A Poverty of the U.S. is its Approach to Life, Bishop Samuel Aquila notes on Respect Life Sunday

Oct 2, 2005 / 22:00 pm

There is a poverty of the United States is “its approach to life and its disregard of the dignity of life,” Most Rev. Samuel J. Aquila, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Fargo, said Oct. 2 during a Respect Life Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of St. Mary, Fargo. October 2 marked the beginning of a month long initiative to foster respect for human life in the Church in the United States.

Terrorism, suicide bombings, euthanasia, and capital punishment are all “attacks on the dignity of human life, on the understanding of the human person as created in the image and likeness of God,” Bishop Aquila said. The gravest of these attacks, he added, “is abortion itself.”

Bishop Aquila said it is God who bestows dignity upon each human person, even those some may refer to as “mistakes,” noting “The eye of God does not see it that way.”

The primary struggle throughout history has been “between the culture of life and the culture of death,” Bishop Aquila said. “We must speak more forcefully for the culture of life.”

At 3 p.m., Bishop Aquila led a Eucharistic procession from the Cathedral to the Red River Women’s Clinic, the state of North Dakota’s only remaining abortion facility. Hundreds followed through the streets of downtown Fargo, reciting the rosary and singing. The group prayed in front of the abortion facility, then continued to pray the rosary on the return walk to the Cathedral.