Thinking About the Murder of George Tiller

I tend to avoid the regular news most of the time and have been trying to stay off the computer more on the weekends (not to mention the Lost Weekend that was devoted almost totally to Boxers this weekend). Therefore it was just this morning I discovered that a gunman murdered abortionist Dr. George Tiller in his church Sunday.

I pondered it as I walked Zoe this morning, delighting in the fact that someone spent time giving her obedience training. She heeled, she sat when I stopped, she obeyed the "down" hand signal. As I made these discoveries, my mind continually returned to the tragic choice of occupation made by Dr. Tiller. I call it tragic not because he was killed, but because he himself killed habitually for a living. I pondered also the tragic choice made by the gunman to cut short a soul's journey, to take from Dr. Tiller his free will and opportunity to redeem himself by discovering his mistakes and become a defender of life, as others have done. I thought of the fact that Christ loves both these souls, no matter how heinous their actions. I wondered how they went so terribly astray. I wondered what little temptations and rationalizations, one after another, led to such extreme choices in the end.

I returned home to see that God was using my thoughts to prepare me to read today's In Conversation with God. It is by keeping Christ as the cornerstone of our lives that we help keep from grievous error such as that on display by Dr. Tiller and his murderer. I share some key passages below.

Error is often presented decked out in the noble garments of art, science or freedom ... But faith has to be, indeed is, stronger than error. It is the powerful light that enables us to see, lurking behind what appers to be good, the evil that lies hidden beneath the surface of an otherwise good literary work, of a beauty that conceals ugliness. It is Christ who must be the cornerstone of every building.

Let us ask Our Lord for his grace so that we may live in a way totally compatible and utterly coherent with our Christian faith. In this way we will never think of our faith as a limiting factor -- I can't do this, I can't go there. Rather it will be a light that enables us to recognize the reality of things and events, without ever forgetting that the devil will try to make an ally of human ignorance. (which cannot see the complete reality contained in this literary work or in that doctrine) and of the pride and concupiscence that all of us drag along behind us. Christ is the crucible that assays the gold there is in all human beings Anything that does not stand up to the testing clarity of his teaching is a lie and deceptive, even though it may be adorned with the appearance of some attractive good or perfection.

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A Christian, who will have built his life upon the cornerstone who is Christ, has his own personality, his own way of seeing the world and its happenings. He has a scale of values very different from that of the pagan, who does not live by faith and who has a purely worldly conception of things. A weak and lukewarm Christian faith, however, which exerts very little influence on ordinary life, can provoke in some people that kind of inferiority complex which manifests itself in an immoderate desire to "humanize" Christianity, to "popularize" the Church, to make it somehow seem to conform to the value-judgments prevalent in the world at a given time (J. Orlandis).

That is why, as well as being immersed in our secular activities, as Christians we need to be immersed in God, through prayer, the sacraments and the sanctification of our daily work. We need to be faithful disciples of Jesus in the middle of the world, in our ordinary everyday life, with all the constant effort and hard decisions this entails. In this way we will be able to put into practice the advice Saint Paul gave to the first Christians in Rome when he alerted them to the risks of accommodating themselves to the pagan customs of the day: Do not be conformed to this world (Rom 12:2). Sometimes this refusal to conform will lead us to row against the current and run the risk of being misunderstood by many of our contemporaries. The Christian must not forget that he is leaven (Matt 13:33) hidden in the lump of dough that has to be fermented by him...

Jesus of Nazareth continues to be the cornerstone of every man's life. Any building constructed without Christ is raised in vain. Let us think as we finish our prayer, whether the Faith we profess is coming to bear more and more influence on our existence, on the way we view the world and mankind, and on the way we behave.

In Conversation With God Vol 3

I pray for the soul of Dr. Tiller, for the soul of his murderer, and for myself and all of us, that we may immerse ourselves in God, keep our eyes on Truth, and follow His will.