Deacon Kyle Eller: Why do we care so much about being pro-life?

Mere Catholicism 

“... And only where God is seen does life truly begin,” said Pope Benedict XVI. “Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know him and to speak to others of our friendship with him.” 

Over his many years of service to the church as a theologian and professor and cardinal and pope, the late Benedict XVI said many profound things, but I find myself going back to this one again and again. It’s something I believe people need so desperately to hear in these times of alienation, as the pope had described it a moment earlier. Often enough they are words my own heart needs to hear again, too. 

We are not a random accident of the universe. Our lives have meaning. God willed us — that is, he deliberately chose to make each of us — and he loves and wants each of us, you and me and every person we’ve ever met or ever will meet. 

Even as a young adult who had drifted far from the Christian faith, this was a truth I grasped intuitively, at least in a partial way. Life is such a deep mystery: something we can destroy all too easily but not bestow once taken, something we cannot fully account for or understand. That’s true for all life, for every creature. 

But human life is something still more. Each person is unique and unrepeatable and contains infinite depths. I cannot fully know even the people I’m closest to, or fully see the world through their eyes. Who would dare treat it cheaply? Who could calculate the gravity of the loss of even one person? In those days I wouldn’t have put it the way Benedict did, but what I was grasping at was that “each of us is the result of a thought of God.” 

It’s a kind of prayer when we’re among people, especially among strangers, to pause and remember this truth in God’s presence, trying to see them all with his eyes. 

Grasping this truth more deeply will, I think, help us, or at least give us courage, as we try to build a culture of life amid people who have lost the thread. I don’t need to tell you how many battles we’re losing, both political ones and in the realm of ideas and culture. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it has become clear that passing even modest pro-life laws through democratic means is often an uphill battle, and we’re often seen as “extreme” and at times even as “uncaring.” 

Those accusations hurt, and they’re false. Some of the reasons the fight is difficult aren’t totally our fault: news and entertainment media that effectively serve as propaganda outlets for the culture of death, cowardly politicians that cannot or will not articulate the principles they profess to share with us, well-funded institutions wielding immense political, economic, and social power. The enemies of life are powerful and pervasive. 

But this world is fallen, and so are we. Some of it is our fault. We haven’t always done a good job articulating why we love life and are so adamant about protecting it. Worse, being sinners, we sometimes bear witness against ourselves with our actions. We don’t always act like people who believe that every single human being reflects a “thought of God” and is of infinite dignity and importance. 

Being in the political wilderness is, in worldly terms, a great loss. It’s also an opportunity to purify our hearts. Political tribalism has tempted us to compromise our principles time and time again in pursuit of policy outcomes that at times seem like Pyrrhic victories. But often those compromises have, themselves, undermined our witness. This is where recovering a consistent ethic of life is so important. 

Moral theology gives us many valid distinctions about issues. It can tell us which ones involve intrinsic evils and which are particularly grave and which involve prudential judgments, and so on. All of those distinctions have their place.  

But in the hands of partisans, they can quickly become rationalizations. And we’re lucky if most of the people we seek to reach can follow even basic moral reasoning. Fine distinctions mean worse than nothing to them. And when they see people claiming to be pro-life and opposing abortion and assisted suicide while also supporting policies and rhetoric that are demeaning and cruel to the poor, immigrants, prisoners, and victims of war, it’s not crazy for them to think there’s something hypocritical going on, it’s common sense. They may miss many nuances, but their instinct is right. 

Even if every politician in the United States abandons the pro-life cause, I will still hold to it, calling for a civilization of love that protects unborn children in law and welcomes them generously and joyously in life, because truth, justice, and love demand it. 

But if we want to convince others, we need to remember why we love life and why it matters so much to us. We need to articulate that vision and invite them to it — it’s for them, too. And we need to evaluate our own words and deeds and ask if they are consistent with believing every human life is willed and loved by God and is the result of a thought of God, unique and infinitely precious. 

Deacon Kyle Eller is editor of The Northern Cross. Reach him at [email protected].