Priests for Life Newsletter

The day is significant, because we honor a Mother without sin, who intercedes for mothers tempted to sin. The night is significant, because darkness is a symbol of falsehood, sin and death, but the vigilance of God's people in the lit Church is a symbol of truth, grace, and life. The presence of the Eucharist is significant, for the One who says, "This is My Body" in order to give us life undoes the work of those who say, "This is my body" in order to justify abortion.

Plan now to open your parish to this special national event!

Fr. Peter West, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, NJ, has been released by Archbishop Theodore D. McCarrick for a period of three years to work along with Fr. Richard Hogan, of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, as well as a staff of 20 lay.

Priests for Life, which was founded in 1991, has grown rapidly in the last several years. Its mission, to train and encourage the clergy to be actively pro-life, and to infuse the structure of the Church with renewed enthusiasm for the pro-life cause, has found great favor among the episcopate of the United States. Fifteen bishops currently sit on its Board of Advisors, including Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family in Rome.

In announcing the news of Fr. West’s appointment, Fr. Pavone stated:

"I am grateful to Archbishop McCarrick for assigning one of his priests to this ministry. The Archbishop's decision, at a time when priests are in such demand, is a sign of his deep dedication to the cause of defending the preborn.

"The fact that Fr. West's service with Priests for Life begins now in the Easter season is also a sign that our pro-life work is always to be marked by the joy and utter confidence that flow from knowing that Christ is Risen and has conquered death."

Anthony DeStefano, Executive Director of Priests for Life, commented: "From a practical standpoint, the addition of Fr. West to our staff greatly enhances our ability to reach the people of the U.S. with our pro-life message. Fr. West will be traveling all over the country teaching, training and encouraging his brother priests. In the last 3 years, Fr. Pavone and Fr. Hogan have visited every one of the 50 states and have personally spoken to over 500,000 people. (This, of course, doesn’t count the masses of people we reach via television, radio, and print media.) With Fr. West on board, we will be able to dramatically increase the number of people we reach through our travels, and the impact we have on the pro-life movement."

In his first months of service with Priests for Life, Fr. West has already begun an intense pro-life speaking schedule, has celebrated Masses broadcast nationwide over the Odyssey Network, has met with priests, youth, and pro-life leaders in many places, and has spent time in Rome meeting with Fr. Pavone and other officials of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

Asked if he was looking forward to the rigorous travel and work schedule his new job will provide, Fr. West responded with confidence: "Pro-life people are the warmest, most kind-hearted people in the world. I look forward to meeting and working with as many as possible in this most necessary work."

One of the topics I address often in my travels for Priests For Life is the encyclical, The Gospel of Life, written by Pope John Paul II and promulgated on March 25, 1995, the feast of the Annunciation. This encylical, while it certainly can stand alone as official teaching of the Church, is better understood as a compendium or summary of the theology of the present Pope.

In 1958, in a speech in Cracow, the then rather young (for a bishop) and newly ordained auxiliary bishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyla, linked the revelation of Christ to the insights of modern phenomenology. He had studied phenomenology at the University of Cracow while earning his doctorate in philosophy. (Previously, he had taken a doctorate in theology at the Angelicum in Rome.)

Phenomenology uses a modern process of thought. In other words, it is subjective, experiential, and inductive. Subjective is the opposite of objective. Objective means what is real, what holds for everyone, what is true. Subjective refers to individual insights and veiwpoints. The statement heard so often, "That may be true for you, but not for me," is a perfect example of a subjective viewpoint. Experiential is usually contrasted with principle. Experience uses data from individual occurrences and events to explain reality whereas principle explains experience from a universal interpretation of reality. Inductive is contrasted with deductive. Deductive reasoning is "top down" and inductive reasoning is "bottom up." Democracy is an example of the inductive method---one man one vote.

All this would be rather unimportant except that the revelation of Christ has been tied for centuries to an objective, deductive, and principled way of thinking: the great work of St. Thomas Aquinas linking Aristotelian philosophy to the faith. But we don’t think this way any more. So in order to effectively communicate the faith a link of revelation with a subjective, inductive, and experiential mode of thinking is very important. In other words, we need a translation of the faith from the older mode of reasoning to the newer mode. This is what Pope John Paul II has been able to do in linking revelation to modern phenomenology.

The key to the whole is the reference to our creation in the image and likeness of God. This was first clearly enunciated in the 1958 Cracow speech. In other words, the union of the modern mode of thought and revelation is celebrated in the human person. We are each created individually like God. We are all "special orders." We are unique individuals. (Michelangelo got it right on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel when he painted God’s finger touching only Adam.) Since we are all individually like God, our own expereinces, subjective viewpoints, and unique ideas (inductive when added together) can tell us something about God. However, unless we know God and how He acts, we do not know ourselves or how we should act, because we are images of God (i.e., reflections of Him). With the link to God, we have a link to the ultimate objective, deductive and principled reality of the universe. And so, the two modes of thought are linked.

It is this marriage of two worlds, two modes of thought, celebrated within the human person which yields the "new personalism" of Pope John Paul II. This new personalism gives us a new understanding of creation (theology of the body, theology of the family, dignity of the human person), of Christology (Christ, as the second Person of the Trinity reveals God and in revealing God, He reveals man to man himself. Cf. Gaudium et Spes, no. 22.), of the Church, of the sacraments, of grace and sin, and of the four last things. The Gospel of Life is in many ways a marvelous synthesis of Pope John Paul II’s theology which he has presented to the world since 1958. Please, don’t just read the Gospel of Life, read all of the Pope’s works. Come to understand the rich and marvelous theology of his "personalism!"