Bishops Annouce Campaign to Fight FOCA

Tom Grenchik, Exec. Director

People of Life

• Following the unanimous vote of the full body of bishops to mobilize the resources of the Conference, dioceses, and the entire Catholic community to prevent either the passage of FOCA (the Freedom of Choice Act) or the elimination of current pro-life laws and policies, we are about to undertake our most aggressive communications campaign ever.
• In the next few weeks, we will be designing a campaign in which millions of Americans can contact their own Senators and Representative with a united message that unrestricted abortion is not only tragically immoral and unacceptable but also out of touch with most American's views.
• And we intend to have this campaign - with millions of participants - ready within weeks of the Presidential inaugeration on January 20th.
• We will also initiate an education program on exactly how FOCA, and similar efforts, are such enormous threats to millions of unborn babies.

To make sure that this campaign is a success, I ask you today to make a special contribution of $25 or $35 to People of Life. This is one of the most important and time-sensitive issues we've ever had to confront.

Your help is needed. If you wish to mail them a donation for this critical issue, send your check to:

PEOPLE OF LIFE

THE PRO-LIFE ACTION CAMPAIGN OF THE USCCB

PO Box 97205

WASHINGTON, DC 20077-7963

H/t: Fidelity and Action e-letter

Stop the bailout for Planned Parenthood!

From the Susan B Anthony list:

Tired of bailouts? Well they aren’t going away anytime soon. Now the abortion industry wants one! We all knew that Planned Parenthood was going to have a special seat at the table in the Obama administration. Well it hasn’t taken them long at all to roll out their extreme agenda.

Tell your Senator today that Planned Parenthood should not get a bailout.

Abortion groups have submitted their 50 page proposal to the Obama-Biden transition team. At the top of the list? More taxpayer dollars for abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood. How much more? Over 1.5 billion dollars more!

The Abortion Bailout Package:

• $1 BILLION dollars in taxpayer funding for International Abortion Groups like UNFPA, an international aid organization connected to coercive abortion as part of China’s coercive one-child policy
• $700 million in taxpayer funding for “Title X” Health Clinics (aka your local Planned Parenthood affiliate)
• Repeal the Hyde Amendment – Vastly expanding federal taxpayer funding for abortions
• Include Abortion coverage in any taxpayer-subsidized national health care program Expand taxpayer-funded abortions through the Peace Corps program

It is an outrage for Planned Parenthood to expect you to give your hard earned dollars to fund the destruction of innocent life. Join citizens across our great country in telling their Senators to keep your tax dollars out of the abortion providers. Tell them to Stop the Abortion Bailout!

Sign the Petition today!

Inauguration Day -- Masses for Life

Here's the deal.

WHO: A few faithful Catholic lay people and priests. (Anyone can do this: stay-at-home moms, singles, retired people, students--anyone--and we can have a huge impact on our country's future.)

WHAT: Have a Mass said on Inauguration Day for our new President. It can be said for his conversion or, "That our new president will work to protect the dignity of each human life." Consider that St. Leonard of Port Maurice said that one Mass offered before death may be more profitable than many after it, and St. Anslem affirmed this.

WHEN: Tuesday January 20, 2009 Inauguration Day

WHERE: Throughout our country in as many Catholic churches as possible.

WHY: Because offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for an intention is very powerful.

HOW: Simply call your local parish and ask to reserve January 20th for your intention. Then send a check for $10 to the priest for your Mass intention. Next please choose three friends (or more) to pass this on to.

For Goodness’ Sake

Perhaps you've heard of the American Humanst Association's atheistic ad campaign, but did you know there is a counter-campaign and that you can help support it?

Rebecca Teti writes:

JoEllen Murphy, however, is not one to read such stories and tsk-tsk the state of things. Instead, she called the local transit authority and found out what it would cost to run a counter ad campaign. She found that with donated design, it would cost only $14,000.

Then she asked a graphic designer friend to come up with an ad and a web-savvy friend to build a website where she could receive donations. ...

... she didn’t want the tone of her counter-campaign to be simply another battle in the annual “Christmas wars”: a tit-for-tat debate. Instead, she focused on how many people are lonely and isolated during the holidays that stretch from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. What a terrible time to tell people they really are all alone, she thought. Instead, people need to be reminded that they are loved. So her counter-ad (which you can see here -- just click on “ to see the ad” in the upper right corner) reads: “Why Believe? Because I created you and I love you, for goodness sake. --God.”

Here's the link to JoEllen's website, where you can donate to support her pro-God ad campaign.

Update: Great news! They have reached their target and raised enough money to run the ads on buses in the DC area through Jan 25th, in other words through the Inauguration and March for Life.

"Christmas in God's Country" CD

This is a neat CD for this Christmas, and benefits Wyoming Catholic College, a small Catholic liberal arts college.

In honor of the Advent and Christmas seasons, the Wyoming Catholic College Choir has released its inaugural recording, fittingly entitled Christmas In God’s Country, featuring beautifully rendered traditional and historical Christmas music. For a small donation, you can obtain a deluxe version of this CD, complete with plastic case and extensive liner notes. It makes a great gift idea!

Click here for more information, including samples of the music from this CD.

Pro-Life UN Petition

Good news on this pro-life petition to the UN from the very reputable Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. They have collected well over 300,000 signatures so far in over a dozen languages. Still, the more the better! If you haven't signed yet, the deadline is Dec. 10.

International Call for the Rights and Dignity of the Human Person and the Family

The radical pro-abortion groups will submit petitions at UN headquarters on December 10th. They might submit a hundred thousand or more! We must match them and show the General Assembly that more people are pro-life than pro-abortion.

So, I ask you to go here: copy this address and send it to everyone you know. If you want to send it in Spanish, it is there, too, or Polish, German, Italian, French, Hungarian, Slovenian and others!

Please go to this link and send this petition to as many people as you can.

We can beat the rich and powerful abortion advocates, but only with your help!

Fathers of Science

The Catholic Church has always respected reason, perhaps more so than the rationalists themselves. She has also long been a promoter and supporter of the sciences.

On March 12, 2008, the John Templeton Foundation made the announcement of the winner of its annual Templeton Prize, which honors achievements engaging the great questions of life and the universe. The $1.6 million prize for 2008 went to Michal Heller, a Polish cosmologist and professor in the faculty of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow, Poland. What makes Heller additionally remarkable is that he is a Catholic priest. ...

As a priest-scientist, Fr. Heller is not unique. Rather, he stands in a long and great tradition of learned priests who were both scientists and men of faith. Some are well-known to history, such as Roger Bacon, the 13th-century Franciscan who stressed the concept of "laws of nature" and contributed to the development of mechanics, geography, and especially optics. Others are obscure. All, however, left a lasting legacy on their eras in learning, science, mathematics, and practical progress.

Above all, the priest-scientists offer a powerful lesson to Catholic apologists: There is no reason to stand mute when the name Galileo is wielded like a cudgel and the Church is savaged as an enemy of human progress. Apologists and well-read Catholics can point to these priest-scientists and declare forcefully what Fr. Georges Lemaître-discoverer of the "Big Bang"-robustly proclaimed in 1933: "There is no conflict between religion and science."

Read the full article at Fathers of Science (This Rock: September 2008) for many examples of scientists who exemplify this fact.

Cross-posted with Unity of Truth.

Going the Distance for Life!

Share this with your friends and family to make them aware of the basics of FOCA and what we need to do to rebuild a Culture of Life. The time to act is now!

Keeping Down's baby was "our best decision ever"

Reports the UK Telegraph:

Adkins and her husband Paul are just two of a growing number of parents who, on discovering their unborn child is likely to have Down's syndrome, go ahead with the pregnancy decide to keep babies with Down's syndrome.

Figures published on Monday by the National Down's Syndrome Cytogenetic Register found that live births of children with the condition have risen approximately 15 per cent from 2000 to 2006.

This rise has stunned experts, who had seen a steady drop in babies born with the syndrome since screening for the condition was introduced in 1989.

'We couldn't understand why there had been an increase,' says John Smithies of the Down's Syndrome Association. 'So we commissioned some research and found that things such as an increase in women leaving motherhood until later had an effect.

'But one of the biggest factors at play is people changing their attitudes. There is far more support, and advances in medicine mean that it is not uncommon for sufferers to live into their sixties.'

That certainly brightened my day!

Read the full article here.

The Reality of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Imagine an Air Force mom, serving her country on a month-long deployment, who learns that her daughter has been secretly removed by local authorities, claiming the child has been "abandoned." Children begin mandatory sex-education at the age of four, regardless of their family's opinions, beliefs, or convictions, and parents are imprisoned if their children fail to receive any of their mandatory vaccinations. Parents live in a state of constant supervision and suspicion.

Imagine if your national government had the audacity to appoint a "guardian" to monitor your child from birth, charged with the legal responsibility to evaluate your decisions as a parent and armed with the legal authority to "intervene, prevent or rectify" any violations of your child's right s. Public and private schools alike are policed by the national government, and classes begin with singing about the principles of peace, tolerance, and the United Nations. Your child's confidential medical records, stored in a nation-wide electronic register from birth until age twenty, can be accessed at any time, without your knowledge, by any physician, teacher, or government social worker in the nation.

Now stop imagining, because for parents in the 193 countries that have ratified the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, each of these scenarios is true. Read the rest of this article.

The newly-elected Senate and President that will take office in January are hoping to pass the above UN treaty. Did you know that a ratified treaty has the same force as a Constitutional Amendment under American law?

We need to pass the Parental Rights Amendment to protect our rights as parents and homeschoolers. To learn more, visit ParentalRights.org and sign up to receive updates.