Position Papers – November by Position Papers

Number 523 November 2018 €3 · £2.50 · $4

A review of Catholic affairs

Interview with John Waters MICHAEL DUGGAN

Reflection on Two Referenda TIM O’SULLIVAN

Film: Gosnell

MICHAEL KIRKE JOHN MULDERIG

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Number 523 · November 2018

Editorial by Fr Gavan Jennings

In Passing: A Victory in Hollywood - Against the Odds by Michael Kirke

Reflection on Two Referenda by Tim O’Sullivan

Postmodern Metaphysics: Violence Vs. Music by Fr Dan Steele

Interview with John Waters by Michael Duggan

Hoax offers hope that post-modernist madness is fading by Michael Cook

Books: The Sexual State: how a rolling revolution is destroying lives by Jennifer Roback Morse

Films: Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer by John Mulderig

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Rev. Gavan Jennings Michael Kirke, Pat Hanratty, Brenda McGann Liam Ó hAlmhain Dick Kearns Eblana Solutions

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Editorial

he month of November is traditionally dedicated to prayer for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. A theme which is very much linked to this is that of the Communion of Saints: the mysterious communion in holiness which pervades the Church, which indeed “is the Church” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 946). We give this mystical union a special name, that of “communion” (in Latin communio and in Greek koinonia). It lies at the very core of the Church; it is the love which springs from the heart of God the Father and is poured out on the world through the Holy Spirit given us by Christ (cf. Rom. 5: 5). One of the effects of this communio is the visible union of Christians with one another. Christ prayed for such union in the Garden of Gethsemane: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me (John 17: 20-21). Jesus presents unity as the quality of the Church which would make credible her claim to a divine origin. In the light of this we must look at the work of the devil in the world. The devil seeks to divide. His very name comes from the Greek verb diabolein, to accuse, divide, break apart. His object is the very antithesis of communion; it is to divide men from God in the first place, spouses from one another, children from their parents, communities into factions, and whole countries into fratricidal strife. And the Church is not immune of course from the action of the devil; quite the contrary: she is his principal target. Recently the Holy Father has reminded of this quite forcefully in a homily given on September 11 in Rome. In it he spoke of the devil as the “Great Accuser” “who is always going about to accuse us before God, to destroy. Satan: he is the ‘Great Accuser’. And when I enter into this logic of accusing, of cursing, seeking to do evil to others, I enter into the logic of the ‘Great Accuser’ who is the ‘Destroyer,’ who does not know the word mercy, does not know, has never lived it.”

In the Church, the visible unity – which is the living out of communio – has as its focus and source the Holy Father, who is uniquely “the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful” (CCC 882). We Catholics must remind ourselves of this frequently, and especially now when the spirit of accusation seems to be sweeping through society. It appears to me that the trauma the Church has experienced here in Ireland over the past years has had one very positive side-effect: that of uniting Catholics with one another. The intense opposition that we experience coming from without has made us realise to some degree that unity – communio – is more important than ever. St Josemaría Escrivá went as far as to call the fomenting of unity within the Church as the “principal apostolate” of Christians: “The principal apostolate we Christians must carry out in the world, and the best witness we can give of our faith, is to help bring about a climate of genuine charity within the Church” (Friends of God, 226). Before we make a remark about the Holy Father or other ecclesiastics, or indeed about any entity within the Church, we would do well to ask ourselves: will this remark warm or chill the charity Christ prayed for to be the hallmark of his Church?

In Passing: A Victory in Hollywood Against the Odds by Michael Kirke

have read the book and recently watched Mark Cousins' exhaustive documentary, The Story of Film - all five DVD disks of it. It is very, very comprehensive. Hollywood is well and truly put in its place in this account of the history of cinema. It played its part - a leading part in some decades, but now is really a bit player in the history of this art.

casualties. The backstory of one film reveals just how destructive of truth a place like Hollywood is. Nick Searcy is an American character actor. He has now directed and stars in a new film, which premiered in US theatres on October 12. He did so and risked his future career on the gamble – not because it threatened to be a box-office flop, but simply because of the truth the film set out to tell us.

The trouble is that it still wields power. Some months ago, in National Review, an article appeared which gives us some sense of the weak and dishonest culture which allows Hollywood to continue to crush goodness, beauty and truth. The truth about abortion is one of its

Searcy was aware of something that really baffled him. "It is”, he says,”nearly impossible to find an adult person who does not have an opinion on the issue of abortion, and yet how little we

all know about it — how it is done, what the laws are surrounding it, how it is regulated, legislated, and practiced. I wanted to share that knowledge."

runs on fear. It is quite common for actors to think that every job they get could be their last. “You’ll never have lunch in this town again” hasn’t become a cliché for nothing.”

To do so he produced Gosnell.

But he had read Andrew Klavan’s script for the film. Not only was he captivated by the horrific facts of the case of Kermit Gosnell. He was stunned by the knowledge the script provided about the facts of the procedure of abortion.

No sooner had the word got out that the project pitched by Ann McElhinney and Kevin McAleer, the Irish husband and wife team behind it, was about to go into production than the machine began to work against it. Searcy’s name was in the front line for the attack.

“I have always hated movies that preach at me, that try to manipulate me and tell me what to think about a story rather than just telling me the story. After a long period of developing a shooting script, the producers and I set out to make a movie that would inform and benefit people on both sides of this issue, no matter how passionate. I saw nothing to be gained from a film that preached or demonized one side or the other.”

“I have been asked, over the years since we shot Gosnell in the fall of 2015, why I chose to take on the challenge of directing such a controversial project. I usually say that I did it for the same reason that I guesthosted the Rush Limbaugh show — I thought it would get me more work in Hollywood. “But seriously — I did have some trepidation. I knew that I could be demonized or shunned by many of my colleagues in the industry. This is a town that

This, he says, is a story about a serial murderer who was allowed to operate for 27 years. Fear of

the politics of abortion is what enabled him to continue, undetected, for decades. What this monster did and how and why he was allowed to get away with it for so long are equally shocking. He believes that they succeeded. The film has a gritty “just the facts, ma’am” style, is well acted, with powerful, moving performances by Dean Cain, Sarah Jane Morris, and Michael Beach.

declined to work on this film, not because of its quality but because of the fear of reprisal or even ostracism by the groupthink herd in Hollywood. More than once, I was asked questions like “Are you crazy?” or “Are you sure you want to do this?” “Three years ago, when we made this film, there wasn’t even a candidate Trump, let alone a President Trump. The climate in this town is more toxic and hateful now than it has ever been for someone right of center. Put it this way: if they think you don’t have the right to eat in a restaurant with your family if you disagree with them, why would they hesitate to exclude you from the business because you don’t vote like they do?

The film was made three years ago. Why did it take so long to get to the screens? Searcy admits his naivety about how the film would be received. “I truly believed that if we did it the right way, even the so-called Hollywood Left would appreciate our fairness in telling the story, see its value, and, furthermore, share our goals in getting this important story before the public.

This film had to go around Hollywood to make its way to the audience. For McElhinney, McAleer and Searcy and the others involved in the production it was a long and difficult road. Just as there is a grossly underrepresented citizenry in public life there is an

“Sadly, I was wrong. As I said, this town runs on fear — the fear not only of failure but, more insidiously, of being shunned because of your political opinions. Many people, some of them good friends of mine,

underserved audience out there, an audience who wants to see truthful movies about serious issues and does not want to be told what to think by sermonizing, patronizing, or condescending filmmakers. In Searcy’s view – and it is his hope as well, “If Hollywood is unable or unwilling to serve that audience, then a new Hollywood needs to be created, a Hollywood that is not controlled by fear. This film will become one more example of why we need to stop letting fear dictate what we, as artists, do in the film industry.”

figure in the next edition of Cousins' book, which is in its own way a history, not of an entertainment industry but a history of the subversion of culture, good, bad and indifferent which is a big part of the history of cinema.

I wonder if this subversive production, subverting the crippling culture of death gripping our society, might not

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR

Michael Kirke is a freelance writer, a regular contributor to Position Papers, and a widely read blogger at Garvan Hill (www.garvan.wordpress.com). His views can be responded to at mjgkirke@gmail.com.

Reflection on Two Referenda by Tim O’Sullivan

he day after the abortion referendum result, I stood at the entrance to a Dublin shop and surveyed the Sunday newspaper headlines. The mood across all papers was one of celebration. The uniform message might be summarized in this way: “Historic referendum result. Landslide win for the Yes side. Great celebrations. No more lonely journeys for Irish women.” Not a single headline suggested that this might be a grim rather than a wonderful day for Ireland and for future generations of the unborn.

singing the same song on such a fundamental issue. I did amend my own reaction a little on reflection, by acknowledging to myself that some of those Sunday papers did carry good articles from the “No” side in the referendum. Nevertheless, there was a basic truth in my reaction: our country does face a grave problem when all the organs of the press are at one, or virtually so, on fundamental issues. This impression of lack of freedom has also been reinforced by the threats made, post-referendum, to the conscience rights of doctors and nurses.

My instinctive reaction in that moment was one of deep sadness. I felt strongly that I was no longer living in a fully free society if all the organs of the press were

On the Monday after the referendum (28 May), the Irish Times letters page carried the heading, “A resounding and emphatic yes.” This presentation may have brought a smile to the faces of veterans of the 1983 referendum. At that time, the reaction of the paper to the 2 to 1 vote for the Pro-Life Amendment was to talk about “the two nations” and to focus on the size of the “No” vote. In fact, the Yes percentage in 1983 was marginally higher than that in 2018. I do acknowledge that turnout was ten points higher in 2018. Nevertheless, a fair summary might be that there was a clear majority for “Yes” in both 1983 and 2018, with a sizeable “ No” vote on both occasions.

backed Repeal and a much weakened Church, along with the various pro-life groups, supported the No side so that a 34% vote was a reasonably solid achievement, even if deeply disappointing to those of us who campaigned for a No result.

In many ways, however, the No vote in 2018 was more impressive than the No vote in 1983. Back then, the No side had the support of the Government, the national media, the trade unions and a large part of the Establishment, while the Church backed, though it did not initiate, the Amendment proposal. In 2018, the Government, the media, and the Establishment generally all

For the sake of historical truth, however, I think that it is important to offer some alternative reflections on the 1981–‘83 debate, particularly when there is such a “party line” on the subject in the media and in academic publications.

In the aftermath of the referendum, and indeed for a lot of the previous thirty-five years, the media attacked both the ProLife Amendment itself and the “vicious” or “bitter” campaign which brought it about. Given that the media has now won its victory on the Eighth Amendment, it might not seem useful to spend much more time discussing the original debate that led to its insertion into the Constitution.

On the Monday after the referendum, an Irish Times article by Stephen Collins reported on how an Anti-Amendment

Government Minister was targeted “in a particularly vicious way” during the 1981–‘83 debate, including through “toxic” phone calls and “gruesome foetal images” being left at his door. Other prominent people reported similar experiences in the paper. That treatment of the Minister, and any other similar actions during the original campaign, were totally wrong.

pre-vote intervention of Archbishop Ryan of Dublin as being measured and detailed and as engaging carefully with the arguments.

Nevertheless, this media account of the 1983 referendum debate lacks balance and fairness. To offer some of my own personal memories, I was a humble canvasser in the same South Dublin hinterland as the former Minister, and in a constituency which eventually rejected the Amendment, and had multiple experiences of courteous interaction, and discussion, with people of a different viewpoint to mine. The same courteous but vigorous debate occurred in my workplace and among friends and at a long AGM meeting of my trade union branch. Spokespeople for the proposed Amendment on TV (like Julia Vaughan and William Binchy) were the epitome of courtesy while I remember the

Abortion is a very difficult and important subject and the debate in the 1980s lasted two and a half years and was very intense. Ireland had never previously had a public discussion on abortion and some on the pro-amendment side were genuinely shocked that some prominent figures apparently wanted to leave the door open for abortion, and reacted accordingly. To say this is not to justify any abusive behavior but to place the emotion of the time in some context. The media’s concern about vitriol or unacceptable campaigning is actually quite one-sided. The systematic tearing down of No posters by Yes activists received little coverage in the 2018 campaign. Nor has much coverage been given in Ireland over the years to the vitriol and intimidation to which pro-life reformers in Britain, like John Corrie MP or David Alton MP, were subject when they tried to introduce even modest

restrictions to the 1967 British Abortion Act. A good deal of the vitriol that I remember from 1983 actually came from the press, although it is itself so critical of the vitriol of others! Virulent articles come to mind not only in publications like Hot Press and In Dublin but also in the mainstream media. There was a bizarre sameness to the “investigative reports” across various publications on the ProLife Amendment Campaign, which strongly criticized a “rightwing” Catholic pressure group, political manipulation and conservative “backlash’. There was just one similar investigation that I can recall of the AntiAmendment side and there were certainly no media investigations in 2018 of the radical proabortion views of Yes campaign leaders. In 1983, many journalists felt that the “shackles” of Catholic Ireland were being thrown off. The clause on the special position of the Catholic Church had gone from the Constitution, contraception had been legalised, divorce was on the way (though it turned out to be a tougher battle than was

perhaps anticipated in the early 1980s), the Pope’s visit had come and gone; and yet now, in the media perspective, a bizarre attempt was being made to turn the clock back to the 1950s by inserting a Catholic clause in the Constitution! Those perspectives help to explain the sheer anger in the media coverage of the referendum – reflected in phrases such as “moral majority” and “moral monopoly” – at the time and since. Some media coverage also reflected inter-generational tensions – young journalists with the benefit of a university education, and huge confidence in their various brands of Seventies socialism, were scoffing at what they saw as the unsophisticated arguments of a previous generation with fewer educational opportunities. Commentators often talk about the more recent 2015 and 2018 referenda as being a “wake-up” call for the Church. It could be argued, however, that the very biased media coverage of the original pro-life referendum back in the 1980s ought to have been a major wake-up call for the Church then and that we (all of us) failed

to respond adequately – for example, by failing to develop alternative media to a sufficient degree. Obviously, Irish Christians must focus now on the situation we face today rather than on the circumstances of the 1980s. We need to take action in the present in support of women in crisis pregnancies or in support of genuinely pro-life media and, more broadly, in the transmission of the faith. Moving forward also means, however, reclaiming our history – in this area as in many others. While it is very regrettable that the Eighth Amendment was repealed in 2018, it is important to continue to affirm that its insertion in the Constitution in

1983 was a very positive step, which saved many lives and prevented the introduction of a liberal abortion regime in Ireland for more than thirty years. People may soon begin to re-think their attitudes to the Eighth Amendment as the sheer injustices of abortion legislation become manifest. It is also to be hoped that future generations of Irish people will look back much more positively than the voters of 2018, or our media and political leaders, on the Pro-Life Amendment and its defenders and on its major contribution to Irish society at a time when the social pressures for abortion were so strong, in Ireland and throughout the Western world.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Tim O’Sullivan has degrees in arts and social policy and taught healthcare policy at third level. He is a regular contributor to Position Papers.

Postmodern Metaphysics: Violence Vs. Music by Fr Dan Steele

“O

wned!” “Destroyed!” “Obliterated!” shouts the clickbait describing the seemingly endless YouTube videos of the infamous Jordan B. Peterson debates. The Peterson revolution has ignited a full assault on postmodern philosophy and its constituents. Leading the charge with a tweed jacket and PowerPoint presentations while wielding Jungian archetypes, evolutionary psychology, and lobsters, Peterson blazed the trail as the first intellectual to dissent publicly from postmodern dogma enshrined in academia. As a result, countless podcasts, Twitter wars, and university speaking events have surfaced from both the intellectual right

and left, uniting thinkers as diverse as Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro and atheist Sam Harris in challenging the tenets of postmodernism. The coalition, in my estimation, is united against the postmodern rejection of the Greek philosophical concept of being as physis or nature (the physical world). Postmodernism is inherently anti-realist, possessing a distaste for fixed, universal scientific or philosophical definitions of nature, holding the impossibility of knowing meaningfully any independent existing reality. In fact, some thinkers like Jacques Derrida believe in an unsurpassable chasm between human

consciousness and the external world, which renders all attempts to explain or define the physical world as merely nominal word games. Language does not connect human consciousness to reality but only connects language with more language. Frederick Nietzsche is a key transitional figure between modern scientific realism and the sounding of the first postmodern alternative. In his book On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche argues for leaving behind traditional philosophical categories in favour of the perspectival nature of knowledge. Perspectivism rejects the classical definitions of nature and metaphysics, claiming that no objective understanding of the world can transcend cultural or subjective designations. In his famous question “What is truth?”, Nietzsche responded that truth is “but a sum of human concepts, which have been enhanced and canonized poetically and rhetorically.” For Nietzsche, then, “truth” is historically and culturally conditioned and therefore available from many particular

vantage points. In this view, no objective facts or knowledge of things-in-themselves exist, but only different circumstances and individual perspectives. Rather than a universal physis or nature to which the material world conforms, postmodernism turns to the diverse and unique traits of distinctive cultures. Since truth is seen as merely a product of human culture, physis is fundamentally malleable and constructed by the dominant cultural ethos. Because language is believed to have no connection to the external world, the truth of physis remains concealed from human knowing. The purpose of language therefore is not to arrive at the truth of things, but to persuade or attract persons in solidarity to a particular movement or world view. “Seek not to find the foundation and conditions of truth,” writes one postmodern author, “but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.” Postmodernism is less a school of thought and more a political activist strategy wherein power is held in greater esteem.

The theme of diversity and difference are a postmodern commonplace. Derrida (hold your breath) reverses the classical understanding of the identity of things, positing that a thing can only be discovered by what it is not, as opposed to Aristotle’s notion that a thing must first exist as something before it can differ from another. Derrida writes that difference is the “primordial dispossession” that allows thought to begin, and that the absence always precedes the immediacy of an entity's being. A thing is never present in and of itself, he states, but only understood and vindicated by its relation to other things. Therefore, there is no truth in things themselves without the presence of a difference. Critiquing the prevailing tenets of postmodern thought, John Milbank described the movement as variants of an “ontology of violence.” Because it is constructed on the theme of difference, he says, whether it be ontological, cultural, or grammatological, an inescapable competition occurs in

postmodernism between beings caught in an aimless falling away from order. Milbank’s insights highlight the postmodern belief that as the material world progresses from the singular point of origin, entities collide and displace one another as they strive to exist, resulting in a chain of causes leading to unrelated differences. Since postmodernism conceives material being to have no organizing ground, no schema or goal orders the natural world. Creation is determined by boundless flow of diversity, setting entities over and against each another in a competition of becoming. The analogy that best describes postmodern ontology is “music” without a composer. When slamming a hand down on a piano the diversity of notes clash with one another all at once, striving to be the loudest instead of working together to form a harmonious melody. In this postmodern world of foundationless “truths” composed of an endless multiplicity of cultural narratives, no overarching truth is available to set a single nuanced idea

above any particular tribal rhetoric. Intellectual discourse devolves into an all-or-nothing shouting match that excludes any attempts at a synthesis through analysis or dialogue. Postmodernism sets the pursuit of truth in competition with the power of cultural or political rhetoric to overcome any intellectual disparity, believing that truth itself is a weapon of oppression used by the cultural elite. In order to achieve gender equality, for example, it is claimed that gender fluidity must replace traditional binary gender designations. In order to close the wealth gap between the poor and the rich, socialism must replace capitalism. In order to have a pluralistic and equitable society, tolerance and nonjudgement must replace free speech and religious dogma. In order to overcome “oppressive” Western meta-narratives, emotions must replace truth, and social theory must replace biological science. Christian metaphysics offers an alternative vision to the competition and violence of postmodernism. The great

Christian minds of Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Dante, and J.R.R. Tolkien have all likened the doctrine of creation to music. Acting as a cosmic composer, writes David Bentley Hart, God’s ordering word sings individual entities into existence note by note, and harmonizes the multiplicity of sounds into a “polyphony of polyphonies”. The manifold diversity of created entities functions not violently, but aesthetically, as a symphonic and rhythmic compilation of praise. The divine tune is the grounding form and physis of creation, the unity that harmonizes all diversity. According to Thomas Aquinas, God designed a multifarious world because no one creature alone can adequately reflect God’s plentitude. All things at all levels – from a speck of dust, the dinosaurs, the black holes and myriad constellations of stars – are united in the hierarchical ordering of God’s symphonic artistry, which reveals his glory in dynamic and variegated intonations. However, sin and violence introduce harsh cacophonies of

evil that disrupt the polyphonic intricacies of God’s music. Vice and disordered desires become a cosmic remix, an alternate track of the mundane and ugly. And how does all this reflect on God? J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings called The Silmarillion, an allegorical creation account of Middle-earth. In the epic work, the conflict between the creature Melkor and the creator Eru Ilúvatar parallels the ancient battle of Lucifer and God. In response to the evil that Melkor introduced into creation, Eru Ilúvatar responds that “no one can alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.” Rather than allow the intervals of evil to disrupt the music of creation, Tolkien brilliantly depicts God as playing into it, incorporating the evil into the song, using it to bring about a grandiloquent victory of beauty and love. The Church Fathers saw by the Incarnation of Christ God’s introduction of a new Word into the song. Through the Paschal Mystery and the

institution of the sacraments, God begins to restore the world’s proper rhythm. “The soul that is virtuous,” Augustine says, “is the one that turns its rhythms not to the domination of others, but to their benefit,” and as the soul grows in virtue through participation in the sacraments, it harmonizes itself with the melody and cadence of the cosmic praise and restores God’s order of love. Christian metaphysics, therefore, as described by David Bentley Hart, is ultimately an “ontology of peace.” The Peterson revolution marks the beginning of something new in philosophy today. His movement has unofficially united atheist proponents of evolutionary biology and neuroscience with AristotelianThomistic religious thinkers in a burgeoning neo-modern or postpostmodern defense of the natural order. While atheists and Thomists may disagree about first principles and ethics, both agree that physis is a vitally important foundation for human knowledge. For example, a recent Twitter poll by

mathematical physicist Eric Weinstein, a self-identified progressive atheist, asked: “Assume that the fields of Gender Studies and Biology came to disagree on a matter of gender and sex. Which would you be likely to believe more?” Out of the 60,103 participants, 95 percent voted for biological science to adjudicate the disagreement. Interestingly enough, Weinstein reported the remaining five percent made the loudest and most discontented responses on the message boards, indicating a majority preference for the hard sciences despite the politically incorrect backlash from social theorists. Postmodern anti-realist ideology imagines the created world without a nature or goal. Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote profusely about this problem in his critiques of modern art, spotting the seeds of postmodernism. Before completing his licentiates in both theology and philosophy, Balthasar’s formal education included a doctorate in literature that resulted in a three-volume tome on the state of German

literature and philosophy entitled: The Apocalypse of the German Soul. Just after the publication of his thesis, in 1940 Balthasar published Die Kunst in der Zeit and its response, Antikritik, describing the dilemma of modern art as a struggle between authentic creativity and nihilism. Analyzing dadaism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism, Balthasar pinpointed the underlying crisis as an attempt to express content without form. These schools of art portray life as a shapeless ball of clay, in what appears to be a scatterbrained amalgamation of abstract shapes and colors that hint at a disjointed and dysphoric semblance of the human person (or not). The traditional material signifiers used to express profound philosophical questions now fail to connect to any coherent sequence, therefore dislodging truth from physis in order to let the composition float freely away from objective conventions. Postmodern anti-realism appears to be the biggest challenge for the Church in the years to come. In

the difficult and sensitive conversations about sexual ethics and human identity, the Church now faces typically postmodern allegations of hatred and phobia. The Christian doctrine of creation – the most basic and fundamental belief that God ordered the world according to his wisdom and purpose – offers a metaphysical alternative. The doctrine upholds a plan for both creation and the human body that leads to human flourishing. Vatican II affirmed that through the Incarnation, the music of creation reaches its climax, revealing Christ as the archetype of human nature, the divine template for human authenticity and vivacity. The Christological paragon for human nature and

all of creation proposes a perennial standard of what is human that transcends particular cultures; it offers a standard not based on the flux of human conventions or disordered desires, but upon conformity to Christ’s divine nature, which elevates humanity to the truth of God’s tune. Christian metaphysics, therefore, is ultimately a way of reconciliation and of peace, bringing fallen creation together with the unending crescendo of the celestial chorus, recapitulating the serial composition, note by note, into the perfect form of Christ.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Fr Dan Steele is a diocesan priest of the diocese of Yakima, Washington, and is currently serving as parochial vicar at Christ the King Parish in Richland. He is the cofounder of beautificfilms.org and is working to complete a License in Sacred Theology. This article first appeared on www.wordonfire.org and is reprinted with the kind permission of the editors.

Interview with John Waters by Michael Duggan

ohn Waters’s career in Irish journalism lasted for more than thirty highly successful years before he quit what he thinks has become an “ideological cesspit”. Waters is now one of the country’s “last men standing” in defending the Catholic faith, though he is unsparing in his criticism of the Irish Church. His new book Give Us Back the Bad Roads will be published this month. With the dust settling on the referendums that took a wrecking ball to Catholic Ireland, I wanted to ask Waters to survey the ruins. We had the following exchange over email.

Chesterton once wrote that a religion is dead “when it has ceased to dwell on the positive and happy side of its visions, and thinks only of the stern or punitive side”. Does this description fit the fate of Irish Catholicism, at least in part? JOHN WATERS In part, yes. In the post-famine period, the Church was forced into the role of moral government and required to restore order in what had become a deeply chaotic situation. One of the legacies of this is that the moralistic note became dominant in Irish Catholicism. In truth, we were told very little about the joyousness of the Christian proposal. We

were never taught to connect Christianity with the wonder and mystery and glory of life. We just assumed that reality was some dark and forbidding state that was ameliorated by the prospect of the next life. Nobody told us that eternity had actually begun.

firm to their respective faiths, the now faith-less Irish would become “spectators at the carnival of belief”.

Do you see any figures emerging from the clergy and hierarchy in Ireland who might explain Catholicism better, who might take the fight back to the people in that way? JW There are a couple of bishops now who offer some hope, but they appear to be oppressed by the collegiality of mediocrity that defines the episcopal whole. They are thoughtful and intelligent and wise, but they need to take their courage in their hands and help us to wrest the Church from the grasp of the mediocrities. About ten years ago, you predicted that, as Ireland welcomed more people from other cultures who still held

JW The other faiths have not as yet become fully visible in Ireland, other than perhaps Islam, which people tend to walk around without saying much. But at a deeper level, there is evidence of the syndrome I wrote about in the willingness of Irish people to dismantle their own belief system out of a kind of deference to outsiders. In part, this is a post-colonial tendency. What it leads to is that there is no core culture, merely a space around which other cultures are invited to build themselves as freely and as fully as they wish. There are signs of this even now. That will be a very interesting phase: when we survey the glory of other cultures in full bloom on Irish soil, while we have nothing left of what we once were. It will be a sad, bracing, but ultimately challenging moment. I hope I live to see it.

Returning to Chesterton, he found his way to his adult faith by reconnecting with childhood and the “submerged sunrise of wonder”. You have also written about the feelings of wonder you felt as a child. They gave you “a profound sense of the religious reality”, but nobody ever told you that this is what it was. However, given all of the antagonism that surrounds discussion about religion in Ireland now, are you still able to tap back into wonder as the wellspring of faith? JW Yes. Pseudo-rationality has become the core form of thinking in our culture now: what Pope Benedict characterised as the thinking of the bunker: the bunker that man has built for himself to live in, excluding Mystery, including the Mystery of himself. But I can exit the bunker at will, simply by going through a series of rational steps. I imagine that I have just arrived here, having perhaps tumbled through space. I

think: what if I had never existed until now, and suddenly had the opportunity to be here, to have this life? This enables me to bypass the logic of the world, the culture, the media, even the everyday sense that we depend upon to engage in our essential transactions. When I do this, I become astonished, as though for the first time. I cannot believe I am here. I start to wonder where “here” is? What is it? What am I? What or Who makes me? I become conscious of myself as governed from without, because I know I do not make myself and have no memory of coming up with the idea that I should look like this and speak like this and arrive in this place. This is the natural state of man, but the conditioning of the bunker hides this from us. We take everything for granted. We are all-knowing; but all-knowing only about the bunker and its logics. In this state of wonderment, I can look backwards at the bunker, having left it, and see it for

what it is: a construction designed to deny man’s true nature.

have no choice but to leave the bunker, and find themselves. Nothing terrifies them as that does.

Have you ever contemplated leaving Ireland? JW The question is: when I think of “leaving Ireland”, what do I mean? Certainly not the landscape, or the history of courage, or the literature, or the personality that connects the people to the landscape. When I think I might escape from Ireland I mean escaping from particular narrow, limited, unimaginative ways of thinking and seeing. From those who purport to lead us, politically and culturally, and those who follow them blindly, who question nothing, who care about nothing except remaining within the fold of the mediocre. Nothing frightens them more than the idea of being cast out of that number. That is why they become so angry when people like me start to question things. The anger is really fear: fear that you may be able to place the truth before them in such a way that they will

So, I want to get away from that, yes. But that is not Ireland, not the continuous Ireland that I know and love. It will pass. I may not live to see the end of it, but I know it is not definitive. I am too attached to the continuous idea of Ireland to be able to leave, or even to see the present usurpers as having anything to do with that Ireland. If I thought for a moment that Ireland was represented by Leo Varadkar and Simon Harris, I would definitively leave. For certain. For good. But I do not feel that. They are interlopers, fools. And, by the same token, I cannot be happy any place else. I sometimes go away and feel relief that I am in a place I do not have to care about in that way. I go to Andalusia, which reminds me a little of Ireland when I was a child.

But I know it is not my country and never will be. A better day will dawn in Ireland. I may not be here for it, but I know it is coming. If I did not believe that, I would not be entitled to call myself a Christian. That is part of the promise we hold to: that we can leave our loved ones behind in the knowledge that they will be looked after as we were. That’s all I can hope for now, as these terrible days unfold themselves. I know a better day is coming, when every tear will be wiped away.

This article first appeared in the October 12, 2018 issue of the Catholic Herald, and is reprinted with the kind permission of the Editor.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Michael Duggan is a freelance writer. John Waters is an Irish former journalist who has written for: Hot Press, The Sunday Tribune, In Dublin magazine, Magill and The Irish Times. He is author of Jiving at the Crossroads (1991), An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Ireland (Duckworth, 1997) and Was it for this? Why Ireland lost the plot (Transworld Ireland, 2012).

Hoax offers hope that post-modernist madness is fading James A. Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, by Michael Cook

and Peter Boghossian / Mike Nayna

ccusations of abuse of power are the most powerful weapons in public debate today. Whether it’s bullying, sexual abuse, homophobia, transphobia, or racial prejudice, an unproven allegation can leave a life in ruins, thanks to the power of the Twittermob, amplified by the internet.

today’s postmodernist climate – common sense, due process, and the rules of evidence prevailed over hysteria.

This was on centre stage in its rawest form in the bitter debate over President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. However weak their case was, Trump’s opponents thought that tainting his nominee as a rapist and abuser would bring him down. Amazingly – at least in

In a serendipitous coincidence, something similar happened last week in academia. Three young academics revealed that they had hoaxed major journals in gender studies and related disciplines.

Trump’s victory could mark a turning point in political debate. It shows that the Twittermob’s tactic of smearing its targets as bigots or abusers will not always succeed.

They had submitted twenty concocted articles applying post-

modernist critical analysis to topics ranging from canine rape to fat bodybuilding to Hooters “breastaurants”. Until the hoax was revealed by the Wall Street Journal, ten had been favourably reviewed, seven of these had been accepted and four had actually been published.

Absurd? Not to the academics who edit the journal. A peerreviewer described it as “an innovative and valuable piece of scholarship”. The editor was so impressed that she selected it as one of twelve studies in feminist geography in the journal’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebration.

From the vantage point of an ordinary reader, the most startlingly implausible of these was published by Gender, Place, and Culture, the leading feminist geography journal and a top-ten gender studies journal. The title says it all: “Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon”.

When the hoax was exposed, the article was immediately retracted. But it’s unlikely that the editors had learned much from the experience. The next one to be published was “Wearable cameras, in-visible breasts: intimate spatialities of feminist research with wearable camcorders in Istanbul”.

Its theme was that dog parks were “rape-condoning spaces” and places of rampant canine rape culture and systemic oppression against “the oppressed dog”. A close study through the lens of black feminist criminology gave insights into how men can be trained to give up habits of sexual violence and bigotry.

The hoaxers are James Lindsay, a PhD in mathematics, Peter Boghossian, a philosopher, and Helen Pluckrose, editor of an online magazine called Aero. Their beef was that in some fields in the humanities, scholarship is “based less upon finding truth and more upon attending to social grievances.” What they describe as “grievance studies” – their catch-all term for cultural studies, identity

studies, gender studies and critical theory and their subdisciplines – is now dominant in many universities. “Their scholars increasingly bully students, administrators, and other departments into adhering to their worldview.” But, the hoaxers contend, “This worldview is not scientific, and it is not rigorous.” They had a lot of fun writing the articles. “Our Struggle is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism” was accepted (but never published) by Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work. The hoaxers took a chapter from Hitler’s ranting autobiography, Mein Kampf, and rewrote it with feminist buzzwords. One of the reviewers described it as “an interesting paper seeking to further the aims of inclusive feminism by attending to the issue of allyship/solidarity”. What they described as their “most appalling paper” reached the seriously-being-considered

stage at Hypatia, a venue “for cutting-edge work in feminist philosophy”. In it, Maria Gonzalez (a fictitious name) of the (fictitious) Feminist Activist Collective for Truth (FACT) argued that classroom teachers should zero in on privileged students and penalise them “by declining to hear their contributions, deriding their input, intentionally speaking over them, and making them sit on the floor in chains”. “Making them sit on the floor in chains”? Like slaves? Like BDSM? Like dogs? This passed muster? Yes, it did. One peerreviewer wrote: “This is a solid essay that, with revision, will make a strong contribution to the growing literature on addressing epistemic injustice in the classroom.” Had the Wall Street Journal not exposed them, the hoaxers would have scored another publication. Which seems to bear out the hoaxers’ belief that any idea, no matter how “nutty or inhumane” can be published provided that it is cloaked with the appropriate

jargon and references “grievance studies” scholarship. Another of their papers questioned the value of modern science. “Stars, Planets, and Gender: A Framework for a Feminist Astronomy” argued that astronomy is inherently sexist and Western. To correct this bias, feminist, queer, and indigenous astrology (star signs and all that) must be incorporated into the study of astronomy. They modelled this jaw-dropping argument on a published proposal for a “feminist glaciology”. This appeared in Progress in Human Geography and has been cited seventeen times in other articles and downloaded 6,500 times. If glaciers fit into a feminist framework, why not galaxies?

into ‘hard’ sciences, such as physics and astronomy.” The editors of Women’s Studies International Forum asked the hoaxers to revise the paper and resubmit it – meaning that it was quite probable that it would eventually be published. Does any of this matter? After all, who cares what nonsense wild-eyed academics are churning out in obscure journals? It does.

A peer-reviewer commented that “For existing proponents of feminist science studies, this also makes sense as a next step – to cast a feminist eye on scientific disciplines beyond the ‘soft’ sciences of biology and environmental studies, and to move increasingly towards critiques of and interventions

Firstly, they are teaching students who will graduate believing that there are no objective, verifiable truths and that morality is merely a reflection of power. These views filter into the media, education, government and politics. Ultimately they corrupt all public discourse by turning every difference of opinion into a test of who can scream loudest. That's what America discovered during the Kavanaugh nomination circus. Second, by propping up absurd claims with the paraphernalia of

respected scholarship – peer review, respectable journals, technical language and so on– “grievance studies” provides the Twittermob with the pitchforks it needs to lynch its targets. No matter how odious the claim, it can be supported with the scholarly references it needs to make it plausible. So Kavanaugh’s nomination and the success of the “grievance studies” hoax both suggest that there is hope for reasoned argument. Perhaps the postmodernist tsunami has rushed as far up the beach as it can go.

against naked emotion and using common sense to push back against inhumanity. “We hope this will give people – especially those who believe in liberalism, progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice,” they explain, “a clear reason to look at the identitarian madness coming out of the academic and activist left and say, ‘No, I will not go along with that. You do not speak for me.’” If only someone would do the world the favour of doing the same for the Alice in Wonderland world of transgender studies.

Ultimately the hoaxers’ intent was serious and important: using reason to push back

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. This article first appeared on MercatorNet and is reprinted with the kind permission of the author.

BOOKS

The Sexual State: how a rolling revolution is destroying lives by Jennifer Roback Morse

id the Sexual Revolution just sweep through society like a mindless force of nature, or did powerful people actively promote it? Why is the sexual revolutionary propaganda so relentless, and increasingly bizarre? Do children have rights to be born into an intact family with parents who stay together for life? Are men and women really different? Does it matter? These and other pressing questions of our day find answers in a new book by Ruth Institute President Dr Jennifer Roback Morse: The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Why the Church Was Right All Along. Here she answers a few questions of our own.

***** MercatorNet: Like every revolution, the sexual revolution (SR) that erupted in the 1960s has created a lot of victims. In the first chapter of your book, “The Misery of Modern Life”, you identify a number of them. Which types of victim do you think are the least recognized, even among those critical of today’s sexual culture? Dr Morse: The victims of the divorce culture are almost completely invisible. I include the abandoned spouses, or reluctantly divorced persons, who would have liked to remain married, but were

divorced against their will. Few people realize that under U.S. nofault divorce law, the government always takes sides with the person who wants the marriage the least. We do not even ask the questions that would allow us to answer the question: “how many divorces have a reluctant partner?” Since the book went to press, I have found evidence that suggests as many as 70% of divorces may have a “reluctant” partner. But the person who found this was not looking for it. He stumbled over it in the course of looking for something else. The children of divorce are also socially invisible. They are supposedly “resilient,” but in fact they suffer for a lifetime. I also think apart from committed prolife advocates, very few people recognize the health problems associated with contraception and abortion.

You also identify different ideological strands of the SR, concerning contraception, divorce and gender. What role has each played – first, contraception? “A good and decent society should do everything possible to separate sex from babies.” I call this, the Contraceptive Ideology. Unlike many commentators who say things like, “The Pill changed everything,” I consider the ideology far more important than technology. The ideology tries to convince people that sex without a live baby is an entitlement. All sorts of nasty things follow from that, including the depredations of people like Harvey Weinstein. Divorce? The Divorce Ideology is that a good and decent society should do everything possible to separate both sex and babies, from marriage. Behind this lies the idea that children don’t really need their own parents. Kids are so resilient that adults can switch partners and living arrangements

without worrying about the welfare of their kids. But we know now that this is completely false. Kids do need their own parents. Deliberately separating kids from their parents without an unavoidable reason is unjust to children. In this section of the book, I discuss the children of unmarried parents, as well as children of anonymous donor conception. All these kids have tenuous, at best, relationships with one of their parents. And gender? The Gender Ideology started with “feminism” that stated that a good society should eliminate all distinctions between men and women. All such differences are socially constructed, and evidence of injustice. Therefore, society should reconstruct itself to eliminate all those differences. This is the thought process that led to the US federal government declaring that all colleges should have equality in sports programs. Since men are generally more interested in sports, the federal government went around shuttering men’s wrestling teams to create “equality.”

Now the gender ideology has morphed into transgenderism which says that a person’s bodily sex is less important than their idea of who they are and what they want to be. This has led to males who “identify” as female winning girls’ track and field events. What unites these two versions of the Gender Ideology is that the sex of the body is unimportant and can be over-written with enough social engineering and medical technology. You also identify the various “narratives” by which these ideologies have been advanced: “the march of history,” liberation, feminism, overpopulation... What is the relative importance of each of these? Under the Liberationist Narrative, I list several sub-types, the Consumerist, the Orientation, and the Gender Identity sub-narrative. Important also is the (Stealth) Capitalist Narrative. I think most people can recognize the significance of feminist and various forms of liberationist

thought. So here, I want to emphasize the others.

Revolution must be confronted honestly, if we really mean to create positive chance.

The March of History story is important because it wipes out all moral responsibility for anything: all these changes in society just “happened” like a force of nature. The Over-Population Narrative is significant because the population controllers provided the money for an awful lot of the subsequent stages of the Sexual Revolution. And the (Stealth) Capitalist Narrative is important precisely because it is “stealth.” In the first place people are making money from the Sexual Revolution. Secondly – and importantly -employers have benefited from having a whole class of new workers, eager to prove their worth in the market, and having few non-market alternatives. I am speaking of women, of course. The “careerist” branch of feminism basically delivered women into the hands of employers on terms that benefited the employers. Most people don’t notice that, until it is pointed out to them. And the fact that people are making money from the Sexual

Against these you posit “the Catholic narrative” about sex – which is, in essence? The Catholic Narrative directly challenges all three of the Ideologies of the Sexual Revolution. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that each of the ideologies challenged some aspect of Catholic teaching. The Catholic Narrative has the virtue that it can account for the failures and unhappiness caused by the Sexual Revolution, something virtually none of the other narratives even considers. We could summarize Catholic teaching from the perspective of children, in this way. Start from the premise that children are entitled to a relationship with both of their parents, in the absence of some unavoidable tragedy. How can we structure society to ensure children receive what is due to them? Reason logically from this premise and here is what you get:

• Form a lifelong plan for cooperating with the one person who will co-parent with you. That is the institution formerly known as “marriage.”

sexual abusers. Doesn’t this discredit Catholic teaching, or at least put it in the realm of idealism? On the contrary: The Catholic narrative is daily being proven correct. The heartbreaking situations we see all around us are the direct result of NOT living according to the Church’s teaching. Thinking with the Church, embracing the Church’s teaching with enthusiasm is really the only possible way out of the problems we face.

• Only have sex with the person you are married to. • Stay married unless someone does something really awful. • Don’t attempt a “remarriage.” • Be nice to your spouse, so he or she can put up with you. In other words, you end up with traditional Christian sexual morality. There is more to Catholic theology of marriage, of course. But at this moment in history, protecting the basic human right of every child to a relationship with both parents would be an achievement worth celebrating.

We now know why so many clergy refuse to preach or teach on the sexual issues, and why so many dioceses have a lackluster record in this regard. There are way too many men using their position of authority and respect in the Church to pursue their private sexual purposes.

Many would argue that the Catholic narrative has been a notable failure, even amongst Catholics, who apparently contracept like everyone else and whose clerical ranks have harbored

However, this makes it even more important that faithful Catholics take up the challenge of educating themselves, living the Church’s teaching, and sharing it with others. We can’t wait for the clergy to put their houses in order.

By contrast, hasn’t feminism, for example, been a great success, achieving much for women? Define “success.” People reflexively define “progress” and “success” in terms of women participating in higher education and in the labor force on the same terms as men. But what has been the price of this form of “equality?” One of the first footnotes in my book cites a study of happiness. Women have been growing less happy both absolutely, and relative to men over exactly the period of greatest entry of women into the labor force. And, women’s participation in both higher education and the labor force had been increasing steadily since the beginning of the 20th century, well before “feminism.” I argue that we could have attained increased participation in higher education and the professions, without all the toxic ideologies we have had to endure. Your basic thesis is that the sexual revolution “needs the state”. Why is that?

The Sexual Revolution is irrational. Each one of the ideologies is false. Sex does make babies. Children do need their parents. Men and women are different. Building an entire society around the opposite of these statements simply cannot be done. That does not mean the attempt to do the impossible is harmless. Quite the contrary. Attempting to do the impossible requires a whole lot of power, force and propaganda. The “advanced” countries of the world are run by people who believe doing the impossible is a high moral duty. Therefore, they can always justify increased power for themselves. This explains the whole course of the Sexual Revolution. Who benefits from our predominant sexual culture? The “elites” as I use the term, include the rich, the powerful, the influential, in any field of endeavor. People like Warren Buffet and George Soros in our time, and John D. Rockefeller III and Katherine McCormick in times past, have financed the spread of the ideologies.

Academics produce and promote the research. Entertainment elites of the likes of Harvey Weinstein create the propaganda. Their motives are varied but include the fact that some of them are making money, and some of them desire social permission to do what they want sexually without fear of social sanction. If, as you argue, the majority of people never wanted the ideology of the Sexual Revolution, let alone its effects on marriage and the family, why haven’t they used the democratic system to get rid of it? There are a couple of reasons. First, the propaganda for the Sexual Revolution is very effective. Most people do not connect the dots between these ideologies and the problems they and their families are experiencing. Second, the Sexual Revolution is very well financed. Warren Buffett, for instance, has given over $1 billion to support abortion, and abortion political advocacy. There simply are no funders of comparable size for the

social conservative side of the issues. Finally, the ideology of the Sexual Revolution appeals to some of our deepest fantasies about ourselves and wishful thinking about the world. “Everything would be alright, if we just allowed people to do whatever they want.” “I do not really have to restrain myself sexually.” “The problems in my marriage are my husband’s fault.” And so on. Pride is not only one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It is also The Original Sin. Every person is susceptible to appeals to their vanity. In your closing “Manifesto of the Family” you list a number of things the government should stop doing, or start doing, and some that the rest of us could do. Would you like to talk about the latter? In my 15-point Manifesto, the first 10 points are all things the government should stop doing, because it never had any business doing them in the first place. The last three points are really all about love. We need social

encouragement for long-lasting love, inside the family. The propaganda campaigns of the last fifty years have created a watered-down, almost unrecognizable redefinition of love. Starting with “Love the one you’re with,” in the sixties, down to things like “Love wins,” and “Love makes the family.” These are marketing slogans, designed to “sell” people on a program of political and social change. These slogans are not much help in hanging in there with our difficult relatives. For instance, people never stop to ask what happens to the family if the love goes away. Does the family disappear? Do the children lose their parents? The slogans can’t handle the

questions. We have been chasing our tails, “looking for love in all the wrong places,” as the song says. Agape love, the highest form of Christian love, requires much more of us. At the same time, that kind of complete self-giving love is the only form of love that can really satisfy us. Committed Christians have the best chance of offering the world what it is really looking for. That is why I believe my Manifesto for the Family can lead us toward a Civilization of Love.

ABOUT THE  AUTHORS

Jennifer Roback Morse, PhD, is the founder and President of the Ruth Institute, Los Angeles (see www.ruthinstitute.org). She has authored numerous books, including: Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, 101 Tips for a Happier Marriage, and Smart Sex: Finding Lifelong love in a Hook-Up World. This article was originally published on MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons Licence and is reprinted with the kind permission of the author. If you enjoyed this article, visit MercatorNet.com for more.

FILMS

Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer by John Mulderig

osnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer (GVN) is a powerful dramatization of the Philadelphia police investigation and state prosecution that finally ended the infamous, decades-long career of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. As proven in the procedure of the title, Gosnell, besides legally slaughtering the unborn, frequently perpetrated infanticide and endangered his adult clients with filthy conditions. As it follows the work of police detective James Wood (Dean Cain) and assistant district

attorney Alexis “Lexy” McGuire (Sarah Jane Morris), the film effectively indicts not only Gosnell himself – played here by Earl Billings – but the political bias of officials who shielded and enabled him. In a similar vein, it should be noted that, rather than being backed by anyone in Hollywood, the movie itself had to be financed via crowdfunding. Gosnell’s long-overdue downfall begins when he’s fingered for selling painkiller prescriptions to addicts. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration are determined to restrict their investigation to the drug transactions, assuming whatever else goes on in

Gosnell’s facility comes under the sacrosanct heading of “reproductive rights.” But Wood doggedly insists on pursuing evidence that an immigrant woman died there due to Gosnell’s flagrant disregard for medical regulations. Accompanying the feds on their raid of the place, he discovers a house of horrors, with whole fetal bodies and various tiny body parts squirreled away in cabinets and a refrigerator. Some of the corpses recovered are shown to have been born alive and then murdered. So, with the reluctant support of her boss, Dan Molinari (Michael Beach), McGuire brings her case to court. Screenwriters Phelim McAleer, Ann McElhinney and Andrew Klavan, adapting McAleer and McElhinney’s 2017 best-seller, Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, keep the focus on the deceptively avuncular, weirdly unflappable physician’s breaches of current statutes.

They obviously do so in the hope of winning over independent minded moviegoers. Thus, as directed by Nick Searcy, who also plays Gosnell’s hard-driving defense attorney, Mike Cohan, the script mostly leaves it to viewers to recognize the wholly arbitrary distinction between extinguishing life within the womb and doing so, perhaps only moments later, outside it. A significant exception comes via the testimony of Dr North (Janine Turner), a law-abiding peer of Gosnell’s. Brought in by the prosecution to show how far Gosnell has transgressed accepted norms, even in an industry devoted to death, North is then crossexamined by Cohan. Cohan, for his own reasons, takes North through the details of her work in a way that reveals what prolife journalist Nat Hentoff, using a phrase of novelist William Burroughs, used to call “the naked lunch at the end of the fork,” the stark reality of what every abortion involves.

Well-written and acted, with touches of humor thrown in to relieve the grim subject matter, “Gosnell” gets its point across more easily than a documentary might. Some parents, moreover, may see in this sobering and informative movie too good an opportunity for reinforcing prolife values in older teens to let the relatively few objectionable elements it includes stand in the way.

PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

The film contains mature themes, images of body parts and medical gore, a couple of mild oaths and about a halfdozen crude terms. The Catholic News Service classification is AIII – adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR

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Interdiocesan Retreats For Priests Monday 19 Nov (9pm) - Friday 23 Nov (10am) 2018 Monday 11 Feb (9pm) - Friday 15 Feb (10am) 2019 Monday 1 Apr (9pm) - Friday 5 Apr (10am) 2019

The retreat will be preached by  a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature and   will also include plenty of time for silence and private prayer. SEE WWW.LISMULLIN.IE FOR FURTHER DETAILS.