Triple Reparation

by Fr. Roger Landry - June 5, 2009

Since abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered on Sunday during a worship service at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, the reaction of the vast majority of people on both sides of the abortion debate has been swift and total condemnation.

The U.S. bishops were among the first to denounce the evil of his assassination. Cardinal Justin Rigali, speaking on behalf of the U.S. bishops, declared, "Our bishops' conference and all its members have repeatedly and publicly denounced all forms of violence in our society, including abortion as well as the misguided resort to violence by anyone opposed to abortion. Such killing is the opposite of everything we stand for, and everything we want our culture to stand for: respect for the life of each and every human being from its beginning to its natural end. We pray for Dr. Tiller and his family."

The bishops of Kansas were likewise unambiguous in describing the evil of Tiller's vigilante execution. "We unequivocally condemn the murder of Dr. George Tiller," they wrote in a joint statement. "The Catholic Church believes that every human life is sacred. The murder of a human being is the gravest of crimes and is an intrinsic evil. Such an act of violence against human life is a contradiction of the most fundamental principle of the Pro-Life movement. The fact that this attack occurred in a church, a place of prayer and worship, only adds to the horror of this terrible crime. We prayerfully commend Dr. George Tiller to the mercy of God and we pray for comfort and consolation for his family and friends."

The bishops' thoughts were echoed by Pro-Life leaders across the country, where almost in unison they did the same three things: condemned the wickedness of the slaying in itself, described how it was a betrayal of the most fundamental Pro-Life principle, and offered prayers for Tiller and his family. A culture of life, they insisted, cannot be advanced by murder. The evil of his murder, they stressed, is not diminished in any way by the amount of blood Tiller had shed in almost four decades of work as an abortionist. The end never justifies the means.

In all of the comments given in the immediate aftermath of Tiller's death, however, something important was missing. Part of the explanation for its absence might be the nature of press statements which, in order to be printed in full, must be brief. A more likely reason would seem to be that many people, including Christians, have lost a supernatural perspective when responding to evils like this. It's not enough to condemn the action. It's not enough to commit to praying for those involved. A Christian must also do reparation.

Before anything else, what happened on Sunday in Reformation Lutheran Church is an offense to God, whose son, however wayward, was slain. The fact that it occurred a place and at a time dedicated to the worship of God only adds to the sacrilege. Just as God had put a mark on Cain after he had murdered his brother Abel to prevent his being slain, so God had given George Tiller an indelible mark in baptism and, regardless of whether Tiller had lived in conformity with his baptismal graces, Tiller's murder was an action not merely against a Kansas abortionist, his family and Church community, but against his Father in heaven. For this, we must beg God for mercy not just toward Tiller and his assassin but toward all of us. We must do acts of penance and reparation to seek in some way to remedy the evil done also against God.

We likewise need to do reparation for the few who are taking quiet or public pleasure in Tiller's death. In the blogosphere, there have been some who have been saying that "Tiller the Killer" had it coming: just as Jesus said that he who lives by the sword will die by the sword, so it was fitting that one who made quite a profitable living by killing other human beings himself was killed by another human being. There have even been some commentators who have suggested that Tiller had gotten off easy: under the law of an eye for an eye, a rather instantaneous death by bullet was merciful compared to what "should have happened to him," namely undergoing what he himself had done to half-delivered babies in his Wichita clinic.

This is all evil talk. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus responded to this type of logic: "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' [and] 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:38-48).

Christians, in short, are called to a higher standard, higher than non-Christians, namely the standard of the love that God has. In accordance with these standards, there were many Pro-Life Christians who for decades had been praying that Dr. George Tiller would become another Dr. Bernard Nathanson, repent of his sins against life and become active in the Pro-Life movement. They never forgot that George Tiller's life, too, was sacred and precious, that he, too, was loved by God, and that they were called to love him as passionately as they hated they sins against life he was perpetrating. These people are now justly mourning Dr. Tiller's death alongside the deaths of the unborn.

Finally, there is also need to for Christians to do reparation for Dr. Tiller's and other abortionists' many offenses against God through the grisly destruction of innocent human life. Even among the abortionists in our country, Tiller was notorious for his willingness to go beyond what all but two others in the country could stomach doing, and abort viable children in the third trimester. He not only did it, but was unabashed in his support for the practice. None of this, of course, provides the least justification for someone's taking his life, but it provides plenty of justification for us to do copious reparation.

In this month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in which we focus on Jesus' sacred humanity and are called by him to do reparation for all sins of indifference to his love, let us ask him for the grace to persevere in prayer and penance for all sins of indifference and sacrilege against those whose human nature is made in his image and likeness and whose humanity he indeed made sacred through his Incarnation.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.