I used to be suprised at how enraged people get at my pro-life stance. After all, I'm not the one forcing pregnant women to do something deadly. Is it so wrong that I am against aborting a life? Is it really that offensive that I am urging caution before killing your baby? Those med students were excited about performing abortions! You could see it in their eyes. Abortion is their god, and I am defiling it, I suppose. If I did not believe in evil in the world, I would think that their blind rage at those priests was an insane overreaction. As soon as I mention that I am pro-life, some people instantly have deep hatred for me. What is SO offensive about my view? Tell me, should not I, the one who believes that you are killing innocent children, be the one to be offended? Is my righteous anger not justified?

Poor priests. The Episcopal Church isn't the one with the pedophilia problem! (Or, as the Archdiocese of Boston is careful to point out, an "ephebophilia" problem, ephebophilia being an attraction to teenagers and NOT to kidlets.) I am constantly astonished by the depth of some people's hatred for organized religion, even from those who weren't brought up in a church. So sad.

Yeah, they didn't make the distinction.

I can't believe I just discovered your site since we're practically neigbors (see blogahland map). There's funny, and then there's F-U-N-N-Y, you aint got no alibi....Great schtick. I just added you to blogroll.

i'm looking forwrd to part III

i too noticed the rage. and they claim we are murdering them? some of them looked to be in around the ... oh, what? 130th trimester. maybe they need aborting now....

Oh what a fun topic...

I agree, the whole thing is tiring, and I really wish it would go away. The part that most baffles me (well, one of them) is the adamant opposition to *contraception* by the pro-lifers. Why on Earth is *that* "sinful"?

Thanks for the professional presentation and commentary. I'm looking forward to the third installment.

What depravity. I commend your tolerance level.

Nice to see down and dirty coverage without the media filter... and no, you would not read "cunt power" in WaPo.

Well, those "Episcopal priests" look decidedly Roman to me, at least from behind, so I suspect that it was Our Intrepid Reporter who "didn't make the distinction". Anglicans in soutanes and zucchettos?

As for "why do they hate religion [i.e., Christianity] so much?", I wonder a lot about that. A while back, NCGR was offering a panel supposedly on "Astrology and Religion", and I went hoping for some insights. What we got was a (except for Michael Lutin, trying to maintain his reputation as the funniest astrologer in practice) was a bunch of the organization's biggest guns going on about how they had been traumatized by awful Organized Religion... and surely you have noticed that people who use that buzz-label are never talking about organized Judaism. Well, I kept hearing "...and then he DIDN'T refuse me communion, which shows what a hypocrite he was..." [Kerry, call your office!] and "...then she DIDN'T accuse me of stealing the pencil. Ooooh, I can't STAND people like that!.." and reflected that in every case if the person involved had done the exact opposite, it would have been trotted out as "proof" of how cruel and unfeeling those Christians -- oops, Organizedreligionists are. I can not help wondering what is the use of even trying, since literally *anything* Christians do will be invoked as evidence against us.

Oh, and as for "which church has the problem"... baloney. (Note the recent Lutheran sex abuse case.) Just a few years ago the Diocese of Long Island has a particularly lurid sex scandal... but that got hardly any notice in the "mainstream" press, as nobody is out to target Anglicans for ulterior reasons. And, of course, there was no way to rationalize blaming it on "celibacy" or refusal to ordain women.
The really amusing part was the reaction by the editorial jackasses at Episcopal Life, who strugged to admit something was wrong without jeopardizing their PC credentials by actually criticizing homosexuals. They finally wrote that the charges were of "indiscriminate sex". Er, it is usually possible to tell whether or not you are committing fornication (unless, perhaps, you are Bill Clinton); but how can I possibly know whether I am being sufficiently "discriminate"?

Ok, then Will, thanks for impugning my credibility and leaving your disjointed, yet welcome opinion. From the Washington Post:

"Most Rev. Randolph W. Sly, archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Church, left, prays as abortion rights advocates march through downtown."

Sorry, no direct link - you'll have to trust me.

Jason -- The best source for the Catholic position on contraception can be found in Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical cafeteria Catholics love to hate. Check it out -- It's a beatiful statement on human dignity. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html

I can tell you why so many people who hate organized religion really, really hate it. Every religion on the planet -- yes, even Hinduism and animist cults of "primitive" people -- have rules for governing and controlling human behavior that the members of those religions must obey. If they don't obey, they are considered wrongdoers. Well, that collides with two of the main tenets of today's secular culture: the idea of almost complete freedom of human beings to do anything they want (as long as it isn't "hurting" anyone else -- anyone who has already been born, that is, and "hurt" usually means physical harm only) and the idea that we are all wonderful individuals whose self-esteem must be coddled and praised at all times.

If you sit down and ask most of the religion-haters just what their personal beefs with it are, there will be a small number of those who actually suffered real physical or psychic damage due to some person or persons in the same religion -- usually family or clergymembers -- but the rest of them are usually either expressing vicarious rage in order to impress other members of their social group, or they are upset over some threat to their freedom to "do as they please" -- which is these days most often something having to do with sex in a way their older family members would not approve of.

Andrea -

Wow, cogent, detailed answer. I was sort of being personally rhetorical (but definitely asking it for the sake of the piece), because my personal reaction to what you describe was different - I disagreed with many of the tenets of organized religion, so I just decided that I wasn't religious. Simple. It's sort of like I skipped the whole baggage part ... I guess that's because I didn't have anyone really putting the screws to me about it ...

Rez--

Interesting document, and I may take time to read it in full at some point, but after a quick scan all I see is an objection to contraception based on "what God wants". As an atheist (no, religion never harmed me that I'm aware of, I just see no reason to take it's supernaturalistic claims as true) any argument based on claims of what God wants are not going to convince me of anything.

As for human dignity, I see no dignity in prohibiting people from deriving consensual pleasure from one another and at the same time refraining from burdening themselves with unwanted or unaffordable children.

And finally, while the document you cite states that arguing for acceptance of a lesser evil is not an acceptable position, I'd have to disagree. We are frequently forced to choose between sub-optimal alternatives (Bush or Kerry? I want to vote for Goldwater dammit!:-), that's just the nature of reality. The alternatives we are presented with in the current debate are 1) allow abortion and contraception, 2) prohibit both, 3) prohibit one or the other. The costs, moral, physical, and financial of those alternatives vary. While I'd be willing to live in a world where abortion was prohibited as long as contraception was freely permitted, I'd prefer a freer world despite my dislike of abortion. The cost of the compromise position seems most acceptable to me, whereas the costs of full prohibition (deaths from backstreet abortions, a rise of illegitimacy, greater human misery all around) outweigh, in my mind, the dubious benefits of eliminating abortion (or early term abortion anyway, I'm much more ambivalent on late term abortion).

Um, Jason, brilliant comment, but if you keep it up, you are going to steal much of the material for my third post ...

Oh, sorry about that...I'll be good:-)

Bill:

I'm also going to refute your assertion about the priests being "episcopal". You say they are priests in the Charismatic Episcopal Church (you didn't bold enough). This is _not_ part of the Episcopal Church USA.

Some information about the Charismatic Episcopal Church can be found here. http://www.iccec.org/whowerare/index.html

Here is the site for Archbishop Sly's home church confirming him in the CEC. http://www.cotcec.com/pages/staff1.htm

As for the larger Episcopal Church USA, they were in fact official cosponsers of the March as found here under "E". http://www.marchforwomen.org/cosponsors/list.php

The main leadership of the Episcopal Church USA, and the parts in D.C. are more and more hard-left these days. Hence the existence of the CEC, and other churches like them.

I apologize for not researching and making the distinction. The fact does remain, however, that technically and under a very brief descriptive moniker, these priests were far closer to being "Episcopals" than they were to being Catholics, as pointed out by the commenter above.

I don't mind being corrected, but it is helpful if one is not a smug asshole about it. (not necessarily referring to you)

The following book is an excellent discussion of how secularists insist that their morality (abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality to name a few issues) is superior to morality informed by faith; this supposition is false. The author argues that morality informed by religious faith can on its own merit, without the need of Bible thumping or even belief in a god, be proven superior to secularist morality.

"The Clash of Orthodoxies; Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis" by Robert P. George

keep this quality of reporting up and you'll have a pulizter on your windowsill.

I doubt that, but thanks.

The whole arguement in two words: http://www.geocities.com/socissues/trust_women.html