Epilogue to The Hand of God
by Father John McCloskey
You have just finished reading one of the more important autobiographies of the twentieth century. Already in less than a year's time it has passed into its third English edition with a prestigious American publisher and with this new Spanish edition it will now be made available to countless millions of readers in the Americas and in Spain. Several other translations into other languages are already in progress, including in French, German, and Polish! With the passage of time it could rank with Merton's Seven Storey Mountain and Malcolm Muggeridge's Chronicles of Wasted Time as the books which our descendants, both familial and spiritual, will turn to in the 21st and 22nd centuries in order to understand both man's inhumanity both to humanity and to his personal self, and the possibility of redemption. All three authors were men of brilliant intellect who came from atheistic backgrounds and who succumbed to many of the ideological and carnal temptations of their age only to finish, through God's grace, as converts to the Catholic Church. I am sure that Merton, Muggeridge, and Nathanson would all agree with Hilaire Belloc's words : "One thing in the world is different from all others. It has a personality and a force. It is recognized and (when recognized) most violently loved or hated. It is the Catholic Church. Within that household the human spirit has roof and hearth. Outside it, it is the night." And it has been a dark and frigid twentieth century!
Perhaps you will only understand the power and grace of this book in the context of the teaching of the Catholic Church which has stood and stands virtually alone in defense of the sacredness of human life from natural conception to natural death. In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae the Holy Father John Paul II, has upheld the principle of the "dignity of the human person" in the face of a century of mass slaughter and degradation. The Holy Father is well aware of this book and knows its author personally. Dr. Nathanson's conversions to the cause of life and to Christianity are indeed highly significant as witness to the power both of scientific evidence and of prayer. It also manifests so clearly the inexorable connection between God and the natural law that He has inscribed in the human mind and heart. As is happening increasingly in the United States and elsewhere, if you acknowledge and follow the natural law, you may very well find God and the Church .
During the late 1970's Dr. Nathanson became a target to the cultural anti-life forces in America, the subject of ridicule and satire in comic strips and news commentary, and the butt of jokes of television comedians for his change of heart and mind regarding the objective reality of abortion, the taking of innocent human lives, comparable to the Dachau of Hitler, the Gulag of Stalin, or the Cambodia of Pol Pot. Since then, along with a distinguished obstetric medical practice and university teaching, he has given hundreds of lectures throughout the world in defense of the unborn. Most recently, now close to seventy, he has received a degree in medical bioethics, continuing his professional preparation, so that he may better be able to defend the cause of human life, philosophically as well as scientifically.
At the end of the book, however, our friend Dr. Nathanson has left us hanging. Did he indeed "finally run towards Him from whom he had been running away even though all the time He had been at the center of things," to paraphrase his mentor and fellow convert, Dr. Karl Stern? The answer is yes. He reached the final goal, the beginning of eternal life in this one, which is found in the sacrament of Baptism.
On December 9, on a Monday at 7:30 a.m. on the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception in the crypt chapel of the Cathedral of St. Patrick's in New Your City, the City of Man, Dr. Bernard Nathanson became a son of God, incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ in His One Church. John Cardinal O'Connor administered to him the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Communion. His god-parents were Joan Andrews, a heroine of the pro-life movement who spent years in prison giving witness to the evils of abortion, and John Downing, an attorney, a close Catholic friend of some twenty-six years. His sponsor for confirmation was Chris Slattery, a man who had left a lucrative career in advertising to dedicate himself wholeheartedly to the cause of life by his direction of the only pro-life alternative for expectant women in Manhattan, the Crisis Pregnancy Center. Cardinal O'Connor in his homily remarked that the lack of respect for life is rooted in a lack of self-respect, and that a lack of self-respect is a consequence of sin. How fitting it was, the Cardinal continued, that Dr. Nathanson should enter the Church on the feast of the new Eve.
Among the concelebrants were some of his friends, all well-known spokesmen for life both nationally and internationally; Fr. Paul, Marx, the founder of Human life International; Msgr. William Smith, perhaps the Church's leading moral theologian in the U.S.; and Fr. Richard Neuhaus, a former Lutheran minister who also had been received into the Church by Cardinal O'Connor in l989, and who is now the editor of one of the most influential religious journals in the U.S., First Things. However, standing out among the various persons, most of them close friends, that Dr. Nathanson had invited, was a stranger, a man Dr. Nathanson had never met, Chuck Colson. He traveled a long way to be there, in many senses. He is very well known in the U.S. as a major figure in the Watergate scandal of the 1970's, for which he spent several years in prison. There he had a conversion to evangelical Christianity and began a pastoral work with those in prison. Today he is perhaps the best known Evangelical Protestant leader in the United States, with a radio show and many books to his credit. He is also a principal author and signer of the "Evangelical-Catholics Together" statement which is an attempt on the part of Catholic and Evangelical leaders to highlight what unites them in Christ while at the same time attempting to move towards unity in what still separates them.
Listen to Colson's impressions of that moment. "This week I saw fresh and powerful evidence that the Savior born 2000 years ago in a stable continues to transform the world. Last Monday I was invited to witness a baptism in a chapel of St. Patrick's cathedral in New York City. The candidate for baptism was none other than Bernard Nathanson, at one time one of the abortion industry's greatest leaders, a man who personally presided over some 75,000 abortions, including the abortion of his own child...I watched as Nathanson walked to the altar. What a moment. Just like the first century–a Jewish convert coming forward in the catacombs to meet Christ. And his sponsor was Joan Andrews. Ironies abound. Joan is one of the pro-life movement's most outspoken warriors, a woman who spent five years in prison for her pro-life activities. It was a sight that burned into my consciousness, because just above Cardinal O'Connor was a cross...I looked at the cross and realized again that what the gospel teaches is true: in Christ is the victory. He has overcome the world, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against His church...And this is the way the abortion war will be won, through Jesus Christ changing hearts, one by one. No amount of political force, no government, no laws, no army of Planned Parenthood workers can ever stop that. It is the one thing that is absolutely invincible...That simple baptism, held without fanfare in the basement of a great cathedral, is a reminder that a holy Baby, born in a stable 20 centuries ago, defies the wisdom of man. He cannot be defeated."
But what was the reaction of Dr. Nathanson himself as he received the Sacraments of initiation into his new life as a Christian? "It was a very difficult moment. I was in a real whirlpool of emotion. And then there was this healing, cooling water on me, and soft voices, and an inexpressible sense of peace. I had found a safe place...for so many years I was agitated, nervous, intense. My emotional metabolism was way up. Now I've achieved a sense of peace." At the end of the Mass Cardinal O'Connor, in a comment that brought gentle laughter to the congregation, said to Dr. Nathanson, "There, now you're as Catholic as I am!" After the ceremony his reaction, understandably was one of gratitude: "I can't tell you how grateful I am, what an unrequitable debt I have, to those who prayed for me all those years when I was publicly announcing my atheism and lack of faith. They stubbornly, lovingly, prayed for me. I am convinced beyond any doubt that those prayers were heard. It brought tears to my eyes."
On the prayer card handed out at the Mass of his reception, Dr. Nathanson had one quote from Sacred Scripture, "God, who is rich in mercy" (Ephesians 2:4), the very same phrase that the Holy Father used as the title for his encyclical on God the Father, Dives in Misericordia. It certainly reflects his attitude as he faces his new life as a Catholic: "I'm confident about the future, whatever it may hold because I've turned my life over to Christ. I don't have control anymore, and I don't want control. I made a mess of it; nobody could do worse that I did. I'm just in God's hands."
As we approach the millennium, the Holy Spirit clearly is moving in a special way. Dr. Nathanson's story just one of the more noteworthy among the thousands taking place all over the world as we move towards unity. All of us have the duty and blessed privilege of acting as instruments of God's mercy to call those around us to Christ and his Church by means of our sacramental and prayer life and by the example of our family life and friendship. Meanwhile, be sure to continue to pray for Dr. Nathanson, who now after having crossed "the threshold of hope," embarks on his new life in Christ.
First appeared in Ediciones Palabra (Spain) in the April, 1997, issue.
