Pro-Life Sermon
This sermon was written by Fr. Kevin Drew of the Diocese Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, for the Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, February 3rd, 2019.
Pregnant Cow That Broke Free on New Jersey Highway Inspires New Legislation.
That was the headline ten days ago, on January 22 from a CBS news affiliate in New Jersey. It
was reported that back in December a cow jumped off a truck that was 10 minutes from the
slaughter house. A beaming anchorwoman said this “daring escape” by the cow inspired a new
bill that would make transporting pregnant livestock for killing a crime under New Jersey’s
animal cruelty laws.
Then the anchorwoman gleefully reported that the newly named “Briana” the cow, now living in
a sanctuary home for animals, had recently given birth to a happy and healthy baby cow.
The date of this cute animal story, January 22 was the 46th anniversary of the legalization of
abortion. A few years back, the abortion giant Planned Parenthood, was caught selling baby
parts. Its managers were caught on camera haggling over prices for hearts and brains and
kidneys. The headlines that week were full of outrage – but not for the ghoulish behavior of
Planned Parenthood. No, a dentist from Minneapolis had shot a lion on safari in Africa and
posted pictures of it. Animal rights activists went ballistic. He became a marked man, a wanted
criminal. His dental practice was nearly destroyed, as his patients scattered to other more
animal-friendly dentists across the Twin Cities.
A Minneapolis writer noted that President Theodore Roosevelt hunted big game and posed for
pictures. It contributed to his “fearless and rugged image, a man with a zest for adventure.” And
no one complained. So, when he asked, did hunting turn into a sin?
It happened when we stopped worshipping God and started worshipping Mother Nature. And at
the same time that hunting was becoming unpopular and then unacceptable, abortion went from
being a crime to a right. The prolific English writer GK Chesterton wrote way back in 1920:
“Wherever you have animal worship, you will have human sacrifice.”
And that is why there are more pet stores than baby stores in our strip malls and why there is
now a price on a lion-hunter’s head while Planned Parenthood rakes in millions of dollars. We
have sacrificed our babies to the Earth Goddess.
This worship of nature is a great fallacy, but as Chesterton says, ‘Fallacies do not cease to be
fallacies even if they become fashionable.’ And when a society devolves into the unnatural there
is a “modern weakening of major morals and the modern strengthening of minor morals.”
This explains why the modern world is more upset about the killing of one lion than the slaughter
of millions of babies. It explains why their veins pop from their necks that a game hunter would
stalk a wild animal in order to stuff it as a trophy, but they ignore the systematic dismemberment
of live babies extracted from their mother’s wombs so as to save the best parts for resale. It is
something of an understatement to say that their major morals are weak and their minor morals
are strong, but that is still the essence of it.
The Governor of New York, who signed legislation on January 22 legalizing infanticide, is weak
on the major morals and strong on the minor ones. You see, right after he legalized infanticide,
he attacked the Catholic Church for sex abuse. Now, those who prey on the young are sick and
twisted and their filthy crimes will be punished, either in this life or the next. But, some have
asked: Is the crime of sex abuse against persons worse than poisoning them and hacking them
apart limb from limb? Even the most monstrous of sexual perverts usually stop short of actually
murdering their victims.
How did it come to this? How did it happen that our society has inverted the major and minor
morals? How does it happen that beasts are preferential to babies?
In 1985 I had to write a paper on a man named Peter Singer. He had written a book called
Practical Ethics in which he argued our philosophy of life should be utilitarian – whatever was
most useful and convenient for society. Singer argued that the life of a fetus was of no greater
value than the life of a nonhuman animal. And because, he argued, no fetus is a person, no fetus
has the same claim to life as a person. Carrying this twisted logic forward, Singer wrote that
since fetuses were not persons, newborn babies were not really persons either:
A week-old baby is not a rational and self-aware being, and there are many non-human animals
whose rationality, self-awareness, capacity to feel and so on, exceed that of a human baby a
week or a month old. If, for the reasons I have given, the fetus does not have the same claim to
life as a person, it appears that the newborn baby does not either.
Who was Peter Singer? I was a dumb college freshman, I had no clue who he was. So, I wrote a
sarcastic-laced paper arguing that Singer could not be serious but was only writing to get
attention. What person in his right mind, after all, would conclude a newborn baby is not a
person?
The teacher thought my paper was pretty good and read it to the class. She wrote some nice
comments at the bottom of the paper, adding: “By the way, Singer is quite serious about his views.”
Dr. Peter Singer is a highly acclaimed and influential bioethics professor. And his utilitarian
philosophy has been taught to college students now for decades. Singer, like many in his
profession, is an atheist. And he teaches a philosophy, a way of thinking that divorces traditional
morality, either major or minor, from one’s deeds. He replaces charity with practicality.
This is the philosophy that many lawyers, politicians, doctors, business and church leaders, and
millions of others have been taught. And it helps explain how New York can greenlight the killing
of newborn babies and most of the world responds by yawning. It explains how the best our
bishops can seem to muster over this is to say they are “saddened.”
This bankrupt philosophy, cracked at its foundation, ignores the first principle, the first cause of
all things, which is God, our Creator, who has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. But
God the Father and Christ the Son pose a huge problem for a practical world that worships Mother
Nature. Peter Singer wrote: it was worth remembering that our present absolute protection of the
lives of infants is a distinctively Christian attitude, rather than a universal ethical value...
In some of these societies, infanticide was not merely permitted but, in certain circumstances,
deemed morally obligatory. Not to kill a deformed sickly infant was often regarded as wrong, and
infanticide was probably the first, and in several societies the only, form of population control.
So, you see, it’s Christianity’s fault for not letting the pagans be practical.
It’s interesting: One of the first thing the pagan Nazis did when they took control of Germany in
the 1930’s was to initiate the T4 program. It entailed the killing of handicapped children, those
the practical Nazis deemed “life unworthy of life.”
And speaking of Nazis, Peter Singer’s grandparents were put on cattle cars during World War II
and sent to concentration camps where they perished. You see, they were deemed “life unworthy
of life.” As human beings, as persons packed in those crowded railway cars, they were aware that
something evil was happening and their future looked very bleak.
Now, despite the media’s efforts to humanize a cow on the same day New York legalized the
murder of newborn babies, understand this: The cow is not a person. The cow, despite living in a
“sanctuary” for unwed pregnant cows, does not possess greater dignity than babies. Briana the
cow, packed on the truck last December did not know it was 10 minutes from the slaughter house.
It had no idea its future was bleak. It was not saying to itself, “They’re going to make hamburger
and baseball gloves out of me. They are going to sell my body parts for money. I better make a
daring escape and be an inspiration to millions of other cows.”
No, the cow didn’t think any of that because it is a cow.
Briana the cow never read and pondered the Psalmist’s words, read at Mass today:
On you I depend from birth;
From my mother’s womb you are my strength.
Nor did the word of the Lord ever come to the cow as it did Jeremiah, who heard God tell him:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I dedicated you,
The person who spoke to Jeremiah is the first cause of everything. He is God. And he revealed
himself, not as a golden calf, but in the person of Jesus Christ. And when Christ said as much in
the synagogue in Nazareth, when he said he was the new law, the new legislation, they tried to
throw him off the cliff.
They’re still trying today to throw Christ off the cliff for his “distinctly Christian attitude.” You
see, a world that worships animals and practices human sacrifice finds Christ impractical.
How do you find him?
Fear God and understand something: He didn’t call you to be practical. He called you to be
Christian. He called you to follow him up Calvary and die to world that hates him because it
loves its sins.
In the silence at Holy Mass listen to Christ speak to you. Hear him tell you that you are much
more than an animal – and for the time being, a little less than an angel. Listen to him say to
you:
Before I formed you in the womb
I knew you.
Before you were born
I dedicated you.
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2019/01/22/escaped-cow-inspires-new-legislation/
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/the-lion-sleeps-tonight
Pregnant Cow That Broke Free on New Jersey Highway Inspires New Legislation.
That was the headline ten days ago, on January 22 from a CBS news affiliate in New Jersey. It
was reported that back in December a cow jumped off a truck that was 10 minutes from the
slaughter house. A beaming anchorwoman said this “daring escape” by the cow inspired a new
bill that would make transporting pregnant livestock for killing a crime under New Jersey’s
animal cruelty laws.
Then the anchorwoman gleefully reported that the newly named “Briana” the cow, now living in
a sanctuary home for animals, had recently given birth to a happy and healthy baby cow.
The date of this cute animal story, January 22 was the 46th anniversary of the legalization of
abortion. A few years back, the abortion giant Planned Parenthood, was caught selling baby
parts. Its managers were caught on camera haggling over prices for hearts and brains and
kidneys. The headlines that week were full of outrage – but not for the ghoulish behavior of
Planned Parenthood. No, a dentist from Minneapolis had shot a lion on safari in Africa and
posted pictures of it. Animal rights activists went ballistic. He became a marked man, a wanted
criminal. His dental practice was nearly destroyed, as his patients scattered to other more
animal-friendly dentists across the Twin Cities.
A Minneapolis writer noted that President Theodore Roosevelt hunted big game and posed for
pictures. It contributed to his “fearless and rugged image, a man with a zest for adventure.” And
no one complained. So, when he asked, did hunting turn into a sin?
It happened when we stopped worshipping God and started worshipping Mother Nature. And at
the same time that hunting was becoming unpopular and then unacceptable, abortion went from
being a crime to a right. The prolific English writer GK Chesterton wrote way back in 1920:
“Wherever you have animal worship, you will have human sacrifice.”
And that is why there are more pet stores than baby stores in our strip malls and why there is
now a price on a lion-hunter’s head while Planned Parenthood rakes in millions of dollars. We
have sacrificed our babies to the Earth Goddess.
This worship of nature is a great fallacy, but as Chesterton says, ‘Fallacies do not cease to be
fallacies even if they become fashionable.’ And when a society devolves into the unnatural there
is a “modern weakening of major morals and the modern strengthening of minor morals.”
This explains why the modern world is more upset about the killing of one lion than the slaughter
of millions of babies. It explains why their veins pop from their necks that a game hunter would
stalk a wild animal in order to stuff it as a trophy, but they ignore the systematic dismemberment
of live babies extracted from their mother’s wombs so as to save the best parts for resale. It is
something of an understatement to say that their major morals are weak and their minor morals
are strong, but that is still the essence of it.
The Governor of New York, who signed legislation on January 22 legalizing infanticide, is weak
on the major morals and strong on the minor ones. You see, right after he legalized infanticide,
he attacked the Catholic Church for sex abuse. Now, those who prey on the young are sick and
twisted and their filthy crimes will be punished, either in this life or the next. But, some have
asked: Is the crime of sex abuse against persons worse than poisoning them and hacking them
apart limb from limb? Even the most monstrous of sexual perverts usually stop short of actually
murdering their victims.
How did it come to this? How did it happen that our society has inverted the major and minor
morals? How does it happen that beasts are preferential to babies?
In 1985 I had to write a paper on a man named Peter Singer. He had written a book called
Practical Ethics in which he argued our philosophy of life should be utilitarian – whatever was
most useful and convenient for society. Singer argued that the life of a fetus was of no greater
value than the life of a nonhuman animal. And because, he argued, no fetus is a person, no fetus
has the same claim to life as a person. Carrying this twisted logic forward, Singer wrote that
since fetuses were not persons, newborn babies were not really persons either:
A week-old baby is not a rational and self-aware being, and there are many non-human animals
whose rationality, self-awareness, capacity to feel and so on, exceed that of a human baby a
week or a month old. If, for the reasons I have given, the fetus does not have the same claim to
life as a person, it appears that the newborn baby does not either.
Who was Peter Singer? I was a dumb college freshman, I had no clue who he was. So, I wrote a
sarcastic-laced paper arguing that Singer could not be serious but was only writing to get
attention. What person in his right mind, after all, would conclude a newborn baby is not a
person?
The teacher thought my paper was pretty good and read it to the class. She wrote some nice
comments at the bottom of the paper, adding: “By the way, Singer is quite serious about his views.”
Dr. Peter Singer is a highly acclaimed and influential bioethics professor. And his utilitarian
philosophy has been taught to college students now for decades. Singer, like many in his
profession, is an atheist. And he teaches a philosophy, a way of thinking that divorces traditional
morality, either major or minor, from one’s deeds. He replaces charity with practicality.
This is the philosophy that many lawyers, politicians, doctors, business and church leaders, and
millions of others have been taught. And it helps explain how New York can greenlight the killing
of newborn babies and most of the world responds by yawning. It explains how the best our
bishops can seem to muster over this is to say they are “saddened.”
This bankrupt philosophy, cracked at its foundation, ignores the first principle, the first cause of
all things, which is God, our Creator, who has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. But
God the Father and Christ the Son pose a huge problem for a practical world that worships Mother
Nature. Peter Singer wrote: it was worth remembering that our present absolute protection of the
lives of infants is a distinctively Christian attitude, rather than a universal ethical value...
In some of these societies, infanticide was not merely permitted but, in certain circumstances,
deemed morally obligatory. Not to kill a deformed sickly infant was often regarded as wrong, and
infanticide was probably the first, and in several societies the only, form of population control.
So, you see, it’s Christianity’s fault for not letting the pagans be practical.
It’s interesting: One of the first thing the pagan Nazis did when they took control of Germany in
the 1930’s was to initiate the T4 program. It entailed the killing of handicapped children, those
the practical Nazis deemed “life unworthy of life.”
And speaking of Nazis, Peter Singer’s grandparents were put on cattle cars during World War II
and sent to concentration camps where they perished. You see, they were deemed “life unworthy
of life.” As human beings, as persons packed in those crowded railway cars, they were aware that
something evil was happening and their future looked very bleak.
Now, despite the media’s efforts to humanize a cow on the same day New York legalized the
murder of newborn babies, understand this: The cow is not a person. The cow, despite living in a
“sanctuary” for unwed pregnant cows, does not possess greater dignity than babies. Briana the
cow, packed on the truck last December did not know it was 10 minutes from the slaughter house.
It had no idea its future was bleak. It was not saying to itself, “They’re going to make hamburger
and baseball gloves out of me. They are going to sell my body parts for money. I better make a
daring escape and be an inspiration to millions of other cows.”
No, the cow didn’t think any of that because it is a cow.
Briana the cow never read and pondered the Psalmist’s words, read at Mass today:
On you I depend from birth;
From my mother’s womb you are my strength.
Nor did the word of the Lord ever come to the cow as it did Jeremiah, who heard God tell him:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I dedicated you,
The person who spoke to Jeremiah is the first cause of everything. He is God. And he revealed
himself, not as a golden calf, but in the person of Jesus Christ. And when Christ said as much in
the synagogue in Nazareth, when he said he was the new law, the new legislation, they tried to
throw him off the cliff.
They’re still trying today to throw Christ off the cliff for his “distinctly Christian attitude.” You
see, a world that worships animals and practices human sacrifice finds Christ impractical.
How do you find him?
Fear God and understand something: He didn’t call you to be practical. He called you to be
Christian. He called you to follow him up Calvary and die to world that hates him because it
loves its sins.
In the silence at Holy Mass listen to Christ speak to you. Hear him tell you that you are much
more than an animal – and for the time being, a little less than an angel. Listen to him say to
you:
Before I formed you in the womb
I knew you.
Before you were born
I dedicated you.
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2019/01/22/escaped-cow-inspires-new-legislation/
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/the-lion-sleeps-tonight
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