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Why Do We Need a Respect Life Memorial?

Oct 08, 2003 If some frightening evil threatened your neighborhood today, what would you do? If you were a faithful knight, your first step would be a quick prayer for deliverance from the evil. You would develop a plan to protect loved ones and pray some more for the next step. You would recruit others to fight the evil and pray some more. You would pray together for wisdom in setting a course of action and pray some more.

There is evil in our Fairfax neighborhood. It’s an evil that kills over one thousand every year. It undermines the sanctity of the family and is counter to everything a Knight stands for in his country and his Church.

According to the Virginia Center for Health Statistics in the year 2001, there were 1518 deaths in Fairfax City. Of these deaths, 1,327 resulted from abortion. For the statisticians reading along, that’s 87.4% of the deaths in the city resulting from abortion. This statistic gives our neighborhood one of the highest abortion rates in the Commonwealth.
Over a thousand in the womb lost their rights to continue childhood and personhood beneath the cold fluorescent lights of the area’s abortion facilities. Over a thousand mothers suffered scars on their emotional and spiritual health demanding our prayers as much as the tragedy in which they engaged.
Prayer is the most powerful weapon we can use to end the horror of abortion. Prayer advocacy comes from John Paul II as well as our national Knights of Columbus leadership. As Knights, we should not only pray individually and together, we have a responsibility to encourage our brothers and sisters who are not Knights to do the same.

Our national leadership also supports councils like ours sponsoring Respect Life memorials. A memorial to the unborn helps our chapter in that leadership objective. Its placement in front of St Leo would serve as a reminder to parishioners leaving Mass to pray for an end to abortion. Not everyone will pray. Some will look at the statue as just a part of the scenery. Others might pray a Hail Mary, but every prayer counts. Hopefully, a few others might pray a rosary in front of the memorial. Perhaps praying a mystery of the rosary before our corporate Mass in front of the memorial every quarter would call greater attention to the urgency of prayer.

It would be wonderful if a few Knights reached into their pockets and funded this project themselves. If a third of our membership contributed $100, we’d almost be there. However, fundraisers have an important place. They call attention to what we want to carry out, and help draw in brother Knights and parishioners to build a prayer chain.

For the brothers who support this project, thank you for your effort.

For those who don’t approve or are lukewarm to it, we ask you to take another look at what this means. It’s worth an extra prayer.


Mike Plumstead
Pro Life Chairman

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