Beware the Holy Water

By Tom Quiner

Carol’s mom stopped in front of the porn shop.

What’s she doing? Carol wondered.

Mother and daughter had been enjoying a nice stroll down the main street of this college town, when the mom spotted the nefarious store front.

She took a bottle of Holy Water out of her purse and sprinkled it on the door step and said a brief prayer.

Isn’t that cute! thought Carol.

One week later, the store burned to the ground.

It dawned on Carol that Holy Water was a force to be reckoned with. Carol laid in a supply for her own home, and like her mom, began carrying a spray bottle of it in her purse, too.

One day, Carol was driving down the road with her husband when she spotted a rather unsavory looking strip joint. Bob, pull over, she purred.

The dutiful Bob wondered, what’s she up to?

You guessed it. Carol got out of the car and sprinkled Holy Water on the strip joint and said a little prayer.

You guessed it, one week later, the place caught on fire.

These stories are a backdrop to help you understand why 75 year old Joyce Fecteau was arrested in Huntsville, Alabama.

Ms. Fecteau has a simple ministry. She prays for women entering the Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives (translation: abortion mill). She does even more: she sprinkles Holy Water on the sidewalk to amplify her prayers for the women and their children (in the womb) entering the clinic.

The president of Huntsville Right to Life, Kelley Manley, said the 75 year old mother of seven and grandmother (of I don’t know how many) has been remarkably effective:

“She has helped to save hundreds of preborn babies and women from the pain of abortion, and many of the women that she has helped have returned to the sidewalk of the abortion business months and even years later to personally thank her for her efforts there.”

Holy Water is powerful stuff. I imagine Ms. Fecteau’s faithful devotion to the women entering this clinic was cutting into the clinic’s abortion trade. So they had her arrested.

They charged her with harassment.

If the abortion mill’s charge sticked, the grandma could have been sent to jail for half a year and fined $500 for the crime of praying.

Fortunately, the judge found Ms. Fecteau not guilty. Ms. Manley lamented that a woman of faith should have to go through such a trial:

“I am disheartened that anyone would interfere with Mrs. Fecteau’s beautiful ministry and wonderful efforts in helping women.  Women deserve the resources and emotional support for the choice of Life!  Neither abortion nor the “slavery of welfare” are Equal Opportunity for women in America.  We must continue to reach out and help pregnant women in need to decrease the number of abortions nationwide and to build stronger women in America.”

Frankly, I understand abortionists’ fear of Holy Water and prayer. These spiritual weapons have been directed against abortion clinics throughout the country, which explains why so many clinics are closing.

Here in Iowa, Planned Parenthood’s clinic in Storm Lake closed after being subjected to “40 Days for Life,” a movement that lavishes prayer on a clinic for forty days. The former director of the clinic, Sue Thayer, acknowledged the devastating potency of this spiritual warfare. She said workers in her clinic called it 40 days of hell.

Ms. Thayer couldn’t take it either, left Planned Parenthood, and joined the pro life movement.

Do you want to change the world? Get your hands on a bucket of Holy Water. Sprinkle it wherever you go.

And pray.

Pray hard.

Nothing beats the power of prayer.