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From NRLC's
Today’s News & Views
Dave Andrusko, Editor.
See also
Tributes to Pope John Paul II - Part Two
"Be Not Afraid!"
Pope John Paul II Has Now Completed His
Earthly Pro-Life Ministry
By Ernest L. Ohlhoff and Kathleen Sweeney
April 8, 2005Pope John
Paul II died on April 2, and the whole world joined in honoring and
mourning the loss of this great religious leader and staunch pro-life
champion. At his death, he was surrounded by the prayers and love of his
household, who described him as serene and kindly until the moment when
God took him home.
Born Karol Wojtyla in 1920 in Poland, Pope John Paul II maintained an
assertive spiritual leadership under Nazi and Communist regimes as
priest, bishop, and cardinal in Krakow. He was elected Pope of the Roman
Catholic Church in 1978 at the age of 58.
From fatherhood radiates life, and from the Holy Father, Pope John Paul
II, there radiated a culture of life that has been a beacon of hope to
the whole world. Just as a biological father is called to protect his
children and honor the mother who has nurtured them in her womb, this
religious father has been unfailing in his call for protection of the
unborn, and eloquent in his honor of mothers whose task of nurturing the
coming generation is central to the survival of civilization.
Pope John Paul II was quintessentially a father in an age when the
culture of death has under mined the role and dignity of fatherhood. In
contrast John Paul II’s spiritual fatherhood seemed virtually to beget
the culture of life.
His sensitive understanding of the pressure exerted on women in a
pro-abortion culture led him to urge all sectors of society to provide
welcome and support to new life and to parents in difficulty. Perhaps
most moving were his words to women who had personally experienced the
tragedy of abortion:
“The wound in your heart may not yet have healed. Certainly what
happened was and remains terribly wrong. But do not give in to
discouragement and do not lose hope.... With the friendly and expert
help and advice of other people, and as a result of your own painful
experience, you can be among the most eloquent defenders of everyone’s
right to life.” (Evangelium Vitae #99)
The Pope’s magnificent 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of
Life), has been a treasure for the pro-life community, providing depth
of insight, compassion, and courage for those struggling to oppose
abortion and euthanasia. With clarity and forthrightness, he reminded us
that “we need now more than ever to have the courage to look truth in
the eye and to call things by their proper name... procured abortion is
the deliberate and direct killing... of a human being....” (Evangelium
Vitae #12)
He brought pro-life issues into the center of debate on an international
stage, urging that the sanctity of life is a universal norm and not a
moral option for contemporary society. He sent Vatican representatives
to oppose pro-abortion pressure groups at UN development conferences,
which helped to steer international statements away from including
“right to abortion” language.
Long before Terri Schindler Schiavo’s tragic death focused our nation on
the problem of euthanizing disabled persons, the Holy Father wrote in
Evangelium
Vitae #58: “A person, who because of illness, handicap,
or more simply just by existing, compromises the well-being or
life-style of those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an
enemy to be resisted or eliminated. In this way a kind of conspiracy
against life is unleashed.”
While John Paul II was himself struggling with debilitating and painful
illness and difficulty in speaking, he authorized statements from the
Vatican in defense of Terri Schindler Schiavo’s right to life, and the
duty to always provide nutrition and hydration to the ill and disabled.
The Holy Father had recently spoken to the Pontifical Academy for Life
(which he founded), “confirming that the quality of life is not
interpreted as economic success, beauty and physical pleasure, but
consists in the supreme dignity of the creature made in the image and
likeness of God. ... No one can be the arbiter of life except God
himself.”
The Holy Father had a special love for young people. He knew that these
youth are the future of the Church, of the world, and of the pro-life
movement. Moreover, he simply cherished each one as the unique human
person he or she is.
And to the amazement of skeptics, young people flocked to him. They saw
in him a loving father and a courageous hero who was not afraid to speak
strong words to an opposing culture of death. He held up to them truth
and hope in life, calling them to defend the life of the unborn and the
vulnerable threatened by euthanasia.
At so many of Pope John Paul II’s public appearances and liturgies, he
paid special attention to the sick and to people with disabilities. To
highlight the dignity of these brothers and sisters so dependent on our
love and care, they were given a place of honor at the celebrations. His
compassion and loving attention to each one sent a message to the world
of the worth of every person’s life and our call to respect their right
to life.
The National Right to Life Committee owes a special debt of gratitude to
Pope John Paul II for the constant support and education he provided on
life issues. On April 24, 1996, His Holiness was honored for his
outstanding pro-life leadership at NRLC’s third annual Proudly Pro-Life
Awards Dinner by a unanimous proclamation of the Board of Directors.
“Be not afraid!” was the constant message of both Pope John Paul II and
of Jesus. As we pro-life people face a mountain of grave problems amid
serious opposition, we can be inspired by the indefatigable spirit
of John Paul II who gave us a model of hope, persistence, energetic
outreach, and courage as well as his legacy of teaching on life issues.
We must now carry on this pro-life work that was so dear to his heart.
He is counting on us."
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Tributes to Pope John Paul
II - Part Two
Compiled by Dave Andrusko
April 12, 2005
"Today we bid farewell to Pope John Paul the
Great, the Pope of Life. His teachings will guide and nourish
the Church for centuries. In particular, his teachings on the
sanctity of life, especially the unborn, will continue to stir
our consciences to build a culture of life."
- Priests for Life
"Pope John Paul II was unquestionably the most influential voice
for morality and peace in the world during the last 100 years.
His extraordinary gifts, his strong Catholic faith, and his
experience of human tyranny and suffering in his native Poland
all shaped him, and yet he was respected by men and women from
every conceivable background across the world. He was truly one
of those rare individuals whose legacy will endure long after he
has gone."
- Evangelist Billy Graham
"By Thursday the decline was swift. Even as the
U.S. continued its great debate over when to remove a feeding
tube, the Vatican revealed the Pope was on one. Terri Schiavo,
once a private, ordinary woman, had no choice about whether her
death would be a passion play for an audience caught in an
argument over when life begins and ends. The Pope, a very public
and extraordinary man, made sure his message was clear: that
life is God's alone to give—and to take....It is of some comfort, when we wait for those we
love to die, to celebrate the way they lived. For Christians
this is a season of mystery and grace, and during the final
days, John Paul II gave his people one last gift: the message of
his visible pain and transcendent love, like a bell ringing out
over St. Peter's Square, clear and resounding as it carried up
to heaven."
- Nancy Gibbs, Time Magazine.
"Yet careful analysts found—agree with it or
not—a powerful internal consistency to John Paul's thought,
although not along the individual-rights paradigm so central to
Western secular social philosophy. His oft-repeated concept of
the 'dignity of the human person' defined person as a divine
creation intrinsically inclined toward God. ...The pursuit of
individual freedoms, untempered by moral teaching, meanwhile,
would eventually lead to a 'culture of death' corrosive to
respect for family, for church and, eventually, for life. The
West, he warned, was in the grip of that culture."
- David Van Biema, Time Magazine
"History will remember first that John Paul II
played a pivotal role in liberating Eastern Europe from
Communism, but his personal faith and integrity and his
passionate defense of human dignity and human rights made him a
powerful figure. 'I speak in the name of those who have no
voice,' he said in 1980."
- The Age
"We treasure John Paul II's legacy to the world,
which is his insistence that "The Gospel of God's love for man,
the Gospel of the dignity of the person and the Gospel of life
are a single and indivisible Gospel." (Evangelium Vitae, 2)... We
call on all people of good will to honor his memory by
responding to his urgent call for 'a general mobilization of
consciences and a united ethical effort to activate a great
campaign in support of life.'" (Evangelium Vitae 95)
- John Smeaton, national director
of Britain's Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.
"In the course of this dramatic renovation of the
world's oldest institutional office, he continued to surprise.
Throughout his pontificate, he was a magnet for the world's
young people, who flocked to him by the millions. In the early
years of his papacy, some of this almost certainly reflected the
contemporary cult of celebrity. But that was not all it was, and
his status in the 1980s as a global superstar did not explain
why John Paul II continued to attract the young when he was
visibly weakened by disease and age. Why did the Pope remain a compelling figure for
the young? One reason was his transparent integrity. Young
people have acutely sensitive hypocrisy detectors; in John Paul
II, they saw a man who believed what he said and acted out his
beliefs. There was no "spin" here--only integrity all the way
through, the integrity of a man who committed every facet of his
life to Jesus Christ. This was immensely compelling."
- George Weigel, author of
"Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul" |
Dave Andrusko can be reached at dandrusko@nrlc.org.
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