About
Walking with Loveis an initiative which aims to assist Australians with support and resources as they face the personal tensions and ethical doubts during the experience of pregnancy and when facing other issues arising at the beginning of life. Walking With Love strives to provide this support in a relational and person-to-person-approach way.
The first aim of Walking with Love is to provide resources so that caring people can accompany women in their pregnancy journey, and to meet any challenges together.
A key goal of Walking With Love is to be authentically pro-life. This involves giving priority to fostering real understanding and concrete support for women carrying new life. This approach is consistent with the Church’s mission to offer solidarity to women and with the unborn.
Walking with Love aims to encourage women and their families to embrace parenthood (pregnancy, birth and the nurture of the child) with a sense of hope and freedom.
Through this portal, the Church community is encouraged in different capacities, but in practical ways, to accompany and support women as they experience the profound truth of their bearing, nurturing, and supporting human life.
Origins of Walking with Love
The Bishops Commission for Pastoral Life of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference initially sponsored this project, in 2007, as a response to recommendations made by the Bishops' Taskforce on Pastoral Responses to Abortion. The Walking with Love project grew out of local symposia and retreats around Australia.
The words "Walking with Love," the project’s branding concept and its particular pastoral approach, came from conducting consultations with experts in abortion grief counselling and bioethics.
Today, Walking with Love has been thoroughly redesigned, reviewed, and updated, but remains faithful to the vision and approach of the original project. Women occupy a place, in thought and action, which is unique and decisive (Evangelium Vitae, 99).
The greatest fear today is the fear of not being loved. It’s terrible to suffer loneliness, dis-connection, the experience of being left out, on the sidelines, alone... Disconnection leaves us restless while
connection allows us to rest secure in love.
Mo. Agnes Mary Donovan SV, Imprint (Winter, 2014)
...it is only the mother who can directly nurture her unborn child; all the rest of us can do is nurture the mother.
Dr Brigid McKenna, Common Ground, p.189
May the "people for life" constantly grow in number and may a new culture of love and solidarity develop for the true good of the whole of human society.