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Freed from the slavery of sin, each of us can look joyfully towards God and Heaven, hopeful about one day sharing God's glory.

It is a terrible thing, that people in many parts of the world are enslaved by other human beings. The worst sort of slavery, however, in God's sight, is enslavement to sin, because, in it, people are in danger of losing not just earthly joy but Eternal happiness, if they do not repent.

It seems outrageous that men had the power of life and death over others, who simply had skin of a different colour, in the time of the slave trade. It seems outrageous, today, to all good people, that the power of life and death has been given to many, over other little people, simply because those human beings are very small, unwanted, and unborn.

People who take other people hostage and keep them captive do the opposite of what Jesus did - Who came to set people free from sin and slavery. There is a need for prisons, in ordinary life, for people justly tried and found guilty. But those who keep innocent people captive do, in physical terms, what the evil one does in spiritual ways. Indeed, they have aligned themselves with the evil one who always opposes God and goodness.

A little child can scream for attention, and dispute every instruction from his mother, so ending up alone and miserable - or he can co-operate, and experience her companionship, her wise words, and her consolations; and so it is in the Church. A Catholic can disbelieve parts of the Faith, grumble about discipline, speak with hostility about the Pope, and become a slave to his own opinions, or he can choose to co-operate with God and the Church, and in that trust and obedience find not slavery but freedom, and joy, and peace of soul, and hope.

There are no human rights, if the right to life is denied. It is an admirable thing, to substitute friendship for racism, housing for destitution, justice for lynch-law, education for child labour, and freedom, for slavery; yet what use are such human rights to someone whose very right to life, in its very eartly stages, had been denied, in the merciless act of direct abortion?