Status Ecclesiae: October 2004

'Beyond' the Babies

By John Mallon

In the Spring of 1990 a curious phenomenon occurred. I was working at Boston College after completing my bachelor's degree in theology. As an older student and staff member I could sometimes fraternize with faculty and administrators on a first name basis. I was involved with the campus pro-life group and as such at that venerable Jesuit institution was regarded as somewhat of a troublemaker. 

The radical little girls from the women's studies department, on the other hand, were regarded as little darlings who were "underdogs" who could do no wrong as they agitated to promote abortion. The Dean of Student's office especially offered them special treatment which the pro-lifers emphatically did not enjoy. 

Anyway, higher education is a major industry in Boston and neighboring Cambridge, the home of Harvard and MIT. The phenomenon that occurred was a sudden and (seemingly) inexplicable drop-off in freshman admissions for the incoming class of 1994. For some colleges and universities it presented a crisis so severe that some schools were considering laying off staff. 

One day while walking through one of the cafeterias I noticed Bob, the Dean of Students going my way. Bob was rumored to be "pro-choice." I did something very mean. I set him up. I said, "Hey, Bob, what do you think of this thing with the drop-off in freshman admission going on around town? 

Bob said, "Yeah, isn't that strange? I wonder what's going on..."

"I know where they are." I replied.

Bob looked at me quizzically.

"They're all dead!" I said. 

Bob looked at me still more quizzically, shaking his head that he didn't understand.

"Let's see..." I said, holding out my hand, and counting on my fingers, "Roe v. Wade, 1973, one, two, three... Gee, Bob that brings us right up to about 18, the age students enter college!" 

Bob looked stunned. "I never thought of that..." he said in an amazed half whisper, as if a new world were opening to him.

"Well, think about it!" I barked. "What do you think we pro-lifers are in this for, just to go around ruining everyone's fun? Think about it!"

Then I stalked away, leaving Bob still looking dazed. Later I was to write an article for a student newspaper entitled, "Welcome Survivors: Class of '94"

*     *     *

The deliberate putting to death of 45 million innocent people sanctioned by law over 30+ years in the "civilized" world—32 years in the United States this January—is enough by itself to raise an outcry. But there's more. Much more. There are many more evils in the pipeline from the ideologues that brought us the genocide of legal abortion for the past three decades. 

The ramifications of worldwide legal abortion, even if it were stopped now, will echo for future decades if not centuries. Those in Catholic inner healing ministries can testify to how abortions going back generations can manifest in family dysfunction in the present. Scripture speaks of "the sins of the fathers" being visited upon the children down to the third or fourth generation. (Exod. 20:5)

We are seeing these ramifications already. On September 14, MSNBC.com reported a story entitled "China grapples with legacy of its ‘missing girls’." The horrific and vicious "one-child policy" of the Chinese government has resulted in the sex selection abortions of millions of baby girls. Traditional Chinese culture unfortunately places a higher value on sons than daughters, and faced with the prospect of only being "allowed" one child they will choose to have the boy. 

Since the start of this evil policy a generation has come of age. According to the report China now faces a ratio of 120 boys to every 100 girls. One expert quoted said in ten years there will be about 40 to 60 million missing women. Among many anticipated social problems resulting from this involve sex trafficking in women, prostitution and other crimes by angry frustrated men.

Where is the Feminist outcry over this? Don't hold your breath. Radical feminists will not criticize anything, no matter how harmful to women, if they think it threatens the "validity" of legal abortion.

The Population Research Institute, (PRI) of Front Royal, Virginia, (www.pop.org) has been waving a red flag over this and many other related issues only to be mocked and ignored by "elites" and "experts." This is often the fate of prophets. (Our interview with PRI President Steven Mosher appeared in our Dossier on the Catholic Vote in the October Inside the Vatican.)

The point is, as a wise man once said, "God forgives and forgets. Nature is God's vicar general. Nature never forgives or forgets." Those of us who are believers know that creation has certain guidelines. Those guidelines are what we call morality—the law written in the human heart, which governs all reality, not just the natural, physical realm but also the metaphysical, spiritual, supernatural realm. Violating these parameters of creation has consequences. 

In his classic book, The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis explores this phenomenon of the moral law which is universal to all major religions and cultures. He makes the case that this law is outside of us, objective, not something subjective and man-made, and therefore not available for revision by man. This obviously points to something other than man in the universe—a Creator. 

Lewis also takes up the case of those who nonetheless would attempt to revise the objective moral law as "social reformers." 

In fact, Lewis takes the theory outlined in the Abolition of Man and illustrates it in fiction in his stunning novel, That Hideous Strength, the third installment of his famous space trilogy, set, appropriately enough, at a university.

The worldwide movement today pushing for "sexual and reproductive rights" is a marriage of convenience between radical feminists and population controllers; and the incestuous relationship between The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). 

In a worldwide and well-funded push, these ideologues—or social reformers—are attempting to rewrite reality without regard to common sense, toward the goal, one imagines, of a world where sexual activity is utterly without restriction and where a lot less people inhabit the world. They would control who gains admittance to this privileged utopia. 

Obviously to attain this goal sexual activity must be separated from procreation—"liberated" from the burden of having children which clutter up the world and drain resources from those permitted live in this sexual Garden of Eden.

Precisely this agenda is being pursued by the Catholic Church's most vociferous enemies attempting to codify their agenda through international treaty instruments. 

U.S. State Department has found the UNFPA complicit in China's one-child policy and has shut off all U.S. funds to that organization. The thankfully unsuccessful Catholic candidate for President of the United States had vowed to restore those funds as one of his first executive acts if elected, as did the Jesuit-educated Bill Clinton before him. 

The slide down the "Slippery Slope" of the Culture of Death, which began with contraception and the rejection of Humanae Vitae, which led to widespread legal abortion is well under way and gaining speed. Cloning and the use of embyonic stem cells in research are just two of the issues opening up.

A little over 10 years ago, when introducing the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the American bishops rightly spoke of a "spiritual illiteracy" widespread in the land. 

This illiteracy is held by otherwise educated Catholics who have come to view secularism as the "real world" while Catholicism is regarded as something akin to ethnic heritage or something perhaps taken out of the closet on the occasional Sunday, if at all, but not as a way of forming and conducting one's life. It is this culture, within the Church, which views Catholic teaching on sexuality as "unrealistic" and Humanae Vitae and the Church's position on abortion as "scoff laws."

This same culture of spiritual illiteracy within the Church, which gave us "pro-choice" Deans of Students at Catholic universities produced a Catholic presidential candidate who claimed that he believes that life begins at conception but enthusiastically supports the "right" to destroy those lives at will. And believes this is a legitimate position. 

As we stressed in our October Dossier on the Catholic Vote, the outcome of the recent presidential election will have profound ramifications for future generations. Perhaps also for the eternal destiny of many souls, and of who is born or not allowed to be born. It may determine whether what began in the last third of the 20th century is but a mere prelude to a new dark age of the human spirit in the third millennium, or the chance to create a civilization of love.

The American bishops dislike controversy. The Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, DC, has expressed ‘discomfort’ with the idea of refusing the Eucharist to pro-abortion Catholic politicians. But what will happen to that discomfort level (or controversy level) if one such politician, a Catholic who is squarely opposed to Church teaching, and squarely aligned with the Church's most vociferous enemies worldwide, approaches the Eucharist as President of the United States? Thankfully, we dodged that bullet.

--

Mallon is a Contributing Editor to Inside the Vatican

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