{"id":5205,"date":"2006-01-23T12:37:34","date_gmt":"2006-01-23T12:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html"},"modified":"2006-01-23T12:37:34","modified_gmt":"2006-01-23T12:37:34","slug":"confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Pro-Life Fanatic"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week’s letter from the pastor of St. Rita’s Catholic Church in north Dallas, TX<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

I have been called a fanatic many times. Some consider me such because of my vocation as a priest. Many more have called me a fanatic because of my focus on the pro-life cause. I\u2019ve prayed and demonstrated before abortion centers. I have preached and spoken and written about this issue. Since 1973, I
have worn a bracelet on my wrist bearing the date of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that, for all intents and purposes, permitted abortion in our country for any reason at any stage of life. That decision was issued on January 22nd of 1973. The bracelet also has symbols inscribed; the alpha and the omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, are on either side of a symbol that stands for life within woman. Since the alpha with the omega is a sign representing God, the symbols serve as a constant reminder to me that only God has a right to determine when life begins and when it ends. I have worn that bracelet for 32 years now, through 32 years of unparalleled legalized bloodshed, and I will not remove it until that holocaust is stopped. <\/p>\n

Although I have been called a fanatic, as I think about it my sense is that, if anything, I have not been sufficiently devoted to this cause. It is true that, particularly in my role as pastor, there are many great needs that call for my attention. But when I think of the whole realm of social justice causes and the many areas of service, I cannot find one more fundamental, more direct assault upon everything I know and believe, than this state sanctioned slaughter. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

God BLESS him! <\/p>\n

Via Catholic Outsider<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s letter from the pastor of St. Rita’s Catholic Church in north Dallas, TX I have been called a fanatic many times. Some consider me such because of my vocation as a priest. Many more have called me a fanatic because of my focus on the pro-life cause. I\u2019ve prayed and demonstrated before abortion…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nConfessions of a Pro-Life Fanatic - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Confessions of a Pro-Life Fanatic - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This week’s letter from the pastor of St. Rita’s Catholic Church in north Dallas, TX I have been called a fanatic many times. Some consider me such because of my vocation as a priest. Many more have called me a fanatic because of my focus on the pro-life cause. I\u2019ve prayed and demonstrated before abortion…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-01-23T12:37:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Confessions of a Pro-Life Fanatic - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Confessions of a Pro-Life Fanatic - Via Media","og_description":"This week’s letter from the pastor of St. Rita’s Catholic Church in north Dallas, TX I have been called a fanatic many times. Some consider me such because of my vocation as a priest. Many more have called me a fanatic because of my focus on the pro-life cause. I\u2019ve prayed and demonstrated before abortion…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-01-23T12:37:34+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html","name":"Confessions of a Pro-Life Fanatic - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-01-23T12:37:34+00:00","dateModified":"2006-01-23T12:37:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/confessions-of-a-pro-life-fanatic.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Confessions of a Pro-Life Fanatic"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}