Showing posts with label Planned Parenthood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Planned Parenthood. Show all posts

Worth Revisiting - Cold As Death

We thank Allison Gingras at Reconciled To You  and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb  for  hosting Catholic bloggers at Revisiting Wednesday


It is a privilege for us to share our work with them and their followers.


Stop by for a visit now



[40 Days For Life's Fall campaign launches tomorrow. This is an event worthy of, and in need of, your participation. I thought I would share a reflection I wrote nearly four years ago.]


Cold As Death


(Originally published on February 21, 2013)

Yesterday was abortion day at our local Planned Parenthood center. Three of us were outside praying for the staff, the parents and the unsuspecting children encased in their mothers’ wombs.

It was bitterly cold. In fact, this is the first time over the past four years when I ever felt cold enough to wear a hooded sweatshirt and gloves. But it was not just the physical cold and wind that was bothersome. It was the pervasive coldness emanating from this place of death on this particular day. If you ever reverently touched the hand of a loved one or friend while praying farewell at their casket, you know the type of cold I am trying to describe.

It seemed more women than normal were entering this evil place and fewer were willing to interact with the sidewalk counselor this day. The honking horn and raised middle finger were auditory and visible evidence of the pleasure the evil one takes in using his minions to belittle and demean the handful who engage in this spiritual warfare.

Despair would be such an easy response to this on-going slaughter!

 “What good are you fools doing?” one could imagine Satan whispering in our ears. “Look around! Count the number of woman who flock here! Where are your fellow parishioners? Oh, how happy I am when your pastors do not let you post flyers or notices in your Churches about your prayerful vigils. Where are your bishops and priests? How ecstatic I am when no prayer warriors show up!”

Monday Musings - The Shameful Silence of Our Spiritual Shepherds



Watch out! The sheep are stirring - looking for their silent Shepherds to speak!

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)


Every day human lives are violently destroyed within the wombs of their mothers and harvested for their body parts. This is EVIL always and under all circumstances.


For the most part, the Catholic Bishops in this country remain unwilling as a group to publicly call out this evil by name with one unified voice and to demand the end of all public financial support for such barbaric, inhuman and sinful conduct.


Yet, these same silent shepherds, under the umbrella of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), rarely hesitate to immediately criticize the latest health care, immigration, or welfare reform proposals –  issues which are important concerns but about which reasonable people can disagree. None of those issues, however, are intrinsically evil as is the slaughter of innocent life and the trafficking in human body parts.


Harsh words? I think not. Truth often stings!


Bishop Frank J. Dewane, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development: recently announced: "The loss of affordable access for millions of people is simply unacceptable."


I am compelled to ask: “More important than ending the slaughter of innocent lives and the sale of their body parts?"


Certainly, we should address the health care needs of our citizens. But our Bishops’ primary duty is to stand up against EVIL and to save souls. To paraphrase Scripture: “What profits a man if he has government provided or subsidized health insurance, if he loses his soul? Of what value is health insurance to the human being whose life is violently snuffed out of his mother’s womb and whose body parts are sold?


Ponder the wisdom of Father Giovanni Salerno, the Founder of the Missionary Servants of the Poor: 


When the missions of the Third World are spoken of, many think that the best way to help the poor is to address their material needs: clothing, medicine, food, etc. In my life as missionary, after forty-six years, I have realized that the greatest gift we can give the poor is God and His divine grace through the Sacraments of the Church”


Abortion and the selling of body parts are the sinful horrors of our time. These are the practices which must be unacceptable to our Bishops.  The USCCB has an obligation to devote all of its energy, resources and moral authority to end these evils.


At a minimum, it must follow the recent example of the Southern Baptist Conference (SBC) which “officially denounced” Planned Parenthood as “immoral” and “called on Congress to immediately and completely defund it.” 


According to an article published in the June 29, 2017 issue of The Wanderer, among the resolutions the SBC passed at its recent Congress, were the following:


“We denounce the immoral agenda and practices of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates, especially their role in the unjust killing each year of more than 300,000 precious unborn babies, its use of particularly gruesome illegal abortion methods, and its profiteering from harvesting of unborn babies’ tissue and organs…We urge the United States Congress to defund Planned Parenthood immediately and completely of all federal government support and that all state and local government funding that supports Planned Parenthood be withdrawn immediately and permanently.”


Why has the USCCB as an organization not made the same public demands? Why has it not declared an all-out war against these evils and their agents? Why has it not demanded that elected officials bring an end to these horrors and their financial support of organizations who propagate such evil? Why is the end of these evils and the public financing of them not its number one priority?

This is not the time for our Bishops to remain timid and silent. The USCCB must speak clearly with one voice and take decisive action to end these evils.  Now! Our heavenly Shepherd and King would expect nothing less from those to whom He has entrusted His Church and the souls of His creatures.



If I am wrong in reaching these conclusions, please tell me why.
Let us never stop praying for our Shepherds!


Revisiting Wednesday - Stop Searching For Loopholes and Make The Salvation of Souls Priority Number One!

Thank you Allison Gingras at  Reconciled To You and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb for hosting "Revisiting Wednesday" each week and those Catholic bloggers who re-post their favorite articles there. 


Go there now. (and every Wednesday). You will be inspired by the variety of spiritual insights these authors share.


 I am sharing the following post:

Stop Searching For Loopholes and Make The Salvation of Souls Priority Number One! 

(Originally posted in a slightly different form on April 19, 2013)

More than fourteen months ago, I offered my few cents on the unprecedented attack on our religious liberty. Sad to say, not much has changed since I wrote those words. If you not already done so, I suggest you read those comments here if the rest of this entry is to make sense.
 
The current Administration still refuses to acknowledge our God-given right to freely practice our religion. In fact, it has expressed frustration and annoyance with our on-going verbal refusal to acquiesce to its intrinsically evil regulations and our stated unwillingness to bow down to their “god” of reproductive rights. One of its agencies had actually classified Catholics as terrorists. Litigation, though not yet finalized, has resulted in mixed and unsatisfactory results.
 
Despite the on-going exposure to the reality of abortion in the Philadelphia house of horrors, the intent of New York’s self-proclaimed Catholic governor to remove virtually all restrictions on abortions performed in that State, and the unwillingness of Planned Parenthood representatives to publicly condemn the practices exposed at the Gosnell clinic and [the selling of body parts] elsewhere, our President continues to attack those who stand up and defend the life of the unborn and vows his allegiance to Planned Parenthood. He has even publicly asked “god’ to bless this evil, earthly arm of the Great Deceiver.
  
The defeat of evil will not occur through litigation or legislation. The unending battle against the dark forces roaming this earth is, has been, and always will be a spiritual one. It will cease only by God's grace and power and in His time. Until then, we must individually and as His Church battle this evil through prayer, fasting, and the courageous proclamation, assent, defense and faithfulness to God's Truth. We may even be asked to suffer civil and economic punishment for defending that Truth. How many of us are ready to do so?


Only God knows but I suspect that number will not be huge. Why? Let me offer a few reasons.

Eucharistic Reflection - Would A Stranger Know?

  "The Eucharist is alive. If a stranger who knew nothing about the Eucharist were to watch the way we receive, would he know...