| Protecting the unborn using faith and reason |
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| Friday, 29 January 2010 21:45 | |||
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – In the fight to defend the unborn, the voices of faith are winning, Archbishop Henry J. Mansell told hundreds of people preparing to participate in the 37th March for Life in the nation’s capital Jan. 22. Although mainstream media coverage of the march was all but lacking, organizer Nellie Gray said the number of marchers exceeded those of last year, which was estimated at more than 300,000. "There’s a strong consensus in our country of people who stand against abortion, who understand the terrible immorality of the process," Archbishop Mansell said to a packed room of about 225 Connecticut Catholics at a Mass for Peace and Justice at the Washington Plaza Hotel. The congregation included priests, deacons, seminarians, high school students, religious and parishioners from throughout the Hartford Archdiocese.
Recent abortion in our country. Everybody’s uncomfortable with that. It doesn’t mean, though, that we shouldn’t be focusing on it." He said it is important to stand up for life because "the number of abortions grew by the millions precisely because there was not enough attention to what really is happening." At a breakfast after the Mass, keynote speaker Helen Alvaré, professor of law at George Mason University, said that not only are the voices of faith winning, the voices of reason are winning as well. Mrs. Alvaré said that the French revolutionaries in the late 18th century considered Catholics to be opposed to reason and logic. Now Catholics are seen as defenders of reason. "It’s ours now. We’re the ones arguing for truth and reason possibly in the most visible way that any church is doing it," she said. "You are here to mourn the lie that is abortion," she said. She called Roe v. Wade "that ridiculous, poorly written, fraudulently reasoned Supreme Court decision." But, she said, "We are also here to celebrate being together. They were so sure we’d be dead by now, by which I mean silent, and it’s an absolute tribute to you that we are not." Abortion and same-sex marriage were sold to the country under the "very, very powerful banner" of freedom, she said. "We are now accused of practicing our religion and, as a consequence, violating freedom," she said. "We were founded as a nation on the entire principle of religious freedom, where religion was specially protected as a social and moral good," she reminded her listeners. "To allow us to practice our faith is no longer the reason for our being as a country." She praised Archbishop Mansell and Connecticut’s other bishops for standing up for religious freedom when the proposed, anti-Catholic legislation S.B.1098 threatened to strip bishops and pastors of their governing status last year. "You’ve had some real near-death brushes with the abolition of your religious freedom," she said. She said that laws can tell people what to do and what not to do, "but religion persuades people to do things that the law never could. It’s the oil that greases a good society." Mrs. Alvaré said Catholics need to "be wise as serpents and stand up for your facts." She said, "Always be living as people who are both people of faith and people of reason, to give off – because it’s true – the impression that we are not speaking by pounding something down another person’s throat." She ended her talk with a call to action. She said, "You need to use your intelligence in the service of reason, which ends up being intelligence in the service of faith and in the service of religious freedom."
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