Truth Wins Out

Sometimes newspaper headlines can actually tell us a lot about underlying truths. About a week ago, in the Toronto Star, there was an attention-grabbing story of a preborn child who had life saving surgery while still in the womb of his mother. The title began with “Unborn Baby has Remarkable Surgery”. This is from a newspaper that has been militantly pro abortion and pro death for many decades. Isn’t it surprising however that the underlying truth about what that pregnancy meant and what and who that surgery was performed upon would almost thoughtlessly come out?

This is the way the truth works. Though we have all kinds of linguistic gymnastics, in the end, we need to speak truthfully. When we try not to, we get ourselves tangled up. The gender diversity debate is only one example of this but that is an article for another time.

In the midst of all the work that we are facing, trying to deal with the mercy killing and euthanasia avalanche, it can be difficult to remember that at the other end of life, a genocide is still quietly unfolding. Recently I was contacted by some media outlets to speak about the impending demographic collapse. This is not an area of which I know very much. I mentioned to one of the reporters that if we took all of the children that had been aborted in Canada since 1969 and considered that many of them would be grandparents by now, we would have to ascribe a good part of our demographic collapse to the acceptance of abortion in Canadian society. The digital reporter was quite visibly shaken and in complete disagreement with me, but even she acknowledged that, in the unlikely case that these children would have been born, that yes, our demographic position would be quite different.

Language is important as we come into this new school year (and as I often call it, “the new volunteer year” for parishes), I would strongly urge you to remember the power of truth in language. As you are preparing schedules, try to put in space to speak about what is the nature of preborn life, what is the value of those who are sick and suffering, and who is it that we’re actually talking about. One of the central tenets of Pope Leo’s recent encyclical, Magnificent Humanity, is that we need to constantly speak about human beings as human beings and not things, but also that we should not talk about things (that is AI) as human beings.

Of course, this linguistic confusion has been with us for many decades when we talk about the termination of a pregnancy rather than abortion, when we talk about a fetus rather than a preborn child, when we talk about mercy killing instead of just killing, etc.

We as clergy can fall into this as well and so it means that we must be vigilant as to how we speak about the reality of the individuals that are being referred to and that are in constant danger. I have used this page before to emphasize that in this new media age, we must avail ourselves of all the various social media platforms that we can handle. Our audience has fragmented along with the various social media platforms that they are using. Even newspapers have gone digital.

We too need to be able to understand the differences between these social media platforms. One is more text based. One is more photo based. One is more video based.

We have these means to speak to people and regardless of the diversity of the platforms, truth can still be spoken.

One of the best things about social media platforms is the fact that we can share or like various media offerings whether they are from our parishes, our communities or from the much wider world. This works because it works.

I would urge you to be bold citizens of our new digital landscape and to realize that not all of the information that’s being thrown at us is some kind of AI slop but instead can be able to be used to both safeguard and build up that innate truth of humanity.

Fr. Tom Lynch (PFLC National President)