Two Responses to Suffering

In the 1920's 2 American women saw poverty and suffering.  Each took a different course to try to end it.

The first, Margaret Sanger, said that "The most merciful thing a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."  She founded the American Birth Control League. Her solution to poverty and suffering was to separate out certain classes and races of people and to kill them.  Her organization later became Planned Parenthood.  In 2007, it killed more than 305,000 children in the name of women's "health".

Katharine Drexel was born to a wealthy banker who instilled in his daughter the idea that her privileged position was given to her by God.  She founded The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Black and Native American Peoples, giving both her wealth and her life to those who lived on the margins of society.

She was canonized in 1988 and is the second saint born in America.  Her feast is today, March 3.

 The inspiration for this post was an excellent article by Joshua Mercer.

On the Darkest Day of the Year, Where is Our Light?

This is the darkest day of the year, both astronomically, politically and spiritually. December 21 is, of course, the Winter solstice, when we in the Northern Hemisphere have the fewest hours of daylight. It is also turning out to be the darkest time in a spiritual and moral sense.
Last night it was reported in Great Britain that U.S. Major General Anthony Cucolo, head of the U.S. troops in Iraq has decided that any male or female soldier who are expecting a baby under his command will face court martial with a possible prison sentence!!!! 

Guess what the effect of *that* will be?  Yep.  Convenient, career saving abortions.  Kill your baby, keep your job.

And a little child shall lead them.  ~Isaiah 11:6

Increasingly, our society refuses to follow. 

On another front, there are more and more voices within the environmentalist community who want to bring China's one child policy here to the west.  It's necessary, they say, to combat shrinking natural resources and feed those of us lucky enough to have been born.

To these secularists, the solution is not sharing.  No.  That would be naive and stupid. The solution is not respecting and cherishing our Judeo-Christian heritage that asks that we feed the poor and take care of those who are more helpless than ourselves.  All that Christian stuff is just too oppressive. The obvious solution is to kill the children.

Let's wipe Christmas of its real meaning.  That will make everyone equal--everyone happy.  Let's take away the baby in the manger so we can go on killing the babies that are conceived today--in the most prosperous century mankind has ever seen. 

We are losing our grip as a nation and as a people.  We no longer have a moral compass.  We are orphans who have run away from the only Parents we ever knew and we think we are free.

Hat tip to Mark Shea.

Ginsberg and Eugenics

Supreme Court Judge, Ruth Bader Ginsberg said Tuesday in a New York Times article, 

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

This reminds us that for many, including Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and, apparently, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, abortion is not about "choice". Abortion is about reducing "growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of."

Poor people, black people, people who suffer from physical, emotional or mentally disabling conditions...who are those that "we don't want to have too many of"?

Perhaps Judge Ginsberg agrees with Margaret Sanger:

We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. If it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members. Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America by Linda Gordon

Or perhaps she agrees with Adolph Hitler:

The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring. . . represents the most humane act of mankind. Mein Kampf

Those who beleive in reducing "growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of", usually hold that opinion until it is they who are suddenly struggling with poverty or serious illness. Then, they want the social programs that Margaret Sanger spoke of as a waste of resources on "human weeds."

Something to Remember on this D-Day

This is from Fr. John Corapi's latest newsletter via Lifesite News. Before becoming a priest, Fr. Corapi worked in Hollywood and experienced all that lifestyle entails. Here is his latest take on what is happening in this country. (Emphasis, mine.)

All evil can claim its ultimate origin in moral evil. Those that deny objective standards of morality merely facilitate the demise of their society. That apparently large numbers of people seem to be intellectually and morally numb is not news, but the near light-speed evaporation of our way of life is.

Personal liberty has already begun to be compromised. Various governments, including the United States, now own car companies like General Motors and Chrysler, mega insurance companies, soon perhaps health care and energy. Injustice is beginning to be seen from the smallest of individuals to the largest of corporations. The only problem with that is that governments have never been able to operate anything profitably, efficiently, or equitably. The little guy and the large corporation will all be equal opportunity recipients of heavy-handed injustice very soon.

The government is about to dictate what car you can drive, how you insure it, what your bank can pay you or not, what kind of heating you have in your home, if you can have air conditioning or not. And, oh, if you eat a Twinkie your health insurance premium is going up. If you get sick, perhaps the Twinkie did it, and you aren't covered.

Nothing will ultimately go well for the United States or any other country until the injustice of all injustices is remedied. Until every human being is respected and reverenced, from the moment of conception to the last moment of natural life, no one will be safe and secure.

Whether it is the helpless infant in the womb or the misguided and/or evil abortionist on the wrong end of a bullet, all deserve the safety and security of the law. Only God can in justice and wisdom decide when life begins and when life ends. When we attempt to usurp God's job description we always come up short.

The freedoms that our ancestors fought and died for are being eroded by our duly elected government. This is happening because we think that anyone who does not have what we as a society judge to be a "quality of life" should not be allowed to continue to live. Of course, we couch it in euphemisms meant to show how modern and enlightened we are, but the result is the same. We want to be God, with the power to decide who works and who does not, who gets medical care and who does not, who lives and who dies.

Religion is seen as an unnecessary restriction on personal freedom and not as the keeper of human rights for all people, regardless of their prospective economic value to society.

As Fr. Corapi said, a society that does not recognize basic human rights will not survive. The only consistent protector of those values regardless of economic, political and cultural changes for the last 2000 years has been the Church. In spite of corruption within its own ranks, the Church has, through its teachings, consistently stood for the basic human rights of all people, born and unborn, young and old, rich and poor, for 20 centuries. We forget that to our own peril. If the Church were to disappear, we would have to invent her anew.

Freedom and civilization always come at a personal price. There must be "rules". That is how a society survives. To have the majority of a culture openly rebel in their attitudes, opinions and behavior, against long held cultural norms, is to perpetuate the disintegration of that culture.

Imagine It

What did he say?

The above quote is from yesterday's National Prayer Breakfast. I wonder if the President realizes how ironic it is. Maybe he truly doesn't think that pre-born human beings are people. Maybe he doesn't believe in God. Or, maybe he does realize the irony and is hoping to placate those "ignorant" pro-lifers. Either way, we need to pray.

Life

Found this video via Fr Dwight Longenecker.

One Baby One Vote

Go to onebabyonevote.com and spiritually adopt and name an aborted baby.

Then go to the polls and give that baby a voice.

Let the coming generation be told of the LORD
that they may proclaim to a people yet to be born
the justice he has shown.
~Psalm 22:32
(from today's Mass readings)

Culture of Death in America

What has our country come to when one of the leading presidential candidates in the United States a) votes against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act and b)declares that he wouldn't want his daughter(s) "punished with a baby" if they "made a mistake". Wow. Babies are not "punishment" for a "mistake". They are logical consequences for a choice made (in most cases) and they are wanted by many, many couples whose hearts are aching for children, but they are not a "punishment" to be KILLED AFTER BIRTH by the very doctors we go to desperate to save our lives.

Where are we as a civilization if we are accepting, almost without question, the very values that Hitler's Germany stood for? By sugar coating our culture of death in sweet sounding euphemisms, we are copying one of the things that Nazi Germany did best--propaganda--"spin"--to make its goal of mass murder acceptable to society.

Anyone who can vote with a straight face against a law that declares a child a person with rights, AFTER IT IS BORN, and sees innocent children as "punishments" for "mistakes" does not deserve to be President of the United States.

Watch out, America. The leaders we have are the leaders we vote for.

Sign Petition to Defund Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the U.S., with its roots in the Eugenics Movement, so popular with Adolph Hitler's Nazi Party, receives over $250 million in our hard earned tax payer money.

Students from UCLA's pro-life newspaper, The Advocate, called the head of development for the Idaho Planned Parenthood chapter and offered to donate money for the abortion as long as it went to "an African American woman" to abort her baby because the caller was against affirmative action.

The representative of Planned Parenthood told the caller that his feelings that "the less black kids out there the better" were "understandable" and that she was "excited" about his call.

Go here to listen to the audio of this call and to sign a petition to defund Planned Parenthood.

God's Word Today

Todays first reading made me think that God was speaking to us, in the West, today.

Hear the word of the LORD,
princes of Sodom!
Listen to the instruction of our God,
people of Gomorrah!

Wash yourselves clean!
Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes;
cease doing evil; learn to do good.
Make justice your aim: redress the wronged,
hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.

Come now, let us set things right,
says the LORD:
Though your sins be like scarlet,
they may become white as snow;
Though they be crimson red,
they may become white as wool.
If you are willing, and obey,
you shall eat the good things of the land;
But if you refuse and resist,
the sword shall consume you:
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken!
~Isaiah 1:10,16-20

Without even needing to make dire predictions about future apocalyptic happenings on our own soil, God's word is coming true this very minute. "By the 'sword'" of abortion, over 1 million Americans die each year. Our culture, which puts Sodom and Gomorrah to shame, is reaping what it has sewn. In exchange for complete sexual "freedom" and license, we have sold the souls of our children. Those that are born and raised in this culture, see a steady diet of sexual voyeurism, even if they manage to avoid participating in it themselves.

This is an election year in the United States. God calls out, even to the leaders of modern day "Sodom and Gomorrah" for repentance. There is always hope, no matter who is elected. We can, as a society, "learn to do good." God holds out the promise of forgiveness to us. Our sins, "though they be crimson red, they may become white as wool."

If we repent.

Day of Penance for Life

For forty years I loathed that generation,
And said they are a people who err in their heart,
And they do not know My ways.
Therefore I swore in My anger,
Truly they shall not enter into My rest.
~Psalm 95:10

Today is the 35th Anniversary of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision allowing abortion throughout all 9 months of pregnancy in the United States. Yes, abortion is legal through the 9th month of pregnancy here, a fact that many in the U.S. don't even realize.

The U.S. Bishops have designated today a day of penance for the sin of taking pre-born life.

In all the dioceses of the United States of America, January 22 (or January 23, when January 22 falls on a Sunday) shall be observed as a particular day of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion, and of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life. The Mass “For Peace and Justice” (no. 22 of the “Masses for Various Needs”) should be celebrated with violet vestments as an appropriate liturgical observance for this day.

General Instruction of the Roman Missal, no. 373

Sweet Jesus, have mercy on us.

Right to Life News

The Catholic News Agency is reporting that The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority in Great Britain is studying whether or not to allow the creation of a human-animal embryo hybrid as requested by King’s College in London and the University of Newcastle. The apparent purpose of this 99% human, 1% animal, would be to harvest its stem cells at 14 days post conception.

The level of hubris shown by these scientists is sad but not surprising. We have not learned, as a society, to curb our tendencies to build our towers of Babel, thinking we alone can reach the heights of creation.

Pro-Life Victory

The Supreme Court today upheld a nation wide ban on partial birth abortion in the United States. This is a victory in the battle against the killing of innocent life that has been a long time in coming.

Saint Joseph

Yesterday was the feast of Saint Joseph. The only hymn in our hymnal dedicated to Saint Joseph is called Saint Joseph was a Just Man or as my dh calls it, Saint Joseph was just a man!

Saint Joseph was, in essence, the adoptive father of Our Lord.

Let us pray especially for those who are adopted, those seeking to adopt, and for troubled pregnant mothers everywhere that they may give the gift of a child to another.

Can I live?

And I don't even like rap...this is beautiful. Hat tip to Mulier Fortis.

March for Life--Day of Penance in the U.S.

Please pray for those going to the March for Life in Washington, DC today. And, pray for all the victims of abortion, both the babies killed, and the mothers and fathers who have to live with their decision for the rest of their lives.

In all the dioceses of the United States of America, January 22 (or January 23, when January 22 falls on a Sunday) shall be observed as a particular day of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion, and of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life. The Mass “For Peace and Justice” (no. 22 of the “Masses for Various Needs”) should be celebrated withviolet vestments as an appropriate liturgical observance for this day.

~General Instruction of the Roman Missal, no. 373

Holy See's Objection to UN Convention on Disabled

The Vatican continued to stand up for the disabled and the unborn yesterday by refusing to sign the UN's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities because of its guarantee of the "right" of abortion, which is often offered to pregnant women if their unborn child is found to have a disability prior to birth.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore, papal nuncio and permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations said, "It is surely tragic that, wherever fetal defect is a precondition for offering or employing abortion, the same convention created to protect persons with disabilities from all discrimination in the exercise of their rights, may be used to deny the very basic right to life of disabled unborn persons."

Church of England greases the slippery slope

The Church of England has come out in favor of the recent British doctors' proposal that severely disabled premature infants be euthanized by the withholding of medical treatment. Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark stated that "it may in some circumstances be right to choose to withhold or withdraw treatment, knowing it will possibly, probably, or even certainly result in death".

An Inthenews.co.uk story says that "Babies born at such premature ages are much more likely to be disabled and therefore suffer major constraints on their enjoyment of life."

So the Church of England says its ok to just kill them.

Babies are first. The elderly will be next. With the birth rate in many countries below replacement level, financial issues will quickly outweigh whatever might be left of Judeo-Christian life ethics. We already have killed permanently disabled adults (Terri Schiavo, for example) in this country, not to mention the many pre-born children who are killed each year.

All in the name of "compassion."

Hopefully, there are still Anglicans left out there who have a conscience that is properly formed enough to be disturbed by this latest foray into "compassionate" killing.

Matthew over at Shrine of the Holy Whapping posts about the Anglican Use parishes. This Pastoral Provision allows "Anglican or Episcopalian clergy and whole parishes (to) be brought over to the Catholic faith while retaining a distinct identity in the form of a very beautiful liturgy." Unfortunately, there are only about 6 of these parishes in the United States. But, God willing, more will come to be created as the Anglican church continues its quick slide down the slippery slope.

Slippery Slope

Don't believe that the "slippery slope" of allowing one pro-death behavior inevitably leads to another? Check this out.

The Times online in the UK is reporting that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology in England is asking that the health profession there consider calling for the legalization of "active euthanasia" of newborn babies and infants.

John Harris, a member of the government's Human Genetics Commission and professor of bioethics at Manchester University, bluntly calls for the euthanizing of disabled newborns.

"We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn. What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it okay to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other?"

What other society thought it prudent to do away with its citizens who couldn't live a so-called "full quality of life"? Nazi Germany. Beginning with infants and very young children who were deemed "unworthy of life", the Nazi program, code named "Aktion T 4" quickly spread to include older children and adults. Hitler's decree in 1939 enlarged

"the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death."

This was typed on his personal stationary.

The Nazi government then began to require that those with conditions such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile disorders, therapy resistant paralysis, syphilitic diseases, retardation, encephalitis, Huntington's chorea, and various other neurological conditions be reported for termination.

Also to be killed were those who had been continuously institutionalized for at least 5 years, were criminally insane, were not German citizens or were not of German or related blood.

As pro-euthanasia advocate, Mr. Harris so rightly points out, what is the difference between killing a pre-born infant and killing those who have already been born? What then is the difference between killing someone at birth, and killing them 6 months later? What about a year later? When will it stop?

What then, would make you or I immune?