Stranded March for Life Group Celebrates Mass on the Side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike

A very hardy group of pro-lifers heading home from the March for Life in DC,  celebrated Mass on the side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike after their bus got stranded in the blizzard.

Gives new meaning to the term, “special snowflakes,” don’t it?

WBAY reports via Deacon Greg Kandra:

A group of 150 people from the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, mostly students, is stranded in their buses by the East Coast blizzard.

The group was in Washington, DC, for the “March for Life” anti-abortion rally but left to come back to Wisconsin at 2 p.m. Friday — a full day ahead of schedule — because of the storm.

 

 

Via the Compass in Green Bay: 

In a telephone interview Jan. 23, from one of three Lamers coach buses carrying the diocesan pilgrims, Maria Schuette, director of religious education and youth ministry for the Diocese of Green Bay, said that while the snowstorm and resulting freeway shutdown impeded the group’s return home, it became another opportunity for the group “to practice what it means to be pro-life.”

In lieu of my weekly Sunday Hymn:

 

The diocesan pilgrims, which included parish youth groups, Catholic high school students, and their chaperones, departed for the March for Life from St. Pius Church in Appleton on Jan. 19. The group participated in service projects and liturgies held in conjunction with the annual pro-life gathering, which marks  the 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Before the march began, Schuette said the group planned to return home immediately after the march in order to avoid the snowstorm. “We were right up in the front of the march,” she said.

Around 2 p.m., the group boarded their coach buses and were on the road home. “We left when the roads were very passible and then probably after about four hours, we came across an accident that happened in front of us,” said Schuette. “That slowed everything down. We couldn’t move after that. We’ve been stuck here since 10 last night.”

…Although stranded in the middle of a major snowstorm, which dumped up to three feet in some locations, the Green Bay pilgrims have been able turn the negative experience into a positive, Schuette said.

“We have been taking in strangers, people whose cars ran out of fuel,” she said. “It’s definitely been like a God moment for us.”

Five people who were stranded in cars were able to join the pilgrims on the buses.

Via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: January 23, 2016 2:58 PM:

Their trip home has essentially been frozen since everything in front of their bus came to a halt about 7 p.m. Friday.

“It’s still snowing, not as hard as earlier but it’s still snowing,” he said. “We’ve done some running around outside. There were no snowball fights, but one of my friends made a snow angel.”

He said the best part of the delay was when he and other students talked to a priest on board about how they would approach various life situations. The worst?

“When we woke up and asked how far we had moved overnight. We were told ‘about 50 feet.'”

The snow in the vicinity was estimated by the Turnpike Authority to be two feet deep in spots as of midday today.

Late this afternoon a spokesman for Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, said eight of its buses returning from the Washington D.C. march also had become stuck on the Turnpike. The 300 to 400 passengers stalled by the storm since about 11 p.m. Friday include the school’s president, Father Sean Sheridan, spokesman Tom Sofio said.

He said the buses are believed to be 11 miles from the Allegheny Tunnel.

In all, 500 cars, buses and trucks remain stranded this afternoon, Gov. Tom Wolf said during a press conference. The Turnpike Authority had no immediate reports of injuries.

“We were proud that they stood up for a cause they believed in,” Mr. McNeil said of students and adults who participated in the pro-life trip; he commended their reaction to the storm as well. “We’re proud of them now for their resilience.

“What we’re hearing from them is that despite the circumstances, they’re having fun,” he said. “They have snack foods, sandwiches and pretty much whatever else a modern day teenager would eat.”

The Archdiocese said the 350 students and 35 chaperons are on the six buses. A seventh managed to get beyond the area of stalled traffic, and the Archdiocese said other students from Nebraska, Minnesota and elsewhere also are apparently stuck.

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Lay Catholic From Romania Gives Synod on the Family a Piece of her Mind

Strange tidings are coming out of the Vatican regarding the Synod on the Family that is taking place there.

Via Church Militant:

Monday’s press briefing just ended a little while ago. And I’m going to tell you, in this third and final week, it seems like the world press is being set up for an introduction of some very strange things because the language that is being used in this last maybe three or four days in various interviews is now starting to pop up.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge from Brisbane, Australia was on the dais today and he kept using this phrase that we’re having a “language event,” that the Synod is turning into a “language event” and we have to do a lot of “listening.”

“Language event”? “Listening?” What the hell?

Meanwhile, the pope is calling for “healthy decentralisation” of power in the Roman Catholic Church, “including changes in the papacy and greater decision-making authority for local bishops.”

The centralization of power in the Vatican has been what traditional Catholics have always loved about their church – it’s what prevents us from becoming fractured into hundreds of different versions of catholicism.

Serious Catholics the world over are perking up their ears and some are beginning to worry.

Father Z highly recommends this speech given by Dr. Anca-Maria Cernea, President of the Association of Catholic Doctors of Bucharest (Romania) on Friday.

I’m impressed too. But why does it take a lay woman from Romania to put these church leaders to some knowledge about cultural Marxism and the importance of resisting it throughout the world?

Posted in full via Father Z and Voices of the Family, this is profound:

Your Holiness, Synod Fathers, Brothers and Sisters, I represent the Association of Catholic Doctors from Bucharest.

I am from the Romanian Greek Catholic Church.

My father was a Christian political leader, who was imprisoned by the communists for 17 years. My parents were engaged to marry, but their wedding took place 17 years later.

My mother waited all those years for my father, although she didn’t even know if he was still alive. They have been heroically faithful to God and to their engagement.

Their example shows that God’s grace can overcome terrible social circumstances and material poverty.

We, as Catholic doctors, defending life and family, can see this is, first of all, a spiritual battle.

Material poverty and consumerism are not the primary cause of the family crisis.

The primary cause of the sexual and cultural revolution is ideological.

Our Lady of Fatima has said that Russia’s errors would spread all over the world.

It was first done under a violent form, classical Marxism, by killing tens of millions.

Now it’s being done mostly by cultural Marxism. There is continuity from Lenin’s sex revolution, through Gramsci and the Frankfurt school, to the current-day gay-rights and gender ideology.

Classical Marxism pretended to redesign society, through violent take-over of property.

Now the revolution goes deeper; it pretends to redefine family, sex identity and human nature.

This ideology calls itself progressive. But it is nothing else than the ancient serpent’s offer, for man to take control, to replace God, to arrange salvation here, in this world.

It’s an error of religious nature, it’s Gnosticism.

It’s the task of the shepherds to recognize it, and warn the flock against this danger.

“Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

The Church’s mission is to save souls. Evil, in this world, comes from sin. Not from income disparity or “climate change”.

The solution is: Evangelization. Conversion.

Not an ever increasing government control. Not a world government. These are nowadays the main agents imposing cultural Marxism to our nations, under the form of population control, reproductive health, gay rights, gender education, and so on.

What the world needs nowadays is not limitation of freedom, but real freedom, liberation from sin. Salvation.

Our Church was suppressed by the soviet occupation. But none of our 12 bishops betrayed their communion with the Holy Father. Our Church survived thanks to our bishops’ determination and example in resisting prisons and terror.

Our bishops asked the community not to follow the world. Not to cooperate with the communists.

Now we need Rome to tell the world: “Repent of your sins and turn to God for the Kingdom of Heaven is near”.

Not only us, the Catholic laity, but also many Christian Orthodox are anxiously praying for this Synod. Because, as they say, if the Catholic Church gives in to the spirit of this world, it is going to be very difficult for all the other Christians to resist it.

Video: A Message To Pope Francis

Conservative Catholics heard Pope Francis’ message when he visited the United States and while we all share the same goals, we don’t always share the same views as to the best ways to achieve those goals. To be perfectly blunt, this pope’s politics in regards to capitalism, immigration, and the environment, are not necessarily our politics.

Via CatholicVote, “Everyday American Catholics have their own message for the Holy Father on the occasion of his first Apostolic visit to the United States of America.”

SEE ALSO:

The Acton Institute:  10 Stories The Media Won’t Tell You About The Pope’s USA Visit

Disturbing news regarding one of the papal delegates chosen to attend the upcoming Ordinary Synod on the Family via Edward Pentin, Natl Catholic Register: Cardinal Danneels Admits to Being Part of ‘Mafia’ Club Opposed to Benedict XVI

In Caelo et in Terra: Don Danneels? The power struggles of the Belgian cardinal

Father Z: Was the election of Pope Francis “invalid” because Cardinals committed certain crimes?

Mark Steyn: Mr. President #BlackLivesMatter When They’re Christian, too (Video)

Conservative columnist Mark Steyn was on fire Wednesday night on Hannity,  discussing the president’s increasingly obvious hostility toward Christians.

Like most sentient people, Steyn doesn’t think Obama is actually a Christian, and he passionately made the case for Americans to start speaking up and pushing back against the anti-Christian bias that has been a coming from the top in this country.

“If I were at that prayer breakfast, I would have shouted out SHAME!” Steyn declared, referring to the Easter Prayer Breakfast where Obama once again, took the opportunity to insult Christians.

“I think it’s a pretty poor reflection even on the presumably loyal, liberal Democrats in that audience, that no one objected to it. Because it IS time for people to object to it. This is part of a conscious strategy.”

Steyn noted that Obama is no more an expert on Christianity than he is on Islam; “you got the idea from hearing his thing about loving each other that he’d maybe seen a production of Godspell in High School – and that’s about as far as it goes.”

He pointed out that “148 young students in Kenya had just been killed – slaughtered  – their bodies on the floor – by Muslims fanatics who asked the students in that university; ‘are you Christian or are you Muslim’ and they let the Muslims go and they slaughtered the Christians.”

Steyn continued, “this is a guy who is happy to draw general lessons when a black youth gets killed in Ferguson, Missouri. That apparently has wide application for black people all  over America. But 148 black corpses has no general application. Well Mr President, (hashtag)Black Lives Matter when they’re Christian, too.”

He lamented that  the United States under Obama has been turning its back on the biggest story of our time:  “the extinction of some of the oldest Christian communities on the planet at the hands of Islam, remorselessly.” Steyn, addressing the president, said, “you dishonored those Kenyan students in death by not identifying them as Christians as you dishonored those Egyptians only a couple of weeks earlier.”

He told Hannity that he figures that “Christianity is something that he associates with white  imperialism –  and Islam is the exotic other and the victim group.

The fact is on his watch,  the last Christian church in Afghanistan was razed to the ground.

The Christian community in Iraq – an American protectorate  has been exterminated – on America’s watch. And that is something that should be shameful to him.”

Referring to Obama’s Rose Garden speech with Bowe Bergdahl’s parents, he declared, “it’s not a small thing when the leader of a supposedly free people – lies to those people about what’s going on in the world.”

“I don’t think in any sense he is a Christian, Sean. He’s a social justice warrior – who like a lot of people from the cultural left regards religion as the opiate of the rubes – to modify Marx. But I think in Obama’s case, it’s compounded by the fact that he does have this  profound respect for Islam that leads him actually to invert the situation that is going on in the world today so the Christians are the problem – and the Muslims who are beheading the Christians, who are shooting the Christians and cutting the throats of the Christians, are somehow the victim group we should all be concerned about.”

Steyn also commented Dick Cheney’s recent comments on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that Obama wants “to take America down” – a line he says Cheney stole from one of his recent columns.

“America is at best a bystander in the world,” Steyn explained, “and at worst, colluding with some of the most dangerous and brutal, violent forces on the planet. As I said, if he were working for the other side – what would he be doing differently?”

SEE ALSO:

Steyn Online: Treason and Corruption

Good Friday Psalm: My God Why Have You Abandoned Me?

For Good Friday, Psalm 22 by Glen Shulfer:

Coulter: Cowardly Christians Would Rather Get Ebola Than Be Called a Homophobe (Video)

On The O’Reilly Factor, Thursday night, Bill O’Reilly tied the genocide against Christians throughout the Middle East with the verbal abuse and political persecution Christians are feeling in the United States. He had Ann Coulter on to discuss what is going on with this “War on Christians” as he put it.

 

“Christians are being slaughtered all over the place,” O’Reilly said. “Here in USA,verbal attacks against Christians are in the headlines.”

“No question, it is open season on Christians,” O’Reilly added, lambasting church clerics who don’t stand up for their faith.

Coulter said “the media has been subjecting us to a whole series of fake stories where we have a new hate campaign each week from ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ to ‘fraternity rape at UVA’ to hysteria over nuclear power. This week’s hate just happens to be on the Christians,” which she argued is part of a longer trend.

“This is a direct attack on Christians,” she said, “but I wouldn’t but so much stress on what’s happening in other countries. The rest of the world is a cesspool of violence and atrocities.”

“Where are the Christians and where are the Republicans?” she exclaimed. “I’m glad this Mike Pence isn’t running for president. They are falling like toy soldiers.”

O’Reilly noted that about 80% of Americans identify as Christians but they are getting “thumped” by about 8%. “How does that happened?” he asked.

“Because these small town owners of pizzerias have more Christian courage than most Christian leaders and CERTAINLY the Republican party,” Coulter answered.

The one thing a Christian should have in their life, she argued, is courage. “Eternity is already taken care of. Go out and fight. You’re afraid of being sneered at by the NYTs? That is the one thing every Christian should have, and most of them don’t. ”

O’Reilly said that there isn’t an organized attempt by Christians (as there is in the gay lobby, etc.) to defend their faith. “Isn’t that strange?”

“It is strange,” she agreed. “And I am telling you  it is cowardice. Most people would rather risk getting Ebola than be called a homophobe, a racist – the horrible accusations and ad hominem attacks thrown at Christians in this country. And it’s time for Christians to recognize that the big thing’s taken care of. Could you be courageous and fight for the most consequential nation on earth?”