From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

This week the leak of the initial draft of the decision regarding the status of Roe v. Wade was surprising. I know that many of you feel angry or depressed. I also know that many others will feel that this is a decision long overdue. There is nothing I can write that is going to change your minds—and I would not hope to do so.

What I might hope for is that we can develop a degree of compassion for the other side. In our faith there is no “other side.” What we have is one another. What we have is our unity as siblings in Christ. That demands a willingness to listen to one another in the midst of precisely these sorts of challenges. We are made stronger by our willingness to listen and enfeebled by our addiction to being right.

What most dismays me, as news of the decision has made its way around, is the oversimplification of a complicated issue. It seems impossible, to me, to insist that abortion be illegal without adequate provision for the mother and child in the form of a robust and generous social safety net. It also seems impossible, to me, to regard a new life as merely a choice with no regard to the potential whole existence that may be lost.

I’ve known women who have made the choice to end a pregnancy. None of them did so because they were wantonly cruel or malicious. In fact, they confided their decision to me because of the profoundly awful choices our society places upon them. Whether it is cases of rape or because of the failures of our education system regarding reproductive health or cases where the mother’s life is profoundly endangered, there are immensely complicated cases in which there are no easy answers—and the women I’ve talked to did not seek them.

Our media and our politics posit this as a binary choice. Yet before this individual choice is made, there is a societal choice to make. We have to decide if we are really and truly a community that is genuinely invested in the lives and wellbeing of children.

Not long ago, the school system our autistic son was enrolled in told us he could no longer attend. Kari and I later learned that this was primarily because the school was concerned that our son would negatively impact its state ranking based on test scores and academic achievement. We filed a complaint with the appropriate state bureaucracy—which went nowhere. The school had no interest in our son’s well-being or his development and we’ve been playing catch up ever since. We home-school him as we are able and pay out-of-pocket for therapy and education to get him caught up.

This is but one small example of a huge problem. As a society we do not truly prioritize the health and wellness of all children. If we were serious about the well-being of children, then, perhaps, we might offer mothers a real choice. Right now we do not. We have to do better.

The decision that the court issues will be made no matter how much we lament or celebrate. However, we have very real choices to make regarding how we will care for children. We get to make a choice regarding how we cherish life and how we support mothers. The issues are complicated but, for Christians, the way we offer support for children and mothers is not. We are called to advocate for policies that make our love known in public and that respect the dignity of every human being.

In the weeks and months ahead we will be challenged by the media to simplify the questions. Let’s not allow that. Let’s keep reminding ourselves and one another that there are no easy answers. And remember that even when easy answers don’t exist, we might still find our guide in Christ who says of himself that he comes that we may have life and have it abundantly. What does it mean for us as a culture to offer life and offer it abundantly? It won’t answer the big questions but it might guide how we respond to the challenges of the day.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert