Blogger Mark Shea also rejected the treatment of the baby.
"(T)he Church does indeed insist on the right to life of the unborn baby," he said in a post on Patheos. However, he continued, "That does not mean that in the name of fighting abortion, you get to use the unborn's naked body as a prop for attacking your culture war enemies on the eve of an election. It does not make the unborn's body a thing for you to manipulate as political imagery."
Scott Eric Alt, a third Patheos blogger, called for Fr. Pavone to have his faculty to celebrate Mass suspended. He pointed to Canon law, which stipulates: "An altar, whether fixed or movable, is to be reserved for divine worship alone, to the exclusion of any secular usage."
"The altar is intended for a sacramental purpose, as the place where the priest celebrates Mass," Alt said.
"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."
Furthermore, Alt charged, "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."
Although Priests for Life claims to be in good standing with the Vatican, Fr. Pavone has previously sparked controversy over his contentious relationship with Bishop Patrick J. Zurek of Amarillo – whose jurisdiction he is under – given charges that he had disobeyed the bishop and had failed to allow the Priests for Life to undergo auditing.
Fr. Pavone also had a severe run-in with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York - where Priests for Life is headquartered - in 2014. That November, Cardinal Dolan wrote in a letter to fellow bishops that he wanted "nothing further to do" with Fr. Pavone given the priests refusal to cooperate in "several necessary reforms" of the organization after requests made by the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy.