January 19, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
Abortion, Balaam’s Ass, and President Trump
Friends,
Yesterday,
Friday, January 18, 2019, over 100,000 people—families, young adults, children,
religious groups—gathered in the freezing cold of Washington DC’s Mall to once
again “March for Life,” a national event that has taken place every year since
1974…that is, for
forty-five years consecutively.
But you
wouldn’t have known it had you watched cable channels CNN or MSNBC, or even the
coverage on NBC or CBS. The march hardly registered a blip, and then with
barely disguised condescending comments about only “thousands” or “tens of
thousands” of participants.
Watching, albeit briefly, those broadcasting networks, I would have missed
their coverage had I blinked more than once.
This is
and has been the increasing and ongoing narrative of our mainstream media for
decades. Abortion, we are told, is firmly here to stay, is completely normal
and even desirable, in fact, a really good thing when a woman makes a “mistake”
or simply decides that there is absolutely nothing problematic about getting
pregnant and then disposing of the unborn fetus. It’s just like having a mole
removed, you see, a simple “safe” procedure that removes that tiny piece of
flesh in the womb, that encumbrance which will prevent the woman from expressing herself
fully and enjoying the “full experiences” of womanhood, including total sexual
freedom: all without worrying about maternity or any such additional responsibility.
Indeed
with the rise of what can only be called a totally unleashed and frenzied
“women’s movement” which continues to rush headlong towards the next and most
extreme position, with demands that barely five or ten years ago would have
been considered loony or insane, the popular narrative presented to American
citizens is one of inevitability, that anyone in any way opposing the radical
expansion and engorging feminist pro-abortion appetite is standing in the way
of “progress” and the rights of women to their bodies: a relict from a reactionary past who must be shouted down, banned, or even
penalized legally. You cannot stand in the way of the advancing progressivist goalposts,
the new norm, whatever that may be.
And yet,
as each year passes and as medical and scientific research continues apace, it
has become and is becoming more undebatable that “the piece of human tissue”
conceived in the womb is, in fact, a real and functioning human being and not the equivalent of a skin mole to be so
blithely excised and tossed into the incinerator.
This is
a fact that the “women’s movement” and the “#MeToo” fanatics do not want you to
understand. The more scientific corroboration there is that we are viewing a
real human being, the more frenzied, unnatural, and anti-human the arguments of
the pro-abortionists become. To the point that the narrative is simply to
declare openly that it is simply okay to “kill” the embryo if it in any manner stands in the way of a woman’s free expression
of her sexuality and her desires: there must be nothing to impede that, nothing
to encumber her.
And
implicit in this template is the admission that both the laws of nature, themselves,
and effectively Divine Positive Law can be violated with impunity, that they
somehow limit unjustly and restrict women, placing the onerous responsibility
on the fairer sex of bearing children. In effect it is open rebellion against
how nature and nature’s God have sanctioned and defined Creation since the
beginning of time; it is the denial of creation, a rebellion against that
order, an attempt to invert and reverse it.
There
could not be any more striking comparison than between the March for Life and the “Women’s March” [January 19], composed of
and directed by some of the most extreme and hysterical elements of the
feminist movement—a coalition of activists who live and fester in what can only
be termed a type of “counter-reality” that denies biology, or rather,
re-defines it and stands it on its head: if nature doesn’t suit you, simply
define it differently or deny its being and its consequences.
Is this
not as well the origin and result of the movement for same sex marriage,
transgenderism, gender fluidity, and more aberrations on the horizon that we
dare not envision? Do not these assaults on the laws of nature and biology emit
from the same mindset, the same unquenched desire to become as gods, as
complete and absolute masters of ourselves, ignoring our origins and our
essential (and undeniable) relationship to creation, itself? Is this not the triumph of
unbridled and uncontrolled passion, unleashed and freed from the natural order
of things and the inherent responsibilities that every human creature possesses
at birth within society? Is this not a rebirth of a brute barbarism which leads
in the end to destruction and the dissolution of the human race?
Our
inherited culture for thousands of years has understood that we as human beings
are part of creation, that we exist along with the lower animals within nature
and largely are governed by nature’s laws and biology. Our Christian faith has
softened to some degree the harsher aspects of those laws, but without denying
them. Indeed, wisely the Church has integrated their meaning and import into
its teachings, fully confirming their existence and reality. For it recognized,
just as the ancient philosophers did, that we are a special creation, endowed
with rationality and special gifts, but within nature. It took the gift of the ancient Hebrew prophets
and the Message of the Christ to transform that philosophy into a full
understanding of the harmony between nature and mankind’s place
and dignity within that creation.
That comprehension
and belief has been essential in the development and flourishing of what we
call Western Christian civilization. Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome: there are the
sources of our inheritance, the expositors of our capabilities, and the founts
of our dignity. Without that, without them, and without their deeply thought
understanding and recognition of our place in creation and in the universe,
without that divine spark given to us all—without all that, we would be nothing more than slightly
higher brutes, devoid of true dignity, devoid of true humanity, wild beasts of
the jungle and desert—without God and without Grace.
The
“women’s march” is a march of the “new barbarians,” feminists who not only wish
to reject three thousand years of human history, but who implicitly reject the
laws of nature and deny the lineaments of creation itself.
The
interesting fact is that in the past when other groups and movements have
attempted to overthrow those laws, they have ended rather badly…whether the
Communists who worked feverishly to defy and redefine those laws (recall
Lysenko and his pseudo-biology), or some of the visionary revolutionaries in
the late 18th and early 19th centuries who sought to
establish utopias on earth, which inevitably turned out to be failures, and at
worst dystopian nightmares.
And with
each experiment the cost in human suffering and miserable death has been nearly
incalculable. By conservative estimate the deaths as the result of Communism over its eighty year
existence amounted to
approximately 100 million (cf. The Black
Book of Communism, edited by Dr. Stephane Courtois).
Yet
unhinged and boastful human pride, disconnected from history and from the laws
of nature (and of God), is always, it seems with us. And today, with the
extreme cultural and religious decline in our society, it raises its head
again, fearless and ugly, profane and defiant, women wearing “vagina hats” and
parading with all the offense they can muster, who once more proclaim open
rebellion and that they will replace nature and nature’s God with another
utopia, another vision, another reality.
And,
yes, it will end just as miserably, probably more so than all those other angry
and violent movements of the past…and bring with it more suffering, more death—millions more infants
in the womb slaughtered, more disillusionment, and more decay of the only
civilization that we have.
Satan,
himself, could not have devised a more effective program of destruction…and
without doubt, in this case, he did.
*****
This past week I had supper with a dear friend of over
thirty-five years, a prominent conservative individual who has, over the
decades made a real difference in American politics. On most every political
issue we have been on the same side; but in 2015 and 2016 my friend, although
he ended up voting for Donald Trump, resolutely supported in the Republican
primaries, “anybody but Trump.” His view—and I think I sum it up correctly—is
that President Trump is morally and personally unfit, a womanizer, an
opportunist, and although he supports many of the president’s initiatives, he
earnestly wishes that someone else occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
We have disagreed strenuously about Donald Trump and his
role in American politics. As I have described it in various essays and
installments in this series, Trump’s role has been that of a “bull-in-a-china
shop,” a veritable battering ram to begin breaking up the viscous Deep State
elitist stranglehold over American politics (and, indeed, culture). It would
take, in my view, someone like that, with all the rough bluster, brashness and
vigor, to make a real difference. And
that is why he is hated by those elites: he was one of them and is seen as a dangerous
traitor to his class.
My friend asked me to name one thing that Trump had done
that was actually beneficial to America, and after attempting to rebut the
answers I gave, I offered the example of abortion and protecting the lives of
infants in the womb.
“But how can a man who is morally defective, a sexual cheat
[his words], produce moral and good results?” My response, only briefly
mentioned, was to offer the most extreme of examples, an example taken from the
Book of Numbers in the Old Testament [Numbers 22:21-34], the story of Balaam’s ass:
God spoke through the donkey to Balaam, just as God may select and employ any vehicle He so chooses, even the
morally imperfect, to make His wishes known or to achieve His designs. And I
stated that Donald Trump had been and was the most pro-life president this
nation had ever had, more so that Reagan, and far more so than the calculating Bushes. And that if his election had saved just the
lives of a few unborn infants, slowed down the abortion mills, had put a crimp
in the industry of death for pay, nationally and internationally, then it was fully
worth it to have elected a man of a debatable moral background. God, indeed,
works in mysterious ways.
Just this morning I found the following interview with Fr.
Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and President of the
National Pro-Life Religious Council. I pass it on because here is a highly
religious, morally erect religious leader who fully understands the often ironic
ways in which God effects His will and designs in society. And that is a major
reason—indeed, maybe reason enough—to give thanks for Donald Trump.
----------------------------------------------
Father Frank Pavone:
Trump Is ‘Most Pro-Life President We Have Ever Had’
Robert
Kraychik 18 Jan 2019
Father
Frank Pavone, national director of
Priests for Life and Missionaries of the Gospel of Life and president of the
National Pro-life Religious Council, heralded President Donald Trump as “the
most pro-life president we have ever had,” offering his remarks in a Thursday
interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart
News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
Mansour
asked about the theme of science for Friday’s March for Life in
Washington, DC. Pavone explained, “The speakers at the rally and also at the
educational convention, which actually started today, sponsored by the March
for Life, are focusing on this theme that good pro-life thinking is good
science, and vice-versa.”
Pavone continued, “Our position
is that there’s one objective line that is already drawn. It’s not drawn by any
government or any particular interest group. One line that already exists that
should be the defining line when we’re going to protect people or not is the
biological event by which it was first decided that any one of us would be male
or female or what color our eyes would be or any one of countless genetic
qualities and characteristics we have. It was all decided at the same event,
namely, our fertilization.”
Pavone added, “This is a basic
scientific fact. Pick up an embryology book, or you ask an eighth-grade biology
student, ‘When does an individual’s unique human life begin?’ The answer is
objective science.”
Pavone said, “A lot of people
look at a pro-life movement or a march like tomorrow’s, and they’ll say, ‘These
people are trying to impose their religion or morality on others.’ It’s
actually the opposite because we believe in freedom of religion. People can
have any philosophy or idea they want about personhood or the soul or even the
value of life, but the law doesn’t impose those beliefs. The law protects
people despite those beliefs.”
Pavone went on, “If someone
came along and said that you or I were not human, we don’t want the law to make
them believe we’re human. We want the law to protect our lives no matter what
they believe. They have the freedom to believe what they want, and that’s what
the pro-life movement is saying. These babies in the womb are identifiably,
undeniably, scientifically human beings and, therefore, they should be
protected by the law.”
Mansour
shared an anecdote of a friend of hers who “became pro-life” while studying
genetics.
“I
remember a friend that I went to college with when she was studying pre-med,”
recalled Mansour. “She was having to take genetics classes, the early gene
stuff. That was when she became pro-life because she realized this is a
human being. This is a unique life. This isn’t just a glob of tissues how the
science has moved us in the pro-life direction, especially the science of
sonograms. You can see it, now.”
Pavone concurred, “We’re in an
age now where the first photograph in your photo album is you still in the
womb. Sonograms have really moved the debate forward. There are some projects
we’ve been involved in that go even deeper than the ultrasound. There are
techniques where you can put a camera right up against the amniotic sac and see
the baby at four, five, six weeks in living color.”
Pavone added, “I invite people
to just look at this stuff. Look it up online. You can see the pictures of
these babies, and that’s where we have to start. I think we’ve not really had a
debate on abortion for the last fifty years in this country. A lot of times we
feel like we’re having the debate, but the two sides are talking past each
other.”
Pavone stated, “We say the word
‘abortion,’ marchers that are going to march to tomorrow. We have a clear idea
in mind. We see the baby we’re talking about, and we see what abortion does to
the baby. Folks on the other side who are opposing us, they’re talking about
something different. They’re not talking about abortions. They’re talking about
freedom, the Constitution, women’s rights, women’s health. Fine, we can talk
about those things. But if you’re going to talk about abortion, you need to
look at the baby, and then you need to look at what abortion does to the baby,
and that is where the debate begins.”
Pavone went on, “You just have
to see for yourself. It’s science. People look at these photos, these images,
and these videos, and they say, ‘Wow. In a generic sense, I knew it was a human
life, but wow, this baby is way more developed than I thought.'”
Mansour remarked, “I worked for
former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for many years, and she was very articulate on
this issue. She had a very compassionate stance on it. She always talked about
how we need to be able to reach out to women who are struggling with an
unplanned pregnancy — getting pregnant at a time that’s just not necessarily
good for them [or] unexpected — and really offer them a real choice.”
Mansour continued, “The choice
can’t just be abortion. If you’re a real feminist — my former boss used to say
— then you really want women to have a real choice, the ability to choose life.
That, to me, always seems to be the big challenge for those of us who are
pro-life, is how are we doing in building a culture of life and making it
possible for women to choose life.”
Pavone shared, “One of the most
beautiful things about tomorrow’s march is that so many of these marchers, when
they are back home the rest of the year, they are working in pregnancy centers.
The pregnancy centers around our country now outnumber the abortion facilities
by about five to one. Pregnancy centers have people who are, every day, giving
counseling, helping people find legal services, job and education opportunities
they can pursue while having the child, assisting them to give birth to that
baby.”
Pavone went on, “This is the
positive work of the pro-life movement, giving those alternatives. That’s
actually the first part of our message. Whenever we talk about this [and]
whenever the pro-life movement presents itself — who are we? what do we do? —
We help those that feel they need to have an abortion to see that there are
other alternatives. That really is the good news about the pro-life movement.”
Mansour asked Pavone about
Trump’s approach towards the pro-life movement’s concerns.
“Tell us about how you view
President Trump [and] his stand on abortion and pro-life issues,” requested
Mansour. “This is a people many people looked askance at, didn’t think he was
being for real when he was a candidate, and yet he seems to have kept all of
his promises on this issue. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
Pavone answered, “Let me
summarize it this way: I have a Make America Great Again hat, and I have worn
it publicly. I was one of the first Catholic leaders to come out in support of
him during the primaries, and he asked me to be part of two coalitions: a
pro-life advisory group and a Catholic advisory group.”
“This is a man who listens,”
assessed Pavone. “When he doesn’t know something, he wants to learn it. He
surrounds himself with people who can inform him. I have come to the conclusion, as many other pro-life leaders have, he
is the most pro-life president we have ever had, and I’m talking about pro-life
specifically — of course, in relation to the abortion issue, the protection of
the youngest babies among us.”
Pavone added, “This man has
gone above and beyond even what he promised. For example, he reinstated the
Mexico City Policy, but then he expanded it to protect our taxpayer dollars
from organizations that perform or promote abortions overseas.”
Pavone concluded, “Time and
time again, in many other examples, he has not only kept his
promises; he’s gone above and beyond. I think he’s the best friend that
our movement for the unborn has ever had in the White House.”
Breitbart News Tonight
broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to
midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.
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