Bishop Doran - Procured Abortion, Death Knell of Our Society

This is Bishop Doran's column from the 24 September 2010 edition of the Rockford Diocesan newspaper, The Observer. It pretty much speaks for itself. Bishop Doran pulls no punches but sounds a clarion call. In word & deed he has spoken out in defense of life as a good shepherd should. Bravo Bishop Doran.

The practice of abortion in our country and city holds hidden dangers

An old story has it that a priest/professor once mounted his pulpit to preach on suicide and he began: “Suicide is not only a mortal sin, but is very dangerous.” One could say with some justification the same thing about procured abortion; it is a mortal sin and is very dangerous. At least practicing Catholics know that it is sinful and many other Christians do as well.
In our devolving and decaying morally relativistic society, there are many people who regard the killing of a pre-born child as of no consequence whatever. What is hidden from the eyes of the unsuspecting, however, is that not only for its victims but also for its perpetrators and for societies that permit it, allow it and license it, it is extremely dangerous.
All of us are aware of the perilous financial condition into which corrupt politicians of both parties have cast our country. Particularly vexing to our congressional overlords are the so-called entitlements: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other such things as unemployment compensation and various types of government relief. What we are never told is that the reason these entitlements are becoming unbearable for the taxpaying public is that there are fewer and fewer people contributing funds by way of their taxes to support these needed benefits upon which many people in our society have come to rely. Ours is a rapidly aging population because the number of children born into it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller, relative to the size of our country.

Since a pagan Supreme Court, overriding the Christian conscience of centuries, chose to kill children in 1973, millions of them have been butchered without ever seeing the light of day, even for a moment. Abortion also coarsens our moral discourse and brutalizes our people.
It is said that even Nazi Germany was not quite as callous with regard to nascent infant life as our unelected judges have made our country. Abortion has also contributed to the treatment of women as objects, rather than as subjects, of rights and duties, has made us more callous as regards the commission of lesser crimes and is a bullet aimed at the heart of marriage and family life. It has ruined the trust we used to have in doctors, nurses and the health care business. In short, procured abortion may well be the death knell of our society.
As with other forms of wrongful activity sanctioned or winked at by the government, procured abortion is for the killers and those who support them, immensely profitable. Abortuaries are gold mines for their operators. Killer physicians and surgeons, distaining the Hippocratic Oath, travel hundreds of miles to assassinate a few children, and you may be sure that that kind of doctor or nurse does not work for nothing.
Many courageous people have taken up the pro-life cause, and one of the things that we have found that is most helpful in dissuading mothers who are on the way to killing their children are ultrasound images of their children recumbent in the womb. To that end, Rockford advocates of pro-life causes, braving the harassment of those paid to protect the abortuaries from suffering financial ills, have arranged for ultrasound procedures at no cost to the mothers of the condemned children in the hope that some, and indeed as many as possible, might be dissuaded from that purpose.
Recently the abortuary functionaries and those publicly charged to protect them deceived the people who were willing to provide these services here into thinking they had permission to do so and then drove them off because they had not paid the license fees for so doing, the fees of which they had not been, as far as I know, apprised in the beginning. I am reliably informed that those in charge of the police department were in no way collaborators in this deception.
In a meeting of the City Council on Monday night, the Mayor of Rockford, the Honorable Lawrence Morrissey, said that the Legal Department would assist the pro-life people providing this service with the necessary licenses upon the payment of the fees exacted by our politicians for this licensure. The pro-life people in this diocese are courageous people who endure a good deal of discomfort, raillery and obloquy from those who maintain and staff the local abortuary. Nor may those people be subject to our contempt. As the Gospel of last Sunday tells us, those who serve mammon must hate God. They have chosen the master to whom they pay homage, and their master rewards them with great financial gain.
A week or so ago, one member of the pro-life movement in Rockford attempted to instruct the City Council on the anomalies of the situation. I do not know to what effect. It must be said, and tearfully, that we do not rely on our public legislators for a great deal in the way of ethical conduct (to say nothing of morally upright behavior), but perhaps some good is done. In the meantime, I ask all in the diocese to pray for the pro-life people here, in Aurora and throughout the diocese that we will be able to dissuade through the use of ultrasound procedures a few more mothers from destroying the children who have been given God’s great gift of life. Many things happen in this world for which there is no rational explanation.
Speaking of children, in the 18th Chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, we read that He called a child over, placed it in their midst and said: “Amen I say to you, unless you turn and become like children you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven . . . and whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me . . . see that you do not despise one of these little ones,” and then He adds the frightening phrase, “I say to you that their angels in Heaven, always look upon the face of my Heavenly Father.” (Mt 18:10) Foolhardy indeed are those who would court the wrath of angels.
We pray then for the pro-life people of the Diocese of Rockford to bless and encourage all their efforts to remove from our midst and indeed from society at large the peril of procured abortion. We pray for their safety and for God’s choicest graces for all of them.