Today our bishops ask us to offer penance for the national crime of abortion. 35 years after Roe v. Wade, we hear in the media that abortion has dropped to ONLY 1.2 million per year in the US (but they don't point out that Plan B abortions have tripled). Who have we killed? Doctors, priests, generals, inventors, peacemakers?
There but for the Grace of God go I. I was careless and sinful and not well catechized in my younger years and bought into the 1970's sexual freedom culture. I could have so easily found myself pregnant and, being an efficient sinner, snuck off to obtain a silent and "safe" abortion. Living with a murder for the rest of my life.....
Embryology 101 in college made me a pro-lifer decades before I came back to faith, but a chicken one, never speaking out in conversation, never putting my charitable money where my mouth was.
Pray today for all who have died, all who killed them. Pray for those women who felt that they had no other choice. Pray for those whose consciences are so hard that they think they feel nothing about the baby who should be 30 today, or 20, or 8. Pray for the clinic workers and the doctors and nurses, and the civil governments that allowed them to move into our communities. Pray especially for those patient pro-life workers who demonstrate, who legislate, who volunteer at crisis pregnancy centers and come alongside pregnant women and girls who need friends as well as financial help.
We are one Body of Christ. Let's do some penance for the good of all the Body.
...and a quiet little "Yay" for the Catholics who are among the most visible leaders of the pro-life movement!
2 comments:
May God have mercy on . . . everyone.
Here are some realizations after Sunday's homily. I find them helpful equipment for being a "candle in the window" on this issue:
*Many feminists favor abortion, yet abortion is probably the most sexist crime in the history of the world. More abortions take place worldwide for the specific purpose of eliminating births of girls than for any other reason.
*In the U.S., many pro-life people feel constrained from voting based on those principles because of fear of having other's identify them as a slightly stupid "single-issue voter". My question to their accusers might be: "Are you, in fact, an issue voter at all? Or a 'personality' voter? Is there any time in history you would consider 'single-issue' voting to be wise (perhaps pre-war Germany or Stalinist USSR)? What is different now? What would the characteristics of an issue be for you to consider it a "crucial" issue?
* For those who consider the unborn child "merely fetal tissue"? Thank you for realizing that "fetus" is Latin for "small child".
* For those who believe that personhood begins at the birth passage out of the uterus: Does a car stop being a car when it turns from the street into the garage? Since when does location affect the substantive nature of something or someone? Is someone less of a person because they are in prison? Because they have a cold? Because they are living under a bridge abutment?
May God have mercy on the children at risk of abortion, the women sorely tempted to try to make their problems go away only to find they have created more problems, and especially on all those tempted to pressure a girlfriend, employee, daughter, sister, friend to take on herself the burden of having done away with her own child.
Amen to your post TZ! I just wish that we US pro-lifers had the ability to work together a bit better.. some take an all-or-nothing position and won't even dialog with people who disagree.. prolife organizations can't seem to work together.. kind of mirrors the divisiveness in religious circles.. maybe the penance needed involves working together?
Of course the rest of the world is not too much better than the USA according to these folks.
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