Neuhaus revisited

"We shall not weary, we shall not rest." In the clash between the culture of life and the culture of death, we are in it for the duration.

These are not the best of times for the pro-life movement in America. A little over two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, we find ourselves politically homeless. The present positions of both major candidates for president differ only in degree. Voters in states where legislatures moved quickly to restrict abortion after the fall of Roe will be voting in November on ballot measures that could overturn those restrictions via constitutional amendment and, with one notable exception, once reliable pro-life public officials are doing virtually nothing to warn voters of the dangers of such measures.

It took half a century to get rid of Roe but that alone was never the end game. In fact, the end of Roe was only the beginning of the much more significant battle. A society so saturated with and enamored of the culture of death is not going to change overnight. Indeed, it may take another half century or longer to turn this unfavorable tide. As the late Richard John Neuhaus said so brilliantly in one of his final public addresses, “To be recruited to the cause of the culture of life is to be recruited for the duration; and there is no end in sight, except to the eyes of faith.”

That address, to the 2008 convention of the National Right to Life Committee, remains to this day, in the words of Princeton Professor Robert P. George, “the greatest pro-life speech ever given.” The words of Fr. Neuhaus are an inspiration and encouragement to us, even as they are also a sober reminder that our work is far from over.

We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every unborn child is protected in law and welcomed in life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until all the elderly who have run life’s course are protected against despair and abandonment, protected by the rule of law and the bonds of love. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every young woman is given the help she needs to recognize the problem of pregnancy as the gift of life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, as we stand guard at the entrance gates and the exit gates of life, and at every step along the way of life, bearing witness in word and deed to the dignity of the human person—of every human person.

Against the encroaching shadows of the culture of death, against forces commanding immense power and wealth, against the perverse doctrine that a woman’s dignity depends upon her right to destroy her child, against what St. Paul calls the principalities and powers of the present time, this convention renews our resolve that we shall not weary, we shall not rest, until the culture of life is reflected in the rule of law and lived in the law of love.

The cause of life requires a much deeper and more permanent commitment than what we might give, in passing, to a politician whose rhetoric might, for a season, soothe our souls or arouse our emotions. We cannot allow the unseriousness of our times, and the corresponding unseriousness of our present political landscape, to undermine or diminish our seriousness in confronting the decadent and sterile culture of death with the hopeful alternative of the culture of life.

“Whether, in this great contest between the culture of life and the culture of death,” Fr. Neuhaus continues, “we were recruited many years ago or whether we were recruited only yesterday, we have been recruited for the duration.”

If we have, indeed, been “recruited for the duration,” then we will be neither encouraged nor discouraged by whoever wins or loses the next election. Politics is the short game of instant gratification, temporary solutions, and cheap distractions from more important pursuits. We are invested in the long game and singularly focused on an outcome of eternal significance. “We shall not weary, we shall not rest” is the refrain that never grows old. “And,” as Fr. Neuhaus so eloquently concluded, “in this the great human rights struggle of our time and all times, we shall overcome.”