Here are the damning words from his own mouth!<\/p>\n
You have heard that it was said to the men of old, \u2018You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.\u2019 But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, \u2018You fool!\u2019 shall be liable to the hell of fire. (Mt 5:21\u201322).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If \u201cFranky Bergoglio\u201d (as the Francis hater dismissively refers to the Holy Father) were to have said some equivalent, we would hear screams about morally braindead clerics daring\u00a0to \u201cequate\u201d insulting speech with abortion. \u00a0But since Jesus said it, we have to deal with it and all its implications.<\/p>\n
And its implications are these: \u00a0Catholic teaching is, to coin a phrase, a \u201cseamless garment<\/a>\u201c. \u00a0In the words of Pope Francis in Laudato Si<\/em>, \u201cEverything is connected\u201d in Catholic thought. \u00a0So the Catholic mind tends to emphasize the both\/and nature of reality. \u00a0The word \u201cheresy\u201d comes from a Greek word referring to pulling out a thread so that said garment falls apart. Heresy\u00a0comes from the strong human impulse to take something good in the Catholic tradition and then elevate it to the sole Good and weaponize it to make war on the rest of the Church\u2019s tradition. \u00a0It scarcely matters what that good is. \u00a0If it is divorced from and pitted against the whole of the Tradition, you are looking at heresy at work. And over the centuries we have seen many manias elevating relative goods to The Good Itself, as when the deity of Jesus was pitted against his humanity in Docetism, or the glory of the Father was pitted against the glory of the Son in Arianism, or the sovereignty of God was pitted against the freedom and dignity of man in Calvinism. \u00a0Indeed, the greater the good is, the more easy it is to idolize and weaponize it against the whole Tradition since any criticism of the idolatry\u00a0is taken as a rejection of the good. \u00a0We see this, for instance, when the prolife cause, in itself good and noble, is turned against the rest of the Church\u2019s teaching and an either\/or choice is forced upon us.<\/p>\n
I cannot tell you how many times I have heard anti-abortion-but-not-prolife people say, \u201cAre you seriously suggesting that abortion is the moral equivalent of\u2026?\u201d I cannot tell you how many times I have been told that connecting the lives of unborn children to the dignity of all human lives is\u00a0a \u201cliberal strategy\u201d for diminishing the importance of abortion. \u00a0Because it\u2019s always either\/or.\u00a0I cannot tell you how many times somebody has angrily demanded,\u00a0\u201cSo you are saying that \u2018Priests for Life\u2019 or \u201940 Days for Life\u2019\u00a0are\u00a0not really prolife unless they come out for gun control or oppose the death penalty?\u201d<\/p>\n
Not at all. \u00a0I have no problem with anti-abortion\u00a0organizations only talking about abortion\u00a0or homeless organizations only talking about the homeless or feed the hungry organizations only talking about feeding the hungry. People can\u2019t be everywhere and do everything.<\/p>\n
Rather, what I object to is self-described \u201cprolife\u201d people\u00a0constantly saying (over the past ten years)<\/p>\n
\n
- \u201cWho cares about torture? They should never have published that Senate Report! \u00a0Why are we worried about a bunch of thugs?\u201d and spending ten years making endless excuses for torture while shouting \u201cWe should only talk about abortion!\u201d<\/li>\n
- Gun violence? Who cares? We must struggle to maintain our current gun regime and ignore the bishops who have called for sane gun legislation! \u00a0You can kill people with rocks! \u00a0We need more guns, not less! \u00a0What about abortion?<\/li>\n
- The Iraq war was great and you create division when you oppose it! JPII and Benedict should have butted out of politics and stuck to talking about the real issue: abortion!<\/li>\n
- \u201cPoor\u201d people? Lazy people deserve to be poor! Abortion is what matters!<\/li>\n
- Why is this commie pope talking about the environment when the babies\u00a0are dying? Catholics should not listen to him!<\/li>\n
- Forget the Church\u2019s teaching on the death penalty and kill all those criminals\u00a0on death row who have forfeited their right to life, whatever the liberal magisterium says! Abortion\u00a0the only thing that matters.<\/li>\n
- \u201cRefugees at the border? \u00a0We need to send those invaders back where they came from and if they get raped or killed, they should have thought of that before they invaded! Amnesty equals abortion!<\/a> \u00a0Because abortion is all that matters!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
You see? In each one of these rhetorical strategies, all the real<\/em> energy goes, not to saving any babies, but to making war on Church teaching that is not in line with Movement Conservative Culture War priorities.\u00a0Babies are, in fact, reduced to human shields\u2013instruments for pursuing the *real* Movement Conservative priorities of Mammon, Mars, and violence, with a heavy dollop or hostility toward the poor and minorities.<\/p>\n
And when the mask falls off completely, the unborn unborn human shields are thrown away entirely and the real priorities shine out with radiant clarity<\/a>:<\/p>\n