Wise Words from Father Gregory Coiro, O.F.M. Cap.

Father Coiro serves at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi in San Francisco. This is an excerpt from his bulletin message for this week:

Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.

The Lord is telling us, not that we can create our own reality, as many steeped in New Age thinking profess, but that we can choose the reality we want in our lives. To many, this might seem like a distinction without a difference, but the fact is that there is a difference, albeit a subtle one.

If we think that we can create our own reality, we will fall into the error farthest from reality: subjectivism. People who embrace this way of thinking are the ones you hear saying things like,“You have your truth but this is my truth.” A good example of this kind of subjectivism is found among those who consider themselves “pro-choice” with regard to abortion.

According to them, the reality of the unborn child in the womb--the objective truth--is not the issue. Rather, the issue for them is whether or not a woman should have absolute freedom not to be pregnant. Nothing shows this more explicitly than the seemingly schizophrenic nature of the law regarding killing the unborn.

Scott Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife, Laci, and their unborn child, Conner. Yet, had Laci Peterson chosen to have Conner killed by a professional, there would have been no crime. How can this be? The answer is that subjectivism trumped reality: if a mother determines to kill her unborn child, the child is not a human being whose life is protected by the law. There is no homicide, as far as the law is concerned.

But if someone else kills that child—even the child’s own father—against the mother’s will, then the law treats it as a homicide. In other words, the reality of the child’s humanness is predicated on a subjective belief rather than on an objective fact.