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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
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Five of Ann Scheidler's granddaughters at the annual Scheidler Girls' Tea Party
The Obama for President campaign recently released a video they’re calling “Dreams of our Daughters,” a letter to the president from Erin Bilbray-Kohn, who waxes eloquent about the dreams and ambitions of her two daughters, six-year old Daisy and and 10-year old Caroline.
According to Bilbray-Kohn, Daisy and Caroline are disciplined and focused on careers as a dolphin doctor and a military officer.
But apparently they are not disciplined enough to avoid ruining their dreams with an unplanned pregnancy. Recall Barack Obama’s comment during the 2008 campaign that he wouldn’t want his daughters “punished with a baby.”
Bilbray-Kohn’s letter strikes the same chord. [Continue reading ...]
Participants at the March 23 Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally in Philadelphia
Yesterday, 43 Catholic institutions filed suit against the Obama Administration over the HHS Mandate.
News of these lawsuits shouldn’t come as a surprise. Since early March, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has been all but guaranteeing that lawsuits would be filed.
A few weeks later, Dolan, appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, said, “We didn’t ask for this fight, but we won’t back away from it.”
Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon points out in the Wall Street Journal how it’s come to this in an op-ed appropriately titled, “Why the Bishops Are Suing the U.S. Government” that is accompanied by a picture of some of the 2,300 participants at the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally in Philadelphia on March 23 (see above, right).
Professor Glendon writes:
The main goal of the mandate is not, as HHS claimed, to protect women’s health. It is rather a move to conscript religious organizations into a political agenda, forcing them to facilitate and fund services that violate their beliefs, within their own institutions. [Continue reading ...]
Lawsuits were filed by 43 Catholic institutions in federal court today against the Obama Administration over the HHS Mandate.
Among the plaintiffs, the University of Notre Dame is the most significant.
In announcing its lawsuit, Notre Dame’s president, Father John Jenkins, CSC, sent an email to university employees in which he wrote:
Today the University of Notre Dame filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana regarding a recent mandate from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). That mandate requires Notre Dame and similar religious organizations to provide in their insurance plans abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization procedures, which are contrary to Catholic teaching. The decision to file this lawsuit came after much deliberation, discussion and efforts to find a solution acceptable to the various parties.
Let me say very clearly what this lawsuit is not about: it is not about preventing women from having access to contraception, nor even about preventing the Government from providing such services. [Continue reading ...]
Despite a strong rebuke delivered to Georgetown University by the Archdiocese of Washington, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius addressed the graduates of the school’s Public Policy Institute this morning.
In her remarks, Sebelius couldn’t resist wading into the area of church/state relations. Toward the end of her speech, she said the following:
Ultimately, public policy is about making difficult choices. Today, there are serious debates underway about the direction of our country – debates about the size and role of government, about America’s role as a global economic and military leader, about the moral and economic imperative of providing health care to all our citizens. People have deeply-held beliefs on all sides of these discussions, and you, as public policy leaders, will be called on to help move these debates forward.
These are not questions with quick and easy answers. When I was in junior high, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was running for president. I wasn’t old enough to vote, but it was the first national campaign I really remember. Some of then-Senator Kennedy’s opponents attacked him for his religion, suggesting that electing the first Catholic president would undermine the separation of church and state, a fundamental principle of our democracy. The furor grew so loud that Kennedy chose to deliver a speech about his beliefs just seven weeks before the election. [Continue reading ...]
Father Norman Weslin offers Mass at the Pro-Life Action League office, circa 1992
Father Norman Weslin died Wednesday at the age of 81 at a retirement home in northern Michigan. He was a devoted friend of the Pro-Life Action League, and on multiple occasions offered Mass in our office and in the Scheidler home.
Before he was ordained, Father spent twenty years on active duty in the Army, earning the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. While in the Army he married and he and his wife, Mary, adopted two children.
In 1980, shortly after he was discharged, Mary was killed in an automobile accident.
Both of them had been ardent pro-lifers, and the tragic loss led Weslin to found the Mary Weslin Homes for Pregnant, Unwed Mothers. This home has served more than 300 single mothers and still operates in Omaha.
Following Mary’s death, Father entered the seminary and was ordained a priest of the Oblates of Wisdom in 1986. He gathered a group of activist pro-lifers in 1988 and founded The Lambs of Christ.
Although the Lambs peacefully prayed at abortion clinics, they were frequently arrested. As they were representing the unborn babies, they would not give their names when they were arrested, but knew each other by a chosen name beginning with “Baby.” [Continue reading ...]
The Archdiocese of Washington has sharply criticized Georgetown University’s decision to invite HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to address its School of Public Policy’s upcoming diploma ceremony.
A recent the editorial in Catholic Standard, the Archdiocese of Washington’s official newspaper, notes:
Founded in 1789 by John Carroll, a Jesuit priest, Georgetown University has, historically speaking, religious roots. So, too, do Harvard, Princeton and Brown. Over time, though, as has happened with these Ivy League institutions, Georgetown has undergone a secularization, due in no small part to the fact that much of its leadership and faculty find their inspiration in sources other than the Gospel and Catholic teaching. Many are quite clear that they reflect the values of the secular culture of our age. Thus the selection of Secretary Sebelius for special recognition, while disappointing, is not surprising.
Monsignor Charles Pope, a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, comments thusly on the importance of the preceding paragraph: [Continue reading ...]
It’s hard to not sound over-the-top in describing how much of an outrage it is that the speaker at Georgetown University’s School of Public Policy diploma ceremony on May 18 will be none other than Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The fact that the nominally Catholic architect of the HHS Mandate — which has been publicly denounced by every single bishop who leads a diocese in the U.S. — is being granted this honor by America’s oldest Catholic university is hard to believe.
Yet at the same time, given the history of the choice of commencement speakers at some other reputable Catholic universities in recent years, it isn’t hard to believe at all.
Clearly, as the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) observes, Georgetown’s invitation to Sebelius “can only be interpreted as a direct challenge to America’s Catholic bishops.” [Continue reading ...]
One of last weekend’s “Unite Women” rallies juxtaposed with one of last month’s “Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rallies
On Saturday, rallies were held to “Unite Against the War on Women”, a pretty obvious response to the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally campaign spearheaded by the Pro-Life Action League and Citizens for a Pro-Life Society.
As the picture indicates, the response was paltry. Even in New York City, where thousands gathered on March 23 in defense of religious freedom, only a few hundred showed up to protest.
They may have had a few B-list celebrity speakers, but they were pitching their muddled message to largely empty audiences. Outside of some talk about the so-called “war on women”, their message was as scattered as could be. [Continue reading ...]
Children of God for Life (COGFL) announced today that PepsiCo will no longer use aborted fetal cell lines in their agreement with Senomyx to develop flavor enhancers for their products.
COGFL called for a boycott of PepsiCo last May, and the Pro-Life Action League signed on immediately.
Clearly, PepsiCo’s decision to stop using aborted fetal cell lines was in response to the thousands of complaints lodged by pro-lifers in the past year.
Via LifeSite:
“We are absolutely thrilled with PepsiCo’s decision,” stated [COGFL Executive Director Debbie] Vinnedge. “They have listened to their customers and have made both a wise and profound statement of corporate integrity that deserves the utmost respect, admiration and support of the public.” [Continue reading ...]
The Pro-Life Action League reported last week about the stunningly powerful homily recently given by Bishop Daniel Jenky, CSC in which he excoriated President Obama’s “radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda.”
In response to Bishop Jenky’s homily, some faculty members of the University of Notre Dame are calling on him to step down from the University’s Board of Fellows.
Why?
Because in his homily, Bishop Jenky said the following:
Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room.
In the late 19th century, Bismarck waged his “Kulturkampf,” a Culture War, against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany.
Clemenceau, nicknamed “the priest eater,” tried the same thing in France in the first decade of the 20th Century. [Continue reading ...]