Have we as pro-life Catholics been wrong to invest the lion’s share of our time, talent and energy in the political battle against abortion over the past forty years? Or even if we have not been wrong the whole time, are we wrong now? Perhaps it is obvious that I believe the answer is yes. It ought to be clear by now that Western culture is insufficiently healthy to sustain a political solution to abortion. Therefore, it is counter-productive to pour our resources into the effort to achieve such a solution. We must use our resources far more wisely than that.
This question is forced upon us by the dramatic change in our social, cultural and political landscape over the past ten years or so, which has pushed problems every bit as important as abortion to the fore, for example the problems posed by the widespread breakdown of marriage and the family, the regularization of same-sex attraction and same-sex marriage, the triumph of a legal positivism utterly divorced from the natural law, our social dependence on a pagan bureaucratic State, the growing antipathy to Christianity, and the rapid erosion of religious liberty.
What we have learned in recent years is that we are not, as we have long thought, on the verge of winning the battle for human life. Rather, we must recognize that our culture as a whole has slipped into such darkness and error that addressing the problem of the sanctity of human life politically has become effectively impossible.
The time has come to admit the obvious and, in consequence, to speak the unspeakable. Is it not clear now that the social order as we know it in the West is utterly incapable of sustaining successful pro-life politics?
The evidence is overwhelming. First, there is again the remarkable lack of success over the past forty years despite the staggering resources expended in the cause.
Second, in the United States at least, this lack of success seems to conflict with polls that repeatedly show a majority of voters to prefer restrictions on abortion—which proves that such voters do not regard abortion as significant enough to influence their votes.
Third, as indicated at the outset, the number of other serious social and political challenges which have so rapidly emerged in recent years are clear signs that our mainstream culture has problems far deeper than a disagreement about how to handle the question of legal abortion.
Continue reading Dr. Jeff Mirus in depth article on Catholic Culture.org
Dr. Mirus founded Trinity Communications, the non-profit organization which runs CatholicCulture.org, in 1985. Originally focusing on print publishing, he guided Trinity onto the internet in 1993 and onto the web in 1996. Over time this initial work grew into the current CatholicCulture.org website, and Mirus has supervised its development and expansion ever since. He is also one of the chief writers for the site.
Image: Prolife New Zealand
