Chicago's Unserious Event | National Catholic Reporter

Chicago's Unserious Event | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: First of all, there are no Catholic Conservatives and Catholic Left – the term of art is Traditionalists and Modernists.  It is much more relevant to any discussion on sex than the political terms, starting with masturbation and the idea that sexual pleasure outside of the creative act is always wrong.  It’s not.  It may, if pursued too far, keep one out of relationship with others, but it is not inherently evil.  If you don’t start there, you are blinded by tradition and unable to view morality from a natural law viewpoint that goes beyond authority.

Second, was there a message of women priests? (Yes, there was, which should have been reviewed and would probably be harder for MSW to refute).  It seems to me that any real effort to make the pro-life message sing for Catholic women is best from a woman’s mouth – and one that has either said Mass or ordained other women who do.

Now, for Catholics for Choice.  Choice is not about promoting abortion.  It is support for the fact that there is no right to life for embryos (first trimester) under the plain language under the Constitution and creating one by whatever means would be bad for both women and society.  That abortion restrictions would not prevent abortion but would harm women and harm those children who could no longer get care in the first trimester because insurance companies would not cover such malpractice coverage.



The fact that the Church cannot tell the difference between advocating abortion, say for all pregnant teens and college kids and not prohibiting it are not the same thing morally.  Not at all.  Interestingly, on the survey numbers, it is true that two thirds of respondents are against abortion.  It is also true that a similar numbers is against doing anything legally to stop it.  The Mushy Middle strikes again.



Faux scandals like Planned Parenthood on harvesting tissue will not change that. Anyone who has had a miscarriage can find paperwork authorizing tissue harvesting for science and post-mortem analysis.  Same thing.



Finally, as to taking God out of the Gospel story, it is an interesting approach, provided you give Jesus full divine power at the Resurrection.  Until then, seeing Jesus as a man of pure faith, in both what his mother told him about his nativity and what he gleaned from the scriptures is a powerful example and it in no way diminishes that which was agreed to (democratically by democratically elected bishops) at Chalchedon.  Of course, humanizing Jesus this way allows him a wife and siblings, with a perpetually virgin mother and messiah less important features of the story – which then changes how we view sex in the modern era as not a lesser activity, whose misuse is painful to us rather than offensive to God, or some faux natural order that the Trads made up out of whole cloth.