Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco offered this homily during his Mass before the Walk for Life West Coast Jan. 22, 2022. California Catholic Daily has excerpted the following:

In our own time, secularism has become a sort of religion of its own, one that takes a hyper-aggressive, anti-Christian tone.  This is all around us nowadays, and this kind of secularism has all the marks of a religion: infallible dogmas, rituals, saints, creedal statements and condemnation of heretical teachings along with punishment of the heretics who hold them and dare to speak them in public, index of forbidden books, even sacraments.  On this last point this new religion mirrors the pagan, which is to say demonic, religions of the ancient biblical world, religious practices to which even God’s Chosen People succumbed.

“They sacrificed to demons their own sons and daughters, shedding innocent blood, the blood of their own sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,” we read in Psalm 106.  The words “demons” and “idols” here are the same word in the Hebrew language: idols, that is, false gods, are demons.  And what is meant by “the idols of Canaan”? 

The Lord warns His people in the Book of Leviticus: “You shall not offer any of your offspring for immolation to Molech, thus profaning the name of your God.  I am the Lord” (Lev 18:21).  Molech was the god of the ancient Canaanites, inhabitants of the same land as the Israelites, to whom they sacrificed their children.  Later on in the Book of Leviticus, the Lord admonishes His people even more harshly: “Anyone, whether an Israelite or an alien residing in Israel, who gives offspring to Molech shall be put to death.  The people of the land shall stone that person.  I myself will turn against and cut off that individual from among the people; for in the giving of offspring to Molech, my sanctuary was defiled and my holy name was profaned” (Lev 20:2).  Sadly, many of God’s people did not listen and went over to this horrendous practice of their pagan neighbors.

The new secular religion of our own time takes on this practice in an almost sacramental way: indeed, abortion has become, for them, their blessed sacrament, what they hold most sacred, the doctrine and practice upon which their whole belief system is built.  That is why we see such visceral and violent reaction to any even minimal regulation of abortion in the law, regulations that even those who believe it should be kept legal would see as reasonable, such as informed consent and parental consent.  It should come as no surprise that the first to challenge the Texas Heartbeat Bill was the Satanic Temple, and precisely on the grounds of deprivation of religious liberty: they need abortion to carry out their religious rituals.

Full story at National Catholic Register.