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 WASHINGTON-Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York called on everyone "concerned about the tragedy of abortion" to recommit to a "vision of life and love, a vision that excludes no one" on January 14. His statement marks the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Cardinal Dolan chairs the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"Most Americans oppose a policy allowing legal abortion for virtually any reason - though many still do not realize that this is what the Supreme Court gave us," wrote Cardinal Dolan. "Most want to protect unborn children at later stages of pregnancy, to regulate or limit the practice of abortion, and to stop the use of taxpayer dollars for the destruction of unborn children. Yet many who support important goals of the pro-life movement do not identify as 'pro-life,' a fact which should lead us to examine how we present our pro-life vision to others."

"Even as Americans remain troubled by abortion," wrote Cardinal Dolan, a powerful and well-funded lobby holds "that abortion must be celebrated as a positive good for women and society, and those who cannot in conscience provide it are to be condemned for practicing substandard medicine and waging a 'war on women'." He said this trend was seen recently when President Obama and other Democratic leaders prevented passage of the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act, "a modest measure to provide for effective enforcement" of conscience laws.

"While this is disturbing," said Cardinal Dolan, "it is also an opportunity." Pro-life Americans should reach out to "the great majority of Americans" who are "open to hearing a message of reverence for life." He added that "we who present the pro-life message must always strive to be better messengers. A cause that teaches the inexpressibly great value of each and every human being cannot show disdain or disrespect for any fellow human being." He encouraged Catholics to take part, through prayer and action, in the upcoming "9 Days for Life" campaign, January 16-24. More information on the campaign is available online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJwfcefUiU

He also cited the Year of Mercy called by Pope Francis as a time for women and men to find healing through the Church's Project Rachel post-abortion ministry.

The full text of Cardinal Dolan's message is available online.
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Keywords: Roe v. Wade, anniversary, Pro-Life, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, 9 Days for Life, USCCB, U.S. bishops, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Year of Mercy, Project Rachel, Pope Francis
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Washington D.C., Jan 15, 2016 / 03:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Planned Parenthood is suing the pro-life group that released a series of undercover videos exposing its role in offering fetal tissue from aborted babies to harvesters for compensation.

The group Center for Medical Progress responded on Thursday that the lawsuit is “frivolous” and they have “done nothing more than tell the truth about Planned Parenthood’s lawless operations.”

The lawsuit, filed in a California district court, calls CMP a “complex criminal enterprise” and alleges that they created false companies and identifications, violated contracts, and illegally taped Planned Parenthood officials “with the ultimate goal of interfering with women’s access to legal abortion.”

Last summer, the Center for Medical Progress released a series of undercover videos featuring top Planned Parenthood doctors discussing the transfer of fetal tissue from aborted babies to harvesters for compensation. The videos were part of an investigative report on the organization’s role in the fetal tissue trade, “Human Capital.”

CMP members posed as representatives of a fictitious company BioMax and met with Planned Parenthood doctors and tissue harvesters from the company StemExpress to discuss a partnership, offering various amounts of money for fetal organs.

The Planned Parenthood doctors discussed prices for “specimens” and at times flippantly discussed the whole matter, joking about the price or casually describing the grisly procedure of extracting fetal tissue from an aborted baby. One doctor suggested that the abortion procedure could be altered to better extract the fetal tissue.

A former technician for the company StemExpress, who worked with Planned Parenthood clinics, said that harvesters would obtain fetal tissue from aborted babies without the mother’s consent.

In their suit, Planned Parenthood accused Center for Medical Progress of using deception and falsehood to tape Planned Parenthood officials without their consent. California law requires all parties to consent to the recording of a private conversation.

“Defendants peppered Planned Parenthood staff with requests for meetings, lying at every step about who they were and what they were doing,” the suit alleged. “Planned Parenthood senior medical and other staff members made time to meet with Defendants in good faith. These doctors and other staff were completely unaware that they were being secretly taped and that they would later be featured in malicious videos.”

Center for Medical Progress accused Planned Parenthood of illegally profiting from the tissue transfer because they were overcompensated. Federal law allows for the donation of fetal tissue for medical research as long as the compensation is “reasonable,” to cover operating and shipping expenses. The compensation cannot be for “valuable consideration.”

Planned Parenthood responded in its lawsuit that “there is no financial gain for women or health care providers involved in tissue donation, and the few Planned Parenthood affiliates that have facilitated fetal tissue donation have done so solely for the benefit of medical research.”

The videos were heavily edited and “manipulated,” Planned Parenthood claimed. However, in addition to the investigative videos that were edited for brevity, CMP released the full footage of each of the conversations on its website.

In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood also alleged that the release of the videos produced an uptick in violence against abortion clinics. “There was a dramatic increase in the threats, harassment, and criminal activities targeting abortion providers and their supporters and, in particular, Planned Parenthood health centers after the release of Defendants’ videos,” the suit read.

In particular, Planned Parenthood had blamed the videos for creating the hostile conditions that fueled a mass shooting outside a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic in November that killed three. The accused shooter, Robert Dear, reportedly said “no more baby parts” after he was apprehended, according to law enforcement, and called himself a “warrior for the babies” in court.

One expert with a knowledge of the history of violence in the name of the pro-life cause told CNA that the shooting did not seem connected to the violent fringe of that movement. It more resembled a lone-wolf attack perpetrated by a mentally ill man, rather than a well-planned act of terror against a clinic in the name of the pro-life cause, the expert said.

The Center for Medical Progress had responded to the shooting by condemning the “barbaric” act “by a violent madman.”

“We applaud the heroic efforts of law enforcement to stop the violence quickly and rescue the victims, and our thoughts and prayers are with the wounded, the lost, and their families,” the Nov. 28 statement added.

Eleven states, two House committees, and the Senate launched investigations into Planned Parenthood over allegations of wrongdoing. A special House committee has been created to investigate the organization in 2016.

Planned Parenthood receives hundreds of millions of federal dollars per year, mostly through Medicaid payments and family planning health grants. Both the House and Senate have voted to block federal funding of the organization, but their budget reconciliation bill that also gutted the Affordable Care Act was vetoed by the president Jan. 8.

 

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Washington D.C., Jan 15, 2016 / 04:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In 2013, there were some 2,100 Christians killed for faith-related reasons across the globe. Last year, that number rose to at least 7,100, according to a recent report from an advocacy group.

“The persecution of Christians is getting worse – in every region in which we work – and it’s getting worse fast,” Lisa Pearce, CEO of Open Doors UK and Ireland, said in the group’s 2016 report. “Many countries have dropped down the list, not because persecution there is decreasing, but simply because others are getting worse faster. And it wasn’t good three years ago.”

“We can and must be strenuous in protecting Christians and all others facing persecution for their faith,” Pearce added.

Open Doors has worked to help persecuted Christians for over 60 years. It was founded by a Dutchman known as Brother Andrew. He smuggled Bibles into Eastern Europe at a time when communist regimes severely restricted Christianity and other religions.

The organization works in 60 countries. Each year, it compiles instances of anti-Christian persecution and evaluates the global situation.

The latest report found that anti-Christian persecution reached a new peak in 2015, with thousands more people killed for faith-related reasons. About 4,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria, over 1,200 in the Central African and over 700 in Chad throughout 2015.

In addition, over 2,400 churches were attacked or shut down for faith-related reasons, the Open Doors report said.

Open Doors’ World Watch List evaluates Christian persecution in the world’s countries and ranks the worst 50. The worst 10 countries on the 2016 list are North Korea, Iraq, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Iran and Libya.

North Korea, a communist state, is still the country where it is most difficult to be a Christian, the group found. It has about 300,000 Christians in a population of 24.5 million. The country has headed Open Doors’ watch list for 14 years.

News from the isolated country is difficult to confirm. However, Open Doors said the country’s leadership sees Christianity as “deeply Western and despicable.”

“Christians try to hide their faith as far as possible to avoid arrest and being sent to a labor camp. Thus, being Christian has to be a well-protected secret, even within families, and most parents refrain from introducing their children to the Christian faith in order to make sure that nothing slips their tongue when they are asked.”

In Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled their homes for fear of violence, especially from ISIS.

“Iraq has suffered from years of structural uncertainty, conflict and instability under a government incapable of enforcing the rule of law and providing a minimum of security,” Open Doors said.

In Eritrea, there are about 2.5 million Christians out of a population of 6.7 million.

“The Eritrean regime is absolutely authoritarian and intolerant towards any form of association, dissent and free expression,” Open Doors commented.

The government aims to control all religious institutions and has deposed the Eritrean Orthodox Patriarch. The country has consistently supported the rise of radical Islam in the region, including arming the Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab.

The Open Doors watch list cited several trends worsening anti-Christian persecution.

These trends include the expansion of self-styled Islamic caliphates, who now operate across international borders. Governments who fear Islamic extremism respond by working to increase nationalist sentiment or they tighten rules and increase surveillance over religious expression. In addition, some Muslims are becoming stricter out of fear of extremist takeovers or ISIS sleeper groups.

According to the report, the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia were the fastest growing areas of persecution. More states suffer lawlessness, which means minorities there suffer more violence. Religious extremism, including Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist extremism, is the greatest source of anti-Christian persecution. The report blamed tribal antagonism as well as churches that do not want to recognize Christians of other denominations.

Mexico ranks 40th on the list, while Colombia ranks 46th. They are the only countries in the Americas to appear on the list. Open Doors said that drug trafficking is largely at the root of anti-Christian persecution in Latin America. Local church leaders are often the only ones who will oppose drug traffickers, but then become targets for violence and extortion.

“There is always hope, and yet we are in unmarked territory – the pace and scale of persecution of Christians is unprecedented and growing fast.  We should not expect that to change unless we are part of changing the situation,” Pearce said.

She found hope in areas where Christian churches grow despite persecution. In countries like Syria, Christian communities care for their Muslim neighbors. In places like Mandera, Kenya, Muslims opposed anti-Christian attackers, saying, “You kill all of us or none of us.”
 

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Vatican City, Jan 15, 2016 / 04:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis will become the third pontiff to cross the threshold of the Major Temple in Rome, the most important and significant synagogue in the city.

Thirty years have passed since the historic visit of John Paul II in 1986, and in these decades the relationship between Jews and Catholics has become closer, more intense, and, because of this, not absent of difficulty.

St. John Paul II brought the spirit of Nostra Aetate into the synagogue, making the historic document that reshaped Catholicism’s relationship with Judaism concrete when in 1986 he became the first Pope since the first century to ever set foot in a synagogue.

But the story as to how John Paul II’s decision to visit Rome’s Major Synagogue came about has a little-known twist, beginning with the planning of an international papal trip.

In an interview with CNA, Gianfranco Svidercoschi, a longtime Vatican correspondent, the former vice-director of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano and a biographer of St. John Paul II, recounted the story.

He said that Fr. Roberto Tucci, former president of Vatican Radio and the previous organizer of papal trips, had been sitting with John Paul II discussing his upcoming 1987 visit to the United States.

“Among the various invitations, one was from an American rabbi who asked the Pope to visit his synagogue,” Svidercoschi said, adding that John Paul II was “very much in favor of it, of course, seeing as how in 1985 he wasn't afraid, at the White House, to meet with young Muslims.”

But it was at this point that Fr. Tucci “had an intuition: 'if a Pope is going to a synagogue, the first needs to be the Synagogue of Rome.'”

So, it was following this train of thought that St. John Paul II decided to visit the Synagogue of Rome, becoming the first Pope in modern history to do so. From that historic gesture in 1986, it has almost become a habit.

Rabbi Elio Toaff, Chief Rabbi of Rome at the time, was the first to go and meet John Paul II in a visit to the parish of San Carlo ai Catinari in 1981. But then the next year, on April 13, 1986, the story took a great leap forward.

After John Paul II’s revolutionary embrace with Toaff, a great promoter of dialogue, the speech of the Polish Pope who had grown up with Jewish friends in Krakow was a lesson on the Second Vatican Council.

The Pope gave his thanks and recalled the many efforts of Pope St. John XXIII, who laid the groundwork for Nostra Aetate, and expressed his “abhorrence” for the Nazi genocide.

He also remembered how the Church came to the aid of Jews during the dark years of persecution in the Second World War by opening the doors of their convents and seminaries to those who went into hiding.

The Pope noted that the relationship Christians have with the Jews is one that they don’t have with any other religion, and pointed to common areas of collaboration in a society that has forgotten the sacred. He then asked for help from the Jewish community, the oldest in Rome, in making Rome a better city.

Many years then passed before another, historic visit took place. The German Pope Benedict XVI arrived to the Seat of Peter, and first wanted to visit the synagogue in Cologne, a tragic reminder of the “Kristallnackt,” or “the Night of Broken Glass.”

The Kristallnackt refers to a massive, coordinated attack against the Jews that took place throughout the German Reich the night of Nov. 9, 1938.

While in Cologne for World Youth Day in 2005, Benedict XVI visited the city’s synagogue, and recalled the 60 years since the liberation from the Nazis.

In his speech, Benedict resumed the path of John Paul II, and took another step forward, condemning the antisemitism which in Europe raises its head like a dragon all too often. He also drew attention to the commitment of the German bishops, and said that we must love one another and put the Ten Commandments again at the center of Jewish-Christian dialogue.

From there, Benedict XVI’s reflections began again when on Jan. 17, 2010, just six years ago, he crossed the threshold of Rome’s Major Temple as a symbol of the “emancipation” of the Jews in Rome.

Rabbi Toaff had by then aged and become ill, but still wanted to greet the Pope. So Benedict went to his house and this time, the first embrace took place in his doorway.

In the synagogue to welcome Pope Benedict after was Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni. It will also be he who receives Pope Francis this Sunday, Jan. 17.

“How good it is for brothers to be together,” the German Pope had said. And in one act the misunderstandings that often punctuate dialogue between Catholics and Jews seemed to dissolve.

Then he gave his reflection, almost in a rabbinic style, on the commandments and on mercy.

One mustn’t forget the destruction of the extermination, he said; a German, who had visited Auschwitz asking for forgiveness. “How is it possible,” he said in the synagogue, “to forget their faces, their names, their tears – the desperation of men, women and children?”

Benedict retraced the common values of the two religions, from safeguarding life to caring for creation.

Then, on the Ten Commandments, he said that “all of the commandments are summed up in the love of God and in mercy toward others.”

The key to everything, the point of union, is the mercy which “urges Jews and Christians to exercise, in our time, a special generosity towards the poor, towards women and children, strangers, the sick, the weak and the needy,” he said.

“In the Jewish tradition there is a wonderful saying of the Fathers of Israel: ‘Simon the Just often said: The world is founded on three things: the Torah, worship, and acts of mercy,’ he said.

In exercising justice and mercy, “Jews and Christians are called to announce and to bear witness to the coming Kingdom of the Most High, for which we pray and work in hope each day,” Benedict XVI continued.

Pope Francis, for whom mercy has been the center of his pontificate, will arrive to the synagogue in the Holy Year of Mercy with a personal history of relationships with Jewish friends from Buenos Aires.

Perhaps his reflection will also be on that very subject of mercy, from the faith of brothers.

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