Fr. Roger J. Landry
2018 Mulier Care Gala Dinner
Fleming Center, Nashville, TN
April 21, 2018
To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s Gala Dinner remarks, please click below:
The following written text guided the remarks:
Reverend Clergy and Religious, Leaders and Heroes in so many aspects of the pro-life movement, Brothers and Sisters, and Dear Friends,
It is a real joy for me to be with you here tonight for this 2018 Mulier Care Gala Dinner to celebrate and prosper the life-saving and life-changing work being done by Mulier Care for so many women in need and for so many whose lives depend on them.
I remember receiving an email from Mathilde Melon early one morning five years ago. She told me that she was starting a new non-profit to formalize her work helping women in crisis pregnancies to choose life and accompanying them through their pregnancies, helping them deal with any past or present issues that were impacting their attitudes about and capacities for motherhood, and much more. She was thinking of some creative acronyms like Madres Unidas en Jesus con Esperanza y Regocio (or “MUJER,” the Spanish word for woman) and God Respects and Creates Equally (or “GRACE”). I was on vacation and had the ability to reply right away. I encouraged her to steer away from acronyms and toward a clear concept that encapsulated the important work being attempted. I gave her four suggestions, one of which was “Mulier Care,” from the Latin word for woman. I told her most people wouldn’t recognize what it meant at first but when they did, they would clearly understand the message and it would stick. For Catholics it might also evoke Saint John Paul II’s and the Catholic Church’s rich teachings on the dignity of women, her feminine genius, and the beauty of motherhood contained in his beautiful exhortation Mulieris Dignitatem, “On the Dignity of Women.” Mathilde wrote back 22 minutes later, with her characteristic enthusiasm and speed. “GREAT recommendations! I’m taking MULIER,” she wrote in capital letters. “MULIER is phenomenal. … MULIER is easy and I think the Latin name is cool. … It rings well and I can almost smell the incense when I hear it. … You are the best.”
Little did I know that 1936 days later, I would be here in Nashville rejoicing at how Mathilde with the help of so many of you — Board Members, Benefactors, Knights of Columbus, Christians from all over Tennessee, leaders of New Life Resources and Tennessee Right to Life, parishioners of St. Philip, St. Luke, Assumption, St. Mary, and other Catholic Churches — has been able to take that idea with its cool and phenomenal name and build something truly beautiful, beneficial, timely, and now, with the Pregnancy Help Center, mobile and versatile. I’m really not surprised at how much progress has been made, because, having known Mathilde and her family for now over 20 years, I know she’s a bright problem solver from a family of entrepreneurial Good Samaritans who see where needs are and respond with compassion, commitment and generosity. But I am surprised and honored to have been asked to give the remarks tonight, following in the line of my friends George Weigel and Raymond Arroyo the past two years. But I’m hoping at the end of the night Mathilde will be able to email me anew saying, “You are the best!,” and copy George and Raymond!
In my remarks I would like to talk to you about two extraordinary learning experiences I’ve had over the course of time that Mulier Care has been growing, both of which I think are relevant to the cause of the dignity of women and the sacredness of human life to which we are all so committed.
The first experience is the privilege I have had for the last three years to work for Pope Francis at the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York. There I have had the opportunity not only to observe the state of the cause of life and the needs of women worldwide but also to participate in the Holy See’s efforts to defend the dignity and genuine rights of both women and children in the context of many cultural currents that look at the maternal meaning of a woman’s femininity with disdain, at unplanned pregnancy as a cancer to be cured, and unwanted children as evils to be rejected and discarded. Many in the United States are surprised to discover that, across the world, only 30 percent of countries permit abortion on demand, 52 percent for rape or incest, 67 percent for woman’s physical or mental health. Six countries do not permit abortion under any circumstances. Geographically, only six percent of government in Africa and Oceania permit abortion on demand, only 12 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, this compared to 75 percent of governments in North America and Europe (DESA, Abortion Policies and Reproductive Health around the World). The foundational human rights document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which this year is celebrating its 70th anniversary, very straightforwardly affirms right at its beginning in Article 3, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
Since the early 1990s, however, there has been a concerted effort to undermine genuine respect for life. In 1994, the Clinton Administration led a vigorous push at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo to establish an international right to abortion. Thanks to the efforts of the Holy See’s delegation, led by Professor Maryann Glendon of the United States and Holy See Diplomats, it was largely rebuffed, only making note of preventing and managing unsafe abortionsand providing services for safe abortion in places where it was already legal. In the quarter century since, however, there has been an unrelenting attempt by some developed nations to push abortion on other countries through striving to insert language everywhere possible into UN resolutions and international agreements and through funding UN agencies and programs that nevertheless promote abortion regardless of the lack of a UN mandate.
There are a few observations I’d like to share, not only because they can provide useful information to help us in our domestic efforts but also because they can give us, perhaps unintentionally, a good deal inspiration.
The first observation is about the use of euphemisms. Those promoting abortion will almost never refer to abortion by name, but instead talk about “women’s rights,” the “right to health,” “family planning,” “reproductive rights,” “maternal health,” “sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights,” “comprehensive sexuality education” that includes unfettered access to contraception and abortion, and so on. Most Americans are well aware of similar language games here in our country in the use of words and phrases “choice” or “freedom of choice” without describing what is being chosen, of describing the “fetus” or the “embryo” without any reference to the child’s humanity or that each of us was once at the same stage of existence, of “women’s rights” without mention of the rights of girls and boys in the womb. This points to something culturally very significant: that most supporters of abortion internationally are ashamed of it. They can’t talk about it straight up. They have to cloak the ugly reality of what is happening in sugary circumlocutions. They implicitly recognize the truth of what’s occurring and have difficulty stomaching it. While all of us need to continue to work very hard to counteract the feigned phrases that seek to facilitate the destruction of innocent human life, it is a sign of hope that even most of those pushing abortion recognize the truth of the matter and the ugliness of what is being chosen. The pro-life movement in the United States has been a leader in counteracting these euphemisms and we have been assisted by technology, like ultrasound machines, in which everyone, especially expectant mothers, is able to see the living humanity, the beating heart, of the child growing within. Three-quarters of pregnant women who receive ultrasounds choose life. That’s why Mulier Care’s mobile pregnancy help van is going to do so much good here in Music City.
The second thing we notice at the level of the international community is the economic and political bullying that is seeking to facilitate the spread of abortion. Pope Francis has called this process “ideological colonization,” meaning the attempt of powerful and wealthy donors to compel developing countries that were once militarily and economically colonized to accept secularized practices with regard to human life, sexuality, family and even basic anthropology, as a condition for the reception of development assistance. Pope Francis has even called this type of development extortion tantamount to a “world war … not with weapons but with ideas.” “Progress” for these developing nations is defined for them by secularized western countries and donors in terms of ensuring “women’s rights,” meaning access to abortion, or of fulfilling children’s “right to education,” meaning comprehensive sexuality education. In the last 20 years, there has been a shift in foreign aid budgets from development aid for essential needs to population control programs. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s recent analysis of Foreign Aid to Africa (2014) has demonstrated that more money is given for population control programs than for health, water supply, sanitation and education — and almost more than all of them combined. Various UN agencies, funded directly by countries that favor abortion, often intentionally misstate international law to try to pressure developing countries to adopt practices that violate their religious and cultural traditions as a price of admission to the club of modern, enlightened nation states.
What do we learn from this? We see once again the total lack of confidence in international supporters of abortion to proposetheir ideas to the developing world. Instead, through this ideological colonization, they seek to impose, because they don’t believe that what’s being offered, even supposedly for free, will be accepted. Developing nations are beginning to see that so much of this help is given with strings attached. We know that a similar dynamic is happening in the United States. Where things are open to referenda and legislatures, in many places abortion is being restricted and attempts to extend abortion are being defeated. Instead there is a reliance on judicial or executive fiats to defeat what the people directly or through their representatives have decided. While such undemocratic usurpations are obviously frustrating for pro-lifers, it is a sign of positive cultural trends that those supporting abortion do not think that they can convince others of the strength of their ideas electorally and hence need to coerce in order to get their way.
The third observation I’ll note is the need for continuous vigilance. At the international level, those trying to extend abortion use every opportunity they can to establish a right to abortion and to push the means for abortion. A couple of case studies are now happening at the United Nations with regard to work on Global Compacts for Refugees and Migrants and with regard to conflict situations. In both, UN Agencies like the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) are seeking to establish access to abortion in these situations through things like what is called the Minimal Initial Services Package (MISP), in which everyone in refugee camps, for example, would receive packets that contain not rations of food, but rather contraception and suction devices that can be used for abortions. Countries that vehemently deny that migrants should have any stated right to health care in their countries of transit and destination vigorously push that they should absolutely be given the right to choose abortion if they become pregnant. So the only type of health care to which they should be eligible is that of abortion. Similarly there are a number of treaty bodies that monitor the compliance of countries with the international agreements they have signed, for example, in humanitarian situations. Even though such treaties do not say anything about abortion and even do not have any abortion euphemisms, provisions ensuring access to health care or even the phrase “right to life” is interpreted by so-called independent experts to include abortion. Had such treaties ever mentioned abortion or its associated verbal alternatives, they never would have been ratified. But now the treaty bodies are finding in these treaties supposed rights that were obviously absent.
What do we learn that can help us here? The fact that it’s similarly important for us always to be vigilant, and not just about jurists and judges, for example, “finding,” first, rights to privacy, and then to contraception, and then to abortion, in documents like the U.S. Constitution like international experts invent it within treaties. It’s because virtue needs to be won anew by every generation. The cause of life will never be over. If we become complacent, if we think that the battle has been definitively won, that’s when things can occur that would never happen otherwise. As hard as abortion advocates have been trying to extend an international right to abortion since Cairo in 1994, they really haven’t succeeded, thanks to the vigilance of pro-lifers at the international level. What’s needed here, too, is a perpetual state of awareness. This means more than a will to be on the alert defending against new assaults on life. More importantly it means going on offense to lay the groundwork for continued progress toward the truth, toward proposing the beauty of life, toward taking advantage of every opportunity we can to promote a culture of life as others never cease to push what Saint John Paul II called a culture of death.
That third observation brings me to the second great learning experience I have had in New York while Mulier Care has been growing and getting more established here in Nashville. Since my arrival in the Big Apple, I have had the privilege to serve as a chaplain to the Sisters of Life, celebrating Mass six days a week for the religious women of this 26 year old community. We are blessed tonight to have with us ten of the Nashville Dominicans, who are so important not only to the Diocese of Nashville but the Church in the United States. Each of us knows that if we were surrounded by them every day we couldn’t help but become a little better … or even a lot holier. That’s similar to the great gift I have to start each day with Sisters equally as inspiring and holy in New York. The Sistesr of Life were founded by one of the greatest pro-life champions in the history of the United States, John Cardinal O’Connor, to promote the dignity of every human life through prayer, fasting and works of love. Among those works are meeting with women being tempted toward abortion, welcoming into one of their convents pregnant women with nowhere to turn, accompanying new moms with their multitude of needs, including, often, escaping from abusive situations or finding jobs, helping women who have survived abortions find forgiveness and peace, training a vast army of coworkers to be effective laborers in the cause of life, working on college campuses to help young people make the right choices and grow as defenders of life, and various other apostolates. In New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, Denver, the Sisters feature the continuum of care for women that Mulier Care is seeking to do here in Nashville.
I have learned so much from them. Coming from a good Catholic home, I have, thanks be to God and my parents, always been staunchly pro-life. I debated — and defeated — some pro-choice teachers in high school in classroom debates. I helped to found the Harvard Radcliffe Progressive Alliance for Life as an undergraduate and would regularly go to pray outside the abortion clinics in Boston and in Cranston, RI. I continued that service as a priest in Massachusetts, preaching often on God’s call for us to welcome, love and defend the least among us, leading parishioners frequently to pray outside abortion clinics, taking young people to Washington DC for the March for Life, doing all that we would to support the various key components of the pro-life movement. But despite this life-long commitment to helping pregnant women and their children, I have grown so much accompanying the Sisters of Life who have received from God a special charism with the sanctity of every human life as its core. From them I have been able to witness in practice what I would call a series of “pro-life virtues” — some of them rather challenging — that I think are necessary for us to persevere in that perpetual vigilance and charity to which the cause of life summons us. I would like to share with you ten of these virtues or good habits that I’ve learned from them. Just like they have helped me grow in my pro-life spirituality and commitment, I hope that they will similarly nourish everyone here.
The first is a need to look at people in general, and pregnant women in crisis situations in particular, with a contemplative gazethat seeks to mirror the woman’s inherent goodness back to her, no matter how broken or messy her life might be at that moment. The Sisters are inspired by something Saint John Paul II wrote in his powerful 1995 encyclical on the Gospel of Life, where he stated, “We need first of all to foster, in ourselves and in others, a contemplative outlook. Such an outlook arises from faith in the God of life, who has created every individual as a ‘wonder’ (cf. Ps 139:14). It is the outlook of those who see life in its deeper meaning, who grasp its utter gratuitousness, its beauty and its invitation to freedom and responsibility. It is the outlook of those who do not presume to take possession of reality but instead accept it as a gift, discovering in all things the reflection of the Creator and seeing in every person his living image (cf. Gen 1:27; Ps 8:5)” (EV 83). The Sisters have told me that the dynamic of their interaction with women is centered on the woman’s inherent goodness. When a woman feels looked at in this way, as a gift not a burden, as a person full of goodness instead of shame, as one in whom the sisters delight rather than view with pity or disdain, she can begin to look at herself differently, as she really is, as a daughter of God, and can begin to look at the inherent goodness of the child growing within her differently as well. The Sisters seek to proclaim the truth to the women who come to see them, but this means more than just the reality about the humanity of the child in the womb or what abortion is and does; they proclaim the truth about the woman’s genuine beauty and goodness against lie that they are ignoble, or a burden, or worthless. This look of reverence toward others, this contemplative gaze, is at the heart of the entire pro-life movement, because when we look at others, we are called to see the image of God, or, for those of us who are Christians, Jesus under the distressing disguise of those in need. That look of love can change everything.
The second habit flows from the first. It’s the virtue of graciousness, an authentic warmth and respect that goes beyond mere hospitality … even southern hospitality. Our reverential glance overflows into reverential treatment. When we see God in others, we begin to treat people with piety. When people have been abused and mistreated, when they can’t help sometimes look in the mirror with self-hatred, when even family members and those who say they love them make them feel ashamed, when they are treated with graciousness they can more easily open themselves up to treating others more easily with the same graciousness, an interior revolution that can start to bringing to the surface the woman’s natural feminine and maternal graciousness.
Third is the habit of true listening. So many women in distress feel unlistened to, unheard, misunderstood and unloved. One spiritual writer recently affirmed, “You can listen a person back to life.” Rather than beginning with answers, when we begin by making the effort truly to hear another, to enter into the person’s experience, to express our sorrow at what the person may have suffered and how it must have been horrifying, women can begin to open up, “You’re right, it was so scary,” and from that opening you can open them up to love, to truth, even to God. To listen in this way, we have to surrender the desire to be in control and to have all of the answers. We have to trust, rather, in what God is doing and can do. The Sisters tell me that women after their first visit to their Visitation Mission often pause at the door as they’re leaving to say, simply, “Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for your time. Thank you for caring when no one else seems to care.” By listening we show them how important they are not just in themselves but to us — and how important their decisions are.
To listen like this requires a fourth virtue, patience. Patience is needed to listen … and listen … and listen, to wait on grace, to go at the person’s pace, to address one issue at a time when so many parts of the person’s life may be out of alignment. Patience is needed to wait, sometimes for weeks, for them to return your messages. Patience is needed to journey with them not just on the two steps forward, but one, two, or three steps back. But the word patience, as many of you know, comes from the Latin word to suffer, and our patience is one of the most powerful expressions of our compassion, our willingness literally to suffer together with another, to share that person’s pain. Our patience shows the woman that she is important enough to wait for, and can help her in term learn how to be patient in adjusting to the new reality of her pregnancy and to life as a mother both short- and long-term.
Fifth is a merciful heart, one for whom compassion is not just a behavior but something that flows from our interior depth, one who can weep with those who weep. In his Magna Carta of Christian morality, Jesus associated mourning and mercy when he said that mourning for others and mercy are two expressions of the same beatitude. His heart was moved with pity for others, for those who in need, for those who suffered injustice, and for those who had been caught in a situation of sin. We’re often tempted to judge others in our hearts rather than be merciful, to question from a place of superiority how they could have made the choices or associated with the persons they did rather than to be with them at their side, offering warm helping hands rather than hurling stones. A heart that looks with merciful love can often begin to heal their often wounded hearts and help them grow big and strong enough so that similar merciful love can begin to flow umbilically to the person made in her image and God’s that whose life depends on that mercy.
Sixth isthe need for unity and community. So many pregnant women in distress feel isolated, alone and abandoned, as if no one cares, as if they’re never going to win, as if their life has no chance to change for the better. They sense that they’re having to bearing enormous burdens all by themselves. They have a deep need to know that they’re not alone, that they’re not carrying their burdens without a Simon of Cyrene, that their hope for communion, for love, for people who care can be realized. That can similarly open them to begin to accept and want the unity and community that naturally is supposed to exist between them and their child. In the pro-life movement as a whole, there’s likewise a need to experience this union and communion if we are going to persevere and flourish. In some places, various stresses can sometimes fracture our fraternity, friendship, and familial spirit. Competition rather than cooperation, suspicion rather than solidarity, contrasts rather than commonalities, can sadly begin to mark the relations between pro-life centers, or sidewalk counselors, or pro-life politicians, and so on. The dragon who wages war against the woman and her child (Rev 12) seeks to have us focus our energies more on what divides us rather than on what unites us and this failure of union and communion weakens everyone. The witness of real loving union and communion among pro-life laborers is, on the other hand, one of the most powerful messages of all to those who feel in isolation. When they see in us a real familial spirit they begin to realize that it’s possible. They begin to want it more. And they begin to choose it.
A crucial fruit of that life of union and communion is the seventh good habit, which is celebration. Pro-life work is, as all of us know, often hard, it can sometimes drain and discourage us. Sometimes we don’t see any fruit of our work from our many hours under the sun. How important it is for our perseverence, therefore, to live steeped in gratitude, to celebrate whenever we can in others’ victories and good choices, to revel on the good days and even rejoice in hope on the bad days, knowing that God’s mercy can triumph even there and draw good out of the darkest of decisions and situations. I love celebrating the baptisms of some of the children whose mothers have been cared for by the Sisters of Life. So often the mothers ask one of the Sisters to serve as a godmother after all that the Sisters have done to help the mother choose life. I love celebrating with the Sisters other victories, like the recent occurrence during 40 Days for life when someone drove up to them as they were praying across from the Planned Parenthood in Manhattan, rolled down the window and told them, “27 years ago I came by this clinic with my girlfriend as she was pregnant. I just now got off the phone with my daughter today, wishing her a happy birthday.” He was thanking them for the gift of life brought about by pro-life witness and prayers a quarter of a century before, and the coworkers celebrated that daughter’s birthday with the grateful dad at the curb, and the sisters continue to celebrate it. For those of us who believe that eternal life can come even from a crucifixion, how important it is for us to feast together, so that we can experience and help others to see the life to the full that comes from choosing life.
The eighth gift, one that flows from the celebration of the goodness of life, is joy. Saint Teresa of Calcutta called joy a “net of love with which you catch souls.” It is contagious. In the midst of darkness, for those in the midst of interior and exterior storms, a smile, a grounded sense of humor, a holy cheerfulness can serve as a lighthouse. This is key for the pro-life movement in general. There’s obviously so much that we can choose to complain about, from political figures who let us down, to the toxins that flow from Hollywood, to the lack of commitment of those who should be standing at our side. But it’s really important for us to choose joy, because life is good and beautiful, because God is with us, at our side, helping us, loving us, wanting us to have life to the full and to fill us with his joy. For someone drowning in sorrow and shame joy can be the lifeline that can fill them with hope and help them become heroic.
That leads to the ninth good habit, courage. It requires real valor to get up every day and put oneself vulnerably out there in difficult circumstances. It’s been noted that sometimes those who have intrepidly served in the pro-life movement for years can show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, and yet they continue to choose to answer the call of love. It takes courage to confront one’s inadequacies and shortcomings on a daily basis. It takes courage to reach out once more after one has been rejected or after one has failed. It takes courage to persevere past thoughts of discouragement, to soldier on when one suspects one is being manipulated, when one becomes a target of those who accuse us because of our pro-life convictions and work as being opposed to women and their rights. This is especially the case for those of sensitive hearts. We need the courage to continue to love even when that love is unrequited or breaks our hearts.
While unity and community can help us to remain courageous, so that we, too, don’t feel isolated in our struggles, there’s something else needed, our final good habit, which is the habit of fervent, constant prayer. I list this last, but it really is first and foremost, because it makes the contemplative gaze, graciousness, attentive listening, patience, mercy, unity, celebration, joy and courage possible. Our strength on the battlefield is rooted in spiritual strength, in the power of God who comes to our aid in our weakness to make us strong in bearing witness to him. Prayer reminds us that God is at work, in us and in others. It reminds us that miracles are possible, that even when all human means have failed, we should still not despair. Prayer enables us to act with peace because it’s in communion with God that we experience a peace that the world can’t give or rob, a peace that we hope God can use us to share with others, as he helps them along the journey from brokenness to grace, to realize that there is a love deeper than the wounds. One of the most beautiful things I do with the sisters every morning is pray during Mass for the women who are vulnerable. They give me names and brief stories before Mass begins and we take those persons and their situations to God. We similarly thank God in Mass for the times that he does what we could never have done on our own. We ultimately pray as we live and live as pray and a culture of life begins with the habit of prayer. We can only give what we have and to love others with the love they deserve and most deeply desire, we need to begin by allowing God to love us in prayer, as he seeks to abide in us and have us abide with him. This mutual, loving abiding eventually changes our eyes, our ears, our hearts and our hands, into the extensions of his own, into those capable of looking and listening, loving and helping as the cause of life needs.
Ten virtues. Ten pro-life habits. Ten roots of the tree of the culture of life. Ten means to help us to persevere. We could of course name others, but these are all staples. I rejoice that these virtues are at the heart of Mulier Care. I rejoice that so many of you already have them in abundance. And I pray that God will fill us and many others with them so much more. May God bless you all for all you do and are!
