An Apocalyptic Time

“Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” Jesus, Luke 12

USA, 2008: We are living in an apocalyptic time. This is a cross, an honor, a blessing!

“Apocalyptic time” here means a period when violence explodes, society polarizes into a civil war, families are divided as brother fights brother, core values are jeopardized and considered worth dying for, hearts and loyalties are unveiled, churches split and excommunicate each other, and there remain no neutral territories or spaces for negotiation and compromise. A time of choice! Examples of such times are:
- The mother of Maccabees tells her sons to accept death rather than betray Torah;
- Jews at the time of Jesus choose for or against him: fraud, madman or messiah?
- Peter and Paul agree Gentle Christians will NOT practice the entire Judaic Law;
- A choice for baptism in the early church was a decision for martyrdom;
- Christians in Europe during the Reformation were loyal or disloyal to the pope;
- Americans in 1776 were loyalists or revolutionaries;
- Citizens of Virginia in 1860 pledged allegiance to the commonwealth or the nation;
- Spaniards in the 1930s were leftists or rightists, as were Germans and Russians.

Barack Obama is so clear, simple, consistent, relentless and uncompromising on the status of unborn life that he has propelled us into an apocalyptic time. Ironically, he has done this in the most charming, irenic manner: proclaiming unity and peace, offering a range of reasonable and enlightened policies, with a temperament steady, reassuring, forgiving and inclusive. The violence is quiet and hidden behind hygienic, legal abortion procedures and moving into embryo/cloning labs, euthanasia of the elderly and even infanticide. Hardly a single issue, it is an entire Culture of Death (said John Paul II.)

He would not allow the rescue of a struggling baby that has survived an abortion. With the Freedom of Choice Act, he would use our tax money to fund abortions here and import them overseas. He would strip away any restrictions the states have already enacted and sanctify abortion (and infanticide, eventually) into an absolute right.

Most social and political policies (health care, immigration, taxes) involve complex prudential judgments about which we can reasonably disagree in good will. Such policies are shrouded in uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Killing of the innocent and defenseless is not such an issue; it is always inherently wrong. Any 7-year old can understand this; it takes a college education to confuse it. THE Church does have A position on genocide, legalized abortion, euthanasia, suicide and infanticide. It does not have A position on health care, immigration or hunting of polar bears.

Many issues are negotiable: if you want a 30% capital gains tax and I want 50%, we might compromise on 40%. The life of a little one cannot be determined by such a Solomon-like decision. Two core moral values are mutually exclusive: the right of the mother to abort and the right of the fetus to life. They cannot compromise; it is either/or.

The common position that “I am personally opposed to abortion, but ….” is a decision that the government support abortion rights against the life of the little one. It is pro-abortion. Princeton’s Robert George has lucidly compared such a stance to a Southerner in 1860 who says “I am personally opposed to slavery and do not own slaves myself; but it is part of our society and we cannot deny the right to choose slavery to others.” Such a position is pro-slavery; the “personally opposed…” stuff is politically meaningless.

In the post-Roe, pre-Obama era, devout, informed, liberal, pro-life Catholics might vote “choice” year after election year, confident that the positive consequences of Democrat policy on a range of issues (peace, jobs, health care) more than overwhelmed the regrettable legalization of abortion. This belief is dismantled by the clarity of Obama’s position: notwithstanding his evident intelligence, good will, and enlightened position on many issues; notwithstanding the many negativities of the Bush administration and the McCain campaign; notwithstanding the pressing urgency of the economic crisis. State-sponsored, legitimated, funded and exported abortion is not comparable to emissions standards or marginal tax rates; nor to health or Iraq policy; it the same as genocide. It is an abomination. A vote for Obama is a vote for a quiet genocide; it makes one the enemy of the “least” and of those of us who would defend and cherish “the least.” The moral judgment on this issue is immune to confusion, nuance and complexity: it is clear, certain, and infallible.

Only Two Choices: Republican or Democrat?
Obama’s policy is so drastic and lucid that he provokes an apocalyptic choice: for or against abortion. A vote for Obama is clearly a vote for legalized abortion and is not possible for a Catholic. This absolutely binary choice can easily be confused in our system as a choice between the parties. The reality is more complex. Thought experiment: imagine an electoral choice in the early 20th century between a Hitler and a Stalin. No matter how bad the Stalin alternative and how enlightened the Hitler policy (on say, health care or the economic situation), a Catholic could NEVER vote for either.

A pro-life Catholic cannot vote for Obama; he need not vote McCain. There are other options: a third party vote or a boycott of the election. A liberal Catholic, unable to support Republican economic or foreign policy might boycott as a protest against both Republican and the Democrat forms of evil. A paleoconservative might vote third party in rejection of the politics of imperialism as well as that of choice. Conversely, boycott by a low-tax, strong defense, pro-choice Republican would be a choice for abortion, even though it appears similar to the decision of the pro-life Catholic. A vote for legalized abortion is morally prohibited; a vote for any particular party or candidate is not required.

Immediate Future of the Culture War
This Culture War has been waged for 35 years (mostly in a civil manner) and it will only intensify. The Obama candidacy brings a new level of intensity and clarity. It has been less prominent in this election than economic policy: both sides are confident of their base and reaching out to independents and therefore downplay the polarizing issue of defenseless human life. But it is the defining moral issue of our time. The surge of enthusiasm for Huckabee and Palin, who came out of nowhere, revealed the intensity of the movement. In a few years the Iraq war and the economic crisis of 2008 will be dim memories; but the war over innocent life will rage through the lifetimes of our children.

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger clarified a few years ago that Catholic politicians who persist in support for legalized abortion are to be denied communion. John Paul, Benedict and our bishops are tireless in their chant: all other rights (to work, immigration, health care, etc.) are meaningless if the right to life is denied. Slowly, our bishops have been getting clearer in their teaching and removing the fog of confusion that would conflate the destruction of innocent life with other “life” issues ranging from just war determinations to tax policy to transfats, clean air and dog fights.

Especially under an Obama presidency, the Culture War will intensify. Out of power, the pro-life movement will reinvigorate itself as the Catholic-Evangelical alliance is strengthened. In the Catholic Church we already see an emergent leadership that is more vigorous and counter-cultural in defense of life and family. The boomer generation, formed by the cultural revolution of the 60s and an undiscerning preference for formless “change” over tradition and authority, is moving steadily towards retirement, the nursing home, the cemetery and longevity in purgatory (if God be merciful!) Leadership will pass into the hands of the John Paul II generation, including more traditional clergy and laity from the ecclesial movements. The excommunication policy of our pontiff will slowly be implemented by an episcopacy that has been up to now mostly timorous and accomadationist. Imagine, for example that a Catholic Vice-President Biden were to break a congressional tie over the Freedom of Choice Act by a vote for abortion: any self-respecting Cardinal of Washington DC would be forced to refuse him communion. The Biden dilemma (loyalty to party or Church) is paradigmatic. The incompatibility of being (pro-life) Catholic and (pro-abortion) Democrat becomes blatant and obvious in an increasingly apocalyptic time.

Long Term Prospects
In the long run, the Culture of Life will prevail. No society that kills its very young can long endure. The culture of “choice” carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction as surely as did the communist, the Nazi or the Ba’athist Parties. The atheistic, nihilistic and anti-procreative logic that underlies the politics of “choice” will eventually self-destruct by an inexorable process inherent in the created order. Despite setbacks, victory in the war is assured us by Christ: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against you.”

Strategy for an Apocalyptic Time
Confident of eventual victory, we recognize the conflict as primarily spiritual; secondarily, moral and cultural; and thirdly, political. Therefore, our priorities are:

Repentance and humility: confession of my own arrogance, resentment and accusation; immersion in works of mercy, prayer, sacrament, and the Word.

Forgiveness of the enemy. With Jesus, we can forgive our enemy only if we name him, in a spirit of peace. My enemy is always the one closest to me, especially spouse, brother or mother or sister or father. Those are the ones who frustrate, disappoint, shame, and damage us. So, we candidly admit the enmity within our families and move to overcome it through forgiveness, prayer and love.

Patience is everything! Many who vote the pro-choice line do intend to protect life through a complex range of policies (health care, end war, distributive justice for the poor)even as their judgment on state protection of innocent life suffers from the confusion foisted by the “spirit of the age.” An agitated, argumentative and condemnatory attitude on our part will do further harm. Patience is all; as the saint said: "Those who rush destroy the things of God."

Passion and persistence in our own commitment to life in all dimensions, overcoming defeatism and discouragement, announcing “in and out of season.”

Clarity in echoing the Gospel of Life: with intelligence and insight, we disentangle the issue of defenseless life from a web of other realities. It cannot become married to a right wing ideology of small government and strong defense. In its simplicity and clarity, it is distinct from but related to the fostering of life through more complex policy issues (foreign affairs, tax, health care, immigration) about which we can and must disagree and compromise in prudential discourse.



It is a privilege to live in such times! How exciting and exhilarating! Whatever our disappointments and failures, we move ahead, confident in God’s grace, repenting from sin, forgiving our enemies, basking in God’s mercy, and protecting life, in the unambiguous and apocalyptic issue of innocent life, as well as the endless flow of complex, interrelated, and controversial issues that impact human life in our age.



“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” Jesus, Luke 12