Letter to the Editor from Dunwoody, GA

Published: August 19, 2004

To the Editor:

Shortly before the Supreme Court decision on abortion our family lived in Jacksonville, Fla., and at that time state legislation regarding abortion was pending. As a nurse and the young mother of six, I was very proactive with a Right to Life group, and we were busy trying to educate ourselves and others on the fundamental horror of abortion and why it should be opposed. We felt a strong apathy existed within our own Catholic churches regarding these issues, and in order to gain support we organized a seminar on abortion with gifted speakers to which we invited the entire clergy of the Diocese of St. Augustine. One pastor attended. It was his church where the seminar was held.

I often wonder what the outcome would have been had there been an outcry of more voices prior to the Supreme Court decision. The overwhelming theme of many parishioners at the time seemed to be an issue of separation of church and state. I can’t help but feel that our church lacked certain fortitude in speaking out when the odds that government seemed to be against them.

In the years since, Right to Life groups have countered political foes with the threat of withholding support determined primarily on the candidate’s attitude concerning abortion (sometimes at the detriment of other life issues). Today we appear to have come full circle. Politicians have now learned how to use the rhetoric of compliance concerning abortion in order to gain votes when there is actually little they know they will be compelled to do to change it. Most of them hold firm two exceptions to the life principle concerning abortion as to when it should or should not legitimately be used such as in rape or incest. These same politicians will speak out feverishly supporting first strikes regarding war, and they hold the power of capital punishment to be a sacred duty without fear of condemnation. They cleverly offer political incentives to Christian churches regarding the privatization of schools in order to win votes while allowing a system for the masses to deteriorate.

Today our church has decided to speak out for whatever sense of duty or guilt that it may have had in lack of doing so in the past. Unfortunately it has been decreed in such a way that we now become a political pawn in this 2004 campaign. We have now been given the God-given right of determining who among us who proclaims to be Catholic is worthy of receiving our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. What an awesome responsibility and who among us is willing to cast the first stone! I am reminded of the many books, bracelets and adornments that many searching Christians have purchased that ask the perplexing question, “What Would Jesus Do?” Did Jesus come and die and endure the suffering he did only for the self-righteous? I believe not. In these bitter days of moral chaos, may we strive to abide in and extend to one another the mercy and love of Christ!

Mary Jean Goode, Dunwoody