The Joy of the Truth » Culture of Life

Pro-choice is the Death of Love

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 05:51:27 +0000

In a previous blog post, I pointed out that abortion advocates have problems even if they call themselves pro-choice. The overemphasis of the individual’s choice tends to isolate the mother from the support of the community. Our culture is pretty much telling unwed mothers, “It’s your choice, so it’s your problem.” Whether a mother decides to kill her baby or give her baby life, the pro-choice movement makes the decision and all its consequences hers and hers alone. Her right to choose removes society’s responsibility and compassion.

Wesley Smith, an outstanding opponent of Euthanasia, teaches that the same thing happens with the “right to die.” The individual’s choice to end his or her life in the face of suffering or despair removes our responsibility to reach out to them in love.

“But I know people and you know people who became suicidal,” he continued. “They might not be alive today if it had not been for the mental health professionals and friends and loved ones who stood in the gap and said, ‘No, we love you, there’s another way’.”

“We are disengaging from each other,” Smith said. “We are losing love for each other, and that is reflected in how we treat people who are in despair and darkness.” [1. Klein, Franz. "Wisconsin is a 'major target' for pro-euthanasia groups, speaker says" Catholic Times. October 1, 2009. 12.]

One interesting thing about Smith was that he said he did not understand why euthanasia is a progressive issue. Apparently Wisconsin is being targeted by pro-death advocates and Wisconsin is known as a blue state. I wonder if Wesley Smith falls into the same misunderstanding of modern liberalism as many Catholics. Liberalism is no longer founded on progressive ideals, but instead on philosophical Modernism, the belief that truth cannot be known except through personal experience. Modernism emphasizes personal choice as the most important value, since it sees truth as a personal thing (“What’s true for you may not be true for me”). Pro-euthanasia and pro-abortion advocates call themselves pro-choice because the personalized choice is what matters most to them. However, their over-emphasis of personal choice means a neglect of community responsibility and love.

Organ Donation: Act of Charity or Abuse of Human Dignity?

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:00:16 +0000

New York recently past a law requiring all citizens to be organ donors unless they opt out. While Catholic moral theologians are still debating the moral rightness of organ donation, in a culture of death this new law is more than problematic.

Catholic moral theologians debate the moral value of the organ donation because of the principle of totality and integrity, which states that the body should be kept whole unless the removal of a body part is necessary for the body’s overall health. This principle protects the dignity of the body as part of the human person. This philosophy of the human body stands at odds with other philosophies within our culture that see the body as a mere vessel for the spirit, or that see the human person as no more than a physical animal. There is also question about whether or not a human person is truly dead with the organs are harvested. Complete bodily death leads to the immediate deterioration of organs. Some organ donation advocates want to create a new category of “death” that allows for the harvesting of organs before the body is completely dead as long as it is reasonably certain that the patient will not regain consciousness and that the brain activity has fallen below a level defined as the standard for life. This places the value of the organ donor’s life below that of the organ recipient because the organ donor’s life is considered useless. The definition of brain death is debated among moral theologians.

Besides questions about the morality of organ harvesting in general, there is also the question about free will. If organ donation is deemed morally acceptable, it is because it is a free gift of one’s body for the good of another, and therefore an act of love. However, if organ donation is forced by law, this free act of love is diminished or even destroyed. Furthermore, our culture runs the risk of becoming utilitarian, judging one life against the other based on some standards of quality that are purely materialistic and that do not recognize the dignity and value of each human person.

Any way you look at it, the New York law is a problem. Yes, it could save lives by making more organs available for transplant, but only at the expense of devaluing other lives. It could put doctors in the position of making value judgments that determine that one person’s life has less value than another person’s. It could be one more step in the culture of death to devalue human personhood and to make life, our bodies, and our very lives into nothing more than a commodity for the highest bidder.

Standard Medical Practice and International Rights

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:08:15 +0000

Our culture now considers shutting down the healthy fertility system and killing babies to be basic woman’s health. Long ago the abortion movement abandoned their slogan “safe, legal, and rare.” They are now successfully pushing to make abortion everyday, commonplace, and accepted medical practice. The practice of medicine used to be considered the practice of making a sick person whole and healthy. It is now becoming a commodity business that offers whatever the customer thinks he or she wants. Even while the morally reprehensible act of abortion is constantly under fire and is increasingly unpopular, activists are moving to make abortion a basic human right on the international stage.

Top Abortion Law Firm Says Government Funded Abortion is a Human Right
By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) A top abortion-rights law firm recently released its conclusion that the last decade of international legal trends indicate that abortion is not only an international human right, but that government funding is part of that right. They claim that the “vicious” health care debate in the United States over abortion funding shows that the U.S. is flouting international law.

In “Reproductive Rights at the Start of the 21st Century: Global Progress, Yet Backpedaling on Gains in U.S.,” the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) argues that “funding for abortion services has increasingly been recognized as a necessary tool for ensuring access to a fundamental human right.”

C-fam.org

We need to shout from the rooftops! True woman’s health is making sure her body, including her fertility system, does what it is designed to do. True woman’s freedom is the ability to choose to enjoy her sexuality within the context of marriage and family love so that she is not used as an object of pleasure and so that her sexuality fulfills the purpose of its power: to create family love.

The Problem of Choice

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:49:24 +0000

I have commented before that while there is value in calling abortion advocates on the “pro-choice” bluff is important and fruitful, we also need to understand how it is possible for them to consider themselves pro-choice (especially because many errant Catholics actually consider themselves so), and to meet their arguments at face value. This is, after all, St. Thomas Aquinas’ approach.

Richard Stith seems to agree. His article, Her Choice, Her Problem in First Things Magazine presents an excellent argument that seriously needs to be considered in the public square.

He argues (among other things) that choice removes compassionate support and replaces it with the attitude, “You chose to have the baby when you could have gotten an abortion, now you can live with your choice.”

But once continuing a pregnancy to birth is the result neither of passion nor of luck but only of her deliberate choice, sympathy weakens. After all, the pregnant woman can avoid all her problems by choosing abortion. So if she decides to take those difficulties on, she must think she can handle them.

Birth itself may be followed by blame rather than support. Since only the mother has the right to decide whether to let the child be born, the father may easily conclude that she bears sole responsibility for caring for the child. The baby is her fault.

It could certainly be argued that society was not so compassionate to pregnant women before Roe vs. Wade. If this is true, is the answer to turn to a solution that is at least as uncaring? Furthermore, it must be understood that there is a difference between compassion for the woman and accepting the sin. Today we are expected to say to a woman who is pregnant out of wedlock, “Oh, that’s OK. Your sexual choices are your own. We’ll help you and not judge you.” Before Roe vs. Wade, the attitude was, “This is the consequence of your sin, and you need to come to terms with it. However, we will help you even though we do not condone your sin.” How is this kind of compassion shown?

The father of the child may man-up and marry the woman and become a true father to the child
A family may take the young mother away from the community, school, etc. so as not to cause scandal, but would support her through her pregnancy and even through the adoption process or even in motherhood
Pregnancy crisis centers help women without other sources of support
Churches and communities step in to help single parents who are struggling
All the while the family, Church and society make it clear that the consequences of the sinful, selfish use of sexuality affect her, the baby, and everyone around them

The personal experience of a friend of mine has shown me exactly what “choice” does to us as a society. When she got pregnant and went to the father of her new baby, his response was, “I’ll give you some money for an abortion, but if you choose to have this baby then you’re on your own.” No longer is the point of choice and consequence the decision to have sex. Now the point of choice and consequence is the decision to have an abortion or not. The man was let off the hood because keeping the child was the woman’s choice.

It’s time for a more compassionate response to unwed pregnancy than “choice.”

Boy, did I get this one wrong!

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:38:30 +0000

You may or may not remember two of my previous posts regarding the Department of Homeland Security’s inclusion of prolife groups as possible domestic threats. I argued that it was a mistake to get defensive about this list because there were logical reasons for security personnel to become vigilant about possible attacks by frustrated radical fringe prolifers (of the type that shoot abortionists in the name of the cause) due to the election of a radically pro-abortion administration. I assumed that the Department of Homeland Security would be reasonable in its use of such a memo. My warning was for prolifers not to fall into alarmism, paranoia and exaggeration.

See posts Alarmism and Propaganda Have No Place in the Pro-Life Movement and Alarmism & Propaganda in the Prolife Movement Revisited to refresh your memory.

In this case, I got it totally wrong! I should have known to trust Life Issues.

Now I have heard from Peggy Hamill of Pro-Life Wisconsin, someone I have come to trust a lot, has had personal experience with where this memo has led. Pro-Life Wisconsin and its members were listed in a “thread assessment” for peacefully protesting at abortion clinics. Records of this threat assessment still exist at the local police department (thought the Department of Homeland Security has destroyed their copies).

Though they have back-pedaled, authorities took the step of listing peaceful demonstrations that are protected by First Amendment free speech and assembly rights as threats. What I thought was an over-reaction has proven to be a real threat to liberty.

Let me reiterate that I still hold to the title of my original post, “Alarmism and Propaganda Have No Place in the Pro-Life Movement.” I write such posts not to water down the prolife message, but to try to sharpen it. I truly believe that alarmism and propaganda do nothing but weaken the potency of the truth about abortion (not that my little blog with its small audience really has the power to do either). However, I now need to balance that statement with a warning about due vigilance.

Join the Crusade Against . . . Water

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:19:23 +0000

I know that Pen & Teller have been critical of Catholicism, but in this video they make a good point. They take on environmental extremism (or perhaps any extremism) and force the question, “Do people support causes out of knowledgeable concern, or out of blind, ignorant emotionalism?” In our politicized word, it’s an important question to ask. Even in causes as reasonable as pro-life, we can fall into emotionalism and make ignorant arguments. However, I am always impressed with the leaders of the pro-life movement in Catholic circles – Fr. Frank Pavone, Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, Peggy Hamill, Bobby Schindler, etc. They all ground their discussion of abortion and other life issues in the natural moral law and create reasoned arguments that show why abortion is morally evil.

In other sectors of the public square, we are often so used to hearing propaganda and sloganizing that we stop questioning if the claims to truth are true. Our politicized culture even makes science into a propaganda tool instead of an investigation into objective truth. Does anyone really know if “global warming” is real or not? “Science” seems to support both sides of the argument because science has been used as a weapon rather than as an honest search for the truth. This video calls us to task on accepting such a culture.

It’s also really, really funny.

Faith and Reason

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:49:00 +0000

OK! One of my two major writing projects is completed and I now have time to dedicate to the blog and website again. I have probably by now lost all of my readers and will need to start from scratch. However, being me, instead of starting something new I’m going to continue the thread of thought that I left off with in my review of The Shack, even though most of you may not remember what that thread was.

So, a quick review: one problem I have with The Shack is the idea that it makes it appear that God wants us to completely surrender our self-will to God and rely on His will alone. While I agree that the main goal of the Christian’s life is to submit his will to the will of God, in the fullness of truth is ever-paradoxical. God calls us to submit our wills to His by exercising our free will – by freely choosing to make His will our will rather than passively surrendering ourselves to God’s will. As C.S. Lewis puts it in the Screwtape Letters, God wants us to surrender our will to His, only to give it back to us in ultimate freedom.

Do I sound like I’m splitting hairs here? An illustration will make my point clearer.

I have been reading / reviewing used books for the Bookstore. I came across Journey Without End by Carlo Carretto, an insightful mixture of pro-life teaching, mystical experience and spiritual direction. The only real problem I have with the book is that the author takes a strong stance against Natural Family Planning. Fortunately, the author is not in favor of contraception. Rather, he is opposed to any attempt to regulate births within a marriage. However, his position on NFP has many of the same problems as the anti-institution arguments made in The Shack.

This quotation reflects the core of his position.

‘I don’t hold with the Billings meth~d, I don’t hold with those who exclusively study the method but neglect reading
the Bible – which teaches how much God loves life and wants o ~r~pagate it and how his providence lovingly watches over each life, over every human being – and so contrive by artifice and selfishness to frustrate the programming done by God. My mother, I heard it said at home, w~s very regular in her cycles and always had her temperature just right.

‘In a word then, with this well-tried method, I should never have come into the world at all.

‘Morality would have been intact, but the divine programming designed to bring me to birth would have been mocked by my mother’s scheming and selfishness.

· cAs luck would have it, she got her sums wrong and 1 was born all the same; yes, I was born.

‘I was lucky enough to be born, though entirely by mistake, with the full consecration of ~morali;y.

cy ou can see these methods aren’t any good, since they get believers used to paying more attention to morality than to love, more to the act than to the intention.

‘In a word, the methods make them self-centred.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to promote faith in God, the hope that he is the true Father, that there’s no need to be afraid of babies, that food won’t run out since God is almighty?

. . .

‘When God programmes the birth of a baby, it’s better to trust absolutely and totally in him.

Like The Shack, this book sets up a false dichotomy between morality and love. Legalism is the error of following the moral law without love, but properly understood morality and love are one and the same thing. The Church is the way the Holy Spirit now guides us to moral truth, which guides us to love. The Church says that Natural Family Planning is in harmony with selfless love, as long as it is used for the proper (unselfish) reasons. Those proper (unselfish) reasons fall under the realm of responsible parenthood.

Yes, we are called to trust in God’s providence. That is where morality calls us to generosity in love. However, God always deals with us as free beings – not seeing freedom as a necessary evil, but seeing it as the way He created us to reflect His image. We are to seek God’s will by use of our free will to pray, discern, and reason what the greatest good is in each situation.

God, should we have another child right now?

Pray about it and be open to God’s voice
Evaluate your physical resources – finances, physical space, etc. – with consideration of the good of your family (not selfish desires to hoard physical goods for yourself)
Evaluate your psychological resources – stress levels, etc
Remind yourself that you are called to self-sacrifice and generosity in love
Make a reasoned, prayerful decision based on what is good for your family

It’s not either free will or God’s will; it’s not either morality or love. Truth is most often both and. We are created and called to use our intellect and our will to seek God’s will and to follow Him as free, loving persons.

Check out the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis! Highly recommended! Click on the image to go to the bookstore.

Despite my disagreement with the author about NFP, I do recommend this book as a wonderful perspective on abortion. Only one available (used). Click on the image to go to the store.

Modernism Gets It Wrong – Again

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:18:11 +0000

A new law requiring insurers to cover the costs of chochlear implants for children has drawn opposition. What is the complaint? Is is that . . .

Government has overstepped its bounds, once again meddling in affairs that should be left to market forces?

the law puts undue burden on small business who now have to pay a higher premium to insure their employees?

the law does not do enough to help children born deaf or severely hard of hearing?

Nope, not that either

So what is the complaint? It comes from Audism Free America:

The notion that being deaf is an affliction and an abomination which alienates one from society and leaves (one) dependent and isolated is a myth,” the petition states. “We do not wish for your state to be mislabeled as promoting eugenics and linguistic and cultural genocide.

Taken from “Ear-implant law draws dissent“, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune.

What this petition seems to be saying is that deafness is not a disability but just another part of cultural diversity. Therefore, to mandate a procedure that could enable children who are deaf or severely hard of hearing to hear more is like trying to bleach African-American skin white so that African Americans can fit into a white culture better.

Such a ridiculous statement has its roots in modernism, the philosophy that truth is created by personal experience and perception. Modernism celebrates diversity, not because every human person has innate dignity, but because every individual has his own truth. In the case of the petition from Audism Free America, modernism is saying, “Who are you to call deafness a disability. From our perspective, deafness is normal and hearing is an abomination.” Yes, I have heard some proponents of “deaf culture” take the argument that far.

The problem with Audism free America’s position is that deafness is a disorder. Human nature includes the five senses as a normative and universal constituent. In other words, the senses make up part of what it means to be human, and a diminishment of the senses is a diminishment of something that a human person should have (however not a diminishment of their humanity or dignity). Therefore, deafness is a disability based on the standard of human health. Modernism does not believe in disability because it does not believe in a universal standard of human life or of human health.

The problem comes in how we look at disabilities. We tend to look at people with obvious and severe disabilities and say they are disabled and we are not. I have been around severely disabled people all of my life, and I have learned that there is no “they” and “us.” Fallen human nature is fallen for all of us. Disability is not a matter of having one or not having one, but a matter of degree and of kind. People who are disabled in one area of life are also extremely able in other areas of life. The term “disabled” becomes a problem only when we let it define a specific segment of the human family.

One can see the same line of thought in the homosexuality movement. The Church calls same-sex attraction “disordered” because it is opposed to the universal human purpose of sexuality. Modernists see this as an insult that alienates a specific segment of the population. However, the Church realizes that every person’s sexuality is disordered to one degree or another, so calling same-sex attraction disordered is actually a statement of solidarity, not one of divisiveness. Again, modernists rankle because they do not believe that a standard for “normal” sexuality even exists.

I had friends in high school and college who were deaf and hard of hearing, and I learned sign language in the course of our friendship. One of these friends had been brought up in the “deaf world” and had a difficult time relating to the “hearing.” The others tried very hard to interact with everybody, and counted a number of the “hearing” among their friends, even those who did not learn sign language. It was not the deafness that isolated them. In the case of my one friend, it was his desire to see his deafness as something that set him apart and his consequent unwillingness to form relationships with those who would not share his unique “culture.” He had implicitly bought the lie of modernism.

In the end, the petition from Audism Free America isolates deaf people from the rest of us by accentuating the differences rather than acknowledging the fact and universal nature of disability. And their modernist bent would keep children from getting help to overcome their disability. That is just not acceptable.

Pro-life means anti-murder

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:35:22 +0000

The murder of late-term abortionist George Tiller has pro-life groups scrambling to defend the pro-life movement from accusations that we support murder,

see Pro-Lifers Say Abortionist’s Murder Undermines the Right-to-Life Movement

and for good reason. Almost immediately, pro-abortion commentaries began declaring that the pro-life movement is hypocritical, violent and “extreme.” Of course, such political diatribe was sadly predictable and frankly pathetic. That pro-abortion activists would use the death of one of their own as an opportunity for such propaganda is pretty much unconscionable, especially considering that the comments came out long before all of the facts are even known. We don’t even know the motivation behind the murder.

In stark contrast to this shameless propaganda, the defenses launched by pro-life groups is not mere political expediency. Murder of any human being, even of a human being who is committing murder, is morally evil and would be fundamentally and philosophically opposed to a true pro-life advocate. Reports on Tiller’s murder have mentioned some possible justifications for such a murder that a morality blog should examine.

Justification #1: the murder of an abortion provider is justified because the use of lethal force is morally justified in defense of innocent human life.

Using lethal force in defense of innocent life (or in self-defense) is only justified under very specific circumstances. Most germane to this discussion, the use of lethal force must be the only means possible for saving the innocent life. While pro-lifers may become frustrated at the continued death of the unborn, we cannot honestly make the claim that lethal force is our only remaining option. In fact, Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life and others have pointed out that converting the hearts of abortion providers is actually a greater asset to the pro-life cause, as these doctors then become powerful witnesses to the evils of abortion.

Justification #2: killing one abortion provider saves the lives of hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of children.

First of all, Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League points out that this claim is simply not true. Getting rid of one abortion provider simply opens the door for other providers to step into the gap. Indeed, another abortion provider, a close of friend of Tiller’s, immediately went to Tiller’s clinic to make sure it kept running. More importantly, even if this were true the proportionate good brought about by the evil does not justify the evil of murder. The principle of “the ends do not justify the means” clearly states that no evil may be done so that good may come from it. If killing an abortion provider saves the lives of thousands of babies, those thousands of lives are purchased at too dear a cost. This principle makes the most sense to those who believe in life beyond this world. The babies who are killed by abortion will be take care of by God. Our faith in God’s love and mercy for the unborn victims of murder does not keep us from fighting the evil of abortion, because the battle against abortion is actually the battle for immortal human souls – of the mothers, abortion providers, and leaders who support such evil. So, we fight abortion out of love for these evil doers and a desire for their conversion. Their murder is antithetical to the cause of life for Catholics and for any other Christian.

Justification 3: As a late-term abortion provider, George Tiller deserved to die.

If this is true of George Tiller, it is true of all of us. Yes, George Tiller committed murder, and as a result may be put to death if the conditions for capital punishment are met. However, vigilante justice is never morally justified, and even capital punishment would probably not be justified in America.

In the end, pro-lifers must declare that the murder of George Tiller was philosophically and morally opposed to what the pro-life movement stands for. I join many Catholics today in praying for the soul of George Tiller and for his family. I also pray for the conversion of the person responsible for this heinous crime, whatever his motivations were.

Counting the Cost: Lines Drawn in the Sand

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:34:58 +0000

When Barak Obama was elected president of the United States, thanks in large part to liberal Catholics, I stated that I hoped God would turn the evil of empowering a pro-death party into good for the Catholic Church by purifying our intellect and forcing us to stand up for the Truth more strongly. President Obama’s recent commencement address at Notre Dame University provided a clear sign that God is indeed at work.

How many times have pro-death speakers been invited to speak at Catholic universities in recent years? How much protest did you hear? Last May, Catholic Answers and other groups published long lists of Catholic universities that opened the door for commencement speakers who did not represent Catholic teachings. Protest was fairly limited to these groups and one or two bishops. Suddenly Notre Dame’s invitation to the president draws lay people and bishops out of the woodwork to protest and to stand up for the truth about the sanctity of life.

Archbishop Chaput out of the Archdiocese of Denver offered a statement that beautifully articulates exactly why Catholics are rising up. Is the sleeping giant (the Church, not the bishop) awakening in America? What wonders will God work when His saints finally arise?

The Joy of the Truth » Culture of Life

Pro-choice is the Death of Love

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Organ Donation: Act of Charity or Abuse of Human Dignity?

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Standard Medical Practice and International Rights

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The Problem of Choice

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Boy, did I get this one wrong!

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Join the Crusade Against . . . Water

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Faith and Reason

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Modernism Gets It Wrong – Again

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Pro-life means anti-murder

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Counting the Cost: Lines Drawn in the Sand

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