Opinion

Jan. 22, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Take heed, pro-lifers: The bishops of Canada’s largest province want you to know that the pro-life battle is foundational to establishing social justice in this country. 

In a new 8-page document summarizing the basics of Catholic social teaching, the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario insist the right to life “from conception to natural death” is the “the basic human right [and] the condition for the exercise of all other human rights.” The line echoes a famous quote by Bl. John Paul II in his exhortation Christifideles Laici.

The bishops’ document, called “Fundamental Principles of Catholic Social Teaching,” urges the faithful to “support efforts to overcome the abuse of human rights” and lists abortion as the first abuse.

Intended for use in the Catholic schools, and quoting extensively from Pope Benedict’s 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate, it focuses on laying out four basic principles: human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity.

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After enduring decades of “social justice” homilies, statements, and fundraising campaigns pushing climate change and economic justice while ignoring the plight of the unborn, we might take it as a sign of new hope for the Church.  At the very least, it’s a green light for faithful Catholic teachers to tackle abortion in their social justice lessons.

Still, while the document is winning some praise from the pro-life leaders I spoke to, there’s also concern that it doesn’t go far enough.

“Oftentimes in discussion of social justice, the most fundamental right of all human beings is ignored, so I’m happy to see that they’re addressing it head on,” said Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition. “As far as it goes they’ve done a good job. There are many other issues that could be prioritized in a positive manner, but at least what we’ve read here is encouraging.”

John Pacheco, a Catholic activist and lead author of the SoCon or Bust blog, called it “a great first step,” but said there still seems to be “a hesitation of addressing abortion specifically within the context of social justice.”

Chief among the concerns is that abortion still simply doesn’t get enough attention. If it truly is the gravest threat to justice in our society, as Church leaders attest time and time again, why isn’t that spelled out more clearly?

In the section on the common good, the bishops say the environment is an “increasing concern” in that area but don’t mention abortion in the section. In the whole statement they mention the environment four times, labour unions three times, the poor three times, but abortion only once, and the unborn not at all.

Another criticism is that it failed to address several crucial, but controversial, issues of the day. It does identify the growing threat to religious freedom as an “increasing concern” for the common good, but is entirely silent on the need to defend marriage. It mentions “the rights of the child to live in a united family and a moral environment,” but includes nothing about family breakdown as one of the root causes of poverty, let alone the fact that much of the breakdown owes to the rejection of sexual mores.

On the abortion issue, Pacheco said the bishops were not clear enough about how the pro-life cause is integrated into the broader spectrum of the Church’s social teaching, and seemed to “crowd it out” with less controversial issues like the preferential option for the poor.

“We get the pro-life angle right away, they mention it in one sentence, and then they move on,” he said. “What [most Catholic students] have never heard is a full and proper exposition of the Church’s teaching on the dignity of human life. And yet that’s only given one line.”

“Why are you preaching to the converted on this other stuff?” he asked.

For years, the pro-life cause has been separated from the Church’s social justice enterprises – treated as an expression of the Church’s moral teaching while issues like immigration, safe working conditions, and others are grouped under the Church’s social teaching. The takeaway is that abortion was more easily relegated to a matter of personal morality rather than seen as a cause for social action.

You can see the mindset at work in Development and Peace, the Canadian bishops’ international development arm. Though it is recognized as the bishops’ principal vehicle for championing social justice, the agency refuses to support pro-life causes and actually funds groups that advocate legal abortion.

But there’s movement afoot. In the wake of scandals at Catholic charitable agencies like Development and Peace, the Pope, the Vatican and other faithful Church leaders have been working hard to emphasize that you cannot separate the Catholic belief in the right to life of the unborn from the Church’s efforts in the social sphere.

In fact, the Catechism itself makes it plain when it insists that the unborn child’s right to life demands that we work to protect him under law: “As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights.”

We are seeing positive signs for the defense of life in the Catholic Church here in Canada. The bishops are getting behind the March for Life, they’ve launched a National Week for Life and Family to take place in May, and every year we are getting solid new bishops and priests appointed who are committed to ending abortion in this country.

But this new document, despite its praiseworthy recognition that the pro-life cause is foundational to social justice, is a sign that the bishops, as a body, are still not all-together on the reality that no other injustice can compare with the taxpayer-funded slaughter of over 100,000 babies every year.

If we really took the right to life with the seriousness it’s owed, we wouldn’t be satisfied to send millions of dollars to the Third World to support the living, while we allocate a mere pittance to protect those denied life by our very own tax dollars.

The Ontario bishops' document is available here.