Australian Bishop Richard Umbers recently cautioned against pro-life marches becoming “so broad that it’s meaningless.”
In a recent interview with Crux, Umbers, the youngest bishop in Australia, discussed the possibility of establishing a March for Life in Sydney after his experience at the D.C. March for Life this year.
“I think that we do need to focus on abortion,” he said about the possible future rally in Sydney, but added “We do have to be pro-immigration, pro-dignity of all sorts of people. I’m not taking away from that, but I do think that you need to give it a focus.”
Acknowledging the March for Life in the U.S. is “pretty Catholic,” Umbers who serves as an auxiliary bishop for Sydney said he “would love to see a broader representation of Protestants and people of other faiths” to make “evident that this is not just a Catholic issue.”
When asked why there was a need for a March for Life in Australia, Umbers pointed to Peter Singer, the Australian philosopher known for his secular and utilitarian philosophies.
“I think we need to be confronting that kind of ideology head on: he wants to remove the image of God from our society. He’s quite explicit about that, and at a time when we see euthanasia legalized, when everything is about utilitarianism, preference utilitarianism, which is pretty much Singer’s thing, we need to respond in a very strong way about the importance of seeing the image and likeness of God in every person, from the moment of conception until natural death.”
Umbers said: “what sort of society [do] we want to see ourselves in: one in which we’re supportive or is it a throwaway culture, where we get rid of things that are an inconvenience. What kind of society do we want to live in? That’s the message I would like to get across, for people to reflect on.”
Umbers plans to return to D.C. to attend the March for Life for a second time in January 2020
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