Pray for Priests: A mission for a Church -- and world -- in need

The following comes from Kathryne Jean Lopez at National Review:

Want healthy spiritual leadership in the world today? Pray for it. That’s the ongoing work of Kathleen Beckman: to encourage the rest of us to pray for priests. She’s the author of the book Praying for Priests. We talk about the mission. — KJL

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Why is it so important to pray for priests?

KATHLEEN BECKMAN: In my book I quote Fr. John Hardon, S.J., who explains why we must pray for clergy: “We should pray for priests and bishops because this has been the practice of the Church from apostolic times. It’s a matter of revealed truth. It is a divine mandate.” When we know the gift of God and cherish the sacraments received through priests, we are moved to gratitude for their selfless service to God and to us. Praying for priests is a graced response to our gratitude and charity for them.

LOPEZ: You quote St. John Vianney: “When people want to destroy religion they begin by attacking the priest; for when there is not priest, there is no sacrifice: and when there is no sacrifice, there is no religion.” Is it really all that bad?

BECKMAN: The Eucharist is the “source and summit” of Catholicism. We can imagine the dire consequences of having no clergy, no sacrifice (Mass), no Eucharist, no absolution of our sins. Most practicing Catholics would shudder at the thought of the Church without ministerial priests who make Christ present sacramentally. St. John Vianney said, “Leave a parish 20 years without priests; they will worship beasts.”

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Kathryn Jean Lopez: The Truth and Abortion

The following comes from Kathryn Jean Lopez:

“The most disgusting part of this to me is these folks lied, lied to gain access to clinics,” Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said on This Week Sunday, in reference to the undercover videos showcasing Planned Parenthood executives talking about selling fetal body parts (including a now-infamous Lamborghini reference). 

She’s right. Lies are a problem. And we’ve been lying for decades. We’ve been hiding the destruction of human lives behind words like “choice” and “freedom” and placards with “women’s rights” and ”women’s health” written on them to keep us looking away from the dehumanizing details of abortion — dehumanizing for all involved. 

At this point in human history, the consciences of the people at the Center for Medical Progress should not be the primary cause for chattering-class concern so much as the “conscience of our nation.” 

Or, as President Ronald Reagan put it in Human Life Review in a manifesto with that very title ten years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion in all trimesters of pregnancy (a little-known American fact): 

As an act of “raw judicial power” (to use Justice White’s biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority in Roe v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court’s decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation. Abortion concerns not just the unborn child, it concerns every one of us. The English poet, John Donne, wrote: “… any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life—the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life. 

Later in the essay, President Reagan wrote: 

The real question today is not when human life begins, but, What is the value of human life?The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother’s body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law—the same right we have. 

And he quoted Malcolm Muggeridge as going “right to the heart of the matter”: “Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.”

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