ROME, Italy, June 27, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an excusive LifeSiteNews.com interview, Mercedes Wilson, founder and President of the Natural Family Planning organization, Family for the Americas, explained the negative effects contraception has on a woman’s body and on a couple’s marriage. She also described Family for the Americas’ mission to spread knowledge of NFP to the poor and confirmed that when practiced properly, it is 99 percent effective. Her organization has taught millions in over 100 nations and in 20 different languages about NFP, not only by teaching people how to practice it, but also how to themselves become teachers of NFP.
Q: How does your organization carry out its mission to spread awareness and knowledge of NFP?
A: Our main work for the last 10-15 years has been training new teachers. We have developed the most comprehensive training manual for training teachers.
We do this all over the world, including the U.S., the developing world, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia, including China. We train by using CD ROMs and videos, but we believe the most useful tools are the simplest materials, and that is why our book has been published in 21 languages. We have training manuals and posters, because many times the poor countries don’t have electricity. Our systems of posters teach the whole method for women undergoing every situation of the reproductive life, from fertility to pre-menopause.
Q: Which types of birth control methods do you find the people who come to you are using the most and what are the dangers associated with these?
A: It depends on the country. In the U.S. women are still using the pill, but less, because the media has given some info on the negative side effects and people are getting scared. Young people, however, are still using patches and other forms of contraception, and they are falling into this trap because society continues to lure them into being promiscuous; that is the main problem. By the time they come to us, by the time they get married, they are already wounded because they have tried a lot of things; we are the last resource in the first world.
In the third world, however, they are still using the 3-month injections the most. It does so much harm to the poor. They are given it while mothers’ are breastfeeding their babies. The steroids are going right through the breast milk to the babies and that is a calamity. It causes cancer, heart disease, you name it; the list is interminable. And with the lack of the health facilities in the third world, it is criminal.
The pill, IUDs, injections, and the patch are devastating to the poor because they all carry the same steroids, which are known to be toxic and carcinogenic. 21 scientists with the World Health Organization in 2005 confirmed that estrogens in birth control methods are carcinogenic of the number one type, which is the most dangerous type of all.
Q: Aside from protecting women from bodily harm, how else does NFP benefit those who practice it?
A: A study of the most important work we have ever done confirms that married couples that practice NFP have a lower divorce rate than couples that use contraception. In couples where NFP was practiced, we found a miniscule .2% divorce rate. As well, happiness and success in the family life was very obvious in those families that respect the natural law by practicing NFP.
Q: What do think is the reason for the lower divorce rate?
A: There are many reasons, but the main reason is that both husband and wife are cooperating to bring life into the world or postpone it. The husband is fertile all the time and the woman is only fertile for 100 hours; most women don’t know this. God in his wisdom has put this natural science in the women’s body and it’s very obvious. Just like menstruation is obvious, the fertile time is obvious. It is a matter of paying attention.
The problem is, is there is such a money making business in contraception, so they are very anxious to keep NFP in the dark.
Vatican City, Jun 25, 2008 / 04:51 pm (CNA).- In interview published in the Wednesday edition of L’Osservatore Romano, Pope Benedict’s new Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations, Monsignor Guido Marini, says he believes that people receiving Communion kneeling and on the tongue will become common practice at the Vatican.
Msgr. Marini’s comments were made during an interview with Gianluca Biccini on some of Pope Benedict XVI’s recent liturgical decisions and their meaning.
Biccini noted in the exchange that Pope Benedict distributed Holy Communion to people who knelt and received the host on their tongues during his visit to Brindisi (Southern Italy) last week.
When he was asked if this would become a common practice at the Vatican, Marini responded, “I believe so.”
“In this regard it is necessary not to forget the fact that the distribution of Communion on the hand remains, up to now, from the juridical standpoint, an exception (indult) to the universal law, conceded by the Holy See to those bishops’ conferences who requested it,” the liturgical master of ceremonies reminded.
Canada, Mexico, the Philippines and the United States are all countries that have been granted an exception from the universal practice of receiving Communion on the tongue.
It seems though that the Pope wants to provide an example for the Church, according to Msgr. Marini, “The form adopted by Benedict XVI is meant to highlight the force of this valid norm for the whole Church.”
“It could also be noted that the (Pope’s) preference for such form of distribution which, without taking anything away from the other one, better highlights the truth of the real presence in the Eucharist, helps the devotion of the faithful, and introduces more easily to the sense of mystery. Aspects which, in our times, pastorally speaking, it is urgent to highlight and recover.”
It usually starts with the missalettes — those lightweight booklets scattered around the pews of your parish church. They contain all the readings of the Sunday Masses, plus some hymns and responses in the back. There’s nothing between the covers that would offend an orthodox sense of the faith, and most of the songs are traditional by today’s standards.
So, what’s the problem?
Well, if your missalettes are like those issued in more than half of American parishes, they’re copyrighted by the Oregon Catholic Press (OCP) — the leading Catholic purveyor of bad music in the United States. Four times a year, it prints and distributes 4.3 million copies of the seemingly unobjectionable booklets (which OCP doesn’t call missalettes).
But that’s just the beginning of its massive product line, where each item is integrated perfectly with the others to make liturgical planning quick and easy. To instruct and guide parish musicians and liturgy teams, the OCP prints hymnals, choral scores, children’s songbooks, Mass settings, liturgy magazines (with detailed instructions that are slavishly followed by parishes around the country), and CDs for planning liturgies and previewing the newest music.
This collection of products, however, does not include a hymnal — or anything else — designed to appeal to traditional sensibilities (its Heritage Hymnal is deceptively misnamed). The OCP’s experts never tire of promoting the new, rewriting the old, and inviting you to join them in their quest to “sing a new church into being” (as one of their hit songs urges). The one kind of “new” that the OCP systematically avoids is the new vogue of traditional music that has proved so appealing to young Catholics.
The bread and butter of the OCP are the 10,000 music copyrights it owns. It employs a staff of 150, runs year-round liturgy workshops all over the United States, sponsors affiliates in England and Australia, and keeps song-writers all over the English-speaking world on its payroll. In fact, it’s the preferred institutional home of those now-aging “St. Louis Jesuits” who swept out the old in 1969 and, by the mid-1970s, had parishes across the country clapping and strumming and tapping to the beat.
The OCP also sails under the flags of companies it has acquired, established, or represented along the way: New Dawn Music, Pastoral Press, North American Liturgy Resources, Trinitas, TEAM Publications, White Dove Productions, and Cooperative Ministries. Every time it purchases — or assumes the distribution of — another publisher, its assets and influence grow.
Power Without Authority
But while the OCP dictates the liturgies of most U.S. parishes, it has no ecclesiastical authority. It’s a large nonprofit corporation — a publishing wing of the Diocese of Portland — and nothing else. It has never been empowered by the U.S. bishops, much less Rome, to oversee music or liturgy in American parishes.
The OCP’s power over Catholic liturgy is derived entirely from its copyrights, phenomenal sales, and marketing genius. Nonetheless, it wields the decisive power in determining the musical culture of most public Masses in the United States.
And once a parish dips into the product line of the OCP, it is very difficult to avoid full immersion. So complete and integrated is their program that it actually reconstructs the sense that the liturgy team has about what Catholicism is supposed to feel and sound like.
But few of those subject to the power of the OCP understand that it’s the reason why Catholic liturgy so often seems like something else entirely. For example, pastors who try to control the problem by getting a grip on their liturgies quite often sense that they’re dealing with an amorphous power without a name or face. That’s because very few bother to examine the lay-directed materials that are shaping the liturgies. Too many priests are willing to leave music to the musicians, fearing that they lack the competence to intervene.
Meanwhile, the nature of the OCP is completely unknown to most laypeople. Many Catholics shudder, for example, when they hear the words Glory & Praise, the prototypical assortment of musical candy that was already stale about 15 years ago but which mysteriously continues to be repackaged and rechewed in parish after parish. “Here I am, Lord,” “Be Not Afraid,” “City of God,” “One Bread, One Body,” “Celtic Alleluia,” and (wait for it) “On Eagle’s Wings” — these all come courtesy of the OCP.
But at the publisher itself, this moldy repertoire is not an embarrassment. On the contrary, the publisher brags that Glory & Praise, whose copyright it acquired in 1994, continues to be the best-selling Catholic hymnal of all time. And what about those prayers of the faithful that seem far more politically than doctrinally correct? They’re probably from the OCP, too. A new edition of its Prayer of the Faithful is printed every year. (In what is surely great news for the unrepentant, the OCP brags that the volume helpfully includes “creative alternatives to the Penitential Rite.”)
Hijacking Of Catholic Truth
It wasn’t always like this. Before 1980, the OCP was called the Oregon Catholic Truth Society. It was founded in 1922 in response to a compulsory school-education law that forced Catholics to attend public schools. Archbishop Alexander Christie got together with his priests to found the society. Its aim: to fight bigotry and stand up for truth and Catholic rights.
In 1934, the Oregon Catholic Truth Society released a missal called My Sunday Missal. It was good-looking, inexpensive, and easy to use. It became the most popular missal ever (you can still run across it in used bookstores).
But the rest of the story is as familiar as it is troubling. Sometime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Oregon Catholic Truth Society began to lose its moorings. Catholic truth had to make room for the Age of Aquarius. Thus, in the course of a single decade, a once-reliable representative of Catholic teaching became reliably unreliable. Money given to the organization to promote truth was now being used to advance a revolutionary approach to Catholic life, one that repudiated traditional forms of the faith. The only thing that did not change was the breadth of its influence: Under the new dispensation, it was still a powerhouse of Catholic publishing.
De Profundis
If you’ve been keeping up with the OCP’s latest offerings, you know that the songs from the mid-1970s don’t begin to plumb the depths. The newest OCP hymnals are jam-packed with music from the 1980s and 1990s, with styles meant to reflect the popular music trends of the time. (Actually, they’re about five years behind the times.)
They sail under different names (Music Issue, Journeysongs, Heritage Hymnal, Glory & Praise), but the content is similar in all of them: an eclectic, hit-and-miss bag with an emphasis on new popular styles massaged for liturgical use. (Worst choice: Spirit & Song, which “encourages the youth and young adults of today to praise God in their own style”)
Some of the newer songs sound like variations on the musical themes you hear at the beginning of TV sitcoms. Some sound like Broadway-style love songs. Others have a vague Hawaiian, calypso, or blues feel. You never know what’s going to pop up next.
Not all of it is terrible. In fact, there are real toe-tappers among the songs. The question to ask, however, is whether it’s right for liturgy. The answer from the Church has been the same from the second century to the present day: The Mass requires special music, which is different from secular music and popular religious music. It must have its own unique voice — one that works, like the liturgy itself, to bring together time and eternity. It’s a style perfectly embodied in chant, polyphony, and traditional hymnody.
The OCP revels in its ability to conflate these categories; indeed, that’s the sum total of its purpose and effect. And judging from its newest new line of songs and CDs — “we just couldn’t wait until our next General Catalog to tell you about it” — your parish can look forward to a variety of ska and reggae songs adapted for congregational purposes.
How It Hooks You
But let’s go back to that innocent, floppy missalette. The OCP claims it has many advantages. Missalettes “make it easy for you to introduce the latest music to your parish, and changes in Church rituals are easy to implement.” Thus the missalette is “always up-to-date.”
It’s also quite a bargain. If you buy more than 50 subscriptions to the quarterly missalette, you receive other goodies bundled inside. You’ll get a Music Issue (the main OCP hymnal) to supplement the thin selection in the missalette. In addition, you’ll receive a keyboard accompaniment book, a guitar book, the Choral Praise Comprehensive, a handy service binder, two annual copies of Respond & Acclaim for the psalm and the gospel acclamation, biannual copies of Prayer of the Faithful, two subscriptions to Today’s Liturgy (which tells liturgy teams what to sing and say, when and how), and one master index. And the more you buy, the more you get.
Why would you want all this stuff? Well, if you’re in parish music, you’ll quickly discover that the missalette has too few hymns to cover the whole season. The Music Issue seems like an economical purchase. But there’s something odd about the OCP’s most popular music book: There’s no scriptural index. How do you know what hymns fit with what gospel reading?
No problem. Just buy a copy of Today’s Liturgy, which spells it all out for you. If you want a broader selection of possible hymns, you can also order the OCP’s LitPlan software or its monthly Choral Resources, which is visually more complicated than the Federal Register (but still contains no scriptural index).
If you follow the free liturgical planner closely, you’ll notice you can purchase a variety of choral arrangements and special new music (copyright OCP) that match perfectly with the response, the hymnal, and the missalette (copyright OCP), which is itself integrated with the prayers of the faithful (copyright OCP) and the gospel (not yet OCP copyright). And so it goes, until you follow the complete OCP plan for each Mass, from the first “Good morning, Father!” to the last “Go in peace to love and serve others!” By making each element dependent on the next, the OCP has ensured a steady — if trapped — clientele.
Musical Gnosticism
But why should the liturgy team go along with this program? The average parish musical team is made up of non-professionals. Its poorly paid members are untrained in music history; they have no particular craving for chant or polyphony, which often seems quite remote to them. Most musicians in average Catholic parishes would have no idea how to plug into the rite an extended musical setting from, say, the high Renaissance, even if they had the desire to do so.
The OCP understands this point better than most publishers. In an interview, Michael Prendergast, editor of Today’s Liturgy, pointed again and again to the limited resources of typical parishes. The OCP sees serving such needs as a core part of its publishing strategy; its materials keep reminding us that we don’t need to know Church music to get involved.
Lack of familiarity with the Church’s musical tradition would not be a grave problem if there were a staple of standard hymns and Mass settings to fall back on. But it has been at least 30 years since such a setting was available in most parishes. The average parish musician wants to use his talents to serve the parish in whatever way possible, but he’s at a complete loss as to how to do it without outside guidance. The OCP fills that vacuum.
Under its tutelage, you can aspire to be a real liturgical expert, which means you have attended a few workshops run by OCP-connected guitarists and songwriters (who explain that your job as a musician is to whip people into a musical frenzy: loud microphones, drum tracks, over-the-top enthusiasm when announcing the latest hymn). These “experts” love the OCP’s material because it allows them to keep up the pretense that they have some special knowledge about what hymns should be used for what occasions and how the Mass ought to proceed.
Real Catholic musicians who have worked with the OCP material tell horror stories of incredible liturgical malpractice. The music arrangements are often muddled and busy, making it all but impossible for regular parishioners to sing. This is especially true of arrangements for traditional songs, where popular chords give old hymns a gauzy cast that reminds you of the 1970s group Chicago.
The liturgical planning guides are a ghastly embarrassment. Two years ago, for example, the liturgical planner recommended “Seek Ye First” for the first Sunday in Lent (“Al-le-lu-, Al-le-lu-yah”). In numerous slots during the liturgy, OCP offers no alternative to debuting its new tunes. When traditional hymns are offered, they’re often drawn from the Protestant tradition, or else the words are changed in odd ways (see, for example, its strange version of “Ubi Caritas”). The liturgical instructions are equally pathetic. On July 8 this year, the liturgical columnist passes on this profound summary of the gospel of the day: “Live and let live.”
The Middle Way?
Nevertheless, the OCP seems to have solved a major liturgical rift affecting today’s local churches. Just as every parish used to have a low-Mass crowd and a high-Mass crowd, there are now two factions in parishes: One wants more “contemporary” music of the sort seen in Life-Teen Masses— loud, rhythmic, and rockish. Another wants traditional music and sensibly asks whatever happened to the hymns of the old days. These two groups are forever at loggerheads and have been so for decades. In fact, most pastors are so sick of the dispute that they’ll do anything to avoid talking about music at Mass.
This is where OCP steps in and serves as the peacekeeping moderate. After all, it’s an established music publisher, and thanks to the missalette, it doesn’t appear (at first) to be particularly partisan. Its literature contains enough traditional material to allow the liturgical team to claim they’re sensitive to the needs of both the contemporary and traditional factions. Indeed, the OCP eschews the most extreme forms of grunge-metal Life-Teen music (though its Spirit & Song comes close). At first sight, it does appear to take the middle ground between two extremes. In truth, however, it’s only slightly behind the curve of the most radical liturgical innovators — as it’s always behind the curve in the popular styles it tries to imitate.
What about the other option of splitting up the Masses according to style, so that those who like traditional music can have their own Mass and the people who compose for the OCP can have theirs? Prendergast rejects this. Whether the style is traditional, contemporary, folk, or even “rock,” Prendergast says, “everyone in the parish has to be exposed to it.” And what if a pastor just doesn’t like rock and other contemporary styles? Prendergast says, “I would talk to the [chancery’s] Office of Worship about him.” I asked whether that means he would turn this poor priest in to the bishop. His response: “I would try to arrange for him to attend a workshop on liturgy.”
With a great deal of knowledge, careful planning, and conscious intent, it is possible to manufacture decent liturgies even if the OCP music is all you have. You’ll have to dig to find the good hymns (10 to 20 percent in the typical OCP publications), but it can be done. It’s also true that not everyone involved with the OCP wants to destroy all that has gone before. There are probably many people on its middle-aged staff who from time to time cringe at the music, just as the people in the pews do. For his part, Prendergast is sure that he thinks with the mind of the Church, and there’s no reason to doubt his sincerity.
In fact, there are periodic signs of hope. Regular readers of Today’s Liturgy might have been astounded to see the recent one-page article buried in its pages that urged children be taught Latin hymns and chant. “The Second Vatican Council did not destroy the tradition of chant,” said the writer, who was a student of the excellent English composer John Rutter. “We can still claim our chant heritage as part of the living Church’s journey into the future.” Indeed we can! But the news seems to be slow in getting around the OCP office. (The same issue contained a blast against a poor old lady who read a prayer book during Mass instead of singing goodness knows what.)
What’s completely amazing about the entire OCP family is how lacking it is in self-awareness. The poor quality of contemporary Catholic music is a cultural cliché that turns up in late-night shows, Woody Allen movies, and Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion. It is legendary among real musicians. Ask an organist what he thinks about today’s Catholic music, and you will receive a raised eyebrow or a knowing laugh.
What You Can Do Right Now
The truth is that no one is happy with the state of Catholic liturgical music — least of all musicians — and the OCP is a big part of the problem. So, what can you do? Step 1 is to get rid of the liturgical planning guides and use an old Scripture index to select good hymns that have stood the test of time (if you absolutely must continue to use the OCP’s materials). Step 2 is to rein in the liturgical managers and explain to them that the Eucharist, and not music, is the reason people show up to Mass Sunday after Sunday. Step 3 is to get rid of the OCP hymnals and replace them with Adoremus or Collegeville or something from GIA (no, none of these is perfect, but they are all an oasis by comparison).
Finally, reconsider those innocuous little missalettes. These harmless-looking booklets may be the source of the trouble. Parishes can unsubscribe — accept no OCP handouts or volume discounts. There are plenty of passable missalettes and hymnals out there, and all the choral music you’ll ever need is now public domain and easily downloadable for free (www.cpdl.org).
In his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy (Ignatius Press, 2000), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger states clearly that popular music does not belong at Mass. Indeed, it’s part of “a cult of the banal,” and “rock” plainly stands “in opposition to Christian worship.”
This is very strong language from the cardinal. And yet we know that many liturgy teams in American parishes will continue to do what they’ve been doing for decades — systematically reconstructing the liturgy to accommodate pop aesthetic sensibilities. The liturgy is treated not as something sublimely different but as a well-organized social hour revolving around religious themes.
It’s up to you to decide the future course of your parish’s liturgy: reverent worship or hootenanny. Despite what the OCP might tell you, you can’t have both.
J. A. Turner is the choral director of a schola cantorum and writes frequently for Crisis.
QUEBEC CITY, JUNE 22, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is encouraging the faithful to revisit the Second Vatican Council constitution on the liturgy, so as to go deeper in the mystery of faith that is the Eucharist.
The Pope made this appeal today when he delivered via satellite the homily for the closing Mass of the 49th International Eucharistic Congress, which ended today in Quebec. The papal legate, Cardinal Jozef Tomko, presided over the Mass.
In his address, given in French and English, the Holy Father said,
“‘The Mystery of Faith’: this we proclaim at every Mass. I would like everyone to make a commitment to study this great mystery, especially by revisiting and exploring, individually and in groups, the Council’s text on the liturgy, ‘Sacrosanctum Concilium,’ so as to bear witness courageously to the mystery.”
Here it is … The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (Sacred Council). I urge you to take our Holy Father’s direction and spend some time with this.
Also, if you’re feeling like REALLY digging in, you might want to take the time to enrich your understanding of Sacred Music by reading the most important encyclical on this in Pius X’s, Tra le Sollecitudini. I realize this is all for the heavy hitters, but I encourage you all to “hit away.”
I revisited the Vatican II liturgy document earlier today, and I was reminded just how many “liberties” were taken from some of the language used in this document. It is quite a “stretch” made by those “spirit of Vatican II” folks who managed to “spin” this document’s intent into a liberal agenda which has left us in utter liturgical ruins.
I recall one parish who would tearfully tell the story of how, year’s ago, their once beautifully adorned church was gutted out and converted into the likes of a lecture hall, while they saw their magnificent back altars laid in a pile by the dumpster behind the church for months.
At the same time, we have witnessed the uplifting angelic sound of Gregorian Chant and sacred polyphony replaced with a range of hippy ballads, campfire songs and the modern medley of night club style “entertainment.” All of which have gone a long way to distract us and startle us out of prayer rather than draw us into any kind of encountering with the Risen Lord in a life-changing way.
Pope Benedict’s priority of restoring the sacred essence of liturgy stems from his understanding that, in order for us to restore “right relationship” with God, we must know how, first, we should approach Him. In other words, how we should offer “right worship.” Recall how God asked Moses to remove his sandals because he was on holy ground. Recall how God has spent all of salvation history instructing his faithful to build him a temple fitting his majesty.
… the word “orthodoxy.” Literally, “ortho” means “right” or “correct,” and “doxy,” though it does have a connotation of “belief,” literally means “praise” or “worship.” So orthodoxy, more than “right belief,” means “right praise” or “correct worship.” When we say we wish to be “orthodox,” we are really saying that we want to do what King David said all of us should do: worship God with “all that is within us” and to do this in the correct way, in a way pleasing to God and worthy of him. The central problem the Church faces today, as always, is the problem of orthodoxy. (From the opposite point of view, it is the problem of apostasy, of making the decision to no longer praise God in the right way, or to no longer praise him at all.) But orthodoxy is not simply a matter of dogmas, of doctrines, of phrases memorized, of a series of propositions. It is a matter of “right praise.”
In conclusion, sacredness of life, sacredness of marriage, sacredness of relationships, sacredness of conjugal love, etc. will all return when we return to “right relationship” with God. And this right relationship will come when we return to the “sacred way” we once knew in how to come to “right worship.”
Barack Obama: “But if they (Obama’s daughters) make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
Let’s keep it going …
Here is another impassioned comment — from someone “out in the trenches” — on the Bill Donahue article at InsideCatholic. These comments are doing a tremendous job in reflecting all of our frustrations as “Catholics” are about to give this Infanticide Candidate the edge he needs to win this election. Truly this is a consequence of silent leadership and poor catechesis over the past four decades. My friends, we have work to do. But, first, we must pray, pray, pray!!!
I suppose you all know all the answers. After all you all have been in the trenches of the pro-life movement of the last 30 years and you have seen where we have been kicked in the teeth by our political friends and taken to court and sued by our enemies. You have tried with every bone in your body to save some girl you don’t even know from killing her baby only to fail and wonder what you could have done different.
Yet you stand in judgment over the mistakes of those who trusted and believed in a better way or a new direction or an incremental approach. Now you curse the political process and demand purity in a world so messed up that the lead story reports that 17 girls made a pact to get pregnant, while the west coast papers gleefully report the onslaught of the next homosexual revolution.
So cast your vote for a third party candidate and feel good about yourself. Help Obama get elected so he can promote abortion worldwide. Ignore what we CAN do and pontificate about how evil Bush and his friends are.
I will not give up. I will support John McCain because while he may not be the perfect candidate, he is far and away the better of the lot. He can get elected, unlike the minor candidates mentioned above. None of them is electable. None of them are serious campaigners. For them it is about ego.
Obama will be a disaster, just as Clinton was a disaster. Two days after Clinton was elected on January 22, 1993, he repealed the Mexico City Policy restricting federal funding of international organizations that work to reverse countries’ abortion laws, reversed Title 10 regulations banning abortion referral by federal employees,negated the ban on funding for fetal tissue transplants, ordered military hospitals to perform abortions, and asked the FDA to “review” the import ban on RU 486.
Clinton nominated Ginsburg and Breyer. Who do you think Obama will select? A pro-abortion liberal pro-homosexual, anti-Catholic judge.
As for the Missouri effort, two more weeks and the pro-lifers would have won. It was a classic case of no one believing we could win and our weakness proving the point. Yet in spite of the nay sayers, they almost pulled it off.
As for the other important issues of the day, how many of them are killing 3600 babies a day? Stop abortion and see the trickle down effect on society. Stop abortion and export the concept of real honest to goodness respect for human life. Stop polluting the womb and maybe people will understand why they should not pollute the environment.
As for pro-life Democrats, please stop telling Republicans how evil they are while my former party continues to have blood on its hands. I remember when the party was taken over by hte pro-abortionists. I also remember how pro-life voting democrats one by one surrendered their convictions, sold heir souls and pandered to the pro-abortion Left. Gore, Biden, Kennedy, Durbin, Gephardt, all turned their back on the children to remain in or seek to advance in power. Then there were the Cuomos and the Moynihans and O’Neils who time and again talked about the being “personally opposed” in order to defend their pro-abortion policies. And who can forget our own Fr. Drinan who went out of his way to defend the abortionist politicians and voted that way himself. What have any of them done to help the unborn?
I suppose you all know all the answers. After all you all have been in the trenches of the pro-life movement of the last 30 years and you have seen where we have been kicked in the teeth by our political friends and taken to court and sued by our enemies. You have tried with every bone in your body to save some girl you don’t even know from killing her baby only to fail and wonder what you could have done different.
Yet you stand in judgment over the mistakes of those who trusted and believed in a better way or a new direction or an incremental approach. Now you curse the political process and demand purity in a world so messed up that the lead story reports that 17 girls made a pact to get pregnant, while the west coast papers gleefully report the onslaught of the next homosexual revolution.
So cast your vote for a third party candidate and feel good about yourself. Help Obama get elected so he can promote abortion worldwide. Ignore what we CAN do and pontificate about how evil Bush and his friends are.
I will not give up. I will support John McCain because while he may not be the perfect candidate, he is far and away the better of the lot. He can get elected, unlike the minor candidates mentioned above. None of them is electable. None of them are serious campaigners. For them it is about ego.
Obama will be a disaster, just as Clinton was a disaster. Two days after Clinton was elected on January 22, 1993, he repealed the Mexico City Policy restricting federal funding of international organizations that work to reverse countries’ abortion laws, reversed Title 10 regulations banning abortion referral by federal employees,negated the ban on funding for fetal tissue transplants, ordered military hospitals to perform abortions, and asked the FDA to “review” the import ban on RU 486.
Clinton nominated Ginsburg and Breyer. Who do you think Obama will select? A pro-abortion liberal pro-homosexual, anti-Catholic judge.
As for the Missouri effort, two more weeks and the pro-lifers would have won. It was a classic case of no one believing we could win and our weakness proving the point. Yet in spite of the nay sayers, they almost pulled it off.
As for the other important issues of the day, how many of them are killing 3600 babies a day? Stop abortion and see the trickle down effect on society. Stop abortion and export the concept of real honest to goodness respect for human life. Stop polluting the womb and maybe people will understand why they should not pollute the environment.
As for pro-life Democrats, please stop telling Republicans how evil they are while my former party continues to have blood on its hands. I remember when the party was taken over by hte pro-abortionists. I also remember how pro-life voting democrats one by one surrendered their convictions, sold heir souls and pandered to the pro-abortion Left. Gore, Biden, Kennedy, Durbin, Gephardt, all turned their back on the children to remain in or seek to advance in power. Then there were the Cuomos and the Moynihans and O’Neils who time and again talked about the being “personally opposed” in order to defend their pro-abortion policies. And who can forget our own Fr. Drinan who went out of his way to defend the abortionist politicians and voted that way himself. What have any of them done to help the unborn?
I was getting ready to post Bill Donahue’s recent article from over at InsideCatholic (which you can read here) but I was, instead, taken by the thoughtful and informative reflection (in the comments section of that article) on the “real story” of Obama’s Pro-death record. So, I felt compelled to reprint it here.
Again, while we are called to vote based on an informed conscience, that information must come from beyond the occassional cocktail party or telephone conversations with friends. My hope is that by posting these truths about Obama’s pro-death record, more of our Catholic friends will dig a little deeper into considering who is “truly” coming to the aid of the MOST innocent and vulnerable:
He has a 100% rating from NARAL and is quoted as saying
“Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, it’s never been more important to protect a woman’s right to choose… Throughout my career, I’ve been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America… As President, I will improve access to affordable health care and work to ensure that our teens are getting the information and services they need to stay safe and healthy.”
He also told NARAL
“A woman’s ability to decide how many children to have and when, without interference from the government, is one of the most fundamental rights we possess. It is not just an issue of choice, but equality and opportunity for all women.
So Obama believes in
“I have consistently advocated for reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as President. I oppose any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in this case.
I support legislation to expand access to contraception, health information, and preventative services to help reduce unintended pregnancies. That is why I co-sponsored the Prevention First Act of 2007, which will increase funding for family planning and comprehensive sex education that teaches both abstinence and safe sex methods. It will also end insurance discrimination against contraception, improve awareness about emergency contraception, and provide compassionate assistance to rape victims.
“Finally, I support the enactment and enforcement of laws that help prevent violence, intimidation, and harassment directed at reproductive health providers and their patients.”
So Obama believes in …
abortion
emergency contraception
distributing more contraception to teen age girls without parental consent
federal and state funding of abortion services
appointing pro-abortion judges
universal health care including abortion paid for by the taxpayers.
This guy’s opinions and philosophy are so ANTI-Catholic that anyone who cannot see it must be wearing blinders.
Remember this is a guy who tells you to expect the government to make the “change.” After all he never pulled anything out of his pocket except the crumbs to support the poor.
When he made over $270,000 in 2001, his charitable contributions were less than $1500. In 2002 he gave $1050 after he and Michele earned over 259,000. This is a guy who cares about the poor. Get real.
A Catholic cannot in good conscience support a person who wants to keep the killing of children legal, anyone than he could support someone back in the 1850s who wanted to keep slavery legal.”
Posted by Fr. Richard Heilman 
Mary\'s Anawim 