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Scheidler Exorts Pro-Lifers To Be Fighting ‘Band Of Brothers’

When Pro-Life Action League Director Joe Scheidler was 5 years old, attending his cousin’s ordination at Notre Dame, he was fascinated by the angels on the altar, who not only wore armor, but brandished swords and shields.

“Why do they have swords?” he whispered to his Aunt Frieda.

“Because they’re fighting Satan,” she whispered back.

This revelation made a lasting impression on young Joe, one that he passed on in Defend Life-sponsored talks March 18 and 19 at Rock Creek Knights of Columbus in Bethesda, Mount de Sales High School in Baltimore, and University of Maryland College Park.

“We are Christ’s army,” he told 70 pro-lifers at his final talk, at St. Joseph’s Church, Cockeysville.  

“Our official title is the Church Militant--not the Church Miserable or the Church Waiting to Die.

“That’s why we go out on the streets and show graphic pictures, go into the schools, and picket:  we are the Church Militant, and we have an obligation to go out and fight.”

If we believe strongly in our cause, our actions will show it, Joe said.  If we believe weakly, we will find all kinds of excuses for not doing anything.

“We are fighting Satan.  If you don’t believe in the Devil, you haven’t been in the pro-life movement very long--we see him all the time!”

Jesus believes in the Devil; He mentioned him 47 times in the Gospels, Joe pointed out.

“It is unfair for our priests not to speak about this.  They’re going to have to answer for this sin of omission,” he warned.

But, he said, we can’t just complain that the priests and bishops aren’t doing anything; we have to do it.

“Someday, Jesus is going to ask you, ‘What did you do, when you were down there for the blink of an eye?  They were killing my babies!’

“I’d hate to say ‘Nothing’--or that I went to a banquet once a year, or wrote a check once in a while.”

In our pro-life efforts, we will become Christ-like; like Him, we will be wounded, said Joe.

He reflected that his 17-year battle in the NOW v. Scheidler case has left him a with “kind of a wound; I’m kind of proud of it.”

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Joe’s favor in February 2003, reversing the lower court’s racketeering conviction against him.

But acting on NOW’s complaint that the Supreme Court erred, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has remanded the case to the Federal District Court for reconsideration.

Undaunted, Joe likened militant pro-lifers to the lowly band who fought with King Henry V against a mighty French army, quoting Shakespeare’s famous lines, beginning, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . .”

“We’re that little band of brothers,” said Joe.

Just as Henry V predicted that Englishmen who did not fight with him that day would “think themselves accursed they were not here,” said Joe, “Someday, people will envy us because we practiced our faith.”