Author: Pia de Solenni

No Discussion, Please. We Want Diversity.

February 13, 2014 1:42 pm February 13, 2014

5 min read

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Oh that ignorant Catholic Church. Once again, it has a different view from those who preach “diversity.” The Catholic Church in Poland has come under attack for apparently challenging “gender…

Oh that ignorant Catholic Church. Once again, it has a different view from those who preach “diversity.”

The Catholic Church in Poland has come under attack for apparently challenging “gender workshops,” a type of sex-ed class in the schools that present children with “alternatives” to permanent monogamous heterosexual relations. According to an article in Our Sunday Visitor, the circumstances are not quite clear. Nevertheless, in a column for the theguardian.com, Agata Pyzik attacks the Church in a way that makes it seem that she, the Church, and other critics of the Church are at least agreed upon the subject of the dispute, namely the “gender workshops” and accompanying topics like abortion and contraception.

Think about it. The gender agenda, inclusive of same-sex marriage, is probably the largest social experiment in the history of humanity. And it’s being driven by anything but science. Gender is a fluid notion despite the scientific fact that the human person’s sex is determined at conception.

It’s interesting that at the same time that most European countries won’t stand for altering the integrity of food produce with genetically modified organisms [GMOs], the integrity of the human person is discounted insofar as one’s sex is considered to be arbitrary, changeable, even mistaken, not an integral and essential part of who we are even though…again…it’s determined at conception. That’s pure science. Not religion, not the Bishops, not the Pope. There is no human being created who is not male or female and yet the significance of that seems to count for very little in some circles.

Obviously people are going to have different thoughts and feelings about policies impacting society in such a profound way. At the very least, differing view points ought to be discussed, pondered, and explored. Instead, any suggestion that perhaps this experiment needs some rethinking or perhaps children should not be the guinea pigs of a vast social experiment (an EXPERIMENT!), results in an attempt to shut down the dissenting voice[s]. Then again, this is Poland we’re talking about. Perhaps the decades of Communism have left a deeper impact than we thought, namely that a voice that challenges a questionable and potentially harmful idea should be shut down, especially if it’s the Catholic Church. After all, a 2,000 year-old institution has no experience to draw upon…

Pyzik ~~discusses the issue~~ assaults the Church for its actions to stop the “gender workshops.”[A quick internet search turned up this bio which describes her as a writer whose primary interest is “(post) Communist Eastern Europe.”] She refers to a recent comment by actress Meryl Streep to Polish politicians:

“I thought that after years of communism you’d caught up with the west in a social-cultural sense.”

Pyzik notes, however,

“… it was during the People’s Republic when women in Poland enjoyed civil and reproductive rights.

“Enjoyed”? Last I checked, the flow of traffic, had the borders been open, would have been out of Communist countries, not into them, precisely because human rights were not acknowledged and supported by law. The rates of abortion in Communist countries have been notoriously high, due to factors like population control, economic conditions, and a basic lack of hope for the future.

Let’s talk about contraception for a moment. Back in 2005, the World Health Organization repeated its 1999 finding that hormonal contraception is a Group 1 carcinogen for humans, in other words hormonal contraception creates a serious cancer risk for women who use it. Yet, Pyzik is not alone in mistakenly seeing it as a part of women’s “rights” or “health.” The current HHS mandate in the U.S. makes the same assertion, apparently without any thought to women’s health.

Given that we’re talking about a very serious drug with dangerous side effects, shouldn’t doctors and pharmacists be able to make the decision to refuse to expose a patient to the danger of a particular treatment? It’s not as if a patient has a right to any medication that she deems necessary. That’s left to the doctor’s discretion. Ethical doctors don’t automatically write prescriptions without first diagnosing the patient and then considering the effects (good and bad) of the treatment. Doctors who are driven by an agenda rather than the health of the patient, well they’re unethical.

But this abortion+contraception = women’s rights formula is all part of a tired, albeit all too successful trope. If something is repeated often enough, it seems true no matter how dubious it might actually be.

I’ve listened to women who have had abortions. Many women. I’ve only had one tell me years after that it was a good choice for her. I’ve met with and researched doctors who work in the developing countries who would like to provide safe maternal care. Instead they are provided with contraceptives…even though their patients want safe deliveries and healthy babies.

With regard to the gender issues, Pyzik complains:

Even scientists speak in one voice with the church: the Polish Academy of Sciences published a letter in which they called the gender workshops an attempt at “unseating children from their own sex”.

I dunno. When I question a scientist, it’s about methodology, not whether or not the scientist agrees with the Catholic Church.

How about measuring progress in terms other than abortion, contraception, and how one chooses to use one’s genitalia? And while we’re at it, it wouldn’t hurt to have an open discussion about a major, major, major social EXPERIMENT.

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Ready to Rumble: Discussing a Theology of Woman.

Pia de Solenni

September 16, 2013 1:10 pm September 16, 2013

2 min read

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I’ll be on the Drew Mariani Show, hosted by Wendy Wiese at 4.30 ET today to discuss the theology of women. A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece prompted by…

I’ll be on the Drew Mariani Show, hosted by Wendy Wiese at 4.30 ET today to discuss the theology of women.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece prompted by Pope Francis’ implicit call for a theology of woman. Generated a variety of responses. Check them out and guess which is my favorite…

Simcha Fisher offered some much appreciated support, too.

As did Elizabeth Scalia on Facebook. I’ll just post her comment here. She cites Simcha’s article:

Look, Catholic women are in a very peculiar position in the 21st century. Many of us have, like de Solenni, rejected the radical feminism that the secular world offers. We are horrified that the feminist movement devolved into a parody of itself, and almost instantly turned from its sorely needed goal of promoting respect and justice for women, and became ugly and strident, rejecting fertility, scorning self-sacrifice, devaluing men and damaging women and children.

But most of the Catholic women I know are just as disgusted with the sissifcation of the Church. We have no desire to replace the sacraments with weaving classes and yoga. This is stupid stuff. This doesn’t tell you what woman can offer, any more than a stroll down the porn and firearms aisle of your local porn and firearms store tells you what men have to offer.

I do not want to be a man, and I do not want to be like a man. I also do not want to turn the Church into a hand-holding, feelings-sharing warm bath of emotion. That’s a parody of womanhood, and it’s just as offensive to women of faith as it is to men of faith.

This is precisely why we need a theology of women: because we’re tired of the parodies, the clownish extremes that purport to represent womanhood.

Brava, Somechop Fisher and Pia de Solenni. These extremes are killing us.

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Why We’re Praying & Fasting Today

Pia de Solenni

September 7, 2013 12:12 am September 7, 2013

7 min read

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Because these people need help and it’s not clear that a military intervention will help them. In fact, it’s pretty well understood that the most vulnerable segments of society…

Because these people need help and it’s not clear that a military intervention will help them.

Photo from the Pontifical Council for the Family's appeal in support of Pope Francis' call for a day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria.

In fact, it’s pretty well understood that the most vulnerable segments of society and the minority communities (e.g. Christians) will suffer the most.

John Allen, an expert Vatican journalist has an excellent piece comparing the similarities in the Pope’s/Vatican’s approach to Iraq and Syria. He makes the very important point that despite John Paul II’s call for peace in Iraq, he never called the war in Iraq illegitimate (or unjust).

In his Angelus Address last Sunday (rough Vatican English translation here), Pope Francis enunciated the evils of war. As world leaders consider any type of military attack on Syria, it is absolutely fundamental that they realistically consider the reality of the effects of war, particularly on the innocent and the weak. Part of the criteria for the just war theory is that every other means of stopping the aggressor “must be shown to be impractical or ineffective” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2309). Leaders and citizens around the world have yet to be convinced.

Consider the response from a Senator of President Obama’s same Democrat party. James Taranto in his “Best of the Web” column on Thursday, picked up on it following the Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote (10-7) on Wednesday to approve the President’s request for authorization to use military force in Syria:

The committee vote shows that both parties are divided. As the Washington Post notes, two of the panel’s 10 Democrats, Connecticut’s Chris Murphy and New Mexico’s Tom Udall, voted “no.” Three Republicans voted “yes.” The Senate’s most junior member, Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey (elected in June to fill the John Kerry vacancy), voted “present,” although his comments suggest he was leaning toward “no” owing to “my worry about a greater involvement in Syria.”

One is tempted to mock Markey for that old Obama gambit–“he vowed to make a decision by next week,” the Globe reports–yet one resists the temptation when one reads his rationale: “Asked why he didn’t just oppose the authorization, as did some of his colleagues who had similar concerns, he said, ‘A “no” vote would have indicated I had sufficient information on which to base the decision. Which I did not.’ “ Given the way this administration bullied through ObamaCare and other domestic legislation, it is easy to believe that concern is well-founded. [Emphasis mine.]

I’ll take Sen. Markey’s comments and vote as a suggestion that the Pope is not off-base in calling for prayer and fasting.

There’s a reason why we have the saying, “Pray like it all depends on God; work like it all depends on you.” Part of the role of prayer is that it can lead the mind to greater understanding and clarity. Since the world doesn’t see yet a clear and better solution, the Pope’s suggestion might actually lead to some successful options. Fasting is a means of detachment and a way of offering sacrifice for one’s own sins, for reconciliation, or for the good of others. It “expresses a conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others” (Catechism, 1434). That’s what we’re looking for: conversion. And part of conversion is to better understand the will of God. We know that his will is peace; we just don’t know yet which forms of justice we need to arrive at that peace.

Representative Chris Smith has come up with an interesting alternative to a military strike: set up a Syrian war crimes tribunal:

It [A war crimes tribunal] shows the power of what happens when everyone’s watching and you know you will be held accountable. Before Bashir got indicted, he was a free agent. Even people like Charles Taylor [who was indicted of war crimes by the Sierra Leone tribunal] understood this when he fled to Nigeria, then the Nigerians coughed him up, and now he’s convicted. People get genuinely concerned when they’re isolated and know that we’re going to be relentless until they’re behind bars.

Not a bad idea. I’ll leave it to the relevant experts to examine it. But it points to the very reality that there are other options to consider before military aggression.

Another consideration was put forth in an explosive article by Oriana Fallaci in 2003, just as the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq. Versions of the article were published in The Sunday Times and The Wall Street Journal. Fallaci, also an expert journalist, though not a Vaticanista by any means (she was a professed atheist), argued that in order for an invasion to work, the culture on the ground had to be primed for regime change. As a member of the Italian resistance when the Allies invaded Italy, she lived the experience of wanting and fighting for freedom and democracy. The resistance was the Italians who were the boots on the ground before the Allies arrived.

There was no significant resistance to Saddam Hussein waiting to meet troops as they went into Iraq.

A generation of young people had grown up without much education and people with means had fled the country. That does not leave a society ready for democracy. Sure, there were plenty of grateful people, like these school children with my brother in Iraq. But many factors, including the embargo (which was not supported by the Vatican because, again, the least among them would suffer the most) left a society that was not prepared.

Fallaci explained:

To redesign it and to spread a Pax Romana, pardon, a Pax Americana, where freedom and democracy reign; where nobody bothers us any longer with attacks and massacres. Where everybody can prosper and live happily as in the fairy tales — nonsense. Freedom is not a gift, like a piece of chocolate, and democracy cannot be imposed with armies.

Yes, I know it’s odd that I’m quoting a woman who at the same time targeted John Paul II with her screed. But part of good prudential reasoning when deciding whether to use military force includes a consideration of a variety of opinions and, perhaps most importantly, history.

In his Angelus Address, Francis forcefully stated, “War never again! Never again war!” John Paul II said the same about Iraq. He was quoting Paul VI. Maybe one way to understand these exhortations would be to see them as a goal, not unlike Jesus telling people to “go and sin no more,” even though they most likely did and we certainly do.

The decisions we make now will pave the way for the future. If we are striving for a world without war, then we must act justly. At this point, justice demands that we ascertain whether all other means have been exhausted, success is a strong possibility, and that the evils caused by the use of arms are not greater than the evil to be eliminated. As long as those questions are open and debatable, we need serious prayer so that we and our leaders can approach things with clear minds and honest hearts.

Pope Francis will lead the prayer vigil today in Rome from 7p.m. to 11p.m. local time (Eastern Time 1p.m. to 5 p.m.) You can follow along in the Italian/Latin booklet. You can watch live. Wherever you are, whatever your faith, do take a moment to lift your mind and heart to God for peace in Syria and throughout the world. I’m certain we can all think of situations requiring the blessing of peace.

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Kiss This Man!

Pia de Solenni

August 30, 2013 11:00 am August 30, 2013

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It’s what a friend of mine in college would say when she wanted to make a point. Yes, random. But I thought of it as a I read Matt Walsh’s…

It’s what a friend of mine in college would say when she wanted to make a point. Yes, random. But I thought of it as a I read Matt Walsh’s blog post, “Dear son, don’t let Robin Thicke be a lesson to you.” I don’t know Walsh, but his post is an absolute must-read.

In this debacle of commentary surrounding the recent Miley Cyrus MTV stunt, which is taking center stage as the world is about to erupt in World War III (duly noted by Walsh), the conversation has centered largely on Cyrus’s behavior, with no mention of Robin Thicke’s culpability. Walsh writes:

A 36 year old married man and father, grinding against an intoxicated 20 year old while singing about how she’s an “animal” and the “hottest b***h in this place.” And what happens the next day? We’re all boycotting the 20 year old. The grown man gets a pass.

The fact that the conversation centers largely on Cyrus also suggests – at least to me – an implicit misogyny in our hypersexualized culture. It takes advantage of women and then blames them. How convenient. By “it”, I mean all of society, both women and men. It’s twisted and perverse.

I’ve written a lot about the role of women, most recently addressing Pope Francis’s comments on the theology of woman. (More on that next week.) I’ve always insisted that the only way forward is to see women and men as complementary and that we need a parallel new masculinism or theology of man. But a woman can’t do it.

Here’s hoping that Walsh is starting a movement. Meanwhile, if he’s the real deal (and I certainly hope he is), he won’t be kissing anyone but his wife. Here’s the letter to his son from the post above:

Dear son,

Don’t let Robin Thicke be a lesson to you.

Don’t let any of these pigs and perverts you see on TV be a lesson to you. They treat women like garbage; they possess no chivalry, no self control; they are disloyal and dishonest; they spend all day pursuing pleasure at the expense of others, and they encourage you to do the same. You might be tempted to follow suit. In fact, you WILL be tempted. These male pop stars and celebrities, look at them, you’ll think. They take advantage of emotionally broken, self loathing, confused young women, and they are rewarded handsomely for it. Look at their nice clothes and their nice cars. Look how they are admired and loved. Look, they treat women like trash and other women fawn all over them because of it. This must be how real men behave, you’ll think.

And you’ll be wrong. You’ll be wrong about a lot of things in life — this is what it means to be human — but never will you be more wrong than when you feel the temptation to buy the lies that pop culture sells about the nature of true masculinity. Son, there is nothing glamorous or fun about being a man of low character and no integrity. What you see on TV is a facade. It’s a sales pitch. It’s poison. You see the bright lights and the sexy women, but you don’t see what happens when the cameras are off and these pop culture gods return to their lives as mere mortals. You don’t see them in their big, empty, lonely houses. You don’t see the emptiness in the pit of their souls. You don’t see all the alcohol and drugs they have to use to dull the pain of living a life devoid of real, committed relationships. You don’t see the hatred they have for themselves and for humanity. You don’t see the jealousy they have towards normal, decent men.

Your dad is no celebrity. He’s just an average, boring guy. But he’s got something that every famous and non-famous womanizer envies: He’s got the love and commitment of ONE beautiful, smart, faithful woman. He’s got your mom, and he’ll only have your mom until the day he dies. He ought to be waking up every day shouting praises to the Lord because of that.

Listen, son, don’t let the world tell you how to be a man. They don’t know anything about the subject.

Men are loyal. Men are honest. Men respect and honor women. A man goes out and finds one woman, and he vows to protect and love her for the rest of his life. A man would never betray that vow. Even the weakest and most cowardly man — if he is a man at all — would die for the woman he loves. Your dad is no hero, but let someone try to hurt your mom and watch him suddenly turn into Superman (or Batman, whichever you prefer).

See, son, you don’t have to be big and strong to be a man, although I think you will be one day. You don’t have to be “cool” or athletic. You don’t have to play guitar or fix cars. These are all fine things, but they don’t define a man. A man is defined by how he treats women, by how he keeps his promises, and by how he protects and serves the ones he loves. That’s what makes a man a man. My dad taught me that, he taught it by example. I pray I can do the same for you.

Oh, and by the way, if I ever catch you disrespecting women, I will sit you down and talk to you about it. But first I’ll kick your butt up and down the street. That’s a promise.

Love,

Your old man

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A Week In The Life: Four Scenes That Make Sense Of It All

Pia de Solenni

May 30, 2013 9:00 am May 30, 2013

6 min read

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Several years ago, my husband was at a dinner with a CNN executive. The inevitable and predictable question arose: “Why do news outlets run so much bad news? Why can’t…

Several years ago, my husband was at a dinner with a CNN executive. The inevitable and predictable question arose: “Why do news outlets run so much bad news? Why can’t they tell more positive and heartwarming stories?” After all, most of us don’t need convincing that ours is a fallen world. The answer was pretty simple, honest, and straightforward. Good news doesn’t sell. People tune in more for bad news than for good news.

Still, I’d argue that we actually need to hear the good stories. Otherwise, the brokeness of life gets to be too much. A professor of mine told the story of a friend who was giving a mission in Trinidad – partway through his stern hellfire and damnation preaching, a woman stood up and said, “Father, we all knows we’s sinners. Tell us something we don’t know.”

So here are four stories just from the past week or so, reminding us that things are not so bad, that life is beautiful.

1. The three angels of Woolwich. Last Wednesday, two men in the UK brutally attacked and slaughtered a soldier dressed in his civvies just outside his base. A big part of me really wrestled with the brutality of the attack, the fact that people stood by watching and recording it on their phones! But there were three heroes. Three women. Three Marys.

Gemini Donnelly-Martin her mother Amanda Donnelly confronted the killers and tried to attend to the victim Drummer Lee Rigby. They blocked him from further attack and Amanda prayed for him when she saw that there was nothing else she could do. In the midst of pure evil, goodness triumphed.

Around the same time [this is all one scene], Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, also a passerby like the other two women, stopped to confront one of the killers who was holding a bloody knife. She did so without thought for herself. She did it because she feared that a child in particular might be the next victim. Her child? No, any child, one that she probably wouldn’t even know.

Heroes. All of these women. But they say they’re not. They confronted violence with truth and prayer. Not one of them had a weapon. Yet they were stronger than the evil surrounding them. Ingrid credits her Catholic faith. And it’s interesting that the very fact that they were women seemed to give them some sort of credibility or respect with these vicious killers. I wonder if men could have been as peacefully effective…? Just wondering…

2. Baby 59. Just five days ago, a woman trying to hide her pregnancy, delivered a baby into a toilet in China. The baby boy ended up stuck in the plumbing. People heard his cries and rescuers went to great lengths to save him, which they did. This is a country where forced abortion and sterilization are the norm in order to meet the standards of a wretched one-child per family policy. In a country where the culture of death seems quite dominant, people took time to hear a child crying and to rescue him. Let’s face it, there are other, more brutal ways of unblocking plumbing…they would have destroyed the Baby 59 (apparently named after the number of his incubator). His rescue has prompted a discussion of China’s extreme population control, even in Time Magazine. It wasn’t so long ago that only “crazy pro-lifers” acknowledged these human rights violations. Now there’s a mainstream discussion, in part because of Baby 59’s sad but triumphant entry into this world.

3. The Korean Baby Box. Faced with the reality of unwanted babies regularly abandoned on the streets and left to die, Pastor Lee Jong-rak built the first baby box in Korea. It’s a drop box of sorts for women who might otherwise abandon their babies, especially handicapped babies. Pastor Jong-rak thought it might not even be effective, but it was worth a try. On the contrary, the box has been very busy, “delivering” even five babies in one week. Clearly, the good pastor was onto something. Those babies that could’ve been tossed out have become a witness of something far greater than evil. The baby box was covered in a 2009 LA Times story [I remember reading it back then.], which was read by Brian Ivie. He decided to go to Korea to do a documentary on the dropbox. In the midst of making his film, he became a Christian:

I became a Christian while making this movie. When I started to make it and I saw all these kids come through the drop box – it was like a flash from heaven, just like these kids with disabilities had crooked bodies, I have a crooked soul. And God loves me still. When it comes to this sanctity of life issue, we must realize that that faith in God is the only refuge for people who are deemed unnecessary. This world is so much about self-reliance, self-worth, and self-esteem. It’s a total illusion that we can be self-sufficient. Christ is the only thing that enables us.

His film, The Drop Box, has won awards and may even be picked up for widespread distribution. Babies that might be considered nothing more than trash end up teaching people who don’t even know them some of the most basic truths. In the words of Dr. Seuss, “A person is a person, no matter how small.”

4. Dallas the cat. One of my aunts sent me this story about a woman, Jackie Sharp, who found her cat thirteen years after he disappeared. I can hear some of you now. A cat? Seriously, a cat makes headline news? What about all the children who are abused? What about all the awful things that happen to innocent people every day? Don’t you know that some animals are treated better than humans?!

So here’s my defense. Yes, it’s a cat; but only civilized societies domesticate and value animals as pets. As overwhelming as the bad news can be, I think it’s quite lovely that someone should care for another creature as this woman did. And her cat gave her support and comfort that she needed during difficult times.

Let’s be honest. Discouragement keeps us from hoping and, frequently, from doing. If things are that bad, why even try? Christians recognize discouragement as a tool of the devil. But you don’t have to be a Christian to know that life is better when you have hope and when you at least try. Try, try again. As John Paul II noted, the saint is not the perfect person. It’s the person who gets up every time after falling.

Or put another way, the poet W.B. Yeats wrote:

…Come away – With the fairies, hand in hand, For the world is more full of weeping Than you can understand.

To which, G.K. Chesterton replied, concluding:

The world is hot and cruel, We are weary of heart and hand, But the world is more full of glory Than you can understand.

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There are Kermit Gosnells everywhere and they can be brought to justice.

Pia de Solenni

May 17, 2013 11:14 am May 17, 2013

5 min read

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This week brought us the conviction of Kermit Gosnell, a man whom I refuse to recognize as a medical doctor and whom the state of Pennsylvania should have shut down…

This week brought us the conviction of Kermit Gosnell, a man whom I refuse to recognize as a medical doctor and whom the state of Pennsylvania should have shut down long ago. Gosnell, apparently, didn’t do abortions very well; so he had his staff dope up his patients with various drugs so that they would deliver the fetus on their own (at which point, legally, it magically becomes a baby because she’s now outside of the mother) and then he or another staff member would kill the fetus-now-baby. Had the same been done to the fetus/baby inside the womb, it would have been just another routine abortion. Nonetheless, these late term atrocities make real what is abortion at any stage.

When the Philadelphia Grand Jury submitted its report on Gosnell’s clinic, most pro-life activists and leaders thought that there were less than five doctors nationwide who performed late-term abortions, i.e. abortions done after the fetus is viable. (If the mother wanted that same baby and delivered her prematurely, that baby would be taken to the NICU.)

Gosnell made it clear that there was at least one more doctor who terminated the lives of very developed fetuses. (Fetus, incidentally, is a Latin word that can be used to describe both the born and unborn child; so the truth comes forth even as people would try to obfuscate the humanity of the unborn.) My response to his conviction? There are many more such doctors. This week of Gosnell’s conviction also brought news of another so-called doctor who appears to be just like him. This time it’s Douglas Karpen who runs three abortion clinics in Texas. Former employees from one of his clinics in Houston have come forth with testimony and evidence. It’s disturbing beyond words. But I firmly believe that it should be shown on all of our media outlets so that we can have an honest debate about abortion. Sanitizing it or ignoring it doesn’t give us an honest discussion.

Since Gosnell went to trial, there have been a lot of questions from pro-lifers. We don’t want another woman or her child to go through the same horror as the patients of Gosnell, now Karpen, and quite possibly many other abortionists. After all, legalizing abortion was supposed to eliminate the horrors of “back alley abortions.” Instead legalization has just given these criminals the cover that they need to do irreparable harm to thousands of women and fetuses/babies.

So what do we do? My suggestion: Take the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report and use it as a playbook. Sure, you might get legislation passed, but these doctors don’t bend their practices to the law. They act regardless of the law which ironically gives them cover…for a while.

The Grand Jury Report lists numerous instances where local and state government agencies failed to follow through on reports received. Want to find out who’s the Gosnell in your community? Start asking around. Just recently, I learned of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic that shut down. In that same neighborhood there were, as in every neighborhood, other people who saw the comings and goings of the clinic, including four ambulances in recent months on the days that the clinic did abortions. Surely, PP isn’t calling an ambulance because they ran into a crisis while handing out condoms or some other form of contraception. And, guess what? Those ambulances took patients somewhere, presumably to a hospital. And most states have some sort of reporting requirement when a patient shows up with a botched procedure done outside the hospital. Who makes and gets those reports? Ultimately, they have to end up at a local or state agency, probably an office of the Department of Health. What happens to those reports? This is the sleuth work that needs to be done by pro-life activists on the ground everywhere. Additionally, there are those who work with post-abortive women. Without compromising the privacy of any woman, they can indicate where many of these atrocities took place. And some women are at the point in their own recovery where they might want to help bring their assailant to justice.

Listen to the testimony of the three informants in Texas. How did Karpen treat his patients?

“He would never tell the woman [of complications, like a ripped cervix].”

“If she asked too many questions, he would ask for her to be put to sleep.”

The informants, by the way, filed reports with the Texas Medical Board which concluded that there was no evidence that he broke the law or acted inappropriately. (At least one member of Gosnell’s staff also filed a report.) But there’s a record of reports and now the District Attorney can go forward with an investigation. Pro-life activists can help collect that documentation, as was done in Texas, and get the process moving so that the work of these criminals can be exposed, the criminals themselves can be brought to justice, and the whole truth about abortion can be exposed. As long as the truth is hidden, we won’t be able to stop abortion. Abortion, like slavery did, persists because a lot of lies are believed and too many people would rather not talk about the truth.

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Mother’s Day: Gender Matters

Pia de Solenni

May 9, 2013 5:59 am May 9, 2013

1 min read

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In his book Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe describes the women at an exclusive party in Manhattan. The first group, starved to near perfection, used fashion to compensate for…

In his book Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe describes the women at an exclusive party in Manhattan. The first group, starved to near perfection, used fashion to compensate for the natural curves that they had denied their bodies. These were mostly the first wives and “women of a certain age.” Then he describes the “lemon-tarts,” the women who were young, the live-in girlfriends, or subsequent wives. But he notes that one type of woman was missing: “[N]o one ever invited … Mother.”

Just what is the Catholic teaching on guns & gun control?

Pia de Solenni

April 25, 2013 6:32 am April 25, 2013

1 min read

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Although there was a time when the old men at a local gun club used to flatter my dad by telling him that I was a better shot than any…

Although there was a time when the old men at a local gun club used to flatter my dad by telling him that I was a better shot than any of the boys in my 4-H club, I am not a gun enthusiast.

Nevertheless, as a Catholic theologian, I am troubled by accounts suggesting that Catholics who don’t support the U.S. bishops on gun control are akin to Catholics who disagree with fundamental moral teachings like contraception, abortion and marriage.