This year’s Parish Respect Life Conference covered a wide range of topics including the impact of artificial contraception on society, the link between abortion and breast cancer and the Church’s teaching on reproductive and end of life issues. Tips were shared on how to bring about “culture transforming conversations” regarding human life, and the Catholic responsibility to participate in political life was also outlined.
The educational program, sponsored by the diocesan Respect Life Office, was held at St. John Center in Little Rock on Aug. 22-23. It is designed for parish respect life leaders, but anyone interested in pro-life issues may attend. About 60 parishioners from across the state attended the event, which was the second of its kind. The first was held in 2007.
Bishop Anthony B. Taylor celebrated the morning Mass Aug. 23. During his homily, he challenged participants to adopt a larger concept of what it means to be pro-life.
“You’re not really pro-life, you’re just anti-abortion, unless you care about both the mother and her child,” he said.
Domestic violence “is perhaps one of the more neglected items on our pro-life agenda, but it is an area where we can do a lot to lift a burden that sometimes leads to abortion, an area where we can do a lot to give life, a better life, to women and their children,” he said. (See his homily in this week’s column.)
The theme for the conference was “Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Humanae Vitae.” This refers to Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical (“Of Human Life”) that upheld the Church’s prohibition of artificial contraception, particularly the birth control pill.
Featured speakers were Father Richard Hogan, associate director of Natural Family Planning Outreach and a priest for the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis; and Deirdre McQuade, assistant director of policy and communications for the USCCB’s Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities in Washington, D.C.
During three presentations, Father Hogan described the methods used to explain the Church’s teachings on human sexuality throughout history and why Humanae Vitae was largely rejected by the faithful when it was written. He gave two keys reasons: the climate of confusion and change in the Church at that time and the fact that people could not relate to or understand the 13th-century language used in the document.
Father Hogan went on to describe how Pope John Paul II, through a series of lectures known collectively as Theology of the Body, took the teaching in Humanae Vitae and explained it in a way people of today could understand.
“Instead of saying you’re going to do this because God says so, it (Theology of the Body) says you are who you are because this is the way you’re made; now be consistent and act like it,” Father Hogan said Aug. 23. “It doesn’t change anything. It’s just a different way of getting at the same truth. And it works much better at least in my experience.”
In his final talk he discussed “Married Love and the Gift of Life,” the 2006 USCCB document that addresses God’s design for marriage.
In an interview with Arkansas Catholic, Marianne Linane, respect life director, said, she hopes the use of Theology of the Body will reach people and help them understand the Church’s teachings on sexuality.
“There’s such a beauty behind it. It’s a way of living that just adds such a dimension, such depth to our lives if we can follow this, and we would if we understood it,” Linane said. “That’s the key, to get people to understand it so they will follow it and enjoy the beauty and the fullness of the whole teaching.”
In her presentation, “Truth, Dialog and Jacob’s Well: A Scriptural Model for Building a Culture of Life” McQuade showed how Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4 can be a model to follow when talking to people who don’t share a Catholic perspective on life issues.
McQuade said there are many emotional and spiritual reasons why people can’t bring themselves to protect all human life and a pro-life advocate who offers kindness with the truth rather than judgment allows God to work.
“We don’t have to make people pro-life, God makes people pro-life,” she said.
In a separate session, McQuade explained the U.S. bishops’ November 2007 document, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States.”
In an interview with Arkansas Catholic, McQuade said the U.S. bishops made it clear that Catholics have a responsibility to participate in political life by voting, educating others on the Church’s social teachings and working to reform government to greater “serve the common good.”
The document also states that Catholics “must always oppose” the “intrinsic evils” of “abortion, euthanasia, human cloning and destruction of human embryos for research.”
“No Catholic may in good conscience vote for a candidate because he or she is pro-choice,” McQuade said. “That’s participating in the sin of promoting abortion.”
However, it is not just about avoiding evil, it is also about doing good, she said. Catholics “have an obligation to work toward alleviating suffering in all its forms.”
“A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support, and they (the bishops) are speaking broadly about any issue here,” she said. “Yet a candidate’s position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, the promotion thereof, such as support for legal abortion or promotion of racism may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support.”
“Abortion is the most prevalent attack against innocent human life in our country right now; one in four pregnancies ends in abortion,” she said. “There are other evils we need to fight just as strenuously, but if we’re trying to compare them and it comes down to a choice between imperfect options, the question of, even if somebody’s neutral and doesn’t have a position on an intrinsic evil, that’s better than a candidate or party who actively promotes it.”
The two-day conference also offered booths from various pro-life organizations and the “traveling heart gallery” from the Arkansas Adoption Coalition.
