What is the fortnight? Why is it being held? How can you participate?

Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, who leads the U.S. bishops’ religious freedom committee, explains:

Abortion advocates garner support by telling pregnant women that the unborn child in their womb is simply a clump of tissue. But even those who support abortion know deep down that when women become pregnant, they are carrying a baby. We can see this in the language that is universally used in talking about the experiences of a pregnant woman. Our society acknowledges the humanity of the unborn, even if it doesn’t want to admit it. 

To demonstrate this, let’s examine some of the common phrases we hear from a pregnant woman and see how her reactions would change if she were really experiencing a generic blob of tissue growing in her body:

Baby:                                                          Blob of Tissue:

See? Pregnancy just doesn’t make sense if the baby is actually just a blog of tissue.

If there really were just a clump of tissue growing in a pregnant woman’s womb….yikes! Every pregnancy would end in abortion. No one wants a blob of tissue with its own heartbeat and reproductive organs living inside of them, kicking them and taking their nourishment. In fact, a blob of tissue that met that description would be a parasite, and every woman would want to have it killed and removed.

But that’s not what happens. When a woman becomes pregnant, a doctor does not automatically react as if she had a parasite. Because unborn babies are not parasites. By definition, they can’t be, because they are the same species as the woman in whose womb they are growing.

And unlike a parasite, babies grow for about nine months, and then they are born. The entire process is natural – their mother’s body has amazing mechanisms that naturally kick in to keep the growing baby warm, safe and well-nourished. There would be no need to feed a blob of tissue, or keep it warm. There would no need for the umbilical cord and the heartbeat that develop within just weeks after conception. These things don’t happen to a blob of cells that randomly starts growing inside of a woman’s body. They happen when there is a baby in her womb.

While I’m sure all of those who followed the trial were disgusted over his crimes and heartbroken over the violence committed against the victims, I think many of us were, sadly, not surprised.

After all, what do we think abortion actually is?

“While Gosnell’s horrific actions were especially egregious,” Congresswoman Diane Black said in a May 13 statement, “we should remember that this is what happens each time an abortion is performed – a beating heart is stopped and an innocent human life is ended.”

Congressman Chris Smith said that while some abortionists may have “cleaner sheets” and “better sterilized equipment” and “better trained accomplices” than Gosnell, what they all do – “kill babies and hurt women – is the same.”

Dr. Patrick Lee, director of the Institute of Bioethics at Franciscan University of Steubenville raised the question, “Why is it wrong to kill a baby? What is it about a baby that makes it a reprehensible act to kill her?”

These are exactly the kind of questions we need to be asking in light of the horror of this trial.

As Dr. Lee explains, it is not the child’s size, location or age that determines his or her identity as a person.

“She is the same kind of being that she was 10 minutes ago. She is the same kind of being she was 10 days ago when she was swimming in her mother’s womb; she is a human being and she was a human being within the womb as well as outside the womb.”

Hopefully, this trial will bring more attention to the fact that abortion is never “safe” for anyone involved. Clearly not for the child being torn to pieces or killed by chemical injections or for the mother who is in such a terrified state of desperation that she thinks her only option to an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy is to have her child killed.

Gosnell and his associates should horrify, shock and grieve us. But now, what will we do to rebuild our culture?

Last week, a Business Insider article citing a 2006 Salon interview with Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries has once again brought attention to the preppy clothing retailer’s refusal to sell any size higher than a “large” for women.

In my view, this attitude falls under the same mentality that prompted Victoria’s Secret to launch a teen lingerie line called “Bright Young Things” and Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches”: money.

No matter how insulted or warm and fuzzy you feel, these companies are using essentially the same tactic: exploiting your insecurities to make you want to buy their stuff.

For Dove, it was reassuring women that they’re prettier than they think. For Victoria’s Secret, it’s telling women their underwear will make them sexy. For Abercrombie & Fitch, it’s telling the kids who fit in their clothes that they’re the American ideal.

I think its right that people are upset over the resurfacing of Abercrombie’s exclusionary sizing options, but this should open up a larger conversation about what we value most in our culture.

By taking a look around, it seems that image and money trumps all.

Perhaps rather than obsessing over one of Jeffries’ bizarre interviews, we should revisit Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in which he states:

“From contemplation of this divine Model, it is more easy to understand that the true worth and nobility of man lie in his moral qualities, that is, in virtue; that virtue is, moreover, the common inheritance of men, equally within the reach of high and low, rich and poor; and that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever found, will be followed by the rewards of everlasting happiness.”

The AP reports about 100 people outside of Massachusetts had offered burial plots for him, but community leaders continuously denied permission. One offer came from a retired teacher in Vermont. The teacher – Paul Keane – said Tamerlan could be buried in his family’s cemetery plot at Mount Carmel Burying Ground in Hamden, Connecticut. Keane offered the spot on the condition that the burial is done in memory of his Christian mother who taught him to “love thy enemy.”

Burying the dead is a corporal work of mercy…so I was curious why it seemed no Catholic cemetery had offered to bury Tamerlan.

When I looked into it, I found Catholic cemeteries are only available for those baptized into the Christian faith. I also found out that notorious sinners who die before expressing remorse for their crimes are similarly barred from burial in a Catholic cemetery.

I was still curious, so I contacted a canon lawyer who told me that a bishop could actually give permission for a non-baptized person to be buried in a Catholic cemetery. So, the issue with burying Tamerlan likely had less to do with canon law and more to do with practicality. The canon lawyer told me his first consideration was the danger of Tamerlan’s grave becoming a sort of shrine that would disturb the peace of the cemetery.

“It’s not so much the burial of this individual, but the effect of the burial on the cemetery…if it were to become some sort of shrine or attract undue attention,” he said.

In other words,

“The burial of the dead is a Christian virtue and an obligation. On the other hand, you don’t want to foster undue attention on an individual who caused so much pain and suffering.”

In the end, Tamerlan was buried in an undisclosed location.

In listening to the words of the Holy Father in his many different homilies, audiences and speeches since his election, there is one incredibly clear message he is sending to us: the Church is narcissistic. We are a narcissistic Church, the product of a narcissistic culture.

In almost every homily, audience and speech that he has given since he began his papacy, Pope Francis has emphasized the need to, as a Church, “go out” of ourselves, and to not remain enclosed. Here is one quote from his homily at the Chrism Mass this year that gives us a clue as to what he sees:

“We need to ‘go out,’ then, in order to experience our own anointing, its power and its redemptive efficacy: to the ‘outskirts’ where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters. It is not in soul-searching or constant introspection that we encounter the Lord: self-help courses can be useful in life, but to live our priestly life going from one course to another, from one method to another, leads us to become  Pelagians and to minimize the power of grace, which comes alive and flourishes to the extent that we, in faith, go out and give ourselves and the Gospel to others, giving what little ointment we have to those who have nothing, nothing at all.

Those who do not go out of themselves, instead of being mediators, gradually become intermediaries, managers. We know the difference: the intermediary, the manager, ‘has already received his reward,’ and since he doesn’t put his own skin and his own heart on the line, he never hears a warm, heartfelt word of thanks. This is precisely the reason for the dissatisfaction of some, who end up sad – sad priests – in some sense becoming collectors of antiques or novelties, instead of being shepherds living with “the odour of the sheep.”

This was a homily addressed especially at priests, but when I read these words, I can’t help but feel that he is talking directly to me, on a personal level, and I experience an increasing sense of responsibility when I am faced with the reality of the challenge that his words present. What is it that he is talking about? What does he mean by the need to “go out” as a Church? When I look at what he wrote in a letter to his brother Bishops in Argentina, the message he is trying to convey becomes radically more clear:

“This way of seeing Christianity often carries with it the attitude of, ‘I was baptized, I made Confirmation, First Communion … I have my identity card, alright.’ And now, go to sleep quietly, you are a Christian.”

Instead, he said that believers must be:

“Faithful to the Spirit, to proclaim Jesus with our lives, through our witness and our words. Mission…is key to ministry. A Church that does not go out of itself, sooner or later, sickens from the stale air of closed rooms…I prefer a thousand times over a Church of accidents than a sick Church.”

In the same letter, he also emphasized that the Church typically suffers from being self-referential, only looking to and relying on itself, and that it is this kind of self-centeredness that “leads to a routine spirituality and convoluted clericalism” and prevents people from experiencing the sweet and comforting joy of evangelization.

The question is, how does this apply to us, the faithful, who are also called to live as priest, prophet and king? Do we truly ‘go out’ to meet the needs of others, of the Church, and fight the falsely-idealistic, politically correct philosophies that are running rancid in our culture? Or do we find ourselves among the quiet members of the Church who attend religious events and collect rosaries from different holy sites that gather dust along with the life of our faith? How often do we fit this profile and convince ourselves that it is enough, sitting silently inside our private bubbles of individual conscience, while outside the world is crumbling, and where the notion of “a right” has gotten us so confused as to the essential construction and nature of the human being, that we are no longer able to distinguish what is good and healthy versus what is bad and detrimental to our own humanity?

Do we know that we have a role to play? Do we understand that we as individuals have a responsibility within the Church to proclaim the Gospel, and to proclaim the truth? Or are we too afraid of being labeled a hater or a bigot? Or do we cry out for the Church and the world to change, but sit back and say that its solely the job or the priest or bishop to make that happen?

I think that our Holy Father is onto something, and that if we take ourselves and our faith seriously, we will take our Holy Father’s words to heart and think about how they apply to us, because, let’s face it, if anyone reads what he says and tells themselves that they do not take part in this sickness – this narcissistic attitude of the Church, then they are sadly deceived. I recognize it in myself, and honestly, it frightens me a bit. Because if we do not preach the truth, or if we preach nothing instead, then what are we really preaching? In the words of our Holy Father, and those of Léon Bloy, “Anyone who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil,” and “When we do not profess Jesus Christ, we profess the worldliness of the devil, a demonic worldliness.” And that includes our silence.

*Elise Harris is the Assistant Multimedia Specialist for CNA. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Northern Colorado.

Baby by Amy Quinn (CC0 1.0)

As the jurors continue to deliberate in the case of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, many of the mainstream media outlets have finally gotten around to giving the issue some coverage. The case involves an abortion doctor known for killing the live babies who survived his abortion attempts. As the newborns lay on the table, crying and very much alive, he would snip their spines to end their lives.

As I recently read the Washington Post’s account of the trial, one of the comments on the story struck me as particularly troubling. Even if a woman decides to choose death for her infant child – an already-born baby, fully alive and breathing – the commenter said, “Who are we to say she’s doing something wrong?”

What we see in this comment is precisely what Pope Benedict XVI warned about eight years ago, a “dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive.” People are unwilling to denounce an act as atrocious as infanticide because they have been taught that they can never judge another person’s actions.

And yet we must judge other people’s actions. We cannot judge their souls, we cannot condemn them to hell, but in order for society to function, we must firmly decry certain actions as being wrong. Our nation’s laws are founded on a judgment that certain actions, such as stealing and murder, are objectively wrong.

Deep down, we realize this. When school children are gunned down in Newtown or innocent people are killed by bombs at a marathon in Boston, we instinctively know this is wrong. Everyone comes together – despite differences in race, religion and cultural background – to condemn such behavior. No one says that we should refrain from judging these actions. Just think of how absurd and inappropriate that claim would sound if applied to the perpetrators of these attacks: “Who are we to say they’re doing something wrong?”

That’s the double standard that comes with relativism. On one hand, people are told not to judge others or condemn their actions, even if the result is a dead infant. On the other hand, people find that their natural human response to violent atrocities is anger and indignation at something that cannot be justified, because they intrinsically know that it is objectively wrong.

And so we are left with an incoherent society in which no one can judge other people’s actions…except when they can. Planned Parenthood has capitalized on this moral confusion with its new “not in her shoes” campaign, which tells people that they have no right to condemn the murder of a pre-born child because they do not know the situation that the mother is experiencing. This line of thought ignores the real issue: Murder is murder, and it’s wrong, no matter what someone else may be experiencing.

As we work to promote the Church’s teaching in the 21st century, it is important for us to acknowledge the relativism we are facing within the culture. We must heed Benedict XVI’s call to counter this relativism with truth if we are to show the errors that come from a worldview in which there is no objective right or wrong.

The radio D.J. gave a shout-out to the hundreds of gay and lesbian couples across the state and said it was “with honor” that he would play Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ song “Same Love.”

I’ve always changed the station when this song has come on in the past – but, this morning I decided to listen, paying close attention to the lyrics.

…The right wing conservatives think it’s a decision / And you can be cured with some treatment and religion / Man-made rewiring of a predisposition / Playing God, aw naw here we go /America the brave still fears what we don’t know / And God loves all his children, is somehow forgotten / But we paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago…

No, the Church hasn’t forgotten God loves all his children. But, I would argue many others have forgotten God’s love.

The Church teaches that same-sex attraction is objectively disordered. There are two options for those who suffer from a disorder: embracing it or rejecting it.

Now with God as our father, and the Church as our mother…would either parent allow a child to indulge in something that isn’t good for that child? (Because we can agree that anything that is objectively disordered is also objectively not good.)

No, because there is no freedom and no true happiness there. And ultimately, believe it or not, God is all about freedom and happiness for us.

So, when I watch video interviews with some of those first same-sex couples in Colorado making their relationship “official” – I don’t see, and the Church doesn’t see, infidels that need to be contained, swept under the rug or shipped out of the country. I see women and men who were courageous in facing their disorder and are now trying to make sense of it in the only way they think they can, which unfortunately for them means making it as “normal” as possible.

A disorder can never be normalized, no matter what the government says. And as long as those with same-sex attraction continue down this path, they will not find the happiness or the peace they are so desperately searching for.

You can click on the image to view it in full size.

But at the end of the day, after the last press conference and the last news report, I turned off the TV and I prayed. Because this was not a movie; this was real life. These are real human beings who have been killed and injured, and their families and friends have been plunged into unimaginable grief.

I prayed for the victims, but I also prayed for the suspects. Because they too are beloved children of God, no matter what atrocious acts they may have committed.

In the 1930s, Jesus appeared to St. Faustina, a simple Polish nun. He delivered to her the message of his Divine Mercy, saying that he desires to grant mercy to all souls, even the most hardened sinners. He called on believers to entrust themselves to his mercy, while acting mercifully toward others.

Jesus said:

“Be always merciful as I am merciful. Love everyone out of love for Me, even your greatest enemies, so that My mercy may be fully reflected in your heart.”

He also said:

“It is not always within your power to control your feelings. You will recognize that you have love if, after having experienced annoyance and contradiction, you do not lose your peace, but pray for those who have made you suffer and wish them well.”

Grief, anger and fear are natural human reactions to the events in Boston this week. But we must take care not to let these emotions lead to bitter hatred. As difficult as it may be, we are commanded to love those who carried out these heinous acts, to pray for them and yes, forgive them. Jesus is our model in this, praying from the cross for those who were brutally killing him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

I do not know what could incite a 19-year-old boy – who by all accounts seemed to be well-adjusted and peaceful, a good student and even a leader in the community – to carry out such horrible actions. In the coming weeks and months, the U.S. justice system will work to determine whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother are guilty for the Boston bombings, and we will likely begin to get answers to some of the many questions surrounding the attack.

But I know this much: Jesus has asked us to pray for those who persecute us. This is not easy, but it is part of our calling as Christians. Browsing the internet last night, it was disturbing to see the words of hatred and how many people were condemning this young man to hell. That is never our place. Christ made it clear that we are all in need of forgiveness, and if we hope to receive mercy from him, we must show it to others.

The court system will determine what happens to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. We should be praying for him alongside our continued prayers for the victims. I invite you to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, a prayer given by Christ himself.

For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.