The Death Party And Pastoral Challenges
By FR. MICHAEL P. ORSI
Clergy must minister to people of all backgrounds, all walks of life, all affiliations. As a priest, my mission is to bring the sacraments to anyone who seeks them earnestly and validly, to help people address their life concerns, grow in their faith, and come ever closer to Christ.
Though I’ve always had strong opinions, I must be open to people who don’t share many of my views. I often have to strike a delicate balance between principle and pastoral service. In particular, I can’t let politics hinder my efforts to meet spiritual needs. So I must try to restrain certain partisan inclinations that are natural to me.
This has become increasingly difficult as the Democratic Party has embraced abortion as its salient cause, becoming unrestrained in its advocacy, and dropping its longstanding claim to wishing the practice might be “safe, legal, and rare.”
Nowadays, Democratic Party leaders and elected officials are entirely open about wanting abortion to be common, easily obtainable, and free from any restriction at any point in a pregnancy. They demonstrated this recently when the Democrat-majority New York state legislature passed a bill permitting abortion right up to dilation and even after a child has emerged from the mother.
Politicians literally danced when this legislation was signed into law by the ostensibly Catholic governor, Andrew Cuomo. The Freedom Tower in the World Trade Center was bathed in pink light to celebrate this freedom which New York’s women now have: the freedom to murder their own fully born babies.
And so the Democrats have committed themselves to infanticide. This is no longer just about “choice” or “women’s rights.” The “D” party has unabashedly become the death party.
Legislation similar to New York’s was introduced in Virginia shortly after. When asked what would happen if a baby survived an abortion, the Democrat governor there — who is a pediatrician by training — explained that the mother and the doctor would have a conference and decide whether the baby should live or die.
Fortunately, this bill failed. The governor is still in office, after a recent controversy over an old yearbook photo that showed him in blackface — for which he received more criticism than he did for promoting abortion. The “D” party continues to support him.
In the wake of these state initiatives, there was a movement in the U.S. Senate to pass legislation that would require medical care of babies who survive abortion. All but three Democrats voted against a procedural motion on that Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, thus stopping it from going forward. In fairness, it should be noted that several “R”s voted with the Party of Death on this.
President Trump has recently declared that government funding will no longer go to organizations that conduct or refer for abortions (Planned Parenthood being the worst). Expectedly, there are legal challenges to his executive order. He deserves a lot of credit for his stance in favor of human life and his willingness to face yet another round of legal battles.
It’s common for pro-abortion politicians who consider themselves Christians (some of them Catholic like Senator and former vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine) to tell us that they are personally opposed to abortion, but that they have to do what their constituents want them to do. This is an old dodge.
When we elect someone to office, we aren’t electing a puppet whose strings we can pull and tell what to do. Rather, we’re electing someone who is, one hopes, a moral person who will exercise some moral judgment that reflects the values they bring with them to the office they’ve been chosen to fill.
This “personally opposed” canard is simply a cop-out. We must call what our politicians are doing — on both the state and federal levels — what it is: murder. And we must make it clear that those who support this killing of babies are complicit in murder.
Those of us who are strongly focused on opposing abortion are often dismissed as “one-issue voters.” We may hear this expression used derisively by friends or relatives who think of themselves as more balanced, sophisticated, or worldly wise. It’s certainly a favorite of pro-abortion politicians. And you may even hear it from some pastors since, tragically, support for abortion can be found in many churches today.
Even in those churches where opposition to abortion is given voice, the issue is often subsumed into a broader social agenda. Among Catholics this approach is known as the “seamless garment,” an image that expresses the supposed equality of all human needs and rights. Thus hunger, unemployment, housing, immigration — all social-justice issues — are the same, and abortion is only one thread in a continuous fabric of Christian concern.
It’s a ridiculous moral slogan that is intended to blunt the impact of pro-life sentiment and action.
Well, I guess we are one-issue voters. In fact, you’re darned right we are, and we should be. Abortion is an issue of life and death. Those who do not live have no other needs or rights. And certainly for babies facing the ends of their lives in abortion, no other issue matters.
Despite the inconsistency on abortion among some Republicans, the battle lines are pretty clearly drawn. The “D” party has gone too far. They must be called what they are: the death party.
I’m a priest, and I’ll minister to anyone. But the truth is the truth.
+ + +
(A priest of the Diocese of Camden, N.J., Fr. Michael P. Orsi serves as parochial vicar at St. Agnes Parish in Naples, Fla. He is host of “Action for Life TV,” a weekly cable television series devoted to pro-life issues, and his writings appear in numerous publications and online journals.)
