Jewish and Christian Leaders Seek Joint Witness in Defending the Sanctity of Human Life Ave Maria School of Law and the Institute for Religious Values Co-Sponsor a Day of Pro-Life Exchange.

Jews and Christians together are a more powerful witness when they speak with one voice about God as the source of life, asserted Fr. Richard John Neuhaus at a Jewish-Christian conference April 24 in New York. This interfaith collaboration Fr. Neuhaus sees as the future of the pro-life movement.

The conference was sponsored jointly by the Ave Maria School of Law and the Institute for Religious Values. It took place at the Manhattan campus of Fordham University and drew a packed crowd. To some it seemed the late John Cardinal O'Connor, who was devoted to Jewish-Catholic dialogue, was present in spirit when his sister, Mary O'Connor Ward, gave a moving tribute to this hero of the pro-life movement.

Fr. Neuhaus, president of the Institute on Religion and Public Life and editor-in-chief of First Things, spoke of the deep cultural conflict we face in our society and urged that faith and reason be "powerfully conjoined" in the pro-life movement. These questions have been more difficult for the Jewish community, Fr. Neuhaus pointed out, since past experiences of anti-Semitism have led Jewish Americans to believe that a secular society would be more protective for Jews.

But today, Neuhaus said, many thinking people have seen that if there is no transcendent belief in higher values, there is no protection of the individual. He said that although he understood the Jewish community's rejection of comparisons with the Holocaust, he felt there are some parallels that are important to note, particularly the way doctors in the era preceding Nazism used the category of "life not worthy of life" to eliminate the mentally and physically handicapped and the elderly, paving the way for the extermination of the "undesirable" populations of Jews and gypsies.

When Fr. Neuhaus was pastor of St. John Evangelist parish in New York City, he came across a Princeton anthropologist Ashley Montague's description of 10 or 11 criteria for what constitutes a "life worthy of life." When he looked out at his congregation, he saw that most of them would not meet Montague's criteria.

It was then he realized what a great evil this lethal logic is. This danger makes it imperative that Jews and Christians together bear witness that there is no such thing as "life unworthy of life," Fr. Neuhaus urged. We must work together "until this is accepted by the public and ingrained in people's lives."

The four rabbis who spoke stimulated much discussion about similarities and differences between the Jewish and Christian approach to pro-life issues. Reform Rabbi Marc Gellman, the well-known TV co-host of The God Squad, said he felt that Judaism has a great spiritual and moral contribution to bring to the discussion of the abortion question.