READ THE BIBLE IN ONE YEAR: http://www.oneyearbibleonline.com/august.asp?version=31
September 3, 2008 HOMILY: What Ardent Practicing Catholics Do
EXCERPT: Don't Blame the Bishops- Catholic means pro-life by Father Thomas D. Williams
Some people think that when Catholics compare abortion to slavery or to Nazi anti-Semitism they are engaging in hyperbole. They couldn't be more wrong. Abortion is not only the greatest social injustice of our century; it is arguably the greatest social injustice of all time. Abortion circumscribes an entire class of human beings (the unborn) as non-citizens, excluded from the basic rights and protections accorded to all other human beings. In this way abortion mimics the great moral tragedies of all time, which always began with the denigration of an entire class of people as unworthy of life or freedom.
The evil of abortion is compounded by the magnitude of the problem. Though completely reliable statistics are unavailable, conservative estimates place the number of legal abortions performed worldwide each year at 25-30 million, a figure that alone makes abortion a social problem of staggering proportions. "Humanity today offers us a truly alarming spectacle," wrote Pope John Paul in his 1995 encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae, "if we consider not only how extensively attacks on life are spreading but also their unheard of numerical proportion." The legal, systematic elimination of the most vulnerable members of society is the most heinous crime known to man. To fail to oppose it is to make oneself complicit in it.
An honest look at what an abortion is, and at how many victims it claims, is enough to reveal that nothing outweighs its gravity among the many "life issues." Multiple Church documents have confirmed this insight, repeating over and over that the abortion tragedy demands urgent attention and priority.
While some have tried, shamelessly, to obscure and contradict this teaching, many are quite able to understand and accept it. Yet the truth is even deeper than the statement, "Being wrong on abortion outweighs being right on other issues."
The full truth is, if you are wrong on abortion, you can't be right on other issues.
To permit abortion, but then to cry out for the right to work, housing, education, health care, and so forth, is to say that these other rights belong to some people but not to all. They obviously do not belong to those who were snuffed out by abortion.
Therefore, these rights cannot be human rights, because you have already said that not all humans have a claim on them. This trivializes those other rights and puts them on an obscure and questionable foundation.
If you permit abortion, then, on what basis do you defend the other rights? Why do we care for the poor?
Because they have a right to food, clothing, and shelter. But why do they have a right to those things?
Because they have a right to live. Why are we concerned about unemployment? Because people have a right to make a living. Why do they have that right? Because they have a right to live. It all comes back to that foundational right. Abortion is not the only issue, but neither is the foundation of a house the only part of a house. Take it away, however, and see how well you can build the rest.
The reason that being wrong on abortion makes it impossible to be right on other issues is that the heart and soul of every "issue" is precisely the dignity of the human person, whose right to life is not under the dominion of any other person. A person's dignity comes from the fact that he or she is human, not that someone else decides to grant that right at some point in time. Any human right begins when human life begins; otherwise, it isn't a human right, but rather some kind of benefit bestowed for another reason.
Now if you can take the right to life away from some humans, as abortion does to the children in the womb, then obviously you can take away from those same humans all their other human rights, because none of those other rights made such a claim upon your respect that you had to let those people live to possess it.
This is why the Pope has said that when the right to life is not protected, cries for other human rights are "false and illusory." When one is wrong on abortion, one cannot be right on anything else.
Ladder of Divine Ascent excerpt: Step 7- "On Joy-Making Mourning"
31. Just as fire is destructive of straw, so are pure tears destructive of all material and spiritual impurity.Prayer request? Send an email to: PrayerRequest3@aol.com
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