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.

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.

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.

Read more here.

Kermit Gosnell

Today’s column by James Taranto in The Wall Street Journal might be the best piece I’ve read on the topic even though Taranto supports abortion in some cases. He includes a story about Gosnell’s early abortion activities:

One of the strongest practical arguments in favor of the Roe regime is that abortion has been around since time immemorial and outlawing it only drove it underground, leading women to endanger themselves by seeking out the services of back-alley quacks. The Philadelphia grand jurors recounted a powerful example from their own city’s history.

It was called the Mother’s Day Massacre. A young Philadelphia doctor “offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women who were bused to his clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972, in their second trimester of pregnancy.” The women didn’t know that the doctor “planned to use an experimental device called a ‘super coil’ developed by a California man named Harvey Karman.”

A colleague of Karman’s Philadelphia collaborator described the contraption as “basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. . . . They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, . . . the gel would melt and these . . . things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus.”

Nine of the 15 Chicago women suffered serious complications. One of them needed a hysterectomy. The following year, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It would be 37 more years before the Philadelphia doctor who carried out the Mother’s Day Massacre would go out of business. His name is Kermit Gosnell.

Back-alley abortions were indisputably a problem before 1973. That’s no defense of the Roe regime, which failed to solve it.

Mother’s Day. If that doesn’t suggest a sick and twisted mind, I don’t know what does.

The Grand Jury Report discusses the Mother’s Day Massacre on pages 96-97. Dave Andrusko wrote about it last month. The accounts surrounding Gosnell’s more recent abortion activities are bad enough; but when one stops to realize that Roe only enabled him to legally engage in butchery, one can’t help but wonder (again) just how abortion, legalized or not, helps women. Instead we are faced with another story of a man who clearly didn’t care about women and may have even hated them. (Mother’s Day!) Given the Grand Jury’s findings, he didn’t like minority women.

We come full circle. Why isn’t there more media coverage of the Gosnell case? Because on some level most people know it’s true. Regardless of their beliefs about abortion, people know it’s not a great thing for women and many would rather pretend the whole mess didn’t exist. Incidentally,  the creator of the super coil, Harvey Karman, is remembered for his “safe” abortion techniques, as if the women from the Mother’s Day Massacre didn’t count or simply never existed.

Future Swiss Guard, currently eats bread and jam.

Loose translation of the story:

Recently, when he left his apartment at Domus Marta and went out into the hall, the Pope found a Swiss Guard standing at attention outside his door.

He asked him, “And what are you doing here? Were you awake all night?

“Yes,” the guard answered respectfully.

“Standing?”

“One of my colleagues gave me a break.”

“And you’re not tired?”

“It’s my duty Your Holiness, for Your safety.”

The Pope looked at him with kindness. He went back into his apartment and, after a few minutes, returned with a chair in his hand: “At least sit down and rest.”

Shocked, the Swiss Guard replied, “Forgive me, but I can’t! The rules don’t allow it.”

“The rules?”

“My captain, Your Holiness.”

“Oh, is that so? Well, I’m the Pope and I am asking you to sit down.”

So, between the rules and the Pope, the Swiss Guard, complete with his halberd, chose the chair. And then the Pope brought him some bread and jam for a snack, saying, “Buon appetito, brother.”

Happy Saturday!

Mandate opponents at a briefing after the hearing.

This year, the Washington State legislature reintroduced legislation that would create a mandate for all insurance plans that cover maternity to also cover abortion. No other state has such a mandate. As a practical matter, all insurance plans already offer abortion coverage in our state. And, speaking from experience, small businesses are having a very difficult time finding plans that don’tinclude it. Yet, in one of the most pro-abortion states in the US (Washington approved abortion before Roe and at least one more time after Roe, just for the heck of it, I guess.), the mandate was proposed to further entrench the abortion culture. Last year, the bill did not make it to the Senate floor for a final vote and it looks like it won’t this year either.

Yesterday, the Senate Health Committee held a hearing on the legislation. I testified on one of the panels, after Archbishop Sartain who gave excellent testimony, in particular:

We Catholic bishops want to be very clear. The Catholic Church in Washington State and its affiliated organizations do not now, nor will we in the future, offer coverage for abortion in our health care plans. [emphasis mine]

And, as quoted at the end of the local news segment last night:

The Catholic Church’s support for the dignity of the human person and its opposition to abortion are well known and well documented. Deeply rooted in our Catholic faith is the belief that life is sacred from the moment of conception until natural death. We cannot equivocate about that belief.

Speaking of the news last night, we couldn’t have asked for a better segment. You can watch it here (I’m even in a few frames). The segment started with testimony about her own abortion from panelist Shelly Cook, a post abortion outreach specialist at CareNet of Puget Sound, and it ended with the Archbishop’s quote above. Perfect.

Even better: all of the pro-lifers [the new pro-choicers] who turned out. About 140 opponents of the bill signed in while only 103 supporters did. That means that in an overwhelmingly pro-abortion state, with a pro-abortion governor and a majority of pro-abortion legislators, we had about 30% more people attending in support of life than in support of abortion. As I said on EWTN’s radio program “At Home With Jim & Joy” today, if we can do this in Washington, there’s no reason why it can’t happen in just about every other state.

It was simple, but it worked. We showed up and we said something. Local leaders, mostly Catholic, worked to spread the word and find the panelists. (I was not an organizer; just showed up.) It was so powerful to witness the public testimony that took place after the formal testimony. Panel after panel. We were not outnumbered. Full video is here. Our first panel, headed by the Archbishop, starts around 25:30.

By close of day, the Chair of the committee, Sen. Randi Becker, announced that the bill would not be moving out of committee.

While I’m at it, Sen. Becker did an amazing job of running the hearing. I’ve sat through a lot of hearings and the deeply controversial ones can be very difficult to keep in control. If she hadn’t done such excellent work, there’s no way we would have heard from so many different voices. (She had to cut me off to keep our panel to its tight 10 minutes, and she was absolutely right to do so. My timing was only slightly off as I had just one sentence left, “I urge the committee to reject…”)

Sadly, another member of the committee, Sen. Karen Keiser said of the hearing:

It was just for show. It was simply a way to provoke a circus in the sense of having a lot of people show up and wave their ideological persuasions in front of us.

Says a lot about her view of the democratic process, one that many have suffered and given much (everything) so that we may all participate in the legislative process. Maybe it’s time for a better candidate from her district to step up…

This was the second hearing on this legislation. Yet, for all that, not once did even one woman say that she was denied access to an abortion because her insurance would not cover it. Not once. Clearly, there is no need for this legislation.

Just today, someone pointed out to me that the Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that only 12% of the women obtaining abortions use insurance. It’s not so much a question of whether the women have insurance, but whether they want anyone, including their insurance company, to know that they’ve had an abortion.

The New York Times had a piece on the hearing here and included a good quote from Angela Connelly one of the founders of the newly organized Washington Women’s Network:

This is also a bullying bill that forces people who oppose abortion to be part of a system that permits abortions. We cannot insist on one agenda oppressing another.

One of my favorite quotes came from Peggy O’Ban from Human Life of Washington:

You all have the second amendment right to bear arms, to own a gun. But does that mean I have to buy it for you?

And incidentally, for those who also aren’t big fans of funding contraception, next time you want to hear about contraceptive failure, go to anything where abortion is being advocated. It’s one story of contraceptive failure after another. Which makes sense since Guttmacher reports that 46% of all women seeking abortion were not using contraception when they got pregnant, meaning that 54% were…

All in all, yesterday was a great day. I’ve been in Seattle for more than three years. Everyone warned me what a spiritual wasteland it is (least churched state, etc), but my experience has been just the opposite. I’ve met really interesting people of faith, lots of them. They We just aren’t weren’t as well organized as people of faith/goodwill in other parts of the country. But yesterday is a sign that things are changing. Yesterday, we were the ones fighting for the right to choose…whether our health insurance plans cover abortion or not. And as one citizen panelist said yesterday, “How can you have a right to choose when there’s a mandate?”

As I learn more about Bergoglio, I’m struck by his simplicity and humility, as are many others. His sincere and prayerful countenance when he first greeted the world yesterday made a strong impression.

We don’t know much about how he ran the chancellory in Buenos Aires, but we do know that he lived a simple life and practiced evangelization in a concrete and tangible way: by hitting the pavement. We’ve been tossing about the term “new evangelization” for many years, but it hasn’t been clearly defined. In many cases, it has been a source of encouragement for more writings and more conferences. All well and good, but what does it mean, what does it look like, and how do we engage in it? Cardinal Bergoglio seems to have given a profound witness in the way in which he lived his life as Archbishop with the people. In the truly Catholic tradition, he didn’t wait for his flock to come to him. He went to his flock, serving the poor and needy himself. He practiced and encouraged his priest to do likewise what we call shoe leather evangelization.

For a long time, we’ve known that local works better. And evangelization is no different. People come to the faith because of a personal encounter, typically with an individual, but ultimately with Christ. Doctrine is important, but it means nothing if it is not lived.

Last month I gave a talk for the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Based on interviews I conducted with people who run successful catechesis programs for youth as well as my own experience of encountering substantial faith filled communities on secular university campuses across the country, I identified three components to every successful program:

1. Create community by building relation, e.g. through friendship.
2. Offer solid catechesis.
3. Encourage and guide people in the development of a truly deep spiritual life which is the encounter with Christ.

The response of the cardinals and bishops at the meeting was quite moving. They understood this better than I. The second and thirds steps have to happen concomitantly. But the first step paves the way and sustains the journey.

Maybe it was their understanding of this very basic component absolutely essential for evangelization that was part of what led them to choose Cardinal Bergoglio as our new pope. I don’t know. No one outside the conclave knows, not even those who hint at insider information whether from this conclave or the one in 2005.

But my inclination is that Francis, like his various namesakes, will be encouraging an evangelization that involves meeting people where they’re at (not unlike Christ himself) and witnessing the faith in very small, personal ways. Once we start that, we just might see the springtime that John Paul II foretold.

Then, before giving his blessing, he asked us to pray for him.

And don’t miss the plenary indulgence (under the usual conditions) that he announced for everyone present, actually or virtually.

There’s been a lot of talk of what strengths the new pope would need. I’ve enjoyed many of these conversations and have learned a great deal.

But I constantly return to the fact that he needs to be a man centered in prayer. He will not be able to fulfill any of his duties (or our plans) without prayer.

On a personal level, I approached Lent somewhat distracted, but sensing a need to go deeper in my own prayer. I was in Rome just before Benedict announced his resignation and that sense of the need for prayer was not just my own. I met with various experts, all of whom I’m pretty certain are more solidly grounded in prayer than yours truly, and the conversations came down to prayer and penance…which was also the focus of Benedict’s message to us during his last few weeks as Peter.

There was an interesting interview by Paolo Rodari with Cardinal Cottier, papal theologian emeritus, whom I had the privilege of meeting several times before he retired. (The interview is in Italian, but you can probably get a good sense of it using Bing or Google translator.)

At one point, Cardinal Cottier says [my translation]:

“Certainly, the Pope is asking for penance for the internal error (sins/mistakes) above all. The errors do not represent the Church in her entirety, but they cannot be denied. The Pope, therefore, is asking [first] for an internal conversion and then a return to working for the good of the Church.”

Now our new Peter is calling us, just as Jesus did the apostles and disciples, to pray. I’m guessing that he’s not far in his sentiments from those expressed by Cardinal Cottier.

To me it’s a great consolation that he chose the name Francis. As a Jesuit, he might have in mind St. Francis Xavier who was responsible for the conversion of hundreds of thousands of people. But also perhaps he’s thinking perhaps of the humility and prayerfulness of St. Francis of Assisi, a man knowing for fostering peace, starting with the individual. At least, that’s my take on it. Feel free to agree or disagree. But let’s join together in prayer.

Today’s headline to a study claiming that Catholics support same sex marriage and want the Church to change its teaching:

And there you have it. It’s clear isn’t it?

Further on in the findings of this “national poll,” we come across a rather significant detail:

From February 27 – March 4, Quinnipiac University surveyed 497 adults Catholics with a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percent. The same-sex marriage question was asked of 1,944 registered voters nationwide with a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points. Live interviewers call land lines and cell phones. 

So over a period of six days, they called 497 Catholics out of the 70+ million in the United States. Hmmmm….

Did they ask people why they identify as Catholic? Or how often they go to Mass? These are important questions. Many people say that they are Catholic when they are in fact not practicing Catholics. When asking people who regularly attend Mass, the answer on same-sex marriage is quite different.

This Pew Report from 2008 is a bit dated, but I think it makes an interesting point:

Polls show that frequency of worship service attendance is a factor in the opposition to gay marriage. According to an August 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 55% of Americans oppose gay marriage, with 36% favoring it. But those with a high frequency of church attendance oppose it by a substantially wider margin (73% in opposition vs. 21% in favor). Opposition among white evangelicals, regardless of frequency of church attendance, is even higher – at 81%. A majority of black Protestants (64%) and Latino Catholics (52%)[*] also oppose gay marriage, as do pluralities of white, non-Hispanic Catholics (49%) and white mainline Protestants (47%). Only among Americans without a religious affiliation does a majority (60%) express support.

I’ll be looking for something more current to post here. Nevertheless the point stands: when asking Catholics what they think about same-sex marriage, a responsible poll would first report why someone identifies as a Catholic, particularly if the poll is suggesting that this religious group wants its leadership to change Church teaching. People who do not attend Mass regularly (and, no, attending Mass on Ash Wednesday or Christmas and Easter does not count as “attending regularly”) are not as vested in Church teaching. It’s also interesting that those who are more involved in the Church seem to better understand her teachings… Coincidence? Sure…

UPDATE - here’s a more recent poll sampling, also from the Pew Forum. If you scroll down to the section “Attend Religious Services,” you’ll see that church attendance corresponds almost inversely to opinions on same-sex marriage. For example, in 2012, those who regularly attend church were 28% in favor and 65% opposed. For those who do not attend church regularly, the numbers were 60% in favor and 31% opposed.

Yet, as we get closer to the Conclave to elect a new pope, you can be sure that this poll will be bandied about ad nauseam: “Catholics say new pope should support same-sex marriage.” Hmmmm….the opinions of 497 people who identify as Catholic for unknown reasons should be considered representative of the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide or even the 70+ million Catholics in the US?

Come on, can’t Quinnipiac do better? Hopefully, those in the news business will dismiss this study for the shabby work that it is and dig deeper. Look at the people who attend the Catholic Church in countries around the world have to say about this particular teaching. Maybe start with France? Even NPR reported that 350,000 people showed up to protest the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Or to make it really interesting, ask Anglicans in the African nations what they think of the Catholic Church’s teachings on same-sex marriage.