Hope is a Supernatural Virtue
At the end of an election campaign which seemed to offer few glimpses of hope or rationality, it can seem very hard to be hopeful. This means it is a good time to stop and look at concrete reasons to be hopeful about the pro-life cause in Canada today.
Youth: Young people are still joining the movement. They join at colleges and universities and high schools. Young professionals are coming forward to offer their time and talents to the cause of the unborn. You see young people on the Hill, at the street corners and in the public spaces speaking up, standing up for life. Truth is “ever ancient, ever new!”
Campuses: The National Campus Life Network is active and alive. It perseveres on campuses across our nation. It will always need help, but these activists are staying the course!
Health Care Workers: Catholic nurses have organized and are working mightily to reach their confreres across the country. Contact us and we can tell you how to reach them and support them! Canadian Physicians for Life is doing a valiant work in cooperating with other groups to work for conscience rights and to educate their members, medical students, and others. Their annual conferences are also superb.
Conscience rights have not been forgotten. Churches and groups are working province by province to establish and extend these rights so that they are respected and upheld by law and strengthened. Provincial politicians especially need to be encouraged and, if need be, pushed.
Palliative Care: Hundreds of pro-life people have evinced interest in this area. We need caring volunteers to work with the dying and their families and you are coming forth. This is evangelization at the abyss, and it says with your care, your presence and your words that the dying person is still exactly that- a person. I highly recommend LifeCanada’s seminar – “Dying Healed” for your parish and diocese.
Social Media: Get on this. The Old Media of CBC and newspapers and their like no longer have the monopoly on news and views. Social media has transformed the landscape of our fight. Information IS out there, and people are accessing it. The doors may be closed in much of Old Media, but the Lord has opened new and exciting and accessible windows galore!
Public witness: Life Chain, 40 Days For Life, Show the Truth, and more. These people bravely and steadily speak for life because they stand for life. From coast to coast the streets are a classroom in the stark realities of our cause.
There is the amazing reality of science and video: The more we see the pre-born child the more we know that she is a person. Pro-death forces try to keep the blinders on, but there is a worldwide hunger for seeing the truth.
Constancy of pro-life volunteers: A sign of hope is precisely that so many of you reading this are determined not to give, up but to keep fighting!
Education Initiatives: People are learning in new ways, and we are adapting to that.
New political responses: Right Now, We Need a Law and more. As the political landscape changes, we must shift too with all the best of new technologies, methods, professionalism and outreach.
Ecumenism: Like nothing else, this cause has brought Christians together and it continues to do so recognizing that the victory is the Lord’s!
Pregnancy Crisis centers: One life, one child saved at a time!
Priests For Life Canada: Reaching each priest, deacon and bishop in the country to encourage, inform and motivate them to continue to be Apostles of Life.
There they are just some of the “reasons for the hope that is within us.” God give us the tools and we will finish the job!