Pope John Paul II frequently and rightly denounces the “culture of death,” the soil that nourishes the odious crime of abortion.
The Holy Father is correct, but here in the United States, some unlikely husbands of the culture fertilize the fetid soil: Catholics whose church condemns abortion and the very culture that sustains it.
If it weren’t for Catholics, for people who call themselves Christians in general, abortion would be illegal.
Such an assertion sounds unreasonable, but it comports with the demographics. American Catholics number 62 million, about 25 percent of the population.
Nearly 150 members of the U.S. Congress are Catholics, including such titans as Edward and Patrick Kennedy, Joseph Biden, Tom Daschle and Charles Rangel.
Add to these men and women the hundreds of state legislators who are Catholics, as well as the doctors, lawyers, judges and powerful members of the news media, Tim Russert and Chris Matthews, to name just two.
But since 1973, abortionists have snuffed out 40 million innocents. Many of those abortionists, as well as the mothers who slew their children, were Catholics.
These facts raise the question of how abortion remains legal in a republic wherein the largest denomination is baptized into a Church that condemns abortion as murder.
Answer? Too many Catholics, particularly those in power, aren’t Catholic. They do not heed the elemental teachings of their church on such subjects as contraception and abortion. If they abide Church teaching, or believe abortion is an outrage, they sequester their faith and morals from their politics.
How one pulls off this feat of intellectual contortionism is a subject for another day; for now, it suffices to say we hear it from politicians all the time. “I won’t let my personal beliefs affect my political decisions,” they proudly say, or “I personally think abortion is wrong, but I can’t impose my morals on someone else.”
Happily, they don’t think similarly about other crimes, such as murder and rape, and unhappily, they merrily impose their superstitions about welfare, socialism, taxes, the environment, sex education, and anything else they can think of.
Anyhow, for whatever reason, millions of American Catholics either accept the culture of death or fully embrace it. Sure, some attend weekly Mass or even believe abortion is wrong, but few of them yank their kids out of public schools because state teachings on sexuality contradict those of their church. Even fewer march in pro-life rallies. One wonders how many even pray. These truths apply to that three-quarters of the population that isn’t Catholic, but instead mostly Christian.
American Christians, Catholic and Protestant, have abandoned the unborn to the machinery of death.
The answer, I suppose, is prayer.
Nothing short of a religious or moral conversion will energize this nation’s guilt and grief over abortion. Only the burning sorrow that accompanies spiritual awakening will thaw the icy conscience that accepts as a “right” what is so clearly a sin of Mephistophelian dimension.
Catholics should tutor the nation on abortion and why it is evil. Instead, they cultivate it. Disconcerting yes, but atrociously, incandescently true.
Shame on us.
R. Cort Kirkwood is managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. His e-mail address is: kirkwood@shentel.net.
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