I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark and say that most pro-life people, even the converts to the position, came from a home environment that included more than one other person. Most people, I have learned, come from this thing called a “family,” that involves a variety of other people, male and female, young and old, to whom one remains ontologically connected for the rest of one’s life. I have also learned, though this took somewhat longer, that most people regard these “families” as a good and useful thing, of positive benefit in their lives.

These ideas have taken some effort to get used to.

This presumption of familial security, common to most people operating in the pro-life world, is perhaps something of a handicap. It tends to make pro-lifers appear smug and self-satisfied and unable to understand the connotations of their message for those on the other side. And it quite possibly makes it impossible for them to understand the hatred and rage they, in all innocence, can engender when they suggest that abortion must be outlawed. I remember when I was younger seeing pro-life people holding signs of babies and advocating motherhood and thinking they were the worst people in the world. What kind of awful people would try to force a woman to destroy herself over a blob of cells?

ROME, March 12, 2013, www.RemnantNewspaper.com  – The waiting time is drawing to a close. This afternoon, the cardinals will have their first ballot. Starting last Wednesday, the cardinals agreed that their discussions will be continued under greater secrecy. This means that we are left to examine the evidence and facts we already know to piece together, if not the outcome of the conclave, then at least the issues looming in the minds of the cardinal electors.

On that day it was announced that the press conferences organised at the Pontifical North American College, up the hill from St. Peter’s, where US cardinals were giving politely evasive and non-specific non-information to US and British journalists, had been cancelled. It came out that the reason was that some Italian cardinals, whose interpretation of the oath of secrecy was a little more, shall we say, flexible, were giving Italian journalists what amounted to transcripts of the meetings.

And there we have in a nutshell a hint as to how the Vatican administration works at the highest levels: chaotically, with no very strong connections to reality.