Thank you very much. It's really a great honor to be here. It's always such a blessing to be with Joe and Ann and the wonderful activists here in Chicago. Of course, I think every community claims Joe; even though he hails from Chicago, he's the one who goes around and started the activist movement all over this country and around the world. So it certainly is a pleasure and deep honor for me to be here with all of you.

I know so many of you have been involved in the Right-to-Life Movement for years and years, longer than I have. Many of you are involved in the rescues that are going on now and that's just a great blessing. I think it ties in well with what we have heard today. What we have heard is our brothers and sisters who were abortionists and worked for abortionists, who have come out from that heinous evil and are now defending the babies. That's something so powerful to us and shows us that Jesus was right when He told us that our brothers and sisters are all lovable, every one of them, because they are of Him, of God. They are children of God and we should have been loving them all along. If we haven't, then the ones who spoke here today can teach us how to love the ones who are still doing abortions. It makes it easy to love the abortionists who are actually doing the killing today when we see the ones who used to do abortions, and who are such wonderful, lovable, godly people, so full of concern for the little babies, so full of sacrifice for the little babies.

There is a great deal of suffering that goes on with abortion. First and primary is the suffering of the heart of God. He is so grieved about this. I think what grieves Him the most, despite the horrendous pain and evil of the killing of the little babies themselves, is that His people or people who claim His name, people who call themselves Christians or Jews who are bound to the covenant of the Lord God, are doing nothing to stop this killing. So many, many Christians and good Jews who consider themselves people of good will and godly people are not listening to the voice of God who is calling out in the night: Come save the little babies. Step forward and stop this holocaust.

The hardness of heart is certainly not only with the abortionists. Probably a much deeper hardness of heart is with those who are practicing Christians and people of good will in any religion who consider themselves believers in God and believers in goodness, who are just ignoring this holocaust. When they are confronted with it, they just kind of make all kinds of excuses and rationalize. I understand that because I did the same thing myself in different ways.

God gave me the grace of having been raised by a good Christian family, a good Catholic Christian family, so I knew right from the time I was a little kid what was right and what was wrong. We all have a conscience. God gives us all a conscience and deep in our heart we do know right from wrong, but it sure helps to have good parents to spell things out because the devil is always tempting us to not listen to our conscience and to make excuses and to rationalize. When we have good parents there helping to lead us, and good church leaders... I was a Catholic at a time when all priests preached the same thing about every evil. There was no such thing as one priest telling you one thing and another priest telling you another thing. They all told you adultery was wrong. They all told you that divorce was wrong. They all told you that abortion was wrong. And there was a heinous evil--all of those things.

Nowadays, there is a lot of confusion in the church, and that's just the devil. The smoke of Satan is in the Church, not just the Catholic Church but all the churches. That's why the main Protestant denominations have all come out in support of abortion. That's not the true church. That's not God's people speaking. Even as messed-up as so many Catholics are these days, the teaching of the church is consistent, as it has been throughout the centuries, condemning abortion and all the evils. There is a faithful remnant in the church holding it together. That's true in every church, not just the Catholic Church. There's a faithful remnant.

But these people are the ones God is asking to sacrifice much because they have been greatly blessed. They have had graces beyond those the others have had. The Lord tells us in Scripture that we are judged by what we know, and once we know something, then there are no excuses.

I remember a passage where Jesus spoke, and He said that now the heavy weight is on you because now you know, and there is no excuse. You can't say you didn't know.

We, of course, in this room do know. We are doing something about it, thank God. God bless you for it. But there are many, many other fellow Christians and people of good will out there who are not doing anything about it, and they do know. But we are pricking that conscience of theirs by being out there in the death camps, by blocking the killing. The more we are out there, a visible sign of God's love in the world and His truths, the more those other Christians and other people of good will who do acknowledge that abortion is evil and do proclaim that they are against abortion and do commit themselves to the Lord and make a public pronouncement of their commitment to the Lord, are going to be very, very uneasy. And they're squirming, and that's great!

Let's look deeper into this. The whole reason this abortion holocaust has gone on as long as it has and has devoured our whole society the way it has and has gone right into infanticide and euthanasia and fetal experimentation and pornography--its tentacles reach all of us, into our families, the whole of society and Satan has come into the church--is because those who knew better and who proclaim the name of the Lord have done nothing, or have done very, very little. I think the bottom line is that we were not willing to sacrifice and suffer, and even die for the Lord, the Truth, goodness, for love. Love is God. They haven't been willing until now, and I really think we are willing now. I think this past year, more than any other time in the history of the Pro- Life Movement, the history of the church in this country, we are willing to suffer, and suffering will come. But right now, if we continue to grow as we are, the suffering won't be as great, but we aren't even concerned about that. I believe that truly, that we are not really concerned about that.

What we really are concerned about is doing God's will, and if it means suffering, we'll embrace that suffering and count ourselves blessed, deeply blessed for the privilege of suffering just a little bit for the Lord. I don't care how great the suffering is, if it's only just a little bit, it will never be what the babies have suffered because they're so young and defenseless. Even if we were ripped apart ourselves, we have lived a life on this earth, we will never experience the rejection they have experienced. Primarily, the rejection at our own hands and those who are like us, who proclaim the name of the Lord.

If it weren't for such a good God we could never make up for that, none of us could. I consider myself far more guilty than any abortionist. Because I knew better. I knew all along how bad it was, and I was just so weak and scared, even though I knew the Lord would give me enough strength to do what He asked of me. I knew that all my life. Even though I knew that, I kept centering my focus on myself and so, so often failing to respond to His grace and to His beckoning.

In 1973 1 came to Chicago to try to disarm murder weapons, and, of course, if I knew Joe Scheidler was here I would have gone ahead and done it. But I didn't know that, so I chickened out and went back home. So I did little things, but I knew deep in my heart that I was not doing what God was calling me to do.

But about seven years later I started going right to the death camps and blocking the killing. That's what I knew God was asking of me, in charity toward these little babies. But just as much, and even in a way more importantly, acting in charity and love, and by example for my dear brothers and sisters who were abortionists who needed that example, and needed my love, and needed to see the gentleness of God, the forgiveness of God, and the goodness of God, the holiness of God through my life, through my example.

I'm still failing God miserably by not being the example I should be, but I'm trying, and the Lord is blessing me. He is blessing everyone in this room. Here we are, listening to our brothers and sisters who once were caught up in that evil because of our failure and the attacks of Satan. With that combination they fell into this atrocious evil. But we're here, listening to them, and learning from them, and we'll be able to go out in love to the many, many brothers and sisters in our society and in the world who are continuing in this evil and destroying their own souls.

I had a problem dealing with people who responded to the devil's temptation to murder the innocent. When I was a little kid I read a lot about the Nazi Holocaust in Germany, and even though it was over by the time I was born, I still could not get rid of the oppression of what happened just a few years before my time. I couldn't get over it because it was such recent history, for one thing. And it was in a civilized society and it was allowed to be done by Christians. The vast majority of the population was Christian, even though many good Christians stepped forward and rescued the Jews, and it was the Evangelicals and the Catholics and a few others who were rescuing the Jews and the other so-called outcasts of Germany and then all of Western Europe. They still were a minority doing it, and I knew as a kid that mass murder could not take place in any society without that society turning its back on the killing and allowing it to take place. Even a kid knows that, because you realize that there are a lot of people in the world and not that many government officials. The masses of the people can stop whatever evil is going on, and if the masses of the people happen to be Christian, and there are lots of churches around--you see people always going to church, and you read that in Germany everybody was going to church--you realize that people have failed, they have failed their God. And they were calling themselves Christians. So that really bothered me.

I had a deep anger and great confusion about why Christians allowed that to happen. But I had even a deeper anger about the Nazis who actually did the killing and the guards at the extermination camps. The way I came to deal with that was just through prayer. I went one year to college and when I was there I finally came to terms with that and God just flooded me with grace. Always, I envisioned myself at a death camp, and I viewed the Jews with the yellow stars on them and the tattoos on their arms, starving and skinny, just skin and bones like the little babies when we see their bodies piled up. I saw them in humble prayer. Then I saw the Nazi guards, and all of a sudden I was just overwhelmed with pity and tenderness for the guards. And I thought, gee whiz, who deserves my pity more? Who needs my prayers more? The Jewish victims who are on their way to Heaven, who are good and innocent, or those who are murdering them? I Just felt such pity. Whose shoes would I rather be in? I certainly would rather be in the shoes of the victims than the shoes of those who were doing the persecuting. So I really felt a great tenderness and a forgiveness in my own heart for them. I prayed with love in my heart for them.

So then when the abortion holocaust came, when I was 25 years old, I was overwhelmed by shock. My first anger was at the church because it was silent. I certainly didn't see everybody out in the streets, an uprising of the churches. I didn't see that, and that was a shock. The silence was a shock. Then knowing that individual mothers and fathers were taking their little babies in to be killed, and that there were people out there, abortionists willing and wanting to do the killing.

Then all of a sudden, through prayer again, I realized that these people needed my example and that they were victims of a Christian community in my country now, in America, that was being silent. Had the church stood up and said, no way are you going to kill little babies, if it were pronounced from every pulpit and people were told to not just pray, but prayer and action, and get out there and stop the killing, it wouldn't happen.

What struck me today was that both doctors said that it wasn't that they wanted to do abortions; it wasn't that they were overwhelmed with this evil glee, let's kill all these babies! It wasn't that they were shocked when they first saw what was happening, the little arms and legs, and that little human beings were being torn apart. It was that they had no commitment to anything. And they really had no one to take them aside and be a friend, and say, listen, please. You don't want to do that, you don't have to be involved in this. These are little babies. But they didn't have anyone doing that.

So that's what's needed. We need to be out there for them. We have to be there in gentleness and in love, but in firmness. Like a parent with a child, if your child is going to do something horrendous like take a brick and throw it through your neighbor's window, or beat up an old lady, or beat up another kid, you don't ignore it, nor do you scream abusive things at your child. That's not going to teach a child. That's not going to turn his heart. Kids can be really kind of mean sometimes. I remember hearing some stories recently about some kids who were picking on an elderly person who lived alone and maybe had some ways that weren't quite similar to the way most people behave. So they were tormenting this poor fellow. But the mother of one of the kids who was doing it just said, you know, I wonder how you'd feel if one day your dad and I got a little feeble in our old age, and how would you feel if some kids your age came and tormented us? The boy never answered to anything, but that night he took his dinner to the neighbor and apologized for the broken window.

That's what example is. A gentle word. That mother didn't take him by the ear and pull him in the bedroom and give him a slapping. I think we have to approach our brother and sister abortionists in gentleness and love and forgiveness, but in firmness. We've got to block the killing. We've got to be there. And they have to see the humanity of the babies through us. The only way they are going to see the humanity of the babies through us is to see such love in our hearts, not only for them, but for these little babies that we can get beat up, kicked, screamed at, and treated in the foulest way, but we will remain gentle and loving. But we will not remove ourselves from the door, blocking the killing at the death camps.

When there are hundreds of thousands of us doing it, their hearts will be converted. I think one of us doing it, a lone rescuer might convert somebody. But eventually this whole nation will be converted when we are all out there blocking the killing. Of course, the other work has to go on--the legislative, the alternatives, the education. But none of that is going to ring true unless we put actions behind our words and be there for the individual babies dying each day in our community.

If we're going to save the babies ten years from now, pass a law and get baby protection on the books ten years from now we're going to have to ignore the babies dying in our community right now. But we will start working now and we will work every day. It's illegal to be out there to protect them. But that illegal is not legitimate because one cannot really legalize murder. We all know that. That's why judges and police officers and other individual public officials in Nazi Germany who went along with that killing, which was legal in that country and it was a duly elected government, they were prosecuted and some were executed because you cannot legalize murder. That's why those of us who go out there and block the killing in this country--we are enforcing the legitimate law. But we have to be that example.

We have to be that example for all the reasons I just said. When I was at college that one year, I read a poem that was written by an inmate at the Nazi extermination camp, and what he said was that the Nazis came and arrested them in the spring of the year, and they rounded up all the Jews in the neighborhood and threw them in the back of trucks. He could remember looking out to try to catch the eye of one of his neighbors to see if they were concerned and were going to try and help them. But he said that the neighbors all looked away and would not even look at them, and how much that hurt. Then he goes on to describe the details of what happened after that: being processed, being tattooed, about the children and how they felt separated from their parents, and being sent to the labor camps first, and those who were sent to the extermination camp. Then it came to the end where he was ready to be exterminated and the days had grown short for him now. He looked back over everything and said, you know, it wasn't the executioners who were our real enemy because they really couldn't that much to us. All they could do was destroy our bodies. But the ones who really hurt us the most were our friends because they had the power to break our spirits, and they did that when they turned away from us.

So we are Christians and we have to be examples and, by our example, get the masses of Christians out there in our society. There are churches practically on every corner. These people are proclaiming the name of Jesus and there are crosses on top of the churches and there are crosses on top of some of the killing centers, like your Lutheran abortion hospital here. I think it's great when you people said that they are either going to take Lutheran out of the name or the cross off that roof. You have to stop the killing one way or another. If they keep the killing going, they're not going to pretend that place is a Christian hospital or that this is a Christian society. You can't have it both ways. We're not a Christian society if we are doing that. And this is and can be a Christian society if we live out God's will and do not allow this evil to exist because all are contaminated by it.

So there are masses of Christians out there; those people who call themselves Christians. Especially those who already at this point say they are against abortion but are doing nothing. We have to affect them, and we will affect them by our willingness to sacrifice and to suffer and to remain faithful. That means gentle and charitable and not fighting among ourselves. Even if we disagree with someone, try to convince them of our point of view if we think it's right. If they aren't going to be convinced, then just let them be and we do what we feel is right. But not to incriminate. That's how the devil gets to us. And he gets to us many ways because he's a mighty power. But God's power is greater.

I see the mass of Christians in our society the same as the mass of Christians in Nazi Germany. There was a remnant, a few people who were rescuing the Jews and others who were victims in Nazi Germany and Europe. It's the same in our country. There's a few of us doing it now, but we have to be able to influence the others and the way we're going to be able to influence them is by becoming more and more sacrificial. More and more Christ-like.

And when that happens, we will be able to first convert our brothers and sisters who proclaim the name of Jesus, or proclaim the name of God, that they are people of good will, good Jews and others. Then after that, God will be able to convert through us, the hard core people who are now pro-abortion.

I've been hearing about a lady in Atlanta after the October 4th rescue which was so brutal, and they were loading up people for the next day for more rescues, and this elderly lady came up to the priest who had also been arrested the day before, and she told him, I'm scared, but I know I have to do it. She got on the bus. That's the type of courage and goodness and gentleness through whom God can work the power of conversion in the hearts of this nation. So it will happen.

There is a movie out called Houston Proud that I think is a powerful tool. When I got out of prison we showed it to the press in Pittsburgh. They didn't want to see it, and they refused at first, and then we said, if you want to interview with us, you have to first watch the film, so they stayed. You could see they were visibly moved. Those are things that we can do to make sure that people see this. Maybe they'll never write a word about it, but I know it touched their hearts. You could see it in their eyes, the way they would look away and then have to look back. You could tell. So maybe some hearts were moved that day.

A final thing I want to say is what came to mind. I'm a Catholic and they refused to allow me to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass while I was in prison. One of the things as I sat there in my cell day after day and week after week, and then a couple of years went by, was that I felt very lonely. One of the impressions of prison is that you're very, very lonely. I just wanted to hug somebody. I pictured in my mind hugging my nieces and nephews often. I just had to picture it in my mind because it became such a craving. It really hurts. And suddenly I began to realize that Jesus (I'm talking to the Catholics now), in the real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, so lonely. No one goes by to visit Him. Not only year after year, but century after century. He stays there because He loves us so much. I was taught something about real love. Being there for someone, even if they ignore you.

How many felt ignored at an abortion mill? Especially when other Pro-Lifers never came out, when you feel that many of your churches have turned their back on you. You don't ever see a collar out there or a habit. You feel all alone. You're the only one out there day after day, week after week, year after year. You get lonely. Well, think of the Lord Jesus and He can give you the strength to continue, even if you're the only one.

I often say that this rescue movement is thrilling. It's taken off. It's really powerful. But I wonder if it were to die in its tracks tomorrow, would you still be out there? I think you would. Even if you were the only one left in this nation, ,and everyone else had been exterminated, you'd be out there because your Jesus is faithful to us, no matter what. Even when we are totally unfaithful to Him, He's our example.

God bless you.

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