Excerpt from: Responding to Controversy: Interview with Fr. Frank Pavone
Click here for 136 pages of praise and gratitude from people around the world for what I did in showing the aborted baby and calling out the baby-killing Democrats.
Leslie Palma:
A few days before the 2016 election, you gained a measure of infamy for showing the body of an aborted baby in a video. Were you expecting the kind of backlash it received and did you also hear messages of support?
Father Pavone:
I don't think I became infamous because I was showing an aborted baby, because I had done that before. And this is the strange thing about what happened in 2016. I posted a video. I was doing a series of videos in the days before the 2016 election. Monumental as that election was. And so, this was like the seventh day of an eight- or nine-day series of talks that I was giving at our Priests for Life office and broadcasting on Facebook.
And in those very days, we were making preparations to bury an aborted baby that another pastor had been given anonymously. So I decided to show people that baby as part of the video. (The baby has since been buried as planned.)
I have done funerals for aborted babies many times before in my role as national director of Priests for Life. And every time, I showed the body of the baby, or the bodies. In fact, we did one such funeral and burial at EWTN, at Mother Angelica's Shrine in Hanceville, Alabama. Back in 2008 we did a massive public funeral. And we've got the video footage of that, but we had an open casket. We showed - we had a wake service first. And we showed the people these aborted babies. We have to show them.
So I wasn't doing anything different than I had done many, many times before quite publicly, and without apology, and what I will no doubt continue to do. I think what got people really riled up was I did it in the context of calling out, as I do again right now, calling out the Democrat party for killing these babies.
This was an election between the man who turned out to be the most pro-life president we've ever had, and the woman who would have been the most pro-abortion president we've ever had. For many voters, that was and is today, issue number one. The bishops say that too.
"Living the Gospel of Life" which is a document I quoted during that election, and during every election, says we've got to start with a commitment not to kill the innocent. That's where we start in our moral analysis of all different issues.
The right to life is like the foundation of a house. An abortion strikes at the foundation. All the other parts of the house are going to collapse if you don't have the foundation. I was just making that point.
There is one thing I would do differently in the future. People got confused because I was standing at a table that we also use as an altar. That's where I was doing all the videos of that nine-day series. So, I was standing there. And I used the word altar, but it's a table that we sometimes use for masses. It's not at an altar and it's not a chapel. And some people, in their ignorance and in their rush to condemn me said that I brought an aborted baby into mass, and said mass with the baby on the altar.
These people must be on drugs or they're very, very ignorant because I had my clerical suit jacket on. When's the last time you saw a priest say mass in his suit jacket? I would never...
I know something about liturgy. I was a Master of Ceremonies for St. Joseph's Seminary and for Cardinal John O'Connor, Archbishop of New York, when he came to the seminary. I know what is and is not permitted on the altar or in the mass.
It's like we were saying before: People rush to judgment. They talk before they listen. And they don't bother to get to know you. If somebody doesn't have the courtesy of getting to know you before they criticize you, then you don't need their praise either. And if somebody doesn't have the common courtesy and the humility, for that matter, to go to you and ask about something that they saw or heard you do, before they pass judgment on it, that person has the problem. Not you.
You asked if I had gotten praise about that video. I did. Let me read a few quotes that came in. I got overwhelming praise for what I did. Here are some of the emails that came in and comments made on Facebook.
"People need to see this. Eisenhower did the same thing. Walked the Germans through the death camps so they could see the face of evil."
Another person said, "Unfortunately, this is necessary to wake people up. To most, this is abstract. When they actually see it, it opens their eyes and hopefully, their hearts."
Another person said, "I want to thank you for posting this. Many people are afraid to see this reality. This was very brave of you and you weren't afraid of any backlash either. So much respect for you. God bless."
Another: "Blunt-force truth. Abortion makes our culture no more civilized than those in the past who practiced human sacrifice."
I'm not saying this because I endorse this idea, but another person wrote. "This priest will be canonized one day as a patron of the unborn children."
These quotes are about half a page of some 136 pages of positive praise I received for posting that video.
People want leaders in the church and the government to speak the truth. And to speak it with courage. That's what leadership is about.
Unlike the Democrats, and unlike their friends among the cowardly “religious” leaders of our day who know how to persecute courageous priests but do absolutely nothing to encourage them.