Priests For Life Call on Pastors to Become More Politically Active in 2016

At a press conference to be held Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Priests for Life will announce some of its plans and strategies for the 2016 election.

“The people of God need to elect public servants who know the difference between serving the public and killing the public (and who) will challenge both Church and state to fulfill their duties to protect children in the womb,” National Director of Priests for Life Fr. Frank Pavone said. “Ending the holocaust of abortion has for some time—and remains now—the most urgent moral priority for both Church and state.”

During the conference, Pavone will call upon churches to stop the process of self-censoring their own messages with regard to politics and elections. He said he’s not asking anyone to break the law, but to work within it.

“We’re asking them to understand the law and stop being afraid to live it out,” he said. “The law allows us to do far more than we realize.”

To hammer that point home, Fr. Pavone will be joined by Janet Morana, Executive Director of Priests for Life, and James Bopp Jr., an attorney and a top expert on what the law permits churches to do regarding elections. Also participating will be Christiana Holcomb, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has provided assistance to Priests for Life and to churches and other organizations nationwide.

 “Much o(f) our message has been outlined in my recently published book Abolishing Abortion,” Fr. Pavone said. “As I document extensively in the book, churches often hide behind the excuse that they will lose their tax-exempt status if they become too vocal about voting pro-life. It is ironic that as churches oppose the Obama administration’s mandates limiting religious freedom, those same churches impose their own mandates limiting that same freedom. It’s time to stop censoring ourselves and to stop hiding behind the tax man while doing so.”