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Day 1 - March for Life Pilgrimage
Well, this post is coming to you from Washington DC, where myself and the rest of the guys from Brute who are here for the March for Life. Since we had school off today for Martin
Luther King Junior day, we had Mass this morning at Brute at 9 AM and left for
our nation’s capital soon afterwards. We
rented four 12-passenger vans this year, since we have grown by 10+ guys since
last year when we had three vans, and started our 9 hour drive around
10:30 this morning. We spent about 3 hours on the
road before stopping for lunch somewhere near the eastern border of Ohio (I went to Wendy's). Anyway, in the second stint of our drive
after lunch, we listened to a talk by Tim Staples, who noted that our culture
has truly disintegrated over the last half-century or so. I will leave it up to you to think about the
many other places were this is evident, but I think this is especially obvious in the
legalization of abortion – the slaughter of unborn babies within their own
mother’s womb – about 40 years ago.
Tim Staples started with the Declaration of Independence which as you all know begins by saying that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”. Of course, this is a political, not
theological, document, but it still makes the all-important point that we get our
human rights from God. I could go from here to something about being made in God's image, and how our dignity was further super-naturalized with the incarnation, but I won't because the point I want to make is even simpler than this. Our culture has not only thrown the rights given by God out of the window. It has also thrown out the rights that we can come to know just using our reason. This is called by Catholics as Natural Law - the law that one can come to know just by using our reason - but we don't even have to get into that. Think about it, our culture raises the right to be able to do whatever you want over the right to life of somebody else. That isn't even rational. If a human being (which, undoubtedly is what the living embryo inside the mother's womb is) doesn't have the right to live, then there isn't any point to having another right - you're dead...
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of cases where the situation is really, really hard for the mother to have a child, and yet she's pregnant. But none of those situations would be so grave as to make murder OK. We were listening to some Catholic Answers Live talks as well on the way over here (it was a good trip, we listened to a lot of good stuff), and the speaker, who I believe was Trent Horn, made the important point that we must battle evil with good, not with more evil. Certainly there are cases where the mother's life is in danger, or the child will be born into a poor/missing family, or the mother was raped, or some other horrible situation, but killing the innocent child isn't the way to fix the problem. We don't fix other problems (over crowded cities or something) by killing people, so why would we think abortion is a good option? (Don't think that this example makes my argument air-tight; who knows what atrocities could happen in the future? But at least right now it shows the absurdity of the proposition.)
Before ending this post though, I'd like to end on a positive note. I started with the unfortunate fact that our culture is disintegrating (at the very least morally) because we have pretty much dropped God (and even reason) from the picture. We have rejected every authority we possibly can and find ourselves trapped in the very slavery that Christ died to bring us out of - the slavery to sin. But, don't despair! As Fr. Bob noted in his homily this morning, it may not be easy or fun to live in such a world, but it is still our duty to fight for truth and God-given, common sense, morality. Pray, fast, go stand in the cold for several hours on Wednesday - do something instead of just complaining! (I don't mean to insinuate that you all just complain, I expect the exact opposite, but I know that often the subject of abortion, or the moral collapse of our culture, evokes despair, not hope, and I wanted to reiterate that we're in a battle on the side that is guaranteed to win. Our job is to get to heaven and bring as much of the rest of our culture there with us. Put the situation, the atrocities, your live, and our country, into God's merciful hands - through our Blessed Mother - and go convert the world!)
More updates will appear as I get the chance. Sorry no pictures just yet, I hope to take some tomorrow as we tour around DC and go to the vigil Mass and of course at the March for Life itself on Wednesday. Keep me in your prayers please, that I can also be a bit productive at least during the car rides - I have to finish up my application to the PNAC as well as my self-evaluation for this last year in college seminary. (Oh, and I need to do all the work for my classes this week...)
Also, I think I may have posted this video before, but it is so fantastic, I wanted to share it again...
That's Great! I love your example of not fixing overcrowded cities by killing people. The video is great also. This post was very inspiring. A.M.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear it! I enjoyed writing this post - it went deeper than my usual ones... (which is good)
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