in this issue:
hot button issue: AMERICAN LIFE LEAGUE BLOGS
bush administration: PROMOTING EUTHANASIA?
catholic bishops: NEW ORLEANS
congress: PRO-LIFE?
euthanasia: DIFFERENCES / INCREMENTALISM / OREGON / SCHIAVO I / SCHIAVO II
morning-after abortion pills: MISSOURI
politics: WILLINGLY IGNORANT?
pro-life principle: NEW BOOK
web news: THE FACT IS / TRULY CATHOLIC
wisdom: POPE BENEDICT XVI
zinger: PLANNED PARENTHOOD’S PERSONHOOD reflection for prayer: IMITATION OF CHRIST
hot button issue
AMERICAN LIFE LEAGUE BLOGS: Judie Brown’s blog is now available on the American Life League web site. In addition, you can visit ALL’s Rock for Life web site and check out Erik Whittington’s blog.
bush administration
PROMOTING EUTHANASIA? In view of the Terri Schiavo case, DHHS Secretary Mike Leavitt is encouraging all new Medicare recipients to sign living wills.
COMMENT: Death warrants save the government money!
(Reading: “US official touts Medicare living wills,” Washington Post, 5/2/05; “Experts dispute remark that living wills save money,” Washington Post, 5/6/05)
catholic bishops
NEW ORLEANS: Archbishop Alfred Hughes will not attend commencement at Loyola Law School because honors are being bestowed on longtime political figure Moon Landrieu and his family, including U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu and Louisiana Lt. Gov Mitch Landrieu, who are not in agreement with Church teaching on abortion.
(Reading: “Statement by Archbishop Hughes concerning Loyola Law School honor of Landrieu family,” Archdiocese of New Orleans, 5/5/05; “Hughes snubs Loyola, honorees,” Times-Picayune, 5/6/05)
congress
PRO-LIFE? American Life League’s Leslie Tignor analyzed the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act and points out the obvious: “Under the UCPAA, there is no requirement that anesthesia be given to the living, yet not yet born, human child — it is a woman’s “choice.” And, pain or no pain, the end result is the same — a dead baby.”
(Reading: “Just how ‘pro-life’ is the unborn child pain awareness act?” Washington Dispatch, 3/4/05)
euthanasia
DIFFERENCES: Everything that went wrong in the Terri Schiavo case went right in the Donald Herbert case.
(Reading: “Different diagnoses, outcomes,” Buffalo News, 5/5/05)
INCREMENTALISM: How do the stealth efforts of pro-euthanasia forces work? Ron Panzer of the Hospice Patients Alliance writes that they take small steps. “One such incremental step is the redefinition of basic necessities of life such as ‘food and water’ into ‘medical treatment’ when that food and water is provided through a tube feeding. Another incremental step is using the well-promoted patient’s ‘right to refuse’ medical treatment, as a justification to withhold tube feedings.”
(Reading: “Muddy waters,” Ron Panzer, 5/6/05)
OREGON: Not Dead Yet has posted its complete amicus brief in the Alberto Gonzales v. State of Oregon case.
SCHIAVO I: The transcript of Sean Hannity’s interview with Terri Schiavo’s family is posted online. Her father, Robert Schindler, said his request of those watching the program is that “they should never, ever let this happen to anyone else.”
(Reading: “Exclusive: The Schindler family speaks out in their first interview since Terri Schiavo’s death,” Fox News, 5/6/06)
SCHIAVO II: Ethicist George Annas notes, “The intense publicity generated by this case will cause many to discuss this issue with their families and, I hope, to sign an advance directive. Such a directive in the form of a living will or the designation of a health care proxy, would prevent court involvement in virtually all cases — although it might not have solved the problem in the Schiavo case, because the family members disagreed about Terri Schiavo’s medical condition and the acceptability of removing the tube in any circumstances.”
COMMENT: If you ever doubted that the “living will” could be a death warrant, don’t! Get your Loving Will from American life League today!
(Reading: “‘Culture of life’ politics at the bedside — the case of Terri Schiavo,” New England Journal of Medicine, 4/21/05, pp. 1710-1715)
morning-after abortion pills
MISSOURI: Pro-aborts surveyed 920 pharmacies in the state and found that 29 percent of them stock emergency “contraception” [sic].
COMMENT: Missouri pro-lifers should strive to make that number ZERO because the pills do act to abort.
(Reading: “Fewer pharmacies stocking morning-after pill,” Cybercast News Service, 5/10/05)
politics
WILLINGLY IGNORANT? Chuck Baldwin opines regarding the blind support so many give to President Bush and the Republicans, “the Religious Right has ceased to be a credible proponent of protecting the lives of unborn children, which leads to the greater question: who will pick up the mantle as the voice for the unborn?”
(Reading: “Is the religious right gullible, na?ve or willingly ignorant?” Renew America, 3/11/05)
pro-life principle
NEW BOOK: Colin Harte has written a stinging indictment of legislation containing exceptions and a strong defense of what Evangelium Vitae, Section 73, paragraph 3 really means and does not mean. The book, “Changing Unjust Laws Justly,” will be published June 29 by Catholic University of America Press. For details and order information contact . The price per copy is $69.
web news
THE FACT IS: A new web site of Catholic news and opinion.
TRULY CATHOLIC: The new web site, Semper Fi Catholic Forum, is dedicated to the memory of Father Denis O’Brien, MM, and is focused on Catholic truth.
wisdom
POPE BENEDICT XVI: Reflection on the Station of the Cross: Jesus falls for the third time: “The tradition that Jesus fell three times beneath the weight of the Cross evokes the fall of Adam the state of fallen humanity and the mystery of Jesus’ own sharing in our fall. Throughout history the fall of man constantly takes on new forms. In his First Letter, Saint John speaks of a threefold fall: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life. He thus interprets the fall of man and humanity against the backdrop of the vices of his own time, with all its excesses and perversions. But we can also think, in more recent times, of how a Christianity which has grown weary of faith has abandoned the Lord: the great ideologies, and the banal existence of those who, no longer believing in anything, simply drift through life, have built a new and worse paganism, which in its attempt to do away with God once and for all, have ended up doing away with man. And so man lies fallen in the dust. The Lord bears this burden and falls, over and over again, in order to meet us. He gazes on us, he touches our hearts; he falls in order to raise us up.”
(Reading: “Way of the Cross at the Colosseum,” Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff, 3/25/05)
zinger
PLANNED PARENTHOOD’S PERSONHOOD: Arguing that a human being begins to be a person at the time a baby takes its first breath, Dr. Vanessa Cullins goes on to tell her readers “What we are all sure about is that a pregnant woman is a person… She is the only one able to make a decision about her pregnancy options. She does it based on her own needs, ethics and religious belief about when being a person begins.”
COMMENT: Gobbledygook.
(Reading: “Ask Dr. Cullins,” Planned Parenthood, 8/8/03)
reflection for prayer
IMITATION OF CHRIST: “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) except to love God and serve Him alone. This is the highest wisdom, by despising the world to tend to heavenly kingdoms.
(Reading: “The Imitation of Christ,” Thomas a Kempis, 1:1:3)