"So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?"
"Ride out with me. Ride out and meet them."-Theoden and Aragorn, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
This week was about taking the faith that has been enriched and strengthened by that peculiar bond of fellowship we call the Parousians into the campus. Specifically, into places we knew would be hostile to that faith, places in which we would certainly be challenged. However in both instances I can say that the Parousians came out with a stronger faith and the belief that we made things better by being there and representing the truth.
The first instance came on Tuesday. Every two weeks on Tuesday a group from the Consuming Fire Fellowship comes into LSU’s “Free Speech Alley” and preaches their beliefs. Most of their discussions are about sexuality and sin and salvation (and generally how we have too much of the first two and none of the last). This of course perturbs a great number of the student body who are atheists and what have you. So generally when the Consuming Fire Fellowship comes to campus, we can expect a lot of yelling back and forth and probably a lot of hate as well. Perhaps this would be fine and irrelevant to the Parousians, except that one of the signs they wear has a list of the people going to hell. Next to abortionists, Jehovah Witnesses, and sodomites are, you guessed it, Catholics. I thought that this would be the perfect place to put the love and mercy of the Blessed Mother, so I invited people to come pray the rosary in “Free Speech Alley.” Because it’s the beginning of LSU midterms and during class time, we could only get one other person besides me to go to the rosary, Parousian and Guard member Liz Johnson. That’s alright; I announced it kinda late, and I’m positive it will build. Since we had small numbers, we decided to pray the rosary off to the side.
So we began the rosary. At first the only attention we got from the preachers was from their children. Every time I looked up I could see two little girls casting glances at us. According to Scott Hahn’s wife, Kimberly, the Virgin Mary is almost despised in Protestant circles and I imagine a similar situation if not worse occurs in the households of these young girls. Perhaps I am being fanciful when I say that I think something about the rosary clicked with them. Fulton Sheen argues that Mary is the woman that all girls want to be like, and I think that for those girls that flash of the perfect femininity was attractive or at least interesting and compelling.
It seemed that that would be all the response we would get going into the fifth decade. About halfway through the fifth, the guy with the sign saying that Catholics are going to hell came over and stood next to us. This is probably a child too but not too much younger than I am so that 16 or 17 would be about his age. And he began to tell us, “You know that’s not doing any good. She can’t hear you.” We prayed on. We said the St. Michael’s prayer as he was telling us, very respectfully I should note, that it was a waste of time. So we finished the rosary and immediately began to discuss with him the faith. Liz and I were later joined by another Parousian, Nicole Augustin. And we talked to him about our beliefs, particularly in regard to Mary, purgatory, and the Eucharist, each of us backing the other up when we needed it (Each of the girls did a fantastic job, by the way, which is required when paired with my attempts at apologetics). And he didn’t really know what to say. It was obvious that what we were saying, Michael (that was the young man’s name) had never heard. It clicked with him, and he didn’t know how to handle it. Eventually he got another preacher over and we debated with him awhile until the main preacher Britt Williams, who was also the young man’s father, arrived. Liz and Nicole had to leave for class, leaving me with Rev. Williams and what turned out to be a sort of circle of other people from the Consuming Fire Fellowship. They would come in and out and listen and then walk off, obviously interested in the debate. We talked about requirements for salvation and Church history and abuses. At the end he wasn’t convinced and I had to leave, though I intend to return in two weeks.
The second instance came tonight. A group calling itself “Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom,” with the help of the LSU Women’s Center and a group called Vox: Voices for Planned Parenthood (I’m not quite sure why they use the singular “vox” for the plural “voices,” but that’s another issue) put on a series called “Spirituality and Choice.” This has been a three part series with a session on stem cells, one on sexual education, and the grand finale tonight on Abortion titled, "Can You Choose Choice? Religion and the Pro-Choice Movement". I missed the first one but attended the second one and knew that this was important. The perverse union between spirituality and their ideology is a dangerous one, one that can hurt many young people, especially women. So I wanted a big turnout at their event in order to challenge them. I set up a facebook event, told people about it for a week (and other people talked about it too; lemme be quite clear that any success is not solely my success). Being exam week and being a Planned Parenthood event, I was hoping we could get a few people to give a different perspective.
This was my mindset when I entered the room tonight a little early. I watched as people began to stream in and kept a tally of which ones I knew and which ones I didn’t (we had decided ahead of time to sit separately, so I didn’t have anyone to talk to). The count was a total of 40 people. 13 of them were Parousians. From the question session after that, I think there 5 more pro-lifers in the crowd at least, so that the pro-life group represented a little less than half the crowd. That is incredible. I was so glad to see that people could make it. This happened despite it being a hectic week, despite many people leaving to set up the Veritas retreat this weekend, and despite people’s natural hesitation to go to an event hosted by a pro-choice crowd. I feel we were very blessed.
The Planned Parenthood people probably didn’t feel the same way. They made sure the question and answer session was very short but starting late and letting the presenters read on and on from little stat sheets which were not even really abortion as much as they were about poverty. Yet when the question and answer session came, they were stumped. They couldn’t answer the very basic question a girl we didn’t know asked: when does the fetus become a human? The basic tenet of the pro-life movement and they couldn’t respond. Questions about whether or not a bad abortion was possible and whether or not abortion was simply sweeping under the rug the social issues they had so exhaustively discussed were similarly baffling to them. While no one agreed with us at the end, I think that we show at the very least that the pro-life position is one to be reckoned with and an idea that has significant intellectual merit, which was precisely the opposite goal of their forum.
However, the question can come up: what good did it do? On the surface, we had no conversions. No new Catholics, no new pro-lifers. Perhaps we touched some of them but how much will that matter when they go back to church on Sunday or go back to the Women’s Center and talk about the conference? Did we do any good or did we simply stroke our own egos by trying to beat our opponents in face to face debate? I have to admit, it’s possible that the seeds we tried to sow fell on bad soil. Even if they did however, we did something. I would say that at least for me I came away stronger in my faith, having seen it come up against its enemies and come out intact. But even more than that, I think that the seeds we planted will have an effect. God only needs a crack to flow completely through, and I think we showed these people the cracks in their armor. We made these people think twice about their positions. That’s allowing for God and the Holy Spirit to work. We’ll never know how much of a difference we made this week, but we made a difference.
I want to end this with a quote from the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. In the movie, Senator Smith is forced to defend himself in the Senate and every other senator thinks him a fraud and a troublemaker and wants to expel him from the Senate, so in one of the great scenes of cinematic history Senator Smith filibusters. This is the conclusion to that filibuster (but not the movie, so don’t worry, I didn’t spoil anything for you).
“I guess this is just a lost cause, Mr. Paine. You people don't know about lost causes; Mr. Paine does...You know that you fight for the lost causes harder than for any others. Yes, you even die for them…I'm going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause even if this room gets filled with lies like these until the Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place. Somebody'll listen to me.”
It’s that last sentence which embodies all our hope. Somebody will listen to us if we only keep speaking in witness to Christ.
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6 comments:
Michael, call me next time you plan to approach Consuming Fire Fellowship, especially to pray a rosary. I've been wanting to do that.
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re: the abortion debate--Usually the impasse I run into is between those who believe in metaphysics and those who don't. Scientific naturalists aren't going to concede that there is any moment when the attachment of a soul to a body makes a human a person. Therefore, they define personhood by means of consensus--currently, the most popular conception (no pun intended?) of personhood is tied to sentience. Previously, it's been tied to viability.
However, the speakers on this panel claimed to believe in metaphysics, am I right? (I am assuming that since they refer to themselves as "spiritual," they believe in the existence of the soul, but what *do* Unitarian-Universalists believe, anyway?) No wonder they couldn't answer your question; their beliefs about metaphysics don't influence their morality the way they should.
Were they addressing the morality of abortion or the idea that while it is or may be immoral, it should be kept legal for x, y, and z reasons (to keep it safe, because poor people have less access to moral reasoning, because social privilege conscribes morality in such a way that what is immoral for a more privileged person may be permissible for a less privileged person, etc. etc.)?
I will defintely call you next time we do the rosary for the Consuming Fire Fellowship.
As for abortion, I have a different experience with the defintion of the fetus. Namely, they shirk the question. PErhaps they define it as sentience or viability but then when pressed on precisely when humans receive their full humanity and rights, they retreat and call it "morally ambiguous." That is, they shirk from defining it at all and argue that the mother should have the decision as to when that is and that governments shouldn't intervene. The quote from last night I remember is that "women, when they make this decision are intelligent and talk about it with their God."
I find this particularly troubling because I can at least understand believing abortion to be moral if you definitively believe that the fetus does not have human rights. However not being sure and allowing it anyway is simply inexcusable.
As far as their metaphysics, it was bizarre. The Rabbi was the closest one to having a metaphysics (he also defined the life of a fetus as beginning at 40 days after birth according to Jewish Law which will patently absurd is at least a step in the right direction). The Unitarians, from what I can tell from the two panels, believe everything. He made the claim that God is pluralistic. When Ryan asked him whether God could hold contradictions simultaneously, he said that he could. So his metaphysics can be defined as this: whatever he particularly likes. Another panelist I talked to after the discussion had no spirituality at all, instead aligned herself strongly with pragmatism so that I had a hard time believing she had any concept of morality at all.
It was more of the abortion ought to be kept legal. Spirituality and Morality were not discussed really, which was troubling b/c they obviously thought they were as that was the topic of the panel.
I think the idea of the panel was more along the lines of, "We'd like to show you how you can be spiritual and still agree with abortion."
I'm not sure how big of a part naturalism or even metaphysics plays into this. I think the real problem, as we witnessed last night, is that of utilitarianism. Julie Mickleberry, one of the panelists who works for Planned Parenthood is a prime example of this. She emphasized that women want to bring their childern into a world where they are wanted, loved, and cared for. Like the other utilitarians and pro-choice people I've met, they all seem to have good motives for their belief that abortion is necessary. However, this belief is entirely (correct me if I'm wrong) founded on the following: they want to help the woman and enable her to plan her family, and/so her children will not have to suffer through economic hardship or even testable genetic diseases (because apparently suffering is the worst thing ever; that’s more of a religious question if anything here). For pro-choicers, it isn't even about, "Does the end justify the means?" because to them, they are using perfectly good means to achieve that end. However, when we question those means, they are unwilling to back down and examine this because ultimately they take the utilitarian stance that abortion is good for the woman and good for her future children (or something, not sure how abortion is good for her children; the way they spoke made me feel as if all the ‘fetuses’ she bears are really just one ‘fetus’, and she can abort it until she gets one that doesn’t have a disease or one that comes in at the right time in her life; I realize this isn’t their thinking, but rather why would you continue to let something that will ‘turn into’ a human continue to grow if it will have a debilitating disease [aka suffer and make you suffer] or if you are too young for a child etc.). When trying to answer our questions about whether or not it is a person etc., Mickleberry’s responses always revolved around the importance of the woman, her future family and/or preventing suffering (I think I’m starting to forget reasons now, forgive me for simplifying) without really answering the question. Reverend Crump of the Unitarian Church usually responded with lots of words ending in “moral ambiguity” repeatedly. We can’t know if it is right or wrong basically, or maybe even, it is right and wrong; sometimes right, sometimes wrong. Who knows what goes on in that man’s mind (he would argue God doesn’t). He’s the one who appealed to the ‘community’ as setting moral standards. However, he also followed the utilitarian argument in that whatever is best (seems best) for the greatest number of people is right. What does this say about revolutions and changing laws and views for the sake of the good of the minority? They are in opposition to the majority, so according to his application of his twisted relativism/utilitarianism, wouldn’t things like the abolition of slavery be bad?
Ultimately for people like Mickleberry and Crump, abortion creates a perceived good.
The panel was suppose to be about spirituality and choice; however none of the panelist offered convincing theological reasons why Abortion is permissible unless you count personal choice and preference as spirituality. Rabbi Barry Weinstein did offer the point that Jewish literature allows for therapeutic abortions. He says that Jewish law shows that tradition, until recently, supports the liberal agenda of abortion and said that, bearing certain circumstances, abortion is permissible up to birth. I asked the question if there was a bad reason to get an abortion and the only cited reason was if somebody was being forced. Thus as long as it is a person’s choice abortion can never be wrong.
Yet I believe another viable argument may be taken from the discussion. There was almost equal emphasis on the right of a child to grow up as Mrs. Mickleberry mentioned. “We want every child in this world to be wanted, love, and cared for. Nobody should be put in a situation for their kids to where they cannot provide and create a great environment.” And since there is moral ambiguity in choosing to bring a child into this world, don’t we as a society have an obligation to prevent unloved and uncared for children? If you know the child is going to come into the world without proper economic means, does that mean for the child’s benefit we should abort it?
Another great point was brought before the panelist. At what point is the child worth more then it was a day before. Why does the right of a more developed life trumps the rights of an less developed life? The panelist admitted themselves that they couldn’t answer this question.
Michael suggested that we have a pro-life and spirituality panel; maybe this would be a nice counter-part to this series
Yeah, I really want to do a counter-panel once we get organizational status. We could probably do it in conjunction with Students for Life and maybe if we can figure out how to get enough speakers we can make it a full series so that we can respond to each of the three panels that Vox & SYRF put out there.
Michael, a "person" in this sense is any entity to which we give rights because it makes sense to give it rights, so if personhood is defined by sentience, then any sentient creature ought to be given appropriate rights. If a right to life is a part of that, then a third-trimester abortion is immoral (to a pro-choice scientific naturalist who does not believe that personhood begins at conception but at the point during which the developing fetus becomes sentient). The impasse occurs because one party recognizes a soul that is a part of a human from the moment of conception while the other does not. Interestingly (and sadly), even in Catholic Brazil, people do not tend to recognize the personhood of a fetus or even an infant who is born sickly. More on this and what the Church is trying to do to educate them next time we get to talk in person.
I know you still hear the "it's a woman's decision" rhetoric, but most people who are seriously and validly engaged in this debate are more concerned with the personhood of the fetus.
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