Yup!

I thought you would appreciate Ross Douthat’s latest column for the NY Timesfrom Sunday on the different outlooks held by Eunice Shriver and her brother Ted Kennedy on you-know-what issue.

Yep. I saw it yesterday!

My thoughts upon reading it: An excellent column, well-researched and clearly, simply written. As I read the comments attached to it, always an exercise in frustration-building, it occurred to me that the clear cognitive dissonance that Douthat points to in positions on abortion–popular among many on the Left and even among social moderates–is something that they have learned to tune out completely in order to maintain their sanity. One of the commenters there, trotting out the oft-used logical fallacy “I find abortion abhorrent personally, but who am I to impose my views on others?”, upbraids Douthat for being “judgmental” and chiding him that only the Almighty God of judgment can judge us. Situational ethics at its worst and most illogical. No doubt those same people who wail and gnash their teeth over Douthat’s clear line of reasoning would have no trouble (nor should they, of course!) recognizing their hypocrisy if the issue at hand were slavery, as it was 150 years ago in this country.

We have much work to do as pro-life Catholics, but the more I read the pablum that spews forth from the lips of the unthinking pro-choice crowd, the more I realize that nothing I say or do could change their minds; it is up to the grace of the Holy Spirit to change their hearts, and for that all I can do is pray. Let’s hope that is more than enough!

Sin makes us stupid. Stupidity, however, brings us into close and sudden contact with hard reality, which often leads to realizations not unlike that of the Prodigal Son. So there’s always hope.