Two weeks after giving birth to her second child, Julia Schoch received an e-mail that would forever change her life. It was February 2003, and she was at home recovering from a C-section with her husband, her two-year-old son, and her newborn daughter when her husband Andy told her she had an e-mail that she needed to see immediately. It was from a friend who knew of a 13-year-old pregnant rape victim who needed help. It turned out that Julia was exactly the help this girl and her baby needed. “It’s one of those kind of bizarre God stories,” explains Julia, “I’d been involved in pro-life stuff since high school, and I had monitored a message board for CBR [The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform]. I would come into contact with people who were post-abortive. In that, I met a woman who had an abortion at 18 weeks and five days, and I ended up becoming friends with her. Over two years of encouraging her and loving her, she finally felt ready to share her story. She was telling [that] story at a Campus Crusade for Christ event at her campus. In the audience, was a young woman who shared that her 13-year-old sister had been raped and was pregnant. Their mother was pressuring her to abort the baby. This girl was reaching out for help.” Julia knew that if she asked this young girl, just an 8th-grader, to go against her mother, she would need to make it a practical, realistic option. She immediately started praying that it was God’s plan for her to adopt this baby. Then, while she was nursing her daughter and praying about adopting, she realized Andy would think she was nuts. Adoption hadn’t been on their radar. They hadn’t ever researched it or budgeted for it. But just then, Andy walked into the room and told Julia that he wanted to adopt the baby.
“It was just that gut feeling that God gives you sometimes,” Julia explains. Julia let her friend know that she and her husband wanted to adopt the baby, and then continued to pray. Finally, she heard back that the girl was willing to talk with her, so Julia, her friend, and the young girl – states away – chatted on the phone. Julia found out some disconcerting information. The girl had already gone to a clinic for an abortion. She told Julia that she was at the abortion clinic for six hours, and that the clinic tested her for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and performed an ultrasound. However, they wouldn’t allow her to look at the ultrasound and didn’t inform her of the results of the STD tests. But that wasn’t the most astounding part. The clinic informed her that she was 20 weeks pregnant, but that at 20 weeks, the baby wasn’t formed yet. That was lie number one. They went on to tell her that if she did have the baby, she wouldn’t survive labor because she was so young. That was lie number two. When the girl asked about adoption, the clinic told her that no one would want to adopt a “biracial” “rapist’s baby.” That was lie number three. Pray for an end to our culture of death. June 18 is a special day for me as I experienced the miracle of life in the birth of one of my children. Stories like Julies help me to realize that we can end the murder of innocent babies if we pray and ask God to use us as his vessel in this important fight.
The twelve apostles chosen by Jesus formed the bedrock of the early Church , and their Catholic identity is deeply rooted in their direct relationship with Christ and the mission He entrusted to them. The Catechism of the Catholic Church highlights this foundational role, stating that Jesus "instituted the Twelve as 'the seeds of the new Israel and the beginning of the sacred hierarchy'" ( CCC 860 ). These men were not simply followers; they were handpicked by Jesus, lived intimately with Him, witnessed His miracles and teachings firsthand, and were specifically commissioned to preach the Gospel to all nations ( Matthew 28:19-20 ). Their unique position as eyewitnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and their reception of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, established them as the authoritative leaders of the nascent Church, a reality echoed in the writings of early Church Fathers like Ignatius of Antioch, who emphasized the apostles' authority as repre...