12/09/01

How do we welcome God Incarnate?

‘Come, Lord Jesus,” the Church prays during Advent, taking for her prayer the cry of God’s people at the end of the Apocalypse of St. John, the Book of Revelation. The Jesus we long and cry for, however, is the Word made flesh, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity incarnate. There are consequences to welcoming and worshiping a God who assumes human nature, body and soul, for our salvation. Human flesh, the human body itself, takes on a sacred character beyond what it has by reason of being created by God.

The Church is obsessed with “pelvic issues”, say those who resent her moral teachings on sexuality and the gift of life. But those teachings are grounded in her profession of faith in the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God. With the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, everything of Christ is taken up into the Godhead; and we belong to Christ. To worship ourselves rather than Christ is idolatry; but to dismiss anything of ourselves, including our bodies, as of trivial importance is a form of blasphemy.

Because our country is newly conscious of its vulnerability since Sept. 11, perhaps we will begin to understand more deeply the Church’s teaching on the infinite value of every human life, no matter how vulnerable. Fourteen years ago, the Pope connected this concern for the most vulnerable to America’s greatness: “Every person—no matter how vulnerable or helpless, no matter how young or old, no matter how healthy, handicapped or sick, no matter how useful or productive for society—is a being of inestimable worth created in the image and likeness of God. This is the dignity of America, the reason she exists, the condition for her survival—yes, the ultimate test of her greatness: to respect every human person, especially the weakest and most defenseless one, those yet unborn.” (Pope John Paul II, Detroit, September, 1987). There is to be no manipulation of one person by another who is stronger or more able. There is to be no reduction of one person to another as a slave or an object of lust. There is to be no cloning for purposes of laboratory experimentation, no production of embryos so that their stem cells can be used and the embryo itself destroyed.

Respect for life and its principles creates the moral teaching around the transmission of life. Sexual activity is reserved to those united in matrimony, so that making love is not separated from the making of children who can be raised protected by their parents’ love for them and one another. To separate the biological from the psychological and the psychological from the spiritual is to destroy the intrinsic unity and the dignity of the human person. The Church recognizes, with the whole human race, that sex is multi-dimensional: it fosters relationships of love, it gives great pleasure, it procreates children. What the Church says is that every act of sexual union should respect the unity and dignity of the human person and not deliberately separate one dimension from the other two.

Respect for life creates the moral teaching around the end of life and the prohibition of euthanasia and assisted suicide. It explains the respect for the human corpse expressed in the funeral liturgy. Because the human person is both body and soul, there are Catholic health care institutions to heal and protect us when we are sick and most vulnerable. All of this teaching and each of these hospitals, nursing homes and care centers are grounded in our worship of an incarnate God.

Catholic health care in the United States traces its origin to New Orleans in 1727, when 12 French Ursuline sisters arrived and became nurses and servants of the poor. In the past 274 years, Catholic health care organizations have dedicated themselves to the care of the sick and the creation of a society in which human life, from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death, is respected, sustained and protected. That system of Catholic health care institutions has itself been respected and appreciated—until this generation.

During the meeting of the U.S. Bishops last November, the Catholic Health Association, which represents more than 2,000 Catholic health care sponsors, systems, facilities and related organizations, presented a troubling report on a campaign to force hospitals to choose between their Catholic principles or their survival. This national campaign seeks to impose upon Catholic health care agencies legal obligations and restrictions that are incompatible with the faith of the Church and the conscience of committed Catholics. Bits and pieces of it appear from time to time in the news, and anyone can follow it on websites. Through regulation, legislation, court cases and public relations ploys, the image and strength of Catholic Health care are being undermined to prepare for the day when Catholic hospitals will be forced by law to provide, as they say, “the full range of reproductive services.”

Who is supporting and organizing this campaign? People with a lot of money: the American Public Health Association, Catholics for Free Choice, MergerWatch, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the Pro-Choice Resource Center, Inc., Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Alan Guttemacher Institute, the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, the National Women’s Law Center, the National Health Law Program, CARAL Pro-choice Education Fund, the Feminist Majority Foundation. There are undoubtedly a lot of well-intentioned people in these organizations. They should, however, allow everyone, including Catholics and Catholic institutions, the same freedoms they claim for themselves and that all of us claim under the U.S. Constitution.

How do we welcome God Incarnate? How do we prepare to recognize again the omnipotent and eternal Son of God in the arms of his young mother, the Virgin Mary? We should start by appreciating the way in which every human being is embodied spirit. We should continue by testing our respect for every human life and for the principles of that life. We should go on to pray for our enemies and take to heart the lesson that the peace which comes through conquest by arms will not last without the peace that comes from conversion to the ways of God. We will call the newborn Jesus the Prince of Peace. We will sing as the angels did at his birth: peace to all whom God loves. For a few moments, at least, we will glimpse the possibility of a world filled with peace and love. If, in those few moments, we resolve to work toward that world with the help of God’s grace, Jesus will be welcomed.

Sincerely yours in Christ,
Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

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