Blog | Subscribe | Free Trial | Contact Us | Cart | Donate | Planned Giving
Log In | Search
facebook
rss
twitter
  • CURRENT
    • Winter 2025 PDF
    • WINTER 2025 HTML
    • THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW HTML COLLECTION PAGE
    • NEWSworthy: What’s Happening and What It Means to You
    • Blog
    • Pastoral Reflections
    • About Us
  • DINNER
    • GREAT DEFENDER OF LIFE DINNER 2024: NEW MEDIA ADDED!
    • Great Defender of Life 50th Anniversary Dinner Ticket 2024
    • Great Defender of Life 50th Anniversary Dinner TABLE for TEN Ticket 2024
    • Great Defender of Life 2024 Young Adult / Pregnancy Center Staffer Tickets
    • HOST COMMITTEE Great Defender of Life Dinner 2024
    • DINNER JOURNAL ADVERTISING 2024
    • ARCHIVE: GREAT DEFENDER OF LIFE DINNER 2023
  • ARCHIVE
    • Archive Spotlight
    • ISSUES IN HTML FORMAT
  • LEGACY
    • Planned Giving: Wills, Trusts, and Gifts of Stock
  • SHOP
    • Your Cart: Shipping is ALWAYS Free!

A Pastor's Reflections

2 Comments

When the Church is silent, we support the killing of the vulnerable (When the Church is Silent, #9 of 10)

Rev. W. Ross Blackburn
church
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

 

You shall not bear false witness (Exod 20:16).

 

“Verbicide must precede homocide.” The sentence is from Paul Greenberg, an American journalist. What he means is that, in order to do the unthinkable, we must convince ourselves that the unthinkable is acceptable.  We do this with language.  Rather than speaking of an unborn child, we speak of a fetus. Killing a child is one thing.  Removing the “contents of the uterus” or the “product of conception”—well, that’s another matter altogether. These terms, abounding in the language of abortion rhetoric, make an abortion sound like cleaning out one’s garage. Even the word “abortion” is a euphemism, focusing one’s attention on a procedure, rather than a slain child or a wounded mother.

On the other side of life, we have “death with dignity.” My dictionary defines dignity as “the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.” But that is not what supporters of euthanasia mean by dignity. Dignity in the so-called “right to die” movement means being able to bathe or feed oneself and not having to use a bedpan. The idea that somehow dignity is wrapped up in whether or not a person needs help is a perversion of the idea of dignity. But dignity is a powerful word, and a powerful word is needed if we are going to justify the practice of getting rid of those whose existence impinges upon the rest of us in uncomfortable ways.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Abortion and euthanasia thrive on false witness. If fact, they require it. After all, who is against choice? The name of the pro-choice movement is shrewd, to be sure, particularly in its reluctance (sometimes even refusal) to mention the choice it promotes. After all, “reproductive choice” sounds not nearly as troubling as homicide or murder, just as the language of “disarticulating the calvarium” of an unborn child is more soothing than “beheading.” And who is against dignity? Perhaps if we understood dignity as that which we recognize in another, rather than as something that we grant to others if they fulfill certain requirements, we might begin to see the image of God in one another, regardless of age or ability.

The call to the Church? We must speak. Our silence allows the world to define the terms and therefore shape how we think about the things of life. Left to itself, the world will convince us that we are not the image of God but rather the complex cellular end of an unguided process of evolution. If that is what we are, then it becomes difficult—in the end impossible— to argue why we ultimately matter, and particularly why the unborn, the elderly, the handicapped, and the otherwise vulnerable matter. Furthermore, we must learn to speak clearly and plainly, with boldness and without euphemism. In other words, we must learn to speak truthfully. Speaking of the efforts of the International Justice Mission to stem human trafficking and slavery, Gary Haugen writes,

I am convinced that any serious contest with evil requires a painful confrontation with the truth. The greatest and most shameful regrets of history are always about the truth we failed to tell, the evil we failed to name. The greatest enemy in our struggle to stop oppression and injustice is always the insidious etiquette of silence.8

The etiquette of silence is a great temptation, for plain speech in the area of abortion is, at the least, socially and relationally awkward, and at the most, dangerous. Yet, speaking in a manner that obscures truth is nothing other than bearing false witness. And, just like it was in the Old Testament, false witness can get people killed.

A truthful witness saves lives… (Prov 14:25).

_________________________________________________________________________________________

8 Gary A. Haugen, Terrify No More (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005), ix. To learn more about IJM, visit https://www.ijm.org.

 

 

 

 

530 people have visited this page. 1 have visited this page today.
About the Author
Rev. W. Ross Blackburn

Rev. W. Ross Blackburn, who lives with his family in Tennessee, has been a pastor in the Anglican Church in North America for 20 years. He has a PhD (Old Testament) from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and has written articles for the Human Life Review and Touchstone, as well as educational materials for Anglicans for Life. Rev. Blackburn and his wife Lauren, married for 31 years, have shared homeschooling responsibility for their five children. 

bio updated April 2024

Social Share

  • google-share

2 Comments

  1. Pingback: MONDAY EDITION – Big Pulpit

  2. Donald Link January 20, 2019 at 12:32 pm Reply

    Another form of silence is by clergy who refuse to condemn those in authority, not necessarily by name, who actively support and promote abortion. Each Church has available, whether used or not, a means of expressing condemnation of extreme personal evil. Whether it be formal excommunication, shunning or simply removal from a position of influence or respect such as deacon, usher, elder etc. If a Church does nothing, it is tacitly cooperating with evil and we know what Jesus said about the lukewarm.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Comments will not be posted until approved by a moderator in an effort to prevent spam and off-topic responses.

*
*

captcha *

Get the Human Life Review

subscribe to HLR
The-Human-Life-Foundation
DONATE TODAY!

Recent Posts

IVF: The Frozen Sleep Evading Time

07 May 2025

Report: "The Abortion Pill Harms Women"

05 May 2025

New York Pushes Asissted Suicide

30 Apr 2025

CURRENT ISSUE

Alexandra DeSanctis Anne Conlon Anne Hendershott Bernadette Patel Brian Caulfield Christopher White Clarke D. Forsythe Colleen O’Hara Connie Marshner David Mills David Poecking David Quinn Diane Moriarty Dr. Donald DeMarco Edward Mechmann Edward Short Ellen Wilson Fielding Fr. Gerald E. Murray George McKenna Helen Alvaré Jacqueline O’Hara Jane Sarah Jason Morgan Joe Bissonnette John Grondelski Kristan Hawkins Madeline Fry Schultz Maria McFadden Maffucci Marvin Olasky Mary Meehan Mary Rose Somarriba Matt Lamb Nat Hentoff Nicholas Frankovich Peter Pavia Rev. George G. Brooks Rev. Paul T. Stallsworth Rev. W. Ross Blackburn Stephen Vincent Tara Jernigan Ursula Hennessey Victor Lee Austin Vincenzina Santoro Wesley J. Smith William Murchison

Shop 7 Weeks Coffee--the Pro-Life Coffee Company!
Support 7 Weeks Coffee AND the Human Life Foundation!
  • Issues
  • Human Life Foundation Blog
  • About Us
  • Free Trial Issue
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Planned Giving
  • Annual Human Life Foundation Dinner

Follow Us On Twitter

Follow @HumanLifeReview

Find Us On Facebook

Human Life Review/Foundation

Search our Website

Contact Information

The Human Life Foundation, Inc.
The Human Life Review
271 Madison Avenue, Room 1005
New York, New York 10016
(212) 685-5210

Copyright (c) The Human Life Foundation.