Norma McCorvey, Requiescat in pace.

Out of darkness and willful ignorance can come Love and enlightenment. Norma McCorvey proves we must pray for the baby-eaters and, indeed, all evildoers. It isn't easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.

From National Review:


Norma McCorvey: 'Jane Roe,' Pro-Life Heroine, Dies

by Nicholas Frankovich

     In standing up for them, she stood up also for herself. Flipping channels in a hotel room in Chicago in June 1995, I stopped at The Late Late Show, where Tom Snyder was interviewing Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade. She spent much of her time reciting sarcastic clichés about pro-lifers, bantering with Snyder and laughing at my expense — and, of course, at that of everyone who shared my conviction, to say nothing of the unborn children whose welfare we were always being told was none of our business.

Flip Benham, an Evangelical minister, had succeeded Randall Terry as director of the pro-life organization Operation Rescue the previous year and moved its national headquarters to a Dallas office complex that included the abortion clinic where McCorvey worked as a marketing director. Later, in her book Won by Love (1998), she described some of her early interactions with Benham. They were tense.

  “Are you still killing babies, Miss Norma?” he asked her in the parking lot.

“The Rescue people proved more resilient than cockroaches,” she wrote.

“We simply could not scare them off.”

By the time I caught her interview with Snyder, her attitude toward Benham had obviously softened. She spoke of him derisively but with an undertone of affection. She called him “Flipper.” Apparently he and Miss Norma had bonded, like Don Camillo and Peppone, the conservative Catholic priest and the Communist mayor who publicly squabble but tacitly hold each other in warm esteem. McCorvey said she borrowed Benham’s Bible when she needed to look up a verse. In a different interview a few weeks earlier, she had called their relationship “pretty bizarre.”

Besides being exasperating, McCorvey was charming. She was blunt, a vivacious tough girl in middle age, possibly playing up her rustic unpretentiousness a little, which would be its own kind of affectation, but better to err on that side than to put on airs. I remember thinking as I sat on the hotel bed watching her gab on TV: I wish she was on our side — and not just because it would be a coup for the pro-life movement if she joined us. I liked her. Her glib putdowns of people whose only crime was to think as I did left me somewhere between annoyed and indignant, but the gentleness of her gibes at Benham was touching. She was drubbing him like an angry cat who took care to retract her claws. I was smitten by ambivalence.

Later that summer, I picked up the New York Times one day and almost laughed: “‘Jane Roe’ Joins Anti-Abortion Group,” the headline read. Benham had baptized her in a backyard swimming pool. Three years later, she was received into the Catholic Church, in whose arms she remained for the rest of her life.

Norma, Love chose you and you chose life.

She appeared to find some peace there. Her conversion from pro-choice to pro-life activism was roughly simultaneous with her religious conversion and followed the same pattern: She did not plunge into those waters but waded, a step at a time. “I still believe in a woman’s right to an abortion,” she told an interviewer two days after her baptism, “but only in the first trimester.” On a local radio station only hours earlier, she said, “I’m pro-life. I think I have always been pro-life. I just didn’t know it.” Got that?

“I think she has this whole trimester idea,” Benham said. “I think that’s something that takes a little time.”

Where McCorvey was in mid August 1995, most Americans are today. Look how far she traveled in the end. So it does. Pro-life advocates, pay heed. Where McCorvey was in mid August 1995, most Americans are today. Look how far she traveled in the end. Note that she did not arrive at her destination overnight and that she was motivated to go there not because someone had opened her eyes to the iron logic of the pro-life position. She eventually left Operation Rescue, whose sharp edges she thought were not helpful to the cause, but the human touch of its members in the Dallas office clearly changed her.

By the late 1990s, McCorvey was advocating for the protection of unborn children, period — no age limits. She founded a nonprofit, Roe No More, dedicated to pro-life advocacy. At speaking engagements she explained that she had never had an abortion — she gave birth while the lawsuit that became Roe was winding its way through the courts — and confessed that she was lying when, to bolster her case, she asserted that her pregnancy resulted from rape. Her real reason for seeking an abortion was less dramatic: She was poor. She was not taking proper care even of herself. Trying to care for a child in addition, wouldn’t she sink them both?

Her life had been hardscrabble. She left school after the ninth or tenth grade (accounts vary), married at 16, soon divorced, and relinquished (or lost, depending on your source) legal custody of her infant daughter. She abused alcohol and drugs. Much of her adult life was defined by a long-term same-sex relationship that she embraced in her first book, I Am Roe (1994), and renounced a few years later, after her religious conversion, although according to some accounts she continued to live with her companion for years afterward, though platonically.

Let us hope she went to confession regularly, kiddies.

Money was always short. McCorvey worked at various times as a bartender, a housecleaner, and a carnival barker. In a deeply researched profile in Vanity Fair, Joshua Prager described her pro-life activism as mercenary — she texted to him that she would speak with him for a thousand dollars — to about the same degree that her earlier stint with the pro-choice movement had been. In the 1980s she had begun to do some public speaking on behalf of abortion rights.

She later complained that abortion-rights lawyers and activists had used her as a “pawn.” They pushed her forward as their movement’s mascot. When she switched sides, some pro-choice commentators blamed their own camp: They had patronized her, they had failed to treat her with due respect.

Resentment of snobbery may well have contributed to her decision to reject the upper-middle-class world of abortion-rights advocacy and take up with the pro-lifers, whose culture, despite its share of lawyers and think-tank scholars, has always been notable for its grassroots and grit. Benham and his Operation Rescue embodied the grassroots and grit that won her over.

The class dimension of that turning point in her life, and in the history of the abortion debate in America, is more conspicuous now than it was at the time, given the populism that has defined the political mood both here and in Europe in recent years. A fundamental arrogance of the abortion-rights movement runs through its studied dehumanization of the unborn child. Condescension is not dehumanization, but it’s on the way, and if some of the coldness with which McCorvey’s handlers regarded “the fetus” entered into their commerce with her, good for her for recognizing it and standing up for herself.

Ultimately, her standing up for herself and for unborn children was all of a piece. She could identify with them. “You reject them, you reject me,” the radical anti-abortion demonstrator Joan Andrews Bell wrote many years ago in a letter from prison. Trying to reconcile abortion rights with the Golden Rule leads inexorably to self-abasement, though by degrees so subtle that few who attempt that balancing act ever notice: You can maintain that your parents had the right to abort you, or you can assert your own right to life, but you can’t do both. You have to choose.

I never met but I sent her a fan letter once, by e-mail. She replied with a courteous thank-you, a single sentence. Her presence and demeanor in her later years struck me as a bit subdued. She’d made many mistakes in life — committed some grave sins, as she must have now reckoned them in the light of her faith. She looked and sounded chastened. And if she felt that she had been exploited by the pro-choice movement back in the day, surely she had reason to take precautions against suffering comparable treatment at the hands of well-meaning enthusiasts on this other side of the abortion debate.

By a twist of fate, or providence, McCorvey was cast in the role of Jane Roe and spent most of her adult life following one script and then another. Toward the end, she loosened her grip on the persona, and it became harder not to notice the person behind it. Susan Boyle holds a similar fascination. Beneath her awkward looks and reputation for being slow-witted, the magnitude of a great soul went undetected until, after nearly half a century, she finally broke through and made her signal heard by the outside world: “I’m human, like you. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

Norma McCorvey spent the last two decades of her life giving voice to the voiceless, defending the dignity of unborn children and, in the process, herself. She died on Saturday, too young, at age 69. Requiescat in pace. —

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Noted blind squirrel with a broken cuckoo clock David Frum just stumbled onto a truth.

I doubt he cares one whit for Mises or real conservatism. My guess is he was just being a dick when he referred to the following in a recent tweet.

Sometimes, kiddies, the enemy of my enemy is still a dick.


Economic Nationalism Is a Philosophy of War | Mises Institute

12/29/2010 Ludwig von Mises

[This article is excerpted from "The Conflicts of Our Age" in chapter 24 of Human Action: The Scholar's Edition (1949) and is read by Jeff Riggenbach.]

Popular opinion sees the source of the conflicts which bring about the civil wars and international wars of our age in the collision of "economic" interests inherent in the market economy. Civil war is the rebellion of the "exploited" masses against the "exploiting" classes. Foreign war is the revolt of the "have-not" nations against those nations who have appropriated to themselves an unfair share of the earth's natural resources and, with insatiable greed, want to snatch even more of this wealth destined for the use of all. He who in face of these facts speaks of the harmony of the rightly understood interests is either a moron or an infamous apologist of a manifestly unjust social order. No intelligent and honest man could fail to realize that there prevail today irreconcilable conflicts of material interests which can be settled only by recourse to arms.

It is certainly true that our age is full of conflicts which generate war. However, these conflicts do not spring from the operation of the unhampered market society. It may be permissible to call them economic conflicts because they concern that sphere of human life which is, in common speech, known as the sphere of economic activities. But it is a serious blunder to infer from this appellation that the source of these conflicts are conditions which develop within the frame of a market society. It is not capitalism that produces them, but precisely the anticapitalistic policies designed to check the functioning of capitalism. They are an outgrowth of the various governments' interference with business, of trade and migration barriers and discrimination against foreign labor, foreign products, and foreign capital.

None of these conflicts could have emerged in an unhampered market economy. Imagine a world in which everybody were free to live and work as entrepreneur or as employee where he wanted and how he chose, and ask which of these conflicts could still exist. Imagine a world in which the principle of private ownership of the means of production is fully realized, in which there are no institutions hindering the mobility of capital, labor, and commodities, in which the laws, the courts, and the administrative officers do not discriminate against any individual or group of individuals, whether native or alien. Imagine a state of affairs in which governments are devoted exclusively to the task of protecting the individual's life, health, and property against violent and fraudulent aggression. In such a world the frontiers are drawn on the maps, but they do not hinder anybody from the pursuit of what he thinks will make him more prosperous. No individual is interested in the expansion of the size of his nation's territory, as he cannot derive any gain from such an aggrandizement. Conquest does not pay and war becomes obsolete.

In the ages preceding the rise of liberalism and the evolution of modern capitalism, people for the most part consumed only what could be produced out of raw materials available in their own neighborhood. The development of the international division of labor has radically altered this state of affairs. Food and raw materials imported from distant countries are articles of mass consumption. The most advanced European nations could do without these imports only at the price of a very considerable lowering of their standard of living. They must pay for the badly needed purchase of minerals, lumber, oil, cereals, fat, coffee, tea, cocoa, fruit, wool, and cotton by exporting
manufactures, most of them processed out of imported raw materials. Their vital interests are hurt by the protectionist trade policies of the countries producing these primary products.

Imagine a world in which the principle of private ownership of the means of production is fully realized. In such a world, conquest does not pay and war becomes obsolete.

Two hundred years ago it was of little concern to the Swedes or the Swiss whether or not a non-European country was efficient in utilizing its natural resources. But today economic backwardness in a foreign country, endowed by rich natural resources, hurts the interests of all those whose standard of living could be raised if a more appropriate mode of utilizing this natural wealth were adopted. The principle of each nation's unrestricted sovereignty is in a world of government interference with business a challenge to all other nations. The conflict between the have-nots and the haves is a real conflict. But it is present only in a world in which any sovereign government is free to hurt the interests of all peoples — its own included — by depriving the consumers of the advantages a better exploitation of this country's resources would give them. It is not sovereignty as such that makes for war but sovereignty of governments not entirely committed to the principles of the market economy.


Liberalism did not and does not build its hopes upon abolition of the sovereignty of the various national governments, a venture which would result in endless wars. It aims at a general recognition of the idea of economic freedom. If all peoples become liberal and conceive that economic freedom best serves their own interests, national sovereignty will no longer engender conflict and war. What is needed to make peace durable is neither international treaties and covenants nor international tribunals and organizations like the defunct League of Nations or its successor, the United Nations. If the principle of the market economy is universally accepted, such makeshifts are unnecessary; if it is not accepted, they are futile. Durable peace can only be the outgrowth of a change in ideologies. As long as the peoples cling to the Montaigne dogma and think that they cannot prosper economically except at the expense of other nations, peace will never be anything other than a period of preparation for the next war.

(Above emphasis mine. -F.G.)

Economic nationalism is incompatible with durable peace. Yet economic nationalism is unavoidable where there is government interference with business. Protectionism is indispensable where there is no domestic free trade. Where there is government interference with business, free trade even in the short run would frustrate the aims sought by the various interventionist measures.

It is an illusion to believe that a nation would lastingly tolerate other nations' policies which harm the vital interest of its own citizens. Let us assume that the United Nations had been established in the year 1600 and that the Indian tribes of North America had been admitted as members of this organization. Then the sovereignty of these Indians would have been recognized as inviolable. They would have been given the right to exclude all aliens from entering their territory and from exploiting its rich natural resources which they themselves did not know how to utilize. Does anybody really believe that any international covenant or charter could have prevented the Europeans from invading these countries?

Many of the richest deposits of various mineral substances are located in areas whose inhabitants are too ignorant, too inert, or too dull to take advantage of the riches nature has bestowed upon them. If the governments of these countries prevent aliens from exploiting these deposits, or if their conduct of public affairs is so arbitrary that no foreign investments are safe, serious harm is inflicted upon all those foreign peoples whose material well-being could be improved by a more adequate utilization of the deposits concerned. It does not matter whether the policies of these governments are the outcome of a general cultural backwardness or of the adoption of the now fashionable ideas of interventionism and economic nationalism. The result is the same in both cases.

There is no use in conjuring away these conflicts by wishful thinking. What is needed to make peace durable is a change in ideologies. What generates war is the economic philosophy almost universally espoused today by governments and political parties. As this philosophy sees it, there prevail within the unhampered market economy irreconcilable conflicts between the interests of various nations. Free trade harms a nation; it brings about impoverishment. It is the duty of government to prevent the evils of free trade by trade barriers. We may, for the sake of argument, disregard the fact that protectionism also hurts the interests of the nations which resort to it. But there can be no doubt that protectionism aims at damaging the interests of foreign peoples and really does damage them. It is an illusion to assume that those injured will tolerate other nations' protectionism if they believe that they are strong enough to brush it away by the use of arms. The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines; they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of a consistent application of these doctrines.

The League of Nations did not fail because its organization was deficient. It failed because it lacked the spirit of genuine liberalism. It was a convention of governments imbued with the spirit of economic nationalism and entirely committed to the principles of economic warfare. While the delegates indulged in mere academic talk about good will among the nations, the governments whom they represented inflicted a good deal of evil upon all other nations. The two decades of the League's functioning were marked by each nation's adamant economic warfare against all other nations. The tariff protectionism of the years before 1914 was mild indeed when compared with what developed in the 1920s and '30s — viz., embargoes, quantitative trade control, foreign-exchange control, monetary devaluation, and so on.

The prospects for the United Nations are not better, but rather worse. Every nation looks upon imports, especially upon imports of manufactured goods, as upon a disaster. It is the avowed goal of almost all countries to bar foreign manufactures as much as possible from access to their domestic markets.

Almost all nations are fighting against the specter of an unfavorable balance of trade. They do not want to cooperate; they want to protect themselves against the alleged dangers of cooperation.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

CPAC sells its soul to the orange sodomite for...power?

Ha! The false conservatives will get NOTHING and like it! It's not the Repansycan Political Action Conference, is it?

Yep, it sure is. Men of principle don't do  stuff like this, kiddies. This is how left-fascists ALWAYS get fooled into backing mass murderers.

President Trump Speaks at CPAC | whitehouse.gov

President Donald J. Trump will speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday, February 24. The President will ...

What Is CPAC? Trump To Address Conservative Gathering ...

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference will welcome President Trump at the end of this week, but the conservative gathering has ...

Steve Bannon And Reince Priebus, Trump Advisers, Speak At CPAC ...

Top White House advisers Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference to make the case ..

(@davidfrum)

Bannon impressively candid on CPAC stage that Trump top agenda item is to launch a series of trade wars across world

Conservatives flock to CPAC to chart agenda under Trump | Fox News

For the last eight years, conservatives used their signature annual gathering to blast the Obama administration and plot a Republican takeover.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

The previous post is my attempt to reach the other side of the family.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Fyodor ha pietà Orange Messia e offre consigli su come trattare con i suoi cugini russi idiota e diventare un vero uomo ..

Mi scuso, miei cari cugini italiani,

per questa traduzione imbarazzante. È possibile dare la colpa

di Google Translate e il fatto che io sono due generazioni 

rimosse dall 'Italia.

Ecco il magro su Russia, bimbi.

I russi sono sempre stati schiavi e rimarrà tale fino ad oggi. Non hanno esperienza con la libertà di qualsiasi tipo, non parola, di riunione, la stampa, o anche la religione. Nessuna.

Non capiscono la responsabilità personale, i diritti di proprietà, o il concetto di stato di diritto.

I miei poveri cugini russi sono stati afflitto e oppresso per tutta la loro storia da teppisti brutali, ignoranti, e assetati di sangue che si facevano chiamare i capi macellati e chiunque osasse resistere a loro. Non importa se questi pazzi e pazze si chiamavano monarchi divine-destra o l'avanguardia della storia. Il risultato è sempre stato lo stesso per la povera Madre Russia. Lei ha conosciuto altro che la povertà, la schiavitù, l'orrore e la morte su una scala senza precedenti.

Mentre io sono a esso, vorrei cogliere questa occasione per prendere un colpo alla Chiesa ortodossa russa, che ha, con poche eccezioni, ha collaborato con i macellai e voltato le spalle innocenti. vergogna eterna è la sua ricompensa.

Nonostante tutto questo, il popolo russo hanno sopportato, e la causa della loro storia orribile, credo che hanno prodotto la più grande letteratura che il mondo abbia mai visto, da Gogol a Solzenicyn e oltre. A questo si aggiunge una bella architettura, musica incredibile, e alcune delle donne più belle del mondo. Si può solo chiedersi e piangere sulle meraviglie Russia avrebbe dato all'umanità se solo fosse stata libera.

Che cosa significa la questione alla clumpy il Clown? Niente di niente. Come potrebbe un thingee ignorante che si preoccupa solo il suo stomaco, il suo conto in banca, e le sue piccole, genitali appassiti fregarmene dei propri cittadini, tanto meno gli oppressi dall'altra parte del mondo?

Semplice. Non può.

Czarina Putinesca e il suo scagnozzo non sono altro che criminali. Pensano come criminali e si comportano come dei criminali.
Capiscono solo il potere, perché è il loro dio. Rispettano il potere solo perché temono solo la perdita dei loro propri.

The Orange Pansy voglia condannare la marina americana per spruzzare il prossimo caccia russo che ottiene nel raggio d'azione delle armi di qualsiasi nave da guerra degli Stati Uniti e il coraggio le bambine codardi del Cremlino per cercare di fare qualcosa al riguardo.

Ma non lo farà.

E 'altrettanto debole e effeminati come i teppisti russi i cui stivali [e "qualunque" cosa si può ottenere la sua lingua su] ama leccare così tanto.

Si dovrebbe andare sopra le teste dei leader autoproclamati della Russia e twittare direttamente al popolo russo e insegnare loro che la Russia appartiene a loro, non i loro schiavi padroni.

Questo non accadrà neanche, bimbi, perché richiederebbe un vero uomo la cui coscienza e l'umanità non sono stati sistematicamente soffocato da decenni di avidità, lussuria, furto, e l'ignoranza volontaria. Nessun uomo del genere è nemmeno lontanamente il potere nel nostro paese, sia ...

Il nostro peccato è questa: Una volta abbiamo avuto il potere per risolvere questo tipo di problema, ma non è più. Mentre i miei cugini russi non hanno mai assaggiato la libertà, abbiamo venduto la nostra incredibilmente a buon mercato.

Nessuno al mondo guarda all'America con speranza. Vengono qui solo per sesso ed essere sul reality show.

Che il Padre, il Figlio e lo Spirito Santo abbi pietà di tutte le anime. Siamo sicuri come l'Inferno avrà bisogno.

TheChurchMilitant: A volte anti-sociali, ma sempre antifascista dal 2005.

John Martignoni attempts to help a lost soul find his way home.

Stay tuned for the next few weeks because Mr. Martignoni, of the Bible Christian Society, knows his stuff and can explain the Truth to anyone with an open mind and an open heart.



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Okay, here's the background story for this week's newsletter - and the newsletters for the next few weeks as well. As many of you know, I have a Facebook page - John Martignoni and the Bible Christian Society (if you haven't joined, please do so - lots of good discussions on there). Well, this guy, Tony Thorne, from somewhere in Maine, who has a degree in biblical studies of some sort from Evangel University (Assemblies of God denomination), apparently joined the FB group thinking, "Cool, a society of Bible Christians." Well, he eventually realized that the Bible Christian Society is basically a Catholic group, so he posted - his one and only post up to that time - with something along the lines of: "I am so sorry I joined this group of people who are in a satanic cult that hates the Word of God and worships Mary before Jesus." I don't have his actual words because he eventually deleted his post (as I'll explain in a minute).

Anyway, a number of folks engaged with him over his not-so-nice remarks about Catholics and the Catholic Church. I joined in by telling him that if he truly cared about representing Christ to a bunch of lost souls - you know, us Catholics - that he was going about it all wrong. I then challenged him that if he was truly a disciple of Christ, and was truly interested in witnessing about Christ to others, that I had 3 simple questions that I would like to ask him to help me discern as to whether or not he was truly a disciple of Christ. After all, the Bible tells us to "test the spirits." So I tested him. Those questions were:

1) For a Christian, what is the pillar and ground of truth...is it the Bible?

2) Is the Gospel of Mark inspired by God and, if so, by what authority do you claim it to be so...is it the Bible?

3) Are you infallible in your interpretation of the Bible?

These apparently piqued his interest and he began to engage with me by giving answers to the questions. At first, he didn't answer #1. But, I pushed him on it and eventually he did answer. And he got it wrong. He said that, "Yes," the Bible is the pillar and ground of the truth for the Christian. When I pointed out to him that the Bible says the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth, he didn't much like it and talked all around it - he had this big explanation about what the Greek word "ecclesia" means and that you need a degree in biblical studies to understand such things and so on.

He answered the 2nd question by saying that, "Yes," the Gospel of Mark is inspired Scripture, but he never could tell me how he knows that, other than to say that it's in the Bible, so it is inspired. He was either unable, or unwilling, to comprehend my questions as to how he knows it's inspired. I asked him flat out, "Since the Bible doesn't specifically state that the Gospel of Mark is inspired, and you go by the Bible alone for all that pertains to Christianity, then how do you know Mark is inspired Scripture? Who told you?" The whole time he kept answering as if he thought I was making the argument that Mark wasn't inspired. In other words, he never got the point of the question.

The third question he answered correctly - "No," he is not infallible in his interpretation of the Bible. When I then pointed out to him that that meant he could be misunderstanding and misinterpreting any or all passages of the Bible, since he relied on his own private interpretations for his doctrinal beliefs - he again either could not, or would not, understand what it was I was saying. No, he wasn't wrong in his interpretations as he knew the Greek words behind the English and he had a degree in biblical studies. And, besides, the Holy Spirit helps Christians interpret the Bible. Not realizing at all the problems inherent in the belief that the infallibleHoly Spirit guides him in his fallibleinterpretations of the Bible.

So, we went a few rounds, and each time he responded he called me more names and his tone just got meaner and nastier. Finally, he deleted his original post and with it went all of the comments - which is why I don't have his actual words for all of that. It never occurred to me that he would come back and delete everything, so I didn't copy any of it. He did message me, though, and said that this was the first time he had ever debated someone and that he felt as if he had done a poor job of it - both in tone and in substance. An apology of sorts.

His "apology" encouraged me, so I set out to see if I could get him to re-engage. That is where this newsletter starts. Having learned my lesson about how if the original post is deleted all subsequent posts are deleted, I copied all of the dialogue from there on. I will be going through that dialogue in the coming weeks. In his original answers to my 3 questions above, he had gone through a litany of things that the Catholic Church was wrong about - one of them being the sinlessness of Mary, about which he made a big deal. So, in an effort to re-engage him, I started there, with the intent to come back to authority and the original three questions. This newsletter picks up the dialogue there:

Challenge/Response/Strategy

Tony Thorne:

You will be accountable for your false teaching John.

John Martignoni:

And you will be accountable for yours, Tony. So, are you open to an honest and forthright discussion about Catholicism, your faith, and the Bible? You will be putting material out there for several thousand Catholics to see and your posts will not be edited.

What if I told you that I would offer you arguments, using the Bible, that Mary was without sin? If you are up to it, here is the first argument that I offer that Mary was sinless:

1) Nowhere does the Bible say that Mary committed a sin.

What is your response to that?

In Christ,

John

Strategy

First and foremost, I never let anyone remind me about my being held accountable for my "false teachings," without reminding them that they will be held accountable for theirs. The thing is, though, that my teachings are not my own, they are the Church's - the Church founded by Jesus Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit. Tony's teachings, however, are indeed his own. And remember, he has admitted that he is not infallible, which essentially means that he more than likely is putting at least some false teachings out there. I also am not infallible, which is why I do not rely on my own teachings, but on the teachings of the infallible Church founded by Jesus Christ.

I use this first "scriptural" argument to state that the Bible nowhere says, "Mary sinned." Nowhere. So, if you want to use the Bible to say that Mary did indeed sin, it would be, at best, an indirect argument from Scripture.

Tony Thorne:

Yes, it does. Romans 3:23

John Martignoni :

Excellent! That is exactly what I knew you would say. So then, it is your contention that when the Bible says, "since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," (Rom 3:23), that means absolutely every person who has ever lived, no exception, has sinned. Which means Mary had to have sinned, correct?

Strategy

Romans 3:23 is, without exception, the very first verse, and usuallly the only verse, that folks point to when they attempt to scripturally "prove" that Mary was not immaculately conceived and that she did indeed commit sin during her life. That is why I made that first argument about Mary's sinlessness so general, because I knew he would respond by going straight to Rom 3:23. If you can overcome the argument from Rom 3:23, you have put a big chink in the anti-sinless argument. The first step in making my argument is to make sure that I get him on record as saying that his interpretation of Rom 3:23 means that " absolutelyevery person who has ever lived, no exception, has sinned." You'll see why this is important as we go through this.

Tony Thorne:

Yes sir, Jesus is the only exception.

John Martignoni:

Excellent reply! So, the word "all" means every person who has ever lived, no exception - except for Jesus. Now, in an earlier post [one of the posts that was deleted], I asked you if you were "seeking God." You said you were. Well, that is contrary to the Bible, at least, according to your interpretation of the Bible, because in Romans 3:11, it states the following: "No one seeks for God." If "all have sinned" means that everyone, without human exception, has sinned, then "No one seeks for God," means that no one, without human exception, seeks for God. Yet, you say that you do seek for God. Which means one of the following must be true: 1) You were wrong and you do not seek for God in your life; or 2) You think the Bible is wrong when it says "No one seeks for God." Which is it? Are you not seeking for God in your life, or do you believe the Bible is wrong when it says "No one" seeks for God?

Strategy

First of all, please note that while Tony made an exception in regard to Rom 3:23 not referring to Jesus, nowhere does the text of Rom 3:23 actually make that exception. And, again, nowhere does Rom 3:23 specifically mention Mary as having sinned. Tony added that to the Bible. Other than that one exception for Jesus, though, he agrees that Rom 3:23 means "absolutely" every person who has ever lived has sinned. Well, if "all" is taken as an absolute, then when the Bible says "no one" a few verses earlier, that must also be taken as an absolute in order to be consistent in our interpretation. In an earlier post I had asked Tony if he was "seeking God." How do you think every Christian on Earth is going to answer? "Yes, of course I'm seeking God." So, I filed that answer away in anticipation of this particular argument taking place.

So, my next step here was to point out to him that the Bible says "no one" is seeking for God, but that he said he was indeed seeking for God. So, by his methodology of interpretation, either the Bible is wrong or he is wrong. It has to be one or the other.

Tony Thorne:

I believe what that verse means in context as Paul was exerting in v10 that none are righteous, none understand. When you look up the greek word for seek, ( zetéo) you will find in its semantic range, the meaning, get to the bottom of. "But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit." For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God's deep secrets.(1 cor 2:10) then stretching across scripture (that never contradicts as we contexualize) we come to Jerimiah 29:13 "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart". Then contextual staying with the theme of the Bible, we come to Mathew 7:7 "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. So, it seems my interpretation is in line at this point. In theology, we call it topicalizing when you exhort scripture noncontextually to prove a point, as you have attempted to do in your previous post? Back to 3:11 In context, this verse implies that man is unable to comprehend the truth of God or grasp his standard of rightuessness. sadly his spiritual ignorance does not result from a lack of opertunity, but is an expression of his depravity and rebellion.

As you have been shown, the Bible does tell us to seek God. Its very important to keep things in context John. Could you please now answer the question as to what makes you think mary never sinned? Please, direct answer would be valued.

John Martignoni:

I am going to let you guys chew on his response for a week. Your homework is to think about how you would respond to what he said. No need to send your thoughts to me, just think about it and maybe write down a few points you would make, and when I publish my response next week, you can compare and contrast it with your response. If you're like me, though, when you first read his response, your first thought was, "Huh?"

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TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

The fascists can't even leave baseball alone.

Just make the batters stay in the box and make the pitchers throw the ball. Simple.

Stop screwing with the best game EVER.

From Tom Gatto of The Sporting News:


MLB gets it wrong — again

I'm running out of clouds to yell at (and I'm not that old) when it comes to Major League Baseball. The commissioner and the players association keep changing rules, and the changes aren't for the better.

The announcement Tuesday that intentional walks will no longer require actual pitches being thrown is the latest miscue.

Beginning this season, hitters will be told to "Take your base" or something to that effect when they get near the batter's box. Just like that, they'll make their way to first base. It's all in the name of shaving seconds off the times of games, you know. And yes, we are talking seconds.

MORE: Manfred rips union for denying rules changes

Some quick math shows the folly of this decision.

Last season, major league teams issued 932 intentional walks. At four pitches per walk, that's 3,728 pitches. Granted, not every intentional walk included four intentional balls: Some were thrown after the count went to, say, 2-0, 3-0 or 3-1 as teams pitched around batters. But for the sake of this argument, let's say all the wide ones were intentional, with the catcher holding out his arm and all that.

FOSTER: Pace of play is just fine

That's 3,728 pitches spread out over the 2,428 regular-season games played in 2016. That is, on average ... 1.54 pitches per game.

MLB and the players, therefore, have agreed to jack around with game play to save the time needed to throw a pitch and a half per game. I don't care how long a nervous pitcher may need to throw that pitch and a half; it isn't nearly enough to merit such a radical change to the rules.

MORE: Manfred defends speed-up ideas

And it is a radical change. Not every intentional ball is perfectly executed (see the ending to Tuesday's Stephen F. Austin-Texas A&M game). The Yankees' Gary Sanchez reminded us last September that a hitter can swing at any pitch, wherever it's thrown. That's why teams try (well, tried) to keep intentional balls far away from hitters.

The change to the intentional walk rule adds to baseball's growing rules Hall of Shame. The slide rule. Increased use of replay. The shrinking strike zone. The potential ruination of extra innings.

MORE: Top spring training story lines

Fans and pundits rightly complain about the real drags on the pace of play, such as the TV commercial breaks between half-innings (MLB responded to that by putting a clock on the players, as if they were lollygagging), multiple mound conferences and pitchers who take forever to go to the plate with runners on base.

The conferences are being reviewed, but there's little chance of the other two things changing. Owners won't give up a penny in rights fees so networks can show fewer ads, and the union is against a pitch clock at the major league level.

At least we don't have to sit through pitchers throwing four wide ones anymore. Nothing ever went wrong with them anyway, right?

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Ladies and gentleman, please welcome the perfect vagina.

Hello? Hello? Is anybody in there? Hello?

Ladies, don't take any crap from the guys over this one. Just ask them how that penis pump they ordered from the back pages of Penthouse worked.

Meet the Vagina Whisperer - Daily Mail

Gynecologist Dr Amir Marashi has performed over 400 vaginoplasties

Known as the 'vagina whisperer', the New York surgeon creates 'perfect' vaginas

Latest figures show over 5,000 women receive the surgery in the US each year

The rise is particularly in younger women as they see celebrities show off their 'designer vaginas'

How many of the alleged men in the Clump regime do you suppose ponied up the big bucks to make themselves look like a Kardasian between the legs?

He is known around his office as the 'vagina whisperer'.

That's because Dr Amir Marashi spends day in and day out creating 'perfect' vaginas.

The New York-based doctor specializes in vaginoplasty - surgery 'down there' - and performs 80 to 100 procedures each year.

And demand has grown so much the number of women undergoing the surgery has rocketed from 5,000 in 2013 to nearly 9,000 in 2015. 

There are two reasons women come in for surgeries with Dr Marashi. The first is cosmetic purposes. Women feel uncomfortable about the size, the shape, or even color of their vagina. 

Dr Marashi told Daily Mail Online: 'For each person, they want something different. But the most important thing is they feel better, they feel confident. 

'Some report better orgasms, feeling more comfortable in the bedroom, and so on.' 

The second is functionality purposes.

'It'll be someone who has had one to two children and they feel their vagina is losing shape or consistency. Usually they're 35 or older,' he said.

'Or they'll have a problem with their labia. They're uncomfortable wearing tight clothing, tight underwear. They're uncomfortable riding a horse or a bike.

'They can be more prone to getting yeast infections.'

At the end of the day, Dr Marashi says, the choice is up to the patient. But he makes sure he consults with them multiple times before they do decide to undergo surgery.

The surgeon can shorten the labia, lighten the color, make the vagina moister, and amplify the G-spot.

The surgeries, he says, can even help lift the bladder, helping with urination, and strengthen the rectum.

Dr Marashi's ability to create the ideal vagina for his clients has earned him the nickname the 'vagina whisperer' among his staff.

He said it first occurred while he was doing non-profit work in Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake.

There was a woman he was treating who was suffering from a vaginal fistula - when a hole develops between the vagina and either the bladder or the rectum - but had been too ashamed to talk about it.

One of the nurses who was in the operating room with him commented: 'Wow, I can't believe you're some kind of vagina whisperer.'

The name got passed around to his nurses back in New York and stuck.

Over the course of his career, Dr Marashi has performed more than 400 surgeries and says he's seen a tremendous rise in the number of women wanting vaginoplasties.

According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, more than 5,000 women underwent the procedure in 2013.

As of 2015, that figure was estimated to have risen to around 8,745 women. 

Since Dr Marashi first began performing vaginal surgeries six years ago, he says particularly more younger women seem to want the surgery.

One reason is that the subject is becoming less taboo as more and more celebrities show off their 'designer vaginas', including British model Katie Price and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Brandi Glanville.

However, because of this celebrity rise, younger women see the procedure as a type of fashion statement.

"Mine's Gucci. What about yours?

'I always make sure they know that it's not something that they need but something that they want. I don't want to just do anything for cosmetic purposes,' Dr Marashi said.

Sure, doc. Everybody knows a vajayjay with self-esteem issues.

'If they decide they want to go through with it, that's fine, but they need to do their homework.' 

For women who are considering undergoing the procedure, the surgeon offered some tips to follow:

• Make sure your surgeon is board-certified
• Make sure they've been performing the surgery for at least a few years
• Go in for a face-to-face consultation
• Ask for before and after pictures
• Request written and/or in-person testimonials

Face it, kiddies. This is only a symptom, not the disease...

And yeah, we are doomed.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.