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Thursday, October 5, 2000 The Southern Cross, Page 5 Living the American Dream: clear thinking needed F or a dozen years, I was an adjunct English instruc tor, teaching composition and literature classes in the evenings at a commu nity college and four-year university. Because I taught evenings, most of my students were non-tradi- tional; they had families and careers and were issues, opinions voiced in class were usually evenly distributed. For example, a discussion about gun control would yield comments both pro and con. A discussion about the effects of violence in the media was also bal anced. But when it came Mary Hood Hart to what we Catholics call returning to the classroom several years after graduating high school. The average student was in his or her mid-twenties. In composition class, students were required to write a persuasive essay about a controversial topic. They were expected to provide logi cal arguments and factual support for their opinions. This essay was, for many, quite challenging to write. To help them to explore both sides of the issues, I would lead class dis cussions, encouraging debate. When it came to most of the MAYCREST HARDWARE CENTER Shop at Maycrest and Save! Great Selection, Low Prices! 1609 Montgomery Cross Road Savannah, GA (912) 354-2045 “life issues,” if there were any pro life students, they were awfully quiet. When discussion about those issues took place students’ com ments were almost always in favor of abortion, the death penalty, and euthanasia. Because it was my job to encour age the students to see all sides of the issues, I had a perfect opportuni ty to express my pro-life views without using the classroom as a bully pulpit. For example, when all who spoke expressed opinions in favor of euthanasia, I prompted them to imagine what sort of argu ments would be used against the legalization of mercy killing. It was through leading them to explore the other side of the issue that I became particularly troubled by their ten dency to form opinions about life issues without thinking them through. For example, most were quick to say that suffering through a terminal illness should be eliminated by pro viding, at the patient’s request, the means of hastening death if it was determined the patient had no hope of recovery. Yet when I asked them how they would ensure the patient was making a sound decision and was not being influenced by rela tives, health care providers, inade quate medical insurance, or fears of being a burden to others, it was apparent they’d never given those possibilities a thought. It occurred to me then that for most of these 20-something students, busy with families, school, and careers, the thought of chronic or terminal illness, prolonged suffering, long periods of hospitalization was so far removed from their everyday experience, they could not imagine the state of mind they might find themselves in were they to be so afflicted. Every so often, someone would mention a grandparent who’d suffered through illness, and the trauma the family endured as a result of witnessing that suffering, but for the most part, the arguments in favor of euthanasia were focused on the avoidance of suffering, as in “Why should people be in pain if they have no hope?” “I’d rather be dead than so dependent on others.” At the end of such a class session, I would return home to my husband and express fears about how a group of adults pursuing higher education could be so casual in their accept ance of such potentially dangerous practices. It seemed apparent that until I brought them up, the poten tial abuses of euthanasia seemed to have eluded them altogether, and I only hoped that, in my limited capacity as their English teacher, I would enlighten some. My experience in the classroom taught me that we who are pro-life must use every opportunity to pro vide people, especially among the younger generation, with the skills and facts to better understand these critical issues. For many healthy, upwardly mobile young adults busy pursuing the American dream, just the possibility of being sick or very old and institutionalized (or, in the case of abortion, enduring a less than perfect or ill-timed pregnancy, or in the case of capital punishment, being victimized by a criminal) is so unthinkable they resist thoroughly considering the implications of laws which promote a disregard for the dignity of all human life. Although pro-life activists are rou tinely criticized as having “knee- jerk” reactions, the truth is that many members of the American public respond superficially to issues requiring serious, deliberate thought. For them, to prevent suffering, finan cial or psychological distress, and to keep others from becoming burdens to society outweigh the horrors, risks, and abuses that are the natural consequences of practices such as euthanasia, abortion, and capital punishment when these practices are sanctioned by law. Mary Hood Hart lives with her husband and four children in Sunset Beach, N.C. Q uestion: The Holy Father is going to conse crate the world to Mary this weekend. What does this mean? —Curious A nswer: First of all, “The earth is the Lord’s and its fullness, the world and all who dwell in it” (Psalm 24:1). The “world” belongs to God, who created it and keeps it in being. The “consecration of the world to Mary” must be interpreted in the context of God’s sovereignty over all creation. Such a consecration can never affect or transfer God’s sovereignty or our alle giance to him. What can it do and what can it mean? Consecrating the world to the Mother of God means entrusting the world, created by God, cor rupted by the sin of Adam but redeemed by Christ’s death and resurrection, to the “all-pow erful and never-failing intercession” of the great est of all the saints. It means imploring her to intercede for us sinners, all of us, “now and at the hour of our death.” All Christian prayer is directed ultimately to God the Father, the giver of all gifts, through Questions and Answers Christ the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the one great intercessor, just as he is the one great mediator between God and man; risen from the dead, he lives to make intercession for us to the Father. But his intercession does not exclude the members of his body, the Church, from interced ing for one another, for they always intercede “through Christ our Lord.” Christians have prayed for one another since the earliest days of Christianity. Saint Paul urges such intercession, especially for those responsible for the commu nity, in 1 Timothy 2:1. Since the first century, Christians have asked those who have “gone before us marked with the sign of faith”—especially martyrs—to pray for them. Some of the earliest inscriptions in ancient Christian burial grounds include the saint’s name and the petition, “Pray for us.” Such petitions form the core of litanies of the saints. In such litanies, it is clear that the saint is being asked not to grant anything on his or her own authority or by his or her own power, but to “pray for us” to God, who alone has the power to grant our petitions. The concluding petition of the “Hail Mary” is of just this sort: “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” By consecrating the world to Mary, the Holy Father, as Vicar of Christ is publicly and promi nently asking the Mother of God to pray—as she always does—for the whole world. By doing so, the pope is reminding the world of its depend ence on God and its constant need for prayer, as well as fulfilling the request made at Fatima. As Popes Pius XII (privately) and John Paul II (publicly) have already consecrated the world to Mary, one last question could arise: “Why is this consecration being repeated?” Just as it is customary for us to renew our bap tismal promises at Confirmation and every year at Easter, or to renew wedding or religious vows or ordination promises on significant anniver saries or special occasions, so the Holy Father has decided to renew this consecration during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, not because the Blessed Virgin needs it, but because we need to be reminded of our consecration to her and our dependence on her intercession, in Christ, before the Father’s throne. —DKC