Variety #198 – 40 Days For Life Perth Western Australia ( 06min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

Joanne Cichini coordinator of 40 Days For Life here in Perth, Western Australia gives us the scoop for this past Lenten Season endeavour and success in saving 10 babies from death.

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

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Almighty Father and Lord of life,

You have entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding and protecting human life with the utmost care from the moment of conception to natural death (Gaudium et Spes No. 51). During this holy season of Lent, a time of both penance and great hope, stir in our hearts a greater love for you and for each other.  During these 40 days of spiritual renewal, lead us to a deeper conversion so that by living in your light and love we may bear witness to the gift of life. 

Lord Jesus, the firstborn of all creation, have mercy on us. Accept our prayers and our fasting in atonement for the tragic sin of abortion. By the merits of your precious blood shed for our redemption, instill in all hearts a profound respect for the gift of life and bring about an end to abortion, euthanasia and every other assault on innocent human life. Reawaken in the heart of every pregnant mother a profound love for the life growing in her womb and grant to her unfailing courage to choose life for her child. 

Come Holy Spirit, strengthen us and give us fortitude to work tirelessly to promote a true Culture of Life, a culture that recognizes the dignity and sanctity of every person. Raise up men and women to serve in public office who will enact laws which will safeguard and protect all human life. 

Blessed Mary, Mother of God, you bore the Author of Life in your womb. Through your intercession may our hearts be conformed to yours so that we might accept, nurture and cherish all human life. 

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.  Amen

Written by Bishop James D. Conley,   Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Denver

Thank God the bishops are using their clout against the attempt of the Obama administration to force Catholic institutions to pay for contraception. Although I do not agree with Paul Moses entirely, I believe he has a point in suggesting that the effort could backfire.  But that is a risk we have to take. Unfortunately, politics today is largely part of our sound bite culture.  So many people are more interested in the outcome of the Twitter war than they are about having an in-depth and clear understanding of the problem at hand.  Political persuasion is to a great extent about perception. Winning a debate  seems more important than dealing with the fundamental issues. Clarifying first principles often clouds the particular agenda and appeals more to the intellect than it does to the emotions. Emotional arguments work better. Partisanship is also an issue.  I am all for distinctions and hard ones when they reflect reality, but Republican vs. Democrat generally does not reflect the complex reality of peoples real interests and positions.  Certainly, neither political party represents the fundamental interests of the Catholic Church. Yet the current problem does reflect a reality that could be conveyed easily on Twitter.  It is President Obama against the Church.  The interests of the bishops relative to this issue are not political.  They are not even confessional.  It is the age old problem of the Church maintaining its liberty from incursions into relgious matters by civil authorities.  And the issue even simpler than the current debate frames it.  The real question is not whether religious institutions should be exempted from paying for something considered immoral by their confession.  The real question is why anyone at all is being forced by the government to act contrary to fundamental religious convictions rooted in natural law and in legal history of our country. During the last presidential campaign Doug Kmiec successfully convinced many Catholics that Barack Obama was the most pro-life candidate in the race.  Many of us were astounded.  Recently, Kmiec wrote to the president in respect to the present debacle.  He said:

In deciding against a reasonable accommodation of Catholic concerns in the implementation of the health care program, you lost sight of your own beliefs.  For this reason, your words this morning touched neither soul nor heart in the room. . . . Today, Sir, I ask you no longer as an Ambassador, but simply as a friend, why put the cold calculus of politics above faith and freedom?  Please respond, for friendship will not permit me to disregard duty to faith and country.  The Barack Obama I knew would never have asked me to make that choice.

I still think Kmiec is very naive–at best. Politicians, journalists, pundits and bloggers will now “soundbite” and “twitter” us with irrelevancies about women dying from a lack of birth control because Catholics don’t want to pay for it and about how the bishop’s are too conservative and partisan.  Unfortunately, many will buy it, which is very ironic, since the official voter’s guide of the USCCB is hardly a conservative or partisan representation. Another irony is Paul Moses’ suggestion that the bishops employ the methods of Saul Alinsky.  This, he says, could build consensus.  Moses counsels the bishops to garner enthusiastic support by community organizing.  Grassroots support, of course, if helpful.  However, the quintessentially alinskian element here is the way in which grassroots support is generated by the ulterior motives of radicals in order to implement a preconceived and elitist agenda.  Moses rightly points out that Obama knows all about this.  But this is not the mission of the bishops. The Church is a voluntary society.  No one has to belong to it, but those who do have an inalienable right to follow its precepts without the interference of the state.   This is not about political maneuvering.  It is about keeping the claws of the government out of religious matters. Politics is tricky.  We cannot do without consensus because politics is a matter of persuasion.  However, I can hardly think of a situation that is more simple than the present one.  The Church must not sacrifice her independence and the general principle of religious liberty for the sake of some vague measure of political coexistence and popular support. There is hardly any way to prevent those who support Obama’s agenda from casting the bishops’ position as a partisan one.  Caesar must not be conceded an inch of God’s territory even if there are political costs. Filed under: Catholic Action, Church, Culture, Politics, Pro-Life, Religion Tagged: Barack Obama, Contraception, Doug Kmiec, Paul Moses Go to Source

At 8:46 a.m., five hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center’s North Tower (1 WTC) and at 9:03 a.m. another five hijackers crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower (2 WTC). There were a total of 2,996 deaths, including the 19 hijackers and 2,977 victims. The victims that day included one Franciscan Priest, while he was performing his priestly duties on the injured and dead.

Today is the Feast of the Patron of the Third Order of St. Francis, St. Louis the King.  He lived his faith with conviction and publicly.  Here is a meditation on this topic  from a modern Franciscan who is presently the Archbishop of Denver and soon to be the Archbishop of Philadelphia:

“Speak in the light”

Cardinal Henri de Lubac: once wrote that “It is not true … that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, [man] can ultimately only organize it against man. Exclusive humanism is inhuman humanism … ”

Living within the truth means living according to Jesus Christ and God’s Word in Sacred Scripture. It means proclaiming the truth of the Christian Gospel, not only by our words but by our example. It means living everyday and every moment from the unshakeable conviction that God lives, and that his love is the motive force of human history and the engine of every authentic human life. It means believing that the truths of the Creed are worth suffering and dying for. Living within the truth also means telling the truth and calling things by their right names. And that means exposing the lies by which some men try to force others to live.

The world urgently needs a re-awakening of the Church in our actions and in our public and private witness … We need really to believe what we say we believe. Then we need to prove it by the witness of our lives. We need to be so convinced of the truths of the Creed that we are on fire to live by these truths, to love by these truths, and to defend these truths, even to the point of our own discomfort and suffering.

We are ambassadors of the living God to a world that is on the verge of forgetting Him. Our work is to make God real; to be the face of his love; to propose once more to the men and women of our day, the dialogue of salvation…The form of the Church, and the form of every Christian life, is the form of the cross. Our lives must become a liturgy, a self-offering that embodies the love of God and the renewal of the world … Let us preach Jesus Christ with all the energy of our lives. And let us support each other – whatever the cost – so that when we make our accounting to the Lord, we will be numbered among the faithful and courageous, and not the cowardly or the evasive, or those who compromised until there was nothing left of their convictions or those who were silent when they should have spoken the right word at the right time.

Archbishop Charles Chaput OFM Cap, Archbishop of Denver.

THE KING’S GOOD SERVANT BUT GOD’S FIRST…

St. Thomas More, a Franciscan Tertiary, has been named the patron for lawyers and politicians.  This holy and wholly Catholic man was a husband and father in addition to being a lawyer and became Lord Chancellor of England so much was he respected and regarded in his own time. He was beheaded in witness of the Truths of the Faith in 1535.

Blessed Pope John Paul II would write of him: “Precisely because of the witness which he bore, even at the price of his life, to the primacy of truth over power, Saint Thomas More is venerated as an imperishable example of moral integrity. And even outside the Church, particularly among those with responsibility for the destinies of peoples, he is acknowledged as a source of inspiration for a political system which has as its supreme goal the service of the human person.”

Sir Thomas More would not compromise on two tenets of the Catholic faith: the primacy of the papacy and the dignity of marriage.  When imprisoned before his martyrdom, he would write. The following are just a few quotes from these writings, particularly from a book called “A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation”:

We shall consider tribulation a gracious gift from God, a gift that He specially gives His special friends…if God does not send it, people need to seek out and put upon themselves by penance, a thing that helps purge our past sins; a think that preserves us from sins that we would otherwise commit; a thing that causes us to attach less importance to the world; a thin that incites us to draw closer to God; a thing that greatly diminishes our pains in purgatory; a thing that greatly increases our final reward in Heaven…if we reflect on these things and remember them well, we shall not murmur or complain in a time of tribulation. Instead we shall first of all take our pain patiently and see it as something of worth.  And then we shall realize that God has sent if for our own good and so be moved to thank God for it.  As a consequence, our grace shall increase and God shall give us the comfort of realizing that He is, in the midst of our trouble, always close.

I find, then, that one great part f the terror of the nights is the fault of faintheartedness: that fearful and feeble disposition, that is, which causes some people to be afraid where there is no need to be afraid. The fault of faintheartedness first causes people in tribulation to become impatient.  The fault of faintheartedness, or a timed spirit, also often prevents people from doing many good things which, if they acquired a strong spirit by trusting in God’s help, they would be well able to do. The devil, however not only puts them in a state of cowardice but also makes them take it as humility to think themselves unfit for an incapable of many a good thing that God has given them the opportunity and has made them well suited to do. Such folks need to lift up their hearts and call upon God.  All this fear comes by scheming of the devil.

St. Thomas More, pray for us!  Help us to never compromise on the Truths of the faith, no matter the cost.

No, I was not helpless or worthless or useless in that prison. I was not terribly humiliated because I was rejected as a priest. These men around me were suffering, they needed help. They needed someone to listen to them with sympathy, someone to comfort them, someone to give them courage to carry on. They needed someone who was not feeling sorry for himself but who could truly share in their sorrow. They needed someone who was not looking for consolation but who could console. They needed someone who was not looking for respect and admi­ration because of what he was but someone who could show them love and respect even if spurned and rejected himself.

As Christ had set the example for me, so could I be to them an example of Christian charity and concern. If nothing else, if they insisted upon shunning me, I could at least pray for them and offer up for them to the Father of us all the suffering and anguish that their rejection of me as a priest caused me. Christ had prayed for his persecutors, “Father, forgive them.” If I could do nothing else at this moment in the prison at Perm, I could do that.

God does not ask the impossible of any man. He was not asking more of me, really, than he asks of every man, every Christian, each day of his life. He was asking only that I learn to see these suffering men around me, these circumstances in the prison at Perm, as sent from his hand and ordained by his providence. He was asking me to do something, as another Christ; to forget about self and feeling sorry for myself, and to act in the situation after the exam­ple of Christ himself … That was all he was asking of me or expecting of me … I had to learn to believe that, no matter what the circumstances, and to act accordingly – with complete trust and confidence in his will, his wisdom, and his grace.

Fr. Walter Ciszek, SJ

via Vatican denounces the “intransigent religious intolerance” of the Chinese Government.

Daily Prayer for 40 Days for Life Fall Campaign:

Heavenly Father, we praise you and give you thanks for all your wonderful blessings. You are the Source and Fountain of Life. We acknowledge you as Lord, not only of individuals but of countries and governments as well. Awaken in every heart reverence for the work of your hands. All human life is sacred from the first moment of conception to natural death for it is created in your image and likeness.

Jesus, the firstborn of all creation, you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Have mercy on us, on our families and our country. Accept our prayers and fasting in atonement for the tragic sin of abortion in the world, especially in our country. By the merits of your precious blood, shed for our redemption, instill in all hearts a profound respect for life and bring about an end to abortion, euthanasia, and every other assault on innocent human life.

Come, Holy Spirit, strengthen us and give us courage to work tirelessly to promote a true Culture of Life, whether in season or out of season – a culture that recognizes the dignity and sanctity of every person. Raise up men and women to serve in public office who will work tirelessly for the protection of all human life.

Blessed Mary, Mother of God, and our Mother, you bore the Author of Life in your womb, by your intercession may our hearts be conformed to yours so that we might accept, nurture, and cherish all human life. Sacred heart of Jesus, pierced for love of our love, we trust in your mercy and goodness. Amen.

Written by Bishop James D. Conley, Auxiliary Bishop of Denver

A Chilean saint, Fr. Alberto Hurtado (d. 1952), often repeated the saying of the famous French priest, Lacordaire, in speaking of the pathway to holiness: “It is proper for the noblest hearts to discover the most urgent need of their epoch and to consecrate themselves to it.” Saints always have their feet on the ground and their minds on God or at least trying to discern the Will of God for the transformation of their societies. In this perspective there is little doubt that many of those who strive for holiness today will consecrate themselves to the most urgent need of our epoch: namely, putting an end to the wholesale slaughter of the innocents by modern day Herods and Pharaohs. It is to this end that this little book is written. This manual is meant to shake people up and call them to the battle to save lives and souls. The day is far gone and the need has grown increasingly urgent.

Modern American society and, by extension, the rest of the world that is influenced by American politics and culture, is be­ systematically dismantled before our very eyes by a spiritual e of evil that is not recognized as such. If the devil were to appear to the children of this age as he truly is, in all his ugli­ness and horror, he would be roundly rejected. So, of course he doesn’t appear as he truly is. This clever being, it is said, “disguises himself as an angel of light”(2 Cor 11:14)3 and has found count­less illusory costumes in which to conduct his evil, all the while maintaining an appearance of political correctness and accept­ability in polite society. Real Christians don’t fall for his deceit, though. We have eyes to see the truth because we are followers of the Truth, and it’s time to “consecrate” ourselves to the Truth in a new and bold way. 

The idea that the devil is “prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Pt 5:8) is not new, but most people are uncomfortable with the idea that the devil could be operating so freely in their world. Yet, those of us who have battled the mono­lith of abortion at close quarters have more than an intuition that abortion has a preternatural strength behind it and that it clouds the minds of men and women with a truly demonic perversion of values. The killing of babies as a form of sacrifice to demons has been roundly condemned by God and His Church from the time of the prophets to the present, but sometimes even the ex­ternal face of the dirty business of child sacrifice shows a consis­tency from one generation to the next. For example, the newly ­dedicated Planned Parenthood killing center in Houston, Texas (2010) has an architectural design that looks uncannily like an Aztec pyramid, where the practice of human sacrifices took place for generations. The existence of demons transcends human time, so it is not surprising that the forms of their idolatrous worship should look fairly similar in different cultures and times.

It is a theme of the spiritual life that when an evil is practiced clandestinely for a long period of time, eventually it sheds its in­visible covering and vaunts itself in its hideous garb. Furthermore, God in His Mercy has programmed reality in this way to expose the nefarious spiritual forces of the underworld for the eyes of all to see. Those who do not reject demons on the basis of faith may then reject them when they see with their own eyes the horrible works of their spiritual hands.

Immense Evil Needs Immense Good to Combat It

A spiritual evil like abortion needs a spiritual force of good to break its power and drive it out of this world. The abortion in­dustry is not just powerful in worldly terms, nor is it just to be understood in its human dimensions. No human being or group of humans on their own can commit such immense atrocities against the human race without a diabolical intelligence and malice giving it power. The scope of the killing, the fervor of abortion’s missionaries of death and the seductive for~e of its ideology transcend the human intellect and will.

Erik Holmberg, in his 1988 documentary, Massacre of Innocence, very aptly details the effects of this evil in our world. Hee titles a section of his film, “The Effects of Child Sacrifice,” and lists six frightening results of such unfettered evil in our world. Abortion, he says,

1.   Destroys human life;

2.   Breaks God’s commandments and thereby puts the nation under a curse;

3.   Opens the door for and empowers demonic spirits;

4.   Binds the practitioners to the demonic spirits (in a blood covenant);

5.   Locks women into perpetual travail and sorrow; and

6.   Releases powers of deception and witchcraft over people, especially women.

Holmberg has summarized in a nutshell the nature of the evil that not only causes such destruction in itself but spills over into society in unforeseen and unintended ways. 

When all is said and done, it is only the united Christian church, expressed most completely in the authority of the Catholic Church, that has the spiritual resources to end the cul­ture of death; a work which it could accomplish overnight if it were to ever fully “consecrate itself” to the mission of driving out the demon of child sacrifice from our land. It is painfully evident to any objective observer that the Church has not yet fully taken up this mission. In fact, the lack of unity of Catholics in this country is largely responsible for the prolongation and inten­sification of the culture of death since the 70s. When Catholic bishops publicly contradict each other on the appropriateness of the nation’s Abortionist-in-Chief receiving an honorary degree at a prestigious Catholic university; when 54% of so-called Catholics vote for the most pro-abortion President and elect the most radical Congress in American history; when Catholic doc­tors prescribe abortifacient birth control, and Catholic hospitals look the other way with a wink and a nod at sterilization and abortion referrals from within their walls; when Catholic women pour into killing centers at the same rate as the pagan genera­tion we are immersed in; when alleged Catholic politicians and public figures use their high-profile positions to aid and abet the prevailing evils or our day-the Church has clearly become part of the problem instead of being the solution to these evils. The Church at all levels, from the bishops to the people, has clearly failed to under­stand the demonic nature of the industry that practices its evil right down the street from many Catholic churches. It has also failed to marshal the spiritual resources at its disposal to stop it.  

To this cause, the Church must revitalize its essential iden­tity as Church Militant. All believers in Jesus Christ must be on guard and prays in the spiritual Garden of Gethsemane in which every child in this land is conceived. Unlike our Master who freely chose to suffer before them, babies have no choice about whether they will be allowed to be born or not, and that Garden of Decision (“choice”) could be followed by a remorse­less Golgotha administered by the devil and his minions, at any point during all nine months of pregnancy. Unless the disciples of Christ truly awake from their slumber and unite in opposition to the heinous crime, the collective guilt of this industry will fall upon us all as a people, and Jesus will say to us, like He said to the weeping women of Jerusalem on His Way to Calvary, “Do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children. Catholics will not be held accountable if they fail to stop such an immense evil, but we will receive a withering judgment if we live amidst the evil and do nothing about it. The Medieval poet, Dante Alleghieri (1265-1321), is supposed to have said that “the hottest places of hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality,”  

Even though the battle is difficult, we must nevertheless re­member the words of St. Paul that, “Despite the increase of sin, grace has far surpassed it.” Our Hope in Christ tells us that what we look forward to is an abortion-free society at some point in the future. We are not so naive as to believe that we could elimi­nate abortion from the world entirely. That would be tantamount to eliminating sin from men’s hearts, but man’s heart of darkness is  the one thing that has shown itself to be a constant reality throughout all human history. Sin and the works of the devil will be brought to an end on the day when Christ our King returns “to judge both the living and the dead and the world by fire,” as has been traditionally said of Him. Our hope is not in an end to sin in the world of space and time, but in an end to the evil of abortion as an institution and as an acceptable “choice” for men and women anywhere. To this end, Christ will use the hearts that are ready to pray and the hands that are ready to work, and He will, through His Church Militant, drive out the evil of abortion from our midst. 

The Church’s Spiritual Warfare Against Abortion  

The pro-life movement has an immense amount of resource material on issues and activities related to the effort to restore legal protection to the unborn child, but the present work is not meant to be an analysis of the pro-life issues per se. It is rather a spiritual commentary about the abortion industry and its evil spawn, the culture of death. Nor does it intend to analyze pro­-life issues from a moral point of view, except indirectly. That is all done effectively in other places and by more capable minds. Here I examine the spiritual power that the Church can marshal in the defense of the most innocent of God’s children, the unborn-and their mothers-from abortion. I will also relate this effort to the need to repulse other demonic attacks against the sacred institutions of marriage and the family. 

Let us never forget how powerful Christian spiritual strength is when marshaled against the institutionalized power of the devil. I distinctly remember praying a private prayer of exorcism at an abortion mill one day when a very angry woman drove into the parking lot and cursed me while she stomped defiantly into the clinic. I and the sidewalk counselors just continued our prayer, only to see this same woman almost run out of the killing center some short while later with a smile on her face! We wondered what happened. With tears in her eyes, she apologized for her behavior and was particularly sad that she had spoken such vulgar words against a priest. She said that she was very pleased that we had stayed to pray for her and remarked that she could feel the prayer literally “penetrating the walls of the clinic” that day! In fact she said that the prayer also penetrated her heart. She felt as if God had come into her heart. Soon afterward she went across the street to the pregnancy care center and was choosing a name for her baby to whom she ultimately gave birth. The prayer softened heart, but more importantly, it drove away whatever spirit of anger, fear or hatred that was coercing her that day. 

May the Lord Jesus enlighten all who read these pages and the holy angels equip us “against the principalities and power­”, the rulers of this world of darkness” (Gal 6:12) in the battle for babies, souls and, indeed, our very civilization. 

Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer   ( from the Introduction to his book Demonic Abortion)