Dear Catholic Exchange,
My name is Charnette Messe. I write to you to tell you of the loss I am suffering as a result of my battle with pregnancy and breast cancer. I had the opportunity to tell my story on The Oprah Winfrey Show on December 12, 2002, and will tell it again on the radio broadcast of Focus on the Family on January 20-21, 2003. My story is so important, however, I wanted to share a brief part of it with your readers.
Holocaust is a word that means the mass slaughter of people. What, then, is abortion? Eleven years ago, I stood in line with a number of different women. It was as if I were part of an assembly line, each of us waiting to enter the infirmary. I remember the girl behind me. She must have been at least six months pregnant because her belly was very large. I kept wondering, “Why did she wait so long?” “She is killing her baby!” I exclaimed. My stomach was flat, so I didn’t realize I was doing the same.
After my abortion, I remember a woman standing over me, looking down and smiling in my face. She took me to a room where I sat and had a cup of tea and two Tylenol. She said the Tylenol would help with my pain. Today, I ask myself, “Which pain?” The emotional pain I have suffered since realizing I had my baby slaughtered, or the physical pain I have suffered from infertility and now breast cancer? It’s funny how I have lost a baby, an ovary and now a breast.
Abortion has nothing to do with women’s health, power or choice. It is a complete loss of humanity. We pride ourselves on a Constitution that vows that everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, yet we allow our laws to protect the same acts and cruelty of Hitler. Every time you see an advertisement for abortion, know that it is an advertisement for the slaughter of people. If there is any question that a child in the womb is not yet a person, look at the evidence. Look at yourself.
Charnette Messe
Groton, CT
Debating Dating
Dear Catholic Exchange:
I writing in response to your article on the Seven Rules of Advice for Teen Dating. Do you really expect people not to have fun in their teens? And you expect adult supervision on dates? Your perspective isn’t realistic. I love how you categorize men as sexual predators with no feelings at all.
Every time I come up against the views/teachings of Catholics and the Catholic Church, I get very angry. You do not accept any other religions, and you think you are the only people who are right. You devote your whole lives to the cause of being right. I don’t mean to be a jerk, after all, if you want to be religious that’s your choice, but this article really made me angry. There are a lot of men in the world who respect women and don’t just use them. You seem to categorize all teenage men as abusers and pornography lovers. I am seventeen, still a virgin, and I would never consider pressuring a woman into having sex or hit a woman. I don’t view pornography, and I think religion is a load of crap. I believe in a higher power, but religion is bull if you ask me.
With respect,
Matt Sell
P.S.: Adult supervision?? Give me a break. Human beings are sexual; deal with it, and stop infringing on others with your threats of eternal damnation. People are meant to have fun, loosen up.
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Dear Matt,
Your note takes things awfully personal. If some of the advice in the article doesn’t apply to you, then don’t take it to heart. Nonetheless, the fact remains that there would not be a thriving multibillion-dollar a year porn industry if a lot of guys weren’t buying it, would there? The cops wouldn’t be so busy with abusive men if they didn’t exist, right? It wouldn’t be necessary to warn about the dangers of sexual exploitation by men if we did not have a soaring population of single teen moms, would it? So, clearly, such warnings do apply to other people even if they don’t apply to you.
Since you mentioned it twice, adult supervision seems to stick in your craw. Consider the fact that “teens” range in age from 13 to 19. Do you really think it is the height of adult intelligence to tell two 13 year-olds: “Feel free to watch a Christina Aguilera video in the soundproof basement till 2:00 AM while Mom and I turn in for the night? Don’t get any ideas you silly kids (heh-heh, wink-wink). Well, g’night!” If you think that’s sensible and you think adult supervision in such situation is idiotic, then you are—not to put too fine a point on it—a fool. If you were a parent who thought such behavior sensible, you would soon find yourself to be a) a foolish grandparent or b) a foolish parent whose children were seeking an abortion. Now, as kids get a bit older and their parents gain more confidence in their sense of responsibility, they should be trusted a bit more. But to simply wave away parental responsibility with some simple-minded canard like “humans are all sexual” is, well, something only a seventeen year-old could say.
Note nothing I have said and nothing in the article mentioned a word about “eternal damnation.” You imported this language into the discussion. Nobody else said anything about it. I don’t know why. Perhaps you mentioned it because the article you read appeared on a site called Catholic Exchange, or because the editorial mentioned Jesus. Nonetheless, the article was not about threats of hell. It was about how to have a reasonable shot at a happy adolescence and the chance of a future without the terror of facing parenthood alone because your boyfriend ditched you when you wouldn’t abort. It’s about avoiding the joys of STDs for the rest of your life. It is emphatically about life in this world, not the next. In fact, the article had nothing at all to say about “eternal damnation,” or about the relative merits of other religions. That was something you dragged into the discussion.
Therefore, just to set the record straight, please be aware of the following: it is atheism that teaches that all other faith systems but itself are absolute garbage. It is the atheist who has to say that not only Christians are idiots, but Jews, Jains, Hindus, Buddhists, animists, Muslims, and everybody else (including you) who professes any belief in God, gods, goddesses, or “spirituality” are all nothing but a pack of fools who are totally and completely wrong while they alone are right.
In contrast, Catholic faith is quite happy to acknowledge that every faith in the world has *something* on the ball (and that many religions have a great deal on the ball). It is happy to work with members of other faiths (as, for example, the Pope did when he gather representatives of the world’s religious traditions at Assisi in January 2002 to call the world to pursue peace). Atheists, in contrast, have to arrogantly maintain that 99.99% of the human race is utterly wrong about the thing that matters to it the most. Think of that the next time you lecture a Christian on exclusiveness.
But, as I say, all that’s a huge non sequitur from the basic thesis of the piece—which was precisely about how to have fun and not spend the rest of one’s life with bitter regrets. The only thing the piece has to say about religion was that “Jesus loves you.” What a cruel slam that was.
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
Surrogate Motherhood
Dear Friends at Catholic Exchange:
I have been assisting my two high school daughters in a CCD project. We’re looking for the Church’s teachings on surrogate motherhood and tissue transplants. Bearing in mind the results my searches generated, I find it scary to think one could “really” be searching for the “truth” taught by our Church. I have checked various Catholic websites to no avail. I did find one remote inference made by Judy Brown on October 2, 2002. In a Q&A, she referenced the Church Document Donum Vitae. Yet, doing a search for this document using Catholic search engines—including yours—yields a scratch.
God bless,
Mr. Penco
Dear Mr. Penco:
I sympathize with you and admit that the Catholic Exchange search engine is not very good. It is something we’re eager to improve upon if and when we can persuade more of our users to support us financially.
For now, I can try to help you become more proficient in using Google.com, in my mind, the best secular search engine out there. Type in “surrogate motherhood” (just like that, in quotes), followed by the plus sign, followed by Catholic teaching so that your command reads: “surrogate motherhood” +Catholic teaching. Here are the best results that give you and your daughters exactly what you're looking for:
The Catholic Church and Surrogate Motherhood
Catholic Social Teaching: Health Care and Medical Issues
What Are Catholic Reproductive Health Services?
You then do another search the same way, only this time replacing “surrogate motherhood” with “tissue transplants.” Your command now reads: “tissue transplants” +Catholic teaching. The best results it yields are:
Activism: Vaccines and Catholic Doctrine
Best of Luck,
Tom Allen
Editor, CE
