Robert P. George

The Supreme Court, You and Me, and the Future of Marriage

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Source: Witherspoon Institute

By Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson and Robert P. George within Marriage

Originally published June 27, 2013.

What happened yesterday at the courthouse matters, and we must keep up our witness to the truth about marriage, by word and deed, until it is safely beyond judicial overreach.

Here’s the least reported fact about yesterday’s rulings on marriage: the Supreme Court refused to give Ted Olson and David Boies, the lawyers suing to overturn Prop 8, what they wanted. The Court refused to redefine marriage for the entire nation. The Court refused to “discover” a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Citizens and their elected representatives remain free to discuss, debate, and vote about marriage policy in all fifty states. Citizens and their elected representatives still have the right to define marriage in civil law as the union of one man and one woman.

And we should continue doing so. Already, in the wake of yesterday’s ruling, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana has called on his state to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Marriage matters for children, for civil society, and for limited government. Marriage is the institution that unites a man and a woman as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children that their union produces. And that’s why the government is in the marriage business. Not because it cares about adult romance, but because it cares about the rights of children.

If you believe, as we do, in the importance to children and to society of the marriage-based family, then of course you were hoping for different results in yesterday’s marriage cases. But you probably also put your trust in the institutions of civil society—in that vast arena between man and state which is the real stage for human development. And in that case, you never expected a court of law to do our work for us, to rescue a marriage culture that has been wounded for decades by cohabitation, out-of-wedlock child-bearing, and misguided policies like no-fault divorce. Your only question at 10:00 AM yesterday was whether the Supreme Court would leave us the political and cultural space to rebuild that culture, or get in the way.

The answer was that the Court would leave us some space—for now. Five justices in United States v. Windsor have seen fit to put the republic on notice. While coy on state marriage laws, they have held that we the people—through overwhelming majorities in Congress and a Democratic President—somehow violated the Constitution in enacting the Defense of Marriage Act.

Here we’ll describe just what the Court said and didn’t, what it got wrong, what that means in practice, and where it leaves the fight for a sound marriage culture.

What Happened in Windsor and Perry

In United States v. Windsor, the Court heard a challenge to Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as a male-female union for federal purposes created in federal law. Justice Kennedy and the four more liberal justices—Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Ginsburg—struck down that section. Dissents were filed by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, and Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas.

In the second case, Perry v. Hollingsworth, the Court considered Proposition 8, the referendum in which California citizens amended their constitution to preserve conjugal marriage in state law. The California attorney general, normally responsible for defending such laws, refused in this case, so Prop 8’s proponents stepped in. But the Court ruled that they had no standing—no legal right—to do so. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Scalia, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan. Justice Kennedy dissented, joined by Justices Alito, Thomas, and Sotomayor.

What That Does—and Doesn’t—Mean

The Supreme Court did not strike down all of DOMA, just Section 3. It left intact Section 2, which prevents the states from being forced to recognize other states’ same-sex marriages. This leads to the broader point that not a single justice said anything against the validity of any state marriage policy, including state conjugal marriage laws. That means, of course, that not a single justice voted to strike down Prop 8. Instead, the Perry majority ordered the Ninth Circuit Court to set aside (“vacate”) its own ruling against Prop 8.

That leaves us with some confusion as to the status of Judge Vaughn Walker’s district court decision that ruled against Prop 8. Some scholars think Walker’s decision must be vacated, too. Each same-sex couple seeking to marry in California would then have to sue for a special kind of court relief, applicable only to that couple. Others think that Judge Walker’s decision would stand, but they debate whether it would apply to all state officials or only the county clerks named in the suit. Governor Jerry Brown, for his part, has directed all county clerks to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses. This will surely be challenged in state court by the proponents of Prop 8.

Trouble Spots

The Court ruled that Prop 8 proponents were not the right party to bring the suit. Wherever vague and conflicting standing doctrine points, its application here eviscerated the California referendum process. That process was designed to let citizens pass laws, and amend their constitution, to check and balance government officials. If those same officials can effectively veto provisions of the state constitution by refusing to enforce and then refusing to defend them, the point of the referendum process is defeated.

Meanwhile, it is hard to criticize the basis of the DOMA case because it is hard even to say what that basis is. The opinion begins with a learned reflection on how family law has historically (but not exclusively) been left to states. Yet it refuses to strike DOMA down just on that ground. After all, DOMA leaves state family law intact as ever. It controls only how the federal government allocates federal money and benefits when it comes to marriage. Congress can’t impose on the states in this matter, to be sure; but then why would the states be able to impose on Congress?

The Court also doesn’t rest its decision just on equal protection principles, though these too are discussed. If equality required Congress to cover same-sex partnerships with its marriage-related laws, wouldn’t the same be true of the states? Yet the majority claims to reach no decision on the latter.

Finally, the Court doesn’t just rely on the principle that the government can’t deny liberty without due process. On the Court’s own accounting, that rule protects substantive rights only when they are deeply rooted in our nation’s history and traditions. But as of 13 years ago, no jurisdiction on our planet, much less in our nation, had enacted same-sex civil marriage.

So if not federalism, or equality, or due process, then what? What is the basis for the Court’s ruling? As Justice Scalia points out, the Court itself won’t say. It discusses each of these principles before refusing to rely squarely on any. As for how they might stretch, multiply, merge, or pile up to support the Court’s holding anyway, several theories have arisen. But even some who cheer the decision have called its reasoning less than coherent or satisfying.

Justice Kennedy, for his part, is just sure the Constitution prevents the federal government from treating opposite- and same-sex state marriages differently. All he knows, in other words, is that Section 3 of DOMA must go.

In fact, we would have been better off had he stopped there. DOMA, he goes on to insist, must have been motivated by a “bare desire to harm,” or “to disparage and to injure.” Its sole purpose and effect is to “impose inequality,” to deny “equal dignity,” to “humiliate.” He infers all this from a few passages in its legislative history about defending traditional morality and the institution of traditional marriage, from its effects, and from the act’s title. Most importantly—and scandalously, given his obligations as a judge—Kennedy does so with nothing more than passing reference to arguments made for DOMA in particular, and conjugal marriage in general. How else could his reasoning leap from the people’s wish to support a certain vision of marriage, to their alleged desire to harm and humiliate those otherwise inclined?

The effect of this refusal to engage counterarguments is the elevation of a rash accusation to the dignity of a legal principle: DOMA’s supporters—including, one supposes, 342 representatives, 85 senators, and President Clinton—must have been motivated by ill will.

The Heart of the Problem—and Solution

The bottom line? The defense of conjugal marriage matters now more than ever. It won’t be long before new challengers come. But whether they succeed may depend on how vigorously the democratic debate is joined that Justice Alito describes in his clear-eyed dissent.

In his DOMA dissent, Justice Alito goes out of his way to frame the central issue of both cases: They involve, he writes, a contest between two visions of marriage—what he calls the “conjugal” and “consent-based” views. He cites our book as exemplifying the conjugal view of marriage as (in his summary) a “comprehensive, exclusive, permanent union that is intrinsically ordered to producing children.” He cites others, like Jonathan Rauch, for the idea that marriage is a certain commitment marked by emotional union. And he explains that the Constitution is silent on which of these substantive, morally controversial visions of marriage is correct. So the Court, he says, should decline to decide; it should defer to democratic debate.

The Court is likelier to defer to democratic debate if it believes there’s a genuine debate to defer to. If the conjugal view’s supporters are instead cowed into silence, or convinced to forfeit on the ground that loss is “inevitable” anyway, five justices will see no obstacle to imposing the consent-based view nationwide.

Never mind that this emotional companionship rationale entails that moms and dads are interchangeable. Never mind that it makes nonsense of other norms of marriage, unable as it is to justify the limits of permanence, exclusivity, or monogamy. Never mind that by its logic, the law’s “discrimination” against multiple-partner bonds, too, would embody a “bare desire to harm” those most satisfied by other bonds.

The point is that by assuming the consent-based view, the majority in the DOMA decision took sides in the very debate it was claiming to sidestep out of respect for state sovereignty. Had the justices taken the trouble even to describe conjugal marriage supporters’ reasons in their own terms, it would have become obvious that these weren’t bigots but garden-variety political opponents.

So our first task is to develop and multiply our artistic, pastoral, and reasoned defenses of the conjugal view as the truth about marriage, and to make ever plainer our policy reasons for enacting it. That will make it more awkward for the justices to apply their DOMA reasoning in a future challenge to state marriage laws. Only conjugal marriage supporters can decide—by what they do next—whether the Court, when it next returns to marriage, will find a policy dispute lively enough to demand its deference.

Our second task is to take a long—and broad—view. Whenever and however the legal battle is won, our work will have only begun. Despite the Court’s libels against half their fellow citizens, this debate is not about “the bare desire to harm” any group. Indeed, for conjugal marriage supporters it is not, ultimately, about homosexuality at all. It is about marriage. The proposal to define marriage as nothing more specific than your top emotional bond is one way to erode its stabilizing norms, so crucial for family life and the common good.

But it is just one way.

Before same-sex anything was at stake, our society was already busy dismantling its own foundation, by innovations like no-fault divorce and by a thousand daily decisions to dishonor the norms of marriage that make it apt for family life. Atomization results from these forms of family breakdown—and from the superficially appealing idea that emotional closeness is all that sets marriage apart, which makes it gauche to seek true companionship and love in non-marital bonds. Part of rebuilding marriage will be responding to that atomization—reaching out to friends and neighbors suffering broken hearts or homes, or loneliness, whatever the cause. That, too, will make the conjugal view of marriage shine more brightly as a viable social option.

In short, winning the legal battle against redefinition is only a condition of winning the political one. And winning the political one is only a condition (though necessary) for rebuilding a healthy culture.

Yesterday’s most important developments in that broadest struggle, of course, did not happen at a marble courthouse in Washington, but in a million minds and hearts and households across the country, as people chose in ways great and small to honor—or not—the demanding ideals of marriage and family, and community. As champions of civil society, we always knew that. Yet it would be naive to deny the law’s effect on those ideals. That’s why the courthouse matters—and why we must keep up our witness to the truth about marriage, by word and deed, until it is safely beyond judicial overreach.

Sherif Girgis is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Princeton and a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. Ryan T. Anderson is a William E. Simon Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and Editor of Public Discourse. Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. They are co-authors of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense.

Fr. Gerald Murray: Homily at the Funeral of Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D.

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I first heard Dr. Bernard Nathanson speak over 25 years ago. I was very young and had just read his book “Aborting America.” There were probably not more than twenty people crowded into a room to hear this man who was one of the three founding members of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) describe the massive public relations campaign they undertook, successfully as it turned out, to overturn the cultural attitudes against abortion. All the shibboleths of the pro-choice cause, from the count of women who died from illegal abortions (the number was pulled out of thin air, Nathanson wrote), to the argument that the opposition to abortion is a “religious” issue came out of their early meetings.

Nathason wrote that he had performed over 75,000 abortions when doubts began to surface about whether or not the fetus (Latin: little one) was indeed an inert clump of cells. Neo-natal medicine was advancing at the time and Nathanson, when taking a hard look at life in the womb, changed his mind. He swore off his former allegiances, stopped performing abortions, and became a pro-lifer.

When I saw him he still referred himself as a “Jewish atheist.” I recall that he was quite clear in his explanation that he became a pro-lifer because the scientific evidence for life was indisputable. That surprised me at the time because I assumed that his moral awakening must have had a religious dimension. It didn’t, not at the time anyway, so I learned something new too.

I recall wondering that if he was honest that abortion killed a human being (his words, not mine), how would he reconcile himself to the fact he took over 75,000? Years later I found out that this question deeply haunted him. He eventually found reconciliation with God through the Catholic Church in 1996. From his biography:

Nathanson grew up Jewish and for more than ten years after he became pro-life he described himself as a “Jewish atheist”. In 1996 he converted to Roman Catholicism through the efforts of an Opus Dei priest, Rev. C. John McCloskey. In December 1996, Nathanson was baptized by Cardinal John O’Connor in a private Mass with a group of friends in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He also received Confirmation and first Communion from the cardinal. He cited that “no religion matches the special role for forgiveness that is afforded by the Catholic Church” when asked why he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Robert P. George gave the eulogy at his funeral last week (reprinted below). George remarked on Nathanson’s brutal self-honesty, a characteristic I too saw years ago when first I heard him speak. George’s reflection confirms the memory I have of the man. May his memory be eternal.

Abortion is still a very contentious issue. There’s a reason for this. All the dehumanizing trends that those of us who hold a high value of human life fight against in our culture begins with abortion. If we don’t value the life of the unborn, all of human life will eventually be devalued. These trends have a logic, a natural cultural trajectory. That’s why we cannot let down our guard.

A person who used to understand this was Frank Schaeffer. I heard Frank and his father Francis Schaeffer speak too years ago when they set out to warn America of the dehumanizing trends that would be unleashed if we devalued life in the womb. I was a college student, and a friend and I founded the first pro-life student group at the University of Minnesota, a very liberal institution with the only accredited feminist studies program in the nation at the time. No need to say they protested against us at every turn, especially when we sponsored a “Pro-Life Week” where Frank’s father Francis was the highlighted speaker. Francis was dying of cancer at Mayo Hospital in Rochester, MN at the time but still came up to Minneapolis speak at our event.

People get weary. I understand that. But the scripture also says “Be not weary in well doing” and standing against the dehumanization of persons is certainly “well doing.” Frank needs to remember this. So do so some our our Church leaders. People can disagree on the politics of the fight, but any definition of human life that accommodates dehumanization must be called out and resisted. That is one reason for the criticism of Constantinople’s lukewarm stand toward the unborn on this blog (see: A patriarch who ‘generally speaking, respects human life).

The devaluation of human life is the central issue of our time. Nathanson came to understand this. Pope John Paul II did as well as does Pope Benedict. The Catholics have been the strongest leaders in defending life although in recent years the Orthodox Church has been speaking with increasing clarity particularly Patriarch Kyrill and Metropolitan Hilarion.

Metropolitan Jonah understands the stakes too. He is one of the clearest voices on the sanctity of human life among Orthodox leaders in America today. Keep this in mind during all the discussions about the present troubles in the OCA. It is a very important consideration.

Source: Coming Home | Fr. Gerald Murray

Your Excellency, Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York, how pleasing it is to us all that you are offering this requiem Mass for the soul of Dr. Bernard Nathanson in the Cathedral where he was baptized, confirmed and received his First Holy Communion in December of 1996. Your telephone call from Rome to Dr. Nathanson just weeks before his death was a source of strength and encouragement to him in his final suffering.

Reverend Fathers, especially Fr. C. John McCloskey, who prepared Dr. Nathanson for baptism and was his spiritual mentor; Dear Religious Sisters, in particular the Sisters of Life, who loved Dr. Nathanson so much; both you and Dr. Nathanson are the children in Christ of that stalwart defender of life who is your common spiritual father, John Cardinal O’Connor.

Dear Christine, Dr. Nathanson’s devoted wife; Dear Joseph his son, and all the members of Dr. Nathanson’s family, and all those who assisted him in his illness.

We are joined today at this funeral Mass by a great cloud of witnesses to commend to God’s mercy this faithful and courageous servant of the Lord, Dr. Bernard Nathanson. Our congregation this morning is made up of so many who knew and admired the man we entrust today to our loving God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Here also present are those who knew him from afar by virtue of his untiring efforts to promote respect for life through his writings, his speeches and especially through his two powerful films, The Silent Scream and The Eclipse of Reason.

Here present in spirit are also those two priests, great friends of Dr. Nathanson, to whom he dedicated his book, The Hand of God: Fr. Paul Marx, O.S.B. and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, true heroes of the movement to end legalized abortion in our country and throughout the world.

The prophet Isaiah proclaims this hope filled message in our first reading today: “Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy; they will meet with joy and gladness, sorrow and mourning will flee” (Is 35:10)

The everlasting joy of Heaven is our hope. We long for the joy and gladness promised to those whom the Lord has ransomed. Dr. Nathanson for years longed for that joy and gladness. He found it in Christ.

In his book, Dr. Nathanson wrote of his medical school professor and fellow Jewish convert to Catholicism, Karl Stern: “…he possessed a secret I had been searching for all my life – the secret of the peace of Christ” (p. 46) After years of deep involvement in what he called “the satanic world of abortion” (p. 58), Dr. Nathanson came to believe in Christ. He lived with Christ crucified and resurrected for the last 14 years of his life on earth. He experienced great peace upon becoming a Christian.

St. Paul exhorts us today in our second reading: “[L]et the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body.” (Col 3:15) Dr. Nathanson heard and answered that call. He knew great peace in the Catholic Church after years of much trouble and despair. We pray today that he enter into the fullness of that peace in the land of the living.

I am not exaggerating when I say that Dr. Bernard Nathanson is a towering figure in the history of the United States because he was an unflinching witness on behalf of those millions who have been killed, or are threatened to be killed, by abortion. He was a witness who spoke out against what he himself had helped to bring about, namely the legalization of abortion in our country, along with his fellow founders of NARAL, the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws.

He broke with this evil movement, and repented of his sins. His epiphany came when he saw ultrasound images of the developing human being in the womb. He wrote: “Ultrasound opened up a new world. For the first time we could really see the human fetus, measure it, observe it, watch it, and indeed bond with it and love it. I began to do that.” (p. 125) He continued “Having looked at the ultrasound, I could no longer go on as before” (p. 128)

Dr. Nathanson followed the truth where it led him. He wrote: “After my exposure to ultrasound, I began to rethink the prenatal phase of life. … When I began to study fetology, it dawned on me, finally, that the prenatal nine months are just another band in the spectrum of life. … To disrupt or abort a life at this point is intolerable – it is a crime. I don’t make any bones about using that word: Abortion is a crime.” (p. 130)

Msgr. William Smith is another great hero of the pro-life movement whose passing we still mourn. He never tired of repeating this axiom: “Social engineering is always preceded by verbal engineering.” Dr. Nathanson and Msgr. Smith were champions in the never-ending struggle here below to prevent the ideological corruption of language. That is a Godly struggle. May we take up where they have left off.

Dr. Nathanson reminds me of another great witness against evil and in favor of the truth in the twentieth century, Whittaker Chambers. I read somewhere that Betty Friedan thought the same thing, but I am sure for different reasons.

Chambers renounced his membership in the Communist party and spoke out against those who were part of a conspiracy to harm our nation through espionage for the Soviet Union. He confessed to being a Soviet spy. He was vilified. He suffered. He stood firm. He spoke the truth.

The introduction to his book Witness is a “Foreword in the Form of a Letter to My Children.” This quotation from the foreword captures Dr. Nathanson’s courageous witness on behalf of innocent human beings menaced by abortion: “A man is not primarily a witness against something. That is only incidental to the fact that he is a witness for something. A witness, in the sense that I am using the word, is a man whose life and faith are so completely one that when the challenge comes to step out and testify for his faith, he does so, disregarding all risks, accepting all consequences.” (p. 5)

Dr. Bernard Nathanson was a fearless advocate of the self-evident truth that it is a grave injustice to kill people before they are born. The unjust decisions of the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton mandating legalized abortion in our country cry out for the counter-witness of those who will not abide this injustice. Heroism is called for. True heroism is never easy and is only possible through God’s grace. We acknowledge today our gratitude to a true hero who would not abide such grave injustice in our land. In doing so, we too recognize the Hand of God in the life of Dr. Nathanson.

Chambers wrote of himself in that foreword to his book: “But a man may also be an involuntary witness. I do not know any way to explain why God’s grace touches a man who seems unworthy of it. But neither do I know any other way to explain how a man like myself – tarnished by life, unprepossessing, not brave – could prevail so far against the powers of the world arrayed almost solidly against him, to destroy him and defeat his truth. In this sense, I am an involuntary witness to God’s grace and to the fortifying power of faith.” (p. 6)

Only God knows whether Dr. Nathanson was a voluntary or involuntary witness against abortion and for life. But it is clear that he was truly courageous. He rejected what he knew to be evil, and then spoke out. In his humility he, like Chambers, recognized that God’s grace is made ever more manifest when He chooses unexpected apostles.

Chambers tells a haunting story in his book which gives us, I think, an insight into Dr. Nathanson’s rejection of abortion. He writes: “The daughter of a former German diplomat in Moscow was trying to explain to me why her father, who, as an enlightened modern man had been extremely pro-Communist, had become an implacable anti-Communist. But she loved her father and the irrationality of his defection embarrassed her. ‘He was immensely pro-Soviet,’ she said, ‘and then –you will laugh at me – but you must not laugh at my father – and then- one night – in Moscow he heard screams. That’s all. Simply one night he heard screams.’

“A child of Reason and the 20^th century, she knew that there is a logic of the mind. She did not know that the soul has a logic that may be more compelling than the mind’s. She did not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the mind, the logic of history, the logic of politics, the myth of the 20^th century, with five annihilating words: one night he heard screams.”(pp. 13-14)

The scream Dr. Nathanson heard was a silent scream. A silent scream uttered by an unseen victim; that is, until the ultrasound machine brought the truth of abortion into plain view for this medical doctor who had expended great effort to make this horror legal and widespread in America. That doctor thereafter boldly decided to make the reality of human life in the womb visible for the whole world to see. Dr. Nathanson wrote in his book: “By 1984, however, I had begun to ask myself more questions about abortion: What actually goes on in an abortion? … so in 1984 I said to a friend of mine, who was doing fifteen or maybe twenty abortions a day, ‘Look, do me a favor, Jay. Next Saturday, when you are doing all these abortions, put an ultrasound device on the mother and tape it for me.’ He did, and when he looked at the tapes with me in an editing studio, he was so affected that he never did another abortion. I, though I had not done an abortion in five years, was shaken to the very roots of my soul by what I saw.” (pp. 140-141)

Anyone who has seen The Silent Scream (see below) is shaken. Seeing the truth about abortion overthrows the lies and deceptions of the abortion lobby. An important way that we can honor the memory of Dr. Bernard Nathanson is to continue his work of making the truth known to anyone who is willing to listen to our message, and then to discover what pregnancy really is by looking at ultrasound images of a pre-born human being.

The psalmist tells us: “Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you.” (Ps 55:22) For the past two years it was my privilege to bring the consolation of the sacraments to Dr. Nathanson at his home. His devout reception of the Holy Eucharist revealed to me a man truly in love with Jesus Christ. The Lord indeed was sustaining his son who had cast his heavy burden of past evils on the Lord. “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:15-16) says the Lord in today’s Gospel. The rest, the peace of soul that Christ gives begins in this life and passes through the Cross and then into eternity. All the while God guides and strengthens us, if only we let him.

Whittaker Chambers ended his Letter to My Children in this way: “My children, when you were little, we used sometimes to go for walks in our pine woods. In the open fields, you would run along by yourselves. But you used instinctively to give me your hands as we entered those woods, where it was darker, lonelier, and in the stillness our voices sounded loud and frightening. In this book I am again giving you my hands. I am leading you, not through cool pine woods, but up and up a narrow defile between bare and steep rocks from which in shadow things uncoil and slither away. It will be dark. But, in the end, if I have led you aright, you will make out three crosses, from two of which hang thieves. I will have brought you to Golgotha – the place of skulls. This is the meaning of the journey. Before you understand, I may not be there, my hands may have slipped away from yours. It will not matter. For when you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wise. Your Father.”

Our life indeed is meant to be lived in intimate union with the crucified Lord. Golgotha, Calvary is indeed the place where we learn to be wise. The pain we experience, if united to Christ’s pain, is then understood to be a blessing that opens our hearts to the only Love that can take away that pain. That Love is Christ, and the gift of eternal life wipes away all pain and suffering. To live and to die in hopeful expectation of that redemption is God’s great gift to us fallen creatures here below. That gift was joyfully received by Dr. Nathanson in this very Cathedral 14 years ago.

Today we pray that the fullness of joy, which is the blessed vision of God seen face to face, be given to his son and our brother, Bernard Nathanson.

Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat ei. Amen.

This is the film “The Silent Scream” narrated by Dr. Nathanson that began to turn the cultural tide against abortion.

Parts 2-5 can be found on Youtube.

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Robert P. George calls out Frank Schaeffer

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I’ve been waiting for this. Robert P. George is an excellent thinker and astute cultural critic. He writes from the Roman Catholic tradition and there is much with which the Orthodox can find agreement (“Clash Of Orthodoxies: Law Religion & Morality In Crisis” is an excellent read). Frank Schaeffer, well, what can you say. I know the man and have been keeping up with his writing, not the books so much which are so-so for the most part — adequate but not memorable except perhaps for his scathing and unseemly criticism of his parents. (No parent is perfect, and no parent, except perhaps a rank abuser, deserves to have his failings pilloried in public by his children).

I knew both of his parents tangentially. A friend and I started the Students for Life group at the University of Minnesota many moons ago (the only accredited Feminist Studies program at any American university at the time) and invited Francis Schaeffer to speak at “Pro-Life Week” that we organized — the feminist studies department dutifully protested in full force. Later I got to know Edith Shaeffer. I was ordained at the time and spent a day with her on the day Frank got chrismated and explained what Orthodox Christianity was (she was relieved to find out it was not a cult). She is a very gracious and generous woman.

Later I got to know Frank a bit better (full disclosure: I was a co-editor of Dancing Alone: The Quest for Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religion) and thus was alarmed with what appears to be a drift from the moral tradition towards libertine liberalism — moral parity for homosexuals is his new cause). I keep up with his writings on the Huffington Post but find the slide into temporal moralizing almost intolerable — lot’s of self-assured finger-wagging, no serious thinking. I only check it every few months now.

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HT: Mirror of Justice

“Natural Law” and “far right Reconstructionist extremism!”
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Robert P. George: Why I signed the Manhattan Declaration

Robert P. George on the Manhattan Declaration

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Princeton professor Robert P. George, one of the drafters of the Manhattan Declaration, is interviewed by Kathryn Jean Lopez on National Review Online.

LOPEZ: Why just Christians?

Robert P. George

GEORGE: For too long, the historic traditions of Catholicism, Evangelical Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy have failed to speak formally with a united voice, despite their deep agreement on fundamental questions of morality, justice, and the common good. The Manhattan Declaration provided leaders of these traditions with an opportunity to rectify that. It is gratifying that they were willing — indeed eager — to seize that opportunity. Of course, as Cardinal Justin Rigali observed at the press conference at which the Declaration was released, the foundational principles it defends “are not the unique preserve of any particular Christian community or of the Christian tradition as a whole. . . . They are principles that can be known and honored by men and women of goodwill even apart from divine revelation. They are principles of right reason and natural law.” So the signatories are happy to stand alongside our LDS brothers and sisters who have worked so heroically in the cause of defending marriage, our Jewish brothers and sisters, members of other faiths, and people of no particular faith (even pro-life atheists such as the great Nat Hentoff), who affirm our principles and wish to join us in proclaiming and defending them.

LOPEZ: Many who signed the declaration are politically conservative. And yet you don the cloak of a Christian tradition of “proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed, and suffering.” Conservatives aren’t exactly known for such things. though. Should they be? Are those who signed the declaration doing anything to change the perception?

GEORGE: Actually, not all of the signatories are conservatives. Ron Sider, for example, who leads Evangelicals for Social Action, is an unabashed liberal. On matters of economics and foreign policy, he would be more comfortable in the company of the editors of The Nation than in the company of the editors of National Review. Several other signatories fall into that category. But they are strongly pro-life, pro-marriage, and pro–religious liberty. I would add that many conservatives certainly have resisted tyranny and reached out to the poor, the oppressed, and the suffering. Conservatives fought Soviet tyranny and worked for the liberation of millions of oppressed and suffering Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Russians, Romanians, and others.

Many conservatives have been in the forefront of the fight against poverty and disease in Africa, the trafficking of women and girls into sexual slavery at home and abroad, and the fight for human rights across the globe. Are there many liberals who have accomplished nearly as much as has been accomplished by the conservative activist Michael Horowitz on any of these fronts? Moreover, it is worth noting that many people who are today “conservatives” were civil-rights activists in the 1960s. Start that list with Mary Ann Glendon, Leon and Amy Kass, and the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. They have not changed their views about racial justice. They are today “conservatives” and no longer “liberals” because mainstream liberalism has embraced a combination of statism and moral libertarianism that they regard — rightly in my view — as deeply misguided.

LOPEZ: What’s the top-priority issue for signers of the Manhattan Declaration?

GEORGE: The three principles — life, marriage, and religious freedom — are integrally connected. They are, as the Declaration says, foundational to justice and the common good, properly understood. They will stand or fall together.

Read Reminding Caesar of God’s Existence on NRO.

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