Misrepresenting Pope Francis

The denizens of the journalistic depths came like piranhas to feed on the morsels of ambiguity issuing forth from a questionable translation of Pope Francis interview with Italian Jesuit newspaper La Civilta Catolica which was reproduced in the American counterpart, America magazine, a week and a half ago. We were told that there were bold changes coming down from the Vatican and that conservative Catholics (that is, actual Catholics) were in for a shock and that the Church was seen by the holy father to be "obsessed" with "talking about abortion, gays and small-minded rules". However, the media outlets, at least those interested in turning Pope Fancis into an echo chamber for modern errors relating to humanity, seemed either to not notice, completely ignore or not understand the meaning of the word "only", for the full quote from the article translation (translated by a committee of five, no less) ran thus :"We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. "So, we shouldn't "only" talk about these issues all the time. Yes, there is the matter of love of God, obedience and fidelity to Him, grace redemption, turing away from all sin, rejoicing in the salvific mission of the Church as a hospital for sinners and a museum, a living museum of saints, miracles, exorcisms, family, marriage and evangelization. Actually, if all of these things had their proper regard by society, then we would hardly have to make mention of the other issues, the issues the liberal media is desperate to twist the Church into giving assent to, and go with the flow, like a dead stick rather than standing firm like a living branch, to borrow G. K. Chesterton's vivid phrase. And just in case a clear restatement of Pope Francis' words in the interview were not enough, the very next day, September 20th, he gave a stirring denouncement of abortion in front of a large group of Catholic doctors : "In all its phases and at every age, human life is always sacred and always of quality. And not as a matter of faith, but of reason and science!"
"Every unborn child, though unjustly condemned to be aborted, has the face of the Lord, who even before his birth, and then as soon as he was born, experienced the rejection of the world," he said. "And every old person, even if infirm and at the end of his days, carries with him the face of Christ. They must not be thrown away!"(taken from the Catholic News Agency http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1303991.htm)The liberal media outlets were strangely silent.

The Pelosi Effect

In these days of such duplicity and confusion, it's a wonder we don't clearly see the cracks as often as we should. Perhaps it's due to media bias. The cracks sometimes show themselves to be the chasms between self-delusion and reality, between lies and the truth. In order to maintain some face and composure under incisive questioning these days, a lot of work has to be done, to keep the dissonance of corrupting influences from showing their foul incoherence. It must be like keeping two counter-progagating positron/anti-positron storage rings from colliding their brains*. Every once in a while, when the right question is asked, the quarks fly.  At a press conference recently, Mrs. Pelosi was asked about the moral difference between aborting a child at 28 weeks (as some centers in Baltimore do) and bringing the child out of the womb at 23 weeks, stabbing him in the neck and killing him dead. This question comes at the time of the conviction of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell who performed the latter in his "house of horrors". Mrs. Pelosi firstly avoids the question completely and instead turns on the reporter, initially goading about deriving pleasure from asking the question in the first place (oh, would that Mrs. Pelosi derive some pleasure in answering it !).  She claims that the actions in the Philadelphia abortion mill were reprehensible because, in her reckoning, "those actions were reprehensible". Why ? Because, according to her, the abortionist "chose to disrespect a judgement made about her own body". But the difficulty with this is that Kermit Gosnell was exactly respecting what the poor and misguided women wanted. Their judgements made about their bodies (and the other body they were carrying) were entirely respected. I have no idea what Pelosi was trying to say here. If those actions were reprehensible, all abortions after 23 weeks of pregnancy are reprehensible. The only difference between what Gosnell did and what abortionists legally do, is that the baby was brought out into the light of day. Various ad-hominem attacks and self-contradictory claims of being a 'respectful Catholic' followed. Further absurd accusations of making abortion into a 'political' issue were raised, as if the Democrats don't use this issue to win over much of the electorate, specifically targeting women voters with flyers and propaganda material. The reporter was told by Mrs. Pelosi that he had an agenda and that he wasn't interested in getting an answer. What we learned, however, was that Pelosi wasn't interested in actually confronting the question. What is the difference between a pre-mature baby of 6 months in the incubator in the neonatal hospital facility and the aborted baby who ends up in a bucket in planned parenthood ? The contradictions of the pro-choice/pro-abortion cannot confront this question. For those who think that ascribing rights to a fertilized ovum is absurd, consider how absurd it is to maintain that a child in the womb can be killed up to some arbitrary gestational time-limit (24 weeks in most states). What happens to the child at that boundary to make it a human being, that would therefore forbid his abortion ? It's a critical boundary, getting it right is a matter of life and death. If it's not important to define it exactly, the limit can be re-drawn to justify infanticide. Whatever line is drawn in time beyond which it is considered a human being, there can always be a baby who develops faster and would have all the characteristics at 23 weeks (say) as another baby would have at 24 weeks. That life begins at conception is coherent, all the hallmarks of growing human life are there, and when left alone will grow as the human being we can easily recognize in ultrasounds and heartbeats. From conception, the growth is a matter of degree. If it doesn't, you have to somehow believe that the cells suddenly become a human being at 24 weeks, or some other arbitrary time which can be re-configured to justify infanticide.

* Thanks John Zmirak.