When I read Archbishop Cupich’s thought on war:
His role as pastor doesn’t fit with the “so-called culture wars” over various issues either, he said. “That’s a term we as pastors don’t want to be associated with. I don’t think we should be associated with any kind of war. War divides, destroys. It has winners and losers. The main role of pastors is to keep people together.”
… I recalled my former ordinary’s approach to the culture**:
I also want to tell you soberly, dear friends, “We are at war!”
The context isn’t quite the same. Bishop Finn places his statement in a larger sense of a struggle against evil. I know, I know: traditional Christian language suggests a war of good versus evil. My own sense is the struggle is far more subtle. It’s a real struggle, no doubt. But unlike traditional war, it seems more like spycraft, and that every one of us, unwilling or not, are at times, double agents. Good vs evil is not a media event. Where people are concerned, the battle lines are not so clearly drawn. More like one foot on one side of the fence and on foot on the other.
In the blogosphere, I noticed Max Lindenman, sort of the token liberal at Patheos Catholic, closed up shop a few months ago. I enjoyed his writing. It was a refreshing tweak to the B16 faithful drumbeat there. And the interminable time it takes for pages to load because of the right bar content. Max hadn’t been writing so often the past year, and as you might guess, I would catch up every few months.
Patheos hasn’t quite gone into the pathetic pathos of antifrancis I’ve seen on a lot of other blogs. A blogging friend on the sidebar is now members-only. Maybe that’s a sort-of withdrawal from the world, like the desert mothers and fathers.
On a personal note, we’re back from a whirlwind 24 hours to Kansas City and back. Everything looked good for the young miss and her heart on the twice-a-year check-up. Her clinic is not too far from the amusement centers on the northeast side, so finding non-crummy hotels has been an adventure for us on the past few trips. We finally found a good one, but it was about fifteen miles out of town. Well worth it.
Unfortunately, when given a choice between an 8:30 appointment and an afternoon one, my wife chose the former. Tough on the women in the family, who are not morning persons. Me, that’s not so bad. Except when the hotel bed is unfamiliar and I ate too much Chinese food for dinner. Is heartburn an appropriate participation in a cardiology trip?
Catholic Sensibility 
While I disagree that there is no culture war to be fought publicly– Planned Parenthood is as wicked as organization as one could conceive– your metaphor of spycraft is a good one and one I’m sure I’ll freely plagiarize one day in a homily!
Pathos has been quite pathetic for quite some time now.
PP is as wicked an organization as one could conceive!!!! Really.
I think that a rather large cross-section of US society might save that label for the Roman Catholic Church.
“PP is as wicked an organization as one could conceive”
No pun intended?
But seriously, that is a very damaging and cruel thing to say. Great people are doing wonderful work in these clinics.
Contraception counseling, uterine screenings and many other helpful things happen at these clinics. Women with Intero-Uterine diseases are often treated with The Pill and it is extremely effective for painful ailments like endometriosis.
I don’t like the idea of abortion at all. But there is something worse than abortion.
It is the notion that a woman is not the free owner of her own body.
If Men were forced by the state to give up a kidney or other organ against their will to save a life elsewhere they might get a sense of the gross violation this is.
The Catholic position on contraception remains a disaster of theology and an assault on decency. At least support contraception for goodness sake!
And – as I commented in response to an earlier post in this blog – reliable and widely available contraception is one of the most effective factors in lowering the abortion rate.
Planned Parenthood – one summer in college I volunteered there. I answered phoned in questions about birth control. The organization does a lot of stuff other than abortion, including prenatal exams and cancer screening. Nice people work there.
I’ll freely admit I’ve been to a PP getting a pap test. Better that than cancer. My other waiting room mate was a very pregnant woman getting a prenatal exam, since that’s the only place she could afford. Her baby was very, very much wanted, and she had to endure the people harassing her about why she wanted to “kill her baby.” (Their words.)
It seems like every movement becomes that which they fight against. It’s time the pro-life groups take a good, hard look at themselves, but that isn’t going to happen so long as extremists are running it.