Year after year since the tragic Roe v. Wade decision, we come here to protest abortion on the streets of the nation’s capital.
Year after year, the devastation caused by abortion becomes more patent, while its harmful consequences accumulate.
Abortion and the “Culture of Death”
Because of abortion, our country must seek immigrants in ever larger numbers to fill the places left vacant by the unborn in our labor force, Armed Forces, universities, and even in the ranks of the clergy.
But abortion causes far more than mere demographic problems. Its legalization has had a profound impact in the areas of human behavior, ideas and culture. It strengthened what Pope John Paul II, in his 1995 Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, so aptly called the “culture of death.” Indeed, as that Pontiff explained, when people no longer see attacks on the unborn as crimes but rather as “rights,” a radical change takes place in the cultural standards of the nation.
Pope Benedict XVI called this culture of death an “anti-culture” in which people seek to flee reality through drugs, lies and sex, which is turned into a merely irresponsible entertainment.2
In this culture of death, the state not only tolerates but also protects through its judiciary and police establishments a practice opposed to natural and divine law. This exerts a powerful influence on people’s mentalities, as they tend to deem what is legally permitted as being morally acceptable.1
Abortion and Cultural War
The legalization of abortion has detached the juridical order from the moral order, paving the way for the legalization of same-sex “marriage,” euthanasia and other aberrations.2
This subversion of our laws and longstanding traditions is a real Revolution or Cultural War. It does not destroy buildings or property but rather institutions, customs and mentalities. It subverts the laws, transforms people’s morals, ridicules the family, and mocks religion.
Abortion is a very bloody and cruel consequence of this devastating cultural warfare, bloodless though it may seem.3
Accepting Abortion Leads to Persecution of Christianity
The acceptance of abortion changes not only people’s morals but their whole view of the world as well. Their Christian worldview is replaced with a secular and neo-pagan one.
Any criticism of acts or attitudes opposed to morals is branded a “hate crime.” Aren’t the myriads of spiteful attacks against all things religious “hate crimes” as well? Does this not apply to Christian symbols, the adorable person of Our Lord Jesus Christ and his Blessed Mother wich are brutally vilified with impunity?
Among the many examples of this anti-Christian fury are the “Anti-Christmas Christmas Special” by Denis Leary on Comedy Central, and the staging of “Corpus Christi,” portraying Our Lord and His Apostles as homosexuals, at the University of Nebraska, both last December; and in November, the exhibit titled “Full Frontal,” in the Detroit art gallery, included a nude image supposedly representing the Blessed Mother (called “Virgin Mary III”).
But what’s happening is more than just an all-out effort to push secularism and persecute Christianity. Sectors of the media and Hollywood are also favoring the spread of neo-paganism.4
A typical example of this is the huge media promotion about The Da Vinci Code, a novel soon to be released as a movie. With an absurd and unlikely plot, it exalts a pagan religious system and violently attacks the Church by parroting old anti-clerical myths already refuted countless times in the past.
Why so Much Hatred?
The culture of death which abortion symbolizes rejects not only life but the very fountain of life—God our Lord. It instills hatred of everything sacred: Christian symbols, the Ten Commandments, and the Church, which preaches observance of natural and divine laws, both of which abortion denies.
Fighting Abortion in a Cultural War
In short, the fight against abortion is today more important than ever. It is vital to counter the Cultural War that has been unleashed on our country, for, accepting abortion entails forfeiting the very basis of law and civilization, that is, the clear notion of good and evil.
To the degree that new-fangled “rights” like abortion, same-sex “marriage” and euthanasia are affirmed, so also “the glorious freedom of the children of God” will be eliminated in our nation.
We must then forge ahead with this fight in earnest, always in a peaceful and legal manner, knowing that the future of our country hinges on this struggle.
Let us move forward with confidence in the final victory in spite of eventual hardships and reversals. For, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”