That Religious Guy: Proud to be Pro-Life

..... This past Sunday, Fr. Joe's homily made an impact on me. Fr. Joe Maghinay has been with the parish at St. Luke's for a couple of years now, leading the weekly bible study and ministering to the Filipino Catholic community. His speech is spiced with a mild Filipino accent, but his vocabulary is never less than proper and refined. People sometimes complain that he is hard to understand and his homilies are too long, but he's still important to the parish. He's probably the most outspoken Pro-Life priest at St. Luke's, peppering his Sunday sermons with reprimands of society's pro-choice tendencies.

..... Today, however, I woke up repeating his words to the parish. As usual, he went up to the pulpit on the right side of the altar and opened with a joke. He continued the homily and slowly but surely, began raising and lowering his voice, a sign that he believes what he says. Like an undulating wave, his words crashed into me, imprinting their meaning in my mind. He faced the congregation and said, "Europe used to be the Christian capital of the world. Well, name a Christian country in Europe now." Those words were building on his previous thoughts in his homily, how Catholics are no longer the majority in the world's populations and how Muslims are overtaking us. His homily was not so much a tirade against the birthrate of Muslims, but against the abortions committed on the unborn in the U.S., many done by Catholics.

..... How can we claim to be Catholic, yet stand idley by and let this infaticide continue? How can you be pro-choice and Catholic at the same time? It's not only a theological oxymoron but pretty moronic itself. With the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade being spent with Pro-Life marches in the East and the West Coast Walk for Life in California, true Christians are letting the world know that we won't stand for further injustices. I'm glad that Roe supporters like Robert MacCartney are starting to realize that the Pro-Life movement is not ending anytime soon. Younger generations are now taking the charge.

..... A Pro-Life advocate came to our youth group once and told us that the Pro-Life movement is the civil rights movement of our day. I for one firmly believe this since we're fighting for an individual's right to life, something that supercedes another's "right" to choose murder.

- Jeremy Dela Cruz