Father Fidelis Moscinski, who frequently participates in Red Rose Rescues, has been sentenced to six months in prison after being found guilty of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act.
On July 7, 2022, Father Fidelis went to the Planned Parenthood of Greater New York facility in Hempstead, and placed locks and chains on the entrance, filling them with glue so they couldn’t be opened. When the police and fire departments cut the locks down, Father Fidelis laid down in front of the gate so vehicles could not get in. He kept people from entering the facility for two hours — something specifically mentioned in a Department of Justice press release announcing the charges against him.
Afterwards, Father Fidelis gave an interview with EWTN explaining why he shut down the facility. “Imagine if you were one of those children scheduled to be executed that day,” he said. “Would you not want every possible effort to be made to save your life? And saying that something is a step too far is simply saying, ‘Well, some lives are less valuable than others; we could sacrifice only up to a point, and then we’ll let these others die.’”
Father Fidelis was found guilty of the charges in January, and faced up to one year in prison. Life News reported the six-month prison sentence. Pro-lifer Theresa Bonapartis was present for the sentencing, and told LifeSiteNews that the priest was portrayed horribly, with the judge mentioning his so-called “criminal past,” and saying he needed “deterrents from acting like this again.”
“It is almost surreal in these court rooms to listen to the prosecution and the judges,” Bonapartis said. “Father [Moscinski] is made out to be a career criminal while the slaughter of the innocent human life and the destruction of their mothers and families that takes place is never even mentioned or allowed to [be] mentioned.”
READ: New York AG to charge Red Rose rescuers, calls them ‘bigoted zealots’
Father Fidelis also gave a statement to the court, in which he said his actions were solely meant to prevent the killing of innocent human lives:
Now that Roe V. Wade has been overturned and we have been delivered from the delusion that abortion was ever a constitutional right we are still sadly burdened with the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. This pseudo-law seeks to cloak the act of killing preborn children under the euphemistic and Orwellian language of “reproductive health care.” I am not guilty of violating this law because this law cannot be seen as anything other than null and void since it attempts to give legal protection to actions which are intrinsically evil and unjust.
I recognize that this view may not be shared by your Honor. I would like you to know that I find the pernicious error of legal positivism both logically incoherent and immensely destructive in practice. The tragic and shameful history of legalized slavery in the South and the more recent genocides of the twentieth century should be more than sufficient to show us the folly of simply accepting something as “legal” because it is the product of some legislative or judicial process. Would it not be much better to acknowledge the truth that there must be a necessary and intrinsic connection between our civil laws and the natural moral law written on the human heart, knowable by human reason, and revealed authoritatively by God Himself in the Ten Commandments?
If you are, as I suspect, unwilling to correct your earlier mistaken judgment finding me guilty, then I suggest that you can still somewhat mitigate the injustice this court has perpetrated by giving me the most lenient sentence possible. Thank you.
It does not appear that Father Fidelis was remanded to prison immediately, and will instead need to surrender himself at a later date. In March, Father Fidelis was sentenced to jail time in Oakland County, Michigan; that sentence was for 90 days. At that time, Father Fidelis offered encouragement to those in the pro-life movement and vowed that this would not be a defeat for him and others participating in Red Rose Rescues.
