Restore Force of Law

A cogent summary of the mission of the pro-life movement is to ensure that every child is welcomed in life and protected by law. Thus I submit that the concluding advice in your Aug. 4-17 editorial, “Planned Parenthood’s Principle Priority,” lacks a crucial component.

You write, “At its core, the battle to end abortion in America is a battle to win over minds and hearts — and most especially, the minds and hearts of America’s women.” Such advice ignores human nature and the history of efforts in America to protect the vulnerable.Since Cain killed Abel, human beings have been killing each other in an attempt to solve problems in our lives.

While changing minds and hearts does save lives and assists in changing laws, the force of law has provided far more protection to vulnerable Americans than changing minds and hearts. Retrospective and prospective reviews support this argument. America’s history indicates that the primary reason slavery ended in America was not because white Americans’ “minds and hearts” changed toward the value of black Americans. Slavery ended in America because slavery became punishable by the force of law. Abortion in America did not have to increase when the U.S. Supreme Court, on Jan. 22, 1973, removed all legal protections from killing children in the womb. Yet abortions vastly increased once the force of law no longer protected these children. In Pennsylvania, abortions increased by about 60,000 per year from 1973 to 1980. Then, through changes in law — and minds and hearts — abortions have declined to about 30,000 in 2018.

If the U.S. Supreme Court declared a “constitutional right” to kill newborns with disabilities, troubled teens, the seriously ill and/or vulnerable elderly, such killings would vastly increase. The force of law would no longer restrain many of us from acting on our corrupt human nature.

The recognition that the primary mission of the pro-life movement remains to restore the force of law to protect children in the womb imposes a serious duty on Catholics and other Christians in America. Since we elect our lawmakers, our voting decisions can make us share in the responsibility for killing these children. An emphasis on “changing minds and hearts” not only provides an ambiguous personal challenge but minimizes our personal responsibility as voters and citizens. This responsibility is to give the highest priority for our voting decisions to legal protection of the lives of vulnerable Americans from unjust, direct and intentional killing, which abortion always is.

Then we have a responsibility to zealously petition our public officials to provide legal protection to mothers and children from abortion.

Michael J. McMonagle

president, Pro-Life Coalition of Pennsylvania

Lansdale, Pennsylvania

 

10 Months With Vanier

The “Jean Vanier: A ‘Giant in Humanity’” article (page one, May 26 issue) mentioned that “his permanent vocation to help those on the margins blossomed in 1964” when he founded the first L’Arche, and there are now “154 L’Arche communities in 38 different countries on five continents.”I write this letter to tell what I think may have been Jean Vanier’s temporary vocation, or first apostolate, where and when I met him and was with him from October 1953 to August 1954.

This great experience began to happen when I returned in September 1953 from my home in Oklahoma to Notre Dame for my senior year.

 A priest, Holy Cross Father Edward O’Connor, offered me a French government scholarship to L’Eau Vive, a place in France that was unknown to me. I was able to obtain a passport quickly and sailed to Le Havre on a French line ship.

I learned that L’Eau Vive, which in English is “The Living Water,” was a place situated in several 18th-century chateaus in Soisy-sur-Seine, a village about 20 miles from Paris, and that L’ Eau Vive was a community of about 15 Catholic American, French, Swiss, English and German men — one of the Germans was a baron — and a Japanese priest, who had been a prisoner of war in an American prison camp, and the founder was Jean Vanier. He was, but I didn’t know it then, only 25 years old, just five years older than I was. We were there to pray as a community. An Augustinian priest was our chaplain. We studied theology at the nearby well-known Dominican house of studies and friary, Le Saulchoir, which, incidentally, was the home of Yves Congar, O.P., whom I saw sweeping the floors.

He was forbidden to speak publicly because of his involvement with the priests’ workers’ movement of which the Vatican disapproved. Many years later, he was made a cardinal.

I thank God for those 10 months I was with Jean Vanier. He was then a great man who became one of the greatest men this side of paradise. Requiescat in pace.

T. Gavin King

Claremore, Oklahoma

 

The ‘Old and New’ at Mass

In his column “Restoring Our Belief in the Eucharist,” in the Sept. 1 edition, Msgr. Pope regrets the apparent loss of hope for a “reform of the reform” that could integrate the ordinary form with the extraordinary form, combining characteristics like the use of the vernacular and the new lectionary on one side and increased use of Latin, ad orientem direction and Gregorian chant on the other.

Perhaps those of us who would love to see such a marvelously integrated Mass need a name to begin a movement toward potentially even a rite in itself, so we could, say, petition pastors for Masses that address our needs.

A verse of Scripture that comes immediately to mind and could serve as a guide and motto is Matthew 13:52: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” This seems to express well the wisdom needed to bridge the divide and fulfill the Lord’s will for our age. Shall we call ourselves the “Old and New” Catholics?

James Kurt

Sarasota, Florida