Archbishop Fulton Sheen "There Is Life in the Womb" Transcript

There will be a special talk tonight, therefore I will not be like the professor who traveled about this country in motorcar and chauffeur always giving the same lecture. 


One day the chauffeur said to him, "I think I've heard that lecture of yours  a thousand times and I could give it just as well as you do."


 "Alright," said the professor, ''you stand up on that platform tonight, give the lecture, I will sit out in the audience in your chauffeur uniform.''


 The chauffeur gave a perfect lecture, but at the end, a hand went up.  


"There's a question I would like to ask you. When you mix that H2So4 with that NAcL2 and compare it with the photographic plates of the sun, how do you get the equation E = M over C square?"


 He said, ''That's the most stupid question, I ever heard in all my life!  And to show you how stupid it is, I'm going to get my chauffeur to answer it."

 

Have you noticed, that it is only within the last  50 years, that we ever had to use the words, Right To Life?

All peoples have university believed in the life. Life in it's right. Quote of hamerrabbi, centuries before Christ. So something has changed. Now behind every single movement is a philosophy.

You see I am a philosopher. So I'm not going to speak to you as a medic. I'm not going to speak to you as a lawyer, but as a philosopher. And everyone has a philosophy of life.

G.K. Chesterton said, "When you sit down in a dentist chair, that dentist has a right to ask you, "What is your philosophy of life?" Because if your philosophy of life is wrong, he can't be sure you will ever be able to pay your bill. So everyone has a philosophy of life.

Now what is, the philosophy of life behind abortion?  That's what we're going to inquire in first.

Let me give you some examples of philosophies of life.

For example, when the Nazi's, said that the Nordics were the chosen race, and others were unfit, to live in the nation. From that point on, you just could not stop the killing of the Jews, because the philosophy was wrong.

In Russia, the basic philosophy is, The Party Alone Matters.  But just as soon as an individual disagrees with the party, he's sent to an insane asylum and declared ''mad.''

Take the christian philosophy of life. Certain consequences followed from this:

A friend of mine, who had spent 7 years in a communist prison and was originally a Jewess. She became a Christian. One day before the communist came into Romania, her country, a Nazi called on her husband who was also a Jew, and later became Christian.

And, he said to the Nazi , "How many Jews have you killed in the last few weeks? "

"Oh, he said,  25,000." 

"In this particular village, how many did you kill? "

"I killed everyone in that town." 

And the man said, "Do you ever ask God for forgiveness?"

"Oh, he says, God does not exist. There is any such thing as forgiveness." 

"Alright," says the husband. "My wife is upstairs asleep. She's not heard this conversation. I'm going to ask her to come down." 

When she appeared before them, my friend, said to his wife, "Savinah, this is the man, who killed your father,  your mother, your 3 brothers, and 2 sisters.

She looked at him for a moment, and threw her arms around him, kissed him and said, "As God forgives you, I forgive you."

That forgiveness was the concept, of a Christian philosophy.

Now, what is the philosophy behind abortion?

That is to say, what is the set of values, that determines the destruction of life?

The philosophy behind, the destruction of life, is a misunderstanding of freedom, and a misunderstanding of love. 

First of all, they understand freedom, as the right to do whatever you please.  We hear the young people saying today, for example, "I gotta be me! I gotta do my thing! I gotta be free! Nobody's going to stop me!"

There's an absolute denial of limits. The selfish ego determines it's own, denies all limits. In regards to any law, as a restriction of freedom. But once you admit, freedom is the right to do whatever you please, then look at the consequences. You can join a machine gun down on any of your neighbor's chickens. You can stuff aunt Lizzy's mattress with old razor blades.

The only  stopping to doing whatever you please is power. And believe me , if we in America are going to develop this philosophy of, doing whatever you please,  there's going to be a reaction.  And the reaction already, has taken prisoner of 1/3 of the people of the world and that is communism, which says, "No. Freedom Is The Right To Do Whatever You Must."  

We say, "Freedom is the right to do whatever you want."

But once that philosophy is proclaimed, that the ego is supreme, there are no limits, then, abortion comes. 

I wonder when we got into this position of denying limits? I wonder why young people are so concerned about their identity? 30 or 40 years ago, nobody had the problem of identity.  Why not? Because he recognized boundaries.  Limits! 

How do you know,  the limits, for example of the identity for the State of Illinois? By it's boundary lines!  How do you know the identity of a basketball court?  By it's foul lines! How do we know our own identity?  By limits! By boundaries! By law! By order.

And I think we lost all of these, at 8:15 in the morning, August the 6th, 1945, when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.  That bomb blotted out boundaries of life and death. and across among nations. And so, abortion, from that point, is defended, on the ground that, one may do whatever he pleases. That's the first fault to us.

The second is, a misunderstanding of love. They understand love, as an experience. Love is sex.  And it doesn't make very much difference, who the other person is. The fig leaf, that in Greek sculpture was over the secret parts of man and woman, is they put it over their face. They don't care who  gives them the exhilaration. It is only the experience itself, that matters. The person does not count. You drink the water, you forget the glass. This is not the meaning of love.  Love is reciprocal. It involves persons. And love also involves responsibility.

And one of the reasons, the principle reasons of abortion is today is hey say, ''Well I don't want to have myself disturbed. I don't want to care. I want no burden. I want to do whatever I please. I want to love myself." This is the philosophy.

Now with the result that America is being divided into two classes, biophiliac and necrophiliacs. Now we're going to enjoy a little Greek. Before I came on the stage, I asked the Bishop, how many people in the audience did he  think they forgot their classical Greek? And he said, "Not over 8.''

Well for the benefit of those 8, in Greek theos is life, I will have to tell you the meaning of these words. In Greek bios is life and philia is love. And the biophiliac people are  those who love life. Necros in Greek is corpse; philia is love.

The people of America, in the world, are being divided into two classes, into the biophiliacs who love life, and necrophiliacs who love death.

The biophiliacs love life.  Why? Because at the beginning, God made this constellation of heavens, and that's the way Genesis describes it, God made-- God saved-- until we come to man.  There for the first time we hear, as it were the Trinity of persons entering into counsel.  And saying, "Let us make man.'' because man was to be made into the Divine image. The biophiliacs start there. They believe that God is the originator of life. And that is why, they are very impatient with those who say, "Oh you don't know if it's going to be human or not, wait for 3 months, wait for 6 months. Is that true?

Listen the problem is not when human life begins. The problem is Who made it! Who produced it? Lilies with lilies! Elephants make elephants! Human persons make human persons!

You put, for example, Tchaikovsky's, Piano Concerto Number 1 on a record. Or, Beethoven's Leonore ..Beyond music, as soon as you hear, the first few notes, you know what it's going to be .The next first half hour, that symphony will unfold as you predict. There are no musicians in that machine. There are no notes written on the tape.  But it's all there, from the very beginning.  And just as soon, as a husband and wife, do an appropriated act, there can be from the very beginning, Life.  And that whole life is structured with and out, just as clearly to be human, as the notes were written to be either say, a Tchaikovsky or a Beethoven.




Tchaikovsky - Piano Concerto 1. A.S. Ott/Orchestra of the National Philharmonic of Ukraine