Are there any Catholic Worker-like places that protest abortion, euthenasia, etc

[foolishmortal]

Foreign wars are horrible, yes, but you don’t hear about Catholic Worker places protesting abortions, euthenasia, contraception-thumping, while still working with the poor and/or other people in a bad place in or outside their heads.

 

[nodito]

Dorothy Day, the foundress of the Catholic Worker Movement, became very pro-life after her conversion to Catholicism. She experienced firsthand the pain of abortion and wrote in the Long Loneliness of her struggles with guilt and fear and regret because of it. I also found these quotes regarding abortion and contraception online:

I always had a great regret for my abortion. In fact, I tried to cover it up and to destroy as many copies of The Eleventh Virgin as I could find. But my priest chided me and said, “You can’t have much faith in God if you’re taking the life given to you and using it that way. God is the one who forgives us if we ask, and it sounds like you don’t even want forgiveness — just to get rid of the books.” I never forgot what the priest pointed out — the vanity or pride at work in my heart. Since that time I wasn’t as worried as I had been. If you believe in the mission of Jesus Christ, then you’re bound to try to let go of your past, in the sense that you are entitled to His forgiveness. To keep regretting what was, is to deny God’s grace.

I’ll never forget the time that I had to literally stand up against birth control. My sister Della had worked for Margaret Sanger, foundress of Planned Parenthood. When Della exhorted me that I shouldn’t encourage my daughter Tamar to have so many children, I stood up firmly and walked out of the house whereupon Della ran after me weeping, saying, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me. We just won’t talk about it again.” To me, birth control and abortion are genocide. I say, make room for children, don’t do away with them. I learned that prevention of conception when the act that one is performing is for the purpose of fusing the two lives more closely and so enrich them that another life springs forth and the aborting of a life conceived are sins that are great frustrations in the natural and spiritual order.

That said, the Catholic Worker movement has as its special “charism” care for the poor and the promotion of peace. They naturally gravitate towards this because of their calling to live in solidarity with the poor and suffering. Although a lay movement, the CW’s focus on peace might be likened to how Jesuits have traditionally had the charism of education and Priests for Life have the charism of promoting the life issues and working to end abortion. All are valuable callings and all are needed. How inadequate the Body of Christ would be if it were not truly comprised of “many parts.”

 

[foolishmortal]

Sure but, unless they’ve gone partisan, don’t they see how the radical left and even snooty rightists like Planned parenthood for dealing with the people they care for the way they do?

 

[nodito]

Don’t they see how the radical left and even snooty rightists like Planned parenthood for dealing with the people they care for the way they do?

I’m not quite sure I understand you. Of course some people like Planned Parenthood. They get tons of donations and even more clients. But as Catholics, we know that offering women contraception and abortion doesn’t actually help them. Theirs is not a Catholic response to a problem. So I would not say that PP has the “charism” of providing abortion, for example, because abortion isn’t a natural response to the gift of God’s divine grace. The CW movement, on the other hand, seeks to serve the poor the way that Christ instructed when he said “I was hungry and you gave me food.”

Put another way, we can certainly judge the approaches of organizations as objectively sinful or helpful. But your question was not, “Is the CW really helping poor people?” It was, “Why isn’t the CW doing more to help people?”