Archbishop Chaput - Homily Respect Life Mass

Roaming the internet, I ran across this homily given by Archbishop Chaput in 2003. I have not seen it before and thought I would share it. It starts:

Every lifetime has a few moments that become larger and more important as the years pass and we see them more clearly in perspective.

No husband ever forgets when he first met his wife. No mother ever forgets the birth of her first child. No priest ever forgets celebrating his first Mass. Looking back, everything in life flows from these pivotal moments, these turning points — and how we live out their consequences defines who we become.

For good or for ill, the same is true for nations. We remember July 4 because it established a new order of human dignity and freedom. And we remember Roe v Wade because it wounded and continues to undermine both.

Thirty years ago next week, the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand. Today we’re living with the consequences. Today we can thank Roe v Wade for the killing of 40 million unborn children; tens of thousands of broken marriages; and hundreds of thousands of emotionally damaged women and men.

But those are just the obvious results. There’s much more ahead, because we’re becoming a nation that no longer remembers the words to explain why things like cloning, infanticide and physician-assisted suicide violate the sanctity of life. We’ve forgotten the language of right and wrong on exactly those issues that define what it means to be human.

Nations are living organisms. If we poison the roots of the tree, we get bad fruit. In 1973, Roe v Wade seemed to be about abortion. In 2003, we know it was really about the nature of the human person — and the callousness and inhumanity of the Roe decision have worked their way into every aspect of our public life, just like a drop of ink changes every molecule in a glass of water. We’re no longer the nation we once were. Because of this bad court decision, we are now a different nation....

See the rest here.