By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
In the course of a recent visit to New York City on the occasion of the annual “Fleet Week,” I enjoyed the privilege of meeting Peter Smith, representative of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children to the United Nations.
An active duty Navy chaplain friend, Fr. Charles Johnson, was in port on his ship the USS Kearsarge for the annual Navy and Marine Corps extravaganza in the city and I had come to town to join him for some time off on liberty.
I enjoyed the hospitality of Fr. Gerry Murray where he serves as pastor at the Church of the Holy Family in the UN neighborhood of the city. I thank him for his fraternal kindness.
Peter and I chatted one morning and he shared his conversion story from a bitter divorced agnostic. He met Christ through a community of believers. He committed himself to Christ in an evangelical context and eventually wound up doing international pro-life work which brings him to New York several times yearly to represent SPUC at UN meetings where family and life issues are discussed.
His work is vital because as we all know life and the family are under attack. My meeting with him proved to be a much needed examination of conscience about my own focus on this vital issue to the Church.
Peter makes an interesting point on his blog about the effect upon the Chinese of the government’s horrific one-child policy. He managed one day after a UN meeting ended early to engage a Chinese acquaintance in conversation who had heretofore been avoiding him. A young man the Chinese rep had one child that was cared for by his mother-in-law. He and his wife now “qualify” to have a second child. When he approached his wife to broach the idea she responded, “No thanks.”
Peter made a very good point when he stated that if the Chinese government thinks they can turn the fertility tap on and off at will they have another think coming.
Sadly, Peter had already gained agreement from the young man that he thought the world would be better off with more Chinese people rather than fewer because, if that’s the truth then the Chinese are not going about it in a promising way.
You can read more about Peter on his blog, “Peter Smith — ProLife Ministries.”
Peter’s work at the UN fighting for children is fighting for families. His struggle on behalf of families is also a struggle for children and the sacredness of their lives from conception until natural death. Children and families go together in God’s plan.
The first most beautiful thing that happened to me was that I was born into the world through a true marriage: a man and woman already committed exclusively to each other who had vowed to seek always the help of God to remain so. The courage of marriage is a remarkable thing. A man and woman set out together into the unknown of the future armed only with their faith in God and love for each other. With these graces they open their lives to the Father’s will as did Christ when He, in total vulnerability, stretched His arms upon the Holy Cross to die for us.
Not for nothing does the Church preach and teach that the love of Christ in obedience to the holy will of His Father in undergoing crucifixion is the model for the servant love of man and woman in the mutual subjection of Holy Matrimony. Undying love for one another can be found only in the undying source of divine love. God’s love for us is found totally and completely in Christ alone.
Thus the family must be founded upon Christ if the family is to have the blessing of love from God.
SPUC sponsored a Rome conference to study a better defense against the attacks upon the family that we are experiencing in our day.
Professor Roberto de Mattei delivered his usual excellent and piercing analysis by beginning with the basic truths about the family.
“The family is a true juridical and moral society, founded on matrimony and intended for the transmission of life and the raising of children. The procreation of children is the primary end to which marriage is ordered by nature, from its very origin. The origin of the family and of matrimony is in human nature. The child is not born because of his own choice, and he is not autonomous.
“The law of birth and the raising of the child is dependence. Dependence is the law of humanity reunited in society. Everything depends on something, nothing is determined by itself. The principle of causality governs the universe. This rule belongs to the first and indemonstrable principles which Aristotle already learned from reality. This principle presupposes the first philosophical primacy of being, to which modern culture opposes the primacy of becoming, which is the negation of any immutable and permanent reality.
“The family is a society whose primary end is to transmit life and to raise children. Because it is the source of life and of new human relationships, it constitutes the fundamental and irreplaceable cell of society. All the classical philosophers and political thinkers have affirmed it, and history has confirmed it.
“Well before Christianity, in ancient Rome, the familia was the cell of the civitas, and matrimony assured social stability, constituting, according to the precise definition of Cicero, the seminarium rei publicae — the seedbed of society which is born and expands from the family.
“Christianity elevated matrimony to a sacrament, and when the Roman Empire fell, crushed by the barbarians, the only entity which survived and constituted the basis of the society which was born was the family.
“The birth of the European nations, from the beginning of the year 1000, coincided with the development of the institution of the family. The same etymology of the word ‘nation’ (from the Latin natus), moreover, does not refer to a ‘choice’ but to birth, and indicates a set of men who have a common origin and a blood-tie.
“The territory in which various authorities were exercised in medieval society — referring to the head of the family, of the feudal baron or of the king — was uniformly called in documents, the patria, the dominion of the father.”
(You can read the complete text of the talks from the Voice of the Family conference in Rome at http://voiceofthefamily.com.)
Salvation in Christ comes through the family. As St. John Paul II told us, “As the family goes, so goes the Church.” Christ is always the source strong, united, loving families that the work of handing on the faith may reach its end of saving as many souls as possible.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
@MCTLFrAphorism
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