Category Archives: News

Abortion Vigil, 1989

You Do Have A Choice

To the mothers who are considering an abortion

We are here, outside this abortion clinic, to acknowledge your freedom to choose and ask you to choose what is right.

The life within your womb is human life.  This is how we all began, developing slowly and hidden within the warmth and protection of the womb.  If this life is not interfered with, a human person, which all would recognize, will be born.  We are opposed to abortion because it attacks this pre-natal human being and because it attacks you, the mother.  Through abortion, this pre-natal human being is killed.  Such an action would not be allowed after birth.  You know that the life within you is a developing human being; how does one decide when to terminate his or her existence?  If you would not do so after birth why do so now?

Abortion is an attack on you as a woman and a mother.  There is no greater power you have than to play a crucial role in giving life and birth.  Nothing is of greater significance.  To submit to an abortion would be to throw this gift away; it would be to say that what you are helping to create is disposable.  But, of course, that is not the case.  You are worthy to bring life into this world.  It is cruel lie what has convinced you to seriously consider an abortion.  Whatever difficulties you face as a result of bringing life to birth you do not have to face them alone.  There are other options, which will protect the life of your child and your dignity as a woman and mother.  The emotional scar of an abortion will remain and hurt much longer than any problems you face now.

To the health workers:

Are you not called by your profession to protect, nurture and heal?  To attack the life within the womb you, perhaps more than the mother, know what you are doing.  Do you fully inform the ‘patient’ of what you are doing in terms of: the development of the unborn child, the reaction of the unborn child during the ‘operation’, or the operating procedure?  Do you describe the developing child accurately, or do you hide the nature of this human life by misnaming this life ‘pre-embryonic development’, or ‘products of conception’, etc.? For the medical profession to be involved in the way it is, demonstrates (again) that there is no necessary connection between one’s training/profession and morality.  A comparable situation existed in Nazi Germany, and exists today with much of the scientific profession making possible the end of all life on earth through the use of nuclear and chemical weapons.

To all:

It is a poor society that induces mothers to kill their unborn children.  We are all the poorer for it.  The loss of three million children since 1967 is an unimaginable loss to the lives of everyone.  The values and pressures, which bring women to the point of accepting the killing of their own flesh and blood is a crime against them and dignity of all women and men.  

We believe that God also is pro-choice.  He gives us free will to choose, even to choose to send ourselves to hell.

A choice is before us all, and we plead that you choose what is right: Choose Life!

–END—

[The basics of this leaflet was first distributed outside the abortion clinic on Brixton Hill in Brixton, London in 1989 by Catholic Peace Action.  CPA, through nonviolent action and civil disobedience has worked outside the Ministry of Defence against the nuclear war preparations of the UK.] 

STATEMENT FOR THE DEFENCE

By Fr David

From the June 1988 Newsletter

Wells St Magistratet’s Court
5 May 1988

‘I am charged under the Metropolitan Police Act 1839 with “marking a wall without the owner’s consent”.

Yes, I did mark a wall, the Ministry of Defence in Horseguards Avenue.

With a cross.  It was Ash Wednesday. 

But in English law, to be guilty of a crime requires both a prohibited action and a guilty frame of mind.

I admit the prohibited action. 
I deny the guilty frame of mind.

On the contrary, my action was done to alert people to the wrongness, madness and unlawfulness of what is being planned in the Ministry of Defence, in our name.

This court has a duty to uphold the law, not just the Metropolitan Police Act, but the more fundamental laws of our country.  It is unlawful to plan the mass murder of innocent people.

It is unlawful to intend to pollute and devastate the earth on a scale that would inevitable follow a nuclear strike.

It is unlawful (and, I submit, criminally negligent) to risk the lives of our own citizens with a defence policy that invites a similar or worse retaliation.

This court, and you Sir, have a choice:

to uphold the letter of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839, or
to uphold the more central principles of law to which I and others were witnessing on Ash Wednesday. 

I ask you to reaffirm in this court the great tradition of English law  which protects innocent life, cherishes the earth, and refuses to be subservient to passing Government policy.

Does this court want to line up with courts in another country in 1940, which would have found someone guilty for marking a cross (without the owner’s consent) on the outside of a truck heading for Dachau?

I am a Christian and a priest.
I am charged to proclaim the law and the love of God, and to preach the gospel of Christ. 
I am also charged to care for my people. 
I am trying to do all these things, and in this court I am asking the law to protect us.

If you choose to see only a mark on a wall, so be it.

And God help us all.

Verdict: CASE PROVED
Sentence: ABSOLUTE DISCHARGE

Same verdict and sentence for two co-defendants: Pauline Condon, a Quaker nurse; and Ezio Roattino, missionary priest.

The court found us technically guilty as charged, but the sentence affirms our action and its moral purpose. A small but famous victory. But we remember the 60 other defendants who received sentences, which they are now serving or resisting.

1986 August

Reprinted from the October 1986 newsletter.

https://catholicpeaceaction.org/wp-content/uploads/1986-10-CPA-Newsletter.pdf

August 1986

By Fr David Standley

Scene One

On August 6th at 7:30 a.m. some fifteen people gather round a child’s coffin in the Embankment Gardens to pray for the victims of Hiroshima.  All round the Gardens strange, sad people waking up from their hard and lonely beds, some declaiming to absent audiences, others cursing God and the world.  They are familiar and welcome, or at least tolerated.  But the gardeners and wardens can’t cope with people praying, let alone coffins.  We are moved on before we can finish.

Scene Two

Three people kneeling before the coffin, placed like a dead baby on the top step of the entrance to the Ministry of Defence. Flurries of security panic — after all that box might contain a little of the same stuff they are in business to manufacture and use themselves, and in the wrong hands… Early workers arrive and are not obstructed.  The three continue kneeling, it seems for a long time, silent and sad and strong.  A little singing and psalming among friends.

Scene Three

Small coffin silent and alone as workers stream past in increasing numbers, some choosing not to notice, some accepting leaflets, a few grinding their teeth.  The jaws of the MoD swallow their daily food.  The three mourners parley with police on the pavement below.  No one is obstructed.  The mourners are bundled away.

Scene Four

Friday 8:30 p.m.  The Eucharist on the steps of the MoD, previously authorised, is now refused by the police, who feel deceived by the action on Wednesday. We remove to the grass on the riverside of the building, and celebrate Mass under the stoney gaze of General Gordon of Khartoum.  The huge bulk of the MoD dwarfs the tiny celebration, as we proclaim our belief that the peace of Christ is stronger than the supposed security of weapons of mass destruction.

Scene Five

August 19th, p.m. The Magistrate’s Court in Wells street. We are shunted from one floor to another as they try to find a vacant court.  As a witness I miss most of the proceedings, waiting my turn.  An hour passes, so the defendants must be being allowed to defend themselves on their own terms.

I am called, and take the oath, resting my hand on God ‘s word.  Theresa asks me why I was there, Margaret asks what significance August 6th has for Christian peacemakers, Clive asks if the Church ever sanctions the right of conscience to disobey the law of the land in order to obey a higher law.

The defendants seem exposed and vulnerable; the magistrate magisterial, not unfriendly, perplexed, in command of the law, listening. I feel the privilege and responsibility of being able to speak openly of the Gospel in a court of law.  Is it mischievous or sincere of the prosecuting counsel to quote Romans 13 about the duty to obey civil authority? He also reminds us that August 6th for Christians is the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord.   Indeed.

The defendants are found technically guilty of the offence of ‘wilfully obstructing the highway without lawful authority.  The magistrate mutters the unexpected sentence, binding them over to keep the peace for a year.

Does this mean they must sign?  Yes, to the Queen, to keep her peace.  Margaret, Theresa, and Clive are led off into a side room.  Later they emerge outside the court.

They have signed.  Tears, frustration, anger.  Sense of failure, even betrayal.  Prison now (the consequence of not signing) is different from prison later, and we are not ready.

But this is not defeat.  We have witnessed in action and word that Christ ‘s peace and the Queen’s peace are not the same.  It is Christ’s peace we must keep and build.  The crisis between the two will continue to break out at the MoD.

I am glad to have had a small part in the play.

Bruce Kent’s letter Tablet 1984

THE TABLET 21/28 April 1984

Letters A question for disarmament

Sir: Cecilia Hatt in Viewpoint asks a question and I hasten to answer. The point I made at the London meeting on 20 March and at other times as well was quite a simple one.

If Catholics and others concerned for peace do not agree with the policies of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, then why do they not instead become active members of one of the many organisations with more general aims?

From the Freeze Coalition to the Campaign against the Arms Trade, from Pax Christi to the United Nations Association, such movements exist in quite large numbers and they ought to have solid Catholic support. That they do not is simply a matter of observation.

I am still almost the only British priest with concern for the entirely non-controversial World Conference of Religions for Peace. It is good news that Cecilia Hatt and I can at least agree on the excellence of the American bishops’ pastoral letter, so well prepared and presented.

If we were to apply its conclusions to government policy here, we would very soon be in collision with government policy. It calls for a halt on further nuclear weapons deployment, an end to nuclear war-fighting doctrines, and opposes deterrent policies resting on a willingness to target cities.

Julian Critchley MP, by no means a enthusiast for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, has recently agreed that our present policies in this area can be summed up as “population extermination”

Of course, we can all do things sometimes, which others will judge to be silly, extreme or over-judgmental, though Catholic Peace Action must answer for itself.

I can only speak for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament which has clearly made mistakes in its time. But no one ought to expect perfection from an organisation before getting involved. Or even afterwards, as the failings of the Vatican Bank may serve to remind us….

(Mgr) Bruce Kent

General Secretary Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

11 Goodwin Street

London

N4 3HQ