A bit more on the Gospel of Life

One of Alan's suggestions during his talks last Saturday (see his own report on the event at the Torch of the Faith website) was that every Catholic parish should have an active pro-life group of some kind.

I'm going to propose that we take up this suggestion at the parish meeting here this Thursday, after the evening Mass. Actually there are some S.P.U.C. groups around the parishes of Wrexham Diocese - I did directly invite local members to the Creed, Code & Cult session on "the Gospel of Life and the Culture of Death", but they didn't seem able to make it.

Also, I don't see why the members of other churches shouldn't be invited to join such a group, although I think we have to admit that unequivocal support for the pro-life cause is not always easy to come by within the various streams of modern Protestant Christianity. A friend of mine, a priest in another diocese, told me recently that when he raised the subject of pro-life campaigning at his local "Churches Together" meeting, he was met with a deafening silence by most of the other ministers and representatives. Interestingly, the strict Evangelical churches, hostile towards Catholicism in so many other respects, often prove to be our most reliable allies in this particular area.

John Smeaton, the director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has a blog of his own, where he provides excellent, well-argued commentary on all the most recent developments in the Society's campaign work.

The Christian Institute regularly highlights pro-life issues, and recently drew attention to Virginia Ironside's advocacy of infanticide for handicapped children.

I found a lot of useful material in Dr Raymond Dennehy's long, scholarly essay on "Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death", while of course the Linacre Centre continues to be a source of solid moral theological reflection on every aspect of contemporary medical ethics.

And then, if you're a bit bookish, have a look at Chapter Three of Richard Overy's historical study of Britain between the wars, The Morbid Age, where he summarises the arguments put forward by the different branches of the eugenics movement during the twenties and thirties - arguments echoed today in the writings of Peter Singer and others.