This is running in the Dallas Morning News today (Saturday). I'll be speaking
there at an Archdiocesan event next Sat, so it was nice of the DMN to invite
me to do this.
I meant to say a couple of posts ago that I got a good laugh out of responses
to the "smashed pocketbook" column, because I'd asked people to guess which
was the sentence that had given me the most trouble, that I'd rewritten
several times and wasn't sure it was quite right. Youall had a *lot* of
different nominations for that honor--apparently there were plenty of places
in the column where things weren't as good as they might have been! So it was
a beneficial excercise in humility for me.
Also, the response to the "flowers for the fellas" column was very strong,
with several guys saying it brought tears to their eyes, and several wives
saying they were putting copies in their husband's valentines day cards. I
hope that kind of affirmation for good men will become more common.
Finally, a fasting follow-up for Orthodox on the list. I recently learned
something very helpful. You can use the Kosher symbols on packaged foods to
help determine content quickly, without reading all the ingredients. "Pareve"
or "parve" means it's totally Lenten. "K" or "U" means it has no meat or
milk, but it might have eggs, so check. "KD" and "UD" means it has a milk
product, and this can be the case even if the label says "non dairy" (as with
non dairy creamer).
Over the years I've tended toward the advice a priest gave me early on, "If
you can't see it, it isn't there," so I haven't worried too much about dairy
derivatives in bread products, for example. But many other people believe
that part of the Lenten discipline is going to the extra effort of reading
labels and excluding things--not that the food is bad, but that the
inconvenience is part of the effort. I recently learned that fasting rules
are not in the canons but in the rubrics, which is why different
jurisdictions observe them differently. So everyone should follow the advice
of their spiritual father, or of waht is the standard in their own parish or
jurisdiction.
The saying, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" actually refers to a question
about fasting. St. Augustine and his mother St. Monica were living in Milan,
where St. Ambrose was bishop. St. Monica went to Rome for a visit and was
surprised that Roman Christians didn't fast on Saturdays to prepare for the
Eucharist on Sunday, as she was used to in Milan. When she got home she asked
St. Ambrose about it, and his famous advice was to follow the local custom:
in Milan we fast, in Rome we don't. All of which is to remind us that fasting
is a matter of grace, not law.
*****
Moment of Silence
Listen. Do you hear the turmoil simmering over the nations' most painfully
divisive issue? Do you hear protesters and counter-protesters clashing in the
streets? Do you hear opposing sides contending in a battle of rhetoric and
passionate will?
Me neither. Pretty quiet out there. Once there were magazine covers devoted
to the abortion debate, panels earnestly arguing on TV, politicians sweating
out meticulously vacant sound bites.
No longer. The issue is fading away. Alert readers noted a milestone last
fall, when Newsweek ran a six-page survey of the presidential candidates'
views on various issues, yet did not include a section headed "abortion."
As someone who hopes to see abortion laws and attitudes change, I think this
is a good thing. That might sound illogical; you'd think that the time for
change is when ideas are in ferment. But there's such a thing as too much
ferment. After twenty-something years of debate, nobody was listening any
more. The lines had divided as sharply and simply as at a football game. When
the abortion topic came up, people wanted only to know which was the home
team, and then they didn't want to think about it any more.
Who can blame them? It's unpleasant to think about. The procedure itself is
appalling and grisly. The women who seek abortions have complicated and
tragic stories. The two opinionated sides are locked in a spitting, flailing
embrace that any sensible outsider would drive two miles out of his way to
avoid. No wonder public attention sidled away. Someone commissioned to figure
out how to make people stay interested in the abortion debate would face a
real stumper.
So there's a moment of silence. And in the silence some thinking can begin.
This is why the fading of controversy is a good thing. As a pro-choice friend
once said, "Every thinking person has to be deeply ambivalent about
abortion." As that ambivalence begins to surface it can teach us many things.
For example, it can help us realize how queasy we have always been about
abortion. We know what's inside those garbage bags behind the clinic. We've
seen our friend's sonogram, so we know.
We can admit, as well, that women don't leave abortion clinics whistling. For
years we've had the circular idea that, sure, abortion kills babies, but it's
what women want. But we know that it's not what women want, not in any
reasonable sense of the word. It's what women choose when they run out of
choices. They want it like a cancer patient wants to lose a breast. But this
is even worse, because what you lose is your own child.
Time doesn't make this dandy. Abortion hurts women and breaks their hearts.
We've seen our friend's face, so we know.
So a moment of silence is a good thing. In the quiet you can hear attitudes
that were encased in ice begin to crack free. According to a recent Gallup
poll, the balance is shifting on how people identify their beliefs. Between
1995 and 2000 the percentage of people using the "pro-choice" label fell nine
points, and those who identified as "pro-life" rose twelve points.
This change is especially notable among the young. While graying Boomer women
still run the feminist movement, the same Gallup poll found that young people
18 to 29 were the age group most likely to favor further restrictions on
abortion. The average member of Planned Parenthood is almost ten years older
than a member of the National Right to Life Committee. The pro-life movement
is becoming a movement of the young.
A year ago I was a guest speaker at a Rock for Life concert. As a graying
Boomer ex-feminist myself, I felt a little out of place looking out at a sea
of teen and twenty-somethings with tatoos, piercings, and black "Abortion is
Mean" t-shirts. This is not your grandfather's pro-life movement.
When I was their age, I thought abortion meant liberation for women. For
them, abortion means violence against children. The meaning of abortion is
changing, and as it does, minds change as well. It's not surprising that this
change would begin with the young. After all, it is their generation that is
under attack: anyone under the age of twenty-eight could have been killed
this way. A fourth of their generation was.
A moment of silence can only help the pro-life movement, as it enables
rethinking to begin. But there's another reason, or rather forty million of
them, why a moment of silence is appropriate. And for that may God have mercy
on us all.
*******************************
Frederica Mathewes-Green
www.frederica.com
