A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. The theme of John's preaching was, one more powerful than I is to come after me. I am not fit to stoop and untie his sandal straps. I have baptized you in water. He will baptize you in the holy spirit.
During that in the Jordan by John. Immediately, when coming out of the water, Jesus saw the sky rent in two and the spirit descending on him like a dove. And then a voice came out of the heavens. You are my beloved son. On you, my favor rests.
Today, our cardinal archbishop has asked that our parish participate with enthusiasm and generosity in the March for Life, Tuesday, January 22. He likewise has asked that we speak to you today about the rights of the unborn child. Now the first thing that strikes me whenever I have this to to deal with is this use of the word life, and I find it very inadequate Because life is something that is shared with every oyster, every cabbage, every turnip, every tree, every cow, every snake, every fish. They all have life. Every tree has life.
So we certainly aren't talking about life in that sense. In what sense are we talking about? What does this mean when you say we're marching for life and or we're pro life? What does it mean that you're pro pro oysters, you're pro plants, you're pro cabbages? Of course not.
Then what are we for? What is involved here? The simple thing is it's the product of a woman's womb. It's the baby that has been fathered and nurtured in its mother, and it's a human being. And, therefore, it has rights, and they are inalienable rights.
They don't come from the church. They don't come from the state. They don't come from society. They are not given to them by any of us. They come from the very fact that it's a human being.
I'm not gonna that's not going to be part of it's not in my agenda for this morning. I'm not going to try to prove that. I'm saying that that is what it has to be treated as. And so why don't we talk about babies instead of talking about life? Why don't we talk about unborn human beings rather than this empty word life, which, of course, isn't an empty word.
Ask any tree. They'll tell you it's good to to live rather than to be dead. Any old fish will tell you that. But we don't hesitate to kill fish. We don't hesitate to kill rattlesnakes.
We don't hesitate to cut down trees. You hear people talking about the sacredness of life. What are they talking about? Mosquitoes? If you're talking about human beings, why don't you mention them?
If you're talking about human rights belonging to unborn human beings because they're human, why don't you talk about the unborn persons? That's what we're really dealing with. And the essence of this problem is justice, not life. The essence of the the the the heinous crime of abortion is that it is a heinous and grievous crime against justice and inalienable right. That's the hub of the matter.
That's the focus of the matter. And so let us get this thing straight in our mind. What are we talking about? I don't know where these phrases came from. Pro life, sacredness of life, sanctity of life.
I don't know where they came from, but it's an unfortunate use of words. But don't you ever underrate the value of words, the power of words. Many a life has been destroyed by a word, and many a and many an election has been won and lost merely on words. Just empty words. They sounded right.
Well, that's the first point I wanna make. Let's get it very straight what we are doing. We are getting involved with the unborn human being. And all I have to say on that regard is if it's not a human being, then what is it? Because the burden of proof rests upon those who say it ain't, not on me.
Now I I'm I'm going to give a rather a long quotation from cardinal o'connor, so I have to be watching the clock because I don't wanna run out of time. As regards this matter of abortion, let me just give you a few little arguments. The first I wanna quote is from John Paul when he was in The United States in 1987. What I wanna I'm I'm not arguing here philosophically. I am speaking to you as Catholics to show that there's absolutely no ambiguity on the part of the church about the heinous crime of abortion, that it's a crime against an unborn human being.
It's a violation of a human right which is inalienable unless it be forfeited. Paul said when he was here in 1987 down on the ellipse, every human being is a being and he was speaking English. This is not a translation. Is a being of inestimable worth. Inestimable worth, every human being who's living, created in the image and likeness of god.
This is the ultimate test of America's greatness, to respect every human person, especially the weakest and the most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn. Could anything be clearer than that? Could anything be more appealing to a nation than that? When in this nation, according to figures I was given, there are four thousand abortions a day and one million five hundred thousand a year. Direct abortions, legal abortions.
Vatican two in the Lumen Gentium, church in the modern world, said calls abortion an abominable crime. Now we don't have to appeal to the church. We don't have to appeal to authority. We don't have to appeal to revelation. There's a very strong natural law argument that every baby conceived must be treated as a human being.
There's plenty of empirical proof for it. And remember, they don't get their human personality. They don't get their human worth because society gives it to them, because they are potential, productive citizens. We you hear this stuff, especially when you're dealing with euthanasia. That is not where inalienable rights come from.
They are inalienable to the person because they're a human being unless, in some way, they be forfeited because they can be. But unless they're forfeited, they have to be recognized not because someone gave them to them, not because they are good productive citizens get getting a fat paycheck every two weeks, but be simply because they are human. And this means not merely they're just human, but that they are made to the image and the likeness of God. You cannot get a right out of mere life. Oysters have no life.
Trees have no rights. Dogs have no rights. It's because a human being, which is a product of a man and a woman's relationship, that is also, as far as the Catholic church is concerned, a unique, unique, peculiar, individual creation of God almighty. It's not because the product of conception is human with human life. It's because they are the creation of God with an immortal soul, born for immortality, and brought into this life to attain immortality.
Not to be good citizens, not to be good fathers, not for any of those things. All of those things come as consequences of their being destined to return to god because they have lived according to god's law and have practiced his virtues. You're coming right back to the old suma of Saint Thomas. I come from god. I go back to god.
And with the coming of our lord Jesus Christ, I do it through his grace. We don't get that from any natural law, but we get it from the revelation of God to his people and through the infallible voice of his living church. We do not respect the life of of a unborn baby or a born baby or an old person or a young person or a male human being or a female human being because they are products products of society or because they are valuable to society. We respect them because they have an inherent value. Inherent because they are what they are.
They don't have to work for it. They don't have to achieve it. They have to work to make it operational, of course. They have it because they are creatures made to the image and likeness of god because they differ from every cat and dog and every tree and cabbage because they have immortal souls. And that's the heart of the matter.
You know, every I understand. I I have this taken this on what I've read recently. Doctors, after they finish their medical school, take what they call the Hippocratic Oath. Now that gentleman, a Greek, lived. Well, his dates are a little bit uncertain.
But take it about 04/1960 to 03/1967. Now I want them to notice that's that's a fourth century BC before Christ. Now that oath, as I had it was given to to me, reads as follows. I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor will I suggest any such counsel. And in like manner, I will not give it to I will not give to a woman a pessary to induce abortion.
And as I understand it, that oath has been used in the at least in the Western world from the fourth century BC. And now listen to this. Some medical schools aren't using the entire oath. They are leaving out that last part about bringing giving a woman help to have an abortion. They don't include that.
Now in The United States, I don't know how reliable these figures are. I have no way of checking it. But you read them. You see them. 4,000 direct abortions.
1,500,000 a year. Direct abortions. And notice I'm using that word direct all the time because there are abortions which are perfectly moral. But we're talking here where of set purpose of set purpose, a living fetus is destroyed intentionally, of set purpose. Now as regards action, because marching is an action.
That's one way of expressing our opposition. And I want to point out this. You should why do we insist on talking in negatives that I'm against abortion? Why don't we talk on the positive side and we're for justice? We're for inalienable rights of the unborn.
That's what we're for. We're not against a negative or a primitive term. We are talking positively. The efforts to try to stop abortion should emphasize justice, right, the god given prerogative of an unborn human being and person destined to be with god for eternity. Now in this country, we certainly need their CESA while there's so much action in or for the proabortions.
It's perfectly clear what they stand for, but they don't like that title either, you know. They don't like to be called pro abortionists. They've coined other ones. Edmund Burke, eighteenth century great Englishman, said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing. Edmund Burke.
Now I want to read something that John Cardinal O'Connor of New York produced last year, January, and he asked that his letter this is a letter he wrote, and there's no doubt that he it came out of his own from his own hand or his typewriter or a word processor. He asked all his priests and diocese in New York to read this on January the twentieth and twenty first of last year, nineteen ninety. I wanna read just some excerpts from it. I haven't read anything that is so human, so human, so understanding of this terrible problem. Because for the woman, I don't care how young or how old she is, who has to face this issue to abort or not to abort.
That is a terrible crisis. Now here's what he wrote. I mean, just what part. He says and you know who cardinal O'Connor is. He came out.
You know, he was lain with armed services. He speaks English. He says, I write to you as a man of flesh and blood who loves you. Now this is a letter he asked his priest to read to the his people on the Sundays of the January twentieth and twenty first last year. I write to you as a man of flesh and of blood who loves you, a man now old enough to be the father of most of you, and as your bishop, spiritual father of you all.
I try never to speak or write to you in abstractions. Let me therefore simply plead with you to do everything in your power to reach out to women or young girls who are pregnant and in need, many of them completely alone, many of them desperate enough to be thinking of abortion. Let them know, please, how much I want to help. I repeat what I have been saying and doing since I became your bishop. That is that any woman of any religion, color, or ethnic origin faced with an unexpected pregnancy or otherwise in need can come to me or to my associates in the archdiocese and be given all the help she needs, medical, psychological, spiritual, at no cost to herself.
Absolutely no woman need have an abortion because she does not know what else to do or where to turn. She need only call 1800592. I would plead with you also never to condemn any mother who has had an abortion. On the contrary, do everything that you can to help her pick up the pieces of her life. I do not write to you to criticize or to condemn.
I do not write to ask you to vote for or against any particular politician. I write to you only because I desperately need your help in order to save the lives of preborn babies, to save their mothers the nightmare of aborting them, and to save those who have had abortions to know that they can be reconciled to the god who loves them very much. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit. Amen.