Opus Dei today

Ruth Pakaluk, a zealous apostle in Massachusetts

Ruth married Michael [Michael’s responses to an interview can be found in opusdeiblogs.org.]

Both Ruth and Michael went to Harvard University. During the early part of their university studies, they were atheists, but converted to Christianity and became Evangelical Protestants. In their third year, they got married: they felt the special call to live the rest of their lives forming a family and living an intense family life. By Divine Providence, they were surrounded by good friends and, wanting to seek and find the ultimate truth, ended up converting to Catholicism. One of those friends, who decided to “come home”, explained to them something that left them restless: the theological notion of munus [office] in our Catholic faith: that if a Church were the true one, then there would have to be someone or some authority that would say whether something’s good or bad. This can be a rather disarming or thorny issue for Protestants surrounded by persons in search of the true faith. In Ruth’s case, her re-reading of the Apostolic Fathers brought her closer to her conversion to the Catholic faith. Meanwhile, there remained in Ruth certain issues of morality, e.g., the question of abortion and her pro-choice stance. Having been convinced, in a debate with a friend, that there was no difference between a fetus and an infant, the only unanswered question that remained was contraception: but even in this, her friend easily convinced her that the entire “contraceptive mentality” was ultimately selfish, individualistic, and consumerist.

Since the couple were in the “Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship” at Harvard, some leaders in the group, in order to prevent their eventual conversion, invited two parties ―one a Protestant, the other a Catholic― to a debate, so that each side would expose his true convictions before the public on campus. Guess who was invited to speak about the Catholic faith: Peter Kreeft! Ruth and Michael delayed slightly the moment of their conversion, because the latter had received a scholarship to study in Britain. But no sooner had they arrived at Edinburgh than she knocks at the door of the chaplaincy directed by a Dominican, and declared: “I want to become Catholic.” It was here that Ruth conceived her first son, whom she had always considered a gift coming from the all-bountiful God, the Giver of all life and grace. Both began practicing the Catholic faith from Christmas of 1980.

Since then, Ruth turned into a great and zealous pro-life advocate. She also used, with great effectiveness, the weapon of “letter-writing apostolate”. Together with Paul Swope, and with the help of the Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL), she decided to initiate a series of meetings, film showings and other pro-life activities at Harvard. This movement produced the Harvard-Radcliffe Human Rights Advocates. Ruth went on to be President of MCFL, from which she launched a dynamic and vibrant work in defense of life and helped form a coalition of Protestant communities interested in the pro-life movement.

In 1989, they lost their fifth child: thousands went to his funeral, including some people of the Work. Even in Scotland they had known the Work, because the godfather of their first child was a resident at a Residence run by people of the Work. Back in Cambridge they were in touch with Fr. Sal Ferigle. Within a year, the couple joined the Work. Since the death of the fifth child, Ruth began longing for heaven in a real and concrete way. The birth of another child, a daughter, gave her much consolation and joy; but nothing presaged another suffering she was to undergo: during the medical exams at this stage, it was found out that she was afflicted with breast cancer, to which she was later to succumb. In spite of this, she conceived and gave birth to another daughter. In addition, she carried on her intense pro-life work: during this period, she crafted a series of presentations*, which used a new paradigm that was to influence individual hearts and minds through education. In particular, she addressed the young people of Massachusetts, so that she called them “Life Education Awareness Project” [LEAP], and at times she’d entitled the talks “Pro-Life is Pro-Love”.

During this entire period, she fully placed her trust in God and in His love. She spoke very clearly about how much she longed for Heaven; in talks and Circles about vacation and sanctification of leisure, she would manifest her desire for Heaven which was real. But the cancer had spread to the bones by 1993. Still, she had plenty of energy left for being the director of Religious Education at the Parish, which led her to re-organize and make more youthful the learning of the Catechism, especially for the young ones. She died in September of 1998. Thousands of people, many more than for her little child, went to the funeral and rites in honor of the “most pro-life woman in Boston”.

Ruth: Pray for me; pray for us.

–o—o—o—o—o—o—o–

*Her memoirs are forthcoming with Ignatius Press, and shall carry the title “The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God”. There is no intention here whatsoever to pre-empt such publication. In the final work, there shall appear the pro-life presentations she used to give all over Boston.

**Five years after Ruth’s death, in early 2004, Bishop Reilly before his retirement constituted a Postulating Committee to prepare a formal request to the Bishop of Worcester to open Ruth’s cause of canonization.