Denver Newsroom, May 5, 2020 / 02:52 am (CNA).- Pope St. John Paul II, who led the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005, is perhaps one of the most compelling figures of the 20th century.
Born nearly 100 years ago on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Poland, Karol Woytila— the future pope— endured the loss of most of his family, clandestinely studied for the priesthood while his country was under Nazi rule, and rose through the Church hierarchy while never ceasing to encourage his Polish countrymen to keep the faith while resisting Communist pressure.
He participated in the Second Vatican Council and, upon his election as pope, became the most widely-traveled pontiff ever and likely the most-seen person in the history of the world. He was an academic, and widely regarded as a genius, but also a man of simplicity and humility.
He survived a brutal assassination attempt in 1981, crediting Mary’s intercession for his survival and extending forgiveness to his attacker.
“He’s the exemplar of the fact that a life wholly dedicated to Jesus Christ and the Gospel is the most exciting human life possible,” George Weigel, John Paul II’s biographer, told CNA.
“This man lived a life of such extraordinary drama that no Hollywood scriptwriter would dare come up with such a storyline. It would just be regarded as absurd.”
His compelling life story has been told and retold many times, including on the big screen.
But did you know that John Paul II’s life story was once the subject of a Marvel comic book?
Printed in full color and featuring dramatic, stylish visuals, the 1982 comic chronicles the pope’s life, from his childhood in Poland all the way up to the attempt on his life by a would-be assassin.
Marvel, which Disney purchased in a multi-billion dollar acquisition in 2009, is one of the largest entertainment companies in the world, and the purveyor of such iconic characters as Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Captain America.
So what persuaded the Marvel executives to green-light a comic book about the then newly-elected pope?
‘Marvel’s Man in Japan’
It all started with Gene Pelc— a New Yorker and Marvel representative living in Japan.
Pelc— whose wife is Japanese— had moved to Japan in the 1970s in order to report back to Marvel on how the comic book company could adapt its products for a Japanese audience.
Pelc was tasked with licensing Spider-Man to play on Japanese television, and was largely successful at what he did, earning the moniker “Marvel’s Man in Japan.”
Pelc told CNA that he and his family went— and still go— to Mass at the Franciscan Chapel Center, a community of English-speaking priests in Tokyo.
Japan was then— and remains today— a very non-Christian country, with Catholics comprising less than half of 1% of the population.
One day, a priest named Father Campion Lally approached Pelc at the Franciscan Chapel Center with an unusual proposition. The eight-hundredth anniversary of St. Francis’ birth was coming up in 1982, Fr. Lally said…what if, to commemorate it, Marvel produced a comic book about the life of St. Francis?
Pelc liked the idea, and wondered whether it would prove popular amongst Catholics in the US. Fr. Lally was adamant, however, that the comic be marketed to non-Catholics as well.
“The real reason I want this done is to reach an audience the Church doesn’t normally reach,” Pelc remembers Fr. Lally saying.
“’I want to take St. Francis out of the birdbath’ was his exact comment.”
Pelc called up Stan Lee— a legendary Marvel comic book publisher— who apparently liked the idea. But when Pelc pitched the idea to the higher-ups at Marvel, they weren’t quite so supportive at first.
“They all said: Gene, you’ve been in Japan too long. No one wants to hear about that. They want to hear about superheroes,” Pelc remembers the executives telling him.
Pelc was able to appeal to the financial sensibilities of the executives to help his case, however— the Paulist Press, a U.S.-based Catholic publisher, had expressed interest in purchasing some 250,000 copies of the comic upon its release.
Needless to say, the prospect of a minimum of 250,000 copies sold— when a popular comic at the time could be expected to sell around 150,000 copies— was enough to sway the executives to approve the project.
Father Roy Gasnick, a Franciscan priest and director of communications based in New York, helped Marvel writer Mary Jo Duffy to write the story of St. Francis’ life for the comic. Fr. Gasnik was, by all accounts, a massive comic book fan himself.
Then the artists at Marvel did their magic, and produced the comic entitled “Francis: Brother of the Universe,” which hit stores in 1980.
Helped by the Paulist Press’ large order, “Brother of the Universe” proved to be a hit, both critically and commercially.
A new project
“The next step was pretty obvious to me, being Catholic and being Polish,” Pelc said.
“Pope John Paul II was extremely popular in the world at the time; he was traveling much more than the old popes did previously. And he was actually coming to Japan.”
John Paul II was the first pontiff to visit the country. The pope arrived in Japan in February 1981, to a small but enthusiastic welcome.
The pope’s visit galvanized Pelc, who was still riding high on the success of the St. Francis comic. He began looking into the possibility of producing another religious-themed comic for Marvel.
A friend of Gene’s introduced him to Father Mieczyslaw Malinski, who was a friend of the pope’s back in Poland during the war. Fr. Malinski apparently consulted with the pope himself about what he thought about the idea of turning his story into a comic.
According to Pelc, John Paul II was supportive of the idea, as long as Fr. Malinski himself worked with the comic book team on the project.
So, the Marvel team was off to the races yet again. The first step? Research. And a lot of it.
Most of the information came from Fr. Malinski, but the story still had to be adapted to fit into the panels and speech bubbles.
That task fell to Steven Grant, a young freelance comic book artist who at the time was living in New York and working for Marvel. He had heard that Marvel was producing a second religious-themed comic, but he didn’t think much of it— he assumed that Mary Jo Duffy would be tasked with writing this one, too.
Instead, Marvel’s editor-in-chief called Grant into his office and asked him to take on the task of writing the John Paul II comic book.
“I got involved because I was expendable at the time,” Grant told CNA.
“I wasn’t one of the artists they particularly wanted writing the Fantastic Four that month,” he laughed.
“And they knew I was Catholic— that was my big credential.”
For Grant, working on a comic book about John Paul II— which the team always referred to as “the Pope Book”— was both ordinary, in the sense that the writing process was not markedly different than other comic books; and extraordinary, given that the subject matter was not only a living person, but also the leader of a 1-billion strong worldwide religion.
“No one was worried about offending him, but there was a lot of room to offend a lot of people if we did a bad job with it,” he said.
Bumps in the road
The project experienced two major roadblocks the year before it was released, the first of which was the attempt on John Paul’s life in May 1981, in the midst of the comic’s production.
Instead of dropping the project, the Marvel team wrote the events of the assassination into the book itself.
In addition, communicating with Fr. Malinski would prove more difficult than the team at Marvel had expected.
On Dec. 13, 1981, a general named Wojciech Jaruzelski appeared on television sets throughout Poland. In a video message repeated over and over again, the general declared martial law, and ordered troops to suppress the Solidarity movement, a trade union rooted in Catholic principles that opposed Communism.
Many striking Solidarity workers would die in the next few days, as Polish troops fired into groups of them.
After John Paul’s visit to his native Poland in 1979, it would be another decade before the Solidarity Party in Poland, with the pope’s encouragement, would finally gain a majority in Parliament, and, largely peacefully, the country would shrug off the shackles of Communism.
To make matters worse, the turmoil in Poland was taking place in the middle of the comic book’s production schedule, and the Marvel team needed Fr. Malinski’s insights in order to get the comic book written.
The Communists restricted much of the communications in and out of Poland during that time. Pelc said he remembers receiving smuggled communications from Fr. Malinski, which he brought to his father in New York to have translated from Polish to English.
Apart from Fr. Malinski’s contributions, Grant says he simply put his nose to the grindstone and read up on as much as he could about the pope’s life.
“It was a little pre-internet,” Grant chuckled.
“I figured anything I found three or four references to was probably accurate.”
His total research spanned about two months, he says, but the actual writing process was only a couple of weeks long, spurred on by Marvel’s tight production schedules.
Legacy
Finally, in 1982, the comic book hit the shelves. Thanks in large part to Catholic agencies buying up the edition, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 million copies made their way into the world.
For a young comic book artist, it was quite the windfall. Grant said he was able to pay off his student loans when he received the royalties for the comic the following year.
So, did the pope himself ever get a chance to see himself as a Marvel hero? According to Pelc, he did. A Marvel executive flew to Rome and presented the pope with a leatherbound edition.
The success of the first two religious-themed comic books led to a third, this time about another future saint— and friend of John Paul’s— Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Although Pelc was not able to assist with that project, that comic also proved successful, though it was the last of the major religious-themed comics that Marvel produced. That comic even won a Catholic Press Association award in 1984.
In the four decades since the John Paul II comic book’s release, several members of the team that worked on it, including the artist who created the drawings, have died.
Pelc and Grant have gone their separate ways. Grant is still a freelance comic writer, and does writing work for Marvel “once in a blue moon” when they call him up.
Though the “Pope book” remains just one of the hundreds of projects that Grant has worked on over the years, he said he remembers walking into his local laundromat in New York a few months after the comic’s release, and being surprised to see the comic’s cover framed and hung proudly on the wall.
Though Grant never told the owners of the laundromat— clearly devout Catholics— that he was the author of the comic, he said it brought him pride that they valued it so highly.
Pelc, who still lives in Tokyo, owns a company that sells merchandise for musical artists. He said he still gets asked to this day— mostly by parishioners at the Franciscan Chapel Center— about Marvel’s religious comics, he says.
On the side, Pelc still has a passion for telling compelling Catholic stories. He is currently working on a book about the late 16th-century 26 Christian martyrs of Japan, and hopes eventually to adapt the story into a screenplay.
For his part, Pelc says he thinks it unlikely that a company like Marvel would produce something like this again. But he’s glad that by means of the “Pope book,” he and Grant and the entire team were able to tell a good story, in a world inundated by bad stories.
“That man deserved to be known by more than just people who go to church. He was an everyman pope, and I, being Polish, loved him,” he reflected.
Note: This story was adapted from an episode of Catholic News Agency’s podcast, CNA Newsroom. Click here to listen to the full story.
[…]
I’ve been involved in pro-life work for more than half a century, even before Roe, even before I had a religious faith. And in all this time I am amazed that we ever made any progress at all considering the blatant foolishness of so many pro-life leaders who so frequently give evidence of wanting to prove moral superiority, not unlike their left-wing counterparts, than provide sober thought as to what will actually save the lives of the babies. Denials of reality contribute to killing the babies, not saving them.
How foolish does someone have to be to deny that a weak midterm performance had everything to do with the pro-life movement adopting moronic in your face strategies towards a predominantly liberal America from a baseless confidence created after the reversal of Roe in June? Trump was obviously right, and pro-life leaders, in this case, are entirely wrong. The moral conversion of a nation is done through a realistic process. You don’t convert a cynical atheist instantaneously by simply saying if you don’t believe in Jesus, Mary, and Joseph immediately, you’re going to hell. And you don’t convert a pro-abortion civilization overnight with draconian policies, a civilization where even the vast majority of Catholics are at least abortion tolerant, when policies even the lukewarm would tolerate would eliminate almost all abortions without triggering the unfortunate but very real uneducated reflex that it is cruel to deny it to rape victims. Realistic gradualism that saves lives matters. Absolutism that fails to take effect kills lives. When a culture turns from most abortions, it can turn from all abortions. The war for the unborn is not about more pro-life than thou self-gratification. Smugness has always been a recognizable sin among the otherwise noble commitments of a movement I’ve been a part of for half a century.
“…The unfortunate but very real uneducated reflex that it is cruel to deny it to rape victims.” It is cruel to deny life to the unborn merely because of the circumstances of the child’s conception. It’s not the child’s fault. It apparently also escapes you that if you grant dispensations to kill the unborn child in certain circumstances, you completely forfeit the argument that abortion is murder, and any prochoice person, no matter their intelligence, is bound to sense that and jump on the contradiction.
Obviously they’ll try to lie to themselves initially. What’s your point? They lie to themselves all the time. That’s why they’re pro-aborts. How foolish do you have to be to believe that pro-aborts will conclude that pro-lifers are insincere with restrictive laws? My point, of which I am totally aware, is that all lives matter, including those conceived of rape and those not conceived of rape. What you apparently ignore is that those not conceived of rape matter too. And when you fail to save any lives at all because of favoring, at all costs, pigheaded sanctimony promoting legislation that is impossible to pass, that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hxll to pass, and promoting candidates that are impossible to elect, rather than legislation that can pass that does save lives, you kill off many lives in the process because of a need to accommodate pigheaded phony pseudo-principles.
And are you seriously unaware of all the pro-abort Republicans who sell themselves as anti-abortion by claiming to be absolutists who will “fight” for absolute pro-life legislation just so they could get pro-life votes knowing that when they propose pro-life absolute bills that get instantly shot down or reversed by depraved federal judges they can lie to their constituents that they did everything they could so they should be reelected by conservative America? If you are unaware, it is only because you, like those I was describing, are trying to remain unaware and are more interested in trying to prove to yourself and others how pure you are than really trying to save lives.
Incidentally, if you desire to learn Catholic moral doctrine beyond the level of say, someone like the highest level of prelates, you might discover that orthodox Catholic moral doctrine promotes this particular gradualist principle, when their are no prudential alternatives, that I am describing.
E. Baker: You write “orthodox Catholic moral doctrine promotes this particular gradualist principle, when their (sic) are no prudential alternatives, that I am describing”….
I do not currently believe that you are properly applying Catholic moral doctrine to the declarations you have made in a variety of posts, but if you can set forth specific statements (generalizations will not be sufficient) and illustrative examples from the Catechism, Evangelium Vitae, and other similar Church documents that unequivocally support your advocacy of what you describe as the “gradualist” position (be careful: tolerance of a lesser evil in pursuit of a greater good is not an endorsement of any kind of gradualism), then those of us you have lectured to in your posts might find some wisdom in what you believe your declarations already possess, including some claims that others in opposition are smug and self-righteous and even immoral to some degree because they do not follow your assessments.
I look forward to engaging your specific Church references to see if they do indeed support your declarations, or if you have adopted a position that is actually not in line with Church moral doctrine.
You misquote me and lie about me. When did it “escape me” that it is wrong to kill a baby that is conceived from rape? What you quoted out of context was my reference to how pro-aborts perceive absolutist pro-life laws. NOT ME. Got it? This should be clear to anyone capable of passing a reading comprehension exam.
I don’t think that it is a matter of “pro-life self-gratification” or “smugness.” There has been a debate in the pro-life movement for decades whether to take an all or nothing approach or an incremental approach. Something of a case can be made for either.
But, in that debate, I am afraid the word “abortion” now slides too easily off our lips. The word has lost some of its moral stigma. We need to be more specific with what is taking place.
Murder is defined as the deliberate taking of an innocent human life. This past November my state had a referendum on adding to the state constitution the phrase that nothing in the constitution would allow for abortion. It failed. Exit polls showed that 60% of Catholics voted against it. Two Mass going Catholics mentioned to me that, well, it did not have an exception for rape or incest. My response was, “Then you are in favor of killing an unborn baby if it was conceived by rape or incest?”
I think that people need to be confronted by what they are in favor of (especially Catholics). If one side of the debate is in favor of a position that would murder unborn babies conceived by rape or incest in order to save other babies, they should be required to state that.
That was my point. You can’t get people to confront what they believe when you allow an all out abortion culture and walk away. Only a restrictive abortion society forces people to think about the matter seriously. When it is impossible to achieve an absolutist pro-life value system within a state, you don’t accomplish anything at all, by just saying, oh well, we tried. That, most certainly, is smugness. That, most certainly, is the pursuit of self-gratification at the expense of life.
Your position seems to run very close to, “We must do evil to achieve good.” We must vote to murder some unborn babies in order to save many others.
If you have a response to this, I am anxious to hear it, hopefully without the “smugness” and “self-gratification terminology.”
Wrong, with all due respect. Doing evil to achieve good is not involved at all in reducing evil to achieve reducing evil, to state a self-evident redundancy that implies good, which is why orthodox Catholic moral doctrine, not dumb modernist Jesuit sophistry, but orthodox moral doctrine, recognizes partial moral success accomplishments when partial moral accomplishments are the only thing that are prudently possible. America has an abortion culture that is impossible to turn around overnight. When we choose to be honest, we can face that our Catholic Church has a pro-abortion culture. When have any pro-abortion prelates ever been denounced by sane prelates? And what sane person would deny the civil war that would ensue if there were a way to absolutely end every abortion facility in America and make it enforceable?
There has always been a lot of cheap talk about changing hearts and minds like that’s such a simple task when even Catholics don’t want to actually talk about it. Did you talk about it with your family at Christmas? Neither did I.
A culture doesn’t change overnight. The best pro-life witnesses are those who used to be on the other side. When they tell their stories, they talk about how they learned it wasn’t a disaster after all when some circumstance caused them to encounter difficulties, not insurmountable, but difficult circumstances in following through with their plans that forced them to reconsider their “choice.”
The point is when we accomplish nothing, we accomplish nothing. You might not like my terminology, but I’ve witnessed enough reactions from pro-life leaders over 50 years who celebrated their alliances with pro-aborts in defeating restrictive abortion bills because they did not include all the unborn…not yet. Never mind that they could have been extended later. So those that would have been saved were treated with as much indifference as the pro-aborts treated them.
That you fight for the lives of the unborn is right-minded. Jesus laid down His life for the forgiveness of sin. We should esteem Him by choosing life and protecting the most vulnerable.
To be condemned to hell is not to believe in Jesus Christ. God will forgive us of our sins and cleans us from all unrighteous when we confess our sins in the name of Jesus.
John 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
1 John 5:10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.
Mark 16:16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
1 John 5:12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life..
What an astounding God we serve. Praise and honour and glory and thanksgiving be unto Christ the King.
Mr. Baker: “Realistic gradualism that saves lives matters.”??? Would you have suggested to Hitler: “Maybe we ought not kill ALL the Jews? How about we just kill the Polish and Austrian Jews today and leave the German Jews alone? We can talk about not killing any more foreign Jews another day.” Realistic gradualism is just another way of saying: “I’m willing to compromise on my principles today in the hope that, someday, you will change your agenda.” But the unalterable principle at stake today is that the unjustified taking of any innocent human life is wrong in every case. Opposition to it is no less correct because you and other amoral relativists like you are willing to compromise your “principles” in the hope that someday the murderers will accept that ALL innocent human life deserves that protection. Support for murder does not become more correct because it may be politically acceptable (and advantageous) to divide innocent people into classes that are okay to murder and those that are not, particularly when the people who are going to be murdered have nothing to do with the protected or unprotected class in which they happen to fall.
I don’t need to lectured on the obvious nor subject to a ridiculous analogy. Killing any unborn child is evil, which is why opposing restrictive abortion laws that can be enacted is a moral evil, and knowingly limiting an effort to create a hypothetical law based on a “principle” doomed to an indisputably certain failure is also a moral evil.
I’m not lecturing.
You can’t make compromise politics an exclusive principle any more than you should rely on it and nothing else besides; and doing so would weaken your politics and undermine all principle. A true pro-life make-up allows you to see opportunities and pin them down in the service of pro-life not mere compromises.
Also consider this is not an issue unique to the US or any particular national situation. It has universal ramifications and so what happens everywhere affects everywhere else. The parts that are already succeeding must not be crashed or hindered by the parts that are mired in long drawn out struggle and semantics.
And in a federal place like the States the same points go among the States. Especially now with Dobbs which didn’t establish a final mooring on life.
Patient counsel: Mind you don’t ensnare others!
Where did I give the slightest indication of making compromise politics an exclusive principle?
You argue for it not by “slightest indication” but by the variety of your circularities and the contradiction you put in making pro-lifers as “wrong-headed”. You have gradualism as absolute; and that is wrong-headed.
More generally, you under-rate/minimize the tasks that pro-life faces and thereby implicitly demean true pro-life. Pro-life has to do many things simultaneously. I might like to share a bit on it but I am fearful of feeding the one-sided gambit toward which you lean things.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/trumps-moral-inconsistency-on-abortion-could-be-his-downfall/
Mr. Galy, when did I state gradualism as an absolute? You’re bearing false witness again. Am I the only one in this forum who has passed a reading comprehension exam? I stated that gradualism is a prudential moral principle in accord with Catholic moral doctrine. “Prudential”, got it? That does not mean exclusive. Prudential implies a level of pragmatic non-absolute judgment. The reason we make prudential judgments, in accord with a Catholic understanding of morality, is to achieve the best imperfect moral result possible in circumstances with multiple implications, all of which, cannot be controlled. It is never done to create an evil result but can be exercised to restrict evil results. Empty phony claims about being able to end abortion once and for all is a guaranteed disaster that will enshrine abortion forever in any Western nation. To choose not to know this is to condemn all the unborn to even more mountains of corpses.
I’m not convinced.
I still won’t want to share new ideas with you since your positions coming on are too narrow. I can add, expressing an intractability.
I am entitled to state my impressions of what your composition of gradualism gave off, in your initiating comments here, or, later ones; and as well to see their implications under Dobbs. Hence my entry underneath in response, January 5, 2023 5:45 am, where I am indicating your effects on my perspective.
My point about mixing de facto pro-choice gradualism with Dobbs, is an excellent one whether or not you care. But you want to ouster it?
In the mode of not lecturing, I suggest: Try to remember you are speaking to a diverse audience interested in differing ways in political possibilities for pro-life, for tackling abortion, for pro-death and for sustaining abortion. What you say for the purpose of being compromising will hit people differently even though you might think it’s the fairest of the generalist positions.
In addition, I consider the weaknesses in gradualism. For everyone’s sake I will hint about one of them.
Think of a number line, with middle 0 between plus side and negative side. Gradualism could land anywhere anytime, shift back and forth meaninglessly and cover a tiny-tiny band of one or two digits; meanwhile everyone is in awe of the breadth of the number line and its horizons.
Then some bi-partisan genius wins the day finding trade-offs among different parts of the number line. Now you have a never-ending series for bartering every new piece of legislation.
I feel compelled to make a reminder that prudence and “pragmatic judgment” do not just so compel “non-absolutist” decisions; and point out that non-absolutist judgment has been the downfall of many a believer beginning with the likes of the chosen Apostles themselves. It’s true prudence is the cardinal virtue, but it is so by dint of the moral and theological underpinnings. It is bound always to relate with means and ends and it can not be reduced to mere reflexive operations or principles.
Pragmatism, in that sense, charges you to find or make new openings and protect the virtue of prudence. Surely all these things must come into the picture.
‘ Sister Simone’s words captured with almost perfect clarity the bizarre moral inversion that has taken place among so many of the American Left, including the Catholic Left: moral absolutism on matters that should allow for prudence combined with near-infinite plasticity when it comes to fundamental moral norms. ‘
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2012/09/11/sr-simone-campbell-poor-in-moral-theology-rich-in-excuses/
Mr. Halliman, Obviously all lives matter, which is why I don’t create any dichotomy between classes between which lives are to be saved, which is why I am not a moral relativist. Here at CWR I have uninhibitedly described Francis as the moral relativist that he revealed himself to be in Amoris Laetitia.
You apparently support the killing of all unborn children if you can’t obtain a statute that claims to protects all of them. I could characterize your attitude as: Let them all die, and that it is an implication of your moral nihilism. But I won’t. If you want to use the Nazi analogy, your logic amounts to implying that Oskar Shindler did an evil thing because he failed to save all the Jews.
Unfortunately, TRUTH is not a commodity one seeks incrementally. It will always be discovered that way, but it can’t be sought that way. Ask the African American community what incremental truth looks like… can you say Dred Scott?
Donald “I’m very pro-choice” Trump. (1999)
People who are personally in favor of abortion, but politically opposed are indeed a thing. They will also sink the effort.
Where do you get the crazy idea that Trump is personally pro-abortion? How anti-Christian do you have to be to believe a man can’t change his mind from having embraced evil to having renounced it as he made very clear repeatedly? Unless of course you are a slave to caricature forming disinformation of anti-Christian media.
And what “sinking of the effort” do you attribute to the indisputable facts that Donald Trump, through his concrete actions as president, saved more unborn lives, more lives, than any single man in the entirety of human history?
“People who are personally in favor of abortion, but politically opposed are indeed a thing. They will also sink the effort.”
***********
Successful politicians typically promote causes that reflect their constituents’ convictions & beliefs even if those may not be personally held by the politician themself.
At the end of the day only God knows what’s in our hearts. What counts for voters is that their leaders & representatives keep the campaign promises they made, which is what Mr. Trump did par excellence.
Politicians are simply public servants, not idols to be cast down.
This is not the case with Trump. Was I the only one who paid attention to his lengthy heartfelt admissions of how wrong he was in to have previously supported abortion and his conversion process of watching friends save the life of their birth-defect child when doctors wanted to abort? He spoke about this at greater length than any other issue during his entire campaign.
It’s a mystery to me why Catholics are so quick to accept narratives as presented to them by anti-Catholic media. Even during my years of atheism, I was amazed at witnessing the phenomenon. Speaking of which, I am also amazed at how reluctant Catholics are to accept the repentance of a former reprobate. Aren’t we supposed to believe in redemption? Aren’t we all in need of repentance all the time? Don’t we have confession for a reason?
I’ve included personal admissions in my comments hear at CWR including my past atheism and conversion to Catholicism. Am I not allowed to be a Catholic today because 45 years ago I was an atheist? Even though I was a pro-life atheist? Actually one follow up comment to mine in the past implied such a very harsh skepticism because he thought I was being insincere noting that I indicated that changes to my thought were first inspired abstractly, by my work in physics where I appreciated the symmetry of forces in nature, sensing the spark of divinity. Therefore, he reasoned, it couldn’t have been by grace. Christian charity often seems to be more of an abstract concept than anything found in physics.
Matthew 21:28-32
Christianity at its heart is about conversion, redemption & forgiveness.
I have no idea what’s in Mr. Trump’s heart nor anyone else’s but as Christians we should always first assume the best intentions in others. God bless you for your faith & witness.
🙂
My point was just a pragmatic one re. politics. Politicians that accomplish good things, as Mr. Trump surely did, do not have to necessarily believe in what they accomplish to make it happen. As a voter I just want them to keep their campaign promises. Their personal lives, unless criminal, are their own business. Otherwise, we end up getting manipulated into voting for useless GOP candidates because they appear squeaky clean, show up at every prolife banquet to garner votes but do little to nothing whilst in office. That GOP reelection strategy got us half a century of open season on children in the womb.
Donald Trump took care of Roe in one term & revealed what a sham the establishment GOP has been. And that’s why they hate him.
He appears to be correct in MI. Proposition 3, hastily and literally sloppingly written on the signature ballot petition, passed with not quite 60% of the vote as “reproductive freedom.” Per the news yesterday Whitmer also got her way in getting a termination pill available (FDA approved) without going to the doctor and now through the mail as well. Apparently she wrote them a letter last summer.
T Sullivan (radio) spent quite a bit of time talking yesterday about what could happen when something goes wrong with the mother if something goes wrong in the resulting expulsion.
As far as the election, women and college kids were lined up to vote and it was late in the evening before the lines cleared in some areas. Whitmer and her anti youth/anti business squad easily won reelection. The Church and Right to Life presented a large campaign against the proposal, to no avail.
I can’t help but think that as the diminishing population in the U.S. (due to the aging and deaths of the massive Baby Boomer population) makes it more difficult to hire workers from what’s left–the tiny population of Millennials, Gen X, Y, etc.–abortion will become rarer as we recognize that “duh!–we need some peeps to grow up and do all the work!!” Unless we invent better robots, of course, but they will use up the diminishing energy sources, and honestly, are robots really capable of cleaning up after incontinent nursing home patients? The other option is to let the immigrants in instead of turning them away at the border, which strangely, is a plan opposed by many of the same people who advocate ending abortion. The bottom line is, we’re just selfish people who want everything for ourselves and if that means killing babies who take up our time and money and turning away foreigners who require lots of our money and help to become citizens, well, so be it! Me, myself, and I–the center of the universe! Oh, and Jesus, too, of course. Jesus loves ME me me, this I know.
Elon M commented that we’ll end up being an ‘adults diapered’ population the way we are going
tremendous burden on our youth, if we let them even be born
US is not the only country with this problem Japan, CHina etc.. and the the kids left aren’t that ambitious
Edward J. Baker, I think what you’re arguing merely amounts to rehashing or re-staging the pro-choice apology of the 20th Century.
The difference now would be that it might be seen as the best useful weaving for providing reference points for rationalizing what should happen under Dobbs.
What this shows is that the real issue is that if you are not plainly pro-life you are accommodating death, i.e., poisoning the human institutions, medicine, law, etc.
Poisoning human understanding, youth, motherhood and family authority. And this is the essential pitfall in Dobbs which ratiocination can’t repair.
I wish you would cease and desist lying about what I am saying and reread what I am saying after completing a remedial course in reading comprehension. Who are you to claim I am not pro-life? I have been opposing abortion for all unborn children my entire life without exception, which I make clear in my comments. After you complete your remedial course in reading comprehension, you might discover that I am arguing that reducing abortion constitutes reducing abortion. Is theis too much to comprehend? If this is too much to comprehend, then you need even more than a remedial course in reading comprehension. You need even more tutoring in common sense. “Pro lifers” who work against reducing abortion, which they do when they oppose restrictive laws that pass legislation, which can later be ammended into universal restrictions, while they santimoniously pretend they are superior for promoting failed absolutist legislation that accomplishes noting at all, have the blood of the unborn on their hands and souls. They are in fact, mass-murderers. Got it?
I wish you would cease and desist bearing false witness about what I am saying and reread what I am saying. Perhaps a remedial course in reading comprehension would help. Who are you to claim I am not pro-life? I have been opposing abortion for all unborn children my entire life, without exception, which I make clear in my comments. Reducing abortion constitutes reducing abortion, unless you favor indifference. Is this really too much to comprehend?
“Pro lifers” who work against reducing abortion, which they do when they oppose restrictive laws that pass legislation, which can later be amended into universal restrictions, while they sanctimoniously pretend they are superior for promoting failed absolutist legislation that accomplishes noting at all, have the blood of the unborn on their hands and souls. Your logic accommodates death, not mine.
From what I read, your opening comment at the very top, strikes a wrong note; and you would be repeating it here but not so strongly as at first.
Pro-lifers have done absolutely astounding work and have an amazing record in all fields of action, apologetics, politics, activism, penitence and suffering.
I would dispute that. The Pro-life community generally shys away from the contraception/fornication (IVF, fetal cell lines, tissue harvesting) issue that underpins the abortion.
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Trying to ban abortion when folks are punch drunk on immorality (including many of one’s own warriors/supporters–who do not even realize it), is not going to work well.
Kathryn, I say that your first statement is just not true.
Your second statement wants to disqualify people from being pro-life because they are imperfect.
The two statements together do not support who and what is pro-life; and each one one its own does not support them as well.
The two statements are in the argumentative realms but and they are neither practical now sensible on the face.
Kathryn this sample of pro-life intervention is from CWR’s own Catherine Harmon. It takes a discursive, is neither permissive nor lax but underscores the seriousness of the issues and of the general neglect of a moral side.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2013/08/01/the-multifaceted-problems-of-surrogacy-and-donor-conception/
Edit ” …. discursive tack, ….”
It is not about being perfect or imperfect, or throwing folks out of the club simply because they want to use contraception, it is just that by using it, they are not helping either themselves or the cause they wish to promote. A homeowner won’t do much about the CO leaky furnace by simply opening the window. He eventually must fix the furnace.
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Or as Father Anthony Zimmerman once wrote, Contraception is Creeping Death.
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http://www.catholicsagainstcontraception.com/fr_anthony_zimmerman_contraception_is_creeping_death.htm
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And now, Michigan is soon to be a destination for abortion up to, and quite possibly past, all nine months.
Some members of the medical community in Quebec were proposing feticide after the fact for disabled newborns.
It just goes on and on…
I suppose the silver lining is that these people aren’t reproducing themselves into the next generations. Bad ideologies have to have future proponents to keep them going.
And it is not insignificant that many pro-lifers allied themselves with pro-aborts to sabotage and defeat feasible restrictive abortion laws because they were not flawless laws at a time when it was impossible to pass and enact a flawless law. I was an eyewitness to the process. And I repeat; this is evil.
MrsCracker: I was told (promised even) that the pro-aborts were all killing their offspring, and we would have a pro-life majority. That was some twenty years ago and things have only gotten worse since then. The pro-aborts do absolutely have progeny–they capture them in schools/colleges and on Tik Tok/Social Media. Young folks are not in any way more “pro-life” than their Gen X and Baby Boomer parents/grandparents. Such is my experience.
E. Baker:
See my previous comment of January 5, 2023 @ 4:47 PM that includes a basic request for you to provide specific Church teaching support for your position, because I don’t believe that what you have set forth lines up with Catholic teaching as you insist it does. Since you assert that your position is faithful to Catholic teaching, please show me and others the specific Church teaching found in official documents that demonstrate your declarations are sound. I don’t think you have the support you believe you do, and it also looks like you are making an application of Church teaching that is not appropriate. However, I remain open to being shown that your approach is completely in line with Catholic teaching so long as you provide specific Church teaching and references that support your position.
It may be necessary – if not ideal – for politicians to say that they are pro-life, but don’t go into the specifics. Of course, any person should affirm that there can’t ever be a case where an unborn child is murdered.
Through ignorance or malice it appears that the vast majority of people are at least material heretics with regards to this issue.
The a very serious error is legal positivism. This heresy (i.e. that law and morality aren’t intimately connected) is largely the basis behind the “legalization” of abortion. As soon as the United States Supreme Court, in 1958, got away with – without censure – attempting to usurp not only the powers of state legislatures to make “JUST laws” (a redundant phrase), but also that of Congress, then the door was opened to massive spreading of errors regarding abortion as soon as the false evil decision in 1973 was promulgated.
What would have happened if the media in 1973 reported that – at least – 7 appointed criminals masquerading as federal judges under color of their authority were complicit with promoting the murder of unborn children under color of law by attempting to strike down state statutes that prohibited the murder of unborn children?
Finally we get to the crux of the matter of this article, not to mention my central point. Pro-life work is a war, and it is not about showboating. Trump is right about a sincere pro-life politician being smart enough to never be in your face about such values which is always, not some of the time, not a lot of the time, not most of the time, but always counterproductive given the realities of our culture. Be articulate, not belicose.
I think that was the thing in play in Michigan. Not all of it, because we got very gerrymandered recently, but a good part of it. I do not believe the majority of people favor total abortion bans. They may not want abortions at 20 weeks or 30 weeks or 40 weeks. They may say it is wrong to abort a child because it is a boy or girl or possibly a Down’s baby, but they don’t want an out right ban. Not the majority. They want those exceptions.
No one who declares that who is a Christian could ever be for ABORTION, UTHANASIA AND THE SAME GENDER MARRIAGE! Because, GOD IS LIFE! What is ANTI LIFE is not with GOD! “If you love me, keep my COMMANDMENTS!” John 14:15.
The pro-life movement seems very prone to shooting itself in the foot. Movement leaders should have understood that the supreme court decision would have brought with it hysterical squealing from the left, as indeed it did. Along with violence against pro-life centers and the Justices who supported the repeal of Roe. Yet rather than let the dust settle and the realization dawn that for those who wanted them, abortion would still be available in the rabidly blue states albeit with some inconvenience, the pro-lifers set about making the most radical state laws possible.Lindsey Graham chose that moment to propose a draconian new abortion law before the ink was dry on the decision. Politics is all about measured approaches and timing. There was none of that here. Even the most pro-life of my acquaintances would approve of abortion for a genuine rape victim. Nor would they force a 12 year old to carry her rapists baby (via incest lets say) to term. Is the loss of the baby sad and awful?? Yes. But in these events it is the lesser of two evils, in situations which could indeed cause the pregnant woman to lose her sanity by dragging out a traumatic event every day for 9 months. It would appear to me the pro lifers are unwilling to settle for half a loaf and incremental success. As a result they have found no success to speak of, and have thereby cost the lives of many babies who could have been saved. If you saw a boat load of 10 people drowning, would you refuse to save 3 because you could not save the other 7? It bears thinking about.
Adding one violence to another does not heal sexual assault. The victim is violated a second time and her child pays with its life for the crime of its father. It makes no sense.
If you propose enacting laws that incrementally protect human rights I can agree with that. Little by little is better than no progress at all. But I completely disagree with those who value human lives based upon the circumstances of their conception.
I doubt a single one of us would be here today without some unfortunate event of that sort in the past however distant.
There is a certain senselessness to would-be pro-lifers arguing about gradualism. Whoever you are, you simply have to deal with things according to their potentials; and historical pro-life -the one that is being faulted and/or vilified- is already doing this. Faulting them demonstrates a shallowness.
In some situations or places there will be the possibility to advance in large steps and real and true pro-life is open to this already, they do not need to bicker about gradualism to notice it and hit on it in a timely fashion. In these situations they are ready and waiting to make the right move at will.
A Refutation of LJ and Fellow Travelers Who Advocate Abortion in Some Circumstances
To LJ: Below is a refutation of the numerous points you make in your comment wherein I first repeat individual sections of your statements (LJ:), and then I provide my responses to each section (Response:) that refute your advocacy of abortion in some circumstances.
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LJ: The pro-life movement seems very prone to shooting itself in the foot. Movement leaders should have understood that the supreme court decision would have brought with it hysterical squealing from the left, as indeed it did. Along with violence against pro-life centers and the Justices who supported the repeal of Roe.
Response: So what? Should the decision have been perpetually delayed or delayed until after an election because of the possibility of violence that could be easily quelled with proper law enforcement? Violence is the way of those who promote direct abortion in any way, shape, or form, and the fact that greater violence may likely arise and has arisen demonstrates the evil of the so-called pro-choice/anti-life movement. But as Martin Luther King famously stated “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Cowards shy away from confronting evil because of the fear of violence, thereby permitting evil to flourish.
LJ: Yet rather than let the dust settle and the realization dawn that for those who wanted them, abortion would still be available in the rabidly blue states albeit with some inconvenience, the pro-lifers set about making the most radical state laws possible.
Response: Great. Those who favor murder should be given more time to recognize (they learned it right away thanks to the evil propaganda wing of numerous pro-abortion organizations and fellow travelers, so don’t pretend otherwise) that they can still murder innocent children in the womb in various states, and perhaps this will contain their violence to only murdering the little ones. What a terrific outcome – Not! Next, what constitutes “radical state laws possible” when it comes to penalties for murder? Always keep in mind that the direct, intentional killing of the always innocent child in the womb is murder, and murder deserves the harshest of just penalties.
LJ: Lindsey Graham chose that moment to propose a draconian new abortion law before the ink was dry on the decision.
Response: Draconian? Again, how so in light of the egregious murder of the innocent child in the womb?
Politics is all about measured approaches and timing. There was none of that here.
Response: Saving innocent human lives must always go beyond politics, and murder is never to be permitted because of political calculations wherein it is claimed something along the following lines: “If we allow just a few thousand more murders to take place now, perhaps we can save many thousands more down the road.”
Even the most pro-life of my acquaintances would approve of abortion for a genuine rape victim.
Response: Such acquaintances that you mention are not even close to being “most pro-life,” and in fact, anybody who approves of abortion because of rape may at best be only marginally pro-life because they are willing to have the innocent life in the womb destroyed because of how it was conceived. Moreover, natural law morality applicable to everyone opposes all direct abortion, and so the evil which led to the conception of the innocent child in the womb NEVER permits murdering the child because of the sin/evil of the father.
LJ: Nor would they force a 12 year old to carry her rapists baby (via incest lets say) to term. Is the loss of the baby sad and awful?? Yes. But in these events it is the lesser of two evils, in situations which could indeed cause the pregnant woman to lose her sanity by dragging out a traumatic event every day for 9 months.
Response: Again, this simply demonstrates that you and your acquaintances approve the murder of the innocent child in the womb, and, once more, this violates natural law moral teaching. Moreover, sometimes natural law morality permits a lesser evil to take place so long as it is not directly willed or intended, no alternative is possible, and the lesser evil allowed to take place is an unwilled side effect of a good action and not directly brought about. This is a shorthand application of the moral principle known as double effect that involves multiple outcomes arising from a single action.
Now, just in terms of ranking the evils in the scenarios you presented, murder is always the worst evil, so murdering an innocent child to prevent a lesser evil is also wrong simply in that respect as well. Any other bad things that may happen to the pregnant woman does not justify murdering an innocent human being in her womb. The pregnant woman severely traumatized by an assault and its aftermath needs care that is available, but such care can never devolve into the exceedingly immoral action of virtually handing a gun to the woman and telling her that the solution to her problems is to murder her innocent child in her womb.
LJ: It would appear to me the pro lifers are unwilling to settle for half a loaf and incremental success. As a result they have found no success to speak of, and have thereby cost the lives of many babies who could have been saved. If you saw a boat load of 10 people drowning, would you refuse to save 3 because you could not save the other 7? It bears thinking about.
Response: Once more an immoral approach and misleading example with a wrongly applied conclusion presented that violates natural law moral teaching. The only sound moral approach regarding this issue is the following principle: We must never directly and intentionally do any kind of evil in order to possibly prevent a greater evil (or even to bring about a good), because the lesser of two evils is Still Evil (and a good brought about through evil means does not erase or minimize or justify the evil that was done). In your example regarding 10 people drowning, the moral approach that must be applied is to first assess whether all 10 people can be saved. If not, the process of saving as many as possible begins, BUT in no circumstance can you purposely drown any of the 10 in order to save any of the others. Now making the only morally correct application to the issue of abortion, we must never, ever murder 7 innocent children in the womb to save 3 innocent children in the womb, nor can we ever advocate permitting even 1 murder to take place as an acceptable practice based on the possibility of eventually preventing more murders in the future. No more thinking about this is needed. The direct murder of anyone in the hopes of preventing more murders in the future is flat out immoral.
No it is not, referring to your last sentence, when there is no intention of killing anyone. How dare you accuse anyone of desiring the death of anyone when there is only partial success of saving some. I have been personally involved in physically catastrophic events of multiple comrades being killed where an instantaneous calculous was needed to be applied to who and how many could be saved. Have you? It’s easy to sit back in your recliner with a laptop and presume the moral high ground and claim moral superiority to anyone trying to save all lives but unable to save all lives and performing the next best thing while you condemn them for being immoral for not “intending” to save them all by way of your sin of presumption about motivations.
You are right that an authentic pro-lifer never does make even a hypothetical exception to rape victims. It is a myth that in a moral society that any victim can not receive proper support through a difficult pregnancy. LJ is very wrong about this. His assumption that it leads to an evil existence is evil in itself. It assumes the non-mercy of God. Of course it is the case that our morally depraved Catholic culture, daily encouraged to be more morally stupid by this pope, has created the environment where one can believe and legitimize stupid things like “lesser of two evils.” But a lesser evil is still an evil.
But partial success in abortion restrictions is never an intrinsic evil when total success is an impossibility. How many times does this tired 50 plus year veteran of pro-life work, spit on dozens of times by Catholics for being pro-life, have to point this out this self-evident truth in this forum?
First: Oops, E. Baker. You have made a false accusation about me and what I set forth. Try re-reading what I actually wrote and the context in which it is delivered, and then you can avoid the sin of making a false accusation. Good luck.
Next, now that you have finally addressed yours truly, please recall a few earlier posts directed to you wherein I asked you to provide specific Catholic Church teaching/documents to defend your position, yet you still have not done so. Instead you continue to rely on tooting your own horn about how many years you’ve done this or that, and you also push the notion that your personal experience and musings present a position supported by the Church, while you also continue to harshly accuse others of wrongly condemning many babies to die because they do not follow your pontifications regarding the abortion debate when dealing with various political realities.
So now I try once more to see if you will at least attempt to provide necessary Church support for your position. All you need do is set forth and properly reference (identify the document or documents) specific Church teaching that you believe supports your specific declarations. If you cannot do this, your position will be shown to be unsound regardless of any good intentions you have. As I previously wrote, I don’t believe you have such support because you have merely assumed your position is moral and Church teaching supports your approach, but you have not added any specific references to Church teaching in support of your claims. Nevertheless, I remain ready to take into consideration and engage any and all specific documents and teaching of the Church you provide that you believe does indeed support the kind of approach you are fully invested in.
Go for it!
As a predominantly Christian movement, the pro-life movement seeking to change laws is caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. The rock signifies Christian faith which hinges, for orthodox Catholics, on the truth of dogma about inherent evil (i.e., homicide as always, in every case, a grave sin).
The hard place is the liberal secular state. The majority of Catholics apparently have greater faith in this institution than in the teachings of the Church. The pro-life movement must traverse between Scylla and Charybdis with great prudence and trust in God.
In 2019, Pew surveyed and wrote: “More than half of U.S. Catholics (56%) said abortion should be legal in all or most cases,…”
Sure, the pro-life movement seeks to change the culture and secular law, but might it be more realistic to first change the minds of those Catholics whose belief in the state outweighs belief in their Faith? OTOH, with the Church’s current progressive Church leadership, unhinged by dogmatic orthodoxy, the movement must fight demons wherever it turns except when keeping close to God.
Jeff Mirus at Catholic Culture in 2004 wrote about the four sins crying for vengeance. He ranks their severity. Homicide (i.e., abortion) is more grave than defrauding workers. Mistreating widows and orphans is heinous as they are a consequence of fatherless homes, and yet always the inherent evil of abortion is far more grave. Always, in all circumstances, abortion results in the blood of a human which cries from the earth (or the “Medical Waste” container) for justice.
/www.catholicculture.org/commentary/crying-to-heaven-for-vengeance-8257/
When Catholics become rightly catechized, with leaders believing and pastorally preaching on the orthodoxy and truth of dogma against the grave sin of abortion as murder, perhaps the culture may follow.
Until then, we should thank God for Trump and thank Francis for Biden.
Correction: First instance of ‘homicide’ in first paragraph should be “homicide of abortion.”
Edward J Baker if real pro-life is too much for you why not just stay home and watch a movie; and pop some popcorn. It will keep you from committing sins against the truth and against life, you know; and from misleading the young, the ignorant and the otherwise witless, most especially those that got themselves mired in death and grief.
I’m not saying watch any movie, I’m suggesting intelligent viewing, like Vendetta (1999, with Christopher Walken); or Dunkirk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendetta_%281999_film%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_%282017_film%29