A giant has passed. Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League, died yesterday at age 93. Absolutely fearless, Joe fought the good fight for many decades. He was a guest speaker for L.I.F.E., Life is for Everyone, the pro-life student group that I helped found, forty-two years ago in 1978 at the University of Illinois. He dealt with the hecklers who showed up effortlessly. One anecdote he told that evening has stayed with me over the years. At age 18 he was in the US Navy as a military policeman and sent to Germany just after the fighting stopped. He viewed the German cities that had been reduced to rubble and wondered why God had allowed this. Then he toured some of the Death Camps and he knew why. Joe assumed that God was all loving but also all just and eventually this country would pay a dire price for allowing abortion.
Then we all went out to eat and I encountered the Scheidler wit. He had endless stories, howlingly funny, about Illinois politicians that painted none of them in good light. He was a newsman by trade and had a newsman’s cynicism, leavened by a profound Catholic Faith. When he arrived at the gates of Heaven, I am sure that Saint Peter allowed him to be escorted in by an honor guard of the unborn.
Had no idea he was that old.
I met Joe a couple of times at HLI conferences. A physically towering figure as well and as shrewd an anti-abortionist as they come. May the Good Lord richly bless his efforts on behalf of the unborn.
Joe also spent seven years in a Benedictine monastery.
Wonderful tribute to an amazing man. I was blessed to have met him.
My favorite Joe; “Why did you punch that pro-abort demonstrator?” “Because he deserved it.”
The most memorable quote of Scheidlet worth framing was “No nation that kills its own posterity can survive.”