At Monday’s Mass, our priest made a joking brag that, as the killer tornadoes ran through our area on Sunday and protestant churches were closed, the lone Catholic church in this town said Mass by lamplight. I think I said something like, “Well, we were under holy obligation.” Wrong thing to say? Yes, I do that very often. But the connection I made with his following homily struck me as maybe not-so-wrong.

He noted the sad anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the women’s protest march in Washington going on that day. He remembered two women he knew long ago who told him that they had considered abortion when they became pregnant at a time when having another child would be extremely difficult. They hadn’t gone through with it because of their faith.

Exactly. And that’s the point. The “holy obligation” to obey the laws of their God saved them. Blessed are they. I think of all the words in Scripture at once, the words about treasuring the law of the Lord, about meditating on it day and night, about loving it with all our heart, soul, and strength.

The women marching in Washington were not so blessed. Their defiance, militancy, anger, their often foul-mouthed demands, are not for the right to abortion. They have that. They’ve had it for decades. They want taxpayer-funded abortions, they want an abortuary on every corner, they want our affirmation of abortions they have already had.  They want you, me, us, to affirm and approve of what they’ve already done. They want us to “make it okay.”

They were not blessed with holy obligation to the laws of faith because they were not blessed with faith. They believe only in themselves and make a kind of pelvic goddess for their worship and so become the very thing they accuse men of making them.

For us, it is always, always, necessary in the face of such offense to remember: Who did our Lord come to save? Those already blessed? Or did he come for the unblessed, for those who scream in pain in the streets, demanding something no human law can give them?