Back to the October 2004 Newsletter Index

Schenck Aims To Unite Pro-Lifers

Paul Schenck can look out the window of his Second Street Northeast office in Washington, D.C., and see, directly across the street, the august and imposing façade of the Supreme Court.

The symbolism does not escape him.

“We are establishing a beachhead for the pro-life ministry in the Capitol,” says Dr. Schenck.  “Here on the Hill, we can scare the daylights out of the politicians, if we’re united.”

“We” is the Gospel of Life Ministries, a joint venture of the Catholic pro-life group, Priests for Life, and the predominantly Evangelical Protestant group, Faith and Action.

The ministry’s aim is to pool the efforts and resources of Catholics and Evangelicals to reverse the effects of the Supreme Court rulings legalizing abortion and bring back a culture of life to the United States.

Paul, the executive director of Gospel of Life ministries, is on good terms with the president of Faith and Action, the Rev. Rob Schenck, who happens to be his twin brother.

Paul and Rob, raised in a Jewish family in Grand Island, N.Y., were influenced as teenagers by high school classmates “who took their faith seriously,” says Paul.

The two were baptized at age 16 by a Methodist minister, and both went on to become Protestant ministers themselves.

Paul is no newcomer to the pro-life movement.  In the late 1980s and early 1990s the brothers led protests and attempted blockades of abortion clinics in Western New York.  Paul was arrested, fined, and on occasion, viciously assaulted by pro-abortionists.

Handing out Bibles in 1990, he was found guilty of violating a 15-foot “floating bubble zone” ordered by a federal court around abortion clients or supporters.  He was sentenced to two years in federal prison.

His case, Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network, eventually reached the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1997 that the “floating bubble zone” violated his constitutional right to free speech.

In the meantime, as a Protestant minister, Paul had been praying for reunion with the Catholic Church “in the sense of John 17: 21:  ‘that they may all be one,’ because the fragmentation of the Church weakened the body of Christ.

“I felt as a Protestant minister who was born and raised Jewish that it was God’s will that there be one church under one pastor.”

Paul’s desire for unity became very personal when, while working in the Holy Land with Ethiopian Orthodox Christians in 2000, he was invited by the Greek Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem to accompany Pope John Paul II’s pilgrimage in the Holy Land.

In March 2000 Pastor Schenck found himself seated to the right of the altar in Bethlehem Square in front of the Church of the Nativity, as John Paul said Mass.

“When the Eucharist was offered, I was in the midst of a sea of humanity—as if I was in the middle of the cross, there by the Holy Father,” Paul recalls.

“All around us was the seething violence of the Intifada, but there in Bethlehem, it was a sea of peace.”

Schenck traveled with the papal pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he stayed with the Ethiopian Orthodox monks on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and attended the Papal Mass there.

He was greatly moved by the entire experience.

“When I came home from that pilgrimage, I was now Catholic in my heart,” says Paul.  “But I was still happily the pastor of Bishop Cummins Memorial Reformed Episcopal Church in Catonsville.”

Paul emphasizes that he wasn’t angry or upset because of what was happening in the Episcopal Church; he came to the Catholic Church “because I think the Church needs to be one.”

He began preparing to enter the Catholic Church, receiving instructions from Fr. John McCloskey of Opus Dei in Washington, D.C.

But Schenck faced a quandary.  He had spent his entire adult life in the Christian ministry.  He and his wife Rebecca had seven children, three in college (they now have eight).

How would he support his family?

“I had been in pro-life work since 1984, and had worked in many pro-life organizations.  I began to quietly contact them.”

After reading the biography of Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who became St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, he prayed to her to intercede for him with the Blessed Mother and the Lord “to open a door for me.

“Within three months I had a sponsor come forward who said, ‘If this is what you want to do, I will pay your salary for a year.’”

Paul brought the offer to Priests for Life Director Fr. Frank Pavone, who “had had a vision of an ecumenical [pro-life] ministry.”  Father Pavone made him director of Gospel of Life Ministries.

Paul and his brother Rob were very concerned that his work with a Catholic pro-life group might cause ill-will, since he had previously headed a Protestant pro-life group.

But “that did not materialize,” says Paul.  “We found Catholic friends who were very supportive, and Protestants were understanding.”

Paul was received into the Catholic Church on February 29, the first Sunday of Lent—“the most joyful Lent in my life!”—at St. Roch’s Church in Staten Island by the pastor, Fr. Leo Prince, and Father Pavone.

As Gospel of Life Ministries director, Paul meets with pro-life representatives of various Christian communities, hosts a website, gives media interviews, writes for publications, and travels, speaking and training pro-life activists in parishes, dioceses and other organizations.

He recently finished writing a major resource project on the files of Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, author of Roe v. Wade, that is being published in Word Magazine and the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s newspaper, The Catholic Standard.

Paul joined other pro-life groups to demonstrate at the Democratic Convention in Boston.

“We debated pro-abortion clergy at Faneuil Hall, very effectively.  We also had a massive die-in out in the plaza in front of the convention.  The young people, including my 15-year-old daughter, laid down in fetal position with Face the Truth posters on top of them.

“We also went to the Paulist Center, where John Kerry is a member, and distributed Cardinal Ratzinger’s notes on receiving Holy Communion to the people coming to Mass.”

Paul and his brother Rob also picketed the Republicans for Choice dinner hosted by Planned Parenthood during the Republican Convention in New York.

More recently, Schenck has been traveling to Catholic parishes throughout the country with a priest from Priests for Life, urging Catholics to vote for pro-life candidates in the upcoming election.

Dubbing their effort the Two-by-Two Campaign, the priest and the layman first call on pastors.

“We’re challenging and equipping them to motivate their people to cast their votes informed by their conscience, which is informed by the teachings of the Church,” Paul explains.

“We also do parish weekends:  the priest preaches the homily and I give a post-Communion talk.  We emphasize that Christians must use the stewardship of their vote to advance the culture of life.”

Dr. Schenck is currently pursuing a Catholic theological degree at Catholic Distance University.  He is exploring the possibility that a 1982 papal decree opening the Catholic priesthood to some Episcopal priests might allow him to be ordained.

“An exception can be granted for a married man; it must be by the Holy Father himself,” he notes.  “My initial contacts with members of the hierarchy have been very positive.

“If my ministry remains that of a layman, I will happily fulfill that ministry.  If I become a priest, that will be a blessing.”

Paul and his wife Rebecca are enrolled in the Church of the Resurrection in Ellicott City, where his younger children attend religious education classes, and he teaches seventh grade religious education.

His older sons, who are adults, attend Mass with him there.  “We’re making the transition,” he says.

Reflecting on his conversion, Paul says, “When I became a Catholic, I did not repudiate my baptism, my Evangelical heritage.  I brought that with me to the Catholic Church, where it belongs.

“I feel I can be a bridge between Evangelical Christians and Catholic Christians; together, we can be a formidable force for life.”