The following come from a November 8 Renew America article by Matt C. Abbott:
Father Frank Pavone, head of the controversial pro-life group Priests for Life, came under fire Monday for a video of him [posted at PFL’s Facebook page] standing behind an altar with an aborted baby in an effort to support Donald Trump.
Ed Mechmann, director of public policy for the Archdiocese of New York, said the use of an aborted baby ‘as a prop’ is ‘absolutely appalling, and deserves to be repudiated by all of us who consider ourselves to be pro-life in the fullest meaning of that word.’
Judging from the comments at Priests for Life’s Facebook page, many people, even those claiming to be pro-life, agree with Mr. Mechmann. Yet I think it’s safe to say that some of these people have never been supportive of Priests for Life and/or they despise Donald Trump and the GOP.
In an email to me, Father Pavone wrote:
The issue is not how I’m treating a baby. (I’ve been providing funerals and burials for these children for decades, with full legal and canonical counsel, and those concerned about these things would do well to talk to me rather than the media.)
The issue is how the abortionists, supported by the Democrats, are treating these babies. What’s sacrilegious is abortion, and voting for those who support it. It’s time we get our heads screwed on straight about who the bad guys are.
We are living in the midst of a holocaust, and our nation faces a choice on November 8 between electing people, like Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, who will continue that holocaust and have us pay for it, and Donald Trump and the Republican Party, who are committed to working to bring it to an end. This choice is neither confusing nor difficult.
Countless people, clergy and laity alike, in all denominations, are raising their voices as never before, to warn our nation of the consequences of continuing to allow the Democrats to control this country, hide the atrocity of abortion even while getting the rest of us to pay for it, make excuses for the illegal and corrupt activities of Planned Parenthood, and trying to squelch the very freedom of the church to talk about these things.
Donald Trump is ready to defend the unborn and to defend the church. That’s why I’m with him – and all believers should be also. And as he is attacked, so are those who stand with him. So be it.
God bless and protect Fr. Pavone for doing this. After 9/11 heroic New York firemen who died saving others were taken and put before Catholic altars. Why not the Holy Innocents from the abortion holocaust? As Fr. Pavone said before, until America sees abortion, America will not end abortion.
Some man once wrote that the pro life movement was using pictures of monkeys. No! those are not monkeys they are children, and just as General Eisenhower made the Germans and American soldiers see for themselves what the Nazi holocaust did, so should those who have taken part in this be made to see what they have done.
Kudos to Fr. Pavone for bringing a little reality to the abortion debate. No big surprise that politically correct church bureaucrats were offended. Reality is not what they prefer. I suspect that the likes of Ed Mechmann were most offended because the demonstration was a direct attack on the Democrats in general, their party of choice, and Hillary in particular. their candidate of choice. Phrases like “who consider ourselves to be pro-life in the fullest meaning of that word” echoes the seamless garment argument that has been used to downplay abortion as an issue and provide cover for democratic pols.
Genesis 22:9 “When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.” Today many priests want the altar to only be considered as a banquet table. Father Frank Pavone reminds us that the altar is also a place of sacrifice.
No bueno, Father Pavone.
Would you hop up on the altar yourself?
If an aborted fetus is not to be used for medical research and treatments, then why is using an aborted fetus as a crass prop any better? At least the former might directly result in the saving of another life.
I am a traditional pro life Catholic, but what Fr. Pavone did was sacrilege. No matter how well intentioned the good message was, you do not put a dead baby on an altar consecrated for the Holy sacrifice of the Mass. This is spelled out in canon law. An altar is consecrated for the worship of God. To use it for other means is sacrilege. The altar was used for secular and political means.
Quite frankly, in this instance I do not think the Good Lord Jesus would care at all if it saves a baby. After all, it was He who said, “I came to save lives not take them.” Even King David “broke rules” when he and his men ate the showbread from the Temple when hungry, which was unlawful for them to eat, and the Lord Jesus approved it. St. Paul wrote about sometimes keeping the spirit of the law instead of the letter of the law. Just my thoughts.
I am not saying that other priests should do this. What I am saying it that there are RARE circumstances where rules should be broken, and I think this was the perfect time. After all, it was the Lord Jesus Christ who said, “Let the little children come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
He could have used any other table that was not an altar. I think the Lord Jesus takes consecrated things very seriously. God does care about the First commandment. He is very strict about it. It is presumption that God might not care and it is not worth the risk of sacrilege and wrath. It just looks perverse to have a dead baby on a holy Catholic altar. A Catholic priest should have more reverence for the sacred and holy objects. His piety should not allow such a desecration.
And you think God is not angry and wrathful for what is being done to his innocent children? Would you like to stone Fr. Pavone , as some are doing for putting that precious child on the Lord’s altar? Would you rather he/she be back in the dumpster? Some have even accused him of mistreating a child that has probably already had its skinned burnt off by saline and been taken out of a sink or dumpster? Oh, yes, some on other blogs are complaining that he did not “clean” the child up. You know, out of sight, out mind as to what is really being done in an abortion. Do you really believe that the Lord of Life would be upset that one of his innocent little children “desecrated” his altar?
The Servant of God, Archbishop Fulton Sheen mentioned and wrote about many times how his mother took him after his baptism and laid him on a side altar and dedicated him to the Virgin Mary. I assume the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was performed there, too, at times as usually is the case There is no evidence in that video of Fr. Pavone that he was saying a Mass or even that the child was lain on a main altar either.
I would say that the sight of a tiny baby, dead by homicide, is what looks perverse to me. And Father Pavone was not the murderer.
The aborted child was not a prop, but a reality. A beach ball from World “Youth” Day is/was a prop.
Time to clean house. But with the immigration money (I mean charity) train stemmed, it will be interesting to watch the scramble for courting the “culture warrior”.
Or a statue of Buddha, Anne Malley, that someone put on a Catholic altar one time, hopefully without permission.
The action of this Priest is beyond the pale. It is disgusting!d He has gone over the top and lost all the credibility he has built up over the years. He must be sanctioned. There are better ways to communicate the faith.
Sorry Bob One, but the murder of that baby was far more disgusting, and the feckless leadership of our bishops toward this holocaust– again far more disgusting. The bishops should sanction themselves before pronouncing judgment on Fr. Pavone.
Who says he has lost credibility? You? That’s just your own wishful thinking.
This is abhorrent. Fr. Pavone jumped the shark. This is such an egregiously disrespectful stunt and shows such poor judgment that Fr. Pavone should be disqualified from any further public relations role. He deserves a swift reprimand and a reassignment.
Fr. Pavone is in hot water. Fr. Pavone is incardinated in the diocese of Amarillo Texas. His bishop, Bishop Zurek released a statement that the diocese of Amarillo is opening an investigation into all matters relating to the Priests for Life, the display of the fetus, and the desecration of an altar:
https://amarillodiocese.org/news/statement-from-bishop-patrick-j-zurek
Pavone has a long history of financial irregularities as well, and bishops have a hard time getting him to cooperate.
And you have a long history of pushing so-called same-sex marriage, so what else is new?
YFC your history of loving sodomy is well known as well…
This calls into question what Fr. Pavone really believes about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Eucharist, the altar, the sanctuary, and basic Catholic theology. The last couple of years have shown me to be skeptical of the formation of Vatican II Novus Ordo prelates. Fr. Pavone has gotten lost deep into his zealotry to the detriment of his priesthood and faith. His political activism has become his religion. He has had his problems with finances, ecumenism, and dead fetuses in the past.
You dare to invoke fidelity to tradition and the Old Latin Mass to justify attacking Father Pavone for so dramatically exposing the hideous slaughter of infants on Election Eve? What hypocrisy! I don’t doubt that St. Pius V himself would vehemently rebuke you for your stand.
I think this was a very ill-advised and even scandalous act of Fr. Pavone, whom I have otherwise hitherto respected much.
If he wanted to make his perfectly valid and heart-rending point, having a Catholic funeral, with a little, painfully small, child’s casket IN FRONT OF the altar, could have achieved all this.
I am sorry to say I believe he treated with horrendous disrespect both the child’s deceased person and the altar, which “is” Christ, in equal and grave measures.
Steve Phoenix, Fr. Pavone and other Priests for Life have burring these children all along. I think by now he is tired and crushed by having to bury so many, and thought it is about time that the world actually sees the little ones he has to bury.
Amen.
“…We had a funeral for this baby who rests in the meorial Chapel”
.
I agee with Steve.
A video of the funeral Mass could have been made with a requeim choir.
A video of an open casket and the child being blessed by the Priest.
Plenty Nervous Nellies out on this one.
Oh, Father Pavone. You’ve really gone and done it now. No more invitations for you to all the right pro-life parties where one meets all the right pro-life people.
I do not dare laugh, Hymie, or someone else will throw a stone back at me for laughing, but if St. Thomas More can make a joke when they were going to ax him, I guess I can laugh at your humor. It has gotten pretty heated. I suppose Anna 32 is right, but the way Fr. Pavone did it expresses much better what is actually going on. It is becoming very demonic, more like child sacrifice, and the demonic display at the opening of the tunnel in Switzerland that many of our world leaders attended was just unbelievable.
Agreed, hardly a subject for levity, and none intended. Left off “and hears all the right pro-life snark” so as not to sound, well, uh, snarky.
Hang tough, Fr Pavone. No good deed goes unpunished.
I know it is fun to belittle others’ concerns as “Nervous Nellies” and “the right pro-life people and their parties”, but that schoolboy era stuff rings hollow when you look at this mistake by Fr. Pavone.
I don’t, and others don’t, need to establish one’s pro-life credentials with anyone. However, the fact is, using the deceased person of a little child for shock effect is unconscionable. I have worked with the funeral arrangements of people for years, and one thing you always learn: Always treat the deceased person as though they are “present”, they are “listening”, even “sleeping”, and treat them with utmost respect as you move them from prep room to chapel. You never objectify them and treat them (as others…
… have said, as a “prop”, an object, or just a mass of organic tissue, or you devolve into what the atheists and the baby-killers do and believe. They are not “the remains”; they are “Mr. Smith”, “Mrs. Smith”, or Baby Smith, and someone’s parent, sibling or child.
So, let the schoolboy stuff roll, but Fr. P. gravely erred here, and I am sorry for him, and especially sorry for the unnamed child, who was also disgraced here.
Not “deceased,” not “departed.” Butchered. Ripped ghoulishly from his rightful home at his most innocent and most helpless, to be sold piecemeal like so much offal. There’s the abhorrence, there’s the sacrilege.
I see neither prop nor desecration. A table set, a makeshift altar if you will, with snow white linen, candles and scripture. A far cry more respectful than the stainless steel industrial deep sink from which the child was likely plucked.
Let them see what they’ve done; let the world view its handiwork. Fr Pavone has seen to that.
A reexamination of priorities and chronology is clearly in order. The ire is misdirected.
Amen! Hymie.
You speak truth, Hymie. My sentiments exactly.
YFC…Do you think that The Lord God used His Son as a crass prop when He allowed His Son to hang on a cross? No, He allowed His Son to make His time and suffering on the cross as an illustration of His great love for we lost humans and as an illustration of the ends that He was prepared to go to in order to save us. What must we do to rescue these precious infants from a hateful world? Should we also break some rules? Do YOU have enough guts?