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TUESDAY January 24, 2000 vol. 11, no. 16 SECTION TWOSee why so many consider the Daily CATHOLIC as the "USA Today for CATHOLICS!"
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We've enlisted Frank Joseph, MD, a committed retired Catholic physician from Southern California to write a special pro-life column for the DailyCATHOLIC which will appear each Wednesday exulting the Catholic beliefs on creation and procreation in upholding the Sanctity of Life. During Respect Life Week we will be carrying his column each day as an introductory promotion. For his introductory column, see Pro-Life Prescriptions: LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!
Life is beautiful from conception
How could our society sink so low? How can any stretch of human
thinking, come to the conclusion that, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," does not
include the killing of unborn babies?
If someone were to destroy the Mona Lisa, the world would be up in
arms about it. Where is their outrage, when a baby is butchered inside
its mother's womb? Can there be any comparison between the most
famous paintings in the world and God's most magnificent creation --
human life? How did our values get so twisted?
There used to be a time when the safest place to be, was in the motherâs
womb. She would protect her unborn baby with her life. Now, since
Roe Vs Wade, it's the most dangerous place on the face of the earth --
33% of the time, the unborn will be killed.
If the unborn is lucky to have a loving mother he/she will live. If the
unborn's mother is self-indulgent and couldn't care less, he/she will be
condemned to death in a horrible manner. Nowadays, it's the luck of
the draw, that will determine if you live or die. What a sad commentary
on our public morals. Life and death decisions should be in the hands
of God, our Creator, and not at the whim of the unborn baby's mother.
One of the fundamental premises of our society is that we are all endowed
by our CREATOR; not by a woman's decision; not by court decisions,
but by our CREATOR with inalienable rights. The killing of unborn babies
destroys that premise, thus destroying everything that you believe in --
even the Declaration of Independence:
Notice, that it does NOT say that all men are "born equal." It says,
"all men are CREATED EQUAL."
Our learned forefathers knew what they were doing when they wrote
the Declaration of Independence. They chose their words carefully, so
there would be no misinterpretation. They could very easily have said,
"all men are born equal," but that would not have included unborn babies.
The Pro-aborts will not accept the words of our founding fathers.
They are willing to trash our country's most revered document, just
to satisfy their killing agenda. How did we let this happen?
It's not a private issue concerning a woman's decision. It's like slavery -
when human beings were not considered whole persons and had no
rights and were subject to the will of their owners.
It's the most important issue of public principle that America faces today.
Balancing the budget, welfare reform, foreign aid, health care, tax reform,
school vouchers -- you name it -- they're all a distant second to the
American holocaust -- the killing of unborn babies -- a.k.a. abortions.
Are we to be a nation under GOD with compassion, love and decency,
or a barbaric nation of degeneracy, which embraces the ideology that
one of our freedoms should be TO KILL, if we so choose.
Respect for life is a principle and when women are given the power to
decide if a helpless baby in their womb is going to die, then don't be so
surprised when they think that a baby is subject to their will, and kill it
five seconds after it's born and throw it in a dumpster, or five years after
it's born. The principle of violence is the same.
And don't be surprised when the killing of 1.4 million unborn babies
yearly, becomes a major factor in the public's perception that life is
cheap. That perception will be stored in the brain, where it will be
retrieved to determine all future actions and reactions.
Now, we have to suffer the consequences of that perception. Do you like
what you hear or read when you turn on the news, or read the newspapers
these days?
So don't be surprised if a person's disrespect for the sanctity of life rubs
off on their children, and don't be surprised when children kill children.
This culture of death, arising from the legalization of abortions and
propagated by the Pro-aborts is completely devoid of love.
Remember love -- it's love that enables us to "lay down our lives for
for our children." In abortions, it's just the opposite. "My child, you
must lay down your life, so that I can live as I want to." This selfish
reason goes against everything that's in the Bible:
"Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these
brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me"
We were all created by God in His own image at conception -- when the
sperm fertilizes the ovum (egg) -- not at birth.
There's not a scientist in the world, who could dispute the fact that life
begins at conception. To kill a developing baby in the womb, is the same as killing a baby after
it's born. Both are human beings, created by God. It's not just a small
sin -- it's a mortal sin.
Now this should not be hard for any Godly person to understand.
"For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my
mother's womb."
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born
I set you apart."
How those who say they believe in God, can ignore the above scriptures
is beyond me.
When the sperm fertilizes the egg, the result is the zygote, which has its
own genetic code (DNA) and destiny -- this beginning of human life is
an indisputable scientific fact, and not based on religious views.
However Judeo-Christian teaching on abortion acknowledges this
scientific fact.
To pick out a certain developmental stage to justify the killing of the
unborn is a travesty of justice. It is scientifically unsound and without
any semblance of logic, since the development of a human being is a
continuum - zygote, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and adult.
To interrupt this continuum of life at any stage, violates God's will, as He
told us: "Thou Shalt Not Kill."
Unborn babies should not be discriminated against and targeted for death
just because they're growing and developing inside their mother's womb,
anymore than they should be targeted for death after birth, since in both
cases they are continuing to grow and develop.
The location of the development is inconsequential, and should not be
held against the unborn and used as an excuse to kill them.
After a baby is born, it is still not fully developed.
The cranial bones are not closed; the eyesight has not been fully developed.
Many newborns have heart murmurs because the heart valves are not fully developed.
These types of murmurs eventually disappear. In young infants, speech
has not been developed. In young children, the reproductive system has
not been developed. These are just a few examples.
What's next - kill your baby after it's born, because it's still not fully
developed and cannot care for itself. You can see what a twisted,
convoluted logic this is and where it can lead. Or has it already led us
down the path of self-destruction?
Why do women who kill their newborn baby, just get a slap on their wrist?
Is it any wonder that the killing of 35 million unborn babies since Roe
Vs Wade, has given everyone the perception that life is cheap. And the
closer the newborn is to its birth, the less its life is worth, because it's
more closely associated to the unborn and we all know that the unborn
baby is fair game.
It's inconceivable to think that the Pro-aborts can't understand simple
scientific facts explaining the beginning of human life. Or is it that they
just refuse to believe it?
The only other explanation would be, that they are just plain selfish --
their
self-indulgence is paramount and human life is secondary -- pick one.
How sad -- this disrespect for human life...the greatest of all of God's
creations.
However, I can understand their decision to have an alternate
conceptualization of reality. After all, when you're a party to the
killing of 35 million unborn babies, you'd better make up reasons
that you can live with.
God bless,
I'm a physician, MD and even though I have delivered many babies, I'm
still in awe of the miracle of life and that life's subsequent birth. It
boggles my mind how a physician who has taken an oath to preserve life, can
actually kill a defenseless unborn baby -- literally ripped out, many times
in pieces, from the mother's womb.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness."
In 2000 we will be bringing you the Holy Father's words twice a week enabling us to bring you his weekly Wednesday Papal audiences on Mondays and his Sunday Angelus address on Thursdays. Today, we bring you the words from January 19th where His Holiness began his series on the Most Blessed Trinity, showing how the Son of God and the Holy Spirit flow from the Father and in the current of salvation history, washes us in redemption through the Mystery of the Incarnation and Resurrection as part of God's master plan for mankind. See THE VICAR OF CHRIST SPEAKS
2. Inspired by an image offered by the Book of Revelation (cf. 22:1), we can compare this path to a pilgrimıs journey along the shores of the river of God, that is, of his presence and of his revelation in the human history. Today, to provide a synthetic idea of this path, we will pause on the two extreme points of this river: its source and its mouth, united by one horizon between them. In fact the divine Trinity is the origin of both being and history, and is their ultimate goal. It constitutes the beginning and the end of salvation history. Between the two extremes of the Garden of Eden (cf. Gen 2) and the tree of life in the Heavenly Jerusalem (cf. Rev 22), stretches a long series of ups and downs marked by shadows and light, sin and grace. Sin has distanced us from the splendor of Godıs paradise; redemption brings us back to the glory of a new Heaven and a new earth, where "Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more" (Ibid., 21:4).
3. The first vision on this horizon is offered by the initial pages of Sacred Scripture, which point to the moment in which Godıs creative power made the world from nothing: "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1). This vision is deepened in the New Testament, ascending to the heart of the divine life, when John, at the beginning of his Gospel, proclaims: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (Jn 1:1). Before the creation and at its foundation, this revelation makes us contemplate the mystery of the one God in the Trinity of persons: the Father and his Word, united in the Spirit.
The biblical writer of the page on creation could not have suspected the profundity of this mystery; much less could he have reached its pure philosophical reflection, since the Trinity is beyond the capabilities of our intellect, and can be known only through revelation.
And yet, this mystery, which infinitely surpasses us, is also the reality closest to us, as the source of our being. In fact, in God we "live, move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28), and we can apply what St. Augustine said of God to all three divine persons: He is "intimior intimo meo" (Conf. 3, 6, 11) [more intimate than my most intimate]. In the depth of our being, where even we cannot see, grace makes present the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God in three Persons. The mystery of the Trinity, far from being an arid truth confined to the intellect, is the life that resides in us and sustains us.
4. Our contemplation in this Jubilee year takes as its starting point this trinitarian life, which precedes and founds creation. In the mystery of the origins from which everything springs, God appears to us as He Who is the fullness of being and comunicates being, as the light that "illuminates everyone" (cf Jn 1:9), as Living Being and giver of life. Above all He appears to us as Love, according to the beautiful definition in the First Letter of John (cf 1 Jn 4:8).
He is love in His intimite life, where the Trinitarian dynamism is the very expression of eternal love with which the Father generates the Son, and with which both reciprocally give Themselves in the Holy Spirit. It is love in the relationship with the world, since the free decision to create it from nothing is the fruit of this infinte love that radiates in the sphere of creation. If the eyes of our hearts, illuminated by revelation, are made pure and penetrating enough, they become capable in faith of engaging this mystery, in which all that exists has its roots and foundation.
5. But as we mentioned at the beginning, the Trinitarian mystery is also before us as the finish line towards which history runs, as the homeland for which we yearn. Our Trinitarian reflection, following the boundaries of creation and history, will look for this destination, which the book of Revelation very effectively describes for us as the seal of history.
It is this the second and final part of the river of God, that we have not much evoked. In the Heavenly Jerusalem, orgins and end come together. In fact, we see God the Father Who is seated on the throne and says: "See, I make everything new" (Rev 21:5). Next to Him is the Lamb, Who is Christ, on His throne, with His light, with the book of life that records the names of the redeemed (cf. Ibid., 21: 23-27; 22:1-3). And at the end, in a sweet and intense dialogue, the Spirit Who prays in us and together with the Church, which is the Lambıs spouse, says: "Come, Lord Jesus" (cf. Ibid., 22:17-20).
Let us then return to the conclusion of this first sketch of our long pilgrimage in the mystery of God, to the prayer of Dionysius the Areopagite who reminds us of the necessity of contemplation: "It is in the silence, in fact, that they learn the secrets of this darkness ... that shines with the most dazzling light... It, even remaining perfectly intangible and invisible, fills with splendors more beautiful than beauty the intelligences that know to close their eyes" (Theologia mystica I,1).
Today is the Feast of Saint Francis de Sales, the Bishop and Doctor of the Church, who is the patron saint of journalists and communicators, while tomorrow we celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. For the readings, liturgies, meditations, and vignettes on these feasts, see DAILY LITURGY.
NOTE: We respectfully recognize and accept the final authority regarding apparitions, locutions and prophecies presently being reported around the world rests with the Holy See of Rome and the Magisterium of Holy Mother Church to whose judjment we humbly and obediently submit.
Dear children! This is the time of grace. Little children, today in a special way with little Jesus, Whom I hold in my embrace, I am giving you the possibility to decide for peace.Through your 'yes' for peace and your decision for God, a new possibility for peace is opened. Only in this way, little children, this century will be for you a time of peace and well-being. Therefore, put little newborn Jesus in the first place in your life and He will lead you on the way of salvation. Thank you for having responded to my call.
