Dear Parishioners,

      This Monday, January 22nd is the 51st anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of the Supreme Court. Of course, we know that was the decision legalizing abortion across the land, and of course we also know that thanks be to God, the Dobbs decision in the summer of 2022 overturned Roe. Unfortunately, many states, including Missouri, are attempting to enshrine abortion as a legal right at the state level.

      The Respect Life Apostolate in the Archdiocese as well as in our parishes, is helping us to lead the charge against abortion coming back to Missouri. In the coming weeks they will be providing us with information concerning this initiative to restore abortion and what we can do to defeat it.

      A special thank you goes out to our Respect Life volunteers for their dedication and guidance. In addition to following their advice in these matters, I would like to point us to something more general that will help us to promote a culture of life.

      A number of years ago, while I was in seminary, we were blessed to welcome the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as a guest speaker. After his speech, one of the seminarians asked him somethingabout overturning Roe v. Wade. The insinuation of the question was that this would solve the problem of abortion in America. Justice Scalia wisely told us that the courts were important but that if we really wanted to rid our country of abortion we needed to be focused on changing hearts. How right he was!

      The Court overturned abortion, but hearts are not yet won over. The fact that abortion is being pushed so hard in Missouri and beyond speaks to a deep wound in our culture and only one thing will heal that wound; Jesus.

      Luckily, we have Jesus. He is ours by faith and we can let Him heal our culture by love.  As we fightonce again in the courts, let’s redouble our efforts to change hearts by giving Jesus once again to our ailing culture.

      The first step to doing so is prayer. We pray for the healing of those directly wounded by abortion. We pray for the healing of those confused by our wayward culture. We pray for Jesus to heal us and help us to foster a culture of life and true love.

Blessings,

Fr. Jim Theby