Rachel's Vineyard:
Hope for those Who Carry the Burden of Guilt
by Susan Fox
“And behold, men brought in a bed a man, who had the palsy: and they sought means to bring him in, and to lay him before him (Jesus). And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in, because of the multitude, they went up upon the roof, and let him down through the tiles with his bed into the midst before Jesus." (Luke 5:18-19)
And that is how Rachel’s Vineyard works. A friend is ill. You cannot reach Jesus because of the crowds so you lower him into the house through the roof. And Jesus forgives his sins and heals him.
Theresa Burke, a psychologist, founded Rachel’s Vineyard after researching abortion’s effects on men and women, finding it often causes grief, shame and depression.
The dirty secret is that the abortion industry is wreaking havoc with people’s health. Women who have had an abortion are at 81 percent higher risk for mental health problems compared to women who have not had an abortion, according to Professor Priscilla Coleman, who spoke at an event on March 14, 2018, sponsored by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC).
Shockingly, Coleman concluded that 10 percent of all mental health problems are attributable to abortion.
Men suffer almost identical effects. They must cope with “choice,” something they are completely denied in an abortion, leaving them emasculated with a loss of masculine identity, according to Men and Abortion:
Psychological Effects by Catherine T. Coyle, RN, PhD. The law in most countries does not even allow them to be informed if their wife plans to have an abortion.
After an abortion, some men attempt to abort their own lives, committing suicide, and some suffer impotence post-abortion. Some choose to change their sexual orientation.
Men, who self identify as homosexual, often comment on my pro-life posts and tell me proudly they don’t need an abortion because their relationships do not produce new life. Such are the costs of female “Choice:” men fear women.
Ironically, Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe in the nefarious 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Roe v Wade) that legalised abortion, did enter a homosexual relationship after giving birth to three children. She never had an abortion, but right up to her death in 2017, she was burdened with the knowledge that she helped begin a law that caused 60 million American deaths. Happily, she joined the Catholic Church in the late ‘90s and died chaste and pro-life, fighting abortion up to her last hours.
Rachel’s Vineyard offers retreats for “all impacted by abortion loss,” Rachel Vineyard’s Executive Director Nancy Blom said. The retreat can help both women and men, young and old, address the spiritual trauma caused by abortion. Blom said abortion loss can take decades … or a lifetime … to heal.
“Thus they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and mats so that when Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on one or another of them. (Acts 5:15-16)
I hope we can take all the men and women crushed by abortion and let Christ’s shadow fall upon them. The weekend retreat Rachel’s vineyard is just such an effort. Participants are led through scriptural readings in this pattern: Friday the focus is on the crucifixion; Saturday, it is Jesus in the tomb, and Sunday’s focus is on the Resurrection. Retreatants participate in guided mediation on Sacred Scripture and group discussion.
At one point they read the account of Lazarus in the tomb.
Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give You whatever You ask Him.”“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her….“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” (John 11:21-26)
He then went to the tomb of Lazarus and wept. People asked, “Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept Lazarus from dying?” (John 11:37) Lazarus was dead already for four days, but Jesus ordered them to roll away the burial stone. Then He called Lazarus to come out. “The man who had been dead came out with his hands and feet bound in strips of linen,
and his face wrapped in a headcloth. “Unwrap him and let him go,” Jesus told them.” (John 11:44)
This is physically reenacted in a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat. Participants play the role of Lazarus. They choose what parts of their body they want wrapped up. They pray while the Lazarus account is read. Then Christ comes Himself and unwraps the strips of linen binding them, usually in the form of a Catholic priest.
It is incredibly powerful moment in a retreat meant to bring healing to people involved in an abortion. Most people feel like they can never get out from under that burden. But Christ comes, enters the room, picks up the heavy stone and …throws it away.
If there is anyone who can understand that experience it is Julia Holcomb, a Catholic
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| Julia Holcomb |
convert with seven children, who is the former fiancee of Steven Tyler, lead singer for the 1970s hard rock band Aerosmith. Tyler coerced her into having an abortion when she was a teenager and his ward. She made the Rachel’s Vineyard retreat after she converted to Catholicism many years later. “There were some beautiful experiences of living Scriptures,” she said, “I felt like it was an encounter with Christ personally.”
Her face lights up with joy when she describes the Rachel’s Vineyard retreat. This is at the end of a long sad video — where her face is etched with suffering — in which she describes the ordeal that was her three-year relationship with Steven Tyler. She met Tyler when she was 15, and her parents gave him guardianship over her. I guess he imagined
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| Rock Star Steven Tyler |
himself in love with her because he asked her to have a baby with him, and then threw her birth control pills over the balcony.
She became pregnant, and they were planning to marry. But his family refused to accept their relationship, believing it wouldn’t last. So it began to unravel. He abandoned her in an apartment with no food, no money, no education, and no maternal health care. On the phone he promised to send his friend Ray over to take her to the grocery store. But when Ray showed up, she suddenly woke up in the middle of a fire in their apartment alone, and the door was barred from the outside.
Amazingly, convicted rapist Bill Cosby saved her life because she remembered he had advised crawling into the fireplace in event of a fire. Once she was inside her bedroom’s fireplace, she looked up at the picture on the
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| The Light of the World |
wall called the Light of the World by Charles Chambers. It is a famous portrait of the Child Jesus. Her copy had belonged to her grandmother. Thinking she was dying, she prayed for forgiveness. She miraculously survived the fire without brain damage. Then her ordeal really began.
In the hospital after the fire, Tyler insisted she get an abortion. She refused the abortion repeatedly. But then he threatened to abandon her. Poor girl, she had been rejected by her own mother and two stepfathers, and she felt like Steven was all she had so she agreed to the abortion, which took place as she was recovering from smoke inhalation from the fire.
She was 18 years old, five months pregnant and the doctor did not explain the saline abortion procedure to her. He just said, “Hold still or you might die.” Then he jammed a huge needle into her belly to put the saline solution into her womb to kill the baby. It was very painful.
Through hours of pain, she laboured to deliver what she was told would be a dead baby. At her side, Tyler snorted cocaine, even offering her some. Later, he told her her son, whom she later named Michael, had been born alive, but killed by the nurse. She didn’t even know how that was legal. It only added to her crushing guilt.
In recent years, she started researching the matter, and found the startling statistic that 64 percent of abortions are coerced. “That’s a shocking statistic. What young girl is going to win out over adults with a financial interest at stake when she’s made the decision to have her baby. She’s usually going to lose because she’s underage and she’s not the adult in the room. It’s unfair to say it’s a choice,” she said, pleading for a change in our laws to protect women and their babies from forced abortion.
Today, Julia Holcomb is a happy Catholic wife and mother, who received significant healing from her abortion through the Catholic Sacrament of Confession and a Rachel’s Vineyard’s Retreat. She is a spokeswoman
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| Julia Holcomb with Silent No More protestors |
for Silent No More, an American pro-life organisation. Congressman Christopher Smith of New Jersey has called the Silent No More campaign "...a powerful new voice. These brave wounded women are the new champions of life. They have refused to be silent any longer. They care too deeply about other women and their children and they want others to be spared the anguish they have endured. And to the millions of women who have aborted, they are uniquely equipped to convey the breathtaking love, healing, and reconciliation that God provides to those who ask.”
“No matter how far from grace someone has fallen you can turn to God, and His goodness is so big he can help you to rebuild your life and find healing,” Holcomb said from the depths of her own experience. “I would encourage anyone who has had an abortion to turn to the Church for healing and look at a retreat experience like Rachel’s Vineyard as another important step to find that healing.”
The image of the paralysed man is a excellent way to describe the feelings of someone who has been directly involved in an abortion. It can be the baby’s father or his mother, or the roommate of the baby’s mother. I’ve seen grieving grandparents who lost a child this way. Even sisters and brothers suffer in an abortion. I know of a woman who dreamt her father and mother planned to kill her, and were digging her grave. She was a little girl at the time. Decades later she found out her parents had aborted a younger sibling.
The tendrils of the abortion experience are so insidious that when I think of the 60.3 million Americans who lost their lives to abortion, I realise that to understand the complete damage done to our people, we must multiply the number of abortions by 5 or 6. It comes to 362 million people affected by abortion in the United States. But our population is only 325.7 million! The babies are dead, but their brothers, sisters, mothers, grandparents, fathers, aunts and uncles, even cousins must still deal with the lasting pain caused by their absence. And that could very well be every single American alive today.
SOURCES:
“Distinguished academic tells MPs about the mental health risks of abortion,” Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.
Rachel’s Vineyard Vine and Branches Newsletter
Men and Abortion: Psychological Effects by Catherine T. Coyle, RN, PhD.
Here is a google address for the download.
