A Franciscan Priest Is Willing to Go to Jail to Witness against Abortion

S aint Francis would probably have made most of us uncomfortable. He’s perhaps both the most well-known and domesticated saint. His love for God and His creation has translated into making him a secular patron for pets. But his radical love of God and insistence on poverty sparked renewal in a way that comfort cannot.

Father Fidelis Moscinski, a Franciscan friar in the tradition of Saint Francis, makes people uncomfortable. When I’m around him, he’s usually praying deliverance prayers outside an abortion clinic. On New York City streets, that makes people not only uncomfortable, but livid. (You don’t want me to repeat some of the things I’ve heard said to him.) When he’s out there, we can’t pretend that the abortion clinic is just another office building. It’s a place where lives end. Developing lives, but lives all the same. Follow the science.

When I’m not around him, he’s walking into the lobbies of abortion clinics, offering women roses. He’s asked to leave and says he will when the abortionist leaves. So, he gets arrested. It’s an act of civil disobedience in response to an unjust law.

A few days after Independence Day this summer, he showed up with locks and chains at an abortion clinic on Long Island early in the morning. He obstructed access to the clinic for a few hours. He’s open about why — he wanted to delay women going in so he could try to help them not have abortions. So now the Justice Department is making a federal case of him.

When I first heard back in July that he had done this lock-and-chain work, I questioned the efficacy of the tactic to a mutual friend — thinking primarily of the long-term effort to change hearts and minds, wanting some kind of perfect strategy that has never and will never exist.  “Women turned around,” he replied. For Father Fidelis, any opportunity to give anyone a chance to pause about abortion is worth sacrifice — and what many would consider foolishness — because there are human lives at stake. It’s a radical last line of defense. It’s the sign someone needed. Questions are asked. People notice. It’s not a routine day of abortions.

Nicole Moore counsels abortion-minded women in New York City at Pregnancy Help Inc., one of those modest pregnancy-help centers that the governor of New York and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren want to shut down. Moore observes that even in the abortion capital/destination of New York, something has changed in the 100 days or so since Roe was overturned. Women’s “hearts are open,” she says. I’ve heard this from others on the front lines of pregnancy help. Now that Roe v. Wade isn’t the law of the land, some of the pressure is lifted — there’s a newfound freedom now that there is a renewed debate over abortion, rather than a Court-imposed necessary evil. In remarks at the Human Life Review dinner just days after the federal complaint against Father Fidelis, Moore said that lives are being saved when someone is there to provide hope for help. She doesn’t sugarcoat how hard the road is, but the more help there is, in the spirit of the radical nature of the gospel, the better off women are.

Jessica Keating Floyd recently wrote about being in the master-of-divinity program at Notre Dame and finding pro-life people who talk about abortion more than other issues to be annoying. After communicating this during a study of Christian radicalism, she was challenged by someone she respected, known for “his commitment to social justice.” He said to her, “If you believe these are human beings, you might feel differently.” Now she works to engage those who are in the same boat she was in on the urgency of protecting the unborn. (All the best policies in the world won’t do a thing for you if you weren’t given a chance to live. We can “love them both,” as in the theme of last year’s theme of March for Life.)

Moore shared that so much of the noise since Roe ended seems so remote from the needs of the women who come to her, who aren’t certain how to make it through the week, never mind a pregnancy and 18 years and then-some.

During the same week, Kamala Harris met with Planned Parenthood’s president and insisted that people of faith who oppose abortion should have no moral qualms about supporting the abortion expansion they insist on. Not if it’s a life, Madame Vice President.

I’m not canonizing Father Fidelis, but I’m much less interested in the political and legal debate over the federal charges against him than I am in how uncomfortable he can make us all in more radically helping women not to have to choose abortion.

As long as there are politicians trying to explain away science when it comes to abortion, there will be religious leaders making us uncomfortable — and going to jail — because they have the courage of their convictions in face of a grave moral muddle.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.