The Power of the Picture
Just the other day I had an individual send her first picture of her first grandchild to me. It was an ultrasound scan, which nobody thinks unusual anymore. How many times have I spoken to colleges, universities, and high schools and have had to change my approach completely from 20, 30, or 40 years ago now? One of the very first things I ask them is, “Who has their first picture?” and when I explain that I mean an ultrasound picture, all the hands go up. Then my question is, “Was that you or is that somebody else?” In effect, if we take into account the reality that it is that person’s first picture then we have to ask ourselves, what is the worth of that person? We’ve all seen the ultrasound ads on the subways, whether for quitting smoking or quitting alcohol use while pregnant, and nobody gives them a second look. They become so standard, but we know what they say.
As part of the pro-life movement, we need to be very clear that we’re into a different phase in our own time. As Marshall McLuhan said, “we are in the post-alphabetic society”. That is a society where the visual or the power of the image is everything.
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Building the House of the Lord Together
God can use anything. He can use us in ways that we could never imagine. He uses the things of the world, not just to advance us, but to advance His cause. Who built that stable in Bethlehem anyway? What unknown hands shaped the spot where the Saviour would shelter at his most vulnerable time. Whoever cut those logs could not have known that they would foreshadow different beams 33 years later that would be the cause of our salvation. It is by the things of this world that God points us to the next. This Christmas I would like to remind you that each year brings its own challenges and this year it is no different for the staff and executive at Priests for Life Canada.
It is through your generosity that we have been able to speak to seminarians in Western Canada to rally support, but also to engage in continuing formation of these seminarians. It’s essential for us to speak with these young men who are pursuing their vocations to help form them in the ongoing Culture of Life and to sustain them in what will be a central battle of their priestly ministry. I am encouraged by their zeal.
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The Elephant in the Room
I wouldn’t wish having to watch the presidential or vice-presidential debates on anybody, but if you did watch them, you may have noticed a serious absence when it came to the discussion of abortion. The American legal situation on abortion is in great flux. In the vice-presidential debate, you had a Catholic convert and a lapsed Catholic debating abortion, but they never spoke about what was really the elephant in the room which is the preborn child who is being killed by abortion. This is often the case because we don’t like to talk about the difficult questions.
Abortion is really a clash of absolutes - you have the health, concerns, or anxiety of the mother and the life of the preborn child. People don’t like to consider the harsh reality that every abortion kills a human life. Pope Francis, in a recent press conference, made the point yet again that abortion is always the taking of a human life.
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