Father Michael's Column

We just finished October, which is always designated as “Respect Life Month”. I want to pass on a little Church history, especially since Michigan’s Constitution has been changed back in 2022 (Proposal 3) to become one of the most liberal in the nation with regard to so-called “Reproductive Rights”.

Our society has devalued the intrinsic dignity of the human person. We have become numb to violence, normalized pornography, and seem intent on destroying the nuclear family. Even infanticide is no longer universally abhorrent, but is being considered by some as a natural extension of abortion. 

Although there are many beliefs and practices in our society that challenge a proper respect for life, certainly the biggest and most controversial ones have to do with abortion. It’s been legal in our country for over 50 years, although the overturn of Roe v. Wade put the question back into the hands of the States, in the minds of many people, since it’s legal it must somehow be moral. But the controversies refuse to go away, because there will always be people who know that abortion is wrong, and they will continue to defend the human person’s intrinsic dignity. 

Our society has a much longer history than just the last 50 years. So does our Church, and her teaching can help provide perspective and direction as we struggle with the challenges of today. Two years ago as Proposal 3 was being debated, I presented what the Church teaches about the morality of abortion, drawn from the “Fact sheet by the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities”. I think it is helpful to review that information:

 The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law" (No. 2271).

In response to those who say this teaching has changed or is of recent origin, here are the facts:

From earliest times, Christians sharply distinguished themselves from surrounding pagan cultures by rejecting abortion and infanticide. The earliest widely used proponents of the new viewpoints as “progressive”. 

As I explained in an article I wrote last year, there was a social phenomenon called “modernism”, followed by an even more pernicious trend termed “post-modernism”. At various times in the last few centuries, there have been periods of “enlightenment”, which sometimes challenged the traditional teachings of the Church, but always in the end fell far short of their high ideals for society. And for good reason, because many of their premises were ultimately flawed and shallow, or just false. 

Modernism might be seen as one of these. It arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly 1900 through about 1930, and was not just an artistic trend but a social one as well. It developed as a response to some of the major scientific discoveries and industrial changes of the time, as well as being influenced by new theories of psychology. It was a time of unprecedented rapid change, and society didn’t know how to handle that. 

In the search for the deeper truths of reality, it looked within the person—who had become just a cog in a large industrial wheel, rather than looking to a God. Old values of civilization were discarded, including those taboos which suppressed immoral urges. There was a rejection of all religious and moral principles. Modernists believed there were other means of obtaining social progress. It sanctioned exploration of the perverse, as an attempt to get in touch with our “natural appetite” for adultery, incest, homosexuality, murder, deceit, theft, etc. Rather than perceiving these things as morally degenerate, they were seen as “liberating”! (Of course, if widely adopted and practiced, such nihilism would also result in the collapse of any civilization.) In short, it devalued any traditional or supernatural elements. It replaced God, as the focus of life, with mankind.

 

Post-modernism, rather than being a reaction to and rejection of modernism, instead took it a step further. Modernism may have replaced God with “mankind” or “society”, but post-modernism replaced society with the individual person. Now, “whatever the individual believes to be true, is true”. The problem with this, of course is that if all truth is subjective, there is no such thing as objective truth. Two and two does not equal four —not if I think that’s limiting or even racist. All truth, all reality has become entirely subjective. Good or evil is what the individual says it is. It is the modern equivalent of the sin of Adam and Eve, who wanted to be “like gods, knowing what is good and what is evil.” (In the ancient world it was believed that only deities could decide what was good or evil.)

In our current American society we’re dealing with people who have eaten, even without realizing it, the rotten fruit of a bad tree, and with great fervor insist that everyone should take a bite. 

I’ll explain more in next week’s column. Meanwhile, pray for our nation, but with hope.

In Jesus,
Fr. Michael