Cardinal reflects on accusations, ridicule of those who defend helpless life

This is the text of Cardinal O'Connor's homily at Sunday Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral Nov. 1.

We note the presence of our good friends Jack and Lew Rudin. They are very fine Jewish men and great, great patrons of this city. They are the ones behind the New York City Marathon. It is a great thing that it is being run on the feast of All Saints because St. Paul reminds us, "I have run a good race. I have finished the course. I am prepared for my eternal reward."

Before reflecting on this feast, I would like to read a statement. Last Sunday from this pulpit, with some of you here present, I expressed my own outrage and that of the Church against the recent killing of a medical doctor for performing abortions. I said, quoting my own words:

"We are all outraged. The Church is outraged. The Church hopes and prays that such stupid, tragic killings will end. The Church denounces all such killings and condemns all such killings. No matter how many abortions are performed, two wrongs do not make a right, 2,000 wrongs do not make a right."

Simultaneously, I said that St. Thomas More, who gave himself to be executed by King Henry VIII rather than renounce Church teaching, would join me not only in my condemnation of the killing, but also in calling for an end to partial-birth abortion--the killing of a baby, literally during the act of being born.

I, therefore, wasn't quite sure whether I should be personally outraged or simply saddened to read in the press an allegation by a so-called "abortion-rights" leader that Pope John Paul II and I were, in essence, responsible for the killing of the abortion doctor. I quote from the Daily News:

"...religious leaders who oppose abortion--such as Pope John Paul, Cardinal O'Connor and Protestant preacher James Dobson--have made hatred blossom among their followers.

"Without these leaders spewing hate, there would be no antiabortion movements. We're not saying Cardinal O'Connor pulls the trigger; Cardinal O'Connor is accountable for these religious followers who do pull the trigger."

That, I think, is a rather strong statement. As I said, I wasn't quite sure whether I should be personally outraged or simply saddened. I decided not to be outraged, not to take any action, and to be only saddened. Sad for our country. Sad because of what our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, calls the "culture of death." Sad over the way in which everything that we used to stand for, it seems to me, is under attack. Standing up for the powerless, the vulnerable, for example. Even apart from the teachings of the Catholic Church, when I was a youngster in public school almost 70 years ago, the teacher in civics class used to quote frequently from Thomas Jefferson, who back in March of 1809 said:

"The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the just and only legitimate object of good government."

But the more I thought about my being accused of being the man behind the person who killed the abortion doctor, the more I wondered if this accusation was really aimed at me or those public officeholders and those campaigning for public office who are pro-life. Was this, is this, a ploy, immediately before elections all over the United States, to make pro-life public officeholders or pro-life contenders for public office appear to be a threat to freedom and human life instead of defenders of life?

Until not too many years ago, who would have imagined that a candidate for public office would be subject to strident ridicule merely because he or she voiced respect for vulnerable human life. Until recently who would have thought that candidates who believed and publicly professed that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable right to life could expect to be scorned and condemned. Yet in today's electoral climate, one must ask if it is any wonder that many, many candidates seem to be afraid to proclaim their support for human life. What is in it for them? Unborn children can not make campaign contributions and, if they survive, they won't be able to vote for 18 years.

Categorically I do not, the Church does not, the Church will not, I will not recommend that any person of any religious persuasion vote for or against any candidate for public office, whatever his or her religious persuasion, anywhere in the United States. I do not recommend anyone in this cathedral or anyone who learns what I have said here, to vote for or against anyone in particular. That is completely your choice; that is completely your conscience. I have been appalled, however, by the ridicule and abuse that have been heaped upon pro-life candidates during a number of current campaigns in various parts of our country. One Catholic politician from a state far from here is even quoted as having excoriated his bishop for having criticized him for voting for partial-birth abortion.

Common decency requires that we respect and be tolerant of the deeply felt convictions of others. Such fairness and intolerance have not been universally demonstrated, however. Again, in no way am I remotely suggesting that anyone vote for anyone in particular and especially in no way am I remotely suggesting that anyone vote for a candidate who simply calls himself or herself pro-life. One can call himself or herself pro-life and be a very evil person. One could call oneself pro-life and call for a return to slavery. One could be a racist. One could have a hatred for the poor. One could be engaged in pedophilia, child abuse or wife abuse and still claim, "I am pro-life." That would be a total contradiction. Categorically, again, this is not a call to vote for or against anyone. We can vote our informed consciences, whether we are Democrat, Republican, Liberal or Conservative. The Church asks nothing more. The Church asks nothing less. Common sense could ask nothing more or nothing less. Thank God it will soon be over.

R.H. Benson said something early in this century:

"When a man falls in love suddenly, his own center changes. Up to that point he has probably referred everything to himself, considered things from his own point of view. When he falls in love, the whole thing is shifted; he becomes part of the circumference, perhaps even the whole circumference, and someone else becomes the center. For example, things he hears and sees are referred instantly to this other person; he ceases to be acquisitive. His entire life, if it is really love, is pulled sideways; he does not desire to get, but to give. That is why it is the noblest thing in the world."

But what he says of a man who has fallen in love is of course true of a woman. The other becomes the center of the universe. Love brings about, therefore, a remarkable wholeness. We no longer feel like half a person, a quarter of a person. Now we are truly fulfilled. It is interesting that we use that term. We become full when we love. I don't know the truth or falsehood of this story, but I read recently this particular story:

A crippled woman left her crutches and ran up a flight of stairs to rescue her 3-year-old daughter when fire threatened to trap the child in an upstairs bedroom. The mother, injured in a car crash two years previously, had been unable to walk without crutches ever since the accident. She was in the kitchen when she suddenly discovered that the house was on fire. Realizing that the life of her little daughter was at stake, she momentarily forgot her own physical handicap. She rushed to the upper floor, grabbed the sleeping child and carried her to safety. Preposterous? I don't think so. That is what love does.

I met a very lovely woman on an airplane recently. I can speak of her freely because no one here would have the slightest idea who she is. She impressed me immediately. She just seemed to be a good and gentle person. As I talked with her on a rather lengthy trip I discovered that she had married her "Prince Charming." She was truly deeply and unconditionally in love with him and he with her. She talked about the difference it made in her life. Everything was given new meaning and then, after 11 very short years in which she says everyday was an experience of love given to each other, he died of cancer. It is a poignant love story. I urged her to write about it to remind all of us of the power of love. But God didn't leave her alone. She told me about priest friends representing this Church of Love. They came to her aid, in her words, day and night. They never left her. They helped her to recognize there is even a higher form of love. When I talked with her I felt this woman is being healed, which means what? She is being made whole once again.

St. Bernard, a fascinating individual who lived from the year 1090 to 1153, was 63 when he died. He entered the Trappists but became a very public figure. They would not leave him alone simply to pray. He was engaged in all sorts of external activities, some fruitful, some not fruitful. He was a real man. He had a temper. He could get impatient. He could do erratic things. Sometimes, he exercised poor judgment. For example, he passionately preached the Second Crusade--urged people to go on the Crusade, and the Crusade was a disaster. Yet this was a man who loved: He loved God, he loved everyone. Permit me to quote from him:

"Love is sufficient of itself, it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it. Of all of the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it may be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him."

It comes as no surprise that, as you are aware, in the third and final book, the longest book of the "Divine Comedy," Dante, in his description of Paradise, uses St. Bernard as his guide who takes him through Paradise ultimately to the throne of God. The work concludes with a postscript, as it were, by St. Bernard:

"What shall then give delight [in heaven, that is, in Paradise] shall not be so much that our wants are put to rest nor that our bliss is gained, but that God's will shall be visibly fulfilled in us and concerning us; which also is what we implore day by day in prayer, when we say Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth."

In other words, the wonder of Paradise for St. Bernard is that we become truly whole persons. It is an immensely important reflection on this feast of All Saints. This, it seems to me, is precisely what a saint is. A saint is an individual who has permitted his or her entire self, all his or her potential, to be fully actualized by Almighty God so they can love fearlessly. We can love courageously. We can love unselfishly. We can generously. We feel so whole, such entirety in ourselves, with God, in our relationship with others, and we have no fear, no sense of insufficiency or inadequacy. We are prepared to run any risk in the name of love because we feel we are true human persons. It's tremendously important to feel truly human.

St. Benedict, the great saint usually considered to be the founder of monasticism in the West, said to his sister, Scholastica, when she asked him, "How do I become a saint?" "To be a saint, be yourself." Not somebody else and not inadequate, not only half a human being, a portion of a human being, but everything that God intended you to be. And that is possible only by way of love.

Read Webster on holiness, on what it means to be holy, and you will find almost precisely the same definition in Webster under holy as you do under whole. Each comes from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning precisely the same thing. The Anglo-Saxon word is halig and it means "whole, good, complete." That is what it is to be holy.

Periodically I have a Mass here in German in this cathedral for those who are German speaking or immersed in German things. It always strikes me when I get to the Sanctus, the Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts. In German it's Heilig, heilig, heilig, which means, "O great wholeness, great oneness." To be holy is to be whole. Many of the synonyms given in the dictionary, for both holy and whole, are precisely the same. What is it to be holy? To be one with God, totally united with him, caught up in the Trinity in intimate union with Christ in whose image and likeness we were made. That is when we feel truly at home, when God's love just floods through our very beings. We feel at home. We feel safe and secure, we feel whole.

Pope John Paul II puts it in his own way in his latest and absolutely magnificent encyclical, the encyclical on the relationship between "Faith and Reason." He says:

"I ask everyone to look more deeply at man, [or at the human being] whom Christ has saved in the mystery of his love, and at the human being's unceasing search for truth and meaning. Different philosophical systems have lured people into believing that they are their own absolute master, able to decide their own destiny and future in complete autonomy, trusting only in themselves and their own powers. But this can never be the grandeur of the human being, who can find fulfillment only in choosing to enter the truth, to make a home under the shade of Wisdom and dwell there. Only within this horizon of truth will people understand their freedom in its fullness and their call to know and love God as the supreme realization of their true self."

That's what God is. Yet it doesn't mean that we can become whole by attempting to fulfill ourselves in this culture that we have created, this "culture of death." We can not become whole in a culture of materialism, in a culture with so much junk on television, in movies, so much crassness, so much sordidness, so much self-absorption. This is exactly the opposite of wholeness. There is grave danger that we can permit our culture to dehumanize us rather than help us become human.

It is strange and totally countercultural. We have been given the formula in today's Gospel of the true meaning of holiness, of wholeness. "Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the sorrowing; blessed are the lonely; blessed are they that hunger and thirst for holiness; blessed are they who show mercy; blessed are the single hearted; blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who are persecuted for holiness' sake; blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of slander against you because of me." Not a single one of these attributes is taught by our culture. But they are the charter of the saints. Be a saint, be yourself.