Reflections on the Gospel of Life (Part One)

Two thousand years ago a rabble from the mid-east began spreading a message of hope. This message of Good News (Gospel) said that a person's value was based on the love bestowed on each person by the God who freely created them in His own image. That was a counter-cultural message in a society of violence, slavery, oppression. That message was heard in a society that believed that a person's worth was dictated by the appurtenance of a veneer of honor, the exercise of high office, the possession of wealth, or an accident of birth into a particular race or class.

Our situation today compels us to proclaim again a Gospel that gives meaning to our existence, direction to our human lives, and a foretaste of the animating spirit of the life to come. This Gospel of Life needs to be heard again in a society where we all too often believe that a person has no value if he is not rich, not powerful, not employed, not part of a majority race. The Gospel of Jesus Christ proclaims that we are ransomed from all sin and evil through the death and resurrection of Christ. We are loved by God, and we are valuable to him. Life is a time to be enveloped in God's love, lifted in God's love, transformed in God's love. This is therefore a Gospel of Life, and during this month of October we take time to reflect on the meaning of that Gospel and how our words, deeds and hearts reflect and proclaim the Gospel of Life.

Building a Life-Respecting Society based on the Good News of Life has many dimensions. The ten or fifteen minutes of preaching that we have each week is simply not enough time to really fulfill our obligation as teachers of the Catholic faith. This handout is offered as a means to reflect a little more deeply on life issues in order to appreciate the depth of the Church's teaching. This week, we offer a reflection on Abortion, as the most pressing life issue. Next week, we will offer reflections on other important life issues.

Abortion and the Freedom of Choice

Among the many issues confronted by the Gospel of Life, none is so pressing as the issue of abortion in our society. Abortion is not a new moral issue in our Church. The earliest catechism of the church (a document called the Didache, ca. 100 AD) condemns it forcefully. An historian named Rodney Stark has surmised that the Church's opposition to abortion and infanticide, and to the values behind those practices, made the church very attractive to women in the first centuries of our Christian faith.

In the political climate today, the real issue of abortion, namely the question of life, has been clouded by the clever manipulation of rhetoric by abortion proponents. The result has been that the political debate has not centered on whether or not a life has been taken, not on the Gospel of Life. Instead, the debate has been framed by discussions of the right to choice, and the right to privacy. Our American understanding is so shaped by the cultural myths of our country, and the civil religion of freedom, that many of the abortion rights activists, do not comprehend what we say when we speak of a right to life.

The Pro-Choice camp have their own Gospel, a Gospel of America. Whereas our Gospel of Life is shaped by the stories of Christ and his saints, the Gospel of America is shaped by stories of George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson. Our tenets of "Take up your Cross and Follow Me", "Turn the Other Cheek", "Blessed are the Poor," "Love One Another" come into conflict with slogans like "Rugged Individualism," "Manifest Destiny," "Looking out for Number One," and a thousand variations of "Don't Tread on Me." People grow up hearing that success in life is based on superficial standards of material prosperity, and self-governance.

If a child is taught to believe that he or she is only valuable if thin, tan, rich, and beautiful, how can we expect this child to be sensitive to the plight of unwed mothers, illegitimate children, or poor families? We Catholics believe that freedom is good, but is a relative good-- relative to the responsibility we have to our neighbors whom we are to love as ourselves, and relative to the obedience we owe to the God who created us.

Pope John Paul II addresses the perversion of the understanding of freedom in his encyclical "The Gospel of Life."

This view of freedom leads to a serious distortion of life in society. If the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy, people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself. Thus society becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds.

The pope points out that traditionally in a pluralistic society, the desire for compromise ends up making people believe that one truth is just as good as another. The key to survival is tolerance. He says this leads to moral relativism, where we end up saying "you do your thing, and I'll do mine." In the abortion debate we therefore do not argue as to whether or not taking the life of an unborn child is good or bad, and instead hear Orwellian doublespeak such as "I am personally opposed to abortion, but I will leave it up to a person to choose for themselves." Because toleration is the highest good in a pluralistic society, this satisfies many persons who have grown up with the American "gospel."

This kind of rhetoric is based on the value we Americans have placed on being autonomous, masters of our own individual fate. But we Catholics are not rugged individualists. We believe in the idea of the People of God, of a community of faith, which we call a Church. We believe that the basic unit of society is not the individual, but the family. We believe that the key to life is living in love, and love isn't love if it is not shared in relationships with others.

And so winning the debate on the abortion issue is going to take some major work in a society where a new BMW is more important than a new baby girl or boy. And that will probably mean that we will need to examine where our values have been shaped more by the American civil Gospel than by a Gospel of Life. Freedom is a good thing, but we seek freedom so that we can grow and become more like Christ. The freedom Christians seek should be a freedom for the building of a community called the Kingdom of God, and not the freedom from having to be obligated to others, or from any kind of hardship or difficulty.

We do value freedom, but our Catholic pro-life voice is unique on this subject. "It is in accordance with their dignity as persons- that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore privileged to bear personal responsibility- that all men should be at once impelled by nature and bound by moral obligation to seek the truth (Vatican II, Declaration on Religious Freedom, #2)." We seek freedom, so that no government or entity may coerce us in our search for truth and the ultimate meaning of life. In our Catholic understanding, undertaking such a search does not free us from obligations or responsibility, but means that we take on more obligations and responsibility as free agents.

We value freedom as part of human dignity, so that we can become fully human. We seek freedom, because love can only exist within hearts that are free. Love is the perfection of our bent human wills. By asserting that we believe love is the key to finding meaning in life, we recognize that we need one another, ands that we must value each human person as beloved.

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself. His life is senseless if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ our Redeemer "fully reveals man to himself." In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity. In the mystery of the redemption, man becomes newly "expressed" and, in a way, is newly created. He is newly created! "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly- and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measure of his being- he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness,, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into Him with all his own self, he must "appropriate" and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God, but also of deep wonder at himself. How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he "gained so great a Redeemer," and if God "gave his only Son" in order that man "should not perish but have eternal life." [Pope John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, # 10]

This wonderful teaching from our Holy Father provides much for reflection in light of the Gospel of Life. First, our animating principle in life has to be love. This love makes us look at our fellow citizens as brothers and sisters of value. This love makes us realize that the highest freedom is the freedom that enables our hearts to love others, not the freedom from responsibility to them. Further, he teaches us here how our value as human beings devolves from the fact that we are the objects of a loving God's fatherly love. Lastly, he shows us that the sufferings and mysteries of our own lives can be given new meaning by reflecting on Jesus Christ, the God Made Flesh whose humanity is an example to all of us.

What We Can Do...

JOIN THE HOLY SPIRIT PRO-LIFE GROUP

PRAYER - is our first tool to fight for life. Prayer acts to illumine our minds to the deeper truth of a Gospel of Life. It purifies our souls of the dross and distraction accrued by our own limitations and sins to better embrace each person as a creature of God, worthy of love and support. And prayer unified us with the author of the Gospel of Life so that our hearts are transformed into the image of God's heart of love. Vigilant prayer serves two purposes. First, it ensures our own integrity and spiritual health. Second, we are consoled by the promise of our Lord that constant prayer will not go unheeded. Prayer does not change God, but it does change us.

FASTING - The ancient pre-Christian tradition of fasting has many layers of meaning. Many advocates of the Gospel of Life spend one day a week in fasting-having one large meal and two small meals which together do not equal the large meal in size. The subsequent physical emptiness of fasting can be a reminder of our own hunger for justice. The discomfort of hunger can compel us to unite ourselves with those who suffer in a world which is not governed by a Gospel of Life. The self-control required in fasting can call us to develop habits of personal virtue which constitute a just society; a society governed by the Gospel of Life. And lastly, fasting can be a personal offering or sacrifice on our part, given on behalf of this just cause. We can participate in our own bodies in the saving work of Christ, through His Body, the Church.

LOVING SERVICE - As Catholic Christians we have always believed that we are to participate in the sanctification of our world. it is not enough to talk about the Gospel of Life, we also must get involved.

1. Political involvement - Catholics have a moral duty to participate in the democratic process of government. Share your own values and beliefs with your elected representatives on a regular basis. You may write your elected officials at the addresses below.

2. Many of our local agencies need volunteers to help in assisting young women who are facing an unplanned pregnancy. Call the Duncanville Crisis Pregnancy Center, 972.298-1900, or the White Rose Center, 214.821-6292, or Catholic Charities to find out what you can do.

3. Money. These non-profit agencies rely on contributions to continue their advocacy on behalf of the Gospel of Life. Many of these agencies also could use items such as diapers, baby powder, blankets, formula, etc. During October's Pro-Life Month, a special basket will be set up in the narthex to allow for these items to be left conveniently for use by the Duncanville Crisis Pregnancy Center and the White Rose Center of Dallas.