Here's the first and most important do. It's very simple: Do become martyrs.
I said it was simple. I didn't say it was easy. Be ready to pay the ultimate price.
Pope John Paul II very shrewdly chose St. Thomas More, a martyr, as the patron saint of lawyers and politicians. Thomas More and his friend Bishop John Fisher, both of them executed by the same king for their fidelity to the Catholic faith, are models of how far we should be willing to go for our beliefs.
In today's world, we may never be asked to pay the ultimate price. But we do see character assassination and calumny against good people every day in the public media. And we should be ready to pay that price too. We have some very good recent examples of heroism. Two months ago, Grand Duke Henry of Luxembourg rejected a bill legalizing euthanasia passed by his nation's lawmakers.
The Duke is the grandson of Grand Duchess Charlotte, the country's heroine in World War II, and the last person to receive from a Pope the Golden Rose, the highest papal honor available to a Catholic woman sovereign.
Of course, some politicians immediately demanded that Luxembourg's constitution be changed to strip the Duke of his power.
A similar fight arose in Belgium two decades ago when the late King Baudouin refused his Royal Assent to a bill legalizing abortion. His refusal was a formality, since the king had little real power. But it was an unprecedented public act by Baudouin, who was a deeply faithful Catholic man. The Belgian Parliament declared him unable to reign. Baudouin abdicated for one day, and the bill became law without his approval.
The lesson here is that nothing, not even our good name, should stop us from doing what we know to be right.
Here's the second do. Keep hope alive.
Cultivating a spirit of Christian joy is not an act of self-deception. It's a way to acknowledge that God is on our side, and that human nature, created by God and despite the damage of original sin, is also on our side. Nothing is more inspiring than happy warriors. I hope some of you will go on the web and check out some of the photos from the annual March for Life in Washington D.C. It's an event full of prayer, charity and confidence. Many of the marchers are young, joyful people who radiate a strong hope in the future - and not the shallow hope of political sloganeering, but the real Christian hope that emerges from self-sacrifice and the struggle to do God's will.
I've never in my life seen a joy-filled pro-abortion event. And I've always found that instructive.
Here's the third do. Be strategic.
Being sheep in the midst of wolves doesn't mean we can also be dumb as rocks. Thomas More was finally a martyr -- but he was also a very adroit thinker, and a shrewd, intelligent and prudent political leader as he tried to avoid execution. Prolife organizations are always outspent by pro-abortion forces. Our efforts are dwarfed by their money. We rarely have their access to friendly media, foundations and circles of power. But this can be a blessing disguised as a curse. It forces us to be creative, long-term thinkers and extremely resourceful with our modest means.
Being strategic means planning ahead, setting the agenda, working together and outsmarting our adversaries. To achieve these goals, we need a big dose of realism. We should never dream or whine about all the things we could do with the million Euros we don't have. We need to focus on the ten Euros we do have.
Two fishes and five loaves of bread, well invested - in other words, given to the Lord -- fed a multitude. History shows that guerrilla wars, if well planned and methodically carried out, can defeat great armies. And we should never forget that the greatest "guerrilla" leader of them all wasn't Mao or Che, but a young shepherd named David, who became a king.
Here's the fourth do. Use the best means for your message, especially the new technologies.
Today's new technologies are a mixed social blessing. But they're also cheap and extremely useful tools that prolifers can use very effectively. While the traditional mainline media, including the printing press, are losing influence, blogs, social networks, and YouTube channels are thriving. And they offer huge prolife opportunities.
Here's an example. Lila Rose is a 19-year-old young woman who just received one of the six prestigious Life Prizes awarded by the Gerard Health Foundation in the United States. Since the age of 15, armed with a little courage, a lot of ingenuity, an audio recorder and a small video camera, Rose has run several undercover investigations, including one that exposed racism and a statutory rape cover-up by Planned Parenthood. Her main tool was YouTube videos that became viral and were picked up by the secular media, forcing Planned Parenthood to apologize and fire some staffers.
Lila Rose and many other agile young users of the new technologies have shown that the new internet, if used well, can break through the wall of silence prolifers often face from an unfriendly media establishment.
Here's the fifth and final do. Remember that renewing the culture, not gaining power, is our ultimate goal.
Culture is everything. Culture is our "human ecology." It's the environment where we human beings breathe not only air, but ideas, beliefs and values.
Bill Clinton's presidential campaign strategist James Carville once coined a slogan that led his boss to the White House in 1992. To keep the campaign on message, Carville hung a sign in Clinton's Little Rock headquarters that read: "It's the economy, stupid!"
It's a clever phrase, and it got the job done - if the goal was the short-term exercise of power by Bill Clinton. But that's not what prolifers are about. Our real task, and our much longer-term and more important goal, is to carry out what John Paul II called the "evangelization of culture."
Many things in the developed world today promote a spirit of greed, despair and self-delusion. Our adversaries often have far more resources than the Church and the prolife movement can possibly marshal.
But cultural trends can be changed. And I'll prove it. Mainline media have been telling us for a decade that the American public is evenly divided between those who consider themselves prolife and those who describe themselves as "pro-choice."
This is broadly true. But the devil - or in this case, God -- is in the details.
A national poll done by Harris Interactive two months ago found that fewer than ten per cent of Americans support legalized abortion on demand as it stands today. Ninety-five percent favor laws ensuring that abortions be performed only by licensed physicians. Eighty-eight percent favor informed-consent laws - in other words, laws that require abortion providers to inform women of potential health risks and also about alternatives to abortion. Seventy-six percent favor laws that protect doctors and nurses from being forced to perform or refer for abortions against their will, Seventy-three percent favor laws that require giving parents the chance to be involved in their minor daughter's abortion decision. Sixty-eight percent favor laws against partial-birth abortion. And sixty-three percent favor laws preventing the use of taxpayer money for abortions.
These figures are very revealing. They show that prolife efforts have made real progress in improving people's awareness of the sanctity of unborn life. These good results may have been impossible just two decades ago.
We need to work to change the culture. And that demands a lifelong commitment to education, Christian formation and, ultimately, conversion. Only saints really change the world. And there lies our ultimate victory: If we change one heart at a time, while we save one unborn life at a time, the day will come when we won't need to worry about saving babies, because they'll be surrounded by a loving, welcoming culture.
Will I see that day with my own eyes? I can't hold my breath that long. But then I never expected to see a Polish Pope or the fall of the Iron Curtain either. We may not see that day in our own lifetimes, but the children of your grandchildren will. The future depends on our choices and actions right here, right now, today -- together.
No matter how tired you get, no matter how hard the work becomes, no matter who praises you or who condemns you, the only thing that finally matters is this: Jesus Christ is Lord, and he came to give us life, and life abundantly. Because of the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection, the future is ours. And the best is yet to come.
God bless you!
Is it me, or is Kmiec's rebuke a "gentleman's" warning that the Obama Administration has in mind for what is permissible in the public square:
