Diplomatic Corps - Tracy Moran

Love the Messanger
Dr. Janet Smith's only concern in teaching the truth is being popular with God.

Some people despise Janet Smith. Or, more accurately, they detest the message she delivers. "It's what I stand for, not me, that people hate," says the 47-year-old University of Dallas philosophy professor. What awful thing does she promote? Merely the Church's teachings on the sanctity of life and the perils of artificial contraception.

"Because of my opposition to abortion, I learned early on to have a tough skin," she says. She's needed it. Over the years, as she's seen contraception's contribution to the prevalence of abortion, she's embraced Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae. Sadly, this prophetic encyclical, which details Church teaching prohibiting abortion and artificial birth control, remains controversial even within the Church. Because Smith defends and promotes it, she's suffered consequences, even losing her teaching job at the University of Notre Dame in 1989.

But don't worry about Smith, who began teaching at the University of Dallas that same year. She relishes a good skirmish. "I get a certain thrill (defending the Church's teachings)," she says, adding with a chuckle, "It's not so much a virtue as a perverse temperament. I like to fight. I trust that God is making sure the battles are worth it, and are not just battles for the sake of battle."

The struggle, however, is hard at times. She strives to maintain charity for those who dismiss the Church's teachings. After all, she almost did the same. As a student at Grinnell College studying classics and, by her own admission, "looking a lot like John Lennon," she left her Catholic Faith at home. "In those days, you'd be a total freak if you went to church," she says. Her sophomore year, she heard about an upcoming rally supporting legalized abortion. "I was 19 and all for women's rights," says Smith, who planned to attend the rally. Only trouble — she didn't know what abortion was, so she looked it up in an encyclopedia.

Appalled, she went to the rally, and knowing nothing about biology, stood up to ask a question. "I asked them when they thought human life began," she says. "I was booed and hissed. I couldn't understand the angry response to this innocent question." Smith, who became known on campus as an opponent of abortion, returned to the Church.

If the Church was right about abortion, then it must be right about other things, she reasoned. "I was astonished at how people didn't want to think about abortion, and how the Church had the means to think about it," she says. She became involved in the pro-life movement, while maintaining that abortion and contraception were separate issues. Then, as a grad student at the University of North Carolina, she began volunteering as a sidewalk counselor in front of abortion clinics. Soon she saw contraception's connection to abortion.

Why, she wondered, were so many women in need of abortions? Why were they involved in relationships that were bad, and why did they feel comfortable in these relationships? Contraception was the culprit.

By 1980, she had done a study of Humanae Vitae, then taught a series of workshops on Pope John Paul II's reflections on it.

She realized Humanae Vitae's profound teachings by studying it through John Paul II's eyes, by working with pregnant women and by talking to her married friends who extolled the virtues of Natural Family Planning.

Smith, who wrote the landmark 1991 book Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later, followed in 1993 by Why Humanae Vitae was Right: A Reader, participates in conferences around the world.

"I do have priorities," she says of her speaking engagements. "My top priorities are seminarians." She also likes to speak to doctors and priests because "you get one of them and you get a host of others." In addition to teaching, writing and lecturing, Smith sits on a host of boards and is committed to a myriad of programs. She serves as chairman of the board of the Millennium Evangelization Project, which trains lay people as evangelists, she's a consultor to the Pontifical Council of the Family, and she's co-founder of a crisis pregnancy center in South Bend, Indiana. In 1995, she was named the Dallas diocese's pro-life Person of the Year. A year earlier, she received the Haggar Award for Excellence in Teaching from the University of Dallas. In 1993, the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars honored her with its Cardinal Wright Award.

But most gratifying to Smith are the people she meets through her work. After one of her many trips discussing such topics as Humanae Vitae, "The Culture of Life vs. the Culture of Death," or "The Moral Vision of the Catechism," she returns home "extremely humbled by the sacrifices people are making to get the truth out."

These people, working in small groups, might be involved in the pro-life movement or fighting the sex ed program in their schools.

"They get little recognition," Smith says. "I look at them and think, if they only knew how much good they're doing. They feel alone, and they are alone where they are, but I see this underground swell." Such people have the Holy Father and his writings as their guide. "I consider Evangelium Vitae to be our marching orders for the next century," says Smith, adding that Pope John Paul II's encyclical is "in a sense an updating of Humanae Vitae. It's brilliant for its diagnosis of where we are and why," she says.

"This century has been the fight against communism. We won a major victory — whether it's permanent or not remains to be seen. The threat to goodness in this world now is the pro-abortion and euthanasia crowd. That's where the devil is focusing his attack.

"People can counteract the attack by knowing and living their Catholic Faith. Stay close to the sacraments and spend time in Eucharistic adoration and prayer. For the last 30 years, people have discouraged that as pietistic and lacking in "social activism." But all those other activities will simply flow from the prayer. The prayer overflows. I tell people to pray and then find out where God's sending them. Some people will be raising large families, others fighting classroom sex ed, others helping women with problem pregnancies, others doing scholarship.

"You can serve God no matter where you are. It's a matter of staying close to the Church and knowing where the devil is attacking and where your gifts can be employed."

Dr. Janet Smith can be reached at the University of Dallas, 1845 East Northgate Drive, Irving, TX 75062-4799, 972-721-5000.