By EmmaLee Italia | Correspondent

Drawing upon the encyclicals and reflections of Pope Francis and his predecessors, renowned papal biographer and Catholic theologian George Weigel made a case for the pro-life movement as integral to the Catholic Church’s permanent mission, during his April 28 talk in St. Paul Parish, Princeton.

“There is no institution in America that more embodies in its practice the concern for human life from beginning to end than the Catholic Church,” Weigel asserted.

A Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Weigel has authored more than 20 books about Catholicism and St. John Paul II. Also a Vatican analyst for NBC News, Weigel’s essays, op-ed columns and reviews appear regularly in major opinion journals and newspapers across the country. He is the recipient of 18 honorary doctorates in the fields of divinity, philosophy and social science.

 Titled “The Gospel of Life and a ‘Church in Permanent Mission: Pope Francis’ Challenge to Catholics in America,’” Weigel’s lecture was attended by St. Paul’s parishioners as well as many visitors from surrounding parishes, even a group from Philadelphia. Msgr. Joseph N. Rosie, pastor, and other volunteers quickly set up extra chairs in the parish’s gathering space as more attendees arrived, filling the room. The parish Respect Life Ministry team members Aileen Collins, Nate Eberle and Susanne Tyrrell were all instrumental in bringing Weigel to the parish.

Tireless Defender

As the first lecture of what local faithful hope will be many in the parish’s Richard Collier Memorial Lecture Series, Weigel appeared in honor of the former St. Paul parishioner who was a stalwart legal champion of the pro-life cause.

Collier’s wife Janet spoke briefly about her husband, to whom she was married more than 36 years, and who succumbed to cancer on Christmas Day, 2013.

“Rich was truly devoted to Almighty God,” she said with emotion. “He was a deeply spiritual man. I even called him ‘St. Richard.’ He never flaunted his intelligence, never made anyone feel intimidated.”

As one of the state’s premier pro-life attorneys who was known to drive through snowstorms in the middle of the night with paperwork to appeal judges’ decisions, Collier was never one to back down from a fight in defense of life.

“He would stand up to anybody,” Janet Collier continued. “And he was very disciplined: everything he did, he did it well – he never shortchanged anybody. If someone came to him asking for help, he would be very patient with them. He made everybody feel important.”

Though a recipient of many awards for his pro-life work, Janet Collier said that, “He was so humble that he never wanted to accept any award. He said, ‘I will not be worthy to accept an award for the unborn until there is no more abortion, until the last baby is saved.’”

Professor Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and St. Paul parishioner, also spoke about Collier.

“Rich did not care about babies in the abstract – he cared about each and every one,” said George. “Everybody mattered for Rich.”

Weigel spoke highly of Collier’s efforts, and made the point that many are fighting a battle they never imagined would need to be fought.

“I’m sure that when Rich Collier began the study of the law, he didn’t imagine for himself the role that he came to play so magnificently,” Weigel said, “because no one could have imagined and yet, what we saw happen in 1973 has now been magnified by subsequent bad decisions.”

Human Rights Revoked

Peppering his talk with wit and anecdotes, Weigel laid out four themes that outline the Church’s responsibility in the defense of life:  “A vital, evangelically engaged, mission-driven Catholicism is pro-life Catholicism”; “Pro-life work converts by compassionate care and witness as well as by argument”; “The pro-life movement is a movement in defense of democracy”; and “Let our witness speak as loudly as our words in confronting the temptations of the Antichrist.”

Weigel spoke about the 1991 college of cardinals called by Pope John Paul II to discuss the threat to the dignity of human life, during which Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger gave a keynote speech.

Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become Pope Benedict XVI, “made the case that the center of this problem of the diminished sense of dignity of the human person throughout Western culture was a kind of philosophical nihilism,” Weigel said. Totalitarianism, the cardinal said, was a product of the society that between the two world wars gave rise to Naziism – “if moral relativism is legally absolutized, then basic rights are also relativized.” Naziism flourished in the society which “no longer knew how to make public arguments for fundamental, absolute moral truths.”

The 1995 papal encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” by Pope John Paul II, Weigel said, affirmed three specific, unchangeable teachings of the Church, with respect to human life – that the killing of innocents, abortion and euthanasia are always gravely immoral. These truths were evident even in the first century, when Christians were known for their compassionate “care of the sick, of elderly, women and children ... hallmarks of the Christian way.”

Weigel shared a story about speaking at a fundraiser for a Chicago crisis pregnancy center, then listening to the witness of a young woman who had benefitted from the help the shelter extended to her when she came seeking an abortion.

“She walked into Aid for Women thinking it was Planned Parenthood,” Weigel recalled. “The decency with which she was treated – the offering of an alternative, seeing her through the pregnancy, getting her into a halfway house, had simply turned her life around... This is what converts.”

The papal encyclical “Evangelium Vitae,” Weigel said, added something new to the lexicon: the phrase “culture of death.” At first Weigel was skeptical of the wording.

“I remember reading ‘Evangelium Vitae,’ and thinking, ‘That’s not gonna work. That’s too harsh,’” he said. “No – that’s exactly what we’re talking about now. (Pope John Paul II) said the culture of death poisons what he called the culture of human rights, and betrays the long historical process in the Western world to affirm and defend human rights.” Weigel described the confusion of our society over pro-life issues as one of deep division over fundamental questions of the human person.

Pope Francis’ Vision

In an interview he gave to the Jesuit-edited magazine La Civiltá Catolica, Pope Francis gave an image of the Church in contemporary society: “The Church is like a field hospital on the edge of a battlefield.”

Weigel had the opportunity to meet with Pope Francis twice since his election. During one interview, Weigel described to Pope Francis the crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S. – more than 2,500 of them, all staffed by volunteers.

“These are your field hospitals on the field of battle,” Weigel told him.

And the battlefield is a post-modern culture that has become, Pope Francis said, “a throwaway culture in which what we throw away is not just stuff, it’s people.”

“What all of this has led to is a kind of moral numbing, said Weigel, “especially... in politicians. I think what the Pope is suggesting is that we have to find some way to touch those morally numbed people. And his suggestion is that the experience of God’s mercy may lead these people to an experience of God’s truth... which is another way of saying ... the Church has to learn how to say better the ‘yes’ on which it says ‘no.’ Every ‘no’ the Catholic Church says to something is based on a ‘yes...’ We say ‘no’ to abortion and euthanasia because we say ‘yes’ to the dignity of every human life.”

Weigel believes that Pope Francis is asking the Church, in its permanent mission, to lift up the compassionate care of the pro-life movement, offering service to women in crisis, as well as continuing on the legal front the effort ultimately to defeat Roe vs. Wade.

“How much of public sentiment has changed ... because of the sonogram?” Weigel noted. “Let’s try to take that experience and use it to shift to an even larger pro-life majority in our country.”

The Church in permanent mission, Weigel interpreted from Pope Francis’ encyclical “Evangelii Gaudium,” “is a Church in which every baptized Catholic understands himself or herself as a missionary disciple ... in which pro-life ministry, care, argument and witness is understood to be a permanent feature of Catholic life.”

Renewed Commitment

Attendees readily expressed their affirmation of Weigel’s talk. Sandra Kay Metzger agreed with Weigel’s characterization of the Church’s mission, saying “I think there’s going to come a time when ‘field hospitals’ will need to be equipped with Catholics willing to lay down their lives ... We need repentance. Without it, the scourge of selfishness and killing will not stop.”

Peter Campagna, team leader for The Culture Project International, Phila. – a Catholic-inspired young adult team promoting virtue – came with 11 members to hear Weigel’s talk.

 “He touched on a lot of prevalent issues,” Campagna said. “It’s consoling to hear and see as well, especially at the March for Life, that the pro-life movement is getting younger… At the core, merely changing the law won’t be enough. We need to change hearts through our witness. We can cling to that as our hope.”

Nathan Maurer, another member of The Culture Project, said, “We need to be making our message about marriage, life and children – stand up and say ‘yes’ to that. The Church stands up for beauty and truth.”