Fr Pius Collins OPraem reflects on Isaiah 61 on the 55th anniversary of the Abortion Act coming into force.
Since the passage of the Abortion Act in 1967 countless lives have been ended, countless because the statistics don’t include the effect of abortifacient drugs and devices. This means that modern Britain is the most barbaric and violent that it has ever been – that we have ever been. Sacred scripture tells us what happens when societies and individuals chosen by Almighty God turn away from Him and follow the practices of the pagans, and we should not shy away from preaching the truths revealed to us.
Pope St John Paul II spoke so eloquently and powerfully about the culture of death of which abortion is a part. This culture of death is one in which “love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in one way or another” (Evangelium Vitae 12). In the years since these words were written in 1995 we have seen the onward march of societal forces determined to ensure that this culture (or rather “anti-culture”) pervades almost every level of society, in which the strong oppress the weakest members of our society and call it choice and freedom. Whose choice? What freedom?
Isaiah fleshes out what preaching the good news entails. He is sent “to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound”. The “freedom” promised by society is illusory, it is a lie; for it is licence not liberty. We, men and women of today, are not free, for we create burdens and chains for ourselves by our sin. Abortion does not free women from being mothers, for only a mother can have an abortion; it does not free men from becoming fathers, it makes them absent fathers. Abortion is not a sign of freedom, but of our captivity and slavery to sin.
Isaiah speaks to a rebellious people craving worldly security at the expense of their covenant with Almighty God. A once mighty and faithful people were broken. It is in this moment that God uses Isaiah to announce that he has come “to bring good news to the poor” and “to bind up the broken- hearted”. For those women and men that mourn children, that wear invisible sackcloth and hidden ashes for those whose lives have been ended, we are here to be instruments of Christ’s mercy and love; we are to assist the Divine Physician in his work of healing souls. But the Prophet Isaiah not only promises healing and freedom, he promises that those who mourned and suffered “may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified”.
Christ’s touch and grace bring healing to us, but also bring transformation. In Eastertide we remember that when Christ rose from the dead and showed himself to his disciples, he still bore the marks of his Passion and Death, but those marks which showed weakness and defeat in natural, earthly terms show victory and strength through the transformation of grace and the power of the Resurrection. Wounds and scars become, in Christ, shining medallions of God’s mercy.
We know also, though, that abortion does not only hurt the individual mothers, fathers and babies involved. There are family members who mourn and grieve, there are doctors and medical professionals whose role of healing the body is perverted, there are legislators and administrators who deny the good to promote evil in its place. In truth, a society that promotes the abortion of just one child is corrupt and depraved, a society that promotes it on the industrial scale we have today is a culture of death.
You might think that, as a priest, this is something that I know in only an intellectual or philosophical way. Of course, I have never been in the position of a mother or father contemplating abortion or having to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, or a child with a severe disability. However, in the course of my ministry I have held in my hands and cradled in my arms the mortal remains of an aborted child: something that will never leave me as long as I shall live. As a society, as a people, as a nation we have all been wounded by abortion. This must change. This will change.
It may seem almost impossible that this culture of death could be transformed into a culture of life, but nothing is impossible to Almighty God. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 outlawed the international slave trade 160 years before the passage of the Abortion Act in Parliament. This was followed in 1833 by the Slavery Abolition Act which passed its second reading unopposed. Those brave men and women fought for their fellow human beings who were denied a voice; they did so with courage, conviction and Christian hope. They fought against the vested powers of industry and commerce, against the settled opinions of the powerful, and they were victorious. The Prophet Isaiah tells us that
They shall build up the ancient ruins;
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.
The “they” Isaiah speaks of is us. Our cities lie in moral ruins, our generations have been devastated, but in Christ great things can be done, and great things will be done. William Wilberforce saw the passage of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act just a week before his death. In our lifetime we hope, pray and work that the horrors of abortion will be eradicated from our land as slavery was in previous centuries; that God’s healing grace will bring us all from mourning into joy and that our ruined cities and broken hearts will be rebuilt and healed.
When preparing my thoughts I happened to be listening to “Jupiter” from The Planets. A movement of this is best known as the melody of the hymn “I vow to thee my country”. Its final stanza speaks of how and why we fight:
And there’s another country I’ve heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to
them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds
increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her
paths are peace.
Fr Pius Collins is a Canon Regular of the Order of Prémontré. This is an edited version of an address given at a Prayer Vigil for the 55th anniversary of the implementation of the Abortion Act organised by March For Life UK on April 27, 2023.
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