By MOST REV. JOSEPH STRICKLAND
Part 2
When St. Paul instructed the Christians in Rome on the implications of living their faith, they were surrounded by a culture which was being corrupted by many of the problems we currently face in the West. He told them: “. . . I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2).
Renewal Of Our Minds
We are called to a continual process of conversion which involves a re-formation of our way of thinking. We are called to work to change the culture when its practices do not conform to what is good and true — not to be improperly changed by anything within it which is contrary to the truth. Part of this renewal of our minds includes rethinking how we view our citizenship and the obligations which it entails.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the duties of both civil authorities and of good citizens in its section entitled “Life in Christ” (CCC, nn. 2234-2246). It addresses the responsibility we have as citizens and the proper role of the formation of conscience.
The problem is that many Catholics have never read it. And, too many do not understand what the conscience is. We must educate our consciences to ensure that they conform to the truth as revealed in the natural law and expounded upon in Revelation.
There has been some extremely poor teaching in the arena of moral theology which has left the faithful confused on this and many other subjects of profound importance to living as Christians. It has led to people speaking as though our “conscience” somehow equates with our “feelings” — or is an aspect of our own opinion.
Not only do our consciences need to be formed, they can also become deformed and regularly need to be re-formed. That is all too evident when we examine the way in which some Catholics (and other Christians) approach political participation.
Let us be honest. Sadly there are too many politicians who are professing to be Catholics and yet stand publicly for political and policy positions which are directly at odds with the teaching of the Bible, the teaching of Catholic Church, the unbroken Christian tradition and the natural moral law.
Most clearly, we see this on the unchangeable teaching of the Christian faith concerning the dignity of every human life from conception to natural death — and the intrinsic evil of every procured abortion. The rejection of this teaching is not only a symptom of a much bigger malady; it is also a scandal. To be a “faithful” citizen, for a Catholic, indeed for every faithful Christian, means to be filled with an understanding of what is taught by our faith and to live out a commitment to that faith in every area of our lives. We are to view our lives as an integrated unity and not compartmentalize them.
All too often, people live daily life in a manner that fails to understand the implications of the Incarnation. For example, this occurs when anyone claiming to be a Christian assigns the teaching of the Scriptures and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church to only the perceived “religious” or “spiritual” part of their lives. Christian faith is meant to be a light which presides over the entirety of our life. Catholic social teaching offers us principles for our action. It is meant to be received with a mature faith, one which embraces the call to form our consciences and then act.
Nowhere is the disconnect between a formed conscience and proper Christian political participation more obvious then in protecting children in the womb from the intrinsic evil of procured abortion.
The Right To Life
In a sense, the fundamental right to life is not a single “issue.” It is a lens through which we must examine all our other claims of compassion for the poor. Innocent children in the womb are, as Mother Teresa so often reminded us, the poorest of the poor.
Without the right to life there are no other rights and the entire infrastructure of human rights is placed in jeopardy. When rights become the exclusive province of the more powerful who can make the so-called “choice” to take a life, society teeters on the brink of collapse.
Even if the positive or civil law of a nation calls what is always wrong a “right.” Even if unelected justices create a “penumbra” out of whole cloth behind which to hide the evil while purporting to be engaging in some kind constitutional analysis. Procured abortion is never right. The natural law and medical science confirm what we have always known, the child in that womb is our neighbor. We have an obligation in solidarity to protect them from the intrinsic evil of procured abortion. Our failure to do so cries out to Heaven. It also reveals the emergence of an extremely dangerous notion of the role of the state.
Pope St. John Paul II, in his encyclical letter The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae) wrote of societies wherein “the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy, people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself. Thus, society becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds.
“Each one wishes to assert himself independently of the other and in fact intends to make his own interests prevail. Still, in the face of other people’s analogous interests, some kind of compromise must be found, if one wants a society in which the maximum possible freedom is guaranteed to each individual. In this way, any reference to common values and to a truth absolutely binding on everyone is lost, and social life ventures on to the shifting sands of complete relativism. At that point, everything is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining: even the first of the fundamental rights, the right to life.
“This is what is happening also at the level of politics and government: The original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people — even if it is the majority. This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: The ‘right’ ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part. In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism.
“The State is no longer the ‘common home’ where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant state, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part.
“The appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy.
“Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: ‘How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In the name of what justice is the most unjust of discriminations practiced: some individuals are held to be deserving of defense and others are denied that dignity?’ When this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human coexistence and the disintegration of the State itself has already begun.
“To claim the right to abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin’ (John 8:34)” (The Gospel of Life, n. 20).
Fully Human
Sadly, many nations are becoming “tyrant States” in this sense. Without the freedom to be born, there are no other real freedoms. Freedom is a good of the person. Children in the womb, like all of us, are human persons.
Personhood cannot be limited to only those perceived to not be “dependent” on any other persons, or we will soon eliminate many other categories of human persons. It is our dependency upon each other which makes us fully human.
Our claims of compassion, the etymology of which means to “suffer with,” are exposed as a fraud when we do nothing to stop the killing of innocents in the womb, once the safest place on Earth, with what amount to chemical weapons and surgical strikes. This must not continue.
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