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Dawn Eden - driven to pro-life and faith by rebellion...

"You were given the grace, the greatest of gifts to mankind, to be born into or come into by conversion, My Son's Church." - Our Lady of the Roses, April 10, 1976

LifeSiteNews reported on April 19, 2007:

Dawn Eden, celebrity blogger and Deputy News Editor for regional editions at the New York Daily News, was doing a book signing for her new book "The Thrill of the Chaste" at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast last week when she sat down with LifeSiteNews.com for an interview.

Her life story as she revealed it in snapshots is a fascinating and captivating chronicle of rebellion. 

In the 1990's as a rock journalist and unobservant Reform Jew, Eden says she thought herself the quintessential subversive, in a lifestyle of sexual liberty amid the excitement of the music world.  As Eden puts it, "I was brought up in a fairly secular, Jewish home . . . I did not continue observance after my bat mitzvah and it was not anything that was stressed to me outside of the annual Passover Seder and family get-togethers at holidays."

"I thought that I was this great rebel," she related, "because I was writing about rock 'n roll and having sex with whomever I pleased and I was going to work at my job at Kim's Video on St. Mark's Place wearing fishnet hose and vinyl boots."

Her self-assessment was altered radically when, on the recommendation of a musician she interviewed, she discovered famed Christian author G.K. Chesterton.  Eden explains: "Back in December 1995, while doing a phone interview with Ben Eshbach of an L.A. band called the Sugarplastic, I thought I would ask him something more erudite than the usual rock-journalist questions, so I asked what he was reading. He said that he was reading G.K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday.' So, I thought, well, I'll impress him and I'll go out and read it.  I picked it up, not knowing what I was in for."

Chesterton, she said, presented the heroes in the book as rebels who "discovered that what they were ultimately searching for was the very thing that they thought they had been rebelling against - God." 

"I saw that Chesterton was presenting Christianity as the ultimate rebellion which was very jarring for me because I had defined myself as being countercultural," she said.

"This turned my worldview upside down," Eden went on, "because I had thought that Christians were conformists," said Eden.  "It felt strange for me to have this idea planted in my head that to be Christian was to be creative and subversive."

Although the seeds of Christianity may have been planted at that time, Eden's embracing faith did not come to fruition until nearly four years later, in October 1999. "I had a faith experience that changed my views on God, taking me from accepting him as an intellectual proposition to accepting Him personally into my heart. Because I had read the New Testament -- and had absorbed all the Chesterton and C.S. Lewis I could find -- feeling God's presence for the first time drew me into faith in Jesus."

Baptized nondenominationally at a Protestant church, Eden was not eager to adopt Chesterton's Catholic faith -- a family member who was a lapsed Catholic convert warned her it was "unbiblical." However, her new convictions bore fruit  in a manner that began attracting the interest of Catholic blog readers, as she started blogging about being pro-life.  "I started to get more vocal about it because I liked being subversive and to me it seemed to me one of the greatest ways to be rebellious was to be pro-life," Eden told LifeSiteNews.com.

As Eden's Christian convictions grew and her notoriety from her Dawn Patrol blog publicized it -- leading to her granting interviews to such disparate publications as the American Chesterton Society's Gilbert magazine and the salacious gossip site Gawker -- her then-job as copy editor with the New York Post became tenuous.  She was asked by her boss more than once not to mention her job at the Post in interviews if she noted her Christianity.  

In addition to her faith, her pro-life convictions also got her into trouble at the Post. "I was copy-editing a story about so-called 'miracle babies' as the story called them who had been created through in-vitro fertilization," she recalled, "and I felt the need to stress the fact that, in this IVF episode described in the story - there was a death."  She added, "The story said that a woman had three embryos implanted and 'two took,' resulting in 'miracle babies.' I didn't think the babies were such miracles if one baby died in order to create them, so I took away the 'miracle babies' term. After the phrase 'two took,' I added, 'one died,' and I noted that embryos are routinely destroyed in the process of in-vitro fertilization.
 
"I'm not proud of making those changes," Eden adds. "It was the cowardly thing to do. I should have asked that the editor make them, and if the editor refused, I should have refused the story and risked being fired. As it was, I was so angry after three years of working at the Post and seeing how the newspaper avoided telling readers the facts about life issues, that I tried to slip the changes under the radar."
 
The reporter, Susan Edelman, was outraged when the story came out, Eden said.  Eden apologized to the editor and was told that she would have to sign a letter taking responsibility for what she did, but she was not fired. At that point, incensed that Eden was retaining her job, Edelman printed up Eden's blog entries against Planned Parenthood and those calling abortion "murder."  Eden recalls that she prayed for strength during the ordeal and even though not Catholic, she took solace in the story of another media personality and pro-lifer who had suffered for his faith - St. Maximilian Kolbe.  

Kolbe, who was killed in Auschwitz, volunteering to take the place of a stranger who was condemned to death, was an inspiration for Eden and she told LifeSiteNews.com she felt that he could hear her from heaven and pray for her.  "I talked with him like I would speak with a friend and I asked him if he would pray for me," she recalled.  "As soon as I did that, I felt a sense of calm in the midst of a storm - I had this feeling that no matter what happened to me, I was going to be all right."

A few days later she was fired -- but even then, she felt grace in the midst of all the antagonism directed at her by her employer.  "I had been praying that if I was fired that I wouldn't break down and cry," she said, "because I cry at the drop of a hat and I didn't want them to feel vindicated in firing me by thinking 'Oh, she's crazy anyway - she broke down.'"  

God answered her prayers.  "I was very calm as the editor in chief, Col Allan, was firing me and I actually felt that I had to warn him in some way that he was doing something wrong," she related.  "So, when he announced that he was firing me, I said to him, 'Sir, you are older than I am and you have had more experience in this field than I have and I am sure that from where you are sitting, you are doing the right thing.  But, from where I am sitting, it is the wrong thing.'"

"He pushed himself up on his desk," she recalled, "and his face got red and his forehead tightened, and he shouted at me, 'You are a liability' and ordered me out of the office."

The firing dampened neither her spirits nor her spunk.  As she departed the offices of the paper she shouted to a colleague what was to become the front-page headline a few days later.  "So, I had to put my stuff in the proverbial cardboard box, and as I was walking out, I shouted to the deputy copy chief the headline for next Sunday's front page, because I knew that it was the Trump wedding - 'Milt, for Sunday - 'The Lady is a Trump.'"

Sure enough, that headline not only graced the front-page of the New York Post marking the Donald Trump wedding but was also reproduced as far afield as the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia.

The day after her ouster from the Post she was approached by George Gurley, a reporter from a smaller New York newspaper well-read by the city's media folk, the Observer.  "He didn't know about my firing," she recalled, "but he . . . said he wanted a story on me because I was a right-wing Christian at the New York Post."

Quick as ever, Eden replied, "Well, I've got a better story for you than that because I am the one who got fired from the New York Post for being a right-wing Christian." Soon the news of her being fired from the Post was on the front page of the Observer.

The editor of the Post's major rival The New York Daily News saw the Observer story and that resulted in Eden's current employment with the Daily News -- presumably for her headline skills rather than her political stances, since the News' editorial page is resolutely pro-choice. 

It was also through the firing, Eden told LifeSiteNews.com, that "W Publishing Group got in touch with me and asked me if I would like to write a book and I suggested 'Thrill of the Chaste'."

Eden went from believing she would never again be able to work in journalism again to having a major new job and a book deal.  Shortly thereafter she entered the Catholic Church believing God had answered her prayers in a miraculous way and that, as she puts it "I felt that St. Maximilian was praying for me."

She started inquiring into Catholicism, she said, just after her being fired.  "I realized that if I am going to be taking a hit for life, I might as well be with the Church that has been taking hits for life for 2000 years - you can quote me on that," she told LifeSiteNews.com.

Her Christianity has not diminished her fondness for rebellion and being subversive.  "Just a couple of nights ago," she reminisced with a mischievous smile, "I went to an alumni/student roundtable at NYU and some of the people at the roundtable were media people - one of them was a reporter for Newsweek."  The Newsweek reporter asked her what she wrote about on her blog, to which Eden replied, "Well, I write about my faith and values and chastity and about pro-life issues - that is very important to me."

Explains Eden, "Of course, to a Newsweek reporter or to your average NYU student, it's probably like saying, 'I write about killing small children and boiling them.' Because that is how they think of it.  Poor analogy, I know, since it's abortion that kills children, but pro-choicers have that same kind of revulsion to hearing someone say they're pro-life, that you and I do when hearing someone say they're pro-choice.  So, it was kind of funny to see how these people's expressions very carefully didn't change when I said that."

Dawn Eden's book The Thrill of the Chaste is available from Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Thrill-Chaste-Finding-Fulfillment-Keep...

See her Dawn Patrol Blog here:
http://www.dawneden.com/blogger.html

Click here to email this page to a friend.

"All parents must set a strong example of faith in the home. Your children are being subject to much error and much soul destruction outside your home. Discipline and truth must be brought to the children. The greatest responsibility for these children will be given to the parents. Guard their souls well.” - Our Lady of the Roses, July 1, 1973

The amazing Bayside Prophecies... http://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm
These prophecies came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995.

ONLY  TRUE  RELIGION
"O My children, I will not go into a long discourse now with you about charity and love for your neighbor, but you must understand: you cannot judge your neighbor. You must pray for them. However, you cannot become weak and permissive. You must stand forth as bearers of the light, carriers of the truth. You have been given by your baptism entrance into the only true religion upon earth, the Roman Catholic Church under My Son, Jesus. Though man in his arrogance and pride has forgotten His role and His rule, you must carry it forward. Retain the Faith and the truth in the hearts of mankind." - Our Lady, September 7, 1978 

YOUR  BIRTHRIGHT
"As in the past, rejection has been the start of a fallen man. Sin has become a way of life with many. You live in a delusion if you believe that you can offend the Eternal Father and then gain eternal life in the Kingdom. No, I say to you: many are called, but few are chosen.
   "Ask and you shall receive, believe and you will be given the way. But you must merit the Kingdom. Your birthright was a start, but you must make your way to the Kingdom. Others may gain these graces for you by prayer and acts of sacrifice, but you will accept or reject the key." - Jesus, May 26, 1976 

ONE TRUE CHURCH
"My child and My children, you are all My children. I judge you not by color or race, and I do not judge you by your creed; however, should the knowledge of the One True Church be given to you, and the way to Heaven along the narrow road be given to you, you will follow it or you will be rejected." - Our Lady, August 21, 1985

RELIGION  OF  THE  CROSS
"There is only one religion that can save your country and all of the countries of the world: the religion of the cross and My Son's sacrifice upon that cross." - Our Lady, November 25, 1978 

SEPARATED  BRETHREN
"O My children, pray much! We do not want to see a division in My Son's House. The Roman Catholic Church must remain one! But this does not mean, as the church of man states, that you will bring all manner of heretics and separated brethren in. No, My children, that is an error, a delusion from satan. You cannot change My Son's House and bring them in and change for them! They must change and come back to the original rule given by My Son and those who were with Him in the building of the foundation.
   "I repeat, My child and My children: separated brethren must change. They have protested in the past; they have taken themselves away from the truth and the one true Church. They must reject the errors they have made in the past and come back and start again. They cannot bring their errors into My Son's House.
   "You are opening the doors now for all manner of heretics, separated brethren. They do not come to unite in good spirit and heart; they come to take over. They seek to change you, O pastors, who are being deluded. And what do I see in My Son's House but separated brethren upon His pulpit! Even from the temples, the synagogues of satan, upon His pulpit! And for what?
   "And who are My pastors now that have joined in this plan of destruction? Who ordained some of them? Not legitimate hands. They come to destroy. They come in like rats, burrowing, undermining My Son's Church! Do you think you are not watched? Are you above your Creator that you think you can deceive the world permanently? No, I say unto you! You are being given your time, for you who have given yourselves to satan are now exposing your true nature to the world." - Our Lady, March 18, 1977 

ESTABLISHED  BY  JESUS CHRIST
"There are many deceptions taking place among you, and one being the falsification of the manner of the salvation of souls. When I was upon earth, I established the rules and I gave you My Church, My House. However, now I watch as many have gone forward with itching ears and novelty, and they are setting upon the world a new religion." - Jesus, May 20, 1978 

WILL  STAND
"Do not be deluded, My children, by the agents of satan among you in human form who preach doctrines of devils. The truth has been given to mankind through the ages. The Holy Roman Catholic Church of My Son will stand. The members shall be reduced to few. Only a remnant, My child, shall carry the banner Faithful and True. But the gates of hell shall fight a heavy battle against My Son's Church, but they shall not succeed." - Our Lady, May 14, 1977 

ONLY  SANCTIFIED  HOUSE
"Your children are wandering into the web of satan, going farther from the House of My Son. The truth is being removed from their hearts. They are setting among themselves groups. They shall not remove from their lives vows of My Son. As the only sanctified House upon earth, their souls will be destroyed when they are not given the Bread of living life. This Bread will only be obtained in the sanctified House of My Son. Satan seeks to remove the tabernacle from among you." - Our Lady, August 5, 1973