Political Responsibility and the Right to Life

Fr. Frank Pavone:

Thank you very much, brothers and sisters. It is a pleasure to be with you always. It is a special honor to be with Bobby Schindler this morning and to hear the tribute and for all of us to take part in the tribute that will be given to Terri Schiavo. I am not going to dwell on the specifics of the case because obviously we look forward to what they have to say about this but let me just say one thing. The whole controversy that has been surrounding Terri - let no one in this Nation think that this is about somebody's right to die because their suffering is too much. What this whole debate is about is some other people's right to kill because their inconvenience is too much.

As far as the teaching of the Church is concerned, the position of Christians throughout the centuries: Any judge, any court, any law that deprives someone like Terri of the right to life or of the right to be fed or nourished is not a bad law; it's no law at all! It has no authority!

What I am going to talk to you today brothers and sisters about are some of the dynamics that lead to problems like this, some of the situations we face in our country now especially as we approach elections 2004. Because what we do on November 2nd of 2004 in large part will determine how many more Terri's there will be and how much more bloodshed there will be in this nation and in this world.

I am not going to hesitate between now and the elections to be far more vocal than I have been in the past. If the Church can't speak at a moment like this, the Church becomes completely irrelevant for this society. That's why the battle swirls when we come to an election season and people start talking about a phrase that is found nowhere in the Constitution - so called "separation of church and state."

Let's reflect on this for a moment, brothers and sisters. We need to get a handle on what this phrase means and what some people try to make it mean. Of course there is a division of labor, which is very legitimate, between Church and State. The Church does not have a standing army. The Church does not deliver the mail. The Church cannot say that there are 51 states instead of 50. At the same time the State does not administer the Sacraments or lead people in Sunday worship or determine where pastors are assigned. The State cannot say that there are eight sacraments instead of seven. There is a certain legitimate autonomy, is there not, that we all acknowledge and accept and can live with.

The problem is that people forget the third element of the equation. Because in our lives, in our world, in our nation there is the Church, there is the State, and then there is morality. Morality, brothers and sisters, overlaps the concerns of both the Church and the State.

Our Founding Fathers understood something - that the great experiment of self-governance on which they were embarking would never succeed if God were separated from the State or if the State were separated from morality. They knew better.

Our Founding Fathers were religious men. They said so. We don't have to wonder about this. It's not a mystery. We just have to go back to what they wrote and to how they spoke.

There are few resources better than Original Intent, a book by David Barton of the WallBuilders. David quotes page after page, chapter after chapter from the writings of our Founding Fathers where they acknowledged Jesus Christ and entrusted him with the remission of their sins and their conviction that as this great Nation took birth and expanded, that without an acknowledgment of God, this great experiment would never succeed.

Listen to these words that the signer of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush wrote - "I sat next to John Adams in Congress and upon my whispering to him and asking him if we would succeed in our struggle with Great Britain he answered me, 'Yes, if we repent of our sins and fear God.'

"This anecdote," Rush continues - "Will, I hope, teach my boys that it is not necessary to disbelieve Christianity or to renounce mortality in order to arrive at the highest political usefulness or gain."

We have to go no further than our Declaration of Independence to see that it is also a declaration of dependence upon God.

Brothers and sisters, ultimately there are only two forms of government. There are many different sizes, shapes and colors of governments throughout the history of the world but they ultimately fall into two categories.

The type first of all acknowledges that our rights come from God and that government exists to secure those rights. The other type says that government is the source of those rights and therefore can alter, add to them, subtract from them or deny them completely.

Let's make no mistake about it. One of the things we are going to be deciding on November 2nd is which of those two types of government America will continue to be.

Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973 as we all know. Most people don't even know about that decision or what it said. They think it was about legalizing a medical procedure called abortion. Of course it was about that but that was only one of its consequences.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Roe v. Wade decision was the establishment of a different form of government in America.

The decision did not deny that the unborn child is a human being. Some people think that they didn't know any better or didn't want to know so they just pretended that the unborn child isn't human, because, of course, if the child isn't human then they can destroy it. But the court didn't say that. If the court had said that, at least they would have maintained a basic moral principle, which is that no government has the authority to destroy innocent life. Because if you say "It's not human, therefore we can destroy it" - well you may be wrong, factually, but at least you preserve the principle. But the Court didn't do that.

As to the question of whether this unborn child is in fact a new human life the Court said, "We don't know and it's not up to us to say." Then on the same page of the decision they declared that this unborn child - we're not sure who he or she is - is not a person under the Constitution. You see what the problem is? Separate a human being from the human person…separating a human life from protection of the Constitution, therefore declaring a new kind of authority, namely, we can decide that some human lives don't have to be protected.

Any candidate for public office who declares support for Roe v. Wade is declaring support for a different kind of government than our founders established!

"Oh, but it's the law of the land," some of them will say. Let's see what our Founding Fathers thought about the law of the land. Most people think that our Founders established a democracy. They did no such thing. Let me read what they thought about democracy.

John Adams - "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

James Madison - "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security. They have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

What were the Founders talking about? Didn't they establish a democracy? When they wrote the word democracy, they had in mind the technical meaning of the term, which is that, whatever the majority says, goes. So that theoretically, if the majority of the people said that murder was OK, it would be OK and there would not be a higher recourse except that the majority would eventually change its mind.

Our Founders established instead a Republic…not based on the rule of the mob but of the rule of law. Furthermore, they acknowledged that there is more than one kind of law.

Let me read on that point what the US Supreme Court Justice and signer of the Constitution, James Wilson said. He said "All laws may be arranged in two different classes: divine and human. But it should always be remembered that this law, natural or revealed, made for men or from Nations comes from the same divine source. It is the law of God."

Now listen to this assertion. He says, "Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine."

Let these words reach the great state of Florida. Let these words reach every state of our Nation coming not from us and not as a matter of opinion but as a teaching of those who established this great Nation.

Alexander Hamilton, signer of the Constitution, says, "The law dictated by God himself is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this."

Can they be more clear? Can it be more obvious? Can it be more certain that when a candidate for office stands up and says that it's OK to have the practice of abortion, when a judge stands up and says it's OK to starve somebody to death, can it be clearer that they have radically departed from the most fundamental principles on which this Country was founded? And not just this Country but every civilized society.

Now brothers and sisters, we have experienced in this Nation the holocaust of abortion, nationwide, throughout all nine months of pregnancy now for 31 years. I have a question for public officials and candidates for public office who support the ongoing legality of this procedure. We have just been through court proceedings in New York, Nebraska and San Francisco regarding the Partial Birth Abortion procedure. We have had practicing abortionists take the stand under oath and testify to the details, not only of the Partial Birth Abortion procedure but of all the other abortion procedures. They testified about them all. The transcripts of these sworn testimonies not of what somebody else did or of what some past history represents but of what they currently do legally in this Nation. Those transcripts are publicly available. We have them on our website at Priestsforlife.org. You can read them, you can download them, you can print them, you can quote from them, you can spread them around. The candidates for public office and those who are in public office - they can read them too. They're written in English. Of course that doesn't necessarily follow, right?

Excuse the harshness of this but this is sworn testimony that came out of another court case in Wisconsin a few years ago by a practicing abortionist, Martin Haskell. He says, "When you are doing a dismemberment procedure usually the last part to be removed is the skull itself and it's floating free inside the uterine cavity so it is rather like a ping pong ball floating and the surgeon uses his forceps to reach up and try to grasp something that is freely floating around. So there are several misdirections, misattempts to grasp. Finally at one point or another the instruments are managed to be placed around the skull or a nick is made in some area of the skull that allows it to start to decompress -- then once that happens typically the skull is brought out in fragments rather than as a unified piece."

We could spend all day quoting things as gruesome as this that have been sworn to in public courts of this Nation. My question for public officials, who say that they are pro-choice, my question for candidates who not only say that this is their position but campaign on it and say "We're going to make sure no one ever loses their right to abortion," -- my question to you is, When you say the word abortion are you talking about the same thing? Just answer that one question and I will be satisfied. Then you can go off and say anything you want. But are you talking about the same procedure that has been described in courtrooms throughout this country? That's what I want to know and that is what I want to hear the answer to from these public officials.

Brothers and sisters, you and I may never get the answer to that question but then again you and I have a power that they don't have. We decide whether they get into office or not.

Let's make no mistake about it. There is a wide range of issues about which we must be concerned: poverty, education, housing, health care, war and peace, capital punishment …many, many issues that we have to evaluate and we have to be active in advancing and protecting and enhancing the lives of our fellow citizens.

Let's also be no mistake about it: Both from the point of view of the Church and also from the point of view of common sense - among all the issues that we have to consider when we evaluate who we are going to vote for none is more important than the right to life. Let me explain why.

I want to give a hypothetical here that might sound ridiculous, but what if somebody stood up and said, "I'm asking for your vote and I support terrorism. I think the terrorists had a right to do what they did. I would never advocate it. I would never do it myself, but I believe they have a right to do what they did."

Now if a candidate stood before you and said that -- my question is not whether or not people would vote for him, because they wouldn't. My question also is, Would you even ask what that person's position was on all the other issues? You wouldn't even ask! "Well sir I disagree with you on terrorism but what's your health care plan?"

Notice what we're saying here. We're not saying that health care is not an issue. We are not saying that it is not important to look at. There are ideas about housing and education and war and peace and many issues. We are not saying that that is not important. What we are saying is if a politician can't respect the life of a little baby, how is he supposed to respect yours?

"Oh, Fr. Frank, abortion is just one of many issues." Yes, and the foundation of the house is just one of many parts of the house. Take it away and see how well you can build. All these other issues, all these other concerns are like the walls and crossbeams of a house. In fact this is an image that again is not the possession of one denomination or another. This is not a religious teaching we are putting forward here. This is an image that the US Catholic Bishops have used in their document "Living the Gospel of Life." They said abortion strikes at the house's foundation. So does euthanasia. Being right on all of these other issues can never excuse a wrong choice in regards to direct attack on human life.

That's why I call upon those - if I can speak for a moment to those who in my own Church community, in the Roman Catholic Church -- whether you are a lay person, minister in some capacity of lay ministry, if you are a deacon a priest or a Bishop: I don't want to hear anymore that all issues are equal! You stand up and you say that all the issues are equal: number one, you're insulting our intelligence and number two, you're contradicting the teachings of your own Church.

Let's make no mistake about it, abortion and capital punishment are not equivalent. There is a big difference between the state in certain limited circumstances exercising its God-given authority to protect the rights of the citizens from someone who is going to destroy their lives when there is no other remedy, and the rights so called of an individual to put an innocent baby to death. There is a big difference.

Not to mention the fact that if you count all those that have been executed by capital punishment in our entire history, it doesn't add up to the number of babies we kill by abortion in five days.

And I have had enough of people trying to say that people are not pro-life if they support the right of this nation to defend itself even in war if necessary.

If you believe that abortion is somehow equivalent to the act of the defense of the nation against those who are trying to destroy our lives, our rights and our freedom, you have obscured the entire principle. It is precisely for the defense of life that in certain limited circumstances states have the authority to use military force. It is precisely for the defense of life. It is not a contradiction. It is consistent.

Brothers and sisters another question has to be asked both of capital punishment and of war: When in the exercise of any of those activities do we deliberately target an innocent child? When? And yet abortion is not even abortion by definition unless you target and successfully destroy an innocent child.

Now, some people think that elections are contests between candidates. They're not. An election is not a contest between two or more candidates. An election, brothers and sisters, is a contest between two or more teams. The people of this nation have to decide what team they are going to be on in each election in which they are eligible to vote.

Because it is the team better organized, it is the team more active, the team larger and more well prepared whose candidate wins. And whose candidate wins? The team who gets more people actually out to vote.

There are things that we can do. There are things that you can do. There are things that the Church can do to call Christians, to call all citizens to their political responsibility. One of those things is to get them to register to vote. Some churches do voter registration campaigns. We don't have to rely only on the churches though. Your groups, your organizations, your meetings, your bible studies, your prayer groups. It is time now in the meetings of those groups between now and whatever the deadline for registration may be in your state that you use those meetings as an opportunity to get people to register to vote.

Some people say, "Well I only have one vote." Of course we do. You can only cast one vote but you can influence thousands of votes. That's what we have to call on our brothers and sisters to do. How do they influence thousands of votes? By getting others registered, first of all. Secondly, by informing them of the positions of the candidates and of the issues.

One of the resources we provided this year is a website; this is in regard to the presidential race, called votinginfo.org. Votinginfo.org is a c-3 friendly website that will allow people to simply inform themselves on the positions of candidates. There are many other resources on the Internet as well regarding where the candidates stand.

What is critical for people to do is to realize that it is not morally responsible to go into the voting booth and just vote according to the letter after the name. You have to look at the name itself, at what that person stands for. Some people are in "automatic pilot" mode. "Oh my parents, my grandparents, we always voted for this political party." There is nothing wrong with belonging to a political party. There is nothing wrong with being loyal to a political party. But there is something very wrong when our loyalty to a political party is greater than our loyalty to God and to basic moral principles.

We've only just begun. I don't mean in reference to this talk, because our time is running out. We've only just begun in reference to this election. We must build a team that unambiguously and without compromise says that we are going to use our vote this year to advance the culture of life because this is not a matter of pro-choice wins or pro-life wins. Brothers and sisters if pro-life doesn't win, nobody wins. There is no victory in death!

We at Priests for Life are at your service individually, your groups, your parish, and your dioceses. Between now and November we are at your service to come to your communities and speak, to assist you with voter education and information - in spreading the teaching of the Church on political responsibility. In fact political responsibility.com has been set up to assist the pro-life movement and all Christians in knowing what they can do, how they can do it and why they should do it to advance towards Election Day.

Let us make no mistake about it. God calls us to renew the earth. He doesn't call us to sit back and just observe and then comment and complain. He calls us to be a community of faith that renews the face of the earth.

And do you know what he said through his own Son? "The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church," he told us. We might think that means that the Church will survive all of the attacks that are launched against her. Yes, that's true. But think about it again. In a battle the gate does not run out onto the battlefield to attack the enemy. The gate stands still to defend the city against the enemy attacking it. When the Lord says "the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church," who is doing the attacking, who is on the offensive? It is the Church storming the gates, and gaining ground for God and for human rights.

So I tell you today, the gates of falsehood will fall in the presence of truth. The gates of sin will melt in the presence of grace, and the gates of death in this Nation, in this election; the gates of death will flee in the presence of you, the people of life.

Do what you need to do. Christ is risen! Let us proclaim it and let us change this land. God Bless you.