“No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church . . .
“Too often it happens that believers, even those who take an active part in the life of the Church, end up by separating their Christian faith from its ethical requirements concerning life, and thus fall into moral subjectivism and certain objectionable ways of acting.”

John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 95

"What I have failed to do . . ."

Your Excellencies, let us move from the absurdity of my allegory to a weightier discussion. As we look together at what can be done to end child- killing in all haste, I would first like to establish my premises:

First, it is not the will of Almighty God that this holocaust continues. Rather, it is His deepest desire that legalized child-killing be brought to a speedy end.

My second premise is that we are His hands and feet, the instruments of His grace and love in this world. We are those called to “defend the orphan” and to “rescue the oppressed from the hand of the wicked.” (cf. James 1:27; Psalms 82:2-4; Proverbs 24:10-12)

My third premise is that we have failed. After 35 years of killing, nearly 50 million innocent souls have been dispatched into eternity by the abortion- ist’s knife – and there is no end in sight.

In light of these facts, we must have the courage and integrity to look critically at the activities, tactics, and ideologies that have guided the anti-abortion movement thus far. We must strengthen that which is successful, modify or abandon that which has failed, and learn from other social revolutions in our nation’s past – such as the abolitionists, the labor movement, the women’s voting rights movement, and the civil rights movement.

All is not grim. We have had a number of successes in which we can rightly rejoice. Parental involvement laws have saved thousands of lives. Crisis pregnancy centers greatly outnumber abortuaries. There are fewer and fewer “doctors” who kill children. Post-abortive women have found their voice, and have become a key part in shattering the lie that abortion helps women. Polling data even shows that the younger generation is more pro-life than their parents.

However, as promising as these small victories are, the culture of death is far more entrenched than it was 10 or 20 years ago. And fifty million children are dead.

We must have the courage to embrace whatever ethical strategies and sacrifices are required of us to bring this slaughter of the innocents to an end.

What is a Child Worth?

As we begin this discussion, I ask a simple question: What is one child worth? What is one child’s life worth in time, effort, hardship, and trials?

The answer is as simple as the question. A child is worth the shed blood of God the Son.

God showed the value He places on human beings 14

by making the ultimate sacrifice. He shed His own blood for us. His thunderous testimony to the value of a child is His infinite love poured out in unfathomable suffering.

Our challenge, then, is to honestly weigh what one child is worth to us. What are we willing to do and say to save one child from a heinous death? In answering this question, we must soberly count the cost of what will be required of us.

What death to self, what controversy, what loss of the praise of men, what bad press, what smearing of our reputations must we bravely endure in order to ensure that millions more children – yet unborn, yet to be conceived – do not have landfills and sewers as their graves? And what priority does this epic battle between good and evil hold in our hearts, our lives, and (perhaps most importantly) our sched- ules?

The answer to these questions are perhaps the most important for any man or woman to answer. When enough are ready to offer themselves on the altar of God’s service in this epic struggle, we shall prevail. 

“When the people look for ways of living which ignore God's plan, it is the Prophets in particular who forcefully remind them that the Lord alone is the authentic source of life.

“The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize that we are dealing with murder . . .”

John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 58

Prophetic Urgency: the Missing Ingredient

You will notice, if you haven’t already, that my choice of words is deliberately jolting, even shrill. Just like the “Pro-Bishop” activist in my allegory, I have been accused of being overheated, controversial, and radical. I acknowledge that my words grate and jolt, and cause discomfort. This is deliberate.

These kinds of words represent a critical missing element in our struggle to end the war on children. We need the clarity of the Biblical prophets to communicate something that is tragically absent in much of the pro-life movement: urgency.

If we strip this battle of urgent rhetoric, how can we expect urgent action?

The act of child-killing is so repugnant to God, the means and methods of murder so barbaric, that it demands shrillness of speech. The lives of those perishing are so precious, innocent and defenseless, that they demand our immediate and focused attention. In a word, children in danger deserve urgency.

John Paul II is correct; abortion is murder. Mother Teresa is correct; this is a “war on unborn children.” Their words are the truth. Why do we constantly dilute the truth so that it offends few and shocks none?

Isaiah spoke these jolting words that yet apply to us:

When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make your- selves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. (1:15-17)

Jeremiah boldly proclaimed these warnings:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: "Stand in the gate of the LORD's house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the LORD, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the LORD . . ." For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers for ever . . . Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Ba'al, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, `We are delivered!' – only to go on doing all these abominations? (see Jeremiah 7:1-10)

How can we – like prophets of old – wake people from their stupor and grip their hearts with the horror of the slaughter of the innocents unless we use words like the prophets? Tragically, many pro-life sympathizers use words that have little or no impact on calloused, deadened souls.

The Seductive Words of Death

The battle of rhetoric in the war on children was framed by the child-killers themselves, in order to promote the slaughter of unborn children. Former leaders in the child-killing movement, who by the grace of God have converted to life and to Christ, have brought to light the efforts of child-killers to ingrain an entirely new lexicon to hide the horrid truth.

One such courageous convert is Dr. Bernard Nathanson, now a baptized Catholic. Dr. Nathan- son ran the largest killing center in the world in the late 60’s and was a founding member of NARAL (The National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws). He and others have told of the efforts to introduce the jargon of “pro-choice” and “safe and legal abortion” and “fetus” and “products of conception.” They spoke about “a woman and her doctor,” a “woman and her God,” a “highly personal decision,” and of course, the very word itself: “abortion.”

What does “abortion” even mean? Historically, someone “aborted” the take-off of a rocket; soldiers “aborted” a mission; generals “aborted” a battle plan. One does not “abort” a human being. Humans are slaughtered, slain, executed, destroyed, exterminated, and killed. The child-killers never, ever, talk about babies, children, death, dying, or killing. They deny them all.

That Dreaded Word . . . Murder

And the one word that they dread more than Dracula dreads a crucifix is the word used by John Paul II – murder. They hate the word “murder” because it resonates so deeply with the human heart. No amount of rhetorical anesthetizing can undo its force.

“Murder” and similarly “charged” words are so effective is because they are Truth. Because we are made in the image of God, and the works of the Law are written on our hearts. (cf. Romans 2:14-16) Truth spoken is like an arrow in our heart, like a two-edged sword able to cut between bone and marrow. (cf. Hebrews 4:12-13)

When we use the very Word of God, “You shall not murder,” in the battle against this holocaust of children, God's Word becomes a hammer that breaks stony hearts and shatters stone-cold lies. (cf. Jeremiah 23:28-29)

Remember: Truth has within it the seeds of its own victory; lies have within them the seeds of their own destruction. The more we use the searing, uncompromising words of Truth, the more impact we will have, the more we will unveil the heinous nature of this crime, and the more readily we will be able to contend with the merchants of death.

Can We Proclaim Truth with Lies?

We must not fall into the trap they have laid for us. We must not use their rhetoric, their jargon, their words, their lexicon of phrases and expect to win this war. If we surrender our weapons of Truth, how can we expect to wake up our people, mobilize our faithful, convert the confused, and rightly de- fend the lives of those about to be snuffed out?

To all bishops, priests, and evangelical pastors, I ask: When was the last time you looked with a steady gaze over your parishioners, and said, with unalloyed clarity, “Abortion is murder.”? When is the last time you spoke with the clarity and urgency of the prophet Isaiah or Jeremiah pertaining to the shedding of innocent blood?

The Shadows of the Dead

Likewise, the pictures of slaughtered pre-born children bear irrefutable testimony to the words of Truth. An image of a murdered pre-born baby con- firms the Truth of the words that abortion is murder, the deliberate destruction of a judicially innocent human life in the time of peace.

To those, like our allegorical moderator, who claim these images are “counter-productive,” I ask:

Is it our duty to eliminate all pictures of all victims from every grave injustice that has ever cursed the earth? Are we to hide all evidence of the blood spilt by tyrants since the invention of the camera? Do we close the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.? Do we tear from the pages of our textbooks the images of the whip-scarred backs of black slaves prior to the abolition of slavery? Do we lock up the video footage of the twin towers being attacked on 9/11/2001?

Do we blot out the pictures of African-American men hanging dead by their necks, the murdered victims of the Ku Klux Klan? Do we hide the image of civil rights leaders standing over a fallen Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Do we put away pictures of the human carnage of genocides under Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, and others, or destroy photos of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, and Dresden, Germany? And what of the footage of JFK or Ronald Reagan or John Paul II being shot?

Those Bloody Icons

More importantly, stop and ponder this: the central icon of the entire Christian faith is a crucifix – an innocent man murdered on a cross! Some of those icons that grace our churches are quite graphic; some depict His precious blood streaming from His gaping wounds.

We have icons of John the Baptist holding his severed head in a charger; St. Bartholomew holding his flayed skin; St. Sebastian pierced by multiple arrows: St. Cecilia and her headless corpse.

Are we then, like crazed Iconoclasts, to pillage the Vatican and tear down paintings of the masters that depict the carnage of war, Herod’s slaughter of the Holy Innocents, the Martyrdom of Saints, the decapitation of Goliath, the murder of Abel, the be- heading of St. John the Baptist, or above all else, the crucifixion of our Lord?

Are we to believe that these haunting and gruesome images – which for centuries have inspired men and women to acts of dedication and sacrifice – should meet the same fate that the timid in the pro- life movement propose for the bloody images of aborted children? Forbid it, Almighty God!

Timing Is Not Everything

Some want us to believe that the proximity of this holocaust in time and location gives us different rules. Does the fact that a woman or a man involved in the death of a child create unique rules for the images of dead children?

The obvious answer is no. That would be like saying that you could not show pictures in Germany of the victims of concentration camps after WWII because certain German soldiers might see them and be upset, or that certain German citizens who spied on Jews and turned them over would be humiliated or disgraced.

The Nature of Truth and the Gospel

Those opposed to using pictures of the victims of this holocaust do not understand two things: the nature of Truth and the nature of the Gospel.

The Truth is jolting, shocking, unsettling. And this is exactly what we need in our war to end child- killing. If the populace is not deeply unsettled, we will never change the current status quo and make child- killing illegal again.

The Gospel, by nature, can be divisive. Jesus said: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” (Matt. 10:34-38)

As we proclaim the Truth and the Gospel in our words and deeds, we are the fragrance of life to some, and of death to others. “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:15-16)

Some people say we are as delightful as roses; others say we stink like a dead body!

Divine Truth in general, and particularly the Gospel, have divided or united mankind for millennia, alternately alienating and conquering men’s hearts since the dawn of time. Some rush to the light because their deeds are holy; others flee it be- cause their deeds are evil. (cf. John 3:19-21)

Take Up Thy Sword

To sheath the sword of the Truth (cf. Eph. 6:17), or to hide its light (cf. Matt. 5:14-16) for fear of of- fending people is to ensure that victims languish in lies and darkness. If we lay the weapons of truth – whether words, images, or deeds – at the feet of lies and injustice, we guarantee that the tyrants who wield lies and create oppression will prevail on the stage of human drama.

Let us be bold in our duty to proclaim the Truth and unflinching in our duty to show the Truth. Let us seize the Sword of St. Paul and the icons of reality and wield them with all the valor that God gives us.

Let us not fear the condemnation of the culture of death, nor the complaints of the timid in our midst that quake and crumble in the presence of hostility. Let us be prophets of life, and create an urgency equal to the crime of murder.

And only then will we prevail in the war against children, and drive child-killing back to hell from whence it came. 

“To be truly a people at the service of life we must propose these truths constantly and courageously from the very first proclamation of the Gospel . . .

“In the proclamation of this Gospel, we must not fear hostility or unpopularity, and we must refuse any compromise or ambiguity which might conform us to the world's way of thinking.” (cf. Romans 12:2)

John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 82

Fear: The Handmaid of Injustice

With Truth and the Gospel on our side, what hinders our victory? Fear.

The single greatest barrier to defeating this abominable crime is fear. It stalks around all corners and lingers in the haunts of our hearts.

We fear rejection by friends, family, or co- workers. We fear that our reputation will be tarnished, that we will be labeled radical, insensitive, intolerant, or abrasive.

We fear losing what “access” we may have to people with power, prestige, and money if we speak too clearly or stand too courageously.

We fear the loss of the significant, like a job, and the petty, like an invitation to a party.

Yet we could be set free from these fears if we re- membered, integrated, and lived the Beatitudes in our pro-life efforts, as characterized here:

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matt. 5:10-12)

The parallel passage from Luke bears quoting for its distinctions:

“Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” (Luke 6:22-23)

The very things we so often fear – hatred, exclusion from parties and gatherings, false accusations, having our very names “cast out as evil” – these are the Biblical tokens of a blessed man or woman! We are Blessed when we are reviled – that is how the evil treated the prophets!

Rather than fear the contempt of those who hold the Gospel of Life, the Laws of God, and God Him- self in open contempt, we should embrace their scorn as a sign that we are serving the Truth; we should receive their rejection as the earnest of our reward in heaven. Oh, the privilege of being named in the same breath as the prophets!

Who Can Lose Their Job?

Holy bishops, I say this respectfully, but in truth – you, above all men, will never lose your place of honor for a courageous public condemnation of child killing. A valorous defense of life from you can only be applauded by the faithful on earth, the triumphant saints in heaven, and the fifty million innocent souls who have been dispatched into eternity by the abortionist’s knife.

You have a holy vocation which demands even the sacrifice of your very lifeblood, if need be, in defense of the Gospel of Life and the lives that the Gospel defends.

If your backslidden parishioners, or the scandalous politicians in our midst who support child- killing, or the hostile media that hides and sustains this holocaust, and even your very own staffs, raise their voice in a howling unison of criticism, they could never drown out the blood of the innocent that cries from the ground to God for justice. (cf. Genesis 4:10)

Truth and Justice are handmaids in the procession of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. The whin- ing, the complaints, and the fierce objections of the misguided are as chaff in the wind.

In fact, the very contempt you endure, and the trials you embrace, in your defense of innocent children will add to the jewels of your crown in the presence of God.

But conversely, you who are heirs of the Apostles’ authority shall be held in treble contempt for your failure to act if you refuse to honor and employ that authority to defend the innocent. I write this with fear, trepidation, and the prayer that God would forgive me if any syllable I utter does not express His heart, but I am convinced that such men will be viewed with disdain by the Church Triumphant, with disrespect by the Church Militant, and with derision by the souls of the slain that cry out from beneath the heavenly altar, “How long, Oh Lord?”

I beg your permission to speak frankly. Because the mandatory retirement age for a bishop is 75, the majority of American bishops will not be active in 10 or 15 years. For those to whom this applies, I ask – If your diocese ran smoothly, yet the blood of children was shed by the thousands with little effort to stop the carnage, what will the judgment of heaven be?

We must call on our spirits to ignore the voice of fear, and obey the voice of Truth.