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Thank you, Askel. I'm sorry that I was not well enough to join you in New York.

Pope Leo XIII once said:

Nothing is quite so salutary as seeing reality as it really is.

The fundamental sickness of our present age is, IMO, a failure to recognize reality as it really is. A baby isn't a baby if we don't want it to be; the pope is not Catholic if we don't want him to be; and Mr. Clinton did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, if he supports our favorite Leftist ideas. We've even elevated this sort of delusion to a philosophy, viz., deconstructionism.

But truth does, eventually, prevail, especially if there are courageous individuals like Bl. Miguel Pro, and these women to defend it. In this case, the truth is that women who have abortions often go through a period of mourning similar to that of women who have miscarriages, because the underlying reality (they are carrying a child, not an amorphous lump of tissue) is the same in both cases. But women who abort have the additional burden of guilt for having chosen to lose their child.

Unforgiven guilt is unbearable, but in the Christian view, even the sin of abortion can be repented of, and forgiven. The Catholic Church sponsors Project Rachel to help these women heal. The reference is to Matthew 2:18, which is itself a quotation of Jeremiah 31:15. Describing the death of the Holy Innocents at Herod's hands, the Evangelist writes:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
sobbing and loudly lamenting:
it was Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted
because they were no more.

But that is not the last word, "because with the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption" (Ps. 129[130]:7). And Rachel can be comforted.