The scream that nobody hears.

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Father George Welzbacher, pastor of St. John's of St. Paul parish, former pastor of St. Agnes, speaks loudly today on the abortion issue.

It's a scream that nobody hears.

It's the scream of a baby being butchered or being scalded to death with a saline solution inside its mother's womb. Here in the U.S.A., with nearly fifty million such babies already done to death within the past thirty five years, the massive slaughter of the innocent unborn has seemingly become a non-issue, or at best an issue that is acknowledged but which, for a majority of Americans, is simply shrugged off. "You've got a problem with that? Well, that's YOUR problem! We're concerned with the REAL problem: What to do about the ECONOMY!" And if thanks to voters' unconcern, FOCA (the "Freedom of Choice Act") becomes the law of the land, as one of the candidates for high office has pledged that, should he be elected, so it will be, to those fifty million missing will be added tens of millions MORE before another generation has passed. For FOCA mean "NO restrictions of ANY kind for abortion on DEMAND!"

But if far too many voters are turning a deaf ear and a deaf conscience to the screams of the defenseless, there is One Who hears those screams, and they call forth His wrath! As indeed we were reminded last Sunday in the passage from the Book of Exodus: "Thus says the Lord: You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. IF EVER YOU WRONG THEM, AND THEY CRY OUT TO ME, I WILL SURELY HEAR THEIR CRY! MY WRATH WILL FLARE UP, AND I WILL SLAY YOU WITH THE SWORD...." Exodus 22:2 1. And the Book of Proverbs adds the warning that AMONG THE THINGS THAT GOD MOST DETESTS, THAT HE FINDS TO BE "AN ABOMINATION," ARE "HANDS THAT SHED INNOCENT BLOOD." (Proverbs 6:17).

In this context Americans would do well to remember the words of Thomas Jefferson: "I tremble for my country when I recall that God is JUST", words prompted by a conscience uneasy at his own and at so many of his countrymen denying to fellow human beings the unalienable right to liberty with which, as he himself had written, all men have been endowed by their Creator. These words of Jefferson apply with even greater force today to those who by active connivance or simply by passive indifference would deny to innocent millions their fundamental right to LIFE!

How long, one may reasonably ask, will God WITHHOLD His wrath? Though it well may be that the chastisement He inflicts upon us will take the form not of direct intervention but of simply allowing us to pull the roof down upon our own heads through the consequences of the choices we have made.

It's no great challenge to the imagination to conjecture that in the not too distant future fifty million additional Americans could make all the difference between our nation's survival and its demise. Could not even less than half that number produce an impressive number of combat divisions? And those fifty million missing Americans will surely have included a multitude of minds gifted with the insight or the genius to make a significant contribution to the solution of our nation's problems. We are as impoverished by their absence as we would have been enriched by the power of their minds. And to state the matter baldly, even crudely, those fifty million Americans, had they been allowed to live, would be energizing our economy today as much with their productive skills and presumable dedication as with their need for food, clothing, housing, education and transportation.

Aren't we being told, after all, that a big part of our current economic problem is the mismatch between an excess of housing and a shortage of buyers?