Key Upcoming Culture-of-Life Gatherings/Projects

For additional  information please contact Sue Lopez at 619/276-7525 or you may e-mail Sue at:

suelopez@catholicfamilies.net




Number 5:   Life Perspectives to offer its Effective Communication Seminar on Tuesday, September 27, 2005 at the Diocesan Pastoral Center.
 

By now you have heard the exciting news about Life Resource Network’s new look and name: Life Perspectives.  Your faithful support has allowed LP to reach so many people, young and old!

Life Perspectives is happy to report  that it continues to increase the number of speaking engagements to student groups.  Over the past six months, Life Perspectives' speakers have made presentations to 50 student groups between K-8, 112 presentations to High School student groups, and 10 to College student groups. In fact, 93% of all speaking engagements in 2005 have been to student groups!

The Women Deserve Better Campaign continues to have a positive influence on Capitol Hill.  LP co-hosted a series of briefings and special events featuring two-time Emmy award winner Patricia Heaton (Debra on “Everybody Loves Raymond”) in April, and Michaelene just returned from DC after participating in briefings and a series of meetings with members of Congress.

Life Perspectives is also continuing to train others to effectively articulate a compelling life message.  LP will partner with the Office for Social Ministry and offer its Effective Communication Seminar on Tuesday, September 27th from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 pm at the diocesan Pastoral Center. 

Listen to the comments of Kim Houlihan, Executive Director of BirthChoice San Marcos, about the Effective Communication training:

“The Effective Communication training seminar is truly one of the most helpful seminars we have ever attended.  Five people from my center attended the seminar recently and came away dazzled. I  would love it if every one of my volunteers could attend.  The training is invaluable to those who want to be a speaker, but it is also invaluable for anyone who works at a pregnancy resource center, has contact with abortion vulnerable women, or just talks to friends and neighbors about the life issue.”

The cost for the seminar is $50.  Parish Culture of Life coordinators will receive a $20 discount.  A further discount of $10 will apply to those who promote Life Perspectives’ Life Walk. 

To apply for the Effective Communication Seminar contact the LP office at 619-516-1236.

Effective Communication Seminar
Tuesday, September 27
9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Diocesan Pastoral Center
3888 Paducah Drive
San Diego, 92117 

For information and to register call 619-516-1236.

e-link Advocacy REPORTBACK

Life Response:

With resources beyond the imagination, pro-abortion forces are just beginning a campaign to demonize Judge John Roberts, with the hope that he can be kept off the U.S. Supreme Court.  I was so glad to have e-mailed both U.S. Senators from California with help from the www.endroe.org, web site set up by the U.S. Catholic Bishops.  If you did not have a chance to do so back in July, why not send the e-mails today?

Send our U.S. Senators the following message: "Support for Roe v. Wade should not be used as a litmus test for judicial nominees."

I want to thank all e-link readers who also sent this message.

Kent Peters

Dignity Response:

As you may know, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) passed both houses of Congress and was signed by President Bush.  I did send a message to my U.S. Senators, with help from CRS, asking that CAFTA be scrutinized and reconsidered, as it would likely hurt the poor in Central America.  Too late for that now...  We still, however, can monitor the effects of CAFTA, pray that the positive aspects of CAFTA outweigh the negative, and be ready to fix problems when CAFTA comes up for review.

Thanks, too, for all those who sent these e-mail to Senators Feinstein and Boxer.

Kent Peters

Web and e-mail-based Resources

How would you like to see 23 seconds of a 4D Ultrasound of a 15 week old baby in the womb?

Just click on the image to the left or click on the web address below. 

It is hard to fathom the complexity already present at this early age.  Remember, most abortions are done between week 10 and week 15. 

It is no accident that younger Americans tend to be more pro-life.  They are in touch with today's technologies and have no reason to be taken in by the "It's only a mass of cells" mantra that has always been at the center of the pro-abortion argument.

If this link does not take you directly to a media player on your computer, you may want to cut and paste the web address below into the "open URL" feature of the media player you use.  The "open URL" function is normally found in the File section.
 

http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/focusonthefamily/pregnancy/clear_choice.wvx


A human being developing in the womb...  What a testament to the creative marvel of Our Lord! 

Why not send this link to those you care about?

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. St. John the Evangelist Parish in Encinitas Pro-Life Mass and Rosary held on the first Mondays of each month.

The first Monday of every month is designated Pro-Life Monday at St. John the Evangelist Church, 1001 Encinitas Blvd, Encinitas.  The 8:00 a.m. Mass will be followed by a Rosary for Life.  For more information, please call Helene McIlhon at 858-756-0622.
 

2. Most Precious Blood Parish Rosary Prayer Vigils held on Wednesdays and Saturdays each week

The Pro-Life Prayer Group from Most Precious Blood sponsors a Rosary Prayer Vigil in front of the Clinica Medica abortion facility at 1550 Broadway, Chula Vista every Wednesday and Saturday at 8:45 a.m.  For more information, please call Shirley Henry at 619-420-7096 or Luis Mendoza at 619-300-5563.


3. Prayerful witness for life at two locations (Sixth and Palm in San Diego and Pomerado in Poway) in San Diego County

1st Saturday of the month:  20 decades of the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet are prayed at Family Planning Associates, Sixth and Palm, San Diego, 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.  For more information, call 858-748-2109.
 
2nd Saturday of the month:  20 decades of the Rosary are prayed in procession past 4 clinics following the 7:30 a.m. Mass, 15546 Pomerado Road, Poway.  For more information, call 858-748-2109.


4. St. Dismas Guild sponsors two weekly hours of prayer for the unborn in North County

Join members of St. Dismas Guild for a rosary picket at Womancare, 120 S. Craven Way, San Marcos, (across from Cal State San Marcos), Tuesdays, 9-10 a.m.

The Guild also sponsors prayer (the rosary) in front of PayLess at Mission Avenue and Escondido Blvd. 347 W. MISSION on Thursdays, 10:30-11:30 a.m.  For information on these prayer vigils, call 760-751-8541. 
 

5. St. Rose of Lima sponsors a regular Wednesday Pro-Life Prayer Vigil in Chula Vista

Please join St. Rose of Lima parishioners every Wednesday after the 8 a.m. Mass at St. Rose of Lima, Chula Vista, for a pro-life prayer vigil at the clinic located at 261 Church Street, Chula Vista.   For more information, call Evangely Aliangan, 619-427-0230.


6. Birthline's Annual Walk for Life to be held on October 15, 2005

BIRTHLINE'S ANNUAL WALK FOR LIFE will be held on October 15, 2005.  Birthline assists women facing crisis pregnancies.  The Walk will be held in three locations, so call for the location nearest you.  If you would like to sponsor BIRTHLINE, call 858-270-2491 or 619-425-5012.

Watch for OSM e-link bulletin #40 around Tuesday, September 13, 2005 

Article/Statement for August 12, 2005

To view Helen's article below at the U.S. Catholic Bishops web site or to look over this year's Respect Life Program Materials, go to:

http://www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/rlp0506.htm

<---  or click on this year's poster.

 

THE GOSPEL OF LIFE AND ITS GREAT EXEMPLAR
By Helen M. Alvaré, Esq.

  

In the year of the 10th anniversary of the great encyclical Evangelium Vitae, The Gospel of Life, its author, John Paul II, died.  While no one, not even a pope, could alter the contents of the Gospel of Life, it can be said with all sincerity that this particular pope was capable of infusing this gospel with particular meaning, to the last moment of his papacy.

In the days surrounding the death of John Paul II, each of us saw the power of this Gospel with its good news: If we, like Christ, lay down our lives in service to others, there will burst forth love, joy and real freedom.  A life lived this way – as gift – opens up as nothing else the full meaning of human life.  People the world over could sense this, even if they could not articulate what it was that drew them to Rome – 3 million strong – or to their television sets at ridiculous hours of the early morning and late evening, to be with John Paul II as he died.

Not only by his life, but even in his dying, John Paul II proved that he was right when he said that this Gospel of Life, this good news about life lived in service to others, “has a profound and persuasive echo in the heart of every person,” Christians and non-Christians alike.  So the 10th anniversary of Evangelium Vitae, and the death of one of its true exemplars, offers the people of God an excellent opportunity to stop and reflect.  We should reflect on the power of a document that has inspired not only theologians and philosophers, but also journalists, politicians, and others to begin facing more honestly the “culture of death” and the possibilities for a “culture of life.”

This brief reflection will consider four aspects of Evangelium Vitae.  First, the occasion for its appearance.  Second, its central teachings on the relationship between the growth of a “culture of death” and the acceptance of destructive notions of human freedom.  Third, the evidence from both faith and reason regarding the need to reject decisively the culture of death.  And fourth, why we can and must continue to hope for and to build a culture of life.

THE OCCASION FOR EVANGELIUM VITAE

I will never forget my first brush with the text of Evangelium Vitae.  It was given to me in New York by a representative of the Holy See, in advance of its U.S. publication, with the intention of allowing me to prepare to explain it to the American press. When I first read through it, and read its characterization of the modern conditions which had provoked its drafting, I felt as if John Paul II was speaking directly and even exclusively to the situation in the U.S.  Of course he was not, but the picture he painted of the degree and kinds of disrespect for life, and the rhetoric that accompany them, was uncannily descriptive of our own country.  It was as if he knew every objection I had ever heard to a pro-life position from every corner of America.  He knew how the opponents of life avoid talk of the morality of abortion and euthanasia, and talk instead about “democratic” process and legal “choices.”  He described how human sexuality is increasingly understood in terms that are hedonistic, individualistic and fearful of procreation.  And he did not spare us dramatic assessments of our situation: words like “tyranny,” “selfishness,” and “arbitrariness,” appear throughout Evangelium Vitae with some frequency. Furthermore, in a document of 105 paragraphs, only two – paragraphs 26 and 27 – specifically note positive signs of the times, such as increasing resistance to war and to the death penalty. 

John Paul II summed up the disturbing confluence of factors provoking this encyclical in these words:

"Here though we shall concentrate particular attention on another category of attacks, affecting life in its earliest and it its final stages.  ...  It is not only that in generalized opinion these attacks tend no longer to be considered as ‘crimes’; paradoxically they assume the nature of ‘rights’.  ...  such attacks strike human life at the time of its greatest frailty, when it lacks any means of self-defense.  Even more serious is the fact that...those attacks are carried out in the very heart of ... the family ...” (no. 11).

John Paul II also noted the additional credibility given to these attacks on life when they are approved democratically.

It was this confluence of outrages that led to the dramatic and comprehensive teaching on life that is Evangelium Vitae. One of its most important components was its dissection of the ideas about freedom that allow arguments against life to succeed in a society, even to the point where killing could becomes a “fundamental right” at law. This is the next aspect of Evangelium Vitae we take up.

REAL FREEDOM

No one who has ever encountered U.S. abortion and euthanasia debates could fail to notice that they revolve around the meaning of “freedom” and “rights.” Abortion proponents, in fact, have staked their whole argument on the phrases “freedom to choose” and the “right to choose.”  Proponents of euthanasia and assisted suicide speak of a “right to die,” and the founder of the Hemlock Society (an organization now named “End of Life Choices”) titled one of his books Freedom to Die. But what could such freedoms mean?

In some of the most accessible philosophy ever written by a pope, John Paul II explains in Evangelium Vitae the characteristics of true freedom, and contrasts these with the marks of false freedom. He shows how proponents of killing innocent human life rely on notions of freedom which are ultimately barren, alienating and even destructive.  In sum, they say that freedom is subjectively known, individually lived, and indifferent to God.  John Paul II, on the other hand, writes that freedom must have reference to objective truth, must be lived in solidarity with others, and needs God. He says further that these marks of true freedom have application not only to Christians, but to all human persons, simply by virtue of how we are made.

If freedom “loses its essential link with the truth,” he wrote, a human being can end up taking “as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices ... only his subjective and changeable opinion, or indeed, his selfish interest and whim” (no. 19) Achieving authentic freedom requires respecting the truth about human life – including the inherent illegitimacy of killing – and the right of every person to the means of meeting his or her basic human needs.

If freedom is lived without solidarity, without an “inherently relational dimension,” he wrote, it ends up “becoming the freedom of the ‘strong’ against the weak, who have no choice but to submit.”  Every other human person becomes at least a stranger, possibly even an “enemy,” and life becomes a struggle to make one’s own interests alone prevail.

Finally, when freedom is without God, the “sense of man” ends up “threatened and poisoned.” Without God, human persons are unable to see themselves as “mysteriously different.”  They are more inclined to regard themselves “merely as one more living being,” even a “thing.”  They tend to regard life as their own property which can and must be brought under their control. In this context, suffering loses meaning, procreation and death lose their meaning, and people become inclined toward “practical materialism,” sexual exploitation and rampant consumerism. Ultimately, they can lose their ability to distinguish between good and evil, a development intimately related to their embrace of a culture of death.

If this version of freedom prevails in a nation like the United States, where it is claimed that laws are developed through democratic processes, supporters of abortion and euthanasia take all the more comfort that “freedom” has been served.  But John Paul II assails this comfort with some of the strongest language in the encyclical: “Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations” (no. 20, italics in original).

REASON, ENLIGHTENED BY FAITH
 
For many centuries, the Church has said that it relies upon both reason and revelation to address contemporary problems, and that these sources complement rather than contradict one another. Evangelium Vitae is a modern demonstration of this ancient insight.  It makes a powerful case against destroying human life, even while recognizing that the Scriptures cannot be expected precisely to address every modern dilemma we presently face.

Regarding abortion, it reviews the genetic and other evidence for the value of even embryonic human life.  It embraces the scientific details, and concludes with a tone of wonder: “How could anyone think that even a single moment of this marvelous process of the unfolding of life could be separated from the wise and loving work of the Creator, and left prey to human caprice?” (no. 44). It adds to this scientific evidence the many references in Scripture to the great gift of children and childbearing, and to God’s tremendous and loving concern for life in the womb.

Regarding euthanasia, Evangelium Vitae accurately describes the ethical questions raised by modern medical technology.  It walks us through the distinctions between euthanasia and foregoing extraordinary medical care.  It defines necessary palliative care.  It describes the temptations to hasten the death of the elderly and disabled in the name of efficiency, scarce resources, and the avoidance of suffering.  But it reminds us never to lose sight of the human person who is the subject of medical interventions.  And it puts before us what we also know to be true – that the meaning of true compassion is to “suffer with,” not to kill. It adds to this the evidence from Scripture on the dignity and reverence that ought to surround old age, and the concern that God has for both our souls and our bodies.

OUR TASK
 
The threats to life described in Evangelium Vitae are as potent today as they were ten years ago, possibly more so in some states and countries.  The tasks set for us by this encyclical, however, are as powerful as the threats.  For the many tasks are really one task – to live as a People of Life, for life.  To conform our own lives to Jesus Christ so that the quintessential “man for others” becomes our way of life.

In a sentence that should by all rights stop readers in their tracks,  John Paul II states in Evangelium Vitae that the “meaning of life” lies in “being a gift which is fully realized in the giving of self. This is the splendid message about the value of life which comes to us from the figure of the Servant of the Lord....”  (no. 49, italics in original).  We are, of course, to abide by the ancient commandment which instructs us “thou shalt not kill.”  But we are to go much farther, as indicated in the New Testament extension of this commandment: to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  How we are to do this is the subject of the last section of Evangelium Vitae.

While of course the task of each person will differ according to his or her station in life, all are charged with some basic, crucial responsibilities.  These include prayer and personal conversion to the good news about the sacredness of human life.  Fasting and prayer, in fact, are called “the first and most effective weapons against the forces of evil” (no. 100).  We are further called to maintain hope in the face of the enormous resources available to proponents of a culture of death. We are called to adopt a life-style which clearly communicates the primacy of “being” over “having” – one that makes room for the embrace of those who need us, not merely those we choose. Thereafter, whether we are women or men, intellectuals, citizens, physicians, teachers or women who’ve suffered from an abortion, we have specific contributions to make.

These practical assignments in the final portion of Evangelium Vitae ought not to be read as mere “add ons” to an otherwise lofty text. The pro-life movement in the United States should, among all movements, be acutely aware of how we owe our continued survival to the actions of one mother, one doctor, one active citizen at a time, a legacy of personal commitment that spans decades and defies all the predictions of our imminent demise.

CONCLUSION

The death of Pope John Paul II, or rather the celebration of his life we have now witnessed, is a call to continued conversion and action for the pro-life cause.  In the very modern documents of this very modern pope – particularly in Evangelium Vitae – we came to understand, as never before, the high stakes of the current struggle between life and death.  We also came to understand, perhaps as never before, how to explain what we are fighting for. Evangelium Vitae has made philosophers, theologians, and aspiring saints out of ordinary citizens who struggle against the killing of vulnerable human beings.  Its effects on us, and on our culture, will be felt for generations.
___________________________
Professor Alvaré is an associate professor of law, Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America, and a consultant to the USCCB Committee for Pro-Life Activities.