Real Catholic Blog

The following was issued by Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests For Life, earlier tonight. He urges prayer to end abortion and asks people to relate their experiences of prayer in saving lives from abortion on his Facebook page.

Brothers and Sisters,

Prayer is the cornerstone of the pro-life movement and the best weapon we have to save lives, always in God’s name. We have no doubt that prayer saves lives, but let us share now with each other and the world how prayer has specifically saved lives within the pro-life movement.

We invite each of you to share your story of how prayer has saved a life. We will share these stories with our members and with the world. Let us show the world how the Lord has heard our prayers and the lives that have been saved as a result.

God bless you. Can’t wait to read your stories!

- Fr. Frank Pavone

Or are they temporarily disappointed? Hopefully, they’ve awakened, and wouldn’t it be sweetly ironic if it was Madam Speaker Pelosi who stirred the sleeping giant that a unified American Catholic Church can be in injecting morality into public policy. The fear is that the bishops, if health care “reform” with all pro-abortion provisions is defeated, will go back to cozying up to leftists in Congress for so-called “social justice” legislation.

Here’s the story: It appears the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is ready to take massive action, including the mobilizing of every parish in the country, to fight the abortion-on-demand health care legislation in Congress. According to Priests For Life, the bishops are calling for bulletin inserts and other communications in every parish immediately to inform American Catholics of the dangers of the legislation.

Now, if we can get the excellencies to realize that we all agree on social justice, but that social justice does not mean socialism and disregard of established law, we’d really have something.

We are called to constantly pray for vocations to the priesthood and the religious life — and well we should. But we must always keep in our prayers those already serving God and us in the majestic calling of the priesthood.

This Sunday is Priesthood Sunday. Please keep in your prayers all priests, those who serve us now and those who have played such vital and influential roles in our lives throughout our lives.

Here is a novena to pray:

Father,

You sent your Son Jesus Christ To be our High Priest,

And you gave us the gift of the priesthood To continue his saving work.

Bless our priests, and give us more of them.

Make them holy.

Strengthen them to proclaim the Gospel of Life, And to defend the rights of all, Especially the unborn.

Bring us, your priests and people To the life that never ends.

We pray through Christ our Lord. Amen.

For more information on Priesthood Sunday, please visit Priests For Life (here).

The niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther Ling, Jr., Dr. Alveda King, who happens to serve as director of African-American Outreach for the organization Priests for Life, last week called for the Justice Department to include Planned Parenthood in its initiative to investigate racist policies of federal fund recipients (see Christian Newswire via Catholic Online).

“The acting head of the Obama administration’s Civil Rights Division wants to crack down on groups that receive federal money and whose policies have a negative impact on minorities,” said Dr. King.

“I can save her a lot of time. All she has to do is look at the abortion industry and its leading money maker, Planned Parenthood, to find suspicious characters.

“I would say wiping out one-quarter of the African American population qualifies as a negative impact on a minority group.”

She added that if the Obama administration is serious about investigating discrimination, it should start with the organization that targets minority neighborhoods in which to locate its abortion centers. Planned Parenthood, which claims to be a non-profit organization, nevertheless pockets hundreds of millions of dollars annually as well as receiving taxpayer funds.

Dr. King has been a tireless worker in the national effort to defund Planned Parenthood. Priests for Life is the nation’s largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia.