By PEGGY MOEN
MINNEAPOLIS — Bishop Paul Sirba of Duluth, Minn., addressed about 250 pro-lifers at St. Helena’s here on “The Gospel of Life in a Throwaway Culture,” borrowing Pope Francis’ theme. The occasion was the parish’s 30th “Evening Affirming Human Life and the Family.”
“What can we do?” Bishop Sirba asked his listeners — the bulk of whom were decades-long pro-life veterans — to answer the throwaway culture, which sees the elderly, the unborn, and others as disposable. “Where do we find ourselves today?” in our defense of human life.
Along with his call to “explore the joy of the Gospel of Life,” the bishop focused on a new manifestation of the throwaway culture: the “commercial surrogacy industry.”
“Surrogacy” means a couple who, unable to have a biological child of their own, hire a woman to carry and deliver a baby for them. After the birth, the couple then take the baby.
Bishop Sirba referenced a recent article on surrogacy by Kathryn Mollen, the policy and outreach coordinator of the Minnesota Catholic Conference (The Northern Cross of the Diocese of Duluth, March 2015). Mollen wrote that surrogacy often leads to disastrous consequences, as when one party to the agreement changes his or her mind.
Therefore, the “commercial surrogacy industry” has been promoting state laws to help them legitimize the surrogacy contracts and protect their client’s “investment” and “do what was, historically, unthinkable in our legal system: buy and sell a baby,” wrote Mollen.
Last year, the Minnesota Catholic Conference helped defeat legislation that would have legitimized surrogacy contracts. This year, the MCC is backing legislation to establish a surrogacy study commission.
Illinois and California have already legalized commercial surrogacy.
While the desire to have a child is a good end, said Bishop Sirba, surrogacy uses unacceptable means to obtain it. He stressed that “compassion does not justify the commodification of human life.”
The bishop offered another example of this commodification.
In a First Things article dated December 31, 2014, author George Weigel reported how Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare — best known for calling American voters “stupid” — in 1997 wrote a chilling paper on the benefits of abortion.
In that paper, Gruber detailed his research on the economic effects of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion.
Gruber wrote:
“By 1993, all cohorts under the age 18 were born under legalized abortion and we estimate steady state savings of $1.6 billion per year from positive selection.”
Weigel explained: “In plain English: The abortion license saved the taxpayers $1.6 billion a year because those terminated before birth were from social classes most likely to be welfare clients.”
This is eugenics, said Bishop Sirba, because Gruber hails the money the country saved through “positive selection.”
To defeat this anti-life mentality, Pope Francis proposes the “joy of the Gospel.” But we need to see that joy is “more than a feeling,” said Bishop Sirba. It is “one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.” It comes from Baptism and Confirmation and being in the life of grace.
St. Thomas Aquinas, he said, wrote that “joy flows from the virtue of charity.” And Blessed Mother Teresa said that “joy is the net through which we can catch souls.”
For the new evangelization to succeed, the bishop said, “the point is to introduce people to Jesus Christ.” Then, the moral teachings of the Church will make sense.
Bishop Sirba, who has headed the Diocese of Duluth since 2009, sees hopeful signs among the young.
For example, he noted, Students for Life boasts 838 chapters, while all the comparable pro-abortion groups combined equal less than half that number.
“They just need witnesses,” he said, “and that’s where we can come in.”
“What can we do? We’re called to live the Gospel of Life.”
The bishop recalled World Youth Day in Rio, with 3.5 million young people gathered on the beach for Mass.
Francis simply told them “Go” — “you just have to know Jesus and then go.”
The culture puts “extraordinary pressure” on youth to be relativists, said Bishop Sirba — that is, the attitude that abortion is OK for you, even though I’m against it.
Pope Benedict XVI told us, he said, that to reach youth “we need to teach them the art of living.”
Present at the table with Bishop Sirba was St. Helena’s longtime pastor, Fr. Richard Villano, who in some opening remarks similarly said that “we need to proclaim life and not death” and “we’ve got to be positive.”
Fr. Villano then introduced Bishop Sirba as “one of the great bishops of our nation.”
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress