#crisis magazine

[riesenfeldcenter]

A short (but very exciting to have) letter from W.E.B. Du Bois to Clarence Darrow, thanking him for contributing an article to The Crisis. Du Bois founded The Crisis in 1910 and edited the magazine until 1934. It is the official publication of the NAACP to this day, and is also the nation’s oldest African American publication.

[whitehorsevale]

I recently spoke to a former public-school teacher who now teaches homeschool students online. She had experienced the expected depredations in the former arena: the introduction of divisive critical race theory, historical revisionism, and the permeation of woke ideology into every crevice of the curriculum. But there was something more.

“We can’t tell any stories,” she related.

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

by Eric Sammons | Years ago, when the “gay rights” movement demanded more and more concessions, you’d often hear their activists say, “Why are you opposed to gay rights? This won’t impact your life in any way.” Of course, they don’t even try to say that anymore, as every one knows it’s a lie. There are no longer calls for tolerance, but compliance...

[kosmik-signals]

(via How W.E.B. Du Bois Helped Create the NAACP - Biography)

[arcticdementor]

The devout and observant Christian is undoubtedly aware of the precarious state of the faith in our modern world and is becoming increasingly open to out-of-the-box solutions. One such possible solution is to take a cue from our bearded Amish neighbors and form rule-based religious communities—but maybe without the horse and buggy.

A brief peak at the current state of American Christianity should disabuse anybody of the notion that this is unnecessarily drastic.

America’s traditional Mainline Protestant denominations are bleeding out so quickly they will likely be gone within 20 years. That is not my prediction, but their own. The ELCA (the main Lutheran branch) projects they’ll only have 16,000 worshippers by 2041; the PCUSA (the main Presbyterian branch) lost almost 40% of their members in the last decade, causing one analyst to note, “At its current rate of shrinkage the PC(USA) will not exist in about 20 years;” and data for the Episcopal Church shows the same 20-year timeline until the denomination runs out of people in the pews.

More conservative denominations used to chuckle at these headlines and say, “If only they preached the Gospel instead of liberal activism, they’d be growing like us.” But they don’t say that anymore. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest of the Evangelical churches, has lost 14% of their members since 2006; the Methodists are losing members while in the middle of a brutal split; and for Catholics, according to Bishop Robert Barron while speaking at the 2019 bishops’ annual conference, “Half the kids that we baptized and confirmed in the last 30 years are now ex-Catholics or unaffiliated.”

There is one major exception, though: the Amish—a mustard seed that is growing into a large tree in front of our eyes. The Amish arrived in the United States shortly after their founder, Jakob Ammann, split with the Mennonites in 1693 for being too lax on enforcing their communal rules, as laid out in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith. For the next 200 years, the Amish were just a few eccentric families in Pennsylvania that spoke an archaic Swiss German. By 1920, these few families had grown to 5,000 people and since then have doubled about every 15 to 20 years, including between 2000 and 2020 when they doubled to 351,000.

Unless something changes drastically within their culture, this doubling is projected to continue. One demographer, Lyman Stone, showed that at their current rate of growth, they will easily make up a majority of the United States in 200 years. This means the current moment may mark the halfway point between them arriving as a small band of friends and their inheriting the most powerful nation on the planet. They may seem like a backwards remnant of the past, but in reality, they will almost certainly play a major role in the future. This will become more evident after they soon dwarf more well-known churches like the Episcopalians and Lutherans.

…

So, when virtually all other Christian groups are seeing plummeting, or at best stagnant, numbers, why are the Amish seeing growth like this? The answers people typically give are that they have a very high birth rate and an over 90% retention rate. But that’s like saying someone is wealthy because they made a lot of money and then saved most of it. It begs the question—how? How do they have such large families—with 6 or 7 children per woman—while the country at large has a below-replacement rate of 1.6 children? And how are they able to keep all those children within their communities?

I believe it all comes down to one thing—the Code—or as the Amish call it, the Ordnung.

The Amish Ordnung is different in each community, but if it strays too far, other communities will no longer associate with that community; so there are limits. While outside observers will just see strict rules about hats and beards and technology use, the Amish see the glue that holds them together as a people.

It’s very important to realize that each rule is chosen as a group and with the goal of strengthening individual virtue (especially humility), family and community ties, and their faith.

As an example, most Amish communities don’t allow phones in their homes, but it’s not because they think phones are inherently evil and ban them completely. They often have shared phone booths at the end of the street to use when necessary and at their places of work. They just don’t have phones in the home because they believe it will take away from the purposes of a home—things like family bonding, chores, and recreation. Nobody who has sat in a room of family and friends all silently swiping at their phones can tell me their concern isn’t warranted.

…

The success of this model was discussed by Eric Kaufmann, a political-demography scholar at the University of London, in his provocative 2010 book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-first Century. Kaufmann noted the growth of groups like the Amish and the Haredi Jews (often called the Ultra-Orthodox) and attributed it to their birth rates and strong communities. Haredi Jews, for example, who also live by strict community codes, were only a few percentage points of the Israeli schools in 1960 but are now about a third of students, and he predicts they will very soon eclipse secular Jews. Haredi growth in Brooklyn, New York, is seeing similar growth, with high birth rates and retention.

…

Laurence R. Iannaccone’s 1994 study “Why Strict Churches Are Strong,” which has been frequently cited and confirmed since, gives more detail on the success of certain community codes.

Iannaconne found that groups can be strict on items as long as they provide a “close substitute.” Think, for example, of banning social media but then providing a lot of new in-person social opportunities to make up for that sacrifice.

“Strictness works,” he says, but the rules can’t be so strict they make people miserable and drive them away, or as Iannaconne says, “Arbitrary strictness will fail just as surely as excessive strictness.” The rules do have to be strong enough, though, to keep “free-riders” from claiming the benefits of the community without participating. He called these rules “costly signals,” like the sacrifices the Amish make by limiting their clothing styles and technology use. A person would be very unlikely to go through all of those costly steps for community benefits they could get more easily elsewhere. By eliminating free-riders—whose “mere presence dilutes a group’s resources, reducing the average level of participation, enthusiasm, energy, and the like”—they see the reverse, very high levels of participation, enthusiasm, and energy.

It’s not just Amish and Haredi Jews that have seen success with following a community code beyond the laws of the state—think of the monastics who survived in far-flung places relying on The Rule of St. Benedict; knights that followed the Codes of Chivalry; bands of cowboys on the American frontier who stuck close to the Code of the West, which gave detailed guidance on passing strangers on the trail, when to tip your hat, and with which hand you should hold your whiskey; and the tribes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border who have followed the Pashtunwali code since pre-Islamic times.

…

Modern Christians interested in starting a rule-based community would need to create some real benefits that are harder to come by in society at large. I’d suggest the basic benefits of a traditional community (help with childcare and schooling, coherent customs on dating and marriage, providing purpose and companionship to the elderly, cultural celebrations and gatherings, friendship, and assistance during hardship) would be plenty.

Then, they could agree together on some basic rules that are costly enough to separate the serious from the free-riders while not being arbitrary or unnecessarily strict. Targeting the rules toward areas that are particular downfalls for modern Americans (promiscuity, pornography, social media, screen-addiction, substance abuse) would be a good start. Agreeing to forego these in this time and culture would almost certainly be a costly enough signal.

Also, many of the rules should take into account issues like abuse of power, cults of personality, convenient personal revelations from God, sexual abuse, and a host of other issues inherent to tight-knit communities (and larger ones for that matter). The ability for a trusted leader to turn out to be an evil psychopath should never be underestimated, so rules should take that likelihood as a given and guard against it. The Amish, for example, draw straws to choose their leaders to avoid jockeying for power.

One last consideration is to what extent “walling yourself off from the modern world,” as Kaufmann said, is appropriate. Kaufmann said that was the best strategy for growth, but growth is not the only thing to weigh. There are also things like loving your neighbors, having an influence on the greater culture, and not stifling curiosity and creativity. Some walls are necessary, like between a teen boy and pornographic websites or between a child and an activist teacher, but a balance between walls and open spaces should be carefully pursued as a group. For example, language is used as a wall for the Amish (who speak Pennsylvania Dutch) and the Haredi Jews (who largely speak Yiddish), but that would likely be a step too far for most communities, as would their highly-detailed clothing restrictions.

…

Out-of-the-box? Sure. But with the exponential growth of the Amish and similar rule-based communities (and our own failure to find a workable model for modern Christian life) it may be a paradigm to consider. Even without our participation, it will certainly be how a fair amount of future Christians will live.

[tinyshe]

June 3, 2021 Your Excellencies, Do You Even Believe? Jennifer Hartline 

The learned and the mighty have been weighing in now for weeks regarding the ongoing scandal of Catholic pro-abortion politicians, particularly Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden, and the question of giving and receiving the Holy Eucharist.

I wonder if the USCCB will listen to a voice like mine. I am not a theologian or scholar. I am an ordinary laywoman. (Please note: This is not directed at the bishops who have spoken out publicly in defense of Eucharistic and moral coherence. Those few, steadfast shepherds are the exception, not the rule. I am immensely grateful to them.)

The scandal isn’t merely the Catholic politician who betrays the Faith. It is also those priests and bishops who shrug and nod, issue utterly worthless statements about the need for greater “dialogue” about what to do, and bemoan their “immense sadness” over the whole thing.

You lament the present “situation” and issue another statement about your sadness.

The “situation,” of course, is that baptized Catholics who publicly profess their devout faith are using all their political power and energy to facilitate the ongoing slaughter of the child in the womb. They guarantee half a billion dollars each year in funding for the killers. They protect this “right” (their language!) with legislation and fight every attempt at restricting the killing.

They do this gladly, without remorse, without any intention of ceasing. They are proud and empowered in their zealous advocacy of slaughtering innocents.

Yet, you only find your indignation and courage to condemn the “politicization” of the Eucharist. We must not “weaponize” the Eucharist, you solemnly warn, as though you are oblivious to the truth that it is Biden and Pelosi et al. who are “politicizing” the Eucharist. It is they who have made receiving Communion a litmus test of “inclusion” and “conscience” and “unity” according to the world’s demand.

To these scandalous Catholics (and to the rest of the Church listening) you speak with all the conviction and authority of a whimpering dog. The public figures in question laugh at your carefully worded, heavyhearted softballs, knowing they will whack it right back in your face.  

They sing the tune, and you dance on the end of their strings. It is clear who preaches to whom.

I can only conclude, sadly, that you do not believe. Nothing else makes any sense.

If you truly believed the Eucharist was the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, then you could not be so careless. You could not be so indifferent to the mockery of the King by those who publicly disavow His authority.

Or maybe what you don’t believe is that abortion is evil. Maybe you do not really believe it is always wrong to kill the child in the womb. Maybe you do not believe it is morally imperative, or even a good idea, to outlaw abortion.

That would help explain why this “situation” has gone on for decades, like a horror movie on endless repeat.

If Pelosi and Biden championed the legal right to kill kindergarteners, and poured half a billion dollars each year into an industry that existed solely to kill kindergarteners, would you have any qualms about them receiving the Eucharist? Would you still say that it was a political statement to deny them the Sacrament?

The unvarnished truth is that Pelosi and Biden actively work for the abortion industry. Do you understand that? Who works that zealously for something he truly believes is wrong?

Or perhaps you do not love. It would seem so because there is no love in betraying the Lord. Nor is there any love in enabling the death of souls in your charge. Or will you argue it is not a mortal sin to kill the child in the womb? If it is a mortal sin, how can it be justifiable to deliberately enable that sin? What excuse can possibly be offered for one who champions the killing of innocents, who personally and professionally benefits from partnerships with those who kill?

These are the ones who scold and sneer at your gentle chiding about the “protection of the unborn.” You refuse to act with courage and clarity to confront their heinous actions. You refuse to call them to repentance and fidelity. You refuse to care for their souls.

It is not a private matter any longer. It hasn’t been for many years. The scandal is public, the effects far-reaching, the consequences of your inaction are devastating. It is incoherent, inconceivable, that you, as a body, are conflicted and unsure whether it is right and just to withhold the Eucharist from any Catholic who willfully persists in zealous facilitation of abortion.

One wonders if you still believe in sin at all or have any fear of Hell at all. The faithful sheep still do, and we need shepherds who recognize the wolf as a threat. Unfortunately, I have seen how you shepherd. I have seen how you compromise and make excuses, and I have no confidence you would act any differently toward me.

You would leave me to the wolf. You would choose some other, lesser love over love of God. You would “accompany” me on the wide road. If I were lost in mortal sin, deluded by the evil one, participating in acts that will condemn me to Hell if I do not repent and convert, I could not count on you to tell me unchanging, hard truths. You would not offer me severe mercy, only counterfeit mercy.

You are unwilling to risk the mockery and scorn of the world, so you preach inclusion and unity rather than repentance and conversion.

You pretend that a soul can openly betray Church teaching and still claim to be a faithful son or daughter of the Church. You are there with handy excuses for why all the teachings of the Church are hard to embrace in their entirety, given all the complexities and pressures of daily life.

You do not love. You do not believe. What other explanation is there?

There is set before us life and death, the blessing and the curse. How long will you go on pretending there is any “dialogue” still to have? What is left to say to Herod at this point?

source Crisis magazine online

[toastyslayingbutter]

And while Negro labor in America suffers because of the fundamental equities of the whole capitalistic system the lowest and most fatal degree of suffering comes not from the capitalists but from fellow white laborers. It is white labor that deprives the Negro of his right to vote, denies him education, denies him affiliation with trade unions, expels him from decent houses and neighborhoods, and heaps upon him the public insults of open color discrimination.

W.E.B. Du Bois - Marxism and the Negro Problem (Crisis Magazine, May 1933) 

[hope-and-fire]

It's the poor in spirit who inherit the kingdom of God, the ones who know they are morally bankrupt apart from the tender mercies of God: '...apart from me you can do nothing' (Jn 15:5). A sustained battle with our weaknesses can bring us to the holy precinct where our strength ends and the grade of God begins.

Jonathan B. Coe, A Tsunami of Mercy, Crisis Magazine

[crisisshmrisis-blog]

Moral Confusion in the Pro-life Camp: A Response

[A photo of tiny plastic babies/fetuses on a sidewalk]

This seems to be a photo from an anti-abortion protest, where they place flags (or in this case tiny plastic fetuses, I guess) that represent x number of fetuses aborted per year. It really just brings to mind those pictures and sculptures of fetuses created by pro-life groups that inaccurately portray what embryos and fetuses look like – like this one that seems to keep cropping up on Facebook (and apologies for linking to the Daily Mail): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2551660/Christian-mayor-inflames-Norway-abortion-debate-posting-picture-fake-12-week-foetus-palm-hand.html and http://www.snopes.com/photos/medical/12weekfetus.asp.

It seems that pro-lifers are not-so pro-life. According to a recent Gallup poll, 46 percent of Americans identify as pro-life, but only 18 percent say that abortion should be “illegal in all” circumstances. So what accounts for this moral confusion?

We start off strong, with accurate references to a well-respected polling company. So 46% of Americans identify as pro-life (“with respect to the abortion issue” – so we’re ignoring end-of-life issues, the death penalty, etc. – things that any good pro-life Catholic should also be concerned withh). This question was asked directly after a question regarding the legality of abortion, in which case 50% of respondents said abortion should be “legal only under certain circumstances,” and 18% said that abortion should be “illegal in all circumstances.”

With this, Mr. Nicoll has implied that pro-life should equal a belief that abortion is illegal in all circumstances.  Anyone who believes in exceptions is not truly pro-life.

There are a lot of talking points today about the exceptions for abortion – before a certain number of weeks, before the first trimester, in the case of rape or incest, if there’s some kind of horrific and/or painful condition the baby will be born with, or if the pregnancy would risk the mother’s life. I presume Mr. Nicoll is going to address these below. So here we go.

For one thing, the ease with which we rationalize morality down.

“Rationalizing morality down” is apparently a cause of moral confusion. I honestly had to Google this phrase because it isn’t quite clear. My best guess at Mr. Nicoll’s intention with this sentence is that we let us talk ourselves out of a hardline approach to abortion. And it’s easy, apparently.

It goes something like this: Imagine an exceptional circumstance to a moral issue and subject it to a moral calculus until what is morally prohibitive becomes morally acceptable, if not commendable.

“Imagine an exceptional circumstance to a moral issue” – okay, this seems feasible. Since we’re talking abortion, I’ll imagine a young girl about ten years old who has been raped by her father and is pregnant. There are definitely physical risks to someone so young carrying a pregnancy to term, and we’ll add in the probable mental health risks (especially if she’s grown up in a strict religious environment where she believes that she is at fault/her value as a human being is tied to her purity) which could lead to trauma down the road, if not being suicidal. Since I’m imagining an exceptional circumstance, let’s throw in some genetic predisposition to depression (which equals a risk of suicide) and horrific life circumstances where she has no family or societal supports for her pregnancy, childbearing, or child rearing. Let’s go, Mr. Nicoll.

“Subject it to a moral calculus” – I’m really not positive what this means, but I’ll imagine doing some calculations with my moral exceptional circumstance.

“Until what is morally prohibitive becomes morally acceptable, if not commendable.” Okay, so abortion is morally prohibitive. But in this circumstance, it becomes morally acceptable (for the imaginary reasons enumerated above). And then commendable. I think Mr. Nicoll is implying that I’m then going to apply this acceptability to all cases of abortion. But he doesn’t make that step (yet, at least.) Although maybe we did that with our calculus. Who knows? So right now, we’re at a point where we’ve moved from morally prohibitive to morally acceptable, under said exceptional circumstances. I feel okay with this right now.

In the abortion rights debate, those exceptions are rape, incest, and health of the mother—circumstances with high empathy quotients, especially when imagining a wife, daughter, sister, or oneself as a victim. People who poll pro-life, yet support some form of legalized abortion, have concluded it would be too difficult, unloving, or cruel for a woman to bear a child under those conditions.

Okay, here we’ve got three reasons to allow exceptions: rape, incest, and maternal health. Which apparently appeal to people due to their “high empathy quotients,” which I assume is a fancy way of saying that they inspire a lot of empathy (versus something like a gender-selective abortion). And these self-proclaimed pro-lifers fall for these traps of empathy. They let their feelings take over, which is foolish – that’s what I’m getting from this. They can’t imagine going through it themselves, or counseling a wife, daughter, family member, or friend through a pregnancy born of rape or incest (situations in which, I would imagine, the trauma continues for nine months or more), or a pregnancy where they might literally die.

Mr. Nicoll doesn’t seem to have much empathy for people in these situations. He has not yet offered a compelling argument for why they should be forced to continue with these pregnancies. Not only are we against abortions in these circumstances, we’re also looking down from our high horse at those who do have empathy and sympathy for people in said circumstances.

Often their reasoning follows an alluring Golden Rule logic: “loving neighbor as self” means sparing him from any consequence I would want [my wife, daughter, sister, myself] to be spared from.

“Consequence” seems like a harsh word to me. It seems to sort of imply that these women and children brought these unwanted pregnancies via incest or rape on themselves. Or maybe it’s a wanted pregnancy, but the mother, again I’m going to put this in italics, might literally die.

Further tipping the scale is that with a million abortions per year, nearly everyone knows a friend, neighbor, coworker, or family member who has had one. Thus, a person who deems abortion in the abstract as morally wrong, can be less inclined to be so when circumstances are real and close to home.

I can’t find any polls or statistics on this exactly, but I’d imagine most people aren’t casually bringing up their abortion with co-workers at the water cooler or with family over Thanksgiving dinner. Just because people are having abortions doesn’t mean they’re talking about it. Sure, you might know or be acquainted with someone who has had an abortion. But do you know about that person’s abortion? Probably not.

But say you do. And then when you look at the circumstances that are close to you and understandable in the context of your life (“real and close to home”), it makes sense. It seems acceptable. This is basically how human understanding works. It’s easy, easy, easy to form strong opinions in the safe vacuum of the abstract. But when we throw in the complications and messiness of real life, it gets harder to make black-and-white decisions. Isn’t there some kind of blessed, beautiful humanity in the people who can empathize with their fellow human being amidst their struggles?

But let’s examine the calculus.

Oh, Jesus H. Christ, now we have to do math again.

Consider the case of a child conceived in rape or incest. Is ending the life of the child a lesser evil than having the mother carry him/her to term? Granted, the post-traumatic consequences to the mother can be painful and prolonged, but the victimization of one person never justifies victimizing another who, in this case, happens to be the most vulnerable and voiceless person involved.

Okay, so Mr. Nicoll believes that life begins at conception. We’ve got one life in the uterus, and another life with the uterus carrying this other life.

“The post-traumatic consequences to the mother can be painful and prolonged, but…” I think both the pro-choice and the pro-life crowd can agree on this one. So why doesn’t the pro-life crowd put some effort into community mental health services, geared toward vulnerable women? And I don’t mean flinging diapers and prayers at vulnerable women. I mean some serious, licensed, accessible clinical therapy geared towards women who have experienced trauma surrounding pregnancy. If you’re going to legislate that a woman carry a pregnancy to term despite the ongoing trauma, and claim to care about both lives equally, then you’re just going to have to put your money where your mouth is.

“The victimization of one person never justifies victimizing another…” Well, Mr. Regis the-world-is-cut-and-dry Nicoll – here’s a quandary. If abortion victimizes the child for the benefit of the mother, and the birth of the child victimizes the mother at the benefit of child – where do we go from here? We seem to have hit a brick wall with our black and white moral compass.

Oh, you don’t see the birth of the child as the continued victimization of the mother. The “painful and prolonged” post-traumatic consequences aren’t continued victimization. Just a consequence for the mother to suffer. (And if you had to suffer these horrific post-traumatic consequences, Mr. Nicoll? I’m sure in the vacuum of the abstract, you say you would suffer them humbly and honorably for the sake of your child. But when it’s real life? I’m not making assumptions, but it would get a whole lot harder.)

How about maternal health? Is abortion justified to save the life of a mother?

So we have two lives here. If the mothers’ is at risk, it’s my understanding that the other life generally is too - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/19/abortion-mother-life-walsh/1644839/. Medicine has advanced, and viability outside the womb has increased. But it’s not perfect – not perfectly advanced enough to match Mr. Nicoll’s cut-and-dry morality. So if the abortion is not justified, and the fetus is not viable, then we lose two lives? That seems unreasonable.

Ironically, in a book promoting legalized abortion, Dr. Alan Guttmacher, past president of Planned Parenthood admitted, “Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal illness such as cancer or leukemia, and, if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save, life.” And that was in 1967!

Preeclampsia affects about 3.4% of pregnant women in the U.S. (https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/preeclampsia/conditioninfo/Pages/risk.aspx). Not a large percentage, but you are the one who dragged us down this “exceptional circumstance” rabbit hole, Mr. Nicoll! The Mayo Clinic states that “if you have preeclampsia, the only cure is delivery of your baby.” Modern medicine is advancing. We are looking for ways to avoid even having preeclampsia in the first place. But it still can happen. And if it occurs before the fetus is viable? Well then, looks like Alan Guttmacher has his foot in his mouth.

The doctor would find no argument from former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop who once stated, “In my 36 years in pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother’s life.”

I presume that C. Everett Koop, a pediatric surgeon, would not have been called in to situations where abortion was medically necessary. We’re talking low numbers anyway (“exceptional circumstances,” remember?), so maybe he never came across such a situation. But even if such a medically-necessary abortion took place in the same building as C. Everett Koop, he might not have known. He would only have been present in the case of fetal abnormalities or birth defects that he could correct or in cases where he could save the life of the child.

But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that abortion is necessary to preserve a mother’s life.

Alright, let’s go.

If a mother is willing, as nearly all mothers are, to assume some, if not significant, personal risk for the welfare of her post-partum child, how could she deny her enwombed child the same consideration? The child in both cases is a genetically complete and unique human being; they differ only in stage of development, as a newborn from a toddler, a toddler from a teen, a teen from an adult.

Oh, no we already talked about this. I’m miles ahead of you Mr. Nicoll. If the pregnancy is such a risk to the woman, and not viable yet for delivery, that baby is probably not going to make it either. Two lives versus one. Or we’re trading one life for one life. And if all lives are equal, well oh dear. Aren’t we at a brick wall again. If there is a case in this cut-and-dry, black-and-white world that you imagine, where a woman knows that if she continues with the pregnancy, she will die, but her child will live, guaranteed, sure, she may be more likely to “choose life,” as you call it (versus risking her life for a child who very well may not survive at all). But if we’re trading exactly one life for another, shouldn’t the person who is giving her life have a say? It’s a difficult moral quandary. But if you say no in all circumstances, then you’re sentencing a woman to death for the mere fact that she was unfortunate enough to wind up with a risky pregnancy. Which seems like a difficult moral quandary to me.

Then again, all this concern over “women’s health” neglects the very real and serious health consequences to women from abortion.

Oh no.

For example, an analysis of 22 studies, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, involving over 800,000 participants found that post-abortion women had “moderate to highly increased risk of mental health problems” that included substance abuse and suicidal behavior.

Correlation is not causation. Perhaps the reason that the woman felt she needed to have an abortion was her mental health status (hey, pro-lifers, put your money towards real, effective, accessible mental health services for women!), or other circumstances in her life that caused the substance abuse and suicidal behavior. These women likely had the substance abuse and suicidal behavior (or at least other circumstances leading to these situations) prior to the abortion. Sure, the surprise/unwanted pregnancy and abortion could exacerbate these. But I’m not going to believe that the abortion caused these problems, as you suggest, unless there is cold, hard data documenting the causation, not just correlation.

Concerning the physical consequences of abortion, the best documented ones include significant increased risks of premature birth in future pregnancies, uterine bleeding, and breast cancer.

Given that you cited Americans United for Life, I’m not going to believe you. Here’s an article that cites a real scientific study about how abortion does not cause premature birth in future pregnancies - https://www.babymed.com/abortion/modern-abortion-does-not-increase-risk-preterm-birth. And another article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15603101. Uterine bleeding also occurs after childbirth (http://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=postpartum-hemorrhage-90-P02486), but I don’t see you arguing against childbirth. And here’s what the American Cancer Society has to say about that breast cancer claim - https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/medical-treatments/abortion-and-breast-cancer-risk.html. (In short – “breast cancer risk is increased for a short time after a full-term pregnancy…Induced abortion is not linked to an increase in breast cancer risk…Spontaneous abortion is not linked to an increase in breast cancer risk.)

Despite the medical facts concerning women’s health and the personhood of the child in utero, courts over the last four decades have denied the child its right to life, while declaring the woman’s right to abort “sacred ground.” So sacred, that her choice is to be free from restriction or personal consequence, even over the objections of the child’s father, and even if the cost of her choice must be borne by individuals and organizations against their religious beliefs.

“Courts…have denied the child its right to life.” What you’re doing here is villainizing the courts, despite a different foundational belief about what exactly an embryo or fetus is, and what right it might have. The courts who have made such decisions clearly do not see the fetus in utero as an individual human being with constitutional rights. If they did, they would probably make other decisions. So stop vilifying people for making decisions based on their belief system and educate them. And educated them with sources other than organizations with a pro-life bent. Because nobody is going to believe those.

“Personal consequence” has been addressed above, at least in terms of those exceptional circumstances. And, as a pro-life writer, I don’t think you should be referring to children as “consequences.” That sounds sort of punitive. And if you call them consequences, then definitely nobody is going to want them.

Regarding the child’s father – this does get tricky. If the courts don’t regard the fetus as an individual human being with rights, what rights does the father have to the growing thing that is inside the mother’s uterus?  I do, personally believe, that if the father can demonstrate his willingness to care for the child and pay for the medical bills for the woman, there should be some sort of system set up for him to be able to have the rights to keep and raise his child. But while the fetus is growing in the mother’s uterus? It gets tricky and we’re weighing one person’s rights against another. It’s basically a landmine. If anyone has a good answer to this, let me know please and thank you.

Prior to Roe v. Wade abortion was legal in most states to save the mother’s life. Given the rare to non-existent instances in which that would be a legitimate concern and the fact that only about one percent of abortions involve rape and incest, according to the “pro-choice” Guttmacher Institute, the ruling should have had a negligible effect on abortion incidence. Instead, less than six years post-Roe, the number of abortions doubled from over 600,000 to over 1,200,000.

This is not them main point of study by the Guttmacher Institute says. The study simply cites the reasons that women have abortions, which are a lack of financial or social stability (the father being out of the picture, or barely in the picture) or obligations to children the woman already has.  I’m not sure where the 600,000 number comes from. From a basic Google search, I cannot find anything and Mr. Nicoll does not link anything. I will note that any numbers about abortion from pre-Roe v. Wade have to be taken with a grain of salt. People who had abortions prior to its legalization were not exactly reportion their abortion to the CDC. So it’s hard to have accurate numbers.

It was the result of expanding the health “exception” to include any physical, psychological, emotional, familial, or stage of life consideration deemed pertinent to the mother’s well-being. Under that broad definition, the reasons women give to abort—again, according to the Guttmacher Institute—include: a baby would interfere with my education or employment or dramatically change my life; I don’t want people to know I had sex; I’m not ready for a (another) child; I’m not married; I can’t afford a baby.

Mr. Nicoll implies that the increase in abortions after Roe v. Wade have to do with the expansion of “exceptional circumstances.” That from abortions in the case of the risking of a mother’s life, we make abortion okay for someone who would be inconvenienced by a child. I’m not sure where Mr. Nicoll draws this conclusion. He offers no data to support this, and just seems to draw it from thin air.

It seems as though these women had abortions because of the reasons presented by their own lives and circumstances – not due to some kind of calculus they did on moral reasoning. Can’t have a child due to financial reasons, other familial obligations, or a lack of paternal or general familial support? These seem to be home-grown reasons – not calculated from a moral exceptionalism standpoint.

Speaking of a condition in his time, Blaise Pascal observed, “[You] make a rule of exception … from this exception you make a rule without exception, so that you do not even want the rule to be exceptional.” In our time, what was once intended to be an extraordinary procedure to save a woman’s life has become a billion-dollar industry to save her from any inconvenience.

Here we go again with math, with Blaise Pascal. And assuming that we make a general rule out of an extreme circumstance. As discussed above, I don’t think that’s what’s happened.

Given that the pro-life movement is primarily made up of Christians, double-mindedness in the camp can be placed squarely on the doorstep of the Church.

Again, making assumptions. The Church is to blame, because her people are the ones in the pro-life camp. Could it not be that our blessed and/or cursed humanity does not allow us humans to fall into your strict pro-life camp, Mr. Nicoll. Because the pro-lifers all fall under one umbrella, the umbrella is to blame?

It is not that Scripture and Church tradition have nothing to say in the matter. To the contrary, when the psalmist wrote, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me,” he was three millennia ahead of medical science in acknowledging when personhood begins.

“From the time my mother conceived me,” does not necessarily mean from the time that the sperm fertilized the egg. It really could be interpreted as from the time that my mother thought of having a child. Let’s not make assumptions here.

As to church tradition, the sentiments of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi notwithstanding, the Church has always held that abortion is murder. In the second century alone, there were over twenty admonitions against abortion (without reference to exceptions) by early church fathers—like this from Tertullian: “In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb…To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth.”

Okay, your beef is with the Catholic Church here. Yes, the Catholic Church is against abortion. This does not require argument.

The problem is that abortion, seldom (if ever) is given any airtime in churches. If the war on children is to end, that must change. The teachings of scripture and tradition must be placed front and center and made clear, not in a single sermon or sermon series, but throughout the church year from the pulpit, Sunday School curricula, and home study groups to remove the moral confusion that divides the pro-life camp and sustains a genocide claiming the lives of 56 million children worldwide, every year.

Oh no, abortion is not given sufficient airtime in churches. I feel like it really is, but I guess not. A priest telling a congregation that abortion is wrong is not going to convince people who feel real empathy and sympathy for their fellow human being that abortion should not happen in extreme circumstances. But if the Church were to provide funding for clinical therapy for women with pregnancy-related trauma and resources beyond diapers and baby formula for women who wanted to continue their pregnancy but lacked the support and finances? Goodness knows what could happen!

[arcticdementor]

On September 18, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at the age of 87. At once, this country was filled with the sound of progressives weeping and gnashing their teeth.

From what I could gather, none of them knew Ginsburg personally. Most likely, none of them paid her much notice until 2016, when it dawned on the Democrats that Donald Trump might be able to replace the most pro-choice justice in American history with a pro-life conservative. That would potentially signal the death of Roe v. Wade. In 2017, when Ginsburg’s health continued to decline, lefties began offering to give up their own vital fluids to sustain her until the Democrats took back the White House. An editor at The Washington Post penned a column memorably titled, “Dear Ruth Bader Ginsburg: If you need anything—blood, organs—take mine.”

…

Seeing progressives in a manic-depressive state over Justice Ginsburg’s death, I remembered watching my middle school classmates going to pieces when Michael Jackson died in 2009. None of them listened to his music, but the phony mourning made them feel like they were part of something. How little has changed.

In his new book, Live Not By Lies, Rod Dreher warns us that the Hitlers and Stalins of our age will not wear funny mustaches and slick uniforms as they did in the 20th century. “The totalitarian temptation presents itself with a twenty-first century face,” he writes. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is that face. It’s the face of grown women screaming in anger and disbelief into the cameras of their iPhones over the death of their fallen hero. It’s the face of grown men who tweet about collapsing on the floor, sobbing, on hearing the news of Ginsburg’s death.

So long as Millennials remain dominant in American politics, this will remain the prevailing mode of discourse. My generation was abandoned by our parents and our teachers. We were never given a moral education for fear of stunting our “individuality.” We were never taught to reason. We were never taught to control our emotional or carnal impulses.

That’s why there isn’t one real “individual” in America under forty. We all became slaves to peer pressure, and to our own base appetites. That’s the great danger of this moment in American history. We are being ruled by children—children who can’t tell right from wrong, and who lack all self-control. Like all children, our new ruling class won’t hesitate to punish any deviation from their the latest infatuation with ostracism, abuse, and perhaps even violence.

The new totalitarians are overgrown children, which is why the new totalitarianism will be defined by these three characteristics: emotivism, hedonism, and conformism. It will look less like Nineteen Eighty-Four and more like Lord of the Flies.

…

Live Not By Lies is at its very best when describing our “pre-totalitarian culture.” Many right-wingers, for instance, would almost entirely dismiss the role that Big Business will play in enabling the new generation of fascists. They’re locked in a Cold War mentality, which sees communism and capitalism as antithetical. In fact, we’re developing a unique economic system—“woke capitalism”—which serves as the very engine of that coming revolution.

Virtually every major corporation has bowed to the successive demands of the pro-choice lobby, the LGBT movement, and lately Black Lives Matter. Amazon will refuse to sell books that conflict with progressive orthodoxies. Google will modify search results to promote “diversity.” Twitter bans users who “misgender” people suffering from gender dysphoria. Bank of America has vowed to no longer do business with gun manufacturers. PayPal defunds users they consider far-right.

The rise of woke capitalism, Mr. Dreher writes, is accompanied by the rise of surveillance capitalism. American consumers have actually paid corporations to place the mechanisms of the surveillance state in our homes. Take “smart speakers,” like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home. These devices record every conversation within earshot.

For now, that data is being used to help Silicon Valley more effectively micromarket their products to consumers. Yet what if the government were to seize that information and use it to implement a Chinese-style Social Credit System? Or what if those corporations were to ban any customers from using their products? So many of my generation would be lost without Google search, Google Pay, their Gmail account, their Chromebook laptop…

…

Following the publication of The Benedict Option, Mr. Dreher was accused of being a “retreatist,” even a “defeatist.” Why? Because, as he says in In Live Not By Lies, Mr. Dreher believes that “The culture war is largely over—and we lost.” That seems to be the central thesis of his work. He made the assertion early in The Benedict Option but didn’t spend much time defending it. The first half of Live Not By Lies is devoted to proving that thesis; the second half, to surviving the coming anti-Christian, totalitarian regime.

Now, one might argue that Christians are just one election away from reclaiming total control over this country’s political, religious, economic, and cultural institutions. So far, nobody has tried—probably because they can’t. After reading Live Not By Lies, there can be no shadow of a doubt that Mr. Dreher is right. He isn’t a pessimist, but a realist.

…

All of that notwithstanding, Live Not By Lies is indispensable for any Christian hoping not only to survive the fall of the Empire but to see a new Christendom emerge from its ruins. Those who are optimistic about the future of liberal-democratic capitalism will be thoroughly disillusioned—and they’ll thank Mr. Dreher for it.

Having realized that things are, in fact, much worse than they seem, they must then read The Benedict Option with fresh eyes. They must prepare for total war against modernity. Modern Man, in all his infantile fury, is surely gearing up for total war against us Christians. Those who don’t heed Mr. Dreher’s warnings and study his writings will not survive the coming Dark Age.

[thebristolboard]

Forgotten masterpiece: “The Happiest Days” by Martine d’Ellard (story) and Caroline della Porta (art) from 2000 A.D. Presents: Crisis #52, published Fleetway Publications, 1990.

[seeselfblack]

The Crisis

The original title of the journal was The Crisis: A Record of The Darker Races. From 1997 to 2003, it appeared as The New Crisis: The Magazine of Opportunities and Ideas, but the title has since reverted to The Crisis. The title derives from the poem "The Present Crisis" by James Russell Lowell.[1] Published monthly, the journal in its first year had a circulation of 1,000 and by 1918 had over 100,000 readers.[3]

Du Bois proclaimed his intentions in his first editorial:

The object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people. It takes its name from the fact that the editors believe that this is a critical time in the history of the advancement of men. …Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals.

Predominantly a current-affairs journal, The Crisis also included poems, reviews, and essays on culture and history. Du Bois' initial position as editor was in line with the NAACP's liberal program of social reform and racial equality, but by the 1930s Du Bois was advocating a form of black separatism. This led to disputes between Du Bois and the NAACP resulting in his resignation as editor in 1934. He was replaced by Roy Wilkins.

Although The Crisis was officially an organ of the NAACP, Du Bois had a large degree of control over the periodical's expressed opinion. Du Bois wrote in Dusk of Dawn (1940) that he intended for The Crisis to represent his personal opinions:

I determine to make the opinion of the Crisis a personal opinion; because, as I argued, no organization can express definite and clear cut opinions… the Crisis would state openly the opinion of its editor, so long, of course, as that opinion was in general agreement with that of the organization.

Du Bois contends that the periodical suffered during the Great Depression as the "circulation dropped steadily until by 1933 it was scarcely more than ten thousand paid subscriptions." Du Bois left the magazine for both financial and ideological reasons.

Throughout the Du Bois years The Crisis published the work of many young African-American writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Its greatest era as a literary journal was between 1919 and 1926, when Jessie Redmon Fauset was literary editor. Fauset encouraged such writers as Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Jean Toomer.

Following the departure of Fauset and Du Bois, the influence of The Crisis declined. The magazine was unable to sustain the high literary standards it had achieved under Fauset, but it continued to have a powerful political voice.

On August 7, 2007, Jabari Asim  was named editor of The Crisis by then publisher Roger Wilkins. Asim came to The Crisis from The Washington Post, where he was Book World deputy editor.[10]

The Chicago Tribune named The Crisis one of its "50 Favorite Magazines" in 2008, stating: "This venerable publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has continued to evolve and illuminate since its premier premiere issue in November 1910 (one year after the creation of the NAACP).

Also see:

-- TheCrisisMagazine.com

-- The Crisis on Wikipedia

-- Paperlessarchives -- The Crisis magazine, every issue published from its first issue, November 1910, through October 1923, archived on CD-ROM

-- The Crisis collection at Brown University 

-- Links to the first six issues of Volume 1 

-- 100 Years of Powerful Covers from The Crisis Magazine

-- PBS - The Crisis Magazine

[joshbishopreads]

When Saint Paul said that he must be all things to all men, he did not mean that he would be stupid for the stupid.

Anthony Esolen in “Reform and Renewal Starts with Us”

[beuncomfortable]

Want to Meet Jesus? Come to Confession

Want to Meet Jesus? Come to Confession - (Orig. at @CrisisMag) #confession

This post originally appeared at Crisis Magazine. It has been reposted with permission. *** We humans can be a bit fickle sometimes. What we choose to do with our time often depends directly on how the people and places with which we associate ourselves make us feel. If we don’t feel welcome in a place, we probably don’t stay long. If we try a place or organization out on the suggestion of other…

[franciscanqotd]

A spiritual bourgeois

The spirit of the Gospel is eminently that of the “open” type which gives, asking nothing in return, and spends itself for others. It is essentially hostile to the spirit of calculation, the spirit of worldly prudence and above all to the spirit of religious self-seeking and self-satisfaction. For what is the Pharisee but a spiritual bourgeois, a typically “closed” nature, a man who applies the…

[reneeo12]

Supreme Poetaster

Here’s a word that doesn’t get much use these days: Poetaster. One of the memorable ways to define this word – as well as to remember its pronunciation – is to take the word Poet, marry to it the last two syllables of disaster, and you have Poetaster.

A Poetaster is simply “an inferior poet, a writer of indifferent verse.” There’s some latitude in the word I think. A Poetastermight be someone who…