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Saturday, July 27, 2013
Friday, July 26, 2013
WYD Pope: Kids, Make a “Mess” in Your Dioceses. Are Adults Allowed? :-)
RIO DE JANEIRO—Pope Francis showed his rebel side on Thursday, urging young Catholics to shake up the Church and make a “mess” in their dioceses by going out into the streets to spread the faith.
It’s a message he put into practice by visiting one of Rio’s most violent slums and opening the Church’s World Youth Day on a rain-soaked Copacabana Beach. Francis was elected Pope on a mandate to reform the Church, and in four short months he has started doing just that: He has broken long-held Vatican rules on everything from where he lays his head at night to how saints are made.
He has cast off his security detail to get close to his flock and his first international foray as Pope has shown the faithful appreciate the gesture. Dubbed the “slum Pope” for his work with the poor, Francis received a rapturous welcome in the Varginha shantytown, part of a slum area of northern Rio so violent it’s known as the Gaza Strip.
At home in slums The 76-year-old Argentine seemed entirely at home, wading into cheering crowds, kissing people young and old and telling them the Catholic Church is on their side. “No one can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world,” Francis told a crowd of thousands who braved a cold rain and stood in a muddy soccer field to welcome him.
No amount of peace-building will be able to last, nor will harmony and happiness be attained in a society that ignores, pushes to the margins or excludes a part of itself.” It was a message aimed at reversing the decline in the numbers of Catholics in most of Latin America, with many poor worshippers leaving the church for Pentecostal and evangelical congregations. Those churches have taken up a huge presence in favelas, or shantytowns such as Varginha, attracting souls with nuts-and-bolts advice on how to improve their lives.
The Varginha visit was one of the highlights of Francis’ weeklong trip to Brazil, his first as Pope and one seemingly tailor-made for the first pontiff from the Americas. Surprise encounter The surprise, though, came during his encounter with Argentine pilgrims, scheduled at the last minute in yet another sign of how this spontaneous Pope is shaking up the Vatican’s staid and often stuffy protocol.
He told the thousands of youngsters, with an estimated 30,000 Argentines registered, to get out into the streets and spread their faith and make a “mess,” saying a church that doesn’t go out and preach simply becomes a civic or humanitarian group.
“I want to tell you something. What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses!” he said, speaking off the cuff in his native Spanish.
“I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!”
Apparently realizing the radicalness of his message, he apologized in advance to the bishops at home.
Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/453569/rebel-pope-urges-youth-to-make-a-mess-in-dioceses#ixzz2aDNemAe5
It’s a message he put into practice by visiting one of Rio’s most violent slums and opening the Church’s World Youth Day on a rain-soaked Copacabana Beach. Francis was elected Pope on a mandate to reform the Church, and in four short months he has started doing just that: He has broken long-held Vatican rules on everything from where he lays his head at night to how saints are made.
He has cast off his security detail to get close to his flock and his first international foray as Pope has shown the faithful appreciate the gesture. Dubbed the “slum Pope” for his work with the poor, Francis received a rapturous welcome in the Varginha shantytown, part of a slum area of northern Rio so violent it’s known as the Gaza Strip.
At home in slums The 76-year-old Argentine seemed entirely at home, wading into cheering crowds, kissing people young and old and telling them the Catholic Church is on their side. “No one can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world,” Francis told a crowd of thousands who braved a cold rain and stood in a muddy soccer field to welcome him.
No amount of peace-building will be able to last, nor will harmony and happiness be attained in a society that ignores, pushes to the margins or excludes a part of itself.” It was a message aimed at reversing the decline in the numbers of Catholics in most of Latin America, with many poor worshippers leaving the church for Pentecostal and evangelical congregations. Those churches have taken up a huge presence in favelas, or shantytowns such as Varginha, attracting souls with nuts-and-bolts advice on how to improve their lives.
The Varginha visit was one of the highlights of Francis’ weeklong trip to Brazil, his first as Pope and one seemingly tailor-made for the first pontiff from the Americas. Surprise encounter The surprise, though, came during his encounter with Argentine pilgrims, scheduled at the last minute in yet another sign of how this spontaneous Pope is shaking up the Vatican’s staid and often stuffy protocol.
He told the thousands of youngsters, with an estimated 30,000 Argentines registered, to get out into the streets and spread their faith and make a “mess,” saying a church that doesn’t go out and preach simply becomes a civic or humanitarian group.
“I want to tell you something. What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses!” he said, speaking off the cuff in his native Spanish.
“I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!”
Apparently realizing the radicalness of his message, he apologized in advance to the bishops at home.
Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/453569/rebel-pope-urges-youth-to-make-a-mess-in-dioceses#ixzz2aDNemAe5
Anarchist Priest to Speak in Archdiocese of Portland at Ecumenical of Ministries of Oregon Church
Catholic priest-reformer Helmut Schuller brings message to Portland
The Rev. Helmut Schuller, controversial within the Catholic
Church because of his support for reform, comes to Portland Aug. 4.
(Austrian Priests' Initiative )
VOCAL This "reform" means women priests, married Roman rite clergy, same sex everything, etc. abortion if it is considered "woman health". Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon is not good for the Archdiocese of Portland to belong to.
VOCAL This "reform" means women priests, married Roman rite clergy, same sex everything, etc. abortion if it is considered "woman health". Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon is not good for the Archdiocese of Portland to belong to.
Schuller, who was vicar general for Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn from 1995 to 1999, was dismissed because his views were at odds with church authorities. The Vatican stripped Schuller of his title of "monsignor" in 2012. He is pastor now of a small rural parish near Vienna. He was a founder of the Austrian Priests' Initiative and their 2011 "Call to Disobedience."
Schuller and members of the priests' initiative oppose the consolidation of parishes, support a greater sacramental role for lay people and advocate new thinking on remarried Catholics and same sex couples. The reformers favor the ordination of women and married men and increased transparency within the hierarchy of the church.
"Priests are losing the chance to walk with members of their communities through their daily lives," Schuller said in an interview this week in the National Catholic Reporter. "This is about more than compassion. It is about companionship and solidarity with laypeople."
He called for "a new teaching model on sexual relations" to guide pastoral care of Catholic couples.
"Our teaching should concentrate on the quality of relationships, not the form," Schuller said. "Rather than condemn remarried Catholics or same-sex couples, we should be asking: How are they living in relationship? Are they respecting one another's dignity? We have to respect that people want to live together, that they feel responsible for one another and that they care for one another."
In the United States, the Catholic Church is coping with an ongoing shortage of priests and parish closures, even as the number of Catholic believers grows. Figures from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University show that
- The number of priests in the U.S. has declined from 58,632 in 1965 to 38,964 in 2012.
- Meanwhile, the number of Catholics in the U.S. has grown from 45 million to 66 million in the same period.
- U.S. Catholic parishes numbered more than 19,000 in 2000 and, after a decade, had declined to fewer than 17,800.
Schuller's first U.S. speaking tour began July 16 in New York City, where 250 people turned out to hear him speak in Judson Memorial Church, a historic Protestant church in Greenwich Village.
The following night in Boston, where Cardinal Sean O'Malley had barred Schuller from speaking at St. Susanna Parish, more than 500 people gathered to hear him at a nearby Unitarian Universalist Church. A spokesman for O'Malley told the Boston Globe that it is archdiocesan policy to ban speakers from Catholic sites if their views are "contrary" to official church teaching.
The only remaining Catholic setting for Schuller's tour was Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. A spokesman for the archdiocese said the priest would not be allowed to speak at a parish or in an archdiocesan setting. Chestnut Hill College is a Catholic school run by the Sisters of St. Joseph. About 350 people squeezed into the room to hear Schuller's speech on campus on July 19.
Archbishop Sample did not wish to comment on Schuller's visit to Portland, Bunce said.
Schuller's speaking tour, called "The Catholic Tipping Point," is sponsored by several Catholic reform groups, including Call to Action, CORPUS, Voice of the Faithful and the Women's Ordination Conference.
The Northwest chapter of Call to Action, which has invited other Catholic reformers to speak in Portland, invited Schuller to speak at Central Lutheran Church, their ordinary meeting place. While organizers expect mostly lay Catholics to attend Schuller's lecture, they are inviting Catholic priests to meet with him informally, according to Nancy Barrett-Dennehy.
Schuller will speak in Seattle at 7 p.m. on Aug. 5 at First United Methodist Church, 180 Denny Way.
-- Nancy Haught
The Pope with a Chotki
What’a chotki? It’s a kind of “prayer rope,” similar to the rosary, used by the Orthodox and Eastern rite Catholics.
From Wikipedia:
When praying, the user normally holds the prayer rope in the left hand, leaving the right hand free to make the Sign of the Cross. When not in use, the prayer rope is traditionally wrapped around the left wrist so that it continues to remind one to pray without ceasing. If this is impractical, it may be placed in the (left) pocket, but should not be hung around the neck or suspended from the belt. The reason for this is humility: one should not be ostentatious or conspicuous in displaying the prayer rope for others to see.
During their tonsure (religious profession),[4]Eastern Orthodox monks and nuns receive a prayer rope, with the words:
Accept, O brother (sister) (name), the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17) in the everlasting Jesus prayer by which you should have the name of the Lord in your soul, your thoughts, and your heart, saying always: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”
Orthodoxy regards the prayer rope as the sword of the Spirit, because prayer which is heartfelt and inspired by the grace of the Holy Spirit is a weapon that defeats the Devil.
Among some Orthodox monastics (and occasionally other faithful), the canonical hours and preparation for Holy Communion may be replaced by praying the Jesus Prayer a specified number of times dependent on the service being replaced. In this way prayers can still be said even if the service books are for some reason unavailable or the person is not literate or otherwise unable to recite the service; the prayer rope becomes a very practical tool in such cases, simply for keeping count of the prayers said. However, among some monastics - hesychasts, for example – this replacement is the norm.
The history of the prayer rope goes back to the origins of Christian monasticism itself. When monks began going into the deserts of Egypt, it was their custom to pray the entire 150 Psalms every day. However, because some of the monks were unable to read, they would either have to memorize the psalms or perform other prayers and prostrations in their stead.
Thus the tradition of saying 150 (or more) Jesus Prayers every day began.
The western Rosary is sometimes said to have the same initial origin.
The invention of the prayer rope is attributed to Saint Pachomius in the fourth century as an aid for illiterate monks to accomplish a consistent number of prayers and prostrations in their cells.
Previously, monks would count their prayers by casting pebbles into a bowl, but this was cumbersome, and could not be easily carried about when outside the cell. The use of the rope made it possible to pray the Jesus Prayer unceasingly, whether inside the cell or out, in accordance with Saint Paul‘s injunction to “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17).
It is said that the method of tying the prayer rope had its origins from the Father of Orthodox Monasticism, Saint Anthony the Great. He started by tying a leather rope with a simple knot for every time he prayed Kyrie Eleison (“Lord have Mercy”), but the Devil would come and untie the knots to throw off his count. He then devised a way—inspired by a vision he had of the Theotokos—of tying the knots so that the knots themselves would constantly make the sign of the cross. This is why prayer ropes today are still tied using knots that each contain seven little crosses being tied over and over. The Devil could not untie it because the Devil is vanquished by the Sign of the Cross.Among other things, I think this shows the pontiff’s affinity for the Eastern rite churches. He used to regularly concelebrate the Divine Liturgy with Ukrainian Greek Catholics and this year took the historic step of having the Ecumenical Patriarch attend his papal installation—the first time that’s been done in a thousand years.
Thank you for this article.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
‘Heads should roll’: Pro-life leaders react to U.S. Bishops agency’s funding of abortion giant PSI
"Somebody has to get fired over
this,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights
Institute (C-FAM). “We fight groups like PSI all over the world and now we find
our own church funds them. It's disgusting and for one I am bone-weary of these
types of revelations. Heads should roll."
BALTIMORE, Maryland, July 19, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pro-life leaders are
expressing outrage after LifeSiteNews.com revealed Thursday that the U.S.
Bishops’ foreign relief agency is funding a leading abortion-marketing firm.
Catholic Relief Services is distributing a two-year $2.7 million grant to Population Services International (PSI), which networks and trains local providers throughout the developing world to offer “safe abortion.”
"Somebody has to get fired over this,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). “We fight groups like PSI all over the world and now we find our own church funds them. It's disgusting and for one I am bone-weary of these types of revelations. Heads should roll."
Fr. Shenan Boquet, president of Human Life International, said he finds it
“incomprehensible” that an organization like PSI was deemed worthy of Catholic
funds.
PSI’s “primary mission has always been to promote contraception,
abortifacient drugs, condoms, and even surgical abortion,” he said. “Like many
other population control groups in the mid-1990s, they started to rebrand their
mission as being about 'health', using more positive language and adding
malaria-prevention programs to their portfolio. But this should not confuse
anyone as to their purpose.”
Judie Brown, president of American Life League, said the news was “not surprising.” “Catholic Relief Services has historically been advocates, although not publicly – behind the scenes – advocates of population control in the Third World,” she charged.
Brown’s point was echoed by Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, who said CRS implicates itself in population control by the very fact that it receives over two thirds of its funding from USAID.
“CRS knows very well what the principal purpose of USAID is. And it tries to, in various ways, to massage that purpose, and avoid being implicated in the purpose of population control,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, they know who’s paying their salaries, and that’s why the money goes to CARE, that’s why the money goes to PSI, that’s why the money goes back and forth to other population control agencies, because that’s what their masters in the federal government demand of them.”
“This (CRS Catholic Relief Services is not an agency of the institutional Catholic Church. This is a separate aid agency, which, because it receives two thirds of its funding from the U.S. government, is Catholic in name only,” he added. “No man can serve two masters.”
The grant
The $2.7 million grant to PSI is part of a Global Fund-backed project run by CRS in Guinea to combat malaria. The funds are disbursed over the two years of the project’s initial phase, from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2013.
When LifeSiteNews questioned CRS about the grant, they initially claimed PSI had merely acted as a vendor by selling them mosquito nets, but when presented with more information, the Catholic agency acknowledged that the abortion giant is taking a decidedly more active role.
“To be clear, now that we have had more time to talk with staff involved in the project, the money did not go specifically to purchase the nets but rather to implement other parts of the grant which is focused on distributing 3 million nets and making sure they are properly used to save thousands of lives by preventing malaria,” Michael Hill, CRS’ Senior Writer, told LifeSiteNews on Thursday.
PSI, he said, is leading the project’s mass media marketing campaign as well as “training and overseeing community health workers” and “community organizations.”
Though the Catholic agency stressed that PSI’s role was restricted only to malaria prevention, concern over the grant is heightened by the fact that PSI describes its work on malaria as “deeply intertwined” with its “reproductive health” agenda.
“Reproductive, maternal and child health and malaria are all deeply intertwined, affecting poor and vulnerable populations in rural areas together,” the organization wrote in a program description [link] for a USAID-funded project in Madagascar running from 2008-2013.
“Success (or failure) in one area, such as malaria, can free up resources to focus on other areas, or drag down progress.” (Fungible Fundin
Integrating these programs, they add, “offer[s] many opportunities to reach target audiences.”
As LifeSiteNews reported Thursday, PSI’s “reproductive health” agenda is heavily abortion-focused. On its own webpage, the firm explains that it “works to increase access to WHO-approved medical abortion drugs,” and mentions its provision of medical abortions in Cambodia and Nepal, noting that in Cambodia it launched the country’s “first safe medical abortion drug, known as Medabon.”
The firm markets a “safe abort kit” in India as a part of a project that aimed to “facilitate … over 200,000 safe abortions using medical abortions” from 2008-2013 by focusing “both on the demand and supply side” of the medical abortion market.
At a “maternal health” conference in Tanzania on January 16, 2013, a PSI employee delivered a talk titled “Creating the misoprostol market”. (See video here.)
Numerous job ads are accessible online showing PSI seeking to fill various roles in its campaign for globally-accessible abortion. Among them is one seeking a candidate with “clinical proficiency [in] surgical and medication abortion.”
For more evidence of PSI’s work in the abortion industry view Thursday’s LSN report.
CRS willing to go to ‘third level of hell’, just not the tenth
LifeSiteNews initially began investigating CRS’ relationship with PSI because the Catholic agency’s IRS filings for 2012 showed that they had given PSI a grant of $9,588 for “agriculture.”
But it turns out that CRS has a history of working with PSI going back at
least over a decade. A page on
the website of the Centers for Disease Control describes a safe water initiative
in Madagascar, with an implementation date of April 2000, that CRS partnered on
with PSI and CARE. On PSI’s website, CRS is listed as a partner in Zambia, Haiti, and Guinea. According to PSI’s webpage on
Guinea, CRS partnered with them on a measles vaccination program there during
2009.
CRS has defended similar grants in the past, such as its multi-million dollar annual donations to the pro-abortion group CARE, by arguing that the funds are given only for projects in line with Catholic teaching and are not fungible because of the way the grant agreements are established.
But the Catholic agency has also said that it would never give a dime to Planned Parenthood. “We would never partner with Planned Parenthood,” communications director John Rivera told LifeSiteNews last year. “We’ve given this a lot of consideration, and there’s a threshold in terms of what the focus of an agency is, and the preponderance of their work.”
In Thursday’s report, Michael Hichborn, director of American Life League’s Defend the Faith Project, said that CRS, in funding PSI, “might as well be funding Planned Parenthood.”
Judie Brown, ALL’s president, slammed the funding policy. “If you read Dante, there’s the ten levels of hell,” she said. By the policy’s logic, she said, “CRS is willing to go to the first, second, and third level of hell. They’re just not willing to go to all the way to the tenth.”
“The underlying philosophical bent of all of those organizations is ridding the world of poor people,” she added. “It’s just that they’re pecking order of how they get that done is a little bit different. The underlying philosophy is exactly the same.”
“CRS should not be collaborating with any of the population control agencies funded by USAID, which means all of the agencies that receive money for ‘family planning,’ ‘reproductive health,’ and ‘population stabilization,’” said Mosher. “They are not as well known as Planned Parenthood, obviously, but they are all cut from the same cloth.”
John Smeaton, chief executive of the UK’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), said CRS’s claims that their multi-million dollar grants to groups like CARE and PSI are not supporting their evil actions are utterly false.
“Firstly, CARE and PSI's knowledge that, year after year, CRS will give them millions of dollars for ostensibly ethical projects enables them to budget and plan ahead for their unethical activities,” he said. “Secondly, receiving millions from CRS helps whitewash their reputations in the wider world and entrenches their presence in the countries where they operate.”
“Lastly, there are legions of pro-life/pro-family Catholic initiatives which desperately need funding, such as MaterCare International, the Billings Ovulation Method and Culture of Life Africa,” he added. “CRS' millions for CARE and PSI should be given to them instead."
A plea to the U.S. Bishops
According to Brown, the problems at CRS are “something that we’ve tried to call attention to the bishops for a long time.”
“The longer the bishops remain in denial, the more obvious this population control aspect of CRS is going to become. Because they have nothing to lose, they have nothing to fear,” she cautioned.
In her view, the issues are so deep that an attempt at reform simply wouldn’t be enough. “What has to happen is that the USCCCB itself has to dismantle this organization completely,” she said. Unfortunately, she added, “I just don’t see that happening.”
Mosher urged action from individual bishops in their dioceses. “What we need in the United States is for a number of bishops to … say that until these problems with CRS are cleared up, they will not be taking a collection for CRS,” he said. “They will be encouraging Catholics in the U.S. to give to authentic Catholic charities.”
“If you sup with the devil, you need a long spoon,” said Mosher, but “there is no spoon long enough to sup with this particular devil.”
“This particular devil is in the business of destroying human life and any agency that’s supposed to be Catholic must not have anything to do with that agenda.”
Contact info:
Cardinal Robert Sarah
Pontifical Council "Cor Unum"
Palazzo San Pio X
V-00120 Vatican City State
Phone: +39-06-69889411
Fax: +39-06-69887301 or +39-06-69887311
E-mail: corunum@corunum.va
Find contact information for all U.S. Bishops here.
Readers may also comment on Catholic Relief Services’ Facebook page.
Catholic Relief Services is distributing a two-year $2.7 million grant to Population Services International (PSI), which networks and trains local providers throughout the developing world to offer “safe abortion.”
"Somebody has to get fired over this,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). “We fight groups like PSI all over the world and now we find our own church funds them. It's disgusting and for one I am bone-weary of these types of revelations. Heads should roll."
PSI’s “primary mission has always been to promote contraception,
abortifacient drugs, condoms, and even surgical abortion,” he said. “Like many
other population control groups in the mid-1990s, they started to rebrand their
mission as being about 'health', using more positive language and adding
malaria-prevention programs to their portfolio. But this should not confuse
anyone as to their purpose.”Judie Brown, president of American Life League, said the news was “not surprising.” “Catholic Relief Services has historically been advocates, although not publicly – behind the scenes – advocates of population control in the Third World,” she charged.
Brown’s point was echoed by Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, who said CRS implicates itself in population control by the very fact that it receives over two thirds of its funding from USAID.
“CRS knows very well what the principal purpose of USAID is. And it tries to, in various ways, to massage that purpose, and avoid being implicated in the purpose of population control,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, they know who’s paying their salaries, and that’s why the money goes to CARE, that’s why the money goes to PSI, that’s why the money goes back and forth to other population control agencies, because that’s what their masters in the federal government demand of them.”
“This (CRS Catholic Relief Services is not an agency of the institutional Catholic Church. This is a separate aid agency, which, because it receives two thirds of its funding from the U.S. government, is Catholic in name only,” he added. “No man can serve two masters.”
The grant
The $2.7 million grant to PSI is part of a Global Fund-backed project run by CRS in Guinea to combat malaria. The funds are disbursed over the two years of the project’s initial phase, from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2013.
When LifeSiteNews questioned CRS about the grant, they initially claimed PSI had merely acted as a vendor by selling them mosquito nets, but when presented with more information, the Catholic agency acknowledged that the abortion giant is taking a decidedly more active role.
“To be clear, now that we have had more time to talk with staff involved in the project, the money did not go specifically to purchase the nets but rather to implement other parts of the grant which is focused on distributing 3 million nets and making sure they are properly used to save thousands of lives by preventing malaria,” Michael Hill, CRS’ Senior Writer, told LifeSiteNews on Thursday.
PSI, he said, is leading the project’s mass media marketing campaign as well as “training and overseeing community health workers” and “community organizations.”
Though the Catholic agency stressed that PSI’s role was restricted only to malaria prevention, concern over the grant is heightened by the fact that PSI describes its work on malaria as “deeply intertwined” with its “reproductive health” agenda.
“Reproductive, maternal and child health and malaria are all deeply intertwined, affecting poor and vulnerable populations in rural areas together,” the organization wrote in a program description [link] for a USAID-funded project in Madagascar running from 2008-2013.
“Success (or failure) in one area, such as malaria, can free up resources to focus on other areas, or drag down progress.” (Fungible Fundin
Integrating these programs, they add, “offer[s] many opportunities to reach target audiences.”
As LifeSiteNews reported Thursday, PSI’s “reproductive health” agenda is heavily abortion-focused. On its own webpage, the firm explains that it “works to increase access to WHO-approved medical abortion drugs,” and mentions its provision of medical abortions in Cambodia and Nepal, noting that in Cambodia it launched the country’s “first safe medical abortion drug, known as Medabon.”
The firm markets a “safe abort kit” in India as a part of a project that aimed to “facilitate … over 200,000 safe abortions using medical abortions” from 2008-2013 by focusing “both on the demand and supply side” of the medical abortion market.
At a “maternal health” conference in Tanzania on January 16, 2013, a PSI employee delivered a talk titled “Creating the misoprostol market”. (See video here.)
Numerous job ads are accessible online showing PSI seeking to fill various roles in its campaign for globally-accessible abortion. Among them is one seeking a candidate with “clinical proficiency [in] surgical and medication abortion.”
For more evidence of PSI’s work in the abortion industry view Thursday’s LSN report.
CRS willing to go to ‘third level of hell’, just not the tenth
LifeSiteNews initially began investigating CRS’ relationship with PSI because the Catholic agency’s IRS filings for 2012 showed that they had given PSI a grant of $9,588 for “agriculture.”
But it turns out that CRS has a history of working with PSI going back at
least over a decade. A page on
the website of the Centers for Disease Control describes a safe water initiative
in Madagascar, with an implementation date of April 2000, that CRS partnered on
with PSI and CARE. On PSI’s website, CRS is listed as a partner in Zambia, Haiti, and Guinea. According to PSI’s webpage on
Guinea, CRS partnered with them on a measles vaccination program there during
2009.CRS has defended similar grants in the past, such as its multi-million dollar annual donations to the pro-abortion group CARE, by arguing that the funds are given only for projects in line with Catholic teaching and are not fungible because of the way the grant agreements are established.
But the Catholic agency has also said that it would never give a dime to Planned Parenthood. “We would never partner with Planned Parenthood,” communications director John Rivera told LifeSiteNews last year. “We’ve given this a lot of consideration, and there’s a threshold in terms of what the focus of an agency is, and the preponderance of their work.”
In Thursday’s report, Michael Hichborn, director of American Life League’s Defend the Faith Project, said that CRS, in funding PSI, “might as well be funding Planned Parenthood.”
Judie Brown, ALL’s president, slammed the funding policy. “If you read Dante, there’s the ten levels of hell,” she said. By the policy’s logic, she said, “CRS is willing to go to the first, second, and third level of hell. They’re just not willing to go to all the way to the tenth.”
“The underlying philosophical bent of all of those organizations is ridding the world of poor people,” she added. “It’s just that they’re pecking order of how they get that done is a little bit different. The underlying philosophy is exactly the same.”
“CRS should not be collaborating with any of the population control agencies funded by USAID, which means all of the agencies that receive money for ‘family planning,’ ‘reproductive health,’ and ‘population stabilization,’” said Mosher. “They are not as well known as Planned Parenthood, obviously, but they are all cut from the same cloth.”
John Smeaton, chief executive of the UK’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), said CRS’s claims that their multi-million dollar grants to groups like CARE and PSI are not supporting their evil actions are utterly false.
“Firstly, CARE and PSI's knowledge that, year after year, CRS will give them millions of dollars for ostensibly ethical projects enables them to budget and plan ahead for their unethical activities,” he said. “Secondly, receiving millions from CRS helps whitewash their reputations in the wider world and entrenches their presence in the countries where they operate.”
“Lastly, there are legions of pro-life/pro-family Catholic initiatives which desperately need funding, such as MaterCare International, the Billings Ovulation Method and Culture of Life Africa,” he added. “CRS' millions for CARE and PSI should be given to them instead."
A plea to the U.S. Bishops
According to Brown, the problems at CRS are “something that we’ve tried to call attention to the bishops for a long time.”
“The longer the bishops remain in denial, the more obvious this population control aspect of CRS is going to become. Because they have nothing to lose, they have nothing to fear,” she cautioned.
In her view, the issues are so deep that an attempt at reform simply wouldn’t be enough. “What has to happen is that the USCCCB itself has to dismantle this organization completely,” she said. Unfortunately, she added, “I just don’t see that happening.”
Mosher urged action from individual bishops in their dioceses. “What we need in the United States is for a number of bishops to … say that until these problems with CRS are cleared up, they will not be taking a collection for CRS,” he said. “They will be encouraging Catholics in the U.S. to give to authentic Catholic charities.”
“If you sup with the devil, you need a long spoon,” said Mosher, but “there is no spoon long enough to sup with this particular devil.”
“This particular devil is in the business of destroying human life and any agency that’s supposed to be Catholic must not have anything to do with that agenda.”
Contact info:
Cardinal Robert Sarah
Pontifical Council "Cor Unum"
Palazzo San Pio X
V-00120 Vatican City State
Phone: +39-06-69889411
Fax: +39-06-69887301 or +39-06-69887311
E-mail: corunum@corunum.va
Find contact information for all U.S. Bishops here.
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