Jeffrey Miller

A story from The Catholic World Report available
at Ignatius Insight chronicles a policy paper put out by Catholic
Relief Services the charitable arm of the USCCB.  Their
position includes giving information on condom use and the report
chronicles tactics used by CRS against those who conscientiously object
to doing this.  Germain Grisez has provides a in depth report
on this that shows how they have taken some older documents from the
bishops out of context and that they are probably presenting one thing
to the donors and the bishops while their actual practice on this issue
has been along secular lines.

The authors believes that there needs to
be an investigation of CRS and concludes.

Since CRS is an agency of the United
States bishops, its officials should act as their agents. If CRS
officials have been pretending to follow the bishops� policy while
disregarding it, they have betrayed their responsibility and misled the
bishops. Any bishop would fire a real estate agent who did that to him.

As the bishops� agency, CRS acts in the person of the Church. CRS
officials should be managing a charitable apostolate of the Catholic
Church in the United States. But they have been distributing material
on which they have prohibited putting the CRS logo. If they are doing
what they cannot make clear that the Church is doing, how can they be
conducting a charitable apostolate in the Church�s name? But if and
insofar as they have not been conducting a charitable apostolate in the
Church�s name, they are betraying the Church herself�not only the
bishops but all the faithful, and even Jesus himself, the Church�s Head.

Moreover, it seems that some partners have been pressed to cooperate
despite their conscientious objections. Negative reactions of bishops
and churches in other countries seem to be regarded as a problem to be
dealt with rather than as expressions of conscientious judgment to be
respected.

Faithful Catholics who have donated to CRS in recent years for AIDS
relief did so because they expected the program to be carried out in a
distinctively Catholic way. Had they not expected this, they could have
donated to a secular organization fighting AIDS. If CRS officials have
used donations otherwise than they have led donors to expect, CRS
officials have misappropriated those funds.

Finally, even by secular standards, people encouraged to use condoms to
prevent the transmission of HIV have been ill-served. Genuine
charitable apostolate in regard to the prevention of HIV transmission
helps save lives but also does something infinitely more important,
namely, offers everyone it reaches help to rise from the life of this
corruption to the life that never dies. However, the opposite was
offered if, as it seems, people who should have received loving service
in the Church�s name were scandalized in the strict sense by being
encouraged to continue engaging�or worse, as early adolescents, to
begin engaging�in sinful sexual activity rather than to live chastely.

What has been going on at CRS must be investigated. The CRS board is
ultimately responsible for its operations. I urge the board to begin by
examining the items described in this article. The questions those
items raise suggest many further questions.

It does remind me of the line George Weigel recently used where he mentioned “salvation-through-latex approach to AIDS prevention.”

“Children are an heritage of the Lord: and
the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a
mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath
his quiver full of them”
Psalm 127:3-5 

Oh wait according to the
Gospel according to Obama.

“Look, I got two daughters � 9 years
old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about
values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them
punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at age 16,
so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.”

Yes a quiver full of punishment and of
course today being the three year anniversary of Terri Schivo’s death
that Obama’s greatest regret in his years in the Senate was not voting
to contribute to the killing of her.

A new annual report from Planned
Parenthood shows the nation’s largest abortion business has made over
$1 billion in income for the first time in its history. The non-profit
pro-abortion group shows the historical gain in its new annual report
covering 2006-2007.
While Planned Parenthood made $972 milion in its 2005-2006 annual
report, last fiscal year it brought in $1.017 billion.

On its web site posting of the annual document, Planned Parenthood says
it “highlights our advancements in providing and protecting trusted
health care services and medically accurate sexuality education.”

Instead, the report finds Planned Parenthood doing more abortions than
ever before.

The report shows an increase in the number of provided abortions from
264,943 in 2005 to 289,650 in 2006.

Planned Parenthood reveals it has doubled �excess of revenue over
expenses� funds from $55.7 million in 2005 to $112 million in 2006.