Sen. Kristen Gillibrand  202-224-4551
Sen. Chuck Schumer  202-224-6542

Tell them to vote YES for the Blunt Amendment. Click here for more information.

]]> http://rocklandrtl.org/2012/02/23/urge-the-u-s-senate-to-protect-religious-freedom/feed/ 0 rocklandrtl Screen shot 2012-02-22 at 8.45.14 PM http://rocklandrtl.org/2012/02/23/40-days-for-life-day-1-prayer-power/ http://rocklandrtl.org/2012/02/23/40-days-for-life-day-1-prayer-power/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:12:55 +0000 rocklandrtl http://rocklandrtl.org/?p=1269 Continue reading →]]> Click to view slideshow.

What a gorgeous day God gave us to begin praying for the community to be Planned Parenthood-Free!

We begin with a beautiful prayer by our Vicar of Rockland County, Monsignor Weber.

We were so blessed to have our guitarist and three wonderful children from St. Joseph’s on drums and violin. The music was spiritually uplifting!

We prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet and The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary. How incredible to see the youth coming and praying for LIFE! We are called to be a voice for the most innocent among us — the baby in the womb.

We know the truth — America is founded upon the INALIENABLE RIGHT TO LIFE. We are standing on Holy Ground — The Planned Parenthood Prayer Site.

For 40 Days, we will be the hope for those who feel they have no choice. NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD.

PLEASE TAKE ONE HOUR A WEEK — email Rachelminister@aol.com or call 845-492-6709

40 Days of Prayer to End Abortion

Daily February 22 to April 1
9 am to 5 pm
Near the Planned Parenthood Office Perlman Drive, Spring Valley
6 pm to 8 am
St. Gregory Barbarigo Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Chapel
Cinder Road, Garnerville  

Soon the David vs. Goliath story will  play out again in Rockland on a little strip of public land in Spring Valley as faithful volunteers take their stand against the giant abortion establishment and Planned Parenthood in the 40 Days For Life.

After so many years of legalized abortion, it may seem that Planned Parenthood and the pro-abortion forces — like Goliath, the giant Phillistine warrior in the Bible — are  unstoppable.

But you know you have to do something. Otherwise, even more little ones will be lost to the culture of death. So, this year, take a leap of faith and join with the “Davids” on Perlman Drive, by the Spring Valley Marketplace, near the strip mall where the Planned Parenthood office is.

All you need to do is give one hour a week to stand with other prolifers and pray. It’s a vigil of peace. In this battle, your only “weapons” are your prayers and your love.

God will provide the rest.

I’m sure you know how the David and Goliath story turned out. So you may not be surprised to learn what the 40 Days for Life campaign has accomplished since it began in 2007.

• 1,633 campaigns have taken place in 422 cities. More than half a million volunteers have joined together in a historic display of unity to fast and pray for an end to abortion.
• Reports document 5,045 lives that have been spared from abortion — and those are just the ones we know about.
• 61 abortion workers have quite their jobs and walked away from the abortion industry.
• 21 abortion facilities completely shut down following local 40 Days for  Life campaigns.

Lives have been saved here in Rockland because some people — like you — were there. Give God a chance to work through you. Come to the 40 Days for Life.

For more information about the Rockland 40 Days for Life or to sign up, call 845-492-6709 or email RachelMinister1@aol.com.

To find out more about the national 40 Days for Life campaign, click here.

Below are two links to stories and photos we’ve posted about past 40 Days’ vigils in Rockland. To find more, just search for “40 Days” in the box at the top of the homepage.

October 2011, Week 4

March 2009, Prayer Vigil Ends

“Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act each of us will be required by law to obtain health insurance, or face fines. Since this HHS mandate will require every insurer to include abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and artificial contraception, we will not be able to obtain any coverage that is free from those ‘services,’ and we will be forced to pay for them directly. Since we are neither employers, nor employees, of any religious institution, we cannot even take advantage of the ‘religious exemption’ contained in the new regulations or the ‘compromise.’ “

Click to read the entire statement:  Sisters of Life Response to the HHS Mandate

The Sisters invite you to join with them in prayer and fasting that our Nation will be protected against this great threat against liberty.

“We marched that day surrounded by many young people, we marched with hope in our hearts, rain and cold did not stop us, 400,000 strong.”

Click here for passionate editorial by Alice Avenia Ossa. It was published in the Rockland County Times on February 2.

• Camp Esther and Oratory Contest for prolife teens
• National Right to Life priorities for 2012
• March for Life 2012

Description of video images: We began our Journey at 6:10 am on a sleety, cold, Monday morning.

Jerry Moriarity led us in the Joyful Mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary. We prayed for a safe journey (Jeff is our bus driver) and for God to turn our beloved country of America from death to LIFE.

Father Antonio Astudillo from St. John the Baptist in Piermont prayed the Finding of Our Lord Jesus in the Temple in Spanish. 

When we arrived in Washington, we found John from the other bus from St. Francis of Assisi getting ready!

Our bus from St. Gregory was full and ready!

WITH SO MANY YOUNG PEOPLE, BEAUTIFUL WOMEN, AND MEN!

We got our banner ready.  Thank you, JOE!

ROCKLAND COUNTY IS PROLIFE

Michael’s sign tells us that we must all vote PRO-LIFE!

God Bless Our Wonderful Knights of Columbus!

Hundreds of Thousands of people were everywhere!

We saw many signs like this.

Here are Max and I.

There were a lot of DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD signs

Look who we found~ Joe Troy, President of ALBERTUS MAGNUS HIGH SCHOOL!

YOU UPLIFT US ALL!

GO LIFE!

Pray for our priests.

Alice brings this sign every year.

Even in the sleeting rain and cold, babies were everywhere.

WE SHALL OVERCOME!

Real feminists don’t kill babies.

Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Multitudes of Youth

Mass at the Cathedral.

PRAYER POWER FOR LIFE

Going home, Michael serves all of us cookies.

At the end of the journey -- The Rockland marchers at the Supreme Court

At 5:30 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 23, we began to gather — at Albertus Magnus High School and in the parking lots of Saint Gregory’s and Saint Francis’s Church.

It was dark, raining lightly and just about freezing. The roads threatened to be icy, but for the most part they weren’t. But no matter the weather, the prolife marchers from Rockland would be there. And so we head south to Washington, D.C., three buses among hundreds coming from all points of the compass, converging on the National Mall. There we’ll speak one message with one voice: Abortion must end. 

For anyone making this trip for the first time, the March for Life is a revelation. Getting up and out at 5:00 a.m. is a very early start, but the ride to D.C. is full of camaraderie, with everyone in this together, determined to make our voices heard, Yet we recognize that without God’s help, evil will not be overcome. And so, we pray the rosary together on the bus, this year saying the decades alternately in English and Spanish.

Some of us read or talk with someone we didn’t know before this morning and some of us sleep. We enjoy a break at a rest stop in Delaware, and before long we’re getting off the bus just blocks from the National Mall.

We put our now iconic Rockland Right to Life banner together. It’s a wonderful concoction by the late Tom Niblo – and getting the poles and banner together is our first challenge in D.C. each year. Walking to the Mall we see other banners from Pennsylvania and Missouri and North Carolina. People shout hello to the “New Yawka’s” and one man, happy to strike a note of introduction, tells me he lived in New York before moving to Massachusetts.

We choose a place on the edge of the Mall and claim it for Rockland Right to Life. We make our stand here. The program has just started, just some 400 yards from us. The stage is huge, like at a major rock concert, and the voices of the speakers carry out across thousands and thousands of prolife faithful.

It’s now that the magnitude of this event becomes apparent. All these members of Congress, mostly men and women whose names we don’t know, are sticking their necks out and standing against the pro‑abortion crowd, those who hold so much of the power in Washington. These are the largely invisible heroes in the Congress. And, in some way, most of us are like them in our invisibility.

For example, who among these do you know? Who among these is a household name?

•  Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) said, “Every life is a precious gift from God.”
•  Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) said it was time to “conquer the culture of death and spread the culture of life” in America.
• Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb) said the Obama administration was “at war” with “people who believe in the sanctity of life.”
• Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) has co‑sponsored several pro-life bills, including H.R. 361, the Abortion Non‑Discrimination Act, which would clarify a “conscience clause” provision to prohibit federal and state/local governments receiving federal funds from discriminating against healthcare providers and organizations that refuse to participate in abortion-related activities due to moral or religious convictions. There were four Democratic Congressmen co‑sponsoring this bill.

Of course, there were speakers we all know, like John Boehner (R‑OH), Speaker of the House, and Chris Smith (R‑NJ), Chairman of the Congressional Pro‑Life Caucus, but it’s inspiring to hear from those who quietly support prolife positions in bills each day.

In that regard, many of us on the March for Life are like them.  Nothing heroic here, but I found it inspiring to know that so many of us at the March for Life are committed to the prolife cause every day even if we aren’t active volunteers in our local Right to Life group.  I met one young man who was articulate and entirely supportive of the prolife cause, but he can’t volunteer to do more right now.  Two ladies from Cleveland weren’t able to stand out in the weather and then march from the Mall to the Supreme Court, but they came all the way from Ohio to the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception and prayed that one day the right to an abortion would be no more.

Bro. Jorge Mateos and Rev. Francisco Sandoval, Order of the Augustinian Recollects, from the Tagaste Monastery in Suffern

Our bus ride home felt good.  We had added our presence and our voices to the hundreds of thousands who came to Washington to stand for life, to oppose the culture of death and to let the nation know that we will never be silent.

Having returned home now, some of us will take up the cause in a new way by volunteering to help the Right to Life cause at home.  For others, that time will come later.  But all of us who went to Washington for this March for Life have been inspired by the breadth and depth of this movement: families, adults of all ages, and children and teenagers who truly are the faces of the future.

The Right to Life March is something you must experience.  It’s something most of us can do, even if we go only to the Basilica like those two ladies from Cleveland.  And for many who cannot, you can still be part of this event through prayer at home while watching on EWTN.  When we march together, we realize we’re part of something very much bigger than ourselves , and by joining with us in the  spiritual bond of your thoughts and prayers, you’re part of it too.

At the Rally for Life at the National Mall, before the March begins.

It all begins at the National Mall.

From every state in the union, hundreds of thousands of prolifers — some of whom have been on the road for days – surge toward this gathering point, where the March for Life will begin.

Here they assemble for the grand opener for the March — the Rally for Life – where the speakers – statesmen, religious leaders, and giants in the prolife movement – give eloquent voice to why we’re all here.

This year the rally began with a joint opening prayer for our nation by Roman and Orthodox Catholic bishops. Then Nelly Gray, who founded the March for Life in 1974, welcomed the crowd.

The first speaker was Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio). He stressed the bipartisan nature of the prolife movement – that being prolife is not a political decision, or a matter of being Republican or Democrat. Rather, it’s a matter of conscience; it’s who you are. He called on everyone to raise their voices together in defense of life.

Next came Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Co-Chair of the Congressional Prolife Caucus, who took on Pres. Obama, whom he called “the most extreme pro-abortion president ever.” Smith said that Obama, in his State of the Union address, will call on the people to “return  to American values.”

“Killing babies is not an American value,” Smith said. Referring to the recent HHS ruling that Catholic hospitals and nonprofits must provide employee health insurance that covers sterilization and contraception, including drugs that work after conception to induce abortions, Smith demanded that Obama stop violating conscience rights and religious freedom.

He said in this upcoming election, “failure to unite, is not an option” for prolifers when faced with a second term for the Obama administration, which uses the “power of the state to compel conformity to abortion.”

Among the other congresspersons who spoke were Dan Lipinski, a prolife Democrat from Illinois and the other co-chairman of the Congressional Prolife Caucus, and Eric Cantor (R-Va.) the House Majority Leader who called for the defunding of Planned Parenthood and protection of conscience rights for those who oppose abortion.

Also on the platform was Chris Bell from the Good Counsel Homes. Many of you may remember Chris from the Concert for Life which was held at the Marian Shrine last November for the benefit of the Good Counsel Home for mothers and babies in Spring Valley.

Chris talked about the necessity of helping for mothers before, during, and after birth. He announced a new partnership among maternity homes around the country and invited anyone who needed help, or who was interested in finding out more or becoming a part of this project, to send him an email at maternityhomes@gmail.com.

Abortion was not the only topic. “Euthanasia follows abortion like night follows day,” said Colin Raye and Bobby Schindler of the Terry Schiavo Life & Hope Network. They called on the audience not to forget the brain-injured, the terminally ill, the mentally disabled, and the elderly, whose right to life was threatened.

The final speaker was Rev. Luke Robinson, pastor of Quinn Chapel AME Church in Frederick, Md. He focused on the abortion within the black community and decried the fact that 60% of pregnancies among African Americans in New York City end in the death of children.

An African American himself, he said this was genocide – a tragedy for America and the African American people.

He asked why leaders like Jesse Jackson, and New York’s senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who should be protectors of minorities, were silent on this issue. He suggested that the “blood money” from the abortion industry had bought their silence.

He said that in November, “we must take this nation back. We must work to defeat this administration. Enough is enough!”

With words of hope and courage, sadness and outrage, each speaker, in his or her own way, told the prolife story.

And now, it was time for the people to come together and act. The first steps would be symbolic – the March for Life along Constitution Avenue, past our seat of government, the Capitol to the Supreme Court. Then they would all head home.

But in the days and weeks to come, they would continue to fight against the evil of abortion – often a lonely, sad and difficult battle – but one made a little easier by the memory of the spirit of the thousands of brothers and sisters who had marched with them that day.

With God and all those good people with us, we cannot fail.