Second, Roe attacked our reasoning and our moral vocabulary. Abortion supporters use the label "pro choice" as a smokescreen — it's an expression that involves the kind of verbal gymnastics deliberately designed to distract us from the actual, flesh-and-blood event of an abortion. Therefore, at their root, "pro-choice" arguments are dishonest.

When God gives Israel the shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 — "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one" — He tells His people to "bind (my commands) as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates" (Dt 6:8-9). God inscribes His presence on the heart of Israel — and His commands on the memory of Israel. One of those commands is to "choose life," not only in our personal lives, but as a nation.

If we want public officials who choose life, who act with both intelligence and moral convictions, the only way we'll get those qualities is by carrying our religious convictions into the public debate — not just at election time, but week in and week out in dialogue with the people who represent us.

The political leader who claims to be "personally opposed" to abortion and then votes to protect a so-called right to choose abortion, colludes in the killing of innocent human life. He's being untrue to his own convictions, and is therefore unworthy of public service. The same applies to each and every one of us as voters.

We can't simultaneously advance human rights, while destroying the weakest among us. Nor can we commit ourselves to the sanctity of human life only as a private piety. People of religious faith must live it courageously, as a matter of public witness and civic responsibility — or we'll lose it even as a matter of private principle.

We need to remind ourselves that real democracy, real pluralism, is usually impolite: Real pluralism always involves a degree of conflict. It demands that people of faith will work tirelessly to advance their deeply held beliefs by every legal, ethical, non-violent method available to them. For Christians, this is what it means to be leaven in society. If we're leaven, we need to offer our culture the whole truth about the sanctity of the human person, whether the message is popular or not.

We get the public officials we deserve. Their virtue — or their lack of it — is a judgment not only on them but on us. Every political choice we make also affects the persons we are. Private conviction is not a separate universe from public life. If we're pro-life, that's the soil from which all our public actions should flower. When we claim to believe one thing, but act in a contrary political manner, we contradict ourselves. And the result is the sort of confusion we find in so many of our centers of public life today.

The U.S. bishops have designated Tuesday, Jan. 22, as a National Day of Prayer for Life. In observance of the day, our archdiocesan Respect Life Office will sponsor adoration before the Blessed Sacrament from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. that day at the John Paul II Center. I encourage all who can, to attend.

I also invite all the faithful to join me for our annual Respect Life Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at 12:10 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 19. Your presence is living proof that God will not abandon the poor, the weak and the unborn. I look forward to seeing you there.

Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament in observance of the National Day of Prayer for Life will take place Tuesday, Jan. 22, from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Christ the King Chapel on the grounds of the John Paul II Center, 1300 S. Steele Street, Denver, CO 80210. All are invited to participate in the 7 a.m. Mass immediately preceding adoration. For further information, contact Mimi Eckstein, 303-715-3205.