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NPLAC BATTLES ON D.C. TURF

Paul Schenck, director of the National Pro-Life Action Center, boasts that NPLAC wages the pro-life battle right in the eye of the storm:  it is headquartered in Washington, D.C., across from the Supreme Court.

There are many good pro-life groups, “but we are the first and only pro-life center geographically located on Capitol Hill,” Schenck said in a September 30 Defend Life-sponsored talk at Holy Trinity Knights of Columbus in Severna Park.

Due to their proximity to the Supreme Court and to a series of fortuitous happenings, Dr. Schenck reports that in the five years they have been there, “We’ve been invited into chambers and to their private lecture series, we’ve had prayer with three of the nine justices, and we have been appointed to the board of the Supreme Court Society.

“We have had numerous encounters with the justices.”

Some of those encounters have been up-close and personal.

At one of the gatherings in chambers, Dr. Schenck spotted Justice David Souter in the crowd.

Schenck had never met the liberal justice, but knew that he was one of the eight justices who had voted in his favor in a 1997 pro-life case.

“I went up to him and said, ‘Mr. Justice Souter, I’m the Rev. Paul Schenck in Schenck v. Pro-Choice.  We haven’t met and I wanted to introduce myself.”

Schenck smiled and held out his hand.  Souter’s hand remained at his side.

“I realized I was being dissed!” Schenck recalled with a grin.

“I said, ‘Mr. Justice, it’s just the courtesy of a handshake.’

“He said, ‘For what you and your brother represent, I have no interest in giving you my hand.’  Then he turned his back on me and walked away.”

At that moment Justice Clarence Thomas walked in.

“He saw what had happened and he came up to me and said, ‘Tell me all about your ministry!  I want to hear all about your ministry!’

“So he saved me from an awkward moment.”

Afterward, in chambers, Schenck introduced his friend, Dr. Bill Lyle, as a “pro-life doc” to Justice Thomas.

Somehow, this inspired Thomas to begin “preaching.”

While two dozen attorneys and judges milled about, Thomas intoned in his booming, baritone voice, “I want to tell you something!  

“All of this strutting and posturing that goes on here” – he pointed to the bench in the Supreme Court – “I’m done with it!  It means nothing to me.  There are only two reasons I’m still here:  prayer and the grace of God.”

On another occasion, when Schenck was a guest at the swearing-in by Thomas of an Alabama federal judge, Justice Thomas “gave another homily about why we swear our oaths to God, and not to man and man‘s law, and that’s why they’re binding.

“Then he said, ‘When I go to daily Mass down here, I always pray the litany for humility on the way to church and back.’

“And then we all said the litany for humility together; there in chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court!

“I just wanted to encourage you that these things are beginning to happen on Capitol Hill,” Schenck concluded.

Schenck’s road to “preaching the Gospel of Life” on Capitol Hill has been an adventurous one.

The son of a Jewish father, Paul and his twin brother, Rob, went to Hebrew school in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Evangelized by a group of Christian students in high school, both boys converted to Christianity at age 16.

“I was baptized by immersion in the Niagara River in October; I’ll never forget it!” Schenck recalled.

Both boys eventually became Protestant ministers.

As pastor of a community church in western New York, Paul’s latent pro-life sentiments caught fire when a young couple in his congregation brought him some small plastic bags they had retrieved from an abortion mill dumpster.

In the bags were “the remains of little unborn children – little baby faces, hands and feet.”

Schenck organized a funeral for the babies on the abortionists’ front lawn, with himself, a rabbi and a Catholic priest presiding.

After that, he began praying and counseling along with other sidewalk counselors in front of abortion clinics in his community.

In 1990 he was hauled into federal court and convicted on five counts of violating a federal judge’s order prohibiting preaching, praying, hymn-singing or handing out Bibles close to an abortion clinic.

“The judge said, ‘Reverend, you’ve been a one-man army; I have to make an example out of you,” and sentenced him to two years in federal prison.

At McKean Federal Penitentiary in Bradford, Pa., the Protestant chaplain “was pro-choice and wanted nothing to do with me.  I was not welcome to participate” in the prison services, said Schenck.

“When the Catholic chaplain heard about this, he said, ‘You’re more than welcome at Mass, and we want you to serve as lector!’  The Church threw open her arms to me.”

Schenck’s case slowly worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where in 1997, it ruled in his favor, overturning by 8-1 a lower court’s ruling as a violation of his constitutional right to free speech.

“It struck down laws in four states that restricted sidewalk counseling,” Schenck noted.

During the long ordeal, he said, he and his brother Rob came to realize that “The U.S. Supreme Court was the most insulated, unapproachable and unaccountable branch of the federal government, yet it has become the most powerful.  It trumps Congress and the President.”

The two brothers began praying about evangelizing the Supreme Court.

Rob was the first to pack up his family and move to Washington.

When the Supreme Court Society building, right across from the Supreme Court, went up for sale, “We made an offer, we won the bid, we put down a deposit, we signed the contracts,” said Paul.

But when the president of the society’s board of directors, a lawyer who belonged to the ACLU, “saw who we were, he tore up the contract and gave the property to the lower bidder.”

The Schencks’ attorneys urged the two ministers to sue:  this was a breach of contract, a clear violation of the law.

Paul and Rob prayed about it and decided not to.

“We came to Washington to make friends, not enemies,” Paul explained.

The next day they got a phone call.  The next-door neighbor of the Supreme Court Society had heard what happened and offered to sell them his building, which was one-third bigger, at the same price.  And his property included space rented out to the Supreme Court itself.

“So I came from being a convicted felon and petitioner to the Supreme Court to being their landlord.

“That can only happen in the Kingdom of God!” said Schenck.

Other blessings ensued.  The executive director of the Supreme Court Society came and thanked them for not suing.

“He said, ‘If you had sued us, we would have lost, and I would have lost the job I love.  I’ll do anything for you – just name it,’” Paul recalled.

“My brother said, ‘Face time with the justices.’

“He said, ‘You’ve got it.’”

In February 2004 Paul took the momentous step of resigning as pastor of the Bishop Cummins Memorial Reformed Episcopal Church in Catonsville.

He and his wife were received into the Catholic Church in New York by Fr. Frank Pavone, and Paul became a pastoral associate of Priests for Life.

Paul is currently focusing his efforts on fighting federal legislation to fund embryonic stem cell research.

With their strategic location, NPLAC has been able to build friendships with the behind-the-scenes movers and shakers in Washington.

And being only minutes from Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court, says Schenck, when an event of importance occurs, “we are a ready response.”

See www.nplac.org for more information on the National Pro-Life Action Center or to donate.