EXCLUSIVE: Groundbreaking new prayer book designed for demographic most targeted for abortion
EXCLUSIVE – Marking Down Syndrome Awareness Day, Bishop Robert Barron's publishing company, Word on Fire, is releasing a groundbreaking new book specifically designed to help adults with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities, who are disproportionately targeted for abortion, to pray.
Written by Mark Bradford, an advocate for persons with intellectual disabilities, the book – titled "Let Us Pray: Catholic Prayers for All Abilities" – features simplified traditional prayers, large print for readability, and an accessible font for those with dyslexia and other reading challenges.
Persons with Down syndrome are significantly more likely to be targeted for abortion. Between 67 and 87 percent of babies prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted, according to a study published by the NIH.
Kids With Down Syndrome Can Live 'Abundant Lives,' Dad Tells Fox News Contributor
There are an estimated 250,000 persons with Down syndrome in the United States, and millions more with other types of intellectual challenges.
Despite this, there has been no prayer book designed for adults with these learning challenges … until now.
Read On The Fox News App
"Prayer is meant for every one of us," Louisville Archbishop Edward Kurtz writes in the book's foreword.
Kurtz, who grew up with an older brother with Down syndrome, called the book a "beautiful gift" for those who desire to grow in their faith but have no means to do so.
Vance Vows Trump Administration Will Be 'Biggest Defenders Of Religious Liberties,' Catholics
Bradford told Fox News Digital that he was inspired to create the new book when he saw his 20-year-old son Thomas Augustine - who has Down syndrome - having to use a book with "horrible illustrations" designed for small children to pray the rosary.
"There are no resources like this for adults with intellectual disabilities," he explained. "I want this to be a resource that provides something beautiful to encourage adults with disabilities, and really anyone whose reading level is around the 3rd to 6th grade, to develop a habit of prayer using a book that was prepared just for them."
Fox News Digital obtained an exclusive copy of the book. Bradford explained that through the book's visually striking but not childish imagery, easy-to-read text, and engaging layout, it can help anyone, especially those with learning challenges, to form a habit of prayer.
According to Bradford, even the typeset chosen for the prayers is a unique font designed by a typographer in Holland specifically to assist dyslexic readers.
Catholic Bishop Invites Americans To 'Take The Time To Focus On The Lord' During 10,000 Hour Prayer Campaign
"Let Us Pray" includes four main sections: "Making a Habit of Prayer," "Getting More Involved at Sunday Mass," "Devotions" and "Prayers for Special Times," which includes "Prayers for Your Life's Purpose" and "Prayers When Someone You Love Has Died or Is Dying."
The book even includes a portion on "Prayers to End Abortion," which acknowledges the "very sad" reality that many Down syndrome babies are selected for abortion because of their disability.
"When some women find out they are going to have a baby, they are very sad and afraid. They don't want their baby — sometimes especially if they find out the baby will have Down syndrome or another disability," the book reads. "They need us to pray for them every day so that they say yes, just like Mary did, and have their special baby to love."
There is also a section at the end of the book for the reader to write down their own prayers.
Chris Pratt Calls Faith The 'Best Part' Of His Life After Teaming Up With Hallow App
Despite the stigma often associated with Down syndrome and other learning disabilities, Bradford said that through "Let Us Pray," he wants to send the message that "EVERY human person made in God's image is called into a relationship with him."
"Those living with intellectual disabilities can have a rich and fruitful prayer life," he said. "That needs to be honored with resources that encourage prayer and the development of that relationship with their creator that happens through prayer."Original article source: EXCLUSIVE: Groundbreaking new prayer book designed for demographic most targeted for abortion
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Diocese announces Mass, observances to close Eucharistic Revival
The Altoona-Johnstown Roman Catholic Diocese will mark the closing of Eucharistic Revival in the Catholic church in America with a Mass celebrated by Bishop Mark L. Bartchak at 5 p.m. June 22 at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Altoona. Prior to the liturgy, the faithful will have the opportunity for Eucharistic adoration beginning at 11 a.m. and continuing throughout the afternoon. At 3 p.m., a holy hour for vocations will be prayed, and priests will celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The Chaplet of Divine Mercy will be prayed at 4 p.m. for the intention of welcoming Catholics home to the church, and at 4:15 p.m., Bartchak will lead a Eucharistic procession inside the cathedral, leading up to the Mass. The national Eucharistic Revival has been a three-year movement by the bishops of the United States to educate and inspire Catholics to re-ignite their personal relationship with Christ through the Holy Eucharistic.
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Yahoo
Commentary: Why nostalgia for the 1950s of ‘Leave it to Beaver' persists in America's religious right
Anyone looking to drench themselves in the 1950s nostalgia currently favored by the religious right in America should consider watching 'Leave It to Beaver' stoned. Which is what I did with an old friend in the 1980s while attending graduate school at the University of California-Berkeley. Nostalgia for the '50s — that land beyond time where Catholic traditionalists such as Notre Dame political theorist and post-liberal prophet Patrick Deneen dwell — idealizes imaginary communities of yore such as Mayfield, the setting for 'Leave it to Beaver,' where the values of faith, family, friends and flag all flourished. According to this narrative, late-stage liberalism and the globalization of markets, with their characteristic rootlessness, dissolve this communal existence. When I was at Berkeley in the 1980s, a large number of my childhood friends from Princeton, New Jersey, somehow found their way to the Bay Area. One afternoon, one of my Princeton buddies was house-sitting for an uncle in a Bay Area suburb. The uncle, whom I'll call Uncle Jim, had been my Cub Scout pack leader in Princeton when I was in elementary school. One sun-drenched afternoon, my friend and I settled into a couch, he rolled some joints and we flipped the TV to 'Leave It to Beaver' reruns. The series, on the air from 1957 and 1963, is a resonant symbol of '50s nostalgia, one to which conservative Catholics have returned as a template for modeling natural law. To Catholics who moved to the suburbs in the '50s and '60s, 'Leave It to Beaver' was a 'medieval morality play,' as Jerry Mathers, the Catholic actor who played young protagonist Theodore 'Beaver' Cleaver, put it. The show was a guide for young souls more tethered to television than to the suburban church. Michael De Sapio, writing in the online journal The Imaginative Conservative in 2017, states that, according to Mather, Beaver Cleaver 'repeatedly succumbed to temptation, suffered the consequences, and was guided back on the path of virtue.' In other words, these archetypal storylines and characters represent a moral imagination that 'elevates us to first principles as it guides us upwards towards virtue and wisdom and redemption,' in the words of American philosopher Russell Kirk. De Sapio continues: 'The emphasis on decorum and good manners in the Cleaver family conveyed a vision of the good, true and beautiful.' Mathers shared that the casting directors for the show selected him to play Beaver when they asked where he would prefer to be after they noticed he was uneasy at the audition. His guileless reply: his Cub Scouts den meeting. Notably, the mission of the Scouts is to 'prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.' Which returns us to Uncle Jim, my former Cub Scouts leader. He was an electrical engineer who ended his first marriage and moved to California in the 1970s, where he married a woman several decades younger and shed the trappings of his formerly decorous identity. 'Leave It to Beaver' mirrored and shaped the aspirations of millions of Catholics moving to the suburbs after World War II, and it has lingered as an idealized — and exclusive — depiction of the American Dream. The only nonwhite characters to appear in the show's 234 episodes were a Black man exiting a dairy truck in the episode 'Eddie, the Businessman' (1962) and a Black actress who plays a maid in the 1963 episode 'The Parking Attendants.' Within months of its final episode in June 1963 — following the March on Washington, D.C., in August led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the November assassination of President John F. Kennedy — 'Leave It to Beaver' had become a charming artifact of mid-century optimism, more a product of nostalgia and romantic imagination than a realistic model for America's future. _____ Peter H. Schwartz writes at the broad intersection of philosophy, politics, history and religion. He publishes the Wikid World newsletter on Substack. _____
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
Former parishioners of long-closed Revere parish to hold 21st annual outdoor reunion Mass
Like other Catholics upset about losing their parish, Our Lady's members appealed the closing all the way to the Vatican, but the decision was not reversed. In 2014, the church building was sold to an Ethiopian congregation, which still worships there, the Globe reported. Advertisement This year's mass will be dedicated to former parishioners who have died , particularly Carmela Mercier, said John Verrengia, who organizes the Mass. 'She was a 95-year-old parishioner who lived right down the street from Our Lady of Lourdes,' he said of Mercier, who died last fall. 'She was everything that Our Lady of Lourdes was all about.' Mercier and her husband were active parishioners. They baked bread for the Feast of St. Joseph's in March and May, he said. 'I saw her last year, 95-year young, she looked great, and she was so excited about the Mass,' Verrengia, 69, said. All parishioners who have died will be remembered at the Mass, with a special dedication to Mercier, he said. Advertisement 'She loved the church,' Verrengia said. 'The church was her whole life.' Verrengia said that the church and the community that formed around it was important to him. Despite Our Lady's closing, Verrengia said, the yearly Mass brings people back to Beachmont for community worship. 'You go on, we certainly do, all of us go on,' Verrengia said. ' we go back there it's like we never left. It's really like we never left.' Adam Sennott can be reached at
