By
Jonquil Frankham
PHILADELPHIA
October 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com)
– In a pastoral letter
released yesterday, Justin Cardinal
Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia,
calls abortion
the “transcending issue
of our day.”
The release of the pastoral
letter comes only days after
Cardinal Rigali released a statement
in his capacity as Chair of
the Committee for Pro-Life Activities
for the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops (USCCB),
in which he observed that
Catholics are “morally
obliged” to oppose Roe
v. Wade (See ).
In
his most recent letter Cardinal
Rigali drives home the point
that the grave immortality of
abortion is not a revealed truth
known only to Christians, but
rather a truth that is universally
accessible to all, regardless
of religious background. Because
the dignity of human life is
written on the human heart,
he says, “no one …
most especially, no Catholic,
can ever say: ‘I did not
know [abortion is evil]’.”
But
despite this fact, he laments,
America nevertheless supports
abortion in its “most
extreme and horrific forms.”
For
this reason Cardinal Rigali
warns that while a Catholic
“owes loyalty to the communities
of which he is a part,”
this loyalty must be subject
to a higher law - the natural
and revealed laws of moral conduct.
Throughout history governments
have sanctioned grave evils,
such as the Holocaust, slavery,
and racial segregation, a fact
that proves that governments
cannot necessarily be depended
upon to protect the dignity
of the human person.
Like
these intrinsic evils, the bishop
states unequivocally, abortion
cannot ever be condoned, even
in circumstances where it has
been made acceptable or "legal."
Cardinal
Rigali writes: “The transcending
issue of our day is the intentional
destruction of innocent human
life, as in abortion. We wish
with all our hearts that no
candidate and no party were
advocating this heinous act
against the human person. However,
since it is a transcending issue,
and even supported in its most
extreme and horrific forms,
we must proclaim time and time
again that no intrinsic evil
can ever be supported in any
way, most especially when it
concerns the gravest of all
intrinsic evils: the taking
of an innocent life.”
If
the right to life is not defended
as paramount, the Cardinal says,
the cry for all other “rights”
crumbles, rendered “illusory”:
“Above all, the common
outcry, which is justly made
on behalf of human rights —
for example, the right to health,
to home, to work, to family,
to culture — is false
and illusory if the right to
life, the most basic and fundamental
right and the condition for
all other personal rights, is
not defended with maximum determination.”
Like
those Catholics who risked their
lives to end the atrocities
of slavery, racial segregation,
and the holocaust, today’s
Catholics, he adjures, must
be willing to respond “with
the same generosity of body
and heart, and the same courage.”
“When
by the most barbaric means,
unworthy of any civilized people,
the brain of a child is sucked
out of his or her head by a
vacuum, God thunders: ‘This
is a child!’”
“When
a baby is left to die of exposure
on a shelf because of a failed
abortion, and this is considered
a ‘right’ by any
leader, God, the Source of all
law and authority, thunders:
‘This is a child!’”
Cardinal
Rigali’s pastoral letter
can be found here: