Letter from the Pastor
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January 22, 2023On this date in 1973, abortion became legal in all 50 states throughout all 9 months of pregnancy. With that ruling, from our Supreme Court, approximately 62 million human beings in our country were killed within their mother’s body.
Every year since January 22, 1974, there has been a peaceful march for life in Washington DC to the Supreme Court building near the Capitol. Millions of people have marched in all sorts of winter weather to witness to the sanctity of human life.
Then On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a landmark ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The decision stated that abortion is not a constitutional right, since the Constitution does not mention it and its applicable right was not "deeply rooted" in the country's history. Therefore the individual states have the authority to regulate access to abortion within their state, among their citizens.
Since the Dobb decision, 13 states have banned virtually all abortions. Several more may soon enforce new pro-life laws. In the two months after Dobbs (July and August), the number of women getting abortions decreased by 10,670, or 6%. If those numbers continue, more than 60,000 lives could be saved from abortion in one year alone.
Great psychological harm has been done to millions of mothers, fathers and families since 1973. Like Herod, our culture has become afraid of an infant. Our country has lost the reverence and respect for one another and human life. Although Dobbs is a good start, our country, helped by the Church, has to once again get back to the most basic of all human rights: the right to life.
We are grateful for the decision of the Court; yet we still have much to do. We have to, beginning with our own people, change hearts and minds. We have to teach the truth about the sacredness and the intrinsic value of every human person: body and soul. We have to teach our children about the sacredness of the sexual act, reserved in all of its power in a committed marital relationship. We have to teach our children to have respect for themselves and others, to know their dignity as children of God; to treat their bodies and the bodies of others as the temples of the Holy Spirit and not as a sport or a conquest. To show our children that we, as rational beings, can and must have control over our urges, and desires, that our reason controls our emotions, and not vice versa.
When we allow or even encourage a misunderstanding of the deep-rooted value or the meaning of a human being, then these terrible and even insane ideas begin to surface.
Tragically, there are millions of men, women, family members, co-workers and those involved with abortion who are in need of healing that only Our Lord can bring. God doesn’t want those people to suffer their difficult burden, which often comes to them in the silence of their hearts.
Sadly many girls and women have been pressured to have an abortion, or they may not have realized what abortion does to them physically, psychologically, spiritually. It must be a terrible weight to bear when realizing a new, precious, vulnerable person had been deprived of life. The guilt of abortion haunts the women and men for years. There are programs available, which help with post abortion syndrome.
Come and be set free from the burden, come to the healing sacrament of Confession. Now is the time for repentance, a time to be relieved of guilt or anger and achieve the peace, which only Christ can give. The Church is at her best when helping her wounded children.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Empress of the Americas,
Patron of the Unborn,
pray for us, our country
and all those affected by the tragedy of abortion.
