The Real Issue

Finally, a well-expressed, humane point of view,, seemingly not calibrated simply to support or oppose some candidate.

Akin’s efforts to defend the prolife view had the opposite effect, by feeding the (entirely unfair) narrative that pro-lifers are ignorant of and callous toward women’s true needs. The abortion debate is one between decent people with honest disagreements on the moral status of the unborn, not of women.

Of course, speaking so ineptly as to seem to suggest that rape victims could block conception just by resisting, is dangerously close to implying that the victim is responsible when pregnancy does occur: hence a third source of outrage at Akin's words.

And this, finally, gives rise to another implication, which should especially trouble pro-lifers. Whatever one’s ultimate view of a rape exception to laws protecting the unborn, no remotely plausible case against such an exception could rest on assumptions about the mother (as Akin’s seems to do), rather than beliefs about the unborn child's rights. Some social conservatives, including Mitt Romney, would allow an exception; others would not. But what all pro-lifers seek, and what Akin's comments make harder to realize, is a world in which there is finally no zero-sum game between mothers' needs and those of their unborn children; in which the equal dignity of every human being — including the smallest and weakest — isn’t premised on blaming or punishing women, or indeed on anything else, but shines by its own light, as a self-evident truth.

Well, Did Ya Lift Up Your Heart?

Thought provoking post about the Propers, by Kathy Pluth, but what really struck me was a phrase in the Combox, by anzlyne.

I think participation is the key here.Sursum corde on purpose. It might be boring if you are not really into it. but if the participation is actual, nothing is boring.

The cliched answer to the cliched complaint, (I don't get anything out of it -- well, what did you put into it? ,) is too pat to provoke conversation, but I am looking forward, when I begin teaching CCD in a few weeks, to asking in response to the almost inevitable, well, did ya lift up your heart?

Sursum corde on purpose indeed.

"Halfway Between Awe and Love"

Thanks to Kathy Pluth, (the new Ephrem?) for this from the"old" Ephrem

It captured my experience at Divine Liturgy last week. Most Sundays other obligations prevent my traveling so far, so a "silent" Latin Rite is my choice, and this was both refreshing and exciting. Even Himself, (who, don't tell him I said so, is a touch scared of the "spoon"...) offered unprompted that we should go back whenever we can.
And like most Byzantine parishes it is small, so one feels that ones offering will really make a difference.

Interesting thing, congregation seemed at least half Refuge Romans. I gather a priest sympathetic to both Tradition and tradition has recently been transferred, leaving both EF and R2 Catholics, (and serious musicians,) in the area bereft, and it is in the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom is where they have sought comfort.

Priest and parishioners were at great pains to make us and other non-Easterners welcome, to explain things, to help us find our place in the hand-outs.

I was reminded of the terrible job in this regard I recently discovered many Roman Catholic parishes and/or dioceses have done, so far as the new translation is concerned.

To whit - nearly half of the several dozen parishes at which I have attended Mass since the First Sunday in Advent used English language "worship aids" that contained neither the Our Father nor the Lamb of God.

That's right.

They didn't bother to include the "parts that didn't change that everyone knows."

Everyone?

So much for visitors, seekers, recent converts, etc.

I always used to joke that with the paucity and brevity of traffic and street signage in parts of New England, they might as well replace them all with the same sign: If it wuh any of yuh damn bus'ness, yuh'd ahl ready know.

Isn't that kinda what we told people in the pews?