Sunday, October 19, 2008

NO DUMPING -- $500 FINE

(I received the following as an e-mail from Jeff Joaquin. I just want you all to know that I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE!)
I write you this email as a follow up to my earlier email this week where the issue of Life and Death was discussed. Well – I’ve always known that God works in mysterious ways, but I am absolutely horrified at the scene I witnessed this morning. After 9am Mass, I went to an abortion clinic on BBD to pray the rosary with some friends to show my support for the 40 days for life” movement. It was a very moving experience as Mary Koehler continues her good work in this arena (Thank you Mary for opening up doors that some of us are afraid to walk through on our own – GOD bless you and all you do for the least of HIS children).

As we were praying the four mysteries of the Rosary I couldn’t help but focus my attention on the name of the abortion mill which was “All Women’s Health Clinic”. That must be some kind of twisted joke to name an abortion mill a Health Clinic. Who’s health are they looking after? None of the people entering the Clinic appeared to be in any diminished physical health, but I could absolutely see the physical and mental anguish that each of these young couples were displaying when they left.

As we were in the process of finishing the last mystery of the Glorious Mysteries, the Eucharist, I kept having images of the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel and Jesus’ words “…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man…you do not have life within you” kept replaying itself in my mind. As we finished the mystery, a woman carrying two black bags was leaving the “Health Clinic” and walking around the side of the building. At this time, I had entered my car and was exiting the parking lot with grim thoughts of the contents of the two black bags and was praying that the remains of unborn children were not inside. As I pulled around the corner, I noticed the women open up the dumpster and throw the two black bags into the dumpster which read “No Dumping - $500 Fine”. This is the point in time where my stomach went from being hungry to the point of repulsion. I know that I am making an enormous assumption as to the contents of the two black bags, but if I am right, do we live in a country where WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO PERFORM GENOCIDE ON UNBORN CHILDREN AND FLIPPANTLY DUMP THEM IN THE GARBAGE?

It is a fine to dump your garbage in the dumpster, but you can kill an innocent child and dump the remains in broad daylight and call this one of our inalienable rights under the law???? What direction are we heading in this country, and more-over, what in the world is God thinking right now as we dispose of these defenseless human lives. When I drove by this woman, the only thing that I could think about for the whole ride home was “what you did to the least of my children, you did for me”??????? I understand that this may be taking Jesus’ message out of context, but is it really? Are we nailing Jesus to the cross every time an abortion takes place in this country, I think so…

How is it that an entire nation of intelligent people from many diverse cultures, ethnicities, race, color and creed can all collectively shut our brains off when it comes to this issue?? You might say to yourself, Jeff – I am against abortion and I think it is abhorrent. Well – why aren’t we all lined up every Saturday and Sunday in front of these clinics protesting if we think it is such a travesty of Justice? I am embarrassed at myself for not participating further in these activities in the past, but that will change in the future. If there was a sale at the local Mall or an important game on the television, we would plan our whole weekend around attending this event as if it held some great importance in our lives, but as far as spending 2 hours in front of an abortion clinic to defend against the genocide of the 21st Century, we all tuck our tales (me included) between our legs and participate in something that is not as controversial.

I am so tired of being politically correct at work and at church and everywhere else where I am supposed to say the right things so as not to alienate anyone or put anyone in a bad position. My question to all of you is quite simple : When are we going to stand up for the Catholic Faith and all that it means to us? When are we going to appreciate the Catholic Faith that many of our predecessors willingly died to protect? When are we going to start evangelizing those in our families, at work, in our daily lives instead of being afraid to speak the Truth. We either alienate ourselves from others or we will alienate ourselves from Jesus Christ – you take your pick.

One final thought to ponder as we debate on the upcoming election and the future of the Roe v. Wade decision – and that is the problem of Global Aging. This Global Aging epidemic is basically the thought that in the next 30 to 40 years, there will be such a large preponderance of elderly people in our society, coupled with the decreasing new births through contraception and abortion, that the economic system will not be able to bear the financial burden of the elderly. Due to the decreased number of people working and generating tax revenues, the elderly will be looked at as a liability and the “Right to Die” movement will become the “Obligation to Die” movement.

The thought is that many children will have to bear the burden of their parents to such a great extent that the proliferation of Euthanasia will lead to the potential of the termination of life for economic reasons and not to reduce the suffering of an individual. Who knows, maybe the Government will be so gracious as to offer the children of the proposed candidate in this hypothetical “Obligation to Die” situation a tax credit if the parent terminates their own life for the benefit of their children. In this way, the Government and the children will not have to bear the financial burden of the aging parent. This is a very scary thought which leads us to the warning of St. Paul in his letter to Timothy “…for the love of money is the root of all evil” which puts the love of money before all moral, ethical and virtuous decisions that should be made.

So you thought that on November 4th you were voting for CHANGE? We better be very careful the CHANGE that we are voting for because this is all that we might have in our pockets if we make the wrong decision – BUT FAR MORE IMPORTANTLY WE MAY BE LETTING THE CULTURE OF DEATH WIN ANOTHER BIG BATTLE IN THE FRONT ON LIFE – HOW MANY MORE BLACK BAGS NEED TO BE DUMPED IN THE DUMPSTER BEFORE WE STAND UP AND FIGHT?????

Maybe the dumpster should read – No Dumping - Eternal Life at Stake??

Just my .02

Jeff Joaquin

Saturday, October 18, 2008

RACISM CAN BE CALLED OUR NATION’S OWN SPECIFIC “ORIGINAL SIN.”

Racism and the Election by Bishop Blase Cupich of Rapid City, South Dakota.

This article in America magazine is worth the read.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11161


Thursday, October 9, 2008

Florida Baby Killed in Unlicensed Abortion, Hidden on Roof, Gets Proper Burial


Hialeah Baby Burial

On July 20, 2006 a baby was aborted alive at A GYN Diagnostic Center in Hialeah Florida. Two witnesses saw clinic owner Belkis Gonzalez cut the potentially viable (23 week gestation) baby’s cord and put the baby in a bio-hazard bag with bleach inside. An anonymous caller tipped off police, who searched the scene but could not find the dead baby. Nine days later the source called again saying workers put the baby on the roof of the building before the search but had now retrieved it. Police recovered the decomposed baby. The DNA matched her mother’s.

Baby Shanice Osbourne’s body has been released for burial. Even though autopsy results point to manslaughter, (autopsy indicates the child was born alive), no one has been charged with this crime. We petition the pro-life community to join in prayer for the soul of this child and the comfort of her mother.


Day: Tuesday, October 14th

Time: Arrive: 10:30 am.
Ceremony: 11:00 am

Place: Our Lady Queen of Heaven Cemetery
1400 S. State Rd. 7
North Lauderdale, 33068

Eulogy by: Dr. Alan Keyes

Attending ministers: Fr. Dominick O’Dwyer
Rev. O’Neal Dozier

For more info, go to:

http://www.lifenews.com/state3533.html

http://www.lifenews.com/state1845.html

http://bluewavecanada.blogspot.com/2006/08/baby-born-alive-at-hialeah-abortion.html

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://operationrescue.org/images/22%2520weeks.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.operationrescue.org/archives/new-details-emerge-in-shocking-case-of-%25E2%2580%259Caborted%25E2%2580%259D-baby-born-alive/&h=283&w=140&sz=33&hl=en&start=42&um=1&usg=__5n-sZft7odyeMfKaBJidtS0DVjY=&tbnid=5NQMR8f6MkYcLM:&tbnh=114&tbnw=56&prev=/images%3Fq%3DHialeah%2Bbaby%2Bburial%26start%3D40%26ndsp%3D20%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7GWYA%26sa%3DN

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://operationrescue.org/images/22%2520weeks.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.operationrescue.org/archives/new-details-emerge-in-shocking-case-of-%25E2%2580%259Caborted%25E2%2580%259D-baby-born-alive/&h=283&w=140&sz=33&hl=en&start=42&um=1&usg=__5n-sZft7odyeMfKaBJidtS0DVjY=&tbnid=5NQMR8f6MkYcLM:&tbnh=114&tbnw=56&prev=/images%3Fq%3DHialeah%2Bbaby%2Bburial%26start%3D40%26ndsp%3D20%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7GWYA%26sa%3DN



Thursday, October 2, 2008

Cardinal Justin F. Rigali


STATEMENT FOR RESPECT LIFE SUNDAY
Cardinal Justin F. Rigali
Chairman, USCCB Committee on Pro-life Activities
September 30, 2008


On October 5, 2008, Catholics across the United States will again celebrate Respect Life Sunday. Throughout the month of October, Catholic parishes and organizations will sponsor hundreds of educational conferences, prayer services, and opportunities for public witness, as well as events to raise funds for programs assisting those in need. Such initiatives are integral to the Church's ongoing effort to help build a culture in which every human life without exception is respected and defended.

Education and advocacy during Respect Life Month address a broad range of moral and public policy issues. Among these, the care of persons with disabilities and those nearing the end of life is an enduring concern. Some medical ethicists wrongly promote ending the lives of patients with serious physical and mental disabilities by withdrawing their food and water, even though - or in some cases precisely because - they are not imminently dying. This November, the citizens of Washington State will vote on a ballot initiative to legalize doctor-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. In neighboring Oregon, where assisted suicide is already legal, the state has refused to cover the cost of life-sustaining treatments for some patients facing terminal illness, while callously informing them that Oregon will pay for suicide pills. Such policies betray the ideal of America as a compassionate society honoring the inherent worth of every human being.

Embryonic stem cell research also presents grave ethical concerns. The Catholic Church strongly supports promising and ethically sound stem cell research - and strongly opposes killing week-old human embryos, or human beings at any stage, to extract their stem cells. We applaud the remarkable therapeutic successes that have been achieved using stem cells from cord blood and adult tissues. We vigorously oppose initiatives, like the one confronting Michigan voters in November, that would endorse the deliberate destruction of developing human beings for embryonic stem cell research.

Turning to abortion, we note that most Americans favor banning all abortion or permitting it only in very rare cases (danger to the mother's life or cases of rape or incest). Also encouraging is the finding of a recent Guttmacher Institute study that the U.S. abortion rate declined 26% between 1989 and 2004. The decline was steepest, 58%, among girls under 18. An important factor in this trend is that teens increasingly are choosing to remain abstinent until their late teens or early 20s. Regrettably, when they do become sexually active prior to marrying, many become pregnant and choose abortion - the abortion rate increased among women aged 20 and older between 1974 and 2004, although the rate is now gradually declining.

Today, however, we face the threat of a federal bill that, if enacted, would obliterate virtually all the gains of the past 35 years and cause the abortion rate to skyrocket. The "Freedom of Choice Act" ("FOCA") has many Congressional sponsors, some of whom have pledged to act swiftly to help enact this proposed legislation when Congress reconvenes in January.

FOCA establishes abortion as a "fundamental right" throughout the nine months of pregnancy, and forbids any law or policy that could "interfere" with that right or "discriminate" against it in public funding and programs. If FOCA became law, hundreds of reasonable, widely supported, and constitutionally sound abortion regulations now in place would be invalidated. Gone would be laws providing for informed consent, and parental consent or notification in the case of minors. Laws protecting women from unsafe abortion clinics and from abortion practitioners who are not physicians would be overridden. Restrictions on partial-birth and other late-term abortions would be eliminated. FOCA would knock down laws protecting the conscience rights of nurses, doctors, and hospitals with moral objections to abortion, and force taxpayers to fund abortions throughout the United States.

We cannot allow this to happen. We cannot tolerate an even greater loss of innocent human lives. We cannot subject more women and men to the post-abortion grief and suffering that our counselors and priests encounter daily in Project Rachel programs across America.
For twenty-four years, the Catholic Church has provided free, confidential counseling to individuals seeking emotional and spiritual healing after an abortion, whether their own or a loved one's. We look forward to the day when these counseling services are no longer needed, when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law. If FOCA is enacted, however, that day may recede into the very distant future.

In this Respect Life Month, let us rededicate ourselves to defending the basic rights of those who are weakest and most marginalized: the poor, the homeless, the innocent unborn, and the frail and elderly who need our respect and our assistance. In this and in so many ways we will truly build a culture of life.

Florida Abortion Advocates Upset Crist Picks Pro-Life Supreme Court Judges


Tallahassee, FL (LifeNews.com) -- Abortion advocates in Florida are upset with Governor Charlie Crist, who has selected two judges friendly to the pro-life movement for the Florida Supreme Court. Crist named conservative appellate judge Ricky Polston to the court today and former Rep. Charles Canady earlier. Polston received his law degree from Florida State University law school and was appointed in 2000 to the First District Court of Appeal. He is an elder at a local Christian church. His comments to the Miami Herald newspaper indicate his judicial philosophy is one pro-life advocates can support -- "I will not want to legislate from the bench." In September, Crist named pro-life champion Charles Canady, a Second District Court of Appeal judge, to the state Supreme Court. Canady is a former Florida congressman who was the lead sponsor of the partial-birth abortion ban and worked closely with the pro-life community.





Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Pope Benedict's General Audience Oct. 1, 2008


ACT ALWAYS ACCORDING TO THE TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL

VATICAN CITY, 1 OCT 2008 (VIS) - In his general audience, held this morning in St. Peter's Square in the presence of 20,000 people, the Pope continued his series of catecheses on St. Paul.
The Holy Father concentrated his attention on two episodes described in the Letter to the Galatians, episodes "that show the veneration and, at the same time, the freedom with which Paul treated Peter and the other Apostles: the Council of Jerusalem, and the incident at Antioch in Syria".

"Each Council and Synod of the Church is 'an event of the Spirit'", the Pope explained. "The Spirit, Who works in the entire Church, led the Apostles by the hand down new roads to achieve His plans. He is the main architect of the edification of the Church".

The Pope recalled how the Council of Jerusalem was called to determine "whether it was necessary to impose circumcision on the pagans who were following Jesus Christ the Lord, or if they could legally be freed from the restraints of Mosaic Law, in other words from the observation of norms established to make a men just, ... especially those relating to ritual purity, clean and unclean foods, and norms concerning the Sabbath".

"If", he went on, "for Luke the Council of Jerusalem expressed the action of the Spirit, for Paul it represented the decisive recognition of the freedom that all the participants shared: freedom from the obligations arising from circumcision and from the Law".

"Nonetheless", the Holy Father continued, "Christian liberty is never to be identified with libertinism or with the freedom to do as one pleases; it is enacted in conformity with Christ and, hence, in true service to our bothers and sisters, especially those most in need".

In this context he mentioned the collection organised by St. Paul for the poor of Jerusalem, explaining how it "was an expression of his communities' debt towards the Mother Church of Palestine, from which they had received the priceless gift of the Gospel".

The incident between Peter and Paul in Antioch was caused by Peter's decision to abstain from eating with the Gentiles "so as not to scandalise those who continued to observe the laws of food purity", said the Pope.

"In reality the concerns troubling Paul on the one hand, and Peter and Barnabas on the other, were different", he explained. For Peter and Barnabas "the separation from pagans was a way to protect and to avoid scandalising believers from Jewish backgrounds, while for Paul it risked causing a misunderstanding of the universal salvation in Christ offered to both pagans and Jews".

Benedict XVI pointed out the fact that around the mid 50s Paul himself "had to face a similar situation, and he called on the strong not to eat unclean food so as not to alienate or scandalise the weak. ... The incident of Antioch, then, was a lesson both for Peter and for Paul. Only sincere dialogue, open to the truth of the Gospel, could guide the path of the Church".

"This is a lesson we too must learn", he concluded. "With the different charisms entrusted to Peter and to Paul, let us all allow ourselves to be guided by the Spirit, seeking to live in the freedom that has its guide in our faith in Christ and its concrete form in service to others. It is vital to conform ourselves ever more closely to Christ. In this way we truly become free and find within ourselves the real centre and profound essence of the Law: love of God and of neighbour". AG/ST. PAUL/...VIS 081001 (610)