Posted on 08/04/2011 8:36:59 AM PDT by NYer
When Bryan Kemper was getting started in pro-life activism about 20 years ago, he "was kind of paranoid at first" about working with Catholics, he said, having been taught by other Protestants that the Catholic Church was the whore of Babylon. "I was hellbent on saving all the Catholics," he recalled recently.
Kemper's younger self would likely be shocked to learn that he is part of a recent string of prominent pro-life activists — including Lila Rose, undercover videographer of Planned Parenthood, and former abortion clinic director Abby Johnson — who have decided to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church.
'One truth'
Kemper, now 44, had been baptized Catholic as a kid to appease his great-grandmother, but the faith was never practiced at home.
He spent his teen years doing and dealing drugs, getting kicked out of the military, and periodically living on the streets. His life began to change when he overdosed at a Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan concert in 1987 and a doctor "shared the hope of Christ" with him, he told Our Sunday Visitor.
| Former abortion advocates also converted |
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The ranks of Catholic converts include at least two people who played a key role in the legalization of abortion in America.
Norma McCorvey was the "Jane Roe" of the 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion in the United States. She later renounced the pro-choice position, and on Aug. 17, 1998, she was received into the Catholic Church and confirmed by Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who died Feb. 21, helped found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) in 1969. An obstetrician-gynecologist, he performed 5,000 abortions and oversaw tens of thousands more. In the late 1970s, as a Jewish atheist, he came to oppose abortion; he was received into the Church in 1996.
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He soon "gave his life over to Christ" and immersed himself in pro-life work. In 1993 he started Rock For Life, which led to spots on MTV and the Lollapalooza music tour. Later on, he started Stand True Ministries, which challenges young people to take a stand against abortion.
Kemper eventually came to realize that his Catholic colleagues "loved Jesus, too," he said, but that didn't keep him from trying to convert them. But his efforts didn't turn out quite the way he expected.
"Twenty-three years of debating my Catholic friends caused me to study the Catholic Church," he said. And although Kemper "fought it so hard" for the past few years, his study led him this past spring to return to the Catholic Church.
Historical facts, such as St. Ignatius of Antioch's early-second-century writings on the Eucharist, confirmed Kemper's sense that holy Communion was more than just a symbol. And he came to believe that "there's no possible way that God can be pleased with 40,000 denominations, and there had to be one truth," he said.
While in Brussels for the March for Life Belgium at the end of March, he talked with a monsignor and made "a pretty heavy-duty confession." After affirming the Nicene Creed at Mass, he was able to receive Communion.
In May, Kemper became the director of youth outreach for Priests for Life, and he's now preparing for confirmation with Priests for Life's president, Father Frank Pavone.
Tip of the iceberg
Kemper's story is far from unique among pro-lifers, said Father Pavone.
"When you see these leaders go through this [conversion], it's really a tip-of-the-iceberg phenomenon, because it's happening on the grass roots very commonly."
As Father Pavone travels around the country, people regularly tell him, "I became a Catholic through my pro-life activism."
There are several factors that lead pro-lifers toward the Church, Father Pavone said: the Church's consistent position on pro-life issues, its strong philosophical tradition and the trust that develops between Catholics and non-Catholics "rubbing shoulders" in the pro-life trenches that helps make non-Catholics more receptive to learning about the Faith.
Father C. John McCloskey, who has played a part in the conversions of several public figures, added that many people "learn about the Catholic Church for the first time through their involvement with pro-life."
Shaped by the saints
| Rose |
Rose was raised in an interdenominational church by devout parents who homeschooled her and her seven siblings. From an early age she was surrounded by the writings of saints such as Justin Martyr, Athanasius, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. As a young teen, she read Catholic author Michael O'Brien's novel "Father Elijah" and Mark Twain's "Joan of Arc," which got her interested in the lives of the saints.
"All of these things began to influence me and shape my spiritual perspective from a young age," she told OSV. "I would debate with my very hard-core Calvinist friends about justification or transubstantiation or different principles of the Catholic faith."
As a sophomore at UCLA, Rose "stumbled across" an Opus Dei center near campus, attended a Mass and found a spiritual "mentor" in the woman sitting next to her. A year and a half later, on March 15, 2009, Rose was received into full communion with the Catholic Church.
Although Rose was impressed by the pro-life writings of Catholics such as Mother Teresa and G.K. Chesterton, "It wasn't the pro-life movement that brought me to the Church," she said, so much as her education and exposure to the saints.
Leaving abortion behind
| Johnson |
Johnson rose to national prominence in 2009 when, after witnessing an ultrasound-guided abortion, she left her job as director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas and became a pro-life advocate.
After her pro-life conversion, Johnson and her husband, Doug, no longer felt welcome at the pro-choice Episcopal church they'd been attending.
Although Doug was adamant that they would not become Catholic, Johnson saw something special in her new Catholic pro-life friends in the Brazos Valley Coalition for Life. "I just saw how Christ was really real every day in their lives, and I thought, 'I want that too.'"
One Sunday they attended Mass after missing another church service, and they realized that the Catholic Church was where they belonged.
They completed their RCIA classes in the spring, and Johnson said they were awaiting an annulment ruling before they can receive what she most looks forward to about becoming Catholic: the Eucharist.
"It feels like torture to have to wait," she said, "but it just confirms that we're in the right place and that this is what we really want and that this is really God's desire for us."
You really want to defend the abortion voters and now try to create a myth that the KKK was not supportive of the same anti Catholic and anti immigrant bigotry as the GOP? Why?
ROTFLMAO! Your lies are a hoot. Sad but funny. Get help.
Getting on a thread merely to post a series of spam attacks, does not change the reality of the orthodox, pro life Catholic voter, and it does nothing to change the voting of the liberals of every faith.
So why do you keep telling one sided lies in your spam attacks on Catholic threads? Have you no shame?
Your odd obsessions and bigotry appear to have enraged you. Perhaps if you spent your time where liberals posted your efforts might find fertile ground. Here bigotry and lies get scorned for the rotten fruit that they are. Get help for your rage, you need it.
I notice that you can't find a lie, that you are merely parroting that line in place of focusing on the pro-life subject of this thread and my of posts.
LOL, your lies are self evident. What is this thread about? PRO LIFE CATHOLICS. Your lie? That Catholics vote for death. You need help.
The lie is you trying to pretend that the facts don’t exist and attempting to keep those facts from politically oriented pro-lifers.
Those efforts of yours serves the proabortion side, not the prolife side, put your pride aside, and try to think of effecting change, not preventing it.
We don’t need problems as described in post 47 and 41.
Of course we're changing it -- but the ordinary guy on the street sees two choices -- one the GOP, which seems filled with folks like yours who keep saying "all caflicks bad, bad, bad." and the dims who actually DO believe this, but go coasting on their past attitudes (50s).
We are changing this, but if we keep having examples such as the many on FR who call catholics the worst kind of names, then the choice seems to be between a rock and a hard place
You want us to change this? Then stop being a bad advertisement for the democrat's demonisation of the GOP
the GOP is not racist, not Anti-Catholic, but the many freepers who portray it like so by their actions and words are damaging the party. Stop it.
What an irrelevant post.
Your anti Catholic position is well known and highly visible. At any rate, if you are making a point and appropriate information, data, or graphics, it is considered good form to attribute it.
From the page:
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,015 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May 7-10, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.
Gallup Poll Daily results are based on telephone interviews with 971 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May 12-13, 2009, as part of Gallup Poll Daily tracking. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
One of the practical difficulties with surveys conducted with this methodology is that people like me refuse to participate. That skews the poll somewhat just on that basis.
Had you been following the discussion, you’d know it had touched on the path that former democrats took when “converting” to conservatism.
Look before you leap.
Legal, illegal, Don't Know
Catholic.................45 45 10
...White non-Hisp...47 44 9
...Attend weekly....26 67 8
...Attend less..........62 29 9
...Hispanic**.........39 48 13
Look at the numbers for "attend weekly". Faithful, regularly-attending Catholics reject abortion by a huge margin: Legal 26%; Illegal 67%; Don't Know 8%.
This study shows movement in the direction of life as well, but I don't know how to transport pdf charts to html on free republic.
You can see why little is done about Catholic voting by the response to someone bringing it up. No one wants to endure the personal attacks I do by getting into the actual proabortion/anti-conservative voting of Catholics.
The problem is denied, the facts disputed and attacked rather than discussed.
Look at the facts about prop 71, something that was very important to me, look at the difference between the Catholic Bishops and the Catholic voter, not one person seems interested in that here. Not one person seems to share my shock and disappointment at finding out how Catholics voted, not one Conservative Catholic here seems to want to do anything about it, they just want the information to not be brought to their attention.
How you can find anti-Catholicism in learning the data on voting while reading at a conservative, activist political site, especially on prop 71, goes a long way to explaining the Catholic vote. Shoot, shovel, and cover up, protects the Catholic liberal vote, I don’t want to hide it and protect it, I want it to come under attack by conservative Catholics that want conservatives to win and that do not want their church to be a tool of the left.
Yes white Catholics have started becoming more Republican in recent years by a slim margin, they are more republican than Hispanic Protestants but not by a huge margin.
This small shift among white Catholics has come too little too late after an almost perfect history of voting Democrat until recently, as white people that are Catholic begin to see the writing on the wall, immigration is replacing them in the Catholic church.
We all know where this Catholic trend is heading.
You'd be surprised at the extent of antiCatholicism. The RM has thankfully banned some hate sites. But trust me on this: an ever greater number of us are fighting the liberals, and now we have a great Pope on our side.
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