A Culture of Life

Last week saw thousands of pro-life advocates descend upon Washington, D.C., for the 51st annual March for Life, the second since the end of the Roe v. Wade era.

The event kicked off a year that will also see the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, and the sight of thousands on the National Mall staunchly invested in the issue of abortion access in America might be a good image of what’s to come: abortion promises to be a central issue this election cycle, with the Biden campaign, for instance, hitting battleground states with high octane abortion-focused ads this week.

But the March for Life may also be a good image of the disposition Christians would do well to maintain in the midst of the controversy these months may bring. Sometimes there’s a tendency to think that cultural influence happens when Christians translate their principles into a congenial and diplomatic message – when they seek common ground with popular opinion. And certainly, Christians are always and everywhere obligated to speak and act with genuine charity. But Christian principles also have and very often do stand against popular opinion. Bishop Barron’s latest homily reminds readers that ideas like the dignity of the individual and the principle of equality, for example – values that seem unquestionable in the West – came onto a social scene that was, as it stood, utterly opposed to them, embroiled in civilizational conquest and built at the hands of slave labor. The source of the great relief Christianity has so often gifted to cultures has been the utter distinctiveness of the truths it proclaims, not its congeniality to what we already think, and that remains true: a culture of death does not need to be negotiated with so much as ushered into the clear and decisive alternative – an utterly distinct culture of life.

So Bishop Barron offered the following encouragement and admonition, one we may return to with invincible joy in the Gospel, sincere love for our neighbor, and an easy trust in Christ as ads and rhetoric fill our purview in the months to come: “What is the needful thing?” he writes, “Christians must raise their voices in protest against the culture of death. And they must do so by claiming and publicly proclaiming the values that come from their faith. For too long, believers have been cowed into silence by the insinuation that religion is a ‘private’ matter. Nonsense. Christian values have informed our society from the beginning and have provided the coherent moral framework that most of us still take for granted. Now is not the time for quietude. It is time for us to shout our convictions from the rooftops.”

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