Christ­mas is a time of mir­a­cles and a time of gifts. As we cel­e­brate the great­est of all mir­a­cles and gifts, that of God becom­ing a child to save us, it can also be a time to rec­og­nize mod­ern mir­a­cles, espe­cially the mir­a­cle of God’s love work­ing in people’s hearts. In this les­son we will high­light two peo­ple who have con­tributed to some “mod­ern mir­a­cles.” They have allowed God’s love to inspire and strengthen their efforts to defend the pre­cious gift of human life.

Stephanie hoffmeier: ado­leS­cent with an atti­tude … for life

Two-​​tone hair, black T-​​shirt with match­ing fin­gernails, ado­les­cent atti­tude … this could describe any one of a mil­lion teenagers today. Who it describes in this instance is sixteen-​​year-​​old Stephanie Hoffmeier. The stu­dent from Colo­nial Forge High School in Stafford, Vir­ginia, is not just another rebel­lious teen, how­ever. She wants to do some­thing for God, by help­ing to over­come the injus­tice of abortion.

What makes Stephanie so dif­fer­ent from other teens her age is her unstop­pable con­vic­tion. Last aca­d­e­mic year, the prac­tic­ing Bap­tist filled out the nec­es­sary paper­work to begin the first pro-​​life student orga­ni­za­tion in the local pub­lic high schools. Asked why she would take on such a task, Stephanie responded,“God has laid this on my heart….[Abortion] is a really rel­e­vant issue to teenagers today.”

mak­ing Space for life, deSpite the obStacleS

The Stafford school sys­tem ini­tially denied Stephanie’s appli­ca­tion, not­ing that a pro-​​life club was not con­nected to any school “cur­ricu­lum.” However, Stephanie knew that the Key Club, the Young Repub­li­cans, the Fel­low­ship of Chris­t­ian Ath­letes, and other groups were already active in her school. She felt this denial by the school board was unfair, so she did what has often been done by peo­ple who think their rights have been ignored – she sought out a lawyer.

Her attor­ney, David Court­man, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, deter­mined that the best way to get the school sys­tem to take Stephanie seri­ously was to threaten it with a lawsuit.

The Alliance Defense Fund believed that Stephaniehad a prece­dent-set­ting case. As stated on her appli­ca­tion, the goal of her club was “to edu­cate peo­ple about the biggest holo­caust that is going on right here in the United States. To come together and pray to end abor­tion. To be a voice for my gen­er­a­tion and a voice for those who can­not speak for them­selves.” Stephanie explained that hers would be a “Christcen­tered club” whose meet­ings would begin with prayer and devo­tion. Any stu­dent would be wel­come to attend.

miS­un­der­Stand­ing of Sep­a­ra­tion of church and State

Pro-​​life issues are more than just reli­gious issues. They are human rights issues. Nev­er­the­less, when reli­gion enters into a deci­sion about pub­lic schools or gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions it often leads to a common mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. The Con­sti­tu­tion pro­hibits Con­gress from estab­lishing a national reli­gion or show­ing a pref­er­ence for one reli­gion over another, but it does not restrict the rights of cit­i­zens to express their faith and val­ues in pub­lic. On the con­trary, the Con­sti­tu­tion upholds this right. In Stephanie’s instance, her law­suit might pro­tect the rights of oth­ers in the future. Catholics need to be pre­pared to work with lead­ers such as Stephanie to pro­mote the com­mon good of soci­ety, espe­cially in regards to the rights of the unborn.

fruitS of faith and perSeverance

Stephanie’s per­sis­tence in this endeavor can be traced back to her faith.“I prayed for a really long time for God to use me in my school,” she said. The teen did not give up, even when fac­ing oppo­si­tion, because she knew she was not doing any­thing wrong. She stood her ground, know­ing that the law was behind her. She worked against injus­tice in a mature way.

Faced with Stephanie’s legal chal­lenge, the Stafford school sys­tem recently rec­og­nized her pro-​​life club. Her efforts are already pay­ing off; fel­low stu­dents are join­ing her club. Thus, Stephanie is help­ing to edu­cate stu­dents around her. She is con­vinc­ing oth­ers of the truth of human life. Through her club, Stephanie is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. It is her small gift to Christ.

Dr. Markus Grompe: A sci­en­tist work­ing for life

Recently another vic­tory for life was won. The vic­tory con­firmed the efforts of a Catholic sci­en­tist who found him­self almost alone among his peers in his insis­tence on respect for life.

Dr. Markus Grompe is in an elite class of about thirty of the most qualified experts in the world on stem cell research. He is direc­tor of the Ore­gon Stem Cell Cen­ter and a mem­ber of the board of the pres­ti­giousInternational Soci­ety for Stem Cell Research. He has been con­sulted by such per­sons as President

Bush on stem cell research.

Dr. Grompe is also a fer­vent Catholic. His involvement in stem cell research comes from his love of chil­dren. He is a prac­tic­ing pedi­a­tri­cian who decided to go into bio­chem­i­cal genet­ics and stem cell biology because he saw chil­dren who were suf­fer­ing from genetic dis­eases.

tough going

As a Catholic and as a com­pas­sion­ate physi­cian, Dr. Grompe has always been con­vinced that sci­en­tific research should never harm any human being, including tiny embryos. He wants to find cures for children’s dis­eases that can be done even at the ini­tials stages of life. But he also knows that the ends do not jus­tify the means; you can­not harm or kill an embryo so that other chil­dren can ben­e­fit. Unfor­tu­nately, few of his col­leagues agreed with him.

Dr. Grompe admits that being a pro-​​life stem cell sci­en­tist has been“tough going.”He explains,“There aren’t many peo­ple [pro-​​life stem cell sci­en­tists] out there. The way to be heard is to be suc­cess­ful in sci­ence. That’s the only rea­son I have a voice. If I had my moral con­vic­tions but didn’t do promi­nent research in my area, I would have no impact.”

The doc­tor was often amazed that such intel­li­gent peo­ple could show such moral blind­ness. While contin­u­ing to work with integrity and pro­fes­sion­al­ism, Dr. Grompe pub­lished papers in pres­ti­gious sci­en­tific jour­nals advo­cat­ingrespect for the human embryo.

a break­through reaf­firmS life

Then, in Novem­ber, it was announced that two of his col­leagues, Pro­fes­sor Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto Univer­sity in Japan and Pro­fes­sor James Thom­son of the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin-​​Madison, found an eth­i­cal way to “repro­gram”adult skin cells into “pluripo­tent” stem cells. This meant that sci­en­tists would not have to use or kill human embryos to get pluripo­tent stem cells.

Pluripo­tent cells hold the promise of deliv­er­ing cures for many dis­eases. Up to this point, most sci­en­tists thought that the only way to pro­duce such cells would be by dis­sect­ing and killing human embryos. This lat­est devel­op­ment is abreak­through for pro-​​life researchers and very good news.

a fruit of perSiStence

If it hadn’t been for per­sis­tent voices such as those of Dr. Grompe, this method of stem cell research would not have been so aggres­sively pur­sued as a viable alternative to cloning. In fact, it was known among the top stem cell sci­en­tists that Dr. Grompe was already pursuing “repro­gram­ming” adult stem cells in his lab at the Ore­gon Stem Cell Center.

Dr. Grompe was very happy about the research break­through. In news­pa­pers and sci­en­tific jour­nals, he drew atten­tion to the news.“I think this is really what we have been dream­ing about,” he told the National Catholic Reg­is­ter.

Asked by Our Faith In Action if his efforts had helped other stem cell sci­en­tists think more deeply about the dig­nity of human life,Dr.Grompe replied,“Definitely. But I haven’t con­verted any­one to the Catholic faith yet. Just made themthink.”

One of the sci­en­tists who led this break­through, Dr. James Thom­son, recently admit­ted he always had ethical qualms about the destruc­tion of human embryos, even though he had been doing it in the past.“If human embry­onic stem cell research does not make you at least a lit­tle bit uncom­fort­able,” Dr. Thom­son told The New York Times after his breakthrough,“you have not thought about it enough.”

much Still to be done

There is still much to be done to build respect for the dig­nity of life, and Christ­mas can be a spe­cial time to gain strength and con­fi­dence for our efforts. Christ­mas reminds us that God sees each human being, no mat­ter how weak and small, as a great gift. As we kneel to adore the Christ Child in the manger this Christ­mas, let us renew our promise to love him and to love all our broth­ers and sis­ters in him. He has sac­ri­ficed him­self to save us and bring us love. We can do noth­ing less. He is here to help us.

cat­e­chism clips

2271: God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mis­sion of safe­guard­ing life, and men must carry it out in a man­ner wor­thy of them­selves. Life must be pro­tected with the utmost care from the moment of conception.

2294: Sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy by their very nature require uncon­di­tional respect for fun­da­men­tal moral cri­te­ria. They must be at the ser­vice of the human per­son, of his inalien­able rights, of his true and inte­gral good, in con­for­mity with the plan and the will of God.

2044: In order that the mes­sage of sal­va­tion can show the power of its truth and radi­ance before men, it must be authen­ti­cated by the wit­ness of the life of Christians.

Catholic Pio­neer of Genetic Research