By Judie Brown
In 1995, Pope John Paul II urged us to work for the day when we could “offer this world of ours new signs of hope, and work to ensure that justice and solidarity will increase and that a new culture of human life will be affirmed, for the building of an authentic civilization of truth and love.”
As you read these words and celebrate his feast day today, look around and ask yourself what you see.
You will undoubtedly see us residing in a land enveloped in efforts to do anything but stand with the suffering, the preborn, and the vulnerable. It seems that whether we are talking about climate change, universities, state legislatures, or even corporate policy, the threat of death by chemical, surgical, or other means looms.
“Experts” tell us that improving access to contraception on a global level can help solve the problems of population growth and climate change. Apparently people themselves are the alleged pollutants.
We see this in Denver, where geriatrics doctor Barbara Morris is suing the Christian hospital Centura because she was fired for offering to help her patient kill himself. According to the Denver Post: “Centura officials said Morris had violated terms of her physician’s employment agreement and ‘encouraged an option that she knew was morally unacceptable to her employer.’”
Proponents of assisted suicide argue that those who hold views in support of assisted suicide are just as ethical as those with a faith perspective.
Aha! Another example of God and His truth getting in the way of the death peddlers. Thank God Centura stands in solidarity with its patients.
We see another example of the lack of respect for human life in Philadelphia, as the city has recently announced plans to open “safe injection sites” where addicts can go to have their injections monitored. Fr. Douglas McKay, founder and chaplain of Our House Ministries, has spoken out against the plan. McKay has spent over 50 years helping drug addicts recover, and he says these “safe injection sites” are just “a way of killing those with addiction, a way of doping them up and ‘protecting’ ourselves from them.” And he calls the plan a form of euthanasia.
Fr. McKay’s way builds solidarity with those sick from their addiction.
And then there’s Louisiana, whose Unsafe Abortion Protection Act is under attack by the pro-aborts. This law—which isn’t about ending abortion in the state—places requirements on abortion facilities with the goal of protecting women from danger. But pro-aborts are upset, calling the law “bogus.”
Louisiana lawmakers are trying to do a little to stand in solidarity with the preborn child, but those who advocate aborting those children will always be frothing at the mouth and clamoring for more killing.
Seattle, Washington, is the site of yet another struggle, and this time the target of the attack is Seattle University president and Jesuit priest Fr. Stephen Sundborg. Sundborg decided to remove Planned Parenthood from an online list of healthcare resources on campus, and the crowd went wild, so to speak. Students and faculty joined in writing a letter to Sundborg accusing him of making a decision that was “ill-informed, irresponsible, and dangerous.”
We are not sure who is in danger other than preborn babies, but clearly Planned Parenthood has a fan club of Catholics aligned with SU.
While Fr. Sundborg says he should have handled the matter differently, he is not altering the decision he made. He is instead standing in solidarity with truth.
The bottom line is that far too many in our midst have not yet heard and heeded the profound call of Christ. But there is always hope, as St. John Paul II reminds us: “The Spirit who builds up communion in love creates between us a new fraternity and solidarity, a true reflection of the mystery of mutual self-giving and receiving proper to the Most Holy Trinity. The Spirit becomes the new law which gives strength to believers and awakens in them a responsibility for sharing the gift of self and for accepting others, as a sharing in the boundless love of Jesus Christ himself.”
Only by building the new fraternity of man will we see selfless solidarity for human beings—born and preborn—replace the current cultural slide into oblivion.
