There are many definitions and descriptions of a prophet. At first consideration, many would typically think of a prophet as one who predicts the future. And yet, we cannot reduce the prophet’s role to merely that; it is much broader. We may think of the prophets of Scripture – major and minor prophets, sometimes willing and sometimes reluctant, those who were heeded and those who weren’t. A prophet is one who is chosen and inspired by God, God’s messenger, one who speaks the truth. One particularly apt description of a prophet says that a prophet is someone who “disturbs the comfortable and comforts the disturbed.” The gift of prophesy continues in God’s chosen ones to this day.

Many are familiar with what have become known as the modern day prophesies of Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, where he foresaw what would happen if contraceptive use became widespread: we could expect to see a general lowering of morality in society, a general disregard for the physical and psychological well-being of females by males, governments using family planning programs for coercive purposes, and, we would begin to treat our bodies as though they were machines, losing respect for the human person as an integral unity of body and soul. Few would argue that these things have not come to pass.

The Prophet Isaiah

Forty-plus years later, the ongoing disintegration of society persists, and the battle for our religious freedom in which we are now engaged is one such manifestation. The very real threats to our religious liberty and rights of conscience brought on by the Affordable Care Act’s HHS mandate have given rise to a great outcry across our country. The mandate is forcing employers to cover contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs in their health plans, putting them in a position of either violating their conscience or facing crippling fines. Currently 94 cases (47 for-profit, 47 non-profit, and 3 class action) representing 300 plaintiffs have been filed to oppose this unconstitutional mandate.

It is quite striking to go back to the words soon-to-be St. John Paul II wrote in Evangelium vitae in 1995 and see its prophetic nature in light of the connection to this evil we face today. In the section on Present Day Threats to Human Life, Pope John Paul keenly observes:

“Humanity today offers us a truly alarming spectacle, if we consider not only how extensively attacks on life are spreading but also their unheard-of numerical proportion, and the fact that they receive widespread and powerful support from a broad consensus on the part of society, from widespread legal approval and the involvement of certain sectors of health-care personnel. With time the threats against life have not grown weaker. They are taking on vast proportions. They are not only threats coming from the outside…they are scientifically and systematically programmed threats. The twentieth century will have been an era of massive attacks on life… Aside from intentions, which can be varied and perhaps can seem convincing at times, especially if presented in the name of solidarity, we are in fact faced by an objective ‘conspiracy against life’, involving even international institutions, engaged in encouraging and carrying out actual campaigns to make contraception, sterilization and abortion widely available. Nor can it be denied that the mass media are often implicated in this conspiracy, by lending credit to that culture which presents recourse to contraception, sterilization, abortion and even euthanasia as a mark of progress and a victory of freedom, while depicting as enemies of freedom and progress those positions which are unreservedly pro-life.” (Evangelium vitae, n. 17).

The Holy Father continues by remarking that decisions that go against life are problems that go far beyond personal situations:

“It is a problem which exists at the cultural, social and political level, where it reveals it’s more sinister and disturbing aspect in the tendency, ever more widely shared, to interpret the above crimes against life as legitimate expressions of individual freedom, to be acknowledged and protected as actual rights” (EV, n. 18).

This is precisely what we are seeing in the arguments of the current administration who is forcing employers to violate their conscience. The government’s assertion that these death-dealing drugs, devices, and procedures are something that women have a “right” to is unconscionable. Our bodies are not machines (cf. Pope Paul VI), something to be manipulated. They are a gift to be revered. Freedom is not license to do as one pleases, but rather we are gifted with freedom so that we may choose the good. There can be no “right” to kill another human being nor to violate the gift of one’s life by going against God’s design for the unity of body and soul. To act in this way has serious present and eternal consequences. Pope John Paul continues: “…freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth” (EV, n. 19).

The U.S. Supreme Court heard the oral arguments on two key religious liberty cases, Sebelius vs. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. vs. Sebelius, on March 25. The Green family, devout Christians who own the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores and the Hahn family, the Mennonite owners of the Conestoga Wood cabinet making company, are business owners who care about their employees, and are taking a stand for the right to run their businesses according to their deeply held religious and moral beliefs that it is wrong to offer life-ending drugs in their health plans.

By forcing employers to violate their conscience, the government puts a direct burden on the free exercise of religion. This has serious and far-reaching implications. It is an exercise in coercion, opposing the freedom guaranteed by our Constitution. Believing in God defines who we are and how we live. Living our faith does not stop when we step outside the church doors. Our faith is made manifest in how we live, love, and serve others.

Pope John Paul II’s deep reflections on the struggle between the culture of life and the culture of death ring true:

“When the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life; in turn, the systematic violation of the moral law, especially in the serious matter of respect for human life and its dignity, produces a kind of progressive darkening of the capacity to discern God’s living and saving presence” (EV, n. 21).

He goes on to quote the profound wisdom of Gaudium et spes (n. 36): “Without the Creator the creature would disappear, when God is forgotten the creature itself grows unintelligible”.

We are quickly realizing just how darkened society’s moral conscience has become and we can marvel at how Pope John Paul II saw this coming when he explained that when relativism reigns unopposed,

“democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves toward a form of totalitarianism…[is] transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest members…in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part” (EV, n. 20).

While we are travelling a dark road, we are never without the light of Christ. Many people of conscience are standing against the injustice of the government’s mandate. They are fighting for the religious freedom and rights of conscience of all citizens. Many people are storming heaven with prayer and fasting. Adversity drives us to our knees, and in the crucible of suffering we are transformed and renewed.

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Despite the dire circumstances in which we live, John Paul continues to offer us hope through the proclamation of God’s Truth. He says,

“And yet all the conditioning and efforts to enforce silence fail to stifle the voice of the Lord echoing in the conscience of every individual: it is always from this intimate sanctuary of the conscience that a new journey of love, openness and service to human life can begin” (EV, n. 24).

In his Address to the United Nations in October of 1995, he proclaims:

“We must not be afraid of the future. We must not be afraid of man. It is no accident that we are here. Each and every human person has been created in the “image and likeness” of the One who is the origin of all that is. We have within us the capacities for wisdom and virtue. With these gifts, and with the help of God’s grace, we can build in the next century and the next millennium a civilization worthy of the human person, a true culture of freedom. We can and must do so! And in doing so, we shall see that the tears of this century have prepared the ground for a new springtime of the human spirit.”

Allison LeDoux is the director of the Respect Life Office and the Office of Marriage and Family for the Diocese of Worcester, MA. Mrs. LeDoux serves as coordinator for the New England region of Diocesan Pro-Life Directors and is a member of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference’s Pro-Life/Pro-Family and Health Care Subcommittees. She received her certification in Catholic Health Care Ethics from the National Catholic Bioethics Center in 2007.Mrs. LeDoux and her husband, John, a permanent deacon, are the parents of eight children.

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