By David G. Bonagura, Jr

I was recently asked, again: "Why is the Catholic Church so focused on abortion?" At least this time, it was asked out of curiosity rather than with anger. I can't imagine how such questioners perceive the Church. Do they think she is the institutional form of the Saturday Night Live Church Lady character? Or do they, perhaps, conjure up a Puritan bounty-hunter, keeping an intimacy log?

Whatever it is, they could not be more wrong. In fact, this time it struck me: the Church's approach to abortion shows her greatness and shows her, outside of celebrating the sacraments, at her best.

The Church, as the Body of Christ, touches men and women with the Son's saving love. Sometimes the greatness of the Church can be obscured by the sins of her members. But when handling abortion, with a few sad exceptions, the Church has nobly reflected the Father's justice and mercy, gifts that she exists to extend to all nations.

Abortion is not a modern invention; it's a sin as old as mankind. From her earliest days, the Church has prohibited abortion following the Fifth Commandment. "You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child," we read in the first century Didache. For the modern world obsessed with abortion as the failsafe of sexual libertinism, Pope St. John Paul II echoed this perennial teaching: abortion "always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being." (Evangelium Vitae 62)

But why the prohibition? It reflects a deeper truth: Human beings are the crown of God's Creation. Made in His image and likeness, human beings not only possess an inherent dignity; we are made to live with God forever. And He loves us so much that He has invited us to participate in His eternal plan through marriage and procreation. Human love reflects His divine love; generating new human life maximizes God's love. What God has created no man shall destroy.

For decades, the Catholic Church has proclaimed this Gospel of Life proudly and loudly to a world that has selected death as its culture. Other Christian groups have waffled. A few religions and groups have defended life, but not with the visibility that the Church has. She has not just taught from documents and pulpits. She has taken the Gospel of Life to the streets as the leading presence at the March for Life and at so many other public witnesses and protests. At all of these events, one thing is constant: Catholics praying the Rosary for strength and consolation.



The teaching Church is simultaneously a caring mother extending her embrace to her children. Shining her light into the darkest corners of the world, she has found countless women in hiding. They weep over their lost children and silently berate themselves for their sin. To these anguished women the Church reaches out with the tender compassion of Christ: "Peace be with you. Come and accept the Lord's mercy. He shed His blood for you. He forgives you. Come and return to the kingdom He has created you for."

In Christ, justice and mercy are not opposites. They fuel one another. Because mercy, in going beyond the limits of justice, restores what has fallen to the state of justice. Following her Master, the Church unites the two by restoring broken mothers to the community where they join their fellow Catholics in lifting up the lost innocents to God in prayer.

St. John Paul's Evangelium Vitae and the post-abortion healing ministry called Project Rachel stand today as the highest expressions of the Church's justice and mercy offered in the fight against abortion, the deadliest scourge of the 20th and 21st centuries.

In addition to defending the sanctity of life, the Church has reached out with an additional teaching effort. Women have been the Evil One's chief target as he advances his culture of death. He has fooled many of them into believing that their worth resides in acting contrary to their nature, and that their children in their wombs are no...