I’m pretty sure Ono Ekeh (the infamous moderator of Catholics for Kerry and former employee at the USCCB) read my post on Why Conservatism will Eventually Win. (He lurks over at JCecil’s and came out of hiding to post there this week – I leave comments there so it isn’t a huge leap). As he wisely doesn’t have any comments, I’ll have to respond here.
Here’s his post:
I find it very interesting and somewhat amusing when conservative pro-lifers feel like they are going to win in the end because they’ll eventually have more kids or “pro-life” states have a higher fertility rate, or some sort of similar argument. As if to say that the beliefs of parents are inserted genetically and passed on into the kids.
That’s ridiculous! Opinions and beliefs aren’t genetic. But it does make sense that if you have a larger family, raise them in a loving conservative home youhave a good chance of passing on your beliefs to your children. The rest is just mathematics.
There is never any guarantee what a child is going to believe growing up. Chances are if you give them truth and a thirst for truth and honesty, they’ll turn out fine. Unfortunately, the conservative pro-lifers cannot claim the mantle of truth and honesty. It only takes an instant when someone realizes that arguments or facts were withheld from them and then the question becomes, why?
Uh… the truth is that abortion is murder. I’d say that is the mantle of truth and honesty. I don’t withhold any of that information from my children and I don’t know any other families who believe similarly that are sugar coating this for their kids. W hat on earth is Ono talking about?
The great thing and scary too about being a progressive is that you commit to where the facts and truth take you, and you don’t always like it, but you at least pre-commit yourselve to considering it. This differs from conservatism which pre-commits to dogma and ideology, and only embraces the unfolding of a new truth when forced.
Actually I see progressives such as Ekeh, Chrittister, et al taking the facts that want to take and weaving it into their own false reality. Conservatism and orthodoxy in my opinion is finding the truth and accepting it.
I think the new frontier for the abortion debate is now about the intersection of legality and morality AND religious duty (which is not the equivalent of morality). We are clearly moving to understanding that social and common good is not the secular correlate of Christian morality, and neither is morality the correlate of religious duty, i.e., believing that the Pope is infallible may make you a good Catholic, but has absolutely nothing to do with if you are a good person.
What he’s saying here is a rejection of Catholic teaching and morality and an embrace of secular humanism in a nutshell.
As this debate proceeds, I think we’ll make less stark distinctions, i.e. are you pro-life or pro-choice, and create a more fruitful context. The truth and the future are nothing to fear-conservatives need to know that.
Already knew that hon – Jesus said so.
As for the stark distinctions fading – that’s n onsense. One is either for the slaughter of innocent babies in their mother’s wombs or not. It’s that simple. It’s that stark.
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