enemy_of_the_state

Fr. John Corapi on the culture of death: Death Wish

2010-09-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

PART I

PART II

Pitchfork Politics:

2010-09-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

the Feds are Targeting Conscientious Doctors

from: LifeSite News

September 20, 2010

by Dominique Monlezun and Kristan Hawkins

Get the pitchforks out — America is hunting physicians. Instead of calling off the dogs, President Obama is leading the charge. In March of 2009, Obama called to rescind the conscience protection clause that was implemented by Health and Human Services on January 20, 2009. Then he adamantly backed the passage of the healthcare reform law, which leaves physicians’ conscience rights open for attack from nearly all sides.

Why should you care about the conscience rights of doctors? Because whether doctors have conscience rights may determine whether you have a doctor.

The sacred doctor-patient relationship is based on the assumption that patients and their doctors share similar moral beliefs. Patients want doctors who can help them make informed decisions within our moral frame of reference because they share our values. And physicians want to be able to follow their consciences when they practice medicine and have the power to say “no” to certain medical procedures without having to fear being reprimanded or losing their jobs.

That’s not a hypothetical situation. The Washington Post noted that Obamacare does not protect medical professionals opposed to a procedure like abortion from discrimination by federal, state, and local governments, nor from hospitals and clinics. This means that if a physician refuses to perform an abortion because it violates her conscience, she could lose her job and have no recourse.

Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo knows this all too well. This New York nurse was forced by her supervisors to help abort a 22-week-old preborn baby at Mount Sinai Hospital, despite her long-standing agreement with the hospital allowing her to opt out of abortion procedures. She states, “It felt like a horror film unfolding … I felt violated and betrayed.”

Starting in 2009 and continuing until today, polls have shown that most Americans oppose abortion. Amid the growing pro-life atmosphere in America, Obama supports a double standard that tells pro-life medical professionals that they cannot exercise their free will and conscience rights, while patients desiring abortions can.

But isn’t America just catching up to the times and is this not the situation across the world? No. For example, the Irish Medical Council’s 2004 Guide to Ethical Conduct and Behavior states: “Medical care must not be used as a tool of the State, to be granted or withheld or altered in character under political pressure. Doctors require independence from such pressures in order to carry out their duties.”

The nation is already facing a shortage of doctors and nurses. Because of Obamacare, millions more patients will be flooding the system in coming years. In an online survey of nearly 3,000 faith-based physicians, 95% of them said they would stop practicing Medicine rather than violate their conscience. And the New England Journal of Medicine published a survey that said one-third of all physicians would stop practicing if Obamacare was passed.

Where will patients go when doctors are forced out of their profession?

We must tell President Obama to call off the dogs. He preaches tolerance but does not tolerate medical professionals who decline procedures on religious or moral grounds. As long as these physicians are portrayed as inhuman monsters, government agencies and organizations will hunt them down with the pitchforks of lawsuits.

Dominique Monlezun is entering Tulane School of Medicine next fall. He is the National Coordinator of Medical Students for Life, a division of Students for Life of America. Kristan Hawkins is the Executive Director of Students for Life of America. Learn more at www.medSFL.org ^[1].

This article is courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.

JACKIE EVANCHO AVE MARIA TOP FOUR AMERICAS GOT TALENT.mp4-sep-14-2010

2010-09-15T21:47:00.000-07:00

Catholic Youth's Near Death Experience

2010-09-12T21:57:00.000-07:00

Sister Emmanuel Children of Medjugorje September 12, 2010 Experience

- Dominik and the Youth Festival. A surprising event took place in Medjugorje on August 3rd. Since the articles on the internet about the events spread many errors, I wanted to make a serious inquiry before writing about it. So, below I have written the facts as I received them from Dominik’s family.

Dominik Juros, a young Slovakian of 16, born in a Catholic family from the village of Hran, came to the Youth Festival this summer with other young people from his area. During the preceding months, Dominik went through a period of inner rebellion, mostly concerning faith. He no longer wanted to serve at Mass as altar boy; and he refused to pray with his parents.

Although this group had signed up for a pilgrimage, they were not really interested in the Youth Festival or in God in general. They behaved more like tourists on vacation.

On August 3rd, the heat was extreme in Medjugorje. The group decided to go swimming at the waterfalls of Kravica with Janko, their guide, rather than follow the program of the Festival. Dominik slipped into the icy water, and sank 9 or 10 feet deep. He managed to surface several times, but no one noticed that he was drowning. Instead, people around him thought he was playing a game. Ten minutes later, Janko began to worry because he could no longer see him! So he swam to the spot where he had last seen him.

With the help of a few people, Janko was able to pull Dominik out of the water. But his heart had stopped. It took 15 to 20 minutes of resuscitation to make it beat again, but on the way to Mostar’s hospital, his heart stopped beating again. His lungs no longer worked. At the hospital Dominik was put into an induced coma and his vital bodily functions were taken over by medical devices.

The next day, his parents rushed from Slovakia to Mostar. After hearing what had happened, all the young people at the Festival started praying fervently for him, and this beautiful chain of love continued day and night! Even Dominik’s bus companions, suddenly seized by the fear of God, started to pray. Each went to Confession and they attended Mass with great piety.

On August 5th, surrounded by his family and with a lot of prayers, Dominik showed unexpected signs of awareness. Although unconscious, he would press his mother’s hand or shed tears. He woke up on August 7th, and his organs revived. His first reaction was to cry, begging his parents to forgive him. He grabbed the hand of his mother and asked her to pray with him, and to pray a lot. He wanted to confess his sins, so they asked a priest to come. He was then transferred to a hospital in Slovakia, where he began walking and talking freely. Four weeks later, he was back in school. His Slovakian doctor reports that Dominik’s recovery is shocking, considering what he endured.

Dominik shared some interesting aspects of his experience. For instance, although unconscious at the time, when he was taken out of the water, he saw his parents in Slovakia sitting in front of television, and he knew what they were doing and where they were going. On August 8th, according to people present and his own words, he became hypersensitive, felt intense inner struggles, and had unusual perceptions.

According to Dominik, while he was between life and death, he felt threatened by “dark figures” present in the hospital, some standing at the door and others causing havoc in the room, accusing him. These figures were constantly trying to prevent his mother from praying at his bedside. Dominik’s face lit up when he felt the presence of a person full of light, peace and joy, who he thinks was the Blessed Mother. When someone entered his room carrying some water, he knew that it was Holy Water and thought “Oh, blessed water! That will help me now!” He said he could perceive the prayers of his family as peaceful, positive, very helpful and full of life.

Dominik was able to see Purgatory. There he saw two young people, from a neighboring town, suffering. He saw that they had burned a car and later were killed in an accident. He saw Angels, splendid beings dressed in white, with beautiful faces. He said he saw Jesus face to face and said that Jesus had the most beautiful eyes. When his family was praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy at his bedside, he asked them, “Can you smell that wonderful fragrance?” “What fragrance?” His mother asked. “Theblood of Jesus! It has a wonderful fragrance!” He answered.

There are many details to the story that will not fit here, however it is important to note that Dominik’s mother consecrated him to Our Lady at his conception.

Dominick often repeated that we should love each other and forgive one another; that love is the most important thing in life. He insistently asked members of his family to treat each other with much more love, even in the smallest things, and to always forgive and to have no enemies. With his short, but sweet taste of Heaven, Dominik regretted that the medical team had saved his life!

We know that normally, after a few minutes under water, the brain is damaged for lack of oxygen. But in Dominik’s case, only God knows whether it is, medically, a miracle. This is of little importance! What is beautiful in this event, is that it happened when 40,000 youth of the Festival were praying in Medjugorje. The Lord used this teenager, going through a crisis, to put all his friends on their knees, (those present in Medjugorje and those in Slovakia), to inspire them to go to Confession and to turn their hearts to God. Moreover, to some of those kids who put earthly things in the first place of their life, and who thought they could make it without God, Dominik’s experience revealed another world, other values, and reminded them of the most vital commandment of Jesus: “Love one another as I have loved you!”

Dominik does not remember everything, but the effect of grace is very obvious in his life. He has turned into a young man who today prays profoundly, who lives his faith with fervor, and who happily joins his parents and family in prayer. He shows great reverence for the Cross of Jesus and for Our Lady. All his relatives are grateful for what the mercy of God did for him. Even his grandfather, a former obstinate opponent of Medjugorje, now wants to come. Magnificat!

Exclusive: Patrice Lewis explains how 'glued together' families build strong nations

2010-08-09T15:58:00.000-07:00

EAL AMERICA
Why housewives will save the world
Posted: August 07, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
By Patrice Lewis

Once in a while a reader is astonished to learn that I am, quite literally, nothing more than what I've always claimed to be: an opinionated north Idaho housewife. I am not a journalist, or a reporter, or anything loftier than a keeper of the home. I use the denigrated term "housewife" deliberately because I am proud to be a member of this elite group.

If you associate housewives with dull women too dumb to do anything but wipe noses and clean toilets, I'm here to tell you otherwise. I will even make the extraordinary declaration that it is housewives who will save the world. Or at least, our nation.

The standard assumption about housewives (besides the obligatory doubts about our intelligence and educational level) is that our husbands make so much money that we can "afford" to stay home with the kids. This assumption always sends us into peals of laughter because it is so seldom true. Let's face it, the term "thrifty housewife" was coined for a reason.

Housewives spend years learning to be thrifty. We shop at Goodwill, not Nordstrom. We mend holes and patch jeans. We purchase basic food items and cook from scratch. Most of us don't do this because we are green and environmentally conscious. We do it because it's cheap and it keeps us home with the kids.

Many housewives supplement their husband's income with cottage industries. I do freelance writing. I know a woman who makes brassiere holsters for handguns (yes really … this is Idaho, remember). Yet another woman makes reusable feminine hygiene products. Yet another woman sells items on eBay.

Perhaps the most encouraging film on marriage of our time -- own it for yourself: "Fireproof"

None of us is sitting around watching soap operas and eating bonbons. We're too busy making our home welcoming, too involved in looking for additional ways to earn money, too occupied in finding yet more techniques to trim the household budget so the bacon stretches further.

We praise our husbands for bringing home this bacon, however modest in size it may be. It's our job to stretch that bacon so it lasts the whole month.

A housewife takes her marital vows seriously and does whatever it takes to make her husband feel like a man by giving him respect, dedication, love, faithfulness, a warm home and happy children. Housewives don't (or shouldn't) speak disparagingly of their husbands. We praise them. Praised men are happy men.

And that's why I believe the housewives of America will save this nation.

When the chips are down, the housewives rise up. We work harder, stretch the dollars further and discover creative ways to do even more things from scratch. We become cleverer and more resourceful at "making do."

These may seem like such small, trivial things. How will baking our own bread or making our own laundry detergent save the nation? It may not … but it could save the family. And if a family is saved, then bit by bit, family by family, the nation is saved. See the logic?

What I mean is this. On a massive scale, our nation's problems are far beyond our individual ability to do anything about them. Housewives cannot stop the insane spending spree our government has embarked on during the last 50 years. We cannot keep the economy from its free fall.

But we can help ourselves. Inch by inch, foot by foot, we can keep our family afloat. If our husband loses his job, we tell him he's still manly and sexy. We give him the confidence to look for work. We tighten an already tight belt even more. We pick up part-time employment. We write more columns, make more holsters, sew more feminine hygiene products and clinch another eBay sale. We stroke our husband's fevered brow and whisper that it will be OK, we'll weather this together, we'll stumble along doing whatever it takes to keep our family whole. We don't let the cruel winds of financial hardship rip our family apart. We are the glue that binds it.

You see, the role of a housewife is so much more than wiping noses and cleaning toilets. Feminists have looked with contempt at housewives for decades and have tried to convince our daughters that only lofty careers and hefty paychecks can fulfill a woman. But housewives know better.

Men work hard at jobs they often dislike to provide for their families. For a man, it is not his job that grants him identity, fulfillment and meaning; it is his wife's praise and admiration. The wise housewife honors her man for his dedication and sacrifice. The smart housewife becomes the kind of woman her man wants to come home to. This is the glue.

A glued-together family stays together no matter where they are. If they are evicted from their home because they can't afford the mortgage, then they rent a cheap single-wide. The housewife will then turn it into a beautiful haven because she knows it is not furnishings but love that makes a home.

When the hurricane roars during an economic storm, it will be the thrifty housewife who will bear her family aloft through hard times. Her frugality, common sense and familial glue will keep the boat afloat until it lands on a more fruitful shore. As the waves settle, she will continue to bind, weave and mesh her family into a seamless harmonious whole. In return, she is blessed a thousandfold for her actions.

On the surface, it may not seem like wiping noses and cleaning toilets can have any significant impact on saving our nation. After all, these acts are not spectacular achievements like winning a court case, negotiating a contract or curing someone of cancer. But the foundation of a nation is a solid family unit. It is the humble, collective efforts of housewives that build those solid, happy families. Nation upon nation is built on this foundation. Without housewives, such a foundation would not – could not – exist.

Don't thank us. We're just doing our job. But please, remember to put the toilet seat down.

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2010-07-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

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You Can’t Handle the Truth “You Can’t Handle the Truth”

2010-07-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

A very powerful article–one that should make us all stop in our tracks and consider how even small sins have big consequences. It has me thinking, that’s for sure.-D

By Cheryl Dickow
July 19, 2010 @ 12:03

“You can’t handle the truth!” Jack Nicholson growls at Tom Cruise in one of the most well-known movie scenes from A Few Good Men.

I don’t remember much about the movie but do remember that particular line. There was something about the malevolent delivery, mixed with the truth of the words, which made it seem applicable to just about everyone.

Can any of us really handle the truth?

Do we seek it?

Do we welcome it when it arrives?

Or do we avoid it?

Do we do our utmost to see things the way we want to see them—ignoring it to our own peril?

I’m halfway through the book The End of the Present World by Father Charles Arminjon — available from the CE store ^[1] — and Nicholson’s words keep ringing in my ears. I can see why St. Theresa of Lisieux said: Reading this book was one of the greatest graces of my life.

At this point, my copy is nothing but yellow highlights — I find the book that powerful. In particular I keep reading and re-reading pages 94 and 95. The topic is St. Thomas’ testimony on the last judgment and the three theological reasons for the universal judgment are being explored and explained.

I read in the words on these pages that reality of which Nicholson speaks when he barks at Cruise: You can’t handle the truth!

I, too, am struck by what St. Thomas says in regards to why man must experience both the particular judgment and then the universal judgment.

In our particular judgment, which occurs immediately upon our death, our life’s actions are judged. The sum total of decisions we’ve made, words we’ve used and courses of actions we’ve taken will be on the table: Each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and faith — Catechism of the Catholic Church #1021

Beyond the particular judgment, St. Thomas gives three reasons why the general or universal judgment is necessary and these are examined in The End of the Present World beginning on page 94. The first of the three very compelling reasons is this:

Yet this judgment [the particular judgment] cannot suffice, and it is essential that it should be followed by another public judgment, in which God will not examine the actions in isolation and taken in themselves, but will examine them in their effects upon other men, in the good or evil deriving from them for families and peoples—in a word, in the consequences they produced and which those who perpetrated them ought to have forseen.

Wow.

It is so easy for us to consider our actions in isolation (or justify them so that they don’t need to be considered at all) but when we mull over their “ripple” effects, we get a better, clearer picture of how our life is connected to all others. Factor in the immense reach we have with the Internet and our impact may well be far beyond what we bargained for with ripple effects taking on the magnitude of a tsunami.

Then, when we consider that those ripple effects will become part and parcel of our general judgment, we are given a truth that many of us might not be able to handle.

Although not a betting person, I would wager that very few of us really understand or know how some of the simplest things we do or say impact others. I am convinced that, if queried, an inconsequential amount of people would believe that something they’ve done or said has caused another person harm or anguish. Let alone rippled along enough to become something that will surface during general judgment!

And yet it is certainly so.

This makes me want to pointedly ask everyone…if you’ve been dismissive or hurtful or downright mean to someone—whether you know them personally or just in the rapidly expanding world provided through the Internet—would you want them to tell you?

Is it a truth you can handle?

I would want to know. I would want to have a chance to make things right before I face my Creator.

In fact, isn’t it actually a blessing to let someone make amends while they still have a chance?

And if someone has been dismissive or hurtful or downright mean to you, do you think you have an obligation to say something? Especially based upon the fact that this may be their one chance to hear and respond to the truth before they are judged?

What are our obligations to one another as Catholic Christians in regards to sharing such truths? We apparently have a lot of power to help one another see the ripple effects set in motion by things said, choices made, and actions taken.

Should we be that honest?

Can we handle the truth?

[Get your copy of The End of the Present World today from our online store ^[1].]

Cheryl Dickow is a Catholic publisher, author, columnist, and speaker. Her newest book is Our Jewish Roots: A Catholic Woman’s Guide to Fulfillment Today by Connecting with Her Past. To invite Cheryl to speak at your event contact her at 248.917.3865 or write Cheryl@BezalelBooks.com

Her publishing company is Bezalel Books www.BezalelBooks.com where her focus is to publish great Catholic books for Catholic classrooms and for family reading. She has a Master’s Degree in Education and lives in the beautiful state of Michigan with her husband and three sons.

Daughter of God

2010-07-11T14:40:00.000-07:00

Smoke and mirrors

2010-06-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

June 29, 2010
11:00 A.M.
Kagan’s Abortion Distortion

How the Supreme Court nominee manipulated the statement of a medical organization to protect partial-birth abortion.

When President Obama promised in his inaugural address to “restore science to its rightful place,” he never explained what that rightful place would be. Documents recently released in connection with the Supreme Court nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan suggest an answer: wherever it can best be used to skew political debate and judicial outcomes.

The documents involved date from the Clinton White House. They show Miss Kagan’s willingness to manipulate medical science to fit the Democratic party’s political agenda on the hot-button issue of abortion. As such, they reflect poorly on both the author and the president who nominated her to the Supreme Court.

There is no better example of this distortion of science than the language the United States Supreme Court cited in striking down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion in 2000. This language purported to come from a “select panel” of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a supposedly nonpartisan physicians’ group. ACOG declared that the partial-birth-abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” The Court relied on the ACOG statement as a key example of medical opinion supporting the abortion method.

Years later, when President Bush signed a federal partial-birth-abortion ban (something President Clinton had vetoed), the ACOG official policy statement was front and center in the attack on the legislation. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf, one of the three federal judges that issued orders enjoining the federal ban (later overturned by the Supreme Court), devoted more than 15 pages of his lengthy opinion to ACOG’s policy statement and the integrity of the process that led to it.

Like the Supreme Court majority in the prior dispute over the Nebraska ban, Judge Kopf asserted that the ACOG policy statement was entitled to judicial deference because it was the result of an inscrutable collaborative process among expert medical professionals. “Before and during the task force meeting,” he concluded, “neither ACOG nor the task force members conversed with other individuals or organizations, including congressmen and doctors who provided congressional testimony, concerning the topics addressed” in the ACOG statement.

In other words, what medical science has pronounced, let no court dare question. The problem is that the critical language of the ACOG statement was not drafted by scientists and doctors. Rather, it was inserted into ACOG’s policy statement at the suggestion of then–Clinton White House policy adviser Elena Kagan.

The task force’s initial draft statement did not include the statement that the controversial abortion procedure “might be” the best method “in a particular circumstance.” Instead, it said that the select ACOG panel “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.”

Notwithstanding its allegedly apolitical nature, ACOG shared this draft statement with the Clinton White House. Miss Kagan, then a deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy, already knew ACOG’s stance as a result of a July 1996 meeting at the White House, at which ACOG representatives told administration officials — according to a Kagan memorandum [PDF] — that “in the vast majority of cases, selection of the partial birth procedure is not necessary to avert serious adverse consequences to a woman’s health.”

Upon receiving the task force’s draft statement, Kagan noted in another internal memorandum [PDF] that the draft ACOG formulation “would be a disaster — not the less so (in fact, the more so) because ACOG continues to oppose the legislation.” Any expression of doubt by a leading medical body about the efficacy of the procedure would severely undermine the case against the ban.

So Kagan set about solving the problem. Her notes, produced by the White House to the Senate Judiciary Committee, show that she herself drafted the critical language hedging ACOG’s position. On a document [PDF] captioned “Suggested Options” — which she apparently faxed to the legislative director at ACOG — Kagan proposed that ACOG include the following language: “An intact D&X [the medical term for the procedure], however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”

Kagan’s language was copied verbatim by the ACOG executive board into its final statement, where it then became one of the greatest evidentiary hurdles faced by Justice Department lawyers (of whom I was one) in defending the federal ban. (Kagan’s role was never disclosed to the courts.) The judicial battles that followed led to two Supreme Court opinions, several trials, and countless felled trees. Now we learn that language purporting to be the judgment of an independent body of medical experts devoted to the care and treatment of pregnant women and their children was, in the end, nothing more than the political scrawling of a White House appointee.

Miss Kagan’s decision to override a scientific finding with her own calculated distortion in order to protect access to the most despicable of abortion procedures seriously twisted the judicial process. One must question whether her nomination to the Court would have the same effect.

— Shannen W. Coffin, an attorney in Washington, D.C., was the deputy assistant attorney general in charge of the defense of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act during the Bush administration.

A commentary on a culture of death wherein life has become incredibly disposable.

2010-06-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

The Relevancy of Defending Life: My Experience of a Culture of Death

Posted By Kathleen Beckman

June 29, 2010 @ 12:03 am In Today | 3 Comments

On a beautiful spring Saturday morning in Southern California my family looked forward to attending our son’s baseball game. Just before leaving the house we received a phone call informing us that our father had been rushed to the hospital via paramedics after he was found by two good Samaritans lying in a pool of blood on the street in front of the family lumber business. We were summoned to the hospital and when we saw our father we scarcely recognized him because he had been severely bludgeoned around his head and face.

Apparently when he stopped by the business office that morning he encountered a couple of men in the process of robbing the office. He was overcome by them with blunt force trauma to the head. They drug him to the sidewalk and left him there unconscious.

The doctors advised that our father required brain surgery in an effort to save his life. We consented, waited and prayed. As it turned out, the surgery was not successful in saving his life and he died that day. The perpetrators were never found though the case aired on the television show, America’s Most Wanted. Nothing was taken from the office after all except the life of a faithful husband, beloved father and grandfather, a well known and respected business man. Our family would never be the same.

On the day of the funeral Mass I experienced the presence of Jesus sympathizing with us over the violent death of our father. Jesus is sympathetic to our human emotions — He has a human heart. Did Jesus not weep over the death of his friend Lazarus and over the whole town of Jerusalem? We can imagine that Jesus wept over the violent beheading of his cousin John the Baptist too.

That day our family experienced the reality of a culture of death. We experienced how someone’s life can be considered of little value. The dignity of the human person is trampled upon by selfish “choice”. Our innocence was lost that day and the culture of death became very personal to us.

Jesus gave us the law of love that requires we uphold the dignity of all human life without exception. In fact, if there is a life to be “laid down” it is my life to be laid down so others can live! Jesus said, “No greater love has anyone than to lay down his life for a friend” (Jn 15:13).

Not only are the unborn and elderly vulnerable in the culture of death but young people are increasingly succumbing to suicide. In this week I am aware of three young people who committed suicide. The escalation of violent crimes, suicide, and murders are all the effect of a culture of death. When my maternal grandmother laid in the nursing home for six years suffering the effects of Alzheimer’s, it was a battle to allow her to be fed.

Recently while praying in front of a local abortion clinic during the 40 days for life campaign, one clinic worker said, “You people are making it even more difficult for the girls to do what they must do!” Right there is the crux of the matter — girls are led to believe they have no choice but to end the life of the child within them.

For the many women who may be post-abortive please remember that there is no sin that is greater than God’s mercy! Jesus and his Church are here to embrace you in merciful love for we acknowledge, “All men sin and fall short of the glory of God.” There is a corporate culpability for the culture of death. Let us pray and work to overcome this darkness by doing “good” since Jesus taught, “overcome evil by doing good” (Rom 12:21). Let us pray this prayer together right now:

Intercession for Mothers of the Unborn

Merciful Father, I bring to you any woman who may be considering abortion. Lord, only you know the disposition of her heart and the details of the circumstance that brings her to this point of decision. Father, bless your beloved daughter with every grace necessary to love, forgive, hope and care for the life she bears within her womb. Father, lift the heavy burden of her situation so she can put her life and that of the unborn child into your Almighty Hands.

Fill her with the Holy Spirit and consecrate her in the truth of your love. Allow her to experience your paternal care for her and the child within her womb, so they are brought to the light of love. Preserve mother and child from the darkness of abortion. Lead her to the right persons for good counsel and maternity care. Divinely guide her path in the hour of her great need. Father, infuse your grace into her mind, heart and soul that she is receptive to carrying her child to full term. Reveal the beauty of her child and gift that she possesses within her. Grant her a long range perspective so that she does not reduce the situation to this moment that passes into a new day.

Bless her with pro-life counsel, care givers and medical personal. Bless her with supportive family and friends. Protect her from persons willing to take the life of this child. Protect her from the lies of the enemy and the spirit of death. I plead the Precious Blood over her pregnancy and entrust all life unto you, Creator God.

Father, please continue to show me how to intercede by prayer and sacrifice for all women in difficult pregnancies. I desire to bring to Jesus the little children who are vulnerable as they grow in the wombs of their mothers. Father grant wisdom to your children on earth so we uphold the dignity of each human being. Teach us to love life in all its stages. Amen.

Fathers of the Unborn

In April 2009, I was invited to speak at the Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy Shrine, St. Stanislaus Kostka, home of Our Lady of the Sign; Ark of Mercy, Chicago, Illinois. The Saturday morning before the evening presentation, I joined a group of young families and singles to pray the rosary in front of an abortion clinic on Division Street. I witnessed a myriad of reactions that morning from people passing by us whether on foot or in cars, buses, or taxi’s. Most people were supportive. I recall a

taxi driver who stopped and leaned over to us and said with a smile, “My mom had nine children! No abortion for us!” There were others who yelled inflammatory curses at us and those who became exceedingly agitated by our prayerful presence. Self righteousness or condemnation had nothing to do with our presence there, love alone compelled us.

Suddenly, my attention was drawn to a solitary man waiting in his parked car after his girlfriend entered the abortion clinic. He was denied entry,

not allowed in the clinic at all. He waited with tears streaming down his face. One of the ladies with us approached him. He rolled down the window and began to talk with her. He did not want the child to be aborted. He could not talk the woman out of it. He seemed sincerely brokenhearted. This was his child too. He was another victim of a culture of death wherein life has become incredibly disposable. Please join me in this prayer today:

Intercession for Fathers of the Unborn

Merciful Father, through the intercession of St. Joseph, I pray for the fathers of unborn children that they may be courageous in taking responsibility to protect the child they fathered that is at risk of abortion. Lord, give them anointed words to influence the mother of the child for the protection of the unborn in her womb. Jesus, grant that men would have wise paternal hearts to know how best to serve the life of the mother and child. Please show them the way to exercise

faith, hope and love. Jesus, please come to their aid and be in the center of all life and death situations. Jesus, heal all men, women and children who suffer the effects of abortion at any level.

Lord, please speak to my heart what

you would have me do to build a culture of life? As I reflect on Saint Joseph’s loving solicitude for Mary and her unborn child, I confide all men, especially fathers, to the intercession of Saint Joseph. Amen.

Kathleen Beckman is a cradle Catholic, a wife of 35 years, and the mother of two sons. She is a medical assistant and business owner. She is the USA Western Regional Rep. for Magnificat, A Ministry to Catholic Women and Coordinator of the Orange Diocese Magnificat Chapter since 1992. She is the author of Rekindle Eucharistic Amazement and Behold the Lamb of God, books on healing and holiness though the Eucharist.

Washington Women Deliver conference goals: to Dismantle Pro-Life Laws

2010-06-14T05:52:00.000-07:00

Women Deliver: Panel Pushes ‘Harm Reduction’ as Effective ‘Facade’ for Dismantling Pro-Life Laws

By Kathleen Gilbert

June 14, 2010 @ 12:00

part 1 of 5-part series from Washington Women Deliver conference

A Wednesday panel at the 2010 Women Deliver conference provided a fascinating peek into the pro-abortion lobby’s logical gymnastics regarding their “harm-reduction” strategy for advancing abortion worldwide. While saying the strategy treats the choice of abortion as “value-neutral” in order to push the provision of better abortion facilities, the panelists went on to admit that the method was little more than a “facade” to push their own “value” of expanded abortion.

A real-world analysis of the harm-reduction strategy was provided by Leonel Priozzo, Director of Strategic Programming for Uruguay’s Ministry of Health. Although abortion is illegal in Uruguay, Priozzo boasted that the “harm reduction” mantra had helped public opinion become more favorable toward abortion in his country.

Priozzo briefly claimed that “unsafe abortion was the most important cause” of maternal mortality – the top theme of the Women Deliver conference. However, as confirmed by a crucial Lancet study ^[1] released in April, pro-life leaders have repeatedly said that illegal abortion has little if anything to do with maternal mortality, which is most heavily dependent on other factors such as average income and trained medical professionals aiding at birth.

Despite the altruistic introduction, the remainder of Priozzo’s presentation, and those of the other panelists, focused heavily on using the strategy simply to change the social and political climate in favor of abortion.

Priozzo revealed figures showing that, under his counrty’s harm-reduction model, over half (55%) the women coming to the agency eventually choose to kill thier unborn child while only 21% follow up to say they will keep their baby. 13.8% do not follow up.

“The political target of our harm reduction model is important,” he noted, “and in this decade, our model advanced to force legal change by means of less resistance.” Priozzo attributed the harm-reduction approach to the Uruguay Congress approving in 2008 a bill legalizing abortion, which was vetoed by president Tabare Vazquez.

Dr. Joanne Csete, an associate professor at Columbia University, took the notion in a broader strategic context, defining harm reduction as “the idea that we will focus on the harms of this behavior, in this case the health-related harms, but we will not so much worry about the behavior itself,” and “will not judge the behavior” or “worry about whether people abstain eventually from the behavior or not.”

Csete said that a good model to follow for applying “harm reduction” to abortion was the UN’s strategy for illegal drug use, which has prompted the organization to fund the distribution of clean needles for drug users. In another example, she bashed the 12-step approach to overcoming harmful behavior, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, for moralizing and having “done a very good job of convincing people that God is on their side.” Csete claimed that simply controlling the timing and type of alcohol consumption is enough to “stabilize the lives of a lot of people who live with alcohol dependency.”

However, because the harm-reduction model could be used to advocate for laws that bar such behavior, said the professor, it is sometimes necessary to make the concept “broader” by focusing on “the harms of criminalization of drug use” which can “cause drug users to spend a lot of time in prison” among other detriments, such as stifling information.

“Certainly we can’t really talk in this framework about the excitement of drug use or the pleasure of drug use – those are completely verboten topics,” she said, comparing the situation to the taboo surrounding contraception and sex.

To be successful in overturning pro-life laws, she concluded, the harm-reduction strategy must be linked to a “human rights” perspective demanding the decriminalizaiton of abortion, a theme resumed by University of Toronto professor Joanna Erdman.

“The evidence on criminal abortion laws causing harm is so overwhelming that it becomes exceedingly difficult not to argue for law reform under a harm reduction model,” claimed Erdman. “[A] human rights [approach will] provide us with the necessary moral grounding to say that prohibition is not only irrational as causing harm, it’s impermissible. It’s unacceptable.”

A few commenting audience members following the panelists’ presentations shed further light on the tenor of the session: one IPPF representative said that the “right to information” and doctor/patient “confidentiality” – i.e., prohibiting doctors to reveal when an abortion has been committed – are “definitely the most important” places to begin change.

Another revealing moment came when a pro-abortion advocate in the audience referred to an East Timor bill in which abortion would be legal “in cases where [a woman's] physical and mental health were to be affected – which as you all know can be broadly interpreted when need be” – and the panelists nodded in agreement.

In a conversation following the session, a third audience member asked Csete about the objection that, because the model was being used to push abortion as a value, some may call the “value-neutral” claim a mere facade.

“Yeah, I think facade is the right word,” Csete conceded. “Sometimes it’s the only choice you have to get anywhere politically and protect services … I think it’s really the sort of desperate, structurally very hostile circumstances where that becomes a very useful thing to fall back on.”

This article is courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.

Paster arrested, Planned Barrenhood lies

2010-06-12T08:03:00.000-07:00

Pastor Arrested for Praying in Front of Washington Abortion Facility

June 11th, 2010 by LifeSite News

Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, was arrested on Tuesday for praying on property where hundreds have prayed before – in front of the Washington, DC Planned Parenthood (PP) facility.

The grass and walkway between the facility and the road have often been the scene of peaceful prayer protests. Several weeks ago, however, PP built a fence around the walkway and put up signs claiming that the area is private property.

According to Mahoney and others, however, the claim is absurd.

“Thomas Jefferson said eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” Mahoney told LSN on Friday. “So if you don’t stand up for free speech rights, they can be stripped or removed. And that’s what we’ll be doing on Tuesday.”

Hence, at about 11:30 on Tuesday, after informing police of his intention, Rev. Mahoney knelt on the sidewalk leading to Planned Parenthood and began praying. A few moments later, police arrested him for unlawful entry.

“We’re not blocking what they want to say. We’re preventing them from trespassing onto private property,” said Diane Quest, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, according to Congress.org.

But according to Mahoney and his lawyer Jim Henderson, this claim is but the latest of many deceptions by PP over this piece of land.

Mahoney told LSN that in the 1980s, Planned Parenthood claimed that the sidewalk was private property, and so pro-lifers refrained from protesting and praying on it.

But after Mahoney was charged with violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) act in the 90s, he discovered over the course of the litigation that it was in fact public.

Jim Henderson of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) explained further.

“DC is a peculiar place. Things that in other areas might look like somebody’s front lawn actually are District of Columbia property, not private property,” he told LSN. In this case, he continued, the District owns everything within 50 feet of the curb face on the street – practically up to the front door of the Planned Parenthood.

In fact, he continued, in years past Planned Parenthood attempted to put up a fence and was cited for illegal construction. This time they correctly pursued and obtained a fence permit from the city, he said.

“What they didn’t get was ownership of that property inside the fence,” he explained. “But they’ve been acting like it.”

Before his arrest, Mahoney said that he planned to issue a national call for activists to come pray inside the fence. “We would invite people, five at a time, to come on the sidewalk and pray,” he said.

“We’re going to fight it in criminal court, we’re going to consider injunctive relief. This sidewalk will be open.”

Henderson said that although the police claimed to simply be enforcing trespassing laws, he had spoken with them enough that they ought to have known better.

“They are in possession of enough information to know that they should not be arresting for tresspassing in this case,” he told LifeSiteNews. “I don’t think its reasonable behavior on the part of the police.”

"North Carolina 7th Graders to Learn About IUDs, Abortifacients, Condoms"

2010-06-11T07:45:00.000-07:00

North Carolina 7th Graders to Learn About IUDs, Abortifacients, Condoms

Posted By LifeSite News
June 9, 2010 @ 12:00 am In Pro-Life

North Carolina schools are preparing to implement the “Healthy Youth Act,” ^[1]signed on June 30, 2009 and set to take effect in the 2010-11 school year. It states that students from 7th to 9th grade should be taught “about the effectiveness and safety of all FDA-approved contraceptive methods in preventing pregnancy.”

Students will be taught about male and female condoms, diaphragms, sponges, cervical caps, spermicides, oral contraceptives, contraceptive rings, the abortifacient “morning after pill,” and other methods of birth control, unless their parents explicitly request that their child be excluded from these classes.

The measure was backed by the ACLU of North Carolina, Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice NC, the North Carolina Association of Educators, and the “gay-rights” group Equality NC.

The original version of the bill would have required schools to offer both an abstinence-only curriculum and a comprehensive sex education program, allowing parents to decide which program their child would attend. It was modified, however, so that students will attend “comprehensive sexual education” unless parents actively have their children excused.

Prior to the Healthy Youth Act, abstinence-only education predominated in North Carolina schools. School boards were required to hold public hearings before schools could offer “comprehensive” sexual education. The ACLU of North Carolina hailed the law because it eliminated this requirement. Such hearings, the ACLU stated, would now be “a thing of the past.”

Nevertheless, the Healthy Youth Act also states that abstinence from sexual activity is to be taught as “the expected standard for all school-age children.” It also instructs schools to teach that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain means of avoiding pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Finally, it also instructs classes to teach that “a mutually faithful monogamous heterosexual relationship in the context of marriage is the best lifelong means of avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.”

The ACLU and the homosexualist Equality NC decried such aspects of the bill. Equality NC stated that it was “disappointed [that] the final bill left in inaccurate and discriminatory language from the existing curriculum.”

But it nevertheless maintained that the law was a “huge step forward.”

Princeton philosopher Peter Singer spouts eugenics again.

2010-06-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

wow....... and young impressionable college students learn from him and eventually become lawyers and doctors, isn't that a special thought??

Princeton Philosopher: ‘Why Not Sterilize the Human Race and Party into Extinction?’

By Peter J. Smith

NEW YORK, June 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Princeton philosopher Peter Singer one of the world’s foremost contemporary utilitarian philosophers infamous for his advocacy of infanticide, would like individuals to consider this question: would sterilizing the human race to spare future generations the pain of existence be a good idea?

In a blog post for the New York Times entitled “Should this be the last generation?” Singer discusses in glowing terms the thought of South African philosopher David Benatar. Singer calls Benator the “author of a fine book with an arresting title: ‘Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.’”

“To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her,” explains Singer.

Both Singer and Benatar both believe that human beings do not have inherent dignity. Singer, the Princeton Chair of Bioethics, has gained notoriety for asserting that infanticide is justifiable, especially for disabled infants, because they lack self-awareness, which he asserts is a requirement for personhood.

A key difference, however, between Singer and Benatar, an existential nihilist who chairs the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, is that Singer believes life could be worth living in certain conditions. But Benatar flat out rejects existence as good, and the still-living author discusses that view in his controversial book.

Singer explains Benatar’s antinatalist philosophy, which bases its moral framework by weighing the consequences of existence, in this way: “everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.”

Singer then invites readers to engage in a thought experiment: “So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!”

“Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend [this scenario], because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off,” he continued.

Singer distances himself from Benatar’s conclusions, however, and says, “I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe.” Nevertheless, he said that for the human race to continue justifying reproducing itself over the next two centuries, individuals should ask themselves the hard questions of, “Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?”

Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, a longtime critic of Singer’s work, responded to Singer’s recent article, saying, “This is nihilism on stilts and it is polluting the West’s self confidence and belief in universal human equality like the BP oil well is polluting the Caribbean.

“Only the resulting mess isn’t measured in polluted beaches and dead birds, but existential despair that destroys human lives.”

“Under the influence of anti-human advocates like Peter Singer, we have gone in the West from seeking to ‘secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity,’ to seriously questioning whether there should be any posterity at all,” Smith wrote on his blog. “This is not healthy. But it is the natural consequence of rejecting human exceptionalism.”

URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10060810.html

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Presence of Children Deterred Israel from Killing Nasrallah...

2010-06-06T14:42:00.001-07:00

One has to wonder, would Hamas have been as reluctant to harm children had the tables been turned???

Do we really need to ask?
D~

E TO KILLING NASRALLAH, PRESS

(ANSAmed) -

BEIRUT, JUNE 4 - Israeli intelligence has located the leader of the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, at least twice in the last few months, and on one occasion would have killed him if he had not been surrounded by a number of children, according to today's edition of the Kuwaiti daily, Al-Jarida. In a report from Jerusalem, the paper quotes anonymous "senior Israeli sources", who say that an Israeli drone recently located Nasrallah on the southern outskirts of Beirut, with orders given to Mossad to "act quickly to destroy him". The operation was suspended, however, due to the presence of a number of children in a nearby building, says Al-Jarida. The paper also reports that Nasrallah was located last February while travelling to Damascus to meet the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was on a visit to Syria. "Mossad identified Nasrallah, but he was able to disguise his movements and lose his followers a few minutes after entering Syrian territory". Nasrallah has lived in secret hideouts since the 2006 war between Hezbollah guerillas and Israeli forces. Since then he has made very few public appearances. His predecessor, Abbas Mussawi, was killed on February 6 1992 in the south of Lebanon by a rocket launched from an Israeli helicopter that hit his car. His wife, his son and four bodyguards were also killed in the attack. Israel subsequently claimed responsibility for the attack. (ANSAmed).

2010-06-04 15:25

Before you boycott Israel!

2010-06-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

Tavis Smiley’s Outrage

2010-06-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

Tavis Smiley’s Outrage

Posted By L. Brent Bozell

June 5, 2010 @ 12:00 am

Media & Culture

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here ^[1]. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

PBS station managers made a big push last year to drive any trace of “sectarian” Christianity out of the taxpayer-funded broadcasting system, banning any church services or religious lectures that appeared on a handful of stations. They ultimately compromised and banned any new church programming ^[2]. But on at least one program, PBS sounds like it’s declaring war on Christianity, including smears on Christianity that are not based on reality.

If that sounds shocking, imagine what the average Christian PBS viewer might have thought as he watched Tavis Smiley’s weeknight talk show on May 25. The guest was ex-Muslim and atheist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, there to promote her latest book, “Nomad.” Smiley claims to be a Christian, but he attacked Ms. Ali for “idealizing Christianity” and recklessly turning people away from Islam.

Right out of the box, Smiley was out to make a point. “You say un-apologetically and rather frankly that your mission here is to inform the West about the danger of Islam,” he began. “What danger do we need to be made aware of?”

What? Did Tavis Smiley somehow sleep through 9/11? Is PBS keeping him locked in a closet where he remains unaware of the ongoing terrorist attacks on Americans – successful and unsuccessful – made by Islamic radicals? When Ali brought up the deaths of 13 at Fort Hood and the failed Times Square bomber, Smiley unloaded a literally unbelievable statement: “But Christians do that every single day in this country.” [Audio available here ^[3].]

Ali replied: “Do they blow people up?” Smiley: “Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine is — I could do this all day long.”

Tavis Smiley is not only wrong, he’s perversely wrong. The boys who shot up Columbine High School were not Christians, they were just violent psychopaths who, among other evils, mocked students who cried out for God to save them. There aren’t Christians walking into post offices or schools every single day in America and blowing people up. Anyone in charge of journalistic integrity at PBS should see this as a blazing inaccuracy, in addition to a religious smear. Men this dishonest should be kept from microphones, not hired to speak into them.

But Smiley kept going, insisting Christians were far worse than Muslim terrorists: “There are so many more examples of Christians — and I happen to be a Christian. That’s back to this notion of your idealizing Christianity in my mind, to my read. There are so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country, where you live and work.”

Who would have thought that anyone would outdo Rosie O’Donnell, who insisted radical Christianity was “just as threatening” as radical Islam?

Ali calmly explained that Christians are far more tolerant. They take abuse on television programs without threatening to blow up Comedy Central offices or promise Daniel Pearl-style decapitations for executives. She acknowledged “not all Muslims are terrorists, we must emphasize that, but almost all terrorist activities that take place today in our time are done and justified in the name of Islam.”

This caused another burst of illogic from Smiley, who compared the Fort Hood attack to the Tea Party activists protesting ObamaCare on Capitol Hill. “There are folk in the Tea Party, for example, every day who are being recently arrested for making threats against elected officials, for calling people ‘nigger’ as they walk into Capitol Hill, for spitting on people.”

Put aside the thoroughly unproven accusations, now that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver has backed off the story of conservative spitters, and there is no audio, or corroboration of the accusation of N-words being thrown. Had those events actually happened, would they in any way have been comparable to murder?

PBS has an ombudsman now to receive public complaints. Michael Getler should hear from across the country, from Christians and non-Christians alike, that Tavis Smiley must provide a retraction and an apology for his scurrilous and bigoted remarks against Christians and the billions that practice that faith. PBS stations across the country accept millions in funding from good-hearted Christian taxpayers who don’t deserve to see allegedly “public” broadcasting attacking their integrity.

Seventy-seven percent of Americans call themselves Christian.

People in public broadcasting boast in their pledge drives and their direct-mail fundraising letters and in their congressional testimony that they are an oasis of civility and intelligent discourse. But they host, and help fund, the unintelligent, inaccurate garbage coming out of the mouth of Tavis Smiley. This trash belongs in the dumpster.

This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.

Article printed from Catholic Exchange: http://catholicexchange.com

URL to article: http://catholicexchange.com/2010/06/05/131037/

URLs in this post:

[1] here: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&promoid=BIOW

[2] banned any new church programming: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061603201.html

[3] here: http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2010/05/2010-05-26-PBS-TS-Smiley.mp3

[4] : http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/2010/06/loose_talk_on_a_talk_show.html

[5] : http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/feedback.html

Click here to print.

Prevent Gardasil Vaccine Injuries & Deaths 07 14 09

2010-06-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

INFERTILITY CONCERN WITH GARDASIL HPV VACCINE

2010-06-03T06:46:00.000-07:00

Mercola on Gardasil problems-HPV vaccine

Does the HPV Vaccine LITERALLY Mean “One Less”?

Marketing geniuses are known to play on words and create slogans with quirky double meanings, and if you’ve been tracking the concerns raised about the potential hazards of Gardasil and Cervarix, the potential for these HPV vaccines to cause infertility – whether purposely or inadvertently – is being heard with ever increasing frequency.

The federal government's Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) has received over 9,000 reports of problems since the vaccine's introduction in 2006, which include at least 28 spontaneous abortions, and 27 deaths.

Is it possible that Gardasil’s cry to fame, ‘One Less’, is turning out to be nothing but a sick, ironic play on words?

Anti-Fertility Vaccines

The World Health Organization (WHO) and its subsidiaries have been actively researching and funding the development of contraceptive / anti-fertility vaccines that prevent full-term pregnancies to take place, for over 20 years. There’s even a Task Force on Birth Control Vaccines of the WHO!

However, no anti-fertility vaccine has ever been placed on the market and promoted as such as of yet.

Instead, as described in a 1993 journal paper published in The British Medical Bulletin, anti-fertility vaccines were being engineered “incorporating tetanus or diphtheria toxoid linked to a variety of hCG-based peptides.”

The authors of this article state,

"The fundamental principle behind this approach to contraceptive vaccine development is to prevent the maternal recognition of pregnancy by inducing a state of immunity against hGC, the hormone that signals the presence of the embryo to the maternal endocrine system.”

Free tetanus vaccines that were offered to young women of childbearing age for years in countries such as Tanzania, Nigeria, Mexico, and the Philippines, were found to contain human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG), which causes spontaneous abortions if the woman becomes pregnant.

While the woman is not technically sterilized, once injected with hCG, she may never be able to carry a child full term thereafter.

HCG-containing anti-fertility vaccines have also been pursued for more than two decades by the Indian National Institute of Immunology, and The Population Council of the Rockefeller University, among others.

In fact, there are no less than 50 research papers detailing research on “contraceptive vaccines” in the PubMed database.

One disturbing paper published in the FASEB Journal in 1993 states:

“… we initiated studies relating to possible mechanisms of action and potential side effects of this vaccine, which should be relevant to world-wide regulation of population growth.”

So again, why the frantic push for the HPV vaccine, created for young, fertile women, when there’s NO solid, rational basis for its use?

Massive Brazilian Vaccination Program Raises Suspicions of Covert Sterilization Plans

A much more recent case of illogical mass vaccinations against a minor health problem is that of the massive, mandatory vaccination program in Brazil, which has raised suspicions among international pro-life activists, who note that the program is similar to other vaccination programs in recent years that have included a hidden sterilizing agent in the vaccines.

The campaign to “annihilate rubella” began in early August this year, mandating rubella vaccinations for all women ages 12 to 49, and 12 to 39 for men; a total of 70 million people, despite the fact that only 17 Brazilian children per year suffer birth defects from the disease.

Adolfo Castañeda of Human Life International notes that just two years ago, researchers found that the rubella vaccine used in a similar campaign in Argentina was laced with human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG).

“The suspicion that brought about the investigation [into the rubella vaccine] was caused by the fact that there were very few cases of the disease in Argentina, which didn’t merit a large-scale campaign,” Castañeda said, adding, “The ages for women are the same as those who received the vaccines in Nicaragua, where they included a hormone that sterilizes the woman who receives it, and similar to the age of those who received another sterilizing hormone in the Philippines.”

Polysorbate-80 – One Less Mouse, Researchers Found

Now, let me state clearly that there’s no proof of hCG being present in any of the current HPV vaccines.

I am merely playing devil’s advocate as I examine the similarities between these other irrational vaccination programs in other countries for relatively minor public health concerns -- that turn out to have far more sinister agendas than mere greed – compared to the fervent, irrational push behind the HPV vaccine here in the U.S.

However, Gardasil does contain Polysorbate-80 – a surfactant used in pharmacology to deliver certain drugs or chemical agents across the blood-brain barrier -- which has been linked to infertility in mice.

Researchers Gajdova et.al. found that administration of Polysorbate-80 decreased the weight of the uterus and ovaries, and caused chronic estrogenic stimulation. The ovaries of the mice were also without corpora lutea (a mass of progesterone-secreting endocrine tissue that forms immediately after ovulation) and had degenerative follicles.

So what might the estrogenic effects of Polysorbate-80 be on pre-adolescent girls and pregnant women?

Anti-Fertility Vaccine Ingredient Also Has Clinical Application in Cancer Vaccines…

A potential coincidence I find most disturbing is some of the more recent research detailing the use of hCG, and other molecules, in vaccines against hCG-producing cancers, such as – certain cervical cancers.

One 2005 paper titled, Recent advances in contraceptive vaccine development: a mini-review published in the journal Human Reproduction concludes:

“At the present time, studies are focused on increasing the immunogenicity and efficacy of the birth control vaccine, and examining its clinical applications in various HCG-producing cancers.”

But research published just a few months ago in the journal Molecular Cancer states that the free ?-subunit of hCG (hCG?) – which was originally considered biologically non-functional -- has recently been shown to stimulate tumor growth, and lead to more aggressive tumors that are more resistant to therapy.

Again, I’m mentioning all of this because it just goes to show that pharmaceutical companies have little or no clue of the extent of harm these vaccines might cause, especially long-term. Something believed to be completely non-functional or harmless can turn out to be a MAJOR cause for concern after more thorough investigation.

For example, Gardasil also contains L-histadine, and histamines have been found to increase clot production five-fold when combined with, guess what? Surfactants! (L-histidine can also pass through your placental wall to your fetus.)

Granted, this laboratory investigative report titled Surfactants Attenuate Gas Embolism-induced Thrombin Production used surfactants like Perftoran, not Polysorbate-80, in their trials, but could Polysorbate-80 have a similar effect?

Could this explain why death from blood clots within hours or days is the MOST COMMON form of death after receiving Gardasil?

The HPV vaccine clearly has a lot of questions left to be answered. And those questions should be answered BEFORE pushing Gardasil on an unsuspecting public at the rate that it’s being done.

Be One Less to Get Gardasil

I think this would be a more appropriate message to send out to young women: There is absolutely no reason to risk the serious side effects of this vaccine to prevent an infection that goes away on its own 90 percent of the time. And there’s no guarantee that you’ll be protected anyway, since you can still get HPV once you’ve had the vaccine. It’s really a no-win situation for those who receive it.

Of course, you can radically reduce your risk of getting HPV in the first place if you follow safe-sex practices, or wait to have sex until you’re in a committed relationship. Then, keep your immune system in tip-top shape, and it will be more than able to shake any HPV virus that comes its way.

Related Articles:

The HPV Vaccine: Preventive Care or Human Sacrifice?

Thousands Have Gotten Sick from Gardasil HPV Vaccine

Why Use Vaccine for HPV When Green Tea Works?

Unplugged Christians living off the grid

2010-05-31T06:43:00.000-07:00

Watch Christians Unplugged on CNN International "World's Untold Stories" May 29 at 1630 GMT, May 30 at 1100 GMT, 1830 GMT and May 31 at 0200 GMT

Summer Lake, Oregon (CNN) -- As the sun rises, cool blues and grays begin their slow transition to glowing golds and ambers. Like a child's pop-up book, dimension is added and a valley is transformed.

To look upon this beauty in the western U.S. state of Oregon is to understand what people mean when they say this is God's country, and that's exactly why Brother Gregory lives here.

He is part of a wider movement of conservative Christians who are choosing to live their lives on the edge of society, unplugged from civilization as much as they can, living under basic biblical principles.

Brother Gregory -- the "Brother" is more of a nickname than an occupational title -- ministers from the Oregon desert where he lives with his wife, some of his grown children and grandchildren.

Like other conservative Christians in this growing movement, Brother Gregory believes that Christianity has strayed too far from its roots, and has given its role in people's lives over to the government -- as with welfare programs or health care.

"We are not living off the grid as much as we are creating a new grid, a more wholesome grid," he said.

"We are following a different path that we think is healthier, promotes better families, and better communities."

He doesn't believe a church needs four walls and a roof. Rather, a church is people who believe in taking care of each other -- living under the biblical principles of faith, hope and charity.

Making the government an idol is the problem.
--Keith Humphrey, Christian Exodus

Video: Christian Exodus leader

Video: Christian Exodus believer

Video: A brother and a shepherd

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"Christians should be looking for a way to take care of one another without forcing their neighbor to contribute to their welfare. In essence that's coveting your neighbor's goods through the agency of the governments you create."

And that is a sin.

Brother Gregory runs the web site for "His Holy Church," and he explains that he is not what you would typically think of as a minister. He doesn't regularly get up and speak before a congregation, for example.

"'His Holy Church' is a phrase. It's 'His', meaning Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ established the Church 2,000 years ago. It's 'Holy' because it's separate. It's separate from the world. It's in the world but not of the world. And it's a 'Church', which actually comes from the Greek 'ekklesia', meaning 'called out'. They're called out to do the will of Jesus Christ and the Father in Heaven."

Brother Gregory, a shepherd in the literal sense at his ranch in Summer Lake, Oregon, sees echoes of that in his religious life as a minister.

"Sheep teach the shepherd to be a good shepherd," he says, "and in that sense, that's what people need. They need a good shepherd who's not going to rule over them but guide them in the good ways, the ways of life."

There are others with similar views to Brother Gregory. But while Brother Gregory is content spreading his gospel over the internet and simply living out his life on his ranch in Oregon, these Christians take things a step further.

There is a group called Christian Exodus, and while they too believe modern Christianity is corrupt, they are a little more fired up about the role government plays. Mainly, that it shouldn't have any role at all.

Keith Humphrey is the executive director of Christian Exodus. His long Amish-style beard gives a very visible clue to his beliefs. He would love to live in simpler times, when government was virtually non-existent.

"Making the government an idol is the problem. That's what stands in the way of Christian sanctification," Humphrey says. "It's hands off mainly things like our family, our children, our bodies, our health, and even our money, the fruits of our labor. These don't belong to government."

Christian Exodus considers itself a movement. In 2004, it tried to get its members -- some 1,500 or so who have signed up online -- to move together to South Carolina, form a community and secede from the United States.

"We originally anticipated thousands and thousands of people overwhelming these smaller counties," Humphrey says. "We had people moving, that were moving, but they were kind of putting the cart before the horse, because they weren't living independently. They were just showing up and saying 'Okay, where's my house and where's my job?' We're like, 'Uh, no, it doesn't work like that. '"

When the idea didn't work out, Christian Exodus then started trying to pull members together into micro-communities, through social networking, and encouraging its members to live through what it calls 'personal secession'.

"Personal secession are things like homeschooling, house churches, home gardening, home-based economics, just regaining privacy and a sense of community rather than worrying about what's going on in Washington, D.C... What's the latest thing from the Supreme Court?

"You know, who cares? I don't care about what they're saying in D.C. because they don't represent me hardly more than Pyongyang."

His Holy Church and Christian Exodus each say it is hard to track how many followers they may have, because many people who believe in their movements also don't like to be tracked.

They live "off the grid" in every aspect. But each group has thousands of members signed up online, and each says many more could be unregistered followers. They exist on the edge of society, living as they believe Christians did in the beginning.

2010-05-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

"Every mother, when she picks up the young
life that has been born to her, looks up to the heavens to thank God for
the gift which made the world young again. But here was a Mother, a
Madonna, who did not look up. She looked down to Heaven, for this was
Heaven in her arms."

- Archbishop Fulton Sheen

2010-05-15T06:45:00.000-07:00

"The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that
and you have abandoned all.”

~Thomas Jefferson

Franklin Graham: Christians Will Lose the Power to Pray Outside Church Walls ‘Maybe in My Lifetime’

2010-05-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, May 05, 2010
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor

Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham, speaking at a 2009 event. (AP photo)

(CNSNews.com) – Two top evangelical leaders sounded a defiant tone on the eve of National Day of Prayer -- warning that the American right to freedom of religion “is being eroded every day” and may be lost in an onslaught of secularism unless Americans “have the guts to stand up.”

The Rev. Franklin Graham, who last month was officially “dis-invited” by the Army to speak at a National Day of Prayer ceremony at the Pentagon for statements he made about Islam, said he will not back down in preaching the Gospel as he sees it.

“We’re living in a time where we cannot compromise, we cannot back up, we cannot retreat,” Graham said Wednesday during a live Webcast from the Washington, D.C. offices of the Family Research Council.

“The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is to be preached to the ends of the Earth – that’s what He’s called us to do,” he said.

Graham, the honorary chairman of this year’s National Day of Prayer, made his comments in a sermon to an audience of leaders making final preparations for Thursday’s National Day of Prayer.

He alluded to Eastern Europe under communism, where Christians and others were allowed to pray only within their homes or inside the officially sanctioned churches that were allowed by the state.

“I think its coming to this country where we (will) have the freedom to preach inside a church wall, but we will lose the freedom to do it outside. That day will probably come – maybe in my lifetime,” Graham said.

Ironically, it was Graham’s famous father, the Rev. Billy Graham, who, in the 1980s became the first Western preacher allowed by the Soviet government to preach at a Russian church -- helping to open the door to greater religious freedom after 70 years of repression.

“(In the United States) we see everyday our rights being eroded. Just a little at a time, but its happening. Everyday. So let’s preach while we can. Let’s stand up and holler ‘Jesus Christ! King of Kings, Lord of Lords!’to the top of our voice,” the younger Graham said.

“The secularists are going to get ticked off, the news media’s going to hate it. I don’t know, maybe the people in the White House are going to be mad. But you know what, I don’t care. Because God has called us to take the Gospel -- His Gospel, the power of God and His Salvation -- unto the ends of the Earth.”

Graham was joined by James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, and Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., who is leading efforts to stop and force a referendum on recent action by the Washington, D.C., city council creating homosexual marriage in the nation's capital.

Dobson, who praised Graham as a "model" for the restrained way he responded to a recent ruling by a federal judge in Madison, Wis., outlawing the statute creating the National Day of Prayer, said the right to publicly proclaim the Christian Gospel was one of the chief freedoms enshrined in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers.

“I am convinced that there are people in high places, people with a great deal of authority and influence, who want to eliminate every vestige of religion -- especially Christian religion, or evangelical religion – from the public square. They want to expunge it. They want to get rid of it. They want to take away our right to worship and to have a prayer service in a government building. That’s not unconstitutional!” Dobson said.

Dobson said 33 of 44 U.S. presidents have called for a National Day of Prayer.

“This has been our history. We dare not lose it now,” Dobson exclaimed. “And we will, if we don’t have the guts to stand up with that kind of intensity.”

Dobson, whose wife Shirley serves as chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, recounted a case in Santa Rosa County, Fla. -- near Pensacola -- involving a high school principal and athletic director at an off-campus event who prayed at an off-campus meeting.

“Prior to the meeting, one of them said to the other, ‘Why don’t you say a word of prayer from wisdom and what we’re about to do?’ And he said a 16-second prayer. It was a prayer for their food! Sixteen seconds! It was reported and a judge in Northern Florida hauled them into court, harangued them for eight hours in one day, and threatened to put them in prison for six months,” Dobson said.

Dobson said the judge did not back off until members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus took up the cause.

Last September, after a day-long court hearing, U.S. District Judge M. Case Rodgers in Pensacola ruled that Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and Athletic Director Robert Freeman had not violated a 2008 court order banning school employees from praying publicly "at any time or at any place" in the Florida school district.

Lay had asked Freeman to pray at the dedication of a field house held during school hours, but conducted on the property of a nearby church.

The men had faced up to six months in jail and $5,000 in fines each for violating the order, which the same judge had issued as a result of a 2008 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on bahalf of two anonymous students at the high school.

The judge held that the violation of the order had been "spontaneous" -- and not voluntary.

Forced abortion in America

2010-05-13T07:44:00.000-07:00

MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
WND.com

Girl's 'forced' abortion blamed on government 'death panel'

'This is what happens in China. Girls are taken kicking and screaming'

Posted: May 06, 2010
12:19 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

A longtime veteran of the battle against abortion in the United States says the case of a Philadelphia teen who reportedly was coerced into a late-term abortion by a social services agency can be blamed on government's so-called "death panels."

The issue of "death panels" came up during debate over the Democrats' health-care reform law. Critics said the plan, signed into law in March, included government boards that would approve or refuse certain medical services for some patients.

"Obamacare" supporters denied that such panels existed or would exist, but Troy Newman, president of the pro-life Operation Rescue organization, said the Philadelphia case is evidence they already exist and are operating.

The Philadelphia Daily News apparently was the first to document the case in which social workers took a teen for an abortion even though the teen had been looking forward to having the little boy and even had picked out a name.

Further, the teen's mother had opposed the abortion, as had the foster mother with whom the teen was staying. The newspaper even reported that one social worker, Marisol Rivera, who said she didn't want to take the teen for an abortion, later was dismissed by the social services agency.

"This is what happens in China," Newman told WND. "Girls are taken from their homes, kicking and screaming, thrown in a van, taken to abortionists and they undergo a forced abortion."

He said it's also not rare in the U.S., citing cases he has witnessed in which girls and women under direct supervision of various governmental agencies, from detention centers to foster care settings, were delivered to abortionists.

"It's something we've been following for years. We've seen forced abortions in prison settings. We've seen these women in chains brought to abortionists. We've seen foster care parents, and the whole system, force teens into abortion," he said.

He said the new health-care law will create a long list of new government oversight boards.

"Once you have these government oversight boards, the Health and Human Services secretary, whomever he or she may be, with a radical pro-eugenicist mindset, all of a sudden the only money available is for abortion. There's no money for prenatal care. Then you have doctors who are not allowed to operate outside the government system," he said.

Much of the impact of "Obamacare" remains to be seen, because even members of Congress admitted they hadn't read the entire bill before the vote.

But Newman said the goal appears to be a "Big Brother utopia" with massive government controls over medical treatments.

And he said there is no question about what the priorities will be under the current HHS secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. She was governor of Kansas, where Operation Rescue has its headquarters, before Obama picked her for the national post. Newman long has documented her intimate ties to the abortion industry, from massive campaign donations she accepted from abortionists to parties she threw in the governor's mansion for abortion practitioners.

Likewise, abortion is rampant for those in the foster care system, Newman said.

"It's draconian. It is one of the most manipulative and oppressive systems," he said.

In many cases, he said, the case worker "makes up the law and enforces the law."

"For all intents and purposes they are above the law," he said. "They do not have the best interests of the children at heart. They have their agenda as the first and foremost issue."

The Daily News reported the pregnant teen was told by a social worker either to get an abortion or have her 1-year-old toddler removed from her care.

The newspaper said the social services agency obtained a court order for the abortion because the girl's birth mother refused to approve the plan. By the time social workers made all the arrangements, they had to take the girl out of state because she was 24 weeks pregnant. In Pennsylvania, abortions are illegal at that stage.

The social worker who had not wanted to accompany the teen to the abortion, Rivera, then told the newspaper she was fired after the March abortion because of her decision.

"They hired me to work in child protection, not to kill children," she told the newspaper.

Department of Human Services officials refused to talk about the case with the newspaper, citing privacy laws.

The social worker who stepped in to follow Rivera, Cynthia Brown, also wouldn't talk about the case.

"Are we living in a culture that no longer feels the sense of urgency and outrage at this in-your-face injustice?" asked Judie Brown, founder of American Life League.

"Scariest to me is the silence – not only from the pro-abortion movement – that's to be expected, but of Americans at large," she said. "When – and more importantly – why did we lose our grip on the concept of human rights? The most basic rights of this girl, of her preborn child, of her mother, of her caregivers have been brutally violated by the state; she's been emotionally coerced and why? Because the state has placed a value on her head and the head of her child. The state has decided they had better work to reduce the 'surplus population.' This is classic eugenicism, folks. This is the philosophy our country has bought into. Welcome to Obamacare."

Donald F. Schwarz, the city's deputy mayor for Health and Opportunity, confirmed 335 minors under DHS care between September 2006 and March of this year became pregnant. Of those cases, 119 resulted in abortions, 54 by judge's order, the report said.

Both state and federal law ban the use of public money for abortions, but Schwarz said while the agency does get that money, it wasn't used for abortions.

Arthur Caplan of the Center of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania said there are questions of ethics that should be answered.

"You can't or shouldn't be threatening to break up a family depending upon whether somebody gets an abortion or not," Caplan told the newspaper. "That is . . . unethical practice, it's not even common sense."

According to LifeNews, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says he worries the Pennsylvania incident may become more commonplace under the government-run health care plan.

"What can we expect from the new federal health care plan? Well, if this story from Pennsylvania is any indication, a multi-state pro-abortion campaign," he said.

"She was smuggled to New Jersey for the appointment – alone. Because the young mom didn't have the proper paperwork, she had to return a second time for the abortion, this time with a state government worker, who ensured that the baby never came home," Perkins continued.

"As for conscience rights of those involved? Forget it. The girl's original social worker was fired for refusing to participate in the abortion," he said. "And while the state insists it didn't pay for the abortion (the city of Mayfair did), a state worker did accompany her and most likely paid for her transportation."

The American Family Association of Pennsylvania also is calling for a formal investigation of the circumstances.

Richard Wexler of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform told the Philadelphia newspaper, "If DHS's behavior is as described, it is shameful and inexcusable."

The foster mother reported the teen was excited about her son and had told her 1-year-old daughter she was going to have a brother. The teen's birth mother, who identified herself to the newspaper as Deborah M., said, "Someone who went to go get an ultrasound, [found] out it's a boy, they give the boy a name, that's somebody who wants to have that baby."

But the foster mother reported Brown had talked about the pregnancy with the teen in her presence. She said Brown told the teen DHS would separate her children if she had the second child.

"She said that if she decided to have the infant she wasn't going to let her have both babies," the foster mother told the newspaper.

The foster mother said the teen was taken without her knowledge for the abortion. She had called the social agency in a panic when the girl didn't return from school that day.

About 8:30 p.m., she arrived home.

According to the Daily News, the foster mother asked, "What happened?"

"The baby is dead," the teen answered.

"Struggling for Life: How our Tax Dollars and Twisted Science Target the Unborn"

"Betrayed by the Bench"

The definitive handbook for battling 'pro-choicers.' Be ready with the perfect answers to the abortion issue's toughest questions.

Tennessee Abortion Opt-Out Becomes Law without Gov.’s Signature

2010-05-11T07:38:00.000-07:00

Posted By Peter J. Smith

May 6, 2010

12:00 am In Pro-Life

A Tennessee law opting the state out of the new national health care reform’s abortion mandate went into effect Wednesday, after Democratic governor Phil Bredesen refused to either sign or veto legislation passed by overwhelming majorities in both chambers of Tennessee’s state house.

The law forbids insurance companies receiving public subsidies in the state-run health exchange from offering or requiring abortion coverage when the exchanges come online in 2014.

Bills approved by the legislature in Tennessee can take effect even if the governor declines to take action on them. A veto from Bredesen, who is pro-abortion, would likely have been an act of political futility, as the measure (HB 2681 / SB 2686) had passed the state House 70-23 and the state Senate 27-3.

The law states: “No health care plan required to be established in this state through an exchange pursuant to federal health care reform legislation enacted by the 111th Congress shall offer coverage for abortion services.”

The bill will not alter the state’s TennCare program, which provides Medicaid subsidies for abortions only in the cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother as mandated by federal law.

Tennessee’s General Assembly was the first state legislature in the U.S. to pass legislation eliminating elective abortion as a benefit in federally required health care exchanges. However, while Bredesen let the bill remain on his desk, Arizona beat Tennessee as the first state to opt-out of the abortion funding mandate, with pro-life Governor Jan Brewer signing similar legislation into law.

Lawmakers devised the bill by following model legislation developed by Americans United for Life (AUL), which intends to take the abortion-health care fight to the states. The AUL model “Federal Abortion-Mandate Opt-Out Act” exploits a provision in the Senate health care bill that explicitly allows the state-run health insurance exchanges to prevent federal money from subsidizing health insurance companies that offer co-pays for abortion.

Americans United for Life, which drafted legislation for any state interested in opting out of the abortion mandate of President Obama’s new health care law, has said that numerous states have expressed interest so far. The latest state to axe abortion funding for insurance policies in the state health exchanges is Florida, where pro-life advocates hope Gov. Charlie Christ will sign the measure – which includes a requirement for abortion providers to give pregnant women ultrasounds – into law.

Tennessee Right to Life (TRTL) showered praise on lawmakers for their work in this legislative session to protect human life, and drew particular attention to leaders in both the House and Senate.

“Pro-life citizens around the state are grateful to our new House Speaker, Kent Williams, for making the protection of life a priority, just as he said he would,” commented Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life. “And without the principled counsel and long-time leadership of Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey, this session’s victories for life would never have been realized.”

According to TRTL, the passage of the “abortion opt out” bill was the crowning jewel of other easily-passed pro-life bills. These include bills that removed priority status from abortion-provider Planned Parenthood, redirected family planning funds to local health departments which do not perform abortions, and required posting of the state’s non-coercion policy in private offices and facilities which perform abortions.

Tennessee also saw the first passage of SJR 127, a resolution requiring a public vote in 2014 to make the Tennessee Constitution neutral once again on the matter of abortion.

See related coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:

Florida Axes Taxpayer Abortion Mandate from Health Care Exchanges
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10043011.html ^[1]

Undercover Videos Prompt Tennessee Lawmakers to End Preferential Treatment for Planned Parenthood
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09062203.html ^[2]

Tennessee Legislature: Abortionists Must Warn Clients against Coerced Abortion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10040107.html ^[3]

This article is courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.

Article printed from Catholic Exchange: http://catholicexchange.com

URL to article: http://catholicexchange.com/2010/05/06/130033/

URLs in this post:

[1] http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10043011.html: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10043011.html

[2] http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09062203.html: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09062203.html

[3] http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10040107.html: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10040107.html

Birth control pill associated with female sexual dysfunction, say German researchers

2010-05-10T06:31:00.000-07:00

This article is very interesting, but the comments are the more fascinating aspect as they are incredibly sad. ~d

Birth control pill associated with female sexual dysfunction, say German researchers

By Sharon Kirkey, Canwest News ServiceMay 5, 2010

A woman holds a pack of prescription contraceptive pills. The study of more than 1,000 German female medical students found those taking birth control pills and other forms of hormonal contraception were at the highest risk for low libido and arousal problems.
Photograph by: Tim Matsui, Getty Images

With "the pill" poised to turn 50 this weekend comes new research linking hormonal contraceptives with diminished desire and other forms of "female sexual dysfunction."

The study of more than 1,000 German female medical students found those taking birth control pills and other forms of hormonal contraception were at the highest risk for low libido and arousal problems.

The findings don't prove cause and effect, the researchers stressed — just an association.

But birth control pills can lower circulating levels of testosterone, the "male" hormone needed to stimulate sexual desire and regulate blood flow to the genitals, in both sexes.

The study appears in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Editor-in-chief Dr. Irwin Goldstein, a Montreal native and director of sexual medicine at the Alvarado Hospital, University of California, San Diego, said the study shows that, "when you fool around with your sex steroid hormones, you gamble with your sex life."

"The value of this paper is to remind us that 300 million users of the pill (worldwide) are putting themselves at risk (of sexual changes), with extremely limited informed consent that this is happening," Goldstein said.

In all, 1,086 women from six medical schools completed online questionnaires designed to identify problems with sexual function within the past four weeks. The women filled out the "Female Sexual Function Index," a validated scale consisting of 19 questions measuring desire, arousal problems, lubrication, orgasms, satisfaction and pain.

Almost 90 per cent had used contraception, and almost all had been sexually active in the previous four weeks; 80 per cent were in a stable relationship, meaning they had the same partner for at least the past six months.

The three most common means of birth control were oral contraception (about 70 per cent), condoms (23 per cent) and the vaginal ring (seven per cent).

Based on their scores, 32 per cent of the women in the study were considered at risk for female sexual dysfunction.

Women using nonhormonal forms of birth control, such as condoms and intrauterine methods, or no contraception had higher total, desire and arousal scores than women using birth control pills, vaginal rings and other forms of hormonal birth control.

"Our data show that hormonal contraception in particular, was associated with lower desire and arousal scores when compared with other contraceptives," the researchers write.

The group at lowest risk for female sexual dysfunction — meaning those with the highest sexual function score — were using condoms or other nonhormonal methods.

"The effect of hormones is there, we have an association. But, at this time, we cannot say if this is causality," said Dr. Alfred Mueck, professor in the Centre of Women's Health at the University of Tuebingen, in Germany. The study also did not look at whether different dosages or formulations make a difference.

"We can only say there might be an effect of hormonal contraceptives (on sexual functioning). But this is only one factor beside other factors that can influence sexual function."

Women who reported higher stress also had lower desire scores. The problem "is really very multifactorial," Mueck said.

Among the study's other findings:

- Women in stable relationships had higher orgasm scores, but lower desire scores. The longer the partnership lasted, the more desire scores dropped.

- Smokers had a higher total sexual functioning score. "One possible explanation is that smokers might have greater ability to enjoy themselves or that the association with smoking is confounded by other factors," the researchers write. Smokers have lower estrogen levels than non-smokers — and lower estrogen levels might result in higher free-testosterone levels. Smokers are also less likely to be on the pill. The combination increases the risk of heart attack, blood clots and stroke.

Goldstein said birth control pills inhibit the production of testosterone in the ovaries, and increase the levels of a protein that binds to testosterone, so that less testosterone is "unbound" and free to act in the body.

On May 9, 1960 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of oral pills for contraception for the first time.

The pill became available in Canada in 1960, but doctors could only legally prescribe it for "menstrual regulation" and other therapeutic purposes. Contraception was formally legalized in Canada in 1969.

SHOULD THE POPE VISIT ENGLAND?

2010-05-05T07:22:00.000-07:00

SHOULD THE POPE VISIT ENGLAND?

May 5, 2010

Catholic League president Bill Donohue questions whether the pope should visit England this fall:

There are many ominous signs surrounding the visit by Pope Benedict XVI to England in September. First, there are now over 100,000 Brits who have signed "certificates of de-baptism" renouncing their former Christian status. Second, there are hate-ridden atheists like Richard Dawkins who are paying anti-Catholic lawyers to investigate the possibility of arresting the pope for "crimes against humanity." Third, Catholic bashing by the British media is flourishing. Fourth, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are in a very tenuous state for Christians.

Regarding the latter, just this week a Christian street preacher was arrested in Britain for the crime of spreading the Gospel. To be specific, a 42-year-old Baptist male was arrested by a policewoman when she heard him declare as sinful such matters as blasphemy, drunkenness and gay relations. It was his comment that homosexuality is a sin that got him into hot water—he was thrown in the slammer for breaking a 1986 law that penalizes "abusive" speech. Not only that, he was fingerprinted, given a DNA swab and retina scan (perhaps they think he has a twin). Now this modern-day revolutionary must stand trial. Had he been a young Muslim calling for jihad, or an ordinary Brit ripping on Catholics, he'd have been tolerated, if not cheered. And this is no exaggeration.

There are times when dialogue is a mistake. This is one of them.

2010-05-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.
If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own;
but because you ...do not belong to the world,
and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates
you."

John 15:18-19

Conference of Catholic Bishops Exec Chaired Pro-Abortion, LGBT Rights Group

2010-02-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

by Katie Walker
Released February 1, 2010

Washington, D.C. (01 February 2010) – A national group that promotes abortion and homosexual rights has deep ties with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, according to a report released Monday.

Top USCCB executive John Carr held simultaneous leadership roles, creating a conflict of interest, with the USCCB and the radical Center for Community Change.

“The closer we look at the Bishops’ Conference [staff and programs], the more we find a systemic pattern of cooperation with evil,” said Michael Hichborn, American Life League’s lead researcher into the USCCB scandal. “The CCC has lodged itself into the highest places of power in the USCCB while working to promote abortion and homosexuality.”

John Carr is the USCCB executive director of the Department of Justice Peace and Human Development which oversees the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). He has been employed by the USCCB since 1987.

John Carr’s relationship with the Center for Community Change goes back at least to 1983, serving in leadership roles from 1999 to 2006 – including as chairman of the board. The Reform CCHD Now report details the organization’s promotion of abortion, “reproductive rights” and homosexuality as among the CCC’s core advocacy focuses.

In 2001, while Carr served as both a USCCB exec and CCC leader, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference funneled $150,000 to the pro-abortion group. The USCCB web site currently promotes the group and officials have spoken at CCC events.

“Strangely, Carr’s leadership on the CCC’s board shows up on several bios he’s submitted for speaking engagements, but the word for word bio on the USCCB web site mysteriously omits that one detail,” Hichborn said. “Why?”

Revelations of John Carr’s involvement in the Center for Community Change come only months after members of the Reform CCHD Now coalition, including American Life League, uncovered 31 CCHD grantees partnered with the CCC.

“The CCHD claims it will immediately investigate accusations against organizations it funds yet it is silent on the CCC,” said Hichborn. “How can Carr and the USCCB possibly justify this intimate relationship with such an obvious enemy of the Church?”

The Reform CCHD Now coalition is a lay Catholic watchdog group comprised of some of the top Catholic pro-life organizations in the country including American Life League, Human Life International and Bellarmine Veritas Ministry. For a full list of all 15 coalition members see www.reformcchdnow.com.

American Life League was cofounded in 1979 by Judie Brown. It is the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States and is committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to natural death. For more information or press inquiries, please contact Katie Walker at 540.659.4942.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

American Life League: Sleeping with the Enemy: Bishops Conference Cooperation with Pro-Abortion Organizations (01 February 2010)
http://all.org/article.php?id=12506

Bellarmine Veritas Ministry: Revisiting the Center for Community Change (01 February 2010)
http://bellarmineveritasministry.org/2010/02/01/revisiting-the-center-for-community-change/

Reform CCHD Now:
www.reformcchdnow.com

# # #

Te Deum

2010-01-28T18:17:00.001-08:00

O God, we praise Thee, and acknowledge Thee to be the supreme Lord.
Everlasting Father, all the earth worships Thee.
All the Angels, the heavens and all angelic powers,
All the Cherubim and Seraphim, continuously cry to Thee:
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts!
Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty of Thy glory.
The glorious choir of the Apostles,
The wonderful company of Prophets,
The white-robed army of Martyrs, praise Thee.
Holy Church throughout the world acknowledges Thee:
The Father of infinite Majesty;
Thy adorable, true and only Son;
Also the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.
O Christ, Thou art the King of glory!
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.
When Thou tookest it upon Thyself to deliver man,
Thou didst not disdain the Virgin's womb.
Having overcome the sting of death, Thou opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all
believers.
Thou sitest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father.
We believe that Thou willst come to be our Judge.
We, therefore, beg Thee to help Thy servants whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy
Precious Blood.
Let them be numbered with Thy Saints in everlasting glory.

V. Save Thy people, O Lord, and bless Thy inheritance!
R. Govern them, and raise them up forever.

V. Every day we thank Thee.
R. And we praise Thy Name forever, yes, forever and ever.

V. O Lord, deign to keep us from sin this day.
R. Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us.

V. Let Thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us, for we have hoped in Thee.
R. O Lord, in Thee I have put my trust; let me never be put to shame.

The New World Order has arrived

2009-12-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

POTUS Executive Order #12425 The New World Order has arrived.

Photo; Internet

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
December 17, 2009

Executive Order -- Amending Executive Order 12425
EXECUTIVE ORDER
- - - - - - -
AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER 12425 DESIGNATING INTERPOL
AS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TO
ENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIES
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words "except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act" and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.

BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,
December 16, 2009.

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-amending-executive-order-12425

To put things into perspective:
Executive Order #12425 allows INTERPOL the absolute authority to investigate, charge, and imprison, and extradite Americans—without having to adhere to the same constitutional laws that American law enforcement agencies are required to abide by. Additionally, the International Criminal Police Organization is authorized to conduct covert surveillance and investigations on American soil—with full immunities from US law. Laws such as the Freedom of Information Act, Congressional oversight, Constitutional protections, and without oversight from the FBI who is charged with the responsibility of internal national Security.

It also allows INTERPOL, wherever and by whomever to be immune from search, confiscation, and INTERPOL isn’t required to show proof or any other documentation concerning its investigations.
It also means that INTERPOL can conduct covert operations against Americans without any accountability to anyone.

“On Wednesday, however, for no apparent reason, President Obama issued an executive order removing the Reagan limitations. That is, Interpol's property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.”
Source: http://corner.nationalreview.com/

What’s next---Concentration camps and Gulags?

Another voice of reason against this executive insanity can be found [ HERE ]

“The pre-requisite conditions regarding the Iraq withdrawal and the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility closure will continue their course. meanwhile, the next move from President Obama is likely an attempt to dissolve the agreements made between President Bush and other states preventing them from turning over American military forces to the ICC (via INTERPOL) for war crimes or any other prosecutions.

When the paths on the road map converge - Iraq withdrawal, Guantánamo closure, perceived American image improved internationally, and an empowered INTERPOL in the United States - it is probable that President Barack Obama will once again make America a signatory to the International Criminal Court. It will be a move that surrenders American sovereignty to an international body whose INTERPOL enforcement arm has already been elevated above the Constitution and American domestic law enforcement.”

Source: http://threatswatch.org/analysis/2009/12/print/wither_sovereignty/

If there is ever a time for Americans to united together, this would be one of those times. President Obama has once again let the people of America down. This Executive Order is just another way for Obama’s socialist government to get more control over Americas dissent voices.

America is starting to look and feel like Iran. Will Interpol and Obama’s national Police start killing demonstrators and protesters as well.

Footnote: The Department of Homeland Security has ordered 200 Million rounds of handgun ammunition. Full story [ HERE] Could this somehow be related to the ongoing events?

Whatever the case and outcome of this Executive fallacy will bring, it sounds both forboding and draconian.

President Barack Obama signed away Americas rights under the US Constitutional protection of the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments. The New World order has arrived…

Another keeper from the awesome Mark Shea

2009-12-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

Hamlet, Threepio and Us

December 30th, 2009 by Mark Shea

In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead , two hapless characters who occupy a few minutes of stage time in Hamlet wander around, trying to figure out why they are there and what the story they are in is all about. They engage in comic banter and wordplay and, periodically, react to the main characters of Hamlet when they occasionally wander into the scene. Eventually, as we know from Hamlet , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wind up getting killed in place of Hamlet, who is the actual center of the story. Their lives are essentially secondary—adjuncts in the service of the plot of Hamlet .

That’s not the only time a device like that has been used to tell a tale. A Japanese film called The Hidden Fortress gives us a tale of adventure as seen from the perspective of a couple of slaves. It was the inspiration for a rather more famous film called Star Wars , which showed us the entire narrative of a vast galactic conflict from the perspective of a couple of slaves called C-3PO and R2D2.

We are in a similar position to these bit players, slaves, droids, and also-rans. We assume the story of the world is about the famous and powerful. So, for instance, right now the headlines are consumed with Obama, bailouts for giant corporations, and the comings and goings of the powerful. Yet while all the while this kerfuffle is going on we may be missing the real story.

To see that, all we have to do is look at the supposed Big Stories of 2000 years ago. All the major players of antiquity—Augustus Caesar, Herod the Great, Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod Antipas—they are all forgotten. The main reason anybody remembers them today, if they do, is because they happened to live in the time of an utterly obscure manual laborer and itinerant preacher who was born in some rathole village nobody ever heard of, who grew up to cause a small commotion in some jerkwater province on the edge of nowhere and, for his troubles, wound up horsewhipped and spiked to a cross as a lesson to the legion of other faceless riff-raff who periodically trouble the smooth running of the System.

Any decent citizen of the time would have known for certain whose story belonged on the front page and who deserved the two line death notice on page D10. And any decent citizen would have been wrong. Pilate, Caesar, Caiaphas and the rest were the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of their time: bit players in the Real Story featuring Jesus of Nazareth.

We can forget just as easily today that where Christ is, there the main story is. That is but one of the reasons that God warns Israel so sternly that he is the Defender of the stranger, the orphan and the widow. It’s just another way of saying, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:35-36; 40).

That’s not to say God doesn’t choose people for special roles in history. It’s to say we often don’t know where the spotlight really is being thrown. And we often don’t remember that the Chosen are always chosen for the sake of the Unchosen. If that sounds like boasting, just remember that Jesus was The Chosen One: all the rest of us are chosen in him. And to be chosen means something much more like being selected out of the lineup at Auschwitz to die in the place of another man (like St. Maximilien Kolbe) than being winner of the lottery. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

However, just as the story is not necessarily where we think it should be, so it is also not over when we think it is either. Just when you figure the credits are going to roll, Jesus is raised from the dead and all the bit players, also-rans, second fiddles, sidekicks, extras, doowop singers, droids, slaves, and chorus line members are revealed to be, with Jesus, what the whole thing was all about. For “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).

Mark Shea is Senior Content Editor for Catholic Exchange and a weekly columnist for the National Catholic Register. You may visit his website at www.mark-shea.com check out his blog, Catholic and Enjoying It!, or purchase his books and tapes here.

Jakov Colo's Annual Apparition in Medjugorje on Christmas Day 2009

2009-12-26T12:39:00.000-08:00

Is Allah the true God?

2009-12-04T02:37:00.000-08:00

Comparing God and Allah – Fundamental Considerations

December 4th, 2009 by Genevieve S. Kineke

After two weeks of plunging into the waters of the Koran, I can finally come up for air — fresh air. After taking time to plow through the repetitive and garbled "revelations" given to Muhammad in the name of Allah, I can now proceed to rejoice in my Christian faith knowing with metaphysical certainty that Allah is not God. In fact, if Allah were truly God, I would be led to despair and self-destruction, for he is a tyrant and marauder of goodness, no matter what his "ninety-nine names" are. Praised be Jesus Christ!

I knew that I had to read the Koran, in all fairness, in order to proceed with a book project which now consumes me. Having spent twenty years writing about Christianity and women, I wanted to see how women have fared under Islam, since stories of honor killings and death threats to Muslim apostates have relentlessly filtered through the self-policing media in the West. What is this faith that triggers such a reaction when attacked from within or without?

Is Allah God?

If we learned anything from the Banner Art Years of CCD, we learned that "God is Love." It may not have included the excellent detail of Fr Hardon’s Catechism — the most recent to carefully list and explain the fifteen attributes of God – but we got that central point. We’ve been told that this was the one thought that captivated the apostle John — exiled to the island of Patmos, because once a person really delves into love, all the world is new. One falls in love with Love.

If you consider those classic attributes of God as understood through Christianity, the premise is that he is all those things simultaneously and can never contradict Himself. On one level, it’s like a detective game that posits some clues: the culprit was a left-handed woman, wearing glasses and a red sweater, etc. so that a variety of suspects have to be sifted through and eliminated. (Even a child knows that you have to abide by the rules, and cannot say in the end, "She was wearing a green sweater because, well, she changed.") The challenge is to combine God’s attributes - such as personal and omnipotent, omnipresent and invisible — so that one can serve him with an informed conscience. To understand God is to understand man in His image and likeness.

Islam insists on no such inner logic, allowing Allah to be "Life-Giver" (Al-Muhyi ) simultaneously with being "Bringer of Death" (Al-Mumīt ). He can even capriciously contradict himself, if he feels like it, being both the "Truth" (Al-Haqq ) and the "Best of Deceivers" (al-Makr ) [i] Despite having all those creative and poetic names by which to describe him, not one names him "love." Muhammad says that Allah does love (Al-Wadūd — "The One Who Loves His Believing Slaves and His Believing Slaves Love Him"[ii] ) but that explanation is rather limited in scope and even recognizably human in its confines. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them."[iii]

So if Allah is not Love, then what is he? The entire Koran is firm in making the point — Allah is very, very powerful. Despite his inconstancy, he can do whatever he wants and will only smile upon those who commit to the Five Pillars of Islam. He is merciful and forgiving to Muslims alone. Those outside the fold will be subject to everlasting torment. So this leads us to another striking difference.

There is no grace in Islam

Despite the age-old debates about faith vs. works, or the nature of salvation, Christians understand that the good we do is contingent on our openness to God, and a result of inviting him to work freely through us. The Catechism explains:

The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification: ‘Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.[iv]

This is the communion we strive for, the hope we bear that God’s will can be done despite us and the limits we place on grace.

Not so in Islam. After having accepted that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet, one must prove his devotion through good works. In essence, from then he is obliged to work for his salvation. Objectively, it may look similar to Christianity but the premise is very different. A Muslim and a Christian may both begin with fearing God, but in Islam it ends there as well — for a Muslim is essentially alone. The Christian moves beyond fear (which is an appropriate premise given his inadequacy to save himself) and appeals to the salvific work of Jesus on his behalf. He does what he can to echo the loving work of his Creator, but knows that his works are nothing compared to the work of the Incarnate One. And this leads to the ultimate difference between the two creeds.

Adoration versus Submission

If God is love, than we can be assured that everything that He permits will be for our good — despite ourselves — and will culminate in the means of eternal happiness. Love requires a personal encounter on the deepest, purest level possible — and what is stilted and compromised on earth will be consummated in heaven. There, those who love will encounter perfect Love, which is to be adored for eternity.

If Allah is not love but power, then there will be no personal encounter either here or in afterwards. Romano Guardini summed it up this way:

In adoration angels bow before their divine Lord, the creature before his Creator. But how and why? Not as a man who journeys on the sea in a frail boat and is compelled to bow before a storm. Not as a physician who has fought for the life of a man and is obliged to acknowledge himself helpless before the advance of disease. In both cases this would mean bowing to a superior force, but certainly not adoration. If God were mere power, man, because of his natural dignity, would have to refuse to render Him complete homage, even if God were to destroy him for his refusal. The angels, the elders, the four living creatures prostrate themselves before God for a very different reason, only because He is all-powerful, but because He is worthy.

This thought it is which determines our relation to God, and we must understand it well. We are as nothing before Him, nevertheless we have the dignity of our personality. Not from ourselves, but from Him - yet a dignity which is really ours. And it places an obligation upon us. Before a God who were only power, we could not bow low, we could only submit.

But God is not mere power, He is Mind as well. As great as God’s power, just so great is His truth. As perfect as is His sovereignty, just so perfect is his justice. As truly as He is real, just as truly He is holy. God’s being, His power and His sovereignty are in every way equal to His integrity and His goodness. If the expression may be allowed, He is not simply God, He is worthy to be God. [v]

Islam means "submission" for a reason - because there is no room for adoration. "And unto Allah maketh prostration whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth of living creatures, and the angels (also), and they are not proud. They fear their Lord above them, and do what they are bidden.[vi]

Whereas the West has often proven itself incapable of deep reflection and mature restraint, the threat of Islamic aggression is different than other questions. It doesn’t require an understanding of medical principles, sexual ethics or theological disputes among Christians. It throws us back on our primal understanding of God and His essence. Will we choose submission to Allah or the God of love. And if we can answer correctly, God grant the grace to live it every day.

[i] This verse (Surah 3:54) is often deliberately mistranslated outside of Arabic, perhaps as part of the deception. Honestly, it should read: "And they cheated/deceived and God cheated/deceived, and God (is) the best (of) the cheaters/deceivers."

[ii] Surahs 11:90, 85:14

[iii] Luke 6:32

[iv] Catechism of the Catholic Church , 1999

[v] Romano Guardini, The Faith and Modern Man , p. 8

[vi] Surah XVI, 49-50

Genevieve Kineke is the author of The Authentic Catholic Woman (Servant Books). She can be found online at www.feminine-genius.com.

Brigitte Gabriel tell it like it is: Politcal Correctness is tying the hands of our law enforcement and it must stop.

2009-11-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

WOW. Episcopalian church kicks out their star pupil after she converts...to Christianity!

2009-11-13T14:04:00.000-08:00

Planned Parenthood Director Who Quit Now Rejected by Episcopalian Church

by Steven Ertelt

LifeNews.com Editor
November 13, 2009
Print

Bryan, TX (LifeNews.com) -- The religious denominations that embrace abortion do so supposedly because they are tolerant and welcoming of people who disagree on issues like abortion. Yet, that is not proving to be the case for Abby Johnson, the former Planned parenthood director who quit after converting to the pro-life perspective.

Johnson, quit her position last month as the director of a local abortion business after seeing an ultrasound of an abortion procedure.

Her October decision has drawn national attention, exposed how Planned Parenthood does abortions for significant profit, and saw the abortion business fail to silence her now that she has resigned.

Johnson now faces a battle of a different kind -- getting her local Episcopalian Church to accept her new status as a pro-life person.

"Now that I have taken this stand, some of the people there are not accepting of that," she told The Washington Times today.

"People have told me they disagree with my choice. One of the things I've been told is that as Episcopalians, we embrace our differences and disagreements. While I agree with that, I am not sure I can go to a place where I don't feel I am welcome," she said.

The rector at St. Francis would not talk about Johnson's situation with the newspaper.

"I do not intend to be dismissive," the Rev. John Williams wrote the Times in an email, "but my pastoral responsibilities to this faith community preclude making public comments."

"I am sure you understand how important it is for me to foster healthy communication around this emotional issue - that is only possible, as I said, in the context of my pastoral ministry to all," he said.

The Times indicates having problems finding a church home is nothing new -- with pro-life denominations rejecting her before her conversion.

"I was raised Southern Baptist but didn't find the Southern Baptist community was very accepting of my work at Planned Parenthood," she said.

She said she and her husband Doug "had been told by a couple of churches ... that because I worked at Planned Parenthood, we could not be members."

"I thought that because this church was so accepting, maybe I was doing the right thing," she said of joining the Episcopal Church. "A lot of people would consider the Anglican faith a pro-choice faith."

She told the Times that another employee who went to the church with her was told by Planned Parenthood officials not to associated with her and so she stopped attending. The abortion business claimed in comments to the Times that that isn't true.

Johnson is not sure on what to do about her church membership.

"We really, really love that church," she said. "We don't want to leave."

She talked with the Times about her faith in terms of working at an abortion center.

"It felt there was a spiritual conflict in what I was doing, but you just begin to rationalize it. I didn't want to leave these women without options, so you begin to think you are doing the right thing, although it doesn't feel right," she said of why she ran an abortion center before she saw the light.

God bless the men and women of our Military, both past and present

2009-11-11T12:56:00.000-08:00

In Flanders Fields By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD
(1872-1918) Canadian Army In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields. [Source: Arlington Cemetery]

He cried Alahu Akbar while killing 13 innocent people, but he isn't a terrorist/traitor to his country???

2009-11-07T14:15:00.000-08:00

"Allahu Akbar": Hasan's Words as He Fired?

Arabic for "God Is Great"; Base Commander Tells Harry Smith Soldiers Report Alleged Fort Hood Gunman Said It During Rampage

(CBS/AP)

Photo Essay Tragedy at Fort Hood
Soldier opens fire at Texas military base

(CBS/ AP) Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar!" as he fired on his fellow soldiers, the base commander said Friday.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith said officials had not yet confirmed that the suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, made the comment, which is Arabic for "God is great!" during the rampage Thursday, which also left 30 people wounded, including the gunman.

"Did he say anything as he was carrying out this act?" Smith asked Cone.

"There are reports, unconfirmed, that he was saying, 'Allahu Akbar," ' Cone replied.

As he laid out what happened, Cone lauded the soldiers on-scene who struggled mightily to help others. "In talking to many of the soldiers in the hospital last night," Cone said to Smith, "they reported almost a very calm and measured approach by the gunman, who went around and, in some cases, talked to one young man who was shot four times, and by the same shooter. And then when he thought -- he said, 'I made the mistake of moving, and I was shot again.'

"And ... as the shooter would change directions, the soldiers would scramble on the ground and try to help each other to carry each other outside the building. And at one point, the gunman realized a lot of the soldiers had started to escape, walked and started shooting outside the building and struck some of the soldiers as they were trying to escape.

Pelosi's healthcare bill will penalize families with cruel taxes and draconian penalties

2009-11-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

Committee Confirms: Comply With Pelosi-Care Or Go To Jail

by Publius

From the House Ways and Means Republicans:

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

n response to the JCT letter, Camp said: “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail. It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”

Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]

- – - – - – - – - -

“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2]

- – - – - – - – - -

“Criminal penalties

Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:

• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties. The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.

“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration. Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates. Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.

According to the Congressional Budget Office the lowest cost family non-group plan under the Speaker’s bill would cost $15,000 in 2016.

Disgusting...Obama has no conscience...still blaming Bush.

2009-10-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

Obama is still blaming Bush... Krauthammer is absolutely right. Obama's behavior DISGUSTING.

The left never cared for our soldiers. Obama is just being expedient. Sending them to the killing fields of Afghanistan is a lot more practical then shooting them into mass graves or sending them into a gulags camp system to die after long years of slavery and starvation like Stalin did. He probably thinks himself compassionate even.

But really...he has to get rid of all those patriotic young men and women SOMEhow. This is perfect. Send a few here, a few there, but never enough to really help till they are either killed or their shoot themselves in the head in despair. This is very compassionate for a liberal ...actually.

D.

Obama's Dilemma: Pay attention to the war where boys are dying or move his Tee time from 6 to 7.

2009-10-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

Obama has a dilemma??????????

It seems he solved his dilemma. Everyone knows sending our troops to the bloody money pit of Afghanistan would be a much more efficient way to get rid off all those patriotic young men and women rather then set up an American Gulag Archipelago. Stalin would be PROUD.

The breast cancer campaign wants all of us to be “aware” of breast cancer but not to be aware of what they know is a major cause of it!

2009-10-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

Don’t Think, Wear Pink!

October 23rd, 2009

by Jenny Senour

I’ve been visually assaulted this month by proliferation of pink popping up… everywhere. The grocery store, the gym, my favorite coffee shop… I swear, if I get a pink-foil wrapped burrito at Chipotle, my head is going to explode.

Now pink is my very favorite color, it’s true. So why the rage? Why did the mere sight of that blushing, bubbly white-zinfandel colored wrist band on the NFL ref during last week’s Broncos game cause my blood pressure to spike?

Well, for the same reason that other women are experiencing elevated levels of blood pressure. And increased risk of strokes and heart disease. And skyrocketing risk rates for breast cancer:

The Pill.

The very same Pill that so many of these merchants tout as the panacea to the problems of the modern world, particularly to those faced by members of the fairer sex. The Pill, our culture proclaims from every magazine spread, television broadcast and billboard, is the answer to our over-populated, under-sexed and insufficiently satiated appetite for more.

But it’s delivered a whole lot more than we could have expected. Which brings me back to the infuriating “think pink” campaign which has somehow replaced our collective conscience for the time being, (giving the tiresome ‘go green’ mantra a break) and opened up a marketing opportunity for everyone from Safeway to Starbucks to the National Football League to show how much they care.

Except, they don’t.

At least, not enough to stop marketing or manufacturing that very same substance which is largely to blame for the skyrocketing increase in breast cancer rates over the past several decades.

Breast cancer is a terrible scourge, a vicious disease. It is heartless in its selection of victims, aggressive in its course, and cruelly demanding of its victims.

But what is far more terrible and in fact much more insidious is the idea of a collaboration of industries whose monetary interests far outweigh their humanitarian concerns.

But when you’ve got companies like Subaru and Wells Fargo funding Planned Parenthood, when you’ve got Ortho and Depo and Yaz and the like being pushed over the counter at Kroger’s to teens and middle aged mommies alike… you start to wonder. How much do these companies actually care about those customers of theirs - girls and women like you and me?

Sure, there are races for the cure, posters saluting fallen heroines who lost their battles, pink sleeves for coffee cups to show that one stands “against” breast cancer.

Because doing something, anything, in the face of overwhelming evil feels better than doing nothing at all. But the funny thing is, after all those dollars are collected at the checkout counter, after all the fundraisers and campaigns for a cure are safely in November’s rearview mirror… will those same companies and indiviudals who proclaim their concern so conspicuously still be speaking out? Will they continue to let their wallets talk for them, reconsidering purchases which might benefit the manufacturers of the Pill in an effort to “fight the good fight?”

Or will this be sufficient? Is it enough to wear a little pink for 30 days? Is no further action required to curtail the epidemic that is stalking our generation? Are we not, in fact, compelled by justice to inform women honestly about the risks associated with consumable, injectible and insertable hormonal contraceptives?

Such an inconvenient truth, this link between cancer and the Pill. It couldn’t possibly be true, could it? No, no… it’s little more than a “right wing scare tactic” or a “dogmatic religious falsehood,” a pro-life “myth”… that’s what the media continually reassures us in soothing tones.

“Don’t worry, nobody’s going to take your contraception away. You don’t have to fret; there are no consequences, and nobody is going to get hurt. Here, put on this pink hat. Affix this bumper sticker to your vehicle. Shhhh, now, doesn’t that feel better?”

I’d argue, no.

So rethink pink, my friends. And ask yourselves who the real losers are when lies become so oft- repeated they become the truth.

Jenny Senour is a graduate student at Franciscan University of Steubenville, where she studies, writes and speaks on Theology of the Body to college aged audiences. She blogs at agreatdeception.blogspot.com on matters of chastity, human sexuality, and the dignity of the human person. A newly published freelance writer, her articles can be found in Our Sunday Visitor. She is a Program Director of Mission Development for FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students), in Denver, CO, where she works to reach college students for Christ.

Ben Stien on Puppy mills

2009-10-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

Such cruelty to animals is shocking, but how can we be surprised at the cruelty to animals when we humans are cruel to the smallest and most helpless of humans in our current culture of death.

Abortionists embrace the spirit of Mengala

2009-10-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

Abortion Practitioner Writes of Doing Abortions While Pregnant With Unborn Baby

by Steven Ertelt

LifeNews.com Editor
October 16, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In a post that is quickly causing jaws to drop from readers across the world, a Michigan-based abortion practitioner has written of how she does abortions at the same time she is pregnant. Lisa Harris is an abortion practitioner and a assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

In a blog post titled "Second Trimester Abortion Provision: Breaking the Silence and Changing the Discourse," Harris reveals a terrible hypocrisy that pro-life advocates are calling a "cognitive dissonance."

Harris' article originally appeared in the May 2008 issue of the journal "Reproductive Health Matters" but has gained its greatest attention as a blog post at the blog "Abortioneers."

"There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a ‘thump, thump’ in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes," Harris notes of doing an abortion while pregnant.

She calls the experience of doing an abortion on an unborn child at 18 week gestation a "brutally visceral" experience given she is 18 weeks pregnant herself.

"Abortion is different from other surgical procedures," Harris admits, calling it "violent."

"Even when the fetus has no legal status, its moral status is reasonably the subject of much disagreement. It is disingenuous to argue that removing a fetus from a uterus is no different from removing a fibroid," she says.

she explains how she was "more interested than usual in seeing the fetal parts when I was done, since they would so closely resemble those of my own fetus."

"I went about doing the procedure as usual," she says in the blog post. "I used electrical suction to remove the amniotic fluid, picked up my forceps and began to remove the fetus in parts, as I always did. I felt lucky that this one was already in the breech position - it would make grasping small parts (legs and arms) a little easier."

Harris sees a need to "cross borders and boundaries (including seemingly inflexible ones like ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’)" so people can "reflect seriously on the question of how providers determine their limit for abortion," but admitted that doing so "may frankly be too dangerous for pro-choice movements to acknowledge."

She says the violence of abortion must be acknowledged and also notes how she once killed an unborn child of the same age as a prematurely born baby she watched struggle to survive.

She goes further to challenge the pro-abortion movement's refusal to recognize "the violence and, frankly, the gruesomeness of abortion" and that it "contradicts an enormous part of" the experience of abortion practitioners, who see directly the destruction of human life.

"Of course, acknowledging the violence of abortion risks admitting that the stereotypes that anti-abortion forces hold of us are true - that we are butchers, etc.," she continues.

She admits seeing the destruction of human beings for what it is could have negative consequences for abortion backers.

"We might conclude at this point that a provider who feels that abortion is violent is simply ambivalent, conflicted, is not really committed to women’s abortion rights, and just shouldn't be doing this work," Harris writes. "’Pro-life’ supporters may argue that the kind of stories and sentiments I've relayed spell the end of abortion - that honest speech acts regarding the reality of abortion will weaken the pro-choice movement to the point where it cannot sustain itself any longer."

However, she says acknowledging that abortion kills children can "be the basis for a stronger movement - one that makes it easier for providers and the teams they work with to do all abortions, especially second trimester abortions."
Thomas Peters of the American papist blog noticed Harris' post and said it "goes far in revealing the sort of extreme cognitive dissonance that is necessary for someone to perform abortions."

"And yet, even in this situation, it's impossible for her to avoid her own humanity - and the humanity of the young human person she is destroying," he says.

"If anything we've ever read has convinced us we need to pray for an end to an abortion, for the conversion of those who perform them, and work with greater self-conviction in the knowledge that our cause is just and desperately-needed in this world ... this was it," he concludes.

Homosexual Hate Crimes Law Poised to Become Law after Passing U.S. House

2009-10-14T06:08:00.000-07:00

"" The wrath of God is indeed being revealed from heaven against every impiety and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened. While claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes. Therefore, God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper. They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and rebellious toward their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know the just decree of God that all who practice such things deserve death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them."" Romans 1:18-32

Pro-Life

Homosexual Hate Crimes Law Poised to Become Law after Passing U.S. House

October 14th, 2009 by Kathleen Gilbert

In what appears to mark the end of a years-long battle over homosexual hate crime legislation in America, the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday passed a law authorizing the federal government to intervene in violent crimes that appear motivated by hatred of homosexuals.

The hate crimes language passed in a 281-146 vote as an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill, with 15 Democrats and 131 Republicans voting against the must-pass bill in apparent protest against the hate crime language.

The expanded hate crime legislation would extend special protection to victims of crime based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. The measure is now poised to become law after final approval by the Senate. President Obama, as an avowed supporter of the homosexual lobby, is expected to sign the measure.

In April, the House approved similar language as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Act, but no legislation mirroring the act was approved by the Senate. Homosexual hate crimes legislation passed both House and Senate in 2007, but was vetoed by President Bush.

Conservative leaders condemned the new law and its mode of passage.

“This is radical social policy that is being put on the defense authorization bill, on the backs of our soldiers, because they probably can’t pass it on its own,” said House Republican leader John Boehner.

“As a strong supporter of our troops, and the father of three Marines, I will not allow myself to be blackmailed this way,” wrote Congressman Todd Akin (R-MO) in a Townhall blog post.

Commenting on Thursday, Family Research President Tony Perkins called the legislation “a direct violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, since all violent crimes are hate crimes, and every victim is equally important.”

“This measure is about giving special rights based solely on sexual behavior,” he said.

Perkins also said that the law “sets us on a slippery slope toward serious infringements of the freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”

“‘Hate crime’ legislation will lay the legal foundation and framework for investigating, prosecuting and persecuting pastors, business owners, and anyone else whose actions reflect their faith,” Perkins concluded.

Critics say the bill is apt to chill the free speech of those who voice a moral objection to homosexuality because, under federal law, individuals whose speech is seen to “aid and abet” a violent crime share in the guilt of that crime. While the House bill was changed to include more protection for the expression of Biblical perspectives on homoesxuality, conservative leaders said the gesture was deficient, with Family Research Council president Tom McClusky calling the last-minute alteration “pretty flimsy.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Controversial Homosexual “Hate Crimes” Act Set for Senate Vote Thursday
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09071505.html

Free Speech Concerns Ignored as “Hate Crimes” Bill Passes Fed. Judiciary Committee
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/apr/09042407.html

A question answered

2009-09-26T08:11:00.000-07:00

A reader recently posted a question to of my blog and asked me to investigate if the Gamaliel Foundation is still funded by the CCHD. Sadly I must report, they do.

Credit actually goes to Mary Ann Kreitzer, founder of the Catholic Media Coalition.

Here is a full and recent article (September 10, 2009) on the activities of the CCHD and the Gamaliel Foundation from Spero News:

Worldly Children shrewder than Children of Light
Catholics should "just say no" to appeals at their parishes to donate to the politicized Catholic Campaign for Human Development. It promotes Alinskyian organizations at odds with Christian morality.

Thursday, September 10, 2009 By Mary Ann Kreitzer

You gotta give President Obama credit for being one shrewd puppy. Last August he held a conference call to promote his health care initiative sponsored by a number of "religious" groups (under the name 40 Days for Health Reform) that attracted 140,000 participants. The "Catholic" sponsors on the list included well known dissent groups Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United. Both are George Soros-funded fronts which use the name Catholic to imply Church support while actually working to promote abortion, same sex "marriage" and other abominations condemned by Church doctrine. Their purpose is to neutralize the true Catholic voice which is pro-life and pro-family. If you examine their beliefs and agenda you find they are more in line with a leftist political agenda than traditional Catholic morality.

The sad thing, however, is that the Catholic Church helped stage this morality masquerade through the funding of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) collection. Among the groups listed as supporters for the "40 Days" initiative is the Gamaliel Foundation. Gamaliel receives a significant amount of its funding from CCHD to advance its liberal agenda.

To see the intimate and lucrative connection between Gamaliel and the bishops, a few illustrations suffice. In 2002 Rev. Robert J. Vitillo, then Executive Director of CCHD addressed the Gamaliel Foundation and accepted an award on behalf of the bishops. Among Fr. Vitillo's comments were these:

The Campaign has particularly enjoyed its work in solidarity with projects affiliated with the Gamaliel Foundation. Over the years, CCHD offered approximately $7 million to 188 Gamaliel-affiliated projects. CCHD is especially grateful for your foundation's work in the areas of metropolitan organizing.

Gamaliel is a leader in promoting President Obama's health care plan. The group is a member of Health Care for America Now, a coalition that, according to researcher Stephanie Block, "includes several other Alinskyian organizing networks, such as ACORN, as well as some pro-abortion groups like the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. And DART – the Direct Action and Research Training Center." According to Block, Gamaliel affiliates rake in 4-5% of CCHD grants. While they claim to take a neutral position on abortion, Gamaliel's activist role in promoting Obama's universal government health care partnering beds them with radical advocates of unrestricted abortion. How compromised can you be?

Can an organization actively working with radical advocates of abortion, abortifacient birth control, forced participation of health care workers against their consciences, etc. still claim neutrality? Gamaliel's buddies in the network are proponents of the liberal creed including positions anathema to Catholics. Faith in Public Life is one of the umbrella group that pulls together faux religious communities to neutralize moral issues in the public debate. Spearheaded by Jim Wallis, head of the liberal Sojourners, Faith in Public Life has been very effective at shilling for liberals including Kathleen Sebelius, the Kansas governor so enamored with late-term abortionist George Tiller.

On their website, Gamaliel proudly acclaims their relationship with President Obama and his roots as one of their community organizer. Gamaliel is deeply rooted in liberalism. That the Catholic Church would fund this group that does little to actually help the poor, but much to radicalize the Church to engage in advancing the liberal agenda is a scandal that continues year after year. Catholics need to realize that not only is CCHD funding liberalism around the country primarily focused on creating support for Democratic pro-abortion, pro-sodomy polticians, but it also funds "education" in parishes that teaches the principles of liberation theology. Instead of planting mustard seeds that grow into trees of faith, CCHD plants ACORNS that grow into Catholic dissent groups.
More from Spero:
An Open Letter to Notre Dame President Jenkins
Pro-life demonstrators at the 2009 Notre Dame commencement, where President Obama was the featured speaker, continue to face prosecution. Notre Dame's response has been ambivalent. A retired professor writes an epistle to President Rev. John Jenkins.
Africa
Church says Niger's omissions caused violence
Government inaction brought about the deaths of 2000 people during the Islamist uprising in August. The Boko Haram sect in Nigeria opposes western education and other values: government had foreknowledge of attacks.
Catholics should boycott CCHD when the time comes for its annual collection at parishes throughout the country. The collection is taken up in most dioceses in November. Catholics should ask their bishops to boycott it as well. The money that goes to CCHD will not go to the poor. In fact grants to groups working directly to feed and shelter the hungry and perform other corporal works of mercy are specifically prohibited. They are ineligible for CCHD grants which are reserved for "empowering" the community. The "charity" was developed specifically to fund Saul Alinsky networks. Msgr. Jack Egan and Saul Alinsky were the brains behind it, with the help of Cardinal Deardon, finding a way to funnel Catholic money into liberal political groups masquerading as non-partisan non-profits.

Wake up and smell the coffee! CCHD operatives are all about advancing, not the kingdom of God, but the kingdom of this world. Don't be an enabler. It's time for Catholics in the pew to be as shrewd as the Gamaliel community organizer in the White House. Just say no to the CCHD this year. There are plenty of real charities that deserve your support.

Thirteen news stories designed to tear back the curtain on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) or perhaps a more accurate description: Catholic Cash Helping Democrats.
Mary Ann Kreitzer is a founder of the Catholic Media Coalition. She blogs at Les Femmes/The Truth.

Info: http://www.catholiccitizens.org/platform/platformview.asp?c=10015

Introducing a new link

2009-09-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

I'm adding a new link to the sidebar.
I hope you all take a moment to peruse this excellent sight. It's well made, easy to navigate, great graphics, but more then that as it has very good and useful ...and shocking (but not surprising) information about the crude and depraved lives of abortionists.

THESE are the people who are expected to 'MINISTER" to women in their most vulnerable and desperate hours.

Here are two of the entries. For more go to Deathroe.com

Lifestyle of an abortionist

On January 15, 1999, abortionist Neville W. Duncan was placed on 18 months' probation, sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $250 after pleading no contest to charges that he beat his wife and was arrested with crack cocaine in his pocket.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, Doctor sentenced to 30 days in jail, A prosecutor in the case stated that,

"When you are providing medical services to others, they expect you to be healthy and in a good way. . . . In this case, I want him to be monitored. If he is to continue as a medical professional, he needs to remain absolutely drug-free."

Here is the mug shot of Duncan from the time of the event.

Abortionist's hygiene - Can you say gross?

During a Kansas House Committee on Health and Human Services hearing March 15, 2005, Kansas City Police Detective William Howard gave the following testimony concerning the appearance of abortionist Krishna Rajanna when he responded to a call at Rajanna’s clinic:

“Abortionist Dr. Krishna Rajanna lacked personal hygiene. His hair was messy, hands dirty, and his clothing was wrinkled and stained. He put on old, used foot booties while we were there. In a statement to me one witness/suspect related how Dr. Rajanna was a filthy man who did not properly sterilize his equipment."

Letter to the National Catholic Reporter that will probably not be published because it isn't 'nice' enough.

2009-09-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

The National Catholic Reporter has an opinion piece discussing how the incivility of 'pro-lifers' is hurting the pro-life 'cause'. One poster even went so far as to say that because pro-lifers are 'so nasty', he became pro-choice...ie pro-abortion. The whole discussion struck me as somewhat ludicrous. I wrote one letter to them yesterday, decrying the hypocrisy of the entire debate. It wasn't published., of course. I did use strong language. I said 'may God rebuke them'...so you know they didn't like it. But today, I calmed down, and wrote from my heart, hoping that perhaps they would publish it. I carefully left out any hint of ad hominem attacks. Who know, maybe they will publish this one:

Why in all this 'debate' is no one mentioning those precious frightened mothers who feel like they have no choice BUt to abort because information is NOT made available to them. I see NO adds for shelters for pregnant women on this site....NONE. WHY??? That's not politics, it's a real NEED. Politics quite frankly, is useless, both parties are long gone to the culture of death. Women need protection from being coerced into choosing abortion. Why are there no adds for pregnancy shelters and services to support women choosing life on THIS site? I think that is a valid question. Women feel pressured to have abortions all the time. Society is not friendly to the lovely pregnant woman. And ironically, the more liberal secularism takes over the more our culture is becoming increasingly cold to the needs of the helpless and poor while many church stand silent by letting the culture of death run amok over it's most helpless lambs.

I mean no contempt for anyone, I know many of you here really do mean well, but I think it is because of your ignorance of the true issues at hand that so many of you are so calm and somewhat clinical about this horrible issue. If you really ...REALLY comprehended the horror of abortion on the woman, not just the baby, you would do EVERYTHING you humanly could to stop it. You'd be fasting and praying! I understand, but from where I stand I can only conclude you are all ignorant, because HOW can anyone ever knowingly support the dismemberment of helpless human beings and the exploitation of frightened women??

All this talk is meaningless. I personally know the frustration of pro-lifers because I am one, true blue dyed in the wool pro-life. If you've never wept in front of an abortuary you really can't understand the real issue. I see women and girls who are exploited and hurt by abortion. It fills me with nightmare like horrors. You would be horrified too if you stood for hours, praying, forced to be silent while you watched woman after women literally being DRAGGED into those filthy clinics (many clinics so filthy they might as well be back allies!!) by boyfriends, husbands and parents while the police/ security guards look the other way and make sure you stand behind the line.

I speak the truth.

Abortion really is the UN-choice.

http://www.theunchoice.com/

Please, open your minds and hearts...it's not a 'debate...it's life or death.

Dina

Socialism comes to Amerika

2009-09-11T13:14:00.000-07:00

There will be a need for a pro-life underground to protect mothers who wish to give birth apart from the state, an underground that will help hide homeschool parents from the state, because that is what I see coming to this country. The church started in the catacombs, it will go back to the catacombs. When that time comes, I intend to be part of that underground.
d~

Obama: Master of the public school system

Posted: September 11, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

By Dan L. White
© 2009

Obama did it.

He gave his speech to almost all the young people in the public schools of America. The White House released the text of the speech ahead of time to show how innocuous it was. The mainstream news media agreed with that, and marveled that some schools and parents refused to let their students watch it.

But he did it. And he will probably do it again and again.

I will never forget my third daughter's graduation from high school.

When you read the word graduation, did you just see a large crowd, a big auditorium and long lines of gowned students being herded by officious educational bureaucrats?

Her graduation wasn't like that at all. Hers was a Christian homeschool graduation, with 11 graduates. All were from Christian families, but I doubt that any two went to the same church and I don't think any two had used the same curriculum

. Each graduate made a personal DVD that was shown at the ceremony, accompanied by music of the graduate's choice. My daughter picked an easy contemporary Christian selection. Vicky chose a rousing bluegrass number by a famous artist she knew personally. Becky had a lovely song that her mother had written, performed by the two of them. Matt's DVD of his life was accompanied by a thunderous classical piano concerto. The other seven grads were just as varied in their musical selections.

That individuality typifies homeschooling, education that is decentralized, individualized and maximized. In a public school graduation, the institution awards its accolades on the students, while the parents look on from afar and Christ is not allowed in the building. In a Christian homeschool graduation, the parents award the accolades to their child, Christ is the focus of the service, and the socialist institutions are not allowed in the building.

When God put Israel in the Holy Land, they had no king and accumulating power was prevented. They were decentralized, a nation of small farmers. Thomas Jefferson wanted America to be a nation of small farmers, decentralized and democratic. America also had no king and was established on the principle of decentralization of power, with its tripartite form of government. Furthermore, the government was specifically forbidden from controlling the press or religion. If government can control the media or the churches, then it can control the minds of its citizens and thus centralize power.

But in the 20th century, America's education system was centralized, with almost every young person in the nation put under the control of government bureaucrats. The government was then able to control the minds of its citizens and thereby centralize power. And that's how Obama was able to give his speech to millions of captive young minds, subservient to the socialist institution, ready to be led by the master – because of the centralized school system.

What were the liberals trying to accomplish with this speech?

They certainly went to a lot of effort, like a major campaign speech. The Department of Education even sent out classroom materials to accompany the speech – a syllabus to go along with Obama's syllables! Those materials encouraged the students to read books about President Obama and discussed "why it is important that we listen to the president."

Why did they do that? Is that college prep or propaganda?

Obama's speech was a campaign speech. The socialists knew what they were doing. Just as RCA pushed Elvis or Capitol Records pushed the Beatles, the liberals are promoting Obama to America's youth. If they accept the man, if they like his music, they will accept his message.

What is his message? Centralization of power – socialism. The centralization of education in America is now being used to centralize all power in America. We have seen that with banks and autos, and now we are seeing that with healthcare. Those most supportive of this Obama socialism are the young people. Obama owns the youth of America; they like his abs, his left-hand jump shot, his George Clooney smile. And more so than any other group, the recent graduates of America's public schools overwhelmingly voted for Obama. Those who were not part of that system overwhelmingly did not. The possibilities for the future are incredibly frightening.

Obama's speech to almost all the youth of America was only possible because of a massively centralized school system. Obama's presidency itself was made possible by that same school system. The liberals know that, and they plan to build on that. A number of people got agitated over that speech. Better they should get agitated over that whole system.

Dan L. White is the author of "The Jubilee Principle: God's Plan for Your Economic Freedom." The book is also available in e-book form.

Another great article from Catholicexchange.com !!!

2009-09-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

Incivility’s Origin

September 9th, 2009
by Tom Purcell
It’s no wonder so many people are being less civil of late. I think it has to do with technology.

Civility in America dates back to George Washington’s time. Washington authored a pamphlet, “Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation,” to define and strongly advocate civil society in early America.

For years, American children were taught good manners by their parents, and adults defined themselves as ladies or gentlemen based on how well they practiced good etiquette.

But technology has chipped away at such efforts. It has provided multiple opportunities for people to be rude.

Consider the invention of the telephone.

Communicating on the telephone is less personal than talking face to face. People are more prone to say nasty things — particularly to telemarketers who have a knack for calling just as you sit down for dinner.

The answering machine introduced additional opportunities for rudeness. Some felt it was rude to use the device to screen calls. Others felt it was rude not to leave a message when the machine picked up.

Telephone rudeness kicked into high gear when *69 was invented. By dialing *69, you could quickly identify the number of the person who had last phoned you.

I got home once to find someone had hung up on my answering machine. Agitated, I dialed *69 and phoned it back.

“Hello, this is Victoria. Bill and I aren’t in right now,” said the answering machine. I didn’t recognize the person and hung up.

A few moments later, my phone rang. I picked it up.

“Hello,” I said.

“Who is this?” said a woman.

“Who is this?”

“You called me and hung up!” she said. Ah, it was Victoria.

“You called me and hung up!” I said.

“Star 69 took me to you!” she said.

“Star 69 took me to you!” I said.

Victoria uttered several profanities, then hung up.

The cell phone soon made things worse. People, oblivious to their fellow human beings, prattle on in movie theaters, libraries and other public places.

The Internet, e-mail and blogging kicked rudeness into an even higher gear. A new era of anonymity was unleashed — a new era of nastiness and mean-spiritedness, particularly where politics are concerned.

Which brings us to this summer’s town hall debates.

Many folks have been brimming with passion and discontent about President Obama’s health care reform ideas. They’ve gotten mighty heated at times.

Proponents of Obama’s plan suspect Republican operatives are behind the protests — even though Republicans couldn’t organize their way out of a paper bag.

Proponents suggest that the people standing in the way of “reform” are ill-informed and don’t know what is best for them. But I think the cause of the discontent is simpler than that: technology.

Thanks to technology, average people have access to tremendous amounts of information. Anyone can download the Democrats’ 1,000-plus-page health care reform bill, as I did, and try to comprehend paragraphs such as:

For purposes of this division, the term ‘affordable credit eligible individual’ means, subject to subsection (b), an individual who is lawfully present in a State in the United States (other than as a nonimmigrant described in a subparagraph though excluding subparagraphs (K), (T), (U) …

What is more worrisome is that there isn’t really a health care reform plan — just a bunch of ideas, many of them unclear, packed into a massive document.

Nonetheless, President Obama promised it would save money — but the Congressional Budget Office said, flat out, that isn’t so.

He assured us he didn’t want the government to run health care. Then video footage surfaced in which he said he preferred a single-payer system.

People began wondering what other Obama claims just aren’t so.

The lack of clarity unleashed a torrent of information — truth, hyperbole and everything in between.

People attempted to voice their concerns to their representatives but were largely ignored. That’s when they began shouting.

Some say the town hall incivility shows that our republic is broken. Some believe it’s driven by special-interest groups that will gain if Obama fails.

I think technology is the culprit. It allowed people to quickly conclude that Obama’s health care reform strategy is a stinker.

Obama has been hoisted by his own petard.

How rude to do such a thing in public.
Tom Purcell's weekly political humor column runs in newspapers and Web sites across America. His email address is Readers@TomPurcell.com; his web address is www.TomPurcell.com.

You will know a tree by it's fruits

2009-09-01T19:20:00.000-07:00

Reading the letter was all about political manipulation of the ‘catholic vote’. Bloggers were all a twitter that there was no public Vatican statement of condolences as there were for with Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who was a saintly woman by all accounts. So the Left has to do *something* SO why NOT use the letter, used Ted Kennedy’s death and religion is always so useful too, for political advantage like Micheal Jackson’s family continues to use his
‘corpse’ to make money. It’s absolutely nauseating to watch the Catholic liberals jump through the hoops like a bunch of pink prancing poodles.

The irony is that they will now memorialize Kennedy with a ‘health care’ bill that will the crowning glory to the Culture of Death Ted Kennedy labored so hard to build.

You will know a tree by it’s fruits.

Pro-Abortion Kennedy Lauded as “Champion for Those Who Had None” at Funeral Mass

September 1st, 2009 by Kathleen Gilbert

Despite the warnings of pro-life Catholic leaders that the public honoring of pro-abortion Sen. Ted Kennedy by the Catholic Church would lead to an enormous scandal, the Boston Archdiocese hosted an elaborate televised funeral Mass for the senator this past Saturday. The service, presided over by Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, included prayers of the faithful endorsing health care reform and homosexualist policies, and a eulogy by President Obama, who remembered Kennedy as a "champion for those who had none."

The Catholic Sen. Kennedy, one of U.S. Congress’ most powerful legislators against the right to life for unborn children, died of brain cancer Tuesday night at the age of 77. Ecclesial participants included Rev. Raymond Collins, Rector of the Basilica; Rev. Mark Hession, Kennedy’s parish priest from Our Lady of Victories Church in Centerville on Cape Cod; Rev. J. Donald Monan, Chancellor of Boston College; and Sean Cardinal O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston.

Hession referred to the section of the gospel reading in which Christ tells the just why they are bound for Heaven: "For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me." (Mat. 25:35-6)

"These works of the kingdom were daily concerns of the public life of Teddy Kennedy," said Hession. "They were the fabric of his mind, heart, and hands as he sought to realize them in a society dramatically more complex than the society in which Jesus spoke these words.

"Our hope, our confident Christian hope, is that the fruits of his work as a political and public figure have well prepared him for God’s kingdom," he said.

Kennedy’s "strong suit," said Hession, was "the faith of the great Hebrew prophets" who "stood in defense of the widows, the orphans and refugees of their time."

The Prayers of the Faithful, read by many of Kennedy’s younger family members, included endorsements of many of Sen. Kennedy’s policy goals. On health care reform, grandson Max Allen prayed "for what my grandpa calls the cause of his life … that every American will have decent quality health care, as a fundamental right, and not a privilege."

Great-nephew Jack Schlossberg prayed that America "close the book on the old politics of … straight against gay."

It remains unclear, however, whether any of the several intensely pro-abortion politicians in attendance - including Vice President Joe Biden and Senator John Kerry - received communion.

At communion time, "every camera suddenly developed an intense interest in the musicians, the organ, or the ceiling," noted Examiner writer Christopher Nowak.

Following two eulogies from Kennedy’s sons, President Barack Obama gave his own eulogy, praising Kennedy as "a champion for those who have none." Obama also alluded to Kennedy’s support for ending the ban on open homosexuality in the military, noting his defense of "the young soldier denied her rights because of … who she loves."

Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who presided at the Mass, greeted President Obama and other dignitaries in the pews at the kiss of peace and thanked the president for his words and presence. The cardinal also met with the president for a brief conversation, but the details of the discussion have not been disclosed. O’Malley has in the past been strongly critical of President Obama’s pro-abortion agenda.

At the final commendation, O’Malley called Kennedy "such an important part of our history and our country" who "shared our belief in prayer and in eternal life."

Noting the constant presence of Kennedy’s family at his deathbed, O’Malley said, "We die in dignity when we are surrounded with love and such care."

The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts decried the scandal of the funeral, where they say the diocese celebrated the life of "one of America’s most notorious opponents of Catholic morality."

The Catholic Action League called the event "a tragic example of the Church’s willingness to surrender to the culture, and serve Caesar rather than Christ."

"Senator Kennedy supported legal abortion, partial-birth abortion, the public funding of Medicaid abortions, embryonic stem cell research, birth control, federal family planning programs, and so-called emergency contraception," noted Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle.

"No rational person can reasonably be expected to take seriously Catholic opposition to abortion when a champion of the Culture of Death, who repeatedly betrayed the Faith of his baptism, is lauded and extolled by priests and prelates in a Marian basilica,’ said Doyle.

"This morning’s spectacle is evidence of the corruption which pervades the Catholic Church in the United States. The right to life will never be recognized by secular society if it is not first vindicated and consistently upheld within the institutions of the Church itself."

This article is courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.

Commentary by Tim Mosser on the advancing culture of death

2009-09-01T19:08:00.000-07:00

The Church, Contraception and the Culture of Death: Pt. 1 of 6

February 27th, 2009 by Tim Mosser

In this series we will examine the history of contraception and its integral connections to the culture of death. Seeing the “big picture” from a historical perspective is vital to a proper understanding of the Church’s unchanging teaching on contraception as well as a deeper appreciation of the Theology of the Body.

“The” Connection
Pope John Paul II addressed the relationship between contraception and abortion in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae. In it he notes that many people assert that the easy availability of contraception to everyone is the best weapon against abortion and that because of her stance against contraception, the Catholic Church is accused of actually promoting abortion. To these claims he stated:

When looked at carefully, this objection is clearly unfounded. It may be that many people use contraception with a view to excluding the subsequent temptation of abortion. But the negative values inherent in the “contraceptive mentality”…are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation [to abort] when unwanted life is conceived. Indeed, the pro-abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church’s teaching on contraception is denied. (Evangelium Vitae 13)

There might be no other issue that has so profoundly affected modern society as contraception has. In less than eighty years, Christianity has moved from a unanimous condemnation of contraception to an almost universal acceptance of the practice – and many other harmful acts associated with it. While a few generations may seem like a great deal of time to some, in the eyes of the Church and of world history, it is barely the blink of an eye. The above words from the late-great Pope John Paul II provide a keen insight into our current culture of death.

The situation above begs many questions. Here are a few:

How did our society move so quickly from one side of the contraception issue to the other?
What are the societal implications of this practice?
What does the Catholic Church teach about contraception?
What is the connection between contraception and abortion?

We will answer each of these in turn by focusing on three specific aspects of contraception.

1. We will review the issue of contraception from a historical perspective.
2. We will examine the teaching of the Catholic Church on the issue of contraception throughout this history.
3. We will discuss some ways that contraception affects our society focusing especially on the connection between contraception and abortion.

Centuries of Unified Teaching
3

The Catholic Church has always taught that contraception is wrong and that the only morally acceptable use of the sexual powers is sexual intercourse within a valid marriage that always respects the God-given gift of fertility. Early Church Fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, St. Hippolytus of Rome, St. John Chrysostom, Lactantius, and many others including St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas all spoke against contraception.

For example St. Augustine wrote:

I am supposing, then, that although you are not lying for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure poisons of sterility. (Marriage and Concupiscence, 1:15:17)

Referring to contraception St. Thomas declared:

Nor, in fact, should it be considered a slight sin for a man to arrange for the emission of semen apart from the proper purpose of begetting and bringing up children….the inordinate emission of semen is incompatible with the natural good of preserving the species. Hence, after the sin of homicide whereby a human life already in existence is destroyed, this type of sin appears to take next place, for by it the generation of human nature is impeded. (Summa contra gentiles, 3, 122)

Unknown to many Christians today, all the reformers, including Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli condemned contraception. Luther called it a sin worse than sodomy, and Calvin likened it to murder. Charles Provan cites dozens of Protestant theologians who rejected contraception and concludes from his research, “We have found not one orthodox theologian to defend birth control before the 1900’s. NOT ONE!” (The Bible and Birth Control, p. 63)

We clearly see that from the time of Christ to past the time of the Reformation, the Christian world was unified in their teaching against contraception. And even though the exact biology of the sexual act was not known in early Christian and medieval times, the force of the moral argument remains strong.

Cracks in the Dam – Pressure Mounts

In 1798 Thomas Malthus, an Anglican clergyman, caused a population scare when he predicted that the world’s population would increase faster than its food supply. Despite this (erroneous) prediction, he advocated self control – not birth control – to moderate our population growth. A key technological advance in the 19th century was vital to the promotion of contraception because it gave us a convenient way to make one particular form of contraceptive.

As John Kippley notes:

The accidental discovery of vulcanized rubber by Charles Goodyear in 1839 facilitated the manufacture of condoms, and this new technology helped the neo-Malthusians to promote contraception in the 1860’s just as the Pill helped their philosophical heirs a century later. (Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality p. 225)

Even with this discovery, the weight of popular opinion was still clearly against contraception and one American evangelical in particular – Anthony Comstock - took steps to stop any contraceptive movement. At his urging, the U.S. Congress passed legislation outlawing the manufacture, sale, and distribution of contraceptives in 1873. Many states followed suit and passed similar laws which collectively became known as the Comstock laws. The fact that these legislative bodies were composed primarily of Protestants lends further credence to the fact of the unified Christian belief against contraception.

In response to the contraceptive pressure from secular sources such as Margaret Sanger and Havelock Ellis, the Anglican Church (Church of England) at its 1920 Lambeth Conference reaffirmed its stance against contraception and warned of dire consequences if contraception was practiced.

As quoted by John Kippley:

We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers – physical, moral and religious – thereby incurred, and against the evil with which the extension of such use threatens the race. (Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality p. 226)

This stern warning was given at a time when the known alternatives for spacing children were few and unreliable. Well into the twentieth century, Christian bodies were united in their stance against contraception. Christian leaders taught that there was an inseparable link between sex, marriage and children; that self control – not birth control – should be practiced in the spacing of births, and that there would be widespread negative effects if contraception was accepted. That was all about to change.

Part 2 will examine how this “contraceptive dam” sprung a leak – and how the Church responded.

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever!

tears for the chicks, none for the babies

2009-09-01T13:44:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post put out a lengthy and sad plea for the lives of poor little chicks siting a group called 'Mercy for Animals'.

Actually, I don't disagree with these people. They have a very valid point. This IS Horrible. This is inhumanity run amok. But this inhumanity has a root, and it's root comes from a culture of death sinking in the blood of innocent humans. How can you expect a society to show compassion for the animals God entrusted to humanity, when there is no legal expectation for humane treatment for unborn human beings?

Did that movie break your heart?

Does this?

Alan Keyes tells it like it is: Obama is a communist

2009-08-26T16:39:00.000-07:00

Homeschool mom holds lawmakers' feet to fire

2009-08-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

Sparks national movement urging states to defend against federal power grab

Posted: August 19, 2009
8:32 pm Eastern

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

A homeschooling mother – who made headlines during the presidential campaign when she received a visit from the Secret Service after calling Obama a "socialist" and criticizing his position on abortion – has launched a movement to hold state lawmakers accountable and promote a return to the rule of law defined in the U.S. Constitution.

Jessica Hughes, a Lufkin, Texas, resident, received a phone call from an Obama volunteer in 2008 asking if she supported the Democratic Party candidate.

Hughes replied, "No, I don't support him. Your guy is a socialist who voted four times in the state Senate to let little babies die in hospital closets; I think you should find something better to do with your time."

The next day, two Secret Service agents visited her home, asking if she said, "I will never support Obama and he will wind up dead on a hospital floor."

Her story was just one in a string of reports about alleged intimidation against Obama critics.

"One of the things that was said was that I had no right to be upset because that happened under the Bush administration," Hughes told WND. "It's absolutely true that there is a terrible danger with these bills that aren't read. It's my understanding that the Patriot Act was never read in its entirety by either President Bush or the Congress who voted it in. … According to that legislation, those secret service agents could have entered my home and searched it without a warrant that was ever seen by any judge. I don't care who's in power. You can't give that kind of power to a government."

Now Hughes, president and chief executive officer of The Founder's Alliance, is leading a movement to hold elected officials accountable and ensure that they pledge to uphold the Constitution, rejecting any effort of the federal government to exceed boundaries of its authority under the founding document.

"We started out with the tea parties in the area, and most of what we noticed was that a lot of our problems stem from our legislators not respecting the Constitution," she said. "So, we wanted to start from an area where we could really have an effect. We felt that local and state legislation was what we should focus on. The idea is to have our state legislators make known where they stand in their interpretation of the Constitution – not just say, 'I'll uphold the Constitution,' but that they will uphold the Constitution as it was originally intended."

The Founder's Alliance has delivered a "Contract with Texans" to state legislators. The pact states:

Be it resolved, that the undersigned pledge to uphold the principles of our nation as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights; and further pledge to uphold the Texas Constitution and defend the inalienable rights of the People of Texas, as follows:

1. I will reject with my words and my vote any effort of the Federal Government to exceed the boundaries of its authority as specifically granted in the seventeen powers listed under Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, and understood to limit the exercise of congressional power in the service of the general welfare;

2. I will reject with my words and my vote any and all legislation which infringes on the inalienable rights of the citizens of Texas as defined above;

3. I will reject with my words and my vote any and all legislation which seeks to redistribute wealth according to the caprices of government or the petitions of those who would enrich themselves at the expense of private property of others;

4. I will reject with my words and my vote any and all attempts to alter the understanding of the United States Constitution from the plain meaning of the text;

5. I will support with my words and my vote all efforts of the state of Texas to legislatively re-establish a constitutionally limited federal government on behalf of the people.

Jessica Hghes, (photo: Lufkin Daily News)

The group will announce in a news conference Thursday at the Texas state capitol the names of lawmakers who have signed the agreement and which ones have not.

According to the Lufkin Daily News, Texas Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, was one of the first lawmakers to sign the pledge.

"I did not hesitate to sign it. We need to get elected officials who swear to uphold the Constitution in their oath of office to pledge to do that. We need to get back to the core principals outlined by the Constitution," Nichols told the newspaper.

"We really just want to make this a positive step in engaging citizens with their state and local representatives," Hughes said. "We're not just sitting back and waiting for a presidential election to come along before we pay attention. We want people paying attention at all times."

She said The Founder's Alliance is forming a network of citizens to monitor different areas of government.

"Right now we have a group that is researching all of the amendments that are proposed to the Texas Constitution for next year," she said. "Then they can share with the group what they've found. That way we're able to divide the labor up and all be informed when we go to the voting booth."

Hughes said the effort does not end with Texas. Citizens from other states are already expressing interest in presenting similar contracts to their own state representatives. Hughes plans to spark a national movement with the Texas contract.

"We do have some people from other states who have joined up," she confirmed. "We're anxious to work with other states. It's absolutely within our plans. We think that every state should have a contract with legislators that says where they stand on the Constitution."

Hughes said both Republicans and Democrats have failed to protect American liberties and allowed the federal government to drastically expand its authority.

"The people have allowed themselves to be taken over by a sense of entitlement and a nanny state that really takes away your freedom to protect and defend yourself, your freedom to support yourself," she said. "Health care is a great example. I think it's a very dangerous idea that runs through this country that the government can be trusted with decisions like your health care. "

The Founders Alliance website states, "In every controversial topic today, from health care 'reform' to bailouts, there are only two choices: The individual or the collective. Will the individual be left free to make personal decisions within the family, community or state of their choosing? Or will your will and mine be subjugated to the 'best interests' of society as the government defines them?"

Michael Farris

As WND reported, Michael Farris, chancellor of Patrick Henry College and chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, recently launched a similar petition against the "swell of socialism."

Through WND, Farris announced an invitation to "the citizens of this country that believe in the Constitution, who believe in traditional morality and virtue, who believe in a free America and reject the concepts of socialism and the secularist moral view" to unite with more than 6,300 other citizens in signing a Declaration of the Principles of Liberty.

"Freedom is the ability to make your own decisions," Farris told WND, "but socialism inherently takes away private decision making. When the president can decide who is the chair or CEO of General Motors, that's socialism. America was founded on the principle that Americans can make their own decisions; the government can't tell us what to do. Socialism erases that line and invades the private decision making of companies, of families, of everyone."

Now, says Farris, "Socialism faces an ardent new foe" – not Farris himself, but the combined grassroots voices of Americans he hopes will rally behind the Declaration of the Principles of Liberty. The eventual goal, Farris explained, is to empower everyday Americans to take their organizations, political parties and nation back from those leaders who don't represent the people's values.

"I'm hoping this becomes a grassroots, viral campaign to promote these principles to millions of Americans and that millions of Americans will sign this pledge," Farris said. "If I'm able to tell the leadership in Washington that hundreds of thousands or millions of people have signed these petitions, they're going to have to start paying attention to these ideas, stop giving lip service to conservatism and stop simply being a more 'conservative' form of socialist."

WND has also reported on a movement in which activists and state legislators are focusing their own efforts on state governments as a way to resist federal health care "reform" and stop federal usurpation of state rights. Lawmakers in as many as 10 states are considering or seeking to propose bills and resolutions to nullify federal health care in their states.

In a July interview with the Mark Davis Show, Texas Gov. Rick Perry indicated that his state may join the showdown with the White House over federal health care.

"I think you'll hear states and governors standing up and saying 'no' to this type of encroachment on the states with their health care," Perry said. "My hope is that we never have to have that stand-up. But I'm certainly willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats."

the third jihad--A real muslim against radical islam

2009-08-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

The real reason liberals are threatened by Homeschooling

2009-08-14T01:24:00.000-07:00

When Institutional Authorities Fail our Children

August 14th, 2009 by Mary Anne Moresco

When parents pull their children from public schools, in order to homeschool them, they are sending a message to authorities. The message is this: “Our family is so unhappy with the job you are doing with our child (our most precious gift from heaven) that we think we can do a better job ourselves.” In a free market economy this should prompt institutions to ask: why are you unhappy and how can we change to better meet your needs? By asking this, authorities might learn how school institutions block children from learning their faith, block some children from learning at all, corrupt good morals and in a plethora of ways disrupt and undermine family life. And then schools might take steps to change these things, and thus bring the children back to school. But public schools are not part of a free market economy. Most authorities have and want to maintain an academic monopoly , and have no particular interest in changing to please rightfully concerned parents. British authorities are finding a way around having to change to please the parents, by entering the home , and thus seeking to change the children and home itself. There is every reason for concern that America will follow suit.

Home education is a blessing not only for the child but for the entire family. Like the institutional school system, homeschooling is not a perfect option. Unlike the school system, homeschooling provides children time to develop hobbies and talents. Our children have, for different reasons been in public, Catholic and Christian schools. But nothing freed our time to live our faith and lives like our five years of homeschooling. Our homeschooling days started early with daily Mass and breakfast. The books were open by 8:00 a.m., well before the school buses in town had picked up the local children to get them to their respective schools.

Children in a non-homeschooling environment can spend hours away from home, then return home with still more hours of homework. Children educated in the home at the elementary school level can usually move through all their subjects in 3-4 hours, leaving plenty of time for reading, ballet, horseback riding, piano and art lessons as well as time for fun and simple uninterrupted play with siblings. Many homeschoolers meet regularly with a homeschooling group, and play during the week with their friends.

Children educated in the home have time to read. Children educated in institutional schools may be given prizes; they may be coaxed by the school to read in a multitude of ways. But the rat race of a busy life has seized hold of many of them. Days at school are often filled with little time to savor reading for the sheer delight of it. The homework and school books loaded into their backpacks and onto their young frames at the end of each day is enough to bend some of their young spines and topple some of them over. Couple this homework with a few after school activities and the time of most children is often monopolized before and after dinner until bedtime arrives. This can transform reading for fun into a near impossibility.

Some authorities neither recognize nor appreciate the strides homeschooled parents have made with their children. On an international level, efforts are being made to control and undermine parental authority in the home. Since the Catholic faith is primarily transmitted to the children through the parents, these efforts undermine our faith. On a global level, the UN has drafted a treaty (Convention on the Rights of the Child) that allows children the right to “choose” their own religion, undermining the right of the Catholic parent (homeschooled or not) to educate children in the faith. Branching off from this treaty, the British government has approved a plan, which seeks direct control over homeschoolers, grants authorities access to the home of homeschoolers, and an astounding “right to speak to each child alone.”

The UN treaty grants children a right to “leisure.” How ironic that governments, who systematically rob school children of much needed rest and family time, would suddenly seek to control whether children are getting the very thing that authorities all along have seemed to care so little about.

As indicated in a Time Magazine article , the amount of time that 9-to11-year-olds spent on homework has increased over the years to more than 3.5 hours a week, stressing out both children and parents. Can someone explain why an 11-year-old, after 7 hours at school, must come home with still more homework when that same 11-year old can be homeschooled in less than four? Despite working fewer hours, children who are educated in the home regularly score higher than public schooled children in virtually every academic area.

If homeschooled students spend less time working, but accomplish more, what are children in modern schools doing all day?

In the modern school of today, entertainment videos are sometimes shown when the children get antsy or the teacher has had enough. There may be some very dedicated teachers in the classroom, but some children have no respect, forcing teachers to use class time to reprimand.

Couple that discipline problem with parties of every imaginable sort. This may include (dependent on age) celebrating the birthday of every child, (perhaps with cupcakes and cookies, and sometimes with teeth-rotting, blood-sugar crashing soda). Some schools offer a 100-day school party, a “Halloween” party, a ‘winter party,” a class “tea,” a valentines party, a class cruise, a class barbecue, a class “pool” party, and an end of school party. The school party possibilities are endless and seem to keep growing. Parents might not mind the parties so much, if it didn’t mean that the work that was not done in school during the day would now need to be done at home, ensuring that there would be no family time, let alone “parties” once the children arrived home at the end of an already long day.

Then there are immodest afterschool dances and the nonsense classes. This includes co-ed sex education classes that have gone goofy. In entering this domain, schools have gone to a place where they had no right to be. History is showing that conducting co-ed sex education in an academic environment has done little more, over recent decades, than shred the natural defenses between boys and girls, and lead otherwise innocent children away from parental family values and straight into promiscuity and STDs.

Could it be that authorities, rather than looking at children educated in the home and saying “What are we doing wrong and how can we help you?” have begun to see the Christian values instilled in many homeschooled children as a threat to the liberal views that institutional education often imparts? Studies show that the number one reason for home education is to “provide religious or moral instruction.” (National Catholic Register Volume 85, No. 26, 2009) Catholic parents have a God-given right to educate their children in the faith. Could liberal government schools, as they morph ever-further into anti-God institutions, have some vested interest in denying parents this God-given right? Might it be that shaping the opinions of the children is what this is really about?

Mary Anne Moresco writes from Monmouth County, New Jersey.

enemy_of_the_state

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This article is very interesting, but the comments are the more fascinating aspect as they are incredibly sad. ~d

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Photograph by: Tim Matsui, Getty Images

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"Every mother, when she picks up the young
life that has been born to her, looks up to the heavens to thank God for
the gift which made the world young again. But here was a Mother, a
Madonna, who did not look up. She looked down to Heaven, for this was
Heaven in her arms."

"The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that
and you have abandoned all.”

“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.
If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own;
but because you ...do not belong to the world,
and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates
you."