Abort blind Catholic dogmatism

Last month, TIME Magazine featured an article that shocked me for more than one reason: A nine-year-old Brazilian girl who was raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church for undergoing an abortion. Her mother, who helped the girl receive the procedure, and the doctor who carried it out were excommunicated as well. (The article doesn't say what happened to the father.)

Brazilians are angry about this – and rightfully so. First, Brazilian law holds that abortion is illegal except in cases of rape, or when having the baby would endanger the life of the mother. Tragically, both of those scenarios hold true in this case, and yet the Church still chose to strip this young girl of her membership in the Catholic Church, claiming that “she could have had a cesarean section.”

That's easy to say when it’s not your daughter who’s just had her virginity stolen from her by a man who is supposed to love her unconditionally; that’s easy to say when it’s not your daughter whose life is on the line, and when all you’re concerned with is Catholic dogma.

In this case, the Catholic hierarchy – more specifically, Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, who announced the excommunication – failed spectacularly in living up to the Catholic Church’s mission of compassion. According to the article, Sobrinho said, “God’s laws dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church.” (Rape, evidently, is not enough to warrant excommunication.)

Sobrinho went on to instill a hierarchical view on the value of life: “Abortion is much more serious than killing an adult. An adult may or may not be innocent, but an unborn child is most definitely ignored. Taking that life cannot be ignored.” Yes, Your Eminence: Abortion is the murder of an innocent, and is a travesty. But how can you claim that any life is more important or worth more than any other? Who are you to say that the life of an unborn child is worth more than that of a terminally ill 78-year-old convicted murderer? I thought only God had that ability to judge.

The sadness of this case is overwhelming: A family was broken apart, and then kicked out of the institution that has incredible healing power; a nine-year-old girl’s virginity was taken from her; an unborn pair of twins was murdered. For the Church to do what it did to these “perpetrators” is a blow to the Church's credibility and reputation – when it takes up positions like this that are rigidly opposed to considering the complex ethical circumstances of a given situation, it only lends credence to the idea that the Church is an intolerant organization.

As someone who is against abortion, I challenge the Church to come up with some way to deal with abortion other than criminalizing it. With this case, the Vatican sent a message that it is not going to minister to those people caught up in situations where it seems like abortion is the only option; instead, it is going to turn them away.

With people like Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho stupidly comparing abortion to the Holocaust – which, by the way, was an ideological, systematic execution of an entire people fueled by an irrational hatred – how will the Church ever be able to create a space for dialogue? According to Sobrinho, the Church doesn't want that: “We know that people have other ideas, but if they do, then they are not Catholic. We want people who adhere to God's laws.”

Your Eminence, mankind would be in big, big trouble if God only wanted people who adhere to his laws.

-Jose Martinez

Stop sending me e-mails I won't respond to

As an unemployed, soon-to-be college graduate with one foot out the door (senioritis), it’s clear that my life is flooded with responsibilities that just eat away all my free time. But when I find part of the day to take a little time to myself, I lay back in my recliner, crack open a can of Shasta and do what any tech-savvy American loves to do – check my e-mail.

E-mail is a vital tool for communicating and keeping informed with today’s society if only being used for the fundamental messages: chain letters, penis enlargement ads or notices from the bank that my account has been overdrawn for the seventh time this month.

Unfortunately, every so often I find that there are those who feel it acceptable to present me with frivolous information that only serves to waste my precious “free” time. With that I mean e-mails that alert the public to useless, uninteresting information like warranty registration requests or billing notifications. Those that contribute to these wicked acts are responsible for slowly eating away at my personal time (stealing time equates to a weak act of murder in my mind). And of all the culprits at fault, one is our very own University, LMU.

How often do you open your mailbox to find another notification for financial aid or some pointless survey to participate in? Not that I don’t encourage spreading the word that helps students afford tuition, but I’ve never once applied for financial aid during my tenure at school. Yet every other week another e-mail pops into my inbox warning me that I’m close to missing the deadline to receive my check. Why am I getting this?

If I’ve never signed up for financial aid in the past, what makes them think that I’m suddenly going to jump on the bandwagon? Also, does this deadline ever arrive? Every message informs me that my application’s been given another couple of weeks until being turned in as if there is no finite due date. It’s a waste of time – my time.

Then there are those damn, pesky polls and surveys. At the beginning of the semester, the office of Dr. Lane Bove sent out a campus wide e-mail asking – well more like pleading – students to participate in a leadership survey. Alright, I’ll allow someone the chance to get their message out there, but if I don’t respond the first time you call out, please don’t confuse that as an invitation to continue the conversation. Throughout the rest of winter, my inbox would receive a consistent visit from Dr. Bove asking me for my help in the survey. Wasn’t my apathy strong enough the first time for anyone to get the hint I wasn’t interested? Guess not. My beloved “time” continued to evaporate as more and more attention was placed into deleting these abhorrent cries for attention.

What’s worse was that every e-mail I saw regarding these infamous surveys always carried the subject heading: “last chance,” as if implying the messages would soon stop. Not only did my University continue to eat away at my life, it was playing mind games with my fragile, little brain while doing so.

Most things that enter my mailbox I accept with arms wide open, but what I hate most is unnecessary repetitiveness. Sending the same bit of information over and over again, hogging memory and wasting my time is tantamount to murdering me in a weak, prolonged fashion. Although it’s being done in small portions, my life’s being taken from me; I won’t allow for it.

Stop the redundant e-mails and respect one’s free time. It’s important that we all receive undisturbed time to ourselves that allows us to catch up on the important things: watching online clips of amateur backyard wrestling and squirrels riding on water skis.

-Trevor Nelson


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Real news: motorized barstool rider gets DUI

From time to time I like to scan Cnn.com to see what is going on in this wonderful world of ours. Remarkably, when I checked under U.S. News, I found my new favorite article headline of all time: "Ohio man seeks trial over getting DUI on motorized barstool."

This man decided it was a brilliant idea to attach a barstool to a lawnmower engine, and after downing around fifteen beers, took it for a spin around his neighborhood. After reaching speeds of around 40 mph, he apparently had a fairly rough crash and the police had to come to the rescue. By the end of the day, the guy got arrested and ended up with a DUI.

Now, I can speak for a lot of people when I say that this story is pretty funny. Almost immediately after I finished reading this story, I began to wonder why this guy even made his little invention in the first place. Was it so he could drive to a bar, have a drink, and then drive home without even getting up? Or was he simply tinkering in his garage when he noticed that he just happened to have an extra bar stool lying around?

Yet those points aside, how did this story ever reach CNN? People around the world will be able to log into this website, and hear about a guy from Ohio who drank one to many beers and decided to take his bar stool for a ride. There is nothing wrong with reporting on something entertaining for the sake of a good chuckle, but when this story rates as number three on today’s “stories most e-mailed”, you have to wonder what kind of news people are actually looking for. Sure people might get bummed out when they hear about a helicopter crash, or that North Korea is working on sending missiles into space, but isn’t that news a bit more pertinent?

I hate to talk about our neighbors on the other side of the pond, but the BBC has got articles on the current situation Hugo Chavez, on the new Israeli prime minister, and on top of that they’ve got the latest cricket scores as well. While cricket is not very high on the list of things that rev my engine, I believe the Brits do the news better. They leave the drama and the gossip for the tabloids, and deliver genuine news stories. Being that we as a nation are not very popular, I feel we should start paying attention to what is going on in the world, and by doing this maybe we can change a our global image.

-Stefan Slater

ASLMU Election Results Live Blog

Voting just closed for this year's elections, join us for our live blog of this year's results as they are announced.



---Faiza Mokhtar

When readers lose control

The Internet does strange things to people. I’ve written about this in a previous column, if anyone cared to read it. Once people have the opportunity to act anonymously, they really do convert moral inches into moral miles. The next thing you know, we see people doing things they never would in their normal inch-living day.

You know, I also wrote a separate column that talked about swearing, and when to do it. It has become clear that many people have never learned how to properly swear. For example: A cheerful reader left a comment as follows: “I have no words to describe myself, so [expletive] you.” Funny thing: It seems that this reader did, in fact, have words to describe their - what would you say - emotions? Their choice of words just lacked any serious effort at creativity.

The most damning thing that I experienced over the past couple of days was the easiness from which blanket statements were thrown by blog readers over certain issues and topics. Some readers would do better by throwing a blanket over their monitor and keyboard – nothing short of terminating usage.

In defense of the writer, Isa Gillette, I will say a few things. With the content written in her blog post, it should be evident that her experience in the Lair was not a random occurrence for her; it was a recurrence. On multiple mornings, she deals with the same employee who makes it difficult for her and everyone else to get in and out of the Lair quickly. While the problem may be pointed to the individual employee, I think it would be valuable to consider the possibility of an understaffing during those hours. Long lines at the registers are not something entirely new to the Lair.

Furthermore, at the bottom of Ms. Gillette’s post, there was a link to Jose Martinez’ blog post, which essentially offered an opinion of the complete opposite. The reader would do well to consider this before vocalizing – what I would call – emotional comments, which seem to be completely devoid of rationalization.


-Alex Tandy