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10-7-11 THE BISHOP'S VOICE: Respect Life Month -- Good news, bad news and more bad news
MOST REV. MICHAEL J. SHERIDAN, S.Th.D.
Diocese of Colorado Springs
10/7/2011
Every October, Catholics throughout the United States observe Respect Life Month. We are in the 40th year of this annual tradition. This year there is good news, there is bad news, and there is more bad news.
First, the good news. In spite of the fact the number of abortions continues to rise each year — we are well over 50 million since Roe v. Wade in 1973 — studies show that fewer and fewer Americans are inclined to view abortion as a “right” or even as an acceptable option. If this way of thinking continues, we may soon see the end of legal abortion. The prayers and the work of the pro-life community in our country are bearing fruit. Thanks be to God!
Advances in medical science have provided us with an ever clearer picture of life in the womb. When pregnant mothers have the opportunity to see their unborn children by means of ultrasound, they are often convinced that these are indeed real human beings. Is it any wonder that those who are involved with the abortion industry in our country will do anything to make sure that a woman with an unplanned pregnancy never sees her unborn child?
Here’s the bad news. Abortion on demand continues to be the law of the land. Unborn babies continue to be killed. More and more mothers and fathers, the living victims of abortion, continue to grieve the loss of their children. How did we get to the point of killing our own children? I am convinced that we started on this course more than 40 years ago when most American Catholics began to reject the church’s teaching on artificial birth control. When the world was crying for the church to “catch up with the times” in the 1960s, and when even many Catholics were expecting the church to change her teaching on contraception, Pope Paul VI courageously reaffirmed the church’s constant teaching when he declared that the church has never and will never condone contraception, which is always a denial of life.
The widespread practice of contraception has served to convince many people that sexual intercourse and pregnancy need not have anything to do with each other. When contraceptives are used, life is prevented. But it is precisely the contraceptive mentality that has given rise to the holocaust of abortion. If unwanted life can be prevented by contraception, it is a small step to end unwanted life by abortion. It is a fact that most abortions take place in the same month as a pregnancy occurs.
The words of Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae are ominous: “Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality . . . It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion” (no. 17).
What was dismissed by many in 1968 as the pope’s fanatical predictions has come to be commonplace. The denigration of women as means of sexual pleasure for men is so taken for granted now that it has become the stuff of which television and movie comedies are made.
And now . . . more bad news. As contraception is taken for granted and abortion continues to be legal, the federal government will now mandate “preventive services” in virtually all private health plans. The Department of Health and Human Services has ruled that these preventive services will include surgical sterilization and all FDA-approved contraceptive drugs and devices — including the abortifacient drug “Ella,” a close analogue to the abortion pill RU-486.
There is a “religious employer exemption,” but it is so extremely narrow that it would not apply to Catholic Charities or Catholic hospitals because not all the employees or clients are Catholic. Catholic institutions providing health care and other services to the needy could be forced to fire their non-Catholic employees and stop serving the poor of other faiths or shut down their operations. This is an intrusion into the free practice of religion and the rights of conscience that would have been unimaginable to our founding fathers.
Bridgeport (Conn.) Bishop William Lori, newly-named chairman of the USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, hit the nail on the head when he said: “There is a common and factually grounded perception that religious liberty is increasingly under assault at the state and federal level in the United States, whether through unfriendly legislation or through rules and regulations that impede or tend to impede the work of the church.”
It is becoming quite apparent that there are those in government that are intent on driving religion — and in particular the Catholic Church — from any meaningful place in our society. The call of the U.S. Catholic bishops is clear and strong in our statement for Respect Life Month: “Catholics must not shrink from the obligation to assert the values and principles we hold essential to the common good, beginning with the right to life of every human being and the right of every woman and man to express and live by his or her religious beliefs and well-formed conscience.”
Let’s not forget this obligation as we inform our consciences for the 2012 elections!
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