(The following is a note I wrote a friend who is a preacher. I had just attended his church, and heard him allude in his sermon to someone sneering behind a window whade as he protested outside an abortion clinic.)
I don't know how free politics is from God. I get the very strong impression from friends in the radical conservative camp that liberality is a hellbound train. What a great political strategy ? make the opposition's name into a curse-word!
I took Paul aside at the retreat and told him 20 ways in which Jesus invented liberality ? generous-mindedness ? responsibility for the forgotten ? the idea that all people are equal in God's sight ? the idea of empathy for the sufferings of others is a liberal idea.
Respect, that's more of a conservative idea. Good one, too, but empathy ? Jesus just about invented it. Where in literature do we encounter it before? Ruth?
I believe that we all come to God from our own stories, and those stories forge our identities.
I am a relentless, instinctual hater of bullies and bullying, owing to things I witnessed as a child ? God, unfortunately, being one of the bullies, which I continue to struggle with — and my politics (and maybe my faith problems) spring almost entirely from that.
The essence of radical (not historical) conservatism is sticking up for Caesar, covering up the truth, being indifferent to the opinions of others, extolling the Pharisee, ridiculing the publican, and telling the leper to shut his tattered yap.
I'm agin it.
Historical conservatism (people left to their own devices will do bad things, so they must be constrained) is something I agree with. But not this radical anti-reflective, who-cares-what-you-think stuff making the rounds today.
Who does the hard work for people in trouble? Liberals like my wife Rachel, who gut it out day after day, helping people with big problems, one at a time. The nurses and teachers and foster families and social workers who wade through misery every day for a living.
Not because they are Democrats, but because they have the idea that everyone matters. They live liberality. All these people are demonized by the current regime as ?liberal do-gooders.?
Many of these liberals hate religiosity, but they live a deeper kind of religion ? they act on the premise that other people are really there.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments
1 - Bíró Zoltán
Dear Readers,
I recommend you the following home page:
www.grain.hu
LIFE-SAVING WEBSITE
Sincerely,
Zoltan Biro
2 - JoeR
The debate on abortion is merely opinion. Moral values are based on either self-centered, God-based or society-based non-provable basic assumptions. For the Catholic viewpoint let me excerpt from the free ebook series “And Gulliver Returns”. The Abortion chapter in Book 4 elaborates the pros and cons of the 3 ethical assumptions. Let me attempt to summarize the changing Catholic position. From the 13th Century the views of St. Thomas Aquinas, that male embryos got their souls about 4 weeks after conception, females somewhat later, were the standard. His was a Christionized view of Aristotle’s ideas.
The crux of the modern idea, that the soul is infused at conception, might be traced to St. Paul (Romans 5:12) who started the ball rolling on ‘original sin.’ 500 years later St. Augustine popularized the idea. But the Blessed Virgin was born without original sin, her Immaculate Conception. Pope Pius IX declared this in 1854. Then in 1870 he decided that popes were infallible in church doctrine. So was his pronouncement retroactive?
Recent popes have generally followed Pius’s idea that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception. This brings with it some theological problems. Since many fertilized ova never implant in the uterus what happens to these little souls?
If you are really interested in the question, see the aforementioned chapter. It is done in detail.
Additionally, unwanted children don't have a fair chance at a happy life, which may affect their chances of a joyful afterlife. Adoption is only a limited option since there are not unlimited adoptive parents--especially for questionably healthy babies--like crack babies. Abortion is good from both a self-centered and a society based morality. It is also moral from most religious views, if they don't follow the Pope's opinions. If you are a conservative Catholic who believes that the Pope gets his opinions directly from God, it makes sense. But if you are not a strong Catholic your opinions are certainly on thin ice--logically.