(LifeSiteNews) – It seems right that it is Paul who has given John the Sacrament of the Sick.
That was my thought when I got the news from an old friend in Toronto. To put this into context, I was on a train platform in Cambridge, England, returning to Edinburgh two days later than I expected. My wheelchair-user husband and I had traveled down for a little vacation time, but Mark developed a fever on our journey and spent most of our holiday in a hospital. As the discharged convalescent chatted happily with our hostess, my phone beeped. Fortunately, being heavily burdened with our luggage, I was already sitting down.
“Paul is giving John last rites,” Shane had written. “He is dying. I thought I should tell you.”
Paul, John, and Shane were all classmates at St. Michael’s College School and, like me, members of the Metro Toronto Students for Life (MTSFL) back when Father Ted Colleton was alive and Operation Rescue still tried to save babies in Cabbagetown. Our friend Adele, the bravest of us all, was regularly imprisoned for praying the Rosary outside the Morgentaler Clinic on Harbord Street. One of Morgentaler’s disciples told the media we were “brainwashed kids.”
At least two of us (including Paul) became priests. Adele herself got married and has 15 children, some adopted.
We were Toronto pro-lifers before the Toronto pro-life movement gave birth to LifeSiteNews. MTSFL met in the Campaign Life Coalition offices in the old Mission Press building where LSN would begin. MTSFL was a confederation of high school students, some of whom had the blessing of their school pro-life groups to take part in street activism, and some most emphatically did not. We came from St. Michael’s College School, St. Jean de Brebeuf, Loretto Abbey, St. Joseph’s Morrow Park, St. Joseph’s Wellesley, St. Robert’s and a non-Catholic public school, whose name now escapes me.
John McCash was our leader. His father Daniel was himself a Toronto-based pro-life leader, being a driving force behind (the now defunct) Liberals for Life. John had his father’s zeal for the right to life — and then some. John is not someone I would have characterized as a prudent boy — or today as a prudent man. We did not always get along, and his leadership style was chaotic, not to say aggressive. However, there was no doubting his commitment both to the Catholic faith and the unborn. Some of the MTSFL also belonged to a Rescue group called TRUTH (Teens Rescuing Unborn Tiny Humans) and John was among those regularly lugged down abortion business stairs and thrown into waiting police vans.
This was not fun. We teenage activists did have fun together — pool parties and dinners at Lime Rickey’s in the Eaton Centre come to mind — but street activism took its toll. For one thing, our public witness made adult strangers angry. (I remember one female passerby making outrageously lewd remarks to a hotly blushing pre-teen boy and a pro-abortion man who liked to say, “Remember this address, girls: you’ll be needing it later.”) For another, we were often located one wall away from terrible evil. In a gentler age, none of us would have known, at 17 or 18, that such things existed. But we knew, and we knew, too, from the angry adults, that we were hated.
We did not emerge unscathed, and some of us suffered from depression or other mental health issues afterward. We did not all remain friends, and at least one of us changed sides. Two of the boys died in their mid-20s. However, some of us have kept in touch, or gotten back in touch, through the intervening decades.
It was Adele who sent me the GiveSendGo link for John.
“Help John McCash Fight Stage 4 Pancreatic, Liver and Lung Cancer,” it reads.
“We’re reaching out with heavy hearts to ask for your support for our dear friend and loved one, John McCash. Recently, John received devastating news — his doctors have confirmed, by biopsy, Stage 4 pancreatic, liver and lung cancer. The urgency is real, and the emotional and financial strain has already begun.”
“John is a kind, hardworking, and generous soul, who has always been there for others. Now he needs us.”
John is also a husband and father. His wife Dinorah has told her social media contacts that although a hospital hasn’t held out hope for John’s recovery, his family is trying “alternative approaches” to “buy time.”
This is why the McCash family is asking for funds: There is a lot that Ontario’s public health system doesn’t cover. They mention medical tests and biopsies, travel and accommodation for treatments, medications and alternative care, and “support for basic living expenses during this difficult time.”
“We’re also asking for your prayers, well-wishes, and messages of hope — they mean the world to John and his family right now.”
Most of my memories of John date from when he was 18 years old. We and all but two of our friends had most of our lives before us. Although it would not have taken a prophet to predict that Paul would become a priest and Adele a mother to many, it would have come as a shock to know that John would be walloped with cancer in his 50s.
It would also have surprised us to know that I would then be in a position to ask the international pro-life community to help him fight for his life. But just as it is supremely fitting that Paul grew up to give John “the last rites,” there is a symmetry to my writing this column.
