A Sustained Presence Within Your Church or Synagogue

Creating a Successful Pro-Life Presence In Your Church and Your Community

By Marjorie Higgins

Editor's note: Few activities get talked about more in pro-life circles than how to organize and sustain a pro-life presence within a church or synagogue. Often that discussion is laced with frustration, as in "I just don't know where to begin, let alone how to keep the pro-life issue alive."

Rest assured, many, many churches have flourishing pro-life ministries.

While there is no magic formula that guarantees success, there are common denominators found in most healthy pro-life church programs. Below is only one of many examples.

We have been able, as members of a large suburban parish of about 3,100 registered families and characterized by a 25% turnover every year, to build an effective pro-life program over the last 11 years. From our experience, let me emphasize what I believe to be three simple truisms:

First, you need a cadre of people, not a crowd of people, to plan the work. You need a dedicated core that understands that every program based on volunteer power works with the commitment from a cadre of people who are willing to work together on a regular basis over the long term.

Second, it is crucial to appeal to all segments within the church, which is accomplished by offering over the course of the entire year a variety of projects from which people can choose to participate. The result will be a marvelous tool to illustrate to your church and your community why opposition to abortion and euthanasia is not only right but loving and even noble.

Third, the more visible and frequent your efforts are, the more people will flock to help and to speak up, both within the congregation and in the community.

St. Catherine Catholic Church's currently small but hardy Respect Life Committee in Orange Park, Florida, began to take shape more than 11 years ago. As I think about what we've been able to accomplish. I see that what we do runs along two tracks: we educate parishioners through officially sponsored events and we reach out to the larger community through participation in interfaith events bringing a message of love for both mother and child.

In 1987 the pre-existing Respect Life Committee had lost most of its original members because of job transfers and changes in family responsibilities. The then-chairman was resigning to go to school and wanted to hand over leadership.

Larry Hart came to a meeting called to handle the transition out of curiosity. I attended because I wanted to serve the pro-life cause at the local level. Both of us were new to the parish and neither one of us wanted to be chairman.

Ed Murphy, who was then a new church deacon, insisted that a congregation the size of St. Catherine's should have an active Respect Life Committee. Over the next few months he actively recruited pro-life parishioners who possessed organizational skills. Most crucially Ed (now Fr. Murphy) saw in Larry the organizational talents needed to make the committee work. He persuaded Larry to assume the position of chairman. (Eventually, Larry and his wife also took on the additional task of working with the teens.)

Not surprisingly one of the first parish projects was a basic educational effort that included a drive in January to gather signatures on a petition, hand out educational materials, and make pro-life bumper stickers available after each Mass. The response from the parish was reaffirming and heartening.

Larry recounts the story of how he had attached to his car one of the new pro-life bumper stickers. (Hard as it may to believe, in 1987 there were virtually none in our area.)

A local businesswoman spotted it and followed him around town until Larry stopped to park his car. To his surprise, she pulled up and asked where she could get such a wonderful bumper sticker. Subsequently, her three childcare vans were all adorned with pro-life bumper stickers.

Another response took us in a direction that has been vital to the ongoing success of our efforts. A parishioner, new to the parish, said, in her opinion, the Catholic Church wasn't doing enough to help women who were considering abortion. We invited her to come and talk at the next Respect Life Committee meeting.

Years before, she said, she had seriously considered an abortion but was persuaded not to go through with it by a Jewish rabbi. Though Catholic herself she was amazed to learn that not only did her church oppose abortion, there already existed a diocesan Emergency Pregnancy Services to provide direct services to women with crisis pregnancies.

When she understood that the focus of our small committee was to educate people to the humanity of the unborn baby, the sacredness of human life, and our absolute insistence on love and help for the mother, she became one of the committee's core members.

As a committee the invaluable first lesson we learned was that when respect life issues are visible it motivates and encourages others to join in.

Although our committee has always been few in number (rarely more than six), it has successfully sponsored a wide variety of activities that tap the differing skills and interests that exist within any congregation. For example, there was a nine- month spiritual adoption of an unborn child, parish baby showers, and autumn work days at St. Gerard's Home for Unwed Mothers.

Moreover, we helped to set up 4,000 crosses for the Cemetery of the Innocents at the Shrine in St. Augustine and participated in projects to pass the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

The committee has always drawn on National Right to Life's educational and legislative resources in its pro life work as well as responded to its pro-life initiatives. For example, every Respect Life committee member from St. Catherine's volunteered for the National Right to Life Rally for Life in Washington, D.C., in April 1990. Additionally, committee members volunteered with the local Right to Life of Northeast Florida for the public distribution of the "STOP FOCA" brochures.

As pro-lifers dedicated to an issue that transcends usual boundaries, it only makes sense for us to work with pro-life brethren in other denominations. For example, every year a letter signed by both Pastor Vincent Haut of St. Catherine's and Pastor Allen Harrod of First Baptist Church of Orange Park is mailed to area churches inviting them to stand together and pray with Christ for one hour in October for the unborn.

Last year a magazine article inspired us to explore another fruitful avenue. The article discussed the serious problems daughters are likely to suffer when there is no loving father in the family, including looking for love in all the wrong places.

This inspired the committee to sponsor a father-daughter dance. Fathers and father figures were encouraged to invite their daughters to a February 13 father-daughter Valentine's Day dance. Tickets were very inexpensive. (February 14 remained reserved for husbands and wives as sweethearts.)

The dance was a delight. Baby daughters in ruffles and lace, ribbons and bows, teen daughters with corsages presented to them by their fathers, and even adult daughters danced with their dads. It was a loving way for the most important man in their lives to show daughters how they should be respected and treated. For the fathers it was a wonderful way to publicly honor their daughters.

This spring the committee assisted the efforts of the Knights of Columbus Ladies Auxiliary to raise money for a parish Memorial to the Unborn. When the president, Linda Skulsky, informally approached committee members for help, the response was enthusiastic and unanimous. The "K of C" ladies did the organizational work and most of the cooking for the two breakfast fundraisers. Respect Life Committee members served as waiters and busboys.

The increasingly bold attack on people with physical, emotional, and mental handicaps disguised as mercy killing spurred the chairman of the Social Ministry Commission, Judy Bennett, to ask the Respect Life Committee for help in understanding how to track and act on euthanasia legislation. Other coordinated efforts by the committee include scheduling the Hour of Prayer times during the year to pray for an end to abortion and spiritual and emotional healing for women who have had abortions.

At a special Mass in December prayers are offered for those who have suffered or know of someone who has suffered the loss of a child through disease, accident, crime, miscarriage, or abortion. Parishioners are invited to approach the altar and light a candle in their memory. The parish young mothers' group hosts a reception afterward.

No church pro-life program would be complete if it overlooked the needs of a population targeted by pro-abortionists: adolescents. Larry Hart and his wife, Darlene, served as sponsors for the Life Savers, teens associated with the Respect Life Committee. The teenagers' energy showed up in many ways.

For example, the Life Savers developed skits on respect life themes as participants at statewide Respect Life Congresses. Some of the skits were so good that they took them on the road to youth groups at various parishes. Beginning in 1992, the committee began to provide a modest stipend for parish teens to attend the annual National Right to Life Conventions to work as volunteers.

Once on site they set up the conventions, assisted staff, provided child care, and staffed convention exhibits in Washington, D.C., Nashville, Milwaukee, Chicago, Houston, and Orlando.

At each convention they met national pro-life speakers and leaders, met hundreds of teens from across the nation, and attended Teens for Life workshops. Some of the original Life Saver teens are now in their early to- mid-20s. Some have finished college, some have begun careers, and some are married. Over the years they have reached out to fellow teens, carried the pro-life message to family members, and counseled co-workers in danger of having an abortion. Our Respect Life Committee faithfully responds to their requests for pro-life materials.

As mentioned at the outset no Respect Life Committee has to be large in number to be successful. Our small committee did not undertake its wide variety of projects all at once. The successes of our Respect Life Committee are a result of a small core of members willing to meet regularly over the years to plan projects that reach out and involve others who are pro-life.

Over the long term each project, building on past projects, magnifies the visibility of respect life issues and builds its part of the church's mosaic to proclaim the Gospel of Life and the dignity of every human person.