No Ordinary Funeral

No Ordinary Funeral

Fr. Frank Pavone

National Director, Priests for Life

Fr. Frank's Columns are Podcast
On Saturday, May 3, a funeral is schedule in Michigan. Bishop John Quinn of Detroit will offer the Mass for twenty-five babies who were murdered in nearby abortion mills, and their burial will follow. The bodies of these babies were retrieved in February and March from the garbage dumpsters behind “Woman Care” abortion mills, owned and operated by abortionist Alberto Hodari. Citizens for a Pro-life Society, headed up by my friend Monica Miller, oversaw the proper retrieval and care for the babies’ bodies and organized the funeral.
This is no ordinary funeral. There are still too many of our fellow citizens who don’t even acknowledge that the people who will be buried this Saturday are people at all. To mourn their deaths publicly, therefore, is not just to honor them, but to sound a wake-up call to our nation that we are living amidst the biggest holocaust of all time. That is why I have called upon my brother priests nationwide to bring to the attention of their congregations this weekend that children are being buried who were brutally, legally killed, and that the killing has to end.
Providentially, the Church observes the Feast of the Ascension this weekend. Jesus, in ascending into heaven forty days after his resurrection, takes our human nature to the heights of heaven. That is the hope we present to humanity. We will sit on the throne with Christ (see Rev. 3:21). It is impossible, therefore, for us to ignore the fact that those who share that same human nature are being thrown in the garbage.
Abortion has become too abstract. The word has lost its meaning. The conceptual knowledge that children are being killed is no longer enough to awaken many people to action. We need the funerals, we need to see the bodies, we need to hear the disgusting details of the abortions in order to be roused out of our moral slumber and end this killing once and for all.
Abortionist Hodari, when he disposed of these babies, also threw into the dumpster the patient records. Sadly, that is the only issue on which he may get into trouble. Of course, carelessness with patient records should be punished. But when society will punish a man for the pieces of paper he threw in the garbage but excuse him for throwing babies into that same garbage, we have become guilty of straining the gnat and swallowing the camel. We have become far worse than the Pharisees of Jesus’ day.
Two weeks after this funeral, the pro-life community of Dallas will pray at another grave, for the 25th year in a row, to honor aborted babies who are buried there…1300 of them! As my friend Monica said, “This tomb will be a place of refuge especially for grieving mothers and dads who regret that they made the decision to abort their children—a place of reconciliation.” Indeed, let the healing begin; but that can happen only when we first mourn the dead.
See details and photos of the babies here and at www.ProLifeSociety.org.

Press release by Fr. Pavone calling on priests across the nation to do the same:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: May 1, 2008

No Ordinary Funeral

Staten Island, NY – Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, called upon all of the nation’s Catholic priests today to offer a Mass within the next few days for the “Hodari babies,” a group of aborted children who were discovered over the last two months in the trash dumpster at Woman Care abortion clinic on Southfield Road in Lathrup Villlage, Michigan. Through the efforts of Citizens for a Pro-life Society, there will be a funeral Mass celebrated this Saturday, May 3, by Bishop John Quinn of Detroit, and the babies will then be buried.
“This is not the first time that my friend Monica Miller has organized such a work of mercy for discarded children like this,” Fr. Pavone stated. “Her work spans the last couple of decades, and it has been my honor to participate with her in similar funeral services in the past.”
“This Saturday’s service is no ordinary funeral. There are still too many of our fellow citizens who don’t even acknowledge that the people who will be buried this Saturday are people at all. To mourn their deaths publicly, therefore, is not just to honor them, but to sound a wake-up call to our nation that we are living amidst the biggest holocaust of all time. That is why I call upon my brother priests nationwide to bring to the attention of their congregations this weekend that children are being buried who were brutally, legally killed, and that the killing has to end,” Fr. Pavone concluded.
Priests for Life has posted photos of some of the babies who will be buried. See www.priestsforlife.org/images. For more info, see www.ProLifeSociety.org

Priests for Life is the nation's largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org.