Monroe County, MI - APOSTALATE DENIED: APATHY AND THE PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT, 15 OCTOBER, 2015
Written and delivered by Mike Church, a Speech for the Monroe County, Michigan, Right to Life Fund. On the way back to Louisiana, from Michigan, Mike was informed of his demise at SiriusXM Satellite radio. Read all about it and listen to the farewell show here.
APOSTALATE DENIED: APATHY AND THE PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT Remarks written for delivery to the Michigan Right to Life Campaign, 15 October, 2015 by Frederick Michael Augutstine Mary Church
apathy = “freedom from suffering,” from French apathie (16c.), from Latin apathia, from Greek apatheia “freedom from suffering, impassibility, want of sensation,” from apathes “without feeling, without suffering or having suffered,”
Using this definition of apathy is a bit of an irony in that it is mitigating the lethal suffering of the developing baby that pro-lifers are animated by. Having said that, perhaps a brief reflection on the meaning of the term pro-life is called for. When we say we are pro-life it is not the same thing as saying we are pro-ice cream. Ice cream is the delicious accident of the substances of cream, sugar and vanilla beans being combined utilizing the genius God gave us to concoct foods that are to our pleasure. But ice cream also requires intellect which of all the animals Man singularly possesses. The evidence for this can be seen in the simple process of asking your dog if he would like some ice cream. A rapid wag of the tail and a gleam in his eye gives you to know the answer is an excited “yes”! but it had never occurred to the dog to make the ice cream even if you had named him Ben or Jerry. So the dog wants the ice- cream but the dog would want it if you called it that famous name Steve Martin called his dog in the movie The Jerk, the point being that the dog may be pro-ice cream but the dog is also pro you know what. If I ask the same ice cream question of most of you the answer would be a resounding “yes”, but if I qualified that with “did I mention that the ice cream brand was (recently tainted) Blue Bell?” Then the mouth watering begets stomach turning. Note that after passing on the salmonella tainted Blue Bell ice cream, you are still pro-ice cream and ice cream will continue to physically exist. Using the same intellect, the same cannot be said if we substitute pro-life for pro-ice cream because any failure to say “yes” when it comes to defending life from abortion or euthanasia results in life coming to an ungodly end. In other words we are free to be pro-ice cream because our parents and their generation using their intellect, were pro- life. If I make the choice to not have a bowl of rocky road I am exercising an eating preference but if I make the decision to not intervene to stop an abortion or assisted suicide after I was granted the opportunity, because it’s not convenient or requires too much “suffering” on my part now I am filled with apathy.
The pro-ice cream metaphor that produces an apathetic pro-lifer may seem a bit extreme but this is because we have largely lost the use of the key word needed to bring this matter into clear focus: SIN. I intend to show you tonight that it is the Sin of Apathy that has crept into the pro-life movement much as the same Sin wormed
its way into the Church Militant then into the Second Vatican Council. The fruits of this apathy toward Magisterial teaching, dare I say dogma, is a lukewarm liturgy
that produces still frostier believers who, 50 years later can’t find the zeal needed to be mortified at the proceedings of the Synod on The Family meeting in Rome right now is the logical end result. What will the pro-life faithful look like on the 50th anniversary of Roe if this same apathy is not abandoned for the zeal any article of our Faith, actually requires?
Apathy, like Sloth, is a sin that St Thomas tells us1: “Whatever is forbidden in Holy Writ is a sin. Now such is sloth: for it is written [in Sirach] “Bow down thy shoulder, and bear her.” St Thomas also tells us that Sloth is a creeping laziness that pridefully crowds out the practice of doing good. “Sloth, according to Damascene2 is an oppressive sorrow, which, to wit, so weighs upon man’s mind, that he wants to do nothing; thus acid things are also cold. Sloth then becomes a “sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin good.”3
This matches St Augustine’s admonition against the sin of apathy. Augustine be- gins by quoting St John: “ ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’4 When there shall be no sin in a man, then there shall be this απάθεια [apathy]... he who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon.” For Au- gustine and the City of God, apathy is the stealth Sin that threatens the entire order established by God himself: “And if that is to be called apathy, where the mind is the subject of no emotion, then who would not consider this insensibility to be worse than all vices?” That is quite a challenge to the watered down orthodoxy of today that in its anemia promotes a sensibility focused entirely upon Man. For example , in the Novus Ordo rite, Man is primarily an emotional being who can, with others, “call to mind [their] sinfulness” and receive a perfunctory “absolution” blessing without any pain, penance or sensibility for the gravity of Sin committed and now ostensibly, removed. Is it any wonder that among Catholic’s, apathy is the result of this? St Paul admonishes the insensitive and proud to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” The post Vatican II Catechism of today, if indeed we can even use the “C” word any lon- ger, doesn’t lend itself to this when tens of millions approach the altar weekly for Holy Communion, where is the fear that Our Lord may take offense to the apathy shown his most Holy Sacrificed Body and Precious Blood? Does a curtsy or quick nod of the chin suffice for the loving fear that “every knee shall bend”5?
You may be wondering what any of this has to do with the pro-life movement and apathy and I don’t blame you, last week when I was down there seated among you and Robert suggested apathy as a topic for tonight I rather thought him mad and only said yes thinking “how difficult could a one word theme be!?” I learned quickly that not only was Robert onto something daunting, I wished he had suggested a 5 word theme that I might have kept abstract and jolly as in: “it’s time to have drinks!”
Augustine continued his forceful condemnation of apathy by suggesting that those practicing apathy are committing a grave, prideful Sin: “But if by apathy a condition
be meant in which no fear terrifies nor any pain annoys, we must in this life renounce such a state if we would live according to God’s will, but may hope to enjoy it in that blessedness which is promised as our eternal condition.”6 Apathy thus has the power to convince a soul that because it is corporeally disinterested it must follow then as also being spiritually dispossessed. Chesterton wrote that those possessed of apathy are on a par with apostates. “Side by side with the increase in those who deny is a growth in the numbers of those who come to regard apathy, suspended judgment, or a lack of interest in a religious matter as a state of positive belief.”7 This apathy is manifested in today’s cult-like “separation of church and state” which far too many pro-lifers have taken as
a doctrinal part of the catechism I call Americanism. Here we arrive at the crux of the problem in the American, pro-life apostolate: it is not termed an apostolate thus it for- feits the undeniable Authority under which it should thrive and make conversions.
In fact, the laity has actually been officially called to this apostolic duty as late as 1965 in Apostolicam Actuostitatem: “Our own times require of the laity no less zeal: With a constantly increasing population, continual progress in science and technol- ogy, and closer interpersonal relationships, the areas for the lay apostolate have been immensely widened particularly in fields that have been for the most part open to
the laity alone.”8 Anyone familiar with the leadership in moral affairs taught by most American bishops these days might wonder if in writing this encyclical Paul VI wasn’t preparing the post Vatican II laity for the likes of Cardinal Kasper and giving them a blessed-butter knife to bring to the fight. To that end there can’t be much doubt when later in the same document the Holy Father writes: “In loyalty to their country and
in faithful fulfillment of their civic obligations, Catholic’s should feel themselves obliged to promote the true common good. Thus they should make the weight of their opinion felt in order that the civil authority may act with justice and that legislation may conform to moral precepts and the common good. Catholic’s skilled in public affairs and adequately enlightened in faith and Christian doctrine should not refuse to administer pubic affairs since by doing this in a worthy manner they can both further the common good and at the same time prepare the way for the Gospel.”
It is true that most pro-lifers call upon God’s name to bring gravity to their public acts e.g. chanting “...abortion is an abomination before God!” While this is laudable its laud-ability is much like the beautiful shimmer of artifacts made of gold. That shimmer, as beautiful and mesmerizing as it is, must be put in the context that if the lights were doused in the room where the shimmering gold is being viewed, even in darkness, the gold would still retain its value, and even though the shimmer will have disappeared, the owner of the gold is no poorer for having lost it. Unfortunately much of the pro-life movement is all shimmer with the lights on in private but fades into darkness in public affairs by losing sight of its priceless gold: the Magisterial Authority of God.
