Happy Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

When Roe v Wade was overturned on June 24, 2022 on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, I wrote with gratitude. I still stand by that gratitude because the decision mattered. The timing was providential. It came down not only on one of the most important feast days dedicated to Christ, but also on the Feast Day of Saint John the Baptist. It was a most celebratory day the Church gives over to the burning love of Christ for mankind, and it was bolstered by the fact that the baby inside Saint Elizabeth’s womb leapt for joy when he heard the voice of the Virgin Mother of God.

At the time, yes, Dobbs felt like an answer to decades of prayer, fasting, marches, rosaries, sidewalk witness, mothers choosing life in fear, fathers repenting in silence, and countless Christians who never stopped asking Heaven for help. Roe was dead, it appeared. The constitutional invention that helped license the killing of millions upon millions of unborn children in America was gone.

Christians had reason to thank God.

Now, four years later, has anything really changed?

The unborn child is still treated as an abstraction. The unborn child is not viewed as a living soul, frankly because the notion of soul has been removed from society entirely. A country that cannot recognize life in the womb or the soul inside the man will eventually lose the ability to recognize reality anywhere else. Just look around and you’ll see that this has long already happened.

Our own leap of joy must be joined to deep-rooted reparation, not bills or Supreme Court rulings.

Four Years Later

The legal scaffolding shifted in 2022, sure, but the national soul did not fall to its knees. America, en masse, did not repent, nor did the elites or political class. The media did not change either, and certainly it too has not discovered the human dignity of the unborn.

Back then, it was easy to speak of states’ rights and constitutional correction. There was truth in that. Roe was an act of judicial arrogance and deserved to be ripped to shreds. But enough time has passed to notice something uncomfortable: Perhaps Dobbs did not prove anything in the way of America recovering its moral logic, and by extension did not indicate anything in the way of God’s favor. Perhaps it exposed how little moral substance remained beneath our political slogans. We were told, in effect, that the issue had been returned to the states, as though the states were morally serious little republics ready to defend innocent life once freed from federal chains.

But a state without a truly Christian soul will never be the sanctuary for the unborn Christ demands. It is only a smaller version of the same moral battle, regardless of whether we see improvement here or there in the data. The same money, propaganda, judges, election machinery, cowardice, and idolatry of democracy simply moved to another level of the same failing system. We have seen for a long time now that elections, state and national, are entirely compromised, if not fully rigged through and through.

That does not mean Dobbs was meaningless, of course. But Dobbs was so clearly not an indication or a harbinger of conversion either.

Can Louisiana be different? Christianity runs deep here, or at least the memory of it does. We still have the language, the grandparents, the statues, the festivals, the churches, the old holy cards, the Catholic school histories, and the cultural traditions—even reflexes, if you will. But a society can retain Catholic customs, symbols, and language all the while not truly submitting to Christ as King.

This is why non-Catholics mock us. We don’t really live what we say we believe.

Even many conservatives treated Dobbs as a final victory rather than a summons to reparation, just as they have with the election of Donald Trump. The pro-life movement cannot survive as a political brand. In fact, one could make the very outcome-based argument that being “pro-life” is a tactic in itself of the US Doctrinal Warfare program to dupe well-meaning and trusting Catholics into believing in this shepherd or that shepherd or their favorite YouTube talking head. They may be pro-life, and it typically won’t be what they do say that keeps you in the dark, but what they don’t say.

The Pope Hildebrand claim—true or not—is a most obvious example right now as we speak.

If America’s moral compass has barely moved, it is because the compass is not repaired by legalities alone. It is repaired by undying repentance, liturgical worship, fathers becoming fathers like Saint Joseph, mothers being protected for their holy state in life, children being welcomed and educated in the faith, priests being brave beyond conservative talking points, and Christians refusing to think everything is fine now that the judges seem to finally agree with them.

That word reparation is of utmost importance.

Reparation is a word Catholics used to know. It belongs to the Sacred Heart. It does not let us merely celebrate being right, but forces us to confront what sin has done to Christ, to the innocent, to our country, to our families, and to our own hearts. Reparation means answering the wounded love of Christ with love, penance, amendment of life, and, where able, public fidelity. That final one is where your YouTube influencers are absolutely doing the hoodwinking.

Reparation is the part of the Sacred Heart devotion modern Catholics have largely forgotten. We remember mercy when mercy means comfort. We remember being received and reassured. All of that has its place. But the older and sterner language of the Church knew that mercy without reparation can become a soft bed for the unconverted soul, and ultimately lead him down the lukewarm path to hell. It can become the typical selfish focus on us instead of a rigorous, extended pouring out of love to Our Beloved Lord Himself.

The Sacred Heart is the fire of divine charity set before a cold world, but also, it indicts that world.

That may be why the devotion has faded. We’ve erased God’s justice from our consciences, attempting instead to foolishly trust in His mercy while never leaving the bed of indiscretion.

The Feast of the Sacred Heart should not be some obscure liturgical artifact remembered only by the already-religious. The Nine First Fridays should not be treated as a quaint Catholic memory replaced by a single-day “get out of jail free card” after Easter. This devotion formed souls in a way that modern Catholic life, often obsessed with affirmation and therapeutic language, rarely does. The Sacred Heart teaches that Christ is not merely useful to man, as though we can do as we please and just go to the spiritual gas station and fill up when we feel like it. He is the King. He is Our Lord, who is owed love, obedience, penance, public honor, and acts of satisfaction for sin just as we would in any other relationship with a loved one.

With every unborn child killed in this country, the Heart of Christ is wounded. With every mother and father abandoning their child, with every doctor doing the work, with every politician calculating for the next election, with every voter shrugging, with every priest whitewashing the truth, the wound deepens.

The call of Christ is not vague. It is total consecration. It is frequent reparation. It is heartfelt confession. It is the restoration of universal Friday penance. It is the Nine First Fridays. It is the enthronement of the Sacred Heart in homes. It is fathers leading prayers, mothers refusing the world, young people learning that love is not self-expression or “the feels,” and Christians remembering that the King of nations has a Heart, and that Heart has been wounded by our age.

The Sacred Heart does not ask to be treated as a cultural nod of the head. He asks to reign fully and unequivocally in hearts, homes, families, and society.

Final Thoughts

When Trump was asked in 2022 whether he deserved credit for the abortion ruling because of the justices he appointed, he answered, “God made the decision.” That was the correct answer, whether he understood the full weight of it or not. God made the decision, sure. But God’s decisions are never invitations to complacency, and God’s decisions often include the operation of error found in 1 Romans, 2 Thessalonians, and Psalms 77 and 80, among other Scripture passages we’ve given extensive treatment to in the recent past.

We’ve warned about this power of God with a stiff-necked people who think they can mock Him.

Roe died. Great. But the spirit that produced Roe did not die at all. It is still alive everywhere you look. Death and the elimination of the human soul are all around us.

May we stop pretending that legal victories can substitute for national penance.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.