The Obvious Must Be Ignored

       From today’s Gospel:  “And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.”  How stunning, sometimes, it is when this Light shines in such a way that it throws into sharp relief the works of evil.  Frightening even, an emotion that gripped my heart like a vise the other day when I did the very brave thing – the very politically incorrect thing – of glancing at photographs of aborted unborn babies, something I am not at all prone to do.  The scenes displayed before my eyes were heart-wrenching and nauseating:  an aborted infant at five months, larger than the size of a human hand and perfectly shaped, scarred and blackened after having been scalded to death with saline; another at ten weeks, a human body disemboweled and mangled; a third scene that could have been from hell – a collection of little severed limbs and heads of once living children. 

      Here are the fruits of that now enshrined American dogma of the “freedom” of choice, captured on film for those courageous enough to view what the Light has revealed.  But the response most often is something quite different from my horror; it is, rather, anger, a puffed up and feather-ruffled, self-righteous indignation that anyone would dare point out the obvious:  that this abortion business is a bloody and murderous enterprise, a putrid worship at the shrine of that age-old, demon-god Moloch before whom some ancient pagans sacrificed their children for the sake of some worldly advancement. 

      Yes, I am amazed at this anger of the pro-choice crowd, directed as it is against the Light.  One could smell the sulfur of this resentment wafting up from a recent declaration of some fifty-five, self-identified Catholic members of the U.S. House of Representatives, a declaration directed at the Catholic Bishops of America, in which they threw down the gauntlet:  they will not adhere to the teaching of the Church but will pursue their defense of the indefensible – abortion available all the way from the morning-after pill to partial birth.  It was as if, one astute commentator wrote, these Representatives were saying, “Stop looking at us like that!”  Yes, the Light hurts… when one prefers the darkness to light. 

      And the response from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops?  A timid reiteration of Church teaching and, you guessed it, a call to “dialog.”  Now I cannot help but think that the members of the episcopate are well aware of what the above-mentioned photographs depict, that they know that this incessant dialoging has been going on for many a fruitless year after year, that they are aware that the anti-life forces are only hardening their position in the light of the fact that the truth about abortion is only becoming more obvious.  And so, I would ask the author(s) of the Bishops’ response, in the light of natural law, in the light of the fact of what the Church has condemned for two thousand years, and of what the photographs of the results of abortion reveal, what in God’s name is there to “dialog” about?  Such “dialog” only serves the purpose of providing a shelter from the spotlight of truth.  It lends legitimacy to the continuing support in Congress by “Catholics” and others to something that is an abomination.

      Oh yes, I am quite aware that what I am saying is immediately labeled “extreme,” the label the media dishes out in these cases, mainly because most of them have no clue what the word “uncompromising” means:  that the right to life is the most basic human right and that a society has the moral and, yes, the political obligation to secure that right.  Let’s face it:  human beings have a right not to be murdered.  It’s really that obvious.  But it’s difficult to read the definitions of things when one hunkers down in the darkness, where blatant works of evil are defended with lies and protests about “freedom” and “choice,” where is ignored the age-old and universal ethical principle that one must not do evil in order to try to attain to any perceived good. 

      Most people, if they would only bring themselves to think about it, are well-aware that abortion results in what those photographs portray.  And yet the tragedy continues.  As one good journalist put it, this outrage goes on and on because most Americans – though polled as very “uncomfortable” with abortion – still believe that it should be available in cases of “rape, incest, and me” – that is, keeping the realm of darkness on hand in case one needs to take cover in it. 

      But again, it’s the anger against the witness to the truth that strikes one as so odd… until we contemplate today’s Gospel warning about light and darkness.  The wrathful response – even among many a Catholic – to the constant teaching of the Church on this matter and to the proclamation of that teaching makes one wonder.  What is that angry person – so incensed at the truth – hiding under the cover of darkness?  What personal evil is he or she “protecting” from the light of the law of nature inscribed in the human heart and made explicit in the Gospel? Why no real anger at the gross injustice against the aborted child and at the now so well documented harm done to the mother?  For if such a person would ever defend abortion, then he will defend almost anything of evil. 

      And this is exactly what’s happening.  Thus the crucial battle over the innocent human life of the unborn child.  It is in a real sense the defining moment in our history as a nation, the test-case of whether we will opt out of civilization all together or allow the Light to shine in our hearts, in our communities, and in society at large.  It’s all about light or darkness.  And with abortion, the distinction could not be clearer.