Receiving as Persons Those Deemed Non-Persons

    I wish to remind Christians that acknowledging the humanity of the unborn child is at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus. In the Roman Lectionary for Sunday, September 22, 2024, we encounter what could serve as the signature pro-life passage of the New...
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The Stubbornness of God

    All too often, prolifers have reason to feel as if our efforts have been futile. With Dobbs v. Jackson, we took one step out of the pro-choice hole our country has dug for itself, but since then it seems we’ve slipped three steps back. We’re barely two years past...
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Pro-Life Extravagance

    In recent years, I’ve become fascinated with the use of “extravagance” as an expression of Christian spirituality. While the word has negative connotations of waste or indulgence, Jesus often invokes fiscal extravagance positively: the forgiveness of great debts,...
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“I Have Called You Friends”

    “It is not enough that I succeed; everyone else must fail.” Google attributes this quote to a Mongol conqueror of the 12th and 13th centuries, though how Google would know baffles me: I can’t find one blog or social media post signed Genghis Khan. Seriously, the...
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The Good News of Life

  When Jesus says at his death, “It is finished” (also translated “It is accomplished”), he refers not only to his earthly ministry, but to the purpose for which man and woman were created: to love God and neighbor wholeheartedly for as long as we live. With Jesus’ victory...
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Christmas Sedition

    Christmas incites observers to contemplate the overthrow of the worldly order on behalf of the oppressed. The pro-life movement, in order to protect the unborn, sustains the seditious nature of Christmas and enlivens Christmas hope. Casting down the Mighty Sometime...
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A Pro-life Word to Save the Clergy

      The Sisters of Life are no strangers to readers of the Human Life Review. But they pretty much were to me before my Bishop invited one of them, Sr. Virginia Joy, to speak to the clergy and lay ministers of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. I had no idea what I...
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“You Don’t Owe Me Anything”

    I may flatter myself, but I like to think I’ve matured as a prolifer. and having learned some philosophy and theology,  I was pro-life out of moral principle. Now, however, I increasingly think that to be pro-life is to share in the extravagant love and mercy of God...
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Pro-Life as Promise, Not Pageant

    “That’s what I’m talking about.” English dictionaries cite this phrase as an idiom for approval, satisfaction, and vindication: Prior words or actions may have been inadequate, but this at last is how I want things to be. Because the pro-life movement has a political...
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Sheep and Shepherds

    In a rural stretch of East Africa, where I lived for two years, I once observed the fate of a flock of sheep without their shepherd. It was market day, and whoever was tending them had wandered off, distracted by the abundant produce temptingly spread across the...
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