For the Record

FROM THE PASTOR
By

Father George W. Rutler
September 14, 2008

On the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Church rejoices in the mercy of our Lord who suffered such a cruel death for our salvation. Mercy moved Christ to condemn most vigorously those who harm innocent life. Abortion is the defining moral issue of our age, as slavery was in the nineteenth century. In our country, the lives destroyed by abortion each day outnumber all combat deaths in war over the last ten years.

Although the bishops corrected the Speaker of the House of Representatives in her misrepresentation of the Church's teaching on life in the womb, she has persisted in her inaccuracies. On network television on September 7, one of the vice-presidential candidates repeated the same misinformation, even though he has been prevented by his bishop from speaking on church property because of his misstatements. For the record, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has published the facts:

1. From earliest times, Christians distanced themselves from pagan cultures by rejecting abortion and infanticide, as is evident in the New Testament, the "Didache" and "Epistle of Barnabas" and regional Church councils. The prophet Jeremiah (1:15) declared of God: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." And the last and greatest of the prophets, John the Baptist, greeted our Lord while still in his mother's womb.

2. While the time of "ensoulment" in the womb was discussed by theologians such as Augustine, often referring to the writing of Aristotle and pre-Christian philosophers who had no knowledge of the existence of the human ovum, all of these theologians affirmed the Church's common conviction that life itself begins at conception and that abortion is gravely wrong at every stage.

3. Penalties for abortion often varied according to the stage of gestation, but abortion has always been seen as a grave moral evil from the moment of conception.

4. Modern genetics has demonstrated that the union of sperm and egg at conception produces a new living being that is distinct from both mother and father. From the mid-nineteenth century, all obsolete distinctions between the "ensouled" and "unensouled" fetus were permanently removed from canon law.

Politicians who relegate the facts of life to the category of religious views rather than natural law, ignore physical science; and they violate the traditional separation of church and state when they twist Christian moral teaching in the civic forum. The Church is patient with ignorance, but not with willful ignorance. Civil and religious leaders are equally accountable to the injunction of the prophet Ezekiel (33:8): "If I tell the wicked, 'O wicked one, you shall surely die,' and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way, the wicked shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death."

On "Ardent Catholics"...

FROM THE PASTOR
By Father George W. Rutler
September 7, 2008

The Roman consul Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519-430 B.C.) was a model for our nation's Founding Fathers, who had no concept of a "career politician." Cincinnatus left his plough to serve his people and returned to his farm when his work was done. Today there are many politicians who have had no career except public office. This can tempt them to think that power trumps truth. Recently, Archbishop Chaput said: "Catholic public leaders inconvenienced by the abortion debate tend to take a hard line in talking about the 'separation of Church and state.' But their idea of separation often seems to work one way. In fact, some officials also seem comfortable in the role of theologian. And that warrants some interest, not as a 'political' issue, but as a matter of accuracy and justice."

Politicians who pick and choose the bits of Catholicism useful to their agenda are picturesquely called "Cafeteria Catholics." There are of course moral principles that permit prudential disagreement, as with economic policy, war strategies, and capital punishment. Abortion is different, because its evil is intrinsic. Like Typhoid Mary early in the 20th century, moral cafeterias can spread grave moral danger. It is safer to go with Blessed Mary than Typhoid Mary. But the latter, who infected 47 people, only three of whom died, acted unwittingly. There are public figures who willfully misrepresent Christ, and so they have His rebuke: "You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men" (Matt. 16:23). Ignorance is willful when it suppres ses information. At the recent convention of one of our political parties in Denver, Archbishop Chaput was not invited to give an invocation even though he is by far the most prominent religious leader in that area.

The Fourteenth Amendment remarks the difference between a citizen and a person in its refutation of the Dred Scott decision which, like Roe v. Wade, denied the human integrity of a person not vouchsafed the rights of a citizen. The former denied the right to liberty and the latter denied the right to life itself. The Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed in the Flossenburg Concentration Camp, wrote: "Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is mere ly to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder."

If politicians want to campaign as "ardent Catholics" they should believe and act as ardent Catholics. As Archbishop Chaput has said from a pulpit better than any denied to him in the public forum: "If you're Catholic and you disagree with your Church, what do you do? You change your mind."