Italian Baby Lives For Almost 2 Days After Abortion

A priest at Cosenza hospital found a baby lying in a sheet with it's umbilical cord still attached 20 hours after an abortion procedure. The child was still breathing and so was brought to the neonatal intensive care unit where it died almost two days after the botched abortion. Charges may be pending for infanticide indicating that the law may require doctors to try and save a child that survives an abortion meant to kill it only an instant before birth.

Article from the Telegraph

The Culture of Death and Its Leaders are Anathema!

Kevorkian is back. Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the infamous physician who assisted more than 130 people to their deaths, was released from prison after 9 years behind bars followed by 2 years of parole which has been completed. He currently lives in Michigan. Thanks be to God he cannot practice medicine in any state thus far and those with some notion of morality and a basic understanding of the ethics involved in the medical field would be surprised as to the amount of support he has gained - not only here in the US but worldwide - for his atrocious behavior and the heinous practices he had committed and continues to advocate in the medical field.

In a recent interview on CNN, Kevorkian stated: “I didn’t do it to end the life but to end the suffering the patient was going through. What’s a doctor to do, turn his back?” Of course, Kevorkian insinuates that doctors who would not perform assisted patient suicides lacks courage in his comment that “they are only concerned with money and the bottom line.” His conviction is that someone like him and those who assisted him with the physician assisted suicides are the courageous ones. “Doctors play God all the time,” he continued in the interview questioning. “Anytime you interfere with any natural process you’re playing God. God determines what happens naturally. Patients want to live as long as possible and not suffer so they call a doctor to help them end the suffering.”

In their February 2010 letter regarding the recent healthcare legislation enacted by the Obama administration, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo (Committee on Pro-Life Activities), Bishop William Murphy (Committee on Justice and Human Development), and Bishop John Wester (Committee on Migration) all strongly urged congressional leaders of both the democratic and republican camps to commit themselves to enact genuine healthcare reform that protects life, dignity, conscience, and healthcare for all. The brief but decisive letter went on to state: “The Catholic bishops....as pastors and teachers, [we] believe that genuine healthcare reform must life and dignity from conception to natural death, not threaten them, especially for the voiceless and vulnerable.” Although the letter was not specifically in regards to the death practices of physicians like Kevorkian, the issue is not moot because of conscience clauses in medical facility policies and federal funding to hospitals, such as those in Oregon, whereby such practices are condoned.

“Is there a God?,” this question being put to Kevorkian towards the end of the interview. His response, “I don’t know. I’m a scientist. It’s my natural right to do whatever I want with my body as long as it doesn’t affect anybody else or any others property, and as long as I give myself permission to do it. That’s in the Constitution, in the ninth amendment, whi

ch is ignored.”

Different ways of ending peoples’ lives: some way to allow the person to hit the switch and start the intravenous solution that I would mix and put in the pump [as was in the first case of assisted suicide with a quad patient of Kevorkian’s], then there came gas because since he was not allowed by authorities to do the mixture anymore, followed by the invention of a device he would put over the patients heads with a gas. In his final case he actually injected the patient so that he could be charged so as to go to court with the intent of having the case go before the Supreme Court so as to try and not only get the publicity and worldwide support for life-ending practices, but also to hasten decision that would ultimately lead to them being placed on the law books.

“The law has forced me to do this in the most undignified way,” he said as he elaborated that no family are present, no other medical caregivers are able to help because they would be at risk of legal charges. “They don’t care about the patient but the letter of the law,” he stated - they, I would surmise to say, meaning anyone who does not support his heinous practices. “I would do it again if I knew for certain that I wouldn’t go to jail.”

Although Kevorkian cannot continue with physician assisted deaths, he continues to give advice on how to end one’s life and he hopes that the law will stand out of the picture and that religion would stop pushing against him on the issue so that he can continue his death practicing methods.

Kevorkian is profiled in the HBO movie You Don’t Know Jack, which aired 24 April 2010, and in light of the movie, as well as the Death with Dignity Act passed in Oregon legislature and the Washington Death with Dignity Act that went into effect just a year ago, terminally ill patients (and, in some cases, their family members) are deciding more and more in favor of receiving some sort of death assistance; by the letter of the law, by prescriptions, and by some form of participation in favor of death by their physician(s). Oregon released a report in the spring of 2009, depicting the data by bar graph of those requesting some form of assisted suicide since the passing of the Death with Dignity policy which can be found via the link provided below.

Click here - Death with Dignity Act data: 2009

All Ontario Grade Schools (Catholics too) to Get Sex-Ed

A new sex-ed initiative in Ontario will mandate for all grade schools. Sixth grade teachers must inform their students about masturbation and seventh graders will be instructed on the subjects of oral and anal sex. First graders will begin learning how to identify by name the different sexual organs. The government says parents are free to remove their children from the classroom if they choose.

More at Yahoo News

The Ten Commandments: Our Way to Freedom and Life

In a homily delivered at a Mass the morning of 16 April, for the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the Holy Father said that in modern times we have seen a theoretical premise according to which human being would be, “free, autonomous, and nothing else.” Not only does this mean a freedom from every responsibility that we have as members of one common human race - models of morality, justice, compassion, charity - but also freedom from the duty of obedience to God. The Holy Father remarked that this, “Is a lie... because human being does not exist on its own, nor does it exist for itself.”

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church, in part I titled, “God’s Liberating Action In the History of Israel,” explains that God’s gratuitous presence is seen “as the origin of what exists, as the presence that guarantees to men and to women organized in a society the basic conditions of life, placing at their disposal the goods that are necessary... On the other hand, he appears as the measure of what should be, as the presence that challenges human action - both at the personal and at the social levels - regarding the use of those very goods in relation to other people.” We should acknowledge all that we receive from God as coming from Him and, once acknowledged, we are called to be thankful for his gratuitousness (of which he has no obligation to us in any way) and manage the gifts received in a way praiseworthy of God and of neighbor.

Social Justice is a concept based on a socially just world. Its basis lies in concepts of human rights and equality, economic and political equality, and a common respect deserving of every human being, each receiving his equal due (that is, the Golden Rule). But, social justice is more than just equal due and concepts of equality. It is a participation in God and His divine attributes of Goodness, Truth, Oneness. Furthermore, when speaking about equality in general, especially in the political realm with a focus on economics, paramount emphasis must be and remain on the human person and the dignity therein. As a dear friend of mine pointed out, ‘laws and policies of

the state must uphold and defend dignity’ because the human person is a paragon of equality by means of participation in God. We must, therefore, take care in promoting certain political ideologies that assert a certain special type of equality among all members of society, particularly in areas of economics. This is because when promoting these sorts of ideologies there begins to take root, more times than not, a type of governance and society in which conflicts arise between members that, ultimately, lead to a distortion or abolition not only in a belief in God and universal truths including (and not limited to) respect for human life/dignity, but also members of society identifying the self via materialistic and individualistic notions. In the end and above all such notions the challenge is not that certain inequalities exist, but rather that our participation in the divine attributes help us to see ourselves reflected in God’s own image whereby we adhere more fully to His eternal ordinances that promote faith in God, hope for eternal life, and charity for oneself and towards each other.

We exist for God and nothing more. Pope Benedict XVI, in his homiletic remarks regarding human existence, promotes thoughts of God’s gratuitous presence in the Old Testament as manifested in the freeing of the Israelites from their captivity to Pharaoh in Egypt. “The gratuitousness of this historically efficacious divine action,” section 22 of The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church goes on to tell us, “is constantly accompanied by the commitment to the covenant proposed by God and accepted by Israel,” the covenant being the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mt. Sinai (Ex.19-20). It is the Ten Commandments that imply our involvement in and consequences of the Natural Law placed in every human heart by God to respond to His loving initiative by cooperating with his divine plan from the beginning of time: to love, worship, and subject ourselves to Him.

In his homily during the Mass for the Pontifical Biblical Commission the Holy Father also stressed that for Christians, true obedience to God depends on our truly knowing Him, and he warned against the danger of using “obedience to God” as a pretext for following our own human desires.

It is by our turning [back] to the Ten Commandments as the means for truly living in freedom from sin that we truly understand ourselves with the natural law written in our souls, the essential duties we are charged with as the highest of God’s created things, and the fundamental rights of all human persons, most especially the poorest of the poor and the unborn. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church concludes Part I sec. 22 by stating: “In the Gospel, Jesus reminds the rich young man that the Ten Commandments (cf. Mt. 19:18) ‘constitute the indispensable rules of all social life.’ ” In order to overcome the rebellious and disobedient mentality towards God and all things religious in the world today, we must seek God’s love once again as the Israelites of old went to great strides to seek resulting in their initial exodus out of Egypt, as well as God answering their cries for help time and time again whenever they orphaned themselves during their sojourn in the dessert on the way to the Promised Land. It is only through God’s love that we will begin to mend the rupture of unity among ourselves and other creatures we have been given dominion over (cf. Gen 1:26-31). The Ten Commandments will lead us back to God who is our freedom, knowledge, and truth; our means to overcome “all the evils that afflict social relations between people, of all the situations in economic and political life that attach the dignity of the person, [and those] that assail justice and solidarity” (The Compendium of the Social Doctrine, P.I, sec. 27).

The Holy Father concluded his homily during Mass by asking for prayers for true and eternal life, love, and truth.

Thai Archbishop Suspects Hidden Agenda Behind Protests

Archbishop Francis Xavier Kriengsak Kovithavanij of Bangkok has asked for a peaceful resolution in settling the rift between the protesters and the current government that is still legimately running the country. He also alluded to a hidden agenda behind the protesters who have attacked military sites with grenades. He fears the country may be pulled into a civil war.

Full Story at Catholic Culture News