Archbishop Chaput–“Evil Cannot Bear the Counter-Witness of Truth”

"We no longer tolerate abortion. We celebrate it. We venerate it as a totem."

By Dave Andrusko

National Right to Life

Editor’s note. We ran this last week, but the response was so overwhelming, I wanted to post it a second time for readers who may have missed it the first time or for newcomers. What follows are very extensive excerpts from a remarkable speech Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia delivered at the Pennsylvania Pro-life Federation Celebrate Life Banquet late last month.
Read them carefully. These are truly pearls of wisdom.

For the past 43 years we’ve been living the consequences of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized abortion on demand. And the abortion struggle of the past four decades teaches us a very useful lesson. Evil talks a lot about “tolerance” when it’s weak. 

When evil is strong, real tolerance gets kicked out the door. This in turn explains a lot about our current cultural climate. To put it simply: Evil cannot bear the counter-witness of truth. It cannot co-exist peacefully with goodness, because evil insists on being seen as right, and worshiped as being right. Therefore, the good must be made to seem hateful and wrong.

The very existence of people who refuse to accept evil and who seek to act virtuously burns the conscience of those who don’t. And so, quite logically, people like the people in this room, people who march and lobby and speak out to defend the unborn child will be – and are – reviled by political leaders and news media and abortion activists who turn the right to kill an unborn child into a shrine for personal choice.

Seventy years ago, abortion was a crime against humanity. Four decades ago, abortion supporters talked piously about the “tragedy” of abortion and the need to make it safe and rare. But not today. Not anymore.

Now abortion is not just a so-called “right,” but a right that claims positive dignity, the license to demonize its opponents and the precedence to interfere with constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, assembly and religion. We no longer tolerate abortion. We celebrate it. We venerate it as a totem.

People sometimes ask me if we can be optimistic, those of us who are religious believers, about the future of our country. My answer is always the same. Optimism and pessimism are equally dangerous for the believer because both God and the devil are full of surprises. 

But the virtue of hope is another matter. We have every reason to hope. Scripture tells us we must live in hope, and hope is a very different creature from optimism. Hope is the grace to trust that God is who He claims to be, and that in serving Him, we do something fertile and precious for the renewal of the world.

Our lives matter not because of who we are. They matter because of who God is. His mercy, his justice, his love — these are the things that move the galaxies and reach into the womb to touch the unborn child with the grandeur of being human. And we become more truly human ourselves by seeing the humanity in the poor, the weak, the elderly and the unborn child — and then fighting for it.

Archbishop Chaput's speech continues

New Movie 'Gimme Shelter' Shows Mother's Heroic Love

     

Pro-lifers are excited about the upcoming film "Gimme Shelter," a story of a troubled young woman who finds hope and healing at a crisis pregnancy center. Based on a true story, "Gimme Shelter" features some top-name talents, including Vanessa Hudgens (of "High School Musical" fame), Brendan Fraser, and James Earl Jones.

"Gimme Shelter" will be in theaters beginning January 24. Watch the trailer above.

The Hidden Agenda for Legalizing Abortion

By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director

Fair and impartial.  Those are the qualities that judges are supposed to aspire to--especially those who wear the black robes on the nation's highest court.

But the groundbreaking book "Abuse of Discretion" shows quite clearly that the men who sat on the Supreme Court at the time of the heartbreaking Roe v. Wade case had quite personal reasons for nullifying abortion laws in all 50 states.

For instance, in an interview with an NPR reporter after his retirement, Justice Lewis Powell revealed that he had aided a law firm "office boy" to avoid prosecution in connection with the man's involvement in an illegal abortion which led to a woman's death. Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote the Roe decision, had a daughter who became pregnant while unmarried seven years before Roe.  Justice Thurgood Marshall saw abortion as a solution to the plight of low-income African-Americans, arguing that poor women should have the same "right" to abortion as wealthy women.

  

As the author of "Abuse of Discretion," Clarke Forsythe, writes, "Justices Powell and Marshall played pivotal roles in influencing Blackmun to extend the ostensible limit (to abortion) from the end of the first trimester to viability (of the unborn child)."

  

Meanwhile, Justice William Brennan planted the seed for the flawed legal reasoning used in Roe. Brennan's former law clerk, Edward Lazarus, once wrote, "Brennan knew well the tactic of burying bones--secreting language in one opinion to be dug up and put to use in another down the road."

By connecting the concept of privacy with the decision to have an abortion, Brennan fashioned for himself the backbone of Roe.

  

And it was that twisted, tortured legal spine that led to abortion on demand, for any reason, during all nine months of pregnancy...to the heinous practice of partial-birth abortion...and to an abortion center in West Philadelphia where babies born alive were brutally killed and mothers overdosed, maimed, and, mistreated to the point of medical manslaughter.

  

To his credit, however, Justice Powell once referred to Roe and its companion abortion case, Doe v. Bolton, as "the worst opinions I ever joined."

  

No truer words have ever been said by a Supreme Court Justice.  For justice's sake, Roe must be reversed. 

Maria Gallagher is the Legislative Director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation.

Gosnell Grand Jury Recommendation Approved by House Committee

A recommendation made by the grand jury in the tragic Kermit Gosnell case has been OK'd by the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee. 

  

The committee last week approved House Bill 587, sponsored by Rep. Matt Baker (R-Bradford, Tioga), which would ensure that impersonating a doctor is treated as a crime with an appropriate penalty in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  The bill is based on one of a number of legislative recommendations made by the grand jury which indicted abortionist Kermit Gosnell in connection with the murder of infants and the death of a female patient in his West Philadelphia abortion center.  Gosnell is now serving a life sentence following his conviction on three murder counts. 

  

The PA House of Representatives could vote on House Bill 587 sometime this week.

A Test of Endurance

Recognizing the Unsung Heroes

in the Fight for Life

 

 

By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director

Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation

A number of national news operations have conducted interviews with a Texas state Senator who engaged in a lengthy filibuster of legislation designed to safeguard the health and safety of women and to protect preborn children from the ravages of late-term abortion.

I understand the media fascination with the filibuster.  One of my favorite movies is "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," in which the pivotal scene involves the late great Jimmy Stewart saying, "I guess this is just another lost cause" and talking about "Love thy neighbor" shortly before collapsing on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Television anchors have questioned the Texas senator about how she stood for hours, without eating, drinking, or using the facilities.  A filibuster is a test of physical and emotional endurance.

So, though, is the largely unreported fight for life.

For instance, each year, hundreds of thousands of courageous people - from students to seniors - board buses headed for Washington, D.C. and the March for Life.  They endure sleep deprivation and bitter cold, on their feet for hours on end, just for the chance to stand before the U.S. Supreme Court to demonstrate their support for pregnant women and preborn children.

Again, we are talking hundreds of thousands of people. And they often receive little, if any airtime from the major networks.  I don't know how many wear pink sneakers, but I do know I have never seen their footwear profiled on the evening news. And they accomplish this grueling physical feat year after year. Some have been doing it for decades.

Many of the marchers are women, and I must confess I don't know most of their names, but they are heroes to me.

And then there are the women who rise in the dark of night to nurse the children their boyfriends-who are long gone-wanted them to abort. They do this night after night, with no TV cameras around to capture their sacrifice, and no crowd of onlookers to cheer them on. Their stamina is unsurpassed, and their selflessness is inspiring. But, again, I don't see them profiled on the morning shows.

And then there is the lovely octogenarian I know who has been providing love and support to pregnant women, day in and day out, for forty years. Again, she has been put to the test, physically and emotionally, for a lifetime. But away from the spotlight, in the extraordinariness of ordinary life.

At some point, these heroines for life were told they were engaging in a lost cause-but they knew it was a cause worth fighting for, because they were fighting for the lives of children and grandchildren, and for the true empowerment of women.

Their physical achievement far surpasses a day-long filibuster. And their legacy of love lasts far beyond one lifetime.

For more info on the PA Pro-Life Federation, use this link to their site at www.paprolife.org