Eight years of Catholic schooling had primed me for this battle, particularly through the holy sacrament of Confirmation in seventh grade, when my classmates and I were deemed old enough to make a clear-minded, lifelong commitment to God. I accepted their flattery of my nascent adulthood, sure of my ability to make such a profound oath, and ready to pour myself into His work. For obvious reasons, I was particularly incensed over the daily murder of thousands of innocent babies. I'd learned of the early development of their brains, hearts, hands, and feet; I'd been told of their silent screams in the womb upon being surgically stabbed in their brainstems; I'd seen photos of the industrial-sized garbage bags into which they'd been suctioned and cast heartlessly into a dumpster behind some seamy clinic.
At 14, it was perfectly clear to me that a holocaust of the unborn was underway as humanity stood idly by. At 14, I could not understand how the world outside the walls of St. Such-and-Such elementary school could be so awash in apathy and evil. At 14, I had reached Christian adulthood. I had been furnished with all of the information necessary to distinguish right from wrong. Whatever "knowledge" I might later acquire, none of it would alter the essential truths I'd learned as a child of God.
At 32, much has changed.
In the recent hullabaloo over President Obama's commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame, while watching footage of the protestors and commentary by leaders of the pro-life movement, I was struck by something: In their words and actions, I saw myself at 14. I saw a multitude of grown men and women who, with regard to this particular issue, had never progressed beyond the moment at which, probably with the authenticating blessing of some church or another, they believed themselves to be in possession of ultimate truth. Within this realization, I saw a framework that might help me begin to understand the ever-confounding phenomenon of otherwise intelligent human beings clinging to religions and the simple-minded, black-and-white moralities that spring from them. Put simply, these people are spiritually retarded.
Hear me out...
We accept that people have widely varying levels of intelligence, sociability, athleticism, artistic talent, etc. Sometimes extremities are exhibited within an individual. (Take autism, for example, which can render a person mathematically brilliant but socially inert.) Furthermore, recent studies have suggested a hard-wired, genetic basis for human spirituality, indicating that it may be just another component of our evolutionarily developed physiology. So, what if we add a new faculty to the mix and call it spirituality? Yes, this is a tough word for us non-believers, as it has long been proprietary to the mystical realm, but I believe that there is room for it in the secular domain. One's spirit might be described as that which is unique to an individual, that collection of atoms and experiences, the ineffable "it" that is, essentially, just the sum of one's parts. Indescribable, after all, is not necessarily (or ever) synonymous with supernatural. The active duty of the spirit, then, would be to synthesize these so-called mysteries of the human experience on an ongoing basis, enabling its corporeal counterpart to cope in a complex cosmos in which not everything can be concisely chronicled or comprehended. A spiritually retarded individual, then, would have great difficulty doing that without reliance on imaginary friends and steadfast devotion to simplistic moral formulae.
I feel sure that my own stance on abortion (pro-choice, pro-abortion...whatever you'd like to call it), for example, cannot be wholly attributed to the intellectual impact of a liberal education (though I would wager that there is a high positive correlation between advanced education and reduced opposition to abortion). As I look back at my 14-year old self, as I compare my present self to that child, I feel sure that the maturation of a specific component of my being - my spirit - has allowed me this new perspective. I did not arrive at the conclusion that abortion is permissible simply because I abandoned religion. These things occurred simultaneously, as my spirit evolved beyond the point at which most become stunted.
Think of it as a wall that exists in the minds of the spiritually retarded that is not so different from the wall that prevents an individual with Down's Syndrome from advancing beyond the mental capability of a four year old. This spiritual wall - a manifestation of the deity of their choice - does not necessarily prevent a spiritually retarded person from grasping or excelling in math, history, science, sports statistics, or any other tangible piece of information. Rather, it incapacitates them in the face of the abstract and demands their submission. The wall is the answer to all of the questions that cannot be answered.
The height of the wall varies from person to person and can change over time. Some build them up, some modify them, some tear them down. And so the spectrum ranges from poor, dumb schmucks like the parents of Terry Schiavo, who simply weren't intelligent or mature enough to bring themselves to terms with the medical reality of their daughter's situation and so relied on religion and religious whackjobs to justify their position, to people like Andrew Sullivan, an intensely intelligent, conservative writer who has lowered a portion of the wall to allow for his homosexuality while retaining enough to remain anti-abortion and a devoted Catholic. There are an infinite number of variations when you account for all of the ways in which varying levels of measurable intelligence intersect with the ethereal wall.
When I started this post (a couple weeks ago), I did not intend for it to be about abortion. The events of the past week, however - the killing of late-term abortion provider, George Tiller - compel me to stay with the issue. As a person without a wall - spiritually high functioning? - I am obviously pro-choice. Also, I am not the least bit anti-abortion. An important distinction. See, I don't care if we reduce the number of abortions. Yes, I would like to see us provide high quality sex education and birth control, which would drastically cut the number of unwanted pregnancies, which would, in turn, drastically reduce the number of abortions - but with regards to the procedure itself, I wouldn't particularly care whether the number increased by a factor of one hundred. Once divorced from the notion that sperm and egg unite to create a mystical and immortal being within the clump of cells that have begun to multiply inside a woman (regardless, mind you, of whether she's just been raped, paid-for-sex, cheated on her husband, seduced a twelve-year old boy, made passionate love to the love of her life, earned her green card, or finished with #327 in her quest to participate in the biggest gang bang of all time), there is simply no good reason to oppose the procedure.
The way I see it, spiritual retardation is the only explanation for opposition to first-trimester abortions, which account for very nearly ALL abortions. It is a mundane medical procedure in which a clump of cells is removed from a woman who would rather not see those cells reach full gestation. It happens naturally to a large percentage of women who don't seek the procedure. Only spiritual retardation can convert it into something more profound than that. Progressing further into pregnancy, human squeamishness enters into the equation and makes this conversation more difficult. Fortunately for humankind, people aren't running around clamoring for second and third-trimester abortions for the sheer joy of it. Abortions in the second and third trimester are almost always sought for medical reasons - some involving the health of the mother, others involving a horribly disabled, disfigured, and or diseased fetus whose quality of life stands to be improved by the work of brave and merciful people like Dr. George Tiller.
Here's what's interesting: Dr. Tiller was at least mildly spiritually retarded himself, having been murdered in the vestibule of his Lutheran church, where he was serving as an usher. As I said, the spectrum is vast, accommodating both Dr. Tiller and his severely spiritually retarded murderer. It seems to me that both of them would have been better off without their respective walls - Tiller wouldn't have been at church and Scott Roeder wouldn't have had any reason to kill Tiller. Still, a wall is a wall - and Dr. Tiller's wall, low as it may have been, lent credence to the prevailing notion that walls are necessary and good. His inability to tear down that last brick or two ultimately denied him the spiritual credibility to question the validity of Scott Roeder's wall.
