I'VE CHANGED MY MIND: I'M NOW PRO-CHOICE
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS A CATHOLIC PLOT
CATHOLIC ANSWERS HIRING FOR THE WEB
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
It hasn't been easy. I don't change opinions willy-nilly, especially if I've held them for a long time and if they're about key issues. But I've been doing a lot of soul-searching lately and feel that the only responsible thing to do is to go public and admit that I'm now pro-choice.
Here is my new thinking:
- The government shouldn't be able to tell me whether to paint my house yellow or green. It's my house, and the choice should be mine. I'm pro-choice.
- No one should pressure me to buy a foreign rather than a domestic car--or the other way around. It's no one else's business whether I drive a Toyota or a Chevy. The choice should be mine. I'm pro-choice.
- On election day, I should be able to vote against any scoundrel I wish. I don't want to be nagged into voting against this guy or that. I can choose my own scoundrels. It's my ballot and my decision. I'm pro-choice.
- In these E-Letters, I should be able to express any opinion I want. If a reader doesn't like what I say (or doesn't understand irony or parody), tough. It's my E-Letter and my writing. I'm pro-choice.
Precisely because I am so consistently pro-choice when it comes to my own choices, I acknowledge the right of others to make choices of their own.
Just one example:
I think every child should have a choice about whether he will come into this world. If he chooses not to, we should respect that choice. Of course, his choice will have to be manifested in a sufficiently clear way.
When the rest of us make choices--to hire a house painter, to buy a car, even to vote--we sign a contract or somehow make our choices known on paper. The same should apply here, for consistency's sake.
Thus, if an unborn child signs a waiver or agreement or contract (or whatever the document would be) indicating that he doesn't want to come into this world, his choice should be respected. Absent such a signed document, we have to presume that his choice is to come into this world. After all, everyone I know who ended up being born preferred it to the alternative.
Whatever the unborn child decides, we should respect his choice--and we should not allow it to be overruled by someone else's choice. That's my opinion, and that's why I'm pro-choice.
THE CHURCH'S IMMIGRATION PLOY
You have your opinion about what should be done about illegal immigration, the bishops have theirs, and Congress has several. Ralph Ovadal has his own.
Ovadal is pastor of Pilgrims Covenant Church in Monroe, Wisconsin. Like many Fundamentalists, he is overtly anti-Catholic. Unlike many, he produces his own anti-Catholic materials. You can find them at:
http://www.pccmonroe.org
Recently he wrote an essay titled "Romanizing America through Illegal Immigration." In it he said:
"I have spent time pointing out that the Roman Catholic Church is aiding and abetting a criminal invasion of America from Mexico because the illegals are almost all Roman Catholics. ... The leadership of the Roman Catholic Church has a stake in Reconquista. The pope and his henchmen are looking to turn America, founded and still a Protestant country, into a Roman Catholic country. ... To that end, the Justice for Immigrants campaign was founded by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Twenty other Catholic organizations have joined together with the bishops in a massive educational, media, and political campaign to block immigration reform in America."
Ovadal is worried about the bishops trying to do something that in fact they are not doing: trying to make America Catholic. I wish they were guilty as charged, but I am unaware of any action by the national bishops' conference that could be interpreted as an effort to convert America to the Catholic faith. Ovadal needn't worry about that.
The other thing he wastes time worrying about is the Catholicizing of America by the immigrants themselves. While many crossing our southern border are personally devout, many lose their faith after being in this country a few years, becoming just as secular as native-born Americans. Some even leave the Catholic Church to join churches such as Ovadal's.
At the Catholic Answers discussion forums you will find a subforum on immigration, and not a few of the writers--whatever their ideas on how to handle the immigration issue--say, "Well, at least the illegals are Catholics." But is that so, in more than just a nominal sense?
Is the faith of the immigrants robust enough intellectually to act as leaven in our culture, or is it the sort of pious, village faith that historically disappears after a generation, to be replaced by a cultural religiosity that itself, after another generation, ends up as run-of-the-mill secularism?
I wish I could agree with Ovadal about the likely religious influence that immigrants from Mexico will have. Unlike him, I would not in the least mind seeing America become Catholic through the enthusiasm of newcomers, but I see no prospect of that in my lifetime, just as I see no prospect of the bishops undertaking a Let's Make American Catholic campaign, either overtly or covertly.
Neither Ovadal's nightmares nor my daydreams are likely to be realized, alas.
CATHOLIC ANSWERS IS HIRING
You are Internet-savvy enough to have subscribed to this E-Letter, so I hope you won't mind my mentioning a pair of job openings at Catholic Answers. We're planning to revamp and expand our web offerings in a big way, and we're looking for a web applications developer and a web server specialist. These might be experienced people or recent graduates.
You can find detailed job descriptions at:
http://www.catholic.com/home/jobs.asp
Priority will be given to candidates who live in or can relocate to climatological paradise, which is to say the San Diego area, because we'll want to engage in a lot of brainstorming at the office. I want to work closely with these employees, so a sense of humor is a must, and it would be helpful if they understood the distinction between a comma and a semicolon.
We are not yet ready to take reservations for this pilgrimage-cruise, but I want to give you plenty of notice about the dates so you can mark your calendar accordingly.
p.s., If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-Letter, please do not hit your Reply button. Instead, go to Catholic Answers' discussion forums at
http://forums.catholic.com
where you may post your comment in the forum dedicated to the E-Letter. You will find a thread devoted to this issue of the E-Letter. Feel free to add your comment in the form of a reply to that thread.
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