How to overcome a ‘spirit of callousness’

Recently, a crisis pregnancy center director expressed her concern over an attitude she and her staff encounter among many of their clients. The director, who has served the unborn, mothers, and families for more than three decades, admitted that she has counseled thousands of women and confronted many obstinate hearts and minds, but, sadly, has noticed a troublesome attitude. “We are experiencing greater indifference, a ‘spirit of callousness,’” she said, “that [we] have never encountered on such a scale.” Adding that “no matter what is said, they are unmoved, cold, and unemotional. I fear our society is growing even more numb to the sacredness of human life, which is very worrisome.”

How did our society become so indifferent, so callous to the sanctity of human life?

Culture plays a significant role in this process and influences how we behave and how we think. It affects how we process information, make decisions, view life, express ourselves, govern ourselves, relate to other human beings, function in society, and even how we view God. Culture is that which envelops us; it is the air we breathe. Yet, its influence is often obscure.
I contend that there are two factors that have shaped our modern-day culture, giving rise to a “spirit of callousness”: the denial of God, and a false understanding of human dignity.

According to Pope St. John Paul II, “when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life” (Evangelium Vitae, 21). And “this reality is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity and, in many cases, takes the form of a veritable ‘culture of death’” (EV, 12).

In other words, whenever a human person’s dignity is overlooked, devalued, or rejected, something essential is ignored, and the consequences of such an act to society and culture are far-reaching. This “spirit of callousness” is enabled and emboldened by the progressive weakening in individual consciences, and in a society that has lost the sense of God and the incomparable worth of the human person. Hence, we do not value each other as much, we do not value our relationships as deeply, and thus have gradually become unsympathetic toward our neighbors, born and unborn.
This truth is expressed in the reasoning of St. Teresa of Calcutta as she considered the ramifications of a culture and its people that reject God and His command to love: “By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world.” She added that “any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want.” (National Prayer Breakfast, 1994).

The moral weakening of our resistance to the culture of death has made many insensitive, blind to the crimes and violence we see in our culture, including abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human trafficking, pornography, and the exploitation and commercialization of unborn children.

Transforming a “spirit of callousness” and restoring a culture of life, a society where God is respected and human life is loved and served, will demand sacrifices, hardships, heroic witness, and heroic action. But, as Christians and as a people of life, ours is not to count the cost but to “fight the good fight” with the tenacity God gives us.

FATHER SHENAN J. BOQUET is the president of Human Life International (www.hli.org), and a priest of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, LA. Please keep Human Life International in your continued prayers and support.