Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1343

Straw in the Wind

Currently there is a civil war going on in the Thing that Used to be Conservatism. Should the faction that just wishes the Abortion issue would go away win, I suspect this will be the fate of any Catholic that crosses them. Thus does Caesar always use the Church when it gets in the way.

Prayer Requests

A reader writes:

I know you are kind enough to sometimes post prayer requests, and right now my family and I can use all we can get.

My father has just died of what was probably a suicide. Please pray for God to have mercy on his soul, and to grant his family the grace to deal with this.

Father, you alone are the merciful Judge. We ask that you would have mercy on this man and on his family and we commend him to the mercy of him who died for love of him. We ask that, in your mighty power to save, you would grant him the grace of eternal life and that you would grant his family grace, strength, consolation and peace in this terrible hour. Mother Mary and St. Joseph, pray for this man and all who knew and loved him.

Another reader writes:

I am asking for prayers for a lady in her seventies dying of cancer. She does not believe in God but she does feel grateful for prayer. Her death could come at any time; the doctor is literally taking it day by day.

Father, hear our prayer and grant this woman the grace of a happy death through Christ our Lord. Amen. Mother Mary, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

The perfect conclusion for this Day of Days!

A reader writes:

I've been reading your blog and notice you'll post Catholic events. I was wondering if you could promote this event I'm emailing you about: There is a Catholic group from Illinois trying to get at least 84,000 Catholics to pray a novena for Pope Benedict for his 84th birthday this year. If you or anyone would like to participate, go to the facebook page for more information or the "Pray More Novenas" website to sign up for novena email reminders!

The website: /
The Facebook Group/Event.

For Terri Schiavo, murdered six years ago yesterday

REMEMBRANCE of EASTER 2005
Crowd my eyes, you bevies of daffodils,
And you forsythias in throngs of cheer,
Dandelion galaxies and fountains of trees.
Fill my mouth with the breath of hyacinths, you purple air
And you roistering breeze.

And you quince-buds so eager, you swelling seeds,
You squirrels running stitches across the loom
Of woven grasses, inflorescent weeds;
Jasmine-bush, loop me with your lariats of perfume.
Fill me, small birds, with your versicles,
And chuckled replies.

She is bleeding from the mouth and eyes.

Sate me then, Sun, all dapple and spangle
Crowd out all else
Lade me and load me, you skies
With blessings of warmth and breath
Let me see nothing else
But everything springing and skyey.

From the mouth and eyes.
________________________________________
for Terri Schindler Schiavo
by Juli Loesch Wiley

You know, he's right!

Scott P. Richert makes a really persuasive case and I have to confess, I was wrong about lying for Jesus.  What won me over was the unassailable logic of this passage:

Our Lord said that "the truth shall set ye free." But what does freedom mean, if not the right to do anything that we think is morally justified in order to advance the truth?

Following up on this ironclad logic, Richert leads us to a brilliant insight:

Granted, the idea that we should be free to do anything that we think is morally justified has been misused by others, even by those who support abortion. But since we know the truth—abortion is wrong—we don't have to worry about whether any action taken on behalf of that truth might be wrong. We've been set free to act in whatever way we need to, in order to bring the scourge of abortion to an end.

And first and foremost among our actions, I've now become convinced, should be depriving those who have no right to the truth of that truth—even if we have to go out of our way to create opportunities to do it. Pro-lifers—no, even more broadly, Christians—have made a grave mistake. We have spent far too much time trying to convince others of the truth regarding abortion, not to mention the Truth of Christianity. And what has been their response? An obstinate refusal to acknowledge the truth!

Seriously—how many times can we be expected to try to convince the same person of the truth? Our Lord said we had to forgive our brother seventy times seven times; but He said nothing about the number of times that we have to expose our brother to the truth. That silence, as any Straussian knows, is significant. Clearly, it was Our Lord's way of signaling to those of us who know the truth that we have no obligation to expose those in error to that truth. They have chosen to deny the truth; who are we to deny them their moral freedom?

Moreover, it is at best naive to think that exposing inveterate sinners to the truth would make any difference. That's the fundamental difference between them and us, after all. We know the truth and act on it; they know untruth and act on it. Thus the best way to stop them is to play along with them, to respond to their untruth with untruth, so that they will continue to persist in their untruth, and we can then expose them to the world (or at least to those who know the truth).

Go ahead. Try to argue with that. I came up empty. The wisdom is unassailable. I'm a convert.

Though, as Richert points out, there remains a troubling moral difficulty with the proposition that we are only bound to tell the truth to those who have a right to it. He expresses concern about

that pesky line from Saint Paul—Romans 3:23, to be exact: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." I'm not sure why, but every time I read it, I begin to wonder whether anyone, including those who do know the truth, has the right to know it. Surely, either Saint Paul was wrong, or Christ came to reveal the truth to a world filled with sinners who had no right to it, and that would have pretty radical implications for how we should act toward those who do not yet know the truth, or even toward those who have rejected it.

From there, Richert goes off on an irrelevant tangent, but I thought this insight was brilliant. For it points out the simple fact that not only was I wrong, I was *dead* wrong. It's not the case that some deserve the truth and others can be lied to with impunity in the service of the greater good. In fact, nobody deserves to be told the truth. Therefore, the best thing we as Catholics who know the truth can do is make sure to fool people as convincingly as possible for the kingdom of God and so achieve the greater good.

Please accept my apologies and felicitations of the day.

I have an announcement

I hope you will all affirm me in my decision.

Now This puts the word "Graphic" into "Graphic Image"

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My sentiments exactly. Let the swine starve.

Quote of the Day:  "We don't deal with the health side of it so much…we're mostly a surgical facility."

Come to think of it calling PP "swine" is an insult to pigs (a noble animal, as I recall from my grandpa's pig farm in my youth).

Welcome Home, Bryan Kemper!

There seems to be another wave of Protestant converts to the Faith rolling in! Always a welcome sight!

Obomba has now butchered more civilians...

...than any Nobel Peace Prize Winner in History. (Kissinger doesn't count since he could not order air strikes or send us to war on extremely blurry grounds.)

You gotta wonder what the people who voted for this guy as the anti-Bush are thinking right now. Meanwhile, as Daniel Nichols so aptly put it, if Bill "Wrong About Everything" Kristol likes you, you know you are wrong.

Here's just a taste of the Prophet of War's track record:



And now Obomba is his new man crush. Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.

Permit me to say to all Obama supporters: Toldja so!