"What Is A Saint?"

It's short and simple, and it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. It was (of course) written by Dr. Peter Kreeft. Found at Catholic Education Resource Center:

Saints are not freaks or exceptions; they are the standard operating model for human beings.

Because, as Charles Peguy put it, “life holds only one tragedy, ultimately: not to have been a saint."

Saints are not freaks or exceptions. They are the standard operating model for human beings. In fact, in the biblical sense of the word, all believers are saints. “Sanctity” means holiness. All men, women and children, born or unborn, beautiful or ugly, straight or gay, are holy, for they bear the image of God.

Saints are not the opposite of sinners. There are no opposites of sinners in this world. There are only saved sinners and unsaved sinners. Thus holy does not mean “sinless” but “set-apart:” called out of the world to the destiny of eternal ecstasy with God...

I highly recommend you continue reading here.

The Culture War

Besides perhaps G. K. Chesterton, no writer has played a bigger part in the formation of my faith than Dr. Peter Kreeft. A Calvinist turned Catholic, he is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and the author of somewhere around 40 books on Christianity, culture, theology, philosophy, and social issues. His entire body of work is, to me, the most compelling evidence there is that reason and faith are not enemies, but best friends.

Recently, over the course of a year or so I began to turn away from orthodox Catholicism. I began to live in the world. For several months, I could feel God beginning to call me back. Ultimately, He used Dr. Kreeft's book, You Can Understand the Bible, to win back my soul. A loving, worshipful, enlightening exploration and synopsis of each book of Scripture, this book acquainted me with God again by whispering excerpts of His love letter to me -- the Bible -- into my ear and explaining to me their significance and meaning. I highly recommend this book to everyone who wants to learn more about God and Who He really is.

Dr. Kreeft is a warrior for Good, and therefore for God. His writing teaches you how to fight the good fight. For example, it is profoundly important that pro-life activists be able to make a sound secular argument against abortion. I was a liberal agnostic when I was converted to pro-life. It took one Conversation (I capitalize it because it was probably the most important conversation of my life) with a Catholic to change my mind. She didn't mention God, which would have turned me off right away. She used reason and an appeal to human rights -- which, like most liberals, I was all for! -- to change my mind. She also, with my permission, showed me some photographs that sealed my conversion instantly. A picture truly is worth a thousand words, and it's impossible to look at an image of a broken, mangled little baby's body and not know in your very soul that it is WRONG. I had an instant, irrevocable, visceral reaction that I can still recall. It was a horrifying, soul-shattering experience that I liken to Paul's on the road to Damascus. Although my realization that I had been addressed by Christ would not happen instantly, I saw the face of God in those children just as surely as Paul heard His voice.

Although I had been vocally, stubbornly, even angrily anti-Christian for years, almost exactly one year after the Conversation that made me pro-life, I was received into the Catholic church. A coincidence? I don't think so. In fact, I no longer believe in them. But my story is important for Christians to hear because many of them think they are somehow thumbing their nose at faith when they do not mention God in their pro-life argument. I say, tailor the argument to the person. God will use any foothold he can get in a person's soul. Once I recognized that Catholics were absolutely right about abortion, it made me wonder what else they were right about. The Truth really will set you free, and the Truth -- not to mention the Way and the Life -- is not just an idea, but a Person. Saying yes to Truth is, whether we know it at the time or not, saying yes to Him.

I strongly suggest you visit Dr. Kreeft's website, http://www.peterkreeft.com/, and visit the Featured Writing and Featured Audio sections. Please note there is a small link at the bottom of those pages where you can find more writing and audio. Read everything you can of his. His words will strengthen your faith and your power to reason. In particular, I urge pro-lifers to read "The Argument for Personhood." It is a sound, and in my opinion irrefutable, secular argument against abortion.

I also strongly urge you to read his writing on spiritual warfare, available on his website and also at http://www.catholiceducation.org/. (Enter his name into the search box for pages of his articles.)

I would like to post here a brief excerpt from "A Defense of Culture War: A Call for Counterrevolution." This is itself an excerpt from his book How to Win the Culture War by Intervarsity Press. The following excerpt specifically concerns abortion:

Even people who identify themselves as "pro-choice", like President Clinton, say they want to reduce the number of abortions. This means they, too, assume abortion is bad, for no one wants to reduce the number of something good. Surely the deliberate killing of unborn children is not something good!

Most Americans will not deny that abortion is at least a moral tragedy. But it is more than that. It is a barbaric act that degrades a civilization.

Polls repeatedly show that the majority of Americans are ignorant of the basic facts about abortion:

the stages of development of life in the womb: just what it is that is aborted;

the biological and medical facts about just how an abortion is performed. You can see absolutely anything today on TV or MTV or HBO except the most frequent medical procedure in America. There is a total media censorship of the facts;

the numbers: more than one and a half million abortions per year. One out of every three children conceived in the United States is aborted;

the fact that Roe v. Wade did not restrict abortions, but any woman in America can get an abortion for any reason at all (including sex selection: wanting a son, therefore aborting a daughter) at any time whatsoever;

the fact that abortion clinics are not legally subject to the same stringent standards of sanitation and safety as all other medical facilities;

that the anti-abortion movement is much larger than the civil rights movement of the sixties ever was, in numbers of participants and numbers jailed, but the media simply black out these facts;

that an overwhelming number of women who have had abortions say they regret it later and wish they had not done so;

that post-abortion trauma is common and crushing; that most women who abort—by their own admission—do not believe their "fetus" was "only tissue" or "only potential life" but believe they killed their baby; and this sense of guilt haunts them for life if not dealt with. But this fact is also denied or censored by a total media blackout.

Abortion splits the family in a literal and lethal way. It literally rips mother and child apart. And it desensitizes us in a gruesome way. We are starting to see the next stage in our "culture of death"—legalized suicide and euthanasia. The same principle that justifies killing at one end of life justifies it at the other: we will dispose of unwanted people.

Read the full article here at Dr. Kreeft's website.

Definition

I found this on A Conservative Blog for Peace, which is always a great read.

"What is ‘tolerant conservatism’?

Charity and discretion about people’s failings while at the same time not making excuses for those vices either.
Don’t ask, don’t tell, we give you your space and God forgives but we don’t teach that it’s not a sin."
(The man who coined the term? The Right Rev. Peter Robinson, Rector of St. Paul's Anglican Church, Prescott, AZ.)

I like this definition, except maybe for the "don't ask, don't tell" part. I need to think that bit over before I decide.

This weekend some core members of New Wave Femmes gathered to make signs for next weekend's Roe v. Wade memorial events in downtown Dallas. (There will be a memorial mass for the approximately 50,000,000 children killed in the U.S. since abortion was legalized in 1973, followed by a rally and a peaceful march to the federal courts building and back.)

It was a wonderful experience of fellowship for NWF, with probably too much wine. We spent hours discussing matters of faith, morals, womanhood, sex, hair dye, swearing, attractive monks, ghost hunting, bean dip, and more.

What came out of this evening of work and fun, other than attending Mass with a pounding headache, were some dynamic ideas about where New Wave Femmes is going and what the next year might have in store for us. Together we can do a great deal to help women and children, and the men who love them.

Later I'll be posting more about NWF, but meanwhile I am reflecting on the definition of "tolerant conservatism" and what it means for our organization.

While discussing what we should print on our signs for the rally and march, knowing that there will be press there and whatever we write might be on the 6 o'clock news, I found myself saying to the other girls: "Never apologize for telling the Truth." I want to capitalize truth because I do believe there is an objective Truth that exists independent of what (or whether) we think about it. While we want to be nurturing to people, to show them compassion and act always from love and kindness, we are only doing them a disservice if we lie to them.

That's why I like, for the most part, the term "tolerant conservatism" and the way it's defined. It is possible to love people and even understand why they do what they do without condoning it.

"What to Expect When You're Aborting"

I just found a website that filled me with sadness. It's the blog of a young woman who had an abortion. The description says: "I'm 23, I'm knocked up, I'm not keeping it. You can fuck yourself Judd Apatow." (She is referring to the director of the film Knocked Up, in which a young professional woman, played by Katherine Heigl, becomes pregnant during a one night stand and, despite her mother's advice that she abort this one so later she can get married and have "a real baby," decides to keep it.)

"What to Expect When You're Aborting" treats the subject of the author's abortion with a sort of dark, dry humor. I can identify with her sense of humor, but not about this particular subject matter. While she seems to obliquely admit to having an emotional response to the experience, in the few posts I read, she has the bitter, snarky tone I've found common to pro-abortion activists.

The pro-choice anger has always struck me as interesting. You'd think we'd be the bitter ones; they have what they want: abortion is legal. But consistently I find pro-lifers to be hopeful, caring people, while there seems to be a lot of barely-concealed rage from pro-aborts. I know this is true because I was one, and I felt the rage. It was a feeling of "How dare they tell us what to do!" It was the anger of indignation, which is self-focused. Now, as a pro-lifer, I feel the the righteous anger that is focused on others -- the innocent, misguided, and lost -- and tempered by sadness and love. It is a totally different feeling.

I remember in particular some photos taken at a pro-life march in San Francisco -- in the lions' den! Having lived in San Francisco, I could almost have predicted the content of those photos. The pro-lifers had been taught to be quiet, respectful, and prayerful. The pro-aborts -- many of them -- were out of control. Several women were dressed in all white, with their crotches splattered with red paint and wire hangers hanging off their clothes.

The author of "What to Expect..." makes it clear that she's not interested in debate, but she certainly can't stop us from praying for her. What she is doing is not only activism -- and it is activism, make no mistake, as surely as this blog is -- but also a cry for help that she might not even be aware she is making.

Pro-lifers need to read these sorts of blogs. We need to get to know the women we are trying to help. We need to understand the way she thinks, why she did what she did, how she feels about it. It is essential to what we are trying to do here. We're not just saving babies, we're saving women, too.

We should also stay abreast of news, events, victories, setbacks and trends in the pro-choice community. "Know your enemy" is a rule of warfare. But remember: although we have to study the pro-choice movement to know how they think, what they fear, and how to fight them, they are not really our enemy. Just like the women who abort, they are the people we are trying to save. Evil is the real enemy, and it comes from a place darker than any on this earth, and an Enemy crueler than any earthly foe.