It's Pro-life Sunday and Pro-life month

Once again the Church celebrates the 1st Sunday of October as Pro-life Sunday. Today across America, many churches will offer special prayers, rosaries and sidewalk chains for life. Many will gather outside the parish church and simply stand in silence holding pro-life messages or gather in prayer as a public witness to the pro-life movement.

Since becoming the law of the land some 37 years ago legal abortion has taken the lives of nearly 50 million babies. How sad. And while people of faith and morals continue to pray and protest and defend human rights for the most vulnerable among us, we are no closer to a day when no child would be murdered in the womb. We have much work ahead of us to tackle a culture that has made abortion commonplace.

We know, after all these years, that the selfish pursuits of sexual freedom and artificial contraception contribute to the problem of killing little babies. Once one of many voices against artificial birth control and the dignity of sex as a gift from God to be celebrated within marriage, today the Catholic Church almost stands alone as so many Christian faiths are now going the way of going along to get along. This too is tragic.

As one who works in prison ministry we must also look at our attitudes concerning the death penalty. Those who are staunchly pro-life on the abortion issue often trumpet the death penalty as ok. We must look to the Church for the proper teaching on this issue too so we express a total pro-life message. And I know that many cringe at lumping the two together. The abortion issue is very different from the death penalty issue on the surface. But deep down, we who are pro-life are called to preserve the sanctity of life, from conception to NATURAl death.

As we pray this month for our pro-life efforts let's remember both the anti-abortion cause and the proper and proportional use of the death penalty world-wide. And we also pray that other misguided efforts like euthanasia and assisted suicide be tossed aside and never take root as acceptable practices of a civilzed world.