“I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name. I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off.” With this passage from the Book of Isaiah, Pope Benedict XVI began a recollection of those slain in the Holocaust and memorialized at Yad Vashem. This passage furnished two words: Yad meaning “memorial” and shem “name.” The Pope recalled how each person remembered there bears a name. Though robbed of their life they could never be robbed of the name God had given them. The Pope said that he can only imagine the joyful expectation of their parents as they anxiously awaited the birth of their children; “What name shall we give this child? What is to become of him or her?” He said, that they could never have imagined that they would be condemned to such a degradable fate. Their cries still echos in our hearts. the Pope said that it is the cry of Able rising from the earth to the Almighty. Pope Benedict prayed from the Book of Lamentations proclaiming that the favors of the Almighty are never exhausted and His mercies are not spent.They are renewed each morning. So great is His faithfulness.
Category Archives: Defending Life
Fr. Corapi – Notre Dame Video Message
Fr. John Corapi thanks signers to the petition at NotreDameScandal.com and urges Catholics to continue the fight for Catholic campuses. For more information on this scandal and to sign the petition visit http://www.notredamescandal.com/Signt…
“A picture is worth a thousand words. Which thousand words will be articulated to an already morally relativistic culture by the picture of Mr. Obama receiving such honors from a Catholic university. Metaphorically and morally it like shooting yourself in the foot but Notre Dame lives on.” Fr. Corapi
Civil Rights At the Heart Of Abortion
A question of truth, a question of conversion; the Anchoress asks can Obama be converted on abortion? I ask, and I think posterity will ask, how can this black man, who knows the Black Man’s pain of Slavery, the history of popular resistance to change, who knows the history of a Stephen Douglas ignoring an Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln who finally pricked Douglas into debate by clubbing him verbally, until, as Edward T. Oakes, S.J. says, “Douglas finally had to take notice of Lincoln’s ceaseless hammering away at Douglas’ ‘pro-choice’ platform (which said, in effect, ‘I’m personally opposed to slavery but can’t impose my choice on other states, including other Norther states.’),” not only ignore but side against so utterly defenseless a part of American humanity? ” How can such a man, now President of a country, founded on the principal that all men are created equal, now consent in his heart of hearts to discriminate against the obviously created human person growing from day to day, as all men grow, just because he/she is still under the protection of a mother’s womb.
How can this President, the citizen of the greatest free nation, ever, be content while people conspire to deprive the weakest most dependent members of their civil rights; when to steal or negate life, black,white, red,yellow, male, female,old or young, is intrinsically evil and morally wrong? How can this be-gifted man standby, a blind, deaf, and mute creature, while this glaring, screaming, appealing and appalling issue of Civil Rights is left to cry in the arms of Lady Justice?
The questions continue, nagging and still unanswered. How can a professor, a teacher, a sworn defender of the Constitution, forget the cries of these similarly beleaguered, disenfranchised, these who endure discrimination, these forgotten and forbidden human beings? Is it simply that they have no power, but the power to be, while Obama, himself, who knows the benefits of life, and the gifts of God and has sworn an oath in the Creator’s Name, forsake his power refusing just consideration? Could he not use his powers of rhetoric to acknowledge our posterity and his power of intellect to comprehend their potential? How can such a man claim his “pay grade” justifies the “choice” not to chose life or engage his own reason and heart and soul?
The buck Mr. President not only stops here but demands you at least use the means you possess; ears, eyes and brain to watch a simple, state of the art and science, video of life in the womb. The thumb-sucking, kicking, jumping, hiccupping creature you see before you may well declare the reality; “I am here, now. I am alive, unless you allow my life to come to naught.”
What price freedom; what price honesty? History begs you not to hide behind polls and politics. Don’t ask people with vested interests in the abortion industry, or who purchase human parts for research, who like slave owners count it lose if right prevails. Ask Martin Luther King, Jr. when you should stand for the civil right SIMPLY TO BE!
High Ground – High Rhetoric – Short Memory
In his third press conference on his 100th day in office, President Obama stood by his conviction that torture is wrong, that water-boarding is wrong. Basically he said it was wrong making the argument that we don’t need it. Obama claims the high ground in protecting sworn enemies of this country from harsh procedures. “It corrodes the character of a country.” Here is the text of exchange:
OBAMA: Jake? Where’s Jake? There he is.
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. You’ve said in the past that waterboarding, in your opinion, is torture. Torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?
OBAMA: What I’ve said ? and I will repeat ? is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don’t think that’s just my opinion; that’s the opinion of many who’ve examined the topic. And that’s why I put an end to these practices.
I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.
I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “We don’t torture,” when the entire British ? all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.
And then the reason was that Churchill understood ? you start taking shortcuts, over time, that corrodes what’s ? what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.
However, this same man, President Obama, supports, allows and has helped restore and implement legislation that allows the arms and legs to be severed from the bodies of pre-born infants not only in this country but around the world. (Harsh words, harsh procedures! Saline abortions are worse than corrosive, they are caustic, for the infant.)
The pre-born children of this Nation are our future citizens. Every fragment of their being was conceived and formed while their mothers breathed the air of American freedom and protection. Obama has in the past stood side by side with those who sanction collapsing the skulls of fully formed infants making sure they never draw their first breath.
The key to his position may be one of pragmatism rather than morality. Has he forgotten that he indicated that the destruction of his own future grandchildren was preferable to him rather than for his own daughters to bear his grandchild in an untimely manner; His words on the subject, “if they make a mistake. I don’t want them punished with a baby.” This is part of what Obama calls teaching “morals and values to make good decisions.” This President hasn’t a moral leg to stand on.
Amy Welborn here points to of OSV who wrote in Corroding the Character of Our Nation:
“We have seen the tragic results of what happens when one life is considered less important than another. It’s unfortunate that the president can recognize that fact when it comes to terror suspects and prisoners of war but not when it comes to his own countrymen still in the womb. President Obama said in his press conference last night that he believes that the abortion decision is best left in the hands of women, who he believes struggle with what they choose to do. Well, we would hope that women struggle with the decision to end a child’s life, but the reality is that with each passing year people seem to become more and more desensitized to the plight of the unborn. Why? For the exact reasons the president stated: Over time, bad but easy choices corrode what’s best in a people.”
Obama’s First 100 Days Counter to Glendon’s Life Work
Elizabeth Lev, daughter of Mary Ann Glendon has responded to this written by Kaitlyn Riely at Politics Daily. Riely,speaking of Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, says:
“But Glendon has been trained in diplomacy. Shouldn’t being in the same place and engaging someone of an opposing view be right up her alley? Wouldn’t the better decision be to use her platform — or at least her proximity — to persuade Obama to change his views? Her diplomatic style seems to be less suited for U.S.-Vatican relations and more for U.S.-Cuba relations.”
Reponse by Elizabeth Lev, Mary Ann Glendon’s daughter:
“The Laetare Medal is the highest honor conferred on Catholics in the United States. For a Catholic, it has greater prestige than a Nobel Prize for a scientist or an Academy Award for an actor, as the award is given for career-long achievement, for “staying the course” in the words of St. Paul. It doesn’t just showcase a single discovery or film role.
To renounce it, therefore, is not the lightest of matters. Professor Glendon has spent a month thinking, consulting, and given her deep faith, praying about this decision. (This, for those of you who don’t know, means asking God to help one put aside one’s own personal concerns and act in the way that will produce the greatest good). (Kaitlyn) Riely’s dismissive “thanks, no thanks” rendering of her decision, while pithy, is reductive.
Professor Glendon was to have been honored for not only for her scholarship, but for her second career, her pro-bono work — ranging from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the great civil rights issues of the present day — namely, the defense of human life from conception to natural death. Her concerns range from the aging and dying population to the unborn to the well-being and dignity of every life, regardless of race, religion, or economic status. Her outstanding work in this field has earned her the respect of the most brilliant minds of the international community, regardless of whether they agree with her position. So again, to see her merely as “strongly anti-abortion” instead of as a tireless defender of the dignity of life, is to reveal not only a lack of understanding of the subject’s work, but also the writer’s real interest in this question.
Furthermore, during his first 100 days in office, President Obama has worked tirelessly to undermine Professor Glendon’s lifetime of work; he is funding abortion out of the bailout package and planning to suppress the protection of conscience for health care workers.
Your notion that her “training in diplomacy” might somehow ease this situation does not take into account that she has a five-minute acceptance speech and he will have a lengthy commencement speech. There is no “engaging” here. Diplomacy generally teaches that if you have a rapier and your opponent has a missile launcher, try not to engage.
That Professor Glendon “did not like that Notre Dame was claiming her speech would serve to balance the event” is again facile and simplistic. What is there to like in being the deflector screen for inviting a profoundly divisive figure to give the commencement speech? What is likeable about a Catholic University named for the most important woman in Christianity exploiting a woman who has already dedicated her life to protecting the Church’s teaching by turning her into a warm-up act for a grotesque twist on a reality show?
Finally, after 50 Catholic bishops condemned the university for its direct defiance in honoring a man in open conflict with the Church’s teaching, it is right that Professor Glendon let her silence speak louder than her five-minute allotment of words would have.Readers might be wondering how I know all this. Well, for one I am her daughter, but more to the point, I read her letter with the careful consideration it deserves.”
Elizabeth Lev is an art historian and writer based in Rome, where all of her three children were born… more
Michelle Malkin sums up Obama’s first 100
Pro-Choice Isn’t Pretty
It was a good day for Life at the Capitol today. It wasn’t that Congress did anything to protect the human life growing in a mother’s womb. Congress it seems is insensitive to Truth these days. However, ordinary Americans continue to demonstrate for Life. Young and old found their voice and pleaded with those who listened to hear the cries of the unborn. Children distributed life calling-cards proclaiming the truth of abortion and pro-choice. Someone dies and it isn’t pretty. The consequence of pro-choice is blood and tears. A banner photograph of the aborted infant offended some who is seems aren’t offended by the act of abortion. Strange sensitivities that allow the actual infant to die but want to spare their consciences, I must think.
Be Holy! 