curlytop

Hi everyone: A small suggestion: listen more closely to women when they talk -- and how they talk, and act -- about abortion. Whether they are prolife or prochoice, many women have a finer understanding that the decision to end a pregnancy is much more complex than hard-liners on either side of the issue make it out to be. I appreciate the variety of contributions to this thread so far. But it's interesting that, as far as I can tell, I am the only women who has contributed to this thread thus far. I wonder why that is? I find the same is true at my church. There are a number of men who will stand up during the "prayers of the faithful" and loudly denounce abortion and anyone who has anything, or has had anything, to do with it. Their tone is often angry, judgmental, and demeaning. They seem to forget the passage from 1 Corinthians, when we are reminded that we can speak as angels but still be a clanging bell if we do not have love. I recognize that this does not necessarily represent the male view. But it's interesting that I don't hear that kind of harsh judgment coming from women, generally. The women are out there praying the prolife rosaries and offering their homes to pregnant women in domestic violence situations and raising money to help women with post-natal care. I have a friend at chuch who has had several abortions and who is now anti-abortion. She now visits churches and tells her story, bravely offering a viewpoint from someone who has had an abortion, who recognizes that women who make such decisions are not monsters or murderers, and her vulnerability, her wounds, and her understanding of the complexities of women's situations are so much more compelling and persuasive than harsh judgments and criticism. Remember Mary, who ponders things in her heart . . . and Jesus, whose ever-flowing mercy is more powerful than condemnation . . . Peace, curlytop

Hey all-- In her book "Thoughts Matter," Benedictine nun Meg Funk defines fasting as more a course of moderation than of extremes: "Refrain from eating too much, but also refrain from eating too little. Eat at the designated time. Refrain from eating before or after meals. Eat the type of food appropriate to the season and the geographic region in which I live. My menu should not be too rarified or delicate, nor should I select foods that are inadequate for the body's sustenance. I should prefer a middle fare. . . Eating too much or eating too little are equally harmful. Extremes are indicators of thoughts being out of control. . . . If I can eat and drink moderately then I can be moderate in other areas as well . . . We do not loathe food, nore do we have guilt or shame about eating and drinking. Food takes it proper place, often becoming an opportunity for feasting and celebrating with others. A solitary cup of morning coffe takes on sacramental dimensions in the dawn. . ." peace, curlytop

And here's another one by Rabindranath Tagore: "Accept Me" Accept me, dear God, accept me for this while. Let those orphaned days that pssed without You be forgotten. Only spread this little moment wide across Your lap, holding it under Your light. I have wandered in pursuit of voices that drew me, yet led me nowhere. Now let me sit in peace and listen to Your words in the soul of my silence. Do not turn away Your Face from my heart's dark secrets, but burn them till they are alight with Your fire. --peace, curlytop

Thanks, Cynthia! Here's another contribution: Prayer of Thomas Merton My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, And the fact that I think That I am following Your will does not mean That I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You Does in fact please You. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything Apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, Though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always, Though I may seem to be lost And in the shadow of death. I do not fear, for You are ever with me, And will never leave me To face my perils alone. --curlytop

Hey all-- I find Lent very to be meaningful. People often get irritated at the "giving up of something" notion, but one could also approach Lent as "adding something" or as simply "giving." For me, Lent is an opportunity to spend a little more time in meditation and prayer (I practice Thomas Keating's centering prayer method), to give more to various charities, and to offer more of myself to people in my life who have asked for my help, explicitly or implicitly. I also do more spiritual reading -- this year I'm relishing The Rhythm of Compassion by Gail Straub. According to one critic, "If you long to make a difference in the world and struggle to find a way to balance self-care with service, then you must read this book." If I'm able to, I may participate in a silent Lenten retreat. Wasn't able to this year, but I went on a six-day silent retreat last year and was quietly transformed. Then at the end of Lent, it's not like we need to drop all these "giving" activities! We can incorporate them, in larger or smaller degree, in our daily lives. Thus, each year, we ourselves take on more of the qualities of Eucharist -- and become bread, drink, nourishment for the world. Blessings and peace to all-- curlytop

Actually, des, a majority of the public supports the legalization of medical marijuana. Several states, not just California, have passed medical marijuana initiatives. Many conservatives as well as liberals support it! For example: William F. Buckley, the original editor of the conservative magazine National Review, is one of medical marijuana's staunchest allies. Check out this quote from Richard Lowry, from his article "Weed Whackers--the Anti-Marijuana Forces, and Why They're Wrong," from the August 20, 2001 National Review: "In the end, marijuana prohibition basically relies on cultural prejudice. This is no small thing. Cultural prejudices are important. Alcohol and tobacco are woven into the very fabric of America. Marijuana doesn't have the equivalent of, say, the 'brewer patriot' Samuel Adams (its enthusiasts try to enlist George Washington, but he grew hemp instead of smoking it). Marijuana is an Eastern drug, and importantly for conservatives, many of its advocates over the years have looked and thought like Allen Ginsberg. But that isn't much of an argument for keeping it illegal, and if marijuana started out culturally alien, it certainly isn't anymore. No wonder drug warriors have to strain for medical and scientific reasons to justify its prohibition. But once all the misrepresentations and exaggerations are stripped away, the main pharmacological effect of marijuana is that it gets people high. Or as the Lancet [a British medical journal] puts it, 'When used in a social setting, it may produce infectious laughter and talkativeness.'" Another big proponent of the legalization of marijuana is the highly respected New England Journal of Medicine. The issue of medical marijuana was hot for a while, now it's cooled off since the terrorist attacks of 2001, as have debates on other domestic issues. But liberal and even conservative politicians have nothing to fear from supporting this issue, because so much of the public is behind them! Regards, curlytop

Hi all--Just a couple of comments-- I recognize that some "stoners" have used the medical marijuana issue as a means to try to get it legalized for their own personal use, as BeachofEden mentions. However, what seems to be the bigger problem, in my opinion, is that those fighting against medical marijuana assume that EVERYONE who claims they want medical marijuana legalized really just want to have access to recreational pot. And because they are against recreational pot, they are going to make sure no one gets it even for medical purposes--because there just might be a chance that someone will end up smoking just to get high! Do you see my point? People who need medicine can't get it because some powerful folks are against recreational smoking! (And they are often the same powerful people who, by the way, have no opposition to other recreational intoxicants such as alcohol!) Isn't it better to have stoners "using" the medical marijuana issue, as long as it results in people being able to get medicine that might help them? Does it matter if our motivations are mixed or impure, if the result is that people with wasting syndrome from AIDS and other serious illnesses might gain some relief? Peace, curlytop

I can understand not wanting to vote. It seems candidates who truly represent our values never make it to the ballot. But I think it is very important to vote anyway. We need to vote when there are ballot initiatives that affect our local communities and states (for example, 11 states had ballot initiatives concerning same-sex marriage during the 2004 elections -- each of these states ended up voting against gay marriage). I also think we need to vote for candidates who share several of our beliefs and values, even when we disagree with them on certain issues. If we wait for the perfect candidate who perfectly matches our beliefs--and if we refuse to vote until those candidates appear--the right wing will only gain more power. I believe we need to be willing to compromise and build on what is available. True change takes time. True change will not take place with just one election or just one candidate. This is political reality. As a progressive Catholic I am always voting for someone who doesn't share every one of my values. Folks like me choose candidates by asking: which person will pur forth policies that would help the greatest number of people? Which person's policies would harm the least number of people? Under which president can we, as liberals or progressives, get the most done? Admittedly I have other reasons for voting. I'm a black woman, and history teaches me that people had to die just so people like me could vote. Women and me, black and white, were abused and tortured and killed so that I could vote. The story of Fanny Lou Hamer stands out for me--she was a Southern black sharecropper and voting rights activist who was arrested in the early 1960s after attending a voting workshop in her area. She was taken to the county jail, where two black male inmates were forced to bludgeon her until they were exhausted. I recognize that we should always have the choice to vote or to not vote. Not voting can be another way of expressing one's opposition, I suppose. And it is also frustrating when we see that even today, voting is tampered with. Certainly our electoral system needs re-working. But in the meantime, I cannot NOT vote. Peace, curlytop

I check in here from time to time, post every once in a blue moon. I discovered this website when I was checking out another website by a local UCC Church -- I was upset about the elections and the arguments that Bush won again because evangelicals were worried about gay marriage. . . I would post more, but I'm a writer and editor with deadlines, and I've gotten a little behind lately. Also admittedly I've been attracted by the online forum on another website and online journal, integralnaked.org, in which people from various religious backgrounds (largely Buddhist, but including Jews, Christians, and perhaps some new-agers as well) discuss progressive spirituality, the evolution of consciousness and ideas on how to integrate knowledge from the realms of science, spirituality, politics. It's great, but there is a monthly fee to subscribe to the online magazine. Is anybody here familiar with Ken Wilber and his integral philosophy? If not, I'd highly suggest that progressive Christians become familiar with his work, because his Integral Institute will be up and running within the next few years, and it will include a spirituality component. The spirituality component will include leaders and organizations in the various faith traditions--including Christianity's Contemplative Outreach, an ecumenical organization that teaches centering prayer. Anyway, books by Wilber worth checking out include A Theory of Everything, A Brief History of Everything, One Taste, and The Marriage of Sense and Soul.

Hi Beach of Eden-- Are there any United Church of Christ or progressive Episcopalian churches in your area? (I guess Disciples of Christ is similar to UCC). Don't know if they would have any contemporary culture to offer, but they might be worth a try. I second your observations about youth being attracted to churches that seem to have the culture down but are more conservative-evangelical in theology and approach. I'm a Catholic who goes to progressive (although not officially progressive) Catholic churches and sometimes UCC and Episcopalian churches. The "liberal" crowd seems to be older. I have seen a few very cool Catholic churches that offer various kinds of masses (rock, folk, gospel, and hip-hop youth choirs), but they can't announce themselves as being "open and affirming" even if they are in spirit. I don't have any suggestions, just wanted to share the frustration. Regards, curlytop

It is, but once the child has been born and is separate from the mother's body, the mother has still the choice to raise the child or to have the child be raised by others. Whether or not to accept that "burden" is still up to her. I'm kind of going off on another tangent here, DJC, but here goes: Many people who are pro-choice are not so much "pro-abortion" as they are concerned about finding a pragmatic middle-ground solution that, odd as it may initially sound, might prevent more deaths than a strict adherence to a "pro-life" stance would. For example: my church (Catholic) has recently made a saint out of a woman who gave birth even though it endangered her health and ultimately caused her death. Now, if that was her choice, that's fine. But is this a good moral "example" to use against Roe V. Wade? Is it better for a woman--who may have other children to nurture--to allow herself to die when her death is preventable? Moreover, would outlawing abortion really stop abortion? When abortion was illegal earlier in the twentieth century, women still went ahead with the procedure--often finding unscrupulous "doctors" to do the surgery. This often resulted in ruined reproductive health and even death--for both the woman and the unborn. Is it better for us to outlaw abortion, recognizing that it may result in the deaths of women as well as unborn children, or is it better to allow it to be an acceptable medical procedure, especially when there are women who may die as a result of being pregnant and giving birth? So some people then say: Well, okay then, we should allow abortion only when we know that it endangers the woman's life. But what seems to happen then is that arguments start coming in about what and wherefore and why the woman's life is endangered -- is her life really endangered or did she just find a wily doctor who is making it appear so? -- and then more stringent regulations get added to the stipulations about the what is endangering a particular woman's life, etc., etc. What would end up happening is that those who are wealthy will do what they want, while those who are poor risk their health and possibly die. But what if, instead, people of faith focused the heart of their pro-life efforts on providing pre-natal and post-natal assistance for pregnant women -- especially young women and poor women who are on their own -- inviting them with open arms to make the choice to give birth -- providing adoption assistance, if need be, or "parent training" and day care, if need be -- and certainly health care-- and I actually do see this happening in my own church today -- pro-lifers "putting their money where their mouth is," so to speak, and donating money and time to help make that birth choice the joyful choice that it should be -- not something forced or coerced by the government, but an invitiation to love. And I believe that God never coerces, but always invites. And invites and invites and invites again, even in the face of our rejection and confusion. . . My prayer is that over time, more and more women will choose to carry their children to term--but my prayer also is that women who need to terminate their pregnancy for medical reasons will not need to lie or do something illegal to save their lives. And I think that the best way for a nation to do so is to keep the procedure legal while increasing charitable efforts to assist women when they are pregnant.

Kevin of the Vineyard: Amen! curlytop

Here's another way I've seen the argument explained, in terms of the rights of the unborn versus the rights of the mother: "If a fetus comes to term and is born, it is because the mother chooses to forgo her own rights and her own bodily security in order to allow that future person to gestate inside her body. If the mother chooses to exercise control over her own body and to protect herself from the potential dangers of childbearing, then she has the full right to terminate the pregnancy . . . It's actually quite simple. You cannot have two entities with equal rights occupying one body. One will automatically have veto power over the other--and thus they don't have equal rights. In the case of a pregnant woman, giving a 'right to life' to the potential person in the womb automatically cancels out the mother's right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." (quote from Bryan Elroy McKinley, http://elroy.net/ehr/abortionanswers.html.) Here's another argument along similar lines: If I am walking by a lake and a man is drowning, is it illegal for me not to save his life when it is within my power to do so? It may be inhumane, it may be cruel, it may be immoral--but it is not illegal for me not to save his life. Similarly, abortion may be wrong from a moral point of view. But not illegal from a secular "rights" point of view.

I have also heard various reports about voter fraud and find them disturbing. . . Several organizations are conducting their own investigations into this, including blackboxvoting.com. The recent shake-ups in the Bush administration are also worrisome. I heard on the Daily Show yesterday (well yes, that's where I get my news) that after the recent CIA resignations a memo was leaked to the Washington Post stating that the CIA is not going to "tolerate any opposition to this (Bush) Administration." This is apparently in reference to some former CIA operatives who disagreed with the way the Bush administration was handling things, but the statement (in or out of context) sounds pretty ominous! Still, things sometimes have to get really terrible before people decide that it's time to act. I just went to see John Shelby Spong speak tonight and he pointed out that he has hope for the future--although he thinks bad things are likely to happen in the interim. He contends that the religious right will, in some way or other, overstep its bounds in the years to come, provoking a liberal/progressive "backlash." Overturning Roe v. Wade or legalizing more discrimination against gays and lesbians or seriously weakening church-state separation might do it. But (here's the hopeful part): the higher level of consciousness always wins in the end. Another hopeful point he made was: a prejudice is on its deathbed once it becomes a subject of public debate. While we certainly haven't done away with racism, we have made great strides against it because race became a subject of public debate and social activism. He believes the same will be true for gays and lesbians. There was a time when the issue of homosexuality was never discussed openly. Now that it is, anti-gay prejudice is doomed to die. It may be a long death, and it will likely be difficult on gays and lesbians and their allies--but the higher consciousness will win in the end. In the meantime, someone e-mailed me the letter below about the sorryeverybody.com website. It's a great place to go if you're feeling discouraged -- just to see the responses of other like-minded folks. Hang in there, curlytop It's a movement. It's a phenomenon. It's a Web site. Or maybe it's far more than that. No one can really be sure. No matter what it is, it's called sorryeverybody.com and it expresses, better than any outpouring so far, a sentiment that's omnipresent and palpable and still going strong, and every single Democrat and every single Kerry supporter and every single liberal of any stripe whatsoever probably felt it like a white-hot stab in the heart the minute Kerry's concession speech hit the airwaves and it undoubtedly went something like this: Dear world: We are so very, very sorry. For Bush. For our bitterly divided and confused nation. For what's to come. Please know that tens of millions of us did not vote for him. Please do not hate us. Not all of us, anyway. OK, maybe Utah. Do you know where Utah is? Never mind. See, not only is half of America still deeply dejected about the onslaught of Dubya Dubya II, but much of that half wants the world to know just how crestfallen we are, and just how awful we feel for inflicting Bush and his middle-finger foreign policy on them like a virus, a toxin, a nasty STD, yet again. After all, we knew this wasn't no ordinary election. We knew how much was at stake, how this one represented a sea change in global attitudes, a dramatic upheaval and reversal of long-standing American ideas of cooperation and defense and restraint, ideas that BushCo has now mutated into a hollow, kill-'em-all faux-cowboy maverick attitude, an almost irreversible shift, mostly backward. Or downward. But here's the genius part. Beyond e-mail, beyond blogs or radio shows or despondent letters to the editor or overly verbose progressively insulated Left Coast columnists who avoid excessive punctuation as they type because it might spill their scotch, sorryeverybody.com nails the sentiment in a way no one could have imagined: in photographs. Or, rather, thousands of photographs. Of people. Ordinary people, grainy and crooked and funny and amateurish and honest and full of pathos and raw emotion and wry humor and surprising beauty and you want that connecting thread? That thing that unifies and makes you feel less alone and that helps you locate yourself in a country gone mad and lost and regressive? You can do no better than this. And so far the site carries nearly 5,000 photos, with an apparent backlog of over 1,000 more ready to be uploaded and new ones coming in faster than the site's diverse gaggle of stunned creators -- namely, a sly neuroscience student from USC named James and his ragtag team of webmasters and designers from across the country -- ever dreamed. And the reaction has been, to put it mildly, overwhelming: a whopping 50 million hits to the site so far, moving nearly two terabytes of information. And growing fast. And if a picture's worth a thousand words, then sorryeverybody.com is exploding with a few million very ardent expressions indeed, all echoing the same simple but heartbreaking sentiment and all, presumably, posted in the hope that the message will be somehow reach the eyeballs of the world, the countries so very and rightfully appalled and revolted by our apparent lack of vision. It seems to be working. Pictures are apparently flooding into the site from around the world, full of messages of "It's OK" and "Thanks for trying" and "Just don't let it happen again" and it's even spawned a European response page called apologiesaccepted.com and this is when it hits you: this little gag site, unexpectedly, wonderfully, with its beautifully simple concept, might have actually stumbled on a way to do the impossible: it might just help heal our decimated international relationships and, quite possibly, do more for world diplomacy that Bush ever could, or ever will. Is that taking things a bit far? Not really. Sure the site's cute. Sure it's a bit of a novelty. But it's also illuminating and deeply moving and 50 million hits in under two weeks is nothing short of staggering, and hence the creators are receiving reams of hate mail from the BushCo Right of sufficient vehemence and vitriol that it's even spawned a creepy 'n' crude "We're Not Sorry" countersite (suddenly off-line, as of this writing), with its handful of disturbing pics of rabid right-wingers displaying their, uh, raging pro-Bush myopia. So you know James and Co. are onto something. After all, sorryeverybody.com has broken the cardinal rule of Bush's bitter neocon agenda: no matter what the atrocity, no matter the how grossly botched the war or how insidious the WMD lie or how debilitating the world-record deficit or how brutal the attack on the environment, if there's one thing the GOP simply does not do, it's apologize. But this is what makes sorryeverybody.com so incredibly effective. It does what no column and no punditry and no news analysis and no Democratic weeping can possibly do, what the Kerry campaign failed to do, what no amount of verbal raging into the Void can manage: it puts a human face on the sadness. A very real face, families and children, teenagers and the elderly, young couples and homosexuals and many, many disaffected liberal loners who are stuck like sad beacons way out in the middle of the red states and who desperately want the world to know they exist, that they're Americans, too, that they did their best to get the Smirking One out. What's more, the pics, generally speaking, aren't raunchy. They aren't gross or hateful or puerile or full of screaming middle fingers or manly gun collections or people holding large kitchen knives or butane lighters up to Bush dolls in effigy. They're just snapshots, candid and intimate and expressive and unretouched and often rather beautiful, taken in the living rooms and backyards and bedrooms and small towns of the country. It's just people. It's just America. "Real" America. An enormous and enormously saddened half of this amazing country that's trying to reach out to the rest of the world and get the word out and mend its broken heart like at no other time in our generation's history. It's an expression of regret for what's been lost, for what we once were, for what we had hoped to become again but that has now been, well, at best delayed, at worst bludgeoned into a blind stupor. The site proves that countless Americans still not only care enough to apologize for our country's massive errors of judgment, for our blind mistakes, but also are concerned about the effect those mistakes will have on others. As such, these pictures are perhaps the finest and most honest expressions of love for one's country you can find. And if that's not patriotic, nothing is.

Maybe it's not obvious from 2 paragraphs from Taylor's book that I cited earlier, but I don't think he's suggesting that we should rely on subjectivism alone in interpreting the Bible. Rather it's a combined, human-divine effort. That is, our reasoning and interpretive abilities assist us as we discern God's word. We are always in danger of letting our own prejudices slip in. Even hermeneutics and textual criticism are not free of their own special biases. Human consciousness itself is not free from bias, cultural conditioning, and self-deception. That is why we need to pray when we read the scriptures--ask the Spirit to lead us to the truth. It is a combination of reason and faith and divine grace that allows us to hear the word of God.

True, the courts are not infallible because humans are not infallible. But my point is that when we live in a society in which some people deeply believe that the fetus is a person at conception while others deeply believe it is after the first trimester and still others deeply believe it is when the baby takes its first breath -- the courts attempt to legislate in a way that does not impose one group's belief system on others. And the best way to do that is to allow people to act on their own beliefs concerning their own personal reproductive processes while ensuring that the abortion procedure is accessible and safe.

"God's revelation" in itself is not flawed. But human interpretations of God's revelation can certainly be flawed. Episcopalian priest Brian C. Taylor explains the progressive viewpoint well in his 1996 book, Setting the Gospel Free: "The Bible is not God. It is a collection of stories and teachings told by an ancient people concerning their experience with God. Sometimes they were wrong, and sometimes they were right on the money. This point of view will make some nervous (“Well, if we can pick and choose what to believe, what good is it?”). But it will also return ultimate truth to where it belongs: to God. God will highlight and burn in our souls from scripture what we need to hear and heed. God will use this imperfect, human document (what other kind of material does God have to work with in this human life, anyway?) to awaken us to the miracle of our life. God will use teachers, friends, books, and the Spirit within to sort out what is eternally true from what is culturally misguided in scripture. On the other hand, as people of the biblical tradition, we take the Bible seriously. For we recognize that it represents centuries of broad experience, an experience of thousands of people, many of whom were utterly devoted to and graced by God in profound ways. This representation far outweighs the limited experience of our own individual lives. While we may have more wisdom than one or another of the particular voices of scripture, we cannot make this claim about the broad themes and recurring truths that shine through its human limitations."

The unborn is a form of human life, but it is not (yet) legally considered a human "person." The courts have made no consistent conclusions on when unborn "personhood" begins. The lawyers arguing the Roe v. Wade case contended that "Life is an ongoing process. It is almost impossible to define a point at which life begins or perhaps even at which life ends." Since there was no consensus--scientific, legal, or theological--on when life began, the fetus could not be defined as a person that shared the same rights as the already born, the lawyers argued. The Supreme Court agreed. The majority opinion in Roe v. Wade was that the word "person" had "no possible prenatal application."

I'm a pro-choice, pro-contraception, pro-education Catholic woman. I also feel that abortions should be rare, because the fetus is a form of life, a potential person, and our lives, our bodies, are really not our own. We did not create ourselves, and because our human-ness connects us to the rest of humanity and to creation -- the mystical body of Christ -- the "it's my body and I can do what I want with it" argument doesn't really ring true. And yet: I did not always feel this way. When I was in my twenties, alienated from my faith, self-centered and immature, and involved in a failing relationship, I had an abortion when I was nine weeks pregnant. I was physically healthy, and the father of my child even wanted to have the baby--although he ultimately supported my decision to abort. But I was just starting a demanding graduate-school program, and I feared that having the child would thwart my future career and keep me enchained in this bad relationship. I seriously considered giving the baby up for adoption, but since the father actually wanted to keep it, it didn't seem like a good option at the time. It's horribly ironic: I had an abortion basically as a form of birth control and because I would not have been able to give the child up for adoption. In retrospect I wish I had given birth to the child, but when you're young and pregnant and confused and emotionally messed-up, it seems like a quick fix. I received no counseling, no alternative suggestions, before I had my abortion. I simply requested one, and was given an appointment date. I seriously think that I might have changed my mind if I had taken the time to examine options. It's also possible that I would have gone on and had the abortion anyway. But I think that offering women real options--individual and family counseling, various types of adoptions, pre-natal and post-natal assistance--could make a world of difference. Yet I don't think that placing more legal restrictions on abortion is a good idea. Stipulating what situations warrant a post-first-timester abortion would simply encourage people to invent health problems that would enable them to have the procedure. There are so many unpredictable reasons why a woman may choose to abort. It may be the wrong choice, but having free will means having the freedom to make the wrong decision. I think the most we can do is be loving and compassionate and ensure that women are aware of the array of options they have concerning their pregnancy. We can work hard to convince and persuade, but not force birth through legal sanction. We can also donate money and time to programs that assist new mothers, particularly young single mothers and mothers in abusive relationships. I think we also need to consider that we live in a pluralistic society, a society of believers, agnostics, and non-believers. There has been no agreement among scientists, theologians, philosophers and different faith traditions on when life begins. It's a huge, gray, ambiguous area. Because of this, abortion cannot really be compared with murder. There is definitely agreement among people of faith and of no faith that premeditated murder is wrong and should be illegal. But since there is no consensus on when pre-natal life begins, abortion should really not be subjected to legal restrictions. On the other hand, abortion is a moral issue, and concerned people and religious and political leaders have the right to denounce abortion and to try to persuade women to give birth.

Thanks for the article, the link, and the info, BrotherRog. You are a wonderful resource! Salud, curlytop

Yes, absolutely--thanks for the clarification. And the use of force (or the threat of the use of force) ultimately is the lack of hospitality. The opposite of hospitality! It puts a thoroughly different spin on the word "sodomy!" peace, curlytop

Any such thing as a progressive Catholic? Yes, a thousand times yes! And I am just one of them. Check out organizations like Call to Action, Pax Christi, and Catholic Worker. Read the National Catholic Reporter. If you're ever in the Los Angeles area in February, check out the Religious Education Congress, an amazing four-day feast (even during Lent) of Catholic speakers, musicians, liturgies . . . of various political persuasions, but generally moderate to progressive. Last time I was there I got to attend workshops led by such unruly Catholics as Martin Sheen, Helen Prejean, Richard Rohr, Michael Crosby, Barbara Fiand, John O'Donohue. Also got to see Arun Gandhi, the mahatma's grandson, and progressive evangelical Protestant Jim Wallis! Read The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale (who sadly has just passed away), a lay Catholic brother who was also a member of a Hindu order. Read anything by Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, Karl Rahner, William Johnston, Dorothy Day, Joan Chittister, Diana L. Hayes, Meg Funk, and Megan McKenna! And go out and rent (or purchase) these video/DVDs: Romero, The Mission, and Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Progressive Catholics? Yes, we are out there! Come on out and play! And pray! Salud, curlytop

I am very grateful to have found this TCPC website, and appreciate all the posts that have been written in response to leah's initial post. I suppose these posts are of particular interest to me because I am a progressive biracial pro-choice Catholic who supports gay marriage. I can understand why Christians believe that homosexual activity is wrong, because of the passages in the bible that say so. I think that there are many Christians who think of homosexual behavior as a sin, but who still believe that gays and lesbians are loved by Jesus, as all sinners are loved by Jesus. We progressives should avoid concluding that all conservative or traditionally-minded Christians actually hate homosexuals. True, there are those that do. But there are also those who truly think that the behavior is a sin, in a similar way that they think of adultery or theft as a sin. But I also think that they are wrong. Here are some reasons why I believe so: 1. The anti-homosexual laws in Leviticus are part of a body of laws that prohibit wearing clothing made of mixed fibers (Lev. 19:19), prohibits intercourse with a menstruating woman (Lev 18:19) and enforces dietary restrictions (Lev 18:22; 20: 13). Modern Christians generally feel free to ignore these laws, because these laws were written by an ancient people. These laws need to be seen from within that ancient culture's context, not blindly applied to our modern context. 2. The Sodom and Gomorrah story in Genesis 19 is not really about homosexuality per se but rather about rape--about violent force and not about sexual orientation. In this story and the similar passage in Judges 19, the point was to humiliate outsiders by treating them like women. (I've also found it interesting that not much is said about the sinfulness of Lot's plan to sacrifice his two virgin daughters to prevent gay gang-rape...) 3. There is no record of Jesus ever saying anything about homosexuality. But he did teach that we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. Moreover, Jesus continued the direction established in the Hebrew Bible by including those who were outcasts as part of God's people. The implication is that we should fully embrace our gay brothers and sisters and "love them as ourselves" by legalizing gay marriage. Thanks again for all the thoughful posts and God bless-- curlytop

I am very grateful to have found this TCPC website, and appreciate all the posts that have been written in response to leah's initial post. I suppose these posts are of particular interest to me because I am a progressive biracial pro-choice Catholic who supports gay marriage.