Category: Pro-Life Issues

On the seamless garment, and Catholics writing about politics.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 22, 2016 • Politics; Pro-Life Issues

 

There is a species of read­er who always seems to know bet­ter than you what ought to inter­est you and what you ought to say. Just as often, this read­er (or Face­book denizen) knows all the things a writer like you should not both­er with. I get e‑mails with the instruc­tions, “Hey, Alt! You should write a post about the Johan­nine com­ma!” or “Hey, Alt! Did you see this stu­pid thing that Mr. Y post­ed at the-pope-is-the-antichrist.com? You ought to refute that!” One would think I took were a DJ, or an impres­sion­ist, and took requests. I mar­vel at this and much else.

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In election, protecting conscience as important as ending abortion.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 16, 2016 • Politics; Pro-Life Issues

 

In my own case, sev­er­al peo­ple have hijacked dis­cus­sions on my Face­book wall in order to write long and graph­ic descrip­tions of what hap­pens dur­ing an abor­tion. Or to say that six­ty mil­lion dead babies are plead­ing with us to vote for Mr. Trump. Yes­ter­day, some­one tweet­ed to me a graph­ic pic­ture of a bloody and dis­mem­bered baby as the kind of thing I would be respon­si­ble for — not if I vote for Mrs. Clin­ton, but mere­ly if I refuse to vote for Mr. Trump. This is emo­tion­al manip­u­la­tion. It is the tac­tic, not of thinkers, but of bul­lies. And so my read­er is exact­ly right.

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Vote Republican to stop abortion! and other myths.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • July 23, 2016 • Politics; Pro-Life Issues

 

Trump sup­port­ers over­nu­mer­ous for men­tion promise, with prog­nos­ti­ca­tion and crys­tal-ball cer­tain­ty, that a vote for Trump will help the pro-life cause of stop­ping abor­tion, and this mat­ters above all. He will pro­mote the right leg­is­la­tion, he will appoint the right jus­tices. Right. Now it so hap­pens that facts mat­ter in this dis­cus­sion, and because facts mat­ter, I went and checked how the indi­vid­ual jus­tices vot­ed in Roe v. Wade, and then checked out who appoint­ed them. Turns out five of the sev­en jus­tices were Repub­li­can appointees. Facts mat­ter.

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We are the barbarians: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 31, 2016 • In the News; Moral Theology; Pro-Life Issues

 

An arti­cle at Rare yes­ter­day points out that some of the ear­li­est and most vocif­er­ous crit­ics of the atom­ic bomb­ings of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki were con­ser­v­a­tives writ­ing for Nation­al Review. Imag­ine that. No less a per­son than Rus­sell Kirk wrote in 1945: “We are the bar­bar­ians with­in our own Empire.” That’s much stronger than any­thing Pres­i­dent Oba­ma said, and yet Joel B. Pol­lak at Bre­it­bart called for Con­gress to cen­sure him for it. Now, if Mr. Pol­lak were a con­sis­tent man, he would also con­demn Rus­sell Kirk and Nation­al Review.

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Life Site News gets a pope story wrong. Remnant and Rorate repeat.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 5, 2016 • False Report; Pope Francis; Pro-Life Issues

 

At Life Site News, John-Hen­ry West­en was first to pub­lish the claim, on Feb­ru­ary 25. “Pope,” the head­line cries, “calls Italy’s fore­most abor­tion pro­mot­er [Emma Boni­no] one of nation’s ‘for­got­ten greats.’ ” You can find the sto­ry here. This is now the lat­est so-called papal scan­dal; it has been picked up by all the usu­al sus­pect blogs. Even Mike Gen­dron, the anti-Catholic apol­o­gist, wrote an out­raged Face­book post about it, telling Catholics to rise up and cry: Enough is enough! the pope should not be con­tra­dict­ing Church teach­ing that way.

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How Pope Francis shocks us on life.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 26, 2015 • Pope Francis; Pro-Life Issues

 

Pope Fran­cis came to Wash­ing­ton, and some of us appoint­ed our­selves experts on what he ought to say. Once you do that, you also become cer­tain what the pope ought not say. Don’t talk about cli­mate change, sir. Don’t men­tion cap­i­tal­ism. Stay out of pol­i­tics when you talk to Con­gress. And once you say that, you stop lis­ten­ing, with open ears, to what the pope does say. You hear him only so that you may find some­thing to pick apart and crit­i­cize and decon­struct. You become his crit­ic, not his sheep. You become the pope of the pope.

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XIII. In which the Year of Mercy confounds New York Times columnist Jill Filipovic.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 14, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome; Pro-Life Issues; Sacraments

 

You can­not con­ceive, nor can I,” Gra­ham Greene writes in Brighton Rock, “of the appalling strange­ness of the mer­cy of God.” Now, if I can’t con­ceive it, and you can’t con­ceive it, and Gra­ham Greene can’t con­ceive it, imag­ine how much trou­ble they must be hav­ing at the New York Times. And so they are. Jill Fil­ipovic, the author of this lat­est excur­sion into Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome, goes as far as to call for­give­ness “unfor­giv­ing.” It must have been pret­zel day at Coney Island when she turned in that copy. And her piece has a plen­i­tude of them.

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St Augustine: What has been injured shall be renewed.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 29, 2015 • Pro-Life Issues; Saints

 

I had made a point of not watch­ing the recent videos expos­ing the bar­bar­ic evils of Planned Par­ent­hood and Stem Express, put out by the Cen­ter for Med­ical Progress. You find out what is in them with­out that. Why expose myself to see­ing images I would not be able to erase from my mind? Why watch babies be sev­ered and cut apart and sliced open so their insides could be boxed and shipped and sold for prof­it? Who wants to look upon any of that hor­ror? But then, ear­li­er this week, per­haps because I had an arti­cle to write, I watched the sixth of them. I knew what I was going to see.

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Aborted ethics and wrongful liabilities: What hath the Court wrought?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 30, 2015 • In the News; Politics; Pro-Life Issues

 

You will have heard, I take it, of a recent “wrong­ful birth” law­suit. The Dai­ly Screech report­ed on it in August: After an amnio­cen­te­sis, par­ents were told they had a healthy baby. Turned out, baby has Syn­drome Z. Turned out, the med­ical office had mis­read the results. So par­ents sued on the premise that they would have abort­ed the baby if only they had known about the Syn­drome Z. This was not a unique case; half of all U.S. states rec­og­nize “wrong­ful birth” as a cause of action, and one cou­ple was award­ed a full $50 mil­lion in such a suit.

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Dear world, let this dead baby in a bag be a lesson to you.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 18, 2013 • In the News; Pro-Life Issues

 

Here’s the solu­tion: Stop lis­ten­ing to what the politi­cians tell you about who you are. Stop lis­ten­ing to what the adver­tis­ers tell you about who you are. Stop lis­ten­ing to what the media tells you about who you are. Stop hav­ing your val­ue sys­tem formed by the noise around you. Your val­ue, and the val­ue of your chil­dren, comes from the fact that you are here and you are made in the image of God and you are his beloved child. If you don’t believe that, maybe you ought to pray. If you do believe that, maybe you ought to start shout­ing from the rooftops.

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Associated Press weeps for Gosnell’s staff.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 15, 2013 • In the News; Pro-Life Issues

 

Eileen O’Neill, the sec­ond char­ac­ter in our Dick­en­sian Tragedy, was forced to “relin­quish” her med­ical license due to “post-trau­mat­ic stress.” The PTSD like­ly also con­tributed to the false billing and rack­e­teer­ing that she is charged with, but cer­tain­ly you can sym­pa­thize with the Root Caus­es that brought her to this Awful Tragedy In Her Life. She even had to deal with “line[s] of peo­ple” at Gosnell’s clin­ic who want­ed painkillers. Will such hor­rors ever end? It’s Just A Shame. Noth­ing left to do with your­self but slit a few spinal cords and necks.

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On Kermit Gosnell and facing human evil.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 14, 2013 • In the News; Pro-Life Issues

 

There seems to be a sug­ges­tion that author­i­ties did not want to look into Mr. Gosnell’s prac­tice when com­plaints were made, because of pres­sures being brought to bear to keep things relat­ed to abor­tion hush-hush. There is also the sug­ges­tion that, as long as cer­tain stan­dards are fol­lowed — of pro­ce­dure, of clean­li­ness, of the train­ing of staff — then abor­tion is all well and good if its pur­pose is to help com­mu­ni­ties and give women choice over their bod­ies. Mr. Gos­nell was just this wild excep­tion, because he was in it for mon­ey. What? Who’s not in it for mon­ey?

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