40 Days for Life Kenosha to Host Steve Karlen and Chris Davis

With New York’s passage of the Reproductive Health Act, which permits abortion to the moment of birth, many more individuals are asking what can be done in response. 40 Days for Life is a life-saving prayer campaign that will take place throughout the archdiocese, beginning on Ash Wednesday, March 6, and concluding on Palm Sunday, April 14. 40 Days for Life is comprised of 40 days of prayer and fasting, peaceful vigil at abortion facilities and educational outreach with the goal of protecting mothers and their unborn children from abortion. According to 40 Days for Life, more than 15,000 children have been saved from abortion during these twice-a-year campaigns.

At 10 a.m. March 19, the Feast of St. Joseph, Campaign Director Steve Karlen and Campaign Strategist Chris Davis from 40 Days for Life will join participants in prayer at Planned Parenthood, 3601 Roosevelt Road, Kenosha.

According to Karen Mathis, Kenosha 40 Days for Life Coordinator, 350 babies in Racine and Kenosha lose their lives to abortion each year. She is looking forward to Karlen and Davis offering prayerful encouragement at the abortion referral center.

continue at MkeCH

Three is also the number of times Steve has paid full price for Brewers tickets. 

2016 Election Predictions

Hola Amigos, it's been awhile, but I can't resist signing into the Badger Catholic for a little Election Day prognostication. Hillary has been the favorite for most of the campaign, but Trump supporters believe they have the momentum. Who will be the next president in the Most Important Election of Our Lifetime ®?

Here's my best guess:

"I heard you calling out and had to come over," she said. "I go to Tulane..."

This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans.

One of the deadliest hurricane's ever, Katrina left a trail of destruction in its wake--both literally and figuratively. Beyond the loss of life, the hurricane became the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, with damage topping $100 billion. There was also a political price to be paid. Katrina effectively ended George W. Bush's presidency just seven months after he was inaugurated to his second term. A decade later, New Orleans still hasn't fully recovered from the hurricane. The city's population is down nearly 25 percent from before the storm.

Somehow, it's simultaneously hard to believe that it's already been ten years and that it's only been ten years. I haven't given the storm much--if any thought--in recent years. But the coverage of this week's anniversary takes me back.

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall, I was just days away from starting my senior year at the UW-Madison . The storm had already caused damage throughout the Caribbean and in Florida, but the question on everybody's mind that last week of August was whether Katrina would make a direct hit on New Orleans. When it became increasingly clear that it would, the world watched and waited to see how severe the impact would be on a city already situated below sea level.

When Katrina reached the Louisiana Coast, I spent most of the night glued to cable news coverage with my roommate Jay. As the storm drew near, it was amusing to watch reporters kill time or conduct interviews with stubborn, sometimes crazy residents who refused to leave town.

The amusement, of course, wouldn't last long. When the storm finally passed, daylight revealed that the city had suffered massive damage. The levees failed, and 80 percent of the Big Easy was under water. Countless houses were destroyed. Refugees scattered about the country found themselves without homes to which they could return.

And they were the lucky ones. Around 1,500 people who tried to ride out the storm didn't make it--their bodies strewn about the city.

St. Catherine of Siena - patroness of miscarriages

Today is the feast day of St. Catherine of Siena--one of the patron saints of miscarriage. It's also the fifth...
Posted by Steve Karlen: Pro-Life Speaker on Wednesday, April 29, 2015

As soon as I heard my wife burst out the bathroom door that sunny spring day, I knew she was pregnant. I hadn’t yet opened my eyes but I didn’t need to. Her footsteps told me everything.

My wife didn’t have any particular reason to believe she was pregnant. But after a couple years of praying for a second child, I’d grown accustomed to Laura taking random pregnancy tests — hoping against hope that somehow that second pink line would appear. This time it did.

Joyful days

The days ahead were as joyful as any we’d experienced in our life together. We beamed when friends who knew of our struggle with secondary infertility congratulated us and we devoured all the fetal development materials we could find, eager to mark every last milestone in our baby’s nascent life.

Celebrating our first child’s birthday later that week, we couldn’t have been happier. Among the presents Peter opened was the Dr. Seuss movie, Horton Hears a Who. Reflecting on the film’s signature quote, “A person’s a person no matter how small,” it was clear that evening that our family of three had become a family of four.

continue at Madison Catholic Herald

more at www.rosarygarden.org

Photo: Miracle of Life - Rosary Garden

Steve meets Jason Evert

Post by Steve Karlen: Pro-Life Speaker.

Steve Karlen to speak at UW this Thursday on The Dignity of Human Life

via UW Badger Catholic

For some reason I can't embed the event itself.  

Come meet me next week (and/or the week after)!

What's up, my friends? I know I've been AWOL lately...and for good reason: Matt suspended me two weeks without pay in response to my conduct during his recent vacation.

OK, that's not true. I've just been traveling frequently. But, God willing, I'll be back to writing somewhat regularly around here very soon. Until then, however, I wanted to invite you to join me at a couple of upcoming speaking engagements I've got in this lovely state.

The Power of Public Witness
St. Bernard’s Parish
2040 Hillside Lane
Green Bay, WI
Tuesday, September 17 at 7pm

Madison 40 Days for Life Kickoff Rally
Schoenstatt Heights
5901 Cottage Grove Road
Madison, WI 
Steve Karlen and Wisconsin Family Council President Julaine Appling
Monday, September 23 at 6:30 pm

I'd love to see some of you at these events.

Steve interviewed on Guadalupe Radio at 1 pm Monday! Tune in!

Edit: So, I mistakenly published this on Friday, but I'll actually be on on Monday, 7/1. I've developed a nasty habit of screwing up by jumping the gun and publishing posts early. I hope Matt doesn't fire me...

This afternoon, I'll be Lauren Muzyka's guest on Culture Lifeline on the Guadalupe Radio Network at 1:30 p.m. The Guadalupe Radio Network is based out of Texas and provides Catholic programming to affiliates in 16 cities, including Dallas and Washington, D.C.

The program begins at 1:00, and I'll come on at 1:30 to discuss the pro-life movement, 40 Days for Life and my journey as a pro-lifer.

Click here to listen.

Steve has confirmed the world has not ended

Now if the Cubs won the World Series, well then I would start to worry. 

If the zombie apocalypse did happen later in the day, at least the 20 inches of snow barricading your doors should keep you safe for a while. 

The Catholic Times profiles our own Steve Karlen

They just have a PDF of the entire paper so there's no way to link directly.  Therefore I have posted the article in it's entirety. 

MADISON – Peace Corps. AmeriCorps. Greenpeace. Doctors Without Borders. While joining these humanitarian organizations are viable postgraduate alternatives to a well paying job with lots of perks and benefits, one graduate of University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) has made a counter cultural career move which, when it comes to helping fellow humans, trumps all these.

Taking what he learned after four years as a double major in journalism and political science at UW (2002-2006), Steve Karlen eschewed an entry-level position at a newspaper or political think-tank for a bird’s eye view of Wisconsin’s pro-life movement.

As director of Development for Pro-Life Wisconsin, headquartered in Madison, Karlen has been putting his expertise to work for the rights of the unborn in and around Wisconsin since 2009. In the process, he’s learned a thing or two about the work he’s participating in while also being reminded that forgoing a fat paycheck and a cozy career is a small sacrifice compared to what the unborn are suffering daily since 1973 due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion in the United States. Studied passion In considering his fields of study, Karlen said, he drew on his interest in politics, which began as a boy and continued through high school.

“I’d always been interested in politics,” he said. “According to my parents, when I was 4 years old, I watched the Republican National Convention from start to finish. That’s what they tell me, but I don’t know if that’s true.”

Fascinated by policy issues with a passion for writing, Karlen decided to combine these interests in a double major. Immediately after graduation, with only vague ideas of working in media or politics, Karlen took up work in the private sector. Two years later, in 2008, he became involved part-time with the Wisconsin chapter of 40 Days for Life, a national Catholic apostolate which emphasized prayer as an integral part of pro-life ministry. Eventually Karlen was heading up the Wisconsin chapter College graduate puts education to work for pro-life ministry and leading the fight on their behalf against the UW surgery center which eventually in 2011 canceled plans to offer late-term abortions on the premises.  [Yes, that was Pro-Life Wisconsin despite claims to the contrary]

“It was at that time that I felt called to do pro-life work as a vocation both personally and professionally full time,” he said. “At that time I was up from 10:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. doing prolife stuff while my family was sleeping. It was clear God was calling me to pro-life work.”

Searching around for work which both furthered the prolife cause and provided the means to support a family, Karlen wasn’t sure where to turn. “You don’t go to monster. com or Career Builder [two online job placement sites] to look at the pro-life jobs section,” he said, explaining that eventually Pro-Life Wisconsin was impressed enough by his work at 40 Days for Life, knowing he was looking for salaried employment employment, that the organization offered him a job.

Familiar work

At the time, Karlen and his wife Laura had only one child – they have since had another after suffering two miscarriages – but his family was in full support of his career decision.

“While I had a family when I started pro-life work, I wasn’t making big bucks I was giving up anyway,” he said. “But ultimately, the pro-life ministry was a passion my wife and I shared at the time – and still share.”

That familial support, Karlen said, makes his work – which often involves late nights and long-distance travel – that much easier.

“We don’t mind putting in time at night or on weekends,” he said, “because if I was working in the private sector, this is what we would be spending our free time on anyway, since we’re both so passionate about pro-life work anyway.”

Good from evil

Married shortly after graduation, the Karlens lived in Chicago briefly because, he said, without children the city was a fun place to live and work. It was while they worked in the Windy City that the urgency to end abortion came home to the Karlens in a painfully tragic way.

“My wife wasn’t necessarily pro-life when we were married,” he said. “My wife had a co-worker who got pregnant with a live-in ex-boyfriend and everyone was urging her to have an abortion at her workplace. Now, while my wife wasn’t prolife, she wasn’t necessarily proabortion either – she just didn’t think it was that important an issue.”

According to Karlen, his wife told the co-worker that the Karlen family would support her through the pregnancy – from giving her a place to live to paying for her medical bills to even adopting the child if it came to it.

“Laura put it all on the line,” he said. “We thought we were making a difference because the woman went from talking about abortion to talking about baby names.”

Hoping for the best, Karlen said, he and his wife invited the woman to dinner to discuss the practical details of their offer. “She never showed up,” he said. “It turned out the pressure from her ex-boyfriend, her parents and her doctor was too much. While we were waiting in a restaurant to have dinner with her, she was at that moment having an abortion. We found out two days later at Mass on a Sunday morning – and clear as day I remember that’s when I knew I couldn’t any longer just be pro-life, but I had to do something pro-life. My wife too at that point went from not caring about it to being passionate about it.”

Proud work

While the experience was harrowing, Karlen is grateful that it showed him the need among women and the unborn for vigilant action on their behalf and against purveyors of the abortion lie. “I’m not very good at quoting Scripture, but I’m a big fan of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans [8:28] where he says, ‘All things work for good for those who work for God,’” he said. “I think this experience allowed the Lord to use us as His tool to save other babies.” There’s no question in Karlen’s mind that he’s maximizing what he learned from his college education for the benefit of pro-life ministry.

“With a journalism degree I learned to write well, which is so important,” he said. “We need to find clever and intelligent ways to persuade those who aren’t pro-life. We have to look at it as part of the New Evangelization …which means using every tool that’s available to us, whether it’s the printed word, multimedia or advertising. Having that formal training at UW, I am able to be more effective at doing those things in the pro-life arena.”

Please pray for Steve and the work that Pro-Life Wisconsin is doing, and if possible support them and one of their many fantastic project financially.