What do you mean self-control is something we should practice? (My emphases)

Pope Benedict XVI: condoms make Aids crisis worse

Pope Benedict XVI said that the distribution of condoms ‘aggravates’ the Aids crisis, as he embarked on his first trip to Africa.

By Nick Squires in Rome
Last Updated: 7:58PM GMT 17 Mar 2009

Pope Benedict XVI gestures from the airplane before leaving from Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport for a trip to Africa that includes stops in Cameroon and Angola Photo: AP

While en route from Rome to his first stop, Cameroon, the Pope said that the condition was “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.”

Speaking on board his official plane, the pontiff insisted that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against Aids, advocating sexual abstinence and fidelity within marriage as a way of fighting the disease.

During the seven-day visit, which will take Benedict to Cameroon and Angola, he said he would address the continent’s “grave problems and painful wounds”.

Africa is crucial to the Vatican because of its growing number of believers. Within 15 years around a sixth of the world’s Catholics, or 230 million people, are expected to be African. The continent also produces a large proportion of the world’s Catholic priests.

But it also presents huge challenges for the Pope, including tension with Islam in some countries, competition from evangelical churches and opposition to the Church’s ban on condoms in countries where Aids is rife.

Pope Benedict, who has mostly confined his travels to Western countries during his four-year papacy, will first visit Cameroon during his week-long trip, and then Angola.

His only previous visit to Africa was to Kinshasa in 1987 when he was a cardinal.

He will appeal to rich countries which are grappling with the global financial crisis not to forget Africa’s acute needs.

An estimated 800 million Africans suffer from chronic hunger and the crisis is already affecting the level of remittances sent from abroad as African immigrants in Europe lose their jobs.

Although he will only visit two of Africa’s more than 50 countries, he hopes that his visit will “embrace the entire African continent”, he said on Sunday during his weekly blessing in St Peter’s Square in Rome.

He referred to Africa’s “ancient cultures and its difficult path of development and reconciliation, its grave problems, painful wounds and enormous potential and hopes”,

He is expected to meet African bishops, Muslim imams, politicians and women’s advocacy groups.

The six-day tour will be the 81-year-old pontiff’s 11th foreign trip.

He is scheduled to visit Israel and Jordan in May.

(from The Telegraph)

Oh, my goodness. AIDS is not a reason to disband Church doctrine! Whatever will the Pope say next?

For this:

Sometimes you just need a little Flannery

to get right to the point.

from a letter Flannery O’Connor wrote to a friend:

The Church’s stand on birth control is the most absolutely spiritual of all her stands and with all of us being materialists at heart, there is little wonder that it causes unease. I wish various fathers would quit trying to defend it by saying that the world can support forty billion. I will rejoice in the day when they say: This is right, whether we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may. Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding.

The Pope and Nancy Pelosi (h/t–dad)

Pope tells Pelosi: Catholics cannot back abortion

From First Things: (my emphases in bold)

When Not Aborting Is Immoral

Posted by Keith Pavlischek on September 19, 2008, 4:34 PM

From over on starboard side, Nicholas Provenzo of the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism is “troubled” by the implications of Gov. Sarah Palin’s “decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome.” He thinks “it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)—a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny.” Here’s his line of thinking:  

A parent has a moral obligation to provide for his or her children until these children are equipped to provide for themselves. Because a person afflicted with Down syndrome is only capable of being marginally productive (if at all) and requires constant care and supervision, unless a parent enjoys the wealth to provide for the lifetime of assistance that their child will require, they are essentially stranding the cost of their child’s life upon others.

 (me: So, I guess I shouldn’t be here, right, because, you know, some CF people are only “marginally productive.” Who in the world has the right to say what is and what is not productive? How can we be so callous as to reduce human life to production, to economic terms!?)

 

Meanwhile, on the port side, Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb,” treats us to this little thought:

I believe it is immoral and should be illegal for people to have very large numbers of children because they are then co-opting for themselves and their children resources that should be spread elsewhere in the world. You only get a chance to get your fair share. 

To the follow-up question, “How many is ‘very large’”? Ehrlich responds:

The issue is: What is the political position to take? In a country like the United States, we should stop at two. But if you had an ideal situation, you might have a lot of people who have no children at all, and some people who have as many as three or four because they happen to be particularly good parents, and are going to raise their children very well. 

Me: OK, so let’s make this a bit less hypothetical. 

“Let’s stop at two”–that means neither of my parents, both the third child in their families, wouldn’t have been born. 

On my mom’s side, more specifically, that means that my Uncle Tim and my Aunts Sue, Patty, Mary, and Amy would not have been born. Hence I would not have my fantastic aunts and uncles, I would not have my godfather, and I would not have my godson. My grandparents, instead of having 25 grandchildren to love, would have four–Julie, Jeff, Diane and Megan–and four great-grandchildren. 

If, by some miracle, my parents did squeak by, then my little sister would not have been born. Sorry, Mel. Neither would the siblings of many of my friends, especially in the families where the first two children are twins.  

What kind of absolute nonsense is this!? People can have as many kids as they want without subjecting the number to some government entity. Yes, you should be able to take care of the kids you bring into the world. I am not advocating that we all go out and produce like rabbits, here. But NO ONE can tell me or anyone else how many kids to have!

Side note: The social entitlements that the Left so enjoys are funded mainly by–guess what–tax receipts. If you have a growing aging population and a shrinking young population, then you do not have the resources to provide for these massive entitlements, like Social Security and Medicare. Look to Europe–as the birth rate declines, so does their inability to support their massive welfare states. 

The Bible says that Children are a blessing from the Lord–they are a reward! We are to “be fruitful and multiply.” The scathing comments about people with big families, people who trust in God’s providence, and who procreate, are just sickening. 

If I was married I would want at least three kids, and maybe four! I love my big family. I love my siblings. Big families are good training grounds for life. 

This sort of thinking is dangerous and needs to be stopped, pronto. Sure the environment and all that is important, but human beings are more so. 

I’ve said a few times on here that Catholicism can be hard. It’s sheer definitiveness can make it that way. But then again, the Cross wasn’t easy, either.

In my life there have a been a few big issues that contrasted what I want with what God wants. The first was birth control.

I want kids–those of you that read regularly know that is NO shock. But with CF, and now transplant, getting pregnant is one of those super-touchy-feely things. You can’t just “get” pregnant. You have to plan it like you’re planning the Omaha Beach invasion. Nurses ask me, pretty matter of course, whether or not I use birth control. It’s sort of a moot point ,regardless, since I don’t have a boyfriend now, but when I was engaged this was a doozy.

Obviously I was not going to use birth control. Fiance OK with this–for awhile. Then we began to fight about it. He didn’t want me to die for a baby. I said I didn’t want to be engaging in sinful behavior. I asked multiple priests whether or not a woman in my condition could use birth control. They said yes. I read the Catechism. It wasn’t quite so malleable (it’s late, but I’ll have the cite later for y’all). And I was torn.

I remember a discussion I had with my best friend about this. I said it really came down to how much I trusted God, didn’t it? Because God doesn’t give us more than I can handle (I did, and still do, believe this). She agreed that it was important to do what God wanted (for the record, she’s Lutheran, so this wasn’t like a fellow Catholic was shooting me the party line.). I prayed. I really agonized over this. And, in the end, it was one of the points that caused our relationship to end.

This has always been a problem with whomever I’ve dated. I don’t normally date casually–life’s too short, you know? So I figure I better stay on God’s good side. But this was an agonizing decision. I didn’t want to give up love. But I didn’t want to go against my faith, which has been my only constant.

The second issue is end of life stuff. Before my transplant, I wrote dozens of letters to people, and planned my funeral. Even if I did get the call, there was no guarantee of surviving major surgery. So I wrote it all down. I chose the “Suffering Servant” passage from Isaiah, the gospel where Jesus raised Lazarus. I chose hymns. And I told my parents that, if I was unable to make decisions for myself, I asked them to do what the Church required. Of course, the excellent Children’s Chaplain (the irreplaceable Fr. Mark) would be able to help them, since he was ministering there at the time. What the Church said, we would do.

Thinking about your own death when you’re 22 is not fun, let me tell you. But I’m glad I did it. It helped me solidify what is really important. Believe me, when I say that Catholicism can be hard, that Christianity can be hard, I know. I’ve struggled with the doctrine too. And for me, I’ve found that submitting to it is the way I find peace.

From Amy:

I have work to do, so I shouldn’t have really clicked on EWTN’s live feed of the USCCB. Because I did, and instead of the boring stuff I expected to hear, I catch Bishop Aquila of Fargo exhorting the body, in the discussion on the Faithful Citizenship document to replace language referring to “spiritual well-being” with “salvation”. Why? He says simply because it is the language of the Church and when one chooses intrinsic evil, such a choice does impact the state of one’s soul. Bishop Morlino of Madison is now speaking in support of Aquila, saying that too many of us have a mistaken notice of “conscience.” His point is that if conscience is a center point of the document, it should be clear what proper use of conscience means and what is at stake – salvation. Now Archbishop Lipscomb of Mobile is also speaking in support – if a choice for intrisic evil is made, the consequences of that should be laid out clearly.

Bishop DiMarzio (in charge) argues that they didn’t want to give the impression that one vote would put someone’s immortal soul in danger…

Voice vote was inconclusive, they’re going to their “clickers” (as they called them.) Let’s see what happens:

Amendment failed, but by a close vote: 51-48. Which is interesting.

ME: That’s my point–the conscience can mean a lot of different things to different people. You have to make sure people have a properly formed conscience. If saving baby seals is your top, top priority, then, well, you’re not going to vote the way a Faithful Catholic “should” (meaning you’re probably going to vote for the Sierra Club candidate, which, among other things, supports population control in ways that do not line up with the Church). We all know CINOs (Catholics In Name Only) like this. Several pro-choice politicians come to mind (Pelosi, Kennedy, le francais Kerry, etc., yet they feel they are voting their conscience.

Hmmm.

From newsweek. My comments in bold.

Crossing the Line
The ripple effect of Missouri’s controversial new abortion law goes far beyond its borders.
By Sarah Kliff
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 12:37 PM ET Oct 19, 2007
On a Saturday morning in October, Hope Clinic draws a crowd of 100 protesters, some with signs depicting fetuses, others with Catholic rosaries—and all shouting and chanting outside the purple-trimmed building where abortions are performed in Granite City, Ill.

The protests are jarring to incoming patients. But they do little, if anything, to affect Allison Hile, the clinic’s director of information and education. “I am so proud of what we do,” says Hile (!), who has been counseling patients for 28 years. Hile has, after all, seen much worse at her clinic. She remembers the wreckage the day after it was bombed in 1982—the blast destroyed a third of the facility’s physical plant. And she remembers when a pro-life extremist kidnapped one of the clinic’s doctors that same year, holding him and his wife blindfolded for eight days. For over a decade now Hile has endured the presence of pro-life activist Angela Michael, who lives in an RV parked outside the clinic. Under the guise of being a Hope Clinic employee, Michael leads women into her trailer (billed as offering “A Window to the Womb”) for ultrasounds and a chance to talk them out having an abortion. (Hile says she can find no record of Michael being a registered nurse in Missouri or Illinois.) After all that, a group of noisy protesters seems relatively benign.

But soon Hile and the rest of the staff at Hope Clinic may have more than shouts and signs to contend with. The clinic sits on the state line between Illinois and Missouri. And while it’s just a 10-minute drive over the Mississippi River from Granite City to St. Louis, the ideological distance between the cities is far greater when it comes to abortion law. On the Missouri side of the river, lawmakers take a dim view of abortion rights. The pro-choice group NARAL gives the state an F in its rankings, while Illinois gets a C+. “Illinois law is in every aspect and way better than Missouri,” says Pamela Sumners, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri. “That’s a pretty big river separating us.”

While Hope Clinic may be governed by Illinois’s more lenient laws, a large percentage of its patients come from Missouri for family planning and abortion services. So this summer, when the Missouri state legislature passed House Bill 1055, a law that Gov. Matt Blunt has called “one of the strongest pieces of pro-life legislation in Missouri’s history,” Hope Clinic began preparing for the possible ripple effects. As Hile explains it, should the new law pass constitutional muster—a decision that could be made within the next two months—it would likely leave the entire state of Missouri with one abortion clinic, at least for a time. And that could create an unmanageable influx of patients for Hope. “We’d be overwhelmed if we had to see not only the women who come to us now but many others,” says Hile.

The Missouri bill is not an outright ban on abortion but rather a regulation that financially squeezes practitioners who perform the procedure to the point where many will no longer be able to function. The bill reclassifies any facility that performs five or more abortions each month as a surgical outpatient center, meaning it must comply with a number of specifications for things like hallway widths and ceiling heights.

Pro-life groups hail the legislation as a way to protect women’s health—by ensuring that facilities are prepared to handle abortions, which are, after all, surgical procedures. “Women who seek abortions deserve to have the same level of surgical care,” says Pam Fichter, president of Missouri Right to Life. “To not give them that same basic level of care would be a great disservice to women who are seeking abortions.” The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Therese Sander, describes the regulation as an attempt to provide “the best possible service to women in crisis pregnancy no matter which way they choose go, whether life or abortion.”

But pro-life activists are also well aware of the potential fallout. “We certainly would not be brokenhearted” if access to abortion were limited, Fichter says, while reasserting that such a result “was not the original intention of the bill.”

Pro-choice advocates fear that is exactly what will happen. The cost of upgrading facilities would be so high, they argue, that abortion clinics would be forced to find significant new sources of funding—or shut their doors (A few things: 1) Wow, what a shock that a surgical procedure should be subjected to safety laws and regulations. 2) If the doors shut, I wouldn’t be brokenhearted. 3)If there was such a demand for abortion, shouldn’t there be funds to cover these renovations?). One Planned Parenthood administrator at a facility in Columbia, Mo., told the Los Angeles Times that the necessary upgrades would cost $1 million; the facility’s annual budget, the administrator said, is $780,000. The law could force the closure of two of Missouri’s three active abortion clinics. Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, says that’s no accident. “I think they’re being totally disingenuous,” she says of the legislation’s supporters. “They’re trying to create this gantlet for women to go through and aren’t in the business of providing health care at all.” (well, if you’re going to kill a baby, I think you should have to jump through some hoops here.)

Hile, who has lobbied on abortion issues in both the Missouri and Illinois legislatures, believes this is the latest in a series of moves aimed at cutting access to abortion providers. “The crux of this whole issue right now is it’s not about Roe v. Wade and overturning it,” says Hile. The battle today is all about “limiting abortion care and making it more difficult for women to receive abortion care.” (abortion care??? Who, exactly, are we caring for here?)
Missouri is not the only state where anti-abortion activists are taking aim at access. In Minnesota, Mississippi and Texas, state regulations require women to undergo counseling prior to an abortion that includes information about a suspected link between abortion and breast cancer. The studies on the subject have been conflicting, however, and the National Cancer Institute concluded in 2003 that “induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.”

Should the Missouri bill pass, Hope Clinic expects to see its annual flow of more than 6,000 patients increase considerably. Already 40 percent of the women seeking abortions and family planning come from out of state, many from Missouri. Some go to Hope Clinic because of its proximity to St. Louis. But others seek out the Illinois facility specifically to avoid Missouri’s more stringent laws—which include a measure requiring women to undergo in-person counseling 24 hours before an abortion. That provision drove one young woman (her name has been withheld for privacy reasons) to cross the border recently. “In Missouri there was going to be a two-day process,” says her mother, who accompanied her daughter to Illinois for the procedure. Critics say the two-day toll is too much of an emotional burden for some women; (you know what? A two-day process before you kill your child does not sound unreasonable to me. For pete’s sake–a transplant eval takes 2-3 days. Nothing moves quickly medically, and something like an abortion certainly should not) others may not be able to afford to take that time off from work.

For now, opponents of the new measure are hoping it does not survive court scrutiny. When the bill passed this summer, Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of regulating abortion clinics as surgical outpatient centers. The federal judge hearing the case issued a temporary injunction, calling on the clinics and health department to negotiate the required upgrades. The injunction allows clinics to continue practicing for the time being but makes no guarantee about the future; a more definitive ruling is expected in about two months. If the provision remains in place, pro-choice advocates vow to try to take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court if need be.

One contentious aspect of the Missouri bill is already in place. Anyone who works at an abortion clinic, or at an organization that refers patients to abortion clinics, is now barred from teaching sexual education in Missouri public schools. Hile, who holds a master’s in sexual health, has spoken on condoms and safe sex at Oakville High School in St. Louis for 26 years. This year she won’t be able to return to Oakville, but educators who promote abstinence until marriage, like those supplied by Lutheran Family and Children’s Services of Missouri, are still allowed in the public schools of Missouri. The Lutheran agency believes the provision is necessary to prevent a conflict of interest. “They say they won’t talk about abortion, but once they get in the classroom, who knows?” says Christine Reams, the group’s director of community services. “It opens up too many doors having them there.” (The educator couldjust say, “we’re not covering that today,” or some other teacher evasive tactic. How many times, as a conservative student, did I hear things like that…)

At the end of the day, Hile wishes there weren’t a need for her clinic. (THERE ISN’T) “When women stop coming to us, we can find something else to do,” she says. But after 28 years of counseling dozens of women each day, she is not optimistic; increasingly restrictive legislation only gives her more reason to think that numbers will not be declining. “You need to have people who are certified and educated in the area and comfortable enough to answer student’s questions and answer them with respect and accuracy,” says Hile. Now that she can’t go to Missouri as an educator, she fears that even more women will be coming to her—after it’s too late. Only time will tell whether her fears are well founded.

I really shouldn’t be surprised by these things, and yet I am…

I don’t really watch that much TV–House, Desperate Housewives, a little bit of Supernanny, and Grey’s Anatomy (although based on last season’s ridiculousness, that might be up in the air. But I digress). My complaint/question/query has to do with the latter.

In preparation for the new season (and the release of season 3 on DVD), I’ve been recapping season 2. (Hey, labor Day, long weekend…I needed some chill time here. ) So last night I watched and episode where the OB/GYN has a patient with seven kids, who is being admitted for a C-section. After her husband and kids go to find some ice cream, Rose (the patient) tells Addison (the doctor) that she wants to have her tubes tied while she’s having the C-section, because she doesn’t want any more kids. Addison suggests birth control. Rose says (shock!) she’s Catholic and it won’t work, because her husband doesn’t think you can “pick and choose” what you believe. And, of course, the husband is then cast as eeevil, forcing all these children on his poor wife, who’s been hospitalized for dehydration, exhaustion, etc. Rose also says that if her husband foudn out about the pills or the tube tying, she’d lose her marriage (to which Karev, the blunt to the point of pain surgical resident, says, “why? He won’t divorce you.”).

So as usual, faithful Catholics are seen as crazy people and Catholics, in general, just see women as baby-making machines. She talks about how they didn’t have sex between their seventh child and the current one for three years. Um, sorry, but that’s not what the Church means by NFP. You abstain during periods of “fertility”, and last time I checked, a woman wasn’t fertile for 3 years STRAIGHT.Um, hello. Basic biology tells us that. It also seems like this woman is a little wimpy and not talking to her husband about her concerns. They should talk to a priest, a pastoral minister, whatever, and get the real deal on NFP. You are NOT just supposed to have kids wily-nily. That’s not what the Church teaches.

Of course the show doesn’t deal with any of this. Rose tries to blame their issues on their religion and her husband, but Karev says that she doesn’t get to “blame her husband and pin this on the Pope.” (He got a lot of good lines in this episode)

Addison does tie her tubes, over Karev’s objections, and the husband may sue the hospital because Karev told him that the “complication” (as Addison and Rose put it) wasn’t really a complication. I don’t think anything ever came of it, but I’m not totally sure.

Just another instance of how Catholics get misunderstood in the media all the time. And the thing is, it’s not even innocent anymore. I’m not expecting to find EWTN stuff on ABC on Thursday nights. I’m really not. But some accuracy, something other than working off blatant stereotypes without evening checking to see what the real position is, would be nice.

On this from the WaPo recently:  (well, OK, I added some emphasis)

Posted at 06:30 AM ET, 06/13/2007
Pro-Choice or No-Choice?
Twenty years ago, I sat in a friend’s kitchen talking with her mom, a 50-something mother of three children. I’d known their family for years. My friend’s mom changed my life forever when we started discussing, rather hypothetically, abortion. “I had one,” she said. “After my three kids were born. I got pregnant by accident, we didn’t want a fourth child, and I had an abortion. It was the right thing to do — and it wasn’t a big deal.”

That was one of the only times a mother talked to me about ending an unwanted pregnancy. Most women I knew who’d had abortions were closer to girlhood than motherhood. They’d been terrified about the responsibilities of raising a child — something they knew nothing about. Abortion had been an unpleasant but welcome solution to a problem they couldn’t face.

My friend’s mother was different. She knew exactly what having a child was all about. She wasn’t a frightened, inexperienced young woman. Nonetheless, she exercised her right to family “balance.” My own mother got pregnant by accident with a fourth child — my much-loved youngest sister. She made a different, also-right choice.

The New York Times recently ran a thought-provoking examination of abortion’s portrayal (or lack thereof) on the screen, On Abortion, Hollywood is No-Choice. In two summer blockbusters out now, The Waitress and Knocked Up, women face surprise pregnancies — and never discuss ending them as an option.

“Real life women struggling with unwanted pregnancies might consider an abortion, have intense discussions with partners and friends about it and, in most cases, go through with it,” according to the article. “But historically and to this day in television and film a character in such straits usually conveniently miscarries or decides to keep the baby.”

Accidental and unwanted pregnancies are part of the facts of life for women of child-bearing age. According to The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, unplanned pregnancies have increased among adult women, even as they’ve decreased among teenage girls. More than half of all unwanted pregnancies occur to women in their 20s. Nearly two-thirds of these pregnancies end in abortion, says the Times, citing federal surveys.

The message from the movies is clear: Here’s another real-life subject that women (and presumably, men) are not supposed to discuss publicly. An unwanted pregnancy is perhaps the most powerful factor in unbalancing a woman’s work and family life. Most working women (at least the sexually active ones) need birth control, including abortion, to plan their careers – sometimes, you need to say “no” to motherhood in order to build your reputation, get more training or an advanced degree, accept a promotion, or simply to work very hard for a certain period of time. Childless women often stay happily childless thanks specifically to birth control. Non-working moms also need the choices offered by all forms of birth control to space their children wisely, and sometimes to put off pregnancy in favor of a current family member’s special needs (including their own).

So why can’t we — or don’t we — talk openly about the tradeoffs of keeping or ending a pregnancy, whether our feelings are painful, matter-of-fact, or somewhere in between?

I haven’t had an abortion (not yet, at least). But the candor from my friend’s mother helped me as I faced my share of “scares” over the years. If I did get pregnant by accident, she’d be one of the first women I’d call. Because she is one of the only ones who was brave enough, and at peace enough, to be open about her decision.

OK so maybe I do have to comment, albeit briefly:

–Abortion as birth control?? Geez, what a solution. Murder to plan your career. Yes!

–”an equally right choice?” When B XVI talks about moral relativism, this woman could be the poster child.

–”An unpleasant but welcome solution.” Geez, that’s said with all the thought of hiring an exterminator to come to your house to get rid of roaches or something. I guess the humanity of the child never figures into this.

From January ‘06 NRO:

During its January 9-12 meeting in Des Moines, the executive council of the Episcopal Church voted to clarify and affirm its membership in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC).

RCRC, formerly known as the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, was founded in 1973 with funding from the Playboy Foundation (and later from the Ford Foundation), to organize religious supporters of legalized abortion. RCRC is absolutist in its rejection of any restriction on abortion, defending the legality of partial-birth abortion, and opposing parental-notification laws, as well as other sensible restrictions.Agencies of the Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ, Reform Judaism, and Conservative Judaism all belong to RCRC. So too does “Catholics for a Free Choice.” RCRC was founded in the wake of Roe v. Wade to counteract Roman Catholic opposition to the Supreme Court ruling.The author of the Episcopal motion, representing the Diocese of Washington, D.C., noted that the executive council’s vote simply reiterated the denomination’s stance on abortion, which he said has been an “unequivocal opposition to any federal or state legislation that would interfere with a woman’s right to make a decision on terminating a pregnancy.” This was reported in the Living Church magazine .

RCRC boasts that its ecclesial alliance for abortion rights is both wide and “mainstream.” It describes abortion rights as integral to “religious liberty.” RCRC head Carlton Veazey notes on its website that RCRC founders thought their struggle would last only a decade. “In fact the struggle is far from over,” he regrets. “It has changed and intensified, and the stakes are growing.”

Veazey refers to a “sense of doom” as the U.S. Senate moved toward confirmation of Samuel Alito. RCRC had already called the Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval of Alito a “dangerous setback for individual privacy and women’s reproductive health.” According to Veazey, in a column for Beliefnet.com, Alito has “shown an appalling lack of understanding for life’s complexities and the circumstances that some women must endure.”

Feelings of angst at RCRC are quite deep. Veazey, who is ordained in the National Baptist Convention, writes:

After four years of unprecedented access, far-right Christian fundamentalists are deeply embedded in government structures. The nation is not yet a theocracy, if mullah-run Iran or Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is the standard. But we are on the brink of a de facto Christian state, and we should be very frightened for the future of religious freedom and diversity.

Despite the claims of the “mainstream” on the issue of abortion, RCRC’s members are in fact an increasingly isolated minority among America’s churches. The vast majority of America’s over 160 million church members belong to Roman Catholic or evangelical churches that disapprove of abortion. Denominations totaling less than 20 million belong to RCRC. And the membership of those denominations is, in fact, deeply divided and ambivalent on the question of abortion.

These RCRC churches, in their official abortion statements squishily express discomfort with abortion while still defending its unrestricted legality. “We do not wish to see laws enacted that would attach criminal penalties to those who seek abortions or to appropriately qualified and licenses persons who perform abortions in medically approved facilities,” the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) declares.

The United Methodist Church unequivocally asserts, “We support the legal to abortion as established by the 1973 Supreme Court decisions.”

Episcopalians warn that “legislation concerning abortions will not address the root of the problem” and insist that any legislation must “see that individual conscience is respected.”

The United Church of Christ “upholds the right of men and women to have access to adequately funded family-planning services and to safe, legal abortions as one option among others.”

The end result of all their statements is that the official lobby offices of these denominations, on their own and acting through RCRC, oppose all proposed restrictions on abortion. In April 2004, they all endorsed and participated in the “March for Women’s Lives” in Washington, D.C., organized by the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood.

In all their unctuous demonstration-marching and statement-making, the pro-abortion-rights church community has not considered the effect of their advocacy on their own demographic health.

Conservatives have often chided the mainline Protestant denominations for their dramatic membership losses, faulting the controversial liberal political advocacy of their churches’ officials. No doubt there is truth in this. Most mainline Protestants are still conservative leaning, despite the chronic leftism of their church hierarchies. Many react in frustration by leaving.

But the demographic implosion may also have other, deeper contributing factors. One out of every six Americans belonged to a mainline denomination 40 years ago. Today it is one out of every 15. Writing for The American Journal of Sociology several years ago, Catholic priest (and romance potboiler author) Andrew Greeley, with two other sociologists, asserted that mainline Protestant decline is actually created by decades of declining birthrates in comparison to those for conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Though Greeley et al. did not address it directly, mainline Protestant hierarchs long championed legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade, culminating in their founding of RCRC in 1973. Undoubtedly this had some impact on abortion rates among their own flocks. The lower birth rate among mainline Protestants can probably be explained, at least partly, by some level of increased moral ease with and resort to abortion (the “Roe Effect“).

So perhaps unrestricted abortion is fueling the decline of the very same churches who have most championed it. The irony is a sad one.

— Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee (UMAction) of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

Wow. I knew that a lot of mainstream Protestant churches supported abortion, but this is overwhelming to me. How can you say you are a Christian church if you support abortion? What happened to “Thou Shalt Not Kill?” Or “whatever you do to the least of these you do to me?”

This is why I cannot stand the so-called “Christian Left.” To me, until they are pro-life, they have no moral ground to stand on. Calling for a higher minimum wage and saving the Earth is great, but maybe we should save ourselves first. Any group that condones the ceaseless, indeed, the on-demand killing of innocents, has forfeited the moral high ground.