Chris Slattery: Bernard Nathanson Confirmation Sponsor

In his autobiography The Hand of God (excerpted in CWR in May 1996), the man who was once America's leading abortionist explained the long struggle that finally led him to seek instruction in the Catholic faith. Now the priest who provided that instruction tells the moving final chapter of the story.

By Rev. C. J. McCloskey III, Catholic World Report, April 1997

The Hand of God is one of the most important autobiographies of the 20th century. Already--in less than a year’s time--it has passed into its third English edition, and with a new Spanish edition it will now be made available to countless millions of readers in the Americas and in Spain. Several other translations are already in progress.

With the passage of time this book will rank with Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain and Malcolm Muggeridge’s Chronicles of Wasted Time as the books which our descendants, both familial and spiritual, will turn to in the 21st and 22nd centuries in order to understand man’s inhumanity both to humanity and to himself, and the possibility of redemption. All three authors were men of brilliant intellect who came from atheistic backgrounds, who succumbed to many of the ideological and carnal temptations of their age, only to finish, through God’s grace, as converts to the Catholic Church. I am sure that Merton, Muggeridge, and Nathanson would all agree with Hilaire Belloc’s words :

One thing in the world is different from all others. It has a personality and a force. It is recognized and (when recognized) most violently loved or hated. It is the Catholic Church. Within that household the human spirit has roof and hearth. Outside it, it is the night.

And it has been a dark and frigid 20th century!

Dr. Nathanson’s conversions to the cause of life and to Christianity are indeed highly significant as witness to the power both of scientific evidence and of prayer. His long struggle also manifests clearly the inexorable connection between God and the natural law that he has inscribed in the human mind and heart. As is happening increasingly often in the United States and elsewhere, honest intellectual searchers are finding that if you acknowledge and follow the natural law, you may very well find God and his Church.

At the end of his book, however, our friend Dr. Nathanson has left us hanging. Did he indeed "finally run towards him from whom he had been running away even though all the time e had been at the center of things," to paraphrase his mentor and fellow convert, Dr. Karl Stern? The answer is Yes.

The feast of the new Eve

On December 9, 1996, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, in the crypt chapel of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New Your City (the City of Man), Bernard Nathanson became a son of God. Cardinal John O’Connor administered the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Communion. His godparents were Joan Andrews, a heroine of the pro-life movement who spent years in prison giving witness to the evils of abortion, and John Downing, an attorney, a close Catholic friend of some 26 years' standing. His sponsor for confirmation was Chris Slattery, a man who had left a lucrative career in advertising to dedicate himself wholeheartedly to the cause of life, setting up the only pro-life alternative for expectant women in Manhattan, Expectant Mother Care.

In his homily Cardinal O’Connor remarked that the lack of respect for life is rooted in a lack of self-respect, and that a lack of self-respect is a consequence of sin. How fitting it was, the Cardinal continued, that Nathanson should enter the Church on the feast of the new Eve.

Among the concelebrants were some of Nathanson's friends, well-known spokesmen for life both nationally and internationally: Father Paul, Marx, the founder of Human life International; Msgr. William Smith, one the Church’s leading moral theologians in the US; and Father Richard Neuhaus, a former Lutheran minister who also had been received into the Church by Cardinal O’Connor in l989, and who is now the editor of First Things.

However, standing out among the various persons whom Nathanson had invited--most of them close friends--was a stranger, a man Nathanson had never met: Chuck Colson. Colson had traveled a long way to be there, in many senses. He is very well known in the US as a major figure in the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, for which he spent several years in prison. There he had a conversion to Evangelical Christianity and began a pastoral work with those in prison. Today he is perhaps the best known Evangelical Protestant leader in the United States, with a radio show and many books to his credit.

Listen to Colson’s impressions of that moment.:

This week I saw fresh and powerful evidence that the Savior born 2000 years ago in a stable continues to transform the world. Last Monday I was invited to witness a baptism in a chapel of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York city. The candidate for baptism was none other than Bernard Nathanson, at one time one of the abortion industry’s greatest leaders, a man who personally presided over some 75,000 abortions, including the abortion of his own child. I watched as Nathanson walked to the altar. What a moment! Just like the 1st century--a Jewish convert coming forward in the catacombs to meet Christ. And his sponsor was Joan Andrews. Ironies abound. Joan is one of the pro-life movement’s most outspoken warriors, a woman who spent five years in prison for her pro-life activities.

It was a sight that burned into my consciousness, because just above Cardinal O’Connor was a cross. I looked at the cross and realized again that what the gospel teaches is true: in Christ is the victory. He has overcome the world, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against his Church.

And this is the way the abortion war will be won , through Jesus Christ changing hearts, one by one. No amount of political force, no government, no laws, no army of Planned Parenthood workers can ever stop that. It is the one that thing that is absolutely invincible. That simple baptism, held without fanfare in the basement of a great cathedral, is a reminder that a holy baby, born in a stable 20 centuries ago, defies the wisdom of man. He cannot be defeated.

"... as Catholic as I am..."

But what was the reaction of Bernard Nathanson himself as he received the sacraments of initiation into his new life as a Christian?

It was a very difficult moment. I was in a real whirlpool of emotion. And then there was this healing cooling water on me, and soft voices, and an inexpressible sense of peace. I had found a safe place... For so many years I was agitated, nervous, intense. My emotional metabolism was way up. Now I’ve achieved a sense of peace.

At the end of the Mass, in a comment that brought gentle laughter to the congregation, Cardinal O’Connor said to Nathanson: "There, now you’re as Catholic as I am! "

After the ceremony the convert's thoughts were, understandably, dominated by gratitude:

I can’t tell you how grateful I am, what an unrequitable debt I have, to those who prayed for me all those years when I was publicly announcing my atheism and lack of faith. They stubbornly, lovingly, prayed for me. I am convinced beyond any doubt that those prayers were heard. It brought tears to my eyes.

On the prayer card handed out at the Mass of his reception, Nathanson had one quote from Sacred Scripture, "God, who is rich in mercy..." (Eph 2:4)---the very same phrase that Pope John Paul II used as the title for his encyclical on God the Father, Dives in Misericordia. The phrase certainly reflects Nathanson's attitude as he faces his new life as a Catholic. As he put it, "I’m confident about the future, whatever it may hold, because I’ve turned my life over to Christ. I don’t have control anymore, and I don’t want control. I made a mess of it; nobody could do worse that I did. I’m just in God’s hands. "

Father C. J. McCloskey III, a priest of Opus Dei, instructed Bernard Nathanson in the Catholic faith. This article is adapted, with permission, from his Afterword to a forthcoming Spanish edition of Bernard Nathan's autobiography, The Hand of God.