Cowardly Silence

During World War II, when Jews disappeared and their synagogues were burned, when the murder of innocent women and children was commonplace, when other unspeakable crimes were committed against the innocent, the Church did not cry out out on their behalf.

Although the official Church was silent, some Christians were bold and took a stand. Among them was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and pastor who was imprisoned and executed for speaking out against Hitler and his henchmen. Before Bonhoeffer was hanged, he wrote:

I am guilty of cowardly silence at a time when I ought to have spoken. . . . The church must confess confess her timidity, her evasiveness, her dangerous concessions. She has often been untrue to her office of guardianship and to her office of comfort. She was silent when she should have cried out because the blood of the innocent was crying aloud to heaven. She has failed to speak the right word in the right way at the right time.... She is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers of Jesus Christ.... She has not borne witness to the truth of God.... By her own silence she has rendered herself guilty because of her unwillingness to suffer for what she knows to be right.

We are the Church and we cannot be silent now. We must cry out because the blood of the innocent is crying aloud to heaven. Our voice must be loud, clear, resolute and united on November 4. We must speak for life.