Respect Life Sunday

            Perhaps the greatest theologian the Church has ever seen is the Dominican, St. Thomas Aquinas.  This great doctor of the Church has left us with not only his magnificent written works but also with the formula by which he pursued his studies.  That formula goes like this:  when you are presented with a proposition that purports to be true, you do three things -- you never deny it, seldom affirm it, and always make the necessary distinctions.  To deny the proposition completely might mean missing out on some hidden truth contained within a statement or missing out on the opportunity to use the very error of the statement to further elucidate the truth.  To always affirm every statement, which is what we tend to do in modern America, runs the risk of inadvertently accepting falsehood as the truth.   But St. Thomas said that one has to always distinguish; therein lays the pathway to the truth and the understanding of that truth.

            Today is Respect Life Sunday.  October is Respect Life Month, as well a month especially dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  And I think that in this whole discussion of Life issues, we need desperately to make some distinctions so that we don’t lose the truth that is there and accidentally accept or assume certain things to be true that are not.  We make distinctions so that we don’t equate things that aren’t equal and so that we see the connection of things that are connected.  Here is what I mean.  We Catholics these days are presented with the statement, the proposition, the idea of the “seamless garment of life”; that is, that since all human life is precious, all human life ought to be protected.  So far so good.  But before we immediately deny or affirm this statement, we need to make some distinctions. 

            This proposition of the seamless garment of life has been used to condemn the use of the death penalty or capital punishment.  Again, so far so good.  Someone can, it seems to me, make an argument based on the seamless garment against the death penalty.  But then these people sometimes go too far, they affirm too much, they fail to distinguish between a convicted and guilty murderer and an innocent unborn baby.  They claim that since all human life is sacred, then criminal and innocent persons alike cannot be, must not be, killed.  Here’s the distinction they miss, the distinction between guilty and innocent life.  Capital punishment, though strongly advised against these days by the Church, is still upheld in principle, the principle of self-defense, the self-defense of a society against those who would murder and maim others.  This failure – and this is the important point to be made – the failure to distinguish between guilty and innocent life can, and does, lead to much moral confusion:  people fail to note that to spare the life of a murderer, as we are urged to do more and more by the Church, is an act of mercy.  But to protect the life of the unborn, the innocent unborn or of the elderly or infirm, is not merely an act of mercy but of justice.  Justice requires the protection of the innocent.  Mercy pleads for the life of the guilty.  And these are two different things.

            Here’s an example of the confusion that can result from the failure to make this distinction.  Many of us are familiar with the work of Sister Helen Prejean, the nun who inspired the movie Dead Man Walking.  She has often and eloquently spoken out for the lives of convicted capital offenders.  She has, we all hope, been instrumental in saving their souls.  But she has failed to make the proper distinctions I have mentioned.  And so we hear her denouncing capital punishment in principle, which the Church refuses to do, and calling the Church’s refusal to do so “a loophole” for the injustice of capital punishment.  This leads to further confusion.  In an interview, Sr. Prejean was asked about abortion, and she responded:  “Abortion is much more complex than a mere choice, because the cross hairs of this decision are in the woman’s body and the woman decides this.”  So according to her thinking the State can never legitimately choose to execute a murderer, but someone can choose to kill the innocent. 

            This brave woman, as I said, has eloquently and unequivocally spoken out for the condemned, and this is all she can muster for the innocent?  But she goes further in the same interview:  “I think for us to really answer the abortion question so that women don’t have them, we really have to look seriously at the whole thing of birth control, family planning and not having unwanted pregnancies.”  Hmmm.  What is so starkly clear to her as far as punishment of the guilty is concerned, here with the potential killing of the innocent she equivocates.  And she points to the very thing that is intimately connected with abortion, the thing making abortion more and more acceptable, as a possible solution to problem of abortion.  That is, contraception.

            The confusion only gets thicker, but inexcusably so.  For now the facts are in, facts noted not only by the previous Pope but also acknowledged by the world too.  The Holy Father wrote in his encyclical “The Gospel of Life” that “despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree...,” that in many cases, both practices are “rooted in a hedonistic mentality” that tries to separate sexual pleasure from procreation.”  And like I said, the Pope was not the only one saying this; defenders of abortion are now saying the same thing.  Doctors and scientists admit, openly, that all the forms of the pill are not only contraceptive but also designed so that if a conception does happen it will be aborted.  The Supreme Court itself said in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, “In several critical respects, abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception....” and that “people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.”  Outspoken proponent of abortion “rights” Germain Greer said back in 1984 that “abortion is an extension of contraceptive technology.”  Planned Parenthood openly proclaims the same thing -- that abortion is only the logical extension of methods of contraception.  And finally, the facts are in on the claim that ready availability of contraception would lower the number of abortions; just the opposite has happened.  And those who know the facts admit it.

            A seamless garment of life?  Yes, indeed, yes.  As long as we make the necessary distinctions between guilty and innocent life and see the connection between things that oppose life even before conception.  I have not, in any way, gone through all of this in order to judge or condemn anyone, but to call us all to real and honest defense of life -- in our openness to God’s gift of life in marriages, in our just and necessary defense of innocent life, especially the unborn and the aged, and in our extension of mercy to those condemned.  That’s the seamless garment of life.  Let us rejoice in it and seek to further in our own lives and in the culture around us.