It is the custom to begin each year with New Year's resolutions which, usually speaking, are broken by the first week. Such is the weakness of man. Almighty God realized this in bestowing on us our humanity and giving us a sure-fire, fail-safe guide to keep our resolutions toward God so that we can see the everlasting fruits of our efforts. Unfortunately, man today is much weaker, much more susceptible to slacking, and basically flat-out lazy compared to our forefathers from both the Old and New Testament times.
Thus, I thought what better way to begin this fifth year of the third millennium by reviewing those resolutions set in stone for all time. I believe very firmly that were people to follow these ten "resolutions" they would find the earthly peace and happiness they strive so fruitlessly to attain through humanistic ideals. It cannot be achieved without following ten simple "solutions."
One of the greatest cancers to erode this decalogue of striving for happiness is abortion. We have all heard many valid arguments against the abomination of abortion, as well as witnessing its impact on society, elections, and general moral standards. However, one need look no farther than these ten infallible codes of conduct - God's Commandments - to see clear reasons against this heinous, despicable crime!
1st Commandment: I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before Me
2nd Commandment: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
3rd Commandment: Remember thou keep holy the Lord's Day
These first three Commandments of God Almighty's Will tell us in no uncertain terms that we must honor Him above all else, and that we show our honor, respect, adoration, and obedience to Him best by showing deference, obedience, and reverence to His Will, His Word, and His Presence in our lives. This is what Our Lord said was the greatest of the Commandments in Matthew 22: 37, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and first commandment."
Not only is abortion an abomination in the eyes of Our Lord, but it is also an extreme act of disobedience, insolence, disrespect, rejection, and disavowal of His Divine Will, Word, and Presence in our lives! The seed of this heinous act is often based on placing many strange gods before God. Often these gods are self, selfishness, greed, arrogance, materialism, convenience, and secularism. The vast majority of abortions are simply attempts to erase immoral "mistakes", whether outside of marriage or within marriage!
Fornication and premarital sex are wrong in and of themselves, but their evil is compounded when one destroys a human life attempting to "cover" one's error!
Within marriage, abortion is often an "escape" from the "mistake" of unsuccessful contraception, which is an evil of itself as well. One cannot claim to honor God's name while condoning or promoting abortion much less participating in this despicable crime!
To do so is obviously to take His Divine Name in vain and tarnishing It with the same lips and mind that accepts the murder of the most innocent. The same lips that proclaim allegiance to God, proclaim His Will and Word, and claim to follow Him can never embrace this gruesome, vile murder!
Finally, the Sabbath is the remembrance and connection to Christ's ultimate sacrifice on the cross to free us from the chains of sin and provide us with the opportunity to reach salvation. Our Lord died for our sins and our sins continually re-crucify Him. To murder the most innocent unborn is to re-crucify the most innocent Christ all over again! Every abortion is a Good Friday with thousands of blood-soaked hands and wallets involved. This vile practice again slaps Christ's face when He tells the truth. It again places thorns deep into Christ's Divine Face. It again tears apart His Holy Limbs. Just as Christ's enemies tried to "erase" Him from their midst out of convenience, selfishness, insecurity, lack of faith and trust, and arrogance, so too abortion advocates try to "erase" the innocent from their midst out of that same convenience, selfishness, insecurity, lack of faith and trust, and arrogance as well!
As much as the Holy Sacrifice of The Mass should be a remembrance of that sacrifice, an adoration of Almighty God, and an act of gratitude to our Creator for His many blessings, abortion is a rejection of that sacrifice, that adoration, and those blessings and hence is nothing less than mocking both God's Omnipotence and the Sabbath which recognizes that ultimate divine authority!
4th Commandment: Honor thy Father and thy Mother
If God Almighty is our Father, The Virgin Mary our Heavenly Mother, and Christ is our Divine Brother, then love of God is love of the Heavenly Family which God invites us to return to. We are as the Prodigal Son separated from our Father exposed to the evil and material temptations of this world. The devil wants us to completely reject, ignore, and forget our Father. Everything about God's Holy Word and Will, about Christ's Nativity, and about The Holy Family is about love, respect, obedience, and family.
Conversely, everything about Herod's murder of the innocent was about the opposite of these things. Present-day abortion dwarfs Herod's evil and multiplies it many-fold. It is shameful that the cries of the victim mothers of Bethlehem over the murder of their young have been replaced with cries of mothers demanding the "right" to kill their young!!! Abortion is a dishonor to parents because it distorts and disfigures the proper role, attitude, and mission of parents from one of example, morality, responsibility, love, life, acceptance and sacrifice to one of immorality, irresponsibility, hatred, death, rejection, and selfishness. Lastly, abortion dishonors the memory and sacrifice of one's own parents ancestors by arrogantly and arbitrarily stopping the well of life which feeds across generations.
The Fourth Commandment serves as a bridge between love of God and love of neighbor as Christ continued in Matthew 18: 39-40, "And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets." In the Act of Charity, we say "I love my neighbor as myself for love of Thee." God never said we had to like our neighbor, only to love him in the scope that he is made in the image and likeness of God, thus tying in with the greatest of the commandments.
5th Commandment: Thou shalt not kill
Obviously, abortion is the cruel murder of defenseless, innocent lives. However, the killing of abortion goes beyond its obvious physical result. Abortion also kills the right to life which all of God's children have. It kills the potential for good which all of these innocent sacrifices to selfishness and arrogance may have had. It kills our society's claim to moral standards and its right to proclaim itself a bastion of justice, humanity, ethics, or example for other societies to follow! Finally, abortion may very well kill the salvation of the mother, the doctor, and all those "soldiers for death" deluding themselves with claims of freedom, choice, respect, and rights! Everything about abortion is about death, first physical, and then eternal! There is no more vile murder than abortion and during this month when we will commemorate the 31st anniversary of the dreaded Roe v. Wade Decision, I will be writing several columns on the result of this curse satan has foisted on humanity.
6th Commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery
It should be obvious as well that if everyone followed God's laws regarding sexual morality, abortions would cease to exist as an option since they would no longer be "necessary" to those who see this practice as an option. The so-called Sexual Revolution was frankly a revolt against God, and its evil has spawned many sins including abortion.
Had the Church stuck by its guns as it had through 260 popes, it is highly unlikely the Sexual Revolution would ever have gotten off the ground, staying shamefully in the backrooms. But by lifting the stigma of sin, the "anything goes" mentality quickly spread from private to very public and love transformed into all-out lust. Because of the lack of vigilance and the goal of placating man in the hideous humanistic agenda of Vatican II, what was ordained as holy between two legally married people in the eyes of God was disdained in favor of immorality of the most vulgar caliber that gave vent to not only the dulling of conscience, but also to contraception, abortion and the other sin that cries to Heaven - sodomy. The greatest tragedy has been the loss of Faith and consequently the loss of souls. Contrary to the pabulum of the 'Civilization of Love', Heaven is much less populated today because of the Sexual Revolution which even back in 1917 was raging out of control as Our Lady revealed to the children at Fatima: "Many more people are in hell for the sins of the flesh than any other sin."
While it is true that abortions existed before this revolution in ancient times, the source of that crime was really idolatry and superstition. People were not so much trying to cut down on the number of children or facilitating sin as falling prey to false beliefs. Yet today these false beliefs both in the right to kill their own child and that same-sex unions, another abomination before God, are being perpetrated and saturated on society as truths that we must tolerate. God has another idea and I think anyone in their right mind realizes the answer to that.
7th Commandment: Thou shalt not steal
Abortion is an attempt to "steal" God's authority over life, creation, and death. It is the theft of the innocent's right to life. It is the theft of salvation for those stained in its blood... The society stained in this murder steals God's protection and Presence from its members to the extent that they agree with and promote this crime! This practice steals the dignity and morality of the society which debases itself by allowing, condoning, legislating, or promoting this despicable crime! Lastly, those who cooperate with this satanic sin are stealing souls, not only in the womb, but those who should know better. Lucifer is laughing all the way to the depths of hell for the region of Hades is filling up fast. Misery loves company.
8th Commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor
9th Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife
10th Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods
Lying, jealousy, and envy have a place of honor in abortion. Since abortion is the work of the devil, who is the prince of lies, it is grounded in lies, misinformation, distortion, and deception. The murderous abortion industry lies to us when it claims that America is Pro-abortion, as shown in the recent elections. It lies to us when it pretends that one can promote abortion and yet still be moral. It lies to us when it ignores health effects to the women who have aborted. It lies to us when it pretends to be about women's rights, dignity, and choice. It lies when it ensnares youth with false claims and biased information. It lies when it calls the innocent child in the womb anything but a living human being with full rights. It lies when it calls abortion "reproductive rights", dismembering a child "termination of pregnancy" and a murdered baby "the product of abortion". It lies when the vast majority of bishops can't provide the moral compass to protect and save souls because they don't want to get political. There is nothing political about sin. It's all about morality and those violating these commandments do not deserve to be recognized as anything but cooperators with satan.
Also, wanting what others have is at the very root of abortion because it is a pathetic attempt to either keep the life one thinks one has or reach a life one sees in others as ideal. By its very nature abortion is an over-fixation with oneself and one's place with respect to others and society's standards of success, fit, acceptable morality, and convenience, not to mention relative importance and values. Abortion has no place where the lips speak truth and the eyes and ears are fixed on God. It is only where those lips, eyes, and ears are fixed elsewhere other than God that abortion can take root.
Sadly, only a few bishops truly realize this.
Conclusion
The Ten Commandments are simply the Rosary of God's Will for Catholics. Just as The Holy Rosary invites us to meditate and recall Its Sacred Mysteries, so too The Ten Commandments invite us to meditate and ponder God's voice, His Call, in our lives so busy and often distant from the solitude of conversation with The Creator in prayer.
The abominable, despicable, heinous crime of abortion represents exactly what the Ten Commandments are not. This gruesome murder presents a contradiction to each of the Commandments. The only conclusion that any sane, rational, and honest Catholic can reach is that The Ten Commandments are wholly and completely incompatible with abortion. If there are ever The Top Ten Reasons Against Abortion, it would be The Ten Commandments!
