I’d like to introduce you to my new friend, Gianna Molla, in anticipation of her fourth feast day, which the church celebrates tomorrow, April 28.  I like this saint, because I think a lot of modern women can relate to her. Like so many out there, Gianna was a working mom.

Gianna Beretta Molla was born in Italy on October 4, 1922.  From childhood, she served God faithfully. She graduated from the University of Pavia with a medical degree in surgery with honors.  She opened a clinic with her brother, and since she loved babies, she obtained a certificate in pediatrics.  She later married Peter Molla, an engineer, in 1955.

Before she was married, she ministered to young girls through Catholic Action, a group involved with catechesis of young people.  She once said something to the girls, which would prove to some day be tested.  She said: 

“Eternal and earthly happiness depends on the fulfillment of your vocation. Your vocation is one to a material, spiritual and moral maternity, because God has placed in us an inclination to life.

“Each of us should make room for our vocation, for the giving of life.  If, perchance, we may have to die while carrying out our vocation, that would be the most beautiful day of our lives.”

Well, Gianna wanted a big family. She and Peter had a son, Pierluigi, then two daughters, Mariolina and Laura, followed by two miscarriages.  In the summer of 1961, Gianna became pregnant with another child.

Within two months, Gianna developed a large tumor in her uterus that threatened both her life and the life of her baby.  Her doctor advised her to have an abortion in order to save her life.  Instead, she opted for a riskier surgery that would remove the tumor to protect the baby while leaving her own life at risk.

The operation was successful in preserving her baby’s life, but as her pregnancy continued, Gianna had a premonition of what was to come.  She was ready to sacrifice her life so that her child could live.

A few days before the baby was due, she told her husband:  “If you must decide between me and the child, do not hesitate: Choose the child; I insist on it.  Save the baby!”

On Holy Saturday, 1962, after a Caesarian section, Gianna gave birth to a healthy baby girl weighing nearly 10 pounds.  The child was named Gianna as well.  (Today, “little” Gianna is also a medical doctor, a gerontologist.)

That same day, the mother’s condition began to deterioriate.  She was dying of septic peritonitis, an infection of the lining of the abdomen-a result of her choice to preserve the life of her child.  Gianna died a week later on April 28, 1962 (now her feast day).

Many saints aren’t formally recognized by the Church until centuries after their death.  But Gianna’s cause for canonization began within three decades after she died.  The miracles necessary for the process occurred in a relatively short period of time, so that her husband, three surviving children and siblings were all able to attend her canonization by Pope John Paul II on May 16, 2004.

Perhaps our God is trying to promote Gianna’s message of holiness in everyday life to our troubled world at this crucial time, in this culture of death.

Read more about Gianna here.

Prayer of Saint Gianna
Jesus, I promise You to submit myself to all that You permit to befall me,
make me only know Your will.
My most sweet Jesus, infinitely merciful God, most tender Father of souls,
and in a particular way of the most weak, most miserable, most infirm
which You carry with special tenderness between Your divine arms,
I come to You to ask You, through the love and merits of Your Sacred Heart,
the grace to comprehend and to do always Your holy will,
the grace to confide in You,
the grace to rest securely through time and eternity in Your loving divine arms.

- Abridged/adapted from article by Joseph Cunningham, J.D. - The Catholic Answer - November/December 2005 Edition

Urgent Prayers are requested for Malta, Poland, Ireland, Andorra, Monaco and San Marino

Calling all Christians ALL OVER THE WORLD!
The Council of Europe will vote on making abortion a Human Right tomorrow.
We need the troops now at the frontline.
We need PRAYER NOW!
Prayer NOW, that is what we need.
Please spread the word, people of prayer, come together.
Christians all over this globe,
Malta, Poland, Ireland, Andorra, Monaco and San Marino need you.
Come to our aid in prayer to battle this cloud of darkness
that if passed at the Council of Europe tomorrow
Wednesday 16th April,
it will start an unstoppable global swing to making abortion a ‘human right’
This is the time for ALL Christians to come together,
Prayer will make the difference.
In His name, we call you to pray.
In Life,
Paul Vincenti
Gift of Life

You heard the man!

Barak Obama’s positions on everything from parental notification to sex shops near schools to sex ed in kindergarten to being the exact opposite of everything I stand for is discussed in this little known video from 8 months ago.

Some disclaimers. First, I am not pleased with the title of this video, but fortunately this vid. doesnt speak about it. Second, this vid. makes references to the “Magical Negro.” This made me a bit uncomfortable until I learned what that expression meant. Then it removed a scale or two from my eyes. The LA Times has an excellent editorial on it here.

The Magical Negro theory may explain the Obama as Messiah phenom which is also reaching new heights. In Obama’s words:

“…that a light will shine through that window,
a beam of light will come down upon you,
you will experience an epiphany
…and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls
and vote for Obama.”

—Barack Obama

Read the rest of this entry »

I wasn’t going to post today. But when is a better time to reflect on sin and grace, life and death?

Check out Blackgenocide.org

Blessed Good Friday.

from vids.myspace.com posted with vodpod

(Flipsyde)
Happy Birthday

Make a wish.
Please accept my apologies, I wonder what would have been.
Would you have been a little angel or an angel of sin?
Tom-boy running around, hanging with all the guys.
Or a little tough boy with beautiful brown eyes.
I paid for the murder before they determined the sex,
choosing our life over your life meant your death.
And you never got a chance to even open your eyes,
sometimes I wonder as a fetus if you fought for your life.
Would you have been a little genius? In love with math?
Would you have played in your school clothes and made me mad?
Would you have been a little rapper like your poppa The Piper?
Would you have made me quit smoking by finding one of my lighters?
I wonder about your skin tone and shape of your nose,
and the way you would’ve laughed and talked fast or slow.
I think about it every year, so I picked up a pen.
Happy birthday, I love you whoever you would’ve been.

Read the rest of this entry »

This video is produced by Live Action’s the Advocate, and with their other videos, shows Planned Parenthood taking donations targeting the aborting of minority babies. The Pro-Life group initiated a series of calls to Planned Parenthood seeing if they would take donations specifically targeting minority babies. It is a fascinating glimpse into the way that the abortion industry works, because the Planned Parenthood employees accepting the donations seem to truly believe that specifically funding the termination of a minority pregnancy is benefiting society. But…what type of society is benefited from this?? Even an African-American employee of Planned Parenthood, while being upset that someone would specifically request that black babies be terminated, still accepts the money.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Pro-abortion Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton joined a majority of the Senate Thursday night in rejecting an amendment that would offer financial support to poor pregnant women and their unborn children. Their votes contrasted with likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain.

The two candidates voted against a measure by Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado that would have included pregnant women and their unborn children in the SCHIP program.

Pro-life groups strongly supported the amendment because it would help women who may otherwise have an abortion because of financial worries about affording a baby.

The vote provided another clear contrast between Obama and Clinton, who support unlimited abortions funded with taxpayer dollars, and McCain, who opposes abortion and has called for reversing Roe v. Wade.

Surprise, surprise. Hillary catches herself in a lie. “Safe, Legal and Rare” apparently doesn’t apply to poor mothers.

The Democratic Party hails itself as the party of the poor, as long as the poor will murder their children. Hillary and Obama want their children dead.

Read more.

Planned Parenthood just lost its state funding in Virginia.

It was a narrow victory for the Pro-Life movement that cost PP about half a million bucks.

The Virginia Senate would have divided on party lines 21-19 favoring PP, but for one courageous Pro-Life Democrat who stood up for his principles, Senator Charles Colgan. His tough stand against enormous pressure from his fellow Democrats set up the Senate for a 20-20 tie, handing the decision to Lt. Governor Bolling who cast the tie-breaking vote against PP.

Hey folks, EVERY VOTE COUNTS!

Read more.

Congratulations to Catholics and Pro-Lifers everywhere. The Youtube battle of Feb 2008 has been won–with more attention to an ALL ad than it would have received otherwise.

American Papalist reports that Youtube claims it had a technical malfunction. He received this email from ALL:

After numerous articles and pressure from Catholic and online media, Google-sponsored YouTube cited a “technical malfunction” as the reason American Life League’s pro-life video was censored by YouTube staff.

… Praising the YouTube decision, Sedlak commented “We are pleased that YouTube has reversed their decision to remove our video. Our ALL News Report was neither objectionable nor inappropriate. While it is unfortunate that YouTube chose this tactic in the first place, it is encouraging to note that they corrected their poor decision in a timely fashion.”

Many thanks to Simple Sinner and many, many others in the Catholic blogosphere and digital media for applying much needed pressure.

Tonight for some reason I was wondering how abortion ranked among leading causes of death in the U.S. I was shocked at the figures. They are utterly dumbfounding. Here are the leading causes of death for 2004 according to U.S. National Center for Health Statistics:

Top 5 US Causes of death
1. Diseases of heart 652,486
2. Malignant neoplasms (cancer) 553,888
3. Cerebrovascular diseases 150,074
4. Chronic lower respiratory diseases 121,987
5. Unintentional injuries 112,012

Much has been written in recent weeks about the “amazing drop” in abortions in the U.S. in 2005, leaving the public with the impression that somehow death due to abortion was indeed well on the way to becoming rare.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong!!

Abortion dropped to 1.2 MILLION!!!

THIS MAKES ABORTION THE LEADING CAUSE of DEATH in AMERICA by DOUBLE !!!

Then it occurred to me to look up the death rate by AIDS and by Breast Cancer which are terrible diseases and have received massive amounts of media attention and public resources and are the subject of constant fund raising campaigns among the general public.

Here they are:

According to US Department of Health and Human Services CDC:

2005 Deaths to AIDS

Deaths: 17,011
Total*: 550,394

*Cumulative total since about 1981

according to the American Cancer Society (see page 3):

2005 Deaths to Breast Cancer

Deaths: 40, 410

The total estimated deaths to AIDS in the US since its outbreak sometime in the 1970’s remains less than half of current abortion rate. If the rates were to remain constant at 2005 numbers, it would take 123.4 years to equal the number of abortions now annually committed.

The death rate to breast cancer has been declining since the middle 1990’s. But if they were to remain constant, it would take 29.7 years to equal the number of children aborted in 2005.

Of course I would never want to diminish in any way the tragedy and suffering experienced by the sufferers of any life threatening disease, especially not breast cancer or AIDS. Rather, I think it is vitally important that we Americans understand and appreciate the magnitude of the preventable holocaust of abortion. While massive campaigns to end these two diseases have run through our society for years, numerically they are much less significant that the deaths inflicted by women and the medical industry on our own children.

While finding the cure for heart disease, cancer, AIDS and other diseases require massive funding and research efforts, the cure for the national holocaust of abortion will take something much more difficult and infinitely more simple: a conversion of heart and a willingness to find creative ways to handle unintended pregnancies. It will required Americans to face down countless lies we tell ourselves and embrace the two fold truth: All human life is sacred. And, there is never a circumstance that forces a woman to have an abortion. For life, there is always a way.

photo by flickr.com user: rev bri

Even though this Canadian band is apparently pro-choice, I think the song (in French with English subtitles, posted below) is rather descriptive of many of the pitfalls of modern life.

Your great-great grandfather cleared the earth
Your great-grandfather laboured on the earth
Your grandfather turned a profit from the earth
Then your father sold the earth to become a bureaucrat

Now you, my little man, you don’t know what to do
In your little 3 room apartment -
too expensive and cold in the winter
You want something to call your own
And you dream at night of having your own little piece of earth.

Your great great grandmother, she had 14 kids
Your great grandmother had about as many
Then your grandmother had three, that was enough for her
Your mom didn’t want any, you were an accident

Now you, my little lady, change partners all the time
When you screw up you save yourself by aborting
But there are mornings you awake crying
When you dream in the night of a large table surrounded by little ones.

Your great great grandfather lived through incredible suffering
Your great grandfather collected used, dirty pennies
Then your grandfather became a millionaire
Your father inherited and put it into RRSPs

Now you, my little youth, owe your ass to the government
No way to get a loan from a financial institution
To alleviate your desire to hold up a bank
You read books about voluntary simplicity

Your great great grandparents knew how to celebrate
Your great grandparent dance the night away
Your grandparents lived through the Rock and Roll era
Your parents, it was discos, that’s where they met

Now you, my friend, what are you doing with your evening?
Turn off your TV, can’t stay locked inside
Happily, some things in life never change
Put on your best, we’re going out tonight dancing!

Tomorrow, Friday January 18th, from 12-1 at the Ohio Statehouse, I will be attending the Youth Rally for Life with some of my students. They will be reading their winning essays from the diocese’s 2007 essay for life contest.

If any of our readers in the Columbus area are going to be there, please look me up at the event! I hope to be posting some photos of the event later.

As I have traveled around the country, one line in my speeches always draws cheers: “The monologue of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has now begun.” We have now entered the post-Religious Right era. Though religion has had a negative image in the last few decades, the years ahead may be shaped by a dynamic and more progressive faith that will make needed social change more possible.

In the churches, a combination of deeper compassion and better theology has moved many pastors and congregations away from the partisan politics of the Religious Right. In politics, we are beginning to see a leveling of the playing field between the two parties on religion and “moral values,” and the media are finally beginning to cover the many and diverse voices of faith. These are all big changes in American life, and the rest of the world is taking notice.

Wow, does Time Magazine’s Jim Wallis ever get it wrong.

Yes, the religious right is in disarray. It is discouraged by a presidency dismally mired in an unpopular war and over interested in the politics of big business. The religious right is dismayed over an array of candidates it finds difficult to support. All true. For now.

In order to substantiate the demise of the religious right, I would look for statistics showing a decline in the pro-life position among evangelicals or similar trends on human cloning, or euthanasia. Jim Wallis and Time Magazine will not find such evidence because this is not happening. If anything, the evangelical commitment to pro-life issues is growing. Yes, many evangelicals are overcoming some of their works-righteousness fears to perform the works of mercy. But, they show no more signs of taking up liberation theology or Marxism or democratic party politics than did Mother Theresa. Feeding the hungry does not make one a democrat, Mr. Wallis.

Political disarray and dismay do not equal demise. Given the opportunity to vote their conscience in a consistent fashion, the Old Religious Right will show itself to be the same religious right as before. The religious and political ideas of evangelicals are not changing as much as they are seeking a decent course for expression. Huckabee’s Iowa performance may be the first sign that the Evangelical vote has not lost its power.

I did notice that Jim lumps Catholics with Evangelicals in the religious right. This is a fundamental error. Yes, conservative Catholics tend to vote conservative. No news there. But, to understand American politics of the past 25 years, one must know that Catholics ARE the swing vote in America. States like Ohio, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan which are notorious swing states are heavily Catholic. Your heavily evangelical/Baptist states are all firmly Red. Since Reagan took the Republican party pro-life, the Catholic vote has been divided. Catholics often have to choose which issues are most important in a given cycle and vote on those issues. In ‘04, Catholics voted Republican largely to avoid gay marriage and get pro-life justices on the high court. Both were a success and neither will be governing issues this cycle as they were in ‘04. Many swing vote Catholics will likely vote on other issues this year. True. But swing vote Catholics were never part of the religious right. Catholics were never part of the Moral Majority of Jerry Falwell or the Christian Coalition.

Traditional Catholics, who are on the ascendancy in the Church, will always vote conservative. Evangelicals will always vote conservative. Swing vote Catholics and other swing voters will always … well, swing. So, what’s the news here, Mr. Wallis?

and then

The sad, painful, and all too undiscussed truths of these offenses are simple - our way of life in America is growing increasingly dependent upon China, her goods, her services… And this holds sway over there.

Keep them in your prayers.

From the Rev. Anne Fowler’s article Abortion as a Moral Choice:

At another point, a few years later, I did have an abortion. I was a single mother, working and pursuing a path to ordination in the Episcopal Church. The potential father was not someone I would have married; he would have been no better a candidate for fatherhood than my daughter’s absent father. The timing was wrong, the man was wrong, and I easily, though not happily, made the decision to terminate the pregnancy.

I have not the slightest regret about either of these decisions, nor the slightest guilt. I felt sorrow and loss at the time of my abortion, but less so than when I’d miscarried some years earlier. Both of my choices, I believe, were right for me and my circumstances: morally correct in their context, practical, and fruitful in their outcomes.

That is, both choices were choices for life: in the first instance, I chose for the life of the unborn child; in the second, I chose for my own vocational life, my economic stability, and my mental and emotional health and wholeness.

I understand that abortion is a complex issue, and I understand that people often make choices that they later regret, and Christ promises forgiveness if we repent. However, I have never in my life heard the testimony of someone who had an abortion in order to purse ordination, and had no regrets or repentance about it. This just blows my mind. In fairness to my Episcopal friends of the more liberal persuasion, I am NOT trying to imply this lady represents your average liberal Episcopalian, at least I sure hope not.