NYTribute to Frances Kissling, stepping down from headship of Catholics for Free Choice.

The only refreshing point of the article is that it actually states, right there in black and white:

Its $3 million budget is largely financed by well-known secular foundations, including the Ford Foundation.

How different. To see that small point acknowledged.

What the valedictory fails to do is to press Ms. Kissling on this whole "Catholic" thing. She trumpets, "Catholic" throughout the piece, ending by saying,

“There are days when I think I can’t be a Catholic and that I want to go join a community where I am welcomed, honored, where I can join a parish,” she said. “But in the end, I don’t want to be a Methodist. I’m a member of the greatest religion in the world.”

(Because that’s the ancient, well-documented reason all the saints are a part of the Church…to be "honored.")

So…why is this the greatest religion in the world? The albs? The statues? The music? The faith in Jesus Christ, savior of a broken world? What?

And of course, no one ever bothers to ask any self-professed theist who pimps and seeks to protect abortion how that works exactly. As in "If human life is created by this God you believe in, and if each human person is passionately loved by God…who are we to decide that this life isn’t worth living? How does that calculus work, exactly?"

We pray for Frances Kissling. That up there on her Uruguayan mountain, she’ll confront that question, of how God values a fetus "on the continuum of humanity," as the piece puts it, and be open to the possibility that it isn’t just "not nothing," as she puts it…and not even "something" – but someone.

Find a Crisis Pregnancy Center in your area. Help.

Pray.