I may not be judging Tony, but Cherie stands convicted...
In the past I have defended our new brother Catholic Tony Blair. And some readers have pointed out that I was wrong to do so. Apparently, they had evidence. Well, I don't know about Tony, but Mrs Blair, the good Catholic girl, is certainly convicted out of her own mouth. Sorry, Cherie, contraception has no place in the kitbag of the faithful Catholic.
posted by Schütz @ 11:48 pm
10 Comments
.JPG)
10 Comments:
It's commonly known that she is for abortion, too.
Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has defended her use of contraception saying that fertility control is an important reason that "women's lives have changed".
They sure have changed. Whereas, 40 years ago, no-one would have raised an eyebrow at a married woman daring to have 5 kids, now it's well-known that such a woman must be insane.
Thanks for nuthin', sistahs!
Cherie Blair has had four children and at least one late miscarriage; she can hardly be blamed for promoting the view that to have five children is insanity.
As for it being "commonly known that she is for abortion", I think it would be more accurate to say that it is commonly asserted that she is for abortion on some of the more virulent and less discriminating websites that feel free to bandy about such claims without necessarily producing any of your actual evidence to back them up. I'll keep an open mind on this one.
There are alternatives to contraception that are in line with the Church's teaching. Maybe Tony has some responsibility here...
I will be happy not to speculate on the abortion issue. Again, I will be charitable and say that I am sure she has confessed this and received absolution.
Instead of slating Cherie in her presumed ignorance, it would be good to offer some 'good news' about modern methods of fertility control which are in line with Church teaching. Try www.woomb.org Perhaps we could send her this link and suggest she inform herself and her daughters.
Cherie Blair has had four children and at least one late miscarriage; she can hardly be blamed for promoting the view that to have five children is insanity.
I am quite well aware that the Blairs have a "large" family (as people are pleased to call a family of four or five children these days), but my point still stands, since I was referring to the use of The Pill in general. I am not particularly condemning Mrs Blair for her own use of The Pill, although she is obviously very vocal about it (why do we need to know, frankly?) and that's why I feel no compunction in denouncing her support of the use of the vile stuff.
Which said stuff has, in fact, led to the changing of women's lives as I mentioned above.
Furthermore, if Mrs Blair is anything like two of my non-Christian friends, she may not think a mother of five is insane, but what about a mother of 12 (who is also now a grandmother). Again, I say that what was once accepted as relatively normal (yes, I do know that 12 has always been a larger-than-average family size) or at least, not entirely unexpected, is now viewed as certifiably insane.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/faith/2008/05/catholicism-con.html
Or, "Why the woman needs a kick in the butt."
I will concede that I may well be wrong on her views re: abortion.
Hmmm. That
link
Actually she said her birth control "apparatus," not "The Pill". So she is/was using barrier methods. Not abortifacient, somewhat less bad, I think, still wrong of course.
Somehow it seems to me that both of these folks are somewhat "clueless" about what it means to be Catholic, about what Catholic teaching really is on certain subjects. I know he was prime minister and all, but I think they are both so caught up in their milieu that they just don't really "get it" that the Church is serious about these teachings and Catholics are expected to obey them. I work with people like that; one girl whose husband got a vasectomy after her second child, also talks about the husband working the parish fundraising bazar/festival, what the priest said to him while they were working together there. I asked her once, if she weren't Catholic now, would she become Catholic...she said, "Yes, or Episcopalian...I think they have a very nice religion." I told her that when people become CAtholic, they have to say they believe everything the Church teaches (without referring to contraception or contraceptive sterilization, as if I did so I would probably get in serious trouble at work) and she said, "Oh, you couldn't really expect people to agree with everything...." I don't know what can be done to cure people of such terminal vagueness. I wonder what Pope Benedict said to Tony Blair, that time he called him over and spoke to him?
Susan Peterson
Cherie Blair doesn't seem much different in her beliefs than most women I know who call themselves Catholic.
As to her husband's recent conversion, Tony Blair is a remarkable man, and I don't think I'll be able to divorce my feelings about him from those as an American listening to his address to our Congress just after 9/11 when he came to stand with us. At one point, he referenced the British burning the White House during the War of 1812, and said, well, about that, sorry -- what a magnificent moment.
I don't agree with him politically, or religiously for that matter, but Tony Blair gets one huge thing most in the West miss -- that religious values matter, that the rest of the world sees the secularism of which the West and particularly post-war Europe is so proud is in the eyes of most of the rest of the world an a-moral threat.
It may be only natural for a global thinker and religious value oriented thinker to be attracted to the original multinational corporation, the Roman church.
But his quest seems to be for those who hold religious values to find common ground right there, against a world which increasingly rejects them all, and regardless of the difference in values the various religions have, and, to have a sort of reverse of colonialism (which is not to say reverse colonialism) in which faith will be a channel of mutual aid rather than unilateral exploitation.
I should think that if you are willing to excuse the glaring un-Catholicness of the behaviour of even a good many of the occupants of the papacy as simply the result of the church having flesh, Tony Blair should represent no problem at all. He's a great man, not one I always or usually agree with, but a great man of a vision sadly not shared by more.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home