The New York Times, in its continuing quest to print all the news that fits the narrative, has published an opinion piece by one Jill Filipovic title “The Pope’s Unforgiving Message of Forgiveness on Abortion.” In it, Ms. Filipovic tries very hard to convince the NY Times‘ loyal audience that Pope Francis reaching out to those guilty of abortion (whether the women themselves, those who caused them, or those who facilitated them) and telling them that God forgives, is somehow a very bad thing.

In a stunningly blatant example of what I talked about in a recent Catholic Geeks essay I called “Fatherhood is a Sexist Concept,” Ms. Filipovic goes on to describe how, because the Pope isn’t gung-ho for abortion, he’s denying women their womanhood; that by appealing to their humanity, the Church reduces them to mere human beings.

But I’m not going to fisk this one. Instead, I’m going to link to Scott Eric Alt’s excellent analysis of the opinion piece, showing where Filipovic’s tirade goes off the deep end, as well as where it merely goes off the rails. Here are some excerpts:

“But,” Ms. Filopovic insists, “mercy may actu­ally be worse.” She will tell us why.

While the pope’s announce­ment has been hailed as evi­dence of the Church’s new, softer approach [No. This has not a thing to do with any­thing “new” or “soft”; it just speeds up a process that was already there.], it’s actu­ally the lat­est exam­ple of the mod­ern anti-abortion strat­egy: [Ms. Fil­ipovic will not be pleased until the Church is pro-abortion.]: Por­tray women as vic­tims who need to be pro­tected from them­selves with laws that restrict abor­tion rights.

Bet­ter to reign in hell than serve in heaven! How dare the pope tell women that killing their babies is wrong!

Indeed. There’s nothing worse to a good feminist atheist liberal than someone mentioning even the possibility of objective standards that might actually apply to them.

That, right there, is the problem that most people have with the Church — the feeling that something might be greater than they are, that someone might have standards that they don’t agree with. They’re fine with imposing their moral standards on others; but God — er, Something — forbid that Christians even speak of their own.

Well, I said that was the problem. Actually, it’s just one major problem. Alt goes on to point out another:

But I am con­fused here, since the pope’s deci­sion says noth­ing about civil abor­tion law. It speeds up a pro­ce­dural point of canon law, and stops there. Please try to stay on point, Ms. Filopovic.

Yes, that’s the other major problem, or perhaps a corollary to the first: the confusion of the rules of behavior for the faithful with the rules of behavior for a society that contains both the faithful and others. After all, this announcement has nothing to do with any woman who is not Catholic, and — as Mr. Alt points out — little to do with women or men who are.

I encourage you to continue reading Scott Eric Alt’s post, as it goes into detail yet remains easily-accessible to the general public. That makes it a very good resource to draw on for use in responding to Ms. Filipovic and her fellows as they continue to attack the Catholic Church for daring to have standards they don’t agree with.