Well, that's unfortunate. But look, the CMAA, while welcoming of non-Catholic members, is first and foremost a Catholic organization, which includes all of its activities… and that means this forum as well. It wasn't irrelevant — the fact that people are or will make new musical decisions on a moment's notice is important, even if you find it tangential. The rest of the discussion might be irrelevant, but occasionally meta-discussion is necessary, and to be honest, I don't think it's irrelevant at all. I wish no ill of clerics and pastors who are very strongly pro-life* and who make it known on a regular basis from the pulpit, however much I wish they'd preach on practical spirituality which by its very nature opens one's eyes to this teaching and how horrible American culture is. It's just that being overtly pro-life, contrasting sharply with most of the Jadot bishops, didn't always mean liturgical traditionalist or even Reform-of-the-Reform conservative, though I wager that most members of this forum wished it did, even to a more limited extent than myself, given that some members are just fine playing at not just the NO but the NO mostly in the vernacular with varying degrees of ceremonial "elaborateness."

(as an aside, tomjaw's just over here raising the next 007… this is a joke — the canonical Fleming character is half-British, half-Swiss, though the character is only Scottish at the end of the series, once Connery had impressed Fleming sufficiently.)

@ScottKChicago I've been here one month longer than you -- plenty of time to learn to ignore what I don't want to talk about and cherish all that's of value here. Do the same!

It wasn't irrelevant — the fact that people are or will make new musical decisions on a moment's notice is important, even if you find it tangential. The rest of the discussion might be irrelevant, but occasionally meta-discussion is necessary, and to be honest, I don't think it's irrelevant at all.

Nor do I. As soon as my pastor and I chanted the Te Deum, he came right down to my office to discuss changes to this weekend's music to acknowledge this momentous occasion. We will be chanting the Te Deum at the end of every mass, as well as singing a particular hymn that I had not previously scheduled.

This irrelevant thread has made me decide to end participation in this forum after 15 years.

A reminder of how this thread started:

The United States Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade!

That's it. A statement of fact. Read what you will into the punctuation, but that would be acceptable on either side of the aisle, really.

It was not a value judgment, endorsement of any legal principles, particular call to any action on the part of the CMAA or its members. It was a statement of fact with the implied invitation to react, respond, discuss, etc.

The category assigned to this thread was "General Discussion." Yes, it is non-musical. But there is a category for that -- "General Discussion: Music." What should go into that category, anyway, if not this kind of thing?

I'm very confused indeed. Is it not timely to discuss a major news item with one's online community of professionals?

?

Te Deum! Glory be to God!

The fight will never be over until the BVM makes her move

I think the fight against evil - in the world as well as my own heart - will never be over until the last judgment (universal / personal).

Some of the other sections of the forum have more focus on specific areas of music. This is general discussion and we love getting off topic. As far as the discussions go, pick your areas of interest. There is a wealth of musical knowledge and experience here.

I have heard of this charity of which you speak. Sounds like a bad habit to me.

In all seriousness, my area of the country is surrounded by "progressive" Protestants who notice nothing that doesn't fit into their world view. Charity can become delusional.

And we probably have readers and commenters along a range of neuro-typicality, which affects how comments are given and received in this medium.

I do my best to be charitable around here (as do most others, I sincerely believe). There are strong opinions on the forum, no doubt, but people are often too sensitive too: reading disagreements as attacks when, in fact, they aren’t attacks, but disagreements.

Yes, we ARE charitable... however, sometimes people define "charitable" as saying nothing that challenges their worldview... that it NOT charity. Charity speaks the truth in love... that means challenging the worldview and avoiding any personal attacks or comments. Yes?

Yes, people are definitely too sensitive, and also add, much more defensive (they think it is a personal attack) than need to be... and

this is a forum... you are not bound to read any of it. Get a tougher skin if you want to wade into the waters of something that might challenge you to think outside of your comfort zone.

I had a rather easy time with this question. On patriotic holidays, the pastor said do God of our Fathers and America the Beautiful as entrance and recessional hymns. When left up to me, I tried to chose music that referred to the actual holiday, whether religious, secular, or semi-religious as some of them are.

Thank you for asking the correct question, Chris. To whom it may concern: calloused or thick skin, so defined as absence of semantical sensitivity, seems an unreasonable requisite for civil discourse in this or any forum. Are we logically therefore to ignore feelings that surface as devoid of any substantive meaning in order to wade?

I hope your music making this morning was prayerful and edifying. Much for which to be grateful.

It’s too bad that as a country and Church we have devolved to the point of lobbing straw-men like hand grenades at facts perceived as threats or biases. One can’t say that abortion is wrong without being hit with a barrage of “well-what-abouts;” one can’t say guns are appropriate (and actually constitutionally protected by name) for self-defense without having the horrific actions of some lunatics thrown in ones’ face, et c, et c. In my experience, those who scream the loudest for civil dialogue are the ones who actually least want it. Not addressing Ariasita specifically; just general observations. And having celebrated the birth of my 2nd grandchild a week ago, I am rejoicing that abortion is being brought up short.

This is an abominable decision of the highest court in the land.

How many more youthful female lives will be wasted by pregnancies brought to fruition caused by rape by strangers/uncles, by rape by fathers on underage daughters? Young women abandoning school due to pregnancies not by their consent? Lost in a future of single parenthood, a life based on welfare payments, their child raised in an environment of insufficient parental care of a single mother doing her best to make a living with no education skills, an absent father and more negative social constraints?

A recipe for increasingly more social problems in the good ol' USA.

I wish all pro-life activists all the best with solving these problems.

The rape and incest arguments are a bit thin and most abortions are for other reasons.

In 2004, the Guttmacher Institute anonymously surveyed 1,209 post-abortive women from nine different abortion clinics across the country. Of the women surveyed, 957 provided a main reason for having an abortion. This table lists each reason and the percentage of respondents who chose it.
Percentage Reason
<0.5% Victim of rape
3% Fetal health problems
4% Physical health problems
4% Would interfere with education or career
7% Not mature enough to raise a child
8% Don't want to be a single mother
19% Done having children
23% Can't afford a baby
25% Not ready for a child
6% Other

One can look here and find other statistics.

https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/

The majority of abortions are from women who are 25 - 29 years of age. (25.2 %)
I have heard the same arguments in favor of abortion, dear Simon, from many others holding your positions. They are statistically, hogwash. Most abortions seem to be matters of convenience, not necessity.

There has never been a perfect world. Ordinary married people from time immemorial have often struggled to raise children, but they did it. Many of them did it well under trying circumstances.

Jani,

I half expected Simon's comments to be in purple, but he intends them to be serious.

Simon,

Just so I'm not confusing you, purple text is the local form of sarcasm. I took your comment, at first, as sarcasm illustrating the point eloquently.

Serviam,

I think "secular" can mean different things to different people. If it means "not strictly ad infra", "not about who gets a red hat" or "whether a432 is preferable to a440:", or "something which impacts Catholics as well as other people", suddenly it's nothing to do with the moral teachings of the Church. On the other hand, since Justice Alito's decision didn't cite Church doctrine, and since the Supreme Court isn't an ecclesiastical tribunal, and since this decision impacts only Americans, could one make the argument that it's a purely non-religious matter?

All,

Juneteenth came up in an earlier thread, and now this. Does the "secular" holiday matter in trying to figure out whether/how to accommodate it?

They also have backed themselves into a corner, away from any "compromise." I also don't think that it's really "over" in Europe, even if publicly taking a pro-life stance is a political death sentence. But, not going all-out like with Roe and Casey and the attempts at codifying them or putting them into state constitutions has kicked the can down the road, if not halted any attempt to go further on both sides.

Don't expect things to go back to the 60's; for one thing mifepristone and misoprostol will make the back alley surgeries that killed the overseas sister of a friend much rarer. A New Yorker article We are not going back to the time before Roe- we are going somewhere worse tells of the three year ordeal of a woman charged with 2nd degree murder after a stillbirth. When every miscarriage is a potential criminal investigation, we might start worrying about the coming backlash and pray, if there's any time after the Te Deums, for the wisdom and humility of prosecutors.

Just one additional comment on all the above reactions to my intial reaction to the subject. I am reacting mostly to unwantingly impregnated young women.

First comment (and this is statistically supported): It seems remarkable that almost twice as many men are pro-life as women who are pro-life. These beings are, of course, the most removed and also often very absent to the consequences.

Simply, the woman should have the say in the negative consequences of a violent/or not violent sexual experience resulting in pregnancy. Read rape/loverboys/pure ignorance of a young uninformed young girl undergoing a sexual experience ('the first time never ends in a pregnancy').

Let the victim be the decision maker. Her future is at stake. Very marginal help is available to very young women. Going through a full pregnancy and giving up the child of a rapist or absent loverboy for adoption leaves long lasting scars to the mother. Her future remains significantly limited.

Simon,

I'm not sure how reliable "statistically supported" conclusions are, because both sides are claiming that the public at large supports the position promoted by the fundraising letter. Ask anyone who yawns through the January 6th meeting broadcasts, or anyone who is glued to his set: each side believes nearly everyone is on the side of the speaker.


Just so I'm sure I grasped what you wrote, did you really say that pregnancy is a negative consequence of sexual intercourse? If I understood you correctly, that's the equivalent of saying that the engine starting is the negative consequence of turning the key in the ignition. Please, clarify.

Even if the young (or not so young) woman is the victim of rape or incest, it seems ill advised (under the name of letting her be the decision maker) to make her an aggressor as well as a victim, the murderer of her unborn child as well as the unwilling plaything of a rapist. To the extent that the antiwar movement is led by women, it is so because they're opposed to seeing the deaths of their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons (and, in this age, their sisters and daughters). Urging them to kill the (unwanted) child is bound to cause cognitive dissonance.

I find it very telling that videos of women pledging abstinence are going viral. These are, mind you, liberal women who are now unwilling to take the risk of getting pregnant, now that they no longer have recourse to abortion as a form of contraception, which is clearly how a good many women were treating it. They are coming to sudden and stark realizations that when you stop aborting children, the reality is that there are many high-stakes risks and consequences to intercourse. So much for “safe, legal, and rare”. Turns out it was being treated as a quotidian procedure of little consequence, which is of course a fantastic lie straight from the pit of hell.

Pax, you know very well that what you’ve just peddled is a lie.

There are long-standing exceptions in Catholic moral theology that permit saving the life of the mother in extreme circumstances. In those cases, you are not merely taking a life, but rather saving one to avoid losing two. Further still, ectopic pregnancies are not viable—by definition—and also pose an extreme risk to the mother. This is fully accounted for in moral law as being just such a case and does not fall under the umbrella of willful ending of another’s life (for the mere sake of it). Also, spontaneous abortion (a.k.a. miscarriage) is not at all the same thing as what we colloquially term ‘abortion’. Removing pre-deceased foetal remains, while a similar medical procedure, is not AT ALL the same thing, morally speaking. There is nothing in the striking down of RvW that prevents the proper removal of foetal remains or ectopic pregnancies.

PS—I’ve buried two children who were ‘spontaneously aborted’. My wife did no wrong in either case.

PPS—we buried our babies in sacred ground, we didn’t grind them up and throw them in a dumpster with the trash.

It seems remarkable that almost twice as many men are pro-life as women who are pro-life. These beings are, of course, the most removed and also often very absent to the consequences.

And yet, there’s nothing quite as disgusting as men arguing for the right to be completely removed by convincing their baby-mamas to abort their offspring.

ectopic pregnancy or spontaneous abortion

I really, REALLY thought this ridiculous argument was being made to fear monger idiots into thinking banning or limiting abortions (which are not healthcare) would have anything to do with ACTUAL medical intervention. Anybody with the smallest amount of common sense knows that ectopic pregnancies are not treated with abortion. Miscarriages are not considered abortion, no matter the medical jargon you want to drag into it.

Why do people think they get to rail on pro-life men just because they are male?

I’m a woman.
I’ve had a miscarriage.
Would anyone care to guess how many people in the doctor’s office said, “Ms. Cooze, your body is in the process of having an abortion”?
OR
“When you come in again, if your body hasn’t naturally passed the ‘fetus,’ we’ll need to schedule an abortion to make sure you stay safe”?

If you guessed that that’s 100% not the way they handle or talk about miscarriages or post-miscarriage appointments, you’re correct. Yay you!

I applaud and encourage this decision on “Roe” and firmly believe that abortion is NEVER the appropriate response to ANY reproductive issue.

How many times have I heard from the pulpit prayers for legal protection of the unborn?

Yet how unclear it has been that in order to have pro-life legislation we need pro-life legislators. How disappointing it has been to find that fellow Catholics vote for pro-choice candidates.

Thank you President Trump and those who voted for him. I hope Catholics who voted for Clinton and Biden will see that pro-life votes can actually matter.

How disappointing it has been to find that fellow Catholics vote for pro-choice candidates.

It would appear, based on Pelosi’s most recent theatre in Rome, that even the Pope “votes pro choice” when it suits him. Even he is not above the moral law… but what’s a little sacrilege between friends, eh?