The Seamless Garment
CHRIST & NEIGHBOR
Politics can be a swamp into which the precarious balance of reason and morality sinks like a stone, leaving no trace.
One big issue that threatens this year to aggravate that condition is abortion. The production schedule of the NOR requires that columns be written months in advance, so I cannot make reference to the actions of the two major party conventions, but going simply on past evidence, it is safe to conclude that one party will favor abortion and the other party will oppose it.
How does a good Christian respond to this situation? That is the question before the house.
On the one hand, it seems irrational that all those good-hearted people who are most active in the one party, whose hearts beat and bleed most warmly for peace and for poor people, for the sick and the elderly, for working people, for the blacks and the browns, can even beat for whales and harp seals, for whooping cranes and snail darters, cannot feel the excruciating pain of the child who is destroyed in the womb.
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A poor woman I knew regarded herself, when pregnant, as the recipient of a gift from God. For me, the matter was at once abstract and circumstantial.
Conspicuously absent from a coalition of pro-life advocates supporting a personhood amendment in Mississippi were the bishops of Jackson and Biloxi.