Book note: Render unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life, by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

Uncommon Knowledge on National Review Online has a five segment video interview with Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of the Roman Catholic diocese of Denver, discussing "Politics & Catholics," and also his latest book, Render unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life. The segments were published September 22 through 26, 2008.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

Book note: William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner, by William Hague

Michael Gerson recommends a new biography of William Wilberforce, and he recommends it rather strongly:

Hague's life of Wilberforce should be read by every student of politics, to understand why mere prosperity and mere security will never be sufficient goals of evangelical political involvement. And this book should be read by every politician, to see what feats of honor are possible even in a very political life.

I haven't seen the book yet, but I applaud Gerson's sentiment.

hat tip: Gina Dalfonzo

"Nobody is a nobody"

Via Fr. Neuhaus on When Life Matters by James M. Kushiner at Mere Comments, here's the text of Richard John Neuhaus's closing address at the annual convention of the National Right to Life Committee held recently in Arlington, Virginia.

I'd file it under "Rousing Calls to Fight the Good Fight."

A snippet:

The contention between the culture of life and the culture of death is not a battle of our own choosing. We are not the ones who imposed upon the nation the lethal logic that human beings have no rights we are bound to respect if they are too small, too weak, too dependent, too burdensome. That lethal logic, backed by the force of law, was imposed by an arrogant elite that for almost forty years has been telling us to get over it, to get used to it.

Oh, good, I'm not the only one...

(Updated: The first link was bad. It should be fixed now. Sorry about the mix-up.)

... unhappy and concerned about assaults on the liberty of association.

I'm going to have to give this statement from the post some thought:

...such associations -- and in particular, such brotherhoods -- are what build civil society to begin with; not the family, as I've argued before, and as a glance at any pre-civil culture will verify...

And this one:

We conservative Christians are apt to uphold fatherhood and the family, without considering that fatherhood is a truncated thing without brotherhood. A soldier alone is not a soldier; a father alone may make a passable father for his family, but his scope of activity is severely limited. In his capacity as a brother -- as a man who naturally wants to stand shoulder to shoulder with other men, to get things done -- he is denied the battlefield...

Full post here.

The post is by Anthony Esolen. In it, he notes that he'll be expanding on the theme in a presentation Friday at the Eagle Forum Convention in Washington, D.C, to be aired by C-Span.

Fear of suffering and the culture of death

Jennifer F. has opened a discussion about Fear of suffering and the culture of death.

Robbed of freedom for our own good?

Via The Paragraph Farmer, The Anchoress has some quotes, comments, and links containing warnings against tyranny, especially (but not exclusively) the sort that creeps into control while promising to protect us. She uses G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis quotes to set the stage, then addresses current news that should give us pause.

Related: the Stupid Citizens post at Wittingshire.

Low carbon footprint

Sometimes cartoons say things better than mere words. Like this.

hat tip: Carl, via Dr. Sanity

How is freedom born? A new film explores the question.

I see that Acton Media has a film coming out this month that looks like it addresses some important issues and provides some useful historical context. See The Birth of Freedom - A Documentary on the History of Freedom for more information, to view the trailer, or to arrange a screening. (Warning: the trailer includes images of torture and war dead and other nasty stuff. It's in context, but it might not be suitable for children.)

The official website also has a useful list of primary documents and websites, information on important people, and relevant court cases.

hat tip: Acton Institute

Update: The film is just shy of an hour long, if that makes any difference to you if you're hoping to set up a screening.

The 20 weeks campaign

In the UK:

On 6 May Nadine Dorries MP launched the official parliamentary campaign to reduce the upper limit for abortion from 24 weeks to 20 weeks. The matter will come to the vote when the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is debated in the Commons later this month...

Visit the 20 weeks campaign website for more information. For those of you in the UK, there's a petition to sign, if you'd like.

hat tip: Anglican Mainstream

William T. Sali on "Life"

I was following links around (you know how that goes), and wound up on the website for Congressman Bill Sali of Idaho. On the issues page, I clicked on "Life" and found this statement, which I thought was a good one:

President Ronald Reagan said, “Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.”

Each of us is here today because our mothers chose to let us live. They might not have expected or even wanted us at first, but they protected us when we were most vulnerable. Yet today, like every other day, nearly 3,000 mothers are making the decision to end the lives of the small children they carry.

We each have a responsibility to come next to these women and help them protect their children. We must be there for our sisters, our daughters, and our friends—to remind them that they are bearing a beautiful little human and that crushing that little life will not give them the independence they want. If we can’t protect our most innocent and helpless citizens, how can we pretend to provide justice and protection for anyone else?

I am committed, as your Congressman, to give a voice to those most vulnerable in our society, the unborn infant.

My thanks to Representative Sali.

Because I haven't done it in a while, and because Mr. Sali was talking about the responsibility to come next to women being pushed toward having an abortion, may I point out the links in my sidebar for Feminists for Life and Silent No More? As they note at both sites: Women deserve better than abortion. (Not just women deserve better than abortion, of course, but since the pro-abortion people generally claim they're doing it for women, I think it's fair to emphasize that a goodly number of women think the 'pro-choice' movement does us more harm than good.)

Book note: No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarty

From A Worldview Clash in View -- A Gift from Literature at AlbertMohler.com:

The clash between fundamental worldviews is often difficult to capture, but sometimes literature does what a news report cannot. Consider this passage from Cormac McCarty's novel, No Country for Old Men. In this passage, one of the main characters reflects on this clash:

Here a year or two back me and Loretta went to a conference in Corpus Christi and I got set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talking about the right wing this and the right wing that.

I aint even sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin something bad about em, but of course that's a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on.

Finally told me, said: I don't like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I don't think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I don't have much doubt but what she'll be able to have an abortion. I'm goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation.

That exchange also pretty much sums up the clash of worldviews. Sometimes literature captures a universe of meaning in a minimum of words.

Full post here.

March for Life 2008 slide show

Barbara Curtis has a dynamite slide show of this year's March for Life in Washington, D.C.

Just look at all those wonderful teens and twenty-somethings! Does the pro-life movement draw the cream of the crop, or what? Look at their faces. Do these kids have their act together or what?

Why good people do evil things (like kill babies)

As some of you know, I used to be pro-choice, but now am pro-life. The blogger "Et tu?" also used to be pro-choice, and is now pro-life. Don't miss her post on what made her change her mind, and how hard it was to make the changeover. She brings some good insight to the discussion, I think. (And also some history.)

Changing attitudes about abortion

In Have your views on abortion changed? (Mommy Life, January 21, 2008), Barbara Curtis writes:

As someone who was in on the early days of abortion - and had one myself - I can say that never in our wildest dreams did we think that abortion would become a form of birth control ending up in 1.5 million deaths per year and wiping out 1/4 of the next generation. Why aren't feminists worried about the message that sends about women and children - that our lives and decisions are worth so little?

[...snip...]

What I'd really like to take to the Blogs 4 Life conference is a message of reality and hope. How are blogs affecting the way readers perceive abortion and other life-related issues? How has the Internet/how have blogs changed the way you think about abortion?

I'm asking because some of my readers have shared that they have been led by stuff they've read here to question their preconceived notions about abortion. Many were unaware of the number of babies aborted. Some had never considered the psychological implications for a generation growing up knowing that their parents had the power of life and death over them. Many are awakening to the fact that the Boomer Generation in its selfishness has created a huge societal problem as it grows to demand longer and better living - with Social Security benefits paid for by a population base shrunken - not by pestilence, famine or flood, but by their own hands.

Read the rest

Canada's cheap lives

January 28 marks the 20th anniversary of R. vs. Morgentaler, which struck down abortion laws in Canada. This week, National Post writers will be looking at the legacy of the ruling. In the first installment, The Day Humanity Became Cheap, "David Frum argues that the decision served to cheapen the value of human life."

hat tip: The Black Kettle

Who owns your body?

As Melanie Phillips explains in Organs of Coercion, when a government feels it has a claim on your vital organs, it's not necessarily a good thing. (/understatement)

And no, this is not science fiction. It probably should be, but it isn't.

Marking an anniversary

Two years ago today, a disabled woman -- who could make responsive sounds but not sentences, who smiled at friends but was wary of strangers, who brightened up at John Denver songs, who laughed to hear a familiar voice on the phone, who had a family who wanted to take her into their embrace and care for her -- died after her adulterous 'husband' got a probate judge to rule in favor of her being starved and dehydrated.

Law enforcement let her down; instead of protecting her life, police helped keep her friends and family and clergy from even giving her ice chips to suck on to ease her suffering, even after the suffering became acute. Government let her down, starting with the judge who made it possible for her to be deprived of the barest necessities of life. The press let her down, portraying her as a vegetable at best. (Now, being a John Denver fan might not be overly sophisticated, but c'mon.) Feminists let her down; if ever there was a time to protest a man's treatment of a woman this was it; he had chosen and publicly announced his next wife but wouldn't cede control of the first. Her bishop let her down, too, not putting his weight behind Catholic teachings to fight for the defenseless and defend the dignity of human life, not to mention the call to love even when that loving calls for self-sacrifice; worse than that, he put out statements contrary to church teaching, giving ammo to the people who wanted to starve her.

What happened to Terri Schiavo was inexcusable.

It was also a wake-up call. I don't know if you had imagined that health care and courts and legislatures had people in them campaigning for the view that a handicapped life wasn't worth living, much less campaigning successfully. I hadn't. I was still walking around assuming that a doctor who thought there wasn't much more he could do would say "I'm sorry, there isn't anything else I can do." The idea of a doctor who decided that since he couldn't make you as well as he'd like you would be better off dead simply didn't occur to me, much less that any doctor would think he had a right or even duty to hurry things along. And even in my nightmares I don't think I could have conjured up judges to provide doctors and nurses with legal cover if they actually caused death. I wouldn't have thought that withholding food and water from a living creature, much less a human, would ever be sanctioned, much less legal in the case of humans, much less the weapon of choice of the death-defeats-difficulties crowd.

I also assumed that the law would never side with a husband who wanted his wife killed and asked someone else to arrange it. That a husband can do this amazes me. That the person to whom he goes to arrange it is a judge worries me. (Not personally. I don't have that sort of husband. But in general, it definitely worries me. Where are you supposed to go for protection after judges get in the habit of signing death decrees for people not on death row? It seems a bit too much like a woman going in for a restraining order and the judge siding with the stalker and having the bailiff do her in. Well, no, maybe not. But you get the picture? You see why I'm concerned?)

We are not talking about not doing some fancy futile thing for a person in the final days of her life here. I can understand not throwing everything imaginable at a person who is terminal and wants to die in peace, naturally and without interference. By all means, more people should be allowed to die in peace, naturally and without intervention. For that matter, I support the rights of anyone to forgo any medical procedure or treatment they want to forgo, minor, major, or in between, for whatever reason or none at all, whether they are dying or not. I support the right of guardians to draw the line on medical care they don't think is appropriate for someone who isn't capable of deciding amongst options for herself. But that's not what happened with Terri Schiavo and that's not what we're talking about here. We are talking about cutting a life short by taking deliberate action to make living impossible. And getting away with it. Openly.

I thought my country was better than this.

I think it can be.

But we have a long way to go.

At least these days, due in large part to the family and friends of Terri Schiavo, there are more places a disabled person can turn if he finds himself fighting for his life, faced off against people who see the downsides of disabilities but look right past the person coping with trouble.

In addition to other efforts, there are coalitions of bloggers dedicated to helping get the word out if anyone finds he needs public support in a right-to-life case. Blogs for Terri, organized to fight for her life, is still in business. ProLifeBlogs.com is also in the fight.