We cannot justify our aspiration to goodness as Catholics simply on the basis of the vigor of our demand for an elusive and questionable civil law declaring what we already know, that abortion is wrong. Approval or rejection of legal restrictions on abortion should not be the exclusive litmus test of Catholic loyalty. We should understand that whether abortion is outlawed or not, our work has barely begun: the work of creating a society where the right to life doesn't end at the moment of birth, where an infant isn't helped into a world that doesn't care if it's fed properly and housed decently and educated adequately, where the blind or retarded child isn't condemned to exist rather than empowered to live.
The bishops stated this duty clearly in 1974. They said that a constitutional amendment was only the beginning of what we had to do, and they were right. The bishops reaffirmed that view in 1976, in 1980, and again this year when the United States Catholic Committee asked Catholics to judge candidates on a wide range of issues -- not just abortion, but also on food policy, on the arms race, on human rights, on education, on social justice, and military expenditures. That's the bishops teaching us: "Consider all things." The bishops have been consistently pro-life and I respect them for that.
Ladies and gentlemen, the problems created by the matter of abortion are obviously complex and confounding. Nothing is clearer to me than my personal inadequacy to find compelling solutions to all of their moral, legal, and social implications. I, and many others like me, are eager for enlightenment, eager to learn new and better ways to manifest respect for the deep reverence for life, that deep reverence that is our religion and our instinct.
【美国经典英文演讲100篇:"Religious Belief and Public Morality"】相关文章:
★ 美国经典英文演讲100篇:1992 DNC Address
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