Pro-life group to begin 12th national bicycle ride for the unborn

CNA Staff   By CNA Staff

July 8, 2021 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 0 Print

Biking for Babies

Washington D.C., Jul 8, 2021 / 19:00 pm (CNA).

Cyclists will be riding across the country beginning July 11, to raise awareness for the unborn and to fundraise for pregnancy resource centers.

This year, 50 college students and young adults across the country will be riding an average of 100 miles a day for a combined 2,700 miles, with the nonprofit Biking for Babies.

Now in its 12th year of holding bicycle rides for the pro-life cause, Biking for Babies aims to raise $225,000 this year for pregnancy resource centers. By hitting its goal, the group will have surpassed its cumulative $1 million donation mark for its history.

Biking for Babies was started by board chairman Jimmy Becker and his friend Mike Shaefer in March 2009. The two young men took their bikes to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, with the goal to bicycle 600 miles to fundraise and raise awareness for pregnancy resource centers. They raised over $14,000 for a local pregnancy resource center on that first journey.

Biking for Babies began its first national ride in 2010, when cyclists traveled for eight days from New Orleans to Champaign, Illinois.

Riders hail from around the nation including groups leaving this year from Green Bay, Wisconsin; Columbus, Ohio; Natchez, Mississippi.; and Holly, Colorado. The teams will be the largest in the organization’s history, and they will all converge together for a “celebration of life” in St. Louis only five days later on July 17th.

The cyclists wear yellow “Biking for Babies” jerseys, with painted support vehicles traveling alongside them. Onlookers often stop to ask about their mission.

“It is these encounters that invite others into the mission and move hearts to support life,” the group’s website says.

The bikers train for months for their ride across the country. They also spend months learning about their local pregnancy resource center and its primary mission, in order to share its story and pray for the center during their ride.

Pregnancy resource centers are also encouraged to fill out an application on the Biking for Babies website to partner with the organization.

Once the application is accepted, Biking for Babies and the pregnancy resource center begin a relationship mediated by a missionary, so both organizations can learn from each other.

In the past, the national ride has included routes from Florida, Texas and Louisiana to the destination of Chicago. In 2017, the cyclists carried a cross into St. Louis.

“We exist to bring light into the darkness of our culture; we exist to invite others into a life of action, to spread hope by our physical witness on the roads,” the group said in its press release.

If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.

About Catholic News Agency 12383 Articles
Catholic News Agency (www.catholicnewsagency.com)

Related Articles

No Picture
News Briefs

Pope Francis: ‘I believe it is time to rethink the concept of a just war’

July 1, 2022 Catholic News Agency 6
Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square, June 25, 2022 / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Vatican City, Jul 1, 2022 / 10:26 am (CNA).

In an interview published Friday, Pope Francis said that he believes it is time to rethink the concept of “just war.”

“I believe it is time to rethink the concept of a ‘just war.’ A war may be just, there is the right to defend oneself. But we need to rethink the way that the concept is used nowadays,” Pope Francis said.

“I have said that the use and possession of nuclear weapons are immoral. Resolving conflicts through war is saying no to verbal reasoning, to being constructive. … War is essentially a lack of dialogue.”

The pope spoke in an interview that was conducted on June 20 by Télam, Argentina’s national news agency. A 1-hour video of the interview was published on July 1. 

In response to a question about how the lack of dialogue is an aggravating factor in the current state of world affairs, the pope said that there is “an entire infrastructure of arms sales” that supports war today.

“A person who knew about statistics told me, I don’t remember the numbers well, that if weapons were not manufactured for a year, there would be no hunger in the world,” he said.

Pope Francis described how he cried during visits to war cemeteries in Europe, including the Redipuglia World War I memorial and Anzio World War II cemetery in Italy.

“And when the anniversary of the landing in Normandy was commemorated, I thought of the 30,000 boys who were left dead on the beach. They opened the boats and said, ‘get off, get off,’ they were ordered while the Nazis waited for them. Is that justified? Visiting military cemeteries in Europe helps one realize this,” he said.

The pope also said that the situation in Europe today shows that the United Nations “has no power” to stop a war.

“After World War II, trust was placed in the United Nations. It is not my intention to offend anybody, I know there are very good people working there, but at this point, the UN has no power to assert,” he said.

“It does help to avoid wars — and I am thinking of Cyprus, where there are Argentine troops. But to stop a war, to solve a conflict situation like the one we are living today in Europe, or like the ones lived in other parts of the world, it has no power.”

Church teaching on the morality of war is based on a theory expounded by St. Augustine in the 4th century known as just war theory and recognizes a potentially just reason to engage in war under certain conditions.

Theologians told CNA in 2019 that applying this theory to modern warfare, which often involves missile and air strikes rather than pitched battles between troops, is more complicated, yet normative.

The papal interview touched on a number of themes, including the Covid-19 pandemic, intergenerational dialogue, and climate change.

“You can rest assured that God always forgives, and we, men, forgive every now and then. But nature never forgives. It pays us back. If we use nature for our profit, it will bear down on us. A warmed-up world prevents the construction of a fraternal and just society,” the pope said.

When asked about the Catholic Church in Latin America, the pope said that it has a long history of being “close to the people.”

Pope Francis said: “In a way, this is the experience of the Latin American Church, although there have been attempts of ideologization, such as the use of Marxist concepts in the analysis of reality by Liberation Theology. That was an ideological exploitation …”

“There is a difference between the people and populisms,” he added.

[…]

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*