Monday, March 18, AD 2024 10:07pm

Peter Kreeft Calls a Spade a Bloody Shovel

 

We live in a low, dishonest age where blatant evil is protected with euphemisms.  I take heart whenever anyone stands up against this meretricious trend.  I therefore applaud Dr. Peter Kreeft, Boston College Philosophy Professor and a Catholic convert, for his remarks at a speech sponsored by the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin on the subject of whether a Catholic can be a liberal.  He minced no words when the subject of abortion and the Kennedy clan came up:

During the Q&A, an audience member brought up the Kennedy political  dynasty and how a group of leading theologians and Catholic college professors  had met with Kennedy family members in the mid-1960s and came up with a way for  Catholic politicians to support a pro-abortion rights platform with clear consciences.

Kreeft said these Catholic advisers “told the Kennedys how they could get  away with murder.” Kreeft then made one of his boldest comments of the evening,  suggesting the theologians who first convinced Democratic politicians they could  support abortion rights and remain Catholic did more damage to the Catholic  Church than pedophile priests.

“These were wicked people. These were dishonest people. These were people  who, frankly, loved power more than they loved God,” Kreeft said. “Sorry, that’s  just the way it is. In fact, I’d say these were even worse than the child  molesters — though the immediate damage they did was not as obvious — because  they did it deliberately, it wasn’t a sin of weakness. Sins of power are worse than sins of weakness. Cold, calculating sins — that’s straight from the  devil.”

A few minutes later, the talk over, the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

Go here to read the rest.  Go here for background on this meeting between Catholic theologians and the Kennedy clan.  Keep slugging away pro-lifers, the tide is clearly turning!

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Patricia M.
Patricia M.
Monday, November 28, AD 2011 8:16pm

Coincidentally, dying milltowns in Massachusetts became a destination for poor immigrants where there was a growth in welfare benefitted lifestyles, with increases for children born to these unmarried beneficiaries. No Mr. & Mrs. or Mother & Father has become commonplace. Gangs of these children form alternate families and battle to the death. Our nation provides not only abortion, but also a means to the destruction of family through legislation. The glamor of evil and its voting block.

Anthony S. Layne
Monday, November 28, AD 2011 10:08pm

I love the message — Dr. Kreeft is a great apologist and writer — but was thrown off by the title of this post. To “call a spade a spade” is to call things by their right names without regard for tact or sensibilities, which is what Dr. Kreeft did; am I missing a point or a play on words?

t shaw
t shaw
Tuesday, November 29, AD 2011 6:19am

Truth!

God bless Professor Kreeft.

bill bannon
Tuesday, November 29, AD 2011 2:47pm

Donald
Your link to the background says that none of the theologians held abortion to be moral but they advised legalization. Could their contradiction revolve around safety. Abortion is never safe for the child …legal or illegal; but illegal abortion is also unsafe for the mother. So could this advice really be rooted in safety though it turned out to be naive in that legalization exponentially increases the number of abortions? But the link has the theologans seeing abortion as immoral not moral. Oddly Augustine and Aquinas held for state’s allowing prostitution lest in Augustine’s view, worse lust takes place…apparently adultery and rape and seduction of non prostitutes. Vatican II seems to have rejected their position though.

Mike Petrik
Mike Petrik
Tuesday, November 29, AD 2011 2:57pm

Very good question, Bill. I do think that whether an immoral act should be criminalized is usually a matter of prudence. But try as I might, I just cannot imagine a justification for the legalization of abortion that does not rely on assigning insufficient gravity to the evil of the act. There is an indifference to the life of the unborn that can only be regarded as either very irrational or very callous.

bill bannon
Tuesday, November 29, AD 2011 3:11pm

Mike
I agree with you totally. I’m just wondering whether at that time period the theologians were thinking aggregate abortions would not increase in number and legally done would be death to the child but safety to the mother rather than jeopardy to both. New York City now has the abortion rate of Red China now without its being coerced as in Red China.

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Tuesday, November 29, AD 2011 4:30pm

[…] Peter Kreeft Calls a Spade a Bloody Shovel – Donald R. McClarey, The American Catholic […]

t shaw
t shaw
Tuesday, November 29, AD 2011 5:14pm

I know basically zero about Theology. However, I would question anyone who would make murder safer for the killers. I would look up “consequentialism.”

Plus, I have some highly uncharitable thoughts about them theologists that thunk that way.

bill bannon
Tuesday, November 29, AD 2011 7:16pm

Donald,
Read the First Things link….all very bizarre and suggests where Pilosi may have gotten her ideas. I found a Drinan article at Theological Studies (see below) on the topic but it is still hard to find there his implicit “render to Caesar with gusto once Caesar has erred” idea. He cites John Courtney Murray S.J. to the effect that there are many immoral actions that the law does not prohibit …I suppose like eating habits that lead to diabetes and communal expense that some are warning of in our media lately. The devil tricked him in an area that I am not seeing unless it’s in the area in the article at TS where he sees significance (what kind?) in the one third of preborns that die by nature all along the spectrum from failed implantation to miscarriage…and similar observations. Well….God takes many people into the next life through heart attack and tornados….that doesn’t mean we should.

http://www.ts.mu.edu/content/31/31.1/31.1.6.pdf

Gabriel Austin
Gabriel Austin
Wednesday, November 30, AD 2011 3:57pm

Years ago at the UN an Australian delegate remarked that it was time to call a spade a spade. In rebuttal, a Russian delegate remarked that calling a spade a spade was all very well for capitalist countries, “but in the Soviet Union we call a spade a shovel”.

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Friday, December 2, AD 2011 5:01pm

[…] Peter Kreeft Calls a Spade a Bloody Shovel (The American Catholic) […]

Bob Brassil
Saturday, December 3, AD 2011 3:28pm

Great piece! Thank you for offering this message & reflection.

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