By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Media through news and commentary are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the first landing of a man on the moon this month, a great achievement indeed. Neil Armstrong’s great feat proved that we could travel into the solar system and see new places beyond planet Earth. The possibility of human life on the moon and the mission to travel deeper into outer space, however, is not the only frontier that yet needs to be conquered: We still have a lot of work to do simply to assert the inviolability of the sacredness of human life right here on Earth.
I remember, at six years old in 1969, fighting sleep, up late at night with my siblings, and I can still hear my mother’s voice as she urged us, “Stay awake, stay awake,” because she wanted so much for us to witness that historic moment of men emerging from their spaceship on the moon firsthand, visible before us, almost as a miracle within a miracle, transmitted as it was on the small black and white TV in our living room.
The moon was a new frontier for humanity 50 years ago, but tragically we’re still trying to make the Earth a safe place, no longer a frontier for the same human life, despite its moment of victory so celebrated in Armstrong’s “one small step for a man.” The call needed in our day is for a “great leap” yet to be accomplished by mankind, so that the world is no longer selective about which human life will be welcomed and which rejected.
As long as any human life is under threat, the Earth remains still a frontier for the Creator’s plan that we “go forth and multiply,” “fill the Earth and subdue it” as commanded in the Book of Genesis.
One year before that moon walk, the Church repeated her teaching against the artificial sterilization of the marital act of husband and wife through the means of contraception — to wide rejection on the part of priests and even bishops. Doubting and disobedient laity were left undefended against this slippery slope to abortion as a backup for failed contraceptive use. The anti-life will operative in frustration of the marital act through artificial means was not condemned or explained, leaving the faithful further vulnerable to an occasion of sin.
Five short years later, Roe v. Wade legalized the killing of the unborn. A child guilty simply of being conceived could find herself a pioneer just by stepping into the world outside the mother’s womb for the first time alive. Mankind took a giant step backward.
Human life is still under attack, with the starvation and dehydration this month of Vincent Lambert, France’s Terri Schiavo. The nation of France made him a virtual prisoner, denying him recourse outside national socialized medicine, and then found him guilty simply of being alive and then executed him by denying him the basic means of sustaining life in nutrition and hydration.
The National Health Service in England recently ordered an abortion for a learning disabled Nigerian woman, even though her mother was willing to care for the child. The ruling was overturned after a social uproar notable for the paucity of episcopal voices.
Catholics are still voting for pro-abortion politicians, including black Catholics, when this is racism, compounding the sin because abortion is an ongoing genocide, targeting as it does minorities, primarily African-Americans.
Catholics admit in unguarded moments to voting for pro-abortion politicians. Pro-abortion Catholic politicians still march up to the Communion rail to receive the Eucharist sacrilegiously and uselessly in many of our churches. As long as the Church is not consistently fighting the injustice of abortion and other attacks on human life such as euthanasia by forbidding such abuse, the Earth remains still an unclaimed frontier for the sacredness of every human being.
In my parish neighborhood an ecumenical pro-life organization was denied funding from the local government simply because they are pro-life, another discrimination against the unborn and those who seek to defend them.
A world that is safe for human life will also be a world where married couples will shun contraception and open themselves generously to conceiving new life. We need to continue to teach the truth that recourse to the means of contraception is always a moral evil.
The astronauts had special handmade suits to protect them and even the suits needed to be protected. Human life needs protection and only those of us already born can give to, and demand respect for, every human person from the moment of conception until natural death, in all its stages and conditions. God commands: “Thou shalt not kill.”
As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of human life on the moon, we continue to battle ceaselessly against the threats to human life that still exist here on Earth.
A retraction is necessary. In a prior column I mentioned a deacon blogger on Patheos as dredging up some of my prior critique of the Pope in the context of and unrelated to the Twitter “shoulders” controversy, but then deleting it. That was not the case. He issued a short factual account of the incident only. My repeated and further research confirmed it was in fact a woman writer at National Catholic Reporter who was the one who brought up unrelated issues involving my criticism of the Pope in an earlier column in the context of the “covering shoulders” controversy.
NCR continues to distort and undermine the faith, just as in the attacks on life and Church teaching in 1968, confusing laity and empowering dissidents in their darkness. It remains a non-Catholic publication, as was made clear by one of our bishops years ago, incorrectly using the word “Catholic” in its name. No Catholic should support NCR or promote it in any way.
A word of thanks to Lisa Bourne for a wonderful article about the “shoulders” episode in LifeSiteNews.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ now and forever.
Follow me on Twitter @IntroiboAdAltar where I will be tweeting for the first time again in September. I’m taking votes on the content of the first transmission after my time off: first choice, “The woman with the shoulders came back to Mass and is doing fine,” number two, “Hello,” number three, “Of course men are responsible for self-control but women can help,” and, choice four, quoting the Catechism on chastity.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress