St. Andrew the Apostle

Over the course of America's 245-year existence, our democratic-republic form of government and our love for freedom has been a beacon for much of the world. 

We cannot ignore, however, that we have also had some dark moments in our history. For generations, enshrined in our Constitution, we enslaved other human beings. It took 90 years for that to be abolished, and thank God that it was. 

I had the great blessing of growing up in the Chicago area, in a diverse neighborhood. My best friend was a boy named Richey Williams. We played together every day for years. I was at his home; he was at my home. What I didn't realize at the time, or at least it wasn't important to me, was that Richey was black. Had the Supreme Court in 1954 not overturned Plessy v Ferguson from 58 years prior, Richey and I would have been forced to attend different schools and other "separate but equal" facilities as enshrined by "settled law" in the constitution.

For 49 years, "settled law" has been used to similarly deny another class of people the most basic of human rights. The right to life. Now, thanks be to God, our great nation has once again corrected a grave error and unborn children have the possibility, in every State, to be viewed as human beings and treated as such, deserving of rights, especially the right to live. 

We now have the opportunity as Catholic Christians to continue to build a culture of life. Unborn children are exactly that; they’re babies, they're little human beings. We not only have the Church's teaching on our side, but we also have science.  Since the Roe decision, we have learned that a child's DNA is established at conception. A heartbeat can be detected at only 6 weeks and the child can feel pain as early as 12 weeks. We also have nearly 50 years of experience dealing with the physical and emotional trauma on mothers who have chosen to abort their children.

Our western society has been sliding toward Gomorrah for decades now. The overturning of Roe by the Supreme Court made me proud to be an American, where the right to live, for even our youngest citizens, is now left to the people of each State. Let us pray we will remember the underlying truth that every single person created is not only an American citizen deserving of the right to live, but also a sacred creation of God himself.

As soon as the Catholic Church was allowed to publicly exist in the early 4th century without fear of Roman persecution, Catholic Christians spared no effort to construct great churches appropriate for the house of God and the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries. These expressions of...

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