By Judie Brown
“Today more than yesterday, man is again beginning to feel the need for truth and right reason in his daily experience. Always be ready to say, without ambiguity, the truth about the good and evil regarding man and the family.”
These prophetic words, spoken by St. John Paul II in 1987, are as much needed today as they were the day he spoke them.
Consider the tragic consequences when people either reject the truth about good and evil or prefer to spin it to their advantage.
Among the deniers we always find Planned Parenthood—an organization that never tires of taking action to ensure the killing of the preborn. This includes the despicable arguments that recently took place in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Planned Parenthood joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union to argue that “an Indiana state law that prohibits abortions based solely on an unborn baby’s sex, race or disability such as Down syndrome” places an “undue burden” on women!
Killing at any cost is an evil of such heinous proportions that many cannot contemplate it. And yet it continues unabated in America.
Another denier is a Jewish rabbi named Dr. Fishel Szlajen, who is member of the reconstituted Pontifical Academy for [Some] Life. The rabbi maintains that, while abortion is wrong, “in only one case does the Bible call for abortion: when the life of the conceptus inexorably threatens that of its mother.” In his interview with the Catholic Herald, he argues that abortions in cases such as those where a preborn child has anencephaly or the mother has been raped are also justified. In other words, he contradicts Scripture while maintaining that Jewish Law approves of such abortions.
These are but two additional examples of the evil which St. John Paul II describes as reason for each of us to “always be ready to say, without ambiguity, the truth about the good and evil regarding man and the family.”
For these reasons, and many others, we look toward courageous Catholic shepherds who have heeded the Holy Father’s call and done so without apology.
We can surely gain insights from Denver, Colorado’s, Archbishop Samuel Aquila. In his pastoral letter on Humanae Vitae he teaches: “Although the secular culture says that there is no objective truth, we are made for the truth, even if living according to the divine truths about sexuality is challenging. In the Gospel, Jesus teaches us, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete” (John 15:11).
Aquila writes that even Pope Paul VI could not have foreseen “a spike in abortions, the spread of STDs and a decline in birth and marriage rates.”
What Pope Paul VI did foresee, however, were the tragedies that can occur when human beings do not fully understand that, when men and women fail to respect and observe the precepts of the natural law—including the truth that sexual relations belong in marriage—terrible things are bound to happen. This is why he emphasized that every “marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.”
We must never forget that abortion and contraception are fruits of the same evil tree. We must never back down from repeating the very truth Pope Paul VI emphasizes in Humanae Vitae: “Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law.”
Only truth and right reason can break the back of such evil. The fundamental truth is clear: Every human being is created by God to know, love, and serve Him on this earth so that he can be happy with his Creator for all eternity.
This is the truth that will break the back of the deceivers in our midst.
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Learn how to teach these truths to your children and encourage their teachers to do likewise. American Life League’s Culture of Life Studies Program offers the way. On the subject of marriage and family, see our unit study entitled Defend Life: Marriage and Family.
Make sure to have Celebrate Life Magazine in your home. It also makes a wonderful gift for your doctor and your educator, not to mention your pastor.
Start rooting out the evil in your neighborhood by learning how to stop Planned Parenthood.
Please pray for America.