admin October 30th, 2006
Ouch…
Warning: excessive self-disclosure present in this ridiculously long post! Read at your own risk!
Father John preached an exceptionally good homily yesterday, which I’ll happily link to once it’s posted. (The parish web site currently has last week’s homily, which of course was very good as well. I haven’t yet figured out exactly when they update the site.)
I think I’ve identified his usual M.O. for homily delivery. He starts with an attention-grabbing hook, moves on to develop the broader point, and then backhands you with a deeper implication that may or may not have occurred to you. Simple, but effective. I remember a few weeks ago he gave one that really emphasized the backhand element…but I’ll save that for another post.
Anyway, it was a hard-hitting homily about abortion. I’ve become accustomed enough to Fr. John’s style of homily – and I’m well-versed enough in the relevant statistics – to know from the outset that he was really driving at something else. I mean, when a priest starts his homily talking about a newspaper headling that the American casualties in Iraq have reached 100,000 in the month of October alone – and you know that isn’t true – you know he’s got another point to make. And make it he did.
The really interesting part, for me, was the broader context of how the day unfolded. It started, of course, with Mass – and 10:15 Mass at St. Anastasia is standing-room-only – which for me ended with the homily. We (the catechumens and candidates) were then dismissed for our Scripture reflection, which ended with one woman (a cradle Catholic revert) asking how women could be excommunicated for abortions and she didn’t think they could REALLY be excommunicated (I don’t remember her logic precisely). The Scripture study leader, to his credit, asked her to ask Fr. John about it during the RCIA session, which she did.
So the RCIA session focused on God the Father (last week having been on Jesus). Fr. John did an outstanding presentation that centered around the story of the Prodigal Son. I’ll link to that once it’s up on the web site also. And it tied in beautifully with the issue of abortion, and particularly with my latent fear that my past support for abortion has earned me a special place in Hell that I cannot possibly escape.
For the record, I’ve never had an abortion. I’ve never performed an abortion. I’ve never helped someone get an abortion (though I was willing to once, had it been necessary). I don’t remember whether I ever personally encouraged anyone to get one. However, despite vague misgivings about the morality of abortion, I steadfastly supported its legality.
In my defense, I was born after Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, to parents who enthusiastically supported the “right to choose”. I was brought up at an exceptionally liberal (even for UUs) Unitarian-Universalist church. When I took the “About Your Sexuality” course at about 13 (they made an exception for me and let me take it before high school), the teacher had us anonymously write down what we thought abortion was. In the midst of all the “A woman’s choice” responses and the disturbingly flippant “A minor operation to resolve a major problem,” my answer stood out: “Morally wrong (sometimes).” They may have known it was me; I’ve never been noted for my poker face. But I’ll never forget my older sibling (not the one who posts on this blog periodically – I have two siblings) elbowing me amid all the disbelieving gasps and joking to me that we should form a lynch mob.
So I was definitely trained from an early age, and rigorously reinforced throughout my teen and early adult years, to unquestioningly support abortion on demand. In spite of this, I harbored doubts. It can’t have only been the AYS experience; that had to have come from somewhere. (Maybe infant baptism really does make a difference…) But when I was 14 or 15, my mother mentioned to me – at a pro-choice rally in Lansing – that she considered aborting me. Her intent was to convey to me that I was a wanted child, but it had the opposite effect: it made me start to think about what would have happened if she had. Poof – no me. I could have not existed just as easily as existed, and at the whim of a woman who (forgive me) has not been noted for her stability. It really made me think.
And yet I persisted. One of the reasons I joined the Episcopal Church and not the Catholic Church as a teenager was because I wasn’t prepared to accept Catholic politics. I was one of the first people I knew to espouse a “personally pro-life but politically pro-choice” stance. In fact, my real break with feminism started because a so-called feminist told me that you couldn’t be anything but pro-choice and be a feminist. Somehow, I was bound and determined to straddle that fence. I think I was too afraid of what my parents, friends, and family would think of me if I made that particular break. (Sound familiar to anyone who’s heard about my wrestling with whether to join the Catholic Church at Easter? I’m an approval seeker through and through. They key, of course, is to seek God’s approval rather than men’s.)
However, the story of the prodigal son gives me a glimmer of hope. So what follows below is the e-mail I sent to the DeVos campaign this morning. Barring a radical change in the next week, it reflects how I will be voting next Tuesday. May I also recommend the Immaculate Conception novena, being prayed to affirm South Dakota’s proposed abortion ban?
My e-mail to Dick DeVos’ campaign:
I voted for Jennifer Granholm four years ago. Until last Friday, I was undecided as to how I’ll vote next week. Now I know.
Take a look at this:
http://jivinjehoshaphat.blogspot.com/2006/10/some-questions- for-jennifer-granholm.html
I was watching the debates. I heard her emphatically say that the partial-birth abortion bill she vetoed did not have life or health of the mother exceptions. After seeing JivinJ’s blog post I went and independently sought out the bill on the Michigan legislature’s web site. I can’t vote for someone who stood in front of the people of Michigan and intentionally lied to them (very convincingly, I might add – it didn’t occur to me to check her facts until I saw the blog post).
I’m no lawyer. And I don’t know if the bill was well-written or not. But the exceptions for life and health of the mother were unequivocally there. If Granholm had said “The way the bill was written was bad because…”, I might feel differently. But she didn’t. She lied. And what’s more, she lied about something that anyone could have gone onto the web and checked. How much more contempt for the people of Michigan does she need to show?
I appreciate that the DeVos campaign is trying to stay out of the muck. But I think the people of Michigan deserve for this lie to be exposed. I hope you’ll consider highlighting her lie about the partial-birth abortion ban in the last week before the elections. I know I will be writing to her campaign and explaining why my vote on Nov. 7 will be for Dick DeVos.
I sincerely hope that Mr. DeVos will prove himself worthy of my vote.
(Feel free to use any of this text in any manner on your campaign, but please do NOT use my name. If you want to use my name, please contact me.)
