By Judie Brown
Those committed to ending the cruelty of abortion are people who strive to abolish that stain on the soul of our nation, not to mention the souls of those who promote or participate in the deadly act.
We live in an era during which the directions to or advice on ways to kill the preborn baby or the elderly are only click away. This fact of life prompted Father Jerry Pokorsky to write in “The Devil’s Clickbait”:
Nowadays, we have cellphones. Those big data centers know our every move, our every text and phone conversation, and every click we make. So does God. Every sin known to man is just one or two clicks away.
The Christian life is not a perpetual search for the devil. It is a life of turning toward Christ. Let’s make every parish an oasis of grace, goodness, virtue, repentance, worship, and happiness. “A house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7)
These few words define our quest as people who work every day to shine the light of truth into the darkness created by the culture of death.
While it is true that sins against the Father are a click away, so are stories of heroines like Catherine, who lived to tell about the seven attempts her husband made to bring about the death of their child by the abortion pill. Both she and her daughter survived and are doing well. However, her story reminds us of why we denounce the culture of death, especially in a world where even physicians can resort to such tactics to assure themselves that their girlfriends do not carry their babies to term.
Reports of such actions are probably more common than we are led to believe. This is but another symptom of the clutches around the hearts of far too many people who have fallen victim to the culture of deceit and death.
Planned Parenthood facilities, while crowing about their work to defend women’s rights, are places where expectant mothers can suffer injury during the abortion of their babies. Operation Rescue is not standing still in the light of such tragedies and has created a website called Abortion911 to tell the truth about the horrors of abortion.
And when we move on to those who are ill or dying, we find a burgeoning assault on human dignity that has not yet equaled but is creeping up on the numbers associated with death by abortion. Noting the latest atrocities against the vulnerable, Dr. Joseph Meaney writes, “The pro-assisted suicide movement attempts to normalize the taking of one’s own life for reasons that begin with terminal illness but frequently expand to chronic conditions or even loss of autonomy or simply being tired of living.”
In other words, anyone who is overwhelmed with a problem may turn to suicide as an alternative to working out a problem.
But Meaney has words of encouragement for those of us who condemn the culture of death. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 chaos, he wrote, “The deepest core of our human natures rebels against death as the solution to our problems. The sophisticated and wealthy, but also cynical and perverted, culture of death will not satisfy the yearnings and needs of our hearts. Babies and life are blessings from God, and more and more people will see this, providing an unexpected benefit from this health crisis.”
Even now, six years later, we know this is not only a provable truth but a burgeoning feeling among the people of this nation. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen recognized this years ago, writing, “The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.”
Through our prayers, our writings, and all our efforts to touch people with truth, we strive every day to be those who challenge the consciences of others.
Being witnesses to truth is how we effectively teach others to deplore the culture of death.