Cyclists will be riding across the country beginning July 11, to raise awareness for the unborn and to fundraise for pregnancy resource centers.
This year, 50 college students and young adults across the country will be riding an average of 100 miles a day for a combined 2,700 miles, with the nonprofit Biking for Babies.
Now in its 12th year of holding bicycle rides for the pro-life cause, Biking for Babies aims to raise $225,000 this year for pregnancy resource centers. By hitting its goal, the group will have surpassed its cumulative $1 million donation mark for its history.
Biking for Babies was started by board chairman Jimmy Becker and his friend Mike Shaefer in March 2009. The two young men took their bikes to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, with the goal to bicycle 600 miles to fundraise and raise awareness for pregnancy resource centers. They raised over $14,000 for a local pregnancy resource center on that first journey.
Biking for Babies began its first national ride in 2010, when cyclists traveled for eight days from New Orleans to Champaign, Illinois.
Riders hail from around the nation including groups leaving this year from Green Bay, Wisconsin; Columbus, Ohio; Natchez, Mississippi.; and Holly, Colorado. The teams will be the largest in the organization’s history, and they will all converge together for a “celebration of life” in St. Louis only five days later on July 17th.
The cyclists wear yellow “Biking for Babies” jerseys, with painted support vehicles traveling alongside them. Onlookers often stop to ask about their mission.
“It is these encounters that invite others into the mission and move hearts to support life,” the group’s website says.
The bikers train for months for their ride across the country. They also spend months learning about their local pregnancy resource center and its primary mission, in order to share its story and pray for the center during their ride.
Pregnancy resource centers are also encouraged to fill out an application on the Biking for Babies website to partner with the organization.
Once the application is accepted, Biking for Babies and the pregnancy resource center begin a relationship mediated by a missionary, so both organizations can learn from each other.
In the past, the national ride has included routes from Florida, Texas and Louisiana to the destination of Chicago. In 2017, the cyclists carried a cross into St. Louis.
“We exist to bring light into the darkness of our culture; we exist to invite others into a life of action, to spread hope by our physical witness on the roads,” the group said in its press release.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot leads the city’s Pride Parade as Grand Marshal, June 30, 2019. / Vashon Jordan Jr. via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 10, 2022 / 13:42 pm (CNA).
Catholic and pro-life leaders are condemning the Chicago’s mayor’s “call to arms” in response to the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting that justices will overturn Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.
“To my friends in the LGBTQ+ community—the Supreme Court is coming for us next. This moment has to be a call to arms,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat in a same-sex marriage, tweeted on Monday. “We will not surrender our rights without a fight—a fight to victory!”
Catholic and pro-life leaders expressed concern with Lightfoot’s wording at a time when abortion activists are threatening Supreme Court justices and attacking Catholic churches and pro-life pregnancy centers.
“It is seriously concerning to see politicians like Mayor Lightfoot use incendiary language with violent undertones at a time when certain Supreme Court justices need additional security and churches and pregnancy centers are under actual attack by the abortion movement,” Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, told CNA.
She added, “Efforts to intimidate jurists and frighten pro-lifers will not prevail, but they are reckless and must be condemned.”
“The March for Life Chicago condemns Mayor Lightfoot’s ‘call to arms,’ especially following a Molotov cocktail being thrown into a pro-life organization’s office just 150 miles from Chicago,” the group told CNA. “The March for Life Chicago calls upon Mayor Lightfoot, civic leaders, and all Midwesterners to peacefully build a society where preborn children and their parents are protected from the violence of abortion.”
Amy Gehrke, the executive director of Illinois Right to Life, also called out the mayor.
“At a time when violence in the city of Chicago is spiraling out of control, it is mind-boggling that Mayor Lightfoot is putting more taxpayer money towards the violence of abortion,” she told CNA. “It is also mind-boggling that, with violence against pro-life advocates rising sharply, that Mayor Lightfoot would use irresponsible and incendiary language such as issuing a ‘call to arms.’”
On Monday, Lightfoot and the Chicago Department of Public Health announced an allocation of $500,000 for supporting “access to reproductive healthcare for Chicagoans and patients seeking safe, legal care from neighboring states that have or ultimately will ban abortion if the Supreme Court decides to strike down Roe v. Wade.”
“Through this investment, my administration is reaffirming our commitment to ensure safe access for anyone seeking safe reproductive healthcare,” Lightfoot said. “That includes access to transportation, lodging, care, and, if necessary, safe and legal access to an abortion procedure.”
Gehrke responded, “By welcoming women to Chicago for abortions Mayor Lightfoot is putting the women of our neighboring states at risk.”
“Talk of threats to the LGBTQ community and others is a straw man,” she concluded. “Abortion advocates know when they talk about the real issue — the deliberate killing of preborn children and the harm it causes their mothers — they lose.”
The mayor’s press office did not respond with comment by time of publication to expand on the meaning of Lightfoot’s remarks. When Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado’s third congressional district called Lightfoot an “insurrectionist” in response to her “call to arms” tweet, Lightfoot responded, “Excuse me. Insurrection is your thing. Not ours.”
In response to the Supreme Court draft opinion, which the court noted “does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case,” some Democrats such as President Joe Biden have claimed that overturning Roe would threaten LGBTQ and contraception “rights.”
The draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, takes pains to say otherwise.
“To ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right,” Alito writes. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedent that do not concern abortion.”
“Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage, but abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged, because it destroys what those decisions called ‘fetal life’ and what the law now before us describes as an ‘unborn human being,’” the draft reads.
Ricky Reyes dribbles the ball up court as now-Father Peter Schirripa follows behind at the national basketball tournament for seminaries in 2022. / Credit: St. John’s Seminary
CNA Staff, Nov 6, 2023 / 14:40 pm (CNA).
Imagine the scene: The alarm clock starts beeping and it’s 4 a.m. Basketball practice starts in an hour. It’s time for a group of bleary-eyed young men to grab their gear, meet their teammates, and begin a one-mile uphill jog in the middle of New England’s freezing weather to the basketball facility.
Once inside the gym, the work begins: stretching, sprints, layups, scrimmaging, shooting, defensive posture, all with one goal in mind — winning.
This type of intense training is all in a day’s work for one team of men in Boston.
No, it’s not the Division I team at Boston College, Boston University, or Northeastern University.
Rather, it’s how a team of seminarians at St. John’s Seminary in Boston trains. And their goal of winning is twofold: victory in the spiritual life and a championship trophy at the national tournament for seminaries, which is held once a year.
But what does playing basketball have to do with priestly formation? Well, according to the seminarians who play for the St. John’s Eagles, quite a lot.
St. John’s Seminary’s basketball team at practice. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
A ‘microcosm of the spiritual life’
When 27-year-old Deacon Marcelo Ferrari, the team’s co-captain, first entered seminary, he saw the game as more of an extracurricular activity, “a good opportunity to spend some time with close friends and maybe build some fraternity.”
“But very quickly it became clear that the basketball team is just a microcosm of the spiritual life,” Ferrari, of Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, said.
Playing the game together imitates the spiritual life in that “you experience a lot of humiliation, especially if you’re not as skilled like me,” said Ferrari, who has more experience in soccer than in basketball.
“But you also just learn a real sense of what sacrifice means,” he said. “Even practice just being at 5 in the morning is enough to demand a lot of the human heart.”
The experience of being on the team aided in Ferrari’s priestly formation in “so many ways,” he said, adding that “it became a critical space for me to recognize especially more of those subtle movements of the heart.”
“There’s nothing like team sports to bring out every part of you,” he said.
An uphill climb
Ferrari had never played organized basketball until he entered St. John’s Seminary. It wasn’t until another seminarian who established the team, now-recently ordained Father Peter Schirripa, asked him to join that he considered it.
“He saw me playing soccer and was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s mildly athletic. Let’s see if we can get him a basketball and see what he can do,’” Ferrari said.
This type of recruiting was par for the course for Schirripa, 30, who grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and had the idea for the team when he first entered seminary more than six years ago.
But Schirripa, who had experience in basketball, track and field, and soccer, credits the founder of the media apostle Word on Fire, Bishop Robert Barron, with the conception of the idea.
Schirripa was visiting his alma mater St. Anselm College during its 2017 graduation ceremony, the spring before his entrance to seminary, when he met Barron, who was giving the commencement address. Barron mentioned to him that there was a national basketball tournament for seminaries and encouraged Schirripa to put together a team from St. John’s.
So, Schirripa brought the idea to his superiors at the seminary and got a green light to start building a team for the national tournament.
Deacon Marcelo Ferrari at one of St. John’s Seminary’s basketball practices. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
“The leadership was like, ‘Sure, you can do it if you can pull it off.’ But I was a first pre-theologian. I’d been there for, like, three weeks,” Schirripa said.
“And let’s just say there was not a robust athletic or even really communal culture at St. John’s at the time. And so trying to inspire guys to do this and play on the team, it was like I was just taking whatever warm body I could get,” he said.
Eventually, enough seminarians wanted in, and Schirripa’s idea came to fruition, which culminated in St. John’s taking a squad of 15 guys to the national tournament at Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois, and winning two games in 2018.
“We went out to it and we won two games, which is crazy because we were so bad,” he said.
He noted that the games were livestreamed and their brother seminarians were watching.
“The whole common room was watching it and I think people couldn’t believe that we did it,” he said.
“And the rest,” Schirripa said, “is history.”
St. John’s has been sending a team to the national tournament ever since. The best they’ve done is third place in a tournament that typically consists of between 12 and 16 teams.
The future of the church
Part of St. John’s success can be attributed to their volunteer coach, Patrick Nee, 44, a practicing Catholic in the greater Boston area who was a Division I basketball player at Brown University in the 1990s.
Nee had coached on the high school level, on travel teams, and even on his young children’s teams, but what made this coaching experience different was the “shock” of being immersed in seminary culture.
“It’s not an experience like I’d ever had before, just being in a gym with 15 seminarians, being on a bus or being on a plane with them and just realizing how good it was,” he said. “And these guys are really holy guys that are just terrific. Getting to know them all, it has just been really inspiring for me.”
Patrick Nee coaches St. John’s Seminary’s basketball team. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
Nee, a high school state champion from St. Raphael Academy in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, said that he stopped practicing his Catholic faith during his college years and didn’t come back to it until his late 20s.
He said that when he returned to the Church it took him on “a journey.” And over the last five years, that journey has “intensified” even more, he said, adding that “this experience has played a role in that.”
Nee said that it’s overwhelming “in the best way” when he is at the tournaments and “every guy you meet is this on-fire guy who’s studying to be a priest.”
One of those men on fire for the faith is Brian Daley, a member of the St. John’s team, Ferrari said. He recalled an incident at practice one day when a newer seminarian began to indulge in “light mockery” of the other teams they would be playing in the tournament.
Ferrari said that Daley reminded his teammate: “No, these men that we’ll be competing against are all giving their lives for Christ and they’re great examples for us.”
Ferrari called it a moment of “deep fraternity” for the team, who were all inspired by the wisdom Daley shared.
The deacon also said that as a team that fire is seen at every practice through prayer.
At every practice, each player is handed a sheet of prayer intentions to offer up their labor on the court so that all of their work is “done with an eye that sacrifice is fruitful.”
Seeing all of the hard work the teams put in for one weekend showed Nee that they care a lot about winning, “but they never lose track of the bigger picture.”
St. John’s Seminary basketball coach Patrick Nee guides his players during the 2022 tournament. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
He said that being a part of the team has strengthened his faith and added that the whole experience inspired him to tell Schirripa that “we need to share this with people.”
“I wish other people could see this. I mean, if you know anyone who is negative about the future of the Church, it’s like, well, walk into this gym for five minutes and you’ll change your mind immediately,” he said.
Nee’s vision for sharing the experience with others became a reality five months ago when St. John’s Seminary released “Souls in the Game,” a documentary that “highlights priestly formation beyond the study of philosophy and theology.”
The 28-minute documentary follows the team’s journey from the early morning practices to the recruiting and training of the seminarians to the final tournament.
“There is no pressure at all. Go out and play. We have brought life to St. John’s Seminary. God has used this team and let’s go out there and show everyone that we love each other, we love our vocations, and we’re going to represent St. John’s,” Schirripa says to his team during a pregame speech in the documentary.
Viewers might be surprised by how competitive the games are, especially in the scene where 6-foot-4 Schirripa is shown slamming it down during the tournament, which resulted in a technical foul for the team.
Despite the penalty, the team was roaring with excitement at Schirripa’s slam dunk, a feat that not many players ever get to experience on a 10-foot hoop.
“We were ready to storm the court,” Ferrari said in excitement in the documentary.
That documentary can be seen below.
Physical exercise such as can be had playing on a basketball team is something that every seminary should “absolutely” have, Schirripa said.
“I think it’s absolutely essential because you need a physical outlet and you need to obviously have a healthy body, mind, and soul. But it also teaches you to work towards something that’s bigger than yourself, which ultimately is the apostolate,” he said.
“And so it’s such a great venue for formation,” he said.
Denver Newsroom, Jun 16, 2020 / 09:10 am (CNA).- Catholic composer David Haas has denied allegations of serial sexual misconduct and spiritual manipulation, and says the advocacy group bringing allegations forward aims to destroy his livelihood.
By 
Leave a Reply