The Rationale

No, this is not about the rare vestment. Sorry, liturgical geeks. Not this time.

Rather, I am talking about the rationale behind a solid pro-life stance. Frankly, my experience has been that there are a good many Catholics in the Church who, rightfully enough, oppose abortion, but, sadly, are unable to defend their stance. To be a little harsh, these are the people who make the rest of us look like idiots when our beliefs are challenged. Of course, they don't do nearly so bad a job as folks like Nancy Pelosi, who knowingly give scandal by making it appear as if the Church's position were somehow debatable or unofficial. That is not the case.



That, my dear friends, is exactly the right example of what we are up against in the contemporary Church. Nancy Pelosi is an "ardent, practicing Catholic" only in the make-believe world where Catholicism is a religion without codified doctrine or morals. However, please understand that I, for one, do not believe that Nancy Pelosi is actively opposing a doctrine that she knows and understands to be true. Rather, I believe that Nancy Pelosi, like so many others, is the product of the tremendous confusion that overwhelmed the Church in the 1960s. When the Second Vatican Council closed, she was a mere 25 years old, and that was in 1965, right in the middle of social turmoil that has yet to be completely resolved.

Speaker Pelosi is one of millions of Catholics in this kind of predicament. It is our job, as Catholics, to be able to explain to her what the Church believes and why. Additionally, it is our job, as opponents of abortion, to be able to explain our case to anyone who denies it or wants it clarified. Since the latter task is more general (and often the one more necessary), I shall begin there.

Why do I believe that abortion is wrong? The answer to that question comes in two parts. First, I believe that it is always wrong to directly end an innocent human life. Second, I believe that abortion directly puts an end to innocent human life.

Now, it may seem like that first claim will probably go uncontested in any debates you may have on the matter. Do not be fooled, however. There are plenty of people who think they believe that it is wrong to directly end an innocent human life who are really not as solid on it as they may seem. Off the top of my head, I can cite the examples of people who usually oppose abortion, but advocate it or tolerate it in cases where the mother's life is at risk, where the child is the product of rape or incest, where the child is not likely to survive birth, where the mother may not be able to provide an adequate existence for the child, and where the child is known to have a high probability of mental or physical handicap.

These are often cited by what I call "soft pro-choicers" as circumstances that mitigate the severity of the act of abortion. At face value, I think we can all understand where they are coming from, here. No, it is not "fair" for a woman (probably a young girl) to have to carry, deliver, and raise a child that she never intended to have, and that she would not have were it not for a sexual crime perpetrated against her and against her will. That is by no means fair. It is not easy to raise a child with physical or mental disabilities, and to do so may well be beyond the abilities of many women. Justice is supremely denied when a mother has to work multiple jobs to cover the bills and can barely scrape together enough money to feed her child. No pregnant woman wants to die during delivery. All of the situations noted above as potential mitigating circumstances are understandably painful and difficult to handle. They do violate an inherent human understanding of justice and right.

Nevertheless, what we as opponents of abortion must always contend is that abortion does not decrease the injustice of the situation, but rather it increases the injustice. It is better to exist than not to exist. It is better to be alive than dead. Furthermore, if we truly believe that it is wrong to directly end an innocent human life, we must also acknowledge, then, that it is better to let a child be born who will die during delivery (that is, indirectly), than to kill it beforehand. Likewise, it is better to let a child be born whose birth will kill its mother (indirectly, again) than to kill the child beforehand. It is better to let a child be born into a life made difficult and risky by disability or poverty than to deny that child the possibility of any life at all. It is better for a woman to allow her brother's or father's or uncle's or anonymous rapist's child to be born than to impose on that child a death sentence for a crime committed by someone else.

We are not talking, here, about the application of principles. We are talking about the principles themselves. Thus, while some may accuse us of being harsh and our ideals too lofty for implementation, while we may come off as favoring the life of the child or as having some wicked desire to impose further suffering on a woman already going through a difficult time, we must always keep in mind that these beliefs are necessarily implied by the principle that it is morally wrong to directly end an innocent human life. Anyone who denies our claims denies that principle, and it is on that ground that these differences of opinion must be argued. Do not allow yourself to be caught up in difficult questions of application, many of which are designed to make you seem (and feel) like a heartless attempt at humanity. Rather, remember that the principle is worded in such a way that it protects as much life as possible from direct harm. To encapsulate that thought briefly: To carry the child to term is the only way that both mother and child could possibly both live good, happy lives.

The second principle is one that will be much more commonly and easily opposed, with the claim that abortion does not bring a direct end to an innocent human life, because the zygote/embryo/fetus is not a human being. This is a question entirely outside the realm of religion. Therefore, your argument cannot be based on the Bible, on Church teaching, on documents of the USCCB, or on apparitions in a slice of toast, unless you are arguing with people who accept that those things have authority. If you are not, if you are arguing with, say, an atheist (a worst-case scenario for which you ought to be prepared, as its reasoning carries over easily to discussion with other groups), then you will have to base your argument on science and common sense. Mine goes something like this:

Scientifically speaking, there is one sure-fire way to know what species even a single animal cell belongs to. All that needs to be done is to count the chromosomes in the nucleus. That is to say, no two animal species have the same number of chromosomes in the nuclei of their cells, so you could give a qualified scientific professional the skin cell (for example) of any animal, and counting the number of chromosomes in its nucleus will reveal its species of origin. For human beings, that number is 46. So, if you give a scientist a cell and ask him what species it came from, he'll count the chromosomes in its nucleus, and, if that number is 46, he'll say that it's a human cell.

Now, in species that reproduce sexually, there are two kinds of cells (for our purposes), diploid (body) cells and haploid (reproductive) cells. Diploid cells include things like skin, bone, muscle, blood, etc., and they form constitutive parts of an individual organism (an individual person). Haploid cells, on the other hand, are meant only for reproduction, and include ova (egg cells) for women and sperm cells for men. Haploid cells contain half the number of chromosomes found in diploid cells. So, a human gamete (haploid/reproductive cell) will have 23 chromosomes. Why half? Well, that question is answered in considering the process of sexual reproduction. If everything goes according to plan, what eventually happens is that the sperm, containing half the chromosomes of a body cell, and the egg, also containing half the number of chromosomes, will united, to the point that their two nuclei fuse together, and the result is a cell with a nucleus containing 46 chromosomes, a human diploid cell, called a zygote (the process of uniting them was called fertilization).

At that point, it is of paramount importance to note that the zygote has a full complement of 46 human chromosomes, thus giving it a complete set of genetic code. What does it do after that? It rapidly begins to divide, splitting in half, and then in half again, and then in half again. The number of cells keeps on doubling and doubling and doubling. Eventually, some of those cells begin to take on specialized purposes, and it is not long before scientists can identify heart, lungs, bones, skin, muscles, and a brain. In essence, once the sperm and the egg are united and their nuclei become one nucleus, the zygote can be determined as the beginning of a years-long process of unbroken, systematic growth, resulting in something that everyone identifies as a human being, given enough time. If you trace the growth of any person on earth back far enough, you cannot but arrive at the zygote where it all began. On the other hand, there is no human zygote (i.e., one with 46 chromosomes) in existence that can become anything but a human being.

This is the part where many pro-abortion contenders will claim that the zygote is indeed a human cell, complete with its 46 chromosomes, but that it is not an organism distinct from the woman in which it is found. That, really, is a claim that ought to be pretty easy to handle. All that need be done is note two simple things:

1.) If this claim is correct, then there is (or was, at fertilization) a cell inside every pregnant woman that had the ability to grow into a distinct human organism, despite being a part of her body in the first place. How can this be explained, if the zygote is indeed part of the woman? At what point does the "cellular mass" (as they call it) cease to be a part of the pregnant woman, and why?

2.) The genetic code of the zygote is distinct from that of the mother. Only half of the zygote's genetic material comes from her, the other half coming from the father. How can the zygote be a part of the woman's body if it has distinct DNA? Where did this distinct DNA come from? Is it not a bit conspicuous and coincidental that this zygote has exactly the same DNA as the "cellular mass" (as they call it) which, upon birth, we now call a child, and that that DNA never changed from the moment of fertilization?

Follow these two lines of reasoning voraciously, and it seems to me that anyone will be forced to admit that the zygote, at the very least, is not a part of the mother's body, nor of the father's body. It should not be a hard sell, given the fact of continuous traceable development from that stage forward, to argue that the zygote must, therefore, be a distinct human organism, albeit one of only a single cell. The alternative to that conclusion is to claim that a "mass of cells" that is neither a part of the mother nor a distinct organism somehow "becomes" a distinct human organism at some point in its development. If that idea comes up, I usually just ask how the "mass of cells" (as they call it) can "become" a human being without any change whatsoever in its genetic code. To get a bit philosophical, one might also ask what the cause of that "change" from non-organism to organism might be, in other words, what's different?

At this point, we've laid out that we believe that the life of a new, distinct organism begins at fertilization, and that we believe it is morally wrong to directly end an innocent human life, and so more argument should not be necessary. Those are the two pillars of the argument. The claim that the zygote (and every developmental stage thereafter, of course) is a human being may be a hard sell, but it is one that can be made to a greater number of people, since it requires no religious bias or faith, simply reason, which we all have. The claim that it is wrong to directly end an innocent human life, actually, may be the harder sell. Somehow, there are people who believe that the zygote is not a human being/organism. They should not be too hard to sway. Harder to believe, though, is that there are people who accept this and still support abortion. I suppose we'll get into that subsequently, since this rant has been rather long.

The Saddest Anniversary

Well, Catholic Americans, today is a day that ought to live on in an infamy far greater than December 7 ever could. Today is the day when it was proved that the pen may indeed be mightier than the proverbial sword, because it was on this day, in 1973, that seven Supreme Court justices gave their approval in the case of Roe vs. Wade to declare that abortion was a fundamental right under the United States Constitution, and that, therefore, it could not be banned. It was that simple act, which was not itself an act of violence, that has led to the deaths of some 45 million innocent children, who never made it so far as their first breath.

As a result, this day has become the rallying point for those in the United States who recognize this grave injustice, and who are gathered in our nation's capital today to make their voices heard and to demand justice from the government that has allowed this all to happen.



In my humble opinion, the mere facts that this court decision past (let alone that is passed with a 7-2 majority), and that there were people then who fought voraciously to ensure that it did, and that there are more people today who will fight sometimes more voraciously to ensure that it is not overturned, and that the American people have just inaugurated a new president, who has declared that it is a priority of his administration to guarantee that the so-called "right" to abortion is in no way hindered with this nation's borders, are all indicators of a culture whose moral compass was accidentally dropped overboard into the vast sea of iniquity long ago. That, to me, is the real problem.

It would not be nearly so grave a situation if there were a so-called "right" to abortion that no one ever used. It would not be so terrible for us as a people if abortion were completely legal, but no abortions occurred. The truly sad fact is that abortion, legal or illegal, continues to happen, and to the tune of about one million per year. One-third of the people whom I should know and who should be roughly my age have fallen under the sword of an aggressor whom they never knew, and should never have had to fear. One-third of the young Americans never lived to see their own birth. If it were not the case that abortion were seen as a solution to a problem, then this court decision would not matter. However, the fact of the matter, to be elaborated in at least one succeeding blog post, is that the problems are there to make pregnancy a difficult and harrowing experience, and there are enough people in this country with loud enough voices to convince women in "problem pregnancies" that abortion is a way out. And that is the real injustice...

The Dream, Part II

Here is the speech that the Rev. King delivered when he gathered a quarter-million people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. This is truly one of the greatest examples of oratory of the Twentieth Century, as well as a landmark in the civil rights movement.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

The Dream

Hopefully, we are all fully cognizant of exactly what today is for us (well, for those of us in the United States, anyway). I mean, of course, that today is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, and it is the day we observe both in honor of a great man and his high social and moral aspirations, as well as to mourn the sad fact that his life was brought to such an abrupt and unjust end. Of course, for those of us who were not alive to witness these events take place, the holiday has taken on a somewhat more symbolic nature, and has become a day for us to ponder the racial situation of the United States, the great strides that have been made since the Rev. King's time, and the amount of work left to be done.

Personally, I think that the racial climate in the United States is not all that it's often cracked up to be. America may be a land of opportunity, but it is not yet a land of milk and honey. Sadly, the existence of racism in this country is too often allowed to continue simply because of its anonymity and its covertness. That is to say that the few racists that are left in the United States (by comparison to what I consider the generally racist population of our entire past before the 1960s or so) today are allowed to persist in their ignorance and their racism largely because many people are not aware of it, or worse, because people refuse to acknowledge that there could be any racism left. Unfortunately, hatred appears to be in unlimited supply.

While I was fortunate to grow up in a nuclear family where race mattered as little as eye color (which was none, of course), I also grew up in an extended family where race was very important, and it was not uncommon for me to hear my grandparents and their brothers and sisters racial slurs that I knew, even as a child, could only be offensive. Thus, I have been shown both sides of the coin from a very young age, and I have been aware that there are people who are racists still living, and some of them are not senior citizens, as was shown in this local story of a synagogue defaced by a teenage girl. The problem persists.

On the other hand, I also routinely find myself fed up with the degree to which I believe the Rev. King's message was distorted. I don't see why the ideal of cultural diversity should be to divest each individual of his ethnic and cultural heritage in order to set everyone on equal, if equally bankrupt, ground. No, to me it is entirely important that my ancestors came from Ireland, and that fact connects me in a very profound way to a country I have never seen and to people I have never met. It helps me to identify myself, and I cannot imagine what I would be without it. I have seen that it is likewise with people whose ancestors came from Germany, Italy, Poland, Mexico, and many other places. I do, of course, understand that that is perhaps somewhat more difficult for most of the black people in America, whose ancestors were by no means immigrants, but I have seen a good number of them attempt to reconnect with the Africa from which, in one way or another and at one time or another, their ancestors came.

Still, there are those who seek a "racial blindness" from Americans, as if none of that were important. These are the people who say to me, "you're not Irish, you're American." True, I am an American, and that fact also carries a profound significance for me. Nevertheless, I cannot say that I am American by ethnicity. The only people in the United States who can accurately and honestly claim to be ethnically American are those whose ancestors lived on this continent before European explorers ever knew it was here, and I am not one of them. I am a citizen of the United States of America, naturally born within her borders, and that fact gives me a certain political and cultural identity, but it is not an ethnic or historical identity. That fact is plainly seen when I consider the great significance of the fact that, as I trace my family's history back further and further into time, I will always come to a point where my ancestors came to this country from somewhere else. That is, and, I think, should be, important.

This nonsense of racial sensitivity and political correctness has gone entirely too far, in my humble opinion, to the point where I could conceivably be called a bigot or a racist for identifying myself as Irish, and others as Italian or Polish, etc., based on their family's country of origin, historically speaking. As far as I'm concerned, it is not racism to acknowledge the ethnic diversity present in America, this land that claims to be a melting pot. Rather, it is only racism to actively disadvantage people, or wish to disadvantage people, based on their race and nothing more. Racism is refusing to hire someone because he's Jewish. Racism is not saying "shabbat shalom" to someone because you know he's Jewish. These are entirely different.

I like Italian and Indian food, Jewish wit and humor, Irish and black music, and on like that. Yes, there is such a thing as Jewish humor. Here is an example:



There is also such a thing as Italian food. Another example:



And, you know what, there is also such a thing as black music (Jazz, hip hop, etc.), and, yes, even black names. If Aidan is an Irish name, and Santiago is a Spanish name, and Mordechai is a Jewish name, and Guido is an Italian name, I don't see why we can't claim that Denzel or Roshanda are black names. These example of cultural and ethnic identity should not, I argue, be eschewed as potential sources of racial discrimination, but rather they should be embraced as elements of an ethnic heritage and identity that gives a person historical roots far deeper and more significant than this 233-year-old nation could possibly provide. Take it from kilt-wearing Patrick Kevin McLaughlin--ethnicity is a good thing.

So, that is my Martin Luther King, Jr., rant. If you have any thoughts about the matter, feel free to leave some comments. I realize that this is a touchy subject and a difficult issue, but it's one that will only get worse if we ignore it or pretend that it doesn't exist. So, may he rest in peace, and may his dream become reality.