Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

and is, of course, lauded by the NYT: (emphases mine)

Backing Abortion Rights While Keeping the Faith
By NEELA BANERJEE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — Frances Kissling has been called the “philosopher of the pro-choice movement” by her friends and an “abortion queen” by her critics.

But the name Ms. Kissling wears most defiantly, to the consternation of many religious believers, is Roman Catholic. For 25 years, as president of Catholics for a Free Choice, she has angered the church hierarchy and conservative Catholics by criticizing fundamental teachings on sex.

“I’m so Catholic, I can’t get away from it,” said Ms. Kissling, who was once in a convent. “How I construct concepts of life, of justice, it all comes out of being Catholic.”

Though unknown to most lay Catholics, she has inspired and worked with politicians and activists, many Catholic, to speak out in favor of giving women access to abortions and to artificial contraception.

On Wednesday, Ms. Kissling, 63, will step down from her post, relinquishing her role as one of the most vocal of the so-called bad Catholics, those who manage to accommodate the opposing sentiments of love for the church and anger at much of its doctrine.

“The constant refrain in this office is, ‘Are we really Catholic?’ ” Ms. Kissling said here in a recent interview. “I know with every ounce of my being that you don’t have to agree with the positions of the church on issues of abortion and contraception to be Catholic.”

Many Catholics passionately disagree. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued statements challenging the right of Catholics for a Free Choice to call itself Catholic. Critics dismiss Ms. Kissling’s organization as a mouthpiece for bigger, secular abortion rights groups and a front for anti-Catholic bigotry.

“They could get special attention and get special digs at the church because of their name,” said Helen M. Alvaré, an associate professor of law at the Catholic University of America and a former planning director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the Catholic Bishops conference. “They had no grass-roots base among Catholics. There was nothing very different about them from other pro-choice groups in the arguments they made.”

Catholics for a Free Choice says it gives voice to the large percentage of Roman Catholics who disagree with the church’s position on reproductive issues. Its $3 million budget is largely financed by well-known secular foundations, including the Ford Foundation.

Ms. Kissling agrees with her detractors that her organization has not affected church doctrine. Instead, it has focused on working with lay Catholics and others to build momentum for its causes.

With other groups, it successfully lobbied against the naming of John Klink, a former representative of the Holy See at the United Nations, to lead the State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration in 2001. Most recently, it worked with staff members for Representatives Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, and Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, to draft legislation intended to decrease abortions, partly by increasing financing for family planning.

Sitting in her Washington office, Ms. Kissling was unequivocal in her distaste for the church hierarchy. “I think that in many ways, the church has become an unjust institution,” she said. On one wall of her office was a cherub, on another a Che Guevara calendar . In a corner stood a candle that looked like a bishop’s miter, yet to be lit.

Ms. Kissling continued: “It abuses nuns, anyone who thinks, homosexuals, women who have abortions. It sexually abuses children. It treats people badly, and something has to be done to change its abusive nature.”

Ms. Kissling was born Frances Romanski into a working-class Polish family in New York, the oldest of four children. When she was a child, her mother divorced and later married a man named Kissling, which in the eyes of the church made her an adulteress, Ms. Kissling said.

Despite her frustration with such beliefs, Ms. Kissling said, she was inspired by the nuns at her Catholic school. In the early 1960s, she joined a convent, at age 19.

Convent life demanded that she look deep inside herself, she said, and she discovered that she did not agree with the church’s teachings on divorce and birth control. She left after six months to attend the New School.

Avowedly heterosexual, she said she never had a desire to marry or have children. She became active in the women’s movement in the 1960s. Then in 1970, when abortion was legalized in New York, she was asked to direct an abortion clinic in Pelham. She had no experience, she said, but neither did anyone else, so she took the position.

In 1978, she joined the board of Catholics for a Free Choice, and in 1982, she took over as president.

Critics and supporters say Ms. Kissling has a more nuanced view of abortion than many in the abortion rights movement. She said her experience working at an abortion clinic and her upbringing in the church made her believe “there was a certain void in the pro-choice movement around the questions of morality and ethics.”

In late 2004, she published an article in her group’s magazine, Conscience, titled “How to Think About the Fetus.” She said that while the fetus might not be a person, it was part of the continuum of humanity. She wrote that the fetus “is not nothing,” and that women who consider abortion know that.

Ms. Kissling said that abortion rights leaders feared acknowledging the value of a fetus because they did not want to further stigmatize abortion. But, she contends, that reticence has cast the abortion rights movement as casual about the emotional realities of abortion.

“Women know that something is inside them, and they know that something will become a baby if they don’t act in some way,” she said. “I don’t think we could say anything to them about the value of fetal life that they haven’t thought of already.”

Many abortion rights leaders said the article was damaging, especially because it came out while politicians were considering bans on so-called partial-birth abortions. But others, including some in the anti-abortion camp, commended Ms. Kissling.

“With her approach, she has found the real-life stuff,” said Representative Ryan, a Catholic who opposes abortion. “Those of us in the debate get hooked on philosophy and theory and dogma, and what Frances brings is reality: that abortion is a difficult decision for a woman.”

Ms. Kissling said she had decided to step down because she believed that her efficacy might soon wane, that she was on the “verge of becoming boring or predictable.” Jon O’Brien, 41, executive vice president of Catholics for a Free Choice, is to take over as president.

Ms. Kissling hopes to write a book about the value of the fetus, or teach, or finish the house she is building on the coast of Uruguay, she said. She has no plans to leave the Catholic Church.

“There are days when I think I can’t be a Catholic and that I want to go join a community where I am welcomed, honored, where I can join a parish,” she said. “But in the end, I don’t want to be a Methodist. I’m a member of the greatest religion in the world.”

There is so much in this that is just disgusting, I don’t even know if I can go into it.

She wants to be “welcomed and honored”? Well, I’m sure that’s what all the saints wanted, too, to be “honored.” Humility, much? Welcomed? Well, maybe if you were actually, I don’t know, Catholic . That might help.

And we’re the “greatest religion in the world” (well, duh ), but yet we “It abuses nuns, anyone who thinks, homosexuals, women who have abortions. It sexually abuses children. It treats people badly, and something has to be done to change its abusive nature.”
–abuse nuns: Haven’t heard this one yet. What, they can’t be priests? Hence the reason they are nuns
–anyone who thinks: I’m sure that Saints Thomas, Augustine, Terese of Avila, St. John of the Cross, JPII, and multiple others would be interested to hear that.
–homosexuals: We abuse them because we tell them to be actively homosexual is sinful? So are we “abusing” the rest of us heterosexuals by telling us we can’t have unfettered sex? Hun?
–Women who have had abortions: Yup, because, you know, they can’t received forgiveness via the Confessional. There’s not Project Rachel or anything like that. We just tie them to the pillar. Right.
–Sexually abuses children: Well, OK. The Church is made up of imperfect people. They do bad things. We are not perfect, it’s not an excuse, but this is not a solely Catholic problem. Kissling acts as if pedophila was some sort of church doctrine. Let’s get real.
–Treats people badly: Yup, that’s why there’s a billion of us. That’s why so many people will voluntarily join the Church this Easter. Because we treat people badly.

Do Protestants make it?

I was reading over at Open Book an article about this and I realized I had never noticed if my Protestant friends do or not. The only time I’ve been in a church with them for a service was when they went with me to Mass, and even then I didn’t notice.

Anyone know?

Head over to Danielle Bean’s site for some great Lenten web resources. It’s on the right-hand sidebar.

And my favorite–lots on confession…something I need to do, again.

OK I missed it, I’m in Shangri-la, give me a break. But apparently my church choir did very well.

h/t Amy:

Bishop Baker calls for a new dedication ot the Sabbath:

I invite all parishes in the Diocese of Charleston to begin the celebration of the Year of the Family by reclaiming the Sabbath for God and family. Because we have become distracted, overworked, and overcommitted to outside activities, Sunday has become just another work day. I challenge each of you to restore Sunday as a gift from the Father for the family to appreciate one another. We have lost the peace that God created for our day of rest, and we all should actively seek ways to invite God into the center of our families.

Some ideas to make this a reality:

Once a month, pray a parish family Rosary, followed by a covered dish with fun activities for youth and children.

Plan a pilgrimage to one of your favorite religious sites, such as the Shrine to Our Lady of Joyful Hope of South Carolina in Kingstree or Mepkin Abbey in Monck’s Corner.

Allow a member of the family to share fifteen minutes of scripture reading.

Refrain from any labor, shopping, and any private activity that conflicts with prayer or family involvement on a Sunday.

While your children or youth may be involved in faith formation on Sunday, try organizing activities with other parents and adults to enrich your faith and friendships.

Sounds like ideas even those of us w/o families can institute…

I love this comment from Mark Shea’s blog and what he would tell people that are considering joining the Church:

The main counsel I give anybody coming in to the Church is that “faith” means “you stay.” The Catholic Church is and always has been the vessel of salvation for the *world*. That means that most of the people you meet are going to be *ordinary*–like you and me. They are going to have the ordinary tastes, prejudices, mediocrities, failures, and virtues of their time and place. There are, to be sure, great heros and extraordinary people in the Catholic communion. But to expect that as the norm and then be outraged and disappointed when it is not is, I think, great folly and, in the end, great pride. One of the things I came to appreciate very early was the counsel of Uncle Screwtape, who urges Wormwood to keep far from his “patient’s” mind the thought, “If I, being what I am, can consider myself in some sense a Christian, then why can’t these people next to me in the pew”?

Consequently, though I have been appalled by some of the sins that have been revealed in the ranks of the Church in the past few years, I’ve never been shocked. What did I expect? They’re just sinners like I am, and I know what I’m capable of. In the same way, the stupid and tuneless OCP songs, the suburban Church of Aren’t We Fabulous smugness, the Our Lady of Pizza Hut architecture, the True Meaning of the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes homilies, and the other stuff that sometimes ails the Church has never been sufficient to put me off. Because they are all just reminders that the Church, thank God, has room for people like me and that this mediocrity and averageness is a sign of the tremendous mercy of God for mediocre folk like myself.

“Well then,” it may be asked, “if the Church is so mediocre, then why bother joining her?” To quote Walker Percy, “What else is there?” After all, it is not the Church that is mediocre, but only we, her members. The Church is, curiously, something that exists before she has any members, because it is founded not by us, but by Christ. The Church is the spotless Bride of Christ, made so by the Holy Spirit in the washing with water and the Word. We, her members, are generally nebbishes and schleps. But she is glorious and beautiful, terrible as an army with banners. And in her all the fullness of the deposit of faith subsists, a deposit through which, by the grace of God, I hope one day to be made perfect in love of God and neighbor. But it is not my job to immanentize the eschaton. So I can be more than merely content living in this strange divine sea of a Church, whose members are, like me, stunningly ordinary, but whose soul, the Holy Spirit, is slowly bringing us along “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” (Ephesians 4:13-16)

This is exactly why I am not scandalized by bad homilies, or bad singing, or when I hear of priestly scandals. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think they’re wrong; it means that I’m aware the Church is made up of ordinary people, like me. If I consider what I am capable of, can I hold my fellow Catholics to any leser standard, even if they are priests or bishops? We are all human. We are all prone to sin. But yet the “gates of Hell” shall not prevail against the Church herself.

I wonder, for the millionth time, why it is that the only choice so many people are willing to allow is that to abort a child. –Jay Nordlinger, “Impromptus”, 8/29/02

Yup.

(h/t: Anchoress)

“When people say to me, ‘You hate America,’ I don’t hate America. I love America. I am just embarrassed that it has been taken over by people like evangelicals, by people who do not believe in science and rationality. It is the 21st century. And I will tell you, my friend. The future does not belong to the evangelicals. The future does not belong to religion.” –Bill Maher

As my eighth grade teacher said, “It is better to remain silent and have people think you a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

I just did…
go to Feminists for Life and become a member. And check out their store. I love the “pro-woman, pro-life” bumper sticker. That might have to be coming to my house.

“We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” –Mother Teresa

My patron saint, St. Therese of Lisieux, said essentially the same thing in her “Little Way.” It’s by touching one life at a time, living a life of witness and devotion to Jesus and His Church, that we can make a difference. And of course, the Rosary is a very powerful prayer, one that I don’t think we use often enough. I’m as guilty of this as anyone else, although I have made a concerted effort to say a full set of mysteries daily. Some days I’m successful, other days, not. But I believe that no matter how “imperfectly” we may say it, Mary won’t reject any prayers said in a devout spirit. She’s our mom! How many mothers would take a child’s fingerpainting that was done especially for her and criticize it? Not many! Instead it would go on the refrigerator in a place of pride. Let’s pray to Mary that she exert her motherly influence on women who are considering abortion, to let them know there are so many of us out there who are willing to support, but spiritually and corporally, through this difficult time in their lives.

So says one of the fired Edwards bloggers (h/t Corner): (my comments in bold)

To see that abortion is moral, you just need to look at women as human beings with lives that have value. When a woman chooses abortion, she’s not indulging some guilty pleasure, like sneaking in a round of adultery at lunch, to bring up a genuinely immoral action that should not be criminal. She is probably thinking about her family’s well-being and yes, her own well-being. Taking your own well-being into consideration is called “selfish” by anti-choicers, but I think valuing yourself is a moral good, even if you are female. In fact, especially if you are female, since you live in a world where having self-esteem can be an act of moral courage that requires some defiance. If I got pregnant, I wouldn’t even have to suffer much mental strain to realize that abortion would be the best choice for myself, my family, and my relationship. Abortion, not just the right to abortion but the actual procedure, is a moral good that helps women and families and should be honored as such. Women who get abortions should be recognized as people who can accurately weigh their choices and make the most moral one.

Wow. One doesn’t even know where to begin. But first, I think you made the choice when you had sex. Abortion gives you self-esteem? You get some kind of twisted fulfilment in killing another human being? Instead of being responsible, abortion is the anthesis of responsibility. It says that you can have sex, sleep around and then just kill off the evidence, because you can’t afford the consequences of your choices.

Learning that actions have consequences is one of the most basic life lessons. An abortion is the total repudiation of this thought, and the most horrific, because not only are you refusing to be an adult and take responsibility for what you have done, but you are causing deadly harm to a perfectly innocent individual. Abortion is “the most moral” decision? In whose book?

Abortion is a “moral good that helps women and families?” How does it help families– it destroys families. It kills children,a rather integral part of that family experience. How is it a moral good for women? Why are there so many women who are haunted by their abortions and wish they could go back, so they could save their children? How many more testimonies do we need to hear about the psychological harm that can come from this procedure? I suppose one must be incredibly morally corrupt to think that the destruction of an innocent life is a “moral good.” As Mother Teresa said, “It is a crime that a child must die so you may live as you wish.”

And this touches upon even broader topics, such as the Left’s opposition to war. How can they be against war, which can be fought justly, if the safest place in the world–a mother’s womb–instead becomes one o the most dangerous? Where millions of babies’ lives are taken every year? Abortions are unspeakably violent acts towards these children. Yet the Left is against wars that free people from oppression and allow them to finally have a chance to live their own lives and not have to worry about being taken away in the middle of the night and put through paper shredders, then buried in mass graves. The Left is against the death penalty, which could be argued as just (even though I take the Church’s stance-that its use is only permittable in very, very rare occasions, as society does have a right to protect itself), but supports the killing of babies . Little, soft, tiny, cuddly babies whose only crime was being “inconveniently conceived.” How is this a logical discourse?

Much prayer is needed to overcome this tragedy. As Lent comes upon us, I think part of my Lenten dedication will focus on the unborn, especially since, with advanced technology, parents can–and are–aborting children with genetic diseases at an alarming rate.Who knows if I would even be here if I was concieved later, and to different parents. It’s a scary, and sobering, thought. God must weep when He thinks about it.