A reader sent me a link to this excellent article that is really out of place in The Guardian.
There has been much written and discussed about the bill South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed that bans all abortions in the state Many pro-lifers have discussed the prudence of doing this at the present time. Obviously pro-abortion groups will bring this into the courts and it is quite possible that it could make it to the Supreme Court if they later agree to hear the case. Considering that we are likely to have four steady vote, it comes to needing Justice Kennedy to side with Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito. If this doesn’t happen and the law is overturned we have the situation where it is unlikely that the court would hear a similar case for sometimes.
I think this analysis offered by many is politically astute and if we look at the ban from just the level of political strategery it looks like the right law at the wrong time. Though I do think it also needs to be looked at from another level and that we should do more than just talk about the consequences of the bill.
In 1571 a force of Ottoman galleys in the Gulf of Lepanto looked like it would handily defeat the The Holy League’s fleet. The fleet was insignificant compared to the number of ships and men available to the Ottoman empire. On a pure strategic level the s Habsburg-controlled fleet had no chance for success but at the end of the day their small fleet was victorious with the Ottoman fleet loosing over two thirds of their fleet and suffered over three times as many causalities a the Holy League. Leading up to this battle Pope St. Pius V asked for public prayers in Rome for the success of the fleet and specifically that Rosary fraternities pray to Mary for victory over the Islamic forces. The next year he instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory (now Our Lady of the Rosary) held on the day of this decisive battle (Oct 7th).
The point of this little history of which I am sure most of my readers were already aware of is to urge you all to storm heaven in prayer, especially with the Rosary, that what might be an imprudent bill or a tactical blunder, might instead be a decisive victory protecting unborn children from abortion. No one expected an abortionist testifying in congress to admit to the fact that the numbers of partial birth abortions were much larger in number than abortion advocates had portrayed. Much happens that is unexpected (just ask Goliath) and the power of prayer is behind much that is unexpected.
If this case makes it to the court possibly it wouldn’t be heard till the next session of the court. The Supreme Court term starts on the first Monday in October and even though the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is five days later this year – that’s close enough for God.
Our Lady of the Rosary pray for us and for your children under threat of attack.
Here is a great interview by Zenit with Alveda King (who works with Priests for Life). [Via Kevin Miller]
Q: There is a high abortion rate among African-Americans and it reflects a problem with unwed mothers that needs to be solved. Abortion seems to deal with the "symptom" of children as if this were the solution. What is the proper solution?
King: The proper solution is righteousness and holy living, including abstinence and marriage. This is the case for all people, regardless of nationality and socioeconomic status.
Her answers in the interview are all good, but I especially loved the above one.
HOLYOKE – The St. Patrick’s Parade Committee will suspend its long-standing tradition of having the Roman Catholic bishop present its highest award after learning that the honoree supports abortion rights.
Thomas J. Ridge, who served from 2001 to 2005 as the nation’s first chief of homeland security, still is slated to receive this year’s John F. Kennedy Award, which honors someone of Irish heritage for distinguished achievement.
But, when Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell of the Springfield Diocese voiced his objections to Ridge, the parade committee agreed that its president, David J. O’Connor, will make the presentation.
Committee members said that despite any problems, they are still excited to have the country’s first chief of homeland security visit Holyoke.
Thank you Bishop McDonnell for your stand against a pro-abortion Catholic politician. Unfortunately for Ridge he did not care that the terror alert level for children in the womb was always maxed out. That everyday we murder as many children through abortion as killed on 9-11.
VATICAN CITY (AP) – Scientists told a Vatican conference Tuesday that screening embryos for disease before implanting them in in-vitro fertilization posed grave ethical problems that could ultimately result in parents choosing the type of children they want.
The warning, however, was rejected as unfounded by outside scientists.
The Vatican conference, which ended Tuesday, focused on the ethics surrounding the handling of embryos before they are implanted in in-vitro fertilization procedures when they are just a few days old and a few cells in size.
On Monday, Pope Benedict XVI told the conference that even such young embryos deserve the same right to life as fetuses, children and adults.
The Vatican opposes in-vitro procedures because embryos created in a laboratory are often discarded, frozen or are created solely for experimentation or to create stem cells. The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life organized the conference to determine if its position is supported by current scientific data.
Well not quite. Even if there was a 100 percent success rate with IVF and no embryos were ever discarded the Church would still oppose IVF or any other technology that separates separating the unitive and procreative ends of marriage. Though you can hardly fault reporters for their ignorance considering the same ignorance of many Catholics.
There have also been cases where parents seek to have a child with specific non-diseased characteristics to help a diseased older sibling through tissue or organ donation, they said.
"How will this ‘savior’ child live his situation?" asked Prof. Marie-Odile Rethore, a member of France’s Jerome Lejeune Institute, which conducts research into Down’s Syndrome. "How will he live the death of the older child he was not able to save?"
In a paper delivered at the conference, she said France’s National Committee on Ethics issued its opinion on the topic in 2002, saying: "If medically assisted procreation is no longer aimed at favoring the birth of children for themselves but to be used to repair another child, we are entering into a humanity that despises itself."
Dawn Eden has a post about a series of sketches that Planned Parenthood’s teen troupes perform at schools that even includes one called "Charlie and the Condom Factory." Which I find to be kind of ironic since with PP’s world view of individual selfishness and pleasure over responsibility that it seems to me that they would be the ones having Oompa Loompa’s singing over them as something disastrous happens to them as they tour the factory.
Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-do
I have a perfect puzzle for you
Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-dee
If you are wise, you’ll listen to me
What do you get with a contraceptive mentality?
Where a disease is seen as your own fertility.
You would think someone would object.
As women’s bodies become an object.
I don’t like the look of it
Dawn Eden provides a summary of the sketches along with their primary message from PP’s site. Now free of charge I would offer a more realistic sketch for them to perform instead.
Pandora’s Pill Box (A true myth) (20 minutes)
The play depicts Pandora a women whose sexual curiosity gets the best of her. Pope Paul VI warns her of the consequence of opening the pill box and of the problems that would ensue. But Pandora was very curious about the simple round pill box and she repeatedly fancied hearings sounds like whispers coming from the box. During the sixties the noise seemed to increase and the pleas from it were amplified by society surrounding it. She puts her ear to the simple case and is surprised when she very clearly hears these words coming from it spoken with a desperate plea. "Pandora, dear Pandora, have pity upon us ! Free us from this gloomy prison! Open, open, we beseech you! Open us to release a new age where every child would be a wanted child and marriages would become stronger and women would be freed of their very fertility and have fulfilling careers like men instead. Pandora promptly opens the pill box and out flies flies pills, IUDs, condoms, patches and every sort of chemical contraceptive device. Along with these contraceptive also flew increased marital infidelity, gigantic increase of divorce, increased fornication, gigantic jump in violence against women, increased sexual objectification of women, subsequent medical problems, necessity for abortion when contraception fails, and many other ills that were packed into the simple white pill box.
Primary Messages:
- Sexual promiscuity without consequences makes as much sense as breathing without air.
- Pope Paul VI was right in what he predicted would happen.
- That even though the promised wonders of contraception never came to fruition, it just doesn’t matter to society at large. P.T. Barnum’s slogan is yet again confirmed.
MANILA, Philippines, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The bishops of the Philippines have responded emphatically to growing pressure from anti-life activists, calling for accountability from Catholics on moral issues.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) have rallied Catholic leaders throughout the country to educate parishioners on the immorality of artificial birth control methods, in response to a concerted onslaught by population control advocates.
Supported by the United Nations, activists for population control have launched an aggressive assault on the country, pushing for anti-life legislation that would limit family size to two children, increase the social acceptance and availability of artificial birth control and give greater access to abortion.
House Bill 3773, the responsible Parenthood and Population Management Act of 2005, is now before parliament.
"
There’s a hidden agenda behind the population bill," Archbishop Fernando Capalla of Davao, president of the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, told reporters. "All this is being done in the name of business."
Capalla accused foreign companies that manufacture contraceptives of backing the strong lobby for the passage of Bill 3773, reported Ecumenical News International.
A US$1.4 million grant was given by the United Nations to help finance the population control program.
"The bishops were appalled by the swift release of the grant and the filing of the reproductive health bill and the launching of the health department’s population control programs," said Jo Imbong, legal counsel of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
No surprise there to find the UN doing what it can to encourage the pro-abortion agenda. This is the new colonialism where the UN and other groups work to force their "enlightened" agenda on countries. Groups like the Ford Foundation (which is the major money behind Catholics for a free choice) is also doing what they can money wise to corrupt the Philippines.
The bishops have instituted a course for parishioners on the fundamentals of Church teaching, called the Basic Ecclesiastical Communities seminar. Catholics are required to take the course, which runs for eight consecutive Sundays, before receiving sacraments for themselves or their children, and upon entering adulthood.
The course includes teachings on the basics of the faith, Bible study, Christian leadership, family and life apostles, salvation history, and the changing Church.
Sister Regina Arguelles of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, who works with the CBCP in offering the seminars, said the Catholic bishops have been alarmed by the “continuing moral decay” that was eating up the society.
The bishops are firm on the necessity of participating in the seminars before being allowed to receive sacraments.
“That’s the idea. That’s exactly the Church’s message. If you want to be a Catholic, act like one and follow the Church’s teachings,” Sister Arguelles said.
I just love to hear such plain talking, thank you Sister Arguelles.
A prominent mayor was not allowed to receive Catholic burial rites in the Church, after failing to participate in the course. The Manila Standard reports that following the incident, all government officials in the region signed up for the course.
Amazing what can happen when a bishops conference speaks both coherently and forcefully on a subject and then actually follows up with consequences. I think I am experiencing bishop conference envy. I wonder what was the last time the USCCB, if ever ,forcefully talked about the sin of contraception? I just don’t understand how a situation where probably a large majority of Catholic are contracepting and going to Communion gets so little attention. Sure there are pastoral issues, but isn’t preventing Catholics in objectively grave sin from receiving Communion sacrilegiously pretty important? How many of you have heard a homily on this subject for instance?
Dawn Eden passed along a press release from condoms4life a.k.a Kissling’s CFFC. Of course you know what to call an organization started up by a dissenting organization? An apostatate.
Robert Duncan at Spero News has some good commentary on this:
If you are predisposed to being a heretical bellyacher, then even St Valentine’s Day is a good day for throwing a rant. And if you can thumb Rome in the process so much the better.
Just in time for the "Love Season," the you-can’t-be-serious-Catholic group "Condoms4Life" is launching its latest malarkey "to encourage responsible sexuality and to raise awareness about the Vatican’s ban on condoms."
If that doesn’t create queasy sensations in your lower digestive tract, then at least rest assured that despite the recent religion riots, Catholics aren’t taking to the streets to beat nincompoops over the heads with the Catechism.
I suspect it wouldn’t work anyway, since people like Frances Kissling, president of the poorly named "Catholics for a Free Choice," are convinced they are Catholic. I doubt even the shorter, larger-print version of the Catechism would make much of a dent on their wooden Orwellian-catholic souls.
Condoms4Life plans to paint the town red with their new version of the Apostles Creed:
"We believe in God. We believe sex is sacred. We believe in protecting each other. We believe in using condoms."
Try saying that one right before communion.
According to Kissling, Condoms4Life was launched "to educate young Catholics, as well as gay and straight couples, about what we think our faith demands of us: Responsibility.” I note the emphasis in Kissling’s statement on what she thinks faith is all about.
Relatedly, when Kissling says "Good Catholics are deeply concerned about the problem of HIV/AIDS,” we are supposed to understand that it is impossible to really be concerned about AIDS if we believe sex is only to happen inside the sacrament of marriage – and condoms are un-Catholic.
I just have one question.
If Kissling claims the Catholic Church is such a horrid place, then why does she to continue calling herself Catholic – could it be for no other reason than perhaps it’s an addictive ego rush?
This is also more evidence that dissenters never dissent on only one subject. In this case we have abortion, contraception, homosexuality. They also never explain why somebody who is married and monogamous needs to be protected from STDs in the first place. This is because they don’t make any such assumptions and it just show more areas where they dissent. In all honest their campaign should be called Condoms4SpritualDeath.
A reader sent me a link to this NRO article by Mark Tooley.
…Conservatives have often chided the mainline Protestant denominations for their dramatic membership losses, faulting the controversial liberal political advocacy of their churches’ officials. No doubt there is truth in this. Most mainline Protestants are still conservative leaning, despite the chronic leftism of their church hierarchies. Many react in frustration by leaving.
But the demographic implosion may also have other, deeper contributing factors. One out of every six Americans belonged to a mainline denomination 40 years ago. Today it is one out of every 15. Writing for The American Journal of Sociology several years ago, Catholic priest (and romance potboiler author) Andrew Greeley, with two other sociologists, asserted that mainline Protestant decline is actually created by decades of declining birthrates in comparison to those for conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics.
Though Greeley et al. did not address it directly, mainline Protestant hierarchs long championed legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade, culminating in their founding of RCRC in 1973. Undoubtedly this had some impact on abortion rates among their own flocks. The lower birth rate among mainline Protestants can probably be explained, at least partly, by some level of increased moral ease with and resort to abortion (the "Roe Effect").
So perhaps unrestricted abortion is fueling the decline of the very same churches who have most championed it. The irony is a sad one. [Source]
I am sure that there abortion support has had some effect, but it does make me wonder in this day and age of Church shopping how many children stay with the same denomination as their parents in Protestantism?
One thing about the Roe effect that I don’t seem to have ever read is that the effect is on more than just the number of children who were aborted. Those approximately 46 million missing children in just the U.S. also never lived to have their own children and so on and so on.
OLYMPIA — Former Washington Gov. Booth Gardner, who has battled Parkinson’s disease for more than 14 years, says he will promote an assisted-suicide initiative for Washington in 2008, and predicted state voters would follow the lead of neighboring Oregon in approving it.
Washington voters rejected an assisted-suicide initiative in 1991, but "I think it will pass this time," he told The Associated Press in an interview.
Gardner, 69, told The AP Tuesday that he hasn’t yet decided on the scope of the initiative. However, if it follows the outline of the 1991 measure, it would allow a health care provider to prescribe lethal doses of medicine for patients who are within their final months of life with an incurable and irreversible condition.
…She said she had made no decision on how she would vote as an individual.
"I have to search my soul and my Catholic faith," Gregoire said. [Source]
Well you know how that battle usually goes with politicians. Now you can’t use Google on your soul, but it isn’t too hard to search the Catholic faith to find that euthanasia is an intrinsic evil.
Similarly we also have:
GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Feb. 7 — Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi announced a plan on Tuesday intended to reduce abortions, calling the proposal a "politically risky" step as he contemplates running for governor this year. Even as he was speaking, an abortion rights group issued a statement criticizing the plan.
Mr. Suozzi’s proposal would give nearly $1 million in county grants to groups including Planned Parenthood and Catholic Charities to promote birth control, adoption, housing for unwed mothers and abstinence. He proposes spending similar amounts in each of the next two years.
…Mr. Suozzi, a Roman Catholic, supports legalized abortion, but his plan to reduce the number of abortions helps position him as a moderate. In bringing disparate groups together, he also portrays himself as a conciliator and problem-solver. [Source]
Again why do politicians want to reduce something that they also say is not morally wrong?