MUCUS and MOTHER TERESA

This blogpost was written by Dorothy Vining, a writer and pro-life advocate in my town. She came to our NFP "Upgrade" Class for CCL members. Her blog is Musings at 85.

By Dorothy Vining

I’m 86, I just got back from a Natural Family Planning course, and here I am, all excited all over again! I am, perhaps, not in the usual NFP demographic, but I never cease to be amazed at the wonders of the human body and I’ve been writing about the efficacy of NFP for years now.

I am also totally amazed that supposedly intelligent people, all green and natural, with their filtered water, their organic veggies, and their free ranging chickens, are willing to pollute their one and only body rather than – God forbid – abstain from sex every now and then. There is just no end to the variety of non-biological carcinogenic steroids that they are willing to ingest, insert, or apply as rings, things, pills and patches, rather than learn to understand their bodies and behave rationally.

Quite conveniently I have come across an old article of mine with a September, 1993, quote from the British Medical Journal authored by Dr. R.E.J. Ryder, Department of Endocrinology, Dudley Road Hospital in Birmingham, England. In it Dr. Ryder says that the Catholic church offers and approves a method of birth control which is “cheap, effective, without side-effects…and may be the family planning method of choice for the Third World.” His article provoked “unprecedented debate” in Great Britain and there was “enormous resistance” to its publication.

Dr. Ryder repeated the well-known facts that a woman’s egg has a lifespan of about 24 hours and is fertilizable for only part of that time. The sperm, however, may remain viable from four to seven days. “Thus a woman is potentially fertile for no more than six to eight days of her cycle, probably less in most cases.” Hormonal studies as well as ultrasound studies have confirmed that the clinical observations of changes in cervical mucus and body temperature as taught in Natural Family Planning can accurately identify the time of ovulation. He cited a World Health Organization study of 869 women of proven fertility in five centers (Auckland, Bangalore, Dublin, Manila, and San Miguel, El Salvador) showing that regardless of culture and education 93% of the women – even those who were illiterate — could recognize the mucus symptoms. “The probability of conception from intercourse outside the period of fertility defined by cervical mucus observation was 0.0004.”

Another study of 19,843 poor women of Calcutta found a failure rate for Natural Family Planning similar to that of the combined contraceptive pill (less than 2%). In closing his article Dr. Ryder wrote: “There is no doubt that it would be more efficient for the ongoing world debate on overpopulation, resources, environment, poverty and health to be conducted against a background of truth rather than fallacy. It is therefore important that the misconception that Catholicism is synonymous with ineffective birth control is laid to rest.”

One has only to Google any contraceptive medication to learn about their myriad complications and side-effects and realize they are all harmful to normal female functioning. (Dr. Herbert Ratner has called it chemical warfare against women!) A woman on the Pill can be a paying customer for 30 years. Doctor, pharmacist, and drug company all profit all that time. Unfortunately, nature has no lobby.

I went to this NFP meeting because I had heard that nowadays the NFP people have a new “one rule” which makes it easier to determine a woman’s fertile and infertile periods. Yes, there are still charts to keep (at least until you are well acquainted with how your particular body functions), temperatures to take, and mucus and cervical signs to record. The new rule is more about looking at the whole picture rather than any particular bodily indicator. For particulars, two resource sites might be helpful.

I was particularly intrigued by the wonders of cervical mucus. Who would have known? It turns out that there are various kinds of cervical mucus at various times during a woman’s cycle, some dense and unwelcoming, but there is a “slippery and stretchy mucus,” resembling raw egg white, in which the sperm can live for 2 to 3 days while waiting for a fertilized egg to arrive. Microscopically, it forms string-like channels and provides transport (‘swimming lanes’) for sperm cells. It produces a “wet, lubricative sensation at the vulva.”

I have read that the Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa’s order) have been able to teach effective natural birth control in India relying primarily on the mucus factor. As I recall, the instruction went something like this: Moisture makes babies grow; dryness prevents growth. (I don’t remember the exact words, but you get the idea.) There has been no more ardent advocate for natural family planning than Mother Teresa.

Who would think I would one day write a blog post on the marvels of mucus? Swimming channels for sperm in women’s cervical mucus! How much more accommodating could we get?

Surely, we are fearfully and wonderfully made!

Read more!

Gardasil- what we knew all along!

Merck Researcher Admits: Gardasil Guards Against Almost Nothing
by Joan Robinson and Steven W. Mosher


On the morning of 2 October 2009, one of us (Joan) joined an audience of mostly health professionals and listened as Dr. Diane Harper, the leading international developer of the HPV vaccines, gave a sales pitch for Gardasil. Gardasil, as you may know, is the new vaccine that is supposed to confer protection against four strains of the sexually transmitted Human Papillomavirus (HPV).

Dr. Harper came to the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination to prove to us the real benefits of Gardasil. Sadly, her own presentation left me (Joan) and others filled with doubts. By her own admission, Gardasil has the doctors surrounding me glaring at a poor promise of efficacy as a vaccine married to a high risk of life-threatening side effects.
Gardasil, Dr. Harper explained, is promoted by Merck, the pharmaceutical manufacturer, as a “safe and effective” prevention measure against cervical cancer. The theory behind the vaccine is that, as HPV may cause cervical cancer, conferring a greater immunity of some strains of HPV might reduce the incidence of this form of cancer. In pursuit of this goal, tens of millions of American girls have been vaccinated to date.

As I sat scribbling down Merck’s claims, I wondered why such mass vaccination campaigns were necessary. After all, as Dr. Harper explained, 70% of HPV infections resolve themselves without treatment in one year. After two years, this rate climbs to 90%. Of the remaining 10% of HPV infections, only half coincide with the development of cervical cancer.

Dr. Harper further undercut the case for mass vaccination campaigns in the U.S. when she pointed out that “4 out of 5 women with cervical cancer are in developing countries.” (Harper serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) for HPV vaccination in the developing world.) Indeed, she surprised her audience by stating that the incidence of cervical cancer in the U.S. is so low that “if we get the vaccine and continue PAP screening, we will not lower the rate of cervical cancer in the US.”

If this is the case, I thought, then why vaccinate at all? From the murmurs of the doctors in the audience, it was apparent that the same thought had occurred to them.

In the U.S. the cervical cancer rate is 8 per 100,000 women.1 Moreover, it is one of the most treatable forms of cancer. The current death rate from cervical cancer is between 1.6 to 3.7 deaths per 100,000 cases of the disease.2 The American Cancer Society (ACS) notes that “between 1955 and 1992, the cervical cancer death rate declined by 74%” and adds that “the death rate from cervical cancer continues to decline by nearly 4% each year.”3

At this point, I began to wriggle around in my seat, uncomfortably wondering, is the vaccine really effective? Using data from trials funded by Merck, Dr. Harper cheerfully continued to demolish the case for the vaccine that she was ostensibly there to promote. She informed us that “with the use of Gardasil, there will be no decrease in cervical cancer until at least 70% of the population is vaccinated, and in that case, the decrease will be very minimal. The highest amount of minimal decrease will appear in 60 years.”

It is hard to imagine a less compelling case for Gardasil. First of all, it is highly unlikely that 70% or more of the female population will continue to get routine Gardasil shots and boosters, along with annual PAP smears. And even if it did, according to Dr. Harper, “after 60 years, the vaccination will [only] have prevented 70% of incidences” of cervical cancer.

But rates of death from cervical cancer are already declining. Let’s do the math. If the 4% annual decline in cervical cancer death continues, in 60 years there will have been a 91.4% decline in cervical cancer death just from current cancer monitoring and treatment. Comparing this rate of decline to Gardasil’s projected “very minimal” reduction in the rate of cervical cancer of only 70 % of incidences in 60 years, it is hard to resist the conclusion that Gardasil does almost nothing for the health of American women.

Despite these dismal projections, Gardasil continues to be widely and aggressively promoted among pre-teen girls. The CDC reports that, by 1 June 2009, over 26 million doses of Gardasil have been distributed in the U.S.4 With hopes of soon tapping the adolescent male demographic, Merck, the pharmaceutical manufacturer of the vaccine, and certain Merck-funded U.S. medical organizations are targeting girls between the ages of 9 and 13.5 As CBS news reports, “Gardasil, launched in 2006 for girls and young women, quickly became one of Merck's top-selling vaccines, thanks to aggressive marketing and attempts to get states to require girls to get the vaccine as a requirement for school attendance.”6

Just as I began, in my own mind, to question ethics of mass vaccinations of prepubescent girls, Dr. Harper dropped another bombshell. “There have been no efficacy trials in girls under 15 years,” she told us.

Merck did study a small group of girls under 16 who had been vaccinated, but did not follow them long enough to conclude sufficient presence of effective HPV antibodies.

If I wasn’t skeptical enough already, I really started scratching my head when Dr. Harper explained, “if you vaccinate a child, she won’t keep immunity in puberty and you do nothing to prevent cervical cancer.” But it turned out that she wasn’t arguing for postponing Gardasil vaccination until later puberty, as I first thought. Rather, Dr. Harper only emphasized to the doctors in the audience the need for Gardasil booster shots, because it is still unknown how long the vaccine immunity lasts. More booster shots mean more money for Merck, obviously.

I left Dr. Harper’s lecture convinced that Gardasil did little to stop cervical cancer, and determined to answer another question that she had largely ducked: Is this vaccine safe?
Here’s what my research turned up. To date, 15,037 girls have officially reported adverse side effects from Gardasil to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). These adverse effects include Guilliane Barre, lupus, seizures, paralysis, blood clots, brain inflammation and many others. The CDC acknowledges that there have been 44 reported deaths.7

Dr. Harper, who seems to specialize in dropping bombshells, dropped another in an interview with ABC News when she admitted that “The rate of serious adverse events is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.”8 This being the case, one might want to take one’s chances with cancer, especially because the side effects of the vaccine are immediate, while the possibility of developing cancer is years in the future.

In the clinical studies alone, 23 girls died after receiving either Gardasil or the Aluminum control injection. 15 of the 13,686 girls who received Gardasil died, while 8 died among the 11,004 who received the Aluminum shot. There was only one death among the group that had a saline placebo. What this means is that 1 out of every 912 girls in the Gardasil clinical studies died. (9, see page 8.) The cervical cancer death rate is 1 out of every 40,000 women per year.10
The numbers of deaths and adverse effects are undoubtedly underestimates. Dr. Harper’s comments to ABC News concur with the National Vaccine Information Center’s claim that “though nearly 70 percent of all Gardasil reaction reports were filed by Merck, a whopping 89 percent of the reports Merck did file were so incomplete there was not enough information for health officials to do a proper follow-up and review.”11 On average, less than 10 percent—perhaps even less than 1 percent—of serious vaccine adverse events are ever reported, according to the American Journal of Public Health.12

Given the severity and frequency of Gardasil adverse reactions, I definitely wasn’t the only one in Dr. Harper’s audience who winced when she dismissed most Gardasil side effects as “easily just needle phobia.”

Due to the young age of the trial participants and the short duration of the studies, the effects of Gardasil on female fecundity have not been studied. I did discover, in my post-conference reading, that Polysorbate 80, an ingredient in the vaccine (13, see page 12), has been observed in a European clinical study to cause infertility in rats.14 Is this an additional concern? Time will tell.

I do not wish to give the impression that Dr. Harper presented, even inadvertently, a consistently negative view of her own vaccine. She did tout certain “real benefits,” chief among them that “the vaccine will reduce the number of follow-up tests after abnormal PAP smears,” and thereby reduce the “relationship tension,” “stress and anxiety” of abnormal or false HPV positive results.

To me, however, this seems a rather slim promise, especially when weighed against the deaths and side effects caused by the Gardasil campaign. Should millions of girls in the United States, many as young as 9, be put at risk, so that sexually active adults can have less “relationship tension” about false positive Hepatitis results? Is the current rate of death, sterility and serious immune dysfunction from Gardasil worth the potential that in 60 years a minimal amount of a cervical disease (that is already decreasing on its own) may perhaps be reduced?

But what I really wanted to know is why Merck is so eagerly marketing such a dangerous and ineffective vaccine? Aren’t there other ways they could make a profit? While Merck’s behavior is probably adequately explained by the profit motive, what about those in the Health and Human Services bureaucracy who apparently see Gardasil as medicine’s gift to women? What motivates them?

I (Steve) think that they see Gardasil as what one might call a “wedge” drug. For them, the success of this public vaccination campaign has less to do with stopping cervical cancer, than it does with opening the door to other vaccination campaigns for other sexually transmitted diseases, and perhaps even including pregnancy itself. For if they can overcome the objections of parents and religious organizations to vaccinating pre-pubescent—and not sexually active—girls against one form of STD, then it will make it easier for them to embark on similar programs in the future.

After all, the proponents of sexual liberation are determined not to let mere disease—or even death—stand in the way of their pleasures. They believe that there must be technological solutions to the diseases that have arisen from their relentless promotion of promiscuity. After all, the alternative is too horrible to contemplate: They might have to learn to control their appetites. And they might have to teach abstinence.

Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute.
Joan Robinson is an Assistant Editor at the Population Research Institute.

Read more!

Support this movie before we have to support OBAMACARE

Please visit the Blood Money Film website and register your support of this film. If the creators of the film can show there is support for seeing this film in theaters they will find a distributor willing to take a chance on this controversial topic. So please tell your friends, family, and your church and help build public support.

It needs to be released now, before OBAMACARE can do its damage!

Read more!

Join Obama's Martha's Vineyard Pro-Life Vacation Protest!

The health care bills in Congress could result in the greatest expansion of abortion funding since the 1970's—and President Obama refuses to admit it. It's time to call him on it.

You, and Family Institute of Connecticut members are invited to Woods Hole, MA for a press conference this Thursday, August 27 at 9:45 in the morning, and then over to Martha's Vineyard by Ferry to join a protest against the President's Abortion Mandate.

We will join pro-life activist Chris Slattery in helping to expose a pro-life message against our Abortion insurance Mandate President during his Martha's Vineyard Vacation stay this Thursday. There will be no civil disobedience, and no arrests planned.

This protest will get media attention with the message that pro-life Americans will not tolerate an abortion mandate in health care reform.

Start time is Thursday, August 27 at 9:45am and end time is Friday, August 28 at 5:00pm. Where: Martha's Vineyard Starting at Mainland Ferry & then on Island

To RSVP call Chris Slattery at 914-224-5773 or for more details Facebook users should follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=136771202016&mid=fd167bG4369ecf6Gbede2eG7

And please click here to support Connecticut's leading pro-life organization: The Family Institute of Connecticut!

Read more!

Only 27% of the nation's voters strongly approve of the job Obama is doing

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Just when it appears pro-abortion President Barack Obama has finally reached rock bottom in his approval ratings descent, he falls even lower. With the Obama administration not only pushing a pro-abortion health care bill but accusing pro-life groups of lying to the American people about it, Obama loses more and more support. The Rasmussen Reports daily presidential tracking poll for Sunday shows just 27% of the nation's voters strongly approve of the job Obama is doing as president. That contrasts with the 41 percent who strongly disapprove. Rasmussen tracks the views of voters who have the strongest feelings one way or another, calling it the Presidential Approval Index, and this rating of -14 is the lowest Obama has seen since he took over the White House in January. Some of the decline has come from within Obama's own party as only 49% of Democrats offer such a positive assessment of the president at this time. At the other end of the spectrum, today’s total for the Strongly Disapprove answer matches the highest level yet recorded. The 41% mark was reached just once before and that came one week ago today. Seventy percent of Republicans now Strongly Disapprove along with 49% of those not affiliated with either major party. Overall, using a more conventional analysis, only 48% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's performance while 51% now disapprove.

Read more!

Health Care Reform is an extension of Roe v. Wade- and worse

Read more!

Protected sex doesn't protect mental status

More proof that sex was meant by God to procreate and bond as husband and wife. Barriers are needed in a culture of promiscuity. Barriers are bad within marriage. To protect against pregnancy, the result of the marital act, barriers are necessary. Research proves what we already know as true.

By Hilary White

PAISLEY, Scotland, August 4, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Research from Scotland finding that heterosexual sex without using condoms is more likely to make people happy than "safe sex" with condoms, has stirred controversy among "sexual health" campaigners. The lead researcher wrote of the survey respondents, "The more often they have sex without condoms, the better their mental health."

In the study, titled, "Condom Use for Penile-Vaginal Intercourse is Associated with Immature Psychological Defense Mechanisms," Professor Stuart Brody of the University of the West of Scotland in Paisley gave questionnaires to 111 Portuguese men and 99 women asking questions about their sex lives and their state of mind over a period of one month. The findings are to be published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour.

The study's abstract gives the purpose as the examination of a hypothesis put forward by Sigmund Freud, "that use of immature psychological defense mechanisms correlates directly with frequency of condom use during PVI, but inversely with frequency of PVI [penile-vaginal intercourse] without condoms."

The survey found that "frequency of PVI with condoms correlated directly with use of immature defenses," according to a standard test of psychological reactions. It also found that "immature defenses" were associated with masturbation in both sexes. In general, the study concluded that condom use during PVI is associated with "psychological immaturity and predisposition to poorer mental health," including depression and suicidal tendencies.

Brody wrote, "The more often they have sex without condoms, the better their mental health." His findings suggest that condom use negates the mental health benefits of what he called "evolutionarily relevant sex." He theorized that there is a direct biochemical response in natural heterosexual relations that is blocked by condoms.

Brody wrote in the study, "Possible explanations for the interference of condoms with the health benefits of PVI include blocking of antidepressant and immunological agents in semen and genital secretions, reduced sexual satisfaction and intimacy, and psychopathology-prone persons who are more psychologically immature and/or heterosocially anxious being more likely to use condoms for PVI."

In an interview with the UK's Independent newspaper, Brody responded to criticisms from sex-campaigners at the Family Planning Association that his findings, if they were acted upon, would result in increases in sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies.

"I have an interest in the best possible science," he said. "I don't want to let anything get in the way, whether its political correctness, or religion. I have deliberately not used the term 'heterosexual sex'," he said.

"Evolution is not politically correct, so of the very broad range of potential sexual behaviour, there is actually only one that is consistently associated with better physical and mental health and that is the one sexual behaviour that would be favoured by evolution. That is not accidental."

In 2007, Brody angered homosexualist activists in the UK when he published research that found intercourse between men and women is the only form of sexual behaviour that improves "psychological and physiological function." He found that levels of prolactin, the hormone that provides the body with sexual gratification, were 400 percent higher among male and female couples who had heterosexual intercourse than those engaging in other forms of sex.

Peter Tatchell, one of Britain's leading homosexualist spokesmen, called the research "unscientific and extreme" and said it contradicted other studies by the US sex researchers Masters and Johnson. Tatchell said, "Brody's is an extreme and disparaging stance to adopt and he seems to have an ideological agenda to promote conventional heterosexual intercourse."

Brody responded at the time, "The radical left wants sex research done, but only if the results are politically acceptable to them."

Brody's previous work has also criticized the disinformation commonly promulgated in the media about the transmission of AIDS among the general population and warned that political correctness has seriously muddied the issues.

His 1997 book "Sex at Risk: Lifetime number of partners, frequency of intercourse and low AIDS risk of vaginal intercourse," concluded that "ideological knowledge" about AIDS, that asserts that heterosexuals are at equal risk of contracting the disease as active homosexuals, is more prevalent in society than evidence-based scientific knowledge gained from objective research. One reviewer called the book a "succinct indictment of people who have conflated politics and science in setting AIDS policy over the past 15 years."

Read more!

Catholics Don't Do Crystals

How to Use ‘Alternative Health Practices’ Without Endangering Your Soul

Are you familiar with Catholic Church communities who offer Reiki healing, yoga and other modern sprituality practices? It's easily convincing, when your church community offers classes and sessions using these New Age remedies. You may practice some of these spiritual healing arts. But this article touches on the precarious position of mixing Catholic Christian religious beliefs with these ancient (and new) healing arts, and cautions you to discern spirits.

BY JUDY ROBERTS
National Catholic Register

Growing up in a family that ran a health-food business, Charlene Williams learned to eat well and heal naturally.

Today the mother of four and grandmother of four raises some of her own vegetables and fruits, shops at farmers markets, and cooks from scratch. She also eats whole grains, avoids processed foods and relies on vitamin and mineral supplements, herbs, herbal teas, and home remedies like fresh-squeezed lemon and molasses in hot water for colds and sore throats.
In addition, she goes to a chiropractor and recently saw a naturopathic doctor and bioenergetics practitioner for help with stress and lack of energy.

But, as a Catholic, Williams is careful to avoid the New Age ideas and practices widely peddled in the subculture that has grown up around natural foods and alternative health care — whether it’s the crystals and books on transcendental meditation displayed in some health-food stores, Reiki treatments offered by certain massage therapists or yoga classes at the local gym.
Williams, whose grandparents started Dietrich’s Natural Foods in their home in Toledo, Ohio, in the 1930s, told the Register she doubts consumers interested in healthy living back then would have encountered the unorthodox spiritual offerings ubiquitous in the industry today.
“As the New Age became more common in our society, I started to see in various health-food stores more things like incense and crystals,” she says. “That kind of stuff was not around when I was a kid.”

Reading about the New Age from a Catholic perspective in books like Randy England’s The Unicorn in the Sanctuary (Tan, 1990) alerted Williams to New Age and Eastern religious practices within and outside the natural-healing movement, helping her discern what is and isn’t healthy for the eternal soul.

Many times, she says, “It sounds like it’s all good, [but] the problem is that the spiritual part isn’t in line with Catholicism.”

Truer words have seldom been spoken. For, although there is much to commend in many natural-healing approaches, any practice or belief that draws from a newfangled spiritual source should raise red flags for Catholics.

Eternity vs. Oblivion
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine recently issued guidelines for evaluating Reiki, an alternative healing technique that attempts to correct imbalances in “life energy” through the placement of the practitioner’s hands on certain parts of the body. The bishops point out that the central elements of the worldview suggested by Reiki theory belong neither to the Christian faith nor to natural science.
Given this, they conclude, Catholics who trust in Reiki are entering the realm of superstition, which “corrupts one’s worship of God by turning one’s religious feeling and practice in a false direction.”

Similarly, Father Mitch Pacwa, Eternal Word Television Network host and author of Catholics and the New Age: How Good People Are Being Drawn into Jungian Psychology, the Enneagram, and the Age of Aquarius (Servant, 1992), cautions that yoga, regarded by some as merely a form of exercise or relaxation, is in fact a religious practice with a spiritual goal: making the personality cease to exist. “That is incompatible with Christian goals,” Father Pacwa says. “As a Catholic,” he adds, “my goal is not simply to have this state of mind. My goal is union with Christ.”

During the 1970s, Father Pacwa says, he tried practicing something called “Christian yoga” that involved meditating on the words of Christ while assuming various yoga positions. But, he recalls, “The problem still remained. I was trying to attain a certain state of consciousness rather than personal union with Christ. I was not really connecting with Christ.”

Father Pacwa says to be wary of practitioners who claim to be able to balance or align chakras, energy centers along the spinal column according to kundalini yoga. Through meditation, kundalini yoga tries to awaken “the sleeping kundalini serpent” at the base of the spine to increase enlightenment.

Practitioners who say they work with chakras, Father Pacwa explains, may be mixing and matching different Asian philosophies. Besides failing to respect the integrity of and differences between each philosophy, he says, they could be wading into dangerous territory. “If you start opening up the chakras and don’t know what you are doing,” he says, “you are opening up yourself to grave danger, madness and even death. That’s according to practitioners of kundalini yoga. It’s not my interpretation.”

On the other hand, Father Pacwa says, he considers reflexology, which involves applying pressure to the feet and hands, a harmless (if questionably effective) nonmedical therapy.
His concern about alternative healing practices and methods in general is that their medical claims are often unsubstantiated — and they are sometimes used as a shill to draw people into New Age spirituality.

For example, he says, when a method does not work, a practitioner may propose a spiritual solution like past-life regression or the application of crystals to channel the universe’s energy.
“This nonsense,” he says, “will take your soul to the other side. It’s entering enemy territory.”


God’s Good Earth
Rebecca Otto of Leipsic, Ohio, a registered nurse and mother of six whose family’s health regimen includes chiropractic care, vitamin supplements and visits to a naturopathic doctor, says she is very much aware of the need to avoid anything that could become a portal into areas of spiritual warfare.

“There are good and bad spirits, and we don’t want to put ourselves in those areas,” she says, adding that she would refrain from involvement in yoga, Reiki, acupuncture and crystals, for example. “All I’ve had to hear is a few knowledgeable people on this,” she says. “There are a few areas I don’t feel it’s worth risking my soul to venture into.”


Although Otto acknowledges that there are times modern medicine is needed, her experience has shown that some alternative forms of healing work.

One of her sons, for instance, suffered from allergies to the point that he needed breathing treatments every spring and fall. The naturopathic doctor who evaluated him recommended several lifestyle changes and gave the boy a mixture of drops to take along with natural herbs. Her son improved so much, Otto says, that he only needs an occasional breathing treatment.
“God created nature, and he has given us ways to help other than [traditional] medicine,” she says.

Maryann Marshall of Lawrenceville, Ga., an herbalist who teaches online classes and has organized a Catholic herbalists group on the Internet, says she has discovered that much of natural healing was actually advanced by monks during the Middle Ages.
“The monasteries kept medicine alive through the Middle Ages,” she says. “They kept civilization alive, including medicine — and medicine was herbology. The monks had amazing herb gardens and vegetable gardens, too.”

Marshall received much of her knowledge about herbs from her Polish immigrant grandfather and, over the last 30 years, has added to what he taught her through her own research. In the process, she has often run into New Age material, something she finds both “distracting and distressing.”

As a result, she has learned not to proceed without some kind of spiritual grounding. She always prays to the Holy Spirit before doing any reading or studying and also consults a priest who is her spiritual director.

There’s lots to benefit from in natural foods and remedies, she says, but “you need a very, very, very firm foundation in the Catholic faith.”

Read more!

Rasmussen Poll: Americans Opposed to Nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new poll shows a plurality of Americans are opposed to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, who has been linked to pro-abortion groups, to the Supreme Court. A new Rasmussen national telephone poll finds 38 percent of voters support Sotomayor while 44 percent oppose her nomination.

That's a five-point increase in opposition from two weeks ago when 37% were in favor of her confirmation and 39% were opposed.

Forty-five percent have a favorable opinion of her, including 20% very favorable while 46 percent view her unfavorably, with 25% very unfavorable. These numbers also have remained largely the same since her nomination was announced, Rasmussen noted.

However, the survey also showed Sotomayor helped her case after giving her opening statement during the first day of the hearing on her nomination.

Looking at the results of the poll from Monday night alone (the poll also included Sunday) 42 percent of voters favored Sotomayor’s confirmation to the high court, while 44 percent were opposed.

Read more!

Sotomayor Evades Questions About Board Membership on Pro-Abortion Group

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor evaded questions Tuesday afternoon from a senator who wanted to know more about the pro-abortion mission of a Hispanic group she served on the board of directors for during the 1980s.

Her comments followed remarks she gave earlier in the day saying the Roe v. Wade abortion case allowing virtually unlimited abortions any time during pregnancy is "settled law."

Sotomayor was a member of the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1980 to 1992.

The New York Times notes that Sotomayor "was an involved and ardent supporter of their various legal efforts."

The group has come under fire for filing numerous amicus briefs with the Supreme Court each advocating an unlimited right to abortion throughout pregnancy and paid for at taxpayer expense.


Shared via AddThis

Read more!

The State of Connecticut Persecution of the Catholic Church

Your Church could be next!

State of Connecticut really wants the Catholic Church in the worst way. As you may already know, Bishop Lori is filing a civil suit against the state. The State claims that our Constitutional First Amendment rights to assembly, speech and religion were not rights at all, but actually ‘lobbying”! And thus, the Church violated the law by lobbying without a license! Now we are subject to civil penalties.

Bishop Lori said: "Never did I imagine that our activities defending ourselves from a government attack on our right of religious self-governance would be met with another government action subjecting our Church to an ‘evaluation’ for those activities!" You can read the Diocese's statement here.

If you would like to contact your senators and reps, go here . If you don’t know your rep or senator go here.

Read more!

Janet Smith weighs in on Christopher West's Nightline Interview

Smith says:

I want to add my voice to those who are enthusiastic about the West/Theology of the Body phenomenon. I think it is important to keep in mind, as Akin does, who West’s audience is. It is largely the sexually wounded and confused who have been shaped by our promiscuous and licentious culture. People need to think long and hard about the appropriate pedagogy for that group. Yet, as West himself knows, his approach is not for everyone. An analogy that pushes the envelope may be "offensive" to one person and may be just the hook that draws another person
in. West has adopted a style that appeals to a large segment of that population—and even to some who are “pure and innocent.”

Read the rest--

Finally! someone who can get off their high horse and articulate this reasonably!

Read more!

Spreading John Paul II's Theology of the Body

By Christopher West

You may have heard that ABC News’ Nightline featured TOB and an interview with me on a recent broadcast. If you haven’t seen the piece, you can view it here. The story provided unprecedented national media exposure and the response on ABC.com was almost unanimously positive (see comments here). We at the TOB Institute hope and believe that, as a result of the coverage, many viewers will take a deeper look at what the Church actually teaches about the glory and dignity God has bestowed on us by creating us in his image as male and female.

While this is good news to be thankful for, the ABC coverage did create some misunderstandings (see clarification here). In addition, we at the Institute received constructive advice on how we might better communicate when speaking to the secular media. As I have often said, finding the right language, images, and anecdotes to communicate the riches of the TOB is a process of trial and error – all the more so when dealing with the secular media. All of us involved in teaching and promoting John Paul II’s TOB must realize that the Father prunes every branch that bears fruit "so that it bears more fruit" (Jn 15:2). As fallen human beings, we’re like tarnished gold. The Father wants all of his children to shine, but removing the tarnish of our fallen humanity demands friction. "This is the way; [we must] walk in it" (Is 30:21).

Despite ABC’s approach and some misunderstandings it caused, so many of you have expressed your gratitude to the Institute for speaking to a national media outlet about TOB, and in doing so, taking up John Paul II’s call to play a role in the New Evangelization. The ABC coverage, and the predominantly positive feedback that we at the Institute received in response to it, has provided us a unique opportunity to reflect on our organization’s mission, which is "to educate and train men and women to understand, live and promote the Theology of the Body." We believe in this mission passionately because we have seen how the TOB has brought countless individuals closer to Christ and the Church. This is a crucial point for all Catholics to consider as we seek to engage others in a culture that has not only rejected the Church’s teaching, but typically turns a deaf ear when the Church shares her voice: Aren’t we all called to reach out to those around us – to share the Church’s teaching whenever we have the opportunity to do so, so that others may be brought to Christ? How can we do this in a way that actually engages the culture so that it won’t "turn a deaf ear"?

In the days and months ahead, I encourage you to think about how you might spread this glorious message. It may be through a conversation with a friend or family member, in your classroom, at your parish, or in dialogue with others online. Whether it’s reaching out to one person, hundreds or thousands, Christ calls us to spread the Good News. The Institute staff is eager to assist you in this endeavor, so please feel free to call on them if you think they can help. With this in mind, please know that in addition to the work we do in speaking to Catholic, Christian and secular media, we at the Institute will continue to do our best to fulfill our mission, through our educational programs offered on site in parishes and dioceses across the country, through our clergy training program, and through our growing line-up of week-long Certification courses offered throughout the year here in Pennsylvania (see schedule).

Read more!

Natural Family Planning's Most Recent Effectiveness Study

My son texted me from his freshman health class at Danbury High today. He quoted me the "effectiveness" of NFP according to his health teacher's handout. From Guttmacher no doubt.

The following is the best research to date.

The most recent research from 2007 is found in the scholarly journal Human Reproduction by Drs. Petra Frank-Herrmann and J. Heil, entitled, The Effectiveness of a Fertility Awareness Based Method to Avoid Pregnancy in Relation to a Couple’s Sexual Behaviour during the Fertile Time: a Prospective Longitudinal Study. Human Reproduction, pp.1-10, 2007.

http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/dem003v1

This study reports both perfect use and typical use unintended pregnancies with an effectiveness rate of 99.6% and 92.5% respectively.

But my son's health teacher will take the 'effectiveness' study from the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood. Or at least their handouts are informed by Guttmacher. Not only is it biased, it is a 14 year old study which defined 'periodic abstinence' as the rhythm and other 'calendar' methods. These methods are obsolete, and have been discouraged in favor of the most recent methods, and simply have not been formally taught for over 30 years.

And this week, a rep from PP will visit their class. Maybe I should volunteer my services for the other side of the debate.

Read more!

Is anybody else overwhelmed?

I can't take it. Bill 899 just overwhelmingly passed in Connecticut, tomorrow is the Day of Silence at my son's high school, Sibelius is head of HHS, and Obama is on the "warpath". I don't even know where to begin. Help!

Read more!

Courage Philippines: This Way Out

Testimony - Frank Worthen

"Born Anew to a Living Hope"

My pastor took me into his office and said, "Frank, you are a homosexual." Being only thirteen, I needed him to explain same-sex attraction. He did. Then he added that homosexuals were different from other people.

I'd been called different before! When my mother took me to kindergarten, my teacher told her, "Your boy is very different from the other boys." And she was right; I'd detached from my family's constant arguing by hiding in the attic and creating my own fantasy world. In response to my patterns of isolation, my peers called me names (which I later learned meant "homosexual").

When I was ten, I began taking piano lessons. My piano teacher knew the Lord in a powerful way. She was ecstatic when, three years later, I accepted Him. She took me to her church, where I began to study organ.

My father died that year. The pastor took an interest in me, assuming the "father" role in my life. He was everything I looked for in a father! But in my heart, I hoped he was wrong about me being a homosexual. Certainly, I was different; I had no friends, I wasn't into sports, and I devoted a lot of time to music. Still, I hoped that I was just late in developing opposite-sex attractions.

When I turned eighteen, I met a young lady. We went together for about a year. It was very exciting to think, Thank God, I'm normal! I love this woman and I want to marry her. So I proposed. She answered, "There are only two things that I love: horses and other women." Crushed, I returned to my pastor, who told me that I'd been attracted to my girlfriend's masculinity. He reasoned, "I've been telling you for years that you are a homosexual." I left the church that day, making the decision to accept my homosexuality. Since "God's man" had convinced me that I was homosexual, I hoped that God would accept me.

I entered the gay lifestyle at that time. By accepting my homosexuality, I believed I'd found where I belonged. The male homosexual lifestyle, however, is built on youth. And so, by the time I was 40, it was pretty much over for me. The only steady lover I could find wasn't even really homosexual—he just stayed with me for the money! But even then, we both cheated on each other. It was very depressing.

The business I owned required me to travel around the world a great deal. During one of my trips, the manager of my biggest store hired a "hippie" boy. Though I didn't want Michael there at all, the manager promised to keep him out of the customers' sight if I'd let him work in the stock room. I agreed, reluctantly.

Returning from another trip, I was startled to see Michael with short hair, properly washed, and working at the front counter. He was efficient, the customers loved him, and he smiled all the time. Finally, after a week of watching him, I asked, "What in the world happened to you?"
He answered, "I accepted the Lord." I wondered if Michael's Christianity would last. During the following year, his life kept getting brighter and brighter. I began to wonder if God could change me the way He had changed Michael. But I told myself, "No. God has never changed a homosexual person." I vacillated between hope and despair.

One day, the Lord spoke to me, saying, "Today I want you back." I knew, without a doubt, that this was the voice of God. I ran to the store and located Michael, gasping, "I've just heard from God, I don't know what to do." I was beside myself. Michael responded that he had the keys to his church, and suggested that we go over there to pray.

Michael had me kneel on the altar's marble steps as he led me through a 20 minute sinner's prayer! Because he knew nothing about homosexual activity, he had me confessing all kinds of things I'd never done. But I wanted everything God had for me, so I thought, "If I have to do this to change, I'll confess anything!" When the prayer ended, the Lord's Spirit came alive in my heart. I came out of the church a changed person!

When I went to Michael's church, the people expressed love for me. Later I learned that they'd spent two years praying for "Michael's gay boss." And for the next year and a half, people from that church came to see me every day! That accountability kept me from going back to the homosexual lifestyle.

At Michael's suggestion, I made a testimony tape to reach out to people who were trapped in the homosexual lifestyle. I decided to advertise the tape in the worst sex paper in town. The ad read: "Do you want out of homosexuality? Send for a Brother Frank tape on a Christ-centered way out of homosexuality." During the first year of its run, my ad brought in 60 people who wanted out of homosexuality! Men in my own church sought me out for counseling on leaving homosexuality. After a while, I started meeting with these men on Saturdays.

Eventually, the Lord put me in contact with a pastor who needed help in counseling homosexuals. Since he was a writer, he and I produced a book called "The Third Sex?" (the first Christian book on homosexuality). Going all over the English-speaking world, that book generated an average of 200 letters a month.

Though I'd had no intention of leaving my business, the Lord impressed me with the need to enter ministry full-time. Thus, Love In Action began with weekly support group meetings.
After a little time had passed, I received a distraught phone call from Barbara Johnson, a woman in Los Angeles. Barbara's son had entered the homosexual lifestyle, but the ex-gay ministry there didn't offer ministry to parents. This was the first time I'd ever heard of any ex-gay ministry besides Love In Action! Intrigued, I hopped on a plane the next morning and went down to see them.

When I met with the Director and the staff of Exit Ministry in Anaheim, California, we wondered if any other ex-gay ministries existed. I was very impressed with the organization of Exit Ministry. I asked them to train my staff at a meeting the following year. They agreed. After I left, the staff began calling churches around the country and found a number of ex-gay ministries. In the middle of 1976 we had our first conference. It was far more than I expected, sixty people representing twelve ministries attended. About the third day of the conference we knew this was not just a one time event, but would be a continuing thing: Exodus was born.
My busy life satisfied me. I enjoyed my work and loved my church. I felt secure and complete, able to settle into a life of comfortable celibacy. After five years, I sensed I was ready for marriage, but was unwilling to make the time commitment involved. I often worked in the office from morning to midnight. How could I give a wife proper attention? I saw no compelling reason to seek marriage.

Around the tenth year of celibacy, however, I began to grow uncomfortable with the single life. Intensely lonely, I began to pray for a mate. During this time, the Love in Action team held a seminar in Eugene, Oregon. I noticed the lady who sponsored the event across the room rapidly talking with a group of people. I thought, "What a hyper lady! I don't think I want to get involved with her!" So I kept my distance. I felt quite sure I never wanted to meet her!
A year and a half later, I visited Los Angeles with the director of Exodus' London ministry. We were on our way to Disneyland and had stopped by Barbara Johnson's house to pick up some passes. Barbara told me that she was obligated to take this woman to Disneyland, but that she just didn't have the time. Essentially, I would be doing her a favor if I could take this woman with us.

I was not happy at the prospect, but there is not much I wouldn't do for Barbara. So I agreed to take this woman along. She introduced us to Anita whom I had no idea I had ever met before. (Actually Barbara introduced me to her the day before at a conference I did, but I met so many people I didn't remember her.) Sometime during the day at Disneyland it came out that Anita had sponsored a conference in Eugene, Oregon where I was the conference speaker. I then remember that I had carefully avoided her, she was so hyper. The day at Disneyland proved to be the most fun I had enjoyed in years. Anita was light hearted and the life of the party. I thoroughly enjoyed her company and dreaded to see the day come to a close.

The next day, Chris and I returned to San Rafael and I became immersed in the day-to-day pressures of the ministry. The memory of that relaxing day faded until Barbara called to say that Anita had apparently liked me. Excitedly, I thought, "A woman really 'likes' me! Guess I did something right!" But calmly, I told Barbara that I couldn't remember having a better day. I asked her to tell Anita that I liked her very much also.

A month or so later, Barbara called again. This time she said that she and four other women were coming north to visit me. Since my late hours at the Love in Action office had never given me reason to furnish my home, I frantically prepared my condominium so that they would have a comfortable stay. Later Barbara called to say only three were coming, then again, only two, lastly that it would be only Anita. I panicked, how would that sound? "Director of Ex-gay Ministry Hosts Single Woman in Newly Furnished Apartment!"

Lori Thorkelson, a lady on Love In Action's staff, came to my rescue by agreeing to stay with Anita in my guest room. As a result of that week, Lori built a firm friendship with Anita and she was invaluable in helping me keep my romantic relationship on an even course. (Later, when I went to Europe for three months, I left a stack of cards for Lori to send Anita every few days, so Anita would know I was thinking of her.)

For Anita, it had been love at first sight (for the ministry that is). She became completely enamored with Love in Action. She loved all the staff and the work we were doing. She wanted to be part of it all. She cried all the way to the train station. It would take time for Anita's love for me to match her love for LIA.

Late one night Anita called me and wanted to see me. I suggested that she get in her car and drive to San Luis Obispo, the half-way point between Los Angeles and San Francisco. She was a little surprised that I was so impulsive, but she wasn't willing to act on the spur of the moment. So we agreed to meet there in a few days. This rendezvous inaugurated a series of long drives to our half-way point (about a 500 mile round trip for each of us).

During these times, we had many meaningful talks about marriage. I was already fifty-five, which made me uncertain that I could consummate our marriage. We decided that a life together was far better than our long-distance relationship. We would have each other, and that would be enough. (As it turned out, my worries were needless.)

Our marriage has been far better than our greatest expectations. The honeymoon continues!

Read more!

Will Condoms Really Stop AIDS in Africa?

BRIAN SAINT-PAUL
We're told by the mass media that condom distribution is the solution to the AIDS crisis in Africa and that the Catholic Church is standing in the way of that effort. The research, however, contradicts that view.

If you've watched any of the mainstream news coverage of the Catholic Church in the past month, you've heard several charges repeated over and over: The Church needs to ordain women to address the vocation shortage... the Church needs to change its attitude on contraception and abortion to better accommodate modern realities... the Church needs to moderate its stance on homosexual behavior to be more inclusive... the Church needs to drop its claim to contain the fullness of salvation, since it hinders ecumenism.
Chances are, you're already well equipped to address these objections. But there's one charge that seems to throw Catholics for a loop.

It goes something like this:

By maintaining its ban on condom use, the Catholic Church is contributing to the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Condoms have been demonstrated to prevent infection 90% of the time. If the Vatican cared more about people's lives than a rigid doctrine that most Catholics reject, they'd make an exception to allow condom use to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. Such a move would do more for "life" than would maintaining a position that allows millions to die as a result of unprotected sex.

Sounds convincing at first, doesn't it? So convincing, in fact, that most Catholics have trouble addressing it.

One approach, of course, would be to explain the Catholic moral/theological position on why contraception is inherently evil. But while absolutely true, that approach isn't terribly convincing to a non-Catholic, let alone a non-Christian. After all, logic and philosophy are easily dismissed as abstractions when human life is involved.

But the debate over condoms in Africa need never get to that point. In fact, the whole matter can be settled without ever bringing in moral theology. You see, the fatal flaw in the pro-condom argument is both simple and devastating: Condoms aren't working to stem AIDS in Africa.

Take for example a March 2004 article in the medical journal, Studies in Family Planning (cited by the Zenit News Agency, June 26, 2004). Titled "Condom Promotion for AIDS Prevention in the Developing World: Is It Working?," the piece was a meta-review of the scientific literature on the question.

The results shocked condom advocates. In the article, researchers Sanny Chen and Norman Hearst noted that, "In many sub-Saharan African countries, high HIV transmission rates have continued despite high rates of condom use." In fact, they continued, "No clear examples have emerged yet of a country that has turned back a generalized epidemic primarily by means of condom distribution."

No surprise, then, that Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and South Africa — the nations with the highest levels of condom availability — continue to have the highest rates of HIV prevalence ("The White House Initiative to Combat AIDS: Learning from Uganda," Joseph Loconte, Executive Summary Backgrounder).

How could this be? After all, we're told that condoms are 90% effective.



And that's precisely the problem.

This claim — so prevalent in condom-promotion literature — is actually a tremendous strike against using condoms to reduce AIDS. Think of it: Assuming that the 90% figure is accurate (a highly contested point), that means that 10% of the time, condoms don't offer protection against transmission.

That's one out of ten.

If you and I were to go skydiving, and I told you, "Don't worry... the parachutes work 90% of the time," how comfortable would you be making that jump?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You see, the pro-condom lobby's exaggerations over the effectiveness of its product is actually making the problem worse, for one simple reason: Condoms provide a false sense of security to those who use them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, of course, the fact that a condom fails to "work" doesn't mean the person will automatically contract HIV/AIDS. Nevertheless, this is hardly the solution to the crisis.

You see, the pro-condom lobby's exaggerations over the effectiveness of its product is actually making the problem worse, for one simple reason: Condoms provide a false sense of security to those who use them. Being convinced of their effectiveness and feeling invulnerable, users will simply continue — or actually increase — their high-risk behavior. In this way, the claimed 90% effectiveness rate plummets in proportion to the increase in self-destructive behavior. This phenomenon is borne out in the countries that focus on condom distribution to fight the disease.



But while condoms clearly won't solve the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa (or anywhere else), there is an approach that will: abstinence. Indeed, in African nations — where HIV/AIDS is transmitted almost exclusively through sexual contact — abstinence is the obvious solution.

And better yet, it has been proven effective.

Uganda at one time had the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world. Starting in the mid to late 1980s, their government instituted a program to teach abstinence before marriage and fidelity to one's partner afterwards. They only reluctantly advised condoms for high risk groups (like prostitutes) whom they knew would not accept the other two approaches.

Billboards, radio announcements, print ads, and school programs all promoted the virtues of abstinence and fidelity to prevent HIV/AIDS.

The results were astonishing.

In 1991, the prevalence rate of HIV was 15%. By 2001, it had dropped to 5%. It was the biggest HIV infection reduction in world history.

Among pregnant women, the drop was even more dramatic (as reported by CNS News, January 13, 2003). In 1991, 21.2% of expecting mothers tested positive for HIV. By 2001, the number had plummeted to 6.2%. Compare this with the 2001 numbers from Kenya (15%), Zimbabwe (32%), and Botswana (38%). All three countries focus on condom distribution, and all three countries continue to see their rates rise.

But wait, the condom advocates object. The Ugandan "miracle" is simply the result of more widespread condom use.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You cannot show that more condoms have led to less AIDS in Africa.... I look at the data and I see that what might be called a more liberal response to AIDS — more and more millions or billions of condoms — has simply not worked, especially in parts of the world with the highest infection rate, Africa and the Caribbean."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not so, says Dr. Edward C. Green, an anthropologist at the Harvard University School of Public Health. Dr. Green was a strong proponent of condom distribution to stem HIV/AIDS... that is, until the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) hired him to study the reasons behind the success in Uganda.

The results of his research left him little doubt. "Reduction in the number of sexual partners was probably the single most important behavioral change that resulted in prevalence decline," he noted. "Abstinence was probably the second most important change" (testimony before the Subcommittee on African Affairs, as reported by Joseph Loconte).

"It is a very indicting statement about the effectiveness of condoms," he told Citizen Magazine. "You cannot show that more condoms have led to less AIDS in Africa.... I look at the data and I see that what might be called a more liberal response to AIDS — more and more millions or billions of condoms — has simply not worked, especially in parts of the world with the highest infection rate, Africa and the Caribbean."



Unfortunately, not everyone was pleased with Dr. Green's conclusions. USAID shelved his study and enlisted a well-known condom advocate and employee of ETR Associates (an organization dedicated to "safe-sex" education) to write a new one. Apparently, USAID wasn't concerned with the apparent conflict of interest.

This is especially tragic, as the effectiveness of abstinence and fidelity education has been demonstrated by numerous research groups. As Loconte notes, evidence for the success of Uganda's approach has come from "USAID, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Harvard Center for Population and Developmental Studies, the Ugandan government, and numerous independent studies published in medical journals."

Yet we're still told condom distribution is the solution to the AIDS crisis in Africa. And the Catholic Church is an easy media bogeyman, standing in the way of that effort.
Ironically enough, Uganda's successful approach is very close to that recommended by the Church. The only exception, of course, is the African country's concession to giving condoms to prostitutes. But if the people of that nation — and indeed, of the world at large — took seriously the Catholic notion of the dignity of women and the nature of sexual intercourse, that last point would be addressed as well.

But what about allowing condoms for faithful married couples, where one partner is HIV/AIDS positive? Isn't that reasonable?

Actually, it's not reasonable at all. Love requires sacrifice. And a person who claims to love another would never knowingly put his beloved in danger. But that's precisely what this approach does.

Imagine if I get drunk one night and drive my wife around town. That's not a loving act. And it doesn't suddenly become loving just because I tell her to put on her seatbelt. When an HIV/AIDS positive person has sex with someone who's free of the disease, he puts that person at grave risk. That's not love... that's selfishness.

In a marital situation where one spouse is HIV/AIDS positive and the other negative, the loving thing to do is to abstain from sex. In those cases, love must be shown in other ways, like the self-sacrifice that abstinence requires.

It's not easy, but real love rarely is.

I'll talk to you next week,

Brian



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Brian Saint-Paul. "Will Condoms Really Stop AIDS In Africa?" Crisis E-Letter (May 19, 2005).

This article is reprinted with permission from the Morley Institute a non-profit education organization. To subscribe to Crisis magazine call 1-800-852-9962.

Further Reading The “Social Vaccine”
The AIDS Pandemic: Saving the Next Generation Latex and Life Doubts About Condoms: Science Questioning Their Efficacy in Halting HIV/AIDS
Will Condoms Really Stop AIDS In Africa?

THE AUTHOR

Brian Saint-Paul is the editor of Crisis Magazine. http://www.insidecatholic.com/

Copyright © 2005 Crisis

Read more!

Pro-lifers get all over Guttmacher (OneNewsNow.com)

The Guttmacher Institute has completed a study that suggests Planned Parenthood needs more money. The American Life League, in response, calls the study a "well-timed and self-serving sales pitch" for the abortion provider.


The Guttmacher Institute is a research arm of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion-provider in the U.S. According to the study -- entitled "Next Steps for America's Family Planning Program" -- the national family planning program annually prevents almost two-million "unintended pregnancies" that statistically would otherwise result in 860,000 "unintended births," 810,000 abortions, and 270,000 miscarriages.

The lead author of the study argues that every dollar spent on "family planning" saves taxpayers $4 in costs associated with unintended births to mothers eligible for Medicaid-funded natal care. "The national family planning program is smart government at its best," states Rachel Benson Gold.

Judie Brown, co-founder of American Life League, says she is amused by the latest Guttmacher study because they play Congress like a violin.

"They always have some new finding that supports their request for more and more taxpayer dollars," says the long-time pro-life activist. "And they are literally parroting what Nancy Pelosi already said when she made that horrible gaffe and suggested that millions of dollars had to be poured into 'family planning' if we are to ever stop the financial crisis in America. It was outrageous when she said it -- and their report is equally as outrageous." (See related story)

Planned Parenthood made a $114 million profit in 2006-2007, so the agency's coffers are loaded. Brown says that money could be put to good use.

"In fact, we're issuing a public statement in which we're asking Planned Parenthood to donate $114 million for programs that would empower the poor...instead of sterilizing them," she notes.

Brown hopes the public will take the Guttmacher Institute study with a grain of salt. And that's exactly what Joseph Scheidler is doing. Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League, says the Guttmacher Institute apparently thinks that people -- particularly those in the lower-income brackets -- are the greatest drain on the nation's resources.

"Even in difficult economic times, the United States is a land of opportunity for people of all income levels," he says in a press release. "It is not appropriate for government to be in the business of providing birth control, which only serves to promote risky, irresponsible behavior."

Scheidler adds that Guttmacher's particular application of "family planning" to the poor "smacks of racism."

Read more!

Pastor Calls for Faithful to Receive Body of Christ on the Tongue Only

Published in Fairfield County Catholic by Father Greg J. Markey Pastor, Saint Mary Parish Norwalk

The beginning of each year is often a time of “New Year Resolutions,” and a wonderful resolution for 2009 would be to start exercising the option of receiving Holy Communion on the tongue in Mass. Let me explain why. This past summer, Catholics were horrified when a professor at the University of Minnesota willfully desecrated the Eucharist. On the Internet, Professor Paul Zachary Myers invited anyone to obtain for him a consecrated Host from a Catholic Church so that he could desecrate It. A man read about the request and took a Host from the London Oratory, videotaping himself taking It from the Mass. He then sent the Host to Professor Myers and posted the video on the Internet. Professor Myers proceeded to drive a rusty nail through the Host in order to show the “absurdity” of the Catholic belief in the True Presence, and posted photos of the event on his website. Unfortunately, the event set off a series of copycat crimes, and these desecrations are all over the Internet.

I have offered Mass in reparation for this sacrilege, and I know that many good Catholics have also done forms of prayer and penance in order to console the wounded heart of Our Lord. Last year, here at Saint Mary’s, we found a Host under one of the pews in the church. I know from other priests that this happens every once in a while in other parishes as well. These incidents remind us that it would certainly be more difficult for people to take the Host improperly if everyone were receiving Holy Communion on the tongue. As the Catholic Church teaches, “If there is a risk of profanation, then Holy Communion should not be given in the hand to the faithful” (Redemptionis Sacramentum, 92).

Many people born prior to the Second Vatican Councilwill remember when everyone received Holy Communion on the tongue and kneeling. This has been the long-held practice for thousands of years (although during certain periods of the early Church it did allow Communion in the hand). While many think that it was Vatican II that called for this change, it is important to note: Vatican II never called for Communion in the hand. Communion in the hand was the result of disobedience which forced the hand of the Church (no pun intended!).

Furthermore, if one does receive Communion on the hand, there is always the danger that particles may remain in the hand. The Council of Trent infallibly teaches that Our Blessed Lord is truly present, even in the particles (Chapter VIII, Canon 3).

For this reason, the priest always purifies his hands of particles at the end of Mass, and uses a corporal (a small white cloth meant to catch the corpus, or body, of Our Lord). This past year, Pope Benedict XVI asked that, from now on, all who receive Holy Communion from him must receive It on the tongue and while kneeling. I am sure that, by insisting on this ancient practice, the pope is trying to foster a deeper respect for the Eucharist as well. While both practices are permitted in most dioceses, I encourage parishioners to give prayerful consideration to following Pope Benedict’s lead by receiving Holy Communion on the tongue in the New Year.

Read more!

Closing the Cafeteria to US Catholics- Where to Start?

BY Tim Drake

July 6-12, 2003 Issue Posted 7/6/03 at 12:00 PM

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Notre Dame students are required to take theology courses. Nevertheless, it's nearly impossible for students and their parents to know which Notre Dame theology faculty teach with the Church and which do not.

Brian MacMichael found out the hard way. He said one theology course was enough to make him wonder whether he had made a mistake when he transferred to the school from the University of Florida.

MANDATUM SECRECY

Investigative series

“The course was on the sacraments,” MacMichael explained, “and when the professor taught on the Eucharist she taught that Christ was equally as present in the community presence as in the Eucharist.”

When MacMichael cited Pope Paul VI's 1965 encyclical Mysterium Fidei(On the Holy Eucharist) to demonstrate that Christ is uniquely present in the Eucharist, he was disregarded.

“She held her ground, reiterating that Christ was just as present in the assembly during Mass,” he recounted.

“I was worried that perhaps this was what the entire theology department was like,” MacMichael said.

But doesn't the entire theology department have the canon law-required mandatums from the bishop certifying that they teach with the Church? No one there will say.

When the Register called to ask which professors at Notre Dame had canon-law mandatums to teach theology, neither theology department chair John Cavadini, university president Father Edward Malloy nor Bishop John D'Arcy of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese responded.

Leon Dixon of Muncie, Ind., is a 1966 Notre Dame graduate. He recalls his father, a 1948 graduate of the law school, complaining about the loss of Catholic values at Notre Dame. Dixon's daughter, Elesia, just completed her freshman year at the university.

“My daughter's freshman religion teacher was an agnostic,” said Dixon. “I can get an agnostic religion instructor anywhere in the world for a boatload less money. If Notre Dame holds itself out, as it attempts to do, as a Catholic university, then it needs to be with the Pope.”

Dixon said that he has written to the bishop regarding his concerns about the mandatum.

“This sort of omertà is a Catholic problem,” he said. “If Mr. [Gov. Frank] Keating had to resign because he felt the American bishops were acting like a mafia, on the intellectual side [Notre Dame] has a problem that will not be solved by the muzzling of internal Catholic intellectuals or of Notre Dame graduates whose real-world accomplishments and learning dwarf those of the faculty. It exposes their lies regarding’ academic freedom.’”

During his meeting with the U.S. cardinals last year, Pope John Paul II said parents “must know that bishops and priests are totally committed to the fullness of Catholic truth on matters of sexual morality, a truth as essential to the renewal of the priesthood and the episcopate as it is to the renewal of marriage and family life.”

The Register is investigating Catholic colleges and universities featured in U.S. News & World Report's college guide, asking: Are parents allowed to know whether those who teach theology even intend to teach in communion with the Church? Or has the opposite happened — is the canon-law man-datum being used to protect dissenters?

Since 1983, canon law has required that a theologian teaching in a Catholic university receive a mandatum from the local bishop, showing his intention to teach with the Church. The requirement was highlighted in a footnote in Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution on higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae(From the Heart of the Church). U.S. bishops began requiring the mandatum in 2001.

But parents say universities won't say who has a mandatum.

The Gamut

Do theology professors have mandatums at Notre Dame?

Responses from theology faculty, said Michael Garvey, assistant director of news and information, would be predictable.

“Father Richard McBrien will say that it's impossible to have any free thought if you implement it,” Garvey said, “and Father Edward O'Connor will say that it's impossible to have any free thought if you do not implement it.”

Indeed, the views of some of Notre Dame's theology faculty are well known.

Father McBrien declared in the Jesuits' America magazine, “I shall not seek a mandate because the requirement of a mandate compromises the academic integrity of the faculty and the university.”

Another theology faculty member, Lawrence Cunningham, has been quoted as saying he “resented” the fact that Catholics should have to take an oath of fidelity to their faith.

“Notre Dame has, for all practical purposes, decided to evade the mandate,” Father O'Connor said via e-mail.

The University of Notre Dame is ranked 19th among national doctoral universities by U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Colleges 2003. Overall, the proportion of Catholics on Notre Dame's tenured and tenure-track faculty has fallen to about 55%.

Parents’ Rights

A recent University of California-Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute survey suggested Catholic colleges, far from instilling the faith in students, are just as likely to cause students to lose their faith. That scares parents who don't want to pay for a Catholic education only to see their child taught that the faith isn't true.

That's the concern of Ken and Anne Marie Schroeder of Cincinnati, who want to find a college for their four children.

Their daughter Julie visited Notre Dame in June. While Julie liked the school, her mother was not quite so sure about it.

“We care about the mandatum and the Catholicity of the college,” Anne Marie Schroeder said.

A high school senior, Julie is interested in possibly studying biology and genetics. “I would really like to know that Catholic values are being instilled in these areas of study,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder said the mandatum has been on her mind at each of the four colleges her daughter has visited.

“You want to know that your child is being taught the truth,” she said. “It would be great if the man-datum information was published or somehow made available. At least I would know what we were going into.”

David Hoppe, a Notre Dame alum, saw his daughter Katie graduate from the school in May. His son Geoff is currently a sophomore. Non-Catholic professors taught both of his children's freshman theology courses.

“One of the great regrets that I have, as an alumnus, is that the theology department is clearly the weakest department in the university,” said David Hoppe, of Burke, Va., who graduated from Notre Dame in 1973. “That should not be. It would be difficult to attend Notre Dame and receive a theology degree and believe that you had learned the Catholic faith.”

“I would have thought that it would be important to have a core curriculum course at a Catholic university taught by a Catholic,” Hoppe said. “It's not the strongest recommendation one can give a Catholic university when one says to stay away from its theology department.”

Still, Hoppe thinks Notre Dame has much to offer.

“You can still find good professors who inculcate the Catholic faith in the subjects they teach,” he said. “Students have the opportunity to attend daily Mass in their dorms. It's still a place where it is easy to live and grow in your faith. Notre Dame still has a religious grounding that many of the major Catholic universities have lost.”

One of the few professors who has written publicly about the man-datum is Notre Dame law professor emeritus Charles Rice.

Rice, writing for the Observer, the daily newspaper at Notre Dame, said: “It is fair to say that if Notre Dame will not ensure that its required courses in theology are faithful to the Church's magisterium, those courses (and required philosophy courses) should no longer be required. If the professors want to do their own thing, let them and the university abandon any claim that it is the’ Catholic’ thing and let the students decide whether to take such courses.”

See the full series of articles here:
Mandatum — Part I
Mandatum — Part II: Georgetown
Mandatum — Part III: Notre Dame
Mandatum — Part IV: Loyola
Mandatum — Part V: Benedictine College Embraces Mandatum
Mandatum — Part VI: Right to Truth, Right to Know: DeSales Is Proud of the Mandatum
Mandatum — Part VII: Taking an oath: Franciscan University of Steubenville

Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Read more!

Obama needs some lessons from Uganda

Let's talk pragmatic! If Obama really wants to be pragmatic, he should take a few lessons from Janet Museveni of Uganda.

HIV/AIDS decreased 30% through her abstinence-only education initiative. If Obama truly wants abortions to decrease, he would agree to this grassroots campaign of educating the youth of America in the health benefits of abstinence. Why did HIV/AIDS decrease? In part, because pre-marital sex decreased. In 1994 the USAID report states, 60% of teenage Ugandan men age 13-16 were sexually active. In 2001, 5% of that age group reported sexual activity. In the US, not only would sexually transmitted diseases decrease, also a decrease in unwanted pregnancies and the abortions they result in would be the by-product. But if STDs decrease, then Merck drug company would have no reason to market Gardasil, the cervical cancer vaccination (cervical cancer is proven a direct result of contracting the STD called Human Papilloma Virus, or HPV).

And then, there's always the money from the pro-abortion groups to whom Obama is heavily indebted. How would he pay back NARAL (National Abortion Rights League)and Planned Parenthood for all those campaign contributions?

Read more!

CT Attorney Blumenthal Sues Department of HHS over Bush's Conscience Clause

Is Attorney General of CT, Richard Blumenthal single-handedly trying to close every Catholic hospital in Connecticut? He is discriminating against people of faith by not allowing them to practice that faith. Women’s health is NOT at risk here: fertility and pregnancy DO NOT require medicine: they are not illnesses. To claim that a doctor who refuses abortion based on conscience endangers women is a smoke screen. Women can then seek a doctor who will perform one! Blumenthal's scare tactics are a shield for his personal prejudice against the unborn and the politics he plays to pander to pro-death groups such as Planned Parenthood. We need an attorney general who knows his facts: in 5% of pregnancy cases or less, the true physical health (due to cancer, diabetes, hypertension, or epilepsy) of the mother is at risk, and no doctor with a conscience clause would allow a woman to die when in need of care.

The people who are truly in danger are those who receive care from these quality Catholic hospitals, hospitals that could be forced to close due to his discriminatory lawsuit. Half of all US doctors are in support of the conscience clause.

It looks like 12 other states will jump on Blumenthal's pro-death bandwagon: Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah and Vermont.

Blumenthal needs to fight for all the people of Connecticut, and listen to all voices in this debate-not just his special interests.

Read more!

Over 600,000 Signatures- Keep up the Good Work!

If this were a petition initiated by Planned Parenthood, there would be MILLIONS of signatures. The pro-life voice needs to be strongly heard! Sign the petition so the country will know.

The Novena starts today!

Read more!

When the Church was silent, the unborn were silenced.

For 35 years, collective Christian faiths have been silent on abortion. The Catholic hierarchy especially has sided with Democrats on social issues. Hardly a whisper was ever heard from the pulpits on moral issues. Many failed to help form the moral conscience of their parishioners, which allowed the innocent to be sacrificed, silenced forever.

read more | digg story

Read more!

McCain vs Obama- my NYTimes comment

Here is what is important to this McCain/Palin supporter-
John McCain and Sarah Palin are PRO-LIFE. When Barack Obama was voting AGAINST the Infant's Born Alive Protection ACT, which would save babies who survived botched abortions, McCain was casting his 100% PRO-LIFE vote! A nation that would kill its own children will never be propserous or peaceful! If Barack Obama cares about the welfare of people of color, have him shut down the abortion clinics which are found in the majority of poor, black neighborhoods. Abortion clinics target the obliteration of the poor minorities.

As for foreign policy and a nation at war: put me in the hands of an experienced and no-nonsense leader who I can envision as COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. He's been there- he's spilled his blood for this country, while Obama was attending school in INDONESIA!

And please DO NOT compare Obama to JFK- JFK (as flawed as he was) coined the phrase "ask not what this country can do for you..." Obama has turned that phrase on its head!
Look beyond the grouchy and aging exterior as opposed to being conned by a youthful "disarming smile" , as one Obama supporter put it. The same mindset that would cast aside the unborn, would put a graying McCain on a shelf.

Fortitude and self-sacrifice is what I see in McCain. 21st -century commercialism is what I see in Obama.

Read more!

What is the Practical Impact of FOCA?

FOCA (or "Freedom of Choice Act") is a bill co-sponored by Barack Obama,
which would make partial birth abortion legal again, and force taxpayers to
pay for abortions. It is the first bill Barack Obama pedged to sign when (and
if) he becomes president.

In elevating abortion to a fundamental right, FOCA poses an undeniable and irreparable danger to common-sense laws supported by a majority of Americans. Among the federal and state laws that FOCA would nullify are:
Informed consent laws
Waiting periods
Parental consent and notification laws
Health and safety regulations for abortion clinics
Requirements that licensed physicians perform abortions
Bans on partial-birth abortion
Bans on abortion after viability. FOCA’s apparent attempt to limit post-viability abortions is illusory. Under FOCA, post-viability abortions are expressly permitted to protect the woman’s “health.” Within the context of abortion, “health” has been interpreted so broadly that FOCA would not actually proscribe any abortion before or after viability.
Limits on public funding for elective abortions (thus, making American taxpayers fund a procedure that many find morally objectionable)
Limits on the use of public facilities (such has public hospitals and medical schools at state universities) for abortions
Legal protections for individual healthcare providers who decline to participate in abortions
Legal protections for Catholic and other religiously-affiliated hospitals who, while providing care to millions of poor and uninsured Americans, refuse to allow abortions within their facilities
Notably, pro-abortion groups do not deny FOCA’s draconian impact. For example, Planned Parenthood has explained, “FOCA will supersede anti-choice laws that restrict the right to choose, including laws that prohibit the public funding of abortions for poor women or counseling and referrals for abortions. Additionally, FOCA will prohibit onerous restrictions on a woman's right to choose, such as mandated delays and targeted and medically unnecessary regulations.”

Thus, under FOCA (as introduced and supported by Senator Obama and other pro-abortion members of Congress), a 12-year old girl could have a late-term abortion performed on her by an under-qualified non-physician without her parents’ knowledge. The parents would have no opportunity to speak with the abortion provider about their daughter’s medical history, and they would have no opportunity to make arrangements for her follow-up care.

Clearly FOCA will not make abortion safe or rare -- on the contrary, it will actively promote abortion and do nothing to ensure its safety.

Read more!

Catholics for Obama- strange bedfellows

Pro-Life Catholics For Obama
Should abortion be the litmus test for political support?

by George Weigel
NEWSWEEK --

In an election cycle filled with its share of quirks, oddities, and surprises, the emergence of Roman Catholic pro-lifers as leading supporters of Sen. Barack Obama—himself a favorite of the National Reproductive Rights Action League—must rank as one of the strangest of twists and turns. Whatever its effect on the election, this unexpected development may also portend a new hardening of the battle lines within the Catholic Church, no matter who is inaugurated president in January.

The most visible of the pro-Obama Catholic pro-lifers has been Pepperdine University law professor Douglas Kmiec, formerly dean of the law school at the Catholic University of America and a minor official in the Justice Departments of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Kmiec began the 2008 cycle as co-chairman of Mitt Romney's campaign, but recently told the Chicago Tribune that, as the campaign unfolded, "I kept discovering that Obama was sounding more Catholic than most Catholics I know" on issues like the family wages, health-care costs and the war in Iraq. With Romney out of the race, Kmiec announced his support for Obama on Easter Sunday, arguing that "Senator Obama comes reasonably close" to embodying "an alternative way to be pro-life." Kmiec develops that arresting claim in a new book, "Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Questions About Barack Obama," published in mid-September.

Other pro-Obama Catholic intellectuals include Notre Dame professor M. Cathleen Kaveny, whose Obamapologetics are frequently found on the Commonweal blog, and Duquesne University law professor Nicholas Cafardi, one of the original members of the U.S. bishops' National Review Board to study problems of clerical sexual abuse. In a recent statement, "Senator Obama: A Moral Choice for Catholics," Cafardi summarized the three most frequently deployed arguments of self-declared pro-life Catholics who support Barack Obama for president.

First, according to Cafardi, Catholics have, as a matter of law, "lost the abortion battle ... and I believe that we have lost it permanently." Second, abortion is not the only "intrinsic evil" of the day; the Bush administration has been guilty of committing acts that are "intrinsically evil" in its policies on interrogation of terrorist suspects, in its failures after Hurricane Katrina and in its detention of terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay. Third, Senator Obama "supports government action that would reduce the number of abortions," including an "adequate social safety net for poor women who might otherwise have abortions."

The argument, in sum: the constitutional and legal arguments that have raged since Roe vs. Wade are over, and Catholics have lost; there are many other "intrinsic evils" that Catholics are morally bound to oppose, and Republicans tend to ignore those evils; liberalized social-welfare policies will drive down the absolute numbers of abortions and Senator Obama is an unabashed liberal on these matters. Therefore, a vote for Obama is the "real" pro-life vote.

The argument is, some might contend, a bold one. Yet it is also counterintuitive, running up against the fact that, by most measures and despite his rhetoric about reducing the incidence of abortion, Barack Obama has an unalloyed record of support for abortion on demand. Moreover, he seems to understand Roe vs. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court decisions as having defined abortion as a fundamental liberty right essential for women's equality, meaning that government must guarantee access to abortion in law and by financial assistance—a moral judgment and a policy prescription the pro-life Catholic Obama boosters say they reject.

According to his own Web site, Obama supports the federal Freedom of Choice Act [FOCA], which would eliminate all state and federal regulation of abortion (such as informed consent and parental notification in the case of minors seeking an abortion); these regulations have demonstrably reduced the absolute number of abortions in the jurisdictions in which they are in effect. FOCA would also eliminate, by federal statute, state laws providing "conscience clause" protection for pro-life doctors who decline to provide abortions. Obama (along with the Democratic Party platform) supports federal funding for abortion, opposes the Hyde amendment (which restricts the use of taxpayer monies for abortion) and has pledged to repeal the "Mexico City policy" (initiated by Ronald Reagan and reinstated by George W. Bush, which bans federal foreign-aid funding for organizations that perform and promote abortion as a means of family planning). According to the pro-choice Web site RHRealityCheck.org, Obama also opposes continued federal funding for crisis pregnancy centers.

Then there is the continuing controversy over Obama's role in the Illinois state legislature when that body was considering an "infants born alive" protection act that would extend full legal protection to infants who survive a late-term abortion. According to the Annenberg Political Fact Check, Obama opposed the 2001 and 2002 Illinois "born alive" bills on the grounds that they were attempts to undermine Roe vs. Wade but said he would have supported an Illinois bill similar to the federal "born alive" legislation signed by President Bush in 2002. Yet, according to Annenberg, "Obama voted in committee against the 2003 state bill that was nearly identical to the federal bill he says he would have supported." However one sorts out the conflicting claims in this often-bitter debate, in which charges of infanticide and lying have been hurled, there can be no doubt that Barack Obama did not make his own the cause of legal protection for infants who survive an abortion.

The "social safety net" component of the pro-life, pro-Obama argument may seem, at first blush, to make sense. Yet it, too, runs up against stubborn facts: for example, Sweden, with a much thicker social safety net than the United States, has precisely the same rate (25 percent) of abortions per pregnancy as America. As for the claim, often repeated by pro-life, pro-Obama Catholics, that more financially generous welfare policies would drive down abortion rates because financial pressure is a predominant cause of abortion, another stubborn fact intrudes: according to a survey conducted by the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute, a mere 23 percent of abortions in the United States are performed primarily because of alleged financial need. There is also what some would consider the insuperable problem of squaring a concern for fostering alternatives to abortion with Senator Obama's opposition to federal funding of crisis pregnancy centers that provide precisely those alternatives. Moreover, the Freedom of Choice Act Obama has pledged to sign forbids publicly supported programs helping pregnant women from "discriminating" against abortion. Thus a federal Pregnant Women Support Act—a key plank in the platform of pro-life congressional Democrats—would, in Orwellian fashion, be legally bound by FOCA to include support for abortion.

As for the claim that the legal argument is over, and lost, that, too, seems belied by the evidence. Roe vs. Wade remains deeply controversial, in the culture and among legal scholars. Since 1989, the Supreme Court has shown a willingness, on occasion, to uphold laws regulating abortion clinics or banning certain forms of abortion. No Clinton-appointed justice contributed to that trend; it seems very unlikely that Obama nominees would extend the trend. In that respect, a pro-life, pro-Catholic Obama vote is not so much a recognition that the legal argument is over but, de facto, a vote to repeal the legal protections for the unborn that have been laboriously crafted in the 35 years since Roe eliminated the abortion law of all 50 states.

Another line of critique against the pro-life, pro-Catholic Obama activists has been mounted by, among others, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who holds a doctorate in political philosophy and currently serves as president of the U.S. bishops' conference. In a September letter to the people of the archdiocese of Chicago, the cardinal laid down what he described as a basic principle of justice: in a just society, innocent human life, especially when incapable of self-defense, deserves the protection of the laws. No one who denies that, the cardinal argued, can claim to be advancing the common good. And, as Roe vs. Wade does indeed deny the protection of the laws to the unborn, no one can, with any moral or logical consistence, claim to support both Roe vs. Wade and the common good. It's one or the other.

Similarly, two New York bishops, William Murphy of Rockville Centre and Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, the present and immediate past chairmen of the U.S. bishops' committee on domestic policy, implicitly challenged the position of Kmiec, Kaveny, Cafardi and others in a Sept. 24 letter to The New York Times. According to a Sept. 18 Times article, the U.S. bishops' statement on the 2008 election, "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," had been crafted so as to "explicitly allow Catholics to vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights if they do so for other reasons." That was simply not true, according to DiMarzio and Murphy, who said that "Faithful Citizenship" states that a Catholic can support a pro-abortion candidate "only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences...." Moreover, the bishops concluded, "this standard of 'grave moral reasons' is a very high standard to meet."

The pro-Obama, pro-life Catholics would doubtless reply that that standard has been met in this instance. But that claim still leaves them with a problem. As Cardinal George's letter indicated, the Catholic Church's teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion involves a first principle of justice that can be known by reason, that's one of the building blocks of a just society, and that ought never be compromised—which is why, for example, Catholic legislators were morally obliged to oppose legal segregation (another practice once upheld by a Supreme Court decision that denied human beings the full protection of the laws). Questions of war and peace, social-welfare policy, environmental policy and economic policy, on the other hand, are matters of prudential judgment on which people who affirm the same principles of Catholic social doctrine can reasonably differ. The pro-life, pro-Obama Catholics are thus putting the full weigh of their moral argument on contingent prudential judgments that, by definition, cannot bear that weight.

One of the most interesting facets of the intra-Catholic furor over Kmiec, Kaveny, Cafardi and other pro-life, pro-Obama Catholics is the way this argument seems to have displaced the struggle between bishops and pro-choice Catholic politicians that was so prominent in 1984 (when the contest was between Geraldine Ferraro and New York's Cardinal John O'Connor) and 2004 (when the candidacy of John Kerry embroiled the entire U.S. bishops conference in a dispute over whether pro-choice Catholic politicians ought to be permitted to receive holy communion). That displacement, however, is likely to be temporary.

In the wake of ill-advised (and nationally televised) ventures into theology by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, several bishops—including Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, Madison Bishop Robert Morlino and Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl—issued statements underscoring the Catholic Church's unswerving moral opposition to abortion from the very beginnings of Christianity; the morality of abortion was not an open question for serious Catholics, as Pelosi in particular had suggested. (After receiving what seems to have been an avalanche of protest over the Speaker's misstatement on "Meet the Press," Pelosi's own archbishop, George Niederauer of San Francisco, announced publicly that he would invite Mrs. Pelosi in for a conversation.) Moreover, in the wake of both the Pelosi and Biden incidents, the chairmen of the bishops' pro-life and doctrine committees, Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia and Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., issued sharp statements deploring the misrepresentation of Catholic teaching by the Speaker and the senator.

Many U.S. bishops, in other words, seem exasperated with Catholic politicians who present themselves as ardent Catholics and yet consistently oppose the Church on what the bishops consider the premier civil-rights issue of the day. It seems unlikely that the bishops, having found their voices after discovering the limits of their patience, will back off in an Obama administration—which could raise some interesting questions for, and about, a Vice President Joe Biden, whose fitness to receive holy communion may well be discussed in executive session at the bishops' annual meeting in mid-November.

Biden is not the only Catholic who will be seriously challenged by an Obama administration bent on reversing what its pro-choice allies regard as eight years of defeat; pro-life Catholics will face different, if equally grave, dilemmas. The bishops already find themselves defending the Catholic integrity of Catholic hospitals under pressures from state governments; those pressures, as well as pressures on doctors and other Catholic health-care professionals, will increase in an Obama administration, especially if FOCA succeeds in knocking down state conscience-clause protections for Catholic health-care providers and institutions. And should an Obama administration reintroduce large-scale federal funding of abortion, the bishops will have to confront a grave moral question they have managed to avoid for decades, thanks to the Hyde amendment: does the payment of federal taxes that go to support abortion constitute a form of moral complicity in an "intrinsic evil"? And if so, what should the conscientious Catholic citizen do?

About which, it will be very interesting to hear what professors Kmiec, Kaveny and Cafardi have to say.

George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow Of Washington’s Ethics And Public Policy Center, Is A Newsweek Contributor.

Read news report from Catholic News Agency

Read more!

Rosary Novena to begin October 27

Among the most important titles we have in the Catholic Church for the Blessed Virgin Mary are Our Lady of Victory and Our Lady of the Rosary. These titles can be traced back to one of the most decisive times in the history of the world and Christendom. The Battle of Lepanto took place on October 7 (date of feast of Our Lady of Rosary), 1571. This proved to be the most crucial battle for the Christian forces against the radical Muslim navy of Turkey. Pope Pius V led a procession around St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City praying the Rosary. He showed true pastoral leadership in recognizing the danger posed to Christendom by the radical Muslim forces, and in using the means necessary to defeat it. Spiritual battles require spiritual weapons, and this more than anything was a battle that had its origins in the spiritual order—a true battle between good and evil.

Today we have a similar spiritual battle in progress—a battle between the forces of good and evil, light and darkness, truth and lies, life and death. If we do not soon stop the genocide of abortion in the United States, we shall run the course of all those that prove by their actions that they are enemies of God—total collapse, economic, social, and national. The moral demise of a nation results in the ultimate demise of a nation. God is not a disinterested spectator to the affairs of man. Life begins at conception. This is an unalterable formal teaching of the Catholic Church. If you do not accept this you are a heretic in plain English. A single abortion is homicide. The more than 48,000,000 abortions since Roe v. Wade in the United States constitute genocide by definition. The group singled out for death—unwanted, unborn children.

No other issue, not all other issues taken together, can constitute a proportionate reason for voting for candidates that intend to preserve and defend this holocaust of innocent human life that is abortion.

I strongly urge every one of you to make a Novena and pray the Rosary to Our Lady of Victory between October 27th and Election Day, November 4th. Pray that God’s will be done and the most innocent and utterly vulnerable of our brothers and sisters will be protected from this barbaric and grossly sinful blight on society that is abortion. No woman, and no man, has the right to choose to murder an innocent human being.

May God grant us the wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and counsel to form our conscience in accordance with authentic Catholic teaching, and then vote that well-formed Catholic conscience.

God Bless You

Fr. John Corapi


Click here to download a PDF copy to email, link and distribute this article freely.



Any of you who are moved by the subject matter in this article, you may want to check out this week's "Weekly Wisdom" Click here to see the schedule.

Read more!

The Obama-Oprah Connection

With more than a little a sprinkling of Eckhart Tolle...

By Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr.

The overlooked imperious theme of Michelle Obama’s convention speech was “the world as it should be.” She used the phrase four times, emphasizing that she and Barack are “committed” to “building the world as it should be.” Mrs. Obama often speaks about remaking the world, as she did at the end of her UCLA speech: “We can change the world. Yes we can.” But how do she and her husband imagine that they are going to effect this change? Michelle’s own carefully considered written words give us a frightening clue, suggesting that the Obamas look to television personality, Oprah Winfrey, as their guide and inspiration in world affairs. What is doubly frightening is that Oprah looks, in turn, to her mentally deranged guru, Eckhart Tolle, and Tolle looks, in turn, to his inner “Source,” an exact match for Satan.

On May 20, Time magazine published Mrs. Obama’s tribute to Oprah as part of its 100 most influential people of 2008. It read in part: “Oprah is a wonderful friend and an incredible force. Her friendship and support have meant so much to Barack and me . . . Using her platform to serve as a global role model, she challenges us [Barack and me] to make the world as it is, the world as it should be. And she is always the first to show us how it can be done.” The Obamas’ vision of the “world as it should be” jibes with Oprah’s.

Oprah’s Obama-admired remake of the world is well underway. There is “a new kind of tribe emerging – a global community of seekers learning from and teaching each other how to be with our humanity,” Oprah says. This new “global community” is made up of the millions who have responded favorably to her relentless promotion of her pathologically narcissistic, anti-Christian guru, Eckhart Tolle.

In March of this year, Oprah kicked off her ten-week global Internet online class touting Tolle’s book, A New Earth, and its importance in raising everyone’s “consciousness.” The interactive webcast reached 500,000 people in more than 139 countries. Since that time, according to Oprah’s Web site, millions more have downloaded Oprah’s and Tolle’s teachings. When Michelle Obama, two months after the Tolle kick-off, lauded Oprah as being “a global role model . . . show[ing] us how it can be done,” to what was she referring, if not this most focused effort on Oprah’s part to “benefit” humanity by building a one-world multi-cultural tribe?

When Barack speaks of himself as “a fellow citizen of the world,” is he visualizing world peace becoming a reality through Oprah’s expanding tribe? Don’t doubt it. Michelle introduced Oprah in Iowa prior to Oprah’s introducing Obama, gushing that the talk-show queen “touches the souls of so many of us” and “empowers us all.” Michelle’s “us” includes Barack. In his Berlin speech entitled, “A World that Stands as One,” the Oprah-empowered Barack said that the “walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.” That’s exactly what Oprah is all about, promoting the lunacy that Tolle’s teaching transcends and unites all religions. Once the Christians, Muslims, and Jews join Oprah’s tribe and accept Oprah’s guru as their chief prophet, then Presto: world peace!

Oprah’s guru, Eckhart Tolle, is a troubled and troubling individual. He claims to have experienced “a reincarnation as a spiritual teacher” through a self-admitted psychotic episode. He is a case study in the development of the mental illness of malignant narcissism. Like the original Narcissus, Tolle is obsessed with the two-dimensional reflection of his image. In his The Power of Now, Tolle writes about what he learns from viewing his own image in a mirror: “If you accept the image, no matter what it is, if you become friendly toward it, it cannot not become friendly toward you. This is how you change the world.”

Here, in a nutshell, Tolle expresses the fundamental delusion and extreme grandiosity of his own malignant narcissism. A mirror image is not true, but backwards. Tolle is not the greatest spiritual teacher in the world as he imagines, but one of the least competent. Oprah welcomes Tolle’s preposterous claims with uncritical glee because they justify the adoration of her own backwards and exalted mirror image of herself. Obama also exhibits the characteristics of malignant narcissism, most notably the delusions of grandeur that lie at the heart of the complex. His entire campaign is nothing more than a demand to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements.

To review: Barack and Michelle Obama look to Oprah Winfrey as their “global role model” for change. To effect this worldwide change, Oprah, in turn, relies on the “infallible” teachings of her guru, Eckhart Tolle. Tolle, in turn, looks in the mirror and makes friends with the backwards image of himself, thus enabling him to “change the world.”

Beyond his backwards reflected image, Oprah’s guru relies on something even more disturbing to change the world. It is a spirit or a force Tolle calls the “Source” which he claims resides within himself and Oprah, and within all those others who have learned through his teachings to “dissolve” their egos. That “Source” has told Tolle that the word of the God of the Bible is not reliable, that there is no death, and that he and Oprah both are as God, able to say of themselves “I Am That I Am.” These things that the “Source” has told Oprah and Tolle are the exact same things the serpent told Eve in the ancient garden.

Let’s review one more time: To change the world, the Obamas look to the New Age babblings of a self-adoring talk-show host, she looks to her mentally deranged guru, he looks to a friendly, backwards image of himself and relies upon the utterances of a “Source” that Christians, Jews, and Muslims recognize immediately as the deluding “wisdom” of the Genesis serpent.

But to Oprah, in her morally backwards narcissistic state, Tolle’s recycled serpent’s “wisdom” does not seem delusive, but true. Oprah goes on to attribute that same “wisdom” to Barack Obama. She praises his “intelligence” and calls him “brilliant.” She says he has the “gift of wisdom,” and a “tongue dipped in unvarnished truth.” According to Oprah, not only does Obama always tell the truth, but also knows how “to be the truth,” a straightforward messianic reference.

Oprah has said, “I don’t think there’s anything more important than awakening and also knowing what your purpose is.” To her, awakening means embracing and spreading the ludicrous, grandiose notions of her guru, as she shamelessly tries to reconcile all of humanity to her and Tolle’s “Source.” Oprah and Tolle believe that “the transformation of human consciousness” is an “urgent task.” We must “evolve” or perish. Oprah refers to Obama as an “evolved leader.” After Obama’s convention speech, before meeting with him, Oprah said, “We have to do whatever it takes to get [Obama] in office.” Oprah’s purpose is to expand her mutually parasitic coupling with her guru into a politically powerful triumvirate, getting Obama elected president so he will help her “save” the world, on behalf of her and Tolle’s “Source.” The most horrifying part is that Obama actually believes he can do it through the Obama-Oprah-Tolle-Satan School of International Relations.

Revelation 12:9 refers to “the ancient serpent called Adversary and Satan, who is deceiving the whole inhabited earth.” Oprah Winfrey leads a global tribe that is part of that sinister process. She is backing a man for president who has become part of that sinister process, as well. Now we have a better understanding of what the Obamas and Oprah mean by “the world as it should be,” and what their guru really means when he says, “This is how you change the world.”

Read more!

Oprah and All Her Works and All Her Empty Promises

Let's not forget how Oprah guides and influences our Democratic Presidential Candidate and his wife!

By Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer
of Human Life International

Of late I am increasingly frightened by something I see happening in our culture: it is the seeming superficial-ization of everything in American life to the point of absurdity and deception. The prime culprit of course is the ubiquitous mass media (especially 24-hour cable programming and the internet) and its constant dumbing down of the American consciousness to the lowest common denominator of the most tantalizing sound bites and images. The other bad boy is the interminable chatter/commentary by clever cultural sharpshooters: it's so bad sometimes that it makes me wonder if we can actually pull ourselves out of our co-dependence upon charlatans. What makes my priest's heart so heavy is that I think our society is going down the path of deep spiritual degradation, and it doesn't look like this trend will be ending any time soon. Certainly not in an election season.

Case in point: Oprah. Our country's richest woman is easily one of the most spiritually bankrupt people in America and also one of the most shockingly popular. How does a New Age con artist like Oprah get so many people to literally adore her? She did not make $260 million last year by feeding people solid food. She deals in fads, feelings and frauds - it's that simple - and apparently she is very effective at convincing people to follow her well-packaged crock of nonsense. Of a recent political speech, she admitted fawningly that she had "cried her eyelashes off" when she heard it, and I am sure her crocodile tears were persuasive to her vast audience. For people schooled in the truth, the reaction would be very different: I saw the same speech and could barely keep myself from throwing up, but they don't pay me $260 million a year.

When asked why she refused to interview her anointed one's political opponent, she balked and got caught in a nasty public relations double-bind which is what usually happens to people who play games with their own popularity. Her refusal would have been easier to swallow if she had just said simply that she didn't like the other candidate and didn't want her on the show; that we can accept! But then again, basic honesty is probably above Oprah's pay grade. The truth is that Oprah has put her social clout to partisan political use, and when she was called on to be fair, she just couldn't admit that she was playing the political hack.

I do think Oprah's menace is fundamentally spiritual though, and that it feeds off the growing spiritual superficiality of the American populace. Its treachery is not to be underestimated. Oprah not only believes in but forcefully advocates pernicious New Age trends like Helen Schucman's A Course In Miracles and Eckhart Tolle's terrible esoteric movement that is trampling down Christian values and opening up a spiritual vacuum in the hearts of millions as we speak. Having the life sucked out of our souls by spiritually bankrupt "celebrities" is a slow spiritual death, to put it mildly. However, Oprah is just the worst case scenario of what is reaching epidemic proportions in a personality-obsessed, spiritually infantile and media-saturated culture. The most popular show in American prime-time is not called "American Idol" for nothing: we are literally becoming a nation of idol-worshippers.

What can we do about all the deceptive cultural garbage clamoring to fill our vulnerable souls? Well, the Church has always had the answer and never ceases to instruct us in the discipline that will bring our souls down that "narrow way" of Christ. We are to "reject Satan and all his works and all his empty promises" - that would include all his idols too. We are to consume the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth and say "yes" when we mean "yes" and "no" when we mean "no." As Jesus said, "everything else is from the devil."

Read more!

Humanae Vitae- Drink from the well of its wisdom!

This encyclical on contraception has been sorely misinterpreted, mostly because its teachings have never been read. The following is an excerpt from the encyclical itself. Drink from the well of its wisdom:

The Church’s view of “conjugal love”

“This love is first of all fully human, that is to say, of the senses and of the spirit at the same time…intended to endure and to grow by means of the joys and sorrows of daily life, in such a way that husband and wife become one heart and one soul, and together attain their human perfection.

“This love is total, that is to say, it is a very special form
of personal friendship, in which husband and wife generously share everything,
without undue reservations or selfish calculations.

“Again, this love is faithful and exclusive until death…, a fidelity which can sometimes bedifficult, but is always possible, always noble and meritorious, as no one can deny.

“Finally this love is fruitful for it is not exhausted by the communion between husband and wife, but is destined to continue, raising up new lives.” (num. 9)

Experience the transcendent beauty of the Church’s vision of marriage, family and human life!

For the text of the encyclical please see http://www.hli.org/humanae_vitae.html or
http://www.humanaevitaepriests.org/

Read more!

A call to celebrate and reverence God’s vision of human sexuality

Natural Family Planning Awareness Week highlights the anniversary of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25) which articulates Catholic beliefs about human sexuality, conjugal love and responsible parenthood along with the feast of Saints Joachim and Anne (July 26), the parents of the Blessed Mother.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's landmark encyclical.

For those in the NY tri-state area,visit St. Mary Church in Norwalk, CT on Friday July 25 at 6:30 PM for a High Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite followed by a visit by Msgr. William Smith, Moral Theology Professor, St. Joseph Seminary Dunwoodie, who will speak on "Humanae Vitae: 40 years later."

Mass is offered in reparation for sins committed against the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Read more!

NEA endorses the candidate who would eliminate the next generation of schoolchildren

"The National Education Association (NEA) has chosen to back a presidential candidate who wants to continue a policy of abortion on demand, which has resulted in nearly 50 million missing students in classrooms from coast to coast since 1973,” Karen Cross, the National Right to Life political director, told LifeNews.com.

Senator Obama has said that, if elected president, the first thing he would do is sign the so-called "Freedom of Choice Act" – a bill that would make partial-birth abortion legal again, require taxpayer funding of abortion and nullify virtually all federal and state limitations on abortion, such as parental notification laws.

"Barack Obama's extremist pro-abortion agenda is a poison pill for our nation's classrooms," Cross added. "It borders on the incomprehensible that our nation's educators would get behind a candidate whose agenda will result in more and more missing children."

This week, pro-life advocates protested at the national NEA convention at the Washington Convention Center. The protest, which started on Wednesday, pointed out how the union has upset pro-life advocates many times over the years.

Most recently, the NEA received criticism from pro-life advocates when it hosted a forum featuring a late-term abortion practitioner.

The National Education Association came under fire in march for allowing a radical pro-abortion group to use its building to host a forum featuring controversial late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller.

LifeNews.com reported on the NEA-hosted pro-abortion forum and the criticism of it. Later, NEA Assistant General Counsel Michael Simpson slammed the criticism as "untrue and unfair."

ACTION: Send your complaints about the Obama endorsement to the National Education Association. Go to http://www.nea.org/aboutnea/contact.html for contact information.

More on Obama and Abortion:
Obama in his own words on the Infant Born Alive Protection Act:

“Aborting babies alive and letting them die violates no universal principle.”
“Babies who survive abortions are not protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.”
“A ban to stop aborted babies from being shelved to die would be burdensome to mothers.” “Aborting babies alive and letting them die is a doctor’s prerogative.”
“Aborting babies alive and letting them die is a religious issue.”

Read more!

China's One Child Policy Revised Due to Quake

Beijing, May 27, 2008 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Chinese officials have exempted families with children killed, severely injured, or disabled in the devastating Sichuan earthquake from the restrictions of China’s one-child policy. The May 12 quake, which left more than 65,000 dead, was particularly painful for many Chinese because so many children died.

China expert Steven W. Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute, welcomes the policy changes. "Many of China's rural schools are so poorly constructed that they became death traps during the earthquake. The heavy tile roofs simply came crashing down on the heads of the children below. They had no chance to escape."

The Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee, located in Sichuan’s capital, said that families affected by the disaster can obtain a certificate to have another child, the Associated Press reports.

The Chinese government normally enforces its one-child policy by fining couples who have more than one child. However, the committee’s announcement said that if a child born illegally was killed in the earthquake, parents will no longer have to pay fines, though previously paid fines will not be refunded. If a couple’s legally born child was killed but its illegally born sibling survived, that sibling can be registered as the legal child, the authorities explained.

Illegally born children are denied many rights, including nine free years of compulsory education.

Mosher, who has followed the one-child policy since its inception and described it in his most recent book “Population Control”, went on to comment that "The natural human reaction to losing a child is to have a make-up child as quickly as possible. But this will not be possible for most of the couples who have lost children to the quake, regardless of what the government policy is. Most women of childbearing age have been sterilized, or their spouses have been sterilized. Unless the government begins offering free tubal ligation and vasectomy reversals to these poor people, there will be no more children."

The authorities have also ruled that adopted children do not violate the one-child policy. About 4,000 children were orphaned in the quake and many Chinese have expressed interest in adopting them. Officials said they would make every effort to connect children with relatives.

China’s one-child policy was instituted in the late 1970s. According to the government, the policy has prevented 400 million births. Its putative goals include ensuring better education and health care to a smaller population.

Critics have charged that the policy has encouraged forced abortions and sterilizations. The policy has also created a sex imbalance in the country as boys are preferred to girls, who are disproportionately aborted.

Read more!