9/30/2014

The Catholic Voice in Pro-Life



Annual Catholic Respect Life Gala
Diocese of Fort Worth
September 27, 2014


There are many voices in the pro-life universe. There are many distinct and important voices that speak for the good of human life. All of these are important and in need of respect, yet we are here tonight to speak and to listen to the particular voice that is the Catholic voice – a voice that during this past year I have personally become ever more responsible for articulating. Pope Francis told us recently ordained bishops last week to preach the Gospel – all of it!

The Catholic voice in the pro-life world views death not as the ultimate enemy – it understands that the status of the real enemy belongs to sin as authored by the prince of liars. The dignity of human life rests in its identity engendered in each person as being made in the image and likeness of God – a likeness that is to be revealed most fully when a human being freely acts in accord with his or her human vocation to love God and his neighbor. The ultimate end of the human person is to love God and our neighbor – the human being is always drawn into community with God and other human beings.

We as the Church have the responsibility today to proclaim this Gospel of the dignity of the human person in the midst of what St. John Paul II referred to as the culture of death. This culture is the intellectual and moral stance that so exalts the individual status of a human being, that it demands the resolution of society’s social problems by the killing of weaker human beings – for rape and domestic violence-it proposes abortion, for crime, it demands capital punishment, for limits in allocation of health care resources it proposes euthanasia and assisted suicide.

We must be very careful so as not to understand that at the heart of this culture is not the human and existential phenomenon of death; but rather at the heart of this culture is selfishness, it is sin. Sin – the willful refusal to love God and also to love my neighbor. It is sin – the great lie of the serpent in the garden; the arrogant boast of Lucifer – “I will not serve;” it is the cowardly abandonment of integrity of Adam, “the woman whom you put here with me – she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it;” the passive and arrogant mendacity of Cain – “Am I my brother’s keeper?;” and the cynical dishonesty of Pilate, “What is truth?” Sin, not death (its bitter fruit) is at the heart of this culture.

The Catholic response to this culture is never reactive – it is not primarily directed at the culture at all, it is directed at the persons most affected and attacked within the milieu of this culture – the weak, the unborn, their mothers and fathers, the terminally ill, the poor. Christ established us as His Church – not His culture. As His Church we are called to proclaim and to live His truth and His love – all of it – made manifest perfectly in the mystery of His Cross. As members of His Church, we are united with Christ and become truly the light of the world.

Such light recently shined forth when the Bishops of Texas, adamantly opposed to abortion as a direct assault on innocent human life and exercising our responsibility to teach authentically the Gospel (through the means of our conference) supported legal measures that respected the health and precious life of women by requiring that abortion facilities should meet the same rigorous standards of regulation as required by other ambulatory surgery centers. The opposition to these measures revealed that the health of women is not really a concern of abortion proponents.

We are reminded that in Christ we are the light of the world, not its heat. Light clarifies and helps all to see. Light drives away the darkness of fear, of hatred, of ignorance and of anguish. Christ tells us that we are called to be the Light of the World, that we might dispel fear, and anguish, and ignorance – each chief components of the culture of death.

We are the light of the world when we reflect Christ in our actions and in our words, when we are transparent and honest – in a word, truthful – so that He might shine through us. Yet, when we are not transparent – that is when we are not honest and merciful, permitting the love of God to shine through us in words and deeds, the Light becomes heat because it is turned inward upon ourselves and not outward in service to the weakest members of society, the unborn, the terminally ill, the chronically disabled. The Light becomes about us and not about the revelation of Jesus Christ that each of us is made in the image and likeness of God.

St. Paul writes to the Corinthians about just such an example of when light becomes heat. He writes about divisions within the community regarding who belongs to Paul and who belongs to Apollos. Paul reminds them strongly that they belong to Christ, and not to either of these men. Some in the Corinthian community were more concerned about the Church as a movement and means for a political agenda instead of about the work of love and the truth of the Gospel. They block the Light of Christ with this barrier of fear and insecurity and of sin, slandering each other with partial truths, instead of being transparent with love. This barrier causes heat, if you will, that creates divisions and foments discord and scandal among people of good will by employing an approach whereby the end justifies the means – a fundamental metric of immorality in the objective order.

As your bishop, I am deeply aware of my responsibility entrusted to me at my ordination and installation to speak the Catholic voice with clarity, resolve, and compassion. It is my responsibility to trust God’s Grace given to me to speak in this voice with avoidance of division and confusion.

One such area of confusion involves current Texas statutes governing end-of-life care. Current law contains definitions that could permit the withdrawal of basic care for vulnerable patients without notifying their proxy decision-makers or families. The Texas bishops, working through our conference, want to change this legislation.

Some voices in the arena of pro-life have misrepresented the Church’s position as favoring new legislation that would require the government to impose indefinite procedures on dying patients, even when such procedures would have no medical benefit and could be needlessly torturous. Such an approach reacts to one extreme that imposes the refusal or withdrawal of basic care by imposing a contrary extreme that demands burdensome procedures without medical benefit in the effort to prolong dying. Each extreme approach fails to respect the legitimate ethical judgment and decision-making of family members to be exercised prudentially on behalf of their incapacitated loved ones.

As your bishop I state that this reaction is not within the pale of orthodox Catholic teaching regarding legitimate care for the dying and terminally ill. Those voices that make claims to the contrary are misrepresenting the Church and causing division through fostering distrust of the integrity of the authentic pastoral teaching of the bishops in Texas as articulated through our state’s Catholic conference.

It is important for us as Catholics to be vigilant in our own examination of how we live our vocation in favor of life. When do our voices provide more heat than light? Where do we find the fruits of the Holy Spirit in the adherence of our position? If we are not honest and compassionate, we block and promote a barrier to the light that Christ shines on and through human life. We then can reduce the beautiful and mysterious truth about life to a political agenda that distorts the family and society into simply a group of self-interested individuals monitored by the government. The result is more heat than light; a furtherance of the violent values exhibited by the culture of death, and the abdication of our responsibility to our baptismal call – the call to preach the Gospel of Life – all of it.