Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

You regular readers of this page know that I am seriously pro-life. I am a “take-no-prisoners” fully pro-life pro-lifer (if that makes any sense). Usually I find nothing about the topic funny.

However, as Mother Angelica says, “we have to laugh,” and the boys at Number 1 Happy St. had this on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade :

Today, dozens of rallies have been taking place all across the country to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. If you’ve been under a rock, that’s the supreme court decision in which a woman (Roe) wanted to terminate her pregnancy. Her unborn baby (Wade) disagreed with that course of action but was ultimately overruled by the high court. And so with that decision, the ‘right to choose’ was finally a reality.

Unless you are a state. In which case, you no longer had the right to choose. The federal government will be doing all the choosing from now on.

And unless you are the father of the unborn baby. In which case, your choice was already used up when you decided to go with the condoms with the plain black and white wrapper because the other ones were too expensive.

And unless you are the unborn baby. In which case, you don’t get to choose because mommy knows what’s best for you. I mean she’s already proven that she can make good decisions which is how she ended up in the back seat of that Prius anyway. It’s not every day you have the opportunity to get nailed by someone who loves the movie Mona Lisa Smile as much as you do!

It’s not ha-ha funny. It’s sad funny. Because there are a lot of things in there that ring true.

In the National Catholic Register:

Cautionary Tales

As a convert to the Catholic faith, I naturally want to see others embrace it, as well. But when I talk with folks who want to be Catholic I often find myself repeating Jesus’ counsel to “count the cost.” Why?

BY Mark Shea

March 11-17, 2007 Issue

As a convert to the Catholic faith, I naturally want to see others embrace it, as well. But when I talk with folks who want to be Catholic I often find myself repeating Jesus’ counsel to “count the cost.” Why?

One thing that concerns me about converts, especially from Protestantism, is that some seem to still be basically Protestant. Some become Catholic, not because they have concluded that the Church is the trustworthy sacrament of redemption given to the world by Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit, but because they are fed up with Protestantism and are leaving it and joining the Catholics — in protest. Such folk are soon disconcerted that the people at Our Lady of Perpetual Ordinariness are not this haven of saints and scholars, but a bunch of regular people.

Some don’t know their faith at all. Some hold political opinions that are very different from the convert’s. Some don’t much take the Church’s teaching seriously. Some get their spiritual insights from Oprah, or are devout but superstitious, or have a Protestant brother-in-law who has taught them to say “Praise the Lord!” a lot.

It’s all so average to the convert who was bargaining on a safe haven from all that. And when some pope or bishop does something not to their liking, such converts not infrequently embrace some form of the “two churches/two magisteriums” theory of a pre- vs. post-Vatican II Church and (either slowly or quickly) start to hive off into some extreme form of what they call “traditionalism” but which is, in fact, yet another kind of Protestantism, albeit one with ultra-Catholic aesthetics.

What we need to remember is that 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 heroes 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. Remember the hellish “wisdom” of C.S. Lewis’ Uncle Screwtape, who would keep far from our minds 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”?

So, 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.

“Well then,” it may be asked, “if the average Catholic is so average, why bother joining the Church?” 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 she 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 faith subsists. In that faith, 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. 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” (Ephesians 4).

from The Anchoress

She’s a bit late to the game, but Queen Elizabeth II wants to “celebrate diversity” and will apparently make a public statement to the effect that “that people should see each other as being individuals who are special.”

“Special” is the most overused, meaningless word currently in use in the English language. “Amazing” is coming a close second.

If the Queen starts talking about how “special” we all are, and how “amazing” everyone looks, the takeover of mediocrity - in language, social discourse, historical reference, etc - will be complete.

Now…Your Maj - I can call you “Maj,” right, since I’m special…how about the Catholics? Are they special yet? Can William marry one and keep his throne? Are we celebrating that much diversity, yet?

ME: When I was little my mom used to mention on and off that I was older than Prince William by a few months. This greatly excited me, being weaned on the Disney Princesses as I was, so I would always say, “so I could marry him!” Then Mom would inform me that I couldn’t because I was Catholic. This was highly distressing because I wanted to marry a prince. As I got older and read more about the ‘reasoning’ behind this rule, I began to think that perhaps the royal life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

But seriously, isn’t this a little ridiculous? I know that one of the monarch’s titles is “Defender of the Faith” or something like that (Churcha nd State, anyone? Oh wait…the Church was created by the state. A ha!). But this is kind of old. If William fell in love with a Catholic he should be allowed to marry a Catholic. Sheesh. Fortunately that didn’t happen. (Well, fortunately for them)

George Weigel seems to think so:

The end of the Anglican Communion
By George Weigel

There’s an Anglican church, St. Luke’s, a few blocks up Old Georgetown Road from my parish in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. St. Luke’s recently posted a large sign on the church lawn: “No matter who you are, no matter what you believe, you are welcome at our table.”

Which is, in one sense, a noble sentiment: if it’s meant to convey that, look, we’re all sinners, and no matter how awful you may think you are, you’re welcome in the communion of Christ’s Church if you’re truly repentant. Judging from recent events in the Anglican Communion, however, St. Luke’s sign isn’t a synopsis of the parable of the prodigal son and his merciful father; it’s a succinct, if unwitting, statement of why the Anglican Communion is coming apart at the seams.

No Catholic serious about the Catholic commitment to the unity of Christ’s Church can take any satisfaction from today’s Anglican meltdown. It now looks as if John Henry Newman was right when he concluded that Anglicanism was not a “third branch” on the tree of historic Christian orthodoxy, of which the other branches were Catholicism and the Orthodox churches of the Christian east; rather, Newman decided, Anglicanism was Protestantism in English guise. In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, as hopes for ecclesial reconciliation between Rome and Canterbury ran high, it seemed, briefly, as if Cardinal Newman might have been wrong. With the Anglican Communion now fracturing into a gaggle of quarreling communities no longer in communion with each other, it looks as if Newman had the deeper insight into what King Henry VIII wrought.

But neither the late cardinal nor the multi-uxorious king could have imagined that Anglicanism’s breakup would result from some Anglicans’ insistence that sodomy can be sacramental.

Yet that is precisely what is happening. As Canada’s finest Catholic commentator, Father Raymond de Souza, wrote last year (reflecting on the attempts of Dr. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, to hold the Anglican Communion together), “Some [Anglicans] argue that [homosexual acts] are sinful; others that they are sacramental. This is an unbridgeable gap and it appears impossible for Canterbury to straddle it, try as he might.” Dr. Williams has tried mightily; he seems to have failed. There are indeed unbridgeable gaps, and it turns out that it does matter what you believe, if you wish to be seated at “our table” — at least in the minds of the majority of the world’s Anglicans, who disagree with the Episcopal Church USA’s determination to bless same-sex unions and ordain practicing homosexuals to priestly and episcopal ministry.

An American Anglican clergyperson, debating all this on PBS’s “NewsHour,” said that, if schism were the only answer, she and her Pasadena congregation would choose “the Gospel” over “the institutional Church.” From a theological point of view, no more thoroughly Protestant posing of the issue could be imagined. And what does standing up for “the Gospel” have to do with embracing the Zeigeist of the more delirious suburbs of the People’s Republic of California?

Shortly after Rowan Williams was named to Becket’s chair, we spent a cordial ninety minutes together at Lambeth Palace, Canterbury’s London headquarters. I gave him a copy of Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II; we spoke of John Paul’s theology of the body, and then fell to discussing the difference between “sacramental” and “gnostic” understandings of the human condition. The former insists that the stuff of the world – including maleness, femaleness, and their complementarity — has truths built into it; gnostics say it’s all plastic, all malleable, all changeable. The sacramentalists believe that the extraordinary reveals itself through the ordinary: bread, wine, water, salt, marital love and fidelity; the gnostics say it’s a matter of superior wisdom, available to the enlightened (which can mean, the politically correct). Dr. Williams seemed convinced that the gnosticism of a lot of western high culture posed a great danger to historic Christianity and the truths it must proclaim.

He was right. The gnosticism that infects the Episcopal Church USA has just about driven the Anglican Communion over the cliff.

So that means Kashi cereal (which is really really good, let me tell you) and OJ.
Probably not what Jesus would’ve eatenm but it’s not meat!!

re: The Latin Mass is coming soon.

Here is an interview regarding it on Catholic Exchange.

Just finished re-reading Crossing the Threshold of Hope, which is just classic JP II. I love everything in there, but his passages on abortion, women, and why we should “be not afraid” are just fantastic. If you haven’t read this, make it part of your Lenten prep and pick up a copy.

Been awhile since I’ve posted anything “Crunchy”, so here’s a quiz to dtermine your level.

I am a 28. So in the middle. It must be the make-up and the breast-feeding stuff. I got the link from Nutmeg and I agree with her when she writes that there’s really no in-between on some of those questions. And I can’t breast-feed so I’m out on a lot of those, if I ever have my own kids. Oh well. And I am definitely a shoe girl. Can’t work at the Statehouse without shoes.

But, like Nutmeg says, I try my best. I shop at Trader Joe’s when I can and try to get organic meat when it’s not too expensive. I eat whole-grain bread (although I have to get that from TJ’s because, dude, the Kroger stuff? Not so much. Definitely not so much.) and more fruit because it’s better for me and I feel better when I do it. Does that mean I don’t have cookies around? Um, no. In fact I am going to buy Oreos as soon as I can…ha ha. But I try to be as “crunchy” as possible.

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?