Key Upcoming Culture-of-Life Gatherings/Projects

Please join us to remember, to celebrate our good work, and to hope in a brighter future for humanity.
  
January 22, 2005 Respect-Life Mass

Saturday, January 22, 2005

The 4:30 p.m. Mass at the Immaculata Parish - Reception to Follow

5998 Alcala Park, USD Campus, just off of Linda Vista Road
(free parking in the new parking structure two blocks east of the Church)

Click on the photo of The Immaculata above for a map to The Immaculata:

For information or questions about this event, contact Jo Brower at 858-490-8323. 

 Short Reports on OSM Related Issues/Events

And then, as always, please report back via e-mail reportback@diocese-sdiego.org on how your call to Senator Frist's office went.

e-link Advocacy REPORTBACK

The Knights Of Columbus and Mission Circle at St. James in Solana Beach have been using Fair Trade Coffee for after Mass and for pancake breakfast for several months now.  I purchase the coffee via the internet at Cafe Mom www.cafemam.com, located in Eugene, Oregon.   It is excellent tasting coffee, competitively priced at $32.00 for a 5 pound bag for French Roast, and the service is excellent.  I first became aware of Fair Trade coffee via an article in St. Anthony Messenger magazine about a year ago.  Our Mission Circle November Newsletter contains another article on Fair Trade Coffee and CRS's endorsement and encouragement to go Fair Trade!
 
Peace!
 
Peter Godefroy
St. James Mission Circle
 
 

Thank you, Peter, for reporting back on your success with Fair Trade Coffee!

Kent, Linda, Jim, and Jo 


If readers would still like to order Fair Trade Coffee from Catholic Relief Services, please visit www.osmelink.org and see e-link #29 in the 2004 folder.

Web and e-mail-based Resources

Angel in the Waters is a story of a child in its mother's womb, who grows, explores the waters, and talks with the angel who is also there.  

The narrative flows through simple, poetical text with gentle illustrations chronicling the child's small but momentous journey from life to the first moments of birth.
 
This is a story every small child will enjoy, for it is also their story.

One grandmother wrote, "This is the most beautiful, loving, sensitive book about new life I have ever read.  It will surely make a lasting impression on every child and parent who shares it.  I will share it with everyone I know who has young children and grandchildren.  What a wonderful Christmas gift for my grandchildren!"  Lynn K.

On the Angel in the Waters web site, you will be able to view the entire book, page by page, and place orders.  The quality of the artwork and printing in this book is remarkable.

Click on the book cover above or the address below to access the Angel in the Waters web site. 

http://www.angelinthewaters.com/

New Local/Regional Events and Gatherings 

If you are planning an event that falls within the mission of social ministry, send the particulars four to five weeks in advance to the Office for Social Ministry via e-mail, osmelink@diocese-sdiego.org.  The OSM reserves the right to publish or not to publish any proposed event information.  We hope this will assist your local efforts to re-build a culture of life.

1. The Migrant workers in North County are experiencing great need.  Won't you help during this Christmas Season?

Migrant workers in need… Mark Day of Ecumenical Migrant Outreach and others report desperate living conditions for migrant workers living in the canyons of North County.  If you can donate tarps, warm clothing for men (sizes small, medium or large), knit hats, gloves, flashlights, small cans of butane for heating food, rain ponchos, umbrellas, dried noodles soups, backpacks, new socks, instant hot chocolate or coffee, hygiene items (toothpaste, toothbrush, combs, hand cream, lip balm, bath soap) or sleeping bags, please drop them off at Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad, 202 Chestnut St. in Carlsbad or Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Rancho Penasquitos, 13541 Stoney Creek Road.  For more information, contact Barb Perrigo (Pilgrim UCC) at (619)709-9803 or Christauria Akong(OLMC) at 858-484-5405.

                                                                                         
2. The Forced Migration Laboratory at the UCSD Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and the International Rescue Committee will present An Update from Dafur:

AN UPDATE FROM DARFUR, given by DAVID DEL CONTE, Humanitarian Affairs Officer,
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

A graduate of the University of San Diego, Mr. Del Conte has extensive experience in humanitarian affairs.  He has served with the San Felipe Humanitarian Alliance in Nicaragua, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kosovo, Albania, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and since April 2004 with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Southern Darfur.  Mr. Del Conte will be sharing his personal experiences and observations on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and will not be officially representing OCHA.                      

Watch for OSM e-link bulletin #31 around Monday, January 10, 2004  
 

Article/Statement for December 15, 2004

In this essay, Cy hits several nails squarely on their heads.  Thank you, Cy, for your clarity of thought and insightful vision of what we might do to blunt the madness that is Proposition 71. 

Mitigating the Evil of Prop. 71

By Cyril Jones-Kellett

It is now a constitutional right in the state of California to clone human beings and destroy them for research.  What is more, the state is committed to spend $3 billion on this type of activity in the coming years.  This is so because Prop. 71 passed on the November ballot by a margin of 59 to 41 percent.

Because the presidential election was so dramatic this year, little media attention was focused on Prop. 71, and there has been little discussion of it since its passage.  So it is possible to go on as if it didn't happen.

The unfortunate fact is, however, that the citizens of California have committed themselves to an astonishing barbarity.  Such a thing is rare in the history of the United States, and it should not go unlamented.  Voters, for example, never approved the general abortion license that was established by the court in Roe.  But California's voters have now committed themselves -- in a constitutional amendment, no less -- to the systematic creation and destruction of human lives for research purposes.

People of good will should not simply acquiesce to this quietly.  We must speak up and try to find ways to help our fellow citizens turn back from the path of bald power madness that this change in our state constitution represents.

It is unlikely that anything can be done to repeal this brutal law, but there are things that can be done to mitigate its evil effects.  This is where we must concentrate our energies now.

To that end, five suggestions:

1) We must find some way to break through the denial that allows people to pretend that prenatal human life is not really human.  Scientists have known for more than a century that mammalian life begins when a sperm and egg combine.  For decades we have known the specific mechanism of this moment of conception in humans -- the combining of the male and female genetic material, creating a new and genetically unique human life.  And still there is the pretense that all of this is somehow shrouded in an impenetrable mystery, that there is something called a "gray area" where we don't really know if human life is present.  This is patently false.  Human life begins at conception.  It is simply a denial of basic science to say otherwise.  The only "gray area" is whether we are willing to accept the implications of this scientific knowledge, or whether we are willing to ignore it so that we can do as we please.

2) We must help the sick to have hope.  The proponents of Prop. 71 played on the fear that unless we are willing to do even the most morally repugnant things, we are never going to get cures for paralysis, Parkinson's, and a host of other ailments.  This is terribly hopeless thinking. Science is making great advances in other areas.  Hope is springing up all over; we don't need to be so desperate that we will try anything.

3) We must educate people, especially young people, to intelligently parse subtle moral distinctions.  The proponents of Prop. 71, for example, posed the argument as one between those who support stem cell research and those who oppose it.  But almost everyone, including California's Catholic bishops, has come out strongly in favor of stem cell research.  The debate was about whether to allow the destruction of embryonic humans. S omehow, we need to find ways to develop clarity in the public sphere on these often hard to see distinctions.

4) We need to create a grassroots anti-cloning coalition.  Most people have enough moral good sense to see that cloning is wrong.  The opponents of Prop. 71 should have labeled it the "pro-cloning" proposition and framed all their media efforts as opposing a California leap into the creepy world of human cloning.  This is an area where people's hearts are still open to hear the truth.  Someone needs to ask Michael J. Fox, and other media stars that lavished their public capital on Prop. 71, "Don't you think cloning is wrong?"  Let them explain why they are for such a thing instead of always being on the defensive about why we oppose "research."

5) Finally, there is a strong anti-cloning bill before the U.S. Senate -- we need to support it with all we've got.  The bill has already passed the House, and Republicans, who got good political mileage out of their pro-life noises this campaign, control the Senate and White House.  It's put up or shut up time.  Call Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and tell him you want this bill, S 245, reintroduced in the new Congress: (202) 224-3344.  If cloning is outlawed, a lot of the mischief created by Prop. 71 will be mitigated, and another step will have been taken in the greatest civil rights march of our times -- the march toward full recognition of the rights of unborn humanity.