BURGOS, Spain, July 14, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Archbishop of Burgos, Francisco Gil Hellín, has issued a call to Spanish Catholics to resist the country’s new abortion law, which he says is no law at all.

In a statement published on the bishops’ Catholic Information Service, Gil Hellín laments the recent promulgation of the law, an “evil law which is directly opposed to right reason and the most elemental justice. Such is the law that establishes that the Spanish have the right to kill the unborn, as long as they do it before 14 weeks.”

“Let us diagnose it with total clarity: this law is no law, although it is presented as such by some political and legislative bodies. And it isn’t because no one has the right to eliminate an innocent. For that reason, it doesn’t obligate. Even more, it demands a head-on opposition without reservation. Right reason cannot admit as a right the killing of an innocent person.”

The new abortion law, which is being contested before Spain’s Constitutional Tribunal, abolishes penalties for all abortions during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.  It also allows minors to obtain abortions without parental permission, although they must first inform their parents of their intention to do so.

The archbishop rejects arguments that claim the law is somehow valid because it was passed by the legislature and approved according to the required legal processes.

“It is a fallacy to affirm that this law has been approved by the majority of the Parliament and that this represents the majority of the citizens, or to say that if the Constitutional Tribunal decrees its conformity [with the Constitution] it would be disobedience to oppose it, and would deserve a punishment. The fallacy consists in attributing to politicians, judges, or citizens a right that they don’t have, and no one has the right to legislate that an innocent can be killed.”

“What society would continue if it declared that is the right of citizens to kill innocent persons by majority [vote]? In the best scenario it would be converted into a tyranny, against which upright persons would have to react, according to this advice by Gandhi: ‘As soon as one understands that obeying unjust laws is contrary to his dignity as a man, no tyranny can dominate him.’”

The archbishop’s strong statements were made only days before the Constitutional Tribunal is to decide if the law will be suspended while it is under review.

A previous ruling of the Tribunal in the 1980s decreed that the right to life of the unborn child is paramount except in certain cases, including danger to health, rape, or fetal deformity.

Steven W. Mosher, Population Research Institute

Prophecies of Humanae Vitae

By Father Paul Marx, OSB

On July 25, 1968, Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae re-affirmed the Catholic teaching on life, love and human sexuality. In that document, he listed the consequences of life lived outside Catholic teaching.

He predicted that:

1.    Contraception would lead to conjugal infidelity.

2.    Contraceptive practice would lead to a “general lowering of morality.”

3.    Contraception would lead men to cease respecting woman in their totality and would cause them to treat women as “mere instruments of selfish enjoyment,” rather than as cherished partners.

4.    And finally, widespread acceptance of contraception by couples would lead to a massive imposition of contraception by unscrupulous governments.

In other words, Pope Paul VI predicted that contraception would evolve from “a lifestyle choice” into a weapon of mass destruction. How dreadfully his prophecy has been vindicated by population control and coercive sterilization programs, fertility reduction quotas and the promotion of abortion literally everywhere in the world.

Contraception’s destruction of the integrity of the marital act—as unitive and procreative—has dire consequences for society and for our souls. Contraception, in other words, is a rejection of God’s view of reality. It is a wedge driven into the most intimate sphere of communion known to man outside of the Holy Sacrament of the Mass. It is a degrading poison that withers life and love both in marriage and in society.

By breaking the natural and divinely ordained connection between sex and procreation, women and men—but especially men—would focus on the hedonistic possibilities of sex. People would cease seeing sex as something that was intrinsically linked to new life and to the sacrament of marriage.

Does anyone doubt that this is where we find ourselves today?

Anti-abortion march attracts thousands

‘The hands of South Africa’s lawmakers are dripping with blood.’ said Archbishop Buti Tlhagale to more than 2,000 anti-abortionists who marched on Saturday 13 March with the Archbishop from the Cathedral of Christ the King to Constitution Hill where officials from the Department of Health accepted a petition addressed to the Minister of Health calling for an end to abortion.

South Africa is a young democracy – said the Archbishop – yet those at the helm have wasted no time in ‘binning God’. They tolerate religion so long as it is practiced in private. South Africa’s law makers deny that God is the source of all freedom. The Act simply frees a person from moral responsibility, from the dictates of their conscience. Since abortion is approved by Government legislation it cannot be wrong is the reasoning which sees morality reduced to a personal preference. The debate around moral regeneration is simply that – debate. There is no search for elusive moral value, not much conscience. In the debate there are no absolutes, no non-negotiables.  For Christians God is the author of life and we have to answer to Him on the issue of abortion. Yes, there are tensions between individuals and tension between the church and politicians who have legislated the killing of life in the womb but society is far too lazy to search for the truth, to do what is moral.

We are on a cause of life. We march today because the Church is duty bound to raise its voice; duty bound to value life, especially life in the womb. South Africa’s lawmakers deny life and offer abortion on demand.  In this country child rape, brutal abuse of women and children, drugs, violent road deaths are common. Amidst this everyday violence the gospel calls us to protect and revere life. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is unambiguous. Life is of unassailable, inestimable value and abortion is a deplorable crime.

Doctors and nurses are pledged to serve life, not death. How long will it be before the South Africa’s constitution protects life?

The Archbishop called on young people to respect their bodies, respect life and speak out. Silence means complicity.

‘Love God, love your neighbour.’ he urged the assembly. ‘Protect and defend life – life from its inception!’

Permission for the march was withheld until Thursday. Nevertheless it was well attended and marchers were well disciplined. Some carried graphic photos of aborted babies, others images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, patroness of the unborn.  SAPS and Metro police accompanying the march were redirected from the ‘Old Fort’ entrance to the Con Court entrance.

Where: Salesian Institute Chapel, Cnr. Somerset Rd & Chiappini St , Green Point

Time: 09:30 –11.30

We will process prayerfully to the Marie Stopes Abortion Centre at 91 Bree Street Cape Town, with full permission from the City Council

Led By: Fr Andrew Cox

Times (approx) are as follows:

09.30am : Holy Sacrifice of the Mass celebrated at Salesian Institute Chapel

10.00am : Prayerful and peaceful procession to Marie Stopes, Bree Street, processing with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Holy Rosary and Hymns

11.30am : Return Procession with Prayers and Hymns, ending with Benediction at 12pm

After Mass the Blessed Sacrament will be exposed for adoration, and some people will stay to adore the Blessed Sacrament.

Please join us – you really do make all the difference. And try to bring someone with you!

For further Information Contact The Helpers of God’s Precious Infants:

Telephone: 021-8520473 or 0822550473

P.O.Box 1601, Cape Town, 8000

Or see our website for more information about the Helpers and for a schedule of forthcoming vigils www.icon.co.za/~host/helpers/index.htm or email helpers@telkomsa.net

“Any country that accepts abortion is the poorest of the poor”

Mother Teresa

The Bill proposes that the 1996 law be amended  “so as to ensure a woman or child is able to make a fully informed choice regarding the termination of her pregnancy.”

The bill proposes that all facilities that perform abortions should provide access to proper counselling, as required by the regulations of the Act. The reality is that most facilities do not provide sufficient counselling and information about alternatives.

The bill suggests that all abortion facilities should:

(a)     have access to ultrasound equipment which must be used (i)  accurately to determine  the gestation period prior to TOP and, (ii) to provide relevant information as to the state of the development of the unborn child thereby assisting the mother to make an informed choice.

(i)   gives access to counselling which:

(i) must comply with Regulation 7 of the Regulations made under the principal Act

(ii) provides full opportunity for discussion and questions;

(iii) provides sufficient information, including electronic pictures, or diagrams and photographs, to enable the woman or child to understand the development of the unborn child;

(iv) includes discussion of the extent of the risks involved in continuing the pregnancy as set against the risks involved in terminating the pregnancy including breast cancer, depression and future difficulties in conceiving and bearing children and

(v) available alternatives to abortion including adoption and state and other support available to the mother.

For more information please contact

Cheryllyn Dudley, MP: 082 890 6520 or

Liziwe Ndalana, ACDP Parliamentary Media Liaison

Tel: 021 403 3307 / 072 103 8899

Holy Mother, we pray to your Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart for all mothers and all unborn children that they may have life here on earth and, by the most Precious Blood shed by your Son, that they may have eternal life with Him in heaven. We also pray to your Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart for all abortionists and all abortion supporters that they may be converted and accept your Son, Jesus Christ, as their Lord and Saviour.   Defend all of your children in the battle against Satan and all evil spirits in this present darkness. AMEN.

While the world is increasingly caught up in the quest for pleasure and hedonism, we have become inured to the reality of an evil unprecedented in the history of humanity – legalized abortion.

Abortion is the murder of the innocent, a sin crying out to Heaven for vengeance.   We are defying the laws of our Creator!   The extent of this veritable holocaust to the powers of evil is difficult to comprehend: over 50 million helpless victims world-wide every year.

South Africa is now on this same course. Let us storm Heaven for mercy from God so that more enlightened knowledge prevails with the most powerful means we have at our disposal, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass!

Under the patronage of Our Lady of Guadalupe you are asked to have a Mass offered annually on the date of your birth, which will ensure that frequent Masses will be said for all babies threatened by abortion in this country.

If you would like to participate in this crusade, please give your name, address, telephone No, as well as your day and month of birth. We will send you a timely reminder to arrange with a priest to have your Mass offered.

The stipend payable should be arranged with your priest.  You can, if you wish, state as the intention of the Mass ‘for all babies threatened by abortion and their mothers’, or, ‘for the right of children to be born’ or ‘for the conversion of mothers considering abortion, abortion providers and the Government’ or similar.

Just as Holy Mary of Guadalupe extinguished human sacrifice in the Aztec world of the sixteenth century, standing for life and offering the abundant new life won by the self-sacrifice of her Son, so too can she be importuned to end the sacrifice of millions of babies in our own world to-day.   It is altogether appropriate that she become the focus of our prayers on behalf of these innocents.

- Janet Barber I.H.M.

If we proceed from the assumption that, after birth, human infants are beings with moral status (who therefore enjoy a right to life), the onus is on pro-abortion advocates to show how the nature of a newborn infant is different from the foetus before birth; in other words why birth represents a morally significant dividing line.  It is clear that birth does not change the nature of the being in question in any morally significant way.  To make this event the marker of the infant acquiring moral status is irrational and arbitrary.

One can now ask whether there is any point in pregnancy (or characteristic of the foetus which is developed during pregnancy) which represents a morally significant dividing line, in other words, which changes the nature of the foetus in such a way that it becomes a being with moral status, when it was not such a being previously.  South African law makes no reference at all to the nature of the foetus, but implies that 20 weeks is such a dividing line, as conditions under which abortion is legal are extremely limited after this point.  If 20 weeks is a morally significant dividing line, the onus is on lawmakers to show why this is so.  If one cannot say why his point is morally significant, the decision to disallow abortion after this point, while allowing it before this point, is arbitrary.

Characteristics which have been considered relevant in this regard are quickening, the ability to feel pain, or viability.  However, none of these characteristics can be shown to be morally significant.  The inability to move, feel pain, or survive independently cannot be rationally defended as characteristics which deprive a being of moral status (they do not count as such after birth – imagine the implications if they did).  It is impossible to identify a point in pregnancy which represents a morally significant dividing line, apart from conception, when a new being comes into existence.  Therefore we are logically left with two options – acknowledge that the foetus has moral status from conception, or deny that it has moral status, and accept the implications of this, which is that infanticide is acceptable.  As the second option is morally repugnant to most people, and is not accepted in South African law, we must logically accept that the foetus has moral status from conception.

It would still be possible to defend abortion if one defends the proposition that the mother’s right to bodily autonomy supersedes the foetus’ right to life.  However, if the foetus is a separate being with moral status, who therefore has the right to life, this is a far more fundamental right than the right to bodily autonomy, and this defence therefore does not hold.

I knew it would be a moving scene-and it was. They sat quietly praying the
rosary in the middle of the wide driveway. The elderly bishop looked like he
came out of a Norman Rockwell painting, while the young friar with him
resembled a figure in a Giotto fresco in the medieval Basilica of St. Francis.
Every demonstration has a sense of drama – a clash of ideas-people dedicated
to opposing points of view and holding them with real emotion.
The thought occurred to me: Today there was no way that the opposition to
life was going to be able to match these two men willing, as they were, to
take on the whole federal government if necessary in their opposition to
infanticide. Congress and the courts had made it clear that they might have
to take on the federal government in their effort to stand up for the
sanctity of life.

Both of these prolife witnesses knew what they were doing. Bishop George
Lynch, the retired auxiliary bishop of Raleigh, N.C., and Brother Fidelis
Moscinsid, a student friar of the Franciscans of the
Renewal, had been arrested many times before. Both had spent extended time
in jail. Both were well aware of the possible consequences of their actions,
a form of civil disobedience to an unjust law that
permits and even encourages the destruction of human life for personal
convenience. They are both soft-spoken, gentle people, not the type to
enjoy such confrontation.

Aware of the absurdity of being arrested for defending babies from
destruction, they were both calmly serious about their witness, which is, in
itself, a profoundly serious act of Christian discipleship. Bishop Lynch has
been to jail more than 20 times. Recently he was taken from Westchester
County Jail to his doctor in handcuffs. This was, no doubt, to fulfill some
regulation lest he run away. He had
told demonstrators protesting his imprisonment: “Don’t be upset. The rest of
the people in here don’t want to be here. I want to be in jail.”

Brother Fidelis, for all his youthful appearance, has been a jailbird too.
Before joining the friars he had to drop out of his Rutgers University class
to spend two months in the same county jail. Like many in the prolife
movement, he’s convinced that the protection of human life is the greatest
single moral challenge facing our society, requiring religious groups to act
as a conscience for the nation.

This picture is incomplete, though, without mentioning the 30 other people
who showed up that early Saturday morning. These prolife demonstrators were
old hands at anti-abortion protests and knew the rules of engagement.
They kept moving as they prayed the rosary, lest they
be accused of loitering. Three so called “pro choice” pickets were also
experienced demonstrators, but none of them had done jail time for their
convictions. This morning they were not only outnumbered but outclassed.
Jenny shows up first and spends her time shouting “prochoice” in an obvious
but futile attempt to interrupt the rosary. Then there’s Bob who refers to
me as “mister monk” and once told me to go back to my “comfortable life.” We
don’t answer such provocations but I was really tempted to invite Bob to
accompany me on my daily routine. Bob’s specialty is telling us that we are
“crazy, wicked, hell itself.” Bob’s no dope, though, and when he observed the
dignity of the old bishop and the young friar blocking the gate, he
retreated to the other side of the street and focused his attentions on the
police who quietly went about their embarrassing task.

Then there was Judy. She’s openly, almost violently antiCatholic. Since most
of the weekly demonstrators at the abortion clinic in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., are
Catholics, she tends to forget that millions of Protestants, Eastern
Orthodox Christians, Jews, Moslems and Buddhists are equally opposed to
abortion on demand. Judy’s shouted remarks are so anti-Catholic that they
technically constitute a disturbance of the peace-a common enough activity
for pro-abortion demonstrators, but one I’ve never witnessed once with
prolife people. About the noisiest thing we do is sing hymns. Suddenly, in
the midst of all this, the manager of the clinic arrived and drove up to the
gate so quickly that she came to a breathtaking stop a few feet from Brother
Fidelis. A police officer pointedly asked her if she was trying to hit him.
I’m told that this lady’s name is Ruby and she works for the abortion
doctor, Stephen Kali.

I keep them all in my distracted prayers because I fear for their eternal
judgment and I fervently hope that they have a change of heart someday and
join us in campaigning for life. The three noisy
demonstrators, Judy, Bob and Jenny, don’t appear to be paid clinic
employees, although they could be. Unlike the directors and employees of the
place they don’t seem to be profiting from this shedding of blood. Even some
of those who have made a living off abortion have been converted and are
well known prolife activists today. We all prayed for the opposition-paid
and unpaid-outside that abominable death house.

There are some other members of the cast who should be mentioned. The Dobbs
Ferry Police went about their task in a quiet, professional way. They
appeared to be embarrassed when they had to drag the old bishop off to the
side in handcuffs. I don’t think that the officers ever thought that
enforcing the law would require them to drag a 78-year-old bishop off to
jail for doing something holy. Surely the greater sin is on those who’ve
passed the unjust laws which demand such a response.

We cannot leave out the judge who ordinarily handles these cases. Judge Luba
Iler is known for dealing with prolife demonstrators with a serene
objectivity-touched at times with severity. She’s sent
prolifers to jail, Bishop Lynch and Brother Fidelis among them.

Today’s charge was not so bad, disorderly conduct. Except that the whole
thing is a travesty of justice-something like the trial of St. Thomas More.
Is it really “disorderly” to pray at the entrance to a place of death? The
law has gone mad since Roe vs. Wade.

We were all appalled when 19 children were killed in a federal building in
Oklahoma City by a mad bomber. But that many children are killed every
Saturday in Dobbs Ferry under the protective mantle of the courts and
Congress. Mother Teresa is certainly right when she says that abortion is
the greatest threat to world peace. Whose conduct is disorderly? That
Saturday morning in Dobbs Ferry, the disorderly conduct of Bishop Lynch and
Brother Fidelis, in fact, had a marvelous result: Two women who came for
abortions turned around and did not kill their children.

Some people tell me that they don’t like to demonstrate, although Pope John
Paul has called upon us to use conscientious objection and protest to lift
the conscience of a nation in his encyclical, “The Gospel of Life.” If
demonstrating is not your “thing”-then what are you doing for life? I
believe we who live in this dreadful time will be asked that question on
judgment day.

I do not think that American Catholics can feel that they have responded to
the Gospel of Life until there’s a quiet group of Christians praying every
morning outside every abortion clinic in our country. Then the ultimate
“disorderly conduct,” the murder of the innocent and defenseless, will come
to an end and the curse will be taken off our land.

Father Benedict J. Groeschel, C.FR., is a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal
and a spiritual writer.

Taken from the “National Catholic Register,” July 16, 1995. For
subscriptions contact the “National Catholic Register”, P.O. Box 260380,
Encino, CA 91426-0380, (800) 421-3230.

Provided Courtesy of:
Eternal Word Television Network
5817 Old Leeds Road
Irondale, AL 35210