​By Brother Simon Ballachi

​In Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), the United States Supreme Court decided that slaves were property, could not be citizens and therefore were not entitled to due process of law.  Dred Scott was overturned by the fourteenth amendment, specifically by reiterating our inalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
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If you don’t have Life, you can’t have Liberty and if you don’t have Liberty, you can’t Pursue Happiness.  This hierarchical order is called a necessity criterion.  Another type of necessity criterion is the fact that something cannot be and not be under the same formal set of circumstances (at the same place and time).  This is called the law of non-contradiction.
 By the law of non-contradiction, if a right is truly inalienable to one person, then it necessarily must be inalienable to all persons, that is to everyone, equally, everywhere and always.  Dred Scott violated the law of non-contradiction by declaring that “people of African descent” were not persons.  By deciding the right to property was more fundamental than the right to liberty, it also contravened the hierarchical nature of the necessity criterion.
Throughout history we have seen time and again that when human beings are denied ‘personhood,’ unbridled brutality against that group or individual becomes normal.  This is most poignantly notable of the twentieth century where multiple political regimes killed people by the tens of millions.
Marxism undermines individual rights by taking a utilitarian view of persons, promoting the sophistry that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the individual.  This is used to justify the practice of ‘might makes right’ or the tyranny of the ‘majority.’  Inalienable rights describe the concept of free will; that individual persons each have their own sovereignty, their own end and cannot be valued simply for their utility; that we are all made in the image and likeness of God.
In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court stated that it could not determine when life begins. That is to say, the court denied infants personhood.  Abortion became legalized and in turn normalized. Since then over sixty million abortions have been performed in the United States alone. That means there is approximately one child out of every three missing from our homes, our schools and our play grounds.
We make many explanations for our actions, but in our hearts we know that it’s wrong.  Good deeds don’t require sophisticated explanations. This conflict between the heart and mind is the death of the soul.  When enough people suffer from interior discord, the lack of peace of soul, that is the true cause of war…
Saint Pope John Paul II said, “The right to life is the path to peace.”  And peace is the path to prosperity, not abortion.  Always choose life.

(A meditation for the celebration of “Respect Life” month)
Composed by: Sr. Mary Magdalene

This post was originally written and posted in October 2016 in celebration of Respect Life month.  It is re-posted here as an opportunity to reflect and meditate on the Gift of Life in the days leading up to the 2019 March for Life.  We hope you find it fruitful!
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Each year the United States Conference on Catholic Bishops designates October as “Respect Life” month.  This year’s theme is “Moved by Mercy” and comes from a quote by Pope Francis during this Year of Mercy in which he encourages each of us by saying “We are called to show mercy because mercy has been shown to us.”

Enjoy the following meditations on the dignity of all life, our own and that of every human person!
 
First meditation:  The Gift of Life which is God Himself

Stop and listen! Of the Father’s Love Begotten   
   
…and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

The mystery of the Incarnation is this: that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son, our Lord Jesus, to save us.  In this ultimate humility, God the Son took on human flesh through the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary in order that He might dwell with us, be close to us, give Himself completely to us.  This is the Gift of God’s own Life.  God the Son had no need to take on our human condition but was instead compelled by love to do so.  He became one with us in our humanity that we might be made worthy to share in his divinity.

Pray—Lord God, Creator of the Universe, it is beyond my comprehension that You would choose to humble Yourself to dwell within our very human nature.  In “coming down” to our earthly humanity, You “raise us up” in all dignity.  Help my heart to be grateful for this Gift which is Your very being.

Ponder—God chose to “confine” Himself to a human body in the Person of our Lord, Jesus.  And yet, as God, He cannot be confined at all; not in our understanding, not in our limitations, not in our neatly packaged notions or preconceived little boxes.  Am I able to embrace God as the Creator, and embrace myself as a mere creature sprung from the love of God’s own heart?

Second meditation:  The Gift of Life which is our own life

Stop and listen! Holy is His Name    

 …Truly You have formed my inmost being; You knit me in my mother’s womb.
We were known and loved long before we were born.  This is the “Gift of our own life.”  That God, who is Sacred, has formed us in His image and wrapped us in His Holiness.
Beloved, you were on God’s heart from before the moment of your conception, cherished and given the dignity of human personhood and divine adoption.
It is a natural human inclination to desire to “know” and to “be known” intimately.  We long to be loved fully, even loved through our faults and failings.  It is this kind of Love in which Jesus embraces us.

Pray—Lord, as I sit quietly and allow You to gaze upon me in my brokenness, open my heart that I might know something of this unconditional love You wish to pour out on me.  I am Your Beloved child.

Ponder—Do I treat myself, my body and my soul, with the dignity of one who is greatly loved by God?

Third Meditation:  the Gift which is ALL life
Jesus, the very son of God, was born into the world as we all are: a baby formed in His mother’s womb.  I heard it once said that “Jesus became the lowest of the low, to show us that no one was beneath his dignity, that every human was worth saving, was of sacred worth.”

Every human….is of sacred worth
                —every race, every religion or no religion at all,
                    woman or man, imprisoned or free, rich or poor

 Every human….is of sacred worth
                —strong or weak, in illness or in good health,
                    the very old, waiting to meet their Lord
                    and the unborn baby, waiting to greet the world!

You are of sacred worth. I am of sacred worth.  Each and every one of us Divinely loved into being!

Stop and listen! How Great Thou Art   
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Pray—Lord, help me to realize my own worth in Your merciful eyes, and create for me “eyes” that see each and every human person with the love and compassion with which You see them.
Ponder—Am I able to see the “sacred”in myself?  Am I able to see the “sacred” in each human person?  This is the Gift of Life which is the dignity of all life; Sacred from conception to natural death.  Beloved, and written on the heart of God.
 
If you would like, you may end by praying one “Our Father,” one “Hail Mary,” and one “Glory Be.”

May we see one another with eyes of compassion and hearts moved by Mercy!



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​submitted by Brother Raymond
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Dear Brother Knight:
There have been times in our country’s past when uninformed or prejudiced people questioned whether Catholics could be good citizens or honest public servants. That’s why Father McGivney chose the name “Columbus” for our Order — because the discoverer was the Catholic figure from American history most admired and accepted at the time. In fact, from our founding in 1882, until the election of Brother Knight John F. Kennedy in 1960, many still held that Catholics were unfit for public office. Throughout that time, the Knights of Columbus worked to counter such prejudice.
Sadly, it seems that in some quarters, this prejudice remains.i  First, in 2017 a Notre Dame law professor was deemed unfit for a federal judgeship by a United States Senator who feared that “the dogma lives loudly within you.” Now, two more senators have questioned a Brother Knight’s fitness for the federal bench precisely because our Order holds firm to the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of life and marriage.
Such attacks on the basis of our Catholic faith are hardly new. The Knights of Columbus was formed amid a period of anti-Catholic bigotry. We stood against that then, and we do so now. We have spoken out against persecution around the world for nearly a century. At the same time, here at home we stood against the Ku Klux Klan, including its attempts to ban Catholic education, and we published books on the black and Jewish contributions to American history decades before the Civil Rights movement. More recently, we stood with the Little Sisters of the Poor in their fight for religious liberty and have worked with both the Obama and Trump administrations — and both sides of the aisle in Congress — to help Christians, Yazidis and Shi’a Muslims targeted for genocide by ISIS.
From our very beginning, the Knights of Columbus has been an organization adhering to the teachings of the Catholic Church. As with the Church, our primary motivation in everything is Christ’s great commandment, that we love God completely and our neighbor as ourselves.
As the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church explains, “Jesus Christ reveals to us that ‘God is love’ and He teaches us that ‘the fundamental law of human perfection, and consequently of the transformation of the world, is the new commandment of love.’”ii
This love impels us to our great charitable endeavors on behalf of those in need. From inner cities in the United States to refugee camps in the Middle East our Order’s donations over the last decade — more than one billion dollars and hundreds of millions of hours in volunteer work — are the result of this faith.
These works of charity have practical impacts that transform lives as we help people here at home and around the world. Our charity helped typhoon victims in the Philippines rebuild their lives and livelihoods; it brought prosthetics and rehabilitation to thousands of Haitian youth after the earthquake there; it puts coats on poor, cold children in some of our country’s most impoverished neighborhoods each winter; it gives wheelchairs to those who otherwise could not afford them in countries like Vietnam and Mexico; and it provides education, housing and medical care to AIDS orphans in Africa.
This love also motivates us to stand with the Church on the important issues of life and marriage, precisely because the Church’s teaching reflects and is based on that love. We stand with our Church because we believe that what our faith teaches is consistent with reason, is timeless and transcends the changing sentiments of any particular time or place.
We do not stand alone.
In his first message to our international convention, Pope Francis asked “each Knight, and every Council, to bear witness to the authentic nature of marriage and the family, the sanctity and inviolable dignity of human life, and the beauty and truth of human sexuality.”
And our positions on life are not new. My two predecessors as supreme knight spoke out forcefully to defend the rights of the unborn. In 1973, Supreme Knight John McDevitt wrote that Roe v. Wade was “a mortal blow to all who consider human life sacred.” He urged the Order to “to initiate or increase efforts to offset the harmful effects of this lamentable decision.”
My immediate predecessor, Virgil Dechant, said in 1977: “With some 1.2 million unborn babies being killed by abortion each year in the United States alone, we are confronted with an outrage against human life paralleled only by the ravages of a bloody war.”
Simply put, our positions are now, and have always been, Catholic positions.
We must remember that Article VI of the U. S. Constitution forbids a religious test for public office, and the First Amendment guarantees our free exercise of religion, freedom of association and freedom of speech. Any suggestion that the Order’s adherence to the beliefs of the Catholic Church makes a Brother Knight unfit for public office blatantly violates those constitutional guarantees.
Let us continue to express our love of God and neighbor by helping those in need and by standing with our Church, regardless of the popularity of doing so. Let us remember that our “Christian witness is to be considered a fundamental obligation.”iii
Let us also remember that, from our founding, we have embodied the truth that a good Catholic is a good citizen who shows civility and dignity even in the face of prejudice.
As we begin 2019, Dorian and I wish you a new year filled with the joy and wonders of His love. Thank you as well for all the many ways in which you have brought joy into the lives of millions around the world. May the inspiration of our founder prompt us to greater confidence in that love and encourage us to even greater works of charity.
Fraternally,
Carl A. Anderson

 i See the excellent historical study by historian Philip Jenkins, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, (Oxford University Press, 2003).
ii Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005), no. 54.
iii Ibid., no. 570.
Knights of Columbus
1 Columbus Plaza
New Haven, CT 06510