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Steven Crowder’s shameful reaction to ‘Down syndrome Barbie’ is neither Christian nor pro-life – LifeSite

(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s solo episode of The Van Maren Show, Jonathon responds to conservative commentator Steven Crowder mocking the new “Down syndrome Barbie,” calling it the reaction of a pro-abortion “eugenicist,” not a Christian or a pro-lifer.

Last week, Mattel, the company behind the Barbie doll, announced it was releasing a Down syndrome Barbie to offer children an “opportunity to play with more inclusive dolls,” according to an Inside Edition report. Crowder reacted to the report by joking that the doll promoted “retard strength” while laughing with co-hosts on his daily show.

When a woman with Down syndrome appeared in the video holding the doll, one of Crowder’s co-hosts was heard saying, “Oh, no, oh, no.” Crowder concluded his reaction by joking that Mattel was going to release a “sickle-cell Barbie” later this year, with the doll surrounded by baby dolls in front of a Planned Parenthood.

Crowder later posted a clip of his reaction to Twitter, which has since garnered him backlash from other conservatives and pro-lifers. Crowder is also under fire for a leaked video where he appeared to verbally abuse his wife, who was pregnant at the time and is now seeking to divorce him.

Noting that Crowder claims to be a pro-life Christian, Jonathon said, “The attitude he displays towards people with Down syndrome mirrors that of our pro-abortion culture, because in a society where people with Down syndrome are actually in danger of extinction, to ruthlessly mock a doll that raises awareness of their value as ‘more retard’ is to participate in the collective dehumanization that has brought us to where we are.”

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The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) has described assisted suicide as sometimes being the “greatest common good concretely possible” contrary to the Catholic Church’s strenuous condemnation of the practice.

This betrayal of the Catholic faith by Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia is not for the first time, with the PAV repeatedly causing scandal under his watch by:

  • recently appointing a notorious pro-abortion atheist to the organization
  • claiming contraception and artificial insemination are sometimes acceptable
  • insisting that priests could accompany people through assisted-suicide, and
  • that Italy’s pro-abortion law is a “pillar” of the country’s social life.

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“Personally, I would not practice suicide assistance,” Archbishop Paglia told an Italian journalism conference last week, “but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions we find ourselves in.”

Accepting an anti-life Italian court ruling that specified when assisted-suicide is permitted, the archbishop claimed “it is not to be ruled out that in our society a legal mediation is feasible that would allow assistance to suicide under the conditions specified by Constitutional Court Sentence 242/2019…”

From the outset of his presentation in Perugia, Paglia also undermined the authority of the Catholic Church on matters of faith and morals, stating: “First of all, I would like to clarify that the Catholic Church is not that it has a ready-made, prepackaged package of truths, as if it were a dispenser of truth pills.” 

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The PAV issued a statement on Monday trying to clarify the archbishop’s remarks, insisting that Paglia “reiterates his ‘no’ towards euthanasia and assisted suicide, in full adherence to the Magisterium”.

However, far from denouncing Paglia’s words, the PAV unsurprisingly supported its president. Referencing the Italian court ruling which partially decriminalized euthanasia by outlining exceptions to its illegality, the PAV stated it was in the context of this ruling that Paglia had made his comments.

In this precise and specific context, Msgr. Paglia explained that in his opinion a ‘legal mediation’ (certainly not a moral one) in the direction indicated by the Sentence is possible, maintaining the crime and the conditions under which it is decriminalized, as the same Constitutional Court has asked Parliament to legislate. 

The PAV’s fudging of the issue was met with consternation from several Catholic commentators, with liturgist Matthew Hazell, who had highlighted Paglia’s original comments, asking “How hard is it for the @PontAcadLife to just say ‘sorry’ for scandalising the faithful? Indeed, how hard is it to actually adhere to the teaching of the Church on life issues? Are you so incapable of reading the signs of the times & interpreting them in the light of the Gospel?”

SIGN: Abp. Paglia’s presidency of the Pontifical Academy for Life is untenable

It’s vital that the Church and PAV push back against the culture of death, rather than trying to accommodate it and accept a world that where the vulnerable are helped to kill themselves.

Be part of pushing back against the tide and making it clear that there is no room for confusion or betrayal when it comes to the sanctity of human life and the infallibilty of Catholic teaching on the matter. 

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Abp. Paglia defends assisted-suicide as ‘greatest common good possible’ for dying people – LifeSiteNews

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Discussing Mattel’s decision to release the doll, Jonathon noted, “We don’t even know what kinds of people could be part of our communities and how they could change our lives and make our society richer because we’re killing them and we’re discarding them like trash.”

“And then a toy company comes out and actually does something good for a change with all of the progressive garbage, all of the gender bending nonsense, all of these things happening,” he added. “And you actually have a toy company coming out and creating a doll of somebody with Down syndrome and [announcing] that this doll is breaking barriers by introducing children to the sort of person that many of them will never have met, and the sort of person that many of them will never have met because our society throws most of these people away.”

Jonathon continued:

The reaction of Crowder and his fellow alleged comedians is not the reaction of a Christian person. It’s not the reaction of a pro-life person. It is the reaction of a Richard Dawkins. It is the reaction of a Planned Parenthood abortionist. It is the reaction of a eugenicist. It is the reaction of an ableist. That … is the attitude that Steven Crowder was displaying. And so when he says that the introduction of a doll who has Down syndrome is “more retard,” he is expressing precisely the attitude that has tens of thousands of parents filing into abortion clinics to get rid of their children.

Anybody who podcasts daily, anybody who comments on things nonstop, anybody who writes a lot of things, including myself, we’ll get things wrong sometimes, we’ll say things that we shouldn’t, we’ll say things that maybe came out too raw that lacked the appropriate amount of compassion, maybe even were too crude,” Jonathon stated. “But after sober second thought, he chose to amplify this particular bit [by posting it to Twitter].”

Listen to the full monologue on this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show:

The Van Maren Showis hosted on numerous platforms, including Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, iTunes, and Google Play.

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