Well, it’s been quite an interesting week. Response to the posts here at Coming Home have ranged from polite discourse to me being a heretic, promoting heresy, covering and promoting mortal sin, the sinking of the Bismarck and the Titanic, and the explosion of the Challenger.
Those caught up in this have been unrepentant heretics such as your humble host (if we are to believe some who have suggested as much), sincere philosophers and theologians who have weighed in on both sides (Meaning this will only be resolved in Heaven), as well as garden variety victims of the psychological affliction of scrupulosity.
I’d first like to address the scrupulous. Scrupulosity is a psychological/emotional affliction that dresses itself up in vestments and passes itself off as moral theology (on steroids). It’s a serious matter that is quite debilitating. But it’s the individual’s affliction, and not my sin.
As for those great thinkers such as Chris Tollefsen and Mark Shea, per usual, their writing keeps me up at nights when the house is quiet. These are giants at whose intellectual table I have been well-fed. Perhaps they are correct, and perhaps it is my life experiences that have colored my vision, cracked the prism through which I perceive and respond to the world, but on this one, we’ll have to agree to disagree for now. Make no mistake; these men are priceless gifts from God to the Church, and one issue does not an adversary make (not even a hundred with them!)
I simply see no mortal sin here, as so many have suggested. I see no venial sin here as many have suggested. I do not think that murderous, brutal people are entitled to the truth and ought to be exposed through covert operations. Perhaps this makes me a consequentialist, perhaps not. But I can’t forget so very many experiences that I wish I could forget, so many children who were pimped and pumped full of drugs, many who have since died of AIDS.
I wonder how many who take issue with Lila Rose would argue that her videos are poison fruit and ought never be used against Planned Parenthood?
I wonder how many would, after the Lila debates, now call for the immediate dismantling of the CIA, the national Security Agency (NSA), the abolition of undercover and plainclothes operations by the police, covert ops by the military, etc.
I find the entire magnitude of this eruption, along with its timing, quite disturbing, coming as they do after four years of undercover work and when LA has yielded its greatest fruit, when Planned Parenthood is critically wounded. Individual motives, though they be good, this has had the effect of straining gnats while babies and teens are butchered wholesale by this organization.
Certainly there is a time and place for such discussions, as that is how ethics and moral theology are done. But given the consequences in real blood, I believe this discussion to have been woefully ill-timed. And there is another aspect of this that has not been discussed, and that is the mortal sin of detraction.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:
“Detraction is the unjust damaging of another’s good name by the revelation of some fault or crime of which that other is really guilty or at any rate is seriously believed to be guilty by the defamer.”
That’s something to think about, and my last word on this debate.
I’m moving on.
Coming Home 
Amen, Dr. Nadal.
I’m so grateful for your posts on Lila Rose/Live Action. May God grant you many graces. You were spot on — as usual. There was no sinning by Lisa Rose/Live Action. To quote Fr. Peter West: “She’s doing God’s work!” And so are you, Gerry!
[…] Update 2/20: The Last Word Here […]
Thank you for everything you’ve posted on this topic. It has actually been something that has kept me up at night lately.
I have been so happy at the way your posts have spurred others to write about it and discuss it. This has been a discussion that was sorely needed. It’s hard not to get caught up in the emotionalism of it all, but how one does the Will of God is usually tied up in heart-vs-head issues. I just keep thinking that we were given a mind and a heart to use together. That’s what I believe you’re trying to do here and it has helped me to see that.
As you said, the resolution to this question will probably not be settled until we get to Heaven. From reading so many different sides of the discussion I believe, more than ever, that my support of Lila Rose and Live Action is not only justified. Thank you for helping me and others to wade through the jarg-uments. I think we all came out of this a little messy, but the wonder of good Catholic thinking is the lively debate that spurs us on.
I pray for you and all those who are fervently seeking truth in this matter (on both sides). Let us please speak to each other in love and charity. We can use our words to tear down the kingdom the same way we can build it up. It’s always good to remember that. May God Bless you and your family!
“I find the entire magnitude of this eruption, along with its timing, quite disturbing, coming as they do after four years of undercover work and when LA has yielded its greatest fruit, when Planned Parenthood is critically wounded. ”
“But given the consequences in real blood, I believe this discussion to have been woefully ill-timed. ”
I absolutely agree. I certainly felt this when I initially read the first online posts.
In some ways, it seems almost diabolical in that the devil likes nothing more than to divide and cause dissension.
Thank you for your posts. They were interesting. As usual.
Gerry – thanks for a very well articulated, and appreciated, discussion on this subject.
I’ve been pondering the issue since Jill’s article, and considered many different angles. Much published commentary critical of Lila overlooks the immediacy of danger the girls and the unborn are in – grounds which really demand deeper thinking when it comes to upholding justice.
There is much in the Bible, and the work of God, we don’t fully understand, for instance Jesus actions on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) are worth study when it comes to behavior. I thought I had it figured out, but was reminded this morning in 2 Corinthians 4:1-4 that overall what happens is the work of the Holy Spirit, and we should simply remain as true as possible to God’s compassionate work on this fallen earth.
I have taken a little time to read some of the articles critiquing Live Action’s methods…and I’m really appalled to see that apparently, there are people that think that the tactics were wrong because they involved deception. The CCC is clear that deception is sometimes justified, and if this isn’t such a case, I don’t know what is.
Bravo.
I stayed out of the debate over lying and Lila Rose; because I’m not Catholic I felt I had nothing particularly germane to contribute. I can only add that I totally agree with your statement, I do not think that murderous, brutal people are entitled to the truth and [I think they] ought to be exposed through covert operations.