Abortion is the Crux, by Michael Pakaluk

By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing, July 7, 2020

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book, on the Gospel of Mark, The Memoirs of St Peter. His next book, Mary’s Voice in the Gospel of John, is forthcoming from Regnery Gateway.

In this age of ours, an age of generalized decay, of compromise and discouragement, and also of license and anarchy, I think it is more important than ever to hold on to that simple yet profound conviction which I had when I began my priestly work and have held ever since, and which has given me a burning desire to tell all mankind that ‘these world crises are crises of saints’. –  from St. Josemaria Escriva’s Friends of God (“The Richness of Ordinary Life,” paragraph 4)

Make this concrete. The answer to riots and lawlessness?  Personal sanctity.  To the curtain of falsehood that must fall upon us following Bostock?  Holiness.  To the widespread ignorance, hypocrisy, and malice that we see clearly each day?  “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

Take it as a starting point, then, that spending an hour in prayer each day, receiving the Eucharist, reading the Gospel, saying the Rosary, and attempting to practice the virtues – these are infinitely more important for us than holding right opinions.

Still, there is the question of what practical path forward is best for our Res Publica or “public thing,” one of the “three necessary societies” for a Christian, to which we belong.  And here I will argue that the best path forward, so much so that it asks for an intense and single-minded concentration, is the pro-life cause. …

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