Catholic = Pro-Life

Amazing that it has to be said. But since many Catholics—and not just well-known politicians—don't seem to know it, get it, or care about it, it must be said. Again and again, as clearly and firmly as possible. Fr. Thomas D. Williams does a nice job of explaining the basics over at NRO:

People — including apparently some “ardent” Catholics — seem to forget how central the pro-life issue is to Catholic morality and why that is so. We are not quibbling here about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It is no exaggeration to say that the inviolability and sacredness of innocent human life is to Catholic morality what the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is to Catholic dogma. Both are not only non-negotiable; they are foundational. I would challenge Speaker Pelosi to come up with any moral question on which the Church has expressed itself with greater clarity than on the intrinsic evil of abortion.

A solid core of beliefs or principles undergirds any human organization. These beliefs constitute the cement that binds the society together and determine its identity. Obviously plenty of issues fall outside this fundamental core, and there is a difference between legitimate pluralism of opinion and arrant contradiction. Environmentalists, for example, can disagree about many things — such as strategies, priorities, tactics, funding and the like — but devotion to the environment and its logical corollaries are not up for debate. If you sport a mink coat, you’re out of the club.

Being Catholic is no different. The title “Catholic” presumes a whole string of basic beliefs, succinctly laid out in the Apostle’s Creed. Catholics believe in one God, creator of heaven and earth, in Jesus Christ his only begotten son who became man, suffered and died for us, rose from the dead on the third day, and so forth. Along with this canon of doctrines, Catholics also embrace a body of moral teaching (summed up tidily in the Catechism of the Catholic Church) which governs their understanding of right and wrong, what is pleasing to God and what offends Him.

From the earliest days of Christianity, Jesus’ followers distinguished themselves from those around them both by their doctrinal beliefs and their moral code. The earliest known work of Christian antiquity outside the New Testament is called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, known also by its familiar Greek appellation, the Didache. This catechetical manual makes no bones about what it means to be a Christian. It begins with the stark admonition: “Two ways there are, one of Life and one of Death, and there is a great difference between the Two Ways.” Included in the explanation of what it means to love one’s neighbor, as part of the “way of life,” first century Christians read the words, “Do not kill a fetus by abortion, or commit infanticide.” Such has been the consistent teaching throughout the history of Christianity and no amount of political posturing will change that.

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.

Read the entire column.

Comments

[Robert Miller]

Thanks for the commentaries by Fathers Williams and Schall.

"Proving", in the 20th/21st century context, that abortion is a heinous crime is analogous, in the same context, to proving that God exists. We know that neither proof depends on Revelation. Every intellect has the data at hand to make the correct judgment. But, if the intellect has been formed in hostility to Revelation, the integrity of its operation will be vitiated on the rational plane as well.

The pagan could understand the rational proofs. The post-Catholic neo-heathen cannot or will not.

This fact underscores the deepest difficulty impeding reception of Catholic social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine is abstracted from the experience of a pre-Christian (fallen) and Catholic (fallen, redeemed) world, transfigured in the Light of Revelation. But those whose program is "ecrasez l'infame", and their followers, will not even embrace Catholic social doctrine's natural principles, because the Catholic Church is the incarnation of the Kingdom.

[MMajor Fan]

Quote: "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."

Imagine that you see it as I see it in my mind's eye. Thirty million or more souls of rejected human lives floating back up to heaven like reverse snowflakes. Imagine how God perceives it. And people cannot recognize the rapture, the disappearing of the humans side by side, as they are doing it themselves. Abortion, the rapture factories. Anyone with a brain should shuddder in terror.

[Ed Peters]

I'm glad to see this column by TDW gettin picked up by so many good blogs. it was quite good.

[Samantha]

Thank you for this post.
:-)