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January 18, 2008

A Shepherd's Message

By Daniel Cardinal DiNardo

I want to open this first article of the New Year with a prayer for blessings and peace to all of you in 2008. In the last few months I have received an extraordinary number of cards, letters and wishes of congratulations upon my becoming a cardinal. The same thing happened at Christmas. Though I have tried to respond to nearly 2,000 pieces of mail, I know I may have missed one or another. I want to express my deepest gratitude to all who have written to me with congratulations and with Christmas greetings. I have been most impressed by the letters and cards from our children and young people in our schools, religious education classes and youth ministry activities. They are all beautiful and touching. A number of them are also very funny and I have been delighted to read them.

Thirty-five years ago on January 22nd, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision on Roe v. Wade, a decision that legalized abortion on demand in the United States. In recent years the Catholic Church in the United States has observed that day as one of voluntary prayer, fasting and abstinence for the end of abortion in our land. I highly encourage every Catholic in the archdiocese to observe this day and to pray for a conversion of mind and heart of every person in this nation to a genuine culture of life, to a welcoming environment for every child, born and unborn. The Church must begin with its own members since there are many Catholics who still do not see the fundamental character of the abortion issue as the primary human rights issue in our day. The task and witness here is not negative, but positive. Our Catholic faith is a gift that allows us to see every person as a gift. It is from such a basis that we can credibly witness to a whole range of issues that demand our attention, from peace and justice to care for the poor and respect for the environment.

In March 1995, Pope John Paul II published a very significant encyclical on the value and inviolability of human life called “Evangelium Vitae” (The Gospel of Life). This circular letter to the entire Church synthesized the teaching of the Church, as well as renewed philosophical classical arguments about the meaning of the human person. The encyclical also analyzed and criticized many liberal societies, including our own, on a deep cultural shift that has occurred in our thinking and action. He wrote that a new cultural climate has developed which gives crimes against life, like abortion and euthanasia, a new and sinister twist. They are justified in the name of the rights of individual freedom and even claim authorization by the state. A perverse significance is given to human freedom; it becomes an absolute power over others and against others. Human freedom, however, is not absolute; it is measured, not by human purposes alone, but by the goal or end of human life - the life given by the Creator. No human institution can bestow rights on the human person but only recognize those rights already inscribed in the human person from the first moment of his or her conception. Human life is sacred from its beginning because it involves the creative action of God and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end.

In # 58 of the encyclical the Holy Father wrote a very clear and blunt assessment. “But today, in many people’s consciences, the perception of abortion’s gravity has become progressively obscured. The acceptance of abortion in the popular mind, in behavior and even in law itself, is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake. Given such a grave situation, we need now more than ever to have the courage to look truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name….”

January 22 each year is a day for looking truth in the eye and learning to call things by their proper name when it comes to the issues of the protection of human life. This requires God’s grace; it requires ongoing repentance and renewal; it requires a prophetic witness about the unassailable worth and dignity of the human person.

Our prophetic witness to the importance of human life also involves our participation in the life of society, our work for the common good, and our role and influence in the political processes of our land. This is especially true this year when national elections will be taking place. We bring our moral foundational principles with us when we enter the public square or the voting booth; central to those principles is the inviolable worth and dignity of the human person, from conception to natural death. We have a great deal to think and pray about this year on January 22.