Un-freaking-believable

Or not.

This morning, Michelle Malkin links to a simply astonishing obituary in the Seattle Times, a death notice for a man who also happened to have (allegedly, but pretty clearly actually) shot and killed his two daughters.

She quotes:

"More than anything in the world, Steve loved his daughters, Kelsey and Hayley. He was at every soccer game, every school performance, every important event in their lives. He taught them how to do all the things he loved - ride bicycles, go sea kayaking, ski, or simply find some good snow to play in. They read together, played games, went to movies, worked on school projects. He hiked halfway up Mount Rainier with them when they were very young, and all the way up on his own. He taught them by example to love the world, to be adventurous, and to be gentle."

Read the whole thing, as well as the other links Malkin provides.

To be honest, I can't but help see this (the attitude that seems to stand behind glossing over these murders) as an extension, logical or not, of thirty years of abortion and its warped effect on our moral consciousness. Several years ago, I heard Jean Garton, the author of the seminal pro-life work Who Broke the Baby? (scroll down the linked page for thoughts from Garton) speak at an NRLC convention in Orlando at which I was also speaking. The point she made that struck me so very strongly, and that I've thought about quite a bit since, was this:

The first, most important impact of Roe has been lives lost, pure and simple, bottom line.

But second, and almost as pernicious, is the twisting of our moral sensibilities necessitated by an acceptance of abortion-on-demand. In order to live with it, in order to accept it without going mad,  we must agree, implicitly, to the destruction of our reason: sometimes what lives inside a pregnant woman is a baby, sometimes it's not. If you want it, its life is precious, if you don't want it, it's disposable. On one floor of the hospital, heroic measures are taken to save young preterm babies. On another floor, or in a clinic down the road, babies of the same getstational age are killed, for a profit. It is somehow a "loving" act to pay someone to kill the innocent within, the most "caring" choice, an act of "compassion."

Our psyches are fractured. Our moral compasses have lost their bearings. And this obit and the attendant commentary is really just one more piece of evidence of how true this is.

Comments

[Whitcomb]

There's a journalistic question here too.

I notice that this was a paid death notice, as opposed to an obituary generated by the newsroom, so one of the questions for me is should the paper have run this notice as is, since the family was paying for it?

Or should the paper have "spiked" the paid notice, or maybe boiled it down to a perfunctory listing of survivors, funeral time etc.?

I would vote for a trimmed-down, just-the-basics death notice, but I can't say that all my journalism colleagues would agree.

[Dale Price]

"Dolf, who lived in Berlin, savored life. He has left us now, in a struggle to find peace, and we will miss him. But we will remember that savoring of life, his love of painting, speaking, writing, hiking. His love of an incredible mountain vista, how the leaves turned gold in the fall, a great bottle of Hofbrauhaus and a wonderful vegetarian meal with friends, a long ride around Berchtesgaden or up Brenner Pass. He loved his friends and fiance' as well, and we loved him. More than anything in the world, Dolf loved his dogs..."

Now pardon me while I go to vomit...

[carolyn]

Unfortunately, this sort of thing is not that unusual. Normally the guy will kill the wife as well but I suppose here she wasn't present. The reason for this sort of "senseless" crime is jealousy and possessiveness--I can't have her (them), nobody can".

I don't think Roe v Wade was responsible for the attitude necessary to commit such a crime which has always happenned in the past.

The glowing obit is a stunner though, gotta admit.

[amy]

The attitude is as ancient as any motivation for murder, you're right, carolyn, but the mainstreaming of it and uncritical presentation of it isn't.

[James Kabala]

I agree with Carol that I'm not sure how much we can link this with abortion. I think that families of murder/suicide perpetrators have always tried to convince themselves that the killer was mentally disturbed or insane and therefore not responsible for his actions, even when (as seems to be the case here) there is no evidence that this is true. I suspect that might be the underlying story behind this, although it is true that the obituary never makes such a claim explicitly. (There is a vague reference to "a heavy burden none of us could know.")
I do agree with the larger point, as seen in the light sentences meted out to mothers who kill their babies after they are born instead of before.

[Chris Sullivan]

I don't see anything wrong with wanting to remember the best in people; that's just charitable.

I think it's jumping to conclusions to assume his motive was jealousy and possessiveness; it might just have been a deep depression and lack of hope. Only God really knows - why do we presume to assume his perogitive? The saddest thing is that he appears to have known no hope, no Christ to live for.

It seems to me that widespread acceptance of killing led to Roe v Wade - probably that in the horrific wars of the 20th Century, and in the death penalty. Once you accept killing "the enemy", all the unwanted become "the enemy", and targets. Abortion is the logical consequence of the acceptance of killing.

God Bless

[Dale Price]

There is nothing wrong in wanting to remember the best in people.

But it is morally deranged to *only* remember the best in people and to paper over the great evil they do. Especially when the effort is deliberately deceptive about the evil done and the innocent victims involved. Speak no ill of the dead does not mandate the "hagiography for Hitler" treatment Byrne's unspeakable crime received. This fawning press release for a child killer--his own children!--is positively Hellish.

I shudder at the thought of Andrea Yates' obituary in forty odd years. The statue will probably follow.

[Miike Petrik]

Wars have always been bloody, but they don't serve to extinguish the distinction between self-defense and murder. Chris, would you have us believe that we should have launched a protest letter to Japan after it bombed Pearl Harbor? Perhaps a million mom march would have done the trick. Gee, why didn't the Poles think of that when Hitler invaded?

I think Amy is spot on here. Once we justify the killing of the innocent (especially the most innocent), human life is inevitably cheapened. No reason to celebrate killing in defense -- it is sad and nasty business; but it is not morally comparable to the deliberate killing of the innocent.

[Nance]

You're making a number of leaps here, all of which I think are unjustified.

First, this was a paid death notice. These are generated by the advertising department, which means someone sent it via e-mail or dictated it over the phone, and no meaningful news judgment was involved other than, "You think this check will clear?" The people who handled it likely had no idea who the guy was, and as long as it didn't contain a naked picture or bad language, would not have flagged it for any objectionable material.

Second, this is hardly an unusual response. A few years ago, a divorced father in Fort Wayne killed both of his children with a bludgeon, then himself with a knife, and left the whole bloody mess for his ex-wife to discover when he failed to bring the boys home after a weekend of visitation. After a few days of news coverage, she -- the ex-wife and bereaved mother -- wrote a letter to the police, ordering them to stop telling lies about her husband to the media, that he was a caring, loving father who had a few personal problems but nothing worth hating him over. The three dead were all buried together, and had a common funeral.

Really, I think this has more to do with shock and denial than with abortion. The human heart is a mysterious organ, and will resist all attempts to inject it with a logic potion.

[Zhou De-Ming]

At the risk of bothering the noble anti-abortion folks, I would like to offer my opinion that this really has nothing to do with abortion.

It is filicide (the technical term for killing of children older than infancy; distinguished from infantacide or abortion). Filicide is, unfortunatley, not that rare an outcome of custody disputes following divorce. If you want to point a finger at a social ill that precipitated the tragic deaths of these two girls, it is divorce, not abortion. Here is a case in Australia from this summer.

There was a series in the Houston Chronicle following Yate's acts of filicide in 2001. They listed some recent cases with all sorts of causes other than divorce.

A study of filicide in Canada by the RCMP in 2000 found, among other things:

- mothers and fathers are equally to kill infant children, but more mothers than fathers kill older children.
- gender of victim children is equally distributed.
- the offendor was most often severely depressed or mentally ill
- in all cases, family discord and relationship problems were a factor, consistent with literature
- cases of filicide increased in Canada from 1990 to 1998.

In adition to filicide, many "missing children" and "Amber alerts" are also related to custody battles after divorce.

When parental relationships fall apart, children suffer, always.

[andrew]

As a 30-something born to good parents and schooled via 12 years of Catholic education. An education that unfortunately failed to stem [by my own free will of course] the torrent of neo-paganism that has taken hold of our society, we really, really shouldn't look for single truths about our abortion culture. There is no "there it is" or "it's their fault." I know many Christians don't want to hear this but abortion is a collective failure, OUR failure. Something that has eroded our national consciousness, we're all to blame. I've been on the other side, lived the life, believed the lies. Now I don't, thanks be to God, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin.

Abortion is an unseen evil. To God and those who've had abortion, and of course, the child, it isn't, but to the rest of us, it's an unseen enemy we know is out there, but in our workaday lives, never witness. We see the homeless because some wicked CEO screwed their employees, we see on the news war, rape, murder, and rightly so, we're outraged at these and other ills of our society. Some of us even get riled up over some bird that lives in a tree someone wants to cut down. But the baby, now in pieces, we don't see that. The Germans knew what was going on at Auschwitz, but that was 100 miles away, no one talked about it, and the TV sure didn't show it. Just don't think about it.

Two generations, myself included, were sold a lie we ate up and swallowed whole. Whose fault is it? The 60's generation? Our schools? The ACLU? Liberals? The media? The devil? Sure, all of these and more, but I'd point my finger at the devil first. Myself and my peers, and now those younger than I bought the oldest of lies; We, as individuals are the source and summit of all that is important in this world. Look out for number one. Evaluate all stimuli, opportunities, events and circumstances and reduce them to one simple principle; how does it affect ME?

We might not think we teach our kids this, but we do. Be all you can be. Score that winning touchdown. The individual created America, not people. Great men made this nation what it is. The CEO gets the $1 million bonus, HE did it. Son/Daughter, you have to do good in school and get that good job, you have to make the money. I think you get my drift. But we forgot the most important thing, people can do great things, but without God, these things are worthless, or worse, will devolve into evil. God was taken away. Compartmentalized. Religion is fine. God is good, but just keep him over THERE, no need to mix in that sentiment and spiritualism, keep focused on the goal. "I think my faith and public policy should be separate" to paraphrase something I heard during the past election.

Our society has also reinforced this by how our very lives our set up from childhood. You have to get the grades, get that 1400 on the SAT, go to a good school, get a good job, or you're screwed. Sure, many eschew that mentality, but look around you. 50 years ago, a high school education and hard work would set you up pretty nicely. Now the same will get you $7hr at Wal-Mart, no benefits and an apartment. If you live in any metropolitan area, unless one breadwinner makes a tidy sum, both parents have to work. I live in Southern California. To have a family, very modest home, car [Honda, not BMW] you need $80k a year, minimum. If any of you have kids, talk to them, the pressure is intense.

When you mix a selfishness as birthright, a society that's Darwinism at it's finest, and religion that is little more than a decoration, you invite disaster. Focus on yourself, damn anything that gets in the way. It's everywhere. It's being forced down the throats of almost every kid in this country. And that woman now pregnant, it isn't that she is evil incarnate and has some bloodlust, it's just that she was sold a bill of goods that her baby is now the only thing that stands between her and something. A job, school, doesn't matter. Heck, you see it with people WITH kids. Take the pill and when it's convenient, get off it and have kids because now they fit into their life. The child is an object. One must keep focused on the goal, oneself. Don't believe me that we as a society do not think this way? I can't imagine how you couldn't.

I can't say how to fix this. I have a young family so I better darn well pray and figure out how. I do know this, my parents were, and still are, the best. I can't blame them. But I will incorporate my Catholic faith into every nook and cranny of my kids rearing, rather than the occasional Sunday Mass and dusty Advent calendar schlepped out every November. I pray I can instill deep into their soul that Jesus is the source and summit, not them. That God's designs permeate everything. That without God they too will stumble and fall, like I did. That what the world teaches is a lie, ".. God knows your hearts; for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of God."

I'll also say this, for those of you who've read to this point, whether you are old or young, with kids or none, you have to do something. Abortion is a symptom of the wreck our society is fast becoming. Sitting back and thinking everything's going to be okay is no different than those "good" Germans 60 years ago. Fix the culture, abortion and a host of other evils will melt away just as did slavery, Nazism, Communism and a thousand other demons we've managed to cast back into hell.

[Fr. Brian Stanley]

Nance,

Your first point, about this being a paid obituary generated by the advertising department of the newspaper, leads to, I think, a pertinent question, cf. "Thou shalt not bear false witness to thy neighbor," to wit: did you ever hear of false advertising? Dale Price's parody of a paid obituary for "Dolf" is spot on in this context: the author is leaving out some of the essentials of this man's life, i.e., he murdered. I do not think it too much to ask of a newspaper to know the product which is advertized in their publication. Newspapers have a responsibility to the public to tell the truth, not just to their advertising clients to publish whatever they deem as unobjectionable. And unobjectionable by whose standards, Nance? Yours? There are objective facts about this man's life which were purposefully omitted, to portray something quite different than the reality. That is deception, and it is morally unacceptable. You can excuse the obituary staff write after you write that excuse for Dan Rather not checking all his facts.

You make a great leap in your second point, i.e., the mere reporting of facts about a person is somehow equivalent to "hating" the person. The facts are unpleasant, even horrible, but facts do not hate. They can certainly be used to deceive, but in your example, you do not demonstrate whether there was deception by the press or not. You just suggest that the ex-wife should have the last word, and that is that. I think a lot of people would be more than just a bit incredulous as to the words of an ex-wife in describing a deceased former spouse. But facts are stubborn things. Why place fast and loose with them, just to salve someone's feelings?

[Fr. Brian Stanley]

Correction:
...obituary staff RIGHT after you write....

Homonyms really get me down.

[amy]

I didn't intend to draw a causal line, as I attempted to clarify, but I stand by my point that this kind of misplaced, bizarre articulation of what compassion and good parenting means is - an extension of, reflective of, of the same piece of the mentality that sees abortion as an act of compassion to the victim.

[Faith]

And is the great lie that is core to the culture of death.

[Dick Rood]

Andrew, not too far above this post seems to me to express the problem very well, which Amy was also driving at. I do not know how to fix it either. But it sure needs a lot of prayer if it is to be fixed.

[Todd]

I think Nance is close to spot on, and I think Fr Brian has jumped ahead of things somewhat in his response to what I read as reporting the truth -- as she and others of us see it. The messenger deserves no criticism in this instance.

That said, I'll also weigh in against this being a cause and effect result of abortion on demand. It strikes me first as being incredibly codependent: making excuses, smoothing over, the lie of saying something convenient instead of saying something true. I think the paper is obliged to provide its readers an answer. I don't doubt that their editorial page in-box will (or should be) full of responses.

My opinion is that this episode and abortion are each symptoms of a much deeper pathology at work in the human race. People have always tried to cover up crimes, gloss them over, make them legal, convince themselves and others this is perfectly normal behavior. This reminds me of Bishop Wenski's blundering about to make some point on immigration. I think the paid obit is repulsive, but I think Amy weakens the argument against it by appealing to abortion.

[Chris Sullivan]

Thank you Andrew for putting it so well.

I believe the solution is the application of the totality of Catholic Social Teaching to the totality of society.

God Bless

[Don]

And then there's this:

"Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A hospital in the Netherlands — the first nation to permit euthanasia — recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20041130/ap_on_re_eu/netherlands_child_euthanasia

[JG]

Chris:

I must say I am astonished at your apparent indifference towards the victims of this appalling murderer.

We need to learn to condemn a little more and 'understand' a little less.

Enough of your patronising excuses!

[Chris Sullivan]

JG,

If I was indifferent to them then I wouldn't have stopped to pray for them.

We need to condemn the mentality which justifies killing, not those who sucumb to it.

God Bless

[JG]

Chris:

We need to condemn the mentality which apologises for murder.

[Chris Sullivan]

JG,

Agreed.

Just read an interesting article on this very subject in our daily paper.

Gwynne Dyer: Gentle monsters offer a lesson

God Bless

[George]

What a horrible story. Suicide Dad is also a murderer. Does this ad signify anything greater than a confused and possibly bereaved family member who has lost three loved ones in a shocking and senseless tragedy?

Of course, it takes Michele Malkin to see the paid death announcement of a murderer as a sign of anything other than befuddlement and confusion on the part of the survivors.

This is almost schadenfreude on Ms. Malkin's part--taking a malicious enjoyment in the pain of others, the others not being the odious murderer, who has already met his Maker, but the surviving family members and friends. Shame on her.

I also fail to see a connection between a murderous father and legalized abortion, but at least I understand Amy's point.

[Zhou De-Ming]

Perhaps more mothers are going mad, such as this one, also in Texas.

Another article on When Parents Kill.

Britian seems to have a "innocent by reason of post-partum insanity" law. In the US, fathers who kill tend to get harsher penalties than mothers.

One of the root problems may be:
VIEWING CHILDREN AS PROPERTY,
whether implicitly (MY baby) or explicityly, as in a divorce custody settlement. Viewing unborn children as "property" also helps "justify" abortion. Quote:

"The property theory does provide these answers. Women still believe that they have sole dominion over so little property that arson and armed robbery and rape make no intuitive sense to them. But the destruction and control of something deemed to be a woman's sole property sends a powerful message about who's really in charge, and this message hasn't changed since the time of Jason and Medea.
It would, of course, help if we could stop thinking of children as anyone's property. It does nothing to advance the feminist cause to simply assume that all mothers who kill their children must necessarily be crazy. It will do a good deal to advance the cause of children's rights if we begin to consider them as legal entities in and of themselves."

[Richard]

Hello gang,

1. I tend towards Zhou's suggestion of a more complicated pathology here which places greater emphasis on the culture of divorce. I also don't think abortion can be exempted from the general coarsening of societal (and thus individual) attitudes towards life. I also like Zhou's point - which conects with that - of the growing tendency to view children from the womb to near adulthood as "property."

Are these new attitudes? Strictly speaking, no. But they are returning to western society with a renewed force.

2. What is also new is the printing of such an obituary, something I can speak to having recently worked in the classified department of a major daily. Until the 1980's American papers published obits as a news item and they were composed by the news staff. A new trend kicked in, however, in which more and more papers began treating them as advertising, allowing the family or survivors to write their own obituary. This relieved news staffs of the distasteful burden of writing obits, seemed to pleasse the readers more, and made extra money for the papers. Very few papers now don't follow this practice.

Should the newspaper have accepted this ad? I have news for you. No newspaper has to accept, legally, any advertisement it doesn't want to accept. We rejected ads all the time, and for various reasons. Our standard response was "We choose not to accept this ad at this time." It is hard to say exactly what we would have done had we been in such a situation (and realized the circumstances of the case) but I am pretty sure we would not have run the ad without at least some kind of clarification or disclaimer. More likely, I suspect, we would not have run the ad as submitted.

This will no doubt force some soul-searching and a new policy in Seattle, which is as it should be. The customer is *not* always right.

[Radactrice]

Considering children as property isn't anything new. Nor is infanticide or even filicide. Read any history of the ancient world and you'll see that these practicies are as old as history, and beyond. Blaming these actions on our attitude toward abortion is trying to make a direct link where I don't think a direct link can be made. As for the murderous dad, it appears to me more that he was mentally unbalanced rather than pro-choice. If murder of children was the result of an abortion minded culture, then voluntary filicide should be very high in places like China and Russia but it isn't.

[Zhou De-Ming]

I don't know how common this is around the country, but in Las Vegas, NV, the "Review Journal" offers Enchanced Obituary service, including an "online memorial" book (sort of a blog for the living to remember the dead).
It's all a matter of sales.
Icky facts need not apply.

[Radactrice]

One more thing with regard to the fictious obit of 'Dolph. No matter how horrible a person is we can't discount the fact that someone may have loved them and be grieved by their loss. I'll never forget Jeffrey Dahmer's father being interviewed. Through his tears. he said, "I always thought he was just one right choice away from turning his life around." He didn't overlook the horror of his son's actions, but that didn't mean he didn't grieve the loss of his child.

[Donald R. McClarey]

Interesting that the Drudge report has a link to a story today about Dutch hospitals euthanizing infants. Abortion and euthanasia have indeed led to a cheapening of human life. Our culture is returning to a grim pagan ethos where human life has no sacred quality and the death of an inconvenient human of no greater significance than slaughtering an animal for food. With a few exceptions, most notably the Jews, the ancient world also embraced abortion and euthanasia. Remove Christianity and the world of antiquity, along with its paganism in a New Age/Wicca guise, returns with all its superficial beauty and glamor and its essential sadness and hopelessness.

[carolyn]

It would be interesting to see crime statistics on killing one's wife/kids from 100,200,300 years ago but I doubt they exist. My guess is that they would horrify us today if they did.

Of course there's no proof, but I'd bet that the view that other human beings are one's "property" was more prevalent in the past than it is now. The Declaration of Independence, for example, is all about human freedom and autonomy--a break from a past of hierarchy and oppression which may have served to rationalize such crimes.

[elizabeth]

This has made me sicker and sadder than I have been, already!

What, do his friends (through thick, thin and murder) see this as some sort of mercy killing? Obviously they are not friends of the ex...
did he save the girls from HER (their mother)?

I mourn for the mother, and wonder how she will get through this, especially with such exaltations (sp) going on over the murderer of her beloved girls.

[Zhou De-Ming]

If there is a historian here, perhaps some light could be shed on the history of childhood.

It seems that until recently the notion that a nuclear family (mother, father, multiple children) being responsible for the total raising of all children to age of majority was rare. Perhaps this approach places great strains on many parents.

Children could be placed in indentured service in England and the US, which seems to have developed into the modern Foster Care system.

Children could be sold as slaves in the past (black children in the US before the Civil War), and still in some parts of the world today, if the parents could not raise them.

In many Catholic countries children were given to monasteries and convents and seminaries until the early 20th century.

And of course military service in Europe and the US received many boys until the early 20th century.

Also, many children died of diseases and accidents (working on farms, etc.)

In short, before say, 1940, there were many options for "placement" of children outside of the home while still quite young.

When did the notion that parents are responsible for all their children until age 18, or beyond, including all care, housing and education, become commonplace?

[Chris Sullivan]

Zhou,

I think we've always had the notion that parents are responsible for all their children (although in times past they'd be working and possibly married long before 18).

What's changed is that the many and varied community and intergenerational (grandparents) supports for the family have largely gone now and parents are very much on their own, which places great stress on the family.

God Bless

[Ellyn]

This reminds me of a situation that my sister (a District Attorney in a small rural county) faced earlier this year. This same week-end that brought one gruesome murder - in an area that can go years without a homicide - followed by a murder-suicide. The murder-suicide was committed by a father who shot his young child and then himself. My sister was sickened to hear this man eulogized as a 'hero to his children.'

On the topic of paid death notices - these are often filed through a funeral director. You would think the funeral director would have enough knowledge of a situation and enough sense to encourage a family to tone it down.

[Zhou De-Ming]

Ah! Thanks, Chris. Intergenerational support may be a key.

The traditional Chinese/Confucian family model is many generations in one household, run, of course, by the senior male (patriarch), often the grandfather or great-grandfather.

What Americans consider as the young adult "parents" are really still considered as "children" in this structure, and the grandfather names the grandchildren (not their parents), and provides financial support for their education, etc. In a real sense the "parents" have much less responsibilities and stress related to raising the youngest generation. And the elders have grandchildren in residence. Financial, educational, discipline, and child-bearing responsibilities are spread over multiple generations in one family housing complex. No such thing as needing to "hire a babysitter."

Of course, there is the downside. It can be really hard on the youngest women, having to do a lot of serving and obeying of their father-in-law. And perhaps the multi-generational structure can be stifling for teenagers. Privacy is a foreign concept.

I don't think there are perfect solutions. But it may be that modern American/Western culture is really, really hard on parents with increasing responsibilities and decreasing family and social support.

[Neil]

Of course, one must be very cautious about commenting about a specific incident. But it is not unreasonable to speculate more generally about the consequences of a pro-choice mentality, about what Amy calls "the twisting of our moral sensibilities." Perhaps we can look at this in another way by asking how having a pro-life mentality might mean going so far as to repair our fractured psyches and reorient our entire moral compasses.

I want to take the analogous example of pacifism. I think that what I have to say, however, should be relatively agreeable to those who embrace pacificism and those who do not - I myself am not a pacifist. We simply, for my purposes here, have to acknowledge that we can learn at least something from pacifists, which the US Bishops' The Challenge of Peace, after all, does seem to suggest (see n 118-120).

The Anglican priest AKM Adam recently wrote in his blog about pacifism:

"The pacifist’s opposition to war becomes operative only at the extremity of human behavior — whereas the real work of pacifism takes place day by day. ... Someone who says that pacifism is cheap when you don’t actually have to participate in war or face harsh consequences for your refusal may not have considered sufficiently the cost of trying to live a life characterized by aiming at harmony and cooperation in a culture overwhelmingly defined by competition, rivalry, and conflict. ... Pacifism is more than not serving in the army: it’s living as an emissary of peace in exile in a land of contentiousness. When you begin with treating your spouse and children, your neighbors and students in a way governed by the blessing of peace, of course war is unthinkable — but there’s so much more to be done before the question of war even comes up."

If the distinction between being pro-life and pro-choice is so significant that supporting abortion rights has a "warped effect on our moral consciousness" - and most of us would say that it is, then we should be able to construct a version of the above quote with "pro-life" replacing "pacifist." We should be able to say that the real work of being pro-life "takes place day by day," that it involves treating our spouses, children, neighbors, and students in a distinct "way governed by the blessing of life" so that abortion (of course) becomes "unthinkable" - "but there's so much more to be done before the question of pregnancy even comes up."

Are we able to say this, or does being pro-life merely become "operative only at the extremity of human behavior"?

Thank you very much.

Neil

[Glenn Juday]

I believe that Amy has a valid point.

Of course murder/suicides have occurred throughout human history. I don’t see that Amy made a claim otherwise, so it seems a little silly to head off in some sort of historical direction. And certainly today one can find short news articles describing facts similar to those in this story in newspapers all over the country.

But what is new and newsworthy here is that someone, several someones (surviving family, editor, etc.), made the decision that they could continue to function in society with no sanction or disadvantage even though they had composed, placed, or accepted an apologia on behalf of a man who had killed his daughters specifically praising him for his love for his children. It seems to me that there is clear evidence in this situation of a widespread, pathological, willful, perverse construct of the concept of love in general and filial love in particular.

How or why is such perverse pathology in understanding a fundamental human relationship abroad in our society? Why indeed? Why such warm acceptance of stone-cold selfishness and possessiveness, why a depraved indifference to the value of innocent human live, why praise for an act that supremely negates the most solemn responsibility of parenthood? One would think that somehow, a twisted and maddeningly mellow attitude of warm acceptance of destruction of children had somehow or other been inculcated into the society. But how? How could personal choice for convenience ever be elevated above the natural understanding of the strongest and most durable bond between human individuals of different generations? It just couldn’t be abortion, could it? None so blind as those who will not see.

[sj]

I think the ad was written because someone couldn't cope with the pain of what their relative did. No one has ever known how to cope with something like that --- which is basically the knowledge that your loved one has damned himself. In our time, we're prone to cope by pretending that it didn't happen and by enabling that pretense. It's foolish but pray that you are never subjected to that trial.

[Colleen]

Skimming through some really amazing responses and thoughts here. Thinking that as fallen human beings we have the hardest time seeing other human beings the same way we see ourselves especially when we don't fight the inate selfishness we suffer from. Look at the way sex is... not so emotional but more personally pleasurable and fun and tie-less, abortion would fit in, euthanasia is right up there, divorce, child abuse, etc. The way I see it, we have a very hard time loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

The family of that selfish, self centered man should have just kept quiet. SOme things are better off not said and in this age of baring our souls to feel better about ourselves, we have gone over the edge and we spew it all out in the open.

[Fr. Brian Stanley]

Todd:

"That said... " needs a little more explanation, at least to my poor brain. "Jumped ahead of things..." -- what "things"? What part of "reporting the truth" did I misunderstand or take too far? Please help me to understand how I managed to misread this one, Todd.

[Phil]

Thank God nobody is excusing this horrible act, but why isn't possible that this man did indeed love his children and that until the moment he was blinded by mental illness (or whatever) he was indeed a good father?

Here is a link of an interesting story from France:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=583&e=2&u=/nm/20041201/od_nm/crime_france_pardon_dc

Was the outcome here wrong? I guess we would not know for a while, but it may indeed be possible that the court did the right thing. As we know, mercy is not always a weakness.

[Todd]

Fr Brian, peace.

Perhaps I was able to read Nance's post with more detachment. First, she draws a reasonable explanation from facts as we know them. While her post contains conjecture, it seems less of a stretch than to link this sad incident as a child of the abortion industry. I think Amy's conjecture was far more of a stretch of logic. Not impossible, mind you, but just less believable, as conspiracy theories go. You seemed satisfied to pick through the particulars to criticize the messenger as if she owned the points she was making. The only thing in the post she claimed was this: "Really, I think this has more to do with shock and denial than with abortion. The human heart is a mysterious organ, and will resist all attempts to inject it with a logic potion."

Can we chalk this up to something less sinister than a conspiracy of the culture of death? Denial seems a much more sensible diagnosis.

[Mike Petrik]

Todd,
But isn't denial a very predictible symptom of the culture of death? Doesn't the culture of death itself cause the death of outrage?

[Nance]

If anyone still cares, the Seattle Weekly took note of this. Note the reaction of the ex-wife.

[c matt]

What's changed is that the many and varied community and intergenerational (grandparents) supports for the family have largely gone now and parents are very much on their own, which places great stress on the family.

Not to mention the added stress of caring for/supporting children through extended adolescence - eg, college and graduate school.

As for abortion being the cause of this, etc., seems that abortion is more a symptom than a cause, but a symptom that re-enforces the cause. Like overeating that causes obesity that causes depression, then the depression in turn re-enforces the overeating, etc.

Andrew laid out the cause pretty well - a self-centered world view that considers people as things or means to be used or discarded for our own personal gain, pleasure, etc., rather than as an end in themselves - in short what JP II has stressed as the dignity of the individual. Certainly, this world view leads to things such as abortion, and acceptance of this "symptom" re-enforces the world view that lead to it.

[c matt]

"this world view" refers to the self-centerd one, not JP II's - just to be more clear.

[James Kabala]

I don't have enough time to do full research on this right now, but most scholars today believe that there was never a time in recent centuries in the West when the multi-generational family under one roof was the norm.

[Fr. Brian Stanley]

Todd,
I have not addressed the issue of the abortion culture: reread my comment. I wrote about the responsibility of the newspaper -- which, by the way, is the messenger here -- to present the truth, and not to omit the truth. Whether or not the omission is evidence of the abortion culture is highly debateable. What I didn't think debateable was the responsibility of the newspaper to publish facts, and that the publication of such fact is not equivalent to hate, which is what I thought was Nance's second point. I have made no argument for or against Amy's observation about the culture of abortion. Talk about jumps to conclusions! Please don't put arguments in my comments that aren't there.

[Fr. Brian Stanley]

Nance,

Is the reaction of the ex-wife really relevant here, vis-a-vis a newspaper's responsibility to report the facts, and not just especially selected facts? Part of my concern is that the newspapers and other media can be pretty selective when it comes to publishing ads. Why should paid obituaries be exempt from ethical scrutiny? I mean, we're not talking about revealing that the man was a scofflaw on parking tickets, or that he had poor taste in house paint, or that he neglected to care properly for his lawn.

[Fr. Brian Stanley]

Let me give an example that might shed some light on the newspaper's responsibility. Suppose some former priest, convicted of sexual abuse, passed away, and his family wrote a paid obituary that went on and on praising the deceased's love for children, but neglected to reveal that he had sexually abused children, and did so repeatedly, using his clerical status as a means of access to victims. Wouldn't the newspaper have a responsibility to either reject the paid obituary, or to publish a side bar explaining the facts? And how would this example be substantively different from the case in Seattle? Do the desires of the family purchasing an obituary overrule the expectation that readers have that the newspaper reports what actually happens, that newspapers are a record of fact, not merely a collection of carefully crafted spin-jobs? I agree with the sentiment given by the Seattle Weekly author: Reader, beware!

[sj]

There is a distinction between obituaries and paid death notices. I don't think of the latter as bearing the endorsement of the newspaper or as being a representation of facts. The notice is basically an ad and should be treated with the standards applicable to advertising. The advertising part of a newspaper _is_ a collection of carefully crafted spin jobs. The hypothetical death notice of the former priest would raise questions of "taste", for want of a better word, as does the notice at issue here, but in the absence of direct contradictions of fact, I don't blame the newspaper for running it. Grieving relatives are usually cut a great deal of slack. And I even wonder if anyone in the department at the newspaper that sells the death notices even made the connection.

[Faith]

The culture of death has created the socially accepted, politically supported, medically administed arena of legal murder for a fee, from conception to unnatural death.

[Faith]

Which in turn has spawned a mind-set that life is disposable when deemed an inconvenience.

[Walter Neff]

For more on the Byrne Girls, go here:

http://www.sparksimagination.com/movinglives/byrne/index.html

[JG]

Fr Brian:

You really should not let Todd wind you up! He's a good laugh. He is. Really.