VICTORY IN A Losing Battle

Everything in the world is the result of the on-going warfare between good and evil. The good is fighting to regain the true freedom of the children of God lost by Adam and Eve in Paradise. Today, the Catholic Church is at the helm of a battle in which the intellect tries to regain control of man.

Evil is fighting on the side of the serpent who tempted Eve in the garden. And evil is seated in man’s concupiscence whose end is to enslave man and make him rebel against the intellect, which is God’s last thread of influence in man. Man’s natural tendency to be a slave of his animal concupiscence, being common to all men, seems to have taken the upper hand today.

The Church seems to be losing its battle to give men true freedom (that freedom which is to be had since only truly-free souls can merit the kingdom of heaven), amidst the crowd of robot slaves that has engulfed society. True freedom is being overwhelmed by slavery. Hilaire Belloc had once surmised on the probability of the return of slavery and paganism with a vengeance. We are indeed back to the times of human sacrifices in Mexico, and the Carthaginians’ worship of Moloch in Africa. We are losing the battle to regain our true freedom as children of God; instead we are gaining the freedom of — animals.

In such an atmosphere, it’s almost impossible to raise children up to be good Catholics. The light of the Catholic Church could dim due to lack of infusion of new souls.

But victory of good will be accomplished by the Woman crushing the head of the serpent. The serpent might seemingly be winning all the battles, but the Church, signified by the woman in Genesis and the Apocalypse, will eventually crush the serpent’s head.

The war on abortion is waged in three levels; the supernatural, the natural and the unnatural. It is now being waged in the unnatural level into which the human race have descended.

To stop abortion we must raise people to the supernatural level or at least to the natural level. But to attain to either, we need graces. Supernaturally we must say “Children are given to us by God to raise them up for the kingdom of heaven.” If everybody is in this level, we would have no problems, and this would be a wonderful world to live in and raise children. But we need supernatural grace for this, the kind that God does not ordinarily give to everybody. This grace is what impels the soul to think, to will and to act toward our supernatural end.

If man hasn’t yet been raised to the supernatural level, he should aim at least at the natural good of the children, which is to take good care of their physical well being. But even this would need some kind of grace, often referred to as the concurrence of God. This is given to all but is temporary, and easily lost or most often rejected by many.

All men are in the level of the unnatural due to original sin. He cannot think, nor will, nor do any good. It is for this reason that abortion has become very common.

Grace is needed to treat every child as a child of God. Grace is needed to treat every child as a human being. Grace is the only solution to the abortion crisis. We need grace to know the reason why a child is given to us by God; and grace to love that child.
Then we need grace to see how evil abortion is. We need grace to see how inhuman abortion is. We cannot avoid the evil of abortion without grace.

But then we live in an age where grace is rejected, where man is ignorant of the necessity of grace; in which case, there is no way we can stop abortion.

But wait… there is something yet that we can do. Grace can be asked of God through prayer. We can pray to God to grant the world the grace to see the supernatural reasons why we are pro-life. But that will need lots of prayer, almost unceasing prayer. But who has the time for unceasing prayer amidst a life of unceasing activity? Looks like the babies have no chance.

When God threatened to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham begged God to spare the city. God agreed if a certain number of people could plead with prayers for His mercy. Abraham could not even find a handful. Today, our problem is that there are few people praying.

What can a Catholic do? Part IV of the Compedium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Pope Benedict XVI teaches us. Then go to your room, lock the door and pray in secret to your Father in heaven, to have mercy on those children, to whom He is also a Father, to whom He will certainly show mercy because they were deprived of mercy on earth. Also pray for the abortionist to whom God will show His justice. Our victory will be when we see those children, whom the abortionists killed, in Heaven.

Though this is a losing battle, we must go on and fight …. to save souls, the abortionists’ souls. How can they repent? Many of them do not believe in repentance, in the sacrament of confession, in the virtue of penance and absolution. They do not believe in the Pope who has reserved this sin. It is for these souls that we are fighting for. Because many of them are Catholics. And the Catholic Church always prays for her own …….and we are Catholics. (‘The murder of the Innocents’ by Giotto)