Monthly Archives: January 2008

Thirty-five years ago today we legalized abortion on demand in the United States. Since then approximately 48,000,000 people have been aborted.

48,000,000.

and counting …

more than 4,000 more each and every day.

There is Hope

Even in the face of this onslaught, there are some truly beautiful moments.

• All over the country places like Our Lady’s Inn and Birthright are sheltering women and their children, who are often dealing with the consequences of “crisis pregnancies”.
• Hundreds of thousands of people are participating in prayer and political rallies all across the country, including today in Washington DC, last Saturday in San Francisco, and many other places. (I’ll post soon on an awesome prayer walk led by Archbishop Burke in St. Louis last Saturday)
• People are standing up to be counted. Great organizations like Priests for Life and the Silent No More Awareness Campaign are teaching all of us more about the real costs of abortion, and what can be done to help.
• Hope, forgiveness, healing and peace are being offered to post-abortive women and men by awesome groups like Project Rachel and Rachel’s VIneyard.

The cost has been brutal, but the tide is turning. Remember, we know who wins in the end – it’s simply our job to make that victory present in this time and this place.

I tend to read stories of casualties in the present Iraq war carefully … for that matter, I’ve pretty much always done that with any war. Not so much because I am particularly interested in military strategy, nor because I have some macabre fascination with the circumstances of each person’s death – after all, it is something that each and everyone of us will do at some point, with absolute certainty – but rather because all of the fallen are people..

People with families and friends, people with hopes and dreams, struggles and fears, people with some relationship with the divine (or sadly, perhaps none at all), people with a future.

Real live, flesh and blood people who have now stepped beyond the confines of time.

So it was with interest that I read this note in today’s morning paper:

As of Thursday, at least 3,926 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,191 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers as of Thursday.

3,926 people – gone beyond our reach.

Another Body Count

Next week will be the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, in which we legalized the taking of unborn life for just about any reason at any time.

As a direct consequence of that ruling we kill

• about 4,000 humans each and every day
• more than 1.1 million each year
• more than 40 million since the ruling

Here’s one more startling fact: when you do the math, it turns out that about 1/3 of the post-1973 generation is gone. Not due to plague, pestilence, or war, but rather sacrificed at the altar of our own comfort and convenience.

For Your Consideration

Making matters even worse, those killed have never even seen the light of day. Never had a chance to make a mistake, never had a chance to do something great. No chance to love … no chance to live the life which was their unalienable right, given to them by the Creator.

This was declared so in the very foundation of our country. Yet now … we kill the most innocent of our citizens … completely helpless, taken from what should have been the safest place in the universe – their mother’s womb – and torn apart.

Let those numbers roll around your head a bit – it’s only been in the past few years that I’m slowly beginning to appreciate the magnitude of the evil that we are doing as a country to our own children.

What am I going to do about it? How about you?

Lest you think that this comparison is cold-hearted, think again. Our fallen died defending those freedoms & principles that we so easily take for granted, that are an intrinsic part of our nation’s character. May we honor their sacrifice by reclaiming our nation’s foundational recognition of that ultimate human right – the right to life.

Hadn’t heard about The Golden Compass for some time, so out of curiosity I looked up the current box office results.

Probably only two numbers need much attention:

• Total to date: $65,664,496
• Production Budget: $180,000,000

With last weekend’s numbers less than $3M, this turkey looks pretty solidly dead at the box office.

Sweet!

Hopefully this means that 1) the sequels won’t be made and 2) the publishers who were betting on a big bump in sales for the His Dark Materials franchise are very unhappy with the financial ramifications of that decision right now.

In checking this out I found two funny posts (unless your a New Line shareholder) by Ray Fowler:

The Golden Compass vs. Narnia and

The Golden Compass vs. Alvin and the Chipmunks

The current results for Alvin and pals is

• Total to date: $176,283,861
• Production Budget $60,000,000

So Mr. Pullman was smoked by a few animated rodents.

Parting Caution

Of course, while the apparent demise of the films as a franchise at this time is great news, prior to all this the books themselves had already sold quite a bit. And in all of the publicity run-up to the movie release, they did pick up new distribution partners.

Scholastic Books, in particular, pushed His Dark Materials pretty hard to elementary and middle schools all across the country, including (ironically enough) parochial schools.

So ongoing caution and clear, simple straightforward education about what these books really propose will remain in order indefinitely. As always, truth is on our side.

In any case I think this is a clear example of how prayer, action, and education have paid off well. Of course, it helps when the filmmakers make a boring flick as well!