Not Those Who Should Be

I can’t seem to stop thinking about the comment I received on this blog in regards for my September poll question, which was posing the question if we are safe than we were on 9/11/2001. Now besides the kind of annoying “we” (why in quotes?) and the black helicopter rhetoric that the religious right is on some sort of government terrorist watch list, the anonymous commenter made a great point.

And if by "we" you happen to mean the 3000 unborn babies who are aborted each and every day in this country by our own mothers, fathers, and doctors, then again, "we" are not safer than we were on 9/11. Every single day in this country we kill the equivalent number that were killed on 9/11 by terrorists through the unspeakable sin of abortion. We commit a 9/11 on ourselves by killing our unborn every single day.

Safe? Not those that should be.

You know, I guess I couldn’t agree more.

 If we truly believe what the Church teaches about life, then it is under constant assault every day in this nation in the way it treats it’s unborn—or if you live in Canada, the recently born. Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, there have been near fifty million abortions performed in the United States alone. That equals about sixteen thousand times the death toll on 9/11.

 9/11 was a horrible attack committed by brutal, barbaric fanatics. The images of that attack, from the planes crashing into the twin towers to their eventual collapse, will haunt and anger many people for a long time. Furthermore, the events after 9/11, the reaction, caused even more death and loss of life. Agree or disagree with America’s wars after September 11, there’s no denying that our retaliation was a bloody one that also—though I believe for the most part unintentionally—dealt death to innocence. 

While the attacks on 9/11 were showcased constantly on news media, and the pain of that day relived every anniversary, the attack on the unborn is largely a hidden massacre. The attacks on 9/11 were committed by jihadists, whose organization and purpose are regarded by all but the most extreme cooks as villainous. Meanwhile, the slaughter of the unborn is regarded by at least half this country as a ‘moral’ choice, and protected by law. Though both the one time event on 9/11 and the ongoing killing threw abortion both result(ed) in the loss of innocent life, they are both thought of quite differently. 

And I believe that thought, that somehow the tragedy on 9/11or any other mass killing of humans outside the womb is more of an issue then abortion, is prevalent even in the Church. An interesting example to illustrate this is a poor response by Geoff Kennedy to an anti-Catholic rant by another blogger from the Anchorage Daily News. Geoff makes the following claim about the majority of Catholic lay men and women, priests, and bishops.

While it’s true, some Catholics today continue the obsession with sexual sins, most of the Catholics, especially the priests and bishops I know, are more concerned with social justice. Some evangelicals are still stuck on sex: Witness the obsession with abortion and same-sex marriage.

Instead of abortion being an issue about life, Mr. Kennedy lumps it with sexual sin. And while I could go on about his obvious error on the teaching of the issue, and his being a hypocrite since a lot of his writings for the Anchorage Daily News deals with ethical double standards, that’s not my focus. Instead, I point out his erroneous writing because it could very well be and honest reflection of the attitude of modern American Catholics today. And though it’s very hard to believe that he knows priests and bishops who share his point of view as he claims, it could very well explain why so many lay Catholics have a blurred view on what should be very clear Church teaching.

 This, by the way, is the same camp that poses the moral question “How can you deal with abortion without dealing with the moral wrongs that cause abortion?” My own question to that is simple, how can you expect a nation to care about any morality in dealing with the poor when its legal to kill—as Blessed Mother Teresa called the unborn—the poorest of the poor?

The embattled Fr. Frank Pavone has written an interesting article that fits perfectly with this point that we tend to view the cause and effect of terrorism as a greater evil than abortion. He also points out the willingness of Catholics and Catholic leadership to abandon the poorest of the poor in the political arena: 

Many will support a particular party because it’s a family tradition (or a Church tradition?), or because they are in bed with leaders in that party who support their social programs in exchange for their silence on baby-killing. That’s often the reason for the perplexing spinelessness often observed among Church leaders on the abortion issue.

So back to the question of the poll I posted for this month. Are we safer since 9/11? I think the anonymous commenter’s final words are true, and if we are people who love life, should shake us to our core.

Safe? Not those who should be.