Paul slips through cracks

Between Easter and Pentecost, Catholics around the globe are reading the Acts of the Apostles.  The readings now are about Paul’s adventures along the coast of Turkey and Greece.  And today’s reading is about a time when Paul got hauled into court by some brother Jews.

Paul looked over his accusers, and saw an old ideological split.  Some of his accusers were dogmatic about their beliefs concerning a spiritual life that transcends daily experience, including angels and spirits and a life after death; others were equally dogmatic in denying such fuzzy-wuzzy.  So he made an appeal to one side, asserting his roots in their beliefs.  The two sides forgot about Paul and attacked each other.  When the melee began to spin out of control, the Roman intervened and pulled Paul out.  Case closed.

I find the reading immensely comforting, addressing a personal worry.  When I was in court in the 1970s and 1980s, pro-life activists used to argue about whether to raise technical issues in court, or ignore technicalities and focus on speaking about children’s lives.  I was generally a strong advocate for scrapping all the technical nonsense and focusing on the real issues at hand; I felt dirty when I descended to trivia amidst a slaughter.  But I did it at times.  Once, there were three of us on trial for blocking access to the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Silver Spring, when it was on Cameron Street.  The court was on Georgia Avenue, a few hundred feet south of Cameron.  Everyone in the courtroom knew exactly where everything had happened.  But still, the prosecutor neglected to ask witnesses whether the events occurred in Montgomery County.  No one bothered to say that Cameron Street, right over there, was in the county.  And so there wasn’t any explicit testimony establishing the Montgomery County court’s jurisdiction in the case.  So when the prosecutor finished, I asked for a dismissal, and got it.  We didn’t argue about babies and go to jail; we raised a technical issue, and went home, to fight another day. 

It is a delight to me to read that Paul did the same kind of thing.  He expected to get convicted of some capital crime, sooner or later, and was at peace about that; but on the way, he felt free to wiggle and dodge at times.  (Polycarp did the same, a few decades later.)  So I can, too; and I don’t have to feel dirty because of it.

But Fr. Martin asked, this morning, whether anyone still argues about theological issues with the passion that caused the riot that freed Paul.  I was startled by his question.  Of course they do!  (Hm. Of course we do.)  Half the Catholic Church is convinced that God really cares about sexual morality, but doesn’t have a strong opinion about how to write laws defending a nation’s borders.  The other half is equally convinced that God has been sending prophets to denounce injustice throughout human history, but doesn’t get too fussed about details of urination or fornication or other genital activity.  Morality versus justice: which does the Lord care about?  I think the division is weird beyond belief.  But still, the current reality is, these two sides denounce each other with bitter passion.  

About Sen Cruz

Thanks, Christy! I have turned to you for strength and honesty, for years.

In the 1990s, I set out to change the way we understand our own work, and wrote about nonviolence.  And following Kathie, I set out to change the way we understand our opponents, and wrote about eugenics.  It was my intention to spark two complementary changes in the pro-life movement. Not done yet.

Eugenics, in its history, has never been identified with the right or the left.  The easiest example of that swerviness comes up in the fight over Hitler’s attitude toward abortion.  Did he mandate it, like a pro-abort?  Yes.  Did he prohibit it, like a pro-lifer?  Also yes.  Which was he?  A eugenicist.  Eugenics started on the right among imperialists, but was quickly adopted by the Fabian left, then by the American right (KKK and the sterilizers), then by the left (abortionists).  It’s an attitude toward human reproduction, and can appear on the left or the right.  British welfare, assaulting family life, was designed by a leading eugenicist (Beaverbrook).  Welfare reform, assaulting family life again, was also promoted by eugenicists (Murray’s “Bell Curve”).

So it is an extraordinarily dangerous thing when people associate this evil with the left or the right, and then stop.  So with abortion, the major project of eugenicists in our generation.  Abortion came from the left – but that’s not precise.  Abortion came from eugenicists working on the left.  If you look at abortion as a left-wing problem, then you can miss abortion promotion coming from the right.  Examples:

(1) Cloning, for example: it goes a step beyond abortion, not just creating babies and then disposing of them – but creating babies specifically in order to tinker with them, and then dispose of them.  We failed to outlaw it – because we attacked it as a leftwing problem.  A huge portion of the left was ready to oppose cloning, but rightwing pro-lifers told them to go to hell.

(2) Forced abortion in China.  A key opponent of forced abortion in Congress was Nancy Pelosi.  So we could work with her opposing this evil, or denounce her as a wicked witch.  We chose to denounce her, without any subtlety.  So we lost the national consensus against forced abortion; it’s not important on anyone’s radar, because pro-lifers decided refused to work within an ad hoc coalition.

(3) Family cap. Welfare was designed by leftists, and damaged family life.  But welfare reform was also written to put pressure on women on welfare not to have kids.  The pressure was mild, and generally ineffective.  But it had some effect, and chemical abortion – mostly DepoProvera – increased dramatically, partly because of the family cap in welfare reform.  The people who pushed that anti-birth measure through Congress identified themselves as pro-family.

(4) FDA. The Food and Drug Administration has been weakened year by year, for a couple of decades.  They are gun-shy, reluctant to take on new fights. So FDA didn’t fight hard against Accutane.  It is effective against acne, but it causes birth defects.  Ballpark estimate, from a decade ago: one FDA researcher estimated that there are about 5,000 abortions annually because someone took Accutane and then got pregnant and then got scared and then got an abortion.  So strengthening FDA is a way to prevent 5,000 abortions annually – about as many as we targeted in the partial birth abortion campaigns.  But pro-lifers never touched that issue, because it’s government regulation, and rightwing pro-lifers hate the FDA.

(5) Immigration.  The Vatican celebrated its 101st annual Day for Migrants and Refugees this year.  The Vatican has been saying for a century that after the colonial era, you get a migration era.  Europeans wandered around the globe, seizing land and control and wealth.  Now the people who live in the lands that Europe plundered for 15-20 generations are on their feet and wandering.  The shoe is on the other foot.  The Vatican has been saying for the past century that migration is one of the signs of our times, and that we should adjust our lives to accommodate this reality.  But America, where the word “immigrant” was invented, tried to shut it down in the 1920s.  The laws written in the 1920s assumed that America could and should wall itself off from changes elsewhere in the world.  Maybe whites would not rule 95% of the world any more, but we could control this continent.  President Johnson intended to put an end to that racist nonsense, but he didn’t understand how deeply entrenched it was; he made some progress briefly, but he left the underlying attitudes and assumptions and general approaches in place.  Reagan didn’t pretend to reform; he just made a temporary adjustment to reality.  Bush II made a serious effort to reform, but he failed.  And since then, the nation has been frozen in place – bitter and divided.  But the laws that we have in place are 1920s laws, reformed a little a couple of times: they were written by eugenicists, for eugenic purposes.

Dividing the pro-life movement, and steadily driving the leftwingers out, has a steep price.  If you can’t see death coming from the right, it will come in floods.

My friend Joe Washburn and his brother point to one of the problems we face now.  In our bitter division, we simply do not listen to each other.  We create wacky stereotypes of each other, and smack down straw men.  The Church never called for open borders.  The Church says that migration is a fundamental right, AND that nations have a right and duty to guard their borders, AND that these two realities are in tension and must be reconciled justly.  Instead of setting out to find a just way forward, most people assert either the rights of the migrants OR the rights of nations – and stop.  And then you get totally stupid things happening, like the flood of kids last summer – a colossal problem, not caused by the left or the right but by the paralysis of adult decision-makers.  Or you get Congress building fences and mobilizing an army – saying they want to stop thousands of criminals, but actually chasing millions of good people.

Stopping criminals takes skill and determination – and focus.  Before the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the USA had good number of serious professionals out hunting terrorists.  They were serious professionals.  But what was their focus?  How many of those good men and women were focused on YOU?  If Janet Reno had not pointed the best and brightest pros at pro-lifers, would Osama bin Laden have succeeded?  Same thing here.  If you tell the pros to stop criminals, and spend money on stopping criminals, we can stop criminals.  But if you actually want to stop brown-skinned kids and hard-working Catholic parents, and you shmush the two jobs together, then the criminals have a much easier time.  So Joe and Dave Washburn can say that I don’t want to stop criminals at the border, because I don’t really believe that bad people exist.  I’m going to try not to argue about such stupid things; but underneath, the truth is, I think that Joe and Dave – and Senator Cruz – are NOT serious about stopping criminals.  They are, at best, unfocused like Janet Reno.  Or maybe, they are taken in by liars, who really do want to stop Mexicans, not just criminals – like the people who wrote the laws in the 1920s.  If you are serious about stopping criminals, the first serious step is to put a cork in Janet Reno – and in Cruz, exactly the same problem.

Me, I try to follow the teaching of the Catholic Church.  Later this year, Pope Francis will be in the USA, and I expect he will say things that are startling and challenging.  But I also expect that he will talk about marriage, and Republicans will applaud.  And he will talk about immigration, and Democrats will applaud.  And he will talk about unity in Christ, and those words will get lost in cotton candy brain fuzz.  A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest – lie la lie.

Please get the books.

Snotty noses in frowning fortresses?

It’s my impression that American embassies around the world have become very unfriendly places.  I’m ignorant: maybe they always were.  Or maybe they aren’t really that bad now.  But I have heard one horror story after another for several years now, without any counter-balancing stories of pride. 

We have been turning the embassies into fortresses, because we have a growing number of very angry and violent enemies.  Step one building a new embassy: dig a moat.  For real.  But that’s not the whole explanation. 

Embassies are set up to maintain government to government communication; they aren’t tourist agencies.  But that’s not the whole explanation.

We are rejecting visa applications at a very high rate, and maybe that sets a tone.  Take a look at some websites giving advice to people from India who want to visit America; they are preparing for very unpleasant encounters.  But I don’t really understand.

Everyone in Washington is piling on now, attacking that dreadful Clinton woman.  She responded breezily yesterday, and started her presentation on silly secrets by bragging about her work in Beijing.  Wow.  20 years ago, she went to Beijing, and did zip about forced abortion.  Pro-lifers and HONEST pro-choicers both oppose forced abortion in China: it is arguably the worst human rights abuse of the century.  Previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican, had sputtered and fussed about Tibet and forced abortion and other human rights problems; but the Clintons let it slide.  So it was mind-boggling yesterday!  When she explained why she violated State Dept policy on e-mails, and why she chose to be secretive about her leadership of our foreign policy, she started by directing everyone’s attention to her debacle in Beijing!  I do not understand that lady!  I’m sorely tempted, then, to blame the shift in America’s face abroad – from the occasional ugly American to the universal deliberate governmental-policy repulsive snotty American – on her.  I think she was a complete disaster, not just on the abortion issue but also on immigration.  I think she’s getting a free ride, after another shocking bomb crater.  But I admit promptly: I really don’t know (yet).

First, am I right?  I have scattered anecdotes, no more.  Are our embassies repulsive and snotty?  If so, then a second question: why?

My family shapes my identity -- more and more

Catherine Rampell asks plaintively, “Why should women need to be seen as daughters before we can ever be recognized as human beings?”  I understand her point: she is a proud and independent woman, not just a decoration in some male’s life – and it almost doesn’t matter whether the male is a good guy or not.  Independent.  Got it.  But …

You have no idea who I am if you don’t understand that I’m Roy’s little brother (Special Forces medic, killed in the Tet offensive).  My sister’s Kathie’s thought and experience is woven inextricably into all my writing about nonviolence and eugenics.  Your picture of me is pretty stunted if you don’t know about my astrophysicist father and my mystical-lit-crit mom.  You can’t get at the motives that drive me if you don’t know about my relatives in the CIA, my pro-labor great-grandfather, my royal peace-making great-great-grandfather, my mayor aunt, my drunken uncle.  I am hugely proud of my second cousin, once removed, who wrote a great novel, The Book of Jonah.  If you want to know how I think, watch the quirky twists in my daughter’s blog, www.joyfulcatholicmom.blogspot.com.  (And of course, if you go back millions of generations, one of my distant ancestors was a blazing explosive star, fresh and hot from the hands of the Lord – who, by the way, is a collateral cousin through Mary as well as an adoptive Father).

My identity is tied tightly to my family, a sprawling brawling complex creation.

One significant family detail.  More and more, my identity is tied to the coming generations more than the past, my progeny more than my predecessors.  And it seems that when my grandchildren describe their ancestors, they will include me and my Irish and Swedish ancestors – but they will also lay claim to roots in El Salvador, Peru, Philippines, Africa, and the African-American south.  My roots are not Asian or Latino, but my branches are.  With each passing year, my family and my own identity become more global.

Isn’t immigration a great and wonderful thing?

(Rampell’s article was not about families; it was about cyber-bullying.)  

The mystery of hate

Michael Gerson wrote a fascinating article about Ferguson and Selma, that included an insight into a more general truth.  “But the situation in Ferguson also reveals something broader: How people who do not regard themselves as biased can be part of a system that inevitably results in bias. How men and women who view themselves as moral can compose an immoral society.” (Washington Post, 2/10/2015)

What he said about racism is interesting, and has application to immigration.  I often wonder how people – who are truly good people (as far as I can tell) – can pour out inexcusable vitriol about the children of Guadalupe.  That is, how can a person simultaneously get excited about the Virgin Mary’s appearance in Mexico City in 1521, and then still post hate-filled pictures of Latino immigrants, one ugly picture after another?  One picture of violence, or three, or even five in a row – I guess that could be a way to explain a worry.  But 30?  Without any beautiful pictures mixed in?  That’s hate. Why doesn’t it give the angry poster a headache, or a heartache, or a hernia?

Gerson continued, “It is inherently difficult to stand in judgment of a social structure that one is part of. It is hard to see the wheel on which we turn. This requires empathy — the ability to imagine oneself in a different social circumstance, to feel just a bit of the helplessness and anger of someone facing injustice. And it calls upon moral imagination — the capacity to dream of a better future in accord with first principles.”

“The Pope challenges everybody!”

I visited the office of Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (1st District, NE) at the end of the recent Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington.  I went with two people from Nebraska, and a staffer from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.  We met a legislative assistant, and the meeting was very professional – that is to say, dry.  Everybody was polite: a Republican aide from well-mannered Nebraska meets with some well-meaning liberals from the East Coast of Obama-Land.  Then someone mentioned Pope Francis’s planned visit in September, and the aide lit up: “The Pope challenges everybody!”

Can we all agree that the visit in September can be a time of grace?

Maybe people will listen to their consciences with a fresh awareness.  Can we all agree to let people – even legislators – shift their positions on issues of conscience at that time?

Legislators take positions on issues during campaigns.  What should they do if they change their minds?  Are they bound to stick to every position they stalked about during the last campaign?  What if the Pope pries open a new idea, and the legislator’s conscience pushes toward a new position on some issue?

Can we all agree not to punish a legislator whose conscience is pricked during the Pope’s visit?

It can be a time of grace.  And grace can be unpredictable.  A time of grace, a time of renewal, might be a time of adjustment and change!

PLEASE!  NOW! Write to your legislators, and tell them you will not attack them if they shift on some issue during the Pope’s visit!  Of course, you might vote against them in the next election, if you disagree with the new position.  But you won’t attack them for inconsistency or treachery or anything like that.  Tell them!  NOW!

Come Lord, and change our hearts!

Immigration Restrictions Kill

unborn unnamed undocumented uncounted unburied – and dead

American immigration restrictions support population control measures overseas.  The exact number of abortions overseas that are linked to America’s refusal to welcome immigrants is hard to determine.  But it’s possible that anti-immigration pro-lifers who are working hard to save about a million babies from abortion annually here are accidentally helping to trap and kill far more than a million annually overseas.

HOPE!  Every pro-lifer who has spent time outside an abortion clinic is keenly aware that most of what we offer to women who feel trapped is hope.  We offer medical help, legal help, housing, whatever is necessary; and the offers are real and testable.  But women who listen to us and turn around usually don’t take the concrete help we offer.  What they hear from us that matters is, “By God’s grace, this is possible. I can handle this.”  They don’t need money or housing (usually); they need prayer and love – and hope.

DESPAIR.  Women overseas facing poverty and pregnancies may consider fleeing, looking for help in Europe or America.  If the doors of wealthy nations are shut tight, that may be the last straw; that may be the detail that tips a woman into deadly despair.  How often does this happen?  Who knows?  Can we separate and measure all the ingredients of despair among poverty-stricken pregnant women overseas, precisely? What’s clear is that emigration is often an act of desperation.  And if you thwart an act of desperation, vulnerable people suffer deeply.  And when pregnant women despair, babies die.

When Jews were fleeing from Nazi rule, a shipload of refugees sailed out of Hamburg, crossed the Atlantic, came within sight of Miami, and then bounced off America’s immigration restrictions.  The refugees returned to Germany, and died.  The Holocaust Museum in Washington has a list of the passengers on the St Louis who saw the lights of Miami, then went back across the ocean to be exterminated.  How many others knew ahead of time that they weren’t welcome, and didn’t even try?  No stats exist.  It’s hard to measure precisely, but it’s not honest to deny the reality: immigration restrictions kill. 

When the Golden Venture went aground on Long Island in 1993, 286 refugees from China spilled out.  Some were women fleeing from forced abortion.  President Reagan and Rep Chris Smith led the fight to protect refugees from forced abortion – but it was a fight.  And it still is.  But somehow, many pro-lifers have forgotten what Reagan understood: our immigration restrictions here support depopulation efforts elsewhere.

How many pregnant women try to enter the country illegally – desperately?  And how many pregnant women don’t try?  If they don’t even try to cross our border, is that a “success”?

This isn’t rocket science.  Inhospitality kills babies, and oppresses women.  Pro-lifers shouldn’t do that.