Archim. Dosoftei Dijmărescu, monk at Putna Monastery, Romania, and Cultural Exarch of the Archdiocese of Suceava and Rădăuți, wrote, invited by Basilica.ro, a column referring to the pro-life issue and the clerics’ involvement in it.

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“Building Together for Life” – 10 thoughts on a cleric’s contribution to this construction

by Archim. Dosoftei Dijmărescu

This year, the theme of the March for Life and the Month for Life was “Building Together for Life”. Priests and Church means cannot be absent from this construction. Here are 10 situations in which a cleric can put his gift to work.

1. Giving sense to science

Scientific development has made visible much of what human intrauterine development is. From the fact that the first cell of our body carries all the DNA we have through our entire life, to the identification, at 16 days after conception, of the first movement of the tissues that form the heart, to having discovered when different parts of the body are definitively formed, to in utero operations – the last few decades have detailed our growth in the first 9 months of our life. But all this knowledge has not been enough to for the humanity of the unborn child to be recognized and protected.

The meaning of the body is not in itself, and the priest is called to strengthen the awareness that each body is in unity with the soul, a reality which is also valid for each unborn child, who is a human person in the image of God.

From this perspective, the life of each child is a gift of infinite value, destined for eternal life and communion with all creation.

If we use science with a sense of responsibility and eternity, the intrauterine diagnosis of Down Syndrome will not be done to stop that child’s life, but to prepare the family and the community for the birth of a child with this condition.

2. The child’s life gets preeminence over other people’s words

How many priests have heard the explanation that an abortion was done for fear of what people would say? Is it worth giving other people’s judgmental words preeminence over the life of a child?

I once asked a grandmother whether it was hard for her when her daughter got pregnant and wasn’t married. The answer was: “The shame lasted for a few days, but the joy of the child’s birth has never ended since.”

Chastity followed by fidelity in marriage is the best way of life for someone who wants a family. The priest knows the turmoil in the soul of an unmarried pregnant woman and can encourage her to choose what is most precious – the life of the child.

What “the world will say” can be neither more important, nor more beneficent, nor truer than what God says; and God began to speak His word when He created the soul of that child, regardless of the situation of its physical parents.

3. When we overlook a toxic relationship, we pave the road to abortion

Different types of domestic violence are closely linked to abortion: whoever despises the woman will most often despise the child; whoever does not value the life, freedom and dignity of the woman will not value the life, freedom and dignity of the child and will easily press for abortion.

Thus, a toxic relationship is an environment that is most likely to herald abortion. Because, when she is pressured to have an abortion, a woman will have no more strength to overcome her circumstances than she had when she allowed herself to be defeated by the toxic relationship.

That is why, if we overlook a toxic relationship, we pave the road to abortion.

In addition to supporting the woman to get out of a toxic relationship, we also need to encourage the creation of a support network in the local community, among the woman’s old friends or some new friends who rally around her. In the absence of help, she will go back to her toxic relationship, because she has not found another environment that offers her material, emotional, spiritual support.

4. The child’s father can wash his hands like Pilate, but that doesn’t help him

The priest will see, especially at the Sacrament of Confession, the problem of abortion arising especially among women. But the reality shows the huge responsibility of the father of the child, who most often makes the decision to abort, either directly or indirectly, by threatening to leave the woman or by other types of pressure. It is not only unfair to forbid the woman to receive the Holy Communion after abortion (while the father of the child can think he does not have a problem, because he did not do the abortion), but it is also damaging to the father of the child to fail to realize that his own responsibility and his own emotional wound are at least as great, if not often much deeper than the woman’s, that he was wrong to have harmed the woman by making her choose abortion.

Yes, the child’s father may wash his hands like Pilate, but he is guilty. His repentance is often more difficult than the woman’s.

5. Return home and tell how much God has done for you!

Jesus Christ urged some of those that He healed to tell others about the miracle they had experienced and to publicly express their faith and gratitude to God (Luke 8:39).

Coming out of the terrible turmoil caused by abortion thoughts is a true healing, a coming out of the abyss of death to the light of Christ. It can be confessed in public, but not everyone has this power. One can discerningly support those who are able and willing to testify without shame, with humility, on the help they have received and their contribution to making the right decision.

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READ ALSO: The gift of earthly life, a gift for eternity: Patriarch Daniel puts the March for Life into transcendent perspective

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One can also offer support to those responsible for abortion who, after some time, become aware of their mistake and want to help others so they can present – anonymously or with assumed identity – what abortion has meant to them. By understanding the truth, they also get out of misconceptions and get a chance to atone for the mistake they have made.

Especially the testimonies of women who have experienced a pregnancy crisis will help other women in the same situation understand themselves and see the real final destinations of each of the paths that lie ahead of them.

6. Forgotten bodies

In our Christian conscience, after the separation of the soul from the body, the body must return to the earth from which it was taken, accompanied by the funeral service, in which we pray for the repose of the soul. If, in the case of abortion on demand, the child’s body is deliberately neglected, just as its life has been overlooked, in the case of spontaneous miscarriage some parents are faced with a difficult situation: what to do about the child’s body. At present, the Romanian law does not allow the child to be taken away and buried unless it was miscarried after 28 weeks of pregnancy. In the future, perhaps the law will change and the right to burial will be recognized even before that gestational age.

Not many Orthodox faithful know that, even though the child was not baptized, having died unexpectedly in its mother’s womb, it can be buried according to the Rite of Burial for Unbaptized Dead Children published in the Euchologion (Molitfelnic, 2019, p. 295–296).

Through this short service, we recognize that this child lived in the physical and spiritual proximity of his parents, who led a life in God and included the child into this life. The spiritual state of the parents, especially that of the mother, is also transmitted to the unborn child, as Fr Dumitru Stăniloae points out [1].

Thus, the burial of a child who has died by miscarriage with a religious service that takes into account the fact that the child was not baptized can be a natural continuation of the Christian relationship the parents had with the child while it was still alive. And, for some parents, this service and the commemorations made with the same special rite are comforting and give them strength to go forward on God’s path, integrating the pain of their loss into the cross which is their life, while being aware that they carry it together with Christ the Lord.

7. A difficult situation: adoption. An even more difficult situation: giving the child for adoption

The Euchologion includes The Rite for Adopting Children, which creates a spiritual bond between the adoptive parents and the adopted child. Even though it is not an extensive service, as it retains a brief ancient rite, it shows God’s blessing on the act of adoption.

However, adoption remains a difficult choice, also because people disregard the child or judge adoptive parents.

More difficult than adoption, however, is the placement for adoption chosen in critical situations. Often abortion is preferred over giving the child for adoption. Abortion is considered less serious than offering the child for adoption, but it cannot be so.

The Church has the discernment to put reason above emotions. Reason shows us that taking a life takes away all the chances of the child, while placing for adoption gives the child chances that its biological parents cannot ensure.

8. When our effort fails

There are times when a clergyman puts a lot of heart into counselling and supporting a woman in pregnancy crisis and, in the end, she chooses abortion. The pain can be overwhelming – for the child, for the woman, for the man, for those who counseled her or pushed her towards abortion or did not help her choose life for her child.

Discouragement is at the door of the heart and only the power of Christ, the One Who tells us “Take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), can protect the cleric from falling into despair and hesitate to invest his soul into future similar situations.

But a glimmer of light is present even in the tragedy that could not be stopped. The fact that the child was loved by someone is no little thing. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh said that no man should die alone – in the sense that, when we are facing our passage from this life, it would be natural to feel that God loves us through other people’s love.

The child who lost life through abortion did not die alone if at least someone loved him and fought for his life. It lost its life accompanied by someone’s prayer, and no prayer is overlooked by the Heavenly Father.

In the same way, every prayer for the child’s mother, for its parents, for the family, for the doctors cannot remain fruitless – both in this world and into eternity. That sincere effort on the part of the priest and the believer will be an opportunity for God to work further.

9. Beyond matter and cultural wars is spiritual struggle

The rage against the vulnerable human being in its mother’s womb can neither be explained by the weight felt by the adults who are supposed to take care of it, nor by today’s conflicts of ideas called “culture wars”.

There is so much hatred – especially in the pro-abortion activism, which some have elevated to the status of a religious belief – that we feel compelled to believe it is generated not only by people with selfish interests and opinions of their own, but also by a negative, destructive spiritual presence that a priori hates the face of the child and wants to stop its life before it fulfils its potential. The demons, who would throw a child “into fire or water to kill him” (Mark 9:22), are today not only unseen, as have always been, but also ignored as a source of evil. And this ignorance makes us more powerless in their face.

But life in Christ through the Church gives us strength against them. The angels, the saints, the Mother of God and God Himself fight on the side of life. Together with them, man gains undefeatable powers. But he must say, like Virgin Mary did: “May your word to me be fulfilled” (Luke 1:38).

10. The pro-life issue is not new to the Church

Always present in the Church – “You knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalms 139:13) – the pro-life issue is not something new that the Church must integrate. But now it particularly needs to be explored, because it is strongly contested by some and the proportions of evil are unheard of and unrecorded in the past: over 23 million abortions were officially recorded in Romania after 1958 (the real number is probably double) and more than one billion abortions were made worldwide in the last century, after Lenin made abortion legal for the first time in history in 1920 in the Soviet Union.

Eternal life, for which God created man, begins with earthly life, which is its foundation. Protecting earthly life and guiding it towards its spiritual transfiguration is a calling and a privilege for mankind and God blesses those who take upon themselves this toil of working together with Him.

Supporting the pregnant woman and the unborn child is fulfilling the commandment to love our neighbor. It requires responsibility and sacrifice and is a toil like all the other that a cleric or a believer takes upon themselves in order to help a person choose what is good and do what is good.

Note

[1] “The union between mother and son is so great at all times, but especially while she is carrying him in the womb, that the mother experiences all of the son’s without becoming one with him. It is a mystery related to the presence of the soul in the child from conception. It is the mystery of the maximum love between mother and child, which unites them without commingling them”, in Pr. Prof. Dumitru Stăniloae, Chipul evanghelic al lui Iisus Hristos (“The Evangelical Face of Jesus Christ”), Basilica, 2012, p. 40, and “For not only does the mother imprint her feelings on the child in her womb, but the child also imprints his feelings on his mother”, ibidem, p. 42.

Photo credit: Archdiocese of Suceava and Rădăuți / Irina Ursachi