I just can't shake it, no matter how much I think about it. The more I think, the more convinced I become.

I'm at a fundraiser festival thing for a prolife pregnancy center. A great cause, yes.

But all I see is: a bunch of Boomers with plenty of money, bidding $200 on a cake or pie, and they can afford to because they only had 3 or 4 kids AND those kids were sent to public school.

Who's the real pro life hero? Anyone who had a large family and can't afford $10 burger plates, much less the overpriced donations/pastries.

Yes I know I'm biased. But it's not helping me convince myself I'm wrong that the whole thing is a bit hypocritical. I mean, they're practically patting each other on the back how prolife and Catholic they are.

Yes they have free activities for the kids, which is the only reason we came. But still, I feel like I'm not participating or contributing, whereas in reality my wife and i probably made the biggest contribution to the prolife cause...
Our example. Every time we go out in public we bear witness with our lives, on the value of children. But we will never be making large donations, to prolife causes OR even the Church. We cooperated with God to bring more Catholic souls into the world instead.

Is there some vanity and/or pride in my thinking? Probably. But nevertheless, I'm not wrong.

Question? Does this pro-life pregnancy center receive federal grants. Is this pro-life center under dioceses?

True. One thought was, "maybe they are atoning a bit, finally. Should they not get that chance?" In other words, "what CAN they do, at this point?"

Then another voice, maybe the little devil on my shoulder, responds "they could be more penitent and/or humble about it. That would sort the good willed from the bad."

Then there's that exponential CathInfo prolife multiplier effect. Not exactly something to be overlooked or minimized!

Here's a parable for you:

The year is 3422. For a period of the last 30 years, there was a frenzy of paranoia about "overpopulation" and it became almost fashionable to kill human beings. So as a result, 99 out of every 100 people were guilty of murdering at least one person and taking all their stuff (house, money, car, assets, etc.) So by 3422, you had a lot of well-off people who were sitting on ill-gotten gains.

But one year earlier, in 3421, a large movement started, the "human life is valuable" movement. They raise money for their cause by having various fundraisers, auctions, and other events.

Someone invites you to one. Almost everyone there is spending big, eating, donating, and making a big ostentatious show of how much they think "human life is valuable" despite the fact that 99% of them were guilty of murder in the past 30 years. Their big donations are only possible because they (or their spouse) committed murder some years ago and consequently "inherited" numerous assets.

Now by patronizing these events, are they taking some baby steps toward making amends? Yes. Are they as "good" as those who never murdered in the first place? No.

Would the cause of human life be better off, if someone never murdered, but then had no "extra money" to donate to the "human life is valuable" cause?  Yes, I think the cause IS better served by such persons -- who witness to the value of human life by their ACTIONS over dozens of years, not just some isolated post-facto donations as a token reparation. Even a large donation of $100,000 would hardly make up for the loss of a single human life.

After all, who REALLY says human life is valuable? The person who never murders, or the person who commits one or more murders, then amends their life and tosses back less than 1% of their ill-gotten gains as a small token of reparations?

I read this comment online, somewhere, possibly, on CathInfo some years back, and I saved it because it's true:

Language and getting it to strike home to something intuitive within people:

When you tell a boomer that you hope their children put them in a Dindu nursing home so that they will be able to experience the diversity they have bestowed upon us till their last breath.

A statement like this strike something intuitive within anyone who reads it. Because what is said and what is implied are things people actually know to be true, whether they allow themselves to consciously think these thoughts or not. It's the same reason people cross the street if there are a group of black people walking towards them. We just instinctively know better. I think we need to ostracize the Boomers through things they know instinctively ( boomers are actually racially conscious ) to get them on our side to get whatever last votes we could get out of there before they die.

There might be a few at the event  who might not have been able to have children at all but wanted to help others.

Yes, there were some younger families with kids, but they seemed to be playing the free games rather than doing any spending. I suspect they were ALSO invited (as we were!) by one of the "Boomers" in order to populate the event and make it more alive with the playing and laughter of children.

Again, you'll all have to excuse me, but I'm a philosopher and I'm always thinking. I can't just switch off my brain. And what I thought yesterday was that there were (2) distinct groups of people at that event; the people spending who were all over 60, and some younger people with children who I didn't see with any plates of food, nor did I see any of them bidding on the $200 pastries.

Believe me, the first thing I did was look all around me, and it was all older retired people inside the main building, sitting at tables. We stayed for most of the auction, so I got a good look at who was participating. I couldn't turn off my brain and I was getting weary of the whole thing, so I went out to the van and typed up my original post.

Something I should add: there was a group of (all retired) ladies from a Catholic church in a nearby town; not just a group of friends but a formal group, the "Ladies Guild". They all had matching shirts on, like a uniform. Their Guild had raised $2,500 for this particular cause. And apparently they were among the bidders -- instead of just handing them a check, they went to the event as a group and bid up the auction (which I guess is almost the same thing). So some of the extravagant bidding was just a fancy way of delivering pre-raised donations to the intended recipient.

I'm not cutting ties with Amazon because, in short, God is not asking this of me. Figuring out God's will is tricky, I'll grant you that. But here's how I do it: start with the certain items, and work from there. Like doing a crossword puzzle. Treat the "certain" items like absolute truth -- fill those in with pen. Then use pencil for the rest. As you continue to fill in the puzzle, if any potential word doesn't fit with those existing "absolute, permanent" letters, you know that the potential word is wrong. Because God can't contradict Himself. See how that works?

There is a longer answer, involving "the alternatives aren't any better". Wal-mart and Target are just as evil. My time machine taking me back to the distant past is broken, so I have to deal with the options available to the average man living in 2023.

I consider the savings in time, money, and gas to be worth buying most of our retail goods from Amazon at this time. We probably place about 200 orders per year on Amazon. That's when I'm unemployed. When employed, it's closer to 300.

I consider Amazon to be secular, worldly, liberal leaning, etc. but frankly no worse or better than ANY of the alternatives. By "alternatives" I mean companies I could resort to instead for the same things. A local company in another state (or another time!), for example, I would not consider an alternative.

Amazon has the "Amazon Smile" program where they allow customers to support thousands of different non-profits (including many good ones) depending on your personal beliefs, religion, what you feel is important, etc. THEY LET YOU PICK ANY OF THEM or none of them. It doesn't cost you anything extra; that non-profit just gets a kickback when you enter Amazon.com through your "Amazon Smile" portal of choice.

So no, that does not constitute any heinous, unique, above-and-beyond-their-competitors, positive support of Planned Parenthood. Only Planned Parenthood supporters are going to select that as their non-profit/charity. They facilitate support of PP, but they also facilitate support of Homeschooling groups *just as much* through their Amazon Smile program.

Edit:
OOPS! Amazon Smile shut down 2 months ago.
https://www.howtogeek.com/866531/amazon-is-shutting-down-its-charity-platform-amazonsmile/

Another thing --

I thought I made it very clear that I support the Pro-life cause as a good, venerable cause, including pro-life pregnancy support centers such as this one.

Until your post (praesul), no one had called me out for being negative on them, which was good, since I'm not critical of the cause itself.

If you take all my criticism in isolation, and stated it all bluntly, it would be: the idea of a bunch of Boomers patting themselves on the back about how pro-life they are, when in fact 99.9% of them maxed out at 4 children. They were the first generation to make industrial widespread use of birth control. And when abortion was legalized in 1973, they were the young adults who should have protested and rejected it -- but they accepted it and all-too-many of them made use of it instead. Boomers were too old to PASS the legislation, but they WERE of childbearing age AND most had spouses by the mid 70s. (Keep in mind that in the Boomers day, people married much younger.)

But it's more than that. It's BECAUSE OF their abbreviated family size that they were able to get so wealthy. They didn't need large homes, they sent their kids off to public school so no homeschooling expenses, and both parents worked. On average, most of them were able to pay off homes and build up nest eggs. But my point is they have MORE money than if they had chosen to be "pro life" in their youth and have a natural-sized family. They'd have a lot more kids, but they probably wouldn't be able to afford $200 pies at pro-life charity auctions...


Think about it:
When you have a natural sized family, suddenly it makes sense for the wife to stay home and take care of them all.
There goes 1/2 the household income (or at least 1/3 of it)
More kids mean a bigger house -- more expense, utilities, property taxes, and of course the house itself costs more.
Not to mention 8 kids cost more than 3 kids. More food/utilities/medicine/dental costs/clothes/toys/etc.
You have an even bigger hit if the kids are homeschooled. That means no free babysitter 7 hours each day taking care of your kids for you.