Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Beatitudes, Babies and Baseball: The Merciful Third Baseman

The Merciful Third Baseman
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Matthew 5:7
The middle three beatitudes are the heart, soul and spirit of the beatitudes. Consider each from the perspective of three relationships: our relationship with God, with His laws and with others, especially the least favored of humanity. This essay considers the fifth of nine beatitudes, most central to Christ's message. Just for fun, the introduction tells about a baseball player who has some of the characteristics of the beatitude. How soon can you name the player? One of my best friends was in an automobile accident when he was in high school. He was unconscious or semiconscious for months afterwards. A sportscaster who knew of his condition contacted this baseball player to ask him to visit my friend where he lay in the hospital. Without fanfare or any publicity, this star third baseman, who had just completed his most impressive season and won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award, not only visited my friend, but he also brought my friend an autographed baseball signed by all of his league’s All Stars at the All Star Game that summer. My friend’s spirits were rejuvenated when he learned afterwards of this extraordinary visit and extraordinary gift to him. You may know of this extraordinary baseball player as the Cardinal player who later managed the New York Yankees, Joe Torre. Our relationship with Christ is at the center of the fifth beatitude, mercy. First, He forgives us when we are repentant. Second, He teaches us to be merciful to others, especially the least of our brothers and sisters, just as He would do. Third, He also expects us to teach others of God’s law and forgiveness so that they can benefit too. The prochoice position approaches mercy from a different perspective. It seeks no forgiveness from Christ although one of the choices it promotes takes the life of one of His least children. Its concept of mercy toward others does not include them, as if it expects God to stand aside when they are killed. Finally, it expects prolife persons to refrain from teaching others of God’s law. That law is contrary to one of the choices that the prochoice position finds acceptable. The essence of the prochoice position is not connected in relationships to God, His law, or others. While it speaks with compassion toward pregnant mothers in the rare cases where rape or incest caused the pregnancy or where a handicapped child results, it cannot undo the rape, the incest, or the handicapped child. At best, it can only stand by, in professed neutrality as to whether the child is killed or not. More frequently, the heart of the prochoice position is a professed compassion for the more common predicament of the pregnant mother in crisis: seemingly living on the edge of her financial capacity to make ends meet and lacking emotional support from the child’s father, who is all too often abusive to her. What distinguishes the prochoice position is that the lifeline thrown out to the mother in crisis is simply an invitation to cast away her unborn child, thereby destroying one of life’s most natural relationships. Afterwards, when the aborted mother is overwhelmed that she has taken the life of her own child, the prochoice position cannot assuage her grief. What rips women apart emotionally after abortion is their just sense of the magnitude of what they did to their own children. What these mothers need is not a god who stands silent afterwards. That god is one whose heart is stone cold, no less an idol than those to which ancient civilizations sacrificed their unwanted, unplanned children. What these mothers need is the God who wraps His arms around those children and whose arms are big enough to enfold them too. Only the true Savior of the world can have mercy for abortion victims, their parents and even the abortionists. Mercy in the prolife cause requires us to acknowledge that Jesus is the Savior of the aborted mother and the abortionist as well as the aborted child and us. Such a God can and does forgive each of us whenever we repent for transgressing His law. Abortion is not an unforgivable sin. Our actions are to be the image of Christ’s mercy. We are to be merciful in our actions toward aborted mothers and abortionists even while we come to the aid of the mothers who give birth to their children. Finally, we cannot stand silent while pregnant mothers consider abortion or aborted mothers experience emotional trauma afterwards. We must plead the cause of the children with conviction and we must help the aborted mothers come to Christ for healing.

BLOG HOME PAGE LINK Illinoislife.blogspot.com

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Press release: CIRTL opposes stealth abortion amendment

Central Illinois Right to Life opposes a stealth amendment to a health care reform bill that could be interpreted as mandating insurance coverage of abortion services.

The amendment was approved 12-11 on Thursday, July 9, by the U.S. Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee. The panel was working on the Affordable Health Choices Act health care bill, one of several proposed in Congress.

Sponsored by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., the amendment’s wording would require insurers, both public and private, to cover “essential community providers ... that serve predominantly low-income, medically under-served individuals.”

Planned Parenthood, which performs abortions at many of its clinics, is typically considered one such “community provider.”

Mikulski denied that the language was a mandate to cover abortions, but said, "It would provide for any service deemed medically necessary or medically appropriate."

The language is nothing but an attempt to use “health care reform” as a vehicle to make abortion even easier to obtain than it already is by forcing private insurers and taxpayers to fund it.

In the current climate of legal interpretation, “any service deemed medically necessary or medically appropriate” could easily be understood as referring to abortion, which has been defined by court rulings to be a private medical matter between a woman and her doctor.
Mikulski said that the language could be “sharpened in the future” to satisfy the concerns of senators who objected.

If that’s the case, why not sharpen it now — by deleting it so it couldn’t be misinterpreted at all?
Central Illinois Right to Life is a nonprofit organization that exists to educate, convince, and mobilize citizens to take responsible action in defense and support of innocent human life.
For more information, call us at 309-645-8000.

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Abortion right 'settled law': Sotomayor

According to BNONews.com, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has called Roe v. Wade "settled law."

And here I thought it was a court decision. Guess I need an updated copy of the Constitution.

Seriously, if it's a "law," why isn't it in any code of laws?

This exposes the predisposition of left-wing judges and their antipathy toward constitutional law when it interferes with their social agendas.

Friday, July 10, 2009

The Inadvertent Value of Garbage

Some have pointed out the obvious regarding the article from Askmen.com, “Dealing with an Unwanted Pregnancy.” Yes, it is a disgusting piece of trash! And something like this is hard to read with our heads without breaking our hearts.

However, the Pro-Life movement is in a struggle for the hearts and minds of people. And this effort is in large part a battle of words and ideas - for we cannot reach people’s hearts except through their minds. The opposition is actively engaged in this same pursuit. But they are devious and deceptive, rarely revealing who they really are and what they really think.

On occasion, one of them inadvertently divulges the truth of the pro-abortion mind-set for all to see - in this case in an internet magazine read by thousands if not millions of people. And true to form, Askmen.com pulled this thing off the web and pretended it was never there when complaints started to come in. Clearly, they suddenly realized that Ms. Snow had disclosed the nasty and indefensible reality that legalized abortion forces on many women. Whatever her intentions, the end product is the portrayal of women as objects for manipulation to abort by the very men who are supposed to love and protect their women and their children.

So, as in this case, when the abortion rights crowd does display their true colors, we must pin the tail on the donkey as clearly and as publicly as we can. And in order to be sure we hit the target, we may have to remove all blindfolds and look directly at the south end of the unclean beast in the process!

And so we must read and analyze – we must dig through the trash to reveal the evidence contained therein to everyone who will pay attention. This particular garbage can reeks with the foul consequences of abortion on demand. So we must hold our nose, remove the lid, and spread the rotten refuse on the public sidewalk in order that the passersby can get a good whiff of the stench.

A blunder such as this from a member of the pro-abortion crowd provides more power in the war of ideas than a hundred articles written by pro-lifers trying to point out the same thing – because the clear and ugly reality is coming directly from the "horse's mouth" so to speak.

This article is very disturbing, in what it reveals about the selfishness of a large number of men - also that a woman of all people would provide instruction to the irresponsible men of the world on how to manipulate women into killing their unborn children... I wonder how many of the ladies who go into abortion mills each day have been treated in just this manner or worse, (threats and violence, etc.,) by the father of their child. How many are going there, not because they freely "choose" to do so, (the big pro-choice lie that we are trying to expose,) but rather, because they have been pressured to the point that they do not think they have any other choice.

But yes, aside from the value of the Askmen.com article for use in the war of ideas – “trash," or perhaps some other more vivid descriptor, pretty much sums it up!

Monday, July 6, 2009

The Delicate Art of Manipulation

Here is a lovely little pro-choice ditty from AskMen.com entitled "Dealing with an Unwanted Pregnancy."

Askmen.com has since taken the article down from their website but this was the orginal page address on their site -

"http://www.askmen.com/dating/love_tip_300/379_love_tip.html" -

And here is a PDF file of the complete text of the article -

http://www.cirtl.org/pdfs/dealing_with_an_unwanted_pregnancy.pdf

This “Love Tip” purports to advise men who do not want to be fathers on how to make their wishes known to their pregnant partners. It turns out to be a "how to" manual, meticulously laying out the steps of the subtle art of emotionally manipulating a pregnant woman into having an abortion. Thank you Ms. Isabella Snow, (yes the article was written by a woman,) for your great service in the pro-choice cause, (also known as “Men’s Liberation!”)

Here are the final telling paragraphs from the article which lay out the coup de grĂ¢ce:

"Stand by your decision - If you’ve followed all of these steps and your woman decides to have the baby anyway, this does not mean you’re required to get married or move in together. You’ll probably want to provide for your child regardless, but if you’ve been clear about your intentions from the start, you are not obligated to contribute beyond what your conscience and the law expects of you. This was her decision, not yours, and the bulk of the responsibility is now hers.

Take a moment to spell this out for her when she gives you the final decision; it may just sway her over to your side."

Translated, “Get rid of that baby, or I’m out of here, and you can raise the kid on your own. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll send you a few bucks every now and then…”

Wait a minute, Ms. Snow - I thought the woman had already made her "final" decision!

Isn’t choice a wonderful thing...