Sin is not in my lexicon, dear friend
Modern woman and her psyche
Sin is not in my lexicon, dear friend—
I do what’s good, defined my way. The end.
No sense of sin? Friend, then how do you know
the right, the wrong, the which-way-to-go?
Honey, I simply do what I think right:
I never harm, I give no spit, no fight.
Darling, how do you know your “right” is right?
Which one authority supports this might?
Authority? Why ask me that? My might
is right! My kindness clearly guides my sight.
What about consequence, sorrow, remorse?
Sacrifices, mercy, and love, full course.
Love? You fool, what are you talking about?
Oh God, you want me to believe, no doubt.
Beloved dear, I’m praying that you know,
it’s sin in lexicon that lets love show.
-Maura Harrison, 09.28.2021
Sidewalk prayers at the Abortion clinic
Had someone told me years ago that I would be one of those protesters outside Planned Parenthood, I’d have been dumbfounded. Because there was a time when I was convinced that Planned Parenthood provided an essential service. Not admitting that the essential service was abortion.
When Christian women or men approached me about their religion, my virtual reply was, “Sin is not in my lexicon, dear friend.” Said far less eloquently, however. For I embodied the “modern woman and her psyche” that my online artist friend Maura Harrison writes of.
What happened?
It’s both a long and short story. Sticking with the short version, I became a Catholic Christian. Joining those who know firsthand that it’s “sin in lexicon that lets love show.”
Now, each Thursday morning, I’m there. On the sidewalk outside the place I cannot call Planned Parenthood because it’s never been about parenthood, it’s about abortion.
On those mornings, I pray, silently. Walking up and down the sidewalk, I pray for light and Truth to unblind the greeters who seem more like guards who stand in the entrance. Silently exemplifying that sin is not in my lexicon, dear friend.
I pray for the staff arriving in their blue scrubs, the mark of 21st century health care workers securing the “reproductive health” of all women. And for the mostly lovely young women enter the doors of the abortion clinic. Sometimes with a male partner or female friend but usually alone.
Maura’s poem exquisitely frames this satanic scourge which now blackens our politics and conversations. Because it isn’t just young, frightened single women coming to terminate their preganancy. In fact, twenty-five percent of those making the decision to kill their infants are married Catholic women. Justifying that their child was unplanned, therefore abortion is the reasonable decision-one that the world applauds. Amidst consoling rhetoric of refuge and rights.
It’s a personal and private decision and “I don’t judge.”
Frequently, I hear this from others- both Christians and unbelivers when the subject of abortion raises its head. Usually preceded by “I do not believe in abortion for myself, but I refuse to judge others…”
Yes.
More loudly, YES!
The admonition is… oh so true. We are reminded why judging others is folly, a dangerous exercise, by St. Augustine in his “Sermon On Pastors.”
And I will feed them with judgment. Observe that he alone so feeds his sheep, in feeding them with judgment. For what man can judge rightly concerning another? Our whole daily life is filled with rash judgments. He of whom we had despaired is converted suddenly and becomes very good. He from whom we had anticipated a great deal suddenly fails and becomes very bad. Neither our fear nor our hope is certain.
What any man is today, that man himself scarcely knows. Still in some way he does know what he is today. What he will be tomorrow, however, he does not know. Hence the Lord, who assigns to each what is owed to him, feeds his sheep with judgment, giving some things to one group, other things to another, and to each his due. For he knows what he is doing. With judgment he feeds those whom he, being judged himself, redeemed. Therefore, he himself feeds his sheep with judgment.On Pastors by Saint Augustine
The words of this fourth-century infamous sinner converted to saint are worth reading repeatedly. In this regard, nothing has changed in the successive centuries between us.
- Daily we judge rashly.
- Only to learn that he from whom we’d expected great things becomes bad.
- And conversely that she from whom we’d expected only evil becomes good.
- Primarly, though, we experience our vast ignorance of ourselves.
Do these facts obviate our obligation to stand up for Truth?
No.
Once again, more loudly, NO.
Our obligation as Christian men and women is to proclaim the truths of God’s created universe. And publically label evil for what it is: work of the Anti-Christ.
Is it “Christian” to remain silent while young women and men are plied with lies and euphemisms?
Are we to do nothing when our self- professed Catholic Christian leaders trumpet abortion as women’s health, justice and insist that abortion up through birth is a right?
Sister Lucia, one of the visionaries at Fatima predicted that: “a time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family. And those who will work for the good of the family will experience persecution and tribulation.”
It was through the writings of Cardinal Caffara, formerly head of the Pontifical Institute for the Studies on Marriage and the Family that crystallized our twenty-first century lexicon: the ennoblement of abortion and homosexuality. Sin is not in my lexicon, dear friend.
“The human story is a confrontation between two forces: the force of attraction, whose source is in the wounded Heart of the Crucified-Risen One, and the power of Satan, who does not want to be ousted from his kingdom.”
Cardinal Caffara spoke those words in a speech given four months before his death in 2017.
Speaking chillingly of Satan, the purity of his hatred for you, me and for humanity, the Cardinal’s words serve as a clarion call to each of us.
…are there developments which reveal with particular clarity the confrontation between the attraction exerted over man by the Crucified-Risen One, and the culture of the lie constructed by Satan? My response is affirmative, and there are two developments in particular.
The first development is the transformation of a crime [termed by Vatican Council II nefandum crimen], abortion, into a right. Note well. I am not speaking of abortion as an act perpetrated by one person. I am speaking of the broader legitimation which can be perpetrated by a judicial system in a single act: to subsume it into the category of the subjective right, which is an ethical category. This signifies calling what is good, evil, what is light, shadow. “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies”. This is an attempt to produce an “anti-Revelation”…
At the moment at which the right of man to order the life and the death of another man is affirmed, God is expelled from his creation, because his original presence is denied, and his original dwelling-place within creation – the human person – is desecrated.We are no longer witnesses but deserters
