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January 22, 2023: The Sanctity of Human Life
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With the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the United States Supreme Court this past year, the Court not agreeing with the statement heard ad nauseum over the past number of years that the right to abortion was “settled law,” the High Court passed back to each respective state in the Union this dominant issue of our time to decide whether the practice of abortion would be fully protected, partially protected, limited, or all together outlawed, depending on each respective state. I address the issue of abortion this weekend because the March for Life continues in Washington, for on this date the “unsettled law” of abortion was passed in 1973 by a different set of justices who, at the time knowingly or unknowingly, made a decision that would cause another set of justices to correct 50 years later, according to law, their mistaken interpretation in 1973.
Supreme Court justices are not the only “professionals” forced to correct wayward decisions made by their predecessors. This has happened in the Church also over the centuries. Not often, granted. But this form of correction has occurred, where one Pope implemented a decision on the Catholic faith that was later “overturned” by a future Pope because the previous Pope made a decision/decisions that was contrary to Divine Revelation, thus heretical. What can only be passed on from one Papacy to another is God’s truth. So, if and when a Pope implements some “outside thinking,” if you will, and calls it Catholic or God’s revelation when it is not, then it must and will be corrected by a future Pope, returning said teaching to where it belongs, in the dustbin of history.
Returning to the issue of abortion, recalling the sadness of what happened this day in 1973, opening the door for more than 60 million human lives lost over a 50-year span, I recently read a compelling book by a former teacher at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, the home of Catholicism in America. The book is titled Abortion and the Early Church, authored by Dr. Michael Gorman. Dr. Gorman was my teacher for the all-important class, The Epistles of St. Paul. He is known in the field as a worldwide scholar in the Pauline discipline of Christian studies. His book is copyrighted 1982, much of it part of a research paper he completed at the time, and nine years after the Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion in all 50 states of our country. The title of his book pretty much tells the story of where his information on this topic derives from. He allows, in most cases, early Christian writers and documents/letters to do the speaking. In the following, I quote a number of writings related to abortion, some by early Church writers, and others from Dr. Gorman’s interpretation and understanding of what he found in his research from the first 3 to 4 centuries of the Church on this issue. The following quotations from his book speak for themselves.
“Christians discarded all pagan definitions of the fetus as merely part of the mother’s body. To Christians, the fetus was an independent living being… in the abortion discussion, they always considered the unborn as God’s creation.”
“Christianity provided no freedom for personal decisions, but rather that all life, including ethical decisions, was understood to be a response to God.”
“Early Christian opposition to abortion…did not arise because abortion was seen as a means of interrupting the natural course of sexual relations (contraception) but because it was viewed as murder.” “
Christians were not alone in opposing abortion; they were accompanied and influenced by both pagans and Jews.”
“Christians interpreted their society’s attitude as a choice in favor of bloodshed over love. If society preferred the way of bloodshed, Christians chose the way of love expressed concretely through nonviolence and compassionate justice. Jesus’ own life and teachings were the basis of this lifestyle.”
“Christian discipleship and love demand a complete renunciation of violence and bloodshed.”
“Tertullian (155-c.220 A.D.) wrote that according to Christian doctrine, ‘greater permission is given to be killed than to kill.’”
“The Lord, in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier.” (Tertullian)
“Christ’s life and teachings raised the fetus to the status of neighbor. Abortion manifested violence and injustice to that neighbor and thus became an example of bloodshed, or murder.”
“The earliest Christian ethic, from Jesus to Constantine, can be described as a consistent pro-life ethic. It was in favor of human life regardless of age, nationality, or social standing. It pleaded for the poor, the weak, women, children, and the unborn…. To follow Jesus was to forsake bloodshed.”
“Though more sophisticated and safer, today’s abortion methods are basically similar to those of two thousand years ago.”
"The early church provides a model for a logical, consistent pro-life position, one which opposes violence in any form. The early Christians were both pro-peace and pro-life. Theirs was an ethic of love expressed in peace and justice.”
“By raising the fetus to the status of neighbor, Christianity introduces a moral responsibility to the unborn, who must be treated with the same kind of self-denying, sacrificial love as other human beings.”
“Jesus explicitly elevated the enemy to the place of neighbor. The enemy must also be treated with self-denying, nonretaliatory love. If an unwanted pregnancy engenders feelings of hatred toward the newly conceived unborn, the gospel supplies the power to transform hatred to love, to consider the fetus not as an enemy to be destroyed but as a neighbor to be loved.”
“For Christians to reintroduce distinctions between human lives is a serious error. Christ has removed all such differentiations, destroyed the hierarchy of the relative value of different kinds of people and made all people neighbors. Similarly, as (St.) Basil wisely recognized long ago, making arbitrary distinctions between stages of fetal development to permit abortions is inconsistent with Christian love. The born and unborn, viable and nonviable, the ‘normal’ and the ‘abnormal’ are all of value from a Christian perspective."
“Christian freedom can never be used as an excuse or cover for sin; rather, it is the process of being transferred out of slavery to sin into the freedom of obedience. Claims to individual freedom of conscience are no substitute for conformity to the will of God.”
“Today absolute power over the life and death of the fetus is often transferred from the father to the mother.” (This statement reflects the patriarchal societies which existed for centuries before and after the time of Jesus, when a husband/father had total control over the lives of his entire family, which included his wife, children, and servants/slaves, and if and when an abortion was to happen. Dr. Gorman’s insight shows how this power has predominantly changed from the father to the mother. This reflects the present-day common thought, “My body, my choice.”)
“Christians need to allow their personal beliefs to shape their political and social involvement. Many keep their belief to themselves, not wishing to force personal convictions on others. Of course, forcing one’s opinion on another is neither wise nor Christian, but Christians may rightly attempt persuasion.”
There is much more in Dr. Gorman’s book that lends to a deeper understanding on the issue of abortion, and how Christian thinking and practice developed in the early Church, beginning with the first Christians and how they understood what reflected the truth of Jesus’ life concerning human life, when it begins, and Christian treatment of it. It’s very interesting how thinking and practice regarding abortion has changed very little over the past 2000 years. The same arguments for and against it are presently presented, although science has done much to allow others to see the truth of what and who is inside the womb of a mother from its earliest stage through the gift of ultrasound.
Lastly, we pray our nation becomes a thoroughly God-fearing nation in the best use of this term, and for all nations of the world, protecting the gift of human life, rather than methods and ideologies that destroy it. Human life is God’s greatest gift by far. There is not a close second, which says something relevant when we consider the many blessings and gifts we possess.