The Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, has been made a shrine, for the massacre there has left it a hallowed place for mourners.

A red rose marks the spot where each of the victims died — and then there is one pink rose. That is for the unborn baby that died in the womb.

To the frustration of some, Texas is one of 38 states that recognize an infant in utero as a victim when the mother is assaulted.

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Federal law also accords legal rights to the unborn in cases of federal and military crimes.

A pink rose is at least a tacit acknowledgment that a human life existed before birth, and Catholics know that life is life, with no varying shades. This is one example of how truth prevails despite attempts to obscure it.

Confusion has also muddled marriage. When marriage is refashioned into an oxymoronic “same-sex marriage,” along with ambiguity about procreation and the permanence of natural marriage, the social order loses interest in it altogether. Even among self-professed Catholics, whose population has increased in the last 40 years, there has been a 60 percent decrease in weddings.

Related: Sutherland Springs: Here’s What’s Holding This Community Together

As the religious life is a consecrated form of spiritual marriage, opaqueness about such commitment has caused the virtual evaporation of many communities. In the past five years alone, with the exception of communities solid in doctrine, there has been a loss of over 7 percent among women religious, while orders of men declined somewhat less.

St. John Paul II spoke clearly about priestly charisms, and during his pontificate the number of seminarians worldwide increased from 63,882 to 114,439. The years of Pope Benedict XVI saw the numbers grow to 118,257. Since then, in a time of confusion in the church and society as a whole, there has been a consistent global decline.

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In our own vast archdiocese, of the small handful of recent ordinations, none was a native New Yorker.

Related: Trump: ‘May God Be with the People of Sutherland Springs, Texas’

Yet often where there is clarity of doctrine and high morale, the picture is bright. In 2015, the most recent year for statistics, there was a 25 percent increase nationally in ordinations. The archdiocese of St. Louis, with a Catholic population roughly less than a quarter the size of the archdiocese of New York, has considerably more seminarians, and the dioceses of Madison, Wisconsin, and Lincoln, Nebraska — relatively small in population — each has about twice as many seminarians as we have in “the capital of the world.”

In the pro-life movement, there are positive developments on the federal level correcting the anti-life legislation of recent years.

In the pro-life movement, there are positive developments on the federal level correcting the anti-life legislation of recent years. And where better instruction is provided, Catholic marriages are becoming more purposeful and stable.

Then, too, a new generation of young priests sound in doctrine and liturgy is appearing. There is strength in clarity. “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” (1 Corinthians 14:8).

Fr. George William Rutler is a Catholic priest and the pastor of the Church of St. Michael in Manhattan. This article from his parish church bulletin is used by permission.