Being raised as a Roman Catholic, I went to church every Sunday. I received an education in classes centered on catechisms and I participated in parish life. Adulthood afforded me to take more notice of socially charged issues like abortion and human trafficking. I was eager to put my time and talents into ministries that engaged them, so I started getting involved with Respect Life, which is a ministry adopted by most Archdiocese in America and is the organization that maintains all of the Catholic crisis pregnancy centers. I assisted with Baby Bottle Campaigns, where parishioners present donations in baby bottles at an altar call during Mass, which is used to fund the organization. I helped coordinate the 40 Days for Life prayer vigils, in which Catholic participants signed up for shifts for forty twenty-four hours and stood outside of surgical abortion clinics to pray the Rosary for the abortive mothers and aborted children so that they would stay out of Purgatory. Respect Life held the Walk for Life at the Seminary every year and had their annual fundraising luncheons in great ballrooms of fancy hotels. After a few years of participating in these activities, I was invited to serve as the Committee Chair for the Church Parish Council Advisory Board. The board served to make the major decisions for the parish, and was consisted of clergymen and the board of directors. I served in that ministerial capacity for four years.
It was at the end of the fourth year of that ministry that I discovered Abolitionism and realized that I had made a huge mistake and had been living in unrepentant sin. I will be eternally grateful to my abolitionist brethren for taking the time and energy to labor and reason with me in truth and in love to repentance and faith. They challenged me with questions such as:
‘Where do the hundreds of thousands of dollars go from the pro-life fundraisers?’
‘Why do Catholics pray to Mary and why do they do it at the surgical abortion clinic mainly during hours it is closed?’
‘Why avoid preaching the Gospel in the Respect Life CPCs?’
‘Why participate in pro-life walks around the seminary?’
‘Why vote to merely regulate infanticide?’
‘Why passively ignore child sacrifice when not engaged in these short intervals of eventism?’
The answers to these questions were eye-opening. The pro-life fundraisers mainly served to maintain the buildings and pay the salaries of the employees and talking heads. My esteem for the Rosary was idolatry, and I did not have to pray to dead people to intercede against abortive mothers, when I could preach repentance to them.
In fact, my first time sidewalk counseling after I had repented I was attempting reason with the murdering parents patronizing the clinic, when a Catholic woman interrupted me to say I had been offending everyone else present. I encouraged her to consider that those who follow Christ as Lord need not be offensive because the Gospel of God is offensive enough to those who would reject it. In addition to my answers, I realized that donations for the Walks for Life were only paying for more salaries and lining the pockets of the Archbishop. The same Archbishop that encourages the voting habits of local Catholics, thereby keeping infanticide both a little more than a voting issue and perpetuated by its regulation as opposed to its abolition.
Probably the most important of my realizations came with my broken heart. There was as much, if not more blood on my hands as the hands of someone who was pro-abortion and unashamedly Godless. For example, I had been promoting, with my vote, exceptions to abolition such as those children conceived in rape and incest. The first time the concept of the Imago Dei was presented to me in regards to these exceptions and regulations, it was like a blow to my gut. Upon these realizations, I had no other course of action then to repent of my own personal abortion apathy.
After having repented, I wanted nothing more than to be obedient to God. I stopped participating in pragmatic activities that only keep the abortion industry in business. Now, I actively oppose child sacrifice by agitating the culture that has made peace with this evil. I stand in front of surgical abortion clinics, the homes of assassins of children, pro-choice and ‘pro-life’ churches, high schools and on street corners. I regularly use signs depicting rhetoric about repentance and destroying misinformation, and with graphic images of abortion victims, all while proclaiming the practice as murder and sin and preaching obedience to the Gospel of our Lord Christ Jesus. I understand that I must expose evil (Ephesians 5:11), abhor it, and cling to what is good (Romans 12:9), and stand firm in truth and righteousness (Ephesians 6:14), while provoking my Christian brothers and sisters unto love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24) in an effort to be obedient and love my neighbor. I seek to preach repentance of participating in, and being apathetic towards the evils of hormonal birth control, In Vitro Fertilization and all methods of decriminalized child sacrifice that are in fact just bad fruits of a hypocritical Christianity.
Once I repented of my abortion apathy, there was no way I could not repent of Catholicism. My own apathy had been bad fruit of unbiblical ‘theology’ and bad ecclesiology. I came to the realization that my beliefs were apostate, pagan, and demonic and therefore did not honor God. In fact, it did the reverse. It offended Him. He hated my idolatry. The Roman Catholic system, fighting abortion, was just a house divided against itself. The pragmatism of this false religion which is pridefully at the forefront of the abortion ‘fight’, has been keeping abortion ingrained into the culture for forty three years. When praying to demons disguised as the dead, and putting one’s salvific faith in their own works, and looking to a Vicar to absolve one of their sins, no wonder this counterfeit Christianity was not prevailing against the gates of Hell.
In contrast to the practices of well-meaning Catholics, abolitionists believe that Christians are to be evangelical and therefore spread the commands of Christ, so that the dying world may repent and embrace eternal life.
Abolitionism is a movement that is completely reliant on God’s providence and not the pragmatic and flawed ways of Catholic crisis pregnancy centers, alluring offers of help like free sonograms or gift baskets to murderous women that all just turn out to be cathartic displays of lip-service. The work of abolition is Gospel centered, the true Gospel that inspires performing miracles and walking in obedience, not the false works-saved salvation that is maintained in Catholic dogma. The Gospel is the only cure for sin, and it should never be hidden for the sake of a false peace. Being an Abolitionist should be a work of God’s called-out Assembly. Abolitionism is nothing more than constantly being a bright and salty Christian in a world that practices disobedience. As a catholic, I did little more than sit there and write a check and was contented in falsely believing that I had performed my obedience. I voted for regulative bills and pragmatic candidates and I had thought that I had done a righteous thing. I was drowning in apathy and taking deep breaths as though I was safe on shore.
Abolitionists are instructed in James 1:27 to care for the widow and orphan, and not just to give monetary donations and ballots to buy us a little piety at their expense. We are to be personally active in loving our neighbor and not outsource our commanded responsibilities to non-profit organizations like National Right to Life or the local pregnancy resource center. No one should get paid by Christians to be Christian for them. Furthermore, Abolitionists require that abortion be abolished immediately and not through incremental steps maintained by Catholic effort. The ideology opposes all pragmatic, self-refuting ways of the pro-life movement that lead to the perpetuation of pre-natal infanticide. The over 200 pro-life legislative steps that have had millions of dollars and man-hours poured into them that were pushed by catholic lobbyists are not saving many children. Also, they are iniquitous decrees that God explicitly says he hates. If all of that energy was put into abolishing abortion by bringing the Gospel into conflict with this culture of death, we may just see the greatest evil of our time abolished in our time. Incrementalism and pragmatism will never work. Hacking away at the branches of evil will only make them grow back stronger and healthier. Abolitionists endeavor to strike at the root. Pro-life mentality is historically a bad fruit of the pagan false religion of Catholicism and Catholicism is bad fruit of man playing God by obeying Satan.
I pray daily that unrepentant Catholics repent of their dead religion and dead opposition towards abortion, and then seek after Christ’s Kingdom by taking up their crosses. Nothing has broken me more than having found out that I thought I had worshiped God my whole life when, in reality, I knew nothing of Him or His ways. My heart grieves me for all those I led astray while part of Papism and the Pro-Life Movement. I pray they will turn to Scripture and discover the same truths that I have learned. May they stop following their traditions of men and start to question it for themselves. May the scales be removed from their eyes so that they stop being blind to the truth, and realize that they cling to their pagan beliefs which prevents them from ever clinging to Christ. May they adopt the grace of God that comes by faith, which leads them to walking in narrow obedience. Amen.
~ Abolitionist Deanna Evans
Voices of Dissidence 