"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Those who are pro-choice will often chastise those who are pro-life for “judging women who have abortions” and “failing to love them”. Today I’d like to look at the substance of these charges. Is that true? Is it unloving to speak out against abortion?
“We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he ‘wants a woman.’ Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want.
“He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes).
“Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.”
– C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage.
Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?”
– CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III)
Given what’s going on around the world, particularly in Iraq, on his Feast Day St. Maximilian has some wisdom to share with us…
“We may study as much as we will but we shall still not come to know the Lord unless we live according to His commandments, for the Lord is not made known through learning but by the Holy Spirit. Many philosophers and scholars have arrived at a belief in the existence of God but they have not come to know God. And we monks apply ourselves day and night to the study of the Lord’s command but not all of us by a long way have come to know the Lord, although we believe in Him.”
– St Silouan the Athonite
In the past I wrote a few posts on the subject of marriage, but being without a wedding ring myself, I’ve generally posted the advice of others (including commenters!). Here’s some more advice from someone who knows what they’re talking about 🙂
