For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the children of the light. – Luke 16:8

A pro-abortion zealot was elected Governor of Virginia. In her victory speech, she pledged to protect abortion for the next four years, making the Commonwealth of Virginia the South’s abortion oasis. She’ll be joined by a like-minded lieutenant governor and an attorney general whose texts fantasizing about killing a political opponent and his children became public… and Virginia shrugged. Expect the new legislature to pass in January an abortion-on-demand-through-birth amendment to the state constitution, ready for popular approval next November.

A pro-abortion candidate also was elected Governor of New Jersey. She has shown some sympathy to writing a pro-abortion amendment into the state constitution, you know, just in case the 34% of New Jerseyans who call themselves Catholic (and the state’s five bishops) ever wake up and smell the feticide. My home state has been a lost cause to prolife efforts for decades, largely because of Democrat dominance. That matters. To one-third of the state’s nominal Catholics, judging by their votes and political allegiance, it clearly doesn’t matter.

A pro-abortion “democratic socialist” is now mayor of New York City. In terms of pro-life matters, not much will change, as New York has “proudly” been an abortion haven for 55 years — and its Catholic governor promises to keep it that way.

Pennsylvania’s judicial elections resulted in retention of state Supreme Court “justices” that are considering expanding abortion in a state that nominally is almost 25% Catholic.

California’s special referendum to sanitize Catholic Governor Gavin Newsom’s effort to gerrymander Congressional seats (to secure a pro-abortion Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives) succeeded.

The only thing missing from this cavalcade of victories for the culture of death was pro-abortion Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois getting a “lifetime achievement” award from a Catholic cardinal. Cupich nevertheless took the dinner’s occasion to defend his choice as fostering “dialogue” on “pro-life” issues.

For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the children of the light.

Three and a half years after the Dobbs decision, when states are now free to protect unborn life, pro-abortion activists are cruising. They’re not “dialoguing.” They’re winning. And by writing their victories into state constitutions, they are making them permanent, likely to last long after any particular baby-kissing/killing politician leaves office. The law teaches, and the law is teaching to kill. And unlike Roe, where people could legitimately claim powerlessness in the face of what Justice Byron White called an exercise of “raw judicial power,” people — including Catholics — faced with the choice of the blessing of life and the curse of death (Deut. 30:19) freely elect the curse.

Some analysts (and clergy) will dismiss my claim as hyperventilated. They will find other “causes” for the outcomes. Trump is unpopular in Virginia, where unemployed feds spoke. Jersey is solidly blue. California wasn’t about abortion but redistricting. Pro-life concerns can expand to include lots of things: Sherrill wants to reduce carbon emissions, Mamdani wants to “feed the hungry” with his state supermarkets, and Spanberger will prevent Virginia police cooperation with the feds to stand with illegal aliens evading arrest.

But we can always “dialogue”!

The result of Election 2025 compels me to speak frankly and demand we cut through this bull and its purveyors. The children of this world — like the dishonest steward in whose parable this line appears — know exactly what they want. They are laser focused on it and will do what it takes — including lie (call it “dissembling” lest we be accused of one of the Vatican’s current greatest sins, “detraction” against the obviously guilty) — to achieve their goals.

Catholics, on the other hand, demonstrate their political ineptitude, which is why they have largely lost political punch. The fact Kamala Harris blew off the 2024 Al Smith Dinner — the quadrennial “dialogue-and-ha-ha” good-will supper traditionally hosted by the Archbishop of New York — tells you what Democrats think of their erstwhile Catholic constituency: political impotents. The fact that Catholic politicians, primarily in the Democratic party, feel assured they can promote abortion without political or ecclesiastical sanction (other than having to “dialogue” with their indulgent ordinaries) tells you everything you need to know. Theoretical faith commitments on Sunday seem to be conveniently forgotten by election Tuesday.

Roe fell in 2022 primarily not because of but in spite of the Catholic bishops of the United States. Lip service notwithstanding, most bishops’ political responses to what Vatican II called a moral crime — an “unspeakable” crime against God and man — have been arguably either naïve or disingenuous. They either showed incredible political ignorance or just went through the minimal motions. In the end, however, and whatever the motive, it was ineffective.

Take Ohio in 2023. In a last-ditch effort to stop a pro-abortion amendment to the Ohio Constitution, there was an interim referendum in August 2023 attempting to raise the bar on state constitutional amendments approved by popular referendum. In Ohio, the state constitution can be changed in two ways: by 3/5s (60%) of the legislature or ½ (51%) of the voters. The interim referendum, taking changes to constitutions seriously, wanted to make both routes 3/5s (60%).

An interim referendum in the middle of August should have been easy to win. But, with the exception of one, all Ohio’s bishops studiously declared themselves neutral on that effort, pretending it was all about constitutional ratios and not the effort to ensconce abortion-on-demand three months later. The effort to set a 60% threshold failed, and Ohio’s abortion amendment went into effect with 56.7% of the vote.

Abortion is not some long-range, slow process (like blocks of ice melting in the Vatican) that threatens some “life” sometime, somewhere. It is the “existential” threat — or rather end of existence — of a human being that happens with relative impunity and commonplace ordinariness many times a day across America. Business as usual.

Jesus praised the crooked steward not for his morality but his shrewdness. Official Catholic pro-life strategy arguably has been neither. Perhaps the children of light must learn a new kind of shrewdness, one that weds innocence to strategy, and truth to courage.

So, pardon me, but I have no intention of “dialoguing” with those who want to normalize this, episcopal admonitions notwithstanding. Nor do I intend to don any seamy garment of life that covers up concrete killing here and now in order to express “solidarity” with abstract threats to life, much less disapproval of persons having to face the consequences of their illegal acts (like crossing the U.S. border in violation of the law). And I’m not going to apologize for calling myself “pro-life” because, in contrast to those whose “big tents” allow abortionists to poke their noses under it, I remember that it was those “one-issue pro-lifers” — not the incessant and ineffective “dialoguers” — that freed us from Roe.