Next week, on Jan. 22, we mark the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand. It's an important moment. The Roe decision, in many ways, has been a turning point in our life as a nation. In the space of a few decades, an act of violence that was condemned as a "crime against humanity" at the Nuremberg Trials, has become a woman's "right to choose" — and even an act of convenience. We need to take a hard look at the consequences.

Political systems are organic. They're ecologies. Even Benjamin Franklin, who was not a particularly virtuous man, once wrote that, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom." Bad laws and bad court decisions poison the roots of the way we live. They damage the way we think — and that damage in turn creates more bad laws, more bad court decisions, and more bad political behavior . . . and gradually we lose the ability to see what's right, and to do what's good. We lose the capacity to recognize and live real freedom. And that's where we find ourselves today.

When the Supreme Court issued Roe v. Wade in 1973, it set two distinct tragedies in motion. First, it legalized abortion on demand. It opened the floodgates to killing 40 million unborn children, and it wounded the lives of millions of women and men in the process. Roe put the definition of human personhood up for grabs. It removed the unborn from human status — and in doing so, it set a precedent that comes back to haunt us in all our debates about infanticide, physician-assisted suicide and what some hospitals now alarmingly call "inappropriate care" for the seriously ill.

Second — and in a way, just as brutally — Roe undermined our reasoning and our moral vocabulary. We're losing our ability to think clearly about moral issues. The way abortion supporters misuse the label "pro choice" simply proves this point. "Pro choice," as an expression, has no connection at all with the real, flesh-and-blood event of an abortion. Abortion always involves a killing. But the language surrounding it has become sanitized, evasive, and dishonest.

The word "community" means more than just a social agreement to tolerate each other's appetites and alibis. Real community always involves shared beliefs and a shared commitment to the future. The common good always demands that individuals sacrifice their own wants and needs for the good of others. So if we want to renew our public life as a nation, we need to begin by realizing that abortion, euthanasia, racial and ethnic prejudice, greed, exploitation of the poor and all the other acts of violence against human dignity in our day begin right here — in our own selfishness as private citizens; in our own refusal to live in a spirit of truth.

G.K. Chesterton used to say that "tolerance" is the alibi of people who don't believe in anything, and that the point of having an open mind is the same as having an open mouth: Sooner or later, it's supposed to close on something solid. Chesterton wasn't preaching the joys of bigotry. Actually, he was doing just the opposite.

As Christians we have the very serious obligation to show even our enemies charity, justice, mercy, understanding and respect. But we also have the responsibility to do all these things in a spirit of love and honesty, which means working to serve the truth, and naming and resisting sin. Real love is always rooted in truth. And we serve the common good best when we serve the truth best. That's what Samuel Adams meant when he wrote that a person "is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue." And that's what George Washington meant in his Farewell Address when he warned that, "reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

History is made — and nations are built — by people who believe in something zealously and act on it in the public square, not by people who have a skepticism toward all belief. If we want public officials who act with both intelligence and moral character, the only way we'll get those qualities is by carrying our religious faith and moral principles into the public debate — not just at election time like last November, but week in and week out, in dialogue with the people who represent us.

Roe v. Wade is an American tragedy. But we can still change that — and I can think of no higher priority among the issues that face us as Catholics and as citizens.

This column was condensed and adapted from the archbishop's remarks to Colorado Legatus members, Jan. 9.