The Pro-Life Parish
Amy Welborn of - well I guess that isn’t really necessary given her fame – offers her thoughts on creating a pro-life parish in the wake of the election of Obama. I’ll let her doing the talking and offer my own thoughts.
…Some of those who voted for Obama probably are opposed to abortion but feel that the legal ship has gone too far to come back anyway, but many are simply not bothered by abortion – even the churchgoers.
There’s where the work needs to begin, as I have said many, many times before -to stop treating abortion simply as a “social issue,” but as a reality among Catholics themselves. To have every Catholic parish in the United States be a pro-life place, not just because there is educational material in the back but because it is a place where:
1) Children are welcomed and prayed for – as in the prayer for “a respect for life in our nation” will be supplemented by a prayer “in thanksgiving for the children of our parish and in hopes that God will bless the families of our parish with more children.”
This would be nice on several scales. While abortion is primarily an injustice against the sanctity of life today, it has also been and traces its condemnation to being an offense against the family and the procreative union we are called to in marriage. Perhaps if this were emphasized I wouldn’t have had the opportunity of hearing two people discuss their sterilizations when we were in the back of the church attending our respective boisterous children.
2) It is stated bluntly and directly in every way possible: “If your teenager gets pregnant or fathers a child, please don’t be ashamed. We’re with you. Let us know what we can do to help, and let us pray for the young parents.”
This is an area where I simply disagree. This seems to play off boomer nostalgia for a lot of problems being because their parents would be upset so it was their fault that they did some inexcusable act. One can still feel shame for doing wrong and not kill her baby. What does need to be done is to push people into marriage when this happens. Of course if he beats her or is unstable then you obviously don’t have them wed. Very real and tangible harm is done to a child not raised with both parents. Telling them they should be thankful they weren’t killed isn’t a remedy.
3) It is stated bluntly and directly in every way possible: “We’re rejoicing in the birth of the special-needs children in our parish. Here’s the assistance we give parents of special-needs kids. There’s lots of it.”
I really wish this pop psychology would end. The problem with special needs children isn’t that people just aren’t happy enough about having them. Special needs children as the euphemism states plainly are more challenging and place greater stress on a parent. Certainly the rewards can be just as great as having non-special needs child. If a parent of a non-special needs child can have mornings where they ponder what they got themselves into, special needs parents certainly have the same right. Certainly the parish can offer assistance.
4) In which foster parenting is promoted and regular workshops and training on fostering are presented.
We’ll probably have to save this for another day, but I’m of the opinion the foster care system should be scrapped. I guess there is nothing wrong with promoting it though.
5) In which adoption is promoted and the parish participates in funds that financially assist adoptive families.
I have completely soured on adoption. It seems to be a greater benefit to the parents than the children. As RCM pointed out a while ago, widespread encouragement of adoption only dates itself to about World War II. I think though, we have the start of a discussion.
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I have completely soured on adoption. It seems to be a greater benefit to the parents than the children.
Whoa, where’s that coming from? Any reasons you could offer?
So if I understand correctly…
You think the grandparents of illegitimate children should feel, not just guilt, but shame? Because that is the group Amy’s #2 was aimed at, the grandparents of illegitimate children. Now, your response could certainly be interpreted as being directed at the parents, but in that case, you are just talkingg past her. And your proposal that parents of illegitimate children should feel shame for procreating out of wedlock, rather than gguilt for fornicating, is appalling. Further, there is nothing in Amy’s comment to imply that marriage should not be proposed to the young parents by the community around them. And lastly on this one subject, what experience do you have to make the claims you do about growing up without one of the parents? I don’t disagree, but I am curious if it is an abstract propostion for you, or if, like me, you actually have suffered the damage done?
Second, yeah, I agree this pop psychology of “Here’s the assistance we give parents of special-needs kids” does not begin to address the reality of the need for assistance families with special-needs kids. Again, if you will not read what you argue against, how can any of us have an expectation that you argue in good faith?
So who do you propose should raise all the children whose parents abandon them, since I do hold out hope you wouldn’t advocate exposure or other means of killing. If we scrap fostering and adoption, what’s left? Growing up in a dorm of other kids tended to by religious sisters? I don’t think its such a dreadful situation, but it would terribly undercut your earlier concern for children not having both parents a few paragraphs back when you wanted to shame fornicators for getting knocked up.
I had a friend from Korea that was adopted, and he had a certain bitterness over the whole matter. I thought his case was isolated until seeing similar stories all over the Internet. Particularly cross-country adoptions rip apart the bonds between parent-child, klan-child, and culture-child. I think these are substancial harms that need to be addressed even if we ultimately conclude adoption was the right choice. It seems more broadly that the vision of the atomistic child that has been created over the past 50 years is falling apart.
As far as adoption and foster care go, I think institutionalization is preferred. In cases of complete abandonment (parents have no contact after sending the child to the orphanage) certainly adoption could be pursued.
So it is best that children be raised by both biological parents. We agree on this.
But second best is institutionalization, rather than being raised by caring husband-wife teams who can give the children some, if not all, the benefits of the natural family?
Sorry, that is just ridiculous nonsense.
Mr. Jennings,
One can argue premises or conclusions. In many cases I argued premises. In the case of special needs children, I specifically agreed that having resources available was not a bad thing. That this would aid in making those pregnant with say a child with Down Syndrome less likely to abort is a proposition I found to be dubious.
I’ll have more about this later, but one significant problem is that for an increasing number of people “the life of the parish” is just Sunday Mass.
Life may not be central to the parish, but the parish is not central to people’s lives.
So do you cram this stuff in to Sunday Mass? Isn’t one of Amy Weborn’s common complaints that much of the music, preaching, and prayers at Sunday Mass is about us celebrating how nifty we all are rather than worshipping God? Wouldn’t things like this pull us further in that direction?
I don’t have the answers, other than an affirmative response to JPII’s universal call to holiness.
“That this would aid in making those pregnant with say a child with Down Syndrome less likely to abort is a proposition I found to be dubious.”
You may have, but you didn’t in anyway communicate it. Quite frankly, I see no evidence you have argued with either premises or conclusions, you’re just belly-aching, and with some of the most contradictory non-sense, might I add.
I would be open to the idea that orphanages are preferable to adoption in terms of the well being of the child. So far, however, I have seen no evidence supporting this conclusion.
I’d be open to it, but I’m not going to have an easy time taking the proposal seriously from someone who, just a moment ago, proposed shaming, as opposed to educating the consciences of, young pregnant teens on the grounds that children deserve to grow up in traditional two parent households.
Put simply, an unwed teenage mother needs to be absolved for fornicating, not conceiving. Heck, conception out of wedlock is no bar to the title “Queen of Heaven and Earth”. And shame has absolutely no place in Christian minds or Christian society. It is the most unchristian concept, since it denies completely, the Imagio Dei.
The following would be a start on the evidenciary plane. The scope of my post wasn’t really to establish this though.
http://www.exiledmothers.com/adoption_facts/adoption_damage_to_children.html
I should also point out that my objection is not so much that adoption is pure evil as much as the claim of neutrality that arm length adoption is a good thing that should be encouraged.
It strikes me that the argument for #3 might be much more that it’s important that a much wider percentage of people have a realistic idea of what dealing with “special needs” children is actually like than that people are actively thinking, “I better abort my child because my parish won’t provide me with help.”
One of the consistent findings in surveys of parents who carry children with genetic defects to term is the complaint that information provided by doctors and insurance companies was often very much “worst case scenario” material and that it wasn’t until they made contact with parent support groups that they realized, “Yeah, I can do this.”
If one had frequently worked with such families through one’s parish and knew what their lives were like, there would be much less of a sense of the unknown — and that arguably might make a difference in how people dealt with such issues.
Mr. Forrest,
The linked to material doesn’t appear to address orphanages as compared to adoption, but rather focuses on the harmful effects of being separated from one’s birth-mother. Even granting that everything said therein is accurate, it wouldn’t speak to a preference for institutionalization over adoption.
BTW, that link on adoption is just bizzare, and bears no relation to the lives of my adult friends who were adopted as babies. Nor does it seem to bear any relation to the experiences of the couples we know who have adopted in the last few years.
I don’t know that supporting families with special needs children is so much about influencing individual decisions of women confronted with such a diagnosis so much as it is imprinting on us that supporting such families is part of our indentity as Catholics. That being pro-life would be woven into our lifestlyes rather than something that may or may not influence our presidential vote every four years.
MZ is probably correct that Catholics and pro-lifers probably haven’t been very thoughtful about the implications of adoption. Pro-choice people demand to know what pro-lifers suggest what a poor woman who finds herself pregnant should do, and we reply “Adoption!” Many of us who have pointed to adoption to get us out of a debating jam probably haven’t completely though through its implications.
“Pushing” people into marriage is quite at odds with the idea of consent fully and freely given as a sacramental basis for marriage.
I realize it has been cultural custom. I also realize that the Church has no objections to arranged marriages.
But “pushing” implies more than mere persuasion – it implies a coercive element. And that is fundamentally at odds with the Catholic sacramental understanding.
I know there are some who actively promote the superiority of young marriage in the face of what they see as the prolonged adolescence of modern post-industrial culture. That’s the wrong cure for that disease, however provocatively prophetic it makes its proponents feel (a tendency that is just as easy to sniff out on the right as it is on the left, except to people used to the odor).
Certainly one can conceive of instaces where couples shouldn’t be pushed. I gave a few myself above. I tend to think a willingness to engage in sexual relations is a form of full and free consent. In many cases, sexual relations have been occuring longer than it took me to propose to my wife.
While an argument for another day, there has been a post-Trent understanding of (sacramental) marriage that is at deviance from the pre-Trent understanding. Such is not to argue that our post-Trent understanding is wrong but an invitation not to conclude what is today is what has always been. I believe there is ample room in tradition for the wedding of a couple with child.
I don’t say there’s no room for the wedding of a couple with child.
The question is whether coitus is the necessary and sufficient form of marriage. The Church took a long time to consider that question and decided firmly against it, for a number of reasons.
“Certainly one can conceive of instaces[sic] where couples shouldn’t be pushed.”
Yes, where those couples are human beings being the easiest instances of which to concieve.