Open Secrets

As regular readers know, I am taking an online course called Faithful Citizenship. The course is intended to assist participants in understanding the duty and role as Catholics in participating in the political arena and encouraging others to do the same. The course also includes significant discussion about what issues Catholics should consider in deciding how to vote.

There are 17 students in the course. After a few weeks of getting to know them online, I would guess that about 7 are very conservative, 7 are very liberal and 3 are somewhere in between.

During the past week, there was a significant amount of online discussion about whether or not any issues, such as abortion, trump other issues. A couple of the women from the liberal camp posted several thoughtful items for discussion. Later in the week, in an post to all of the students in the class, one of the women said that she had an abortion not too long ago and provided some details about why she felt she had to have an abortion. In the post, she mentioned that she thought some of the other students might not think much of her. To my slight surprise, nearly all of the students, including the conservatives, replied to her post with support for her and offered any assistance to help her with her struggle - she expressed that she feared for the salvation of her soul and feared talking to her priest because she has a leadership position in her parish and she was worried that the priest would think less of her because she had an abortion. Many of the students, including me, encouraged her to talk with her priest and that he would likely think even more highly of her for her willingness to share her struggle with him and seek his assistance. After the seeing the support she received from people she had never met, she has decided to talk with her priest.

Amazingly, a few hours after her post, the other woman that shared some very thoughtful insights posted a message that said she had had 2 abortions many years ago and still struggles with related issues to this day. She also received many replies from the other students that offered support and encouragement.

I mention that I was only slightly surprised that the pro-life students offered support to these woman. I really think that most pro-lifers are pro-life because it is a Republican issue rather than being Republican because the party supports pro-life causes. The political partisanship comes before morality. So, when the conservative students were faced with learning that someone to whom they have a personal connection had an abortion, their morality trumped their partisanship. When they ignored the partisan box that normally surrounds their thinking, they did the right thing and offered support to others that are struggling.