Safe Haven

It is claimed that banning abortion will only drive abortion underground, where it is less safe. (You can find Sen. Ted Kennedy's "wire hangar" speech against Bork for an example.) As an aside, even if this grisly practice were properly regulated--which to the present day, it's not--it's not safe for the baby. Moreover, the claim that abortion is at least physically safe for the mother is false. Given the fact that abortion supporters and opponents agree that "back alley" abortions are undesirable, it's nevertheless the case that the "choice" side imputes a moral culpability for the harms caused by the illicit procedure on to those who wish to ban abortion as such. This doesn't follow, for one thing. For another, anti-abortion legislators and voters would only be culpable for the harm in such a situation with an unstated premise that abortion itself is morally neutral or good. If abortion were morally neutral or good, the only hardshi...

Let me start with Mark Shea, and say it like this: I get it. I don't want to be in the GOP tribe, either. I don't like the political culture of deflection. I don't like the notion of pretending that President Trump is a good man, who's misunderstood, or slandered, or whatever people say. I don't like the fact that most serious issues not related to sex are being discussed inside the Democratic Party. I could go on and on about the GOP, and GOP voters, and that even most thoughts within that coalition strike me as irritable mental gestures in the direction of a philosophy, to borrow a phrase. Yet I have some truth to share: A human fetus is a person, an innocent person, and killing an innocent person is wrong. Not because Jesus said so, although he does. Any person who loves reason can come to see this truth. We may even convince ourselves that "reproductive choice" is less wrong, because the set of Republican policies related to social support makes th...

You can scan the news any time; the most obvious conclusion, though not necessarily helpful, is, "Everything is terrible." Sin, tragedy, alienation, death, and destruction are just a typical Friday. I was praying a Chaplet of Divine Mercy last night for a guy with cancer I heard about. The Chaplet is an amazing prayer. And as I started to think about what we were saying, it bowls me over still. Father, we plead the all-sufficient merit of Your Son. If that won't help us, nothing will. If you're suffering, I can't tell you how to feel that, or to get through it. I do know that I am not afraid of dying. I was kind of taunting the devil after a fashion in prayer the other day, in that it came to me in this way: What's the worst you can do to me, kill me? Do you understand, my friends? Our souls are eternal. These bodies will die, but we will not. It sneaks up on some people, because of the pride of life. The evil one loves death in this world, because it hu...

When you're close to Jesus, he knocks on the door of your heart. Many people do prayers of various kinds, and we ought to be thankful that holy Church gives us so many prayers to learn. They guide us and help us when we are spiritually young. Later, the words take on new life, as things we know by the light of faith, not simply as practices we have. Jesus knocks, because the deepest desire of the faithful heart is Him. And at this stage, we are no less likely in my view to fall back into sin or fear as any new person, but we recognize we may do it for an entirely different reason: the danger of an intimacy growing ever more deeply. How scary it is to be known or potentially known by another human being! And if that is true, how much more the divine Son of God! How does Jesus overcome this in us? With a love that is relentless, unyielding, undying, like the burning sun in the desert in the middle of the day. We are the inconstant ones; we are the ones who fail and change. He has...

Admittedly, I have much less patience for people these past few months. That sounds weird and wrong to say. I mean that I am closing ranks; I have no time to join in a chorus of criticism directed toward myself. I used to love meeting new people; I don't anymore. I will probably say a lot more offensive things in the weeks and months ahead, because I think I had an idol of being popular, an idol of being well-liked. I wasn't one to mince words to begin with, and now, I find that sometimes, diplomacy leaves leaves you holding the ashes of fruitless efforts to please others. I think the Sacrament of Holy Orders is a wonderful gift, one of the greatest ever given to humankind. I also think it doesn't necessarily prevent any man from being a fool. Please do move the priests, powers that be. The broken cistern is more obvious the longer it stays in the same place. I think I'll be one of those public intellectuals who dies, and someone will say, "he wasn't one ...