I don't think it's right to say that "if we really believed and understood and appreciated what is happening in abortion clinics as they do, we would have been there blocking abortion clinics and going to prison with them."
There are lots and lots and lots of horrible things happening in the world that I am not called to leave my primary …
I don't think it's right to say that "if we really believed and understood and appreciated what is happening in abortion clinics as they do, we would have been there blocking abortion clinics and going to prison with them."
There are lots and lots and lots of horrible things happening in the world that I am not called to leave my primary vocations to go and combat. I'm not going to prison for blocking abortion facilities for much the same reason as I'm not leaving my family to go serve the poor suffering in (pick a troubled spot in the world) or taking every homeless person in my city into my own home. Not everyone is called to be on the front lines of every fight, and I owe my own children a present father and a safe home more than I owe my witness to another cause, however good that cause may be.
I understand the sentiment, but I think it underestimates the degree to which pro-lifers do really understand that abortion is a tragedy.
This is a good point with which i agree. I admire the pro-lifers, and I think they can do it because of their particular state in life, etc. The same way my fatherhood prevents me from any number of other competing goods.
In the midst of this conversation I can’t help but recall those Catholics who lived or are living under the boot heel of tyranny, such as _______ (fill the blank with any of them). They are faced with submission or martyrdom. Since 1917, the first 3 things done by communazis when they get in power are: censor the press, confiscate guns, and outlaw religion (especially Catholicism).
Sometimes Catholics must retreat to catacombs, so to speak. Thankfully not here. Here in the U.S. we’re free to respond and react as each of sees fit - but how each chooses to do that is up to each to discern in Christ. My responsibility, indeed ‘mission’, was primarily to my family - especially my children. That conditioned a lot of my moral choosing in the practical order.
Yes. I admire them for their prophetic stand (and may God raise up more such prophets!) but I don't think most are called to this. Leaving my children without a father because I'm in prison wouldn't be a prudent use of my life. But who knows, once my kids are grown that changes the equation.
I wonder if this really answers Ed’s point, though.
Yes, some of us have vocations/stations in life that prevent us from certain types of witness to the Faith - say, becoming hermits, or taking in every homeless person we might see, because that would be incompatible with our duties (such as to look after our children/spouse/dependants).
But, surely, literally everyone is called to try and prevent actual murder happening in front of us or down the street - even at great personal cost?
This very much indicts me too: I fail to even witness to the tragedy of abortion in many circumstances (say, at work, because doing so would offend prevailing liberal pieties and I fear for the consequences I might suffer as a result).
But I *think* Ed’s point is that, had I more faith and understanding and appreciation for what abortion is, I would view it precisely as any other form of murder happening before my eyes - something I am compelled to try and stop regardless of consequences.
As someone “who was there” in our society when Roe v Wade was anti-Constitutionally judiciated down America’s collective throat, and who has argued publicly against the slaughter when I could, I think Ed missed the mark in criticizing us for apathy in the face of the pro-death onslaught. By extension he could claim the same about past and current Catholic victims of totalitarianism (Soviet, chicom, Naziagua, Cuba, Venezuela, National Socialism in Germany, and etc, etc, etc - all the way back to Nero) for whom giving any sign of disagreement results in an almost immediate ‘post-birth abortion’ (i.e., execution).
There were, of course, those Catholics who did just that. They’re called martyrs.
Prudence is a virtue. And it sometimes directs non confrontational witness.
Courage is a virtue. And it sometimes directs confrontation.
Wisdom is a gift that allows us to discern if / when to suffer the fury of hell - like Fr. Kolbe in Auschwitz. Or to confront evil by storming a beach at Normandy and fighting like Heaven against the powers of hell.
Those graced with the luxury of freedom and peace never faced with such a situation should thank God for that, and humbly thank Him for those who were.
> say, at work, because doing so would offend prevailing liberal pieties
If the liberally-pious have invested in DEI or diversity training, it's pretty simple. Your stance on abortion is a religious belief and therefore part of diversity. I do not bring up the topic but when it comes up I do not let people get away with imagining that everyone thinks the same way they do. There are always other people who were afraid to say anything (as I used to be), so I am basically the stalking horse or coal mine canary or whatever. The majority behaves differently when they know they are in mixed company. This is a key tenet of DEI (make everyone slightly uncomfortable by knowing they need to be polite, rather than make a majority comfortable and a minority very sad and afraid to say so) and it depends on people who are willing to be the visibly different person.
A lot of people in the comments section are suffering from the fallacy of the excluded middle: 1. Currently if I were imprisoned my dependents would have literally no one to care for them. 2 Therefore I can't protest abortion.
Everyone here (barring those who are unable to go to a US clinic) absolutely can protest abortion outside a clinic. Do it without breaking any of the goofy laws about how close people are allowed to be. Do it without standing in someone's way. Does it make a difference to pray outside a clinic *visibly* and not just at home? - Yes it does. The clinic hates it because it causes people to turn around and rethink what they are doing before they get close enough to be physically "escorted" inside. Organizations have anecdotes and numbers. A team in which some people pray peacefully and others hand out information cards on *who can help you in your crisis pregnancy* (eliminating the perceived need for what the clinic provides) without breaking any goofy laws can save lives. So why are so few people doing it? Why isn't there larger turnout in 40 Days for Life season? Why doesn't everyone who posts on the internet about how to fight demons get off the internet and onto the sidewalk to fight demons? I am asking these questions because I need to reevaluate my own life (I have been off of the sidewalk for nearly a year now and maybe could get back on.)
Everyone here can contact government people to say "FACE Act is unconstitutional, or stinks for other reasons, and must be destroyed like Carthage". If we could get this removed then the old school form of protesting to provoke media coverage by the optics of arresting a swarm of little old ladies would be back on the table (whether this is wise or not, IDK, but more of the little old ladies would have the option).
If nothing else, everyone here can tell one other person about Let Them Live.
I think the objections were specifically because of the statement "if we really believed and understood and appreciated what is happening in abortion clinics as they do, we would have been there blocking abortion clinics and going to prison with them".
Which attempts to remove the legitimate prudential aspect of deciding *how* we fight something, by saying that all decisions to not go to the extreme are due to an insufficient appreciation for the gravity of the evil. The comments are objecting to Ed excluding the middle.
Other than that, everything you said is fantastic.
While I did want to point out the excluded middle, I do not actually disagree with Ed's statement: if we did, then we would. We have intellectual knowledge of the gravity (and I do not deny that) but not experiential knowledge. As a straw man: None of us have had a vision (nor I assume have the protesters) of souls falling into hell and if we did we would act very differently.
I'm going to play your two statements off each other.
The reasonable response to a full appreciation of souls falling into hell is demonstrated quite well by a number of different Saints. There are the Fatima children who actually saw it: they reacted with prayer and sacrifice, in their normal state of life. There is St. Paul, who responded with evangelization, St. Augustine, who responded with study and teaching. There are the many monks and nuns in contemplative orders who respond with dedicating their lives to prayer and sacrifice in a particular way. Christ went to the cross, but there is nothing recorded that he protested the systematic murder in the Roman Empire. The urgency and gravity of the matter did not result in every Saint dropping their obligations to stand on street corners with "The End is Nigh" signs. You can't win souls by going against God's particular will for you.
In a normal accounting, winning souls is more essential than saving lives. Therefore the first obligation is in fact to do what is God's will for one's self specifically, not to drop all obligations in favor of the most extreme methodology. The fact that some are called to more extreme methodologies doesn't mean everyone is: that's emotionalism, not docility to the Holy Spirit.
I used to know someone who couldn't pray at abortion clinics, much less do counseling, because she couldn't do anything but cry when she was there. So she didn't go (at least not while I knew her). There is no kind of knowledge of the gravity of abortion that leads inexorably to blocking abortion clinics and going to prison.
You are right; the necessary response is not specifically to block doors and go to prison, but rather to surrender one's entire life to God for Him to dispose of as He wishes, which is somewhat more radical than Ed indicates, and, as you indicate, it will result in a diversity of outward appearances (all of them, though, insane by the world's standards.)
If I knew this person, I would want her to know that prayer is not a matter of words spoken aloud (such as a group rosary) or even words spoken silently. It is entirely possible to pray while crying (in the winter it would be very unpleasant because of the chill from the moisture on the face, but in other seasons, not so bad as long as a person brought water and stayed hydrated). But she would need to ask God, all the same, whether this is what He wants her to go and do. We look at something and say "I don't think I am *made* to do this because of the way that I *am*" (this is different from "my station in life precludes it" such as a cloistered nun) but we ought to give Him the chance to agree "yes this isn't what I made you to do " or the chance to say "but, my child, my power is made perfect in weakness."
Yes! The biggest problem with Ed's statement is that it isn't radical (or diverse) enough!
She might have done that discernment, although I didn't know her very well. But yes, it definitely is a necessary thing to do. Discernment via "but it's hard" doesn't go so well.
Except the problem is that if someone intends to commit murder and is physically prevented from doing so by blockaders they are still guilty of murder in the sight of God according to the Sermon on the Mount. So to save her soul one must change her mind without interfering with her free will.
Let's consider the case of someone depressed who is about to commit suicide due to despair: generally if you stop them and they get through the crisis, they no longer want to kill themselves but want to get help to go on living although it is a real challenge. Similarly, most people who want to kill someone (themselves or another person; and I am setting aside *hired killers* for the moment) do not see another way out of the matter in that moment or they would take a different way. But yes, someone also has to present them with alternatives when they are thinking a little more clearly, and someone has to accompany them along the way when they are afraid and about to fall into the same trap again.
Returning to the subject of hired killers (guilty of murder many times in the past and guilty of intending to murder again), sometimes these also do not see another easy way forward, and the enemy would like them to think they "have to" keep doing what they are doing and "have no choice" (and that what they have done is either not a sin, or is an unforgivable sin), so it is also important for someone to inform people who work in an abortion clinic that we care about them and that there is an organization that will help them to find a different job (and that they can repent). I do not know the best way to do this. I think, though, that there's actually a better chance for them (who are not rich and who have somewhat-unpleasant somewhat-dishonorable jobs) than for high-ranking politicians (who have riches and honors and pride and wash their hands of what they claim are other people's decisions.)
It was better and worse than I expected. After daily Mass and confession I came home and two of my dependents were still asleep (the other was up and starting a project) so having no reason not to go out, I armed and armored myself like a hoplite which is to say that I was wearing about five layers and a couple of blankets (it was 25 F) and had a breviary and a Latin/Greek New Testament and a black metal hip flask that says HOLY WATER on it in large letters (which one of my kids got for me as a joke from the Halloween store, two Octobers ago, and which I assume was intended by its makers to be filled with "spirits" in the material sense; however on receipt I immediately filled it with holy water from a gallon jug in the cabinet under the sink, which she thought was very funny). My general intention was to pray a couple of hours of the breviary since (on my own) the Liturgy of the Hours is probably the most high-powered thing at my disposal, possibly read the prologue from St John in Greek, and then bail out home because it is cold. So then I drove downtown and parked in the nearest garage and broke out a pack of handwarmers. Then I exited the parking garage by the stairs (looking out the window and not seeing any escorts I suspected it was closed today), crossed the street and went half a block, immediately observing that the clinic was definitely closed for the day and that men were jackhammering in front of its immediate neighbor, which was probably why. I prayed Office of Readings for the conversion of St Paul with one hand over one ear (the armed and armored hoplite did not bring disposable earplugs, although I do have a jar of them, and I guess I will put some in my backpack), and sang the Te Deum, and made the sign of the cross with holy water on the edge of the window that I can reach without crossing The Line, and bailed out. The thing is, though, that my job (before I took about a year off) is to fend off demons and when the clinic is closed *there are no demons there* (it feels like any other closed storefront on the block which is a relief, vs. I am not sure how to describe what it is like when it is open and anyhow I don't want to (and probably ought not to) think about it.) So what did I do this for? I don't know ("just following orders" as they say). I guess I will email the usual suspects and let them know that I can come (erratically and for shorter intervals) on Saturday mornings again.
It was really interesting to read an interview of Lauren Handy, who specifically doesn’t own any assets nor has a family so that she can do the work she does, and she knows she will be in and out of jail her whole life.
I agree that we should take what is happening in clinics extremely seriously, but some people genuinely have a vocation to frustrating abortion clinics and abortionists directly, if we’re to look at what Lauren is doing.
I don't think it's right to say that "if we really believed and understood and appreciated what is happening in abortion clinics as they do, we would have been there blocking abortion clinics and going to prison with them."
There are lots and lots and lots of horrible things happening in the world that I am not called to leave my primary vocations to go and combat. I'm not going to prison for blocking abortion facilities for much the same reason as I'm not leaving my family to go serve the poor suffering in (pick a troubled spot in the world) or taking every homeless person in my city into my own home. Not everyone is called to be on the front lines of every fight, and I owe my own children a present father and a safe home more than I owe my witness to another cause, however good that cause may be.
I understand the sentiment, but I think it underestimates the degree to which pro-lifers do really understand that abortion is a tragedy.
This is a good point with which i agree. I admire the pro-lifers, and I think they can do it because of their particular state in life, etc. The same way my fatherhood prevents me from any number of other competing goods.
In the midst of this conversation I can’t help but recall those Catholics who lived or are living under the boot heel of tyranny, such as _______ (fill the blank with any of them). They are faced with submission or martyrdom. Since 1917, the first 3 things done by communazis when they get in power are: censor the press, confiscate guns, and outlaw religion (especially Catholicism).
Sometimes Catholics must retreat to catacombs, so to speak. Thankfully not here. Here in the U.S. we’re free to respond and react as each of sees fit - but how each chooses to do that is up to each to discern in Christ. My responsibility, indeed ‘mission’, was primarily to my family - especially my children. That conditioned a lot of my moral choosing in the practical order.
Yes. I admire them for their prophetic stand (and may God raise up more such prophets!) but I don't think most are called to this. Leaving my children without a father because I'm in prison wouldn't be a prudent use of my life. But who knows, once my kids are grown that changes the equation.
I wonder if this really answers Ed’s point, though.
Yes, some of us have vocations/stations in life that prevent us from certain types of witness to the Faith - say, becoming hermits, or taking in every homeless person we might see, because that would be incompatible with our duties (such as to look after our children/spouse/dependants).
But, surely, literally everyone is called to try and prevent actual murder happening in front of us or down the street - even at great personal cost?
This very much indicts me too: I fail to even witness to the tragedy of abortion in many circumstances (say, at work, because doing so would offend prevailing liberal pieties and I fear for the consequences I might suffer as a result).
But I *think* Ed’s point is that, had I more faith and understanding and appreciation for what abortion is, I would view it precisely as any other form of murder happening before my eyes - something I am compelled to try and stop regardless of consequences.
As someone “who was there” in our society when Roe v Wade was anti-Constitutionally judiciated down America’s collective throat, and who has argued publicly against the slaughter when I could, I think Ed missed the mark in criticizing us for apathy in the face of the pro-death onslaught. By extension he could claim the same about past and current Catholic victims of totalitarianism (Soviet, chicom, Naziagua, Cuba, Venezuela, National Socialism in Germany, and etc, etc, etc - all the way back to Nero) for whom giving any sign of disagreement results in an almost immediate ‘post-birth abortion’ (i.e., execution).
There were, of course, those Catholics who did just that. They’re called martyrs.
Prudence is a virtue. And it sometimes directs non confrontational witness.
Courage is a virtue. And it sometimes directs confrontation.
Wisdom is a gift that allows us to discern if / when to suffer the fury of hell - like Fr. Kolbe in Auschwitz. Or to confront evil by storming a beach at Normandy and fighting like Heaven against the powers of hell.
Those graced with the luxury of freedom and peace never faced with such a situation should thank God for that, and humbly thank Him for those who were.
(you mean Ed). carry on.
Ooops. Low caffeine glitch.
> say, at work, because doing so would offend prevailing liberal pieties
If the liberally-pious have invested in DEI or diversity training, it's pretty simple. Your stance on abortion is a religious belief and therefore part of diversity. I do not bring up the topic but when it comes up I do not let people get away with imagining that everyone thinks the same way they do. There are always other people who were afraid to say anything (as I used to be), so I am basically the stalking horse or coal mine canary or whatever. The majority behaves differently when they know they are in mixed company. This is a key tenet of DEI (make everyone slightly uncomfortable by knowing they need to be polite, rather than make a majority comfortable and a minority very sad and afraid to say so) and it depends on people who are willing to be the visibly different person.
A lot of people in the comments section are suffering from the fallacy of the excluded middle: 1. Currently if I were imprisoned my dependents would have literally no one to care for them. 2 Therefore I can't protest abortion.
Everyone here (barring those who are unable to go to a US clinic) absolutely can protest abortion outside a clinic. Do it without breaking any of the goofy laws about how close people are allowed to be. Do it without standing in someone's way. Does it make a difference to pray outside a clinic *visibly* and not just at home? - Yes it does. The clinic hates it because it causes people to turn around and rethink what they are doing before they get close enough to be physically "escorted" inside. Organizations have anecdotes and numbers. A team in which some people pray peacefully and others hand out information cards on *who can help you in your crisis pregnancy* (eliminating the perceived need for what the clinic provides) without breaking any goofy laws can save lives. So why are so few people doing it? Why isn't there larger turnout in 40 Days for Life season? Why doesn't everyone who posts on the internet about how to fight demons get off the internet and onto the sidewalk to fight demons? I am asking these questions because I need to reevaluate my own life (I have been off of the sidewalk for nearly a year now and maybe could get back on.)
Everyone here can contact government people to say "FACE Act is unconstitutional, or stinks for other reasons, and must be destroyed like Carthage". If we could get this removed then the old school form of protesting to provoke media coverage by the optics of arresting a swarm of little old ladies would be back on the table (whether this is wise or not, IDK, but more of the little old ladies would have the option).
If nothing else, everyone here can tell one other person about Let Them Live.
I think the objections were specifically because of the statement "if we really believed and understood and appreciated what is happening in abortion clinics as they do, we would have been there blocking abortion clinics and going to prison with them".
Which attempts to remove the legitimate prudential aspect of deciding *how* we fight something, by saying that all decisions to not go to the extreme are due to an insufficient appreciation for the gravity of the evil. The comments are objecting to Ed excluding the middle.
Other than that, everything you said is fantastic.
While I did want to point out the excluded middle, I do not actually disagree with Ed's statement: if we did, then we would. We have intellectual knowledge of the gravity (and I do not deny that) but not experiential knowledge. As a straw man: None of us have had a vision (nor I assume have the protesters) of souls falling into hell and if we did we would act very differently.
I'm going to play your two statements off each other.
The reasonable response to a full appreciation of souls falling into hell is demonstrated quite well by a number of different Saints. There are the Fatima children who actually saw it: they reacted with prayer and sacrifice, in their normal state of life. There is St. Paul, who responded with evangelization, St. Augustine, who responded with study and teaching. There are the many monks and nuns in contemplative orders who respond with dedicating their lives to prayer and sacrifice in a particular way. Christ went to the cross, but there is nothing recorded that he protested the systematic murder in the Roman Empire. The urgency and gravity of the matter did not result in every Saint dropping their obligations to stand on street corners with "The End is Nigh" signs. You can't win souls by going against God's particular will for you.
In a normal accounting, winning souls is more essential than saving lives. Therefore the first obligation is in fact to do what is God's will for one's self specifically, not to drop all obligations in favor of the most extreme methodology. The fact that some are called to more extreme methodologies doesn't mean everyone is: that's emotionalism, not docility to the Holy Spirit.
I used to know someone who couldn't pray at abortion clinics, much less do counseling, because she couldn't do anything but cry when she was there. So she didn't go (at least not while I knew her). There is no kind of knowledge of the gravity of abortion that leads inexorably to blocking abortion clinics and going to prison.
You are right; the necessary response is not specifically to block doors and go to prison, but rather to surrender one's entire life to God for Him to dispose of as He wishes, which is somewhat more radical than Ed indicates, and, as you indicate, it will result in a diversity of outward appearances (all of them, though, insane by the world's standards.)
If I knew this person, I would want her to know that prayer is not a matter of words spoken aloud (such as a group rosary) or even words spoken silently. It is entirely possible to pray while crying (in the winter it would be very unpleasant because of the chill from the moisture on the face, but in other seasons, not so bad as long as a person brought water and stayed hydrated). But she would need to ask God, all the same, whether this is what He wants her to go and do. We look at something and say "I don't think I am *made* to do this because of the way that I *am*" (this is different from "my station in life precludes it" such as a cloistered nun) but we ought to give Him the chance to agree "yes this isn't what I made you to do " or the chance to say "but, my child, my power is made perfect in weakness."
Yes! The biggest problem with Ed's statement is that it isn't radical (or diverse) enough!
She might have done that discernment, although I didn't know her very well. But yes, it definitely is a necessary thing to do. Discernment via "but it's hard" doesn't go so well.
Except the problem is that if someone intends to commit murder and is physically prevented from doing so by blockaders they are still guilty of murder in the sight of God according to the Sermon on the Mount. So to save her soul one must change her mind without interfering with her free will.
Let's consider the case of someone depressed who is about to commit suicide due to despair: generally if you stop them and they get through the crisis, they no longer want to kill themselves but want to get help to go on living although it is a real challenge. Similarly, most people who want to kill someone (themselves or another person; and I am setting aside *hired killers* for the moment) do not see another way out of the matter in that moment or they would take a different way. But yes, someone also has to present them with alternatives when they are thinking a little more clearly, and someone has to accompany them along the way when they are afraid and about to fall into the same trap again.
Returning to the subject of hired killers (guilty of murder many times in the past and guilty of intending to murder again), sometimes these also do not see another easy way forward, and the enemy would like them to think they "have to" keep doing what they are doing and "have no choice" (and that what they have done is either not a sin, or is an unforgivable sin), so it is also important for someone to inform people who work in an abortion clinic that we care about them and that there is an organization that will help them to find a different job (and that they can repent). I do not know the best way to do this. I think, though, that there's actually a better chance for them (who are not rich and who have somewhat-unpleasant somewhat-dishonorable jobs) than for high-ranking politicians (who have riches and honors and pride and wash their hands of what they claim are other people's decisions.)
For the curious (curiosity is a vice)
It was better and worse than I expected. After daily Mass and confession I came home and two of my dependents were still asleep (the other was up and starting a project) so having no reason not to go out, I armed and armored myself like a hoplite which is to say that I was wearing about five layers and a couple of blankets (it was 25 F) and had a breviary and a Latin/Greek New Testament and a black metal hip flask that says HOLY WATER on it in large letters (which one of my kids got for me as a joke from the Halloween store, two Octobers ago, and which I assume was intended by its makers to be filled with "spirits" in the material sense; however on receipt I immediately filled it with holy water from a gallon jug in the cabinet under the sink, which she thought was very funny). My general intention was to pray a couple of hours of the breviary since (on my own) the Liturgy of the Hours is probably the most high-powered thing at my disposal, possibly read the prologue from St John in Greek, and then bail out home because it is cold. So then I drove downtown and parked in the nearest garage and broke out a pack of handwarmers. Then I exited the parking garage by the stairs (looking out the window and not seeing any escorts I suspected it was closed today), crossed the street and went half a block, immediately observing that the clinic was definitely closed for the day and that men were jackhammering in front of its immediate neighbor, which was probably why. I prayed Office of Readings for the conversion of St Paul with one hand over one ear (the armed and armored hoplite did not bring disposable earplugs, although I do have a jar of them, and I guess I will put some in my backpack), and sang the Te Deum, and made the sign of the cross with holy water on the edge of the window that I can reach without crossing The Line, and bailed out. The thing is, though, that my job (before I took about a year off) is to fend off demons and when the clinic is closed *there are no demons there* (it feels like any other closed storefront on the block which is a relief, vs. I am not sure how to describe what it is like when it is open and anyhow I don't want to (and probably ought not to) think about it.) So what did I do this for? I don't know ("just following orders" as they say). I guess I will email the usual suspects and let them know that I can come (erratically and for shorter intervals) on Saturday mornings again.
Thank you for the reminder that this is a simple, powerful way to save lives!
It was really interesting to read an interview of Lauren Handy, who specifically doesn’t own any assets nor has a family so that she can do the work she does, and she knows she will be in and out of jail her whole life.
I agree that we should take what is happening in clinics extremely seriously, but some people genuinely have a vocation to frustrating abortion clinics and abortionists directly, if we’re to look at what Lauren is doing.