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Start the new school year with pro-life education

If we—as parents and educators—do nothing to help the children in our lives grow in their faith and learn to care for and protect the vulnerable, the sick, the elderly, and the preborn, evil will prevail.

(Image: Kyle Gregory Devaras/Unsplash.com)

Judie Brown, president of American Life League, is not just passionate about protecting preborn babies, the sick, and the vulnerable. She’s passionate about teaching the importance of protecting preborn babies, the sick, and the vulnerable. She understands that, in order to build a culture of life, we must teach respect and dignity for all people—born and preborn. And the best time to start teaching this is when people are young. When children grow up with this foundation and the understanding that all human beings have value, they will be more likely to treat them with love and respect.

That was her vision for the Culture of Life Studies Program—American Life League’s pro-life educational program for students preschool aged through high school. And in 2014, under Judie’s guidance, a group of educators and homeschool moms began creating lessons that range from one-day lessons on saints to four-day lessons on euthanasia, the sanctity of marriage, and the preborn baby to four-week picture book lessons about caring for and protecting others, and more!

Over the years, as the program has evolved, we have seen tremendous growth. These lessons are used throughout the country in Catholic schools, by homeschoolers, in religious education programs, and in youth groups.

We recently received a message from Rosemary Circo, a middle school teacher in California who uses many of the CLSP lessons. She wrote to say how much her students enjoyed the lesson on St. Maximilian Kolbe. She stated: “My students loved his lesson and the project. They made their own radio commercials about St. Max’s life using Flipgrid. A genius lesson.” She followed this up by saying that she recently created a library system for the school so that all teachers have access to our resources. We are thrilled that the students at St. Bruno Catholic School are learning the importance of protecting all human beings.

As the new school year begins, we want to introduce more people to our program and explain how easy it is to integrate CLSP lessons into any curriculum—be it in a school, a homeschool, a religious ed program, or a youth group.

The Culture of Life Studies Program is unique, as it’s the only Catholic “culture of life” educational program to:

  • Provide pre-k through high school lessons and unit studies for implementation in multiple learning environments. Every study includes practical applications of the ideas and truths taught, helping both students and educators to become effective communicators of the culture of life.
  • Utilize subject-matter experts (doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, and religious clergy) and some of the greatest pro-life minds in the world to help create solid materials that inspire and motivate students to both live and promote the culture of life—all while protecting the innocence of our audience.
  • Create materials that can be easily integrated into religion, history, science, literature, government, art, music, and other classes.
  • Delve deep into subject matters and into the lives of historical figures paramount to both understanding and defeating the culture of death.
  • Pair the philosophical foundations of the pro-life position with real-world, hands-on applications for students by providing them with the tools necessary to articulate the message, defend the position, and live out the culture of life in every aspect of their daily lives.

All of our lessons are age appropriate and adhere to Catholic teaching. Many even have a nihil obstat and an imprimatur.

Pro-life education is more important now than ever. Why?

Take a look at the state of our country. The culture of death has gotten a stranglehold on politics, in schools, on social media, and on TV. Everywhere we turn, we see a rejection of morality, a disdain for faith, and an attempt to be “woke.”

One particularly egregious example comes from Florida where Sarasota school board member Tom Edwards said at a recent meeting: “I just wanted to give a little reassurance that here in the state of Florida there are school board members that are woke. We’re here. . . . You need to know we have your backs. And we’re working in the best strategic spot because we’re on the inside. We’re working from the inside.” He goes on to say that he’s not the only one.

Indeed, he is not the only one. This is why we must protect our children. And this is why they need pro-life lessons that teach the truths of our faith, that help them understand the importance of protecting the vulnerable, and that will help them grow into good and moral human beings.

A quote often mis-attributed to Edmund Burke tells us that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Regardless of who actually said it, the underlying truth speaks volumes. If we—as parents and educators—do nothing to help the children in our lives grow in their faith and learn to care for and protect the vulnerable, the sick, the elderly, and the preborn, evil will prevail.

That’s why—now more than ever—the CLSP is so relevant and so important.

Our lessons all help build a culture of life in your home or school so that you and your students can build a culture of life in your community. So whether you’re a teacher or a concerned parent, you can use any of our lessons to help your children or students grow in the faith. And this is exactly what we need in a world steeped in wokeness and godlessness.


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About Susan Ciancio 45 Articles
Susan Ciancio is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has worked as a writer and editor for nearly 19 years; 13 of those years have been in the pro-life sector. Currently, she is the editor of American Life League’s Celebrate Life Magazine—the nation’s premier Catholic pro-life magazine. She is also the executive editor of ALL’s Culture of Life Studies Program—a pre-K-12 Catholic pro-life education organization.

15 Comments

    • You cannot teach morality with an immoral position, by coercing others to support your religion. The 6 catholic justices have smeared your god with this decision and eviscerated the First Amendment and the establishment clause all in one fell swoop.

      These are not the only ones to set a religion at odds with the Constitution. Nor is it the first time a church has used coercion to convert. None of those earlier situations turned out well for either side. I believe and hope that this is a minority of the church instigating this extreme tactic, but they are unfortunately influential. This was the trap laid for President John F. Kennedy that he fortunately saw and sidestepped. The United States is a purely secular government in order that people may freely practice their religion, or lack thereof. While correcting this will take a great deal of time

      • Opposition to badly written court judgments and to the killing of unborn and innocent life is not religious in nature. It simply reflects good judgment, commonsense, and moral logic. To say that “Dobbs” is somehow religious or unConstitutional is to expose oneself as either an ideologue or a fool.

        • “Ideologue or a fool,” or maybe simply illiterate?

          With legal clarity, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling reverses Roe v Wade on the three grounds on which the 1973 decision was falsely based. Holding, instead, that the ruling was supported by neither history, nor precedent, nor the 14th Amendment (rather, that within our federal system of government the applicable “standard of review” did not trigger usurpation of state legislation by a federal court decision).

          But, yes, culturally we do have what will be a longstanding period of cognitive dissonance, of which Randy Grein is, at best, an unwitting victim.

          Rather than his straw man of “religion,” what about the science of embryology (the Galileo thing, but now with the shoe on the other foot)? What about the unquestioned notion that reality is simply what we say it is, politically (logical positivism)? And, practically, what about the complicated outcome that the legislative (!) acts of 50 different states will not be identical? But, again, on this circumstance, what about the simple fact that the Constitution was established to protect the legislative branch (and the states) from specious and overreaching judicial fatwas at the federal level?

      • You should read the majority opinion. The justices’ argument was that there was no legal precedent for any “right” to an abortion in both American and English common law. It is well-written and addresses the issue as a matter of law, not religion.

  1. Do you see what’s written on the sidewalk there? That’s the bone of contention.

    That is the thing beguiling everybody, including religious as well as the non-religious who are otherwise quite rational-minded.

    Each party who believes in it, lies and dissimulates on it according to his formation, level of conviction, aims, timing, audience and range of influence. And others fall for it.

    There are core people who will never budge on this “question of safety” and “humaneness” -notwithstanding that these are falsehoods.

    There are some essential points to grasp from this.

    On this issue, they will not budge.

    Some of them are declaring a war of violence over it.

    Others more to the philosophical litter about it with every kind of epithet/euphemism: lesser evil, greater good, not being penal, empathy, back street dangers, not going back to hangers, etc.

    Freedom.

    My life.

    My body.

    Some Catholics and (pseudo-) Thomists also want to add the principle of double effect.

    Anything that fits the occasion.

    The epithets are misleading in 3 ways.

    First, they are not rational, in that they actually are speaking to destroying life, good sense, femininity and tangible and determined society.

    Second, at the same time, they deflect attention from what the proponent is actually doing and who that proponent is. It hides what he stands for and with whom; plus either that he essentially doesn’t understand or that he is closed and dangerous.

    Third, there are oligarchs, plutocrats, elders and what-have-you, who both support it and actively help craft it as a matter of efficiency, money, some popularity and as the way of quietly and neatly taking care of embarrassments.

    https://www.ncregister.com/cna/vandalizing-pregnancy-center-for-giving-out-diapers-is-a-bit-much-director-says

  2. Pro-death and indifferent people thrive off generalizations. Generalizations allow specifics to go un-scrutinized.

    Generalizations also allow for all kinds of disruptive/diversionary activity and behaviours, the the forum: emotive appeals, false comparison, undue emphasis on protecting “the individual”, information flooding, misrepresenting, irrelevant
    misrepresentation, denying later what seemed logical earlier, unsettled disparate notes collectively giving off a sense of meaning.

    Plus when the interchange is fixed within or upon generalizations, it is set up where it is very difficult to go back and re-position an objection after it has arisen: because as it went the premise is the generalization, the premises are the generalizations.

    Criminal trial lawyers would be familiar with this. In criminal advocacy practice it’s called trial tactics. When it is planned in advance it is called trial strategy. Some of it frames the output. Some of it is designed NOT to un-confuse a muddle. Some of it is structured for surprise. There are limits to what advocates can do and when they breach those limits they can be checked in court and even found to be in contempt of court and in breach of the code of ethics.

    There are rules in place for that.

    Similarly in criminal trial, the cross-exam is meant to allow penetrating into specifics. This is what unravels the depictions that are being cast forward through the various depositions ….. and silences.

    In every forum, the approach to contraception has to be to get at the specifics going with EACH PARTICULAR FORM OF CONTRACEPTION. And it’s the only way to reason through each one properly. In the simplest terms, it is not possible to do this via generalizations. In a more complex sense, only this makes life thorny and truth and facts intractable, to those opposing control on the matter and opposing reasoning through them properly.

  3. I don’t like faulting pro-life people and great efforts but what has to be said is that abortion is the ultimate backstop to a consequences-free “SOCIETY”.

    It isn’t only a matter of irresponsible sex. It’s crime at the level of murder; while at the level of organized corruption of medicine and science, is something truly horrendous in nature.

    “Family building” is not a solution to the crime of abortion.

    So saying that it will be solved through the promotion of a marriage culture is selling everything short. It features many other dimensions integrally and so they all have to come into how the questions are addressed.

    I haven’t read the book; I can’t speak about it comprehensively. The link contains the video interview done through EWTN/Prudence Robertson, 6 minutes.

    ‘ “Abortion is the ultimate backstop for so-called consequence-free sex” or sex without commitment, Anderson explained. “What we argue in the book is that it can’t just be that we prohibit abortion.” ‘

    https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252134/book-roadmap-to-pro-life-movement-after-dobbs-roe

  4. In my comment above AUGUST 22, 2022 AT 10:07 AM, on House hearings December 2018 for fetal research, “Tara Sanders Lee” should be “Tara Sander Lee”.

    In this next House hearing, Oversight & Reform November 2019, State efforts reproductive health, we can adduce that In many respects the Dobbs decision has not changed the fundamentals that can be seen to be at work.

    Rep. Jim Jordan gave very strong opening comments.

    Jennifer Box gave a “sacred story” about “love” in having an abortion – everything “beyond question” and “requiring” empathy and needing “protecting” yet totally side-stepping Jim Jordan’s centering of the subject.

    Dr. Colleen McNicholas, on almost every single one of her points, could only provide the most evasive responses; and it all went un-repaired. She was a focus for the biased House bench.

    The general make-up was like this:

    a) Imbalanced witness representation 4 to 1
    b) Imbalanced House representation
    c) Wasserman-Schultz challenging Stuckey only at the last minute
    d) Wasserman-Schultz challenging Stuckey for being a lay person -as if discardable
    e) Biased Chairlady did not censor Wasserman-Schulz or defend Stuckey re other lay witnesses
    f) Stuckey departure -no-one left to answer questions
    g) Pro-life medical and scientific representation absent.

    Mrs. Allie Stuckey made the very seminal point that she alone addressed specifics. There you go. There has to be more representation and vocalization. And I just want to commend Stuckey for taking on this project and presenting with so much force on her own, just by herself, even spontaneously.

    The Dobbs decision means that for the time being the State-choice regime retains the upper hand in future hearings. State-choice is the unfolding paradigm with a legal framing and Supreme Court endorsement.

    I wonder if Mrs. Stuckey can confirm for you when it was Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz actually appeared on the House side. Wasserman-Schultz had a tiny window of “time” that she was allowed to use; and she deployed it in a way first to try to side-step and then elbow-out Stuckey from replying at all.

    Stuckey didn’t let up and this is what I am telling you is important.

    The Chairlady already knew Stuckey wanted to exit early and upon announcing her imminent departure Wasserman-Schultz made her very first entry/contribution of the day. In my recollection, at that time I saw the airing live Wasserman-Schultz’s name was not even posted on the House bench list.

    Anyway, in the Oversight & Reform fetal research hearing with Sander Lee, aforesaid, December 2018, you will notice how the balance in witness set-up and the dynamic from the House bench were very different to what you see here, November 2019.

    https://www.c-span.org/video/?466400-1/womens-reproductive-health

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/im-only-one-willing-to-talk-specifics-says-lone-pro-life-witness-at-house-pro-abortion-hearing/

    https://www.c-span.org/video/?466400-1/womens-reproductive-health

    • ‘ Any discussion of limiting abortion in legislation has been vociferously condemned as an attempt to curb the so-called “right to abortion.” Unrestricted and unlimited access to abortion has become a sacred idol to many people in the throwaway culture of death we live in.

      We know it and abortion advocates know it.

      This was on full display some months ago when Catherine Glenn Foster, from Americans United for Life, testified during a session of the House Committee on the Judiciary. The committee revealed their agenda with the session’s title: “Revoking Your Rights: The Ongoing Crisis in Abortion Care Access.” Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland confronted Foster on “calling for a nationwide ban on abortion with no exception for rape or incest.” Foster replied, “If we added rape and incest exceptions, would you vote for it?” Raskin had no answer but to reclaim his time, pretend his question wasn’t answered, and that Foster’s question wasn’t asked. ‘

      https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/abortion-the-sacred-idol-of-our-throwaway-society

      https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5016027/user-clip-raskin-scared-answer

  5. Here is an idea for a template for teaching. I didn’t ask LIFESITE but I’m sure they’d be happy if you took inspiration from it.

    You could add a bit of history under each State, for that State. Each State could have “2 arms” or timelines – Pro-life Arm and Death Arm. And you could reveal how the Death Arm reaches through states just as the organized vice trades do.

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/full-list-abortion-is-now-illegal-in-at-least-10-states-more-to-follow/?utm_source=promoted&utm_campaign=usa

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