Transcript
from the August 26, 2008 Conference Call
Interviewer: Well welcome, missionaries, to the
Gospel of Life. It is absolutely
wonderful to be with you
tonight, this is Jim Pinto, coordinator of
the Missionaries of
the Gospel of Life, and I have so looked forward to this time with
you. Sue Tuner is on with us tonight, and we’ll have some other
guests including Father Frank Pavone, our founder. But Sue, would
you like to begin just by going over some technical things and
then we’ll have a word of prayer.
Interviewee:
Certainly. We welcome everyone, and we also welcome all of our
friends from UK, Australia, and Canada who are with us on this
call. If any of you have trouble, if any of you are having
troubles as you begin to go to the different webpages that Jim
leads us to, hit the refresh button on your computer, and that
should bring up the fresh page, and it should work fine. Also, if
you have any questions or comments, please just type it in the box
at the bottom left of your simulcast page, and if you want a
personal response, please add your email address and your name in
the box. Otherwise, we won’t have that information. If we don’t
get to these questions and comments tonight, Jim will try to
answer them in his monthly email.
Interviewer:
Thanks so much, Sue. Tonight is not simply a teleconference or a
seminar, but it’s a national Life Cell, and a number of us are
part of Life Cells, state by state, or city by city. Now, for the
first time, we’re going to have opportunity through technology,
for all of us to get together as an association, and to pray
together. And we know how important it is to pray… And so let’s
pray now, and unite spiritually at this time. In the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Most Blessed
Trinity, we thank you and we praise you and we bless you for this
night. We thank you for the gift of technology, that we can be
together this night, state by state and other countries, gathered
together. Lord you said that when two or three are gathered
together in My Name, I will be in the midst of them. And Lord
Jesus, we believe that You are here. We believe that You are with
us. We believe that You are the Way, the Truth, and the Light, and
that no one comes to the Father but by You. So we give ourselves
to you, most Holy Trinity. I pray for every person on this call
tonight, who’s a part of this teleseminar, this Life Cell, Lord, I
pray the ministry of your Holy Spirit to each one of us, to every
person, to their marriages, their children, their grandchildren,
their mission, their ministry. Father, help us to be still and to
know that You Are God, and that You Are Exalted in all the
nations. You’re exalted in all the world. Precious Lord, we
consecrate ourselves to You, this night, that we might love You
with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength, and love our
neighbors as ourselves. Lord, we promise to live a chaste,
obedient, and simple life of faith, and to nurture these Promises
through the spiritual disciplines of prayer, study, community, and
apostolic witness. We ask all this through Jesus Christ, the
author of life, Amen. Well I hope that you have your computers in
front of you, and if you don’t I’ll do the best I can so that you
can understand what we’re looking at, and I hope that you’re
looking at the various links that are there: the MEV, the home
page, and then you have three other links below that, the Priests
for Life homepage, the assessment form, and Jim’s MEV letters. And
so we’ll get to those in just a moment, but I just want to again,
in a sense, CAST THE VISION for all of us, about the blessing of
being Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. And that to be a
Missionary is to be a part of a fellowship, of an Association, of
like-minded people, who love God and who are dedicated to the
Gospel of Christ, and in particular, the Gospel of Life. And that
we are people who know the importance of the Body of Christ. That
we are a worshipping people; we are a liturgical people; we are a
sacramental people, and that we need one another, those here on
earth and those in heaven, who are praying for us. We’re an
Association, the Missionaries are an Association of the Gospel of
Life. The Missionaries of the Gospel of Life are an Association
with a mission. And a mission is what people do outside of the
church. So we are the Church, we are called to the church as an
institution, we partake in the sacraments, we partake of prayer,
we are together, but yet mission is not much what we do in the
church, it’s what we’re sent out to do in the world. And so we
believe as Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, that every
Christian is called to be a missionary. We are called to be
evangelists of the Gospel of Life, and to take this Gospel of Life
to every human being upon the face of the earth. So we’re a
fellowship, we yearn for the Lord, we yearn for one another, but
we have a task to proclaim the fundamental right to life. The
fundamental right of every human being to existence, and we call
upon the church to respect this right, and we call upon every
member of society and every group of society to respect this
fundament right to existence. And not to murder, not to shed
innocent blood. So we’re an Association. We have a mission: to
declare the fundamental right to life. But the Missionaries of the
Gospel of Life is also a way of life. It’s a lifestyle. And so
through our spirituality that’s been given to us by Evangelium
Vitae, by the teaching of the Church, by Father Pavone, our
founder, this is a way of life. And so we’re not Missionaries just
simply when we’re out at the abortion mill, or leading a group, or
wherever we might be. We are Missionaries at home. We are
Missionaries in our marriages. We are Missionaries with our
children. We are -- as one teacher of the faith said -- we’re
looking for the Face of God in every human face. God’s Face is
just veiled, it’s in a riddle, and so we never relate to other
human beings just straight up. We relate to them through the
mediation of Jesus Christ. We’re looking for the Face of Christ,
and how much better our marriages would be, our friendships would
be, our relationships even with our enemies. So, the Missionaries
of the Gospel of Life is an Association. But we have a mission to
declare in word and in deed: the fundamental right to human
existence and to life, and we call every other human being and
group to respect that fundamental right. And it’s also a
lifestyle. It’s simply the way we live. And we think of John Paul
II; we think of Mother Teresa who modeled this so clearly for us.
See that’s our lifestyle. So I just wanted to place that out
before you, and share that vision with you, and for us to embrace
that together. If you would go to our home page here that has the
links on it, and maybe you could just hit that big link, MEV
homepage, so at least we can get into that homepage, and be sure
you can see all the links on the side there, about the lay
associates and our spirituality, we’re going to be going through a
number of these links, and I think they’ll be very helpful. It’s
one of the key things I want to do tonight is just go through some
of the main sections, and dispersed, in that time, will be various
people, who will have a sharing with us, about what it means to
them to be Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. I would like Amy
now, Amy Seltzer, who is a Missionary of the Gospel of Life from
New Mexico, just to share with us for a few minutes about what it
means for her to be a Missionary to the Gospel of Life. She’s a
mom, she’s a wife, and she’s working out her missionary lifestyle
in that way, in New Mexico. Amy, are you with us?
Interviewee 1: I am.
Interviewer:
Go ahead.
Interviewee: Good evening Jim
and everyone. Jim asked me to share the
meaningfulness of why
I made my promises and how it’s made a difference in how I live
out my daily life. When I made my Promises, the definition of my
life was changed as a stay at home mom with little ones. I don’t
get out much; I don’t interact with many adults, but making my
Promises, as a MEV, connected me with others who have the same
passion for human life I share. My day-to-day tasks were something
that I drudged my way through; they’re now part of my work as a
Missionary. And it’s all part of the work of the other MEVs. My
daily life is consecrated and this gives me a great joy, as well
as often the needed push that I need to keep going. And I really
wanted to encourage other “I’m stuck at home moms” out there, who
don’t think that they are called to the Missionaries, honestly I
think really all you have to do is read the encyclical, I’m just
going to refer to John Paul’s words, my job description is in this
encyclical. Paragraph 86, he says, “part of the daily heroism is
also the silent but effective and elegant witness of all those
brave mothers who devote themselves to their own family without
deserve. Who suffer in giving birth to their children, and who are
ready to make any effort to face any sacrifice in order to pass on
to them, the best of themselves.” He also goes on to describe
perfectly how I fulfill my mission as a MEV; he says “the domestic
church is a family that is summoned to proclaim, celebrate and
hear the Gospel of Life. And it is above all in raising children
that the family fulfills its mission to proclaim the Gospel of
Life.” And so I really wanted to just encourage women and fathers
as well who are at home, raising their children, that you don’t
have to be outside of the home doing anything else. If you are at
home, devoting yourself to your children, you’re already
fulfilling the call as a missionary. You don’t have to do anything
more! And so I really wanted to encourage others out there who
think this is not something that they’re able to do, because like
you said they can’t go stand outside of the abortuary; you don’t
have to. Yeah, when I get the opportunity, I’d love to, but I
understand and I embrace the fact that I am living out my mission
here in my home and I don’t have to go outside to do that.
Interviewer: Amy, that’s beautifully
articulated. We are so blessed to have you
as a member, and I
hope that the rest of our folks really hear this and would spread
the word to moms just like you. Because I have spoken with a
number of women who say that they can’t join the Association,
until their children are grown cause they’re just so busy at home,
and I say to them, just what you’ve been saying: hey this is your
mission, this is your ministry, it’s at the heart of the Gospel at
Life, we need you, and we need what you do. So you really model
that! I encourage you to continue to share your story and to call
other moms like yourself into the Missionaries of the Gospel of
Life. Thank you and God bless you.
Interviewee:
Thank you, Jim.
Interviewer: Let’s look
again: we’re on the home page of the Missionaries of the Gospel of
Life. You can hit the big link and open that…you’re looking at the
smaller links on the side of the page. If you’re there, on the
home page of the Missionaries, if you read down there a few lines,
you’ll see a link there that’s a sign up form. If you could just
hit that link “sign up form”, either on the side or on that page,
and so now it’s opened up. And I just want us to look at this
again. I mean many of us have filled this out and have mailed it
in, and that’s how we became registered members of the
Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. That meant that we were
registered, and that we were in Formation, because as soon as you
fill that out, you get a letter from me, and from Father Frank
telling you what your next steps are in terms of your Spiritual
Formation. If there are people listening in tonight and you’re
interested in the Missionaries, and you’ve not yet filled out this
registration form, you need to do this by the end of the night. So
make sure that you just fill in all the information here, you send
it in, and then you’ll get a letter back from us, telling us your
next steps. This registration form is not to be confused with what
we call the Assessment Form. And Ray Mooney in a minute or two is
going to share with us about that form. The Assessment Form --
which is not this form that we’re looking at, the registration
form or the sign in form -- is filled out after 10 months. And
Ray’s going to share that in a minute, but I don’t want you to be
confused between the two, because we have a number of people who
registered as Missionaries, who never went on to fill out the
Assessment Form, and you really do need to do that! But if you
haven’t ever even completed the registration form, the one we’re
looking at now, the one that says “sign up”, make sure you fill
this out tonight [and submit it], and share this form, this
registration form with others. If they’re interested in the
Missionaries, this is where you need to take them, to where it
says, ‘sign up form.’ So if you could go back now to the main page
of the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, you can click the big
link, or you can just press your arrow, but you should be back on
the homepage, and Ray Mooney, I want to call you in right now.
People like Ray Mooney and Sue Turner are special assistants to me
in terms of coordinating this effort of the Missionaries of the
Gospel of Life, and they’re absolutely incredibly valuable, and
their hearts are so for this ministry. Ray, are you on now?
Interviewee 2: I am, Jim.
Interviewer: Okay.
Interviewee 2:
Evening everybody. And Jim, thank you so much for the
opportunity to communicate some of my passion for the work that
we’re doing. I joined Priests for Life two years ago,
specifically to be a Missionary of the Gospel of Life and my
blessing is that I get to do this work full time. And I will just
mention that, if there are any questions that come up from what
I’m going to be talking about in terms of the Assessment Form, or
any of this process that follows after the form, you can email me
at RayM@priestforlife.org, and I’ll be very happy to get back to
you. Many of you I’ve already communicated with I’m sure, either
by phone or by email. I just wanted to give you a little update as
to where we’re at before I go into some of the details. We now
have 77 people who have made their Promises. And there are 1108
people who have registered to be a member of the Missionaries of
the Gospel of Life. Now just this month alone, and during the
month of August there will be 6 Promise Ceremonies, for a total of
10 people by this coming Saturday who will have made their
promises this month; these ceremonies are in New Hampshire,
Stafford and Solomon, Arizona, Northfield, Illinois, & White
Plaines New York. This coming Saturday, Father Wilde will be in
Capital, Wyoming, and he will receive the Promises of four people
there. So there’s a lot going on and also, of course, the online
community that we have, and I hope you are or will sign up for
that. But this is very important that we talk about the Assessment
Form and the importance of it. When you registered online with
Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, you are then in formation in
this organization. And, at about the 10-month mark, is when you
would fill out this Assessment Form. Actually, that’s when you
would send it in; you really should be filling out the Assessment
Form as you go. But you would be submitting it to Priests for
Life, roughly at your 10th-month of Formation mark. But these are
some of the things that you need to be doing now, either because
you’re new with the organization, or maybe you have been with us
for a year, or two years, or even three years, some of you have
been registered since the latter part of ’05, but many of you have
also joined recently, so for some of you, this is all going to be
a little bit redundant, maybe. But for others of you it’s going to
be brand new, so here’s where the questions may come from. But
what you will do, is click on where it says ‘Promises’ on the left
side there. The first thing you’re going to see here is the actual
Promise that you will make when you have your Ceremony, and you
can look at that a little bit later, perhaps. But what I want you
to do is click on the bottom of the page where it says ‘Assessment
Form.’ Now, although you can register with us online and submit
online, you must download the Assessment Form, fill it out, we ask
you really to hand write it, to print it, I should say, if your
handwriting is anything like mine, we really would prefer that you
print. But there are 32 questions on this Assessment Form, so we
ask you when you have filled it out to send it to the address at
Priest for Life that’s at the bottom of the form. But those 32
questions are broken down into some general questions; there’ll be
a few of those. There’ll also be a question about your prayer
discipline, about your study discipline, and your community
discipline. So when you have filled this all out and you send it
to us, that carries the process to the next step. Now, what are
these requirements that we’re talking about. In the manual that
virtually all of you have received, there’s a section in there
that says, “Lay Association requirements to make Promises.” And
these are some of the basics, I’m not going to try to read
everything; you can certainly go over these things. But one area
is fulfilling the prayer requirements. Jim prayed the first prayer
that we’re supposed to pray everyday, and then there’s a second
prayer that we’re supposed to pray every day, for us to do the
rosary as often as possible. If you can’t do it daily then as
often as possible. We ask you to do the First Friday pro-life
examination of conscious. We ask you to use the In The Palm of His
Hands prayer booklet, and/or the Magnificat or other things that
you can study, perhaps reading the Bible. But then there’s another
section that says fulfilling the study requirements. Now the study
requirements are really more involved in things like reading the
major documents that are part of our Association. But also we
would like everybody by the time they make their Promises to read
Evangelium Vitae, and the study guide that goes with that. Now if
you don’t have the study guide, again, let us know, you can order
these things from us. So these are just a few of the things that
we would ask you to be studying. We are also going to be studying
the Humanae Vitae and its associated study guide. So studying, you
can work on studying for several years at this point. But we want
to be sure that this is something that’s a habit that you develop.
Another area of fulfilling requirements is fulfilling your
community requirement. Are you a parishioner in good standing? We
think you should make your pastor aware of what you’re doing as
soon as you join up, not waiting until it’s time for him to fill
out a recommendation form. Let him know what you’re doing and why
it’s so important to you, and in fact if you get a little fire
built under your pastor, he may then help you recruit other people
in your parish. But the other community requirements would be that
you be active in a pro-life group and/or a Life Cell if there are
enough people in your area to be able to do that. One other area
of fulfilling requirements is in terms of Apostolic Witness. We
know the words ORA ET LABORA, well the time comes to, not just to
pray, not just to study but to do. And that’s what we’re talking
about in apostolic witness: that you go to abortuaries and pray,
or you start or involved in a pro life community in your parish,
and there you can be writing things from home, like letters to the
editor; there’s lots of different things that you can do. And of
course, if you do have other Missionaries in your area, it would
be great if you could be their mentor, especially if you’re the
ones who recruited them in the first place. So these are the
things that we’re asking you to fill out, the 32 questions that
you’re finding on that Assessment Form. Now when you finish that
and have it all done, please send that in to Priests for Life in
Staten Island. I will receive it; I will log that into our
database that we have received it. I will then make a copy of it
that will send the copy of your Assessment Form and the
recommendation form to your pastor. Now, even though you are
taking the Assessment Form off our website and filling it out, the
recommendation form is not on the website, it must be sent out
from Priests for Life, and I would be responsible for doing that,
and what I will normally do, if I have your pastor’s email
address, I will send him an email and copy you, letting him and
you know that this recommendation form is on it’s way, and I’ll
give him a little bit of background about what it is we’re doing
and things like that. But basically, when you get that, it
probably would be a good idea if you go to your pastor or at least
contact him, confirm that he knows it’s on it’s way, and then
maybe as soon as he gets it, if you could sit down with him for a
couple minutes and just kind of talk a little bit, the reason I
mention that is, many pastors are so busy that recommendation
forms go into a pile on his desk and if the pile gets bigger that
recommendation form gets lower and lower in the pile. I have had
many times to send out another copy of the recommendation form
because it gets lost. So in a nice way, please bug your pastor a
little bit, I don’t know how else to put it, but in a nice way of
course.
Interviewer: Can I come in at
this point please?
Interviewee 2: Yes
please do.
Interviewer: Thank you so much
for that overview, and for all of you on this
call tonight,
this is a real action step for you. What Ray has laid out for you
is absolutely key. You’ve heard the statistics: we got about 1000
people who’ve registered, and we have about 80 people who have
made Promises. We thank God for the 80 people who have made
Promises, but many more of us need to fill out that Assessment
Form, so if you’ve not done so, you’re assignment for tonight is,
download the Assessment Form, look it over, just as Ray has told
you, begin to fill it out, and at the 10 month point, mail it to
us, because we want you to be able to experience what the other 80
people have experienced making your Promises to protect life, to
do that in Association with the Missionaries of the Gospel of
Life, to receive added blessing to your mission and to your
ministry. But you can’t go forward with the Promises unless you
fill out the Assessment Form; so tonight, I’m calling upon you,
download the Assessment Form, begin to fill it out, mail it back
to the office, and then Ray will work on your making your
Promises, so Ray thank you very much for going over that.
Interviewee 2: Thank you.
Interviewer: Thank you, Ray. At this point, we have real
privilege: Father Frank
Pavon wanted very much to be a part of
this first national tele-seminar, our first Life Cell more
importantly, and so he’s here with us tonight and wanted to speak
a word to us. And he’s been a great blessing in many of our lives,
and I can tell you being a friend of his since 1993, and working
together with him, everything positive you hear about Father Frank
is true and more. So it’s a great blessing, Father Frank you’re
here with people all over the country, various countries, you are
an inspiration to us so we bless your life, we pray for you, and
Father Frank if you would share with us for a few minutes we’d
love to hear from you.
Interviewee 3:
Well thanks Jim and thanks for the commitment that you have to
this ministry and mission, and for doing such a great job as the
National Coordinator of the Lay Missionaries of the Gospel of
Life, and brothers and sisters, thanks for taking the time
tonight! It’s great that we can use this technology to be
together, and we intend to use it more frequently. We’ve been
using it in a number of arenas, including the activity that needs
to be mobilized across the country for our national elections.
We’ll be able to use it for mobilizations like the Silent No More
Awareness Campaign, Rachel’s Vineyard, and many other activities
of the pro-life movement that Priests for Life is either spear
heading or is involved in. Now, a couple of quick thoughts: first
of all, obviously, the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life is a
movement. Because there’s a charism in the Church for the defense
of human life, and the movement that springs from that charism,
from that gift of the Spirit is a movement that’s shaped by the
tragedy of our times, that the abortion holocaust continues, and
that therefore it evokes this response from the people of God. I
often say to people, if the leadership of the pro life movement,
by some strange twist, wanted to stop the pro-life movement, they
wouldn’t be able to do so, because the pro-life movement doesn’t
exist because leaders stand up and call it into existence, it
arises from the very depths of the human spirit, and especially
when that spirit has embraced the Holy Spirit and has by faith in
Christ begun to participate in a life of God, there’s no way that
the striving for life, that this movement consists of, can ever be
dampened or turned off. So you and I, all of us here on this call,
so many others who join with us in many ways, are part of this
tremendous movement. The movement within the Church then is
supported by different structures, and therefore in these last few
years we’ve been blessed to have the approval and blessing of the
church; to have this structure of the Missionaries of the Gospel
of Life. I want to bring you the greetings and the encouragement
of the Bishop of Amarillo, Bishop Patrick Zurich. As you know,
Bishop John Yanta was the one who initially approved Missionaries
of the Gospel of Life and brought me to Amarillo from New York, so
that we could start this work, and now Bishop Yanta has been
replaced by Bishop Zurich. Bishop Zurich is tremendously
encouraging and is fully in support of what is happening here with
the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. I talked to him just very
recently and was just in email correspondence with him today, and
he wants to assure all of you of his blessing, of his
encouragement, and of his desire, as a bishop to do everything he
can, to see to it that this ministry continues to grow. That is
because he recognizes the same thing, that this is a movement,
it’s more than just a particular structure within the Church.
Speaking of that structure, I do want to give you an update of
what the bishop and I and many of our advisors have been talking
about and one sort of behind the scenes change or under the hood
change, if you will. It doesn’t in any way effect anything that
we’re doing in terms of the mission or the Promises or anything
that Jim and Ray have just described, everything is exactly as it
has been from the beginning. But you know when we started the
Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, one of the things we wrestled
with, and that I personally wrestled with quite a bit, was whether
there should there be one or two separate entities that provide
the canonical infrastructure, if you will, for this movement to go
forward. In other words, Priests for Life existed as an
Association since 1991, and continues to grow in it’s own right,
and the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life was established as a
separate entity, and I was really from the beginning, advocating
that well, this is really one and the same thing, because it is
the same mission, it’s the same ministry, it’s the same
spirituality, it’s the same charism. And so we started, however,
with two different entities. Now, under Bishop Zurich, we have
been evaluating the growth and the ministry and the mission, and
in conjunction with all our advisors in the church, the decision
has been made mutually that we should have a single entity, the
Association that would be called -- and the Bishop loves the name
-- Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, and he said that the name
Missionaries of the Gospel of Life actually embraces everything
that we’re doing, not only with you, our lay associates, but also
with the priests themselves, because after all, priests are
missionaries by their ordination, and all of us are Christians,
and missionaries therefore, by our very baptism. The bottom line
is this: That the Association that you join when you make your
Promises is not a separate entity from the Association of Priests
for Life, but rather, a single entity an ASSOCIATION OF THE
FAITHFUL in the Church, and the Promises that the priests would
make who want to come and work with us on a full time basis, and
the Promises that the lay associates make embody the same
spirituality, the very same charism. And we’re going to use the
names interchangeably: Priests for Life, Missionaries for the
Gospel of Life, because again, “missionaries” is actually the more
inclusive term, it includes priests and laity. So, that’s the
canonical shift and the bishop and all those who advise us are
convinced that this is the best way for this work to continue to
grow, because it was starting to cause a little bit of confusion
as to, among people, as to whether the mission and the ministry
and the spirituality are the same, as what we have in Priests for
Life, then what is the difference, or what is the distinction, or
why do we have different entities. So then, once again I convey to
you the bishop’s encouragement, his full support, and that of many
different people. One of the people who has been very much behind
this and was at the inauguration ceremony for the Missionaries of
the Gospel of Life is Cardinal Renaldo Martino. He is the
President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the
Vatican, and also is in charge of another council there that deals
with migrant peoples. And the Cardinal used to be the Holy
Father’s Observer at the United Nations here in New York, and
that’s how we came to know him over the years. He too, sends his
strong support, his gratitude for the work and the commitment that
all of you have and demonstrate, and he is ready and willing and
is actively helping us even at the levels of the Vatican, to
continue to grow, especially on the international level, which is
a growing part of our work. So thank you again, Jim, thanks to all
of you, I look forward to hearing our other panelists tonight, and
God bless each and every one of you, I look forward to keeping in
close contact with you as the weeks and months go on.
Interviewer: Thank you, Father. Well
Missionaries, let’s look for a time at the
Spirituality that
Father Frank has shared with us. If you can go to the Missionaries
of the Gospel of Life webcast page, again the big link there on
your page will take you to our home page again, and you’ll see the
side links. If you can click on “spiritual disciplines” again
that’s on the homepage, the side links, and so let’s click on that
now, “spiritual disciplines” and again, these disciplines and the
spiritual components, and the Promises that we make, are in a
sense, what makes us unique in terms of the way we work out our
missionary spirit. And so the four Spiritual Disciplines, you
should be very familiar with these, on the site, are: prayer,
study, community, and witness. And as you look there, you don’t
have to do it right now, but if you were to click on each link,
there would be a teaching, a larger teaching for prayer, study,
community and witness. If you go to study, and if you were to
click on that link, and let’s do that now, study, it opens up, and
it gives you some of the various items that we’re supposed to be
involved with, our studies: the Sacred Scriptures; if you scroll
down there, take scriptures, the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
encyclicals, lives and teaching of the saints, spiritual devotions
of pro life materials, and so on. If you just click the back arrow
and go back, or go back to the homepage, and you look, it says
“study,” look at that study again, that short paragraph, and it
says Evangelium Vitae, the Gospel of Life. If you can click on
that, that brings up another page that says a message for our
times. Evangelium Vitae, that encyclical by John Paul II is really
our marching orders, and so that’s the key thing that we have to
read first, is Evangelium Vitae, and there is the study guide that
you can order, or it’s right online, so if you’ve clicked on that
link, to the Gospel of Life, the second link down there, it’s says
the spiritual guide to the encyclical by the clergy and pastoral
associates of Priests for Life. If you click on that, that opens
up and that will give you the study guide that we did, the
pastoral associates of Priests for Life, it outlines it, and it
has some questions for you for each chapter of Evangelium Vitae,
and so you can study right online. If you go back to the homepage
again, of the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, make sure you’re
on Spiritual Disciplines, we’ve looked at prayer and study, and
community, and witness, and then at the bottom of that page, on
spiritual disciplines, there’s a link that says, “Our
spirituality.” Click on that please, and that will open up the key
components of our Spirituality. And again, this is what makes us
unique, and so we have a biblical emphasis: we love the holy
Scriptures, we study the Scriptures, we look for the pro life
teaching all throughout the Scriptures, the Bible is a teaching on
life. We are prophetic, liturgical, Eucharistic, the Eucharist is
life Itself, and therefore our spirituality is centered on the
Bread of Life. We’re ecumenical, we have a deep longing for the
Church of Christ to be unified, we want to work with our Christian
brothers and sisters to declare life, and we see that happening so
beautifully with the 40 Days for Life, and the other ministries of
Priests for Life, that Priests for Life is involved with, and
we’re Marian. So you are to read over those components, those
teachings, and I can tell you there was a time when I first came
into the Missionaries, that every day I would say each one of
those components: we’re liturgical, we’re Eucharistic, we’re
ecumenical. And then we have the Virtues of the Missionaries. A
spirit of joy, a serene confidence, a deep passion, a radical
solidarity, a strong courage, a constant readiness for public
witness, and a passion for justice. I strongly recommend to you,
to study those each day, maybe to say them each day until they
really get inside of you. These are the powers that we want to
impose in ourselves; they also pose questions to us, you know. Am
I really in radical solidarity? Do I really have courage? Am I
really passionate about this? Am I ready for public witness? And I
have to ask myself those things when I really look into myself,
and say look, He’s worked this in me, please help me, Lord, to
work these into my children, to bring these to my kids, to my
grandkids, to other people. If we’re not working out the
spirituality, then I think we’re really missing the unique aspect
of what it means to be a Missionary to the Gospel of Life, and
these would be excellent for a Life Cell to study and so I really
can’t recommend it more strongly to you, and also that outline is
wonderful even for teachings with people who aren’t Missionaries
of the Gospel of Life, for your local pro life committee, parish,
or if you’re asked to give a teaching someplace, you can just go
through this wonderful teaching, the Spirituality of the
Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. People don’t have to become
part of our Association to hear about this beautiful and solid
spirituality that we have. So you can go back to the homepage of
the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, if you would. and just
stay there for a moment, and I want to introduce another
Missionary of the Gospel of Life, Paul Simoneau, from Knoxville,
Tennessee. Paul is just a wonderful man and dad and father of
many, and he is the director for the Office of Justice and Peace,
the Diocese of Knoxville, and the Missionaries of the Gospel of
Life is just really growing wonderfully there, so Paul if you can
give a little testimony about your being a Missionary and what it
means to you and how it’s working it’s way out; Paul?
Interviewee 4: Yeah, sure, thank you very much
Jim, I appreciate it, and hello to
Ray and Father, and
everyone. I know two years ago when I came on board at the
Diocese, almost immediately two individuals came forward and spoke
to me about the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life -- Mike _, Lisa
_ -- and I really knew at that point, just based on again, the
whole organization of the Association, that this was something
that would provide structure. It would help to provide unity
within the diocese as a rallying point for the various pro-life
entities in the various parish groups and greater areas. And
having retired from the Marine Corps I’ve always been very close
to a sense of mission whenever I set out on anything, and I could
really feel the fact that this meant a mission. And this provided
unity of effort, what we call today “solidarity” in our Catholic
social teachings, to fulfill virtue and of principles, and based
on that, I realized that this was something that we needed to
present to the Bishop, and the Bishop was very open to it and
really embraced it and I think that many of the priests of
believing in this effort. Unfortunately our Archbishop transferred
to the arch diocese of Louisville, good for them, unfortunate for
us, but none the less, it is his caveat that allowed us to start,
and I must say that it’s really had an impressive formation
quality within the diocese, because we do have a unity of effort
that would not exist outside the structure that the Missionaries
of the Gospel of Life provide. And particularly, not just the
virtues that we are called to practice, but again, the four
Spiritual Disciplines of prayer, study, community, and apostolic
witness, certainly prayer was all learning that unless we really
use this, we’re not going to venture very far. And we have to do
more than an inch deep and a mile wide in our faith, we have to be
able to be out there with a well informed Catholic faith, because
we can see that we have lots of areas… No one needs to think more
than just the last few days ago, Nancy Pelosi, her comments about
when life begins and where the Church stands on that issue. So,
study is so important. Again, just that aspect of community and
apostolic witness. We definitely, the second Vatican Council noted
a generation ago, that there was a split between the faith and
living it out in daily lives, we counted among the more serious
errors of our age. And the MEV basically helps them mend that
split. And we all have that specific vocation, to speak to others,
by engaging in global affairs, and ordering them according to the
plan of God. We have to see our daily activities as an occasion to
join ourselves to God and to serve His will, to serve other
people, to lead them to a community with God and Christ and be a
witness for life, and present a correct answer to Christian
apologetics. And the MEV is a vehicle for that, so I am just
ecstatic at what it has brought to our diocese, the way it has
brought community, and I encourage everyone out there, if your
diocese is lukewarm on it, tell them wait, you’ll see the fruits
that come from the structure association. Thank you very much Jim,
and Ray and Father, I appreciate the opportunity to say a few
words.
Interviewer: Paul, thank you so
very much. You are a real model for the
Missionaries and the
extension of the Life Cells all throughout the Diocese of
Knoxville. It’s something that we all can learn from, so Paul
Simoneau is someone that we can really rely upon to help instruct
us on how to help the Missionaries to move throughout the diocese
that we’re located in. Again, on our main site right now, let’s
just look at a few things, and I want to look at the link on
Letters, again it’s not your large link, it’s on the Missionaries
homepage on the side, if you can just click on Letters, and we now
have titles on all of the letters that I’ve written over the last
couple of years or so, and these are just excellent teachings on
various aspects of the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life.
Tonight, when I began our time, I spoke about the Missionaries
being an Association, having a mission and a lifestyle, and if you
were to look, if you just scroll down on the letters page and you
went to June 2007, so that would be towards the end, June 2007.
You’ll see the link there that says “casting the vision,
association, mission, and lifestyle.” You don’t have to click on
that right now, but if you did, you’d have the teaching written
out, and you would have a video, with me teaching on the vision of
the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. Likewise, Ray has spoken
to us about making your Promises, and if you were to look at March
2007 on our letters, March 2007, scroll down till you get to the
2007 of March, you’ll see “Promise, process with a video” and then
January 2007, “Promises, making your Promises.” So, you’ve got
teachings on what Ray shared tonight, you have teachings on it,
you have a video on it, explaining it to you, helping you to share
it with other people, so I hope that you’ll go to the Letters link
regularly, and that you would go through the teachings that are
there on the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. If you could now
on the side there, of the page that you’re looking at, we’ve gone
to letters, let’s go just for a moment to ‘Order Materials.’ So
link on the site, “order materials” just click on that, and then
once you get into that section, it says “view and order
Missionaries of the Gospel of Life products.” Now Priests for Life
has so many wonderful products, but we have our own section of key
things that you need to have in the Missionaries of the Gospel of
Life, so if you could click where it says clicking here, and then
that opens up in particular to our Missionary of the Gospel of
Life products. Okay, hope that’s opened up for you and you see our
brochure which is being updated, we should have a good supply of
those, scroll down. You’ll see our latest study guide, we have the
study guide series with Priests for Life and our latest one is
Humanae Vitae which celebrates an anniversary this year. And this
is just excellent for the fall season in church. It has contained
within it, the encyclical itself, plus the study with questions
chapter by chapter, and our Associates have all contributed to
that. Scroll down, you’ve got the prayer card with the Prayer of
Consecration which we prayed at the beginning, and the Prayer to
End Abortion on the other side of it. And that’s critical in
uniting us together, I’m counting on you every day to say those
two prayers, I think about you and I pray for you. There’s the
study guide on Evangelium Vitae, if you scroll down again that’s
online. All of our studies are online as well as you can order
them. And then you’ve got our prayer booklet, In the Palm of His
Hand, I just used that again today, for the Litany to End
Abortion. The litany to end abortion is included in that, it’s
absolutely wonderful and you can use it with whatever group,
ecumenical groups, it is incredibly powerful and moving, that
litany, so that’s one of the prayers that’s in there. And then of
course our Manual, which is being updated, another brochure and
then Living the Gospel of Life, again that’s the U.S. Bishops
work, based on Evangelium Vitae. The American Bishops wrote Living
the Gospel of Life, we have study guides to go with that. So
please be familiar with those materials and make sure you’ve got a
good supply of those items. Let’s go to our homepage, not to the
Missionaries, but the page that has the other links on them, hope
that you see that you got the big link, MEV homepage, you’ve got
Priests for Life homepage, Assessment Form, and Jim’s letters.
Let’s go to Priests for Life homepage, PriestsforLife.org. I hope
you’re on that homepage now, and we’ve just redone this homepage,
I hope you’re using it, it’s something that you should be going to
every day, because this is really updated continually and of
course as Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, we’re in a special
place, of trying to really hear clearly what Father’s asking us to
do, and what’s happening in the country at any particular time,
the prayers we need to be praying, the activities we might want to
be involved with, and that’s a special call to us as Missionaries
of the Gospel of Life. We’re giving ourselves to this Association
in a special way. We’re making Promises to bring a Culture of
Life, and to end abortion with this particular Spirituality, that
Father Frank is the founder of this ministry, so please, be very
familiar with that homepage. As you are looking at it, you can see
there, all the links up top. If you want to click on any of those,
and don’t click on them right now, but you see the Missionaries of
the Gospel of Life icon with the cross, and with the feet, our
emblem that will get you right to the website and the rest of the
sites that are there. Rachel’s Vineyard, Silent No More, African
American outreach and so on, and on the left hand side, just below
all of that, you see a novena of Mother Teresa, a 9 weeks of
prayer for the elections, so there’s an election novena, and so I
want you to be familiar with all of that. In particular right now,
if you would go to the icon that says “political responsibility”,
it’s a big icon, Priests for Life and then right below that, is to
the right, ‘political responsibility’ I think that’s the capital
building, click on that if you would. I’m not going to spend a lot
of time on political responsibility because Father Frank, I think
that was his last teleconference and he got into that. I hope
yours is opening up, but you should see there our voters guide,
and so I want you to be aware of that, I want you to download some
of those, use them as you see fit with your own family and
friends, and if you get permission by your pastor to put them out,
you can do that. There are even some bishops that might say, ‘hey
it’s fine with me.’ But I want you to be aware of that and use
that, it’s well laid out. It has been looked over thoroughly by
attorneys who understand that it doesn’t violate any particular
principles in endorsing candidates, so I just wanted you to be
aware of that. And so you can just click back now if you would, to
the homepage for the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. At this
point, I’d like Sue Turner, Sue if you would come on, we’re just
getting ready to close out here in a few minutes now, and Sue if
there’s anything you’d like to touch on with our people, please do
so. Sue?
Interviewee: Well thank you Jim,
I just wanted to take a couple minutes to talk
to everybody,
we’ve had an awful lot of terrible news about the culture of death
lately, and sometimes you kind of get really angry or you just
want to give up. And so what I wanted to do is just mention some
different options instead of those two. Some things we can
actually do in our own parishes to counter the culture of death.
These are, we’re trying to produce a ‘cookbook’ of sorts, that
we’re going to put together on the community site, of various
ideas that everybody has tried in their own parishes and have had
success with. I was just going to mention a couple of those right
now. One of these ideas is a ‘basket ministry’, which we received
from one of our missionaries in Atlanta. If this is approved by
your pastor, basically you take a nice basket, and you fill it
with precious feet pins, pro-life buttons, pro-life brochures,
small bumper stickers, pro-life envelope labels, maybe some fact
sheets that you make up yourself, real facts about abortion or
pregnancy resources in your area, and then just keep refilling it
as it empties. It’s a very easy way for people to go and just pick
things up if they don’t want to be identified as pro-life, but
they start thinking about it, and start doing something about it,
and it’s a wonderful ministry. That’s the basket ministry. Another
thing, we were starting to run into with gas prices, and people’s
busy, busy schedules, is that it’s hard to get people together for
a prayer group. People are trying to start Cenacles of Life, and
other kinds of prayer groups, and it’s hard to get everybody
together. So one of our wonderful associates here in Alabama came
up with the ‘Window of Time’ Prayer. And so basically, Father
Pavone approved this, if you can’t get everybody together in one
place at the same time, give them 4 hours, a block of 4 hours on a
particular day that they commit to be in prayer during that 4
hours in unity with all the rest of you. So that’s something that
can be done, it’s a wonderful idea, and you may have to call them
for a few weeks to make sure that they kind of get in the groove,
but it’s a good idea for getting everybody together. Also this
fall, we have 3 fantastic pro-life projects going on that you and
your church pastor, parish can get involved in. These would
include the 40 Days for Life, which begins September 24th, and if
you haven’t heard of it, go to 40, the number 4-0 Days for Life,
spelled out, .com. 40DaysforLife.com, and it’s a fantastic prayer
and fasting, prayer vigil, and community outreach project. Another
one is the Public Square Rosary Rallies, which are being conducted
through the American Needs Fatima group, AmericaNeedsFatima.org
website. The Public Square Rosary Rally, will be held on October
11th. There are over 2,700 rallies already scheduled around the
country. And a third possible activity would be Life Chains. Life
Chain is another ecumenical thing, like 40 Days for Life, where
people carry a sign, no picture, but just signs that say things
like, “abortion kills children.” And everybody goes and stands
along the sidewalk of a busy highway, praying, silently. Life
Chains, there are over 1000 of these expected throughout the
country during October, and you can go to LifeChain.net. These are
all wonderful opportunities for you and your parish to get
involved, and if you have ideas of your own, now that we’ve given
you some, send them to us. Contact Missionary@ PriestsforLife.org,
and tell us what you’re doing in your parishes, and we’ll put all
of these up on the website.
Interviewer:
Sue, thank you so much for a summary of ways people can be even
more involved in pro-life work. Your assignment tonight in
particular, good people, is to, if you’ve not registered for the
Missionaries, that you would register tonight. If you’ve not
filled out your Assessment Form, that you would download it and
begin to fill it out tonight, we’re hoping that we’ll get scores
of Assessment Forms back in. We pray that you would also share
with others how they can register, that you encourage people in
your locations to fill out their Assessment Forms and get them in,
and so it’s been a great night, and we especially bless those
who’ve tuned in from other countries, we want to hear from you, we
want this Association to grow throughout the world. I want to
close with a, it’s a hymn, but I want to make it a prayer, and
then I’ll ask Father Pavone if he’s still with us to give us a
blessing, it goes like this: the setting sun now dies away, and
darkness comes at close of day. Your brightest beams, dear Lord
impart, and let them shine within our heart. We praise Your Name
with joy, this night, please watch and guide us till the light.
Joining the music of the blessed, oh Lord, we sing ourselves to
rest. As God the Father and God the Son, and the Holy Spirit three
in one. Trinity blessed, whom we adore, we praise in glory
evermore. Father if you’re still here, could you come in and give
us a blessing?
Interviewee 3: Yes sure.
And may the Lord bless each and every one of you,
with the
strength, the courage, and the joy that marks His disciplines as
you build the culture of life. In the Name of the Father and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Interviewer: Thank you so much, Father. Good night
everyone, we look
forward to having more of these National
Life Cells, we hope to hear from you. God bless you, good night.
Interviewee 1: Hey thanks Jim, appreciate
it.
[End]
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