by Craig Bernthal<\/p>\n
Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n Martha Raddatz: \u201cThis debate is, indeed, historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role religion has played in your own personal views on abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n A fair question by Raddatz, completely muffed by Biden and partially muffed by Ryan. Biden styles himself as a dedicated Catholic who thinks his religion should play no role in his public position on abortion whatsoever: \u201cI do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that \u2014 women they can\u2019t control their body. It\u2019s a decision between them and their doctor.\u201d Abortion on demand is OK with Biden and certainly supported by the Democratic Party and its line-up of convention speakers.<\/p>\n Ryan\u2019s answer was unfortunately very short because he deferred too much to Raddatz: \u201cThe policy of a Romney administration is to oppose abortion with exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.\u201d The position is better than Biden\u2019s, but it doesn\u2019t quite answer Raddatz\u2019s question: \u201c. . . tell me what role religion has played\u00a0in your own personal views<\/em>. . .\u201d<\/p>\n This would have been a wonderful opportunity to explain to the world exactly why the Catholic Church holds its pro-life position and why this goes to the essence of the human relationship \u2014 one\u2019s personal relationship \u2014 with God. And this could have been explained very simply, in one paragraph, as follows:<\/p>\n The Catholic Church has a view of the human self which is radically different from that of \u2018liberalism\u2019 in the broad sense of the word. The Church holds that people to the core of their beings are\u00a0creatures,<\/em>\u00a0i. e., created by God, oriented toward God, for the purpose of receiving God\u2019s love and returning it in loving obedience. The Catholic belief is that this is the deep pattern of what it is to be human, and that is why human dignity, at all stages of life, is so important to the Church. This understanding goes back to the beginning of Christianity and is reflected in Augustine\u2019s famous insight in\u00a0Confessions,<\/em>\u00a0\u2018You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.\u201d Human beings are created to be actively in search of God, whether they realize it or not, and they are happiest when they are acting in obedience, in response to God\u2019s love, as they were created to do. St. Basil said it succinctly: \u201cThe love of God is not based on some discipline imposed on us from outside, but as a capacity and indeed a necessity it is a constitutive element of our rational being.\u201d\u00a0An attack on human life is, at its most basic, an attack on the deep reason for human life, relationship with God.<\/p>\n Well, I don\u2019t expect a vice-presidential candidate to quote St. Augustine or St. Basil, but something on that order, with a finisher by Ryan that this is what he believed, would have made me get off the couch and cheer.<\/p>\n This human being, patterned for loving relationship with God is\u00a0in<\/em>\u00a0relationship with God from conception to death \u2014 and of course, thereafter. All of Catholic social teaching and charity grows out of this single premise. It is profoundly wrong for human beings to interfere with that relationship at their convenience or to degrade it by holding other human beings in contempt.<\/p>\n Now, if you dismiss the Catholic position as a spiritual fairy tale \u2014 then there is no reason not to kill inconvenient people, whether it\u2019s an inconvenient human in the mother\u2019s womb three months after conception, or an inconvenient human three months after birth, or a senior citizen who has become a drag on Obamacare. But if you do believe that human beings are in relationship with God\u00a0ab ovo,<\/em>\u00a0then you cannot kill them: it would be a rejection of the human being, God, and their relationship.<\/p>\n The liberal self came into being in the thinking of Locke, Hume, Kant, and Mill, who together developed a lynchpin of classic liberalism: that people are free agents, morally and personally autonomous, who create themselves and their societies, but have no internal destiny. \u00a0God had not made the Lockean human being for relationship with himself and maybe not even for relationship with others. These assumptions, in many ways, carried forward into the social sciences, where we get creatures like \u201ceconomic man\u201d as either a determined chooser between goods or a rational one, but certainly not as a God-patterned one. The overall social assumption today is certainly the liberal one: however I got here, I now create myself (Satan\u2019s delusion in\u00a0Paradise Lost<\/em>, by the way) and my freedom to do so is unquestionable. Sandra Day O\u2019Connor in\u00a0Planned Parenthood v. Casey<\/em>\u00a0voiced the beliefs of the liberal self more eloquently and succinctly than anyone: \u201cAt the heart of liberty is the right to define one\u2019s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.\u201d<\/p>\n From the Catholic perspective, the idea that human beings can actually define the meaning of their own lives is an enormous metaphysical delusion, and it is a delusion that promotes just the kind of culture defended by O\u2019Connor inPlanned Parenthood v. Casey<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 a culture of death. A person who truly holds the Catholic understanding of what human beings are cannot support abortion or vote for candidates who do. Although there are exceptions for self-defense and the defense of others, we cannot violently end the life of a human being, made by God for relationship with God, in relationship with God, at any point.<\/p>\n Now, explaining all of this, even in brief, might not have been a selling point for Paul Ryan, but there it is.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Craig Bernthal<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Martha Raddatz: \u201cThis debate is, indeed, historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role religion has played in your own personal views on abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[33,199,96],"tags":[190,191,192,1026,183,40,184,1054],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-68","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":752,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-gay-marriage-evolution-deception\/","url_meta":{"origin":380,"position":0},"title":"Obama’s Gay Marriage ‘Evolution’ Deception","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine In yet another act of election-year cynicism, Barack Obama has announced, \u201cI think same-sex couples should be able to get married.\u201d This statement follows similar pronouncements by Joe Biden and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. To hear Obama tell it, this change reflects his \u201cevolution\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":469,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-is-obama-still-likable\/","url_meta":{"origin":380,"position":1},"title":"Why Is Obama Still Likable?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine The Democrats\u2019 convention was the public coming-out bash for the party whose political clock stopped in 1972. Every speaker and speech celebrated the musty left-wing ideology and smug arrogance of those who idolize big government because it gives them the power to tell everybody else\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5520,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-symphony-unheard\/","url_meta":{"origin":380,"position":2},"title":"A Symphony Unheard","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 24, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Go see\u00a0The Nativity Story by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Here is the plot and the theme: God creates the universe, not because he needs to, since he is complete in himself, but as an act of gratuitous love. Being omniscient as well as omnipotent, he knows before the initial instant\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Craig Bernthal"","block_context":{"text":"Craig Bernthal","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/craig-bernthal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7237,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/elites-sacrificial-victims\/","url_meta":{"origin":380,"position":3},"title":"Elites’ Sacrificial Victims","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"When your goal is to save the planet, you can't worry about who may get hurt. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Why do our well-meaning elites so often worry about humanity in the abstract rather than the real effects of their cosmic ideologies on the majority? The dream\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/474px-Elizabeth_Warren_CFPB-237x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5355,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/leaving-the-new-episcopal-church\/","url_meta":{"origin":380,"position":4},"title":"Leaving the New Episcopal Church","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Most Christians in America probably don\u2019t know much about what is happening in the Episcopal Church (TEC). It is very small in comparison with the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, or the new, \u201cnon-denominational\u201d neighborhood churches, whose campuses dwarf small towns; and TEC\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Craig Bernthal"","block_context":{"text":"Craig Bernthal","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/craig-bernthal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11638,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trump-and-the-latino-vote\/","url_meta":{"origin":380,"position":5},"title":"Trump and the Latino Vote","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Trump would not have to change his policies to capture 40 to 50 percent of the Latino vote (which is quite different from \u201cLatino\u201d spokespeople on television and the Jorge Ramos crowd), as opposed to simply articulating them: 1) The \u201cnew\u201d Democratic party not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":395,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}