And this video is of the talk I gave on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Evangelium Vitae. The talk begins at 13:50 and the text follows.
The greatness of the United States, Pope Saint John Paul II once preached, is rooted in its embodiment of a “commitment to human freedom, human rights and human dignity.” He continued, speaking to you and to me, “[As] Americans, you are rightly proud of your country's great achievements."
What makes America great, according to this saintly Pope, is our commitment to human dignity, the dignity of every human being and especially the ones forgotten or thrown away by the rest of the world.
Emma Lazarus’ poem which graces the Statue of Liberty professes this national Creed, declaring to all the world: “ "Give me you're tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
What makes that door golden is not the wealth or power or prestige of our nation, but its essential goodness, fairness and love for those whom everyone else has forgotten.
Twenty-five years ago, that same Pope called the whole world to embrace this most basic of all human values, defending “”the inviolable dignity of the person” from conception to natural death. Reflecting on his Encyclical Letter, Evangelium Vitae, the Bishops of our declared that a country which was founded on the God-given right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” must never “kill, or collude in the killing, of any innocent human life, no matter how broken, unformed, disabled or desperate that life may seem.”
America seeks to be great. Yet she too often does so by building ornate structures of self-engrandisement, power and financial gain. Yet the God who endowed us with the rights we enjoy is the One who hears the cry of the poor and looks upon us in our littleness. When the road to our success is littered with the corpses of those unfortunates whom we have devalued and abandoned, we become something different than what we have been called to be.
I sometimes fear that our great country has proved the prescient maxim of C.S. Lewis to be true: “The power of Man to make himself what he pleases means…the power of some men to make other men what they please.” For in rendering the definition of human personhood subject to negotiation and political calculation, we have excluded the unborn child from human status.
Thus the sad reality is that Abortion will long be remembered as the proto-evil of our generation, alongside those laws which would assist the old and sick in taking their own lives, putting criminals to death, refusing to welcome the immigrant and the stranger and discriminating against those who skin is a different color than our own.
This failure to acknowledge the dignity of every human person is a disease which, sadly, infects the fabric of our society and keeps us from realizing the greatness to which God has called us. Sadly, it is a disease more deadly than any pandemic we have ever known.
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So twenty five years after Pope Saint John Paul’s Evangelium Vitae, more than a half century after Pope Saint Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae and almost as long since our Supreme Court legalized abortion, what are we to do?
Certainly we are to pray. It is the most fundamental and effective thing we can do to foster a culture of life in our country. We pray “in order to glorify and give thanks to God for the gift of life, and implore his light and strength in order to face times of difficulty and suffering without losing hope.”
It is also important that we exercise our duties as citizens to assure “that the laws and institutions of the State in no way violate the right to life, from conception to natural death, but rather protect and promote it.”
And finally, we must foster the Gospel of life by the way we live our life. By forgiving before we ask to be forgiven, seeking to understand before we seek to judge and giving before we seek to receive.
Two stories in this regard.
During the past year this Cathedral parish has been seeking to reach out to the neighborhood, and the neighborhood of downtown Worcester includes the Pharmacy School. So last fall we joined the many Worcester community y organizations in setting up a table at the open house for new students.
Diagonally across from us and a couple tables down was the table for Planned Parenthood. After a few minute the woman sitting at the table caught my eye and we cautiously nodded our heads. Soon, however, I was caught up in meeting new students and bragging about the Cathedral. This went on for quite a while until lunch time approached and the crowds began to thin.
My staff and I sat down and began to compare notes on our evangelical efforts. And then I looked down the row of table again and saw the woman whose eyes I had caught a couple hours before. She was all alone at the table and she too was experiencing a lull. So I excused myself from the staff and walked over to meet her.
She was admittedly startled at this hulking man in a collar coming toward her, but she shook my hand and we started to talk. She was an obstetrical nurse with three children and she had lived up on Pleasant Street all her life. She had grown up in Worcester and started nursing at Saint V’s. We must have chatted for fifteen minutes, at the end of which she looked at me and said “I know we really really disagree with each other on a lot, Father,” she said, her voice trembling, “but thank you for not yelling at me.”
She knew what I believed, just by the way I was dressed. And I knew what she believed, just by the sign she was sitting behind. But our encounter was between two human beings, each convinced of the value and inherent dignity of the other. Which is a good start. And a lot better one than I had hoped for.
I wish I could give you a dramatic conclusion to the story — of conversion experiences and break-though moments. But life is a lot messier than that. And it takes a long way for us to slog through the swamp together. But maybe in God;’s good time.
God willing…with enough courage and good will. Maybe in God’s good times.
Story number two.
At least once a month in my first ten years as a priest I would join with the folks of Problem Pregnancy in picketing the old Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. One Saturday morning we heard the terrible news: that there had been a shooting at two clinics in Brookline. The man with a gun was John Salvi, and he went into two clinics, put a rifle up to the head of one woman and shot and killed her, saying “That's what you get. You should pray the rosary more.” Then he killed a second woman.
Pro-life Catholics were ashamed and infuriated and the pro-choice folks was terrified and traumatized. Cardinal Law and most of the Bishops of new England suspended further protests and everyone from the Governor on down called for dialogue.
Concretely, the Cardinal quietly contacted Planned Parenthood and three leaders from the pro-life and pro-choice movements were chosen to secretly meet and begin a dialogue.
One author recalled that “at first, the conversation was hard…There was a lot of finger pointing back and forth. Everybody thought, we're not going to do any finger pointing. But in fact, they couldn't help themselves is what you write.” Each side saw the other as evil or insane.
But slowly things changed. A dozen years ago, one of them, Frances Hogan said this:
Now you expect me to conclude the story by saying everyone lived happily ever after because they listened so beautifully and that one of the pro-choices was marching with us last Friday. Afraid not. This is real life and not a movie.
Indeed, both sides reported that their view on abortion because deeper and the political attitudes of the participants became even more polarized over the years they continued to meet. They continued to differ fundamentally on these issues, but they no longer hated each other…indeed, to this day, the participants int hat dialogue care deeply about one another.
Because they believed Saint Paul: “If I have not love, I am nothing.” And who knows, with enough love and enough of God’s grace what other miracles might occur!?
Twenty five years after Evangelium Vitae we have a lot of work to do. A lot more prayers to pray, a lot more petitions to sign, and a lot more votes to cast. But we also have a lot more relationships to build, a lot more stories to hear and a lot more friends to make.
May God gives us the words and the heart for this great work. May he bless our country and our leaders with the wisdom, the courage, the faith and the love they will need. And may he show us the way to make this one nation, under God, with liberty and justice even “the wretched refuse” whom everyone else throws away.
