The oxymoronic organization has welcomed Advent by trying to invoke Mary as an argument for abortion.
The oxymoronic organization has welcomed Advent by trying to invoke Mary as an argument for abortion.
T he Christmas season has arrived. Trees and lights have been going up in neighborhoods and towns across the country. Those who don’t hear Christmas songs outside from carolers will hear them inside while shopping, holiday or otherwise. Sometimes, it can seem that the gauzy modern trappings of the holiday have supplanted its true meaning.
But Christians hold fast to that true meaning. The purpose of Advent, the liturgical season that marks the lead-up to Christmas, is to prepare ourselves to welcome Christ into our lives. We derive inspiration from how Mary welcomed Christ into her life, and thereby into the world, by her participation in the divine plan that she would be His mother.
The lesson from this is not that Mary should have had access to abortion. That this need even be said is the fault of the activist group Catholics for Choice. Recently, the organization further displayed its singular knack for theological misconceptions by adding anti-seasonal callousness to its repertoire. “This holiday season, remember that Mary had a choice, and you should, too,” it tweeted on December 1, the first Sunday of Advent.
Catholics for Choice has been at this kind of thing for some time. In 2021, for example, the organization tweeted, “Abortion is not a sin. It’s okay to get an abortion because you want an abortion.” Perhaps its most ghastly stunt came in 2022, just before the March for Life, when the group projected pro-abortion messages such as, “Pro-Choice Catholics, You Are Not Alone” onto the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. A prayer vigil for mothers and for unborn aborted children was occurring inside the building at the same time.
Such trolling does not deserve to be rewarded with attention. But ignoring it risks letting go unchallenged the group’s message: that Catholics can and should join much of the rest of our culture in celebrating abortion. The Catholics who supported the presidential bid of radically pro-abortion Kamala Harris at least retained enough of the guilt that the religion tends to inculcate in its practitioners (I speak from experience) that they felt the need to render abortion as merely one concern among many, one that other issues can outweigh. There is no such compunction on the part of Catholics for Choice. The group’s website proclaims, “Abortion access is a social justice value.”
There is no basis for this in Catholic teaching. The Church’s opposition to procured abortion extends back to the first century — that is, to the beginning of its existence. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, a ready compendium of Catholic doctrine (to which Catholics for Choice might consider referring) doubly affirms that “formal cooperation in an abortion” constitutes a “grave offense” (though not one beyond mercy). On a personal level, it asserts that “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception” and that “from the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.”
But so serious is abortion that the Church does not consider it merely a personal matter. Catholics are, rather, called to advocate protections for the unborn in law. A society that does not protect them transgresses the human person. “The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation,” the Catechism reads.
Their failure to understand these basic points about abortions makes it unsurprising that Catholics for Choice would profane Mary for retweets. Catholics hold that Mary was immaculately conceived (and will celebrate as much tomorrow; a reminder to those who need it that it’s a holy day of obligation). Her fiat was a demonstration, on the part of a human woman full of grace, of freedom as it ought to be: the freedom to choose to align ourselves with God’s will for us. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” To assert otherwise, as Catholics for Choice has, is not just a category error (it’s not as though she learned she was pregnant with Jesus and then considered aborting Him). It’s a turning away from the transcendent and the eternal in favor of the modern, the ephemeral — and the disposable.
The humble majesty of the Christmas season may arouse in some a resentment that curdles into attacks that backhandedly affirm its glory. But it always inspires in me a sense of charity and benevolence. Outside of it, I might be inclined to ridicule the impossibility of an organization that calls itself “Catholics for Choice” as belonging in the company of other hypothetical oxymorons, such as “Vegans for Meat” and “Nudists for Clothes.” There may be time for that later. But for now, I will only sigh in sadness that the group and those who think along the same lines are closing themselves off from a depth of meaning and hope that this season and the Church can offer. I pray — and so should others — that they have a change of heart. Until then, the rest of us need not join their cause.