A Day of Penance
I was reminded in the weekly bulletin of St. Mary’s on the Avenue, that “the [Catholic] bishops of the United States have designated Saturday, January 22, as a special Day of Penance for the Pro-life cause. They have designated this as a day for all Catholics in the United States to either abstain from meat (as on Fridays in Lent) or to perform some other Act of Penance (saying the Rosary, Stations of the Cross, etc.) in reparation to God for the sins against life committed in our country and as an act of prayer for the protection of all human life.”
January 22 is the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and in the intervening 38 years there have been millions of abortions. What does it say about a society where is it a crime to harm the egg of a vulture (the California condor) but it is okay to abort a human fetus? Some say that we don’t know if a fetus is a life – that is “above our pay-grade” to know when life begins. In America there is a presumption of innocence. Why not a presumption of life – especially when death could be the alternative?