Alerts and News Items

The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference's "alerts" currently include the following:

• "Support the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act" (H.R. 36, S. 1553). 
• "Protect Rights of Conscience and Religious Liberty" (H.R. 940)
• "Use Tax Dollars for Life Not Death" (Pa House Bill 1623)
• "Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Religious Liberty" (Pa House Bill 1510/Senate Bill 974) 

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' "Alerts Central" currently includes the following:

• "Protect Rights of Conscience and Religious Liberty" (H.R. 940)
• "State Marriage Defense Act of 2015" (H.R. 824, S. 435)
• "First Amendment Defense Act" (H.R. 2802, S. 1598) 
• "Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2015 (CWPIA)" (H.R. 1299, S. 667).
• "Urge House Support for Women's Public Health and Safety Act (HR 3495)"

As per the USCCB: "Action alerts for issues related to immigration reform can be found through the USCCB-led Catholic coalition, Justice for Immigrants."

 

As per the USCCB, "Action alerts for pro-life issues can also be found through our partner organization, the National Committee for the Human Life Amendment."  The NCHLA's "Current Action Alerts" include the following:

• "Protect the Rights of Pro-Life Health Care Providers! (updated on 10/23/2015)"
• "Please Support the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act! (updated on 1/22/2015)"
• "Stop Federal Funding of Planned Parenthood (updated on 9/30/2015)"

(We need our elected officials to absolutely oppose ANY monies going to Planned Parenthood.  Email Representative Fitzpatrick, Senator Casey, and Senator Toomey, asking for all federal funding of Planned Parenthood to stop.    Email all of Bucks County's representatives and senators in Harrisburg, asking for all state funding of Planned Parenthood to stop.)

As per a Letter to Senator McConnell, Senator Reid, Speaker Boehner, and House Minority Leader Pelosi, in support of Representative Chis Smith's HR 1150 (Ken Starr, Archbishop Chaput, Alan Dershowitz, Matthew Franck, Maryann Glendon, Senator Joseph Lieberman, Bishop William Murphy, Pastor Rick Warren, Cardinal Wuerl and others, 7/14/15):

• "....We are witnessing a tragic, global crisis in religious persecution, violence, and terrorism, with dire consequences for religious minorities and for the national security of the United States....H.R. 1150 would...give Ambassador Saperstein the status that other ambassadors at large at the Department of State enjoy, the authority to develop an interagency strategy to protect global religious freedom, and the resources he needs to implement that strategy. It would also mandate training for all foreign service officers, deputy chiefs of mission, and country ambassadors...." 

• As "citizens in the US [we must]...call on...Members of Congress...to support two pieces of urgent legislation in the House of Representatives.  H.R.  1150  And...[H Con Res 75] ("It's genocide' - US Congress challenged over Christian victims of ISIS").  As of 11/14/15, Representative Fitzpatrick is NOT among the 108 co-sponsors of H.R. 1150, nor the  146 co-sponsors of  H Con Res 75.

"Alerts" from the following also deserve your consideration:

• Family Reseach Council Action Page
• National Organization for Marriage's Advocacy Center
• National Center on Sexual Exploitation (nee Morality in Media)
• PaFamily.Org 

 

News Items

•  Playing God and Making $ Doing So! (11/16/15)

• The U.S. Bishops' Pastoral Statement on People with Disabilities - 37th Anniversary (11/15/15)

• "Informed of the horrific terrorist attacks that occurred in Paris and at the Stade de France, killing a great number of people and wounding many others, His Holiness Pope Francis joins in prayer with the suffering of families affected by the drama and the pain of the French people. He invokes God, Father of mercy, asking that He welcome the victims into the peace of His light and bring comfort and hope to the injured and their families. He assures them, and all of the personnel participating in aid efforts, of his spiritual closeness. Once again, the Holy Father vigorously condemns violence, which cannot solve anything, and he asks God to inspire thoughts of peace and solidarity in all and to impart on families in this trial and on all of the French people, the abundance of His Blessings" (Vatican Radio, 11/14/15).

• "Not all American states have placidly accepted the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges to declare same-sex marriage constitutional. Some are listening to advice from legal scholars ...[to] refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent'....Abraham Lincoln ignored the Court’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which declared that blacks could not be citizens and Congress could not ban slavery in federal territories" (Michael Cook, Signs of push-back against Obergefell, 11/13/15).

• "Massive ad in Times Square warns that Planned Parenthood ‘betrays women’" (LifeSiteNews, 11/13/15)

• "Bishop Athanasius Schneider gave a strong defense of marriage on Friday, October 16....:
  
  
  Our Lord Jesus Christ the Eternal Word and the Eternal Truth in Person, restored the original dignity of human nature in a most wonderful manner, also regarding the sexuality of the human being, which was created in a wonderful manner in the beginning.
  
  
  Through the fall in sin, the dignity of human sexuality had also been wounded. Because of the hardheartedness of the fallen man, there was introduced by Moses even divorce, and this contrary to the absolute indissolubility which God commanded. 
  
  
  Also the Pharisees and scribes had known the divine truths about the beginning of marriage, they nevertheless endured to receive from Jesus, as from a well-known and recognized teacher, the legitimization of the practice of divorce, a practice which was already widely adopted in those times, perhaps for ‘pastoral reasons.’ 
  
  
  They asked Jesus about basic legitimacy of divorce. Jesus proclaimed to them, and through His Gospel He still proclaims to the man of all times the ever-valid and unchangeable divine truths about marriage: ‘In the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever shall put away his wife and shall marry another commits adultery.’
  
  
  Jesus restored in all its seriousness and beauty the divine truth about marriage and human sexuality. Regarding these divine truths which Christ authoritatively proclaimed, he did not admit any sophisms.
  
  "....In the 16^th century several Catholic bishops accepted the divorce of King Henry VIII – indeed, all the English bishops did, except for Bishop John Fisher, who was executed for his resistance. His Excellency also noted the heroism of Saint Thomas More, who joined Bishop Fisher and was also martyred for his defense of the Faith and of marriage. Of course, a schism followed, leading the creation of the king-led Church of England" (Human Life International, 11/11/15)

• "Why are we not protecting married couples from the violence of contraception — the divorce of unitive and procreative aspects of the beautiful gift of sexuality? Why are we afraid of helping our brothers and sisters to live in truth, according to their dignity?" (Fr. Shenan J. Boquet, 11/6/15)

• "After Germany passed a law Friday which permits assisted suicide for 'altruistic' motives but not for 'business' ones, at least one German 'assisted suicide association' has signaled it will challenge the legislation....Up to now, there has been a legislative void in Germany around assisted suicide and euthanasia, a controversial issue in the country because of its historic connection to the Nazis.
  During the operation of their clandestine euthanasia program, begun as a eugenic measure in 1939, the Nazis systematically murdered an estimated 200,000 mentally and physically disabled children and adults in institutions in Germany and its territories" (LifeSiteNews, 11/6/15).

• "Guy Fawkes Night was created as an explicit celebration of the death of Catholic England on the pyre of the Protestant Reformation....
  
  "Fawkes was born in York in 1570, and is the most famous of the Gunpowder Plotters, a group of English Catholics incensed at King James I’s refusal to offer them the freedom to practice their traditional religion....
  
  "the Reformation was not a gentle evolution....It was a violent rupture with our country's recent history, achieved at the point of a sword.  Only two generations before Guy's, England had been an integral part of Christendom....
  
  "By the time Parliament passed the Observance of 5th November Act, the country was adrift from its cultural heritage, charting a course west to the New World....
  
  "In a strange twist, the Catholic faith that had sustained England for centuries was now labelled 'foreign'....
  
  "it has been traditional to present the Reformation as an organic intellectual wave — a fresh current quietly flowing over Europe, bringing change and relief from existing sufferings....it was anything but a quiet pulpit revolution. Change was effected by a brutal battle of attrition fought with hangings, burnings, and bloodshed, in England and on the continent....Here in England we had our own fanatics — men like Thomas Cromwell, who plundered the Church and universities to line his pockets and those of his henchmen, and who used the power of the State to ruthlessly murder those who got in his way, irrespective of gender or age.  As we have seen from the reactions to the book and television series of Wolf Hall, outright ahistorical inventions like a tender Cromwell and a ghoulish [Saint Thomas] More can still be provocative in a society for which there remain sensitivities to Reformation-related propaganda....
  
  "The ins and outs of Britain’s complex religious history are no longer a prominent part of the annual fifth of November celebrations. If anything, the event is blurring into — or being overshadowed by — Halloween, at which Guy Fawkes 'Anonymous' masks are becoming ever more popular....From the outset of Henry[VIII]’s self-serving reforms there had been widespread civic unrest and protest.... Elizabeth continued the crackdown on English Catholics....
  
  "Fawkes was guilty of treason, but in the modern day we struggle to understand the state oppression he faced in this country" (The Telegraph, 11/5/15)

• "the marriage act purged of impurities is the nearest thing to the beatific vision we can know....To offer the suffering of celibacy, temporary or permanent, to the Lord is to make use, in the best possible way, of man's greatest joy " (10/21/15)

• "The German Catholic Church has a long and ignoble history of playing fool for its government...." (Rebecca Hamilton, National Catholic Register, 10/12/15)
  
  
• "Statement Calling for Constitutional Resistance to Obergefell v. Hodges"  (American Principles Project, 10/8/15)

• "the Sexual Revolution ushered in the scourge of abortion, pornography, and sexual abuse so rampant in recent decades. Instead of real and authentic love, this false 'liberty' offers cheap pleasures that mask a deeper loneliness and pain. Instead of the security of traditional family bonds, it leaves children longing for the stability of a mother’s and a father’s love....Today’s attack on fatherhood, and by extension, motherhood, is multi-pronged and breathtakingly damaging. 41% of children are born into unmarried homes in our day, an increase of 700% from 1950" (Bishop Thomas Olmstead, 9/29/15).

•  re: "The Revision and Updating of the Charter for Healthcare Workers (5/6/15)"

• ''Bigotry Killed 'Conscience Law'" (BC Courier Times, 3/3/14)

• "Who is going to save our Church? "Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops, like bishops, and your religious act like religious" (Archbishop Sheen, June 1972).