Tea at Trianon: Our Task in Post-Roe America

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, July 1, 2022

Our Task in Post-Roe America

A brave shepherd speaks. From Archbishop Cordileone at First Things:

After a half century, this moment that so many of us devoutly hoped for, and worked for, and prayed for, is here. I started praying in front of abortion facilities when I was ordained a priest in 1982. My first parish was near one of these death factories, so I’ve been at this work for a few decades myself. We would not be human if we did not take a moment to honor the pro-life heroes who worked for so many years to make this happen.
John Cardinal O’Connor rallied the faithful and rebuked the politicians. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus helped forge an intellectual coalition that overcame religious differences. Dr. Bernard Nathanson was one of many converts to the pro-life cause. A sometime atheist, he personally performed 5000 abortions before turning against the killing. His movie Silent Scream humanized the unborn child in the womb and forced abortion advocates to acknowledge that abortion is a violent act. I gratefully recall many pro-life feminists, women who stepped forward to say abortion is not good for women or a way to advance women’s equality.

One of them was Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the precursor to today's pro-life leaders like Marjorie Dannenfelser, Kristan Hawkins, and the Bay Area’s own Lila Rose. Dr. Jefferson was the first black female doctor from Harvard and a renowned professor of surgery at Boston University Medical School. In 1970, when the American Medical Association abandoned the Hippocratic Oath to announce that abortion was ethical where legal, Dr. Jefferson became a leading national figure who spoke against the killing of children in their mother’s womb. After she appeared in the 1972 public television series “The Advocates,” Dr. Jefferson received a letter from a rising California politician. “I wish I could have heard your views before our legislation was passed,” Ronald Reagan wrote. “You made it irrefutably clear that an abortion is the taking of a human life. I’m grateful to you.”

For fifty years pro-life advocates have done the hard work of keeping the nation’s conscience alive. We protested, we prayed in front of clinics, we sustained crisis pregnancy centers to help women choose life, we conducted healing retreats for women and men suffering the after-effects of abortion, we founded journals like the Human Life Review to make the intellectual case. Many worked in the legal field to make the principled case for overturning Roe v. Wade. Others strove to form and select judges who would respect and not pervert our national commitment to the inalienable right to life. Those called to politics worked to elect presidents and senators who would confirm such judges to the Supreme Court.

Together, we persevered. And today it is hard not to feel like we triumphed.

But in truth the overthrow of Roe is not the final triumph but the beginning of a new and harder road ahead. Our goal is not to create a culture where abortion is illegal, but where it is unthinkable. To do that requires sacrificial love for both mother and child.

There will be protests and threats and tumult. I ask you not to back down but to redouble your commitment. Most of all, I ask you to pray—because without God we can do nothing.

And then, get to work: Call up a local pregnancy center and commit to a monthly donation. Support political leaders who not only restrict abortion but provide new resources for mothers in crisis. Volunteer to accompany single mothers not only during pregnancy, but also beyond. Fast one day a week and donate the money you save to Catholic Charities or other organizations that provide for mothers in need. And men, answer the call to be a father to the fatherless. (Read more.)

From One Peter Five:

The ruling happened on the Feast of the Sacred Heart which fell on June 24th, which is also the traditional feast day of the birth of Saint John the Baptist. Yes, the feast was moved to the next day in the old calendar due to the supremacy of Christ’s feast. However, it is still the vigil of Saint John’s feast, and it is still celebrated as his birthday in Quebec and historically Catholic countries (as well as the Eastern Rite Catholic churches of course). Point being, today in a cultural sense is as much the Feast of Saint John the Baptist as it ever was, and it is also the actual Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

There is a world of significance to unpack in this providential meeting of the Sacred Heart and John the Baptist.

Let us consider the first meeting between Christ and John.

Immediately after the Annunciation (March 25, the day Pope Francis did the consecration) Mary and her Immaculate Heart visited her cousin Elizabeth, and it is said that upon her arrival, “the infant leaped in her womb.” Thus, we understand that John – who was around the age of six months gestation – leaped at the arrival of his Saviour, who was in the very early stages of life in utero.
We might say that the first encounter between John the Baptist and Christ was a moment when the fluttering of the Sacred Heart caused John’s to jump for joy

The pro-life significance in this encounter is easy to see, given that a Sacred Child and a saint-to-be were able to connect in a way that goes beyond mere biology. There is a spiritual element to the encounter, which tells us that God has endowed the unborn with a unique human soul, thus the full dignity of a fully-grown human person.

Very important to recall, as well, is that Our Lady stayed with Elizabeth for exactly three months, until the birth of John, and then she left.

Now, if Heaven were to make its presence known in the world, especially in a moment like this, I think we can responsibly make a few connections. Three months after Pope Francis consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, there comes a providential day when the Sacred Heart and the Heart of John collide, and on that same day a judicial miracle takes place wherein the beating hearts of innocent children are given their rights. (Read more.)

And now we see the demons. From John Zmirak at The Stream:

Not one of the arguments really stands. Not if you’re relentless, and don’t care that the tenured professor in your Ph.D. program is turning red and making fists, or that your desirable date is pounding the table and starting to cry. It’s fun — but not really helpful — to end the argument with a snappy phrase like, “Sorry, I don’t make the Natural Law, I just enforce it.” For better or worse, you’ll never have to speak to this person again.

So I think I know a teensy little bit how Samuel Alito might feel. Because his majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization didn’t just overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. You could say that it shredded them.
But that wouldn’t be right, since no shreds even remain. Alito’s careful, dispassionate scholarship — which took no position on the morality of abortion — simply annihilated those jerry-rigged, duct-tape-and-chewing-gum precedents. As if they’d been hit by antimatter, and POOF! They went into the void. (Read more.)