February 8, 2003
Most Rev. Fabian W. Bruskewitz
Catholic Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska
3400 Sheridan Blvd.
P.O. Box 80328,
Lincoln, NE 68501-0328
Dear Bishop Bruskewitz:
As
you may know, the Preborn Child Protection Act is now pending
before the North Dakota Legislature. See attached
House Bill 1242.
As
we continue to do battle for the little children in the womb in North
Dakota, I am sending you this Open Letter/Call to Arms. Like the
picture of the child in the womb grasping his physician’s finger, we
are stretching forth our hand to you, Bishop Bruskewitz, looking for a
co-defender of the unborn, holy and inflexible, who is willing to join
us now to defend without compromise our preborn brothers and sisters.
Whether we like it or
not we are engaged in a war, a war of ideas, a war of words, a war of
ideology, but a war nonetheless, and we must expect that in every war
there are casualties. The war for human life, the war to end those
things that destroy human life must go on, unending, until, in God's
good time, victory, by His strength and under the banner of His cross
is accomplished.
Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz,
"The
Pro-Life Struggle", An Address to the Diocesan Pro-Life Banquet,
October 22, 1999, Lincoln, Nebraska.
This bill outlaws abortion in North Dakota with no exceptions.
Opposition has arisen from the North Dakota Catholic Conference. See
attached letter of January 3, 2003, from
Christopher Dodson to Peter Crary. The two Catholic Bishops in
North Dakota, claiming consistency with the positions of the United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops, have also directly expressed
their opposition to the bill, stating in particular that it is
contrary to Church doctrine for the civil law to penalize the mother
who intentionally kills her own child. See attached letters to Peter
Crary from Bishops Zipfel and
Aquila. Mr. Dodson, as Executive
Director of the North Dakota Catholic Conference, has also indicated
that the Catholic Bishops of North Dakota would not support any
legislation that is incompatible with Roe v. Wade, because it
would lack a “realistic possibility of withstanding constitutional
scrutiny.”
Professor Charles Rice communicated with my office about this
situation.
[T]he bill is
excellent and ought to be supported by the North Dakota Catholic
Conference.
. . .
With few exceptions,
The Catholic Bishops are part of the problem. They bear major
responsibility for the pathetic state of the pro-life movement.
Letter of January 20,
2003, from Charles Rice to Martin Wishnatsky.
Surely a mother who deliberately destroys her own child should be
appropriately penalized as a sanction and a deterrent, a position
fully consistent with the law addressing a parent’s responsibility
towards a born child. It seems strange that the civil law should be
disabled in this matter, when the Catholic Church itself automatically
excommunicates the mother!
The
current statement of the Pro-Life Secretariat in support of a new
Congressional Partial-Birth Abortion ban is another example of the
moral degradation that results from attempting to legislate within the
confines of the disordered sense of right and wrong exhibited by a
majority of the United States Supreme Court. The Secretariat carefully
demonstrates that “dismemberment abortion” is not prohibited by the
redrafted legislation, and that the privacy interest of a woman in
killing her child is also not implicated.
“Life Insight,” November/December, 2002.* Trying to satisfy the
ghoulish directives of the U.S. Supreme Court is a distasteful and
morally repugnant approach to take to moral absolutes. It is
apparently, however, the position of the USCCB and by derivation that
of our North Dakota bishops. I note your previous comments on this
moral declination:
I have also been
impressed by Professor Charles Rice's view of how we ourselves, though
ardent pro-lifers, have been dragged along by means of terminological
bounds set by others in our own discussion of the issues that press
upon us. He speaks, for example, of how we have degenerated from the
question as to whether we would kill little babies before they are
born and then went downward to the question of which little babies
shall we kill before they are born? That is to say we will keep some
of them alive, perhaps, but maybe those who are the innocent victims
and result of rape and incest, for instance, are not worthy of life.
Then we have gone even beyond the question of whether and which ones
to the question of how it is done. Certainly, we are opposed with the
utmost vigor at our command to the monstrous practice of partial birth
abortion, and yet, when we step back and consider the entire
situation, we can see how we have been reduced to discussing not any
longer whether some babies should be killed, or which ones should be
killed, but, rather, discussing the method by which it's most
appropriate to kill them.
"Hope
in the Pro-Life Cause,” an address to the Human Life International
(“HLI”) Banquet, April 19-20, 1997 (Minneapolis, Minnesota).**
Is
the Church now subservient in its public policy activities to the
decrees of the secular state? How can abortion ever be outlawed if the
United States Catholic Conference takes the position that only
legislation compatible with Roe v. Wade or acceptable to the
U.S. Supreme Court may be supported by the Church? I am dismayed
and outraged by the position of my own Bishops, and ask for your
pastoral insight and guidance on this basic “human rights” matter. Are
you and your office willing to assist us in North Dakota to prevail
for life despite the lack of support/opposition of the USCCB?
I
have been a lifelong Catholic and was taught that life begins at
conception and that abortion is murder and a heinous violation of
God’s commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Is that merely a private
position, or is it one that our common humanity with the unborn child
objectively requires us to defend without compromise in the public
arena? Jesus said that the truth shall make us free. If we abandon all
truth except what the unbelieving world will recognize, can we say
that we are still free? Or do we instead become the servants of error?
I
prefer to be “utterly and totally inflexible in those principles which
will ultimately, in God's good time, prevail.” Bishop Bruskewitz,
Address to HLI banquet, supra.
Bishop Bruskewitz, thank you for your uncompromising position in favor
of human life.
We
here in North Dakota are currently seeking an authoritative Roman
Catholic cleric willing publicly to proclaim that the Preborn Child
Protection Act (HB 1242) is exactly what is needed, not only in North
Dakota, but in all the states of the Union. Are you willing to join
us?
I
earnestly request your immediate, complete, unequivocal and outspoken
endorsement of this legislation.
Sincerely,
Peter B. Crary
Attorney at Law
*http://www.usccb.org/prolife/publicat/lifeinsight/novdec2002.htm
**http://www.dioceseoflincoln.org/brown/Bishop_hope.htm
cc (w/o encls):
Representative
Sally Sandvig; Senator
Russell Thane
Professor Charles Rice
Enclosures