Between the Wars [UPDATED]

[Update, 2/6/09: Janet quite rightly points out in the combox that the young Joseph Ratzinger was compelled to fight for the Third Reich, which is certainly not the case for today's "soldiers" for abortion rights. The young Joseph Ratzinger's desertion makes clear his opposition to the evil cause for which he was made to fight. No one, of course, compels Americans to fight against our weakest citizens. In my last paragraph below, I was merely wondering at the way that God sometimes nurtures great good and holiness from evil soil, and hoping that this might be the case with the most committed pro-choicers. But of course, we have to choose it.]

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I went to Mass today in a little chapel near my new home. At the Prayer of the Faithful, the priest invited the congregation to voice their petitions. I was about to ask my fellow communicants to pray for my brothers to find work, but an elderly man offered the intention "For an end to the war . . . of abortion." I was struck by his analogy and forgot my prayer request, and indeed no one else mentioned their petitions after this one.

If abortion is a war, that means there are victims of two kinds, at least as we've come to define them: casualties and collateral damage. Collateral damage is damage that is incidental to the intended outcome of the war. If unwanted babies are the intended casualties of this war, then their mothers (and fathers, and grandparents, and on and on in ever-widening concentric circles) are the collateral damage. If we can't bring back the dead, at least, as in a war, we must bind up the wounds of those calamitously injured in it and work to reintroduce them into society.

And if this is a war, then there are generals, officers, infantry and foot-soldiers on both sides. There are, of course, the vocal and dedicated spokesmen (usually, on the pro-choice side, spokeswomen) who rally the rank and file and lead the troops in battle. But the commitment of the soldiers themselves to the cause for which they are fighting varies widely. Many people on the pro-choice side simply accept that abortion is legal and assume it's an uncontestable right; after all, when something is legal, one can usually safely assume that, if not in the interest of the common welfare, it's at least not something that will harm one's fellow citizens. These people might be induced to march in a rally, or might simply do nothing, as so many good Germans did.

It seems to me that, if lovingly presented with the truth, some of these soldiers might lay down their arms and work instead toward the creation of a more just society, in which all lives are valued equally. Many of them care deeply about justice in the abstract, and abortion rights have become firmly entrenched in the public mind as one of the freedoms that should be guaranteed by our hyper-individualistic society; like the good Germans, these soldiers are unquestioning.

But soldiers can have changes of heart; and soldiers, after the war, must be rehabilitated. One German conscript, for instance, who deserted from the Wehrmacht is now Pope Benedict XVI.