It Matters

I've been reading/listening on and off to the Gosnell trial and the Benghazi testimony. Both stories are hard to listen to for prolonged periods without suffering from both despair and fury.  Both stories are the triumph of political fealty over the reality.

I understand why the Gosnell trial is not being covered. It is icky and it goes against the political winds of the day that authorize every insurance to pay for abortions and the new policy by the FDA to allow any 15 year old to pop a RU486 faster than a tic tac.  There is no news about the shameful conditions of the Gosnell clinic. There is no story about the woman who died or the infants born alive who were then ruthlessly killed.  There is no story.  Why?  Because there is no story if it disrupts those who favor abortion. There is no story if it portrays those seeking to be reelected in a less than perfect light.  As Hillary said, "What's the big deal?" or more currently, as Jay Carney said, "That's old news." 

But there are dead people as a result of decisions in both cases.  There are families destroyed because people were allowed to go on pretending that what was happening, was not happening.  The Gosnell trial is the manifestation of the logical/rational outcome of believing in abortion on demand. If a person is not a person until thinking and willing makes it so, then geography and size become irrelevant.  If the mother wants the child dead and she goes to this man, he will make it so. 

One can only deaden one's soul so much before the sin of committing murder starts to feed itself.   If you want to know how a clinic like Dr. Gosnell's could exist, it is because the society as a whole allowed it, sanctioned it, refused to see it as what it was, a place that preyed upon the desperate, despairing, the fearful and the selfish and the poor, for money.   It put forth the lie that if the child were destroyed, life would be better.  People paid for that lie to be whispered in their ears, and children wound up in the freezer and in the toilet, and chopped up.  The ugly truth is abortion is the fruit born of a lack of charity in the hearts of all involved save the baby, and lack of charity leads to deadened eyes and deadened hearts.   We become blind to what is evil and call it good.


Willful blindness abounds in the Gosnell trial. 

It is also the hallmark of the dust up over Benghazi.  Truth keeps running into the various trial balloon possibilities that have failed to gain traction in the months since the attack. The assault on our embassy was not because of a video on Youtube. Though I remember how the administration indicated this film posted in July was the reason for the spontaneous decision on September 11th, 2012 to throw maltov cocktails and drag Ambassador Stevens through the streets.  I remember them speaking about this over and over again, at the UN, at the coffins of the four men, that they would get the people responsible.  But we had assets there who were told to stand down.  We had calls to indicate proper people knew, we have knowledge that people defied the orders to stand down to help those in the embassy, and thus lost their own lives.

Has the man who made that stupid film been released?  No.  He the Stan Shunpike of our current Ministry of Magic;  A symbolic arrest touted as proof of doing something about the death eaters that killed four Americans including our diplomat to Libya.    That arrest and the subsequent fallout has vanished from the news narrative. So Nakoula sits in jail even though there has been plenty of evidence that the film had nothing at all to do with the terrorist attack.  Releasing him would verify that reality so he sits in jail to save the face of our government.  It is an inconvenient story.  

The people testifying that Hillary knew it wasn't a video, that the order to stand down when help could have been given and had been called for, could only have been given from someone at the very top, are being smeared as GOP tools, as part of the vast right wing conspiracy.  Apparently the collective press is suffering from a dearth of curiosity with respect to anything that might indicated the "incident" in Benghazi was the result of systemic incompetence, indifference or shallow calculations that before it happened, it still didn't matter and afterwards, even moreso. 

 That the talking points were rewritten to varnish history as it happened to pretend there was no error, there was nothing that could have been done, and that there is no cover up, nothing

to see, nothing to be upset about, matter.  It is not old news. It is an active story.  Our government failed in its first responsibility, to safeguard the life, liberty, laws and values of our nation.  There should be an investigation, there should be consequences.  People who made the call made the call wrongly. People who made the call, lied afterwards to cover up  their errors and pretend there was no moral culpability or political fallout.  People who cover such things for a living, covered it up by not covering it.  

Again, narratives that are icky to the ideology, are not covered.  The 4th estate now no longer covers anything save what reinforces its own sensibilities.  Truth is not the objective.  The objective is to preserve the power we deem worthy, and to discredit, disown and destroy any objections to the recasting of reality to suit the agenda.   Truth is deemed unknowable and thus never pursued unless it suits the political interests of the day. 

But truth matters even if no one believes it. Truth matters even if it is not popular.  Truth is reality, unvarnished by politics or ideology, and sometimes, it is inescapable because it resonates beyond what spin and manipulation can manage.   (The reporter changing his mind about abortion while covering the Gosnell trial is a perfect example).  Truth can break through.

Why? 

Because it is real. Truth matters.   It matters that our nation pretends killing children is not killing children. So also, it matters that our nation ignores its own mandates, its own laws and gets away with it if those gifted with the charge of watch dogging our government deem the story to go against their own world views.   So when our leaders ask quite directly, "What difference does it make?"  I have an answer.

It makes a difference. It matters.  What is the difference?  Only the difference between good and evil, life and death, freedom and fear, a world that isn't simply run by the rule of force and a world that will allow anything to happen as long as it doesn't happen to them.   Yesterday a story broke about three women being freed from ten years of imprisonment by men who used them as sexual things.  They were free because one man heard crying out and acted on it, his little actions while sitting at home eating brought about an end of a ten year evil.  He could have looked the other way.  He didn't.  Why?  Because when you see evil, if you ignore it, you enable it.  If you hear evil, and you do not stop it, you embolden it.  If you refuse to recognize evil, you will become blind to the pain and suffering you could stop.  So it matters.  It always matters.  So what difference does it make?

All the difference in the world.  

Have Mercy on Us and the Whole World

I have read as much as I could stomach of the Gosnell trial, and what I read fills me with both sorrow and revulsion.  The temptation to go all James and John, "Lord, let us reign fire down..." is strong, because the evil is so obvious.  However, James and John are rebuked by the Lord, it is not good for their spirits, and it is not good for mine either.  

While in Texas visiting my parents, I had a momentary glimpse into how grace works, a vision of sorts, while waking, brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed.  I saw a woman, not myself, standing at the edge of a cliff.  Below her were rocks and a fierce ocean. The wind was swift, the sky clear and immense, filled with stars and overwhelming in its emptiness.  The woman was suffering, pain of the heart, worry, every sort of care. 

A cross, a luminous cross came down to her and she threw her arms around it like a lover.  It floated up into the air, over the ocean, away from the cliff and the cares.  Then, it turned so the woman could rest on the cross, holding onto it still in a huge embrace.   The cross flew past the ocean and the stars and all of time with the no longer troubled soul resting as she saw everything fall away.  Grace works that way for all of us no matter what we've done. 

Reading the news, the very sure temptation to say, "Lord, I am grateful I'm not like that sinful man." is fairly obvious.  It is a grave danger to anyone who calls themselves pro-life to presume to know the state of another's soul, or to wish hell, death, pain and damnation upon anyone. Righteous wrath turns quickly to a lust for vengeance, and we do not manage our souls well when tempted with the opportunity to presumably end evil with an evil.  We cannot bring a good out of evil, only God can do this, and it is a great temptation when presented with grave evil, great injustice, and cruel indifference toward the innocent.

The saints did not curse their persecutors, they sang praise while going to their deaths, they focused on their own unworthiness to be martyrs or witnesses to Christ, they comforted others, they prayed.  I am no saint. I will not allow myself to entertain the thoughts I had about this man and what he deserves, because they hurt me.  I cannot call the cross to me, it comes unsummoned, I cannot make the cross fly across the heavens past time, I can only embrace or not.  The cross is a gift.  The grace is a gift, mercy a gift, forgiveness a gift, all of it, unearned by us, merely sought.  

So I focus instead on the reality, that this man, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, is beloved of Christ. 

Boy let that sink in for a minute.  This man is beloved of Christ, ergo, Christ loved him  so deeply, He would and did take the wounds and scourge and pain of death for this man, just as singularly as He did for Hitler or Margaret Sanger or Adam Lanza or Kim Jong Il or me.  

I'll just sit here and sting Ow...for a minute. 

We just know these people's public sins.  We should remember to God, all our sins are public.  All of them count.  All of them wound Christ's heart. Christ wants each and every soul.  We cannot love as Christ loves, so we cannot comprehend this deep ocean of mercy, except to know that the same ocean of mercy is available to us if we are willing to plunge into it, to accept that this ocean is His to give, not ours to dole out.

But...but...but...this is really bad. Really bad. Evil sick twisted wrong bad my soul sputters.

It is a great mystery that Christ can forgive evil, notice I did not say excuse or explain, but forgive. We have to trust, God's justice and mercy are never at odds, it is only our fractured fallen souls that cannot reconcile the two. Which would we want for ourselves, for our children, for our friends?  Justice or Mercy?  Then that is what we must pray for, for our enemies.   (Darn).

If we need convincing, we need only look at the cross.  It is God's answer to our sin, to our evil.  My mercy is the limit of sin's reach.   My mercy is here for you.  My mercy is all if you accept it.  My mercy is yours if you seek it.   My mercy, my mercy, my mercy.  

So I'll be asking all of you to consider praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet for Dr. Gosnell, today and every day as long as he lives, because the souls we save, may be our own.