Louie has a few thoughts:

“One will have noticed that among the first lines of defense that has been offered includes a considerable effort to convince the faithful that the Church has always approved of contraception use as a means of ‘self-defense,’ such as when there is reasonable fear of an impending rape at some point in the future.

The whole thing is a ruse, of course. The boss made a significant blunder and the lower ranks are clanging the barn door shut as fast as they can:

Louie again: _“Let us turn our attention to the million dollar question that no one seems to be asking:

“Why is it so very important for the enemies of Our Lord to make us believe, ludicrous though the notion truly is, that an ironclad ‘rule’ has always existed in the Church with respect to contraception and rape, when clearly this isn’t related in the least to the Zika question?

“Answer: Because Francis made a big mistake, and not just in contradicting Catholic doctrine – this he has done many times in the past. What he did the other day is something we’ve never seen before:

“He betrayed the conciliar cause in a way that is tantamount to a military leader revealing classified information to the enemy. [WUWFC emphasis added.]

While flying the friendly skies, Francis cracked the door just enough to give the otherwise duped an unprecedented glimpse into a Vatican gone astray; running the risk of exposing the entire post-conciliar charade for what it truly is…”

The term “diabolical deception” comes to mind.

And while you’re chewing on that one, here’s a few more.

The argument of “allowing” contraceptive use when there is a threat of rape has always made me wonder in what order these Jebbie and Opus Dei churchmen imagine things go. I mean, do you really expect these sisters to carry a condom around in their wallet like a teenaged boy, “just in case”? And if Paul VI (or John XXIII or “the Vatican” … or whatever phantasm we cooked up in 1961 and 1993 to get this idea to fly) had “allowed” it as “an exception”, how would you imagine such a device could be deployed while one is a German or Swedish or Norwegian woman being gang-raped by, say, a group of Muslim migrants fresh off the boat from Sudan or Afghanistan? (Perhaps I digress…)

But perhaps the strangest assertion of all is that it is a form of “self-defence” against an unjust aggressor. Do condoms magically stop rape now? Do we hold them up when our attacker is heading our way, like the magic mitten in that insane Finnish PSA video?

Or is the argument simply that they de-rape you after the fact?

Oh, and Fr. Gahl, could you perhaps clear a moment or two in your schedule to explain what you meant by the “responsibility of parents to decide when life would begin,”? Because last I checked, the embryologists had that one figured out by the end of the 19th century. It’s kind of what the pro-life thing is all about.

The freudian slips are coming thick as mucous this weekend, aren’t they? I seriously think these guys spend too much time at their Pontifical universities, surrounded by fellow-travellers, obeissant seminarians and fawning subcontinental nuns. No one has ever just looked steadily back at them after they spew this crap and told them it’s crap.

Honestly, endless logical hole-poking-fun can be had with this diabolical nonsense, but as we know, it has nothing to do with viruses or birth defects or rape or rape victims or women in dangerous situations, or – and you guys should go read the incredible convolutions Fr. Gahl gave us as a hard-case scenario… something about a Brazilian woman whose husband is so hot to trot he can’t be deterred… Yikes! What sort of bodice-rippers are they reading in refectory these days!? – with married couples who can’t abstain. It has to do with deterring the promulgation of the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of procreative sexual relations in marriage, and her absolute ban on ANY sexual activity outside those parameters. It has to do, in other words, the same thing it has had to do with since 1965.

But I must say, the ground has certainly been well-tilled for this latest little adventure! You should see what I’ve been seeing in commboxes on FB and other places. I’ll do a longer post about it maybe tomorrow, but until then, this is where we are in the Church these days nearly 50 years after Humanae Vitae and after over 35 years of “conservative” and “orthodox” popes. These are all comments from regular Catholic schmoes, who no doubt consider themselves very well-informed and terribly, terribly nuanced.

Papolatry? Hypermontanism? Hard to know what to call it…

“What do you do with a Pope like Francis? You recognize him as the Vicar of Christ on Earth and give him your full support.Traditionalists just can’t swallow that,can they? The teaching of the Pope of the day, although informed by tradition, takes precedence over it. Always.”

And oooohhhh how eagerly they ate up Francis’s clever little bait-and-swtich distraction: “Abortion is an absolute evil… very bad, can’t do it, ever, ever, ever… NO reason. As bad as the mafia… Oh wait, you were talking about contraception? Oh, well there’s nuances, aren’t there? No? Eh? We can’t be too unmerciful, eh? …Lesser evil!…Quick, look over here! abortion!”

And yep, they ate it right on up. Here’s another from FB:

_“… if this nonsense that the Pope has somehow turned round Catholic teaching persists. Let’s be very, very clear: he hasn’t. He has reiterated it. The teaching is: deliberate abortion is always evil. There is never a case where deliberate killing of a child is ‘the lesser of two evils’. In some extreme circumstances, such as murderous gang rape, AIDS among gay prostitutes and the real, present and foreseeable danger of malformation, contraception may be excusable, while remaining against Church teaching.

It will help understanding enormously if we appreciate what the ‘lesser of two evils’ question was. Is abortion the ‘lesser of two evils,’ in these circumstances? I would think that the answer is clear and, to be honest, uncontroversial.”

Didja catch that one? “Lesser of two evils” is getting to be like a duck call. And doesn’t this sound familiar: “may be excusable, while remaining against Church teaching…” Sound like someone? A certain gap-toothed German someone we’ve been hearing a lot from in the last couple of years? That’s what we get from the habit of priests and bishops and popes of shying away from the “unmerciful” language that used to require precision and forthrightness. We used to use expressions like, “intrinsically evil” and “mortally sinful.” And “it is always wrong to commit an intrinsically immoral act.” And “you’ll go to hell for all eternity.”

And all pro-life activists will be familiar with this one: Why can’t you focus on what’s important?! He condemned abortion! He said it was like the mafia! All this NITpicking over the METAPhorical details of obscure Catholic doctrine is just a GIFT to the abortion lobby…

_“Are you at risk of something like AIDS (Pope Benedict’s observation regarding male prostitutes) or being gang-raped by armed forces, or otherwise at obvious and extreme risk of infection or deformity, Clare?

“You have been good enough to quote sufficient of what the Pope said to have some kind of context. He said a great deal more about abortion and made clear that abortion is an absolute evil. He did not give a free pass otherwise and it is misleading to suggest he did. Surrey is not Sao Paolo; Camberley is not the Congo and Farnham is not the Milan bypass. There are specific circumstances in which no less than three Popes have said that something can remain wrong but the Church understands the human condition.

“He was presented with a bear trap about abortion and is quite aware of the ongoing campaign. The ‘lesser of two evils’ suggestion being put forward was, implicitly, that an abortion is less evil than a microcephalic child. I agree with his response and feel that the Mafia imagery is entirely appropriate.

“What a shame that people are so keen to focus the wrong way and see heterodoxy where there is reiteration of existing Church teaching, rather than support what he said, in the context he said it.

“What a gift to the abortion proponents! While ‘loyal Catholics’ engage in metaphorical arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and expose condemnatory, dictatorial tendencies, the campaigners for child slaughter on an industrial scale can point and laugh at how irrelevant we are. See those Christians, how they love arguing with each other!

…

“Whatever is responsible, slaughtering the innocent seems like the wrong response to me. And so is internal, doctrinal nit-picking; it allows the death cult free rein.”

~