During his liturgical reflection for the Monday of this Holy Week, Dom Guéranger meditates: “This city [Jerusalem] is zealous for the exteriors of divine worship; but her heart is hard and obstinate, and she is plotting, at this very hour, the death of the Son of God.”
In our own age we face a culture that has a heart which is both hard and obstinate, described by Pope Saint John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae as a “culture of death”. This culture has seen an “eclipse of the sense of God and of man” and as a result has “lost the sense of man, of his dignity and his life”.
John Paul II described a kind of “conspiracy against life” where huge sums of money were being invested into “developing products which are ever more simple and effective in suppressing life” and at the same time “removing abortion from any kind of control or social responsibility”.
Since writing this encyclical in 1995, the situation has rapidly worsened, particularly in the UK. Those conspiring against life are now working to remove any vestiges of “control or social responsibility” left in the law.
Just as the assisted suicide lobby tried to push their campaign at Christmas time, the pro-abortion activists, through some kind of dark coincidence, have chosen Easter as their time to push abortion decriminalisation.
With abortion seemingly so widely available, many may not be aware that abortion remains a criminal offence in England and Wales. The 1967 Abortion Act only provides a legal defence against prosecution in certain circumstances. No right to abortion exists in law.
The abortion lobby, however, wants all this to change, and are seeking to eradicate abortion from the criminal law entirely. This would mean abortion could be legally carried out for any reason and at any stage of the pregnancy.
Labour MP, and Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Dame Diana Johnson, is leading the charge through an attempt to amend the Criminal Justice Bill. The vote on the amendment, which is likely to take place just after Easter, will be a free vote and has already received cross party backing from 31 MPs, as well as support from professional bodies such as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of Midwives.
As it stands, this amendment has a serious chance of becoming law.
In 2021, 214,869 abortions were reported in England and Wales, the highest since records began. Were there to be no legal safeguard whatsoever for the unborn, one can only predict the devastation that will result.
In the face of this offensive, now is the time to up our game, in terms of campaigning but also spiritually, through prayer and fasting. Indeed, St Pope John Paul II urged those fighting the seemingly insurmountable and well resourced “culture of death” to rely on the help of God “for whom nothing is impossible” (Mt 19:26).
In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II reminded us that “prayer and fasting are the first and most effective weapons against the forces of evil (Mt 4: 1-11)” and urged the faithful to fast and pray “so that power from on high will break down the walls of lies and deceit: the walls which conceal from the sight of so many of our brothers and sisters the evil practices and laws which are hostile to life” (Evangelium Vitae, 100).
John Paul II reassures us that “Nothing helps us so much to face positively the conflict between death and life in which we are engaged as faith in the Son of God who became man and dwelt among men so that ‘they may have life and have it abundantly’ (Jn 10:10)”.
Let us look forward in hope to the Risen Lord who was ultimately victorious in conquering death, and for whom nothing is impossible.
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