Villanova Corrupts Symbol of Goodness ?

Villanova University has gone way too far.

Well, someone who doesn't think abortion IS purely the woman's choice would respond with 'what about the fetus' potential body/the father's wishes'?

for exactly what reason do you believe this corrupts the Virgin Mary? Does the statue itself make a statement?

I guess what I'm not really understanding in all this furor is what other position would you expect a Catholic university to take? By the tenets of Catholicism, abortion is a bad thing. Mary, being an integral part of the theology of the Catholic Church (moreso than in many other Christian denominations), would presumably hold the same belief (at least according to Catholic theology), would she not?

Strategically, in terms of wooing people to the "pro-life" side of things, this may be a mistake. But in terms of traditional Catholic teachings, it's absolutely by the book.

As much as you dislike being told what to do with your own body, are you going to start telling religious institutions what theological teachings they're permitted to embrace? I tend to think that either position is just as dangerous as the other.

frank, this isn't all about the guy. you prove my point. so are you inferring that if a woman is raped, the rapist impregnates her, that the rapist then has rights? ever been raped, frank? because that is part of what i am talking about. no, abortion should not be used purely as birth control, that in itself is an abuse...but i don't think women should lose the right to choose.

people don't like a symbol of goodness and reverence being used in this way anymore than people liked the star of david being used to mark jewish people during world war two in hitler's germany.

think about it howard......the virgin mary is a symbol of purity. to attach that symbol to a pro life campaign is ugly, and defiles the symbol. it's like putting the pope on a political campaign poster....

let catholic institutions take up pedophiles in the church and be proactive. why are they saving the lives of the unborn? so they can be abused by priests later?

will we next see the pope as honorary campaign chair to rick santorum? villanova did this as a political statement - even the easter week timing is suspect.

NOW should protest at vu

...a VERY ugly message. it doesn't matter if Villanova is a catholic institution or not. granny always says "god don't like ugly"

why is it that they were forced to remove the plaque to memorialize Mine Ener and post partum depression (she was the Villanova Professor who murdered her baby), but this is allowed to go up?

Refer to:

http://sayanythingblog.com/2005/02/03/justice_served_at_villanova/

... a wildcat

...the comments are WILD (and some are kinda crazy)

http://pod01.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=144&nav=messages&webtag=kr-phillytm

check out all nine pages of nuttiness

you're missing the point. The anti-abortion movement started prior to it being a political movement, and there are still facets of it that have nothing to do with politics, so equating a group sympathetic to a pro-life ideal with a political movement doesn't necessarily jibe.

I hear you saying it's ugly and it's wrong. But you're not explaining why. Why is attaching a symbol of purity to a pro-life campaign ugly? How is purity out of line with a campaign that the church purports to be about protecting the innocent?

Are you saying it's wrong for people hold the idea that life is sacred in the womb? Are you saying that statues of the Virgin Mary are wrong? I'm not just pointing a finger at you; I trying to get you to realize not everyone thinks the way you do, so maybe some people don't inherently understand why you feel this way. If you want people who don't think the way you do to come over to your way of thinking, you might need to do more than imply that their values are ugly. These are questions, not daggers -- I'm just trying to draw out answers.

In short, put yourself in someone else's shoes (like I just did in talking about Catholicism) and explain why you think it's wrong to allow a Catholic symbol to be associated with a Catholic value.

I don't think that person is missing the point, but I don't think you get where they are coming from. I do. I am a catholic and a woman.

we are taught through catechism to revere the virgin mary, and attaching an interpretation of what she represents and the symbolic portent she has to an anti abortion campaign, is well, wrong...it does debase her image and make something ugly out of something beautiful. (let me finish)

there is NOTHING wrong for people feeling life is sacred in the womb. I feel that, and perhaps even moreso because I am a woman who can't bear children.

BUT....I think that there have to be allowed two trains of thought that should be able to coexist in harmony for different reasons. anti abortion extremists, right to lifers if you will, see no gray area in this debate - it is their way or the highway and that is wrong.

Once upon a time when I lived in another city in another state, I had to escort a friend without much money into a clinic where she was being treated to deliver a baby not so far along that was DEAD in her womb. outside that clinic were horrible people with pictures of dead babies and things in speciman jars. they were chanting and praying and yelling. she almost passed out. they didn't even stop to condsider she might have been different. by the time we got her inside (probably the longest couple minutes of my life) she was so upset she vomited right there on the floor. what those "good" people did to her was ugly and cruel. she wasn't there because she wanted to be, she was there so she didn't have to carry around something dead in her belly. That event traumitized her. So much so, that when she did get pregnant again she waited a very long time before seeking medical attention.

THAT is why i feel this statue is wrong - I am a catholic who chooses life out of personal choice and a personal value system. It is NOT a religious choice....BUT, it is NOT for me to judge my fellow sisters, i.e. other women.

Their rights AND my rights need to be preserved. And if someone calls me a "cafeteria" catholic I might just throw this computer out the window.

To be christian in any faith is to be tolerent of other's views and perspectives, and these extreme types DON'T do that. that of course is a sad commentary on the society in which we live - in america today filled with with pathetic individuals with a narrow perspective of the world, and the falsely religious who are filled with fire and brimstone.

are we all witches to be burned at the stake because we feel we have earned the right to decide for ourselves what to do with our bodies?

screw that. if that makes me a bad catholic facing eternal damnation then i do it as an honest individual. I doubt st. peter will bar the gates of heaven.

for answering.

I was missing that point, and that was my whole point -- that nobody was explaining why they believed it was ugly or wrong. I hail from a church background where icons were a non-issue, and people like me, who aren't Catholic, may require extra instruction on these matters.

I do appreciate you taking the time to clarify.

To be fair, people who are pro-life come in all different stripes and not all of them believe exactly the same things. I think the broad brush approach is part of what stains this whole debate. We often assume an us vs. them approach, which tends to stunt any progress we might make in understanding the complexities of issues like this.

I consider myself pro-life, but that doesn't mean I judge those who obtain abortions. (As a matter of my faith, judging peoples' moral guilt or innocence is not acceptable -- morals are a tool for me to measure my own life, not to tell others how to live theirs.) My belief in the ethic of life revolves around promoting values and situations that make life a more palatable choice, not outlawing or branding the alternative as evil.

Let's be realistic here, most abortions are not because the woman was raped, they were because two willing partners messed up and didn't use protection.

Both partners should get a say in the termination of the pregnancy, is all I'm saying.

....but the statue goes too far....and just for the record, women get abortions for a lot of reasons, and they shouldn't be for birth control....and if you were a woman who ever told a guy she had a bun in the oven and you weren't married or whatever, trust me you are an exception to that rule.

With regards to the response to my comments about the history of the Catholic Church and abortion, and the demand that I prove my contention that the church permitted abortion under certain circumstances:

St. Augustine argued that abortion should not be regarded 'as homicide, for there cannot be a living soul in a body that lacks sensation due to its not yet being formed.' Thomas Aquinas taught that the embryo does not acquire a human soul until the end of the first trimester. Pope Innocent II proposed that 'quickening' (the time when the woman first feels the fetus move within her) should be the moment at which abortion becomes homicide. Abortions occurring prior to that moment constituted a less serious sin. Pope Gregory XIV's declaration in 1591 that early abortion was not grounds for excommunication guided Church policy until 1869. In that year, Pope Pius IX eliminated the distinction between the animated and non-animated fetus. The instruction was written into the Canon Law in 1917.
Thus, that abortion is always wrong was not Catholic Church dogma until 1917.
Similarly, infanticide was not considered always wrong until fairly recently. For instance, to expose children (i.e. leave them exposed to the elements) was common public practice throughout Europe until at least the nineteenth century, often with a bit of bread or meat in their months so that one could not be accused of murder. In fact, when several European nations became Christian/Catholic as the result of evangelising church representatives, they were granted explicit permission to continue this practice.

I regret getting involved in this "discussion".

Posted by: secular theologist over at philly.com

Well, not speaking for everyone else, I appreciate your input here.

Wow bunch of liberal selfish twits post on this blog.
Abortion is killing future humans.
Nothing less.
A woman is carrying a living being inside her.
To stop something from being alive you have to kill it.
Hence abortion is murder.
Good for Nova.

You are, in this case, an anonymous coward. I am neither a liberal or am I selfish. People are entitled to their opinions, even you.

If the Catholic Church is so hell bent on saving the lives of the unborn, one would think they would be more proactive on taking care of pedophile priests. Unless of course, you just want women to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen growing new crops for pedophile priests to harvest. And then there is the question of what if a woman's life is at risk? Is she supposed to die so a child can be born healthy without a mother? Or vicitms of rape? Are they supposed to bear a child that is a product of anger so the rapist can potentially haunt them forever over parental rights? Or what of a family that can't afford to have a child? Or what if that child has such a serious abnormality in the womb that it will be born onto life support, or would even be born dead?

You see, this issue has no easy answers. I for one, am against abortion as a method of birth control. I also agree with blogger frank that dads have rights (unless they are a convicted rapist - then I think violence wipes the slate clean and women should have peace of mind in those situations)

Are you against birth control too?

You can't just foist individual beliefs on all people. I'm not doing that, merely telling you my perceptions. And I am leaving this post be to allow people dialogue. Even you.

If that makes me liberal so be it- it's your opinion. And I still say that Villanova did the wrong thing by making a political statement during Easter week with a beautiful piece of sculpture. They were wrong. Everyone gets that this is a Catholic University, but as educators, they should know better than to force one perspective and one perspective alone. Are they also going to forgo Darwinism in favor of Creationism?

I'm a woman. My body. My rights. My thoughts. Leave God out of it. He's got no quarrel with me for being honest.

what you need at VU is good old fashioned NOW.

Let's be realistic, this is a statue of the mother and child plain and simple; there is nothing saying that it is specifically a pro-life monument when you look at it from its visible view. If all statues of mothers and infants are seen as being pro-life than these critics that are against the statue are indeed against motherhood, religion, and artistic expression. If this is truly the case then it must be said that all statues of the Madonna and Christ child around the world are pro-life as well.
My second point about this statue is beyond the artistic interpretation. Let us all remember that Villanova is a Catholic University, a Christian School so it is only sensible that they be allow to display statues and symbols of the faith on their property, just as much as it is sensible for Jews to have the Torah in their temples or those who believe in evolution to have their text books and animal specimens in class.
My third point is that in Christianity it is believed that God created life at conception and not birth so if Villanova, is pro-life, if the Catholica Church is pro-life, and if all 2.3 billion Christians world wide are pro-life then so be it, becasue they are simply hold true to what they believe to be right just like anyone else and what they do on their universities is exceptable.
There are to many people who have to much time on there hands, they are so anti-Christian that they will oppose anything that deals with the Christian faith even something that seems obvious like this. If the United States was a communist state I could understand this point being argued but when its freedoms come from Christianity the arguement looks stupid, it is insane.
If Villanova is pro-life, fine, that is good, for scientifically a baby who are in their mothers are called a fetus which comes from the Latin and means baby. If a person kills a pregnant mother tehn by American Law they are guilty of killing two people, the mother and the fetus or unborn child, by law and I personally challenge someone to find that this is not true. To the mind of many christians their is no difference between abortion and fetuside or murder; abortion is like killing a pregnant woman and her child except for the fact that the mother infact lives.
So by Artistic Expression, the rights to persons having privacy according to the United States Constitution which allow them to what they want on their property, by the Laws of the United States involving murder towards a fetus in many conditions, and upon Christian Doctrine Villanova can do what they want to do and put a pro-life statue up if they want to do it. The only way they should be outlawed from doing so is if you outlaw Christianity, outlaw the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, outlaw the Freedom of Expression, and freedoms of privacy and change the laws of murder nationwide.
Those people who are attacking this statue need to educate themselves, I encourage you all to educate yourselves and stop follow people do to what they say without doing research. I encourage you all to take the time to focus on other issues that threaten our survival as people, and as a nation and quit arguing over such trivial matters.

Oh I forgot to mention one more thing in my article dated 12 April 2006 at 9:56AM. My name is John L. Hemphill III; I am neither a coward nor am I afraid to stand up for what I said; this is why I'm putting my name on this article.

Oh how wonderous! would this be the same mr. hemphill with the amusingly strong crush on fresh-off-bail supermodel Naomi Campbell ? The same John Hemphill who released an uber-Christian tome in 2004 called "Genesis"? The same John Hemphill who loves tall buildings in Philly in a single bound? THAT John Hemphill?

Well, you do have a austere old time Philadelphia name, and you are entitled to your opinion...only I don't happen to agree with you.

I will start by asking you to refrain from slams against Anonymous posters on this topic. People have a hard won comfort level with this subject (pro-life/pro-choice debate), and personally good , bad , or indifferent I applaud them for speaking their minds.

However, that being said let me point out the salient fact that IF this statue (currently being debated hotly here, there and everywhere) were "simply" a statue of a mother and child, it would not have been funded by the group that funded it, nor would the timing have been of one of the holiest weeks of the Catholic calendar: Easter week. Further and to the point, Villanova is a Catholic school, not Christian per se. A Christian college would be (for example) Eastern College in St. David's, PA, Elizabethtown College (upstate PA),Bob Jones University, etc .

In today's society if you step up and say for whatever reason you are pro choice, you look around for the angry mob to tie you up and burn you as a witch. The Bill of rights and the Constitution are a TWO way street my friend, which means (like it or not): if Villanova has the right to put up a statue, then people have the right to comment on it. And above all else (like it or not) women have god damn well earned the right to do with their bodies what they want. It's called CHOICE. MY body, MY life, MY choice.

Not everyone has to agree with a woman's right to choose, but they should shut up and respect personal choice, because it IS a personal decision. This sorry assed topic belongs off of the pulpit, out of political campaigns.

And as for the rest of it, check the post by the thoelogist. http://www.phillyfuture.org/node/3086#comment-2306

This country is full of fanatical false prophets and pseudo religious types who wouldn't know what it was to be truly Christian if it bit them on the ass. AND this country was purportedly built on tolerence. why am I supposed to be tolerent of your viewpoint if you can't respect mine.

philosophize on that a while .....

i am very involved in the pro-life movement and i just wanted to let you all know that Mary is the patroness of the pro-life movement. so to say that it is wrong to use her as a symbol won't make sense to any pro-lifers you might speak to.

http://www.hli.org/commentaries_fr_tom_olg_patroness_pro-life_movement.html

and someone mentioned earlier... what about the life of the baby? let's set aside everything else for a moment. doesn't the baby have the right to live? i will grant you are correct about everything else if you can prove to me that the preborn fetus is not human and doesn't possess the same right to life that we all have.

on top of which, i'll even go so far as to say that this memorial doesnt have anything to do with pro-life or pro-choice opinions. it is a FACT that 93% of all women who have abortions, regret them (silentnomoreawareness.org). these women feel true pain and regret at their decision. dont they have the right to find healing? that is what villanovans for life says they are trying to help with. they arent condemning anyone or even saying that abortion is innately evil. they are acknowledging that people have been hurt and are reaching out in love to them. is that wrong??

i am very involved in the pro-life movement and i just wanted to let you all know that Mary is the patroness of the pro-life movement. so to say that it is wrong to use her as a symbol won't make sense to any pro-lifers you might speak to.

http://www.hli.org/commentaries_fr_tom_olg_patroness_pro-life_movement.html

and someone mentioned earlier... what about the life of the baby? let's set aside everything else for a moment. doesn't the baby have the right to live? i will grant you are correct about everything else if you can prove to me that the preborn fetus is not human and doesn't possess the same right to life that we all have.

on top of which, i'll even go so far as to say that this memorial doesnt have anything to do with pro-life or pro-choice opinions. it is a FACT that 93% of all women who have abortions, regret them (silentnomoreawareness.org). these women feel true pain and regret at their decision. dont they have the right to find healing? that is what villanovans for life says they are trying to help with. they arent condemning anyone or even saying that abortion is innately evil. they are acknowledging that people have been hurt and are reaching out in love to them. is that wrong??

You posted twice, but i am only going to reply once. You said " it is a FACT that 93% of all women who have abortions, regret them (silentnomoreawareness.org). these women feel true pain and regret at their decision. dont they have the right to find healing? that is what villanovans for life says they are trying to help with. they arent condemning anyone or even saying that abortion is innately evil. they are acknowledging that people have been hurt and are reaching out in love to them. is that wrong??"

You lady can kiss my ass. I AM a Catholic and I AM a woman. I carry a gene for a disease that kills . It is a gene that you don't know to look for if you are young, which I still am comparitively speaking in the child bearing years.

I was carrying a baby that started to fail. I found out that my baby was dying, and would be born to a life nothing deserves (if it survived). So while I had freaks like you telling me what my "duty" was as a Catholic, the baby died. If I had not been able to have a late term abortion, I would have been forced by law to carry a dead baby in me to full term.

I had no qualms about my decision, and had already made the appointment before the baby died.

If you have never been in the position to decide on having an abortion, shut the F up, because quite frankly you are not in a position, nor is anyone else to comment on feelings of guilt. I felt none because I knew I was making an educated, informed decision that was right for ME.

You want to reach out and spread the love? Then stop protesting laws that give women personal choice.

I think Villanova sucks but big time with this statue. If it was just supposed to be a thing of beauty, it would NOT have been announced easter week.

Keep your freaky opinions to yourself and don't post in duplicate.

to whomever who put up the post, I can't put up my name, because there are others than myself to take into consideration.

I just want you to be clear that I am not ashamed, nor a coward because my choice took great courage.