Catholic & political
Schilling, Timothy P.
Artificial contraception poses serious risks to women's health. Catholic spokesmen have been making this particular claim since the early years of the twentieth century. And yet the same...
...Like His apostles, you have the power to bring the bread of life to those who are near death, to heal the sick, to shed light into the darkness of ignorance, to bring shelter to the homeless, hope to those in despair...
...Dire symptoms, however, mandate careful diagnosis...
...In November he will vote by absentee ballot...
...I believe this is the cosmic plan, and I struggle mightily to live my life accordingly...
...This ought to be the end of the story...
...When will we see a Democratic leader who possesses the moral clarity and intellectual vigor to say something like: With malice toward none...
...This occurred in Muncie, Indiana—christened "Middletown" USA in a groundbreaking sociological study of the early twentieth century...
...That's what I was looking for as a college undergraduate and officer of the University Democrats...
...with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in...
...the most recent epidemiological studies dispute a once-suspected correlation between the two...
...However, the waters got stirred along the way, and integrating my personal beliefs and political choices has proved to be anything but easy...
...My embrace of Catholicism compelled me to reconsider political opinions I had taken for granted, with abortion being perhaps the most profound example...
...May your tenebrific spirit (Rank fruit of wrath and flight) Be freed from endless darkness Into Christ's transfigured light...
...My parents also supported McGovern because they thought he best represented their ideals about social justice and opportunity for all...
...I am not a social activist...
...I don't doubt that the dangers we face are real or the steps we must take to preserve this nation will be harsh...
...And yet the same century saw an unprecedented increase in women's life expectancy, particularly in the developed nations, where contraceptive use is most widespread...
...The idea that politics must serve the common good and help care for the weakest segments of society seeped into my own political consciousness at an early age...
...Moreover, it puts me in touch with experiences (challenges) that many share and that I otherwise would have missed: marriage, parenting, providing for and protecting one's family, pursuing a career...
...Catholic spokesmen have been making this particular claim since the early years of the twentieth century...
...If one accepts as an article of faith that contraception is the cause of all our sexual woes, then Hagen is surely right...
...Contraception, moreover, is here to stay—no matter what the bishops say...
...Our present woes have multiple causes...
...For more information, call Joan Vidal at 877-654-2960, ext...
...if I knew with absolute certainty that God has given us an immortal soul, is watching over us, and will judge us mercifully at the end of our days...
...The bishops should indeed press ahead with their "easily understandable booklet...
...My secular, atheistic philosophy (embraced in earnest as a teenager) had brought me to a dead end...
...Leslie Woodcock Tentler is professor of history at The Catholic University of America...
...Certain contraceptives have in fact been physically harmful: the Dalkon Shield, a nolonger-marketed version of the IUD, did dreadful damage to some of its users, while the earliest version of the pill contained what many researchers now regard as dangerously high levels of estrogen...
...Timothy P. Schilling CATHOLIC & POLITICAL Between a rock & a hard place he first presidential election I gave any thought to was Nixon-McGovern, 1972...
...That marriage is a vanishing institution among certain vulnerable segments of our population, and in trouble among the rest of us...
...Oratio Pro Caravaggio Devouring desire, Longing indiscriminate, Two-souled (like the rest of us) Driven to despair...
...Once we can speak honestly about marriage, we will be in a much better position to guide our young people through the sexual jungle that is their unhappy inheritance...
...We are also in the midst of a presidential election that will decide who will lead us in that war...
...America need not succumb to self-doubt: it was "morning in America...
...As Catholics, we should be internally consistent in our beliefs and come to coherent, consistent moral and political choices...
...On the other hand, by not becoming a priest—by marrying and raising two children—I have entered into a life that is, I am sure, most in tune with the person who, deep down, I believe myself to be...
...But one day I found myself no longer thinking of myself as a Democrat...
...My suspicion is that many Catholics are stuck between Catholic idealism and Nietzschean realism, wanting to trust the angels of their better nature, but fearing that the gospel is not true and hedging their bets just to be on the safe side...
...Catholicism, while continuing to have great influence on my political views, has not, by itself, supplied the neat integration of life and ideals I had hoped for...
...Over time the sense of rescue, the experience of salvation and conversion, transformed my most basic choices...
...Becoming a practicing Catholic and taking into account the Catholic Priests needed to be the voice of Christ on behalf of the poor children of the world...
...On many other questions, political positions advocated by the church matched views I had long held...
...It was one thing to think of a radical, self-sacrificial commitment as a twenty-three-year-old seminarian...
...McGovern lost in a landslide election...
...Before my conversion, I had never thought much about the life of the unborn child...
...Far better, in my view, for Catholic leaders to begin to speak about living the vocation of Christian marriage in the real world—about marriages that are communities of life and love, where fidelity to spouse and family is what makes every act of marital intercourse simultaneously unitive and procreative...
...Your words, preached in churches throughout the United States, can touch hearts and move mountains...
...After we raised our hands it became clear that my parents were the only ones for McGovern...
...I was fascinated by politics...
...Positions are now available at Food For The Poor for English speaking and bilingual (English/Spanish) Roman Catholic priests...
...That was my spontaneous reaction upon first reading the "doomsday" paragraphs of Humanae vitae, where the pope predicts widespread moral collapse should the church permit contraception in marriage...
...Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's "seamless garment" approach made perfect sense to me...
...As the feeble support for McGovern showed, Muncie was still a reliable barometer of the nation's sentiments...
...In some ways, I feel that my life as it is now sells my ideals short...
...Life would be easier if I knew for sure that it was all going to work out in the end...
...Robert P. Imbelli Commonweal 1 2 June 4, 2004...
...At the same time, I've been waiting for a Catholic Lincoln to make his appearance, someone who combines political realism with conscience and the ability to call the American people to their better nature...
...I couldn't bear Reagan...
...I started thinking about going to seminary...
...If this says anything at all about contraception, it would seem to suggest that birth control is good for women, at least in a physiological sense...
...I felt right at home, for example, with the U.S...
...with charity for all...
...High rates of teenaged pregnancy in the United States predate the pill...
...That comment didn't turn me into a Republican, but it did make me wonder about being a Democrat...
...to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan— to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations...
...Pope Paul VI was an accurate prophet...
...I haven't embraced voluntary poverty...
...We urgently need priests like you...
...Our ministry works directly with clergy in the Caribbean and Latin America to feed, shelter and clothe the poor...
...I'd grown up in a terrible period which included the war in Vietnam, Watergate, a faltering economy, the hostage debacle, and Carter's misplaced worries about a national "malaise...
...The debate coach's comment also touched another nerve: a longing to support my country and see it succeed...
...If this world is all there is, don't we have an obligation to make the best of it...
...Then shouldn't we just get real and stop kidding ourselves and make sure that America remains a strong, safe, and prosperous country...
...I opened my mind, and gradually my heart, to the possibility of faith...
...Commitment is only for weekends • Salary/stipend, paid vacations, health insurance, travel and expenses provided • No relocation necessary • Must have permission from bishop or major superior "Whoever we, ,,m, in My nan , ,,rn of these chili/t w. welcomes A le...
...Welfare programs did seem, as Republicans repeatedly said, to keep people in a state of dependence instead of empowering them...
...Share the Gospel...
...My parents voted for McGovern because of the war in Vietnam...
...I am not living a life of sacrificial service to the poor...
...C M FOOD FOR THE POOR, INC...
...Viewed from 2004, his litany of moral disasters seems rather tame— a contemporary reader is immediately tempted to embellish it...
...Seeing no way to help myself, I had to look elsewhere...
...I asked what she meant...
...More precisely, I decided to claim for my own the religious tradition into which I'd been born...
...multinationals to guarantee our disproportionate prosperity and our freedom to speak of noble values...
...What if, after all, power decides, might makes right, and idealism and notions about people's inherent dignity are just wishful thinking...
...But doubt is not something I ever get around entirely...
...I didn't even know if my ideals had any real foundation...
...The church is wise, but it does not supply blueprints for living...
...I don't know these things for sure, I can only take them on faith...
...I wanted my country to be a shining example to the world...
...But alarmist claims about pill use and breast cancer have not been borne out...
...Timothy P. Schilling writes from the Center for Parish Spirituality, Nijmegen, the Netherlands...
...to bind up the nation's wounds...
...Americans had the world's highest divorce rates when it was still illegal to send contraceptive information through the mail...
...Why is it, she asked, that amorality seems to be the prerequisite for effectiveness...
...6419 Commonweal I I June 4, 2004 teaching of the church did not make me feel any less compassion for women in the terrible situation of contemplating an abortion, but it did challenge my notion of when life begins and what it entails (when understood in the context of God's love...
...Who can doubt that we live in a hypersexualized culture...
...It's so easy to talk a good game of ideals (going to church, supporting good causes, saying the right words) while looking the other way and relying on our military's pulverizing might and U.S...
...Maybe we were too soft, maybe we were too often misled by naive ("idealistic") notions of how the world works...
...Not until my high-school years did I have second thoughts...
...I quit the University Democrats, telling a fellow member that being Catholic now defined my political views in a way that being a Democrat no longer could...
...A woman's right to choose was an infallible dogma for Democrats—a view I had never seriously questioned...
...Beauty-besotted child, Craving beyond measure, Passionately seeking A half-forgotten face...
...Our nation did seem better able to negotiate peace from a position of strength...
...My first-grade teacher asked if we knew whom our parents would be voting for...
...She talked about how President Jimmy Carter, for all his high-mindedness, seemed not to get anywhere (as in the Iran hostage crisis), but Reagan, who was stockpiling weapons like crazy and cutting taxes for the rich, appeared to be getting results...
...That courtship among the young has been increasingly displaced by a crude exchange of sexual favors...
...I felt desperate, trapped in myself, and I didn't see how I could generate the energy to live according to my own ideals...
...Serve the Po Join the outreach of Food For The Poor today...
...It is something else altogether to do so as a thirty-eight-year-old married man who wants to respect the views of his non-Catholic wife, materially provide for his two young children, and find his own way in a world full of risks...
...So far, he's not on the ballot...
...More important, American women today live longer, healthier lives than ever before...
...Mark g...
...How do we know that contraception is the root cause of these disorders...
...And what if what the church teaches isn't true...
...My life is comfortable and privileged and my sacrifices are anything but dramatic...
...I was grateful for the support when one girl said she wasn't sure...
...I'd become a Catholic...
...I'm afraid this hedging is what I do myself...
...One day, though, my debate coach, a liberal like me, mulled over the Reagan presidency on the long ride home from a tournament...
...Its credibility has also been undermined by institutionalized bad habits and failures of judgment and courage...
...I did not become a priest...
...That was during Ronald Reagan's first term...
...As a historian, however, I find this leap of faith eludes me...
...bishops' pastoral letters on the economy, nuclear arms, and capital punishment...
...Where was the Democrat who could combine Reagan's optimism and effectiveness with Carter's compassion and moral probity...
...One thing Reagan got right, in my view, was his utter conviction that we could usher in a new day...
...My father, who served in the Army in Vietnam (1967-68), returned opposed to the war...
...I couldn't read enough books recounting FDR's grappling with the Great Depression and, as a boy, I was a convinced Democrat who wanted to be "1Vh01 !h) 1/011 uirnii, 1/1111 ~u~~irl to Vi .istrr,/ i7 I~r~tu~cr~iN" T SCHWADRON Commonweal I 0 June 4, 2004 president...
...The rate of abortion in the mid-nineteenth-century United States, when contraception was unmentionable in polite public discourse, was probably almost as high as it is today...
...We are in the midst of a "war" on terrorism that threatens much of what we hold dear...
...The pope, in fact, didn't know the half of it...
Vol. 131 • June 2004 • No. 11
