Social and political commentary from a Catholic freelance writer and mother.
Blog Details
Overall rank: 125243 Number of inbound blogs: 51 Number of incoming links: 191 RSS: RSS feed ATOM: ATOM feed Last update: 2008-10-19 04:38:00 GMT Estimated value: $129,415
Analytics
Incoming clicks since last reset: 82 Outgoing clicks since last reset: 295
Latest Posts
USCCB Film reviewer Harry Forbes at it again
Thanks to Harry Forbe's lack of understanding or respect for Catholic teaching on sexuality, I am in the movie review business. That's why I started Catholic Media Review, and why it's getting me noticed not only on Google, but on Catholic online, MercatorNet, Reuters, The Chicago Sun-Times, "The Wanderer", and Catholic Exchange. Thanks, Harry! Now, I wish I made half his salary, which of course is paid by the faithful. I usually work for nothing. He's at it again with his review of "Milk" about homosexual San Francicso city council member Harvey Milk. The movie, which exalts the first openly homosexual man elected to public office in U.S. history, Harvey Milk, contains scenes of "male kissing and nongraphic encounters, rear male nudity, murder, suicide, and some rough language, crude expressions and profanity" by Forbes' own admission. Despite such material, and despite the movie's blatant glorification of the homosexual rights agenda, it is not rated "Morally Offensive" (O), but only receives a rating of "L", for "Limited Adult Audience." Furthermore, in his review Forbes in no way objects to or cautions viewers about the content of the film, instead offering nothing but words of praise.
Magdi Allam, the Muslim who was baptized a Catholic by the Holy Father at the Easter vigil this year, is financing a pro-life politics in Europe. He is a another example of how converts make the best Catholics. They appreciate the richness of the fullness of truth. Speaking of his encounter with Jesus Christ and entry into the Catholic Church, Magdi Allam wrote: "I converted to the Catholic Christian religion, renouncing my previous Islamic faith. Thus, I finally saw the light, by divine grace. On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason." Now, this former Muslim who bears the new name of “Christian” has formed a new Political Party to help Europe. This Party will put forth an entire slate of candidates in the European Union elections next year. The Party is called “Protagonists for Christian Europe”. It is explicitly and unapologetically committed to promoting and defending Europe’s Christian values and the Western culture which was informed by and built upon them. Magdi Allam openly declares that these values are the path to true and authentic freedom for all men and women. He also asserts that they are under a fierce assault by the forces of secularism and moral relativism. Read the entire story on Catholic Online.
No 60 seat majority in the Senate: Chambliss wins Georgia!
This means that Obama can't overrun Congress like a steamroller with his radical agenda. Now he can face a filibuster on his initiatives IF the Republicans have the guts to oppose him. Remember when Clinton appointee, ACLU radical jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburn sailed through her Senate confirmation with 98 votes? Did Thomas, Roberts or Alito get such courtesy? Even when we were in the majority, members refused to use the 'nuclear option' and break the Democrat stranglehold on Congress, so I hope they've learned their lesson and acquired a backbone! Read the entire story here.
A confused sister
Yes, abortion is the killing of an innocent life. So is war andviolent killing on the street. I have often seen many starving babies inhospitals in Honduras and witnessed their pain. In these cases, abortionmight have been the lesser of two evils, and even the most mercifu lalternative. I don't think being torn limb from limb is merciful any way you think about it, sister!
I challenge our bishops to dwell more on unjust economic issues that both create and perpetuate the need for children to die of starvation, and for women to choose abortion. It would be better to aim at eliminating poverty rather than focus only on abortion. Poverty in our country and the world at large is a disgrace that cries to heaven for vengeance. Sr. Arlene Welding, SSSF Campellsport, WI Poverty is a sin which cries for vengance, and Catholics DO need to work on it, but it doesn't justify this kind of extremism, sister. Voting for Obama will do nothing but enrich his millionaire friends. The poor who voted for him will be sorely disappointed.
Thank you, Jill Stanek!
Not ony was Jill a relentless campaigner against the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever to run for office, but she continues to support the babies with Down sydnrome whom she has come to love. Here is her post on KIDS joining the March for Life. May God reward you, Jill!
Down syndrome and Europe
There's a lot of talk about eugenics in Europe, from Denmark's 'kinder system of eugenics' which means that 50% more babies with the condition are aborted thanks to new prenatal testing, to Britain's debate on whether higher birth rates of children with Trisomy 21 will harm the national health care system. For make no mistake: despite all the progress which children with Down Syndrome are now making in schools and homes up and down the country, the medical profession in general still has a visceral bias in favour of eugenic termination, which its practitioners are often startlingly crude in expressing. This is not based on a realistic and up-to-date assessment of the possibilities open to those with Down Syndrome, still less of the happiness which such people can and do bring to families and even communities as a whole: it is a function of the fact – which is undeniable – that people with Down Syndrome are likely to cost the NHS more in subsequent medical treatment than a child without any disabilities. Only 70 years after the Holocaust, once again, certain Europeans are considered "life unworthy of life". Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. George Santayana
Please join us in publicizing this
For immediate release: For more information: November 30, 2008 Eileen Haupt: 802-899-4882 Leticia Velasquez: 860-556-9116
FAMILES WHO HAVE CHILDREN WITH DOWN SYNDROME TO MARCH TOGETHER IN THE 2009 MARCH FOR LIFE in D.C. TO RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT THE HIGH INCIDENCE OF ABORTING BABIES WITH DOWN SYNDROME
Leticia Velasquez and Eileen Haupt, two mothers who each have a daughter with Down syndrome are organizing a group of families who have children with Down syndrome to march together in the 2009 March for Life in Washington, D.C. We are calling our endeavor KIDS (Keep Infants with Down Syndrome) to raise awareness about the 90% abortion rate of babies with Down syndrome and to challenge the misinformation that often leads mothers who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome to seek an abortion.
WHEN: Thursday, January 22, 2009, 11:30 a.m. to Noon WHERE: National Right to Life Committee, 512 10th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. WHAT: Meeting place for families who have children with Down syndrome (and other prenatally diagnosed conditions) to walk together in the 2009 March for Life
For more information please contact Eileen Haupt or Leticia Velasquez.
Leticia Velasquez is a mother of three daughters and lives in Connecticut. Her 6-year-old daughter, Christina, has Down syndrome. Leticia has a background in Journalism. She is the creator of several blogs and writes for several publications, including the National Catholic Register and Faith & Family Magazine. Her recent article published in the NCR entitled “Down, Hero Dad, and Palin” reported on the recent passage of the “Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act,” and the influence that Sarah Palin and the late Tom Vander Woude had on the success of the bill becoming law.
Eileen Haupt is the mother of two daughters and lives in Vermont. After her daughter Sadie was born with Down syndrome almost 10 years ago, she was drawn into the pro-life movement when she learned about the high incidence of aborting babies with Down syndrome. She is on the board of the Vermont Right to Life Committee and is the Alternate Delegate from Vermont to the board of the National Right to Life Committee. She ran as a candidate for State Representative in her district in Vermont in the 2008 elections.
Dilemmas of Pre-natal testing
Margarte Somerville has a good article on pre-natal testing at MercatorNet. Are we using pre-natal testing as part of a search-and-destroy mission for the disabled?
As harsh as the language is, we must ask ourselves: "Are we on a search-and-destroy mission to wipe out certain groups of people?" Widespread pre-natal screening will eliminate entire groups of people, for instance, those with Down syndrome, genetically linked mental illness such as bipolar disease, the profoundly deaf, and so on. The vast majority of people oppose screening for sex as unethical, except some would allow it for sex-linked diseases. And some gay people are concerned there could be screening for genes linked with homosexuality. If we don't want genetically "disabled" children to be born, what are our reasons and justifications? Are those reasons and justifications ethically acceptable? What principles and values do they establish and affirm at a societal level? And when there are no legal restrictions on abortion, we must also consider routinized pre-natal screening in that light. Is it ethically acceptable to abort, for instance, a Down syndrome child at eight months of gestation?
I have discussed the hidden agenda of pre-natal testing, which we prefer to call "Search-and-destroy" as proven by the statistics quoted here: "Pre-natal testing halves numbers of babies born with Down syndrome". I had erroneously attributed the rise in births of children with Down syndrome in Britain to more positive public image of children with Down syndrome, in this post, when it may simply be more diagnosed cases of Trisomy 21 than before, and the fact that women are beginning families much later. Sish.
In any event, new findings that the symptoms of Down syndrome may be either prevented or treated prenatally may make the search-and-destroy fostered by such organizations as March of Dimes unnecessary, as stated here: Down's starves developing nerve cells of two key proteins, leading to problems with mental development. But when US researchers injected the proteins into mice pregnant with "Down's" pups, the offspring seemed free of these problems. Read the entire article in BBC News. But will they stop funding research into such types of pre-natal diagnosis as ?
Alas, my experience in pro-life activism tells me that this life-saving news will receive far less press than the new diagnostic techniques. They even had the gall to try and advertise on my other blog, Cause of Our Joy. "Great news, now fewer disabled babies will be able to slip through the net". Society will be the loser when fewer children like my Christina are born. But will be have the spiritual intelligence to recognize it?
What have we come to?
A 34 year old store employee was trampled to death by the crowds in a Valley Stream store this morning. I am appalled. The 34-year-old male employee was pronounced dead an hour after shoppers breached the doors to the shopping center in Valley Stream, Long Island, about 5 a.m. Friday and knocked him down, police said. Click here for photos. "He was bum-rushed by 200 people," Jimmy Overby, the man's 43-year-old co-worker, told the New York Daily News. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too ... I literally had to fight people off my back."
Materialism is the culprit; on the part of Walmart execs who keep upping the ante by offering earlier and more dramatic "door buster" sales, and a crowd too bent on saving a few bucks to care if they killed a man, and nearly overran a pregnant woman. Even when rescue workers were trying to work on the man, they fought crowds.
Up in the tranquil stores in rural Connecticut, my mother, my daughter and I were in several stores this evening, with no trouble. I miss New York less every week.
Many in the blogosphere have pointed out that the best part of this debacle of an election is that more and more bishops are emerging from the shadows to take bold stand for life. Archbishop Burke did not have to emerge; he's always been at the forefront of the battle for the culture of life. Read the interview here.
Guadalupe the film
This film was releasesd the same day as Gibson's Apocalypto,and is the natural continuation of the story, Our Lady of Guadalupe ended the bloodletting of the Aztecs sacrifices. John Henry Westen of Life Site news says it is estimate that 1 of 3 Aztec children died in sacrifice. That's the same percentage of children who die from abortion in this country. I have been searching for this film and the website is no longer functioning. Does anyone know if it is our on DVD?
Mother Teresa's plea to the Supreme Court
Chocolate for your Brain has a moving post which includes this amicus brief filed by Mother Teresa to the Supreme Court when it was considering overturning Roe v Wade in 1994. It is more relevant than ever in the shadow of the upcoming adminstration of the culture of death.
This amicus brief was filed before the U.S. Supreme Court in the cases of Loce v. New Jersey and Krail et al. v. New Jersey in February 1994, by Mother Teresa.
I hope you will count it no presumption that I seek your leave to address you on behalf of the unborn child. Like that child I can be considered an outsider. I am not an American citizen. My parents were Albanian. I was born before the First World War in a part of what was not yet, and is no longer, Yugoslavia . In many senses I know what it is like to be without a country. I also know what is like to feel an adopted citizen of other lands.
When I was still a young girl I traveled to India . I found my work among the poor and the sick of that nation, and I have lived there ever since. Since 1950 I have worked with my many sisters from around the world as one of the Missionaries of Charity. Our congregation now has over four hundred foundations in more that one hundred countries, including the United States of America . We have almost five thousand sisters. We care for those who are often treated as outsiders in their own communities by their own neighbors—the starving, the crippled, the impoverished, and the diseased, from the old woman with a brain tumor in Calcutta to the young man with AIDS in New York City .
A special focus of our care are mothers and their children. This includes mothers who feel pressured to sacrifice their unborn children by want, neglect, despair, and philosophies and government policies that promote the dehumanization of inconvenient human life. And it includes the children themselves, innocent and utterly defenseless, who are at the mercy of those who would deny their humanity.
So, in a sense, my sisters and those we serve are all outsiders together. At the same time, we are supremely conscious of the common bonds of humanity that unite us and transcend national boundaries. In another sense, no one in the world who prizes liberty and human rights can feel anything but a strong kinship with America . Yours is the one great nation in all of history that was founded on the precept of equal rights and respect for all humankind, for the poorest and weakest of us as well as the richest and strongest. As your Declaration of Independence put it, in words that have never lost their power to stir the heart: “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”
A nation founded on these principles holds a sacred trust: to stand as an example to the rest of the world, to climb ever higher in its practical realization of the ideals of human dignity, brotherhood, and mutual respect. Your constant efforts in fulfillment of that mission, far more that your size or your wealth or your military might, have made America an inspiration to all mankind.
It must be recognized that your model was never one of realized perfection, but of ceaseless aspiration. From the outset, for example, America denied the African slave his freedom and human dignity. But in time you righted that wrong, albeit at an incalculable cost in human suffering and loss of life. Your impetus has almost always been toward a fuller, more all embracing conception and assurance of the rights that your founding fathers recognized as inherent and God-given. Yours has ever been an inclusive, not an exclusive, society. And your steps, though they may have paused or faltered now and then, have been pointed in the right direction and have trod the right path.
The task has not always been an easy one, and each new generation has faced its own challenges and temptations. But in a uniquely courageous and inspiring way, America has kept faith.
Yet there has been one infinitely tragic and destructive departure from those American ideals in recent memory. It was this Court's own decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) to exclude the unborn child from the human family. You ruled that a mother, in consultation with her doctor, has broad discretion, guaranteed against infringement by the United States Constitution, to choose to destroy her unborn child. Your opinion stated that you did not need to “resolve the difficult question of when life begins.”
That question is inescapable. If the right to life in an inherent and inalienable right, it must surely exist wherever life exists. No one can deny that the unborn child is a distinct being, that it is human, and that it is alive. It is unjust, therefore, to deprive the unborn child of its fundamental right to life on the basis of its age, size, or condition of dependency.
It was a sad infidelity to America 's highest ideals when this Court said that it did not matter, or could not be determined, when the inalienable right to life began for a child in its mother's womb. America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience.
It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered domination over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.
Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign. The Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany recently ruled that “ the unborn child is entitled to its rights to life independently of acceptance by its mother; this is an elementary and inalienable right that emanates from the dignity of the human being.” Americans may feel justly proud that Germany in 1993 was able to recognize the sanctity of human life. You must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth.
I have no new teaching for America . I seek only to recall you to faithfulness to what you once taught the world. Your nation was founded on the proposition—very old as a moral precept, but startling and innovative as a political insight—that human life is a gift of immeasurable worth, and that it deserves, always and everywhere, to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect.
I urge the Court to take the opportunity presented by the petitions in these cases to consider the fundamental question of when human life begins and to declare without equivocation the inalienable rights which it possesses.
What a powerful treatise on the dignity of human life, as declared by our own Founding Fathers! What will become of this nation which has abandoned it's role as salt and light to the world?
Blessed Mother Teresa, pray for us!
The ugly side of the internet
In a culture where women who are used in pornography are called, "adult performers" and there is such a thing as "snuff films" where an actor actually dies in the film, can 'suicide performers' be far behind? Sadly, not. A young man informed the "audience" via webcam of his impending suicide which he committed in their view. To the horror of his father, who was unaware of his 19 year old son's actions, those who watched his son take a lethal drug overdose and die on camera, share in the responsibility for his death. Some of the voyeurs did try to contact emergency workers, but they arrived too late. What were those who watched this young man kill himself thinking? Would he have killed himself if there was no one to watch it? Did it urge him on? How unbearably lonely does a young man have to be to seek the company of cruel voyeurs as he ends his life? The cruelest form of entertainment yet is merely the latest symptom of the spiritual death of this culture of death. Read the entire story here.
Sometimes it helps to remember Who's in charge of the world
A blessed feast of Christ the King to all of you. Here's an excellent post on the feast day. Que vive Cristo Rex!
Avoid the second collection this week!
We have been hearing about the USCCB's using the Campaign for Human Developement funds for ACORN whose shady election practices help elect Barack Obama. This Sunday, the second collection is for the Campaign again, and a reader at Mommy Life suggests we save our money for our local crisis pregnancy center instead. Good idea.
How to respond to Obama Trauma!
Every time I think I'm recovering from Obama Trauma, the news gets worse! The appointees Obama is naming are the Who's Who of the abortion industry, from Planned Parenthood's Guttmacher Institute professor Alta Charo, to CINO(Catholic in Name Only) Tom Daschle's being tapped for the position of Health and Human Services Secretary in the new cabinet, to this gloomy bit of info from the Cardinal Newman Society. Several outspoken professors and political activities on Catholic campuses helped deliver pro-abortion Barack Obama the Catholic vote, according to a new report from The Cardinal Newman Society. Exit polls show that Obama won over self-described Catholics 54 to 45 percent—better than the 52-46 split among all Americans—and even made inroads with Mass-attending and white, non-Hispanic Catholics. Not surprising, I argued against it in my piece at Catholic Exchange, but these professors have the students as captive audiences. When I tried to frame our debate in my eighth grade US History class in term of life issues, which of course meant that Obama lost handily, I took some fierce flack from parents and students alike.This was in a conservative Catholic school.
Catholics don't want to hear the truth; they shut their ears and their hearts. So the most pro-abortion politician in the history of the USA gets elected with our help. The bishops threaten a war over life issues, but I can't help remembering poor Fr. Newman being forced to retract his bold statement about voting for Obama and hand my head in shame. An abomination! Here, folks are our marching orders from Our Lady of Victory.. .
Father Patrick Peyton's cause for canonization opened
This is wonderful news. No one save Archbishop Fulton Sheen did more to evangelize America than Fr Peyton whose famous saying, "the family that prays together, stays together" is well known. Peyton, who died in 1992, used technology to reach more people than he ever could by person, founding Family Theater Productions in 1947 in Hollywood, said the Rev. John Phalen, president of Holy Cross Family Ministries, which carries on Peyton's work. He bolstered his message with Hollywood elites, including Loretta Young, Jimmy Stewart, Bing Crosby and Lucille Ball, who appeared on his shows. He ended many programs with his catchy family message, now trademarked by his ministry. As Peyton grew up in Ireland, his family prayed the rosary daily and it brought them strength, Phalen said. He thought the centuries-old tradition linked to the Virgin Mary could help other families. May he pray for the Catholics in this nation who need his message of the family rosary more than ever. HT AP
We're gonna miss ya W!
For those who complained that Bush was not prolife enough check out the lame duct move he makes here. A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job-discrimination laws. The proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to perform or to assist in the performance of abortions or sterilization procedures because of their "religious beliefs or moral convictions." It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to "assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity" financed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Clinton used the end of his presidency to pardon terrorists drug dealers and money launderers, and those were just his relatives. Bush uses the end of his presidency to save babies. We will miss you President Bush, for all your flaws, you are a devout Christian and decent moral man. No president did as much as you for the unborn, and we thank you on their behalf. As the Obama administration looms ahead, I am more afraid for the future of the innocents of this nation than ever. HT International Herald Tribune
Obama's pro-gay agenda
From Citizen Link
President-elect Barack Obama is committed to creating special rights for homosexuals and trampling on traditional marriage. He laid out his agenda on his Web site: Expand hate-crimes legislation (which would create a new category of crime for actions said to be motivated by bias toward a person’s actual or perceived “sexual orientation” and “gender identity." Sexual-orientation hate-crimes laws have been used to prosecute speech in the U.S. and abroad). Support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (which would create special rights based on an employee’s actual or perceived sexual orientation and could force Christian employers to hire against their religious beliefs). Oppose a federal marriage-protection amendment. Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (which would open the door to forcing all 50 states to recognize same-sex "marriage"). Expand gay adoption (which would leave vulnerable children without either a mom or a dad). Repeal the so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (which would jeopardize military readiness by allowing open homosexuality in the armed forces). Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, said: "We need to support our men and women in the military and not expect them to carry the heavy burdens of social engineering." She said no one has a "right" to serve in the military, as Obama seems to suggest. "To say that the armed forces should accept any and all people is a little absurd," she told Family News in Focus. "Should we throw out all distinctions?"
What the UN Populatin Fund is doing with it's money
President Bush refused to fund the UN Population Fund because of horrific stories like the one I cite here. Our money would be used for forced abortions in China. Obama has promised to fund the UNFPA. from the Family Research Council Reinstating UNFPA -- Over China's Dead Bodies Newspapers from cities as far away as Melbourne, Australia are anxiously awaiting word on a Uyghur woman in China, six months pregnant with her third child. According to local reports, government officials tracked Arzigul Tursun down in her village and escorted her to a hospital where authorities ordered her to abort the baby against her will. Although guards had been stationed at the hospital, Arzigul managed to escape. After the police interrogated her family, the mother-to-be was recaptured yesterday in the home of some relatives. Her plight has sparked outrage in the international community, which is demanding her release. In the past, the U.S. government -- at President Bush's insistence -- has withheld funding from groups like the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) for its supporting role in these coercive abortion policies. President-elect Obama has said he will restore U.S. funding to UNFPA. America will no longer be an innocent bystander of tragedies like this one. Instead, the U.S. will be knowingly funding forced abortions like Arzigul's with millions of taxpayer dollars. In an interview with the Obama campaign before the election, RH Reality check asked, "If elected President, would Sen. Obama, overturn the Global Gag Rule or reinstate funding for UNFPA?" A spokesman for the campaign responded, "Yes, Senator Obama would overturn the global gag rule and reinstate funding for UNFPA." The new administration plans to funnel millions of dollars to UNFPA despite its support of China's savage one-child policy. Contact your leaders and tell them that terrorizing pregnant women is not the "change" America voted for. Urge them to oppose Obama's anti-woman agenda.
Dr Alveda King on Obama and white guilt
The Obama election has changed the face of America. It strikes a blow to white guilt, because hundreds of thousands of white people voted for him to prove that they were not racists. It gives blacks who voted for him hope, because there has never been a black president of America. And the election of Obama gives a face to abortion. Like it or not president-elect Barack Obama has promised to do more to advance abortion rights than any other president in America’s history. His no-holds-barred promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) - which should be renamed the No Limits on Abortion Act - is a promise to make abortions more accessible than they have ever been since Roe vs. Wade. Dr King is the niece of Dr Martin Luther King, and is part of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. Read the entire story on Life Site News.
Italian nuns refuse to kill Eluana Englaro!!
God bless these brave nuns who refuse to comply with a court order to dehydrate this Italian woman! They are part of the resistance to the Culture of Death. MILAN, November 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The nuns who run the hospice in which Eluana Englaro has been living for 14 years have refused to carry out the court order to remove her food and hydration tube. On Friday, the highest court of appeals of Italy upheld a previous court’s ruling that Eluana Englaro, the young disabled woman who has been in a state of diminished consciousness since being in a car accident in 1992, may be killed by the removal of her food and hydration tube. In a letter published in yesterday’s Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference, the Misericordine nuns of Lecco said, “Our hope, and that of many like us, is that the death by hunger and thirst of Eluana, and others in her condition, will not be carried out.” Read the entire story on Life Site.
Cardinal, 'Obama is apocolyptic'
His Eminence James Francis Cardinal Stafford criticized President-elect Barack Obama as “aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic,“ and said he campaigned on an “extremist anti-life platform,” Thursday night in Keane Auditorium during his lecture “Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II: Being True in Body and Soul.“ “Because man is a sacred element of secular life,” Stafford remarked, “man should not be held to a supreme power of state, and a person’s life cannot ultimately be controlled by government.” “For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden,” Stafford said, comparing America’s future with Obama as president to Jesus’ agony in the garden. This is an awesome speech, and I hope it rallies the biggest crowd in the history of the March for Life. We MUST let the Abortion President know we're out here, and we're NOT GOING ANYWHERE. Our job is to be the biggest thorn in President Obama's side we can, all the while praying for his conversion. If it happened for this abortionist, it can happen to him.
The Spanish daily “La Razon” has published an article on the pro-life conversion of a former “champion of abortion.” Stojan Adasevic, who performed 48,000 abortions, sometimes up to 35 per day, is now the most important pro-life leader in Serbia, after 26 years as the most renowned abortion doctor in the country.
