Shalom,
Ellen

Let me try again.

I think that as long as we present our positions in terms of errors from the opposite camp — even if we consider ourselves well-informed about them — our discussion is doomed to contribute more to war than to conversation even if we are determined to avoid it. And that goes for the internal critique as much as for the external discussion.

For instance, when your pro-choice voice judged the motives of the Catholic church, I’m afraid I took the bait and got defensive. (Now, I don’t believe you were baiting anyone; but I do believe that I forgot the role the enemy plays in the conversation.)

However, if your pro-choice voice says (just as an over-simplified example), “I care about the hard choices that women face when they have an unwanted pregnancy,” they are telling me something about the foundation of their own stance rather than putting words in my mouth or the mouths of my friends. Otherwise I find myself obliged to defend — and apparently tempted to attack — rather than to build toward accord.

I can see that I screwed up with my last question to you in exactly the same way. If I am going to attempt critique from within — and that’s what I’m doing, too — I must beware feeding the party spirit ‘within the camp’ just as much as without. It was insidiously easy to just be one Christian pointing at another and saying, “Thank you Lord, that I’m not like that tax collector over there.”

Remember how that story came out…

But what really bugs me is that we allow abortions past 11 weeks. This is the most wrong procedure where there is a lot of blood loss, the procedure is basically killing a human being. It puts the woman at a severe risk of infection and sometimes death. I do not get the politics in allowing this to go on. How come we can not just focus on this issue of pregnancies past 11 weeks?

Do you know that most cultures around the world believe that the life or soul of a human being comes into the womb of the mother at around 11 weeks? Muslim, Japanese, Asian, African, Buddist, Hindu, etc… all believe this. Check it out you would be surprised about this statement.

So I guess the question is why we let abortions to continue past 11 weeks? This is such a middle of the road position that I am surprised that both sides have not come to the same conclusion.

I think the post was a fairly accurate portrayal of catholic teaching on contraception: that except for “natural family planning” (which can only used licitly when there are “grave” reasons to prevent pregnancy–a strong word, that, especially for a conscientious catholic) all other means of contraception are wrong. I think it’s also fair to say that the various pro-life groups are heavily influenced by the catholic teaching on contraception. The catholics were the first to organize against legalized abortion (and I believe the roe v. wade decision was rooted in a “right to privacy” that was granted or assumed to exist in laws that allowed for legalized contraception.)

I think it’s accurate to say that because of the strong influence of roman catholics in the pro-life groups, there is a strong tendency for those groups not to advocate for greater access to contraception as a means of preventing unwanted pregnancies that provide the occasion for people to consider abortion. So I respectfully disagree with this roman catholic teaching and it’s influence on the pro-life movement. There are many other aspects of roman catholicism that I deeply appreciate and have tried to learn from.

So the concern I was raising in the post was with a weakness I perceive in the pro-life movement. I spoke several years ago with a leader of an evangelical relief agency doing work in Africa. He informed me that a leader of the religious right had warned his workers against distributing condoms in villages where they weren’t available. I think this kind of approach is flat out wrong. People suffer as a result, abortions increase as a result. Married men with HIV are forbidden by catholic teaching from using condoms. I think this is wrong. I understand that is based on a moral conviction that all contraception except natural family planning is morally wrong, but I still think it’s effect is to increase the number of unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortion. I just don’t think natural family planning is practical in developing nations especially. It takes enormous care, charting of physical symptoms, close monitoring of body temperature, etc. When it is presented as the only morally acceptable option to prevent pregnancy the result will be an increased rate of unwanted pregnancy.

But my main point in the post was the negative impact of framing this issue and others under the rubric of “culture war.” This framing has been widely embraced by Christians and I think it needs to be critiqued from within. Those of us who identify as pro-life need to be critical of weaknesses in the pro-life movement. This is one of them that has concerned me. In fact, as an antidote to the culture war approach (which by definition discourages partisans from acknowledging any positive things in the concerns of their opponents–assuming the worst about opponents and the best about one’s allies) I think Christians need to engage in “internal critique.” Jesus did a lot of it, and it didn’t make him popular. I think he was modeling something for us that we need to take to heart in order to get out of the “culture war” mentality.

War is such a powerful metaphor that should be used sparingly because it leads to extreme thinking, to the demonization of opponents and to an unwillingless to consider the weaknesses in the position of one’s own side. It promotes “party spirit” [partisanship.] hen I speak to pro-choice friends, invariably I end up stressing the moral problems with abortion on demand. But in the blog, I tend to have more readers or at least commenters who are Christians and strongly pro-life. In acknowledging what I think is a strong weakness in the pro-life agenda (not stressing access to contraception as a way to reduce abortions, but in fact opposing it)I realize it’s not widely appreciated. But unless we start engaging in honest internal critique, we are going to simply reinforce the culture war mentality. The view from here, at least.

For example, one of our daughters went off to college opposing many of the things we had taught her, including our pro-life position. She joined pro-choice campus organizations and demonstrated and counter-demonstrated accordingly. She told us how her new friends would paint pro-lifers with a broad brush, accusing them of not caring about babies once they were born, of wanting to put mothers in jail, and of other things like that. But she knew us and all the people she grew up with, and she expected her friends to be relieved to find out that she personally knew pro-lifers who weren’t like that. She was pretty shocked when they turned on her instead.

Of course the opposite camp has been known to do exactly the same thing, and that is precisely my point. Could the reason we’ve had a war instead of a dialogue be because we have founded our arguments on what we fear our opponents represent instead of on the reasons for our beliefs? Even your attempt at a conciliatory conversation makes sweeping statements about Catholic reasoning and motives that have more to do with trying to apologize for what you think their opponents are thinking than with the reality of Catholic morality.

When was the last time you sat down with a knowledgeable Catholic to try your dialogue idea?

At the risk of being accused of proof-texting, I think these words from James’ epistle shout out to be the foundational principle for this type of dialog.

Mercy doesn’t mean condoning dark and dehumanizing elements in our culture and society.

If life begins at conception, then many conclusions follow that are very, very uncomfortable for society to grapple with. Likewise, if we accept the Biblical view of human sexuality, we need to acknowledge that we live in the midst of a very confused generation.

Mercy triumphs over judgment!

Sexual intimacy is meant to humanize us, but we are created for monogamy, so sexual intimacy outside of marriage dehumanizes us. Loaded words….

But Mercy triumphs over judgment!

The natural reaction to judgment is to hide, so we (as a society) try to obfuscate reality…”Sex is primarily a physical and emotional act (not a spiritual one)…a fertilized egg is not a human until (name your arbitrary cut-off)…an unwanted child is better off dead (which no one ever says but is the logical implication of much pro-choice rhetoric).

Mercy triumphs over judgment!

We can’t ignore the truth of the matter, and we shouldn’t soften hard issues because because they make for awkward conversations (not that I think that is what you are doing, Ken, I know better).

We CAN choose to focus on merciful solutions rather than focusing the majority of our efforts on judgmental solutions (through the courts, etc.). If we could wave a magic wand and eliminate abortion, what would we do will all those unwanted children, and their unprepared (emotionally and/or economically) parent(s)? The answer is as obvious as it is hard to implement…we LOVE them, we show them mercy, we become good news for them.

The answer is not in rhetoric but in action, since, as James also wrote “Faith without works is dead”

the past week has been tough for me. My wife was sent a very judgemental email from a member of the church we used to attend, remember I called it “the Church of Republicanism”. Aparently they don’t know any other Democrats so they had to fire their insults to us 3000 miles away. I haven’t even heard from these people for 18 months. Aparently I’m not a Christian because I voted for man who’s number 1 priority is to kill babies….. I’m very full of hate and feel a huge sense of rejection and loss from these people. I was always kind to them, and they know I’m Pro-Life, but I’m not a one issue voter and I voted for Obama so that makes me SATAN! If only I could say that everything at that church was aweful, then I could write them off. But I renewed my faith there, met my wife, and learned a lot about how to be a good husband. I feel like a man in exile…