Brian R Corbin's Reflections on Religion and Life

Living Your Faith as Citizens and Leaders in Politics, Culture, Society and Business

July 24, 2009 • 3:23 pm 0

USCCB Response to Rep Ryan’s Pregnancy Prevention Bill. Thoughts?

LIFE ISSUES FORUM                                                                   July 24, 2009

Let the Taxpayers Beware!
By Susan E. Wills
 
It should be called the Planned Parenthood Economic Stimulus Package of 2009.

Instead, co-sponsors Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) have given their “new” (though largely recycled) bill the promising title “Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act.” Sponsors describe the bill as a “common ground” approach to reducing unintended pregnancies and abortions, one that should appeal to opposing sides in the abortion debate.
Sure, the bill is dressed up with some funding for after-school programs, and some (very poorly crafted) efforts to provide support for pregnant students. But make no mistake. The bill is “about access to birth control,” according to Congressman Ryan (MSNBC’s “Hardball,” May 19, 2009). In the same interview, Ryan explained: “We have to have birth control and contraception offered to these poor women who don’t have access to contraception, period, dot. There’s no other way we’re going to be able to reduce [abortions].” About what you’d expect in a bill whose co-sponsors enjoy a 100% pro-choice rating from NARAL.
Accordingly, their bill calls for grants for comprehensive sexuality education (abstinence-only educators need not apply!). It substantially increases funding for the federal Title X Family Planning Program. It denies state choice, making family planning services a mandatory Medicaid entitlement in all states, and greatly expands family planning eligibility under Medicaid to all women who are eligible under state law for prenatal, labor, and delivery care.
Some people might find this approach sensible. But they ignore at least two things. First, since at least 1980, taxpayers have been funding “family planning services” to the tune of over $1 billion  per year. In 2006 such public expenditures totaled $1.85 billion . So today, virtually all teenagers who are sexually active and do not want to become pregnant are already using contraception. Only 7% are not  using it, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Second, contraceptives don’t work very well in real life. In the first 12 months of contraceptive use, 16.4% of teens (1 in 6) will become pregnant. Among low-income cohabiting teens, the failure (pregnancy) rate over 12 months is 48.4% for birth control pills and 71.7% for condoms.
Numerous studies in the United States and Europe have found that greater access to contraception fails to reduce unintended pregnancies and abortions. A recent $10 million intervention in England giving at-risk teens comprehensive sex education and contraception is a perfect example. Teens in the program had a pregnancy rate 2.5 times higher  than a similar group of at-risk teens (16 vs. 6 percent).
Why does increased access to contraception fail at the population level? Thinking they are protected from pregnancy and disease, more young people become sexually active and have more partners, offsetting any reduction in pregnancy from individual contraceptive use. And the increased level of sexual activity causes STD rates to soar.  In the U.S., 1 in 4 teen girls has at least one STD; many of these are incurable and some are fatal.
The sharpest decline in unintended pregnancies and abortions since 1990 has occurred among those under 18, due not to comprehensive sex ed or contraception, but chiefly to the growing number of young people choosing to remain abstinent.

Visit the Secretariat’s website for contraception facts and citations at http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/contraception/index.shtml , and let your member of Congress know that the Ryan/DeLauro bill cannot fulfill the promises in its title. The real abortion-reduction bill in Congress now is the Pregnant Women Support Act (S.1032, H.R.2035), which needs our support.
Susan Wills is Assistant Director for Education and Outreach in the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. To learn more about the bishops’ pro-life activities, see www.usccb.org/prolife .

Filed under: Culture, healthcare, morals

May 22, 2009 • 12:21 am 0

Roundtable: Book topic “God and the gods”

Newsletter n. 219  www.vanthuanobservatory.org

Verona 21 May, 2009

18 May 2009 at 17:00, the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Gregorian University organized a round table for the presentation of the book “God and the gods” written by Rt. Rev. Giampaolo Crepaldi, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and President of our Observatory. Presented below is the full text of the author’s statement.

 

18 MAY 2009

GREGORIAN UNIVERSITY, ROME

PRESENTATION OF “GOD AND THE GODS”

 

Rt. Rev.   Giampaolo Crepaldi

Secretary of the Pontifical Council for justice and Peace

 

With this my book God and the gods published by Cantagalli of Siena as part of the Collection of the Cardinal Van Thuân Observatory I sought not only to analyze some of the classical and current themes of the Church’s social doctrine, but above all offer a perspective, a unitary visio as a basis for their consideration. This book in no way shirks the commitment to tackle even the thorniest issues facing us today – from the right to religious freedom to the human rights of the fourth generation – and at the same time strives to revive fundamental arguments for tackling them in a neither opportunistic nor politically correct manner.

From whence did I draw inspiration? Above and beyond the names mentioned in the footnotes, my considerations drew inspiration above all from my reading of the works of Joseph Ratzinger, theologian and Pontiff. I also acknowledge the substantial debts I owe to Romano Guardini on the theological level, and to Augusto Del Noce as far as philosophy is concerned.

Then again, the judgment about Christianity in modernism offered by the three aforementioned scholars reveals considerable features of convergence despite evident difference. This is especially true as far as one point is concerned: modernism will not succeed in reviving itself without Christianity. This is also the thesis presented in this book.

Modernism had the gall to claim that it invented reason, thereby separating it from a broader context of sense constituted by the faith. But without faith in the Word of God incarnate, the Logos, Primordial reason, even our reason, the reason of modernists, becomes lost as it twines around and around itself. In the book I described some of these processes, especially in the areas of democracy, laicity, human rights and technology. And each time I made an effort to show how human reason on its own does not have to force to remain fully faithful to itself.

When discussing “pure nature” with Franco Rodano, Augusta Del Noce said modernism issues forth from the negation of original sin. It is evidently necessary to speak about a “certain” modernism and not modernism as such, because otherwise the meaning of modernism would have negative connotations alone and it would be transformed from an historical and cultural process into an abstract and unchangeable philosophical category.

I am of the opinion that the final destiny of modernism has yet to be decided and that it can recover from the Pelagianism of its origins, which necessarily turns into Gnosticism. Pelagianism consists in holding that nature on its own is able to attain its own natural ends, but today we witness exactly the contrary: nature on its own can’t even be nature, and becomes transformed into culture, or science or technology.

The Pelagianism of modernism necessarily begets Gnosticism: salvation is immanent to me and I can attain it with that certain science or technique I now possess. But this too is in the throes of such a dramatic crisis since science and technology act in an agnostic context in ethical and metaphysical terms. Technology                                                        professes to determine what man is without having any sense of man. Reduced to “pure technique”, what type of salvation can technology ever deliver?

In his “Foreword” Cardinal Martini says: “At the bottommost root of problems there is always a defect of faith. Halfway through the 19 th century the anarchical socialist Proudhon wrote the following words: ‘The first duty of an intelligent and free man is to constantly eject the idea of God from his spirit and his conscience. Because God, if He does exist, is essentially a foe of our nature, and we gain nothing from His authority. Despite Him we attain science, despite Him we attain wellbeing, society, and each of our achievements is a victory in which we crush the Divinity’. Has this ‘despite Him’ proven to be realistic? Is it really true that man may attain science, wellbeing and society without God? How many presumed victories have turned out to be defeats?”

I would now like to say something about the unitary perspective proposed in the book. This could perhaps be expressed as follows: the vocation of the Logos. In fact, I made an effort to project a non positivistic vision of reality, and, especially in the chapters dealing with anthropology, to show how nothing utters itself alone; each thing or reality or person expresses a sense which transcends it. The aridity of our personal, relational and religious life depends on our mounting inability to make things, nature, persons and life speak. Stemming therefrom is a strong resistance to being grateful, to welcoming reality reading in it an appeal addressed to us, a vocation. The book’s first chapter is dedicated to “the human person between vocation and alienation” and sets the tune for the all the rest, beginning with an excerpt taken from Centesimus annus where John Paul II writes that the identity of a person depends on the response to the vocation of God. If things are naught but what I see of them, they embody no message for me and are just there at my beck and call. Even a love or a child, once upon a time looked upon as an undeserved vocation, or a gift as people say in such cases, cease to be events speaking to me, events abounding with prospects of responsibility, duties to be shouldered and ends to be attained, and turn in to cases to be kept under control by imposing my rationale upon them instead of letting myself be challenged by them. What is not accessible to our grasp thins out until it disappears. The space of what is accessible to our grasp expands to encompass each aspect of life and even life itself, which, however, precisely for this reason no longer reveals itself to us as having a sense because the sense we can give to life no longer suffices. Only the meanings we do not construct ourselves satisfy us because they represent a vocation.

Considerations of this nature also have considerable social and political relevance, and are at the heart of the selfsame social doctrine of the Church. In this book I have tried to capitalize as well on the knowledge of the Church’s social doctrine built up over many years of service to the Church in this field of endeavor. Benedict XVI said it so very well in Deus caritas est : the social doctrine is situated at the point of encounter between faith and reason, or, even better, there where the faith purifies reason. As we know, to purify means to reveal a vocation. The faith enables reason to appropriate itself anew, to fly much higher than before, to discover new lands waiting to be explored. This is the key used to analyze the themes of laicity and religious freedom, which I tackle by drawing on the Decree Dignitiatis humanae as a whole, and not just select excerpts.    

 

 

 
www.vanthuanobservatory.org

Filed under: consumerism, Culture, Economic Policy, morals, Social Doctrine, Spirituality

March 4, 2009 • 8:06 pm 0

PRO-LIFE E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO CONGRESS EXPANDS NATIONAL POSTCARD EFFORT


 
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has launched an e-mail campaign urging Congress to maintain widely-supported pro-life policies and to oppose the federal funding and promotion of abortion. The e-mail campaign augments the massive national postcard campaign launched in dioceses throughout the country in late January. Both efforts are being coordinated through the USCCB’s partner organization, the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment (NCHLA).
            Since 1993, NCHLA has coordinated national postcard campaigns equipping citizens to express their pro-life views clearly and respectfully to Congress. The current campaign is unprecedented in scope, exceeding those sponsored by the Catholic bishops in the past.
            Deirdre A. McQuade, Assistant Director for Policy and Communications at the USCCB’s Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, explained the supplementary e-mail campaign. “Tens of millions of cards have been distributed in parishes, schools, non-Catholic churches, and civic organizations across the country,” she said. “The e-mail campaign will give even more citizens the chance to participate.”
            The e-mails urge a constituent’s Senators and Representative to “please oppose FOCA or any similar measure” and “retain existing laws against funding and promotion of abortion.” They also state: “It is especially important that Congress retain these laws in the various appropriations bills, e.g., the Hyde Amendment in the Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill.”
            “To guard against the erosion of current pro-life measures—and to keep abortion from becoming a federal entitlement—our voice is needed now more than ever,” McQuade said.

Filed under: Culture, healthcare, morals, Politics, Social Doctrine

February 7, 2009 • 8:28 pm 0

President of Caritas Internationalis Discusses role of families

ZE09020605 – 2009-02-06 Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-25022?l=english

CARITAS PRESIDENT ON THE ROLE OF FAMILY

Interview With Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga

By Gilberto Hernández García

MEXICO CITY, FEB. 6, 2009 (Zenit.org).- With all of the importance that families have for individuals and society — including in the economic realm — the decision to form a family should be made with ample preparation, says the president of Caritas. Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga affirmed this last month when he spoke with ZENIT at the 6th World Meeting of Families, held Jan. 14-18 in Mexico City. In this interview, he considers the impact of poverty on family relationships and the Church’s response.

Q: You have a broad vision of social issues and their repercussion on families. In this regard, what is the issue that most concerns the Church today?

  Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga: The family itself — that is the principal point, the most important option in the life of the human being; as a consequence, it is on the list of the concerns we have: what to do so that people are ever better prepared for this life option. All big things are prepared for, they are not improvised, but many times the greatest decision of life, which is love and family, is improvised in a frightful way. Sometimes we have families that start off because of a mistake and not because of a decision made freely. To prepare this life option is perhaps the biggest objective of all evangelization of family ministry.

Q: What do you think about the evident process of poverty and inequality that Latin America suffers and that in many cases restrains the integral development of families?

Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga: In the World Meeting of Families, a specialist in economics presented to us the consequences that a lack of families has for economic development, for poverty itself. With studies and statistics, she showed us that physical and mental health is much better in united families than in single-parent or disintegrated families. Poverty is much worse in broken than in united families. In this regard, they looked at distinct aspects, for example, higher education and the obstacles when parents are divorced. These are elements very little considered by the press and it’s worthwhile to give them attention. The educative role of the family is spoken of; some reduce it to school education. Here it was made clear what moral education in the family means, spiritual education, economic aspects and the testimony of the father of the family, when in the midst of life’s vicissitudes, he is capable of heroically accompanying the family. These are unexplored riches and it’s worthwhile to make them known, because there are people who suffer and hearing these cases gives them strength. Poverty is a reality that is increasing in our countries, instead of diminishing. Now we have this very grave financial crisis and it is foreseen that it will have many consequences.

Q: Some say poor countries are poor because they don’t regulate births. Many governments focus their strategies against poverty with policies of birth control.

Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga: These birth control policies are in reality the elimination of the birth rate. They consider only one of the perspectives. It is thought that we are poor because we have a large population and this is a sophism. Population is necessary for economic development; there is a country in Latin America that was the first, already in the 50s, to apply reductions of birth rate. What has happened to that country? It cannot grow and, as a consequence, it doesn’t have consumers so that there are prosperous businesses. They have to import everything from other large countries and barely have a subsistent economy — not a development as there should be. The Church speaks clearly of responsible paternity and maternity; the transmission of life is a great responsibility of the parents, not a product of some disorder. It is a great responsibility. In the same way governments have the grave responsibility to procure the common good for all citizens, and if there are citizens that should be privileged, it should be the poor and not those who have more. And that is why the Church, that is Mother, heavily insists in its social doctrine that the family is not like an element that doesn’t play a part in the social problems. In the social doctrine of the Church, a very important chapter is the family, because it is very linked to everything that refers to social problems. The Church has always made the appeal to governments to concern themselves with poor families.

Q: What merit has the idea that the Church only gives privileges to the rich?

Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga: One who says this doesn’t know the life of the Church. In the first place, the Church is not reduced to the hierarchy; every baptized person is the Church. If we look at all the pastoral developments in the continent, we see that the Church has made a preferential option for the poor. In Mexico there is a unique case for our continent: businessmen and people of the high economic class sustain the Instituto Mexicano de Doctrina Social (Mexican Institute of Social Doctrine), which educates the people precisely in the conviction they have that one of the best ways to relieve poverty is through education. The institute has given scholarships to students from poor countries, including Cuba, who have come to Mexico with full scholarships, to go deeper in the study of the social doctrine of the Church. So this judgment cannot be generalized. One who examines the life of the Church understands that the preferential option for the poor is not poetry, but reality. Sometimes Catholic morality is criticized because it is opposed to the use of condoms as a solution for the problem of HIV-AIDS. Well I want to say that 27% of the organizations in the world [that work] in favor of patients with this illness are from the Catholic Church and they receive barely 2% of the Global Fund for aid for HIV-AIDS patients. If we move to programs of housing construction, we realize what it means when, during natural disasters, I speak as president of Caritas Internationalis, the most respected institution in the preferential option for the poor.

Filed under: AIDS, Caritas, Economic Policy, morals, Social Doctrine

February 5, 2009 • 11:52 pm 0

CARDINAL RIGALI TO CONGRESS: KEEP EXISTING PRO-LIFE LAWS

WASHINGTON— Writing as chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, Cardinal Justin Rigali sent a letter on February 5 to all members of Congress, urging them to maintain pro-life provisions in the appropriations bills they must soon approve to keep government programs funded past March 5.

“I urge you not to use this legislation to weaken or rescind longstanding provisions that protect U.S. taxpayers from being forced to fund and promote the destruction of innocent human life,” Cardinal Rigali said. “In making this plea,” he said, “I am joined by millions of Catholics and others who, in the weeks to come, will be sending postcards to their elected representatives with this message: ‘ Please oppose FOCA [the ‘Freedom of Choice Act’] or any similar measure, and retain laws against federal funding and promotion of abortion.’

While an extreme proposal like FOCA would overturn hundreds of pro-life laws at once, we are equally concerned that such laws may be overturned one at a time during Congress’s appropriations process.”

The prelate’s letter highlighted several pro-life provisions, including: the Hyde amendment and similar measures protecting American taxpayers from being forced to subsidize abortions; the Dickey/Wicker amendment preventing federal funding for research in which human embryos are created, harmed and destroyed; and the Kemp-Kasten amendment preventing U.S. funding of organizations that support or help manage programs of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.

Cardinal Rigali also called on Congress to maintain the Hyde/Weldon conscience protection amendment , a key measure preventing discrimination against health care providers who do not perform or refer for abortions. “Clearly ‘choice’ is an empty slogan if physicians, nurses and hospitals must ‘choose’ to provide abortions or be forced out of the health care field,” he said. “Like Congress’s decision about requiring taxpayers to fund abortion, the decision whether to maintain current conscience protections could play a major role in determining whether Americans of different backgrounds, viewpoints and religions will be able to work together toward a consensus on much-needed health care reform,” Cardinal Rigali advised.

Filed under: Culture, healthcare, Medical Ethics, morals, Social Doctrine

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