GUEST COMMENTARY
Election exposed hypocrisy, vindictiveness
By Father John Dietzen
Special Contributor
Before the 2004 campaign and election fade too far into history, there is one phenomenon of this election year that all of us who are devoted to the cause of respect for human life badly need acknowledge and reflect on.
I was moderator of our diocesan Respect Life Board for 35 years. Beginning more than 40 years ago, long before Roe v. Wade, I was intimately active in the pro-life movement locally and nationally. In those days, the 1960’s, we (several other diocesan and archdiocesan family life directors and I, from the east and west coasts and the midwest) became aware that a national abortion catastrophe, coordinated and led by Planned Parenthood and its Alan Guttmacher Institute, was imminent in the United States. We badly needed to develop an official and well-organized pro-active strategy.
Those involved at the time will remember that it was impossible to persuade more than a very few people, including a small handful of bishops, that the campaign to legalize abortion on demand was on track to succeed, which of course it did in l973.
In the years following, the pro-life movement found itself in one after another difficult and emotionally draining legislative and judicial battles. But, and this is the point, never before, in all those years, has the American Church experienced such bitterness and hostility on the part of many professedly pro-life people as these past months.
After my own diocesan paper printed a letter I wrote, suggesting that the life issues in the presidential election might not be as black-and-white as some claimed, I received a personal response from a fervently pro-life Catholic man. Purposefully referring to me as “Mr.” Dietzen, he said I would meet “God face to face with blood-soaked hands,” that I was promoting a culture of death, and that he would see me in hell.
This degree of personal abuse was not perhaps typical, but it was far from uncommon, especially toward those more directly involved in political life and candidacy. I say this not accusingly, but sadly, because of its negative impact on the credibility of our entire effort to defend and protect human life.
For the most part, I believe, comments during the campaign were thoughtful and reasoning. But that was not universally true. I am aware, of course, that those who tried to bring wider pro-life issues into the dialog were convenient vents for people enraged at those bishops who did not take the “correct” abortion stand regarding candidates and voting. After all, it is more seemly, and safer, to attack a priest than a bishop.
As a whole, the American bishops, in fact, gave the rest of us some good examples. They obviously differed with each other significantly on major theological and political positions and strategies. But, at least in their public discourse, they spoke of and with each other civilly and respectfully and, as one said, agreed to disagree.
Differing positions on important issues always need to be confronted and debated. But there should be room for charity somewhere. This past year in particular, some pro-life people have been so convinced they are absolutely right, not only on abortion itself but on all the details of political involvement and social and political strategies, they convince themselves that anyone who disagrees must be either ignorant or evil or both.
So it’s open season for whatever name-calling, violence or incivility they wish. I realize this is, in part, just another facet of the vulgarity and divisiveness that permeates so much of our society today. But we should be different, if we really expect to make a difference.
The negative attitude I’m speaking of is not, thankfully, the predominant spirit of the pro-life movement. But it is prevalent enough to be more than a little damaging to what we hope to accomplish.
St. Francis of Assisi once told his followers they should preach always, sometimes with words. When our actions contradict our words, the words, no matter how good or true, are useless.
When we who claim to be pro-life, ridicule and disparage those who disagree with us, when we continuously insult and ridicule them, openly despise them rather than love them, then we should not surprised, or blame someone else, when our message falls on deaf ears.
We are, and must show ourselves to be, better than that.
Father John Dietzen is a priest ministering in the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, and is the Catholic News Service columnist who writes Question Corner.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law