Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 8, 2022 / 07:08 am (CNA).
Catholics across the U.S. kept a wary vigil Sunday for pro-abortion activists to follow through on a threat to disrupt Masses on Mother’s Day.
The call to protest at Catholic churches came in reaction to last week’s leaked draft opinion suggesting a conservative majority on the Supreme Court may be poised to overturn the landmark abortion ruling in Roe v. Wade.
Earlier this week, a pro-abortion group, Ruth Sent Us, called on social media for activists to “Stand at or in a local Catholic Church” on Sunday, Mother’s Day. The same group on Saturday vowed on Twitter to burn the Eucharist.
On Saturday, activists blocked the entrance of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Lower Manhattan in New York City. For safety reasons, police at the scene halted plans for a pro-life procession to a nearby Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, as happens on the first Saturday of the month.
“Thank God for abortion,” protesters chanted.
The most disturbing scene this morning outside Old St. Patrick’s may have been a woman who was mocking pregnancy and abortion, using dolls to represent her “aborted babies” pic.twitter.com/uvXWuf2xHl
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) May 7, 2022
Kathryn Jean Lopez, a columnist for National Review, reported from the scene that a woman dressed in a white bathing suit that had baby dolls attached to it, danced in circles outside the church.
“God killed his kid, why can’t I kill mine?” she said. “Help me abort my babies.”
Lopez said the woman and other protesters taunted and heckled the church’s pastor, Fr. Fidelis Moscinski, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal.
“Childish stuff, mostly, making fun of the fact that his religious name is not his birth name. ‘Christopher! Christopher! Christopher.’ His given name actually means “Christ-bearer,” so that’s not exactly an insult,” Lopez reported. “Most of their other insults involved accusing him of sexually abusing boys, insisting all Catholic priests do.”
Lopez and others at St. Patrick’s eventually did pray outside the abortion clinic on Bleecker Street.
“As always during these incidents, I’m overwhelmed by how angry and obviously hurt so many of the people who showed up this morning are. Pray for people who wake up in the morning want to protest people who pray for women and babies to not be pressured into abortion,” Lopez wrote.
“‘Abortion is health care,’ they chanted over and over. Killing babies isn’t healthy, and the kind of demonic scenes I’ve witnessed again and again near and outside Planned Parenthood on Bleecker Street only serve as confirmation of the wreckage abortion is responsible for.”
This is a developing story.
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A picture is worth a thousand words. Saw nothing of this exhibition on the news this morning. Despite its grotesque character it need be provided coverage. It rather puts it all in perspective.
The same group [Ruth sent Us] on Saturday vowed on Twitter to burn the Eucharist (Kathryn Lopez Nat Rev). Rage, threats, demonic scenes, dancing in circles [a hexen ritual] mimicking aborted infants is convincing demonic behavior.
Hatred of Catholicism, priests, especially Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist has occurred throughout history, although this time it’s not motivated politically, Communism in Cuba, or religiously, Protestantism in N Ireland. It’s secularist, though not merely atheist. It’s hatred of God and vehement hostility toward the Son expressed in the desire to desecrate the Holy Eucharist. All because Christianity censures their desire to murder their infants. Legality and justice are irrelevant.
Catholic justices are the target of rage moreso because they are Catholic. Gorsuch is not, although he’s expected to favor striking down Roe, and probably will be threatened, perhaps attacked. He is Christian.
Catholicism is facing a watershed moment [a long time coming beginning with the Obama presidency] of what seems a Soviet Union type persecution similar to what occurred in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, former Czechoslovakia. Pres Biden appears mute, even empathetic to Leftist anti Catholic rage. As does Pope Francis. Nothing coming in from the Vatican to Biden, no appeal for calm and justice.
I guess we US Catholics need to steel ourselves for what may lie ahead. Deepen our faith and trust in Christ. Be willing to suffer for him if necessary. For many, like the drunkard priest in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, a blessed moment to redeem oneself.