Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court decisions legalizing abortion, the “moral and social turmoil continues in the hearts and homes of Americans,” said Coadjutor Bishop Jaime Soto, who presided at the annual pro-life Mass Jan. 22 in the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Sacramento.

Several hundred people attended the Mass, which was held on the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions that legalized abortion.

“What is clear for us on this occasion is…the continuing critical saga of American life and culture over this fundamental question of life and death,” Bishop Soto said in a homily during the Mass.

“What the court sought to hush and muffle with a contrived notion of ‘privacy’ continues to spill out in to the streets and public squares of our communities. The cry of Abel resonates in the anguish, sorrow and shame that will let neither our souls nor the soul of America rest.”

Bishops William K. Weigand and Soto had invited Catholics in the diocese to observe Jan. 22 as a day of fasting, abstinence, prayer and works of charity in penance for violations to the dignity of the human person and prayer for the full restoration of the right to life.

The observance marked by prayer, fasting, and works of justice and charity “signals our determination to love as Christ loved us, to suffer with the anguished mother for whom there is no choice but only the desperation provoked by a society that prefers not to bothered by her plight,” Bishop Soto said.

“We stand in solidarity with these women and their children precisely because the decision is so very personal,” he added. “It is personal for them, for their child, and it is personal for us.

“The personal nature of this decision makes it also a very social one because the person is social by one’s very nature. The life that God has brought into existence begs the personal response of the parents as well as us.

“That response can only be ‘yes.’ That ‘yes’ is not always easy, but our solidarity with them, our heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, has made it possible for many women to say ‘yes.’”

Bishop Soto contended that Catholics’ conviction about the sacredness of human life “is not an imposition of our religious preference.”

“It is, first of all, our own acceptance of the responsibility we owe one another, especially those who are the most weak and most vulnerable among us,” he said. “We speak for what is reasonable, sensible. It is common sense because it serves the common good by restoring the social dignity and moral significance of the human person, both for the mother as well as the innocent child.”

The bishop concluded that in the current election year Americans “should not lose sight of our personal obligation to restore sound reason and earnest compassion for the most vulnerable of our society, especially the unborn. Our choices make a difference in the lives of the most weak and poor.”

For the unborn, “it is the difference between life and death,” he said. “For many women it will be the difference between desperate isolation and finding a community of hope. For us, it is the difference between the darkness and moral poverty of personal indifference and the power and possibility of an American society where we are all personally committed to ensuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.”

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