Ding Dong, The Wicked Witch Has Retired

Patum Peperium has a new Queen! It's Christine!

A few weeks back, when Mr. P slipped his leash and went out on the town courtesy of The Fiendish One (thank you again Fiendish), with Sir Basil, and I was busy being the dutiful wife and mother by casting about the Sons of The Revolution Ball for a new grandfather for my children, Christine went and won The Ghoul Pool. Her ghoul, Frances Kissling handed in the old feedbag.

In the interest of full disclosure, Frances Kissling has not died but the night has cometh upon her so we are calling it a win:

You're standing in the room, and the woman is on the table, and the vacuum aspirator is turned on. The doctor goes in her body, and then there is that point where they turn the aspirator on, and you see the look on the face of that woman. The absolute awareness of every person in the room at that instant of what is happening lasts for maybe 60 seconds. It's a profound moment, no matter how tiny that fetal life is. There is that consciousness in an instant of something being sucked out, destroyed. How can you not be affected? You see an instant of enlightenment or of recognition of the profound event that is happening. That just makes it impossible to look at the issue in totally abstract ways or as simply good or bad.
"How can you not be affected?"

Yet another exit interview with Frances Kissling, this one published in her own magazine, Conscience. William Saletan departs from his usual hardball journo act and, in his role as interviewer, pitches underhand to Aunt Fran. The results are surprising. Now and again there are glimpses of the old Kissling truculence, but she seems to be losing her grip on her dogma -- or better, she seems more willing to admit that the absolutism of "abortion any time any reason" is a useful, perhaps indispensable, political slogan, but that her true beliefs on the matter are more complex.

I've long nursed a suspicion that Kissling was never interested in abortion per se -- or in "choice," for that matter. Her real crusade is aimed against the Catholic hierarchy, for whom she displays the antipathies typical of an educated feminist of her generation: the girls who, now in their 70s, still cherish resentment at injuries received fifty years earlier. Energized by wrath, and more nimble than the comparatively slow-moving and slow-thinking herbivores that had pastoral custody of Church teaching, Kissling spent her life enjoying the delights of vengeance, by claiming to be a good Catholic while pro-abortion -- and watching the reaction. She was canny enough to realize both the sputtering outrage that her claim would provoke in her targets, and their impotence at hitting back. She also understood, and capitalized on, the support her stance would attract from the Church's powerful and wealthy despisers.

Kissling has never shown any genuine interest in or knowledge of the post-Conciliar Catholic Church. She applauds some Catholic relief efforts, but in a way no different from the Clintons or the Euro-Communists. She shrewdly continues to identify herself as a Catholic in good standing, however, which gives her the double advantage of newsworthiness ("proof" that the Church embraces a "diversity of positions" on abortion), and of positioning her in media eyes as David against Goliath -- Goliath being her old foe the hierarchy, of course.

Given the overwhelming media sympathy for her position, Kissling's game was not a hard one to play, but even so she carried it off very well, and clearly enjoyed twisting the tails of her opponents, safe in the knowledge that they were powerless to hurt her in return. The show's just about over now, and most of the fun is past. Now perhaps the ultrasound videos that she must have seen from time to time take on a new meaning, and images of those shadowy "somethings" somersaulting in the womb may make unwelcome intrusions into her wakeful hours at night. "How can you not be affected?," she asks Saletan, pointing to the scene in the surgical theater. There are hesitations in these farewell interviews we haven't heard before.

"Revenge is barren," declared Friedrich Schiller, "its delight is murder, and its satiety, despair." Having devoted her life to the amusements of pay-back, Kissling can congratulate herself on murder, satiety, and despair -- which, in this case, takes the form of a sardonically emphatic childlessness not her own. As with her colleague Kate Michelman -- who hoped that retirement would allow her "to indulge that 'grandmother' part of me" and who hoped that God would assure her on the day of judgment "that I was a good person" -- Kissling seems on the brink of the realization that the joke is wearing thin.

"The night cometh," Jesus said (John 9:4), "when no man can work." Or snicker.

-Diogenes (a great blogger)

Congratulations Christine! A very fine win. Christine is now working hard on her royal degrees and will be issuing them soon. I'm confident they will be better than anything either Queen Elizabeths could come up with. What else she plans to do here at Patum Peperium is up to her. She will be Queen until another ghoul bites the dust. Then we will have a peaceful transfer of power to our new monarch with no churches, abbeys, and libraries destroyed as we are not the English.

So, now all of you can choose new ghouls or stay with the ones you have. New players are welcomed to jump in. Unfortunately, Mr. P has been too busywith life to finish recounting his time in New York, but fear not, he will. I am still undecided on whether I should tell the things they've (Mr. P and Basil) conviently left out...

Mrs. P

Comments

[Fr. M.]

As today is the Feast of the Annunciation and the International Day of the Unborn Child your announcement is well-timed. Interesting enough, the last Queen Christine (of Sweden) converted to Catholicism and was forced into exile in Rome. She is buried at St. Peter's across from Pius X and within whispering distance of King James III and Prince Cardinal Henry Benedict Stewart, Duke of York.

[Mrs. Peperium]

I'd like to say I knew all that but I did not. Thank you Father...

Hey Christine, if you do a bang up job here as Queen, maybe your bones will end up at St. Peter's too.

[mario mandingo]

Mrs. P and Father M:

Kissling is gone, but alas, now we must be faced with the one that replaces her - so more demonic carcinogenic choice is to come our way - duping us that they are good Catholics! Bring it on, bring it on! We love the fight we will wage with the ghouls - we will fight them with love, wit, and determination.

[Fr. M.]

Mario, you are sounding very Churchillian today!

We have the Truth on our side and they only have bloody murder on theirs.

[Christine]

Yes, please, Mrs. P, do give us the dish on the things Mr. P and Sir Basil have passed over in silence...

[Mrs. Peperium]

Sure thing.

[Christine]

Mrs. P,
You'll see from my blog that I've issued my two royal decrees... and what fun I had!