There’s a group in my region that provides help to women feeling they have no choice but to abort. They pray at the local Planned Parenthood, and on mornings when abortions are performed, they are available in the immediate vicinity to assist any parent who asks for their help.
In the past few weeks they’ve helped a young man who wanted to support his girlfriend through her pregnancy, but she was feeling like abortion was the only option. They’ve helped a young woman who was being pressured to abort by her boyfriend, and who was grateful when he left the appointment early and she was able to get up and go talk to someone who could give her a real choice. They helped a young mother who needed prenatal care, and hated the idea of going to an abortion clinic, but she didn’t know where else to go.
For all these families, someone was there, yes at 7AM on a Saturday, to help with setting up appointments for real prenatal care, to help with finding social services, to help with acquiring practical stuff like diapers and strollers — all of that.
This is a good group of peaceful people sacrificing to help others out of impossible situations. And in their combox promoting a day of prayer for their ministry, someone snarkily asked, “Well when’s the day of prayer for __hot topic that isn’t crisis pregnancies___ ????”
You’ve heard this a bazillion times. If you talk about immigrants, you must hate the unborn. If you talk about the unborn, you must hate the homeless. If you talk about the homeless, you must hate the mentally ill. If you talk about the mentally ill, you must hate prisoners. If you talk about prisoners, you must hate immigrants.
Bosh.
To be Catholic is to love everyone. All the people.
I tried googling “Catholic Charities Immigration” and came up with a pile of results, none of them national, because Catholic Charities offices are run locally, not nationally. Here’s the link to some places (not the only places) you can get help with immigration law in my state. Here’s a link to diocesan-sponsored counseling services. Here’s a link to the Office of Family Life, which covers everything from conception to natural death, and actually a bit before and after. Here’s the office devoted to combatting racism in all its forms. Here’s a locally-sponsored mission organization devoted to improving life at home so people don’t need to leave their communities.
I could spend a day doing nothing but putting together links to ministries — Catholic, ecumenical, and civic — that serve prisoners, the homeless, the hungry, the abandoned, the abused, the illiterate . . . name that need.
Some of these links on the diocesan website aren’t that impressive. There are some reasons for that.
Some people are great at ministry, not so great at internet. It happens.
Often the diocese partners with non-diocesan Catholic apostolates, or with non-Catholic groups — whether formally or through the private efforts of area Catholics. For example, Sistercare is one of the go-to’s for abused women seeking shelter, and it would be dumb for the diocese to pull Catholics away from supporting a functioning organization just so we could have Catholic Brand.
And then yes, of course, quite often not enough is being done. That’s something you could help fix.
But to say that people who care about _______ don’t therefore care about _____ just shows your ignorance. Look around. Get off the part of the internet where trolls play one-upmanship and do a search for who is working on helping the people who pull at your heart. Those people are out there, and you can join them.
Artwork courtesy of Wikimedia, Public Domain.
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