Saint Vincent and Roe versus Wade: Great Good out of Great Evil

Saint Vincent the Deacon (+304), who suffered grievous tortures witnessing to his Catholic faith under the Diocletian persecution, is a providential saint for this sombre anniversary of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision of the United States of America which legalized abortion across the nation. It may be beneficial to take some time today to ponder precisely what the euphemism of ‘abortion’ entails but, first to Vincent:

The pagan governor was so angered at the saintly Deacon’s outspoken manner, refusing point black to consign the Holy Scriptures to the fire, that he had Vincent subject to the most painful of tortures, racking him, his flesh torn by hooks, salt rubbed in the gaping wounds, and then burned alive on a red-hot gridiron.

The saint’s sufferings are not far from those of the unborn, who have their little lives snuffed out, by ‘curettage’ – the ‘scraping’ of the contents of the uterus, as they put it – by saline injections, by poisons of various sorts.

And, like Vincent, they suffer silently. In fact, his jailer was so impressed by the saint’s quiet resolve and equanimity that he converted on the spot.

Many are still thankfully aware of the evil of abortion as the annual March for Life signifies  or at least, used to signify, as one now wonders whether the even will ever be held again. But hundreds of thousand souls – representing millions more – witness against this ongoing holocaust. Too often, however, concerns continue to be, over-ridden, the rightful autonomy of the States squashed as the Supreme Court’s universal ‘right to abortion’ covers the nation in blood. Now any attempt to repeal abortion is a long and laborious endeavour south of the border.

Such regional legislation is nearly impossible here in monarchical federalist Canada, under the tinpot dictatorship of Trudeau. Most Canadians, alas, have been brainwashed by our legal and educational establishments to consider abortion a purely ‘private’ decision between a ‘woman and her doctor’, leaving out, of course, the unborn child. We must not underestimate the pedagogical effect of law, both of the good and bad variety.

There is a silver, if not golden, lining in all of this: The martyr Vincent went straight to eternal beatitude and, we may hope and pray, so do all the aborted children who, like the Herodian innocents, knew not any taint of personal sin. The primary evil in abortion is moral and spiritual, the corruption of the human will, which makes the soul who formally cooperate in this grave and even demonic evil, in proximate danger of hell, that tragic and final and irrevocable loss of the beatific vision.

That is why Pope John Paul II declared in the very opening of Evangelium Vitae (1995) that not only do these numerous crimes against life ‘poison human society’ at its very roots, but “they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury” (E.V., #3).

Strong words indeed, given the heinousness of abortion. For moral evil is always more grave than physical evil. As the Truth Himself warns:

And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather be afraid of him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Mt. 10:28)

The great Pope also warned that the two primary causes of abortion are the moral evils of contraception, which builds up a ‘contraceptive mentality’, (E.V., #13) seeing the unborn child as an invading enemy to be destroyed. Nancy Pelosi is deluded in saying that those who hate abortion should love contraception. Abortion is almost always an a posteriori contraceptive.

The other cause is what the Holy Father calls the trivialization of sexuality (E.V., #97) – ‘trial marriages’ and ‘live-in unions’ without long-term commitment provide little welcome to a child, and many go not even that far, treating the sacredness of what should be the marital bond as little more than a handshake (remember those?), the scratching of a prurient itch, the feeding of transient lust.

But that demon requires his own sacrifice – yes, of the unborn child who may be conceived in such unions.

A final thought: God can bring great good from both moral and physical evil, often in ways that we cannot imagine nor foresee. Hence, as we pray to Saint Vincent on this memorial, let’s also include the intercession of the millions – and there are untold millions – of all those babies, we may hope are in heaven before the face of God, awaiting their own resurrection in full glory. Pray for an end to abortion, and the moral insanity that leads thereto.

While we’re on that them, here are but two miracles of conversion, both connected to the infamous 1973 Supreme Court Decision, when the United States determined to allow the murder of its own citizens:

There is ‘Jane Roe’ herself, the woman at the centre of this initial abortion case, whose real name was Norma Leah McCorvey Nelson. She indeed won the right to murder her own child, falsely claiming she had been raped to add emotional appeal to the decision, but the decision thankfully came too late; she not only gave birth to that child (while the three-year Court judgement was pending), but later converted to Catholicism and became a leader in the pro-life movement, dying three years ago, on February 18th, 2017. (I will leave aside the recent controversy of that tendentious and contentious interview as she lay dying).

And Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the physicians who suggested the lie about the ‘millions of back-alley abortions’, which he knew wasn’t true, to add further emotional appeal to abortion’s ultimate legalization – and protesters still use the infamous ‘coat hanger’ as their symbol. Nathanson himself performed thousands of abortions of all varieties – including on his own child – until finally one day the truth began to dawn, and while placing dismembered baby parts on the surgical tray, he saw that they were in fact the limbs and legs of actual humans. It took some time, but eventually he too converted to Catholicism – dying ten years ago, ironically also in February (the 21st), and was at the forefront in the fight to end abortion up until the very end. It was Dr. Nathanson who produced the influential 1984 medical documentary The Silent Scream, showing through real-time ultrasound what an abortion actually is – a baby trying to scream, silently in his watery environment, in its – his – own death throes.

Who knows how many others were brought to the truth by witnessing the effects of the moral evil of abortion? The Knights of Columbus have done wonderful work in the States with their 4-D ultrasounds, through which mothers – before deciding on an abortion – watch their babies in full technicolour. As far as I know, no woman has chosen to kill her child after seeing those images.

For heaven rejoices over even one sinner who repents…

While we continue to pray, sacrifice and work to end the holocaust, we should keep in our minds and hearts that in the midst of this carnage, over which God Himself may almost be said to weep, He is also able in His infinite power to bring great good.  For this is a battle not “against flesh and blood, but against the Principalities and the Powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness on high”

Against which only Christ and His Church can give the victory.

Saint Vincent, ora pro nobis!