A blog launched on the 41st anniversary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), the first pro-life organisation in the world, established on 11 January 1967. I wrote this blog in my role as SPUC's chief executive, commenting on pro-life news, reflecting on pro-life issues and promoting SPUC's work. I retired from my post on 31st August 2021 and will therefore be adding no further posts.
Anthony Ozimic, SPUC's communications manager, and his fiancée Magdalena, have just returned from representing SPUC at the March for Life in Paris last Sunday, and Anthony has sent me the report below.
"Sunday's march was preceded on Saturday evening with a prayer vigil (right) for Catholics at L'Église St Francois-Xavier, a particularly beautiful church. Between seven and eight hundred people, mostly in their twenties, attended. We were impressed by the sermon given by Monsigneur Chauvet, the parish priest. He explained very clearly the Catholic Church's teaching on the dignity of the human person, the important place of conscience and the respect due to the human body. The young people were therefore well-versed in the reasons for participating in the next day's march.
"Sunday's march started at the Place de la République (left). The Place soon overflowed with thousands of young people bearing placards, t-shirts and balloons with clear, strong messages. One placard which caught my eye read: "No children, no pensions!" Representatives of pro-life groups from various countries were invited to speak. Magdalena, a talented linguist, translated my speech to the marchers. We explained to them SPUC's history, its international outreach and the importance of solidarity within the European pro-life movement. I was also interviewed by Agence France Presse (AFP) and other reporters.
"The march then started on its route (right, with Magdalena in the foreground). As the march is organised and led by young adults, the spirit is very boisterous, with catchy songs, witty chants and plenty of bonhomie. I was amazed to see one group called "Musicians for Life", another group called "Socialists for Life" and a third group of hunting-horn players! Walking behind the main march was a Catholic prayer procession, featuring parents and their children and led by superiors and representatives of several religious orders.
"The march ended three hours later outside the Paris Opéra, one of the city's finest landmarks (left, with me in the foreground). The organisers estimate there were 20,000 marchers. Although 25 French bishops sent messages of support, it's a pity that only one attended. Nonetheless, such a event is an impressive achievement considering the strong anti-life trend in France. The youthful vigour on display makes one hopeful for the future."
Caritas in Veritate (Latin for "charity in truth"), the wonderfully-named blog of Fr John Boyle (pictured), carries an important reflection on a worrying report in The Tablet concerning Bishop Malcolm McMahon, the chairman of the Catholic Education Sevice, an agency of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.
Bishop McMahon reportedly told The Tablet that:
" ... the backgrounds of potential school leaders were not the concern of the Church and it should be up to applicants themselves to decide whether they were able to live according to church teaching ... "
The Tablet says:
"[Bishop McMahon] also said that the Church was not opposed to civil partnerships. 'Civil partnerships are precisely what they say they are. They’re not gay marriages or lesbian marriages. They’re simply a legal arrangement between two people so that they can pass on property and other rights in which they were discriminated against before,' he said. 'We have many gay people in education and a large number of gay people in the Church, at least the same as the national average. I think a person who is leading a church school should live according to the Church’s teaching whether they are in a civil partnership or not. A civil partnership is not a marriage, it’s not a conjugal relationship.'
Fr Boyle's commentary is well worth reading. He is a canon lawyer and contributor to the newsletter of the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
Bishop McMahon's worrying reported statement comes in the wake of considerable concern regarding previously published episcopal policy in England and Wales. I have blogged before about the Diversity and Equality guidelines, a publication of the Catholic bishops' conference of England and Wales. This policy document welcomes, seeks to implement, and says that it will monitor the implementation (in the Catholic Church, including in Catholic schools) of British government and EU law on the equal employment rights of male and female homosexuals, and bisexuals and transsexuals.
I note that the Catholic Bishops' Conference website currently states of these Guidelines:
"Please note that the law in this area has already changed in certain respects since the Guidelines were published and it is likely to change further in the light of new equality legislation due before parliament in 2009. New comprehensive Guidelines will need to be written and published after the Bill has been enacted."
I do hope and pray that the bishops will reverse their policy in any newly-written guidelines and that they will repudiate Bishop McMahon's reported statement. Their guidelines and the bishop's statement have the effect of undermining the culture of life. As I said in my earlier post:
"With the bishops of England and Wales now welcoming and guaranteeing the presence of homosexual, bisexual and transsexual teachers in Catholic schools in England and Wales, and in the light of Evangelium Vitae, paragraph 97 (above), is it not completely unrealistic to expect that Catholic sexual morality, including the sacredness of human life before birth, will be taught in these schools?
"A pro-abortion document, prepared at the request of the EU Commission on the right to conscientious objection, links rights relating to sexual orientation to other supposed rights, including the “right” to abortion and the “right” to euthanasia and assisted suicide. The document quotes, in part, the Diversity and Equality Guidelines of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales in a generally approving way. The bishops’ guidelines and the EU experts’ document clearly agree that, subject to limited and narrow exceptions, Catholic organisations must ensure that no job applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment than another on the grounds of sexual orientation."
On Wednesday, David Burrowes MP presented the 2009 Robin McNair Prize in the Houses of Parliament (pictured). Student-contestants wrote essays on bioethical issues including abortion, human embryos and the rights of the disabled. A full report and photos of the event can be seen on the SPUC website.
Kirsty Jones, 17, of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, won first prize. She answered the question: "Is abortion justified if the unborn baby is disabled?" She pointed out that five babies are aborted every day because of their disability, at a time when medicine and therapy are actually improving and extending the lives of many disabled people. Kirsty cites United Nations documents which defend the rights of the unborn. She concluded:
"As mere individuals we cannot cure disability, but [we] can cure the world of its attitudes towards [disabled people]."
Emily Nightingale, 15, of Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, won second prize. Like Kirsty, she wrote about abortion of disabled children. She pointed out that British law allows abortion of disabled children at any stage in the pregnancy. She wrote:
"There are thousands of disabled people living happy, successful lives and I think that aborting a child because of a disability is very offensive to all of those people."
Emily described how abortion has helped bring about a cult of perfection and a sort of "un-natural selection process".
Dexter Leung, 16, of Eton College, won third prize for his essay which answered the question: "Is the human embryo a potential human life or a human life with potential?" Dexter pointed out that the start of human life isn't just a religious matter but can also be determined by science. He described how modern genetics is reinforcing the fact that early human life is unique and truly human.
Mr Burrowes explained that it had been his involvement with SPUC at university that had encouraged him to enter politics. He said that there was a need of people who will speak with "passion and depth" about respect for the sanctity of human life.
I opened the event by thanking our host for his staunch defence of the right to life since his election in 2005. I pointed out, however, that all is not well:
"On Monday, the House of Commons gave a second reading to the government's Children, Schools and Families bill. This measure includes provisions to make sex education part of the national curriculum for England. Schools would have to teach it from the age of five. School-based sex lessons have a reputation for worsening, not improving, indicators such as teenage pregnancy ... "
"The bill's proposals for compulsory sex education have been framed by the pro-abortion lobby and will help to keep abortion rates high. Not since the Abortion Act 1967 has there been such a determined effort to promote universal access to abortion. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we call upon MPs to speak out against the bill's proposals."
Nick Clegg (pictured), the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, has reportedly told a homosexual magazine that faith schools must be forced to teach that homosexuality is "normal and harmless".
This news is important for many reasons, including;
the negative effect of teaching homosexuality on building a culture of life
the undermining by the state of the role of parents as the primary educators of their children, and parents' legal right to secure an education for their children according to their beliefs
the possible role of Mr Clegg and his party in holding the balance of power should this year's general election beget a hung parliament (i.e. where no one party has a majority)
In Evangelium Vitae paragraph 97, Pope John Paul II taught that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection. (Ironically, Mr Clegg, an atheist married to a Catholic, has reportedly pledged to raise his children as Catholics.)
Regarding parents, Norman Wells of the Family Education Trust put it well in yesterday's Daily Mail:
"The vast majority of parents do not want their children’s schools to be turned into vehicles to promote positive images of homosexual relationships."
It is also disturbing that David Cameron, the leader of the opposition Conservative party, has also proposed the normalisation of homosexual relationships, putting them on the same par as marriages:
"Pledging yourself to another means doing something brave and important ... And by the way, it means something whether you're a man and a woman, a woman and a woman or a man and another man. That's why we were right to support civil partnerships, and I'm proud of that."
The promotion of homosexuality in schools as a result of the government's Children, Schools and Families bill is a distinct possibility. We need courageous people who will stand up against the political establishment for our children and grandchildren, if we want, as Pope John Paul II (that great pro-life leader) put it, to build a "true culture of life".
I have mentioned before that I think that Pope Benedict's Apostolic Constitution and the entry into the Catholic Church of members of the Traditional Anglican Communion will greatly strengthen Catholic witness on pro-life matters. A recent post about contraception on The Anglo-Catholic confirms my view. It begins:
"It is an unfortunate — but not altogether infrequent — occurrence to find a 'traditional Anglican' who believes that his faith permits the use of artificial means of contraception despite the difficult moral teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. It is supposed (by the ignorant) that our acceptance of the courageous teaching of Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae and reinforced in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (the doctrinal standard proposed by Anglicanorum Coetibus) would be, at least, a novelty, a rigorous discipline beyond what has been required in the past. But it is important to understand that with respect to this now controversial point of moral teaching, the Church of England, and her daughter Churches throughout the world, followed the tradition of the Church Catholic from the earliest days."
The Anglo-Catholic article is timely, particularly in view of Pope Benedict's recent strong emphasis in Caritas in Veritate that the Catholic teaching on contraception is not just a matter of personal morality. As Archbishop Burke explained last year in the US:
"Pope Benedict XVI makes clear that the teaching in Humanae vitae was not simply a matter of 'individual morality', declaring:
'Humanae vitae indicates the strong links between life ethics and social ethics, ushering in a new area of magisterial teaching that has gradually been articulated in a series of documents, most recently John Paul II's Encyclical Evangelium vitae' (Caritas in veritate, no. 15)
For reasons I have frequently presented on this blog, to my own mind it’s quite clear* that countless human lives have been destroyed as a result of the rejection of Humanae vitae and its teaching on the wrongfulness of the separation of the unitive significance and procreative significance of the conjugal act, not least through birth control and IVF practices, including amongst Catholics.
(*Albeit on the question of the separation of the unitive significance and the procreative significance of the marital act, SPUC itself has no policy. The Society is made up of people of all faiths and none, and SPUC’s remit is solely concerned with defending the right to life from conception till natural death.)
Tonight the House of Commons voted to give the Children, Schools and Families bill a second reading by 287 votes to 206.
The government's plans for sex education in all state schools would pour petrol on the fire of the sexual health crisis among young teenagers.
The bill includes provisions to make sex education part of the national curriculum for England, requiring schools to teach it from the age of five and up. This gives us serious cause for concern because of the history of British classroom-based sex education. School-based sex lessons have a reputation for worsening, not improving, indicators such as teenage pregnancy.
As sections of the media have become increasingly explicit and lurid over recent decades young teenagers have been increasingly sexualised, and many youngsters suffer the related miseries of early and inappropriate sexual initiation. Yet health and sex education policies have facilitated, and not discouraged, illicit teenage sex. This has meant sustained high levels of sexually transmitted disease, lone-parent families and abortion.
The changes in the CSF bill amount to pouring petrol on the fire.
The most important thing at this point is for the MPs considering the bill during its coming committee stage to scrutinise the evidence carefully. Critically they should not accept false claims that school-based sex education reduces teenage pregnancy and abortion, but should examine the evidence themselves.
The government defended tonight its plans to abolish parents' right to withdraw older teenagers from sex education classes. The government says that it's nonsensical that older teenagers can be told by their parents they can't have such classes. The government's defence shows that it doesn't trust parents to deliver the pro-abortion propaganda it wants teenagers to hear in such classes. It is important that all parents, who have legal responsibility for their children until they leave school, retain the right to withdraw them from sex education classes. Retaining this right may help to have a positive effect on the content of school SRE lessons, forcing them to pay attention to the values and moral standards of parents. This may put a break on some of the worst excesses of school-based sex education.
In an address today to the diplomatic corps, Pope Benedict XVI urged representatives that:
“[a] concern and commitment for the environment should be situated within the larger framework of the great challenges now facing mankind.”
This larger framework refers to man’s attitude to man. Pope Benedict highlights the contradiction between a promotion of environmental concerns and a disregard for the protection of human life, itself the crown of creation.
“If we wish to build true peace, how can we separate, or even set at odds, the protection of the environment and the protection of human life, including the life of the unborn? It is in man’s respect for himself that his sense of responsibility for creation is shown. As Saint Thomas Aquinas has taught, man represents all that is most noble in the universe (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 29, a. 3).”
Benedict also took the opportunity to reject the myth that the world is suffering from a shortage of food. (Too often this myth is used as a smokescreen for the agenda of pro-abortionists to destroy human life through brutal family planning policies and the promotion of abortion.)
“Furthermore, as I noted during the recent FAO World Summit on Food Security, ‘the world has enough food for all its inhabitants’ (Address of 16 November 2009, No. 2) provided that selfishness does not lead some to hoard the goods which are intended for all.”
The multi-faceted nature of governmental policies effecting a culture of death were highlighted by Pope Benedict and he reflected on the difficulty which those with religious beliefs face in being an active part of the moral reform needed to help improve the environment and society. This difficulty arises due to the often aggressively anti-religious legislation in West:
“The community of believers can and wants to take part in this, but, for it to do so, its public role must be recognized. Sadly, in certain countries, mainly in the West, one increasingly encounters in political and cultural circles, as well in the media, scarce respect and at times hostility, if not scorn, directed towards religion and towards Christianity in particular. It is clear that if relativism is considered an essential element of democracy, one risks viewing secularity solely in the sense of excluding or, more precisely, denying the social importance of religion. But such an approach creates confrontation and division, disturbs peace, harms human ecology and, by rejecting in principle approaches other than its own, finishes in a dead end.”
Such relativism, culminating in the ‘dead end’ of increased abortions, will be foisted upon the next generation of English schoolchildren via the government’s plans to impose universal sex education through the Children, Schools and Families bill being debated today in the House of Commons. Through this legislation, the government wants to use all state secondary schools, including Catholic ones, as centres for promoting access to contraception and abortion services. Sadly the government's plans are being supported by both the Catholic authorities and the Anglican authorities in England and Wales
The House of Commons will this afternoon debate the government's plans for sex education in all state primary and secondary schools. The second reading of the Children, Schools and Families bill will start at 2.30pm. SPUC will be commenting after the debate's conclusion this evening and will be available for interviews.
The bill seeks to force schools to prime children for adolescent sex. This is a clear example of pursuing ideology despite the evidence. The teenage pregnancy policies pursued over the past 10 years have encouraged escalating rates of sexual diseases, the further sexualisation of culture, and continuing high abortion rates among teenagers, especially younger teenagers. The bill's proposals for compulsory sex education have been framed by the pro-abortion lobby and will help to keep abortion rates high. Not since the Abortion Act 1967 has there been such a determined effort to promote universal access to abortion. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we call upon MPs to speak out against the bill's proposals today.
As a Catholic, I am impressed and inspired by the great, consistent, pro-life leadership shown by the Good Counsel Network, a pro-life group founded on devoutly Catholic spirituality. As Fr Tim Finigan, the well-known Catholic blogger, has pointed out, their work is "solidly based on a life of prayer".
This Tuesday, 12th January, they commemorate the 13th anniversary of their foundation - a truly historic date for the ever-growing number of mothers and babies they've saved from abortion. The Good Counsel Network is marking this anniversary with a day of prayer and fasting. I am delighted to commend this initiative to Catholic and to non-Catholic readers alike.
Such Catholic pro-life leadership is sorely needed particularly in a country in which the Catholic authorities shamefully co-operate with a government which provides schoolchildren in Catholic schools with confidential access to abortion and contraception. This is a result of the Catholic Education Service's ambiguous policies.
Instead of such co-operation with the pro-"choice" culture of death, " ... what is urgently called for is a general mobilization of consciences and a united ethical effort to activate a great campaign in support of life ... ", as Pope John Paul II put it in Evangelium Vitae(95).
Personally, I believe strongly in fasting - but I believe (like the Good Counsel Network) that this can be from giving up a favourite food or drink, to more serious fasting. Please read their appeal below. I will be joining them - in reparation for the government's policy in promoting abortion amongst schoolchildren and for the actions of those who co-operate with that policy.
The Good Counsel Network writes:
On Tuesday 12th January, the eve of the 13th anniversary of the founding of The Good Counsel Network in the UK, please pray and fast for the end of abortion and euthanasia. Your prayer and fasting is urgently needed. A great prayer for life is urgently needed. Pope John Paul II
Join us each month in prayer and fasting:
fasting: Fast from all food except bread and water for the day or fast from a particular food or luxury, e.g. chocolate, alcohol, cigarettes, TV. Fast from whatever you can given your state of health etc, but make sure it is something that involves a sacrifice to yourself.
prayer: We are asking people to say a Rosary (or an extra Rosary if you say it daily already). You could also offer an extra effort such as going to Mass (or an extra Mass) on the day, or going to Adoration. You can even pray before a closed tabernacle if Adoration is not available near you.
And He said to them; This kind (of demon) can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.(Gospel of Mark 9:29)
For information on the day of prayer and fasting contact The Good Counsel Network on 020 7723 1740.
And the people of Ninevah believed in God; they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least…God saw their efforts to renounce their evil ways. And God relented about the disaster which He had threatened to bring on them, and He did not bring it.(Jonah 3:5,10)
A new film on abortion exploring the abortion issue looks likely to spark controversy.
Entitled “South Dakota: A woman's right to choose”, the film-makers say it represents "both sides" - although at least one of those attending advance screenings in the US says it leans towards the pro-life side.
According to a CNA report, this "is a movie that dramatizes the stories of two teenage girls who become pregnant unexpectedly. Interspersed with the action are interviews and sound clips of various pro-abortion and pro-life advocates ... The movie was produced by Howard Kazanjian, (Star Wars Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark.) It will be marketed by Motive Entertainment (The Passion of the Christ, The Polar Express, The Chronicles of Narnia, Expelled)."
Sounds interesting. I look forward to seeing the film and reviewing it in a future post.
Yesterday Hillary Clinton, the pro-abortion US secretary of state, gave a speech marking the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. In her speech, Mrs Clinton notably failed to remind the audience that the programme of action agreed by governments at Cairo says: "In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning". Mrs Clinton nonetheless confirmed the Obama administration's commitment to support and bankroll organisations which promote abortion as a method of family planning, notably the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Mrs Clinton frequently used the terms 'reproductive health' and 'family planning', making only one passsing reference to abortion. In April, following direct questioning by pro-life Congressman Chris Smith, Mrs Clinton was forced to admit that the Obama administration's definition of reproductive health includes abortion.
Here are some extracts from Mrs Clinton's speech yesterday, and my comments [JS] on them:
"What is it we will do between now and 2015? Remember what was expected of us [at Cairo]. All governments will make access to reproductive healthcare and family planning services a basic right." [JS: This means the Obama administration believes Cairo requires all governments to provide abortion and contraception.]
"We have made measurable progress since 1994 in improving the health and the lives of women and children, especially girls. For example, the use of modern contraceptives worldwide has increased from under 10 percent in the 1960s to 43 percent in 2008." [JS: As I blogged yesterday, contraception paves the way for abortion, and the physical and psychological damage abortion does to women.]
"And 15 years after the Cairo conference, far too many women still have little or no access to reproductive health services, including family planning and maternal healthcare." [JS: This shows just how extreme the Obama-Clinton administration regime is. Even though almost every country in the world allows abortion and contraception, resulting in tens of millions of abortions annually and a growing under-population crisis, the administration wants more.]
"More than 215 million women worldwide lack access to the modern forms of contraception, and this contributes to the nearly 20 million unsafe abortions that take place very year." [JS: I have blogged before about the pro-abortion lobby's outrageous manipulation of shaky statistics.]
"[W]e are working with religious leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan to increase access to information about family planning" [JS: Obama-Clinton know that the anti-life juggernaut can be stopped by religious leaders.]
"Uganda, where USAID works with the International Planned Parenthood Federation to provide reproductive health services" [JS: The pro-abortion lobby is determined to reverse the Ugandan government's emphasis on abstinence and fidelity, which has been successful in reducing HIV rates.]
"So we are rededicating ourselves to the global efforts to improve reproductive health for women and girls ... One of President Obama’s first actions in office was to overturn the Mexico City policy, which greatly limited our ability to fund family planning programs" [JS: In fact, the Mexico City policy denied millions of US federal dollars to organisations which promote abortion, not just 'family planning'.]
"We have pledged new funding, new programs, and a renewed commitment to achieve Millennium Development Goal Five, namely a [three-fourths] reduction in global maternal mortality, and universal access to reproductive healthcare." [JS: which means seeking to force governments to allow abortion on demand.]
"This year, the United States renewed funding of reproductive healthcare through the United Nations Population Fund, and more funding is on the way. The U.S. Congress recently appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide. That’s the largest allocation in more than a decade – since we last had a Democratic president, I might add." [JS: which is why it's essential that more pro-lifers win seats in this year's mid-term elections, and that a pro-life candidate replaces Obama in 2012.]
"[T]oday, the United States is proud once again to support the work of the UN Population Fund." [JS: despite that body's shameless complicity in the China's one-child policy of forced abortions.]
"[E]very single child in this country – boy or girl – deserves a chance to live up to his or her God-given potential." [JS: There's a good Jewish-American word for such a statement: 'chutzpah'. Under Obama-Clinton, countless more children's lives will be extinguished.]
Anne Barbeau Gardiner, an emeritus professor of English in New York, has written a stunning review of an important book entitled "Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany". Here are some extracts from her review, which I recommend you to read in full:
"In her research for Cultures of Abortion, Cornelie Usborne examined literary works, movies, trial documents, medical records, social workers' notes, police interviews, and newspapers from the years of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933 ... Although [Usborne] is pro-abortion...her research is valuable because it shows how the groundwork for Adolf Hitler's eugenic-abortion policies was laid."
"[C]ontraception was 'big business' in Germany prior to World War I ... [I]n 1927 the law was changed to allow contraceptives to be advertised, though some of these, like the uterine coil, were also abortifacient."
"[T]he Weimar Republic was distinguished by 'the lowest birth rate in the Western world'"
"German law on abortion became 'one of the most liberal in the world' because doctors could easily convince officials that any abortion was necessary for 'health' reasons."
"Deceptive language about abortion was also used in the Weimar Republic by communist and socialist novelists, poets, dramatists, and filmmakers, all of whom advocated 'medical, social and/or eugenic abortion'"
"The 1929 play Cyankali §218, written by the socialist Friedrich Wolf, was supposedly a docudrama about abortion intended to rouse the audience for mass protests. Yet it was based on a lie ... [T]here [is no] evidence for the allegation in the play that 10,000 women died annually from 'back-street abortions' ... Filmed in 1930, Cyankali §218 was used by socialists and communists in their election campaigns."
"[W]here contraception is rife there will also be the widespread practice of abortion and a growing pressure for its full legalization ... It is crucial, then, to oppose the contraceptive mentality that makes abortion inevitable"*
"[T]he road to Hitler was paved with abortions. The Weimar Republic was a society committing suicide in slow motion. It could neither stop the killing of its unborn children nor control the degrading hedonism that accompanied this practice ... It was so weak it easily caved in when confronted with a fiercer form of that same culture."
This book and Professor Gardiner's review of it are very relevant to the current British government's plans for children's education. The governments which preceded and followed the Weimar Republic (the Second Reich under Bismarck and Hitler's Third Reich respectively) used laws to control and thereby undermine Catholic parent's education of their children. Under the Third Reich, a law against home-schooling - which is still being enforced today - was passed in order to ensure that children received Nazi indoctrination, including Nazi anti-life and anti-family ideas. Pope Pius XI protested against these laws, writing:
"Catholic parents'...rights and duties as educators, conferred on them by God, are at present the stake of a campaign pregnant with consequences ... [I]it will be every one's duty to sever his responsibility from the opposite camp, and free his conscience from guilty cooperation with such corruption. The more the enemies attempt to disguise their designs, the more a distrustful vigilance will be needed, in the light of bitter experience."
imposing sex education in all primary and secondary schools following the national curriculum, including Catholic schools, which entails anti-life and anti-family indoctrination
abolishing the parents' right to remove school-children of 15 years and older from sex education classes
establishing strict and intrusive regulation of home-schooling, including direct access by regulatory officials to home-schooling children, bypassing parents.
We must not give an inch to the culture of death. The second reading (the first main debate) on the Children, Schools and Families bill will take place in the House of Commons on Monday (11 January). Please email your MP immediately to urge them to speak out against the government's plans.
*which reminds me of the admission by Dr Judy Bury, former Director of Edinburgh Brook Advisory Centre, that: "There is overwhelming evidence that, contrary to what you might expect, the provision of contraception leads to an increase in the abortion rate." (The Scotsman, 29 June 1981)
"TPIAG commends the Government for its decision to make PSHE education, including SRE, statutory at all key stages .... We are very pleased that Church of England and Catholic Church are also supporting this move." [my emphasis]
The TPIAG is undoubtedly referring to the general - and disgraceful - support given by the Catholic Education Service (CES) of England and Wales to the government's proposals, contained in the Children, Schools and Families (CSF) bill. The CES, however, does not comprise the Catholic Church: it is an organ of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW). Whilst it is understandable that a bishops' conference and its organs seek to speak for and on behalf of the Catholic Church, it may be illuminating to read what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) said whilst Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:
"We must not forget that the episcopal conferences have no theological basis, they do not belong to the structure of the Church, as willed by Christ, that cannot be eliminated ... No episcopal conference, as such, has a teaching mission: its documents have no weight of their own save that of the consent given to them by the individual bishops."
Among the government's proposals is, as the TPIAG report explains, the teaching of sex and relationships education (SRE) from the start of primary school (key stage one, ages five to seven) onwards. In contrast, the Catholic Church's key teaching document on sex education, The truth and meaning of human sexuality: guidelines for education within the family (Pontifical Council for the Family, 1995), teaches that:
"[P]rudent formation in chaste love during this period [before puberty] should be indirect..."
"In some societies today, there are planned and determined attempts to impose premature sex information on children. But, at this stage of development, children are still not capable of fully understanding the value of the affective dimension of sexuality. They cannot understand and control sexual imagery within the proper context of moral principles and, for this reason, they cannot integrate premature sexual information with moral responsibility. Such information tends to shatter their emotional and educational development and to disturb the natural serenity of this period of life. Parents should politely but firmly exclude any attempts to violate children's innocence because such attempts compromise the spiritual, moral and emotional development of growing persons who have a right to their innocence."
"Homosexuality should not be discussed before adolescence unless a specific serious problem has arisen in a particular situation."
"As regards sterilization and contraception, these should not be discussed before adolescence..."
On this point (of pre-pubescent sex education) and on other points which I have blogged about recently, it is clear that the government's proposals, and the CES's general support for them, are contrary to Catholic teaching.
There can be no doubt the government will use the bill, if passed, to promote abortion in schools. The bill's principles will be used to ensure that pro-abortion propaganda dominates the content of sex education. Schoolgirls will be told that they have a right to abortion, that abortion is virtually harmless and that pro-abortion agencies provide good sexual health services. 'Equality' and 'diversity' will be used to suppress opposition to abortion. The abolition of parents' right to withdraw older children from sex education classes will ensure that no child leaves state schooling without having been brainwashed with an pro-abortion mentality.
It is therefore imperative that Catholics put the record straight by speaking out against the government's plans so disgracefully supported by the CES.
Some scientists are calling for dolphins to be given the same respect as humans, on account of their supposedly relatively high intelligence. The scientists claim that dolphins are more intelligent than chimpanzees, based on brain size and behavioural observations. There is a push by anti-life academics such as Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins to accord human-style rights to chimpanzees and other apes.
Let us look, however, at the differences between humans and animals. Dr Armand Leroi, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College London, has said that, although the genes of humans and chimpanzees are
"pretty much the same"
humans are
"so much better at imitation, language and culture ... [P]rimates simply don't have the social skills we humans take for granted."
Dr Leroi cited behavioural observation experiments at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, which found that chimpanzees
"can't understand the intentions of [human] adults. Human children, by contrast, are naturally very good at understanding the intentions of others."
Dr Leroi interviewed a psychologist who has used Shakespeare's Othello as a key to understanding human interaction. The psychologist said that
"chimpanzee[s] could never understand a play by Shakespeare, even if they could understand language. Their minds are limited to second-order intentionality at best, which means they simply couldn't even follow the plot."
Dr Leroi concludes that:
"We alone among the animals can step beyond our biology. Perhaps it is this that truly makes us human."
The proposal to accord personhood status to dolphins and apes takes animal welfare into the realms of rights. This runs contrary to the widely-held beliefs that animals are not persons and that only persons are capable of possessing rights. Indeed, permission for abortion, embryo experimentation and (in certain cases) euthanasia is often predicated on the erroneous belief that unborn children and the severely mentally incapacitated are not persons.
The proper treatment of animals is a legitimate concern. We need to treat all aspects of our world responsibly, and it's wrong to abuse any creature even if it's not human. It would be a tragic irony if society affords extra dignity to dolphins and apes while continuing to deprive some of its most vulnerable human inhabitants of every possible dignity by killing them in abortion, embryo experimentation and euthanasia.
The Episcopal Commission on Family and Life of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines have issued a particularly solid "Catechism on Family and Life" for this year's elections in the Philippines. Here are some key points from the catechism:
"The Church has the duty to teach Catholics about the importance of taking their Faith with them in all their endeavors, including voting."
"[T]he dignity of the human person and the sacredness of human life...are at the very core of the Catholic moral and social teaching. Because we are people of both faith and reason, it is appropriate and necessary for us to bring this essential truth about human life and dignity to the public square. Church authorities exercise their teaching function also by reminding Catholic civil leaders of their moral obligations, especially in matters related to family and life."
"Our manner of active involvement in the democratic process means that we will use the power of the vote, as citizens of the Republic, to elect political leaders who will uphold and promote the dignity of human life and the sanctity of family and marriage."
"[A]bortion is always a most violent, unjust and inhumane act committed against the most harmless, defenseless, and weakest member of our society –the baby– and committed by those who have the greatest duty to care for, love and defend him or her most –the mother, father, doctors and other health care professionals."
"[R]esponsible parenthood has nothing to do with encouraging individuals to use contraceptives as what reproductive health programs do."
"[C]ontraception makes the conjugal act a lie. It expresses not a total love, but rather a merely conditional or partial love."
"[R]eproductive health necessarily presupposes access to contraception and abortion."
"[T]he Reproductive Health bill (House Bill 5043), which carries the same definition of reproductive health, will penalize with one to six months imprisonment, and/or 10-50 thousand pesos fine, parents who for example prevent their grade school and high school children from using contraceptives, and having satisfying and safe sex."
I blogged in August about the Reproductive Health bill. I also blogged in September on the speech of Kit & Fenny Tatad, senior Filipino pro-life figures, to SPUC's annual national conference.
I give thanks to the good Lord that the Philippines has such strong voices in defence of life and family, especially in the lead-up to elections. I hope that the bishops of England and Wales will speak out with equal strength and clarity before this year's UK general election.
I would like to express my deep sympathy to the family of Akmal Shaikh, said to have suffered from a mental illness, following his execution in China as a convicted drug smuggler.
His family have written to The Guardian newspaper criticising the British government, saying:
"Britain's economic dependence [on China] far outweighs these 'individual cases'".
"Did the British Government pull out its diplomats in protest? Did it have a hard-hitting strategy to persuade the Chinese authorities to change their decision?"
"This is an example of Britain's powerlessness in the world."
I think there's a lot of truth in what they say. When Wen Jiabao, China's premier, visited the UK earlier this year, Gordon Brown (pictured above with Wen) set a target of doubling British exports to China in the following 18 months, from £5bn to £10bn, in order to help lead the world out of recession.
Britain's powerlessness - and the European Union's which made repeated calls for the death sentence to be commuted - reflects, in my view, its moral powerlessness. Quite apart from any other considerations, why would China heed the representations of western governments which are giving so handsomely to its forced abortion, one-child policy through their funding of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)? (Three months ago, the European Parliament voted against pro-life amendments to stop EU money being spent on coercive and sex-selective abortions.)
This is the China where earlier this year, Zhang Minan, a law professor at Guangzhou's Sun Yat-sen University and an expert on the the government’s population policy, told Reuters: "'They (the authorities) do have the right (to force abortions) ... " The same report interviewed a young Chinese woman, pregnant with four-month-old twins, who last February had been dragged into a maternity ward and had her belly injected with a needle in forced abortion.
The UNFPA's participation in China's forced abortion one-child policy is well-documented. Furthermore, when Colin Powell (a supporter of abortion) was US Secretary of State, the State Department verified the pro-life Population Research Institute’s allegations that the UNFPA was cooperating with China's coercive abortion programme:
“UNFPA's support of, and involvement in, China's population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion,” (letter from Colin to Congress, 21 July 2002)
The UK government gave over 40 million US dollars to the "regular funds contributions" of UNFPA in 2007 (the latest report available), about 10% of the total income China received in regular donations from over 180 countries worldwide.
So long as the UK, the US (under the Obama administration), and European governments eagerly fund, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, the brutalization of China's women and the forced abortion of their children, we should not be surprised if China airily dismisses our concerns about the execution of a drug smuggler said to have suffered from bi-polar disease.
Again, my heartfelt sympathy goes to Akmal Shaikh's family.
A commentary by Liz Hoggard in yesterday's Independent newspaper, entitled A morning-after pill is best served without a sermon, is a sign of the direction in which Britain and much of Europe is going. Her message for pro-life and pro-family Britons is:
A job in a registry office that conducts same-sex civil partnerships may not be for you. Don't open a hotel or a B&B if you think you will want to turn away certain sections of the community. And most of all, please don't become a pharmacist.
This is why Britain urgently needs the kind of leadership I noted yesterday in Spain.
As my colleague José Pérez Adán (pictured right), professor of sociology at Valencia university, put it to me regarding the Spanish government's abortion law, recently passed by the Spanish parliament's lower house:
" ... if the law goes as it is, we'll have to break it. This means we will be punished: fines, detention and maybe imprisonment ... "
The conscientious objection of parents to their children being provided with access to abortion is already being swept aside by the British government in schools in England and Wales, including Catholic schools.
It's essential that we do everything in our power to stop this situation getting even worse, by opposing the government's Children, Schools and Families Bill. The bill threatens both children and families as never before in our country. Once again I urge readers in Britain to please read our alert and act now by writing to Gordon Brown and your MP.
Thanks to Catholic leaders in Spain and from the Vatican, the world is in no doubt that there's a massive battle between life and death in Spain.
A huge rally in Madrid was led last Sunday by a veritable who's who of Catholic European leaders, against the Spanish government's legislation to make abortion available on demand, including without parental consent for 16 and 17 year-olds. Check the list below for cardinals, archbishops and bishops who attended the rally - from the Vatican, from Spain, from Poland, from Holland, from Germany, from Austria, from Portugal, from Italy and from France.*
The Daily Telegraphreports that Cardinal Antonio Rouco, the leader of Spain's Roman Catholics, spoke as follows about the Spanish government's plans to legalize abortion on demand for young people of 16 and 17 years without parental permission:
"Who denies to defend a human being so innocent and weak, already conceived but not born, commits a grave violation of moral order."
And last month Juan Antonion Martinez Camino, the spokesman of Spain's Catholic bishops' conference, told members of the Spanish parliament:
"This is a warning to Catholics, that they can't vote in favour of this and that they won't be able to receive communion unless they ask forgiveness ... They are in an objective state of sin".
In the meantime, back in England, our church leaders are not only failing to break their silence on government legislation in the Children, Schools and Families bill, the Catholic Education Service (CES), on behalf of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, gives general support to compulsory sex education
Moreover, the CES (of which Archbishop Nichols was chairman until his appointment as archbishop of Westminster this year) welcomesConnexions into Catholic schools. Connexions is a government agency which is committed to giving schoolchildren, under the age of 16, access to abortion and abortifacients without parental knowledge or permission. Connexions' advisers are trained to tell young people that they can obtain abortion and abortifacients without parental knowledge or consent.
Through the Children, Schools and Families bill, the government not only wants universal sex education, but it also wants to use all state secondary schools, including Catholic ones, as centres for promoting access to contraception and abortion services. Not since the Abortion Act 1967 has there been such a determined effort to promote universal access to abortion.
Archbishop Nichols (as reported on the Bashing Secularism blog, which cited an interview in Standpoint magazine), appears to believe that British government policy means that Catholic schools have "retained their rights through the governing body that their sex and relationships education is delivered according to Catholic ethos and teaching". This is simply not the case.
The government has accepted all the major recommendations of the 2007/2008 report by the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group. The report's major recommendations include that:
"The Government's current review of SRE should ...
... [s]tate clearly that all schools including faith schools must teach all aspects of SRE within the context of relationships in an anti-discriminatory way; contraception, abortion and homosexuality are all legal in this country and therefore all children and young people should be able to learn the correct facts
... [m]ake explicit links to young people's advisory services and provision of contraception and sexual health services and demonstrate this by teaching young people how to access services"
* Here are the Catholic leaders listed as being present at last Sunday's rally in Spain:
Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela, archbishop of Madrid and president of the Spanish bishops' conference
42 Spanish archbishops and bishops from Portugal, Italy, Austria and France
1,200 priests
England and Wales urgently needs Spanish-style Catholic leadership, to assist the pro-life movement in opposing the government's abortion plans for our children, rather than the Catholic authorities' co-operation with government policy which currently obtains.
During the past month, SPUC has written to churchmen and women throughout the UK concerning the Children, Schools and Families bill. I would urge readers in Britain to please read our alert and act now by writing to Gordon Brown and your MP.
It's interesting to note that John Lennon regarded over-population as a myth, as the video link below shows.
His view is supported by many leading demographers, including Dr Nicholas Eberstadt, who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr Eberstadt has written a comprehensive paper on population questions entitled "Too Many People?".
"Sunday's march was preceded on Saturday evening with a prayer vigil (right) for Catholics at L'Église St Francois-Xavier, a particularly beautiful church. Between seven and eight hundred people, mostly in their twenties, attended. We were impressed by the sermon given by Monsigneur Chauvet, the parish priest. He explained very clearly the Catholic Church's teaching on the dignity of the human person, the important place of conscience and the respect due to the human body. The young people were therefore well-versed in the reasons for participating in the next day's march.
"Sunday's march started at the Place de la République (left). The Place soon overflowed with thousands of young people bearing placards, t-shirts and balloons with clear, strong messages. One placard which caught my eye read: "No children, no pensions!" Representatives of pro-life groups from various countries were invited to speak. Magdalena, a talented linguist, translated my speech to the marchers. We explained to them SPUC's history, its international outreach and the importance of solidarity within the European pro-life movement. I was also interviewed by Agence France Presse (AFP) and other reporters.
"The march then started on its route (right, with Magdalena in the foreground). As the march is organised and led by young adults, the spirit is very boisterous, with catchy songs, witty chants and plenty of bonhomie. I was amazed to see one group called "Musicians for Life", another group called "Socialists for Life" and a third group of hunting-horn players! Walking behind the main march was a Catholic prayer procession, featuring parents and their children and led by superiors and representatives of several religious orders. 
"The march ended three hours later outside the Paris Opéra, one of the city's finest landmarks (left, with me in the foreground). The organisers estimate there were 20,000 marchers. Although 25 French bishops sent messages of support, it's a pity that only one attended. Nonetheless, such a event is an impressive achievement considering the strong anti-life trend in France. The youthful vigour on display makes one hopeful for the future."
