A gonzo whopper of a moral dilemma

What's a uterofascist to do in a situation like this?

"I was constantly put under pressure over the course of six months to carry out illegal abortions on two women but I refused," said Miss Kousar. "And so revenge was taken."

"The family came and harassed me but I never imagined they would do this," she said, weeping and shaking with shock.

The gang tied up the clinic's guard and then advanced on Miss Kousar's lodgings.

"They broke a panel in my bedroom door and unbolted it. One of them held a pistol to my head and threatened to kill me," she said. "Another held me down and then they took turns raping me."

You know, my money is that those people hold abortion so sacred that they'll be appalled at the rape but ultimately hold that anybody who stands in the way of feticide deserves whatever happens to her. Abortion trumps everything else.

Catholic Carnival for Carnival

Happy Catholic ushers us into Lent with Catholic Carnival LXVIII. Beads optional.

Confessions of a forty-day monk

With Lent about to drop upon us like an anvil on Wile E. Coyote, it seems like a good time to resurrect a column I wrote for a local Christian magazine a couple of years ago. Catholics will find it kind of a no-brainer; it was intended to explain Lent to Evangelical Protestants.

Hooray! It’s that time of year again! Time to mourn, repent, and deprive ourselves of lots of fun and goodies!

Sound weird? To a lot of Christians, it does. Most Evangelical churches don’t pay a lot of attention to the calendar anyway, except for Christmas, Easter, and Super Bowl Sunday. Lent is ranked right up there with Candlemas and Epiphany; a vaguely archaic practice that’s faded into one of the more harmless quirks of Catholicism. Before I started writing this, I asked some of the Protestants I know what they did about Lent; I was answered with a unanimous “Huh?”.

Like many Catholic practices, Lent is more widespread than most Westerners think. Besides liturgical churches like the Episcopalians and Lutherans (some of ‘em, anyway), all of the Traditional churches outside the Protestant spectrum observe it. In fact, if anything, the Catholic version of Lent is one of the least extreme ones. (Every year I’m glad I didn’t turn Orthodox, or Coptic. They have a Lenten regimen that makes ours look wimpy.)

During the forty days before Easter, Lent observers give up something they like. I usually give up TV (and movies, and most other forms of electronic entertainment). I’ve known others to give up chocolate, or the Internet (braver souls than I), or even broccoli. Anything that’s enjoyable and not a sin can be given up for Lent.

This strikes most Protestant Christians as pointless masochism. And if that’s as far as we go with it, it is. What Lent is supposed to be is a time of clearing away the things of the world so we can concentrate better on our spiritual lives.

It’s a funny thing about Lent. It starts in late February or early March (March 2, this year), which is not a notoriously joyous time of year anyway. The winter weather that looked so charming during the weeks leading up to Christmas now just looks dreary, and spring is little more than a distant dream. In the same way, Ash Wednesday (the opening act of Lent) is a reminder of the bleakness of our own souls without God’s mercy. Fasting through the day is a tummy-rumbling way to keep our eyes on Christ (and on the donuts some sadistic heathen had the gall to bring to the office). When the cross is drawn on our foreheads with ashes, it reminds us that our efforts at righteousness are nothing more than dirt. (And I find it prompts curious questions from people who see me going around all day with a smudge on my forehead. Excellent chance to share my faith while assuring everybody that yes, I do know how to wash my face, thank you.)

As Lent goes on, it gets harder and harder to stick to the routine. I start out with a sense of zeal, a desire to surrender everything for Christ. I attend church every morning (my parish schedules Mass an hour earlier so worshippers can still get to work on time), unplug the TV and set out a vigorous prayer timetable. Since one of the Catholic disciplines is abstaining from meat on Lenten Fridays (it used to be all year, but times have changed), I studiously search out fish and vegetarian recipes in the vain hope that the kids will eat the stuff. I’m on fire and ready to go! At least for about a week and a half.

Along about the second Friday, it starts to get old. When the alarm rings an hour earlier every morning, the bedsheets pull me back down like a bungee. I find myself about three days behind on the prayer schedule I swore I’d stick to. I can’t abide the taste of fish (especially given my cooking skills), and I start to suspect that tofu is a tool of Satan to torment the faithful. Once I even (I’m embarrassed to admit this) slipped into the tavern next door to my office to have a cup of coffee and watch some talk show I didn’t even enjoy. Lent becomes, frankly, a pain in the patoot.

Which is exactly what it’s supposed to be. It’s easy to proclaim my love for the Lord when there’s no hassle involved. The key to Lent is remembering. Remembering to walk past the TV the kids are watching without stopping to look. Remembering that it’s Friday – again. Remembering to pray even though I don’t really have time. Having to pay attention to the outward disciplines of Lent makes it easier to listen to the voice of God, and diverting my eyes from the good things I take for granted the rest of the year makes it necessary to focus them where they belong, on the Giver of good things.

By the time I arrive at Palm Sunday, a funny thing has happened. I’ve stopped muttering vague threats at the alarm clock. I’ve gotten used to the bean-and-rice burritos that have become a Friday staple. What looked at first like a long prison sentence has become more like a stay in a monastery. The noise and worry of everyday life has faded, and the Lord fills my thoughts even when I’m not concentrating specifically on Him. And spring seems to have sneaked up on me while I was busy watching God.

The whole thing comes to a head on Good Friday. It’s another fast day, and the liturgy that night is somber and sad. We have reached the depths of mourning with the death of the Lord. We go home without even the closing blessing, which leaves a feeling of something unfinished. And indeed, it is.

Saturday night, we return for Easter Vigil. It’s dark when we arrive, and the candles that are distributed are unlit. Then, from the back of the church, a light appears, moving slowly forward while the priest chants the Exultet, the opening words of the liturgy:

“This is the night when Jesus Christ
broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave...

“Rejoice, heavenly powers!
Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Jesus Christ, our King is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!”

This is it! This is what Lent has been leading up to. The grim doggedness of Lent vanishes like the darkness in the face of the light emanating from an open Tomb. Like sin being washed away, the joy of Christ’s resurrection washes over us, and we forget that we ever lacked anything.

Lent is the metamorphosis, not only of winter into spring, but of a carnally-distracted man into a spirit-filled one. When we empty ourselves of everything else, the Lord comes in to fill the gap. But being weak, I need the enforced emptying that Lent brings.

I think St. Ephraim of Edessa summed up Lent the best:

How many times have I promised, yet every time I failed to keep my word. But disregard this according to Thy grace.

Grant forgiveness, O Lord, send also strength. Convert me, that I might live in sanctity, according to Thy holy will...

I am unworthy to ask forgiveness for myself, O Lord, for many times have I promised to repent and proved myself a liar by not fulfilling my promise. Thou hast picked me up many times already, but every time I freely chose to fall again...

How shall I recount all the gifts of Thy grace, O Lord, that I the pitiful one have received? Yet I have reduced them all to nothing by my apathy – and I continue on in this manner. Thou has bestowed upon me thousands of gifts, yet miserable me, I offer in return things repulsive to Thee.

Yet Thou, O Lord, inasmuch as Thou containest a sea of longsuffering and an abyss of kindness, do not allow me to be felled as a fruitless fig tree; and do not let me be burned without having ripened on the field of life...

If the path that leads to life is strait and narrow, then how can I be vouchsafed such good things, I who live a life of luxury, indulging in my own pleasures and dissipation? But Thou, O Lord, my Saviour, Son of the true God, as Thou knowest and desirest it, by Thy grace alone, freely turn me away from the sin that abides in me and save me from ruin.

And He does.

Is this the next step for Washington?

I wondered what the fallout might be from Washington state's new bestiality law. I doubt we'll ever get to this point, but if we did, I'll bet the marriage rate would rise dramatically in my old stomping grounds of Klickitat County (motto: I only have eyes for ewe!).

Looks like Miller Time to me

I'm outta here. Have a great weekend, y'all!

Murder manual

Just in case South Dakota's abortion law holds up, Molly Saves the Day has step-by-step instructions for how to do a surgical abortion. Not for the weak of stomach or the strong of morals.

This is without a doubt the most loathesome thing I've ever read. I feel the need to shower after merely linking to it. Pray hard for South Dakota!

Time travel & Sunday obligation

Jimmy Akin fields a lot of questions, but this may be the weirdest:

1. Assume that a group of people who can time travel journey back to the Jurassic period. Among their number are some Catholics. Barring any other impediments (rampaging dinosaurs, etc.), are those Catholics still obliged to travel forward in time to attend Mass at some point?

Jimmy answers with a straight face.

Want more milk? Beat the cow!

Connecticut is vying to force Catholic hospital workers to excommunicate themselves.

The legislature's Public Health Committee is drafting a bill that would require all Connecticut hospitals, including the four Roman Catholic hospitals in the state, to provide emergency contraception to rape victims.

In response to the proposal, the Connecticut Catholic Conference sent out an "action alert" on the Web recently, saying the proposed legislation threatens the religious freedom of Catholic hospitals in Connecticut.

Connecticut's Catholic hospitals have "provided the citizens of Connecticut with a high standard of care for decades," the alert reads. "These institutions should not be forced to violate their religious beliefs, especially those concerning the human dignity of every person, no matter at what stage of life."

I think the only solution if the bill passes is to close the hospitals. It's harsh, but if the State of Connecticut won't allow the Church to operate hospitals without violating its conscience, then the state doesn't want our hospitals very badly. Let them provide their own healthcare. Same with any other state that pulls a similar stunt.

The Catholic Church runs 581 hospitals in the US, and millions of non-Catholics have benefitted from them. The same religion that mandates caring for the sick also forbids abortion. You don't want us to uphold one principle, don't expect us to cater to you with the other.

Hat tip to Amy Welborn.

Real Men of Genius?

A commenter at Fark.com has an idea for a Bud Light commercial. You know, the kind where they salute a "Real Man of Genius" like Underwear Inspector #12 or the pro wrestler wardrobe designer? This one salutes the Travis Frey, the guy I mentioned the other day who insisted on tying things down, as it were, in a contract with his wife. Warning: Vulgar phrasing alert!

Announcer: Today we salute YOU, Mr. Has-a-Sex-Contract-with-his-Wife Guy.

Announcer: Some men leave sex with their wife to chance, but not you, you have a notarized 47 page document explaining just how often you take the skin boat to tuna town.

Background guy: All aboard!!

So crack open a cold Bud Light, O drafter of the document that gets you derriere. You may not be romantic but we think you're brilliant!

Background guy: Happy Vaaalentine's Daaaay

Anheiser Bush, St. Louis Missouri

All eyes on South Dakota

Roe vs. the Human Race is about to be challenged for the first time since 1992. Watching closely for developments.

Already the uterofascists are getting their ducks in a Roe, shouting about how South Dakota is trying to punish women for having sex, control their private lives, endanger their health and lives, and tear them into pieces with vacuums or scald their skin off with salines. Eh? That's what happens to the baby? What's the baby got to do with it? Women's convenience and doctors' vacation homes are at stake here!

One thing we must not do is accuse the Supreme Court of partisanship if they do decide to strike down the law. As much as I'd love to see it – and 49 more – codified, the SCOTUS has legal angles to the decision that I wot not of, and if the court in its current cconservative constellation can't see its way clear to find the law constitutional, then I have to believe it's acting in accord with existing law. Judges, as I kept pointing out to anybody who would listen during the confirmation hearings, aren't free to pursue their moral convictions.

Pray for South Dakota! This could be our Lepanto.

Prince Charming

Okay, men are pigs. Granted. But this guy could take ribbons at the county fair. Seems he not only has very specific criteria in a wife, but he actually drew up a "Contract of Wifely Expectations" detailing her duties. Gives "tying the knot" a whole different connotation.

The document, a copy of which was obtained by TheSmokingGun.com, stipulated that Ruth Frey was to do "anything and everything" her husband wanted.

The contract required she be naked once the kids went to sleep, walk around the house in heels and shave her underarms, legs and pubic area every third day.

Under the heading of "My Time," Travis Frey stipulated his wife to "be subservient, submissive and totally obedient" and "to do what you are asked, when you are asked, how you are asked" and "perform any and all sexual acts."

Further, his wife was never to argue with him, complain about "anything to me or about me," raise her voice or "sigh, moan, bulk [sic] or otherwise show displeasure or unhappiness."

The contract also required his wife to pose for pictures 20 times a quarter, with Travis Frey selecting the positions.

Her wild and crazy hubby did offer his wife the chance to earn "good behavior days," provided she performed "everything with complete and total enthusiasm."

The GBDs, as he called them, could be used to "get out of" doing things.

Apparently she wasn't quite as good a little wifey as the contract stipulated, because he kidnapped and tied her up in retribution for taking their daughters to church (something which was not addressed in the text).

The whole contract is here. If you can handle it, it's mind-boggling. What I want to know is, what kind of woman marries a sick puppy like this? Obviously, she knew going in what kind of a perv he was. Yet she married him anyway, and even perpetuated his genes!

What was she thinking? "Gee, I don't think I'm really qualified to pick out my own knickers and decide for myself how large a patch of pubic hair I should leave. And more than anything, I want a man who schedules my nakedness. Sigh!"

H/T to Stephanie Logerot.

Update: Emily at It Comes in Pints? has a far, far better response than I could ever come up with. Steel yourself to the language and check it out.

Anesthesiologists refuse to carry out execution

I wonder if the pro-aborts who have been so vocally against conscience clauses will be howling to force these doctors back to the death chamber. Hey, if they weren't willing to kill, they shouldn't have become physicians, right?

Of all the blogs on all the servers in the world...

I walk into this one. Every morning, in fact. Today I'm glad I did, as she's got a plethora of links about the greatest movie ever made.

I'm a romantic at heart, despite maintaining the veneer of a cynical doofus. And like Miss C., I still get misty at Paul Henreid's Marseillaise. Get a few bourbons in me, and I'll recite Bogie's "wild finish" monologue better than he did. Personally, though, I'd have shot Major Strasser a lot earlier, just because he was a jerk.

Roll me over on the table, and do it again...

Probably the weirdest blog quiz I've taken yet. Not a leading question in the lot. Even the one about "Which die would you be" can lead to a surprise.

No use trying to fight it, you're an eight-sided die, a d8. A fine example of simple elegance, the d8 is one of the least appreciated types of dice, and is often neglected. You are known to be quiet and shy, outward traits that conceal viscous sarcasm and mean wit. You are very smart, yet wise enough to hide your intelligence the quicker they found out how smart you are, the sooner they'll put you to work, which is something you can do without. People call you dark and pessimistic, or moody and cynical. You find little point in arguing.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

"Viscous sarcasm"? Is that thick, squishy and kind of oily?

And check out the rationale behind the whole thing:

This survey is completely scientific. Despite the mind-boggling complexity of mankind, the billions of distinctly different personalities found on Earth can easily be divided into seven simple categories that correspond to the five Platonic solids, a pseudo polyhedron, and whatever the hell a d100 is. The results of this quiz should be considered not only meaningful but also infallible, and pertinent to your success as a fully realized individual. If you feel the results of this examination do not match your perceived personality, you should take whatever drastic measures are needed to cram your superego back into proper alignment, as described by the quiz results.

And if you believe that, we have some really great critical-hit insurance to sell you.

A tip of the octohedronal hat to Scott at Magic Statistics, who I'll bet was a D&D-er back when it was still fun.

Ah, the smell of fatwa in the morning!

Sitcoms guaranteed to cheese off terrorists.


Check out more here. Long load, but worth it. A/T to Ken at It Comes in Pints?

New blog!

Well, sorta new. I'd never seen it before. Mormon2Catholic is especially interesting to me, because of the part Mormons played in my conversion, and also because I live in a heavily Mormon area of the Northwest, and despite the theology, I've developed a lot of respect for them.

Thanks to Julie for steering me to this.

Gah!

Here's a thought to take into the weekend with you. I think I'll go home now and be really, really nice to my wife. Really nice.

A cross-legged, cringing H/T to Miss Cellania, on whose good side I fully intend to stay.

What made me pro-life

I've gone and gotten myself into another abortion discussion over at Pandagon. (Why do I do that? Why? Am I really such a masochist? Wouldn't it just be easier to smash my testicles with a hammer a few times?) It seems to me to be a good time to relate the incident that convinced me that abortion was wrong.

It's not for religious reasons. It really isn't. My Lovely and Brilliant Wife and I refrain from contraception because we're Catholic. That's our business, and our call to make. I don't care if anybody else does or not (although people who contracept and call themselves practicing Catholics annoy me through hypocrisy.) I'm well aware of Catholic teaching on abortion, but my reasons are rooted in something that happened before I joined the Church.

Nine years ago, one of my co-workers had a baby prematurely. Very prematurely. The little boy was born about four months early, and he weighed a little over a pound. I don't recall how long he was in the hospital in Spokane, but it was for several months. What I found incongruous was that an abortion at that stage of his development would have been legal in all 50 states, but instead, enormous amounts of money and effort were expended to keep him alive. The sole difference between him and an abortable fetus was that his mother wanted him to live. The law considered him human only because she did.

To place one individual's human rights at the sole discretion of another individual is to make human rights meaningless. The blather about "potential persons" and "a parasitic clump of cells" is window dressing. The fact is that either that little boy's life was extremely valuable, to the point of some really impressive work on the part of the medical staff at the hospital, or it was worthless and he belonged in the dumpster. To make that a "woman's choice" is to say that all life is equally worthless unless a woman validates it. It's simply not a matter of women's rights vs. men's, and anybody who tries to frame it that way is merely not willing to admit that there are some things that nobody is entitled to do. Placing the acquisition of human rights at birth is arbitrary, as my co-worker's child demonstrates.

And if anybody's interested, the boy is now a healthy, active, bright and larger-than-average eight-year-old. I call him "Thud."

Update: I finally gave up on the discussion at Pandagon. My flimsy logic couldn't stand up to well-reasoned discourse like this:

I prefer viciously mocking him, calling him a liar, an idiot, and a fucktard.

“YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING! GO KILL YOURSELF!”

Hully gee! I guess yuh got me there!

A tale of two tales

Take a look at this story about a government scandal and tell me what's missing. Give up? Compare it to this story about another government scandal.

It's seldom that you get to see this happen so blatantly. Party affiliation is mentioned in the first paragraph or two if it's a Republican, farther down if it's a Democrat. In the Times story, it wasn't mentioned at all; I had to go elsewhere to find out that Al Rossellini, Judy Nicastro, Heidi Wills and Jim Compton were all Democrats (although the city council posts are technically nonpartisan). The Times doesn't think it's important enough to mention.

The lesson is clear. Bribe both Republicans and Democrats, it's a Republican scandal. Buy Democrats only, it's all cool.

H/T to Washington State Political Report for both stories.

No! A thousand times, no!

Michael Jackson's singing of Papal poetry turned out to be a rumor. God grant that this turns out to be hooey as well.

Protestant readers, please refrain from "Whore of Babylon" jokes on this one. I'm way ahead of you. I don't know who would be worthy to play Blessed Teresa, but surely there's somebody more appropriate than Paris Hilton.