spikenard

Support Respect for Rights of Conscience Act

2012-01-27T21:38:00.000-08:00

3 Easy Steps:

1. Follow this link: Support Respect for Rights of Conscience Act
2. Complete the really easy form and then select SEND
3. Forward the link and directions to everyone you know.

Your conscience thanks you!

Best Response Award on the HHS Mandate. Hey Catholics...Go to hell.

2012-01-27T21:23:00.000-08:00

It was a toss up between, my own beloved Bp. Thomas J. Olmsted, Cardinal Mahony (simply because it was unexpected) and this one which I post for you below. Also, go read Judge Andrew Napolitano's Abortion article from Crisis Magazine here for where we may be headed. If our conscientious objections to the things that could send us to hell count for nothing, what's the next step? Perhaps Catholics will be deemed non-persons next and threatened with extermination. It happened in Dred Scot, it happened in Nazi Germany. It's happened to 50,000,000++ unborn children.

Brave New World?

Decision unchanged on HHS exemptions

HHS Edict Will Force Catholics to Violate Conscience

‘To Hell With You’

By Bishop David A. Zubik

It is really hard to believe that it happened. It comes like a slap in the face. The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, “To Hell with you!” There is no other way to put it.

In early August, the Department for Health and Human Services in the Obama administration released guidelines as part of the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The guidelines mandated that by Summer 2012 all individual and group health insurance plans, including self-insured plans, cover all FDA-approved contraception, sterilization procedures and pharmaceuticals that even result in abortion.

A million things are wrong with this: equating pregnancy with disease; mandating that every employer pay for contraception procedures including alleged contraceptives that are actually abortion-inducing drugs; forcing American citizens to chose between violating their consciences or providing health care services; mandating such coverage on every individual woman without allowing her to even choose not to have it; forcing every person to pay for that coverage no matter the dictates of their conscience.

Let’s be blunt. This whole process of mandating these guidelines undermines the democratic process itself. In this instance, the mandate declares pregnancy a disease, forces a culture of contraception and abortion on society, all while completely bypassing the legislative process.

This is government by fiat that attacks the rights of everyone – not only Catholics; not only people of all religion. At no other time in memory or history has there been such a governmental intrusion on freedom not only with regard to religion, but even across-the-board with all citizens. It forces every employer to subsidize an ideology or pay a penalty while searching for alternatives to health care coverage. It undermines the whole concept and hope for health care reform by inextricably linking it to the zealotry of pro-abortion bureaucrats.

For our Church this mandate would apply in virtually every instance where the Catholic Church serves as an employer. The mandate would require the Catholic Church as an employer to violate its fundamental beliefs concerning human life and human dignity by forcing Catholic entities to provide contraceptive, sterilization coverage and even pharmaceuticals that result in abortion.

There was a so-called “religious exemption” to the mandate, but it was so narrowly drawn that, as critics charged, Jesus Christ and his Apostles would not fit the exemption. The so-called exemption would only apply to the vast array of Catholic institutions where the following applied:

Only Catholics are employed;
The primary purpose of the institution or service provided is the direct instruction in Catholic belief;
The only persons served by the institution are those that share Catholic religious tenets. (Try to fit this in with our local Catholic Charities that serve 80,000 every year without discrimination according to faith. It would be impossible!)

Practically speaking under the proposed mandate there would be no “religious exemption” for Catholic hospitals universities, colleges, nursing homes and numerous Catholic social service agencies such as Catholic Charities. It could easily be determined that the “religious exemption” would not apply as well to Catholic high schools, elementary schools and Catholic parishes since many employ non-Catholics and serve both students and, through social outreach, many who do not share Catholic religious beliefs. Such a narrow “religious exemption” is simply unprecedented in federal law.

Last September I asked you to protest those guidelines to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services, and contact your political leadership in the federal government. I asked that you request that this flawed mandate be withdrawn because of its unprecedented interference in the religious liberty and freedom of conscience of the Catholic community, and our basic democratic process.

You did. And you were joined by Catholics throughout the country (and many others as well) who raised their voices against the mandate, raised their voices against a meaningless religious exemption.

On January 20, 2012, the Obama administration answered you and me. The response was very simple: “To Hell with You.”

Kathleen Sebelius announced that the mandate would not be withdrawn and the religious exemption would not be expanded. Instead, she stated that nonprofit groups – which include the Catholic Church – will get a year “to adapt to this new rule.” She simply dismissed Catholic concerns as standing in the way of allegedly respecting the health concerns and choices of women.

Could Catholics be insulted any more, suggesting that we have no concern for women’s health issues? The Catholic Church and the Catholic people have erected health care facilities that are recognized worldwide for their compassionate care for everyone regardless of their creed, their economic circumstances and, most certainly, their gender. In so many parts of the globe – the United States included – the Church is health care.

Kathleen Sebelius and through her, the Obama administration, have said “To Hell with You” to the Catholic faithful of the United States.

To Hell with your religious beliefs,
To Hell with your religious liberty,
To Hell with your freedom of conscience.

We’ll give you a year, they are saying, and then you have to knuckle under. As Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops responded, “in effect, the president is saying that we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”

As I wrote to you last September, with this mandate the democratic process is being ignored while we are being ordered to ignore our religious beliefs. And we are being told not only to violate our beliefs, but to pay directly for that violation; to subsidize the imposition of a contraceptive and abortion culture on every person in the United States.

It is time to go back to work. They have given us a year to adapt to this rule. We can’t! We simply cannot!

Write to the president.

Write to Secretary Sebelius.

Write to our Senators.

Write to those in Congress.

Love Can Build a Bridge

2012-01-24T18:50:00.000-08:00

Phoenix Silent No More takes it to the streets of San Francisco for this year's West Coast Walk for Life.

Why I am Silent No More

2012-01-19T18:09:00.000-08:00

I was 21 years old when I made the worst decision of my life to take the life of another human being who was innocent, vulnerable and unsuspecting. I was never held accountable for the life I took because of what a previous Supreme Court determined was legal and now praised as reproductive freedom.

I was a junior at Michigan State University in when I visited the “WomanCare” Planned Parenthood clinic in 1987. The stunning confirmation of my crisis pregnancy was delivered to me while I stood in a hallway surrounded by strangers. Life as I knew it, had just changed for the worse. Through hot, angry tears, I sobbed that I could NOT be pregnant. I would have no part of a baby-limited future. I was in a disconnected panic. Confused, alone and unsupported I wondered aloud how I would deliver this news to my parents, family, friends, and floormates where I was a Resident Assistant. I believed that I was out of options and running out of time. I reached for the only conclusion that could deaden the pain. Abortion was not the ideal, but it was a solution…an easy way out that could be kept secret. A choice.

A very attractive clinic employee clad in business attire reassured me that I need not feel afraid or guilty for choosing abortion. She herself had multiple abortions and was grateful for having the power to be able to control the size and spacing of her family. This was my final edification. Even though my boyfriend agreed to marry me, I would make the final, fatal decision for our baby. I chose my body, my plan and my convenience over his life.

Numbed by twilight sedation, my conscience in self-inflicted exile, I allowed my accomplices – the abortionist and his nurse-witness – to rip from my uterus, my tiny, 10 week old son. His small frame captured on ultrasound only a week earlier was now in pieces in a plastic container.

They tell us that Abortion is good for women; that it is necessary. That it prevents us from being punished with unwanted children. Let me tell you that this is a bold-faced lie. The sights, sounds and smells of that day in January still haunt me. The images are as fresh today as they were 25 years ago. There was no one around me to advocate for the life of my son. No one to speak for him; to break into his mother’s crisis of the moment. The choice didn’t really feel like a choice at all. I wasn’t choosing between Cheerios or Frosted Flakes. I was in a desperate place and I did what many, young, unsupported, college women do when faced with a desperate situation—I made an irrational, illogical and fatal decision for my child and I regret everything about that decision today.

The years following my abortion included inexplicable depression, anxiety, alcoholism and addiction; and divorce from the baby’s father in 1990. I am a living statistic. But thanks be to God and His grace working through people just like you, my story does not end there.

I found miraculous grace, healing and recovery from our Great Physician, Jesus Christ and the Sacraments of His church. Telling my story, first in the confessional and later to others whom I trusted thrust my secret out of the dark cavity of numbness where I had placed it and into God’s marvelous light where I could find forgiveness and healing. The dirty little secret of abortion must be exposed for what it is – it is a failure of Love. A failure with fatal consequences.

We all deserve better than the lie that is abortion. Women are not in a position to make decisions about anything when they are isolated in a desperate crisis. What we do need is support and love. I stand before you today to offer my personal experience as a woman who still mourns the loss of her firstborn child. Out of my love for Michael, my child in heaven, and my obligation to you; the real truth must be told about abortion and its countless victims. Abortion is not a choice, it is a weapon that causes death and multiple casualties. We are our brothers’ keepers. We are all responsible for creating a just society where the most fundamental rights of our unborn brothers and sisters are protected. Let us continue to work together to end the killing. It is my hope that I can be a light and witness to others so that the horror of abortion will exist only as a sad and futile relic of a bygone era in our nation’s history. And this is why I am Silent No More.

Karen Williams

SF Testimony

January 2012 March for Life

(If you or someone you know is suffering the wound of abortion please email me directly: kwilliams@catholicedition.com. Hope and healing are available to you.)

California Here We Come!

2012-01-17T14:09:00.000-08:00

A dozen of us from Arizona representing Silent No More Awareness are 'go for launch' for the San Francisco March for Life West Coast this Saturday, January 21. We walk in unity to commemorate and speak out against the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion for all 9 months of pregnancy. We have all lost children to abortion. 8 of us are from the Valley (Phoenix Silent No More) and 4 are driving from Flagstaff. Add to that, a gaggle of youth from St. Joan of Arc, St. Thomas the Apostle and St. Mary's and you've got an impressive Copper State contingency! Please keep all of us in your prayers for safety, perseverence and courage. A number of us will be giving our abortion testimonies publicly during the Rally Fair around 11am Saturday before the Walk. I'll keep you posted via the blog live from San Fran. I believe EWTN will also be broadcasting live. Please pray for us, that our words and our actions may touch hearts and glorify God.

So grateful to God for his abundant blessings that have provided for this opportunity to speak the truth in love about LIFE. As is our custom, we have placed some special saints in charge of our sojourn. They are listed below.

Our Lady of Guadalupe....ora pro nobis

St. Joseph

St. Rita

St. Michael the Archangel

St. Christopher

St. Joan of Arc

St. Mary Magdalene

St. Monica

St. John Chrysostum

St. Catherine of Sienna

St. Theresa of Avila

Bl. Dorothy Day

St. Padre Pio

St. Francis
St. Gianna

Special thanks to our Trip Sponsors: Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, St Mary Magdalene Knights of Columbus, Mesa Knights of Columbus, Sharon & Bruce Wolff, Ken Maxwell, Lyn O'Neill Burton, Debbi Gambert, AZ East Valley Alliance, Genny Jones, & Carolyn Diercksmeier, & The Serrano Family.

We love you all.

Hey Black Friends: Happy MLK Day and...WAKE UP

2012-01-16T09:53:00.000-08:00

What Would Martin Luther King, Jr. Have Thought of Abortion? | LifeNews.com

The Debate over YouTube on Loving Jesus and Hating Religion

2012-01-15T13:39:00.000-08:00

Check out the two postings. I believe the man in the first vid is getting confused over Pharisaical Religious practices and some other post-modern beliefs about things that have been reduced by moral relativism versus a more truthful account of the Church. Trent, the man in the 2nd video, does a very good job of responding with love to the first vid. I think it is a blessing that we can use technology in such a way to bring important subjects to the fore. It is true that man has used religion for less than holy purposes. However we need not be confused that God came "not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it". His One, Holy and Apostolic Church is a gift to us and a means by which He lives among us still, in the sacraments. Let us pray for all that we may be enlightened by Truth and let us pray that those who are far away from the Church, may find their way back to her.

The Charge: Loving Jesus & Hating Religion

The Response: Loving Jesus and Loving His Church

Crashing the Planned Parenthood "War on Women" Rally

2012-01-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

Basically, a woman carrying a beautiful message ["Unplanned Pregnancy=Unplanned JOY"] about pro-life brought her children in a stroller to the center of the rally where she was starting to be surrounded by pro-death people. We ended up gathering around her and praying together. I am so proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with such warriors for life.

Monday was the opening day of the Arizona State Legislature. Though we were outnumbered 4:1 (approximately) you can see by the video where the powerful message was. We sorta crashed the Planned Parenthood "War on Women" rally down at the Capitol Complex. The demographic on the pro-choice side was mainly a bunch of 60ish women who are very angry. They get right up in your face and call you nasty things and use vulgar language. They ask ridiculous questions like "so are you going to pay for their health care, shoes, food, education?" I guess the logic they are compelling us to consider is that children are too costly....so we should kill them. Children require expensive education and health care... so we should kill them. Children are impoverished and needy...so they are better off dead. I wonder how they will feel in about 5-10 more years when someone decides that they are a burden.

Me and Callie holding our signs under the flagpole

Patti and I with our Silent No More witness

How about those bodies inside of those wombs? Who is carrying their sign?

Bravo Beautiful Women who vote (and will vote someday!)

Somethin' tells me she ain't talkin about her cereal box

There can be dialogue. This lady asked me to pose with her. She shook my hand and was pleasant. She commented that she wanted to show people that we can be reasonable. I was happy appear with her even though we disagree.

Wa?

Pro-Life Warriors in front of the AZ Senate building.

We love you! Choose Life.

Quotables

2012-01-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently, He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."
C. S. Lewis

Are You Going to San Francisco?

2012-01-08T18:51:00.000-08:00

If you're going to San Francisco,

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

If you're going to San Francisco

You're gonna meet some gentle people there.

This song's been rattling around in my head; probably because of the upcoming March for Life West Coast being held in San Fran on January 21...and YES, we're goin! We've got another dozen Silent No More friends traveling to the coast in less than 2 weeks. Though we have been warned that the SF March for Life West Coast is not as friendly as the DC venue, we remain optimistic that we will be surrounded and supported by a multitude of 'friends for life' who are offering their prayers and sacrifices for our pilgrimmage.

Please pray for us, for those who are offering their testimonies, and for those who we intend to reach with our stories and our love.

Love can build a bridge, you know. (Hey, do I sense a theme song?!)

LIFE from Hannah Benjamin on Vimeo.

Let the Deception Begin...

2012-01-05T09:41:00.000-08:00

From Deal Hudson and the Catholic Advocate. You might as well just copy this off and post in up on a nearby wall. It will be more accurate than the weather forecast in Arizona.

Ten Ways Catholic Voters Will Be Misled in 2012

1. In spite of the new "Introduction" to "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," the bishops' document will be cherry-picked and repackaged into sound bites to justify voting for a candidate who supports abortion and same-sex marriage.

2. Pro-life Catholics will be labeled as "single issue voters" who don't care about the larger social teaching of the Church, especially concern for the poor and vulnerable.

3. The budget passed by the House of Representatives, led by Rep. Paul Ryan (R, WI-01), a Catholic, will be relentlessly attacked as not caring about the poor because it proposed cuts and spending freezes to reduce the growing U.S. deficit that is hurting the economy.

4. "Progressive" Catholic groups will produce polling that supposedly shows Catholics disagree with Church teaching on the sanctity of life and marriage, implying those who agree are in the minority and "behind the times."

5. Catholic politicians and leaders who support abortion and same-sex marriage will not be termed "dissenters" or "liberals" but "progressives" in order to make them sound more attractive to independent voters.

6. Catholic voters will be told the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obama-care) did not contain federal funding for abortion.

7. Catholic voters will be told the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obama-care) does not pose a threat to religious liberty, for example, the conscience of a Catholic health care worker.

8. Anyone supporting state collective bargaining reforms with public-sector unions, such as Wisconsin, is ignoring the importance of worker's rights in Catholic social teaching.

9. Those Catholics who opposed President Bush and Senator McCain over Operation Iraqi Freedom will not make the same argument against Obama who increased the U.S. military in Afghanistan and the use of drone aircraft to perform executions.

10. The issue of immigration will be elevated to a level of importance equal to abortion and marriage with the only acceptable 'Catholic' position being support for specific pieces of legislation such as the 'DREAM Act' (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors).
_______________

So compare all of that to what is written in Demonic Abortion...
"In a diabolical possession, demons don't need full understanding or agreement to do their evil once they have entered; they just need an acquiescence of will. The same happens in a populace where a demon can gain increasing control of the culture and its institutions over time with the acquiescence of the people." (p. 54)

To site previous blog entry, this is done by reinventing a few words (fetus is a blob of tissue and not a human) and making unthinkable things thinkable such as: "it is more humane that women not suffer, so we find it okay to kill the children that are making women suffer rather than make them suffer".

Further, "in modern American society, just a minority of abortion-possessed individuals controls the passive majority who support the demonic activity by acquiescence, if not by full agreement. There is no such thing as neutrality on the abortion issue. An apathetic society on the issue of abortion is a compliant society to the demonic will." (p. 55)

It is not okay to be neutral, brothers and sisters. If this means that I will go to the gallows, so be it. I don't think I'll be alone.

The Deeper Meaning of Resolutions

2011-12-31T13:01:00.000-08:00

The Problem of Reality

I had a friend come to me with a recent quandary. She did not like the word "resolution". (Oh-and I have a different friend who does not like the word "fellowship"). On both counts, the friends asked me not to use these words but to rather, come up with replacement words. Replacement words? It does not take long to figure out that this might get a little problematic. The implication here is, if you don't like the connotation of a particular word, we can change the word and avoid the connotation. Seems logical on paper, however if you do the higher math, you might find that all you've done is apply a thin coat of veneer to the reality of what really IS. Just because we rename something, doesn't mean we have removed its meaning; even though, subconsciously, this is what we would like to do. If we are very honest we will quickly determine that this blurring of definitions is a rather common form of lying and it finds its origins, no doubt, with the Father of Lies:

Some Examples of Unreality

homemaker = domestic engineer
Divorce = marital restructuring
Boob job, nose job or any other kinds of body jobs = enhancement surgery
sin = missing the mark/being off target
dishonesty = bending the truth/white lies
laziness = procrastination
manipulating others = people pleasing
sarcasm (which means 'tearing at the flesh') = humor
Pornography = adult magazines
Strip joint = Gentlemen's Club
Pornographic content = mature audiences
Old = mature
semi-pornographic content = parental guidance suggested
Spouse = Domestic Partner
Fornicate = to living with someone who you are not married to, as though you are married
fetal homicide = abortion
Killing off older or vulnerable adults = mercy killing or euthanasia
God* = Good, Collective Conscience, Life Force, Force, Energy, Universe, Chuck Norris, blah blah blah

(* I am pained to include the term Higher Power here because, for those in 12-Step Recovery programs, the idea of God has been so painfully maligned and associated with injury that there is a need for a God of one's understanding as a point of departure. I have watched many a recovering addict/alcoholic expand their HP definition once they begin to trust God, themselves and others)

I am sure that you could find a dozen or so more on your own without having to work too hard. We do this with just about everything that is difficult to talk about: body parts, excrement, death are subject matters that have not been plumbed here, but you get the picture.

When we relativize the reality, we blur it to make it less recognizable. A thin coat of varnish, pretties up something that might be really hard to tolerate, doesn't it? When we redefine something to irrelevance, it can keep us from making the necessary amends in our lives that lead to real growth. Let me be very clear, if this sounds like a trick that an enemy might use on us to keep us away from reality, then you'd be understanding a bit of that playbook.

Welcome to Reality

So what's the solution? Come to terms with the real meaning(s) of things. Let's starting with the word "resolution". I suggested to my friend that she find a definition of resolution in order to plumb into a deeper meaning; obviously the meaning that she had internalized, had a foul odor. Here's what she found instead:

Resolution is derived from the Latin verb Resolutio, originally Resolvere, meaning: to UNTIE, UNFASTEN, LOOSEN, UNBIND. The meaning has changed over the centuries meaning to change something with firm determination and will. From Webster: a resolve made, a fixed determination or purpose, the state of acting with fixed purpose; the answer or solution to a problem.

I just LOVE that! If I unfasten, unbind, loosen something, I set it free. If I make a resolution about something, I am becoming freer. And everybody loves freedom, right? I can do things in freedom. I can become more me. I can be more available to the pursuits that bring me true happiness and joy. I can pursue my heart's desire. I can only pursue this as a free person, not as a slave. Remember how Christ refers to his friends? "I no longer call you slaves....slaves do not know what their Lord does; I call you friends because all things that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you." Freedom allows us to think and move and be. It allows us to be us in the fullest sense. Resolutions bring us closer to this personal freedom.

It takes a lot of courage to be honest. It also takes a lot of courage to want to change, but this leads to my next point. Once we get honest about things, we realize that it behooves us to change. And this, my friends, is where the devil really loses power and gets irritated. In myself, I recognize that personal change is possible in and of myself only to a certain degree. I am usually thwarted by something or someone that I am powerless over. For this I need Extra Help. Prayer is my best tool. More on this later on under "Tools..."

Coming up with Resolutions

So be courageous and come up with that list of resolutions...maybe it's one or two things that your doctor keeps telling you to give up (cholesterol, coffee, cigarettes, anger, food, excessive drinking). These tip-o-the-iceberg bad habits usually give weigh to more deeply rooted ills and evils which probably have their origin in the seven deadly sins. Do you think this might be why most people give up on their resolutions before the end of January? They are attacking symptoms rather than the real root problems. I wonder what it would be like to use an Examination of Conscience as a tool to structure a Resolutions list. Or how about the 10 Commandments? This might help to tease out those unruly 7 deadlies, and hasten true change. Add to this a monthly retreat to renew your commitment to following God's laws more faithfully.

Another approach has trinitarian roots. Devise a triparteid column list with headers such as: Health, Happiness and Character (Thank you Dennis Prager) or Mental, Physical, Spiritual.

And then there is the giant unstructured list. This is fine too. Just be sure to post whatever it is your doing in a common location like a journal and don't wait until Lent to figure out that you've not spent any time reviewing it.

Tools for Maintaining your Resolve

(That's Re-Solve for those of you hanging in there with me on the real meanings of things).

Prayer: The action of recollection; our conversation with God who is the lover of our hearts. Directing one's thoughts, actions and will towards God. Every good action begins and ends in prayer.

Courage: Courage is not the absence of fear, but acting in spite of it (Mark Twain). The courage to want to change is a great spiritual virtue. The idea that we want to change is a signal that we desire to be better people.

Calendar: track progress and ensure motivation & follow through.

Accountability - Let somebody in on your plan. A friend or accountability group is a great support system to let others into your life and give you needed encouragement. Who knows, you just might be an inspiration to others! My accountability group will be sharing our "bucket list" items starting this January. This includes my friend mentioned in the first paragraph who has happily renovated the "resolution" word for us. Kudos to you CAMH :-) Oh, boy...there is a significant temptation to publish bucket list here on the Spikenard blog but let's just say that for now I will keep you posted on the progress :-)

Happy New Year!

The 'Herods' in our midst

2011-12-28T10:24:00.000-08:00

Herod "The Great" king of Judea was unpopular with his people because of his connections with the Romans and his religious indifference. Hence he was insecure and fearful of any threat to his throne. He was a master politician and a tyrant capable of extreme brutality. He killed his wife, his brother and his sister's two husbands, to name only a few.

Matthew 2:1-18 tells this story: Herod was "greatly troubled" when astrologers from the east came asking the whereabouts of the "newborn king of the Jews," whose star they had seen. They were told that the Jewish Scriptures named Bethlehem as the place where the Messiah wold be born. Herod cunningly told them to report back to him so that he could also "do him homage." They found Jesus, offered him their gifts and warned by an angel, avoided Herod on their way home. Jesus escaped to Egypt.

Herod became furious and "ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under." The horror of the massacre and the devastation of the mothers and fathers led Matthew to quote Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Ramah,/sobbing and loud lamentation;/Rachel weeping for her children..." (Matthew 2:18). Rachel was the wife of Jacob/Israel. She is pictured as weeping at the place where the Israelites were herded together by the conquering Assyrians for their march into captivity.

(The above was excerpted from Ibreviary, December 28, 2011)

_______

Isnt' it strange how history repeats itself? The names and circumstances are a little different but the image we witness from antiquity is eerily similar to the present day slaughter of the innocents that Pope John Paul II coined as the "culture of death". The Israelites demanded a leader to respond to their every whim and need and they got a "herod". They demanded a liberty of convenience to relieve them of their responsiblity to integrity and they got bondage. They demanded a relief to fear and insecurity and they got tyranny and death.

True for us. We have mistaken human figures for God; we call this government. We demand and expect our needs to be met through government programs and services. We have learned that the more "choices" we get, the less free and more savage we become. We demand the pleasure of sex over its consequences and the convenience of intimacy over the responsibilities that it entails. We fail to realize that the fruits of sex and and intimacy involve life. And the very best place where life can flourish is in the protected environs of a family. So when we want one without the other, chaos and disorder follow.

Most women who I meet who have had abortions, regret them later. They may have demanded a relief to their fear and insecurity which they experienced temporarily in an abortion. Unfortunately the tyranny that arises some time later results in great anguish for the woman who has tried to suppress her conscience either by drinking, drugging, eating, spending, working or escaping into some fantasy world. The "herod" of addiction is a brutal tyrant to those who would refuse to face the friend in their conscience.

There are personal herods and societal herods as well. The society that employs these herods fosters this bondage when we continue to make it okay for people to escape the consequences of reality. Obamacare, divorce, mortgage bailouts, capitol punishment, gluttonous and irresponsible overspending, euthanasia, abortion, moral relativism; the realm of evils left untended and not remanded to the custody of the human conscience will not find a Robin Hood or his merry men to save them in the end. Hopefully when the conscience is aroused there will still be time for an epiphany of repentance. Will it be in time?

I was struck by the words fear and insecurity that were used to describe the Herod of antiquity. Here is this powerful guy enabled by a dysfunctional societal system that has left him to his own devices, and he is so scared and insecure of being relieved of his addiction (power) that he is willing to kill family members and helpless infants. Stew on that for awhile. If you've ever seen an addict, you know that they are mostly willing to go to any length to ensure that they get their "fix". While the addiction is active, precious little is safe. Keep this in mind as we elect or re-elect a powerful leader in 2012.

And how about closer to home? Don't we all have some herods to tend to in our own life? Are you in charge of you or is something else driving the bus? Is the desire for power and control mastering you? Yes, there is an addiction to power and control and it's one of hell's ugliest demons. Just watch Lord of the Rings or read Genesis Ch 3 if you don't believe me.

The slaughter of the innocents was a result of fear, insecurity and a paralyzed personal and societal conscience. May we take the necessary efforts at home, interiorly, and abroad, in our communities to ensure that these tyrants are chained and muzzled. When we take care to do this, perhaps we are enacting the 149th Psalm where the two-edged sword is put to use on our personal and societal herods:

"Let the praise of God be on their lips and a two-edged sword in their hand,

to deal out vengeance to the nations and punishment on all the peoples;

to bind their kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron;

to carry out the sentence pre-ordained;

this honor is for all his faithful."

A Merry Statistical Anomale

2011-12-22T05:45:00.000-08:00

Did you know that, in scripture, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of not 5, not 10 but 456 prophecies regarding the Jewish Messiah, the Christ, Savior, Vanquisher of Evil, establisher of the New Covenant? That's an impressive figure. The probability of one Individual fulfilling just five of those prophecies would be one in a million. What's the statistical probability of one Person fulfilling all 456 of them? Ready? Here goes:

1/84,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

(That's 126 0s...from Abp Fulton Sheen's "True Meaning of Christmas")

Pretty amazing isn't it.

O Come, let us adore Him.

Padre Pio's Christmas Meditation

2011-12-21T05:23:00.000-08:00

Thank you Sandie M....

Padre Pio's Christmas Meditation

Appearing in volume four of the Italian-language edition of Padre Pio's letters, this essay was taken from Padre Pio's hand-written notebooks. To the best of my knowledge, it is presented here for the first time in English.

Translated by Frank M. Rega, December 2005.

"Padre Pio da Pietrelcina: Epistolario IV," Edizioni Padre Pio, San Giovanni Rotondo, 2002, pages 1007-1009.

Far into the night, at the coldest time of the year, in a chilly grotto, more suitable for a flock of beasts than for humans, the promised Messiah – Jesus – the savior of mankind, comes into the world in the fullness of time.

There are none who clamor around him: only an ox and an ass lending their warmth to the newborn infant; with a humble woman, and a poor and tired man, in adoration beside him.

Nothing can be heard except the sobs and whimpers of the infant God. And by means of his crying and weeping he offers to the Divine justice the first ransom for our redemption.

He had been expected for forty centuries; with longing sighs the ancient Fathers had implored his arrival. The sacred scriptures clearly prophesy the time and the place of his birth, and yet the world is silent and no one seems aware of the great event. Only some shepherds, who had been busy watching over their sheep in the meadows, come to visit him. Heavenly visitors had alerted them to the wondrous event, inviting them to approach his cave.

So plentiful, O Christians, are the lessons that shine forth from the grotto of Bethlehem! Oh how our hearts should be on fire with love for the one who with such tenderness was made flesh for our sakes! Oh how we should burn with desire to lead the whole world to this lowly cave, refuge of the King of kings, greater than any worldly palace, because it is the throne and dwelling place of God! Let us ask this Divine child to clothe us with humility, because only by means of this virtue can we taste the fullness of this mystery of Divine tenderness.

Glittering were the palaces of the proud Hebrews. Yet, the light of the world did not appear in one of them. Ostentatious with worldly grandeur, swimming in gold and in delights, were the great ones of the Hebrew nation; filled with vain knowledge and pride were the priests of the sanctuary. In opposition to the true meaning of Divine revelation, they awaited an officious savoir, who would come into the world with human renown and power.

But God, always ready to confound the wisdom of the world, shatters their plans. Contrary to the expectations of those lacking in Divine wisdom, he appears among us in the greatest abjection, renouncing even birth in St. Joseph’s humble home, denying himself a modest abode among relatives and friends in a city of Palestine. Refused lodging among men, he seeks refuge and comfort among mere animals, choosing their habitation as the place of his birth, allowing their breath to give warmth to his tender body. He permits simple and rustic shepherds to be the first to pay their respects to him, after he himself informed them, by means of his angels, of the wonderful mystery.

Oh wisdom and power of God, we are constrained to exclaim – enraptured along with your Apostle – how incomprehensible are your judgments and unsearchable your ways! Poverty, humility, abjection, contempt, all surround the Word made flesh. But we, out of the darkness that envelops the incarnate Word, understand one thing, hear one voice, perceive one sublime truth: you have done everything out of love, you invite us to nothing else but love, speak of nothing except love, give us naught except proofs of love.

The heavenly babe suffers and cries in the crib so that for us suffering would be sweet, meritorious and accepted. He deprives himself of everything, in order that we may learn from him the renunciation of worldly goods and comforts. He is satisfied with humble and poor adorers, to encourage us to love poverty, and to prefer the company of the little and simple rather than the great ones of the world.
This celestial child, all meekness and sweetness, wishes to impress in our hearts by his example these sublime virtues, so that from a world that is torn and devastated an era of peace and love may spring forth. Even from the moment of his birth he reveals to us our mission, which is to scorn that which the world loves and seeks.

Oh let us prostrate ourselves before the manger, and along with the great St. Jerome, who was enflamed with the love of the infant Jesus, let us offer him all our hearts without reserve. Let us promise to follow the precepts which come to us from the grotto of Bethlehem, which teach us that everything here below is vanity of vanities, nothing but vanity.

St. Francis would be so proud!

2011-12-20T04:28:00.000-08:00

Intensify your prayer life-fill up the sidewalk

2011-12-18T08:24:00.000-08:00

The story I've posted below is a beautiful conversion that happened recently in Charlottesville, VA. Here's a man that had been yelling and screaming at Pro-Life sidewalk counselors on a regular basis and who eventually came to a new understanding of abortion, in my opinion, as a result of the prayers that were offered for him in the midst of his rants.

As sidewalk counselors, we do this, right? We pray for the folks that get right up in our face. Or at least we should. Whenever or wherever I've been verbally accosted by someone who is pro-choice, I try to introduce them to facts about abortion, how it takes a human life; how it is bad for women; how it really harms society. This usually fails because a thick veil of emotions is blocking real understanding. I have yet to my knowledge, been able win over any pro-choicer on an intellectual plane alone; not because the intellectual argument is not sound but rather because the argument of fact breaks down into emotional sparring. I'm not saying we should jettison the idea of educating those with whom we come in contact on the sidewalk. We should always educate and provide copious amounts of information as the seedbed of understanding. What I do want to emphasize however is that we cannot stop at the intellectual or educational pursuit. We must plunge headlong into supernatural terrain. Which brings up the profound need for PRAYER.

Prayer loosens the soil of the heart...tills up all those clods. Prayer softens the sharp temper. Prayer brings God into the discussion. Prayer is supernatural conversation that transcends human abilities because it is a fruit of love of neighbor. Prayer is what brought the man in the story below back to his sensibilities. Prayer is what will close abortuaries and convert the hearts of the workers.

Prayer will also change the pray-er. I used to become frustrated with the F-bombs, Brooklyn salutes and verbal jousting that turns most good folks off to the idea of standing and praying in front of an abortion clinic. Now, I am resigned to the fact that this is due partly to the ignorance of the people who have never examined the flaws of the pro-choice mentality because of the moral decay & relativism of our generation. And, (this second part is really a hoot to those who thing we are all mentally imbalanced anyway) partly due to the result of demonic activity that is prone to volatility when provoked. (Please read Demonic Abortion.) How patient I can be is directly proportionate to my prayer life. It is not me acting but God acting through me for the sake of that person. That my prayer presence would actually cause someone to curse and explode is telling, is it not? Further edification that it is not fang-less me that they are mad at, but a system that has continued to propagate huge lies about the sanctity and dignity of human life. If they admitted that the pro-life "side" is right, then they would have to admit to being duped. (And let's admit it....nobody wants to be a dupe.)

I'm going to miss "Steve of the Sidewalk" even though I've never met him personally. I don't know where he's going but it's probably somewhere else that his strong light is badly needed. So this is your invitation...whoever you are. We need a replacement STEVE. There are lots of souls who need your prayer. If you're in Phoenix on Christmas Eve, join us out at Glendale Planned Parenthood (a.k.a. Eugie). Bishop Olmsted will be with us to pray the Rosary at 11am.

"After you have made a decision that is pleasing to God, the Devil may try to make you have second thoughts. Intensify your prayer time, meditation and good deeds. For if Satan's temptations merely cause you to increase you efforts to grow in holiness, he'll have an incentive to leave you alone."
Ignatius of Loyola.

Merry Christmas,
Karen of the Sidewalk

Hi folks,

Today was my last day at the abortuary on Commonwealth Drive just around the corner from the Pregnancy Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. This particular clinic had fallen under the radar and been ignored for far too long until this year. Even the accountant who lives next door was shocked to see pro lifers standing vigil. I thought it was going to be an uneventful final day where I would get to say goodbye to all the wonderful pro lifers who have been sacrificing their Weds evenings from 5 pm to 8 pm to defend the unborn and be a living example of God's never ending love for moms and dads in need of spiritual rescue.

Many familiar faces and some new faces were there and I was glad to see them all -- but sad that it was going to be the last time.

It turned out to be the busiest day I had ever seen at the Commonwealth abortuary -- the cars kept coming and coming. Most of the pro life volunteers were in the drive way ministering to their spiritual brothers and sisters that were there to abort their babies. A couple other pro lifers were standing on the sidewalk in front of the abortuary holding signs and I decided to join them.

Eventually a car pulled over and a young man jumped out. It was dark, so I recognized his voice before I saw his face.

This young man had been a familiar sight at the Planned Parenthood during 40 Days for Life, but I'd never seen him at the Commonwealth abortuary. Many of you will remember him because he also pulled over during the Hour of Power and walked up and down Hydraulic Road yelling at us. Eventually the police were called and he reluctantly left.

It was obvious that God was working on him.

In fact, just last Friday he rolled down his window and yelled for us to go home as he drove past the Planned Parenthood. And someone else yelled back that God loved him and that he needed to start fearing Him.

But tonight was different, it the wasn't the same young man we'd encountered so many times in front of Planned Parenthood. For starters he wasn't yelling at us. =-)

He told us that he recently had a telephone conversation with a female friend in Philadelphia and the topic of abortion came up and in the middle of that conversation he began to cry uncontrollably. At first he wasn't sure why was crying so hard. After all, he believed in a woman's right to choose and had been verbally jousting with us on that very topic for months. He said that he suddenly realized that it was wrong for these women to abandon their babies.

He then talked about the the Apostle Paul and how he could identify with that story. He said just as Saul cheered as Stephen was stoned, he had been stoning us with his words and been hateful toward us. And then he quoted the words of Stephen shortly before his death, "Father do not hold this sin against them."

This presented the perfect moment for me share my first name with him. ;-)

He said part of the reason he hated us was because he misunderstood us. He said he came to his conclusions about us based on television and other unreliable sources. He thought we were trying to judge them. And then we told him that we were there because God loves them and God loves those babies. And it wasn't about trying to prevent freedom of choice, but protecting the right to life of the child and avoiding the dire consequences of sin.

To my surprise he began to weep as he considered his place in the world and what was going to happen to this country because of our sin. As he wiped the tears from his face he said he knew that our sin was going to bring an end to the world. He wept because he understood that sin would interrupt his plans and that he might not live a full life.

We agreed with him that sin has consequences, but reassured him that God has already prepared the way -- even in times of God's justice.

It's true that those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind, but God has a spiritual cave for his faithful servants. And God sends them into the world to minister and offer rescue until the very end of time. And long after we've all given up and thrown in the towel God is still there until the end.

He heard a few stories of our own impatience when we'd given up. Even as some servants of God had given up on him, but God never gave up. He was told that he was an answer to prayers. And that one day his voice would be heard through the chaos of voices in the world by men and women hurting and in need of God's love. He didn't realize it then, but when he responded to the deafening call of God's voice and pulled his car over rather than ignore it ... his life would never be the same.

He fought and struggled with it -- but he never ignored it like so many busy Americans.

As I placed my hand on his shoulder and heard his name for the time I felt joy and sadness. I was happy that he was finally surrendering to God's plan for his life, but I was sorry that I was leaving just as it was about to take root and grow. I wouldn't get to see the miracle of his ministry in Charlottesville, but Lord willing many of you will get to see it firsthand.

I'm being a little bit selfish since I was fortunate to see your ministries unfold before my eyes.

Many of you loved him when all he was expecting was hate. And many of you prayed for him and your prayers were heard and answered. And still others were stranding in front of those clinics for his eyes to see and his heart to ponder. And it changed him. Thanks for being faithful -- young men like him recognize God's servants when they see them. And your constant presence in front of those clinics is a reminder of the choice we must all make every day: who will we serve?

Think how different the story would be if the sidewalks were empty.

-Steve

Steven Lopez

Spiritus Films

Congrats Sr. John Mark Maria!

2011-12-13T19:16:00.000-08:00

Despite wind, rain and a bit of ragged nerves, I was able to witness a joyful & blessed event at the Our Lady of Solitude Monastery out in Tonopah with the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration yesterday. Our friend, Sr. John Mark Maria celebrated her first profession of vows to the Poor Clares....and she was truly radiant! Having never attended anything of the sort yesterday, I felt that I was transported to another world. All of the elements of this liturgy were truly beautiful and Sister was a most stunning bride.
Enjoy the slideshow below.

Juan Diego and the Blessed Virgin

2011-12-09T11:10:00.000-08:00

Last night on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, some of our committees united to to pray on a spectacular, giant, 500 foot long rosary that was made by my friend Maria M. She's a spiritual powerhouse, packed into a tiny 4' 11" frame; proving to me once again that great things can manifest themselves in small packages. Those who were gathered prayed the rosary in three languages: english, spanish and italian. It was marvelous. Afterwards, anglo that I am, hung around to completely butcher the Marian hymns in spanish with those who remained. Despite my lameness of skill at singing, speaking or even clapping in spanish, I am humbly reminded that I am part of a beautiful, rich family of faith. How is this so? Because we have a common Mother--the most exquisite of God's creations. She unites us all under her mantle of love, as my pastor beautifully recommends in his intentions. I also realized that it was good for me to listen to the music being sung and lauded about Our Lady & God's grace; even though the words were in a language that I did not understand. Why? Because the language emanating from their hearts transcends words. Their devotion surpasses the senses. Just like little Bernadette Soubirous did not understand the words "I am the Immaculate Conception" spoken to her by the Blessed Virgin a few centuries ago, as it was way beyond her level of comprehension. She was 14 years old and had no formal education; yet she somehow knew that it was important that these words reach her bishop . Perhaps this is how we may someday come to appreciate the music of the angels and the songs of heaven. Though God's ways are far above our own and Mary is the sublime Seat of Wisdom, the heart language is the common bond, the bridge between two shores.

I am grateful for the rich spanish cultural influences that have helped shape my faith and graft me into a spiritual family. I made a Cursillo back in May of 2000 as a 4 year-old fledgling Catholic. It was in the rollo room of the Mt. Claret Center where I was introduced to Mary as my Mother and climbed our little version of Tepeyac Hill to the Madonna icon which adorned the mini summit; where I learned sweet songs like DeColores, Alabare and Ave, Ave, Ave Maria. I brought home souvenir words like "mananitas" and "ultreya" and allowed myself to be serenaded by mariachis, (who's name coincides with Maria). It was a letting go of sorts and as I learned to surrender some of my pride and familiarity, I experienced an appreciation for worshipping Our Lord through His Mother that I had never before known or recognized. Their vibrant love for Our Lady melted me and made it possible for me to love her too, like a daughter. I am forever indebted to my spanish compatriots for their extraordinary passion to Our Lady.

So it is fitting that today in the church we celebrate another extraordinary feast of a humble Mexican/Indian Man named Juan Diego. May Our Blessed Mother's imprint be fixed onto your heart today just as the image was emblazoned onto his mantle; allowing us all to understand the perfect language of love that God longs to impart. I didn't know I was under the mantle back in 2000, but I sure knew that something different was going on. Maybe a little bit like Juan Diego..."who is this aztec princess adorning me with Castilian Roses and emblazoning me with her image? It is Mama.

***

Juan Diego was born in 1474 in the calpulli or ward of Tlayacac in Cuauhtitlan, which was established in 1168 by Nahua tribesmen and conquered by the Aztec lord Axayacatl in 1467; and was located 20 kilometers (14 miles) north of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).

On December 9, 1531, a native Mexican named Juan Diego rose before dawn to walk fifteen miles to daily Mass in what is nowMexico City. Juan lived a simple life as a weaver, farmer, and laborer. That morning, as Juan passed Tepeyac Hill, he heard music and saw a glowing cloud encircled by a rainbow. A woman's voice called him to the top of the hill. There he saw a beautiful young woman dressed like an Aztec princess. She said she was the Virgin Mary and asked Juan to tell the bishop to build a church on that site. She said, "I vividly desire that a church be built on this site, so that in it I can be present and give my love, compassion, help, and defense, for I am your most devoted mother . . . to hear your laments and to remedy all your miseries, pains, and sufferings."

The bishop was kind but skeptical. He asked Juan to bring proofof the Lady's identity. Before Juan could go back to the Lady, he found out his uncle was dying. Hurrying to get a priest, Juan missed his meeting with the Lady. The Lady, however, met him on his path and told him that his uncle had been cured.

She then told Juan to climb to the top of the hill where they first met. Juan was shocked to find flowers growing in the frozen soil. He gathered them in his cloak and took them at once to the bishop.

Juan told the bishop what had happened and opened his cloak. The flowers that fell to the ground were Castilian roses (which were not grown in Mexico). But the bishop's eyes were on the glowing image of the Lady imprinted inside Juan's cloak.

Soon after, a church was built on the site where our Lady appeared, and thousands converted to Christianity. Our Lady of Guadalupe was declared the patroness of the Americas.

He died on May 30, 1548, at the age of 74.

Juan Diego deeply loved the Holy Eucharist, and by special permission of the Bishop he received Holy Communion three times a week, a highly unusual occurrence in those times.

Pope John Paul II praised Juan Diego for his simple faith nourished by catechesis and pictured him (who said to the Blessed Virgin Mary: “I am a nobody, I am a small rope, a tiny ladder, the tail end, a leaf”) as a model of humility for all of us.

Friendship: Low expectations vs. High expectations

2011-12-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

I set before you today 2 stories; One from current, popular culture; the other, from antiquity. I would suggest only two differences set them apart: First, their time in history and the second, our familiarity with the saints mentioned in the latter. Lest we forget: Human nature has not changed. The message & the challenge therefore, remains the same. We are responsible for our neighbor. We are obligated to elevating ourselves, and our friends beyond the dung heap. We have tools. (We don’t have to be tools; to use a popular euphemism.) And if we are going to be a “tool” we should set our sites on sainthood, because WHAT ELSE IS THERE?

The Problem of Low Expectations.

Excerpted From Fox News, 12-8-11

Think most of the misogyny on MTV comes from men? Guess again, says a new study of the network’s shows, which finds women engage in a whopping 88 percent of the shows’ sexual dialogue, insult each other much more than the men, and offer themselves up in positive portrayals only when they’re talking about physical appearance and their ability to bounce back from getting ridiculed.

Television watchdog group The Parents Television Council (PTC) releases its jaw-dropping report “Reality of MTV: Gender Portrayals on Reality TV” on Wednesday, and Fox411.com got an exclusive first look at its findings. They're not pretty. Nielsen data were used to identify the most-watched prime time reality shows on cable among the 12 to 17 demographic in 2011, which included MTV shows “Jersey Shore,” “Real World,” “Teen Mom 2,” and “16 and Pregnant.” Analysts then analyzed the content on the most recent full season of each show, logging the language and context of the language used.

Here are their bombshell findings:

-- Only 24 percent of what females said about themselves was positive across all shows combined.

-- Positive dialogue between females focused on their appearance, sense of accomplishment and emotional resilience.

-- While terms men used for each other were often viewed as complimentary (e.g., big man, dawg, superhero, McGyver, winner), women used far more degrading language when talking about other females (e.g., rodent, skank, trash bag, trick, ho and much worse).

-- Females talked about sex acts more than men, talked about sex more graphically than men, mentioned sexual body parts more than men, and talked about intercourse and foreplay more than men.

-- Although 88 percent of the sexual dialogue between females and males across all shows focused on intercourse and preliminary activities leading to intercourse, the topics of virginity (0.2 percent), contraceptives (1.4 percent) and STDs (2 percent) were only mentioned 4 percent of the time.

-- “Jersey Shore” made up 47 percent of the disparaging remarks (mostly coming from cast members Ronnie and Sammi) and 59 percent of the sexual references across all four shows.

“The most shocking finding – or at least the most disturbing – was the way the two genders spoke of themselves. The women were overwhelmingly more disparaging when speaking of themselves. With so much being invested and so much at stake in empowering one’s self, especially for girls, the overwhelming message from reality television targeted at teen girls is to be overly negative to yourself,” PTC President Tim Winter told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “After so many years of pursuing equality for women, our study suggests a glamorized, but grossly distorted view, of what it means to be feminine.”

According to the study, the issues surrounding negative media models of female and male behavior have only been exacerbated by the increase in reality television shows over the past few years, particularly as networks strive to reach the next level of shock value for their audiences. The report also claims that the continued success of these shows is dependent upon the “outrageousness of the content,” and that this can have serious implications on teens and tweens in the middle of establishing their own identity and core social values.

The PTC hopes that the study will intensify the national dialogue that has already begun with regards to the sexualization of women and girls in the media, and is urging parents to pay closer attention to the potentially harmful media images and messages their children may be consuming. They are also calling out advertisers, claiming that the media dollars underwrite television programming which contains “sexualized and narrowly defined gender portrayals.”

“Collectively, we must call upon media makers to present a more balanced view of ‘reality.’ We must demand more responsible depictions of how females and males resolve conflict and broader perspectives of what it means to be a female or male beyond the limits of current stereotypes,” the study concluded. “The saddest commentary is how ultimately these media themes and images serve to paint a very vivid picture of low expectations. The fear of setting low expectations for our young girls and boys is that they may fulfill them.”

MTV reps declined to comment until they had a chance to see the report.

So while the Fox article expounds on the idea that media is ultimately responsible for the steady downhill progression of self-esteem and poor view of reality; I would say that it is more symptomatic of a deeper spiritual wound….read on.

The Hope of High Expectations

From Mr. Bryan Y. Norton, SJ:

Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Our Lord's sweet promise of repose in today's Gospel passage immediately makes me think of St. Augustine (354-430). In the opening paragraph of his Confessions-the first, true "autobiography" in all of Western literature and a perennial source of humanistic, philosophical, spiritual, and theological wisdom-Augustine famously writes: "You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts our restless until they rest in You." The connection between this Gospel reading and Augustine's own spiritual journey proves especially fitting on today's memorial of St. Ambrose. After all, Augustine recognizes Ambrose as a pivotal figure in his own journey of conversion:

"To Milan I came, to Ambrose the Bishop, known to the whole

world as among the best of men, Thy devout servant; whose eloquent discourse did then plentifully dispense unto Thy people the flour of Thy wheat, the gladness of Thy oil, and the sober inebriation of Thy wine. To him was I unknowing led by Thee, that by him I might knowingly be led to Thee" (V.13.23).

Tradition teaches that saints come in clusters. We can easily make the mistake of isolating the saints, as though December 7th were dedicated solely to the memory of St. Ambrose. Truth be told, though, the life of one saint always intersects inseparably with the lives of other saints. This realization should spur each of us on to sanctity: God sanctifies us through the most ordinary of ways, namely Christian friendship. This wisdom profoundly shaped the young Society of Jesus, for example. Long before the founding fathers of the Society were the "first Jesuits," they were simply "companions," "friends in the Lord"-amigos en el Señor.

Today's readings, clothed with the Tradition of the Church, bid us to consider our own experience of Christian friendship. Do we have, among the members of Christ's Body, true "friends in the Lord," with whom we can intimately share the joys and sorrows of Christian life? Perhaps we have lost touch with them. Perhaps we need to ask the Lord to send new companions into our lives. Such bonds of friendship strengthen us to receive Christ's yoke and enter into His rest. They that hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles' wings; they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint. Amen.

While it may be a factor in better living and healthier productivity, the idea of unplugging form MTV still falls short of solving the age-old dilemma of bad alliances. Some of the most heinous acts in history have been committed by people who have never watched MTV; (Judas, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, to name but a few). We must attack the root, for there is where the problem resides.

Where do our expectations reside? Do we have any standards for friendship, or are we just available for anything? Could we be counted on to deliver a tough message to a friend if we knew it was a matter of their integrity, or their eternal destination? Do we encourage one another to follow the narrow path or do we simply sustain them on the broad highway? The company that we keep is revealing of the interior life we engender.

Food for thought.

Do you know your Self?

2011-12-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

C. S. Lewis

Our Very Own Dr. Billy Chavira "On the Rock"

2011-11-15T04:55:00.000-08:00

Voices of Peace sing for Pope Benedict

2011-11-07T04:32:00.001-08:00

What a profound statement. A musical plea to God from a broken brotherhood. May God heal our hearts and our land.

Adonai,
Hear my prayer.
In my need,
You have always been there.
Beth Shalom,
Bring him home.
Beth Shalom.

Lord, hear our prayer.
Amen.

Do not be afraid

2011-11-05T04:49:00.001-07:00

If you are afraid, scare it back.

see more dog and puppy pictures

Quotage

2011-11-02T11:51:00.000-07:00

Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.
--C. S. Lewis

Happy All Souls Day...
Let us love them right into heaven.

Hey Big 10....

2011-10-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

This is SPARTA!!!!!!

Wisconsin 31, MSU 37

Thank you Blessed Mother.

30% Drop in AZ Abortions in 1 Year

2011-10-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

We are doing something really right here in the Grand Canyon State to end the evil that is abortion. And just what is that, you ask? We are using our KNEES. Under the Mantle here in the Valley, we have some stunning statistics that, I'm convinced, are the direct and proportional result of prayer by more and more men and women who are using their voices, their rosary beads, their prayer booklets and their knees to bring a swift and necessary end to our generation's slaughter of the innocents. I stand in awe of the remarkable testament to faith that is represented here, in our state. My heart goes out to each and every one of you who continue to remain faithful to this cause.

The battle is not over. But we keep trudging, under her mantle.

-----------
From LifeSite News
Showing pro-life legislation protecting women and unborn children has a tremendous impact in saving lives, new figures from Arizona show a new pro-life law has resulted in dropping abortions 30 percent.

Last week, Cathi Herrod of the Center for Arizona Policy indicated the state released new abortion figures comparing the number of abortions in September 2011 with those done in September 2010.

“In September of 2010, 1,053 abortions were performed in Arizona. This September, 729 abortions – that’s 324 fewer abortions – a 30% decrease,” Herrod explained. “That number is also down from 1,069 abortions in August of this year. Simply incredible.”

The new follows on the heels of an appeals court upholding a pro-life law that protects the health and safety of women and their unborn children by giving them information they don’t normally receive. The Arizona Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in June in Planned Parenthood Arizona v. Horne, a case the abortion business filed which challenges key aspects of the 2009 Abortion Consent Act. The law is a pro-life measure Governor Jan Brewer signed which tells women of the risks associated with and alternatives to abortion. Planned Parenthood sued the state soon after its signing and a Superior Court judge blocked the law from taking effect while the case moves forward.

The law makes it so Arizona will require a notarized parental signature before an abortion can be performed on a minor child, women will be provided with full and accurate information by a doctor in person at least 24 hours before an abortion, medical professionals cannot be forced to perform abortions if it contradicts their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs and non-doctors will not be permitted by law to perform surgical abortions.

Responding to the decision, Planned Parenthood announced it will no longer do abortions at seven locations — including communities outside of Phoenix and Tucson rather than comply with the law.

Herrod says the new law and its effects are responsible for the abortion decline.

“Following the August court ruling upholding the 2009 Abortion Consent Act, Planned Parenthood announced they would stop providing abortions at 7 of their 10 clinics,” she explained. “Arizona’s new laws now ensure that all women considering an abortion are given an ultrasound exam and are provided the opportunity to see those results and to hear the baby’s heartbeat. Now, non-doctors are not allowed to perform surgical abortions, and doctors must be involved in the care of all women seeking abortion.”

“These initial numbers are the fruits of your partnership with Gov. Brewer, state legislators, and CAP to make a difference to empower women and give them the opportunity to make an informed choice,” Herrod continued. “The work is far from over – I anticipate further lawsuits from the abortion industry. For now, our CAP Policy Team is assessing what else can be done to protect women and preborn children. And, I hope you rejoice with us that lives are being saved.”

Herrod also thanked the work of pregnancy centers in the state — providing women with abortion alternatives — as part of the reason for the drop.

“The work of the almost 50 pregnancy resource centers in Arizona means more now than ever. As the new pro-life laws take effect, women facing crisis pregnancies will turn to your local pregnancy center rather than an abortion provider. Please do what you can to help those centers thrive and meet the overwhelming needs,” she said.

Naturally, Bryan Howard, president of Planned Parenthood Arizona, disputed the reasons for the decline, but admitted part of it has to do with the fact that non-doctors it formerly used to do abortions are no longer allowed to do them.

“It’s 100 percent due to the shortage of providers,” Howard said, according to the Yuma Sun.

Still, Planned Parenthood is the biggest abortion business in the state, doing 653 of the 729 abortions in September.

Maxwell Smart's got nothing on us...

2011-10-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

This just in from Sheila Reila, Director of Life Choices Women's Center...

A note sent to her donors about recent Planned Parenthood Clinic closures in the Valley. This one hits close to home, since the undercover work that helped cultivate this information was done by friends of mine with very good acting abilities.

_____

Thank you for your generous support. You make hope and faith possible for others by sharing your blessings. It is this faith and hope that allows a woman considering abortion to choose life for her unborn child. We would not be able to serve our clients without financial support. We remember you in our daily prayers.

I want to share some good news with you. The largest abortion provider in Arizona, Planned Parenthood, has had some setbacks in the last few years. In 2009, they consolidated four Phoenix area offices into one, the Eugie (Glendale) location. This year, a law went into effect that prohibits a Nurse Practitioner (NP) from performing the chemical abortion procedure (RU486). This resulted in 7 out of the 10 Arizona Planned Parenthood offices' ceasing to do abortions, further consolidating the abortion practice.

Another result of this law was a decrease in NP hours since they can no longer provide the highly profitable chemical abortion. We learned that the Planned Parenthood on Thunderbird, the closest to our 7^th Street location, is now only providing NP services 10 hours per week compared to our 17 hours each week. In addition, we have a Registered Nurse offering ultrasounds and counseling an additional 7- 14 hours each week and are open 46 hours per week compared to Thunderbird Planned Parenthood's 27 hours each week. This means that women are more than twice as likely to find health care services in this area of Phoenix at a pro-life clinic then at an abortion referral location! Our reaction to this was to increase our NP hours in our West office to ensure that this will also be true in another area of Phoenix.

Please know we work very hard everyday to make sure your donation helps as many mothers and babies as possible. Clearly, the Hand of God is the most important factor in these amazing developments. Your gifts have also helped us be positioned to take advantage of these developments.

PP Probe Underway

2011-09-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

Very exciting news as we start down the road less travelled to the truth about abortion funding and the black hole that is Planned Parenthood. Read more: House Launches Probe of PP

JFF

2011-09-26T06:23:00.000-07:00

"Just for fun" from my friend Robbie...

This is deeeelicious music for the soul. If you listen very carefully about almost 4 mins into this piece, you will here a familiar tune that we sing at Mass: The Thaxted melody of "O God, Beyond All Praising" is beautifully conjured by the violins. It all reminds me of what the psalmist composed in the 8th Psalm:

"O Lord, our Lord how majestic is Thy name in all the earth! Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted by the mouth of babes and infants, Thou has founded a bulwark because of Thy foes to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast established; what is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Yet, Thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor. Thou hast given him dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name in all the earth!"

Somebody just asked me recently what kind of music I like. That's hard to nail down, but I'm pretty sure that this music is straight from heaven. Just a small sampling of what God has in store for us, I think.

Getting behind the rhetoric

2011-09-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

"Things around abortion clinics die"

2011-09-19T07:52:00.000-07:00

'There is no outside solution to an inside problem'

2011-09-16T18:26:00.000-07:00

"ACCEPTANCE is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation -- some fact of my life unacceptable to me and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes." ~ Paul O., p. 417 4th Edition of Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

Glorious News Under the Mantle of Our Lady

2011-09-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

I’m deciding to share this news with you on a most fitting feast day – The Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

On Ash Wednesday of this year (March 9, 2011) some prayer warriors from my church, St. Joan of Arc in Phoenix, starting showing up at our neighborhood abortuary to pray weekly for the end of abortion. We joined an existing valley initiative named Our Lady’s Mantle and, armed with rosary beads, prayer booklets and hearts fixed on the Lord, we took our love of the unborn to the streets to offer peaceful, prayerful vigil for our littlest brothers and sisters who were dying just a few blocks away from our parish.

We wanted Planned Parenthood Thunderbird to know what so many people already know about abortion. It is bad for women, bad for our community and deadly for our unborn brothers and sisters.

We showed up with some informational signs, (not torches and pitchforks). The signs simply stated that women and men regret their abortions. You would have been amazed at all of the people who paid attention to those signs. Thanks Karl.

We showed up with some love & compassionate understanding for those who suffer from our abortion-wounded culture. We were pelted with raw eggs, and raw emotional outbursts but we did not return the hostility. This was not easy, but we have a great Teacher.

We showed up with some prayer. And boy did we have backup! Father, with the assistance of Carol and a few others instituted Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration at our parish on the 7^th of May. The Poor Clares out in Tonopah lifted our intentions weekly. The understatement of the century: “ I think it worked.”

We showed up with consistency. Examples abound:

· My dear, anonymous friend who made our first ‘offering of suffering’ by literally leaving part of her chin skin on the sidewalk on opening day.

· My pastor who showed up in his “Sin Fighting Suit” at the hottest times of the day—later joined by my husband, Ron.

· The kids who showed up from their afternoon RE class with Jim and Linda.

· The abortion-wounded women who courageously thanked us for our witness.

· The green truck that was always joyously honking a triumphal thumbs up.

· The friendly police officers who kept watch

· Robbie, Laurie and Peg…my prayer warrior sisters who showed up rain and shine. (Mostly blazing hot sunshine).

· The Knights of Columbus & Mary M. on their Tuesday Night Vigil

· Charlie, Ray and Jared; the men of the Fab Friday crew

· The Thursday Ladies, Connie, Patricia, Pat, Linda, Maria and Kathleen

· The stranger who gave us water bottles on more than one occasion

· The good neighbors who told us to keep up the good fight.

· Rebecca, the Avon Lady, who kept vigil next door to the abortuary and allowed us to keep our signs in her windows

· The boutique: who offered their ongoing prayers.

· The many individuals who suffered either physically or mentally- for the protection of those on the sidewalk

And most importantly, we showed up with our most powerful advocate…Our Lady. Thanks for securing that wonderful image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, Sheila. Her presence spoke volumes.

There is one thing that the people of Planned Parenthood do not understand about Our Mother. She has an abiding love for her children. She hates the evil that is abortion and she is imploring us to change our culture at the Calvary that exists in these Planned Parenthood facilities. She uses her daughters and sons on the sidewalk to remind Planned Parenthood that she is here for them too. She longs for them with a Mother’s love. She wants to wrap them in her mantle and take them to herself and show them that they do not need to shed any more innocent blood. She admonished us to persevere at the sidewalk and she promised that Her Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ would be there with us.

So we followed Our Lady’s direction and we are so happy to know that God heard our prayers. No longer will this Planned Parenthood at 32^nd and Thunderbird offer abortion services. May God be praised. Lifesite News Article about the Abortion Changes

We continue to offer prayer and sacrifices for the conversion of all who participate in this abomination. We have not given up on Jackie, the nurse practitioner, her staff and the other Planned Parenthood Clinics that are still operating. There is room for them in our midst. There is still some time to change. I say that with great experience, for I was once like them.

Our Lady’s initiative of peaceful, prayerful vigil will continue. The clinic website states that they will be offering abortion referrals and the morning after pill, so our work is not yet finished. But one day…one glorious, blissful day, there will be a “For Lease” sign in the window of the Planned Parenthood clinic at 32^nd street and Thunderbird.

Until THAT day, I’ll see you on the sidewalk.

Under the Mantle,

Karen

New Study, Alarming Stats, Same Ol' Message...Abortion harms women!

2011-09-01T20:05:00.000-07:00

Huge Study Confirms Link between Abortion and Mental Health Problems; Validates Silent No More Women

A study published today by Great Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists concludes that women who have had abortions have an 81% greater chance of subsequent mental health problems. Leaders of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign (SNMAC), the world’s largest network of individuals harmed by abortion, say that the report validates what many post-abortive women already know.

“This is not just another study. It’s historic,” said SNMAC co-founder Georgette Forney. “It combines the results of 22 studies conducted over a 14-year period in six countries involving 877,181 women. And it confirms what Silent No More members have been saying all along – abortion harms women.”

The study is the first meta-analysis of research conducted on abortion’s impact on mental health. It found that post-abortive women are 37% more likely to suffer depression, 110% more likely to engage in higher alcohol use, and 155% more likely to engage in suicidal behavior.

“This report is devastating to those who try to deny the hurt and anguish women suffer from abortion,” added Janet Morana, another SNMAC co-founder. “The cruelty of those who lie to pregnant women about abortion’s impact is compounded by the heartlessness of abortion industry propagandists who dismiss post-abortive women’s pain as non-existent. After this enormous scientific study, abortion’s apologists should apologize to the millions of women they’ve tried to marginalize.”

Fr. Frank Pavone, SNMAC Pastoral Director and National Director of Priests for Life, expanded on the report’s impact. “What I pray will be one of the major results of this study is that more women will realize that they are not alone. The pain they’ve been internalizing, perhaps for years or decades, is not uncommon; in fact, it’s quite normal. There is help and there is healing. I urge them to contactwww.SilentNoMoreAwareness.org.”

Since the launching of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign in 2003, 3,4845 women and men have shared their testimonies publicly at over 865 gatherings in 48 states and ten countries where more than 110,830 attendees have heard the truth about abortion’s negative aftereffects. More than 10,100 people representing 57 countries are registered to be Silent No More. Raising awareness about the hurtful aftermath of abortion and the help that is available to cope with the pain are two of the Campaign’s goals. The Campaign has over 1,300 testimonies posted here, with over 120 that are shared via video!

The Silent No More Awareness Campaign is a joint project of Anglicans for Life and Priests for Life. For more information, please visit our website:

www.SilentNoMoreAwareness.org

Coleman, P.K. (in press). Abortion and Mental Health: A Quantitative Synthesis and Analysis of Research Published from 1995-2009. British Journal of Psychiatry.

This review offers the largest estimate of mental health risks associated with abortion available in the world literature. The results revealed moderate to high increased risk of mental health problems after abortion. Consistent with evidence-based medicine, this information should be used by health care professionals.

What are the basic results? What should women know?
1) Overall, women with an abortion history experience an 81% increased risk for mental health problems. The results showed that the level of increased risk associated with abortion varies from 34% to 230% depending on the nature of the outcome. Separate effects were calculated based on the type of mental health outcome with the results revealing the following: the increased risk for anxiety disorders was 34%; for depression it was 37%; for alcohol use/abuse it was 110%, for marijuana use/abuse it was 220%, and for suicide behaviors it was 155%.

2) When compared to unintended pregnancy delivered women had a 55% increased risk of experiencing any mental health problem.

3) Finally, nearly 10% of the incidence of all mental health problems was shown to be directly attributable to abortion.

Why was this meta-analysis conducted?
1) Recently published, less systematic reviews of the scientific literature on abortion and mental health, including the American Psychological Association report and one by Johns Hopkins researchers among others, are prone to bias, and as a result actively mislead the public.

2) Practitioners need an accurate synopsis of the best available evidence in order to provide women with valid information in order to make informed health care decisions.
How is a meta-analysis different from the many other papers and reviews published in recent years? Why should we believe the information from a meta-analysis is any more accurate and reliable or less biased?
1) A meta-analysis is a quantitative or numerical synthesis of data from many previously published studies.

2) In a meta-analysis all studies are not treated equally. Contributions of individual study effects to the overall results are weighted statistically based on sample size.

3) Only studies that meet very stringent methodologically-based criteria are entered into the analysis; whereas in other types of reviews authors may not reveal the criteria employed or the criteria may be too restrictive (missing valuable studies) or too general (including weak studies in conclusions).

4) The bottom line is the results are far more reliable than the results of a single study or a qualitative review, because of the wealth of data incorporated and the objective methods for combining effects.
Isn’t it possible for meta-analyses to differ in strength and reliability? What distinguishes this one?
1) In order to avoid any allegations of bias, very stringent inclusion criteria were employed. This means every strong study was included and weaker studies were excluded. Specifically, among the rules for inclusion were sample size of 100 or more participants, use of a comparison group, and employment of controls for variables that may confound the effects such as demographics, exposure to violence, prior history of mental health problems, etc.

2) This meta-analysis is based on 22 published studies, 36 effects, and it brings together data on 877,181 participants 163,831 of whom experienced an abortion.

3) The paper is being published in a very prestigious journal, the British Journal of Psychiatry, which is considered one of the top psychiatry journals in the world. This means the paper has been extensively scrutinized by well-respected scientists and the results of studies are trusted by practitioners throughout the world.

Scar Tissue

2011-09-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

A lovely reminder about how we heal. This article is timely considering a rather humbling wipe out I experienced while on a run about 90 days ago. Luckily no one was around me to see the carnage of my humiliation (is that necessarily a good thing?). I had giant strawberries on my elbow, knee and the palms of my hands, the likes of which I had not seen since my softball days in high school. And I, too, watched in amazement, over a relatively short period of time, how these areas became new again from the inside out. Truly, Christ heals us from the inside out.

My scars are still visible, but now I now know to avoid the loose gravel like bubonic plague!

-----------------------------------------------------------
Healing — Burns, Blessings and Sacred Scars
By Margaret Silf (America: February 26, 2007) The pain of a broken
heart is far worse than the pain of a broken leg I put my hand in the
oven a few weeks ago and scorched myself on the heating element. In
normal times this would have been just another domestic accident—a
careless mistake for which my skin paid the penalty. But the times
were not normal. I was in a dark space following the breakdown of a
significant relationship; and this accident became an incident that,
in hindsight, has taken on something of the power of parable. My close
encounter with the grill left me, initially, quite oblivious of the
pain that was about to follow. As so often in these matters, the pain
of trauma is delayed. I recall once slicing off the tip of my finger
with an electric bread slicer (oh, the joy of our high-tech kitchen
aids!) and being genuinely surprised to see the blood issuing from the
wound, and the redesigned shape of my digit. It was a full few minutes
later before the searing pain kicked in.Now, as I reflect back, I can
see the same pattern revealed in the deeper, invisible traumas in our
lives. The initial shock of what has happened simply doesn’t sink in,
and we are granted a short respite of stunned numbness before our
minds and hearts have to begin to deal with the fallout.Needless to
say, my hand soon registered its displeasure at being so undeservedly
barbecued. For a while the wound screamed through my consciousness,
allowing me to think of little else, yet at the same time refusing to
allow itself to be touched with any kind of balm. It sat there, across
my hand, growing daily more livid and leaving me helpless either to
help myself or allow anyone else to help me.I realize now that my more
personal trauma was behaving in much the same way: taking over every
waking thought and every restless dream, yet repelling any attempts at
tender ministration. The wounded animal tends to bite the one who
would feed and care for it. The fact that we belong to that same
animal kingdom is particularly apparent when we are hurting.But then
the matter moved on again. Within a few days the pain began to
subside. It was possible to touch the wound, and to administer
soothing cream to it. I watched, not without a sense of wonder, how my
own body’s self-healing capabilities began to work. The angry redness
faded to a more conciliatory dark pink. The pain became less
insistent. The scorched skin gradually fell away, and I could see this
miraculous process unfolding before my eyes, as a new skin cover was
being created. Everything that had been damaged and destroyed was
being gently set aside, health was being restored, and a new beginning
was being woven. The pain was still there, but it no longer dominated
my mind. I was beginning to focus on the healing process instead, and
even to cooperate with it.The healing of an aching heart and
devastated feelings takes a lot longer than that. Maybe it takes a
lifetime. But my hand seemed to be telling me that healing is the real
thing, and that Dame Julian of Norwich got it right when she said that
“all shall be well.” My hand is teaching my heart to trust the mystery
that is ceaselessly striving for our greater good, out of whatever
facts we present. Day by day my skin has knitted back together, and
now all I have left to show for my destructive adventure is a slight
scar. I’m actually hoping that the scar never completely fades,
because it is something of an icon for me. It leads me through and
beyond itself to the place where I meet the Healer. It will always
remind me that whatever the trauma, the permanent reality in which we
live and move and have our being is about wholeness, not harm. One of
my favorite Scripture texts is the assurance in Jeremiah (29:11-12):
“I know what plans I have in mind for you, plans for peace, not for
disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Our scars are our
reminders, not just that we have been hurt but, more important, that
we have been healed.There is a custom among some Native American
peoples, that when someone is bereaved or suffers any kind of
traumatic loss, that person is invited to go out into the forest
carrying an axe, and to choose a special tree, to represent the aching
space of the loss or the breakdown. Once the tree has been selected,
the bereaved one (for every kind of loss in life is a bereavement),
strikes several sharp blows into the bark of the tree with the axe.
The wounds of the heart are inflicted, both symbolically and actually,
upon the tree. The tree is wounded but not destroyed, and from then on
the one who has suffered the loss is encouraged to visit the tree
regularly, and to be present to its gradual healing, over time, from
the wounds it has suffered. The tree and the mourner become one in
their pain and in their healing until eventually what they share has
become a deep and sacred scar.Our neighbors across the English Channel
enjoy an interesting linguistic quirk. The French word blesser, which
we anglophones are likely to associate with our word blessing,
actually means “to wound.” Since I uncovered this fact in my school
French lessons, I have always subconsciously linked “woundedness” and
“blessing” in my mind. My recent experience confirms that association.
In my darkest hour I begged God in prayer for a glimpse of light, an
angel’s touch, to guide me on. The next day I put my hand in the oven.
And God did the rest.

Margaret Silf lives in Staffordshire, England.
Her latest books are Companions of Christ: Ignatian Spirituality for
Everyday Living and the Catholic Press Association award-winning The
Gift of Prayer.

Hope floats and LIFE Rosary Soars!

2011-08-29T06:20:00.000-07:00

Over Chicago that is! Check this out.

Giant LIFE Balloon Rosary seen by Thousands over Chicago's Downtown

CHICAGO (August 15, 2011) - Just in time for the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, a 75-foot rosary floats skyward from Chicago's Michigan Avenue Bridge claiming the Magnificent Mile for Mary.

A giant rosary floated gracefully over Chicago's busy tourism district on Friday as thousands looked on. The six-foot gold cross hanging from the rosary sparkled in the sunlight as it very slowly ascended between the Tribune tower and the Wrigley building. The rosary of helium-filled yellow balloons bearing the word LIFE then floated down Michigan Avenue over the Hancock Tower and past North Ave Beach. Cameras and cellphones flew into action as people responded to the unexpected sight.

"There was an excitement all around us and there were people in tears at the sight of the rosary. I think we often take it for granted the power of a simple witness to the faith," said a camp counselor.

A passerby tweeted, "A balloon rosary in the air. My faith confirmed :)", while another surprised Chicagoan wrote, "what the... giant balloon rosary, with cross, just floated heavenward from the michigan avenue bridge."

The rosary was the craft of 20 imaginative elementary-school-aged girls and their counselors participating in a summer camp at a Chicago Catholic Parish. The girls prayed the rosary in front of the Washington Blvd. Family Planning Associates asking Our Lady for an end to abortion. They then carried the rosary, cross-first, through downtown Chicago's peak traffic to the cheers, and sometimes jeers, of pedestrians and motorists. Homeless people gave high fives, street preachers started singing Gospel songs, and semi-truck drivers shook the streets sounding their truck horns in approval. "I was completely ecstatic the whole time. I loved seeing how many people on a random street corner were thrilled. It is a lot more than we tend to think," said one participant.

One of the girls said, "It was the prettiest rosary I have ever seen. I liked how it would float up and sit and then float up and sit. It looked really pretty against the buildings and the sky." Another camper said, "The best way to describe it was 'beautiful'. I didn't see one frowning face. It evangelized everyone who saw it."

This is the latest of a series of spontaneous acts of joy across the United States involving the yellow LIFE balloons. Sightings of LIFE balloons at prayer vigils, county fairs and flash mobs leave many wondering if the trend will impact this year's March for Life in Washington DC.

See photo post here: Giant Balloon Rosary

If you care about your conscience, sign this

2011-08-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

On August 1, 2011 the Department of Health and Human Services directed by Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic, adopted the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation that “the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive methods” be determined a “preventive care service for women.” Under these new guidelines, mandatory coverage will be provided for surgical sterilization, all prescription contraceptives approved by the FDA - including drugs like Ella that can cause abortions in the early weeks of pregnancy - as well as counseling to promote them. This directive from the Affordable Care Act initiative will be supported by tax payers without a conscience clause exemption, violating the civil and religious liberties of millions of Americans.

This new directive by the Obama Administration is:

Undermining: The U.S Department of Health and Human Service’s adoption of the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation that contraceptive services be provided for all women is contrary to Catholic moral teaching and undermines fundamental principles of the Catholic Faith. ["Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means . . . for example, direct sterilization or contraception." (Catechism of the Catholic Church #2399)]

Deceptive: Many FDA approved birth control methods are classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency of Cancer Research (IACR), a research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO) and categorized in the same group as cigarettes and asbestos.

Discriminatory Against Catholic Institutions: It violates the freedom of conscience and freedom to practice religion guaranteed by the Constitution, specifically targeting Catholic hospitals, clinics, parishes, social services, schools and other Catholic institutions under the new rule compelling them to act contrary to Catholic teaching on life and procreation unless they stop hiring and serving non-Catholics.

Biased Against Catholic Health Care Professionals: A direct attack on Catholic doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers who are not provided a “conscience clause” to opt out of providing medical services that are contrary to their religious beliefs.

Misleading: Increased access to birth control will actually increase (not decrease) the need for abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, a research arm of Planned Parenthood, admits that their research reveals that over 50% of women show up at abortion clinics for an abortion due to failed birth control.

Bad Medicine: Encourages unhealthy and immoral sexual practices which will drive the need for more health care services in the area of STD treatment and abortion services.
Lacking Transparency: This mandate reveals shameless abortion rights advocacy by the Obama Administration as they are well aware that birth control distribution is the feeder system of the profitable abortion industry.

Therefore, we petition the Obama Administration and Secretary Sebelius to immediately withdraw all references to contraception and contraception counseling from the “Guidelines for Women’s Preventive Services” under The Affordable Care Act, and to provide a CONSCIENCE CLAUSE to protect the religious freedom and beliefs of Catholics and other Americans who are opposed to contraception.

To take immediate action follow this link, Stop the Birth Control Mandate sign the petition & share with your friends.

Pray for Priests -- August Intentions

2011-08-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

THIS IS NOT AN EVENT YOU NEED TO PHYSICALLY ATTEND it is an event where the Body of Christ, the Church, are uniting to pray for our priests.

"The world looks to the priest, because it looks to Jesus! No one can see Christ; but everyone sees the priest, and through him they wish to catch a glimpse of the Lord! Immense is the grandeur of the Lord! Immense is the grandeur and dignity of the priest!"
Blessed Pope John Paul II (Rome, Italy, October 13, 1979)

Our priests are under constant attack, they are called to be God's instruments to administer His Sacraments which translates to they are walking around with a giant target on their forehead.

We need to pray and sacrifice for our priests, we need to form an army to defend them in prayer and penance.

I ask you to join me in dedicating August to praying for priests around the world, to praying for seminarians, for those training and forming priests, for vocations directors and for more vocations and for those who are discerning priesthood.

I prepose praying St Therese's daily prayer for priests (see below) and fasting or doing penance one day a week each week in August (and beyond) for our priests.

Please invite all your friends to join us.

"O Jesus,
I pray for your faithful and fervent priests;
for your unfaithful and tepid priests;
for your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields.
For your tempted priests;
For your lonely and desolate priests;
For your young priests;
For your dying priests;
For the souls of your priests in Purgatory.
But above all, I recommend to you the priests dearest to me:
The priest who baptized me;
The priests who absolved me from my sins;
The priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion;
The priests who taught and instructed me;
All the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way
(especially …).
O Jesus, keep them all close to your heart,
And bless them abundantly in time and in eternity.
Amen

Rock & Skate Sunday at Skateland

2011-07-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

For Immediate Release

Media contact:

Lori Beecham

lori@alicecoopersolidrock.com

602-522-9200

ALICE COOPER’S SOLID ROCK

SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER ROCK AND SKATE

SKATELAND

7 E. SOUTHERN AVENUE

MESA, AZ

SUNDAY, JULY 31ST

6 to 10 p.m.

Skateland is hosting an evening of skating and rock and roll featuring several of the

Valley’s premier teen bands Including Audio Invasion, Run 2 Cover, Jimmy Legs, Saving Shea, The Kards, and Irie.

There will be raffle items including, 2 roundtrip Southwest Airlines tickets, a Fender guitar, a Tourneau BMW watch and

many more great items. Alice Cooper will make a special appearance.

Admission is $10 at the door (includes skate rentals – inline skates an additional $3 with all proceeds to benefit Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock.

Solid Rock is a Christian, 501 (c) (3) non-profit Arizona Corporation founded by long time Valley residents and fathers, Chuck Savale and Alice Cooper. The two envisioned a teen center that provided an outlet where teens can flourish, understand themselves, understand the love of Christ and equip themselves for the road ahead. Thus, the idea of The Rock was born and the primary mission of Solid Rock was realized. Today, Solid Rock’s focus is to honor Christ by seeing The Rock come to fruition in Phoenix, and then create a series of “Rocks” in large metropolitan areas across the nation. For more information, visit www.alicecoopersolidrock.com or call 602-522-9200.

Thekards
Habib, Jacob (my son), Lucas and Jared (not pictured)
with Alice Cooper.

Friends of the Cross

2011-07-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

I am reminded of a great quote by a source that I cannot remember which goes something like: "Let us be kind & gentle to one another; everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."

Those are good fighting' words, don't you think? Here are some more from our dear St. Louis de Montfort. I just love this holy friend...may we all be inspired to take his advice and be a true Friend of the Cross.
+++
"We are a group of crusaders united to fight against the world, not like those religious men and women, who leave the world for fear of being overcome, but like brave, intrepid warriors on the battlefront, refusing to retreat or even to yield an inch. Let us be brave. Let us fight with all our might.

Let us bind ourselves together in that strong union of heart and mind which is far superior, far more terrifying to the world and hell than the armed forces of a well-organized kingdom are to its enemies. Demons are united for our destruction, but we are united for their overthrow; the avaricious are united to barter and hoard up gold and silver. Let us combine our efforts in the pursuit of the eternal treasures hidden in the cross. Reprobates united to make merry, but we unite to suffer.

We have been chosen by God from among the tens of thousands who have only reason and sense for their only guide. We, who are raised above reason and thoroughly opposed to the things of sense, live in the light of true faith and burn with love for the cross.

Such a Friend of the Cross is a mighty king, a hero who triumphs over the devil, the world and the flesh and their threefold concupiscence. He overthrows the pride of Satan by his love for humility; he triumphs over the world's greed by his love for poverty and he restrains the sensuality of the flesh by his love for suffering.

Such a Friend of the Cross is a holy man, separated from visible things. His heart is lifted high above all that is frail and perishable; "his conversation is in heaven" (Phil 3:20); he journeys here below like a stranger and pilgrim. He keeps his heart free from the world, looks upon it with an unconcerned glance of his left eye and disdainfully tramples it underfoot.

A Friend of the Cross is a trophy which the crucified Christ won on Calvary in union with His Blessed Mother. Conceived in the sorrowful heart of Christ, he comes into this world through the gash in the Savior's right side and is all empurpled in His blood.

True to this heritage, he breathes broth only crosses and blood, death to the world, the flesh and sin and hides himself here below with Jesus Christ in God (Col 3:3). Thus, a perfect Friend of the Cross is a true Christ-bearer, or rather another Christ, so much so that he can say with truth, "I live now not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal 2:20).

What Blacks don't know will kill them

2011-07-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

A jar or two of costly spikenard...

2011-07-22T17:01:00.000-07:00

He who has been forgiven much, loves much.
I love my dear St. Mary Magdalene. So much so that I have claimed her as my own patron saint. Many of the saints I tend to gravitate to (or those who gravitate towards me?) seem to have a few rough edges to their credit: St. Augustine, St. Peter, St. Theresa of Avila, Matthew Talbot, St Paul, you get the gist. Don't get me wrong, I love the Little Flower and St. John of the Cross too, I just have a harder time identifying with them. They seem to hover a few more feet off of the ground than the ones I just mentioned.

But our dear Saint Mary... she holds a special place in my heart. Sweet, demon-possessed, sensual, vexing, adulterous, earthy, extravagant Mary of Magdala. She renounced none of her feminine splendor yet we observe as she passes from nature to grace to glory; sinner to convert to contemplative. Most post-abortive women that I know claim her as their own. She loves to be shared, I am sure! I relate to Mary's lack-luster existence before Christ entered her life. I relate to the feeling of being lower than a worm; face to the dirt. I concurred with those who shamed and assailed me that I was guilty; worthy of bitter scorn. I was lost but now am found; was blind but now I see. I am forgiven and set free because a Hand reached down and pulled me up. Like Mary, I was loved into the truth. I was loved back into life by the Author of Life Himself.

Mary Magdalene claims a prize that all of us can lay claim to. The blessed relief of forgiveness. The 10 million pound weight of bone-crushing sin being lifted off of one's chest and the sweet relief of breath that follows. Mary is a revival story. It's rags to riches, Cinderella and Star Wars all wrapped up in non-fiction! (Ever wonder where they all got their story lines??) Our heroine's relief is requited in a life of love to the One who set her free. The rest of her life is caught up in Christ; in service to Him on the cross, in service to Our Blessed Mother and St. John and the new Christian family that has just been born. I often wonder if she did not bathe the feet of other penitents along her way. It is said of Mary that she loved much. Is it any wonder?

Today is my feast day and also the day that I remember the birthday of the child I lost to abortion. Michael would have been a July baby and so what more fitting a day to remember him? I am grateful to God for the ocean of Mercy that he supplies to all of us so that we may freely come home to Him. Not a day goes by that I do not miss this child. I trust that Our dear St. Mary Magdalene is keeping her watchful eye on him until I get there. God willing.

I found this priceless gem in Magnificat today...can't you just smell the aroma of Spikenard?

Alas for me, poor woman, I did not appreciate my happy condition while my Spouse was near me. Who will give me the broad firmament as parchment, the deep ocean as ink, leaves and grass as pens, so that I can write out, fully and plainly, the sorrow and incurable wound which has gnawed at my heart ever since I proved untrue to my Beloved? Oh, that I had never been born! What can I do but fling myself into the bottomless pit of melancholy?

Answer of Eternal Wisdom: Overcome this moodiness by remembering that I came into the world to save you and all poor sinners, to restore each one of you to my Father in original beauty, innocence and uprightness... Do you not recognize me? How low have you sunk? Or has excessive weariness of heart dulled your power of recognition? My dear child, it is I, gentle, merciful Wisdom, who have thrown open forever the boundless halls of my mercy, so vast that even the saints cannot comprehend it, to receive you and all contrite hearts. It is I, Love personified, who accepted poverty and disgrace so that I might restore you to honor, and who endured a bitter death in order to revivify you. I stand here livid, dyed with blood and lovable as once I hung on the high gallows of the cross, warding off my Father's severe judgment on you. It is I, your Brother; look at me, your Spouse. I have so completely forgotten your misdeeds that it is as if you had never offended me. All I ask in return is that you dedicate yourself wholly and irrevocably to me. Bathe yourself in my lovable, red blood. Lift up your head, open your eyes, and bolster your courage. Behold, as a pledge of complete forgiveness I now place the ring of our betrothal on your hand, clothe you in the best garments, furnish you with shoes, and confer on you the engaging name of my bride, to have and to hold forever.
--Blessed Henry Suso (+1366)

Time for Action

2011-07-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

Please take the time now to act on the below press release issued by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo. I've added a page to the right under "Your Elected Officials" that gives you easy access to the members acting on your behalf in the 112th Congress.

On July 19, the Institute of Medicine submitted its recommendations to the Department of Health and Human services on the mandated "preventative services" for women under the new health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). If HHS accepts these recommendations, people would be forced to carry health coverage that violates the deeply held moral and religious convictions of many. It is very important for you to encourage your Representatives to co-sponsor HR 1179 if they have not already done so.

Please activate your distribution lists with this important information.

DATE: July 19, 2011

FROM: Don Clemmer

O: 202-541-3206
M: 260-580-1137

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BISHOPS’ PRO-LIFE CHAIR STRONGLY OPPOSES RECOMMENDED MANDATE FOR BIRTH CONTROL, STERILIZATION IN PRIVATE HEALTH PLANS

WASHINGTON—Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, strongly opposed the recommendation of the Institute of Medicine that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate coverage of surgical sterilization and all FDA-approved birth control in private health insurance plans nationwide.
The full text of the statement follows:

I strongly oppose the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation today that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate coverage of three particular practices in almost all private health plans: surgical sterilization; all FDA-approved birth control (including the IUD, “morning-after” pills, and the abortion-inducing drug Ella); and “education and counseling” promoting these among all “women of reproductive capacity.”

Pregnancy is not a disease, and fertility is not a pathological condition to be suppressed by any means technically possible. The IOM report claims it would have good reason to recommend mandatory coverage for surgical abortions as well, if such a mandate were not prevented by law. But most Americans surely see that abortion is not healthy or therapeutic for unborn children, and has physical and mental health risks for women which can be extremely serious. I can only conclude that there is an ideology at work in these recommendations that goes beyond any objective assessment of the health needs of women and children.

The single largest abortion provider in the United States, Planned Parenthood, is celebrating the IOM’s report. If the HHS does likewise and implements its recommendations, these controversial practices will be mandated for all insurance plans – public and private – without co-pay from anyone receiving them. The considerable cost of these practices will be paid by all who participate in health coverage, employers and employees alike, including those who conscientiously object to Planned Parenthood’s agenda.

Without sufficient legal protection for rights of conscience, such a mandate would force all men, women and children to carry health coverage that violates the deeply-held moral and religious convictions of many. This new threat to conscience makes it especially critical for Congress to pass the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act” introduced by Reps. Jeff Fortenberry and Dan Boren (HR 1179). I am writing to all members of Congress to urge their co-sponsorship.

The IOM missed an opportunity to promote better health care for women that is life-affirming and truly compassionate. I once again urge the Department of Health and Human Services to focus on the need of all Americans, including immigrants and the poor, for basic life-saving health coverage – not on mandating controversial elective practices in ways that undermine the good of women and children, the consciences of employers, employees and health plan providers, and the common good.
---
Keywords: Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, Institute of Medicine, IOM, preventive services, sterilization, contraceptives, birth control, IUD, morning-after pills, mandate, health care, Ella, conscience rights
# # # # #

Power Surge of Rockford priests saves lives on the sidewalk

2011-07-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

My friend Sheila sent this to me from James at the ProLife Corner...

Thanks be to God; because of these seven Priests, the Poor Clare Nuns who in the Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford were uniting their prayers with the Priests, and every Christian who prayed this morning, not one child was killed in Rockford today.
A small group of abortion supporters showed up, thinking the mill would be open. When they saw seven Priests and over forty pro-lifers deep in prayer and the abortion mill closed, the pro-aborts appeared even more dazed and confused than usual.
The abortion mill landlord Wayne Webster, who seems to have a pathological hatred for Catholic Priests and has a history of skulking away from the abortion mill grounds when Priests are praying prayers of exorcism outside his killing center, was nowhere to be seen. In his absence he did leave some quite vulgar signs in his abortion mill windows attacking Priests.
On this day in Rockford, the presence of Christ through His Priests and His people could be tangibly felt and experienced outside the building where over 60,000 human beings have been murdered.
On this day in Rockford, Satan fled; Christians stood united in faith and love, and no children had to face a brutal, vicious death inside the Rockford abortion mill.

Way to go Rockford!
My hat is off to these priests, the Poor Clare nuns who were praying remotely in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament and the dozens of pro-life warriors who cultivated such a beautiful spirit of prayer and unity outside of this abortuary. We would be wise to emulate their fine example and to continue to be encouraged and inspired by this strong witness of faith. There are some prayers that ONLY PRIESTS can say out there on the sidewalk by virtue of their Holy Orders. Do you see what happens when we pray in the sacraments that God has given us through His church? To James' comments I can only add: "And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it".

Beware of Black Sheep Dogs

2011-07-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

Sadly, you could almost see the Corapi story forming like a storm cloud on the horizon. It seems like the chances are good that when a priest rockets to celebrity status, we end up reading about him days, months or perhaps years later doing something outrageously scandalous. I’m just going to start making it a personal rule…whenever a priest or clergy star rises, red flags should ascend my mental flagpole and I need to start praying for them. (see Marcial Maciel, Fr. John Eunteneur, and now Fr. John Corapi).

[Furthermore, anytime that a professed addict/alcoholic decides that they are going to start a public speaking career, move to Montana and live by themselves, those same red flags should be hoisted, prayer efforts redoubled….yes, we saw this coming.]

A priest, especially those who make vows of chastity, poverty and obedience make a public proclamation that they are choosing the narrow way and not the broad highway. And by the way, it’s not just them; we who are believers also choose the narrow way when we make a profession of faith. Do we not make a public condemnation of “Satan and all his works and all his pomps”? Yes we do; it is in our baptismal credo either answered for us in infant baptism or later by ourselves in the Adult Rites of Initiation. Words mean things and sacramental words are a potent representation or part of an outward sign of an inward reality; a life of grace.

Here’s another way to look at it: What goes up, must come down. “He who exalts himself shall be humbled and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 14:11). “Pride comes before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:28) This wisdom didn’t just towel snap us in the fanny a few seconds ago…it was around when the Dead Sea was still alive. Personal exaltation is a no-no. It is a brother to the original sin of pride and we know where that got us.

Here’s a clip from the St. Louis de Montfort’s Consecration to Mary on the Devilish Search for Greatness, Honor, Praise and Applause…

Devilish wisdom consists in an unlawful striving for human esteem and honors. This is the wisdom which the worldly-wise profess when they aim, although not openly, at greatness, honors, dignities and high positions; when they wish to be seen, esteemed, praised and applauded by men; when in their studies, their works, their endeavors, their words and actions, they seek only the good opinion and praise of men, so that they may be looked upon as pious people, as men of learning, as great leaders, as clever lawyers, as people of boundless and distinguished merit, or deserving of high consideration; while they cannot bear an insult, or a rebuke; or they cover up their faults and make a show of their fine qualities.

I remember the moment that I started to puzzle about the motives of Father John Corapi…like somebody leaning on a keyboard, it was when he named himself the Black Sheep Dog. Not only did this sound stupid & defensive, it is insulting to dogs! It is one thing to defend a position or even yourself in a matter of jurisprudence, it is quite another to endow yourself with a label over it, like some superhero. That’s when I knew he was in trouble and when I noticed that he wasn’t on the narrow path anymore. I shall offer prayers for him and for all who have been scandalized over the allegations. But a bigger lesson for me is that I must keep my watchful gaze on Christ and never on powerful men or women. Keeping principles before personalities is an idiom that works not only in AA, but in all areas of life. And finally, I, too must learn to keep my ego in check because I am as susceptible of a fall as those who have fallen before me.

“Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:14) To squeeze onto a narrow way, I think you have to be small. In spiritual language, smallness can be equated to meekness or humbleness. I remember thinking once that being fly-sized might be a good thing. It’s hard to be a target for the evil one when you’re quick and small. Quick to confession and small in ego. You may be familiar with the “Stay thirsty my friend” quote from the ‘most interesting man in the world’ commercial that put Dos Equis Beer on the map? Perhaps it might be prudent to craft a more fitting spiritual maxim about staying on the narrow path; How about:

Stay small my friend.

Great things coming out of Poland...again

2011-07-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

The nation responsible for giving the world the gift of Karl Wojtyla, aka Blessed John Paul II, the Great, is now making headlines again. Mary Nowick from Lifesite news reports that Poland is a few measures away from completely outlawing abortion in their country...here's the scoop. And keep praying!

by Mary Nowick of Lifesitenews.com

Let us draw inspiration from the actions of the Polish Parliament last week in the overwhelming vote to totally outlaw abortion. There is hope!

Last week the Sejm – the lower chamber of the Polish Parliament – voted to outlaw all abortions in a landslide vote of 254 to 151 with 11 abstentions. This great legislative victory rode on a great wave of support from the grassroots, with over 600,000 signatures that were gathered in just the two weeks before the vote. Among the supporters for this legislation are OBGYNs, journalists, and lawyers.

With this vote, the people hope to reclaim Poland from the culture of death that was imposed on it by the Nazis and the Communists that introduced abortion to this beautiful country. Women journalists express their support for a ban on all abortion in Poland in an open letter stating,

“A vote for the protection of the unborn would be a vote for the restoration of moral order. It would be a vote for the protection of women, and the protection of their relationship with their children. It would also be a vote for the restoration of dignity and respect for motherhood.”

Abortion drives a wedge between a mother and her child, pitting one against the other. Polish women recognize that a total ban on abortion safeguards this relationship and gives motherhood the esteem that it deserves.

Poland is one of the most pro-life countries in Europe. Currently, abortion is only legal in Poland in the case of fetal anomalies, when the pregnancy results from criminal acts, or when the life or health of the mother is at risk.

The battle is not quite over in Poland. The abortion ban still needs to pass the Polish Senate and be signed into law by the President, who has stated his reluctance toward the measure.

As we continue to strive to make our own country one where everyone is welcomed in life and protected in law, let us take this bold move by Poland as a source of inspiration and hope that we might be able to do the same one day.

America the Beautiful and other songs we should not sing during Mass

2011-07-03T20:51:00.000-07:00

The Declaration of Mass Independence

We sing these songs to be self evident that all Masses are created equal. That we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable entitlements…that among these are the rights to do & sing whatever and however we want at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, including the pursuit of my own version of happiness. That to secure these rights, pastoral councils are instituted among parishes – so that whenever the pastor or the bishop becomes destructive of my will – it will be the rights of the people to withhold their plate collections until such a time that we laity will be able to institute a new mass that is less challenging, less good, less beautiful and by far less truthful than the one we started with.

Of course I’m having a little fun at the expense of a truly great document, however there is a point. Actually it is a question. When will we stop trying to change the Mass to suit our emotions?

I am a patriot. I come from a family of patriots – people who have served our county and some who have paid with their lives. One of my great grandfathers even served as a field commander to Abraham Lincoln during the Blackhawk Wars. Frankly there is no time better than this time of year – Our Nation’s Birthday – to proclaim our love of nation boldly and proudly. In honor of this special day, our family, among other things, has supported the economy, worn red, white and blue clothing, prayed for our country at Mass, flew the stars and stripes over the garage and took a day off to remember the birthday of our country. This will be the first year that we have purposefully skipped fireworks but, hey…it’s 115 degrees in Phoenix today and every part of me is rebelling against going outside. We shall enjoy fireworks from the air-conditioned comfort of our living room.

I also am a Catholic and these two identities get along just fine under normal circumstances except for last night. I am a cantor at my church and after the 4:30 Mass, where I serve, I was confronted by a parishioner who complained that we did not sing “America the Beautiful”. I think his exact words were: “This is the most unpatriotic parish I’ve ever been”.

I think he is right—we do not offer a “Patriots” Mass, our windows are not red, white and blue, nor do we espouse allegiance to any such saint of patriots. Father will be so happy to learn that I deferred his question to the pastor (!)

Excuse me, but when did Mass become a piano bar? No, it is NOT our right to sing patriotic songs at Mass, actually. I have served in music at many parishes and much of the time, offering patriotic music serves as an appeasement in order to honor the vets, our country, or whatever thing other than God we are trying to worship. I’ve sung God Bless America (long intro version), the National Anthem, America the Beautiful, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, My Country Tis of Thee. I’ve done this sort of stuff on Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day and Independence Day. As a former liturgist, I have had many a fellow Catholic get downright ugly with me about why the American Flag somehow needs to be placed up near the altar during the 4^th of July Liturgies, even when the 4^th does not fall on Sunday. I am exasperated with this line of thinking. Perhaps we need to re-examine a few priorities.

My first point: The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass celebrates, honors and worships the Triune God. The once-for-all sacrifice of Christ (Heb 9:28) is eternally re-presented to the Father on our behalf (Heb 9:24). It is the actual events of the life, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior in which we participate, and we do so in the sublime action of sharing a meal—a supper that is our Holy Communion. Only the Catholic Mass fulfills Malachi’s great prophecy: “For from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, my name is great among the nations and everywhere they bring sacrifice to my name, and a pure offering; for great is my name among the Gentiles, says the Lord of hosts” (Malachi 1:11). We come to praise and worship our God and King, the author of all life and freedom. We gather at Holy Communion to be present in an eternal kingdom; a world without end; that flies one banner which is love.

My second point: We have our priorities turned around. I think it is the well-meaning intentions of Americans who are Catholics at Mass who want to hear these patriotic hymns that inspire our nationalistic sense of pride. I sense their plea: It is good to be an American! If it weren’t for our religious liberty-bought at a hefty price by other Americans- we would not be able to worship as we please. We want to offer thanks to God for America, for this great and exceptional nation who does hold certain absolute Truths to be self-evident. Hey—that’s a swipe at relativism, isn’t it? America is, by far, the greatest country on God’s green earth. Who doesn’t remember how packed our parishes were directly following 9-11? We implored God through our many Masses offered, to spare us, save us and come to our aid. We even blur the lines a bit on the secular side of things by singing God’s praises at baseball games, invoking his blessings at graduations (though it is becoming much harder) and emblazoning stunning God-centered Latin phrases on buildings and structures within our own government. So what’s so wrong with that ambiguous blurriness?

Nothing, at first. But as I mentioned, the priorities are skewed. Stating it the correct way, we have God to thank for our freedoms, all of them. They were not free. In our nations early history, it was not easy to be a Catholic. There were grave persecutions of early Catholic Americans. They went to Mass-it was sung in Latin then-and they offered prayers and petitions for our country. There is no reason why it still cannot be so now.

So what’s the problem with patriotic songs at Mass. My answer: It simply is not the best way to offer praise and worship to God. Which brings me to my third point. There’s a whole lotta “Mass my way” going on in the church. Have you noticed? Ever since Vatican II, almost every aspect of the liturgy has changed. In fact, if you compare the Novus Ordo Mass to the Tridentine Mass, it will seem like two completely different things. I could go on and on about EMs, “clown” masses, holding hands, receiving the Holy Eucharist in the hand, and all of our various “ministers” and I just keep seeing this as the poor laity being bored out of their gourds and needing some activity to distract them from what’s really happening at that altar. How sad this is. This is not to say that it’s a contemptible thing to sing America the Beautiful as the recessional hymn. This hymn could be sung after the final blessing when Mass is officially concluded making it a fair choice. I’m just saying that we need to keep our priorities straight. We need to keep God first.

My concluding point; America is beautiful but Beauty is an attribute that God personifies. America can also be, at times, very ugly. For instance, when she forgets about the standards and values that formed her great traditions: standards that protect the inherent dignity of every human life. And if I went into a local public school and wanted to teach the kids about why we still say “UNDER GOD” in our pledge or why the Pilgrims really left England, or how our legal code was derived, I would be roundly mocked and eventually silenced.

Which is why we need to wholeheartedly PRAY for America; that she be conformed to the image and likeness to the One who did salvage our eternal freedom; Who ransomed us from a place of slavery, Who bore us up with His pinions, Who sheds His grace on thee, Who crowned thy good with brotherhood.

So if you should decide that you would like to make a special song request of the cantor next 4^th of July at a Catholic parish in Phoenix, be prepared to hear at least from me that the blue field of Old Glory bears a striking resemblance to Our Lady’s Mantle!

May God bless America.

One noteworthy response to the Goodrick Puff Piece

2011-07-02T11:39:00.000-07:00

Posted at the entrance to the St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Phoenix. Thank you, Father John Ehrich

Some things really make me sick...

2011-06-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

This is one of them. This particular abortionist has been on my last nerve lately because not only is she The Provider who a bunch of stalwart prayer warrior friends protest twice weekly, she is also The Provider who my FORMER Ob/gyn refers all of her abortion patients to. I'll tell that tale in another post. For now, pay attention to this one. At the end, I'll parse the paragraphs so that you can tell truth from fiction.
Happy gagging.

#####

What Jessica Testa's piece is missing is a dose of truth. Let's look at some detail...

"So this is what an abortion clinic looks like?" Not really. This particular one is trying to hide under a few monikers. One is Camelback Family Planning, the other is Jackrabbit Clinic. Camelback Family Planning is on the door and Jackrabbit signage is displayed at the street entrance. Both are facades that hide a more sinister money making machine: a for-profit abortion clinic that spins itself as a "family practice". How do I know this? Because a little over a year ago, my sidewalk counseling partner and I were doing recon work at this particular location. When I visited (it wasn't that pretty on the inside by the way), I posed as new patient needing a strep culture for my young son. I was advised that Dr. Goodrick was not accepting new patients and for routine family medicine, we were given a referral to a doctor down the street. Repeated attempts at procuring routine services were met with the same reply. Hmmm. So much for doubling as a "private family practice".

"Toys in the waiting room": I suppose this is for the lucky ones who survived a visit to Dr. G's abortion mill. Or perhaps they are just more props to make you think that this doctor is actually in favor of you bringing a pregnancy to term. Whatever the case may be, it's about as oxymoronic as selling bacon in a kosher deli.

"Her pink scrubs matching a t-shirt bearing a cartoon uterus" tells me she doesn't take my insides very seriously. I'm runnin.

"When you start doing abortions it takes over your practice because there's such a need" Yes. A need to get rich and make tons of money. Another blogger used his calculator to determine how much money Goodrick rakes in on an annual basis. According to CamelbackFamilyPlanning.com, the website for Goodrick’s practice, she charges the following for the abortions she conducts:

Doing the math on performing 2,000 abortions at the rate of $460 (the cheapest rate at 5-11.6 weeks), Goodrick is paid around $920,000 a year!

"The (abortion) procedure is so stigmatized and marginalized". Sorry, but anytime the medical establishment starts to mainstream the killing off of perfectly alive humans in the womb, I get just a tad worried.

"Even the protestors are quieter" OMGosh, this one just made me laugh. First off, nobody's been there protesting or praying until a little over a year ago since she's been flying so low on radar. Now she has the audacity to imply that the reason the prayer warriors are quieter is because she's conducting a private abortion practice??? So somehow the prayer warriors know that there is actually some real medicine being practiced here? Our Lady's Mantle Prayer Warriors, I hope you're listening!

"For who she is and what she does, Goodrick flies considerably under the radar" . This statement is 100% accurate. What is omitted is the rather inconvenient Board of Medical Examiners action that has been filed against Goodrick and rendered her on a long term probation for an addiction problem that involved one of the drugs that she uses in her practice. I'll call this debacle the Fentanyl Irony. Seems like the stuff she uses to knock out her patients has knocked her out as well. Speaking as merely one of the abortion-wounded, all of the fentanyl in the universe cannot numb a pained conscience forever. Let us hope that the oversight her practice may now receive may shed some light on what really happens in this murky industry.

"Up to 24 weeks, a woman can have an abortion for any reason she wants". (Can't you almost hear the diabolical smirking?) Most non-elective medical procedures usually require medical rationale in order to justify them. This may sound hysterically obvious, but to have a fibroid lump removed recently I had to have 2 doctors and one insurance company approve the procedure. We have reduced the taking of a human life to an elective procedure akin to having a routine Botox injection or tattoo removal. And by the way, if it is okay to kill a human at 24 weeks, then why would it not be okay at 25 weeks?

"After their procedure, the patients go to a recovery room and write about their experiences in notebooks" I would imagine those are some pretty scarey journal entries sans fentanyl.

Generally speaking, most patients undergoing routine tissue removals are not traumatized, stigmatized, or emotionally disabled after their procedure. Most do not require a visit to a recovery room to journal about their experience. Most of them do not have guilty consciences resulting in months or years of therapeutic interventions. Most of them, do not develop addictions to substances or alcohol, develop depressions, anxiety, insomnia or suicide ideation. Most of them go on and simply forget about their cyst surgery. Not so in abortion. The law that is written on our hearts stabs at our conscience. It is a torture that starts early for some....much later for others.

I labored writing this answer to Jessica's flawed piece of journalism. I know she is not perfect, nor am I. I offer my prayers for Gabriella Goodrick. (I refused to label her as a doctor). I pray that she find sobriety and recovery from whatever it is that has caused her to take such a destructive role with our most vulnerable brothers and sisters. I am certain that there is a wound in her that is very deep indeed. However, we must stop glorifying this absurd and disgusting action that is abortion; passing it off as some kind of remedy to disease. There is a dis-ease. It is not the human fetus. It is a darkness rooted deep in the human conscience. It can be healed by One Who has all power. May we find Him now.

From a Convert's Heart

2011-06-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

Discovered a new favorite blogger today...thanks Maryann. Such great wisdom about conversion stories. The road is truly narrow that lead's to God's door. Daily vigilance and perseverance in prayer are key to getting there. PLUS (and I always pay attention to these pluses)--I have never heard of the venerable Matt Talbot...a great Irish alcoholic saint. This is the 2nd time in as many days where his name has been thrown onto my path. There are no coincidences...the saints find us.

Enjoy... Abbey-Roads in case you want to follow http://abbey-roads.blogspot.com/2011/06/something-about-conversion-stories.html

When you find unchanging peace on your way, then fear; because you are far from the right path by which the righteous go with suffering feet. - St. Isaac the Syrian

Conversion stories are edifying and oftentimes amazing. Sensational sinners repent and come into the Church and the world stands in awe before the grace and mercy of God. Frequently they demonstrate the efficacy of prayer and sacrifice, the sacraments, to effect such conversions. Christ tells us in the Gospel heaven itself erupts in joy over just one sinner who repents.
.
We must not be too ready to trust young men who have great devotion; we must wait till their wings are grown, and then see what sort of a flight they make. - St. Philip Neri

.
In our times, the idea of conversion sometimes carries with it an expectation of honors - like the Prodigal Son's homecoming - celebrated with parties and gifts and even celebrity. I sometimes get the impression that some Catholics have adopted the Protestant attitude of born-again Christians as regards the grace of conversion. Many think you do it once and you are saved for life - and there is some sort of immediate reward, as least something as pleasant as a good 'approval rating'. Especially when they write a blog or a book about it. That can be a lot to live up to.
.
A virtuous life consists in mortifying vices, sins, bad thoughts, and evil affections, and in exercising ourselves in the acquisition of holy virtues. - St. Philip Neri

.
The reality is that conversion is an ongoing process wherein one never is immune from backsliding or relapse - especially when one's sin was habitual and sensual - Philip Neri said sins of sensuality and avarice are particularly hard to cure. The Gospel tells us, 'how narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life', and that is just the road, the way that leads to life. Thus one never arrives at some point in one's journey where one can say, "I'm healed and okay now. I've arrived. I will not fall back." For many of us the struggle never ends. Through the action of grace we may go 'from strength to strength' but we are always dependent upon God's grace and mercy, and we must deny ourselves each day and take up our cross to follow Christ, who was hassled and harried, scoffed at and despised and all of that stuff we think we know about him.
.
We must never trust ourselves, for it is the devil’s way first to get us to feel secure, and then to make us fall. - St. Philip Neri

.
Moral conversions which involve recovery from substance abuse or sexual addiction are not only hard fought, they can be very difficult to verify. For example, the penitent St. Margaret Cortona was refused entrance into the Third Order of St. Francis for three years while the friars tested her virtue - and then suspicion of her virtue never ceased to plague her. Another example, in our day, rarely if ever are moral cures recognized or accepted in the process for the canonization of saints. This is no more evident than in the cause for Matt Talbot. Numerous claims of moral cures and conversions (from addiction) are attributed to Talbot, yet none have been accepted as miraculous. Perhaps a few could be accepted now if it could be established that a person persevered without relapse until death, but I don't know if any such case has been postulated so far.
.
All sins are highly displeasing to God, but above all sensuality and avarice, which are very difficult to cure. - St. Philip Neri

.
My point is that the devil delights in pulling us back into sin - the more dramatic the conversion, the bigger the convert, the greater the effort to snare him back - to make him 'return to his vomit' so that his 'last sin may be worse than the first'. I sometimes think that is why the Lord permits some of us to keep falling into our former sins, so that we may become more and more humble, and by repenting, glorify his mercy that never gives up on us, 'for he knows we are but dust', weak and inconstant - our only constancy being our need for his mercy, for our conversion and our salvation is so unstable. We need patience to do God's will. Patience involves suffering. And perseverance.
.
He who cannot put up with the loss of his honour, can never make any advance in spiritual things. - St. Philip Neri

An Important Day for Pro-Life Legislation June 14...

2011-06-13T16:26:00.000-07:00

The Arizona Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments tomorrow in Planned Parenthood Arizona v. Horne, a case the abortion business filed which challenges key aspects of the 2009 Abortion Consent Act.

The law is a pro-life measure Governor Jan Brewer signed which protects the health and safety of women and their preborn children and has proven to reduce abortions in other states by giving women information they don’t normally receive from an abortion center telling them of the risks associated with and alternatives to abortion. Planned Parenthood sued the state soon after its signing and a Superior Court judge blocked the law from taking effect while the case moves forward.

“If Planned Parenthood really cared about women’s rights, they’d support laws that allow women to make fully informed choices instead of going to court to tear them down,” said Aden. “The protection of women should not be on hold while the nation’s largest abortion purveyor ties things up in court.”

Read entire article at this link: AZ Hearing on Abortion Law

Please offer prayers tomorrow for these initiatives. Especially let us pray for the abortionists and their employees--that they may have a conversion of heart to see the sanctity and dignity of all human life from conception to natural death.

Being an older (& wiser) student

2011-06-03T17:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've been a bit remiss with my postings as of late. We can trace this delinquent behavior to a pesky midterm exam I've been studying for. It's hard to be an "older" student--and I use that term very loosely. I prefer the term non-traditional though it does not usually describe me very well in other categories.

I do like being a student now though. I take my studies much more seriously. I avoid all of the nasty bad habits of my former youth such as "cramming, cheating, all-nighters, no-doze, bribing the prof, cluelessly picking "b" on multiple choice guess tests, oversleeping, writing on my arm, and forgetting all content 10 minutes after the exam because...who cares anyways?"

So when my proctor opened up the packet and plucked out 2 blue books (remember those?) I sort of had a flash back to those hellish days of yore. Believe it or not, I have a recurring nightmare that I never earned my degree from Michigan State because of missing an exam. Which led me down a little road of regret as I thought about all of the time I've wasted in my undergraduate "career". I don't think I'm alone in this area. I talk to a lot of grown ups who also had no clue what they wanted to be in college and recognized later that they wasted a lot of time and resources as no-preffers and professional or amateur party-animals. Is this wasted time? Well, yes....but no. Some of us need to run out of road before we hop on another. Rather than wallow in the sea of regret, I'd prefer to concentrate on what the college experience opened up for me...25+ years later.

*The value of prioritized vocations (I am a mom and a wife first...student follows these)
*A thirst for knowledge and the ability to critically analyze a subject
*A desire to focus on fields of study that are better suited to my passions
*A heartfelt commitment to take my real studies seriously
*I am suspect of any need to rush or hurry
*Awe and wonder in the epiphanies of learning
*A sincere gratitude to Almighty God for having any cognitive capacities left!

I'm so glad to be a 40-something college student. It makes me appreciate beautiful expressions of Truth like the below excerpt from my professor's text, of all places...

"The heart really should not be seen as something essentially inferior to intellect and will; the heart has its own fully spiritual forms and ought to be recogized as a dimension or a faculty of the human person in every way the equal of intellect and will" (Dr. John Crosby, Franciscan University of Steubenville)

Top 10 Pro Choice Misconceptions (and how to refute them)

2011-06-03T16:50:00.000-07:00

Ten Responses to Pro-Abortion Politicians

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life

If you've ever written to a pro-abortion politician about the right to life, you've probably received a form letter that utilizes one of several worn-out arguments. Let's review how we answer them.

1. "I respect your views, but I have to represent all the people." Our response: That's what we're trying to say to you. If you neglect the unborn, you are not representing all the people. Roe vs. Wade excludes them from protection; we demand that they be included. A public servant cannot legitimately ignore an entire segment of the public that is being destroyed.

2. "I'm personally opposed to abortion, but can't impose my views on others." Our response: This is not a matter of views, but of violence. The law is supposed to protect human life despite the views of those who would destroy it.

3. "The government should not be involved in such a personal decision as abortion." Our response: The government got "too involved" in abortion when it claimed to have the authority to deprive some human beings of their right to life. The Declaration of Independence asserts that government exists to secure the rights already bestowed by the Creator. Moreover, when somebody's "choice" destroys somebody else's life, that choice is no longer merely a personal, private matter.

4. "Legislators should not be practicing medicine." Our response: We're not asking you to practice medicine, but to prevent the abuse of medicine. The practice of medicine is regulated by all kinds of laws that protect the lives of patients. All we ask is that the unborn be included in that protection.

5. "Abortion is the law of the land." Our response: The "law of the land" can be changed, just as it was changed regarding slavery and segregation. Leadership means seeing the injustices that others miss, and inspiring people to utilize the methods the law permits to make necessary changes.

6. "I support women's rights and health." Our response: That is precisely why you should examine the evidence, which is more plentiful than ever, that abortion is destructive of women's health, and listen to the growing voices of those who have been harmed by abortion. That is also why you should examine how the abortion industry, through unregulated and dangerous clinics, continues to deceive and exploit women.

7. "Abortion is just one of many issues; I embrace a consistent ethic of life." Our response: The foundation of a house is only one of many parts of the house, but it is essential in order to build the other parts. That is why the Catholic bishops have repeatedly asserted that among the many interrelated issues within a consistent ethic, abortion deserves "urgent attention and priority " (Pastoral Plan, 2001).

8. "My office does not involve any decision-making about abortion." Our response: Your position on abortion says a lot about your character and worldview. If you cannot stand up for the smallest of children, how will you stand up for the rest of us?

9. "Let's just agree to disagree." Our response: We have the greatest respect for those who disagree with us. But when victims are oppressed, we don't sit back and "agree to disagree" with the oppressor. Rather, we intervene to save the victim. Abortion is not about beliefs; it's about bloodshed. Those who need protection need it despite the disagreement of others.

10. Finally, always use the best response to all the arguments: I vote!

Eggsploitation - very weird science

2011-06-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

The infertility industry in the US has grown into a multi billion dollar industry. What is its main commodity?

Human Eggs.

Center for Arizona Policy is hosting the documentary an informative panel discussion after the viewing featuring folks from CAP, Bioethics Defense Fund and Alliance Defense Fund.

This is something you won't want to miss.

RSVP and details available at the attached link

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/A-critical-message-for-all-young--college-age-women.html?soid=1011047932616&aid=J2Zd0eaeEyY

Father Ed Dowling and AA's Bill W.

2011-05-18T15:43:00.001-07:00

by Robert Fitzgerald, S.JBill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was down. His feet hung over the end of the bed that nearly filled the small room he and his wife, Lois, had rented above the 24th Street AA Club in New York. It was a cold, rainy November in 1940. Lois, who supported them both with a job at a department store, was out. Bill was wondering whether the stomach pain he was feeling was an ulcer.
The walls were closing in. Thousands of copies of the Big Book were waiting in a warehouse, unsold. A few people were sober, but Bill was frustrated. How could he reach all who wanted help? Nine months earlier, a gathering of rich New Yorkers had come and gone with applause for the young movement, but no money. Hank P., after complaining for half a year, finally got drunk in April. Rollie H., a nationally famous ball-player, sobered up but broke AA's policy of anonymity by calling the press for a full name-and-photograph story.
Eventually, Bill fell into the same trap as Rollie; he began calling reporters, too, wherever he gave talks. Now he was becoming the center of attention. He had just returned from Baltimore, where a minister had asked him to face the self-pity in his own talk. He was depressed. What if he -- five years sober -- were to drink?
It was 10 p.m. The doorbell rang. Tom, the Club's maintenance man, said there was "some bum from St. Louis" to see him. Reluctantly, Bill said, "Send him up." To himself, he muttered, "Not another drunk. "
But Bill welcomed the stranger, all the same. As the man shuffled to a wooden chair opposite the bed and sat down, his black raincoat fell open, revealing a Roman collar.
"I'm Father Ed Dowling from St. Louis," he said. "A Jesuit friend and I have been struck by the similarity of the AA twelve steps and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius."
"Never heard of them."
Father Ed laughed. This endeared him to Bill. Robert Thomsen tells the rest of the story this way in his book, Bill W.:

"The curious little man went on and on, and as he did, Bill could feel his body relaxing, his spirits rising. Gradually he realized that this man sitting across from him was radiating a kind of grace...Primarily, Father Ed wanted to talk about the paradox of AA, the 'regeneration,' he called it, the strength arising out of defeat and weakness, the loss of one's old life as a condition for achieving a new one. And Bill agreed with everything..."
Soon Bill was talking about all the steps and taking his fifth step (telling the exact nature of his wrongs) with this priest who had limped in from a storm. He told Father Ed about his anger, his impatience, his mounting dissatisfactions. "Blessed are they," Father Ed said, "who hunger and thirst."

When Bill asked whether there was ever to be any satisfaction, the priest snapped, "Never. Never any." Bill would have to keep on reaching. In time, his reaching would find God's goals, hidden in his own heart. Thomsen continues:

"Bill had made a decision, Father Ed reminded him, to turn his life and his will over to God ... he was not to sit in judgment on how he or the world was proceeding. He had only to keep the channels open ... it was not up to him to decide how fast or how slowly AA developed ... For whether the two of them liked it or not, the world was undoubtedly proceeding as it should, in God's good time."

Father Ed continued quoting Bill's work to him. No one had been able to maintain perfect adherence to the principles. None were saints. They claimed spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection.
Before Father Ed left, he pulled his body up, and leaning on his cane he thrust his head forward and looked straight into Bill's eyes. There was a force in Bill, he said, that was all his own. It had never been on this earth before, and if Bill did anything to mar it or block it, it would never exist anywhere again.
That night, for the first time in months, Bill Wilson slept soundly.
Thus began a 20-year friendship nourished by visits, phone calls, and letters. Both men spoke the language of the HEART, learned through suffering: Bill from alcoholism, Father Ed from arthritis that was turning his back to stone.
Bill turned to Father Ed as a spiritual sponsor, a friend. Father Ed, in a letter to his provincial, noted that he saw his own gift for AA as a "very free use of the Ignatian Rules for the Discernment of Spirits for the second week of the Spiritual Exercise."
Thus Father Ed endorsed AA for American Catholics with his appendix in the Big Book and his Queen's Work pamphlet of 1947. He was the first to see wider applications of the twelve steps to other addictions, and wrote about that in Grapevine (AA's magazine) in the spring 1960 issue. Bill added a last line to that Grapevine article: "Father Ed, an early and wonderful friend of AA, died as this last message went to press. He was the greatest and most gentle soul to walk this planet. I was closer to him than to any other human being on earth."
For his part, Father Ed counted many gifts from Bill. He had told his sister, Anna, that the graces he received from their meeting were equivalent to those received at his own ordination. And he thanked Bill for letting him "hitchhike" on the twelve steps. In 1942 he wrote to Bill that he had started a national movement for married couples to help each other through the twelve steps: CANA (Couples Are Not Alone). He used the steps to help people with mental difficulties, scruples, and sexual compulsions.
When chided by an AA member about his smoking, Father Ed stopped with help from the twelve steps and wrote to Bill that as a result he was becoming as "fat as a hog."
Next, he tried to use the twelve steps with his own compulsive eating. One story of his struggle ends with Father Ed one night eating all the strawberries intended to feed the whole Jesuit Community. He became so sick he had to receive last rites. He went from 242 to 167 pounds and up again like a yo-yo. He asked Bill to start an 00 ("obese obvious") group.
Often Father Ed spoke of being helped by attending an open AA meeting and wrote to Bill that AA was his "lonely hearts club." In his last 20 years his ministry changed radically due to AA and his friendship with Lois and Bill. He gave CANA conferences for families, using the twelve steps, once a month from 1942 to 1960. He cheered Lois on as she started and continued with Al-Anon. Father Ed rejoiced that in "moving therapy from the expensive clinical couch to the low-cost coffee bar, from the inexperienced professional to the informed amateur, AA has democratized sanity."
He wrote his superior to free up another Jesuit, Father John Higgins, who was recovering from mental illness, to work with Recovery Inc., a group Dr. Abraham Low had started for people with mental problems. Those groups for mental illness were especially close to Father Ed's heart as there was a history of depression in his own family. He called people to be "wounded healers" for each other.
Was there anything from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius in Father Ed's gift to Bill? Father Ed pointed out parallels between the Spiritual Exercises and the twelve steps several times, but Bill had written the twelve steps before he ever heard of the Spiritual Exercises.
Father Ed did give Bill a copy of the Spiritual Exercises in 1952, underlining the "Two Standards" meditation. When Father Ed met Bill, moreover, he had called him to the place where he bottomed out and surrendered to his Higher Power. Father Ed believed that this was the place where humiliations led to humility and then to all other blessings. In saying this, he paraphrased Ignatius's closing prayer of the "Two Standards" meditations.
And this, Father Ed maintained, was where the Exercises become most like AA. He went a step further and invited Bill to make choices based on poverty and humility rather than on money, power, or fame.
This suggestion helped Bill Wilson turn down an honorary degree from Yale. On the packet of letters dealing with his decision, he wrote: "To Father Ed, with gratitude." In the letter to Yale he stated his reasons for declining the honor:
"My own life story gathered for years around an implacable pursuit of money, fame, and power, anti-climaxed by my near sinking in a sea of alcohol. Though I survived that grim misadventure, I well understand that the dread neurotic germ of the power contagion has survived in me also. It is only dormant and it can again multiply and rend me -- and AA, too. Tens of thousands of AA members are temperamentally like me. They know it, fortunately, and I know it. Hence our tradition of anonymity and hence my clear obligation to decline this honor with all the immediate satisfaction and benefit it could have yielded."
This, then, is where Father Ed met Bill that rainy night long ago, in the small room where bottoming out opens up to life, where humiliations lead to humility -- and to all other blessings.
From The Catholic Digest, April 1991

When their meeting together was over, Dowling hobbled to the door and declared, as a parting shot, "that if ever Bill grew impatient, or angry at God's way of doing things, if ever he forgot to be grateful for being alive right here and now, he, Father Ed Dowling, would make the trip all the way from St. Louis to wallop him over the head with his good Irish stick."

Jesus is truly Present in the Eucharist--Video

2011-05-16T11:24:00.000-07:00

How GREAT Thou Art...really.

2011-05-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

I JUST finished my Last Will and Testament yesterday and "coincidentally" 2 people so far have forwarded this amazing video of Carrie Underwood singing one of the only 2 hymns I requested at my funeral...listen in and have tissue handy.

(Oh--no, I am not dying. Just doing something that I should have done a long time ago. And yes, I also did my Living Will/Heathcare Directive too. So easy on Legal Zoom...I am happy to shamelessly plug them. It was easy and relatively inexpensive. The peace of mind it provides is priceless.)

How an Abortion Changed Steve Tyler's Life

2011-05-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

May 4, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Long before he won accolades as an American Idol judge, Steven Tyler was a bona-fide rock star, with all that that implied. In 1975, when he was in his late 20s and the lead singer for the band Aerosmith, Tyler persuaded the parents of his 14-year-old girlfriend, Julia Holcomb, to make him her legal guardian so that they could live together in Boston.

When Miss Holcomb and Tyler conceived a child, his longtime friend Ray Tabano convinced Tyler that abortion was the only solution. In the Aerosmith “autobiography,” Walk This Way (in which recollections by all the band members, and their friends and lovers, were assembled by the author Stephen Davis), Tabano says: “So they had the abortion, and it really messed Steven up because it was a boy. He ... saw the whole thing and it [messed] him up bi g time.

Read more http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/jesus-what-have-i-done-rock-star-steve-tylers-traumatic-encounter-with-abor?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4f8534bcf5-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines05_04_2011&utm_medium=email
”

O Come Let Us Adore Him

2011-04-21T15:42:00.001-07:00

Healing Prayers

2011-04-20T05:53:00.000-07:00

Because we're all still sorta sick...

Prayer of St. Bernard
Come, Lord Jesus, take away scandals from Your Kingdom, which is my soul, and reign there, You alone who have the right. For greediness comes to claim a throne within me; haughtiness and self assertion would rule over me; pride would be my king; lust says "I will reign"; ambition, detraction, envy and anger struggle within me for the mastery. I resist as far as I am able; I struggle according as help is given me; I call on my Lord, Jesus; for His sake I defend myself, since I acknowledge myself as wholly His possession. he is my God, Him I proclaim my Lord; I have no other king than my Lord, Jesus Christ. Come then, O Lord, and disperse these enemies by Your power, and You shall reign in me, for you are my King and my God. Amen.

The (Entire) Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference; living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.

Lead O Kindly Light

Lead, O kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home, Lead thou me on Keep thou my feet, I do not ask to see the distant scene, one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou should lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path, but now Lead thou me on. I loved the garish day, and spite of fears pride ruled my will; remember not past years.
So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still will Lead me on O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till the night is gone, and with the morn those angel faces smile, which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. Amen.
Cardinal Newman

The Litany of Humility

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...

That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…

NOTHING!

2011-04-19T06:03:00.000-07:00

The answer to yesterday's riddle is NOTHING!
Congratulations to Redcat, Quaerens, Christy & Adam for figuring it out :-)

And while we are on the theme of NADA, here is a wise quote from St. John of the Cross:
“If you purify your soul of attachment to and desire for things, you will understand them spiritually. If you deny your appetite for them, you will enjoy their truth, understanding what is certain in them.”

Monday Riddle

2011-04-18T06:55:00.001-07:00

Only 5% of Stanford University graduates figured it out!

Can you answer all seven of the following questions with the same word?

1. The word has seven letters....
2. Preceded God...
3. Greater than God...
4. More Evil than the devil...
5. All poor people have it...
6. Wealthy people need it....
7. If you eat it, you will die.

Tune in tomorrow for the answer

And this, from the Obedience File

2011-04-14T19:09:00.000-07:00

Seems we've not heard the last from Fr. Pfleger. Remember him? I can almost hear the whining from here. One clever commenter wrote: "I heard Rev. Wright might be looking for an assistant"?

From the Curt Jester...

The embattled pastor of St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church told radio show hosts Tavis Smiley and Cornel West this weekend that he would look outside the Catholic Church if offered no other choice but to work at a Catholic high school.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger also said on the “Smiley & West” public radio program that he had been banned from speaking at events in the archdiocese and blamed pressure from conservative Catholics and the National Rifle Association for his most recent clash with Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George.

“I want to try to stay in the Catholic Church,” Pfleger said. “If they say ‘You either take this principalship of [Leo High School] or pastorship there or leave,’ then I’ll have to look outside the church. I believe my calling is to be a pastor. I believe my calling is to be a voice for justice. I believe my calling is to preach the Gospel. In or out of the church, I’m going to continue to do that.”

In an interview with the Tribune, Pfleger clarified that he feels called to preach and push for social justice in a Catholic context. He said he loves the Catholic Church and prefers to stay there. But going to Leo full-time would not happen, Pfleger said.

“I’ve always said I could not do something that I don’t feel called or equipped to do,” he told the Tribune. “A full-time position at Leo is not something I’m equipped to do. I think Leo has made it clear they don’t see any need for me to come there. For both sides this would be a lose-lose.

All politics is local & what we do in the Mean Time

2011-04-12T18:44:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you're as frustrated (and maybe a bit confused) over the inability of the folks in congress to accomplish an objectively reasonable goal of not balancing the budget with the blood of the unborn. It seems simple to most fair-minded individuals that shutting down the government might have been worth it to make this simple point. If you are a pro-life person with an active conscience, my heart is with you on this one. On the other hand, we still don't have what it takes from the Senate to muster the votes necessary to enact far-reaching legislation that would de-fund the abortion giant-Planned Parenthood. Call me a skeptic, but I don't have faith in the Senate to make it happen.

Game changer? I think not. Congress has clearly demonstrated that they can write law after law after law but still fail to obliterate the abortion/choice law. (Which is really bad law, by the way). I'm not saying that we should not be incrementally savvy--just look at what some fantastic legislation has done here in Arizona recently for the rights of the unborn. That is an extraordinary example of being legislatively "wise as serpents & as gentle as doves". At the end of the day, though, abortion law change does not happen with the legislative branch of government.

I personally believe that there will be an end to legalized abortion in my lifetime. It will take not an act of congress but an action of the Supreme Court....an overturning of Roe V. Wade. And I am confident that we are inching ever closer to this showdown with each passing year. Once it is overturned, it will pass to the state level where each state will enact its own "Life Legislation" etc. etc. That's at least my view.

So what do we do in the meantime? (& yes, it's a pretty mean time) We don't give up hope! We do what we can do, where we can do it and with the capacity that God gives us to do it, whenever possible. Is there an abortion clinic in your neighborhood? Organize a prayer vigil at it. Write letters to the local establishments that surround it. Tell them that you are uncomfortable with there being an abortion clinic right next to your a) dry cleaner b) veterinarian c) pizza parlor d) Walgreens e) grocery store. Send letters of abortion testimonies to the clinic and include the fabulous turnarounds by doctors who used to be a part of the abortion industry (www.silentnomoreawareness.org).

And you can do what Jim & Linda from my parish just did: They took their teen Religious education class out our local abortuary - Planned Parenhood Thunderbird - and prayed the rosary. A rosary field trip! Not only did they pray, but the EDUCATED the young people about the culture of life. These teens are the next generation of doctors, lawyers, legislators, justices. These are future parents, voters, teachers and humanitarians. These will be the torch bearers of the next generation entrusted with the sacred duties which have been so unscrupulously lost on my generation. I have great hope in them. (And I tell them so!)

Below, please enjoy their eye-witness accounts and commentaries on their experiences & especially the miracle at the end. And if you know of any other Jim and Lindas in your neighborhood, say a pray for them. They don't wear any noticeable armor, but they are warriors just the same.

(Reprinted with their permission)

Jim & Linda Ward

Sacramental Preparation Class/St. Joan of Arc

High School Students

Some of the teens in the High School Sacramental Preparation Class at St. Joan of Arc Roman Catholic Church in Phoenix, chose for their “Community Service Project” to attend a class on “How to help an abortion-bound woman make a life-affirming choice” held on a Saturday morning at St. Joan of Arc. Some others who were not able to make it to the class held a “baby shower” with gifts to be donated to Maggie’s Place; and a combination of these young adults came to pray in front of an abortion mill on a Friday afternoon after school! What you will see below is an exact transcript of some of their thoughts on this life-saving community service project!

“From the moment we set foot on the property, a feeling of despair seemed to fill the air. It was as though everyone knew there was something wrong, but no one wanted to say it. Everyone going into and coming out of, or even going by the “clinic” seemed rather bitter about the place, and seemed ready to lash out at anyone who went too close. The instant we began praying, we began to receive strange looks from people in adjacent buildings. (Let it be noted that the Planned Parenthood building had blurred windows, highly contrasting the clear glass of all the other stores on the property, as though to hid something!) As we prayed, we got stares that made it very clear that we were not to feel welcome in this place. After one mystery (of the Rosary), a worker walked out and threatened to call the police, because it seemed that we were to be as far from the place as they could legally make us. We moved to the sidewalk and continued to pray, and as we were moving, two girls going by in a car, yelled about how the teachers should be ashamed for taking “children who don’t even know what’s going on.” This struck me as both insulting and hypocritical because they were referring to us as “children” when we are already 15; and hypocritical because then they say “children who don’t know what’s going on,” my first thought was of children still in the womb, who are killed without any reason besides convenience. When I’d heard all the stories of pure hatred emanating from abortion clinics, I thought they were exaggerating, but I was wrong. These “clinics” are the very embodiment of ignorance and hatred.” Ivan Garcia

“Last week on Friday, a group of kids from my Sacraments class and I prayed outside an abortion clinic. That experience made me realize why it is wrong to have abortions, and although many people shouted comments to us about how we were wrong, I realized that people like to believe they are right, and so they try to shut off God, and in that process they commit many sins, such as abortion, because they aren’t aware of the truth of God. It also made me realize the importance of saying the Rosary because many abortion clinics have closed after people have said the Rosary, and because of that I realized the importance of praying the Rosary. As a result of this experience, I will be saying the Rosary more often as well as praying to end abortion. Before this experience, I thought abortion was OK, but after actually praying to end it and seeing how the girls who were getting an abortion reacted to us praying, I realized that taking anyone’s life is wrong, whether it be by abortion or euthanasia.” Telvi Campos

“Community Service: My thoughts.

For my community service, I couldn’t go to the clinic, but I went to the preparation class. My experience there was amazing! I learned many new things. But also understand the consequences and how many problems there were.

When I was in the class, I learned that a baby’s heart starts beating in just 4 weeks! I learned many new things! I used to be okay with abortion, but when I took that class and came out I was surprised that I even thought it was okay. That class really helped me. I also learned how they took the baby out. It was shocking! I couldn’t even believe they can do something like that. I also heard about a book that a lady from Planned Parenthood wrote who disclosed many things about abortion.

Taking this class was very, very helpful. I learned many new things in just one day! It was amazing. I really like it. It’s shocking that a person that horrible can do something that horrible to a person so innocent. This really changed my way of thinking and my way of acting.” Karen Canizalez

“When we went to the clinic I was very nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. We started praying and everything was going well, until some lady that worked in the clinic came out and told us to leave or she would call the police. I wanted to say something, or cry, I was feeling all this emotion, but I stayed quiet and just kept praying. I’m actually glad I went because I felt very good inside. Knowing that I’m helping by praying against abortion, and I will keep doing whatever I can to help out.”

Karen Ledezina

“When going to the clinic I thought that if we got insulted it wouldn’t affect me. Once I heard what these two ladies said, that was when it hit me. They started saying that why did we have kids (my little brothers) there, that they didn’t even know anything and they started to “flip us off.” While that happened a nurse came out and started yelling and telling us that if we didn’t leave, they were going to call the cops. So we left to go to the sidewalk and continued praying. I went up to my Mom and asked what was wrong and she said that she felt bad because they pointed my brothers out. My Mom was teary and my brother was crying. I felt really sad and I started to feel all choked up, but I knew I had to be strong and not cry, so I was. When we were finished, I felt very proud of myself, my brothers and my boyfriend and my Mom for taking it very well, and I’m also proud of my boyfriend because he volunteered to go. I’m very happy to have experienced this, and I am willing to do it again. J” Liz Cejudo

And a few additional comments from some of the other students:

“I chose to pray the Rosary outside of an abortion clinic to help save the lives of unborn babies…I learned that some people need help, even if they don’t know it.”

Carolina Castillo

“…it is good to pray to stop abortion…I didn’t care what people would say…”

Angel Garcia

“I chose to pray at the abortion clinic because it was a great opportunity to save lives and to get closer to God…my parents encouraged me to do this…I grew in the understanding of serving my neighbors by helping others who are most in need, by understanding their need, and helping them no matter what.” Jacqueline Garcia

(Please note, Jackie also counseled a friend who is pregnant and her mother wanted her to get an abortion. She gave her friend information to help out with her pregnancy and is praying for her. The friend said she just didn’t feel right about aborting the baby and Jackie confirmed that it was not the right thing to do! A life has been saved because of her prayers, knowledge and bravery in speaking the truth)

Lies & Buzzwords Planned Parenthood want you to buy

2011-04-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

Here are the must-haves that the PP crowd (including the dems in congress) think indispensable:
Birth Control
Cancer Screening
STD Testing
Prenatal Care (Oh, and we know what THAT means at a PP clinic)
HEALTHcare

(I'm becoming so exasperated by that last word...I should have given it up for lent. Perhaps I will strike it from my Easter Season lexicon.)

And they think the only place one can get them is (drumroll please): Planned Parenthood.
These mantras are repeated over and over again like a skip in an old vinyl record. And if you're paying attention to the news media and to the PP Channel on Youtube...it's gone viral. That's their story and they're stickin to it. They will slap you in the face by telling you that you are throwing women under the bus and taking away their healthcare rights if you make one move to defund this organization. They are bullies and liars. We must continue to examine the motives of this hostile organization and why it is becoming agonizingly clear that the current administration and pro-choice congress wants you to know that it is refusing to budge on what they initially considered a minor issue.

All those buzzwords? It is a ruse. This is all a "get you in the door" ploy. Don't be fooled. Planned Parenthood (somebody mistakenly called that Planned Partnerhood once which is a funny irony); makes its living off of abortion services which include and are not limited to contraception on demand, surgical abortion and chemical abortion. In other words, they are in business to slay of the unborn within the womb and to re-educate you on why this posture must be maintained. They even think that the American woman should be entitled to co-payless birth control pills and dressed up a young woman in a pill container to travel around a large metropolitan city under the title of BC Girl to convince you of this necessity.. (google on BC Girl Planned Parenthood YouTube) .. I wonder if BC Girl is aware that birth control pills are considered, by the American Cancer Society, a class I carcinogen? I bet she's a bit quiet about that.

An excerpt from the book Demonic Abortion will show you precisely that the PP model is a business plan to gain access to your teenager and to indoctrinate them into the culture of death by means of an "unholy trinity": contraception, comprehensive sex education and abortion. These three standard tactics of the death peddlers work in a sick harmony to distort and mutate all the things that God considers sacred. From the book...

Abortion promoters do not go into traditional cultures and try to convince them to start killing their babies. Quite the opposite, oftentimes the abortion-promotors enter disguised as St Paul describes the devil and his servants as "angels of the light", to deceive a culture into thinking that they are preventing abortion by promoting contraception as a solution to "unwanted pregnancies". They claim that fewer children will bring greater economic prosperity and that the development of their country is intimately tied to reducing their birth rate. In other words, in overt and subtle ways, they blame the economic poverty of a country on children and stigmatize large families as irresponsible. At times, they impose government-ordered limits on child-bearing overtly or punish reproduction through other forms of disincentives like social pressure and medical coercion. Along with that, the abortion promoters, rarely, if ever, admit that contraception fails, because they know that when it does, it creates a need for abortion as its sinister backup.

They also tell you that all of this nonsense is Healthcare that women should be entitled to and if somebody in congress doesn't write that check, then WE are evil.

Watching this video, you will learn that the president of PP admits that the Planned Parenthood doctor may be the ONLY DOCTOR that a woman may see all year. Do you realize what a monopoly that is? Do you see what kind of money & power these people seek and cannot afford to lose? If you were a doctor (a real doctor providing legitimate healthcare), wouldn't you like access to a portion of the $363 million dollars that come to you every year? Wouldn't that be extraordinary job security?

Please pray for passage of HR 1179

2011-04-07T15:55:00.000-07:00

CARDINAL DINARDO URGES SUPPORT FOR ‘RESPECT FOR RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE ACT’

WASHINGTON— Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has written to urge all members of the U.S. House of Representatives to support a bipartisan bill protecting conscience rights in health insurance. Introduced by Reps. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and Dan Boren (D-OK), the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011 (HR 1179) “will help ensure that the new health care reform act is not misused to violate the religious freedom and rights of conscience of those who offer and purchase health insurance coverage in our nation,” Cardinal DiNardo wrote.

“Federal law, until now, has never prevented the issuers and purchasers of health coverage from negotiating a health plan that is consistent with their moral and religious convictions,” Cardinal DiNardo explained. “This could change, however, with implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) as now written.” He noted that the law “establishes a new list of ‘essential health benefits’ that will be mandatory for most health plans throughout the United States,” and also “requires all group and individual plans to cover general ‘preventive services,’ as well as additional preventive services specifically for women.”

“For months,” Cardinal DiNardo wrote, “Planned Parenthood and other groups have been urging that mandated ‘preventive services for women’ include all drugs and devices approved by the FDA for contraception—including those that can prevent the implantation and survival of a newly conceived human being, and hence are seen as abortifacient by the Catholic Church and many others.”

“Mandated inclusion of contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs in health plans poses an obvious potential conflict with rights of conscience,” Cardinal DiNardo wrote. “Such conflicts would also arise if HHS mandates inclusion of some fertility treatments such asin vitro fertilization, treatments using material from deliberately killed unborn children, or other procedures specifically rejected by the teachings of some religions.”

PPACA “arbitrarily and inexplicably does not protect the many religious denominations – including those providing the backbone of the nonprofit health care system in this country – whose moral teaching rejects specific procedures,” Cardinal DiNardo said. “If religious and other stakeholders are driven out of the health insurance marketplace by this aspect of PPACA, legislation whose purpose was to expand health coverage could have the opposite effect.”

The Respect for Rights of Conscience Act “is modest and well-crafted legislation…it only prevents PPACA itself from being misused to deny Americans’ existing freedom to seek health care coverage that meets their medical needs and respects their deepest convictions,” he wrote. “I am sure that most members of Congress voting for PPACA did not intend that it should deny or take away this freedom. Therefore I hope and expect that Representatives who supported PPACA as well as those who opposed it will join in co-sponsoring the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act and in helping to ensure its enactment.”

The full text of the letter may be read at...

http://www.usccb.org/conscienceprotection/DiNardo-ltr-HR1179.pdf

What do aborted fetal parts have to do with my Nestle Crunch Bar anyway?

2011-04-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

From LifeSite News last Wednesday... "A pro-life group that monitors the use of cells from babies victimized by abortions is today highlighting a biotech company, Senomyx, which it says produces artificial flavor enhancers using aborted fetal cell lines to test their products...."

Company Uses Fetal Cells From Abortions for Testing Artificial Flavors | LifeNews.com

AMAZING Grace (thx Ray!)

2011-04-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

C.S. Lewis...there's an app for that too

2011-03-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

And I found it yesterday on my Iphone. Joy! A happy Lenten consolation considering the oodles of chocolate I have surrendered. This priceless gem of Lewis' below reminds me to once again consider abandoning myself--every last ounce & freckle of myself--in order to find myself. And when I do that, I find God.

"Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sounds strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs though all life from top to bottom: Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end. Submit with every fibre of your being and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead (emphasis mine). Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." (C.S. Lewis)

I had a bit of a taste of this musically, tonight at our Schola rehearsal. We usually rehearse our schola cantorum 'in the round' so that we can hear ourselves better. Circled around the piano, we arrange ourselves by parts...sopranos, altos, tenors and basses. Tonight, however, Adam suggested that we try what Stile Antico does when they sing: Mix all of us up so that we are not singing next to our respective part: Tenor next to soprano next to alto next to bass...you get the picture. The start was tenuous for me as I was self conscious; SELF conscious. Did I know my part well enough? Would I get lost? Will I stick out like a sore thumb? I, I, I, me, me, me. But after we sang a few measures, something beautiful and unique happened...we sang together, differently. It was a most beautiful, polyphonic mixing of our voices. We sang with each other. The individual parts seemed to recede into relief while the music (the Beauty) was allowed to soar. Yet each voice was still clearly heard....we lost ourselves to find the music. We became, in essence, OTHER conscious. What a glorious God moment.

Someday I will figure out how to post these recorded gems up on the blog for your listening pleasures. Until then, you'll just have to take my word for it!

Please pray for some friends of mine

2011-03-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

Some of you, perhaps many of you, may know Nik and Melinda Nikas of Bioethics Defense Fund fame. We have been friends for several years and I thought I should pass this on here to request your prayers...

Nik's Uncle Ted - a Foster Father of sorts to Nik - recently passed away and the family was en route to California today to meet up with Nik for the funeral. Due to unknown circumstances, Nik's daughter, Anastasia lost control of their Suburban just outside of Indio California. The vehicle was traveling on the highway and rolled. Anastasia and the other passengers: Nik's Mom-Violet, Father in Law-Ed and son-Nik Jr., were all air-evacuated to a local hospital where we have just learned of Violet's death. The other family members have been stabilized with non-life threatening injuries however they are very distraught over the tragedy.

Please pray for the repose of the soul of Violet (and Nik's Uncle) and for continued prayers for their entire family.

May their souls rest in peace and may perpetual light shine upon them.

Takin' It To the Streets

2011-03-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

And there's more where this came from. Stayed tuned for continuous coverage about Our Lady's Mantle, Sidewalk vigils and what the Diocese of Phoenix is doing about the the "Big Pink Goliath" in our neighborhoods.

What we can learn from Labradors about guilt

2011-03-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

1. Guilt is painful
2. Guilt is hard to hide
3. Guilt can implicate others
4. Guilt can separate us from the ones we love
5. Guilt can lead us to remorse for past behaviors
6. Guilt is best followed by action to repair wrongs
7. We need not remain in guilt; in fact, it is ill advised to remain in the doghouse of guilt
8. Guilt can make our spirit droop
9. Guilt makes us feel bad but does not mean that we are bad (now shame is a different story)
10. Guilt can pave the way to repentance
11. Guilt is a signal that we have a conscience
12. Guilt can be a (doggie) door to God

This pupster is an irresistible example of guilt. Right down to his little grin...c'mon, be honest...don't we try to downplay it too?

http://blog.adw.org/2011/03/just-a-little-talk-with-jesus-makes-it-right/

2011-03-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

Giving up alcohol for Lent?

2011-03-13T20:40:00.000-07:00

Here is reason #618 why that may be a good idea.
I found it interesting that these monkeys were introduced to alcohol due to the slave-driven rum trade that took place in the Caribbean. So alcohol created slaves to taskmasters who were human and slaves to the taskmaster that is a distilled spirit.

"Take care not to forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. The LORD your God, shall you fear; Him shall you serve, and by his name shall you swear."

These entertaining little monkeys remind me of some people in Hollywood.

Into the Mystic

2011-03-10T20:56:00.000-08:00

To be buried with Christ...
My soul needs to tell you that it is wholly in communion with yours, letting itself be caught, carried away, invaded by him whose charity envelops us and who wishes to consummate us into "one" with Him. I thought of you when I read these words of Pere Vallee on contemplation: "The contemplative is a being who lives in the radiance of the Face of Christ, who enters into the mystery of God, not in the light that flows from human thought, but in that created by the word of the Incarnate Word." Don't you have this passion to listen to Him? Sometimes it is so strong, this need to be silent, that one would like to know how to do nothing but remain like Magdalene, that beautiful model for the contemplative soul, at the feet of the Master, eager to hear everything, to penetrate ever deeper into this mystery of Charity that he came to reveal to us. Don't you find that in action, when we are in Martha's role, the soul can still remain wholly adoring, buried like Magdalene in her contemplation, staying by this source like someone who is starving...Then both can radiate God, give him to souls, if they constantly stay close to this divine source. It seems to me that we should draw so close to the Master in such communion with his soul, to identify ourselves with all its movements, and then go out as he did, according to the will of his Father. Then it does not matter what happens to the soul, since it has faith in the One it loves who dwells within in. During this lent, I would like, as Saint Paul says, "to be buried in God with Christ" to be lost in this Trinity who will one day be our vision, and in this divine light penetrate into the depth of the Mystery.
St. Elizabeth of the Trinity

Nun-Profit Healthcare

2011-02-19T11:08:00.000-08:00

St. Joseph Hospital in Arizona is no longer Catholic. The reason? The hospital and its parent organization, Catholic Healthcare West, refuse to acknowledge that the abortion that took place there was completely unjustifiable. But recent developments reveal a much darker story with far-reaching consequences.

The Gather Hymnal Makes Its Farewell Tour

2011-02-17T17:48:00.000-08:00

From Creative Minority Report blog via Adam Bartlett. Thanks for the laugh!

"With the new Mass translations coming out this year, the "Gather" hymnal will sadly become obsolete. With that in mind, I composed a tribute medley to some of the best songs contained therein. Unfortunately, I didn't have a hymnal around when I was tracking this, so I did the best I could to remember the lyrics from memory. Enjoy!"

2nd Guessing Yourself

2011-02-15T13:39:00.000-08:00

"After you have made a decision that is pleasing to God, the devil may try to make you have second thoughts. Intensify your prayer time, meditation and good deeds for if Satan's temptations merely cause you to increase your efforts to grow in holiness, he'll have an incentive to leave you alone."
--St. Ignatius of Loyola

(Thanks, Sheila, for this tender piece of wisdom)

Let's Talk About Sex

2011-02-01T05:12:00.000-08:00

About 15mins long & worth every minute. Thanks Father Hollowell...

spikenard

Support Respect for Rights of Conscience Act

*Best Response Award* on the HHS Mandate. Hey Catholics...Go to hell.

HHS Edict Will Force Catholics to Violate Conscience

Love Can Build a Bridge

Why I am Silent No More

California Here We Come!

Hey Black Friends: Happy MLK Day and...WAKE UP

The Debate over YouTube on Loving Jesus and Hating Religion

Crashing the Planned Parenthood "War on Women" Rally

Quotables

Are You Going to San Francisco?

Let the Deception Begin...

The Deeper Meaning of Resolutions

The 'Herods' in our midst

A Merry Statistical Anomale

Padre Pio's Christmas Meditation

St. Francis would be so proud!

Intensify your prayer life-fill up the sidewalk

Congrats Sr. John Mark Maria!

Juan Diego and the Blessed Virgin

Friendship: Low expectations vs. High expectations

Do you know your Self?

Our Very Own Dr. Billy Chavira "On the Rock"

Voices of Peace sing for Pope Benedict

Do not be afraid

Quotage

Hey Big 10....

30% Drop in AZ Abortions in 1 Year

Maxwell Smart's got nothing on us...

PP Probe Underway

JFF

Getting behind the rhetoric

"Things around abortion clinics die"

'There is no outside solution to an inside problem'

Glorious News Under the Mantle of Our Lady

New Study, Alarming Stats, Same Ol' Message...Abortion harms women!

Scar Tissue

Hope floats and LIFE Rosary Soars!

If you care about your conscience, sign this

Pray for Priests -- August Intentions

Rock & Skate Sunday at Skateland

Friends of the Cross

What Blacks don't know will kill them

A jar or two of costly spikenard...

Time for Action

Power Surge of Rockford priests saves lives on the sidewalk

Beware of Black Sheep Dogs

Great things coming out of Poland...again

America the Beautiful and other songs we should not sing during Mass

One noteworthy response to the Goodrick Puff Piece

Some things really make me sick...

From a Convert's Heart

An Important Day for Pro-Life Legislation June 14...

Being an older (& wiser) student

Top 10 Pro Choice Misconceptions (and how to refute them)

Ten Responses to Pro-Abortion Politicians

Fr. Frank PavoneNational Director, Priests for Life

Eggsploitation - very weird science

Father Ed Dowling and AA's Bill W.

Jesus is truly Present in the Eucharist--Video

How GREAT Thou Art...really.

How an Abortion Changed Steve Tyler's Life

O Come Let Us Adore Him

Healing Prayers

NOTHING!

Monday Riddle

And this, from the Obedience File

All politics is local & what we do in the Mean Time

Lies & Buzzwords Planned Parenthood want you to buy

Please pray for passage of HR 1179

What do aborted fetal parts have to do with my Nestle Crunch Bar anyway?

AMAZING Grace (thx Ray!)

C.S. Lewis...there's an app for that too

Please pray for some friends of mine

Takin' It To the Streets

What we can learn from Labradors about guilt

http://blog.adw.org/2011/03/just-a-little-talk-with-jesus-makes-it-right/

Giving up alcohol for Lent?

Into the Mystic

Best Response Award on the HHS Mandate. Hey Catholics...Go to hell.

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life