"DOMA advances the common good in a manner consistent with the human dignity of all persons."

Here is the full text of the testimony provided by Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of Oakland, urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to uphold the Defense of Marriage Amendment:

November 2, 2011

Dear Member of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee:

As Chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, I urge you to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) by opposing the Respect for Marriage Act (S. 598) and any other measure seeking DOMA’s repeal.

DOMA recognizes for federal purposes that marriage is defined as the union of one man and one woman. It also prevents the redefinition of marriage in any one state from forcing other states to follow suit. DOMA’s codified definition of marriage reflects a deeply rooted and enduring consensus, based on truths about the human person discernible by reason and accessible to people of all faiths or none at all. Millions of citizens have gone to the ballot in thirty states to ratify similar DOMA proposals by substantial majorities. Forty one states in all have enacted their own DOMAs. Popularity alone does not determine what is right. But in the face of such broad support in the present day, not to mention a legacy of lived experience and reasoned reflection measured in millennia in every society and civilization throughout all of human history, repealing a measure that merely recognizes the truth of marriage is all the more improvident.

I raise for your consideration two points: DOMA is rational, and its repeal would be unjust.

A. DOMA is grounded in reason and experience. It takes into account the distinguishing properties of unity and procreation that mark the relationship of husband and wife.

Marriage is a comprehensive union of man and woman, a total, permanent, faithful, and fruitful sharing of lives between husband and wife. This union is a great and unique good in itself, and is critical for the common good. There are fundamental reasons why sexual difference and the complementarity between man and woman have always been considered essential to the meaning of marriage.

The connection between sexual difference and procreation is obvious and unique. The public status of marriage owes its origin and existence to the natural capacity of man and woman to bring children into the world. Research substantiates that children thrive best when reared by both a mom and a dad married to each other. Marriage has been and should remain a child-centered institution.

Even when a marriage is not blessed with children, all husbands and wives can model for society the possibilities and potential for mutual collaboration between the sexes. They can teach children generally by their witness and exemplify for other men and women what it means to be husband and wife. They also can provide an essential service to society through adopting children, who need the care of a mother and a father.

The unitive and procreative realities at stake cannot be ignored. They are not mere cultural constructs that can be discarded at will, with little or no social cost. Instead, they flow directly from the immutable nature of the human person, and so our society ignores them at great peril. By contrast, where these human realities are respected, the benefits to society are unparalleled. This explains why Congress, nearly all of the states, and millions of voters affirm marriage as an institution founded on sexual difference. DOMA furthers the common good by preserving in federal law the essential connection between marriage, sexual difference, the good of children, and public policy.

B. Redefining marriage to mean simply an arrangement of consenting adults violates justice because it interferes with basic human rights.

First, changing the institution of marriage by making it indifferent to the absence of one sex or the other denies that children have the fundamental human right to be cared by both their mother and father. Such revision transforms marriage from a child-centered to an adult-centered status to the detriment of children. DOMA maintains marriage’s proper focus on reinforcing the interests of children.

Second, redefining marriage also threatens the fundamental human right of religious freedom. Those who refuse on moral and religious grounds to accept or accommodate the redefinition of legal marriage are already being wrongly accused of bigotry and hatred, bias and prejudice. They are being stigmatized and marginalized precisely because they are exercising their religious freedom to teach and practice their values.

In places where marriage’s core meaning has been altered through legal action, officials are beginning to target for punishment those believers and churches that refuse to adapt. Any non-conforming conduct and even expressions of disagreement, based simply on support for marriage as understood since time immemorial, are wrongly being treated as if they harmed society, and somehow constituted a form of evil equal to racism. DOMA represents an essential protection against such threats to faith and conscience.

All persons have a rightful claim to our utmost respect. There is no corresponding duty, however, for society to disregard the meaning of sexual difference and its practical consequences for the common good; to override fundamental rights, such as religious liberty; and to re-define our most basic social institution. DOMA advances the common good in a manner consistent with the human dignity of all persons.

For all of the above-stated reasons, I strongly urge you to uphold DOMA and to reject any bill, including S. 598, that would repeal it.

Sincerely,
Most Reverend Salvatore J. Cordileone
Roman Catholic Bishop of Oakland
Chairman, USCCB Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage

Court Prevents NJ Hospital From Forcing Nurses to help Abort Children

A court has stepped in to prevent New Jersey nurses from being forced to participate in abortions against their will and conscience. The attempt to force them to do so is illegal.

Today, from the great Andy McCarthy, writing at The Corner:

"I am informed that a federal judge in Newark today issued a temporary restraining order protecting nurses from being coerced by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey to assist in the performance of abortions. As noted here yesterday, the state hospital has been attempting to force nurses to participate in abortions despite federal and state law which holds that those who conscientiously object may refrain from participation.

The TRO extends only for two weeks — until November 18. That is, even though the TRO really does nothing other than require the state hospital to obey the law, UMDNJ did not agree to obey the law permanently — in order to promote abortion, it apparently intends to fight against the laws that safeguard freedom of conscience.

NEW YOUNG MARTYR

Egypt: Christian student murdered for refusing to remove crucifix

Ayman Nabil Labib, a 17-year-old Coptic Christian student, was murdered by Muslim classmates after refusing to remove a crucifix he was wearing, the Assyrian International News Agency is reporting.

The murder, which took place on October 16 in the central Egyptian town of Mallawi, took place after a teacher asked Labib to cover up a tattooed cross on his wrist. Labib refused, instead uncovering a cross necklace.
“The teacher nearly choked my son, and some Muslim students joined in the beating,” said Labib’s father.

“They beat my son so much in the classroom that he fled to the lavatory on the ground floor, but they followed him and continued their assault,” the victim’s mother added. “When one of the supervisors took him to his room, Ayman was still breathing. The ambulance transported him from there dead, one hour later.”

From CatholicCulture.org, a chief provider and curator of Catholic content on the web

St Ayman, pray for young people especialy those entrusted to the care of the Salesian Family.

"Walter is a Still, Small Voice in the Turmoil of the Abortion Debate"

His voice may be quiet, but the effects of his witness, faith, and courage are momentous and ongoing. What a shepherd!

Our good friend, the Reverend Walter Hoye, has received the Life Issues Institute's "Hero at Heart" award. Reverend Hoye joins such past recipients as Senator Henry Hyde and Abby Johnson.

WASHINGTON, DC, October 27, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "An African-American pastor who spent 18 days in jail for peacefully picketing in front of a California abortion clinic has been awarded the Life Issues Institute’s 2011 Hero at Heart award.

Rev. Walter Hoye, accompanied by his wife, Lori, accepted the award before a gathering of pro-life leaders in Washington, DC.

'Walter is a still, small voice in the verbal turmoil of the abortion debate. Yet his humble and loving actions are turning the hearts and minds of women against abortion. Life Issues Institute is honored to give him this award,' Life Issues Institute Executive Director Bradley Mattes commented, after presenting Hoye with the award.

Past recipients of the Hero at Heart award include Congressman Henry Hyde, Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, former Kansas state Attorney General Phill Kline, Abby Johnson and Olympian medal winner Tasha Danvers-Smith."

Congratulations, Reverend Hoye, on this well-deserved honor!

Betrayed

We put him in office--promises broken.
Here's part of a brilliant article from the St Louis Dispatch.

...Among Catholics, the most egregious example of Obama's broken promise of religious tolerance is the one dominating diocesan headlines now: His administration's push for a mandate that would require Catholic institutions to violate the teachings of their church by covering contraceptives in their health care plans – including sterilization and drugs that induce abortions.

The mandate would be controversial even if accompanied by the standard religious exemption that allows faith-based organizations to opt out of government regulations that violate their religious beliefs. But the Obama administration has gone a step further, by crafting a religious exemption for the mandate so narrow that it excludes nearly all Catholic hospitals, elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities and charitable organizations – virtually everyone, it seems, except Catholic parishes and religious orders. The upshot: Catholic colleges that teach abortion is evil must pay for abortifacient drugs for their students and Catholic hospitals that refuse to sterilize patients must subsidize sterilization for their employees.

The mandate and its lack of conscience protection is a blatant attack on religious freedom and a far cry from the promise Obama made at the University of Notre Dame in 2009. Back then, when the president was peddling his health care plan and pledging to seek "common ground" with pro-life Catholics, he vowed to "honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause." Now that Obamacare has passed, the president and his surrogates are singing a different tune.

Sebelius followed her martial rhetoric with a sarcastic swipe at pro-lifers who fail to see church-funded contraception as a cure-all for America's astronomical abortion rates. Apparently, the secretary has not read the 2011 Guttmacher Institute report that found a majority of women who abort their babies were using contraception the month they conceived.

Obama displays a similarly dismissive attitude toward his pro-life and Catholic critics. At a fundraiser here in St. Louis last week, he offered a flippant "darn tooting" rejoinder to an audience member who called out support for his unyielding enforcement of the contraceptive mandate. He answered a recent invitation to dialogue from U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops President and New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan with stony silence. And he has ignored pleas for compromise from the likes of Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins and Catholic Health Association President Sr. Carol Keehan, two former Obama cheerleaders who now look like Obama's dupes.

The president's hard-line, anti-freedom stance threatens to alienate millions of Catholics, including many who disagree with their church's teachings but resent the prospect of government officials dictating which doctrines Catholic institutions may follow and which ones they must violate. For these voters and millions of their fellow travelers of other faiths, Obama's election in 2008 is looking more and more like a mistake – one they do not intend to repeat in 2012.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Colleen Carroll Campbell. "Obama is alienating Catholic voters." St. Louis Post-Dispatch (October 13, 2011).

Bl. Luigi Guanella Canonized!

Wonderful news about a wonderful saint! Blessed Luigi Guanella, who worked closely with and was influenced by St. John Bosco, the founder of the Salesians, was canonized today by the Holy Father. Of his years with Don Bosco, Don Luigi said "Being with Don Bosco was to me like being in heaven."

His Holiness also canonized Archbishop Guido Maria Conforti, founded the St. Francis Xavier Foreign Missions Society, and Sr. Bonifacia Rodriguez De Castro who co-founded the Congregation of the Siervas de San Jose, which helped poor women in Spain in the 19th century

Here is a short video about Saint Luigi Guanella:



Saints Luigi, Bonifacia, and Guido Maria, pray for us!

San Francisco Rosary Rally Video--Great!

What a blessed day it was! Here is the official video of San Francisco's Family Rosary Crusade 2011, by Gino & Nyna Caputi:



Gino & Nyna are also the producers of "Petals in the Dust," a film about India's missing girls--millions of whom have been murdered through abortion and infanticide. You can learn more about their work here:

http://www.petalsinthedust.com/

We have posted about their efforts. Our past posts are here.

SF's Catholic Supervisor Mark Farrell on His Crisis Pregnancy Center Vote

The greatest issue facing “a Catholic in elected public office” in the United States is legalized abortion. On October 18, the Catholic Supervisor Mark Farrell was one of 11 San Francisco Supervisors to vote on legislation restricting the message of crisis pregnancy centers. His vote, and his statement about his vote, are interesting because on Tuesday, November 15, he will address the Young Adults Group of St. Vincent de Paul Church in San Francisco. The Young Adult’s calendar of events states: “Supervisor Mark Farrell will be joining the group to share some of his personal stories and reflections as a Catholic in elected public office.”

Here is his statement, taken verbatim from the caption notes to the video of the meeting and vote. Typography in the original; interpolations in brackets added:

"Supervisor farrell: “this has been a tough one for me and I will be supporting the legislation. First, this is not about first resort."

(Who, then, is it about? The only other crisis pregnancy center in San Francisco is the Alpha Pregnancy Center, a much smaller organization).

"I know lot of people have insinuated that. I have a lot of friends involved with the organization and I have great things to say about it. Second, this is a cautionary warning."

(Who is being cautioned? Read on.)

"At the end of the day, I don' t have a problem or regulating advertising and saying false or misleading advertising is wrong. I have no problem doing that and why I will be supporting this today. I have seen a lot of evidence in e-mail change going around looking at google search results and algorithms. All lot of that stuff is not controlled by people to advertise. A clear warning -- I think you could go down a very slippery slope."

(Who is the “you” that Supervisor Farrell is addressing? It can only be his fellow board members--and himself. What is the slippery slope? As Farrell’s colleague, Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, the only Supervisor to vote against the ordinance, pointed out: “Four cities have passed ordinances like this. Three of those cities have seen those tossed out. The fourth is in the middle of litigation right now. I do not believe the record is sufficient to beat that threshold.”)

"Google has a provision against false or misleading advertising. To say that by buying certain key words you are doing false or misleading advertising, you' re going after google itself, and we need to take a hard look at the ways we' re going to enforce this law going forward, but I will be supporting it today.”

So, according to Supervisor Farrell:

1) First Resort is a great organization.

2) Google already “has a provision against false or misleading advertising.” Supervisor Farrell’s clear implication is that if First Resort or Alpha Pregnancy were engaged in “false or misleading advertising”, Google, a far more capable organization than the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, would have nailed them already.

3) Supervisor Farrell offers his colleagues (and himself): “A clear warning -- I think you could go down a very slippery slope.”

4) Supervisor Farrell then proceeds to vote for the legislation.

Supervisor Farrell’s statement is hardly a model of clear thinking or a profile in courage. After listing all the problems with the legislation, he then proceeds to vote for it. Hardly a good message for the Catholic Young Adults.

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney

Thanks, But No Thanks--High Schoolers Walk Out of Homosexual Propaganda Play

A good sign! From LifeSiteNews:

"HARTFORD, October 18, 2011 - Several students at a Hartford high school expressed horror and left the auditorium when two male members of a city-funded school play shared a passionate kiss onstage on Friday. School officials said they opted against informing parents about the event ahead of time, saying that the students needed exposure to homosexuality, and hailed the “chaotic” reaction as a victory for raising the gay issue."

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney

"Pro-Life Aristotle"

In the Corner, Katherine Jean Lopez interviews professor Christopher Kaczor of Loyola Marymont University. They discuss his new book, The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice.

"I know that many women face unbelievably difficult circumstances in their pregnancy. For this reason, I think that all people of good will have an obligation to help them, to celebrate their heroism when they choose life, and to love them even when they do not. I can think of one case in particular: a young student, not yet finished with her education, who found herself pregnant with a man she did not know well. With so many responsibilities, both to her extended family and to her studies, she felt desperate, alone, and trapped. It was truly an act of heroism for that woman to decide to place that child for adoption. I know the woman in the story very well. She is my birth mother."

Read the whole thing.

Obama alienates Catholics

Catholics make up about a quarter of the American electorate and have backed the popular-vote winner in every presidential election since 1972.
That track record continued through 2008: While weekly churchgoing Catholics slightly favored Sen. John McCain, Catholics as a whole backed President Barack Obama by a margin of 54 to 45 percent.
Given the role Catholics played in Obama's 2008 victory and their habit of picking presidential winners, you might think that an embattled president with a 40-percent approval rating would be working overtime to solidify his support among this crucial voting bloc. Instead, Obama seems intent on convincing Catholics that their faith in him was unwarranted.
While other voters have been disappointed by Obama's economic failures and arrogant, ham-handed approach to everything from health care reform to the Solyndra scandal, swing-voting Catholics have special reason to feel betrayed. A candidate who won their support by pledging to respect the religiously grounded views of those with whom he disagrees has morphed into a president whose administration relentlessly attacks religious liberty.
In the past year, Obama's Justice Department has argued in court that defenders of traditional marriage – the most visible segment of which are observant Catholics and bishops – should be regarded in law as the equivalent of racists. His National Labor Relations Board has issued rulings against two Catholic schools, St. Xavier University in Chicago and Manhattan College in New York, saying that they are not sufficiently Catholic to warrant religious exemptions from federal labor law – a stunning breach of the precedent in which religious bodies, not government officials, decide who qualifies as a member of a particular church. Those rulings followed on the heels of a highly publicized crusade by Obama's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to punish North Carolina's Belmont Abbey College for removing contraception coverage from its employee health plans, a move the Catholic school made to conform to church doctrine.
And just last week, Obama's Justice Department argued before the Supreme Court for the effective gutting of the longstanding "ministerial exception" that allows religious bodies to hire and fire employees without government interference. The administration's extreme position has drawn criticism from nearly every major religious organization in the country, from the liberal National Council of Churches to the conservative National Association of Evangelicals, all of whom fear that their churches could be the next targets of an overzealous, First-Amendment-trampling Uncle Sam.
Among Catholics, the most egregious example of Obama's broken promise of religious tolerance is the one dominating diocesan headlines now: His administration's push for a mandate that would require Catholic institutions to violate the teachings of their church by covering contraceptives in their health care plans – including sterilization and drugs that induce abortions.
The mandate would be controversial even if accompanied by the standard religious exemption that allows faith-based organizations to opt out of government regulations that violate their religious beliefs. But the Obama administration has gone a step further, by crafting a religious exemption for the mandate so narrow that it excludes nearly all Catholic hospitals, elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities and charitable organizations – virtually everyone, it seems, except Catholic parishes and religious orders. The upshot: Catholic colleges that teach abortion is evil must pay for abortifacient drugs for their students and Catholic hospitals that refuse to sterilize patients must subsidize sterilization for their employees.
The mandate and its lack of conscience protection is a blatant attack on religious freedom and a far cry from the promise Obama made at the University of Notre Dame in 2009. Back then, when the president was peddling his health care plan and pledging to seek "common ground" with pro-life Catholics, he vowed to "honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause." Now that Obamacare has passed, the president and his surrogates are singing a different tune. "We are in a war," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a NARAL Pro-Choice America crowd in Chicago last week.
Sebelius followed her martial rhetoric with a sarcastic swipe at pro-lifers who fail to see church-funded contraception as a cure-all for America's astronomical abortion rates. Apparently, the secretary has not read the 2011 Guttmacher Institute report that found a majority of women who abort their babies were using contraception the month they conceived.
Obama displays a similarly dismissive attitude toward his pro-life and Catholic critics. At a fundraiser here in St. Louis last week, he offered a flippant "darn tooting" rejoinder to an audience member who called out support for his unyielding enforcement of the contraceptive mandate. He answered a recent invitation to dialogue from U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops President and New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan with stony silence. And he has ignored pleas for compromise from the likes of Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins and Catholic Health Association President Sr. Carol Keehan, two former Obama cheerleaders who now look like Obama's dupes.
The president's hard-line, anti-freedom stance threatens to alienate millions of Catholics, including many who disagree with their church's teachings but resent the prospect of government officials dictating which doctrines Catholic institutions may follow and which ones they must violate. For these voters and millions of their fellow travelers of other faiths, Obama's election in 2008 is looking more and more like a mistake – one they do not intend to repeat in 2012.
Catholic Education Resouce Center: COLLEEN CARROLL CAMPBELL

SF Supes Approves Ordinance against Pregnancy Centers: "A Solution in Search of A Problem"

"A solution in search of a problem" is how San Francisco supervisor Sean Elsbernd referred to today's “false advertising” ordinance against San Francisco pregnancy centers. The ordinance was passed by the Board of Supervisors by a 10-1 vote. Elsbernd was the only dissenter.

Albert Lee, of First Resort, one of the centers affected by the ruling, said "It is a sad and regrettable thing to see the board pass this legislation despite no evidence whatsoever of false and misleading advertising by San Francisco’s two pregnancy centers. It is, as Sean Elsbernd said as the sole dissenting supervisor, 'a solution in search of a problem.'”

Sad and regrettable, yes; surprising, no. That the Board of Supervisors of the City and Couty of San Francisco would waste time and money on a non-existent issue is not news. But the Board has left the taxpayers of San Francisco on the hook for a costly legal battle that is very likely to be won by the pregnancy centers. Similar laws in Baltimore and New York have already been overturned/put on hold by judges, on First Amendment grounds. As we wrote back on August 2, the real purpose of this is law is to harass crisis pregnancy centers at taxpayer expense, and thus to service the Democrat's sacred cow, Planned Parenthood.

But this will certainly end up in court. And the already stretched taxpayers of San Francisco will get screwed again. As Mr. Lee said, stay tuned.

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney