Dear Faithful People of God of the Archdiocese of San Francisco,
Please join with me to pray and to do penance on Jan. 22, the day that the U.S. bishops have designated the “Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children.”
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, no. 373, states: In all the dioceses of the United States of America, Jan. 22 (or Jan. 23, when Jan. 22 falls on a Sunday) shall be observed as a particular day of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life and of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion.
The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision is a harsh marker of the throwaway culture that Pope Francis decries. There have been more than 56 million abortions since Roe v. Wade. It is unimaginable that so many little human lives have been lost or to envision the tremendous damage inflicted upon the children’s mothers, fathers and families.
In Scripture, God calls us over and over again to pray and repeatedly reminds us that he will answer our prayers. On this day, we call on him particularly to remedy this great evil.
I will be offering the Mass at noon at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption on Jan. 22. The Mass will also be livestreamed at https://sfarchdiocese.org/livestreams.
Each parish is encouraged to offer a noon Mass or the regular weekday Mass for that intention, using the liturgy recommended by the U.S. bishops in designating this special day.
By offering Mass in our parishes on this day for this particular intention, we will pray together but in safer smaller and separate gatherings for the restoration of the right to life for all, from conception to natural death.
For those who are not able to attend Mass, please pray particularly for this intention in some other way. More information available at https://sfarch.org/legal-protection-unborn.
The above comes from a Jan. 4 letter from the archbishop published in Catholic San Francisco.
I have long wondered whether the Supreme Court can muster five [preferably six or seven] votes to clearly overturn Roe. It’s survived almost fifty years.
Yes, fifty years of shame. All the millions of wounded walking around and all those lives which were snuffed out before they have a chance. And the violence of ripping a child to pieces is pure evil.
God answers prayer by granting that a pro-abortion Catholic will be President of the United States, a pro-abortion Catholic continue as Speaker of the House, the federal government controlled by rabidly pro-abortion Democrats, and the most populous states controlled by pro-abortion Democrat Catholics?
It’s not a stretch to believe that the “remedy for this great evil” would have been more easily provided by ensuring that the most pro-life president in the history of America would be reelected and that the Party of the Culture of Death be prevented from controlling the federal government. But that’s just my opinion.
What to tell all those who worked for pro-life legislative efforts over the past ten years or more? Their efforts are about to be ruined in less than a year like a sand castle being eroded by the incoming tide. It’s also a slap in the face that a lot of Catholic bishops tacitly or explicitly preferred pro-abortion Biden as their candidate.
I’m sorry, Archbishop. You have to do better than “pray.” People have been praying, and they’ve been working. And now it’s all going to have been for nothing come January 20. I ask again, “Where’s God?” That’s not “vending machine” spirituality, as some have chided; it’s wanting reassurance and wanting to see that our efforts are meaningful instead of wasted.
I was astounded to read the other day, that in 2019, abortion was the leading cause of death, worldwide! 73.3 million unborn children were put to death!
Abortion has been legal for a long time, in many countries. Lenin first legalized abortion in Russia, in 1920. In 1931, Mexico legalized abortion only in cases of rape. In 1932, Poland legalized abortion only in cases of rape or threat to the mother’s life. Today, there are few countries that do not accept abortion, in an extreme case, such as rape, or threat to the mother’s life. Recently, Argentina shocked the Catholic Church, by legalizing abortion. And our Argentinian Pope said not one word! The president of Brazil (the largest Latin American country) vowed that abortion would never be legalized, while he is in office, and his government held a moment of silence in sympathy for all the poor children soon to lose their lives! Since the 1960s, America has become blackened with sin– millions of souls have been lost, due to sexual sins, and murder of unborn children! The churches all need to step up, and preach and teach their people, and form them all into true Christians. That is their job, for God and our country– and for the world! A nation deeply infused with Christian teaching and virtue, will finally reject sin, and abortion will be made illegal– and unthinkable!