Americanism and abortion (from my 2003 article).

Pope Leo XIII did not have abortion in mind when he condemned Americanism as a heresy and a threat to the Catholic Faith. It is ironic that if he were still alive, he would see one of the most gruesome aspects of "Americanism" that has been perpetrated upon this nation since 1973 when the United States Supreme Court said, from that point in time, that a woman had a right to kill her pre-born child - legally - through some of the most ingenious and heinous methods imaginable. This "right" to kill a pre-born child, the advocates say, is somehow guaranteed by the very same Constitution that forbids it!

In the preamble to the founding document, we read: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

A more perfect Union?  How can there be a more perfect Union when we are allowed to kill off those who will make up the future Union?

Justice? What Justice is there in killing the pre-born for economic or social stigma or for any reason for that matter?

Domestic Tranquility? What has abortion wrought to the very parents who kill their offspring?

Provide for the common defense? With the killing of the pre-born, who will be left to protect an aging population from threat - real or imagined?

Promote the general Welfare? There will be no "welfare" to promote if no one is left…

And secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our POSTERITY? If we are allowed to kill those who make up the future - our posterity - there will be no one to enjoy the "blessings of liberty."

Let us now look at the Declaration of Independence and see what it says regarding government: "…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." Does anyone not think that the killing of 60-plus-million pre-born children since 1973, many more times than the holocaust of World War II, is an abuse and a diabolical mark of absolute despotism? Should not the law enforcement and military help the citizen to overthrow this killing machine and establish a new and a more benevolent, God-fearing form of government? Why is this not being done?

The oft-quoted section of the Declaration of Independence nullifies the actions of the Supreme Court of 1973, it reads: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are LIFE, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Notice that the first of the unalienable (inalienable) rights is LIFE. Without life, there can be no other rights! The right to life has been trampled upon by a Supreme Court that is out of control. This once august body established as a system to determine whether a law passed by the state legislatures or Congress meets the criteria of Constitutionality, has, since the 1930's, taken on a life of its own - not to interpret the law, but to MAKE them! Is it any wonder why it would create the "constitutional" guarantee: the "right to choose"?

 At the beginning of this discourse, I mentioned that Pope Leo XIII condemned Americanism as a heresy and a threat to the Catholic Faith. In his encyclical: Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, promulgated on January 22, 1899, he specifically cautioned and called into question, the then prevailing attitude of the American bishops regarding their relationships with members of other "faiths" and their willingness not to promote what is true Catholic doctrine or to water-down that doctrine in an effort to "go along to get along" - my phraseology, not the Pope's.   It must be admitted that by all accounts – as history has so proven – the American Church prelates all but ignored Leo’s admonishments regarding Americanism.   The consequences of this disobedience have been titanic.   For if the bishops and archbishops from the nineteenth, to our present century had followed Pope Leo XIII’s – and then Pope Pius X’s – stern warnings and condemnations, and had lived up to their obligations of guiding the flock to Christ, regardless of the consequences, the heinous scourge of abortion would have never occurred.   Logically, numerous other maladies would not have gotten a foothold nor hold such prominence as they do today: e.g., immorality, rampant homosexuality, divorce, etc.

Now that we have selfishly considered ourselves in this matter, what of the pre-born?

What is their fate when they are killed?

 Are we not supposed to know, love, and serve God in this life in order to be happy with Him in the next?

 How can the children who are killed in the womb fulfill this basic tenet of our existence?

 The answer to these questions is grimly simple: they are forever denied the Face of their Creator.   “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”

Gene DeLalla