Am I a Closet Catholic??

A person who called herself "Yabby" on an Online Opinion message board, recently accused me of being a Catholic solely on the basis that I am pro-life. Even after I told her I was not, she persisted in saying I must be "connected". Yabby looked up my blog and then wrote that I had a whole heap of anti-abortion people listed, most of whom have links to the Catholic church. Hmm. Perhaps she doesn't know the difference between Catholics and protestants. As a protestant, I am nearly as likely to be criticisized for being actively pro-life as encouraged. Two people have told me to make sure I note that what I'm doing isn't really useful, as if I do "save any babies" they'll probably grow up and go to hell. Many people are encouraging too, but there is certainly a lot of feeling that I'd be better off spending the time I take on pr0-life work "preaching the gospel". I don't mind these friendly reminders. They help me keep anything I do about abortion in perspective. The gospel is indeed far more important.

My exchange with Yabby reminded me of emails I received last year as the President of Students Organised to Uphold Life at the University of Tasmania. When I received the following emails, I sent them on to a few Catholic SOUL members, and they found them extremely funny. Here is my correspondance with our critic:

The original email, titled “Message for SOUL”, on 5 March.

get your rosaries of our ovaries

6-3-05

Hi Danielle,

Thank you for your message. I can assure you that we at SOUL have absolutely no interest in your ovaries. Nor do the majority of us have any interest in rosaries. Some of our members are Catholic, but they do not make up the majority.

Your cute rhyme represents a common stereotype, but it really has absolutely nothing to do with what we are trying to do.

Pro-life people are commonly assumed to be solely religious, but that is just not true. See these two sites if you are interested.
http://www.godlessprolifers.org/home.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Parliament/8383/

From Sherrin Ward.

6-3-05

Ha Ha Ha,

You Catholics should just tell the truth about SOUL
and that is just a recruiting ground for picking up
unsuspecting young catholic girls who will be driven
to a life of submisiveness or young boys who priests
would be interested in.

You should be all sterilized the lot of you

People who assume all pro-life people are Catholic do two things, neither of which are helpful to their cause.

1. They attack the person (inaccurately in my case), rather than the arguments persented.
2. They underestimate their opposition, which is never a smart thing to do.