1/22/73

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade court ruling that legalized abortion in the U.S.

The U.S. Bishops have declared it to be a mandatory and national day of penance. Fasting is a most ancient expression of penance, but any form of self-denial wed to an intention of reparation to God and prayer for an end to what John Paul II called abominandum flagitium abortus - the unspeakable crime of abortion - serves well to fulfill our Bishops' mandate.

Even the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill weighed in recently; and in lieu of the Russian experience of abortion his words bear special gravity.

One particular news item came out yesterday that lays bare the all-too-often hidden horrors of our nation's oxymoronic commitment to secure the legal right to slay unborn human life.

We respond, like MLK, with the non-violent and prophetic force of love and truth. We may not remain silent. We cannot allow apathy to lull us into the moral sleep of apathy...

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged him on a tree.
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary.
They crowned him with a crown of thorns, red were his wounds,
and deep,
'Cause those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed him by.
They wouldn't touch a hair of him; they left him there to die.
'Cause folks had grown more tender now, they wouldn't cause him pain.
They simply passed on down the road, and left him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried, 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do'.
And still it rained a bitter rain, that drenched him through and through.
All the folks had gone by now, there was no one there to see,
As Jesus crawled against a wall, and sighed for Calvary.
- Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy