Bishop Fernandes says ‘we will not be silent’ on abortion

Five days of pro-life activities in Washington, D.C. and Columbus surrounding the 51st anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision culminated with the annual diocesan Respect Life Mass at St. Joseph Cathedral and the annual Roe Remembrance at the Ohio Statehouse.

Bishop Earl Fernandes celebrated the Mass on Monday, Jan. 22 with nine other priests of the diocese for a congregation that included students from Zanesville Bishop Rosecrans, Columbus Bishop Watterson, Bishop Ready and St. Francis DeSales high schools and Columbus Immaculate Conception School. 

Afterward, some of those at the Mass walked several blocks from the Cathedral to the Statehouse on a blustery winter day to hear several speakers, including Bishop Fernandes, champion the cause for life from the steps of the Capitol.

The bishop and some of those in attendance had returned two days earlier from the National March for Life in the nation’s capital, where Bishop Fernandes also presided over several Masses for life.

“It seems somewhat difficult having just spent three days in Washington, D.C. with a group of 300 to 400 pilgrims, preaching each day about the Gospel of Life, to come up with yet another sermon,” Bishop Fernandes said at the Respect Life Mass. “Except when we preach the Gospel, we are always preaching the Gospel of Life. They are one and the same.”

Bishop Fernandes called this moment in time a critical stage in the history of our society.

In Ohio, voters passed in November a state constitutional amendment protecting abortion throughout pregnancy. That vote came 17 months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case overturned Roe by determining the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.

The ruling returned decisions on abortion to the states, with abortion supporters in Ohio working successfully on behalf of the amendment on abortion. Similar amendments will be put before voters this year in New York and Maryland, and other states are pursuing related legislation or amendments.

Bishop Fernandes said the devil wants to divide society, which he said has never been more polarized, and that Satan wants to pit mother against child and neighbor against neighbor and  wants the faithful to give up instead of answering the call “to really, truly appreciate the gift of our baptism and to say I will give prophetic witness to the God of life.”

“We will not be silent,” Bishop Fernandes said. “We will not go away when it comes to respecting the dignity of the human person and the goodness of human life. God is the author of human life.”

Failure to stand up for the unborn, the disabled, the elderly and the suffering will leave those people vulnerable in today’s culture, the bishop warned.

“I’ve been marching practically my whole life,” Bishop Fernandes said. “And why? Because I want something better for everyone around me, especially for younger people. I want a society where abortion is absolutely unthinkable, and for that type of society to exist, we need not just all of you but your family and friends, and we need to fight this battle with Christ on our side.

“The battle is not merely a political one. The real battle is for a conversion of hearts.”

Later, speaking at the Statehouse, the bishop again encouraged all people, particularly the youth, to be unafraid and not to be indifferent to the cause.

“We have to confront others with the truth – the truth about human life, its origin and its destiny, and the truth about our humanity and our shared humanity,” he said. “And so in radical solidarity with women and children, we will make our stand and we will fight until the forces of life are truly victorious here in our great state of Ohio.”

The Roe Remembrance began with a prayer from Father Donald Franks and was followed by the pledge of allegiance led by state Reps. Tracy Richardson (R-Marysville) and Bill Dean (R-Xenia).

Rachel Citak, an attorney who is the president of Greater Cincinnati Right to Life, decried the passage of Issue 1 in November and the exploitation that abortion providers perpetuate on women who face situations caused by financial hardship, trauma, incest or other factors.

“What the pro-life effort does so well and has to continue to do is to respond with love and with empathy and with understanding, not the counterfeit or conditional love, empathy and understanding that’s offered by the abortion industry,” she said.     

“We’re seeing a society that really is becoming more self-centric, and we need to show that we love them both (mother and baby) in a way that Planned Parenthood never has and never can.”  

Citak believes that pro-life efforts need to begin anew and focus not just on policy and litigation efforts, but on the beauty of motherhood, no matter a woman’s state in life.

“We cannot just reach them at the doorstop (of abortion centers),” she said. “The abortion industry continues to build a business off of death, aligning with Satan and with anti-woman principles. Anti-woman principles are expansive and an unrestricted money grab in every state is the goal, and it’s all dressed up as medical care. That’s their business, profiting at the expense of women.”

Beth Vanderkooi, executive director of Greater Columbus Right to Life and organizer of the Roe Remembrance event that started in 2014, told the crowd that the question she’s most often asked since November is “What’s next?”

“I honestly do not yet know,” she said.

“But I have a couple of ideas and I think for the time being, it looks like us continuing to pray and counsel outside of abortion clinics,” she said while acknowledging the possibility that the constitutional amendment could lead to more doctor’s offices, clinics and hospitals performing surgical abortions while more pharmacies and online outlets dispense abortion pills.

“We’re not going to solve it with a program,” she said. “We’re not going to solve it with the law. We’re not even going to solve it with the constitution.

“You’re always going to solve it in relationships on the human level.”