Anointed Enemies

Homily at the Sion Community, for our Family Day on the Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C.

Sometimes, Our Lord Jesus speaks so clearly there is no need of elaboration.

We are to love our enemies, and here is how to do it.

So this afternoon I ask you, “Do you desire to love your enemies?”

If you already regard your enemies with a compassion which flows sweetly from your hearts, you have no need of a sermon from me today; simply go, and pour out your love.

Sometimes this happens, and the world takes notice. Earlier this week, Dr Adam Towler produced an extraordinary statement which was read in court. Dr Towler had been stabbed multiple times by a stranger who knocked on his door with wild accusations, and yet as his attacker was being sentenced, he sent this message: “Sometimes I would feel bad that I had this great freedom but you didn’t – I wondered if you had just made a mistake, albeit a big one, or been unlucky.” Neither we nor the trial judge know what motivated the victim to make such an extraordinary statement, but the judge commented: “If it is the consequence of intellect, I admire it. If it is the consequence of faith, I envy it.”

Whether or not it comes naturally to us to love our enemies, this is a choice we are all free to make. And Our Lord spells out clearly how to do it. We are not to get caught up in the game of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Rather we are to play the game of “I’ll scratch your back because your back is itching and I am in the right place to help.”

“But if I don’t play that game, I’ll lose out!” – I hear you cry. And yes, maybe in the short term you will. But in the long term – you will be a winner, because we have an Ultimate Judge who sees all and is looking for compassionate, generous hearts.

The Bible calls King David a “man after God’s own heart”. While Saul was King, he and David were at best, frenemies. The King’s son, Jonathan, was David’s closest friend. David was married to one of King Saul’s daughters, and was made commander of Israel’s armies. But Saul was jealous of David, especially when the people started crying “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.”

More than that, the prophet Samuel had anointed David with oil and said one day, after Saul, David would be king. If you were David, wouldn’t you be tempted to stage a coup or allow one of your bodyguards to stab Saul in the back? But David lived by a simple principle. God had also chosen and anointed Saul to be king. David would not raise his hand against the Lord’s anointed.

Today’s first reading is one example of David’s restraint. Another story in the Bible tells how David was hiding in a cave, and Saul came into that very cave to use the bathroom! Instead of using his sword to stab Saul, David cut off the corner of his cloak. A few moments after Saul had returned to his troops, to continue the hunt for David, the man they are looking for steps out with the piece of fabric and declared that he had no intention of harming the King. Saul and his troops went home, embarrassed. When David eventually does become King, it is because Saul and Jonathan have fallen in battle against enemies from outside Israel.

David has an important lesson to teach us, because he knows that although God is with him, God had also chosen Saul, with all his flaws, to be anointed king. We too must recognise this when our enemies are also part of God’s plan.

“Enemy” is a strong word. Maybe we don’t have enemies in the sense of people who are seeking to harm us or undermine us. Perhaps we only have rivals at work. But I’m sure we can all think of people who are obstacles to our Church being the kind of church we want it to be.

We’ve gathered here for a Family Day because I’m guessing you don’t have a day like this in the parish where you normally worship. And if you’re a Catholic in love with Jesus and wanting to follow him, how often do the priest and the parishioners of your regular parish feel like enemies, or at least obstacles?

Maybe your parish priest is all about helping the practical needs of the poor and needy, but doesn’t seem to want to tell them about Jesus.

Or maybe your parish priest seems to care most about vestments and Latin and producing ceremonies which are very elaborate but don’t feel like they connect with you or many of the people in the parish.

Maybe there are parishioners, even stewards, in your parish who seem hostile to families with small children and go “shush” or direct you to the back row when you come in.

Or maybe you’ve tried to get the Parish Council to think about how to invite people in your town to become followers of Jesus, but all they seem interested in is how to arrange another jumble sale to raise funds to fix the church roof.

Yes, our churches are full of enemies. But these too are the Lord’s anointed!

Your parish priest, for all his failings, has been discerned by the Church as fit for ministry and invested with divine authority to forgive sins and celebrate the Eucharist.

The members of your parish have been called by Jesus to be members of his Church. I hesitate to say that they have all been granted the gift of faith; but they at least have a sense of belonging which opens the door to be challenged to know and serve Jesus.

Do not raise your hand against the Lord’s anointed!

When Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, he is not asking anyone to be a doormat or a willing victim. Rather, he wants us to give our oppressors a chance to think again! In the Middle East, the left hand was considered unclean. Turning the other cheek might provoke an angry person to strike with the left hand and so publicly embarrass them for carrying out a taboo action. How can you embarrass your enemy with kindness? Maybe the last thing you think your parish needs is a cake sale, but by donating the most lavish cake you might find yourself in a position of influence next time an event is organised – or perhaps you could even decorate your cake with a message of Christian faith!

Now I can’t promise you that your acts of love will get instant results.  David attended court and played the harp to soothe Saul, but still sometimes Saul lashed out in anger. I once shared a house with a man who had a bad temper. We weren’t getting along very well, so I decided to make a peace-offering. He loved eating melon for breakfast, so when he went away for a week’s holiday, I made sure there was fresh melon in the fridge for his return. This did not have the desired effect. My gift was rewarded with a small explosion of anger – “That’s not the sort of melon I like, but now I have to eat it!” Truly, no good deed goes unpunished!

So I’d like to invite you now to pick an enemy. Maybe a member of your family. Perhaps someone at work or at school. Or it could be a member of your usual parish. Think of one thing you could do which would really help or support them. Your mission for this week is to go out and act with love – because that is a choice we can always make. At best, you will transform an enemy into a friend – but at worst you will have obeyed Our Lord’s command.

Our acts of love may not touch the heart of our enemies, but they will always touch the heart of God. When the prophet Samuel was sent to anoint David as king, he was the smallest and least impressive of the eight sons of Jesse. But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature… For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Yes, we human beings often miss what is going on in the heart of a person. Our Ultimate Judge always notices. Sometimes, other judges notice too. Loving enemies is a choice we can all make. Yes, we will have unguarded moments which our frustrations get the better of us, but we can all make the choice to do kind acts for which we expect to receive no earthly reward. We are called to display so much love for our enemies that even a respected judge would envy our faith.

Is it wrong to call a “Morning After Pill” an abortifacient?

British Conservative MP (and Catholic) Jacob Rees-Mogg is in the news this weekend because he described the morning-after pill as an abortifacient. Critics quickly attacked him, declaring:

emergency contraceptive pills prevent pregnancy by preventing or delaying ovulation and they do not induce an abortion – emergency contraception cannot interrupt an established pregnancy or harm a developing embryo.

World Health Organization

My first reaction was puzzlement – surely emergency contraception works mainly by stopping a fertilized embryo from implanting in the womb? And if that were the case we would be dealing with a semantic debate about whether abortion was really abortion if what was being expelled hadn’t yet been implanted in the womb. (Scientific bodies may define that ‘pregnancy begins at implantation’ but the Catholic Church recognises that a new and precious human person comes into being at conception.) On the other hand, the distinction of whether fertilisation has been prevented is a distinction of great substance – it is the difference between whether a new human life has begun, or no conception has taken place. That has immense moral weight, though it’s not the only factor in weighing up whether an emergency contraceptive is morally justified.

A Vatican statement made October 2000 opines that morning after pills are morally equivalent to abortion because they prevent implantation of a fertilised embryo. But the Vatican holds no special expertise in science; it can only apply morals on the basis that “if this is scientifically accuarate than that is the ethical consequence”. Medical research is continually developing. It’s not good enough to rest on what I thought I knew – or what the Vatican experts thought they knew – some years ago. Time for a refresher. Is it in fact the case, as this 2014 piece states, that:

In the past, the morning-after pill has been thought to prevent implantation and has therefore been termed an abortifacient. This is categorically incorrect.

The longer established ‘abortion pill’, RU-486, was licensed for use in 1988 and does indeed cause a formal abortion, inducing changes in the womb lining causing an already-implanted embryo to be jettisoned.

The newer ‘morning after’ pills use either levonorgestrel, a synthetic version of the natural hormone progesterone (e.g. Levonelle or Plan B) or ulipristal acetate, which interferes with natural progesterone (e.g. ellaOne). These claim to effectively prevent pregnancy for 3 and 5 days respectively after intercourse: sperm can survive for up to five days after intercourse so anything which prevents an egg being released during that five-day window can potentially reduce the chance of conception ocurring. This mechanism would mean that a morning after pill does nothing to impede an egg which has already been released before the tablet is taken.

Is there any evidence that these pills do anything to prevent implantation? Much evidence is focussed on the American “Plan B” pill which uses levonorgestrel. A 2015 study cast some doubt on the confident assertions that this treatment only works by delaying ovulation. The paper set the burden of proof as requiring ‘moral certainty’ that the pill does not ever cause abortion; it then set out seven scientific routes for challenging the evidence which seemed to say that this pill (only) prevents conception and offered some possible mechanisms through which it might also cause loss of a fertilised embryo. This does not add up to proof that levonorgestrel is abortifacient; but it does provide some reasons to question blithe assertions that it is not. Also in 2015, the American FDA included in a FAQ the statement that “If fertilization does occur, Plan B may prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb.” The FDA has refused to clarify this statement.

A 2019 paper finds that, across numerous studies, some suggest that some morning after pills have an anti-implantation effect but other studies oppose this. The evidence is not in the form of clear mechanisms, but analysing statistics which might suggest the pills are ‘too successful’ to work solely by preventing egg release.

We are faced, therefore, with circumstantial and statistical evidence suggesting that there is no clear reason to believe that either kind of morning after pill prevents implantation, though there is certainly room for doubt by those who will only be satisfied with moral certainty. For now, Mr Rees-Mogg’s best defence is that the FDA maintains its position that levonorgestrel may prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb, while his critics are certainly correct that this is not the predominant mechanism in pills which are now known (in a way which wasn’t clear 20 years ago) to prevent pregnancy by preventing or delaying ovulation.

As to whether the use of such emergency contraception can ever be ethical, it would certainly be covered by Catholic teaching that no married couple should wilfully impede the fertility of their conjugal act. Since, by its nature, it can be used hours or even days after intercourse has taken place, there is a serious ethical question about whether these kinds of pills can be taken to prevent conception following non-consensual sex. Can a rape victim legitimately use this treatment to minimise her chances of conceiving a child out of her ordeal? Germany’s Catholic bishops believe the answer is yes, and the US Catholic Bishops’ policy on Catholic hospitals (see Directive 36) seems to leave room for this interpretation, too. The caveat is that the treatment must not act to prevent implantation, and the current state of scientific knowledge is likely to divide those who would insist on moral certainty from those willing to act on the current weight of evidence.

It is true that there is not always complete knowledge of the way that different pharmaceuticals operate, but scientific studies indicate that the effect of inhibiting implantation is certainly present, even if this does not mean that such interceptives cause an abortion every time they are used.

Dignitatis Humane

The Vatican’s 2008 instruction, quoted above, forces us to ask whether there is any morning after pill for which we are now not certain that the effect of preventing implantation is present. In 2010, Cardinal di Nardo expressed the bishops’ concern to the FDA that ulipristal acetate always included the risk of blocking implantation. In 2015, the Catholic Medical Association produced a paper which was largely pessimistic, on the grounds that even the more hopeful levonorgestrel carried a measurable risk of preventing implantation, but concluded:

Further research is needed to find a drug that can be used after sexual assault to prevent conception without taking a human life.

It’s a brave scientist who categorically states that an effect is absolutely not present. But the World Health Organisation’s bold statement uses carefully chosen vocabulary. It is technically true that “emergency contraception cannot interrupt an established pregnancy or harm a developing embryo” if pregnancy is defined to begin at implantation and harm is defined as direct injury. It is true that “emergency contraceptive pills prevent pregnancy by preventing or delaying ovulation” in many, if not most, cases. As for the statement “they do not induce an abortion”, the question is whether you class the minority of cases where they may prevent implantation as a form of abortion (and indeed, passive harm to a developing embryo). We may therefore conclude that:

Emergency contraceptive pills prevent pregnancy by preventing or delaying ovulation and they do not induce an abortion – emergency contraception cannot interrupt an established pregnancy or harm a developing embryo – but there is statistical evidence that in some cases they may prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb, and therefore cause a newly-conceived human life to be lost.

World Health Organization augmented by the position of the FDA and the 2015 findings of Kahlenborn, Peck & Severs.