Good and evil, PFM style

Here we go again, with the Chuck expressing shock, shock, that his “worldview” is perceived by the recipients of his tender loving counsel as hateful. How could anyone object to The Manhattan Declaration, he wonderingly asks, when it clearly includes “an affirmation that gays and lesbians possess a God-given, ‘profound, inherent, and equal dignity’?” As we pointed out here, including an “affirmation” that is directly contradicted by the presupposition that GLBT people are inherently broken and inferior is meaningless. It’s the equivalent of an “apology” that begins “I’m so sorry that you’ve chosen to be hurt by what I did.”

It’s not a surprise, then, to see in this essay a bizarre redefinition of the terms “good” and “evil” as Chuck attempts to defend Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who excommunicated a Catholic hospital, from this column by Nicholas Kristof:

The hospital’s offense? It had terminated a pregnancy to save the life of the mother. The hospital says the 27-year-old woman, a mother of four children, would almost certainly have died otherwise.

Bishop Olmsted initially excommunicated a nun, Sister Margaret McBride, who had been on the hospital’s ethics committee and had approved of the decision. That seems to have been a failed attempt to bully the hospital into submission, but it refused to cave and continues to employ Sister Margaret. Now the bishop, in effect, is excommunicating the entire hospital — all because it saved a woman’s life.

In the world according to Chuck, saving the woman’s life is “evil,” while Bishop Olmstead’s bullying is “good.” His actions are “obedient to God,” because “from the bishop’s point of view, St. Joseph’s did not demonstrate that the abortion was strictly required to save the woman’s life – the only morally acceptable reason for terminating a pregnancy.”

The hospital says that the woman “would almost certainly have died.” The bishop and Chuck Colson say that it failed to “demonstrate that the abortion was strictly required to save the woman’s life.” One must wonder what could have demonstrated this to the satisfaction of these pompous religious authorities, short of actually letting her die.

If I recall correctly, they once had a similar test to “demonstrate” that a woman wasn’t a witch:

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8 Responses to Good and evil, PFM style

  1. Jonathan says:

    I posted a link to this article on the Loudoun Times Mirror site which is running an article about Stephen Baldwin’s film preview at PFM. It’s laughable that a so-called “family values” outfit would neglect to mention that the mother had 4 children. Chucky reveals more in what he omits, than what he says.

  2. David says:

    It’s so true. One minute they insist that a child ‘must have it’s biological mother and father’, the next they’re willing to let the mother die. You got the term precisely right: Postmodernism. Nothing really means anything, they can redefine at will. They believe the exact opposite of what they claim.

  3. Rasputin says:

    It’s interesting to see the comments that use the term they. It’s kind of like the “Royal We” as in we need to do something about the situation actually meaning YOU need to do something about it. So when you use the term THEY, there is no face to your accusation just a whimsical aloofness that portrays you in the very same light as those you would attack.

    Look if you want to disagree with Colson fine, but to lump every Christ following christian into your rant is as silly as what you accuse him of saying and doing.

  4. David says:

    Thanks for commenting, Rasputin. The “they” in my comment – the “pompous religious authorities,” refers to the propagandists at Prison Fellowship Ministries, with whom we are rather familiar, and the bishop in question. The talking points PFM generates have proven to be a reliable predictor – not surprising, since Colson is a core member of C street/The Family.

    This particular “they” are also explicitly not “Christ following Christians,” since the ideas that precede the hypocrisy described here are a distortion of the Bible. So I very much do NOT lump all Christians into this characterization.

    I agree with you in principle, though. If I had done what you are suggesting, that would be lazy and deserving of criticism. I’ll try to write my comments with more clarity in the future.

  5. liz says:

    All life is sacred…but only for the 9 months of gestation.

  6. David says:

    Right – because as soon as a person is born, they are a “sinner,” automatically. The theology that permits the bizarre statement you cite is just fascinating. I don’t know if Rasputin adheres to this theology or not, but if so I would appreciate hearing the apologetics behind it. From what I understand of this orthodox strain of Christianity, the words of Jesus about “the least of these” are thought to apply to fetuses instead of to people oppressed by systems of domination – at least, that is how I have heard those words used. This is all subject to a certain situational slipperiness, of course. It’s a theology of convenience, created to support systems of domination rather than subversively undermine them.

  7. Charlie says:

    Am all for treating all people respectfully, and extending full legal and medical benefits to all regardless of “orientation”. But come on, GLBT is not natural. Why would humans “evolve” this way? You all are just fooling yourselves with “scientific” evidence.

  8. David says:

    Hi Charlie, thanks for standing up for basic fairness.

    To answer your question at face value, how could something that occurs in nature consistently, not just across time but across species, not be natural? Empirically, variations in sexual orientation are part of the natural world, period.

    As for “why humans would evolve this way,” probably the most compelling theory is that survival of the young is enhanced when there are a few adults in the group that are not focused on their own, personal, reproduction. There’s a group advantage to having extra adults who can altruistically help with rearing. That doesn’t just apply to humans, but all social animals.

    As for neurological gender that varies from the gender assigned at birth, that’s as natural as is any other intersex condition. The only explanations of “why” I know of are spiritual/religious ones. What we know is that these conditions have existed as long as recorded human history, and that they are medical (physiological) in nature. The “common” understanding of this lags probably 40 years behind the medical understanding.