A Prophetic Fortitude

Happy 100^th birthday, John Joseph O’Connor!

We were blessed to have you as our shepherd from 1984-2000.

Never can we forget you!

While there are so many gifts you gave that prompt ourgratitude to this day, we especially prize your prophetic fortitude indefending the sanctity of human life –from the baby in the womb to the fragile ill and elderly – and the dignity of the human person – especiallythe worker, minorities, immigrants, the poor, AIDS patients, and special needskids.

You were maligned as a fanatic as you defended the civilrights of the innocent baby in the sanctuary of her mother’s womb, andpredicted that before long abortion-on-demand, unfettered by any law, up to theact of birth, paid for by our tax money, insensitive to the consciences ofthoughtful physicians, nurses, healthcare workers, and institutions, wouldbecome obligatory, coerced, and celebrated!

Behold the “brave new world” of this state you loved, now onpar with China as the abortion capital of the planet. 

This is “regressive,” hardly “progressive,” as you so often warned us.  How often you quoted Mother Teresa, “If the life of the tiny infant in the womb is not protected, no human life, anywhere, can be safe.”

Now we have drones and mass shootings, an epidemic ofsuicides and push for euthanasia, awful treatment of immigrants and refugees,human trafficking, and a cheapening of life – a “throwaway culture” as PopeFrancis dubs it – by drugs, pornography, mutilation and hedonism, to which youcould reply, “I told you so.”

Thank God we had you!

We still need your teaching – it’s a matter of life anddeath.