Protecting The Unborn: A ‘Pro-Life Position?

I checked the NCR this morning to see which of their writers would be the first out of the gate to instrumentalize the heinous killing of children in Connecticut to argue for tougher gun control laws.

Would it be Michael Sean Winters? Would it be Sr. Joan Chittister (who still hasn’t gone back to Tahrir Square).

It was Sr. Maureen Fiedler!  She is probably trying to get back into the race for Fishwrap’s Person of the Year.

Sr. Fiedler made a little attack on the pro-life movement’s focus on abortion. She is making the claim that gun-control is a pro-life position. How do I know that that is what she is arguing? Here is her piece:

Gun Control: A ‘Pro-Life’ Position
Maureen Fiedler | Dec. 14, 2012

In his Oct. 27, op-ed column in The New York Times, Thomas Friedman said this: “…for me, the most ‘pro-life’ politician in America is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.”

That may shock some people because Bloomberg is for a woman’s right to choose, and Friedman acknowledged that. But he enumerated several reasons for his pro-life description of Bloomberg, and this one stands out today: “…he has … used his position to … push to reinstate the expired federal ban on assault weapons and other forms of common-sense gun control …” Read the full column.

In the wake of the school shooting and multiple deaths in Connecticut, need we say more?

Yes, Maureen, we need to say more.

You don’t get to co-opt the language of the pro-life movement.

I looked back in the list of your Fishwrap columns, Sister.

You have never written, as far as I could find, anything in defense of the unborn.

Now, in the wake of the disaster in Connecticut, you blather about gun-control being “pro-life”?

Okay, I’ll play along. Let’s undermine the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution.

I, Father John Zuhlsdorf, proud gun-owner, am ready to campaign in favor of a ban on certain “assault weapons” as soon as Pres. Obama endorses a 28th Amendment to the Constitution: The Human Life Amendment.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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19 Comments

  1. fvhale says:

    Well, she is sticking to her guns.

    She signed the NYTimes ad on Oct 7, 1984 (“The Statement”) which proclaimed: “A large number of Catholic theologians hold that even direct abortion, though tragic, can sometimes be a moral choice.”

    In the LATimes on Jul 26, 1986 she said: “I have never retracted or recanted one syllable of the Catholic Statement on Abortion and Pluralism. I continue to stand behind every word of it without the slightest reservation.”

    I hope we can assume that we would never read in this country: “A large number of Catholic theologians hold that even [mass killing of school children], though tragic, can sometimes be a moral choice,” although we certainly do have the situation where killing millions of (60 million?) unborn children [translation of “direct abortion”] “though tragic” is regarded as a choice, maybe even moral, but certainly legal.

    It is truly astounding to consider the number of reported abortions in the United States (since 1973) is now equal to about 20% of the current national population. I wonder how many of them would have grown up to become Catholic theologians (or priests).

    Fr. Z's Gold Star Award

  2. wmeyer says:

    It is appalling (and yet, expected) that these people will use such a tragic episode as fodder for their political causes. And all the more appalling that they are incapable, it seems, of seeing any relationship between such an episode and 40 years of infanticide.

    How should our children value life when they see our culture place no value on the lives of babies in the womb? And how should they find any reverence for life in a culture which seeks to remove all public evidence that anyone of faith still exists? And when they are drilled in school about hate speech, but every day, see the lie put to that message, as regards speech about Christians?

  3. Jackie L says:

    So pro-life ought to encompass gun control measures in order to be consistent, yet pro-choice does not need to include things like soft-drink size, only stabbing into the skull of a half-born child. Do I have Sister Fiedler’s position correct?

  4. bbmoe says:

    I second that motion.

    I understand the horror, the anxiety, and the grief that everyone is feeling now. I feel it, too, in this instance, but I also feel it every week while I stand outside an abortion clinic and pray. 20 kids died: that’s my Tuesday, every Tuesday. Except I watch young women being escorted by her parents, older women with two kids in the back and her husband at the wheel being dropped off, boyfriends holding the doors open for their knocked up girlfriends, all supporting the killing of their children and grandchildren. I met a married woman last week who brought her 16 year-old daughter with her: the mom was pregnant and thought it would be good to show her daughter all the options available if one day she should find herself inconvenienced by pregnancy.

    It’s highly likely the young man who did this was mentally disturbed, but I seen completely sane people making the choice to kill their own children every Tuesday. Tell me who is truly depraved.

  5. benedetta says:

    Listening to Pres Obama’s statement yesterday about the little victims “They had their whole lives ahead of them….”, my 12 year old said, “Huh? What about abortion?”. Any adolescent can detect the hypocrisy in the statements of those who attempt to justify the killing of one child over another, simply because one is “wanted, desired” by this or that mother, and one, unfortunately, not. Any sort moral stance on any issue including assault weapons ban, that these hypocrites promote will ring hollow to our violence saturated youth who know that they advocate the killing in the womb, and, in Pres Obama’s case, killing outside of the womb, should the baby survive the abortionist’s violent attack. Even President and Mrs. Obama limit the types of tv and internet their children are exposed to, yet happily take campaign donations from the industry that promotes it all in the first place, to the gross desensitization of our children’s sense of empathy, security, and mental health. The country is going to have to do a lot of soul searching. Assault weapons bans would be the most superficial response that can be made to this horrific tragedy. Like Fr. Z, I will support any politician’s leadership in this area, regardless of party, to face head on the pervasive and soul deadening experiences that our children and young people suffer from in this country. Peace begins in the womb. Violence in the womb is the foundation of a culture beset by sickening violence.

  6. dominic1955 says:

    There is something morally repulsive that makes my skin crawl when party-hack apparatchiks and 5th Columnist “religious” use a tragedy to further a tyranical and statist cause. Pro-life because some hack wants to put restrictions on where bits of plastic, wood, or steel come from and because they scare cowards? That’s fine, but dismembering babies is some sacrosanct sacred cow of “personal choice”.

    There are 3,700 (or so) babies killed a day in this country alone by abortion. That is like having some Statist secret police come and murder every single person of my home town 4x over. These people support this and then have the gall to call for the repression of our 1st and 2nd Amendment rights to make us slaves to the kind of system that will one day do just that?

    I have no respect for people like this. God have mercy on them, and me.

  7. Supertradmum says:

    Bravo, Father Z., I have been insulted today but excuse the person as he is young over these same points. The problem is that people are in denial about the killing of children in the womb. Denial.

    I wrote about the false tear wiping of O on the television to some friends. This man and those who follow him, like Maureen Fiedler, have an ideological blindness , but more than that, a moral blindness which is frightening. If some people can overlook the millions of dead babies sacrificed to the god of prosperity or money, and get all upset about guns, what else will they overlook?

  8. happyCatholic says:

    Seeing the (appropriate) tributes on Facebook to the lives lost yesterday, nevertheless I could not help but see the dichotomy that yesterday no one was breathlessly reporting outside abortion clinics yesterday about the thousands of lives lost and there being numerous tributes to those babies today. I realized it was a sensitive subject, but I felt I had to post a comment on my Facebook anyway. Here is what I posted:

    “All the tributes on Facebook to those poor, innocent lives lost yesterday are true and appropriate. Would, however, that the other almost four thousand innocent children who lost their lives to abortion yesterday in this country alone were also appropriately mourned. And the four thousand who will die today, and tomorrow, and the next day. Where are the TV cameras and wall-to-wall media coverage and posts for them? They are innocents too. :( “

  9. Genevieve says:

    I like that happyCatholic, and may steal it. Regarding 2nd Amendments rights, this tragedy has convinced my husband to stop talking about it and actually do something. He is applying for a concealed weapon permit on Monday.

  10. mamajen says:

    Obama, who has fought more than anyone to ensure that infants are allowed to die alone on a cold countertop in a closet should they survive abortion, is the biggest hypocrite of them all. His crocodile tears mean nothing to me.

  11. bookworm says:

    There isn’t a whole lot I can add to what’s been posted above, except the following, for the benefit of those confronted with arguments that such atrocities “prove” the need for stricter gun control:
    — Most if not all of these incidents occur in designated “gun free” zones or facilities such as schools, theaters/auditoriums, and public buildings where the shooters KNOW concealed weapons are not allowed and prospective victims will not be able to shoot back.
    — Even if we concede that stricter gun control might keep weapons out of the hands of people like the Connecticut and Colorado shooters who had no previous criminal record, and thereby prevent at least a few mass shooting incidents, it would also keep weapons out of the hands of many other law abiding, non-crazy citizens who could have used them to protect themselves from a one-on-one incident such as a home invasion, carjacking, attempted rape or robbery, etc.

    I would bet that, with strict gun control, the number of lives lost or scarred by the latter type of incident (which don’t get nearly as much publicity, or no publicity at all if the attack is thwarted) would eventually far outnumber the number of people saved from mass shootings, which though highly publicized, are far less common.

  12. I have let a couple comment mostly about gun-control through the moderation queue, but don’t, because of that, think that the entry at the top is about gun-control. It is not. This entry isn’t even about the horrible killings in Connecticut.

    I’ll spell it out.

    This is about a liberal nun, who never publicly defends the unborn, hijacking the language of the pro-life movement for her own agenda.

  13. benedetta says:

    Sr Fiedler isn’t prolife, doesn’t care about prolife, and whatever she says under the headline of prolife rings hollow with hypocrisy. She doesn’t care about all children, she cares about some children, the some who in contrast to some thirty million who managed to survive because of the whim or desire of a mother to deem them wanted, whereas the others, she doesn’t really care about nor the several thousand daily who are up for execution, and this she supports. She can’t expect to moralize on this situation now having scorned the foundation of the dignity of life for many years now, publicly. Sr. Fielder, it’s not prolife if you scorn the thirty million unborn as perfectly expendable from the get-go. Those children in fact do matter. They matter to us, and they matter to God.

    If she wants to be prolife I invite her to attend the annual march for life in Washington, to lobby President Obama for a conversion of heart, and, to take part in the works of mercy that real prolifers do every day for mothers and children.

  14. benedetta says:

    You know what also is amazing to me, and Sr. Fielder’s article is a prime example of it, is how the agenda of the 60’s is clung to with such vociferousness and nostalgia while at the same time there is such ridiculous and horrendous denial to the sick aftermath that the love generation has wrought on young people of today who certainly don’t thank, honor or respect them for what they brought on. Today we have a filthy sex and violence saturated media, abortion to the tens of millions and even infanticide thinly veiled in clinics, hardcore porn accessed by young people, the aftermath of free love and drug culture of addiction and crime. Soaring credit card debt, and marketing so aggressive it has no problem sexualizing youngsters, or marketing directly to them, to make the almighty buck. It is laughable that this same crew now waxes morality, as if they are still in the days of demonstrating against the Vietnam war. Why don’t they start cleaning up after the filth they inflicted on generations of innocents, along with their lobbying their president for their trinkets. It’s so superficial it is just another aspect of catastrophe.

  15. SimpleCatholic says:

    Father(s),
    I am a firearms instructor in Canada, where we have multitudes of ridiculous laws restricting the possession and use of most firearms, but NO LAWS that prevent a baby from having its spine pierced and skull crushed AFTER FULL TERM DELIVERY as long as some part of it (a foot) is still inside the mother’s body and the child hasn’t drawn breath. In the fight for life, we are generations behind our friends to the south.
    I don’t want to create a rabbit hole, but I’d like to share that in January, I will be quietly leading a group of priests through the necessary courses and examinations to get their PALs (Possession and Acquisition License) so that they may own guns. I have looked in the older Rituale for a blessing for guns or weapons (swords?), but have not been able to find one. Am I missing something or looking in the wrong place? Can anyone help me find an approved rite of blessing that would be better than the “Benedictio ad Omnia”

  16. Suburbanbanshee says:

    There’s a “Blessing of Swords” (Benedictio gladii) in “vit. Pontif. MS eccl. Elnensis.” So some kind of Pontifical in a manuscript. Anyway, here it is:

    Benedicere digneris, quaesumus, Domine, enses istos et hos famulos tuos, qui eos te inspirante suscipere desiderant, pietatis tue custodia muniat et illesos custodiat. Per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

    From the Pontifical of Guillaume Durand, as part of the blessing of a new knight:

    1. First the bishop reads the Gospel.

    2. Benedictio ensis:
    Exaudi, quaesumus, Domine, preces nostras, et hunc ensem, quo hic famulus tuus circumcingi desiderat, maiestatis tue dextera dignare benedicere, quatenus esse possit defensio ecclesiarum, viduarum, orphanorum, omniumque Deo servientium contra sevitiam paganorum, aliisque sibi insidiantibus sit terror et formido, praestans ei aeque persecutionis et iuste defensionis effectum. Per Christum Jesum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

    3. Alia benedictio:
    Benedic, Domine sancte, Pater omnipotens, eterne Deus, per invocationem sancti tui Nominis et per adventum Christi Filii tui Domini nostri, et per donum Spiritus Sancti paracliti hunc ensem, ut is, famulus tuus, qui hodierna die hoc, tua concedente pietate, precingitur, invisibiles inimicos sub pedibus conculcet victoriaque per omnia potitus semper maneat illesus. Per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

    4. Then the bishop blesses other weapons, then girds the sword onto the knight, then says:

    5. Benedictus Dominus Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad proelium. (And he says the first three verses, with Gloria patri:) Salvum fac servum tuum. Esto ei, Domine, turris. Domine exaudi.

    Dominus vobiscum. Oremus.

    6. Then there’s a really really long prayer and the rest of the ceremony.

    There’s tons of these in medieval manuscripts and Pontificals and such, apparently.

  17. Suburbanbanshee says:

    Oh, and kings and emperors also got their ceremonial swords blessed.

  18. Pingback: first pray for the victims souls and their familys « Over the Rhine and Into the Tiber

  19. min-bee says:

    My first thought was the same as happyCatholic’s when I heard Obama talk ahout how the murdered children would be deprived of the experience of growing up: why can’t he apply this same view to the unborn? And how fitting that Sr. Maureen Fiedler should quote the “NY Times” citing Mayor Bloomberg as the most pro-life! New York City has become Sodom by the Sea and the Abortion Capital of the nation. Many in the Archdiocese of New York appear blind and refuse to remove their “seamless garments,” even though Vatican II’s Constitution “Gaudium et Spes” called abortion and infanticide “unspeakable crimes.”

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