Frank Schaeffer Courageously Faces the Applause

In one of those phony “confessional” articles where the author uses fake contrition to heap abuse on his enemies, Frank Schaeffer came out with a “confession” in which he again disinterred the corpse of his father, put it on trial like the body of Pope Formosus, and then, to the applause of the Herd of Independent Minds who read junk like HuffPo, set to work once again inserting the dagger of Christian fellowship between the shoulder blades of Evangelical and Catholic prolifers whom he claims bear blame for the act of a lone murderer.

Schaeffer has been relentlessly bashing anything that reminds him of Daddy (meaning “Evangelicals”, “conservative Catholics”, “prolifers” and so forth) for two decades. I’d hope his becoming Orthodox would have tempered him by the grace of the sacraments, but he’s largely used his Orthodoxy as a platform for looking down on Christians who don’t appreciate how deep and thoughtful he has become. In short, he’s simply found a way to spiritualize his rage rather than confront it and repent it.

The fact is that: Scott Roeder was a kook who acted alone. Prolifers were overwhelming in their condemnation of the murder. Now, of course, the pro-abort contingent is trying to Horst Wessellize Tiller and demand that prolifers stop speaking the truth about him and about abortion since this is, we are told, to “create a climate of hate”.

Rubbish. Abortion and infanticide (which Tiller practiced) remain what the Church calls them: “abominable crimes”. Tiller was not a hero but a monster who enriched himself on the blood of children and the exploitation of women. One can say that–one must say that–without in the slightest endorsing murder, just as one can protest the Iraq War and Bush/Cheney’s evil deployment of torture as a state policy without in the slightest suggesting that they should be assassinated.

I wonder how Schaeffer sleeps at night anymore.