I have glanced over the guide myself, and read a few posts on it. Personally, I am not that fussed about it one way or the other. It seems to me the bishops were trying to write something that would not offend anyone, which means that pretty much everyone will be offended by it for some reason or other. I am of the opinion that our faith is inherently offensive to the world and its master, and if you are not offending anyone by it, you are doing it wrong. So, it seems the bishop's may have inadvertently done God's work when they tried not to offend people, but managed to do so anyway, despite their best efforts.
One of the curious things I find in the document is this phrase:
"Demanding the right to life for even the smallest among us – the human embryo and the foetus – since they too belong to the human family, while also providing assistance to pregnant women facing difficulties; "
Apparently, I am not alone in finding this phrase interesting. Many are commenting on the choice of words here. Some are pointing out that the document does not mention abortion. If it did, this would have been the place to bring it up. Also, some have noted that the document does use the words embryo and foetus, and are wondering why they would use the terms favoured by the abortion industry. I am not terribly concerned over either, and I suspect the bishops are trying to do a few things here. First, they are establishing themselves as not merely being anti abortion, but as pro life, which is what this section of the guide s dealing with. Secondly, by using the terms of the abortion industry, they are effectively saying that it does not matter of you call it an embryo, or a foetus or a baby, it is still human and deserves respect and protection. In so doing, they are attempting to wrest those terms away from the abortion industry, and removing the battles over semantics. I would give them some praise for this attempt.
Another thing that stands out is this line:
"Ending excessive, unjustified spending; "
That is so vague as to be utterly meaningless. To both the right and the left, "excessive unjustified spending" is any nickel spent on the other guy's pet projects. I really can't praise them on this one.
On the whole, I find this document neither helpful nor a stumbling block. While I have focused on one line as specially vague and pointless, the document as a whole suffers from a vague pointlessness. It tells me nothing I did not already know. It neither thrills nor offends me. I won't be glancing over it again.
1 comment:
Hi Bear. Thanks for taking a level headed approach to this. Other analyses are biased in certain ways. I wish that more bloggers like yourself, used their minds and rational logic in approaching items like this. Keep blogging!
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