This blog was created for members of the Y-LIFE Youth Group to get the message out about events and projects the group is working on to further what Pope John Paul II called "The Culture of Life." We will also be using it to blog in our own words about what it's like to be young and pro-life in today's society.
Showing posts with label St. Gerard's Center for Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St. Gerard's Center for Life. Show all posts
One would be hard pressed to find a Catholic priest who wouldn’t describe his path to the priesthood as a "grace filled journey." Father Stephen Imbarrato of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico, has good reason to make that claim. For Father Stephen, who was ordained in 2005, that grace includes great blessings – such as the joy of adopting a son as a single person and his dedicated involvement in various pro-life initiatives.
It also includes the knowledge that it was a painful past – namely his own complicity in an abortion 35 years ago- that brought him to the pro-life movement in the first place, opened him to the priesthood and now allows him to preach the Gospel of Life “from the standpoint of mercy.”
In 1974, he said, “I did not stand up for my girlfriend when I got her pregnant,” and today he counts himself as sharing the guilt for her decision to abort. It wasn’t until years later as a seminarian that he learned she had been carrying twins.
Fr Imbarrato began pro-life work in the early nineties as a political activist, but soon realized the call to pro-life ministry joining Lifenet of NJ as a member of their Speaker Bureau. When he entered Holy Apostles Seminary in 2000, he directed their Life League (HALL), and while still in the seminary founded St Gerard's Center for Life in Hartford. Ordained to the priesthood in 2005, Father soon founded Project Defending Life (www.defendinglife.org) in his home diocese of Santa Fe, NM, which has many pro-life ministries and activities under its direction including the Holy Innocents Chapel directly across from Planned Parenthood. Father Stephen celebrates Mass in the Chapel twice a week and leads a Eucharistic Procession to Planned Parenthood, the only ministry in the US with regularly scheduled Eucharistic processions to an abortion mill.
(Check out all the info at the top of the blog sidebar.) Our Conference this year is also a fantastic retreat opportunity for Confirmation candidates. You may be thinking that pro-life work is all about the evil of abortion and we have even heard a priest say, "I would really like to see more pro-life groups focus on the death penalty and the injustice of war." A lot of folks think we ignore the more standard peace and justice ministries, and this is simply not the case.
Take Dr. Theresa Krankowski, founder of St. Gerard's Center for Life. In ministering to abortion-minded women, she, and the St. Gerard volunteers, often-times end up clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, sheltering the homeless, visiting the prisoner and visiting the sick. Ironically, when it is time to bury the dead of this terrible wholesale killing of the unborn, most of the time their little bodies cannot be found, so Dr. Theresa works in the spiritual realm and comforts the sorrowful mothers. She and her volunteers also instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, counsel the doubtful, bear wrongs patiently, forgive injuries and pray for the living and the dead. And Dr. Theresa is just one of many who work tirelessly in the pro-life movement to stand up to the culture of death with truth and love. Just so you know. Her ministry doesn't play well in, say, The Hartford Courant or People Magazine or The New York Times. The secular culture likes food drives, cure walkathons and vigils outside of prisons (all of which are good things). But there is also lots of sympathetic coverage for "the right to choose" when you will not find any kind of truthful coverage regarding the difficult work of helping abortion-minded women in any way imaginable. This help is still there even if the baby is aborted, because these mothers suffer the most. This is a fight against the death penalty and war at its most fundamental level, put most eloquently by Bl. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa):"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."
The sessions at the Conference that will be given by Fr. Tad Pacholczyk will be geared toward our attendees and will provide not just information, but truth regarding the buzz around stem cell research and reproductive technologies.. Truth is sadly lacking in the information the culture at large provides to young people, because the intrinsic dignity of the human person is denied due to legal shenanigans that have rendered the pre-born in this country an unprotected class of human being. If we can't go out armed with truth, how can we be a force for good or change or anything that God has put us here on earth to do. The Conference also includes Mass and a Holy Hour with an opportunity for confession, so as far as a retreat opportunity is concerned, you have the whole package ... Mass alone makes it a retreat par excellence.
Talk to your pastor or your DRE or the person in charge of your Confirmation class. We would love to have you attend the Conference, and there are opportunities for group rates and scholarships. It promises to be a day that will assist you in being the kind of Christian who can speak the truth in love. See you on October 16th!
If anyone out there would like to help sponsor the Y-LIFE Pro-Life Youth Conference, we will be publishing 200 copies of a 5½” x 8½” program booklet for the Conference. The Conference program and biographies of our speakers will be spread over the whole booklet to ensure that all our supporters will have their sentiments read. We can reduce or enlarge anything you send us (without stretching or widening) to fit the space.
