+ + + Sign of the Crossing + + +

John Walton asked me about my response to a book by Pat Buchanan. I have not read that specific book, but I want to respond to the ideas that John sketched from the book. 1.        A picture of the Catholic Church. I was delighted to take part in World Youth Day 2000, the last one that Pope John Paul II sponsored and attended. About 2.3 million young men and women from around the world gathered in Rome for a week of prayer and praise and teaching and meeting. It was glorious. In Rome, the age of the Church is visible and tangible; you can pick a century and go take a look at something from that time. I loved San Clemente, where there’s a church built on top of a church built on top of a temple – approx. dates reaching back 400 years, 15 centuries, and 21 centuries. The canon of the Mass begins with a Roman declaration praising God always and everywhere: “It is right and just.” When my father was at Harvard, the chaplain of the Harvard Catholic Studen...

The seamless garment idea has roots. In the mid-1980s, Juli Loesch build an organization she called Prolifers for Survival. “P.S.”: may I add a thought. She traveled across the country by bus, and built chapters in every part of the country. P.S. was small, but it was everywhere. Most of the people involved in the leadership of the organization were also involved in prolife nonviolent action (later called rescues). Juli was later the press liaison for Operation Rescue in Atlanta. I edited the P.S. newsletter, and I helped start prolife nonviolent action in 50 states plus Australia and Korea and Latin America and Europe. Harry Hand moved from New York to live with my family – and to help build two groups, P.S. and the Prolife Nonviolent Action Project. Carol Crossed gave generously to build P.S., organized conferences for it – and organized the sit-in at which Dan Berrigan was arrested at the door of an abortion clinic. Mary Rider, P.S. coordinator for years, was also active in the res...