Pro-life is not enough; we must be Gospel of Life

H. H.  Pope Francis with Emeritus Bishop of Rome, Joseph Ratzinger

Our recently sainted Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, raised to the altar by Christ's Vicar, Pope Francis, accurately pointed out that all "pro-life" activity has its beginning and end in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. This has been forever held by the Sovereign Pontiffs, following Our Lord: "without me you can do nothing" (St. John vx:v). 

So it is with any activity in favour of life: be it opposing the abomination of abortion, opposing the slaughter of the infirm and the elderly, fighting the drug subculture that is decimating the young, or the cavalier disregard of our penal system that leads to the death of persons who should be loved and not treated as mere objects. The prayer for life by the sainted Pope focused on life from conception to natural death. Anything else reduces opposition to the culture of death to nothing but an opposing ideology. The Church does not have an ideology: She has Truth. The culture of death will be defeated when we proclaim the Truth of the Gospel, and not be seduced into ideological concerns. We are proclaiming a Person, who is Truth Himself. His Truth teaches us that He loves us, and we must love Him in return, and we must manifest this love with our love towards our fellow man (c.f. St. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, V, iii, viii). 

I see a danger. The shift in language within the "pro-life" camp to that of the non-believer in "defending" life, is ominous. If not an implicit rejection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, it is certainly the beginnings of shame and an insecurity about truth and our Divine Saviour. 

Witness blogger, Freyr is absolutely correct, to remove God removes the reality that each person is created in the image and likeness of God; it opens the door to the inevitable extermination of the human person for various "humanitarian" reasons. It also, inadvertently, concedes that "faith" is immanent and subjectivist. Therefore faith is no longer a reality that I must conform my mind to, but something that my mind generates. It is the effect of the pernicious influence of liberalism.  

Mary Wagner is absolutely correct in her two recent statements that pro-life activity must be Gospel of Life activity; that is, focused on and in conformity Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord is not just an opinion, a faith "option", a figure of history. Jesus Christ is either God, or He is not God. The world, reality, human history hinge on this. Mary wrote in her Open Letter: 

"...there is pro-life work and there is Gospel of Life work. If we are Christians, we want to be Gospel of Life workers! We see not only the problems (of abortion, euthanasia, etc...); we are called to see everything in the light of Christ (crucified, died and risen from the dead)! We are called to see that the greatest injustice today is not abortion but the root of it: the failure to adore God, to put Him first. We have lost respect, reverence, for the human being because we no longer adore God, to whom alone our worship and adoration is due".

These words can be apparently difficult for some, because our individualistic society values  the "active" virtues" over the "passive", erroneously giving way to the subtle but very dangerous heresy of Americanism, rightly identified by Pope Leo XII as exceedingly dangerous. This American variation of liberalism has greatly infected the Catholic Church. 

If Jesus Christ is God, why are we becoming ashamed to declare Him so? Why are we becoming ashamed to proclaim that each and every person is created in His image and likeness?