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| Volume 1, No.10 |
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August 15, 1998
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"Abortion is a crime that kills not only the child but the consciences of all involved."-- Mother Teresa
General Statement
God wishes all human beings to receive His Salvation; that is, to be endowed with supernatural faith in Jesus; to be filled with sanctifying grace by means of the Sacraments; and, when life on earth is terminated, to enter his Divine Presence forever. For this reason and this reason only, His Only Son, Jesus Christ, became man, lived, suffered, died and rose from the dead. For this reason, He established His Church under the Apostles and their faithful successors. Its members would become, by that very fact of Church membership, members also of His Mystical Body in which the grace of faith would abound. All the members of that Body would work together, each sustaining and helping the others according to the measure of each member's grace, and the will of Christ. Ultimately, this Mystical Body would reach the fullness of maturity that God has decreed for it.
Christ's Acceptance of Our Co-Operation
It has been the constant teaching of the Church, in its doctrine of the Fathers as well as in its liturgy and piety, that according to the divine plan, the living members of Christ's Mystical Body help each other by their prayers and offerings made in union with the Redeemer. It has also been the teaching of the Church and the sensus fidei that Christ in His redemptive actions-particularly in His sufferings and death on the Cross -- foresaw and accepted ("co-opted" might be a better word) the holy actions, the offerings of patience and work and suffering, the acts of faith and hope, of all those who would come later in time, believing in Him and uniting their daily life with Him as Redeemer. It was St. Paul who gave the initial theological and dogmatic legitimacy to this whole notion of collaborating with Christ even in His redemptive actions. St. Paul held himself up to his favorite Colossians as an exemplar: "...I rejoice in suffering... I fill out in my own human existence what is lacking to the Passion of Christ..."The Permanency of this Co-Operation
The redemptive value of Christ's acts, even though those acts took place in space and time, was supernatural in its essence. Therefore, theologically speaking, their redemptive value reigns -- is valiant -- outside of space and time, as the supernatural existence of God essentially is. Hence when we participate, by our good works and our union with Christ, in His redemptive action, there is no "backwards movement" in time. What is supernatural is outside of time and space in its essence.The highest moment of such timeless, spaceless, participation in the redemptive action of Christ occurs, of course, during the Sacrifice of the Mass. Although the priest and the ceremony of the Mass are at one altar at one hour on one day in one particular year, the Mass is really and only and completely Christ's unique Sacrifice on Calvary. Something really happens at Mass. This something that happens at Mass is Christ's one, supreme Sacrifice, spaceless and timeless. We therefore call the Mass a mystery: we cannot explain how it is achieved; but we know what is achieved. I cite this as one outstanding example of the momentless persistence of redemption in this world by Christ.
Practical Consequences
In themselves, the lives of ordinary men and women would have no supernatural significance or value. United to His all-meritorious and redemptive actions by a free choice of Christ and by our own willing co-operation with His choice, we each participate in His work of redemption. Scanning the theology of human sanctification -- devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, prayers for the Holy Souls, the urgent requests by Our Lady at Lourdes, at Fatima, at La Salette, that we pray for others in order that they be saved, and a score of other such facets of devotion and piety -- we come to the conclusion that this union with Christ in His redemptive actions is fundamental to our whole concept of redemption in Christ: My actions, my pains, my offerings have, by association with Him, an enormous value in the redemption of the world. This co-redemptive value of our offerings is, incidentally the supernatural consideration which helps us most effectively to surmount the evil of pain.So my good works and my pains, accepted by me in the spirit of faith and union with Christ, will inevitably be accepted by God as contributions to the life of the Mystical Body, thus enabling me to aid the needy members. Some theologians would go as far as to say that such needy members -- under God's disposition -- depend on my contribution:the missionary struggling to convert unbelievers, a man or woman faced with temptation, some person who needs a special grace or some additional light in his or her soul in particular circumstances.
The Faithful as Guarantors of Grace
The principle of divine economy that is involved here seems to be the old one: I am my brother's keeper combined with the Christian refinement that I can, in union with Christ, be an effective instrument in "keeping" my brother on the way of salvation unto Heaven. What lacks to him, I can, if I will, make up, in the manner just explained.The Example of Baptism
The infant who is baptized is not capable, mentally, or physically, or consenting to be baptized and thus admitted to the duties and privileges of a member of Christ's mystical Body. God Himself has so arranged the composition of our human frame that this is the actual circumstance of humankind at conception and at birth.In God's ordinary providence, because they are personally incapable of opting for Baptism, the Church teaches that the parents should and can opt for their infants, should and can guarantee their infants' desire for salvation and their consent to the means thereto. The parents, therefore, and/or the godparents, are accepted by the Church -- therefore by God -- as sufficient guarantors for their infants' desire to be baptized. They are directly responsible and instrumental in the infant's obtaining the grace of Baptism.
Abortion and the Denial of Baptism
The conferring of the grace and gift of belief, and belief's companion, desire for God, then, are normally conferred through the Sacrament of Baptism complete with its matter and form.Today, we have the extraordinary circumstance of legalized abortion that does away with at least 70 million infants per year in our world. It is extraordinary, not only because their mode of dying is so bloody, or so unjust (they cannot defend themselves) or so Satanic (it is surely the Evil One's newest way of obtaining human sacrifice to false gods). All that is the measure of the abortionist's sin and the sin of all who have collaborated in that sin. The circumstance is extraordinary in that those 70 million are given no choice, cannot make a choice, in favor of God and Christ's salvation.
The truth is that, while we are inclined to stress the murderous and bloodstained aspect of abortion is the most heinous, we ourselves neglect the greatest crime more heinous than murder: the injustice done in cutting the infant off before the infant can choose or be chosen for; in depriving the infant not only of life here and now, but of life eternal. Aborted infants, in their vast majority, are never baptized. According to pathetic reports,
some few are baptized ad hoc by nurses, by orderlies, even by "garbage removal" men at work in and around abortion mills. But it is the vast majority of aborted infants those 70 million infants per year among all the peoples of the Earth who concern us all as members of Christ's Mystical Body. Each individual aborted infant is affected by original sin. But each is also robbed of the chance to make a personal choice for salvation. In other words, the abortion of an infant deprives not merely of guarantors, but of any possibility that it will have even the ordinary chance of a human being able to opt for God's salvation at some point along the way of life. Deprived of the opportunity to live, the infant is obviously and simultaneously deprived of the opportunity of choice as well. In short, the infant is cut off from all ordinary circumstances. The aborted infant circumstances are thus, by definition, extraordinary.The Faithful as Guarantors for Aborted Infants
When it is a matter of supreme importance, such as eternal Salvation, and when the circumstances are extraordinary, the principle enunciated by St. Thomas in the Summa Contra Gentiles comes into play: deus non aligatur Sacramentis. God is not limited to saving men and women formerly through the sacraments (as He has consented to be limited in ordinary circumstances).
If the natural parents of aborted infants before to stand as guarantors for them and all parents consenting to abort their children do just that then the reasoning behind the mutual support passing between living members of Christ's Mystical Body impels us towards the conclusion that such living members can, if they decide to do so, and desire Baptism for the aborted, become the guarantors -- the spiritual parents -- of those aborted infants so that they receive the grace of Baptism of Desire.
As mentioned above, even were they not to suffer abortion, as infants these children could not themselves have known and desired Baptism. Nor could they, any more than any adult, have merited the grace of Baptism. Christ, by His suffering and death on the cross did surely merit it for each one of them; and the Christian who unites himself with that meriting Christ can become, it is argued here, the guarantor for the aborted infants desire of baptism and salvation. Just as parents who chose to have their child and stand guarantors for its desire of Baptism, so also the voluntary, spiritual parents of the aborted can, by their faith, stand guarantors for the aborted desire for baptism. It is by their faith that Christians fulfill their function.
(to be continued)
- Malachi B. Martin (August 15, 1998)
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