Caroline Kennedy’s False Witness: Who Will Speak for the Church?

at Catholic Online

There were a lot of bad speeches at the Democratic National Convention, but Caroline Kennedy’s speech was the low point in many ways.

Caroline Kennedy got up on a national stage and used her professed Catholic faith to justify and actually demand the preservation of grave evils that the Church explicitly condemns. She twisted Catholicism into a pretzel to suit her own apostasy. She presented lies for the truth, and tried to justify it with her Catholic faith.

I’ve been hoping to hear some strongly-worded corrections from our stellar priests, bishops, and cardinals since that night, but unless I’ve missed it, so far I’ve seen nothing. Are we wrong to expect a public condemnation of Caroline Kennedy’s words from our church leaders? And by the same token, are we remiss in voicing that public condemnation ourselves?

Ms. Kennedy, I know you grew up Catholic. I know you were raised in the Church. I won’t speculate on the exact nature of your faith, but I can say this for certain: What you professed that night at the DNC was NOT Catholic. You seem to indeed have a very specific creed, but it’s not the creed of the Catholic Church.

Your speech that night was scandalous. There’s no other word for it. It was disgraceful. On the one hand, it made me furious, and on the other hand, it made me feel very sorry for you.

I am furious with you and every other public “Catholic” in this country who makes a mockery of our faith by living in utter contradiction of what the Church teaches while claiming to love the Church, love your faith, and take your faith seriously. You obstinately persist in championing grave and intrinsic evil, while wearing your ashes on your forehead as an empty display of authenticity. You claim to love the Church you persecute and blaspheme at every turn. You claim membership of a Body you despise through your actions.

When you champion the “right” to kill the child in the womb, you despise the Body of Christ. When you champion the “right” to treat the child in the womb as a thing rather than a person, you despise the Christ Child. When you champion the demise of true marriage through its redefinition, you despise the Holy Family. When you champion the demise of the family by casting aside the primacy of mother and fathers in raising children, you despise the Child Jesus. When you champion the proliferation of contraception and require your own Church to violate Her unchangeable teachings about the sanctity and dignity of human life and marital love, you despise the blessed humanity of Christ.

You do not correctly represent the Church when you make such scandalous remarks as you did that night. You may wish to fashion a Catholic Church more to your liking, but you don’t have that authority or ability, thank the Lord.

I pity you that you have not yet encountered the true Faith in which you were brought up. I’m sorry you haven’t yet realized what a treasure you could have. It is rich and beautiful and merciful and miraculous, and you don’t know that. I hope someday you will. In the meantime, I cannot let your remarks or your version of Catholicism stand unchallenged.

You and Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Kathleen Sebelius and John Kerry and on and on… you do not speak for the Church. You do not serve the Church. You don’t seek to build up the Church but to weaken Her and contradict Her and remake Her in your own image. You make your scandal public so I make my confrontation public as well. I’m tired of all you wolves in sheep’s clothing making yourselves at home in my Church while you work to scatter and devour.

If the Catholic Church is not to your liking, then leave and find a church that is. If the doctrine of the Catholic faith is not palatable to you then go find a doctrine that is. No one’s forcing you to believe or to stay against your will. Be honest for once. You know quite well that your personal doctrine is diametrically opposed to the truth of Church teaching. You know that what you call good the Church rightly calls evil. You know that what you celebrate as progress the Church rightly calls immoral and destructive.

Your facade is pitiful and insulting. I’m sick to death of hearing you embrace evil and call it a “right” that must not be lost. My blood boils when you advocate for evil while waving your little Catholic banner.

So while I’m sitting here waiting for a bishop or other Church leader to publicly renounce your remarks, I started wondering if perhaps they were all waiting for me. And thousands of other Catholic women just like me.

I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, nor am I ashamed of His Body on earth, the Church, and I will gladly profess and live the Truth and the Faith that you spit on with your betrayal. I will fight for the life of the child in the womb, for the sanctity of all human life, and for true marriage between husband and wife for life.

Perhaps our leaders are waiting for Catholic pewsitters to stiffen their spines a little and take a public stand for their faith. We cannot always wait for bishops to sound the charge. Each one of us has the horn in his hand as well. What are we waiting for?

We cannot take for granted that our Church leaders’ words will be enough. Their voice is strong and powerful and irreplaceable, yet it does not give us permission to be mute. Jesus felt pity for the people of His time, calling them “sheep without a shepherd.” Well, you know what? The last few years we have seen leader after leader, bishop after bishop, priest after priest boldly defend the Church and Her teachings as they should; they’ve used their gifts and their words to instruct the faithful and to teach and inspire. Perhaps what we now suffer from is shepherds without sheep.

What would happen if Catholic women across America rejected Caroline Kennedy’s version of “rights” and truths, and instead publicly witnessed to the true doctrine of their Church? What would happen if Catholic women embraced chastity and virtue instead of Planned Parenthood? What would happen if Catholic couples across America rejected the culture of death with all its abortion and contraception and instead gave public witness to the power of life-giving love?

It was not the votes of bishops and cardinals that ushered in the current administration with its ceaseless devotion to abortion and love-affair with Planned Parenthood; contraception; same-sex “marriage”; and assault on Religious freedom. It was the votes of the sheep! If polls are to be believed these days, it seems those sheep have learned nothing at all, and are poised to once again extend their support to the man and the party that glories in killing the child in the womb, along with redefining marriage and elevating homosexual sex to something righteous; and punishing the Catholic Church and the faithful for being Catholic.

Perhaps our leaders are hoarse from screaming at sheep who refuse to listen. Perhaps they’re tired of putting up with phony Catholics and impotent Catholics and cultural Catholics who really couldn’t care less what the Church teaches. Perhaps they’re heartbroken that so many Catholics can’t even be bothered to show up.

Perhaps, like me, they’re also angry that so many Catholics make a mockery of the faith by openly denying what the Church teaches and openly advocating for intrinsic evils. If they are, I admit I’d love to hear them express their outrage more often. I’d love to see public scandal answered publicly and corrected publicly every time.

Whether I get my wish is not the point. The point is, it has always been up to you and me to be salt and light in our culture. It is up to us to speak the truth and live the truth and confront evil in our midst with courage. It’s up to you and me to live an authentic faith. It’s up to you and me to answer Caroline Kennedy and the others and bring their false witness to shame with our own genuine witness.

Caroline Kennedy et al only have the nerve to do what they do because sadly there are a lot of sheep who applaud and march with them. They are lost sheep, all of them. They will not benefit from our timidity or lukewarmness. It’s time to light the fire and you and I are holding the match.

Pray continually for our Church leaders here in America. They need our support and the covering of our prayers. They also need us to take ownership of our faith and act like the militant Church we’re supposed to be. Just as we wait for inspiration from them, so they need some enthusiasm from us. It is a laborious task indeed to lead people who stick their finger in your eye.

 

11 Years

 

Corrupted Women Take the Stage at DNC: Abortion is Not a Woman’s Prize

at Catholic Online

The Democratic National Convention will be featuring their favorite female “stars” this week. Cecile Richards, Nancy Keenan, Sandra Fluke, Kathleen Sebelius, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and yes, Michelle Obama. They will be used to highlight this administration’s “commitment to women’s rights and health.” They will stand front and center as advocates of the only man who really understands them or cares about their needs. They’ll be hailed by the media as the true American woman.

Well, I can’t tiptoe around the truth. I say with as much kindness as possible that they are corrupt. They are corrupt because they have united themselves with the ultimate corruption and made it their prized possession.

Abortion is nothing new or modern, but only in our modern age has it been elevated to the status of a “right” and sold as a necessary tool of liberation for women. Only we, of all of civilization’s women, have cemented into our law the expectation that women must be allowed to kill their own sons and daughters. We’ve befriended something insidious.

As Blessed Teresa of Calcutta warned us, “If a mother can kill her own baby, what is left but for me to kill you and you to kill me?” There is no further line to be crossed once we have severed what should be the inviolate bond between mother and child. Now there is violence in the sacred space that should be — needs to be — the most protected habitat in the universe.

Go back to the Garden of Eden for a moment. Forget the nonsense of Eve being the “weaker sex”, or more easily deceived. You think that’s why Satan picked her to go after first? I say baloney. Satan is no fool. He did not go after Eve first because he thought she’d be an easy target. She was the chief target, the greatest threat. He wanted to destroy the human person, and the most sure-fire way to achieve that, not just with those first two, but with every human being til the end of time, was to cripple the foundation. Eve was the foundation.

Satan went after the strongest link in the chain of all of humankind — Eve — the mother of all the living. God had given her something He did not give Adam. Only with Eve did He share His glorious ability to create new life. The strength of the human race lies with those who are the life-givers; therefore, the best way to sustain continuous destruction and evil amid the human race is to corrupt the life-givers. Eve’s downfall meant the poisonous seed was planted permanently in the soil from which every other human soul would come.

It was efficient, tidy, genius, and impossible to undo without Divine intervention. Once that was accomplished, Adam was easy. (The Redemption would come through another woman. As the human chain was weakened through Eve, it would be strengthened again through Mary and her humble obedience to God.  The early Church fathers call her the “Second Eve.”)

Now our century has seen women (and as a result the men have followed) turn an act of violence into their “birthright”, if you’ll pardon the irony. With all the inherent force that their life-giving nature endows, modern women have turned the womb into enemy territory, and as a result they’re literally laying waste to the human person.

Abortion corrupts a woman in a way it can never corrupt a man. Men are indeed irrevocably harmed by abortion and by the loss of their children. Men suffer deep and lasting wounds, but in different ways and at a different level than women. Abortion strikes clear to the core of a woman because a woman’s God-given nature is to create, sustain, nurture, and protect new life. Whether a woman ever gives birth is irrelevant. It is still a woman’s essential make-up to bring forth new life into the world. God designed us that way.

When the nature that gives life and creates new life with the help of God turns on herself, comes to despise herself enough to do violence to herself and her own child, the corruption is unleashed.

A Legacy of Death

We are seeing that complete corruption take center stage as the premiere example of what “womanhood” now means in America. The women being presented as models of success, intelligence, talent, and accomplishment are all women who glory in the mass slaughter of babies in the womb. They celebrate the blood of innocent children as proof of their liberation and progress. They demand the continued “freedom” to kill the child in the womb at will, without restriction, without question, and without any moral quandary. Oh, and subsidized by you and me.

They cheerfully embrace with both arms a legacy of death and a continuing promise of more death. They are as blind and corrupt and lost as a woman can be.

Tuesday night HHS Secretary Katheen Sebelius said one thing I have to agree with. She said this November, our choice is “between a nation whose politics play on our worst fears and a nation whose laws reflect the best of our values.”

I’m so sick of the cowardice and dishonesty of people like Sebelius and after tonight, the entire Democrat party. If you’re going to fight for something, then by God, say what it is you’re fighting for. Say it out loud and say it directly. Quit the code-speak. Get up on that stage and say, “The best of our values in America means ensuring that killing a baby in the womb is legal, without restriction, without exception, until the moment of delivery. And it means the taxpayers must pay for this child-killing whether they like it or not.”

Sebelius is right that it really is a choice about what we value in America, and what we defend. Right now, America is a nation that does not defend her most vulnerable citizens. Right now, America is a nation that prides itself on making womb executions “safe, legal, and”… whoops, I forgot — they don’t want them to be “rare” anymore.

Right now America is a nation that dehumanizes the child in the womb in order to destroy that child. Today America is a nation that spends billions of dollars killing tiny babies and celebrates it as enlightened morality. We are a nation where a baby who survives an abortion attempt can still be left to die and even actively killed. Those are Obama’s values. Those are the values of America today, based on our laws.

So get up on that convention stage and admit it. Stop talking about reproductive rights, and choices, and family planning, and women’s health, and stake your abortion claim in plain language. Get up there and admit that the only woman Obama considers legitimate is a woman who thinks it’s a good and necessary thing to kill the child in the womb. Get up there, all of you and admit that the only women in America who should matter at all are the ones who support unfettered abortion on demand at taxpayer expense. I dare you.

You Don’t Speak for Me

It is unspeakably infuriating as a woman to watch Obama and his party of death present the pro-abortion woman as the ideal American woman; as the only acceptable American woman; as the representation of all American women. I’ve got news for you. Your idea of womanhood is utterly repulsive and corrupt. Your idea of freedom and progress for women is utterly grotesque. You do not speak for me, and you certainly do not represent anything that I value.

The current values and laws of America are also repulsive to me. It is shameful that the nation that was birthed on the divine idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the unalienable right to Life is now a nation that greedily devours its own young like the most perverse monster.

Only cowards and tyrants enact laws to permit a helpless child to be killed at will because an adult “chooses.” Only cowards and tyrants hide their violence behind euphemisms and sophistry, and pander to “women’s rights”, cloaked in the rhetoric of “health care.”

Men and women of honor protect their children, born and unborn. Men and women of honor give their lives for their children — they do not take their child’s life for their own. Men and women of honor make sacrifices for their children — they do not make sacrifices of their children.

This election is indeed about choices and about American values. How much longer will America remain a nation that values the “right” to kill the child in the womb? How much longer will America deny the humanity of that child?

We ask, rightly so, how the Holocaust could have happened during WWII. How is it possible that such mass murder could take place, such evil show itself and yet people did nothing to stop it?

How is it that over a million American babies are killed every year and yet not only do we not stop it, we campaign and legislate its protected status as a “right”??

The Official Party of Abortion

Nancy Keenan of NARAL said in her speech that she and her cohorts are proud that the Democratic party believes “women have the right to choose a safe, legal abortion with dignity…” The abortion industry believes there is dignity is tearing a child from the womb. They believe it is dignified to kill a child. That, folks, is the definition of corruption.

Sebelius ended her speech by saying that Obama “is a leader with uncommon compassion and courage…” Yes, this is the man who believes it is an unreasonable burden on a woman’s original decision to have a second physician come and see that the baby who survived the attempt on his/her life is actually cared for and not discarded like trash or finished off. How very compassionate is infanticide!

The new platform embraced by the Democratic party now endorses “safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.” The values of the Democratic party and Obama mean that baby-killing must be “safe”, legal and paid for using taxpayer dollars. Sick and tyrannical is the government that considers killing a defenseless baby something “safe” and insists on subsidizing the slaughter! This is the America and the “American values” that Obama and his gaggle of corrupt women want to perpetuate and then export around the world.

I asked once before, and I’ll ask again now: Women of virtue, where are you? There is not another second to lose. RISE. The foundation of our society must be rebuilt. Ladies, it starts with us. When the womb and the child within are sacred once again, only then will our nation be restored.

 

And Then There Were None: Abby Johnson Helps Abortion Workers Leave the Industry

at Catholic Online

As I hung up the phone from talking with Abby Johnson, the founder of And Then There Were None, a ministry she began with her husband to help abortion clinic workers leave the industry, an image came to mind that stung my heart and made me ashamed.

A woman, a known sinner, fell at Jesus’ feet and bathed them with her tears, then dried them with her hair. From her alabaster jar she poured her perfume on the Master’s feet, along with all her regret and shame, sorrow, and love. The men in the room were appalled by her audacity — the nerve of this sinful woman to barge into a Pharisee’s house and touch Jesus!

Yet Jesus made them look at her and witness the greatness of her love. “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven — for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” Luke 7:44-47

Today that woman works in an abortion clinic. She works for Planned Parenthood, or one of its affiliates. She works in a medical clinic somewhere, and her job every day is to “terminate pregnancies.” She helps spill innocent blood in the name of “choice” and “reproductive rights.” But what if… what if she doesn’t want to anymore? Do you care?

Abby cares, because that was precisely the position she found herself in just a few years ago, when she realized she could no longer work for Planned Parenthood and kill the child in the womb through abortion. She wanted out, and thankfully, she was assisted by people in the pro-life community who were waiting to welcome her and help her leave her job. (If you haven’t read her incredible story, unPlanned, you should.)

Abby knew when she left PP that some day she wanted to help clinic workers, but she didn’t know how that would take shape. She began speaking publicly in the pro-life community, and finished writing unPlanned, giving the country an unflinchingly-honest look inside the abortion industry. When it was released, something interesting happened. Clinic workers started reading it, and 40 Days For Life groups began handing it out.

Abby told me, “I wrote the book because I thought, if I was still a clinic worker and someone like me came out with a book, I’d want to read it as a critic! So I wanted to reach out to clinic workers who would read the book as a critic, and maybe something would strike them as truth.

So that really started to happen, and clinic workers began contacting me, saying ‘I’m feeling the same way you were feeling, can you help me?’ They were feeling trapped with nowhere to go. They felt PP was a big black mark on their record, which it is. PP is the lowest of the low; abortionists are not the greatest physicians. It’s like if one day you wanted to become a respected dog breeder but you had on your record that you used to work in a puppy mill, you’d have a hard time.

These workers feel stuck, like they can’t leave. A lot of them are single mothers, and they can’t just leave their job on a leap of faith.

I knew how lucky I was to have so much support when I left PP, and how scary it is for workers who want to leave but have no one to help them. I thought, after 40 years of abortion in this country, surely there are groups out there to help clinic workers. Surely there are other organizations doing this, and I wanted to find them and join forces. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. I was stunned to learn that there was no one at all reaching out to clinic workers. No one.

So my husband and I began helping them ourselves. On our own we helped them financially, emotionally, and spiritually. In short order, we’d helped 17 clinic workers make the transition out of the abortion industry. I was motivated, and I knew I had to get something official going. Nobody was reaching out to these workers — they came to me. I knew that had to change.”

And so, And Then There Were None was born.

Thinking that original crop of 17 workers was a fluke and they’d probably never see numbers like that again, Abby and her friend, Jennie Stone, set out to create a yearly budget for their new ministry. They thought a liberal estimate would be 10 workers over the next year, and they figured that would be a miracle. Since the official launch this past June, they have already helped 13 more workers leave. So far, a total of 30 clinic workers have left the abortion industry.

With this new ministry, Abby is challenging the pro-life community in America, and even exposing their failure of love.

“Something that has always struck me when I go out to clinics, and I watch the women who come out who’ve had an abortion. I’ll see the sidewalk counselors reach out to them, and I see the compassion on their faces and I hear the compassion in their words, and it’s fantastic. It’s so wonderful to see that. They extend such love to those hurting women.

But then I see clinic workers come out, and that compassion just evaporates. And it’s wrong. 70% of clinic workers have had abortions themselves. They are in need of healing just as much, if not more, than the women who come to that clinic. No one grows up wanting to work in an abortion clinic. It’s a series of heartbreaking, regretful, painful choices that lead them there. We don’t see it because they show their hurt with anger — they yell at us and curse at us because they are hurt. Yet our compassion is somehow diminished toward them.

I want people to know this community of clinic workers have not been embraced by the pro-life community, yet they could literally be the demise of the abortion industry! There are 4 major pending lawsuits against PP, for billions of dollars, all brought by former PP employees. If these suits are successful, God-willing, these large affiliates could shut down. This could be a domino effect. This could be the beginning of the end!

These workers coming forward with information we would not have any other way. The beauty of this is these are real people with real stories of real clients and real things happening that can be brought to court and prosecuted. These clinics really can be shut down because of it. This is what the pro-life movement has been missing for 40 years.

We’ve been missing it because abortion workers are seen as lepers, people we don’t want to touch. But God is able to do His best work in those who have received the most forgiveness. He is doing amazing work through these former workers. It takes a lot of courage on their part, because they aren’t accepted by the pro-life movement. It’s not an easy road they face when they go public. They do it because they’ve seen what abortion really is and they’ve seen their part in it. They feel they have to right the wrong they’ve done.”

Abby sees the great need for healing for those who leave the abortion industry, and that is central to the mission of ATTWN. “Recovery is key for us. I know firsthand the trauma these workers have to deal with after leaving a job like that. They’ll never feel the burden is completely gone, but we want to help the lift part of the burden and heal. Honestly, the burden I feel is what motivates me to continue in this fight. So I’m thankful for the burden I’m left with.”

Spiritual healing is a major component, and I was floored when Abby told me that most of the workers who have come to her for help are Catholic. Talk about a wake-up call for the Church!

She told me of a conversation she had with a priest at a conference recently when she insisted that our priests need to be talking about abortion from the pulpit every week, and that the sanctity of human life needs to be mentioned in the Prayers of the Faithful every week. This priest said, “C’mon, Abby, how often do we really need to include abortion in our homilies?” She replied, “Well, we’d often have women come in for an abortion and lay on the table with a rosary in their hands. I had two employees in my clinic who would help perform abortions on Saturday and be at Mass on Sunday receiving the Eucharist. You tell me, how often do you think we need to talk about abortion?”

They’ve produced a flyer describing the ministry and the help they can offer, and they want to see that flyer in the hands of every pro-life group who’s out in front of a clinic. They want to see that flyer handed out to clinic workers all over the country. (The flyer can be printed from their website.)

ATTWN’s goal for this year is to become financially stable, and provide a good healing program for every clinic worker they can help. To do that, they need our financial support. This isn’t a ministry that needs volunteers right now as much as they need monthly partners. There is no overhead, and Abby draws no salary. Every cent given to ATTWN directly assists clinic workers who want to leave. (They don’t receive assistance until they’ve actually left the industry.)

Individuals and businesses can partner with ATTWN on a regular monthly basis, and companies that would match donations are also welcome and needed. (At this time, the application for 501c3 is pending. Upon approval, donations will be tax-exempt.)

Last but not least, Abby wants our help spreading the word. This life-changing miracle is happening by word-of-mouth, and personal contact. But the potential to cripple the abortion industry is unmatched. And Planned Parenthood knows it. Abby and Jennie know PP is very angry about what they’re doing. They also know that God is with them, and they trust in His hand of protection on their growing outreach.

I have to admit that prior to learning about ATTWN and hearing Abby’s story, the abortion clinic worker was not tops on my list of people to care about. It’s easy to villainize and condemn; it’s hard to show compassion and love. And Then There Were None is a bold challenge to the Body of Christ to realize the clinic worker is not our enemy. She’s just like us — a sinner in need of forgiveness and hungry for love. Those who are forgiven much, love much.