Friday, September 7, 2012

When is a Catholic not a Catholic?

Q. When is a Catholic not a Catholic?
A. When she is a Kennedy.

Carolyn Kennedy said:
"As a Catholic woman, I take reproductive health seriously. And today it is under attack. This year alone, more than a dozen states have passed more than 40 restrictions on women's access to reproductive health care. That's not the kind of future I want for my daughters or your daughters. Now isn't the time to roll back the rights we were winning when my father was president. Now is the time to move this country forward.

Peter Kreeft has an eye-popping perspective on this non-Catholic, pro-abortion world-view in his book Christianity for Modern Pagans where he discusses Pascal's Pensée 8o6.

Kreeft has grouped this one interestingly enough under "Vanity".

First here is what Pascal said:
"We are not satisfied with the life we have in ourselves and our own being. We want to lead an imaginary life in the eyes of others, and so we try to make an impression! (A) We strive constantly to embellish and preserve our imaginary being, and neglect the real one. (B) And if we are calm, or generous, or loyal, we are anxious to have it known so that we can attach these virtues to our other existence; we prefer to detach them from our real self so as to unite them with the other. We would cheerfully be cowards if that would acquire us a reputation for bravery. (C) How clear a sign of the nullity of our own being!"

Here is what Kreeft said regarding (C) above:
"...Test yourself. Use Plato's thought-experiment at the beginning of book 2 of the Republic. Ask yourself which you would rather be: a good soul whom everyone thought evil, hated, misunderstood, persecuted and victimized? Or an evil soul whom everyone thought good, loved and rewarded? Would you rather be really good but apparently evil, like Socrates; or really evil but apparently good, like the perfectly successful tyrant? Would you rather be brave and thought to be a coward, or cowardly but thought to be brave?

Would you rather be a Catholic or a Kennedy?"

Ouch.

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