Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the pregnant Madonna of the Americas. She appeared 478 years ago to Juan Diego, a poor Aztec Indian on Tepeyac hill in Mexico. She told him that she was the “Mother of God, for whom we live,” and left a miraculous picture of herself on his tilma or cloak.
Rocco has more videos from across the country and videos. He notes that because of the increasing Hispanic population, this devotion is the future of the Church in the U.S.
The entire history of the apparitions and this devotion can be found here.
Here is some extraordinary video from the midnight celebrations in her shrine in Mexico.
On a visit to this sanctuary in 1999, Pope John Paul II entrusted the cause of life and unborn children to her care. In 1995 he composed this prayer.
Prayer of John Paul II for Life
O Mary,
bright dawn of the new world,
Mother of the living,
to you do we entrust the cause of life:
Look down, O Mother,
upon the vast numbers
of babies to be born,
of the poor whose lives are made difficult,
of men and women
who are victims of brutal violence,
of the elderly and the sick killed
by indifference or out of misguided mercy.
Grant that all who believe in your Son
may proclaim the Gospel of life
with honesty and love
to the people of our time.
Obtain for them the grace
to accept that Gospel
as a gift ever new,
the joy of celebrating it with gratitude
throughout their lives
and the courage to bear witness to it
resolutely, in order to build,
together with all people of good will,
the civilization of truth and love,
to the praise and glory of God,
the Creator and lover of life.
John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Encyclical Letter “The Gospel of Life”
Given in Rome, on March 25, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, in the year 1995.
Today her intercession is needed more than ever.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen of the Americas, pray for us!
Sometimes it’s just so good to be alive! When Obama was elected president, I was almost in despair for the pro-life cause. Then came the nightmare of Notre Dame. Now things are looking up.
“And I was so ashamed. Just think of it: me, a Beta–having a baby: put yourself in my place.” (The mere suggestion made Lenina shudder.) “Though it wasn’t my fault, I swear; because I still don’t know how it happened, seeing that I did all the Malthusian Drill–you know, by numbers, One, two, three, four, always, I swear it; but all the same it happened, and of course there wasn’t anything like an Abortion Centre here. Is it still down in Chelsea, by the way?” she asked. Lenina nodded. “And still floodlighted on Tuesdays and Fridays?” Lenina nodded again. “That lovely pink glass tower!” Poor Linda lifted her face and with closed eyes ecstatically contemplated the bright remembered image. (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932)
I’ve been thinking a lot about Brave New World lately. Of course, a great part of Huxley’s almost 70-year-old novel is prescient of everything happening today. Huxley even said in 1958 that his Brave New World was coming to pass much faster than he had expected. And more now than ever before.
For those who have never read it — though I suppose there aren’t too many — or to refresh your memory if you have, Huxley’s dystopian novel takes place in 2540 (”the year of our Ford 632″) in a society under one world state, where the population is kept satisfied with promiscuous sex (”everyone belongs to everyone else”), where marriage is extinct, and the very idea of being a father or a mother is comic or obscene. Babies are fertilized in glass tubes from donated eggs and sperm, grown to maturity and “decanted” at the proper time. Children are raised in communal nurseries by doctors and nurses who “condition” them by sleep-teaching in accepting their caste (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta) and their lot in life, which is to consume and keep industry and jobs going. Religion is unknown, whatever needs and frustrations constant sex doesn’t satisfy are soothed by the recreational drug soma, which unlike alcohol or cocaine, has no bad after-effects (”A gram is as good as a damn”). So everything is cool, right?
Of course, Huxley’s point is that this society is completely horrible and inhumane and its inhabitants cut off from their full humanity, the worst part being that most of them don’t realize it. It’s as oppressive as a fanatically religious theocratic state at its worst. And society today has come to resemble it more and more (even Huxley’s description of the virtual-reality entertainment or “feelies” could almost have been written yesterday). In fact, the novel is so timely that director Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio and making a new movie version, due out in 2011, just in time for the novel’s 70th anniversary.
However, one particular insight of Huxley’s perhaps hasn’t been noticed so much, and I began thinking of it the other day when some politician assured us for the umpteenth time that “we want to reduce the need for abortion” by pushing contraception on the young (it’s all right there in the health-care bill, even if massive efforts to keep abortion out have succeeded - temporarily).
You see, in Huxley’s society, there are still a number of fertile women with intact ovaries. (Eggs have to be donated by someone). So these women must do their daily “Malthusian drill” - that is, take the state-mandated contraceptive drug (presumably pills, though rather vaguely described. Keep in mind that this is some 30 years before the Pill became an actual reality).
It’s safe to say that never has there been a society with a more contraceptive mentality, enforced by months of sleep-taught drill, and the “regulation” Malthusian belts to carry the contraceptives that every woman was required to wear. But — there is sill that “lovely pink glass tower” of the Abortion Center. You see, in spite of the government’s most strenuous contraceptive efforts, the Malthusian drill failed, probably with some regularity. Women like Linda would seem to have visited the Abortion Center, perhaps even fairly often. (She eventually had a baby far away from civilization on an Indian reservation, only because there was no abortion there).
You see, Huxley realized, 30 years before the Pill was invented, and 40 or more years before the worldwide legalization of abortion, that abortion follows contraception as closely night follows day. It was just so logical.
So tell me again how you’re going to reduce the need for abortion?
It’s called the Manhattan Declaration, and here it is in a nutshell:
THE MANHATTAN DECLARATION
Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.
We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:
1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.
Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
———————————————————————————————
The statement was drafted in New York on Septebmer 28, 2009 by Charles Colson, a prominent evangelical who founded Prison Fellowship after serving time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, Robert P. George, a Catholic professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University; and the Rev. Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School, an evangelical interdenominational school on the campus of Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama. In just a few days since it was made public on November 20, it has received over 100,000 signatures, including those of over a 150 prominent religious leaders. Among the American Catholic hierarchy signing are: Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, Archbishops Donald Wuerl of Washington, Timothy Dolan of New York, Charles Chaput of Denver, Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, John Myers of Newark, John Nienstedt of St Paul and Minneapolis, Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, and Bishops Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, Salvatore Cordileone of Oakland, David Zubik of Pittsburgh, and Richard Malone of Portland, who just lately led the successful campaign to prevent Maine from changing the definition of marriage.
You can read the full 4,700 word statement and sign here:
More powerful testimony by Abby Johnson, former director of Bryan, TX Planned Parenthood, who quit to join the Coalition for Life:
She describes how watching an abortion via ultrasound changed her life and her view of abortion.
As Johnson noted, ultrasound abortions are very rarely done in abortion clinics, because it makes the reality of life and death in the womb too obvious.
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
"The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness. The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history."
Pope Benedict XVI to the German Parliament, Sept 22, 2011.
