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Bishop Thomas Paprocki consecrates the host during Mass. / Diocese of Springfield in Illinois

St. Louis, Mo., Mar 1, 2023 / 14:45 pm (CNA).
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, on Tuesday published an essay in which he quotes the wo… […]

Chicago, Ill., Mar 19, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) conceded his primary race on Wednesday, saying that he stood by his pro-life principles even if they led to his defeat.  

“There was one issue that loomed especially large in this campaign, the fact that I am pro-life,” Lipinski, a Catholic eight-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, told reporters on Wednesday as primary election results showed him more than 2,400 votes behind his challenger Marie Newman.

“Over the years I’ve watched many other politicians succumb to pressure and change their position on this issue,” he said, noting that his pro-life stance was based upon his Catholic faith and “on science, which shows us that life begins at conception.”

“I could never give up protecting the most vulnerable human beings in the world, simply to win an election,” Lipinski said.

“My faith teaches—and the Democratic Party preaches—that we should serve everyone, especially the most vulnerable,” he said.

“To stand in solidarity with the vulnerable is to become vulnerable. There is no higher calling for anyone. But politicians don’t like to be vulnerable.”

Lipinski, representing Illinois’ third congressional district on Chicago’s south side and suburbs, is recognized as the last reliably pro-life Democrat in the House.

In recent years, he joined Republicans in supporting a “pain-capable” 20-week abortion ban, a bill to mandate care for babies who survive botched abortions, and legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funds.

His opponent, Marie Newman, was backed by national pro-abortion groups who targeted Lipinski’s pro-life record in ads during the primary.

“We ran a good campaign against tremendous headwinds,” Lipinski said on Wednesday, acknowledging his defeat and offering his congratulations to Newman. “As I said during the primary, I’ll support the winner of the primary,” he said.

For the second consecutive election cycles, Lipinski faced an onslaught of opposition from progressive and pro-abortion groups. 

Pro-abortion groups such as NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and EMILY’s List all joined a coalition that invested $1.4 million into the race, targeting him in digital, TV, and mail ads and highlighting his pro-life record.

Even two politically activist nuns from the Sisters of Mercy—Sisters JoAnn Persch and Pat Murphy—publicly endorsed Newman in a campaign video. The endorsement was “the most embarrassing, or shameful, moment” in the race, said Joshua Mercer, editor of CatholicVote.org’s “The Loop.”

Lipinski said on Wednesday that he “was pilloried in millions of dollars of TV ads and mailers” on the abortion issue. He had told CNA in January that he had not seen as much support from pro-life groups as he had hoped for.

“The pro-life community doesn’t have as much money as the abortion lobby, for sure,” said Kirsten Day executive director of Democrats for Life in America. Ads from pro-abortion groups also targeted Lipinski for opposing health care, immigration, and the minimum wage, even where he had voted reliably Democrat on an issue. “There was no counter to that,” Day said.

Lipinski’s seat was a symbolical for the abortion industry, Mercer said, and groups like NARAL understood that.

“It’s very few times when abortion legislation in the House would rise or fall on one vote. The abortion industry understood how frustrating it was to their cause to have someone who was a very reliable Democrat say ‘no, I’m pro-life,’” Mercer said.

“They saw him as undermining their cause, and they saw the value in spending millions of dollars to defeat him.”

Some progressive Democratic members of Congress, including freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), officially endorsed Newman.

Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) made headlines in 2019 for backing out of a DCCC fundraiser to support Lipinski after she endured backlash from abortion supporters in the party. On Wednesday, she congratulated Newman on her victory and thanked Lipinski for his service.

Lipinski on Wednesday said that he “was shunned by many of my colleagues and other Democratic Party members and operators. I was shunned because of my pro-life stance.”

“The pressure in the Democratic Party on the life issue has never been as great as it is now,” he said.

Democratic leadership in the House and senators from Illinois “did very little” to back the eight-term incumbent, even as other Democratic members were endorsing Newman, said Day.

Lipinski voted often with his party, so “to receive this kind of treatment over his support for human life, it just is a bad direction for the party,” she said.

Some party leaders, such as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), have said that there is still room in the party for pro-life Democrats like Lipinski. Endorsements of his colleagues in Congress, however, never materialized as they did for Newman.

“They want the votes of Catholic voters,” Mercer said of Democratic Party leaders. “They don’t want the voices.”

In the wake of Lipinski’s defeat, political commentators said that the Democratic Party’s abortion extremism will come back to haunt them in the general election. Presidential candidates have endorsed abortion-on-demand even until birth, and all the candidates support taxpayer-funded abortions.

Day said that pro-life Democrats need to turn their attention to the general election and the party’s platform, which will be adopted at the 2020 convention in Milwaukee later this summer.

The 2016 DNC platform called for taxpayer funding of abortions in the U.S. and overseas, a significant shift on the issue. Day said that the platform contributed to the party’s extremist shift in favor of abortion, including efforts to unseat Lipinski.

Based on her conversations with moderate Democratic, independent, and Republican voters in Lipinski’s district, Day said the party’s abortion “extremism” had already convinced some of them to stay home on Tuesday rather than vote in the party’s primary.

“If the Democratic Party thinks that they’re going to do well in November with [Joe] Biden, who has really apologized for opposing taxpayer funding of abortion—if they think they’re going to get these independents to cross over and vote for Biden, I think that they’re going to be surprised,” Day said.

Biden, she said, needs to make “concessions” on the issue and there must be “drastic change to the [party] platform.”

Political strategist Jacob Lupfer said the pro-life movement could have done far more to save Lipinski.

“It is strategically insane for the party to move in this extreme direction,” Lupfer said.

While Students for Life volunteers canvassed for Lipinski in the closing days of the race, he noted, “the institutional pro-life movement did not make significant investments in this race commensurate with its wealth and power. The big pro-choice groups did.”

Mercer, however, questioned the lack of support Lipinski received from the “Catholic Left,” some of whom support presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who also endorsed Newman last year.

“It makes you wonder about what’s going on with the Catholic Left, that stuff like this happens,” Mercer said of pro-labor Lipinski’s defeat by the more liberal Newman who advocated for policies such as Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal.

“These are two Democrats. It’s like, what kind of Democratic Party do you want? Do you want it to be a cheerleader for the abortion industry? Then that’s Marie Newman. Or do you want the Democratic Party to say ‘we can be pro-labor, pro-environment, and still be pro-life’? That’s Dan Lipinski,” Mercer said.

Pro-lifers also need to recruit candidates from a more demographically diverse field, Lupfer said, noting that “it doesn’t look good for the movement when all the pro-life Democrats in Congress are moderate white men.”

The movement needs to be bipartisan to succeed on the national level, he said, and this means going on offense and running candidates in primaries in moderate and swing districts, targeting vulnerable incumbents.

Pro-lifers should “do what AOC did, but do it in reverse,” he said, referring to the unexpected success of young Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who ousted a Democratic incumbent in a 2018 primary.

“They need to go in and recruit black church leaders to run for Congress. Or go find Hispanic moms in state legislatures who are pro-life Democrats,” Lupfer said. “Go around the country and get 30 or 40 of these candidates and run them in Democratic congressional primaries against complacent, entrenched, or corrupt incumbents.”

Lipinski was one of the last remaining pro-life Democrats because he stood fast by his principles, Mercer said.

“It’s easy to get disappointed by politicians, and the enormous pressures that politicians face between voters and institutional party,” he said.

“Dan Lipinski was somebody who stood strong on the principle of defending the unborn, and was willing to pay whatever political price for it. And that’s a tremendous amount of courage.”

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Palm Beach, Fla., Jan 9, 2018 / 04:57 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- More people need to know about the Dutch priest Blessed Titus Brandsma and his heroic death in a Nazi concentration camp, according to a Florida priest who says Brandsma’s intercession led to a miraculous healing from cancer.
 
“He was bold. He was brave,” Father Michael Driscoll, 76, told CNA. “He knew when he was in the pulpit preaching that there were people in the congregations taking notes for the Nazis about what he would be saying. Yet he continued.”
 
Driscoll has faced his own struggles. He was diagnosed with advanced melanoma in 2004. Shortly after that, someone gave him a small piece of Brandsma’s black suit, which the American priest applied to his head each day.
 
He underwent major surgery, with doctors removing 84 lymph nodes and a salivary gland. He then went through 35 days of radiation treatment, the Boca Raton Sun-Sentinel reports.
 
Still, his cancer had a very poor survival rate, of only 10 to 15 percent after ten years.
 
“Doctors have stated Fr. Driscoll’s cancer is now gone and have said his good health over the past 12 years defies all odds,” the Diocese of Palm Beach said Dec. 13. “They have stated his healing and recovery from Stage 4 cancer cannot be explained medically.”

Driscoll recounted his doctor’s words three and a half years ago: “no need to come back, don’t waste your money on airfare in coming back here. You’re cured. I don’t find any more cancer in you.”

The apparent miracle could lead to the canonization of Bl. Titus Brandsma. The Palm Beach diocese, where Driscoll serves as a retired priest, sent its findings and evidence to the Vatican in December 2017.

Brandsma, a Netherlands-born Carmelite priest, was a professor and a journalist. He was a strong critic of Nazi ideology. After the Nazis occupied his country in May 1940, they persecuted Jewish citizens and laid increasing restrictions on others.

The priest defended freedom of Catholic education and of the Catholic press against Nazi pressures.

“He was a spokesperson for the Dutch bishops,” Driscoll said. “He got the message across against the Nazis and what they were doing against the Catholic press, the Catholic schools, the persecution of Jews, you name it.”

Due in part to Brandsma’s refusal to expel Jewish children from Catholic schools and because he opposed mandatory Nazi propaganda in Catholic newspapers, he was arrested by the Nazis in January 1942. He was was eventually sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, joining 2,700 other clergy. He faced inhumane conditions and abuse from his captors.

“He apparently was very kind to other prisoners, telling them to forgive the people who were persecuting them and punishing them in this prison, giving up little bits of his food to others,” Driscoll recounted.

Non-German priests weren’t allowed to celebrate Mass in the camp, where the majority of the priests were Polish.

Still, Brandsma carried out priestly duties.
 
“The German priests used to smuggle the Eucharist to him so he could distribute it to various prisoners, by an eyeglass case. That’s where he hid the Eucharist,” said Driscoll. “He would go around giving encouragement to other prisoners and giving them the Eucharist too, as best he could.”

Brandsma, who was always frail, was sent to the prison hospital.
 
“It is said that anybody who went to this prison hospital never came out,” Driscoll said. “Probably when he went there, he knew all sorts of things might happen to him.

The hospital’s doctors regularly engaged in human experimentation.
 
Driscoll said a nurse gave Brandsma a lethal injection on July 26, 1942 and he died immediately. His remains were likely cremated within a day. He was 61 years old.
 
A nurse on duty at the time of the priest’s death later testified that the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, had ordered his death.
 
“Before he died, he gave this person his rosary, which was a rather primitive rosary, made with some kind of beads,” Driscoll said. “He told her to pray the rosary. She objected that she didn’t understand how and wasn’t a believer anymore.”
 
“He said all you have to do is go from bead to bead and say ‘pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.’ And just keep saying ‘pray for us sinners, pray for us sinners’. And that’s enough,” the American priest recounted.
 
Brandsma was beatified in November 1985 as a martyr for the faith.
 
For Driscoll, the priest’s life teaches us “to preach the gospel boldly, forcefully, and not be afraid.”
 
“I think that’s one of the important issues,” he said. “Being kind to one another, as he was to his fellow prisoners, and try to console them when they fell down. I assume many of them were totally depressed by their condition. He encouraged people.
 
Driscoll also reflected on the nature of faith, sickness and healing. Those who suffer illness should “try their best… try to not lose hope.”
 
“It’s faith that heals. I believe, and that’s important,” he said. “I tell people ‘It’s not the touching of this piece of cloth to you. It’s faith that saves.’ You should not give up hope, but have faith. Jesus says ‘ask and you shall receive.’ You keep praying for that. Certainly everybody’s prayer is answered somehow. It may not be the way that you like, but it is answered.”
 
Fr. Mario Esposito, a Carmelite priest from New York, is a vice-postulator for the case. He told the Sun-Sentinel that he knows of no other miracles attributed to Brandsma that are under investigation.
 
“We hope this could be the one, but there are very exacting standards, and Rome is going to go over this case with a fine-toothed comb,” Esposito said.

 

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