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Here in the States comes news that Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez has demanded that all Democrats support abortion rights. This got me thinking of another Democrat, a woman who rose through the ranks of the Democratic machine here in Rhode Island in the 1940s and 50s, who then shattered the glass ceiling of the City of Warwick’s Eighth Ward.

At a time when women in such positions were minor revolutions, my grandmother, Antoinette Patenaude, took the reigns as chair of her ward when her husband, who had held the position, died unexpectedly.

Because of this I never knew a time when women were not in charge in politics. It was common to see my grandmother run political meetings at her dining room table while I, sleeping over in my pajamas, my belly full with her old-school cooking and my face scrubbed, made puzzles in her living room.

She would take me knocking on the doors of her ward.

She would tell me to always be a Democrat because “Democrats look out for the little people.”

I never thought to ask my grandmother what she thought about abortion. I would suspect that she would frown upon it....

Consider how the environmental community speaks to the world: you must change your ways; sacrifice for the good of others; deny your desires. You must become someone more selfless, charitable, and virtuous than you are.

Engrained in even the most secular, atheistic eco advocate is a knowledge that protecting life requires a sort of death to ourselves—a willingness to suffer so that others may live.

Here, of course, we hear the Christian hymn of the Cross. And what that hymn means—what God has revealed to us through the Passion of Christ—brings two vital realities for those seeking a world that embraces life in all its forms.

Conversion

Consider the notion of “ecological conversion” that Saint John Paul II proposed and Pope Francis now champions.

“[Ecological] conversion calls for a number of attitudes which together foster a spirit of generous care, full of tenderness,” writes Pope Francis in Laudato Si’. “First, it entails gratitude and gratuitousness, a recognition that the world is God’s loving gift, and that we are called quietly to imitate his generosity in self-sacrifice and good works.”

In this light, the demands of Lent—self-sacrifice and good works—are spiritual and corporeal paths that lead us to the...