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Jan. 2, 2019
Dear Parish Pro-Life Coordinator,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  With 2019 upon us,  our largest pro-life event is right around the corner:



The annual diocesan-wide  Roe Memorial Mass and North Texas March for Life  with Bishop Edward Burns  will be held on  January 19, 2019 . I hope all of you are planning to attend with your families and fellow parishioners.  The event schedule is as follows: 
  • Youth For Life Rally -  beginning at 8:30 a.m. at St. Jude Chapel in downtown Dallas (includes lunch and free-t-shirt!). Pre-registration at prolifedallas.org/yflrally.
     
  • Procession of Roses - 9:45 a.m. at Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. If you or your children were born in 1973 or later and are interested in participating in the Procession of Roses, please email cplc@prolifedallas.org.
     
  • Roe Memorial Mass (bilingual) - 10:00 a.m. at Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, celebrated by Bishop Edward Burns with Bishop Greg Kelly and Abbot Peter Verhalen
      
  • Opportunity for Lunch - 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. (Food trucks curated by Roaming Hungry available outside Cathedral until 3 p.m.)  
  • North Texas March for Life & Rally - 12:30 p.m. from Cathedral to rally outside the federal courthouse, featuring Bishop Burns, national pro-life speaker Eric Metaxas, and a powerful testimony by a mom who chose life!
     
  • Reception and Exhibit Fair - 2:30 p.m. at Grand Salon in Cathedral.
Please ensure that your parish uses the following promotional materials by the weekend of January 5/6:
  • Bilingual bulletin announcement available here
  • Bishop's Letter of Invitation available here in English and here in Spanish
  • Promotional flyer available here in English and here in Spanish
  • Promotional posters & yard signs (if your parish has not received your posters or signs yet, please contact the office at 972-267-5433 to arrange pick-up / delivery).
If you have not seen the announcement in your bulletin yet, please contact your parish office immediately to ensure it runs by this weekend, January 5/6.     

In addition to the Roe Memorial event, other upcoming events include:
Parish Pro-Life Coordinators Meeting and 
ADVOCACY DAY TRAINING
Please mark your calendar for the next Parish Pro-Life Coordinators Meeting on Feb. 9, 9 am to noon, at  St. Thomas Aquinas. This important meeting will provide details  on the 26th annual Bishop's Pro-Life Dinner on  April 13. 

Also, that afternoon will be Advocacy Day Training from 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Catholic Advocacy Day on March 26 is an opportunity for Catholics around the state to make their voices heard on behalf of life, dignity and the common good!

Pro-Life Staff and Volunteer Positions Open

Catholic Pro-Life Committee: 
  • Project Gabriel Assistant: part-time position responsible for client intake and evaluation,assisting in training and guiding volunteer Gabriel Angels, and coordinating referrals from partner agencies. Click here for details and how to apply.
Bella House Maternity Home:
  • Full-time Case Manager: responsible for providing all case management for both Bella Houses (Plano and Dallas). Read job description here.
  • House Watch: Women to commit to staying one or more nights during non-business hours and weekends to help close the house in the evening and open it up for morning activity. A stipend is offered or an in-kind donation receipt for volunteers. Details here.
______________________

On January 28, we celebrate the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas is the pre-eminent spokesman of the Catholic tradition of reason and of divine revelation. He is one of the great teachers of the medieval Catholic Church, honored with the titles Doctor of the Church and Angelic Doctor.

At five he was given to the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino in his parents' hopes that he would choose that way of life and eventually became abbot. In 1239, he was sent to Naples to complete his studies. It was here that he was first attracted to Aristotle's philosophy.  By 1243, Thomas abandoned his family's plans for him and joined the Dominicans, much to his mother's dismay. 

His greatest contribution to the Catholic Church is his writings. The unity, harmony, and continuity of faith and reason, of revealed and natural human knowledge, pervades his writings. One might expect Thomas, as a man of the gospel, to be an ardent defender of revealed truth. But he was broad enough, deep enough, to see the whole natural order as coming from God the Creator, and to see reason as a divine gift to be highly cherished.

The Summa Theologiae, his last and, unfortunately, uncompleted work, deals with the whole of Catholic theology. He stopped work on it after celebrating Mass on December 6, 1273. When asked why he stopped writing, he replied, "I cannot go on.... All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me." He died March 7, 1274.

We can look to Thomas Aquinas as a towering example of Catholicism in the sense of broadness, universality, and inclusiveness. We should be determined anew to exercise the divine gift of reason in us, our power to know, learn, and understand. At the same time we should thank God for the gift of his revelation, especially in Jesus Christ.

Thank you for all you do in the service of Life. 

God bless,


David Carr
CPLC Parish Liasion
Catholic Pro-Life Committee | 972-267-LIFE (5433) | cplc@prolifedallas.org 
P.O. Box 803541, Dallas, TX 75380