WASHINGTON (CNS)—The U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade “is, without query, a solution to prayer,” but in a post-Roe world, “Catholics must now work together for one more, even deeper paradigm shift,” said the U.S. bishops’ pro-life chairman.
“We must move beyond a paradigm shift within the law with a purpose to help the people of our nation higher see who we could be as a nation by truly understanding what we owe to at least one one other as members of the identical human family,” said Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-life Activities.
“To construct a world during which all are welcome,” he said, Catholics “must heed” the words of St. Teresa of Kolkata “and remember ‘that we belong to at least one one other.’”
“We must shift the paradigm to what St. John Paul II described as ‘radical solidarity,’ making the great of others our own good, including especially moms, babies—born and preborn—and families throughout all the human lifespan.”
“We must shift the paradigm to what St. John Paul II described as ‘radical solidarity,’ making the great of others our own good, including especially moms, babies—born and preborn—and families throughout all the human lifespan,” Archbishop Lori said.
He made the remarks in a Sept. 21 statement for the U.S. Catholic Church’s observance of Respect Life Month, which is October. The theme of the observance is “Called to Serve Mothers in Need.”
The primary Sunday of October is designated as Respect Life Sunday, which is Oct. 2 this 12 months.
Of their June 24 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a majority of the justices ended the court’s nearly 50-year nationwide “regime of abortion on demand,” the archbishop said.
“Catholics must now work together for one more, even deeper paradigm shift.”
This “regime” was “based on the indefensible view that the U.S. Structure implicitly forbids government from protecting the preborn child within the womb from the violence of abortion,” he said.
The court “concluded that there’s nothing within the Structure’s text, history, American legal tradition or the court’s precedents that justified the intense holding of Roe,” he said.
Dobbs was a challenge to a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks. The court affirmed the law 6-3 and in addition voted 5-4 to overturn the 1973 Roe ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide, and 1992’s Casey v. Planned Parenthood ruling, which affirmed Roe.
The ruling returned the difficulty of abortion to the states.
“To construct a world during which all are welcome requires not only justice, but compassion, healing, and above all, unconditional love.”
With Dobbs, the high court “cleared the best way for a paradigm shift in American law, allowing it to enlarge its boundaries to again welcome a segment of the human family that had been outside of its protections for near half a century,” he added.
He called Dobbs “a victory for justice, the rule of law and self-governance.”
“But for those of us who’ve prayed for this moment to reach, it’s the time for a renewal and rededication of our efforts to construct a culture of life and civilization of affection,” he said. “Justice is, after all, essential to this end. But it surely will not be sufficient.
“To construct a world during which all are welcome requires not only justice, but compassion, healing, and above all, unconditional love.”
“Abortion is a gruesome sign of how now we have forgotten our mutual belonging,” Archbishop Lori continued. “The logic of Roe v. Wade has framed our national discourse on the difficulty of abortion as a zero-sum conflict amongst individual strangers.”
“The brand new life that’s developing under the guts of the mother is already situated in a network of relations, including family, neighbors and fellow residents.”
But “mother and child will not be strangers; they’re already sure together by flesh and kinship,” he said. “The brand new life that’s developing under the guts of the mother is already situated in a network of relations, including family, neighbors and fellow residents.”
Roe’s logic “offers the girl only the proper to see lethal force used against her child, nevertheless it otherwise abandons her,” he explained.
But “the logic of the culture of life recognizes that the pregnant woman and her child will not be alone—they’re fellow members of our larger human family whose interwoven vulnerability is a summons to all of us, but especially Catholics due to teaching of Jesus and his proclamation of the Gospel of life,” the archbishop said.
“Tens of millions of individual Catholics from all walks of life are already personally endeavoring to construct the bonds of solidarity and compassion throughout our society.”
To practice “radical solidarity and unconditional love in a post-Roe world,” he said, means speaking and living the reality” with compassion—the reality that abortion not only “unjustly kills a preborn child, but additionally gravely wounds women, men, families and the nation as a complete.”
Through law, policy, politics and culture, society must do whatever it might probably to offer moms, children and families in need “with the care and support essential for his or her flourishing throughout all the arc of life’s journey,” he said.
“Constructing a world during which women are esteemed, children are loved and guarded, and men are called to their responsibilities as fathers, requires us to know and address the complex and tragic tangle of affliction and strife that culminates within the violence of abortion,” Archbishop Lori said. “This can be a massive and daunting undertaking.”
“Catholics have already got a powerful foundation within the church’s centuries-long encouragement of parental and societal duties,” he said. “Tens of millions of individual Catholics from all walks of life are already personally endeavoring to construct the bonds of solidarity and compassion throughout our society.”
Many are also engaged in parish and community initiatives akin to pregnancy resource centers, post-abortion counseling, he said, in addition to Walking with Mothers in Need, an initiative of the U.S. bishops to attach pregnant women and their families with parishes and to a growing network of resources.
