By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
Father Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, is cautioning the pro-life community against being shamed into silence by those critics who are blaming anti-abortion forces for the murder of George Tiller.
In his blog on Monday, Fr. Pavone admitted that the killing of the notorious late-term abortionist “tars” the reputation of the pro-life movement “despite the fact that those who kill abortionists are always disconnected from pro-life organizations.”
Another effect, he said, is that it makes the government “reach too far in clamping down on First Amendment activity against abortion.”
However, these are not the biggest dangers, he said, and pointed at the “enemy within”, the “fear and self-doubt to which we can all too easily fall victim.”
“It is the voice inside that makes us feel guilty for saying ‘abortion is murder’ or ‘abortion is a holocaust’ or ‘the babies who are being killed need to be defended now,'” he explained.
He also warned of a new danger that has emerged after the killing, that of pro-abortion forces who think people who say “abortion is murder” should be prosecuted because it leads to violagence against abortionists.
The Church teaches that “we have to look evil in the eye” and call it “by its proper name,” he said. “This is no time to shrink back from the reality of what is going on every day in abortion. Children are being killed, and the reason it continues is that too many of our fellow citizens are blind to it.”
He referred to Martin Luther King, Jr, who responded to criticisms that civil rights activists were fomenting violence by saying, “That’s like saying the person who owns money is fomenting the activity of the robber.”
“To expose the violence that is already occurring, to call it what it is, and to sound the alarm that it has to stop, is not to foment violence.”
He advised: “Let the outcry against Tiller’s murder be loud and clear,” the priest said, “and let the outcry against the murders he committed — and that other abortionists commit — be loud and clear as well.”
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly/Women of Grace. http://www.womenofgrace.com
