11 families displaced as fire destroys Prima Motel
Red Cross assisting 11 families
PHOENIXVILLE >> Firefighting crews from throughout the area responded to a two-alarm fire at the Prima Motel Tuesday morning.
The building was destroyed, but there were no injuries reported on area fire company Facebook pages which posted photos and information on the incident.
The American Red Cross is assisting 11 families affected by the fire in the 800 block of West Bridge Street.
A total of 28 people are receiving support for temporary lodging, food, clothing, emotional support from the Red Cross, according to a spokesperson
for the agency.
According to a post on the Black Rock Fire Company page, crews from the Upper Providence Township
Emergency services were dispatched at 9:15 a.m. to assist the Phoenixville Fire Department for a working fire at the motel,
located at Ringgold and West Bridge streets.
The fire burned for approximately three hours.
Many companies responded
including, but not limited to, Valley Forge, Berwyn, Wayne and the North Penn Goodwill Service.
The Skippack Fire Company and New Hanover Volunteer Fire and Rescue Services were on standby to cover for Upper Providence while on the scene in Phoenixville.
According to the Black Rock post, “this is the third working fire firefighters have responded to in the past 24 hours.”
A Facebook page — Support for Prima Motel — has been set up to take donations for the victims.
I’m pretty open about my pro-life views. I’ve written 20 years of columns about my opposition to abortion. I’ve been a keynote speaker at many events, including one on the steps of the capitol in Harrisburg during the March for Life. I’ve prayed outside of Planned Parenthood. I’ve been a vocal critic of people like state Rep. Brian Sims, who doxed and harassed young pro-life teens outside of an abortion clinic. I’ve lobbied for legislation to ban late-term abortion. It’s right there in my Twitter biography.
I am not “personally opposed,” like our current president. I want abortion criminalized. I want it banned. I want it to be recognized as the single greatest act of inhumanity in recent times. I agree with Mother Theresa that “abortion has become the greatest destroyer of peace, because it destroys two lives, the life of the child and the conscience of the mother.”
I am also a Catholic, and I am quite proud of the fact that my church is the most vocal, most unapologetically pro-life among the three great monotheistic traditions. I know that there are some Catholics who disagree with the church’s position on abortion, including the aforementioned president, but that’s their burden.
The reason that I point out my religious affiliation is that it will always have some bearing on my personal actions. While we can never impose Catholic morality on secular law, we do need to follow its guidance in our personal choices. And one of those choices is whether to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
I got my first shot this week. It was the Moderna vaccine, which gave me some relief. The reason for that relief is the main point of this column.
The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, two of the three that have been cleared for use in the United States, were tested on cells derived from aborted babies. Those cell lines have been cloned and reproduced, and date back to the 1970s and 1980s. Those two vaccines have some remote, generations-removed connection to elective abortions, but the vaccines themselves are so distant from the act itself that they cannot really be viewed as morally compromised. Not so with the third vaccine, Johnson and Johnson, which used abortion-derived cells in the direct production of the vaccine. And this is where the dilemma arises, for those of us who call ourselves pro-life.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has come out with guidance that essentially tells the faithful that while some of the vaccines are morally compromised, most especially Johnson and Johnson because of the closer connection to cell lines from aborted fetuses, it is better to be vaccinated than not to be. Ultimately, the church has concluded that the greater evil of the pandemic outweighs the temporal evil of using the products of abortion. The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith stated last December that “it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process.” That principle was echoed by the Vatican COVID-19 commission which stated that “all clinically recommended vaccinations can be used with a clear conscience.”
As if to punctuate the point, both Popes Francis and Benedict have been vaccinated.
Of course, people have differences of opinion. Many local dioceses, including Philadelphia’s, are urging people to avoid the Johnson and Johnson vaccine if they possibly can.
As I said, I got my first shot of Moderna. That shot in my upper arm did not fill me with euphoria and relief, as many have described themselves in the moments after being vaccinated. It filled me with resignation, and a sense that I was doing something to keep my family safe. It also brought with it the sense of shame that this “safety” came at the expense of lost lives.
Those who don’t see abortion as the greatest modern evil will laugh at that feeling, I suppose. They don’t understand the horrible implications of benefiting from the death of innocents. They would probably understand it if I said “I don’t want to use any drug that was developed from Nazi-era experiments or the Tuskeegee syphilis trials.” But mention abortion, and their eyes glaze over.
They’re irrelevant to me. And at the risk of justifying myself to God, I like to think that those innocent souls that were sacrificed in the 1970s and 1980s have been raised up, glorified, and sanctified by their ability to save future generations from this scourge.
I carry in me their sacrifice. That the church understands this as well is a singular blessing. And a painful one.