Maybe we will be brave. Some people no doubt will. There have always been Joan Bells and Joe Scheidlers and Baronelle Stutzmans among us. But the truth is that most of us will just be carried along. They'll tell us we can't have our hospitals or universities unless we support gay marriage and pay for abortions and you know what will happen? We'll agonize, and then we'll decide in conscience that the good of being able to treat people in the hospital or of teaching most of what we believe outweighs the evil to be done by turning so many people out of work by closing those institutions down. Better that we should continue our work as best we can than turn these vital duties over to others, we will say.  

We will Sr. Carol Keehan it, and we will do so in good conscience, believing in good faith we are making the best of a bad situation and lamenting our own persecution.  And of those who do stand up we'll say either that we admire them but we don't think Christian conscience necessitates their stand or that they are a little too harsh or odd and that's not the way to attract people to the faith. We will have a point, as people who say such things (myself among them) do today, but we will be making these same compromises with a secularism now 5, 10, 15, 20 years advanced and even more people than today will simply not remember, or ever have experienced, any reality other than rule by the secular administrative state and they won't think it's that bad. 

This is why we pray, "Lead us not into temptation."  Because most of us are not strong enough to stand against the strong winds that blow. Most of us --I-- need a healthy culture because we have neither sufficient leisure to study and understand the times, nor eyes to see the evil in them, nor courage to oppose evil when we do see it. 

#BlackLiversMatter

Pretty good piece in The American Thinker about Planned Parenthood and blacks.  I have one quibble, perhaps it's more than a quibble, which is that the piece makes use of this oft-repeated-among-pro-lifers quotation: 

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”

I wish folks would quit citing that, because in context I don't think it means what it's purported to mean. It comes from a letter in which Sanger recommends recruiting black doctors and pastors to promote birth control to blacks not to hide an intent to exterminate the entire race, but because blacks were backwards and superstitious and likely to think that without one of their own to reassure them. 

Which is still plenty racist, I grant. And here's an abundance of actual quotations considering blacks inferior, and Sanger's actual "Negro Project" to make it unnecessary to muddle things with a juicy quotation taken out of context.  

The larger point, however: that Planned Parenthood targets the poor and desperate -- which in this country means targeting blacks and immigrants-- is well-taken. 

While Blacks make up 25 percent of the NYC population, 46 percent of abortions were Black babies. Shockingly more Black babies were killed by abortion in NYC than were born alive. By contrast, Whites make up 44 percent of the NYC population but only account for 12 percent of abortions. Margaret Sanger’s dreams are being realized. Where is the outrage in The Big Apple over #BlackLivesMatter?

Well, given the recent and ongoing exposure of Planned Parenthood for trafficking in fetal organs, it just goes to show that #BlackLiversMatter. 

Nate Beeler, shamelessly pinched from The Washington Examiner.

Look Who's Discovered the Birth Dearth

Formerly Grey Lady reports:

Recently, Sex and Society, a nonprofit group that provides much of Denmark’s sex education, adjusted its curriculum. The group no longer has a sole emphasis on how to prevent getting pregnant but now also talks about pregnancy in a more positive light.
It is all part of a not-so-subtle push in Europe to encourage people to have more babies. Denmark, like a number of European countries, is growing increasingly anxious about low birthrates. Those concerns have only been intensified by the region’s financial and economic crisis, with high unemployment rates among the young viewed as discouraging potential parents.

But oh: the comments! the comments!

Where's The Sisterhood?

I don't know what made me watch this, since the everyone-talk-over-everyone-else format irritates me, but I did. Another yeoman performance from Lila Rose and I almost felt sorry for NARRAL president Ilyse Hogue; the facts of the matter simply don't permit her to ever answer a question straight-up or without repeating a lie. While it's a worthwhile conversation in itself, posting for Hogue's answer to Gingrich's question at the very end (about 19:55). He asks whether there's any restriction on abortion at all she'd allow. She says of course, abortion is restricted all the time (which is false; NARRAL won't advocate for any restriction at all). Gingrich calls her on it by asking her to name one restriction she'd support and she says, "But I'm not a medical professional....and (paraphrasing) and we're saying let the medical professionals make the call."

So: not women? You're not arguing about women being empowered to make their own decisions, it's about women helplessly throwing themselves under the "protection" of doctors who make their livings from abortion?

The sexual libertine "I do what I want" and don't care how it affects others I at least get. Don't find it morally acceptable, but I can wrap my mind around it, imagine myself thinking it. What I've never been able to understand is why people who style themselves feminists and want (presumably sincerely) to help women insist on enfeebling them so. I'm not belittling the genuine suffering and hardship of pregnancy and how wrenching it must be to give a child up for adoption, but what is empowering, ennobling or freeing about insisting that a woman's life will be ruined by a pregnancy?

People interrupt their plans because of unexpected troubles all the time: a broken leg makes you lose your athletic scholarship; your dad's cancer makes you have to run the family business for a year or two instead of going to grad school right away; you get cancer and can't hold down a job; your parents unexpectedly divorce and send you into a tailspin of depression so you bomb out of college; you're unexpectedly fired; you turn out not to be as good at your chosen profession as you'd hoped. Etc, etc.

In any of these cases, your friends and family and society at large tell you you're tough and you'll get through it and it's just a bump in the road. And it IS. In fact, characters are made precisely in overcoming such obstacles. Why is unplanned pregnancy sold to women as the sole insuperable problem that will ruin your life and for which your committing an act of violence against another and against your own psyche is the only response? Where is the sisterhood in that?

Pope Francis, Virtual Marcher

I join the March for Life in Washington with my prayers. May God help us respect all life, especially the most vulnerable
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) January 22, 2014

Update:  Went to the March with the kids. The below-zero windchill nearly scared me off, but I rallied and decided, "bring it, Winter."  It stands to reason that the crowds were diminished due to the cold, but you sure couldn't tell it. We were at the head of the line this year, and as we were departing, the throng behind us just kept coming and coming and coming. Pro-lifers ain't wimps, whatever else you might say.

The new head of March4Life is taking pains to modernize it in a good way -- she wants it to have impact beyond visuals (and the spiritual warfare aspect of that many people praying for hours at a time), and she made an effort to get more Evangelicals involved this year. In my portion of the March I didn't see so many new Church groups, but there did seem to be more Jews. There've always been a couple of Rabbis for Life, but this year there was a group flying an Israeli flag and another with colorful "L'Chaim!" posters. And I got a chuckle out of this:

  Secular Pro-Life: "For the embryology textbook tells me so."

(For those of you over The Big Pond, that's a play on the lyric of what I assume is an American Christian children's song: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so....).

It was the usual pro-life homecoming atmosphere. Lots of praying and singing and jubilation and hugs for friends you haven't seen in a while. At the Supreme Court there were maybe a dozen pro abortion protestors awaiting us. Most of them had that familiar purple "Keep Abortion Legal" sign, but some had handmade signs that were so vulgar it hurt. There was one girl who looked so young and sweet and innocent and the sign she was carrying made me feel sick. It is hard to believe there's not an element of the demonic involved when people make themselves so base. 

Eldest Weed has reached the stage where he questions everything and is cynical in that kind of low-grade teenage way. But he doesn't need any lectures from me about which path leads to emotional happiness and which leads to hatred and bitterness. He saw the tens of thousands rejoicing and the dozens cursing. All he said was, "You stay classy, Planned Parenthood," but when I said I'd stopped to pray for that girl because it made my heart ache to see someone in such emotional pain, he completely agreed.

And then, le sigh....the President felt the need to weigh in on this Holy Anniversary of Roe v. Wade.  I am not exaggerating when I say it strains my capacity for charity to read or listen to this man, so I defer to this great First Things piece, which notices more than 8 lies in the President's single paragraph statement. 

As a palate cleanser, or brain bleach, or just the refreshment of someone not talking smack: Archbishop Chaput's homily from Mass at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception last night:

Today is the forty-first anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which effectively legalized abortion on demand. It’s a time to look back and look ahead. The abortion struggle of the past four decades teaches a very useful lesson. Evil talks a lot about “tolerance” when it’s weak. When evil is strong, real tolerance gets pushed out the door. And the reason is simple. Evil cannot bear the counter-witness of truth. It will not coexist peacefully with goodness, because evil insists on being seen as right, and worshiped as being right. Therefore, the good must be made to seem hateful and wrong.

....
Seventy years ago, abortion was a crime against humanity. Four decades ago, abortion supporters talked about the “tragedy” of abortion and the need to make it safe and rare. Not anymore. Now abortion is not just a right, but a right that claims positive dignity, the license to demonize its opponents and the precedence to interfere with constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, assembly, and religion. We no longer tolerate abortion. We venerate it as a totem.

 Boom! That was just the opening grafs! Well, whatevs. We aren't going to shut up. 

(Actually he said this as Cardinal in 2005)

Neither of Whom Is Fit to Live in Andrew Cuomo's New York

 

Shamelessly pinched from the Accidental Talmuldist.

Accepting whatsisname's (that New Republic guy whose name escapes me) definition of gaffe as a politician accidentally saying what he thinks, Gov. Cuomo had a doozy Friday night-- in which he said that pro-lifers are among those who are "extreme" and "have no place in New York."

K-Lo says what needs to be said about that. Her best column ever, I think. And as she points out: there mustn't be crickets about the fact that when a man aspires to run for President as a Democrat, he does so not with some uniting vision of the common good, but by fantasizing about banishing arguably 80% of his home state (since that's the # of New Yorkers who favor at least some restrictions on abortion). As K-Lo says: 

Notice who it is telling New Yorkers who believe we have to protect the most innocent – and we most definitely ought not be making their shot at seeing the light of day any harder – are not worthy of residence in the Empire State. It’s not Cardinal Dolan (who recently won a court victory on religious liberty). It’s not the Little Sisters of the Poor. It’s not pro-life Democrat Ruben Diaz. It’s not even National Review, a New York mainstay since 1955! The assault on religious liberty and conscience in America is coming from a radical secularist ideology on the Left. The narrowing of freedom is not coming from people who propose alternatives to the sexual revolutionary values, but from those, like Andrew Cuomo, who insist on doubling down on a culture of death, coercing submission and banishing dissent, all while using words like tolerance and choice.

I try to keep my darker thoughts to myself, but this illiberal and tyrannical talk from elected officials does frighten me because....

 Shamelessly pinched from American Digest. Click to enlarge.

For the record, I don't think the President plans or fantasizes about the result depicted in the cartoon. I think he's a sophomoric lightweight whose grad-school pieties aren't adequate to the real world. But the result of his policies is the same -- and we have an entire generation of spoiled citizens like him who think liberty just "is" and not something precious that must be thoughtfully maintained. It is deeply creepy to hear politicians speak openly about who is and isn't worthy of living amongst us. In a healthy society, a guy talking like Gov. Cuomo would immediately be in way more trouble than Chris Christie, and would have disqualified himself from the presidency by that single telling remark.

What's Going On In International Adoption?

In a previous post highlighting Obama administration abuses, I noted the IRS targeting adoptive families -- with 90% of them subject to additional "scrutiny," whatever that means, and about 70% of them actually audited, even though there's no widespread adoption fraud to justify such a thing.

Today the Wall Street Journal published a piece (behind its firewall) about the red tape from American embassies that makes overseas adoption increasingly difficult. Friends of mine just experienced this firsthand. They were over in Poland adopting their daughter and were held up there for an extra...I don't recall, month? because of bureaucratic obstruction bordering on harassment from some caseworker on the U.S. side. I've forgotten how they overcame it -- asked for help from a Congressional caseworker, I think.  But it doesn't seem to be unusual, thanks to a new investigation process. From the article, which takes adoption from the Congo as an example:

While children who have been legally adopted by American parents languish in orphanages, the embassy sends out its Fraud Prevention Unit to investigate each child. In many cases, children slated for adoptions were removed from orphanages and placed in foster care several months prior to the investigators' visit. Congolese orphanage directors are inundated with children, but when they do not remember a particular child they met briefly many months earlier, the U.S. embassy declares that "orphan status cannot be verified" and recommends denial. When the orphanages do not keep detailed records -- and few do, despite their best efforts -- the embassy recommends denial. When there are any inconsistencies in the abandonment documents, which are created months after the abandonment and only when an orphan is matched with a family, the embassy recommends denial. 

The author, a lawyer who recently went through the process, reports that overseas adoptions have dropped 60% in the past eight years and blames embassy understaffing, but also the absurdity of having strict transparency standards in countries where conditions make Western-style record-keeping impossible. That means precisely where there are the most kids in need of rescue, it's hardest to rescue them.

On behalf of my friends trying to adopt, I have been outraged by these things. It seemed like targeting of pro-lifers.

But something came up recently that makes me wonder if there isn't actually a wholesome reason for the increased scrutiny: namely, this truly horrific story about the prosecution of a gay couple who prostituted their adopted Russian baby as part of an international sex trafficking ring. They were even highlighted as an ideal gay couple on Australian tv at one time. When the story broke, all the traditional marriage defenders pointed to it as evidence against gay marriage. I held my fire because as awful as the story is, it seems like an outlier, and we wouldn't use hetero pedophilia as an argument against adoption generally.

But if you read to the bottom of the story, it seems that abusing Russian children for sex trafficking --including not just orphans, but kids purchased from surrogate moms-- is a big problem in Russia, and the main reason Russia recently closed adoption to American couples. I don't know how widespread the abuse is -- it's in Putin's interest to exaggerate it, and most people saw the gesture at the time as just that -- a gesture, in response to Obama's signing the Magnitsky Act, seen as a slap at Russia. I don't know; I'm not making a claim, but it makes me wonder.

Russian Ombudsman for Children’s Rights, Pavel Astakhov, told RT Novosti that the Russian government is tightening up adoption laws to prevent another case like Adam's.
“Russian orphans always attracted foreign perverts because of accessibility. The foreigners were simply coming and taking children for money,” Astakhov said. 

At the very least, it seems that the heightened scrutiny is not unilateral US bureaucracy, but part of an international effort to interrupt child trafficking, which is unfortunately very common in some countries -- notably Ethiopia & Vietnam-- under the guise of international adoption.

Filner, Weiner & Other Bro-Choice Politicians

Remember the journalist who said not only was she not bothered by Bill Clinton's sexual predations on an intern, she'd perform an unmentionable act for him herself just to keep abortion legal?

Shades of the same from the increasingly obscene case of San Diego mayor (and former Congressman) Robert Filner, who now has seven women accusing him of the grossest kinds of harrassment (gives a whole new meaning to "hands-on government" said a waitress), and whose fiancee broke up with him for sexting other women right in front of her at a restaurant. From a former lobbyist for "women's issues" :

It was common knowledge on Capitol Hill that this guy was a pig, but as politics got more fractious and partisan, we needed his vote. He was pro-choice, pro-labor, pro-veterans and pro-Israel. That’s why no one outed him.

So... votes for services, that's what passes for feminine empowerment these days. Clinton. Switzer. Weiner. Filner.....Kennedy. It's men like these who wage the real War on Women. They don't even have the courage and passion to have a real affair of the heart. They sext and insist women in subservient positions service them. They aren't pro-choice, they're Bro-choice, as men against a recent Texas law explained: 

Your sex life is at stake. Can you think of anything that kills the vibe faster than a woman fearing a back-alley abortion? Making abortion essentially inaccessible in Texas will add an anxiety to sex that will drastically undercut its joys. And don't be surprised if casual sex outside of relationships becomes far more difficult to come by.

Are women really so stupid that it never dawns on them that men who treat women like this in real life don't really have their best interests at heart in policy either?

Hermeneutic of Continuity

Well done, William Doino, Jr., for Five Myths About Pope Francis. People who repeat any of the five are either up to no good or not paying attention.

(My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I read a Sandro Magister piece a week or two ago alleging the Pope has said nothing about abortion. Um, taking part in Italy's March for Life seems like a comment to me -- and there was more, as this piece documents. The Vatican watcher seems to have nodded off for about a month.)

Not Your Average Pastor's Column

How would you like to have the likes of this in your parish bulletin each week? Fr. Rutler on calling evil good.

I Think Fr. Frank Just Won

After Gramma Pelosi proclaimed (or appeared to proclaim) late-term abortion "sacred," Priests for Life founder Fr. Frank Pavone called her out, asking her to have the decency to renounce Catholicism instead of pretending to be "devout" (though any practicing Catholic would tell you that no actually devout Catholic would ever refer to himself as devout; saying that of yourself is de facto proof it ain't true).

In an interview with Think Progress she laughs his challenge off -- says if it had been more "intellectual" and less "hysterical" she might have taken it seriously. But I think she also admits she's not Catholic here.

I grant the Church where they are on abortion. That’s where they are, that’s where they have to be. But my faith isn’t about what their position is.

It's a bit ambiguous. Possibly the "they" is Priests for Life since she denounces them before and after. But she seems to say here that her faith has nothing to do with what the Church teaches.

The interview is revealing, not only because it shows she's as ignorant as she appears, but because it demonstrates what's not even on her radar. Here 's what she says about Roe v. Wade (note her dismissive referral to the March for Life as a "parade"):

I’m not sure that the Republicans actually want Roe v. Wade to be struck down. Their base does. But from their standpoint, they’ve had plenty of opportunities to strike Roe v. Wade. They have these parades every year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but they have not acted in a way that would take it to the courts. Now, other people outside have their cases and all that. But President Bush, with a majority in Congress and a court inclined to strike down Roe v. Wade, he didn’t need to do it. And that should tell you something. They want the issue. Better to have the issue. Because if they strike it down they will have such a backlash in the country. [Emphasis in original.] 

Nancy Pelosi --former Speaker of the House-- does not value the authority of Congress! She thinks Republicans aren't serious (some of them certainly aren't, but that's another story), and her evidence is that they haven't done what Lefties do, which is try to impose their views through judicial diktat. It does not even occur to her that there could be any other way to function. Similarly, look at how she speaks of Bush "striking down" Roe, as if that were a Presidential power or as if the President has any control over the SCOTUS. (Makes you wonder what the relationship between Dem presidents and their appointees is, doesn't it?)

This calls to mind John Allen's piece about Christians in Nigeria wanting to be peaceful, but not able to bring the Muslims to the table until they fought, because Muslims could only understand non-violence as weakness. Legitimate legislative processes that honor the Constitution and the will of the people are so far off Pelosi's radar, she can't recognize that her opponents are working within them. Honorable politics are a cipher to her!

Pelosi: Abortion Is Sacred Ground

Actually, as you'll see or read, she didn't quite say late-term abortion was sacred ground. What she said, by way of avoiding admitting there is no difference between the horrors Kermit Gosnell was prosecuted for and what the law of the land explicitly allows, is this: 

I've responded to you to the extent that I'm going to respond to you. Because I want to tell you something. As the mother of five children, my oldest child was 6 years old the day I brought my 5th child home from the hospital, as a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don't think it should have anything to do with politics. And that's where you're taking it and I'm not going there. 

Which is to say: life is so sacred that I shouldn't have to be pinned down on my duty to protect it. Or: it's a sin to even talk about this!

I wonder if Ms. Pelosi would also be uncomfortable reading the text of Gonzales v. Carhart, which describes what the most common second term abortion procedure in the United States is like (85-90% of our annual 1.3 million abortions take place in the first three months). In the second term, the most typical procedure is like this. From the Court decision.

A doctor must first dilate the cervix at least to the extent needed to insert surgical instruments into the uterus and to maneuver them to evacuate the fetus. Nat. Abortion Federation, supra, at 465; App. in No. 05-1382, at 61. The steps taken to cause dilation differ by physician and gestational age of the fetus. See, e.g., Carhart, 331 F. Supp. 2d, at 852, 856, 859, 862-865, 868, 870, 873-874, 876-877, 880, 883, 886. A doctor often begins the dilation process by inserting osmotic dilators, such as laminaria (sticks of seaweed), into the cervix. The dilators can be used in combination with drugs, such as misoprostol, that increase dilation. The resulting amount of dilation is not uniform, and a doctor does not know in advance how an individual patient will respond. In general the longer dilators remain in the cervix, the more it will dilate. Yet the length of time doctors employ osmotic dilators varies. Some may keep dilators in the cervix for two days, while others use dilators for a day or less. Nat. Abortion Federation, supra, at 464-465; Planned Parenthood, supra, at 961.
     After sufficient dilation the surgical operation can commence. The woman is placed under general anesthesia or conscious sedation. The doctor, often guided by ultrasound, inserts grasping forceps through the woman's cervix and into the uterus to grab the fetus. The doctor grips a fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through the cervix and vagina, continuing to pull even after meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through the cervix and out of the woman. The process of evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues until it has been completely removed. A doctor may make 10 to 15 passes with the forceps to evacuate the fetus in its entirety, though sometimes removal is completed with fewer passes. Once the fetus has been evacuated, the placenta and any remaining fetal material are suctioned or scraped out of the uterus. The doctor examines the different parts to ensure the entire fetal body has been removed. See, e.g., Nat. Abortion Federation, supra, at 465; Planned Parenthood, supra, at 962.
     Some doctors, especially later in the second trimester, may kill the fetus a day or two before performing the surgical evacuation. They inject digoxin or potassium chloride into the fetus, the umbilical cord, or the amniotic fluid. Fetal demise may cause contractions and make greater dilation possible. Once dead, moreover, the fetus' body will soften, and its removal will be easier. Other doctors refrain from injecting chemical agents, believing it adds risk with little or no medical benefit. Carhart, supra, at 907-912; Nat. Abortion Federation, supra, at 474-475.

That, see, the Court is okay with. Is it different in magnitude than Gosnell? What the decision bans is a variation on this grisly procedure in which the baby is turned to breech position, all but the head is delivered, and then the doctor stabs the baby in the head and collapses the head for delivery.

If you ask me, the banned procedure, horrifying as it is (and don't get me wrong, I'm glad we could ban something, to establish a limit on abortion), is actually more humane than the acceptable procedure, where the doctor pulls the baby apart limb by limb -- clearly more painful and more prolonged. We can't just kill the fetus, we have to torture it besides.

This is Pelosi's sacred ground. It's a sin to even bring it up.