Is MSM Awareness of Gosnell a Wave in Tide of God’s Mercy? UPDATE

It has been, as Ed Driscoll notes a slow awakening for the mainstream media, but now that they are reading the Grand Jury reports on Kermit Gosnell and the testimony at his trial, some members of the press are saying yes, this story deserves covering and in fact demands it from many angles. Perhaps no one has touched on the crux of the thing like Seth Mandel at Commentary:

The media should be ashamed beyond description for this behavior. The American left should come to terms with what it means to talk about a human life as if it were a parasite, or merely a clump of cells. And they should most certainly stop lecturing the rest of us on compassion, on pity, on social obligation, on morality.

[Kirsten] Powers is right when she says the alleged revelations about Gosnell “should shock anyone with a heart.” Which is precisely what the press is avoiding.

As Ed Morrissey writes, here, not all of the press have figured it out yet (some outlets still feel safer focusing on dog killings) but ABC’s Terry Moran, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper are all promising broadcast coverage, tonight or in the future.

This is a good thing. Despite Sam Rocha’s utter despairing upon reading the reports (“Only God can save us now, I hope we forgot to kill him properly.”) and perhaps because I came to the story pretty early, I see not a glass half-empty, but one half-full and filling. Perhaps I am only an optimist, and a naive one, but I feel like this is a break in the tide; a moment that can perhaps turn America from its myriad and mostly empty distractions, and get her asking important questions about who we are, what we have been enabling, who we want to be and what serving “the least among us” really means.

Coming, as it does, during a honeymoon phase of a popular new pope who embodies the idea of Godly tenderness and forcefully demonstrates his awareness that poverty, marginalization and “least-ness” comes in many forms, this almost seems like a moment handed to us by God.

As such, we Christians need to respect it; we need to respect the moment and the opportunity, and the fact that this is a possible gift. If this is a small break in the tide, it’s one we have to fill with patience and mercy; it is going to call on Christians to be as Christlike with our stunned and (hopefully) open-to-re-thinking brothers and sisters. We can’t haul off on them, but must teach with love. With firmness and truth, but also with some of that tenderness we’re called to; with an acknowledgement that Justice belongs to God while mercy is ours. It goes back, a little to what I wrote yesterday, about balance.

Without balance, Christ Jesus and his teachings cannot be understood, because he is All Mercy, All Truth, All Wisdom and All Justice. When we overweigh any one aspect of those four we underweigh the other three; our perspective becomes unbalanced and our understanding disoriented. More importantly, we run the risk of pulling down the cross, altogether.

Embracing this moment with a Christlike heart and mind means no hateful postings on Facebook. No hashtags on twitter meant to insult, demean or cast down. Try #pro-abortion instead of #pro-murder.

Let me put it another way: if you’re a Christian who hates abortion and you see a sliver of light in this 40 years of darkness — which is exactly what this hushed admission from the press might be — and you repel the light with your anger instead of widening it (and its pathway) by taking a gentler, more merciful tone, then you will have to answer to the God of Justice about it. You’ll have to tell God why you thought it was more important to beat his wounded sheep rather than heal; you’ll have to explain why you thought your immediate “justice”, which can never be as informed as God’s, was preferable to waiting for his, which (for others) might come well after some years of regret, and contrition and penance and (for others) may be wholly beyond our comprehension.

We may be in a moment of grace, standing at the advent of a great gift. It’s not time to put a nail through a bat and start swinging.

UPDATE: I understand this piece got a shout-out from Tammy Bruce on her show last night. Thanks!