Father Rutler: Infanticide in New York

Father George W. Rutler

The mayor of a French town commissioned a statue of the rationalist Emile Zola and, intent on provocation, he ordered that the bronze for it be from the bells of a church. Similarly, Governor Andrew Cuomo chose to sign into law our nation’s most offensive abortion bill on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, to ecstatic applause in the state capitol. Then he ordered that the Empire State Building, the Freedom Tower, and the Alfred E. Smith Building in Albany be lit in pink. The ancient Caesars dressed in red as the emblem of victory; Cuomo drapes himself in pink. 

Mark the ironies: The Freedom Tower is at the site of the memorial to the dead of 9/11, and listed on it are eleven “unborn babies” killed with their mothers. And Al Smith would have resigned rather than endorse infanticide.

In Orwellian “Newspeak,” just as a concentration camp was called a “Joycamp,” the killing of innocent unborn infants is sanctioned by a “Reproductive Health Act.” Now it is legal to destroy a fully formed baby one minute before birth and, should it survive a botched attempt to cut it up, there is no requirement to provide medical help. The abortionist does not even have to be a medical doctor.

The legislation was deferred over years by politicians who, if not paragons of empathy, were appalled by its excess. It has only passed because the Democrats now control both houses of the New York state legislature. Politics aside, the governor teased a religious question. Not only does he mention that he once was an altar boy, but he concluded the signing celebration by telling the legislators, “God bless you.”

Perhaps he is succumbing to the temptation that some of the senators of Rome detected as evidence of decadence: the apotheosis, or divinizing of emperors in an Imperial Cult complimentary to the traditional deities. Andrew Cuomo, over the objections of more than 100,000 petitioners, named the Tappan Zee replacement bridge in honor of his father. In the dark ages, there was a superstition that a bridge could only be safe if a sacrificial victim was buried in its foundation. There are many innocent bones that could be buried under the Mario Cuomo Bridge, and his son perpetuates the cult.

Doctor Edward Peters, one of our nation’s most venerable canon lawyers, has written: "Penal jurisdiction in this matter rests with the bishop of Albany (as the place where some or all of the canonically criminal conduct was committed, per Canon 1412), and/or with the archbishop of New York (as the place where Cuomo apparently has canonical domicile, per Canon 1408)."

These matters are beyond the ken or jurisdiction of a parish priest, but it is clear that it is not sufficient for Churchmen blithely to suppose that an adequate response to the massacre of innocents by the inversion of reason is nothing more than an expression of “profound sadness.”

Father Rutler: Herod's Heirs

Father George W. Rutler

Researching the Birth Narrative of our Lord on the computer can be a source of unintentionally mordant humor. On one of the prominent encyclopedia sites, we are told in the entry for King Herod that “most scholars agree” that he was entirely capable of massacring the Holy Innocents in Bethlehem. But the same source, under the entry for Holy Innocents, says “most scholars agree” that the account was a myth, since no one would do such a thing.

The emperor Augustus, who was content to have Herod as a client ruler, punned in Greek that he would rather be Herod’s pig (“hys”) than be his son (“huios”). Herod had murdered three of his sons along with one of his wives and a brother-in-law, not to mention three hundred military officers who were abrasive to his paranoia, even though he had 2,000 bodyguards from as far away as what now are France and Germany. Augustus was appalled by the crassness of Herod, rather as the Nazis, for all their malevolence, were taken aback by the sadism of the Soviets in the Katyn Forest and the insouciant viciousness of the Vichy leaders.

To this day, remnant stones and bulwarks testify to the large-scale engineering wonders with which Herod impressed and intimidated the populace: the extension of the Second Temple, the Herodium and Masada fortresses, the port town of Caesarea Maritima, which was enabled by his development of hydraulic cement, and his shipbuilding industry made possible by the asphalt he dredged from the Dead Sea.

The Wise Men from the East, whatever else they were (and we do not know precisely from where they came or how many they were) were good psychologists. They quickly seized upon the paranoia of Herod and outwitted him, provoking the massacre of male infants two years old and under. The historians Josephus and Nicholas of Damascus do not record that slaughter because the victims were babies, and for Roman chroniclers, babies were not as important as adults. Contrary to the inspired Jewish religion, the dominant protocols of the Western world permitted the killing of infants by the paterfamilias for any reason, including inconvenience, deformity and birth control. In Sparta, only a child strong enough for development into soldiery had a right to life.

By an indult of Providence, and in contradiction to many “virtue-signaling” cynics, our current Executive branch of government has become the most pro-life since Roe v. Wade, but that is a fragile assurance and one with no promise of permanence. There are vastly more infanticides now than in Herodian Bethlehem. If our civilization lasts two thousand years more, there may be a “majority of scholars” who will say that in 2019 there were people capable of such iniquity, and another “majority of scholars” who will insist that people back in 2019 could never have been so cruel.

Pat Buchanan: ‘A New Dark Age’

 

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.”

Ivan Karamazov’s insight came to mind while watching the video of Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood describe, as she sipped wine and tasted a salad, how she harvests the organs of aborted babies for sale to select customers.

“Yesterday was the first time … people wanted lungs,” said Nucatola, “Some people want lower extremities, too, which, that’s simple. …

Abortion Industry is ‘Imploding’ says US Priest, Following Drop in Abortions

Father Frank Pavone (CNS)

The number of abortions has gone down by 12 per cent since 2010 


An American priest has attributed a drop in the abortion rate to the ‘implosion’ of the abortion industry.

An Associated Press (AP) survey of abortion in the United States has revealed that the number of abortions has revealed that the number of abortions has gone down by 12 per cent since 2010.

Father Frank Pavone, the national director and chairman of Priests for Life, based in Staten Island, New York, said on Sunday:”It’s important to realise, first of all, that the factors accounting for this are multiple, complex and often hard to measure.”

Read more at Catholic Herald >>

US Catholic Charities Forced to Disclose Whether They Provide Immigrants with Abortions

One of the numerous hostels provided by the Catholic Church for illegal immigrants. This one is in Los Angeles (CNS)

From The Catholic Herald (UK)

Charities providing help to immigrant children must provide contraception to youngsters, according to government regulations

The American Civil Liberties Union is taking the US federal government to court to find out whether Catholic Charities are providing abortions to illegal immigrants.

According to Vox, the ACLU is filing the unusual lawsuit to find out whether illegal unaccompanied migrants have access to contraception and abortion while being cared for by Catholic charities.

Cardinal Thomas Collins Has Urged Canadian Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau to Reconsider His Decision to Ban Pro-Life Candidates

The left is beginning to reveal their extreme authoritarianism and intolerance for any ideas that differ from their own.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has stated that “extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault—weapon, anti-gay…have no place in the State of New York."  More recently the Canadian Liberal Party Leader, Justin Trudeau, has banned pro-lifers from standing as party candidates.  These are the very sort of politicians who trumpet the ideal of democracy, but all ideas of freedom and democracy vanish once THEY are in power.

The Cardinal Archbishop of Toronto, Thomas Collins, has urged Trudeau to reconsider his edict requiring that all party candidates be pro-abortion.  The letter may be seen here.

Pro-Life Groups Launch National Boycott of Girl Scout Cookies Over Abortion Ties

As we have posted previously, there is an alternative to the Girl Scouts, which, sadly, has been taken over by the radical feminist movement and supports Planned Parenthood and their abortion industry.  The cookies may be tempting, but American Heritage Girls is forming "women of integrity through service to God, family, community and country."  They are nationwide and they need your support.

National pro-life groups have banded together to launch a boycott of the sales of Girl Scout cookies over the ties the organization has to the Planned Parenthood abortion business and how it has promoted pro-abortion groups and activists.

The pro-life movement has been concerned for a number of years about the ties between the Girl Scouts and the Planned Parenthood abortion business.  Although the Girl Scout organization maintains that it takes “no position” on the issue of abortion, parents, churches, and pro-life activists have long complained of the pro-abortion slant of the Girl Scouts’ resources, role models, and affiliations.

LifeNews is a part of the coalition of pro-life organizations that are boycotting sales of the cookies — along with American Life League, the Pro-Life Action League, the Radiance Foundation, blogger Jill Stanek, the National Black Pro-Life Union, the Issues4Life Foundation, and Life Coalition International.

Read more at LifeNews.com

"180" - An Award-Winning Documentary

The Ugly, Unknown Story Behind Roe v. Wade

 

It’s not often that I agree with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but she was right for more reasons than she probably realized when she said last year that the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade went “too far, too fast.” Roe protected almost all abortions from the democratic process and led to four decades in which, by even the most conservative estimates, 50 million American babies were aborted and pulled from their mother’s womb.

And, now thanks to a revealing book out this week called Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wadeby veteran attorney Clarke D. Forsythe, we know that Roe was not just one of the most controversial decisions in the Supreme Court’s history, but also a poorly reasoned rush to judgment based on a wealth of misinformation that has since been debunked. The first to look inside the Supreme Court Justices’ papers, Forsythe shows the liberal supporters of the decision made at least three shockingly erroneous assumptions. 

Read more at Townhall >>

 

Confronting Indifference - A Powerful Pro-Life Message from Canada

Here's a powerful response to all those who find pro-life literature and pictures "distasteful" and "offensive."  This excellent post is from The Bridgehead, a blog of The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, which "focuses on making the killing of pre-born human beings unthinkable."  It is reprinted here with their kind permission.

To Karen, the Woman Who Hung Up On Me Yesterday

By Stephanie Gray

When you called last week, our administrator said you sounded nice.  She said you said it was urgent that you speak to me, so I had my assistant call you as I was out of the country.  When she spoke to you, you told her you’d really like to speak with me.  You wouldn’t give her any details about the reason for your call.  She said you sounded sad.

And so my first day back in the office I called you.  I took your call seriously.

The Scandal Within Catholic Relief Services

By Judie Brown

Catholic Relief Services’ history is not a pretty one, so the most recent news really comes as no surprise. 

President Barack Obama has appointed one of his former donors, Ken Hackett, to represent our nation as ambassador to the Vatican. Hackett is the immediate past president of Catholic Relief Services; he served in that post for 40 years.

Thinking about the irony of this connection between Obama and Catholic Relief Services begs the question: How can a Catholic charity align itself with the president of the United States? This is a man whose commitment to abortion, same-sex marriage, and contraception for teens—to name but a few of his policy choices—is a matter of record. The answer is that apparently CRS and its leadership prefer alliances with the government and the taxpayer dole to stalwartly defending Catholic truth.

40th Annual March for Life

An estimated 650,000 marchers at this annual event, and the American media chooses to ignore it. This is precisely why you don't want to rely on the mainstream media for news.

A Godless Party Expels the Creator

By Patrick J. Buchanan

 "No platform celebrating homosexual marriage and backing a woman's right to abort her child at any time in her pregnancy can be credibly adopted by a party that also purports to revere the God of our Founding Fathers."

 

The authors of the Democratic platform have inadvertently revealed to the world the sea change that has taken place in that party we once knew.

For the first time -- and in the longest Democratic platform in history, 26,000 words -- there was not a single mention of God, the Creator, whom Thomas Jefferson himself, father of the party, proclaimed to be the author of our right to life and liberty.

The convention had approved the new platform, but when a firestorm erupted, a panicked Barack Obama hastily ordered "God" reinstated.
 

"Pro-Choice" Americans at Record-Low 41%

Americans now tilt "pro-life" by nine-point margin, 50% to 41%

 

From Gallup Politics

By Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- The 41% of Americans who now identify themselves as "pro-choice" is down from 47% last July and is one percentage point below the previous record low in Gallup trends, recorded in May 2009. Fifty percent now call themselves "pro-life," one point shy of the record high, also from May 2009.

Gallup began asking Americans to define themselves as pro-choice or pro-life on abortion in 1995, and since then, identification with the labels has shifted from a wide lead for the pro-choice position in the mid-1990s, to a generally narrower lead for "pro-choice" -- from 1998 through 2008 -- to a close division between the two positions since 2009. However, in the last period, Gallup has found the pro-life position significantly ahead on two occasions, once in May 2009 and again today. It remains to be seen whether the pro-life spike found this month proves temporary, as it did in 2009, or is sustained for some period.

Record Crowd Attends Canada’s March for Life

From Catholic World News

A record crowd of 19,500 gathered in Ottawa on May 10 to attend Canada’s annual March for Life. Most attendees were under 30 years of age.

“Who is our neighbor?” preached Archbishop Terence Prendergast of Ottawa at a Mass at Ottawa’s cathedral. “The poor, the marginalized, the suffering, the defenseless, and yes, even those invisible in the womb.”

“We understand that we need to challenge the false idea that abortion is merely a private and personal decision,” he added. “The truth is that abortion hurts everyone, the developing child in the womb, the mother, the father, the extended family, and even our culture here in Canada.”

Because Canada’s population is less than 11% of that of the United States, a crowd of 19,500 in Canada is comparable to a crowd of almost 180,000 in the US. 

 

Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Canadian March for Life smashes previous attendance records: 19,500 (LifeSiteNews.com)
• Archbishop Prendergast dissects ‘my body, my choice’ slogan at March for Life Mass (LifeSiteNews.com)
• March for Life draws nearly 20,000 people to Canada's Parliament Hill (CNS)

The Prince of Liechtenstein is Upholding Natural Justice in His Threat to Veto a Law Legalizing Abortion

From Catholic Herald (UK)

By Francis Phillips

Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein (PA photo)

We live in a constitutional monarchy where the actual powers of the monarch are very limited: to listen, to advise, and to warn, as Bagehot says. This is not the case in the tiny principality of Liechtenstein (population: 36,000 with a land area of 62 square miles) where the constitution gives the hereditary prince the right of veto. Tim Tindal-Robertson of the World Apostolate of Fatima in the UK has emailed me to say that this right of veto has resulted in a difficulty: Hereditary Prince Alois von und zu Liechtenstein, who assumed his constitutional powers in 2004, has stated that he is prepared to abdicate his position if the principality carries out a referendum this Thursday, May 10, to approve a new abortion law.

Queen’s Cousin: Abortion Act Was Doomed to Fail

From The Catholic Herald (UK)

Lord Nicholas Windsor and his wife, Paola, Lady Windsor with their children.

Abortion is “the great elephant in the room in our culture” and the 1967 Abortion Act was “defeatist, unjust and doomed to fail horribly in the long run”, a cousin of the Queen has said.

In an interview with The Catholic Herald this week Lord Nicholas Windsor said that “it is so perverse for the state to withdraw fundamental protection for those who are owed it most of all [ie, unborn children]. What were those Parliamentarians thinking in 1967 [when they first legalised abortion]?”

The younger son of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, the first cousin-once-removed of the Queen, and the great-grandson of George V, Lord Nicholas has become a pro-life campaigner in recent years and last year put his name to the “San José Articles”, a set of nine arguments set out to counter the case, currently being pushed by some at the UN, that abortion should be deemed a human right under international law.

In 2001 he became the first male blood member of the royal family to convert to Catholicism since Charles II in 1688, following the conversion of his mother the Duchess of Kent in 1994. The turning point, he said, was the voice of Blessed Pope John Paul II.

“He was my entry point. Obviously there was something extraordinary about him,” Lord Nicholas told the Herald.

Although admitting he felt “squeamish” about speaking in public, Lord Nicholas said that his convictions left him no choice. He said: “The death of so many unborn children, a good part of my generation, is the great elephant in the room in our culture. It is no good us going on thinking we are a compassionate, caring society when we accept what is really a tyranny, the abortion licence, thinking it’s a settled question and frowning on any questioning of it.”

We will post the Catholic Herald's full interview with Lord Nicholas Windsor tomorrow.

Komen Donations Soar After Cutting Ties with Planned Parenthood

From LifeSiteNews.com

By Ben Johnson

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation is reporting a massive uptick in fundraising ever since the women’s health organization announced it is cutting ties with Planned Parenthood.

In a conference call on Thursday its founder, Nancy Brinker, told reporters donations to the Komen foundation have increased 100 percent over the last two days. 

Lord Nicholas Windsor: 'If We Can Abolish Slavery, We Can End Abortion'

But we must be creative in responding to the reality of unwanted pregnancy

From the Catholic Herald (UK)

By Lord Nicholas Windsor

Lord and Lady Nicholas Windsor with their eldest son, Albert

I sometimes envy the Americans. They see their efforts to protect unborn children as being of a piece with their country’s other great struggles for justice, both against the practice of slavery and in the civil rights movement a generation ago. And today a united society fights together on this front. From this they get a strong sense of continuity, that their cause is part of their pursuit of the full spectrum of civil and political rights, of which the effort to defend the child before birth has become the keystone.

We in Britain don’t perhaps feel so conscious of our living links to struggles akin to this one. We need to look back to Wilberforce and his ilk for inspiration, and quite sensibly too, when his generation was perhaps the last to have fought to accord the most basic right to the fellow humans in their midst, the right to life and not mere chattel status. If we are still a nation with a proud recent record of defending democracy and helping the underdog, it’s all the more a shame that we cannot stand as tall as we might because of the moral handicap of our failure to care for the unborn.

Today’s Britain, then, faces a double challenge: to make the case that the unborn deserve the same fundamental rights as those who’ve been born, and another, perhaps less spoken about: to prepare and lay the ground for a post-abortion culture. It will be a great wrench for a culture such as ours to re-orient itself so as to recognise again, as it once did, the inviolability of unborn human life, with all that flows from that recognition. To help this transformation to take place, we’d need to be very realistic about the scale of the changes asked of the whole of society, but in particular of women: asking, first of all, for nothing less than that a pregnancy, once begun, be allowed to reach its term. That is a shocking thing to consider, so familiar have we all become with the status quo.

All being medically well, then, the normal expectation would once again have to be that a conception would lead to a birth. But what would our society look like once the legal option to end a pregnancy, whether undesired or too hard to bear, had been taken away? Much thought will have to be given to this, or the default position of the defenders of the current law will be to shout that we propose nothing more a return to the 1950s.

Were our “offer” to be made to look anything like that, then our goal would recede indefinitely. One of the main stumbling blocks for many people in fully acknowledging the humanity of the unborn might just be an anxiety about what might happen to the culture if they did so. Wouldn’t the change inevitably be retrograde? Our task is surely to say that it needn’t be so. Genuinely attractive scenarios have to be put forward that don’t have the look and feel of 50 years ago.

President Obama has called for a new Manhattan Project to find alternatives to fossil fuels. I think something analogous is required in our case if we want to wean ourselves off abortion. To go on saying that this is the best we can do for women in need is a truly defeatist position. A real collaborative effort is needed to search for new solutions to help those with unwanted pregnancies. That could allow society one day to put behind it the sad choice it made to condone the ending of a pregnancy that was found too burdensome.

We can do better. Yes we can. Human beings are above all creative. It cannot be beyond us to find ways to meet the needs of the half of society which does the job of bringing children into the world, while at the same acting responsibly towards the unborn.

Are men, though, a sticking point in all this? For sure, this whole discussion must be approached with humility. A man can never, for one thing, wholly understand what a physical sacrifice it is in so many ways for a woman to persevere with a pregnancy, and to play her unique part in the early years of her child’s life. Especially given that the modern lifestyles have greatly reduced the support, especially from family members, available to her in this vital period. But, if men can’t pretend to know the price women pay to be mothers, they can still endeavour to be aware of it, to genuinely support them in choosing it, share what burdens they can, and perhaps above all to thank them for it. We will make no headway in this debate otherwise. We cannot, either, allow ourselves to be tempted into a style that fails to be moderate and judicious. Moreover, we should reject the alternatives that come close to denigration of those who disagree with us, especially those who’ve known pregnancy themselves, and whose motivations we cannot fully know and therefore cannot condemn.

If such a project could be undertaken that would thoroughly explore the look and feel of a post-abortion world and then make proposals as to how we might adapt to it, what preliminary suggestions might one make? Firstly, perhaps that if it shied away from radical and untried proposals, blended however they may be with traditional ones, newly presented, then it won’t capture the imaginations of its intended audience. It would have to do so, also, because the goal is so well worth our trouble: a win-win situation in which we shed our collective dependency on this cruelly self-harming act, and above all come again to see our children as safe and welcome visitors in their mother’s body, and in the human community. Better still, we begin to repay the vast debt that is owed to women since the law first offered them the falsest choice of all.

Lord Nicholas Windsor is chairman of the Rome-based Dignitatis Humanae Institute.

The World Doesn't Have a Right to Abortion

The womb ought be the safest place for a baby to be and should be protected by law, writes Nicholas Windsor. 

A 3D ultrasound showing a baby inside the womb Photo: Getty

From The Telegraph
By Nicholas Windsor

If I were to imagine the voice of a rather sensible relative, or just a concerned bystander, addressing me on the subject of abortion, the words I hear them using go something like the following: "Why on earth get yourself mixed up in/wade into a matter like this?" (Aside) "And isn't it rather distasteful?"

Well, I don't think my well-meaning voice has it far wrong. I can't be altogether wise to join this debate (on the side I've chosen, anyhow) and, no, it's never going to be the stuff of polite conversation. But just why is it that this question generates so much heat in politics, in the media and around the dinner table? Not just, I think, because it belongs somehow to the category of "bedroom and bathroom" subjects that nice people don't broach too freely. Much more than that, it seems to be a highly reactionary position, one that, probably without a precedent, would seek to take back a "right", specifically a woman's right, that was conferred by Parliament in 1967 in the Abortion Act. What could be more illiberal in our culture than that? No wonder there is fury and resistance.