By David G. Bonagura, Jr.
I was asked recently, again: “Why is the Catholic Church so focused on abortion?” At least this time they asked with curiosity and not with anger. I can’t imagine how those who ask this question see the Church. Do they imagine it as the institutional version of the character Church Lady from Saturday Night Live? Or as a puritan hunter taking note of others’ intimacy?
Be that as it may, they couldn’t be more wrong. This time, I realized something: the way the Church addresses abortion manifests its greatness and shows it—outside of the celebration of the sacraments—in its best expression.
The Church, as the Body of Christ, touches the hearts of men and women with the saving love of the Son. Sometimes, the greatness of the Church is obscured by the sins of its members. But when it addresses the issue of abortion, with some sad exceptions, the Church has reflected with nobility the justice and mercy of the Father, gifts that it exists to extend to all nations.
Abortion is not a modern invention; it is a sin as old as humanity itself. From its earliest days, the Church has prohibited it following the Fifth Commandment. “You shall not procure an abortion or destroy a newborn child,” we read in the first-century Didaché. For a modern world obsessed with abortion as a safeguard for sexual libertinism, St. John Paul II reaffirmed this perennial teaching: abortion “always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate elimination of an innocent human being” (Evangelium Vitae 62).
But why the prohibition? Because it reflects a deeper truth: the human being is the crown of Creation. Made in the image and likeness of God, he possesses inherent dignity and is called to live with Him forever. And God loves us so much that He invites us to participate in His eternal plan through marriage and procreation. Human love reflects divine love; generating new human life magnifies the love of God. What God has created, let no man destroy.
For decades, the Church has proclaimed this Gospel of Life with force and clarity to a world that has chosen death as its culture. Other Christian groups have wavered. Some religions and organizations have defended life, but none with the visibility of the Church. It not only teaches from documents and pulpits: it takes to the streets, being the main presence in the March for Life and in so many more public testimonies. In all these acts there is something constant: Catholics praying the Rosary asking for strength and consolation.
The Church that teaches is, at the same time, a mother who cares, extending her arms to her children. In illuminating the darkest corners of the world, she has found countless women hidden away, weeping for their lost children and tormented in silence by their sin. To these anguished women the Church offers the tender compassion of Christ: “Peace be with you. Come and accept the mercy of the Lord. He shed His blood for you. He forgives you. Return to the Kingdom for which He created you.”
In Christ, justice and mercy are not opposed: they feed each other. Mercy, by going beyond justice, restores what has fallen to the state of justice. Following her Master, the Church unites both by restoring wounded mothers within the community, where they join the faithful to offer to God the innocents lost.
St. John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae and the post-abortion healing ministry Project Rachel represent today the highest expressions of the Church’s justice and mercy in the fight against abortion, the deadliest scourge of the 20th and 21st centuries.
In addition to defending the sanctity of life, the Church has offered additional teaching. Women have been the principal target of the Evil One in his advance of the culture of death, deceiving them into believing that their value consists in acting against their nature and that the children in their womb are not gifts from God, but obstacles to obtaining power in the world.
Under the guidance of St. John Paul II, the Church responded to this lie. “The dignity of woman,” he wrote, “is closely linked to the love she receives by reason of her femininity; likewise, to the love she gives in response.” (Mulieris Dignitatem 30). In other words, receiving love, returning love, and conceiving love in her body is where woman finds her fullness. “The moral and spiritual strength of woman,” the pope concluded, “is linked to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way.”
Abortion, in short, directly opposes the essence of femininity.
The world has been blessed by the Church’s attention to the issue of abortion. Without this work, it is very likely that countless more babies would have been destroyed, countless women would continue to suffer in silence, and many more would remain in sin without the Gospel of Life to guide them to God.
It has always been easy to strike at the Church: each of its members is a sinner and, sometimes, worthy of ridicule. But when we consider how much the Church has fought against abortion and how it has healed its wounds, we see the greatness with which Christ has endowed it.
About the author
David G. Bonagura, Jr. is the author, most recently, of 100 Tough Questions for Catholics: Common Obstacles to Faith Today, and translator of Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning. Adjunct professor at St. Joseph Seminary and Catholic International University, he is the religion editor of The University Bookman. His personal website is available here.