Good Counsel Homes, Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Chris & Joan Bell, Hoboken, NJ

Good Council Homes ^ | 07.21.04

[Coleus]

Good Counsel Homes
Chris and Joan Bell

EWTN GALLERY
GOOD COUNSEL HOMES WITH FATHER BENEDICT GROESCHEL (30:00)

Fr. Benedict Groeschel hosts this half hour special about Good Counsel Homes. Good Counsel provides homeless pregnant mothers a place to stay during their pregnancies, as well as training in skills to help them get jobs and assists them in finding affordable apartments after their babies are born. This special features interviews with Executive Director of Good Counsel Homes, Mr.Chris Bell, as well as mothers who have benefited from Good Counsel's assistance.

Thursday	July 29, 2004	4:30 AM
Thursday	July 29, 2004	6:00 PM

Hear their Story:

Chris & Joan Bell along with Amy Kerr 8/7/2003 (#320) The Good Councel Homes For Unwed Mothers w/ Chris & Joan Bell along with Fr. Groeschel 7/31/2003  Listen on REAL ONE player.  Advance to 15:00 minutes to hear the interview on LIFE ON THE ROCK

While working with homeless runaways in New York's Times Square, Christopher Bell became troubled. He saw many single pregnant women on the streets who were pregnant and with seemingly nowhere to turn.

One day Chris made a remark to his spiritual director, Father Benedict Groeschel, "Somebody should do something to help these pregnant women!"

Father Benedict looked Chris directly in the eyes and said, "You are right Chris! And you are that somebody!" With that encouragement, Good Counsel was born.

Chris and Father Benedict found an abandoned convent in Hoboken, New Jersey and in March 1985, the first home for mothers and children opened its doors. Since 1985, more than 3,500 women and children have received residential help at Good Counsel.

In addition to the basics of food, clothing and shelter, single mothers benefit from many "life skill" programs including parenting classes, nutrition, career guidance, chastity teaching, spirituality and budgeting. Daycare is available in each home so that a mother may work or return to school to complete her education.

Today Good Counsel operates five homes in New York: the Bronx, Staten Island, Spring Valley, Poughkeepsie and Harrison. We hope to be able to expand into other areas of the country as well.

If you are in need of crisis pregnancy counseling, please call out toll-free national hotline 24 hours a day, seven days a week at (800) 723-8331.

Catholic New York - Teen Chooses Life - testimonial

Joan Andrews Bell, Meet the Abortion Providers conference

AFFIDAVIT OF JOAN ANDREWS BELL

Site Review for Good Counsel Homes        Human Life International’s 18th World Conference

Domestic-Church.Com: Vindication: Joan Andrews Released

Joan Andrews Bell: Prisoner of Conscience

THE INTERIM NEWSPAPER ONLINE : Level 2 template

Seattle Catholic - A Champion of Life Everlasting      Seattle Catholic - Of Slaves and Babies

Domestic-Church.Com: Epiphany 1998: Letters to the Editor

Then in 1991, at age 43, she married Christopher Bell, 33, a coordinator for the Respect Life Office in the Archdiocese of New York. The pair met while he was bringing her Communion in a Delaware state prison.

She immediately became pregnant and had a daughter, Mary Louise, now 5. The girl was delivered by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a founder of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, who became a pro-lifer in the 1970s.

In December 1993, the Bells adopted a handicapped Mexican boy, Emiliano, now 9, who has arthrograposis, also known as "frozen joint disease." After four operations and physical therapy, the boy now is able to walk.

California gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon (R) has had a long-standing association with Good Counsel, a New Jersey-based organization with "close ties to some of the most extreme members of the antiabortion movement," the San Jose Mercury News reports.

According to the Mercury News, in the late 1980s Simon helped Good Counsel Executive Director Christopher Bell incorporate the organization, which runs five homes in New York for unwed mothers, and Simon has served on both its board of directors and advisory board in the past.

The paper calls Bell --"whom Simon has known for about twenty years" -- an "outspoken abortion opponent" who has supported activists "known to have violated some of the laws Simon pledges to uphold" (Kurtzman, San Jose Mercury News, 6/29).

Simon opposes abortion rights but has said that he would uphold the state's "legal and constitutional protections of reproductive freedom" (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 6/7).

Good Counsel's Web site includes links to organizations that "espouse radical antiabortion views."

Statement opposing brain death criteria

Abortion, Euthanasia, Pro-Life, What's New?

Pictures of Clinton Street, Hoboken, home which needs to be repaired

---

Chris and Joan Bell have 7 Children, 6 are adopted and are Handicapped.

Volunteers are needed for the Clean up and Repair day for this crisis pregnancy center which will open whenever the work is done. There will be many repair days in the future and if you know of someone in the NY/NJ metro area who wants to volunteer in some way  have them call the home.   This Saturday, July 24th, 2004,  9am-1pm, optional mass at 8am in the chapel, Cleaning, spackling, priming/painting. Good Counsel Homes for Unwed Mothers, 411 Clinton Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, ( 201) 795-0637 Chris Bell is the director http://www.goodcounselhomes.org/ Pictures of Clinton Street, Hoboken, home which needs to be repaired before it can be opened, mothers are turned away daily.  NJ leads the USA in Teenage abortions.

[cpforlife.org]

Operation rescue might have made the Movement "look" bad, but did not "set back the pro-life movement in this country at least 15 years."

I'll be blunt: The Pro-Life Movement has been INCAPABLE OF VICTORY SINCE DAY ONE because of one SPECIFIC factor: THE APATHY AND COWARDICE OF THE LEADERS IN THE CHURCH (ALL DENOMINATIONS).

Until the Bishops and Pastors act as true shepherds and fight this daily, head on as the mass genocide that it is, we will NOT prevail. We'll have little victories and perhaps reduce the numbers of the children butchered, but the abortionists have won every day since 1-22-73.

Somebody, ANYBODY please tell me if I'm mistaken!

The culture of death grows—not because of the power of wicked men—but because of the silence of good men.

[NYer]

I'm still unclear on what the PING means and what list I am on. Please explain both.

"Ping" is a call to a particular thread. I maintain a Catholic Ping List. In my response to 'you', I 'pinged' the Catholic List. You are not on my list. Should you wish to join, simply send me a freepmail. In the meantime, the words 'ping' and 'bump' are simply terms used in a post to call others to a particular thread.

[eleni121]

Here is the dilemma: Many public institutions, mainly schools, in this country turn to PP for advice etc. about STD's, Sex Ed. etc. Why? Because PP labels itself as a secular non denominational non religious org. In response to PP coming into the college where I teach I have tried to find a non religious org which offers alternative points of view (pro life, pro absinence etc.) that could also be invited. I could not find one. Most public institutions will not invite any religious group for fear of backlash.

What Pro life needs at this point is a secular alternative to PP. Response anyone?

[Coleus]

Mission Statement
of the National Right to Life

In June of 1973, a group of pro-life leaders met in Detroit for the first meeting of a new organization, to be non-sectarian, non- partisan, and to have its board consist of an elected representative from each of the 50 states.

[old and tired]

The Rescue Movement was a PR disaster simply because the Internet/Fox News/and Talk Radio was virtually nonexistent. The mainstream media maligned OR every chance it could get. However, it did not set the Pro Life Movement back 10 years, it WAS the pro life movement for many years. I believe it served as a sort of boot camp for rescuers and they were given a glimpse of the evil that exists on the other side. The most organized and influential political arm of the pro life movement here in Philly was founded by two veterans of OR.

Cpforlife.org is right to blame church leaders. Bishop Austin Vaughan and Fr. Norm Weslin at least tried to do something. Rescues did save many babies and they would have changed many more hearts if the truth could have gotten past the liberal media.

Although I was never arrested, I supported the Rescue Movement financially and prayerfully for many years. Joan Andrews slept on my floor back in the 80's. She refused to take a bed, although we had many available. She had a childlike simplicity that was as frustrating as it was admirable. I don't know if marriage and family has changed that about her.

[old and tired]

Eleni121, I see you are from NY. I don't know what's available up there, but here in Philadelphia, we have a group called Generation Life (founded by a former rescuer, by the way). They are a group of Catholic young people who go into schools discussing the dangers of pre marital sex. They give a wonderful pro life talk in line with Catholic church teaching. They do, however, speak at many public schools, where, naturally, they must give a secular speech. The thrust of their message is chastity, but they stress that being chaste is but one aspect being pro life.

[Coleus]

Don't believe that PP is not sectarian, they adopt a self-centered demonic, pagan, humanist philosophy. Read about the secular humanist movement in America and the John Dewey, Secular Humanist/Columbia University methods and philosophies of teaching in our schools.

You will find that most faculty and staff will have no part in a pro-life organization working and teaching in an educational institution.

Most, if not EVERY state RTL chapters and their county affiliates are non-sectarian. In NJ, the NJEA teachers' union kicked out sexual abstinence speakers from their convention workshops! They also recently promoted the Pro-abortion march in DC on April 25th! Seems abortion and teachers go hand in hand.

There is plenty of pro-life info. out there. You can also reach the http://www.bcpinstitute.org/ and have them come in to set the record straight about abortion and breast cancer, there is a link.

[Coleus]

Cpforlife.org is right to blame church leaders.>>>

Democrats Secret Weapon - How American Bishops Kept Abortion Legal for Thirty Years

Abortion and the Bishops

Bishops urged to confront politicians (over abortion)

Wishy-Washy Statements by Catholic Bishops on Abortion and Voting Leading to Scandal

Three Catholic Bishops Refuse to Take Action on Pro-Abortion Catholic Politicians

Why do Catholic Bishops promote & aid pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Senator Gil Cedillo?

The Good, the Wishy-Washy, The Bad (The Bishops of the Catholic Church on Abortion)

[TOUGH STOUGH]

Only to have a clinic open somwhere else in the nation.

What is wrong with standing outside a clinic with a sign, protesting in the normal way that American's protest other issues?

Rosaries only give the wrong impression that Pro-life is a soley Catholic issue, and alienate people who might otherwise be inclined to join in.

[TOUGH STOUGH]

I am sorry to disagree with you. I know many fine, devoutly religious people(some of whom were Catholic,one of whom received a medal from Cardinal Bevilacqua (Sp?)for her work on behalf of the unborn) with whom I became acquainted through work in the pro-life movement, who were as opposed to Operation Rescue as I was. It divided the movement in half. One of the leaders in the pro-life movement who was active long before operation rescue (I met her in my college years) said to me just recently, when one of the leaders in Operation Rescue started talking about "dying in the streets" they lost me completely.

The operation rescue folks became the focus of the cause, not the babies they were attempting to save. All the time, energy and money spent getting them out of jail, going to court, saving their homes and their jobs. And for all the investment, how did it advance the cause? What legislative gains were made? Are babies in the womb any safer?

For ten years (or was it longer?) no protests, even of the normal kind, could be held at the clinics. And the pro-life movement lost all its momentum.

It was a PR nightmare because it was a PR nightmare. Their movement not only repulsed the general public, but also repulsed genuinely pro-life people who had been working on behalf of the unborn for a long time, many of whom are still involved. They turned people off in droves, myself included. And God forbid, if you questioned their strategy.

I have never met a group of people who were more politically tone deaf or totally devoid of any sense of political strategy or political reality. For instance, there is at least one occasion I can think of (and there are probably more) in which operation rescue ran one of their own members in a major election against a Republican candidates who had a pro-life voting record close to 100 percent. You can guess how it ended, both pro-life candidates lost and the pro-choice democrat won.

Though some of their leaders, such as Randall Terry, seemed to lavish the limelight, I do not doubt their good intentions, even though they doubted the good intentions of those in the pro-life movement who disagreed with them. Likewise, as full of good intentions as they might have been, they were and still are, as equally devoid of wisdom. They took many of the grassroots members down a most destructive path.

[TOUGH STOUGH]

The above reply was also meant for you. My apologies.

[old and tired]

I know many fine, devoutly religious people(some of whom were Catholic,one of whom received a medal from Cardinal Bevilacqua (Sp?)for her work on behalf of the unborn) with whom I became acquainted through work in the pro-life movement, who were as opposed to Operation Rescue as I was. It divided the movement in half.

That may be the case in the Evangelical community, but I don't think it's the case in the Catholic pro life community. I also know a (Catholic) woman who's received awards from Bevilacqua. She was involved with the Archdiocesan sanctioned Pennsylvanians for Human Life. They go into Catholic Schools and give pro life talks. My wife has been a member of them for many years. But they don't want to rock the boat, ever. They wring their hands and say what can we do? Many of their children still go to colleges like Notre Dame, Boston College and Georgetown. It's true many pro life Catholics in the pews were turned off, as was the public at large, but by and large, these folks were not the people manning the crisis pregnancy centers, or carrying signs outside the killing centers. In my experience the Catholics in the trenches largely supported the rescue movement mostly because it was the only game in town.

During the rescue years, Bevilacqua chose his pro life public actions very carefully, and even he did once visit the pregnant wife of a rescuer who was in jail. But he also did NOTHING about the pro abort "Catholic" college campuses or pastors in Philadelphia. Under his watch and at the height of the rescue movement, the Archdiocese was happy to hand out voters guides with issues like "equal healthcare access for all" plastered right next to abortion. The Archdiocesan Respect Life Office still includes the ministry to the crippled and disenfranchised.

I'm not saying I agreed completely with how OR expended its resources, but at least they were doing something. And you could hear the crickets before you could hear a sermon that denounced abortion in a Catholic Church. I know that many evangelical pastors are much better at denouncing evil from the pulpit.

[TOUGH STOUGH]

And the little something they did caused tremendous harm.

Can we find a middle ground behind what Bevilacqua did or didn't do, and what OR did?

[TOUGH STOUGH]

behind = between

[TOUGH STOUGH]

I can't think of a single Catholic person I know inside or outside the movement who supported them, save one, who after almost having her life destroyed, left OR and the movement entirely.

[old and tired]

I'm curious. Are the Catholics you know involved in the Pro Life Movement beyond the voting booth and prayer support? I know OR was not popular with Catholics on the perimeter, but I blame that largely on the media bias. Rescues did save babies. Sidewalk counselors and women who ran the crisis pregnancy centers all have dozens of stories of babies saved by a rescue.

One other thing the rescue movement did was bring Catholics and Evangelicals together for the first time and we prayed together. I saw Randall Terry give a moving sermon in a Baptist Church the night before a rescue where he thanked God for bringing the members of the two different Christian faiths together. In many ways, Terry said, Evangelicals introduced Catholics to the Holy Spirit. And Catholics in turn taught Evangelicals humility before the Lord - to pray on their knees. I think he was right. But even if you disagree, it did afford many Catholics and Evangelicals the opportunity to meet and come to respect each other.

I know I've given the impression that I was a huge supporter of OR. I wasn't. I just didn't see any other game in town. The analogy I always drew at the time was that it was like throwing water onto an oil fire. But I had and continue to have tremendous respect for the work of Fr. Norm Weslin and the late Bishop Austin Vaughn. If our priests and bishops had been out with their congregations blocking access to the killing centers when they first opened, perhaps we Christians could have stopped the abortion industry dead in its tracks.

I agree, however, that we must find a middle ground because all arms of the pro-life movement must work together. The New Media has made it possible for faithful Catholics to organize and to get in the faces of our clergy. Finally, finally, we are starting to see some movement in our hierarchy. Many of the new young priests come from families with long involvement in the Pro Life Movement. So I believe better days are ahead.

Go Clymer Go!

[Askel5]

=== I'll be blunt: The Pro-Life Movement has been INCAPABLE OF VICTORY SINCE DAY ONE because of one SPECIFIC factor: THE APATHY AND COWARDICE OF THE LEADERS IN THE CHURCH (ALL DENOMINATIONS).


Hear hear.

And few, if any, realize this apathy and cowardice is in large part due to the FACT that the AmChurch hierarchy -- in the person of Spellman and others -- have been complicit with the eugenicists and pop-control mavens of the US political elite since Roosevelt's time, even.

[old and tired]

And few, if any, realize this apathy and cowardice is in large part due to the FACT that the AmChurch hierarchy -- in the person of Spellman and others -- have been complicit with the eugenicists and pop-control mavens of the US political elite since Roosevelt's time, even.

I think most active pro lifers know that it even goes deeper than apathy and cowardice. Even without knowing the history. So often we witness the active participation of the hierarchy in the culture of death. Think of Cardinal Law having his picture in the paper with the Kennedys and Tip O'Neal. It has come to the point where when pro lifers say of a pastor "he's pretty good" they mean there's a priest who allows us to hand out voters guides after Masses and doesn't actively schill for the Democratic party.

[Salvation]

Eugene abortion clinic closes; surprising many (Hooray !!!)

Prayer credited for closing of abortion clinic [Eugene, OR]

Planned Parenthood will shut down 3 clinics (Indiana)

Persevering Students Help Close Abortion Clinic

Abortion Clinic Managers Quit After Being Outed by Operation Rescue

[Salvation]

**What is wrong with standing outside a clinic with a sign, protesting in the normal way that American's protest other issues?**

Nothing is wrong with that. But, remember, that prayer works!