A Lenten Checklist

Via Gregory Popcak, whose radio podcasts with his wife I enjoy so much:

9 TASKS OF MARRIAGE. [Gregory Popcak]



2/7/2008


Here is an interesting look at the 9 tasks every marriage must accomplish in order to be healthy.

How are you doing?

Via Heart, Mind & Strength.

As Long As We're Talking About Art

Here's a lovely icon. We only started with Thirteenth Century Italy, so Cimabue and Giotto are still clearly working from Byzantine forms. But the Fourteenth Century turns to other inspirations and new forms.

Icon at Nearby Byzantine Church...: "Icon at Nearby Byzantine Church

"

(Via Video meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor.)

Florence in the Fifteenth Century

was an exciting, dangerous place to be. We're just preparing for a mid-term that will include the art of this time and place. So this news was very interesting. The allusions to Pico della Mirandola's possible homosexual liaison lend credibility to the idea that Donatello's David may have a sensuality inspired by homosexuality:

Medici philosopher’s mystery death is solved: "

From the Telegraph: Medici philosopher’s mystery death is solved.

After 500 years, one of Renaissance Italy’s most enduring murder mysteries has been solved by forensic scientists.

Ever since Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a mystical and mercurial philosopher at the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, suddenly became sick and died in 1494, it has been rumoured that foul play was involved.

Pico’s fame has faded, but he was a celebrated figure at the Medici court.

He gained notoriety when, at the age of 23, [continue]

Share This

"

(Via Mirabilis.ca.)

God Bless Bishop Henry

And here I was thinking nothing good would ever come from Calgary:

In other Episcopal Spine News... Bishop Fred Henry and...: "In other Episcopal Spine News...

Bishop Fred Henry and various other Catholics are battling the soft tyranny of the Canadian Human Rights Commission attempts to crush free speech."

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Universities Should be Bastions of Free Speech

So I'm disappointed to see that part of my student fees go to this fascist authoritarian organization:

Canadian Federation of Students’ Dangerous Waters: "

Due to recent scandals in which student unions across the country have begun usurping the freedoms of expression and from discrimination, it was only a matter of time before the CFS decided to comment on this issue. Now, I’m not sure on how correct Warren Kinsella is when threatening people every time he feels offended by their blog posts, but if his latest threat to a blogger who implied that he was a Nazi has any merit, the following comment might be trouble for the CFS:

When asked whether Ryerson students should be exposed to both sides of the abortion issue, Hudson said allowing an anti-choice group would be like allowing a white supremacist group on campus.

If there’s a lawyer out there that can share some insight on this, I’d be most grateful. More as it develops…

"

(Via ThePolitic - Canadian Political Weblog.)

For All Your Lenten Needs

Have a look at this poster:

Hang or stuff: "Consider printing and hanging this excellent 'Guide to Lent' poster from Our Sunday Visitor in your parish vestibule. You could also ask that it be included as a bulletin stuffer. As a last resort, tack it to your 'fridge."

(Via Ten Reasons.)

Le Mieux Est L'ennemi Du Bien

So with the ashes nearly invisible (in conformity with today's gospel), I'm considering Voltaire's insight: "The perfect is the enemy of the good". Setting goals only to fail and become discouraged may happen in part because we won't accept our brokenness. As I tried to encourage my oldest daughter: it isn't how fast we're getting there, it's whether or not we're going in the right direction.

Lenten resolutions are of the same species as New Year's resolutions: commitments to improve ourselves in some specific way. Baby steps as my wife likes to say.

So, don't aim too high. Don't let small failures get you down. Find an area of your life that is a source of unhappiness for you and make a specific resolution to improve it in some way. Forty days will fly by and you will be a (slightly) better person for it.

Daily spiritual reading is my resolution, by the way. Hmmm. More reading, where have I seen that before?

New Beginnings

Time to renew our New Year's Resolutions or start new ones.

An Acceptable Time: "
We begin the 'joyful season' of Lent today. That description usually sounds a little hollow in our ears, I suspect. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving usually don't make the top ten list of ways of expressing joy. Perhaps that in itself is evidence that our lives are a bit our of kilter.

When Jesus is asked by a scribe to name the greatest commandment (a serious question for the first century Jew who was encouraged to keep all the commandments with equal energy), Jesus replies,

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.' Mt 22:37-40.

Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are practices meant to help us fulfill these two commandments. Our natural tendency is to focus on ourselves - to love and care for ourselves first, then our neighbor, and to place God last. Of course, the neighbor we tend to care for is the one who is like us, or who has demonstrated some love for us first. And while God's expectations of us are clear in the Scriptures, He doesn't seem to force them - or Himself - upon us from day to day.

Even the 'give ups' we embrace at the beginning of Lent can really be self-centered. Some people give up chocolate or dessert (perhaps in the hope of losing a few stubborn Christmas-New Years pounds). Lent can become a time of 'self-improvement' based on superficialities (less caffeine in my system, less time wasted in front of the TV). But Lent is a time of turning away from myself and back to God and neighbor, so why would I ask God for the grace to do that during Lent, only to return to my 'normal' ways Easter Sunday?

Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are intimately linked. In fasting, whether from food, a vice, or time-consuming activity, God invites me to deny myself in order to break the illusion that I my life is about myself. In fasting, God teaches me that my needs - which often are really wants - do not have to be filled in order for me to be content. Fasting also prepares a space in my life in which more prayer can take place. So in choosing your fast this year, ask yourself, 'what activity has taken hold over my life in such a way that it is interfering in my relationship with God and/or my neighbor?'

Prayer is our conscious, intentional turning towards our Creator. It acknowledges our Source and our End, and places Jesus and His Father and their mutual Love, the Holy Spirit, nearer the center of our life. Perhaps our best prayer might be to acknowledge our complete dependence upon God and to beg that knowing, loving and trusting Him might become our greatest desire. Perhaps in prayer, God may reveal to us the idols that we have worshipped instead of him; idols like wealth, security, power, our favorite sports team, beauty, etc.

The prophet Isaiah links fasting with our relationship to our neighbor:

Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed, and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Isaiah 58:5-7

Again, we see that almsgiving also focuses our attention away from ourselves. The 'fast' Isaiah describes requires us to see the needs of the oppressed, the imprisoned, the hungry, naked, and homeless. It demands that we expand our understanding of 'our own' beyond the narrow confines of family and friends.

How is Lent a 'joyful season'? Perhaps that answer lies in actually praying, fasting, and giving alms. Maybe being less selfish and self-centered, maybe being more focused on a lived relationship with the God who loved us so much that He came to share our life, will be its own reward."

(Via Intentional Disciples.)

Congratulate Me

I've been promoted to Associate Member of the Socon Blogs.

Just to Keep Up the General Negatvity

Here's a brief post on Family and what it isn't:

THE DECLINE OF THE WEST IS PROCEEDING APACE [Kevin Miller]
2/4/2008


"U.S. Judge Allows Gay Couples to Register for Domestic Partnerships in Oregon"

"'We're a family ...,' said a beaming Cathy Kravitz of Portland."

Uh ... no.

(Via Heart, Mind & Strength.)

What's This Got to Do With RCIA

RCIA was where, as a team member, I first ran into the Catholic Updates. And, several times, grew to loath them:

Bulit-in fuzziness: "You'll recall that last month I fisked an egregious Catholic Update written by Xavier University's Ken Oberberg, S.J., that the Franciscans at American Catholic posted to their web page devoted to the 2008 National Prayer Vigil for Life.

Diogenes looks at the same piece and finds a 'built-in fuzziness.' (And take note of John Finnis's clarifying explanation of the operation of moral norms.)

To repeat: consistency in one's ethical commitments is a good thing, and recent popes have given us excellent guidance in defending human life across the board. But too often the 'consistent ethic' language is employed to smother pro-life action even as it pretends to incite it. Far too many progressivist Christians keep mum about abortion and euthanasia for forty month stretches, and then when there's an election underway cram the 'life issue' full of Leftist entitlements in order to stuff it down our throat like a sock. As one specimen among many, here's a forward-thinking Christian ethicist, coaching us in consistency:

If we are consistent, we must speak and act concerning abortion and euthanasia but also concerning welfare and immigration, sexism and racism, cloning and health-care reform, trade agreements and sweatshops, the buying and selling of women for prostitution, genocide and many other issues. Based on our ancient Scriptures and attentive to contemporary experiences, the consistent ethic of life provides an ethical framework for confronting the moral dilemmas of a new millennium. It helps us to promote the full flourishing of all life.

All the key distinctions are blurred here. The built-in fuzziness helps to camouflage the truth that, by their nature, absolute moral norms have priority over moral norms that are not absolute. Moral absolutes, as John Finnis writes

are negative norms (praecepta negativa) which hold good always and on every occasion (semper et ad semper), whereas the many other essential and affirmative moral principles and norms (praecepta affirmativa) hold good semper sed non ad semper -- are always somehow relevant but leave it to your moral judgment to discern the times, places, and other circumstances of their directiveness.

"

(Via Ten Reasons.)

Evolutionary Psychology

Seems like a very doubtful enterprise to me. Make up an explanation, one that doesn't have any meaningful way of being tested; because if it could be tested it would be a hypothesis. Broadcast that idea as science. You know, science, where ideas are turned into hypotheses, tested, revised, tested, and when, finally, they can correctly predict the result of the test, they are raised to the level of theory. Or not:

Fun sendup and straight talk about evolutionary psychology - why does anyone take it seriously?: "Columnist Mike Adams, whose spoofs regularly outrage odd, tax-funded people at universities, was last seen fronting the 'Journal of Genetic Rationalization', whose research projects include the following:

The Tardy Gene. Attention seeking has been a common explanation for chronic lateness. Television star and psychologist Dr. Phil has advised – to Brittany Spears and others he is unqualified to counsel – that such strategies often backfire. A person will often make late appearances at social gatherings in order to draw attention without realizing that the attention she draws is significantly more negative than she had expected. Since it is assumed that people are not likely to make choices that bring about adverse consequences – even when those adverse consequences were unforeseen – the existence of a tardiness gene is assumed. Researchers are encouraged to begin the search for evidence of a tardiness gene before it is too late.

Seriously, the basic problem with evolutionary (= gene-driven) psychology (EP), as I explained in a recent piece in Salvo 4, is that EP must locate the causes of human behaviour in genes inherited from prehuman ancestors - genes that want to replicate themselves - rather than in decisions made by conscious minds today. So what you do is driven by your genes, not by your current perceptions of your environment.

That entails an amazing number of silly ideas. For example,

A recent article in Psychology Today (July/August 2007) avers that men prefer women with big breasts because the man can see whether the woman’s breasts sag, which indicates reduced fertility.

Really? Isn't the general human preference for the anticipated pleasure of abundance over scarcity a better explanation - and a wee bit simpler too? But to think that way is to be out of step with the whole point of evolutionary psychology, which derives from a materialist view of human nature. To say that men prefer abundance to scarcity is to say that they have minds and that - to their minds - abundance seems better than scarcity.

But to an evolutionary psychologist, framing the preference that way is simply not acceptable. Evolutionary psychology looks for a program in the genes that governs what men like. Its practitioners are entirely convinced that such a program exists. The program must exist because the mind does not cause anything to happen. Men do not know what they like until their selfish genes act on their neurons, creating the appropriate buzz. The man himself has no preferences, but his genes do.

Believe it or not, the central dogma of neuroscience today is that the mind is an illusion, but Mario Beauregard and I dispatch that doctrine handily in The Spiritual Brain.

Actually, evolutionary psychology contains within itself the seed of its own downfall. Taken seriously, it means that precisely nothing has changed since the days of our prehuman ancestors. In that case, no evolution occurred. That is strange, considering the wonders Darwinists attribute to natural selection. And if nothing has changed between our prehuman ancestors and ourselves, has anything changed between the amoeba and ourselves?

Either Darwinian evolution can induce real change (in which case, the evolutionary psychologists' pursuit is highly doubtful) or it can't, in which case it is futile because evolution did not happen by Darwinian means.

Essentially, evolutionary psychology, in an effort to prop up Darwinism, is stabbing it through the heart by trying to show that no evolution in human behaviour has actually occurred. In all that time, no evolution occurred ... Well, then, ... you shouldn't have even asked."

(Via Post-Darwinist.)

Synchronicity?

Maybe not. But I weighed in on an on-line philosophy debate about the existence and nature of God a couple of days ago. And now this turns up:

Who Cares?: "Dinesh D'Souza explains the argument from morality to prove the existence of God. This is the one that really did it for me during my 'Ayn Rand phase.' Watching hardcore objectivists use tortured logic to explain why, to use D'Souza's examples, a gentleman vacates his seat for an old lady or a Franciscan gives his life for a stranger, led me to believe that the simpler explanation was the better one.

This entire framework of Darwinian analysis does not even come close to explaining morality. It confines itself to explaining altruism, and at best it explains 'low altruism.' But humans also engage in 'high altruism' which may be defined as behavior that confers no reciprocal or genetic advantage. A man stands up to give his seat on the bus to an older woman. She is nothing to him, and he is certainly not thinking that there may be a future occasion when she will give him her seat. He does it because he's a nice guy. There's no Darwinian rationale that can account for his behavior.

Consider the true story of the Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe, who was imprisoned in a German concentration camp for his anti-Nazi activities. Each day the Nazis would choose one person from the group for execution. One of the first persons they selected was a man who pleaded for his life, saying he had a wife and children who were dependent on him and he needed to live in order to look after them. Just as the Nazis were about to drag him from the room, the priest stood up and said, 'Take me in his place.' The Nazis were baffled and refused, but the priest insisted. The man was equally uncomprehending, so the priest told him, 'I don't have a family, I am old and won't be missed like you will.' The Nazis finally agreed, and the priest went to his death. The man whose place he took survived the war and returned to his family.

Now what is the Darwinian explanation for Kolbe's behavior? It does not exist. Ernest Mayr, a leading evolutionary biologist, admits that 'altruism toward strangers is behavior not supported by natural selection.' Richard Dawkins concedes that Darwinism cannot even explain why people donate blood, an action he puts down to 'pure disinterested altruism.' I enjoy reading Pinker, Trivers and the others, but I don't think that the Darwin Cleanup Crew is going to come up with a comprehensive account of morality. The simple reason is that the evolutionary project is necessarily confined to the domain of survival and reproductive advantage — in other words, to the domain of self-interest — while it is the essence of morality to operate against self-interest. The whole point of morality is to do what you ought to do, not what you are inclined to do or what it is in your interest to do.

"

(Via Ten Reasons.)

I am Free to Choose Determinism

Well, that seems to be the rationale of those who believe free will and determinism are compatible. Yeah, right. (Guess what my assigned argument is going to be about.)

Belief in free will keeps us honest, study finds: "Apparently, believing we have free will keeps us more honest. . In a recent study by psychologists Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia,

The psychologists gave college students a mathematics exam. The math problems appeared on a computer screen, and the subjects were told that a computer glitch would cause the answers to appear on the screen as well. To prevent the answers from showing up, the students had to hit the space bar as soon as the problems appeared.
In fact, the scientists were observing to see if the participants surreptitiously used the answers instead of solving the problems honestly on their own. Prior to the math test, Vohs and Schooler used a well-established method to prime the subjects' beliefs regarding free will: some of the students were taught that science disproves the notion of free will and that the illusion of free will was a mere artifact of the brain's biochemistry whereas others got no such indoctrination.

The results were clear: those with weaker convictions about their power to control their own destiny were more apt to cheat when given the opportunity as compared to those whose beliefs about controlling their own lives were left untouched.

Of course, the study does not show that free will exists; it shows what happens when people believe it doesn't.

Here's the paper."

(Via Mindful Hack.)

Is That A Light at the End of the Tunnel?

The Centre of the Universe has re-discovered free speech:

Power to the Bloggers; MSM Lock Busted: "

Well, if you can’t even count on the Globe & Mail to come to your rescue, you know things are bad for the ‘perpetually-a-victim, my-FEELINGS-NOTHING-MORE-THAN-FEELINGS!-are-really-really-hurt’ crowd.

Hey Shirley!  Yo Laurie!  Time to start looking for a new gig. 

There comes a time that belonging to a pariah organization - even if it is sponsored by the gov’ment - is still not that great for one’s own reputation.

When this ship finally sinks, we need to have a party, man.

Still, it is a positive sign that the Left is split on this issue. It means that they are thinking outside of the gulag they helped to create these past forty years.  Maybe it will mean more critical examination of the other foolish dogmas they try to enforce on the sheep in Canada.

The MSM tried to protect their lock on our reality by virtually ignoring this story for three weeks. Only when Keith Martin started making some political movements did they start to wake up, but even then, they attempted to warp the coverage into some kind of ‘white supremacist’ cause.  How thoroughly bankrupt and pathetic they are.

Power to the Bloggers and YouTube for once again showing the utter irrelevancy of the MSM.  People saw Ezra’s ‘Braveheart’ performance 500,000 times before the MSM finally rolled out of their beds.  Wake up guys, you’re three weeks late and are taking up airwaves.  Message to the MSM: ‘Why don’t you step aside and let real reporters do the job that you refuse to do?’ 

The thing about free speech that we all have learned through this whole debacle is this: IF YOU DON’T USE IT, YOU’LL LOSE IT.  If Ezra had not published those cartoons, we’d still be sinking further and further into the socialist, islamic gulag without even knowing it. Sometimes, you need some shock treatment and, boy, did Ezra ever push the right button.

During the last Ontario provincial election, there was a record low 52.6% turnout.  That kind of gives you an indication what Canadians think of exercising their free speech.  Materialism and self gratification leave little room for pushing back a tyrannical kangaroo kourt abetted by decades of socialist group-think legislation when you’re on the dole and your biggest complaint in life is not getting a clear signal on the dish.

"

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

Ok, Just One More

Are the Liberals in favour of free speech or not?

Is It Time For Keith Martin To Return His Original Team?: "

I’m a little surprised as I read around the blogsphere to find that many Blogging Tories who are giving Liberal MP Keith Martin his due praise haven’t been making mention of his past history and drawing up some obvious questions that his new landmark human rights legislation are putting in my head. Namely, is it time for Keith Martin to come back to his natural party?

Martin, you see, is the lesser known defector to the Liberal Party in December, 2003 after the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties ratified a merger agreement, the other being former every-party leadership contender and cabinet minister Scott Brison. I think a lot of history’s forgetfulness of Martin stems from the fact that Brison hailed from the PC Party (and was therefore considered ‘moderate), which Martin came from the Alliance benches. In fact, I’m still puzzled as to why Martin joined the Liberals to this day since, unlike Brison, he was never offered a cabinet position in Paul Martin’s government and has largely faded into the woodwork of a caucus that supports initiatives that Keith Martin, the dark horse Canadian Alliance leadership candidate of 2000 would be cringing over.

News that Stephane Dion’s office will now ask Martin to withdraw his human rights motion for fear of upsetting the ever-restless Liberal base might trigger Martin to examine whether he should be sticking it out with the Liberal caucus or not. Again, I’m not sure what led an MP to leave a then-leaderless party but it appears that Martin’s attitudes haven’t chanced that much from when he was a CA MP and hence, he’d find more friends in the government caucus these days than he would among his current colleagues.

"

(Via ThePolitic - Canadian Political Weblog.)

The News is Spreading

to Quebec:

Steynianism 40.0: "~ STEYN: ‘RIGHTS COMMISSIONS ARE STIFLING OUR RIGHTS’: The Montreal Gazette speaks up …. (montrealgazette)"

(Via Free Mark Steyn!.)

Apropos of Nothing

Jimmy posts a picture of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, which is one of the works on my flash card list:

The Nekkid Truth: "

Another from Old World Swine;

I remember the first time I sat in a figure drawing class and worked
from a real, live, nekkid model. I was a little nervous before, as were
probably a lot of us wet-eared art undergrads. I don't know how
everyone else responded when the young lady dropped her bathrobe, but I
expect their experience wasn't too different from my own; there were a
few moments of awkward ogling, a few moments of stern and studied
pretense at ignoring the obvious, and then - something else. I began to
think about how I could wring a good drawing out of the pose. As I
started to draw, my brain began to break the model down into her
component elements... line and form, light and shadow, muscle and bone.
Within a minute, and for the remainder of the class, she registered no
more on my libido-meter than a clay pot or a fern. And I was not nearly
such a paragon of virtue and restraint as I am now.

Not everyone has had the benefit of such a class, of course, but it
did demonstrate to me in unmistakable terms the very real difference
between appreciating the beauty of the human form and what might be
called the Look of Lust. I had the great privilege of having my view of
the female form somewhat redeemed and baptized long before I knew
anything of John Paul II's Theology of the Body. In this work, he makes
brilliantly clear that the mere repression of lustful thoughts is not
enough, and may even be unhealthy in the long run. We must learn -
through the help of the Holy Spirit, the teaching of the Church, the
sacraments and prayer - to change the way we perceive the human body.
We must have our thoughts redeemed. We should work toward being able to
thank God for the breathtaking beauty of the human body, and through
giving thanks and praise to the Creator, disarm and disable Lust.

The idea is not to cage our lust, but to drag it out into the light where it can be transformed by the Holy Spirit.

Not that nudity is something to be treated lightly. We are fallen,
after all. There is nudity - even under the pretext of art - that is
wholly inappropriate. If it is intended to excite lust, or if it in
fact does so, then it is unhealthy.

How do we tell the difference? Obviously, this is a matter of
judgment. For one aware of his own weakness, one sincerely committed to
trying to please God in everything, one familiar with Original Sin, one
who has been trained to respect the dictates of conscience... a
certain' amount of confidence in personal judgment is possible, and can
be developed. In the words of St. Augustine, 'Love God and do as you
please'.

For one lacking these things, it may be impossible, though I believe
that even based only on natural law one can tell the difference between
a painting that is basically an act of praise and homage, and one in
which the body is displayed like a piece of meat in a butcher shop
window. In the first case, the viewer's response is 'Yes, that is
beautiful - God does great work'. In the latter case, the viewer's
response is 'I want that'.

In short, if you are truly concerned about lust in regard to viewing
nude figures in art, then the battle is half won already. Trust your
judgment, and be watchful of your own thoughts. Where truly great,
classical, historically significant art is involved, I don't think even
children need be' cocooned and shielded as much as one might think.
Most children likely have a much saner and simpler response to these
things than we give them credit for. If you have concerns for kids,
look things over for yourself first, but don't get too wound up over
them seeing this or that body part, in the right context.

"

(Via JIMMY AKIN.ORG.)

Free Speech...

isn't an Anglican value?

Rowan Williams has been a ninny for a long time......: "Rowan Williams has been a ninny for a long time...

But now his ninnyhood threatens free speech in Britain. He wants a law against 'thoughtless and ... cruel styles of speaking and acting.' From the well-meaning attempts of fools to legislate virtue, dear Lord, deliver us."

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

It's baaaack....

Actually, it just won't go away. Nixon declared victory in Vietnam and promptly decamped. But declaring victory in the abortion controversy and wishing it out of existence isn't working at all:

Everyone’s hip to the times but the baby killers: "

And yet, beneath the veneer of tribal sisterly celebration, I did manage to detect a strain of underlying tension. It came out on those few occasions when one of the speakers made oblique allusion to that taboo question in the pro-choice camp: How late is too late?This should be a question of special interest to anyone who’s managed to escape the tribal polarization of the abortion debate. Squeezed between the two tribes are a few of us (including me) who think a woman should have a broad right to abort her fetus when it is an insentient bundle of cells, but are appalled by the fact that Canada — alone among industrialized nations — permits ‘socially motivated’ abortion in the second and even third trimesters. Yet in a full day of presentations purporting to comprehensively evaluate the state of abortion in this country, no one at this symposium took on this one disturbing, and truly unique, feature of our country’s legal landscape.Even in the Q&A, the issue came up only twice — and then, only obliquely. The first came when an audience member bemoaned the fact that most doctors in Western nations wouldn’t perform abortions after 24 weeks — and asked, with apparently genuine curiosity, why this was so. The panelist who answered, National Abortion Federation director Dawn Fowler, refused to supply a reason, merely demurring that ‘It will be interesting to have the physicians appearing later today [as speakers] comment on that.’ (None did.) A few hours later, a male student rose during the Q&A to broach the issue indirectly with legendary Canadian abortion doctor Garson Romalis. The student asked whether late-term unborn children should be supplied pain-killers as part of the abortion procedure. Romalis (who, by way of background, has survived two murder attempts by pro-life fanatics) dismissed any evidence that aborted fetuses feel pain, and with it the entire issue, in a single sentence. And that was it. The interesting thing is that several of the symposium speakers — most notably, University of Toronto Law School professor Joanna Erdman — vigorously assured the audience that very few abortions take place in Canada ‘for social reasons’ beyond 20 weeks, and none beyond 24 weeks. No doubt, the data show this to be true. But why was this fact so important as to deserve emphasis? Similarly, why did Gavigan take such pains to dismiss anecdotes of women having abortions for capricious reasons (e.g., looking good in a bikini on an upcoming vacation) as ‘preposterous misogynistic fables.’ If it is really true that ‘the unborn child and the pregnant mother speak with one voice,’ then presumably they have the right to assume a voice that is selfish and vain. If the ‘dominant ideology of the unborn child’ is nothing but a misogynistic construct invented by patriarchal moralists, why does it matter if that so-called unborn child weighs one pound — or five? Why strike such defensive postures against a issue that no one in the room would even discuss?   (National Post)

We are living in amazing times in Canada.  I would never have believed that, in 2008, abortion would be back on the front burner as a legitimate social and moral question.  But, reading the news reports and columns, it is clear that there is a definite shift in blindly accepting the feminist dogmas of yesteryear. This isn’t your typical ‘choice’ culture anymore.  People have gathered their collective minds and are starting to ask: ‘Um…choice? Choice to do what?’

The pro-aborts tried to convince Canadians that the issue was ‘settled’.  After all, didn’t Jean Chretien and Paul Martin tell us that?  Henry Morgentaller and his shills has been telling us that for the past 20 years.  Maybe it’s just me and my personal sensitivities on this issue, but it seems to me that they are telling us that more frequently and much louder in the last year or so.  It’s like they have to raise their voices because they sense, quite correctly and understandably, that they are starting to lose influence and slowly losing the debate.  It reminds me of the old Communists under the thumb of Josef Stalin. When uncle Joe would laugh, he would look around the table to be sure that everyone was laughing too.  Rumors had it that if you were the last to laugh, you would be on a train to Siberia the next day.  It’s kind of like that with the abortionists and the Death and Dismemberment Department of  Reproductive Health.  After blathering on about the supreme euphemism of ‘choice’, they look around the audience to ensure that smiley happy, faces stare back at them, knowing that today’s audiences are more discriminating, thoughtful, and informed about the development of the unborn child.

They are also not buying the refusal of the abortion lobby to answer the question of late term abortions.  The pro-aborts aren’t talking about that one, understandably. Or, if they are, they are saying that it doesn’t exist. Of course, that is a lie just like abortion is a lie.  A few years back Margaret Sommerville cited a Stats Can statistic of there being 230 or so late term abortions in Canada.  When I ran in the last provincial election, I was able to get my hands on some information on late-term abortions.   Not only are we doing them here in this country, we are paying the United States to do it when we cannot. Here is the blog entry from my campaign log with the relevant links:

Our provincial government does that sort of thing for about 60 women a year in this province at a cost of $400K (click here). Tiller would have done the job and Ontario taxpayers would have picked up the tab. It would have spared the champagne liberals across the province a lot of discomfort in explaining how this situation is all that different from the hundreds of late-term abortions that occur every year in this country (click here). I believe we are at a point in this culture where our opponents have really and truly lost their collective minds. I sincerely doubt that there would be much outcry at all if we were to legalize infanticide — provided, of course, that we did it within say, 30 days after birth. I think that’s a reasonable compromise, don’t you?

The jig is up for the abortion propagandists in Canada. Their days are numbered one way or another. They are getting old (like Morgentaller who is 84 years old), they are losing the arguments, they are being undermined by the stark reality of the unborn child that science is clearly demonstrating, and they have fewer and fewer recruits.  Oh yes, one more factor. While pro-lifers have been popping them out like like-minded rabbits these past 20 years, the pro-aborts have been skinning and disposing of their own.  One need not a crystal ball to see the future, just an ability to count and read the signs of the times.  Everyone is beginning to read the writing on the wall, except the pro-aborts and their ideological buddies of a bygone era.  And, like the past anti-life comrads, they’ll suffer the same fate and the full judgement of history.

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(Via SoCon Or Bust.)