By TOM TAKASH
The list seems to be unending: Catholic politicians, academics, your next-door neighbor, even your best friends, can claim to adhere to the Catholic faith, but at the same time claim that it’s a woman’s right to “terminate her pregnancy.” They repeat the same catchy phrases like “reproductive rights” and “her body, her choice” that the radical Church-haters spout.
It doesn’t matter to them that they directly defy Church teaching on abortion. They proudly profess to be Catholics, and insist they are in good standing with the Church. They regularly attend Mass and receive the Eucharist, but they also defend abortion, and not just passively but often with an almost religious devotion, professing support for “women’s rights” while ignoring the lives of the unborn. Their faith finishes far behind, and it doesn’t bother them or their day-to-day activities.
In Pro-Life Reflections for Every Day, published in 2009, Fr. Frank Pavone said, “Some abortion advocates call themselves ‘Prayerfully pro-choice.’ The implication is that they have consulted God about a procedure that dismembers little babies [bodies] and found it to be OK.” To the Catholic who takes this approach, and identifies himself or herself as a “Practicing Catholic,” let me say, that in your case, practice does not make perfect!
Maybe it’s time to become a real Catholic. Enough of the practicing. Start doing something that’s actually Catholic. Like what, you might ask? How about acknowledging that the Church’s teaching on the right to life from conception to natural death allows for no exceptions! Then consider praying outside abortion mills, or volunteering at Pro-life Pregnancy Centers, or asking Jesus in His Presence at an Adoration Chapel to guide you in ways you can help pregnant moms, or donate to the pro-life cause, or attend a “March for Life” in your local community, or put pro-life messages on your car for all to see, or just pray a daily rosary for an end to abortion.
Those are just a few of the things that can make practicing Catholicism real. And, by the way, if you have the right to vote, have the guts to say “yes to life,” and “no to abortion,” and if the subject comes up with your friends or neighbors, never hesitate to say that you are pro-life!
One wonders why so many “Catholics” don’t step up for life? Perhaps some of them are just too worried about public opinion. Perhaps they just want to get along and want to be considered open-minded. Or, maybe they actually have bought in to the “overcrowded planet” panic nonsense. They may claim it’s their obligation to protect the environment for our future generations. (That last one sounds so caring and often makes them feel that they really love children; unfortunately, not those that could be born right now!)
Whatever the reason, these “Catholics” accept “terminating an unwanted pregnancy” as a sometimes disappointing, but as a righteous act. And, of course, we also have those “intellectually mature Catholics” who just find the Church’s official position on abortion kind of outdated. A nice idea, but not relevant in today’s enlightened world.
This thinking allows them to look with amusement upon pro-lifers; those fanatics who just can’t leave well enough alone. As long as they don’t have to be personally involved in the debate, they can get on with their day-to-day activities, i.e., pay their bills, keep their jobs, save for that next vacation, occasionally donate a few bucks to the poor, raise their one or two kids, and even take some time to plan for early retirement to a warm climate for golf and pickle-ball fun.
But as damning as these selfish and weak positions can be among the average so-called pro-choice Catholics, what really is disheartening is witnessing the active promotions of the abortion agenda among Catholics who are in positions where they could positively turn people away from that abominable evil. So many Catholic politicians, academics, and scientists, who through an honest examination of conscience could be working to turn our world away from death and to life, are simply putting truth behind them and are instead embracing evil.
How could a Joe Biden, a Nancy Pelosi, a Gavin Newsom, or so many other “Catholic” politicians sleep at night, knowing that they actively seek the support of Planned Parenthood and accept the money of a George Soros and others promoters of death to our innocent unborn? How can they suppress their fellow pro-life politicians and vigorously pass anti-life legislation and still trumpet their “Catholic” faith?
Maybe their fall from the truth of the Catholic Church began with ambition, or with a lack of real Catholic catechesis, but at some point, the Church’s corrective voice must have been heard, but something else may have come into play that has closed their minds. Something that can overwhelm one’s sense of right and wrong. Self-love can mask any sin.
With our free will, we can choose sin and love darkness. We can enjoy the bittersweet taste of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge and embrace a craving for acceptance and power. The natural desire to do good can be replaced with a decision instead based on what we perceive will help our immediate needs. The desire for approval, for power, for fame, can turn anyone away from good and toward Satan’s kingdom. And these desires are with us at all levels of our society. How many Catholic politicians at every level of government have held their hands out for campaign funds from whoever will support them?
Just recently a great many “Catholic” politicians shamefully assured the passage of legislation that mocks marriage. The “Respect for Marriage Act” that actually lacks any respect for true marriage between one man and one woman has been praised by many “Catholic” politicians as they turned away from Church teaching. Are we to believe that they supported that disgrace because they really believed in it?
What has happened to the collective minds of these people? I believe that their successes have placed them in vulnerable positions where most have yielded to the virtual elimination of an objective view of right and wrong. They have closed their minds to good and embraced evil. They no longer view their decision-making the way that God has intended. Will I be re-elected? Will I get ahead? Will the media praise or belittle me? These thoughts weight heavily on their minds.
Pride can overcome the wisest of men. Even King Solomon, who was granted great wisdom by God, yielded to pride in his lifetime. Self-love is a bloody dagger. It kills truth and destroys grace. We can all be blinded by it.
Hannah Arendt, a Jew who fled Nazis Germany and reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann (a bureaucrat in that evil regime and one of the coldest organizers of the Holocaust), described him as “a collection of functions rather than an accountable human being.” He became fixated on his power at the expense of decency. His concern about doing his “duty,” about being a good party member blinded him to his real duty — that is, respecting life!
As frightening as it may sound, this description may apply to many, if not most, of our “Catholic” political and academic leaders. They vote to stay in power and delight in being accepted by the elite, by being good party members. They have become “collections of functions.” They no longer act as accountable human beings. They are Adolf Eichmann clones.
While politically powerful Catholic politicians disgrace themselves publicly, many of our Catholic academics quietly work to destroy our faith as well. For the claim to be a “practicing Catholic,” and yet to be in complete disagreement with absolute Catholic teaching, is a problem that exists throughout the American educational system, particularly when it comes to abortion, including in our Catholic schools.
Just look at how the University of Notre Dame welcomed Obama, an ardent promoter of abortion, and how Our Lady’s University then treated those pro-lifers who protested his invitation.
Abortion Always Kills
Individually, so-called Catholic professors everywhere seem to have traded in their faith for acceptance. A good example of such, professors at the university level promoting legal abortion, is one Dr. Julia Walsh, a retired health professor and a current senior research scientist at UC Berkeley California’s School of Public Health.
Dr. Walsh proudly says, “I was raised Catholic, attended Catholic college, and am a practicing Catholic today. I know that the Church opposes the right to an abortion. However. It was precisely my Catholic education that taught me to value human life and social justice above all and to develop my individual moral conscience. I saw with my own eyes that access to safe legal abortions saves lives.”
She goes on to praise legal abortion, emphasizing that illegal abortions can cause complications and death to women. The operative word is can. However, this academician fails to mention that the legal abortions that she cherishes always kill the unborn, resulting in over 63,000,000 innocent lives murdered since abortion was erroneously blessed by a not-so-supreme, Supreme Court in 1973.
Where, Dr. Walsh, may we ask, is the social justice for these murdered children? Curiously, Dr. Walsh claims that she values “human life and social justice above all . . . ,” but the only human life she apparently values is the life of the mother, over her own child, the innocent baby that God created!
I especially like her rationalization about developing her own “individual moral conscience.” So much for forming one’s conscience to the teaching of the Catholic Church, but UC Berkeley, Calif., people are a special breed! Since when does the Catholic Church’s teaching override a view of a professor at a secular major university?
Oh, and regarding your deep concern for the lives lost though illegal abortions, Dr. Walsh, I have a practical solution for that problem. Make performing an abortion a capital crime with all the possibilities for punishment that accompany a guilty verdict. Abortionists would be few and far between when faced with the possibility of a long prison term or even a death sentence. Let’s not praise these physicians who have betrayed their profession. Murderers of other humans already face these punishments in our legal system. So, why is this different? The unborn child is a living human being. Surely, as a medical professional you would not deny that the unborn child is alive?
Bernard Nathanson
And, Dr. Walsh, another doctor, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, whom you may have heard of, was once an ardent supporter of abortion. In fact, in order to promote the legalization of abortion in the late 1960s, he and others, by his own admission, greatly exaggerated the injuries and deaths to women from illegal abortions to accomplish legalization of this abomination. He was not raised Catholic as you were, but after being involved with some 75,000 abortions himself, and after an extensive study of ultrasounds of abortions, and of the development of the unborn in the womb, he became convinced of the great evil abortion is, and later became a faithful Catholic, rejecting his past actions and promoting the protection of the unborn and their mothers for the rest of his life.
I especially like Dr. Nathanson’s “Vector of Life Theory” which states: “That from the moment of conception, there exists a self-directed force of life that, if not interrupted, will lead to the birth of a human baby.”
Perhaps, Dr. Walsh, you might give some thought to what he concluded, and reconsider your wiliness to support the sacrifice of these innocent babies? After all, the “interruption” he refers to in his “Vector of Life Theory” is almost never a natural one but is almost always the murder of the innocent unborn life by violent assaults on it in the womb.
So, all “Delusional Catholics” should be beware. The wise decision is to return to your faith and become a true “Practicing Catholic,” for as Jesus said: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in Heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father” (Matt. 18:10).
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