Our Lady of the Wayside

Our Lady of the Wayside
Protect Expectant Mothers and Their Babies

Pages

Thursday 19 November 2015

Beautiful Pro-Life Videos and Your MP


The idea of their buffer zones is to stop pro-lifers offering help to pregnant women outside abortion 'clinics'. Whilst no doubt some of the people supporting the idea of buffer zones may be well meaning, we can be sure they know very little about what actually takes place at our vigils. The idea that the two pro-lifers in the photo above, praying opposite Whitfield Street abortion centre in London, are there to intimidate anybody, is, of course, preposterous.

Please watch the following video, of one young mother who desperately needed help to keep her children, and was able to receive that assistance, because there were no buffer zones; https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCw-CqRb1UIuD8-me5XQXxg

Please then contact your MP and ask them not to support moves to hinder caring, pro-life vigils. You may, of course, send them the link to the video to back up your arguments. You can find your MP's contact details here: http://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-your-mp/

Then please do see SPUC's video of another mother helped by Good Counsel, and sign their petition;
https://www.spuc.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-us/buffer-zones


Then please invite all of your friends and family to this 'event' on Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/events/1519476211704176/. All of this should take you less than 15 minutes. 


Tuesday 6 October 2015

71 year old Jim travels 120 miles to London for Pro-Life vigil each week.

Pensioner"Jim" praying at Whitfield St because Londoners can't make it.

This is a picture of "Jim" (not his real name). Jim travels 120 miles at least once a week to support the Whitfield St, 40 Days for Life Vigil. As a pensioner in his seventies, Jim got up last Saturday morning at 3.40am (yes you read that right) to come to the vigil early on Saturday morning. Unfortunately no volunteers were able to join him because all London pro-lifers were...er...busy. Never mind, two Good Counsel Staff went to accompany him at the vigil.
We would like to see large numbers of turnarounds and ultimately the closure of this abortion centre.
40 Days for Life has a proven track record in closing abortion centres down. They announced the 64th abortion centre to close, after a 40 Days Campaign had taken place there, just this week. And London's BPAS abortion centre in Bedford Square closed down in 2014 after several 40 Days for Life campaigns of prayer and fasting there.
If Londoners want to see more abortion centres close and more turnarounds, there needs to be a lot more people willing to pray, fast and sacrifice.
If you can help by attending the vigil, either as a one-off or for a regular weekly slot of 1 hour or more, please visit the 40 Days for Life London website at https://40daysforlife.com/local-campaigns/london/ and sign up.
You have endless choice of times to come, because almost no slots are taken!
To find out about other 40 Days for Life vigils around the UK see the 40 Days for Life page on our website http://www.goodcounselnet.co.uk
In the last two and a half years 230 women have chosen life for their babies at the vigils at abortuaries and have received help and support from The Good Counsel Network. Please support our work. If you would like to donate you can do that at http://www.goodcounselnet.co.uk/Donate.html 
Mornings are especially hard to fill, currently our staff are filling all of the slots between 8 and 9am. We are there from 8am every day, and actually we now start even earlier, from 7.30am, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday when girls are being admitted early for abortions.
Please remember our staff, especially Gaelle and Alina who may spend 3-5 hours a day between them phoning and texting people to try to fill the vigil slots. It's very demoralising sometimes...
With a 7.30am start each Saturday, are these men more committed to football than we are to defending life?

Every Saturday morning a group of young men (above) arrive to play various sports at the other end of Whitfield St as early as we do (7.30am). Can they really be more committed to their sport than London Pro-Lifers are to ending abortion in our city?

Tuesday 7 April 2015

Who Can Catholics And Other Pro-Lifers Vote For?


There is a lot of mixed opinion about what we should consider before deciding who to vote for. But I believe that if we looked at any mass killing of human beings other than abortion where hundreds of thousands of lives were being taken every year, such as in Nazi Germany for example, no-one (retrospectively at least) would say "We can't just vote on that one issue"!*@ Until abortion is ended, no other issue can compare with the huge and wholesale slaughter that deprives my unborn neighbour of his right to life, her right to own property, his right to work, her right to be educated, his right to have food on her table, his right to freedom. All rights are pointless if we do not have a right to be born! Fr Frank Pavone illustrates this perfectly in the following article, from his website, which is so good I am including it in this blog in full.
If we don't believe abortion is a big enough issue to be worth casting our vote on, how on earth do we imagine that any parliamentary candidate is going to? Read on...
by Clare McCullough

The following article was taken from the Priests for Life website www.priestsforlife.org

You Wouldn’t Even Ask….
By Fr. Frank Pavone

If a candidate who supported terrorism asked for your vote, would you say, "I disagree with you on terrorism, but where do you stand on other issues?

"I doubt it.

In fact, if a terrorism sympathizer presented him/herself for your vote, you would immediately know that such a position disqualifies the candidate for public office -- no matter how good he or she may be on other issues. The horror of terrorism dwarfs whatever good might be found in the candidate's plan for housing, education, or health care. Regarding those plans, you wouldn't even ask.

So why do so many people say, "This candidate favors legal abortion. I disagree. But I'm voting for this person because she has good ideas about health care (or some other issue).

"Such a position makes no sense whatsoever, unless one is completely blind to the violence of abortion. That, of course, is the problem. But we need only see what abortion looks like, or read descriptions from the abortionists themselves, and the evidence is clear. (USA Today refused to sell me space for an ad that quoted abortionists describing their work because the readers would be traumatized just by the words!)

Abortion is no less violent than terrorism. Any candidate who says abortion should be kept legal disqualifies him/herself from public service. We need look no further, we need pay no attention to what that candidate says on other issues. Support for abortion is enough for us to decide not to vote for such a person.

Pope John Paul II put it this way: "Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture -- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination" (Christifideles Laici, 1988).

False and illusory. Those are strong and clear words that call for our further reflection.

"I stand for adequate and comprehensive health care." So far, so good. But as soon as you say that a procedure that tears the arms off of little babies is part of "health care," then your understanding of the term "health care" is obviously quite different from the actual meaning of the words. In short, you lose credibility. Your claim to health care is "illusory." It sounds good, but is in fact destructive, because it masks an act of violence.

"My plan for adequate housing will succeed." Fine. But what are houses for, if not for people to live in them? If you allow the killing of the children who would otherwise live in those houses, how am I supposed to get excited by your housing project?

It's easy to get confused by all the arguments in an election year. But if you start by asking where candidates stand on abortion, you can eliminate a lot of other questions you needn't even ask.

For more election related articles and information, visit www.priestsforlife.org/elections (US)

See how your MP has voted on Life Issues in the past and how your other local candidates would vote if elected;
https://www.spuc.org.uk/campaigns/general_election_2015/ (UK)
 
So it is no good just voting for this Party or that, you need to ask all your local Candidates where they stand on abortion and how they will vote if elected.

Sunday 29 March 2015

A Thank you to Our Priests for Defending and Committing to Support the Sacrament of Marriage

Just a thank you to our priests for defending the vocation of Marriage and committing themselves to support it. And thanks for their courage in wanting to witness to the truth to the divorced and remarried in gentleness and love.


SIR – Following the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in Rome in October 2014 much confusion has arisen concerning Catholic moral teaching. In this situation we wish, as Catholic priests, to re-state our unwavering fidelity to the traditional doctrines regarding marriage and the true meaning of human sexuality, founded on the Word of God and taught by the Church’s Magisterium for two millennia.
We commit ourselves anew to the task of presenting this teaching in all its fullness, while reaching out with the Lord’s compassion to those struggling to respond to the demands and challenges of the Gospel in an increasingly secular society. Furthermore we affirm the importance of upholding the Church’s traditional discipline regarding the reception of the sacraments, and that doctrine and practice remain firmly and inseparably in harmony.
We urge all those who will participate in the second Synod in October 2015 to make a clear and firm proclamation of the Church’s unchanging moral teaching, so that confusion may be removed, and faith confirmed.
Yours faithfully,


From 461 Priests

Join Us In Prayer And Fasting