Live Chat w Fr. Pavone, Priests For Life, Friday 4 pm & 9 pm! Plus GREAT new column!

Please join me - and have undecided voters join me - for an Online Chat tomorrow (Friday) at 4pm and again at 9pm. Here are the instructions:

1) Go to http://www.talkfinity.com/fpavone (If your screen only displays "connecting to server" - see the frequently asked question section below)

3) Please supply a username, password, and email address. Click the "Register" button to complete. (Please remember the username and password. This will be the information used to login whenever you return to the site.)

4) A screen will pop-up that says "Register Successful". Click the "Close" button.

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****PLEASE NOTE: The chat forums will open 15 mins. prior to their designated start time. Until then, the forums are closed and cannot be accessed.

2) Type in your username and password created above into the Username and Password fields in the top right of the screen. Click "Login"

3) To join the chat room and participate in the online discussion with Father Pavone, click on the appropriate room.

***PLEASE NOTE: We expect a heavy volume of messages in the chat forums. Due to this, your questions may be delayed. Please be patient. I will attempt to address all questions as quickly as possible.

Q. I connect to the site but the screen just displays "Connecting the ServerHow can I fix this? A. This will often occur if you have an older version of Flash installed on your computer. Please download and install the newest version of Flash (Flash 7) available at: http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=Sh ockwaveFlash

Remember also that tomorrow I will be preaching at the Mass on EWTN. It airs at 8am, noon, 7pm, and midnight (all Eastern time). I will deliver a strong message on the fact that Tuesday’s election will shape the Supreme Court and determine the fate of tens of millions of unborn children.

This weekend is the "72-hour plan" for the Election, that is, the most important phase of the get-out-the-vote efforts. Please, to the extent that your duties allow, put aside everything else and focus on mobilizing voters, by phone, email, distribution of literature, etc. Contact the local parties and campaigns and volunteer for this activityPeople are needed to distribute literature, make phone calls, transport voters, etc. Please be sure you have your lawn signs out and bumper stickers on your cars to support pro-life candidates.

If you can, please take the day off from work on Election Day to assist with get-out-the- vote activities. And keep updated at our election website, www.priestsforlife.org/elections

Thank you so much for all you do. So many of you thank me for my work, but I am inspired by - and very grateful for - your own dedication to elect pro-life candidates and to advance the pro-life cause in so many other ways.

Failing the "Ethical Test"

Fr. Frank Pavone National Director, Priests for Life

"The ethical test of a good society is how it treats its most vulnerable members." Thus spoke John Kerry in an address on October 24, in which he also declared that he disagrees with those who oppose abortion.

But the very reason people oppose abortion is that they want to protect society’s most vulnerable members, the children in the first nine months of their lives.

Kerry went on to say, "[W]e have a moral obligation to one another, to the forgotten, and to those who live in the shadows."

Right. And people oppose abortion because they recognize their moral obligation to the children growing in the womb, who are the most forgotten of all.

Mr. Kerry is not the only public official involved in this contradiction. A letter sent last summer from forty-eight Catholic Democratic members of the House of Representatives to Cardinal McCarrick of Washington indicated that while they disagree with the Cardinal and among themselves on the abortion issue, they are each "committed to the basic principles that are at the heart of Catholic social justice - [including] protecting the most vulnerable among us."

What we see here is an inability - or simply an unwillingness - on the part of public officials who support legal abortion to discuss it in clear and forthright terms. They can learn something from Ron Fitzimmons, who until recently was the director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, and with whom I engage in regular dialogue. Ron has told me numerous times, and has expressed publicly, that abortion is a form of killing, and that any productive dialogue on the issue has to begin by acknowledging that basic fact.

Public officials can also learn something from the court transcripts of the trials held this past spring in three separate courtrooms across the nation regarding the ban on partial- birth abortion. Doctors took the stand to testify not only about the details of that procedure, but about other more common abortion procedures. They spoke in clear terms about "crushing the head of a baby" and "dismembering" the body.

These are the most vulnerable members of society. If one supports the legality of abortion, one should be willing to describe it. People like Mr. Kerry will not describe it, however, because then it is clear that allowing it fails what he calls "the ethical test of a good society," namely, "how it treats its most vulnerable members."

Kerry and others, of course, take refuge in the argument that "My task as I see it is not to write every doctrine into law. That is not possible or right in a pluralistic society."

But it is not clear what "doctrine" he is talking about. If he means the doctrine that human life is sacred, then he is talking about the same doctrine embodied by the law that protects your life and mine!

When we in the Church and the pro-life movement call on public officials like John Kerry to be committed to protecting the unborn from abortion, we are simply calling for a consistent application -- to all human life -- of the laws that protect the born. This does not impose any belief, but rather protects us all precisely from the beliefs of others who might not see much value in our own lives. That’s the position of the Catholic Church.

We should not expect any public official to impose his religion on us. But we should expect him to understand it, and to be able to make the distinction between an article of faith and a demand of what he calls "the ethical test of a good society."

Email us at mail@priestsforlife.org, Priests for Life, PO Box 141172, Staten Island, NY 10314; Tel: 888-PFL-3448, 718-980-4400; Fax: 718-980-6515; web: www.priestsforlife.org

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