Good Counsel Homes Plans to Grow ‘Coast to Coast’

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Good Counsel Homes, which operates four Catholic pro-life homes for pregnant women and their children in the archdiocese, plans to expand its network of homes “from coast to coast,” said Christopher Bell, the president and executive director of Good Counsel, at the organization’s annual dinner.

Bell, speaking at the Father Benedict Groeschel Award Dinner at the Union League Club in Manhattan Dec. 1, said Good Counsel’s board of directors recently expressed a “vision” for the expansion. He asked the 220 guests for their “prayers and support” in helping the agency carry out its plans “as we take one baby step at a time.”

Bell, in a phone interview with CNY later in the week, shared some details of Good Counsel’s plans for growth. This month, he plans to visit sites in Florida, where the organization is looking to open a new home, and in Georgia, where he will tour an existing home seeking to partner with Good Counsel.

Good Counsel helped Joseph’s Home in Syracuse get up and running less than two years ago, Bell said, and has played a key role in launching other homes for pregnant women and their babies over the years.

Bell said he sees an opportunity for Good Counsel to “set out” its model and then “look at an area where there is a need” and follow “the steps to start that home” and help it to operate. He told CNY that he could see the Good Counsel model being employed in other large cities like Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

Good Counsel, a member of the National Maternity Housing Coalition, takes in any woman who is pregnant and in need, no matter what other issues she may have, including mental health problems, drug addiction or immigration issues. “We want to help every woman who is pregnant and in need,” Bell said.

The expansion would fulfill a hope expressed by Father Benedict, a co-founder of Good Counsel Homes and of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, who died Oct. 3, 2014. “Just grow” was his simple response when one of Good Counsel’s board officers asked for advice about the work in which he had been so involved for many years.

“I’ve been thinking about it and praying about this a lot,” Bell said.

Good Counsel now operates homes in the Bronx, Staten Island, Harrison and Spring Valley, and in Riverside, N.J. Thirty-three babies have been born to the mothers of Good Counsel this year, adding to the more than 900 born since Good Counsel’s founding in 1985.

At the dinner, Cardinal Dolan accepted the Father Benedict Groeschel Award. It was noted that the cardinal became the first Archbishop of New York to visit a Good Counsel Home when he traveled to the one in Spring Valley in October 2014. The visit was captured in a short video played for the guests.

Cardinal Dolan, saying the honor was “named after a man I loved very much,” expressed his admiration for the work that continues to be accomplished by Bell and the Good Counsel staff on behalf of the women and children in their care.

In this Advent season as we prepare to celebrate the birth of a Savior, the cardinal reminded the audience that Mary’s was a “problem pregnancy.”

“God brought about our salvation from a pregnant woman,” he said. “Caring for pregnant women, caring for our babies is our sacred vocation,” he said.

He invited those in attendance to drop by a Good Counsel Home, as he did, to see the good work accomplished there.

Isabel Diaz said many people then in her life advised her to abort her son, Isaiah, now 6. She said she could not do that because “I knew I was holding a life. I prayed to God to help me.”

A lot of that help was delivered at Good Counsel Home on Staten Island. She learned how to cook, to set up a budget and, most importantly, to be a good mother.

Today, Isaiah, who is autistic, is “one of the smartest kids you can think of” and his soul is “so awesome,” said his proud mother.

Of Good Counsel, she said, “It does work.”