The prominent pro-life activist priest Father Frank Pavone has apparently lost his mind. In a stunt designed to convince people to vote for Donald Trump, he put the body of an aborted baby on an altar, and filmed it. Here’s a link to the video, though I warn you, it’s horrifying. Pavone writes:

Today I am showing you a child who was killed by abortion and entrusted to us by a pathologist for burial. We have had a funeral for this baby, who rests in a Memorial Chapel – -but today I am showing him to you because in this election we have to decide if we will allow this child killing to continue in America or not. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform says yes, let the child-killing continue (and you pay for it); Donald Trump and the Republican platform says no, the child should be protected.

Catholic Deacon Greg Kandra, who is strongly pro-life, Scott Eric Alt comments:

I am going to be, excuse the pun, frank: What Fr. Pavone did was a sacrilege. It is a violation of canon law, which states that the altar is consecrated for one purpose and one purpose only. It is consecrated for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is not consecrated so that a dead child can be placed there as part of a political stunt to lobby for a favored presidential candidate.

More than that, what Fr. Pavone did is the opposite of pro-life. Being pro-life is about respecting the dignity of the human person. It is the antithesis of respect for the dignity of the human person to use a dead child as a political prop to lobby for your presidential candidate the day before an election. This does no honor to the dead.

In consequence, Fr. Pavone’s ordinary should suspend his faculties–at least his faculty to celebrate Mass. There is no other way to put it than that this is a sacrilege and a scandal. The human person is not a prop for a political stunt. This is an offense to the purpose for which priests are ordained to use the altar.

A sacrilege and a scandal it is indeed. To use the body of an aborted baby as a political prop is beyond ghastly. That priest has lost all sense of proportion, to put it mildly. What a terrible thing, all the way around.