Zenit reports that Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, is amongst the speakers at next month’s Rimini meeting on “knowledge and faith” organized by the Communion and Liberation movement. Previous visitors to the meeting include Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. A core of 14 people work full-time on the organization of the Rimini meeting. I am sending each of them the open letter below. I suggest that others write to them too – including concerned Catholics, pro-life people of all denominations and none, and everyone whose family lives are threatened or damaged by the anti-life/anti-family legislation supported by Tony Blair whilst in parliament and by his continuing positions. You can write to them from here
Remember: This is the man favoured by the British Government to become president of the European Union (EU). An Obama-Blair alliance imposing its “pro-choice” culture of death worldwide has been described thus by leading Vatican scholar Monsignor Michel Schooyans:
“What the analysis of Barack Obama's decisions and Tony Blair's project reveals is that an alliance is coming between two converging intentions, one aimed at subjugating law and the other at subjugating religion. This is the new version of the two-headed eagle. Law and religion are exploited to 'legitimize' anything at all.”Open letter to 30th Rimini meeting organizers
My dear friends and fellow Catholics,
Zenit has alerted me to your meeting next month in Rimini on knowledge and faith at which Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, is among the speakers.
Firstly, I wish to congratulate you on the impressive history of your Rimini meetings which have been attended in the past by John Paul II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now our Holy Father. As Pope Benedict XVI, he called on your meeting last year to consider the question: " ... What makes a person unmistakable and guarantees his/her existence full dignity? ... "
The theme of your meeting this year is equally lofty and challenging: Mankind's search for the truth, in an uncertain world, through "reason and love ... profoundly united in the dynamics of knowledge ... " as you express it. You explain on your website: "Without the mediation of witnesses (my emphasis) there would not be the growth of knowledge, there would not be civilization and culture, and there would not be history."
One of the witnesses you have chosen as a speaker at your meeting is Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. Here I must express - and provide reasons for - my intense disappointment and deep concern:
Only last April, in a homosexual magazine, Tony Blair, who has recently been received into the Catholic Church, attacked papal teaching on homosexuality, telling the Church it must change its "entrenched attitudes" to homosexuality.
As a British member of parliament and prime minister, history shows that Tony Blair is one of world's major architects of the culture of death. Since becoming a Catholic he has refused to repudiate the anti-life policies and legislation he pursued, and succeeded in enacting, throughout his political career. These include: voting for abortion up to birth three times; personally endorsing his government's policy of supplying abortion and abortifacient birth control drugs and devices to schoolgirls as young as 11 without parental knowledge or consent; his government’s commitment to the promotion of abortion on demand as a universal fundamental human right; personally championing destructive experiments on human embryos; his government's legislation which allows, and in certain circumstances requires, doctors to starve and dehydrate to death vulnerable patients; bringing down the force of the law upon doctors who refuse to refer women to other doctors for abortion, and upon Catholic adoption agencies who refuse to hand over children to homosexual couples.
Naturally, I can and I will send you in the post all the evidence to support the reasons I give above - which you can also find on my blog http://spuc-director.blogspot.com/ It's important to note that Tony Blair's public record (of attacking Catholic teaching and pursuing public policies undermining the family and the sanctity of life) are not historical curiosities. Unlike St. Paul, he has had no road to Damascus conversion. As I say above, he has refused to repudiate the anti-life policies and legislation he has pursued throughout his political career. He continues to nurture ambitions to become a future EU president, and he is the favoured candidate for this post of the British government.
Monsignor Michel Schooyans, a leading Vatican scholar, has delivered in Rome a masterly analysis of Tony Blair and Barack Obama, in which he explains with devastating insight their anti-life/anti-family agenda to undermine both law and religion respectively. I do urge that you study what he says carefully, review the evidence to which I refer above, and cancel your invitation to Tony Blair to speak at the celebrated Rimini meeting next month. His participation in your event effectively provides a platform for a politician who is intent on continuing his influence and power in order to attack the Church's teaching, the family based on the marriage of man and woman, and countless vulnerable human lives - the unborn, the sick and the elderly.
Thank you in advance for giving urgent consideration to my request.
Yours sincerely,
John Smeaton
National Director
Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC)
Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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