In a story that made national news, albeit mostly in the Catholic press, a high school student in New Jersey is suing her school district for failing to protect her when she showed a pro-life sign at a great big pro-abortion rally.
The National Catholic Register reported that, on May 24, on campus during school hours, Nichole Pagano, a 16-year-old at Hunterdon Central Regional High School, in the company of her older sister Vanessa, witnessed a horde of 200 schoolmates gathering to demonstrate in favor of child-killing. Not wishing to see the child in the womb go undefended, the pro-life sisters organized a spontaneous counter-protest of two. Nichole was walking in the very midst of the pro-aborts with a sign that read: “Equal Rights for Babies in the Womb.”
Pro-abortion students assaulted the girl with the sign, the one who had dared to commit the crime of individual thought. They surrounded the two sisters, screamed crude and intimidating comments, grabbed the girl and her sign, pulled her to the ground, and generally made it violently known that alternate visions would not be tolerated.
The only one to stick up for Nichole was her sister. School officials who stood by did absolutely nothing to prevent or restrain the attack.
Nichole emerged with scratches on her arms and legs and a wrenched shoulder. School officials later apologized to the victim of pro-abortion intolerance, but it was the sort of apology that shrugs off responsibility rather than accepting it.
So now Nichole is suing the district — which is exactly the right thing to do. It might be a tremendous exercise in Christian endurance to let the matter go unanswered, except that it would condemn future pro-life students in the district to a choice between silence and beatings. In the long run, it would also condemn the helpless babies destined for butchery to go undefended….
From Life Legal Defense Foundation
Why are devout and faithful Catholics (and other Christians) still sending their children to government schools?
Why? To make a difference there, even if they have to suffer for it. These girls’ powerful witness could not have been accomplished anywhere else
You want your children to suffer? Preparing them for martyrdom is one thing but actively sending to an antiChristian institution is itself anti Christian.
“You want your children to suffer.” Nobody plans for their children to suffer. But in the course of the Christian live, we are told that all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution (II Tim. 3:12). Suffering is the price to be paid for us to hear Jesus say at judgment, “Well done good and faithful servant.” The Lord will uphold those who suffer for His name. Christian students must be a witness in our public school system as lights in the darkness– Christian teachers as well. How else will the ungodly hear the word of the Lord?
Maybe because many so-called Catholic schools are no better. Look at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose. At government schools, at least students know to expect opposition to Christianity. To send a student to a nominal Catholic high school that teaches contrary to the Faith is like a vaccination. Give someone a dead or weakened version of something and they build up resistance to it. I taught at such a Catholic high school and was a youth and young adult minister. Why are more students who attend public high schools and colleges involved in their parishes than those who attend nominally Catholic ones?
And, most Catholic young people attend public schools. (Sometimes finances are an issue.) I wouldn’t be so quick to judge devout Catholic parents, who, according to the Church, are the primary educators of their children, regardless of who they enlight to assist with forming their children.
The public schools were made to be anti Catholic.
And it isnt judging to point out parents are Choosing money over the safety and salvation of souls.
It is why we are in this mess.
It’s difficult to choose based on money when there may be that much money to begin with. Perhaps you could set up a permanent GoFundMe for Catholic parents who truly cannot afford Catholic schools.
Manuel, I went to public schools all the way through, and for college, went to a private but very secular school where Christianity was mocked, graduating in 1972. My faith grew in response to the hostility at the college. I challenged my professors in the classroom now and again. I left college a much stronger Christian than when I went in, though it is true some left with their faith in tatters. What made the difference were the spiritual disciplines instilled in me in my youth and at Church. I remember going up to Santa Barbara to Westmont College, a Christian school. It seemed to me that many students seemed bored or unexcited about being Christian. There were few challenges to the believing student population, unlike what I experienced at the same time. Now 72, I look upon those college days as a great Grace, a gift from heaven.
Democrats are totalitarian communists. You see it every day. This is another example, both on the part of the mob of students that attacked her and the school officials who didn’t protect her.
” They surrounded the two sisters, screamed crude and intimidating comments, grabbed the girl and her sign, pulled her to the ground, and generally made it violently known that alternate visions would not be tolerated.” As if one needed more evidence that abortion corrupts everyone and everything it touches –students and administrators alike.
These two girls have courage for their public prolife support. The only answer for parents is to homeschool their children.
Restrainer-I go with Dan’s comment.Without kids like these those classmates would never hear a dissentimg opinion in their class.Some of those young hearts maybe changed down the road due to the witness of these sisters.
John C.- Let’s pray that you are right and that some of those children with dissenting opinion will have their young hearts change because of the tremendous prolife witness of those two girls.
I am sorry that the young lady got hurt and that no one helped her.