Fruit of the Vine

How unfortunate it is that the pro-life movement comes across to some as angry, reproachful or excessively judgmental. Unfortunate, too, that the clear and unchanged teaching of our Church from its earliest days has been so distorted in political debate and commentary.

The earliest book of Christian instruction, very possibly written as the New Testament was being formed, is called the Didache, or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. It speaks of the two Ways of Life and Death and admonishes: “ Thou shalt not procure an abortion, nor commit infanticide.” This solemn teaching has never been in doubt since those earliest days.

The Church then, as do so many of good will of every religious persuasion and of no religious belief, because she sees the right to life as the basis of all other rights, has no choice, but with love and compassion for all, to speak out in defense of innocent human life.

To our elected officials who value innocent human life in the womb, a reminder and a plea: there are any number of ways within our Constitution to advance the protection of innocent human life. Is it not reasonable and honorable to take some steps, however small, to pursue that goal? As disciples of Christ, we are but fruit in God’s vineyard and thus are called – each of us – to cherish the divine within every human being made to the image and likeness of God from the first moment of conception to the last moment of natural death.

Those who claim we have a “right” to take innocent life usurp God’s dominant claim on every human being. But in and through Christ and His Church, the vineyard owner will never give up. Nor must we as we sing of the beauty of His creation and of all those little ones in the vineyard, made to His image and likeness.

-Archbishop of Baltimore, via Whispers

Pope Benedict recently spoke at the Synod on this dominant claim of God on the life of every human being that has been called into existence:

Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is he who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things. Realist is he who builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent.