July 5, 2022 Column Father De Celles

Roe is Gone. Thanks be to God, Praised be Jesus Christ! By now all of you have
heard the best news and the greatest miracle in America in the last 50 years. As Justice
Alito wrote for the majority in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS)
decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization:
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to
abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,
including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
If you haven’t read Alito’s opinion, you should. It provides a clear, step by step,
logical explanation of why the Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey were
clearly wrongly decided, and why there never has been a constitutional right to kill
unborn babies.
It is mindboggling to hear how pro-abortion activists have misrepresented the
Dobbs decision. They say that SCOTUS has “banned abortion.” It has not. Dobbs merely
said there was no constitutional right to abortion and added that the states are still able to
write laws that allow or restrict abortion. So if SCOTUS says a state can allow abortion
SCOTUS has not banned abortion. (I personally think they should have found a “right to
life” guaranteed in the Constitution; but few good constitutional experts agree with me).
They also say that SCOTUS has “destroyed democracy.” That’s ridiculous. As
Alito makes clear, back in 1973 when Roe was decided, the democratic process was
working in state governments to modify the laws about abortion according to the will of
the people of those states, when the SCOTUS intervened and unilaterally, against all
polling of the American people at the time, set aside the democratic process by the decree
of 7 unelected men. The SCOTUS now admits its prior undemocratic mistake.
They also say that “conservatives have high-jacked the Court.” No. As former
President Barrack Obama said so often: “elections have consequences.” In 2016
Americans elected a President and Congress that they wanted to appoint the next 3 judges
of SCOTUS, to make decisions more in line with the original meaning of the
Constitution, and not legislate from the bench.
As a wise man once said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you
free.”
 
Miracle. For 50 years we’ve been working to defend life and overturn Roe, and now it’s
happened. But as I try to let it sink in I am still stunned. And I admit, I hoped, but I was
never confident that it would happen in my lifetime. And certainly not in 2022.
Many of the most adamantly pro-life folks feel this way. For example, Judge
James Buckley, the 99 year-old retired Judge of the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia, introduced the Human Life Amendment to the US Constitution in
1974 when he was the US Senator from New York State, (the amendment was never
approved by Congress). (He is also the older brother of William F. Buckley). In the wake
of the Dobbs decision, he stated how overwhelmed he was and how he never imagined
he would see this in his lifetime.
How did it happen? I mean, just 6 years ago, in 2016, when President Obama

nominated liberal Merrick Garland to fill conservative Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on
the SCOTUS, making the court even more liberal, who’da thought we’d have a 6-3 ruling
for life in 2022. And just 2 years ago, so many conservatives were questioning whether
nominee Amy Barrett would be bold enough to vote to overturn Roe. And just weeks ago
many people thought Gorsuch, or Kavanaugh or Barrett, or certainly Roberts, would fold
in favor of Roe.
How did it happen? I truly do believe that this is a miracle. The greatest I’ve
seen in my lifetime. Jesus has directly intervened, moving the hearts and minds of the
electorate in 2016, and of the Senate in 2020, and the 6 Justices last week. It is no
coincidence that Dobbs was announced on June 24, 2022: the Solemnity of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus.
 
July 4 th and Dobbs: Propriety and Irony. The unelected Justices of the Supreme Court
are not Kings—they can only interpret laws and the Constitution, not invent new rights or
issue new laws on their own. In 1776 America declared itself free from the tyranny of the
Kings; how appropriate that in 2022, in Dobbs, we are freed from the tyranny of
SCOTUS Justices.
But there is an amazing irony as well in the activities of those who are violently
protesting Dobbs and threatening and committing physical violence against pro-life
institutions and Churches—especially Catholic Churches. There is, in fact, no “right to
abortion,” or anything like it, mentioned in the Constitution. But “free exercise of
religion” is explicitly mentioned as the first enunciated right in the Constitution’s “Bill of
Rights.” And “freedom of speech” is the second right explicitly mentioned there in. As
the First Amendment reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances.”’
If someone thinks the Constitution should bind our thinking on abortion (even if
the SCOTUS says it does not), fine, they can speak and vote about it freely. But they
shouldn’t then attack us in our Churches when we exercise our religious freedoms, or in
our pro-life organizations, where we exercise our constitutional rights of freedom of
speech.
But what if someone disagrees with the First Amendment, and wants to take away
our free speech, or religious liberty? Do we fight them? We must. But we must always
and only fight them governed by the principle that we must always “love our enemies.”
Which means, we fight them, but we constrain ourselves to use only the force absolutely
necessary. We must not resort to violence, but fight with prayer and patience and
respectful argument, reason, and logic—imbued and informed by the love and teachings
of Christ and His Church.
Oremus pro invicem. Fr. De Celles
 

 
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume
among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of
Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….”