Question:
Brother,
I have been pondering a certain senario. I fully understand the Church's stance on abortion even with rape and incest victims. I understand if it was determined that the female had not ovulated hormones can be given to protect her against the possible pregnancy. I guess the only problem is that according to my knowledge there is only a test for saliva and I do not know how accurate it is. There is no other way without a history taken as couples do with NFP where the woman knows her fertility with fair certainty. Of course a devout Catholic woman would have a hard time as would anyone in this situation where she was raped and did be one pregnant. But I would expect her to appreciate that here is now a life inside and some responsibility comes although sad and emotional to that life.
With these difficulties my problem is how the heck can we explain this to secular society? I imagined myself being a prolife politician and wondered what the heck do I tell rape and incest victims? I mean I know and believe and everything but how the heck would I say this and not be trashed by liberals saying I'd be forcing women to have children from rape and incest? I know how his sounds but if I am having trouble hypothetically how can real prolife politicians get the correct message to the public so as not to be vilified? Thank you for your time.
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Question Answered by Bro. Ignatius Mary, OMSM(r)
Dear George:
There is no way to tell the truth and not be trashed by liberals. Liberals have no respect for the truth. They, and many other people, think with a worldly mind and not with the mind of Christ. We need to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.
The worldly mind will never accept anything we say to explain the truth no matter how we say it. St. Francis de Sales wrote about this 400 years ago in his book, Introduction to the Devout Life. Although written four centuries ago what he said about the worldly mind could have been written this morning.
Because of the way the worldly mind works, we can never satisfy it, so why try. Just tell the truth in a way that is as persuasive as you can. That is all you can do.
The Worldly Mind
When your worldly friends perceive that you aim at leading a devout life, they will let loose endless shafts of mockery and misrepresentation upon you; the more malicious will attribute your change to hypocrisy, designing, or bigotry; they will affirm that the world having looked coldly upon you, failing its favour you turn to God; while your friends will make a series of what, from their point of view, are prudent and charitable remonstrances. They will tell you that you are growing morbid; that you will lose your worldly credit, and will make yourself unacceptable to the world; they will prognosticate your premature old age, the ruin of your material prosperity; they will tell you that in the world you must live as the world does; that you can be saved without all this fuss; and much more of the like nature. My friend, all this is vain and foolish talk: these people have no real regard either for your bodily health or your material prosperity. “If ye were of the world,” the Saviour has said, “the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” Is it not as plain as possible that the world is an unjust judge; indulgent and kindly to its own children, harsh and uncharitable to the children of God? We cannot stand well with the world save by renouncing His approval. It is not possible to satisfy the world’s unreasonable demands… if we give in to the world, and laugh, dance, and play as it does, it will affect to be scandalized; if we refuse to do so, it will accuse us of being hypocritical or morbid. If we adorn ourselves after its fashion, it will put some evil construction on what we do; if we go in plain attire, it will accuse us of meanness; our cheerfulness will be called dissipation; our mortification dulness; and ever casting its evil eye upon us, nothing we can do will please it. It exaggerates our failings, and publishes them abroad as sins; it represents our venial sins as mortal, and our sins of infirmity as malicious.
St. Paul says that charity is kind, but the world is unkind; charity thinks no evil, but the world thinks evil of every one, and if it cannot find fault with our actions, it is sure at least to impute bad motives to them…
Do what we will, the world must wage war upon us. If we spend any length of time in confession, it will speculate on what we have so much to say about! if we are brief, it will suggest that we are keeping back something! It spies out our every act, and at the most trifling angry word, sets us down as intolerable. Attention to business is avarice, meekness mere silliness; whereas the wrath of worldly people is to be reckoned as generosity, their avarice, economy, their mean deeds, honourable…. Let us leave the blind world to make as much noise as it may…let us be firm in our ways, unchangeable in our resolutions, and perseverance will be the test of our self-surrender to God, and our deliberate choice of the devout life.
There is no surer groundwork for the beginnings of a devout life than the endurance of misrepresentation and calumny, since thereby we escape the danger of vainglory and pride… We are crucified to the world, and the world must be as crucified to us. It esteems us as fools, let us esteem it as mad.
God Bless, Bro. Ignatius Mary
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