I can remember vividly first reading the announcement from Rome that Pope John Paul II would be issuing an encyclical called Evangelium Vitae - The Gospel of Life. I smiled widely, knowing the encouragement this would bring to pro-life activists everywhere. I knew this would be a Magna Carta for the pro-life movement.
At that time, I had only been working for a couple of years as the national director of Priests for Life. Cardinal John O’Connor had granted me permission to fulfill what I had described to him as a “call of conscience” to devote my entire life and ministry to ending abortion.
Now, he - as a close advisor of Pope John Paul II - was part of creating a document that would affirm not only the Church’s position on abortion, but the reasons why it is a more serious and fundamental moral issue than the many other moral challenges of our time.
March 25 will mark 30 years since Evangelium Vitae was published.
Shortly after its publication, I had the privilege of working at the Vatican for two years in the office that coordinates pro-life ministry for the whole Church. I saw the importance that Pope John Paul II placed on this document; I spoke with him about it, and with many of those who collaborated with him to write it. And from them I learned what I have seen over these 30 years: This document was meant to light a fire, to mobilize a movement, to sustain a self-sacrificing effort to defend the weakest among us.
And it does precisely that. It has encouraged people already active in the pro-life movement and has brought new people in. It has helped Catholic priests and theologians present the prolife message and it has nourished and inspired clergy of other Christian denominations, many of whom have spoken to me of their love for this document.
The encyclical was placed in our hands when we in the United States were in the shadow of the Casey decision, which reaffirmed Roe v. Wade in 1992, and of the pro-abortion Clinton administration. He permitted the most gruesome forms of abortion - twice vetoing the ban on partial-birth abortion - exported abortion overseas, got abortion drugs approved, put pro-abortion justices on the Supreme Court and punished pro-life leaders and activists for peaceful peaceful pro-life activity.
Now, after four years of an even more pro-abortion president than Clinton, we need a new dose of that call and that document. It’s time to leave the darkness of abortion behind – and with the incoming Trump administration and the new Congress, we have new hope that our ability to do so will only grow stronger in the years immediately ahead of us.
Thirty years after this ground-breaking document was published, we can rejoice in the fruits it has borne, and we can take it up again as if on the first day, to forge a path in what is still a culture of death, but to do so with even more confidence in the victory of life!
To read the text itself, and to utilize the Study Guide prepared by the Pastoral Team of Priests for Life, visit GospelOfLife.org.