Pro-Life March in Washington DC

By: James Harper
Seminarian, Fourth College

The march for life has become an unfortunate annual event for the community of St. Charles Borromeo seminary.

Each year, we at the seminary regard this march as a solemn duty we are to perform. We will do it, but we would certainly rather have no reason to march. Despite any optimism on our part and prayers for justice with regards to basic life issues, the march for life has its place once a year in the life of a seminarian.

Traveling by bus, our departure comes soon after 0530. Unlike a typical seminary day, this trip necessitates a day free of class and a day outside of the seminary environment. Once underway, we begin our day together with prayer with morning prayer and a rosary offered for life. Beyond this, the remainder of our trip is spent at our discretion.

As seminarians, our initial destination for the march is not a rally point within Washington, but the National Shrine. The seminary joins the Philadelphia Archdiocese contingent. This year the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was privileged to make use of the National Shrine for mass. With the seminary choir tasked to lead the singing, my two Allentown classmates, Vincent Dranginis and Kevin Lonergan, and myself were actively involved in aiding a beautiful mass.

After mass, we advanced to our rally point with the rest of those representing Philadelphia Every year, assembling for the march takes more time than the actual march itself. But this time is constructively used. Often, we encounter other seminarians who once attended St. Charles. This is also a time when many seminarians find high school friends and renew their friendships. But as it came closer to begin our march, Cardinal Rigali addressed the people of Philadelphia and the seminary community via a megaphone and began to lead us in prayer. Shortly thereafter, it was time to begin walking.

I had an unusual perspective during this year's march. Often while marching, we join together in prayer, often a rosary and sometimes singing. This time four seminarians from Harrisburg and I were selected to lead the decades of the rosary with the megaphone. Leading a rosary in such a manner at first seems to lack the setting in which we would wish to pray. However, in this extraordinary circumstance, it was powerful to be leading a prayer like the rosary within the context of a large crowd joining the prayer amidst other factions alongside us presenting more boisterous demonstrations. Despite all various distractions that turn the march for life into a pep rally, we can still lock into prayer and devote our concentration towards it.

After praying first the sorrowful mysteries, then the luminous mysteries for a total of ten decades, our march came to an end. With a momentary pause to regroup the seminary community, we then moved towards Union Station to ride the Metro back to Catholic University where we would begin our return trip on the bus.

We returned to the seminary at about 1900 and I spent the rest of my day with friends. Most of everyone else did likewise or took advantage of their free time to sleep early. At the day's end, the march for life was a full day providing mixed feelings. We had the camaraderie of our community but also the need to stand up for injustice. As a seminary community, our presence was a small, but necessary part of a larger piece of society that will continue to march year after year until this form of injustice is brought to an end.