Speak honestly: abortion is ‘the killing of tiny human beings in the womb’

News Print Article | Email Friend | Reprint Permissions Speak honestly: abortion is ‘the killing of tiny human beings in the womb’ – Denver bishop

Thu Jan 26, 2012 18:40 EST Comments (2) Tags: abortion, james conley, march for life

DENVER, January 26, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – If we want to be “serious Christians,” the auxiliary bishop of Denver said last week, we must be honest about abortion. “Speak the truth, in love, about abortion,” Bishop James Conley urged his flock, commenting on the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

“As uncomfortable as it might be, we are called to share our pro-life convictions with our neighbors, friends and families. We can counter the influence of relativism by speaking the truth with love—convincingly, clearly and without compromise.”

In a column in the diocesan newspaper coinciding with the Washington March for Life, Bishop Conley called on Catholics to work actively to stop abortion and overturn the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made it legal in all states.

“We need not be combative or polemical—but to be serious Christians, we need to be honest. And honesty means telling the truth, in love, about abortion,” the bishop wrote.

“Make no mistake about it. Abortion is the killing of tiny human beings in the womb. But for nearly 40 years in the United States, abortion has been a legally protected right by the Supreme Court.”

On January 21st, while hundreds of thousands marched against abortion in Washington, Bishop Conley led a day of prayer and recollection in the Colorado diocese. He presided over a “Mass of remembrance” and lead the faithful in a “Rosary for life” at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. After the Mass, young people in the diocese were invited to attend a “pro-life boot camp,” a day of training with “scientific and historical information” and using the latest information on human embryology, sponsored by the diocesan Respect Life Office.

“We live in an era where reason has given way to sentiment,” he wrote. “Where, at the highest levels of society, emotion, self-interest and uncertainty have taken the place of logic.” The result of this inversion of logic, Bishop Conley said, is “to convince us that abortion is a fundamental right, and that life itself is not.”

Abortion, he said, “is no longer viewed even as a tragedy. Instead, abortion—the killing of tiny and not so tiny human beings—has become celebrated as a basic human right.” He called it “perverse” and a “tragically confused perspective” that abortion is increasingly seen as a safeguard to freedom.

He lauded efforts of the pro-life movement to reverse the tide, especially youth movements which, he said, are “are more popular than ever before”.

Since his appointment to Denver as auxiliary bishop in 2008, Bishop Conley has been steadily active among the U.S. bishops in opposing abortion. He was a signatory to a 2010 open letter warning Catholics not to support Senate legislation proposing to expand abortion funding. In 2009, he joined dozens of other U.S. bishops in condemning the appearance of President Obama at Notre Dame University.

Responding last November to charges from secularists that the pro-life viewpoint encourages a “theocracy,” Bishop Conley warned pro-life advocates that their greatest opponent was a militant “atheocracy” that is attempting to silence their message. The battle over freedom of religious expression, he said, amounts to “the biggest challenge the pro-life movement faces.”

“America today is becoming what I would call an atheocracy — a society that is actively hostile to religious faith and religious believers. And I might add — the faith that our society is most hostile toward is Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular,” he said.

In 2008, he co-authored a letter with then-Bishop of Denver Charles Chaput, correcting Senator Joseph Biden who had claimed in an interview that the question of when human life begins is a matter of faith, not science. Biden had said the issue is “personal and private.” The bishops responded that “in reality, modern biology knows exactly when human life begins: at the moment of conception. Religion has nothing to do with it.”

In June last year, when the news came out of the connection between the Girl Scouts of America and Planned Parenthood, Bishop Conley warned parents that their daughters could be in danger of becoming “more receptive” to the pro-abortion and pro-contraception agenda.

The full text is available on the internet.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Bishop Doran pulls no punches
Bishop Doran’s (Diocese of Rockford) latest column really is quite something, you don’t see that kind of thing every day

Reaping the whirlwind of abortion

(snip)

Many of the issues that confront us are serious, and we know by now that the political parties in our country are at loggerheads as to how to solve them. We know, for instance, that adherents of one political party would place us squarely on the road to suicide as a people.

The seven “sacraments” of their secular culture are abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, feminism of the radical type, and genetic experimentation and mutilation. These things they unabashedly espouse, profess and promote. Their continuance in public office is a clear and present danger to our survival as a nation.

(snip)

Think for yourself: what nation that kills its young, perverts marriage, prevents new life, and destroys the family, kills those deemed useless, makes the war of the sexes into a real war, and manipulates the genetic basis of human nature, can long endure?

Abortion is homicide of a class of people our government fails to recognize. Ancient Sparta used to kill their new born children if they were determined to be sickly, small, or defective in some physical way. This was purely based upon economics. If the child could not support the city state as a warrior or bare children it would be a burden on their society and not contribute so they aborted the baby before it could have a citizen status. Many countries today kill female babies after they are born for purely economic reasons. Americans cal these practices evil and immoral, yet they allow abortion.

Make no mistake abortion is solely for economic reasons. Obama openly admits that it allows young women the choice to murder their child so as not to have their own education or career interrupted with raising a child or because they can not afford another mouth to feed and use abortion as state sanctioned failed contraception procedure of last resort not punishable by Federal law. This makes every citizen culpable in murder because as citizens we allow our government to permit murder of innocent children killed in their earliest and most fragile state unable to defend themselves. Also, make no mistake on the toll this takes on women and their physical and emotional well being. They are accomplices to murder and they know it and they carry that burden their whole life. They are more prone to breast cancer and other cancers for terminating pregnancy, drug abuse, alcoholism, and many other mental problems as a result as well. The breast cancer statistics are there and if it was from some medication or chemical it would have been banned by lawyers and insurance companies long ago by forcing the government to take action on a source of cancer, yet it remains the dirty little secret of the medical establishment.

Abortion is murder and happens every day in all of our cities. Like the unwanted in Nazi Germany being sent to the death camps and gas chambers as their society turned the other way, so do we in America because they have not come for us yet. Someday we may be the economic burden or in a class of people in a certain stage in life or condition deemed unfit and we will be discarded as well. When there is no sanctity for life nobody is safe.

Bishop Conley: Courageously be open to, protect human life

By Nissa LaPoint

After attending a Mass remembering the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Debbie Nowak, a mother of 10 children, shared what she would tell a contracepting couple or a woman considering abortion.

“‘Be not afraid,’" Nowak said Jan. 21 outside the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver. "God provides."

There was a time when Nowak and her husband found themselves in what seemed like a desperate situation, she said. When her husband quit his job and moved her and their five children to Denver in the ‘90s, Nowak discovered she was pregnant again—and was afraid, she said.

They sought help from Our Lady of Guadalupe—and her husband was hired six months later. The experience, Nowak said, showed her that difficult situations can end up being the greatest blessings in life.

This year, Nowak and her family were among the faithful gathered for the annual “Mass for Giving Thanks to God for the Gift of Human Life”—formerly called the Mass of Remembrance—at the Cathedral Basilica.

Nowak's sixth child, Clare, presented gifts to Bishop James Conley, apostolic administrator for the Denver Archdiocese, who presided at the Mass.

In his homily, Bishop Conley shared Catholic beliefs on abortion, contraception and the importance of the next generation's witness to life.

"Every gift of life is willed by God and is therefore precious is his sight," Bishop Conley said to a nearly full church. "It's incumbent upon us to protect and safeguard every human being. So we have this special Mass dedicated to that thanksgiving for human life."

He spoke about the need for Catholics, who have the fullness of truth about human life, to be able to articulate the science and truths that point to its God-given dignity. Part of the task is also to welcome and love those who've been affected by abortion.

Today, one out of four women under the age of 40 has had an abortion, he said.

"They're all around us," Bishop Conley said. "I'm not condemning women who have chosen to abort their children. In fact, my heart breaks for them and we need to reach out to them in love and compassion to let them know that Jesus and his Church are here for them through Project Rachel and other programs for reconciliation and healing."

Choosing life is not always easy and oftentimes circumstances surrounding abortion lead women to believe they have no other choice, he continued.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court's Jan. 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion, an estimated 54 million children lost their lives, based on reports from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit sexual and reproductive research organization.

Pro-life advocates gathered across the nation last weekend and Monday to march against abortion and speak for the unborn.

Louise Saindon, 72, of St. Dominic Parish in Denver, said she has attended pro-life Masses and petitioned against abortion since its legalization in 1973.

At the Mass Saturday, she pinned bright pink signs to the front and back of her blouse that read "Unborn babies feel pain."

Saindon said being pro-life is the foundation to all other Christian values and acts of charity.

She attended the "Rosary for Life" held afterward in the Cathedral Basilica’s Marian Garden.

Photo by James Baca/DCR
Bishop James Conley leads faithful in a “Rosary for Life” the morning of Jan. 21 in the Marian Garden at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.

Some knelt and some stood as Bishop Conley led the joyful mysteries amidst the clamor and traffic of adjacent Colfax Avenue.

Robert Lederhos, of St. Anthony Parish in Sterling, said the pro-life message needs to be proclaimed more and more.

"If we don't stand up for those who don't have a voice, who will?" he said.

He gathered with his family after the rosary and said he believes contraception was really the beginning of abortion.

In fact, artificial contraception, like the birth control pill, can cause early abortions, said Lynn Grandon, director of the Office of Respect Life. The pill can prevent a zygote from implanting on a woman's uterus, which many Catholics may not know, she said.

Statistically, 98 percent of Catholic women reportedly used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning—the Church's approved birth regulation for grave circumstances—and nearly 70 percent use sterilization, the pill or an IUD, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Only 2 percent of Catholic women, even those who attend church once a month or more, rely on NFP, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Bishop Conley told the faithful to be open to the gift of life.

"We believe very strongly that the gift of life is a gift to be welcomed by mothers and fathers," he said. "That contraception is a moral evil and those who choose to contracept—which comes between God's gift and the human person—is wrong. It's a sin."

According to Church teaching, to contracept is to impede God’s will—openness to life, is openness to God’s will, trusting that he will provide.

Kaitlyn Evensen, 16, of St. Thomas More Parish in Centennial, said Bishop Conley's homily helped her solidify the arguments for respecting life.

He petitioned the crowd and particularly the youths at the Mass, to be confident, joyful and hopeful.

Even if people think Catholics are "out of their minds," Bishop Conley said, it's important to be brave and witness to life.

"We need to be convinced that we're on the right side of this issue no matter what the rest of the world says," he said.

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