THE PRIDE OF THE MARCH FOR LIFE - AND THE SHAME OF IT

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 "We saw Father Laisney in the March on Tv - he looked so regal; I was so proud of him!"

From my personal perspective the March for Life was saved from disaster by the same Fr Laisney, SSPX. 

I've had the privilege of attending the TLM celebrated by Fr Laisney, and received the Sacrament of Penance from Fr Laisney, but don't ask me what's his first name: the SSPX don't go in for palsy-walsy Christian naming (as in 'call me John' Cardinal Dew or even 'Father Tom, Dick or Harry'). The SSPX like to keep things on a formal footing, which tends to head off any intimacies or accusations of sexual abuse at the pass.

Anyway, thinking I'd lost a $500 cheque from my Voice for Life branch which I was supposed to present to Family Life International at the March, I'd spent a couple of hours revisiting every retail premises I'd entered the day before, hoping to find it (and don't tell me it was crossed etc so no need to worry; I was panicked beyond reason - I could hear my mother saying, "Monkey girl!"), then another half hour negotiating with Westpac to cancel it.  

So the tail-enders of the March were at Midland Park before I caught up with them (sans cheque).

At Parliament in a force 8 gale I helped hold on to a large banner brought all the way from Christchurch, and not for the first time, by a valiant Protestant marcher. I was consoled by the fact that the other assistant banner-holder (it took four of us to restrain it) was an archetype of Catholic motherhood and moreover, a member of my branch of VFL. 

She and two or three of her brood were the only other Catholics I spotted until Fr Laisney gathered about fifty of us together, as prearranged by the redoubtable Dame Colleen Bayer, to pray the Rosary - on the eve, of course, of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. It occurred to me that the Rosary could have been announced from the stage at Parliament but I'm told it was purposely not mentioned as it wasn't a March for Life event.

Kneeling there on the grass I was consoled also by the thought that my carelessness and panic re the lost cheque would have been used by God in His holy, adorable and Divine Will for His own good and perfect ends. 

"If only each soul knew or comprehended the immense good that the Cross contains, and how it renders the soul precious, like an inestimable Gem that acquires a value ever higher, insofar as the soul accepts the suffering that the Cross entails": so ran the text from a friend whom I'd asked to pray that the cheque would be found; a quote I'd say, at an educated guess, from the writings of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, a 20th century Italian mystic known as the Little Daughter of the Divine Will.
https://divinewill.org/

Maybe my embarrassment over the lost cheque, combined with another serious concern visited on me on the trip down to Welly, might even have contributed mysteriously to the turn-out for the March - which I couldn't even guess at but TvOne News called "thousands". 

The Mass for Life at St Mary of the Angels the night before, concelebrated by Cardinal John Dew, Monsignor Trevor Murray of Taupo, Monsignor Gerard Burns and SMOA's Father Kevin Conroy SM was not, as I'd expected, primarily a Mass of Reparation for the 500,000 babies murdered by abortion since it was legalized 50 years ago. 

The word 'reparation' was never mentioned. Instead the congregation, we who had been allowed to live our lives, were invited to thank God and more or less congratulate ourselves and one another on that account.

Quite apart from any lack of emphasis on atonement, which as one of the four ends of the Mass would seem peculiarly suited to a Mass preceding a March protesting against abortion, in a nation which in an act of collective barbarism has sacrificed 500,000 lives given by God on the altar of convenience, career or concupiscence, there was the aspect of 'concelebration', of multiplying the number of priests at the altar as a means, it would seem, of turning the Mass into a special occasion. 

The Mass cannot be made more 'special' than it is; and the Ottaviani Intervention which sought to prevent the promulgation of the Novus Ordo advisedly calls concelebration a "mania, which will end by destroying Eucharistic piety in the priest, by overshadowing the central figure of Christ, sole Priest and Victim, in a collective presence of concelebrants."
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-ottaviani-intervention-turns-50.html

Neither could I help thinking, as I knelt on the grass for the Rosary, near an old woman who sat to pray with great difficulty and regained her feet only with helping hands, that it was a shame the Rosary was led, in a force 8 gale, by a priest with a pronounced French accent.

But thank God, it was led by a priest, and my friend (a convert who's discovered the SSPX and the Latin Mass) who saw Fr Laisney on the News, was right. I'm told Cardinal Dew and several other 'mainstream' priests were among the marchers, and good for them, certainly they should have been marching, but how visible were they? 

In his black cassock and roman collar, tall and ascetic, it was Father Laisney SSPX who stood out like a beacon among the marchers, a sure target for the Tv cameras. As the second antiphon for Morning Prayer for the Common of Pastors (Mt 5:13) goes:

Your light must shine in the sight of men, so that seeing your good works, they may give the praise to your Father in heaven.


A coda: 

As soon as we arrived home this evening, 'im indoors said, "here's the cheque". Folded in a business envelope to fit in my handbag but left on the kitchen bench to be picked up on the way out, there it was, mistaken for a shopping list (which we write on old envelopes) and tucked in with the other lists. By moi. Silly as a two-bob watch.

Mea culpa.