Forty years

''Forty years I endured that generation. 
I said, 'They are a people whose hearts go astray
  and they do not know my ways.'
So I swore in my anger, 
  'They shall not enter into my rest.' " -- Psalm 95:10-11 (Grail translation)

Every morning I, like millions of other Catholics around the world, pray the Liturgy of the Hours. The most common invitatory psalm as part of the first "hour" of the day is Psalm 95. When I pray this psalm, I shudder as I consider it in light of the 40th anniversary of the Roe vs Wade decision legalizing abortion on demand in the United States.

For most of the last 40 years, the pro-life movement's efforts to end abortion have focused largely on legal and political means. I have long held that such means are important in the same way that a tourniquet is important to a bleeding hemophiliac -- they both buy you time. However, if you never address the underlying problem, the patient, whether the hemophiliac or the society, will eventually die. I fear that our society may quickly be approaching its death bed.

Pro-lifers used to think, and many still do, that if you could just get out the message about the truth of the humanity of the unborn through education, ultrasounds, images of aborted babies; or if you just made arguments based on natural law, people would support legal and other means to save babies from abortion. And we need to keep doing those things because they do change some minds and hearts.

The mounting evidence, however, of 40 years is that those means are not enough. We are seeing the fruits of a culture whose members have ignored or rejected God and His laws. As we have moved further and further from God, our moral foundations have gradually collapsed until now, arguments based on natural law fail to persuade many people on key moral issues such as abortion and same-sex so-called marriage.

Although the tourniquets still need to be applied, we need to deal with the root issues, rather than just trying to manage the symptoms. Through prayer, word and deed, we need to reach out with the saving truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Only the Divine Physician can heal the disease that has not only destroyed 55 million pre-born children since 1973, but is threatening to destroy tens of millions more individuals in our nation, and even our society itself.

All too many don't even realize that they are sick and dying and so are unwilling or unable to come to the Lord themselves. We need to act like the paralytic's friends who brought him to Jesus (Mt. 9:1-8), showing by their loving actions their trust in His power to save.

The first way that we can bring our society to Jesus, the most important way, is through prayer. In addition to our personal and private prayers, I encourage you, if you have not yet done so, to get involved in 40 Days for Life. In less than ten years, this wonderful ministry has spread from a town in Texas to over 480 cities in 15 countries. Through prayer and fasting, over 6,700 babies--that we know of--have been saved from abortion; 75 abortion workers have quit their jobs; and 25 abortion facilities have shut down following local 40 Days for Life campaigns.

God alone can heal the wounds of our society that manifest themselves in the sin of abortion. Let's turn to Him unceasingly, begging Him through prayer and fasting to act in power in our nation and our world. Our society may be dying, but we follow the one, true God, who raises the dead.