Le blog de la Bergerie
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Le blog de la Bergerie
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A week ago, the West Coast Walk For Life 2008 happened along the Embarcadero and through the Wharf and it was such a wonderful event! The sun was shining, the crowd of marchers was larger than ever (25,000!) and it was a terrific testimony to the goodness of life and family, to the joyful support and strength that happens when so many different people team up for the common good. Because the common good of society is definitively resting on our ability to desire and welcome children and to foster a positive climate for putting families first. And that is what it is really about. About having a vision of life that goes farther than our own belly button. And to think that there were so many young people marching, so many beautiful young women, it brings a smile to my face just to remember them. The whole event was barely covered in the local press because they don't understand it, but that's OK, being under the radar can sometime greatly help gather momentum till the tipping point.
It was truly a blessing to have such a sunny day because it sure was raining the
week before and it sure has been stormy ever since so I was thankful for the clear
sky that day. I walked for a while next to a group singing beautiful and haunting
songs in Spanish. I ran into friends, I took pictures, I marched and I sang along.
I tried to go up through the crowd to the very beginning of the march and it took
me a while, I was only able to catch up with them at the Wharf.
Along the way there were some protesters although their numbers get smaller
every year. There must have been less than 500 of them. When you think that
25,000 people marched that day by the waterfront, a few hundreds of pro-abortion
demonstrators is not that many. But they were very virulent and very vocal.
Again, as they have done before, obscenities and insults were hurled at the
marchers. There was a group of young lesbians vehemently pro-choice and making
lewd gestures and I wondered what was their point. Were they trying to shock
us? And I was thinking as I was passing a couple of them kissing and fondling publicly with
defiance that the one thing that is truly separating us is that I am so grateful
for having had a baby, for the wonderful chance at motherhood that I got, because
it is such an exciting and challenging adventure, such a beautiful opportunity
for growth and for love, because the whole issue is about love, about true
love, and that there is nothing better that I could wish for these young
girls but to experience a change of heart one day and shed their pro-choice
stand like one discards an old and useless shirt.
So I kept going and I squeezed by the great crowd and I finally got to the beginning
of the line just as it was turning and going up to Ghirardelli Square. I had a
great view of the first marchers and I took pictures of the young women holding
the Walk For Life banner. They certainly looked like a happy and healthy, beaming
and assertive group of young women. And I stood at the corner and I watched as
the marchers go by and I saw so many kids and so many families pass by that it
was mesmerizing; I saw people pushing other people in wheelchairs; I saw banners
of schools and colleges and parishes, in English and in Spanish; I saw many Catholic
posters and religious pictures, many people of faith, singing and praying; I heard
the rosary being said in English and in Spanish; I saw entire families holding
hands, I saw nuns in habit walk by and smile, I saw elderly women walking with
difficulties but determined to push along and finish the walk, I saw couples in
love holding hands, little kids running around and pushing their sibling in baby
carriages; I saw priests and brothers walk by and chanting; I saw puzzled tourists
on the sidewalk staring, some of them smiling, one even asked whether the chocolate
factory was around the corner and someone pointed him in the right direction.
I felt that the great stream of humanity in all its beauty and weakness had just
walked by me and I was elated to witness it and to be one of its member.
It felt like such a special and blessed moment.
The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness
that God entrusts the human being to her in a a special way. Of course,
God entrusts every human being to each and every other human being. But
this entrusting concerns women in a special way - precisely by reason
of their femininity - and this in a particular way determines their vocation.
(On the dignity and vocation of Women). JPII |
My
opposition to abortion springs from a conviction that it is ugly and degrading
to women. Years spent as a natural child birth teacher, devising my own
method of pain relief and becoming a homebirth mom myself, wrought in
me a deep conviction that pregnancy and birth are a healthy process that
should be, as much as possible, left alone. Pregnancy and birth link together
women all over the world and throughout all time, that earthy vital process
is the most elemental symbol of woman's strength. Disrupting it by thrusting
tools deep into her body is as obscene as pouring dirty motor oil into
a mountain lake. I oppose abortion because it violates women more deeply
than rape, a more hideous violation because it brings grisly death into
the very house of life. ("Real choices" by Frederica Mathewes-Green). |
In order to spread joy, joy needs to reign in the family. Peace and war
start within one's own home. If we really want peace for the world, let
us start by loving one another within our families. We will thus have
Christ's joy, which is our strength. Sometimes it is hard for us to smile
at one another. It is often difficult for the husband to smile at his
wife or for the wife to smile at her husband. It is sometimes difficult
for me to smile at Christ. (Mother Teresa of Calcutta). |
| We know that
all families are jeopardized and the entire human race is threatened when
women despise and refuse God's greatest gift to woman: motherhood. We
know that there can be no hope for true justice when women refuse to accept
their right and responsibility to transmit to a new generation the moral
and ethical principles that are the true foundation of any just society.
(Helen Hull Hitchcock, Director of Women for Faith and Family) |
Choose Life!
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"It is not good that the man should be alone" Gen 2:18. From the texts that
narrate the creation of man, there emerges how in God's plan the couple constitutes "the first form of communion between persons".
The family is presented as the cradle of life and love, as the sanctuary of life. §213
The priority of the family over society and over the State must be affirmed. §214 (Compendium of the social doctrine of the Church. ) |
Copyright©2005-2008-2023Michele Szekely