Safe Haven

I'm really pro-life. And by "really," I mean that when someone says, "If you were really pro-life, you would..." my response is, "OK, let's talk about that." If you're out on the sidewalks praying the Rosary, counseling, working in a crisis pregnancy center, none of this criticism applies to you. I see whataboutism all over the place, to the effect that because "The Left" supports abortion, homosexuality, divorce, etc, then every moral criticism of Right-leaning political engagement is invalid. Worse still, some of us have effectively or explicitly decided that our alleged blind spots on other issues aren't really blind spots at all. Some of us have decided that inconsistency on one point renders all other moral judgments suspect. In fact, people on our side love to do this, because it deflects attention from immoralities we have tolerated, or explicitly endorsed. Well, to be blunt about it, just because we're putatively in ...

A friend was saying he found some Catholic church at the "Pride" parade who in effect described themselves as Catholicism without all the meddlesome rules. As a note off the top, I won't belabor the point on homosexuality , because my views aren't hard to find or understand. What about rules? On the one hand, a religion that subsists entirely in its rules is not from God. Revealed truth as we know it comes from a God whose very being is Love. On the other hand, rules in fact are a means to an end. The end is everlasting communion with God. We know from our own experience that a parent that gives his or her children no rules is deficient in love. Still, we don't want to push the analogy too far. Providence--God's ordering of everything--is too big for us, and we end up speculating dangerously (and doing a fair amount of complaining) instead of humbly seeking. In any case, rules can be a problem if we ignore them, or if we make them an end, instead of a mea...