I forgot to do a post yesterday about Respect Life Sunday. I wasn’t able to participate in any Life Chains. Come to think of it, I don’t think I heard of any being organized around my area. Maybe I will have to do something about that in the future. This is a picture of me at the Life Chain in Naples a few years ago. It pretty much poured rain on us for the entire hour or so that we were out there. Only to clear up the moment we were ready to leave.

We also didn’t do a whole lot in our parish besides having a table set up in the back of church equipped with pro-life materials. Lucky for us the entire month of October is Respect Life Month. I will probably try to organize a group of people to go up to the PP in Columbia for a picket (this is us at PP in August). I have also been invited to speak to another parish in our Diocese later this month at their annual pro-life Mass. Conveniently, Respect Life Month coincides with the month of the Rosary – an excellent prayer for the end of abortion and the respect for all human life. I like the Rosary Crusade to Safeguard Embryonic Human Life that the St. Louis Respect Life Apostolate put out last year to fight Amendment 2. We should probably continue that crusade, especially here in Missouri, as the cloning/embryonic stem cell research debate continues to be a hot and heavy issue in the nation, and the world at large.

UPDATE: I will also be speaking tomorrow at a life issues forum in our Diocese about Theology of the Body – something very, very important to me, and I think, essential to the turnaround of the culture of death. I consider it a must-read, must learn about topic for everyone! I know that there are many people who teach this subject, but I am partial to Christopher West. I have listen to a number of his talks on CD and can’t get enough of them. You can find them on his website, along with the many books he has written, including his latest: The Love That Satisfies, reflections on eros and agape – based on Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love). Other TOB resources can be found at www.theologyofthebody.net.

Good reading for this month:
EVANGELIUM VITAE
FAMILIARIS CONSORTIO

GIDEON’S TORCH – very interesting pro-life fiction