Learn more about a prolife spirituality to strengthen you as you do your prolife work!

oh [Music] welcome to just ask janet well have you ever thought about pro-life spirituality um is there such a thing i think there is well in today's program we're going to be talking about the spirituality of the missionaries of the gospel of life but we're also going to be talking to a very dear friend of mine and father frank pavones who actually made the journey with us in starting up that pro-life spirituality uh he came to us as a person inspiring what he thought to the priesthood and of course um the journey continues and welcoming to the program now is a dear friend of mine and father frank pavones father david beggarty father welcome to the program well thanks janet it's good to be with you today and your and your viewers and be happy to share my experiences with the missionaries of the gospel of life uh its founding spirituality uh with you and your guests today ah that's wonderful well of course uh father i forget but you're probably better with the year than i am i think it was what two thousand and like i too 2006 is when i joined uh the community the community community began in 2005. right so i joined in 2006 and uprooted myself from pennsylvania and moved to all places amarillo texas i remember that well and at that time it was bishop john yanta who said well yes let's have a a a pro-life priesthood a seminary and all that so i know you and several other men came that that very beginnings and um he had pretty good training didn't father pavone and myself and the other pro-life leaders we brought in for training was it was pretty good pro-life training wasn't it yeah so our experience was kind of atypical i would say compared to other religious orders many religious orders have uh what's called the novitiate which is almost semi-monastic but ours was called the year of inquiry in which we did develop our spirituality but at the same time we went ahead and and and traveled and learned so much about uh the pro-life movement its various aspects and that is one of the the things that i still carry with me in my priesthood today um of course i'm a josephine priest but i carry that training with me today and use it to help men and women as best i can yeah i know and of course that happened for a couple of years and then of course rome said well you can't found the seminar right now like kind of because everything has to be with permission as we know uh but they did let us continue the mysterious gospel life as a lay apostolate that people active in the pro-life movement could could do that and we're going to come back to that whole thing shortly because i think people want to know oh how could i get involved with the spirituality but first let's go back to your journey so then you left amarillo texas and you still in your heart was burning to be a priest so tell us about the the journey that happened next yeah sure so um yes right so unfortunately our my journey with the missionaries came to an end about 2008 uh through various permissions we were i was allowed to continue at the seminary and while i was in the seminary i still felt the call to the priesthood even if it would not was not going to be strictly in pro-life work and so i began to explore joining other religious orders for example the society of our lady the most holy trinity i think i looked into the benedictines and then i um rediscovered the josephites which were a religious community i had visited several times but i had never formally applied to them and you know when you get close to 50 you know religious orders get a little nervous you know because they're so they're not they're afraid they might not get a lot of uh productivity quote unquote out of you that's my term not their term but nonetheless the josephites were open to taking me and so i initiated the um application process with them uh i should point out i had like i said i had visited them several times so they were aware of me they knew who i was and so it wasn't like i was just someone giving them a cold call and i think that that helped me to get accepted into them i did visit them after that extra year in the seminary and uh thankfully they accepted me in the fall of 2009 and then i joined them in january of 2010. wow and so how many years then did it take to ordination well um so from 2010 to uh 2014 so uh you know i think we we kind of use the you know some of the um latitude within canon law to kind of um help me to take my promises maybe a little more quickly than traditionally but at the same token you know because of my age i think that was probably a wise decision so i think i figured total if i include the formation with the mevs it took me about roughly about seven years before i was able to get ordained and what when was that what year and then uh tell us okay may 31st 2014 i was ordained at saint luke's church in uh washington d.c by bishop john ricard who is actually he's the superior of our josephine order right now and he was the former bishop of uh tallahassee pensacola and uh he retired early for health issues but he has regained his health and so he ordained me in in 2014 and then my first assignment was to go to new orleans louisiana and it's kind of funny people say you sound like you're from louisiana or you have some louisiana accents and i never would have guessed that having lived in pennsylvania you know for almost 50 years or you know close to that but um so i was in new orleans for five years as a parochial advicer at corpus christi epiphany catholic church uh which was at the time was probably the largest uh african-american catholic church um uh certainly in new orleans but may very well have been one of the biggest in the country and um it's kind of funny when when folks uh when they pass they say when they die they say i want to pass through corpus christi uh church you know where they grew up and so i did quite a few funerals when i was there but it was a very good experience very warm and friendly culture in new orleans yeah and of course now you're a texan right then you get moved over to texas right father yeah so as a member of religious order we're able to serve wherever our religious diocese works the mission of the joseph ice actually came about shortly after the end of slavery in the united states it's an interesting story briefly the founder cardinal herbert vaughn who was from england established the mill hill fathers as a missionary society to evangelize wherever the british empire was well ironically one of his first missions at the request of the holy father was to come to the united states to take care of the spiritual needs of the freed catholic slaves and so they came here in 1870 1871 and then um ministered to many many folks mostly down here in the south uh alabama mississippi texas and louisiana and and then of course in 1893 he called them back to england and a handful said we want to continue the mission and he said okay and so he founded the society of saint joseph of the sacred heart and the short name is the josephites and that's who i am a member of and we still have many missions here in texas primarily in houston right now and my parish is in baytown so i was asked to become the administrator here and my predecessor was asked to become the rector of our seminary in washington dc so this happened about two years ago wow that's great and of course i know the you spoke about the pro-life training you received from us as part of the mysteries of the gospel of life and i know that spirit has stayed with you um so tell us because you did make promises didn't you as a missionary of the gospel of life right um i we didn't get to that point unfortunately in terms of but i i i think i may have done it as uh i may have done it as a lay associate as a right a lay med yes yeah that's that's what i'm referring to oh okay i'm sorry okay yeah because even i made the first promises as a lay associate right and that's what i'd like to discuss now a little bit from people because they might say to you janet father david like all right you're talking about pro-life spirituality um you know when you think about it uh trying to bring it into abortion as you know father it's a spiritual battle wouldn't you say i mean come on it's the forces of good and evil i mean destroy the life of a baby right i mean this is good and people at its best right yeah exactly and there was actually one incident i think that demonstrated that you know when i joined the josephites in 2010 i began my novitiate shortly thereafter and i was praying at an abortion clinic in washington dc it was a planned parenthood facility and they had a number of folks there who were acting as escorts you know and uh for women coming in to the facility and several of us were praying outside one time and and one of the escorts said something underneath his breath which was very insulting to me personally and i won't tell you what it was but it was it was i would consider it you know something uh degrading and nonetheless um you know i remember the words of the lord you know you know you will have to suffer for my name and and i'm not saying every time i went there i had that experience but certainly there is there is that that battle between you know light in the sense of knowledge willingness to conform conscience to what the knowledge is and darkness which is really essentially selfishness you know perfuming [Music] preferring my own vision of things rather than the vision of god or just the vision of you could say common sense you know we call natural law right right and then you know if people want to study more about the mission of the gospel of life if they go to our priest for life website uh there's a link right there or just go to missionaries of the gospel of light.com and all the information is there but i just thought father we could just talk a little bit about um what's called the uh spiritual disciplines for personal growth um which is part of the spirituality i'm just going to name them quickly and then we'll discuss them it's prayer study fellowship apostolic witness and of course of the spirituality of the missionaries is that it's biblical prophetic liturgical ecumenical eucharistic and marian but what's not first like you know father with prayer obviously um i mean that's like our what would you say our nourishment right as christians but especially when you're doing your pro-life work like you just said outside of an abortion mill those who are praying outside of a motion belt that's why they're praying because they're they're almost like at the foot of the cross they're there where a mom is going to go and destroy the life of that baby you're standing up for that baby saying please god intervene help this baby live um so don't you find that first principle of the missionaries of the gospel is to increase our prayer life right father yeah exactly yeah any time you know we we face those challenges whether you want to call this you know the forces of darkness which i think is fine you know we need that nourishment we need that strength and prayer gives us that strength you know to our souls to our spirits you know to really help us to be confident and to persevere in the face of you know insults to pace persevere in the in the face of people who don't understand what we're doing you know people who refuse to you know acknowledge the truth of the humanity of the unborn child to those men or women maybe who are being forced in there against their will by their boyfriends maybe by their parents grandparents and so those who are praying they need that fortification and you're right janet all christians need to to have that strength to receive the grace from god that comes from prayer and that is what will sustain us in the spiritual life but it sustains us in in that apostolic witness so yes that's that's vital uh to anyone doing pro-life ministry and even anyone just you're living the christian life right and of course as missionaries of the gospel of life we are like almost like a founding document for us is uh evangelion vitae the beautiful encyclical right written in 1995 by saint john paul ii and you know father david i can remember i was already involved with father pavone and priest for life when that encyclical came out i just can remember feeling so overjoyed we couldn't wait to get our hands on it and consume every word of it because for us we felt like the holy father is really acknowledging the pro-life movement and saying yes trying to bring it into abortion is the most important work on the on the planet right now and i and so we've made that the cornerstone and that's why it's called the missionaries of the gospel of life it's taking root from that evangelion vitae and i know you've studied that document extensively we have a study guide on our website they can find but but tell us what are what are your impressions of the uh evangelion vitae yeah you're right janet um when i was a member of the missionaries of the gospel of life in the the religious order yes we had to study that in fact i think that was one of father pavone's assignments for us was to each of us each each seminarian took a portion of it and really summarized it and then i think prepared some study questions and um yes it was a fantastic fantastic document um you know certainly something that everyone can study and it would probably be ideal for group study among uh you know members of the mevs and um you know the thing i've always admired about the late holy father is is is you know his intellect his ability to clearly explain things his ability to reference scripture and so he heavily references scripture and the necessity of promoting the dignity of the human person in fact he said that the gospel of life is the gospel of jesus christ in other words the pro-life mission in all its dimensions is essentially the gospel and that of course is you know promoting the dignity of the human person but focusing first in format on the unborn child which is the most innocent and vulnerable of any human person and you know that's something you and i know our society really needs to recapture and the holy father said if we do not put you know protect the life of the unborn child all of the other rights that are good that we need you know the right to work the right to health care etc they become superfluous if you don't have the if if you don't have the right to life then you cannot enjoy those other things and so he stressed the importance of working you know politically even socially educationally to help people understand who the unborn child is and to recapture that dignity that really that unborn children have prior to roe v wade yeah and of course father there's certain parts of uh the gospel of life even julian vitae that like for example um i know with my work with the women of silent no more who regret their abortions of my work with rachel's vineyard which you know as part of our ministry paragraph 99 for these women is so important for those who don't know paragraph 99 paragraph 99 uh the holy father said that because women always ask that what about my baby what about my baby is my baby with jesus is my where's my baby and in paragraph 99 when the holy father clearly said we entrust your child to the lord that entrustment i have seen father in so many rachel's video retreats that when we tell them about that paragraph and they they hear those words oh so i entrust my baby to jesus it's reassuring to them that okay it's going to be okay right father exactly and that's what the holy father was trying to convey he was trying to convey to the women who are suffering from abortion and we could even say to their their you know to their husbands their partners boyfriends that we entrust the unborn child to the loving you know care of god so in our christian faith we think typically to be baptized to enter into heaven we have to be baptized and so the holy father wanted to assure the women that even though their babies were not baptized that that indeed god can make a way for them and that they are indeed in his presence and we always say in our faith that you know god is not bound by uh the sacraments in other words god could make a way for uh for an unborn child or for someone else perhaps to enter into heaven even without baptism but again that's what the holy father was was trying to was alluding to that we entrust them to the care of god that indeed there is a good chance and maybe even extreme likelihood that indeed they are in the presence of god and you're right that is very consoling to women uh to men who've been involved in abortion to know that even though they've done this thing and they've received forgiveness that their child you know may very well and probably is enjoying you know that that presence of being in the presence of god which is what we are strive for here on earth of course by you know by living uh being faithful to our christian faith and values we do that you know with the hope of clean god being with him at the end of our earthly lives wow and of course you know uh when i think about all the different questions or problems we have in the pro-life movement if you look inside evangelion vitae the gospel of light it's there like even with politics the holy father really addressed uh that abortion is the foundational issue that like you said before father all these other rights the right to a good education to housing to good food and nourishment to health care education all that stuff's important right but you have to have life to enjoy those things and that's why life is the most important and he even took on uh voting you know that it's almost like a duty of hours to come out and vote pro-life uh in the evangelical video didn't he yeah the holy father you know he's a realist and you know he understands that you know the way that that um women and men have set up what we call how they how they rule themselves you know through uh democratic forms of government other forms of government that if there is something that's unjust in society then it has to be it's legitimately can be addressed by making new laws by reforming old laws by uh promoting new laws and so he acknowledged the necessity of what had to be done and along with that of course is voting for candidates who will support our values now i heard from a friend yesterday i was actually out golfing with them and was telling me about his father and his father one time uh was upset when a priest said you know you have to you really should hold uh the pro-life the life of the unborn as a primary value in voting but the holy father john paul was trying to say it's important for us to engage um you know uh our political process in the sense that we'd have elected representatives and so we have to vote for those who are going to support our values i mean it's common sense if we think about you know certainly um why don't we use the example of nazi germany if people would have voted for the candidates who were not of that particular party and if they would have been stronger in that you know maybe that great evil would not have occurred and so we have to you know we have in our democratic system we elect our representatives and so we have to elect those who support our values and the right to life of the unborn child really is the preeminent uh value all the other things are good you know taking care of migrants taking care of the poor but again if you don't have that right to life all of these other things really it almost becomes a lie to support those because we do not support the right to life of the unborn and so yes it is important and the holy father you know strongly supported the necessity of involvement in in politics and voting for those who support uh the right to life for the unborn right now if if people are watching this program and maybe they're a little curious about the josephites and they said maybe there's men watching right now who maybe are discerning a vocation to the priesthood and maybe they don't feel called to be a diocesan priest and they said oh the josephites i didn't hear about that where could they go uh father to begin to explore what the josephites are about is there a website or you know just to kind of teacher yeah well you know uh www.josephites so that's joseph with an ites.org josephites.org if you go there and remember you're going to look for the one that's in the united states because i think there is actually another josefi order or something or they call themselves that but they work i think in europe well in any case so joe www.josephites.org and our current uh vocation director is father steven sohay and if you contact uh go to the website um you know you you can send in information now josephites are religious order so for a man who wants to become a priest there are two options you can become a diocesan priest which means you work within a specific geographic area primarily as a parish priest or you can join a religious order like the franciscans the jesuits the dominicans uh the fathers of mercy the marians of the immaculate conception the josephites and religious orders focus on a particular charism the charisma means a particular gift that that religious order gives to the church the josephites religious particular gift is the evangelization of the african-american community and so we not only take care of the needs of african-american catholics but through our dialogue and our participation in community life we are there to evangelize non-catholic african-american persons with the gospel to show them the mercy of christ uh to be with them and in their struggles to certainly promote their social welfare and so that's what we do as josephites our primary role is primarily as parish priests and in that within that context we have many opportunities to promote and to help african-american women and men help their families uh promote their needs in society and to continue to take care of their spiritual needs yeah well that's wonderful i hope father because of this program maybe we'll get some men contacting the josephides so and i want to thank you for joining me on the program today father it was a pleasure to have you with me and of course brothers and sisters i'm going to give you a little secret father david beginning is going to come to our priest live headquarters in just a few weeks and we're gonna tape some exciting new episodes of our series for ewtn called defending life so there's a little secret so thank you father for joining me and i'm looking forward to working with you in just a few short weeks so god bless god bless you too janet good look forward to joining you okay well brothers and sisters thank you for joining us here on justice janet today and just a reminder if you're interested in the missionaries of the gospel of life just go to that website missionaries of the gospel of life.com and if you'd like to inquire a little bit more about the josephites that's josephites.org until next time this is janet morana executive director of priests for life god bless [Music] oh

Channel: Father Frank Pavone

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Id: J7soEOi3JMs

Length: 27min 18sec (1638 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 06 2022