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​Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly and His Helpers of God's Precious Infants, by Frederick W. Marks

5/18/2021

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By Frank Drollinger    

    Stories, stories, stories.  This is a book full of moving and delightful anecdotes as well as sober and moving thought. 

    If you will enter its world, you will learn new things.  Dr. Marks gives here a picture of an extraordinary effort in the current culture of life.  Like all good efforts, those in this book can seem to be beggars to those not open to truth, goodness and beauty—not their imitations—which are available free of charge.
 
    The book’s many stories can draw you in.  They come with keen insights into our daily life. 
 
    You will want to at least take a look at several things in the book that are worth the price paid of the time you spend reading them.  I’m thinking first of all—at least for myself—of the help of Saint Anthony in getting Monsignor’s new idea for pro-life activity started (page 75)—an idea that would quite literally spread across the globe.  Many of us have Saint Anthony stories.  This one ranks right up there.
 
    We are used to the false narratives and examples and conclusions put out by the pro-choice movement and its fellow travelers in media and government.  We seldom see, in one place, the great refutations this book presents.  We find here an encouragement and intelligence that can affect our own witness both in the movement and in daily life.  Indeed, we will find things that we will want to add to our own daily conversations with family, friends and acquaintances. 
 
    A good place to see all of this is the chapter, “Marks of a Teacher” (pages 89-93).  Marks (the author) tells us that “Cardinal Schönborn had it right when he told Bishop Daily that the Helpers “changed the face of Austria.”” And Marks adds, “Austria owes much of the change to a quality that I shall call “teacherliness,” for lack of a better word.  It is one part communications skill, one part mastery of subject matter, and a third part appreciating the good qualities of one’s students.  Monsignor qualifies on all counts.” 
 
    Monsignor gives us a compelling overview of how abortion took hold in the first place.  The book also gives us a look at what Monsignor is trying to do to improve the quality of homilies.  In his program, called “We Want To Teach, We Want To Be Taught,” he wants to replace the scripture review approach with a catechetical method.
 
    The pro-choice movement is a compound of falsehoods, and it introduces these into its arguments, always substituting a different lie for the one that is being exposed.  The ground keeps shifting.  A good teacher—Monsignor Reilly—can keep the matter on track. 
 
    The book is, I think, a conscience-forming event.  If you are an active pro-life person, I think this will encourage and improve what you do.  And even if you have been a regular with Monsignor at vigils, I think you will find it a new benefit to have so much of Monsignor’s history in one place and in a continuous, memorable presentation.  Whether you are a bishop or a beggar, I believe you will find yourself somewhere in the story. 
 
    This is a book we can go back to:
  • We can get a look at some of the history of New York that we may never have heard.
  • We learn who make the best shock troops in the movement.
  • The number of “turnarounds” at an abortion clinic is directly proportional to the number of persons in the praying group.
  • The three things that a woman will never learn from an abortionist.
  • Monsignor Reilly, who at one time was principal of Cathedral High School, became an unwelcome person there, because of the strong pro-life message he continually advanced.
  • How Monsignor was able to invigorate the pro-life movement after Operation Rescue began to run down.
  • Bishop Daily’s help in separating, as greatly more important,  the pro-life movement from other issues, such as was being done by some of the clergy.  
  • How Monsignor was able to successfully prevent the New York City Council in its attempts to deprive The Helpers of God’s Precious Infants of its First Amendment Rights.
 
    As you read, you begin to see that because of the approach Monsignor takes, the stories frequently lead to what J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, called eucatastrophe—“the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears…”
 
    For myself, this is something that can occur at a vigil in the presence of evil at an abortion clinic— the silent and powerful way goodness can seep into your soul—and into the souls of your fellow pray-ers and counselors.  I think that if you would experience the wellsprings of hope, you may find them at Calvary, which is what Monsignor calls the abortion clinic.


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Blessed Herman: Saint of the Unborn

5/14/2021

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By Frederick W. Marks         

    Have you ever heard of Blessed Herman, known as the saint of the unborn?  He came into the world with cerebral palsy and spina bifida in the eleventh century in southern Germany.  At delivery, doctors gave him five years to live (five turned out to be forty-five). 
 
    If today’s parents knew of the ill health of such a child before birth, the poor fellow would likely be aborted, but Herman’s parents raised him for seven years, then turned him over to the Benedictine monks of Reichenaur Abbey where he was lovingly educated. 


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    The monks did so much for him that he became one of the world’s most brilliant and accomplished men — the leading religious poet of his age, fluent in Arabic, Greek and Latin, an expert on every subject under the sun and a builder of musical and astronomical equipment.  On top of this, he is the author of the beautiful prayer, “Hail Holy Queen.” But the most striking thing about him may be the fact that, throughout his life, he seemed so very happy and was always smiling.  Though he could hardly walk or talk and went blind in his thirties, he never wanted anyone to feel sorry for him, believing that suffering is a gift from God.  What an inspiration for the pro-life cause, what a reason to keep on praying, fasting, and demonstrating for an end to abortion!
 
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Frederick Marks, author of Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly and His Helpers of God’s Precious Infants.
 
May 10, 2021
Forest Hills, New York


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Planned Parenthood Gets Woke – But Not Enough

5/13/2021

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By Alice Lemos  

  The President and CEO of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson, has announced that “My group, Planned Parenthood, is done making excuses for Margaret Sanger” and some of its affiliates will change their names from “Margaret Sanger Center” to something less controversial. There is already a move in NYC to change the name of “Margaret Sanger Square” where one of the abortion mills (referred to in PP propaganda as a “health center”) is located (thanks to the largess of New York City’s radical council and Mayor Mike Bloomberg) to something more“palatable”. 

    Why would Ms. McGill, who is black, suddenly turn on the founder of PP? Perhaps it is because Sanger had addressed a KKK rally in New Jersey, favored the United States eugenics programs (which the Nazis eagerly emulated in Germany with deadly results) and referred to children with birth defects as “weeds in the garden” that needed to be plucked out. However, PP, the largest provider of abortions in the United States will continue to target women of color in the United States and abroad. 

    Ms. Johnson concentrates her ire on the “whiteness” of Margaret Sanger and leaves it up to the reader to decide whether she was a“racist”. The fact that black women account for a disproportionate number of abortions in PP clinics apparently is not proof enough of the racism of said organization to Ms.McGill. As part of an initiative of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York called “Reviving Radical”, Karen Seltzer, the chair at PPGNY, believes that removing Sanger’s name from buildings does justice enough to her racist and eugenicist legacy. It does not. 

  As part of the Reviving Radical agenda, PP intends to “divest from and dismantle white dominant organizational cultural norms and values” – written with no sense of irony since it is mostly single white men who are the most in favor of abortions as it enables them to behave irresponsibly towards their women and children. PP of Greater New York also wishes to “build accountable relationships with communities of color”. It might begin by apologizing for the breakdown of the black family and again, the disproportionate number of abortions done on black women. PP might try to own up to the idea that they push the propaganda that poor women don’t love their children and should not breed – which of course, is eugenicist. Using their logic, an entire generation would have been destroyed during the Great Depression. Their idea of correcting “racial injustice” is to rename a few buildings and keep doing what they are doing: destroying minority lives.  

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Blogger Alice Lemos is a member of the  Jewish Pro-Life Foundation board of directors, a staunch pro-lifer and activist, the mother of a marine veteran, and a cancer survivor. Contact Alice at alicelemos@jewishprolifefoundation.org.   

This blog posting first appeared on the JPLF website and is being reprinted with the permission of the author.                    
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    Authors

    Frank Drollinger
    ​Msgr. Fernando                         Ferrarese
    ​Patricia Gregorek
    ​Alice Lemos
    Florence Maloney
    ​Frederick W. Marks
    ​Pamela Menera
    ​Judith Mooney
    ​Kevin Moore
    Thomas Murawski
    ​Boris Musich
    Melinda Rabbia
    Josephine Rose
    Madeleine Santangelo-     Palumbo
    ​Michael Shoule
    ​Deborah Sucich

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