News is out today about two Scottish midwives who have just lost their legal battle to opt out of supervising other midwives who are performing abortions. The Catholic Herald reports on it here.
The midwives "argued that they had never been required to supervise abortion procedures in the past, and that the hospital was asking them to be morally, medically and legally responsible for abortions". Despite the fact that the Abortion Act 1967 allows for opt-out in the case of conscientious objection - "no person shall be under any legal duty, whether by contract or by any statutory or other legal requirement, to participate in any treatment authorised by this Act to which he has a conscientious objection" (Section 4(1)), this being only subject to the subsection 4(2) which maintains the person's duty to participate in treatment necessary to save life or prevent grave permanent injury to the pregnant woman's physical or mental health - Lady Smith ruled at the Court of Session in Edinburgh that the midwives' supervisory role was not covered by this clause.
It is difficult to see how overseeing a midwife performing an abortion is not participating in the abortion, which presumably would not go ahead without the correct supervision. It is surely material cooperation. Where does such a judgement logically leave a number of other medical personnel with peripheral or facilitatory roles in the abortion process? There are several roles involving promoting, condoning or cooperating in the abortion other than that of the person who actually performs the act itself.
SPUC have been supporting the women in their case and Paul Tully, SPUC's general secretary, said “We are very disappointed by the judgment. SPUC has supported the midwives in bringing their case, and will now be considering their further legal options with them."
Is the law really an ass, or just prepared to ignore the safeguards it has itself put in place? The Guild of Catholic Doctors (UK) suggests, "The reality is that there is little any law framed like the Act can do to provide significant safeguards once the concept of abortion becomes acceptable". Scary stuff. Please pray for these brave ladies and their battle to uphold the right to follow one's conscience. It is especially poignant that this judgement is affecting midwives, whose primary role is to help bring new life into the world, not snuff it out.
Yesterday was One Of Those Days... and so I am very thankful that God allowed it to be preceded by an experience that was One Of Those Evenings in quite a different sense. On Monday night four of us (that I know of) from Horsham went down to St Mary Magdalene's RC Church in Brighton, whose 150th anniversary celebrations were started in heavenly style by a celebration of Solemn High Mass of the Holy Ghost (Extraordinary Form). Our own Fr Richard and Fr Aaron were amongst the priests present.
The Mass was sublime, a genuine foretaste of Heaven, or perhaps rather a kairos moment in which the veils between Heaven and earth dissolve and one is vividly aware of being part of the universal and eternal communion of the Church. It was revelatory for me to hear Schubert's Mass No 2 in G major performed in its intended setting rather than in the context of a concert or CD recording. There was also a new and spine-tingling composition by composer Tom Bennett having its world premier, Tu es Petrus, and I am inclined to agree with Mulier Fortiswho says it made her think of the "terrifying and awe-ful responsibility" that accompanies the office of Pope, echoing down the centuries from Jesus' instigation of the role until the end of our world.
Congratulations to St Mary Magdalene's both on the Mass and on their anniversary!
This was an experience which re-grounded my faith and reminded me of the raison d'etre of everything I do (indeed, of everything I am). Sometimes the practical challenges and battles of daily life distract and discourage us and we need reminding of the ground of our hope. Another such moment came last week when, in my prayer time, I was reading the Meditation of the Day in Magnificat. The Gospel (Saturday after Ash Wednesday) was Luke 5:27-32, the calling of Levi, and the meditation was a passage by St Catherine of Siena which had been entitled "What Drew Matthew to Jesus". St Catherine's answer was, quite simply, love. As pro-lifers, we can never remind ourselves enough that love should be the "source and the summit" (to re-apply the words from Sacrosanctum Concilium!) of all that we do and say. Love for the precious, sacred dignity of all human life from conception until natural death.
An excerpt:
Because of its rebellion against God, here are the devils, holding this sheep as their own possession. Then along comes God's infinite goodness and sees the sheep's sorry state, its ruin and damnation. He knows he cannot use wrath or war to entice it away from them. Supreme, eternal Wisdom doesn't want to do it that way, even though the sheep has wronged him... No, he finds a delightful way - the most sweet and loving way possible; for he sees that the human heart is drawn by love as by nothing else, since it is made of love. This seems to be why human beings love so much, because they are made of nothing but love, body and soul. In love God created them in his own image and likeness, and in love father and mother conceive and bring forth their children, giving them a share in their own substance. So God, seeing that humankind is so quick to love, throws out to us right away the hook of love, giving us the Word, his only-begotten Son...
This Word played life against death and death against life in tournament on the wood of the most holy cross, so that by his death he destroyed our death, and to give us life he spent his own bodily life. With love, then, he has so drawn us and with his kindness so conquered our malice that every heart should be won over... Oh gentle loving Word, with love you recovered your little sheep, and with love gave them life. You brought them back to the fold by restoring to them the grace they had lost. (St Catherine of Siena)
Humbling words, and a reminder of our own vocation to love until it hurts.
Am feeling too muzzy-headed with a mild cold (violins in background) and jittery because of second go at driving test tomorrow (alarm bells!) to write anything even mildly insightful or intelligent - not that I would generally describe my posts as either of those things, given the abundance of truly insightful and intelligent commentators out there on the "super blogs". However I was very struck by the latest post on Christian Medical Comment about a perhaps rather surprising defender of faith, Matthew Parris, and wanted to mention it.
The full article by Mr Parris in the Spectator, to which Peter Saunders refers on his blog, is well worth reading. In terms of what faith is all about, Matthew seems to "get it" a lot better than many of we modern-day Catholics who are continually fed a rather bland and unchallenging diet of tolerance, inclusivism and trying not to upset anyone. Not that I am against tolerance and sensitivity - I think they're very important. But not at the expense of compromising Truth and losing passion: not least because without conviction and passion, we will never touch anyone, let alone convert them.
To quote parts of Mr Parris' article, "This goes to print on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. So allow me to pitch in to February’s religion-versus-secularism debate from a new direction. As an unbeliever I wish to complain on behalf of serious religious belief. Faith is being defended by the wrong people, in the wrong way... Jesus did not come to earth to offer the muzzy comforts of weekly ritual, church weddings and the rhythm of public holidays... The (Muslim) Chairman of the Conservative party, Daniel Finkelstein, the Archbishop of York, Giles Coren, the Queen and Eric Pickles [have all] expressed alarm at the advance of ‘militant’ secularism. Only a minority, however, have reaffirmed with any muscularity their belief in God...
"My 'Times' colleague Daniel Finkelstein, in a moving column well summarised by its headline ‘It’s easy to mock religion — but then what?’, as good as declares himself a Jewish atheist but goes on to assert the importance of faith and religious ritual in holding people together. Affectionately he recalls fiddling as a small child with the fringes of his father’s prayer-shawl. He thinks it good (as do I) that human beings ceaselessly struggle to find meaning and purpose in life; and deplores the illiberal ‘liberalism’ that seeks to sneer at that...
"If a faith is true it must have the most profound consequences for a man and for mankind. If I seriously suspected a faith might be true, I would devote the rest of my life to finding out... As I get older the sharpness of my faculties begins to dull. But what I will not do is sink into a mellow blur of acceptance of the things I railed against in my youth. ‘Familiar’ be damned. ‘Comforting’ be damned. ‘Useful’ be damned. Is it true? — that is the question. It was the question when I was 12 and the question when I was 22. Forty years later it is still the question. It is the only question."
Mr Parris, defender of our faith?
Those often referred to as "miliant secularists/atheists" also seem to get it, in a way. They are certainly passionately concerned with establishing their own modern-day system of belief and proselytising the rest of us. Tolerance and rubbing along together are not on the agenda (as a friend, who describes himself as being at the liberal end of the Catholic Church, recently remarked, it often seems there's no-one as illiberal as a liberal). Because of course, if you are asserting your right to the social acceptance of your worldview, you are also asserting the same right for those of other worldviews - whereas what is actually happening is the abrogation of some people's rights in favour of others.
If I shopped in a store owned by Muslims, I would not necessarily expect them to stock and serve alcohol, even if that type of store was legally permitted to sell it and I was permitted in law to buy it. There would be plenty of other places to go buy my booze. Just as there are plenty of bed and breakfasts whose owners would not be being forced to act against their deeply-held beliefs by renting double beds to homosexual couples. If a committee to which I belonged held Buddhist meditation at the beginning of its meetings, or some other sincerely-motivated prayer ceremony, I would politely sit through it or at the most assert my right to wait in another room until that part of proceedings was finished (supposing no human sacrifice or the like was going on of course, which seems rather unlikely). I would not storm off to the nearest court to protest. In the same way, I wouldn't turn up at a mosque and demand to be married there whether I met the criteria for their definition of marriage or not - there would be other options available to me. As far as I can see, that is what rubbing along together in our society means, and the essence of true tolerance, one that gives us all the right to passionately defend and even promote our beliefs but not at the price of denuding others of theirs. The whole concept of "individual rights" has been twisted and hijacked for the interests of a minority, in a way that is often frightening.
It's all barmy really. And the barmiest thing is that when it comes to a true human right - the right to life, based not on some arguable definition of when an embryo becomes a person, and not on a misdefinition of a foetus as being somehow part of a woman's body, but on the undeniable fact of simply being a human life in existence - we are happy to dismiss it, even though without this basic right to life no other human rights exist in the first place.
Hey-ho. I've strayed from my first point (the vital, life-changing importance of religious belief, which believers should stand up for and agnostics have no right to denigrate or patronise) to a second (the hypocrisy of what our society today labels as tolerance and liberalism). I said I was virus-ridden and muzzy-headed! Having said that, the two points are essentially related, because the only way for the first point to flourish is for the second one to be got right. And getting the second point wrong, the true nature of tolerance and human rights, means that many of we Christians today are not the witnesses for our faith that we should be - either because we're misguided as to those concepts ourselves, or because we're frightened.
Let's hope my muzzy-headedness has cleared by tomorrow, or that my driving examiner has eaten a lot of Weetabix for his breakfast. Apologies to those of my friends who have already been treated to the video below!
Catching up with some blogsites this morning, I came across the post I have reproduced below at Maria Stops Abortion.
A major part of the perspective of St John's Pro Life Group is finding practical ways to help those facing crisis pregnancies (or suffering as a result of abortion). We don't believe you can preach a message without at least signposting the help that will be available for those who try to follow it. We're still very much feeling our way as to how to do this, for example by supporting our local crisis pregnancy centre in Horsham, Oasis (01403 272273), and by maintaining the Pro Life Memorial as a place where parents can come to grieve and remember. The following is a good example of practical support and (after due consultation with hubby) I think will become the focus of our household's Lenten almsgiving... See the original blog post for details of how to donate.
Choosing what to give alms to this Lent? Why not give what you can each Friday in Lent to help Good Counselfeed destitute Mothers and Babies? We spend £40,000 per year on feeding Mothers. And we give this help when a Mother has no wage, no right to benefits and no other means of support.
Some of our Mothers were sleeping on buses or on the street as late as 7 months into their pregnancies. Many others considered abortion because of their devastating poverty when their baby's father chose not to support them in having their baby. Those readers who have been pregnant and who know the awful hunger pangs you can endure in pregnancy even when you have plenty to eat will understand how terrible real hunger in pregnancy can be!
We always deliver the help that we promise an expectant Mother. We don't provide luxuries, but we do provide the basics. But at the moment funds are at an all time low.That's why we need your support especially during Lent.These women that we support witness to other women who are considering abortion - showing that there is real hope and real help for those in poverty who continue their pregnancies.
It costs us £35 to feed an new Mother for 1 week.
It costs us £25 to feed an expectant Mother for 1 week.
It costs £15 to pay for baby milk each week when a Mother cannot breastfeed.
It costs us £7 a week to buy nappies for a baby.
It costs about £3.60 a day to feed an expectant Mother.
Can you donate any of these amounts weekly through Lent as part of your Lenten almsgiving?
I have come across two very good posts today which explain the case against legalising same-sex "marriage" (hat-tip to A Reluctant Sinner) in terms that cannot be dismissed as "simply theological" but appeal to common reason. Even Christians do well to be informed by these for when they are speaking with friends and colleagues who do not adhere to a religious faith.
"Traditional marriage, the lifelong commitment of a man and a woman ordered to procreation, is the indispensible condition for the family, and grows directly out of human nature. It is not the product of human convention or law; it is historically and logically prior to the state. Since it is the fundamental institution of human society, the state has an interest in recognising and protecting it, particularly as it provides the natural, normal, and by far the best environment for the raising of children. The proposal to extend the legal category of 'marriage' to same-sex couples is a proposal to cease to recognise the natural institution as such; those getting married will be accorded the same status as those engaged in something completely different. This is motivated by a social-engineering project in favour of sexual libertinism which is directly hostile to stable family life, and it is a move away from the state's engagement with human realities, towards a dystopian fantasy."
Thanks to Annie at the Arundel &
Brighton Latin Mass blogsite
"Hate" is a word I try to avoid using, but in certain contexts it's the only one that fits. I hate the storms of invective and vitriol that rage every time certain topics are debated, those topics being anything to do with Christianity, the pro-life movement or gay rights. It's not that I deny anyone the right to have a different opinion than myself on any of these subjects. I can understand that they are sensitive areas in which there is a lot of potential for personal hurt and upset. But why must people be gunned down for expressing their opinion? Sometimes it doesn't matter how courteously the opinion has been expressed or whether the speaker's motivation is to defend what they see as a truth relating to the common good, rather than a personal predilection. The very fact that it has been expressed, and that it disagrees with the current social ethos or even just the hearer's own opinion, is apparently justification for the release of a horrible whirlwind of anger, acidic words and even personal insult. What happened to civil debate?
It was a lily-livered disinclination to put myself in the path of any of this vitriol that led me to step back from pro-life work for many years. It took a good nudge from God and the illness of my daughter to make me realise I couldn't keep silent just because I didn't want to be called any nasty names. Even so I believe, I hope, that my motivation is to positively promote the sanctity, the beauty, the preciousness of human life and its innate dignity, not first and foremost to engage in criticism. That involves answering those who see certain things differently; but it shouldn't require shouting anyone down. In case that makes me sound holier-than-thou, I admit that the futility of abrasive rhetoric and hot-headed indignation is a lesson I've had to learn the hard way over the years!
Bump Babies Beyond posts well on this topic today and mentions a Conservative MP, David Burrowes, who received a death threat and hate mail after speaking out in support of traditional marriage. The Archbishop of York also received "racist and threatening messages" when he did the same, sparking a police hate crime investigation. It's not good enough. We've got to stop dealing with each other this way, not least because we're never going to see the arguments clearly through a fog of hatred and vitriol.
I was beginning to get utterly discouraged when I came across this inspiring message from the late and great, Blessed Pope John Paul II on the Sisters of the Gospel of Life blogsite. And suddenly I remembered why I am doing my bit for pro-life!
“To be actively pro-life is to contribute to the renewal of society through the promotion of the common good. It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop.”(Pope John Paul II, "The Gospel of Life", n.101)
On Tuesday on the blog Anneli posted about the 40 Days for Life and how to make this Lent a pro-life one. After the news story of sex-selective abortions occurring here in the UK our group has been discussing various ways in which we can pray for life in all its forms. Anneli suggested saying a daily Haily Holy Queen, former member Fr. Terry recommended saying the Angelus either at midday or in the evening and another former group member Fr. Peter suggested saying a weekly Stations of the Cross in honour of all human life. All of these are wonderful ideas, they are simple ways we can help the cause of life all over the world and this, prayer, is the most powerful way we could ever choose to help. Please do join us in using these three marvellous devotions, it makes a huge difference!
(You can download a document with all of the prayers on here.)
This morning The Daily Telegraph is leading with a story on sex selective abortions being carried out with "no questions asked" here in the UK. Undercover reporters accompanied pregnant women to nine different abortion clinics and secretly filmed the conversations had with the doctors (one of which can be viewed on the Telegraph's page, see link above). Despite sex selective abortions being illegal in this country this was overlooked and ignored by the doctors in question with one of them even saying, "I don't ask questions. You want a termination, you want a termination. ... That's my job..." On learning of the report Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said, "I’m extremely concerned to hear about these allegations. Sex selection is illegal and is morally wrong. I've asked my officials to investigate this as a matter of urgency."
One thing that immediately strikes me about this story (although it is not the main issue) is the hypocrisy of it all. We live in a country which has spent a lot of time and energy in making men and women social equals, for instance in the workplace you cannot hire or fire or give a pay rise to one person just because they are male or female. We live in a country where discrimination against gender is, quite rightly, not tolerated...but for some reason this is now only extended to a person once they are outside the womb. This is the ultimate form of gender discrimination and yet it is allowed to occur behind closed doors. Other "reasons" are cited, excuses made, loopholes found (for example going private to avoid certain questions from the NHS) and a baby dies.
So how and why has this disturbing state of events been able to come about? There has been a great deal of anger and condemnation of these events since this story broke from both pro-life and pro-choice voices but, to a certain extent, this is not actually surprising at all.
Before you can honestly and thoroughly start to examine how the notion of killing an unborn child just because he or she is a boy or girl has taken hold in the UK you have to take a long, hard, realistic look at what abortion is in the first place. No matter how clinics or pro-choice advocates try to play it down (for example by calling the unborn child a "clump of cells" or whatever else) abortion is the intentional killing of another human person. Whilst it is not our place (and nor would we ever want to) to judge those who have had abortions in the past there is nothing that can change this fact. And in the UK abortion is available "on demand"; if you don't want to keep your child you can go into a clinic and they will organise a termination for you. Since it was legalised in 1967 it has become more and more acceptable to end your pregnancy if you can't afford to have a baby, if you don't wan't a baby, if your partner doesn't want a baby, if your baby is disabled or if, especially during IVF, there are "too many" babies. When you consider the attitude towards pregnancies where the child will be born with Down's Syndrome (for one example), where the child won't be "normal", it is not that great a leap for our culture to terminate one simply because the baby will be born the "wrong" sex. Children have become a commodity and with that they become disposable when they are not precisely what we want them to be. This attitude has come out of the easy, "no questions asked" access to abortions over the decades (as outlined in SPUC's statement here.) Sex selective abortions are, quite literally, the tip of the iceberg and what makes this so abhorrent is not simply the reason a girl could be killed just for being a girl, it is the fact that a child died in the first place. All abortion at any stage is totally and utterly wrong, completely immoral and the only way to properly address this recent and disturbing development in the attitudes towards sex selection are to change the way people see abortion in the first place. The law needs to be changed, life needs to be cherished, respected and loved in all its forms. Somehow our culture has forgotten this or tries to forget it when the truth of the beauty and dignity of all human life becomes inconvenient and needs, desperately, to re-learn it and soon.
“Gay marriage” is of course a hot topic of the moment, with David Cameron actively backing its legalisation and online campaigns both for and against being launched (see button on our own sidebar). It is a topic pro-lifers must take seriously, because like the fundamental right to life, it concerns our very nature and identity as human beings. That’s not for a moment to say that gay people are anything less than human: of course they are no different from heterosexuals in their personhood and dignity. But a gay relationship cannot be equated with a heterosexual one and called a marriage. They are essentially different beasts.
The purpose of sexual intercourse is not only for procreation, but procreation is an essential dimension of it, as the Catholic Church teachers teaches when it states that the unitive and procreative aspects of sex must not be artificially separated. That’s why, in order to answer man’s deepest need for companionship and intimacy, God created a woman. Their relationship – not a petri dish or artificial insemination – is the loving, sexual context in which children were intended to be conceived and born. Over the millennia this committed, fruitful, life-giving relationship of two biologically and psychologically complementary persons came to represent first God’s relationship with His people Israel, and then Christ’s relationship with His Church. Finally it was raised to the dignity of a sacrament, a vehicle of grace and a participation in the internal relationships of the Holy Trinity (which the human family mirrors). In marriage between man and woman, then, we can read the spiritual as well as biological DNA of the human person, his nature, his dignity and his relationship to His creator. It’s what we’re all about on a multitude of layers.
Sexual activity between a same-sex couple is something different. It cannot be procreative and thus cannot co-create with God. There is no biological complementarity to reflect the initiatory love of the Creator with the receptive love of His creatures (even if the couple assume roles). Should children be desired – and this is particularly important from the pro-life point of view – then they will have to be conceived by artificial means (which at the very least will mean conception outside of the act of marriage, and at worst can mean IVF treatment with consequent loss of embryonic life). In short, sex between two men or two women is just a different thing altogether.
One does not need to rely on religion - which of course will not bear weight with everyone - to protect the traditional definition of marriage. Marriage, defined as the “voluntary union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others for life” (Hyde v Hyde 1866), has been a constant of human societies in all ages and all parts of the world. Our own British society was founded on it and until recently held together by the familial bonds resulting from it. This is recognised by the UN Declaration of Human Rights in article 16 which allows that the family, headed by a man and a woman, “is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State”. Gay marriage will tend to undermine that because it cannot give rise to a family with the usual natural network of extended relationships around it; blood aunts and uncles, grandparents and so on.
The civil partnerships into which gay couples may legally enter bestow virtually identical legal rights to marriage already, so there is no practical reason to redefine marriage in order to include them. A gay relationship may be loving and stable, but it is a partnership, not a marriage.
Christian Medical Comment carries an excellent post which brings together 24 articles on the legalisation of same-sex “marriage” in the UK. I am indebted to it for the definitions of marriage and family quoted above, and it is a mine of useful information and arguments to draw upon when debating this foundationally important topic with those inclined to support “equality in love”. Do go over and read.
I have posted before on the difficulty of separating out the ethical wheat from the darnel in so many of the situations the modern world presents to us. That isn’t to say the basic moral principles aren’t clear, but they are entwined with so many other hurts, challenges and considerations that they can be hard to tease out. Coaxing the knots apart can be a very painful process and this whole debate is a case in point, because we are asking homosexual people to make a sacrifice, even if for the sake of receiving greater blessing and even if it is one we also ask of some heterosexual people, for example priests, religious and unmarried singles.
Being gay is not a sin (although it is a mis-orientation, a particular sharing in the state of disorder each and every one of us suffers from in one way or another); loving someone is not a sin; but the genital expression of that love is a sin outside of marriage, because it constitutes a distortion of what sex is meant to be for and about... and homosexual love can never constitute a marriage. This is a hardship for those with same sex attraction. However much we point out that our society gives too much weight to sex as the only means of complete human fulfilment, however much we draw attention to the myriad other types of loving and intimate relationships there are other than sexual ones and point out that celibacy can have positive value, it remains a hardship. I think it was Michael Voris who said that homosexuals who remain celibate for love of Christ and His Church are “moral giants” amongst us, carrying a heavy cross, and I wholeheartedly agree.
One of the unhappiest aspects of this whole scenario is that, it seems, either you support “gay marriage” and active gay relationships generally, or you are labelled homophobic, unjust and a hater of gay people. You are allowed no leeway to say “I love and respect my gay brothers and sisters just as I love and respect anyone else, but I believe that gay sex is wrong”. That will simply arouse anger, disbelief and accusations of hypocrisy or arrogance. I find that understandable... but very, very sad.
Whoops! Not the best start to Ash Wednesday... old habits die hard
Last week I placed an order to be delivered today from my milkman - a cut-price bumper box of chocolate biccies, end of Christmas stock. The fact that today is Lenten Eve and the beginning of six weeks of giving up chocolate (Aila and me) and biscuits (hubby) hadn't quite registered. Luckily the hand of God must have intervened (or the available stocks had already been snapped up by those frivolous souls* happy to guzzle their chocolatey way through Lent), as it wasn't delivered!
Now that I've got my act together, here are reminders of two ways to make your Lent fabulously pro-life...
40 Days for Life
This has kicked off this evening, with a prayer vigil in Bedford Square, London, opposite an abortion facility. The Vigil will continue between 8am-8pm every day from 22 February-1 April - see the 40 Days for Life website which has details of the campaign and its events. If you can't physically join in, why not make it a Lenten resolution to pray the 40 days at home? During previous 40 Days for Life campaigns our Pro Life group has suggested (by way of the church newsletter) that all parishioners pray a daily Hail, Holy Queen for pro-life causes and held our own all-night vigil before the Blessed Sacrament.
National Day of Prayer and Fasting for Life: Ash Wednesday
The Good Counsel Network are encouraging us all to engage in the spiritual battle for an end to abortion and euthanasia this Ash Wednesday. Offer up your fasting and abstinence together with a Rosary in the knowledge that, as the Maria Stops Abortionblogsite reminds us, "the struggle to end abortion is a spiritual struggle and not merely one of practical concerns or politics".
No, not a giant slice of salami...
However you engage in prayer, fasting and alms-giving this Lent, have a blessed one! I'm just off to brazenly over-eat, hopefully for the last time in the next few weeks, as Shrove Tuesday this year in our house is Pink Pancake Day - see photo. (Aila's idea, and a delicious one, but I'm thinking we might try a different colour next year lest our aims be misunderstood. Why must nice colours and words get hijacked?!)
*I realise I am making assumptions. Quite possibly they are worthy souls who, instead of giving up chocolate, are doing what I cannot do and forsaking wine/cheese instead!
A quick snapshot of what Aila and I did this morning... We were actually up at East Surrey hospital so that Aila could have her blood pressure monitored whilst they found out whether she would tolerate a certain heart medication (unfortunately the results weren't hopeful), but we had to pass the time somehow and once Aila had got over a dizzy patch we discovered that you're never too old to enjoy a wall-mounted Duplo board. What you see here is my portrait, the extra-clever bit being of course that the initials are both that of the subject (me) and the artist (Aila). I created a superb dog picture myself, but failed to digitally immortalise it!
With all the controversy going on at the moment surrounding the NHS and various reports being circulated about standards of care, I thought I'd just stick my head above the parapet and pay tribute to all the many wonderful medical professionals who have dealt with us since Aila's diagnosis two years ago. A big huge THANK YOU to you all, for making a difficult situation that bit easier to cope with. We have met with loads of care and kindness and this morning was no exception; the cheery nurse had plenty to do hooking Aila up to an exceedingly beepy monitoring machine at 15 minute intervals but still kept us plied generously with toast, tea and blankets. (I would like to include Aila's hospital lunch in this tribute but alas that would be pushing things. It was nice that she was offered one though and I can honestly say I've never tasted custard like that before!)
In the midst of all this generous care, though, I do have a dilemma. I guess it's just part of living in a world whose heart, though often kind, doesn't always beat to the same rhythm as that of a Christian pro-lifer. It would be so easy if the world really were divided into clear "pro-life: good" and "anti-life:evil" camps but of course it just ain't like that. Differing worldviews and ethics can be married to differing motives in a bewildering variety of well- and not-so-well-meaning combinations, until one ends up finding oneself in the position of the Biblical farmer who was in danger of pulling up his wheat whilst trying to weed out the darnel.
My own wheat-and-darnel dilemma concerns a smallish but excellent charity, the only one I know of set up to specifically help patients with Aila's and similar conditions. We are members of this charity; I have spoken to its representatives on the 'phone, as have others on my behalf, and found them very helpful and friendly; it does a lot of good work both in the practical support of sufferers and in funding medical research into their conditions. The trouble is, of course, that this charity - like so many other medical charities - belongs to an umbrella organisation, the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC), which supports embryonic stem cell research and pre-implantation genetic selection of embryos (in IVF). I have emailed the charity to ask what their own stance is and whether they in fact support medical research of this type - from following their website and members' newsletters I have not noticed any embryonic stem cell research projects, but that doesn't mean that none are, have been or could be funded by them. Unfortunately I have not yet had a reply.
I have noticed several excellent projects that they support. In the case of Friedreich's Ataxia in particular, there seems to be a lot of very hopeful research going on and I would like to donate towards it as and when I am able. I just don't know how to do that without quite possibly inadvertently funding projects that do not accord with my conscience. And I don't want to not fund the "good" research, because every day I see my daughter struggling with her condition and I would move mountains to help her if I could.
My worst nightmare of course is that a treatment which dramatically alleviates or reverses the damage done by the disease will be developed, but using a technique which I cannot in conscience accept. I cannot imagine anything more heart-rending and soul-ravaging than watching your child deteriorate with a curable condition. If the illness were mine, the choice would be easy - I would suffer and if necessary die rather than use the treatment. But it is not mine; I only wish it were.
By the time anything like a cure might be on the horizon, the choice of whether to take it up will be my daughter's as an adult, not mine, though that is cold comfort. I can only hope and pray that it will be a choice between equally ethical alternatives. In the meantime, given that I do not know of any specifically "pro-life" institute devoted to researching into conditions like Aila's, my dilemma continues. How do I support the wheat of those ethical alternatives whilst making sure I am not also feeding the darnel of embryo research? In this complicated, topsy-turvy world where the sun shines on the good, bad and well-meaning alike, can I?
Having been away for the weekend, I've returned to the fantatastic news that the Pro Life Group cake sale this morning raised a wonderful £510 for Aila's Fund! Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who baked (or made cards or marmalade), everyone who helped sell, everyone who bought. It's a really amazing start to our fundraising efforts and Aila was blown away by everyone's generosity.
Thank you and God bless.
Updates on the Fund: our Diamond Jubilee Concert is now confirmed for Friday 1 June, 7.30pm in St John's RC Church, Horsham... do put the date in your diary if you can. News is soon to follow on how you can sponsor a friend and parishioner who will be cycling from London to John O'Groats in June.
I poached this pic of a prematurely-born baby from Bump Babies Beyond. She’s 24 weeks and a tiny, protect-me-I’m-beautiful miracle. Chilling to think that until 1990 babies a whole four weeks older than this could be legally aborted; in fact, of course, abortion up until birth is legal even now in the case of “severe foetal abnormality”. The definition of severe abnormality seems to be a movable goalpost, as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists itself admits: “The RCOG has stated that a strict definition is impractical because we do not have sufficiently advanced diagnostic techniques to detect malformations accurately all of the time and it is not always possible to predict the ‘seriousness' of the outcome (in terms of the long-term physical, intellectual or social disability on the child and the effects on the family).”
This piccie (thanks Katherine at Five Feet Above Sea Level) shows an “abnormal foetus”, Taya Kennedy, who was not aborted on the grounds of a sinister but fallible diagnosis of quality of life. The words below could surely be hers. They were actually spoken by Anya Souza, who has Down’s Syndrome and showed up at an International Downs Syndrome Screening Conference - uninvited and unencouraged, needless to say. I discovered them on SPUC’s website.
"I can't get rid of my Down's syndrome, but you can't get rid of my happiness. You can't get rid of the happiness I give others either. It's doctors like you that want to test pregnant women and stop people like me being born. Together with my family and friends I have fought to prevent my separation from normal society. I have fought for my rights... I may have Down's syndrome but I am a person first."
A person first... We invent so many moral mazes for ourselves, splitting the path between left and right where in fact the way ahead is clear, if hard. From the moment of conception a human life is a person with a right to life and all our subsequent decisions about them should be made on that basis. If they are not perfect, if they will know suffering – these things will affect how we look after that person, but they do not affect the basic premise. To say this isn’t to ignore the difficulties brought by hard circumstances, disability or pain. It’s just to say that the only truly fruitful way ahead is start with the right to life and the dignity of the person. After that, it is easier to know what to do, even if the road is uphill. If we start to admit of the possibility of destroying the foundation stone of the path, of ignoring the first signpost – the right to life – then we get lost, badly lost, and the maze closes down.
Before my metaphors become too tortured, let me refer to an excellent post from the Sisters of the Gospel of Life dealing with the “hard case” that is often thrown at pro-lifers – why should a woman be forced to cope with an unintended pregnancy and birth if she is the innocent victim of rape? The Sisters quote Ken Connor of Lifenews.com who refers straight back to that first principle, the right to life, in order to keep the argument clear.
“In this life, we cannot always undo the effects of sin and violence. We can only seek to mitigate the adverse consequences of such acts. Killing an unborn baby does not erase the pain and trauma imposed by rape. It is rather a form of misdirected retribution, revenge meted out against an innocent child because of the act of his or her parent. In the case of rape, the mother deserves our love and help and support. The perpetrator deserves punishment. But the child, once conceived, deserves to live.”
Things aren't easy when you are facing a crisis pregnancy or caring for a child with a disability. There are still practical decisions to make and many of them are difficult. But we can make it so much harder for ourselves when we muddy the moral waters right from the start.
Last night saw the St John's Pro Life Group, or more accurately a remnant thereof, getting together for one of our regular meetings. Unfortunately half term and illness had between them spirited away several members: we offer ongoing prayers for Chris and Stella that they may soon be restored to wholeness and health. The remaining three of us gathered upstairs in the church hall and, with the assistance of Our Lady, prepared to fight the good spiritual fight. Whilst it would of course be wonderful to see large numbers gathered together in the pro-life cause, there's something paradoxically encouraging about being one of just a few getting together and entrusting ourselves to the Lord. I suppose because it reminds us that we can only achieve anything in God's strength - the only way we are doomed to failure is if we rely on our own puny efforts alone - and that for Him, "all things are possible".
Fighting the good fight last night mostly involved wielding flowers and cakes. Some years ago a local SPUC group, sadly no longer in existence, established a "Memorial to the Unborn Child" in our local cemetery (Hills Farm). Over the years people have been visiting to remember their children lost before birth for any reason, be it miscarriage or abortion, as evidenced by the touching mementoes often to be found there; but without regular maintenance the site was looking a little bit sad and run-down. As someone involved in the original fundraising and setting-up of the Memorial, I was delighted when the new Pro Life Group enthusiastically took it up as a project and already Stella and her daughter Becca have worked wonders digging the ground and tidying the site. Becca plans to visit soon to nourish the ground with some horse manure (might keep a distance during that period) and then at the end of March we should be able to get planting, in order to surround the Memorial with all-year colour and provide both a fitting remembrance for these little ones, and a beautiful, peaceful place for their parents to sit and hold them in their hearts.
Sometimes the weapons of spiritual warfare look like this
Our cake and home-made cards sale goes ahead this Sunday after 9am Mass in St John the Evangelist Church hall (3 Springfield Road, Horsham; do visit if you're anywhere near and buy yourself a pre-Lenten treat!). Again, I am really grateful to the group who are donating all proceeds from the sale to Aila's Fund.
Two of us had received replies from our MP, Francis Maude, in response to our letters about assisted dying (see this earlier post) for which we thank him. The letters, whilst avoiding overt personal commitment to specifics, read very encouragingly, particularly a sentence which commented "I am concerned that leniency towards those assisting in euthanasia will send us further down the slippery slope to legalising euthanasia itself". Our Group had not itself offered any view about how either doctors or relatives assisting patients to die under our present laws should be dealt with, but we were delighted with this implication that Mr Maude is not in favour of legalised euthanasia (for so the sentence would seem to read). We were also happy to read Mr Maude confirming his belief that "human life is intrinsically valuable" and that "terminally ill patients should receive the highest quality palliative support and that those patients, and their families, should be certain that their end-of-life care will meet all of their needs". It follows, of course, that adequate resources and energy need to be expended towards providing that support and not diverted towards assisted dying...
A heartening evening. In meetings like this, there is a sense of fellowship in shared goals and efforts that gives one courage to continue.
A beautiful Missal for a beautiful Mass
OK, the following isn't strictly speaking "pro-life", but I'm so thrilled that I have to mention it. My evening was completely made after the meeting when Katherine produced a 1953 Catholic Missal that she had found on eBay saying "Saw this and thought of you". She knew that my husband Edek and I are trying to attend Extraordinary Form Masses twice a month as we are privileged enough to have several regular EF Masses within reach. It contains (in English) all the prayers and readings for every Sunday of the Year (traditional calendar, obviously) and Holy Days of Obligation, set out in full for each Sunday so that one doesn't need to go backwards and forwards. It's got a gorgeous embossed leather cover, gilt edged pages and is full of sumptuous colour pictures... I love old books anyway and what can be better than an old book that is also holy and useful?! (Sadly it doesn't show off properly in this photo taken on my mobile. My mobile... let's not go there...) Thanks Katherine!
Note to Demelza (also there last night):- I am not trying to flaunt my gift before you, please remember that you were offered a fab Ipsos Mori biro that is bound to be a collector's item in 100 years. When that happens look back and remember that you were given the chance of ownership. Note to blog readers:- Demelza makes AMAZING cakes and she is making LOADS of them for Sunday's sale!
So much of the abortion debate has been made necessary by the skewed way in which we, today, view sex and the human body. Sex, it seems, is not only a “right” – any time, any place, anywhere, like a nice Martini – but the ultimate form of fulfilment and pleasure. It’s the end goal of just about everything. Why buy shampoo? So that you can toss your super shiny hair around and bring square-jawed male models to their knees. Why shave? So that a glamorous girl in a towel will undulate up to you as you gaze in the bathroom mirror and drape herself suggestively against you. Why keep clean and nice-smelling? So that persons of the opposite sex will fly through shop windows and glue themselves to your body... And so it goes on.
It’s not surprising, then, that the very idea of suggesting abstinence to young people is laughed out of town. Pardon? It’s obvious they’re going to “do it”, don’t be so silly. Well, they will given the fact that we are blasting “sex is everything” at them 24 hours a day via all their senses (in other contexts, that would be called indoctrination). And as for suggesting someone should embrace celibacy for any period of time... p-lease. Why would their life be worth living? The fundamental right to life is a debatable concept but the fundamental right to have sex is beyond question.
Unfortunately, of course, sex sometimes leads to pregnancy (that being a big part of what it was designed for). And if you haven’t had sex in a context in which you would be open to nurturing a new life, then abortion so often rears its ugly and painful head.
The saddest thing is that all of the above attitudes are not usually consciously held. They are the result of the mis-moulding of our minds and hearts over several generations. Most women who have abortions are not hard-edged, thoughtless pleasure-seekers. They are victims of a warped worldview that they were born into, within the terms of which they may have seen themselves as acting perfectly normally and responsibly, indeed may well have taken positive steps to do so. The trouble is, we have got sex, its nature and its importance, way out of proportion.
I say that, but in another way sex is fundamentally, beautifully, hugely important and has foundational, earth-moving things to say about us as human beings and as men and women. It’s just that we don’t hear it right these days. For me, Blessed Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (TOTB) came as a revelation in this respect.
I don’t know how to make a synopsis of such a big topic as TOTB in a paragraph – I’ve talked on it, but summarising it is a different matter! Many people who might be reading this post will be familiar with it anyway. Essentially, our bodies are speaking about who we are, about our fundamental vocation in life: that is, we were made to love. Each other, and ultimately God. That’s why we were made male and female, for “it is not good for man to be alone”. Sex between a man and a woman is the ultimate expression, in physical terms, of this vocation; that makes it an incredibly precious and dignified, symbolic action (in terms of Catholic Christianity, in fact, it has been raised to the dignity of a sacrament through marriage, a source of divine grace like baptism or priestly ordination).
Intrinsic to this view is that our bodies, far from being things we “have” or “own” and can dispose of as we wish, are inherently a part of us as whole people. We are not souls in bodies, or minds that happen to have a torso and limbs at our disposal – we are a unity of spirit and flesh, or as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “in his own nature [the human being] unites the spiritual and material worlds” (CCC 355). What we do with, or rather in, our bodies is important. It has meaning, it speaks volumes about who and what we are, and it has a profound effect on our minds, our souls, our emotions and our wellbeing.
This way of seeing the human person is in direct contrast to many of the assumptions that underlie our modern-day thinking. Since the not altogether appropriately-entitled “Enlightenment” of the 18th century we have progressively excluded the spiritual from human identity and seen ourselves primarily as biological entities with rational minds. Our reason has primacy over this biology and so we can use our bodies and those of others as we will, be it genetic engineering, abortion, sex, embryonic stem cell research, whatever. Alongside this is the tendency to regard the “person” or “self” as a psyche, a collection of feelings and emotions, which are conditioned by a number of factors such as societal pressures, and thus morality and identity tend to get defined by “how we feel” as individuals about ourselves and others.
The union of man and woman has meaning
All this makes a lethal and rather confused cocktail of materialistic rationality and illogical subjectivity, but the taste that it leaves in the mouth is above all that of a debasement of the body. The body is there to be used for our profit or our pleasure. There is no value or meaning inherent in the biological because the biological is merely matter and has whatever value we as individuals assign to it. What a contrast to the beautiful vision offered by the Theology of the Body.
I believe that many others would find TOTB as much of a revelation as I did, if they were only introduced to it. Neither do I think it’s something that only has meaning for people of religious belief, because many of every faith and none profess themselves to be open to a holistic view of mind, body and (maybe!) soul and therefore to the view that the body has a very personal dignity, which can be compromised by certain ways of thinking and acting. It’s a sort of divinisation of sex and sexuality, if you like – but it’s the right sort, which doesn’t make sex an idol and the answer in and by itself to the meaning of life.
If you would like to know more about TOTB, read Christopher West’s Theology of the Body for Beginners– you might just have your eyes opened to a whole new way of seeing the world! One that, you’ll realise, you always kind of understood really, deep down, always glimpsed – but could never before quite nail...
“The call to nuptial love and communion revealed by our sexual bodies ‘is the fundamental element of human existence in the world,’ ‘the foundation of human life,’ and, hence, ‘the substratum of human ethics and culture.’ Indeed, the human project stands or falls based on the proper ordering of love between the sexes. Thus, it ‘is an illusion to think we can build a true culture of human life if we do not... accept and experience human sexuality and love and the whole of life according to their true meaning and their close interconnection.” (Christopher West, quoting Blessed Pope John Paul II)
I suppose you could give this card a sinister sub-text in a pro-life context and use it as a worrying symbol or something of things to come on the euthanasia front... But really, it's just another of my cute piccies and it's pro-life because children are pro-life!
Hat-tip to Bump Babies Beyond where I picked up this photo of a Valentine's card that a little boy has made for his parents. I think I get what he's really trying to say!
Another hat-tip (or maybe twitch of the mantilla?) to Annie at The Arundel & Brighton Latin Mass Society blog who draws attention to this report from the Telegraph. The state of Texas is enforcing a law which requires doctors to show a mother an ultrasound of her foetus before proceeding with an abortion (or as the Telegraph rather loadedly titles its article, "Texas forces mothers seeking abortions to view image of unborn child").
Of course various rights groups are up in arms about this, with US Federal Judge Sam Sparks (who originally blocked the law until it went to appeals court) stating, "There can be little doubt that (the law) is an attempt by the Texas Legislature to discourage women from exercising their constitutional rights by making it more difficult for caring and competent physicians to perform abortions." But hey, if abortion is so OK and straighforward and legal, what's the problem with the ultrasound? Annie quotes "Nigella" who comments, "Why is everyone so 'shocked and appalled'? You are shown the xrays when you break your leg; if abortion's so easy, common place, risk and consequence free, and run of the mill, and you have free choice, why complain about being shown an ultrasound of your baby before the abortion?"
I was cheered however when I took part in the poll on the Telegraph page in which readers were invited to vote for whether or not doctors should be required to show a woman pictures of her unborn foetus before she can have an abortion. 72.32% agreed they should, with only 27.68% saying "no". (Why not pop over and vote yourself.) Maybe the results would have been a bit different if the readership of a paper followed by a different political demographic had been polled, but even so.
If seeing an ultrasound makes a difference to a woman's choice, then that choice was not originally a fully informed one. Measures like this blow apart all the double-speak and brushing under the carpet which the abortion industry depends on - by showing the simple, tangible truth. Way to go, Texas!
Catholics in America are facing a tough predicament at the moment with Obama's healthcare mandate, a bill which threatens to force people to accept the use of contraception, for their money to be spent on these things even though it goes completely against their beliefs. The National Catholic Register has posted the following article (http://www.ncregister.com/blog/dan-burke/why-the-popes-army-will-not-kneel-to-the-hhs-mandate) on why they will not accept this decision, why they and all American Catholics must stand against it. The article asks all readers to pray the rosary, to pray hard that this will not come to pass. Please join them with at least a decade a day.
