20-year-old [Catholic] pro-life Crossroads walker hit by car and killed this morning
Kathleen Gilbert
www.lifesitenews.com/news/20-year-old-pro-life-crossroads-walker-hit-by-car-and-killed-this-morning
July 20, 2012 (LifeSiteNews,com) – A young man praying the rosary while participating in the Crossroads Pro-Life walks across America was killed when struck by a car in Indiana early Friday morning.
Andrew Moore, 20, of California, was walking along U.S. 40 near Stilesville, Indiana at 5 a.m. when the incident occurred, according to IndyStar.com. Moore died at the scene.
IndyStar reported that the group was walking on the grassy median of the four lane divided highway and did not hear a vehicle approaching them from behind. Police consider the incident to have been an unfortunate accident and no charges have been laid.
Crossroads, founded in 1995, has expanded to seven walks in four countries: Canada, U.S., Spain and Ireland. This year, the initiative’s most successful by far, the group hosted four walks across the U.S., all culminating in Washington, D.C. The accident occurred in the Central Walk, which began in San Francisco.
LifeSiteNews.com was unable to speak with Crossroads president Jim Nolan as of early Friday afternoon. In a Facebook post Friday, Nolan asked for prayers for Moore and his family, and said the young student was praying the rosary at the moment he was struck.
“I feel rest assured that he is with our blessed mother Mary in heaven,” wrote Nolan.
Catholic blogger Mark Shea reported that he received a message from readers asking for prayers for “the repose of the soul of our oldest son, Andrew, who was hit by a car and killed early this morning while walking in the Crossroads Walk for Life.”
The note said that Moore, a student at Thomas Aquinas College in California, was taking part in the walk both to “further the cause” of pro-life and because he was discerning a vocation to the priesthood.
“If there is any cause he would have willingly died for, defending life is it,” the note concluded, as quoted by Shea.
On the Crossroads page featuring Andrew is quoted his remarks about undertaking the pro-life walk for life. He said:
I heard about Crossroads from Jason when he gave a talk at Thomas Aquinas College. I had already been involved in the pro-life movement for several years: when I am at home I pray in front of the local abortion mill almost every day, and try to speak to the people going in. Crossroads sounded like a good way to serve God and help His children. Having hardly ever left California and my sedate suburban life I was also interested in seeing the country, meeting new good people, and just doing something crazy! I have been considering a vocation to the priesthood for some time and Crossroads is a great way to work on my discernment: prayer, sacrifice, and separation from the distractions of the world.
Requiescat in pace/May his memory be eternal.
Joseph Moore’s moving tribute to his son Andrew who died during Crossroads walk
The Editors
www.lifesitenews.com/news/joseph-moores-moving-tribute-to-his-son-andrew-who-died-during-crossroads-w
July 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews,com) – LifeSiteNews received this item from Crossroads Pro-Life president Jim Nolan as given to him by Andrew Moore’s father to do as Crossroads wished to honor Andrew. The exceptionally dedicated young pro-lifer was killed in an accident early Friday morning while walking with other members of the Crossroads team.
Andrew Moore: 1991 – 2012.
Millions of fathers have had to come to grips with the tragic, untimely deaths of a beloved child. I am no different, and no different in wanting my son remembered for the unique and good man that he was. Here are a few pieces of his story.
Andrew, our beloved son, was hit by a car while walking along an Indiana highway with Crossroads, a pro-life group that sponsors college students on walks across America each summer. He died instantly. In this modern world, we’d reflexively add that he died doing what he loved – a somewhat true but strangely self-focused way to see it.
What Andrew loved was not, exactly, the pro-life movement. In fact, I can safely say he pretty much hated praying in front of the local abortion mill, and had a very hard time making himself say anything to the people as they walked by.
He hated the occasional mockery and confrontations. He hated being there alone most mornings. There was none of that peculiar self-righteousness that is the hallmark of the secular protests us residents of the San Francisco Bay Area see, the patting of oneself on the back for sticking it to the man while hooting it up for the cameras. Andrew’s mostly solitary protests were not a party, and were hardly even a protest. There was no man to stick it to – only women faced with a terrible ‘choice’.
What Andrew did love was the Truth. Decades of deconstruction, of Orwellian ‘critical thinking’, have succeeded in painting the love of Truth as some sort of disorder, as naïve and simplistic – Andrew, by some mysterious grace, was immune to this poison.
While he might have been naïve and simplistic about many things, his intellect, by another mysterious grace, was profound and mature far beyond his years. His love of Truth lead him to a love of God, to a love of neighbor, to Thomas Aquinas College – and to untold lonely hours spent in front of Planned Parenthood. And to the walk that resulted in his being taken from us.
Once Andrew understood the truth, he saw no way he could escape spending hours praying on the sidewalk. Nor – and this is critically important – helping out at all the crisis pregnancy support groups in the area.
He is well known and well loved by the people at Concord Birth Right and at the Gabriel Project, as he always showed up to help whenever they needed him. He knew that success was not defined by simply talking a women out of getting an abortion – success meant that he – and all of us – stepped up to help, to love that woman and her baby unconditionally and materially for the rest of their lives.
But on a much deeper level, he understood that embracing the truth meant, ultimately, embracing the Cross. There is a heavy price to pay for loving people. We will fail, and we will be ridiculed, and we will be spat upon by those we try to help. But that is nothing compared to the suffering when we succeed, when we will the good of the other for the sake of the other. The pain we then feel, if we are so blessed, is the slow death of ourselves.
Some people have called Andrew a martyr. I can understand why, but it makes me very uncomfortable. In the popular imagination, a martyr gets dragged in front of a firing squad or thrown to the lions. Since Andrew’s death was nothing so dramatic, calling him a martyr risks making his sacrifice merely hyperbolic and therefore easily dismissed. At the same time, martyrdom is the correct and traditional way to describe the process of dying to one’s self for the sake of God through the selfless love of others. Understood in that way, Andrew’s life was a martyrdom, and I cannot feel he was cheated in any way by how short it was. For the rest of us, his death remains a tragedy and a mystery.
May God have mercy on his soul, and consol the inconsolable.
Joseph Moore
July 21, 2012
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Amen +++
Requiescat in pace/May his memory be eternal.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen