Let Them Say, "I Regret My Child!"

Janet A. Morana, associate director for Priests for Life and co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, makes a very good point in her article, When Pro-Aborts Say, "I Do Not Regret My Abortion."

More and more women, as part of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, hold signs at public events saying "I regret my abortion." The pro-abortion side, in response to this effort, is trying to give visibility to women who say, "I had an abortion and I don't regret it at all." ... Here's the point. We are saying abortion is hurtful, and they are saying childbirth is hurtful... The alternative experience to killing an unborn child is giving birth to that child -- not killing the child and then saying it was OK. The point of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign is that what the other side defends and promotes (that is, abortion) has a negative side that is being hidden and denied. To round up a group of women to continue denying it only proves our point, not theirs. The denial, in other words, continues, and most of the women who now hold "I Regret my Abortion" signs once said that their abortion caused them no problem at all.

If the other side really wants to try to mount a counter-campaign, they need to do what we have done, namely, take what we promote and show the negative side of it. We promote childbirth. The true reverse of our campaign would be to have women publicly come out and say, "I regret my child."

These groups that put forth abortion as the emancipation of women simply do not have a good response to these women who have found each other and are coming out to tell other women that their abortions have hurt them profoundly. Planned Parenthood, NOW, and NARAL have been trying to ignore them, passing them off as simply anti-woman... yeah, right...

Please check out Silent No More.

Marie Antoinette: La Reine Martyr



Just wanted to point out www.emvidal.com, which is the blog of Elena Maria Vidal (aka Mary Eileen Russell), author of Trianon, a historical fiction novel about the life of Queen Marie Antoinette of France, and Madame Royale, the sequel concerning the life of the Queen's daughter after the French Revolution.

Russell also reviews Sofia Coppola's recent film about Marie Antoinette. Christina and I went to see this film a few weeks ago. While I loved the film's use of scenary and costume, I agree with Russell's review for the most part, particularly this:

The Coppola film ends when the Revolution begins, at the moment when as Marie-Antoinette came into her own as the daughter of a great empress and as a queen who would not forsake her husband or her duty, even when to do so cost her her life. The new generation of movie goers will be deprived of such an inspiration that would be so powerful on screen. Antoinette's Christian fortitude is ignored and her personal tragedy is trivialized amid a movie of froth. Without the spiritual depths, the depiction is shallow and incomplete. I do not begrudge people their enjoyment of an art film about decadent adolescents romping at Versailles, surrounded by pastries and champagne, but the real Marie-Antoinette seems to be missing.

I guess the bloody details of revolution, courage, and martyrdom are too much real history for today's adolescents to appreciate...

Dogma is a Progressive Good!

As an addendum to my previous blogpost on the necessity of dogma, I submit this additional quotation from G.K. Chesterton, offered by Dr. Thursday of the American Chesterton Society blog:

People talk nowadays of getting rid of dogmas and all agreeing like brethren. But upon what can they all agree except upon a common dogma? If you agree, you must agree on some statement, if it is only that a cat has four legs. If the dogmas in front of you are false, get rid of them; but do not say that you are getting rid of dogmas. Say that you are getting rid of lies. If the dogmas are true, what can you do but try to get men to agree with them? Nevertheless there is something deeper behind the rather vague attack on dogma which is widespread in our world. I think what the honest anti-dogmatists really mean about dogma is something like this: it is quite true that when one is talking to simple people such as children or the very poor, one does not repeat theoretic dogmas in their very theoretic form. One does not use frigid and philosophical language. One does not, in short, define the dogma. But let no one suppose that one is any the less dogmatic. For the simple truth is that, instead of defining the dogma, we simply assume the dogma. A mother does not say to her child, "There is a personal God, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe". She says, "God will be pleased if you are good". She is quite as dogmatic as a college of theologians. Nay, she is more dogmatic, for it is more dogmatic to assume that a dogma is true than to declare that a dogma is true. But she is certainly simpler and better adapted to looking after babies than a college of theologians would be. And from this fact flows a singular consequence. It does often happen that the more good or innocent a man is, the more he imagines that he is undogmatic. The truth is that, so far from being undogmatic, he believes his dogmas so implicitly that he thinks that they are truisms.

[GKC Daily News Feb 13 1906 quoted in Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox]

Remembrance Vespers, this week in Sugar Land

If you live in the Houston area, check this out. The Sugar Land choirs of St. Laurence Catholic Church and St. Theresa Catholic Church will be presenting an evening concert for Remembrance Vespers, featuring:
The Mass in G by Franz Schubert
with organ, orchestra, and soloists
conducted by Kevin Klotz

Thursday, November 9th, 7:30pm
at St. Theresa Catholic Church
115 Seventh St. in Sugar Land, TX
Admission is free, with free-will offering.