Posted on 01/10/2014 5:28:10 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
Justice Sonia Sotomayor's recent ruling, issuing a stay on the fines for the Little Sisters of the Poor, struck some people in violent ways. One blogger, Jamie Stiehm writing for U.S. News, seems to think that Sotomayor outed herself as that most crass and small minded of people: a Catholic! This was certainly not a predictable outcome in the minds of those progressives who celebrated the elevation of the first "wise Latina" to the highest court in the land. She was supposed to stay on the reservation, of course, voting reliably to uphold the foundations of liberal orthodoxy, whenever they were threatened.
In the progressive worldview, contraception and abortion are to women what breathing and eating are to men: absolute necessities of life. Waivers are being handed out right and left for Obamacare victims, but no waivers for nuns. And if Justice Sotomayor stands up for the religious liberty of these noble women, well "she's just a good Catholic girl," in the snarky tone of Stiehm's blog post. In her opinion, that court is now the "Catholic Supreme Court," and it hates women.
In a rant of old fashioned anti-Catholic bigotry, of which there is a long history in the United States, we learn several scary things. "Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if 'you' are female." And that when Thomas Jefferson championed the separation of church and state, he was "thinking particularly of pernicious Rome." Rome remains pernicious, apparently. The Little Sisters, who, by the way, take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in order to slave their lives away taking care of the indigent elderly, are terribly wily, and "seemingly innocent." And the big bad Catholic archbishops have painted a bullseye on the foreheads American females: "Their principal target for years on end has been squelching women and girls."
The kind of contempt the author spreads on the heads of Catholics, if written about any other group, would have her immediately barred from polite society, and justifiably. In her mind, there is a noble sisterhood, comprising at least her and Nancy Pelosi. Women who disagree with them are not sisters, though they may be nuns. As a wise Latina myself, I feel very sorry for Justice Sotomayor. She thought she was being celebrated for herself and her achievements in the face of societal barriers that should have kept a Hispanic woman down. It turns out she was just a token after all. Now that she has sided with religious liberty over liberal pieties, she has been unceremoniously dumped from the sisterhood.
I think that Justice Sotomayor understands something that Ms. Stiehm may never get. Governments that wish to preserve a truly pluralistic society must act with great delicacy and even tenderness when it comes to the conscientious scruples of its citizens. It is not necessary to share those scruples or even understand them. Progressives believe with all their soul that women's sexual liberty, untrammeled by copays or unwanted children, trumps any other "good," including religious freedom. They are free to propose that idea in the public square, and they do so with all the power of Hollywood, MTV and higher education behind them. They have the administration on their side, most newspapers and most TV stations. But they don't have most of the citizens of this country, they don't have the Catholic Church and they may have lost Justice Sotomayor.
Please feel free to critique my faith once you have actually placed your own at the Throne. (That rhymes.)
Until you do, you must realize you are pleading on the basis of worldly principle. Won’t fly, and God never expected it to fly.
At any rate, the misbehavior of the earthly church can only bother something that is a shadow, a symbol, of eternal liberty. A good, solid Christian will be glad and victorious in spite of such nuisances. I could very much wish you would place your faith where you would be in a position to critique mine.
Let me be very very clear. Seize the eternal liberty. Then you have the leverage to work the blessing of earthly (and passing, and fragile, and vulnerable) liberty. Be an agent, not a wailing tantrum thrower.
put them in the same room with the victimized catholics then
Thanks Nifster...
The elephant doesn’t need to attack anyone. It is the 35,000 swarms of flying insects that bite at its legs and tail.
(Go back to your Book of Ethel Merman.)
I'm inclined to love people who start off their comments with that. ♥ ♥
I just got home from praying the Rosary in front of the Planned Parenthood in Knoxville with Cardinal Justin Rigali.
In the rain (though it did clear up).
With 300 other people.
Hope to give the devil his walking papers but good. Hope to see the PP premises turned into a Pregnancy Aid Center.
Hey, they did it in Chattanooga! Love ya, Hi-Tech --- from your fellow Redneck.
Yes, I’ve seen a LOT of flies attracted to....
Jesus would have braided a whip...
A whip would have been more effective too.
Someone is playing with beads out there, oh da horror.
or
Some people out there with whips and buckets of fake blood...
Which would have more immediate impact?
On the other hand, many of us have been quite subdued in our attacks on the church concerning instances of abuse and the peripheral related issues.
...commendable as that may be, there a quite a few that have not been so...and there are many of us who have been quite reticent in bringing up the many recorded instances of Protestant clergy peccadilloes as well...
...which is as it should be...we get nowhere sniping at ourselves...
Well, every single request to Christ for the cause helps. The key, as I’ve been advocating, is to ask for His glorification. If Mary does that I am not in any position to argue. I see Mary as a recipient of Christ’s power... but so are we, and so are all other saints (guaranteed salvations) on either side of heaven. The details of the interaction may not be clear to all until they arrive and that’s fine with me. I love mysteries. At any rate, the big kudos need to go to Christ. Him on that Cross is the source of the power that you, or I, or Mary can call upon.
Christ fights in strange ways as seen from the world’s view point. As I have seen Him operate, He’d be less inclined to sabotage, and more inclined to repurpose. It is a war on a supernatural scale and some of the moves probably only make full sense to the angelic (good and bad) beings.
[Him on that Cross is the source of the power that you, or I, or Mary can call upon.]
Well let me not sell Him short. Him also in His resurrection. We’re tied to Christ with some kind of supernatural cords that we don’t possess the domain knowledge to trace. I don’t think God wants us to try, either. There’s a point where it turns into the proverbial discussions of the angel dancing capacity of a pin head. My answer is, God will put all the angels on that pin head that He wants to be there for His glory. And we know a lot of things about His glory. He doesn’t keep that a secret at all.
[And we know a lot of things about His glory. He doesn’t keep that a secret at all.]
I even have to correct myself here, in a way. He tells us a lot. It isn’t utterly inscrutable. But there are doubtless things that only He understands Himself, or only the angelic beings understand. And that’s fine with me. God never required us to understand every single solitary thing about Him. That’s an objection I hear from a lot of unbelievers who would only believe in a God they could stuff in a test tube and under a microscope and otherwise get to do things totally at their beck and call. I tell them that no, it’s getting to know a Person. And then they tend to balk.
This is something that none of us do perfectly, especially if we care with passion about truth.
But to the good, I have also learned to care with passion about love. Love really does “make the world go round” (let alone heaven).
Love of the Lord matters most of all. I am very much a gadfly here. But it’s because my particular circumstances have homed my perceptions in upon Christ directly. I’ve fought very hard battles in order to come to know Him. And God has rewarded those battles. I have been granted a glimpse, just a glimpse, of divine perspective. The mind of Christ does that kind of thing. And yes I bumble and stumble now. The more power I have access to, the easier it is to hose up with it. God’s love has gripped me very hard, though. I can’t brag on myself loving God. I hated Him even while knowing to the core I needed Him. It has been an industrial strength battle to get to where I am now.
Anyhow. Yes. Let’s look for the baby and cherish Him to the very best we can. Then maybe that bath water won’t look so daunting after all.
And I do mean..
We want that report!
lol. I really doubt it would be a good idea though. No bail money.
To Christ be the glory!
Sigh...
Let’s see if we can go more than skin deep here. (Bzzzzzzp... the Mad Theological Scientist turns on the X-ray spiritual glasses...)
At the root of sin is people with needs, meeting them the wrong way. Yes there is the culpability aspect of having done it at the behest of Satan at the Fall of humanity.
NOW, looking through THOSE eyes. What would you suggest.
Well, as the scripture says, be angry and [yet] do not sin. (The [yet] is a Crazy Evangelical gloss.)
Yes we need to get angry at sin. The secret is to use the spiritual equivalent of what oriental martial arts experts call “pressure points.” (You press there and the opponent falls down in a swoon. And it’s not a roundhouse, widowmaker blow that does it.)
The purpose of getting angry at sin is to get it to stop. And the purpose of getting sin to stop is so that righteousness can be accepted to take its place. I really do take this God is Love stuff seriously, folks... and so should you. Once you do, it will explain a whole lot of mysteries.
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