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by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Archdiocese of Denver
Mary's kind of faith—from the
confusion and joy of the Annunciation to the sorrow of the cross—is
unreasonable. Her kind of love is too deep, too pure, too strong and too
unselfish, and it offends the pride of the modern world. That kind of
witness goes against the spirit that rules our world—the immaturity and
selfishness in our personal consumption, our politics and our workplaces,
and even within our families.
Our secular world seeks to reinvent or reinterpret Mary
because she is the model of mature human wisdom—a human being alive with
love who co-creates a new world not through power, but through unselfish
sacrifice, faith in God, and the rejection of power.
The result of our immaturity and selfishness at every level
of daily life is a competition that breeds an anger and violence —even the
polite violence of the language we use to smooth over the killing of new
life in abortions.
"Choice" can be a good thing but not if the price tag is a
human life. A friend of mine who is the mother of a son with Down
syndrome likes to say that the only difference between German doctors in
the 1930s and doctors in our own abortion establishment today is that now
we have better public relations firms. Our hostility to human weakness,
our anger at human imperfection, is exactly the same now as it was then.
Children with Down syndrome are creatures of God. They
can live happy and fruitful lives. They give far more love back to their
parents than they ever take. And because they belong first to God, killing
can never be a "private decision." It always has wider
consequences—beginning with the grief of the mother. It is the woman who
bears the spiritual cost of an abortion. Not the doctor, not the
researcher, and too often, not even the father. That is the lie in
sanitized language like "choice", and "private decision." The mother
always bears the cost, because every mother is always a part of her child.
This is the world women face in 2004. They can
compete with men for a piece of the power. But there's a cost. The price
tag of this kind of "equality" too often means denying the differences
between women and men. It can mean putting career first. It can mean
fearing the things that make up the feminine genius—the acts that make
women, women. That is why so much of today's secular world resents
fertility. Fertility is seen as a weakness. Children mean taking
responsibility for somebody else. Children should mean that a woman can
depend on the love of a husband. And that is frightening, because too many
men today never learned how to be men.
The genius of women is different from the genius of
men. Women express their genius through mercy, patience, endurance and
forgiveness. Women, usually far better than men, know what's true and
important about the world. Men usually understand the facts of their
daily life very well. But women more easily see the truth of the people
and the relationships hidden behind the facts.
The genius of every woman is the genius of Mary—to
love; to protect and nourish the lives entrusted to her no matter what the
joy, suffering or sorrow; and to support the full development of life in
others.
Teresa of Avila, one of the great doctors of the Church
said "Accustom yourself continually to many acts of love, for they
enkindle and melt the soul."
Women who love well become real women. And in becoming real women. they
draw men into being true men.
Mary at the cross is the same icon of real human
greatness, the same defender of life and model for us all. In protecting
the weak, the poor and above all the unborn, we follow Mary in becoming a
people of life.
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