By DEB PIROCH
God gives us saints for our times. With the recent Supreme Court ruling, one’s mind turns to Pro-Life Saints — like Pope St. John Paul II, or Mother Teresa.
When abortion was legalized in 1973 in America, the Supreme Court ruling overturned the majority of U.S. states’ laws which made abortion illegal. And while Roe v. Wade created a precedent in law where none existed for abortion, this did not in any way morally justify the killing of innocent unborn children. Since that time many nations have followed the example of the United States, but the U.S. is unique in that here our leaders and electorate continue to wage a fight back and forth against abortion, with the right to life coming above all other rights. As Catholics, we recognize no one may take life in the Ten Commandments and in the Truth of sacred teaching, handed down by the faith through the ages.
Mother Teresa, whose order rescued over 50,000 dying from the streets and gave them love and care, addressed the wickedness of abortion many times and championed the inherent value of Life. When she was given the Nobel Prize she said:
“And I feel one thing I want to share with you all, the greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child. For if a mother can murder her own child in her own womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other? Even in the Scripture it is written: Even if mother could forget her child — I will not forget you — I have carved you in the palm of my hand. Even if mother could forget, but today millions of unborn children are being killed. And we say nothing. In the newspapers you read numbers of this one and that one being killed, this being destroyed, but nobody speaks of the millions of little ones who have been conceived to the same life as you and I, to the life of God, and we say nothing, we allow it. To me the nations who have legalized abortion, they are the poorest nations” — Nobel Prize speech, 1979.
Mother practiced what she preached. In founding the Missionaries of Charity, one of the areas the order embraced was taking in unwanted children and finding them adoptive homes. By the time she passed away, 8,000 children had been placed in homes, and her order numbered 5,000 Missionaries of Charity in 120 nations.
Everything she did came from prayer and grace, the hours spent on her knees at Mass and in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. She worried about disappointing only God. In 1982, the class and faculty at Harvard would have done well to listen harder when she addressed them, urging them to remain virgins until marriage and terming abortion the “greatest evil.” Birth control is capable of abortifacient methods of killing fertilized embryos at early stages, which is one reason why the Church has never condoned it.
Today we see the hue and outcry because people have grown used to the sinful mindset that surrounds sex separated from marriage and procreation. For all that abortion backers promised it would be rare, it has flourished, as has promiscuity, becoming now a secondary method of birth control. When birth control fails, you see, people are not prepared for a child and run to abortion. This is in part why the birth control attitude is toxic.
In 1985, Mother was invited to speak to the United Nations, and addressed abortion in her address:
“This is what is such a contradiction, and today I feel that abortion has become the greatest destroyer of peace. We are afraid of the nuclear [war], because it is touching us, but we are…not afraid to commit that terrible murder. Even when God Himself speaks of that, He says “even if mother could forget her child, I will not forget you. I have carved you on the palm of my hand, you are precious to me. I love you.” These are God’s own words to you, to me, to that little unborn child. And this is why . . . if we are sincere in our hearts that we really want peace, today, let us make that strong resolution. . . . That in our countries that terrible law of killing the innocents, of destroying life, destroying the presence of God, be removed from our country, from our nation, from our people, from our families” — United Nations, 1985.
The Albanian-born nun was beatified by Pope John Paul II and then canonized by Pope Francis just six years ago. Surely, though, those of us who remember her knew she was a saint and were prepared for this swift canonization. Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, she took the name Teresa after St. Therese of Lisieux but with an alternate spelling, as one of the other nuns in her order already had the name Theresa with an “h.”
Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR, whose program I produced for six years in prime time on EWTN, was for years acquainted with Mother Teresa, starting around 1968. He eventually became the appointed representative for the archdiocese to help Mother Teresa. He said in an interview with Linda Schaefer, “I think she was the prophetess of our time. I think she was substantially directed by the Holy Spirit to lead the Church to an identification with the poor Christ and a love for the poor and with a true sincerity.”
Destroying the unborn of the poor, or putting all young, underprivileged women on birth control, would have horrified Mother Teresa, and of course she was criticized for not doing this in India. Only the Devil would define killing as “a solution,” but the Devil is in the details.
One of the most famous speeches Mother Teresa gave was at the 1974 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. She was asked to talk and in characteristic fashion for her, was very plainspoken on the matter of abortion. People were shocked as next to her were President Bill and Hillary Clinton; we should remember that both Clintons have always been very pro-abortion, to the extent that Bill Clinton twice vetoed laws that would have stopped partial-birth abortion before the barbaric practice was barred by law. There is no such thing as doing an evil to promote good, and Mother Teresa knew this.
“By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. So that father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So, abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion….
“We have sent word to the clinics, to the hospitals and police stations: ‘Please don’t destroy the child. We will take the child.’ So we always have someone tell the mothers in trouble: ‘Come, we will take care of you. We will get a home for your child.’ And we have a tremendous demand from couples who cannot have a child. But I never give a child to a couple who have done something not to have a child. Jesus said, ‘Anyone who receives a child in my name, receives me.’ By adopting a child, these couples receive Jesus but, by aborting a child, a couple refuses to receive Jesus.
“Please don’t kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to [a] married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child.” — National Prayer Breakfast, February 1994
Mother Teresa died in 1997 and her feast day is September 5. It is somehow very proper that she and Pope John Paul II are both saints, for the friendship of these great pro-life saints should rightly continue in Heaven, where they may continue as our intercessors.
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