FATHER STEPHEN IMBARRATO’S
COMMENT ABOUT THE RED ROSE RESCUE!
Click on the Rose for Rescue Pictures
I want to thank everyone for their prayers yesterday and going forward. Now you know why I didn’t do my FB live yesterday morning. We weren’t able to get many good pictures, but that means next to nothing. I am still overwhelmed by the experience because it was the realization of many years of difficult soul searching and continued conscience formation. I cannot say enough about the people who led the way yesterday, the 4 women…Joan Andrews Bell, of course, an incredibly humble woman who inspires everyone; Joan MacKee, who I just met and who, in one day, has had a profound impact on me…a truly humble and amazing woman; Bonnie Ethel Borel-Donohue who I have known and done activism with since even before I was ordained and Julia Haag, who I work with not just doing DC activism, but also in helping organize the National Rosary Rally. Bonnie and Julia are dedicated D.C. area prolife activists who I am always especially proud to work and hang out with. They are the real inspirations for me. Fr Fidelis and I were merely spiritual support. I can’t say enough about every CFR I know…Fr Fidelis the latest. As much as the police dragged Fr Fidelis and me out of the building…down the 2nd floor hall to the elevator, out the elevator through the back exit, and across the parking lot to waiting cars, I have to say for the most part, with one or two exceptions, the police were patient and professional. They treated the good women pretty respectfully, using strapped wheel chairs. Thank God.
Now the most important fact and the reason for this action! As much as it is impossible to know if babies were saved, it appeared to me that 2, possibly 3 women, changed their minds. Two women, I am almost sure of. Since no one seemed to enter the mill for quite a while as the police arrested us, we don’t know how many women could not get inside for their appointments.
Also equally important, the babies that died yesterday had 6 people inside the killing chambers standing in solidarity with them offering up prayers and supplications just as we heard Christ did in the Exultation of the Cross reading from the day before…to Christ be all the glory!
If any other graces come out of yesterday’s Red Rose Rescue, so be it. It is my hope that other prolifers and activists, especially my priest brothers, will become convicted as I did, that after 45 years of pre-born baby killing, our response in the present time is not even minimally proportional. I am a coward and a hypocrite because I have known this for years and only yesterday acted on it. That being said, I believe that our action yesterday was only minimally proportional in the face of the mass slaughter of our brothers and sisters in the womb and the wounding of our mothers at an alarming rate. The pre-born baby killing industry has to be stopped now and I believe that we as a pro-life collective need to be seriously discussing and exploring every peaceful, decisive strategy available to us to end the bloodshed tomorrow, if not today. I want to thank Monica Miller for her leadership and again for all those who participated in the Red Rose Rescues yesterday either directly or in support roles, whether it was physically or spiritually. It is everyone’s prayers and Jesus’ grace that are the driving forces here, but in our Gethesemane-like prayers, let us be mindful that His challenge to us is…”no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
The night prior to the Red Rose Rescue…
after an hour of prayer and final planning!