27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

October is designated at “Respect Life Month” and today, in particular, is observed by the Catholic Church as “Respect Life Sunday.” Since the time of Christ, the Catholic Church has had a consistent ethic of life. As a Church, we recognize that all persons have an inherent human dignity having been created in the image and likeness of God, and it is our obligation to uphold the dignity of all human life. In a document entitled “Faithful Citizenship,” the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states: “We believe that every human life is sacred from conception to natural death, that people are more important than things, and that the measure of every institution is whether it protects and respects the life and dignity of the human person.” Consequently, the Catholic Church has condemned abortion, euthanasia, cloning, stem cell research that utilizes stem cells obtained by immoral means, and other assaults against the dignity of human life. While the Church recognizes the necessity of capital punishment in certain extreme cases so that the public might not be endangered, Pope Saint John Paul II stated in his encyclical “The Gospel of Life” that given our ability to confine dangerous persons in penitentiaries, the legitimate need for capital punishment is virtually non-existent. Other examples of offenses against human life include poverty, poor working conditions, inadequate wages, illiteracy, domestic violence, and inadequate health care.

Today the recognition of human life as a fundamental value is threatened. Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of elective abortion. From the birth of our nation in 1776, the Declaration of Independence recognized the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and yet, in the 45 years since the Roe. V. Wade decision of the United States Supreme Court, approximately sixty million unborn American children have been denied those very rights because they have been the victims of abortion. In 2015, there are over 2,488 children aborted in our country every day. A total of 908,000 unborn Americans died as a result of abortion that year. Within our own state of New Mexico, there were 4,673 abortions in 2015, and 20% of those were performed on women who had travelled here from another state to take advantage of our lack of restrictions on abortion. In “Faithful Citizenship,” the American bishops state: “Laws that legitimize abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia are profoundly unjust and immoral. We support constitutional protection for unborn human life, as well as legislative efforts to end abortion and euthanasia.”

It would be easy to turn our backs and pretend that abortion and other pro-life issues do not concern us, but they do. It would be easy to keep silent about this American holocaust and pretend that there is nothing we can do about it, but there is. We can pray. We can peacefully protest. We can support organizations such as Birthright that provide care for expectant mothers and mothers on limited incomes who have chosen life for their unborn children. We can support programs such as Project Rachel and Rachel’s Vineyard that seek to bring reconciliation and healing to those who have had an abortion or encouraged one. We can write to political office holders and candidates and let them know that to speak of any other “rights” is meaningless unless we first defend and protect the fundamental right to life in this country. The Gospel clearly challenges us to protect those who are most vulnerable in society. Who is more vulnerable than an unborn child?