DR. JACK R. VAN ENS, AUTHOR

CREATIVE GROWTH INC.

9745 W. 77 TH DRIVE

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E-mail: vanensfam@juno.com

Web site: www.thelivinghistory.com

BE PRO-PERSON AND WIN THE ABORTION WAR

Gary Wills, an ardent Roman Catholic and a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian, argues convincingly against U.S. Catholic bishops who lead pro-life forces in the abortion wars. Wills, in his book Head and Heart: American Christianities (2007), claims the pro-life adamancy agaianst abortion lacks biblical proof, isn't supported by Christian tradition, and that life begins at conception is void of logical consistency.

Evidently, he isn't a lone Roman Catholic voice howling absurdities in the wilderness. Exit polls show Barack Obama won 54 percent of the Roman Catholic vote. Obama's stance on abortion doesn't bother these Christians. He promises to make abortion rare, as long as legal safeguards in unusual circumstances remain legal. A majority of Roman Catholic voters find it ethically right to vote for Obama. He's a sincere orthodox Christian who pledges to reduce abortions. He wants to protect rights of persons, whether in the womb or as citizens. He believes in a pro-person morality about abortion.

This past Veterans Day our nation's Roman Catholic bishops shot back at "backsliding" Catholics who support Obama. These prelates ratified making the anti-abortion fight their #1 priority. Some bishops have seriously considered withdrawing Communion from believers who voted for Obama.

Gary Wills dissects the bishops' flimsy arguments. He shows how they are based on a tired moral philosophy out of joint with the Bible, Christian tradition and coherent thinking.

God oddly revealed His moral will. Instead of parading it obviously before us, like a prop plane flying an advertising banner along the beach for sun-worshippers to see, God worked indirectly to convey right from wrong. He used ancient history's filter through which He poured divine ethical revelation. Doesn't Christmas remind us of this indirect way in which God works? Who would guess that God might by-pass obvious publicity? He opted to secretly sponsor a Jewish baby named Jesus, the "Immanuel" Jews hoped would interrupt history as "God with us."

By using ancient history to convey His will, God accommodated Himself to Mary and Joseph's limited medical knowledge. They lived in a world that only experienced natural abortions called miscarriages. Biblical writers never intended to issue an authoritative medical textbook about abortion for 21 st century readers.

Roman Catholic bishops sound as if the Bible is full of anti-abortion passages. They habitually use a debater's trick. Assume the premise is true without proving it. Bishops declare their premise, that abortion is murder, is taught in the Bible. In the Ten Commandments we are warned, "You shall not kill" ( Exodus 20:13). Therefore, abortion is murder, conclude the bishops. What's missing in this faulty thinking? NOWHERE IN THE BIBLE DO WE READ LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION.

"Abortion is not treated in the Ten Commandments-or anywhere in Jewish Scripture," Wills rightly contends. "It is not treated in the Sermon on the Mount-or anywhere in the New Testament. It is not treated in the early creeds. It is not treated in the early ecumenical councils." The Bible is silent about abortion.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, a theologian bishops like to quote, doesn't accept their assumption that a person is created at conception. Aquinas used sophisticated arguments he lifted from Aristotle, differing between "vegetative" life at conception and "intellectual life" when God chose to plant a soul within a person gestating in a womb. Boiled down, St. Aquinas issues a devastating critique of the bishops' assumption that at conception a person is created. He denied that personhood is conveyed at the moment of fertilization by semen.

"The question is not whether the fetus is human life," writes Wills, "but whether it is a human person, and when it becomes one. ...Thomas Aquinas said that the fetus did not become a person until God infused the intellectual soul. A functioning brain is not present in the fetus until the end of the sixth month at the earliest (what Roe called the beginning of the third tri-semester). Only then can the cerebral cortex process information from various senses."

BELIEVING ABORTION IS MURDER LACKS LOGICAL CONSISTENCY

Let's suppose the Roman Catholic bishops are correct. All abortions are murderous acts. Inconsistency mars their argument because bishops don't act as if it's true that abortion is murder. If true, why don't they press for murder charges against a mother who aborts? Why don't they prosecute in court an orthodox Christian like Gary Wills for acting as an accomplice to this "murder" because he allows for abortion?

The bishops aren't consistent in their application of the principle that abortion is a murderous act. "... the evangelical community," writes Wills, "which generally believes in the death penalty, does not call for her execution [the mother guilty according to them of infanticide, killing her own child]." Nor do they throw in jail her defense attorney.