Silly: NCR's "simple fact" about marriage is neither simple, nor a fact

My father Canon Lawyer Ed Peters writes a brief comment on National Catholic Reporter's recent editorial staff article on the US Bishops' new Pastoral Letter on Marriage. The bottom line:

"... advice from the National Catholic Reporter on how to improve pastoral letters on marriage might be read for possible amusement value, but not for anything that requires theological, canonical, and/or historical accuracy."

Silly NCR editors - theology is for theologians!

NCReporter pro-abortion Young Voices author could face penalty

While I was away last week, little miss Kate Childs Graham published an article in the National Catholic Reporter entitled "I am a pro-choice Catholic."

I called the first entry of this Young Voices feature, "168 words of forgettable."

Well, Graham's new entry is "704 words of actionable", says my father Canon Lawyer Ed Peters:

Graham published her essay justifying the abandonment of unborn innocents to prenatal slaughter in a widely accessible, indeed internationally accessible, medium. I think that her remarks, considered specifically and generally, "gravely injure good morals" and thus constitute the kind of abuse of the instruments of social communication that renders one liable to a "just penalty" under canon law (1983 CIC 1369).

Finally, and this is what distinguishes Graham's essay from the typical pro-abortion Catholic palaver, by her own words, she vitiates several defenses that might have been raised for such conduct, defenses based on say, one's ignorance of Church teaching, or because one acted without sufficient deliberation (e.g., 1983 CIC 1323-1324). I can scarcely conclude other than that Graham is daring the bishops to do something about her.

And really, if the bishops don't think they have a case, all they have to do is keep reading her....

Graham writing on Academic freedom on Catholic campuses:

"Many administrations at Catholic colleges and universities have similarly succumbed to the pressure of the Catholic right or the bishops."

"My hope is that other administrations at Catholic colleges and universities will follow Fordham’s lead and refuse to succumb to the pressures of the bishops and the Catholic right. Only then will students be able to freely think, be, create, form and grow."

Graham writing on the Catholic support of Proposition 8:

About a month before Proposition 8 passed in California Nov. 4, taking away an array of human rights, and the U.S. bishops decided to team up with the Knights of Columbus to make the “preservation of marriage” one of its key focuses for the next five years, my partner, Ariana, and I made our commitment to one another.

Our marriage was not "legal" by terms of the District of Columbia or the institutional Catholic church. Yet, in our eyes and in the eyes of our friends and family, our union is indeed holy.

That's right - her "partner" Ariana. Graham's title for this essay? "Our Journey to holy union."

So Graham is a gay, absolute-primacy-of-conscience, anti-Church-hierarchy, pro-abortion zealot?

... what a refreshing change from the National Catholic Reporter's Old Voices. Oh wait.

NCR introduces "New voices from young Catholics"

National Catholic Reporter evidently saw the writing on the wall and is trying something new.

It's called "Young Voices" and here's how they describe it:

The future of our church is in the hands of a generation coming of age in the first decade of the 21st century. NCR went looking among this generation and found four young Catholics -- Nicole Sotelo, Kate Childs Graham, Mike Sweitzer-Beckman, Jamie L. Manson -- from different backgrounds and with different connections to the church. They will be sharing their stories in this space weekly.

Two possible goals here:

• Maybe they'd like to have subscribers under 40 again (no offense)
• Maybe they'd like to convince their subscribers over 60 that they are not a dying breed

Regardless of the conjectural editorial motivation, their inaugural column is by Nicole Sotello on Proposition 8.

Her thinly-veiled disagreement with the teaching of the bishops on this topic runs as follows:

But I wonder what type of laws we are preserving. We’ll be keeping a system of marriage laws that are not about love, but about privilege. Our current civil marriage laws privilege heterosexual men and women who happen to be fortunate in finding a partner. These couples receive special benefits with regard to taxes, pension plans, health care, social status and a variety of other societal advantages. Those who happen to be unlucky in love or whose families do not fit the mold are left out: unmarried parents with children, unmarried elderly individuals who live together and care for one another, and so on.

But marriage is a privilege - not a right. If it was a right, I could demand to be married - and as easier as that might make things for me on a friday night, it's clearly not reality. And marriage as a civil institution says nothing about love - that's a sacramental/interpersonal category, so it's unfair to ask if civil marriages are about "love". Try arguing that in a court.

Moving on: yes, marriage law privileges heterosexual couples, but why? Because they are the fundamental unit of society and society has an interest in protecting and fostering them. Society doesn't have that same interest in fostering the relationship between my brother and I, even if we share a house and expenses together (we don't, he has to graduate college first).

Protecting marriage is not about excluding people who are "left out". Even if gay marriage were approved by the state, that would do nothing to address the other situations Nicole talks about, including the unmarried, single-parents, etc. So that's really a completely separate issue.

And that coy "families who don't fit the mold" line? Please, if you're going to be a columnist, actually talk about the things you want to talk about. Don't use code language like that. Try being specific and explicit.

Oh, and in a column talking about Proposition 8, ya know that might be a really good time to express your understanding of the Church's teaching on homosexual unions and the civil ramifications.

My final take:

168 words of forgettable.

National Catholic Reporter editors endorse Obama, and I lose it

Well, in effect.

Here's how the editors of NCR begin:

"Another presidential election cycle is nearly ended, and once again the Catholic bishops in the United States have sadly distinguished themselves for the narrowness and, in too many cases, barely concealed partisanship, of their political views."

Notice, for the NCR editors, bishops who defend the teaching of the Church must be partisan if that teaching conflicts with the liberal viewpoint of the NCR editors. The fact that these same bishops are perfectly willing to accept pro-life democratic candidates completely eludes them.

Fundamentally, the NCR editors parrot the "get over Roe" talking point which has been made popular by pro-Obama catholics. Moreover, the NCR editors sign onto this position even after it was explicitlty condemned by the competant authorities in the US Bishops Conference.

The NCR editors even criticize the bishops for being narrow minded, for "turning the abortion issue into a partisan rallying cry" for "damaging the church and the pro-life cause" and for "erod[ing] the legitimate authority of an already beleaguered episcopal conference."

And all this crosses a line. How dare they.

How dare they claim that it is "partisan" affiliation which has prompted 60+ bishops (at last count) to speak out about the radical centrality of respecting human life in this election?

How dare the NCR editors claim that it is some sort of affinity for the GOP party (why? what do the bishops have to gain, exactly?) which prompts the bishops to council against supporting a candidate who would overturn every restriction on abortion in the books, who radically supports the right of a mother to have her child dead even in cases of a live birth, and who would have catholics and other Americans pay for it?!

And finally, how dare the NCR editors claim that they say all of this because of their Catholic faith?

Essentially, they are claiming to be more Catholic than (at least) 1-in-4 American bishops.

And they have intentionally put themselves under the condemnation already leveled against those who have similarly employed this nonsensical, disingenuous "the way to reduce abortions is to increase funding, support and access to them" argument.

How dare they.

(Oh, and having this photo - of young people walking in the annual March for Life, petitioning the Supreme Court to repeal Roe - serve as the accompaniment to their editorial? You know what I'm going to say.)