Impossible human situations(The Abortion Issue)

Impossible human situations
(The Abortion Issue)​

The abortion question is divisive, and I approach it with a certain level of fear and trembling. It is not a simple matter at all. I have friends who are pro-choice. They focus on the mother, her plight, and wish to protect women from procedures that are illegal and perhaps a threat to their lives. I do believe that abortion is not something that will ever go away. However, there are deep moral implications when it comes to this subject.

I do know that the demographics on those who get abortions are across the board when it comes to religious affiliation. So that needs to be understood.

2006: The Center for Reason: Responding to a claim by some conservative Christian leaders that abortion is an evil perpetrated by non-Christians, the Center -- a private research group -- decided to conduct a study to determine whether Christians have fewer abortions per capita than do non-Christians. They determined that Christians have as many abortions per capita than do non-Christians. They analyzed state-by-state data -- perhaps from the CDC -- and found that the rate of abortion is the same in the most Christian segments of the population as it is in the least-Christian. However, the most highly Catholic segments of the nation showed significantly higher abortion rates.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_fact4.htm

I do believe, and being a Catholic, and this will not surprise anyone that life needs to be protected from the moment of conception to natural death. Just because I believe that does not mean others do, and it does nothing to stop abortion. For abortion to stop, the changes in our cultural needed to accomplish that, would transform everything, both in how we treat each other, do business, and how we actually care for the elderly and the very young. The trends at this time seem to be going in the other direction. It would be like the ‘Ten Commandments’ would actually have to be taken seriously and lived out in a mindful and thoughtful manner in order to reverse the trend.

I do know that yelling at others or condemning them (which we are commanded not to do) only makes matters worse. The issue is complicated and the fruit that is produced is often bitter and not life-affirming at all.

Many women come to our retreat house and talk about having an abortion. Many of these poor women have to go through the reminder of how old their child would be if allowed to reach birth. It is heartbreaking. Yet, at the time of their abortion, many were alone, abandoned by their boyfriends, and even families. Some came from families, who were practicing members of a church, who pressured them so much that they got the abortion. Not all abortions are made freely but actually bullied into it……by Christians. I am not saying this to point fingers, but bring to light the deep changes that need to be made by Christian on this issue.

I have also met men who mourn over abortion, because even though they wanted the child and to taking care of it, the abortion was still performed. Some marriages ended over this issue.

We have problems in every area of our society. This goes for the Church’s, our government, and in our families. It is not just about sexual abuse, which seems to be rampant, but about seeking the dignity present in every human being, which from the way we treat one another, seems to be lacking. I do not believe things will get better in this country, but only worse, until, hopefully, we will come to a point where we will all wake up, and that includes people like me. I do have blind spots like everyone else, some of them serious ones. We are all called to conversion, which is not a onetime event, but an ongoing process that continues until we die.

I live in hope, my faith leads me to that. However, that does not mean that we are not moving towards a future that will be become more tumultuous as time moves forward. So, for Christians, and all people who seek God, we need to on a more conscious level, live out our faith, and love others, not hate, or scream. But speak gently and with love. We believers can be our own worst enemy when it comes to how we present ourselves to others.

The Human Situation

Some problems are impossible to solve,
like the Gordian Knot,
so turned in on itself that it can’t be untied,
so I am powerless to change anyone,
or any situation that affects so many,
yet I can still not hate, or judge, or shower with contempt
those who disagree with me
about what I believe, or my faith,
even if they do so with hatred and contempt.

Each life is seen only by God to the very depth of soul,
I see the surface, so I am told to not judge,
to judge is to be blinded by a false light.
Judgment, which is absolute truth
comes only from God,
perhaps we will all be surprised by what that implies
and will silence all the clamorous interaction. —Br.MD​

 

Brother Mark, this is not an impossible situation, it is a child. The mother and father, if they realized that this life is a child, would do every thing they can to see that child gets born. Peace to you and your ministry, Mary

 

Abortion involves an awful lot of people -- the wave of evil spreads out like a tsunami --

From the politicians & legislators who enable it to happen, to the doctors, nurses, ancillary staff, secretaries, medical staff, families, parents, women, men -- all invloved in the decision to end an innocent human life.

God will judge each for their part played in this holocaust.

Very simple it is a direct attack on God's commandment thou shalt not kill.

Every abortion is a direct attack on God Himself the creator who endows each life with a soul.

 

Well, yes, I understand. Not sure what kind of a man, or woman, who is a doctor could do that everyday, all day. They must have to let go of some part of their humanity. Many doctors will not do abortion, I know some of them.

Peace
mark

 

Yes, it is a great evil. Today there seems to be no understanding of the reality of evil, or sin. Our actions, what we choose, can make us into true monsters. that is why I pray for them, even if at times I have to grit my teeth. Not to do so would poinson my heart and soul.

thank you for responding.

Peace
Mark

 

There are no 'impossible situations'. With God nothing is impossible. Our Lady promises that the Rosary can solve ALL problems. There have to be SOME absolutes and protecting the lives of the unborn, the physically and mentally disabled, those with serious illness and the old ARE absolutes. Hard cases make for bad law and hard cases are all that are offered by the 'progressives' but the majority are not hard cases at all, they are choices made by people who will not bear the consequences of their own decisions.

 

I think we need to be wary of 'morbid pity' for those who murder babies. The woman who murders her own child is nearer to Charlie Manson than to being a 'victim'.

I just happened to read this tonight:

Morbid Pity and the Apotheosis of Blockheads
“‘The friendship of a blockhead shun,’
Said Israel’s monarch, David’s son.”*

Samuel Low, “The Fool’s Friendship” (c. 1800)

“And all that pity you are made your prey.”

Thomas Otway, The Orphan (1680)

It may strike some readers as odd that I so often quote or allude to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, one of history’s more decidedly anti-Christian thinkers. Indeed, I most often quote The Antichrist, his most decidedly anti-Christian book. The Antichrist is, as they used to say, strong meat, but a Christian who has the stomach for strong meat may learn a good deal from it. Nietzsche himself believed he had diagnosed Christianity as the pathology of Western Man; I would say he has diagnosed morbid pity as the pathology of postmodern Christianity.

Unlike Nietzsche, I accept pity (compassion) as a virtue, but unlike many modern Christians, I see pity as a secondary virtue that degenerates into pathological altruism when it is not regulated by the primary virtues of justice, prudence and courage. A man without compassion is certainly a bad man, but a man who is guided by nothing but compassion is a King Midas of misery. Everything he touches turns to mold.

Morbid pity does its mischief in many ways. The most obvious is that it rushes in to palliate unpleasant but just deserts. A drunkard groaning in bed should at least get his own aspirin! A sluggard lamenting his empty belly should be ignored. The road to wisdom runs through the swamp of suffering, and when morbid pity tries to bridge that swamp with a causeway, it turns the road right back to folly. All suffering does not deserve pity, and it requires justice, prudence and courage to harden one’s heart when it does not.

More insidiously, whenever we feel pity, there is a great danger we will begin to feel sorry. Notice the telling equivocation in this word sorry, which can mean simple compassion or guilty remorse. Morbid pity is compassion that has degenerated into guilty remorse, into a false belief that I have somehow caused the suffering that I see. Compassion makes me feel a duty to alleviate unjust suffering. Morbid pity makes me feel that I am at least partly to blame for all the sorrows of the world.

Prudent pity for the poor is a virtue, and it leads to charity. Charity is given in love and received with gratitude. Morbid pity for the poor is a vice, and it leads to restitution. Restitution is given in shame, received without thanks, and impartially showered on deserving and undeserving alike. When wealth waxes guilty, poverty waxes predatory, and “Christian charity” becomes the cover for a heist.

Returning to Nietzsche, morbid pity also perverts our discernment by blurring our vision of goodness, beauty and truth. When a person is deficient in intelligence, for instance, morbid pity encourages us to compensate that person with some wholly imaginary virtue, such as “soul,” or “kindness,” or “honesty.” Because many stupid people are also vapid, mean, and shifty, this compensatory fiction blinds us to genuine instances of these and other virtues.

It is a fact that many beautiful women are also intelligent, unaffected, and kind, and that many homely women are also dull, vain and spiteful. Compassion faces this fact and does its best to pity the ghastly hags. Morbid pity recoils from this fact and compensates the charmless gargoyles with fatuous compliments.

Morbid pity causes many people to believe that a child who is poor at math must be good at art. The result has been to destroy art classes by packing them with blockheads who don’t know what to do with finger paints. Artists and mathematicians are different than each other, but they are, together, even more different than the many blockheads who are neither artists nor mathematicians.

We should do our best to feel compassion for blockheads, whom God must love since he made so many of them. But it is morbid to imagine they are anything other than blockheads.



*) “A friend of fools shall become like unto them.” Proverbs 13:20

[Bolded lines done so by me].

https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2...-and-the-apotheosis-of-blockheads/#more-21400

 

This is the type of misplaced pity that motivated people in this country voting for 'gay' marriage and abortion. We have to have moral absolutes that cannot be watered down in the name of misplaced pity. Also we have to consider the eternal fate of people.

 

Correct. As Augustine said, we must absolutely love the sinner, but absolutely hate the sin. It's not showing love to the sinner by trying to 'understand' his sin-this is only giving him the mistaken impression his sin isn't so bad or isn't sin at all. This is all the more so in terms of murdering babies, the absolutely gravest sin conceivable against one's fellow man, I would think. If the Church had taken an absolute, condemnatory stance from the very beginning of the abortion epidemic, one in line with its tradional stance when abortion was comparatively rare, instead of the mistaken compassion of attributing victimhood to mothers who murder their children, would so many Catholics have fallen for this sin, as lamented in his original post, by Brother Mark? Or even non-Catholics? Might such an uncompromising, unequivocal approach have nipped much of the sexual revolution in the bud? No such revolution got going before the sixties, when Sin, Hell and Damnation got 'wished away' (but wishes don't work).

 

Indeed. There's a reason situation ethics is condemned by the Church. It's so sad to see members of religious communities making a case for it. Evidently, in their eyes the person situated in one womb can be less human than the person situated in another womb.

Would they twist themselves inside out coming up with excuses for cutting the spinal cord of a born baby, heaping pity on the killers? Maybe for a while but give it time and the excuses will come. Euthanasia aka Mercy Killing is expanding to cover situations which would have been considered murder until very recently.

 

Abortion is murder. I do agree that people do not deserve pity, becasue it makes us weak. To speak truth is necessary. However, to speak in anger, or in an attitude that condems (which is not our place) does not help either. Many woman are actually forced into having an abortion by parents, and even boy friends, and husbands, most are very youngs. Many spend a lifetime regretting what they have done.

Even devout christians, when their daughters get pregant, often out of fear of their fellow christians will force their daughters to get abortions, just one, and a great shame.

Abortion is not the only issue in this country. There is sex trafficking, and what about those who look at porn, they also sin and part of that is that they partake, and pay, to see the degradation of another human being.

Abuse of parents on their chidlren, of husbands on their wives, and of couse wifes abuse towards their husbands. Politician who are corrupt, church men who lead many astray through their own lack of faith, and even those who sexually abuse others. All of the above is widespread. Then there is racism on all sides.

That is the human situation, a spider web of evil, people caught up in it, and many have no way out. When dealt with in a loving manner, many see another way, anger and judgment only make them worse. God judges on truth, we don't I believe, or I don't.

The fix we are in can't be changed at this time, but we can all stay calm, speak the truth, and pray, and leave judgment, true judgement up to God. We are so blessed to l have faith, and a community like this one who can support us.

Peace
Mark

 

I read a very scary quote from CS Lewis just yesterday.

'The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual; the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising, the pleasure of power, of hatred..That is why a cold self righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither'.

But you know Pope Francis has been going on and on about this. It's true to be rigid and judgemental is terrible and to be avoided at all costs.

But the problem these days is not, I think with the prigs, no matter what Pope Francis says. The real problem is with Western Societies is an attitude of , 'Do what you like with your body, who cares?'

As to the countless cold, judgemental prigs Pope Francis supposes going about...well all I can say is I haven't met one, not even having a long cool stare in the mirror of my conscience.

 

This feels like a Francis-style rebuke to the 'inflexible, judgemental etc.'. As such it is, of course, a judgement itself. If young women feel 'forced' into performing an intrinsically evil act, then of course their guilt is limited or possibly non-existent. I am not judging individuals nor am I assuming that most cases involve a tortuous decision which the 'pro-choice' lobby pretend to be the average situation. A member of my wife's family (a non-Catholic) was guilty of this act. In the circumstances of her pregnancy few would regard her as guilty of a great sin or of any sin at all and we certainly do not shun her but an innocent life was ended and sin it was and there is no way round it.

 

I suspect the main problem is not the discomfort of what people say and think (for these days does anybody really care what others think?) The main problem is the voice of conscience irritating within. If only people would shut up saying about abortion being murder folks could more easily put their consciences back to sleep.

 

I noticed the man who kicked that woman{and that was some Kick} was wearing what looked like a pentagram emblem around his neck. You know I never met a "witch" that didn't end up inviting you to join them in their "fasting and praying for abortion".

 

You know in our country{USA} there is almost always a real woman's health clinic right next door, across the street or around the corner and people doing sidewalk counseling, that will help these woman and give them real health care. PP tries their best with court orders to make them keep their distance from their PP centers so as not to lose money. People have lost their trust in God and just don't believe He will help them anymore. They just haven't been taught that. I pray everyday that Jesus and Mary will send their angels to guide these women to clinics to show them how to have these babies. And to guide people out of the abortion industry.

 

Oh wow! It is an upside down Pentagram ..a pure Satanic Symbol....well spotted I hadn't noticed this!



https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/tag/jordan-hunt

'The Washington Free Beacon reports that Jordan Hunt also scribbled on several pro-lifers’ clothes, including those of a 10-year-old girl.


Bissonnette said she was not the only person targeted Sunday during the Life Chains. In Mississagua, someone walked up to a pro-life advocate from behind and poured paint over his clothes while he was praying. She wrote for LifeSiteNews:


“I’ve participated in many public pro-life activities throughout my life. This isn’t the first time I’ve been attacked. Rocks have been thrown at me. I’ve been spat upon multiple times and pushed. Men have aggressively asked how I would like it if they raped me and forced me to have an abortion. There is a media-driven narrative that pro-life activists are violent and a danger to women. This is a bald-faced lie. The only violence or aggression I’ve witnessed in my many years in the pro-life movement comes entirely from pro-abortion activists, and yet it’s rarely, if ever, reported.”'

 

He's so very fond of himself, too. A pure narcissist-how long does he spend in front of the mirror to get that beard like that? And your woman with the blue hair goes to a lot of trouble to make herself as ugly-looking as possible, a sort of narcissism in reverse. The satanic symbol certainly seems appropriate, and apparently is not unusual amongst abortion activists. These aren't people who find themselves in 'impossible situations'; on the contrary, they revel in the slaughter of the innocent, this is how they get their kicks and they equally delight in inflicting violence upon anyone who tries to do good, such as the poor woman here who got kicked. This chap loves hurting the weak. To many of these people, abortion is not something to be undergone reluctantly and with regret, it is to them an antisacrament, the act that enables them to enjoy all the pleasure they crave without any consequence. But it seems to have even gone further than this for many; the abortion itself has become the primary pleasure. There is no longer a pretense with many abortion activists that it is something that is done with regret and would be avoided if possible; it is clearly something to be celebrated in itself and to be proud of and boasted of. It all must delight satan.