Cry, the beloved Country

01-22-2023Pastor's LetterFr. John Bonavitacola

Dear Friends,

The new Congress, in its first week passed a Pro-life bill: the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act; except that 210 members of the House of Representatives voted against the bill. They voted against requiring an abortionist to care for a child they failed to kill if that child is born alive.

That is as morally abominable as there is. What demonic influence holds sway over people who see nothing objectionable in allowing a newborn to be put aside to die, maybe gasping for breath, writhing in pain from the abortionist’s scalpel or the burns from the chemicals are injected into the womb?

So, even though this year’s Annual March for Life will not be to overturn Roe v Wade, we still have a long way to go to rid our Country of the practice of abortion. We will continue to do what we have been doing: making the case for life, offering women and men a real choice, providing services to expectant mothers, walking with moms as they raise their child, dispensing the mercy of God to post-abortive mothers and fathers and using the democratic system to enact laws that are just and laws that protect human life.

While the national law on abortion has changed and now it is an issue for states to take up, our position as Catholic Christians remains the same: the direct taking of innocent human life, no matter what state of development or decline, is always wrong.

Now, however the political dynamic has changed and that calls for a different political strategy. Immediately after the overturning of Roe, the Prolife movement didn’t have a solid strategy to move forward in the new landscape and as we witnessed in various states, abortion made its way quickly to the ballot box in the form of voter propositions and influenced voter’s choices in electing various office holders. In many places the last election showed that US voters are generally not in favor of outright bans on abortion but still want restrictions in some form or another. Prolife leaders will have to develop new strategies, often more local than national, to win over the hearts and minds of the US voter.

The kind of middle ground that the US voters seemed to want, not a ban but serious restrictions, shows how challenging the issue is for our Country that has been marinated in abortion since the early 1970’s. Even many who would never choose an abortion or encourage a friend or family member to have one, struggle with the issue because they, all of us really, have been programmed by the “can’t impose my beliefs on others” mentality.

Our culture has done a good job at confusing the issues of religion and politics and makes it hard to see that abortion is neither a political issue nor even a religious one. It is an issue of justice. Unlike charity, which is an act of the will, justice is a demand on the conscience, an obligation. The issue is whether we will continue to support and defend the basic principle on which we have based our society: that we are created in the image of God (religious language), that all men are created equal (political language), that human life has intrinsic value (secular language). Whatever wording we use to state the principle its truth remains the same.

And that is why it is one thing to change laws but another to change hearts. By our actions, by our love, by our witness to the Truth, by our sacrificial efforts to help mothers make the choice for life and accompany them when they do, let us continue the work of defending, nurturing, and supporting human life at every stage of development and decline.

Love,

Fr. John B.