A story from Lifesite News gives the full details. The House Rules Committee is still trying to block a vote on the Stupak-Pitts amendment, which would remove the federal funding for abortion contained in the House healthcare bill. H.R. 3200. The bill may soon come to a vote, and is increasingly likely to pass unless we do something.
The story gives links for contacting the committee Chair, Rep. Louise Slaughterer (R-New York) and the other members. Please make your voices heard!
Update: To give an example of the kind of skewing of facts that the President and some Democrats are engaging in, here’s a transcript of the exchange between Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D.-R.I.) and CNS News:
Nicholas Ballasy: “There’s a letter written by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to Congress saying that they believe all of the health care proposals right now – the one in the House and the ones in the Senate – they all fund abortion as it stands and unless there’s an amendment or a change to those bills that specifically prohibits it, they’re not going to support it. Do you agree with them or is there something – ”
Patrick Kennedy: “I can’t understand for the life of me how the Catholic Church could be against the biggest social justice issue of our time where the very dignity of the human person is being respected by the fact that we’re caring and giving health care to the human person – that right now we have 50 million people who are uninsured. You mean to tell me the Catholic Church is going to be denying those people life saving health care? I thought they were pro-life. If the church is pro-life, then they ought to be for health care reform because it’s going to provide health care that are going to keep people alive. So this is an absolute red herring and I don’t think that it does anything but to fan the flames of dissent and discord and I don’t think it’s productive at all.” (CNS News)
What skewed logic! It’s not the bishops who are going to be denying health care to people, it’s the President, the Democrats and the House Rules Committee, to name a few. They are willing to delay and possibly stop health care reform because they won’t give up on the federal funding for abortion that most Americans do not want. They keep saying that there is nothing about federal funds for abortion in the bill, but if that were so, they would be changing absolutely nothing and losing absolutely nothing by agreeing to the Stupak-Pitts amendment. The fact that they won’t do so is all the information anyone needs to understand that they are under the thumb of Planned Parenthood, and that the thing that they and the President are most concerned with is putting his long-promised abortion mandate through Congress (remember Obama’s pledge to Planned Parenthood during the campaign?)
The bishops are not opposed to a public health care plan — they have been urging one on Congress for decades. Didn’t Rep. Kennedy read all their statements from earlier this year urging Congress to adopt a universal health care plan? The bishops, unlike the Kennedys, are coherent in their beliefs. They believe that health care should be about actual health care, not about murder.
Update, October 24: My apologies for the server, which seems to have been down from yesterday evening until now. Otherwise I would have posted this much sooner.
Kennedy’s remarks have received a blistering reply from his bishop. LifeNews has the story.
The Most Rev. Thomas J. Tobin, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Providence, took exception to his comments in an email to LifeNews.com.
“Congressman Patrick Kennedy’s statement about the Catholic Church’s position on health care reform is irresponsible and ignorant of the facts,” he said.
He continued: “But the Congressman is correct in stating that ‘he can’t understand.’ He got that part right.”
“As I wrote to Congressman Kennedy and other members of the Rhode Island Congressional Delegation recently, the Bishops of the United States are indeed in favor of comprehensive health care reform and have been for many years,” the Catholic official said. “But we are adamantly opposed to health care legislation that threatens the life of unborn children, requires taxpayers to pay for abortion, rations health care, or compromises the conscience of individuals.”
Kennedy has a 100% pro-abortion voting record, according to National Right to Life, and Bishop Tobin said that makes him an embarrassment to the Catholic Church.
“Congressman Kennedy continues to be a disappointment to the Catholic Church and to the citizens of the State of Rhode Island,’ Tobin said.
Pope Benedict isn’t just welcoming Anglicans who are swimming the Tiber to Rome — he’s building them a bridge. That was my first thought when I learned early today of the new structures the Catholic Church will soon have in place to care for the traditionally-minded Anglicans who want to be in full communion with Rome. There are many of them - the Traditional Anglican Communion, some 400,000 strong, has many members who want to return to Rome. They have become increasingly dissatisfied with the Anglican Church as it has discarded more and more of the ancient Christian doctrines and practices, and ordained openly and actively gay clergy.
It was fifty years ago that Pope John XXIII, in announcing that he would call the Second Vatican Council, expressed the hope for the reunion of Christian Churches. Four years later, on his deathbed, he continued to murmur his greatest wish: Ut unum sint (that they may be one). Today, Pope Benedict has brought that dream a giant step closer to reality, at least for Anglicans. Of course, the majority of the Anglican Church will be cut off, perhaps more than ever, from seeing eye to eye with Rome, but they are fast losing all credibility as Christians, even among their own flocks. Benedict’s bridge will no doubt see more and more traffic in coming years.
The Anglican converts will keep much of their own liturgy and spiritual traditions. This move is at one with Benedict’s wise understanding about the traditionalist Catholics in our own fold — “we can be different but still united.”
I wonder whether the reason the date for John Henry Newman’s beatification has been delayed is so that the Catholics and newly in-communion Anglicans can jointly celebrate the Mass elevating this Anglican convert to the altars. If so, what a grand day that will be!
“It seems to me there must be some divine purpose in it. It often has happened in sacred and in ecclesiastical history, that a thing is in itself good, but the time has not come for it … And thus I reconcile myself to many, many things, and put them into God’s hands. I can quite believe that the conversion of Anglicans may be more thorough and more extended, if it is delayed – and our Lord knows more than we do.”
Prophetic words indeed.
And it seems that St. Therese of Lisieux, whose relics were on display very recently in England, may have had a large role to play in all this. The whole story is worth reading.
I remembered that today October 17, was Pope John Paul I’s birthday, but totally forgot that yesterday was the anniversary of his successor’s election — a momentous day in the history of the Church. So a look back, a little belatedly:
Here’s his talk translated from Italian:
Praised be Jesus Christ! [Crowd: May he always be praised!]
Dearest brothers and sisters,
We all remain sorrowing after the death of our beloved Pope John Paul I. Yet here, the Eminent Cardinals have called forth a new bishop of Rome. They have called him from a far country… far, but always so close in the communion of the faith and in the Christian tradition.
I was afraid at receiving this nomination, but I have done so in the spirit of obedience to our Lord, and in total trust of his Mother, our Most Blessed Lady. Also, I don’t know if I can explain myself well in your… in our Italian language. If I make a mistake, you will correct me!
And thus I present myself to you all, to confess our common faith, our hope, our trust in the Mother of Christ and of the Church, so to begin again along this road of history and of the Church — to begin it again, with the help of God and the help of men.
Rocco at Whispers in the Loggia has some great stuff about the pilgrimage to Rome for Fr. Damien’s canonization tomorrow.
Damien de Veuster was the Belgian priest who gave his life to the people of the leper colony of Molokai in Hawaii, dying of the disease there himself in 1889. Rocco notes the important lesson from his life and that of all other Christian heroes: “The saints aren’t the talkers, but the doers.”
In an ironic counterpoint, another famous Hawaiian, President Barack Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize, for talking about peace — while engaging in two foreign wars (which he promised nine months ago to end), maintaining Bush’s torture policies abroad, and oh yes, waging unprecedented war on helpless unborn children (Remember when his fellow Nobel laureate, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, called abortion “the greatest destroyer of peace today”?)
They dress the wound of my people as if it were nothing: “Peace, peace!” they say, though there is no peace. (Jeremiah 6:13-15)
Yes, talk is cheap, Mr. President, when there are wounds to bind.
Here is something about one of those genuine pro-human rights heroes who should have won the Peace Prize.
President Obama issued a statement expressing his “deep admiration for the life of Blessed Damien de Veuster…I also want to convey my best wishes to the Kingdom of Belgium and its people, who are proud to count Fr. Damien among their great citizens. Fr. Damien has also earned a special place in the hearts of Hawaiians. I recall many stories from my youth about his tireless work there to care for those suffering from leprosy who had been cast out.”
Continued the president, “Following in the steps of Jesus’ ministry to the lepers, Fr. Damien challenged the stigmatizing effects of disease, giving voice to the voiceless and ultimately sacrificing his own life to bring dignity to so many. In our own time as millions around the world suffer from disease, especially the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, we should draw on the example of Fr. Damien’s resolve in answering the urgent call to heal and care for the sick. I offer my prayers as people of all faiths join the Holy Father and millions of Catholics around the world in celebrating Fr. Damien’s extraordinary life and witness.”
The president still has a long way to go before he can beat Damien as a doer . . .
Barrie Schwortz, an original member of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) debunks the latest debunker of the Shroud. Early this week, news broke that an Italian man had supposedly duplicated the image on the Shroud. Schwortz posted this on his website:
Frankly, knowing that the Shroud will go on public display again in around 6 months, I am not very surprised to see this type of story coming out, along with its resulting media coverage. This seems to happen every time the Shroud is about to go on public display. Yet whenever a serious scientific article about the Shroud is published in a peer reviewed journal, there is barely a ripple in the popular media. And now, once again, someone claims to have “reproduced” the Shroud, “proving” it is a medieval forgery. They made their claims via nothing more than a press release and got instant global media coverage. However, that is NOT the way science actually operates.
The author who made these claims states that he will make the details available “next week.” In the real world of science, a researcher must perform his experiments, compile his data, draw his conclusions, write a formal paper and submit it to a scientific journal for peer review. The work is then examined by other experts, usually of the same discipline, before it is accepted for publication (or rejected). The data must provide a sound basis for the claims and be there from the beginning. Not “next week.” And certainly not made public via a press release!
Sadly, in reviewing the article, it is apparent immediately that the author knows very little about the actual Shroud of Turin. He is not the first to suggest that the Shroud image was produced by red ochre pigment (iron oxide). In fact, he is at least the fourth to have proposed this theory in the last 30 years. Of course, this issue was anticipated by the STURP team in 1978 and a number of highly sensitive tests were performed that determined there was not enough iron oxide on the Shroud to be visible without a microscope. Iron oxide does not constitute the image on the Shroud. They also determined the image areas of the Shroud contain no more iron oxide than the non-image areas. It is more or less evenly distributed across the entire cloth.
Obviously, if the image were made in the manner detailed in the article, we would still find thousands of particles of iron oxide embedded into the image fibers of the linen and these would be clearly visible with just a good magnifying glass. Yet the microscopy done directly on the Shroud in 1978 revealed no such thing. These particles just don’t go away on their own. STURP’s instruments could detect parts per billion (a very small amount) of any substance on the Shroud and ALL known paints and pigments (including iron oxide) were excluded by the data. Interestingly, iron oxide is also a by-product of retting linen and the minute quantities found on the Shroud were pure and most likely the result of the retting process. The iron oxide used in red ochre pigment has many impurities and is rarely if ever found in its pure form.
www.shroud.com is a marvelous website that hosts a large number of historical and scientific papers on the Shroud. I’ve spent a lot of time there in the last few days. It’s information you can trust.
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"We are talking of peace. These are things that break peace, but I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing — direct murder by the mother herself. And we read in the Scripture, for God says very clearly: Even if a mother could forget her child — I will not forget you — I have carved you in the palm of my hand. We are carved in the palm of His hand, so close to Him that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God. And that is what strikes me most, the beginning of that sentence, that even if a mother could forget something impossible — but even if she could forget — I will not forget you. And today the greatest means — the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion."
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in her Nobel Prize acceptance Speech, 1979
