Delightful events are unfolding at this writing, as Norma McCorvey (“Roe” of Roe v. Wade) files a motion that asks the courts to overturn the 1973 decision.
It will be fun to watch the contortions of the “We Know What’s Best for Women” storm troopers as they try to tell the public that Norma “doesn’t speak for women.” McCorvey has, in recent years, become a Catholic and was received into the Church by Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life. In the process, she has gone from being a woman exploited for profit by the abortion industry to a splendid example of the way God casts down the mighty in their arrogance and lifts up the meek and the lowly.
Now the woman they tried to exploit is fighting back and speaking out for God’s defenseless children. Legally and politically, it’s an open question whether the petition will ever have any clout. But, as the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin showed back in the 1850s, there are other forms of power than the legal and political.
Man As the Measure of All Things
The BBC offers an essay by a man who doesn’t seem to be able to distinguish between applying Scripture and interpreting it.
Paul Green, who is, we are informed, “active in Disability Art and politics, but prefers to describe himself as a ‘propagandist for the disability movement’” writes (unsurprisingly) that “Moses was disabled” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/features/moses.shtml). Proof? Well, first of all, he was taken care of in Pharaoh’s court as a child, and “Egyptian society of the day did not tend to discriminate against disabled people, perhaps most obviously because several members of its own royal family were themselves disabled.” Not entirely convincing, eh? Well, there’s more proof:
“But Moses said to the Lord, ‘Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either heretofore or since thou hast spoken to thy servant; but I am slow of speech and of tongue’” (Ex. 4:10).
What else can a rational person conclude from this than that “Moses describes himself as someone who is speech impaired”? And when God says, “You shall do the signs” (Ex. 4:17), this makes Green “think that maybe Moses was deaf. There is another reference to this to be found in the Koran, which has the child Moses undergo a test of some kind where he puts a hot coal in his mouth. This story would certainly seem to explain and therefore confirm that he was not by nature an oralist.”
Not content with these insights however, Green also has some stern words from on high directed to all Western religions:
“‘And the Lord said . . . who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?’
“Doesn’t this statement say quite explicitly that god made everybody the way he intended to, and disabled people are not just faulty or broken able-bodied people after all? Hello, religious leaders of the western world and all fundamentalists, genetic scientists, and the world press! Please take note—it’s time to have a rethink and accept the fact that we are a varied species, and that your god told you this a long time ago.”
Poor Moses, who, in Green’s opinion, had a “sensory impairment or possibly Cerebral Palsy” and suffered from divine discrimination:
“I’m not left with a good feeling when I read that upon finding the Promised Land after forty years of searching, Moses was forbidden from entering it. Typical?”
Well, yes, it’s typical. But not of what you’d think. What’s typical is that modern readers of Scripture always tend to view the Bible through the lens of their personal experience. Publishers know this and tend to issue new versions of the Bible about every fifteen minutes: “The Study Bible for Executives,” “The Bible for High School Students,” “The [Insert Identity Here] Study Bible,” etc.
There’s nothing wrong with applying Scripture to your circumstances. We have to do that or it does not have the effect for which God gave it: to bring us to Christ. But the crucial first step is to find out what Scripture actually says, not read into it what we want it to say. Do the former and you are “reading Scripture.” Do the latter and you are indulging in a textual form of a Rorschach blot, seeing what you want to see.
It’s fine to say that Scripture asserts the dignity of every human person. It remains false to wrench some bogus notion that Moses had cerebral palsy out of the text or to claim that God kept Moses out of the Promised Land because he was “disabled.”
Danish Lutherans Shout “Give Us Barabbas!”
“Hundreds of parishioners in the Danish village of Taarbaek have come to the defense of their pastor after he was suspended for not believing in God and have demanded his reinstatement, Danish media reported” (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s877813.htm).
One hardly knows where to begin with a story like this.
“‘If there is no place for our pastor in this Church, then there is no place for many of us either,’ the head of the parish council, Lars Heilesen, told the gathering.”
Well, yes. You may have a point.
The unfortunately named Bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel “suspended Pastor Grosboell, calling his comments ‘totally unacceptable’ and ordering him to make a statement ‘clarifying that he did not want to sow doubt about the Church’s confession but rather trigger a debate.’”
Translation: “You’re kidding, right? Please. Tell me you’re kidding.”
At this writing the atheist pastor hasn’t said, “Just kidding.”
Two final notes for the poor people of Denmark and Europe respectively. First:
“Denmark’s Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs, Tove Fergo, has taken the bishop’s side in the matter, saying a pastor cannot work in the state church if he or she does not believe in God.
“According to a study published in the religious daily Kristelig Dagbladet, 90 percent of pastors agree.”
Get that? Ten percent of Danish Lutheran pastors think it would be just fine for an atheist to retain a pastorate. Then there’s this:
“A committee fighting corruption and abuse of power in Denmark has denounced what it described as censorship against the pastor, saying his freedom of expression had been violated. It has filed a police complaint against the Church, accusing it of violating the Danish constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.”
That ominous move has profound implications for every religious body in Europe—including the Catholic Church—if the bean counters and bureaucrats in the High Places decide that “affirmative action” should be creatively applied, forcing the Church and other Christian bodies to give a forum to whatever crank, heretic, dissident, or pervert who is deemed politically correct by the ruling Elite. Keep your eyes on this story as it develops.
Science!
“Researchers have identified a pattern in the molestation crisis afflicting the Roman Catholic Church: Most of the victims are older boys” (http://www.s-t.com/daily/03-02/03-23-02/a05wn029.htm).
In other news, scientists have noticed a definite alternating light/dark pattern in the rhythm of day and night.
“Noting this trend, some high-ranking Catholics have concluded that many abusive clergy are gay, and some church members have suggested purging the priesthood of homosexuals. But abuse experts say that’s a simplistic approach that will not end the threat to children.”
Now, these are the same experts who just identified that “pattern” they’ve discovered, right?
Hubris
Reality tends to collect the bills later on the promises made in passion today. In the early 1960s, when confidence was at an all-time high for Americans, there was President Kennedy’s promise that we would “let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, and disco all had eroding effects on these heady promises, but the secular faith in the power of Caesar to create eternal earthly happiness dies hard. And so we now find ourselves, post-9/11, with a new government making a new eternal pledge. According the June 11 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jim Flyzik, a consultant for the Homeland Security Department, says the department “is going to make sure we never become complacent again” (http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/20030611homelandnat5.asp).
In related news, the Feds have created a special department to ban death and repeal the second law of thermodynamics.
Someone in the Homeland Security Department needs to learn the meaning of the word hubris. Do they really believe for a moment that a government department can prevent people from becoming complacent? Heck, people are forgetting the Holocaust. Do they really think they will succeed in making people live every day like it’s September 11, 2001—forever?
One deleterious effect of the loony campaign to keep the Bible out of every square inch of the public square is that it makes it too easy for public officials to forget the salutary lessons of books like Exodus, where the people make colossal promises they can’t possibly keep (“All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient” [Ex. 24:7]) and then find that they actually have to keep them. Perhaps the Homeland Security Department should set their goals more modestly and not assume the role of secular savior, a perennial temptation for Caesar.
Defending the Culture of Sexual Depravity
“In a step critics charge could result in decriminalizing sexual contact between adults and children, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) recently sponsored a symposium in which participants discussed the removal of pedophilia from an upcoming edition of the psychiatric manual of mental disorders” (http://www.conservativenews.org/ViewCulture.asp?Page=Culturearchive200306CUL20030611c.html).
Show us a culture that despises virginity and we’ll show you a culture that despises children. In a few decades, the Church will be condemned for opposing what evil clergy are now condemned for doing. It’s almost inevitable. If any form of sexual license is condemned then it leaves a toehold for other forms of sexual license to be condemned. So the culture of death must perpetually seek to attack the very idea that any form of sexual depravity is off limits. Look for more of this.