It’s a real blessing to be doing opinion journalism — to have the general point of view/lens/human anthropology we’re coming from out in the open. It means we have encounters like this one — this weekly pro-life newsletter.
Mother Angelica was certainly coming from a particular point of view. She was a historic woman in journalism, such that she should be honored and studied in the mainstream.
Super early in my journalistic life here, I had the opportunity to meet with her. She was the founder of EWTN, the Catholic channel, an international network that includes TV, radio, and digital. I remember Mother talking to me — honestly in a bit of a William F. Buckley Jr. kind of way — about how important it is to use whatever new media and technology that’s available to reach people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The things I remember most about her — mine was her last interview before a stroke put her in a decade of silence — was her warmth, her familiarity, even, as a spiritual mother (that may have been my first real experience of such a thing), and her confidence in and conviction for keeping in dialogue with the Lord so you keep taking the next step the Holy Spirit is guiding you to do the will of the Father.
She’s on my mind this week because EWTN just announced a new president for news, as the current one is moving to the Vatican. Montse Alvarado, formerly of the amazing Becket, the religious-liberty heroes, will run communications at the Vatican. I did an interview with her successor, Ursula Murua, here. Mother Angelica’s Answers, Not Promises: Straightforward Solutions to Life’s Puzzling Problems includes a reflection on human guilt and the sin of abortion.
She wrote:
In the past ten years, I’ve counseled so many women who have aborted children, and when they come to me, distraught, anguished, and bereft, I can see that they are devastated by the realization that they have taken a human life — and they just don’t know what to do about it.
I believe that the guilt over having aborted a child is one of the most severe pains a person can experience. I’m reminded of a letter I received from a woman in Michigan:
“Mother, you won’t remember this, but four years ago I called you to ask you to save my life. I had attempted suicide twice, and a friend suggested that I call you.
“It only took you a couple of minutes to get to the root of my problem. I had aborted two children within six months of each other. When I told you, I knew you were as heartbroken as I was. Well, I know you probably won’t recall our conversation, but you told me something odd.
“You told me I was not alone and that I still had two children, even though they had gone to the next life.
“You told me to name my children. You told me to ask them to pray for me. I thought you were some kind of weirdo, but I had nothing to lose. I did what you said to do. Over time, I realized that my children were not lost but were created and loved by God even though they are no longer in this world.
“Two years later I married a wonderful man, and last month we had a little girl. We named her Mary Michael. This is a birth announcement, Mother. I know I love her with a depth I could never have had were it not for God’s forgiveness and healing power. I’ve tried to warn other women about abortion, and I’ll fight it now with an even greater love for God and the life you helped me find.”
This woman had experienced an extraordinary healing from God through the sacrament of Reconciliation. She had suffered tremendous guilt and remorse for her abortions and had asked God for His help and forgiveness. She had repented for her sins and was now healthy, fueled with a higher joy and understanding than most people today. She didn’t sugarcoat her sins. With God’s grace, she had overcome her guilt.
We are meant to be a people of love — not polarized judgment or worse.
This can be so easy to get lost in the mix of fighting abortion and sorting out laws in states, and whatever aspect of the post-Dobbs mess of abortion in America, but at root people are immiserated and in need of a healing that will make life plausible to them — including, frankly, their very own in many cases. That’s why we have a loneliness epidemic. That’s why suicides are up. We don’t know who we are as creations of a Creator.
Open to Life and Love
I moderated a panel this week at the Napa Institute’s Faith & Business Conference in New York. It was called “It Takes a Family (and a Parish)” with Tim Carney from the American Enterprise Institute and the Washington Examiner, author of Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse; and J. P. De Gance, founder of Communio and co-author of Endgame: The Church’s Strategic Move to Save Faith and Family in America. I started the panel in part by reading a little from a homily Pope Leo gave at a Mass for families:
The Lord does not want us . . . to be a nameless and faceless crowd. He wants us to be one: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (John 17:21). . . . Let us listen with amazement to these words. Jesus is telling us that God loves us as he loves himself. The Father does not love us any less than he loves his only-begotten Son. In other words, with an infinite love. God does not love less, because he loves first, from the very beginning! Christ himself bears witness to this when he says to the Father: “You loved me before the foundation of the world” (v. 24). And so it is: in his mercy, God has always desired to draw all people to himself. It is his life, bestowed upon us in Christ, that makes us one, uniting us with one another. . . .
Dear friends, we received life before we ever desired it. . . . Someone else saved us by caring for us in body and spirit. All of us are alive today thanks to a relationship, a free and freeing relationship of human kindness and mutual care.
That human kindness is sometimes betrayed. As for example, whenever freedom is invoked not to give life, but to take it away, not to help, but to hurt. Yet even in the face of the evil that opposes and takes life, Jesus continues to pray to the Father for us.
Much was said; there is much to be said. But if we are people of faith talking about family life, we must not try to divorce it from the Beatitudes, of whom we are called to be by God. Because it’s precisely Trinitarian love that will transform the lives in our care — as parents, godparents, grandparents, mentors. . . .
This is how we renew the family and the culture.
The Unhealed Wound
Rock star Alice Cooper has a memoir out, Devil on My Shoulder, in which he includes an abortion experience with a girlfriend when he was young. There was no paternity test to his knowledge, and it’s possible the child was not his, but a decent chance it was. (The mother of the child has since died.) It’s worth noting because he does seem to have some regret — and he’s still thinking of it decades later. He writes: “While I felt really bad for Cindy, I never took any responsibility.” Women need men to step up to the plate and not leave them facing a future alone. Cooper seems to understand and pass along a lesson learned.
Mommy at 52
“Celebrities who had babies in their 50s: Cameron Diaz, Hilary Swank, George Clooney, more.”
Which one of these things is not like the other? George Clooney’s name is the first thing I noted in this list of celebrities who have had babies at older ages. Men, of course, have more flexibility in the reproductive biological clock department.
Earlier this year, Anne Hathaway was given a hard time for being in her forties and pregnant. Never mind about that! This week actress Hilary Swank announced that she is having a third baby at 52. Swank started with twins at 48, having had eggs frozen at 37. She has said: “I have my career that’s already established, so I’m not divided. . . . I’m able to really sink in and be present with them and be a hands-on parent.”
I wish them well, of course. This is not something most women can afford to do, of course, not even talking about the moral issues it involves. I mention it because we just went through AOC’s possibly pre-presidential-run egg-freezing. And during our panel Wednesday, this is exactly the kind of thing we were talking about: the need for a healthy pro-family, pro-children culture. And now. Don’t wait. That requires communities to wrap and rally around families. But that is what we are all here for together.
Among many other things, one cannot know the love of the Trinity without knowing love in human relationships. We are so well-equipped for love, but we can never be alone in it.
Around National Review
• Wesley J. Smith: Belgium Expands Killable Caste While Euthanasia Cases Increase
• Raleigh Adams: Talarico Tells Catholic Voter Bible Is ‘Silent’ on Abortion
• Michael New: Texas Pro-Lifers Aren’t Buying Talarico’s Tired Democratic Talking Points
• Abigail Anthony: Khloé Kardashian Says She Owns Her Daughter, a Frozen Embryo
Me:
• Flashback: The One Where the Kardashians Save the World
• Trump Somewhat Reluctantly Reverses Hegseth on Livestream Execution
• James Talarico Fails on Abortion
• Pro-Lifers to the CDC: Where Are the Abortion & Maternal Mortality Numbers?
• Pregnant on Campus: Where Are the Resources? — video interview with Meredith Dixon from Students for Life
Other Things
Rachel del Guidice: Christian woman pleads not guilty to new ‘Orwellian’ charges for standing in silent prayer
Chuck Donovan: 2028: Remaking a Platform for Life
Right to Life UK: Queensland: Almost 60% increase in euthanasia deaths in two years
Grazie Christie: A pro-life lesson from . . . veterinarians?
Chaney Gooley: Caring for clients when pregnancy ends in loss an integral part of pregnancy help
The Today Show: She Fostered a Baby Girl Who Became Her Daughter. Then A Connection Left Her Stunned
New and Upcoming
• Pregnancy Help News has a new podcast series, The FrontLine15.
• Application deadline for Live Action’s North Star fellowship is November 20. All I know about it is I have a friend or two who has been a part of its speaking mix, and they’ve been impressed with the fellows. They’re young professionals who want to make an impact on that culture of life and civilization of love we tend to reflect on in these parts.
• Even if you’ve never been to the March for Life before, I encourage you — maybe especially if you have children in the house — to consider the opportunity of attending Life Fest in January. It’s quickly become one of the most powerful events around the march, hosted by the Knights of Columbus and the Sisters of Life. It’s a morning event, before the annual march, and includes praise and worship, inspirational talks, fellowship, confession, and Mass. I don’t think you will walk out without a new sense of mission. The charism of life the sisters live and breathe is contagious. I’m pretty sure that’s why the Knights of Columbus fund some of their work; it makes all of life better, stretching our hearts for more courageous, creative, and vulnerable love. Even if you don’t walk the whole march — maybe you need to get to work — Life Fest is a good way to still participate in this communion of rehumanization that we who attend experience in and around Washington, D.C., every January, marking the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, still. It’s an important thing for us to do — it refocuses and reenergizes us. And first-timers are always welcome. Life Fest is an especially welcoming way in. The website for Life Fest is here. (Last year I had a pre-Life Fest chat about it with some sisters here.)
Does your pro-life ministry have news to share about upcoming events, job openings, or anything else? Email me, and we might be able to help spread the word. (I also am happy to speak as is helpful to groups dedicated to helping lives flourish.) KLopez@nationalreview.com
Merriam-Webster tweeted (sorry, Elon, it just sounds better than “X-ed”) on Thursday that “Goodbye is an alteration of ‘God be with you.’” I take that as an unintentional (I presume) nudge to just go ahead and say it: God be with you, friends! “Friends, Romans, countrymen, thank you for your patience in lending me your ears.” Be assured of my prayers as we continue on this journey of mercy, boldness, and sacrifice for love of life. How is it going in yours?