Strength for your week: Motherhood is perhaps the most charitable act in the world

Strength for your week:
Motherhood is perhaps the most charitable act in the world

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The overt claim in favor of abortion is that a woman has a right to self-determination, to do “what I want with my body.” Apart from the medical fact that the pregnant woman carries another body in her very body, consider the underlying philosophical claim in abortion. Whether it is unacknowledged or simply not understood, the claim is that a woman has the right to be free from the duties that come with her unborn child’s dependence upon her. But in denying her responsibility to her child, she begins to eat away at that which, in the Catholic view, makes us most human: the solidarity we have with other human beings. This solidarity springs, in part, from our obligations to one another. In imagining herself autonomous, free from the bonds that bind human beings to one another, that bind us especially to those put in our care, the mother who aborts acts to eviscerate her bond to the human community. The right to abortion manifests a cultural mindset that Pope John Paul II said “exalts the isolated individual in an absolute way and gives no place to solidarity, to openness to others and service of them.” (94) It’s no wonder that the act of abortion causes such psychic suffering for so many women. (95)

In the Catholic understanding, failure to perform a duty to God and other human beings harms not only the person to whom we owe such responsibility. When we neglect or thwart our duties to God and others, we harm ourselves as well. When a thief steals, for instance, not only the property owner is hurt. The soul of the thief suffers as well, perhaps unknown to him for a time, for he has denied the responsibility he has to respect the property of another human being, his brother or sister. He has broken the bonds he has to the human community, and in so doing has harmed himself and his own integrity. This, of course, is why Christ instituted the sacrament of Reconciliation, so that apart from the amends the contrite thief makes to the property owner, he also might heal his breach with God and the human family.

The inverse is true as well. When a benefactor assists the poor materially or spiritually, that benefactor is not only benefiting the person she has helped. Her charity lifts her up as well. By her act of kindness, her heart is transformed and made more Christ-like, indeed more inclined to act generously again. Even the best government program fails to substitute for individual human acts of love. Acts of personal generosity, of charity, then, are needed not only for the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of the poor. Acts of charity may be required even more for the souls of the rich.

Motherhood is perhaps the most charitable act in the world, and when unexpected, even unwanted, the opportunity for virtue grows. Motherhood, comparable only perhaps to the heroism of a soldier who makes the ultimate sacrifice, transforms because of the total sacrifice of body, mind, and heart it requires. It is a great call to love in spite of ourselves, our plans, and our own ideas of self-fulfillment. It embodies the total gift of self for which the human heart was made.

Excerpted from Women, Sex, and the Church, edited by Erika Bachiochi