Father Morrow describes this book as ‘being much of my Autobiography’. In a sense it is the whole of it. Three pages out of 445 are devoted to his early years as one of 12 children from a close, working-class Scottish family; the remainder of this heavy (A 4 size), handsome volume is devoted to his life’s work as a priest: his pro-life apostolate.

It is not a narrative in the normal sense, but rather his collected newsletters, begun in 1985 and continuing until 2004, the year of publication. Reading 400 or so pages in this format might seem at first a dull and disjointed task, but such is Father Morrow’s passion, energy and enthusiasm for his cause that it is hard for the reader not to be swept up in a campaign which history will surely come to place alongside the heroic struggle against slavery in the early 19th century.

Ordained to the priesthood in 1958 and for many years a teacher in the minor seminary, it was in 1980 that Fr Morrow was appointed parish priest of St Andrew’s, Braemar. An active pro-lifer since 1966 (the year before the Abortion Act was passed) this appointment enabled him to realise his particular calling within his priestly vocation: to ‘preach life’. In 1984 an old school in the town was refurbished to become Humanae Vitae House Teaching Centre; by 1987 it had developed into a vigorous, pro-life prayer, study and conference centre.

In February 1989 Fr Morrow became involved in his first rescue work at an abortuary and in July of the same year he was arrested outside a clinic and spent time in Strangeways Prison, Manchester. In 1990 Bishop Mario Conti of Aberdeen released him from his ordinary parochial duties and gave him his support for ‘direct, non-violent action’ in a full-time pro-life campaign.

It has been in some ways a lonely and controversial battle. The secular press has not been kind to him and he stands apart from other main pro-life organisations, largely because of his total opposition to any compromise: for Fr Morrow it makes no sense to amend the Abortion Act; it must be repealed - without fudging on time limits, as for instance with the recent Tory initiative to restrict abortions to 20 weeks.

Until his stroke in recent years (from which he has now recovered) his zeal was unflagging, despite dispiriting results. In his own words, “I have written, typed, printed, published, leafleted, advertised, marched, lobbied, picketed, argued, debated, lectured, phoned, broadcast, counselled, travelled, harassed, begged, borrowed and prayed – and have over three million dead babies to show for it”.

Stalin once remarked, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”. For Fr Morrow, the terrible toll of innocent pre-born life since the 1967 Act represents three million individual tragedies. Against those who would argue for the slow process of legislative change he would counter that saving one baby’s life by peaceful persuasion outside an abortuary makes all the difference between life and death for that baby. It is difficult to disagree with this.

This is not to say that persistent pressure for a change in the law does not matter; but it should be recognised that direct, personal, street witness, which often requires bravery, risk and self-sacrifice, is also an essential part of the pro-life struggle. When Mother Teresa was criticised for not turning her attention to the institutional structures of sin that left people in abject poverty, she replied that her vocation was to rescue the outcast on the street, not to wait for him to die while bureaucrats argued.

Fr Morrow is a fellow ‘rescuer’. No amount of fines, debts, financial difficulties, arrests, imprisonments, court orders, court appearances and press vilification has deflected him from his purpose. One senses from these pages that behind the public image is a compassionate, fearless and down-to-earth man, equally at home as chess champion among the convicts of Aberdeen Prison as engaging in a debate with undergraduates at the Oxford Union.

Some would dismiss him as a ‘single-issue’ fanatic. As this book testifies, this is hardly the case. As a Catholic priest who early on converted an outhouse on his Braemar site into a chapel, he has a deeply Catholic vision of society and what needs to be done to bring true happiness into people’s lives. Not for nothing did he call his pro-life centre ‘Humanae Vitae House’, thereby drawing attention to the magisterial encyclical of Pope Paul VI in 1968 on the beauty of conjugal life lived according to the Church’s constant teaching - and why artificial contraception deals this beauty a death blow.

For Fr Morrow the culture of life includes proper marriage preparation, education in chastity and natural fertility awareness, and an end to immoral sex instruction in schools - as well as drawing the public’s often unwilling attention to what goes on behind the antiseptic doors of private abortion clinics.

Today the struggle to protect life includes the battle against euthanasia of the elderly and the sick. This book – itself a history of the gradual encroachments of the culture of death in the last two decades - chronicles the tragic case of Tony Bland, the Hillsborough victim, and Fr Morrow’s attempts both to prevent his death and to see justice done. As the Mental Capacity Bill slowly approaches the statute book and the world is alerted to the case of Terri Schiavo in Florida, it is hard not to see his words in 1993 referring to the Bland case as prophetic: “It is patent nonsense to speak of starvation as allowing nature to take its course.”

Recently Fr Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life in the US, has founded a pro-life community composed of priests and religious, to work alongside the Sisters of Life, the pro-life Order founded by the late Cardinal O’Connor of New York. This good news comes 20 years after Fr Morrow began his life’s work in earnest in a small Scottish glen. Let us pray that the time will come when he and his little devoted band of helpers are recognised as early champions of the culture of life.

© 2005 Francis Phillips

Theotokos Catholic Books - Book Reviews Section - www.theotokos.org.uk