Fr. Pavone to Birmingham AL Pastors: 1st Amendment Trumps Your Trying to Stop Pro-Life Speech

You'd think that the Catholic News Agency would get all the facts straight. Fr. Pavone is the head of Priests for Life. But they aren't a pro-life religious order. I think that in this case they meant Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. What is even more interesting is the fact that Fr. Pavone issued the news release on 26 July 2007 & it made the Christian News Wire the same day (with an accurate description of Fr. Pavone, "National Director of Priests for Life and President of the National Pro-Life Religious Council"), while it took the CNA 2 more days to get it out. I will credit CNA with accuracy in describing the rebuke as "stinging". It was, as it should have been.

Fr. Frank Pavone rebukes other Christian pastors

Washington DC, Jul 28, 2007 / 08:13 am (CNA).- Fr. Frank Pavone, the head of the pro-life religious order, Priests for Life, has issued a stinging rebuke to some Christian pastors who have tried to silence pro-life protestors.

Fr. Pavone was particularly upset about an event that happened in Birmingham, Alabama.

"The Birmingham News carried a story on Thursday wherein some local pastors said that pro-life activists who held events on public sidewalks near their Churches 'did not have permission' to hold the events.

"Excuse me, pastors, but they don't need your permission.

"In America, the public sidewalks are a forum in which any citizen can communicate to any other citizen what is on his or her mind. The 'permission' has been granted by our Founding Fathers and it's called the First Amendment to the Constitution.

"This permission holds even when the public sidewalk happens to be in front of a Church. Every pastor in every denomination has a duty to understand this clearly and to respect the rights of every citizen to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly."

According to the Tues 24 July 2007 Birmingham News article (Churches say protesters lacked permission) there were 2 churches who objected, Briarwood Presbyterian & Lakeside Baptist. The reason they gave for being upset: "Some members of the churches have said they considered the protests inappropriate because graphic pictures of aborted fetuses were displayed where children could see them." Is it really out of concern for the children, or was it the adults who didn't want to see the truth?

I can't help but wonder 1 thing. How many of these same pastors would have not only denied Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the right to speak on their sidewalks but also have called the police to arrest him? My bet is that most of them would deny that they would have tried to silence Dr. King or called the police. But, the history of Birmingham's churches from that era shows a different story. & given the locations of those 2 churches I am fairly sure that they were not intergrated, let alone willing to support Dr. King back then. (If they can prove me wrong on this I will gladly acknowledge I was wrong. The proof will have to be evidence that shows they actively supported Dr. King's efforts.)

I do have a question for these churches: "Are you Pro-Life & if so, what are you doing to end abortion in Birmingham, let alone the rest of the USA?"