Advancing a Pro-Life Culture in a Catholic Community With Pro-Abortion Politicians

This article is adapted from remarks that Archbishop Burke delivered at InsideCatholic.com's 14th Annual Partnership Dinner.

It is clear that we are experiencing today a period of intense and critical struggle in the advancement of the culture of life in our nation. The administration of our federal government openly and aggressively follows a secularist agenda. While it may employ religious language and even invoke the name of God, in fact, it proposes programs and policies for our people without respect for God and His Law.

In the words of the Servant of God Pope John Paul II, it proceeds "as if God did not exist" (Pope John Paul II, Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici, "On the Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World," 30 December 1988, no. 34).

At the same time, there is a lack of unity among those dedicated to advance a culture which respects fully the gift of human life and its origin in procreation, that is, in the cooperation of man and woman with God through the conjugal union and through education in the home which they have formed by marriage. Recent statements, occasioned by the Rites of Christian Burial accorded to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, have manifested profound disagreement and even harsh criticism among those who are publicly committed to the Gospel of Life.

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