"We Christians, then, must stand up for this reality of marriage today in our homes and in the Public Square, despite the real risk of persecution by doing so."

"Marriage, God’s Plan for the sacred unification of man and woman, which mysteriously images the Trinity, stood in the way of the early Gnostics, the Manicheans of the 1st Millennium, the Albigensians of the 13th Century, King Henry VIII of England and Fr. Martin Luther of Germany during the Reformation; and marriage stands now in the way of the Gender Ideology. Its further weakening will do nothing to strengthen our great country. We Christians, then, must stand up for this reality of marriage today in our homes and in the Public Square, despite the real risk of persecution by doing so....

"As one called by Christ to be a shepherd in these times, I also owe you and the Lord clarity in my teaching and its entailing challenge in your vocation to marriage....A section from my recent Apostolic Exhortation to the husbands and wives, mothers and fathers of the Diocese of Phoenix, Complete My Joy, will help me say it most succinctly:  

'The disaster invited by theologians, bishops, priests and laity who rejected Pope Paul VI’s [prophetic] letter is upon us. Enough! What further evidence do we need to see that the Sexual Revolution’s divisions: sexual pleasure separated from procreation, sexuality from marriage, man from woman in divorce, woman from child in abortion, youth from the hope that love can be faithful and beautiful, the elderly from children who can care for them at life’s end—[these divisions] are a plague of misery on a scale never known before. Enough! Husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, you are called to have great hearts here, counter-cultural and brave. You can build something better, freer, more generous, and nobler, beginning in your own home' (Section 59)….

"you, the heads of our domestic churches, the smallest and most vital cells of the Church and of society, have as your primary responsibility to be 'all-in' for your sacramental marriage vows. This entails an extra-ordinary openness to the gift of new human life, whether the child arrives by way of the marital act or via the generous fostering and adoption of children who have no parents....

"Do not be afraid to sink your roots deeply into the living water that is Jesus Christ. He will not abandon you.

"Lead your family, and lead in whatever other place the Lord asks, with deep and childlike faith in Him. Trust in God the Father who loves you, in His Son who frees you by His saving death and glorious Resurrection; He fills you with the Faith, Hope and Love you need to be leaders in the Name of the Risen Christ" (Bishop Thomas Olmstead of Phoenix, National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, 4/23/19).

• Call your [Pa State] Senator to oppose assisted suicide (Pa Pro Life Federation, 4/2/19)

• Please Urge Lawmakers to support an increase in the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) (Pa Catholic Conference, 2/26/19)

• Please urge your [Pa] Representative or Senator to support or co-sponsor Down Syndrome Protection Legislation (Pa Catholic Conference, 2/13/19) 

• Please ask your State Representative to Co-Sponsor the "Heart-Beat Bill" proposed by Stephanie Borowicz (Pa Catholic Conference, 2/11/19)

• Urge your State Senator to co-sponsor Sen. Judy Ward's bill on Keystone Scholarship Program (Pa Catholic Conference, 2/8/19)

• Urge your lawmakers to support [Pa] House Bill 51 which helps individuals looking to receive nursing care (Pa Catholic Conference, 2/4/19)

• [Pa] Lawmakers want to take away our right to vote for judges (Pa Pro Life Federation, 1/28/19 email)
• Action needed to oppose Pa HB 111 (4/24/19)

• NJ Governor Phil Murphy signed assisted suicide into NJ law. To express your outrage, Murphy can be reached at 609-292-6000 or https://www.state.nj.us/governor/contact."

• Ask Legislators to Increase Non Public School Funding (NJ Catholic Conference)

• Protect Viable [New Jersey] Babies in the Womb – Equal rights for children who can survive outside the womb (http://protectviablebabies.com/).

 

• Born-Alive Legislation Deserves a Vote in the People's House (USCCB) (HLA)
• The Discharge Petition to bring the Born Alive Survivors Protection Act to a vote in the House 
• Further Action Needed to Save Babies Born Alive! (USCCB)

• Support the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act (USCCB)
  

• Contact your senators and representative today and urge them to oppose the [so-called] Equality Act! (USCCB)

• Save the Hyde Amendment (March for Life Action)

• Life at Conception Act Petition (National Pro Life Alliance) 

• Contact your U.S. senators and representatives today and ask them to support the LIFT for Charities Act! (USCCB)

• "Senator Lindsay Graham...[has] introduced the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a nationwide ban on abortion after 20 weeks....Senator Graham has introduced this bill or one similar every year since 2013. Although it has never received the 60 votes necessary for cloture, there is some hope that if enacted, it could now be upheld in an inevitable legal challenge due to the majority conservative Supreme Court (Live Action News, 4/11/19).
• I Cherish Life: I call on Congress to ban late term abortions when babies feel pain!(Family Policy Alliance)
  

• Tell the Senate to Reject Religion Tests for Judicial Nominees (USCCB)

• Ask the Department of Homeland Security to Rescind the "Remain in Mexico" Policy and Support Asylum Seekers by Following Existing Law (USCCB)  

• Stop Taxpayer Funding of Abortion (Click for Pa Pro Life Federation petition)

• Sign the Petition to Repeal the Abortion Law (NYS Catholic Conf)

On the right side of the home page, you will find links to email Church leadership about "Catholic" health care, Bucks country representation in DC, Bucks County representation in Harrisburg, Central NJ representation in DC and Central NJ in Trenton.

Divine Mercy Sunday (text/audio of readings) (Signed Homily)

• Pa Family.org, 2019 Election Center

• In LGBT War Against Catholic Adoption, Kids Come Last (Catholic Vote, 4/24/19).
  While Pennsylvania should be proud that Rep Mike Kelly is the primary sponsor of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act in the House (HR 897), only two fellow Pennsylvanians (i.e., Schmucker and Reschenthaler) and one New Jersey representative (i.e., Smith) are joining him! No one from Pa or Jersey is a co-sponsor of S 274 in the Senate!
• LGBT activists threaten Texas with economic protests against conscience protection bill (Calvin Freiburger, 4/24/19)

• The so-called Equality Act "explicitly blocks religious believers from invoking the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.... Some feminists in America, working to foster bipartisan resistance, have nicknamed the bill the 'Women’s Erasure Act.'  It is certainly an attempt to erase the reality of biological sex, and to erase the reality of widespread and reasonable opposition to a new transgender orthodoxy" (National Review, 4/11/19)
• In the U.S. Senate, Robert Casey is a cosponsor of the so-called Equality Act (S.788), as are Booker and Menendez from New Jersey!
• "If the [so-called] Equality Act reaches a full vote in either chamber of Congress, it will mark the first time the bill — which has been introduced in various forms since 1974 — has done so. A similar bill, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, passed the Senate in 2013. Four currently serving Republican senators voted in favor of that bill: Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Patrick Toomey, R-Pa." (NBCNews, 3/11/19).  
• In the U.S. House, Brian Fitzpatrick is one of three Republican co-sponsors of the so-called Equality Act (H.R. 5).  

• The common conservative lament is true: marriage is in retreat in America, and the traditional family is becoming less common. The old conservative warning is also proving true: this retreat from marriage is bad for children and for unmarried adults.
  
  "Contrary to some conservative assumptions, though, it’s not the liberal elites who are saying, 'I don’t.' It’s the working class in 'Real America'….
  
  "What has killed the norm of marriage in the working class is mostly the erosion of community, which itself has centered in working-class places....
  
  "America’s elites still enjoy strong communities, planted thick with institutions—even if they call it 'networking,' and don’t view it as anything special. In places where college degrees are rare and where factory jobs used to dominate, though, the little leagues, the swim clubs, the rotary clubs, and most of all the churches are fading away, delivering a death blow to family formation.
  
  "These local institutions serve as necessary support structures for families. This is obvious to anyone who’s ever tried to raise children. Community, which can seem merely a nice thing to have when you’re a singleton in your twenties, becomes indispensable when you take on the difficult and crucial work of marriage and childrearing....
  
  "A return to marriage doesn’t result from simply introducing good blue-collar jobs into places that don’t already have the infrastructure for supporting families....
  
  "job restoration alone cannot instantly restore the local community institutions that support marriage—like churches, clubs, and local meeting places. These take time to re-emerge organically....
  
  "[Successful work personality] skills, if you think about it, are the basic skills of marriage and fatherhood. Are you reliable, honest, and patient? Can you delay gratification? Do you see the value in self-sacrifice? Are you willing to give decades of your life to your family?
  
  "Good factory jobs rewarded and cultivated these skills, which are best called 'virtues.' This is what community institutions do. Such institutions used to exist in places of all income and education levels. They are now a luxury good.
  
  "Fewer reliable jobs, less marriage, and less civil society are all manifestations of the same phenomenon: life for the working class is becoming deinstitutionalized. The collapse of community exacerbates poverty as adults lose the training grounds and support structures for both reliable work and family. This further weakens community, creating a vicious cycle, and yielding places in Middle America where the lack isn’t merely money—the real lack is the infrastructure around which people can build a family and a good life" (Institute for Family Studies, 4/24/19)

• What happens next after Notre Dame? (Rey Flores, 4/23/19)

• Killing Catholicism: The Drama Of Self-Murder  (Rod Dreher, 4/11/19)
  "look, it’s a Jesuit university, so you expect them to embrace every possible progressive fad that blasts Catholicism to rubble."