WOMEN / India: ‘National Girl Child Day’ against gender selective abortion and infanticide

'National Girl Child Day' against gender selective abortions and infanticide
by Nirmala Carvalho
One girl in 13 does not reach the age of six. A member of the Pontifical Academy for Life says that "socio-cultural factors" are at the root of gender discrimination. The Catholic Church adopts strategies to "protect and promote girls."

Mumbai (AsiaNews) – India marks its third 'National Girl Child Day'. "One in 13 girls does not survive beyond six years of age," said Dr Pascoal Carvalho. "All forms of discrimination and violation of the rights of the girl child need to be eliminated, within and outside the family." Speaking to AsiaNews, Dr Carvalho, who is a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, noted that this day is a reminder of the urgency to protect girls from selective abortions and female infanticide.

The current United Progressive Alliance government set aside this day in 2009. The chosen date corresponds to the day in 1966 when Indira Gandhi became India's first woman prime minister. The Catholic Church celebrates the same event on 8 September, nativity of Mary.

With the introduction of ultrasound and amniocentesis, tens of thousands of female foetuses were never born. The tests were "originally designed for detection of congenital abnormalities of the foetus," said Dr Carvalho, who is also a member of the Human Life Committee of the Archdiocese of Bombay. Now, they "are being misused to know the sex of the foetus with the intention of aborting it if it happens to be that of a female."

In order to stop such abuses, the government passed the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technologies Act, which include penalties for anyone, doctor or parent, who carries out such tests for this purpose. 

Yet, "Even though the law is a powerful instrument of change, alone it cannot root out this social problem," Dr Carvalho said. "Girls are devalued not only because of economic considerations but also because of socio-cultural factors," like lineage, protection for parents in their old age and rituals like lighting the funeral pyre and other death related rites. "Culturally, girl children are not valued and, in many Indian communities, familial and social pressures often dictate who is born and who survives."

In some regions, sati is still practiced, whereby a widow joins her husband in the funeral pyre in order to fulfil her role as wife. However, it is a way to remove the economic "burden" of the woman.

The Central Supervisory Board set up to monitor implementation of the Act has investigated the matter. So far, 94 doctors have been convicted under the Act, but licences of only 15 have been revoked by the Medical Council of India (MCI).

Whilst the government does not oppose such technologies, they should be used for their original purpose. District authorities can monitor how they are used, said joint secretary in the health ministry Anuradha Gupta.

Beside the government, the Catholic Church has also taken steps to counter gender discrimination and protect the rights and freedom of girls. In 2010, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India adopted in fact a gender policy with strategies to protect and promote girls. 

The police includes protecting girls from any form of discrimination and abuse, sexual or otherwise; projecting a positive female images among girls, boys, parents, teachers and society at large; avoiding all forms of stereotyping in Church-run inter- and extra-curricular activities; and promoting government programmes for girls in homilies, hospitals, dispensaries and catechism classes.

FAITH: Martyrs of Disunity or Unity?

SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 2012

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity - Martyrs of Disunity or Unity?

In the 16th and 17th centuries it is a sad fact that, amidst a complex religious and political situation, at various points Protestants and Catholics executed each other in connection with the specific form of a person's faith in Jesus. The Church has seen fit, after due examination, to officially recognise a number of these Catholic martyrs, canonising or beatifying them. When the Church does this, she proposes them to us as models of Christian life to be learned from and imitated. God may call us to imitate them in our deaths as actual martyrs but in the first place we are firstly to imitate them in the manner of our lives. How are we to do this? Some may think that it ought to be by a firm rejection of and opposition to current Protestants; or, if not this, by as much distance and as little contact as possible. Even if ignorance tends to breed contempt, and distance may tend to harden our hearts which may in turn lead to indifference, disrespect or worse, some may nonetheless consider it a strategy worth risking, as a 'softer' approach might dishonour our martyrs and the wishes of the Church that canonised or beatified them.

But the declared wishes of the Church challenge this and point in another direction. The Church, most authoritatively in the Decree on Ecumenism of Vatican II, and in more recent documents and in the ministry of Popes since then, has recognised that Protestants are real Christians, live in the grace of Christ and are our spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ. We are to recognise them as such, and to work towards unity with them, a unity Christ prayed would be among all his disciples. We are to pray and reflect together and also practically co-operate where possible. By committing ourselves to such ecumenism in authentic ways we become more Catholic and not less Catholic, more loyal to the work of Christ and the Church and not betrayers of it. How then are we to imitate our martyrs? We do not need to ignore them but can learn from them to positively engage ecumenically. We may do so now by our lives as the manner of our deaths are in God's hands.

The martyrs in general offered their deaths as the final act of a life lived in love of God and neighbour, as an instrument of God to bring salvation to those around them. Thus they lived and died seeing others as made in and for Christ, they lived and died encouraging fellow believers to a generous and risk-taking, costly love. Do we?

Many of them died, expressing their own sinfulness, and seeking God's mercy: we need to be the same and to seek mercy for any hostility or disrespect to other Christians on our part. We need to be mindful of the contribution, sometimes sinful, by Catholics to the problems in church and violence in society of that period of history. We live with the legacy and need God's mercy. Do we seek it and to remove the plank from our own eyes?

The martyrs witnessed to the truth of the Christian faith. Our witness to the fullness of our faith matters too, and the strong convictions of martyrs should be noted, shared and learned from. At the same time, we need to appreciate that many Protestants died for what they sincerely believed to be Christian truth and good practice. When examining the execution of Christians by Christians in the 16th and 17th centuries, we should also seek to understand the way the political and cultural issues of the times polarised Christian views and convictions and shaped actions. Error does need to be pointed out on occasions but we also need to listen and to appreciate that Truth has many aspects and there are often different ways of articulating and living it, and also that truth can be packaged with error. The Truth is Jesus, the saving love of God for us; the martyrs, spoke that Truth in love, in keeping with its nature. Do we?

They invited and challenged persecutors to come to faith, but did not impose their faith and did not use violence or political machinations to defend themselves. They witnessed to the power of forgiveness. Some specifically prayed at the scaffold for the unity of the Church to be restored, though, among other factors, the politics of their situation made that very difficult to envisage indeed. If we are to imitate them we need to forgive and to seek reconciliation at various levels. We have far more opportunity for practical co-operation than the martyrs did due to the politics of their time. Will we make ourselves vulnerable and take risks to bring reconciliation?

The martyrs looked to heaven for God to reward them and to vindicate them in his own way. We too are called to look to heaven and to trust God's providence. But in looking to heaven, we need to realise we will share it with all whom God has called, justified, sanctified and glorified and that will most likely include Protestant brothers and sisters, including ones from this bloody period of Christian history. We will be fully reconciled in Heaven. This should encourage us and give us hope, and inspire us to seek to build a church that not only looks to this, but seeks to build it upon earth and so witness to just how much reconciliation and unity God wants to bring about among people.

The situation facing the martyrs was complex and presented them with difficult and often conflicting emotions. Their legacy and our situation of disunity and the call to unity creates a complex situation with difficult and conflicting emotions. Let us be inspired by their compassion and also candour, their courage and also good cheer, their constancy and also courtesy, and by Christ-like integrity, humility, sensitivity, generosity and wisdom which bind these together and direct them, so that we may renew all of the Church, and deepen its visible unity, that Jesus Christ may be seen the more clearly in our world.

Record turnout for Paris March for Life: unprecedented support from Catholic Church

by Jeanne Smits, Paris correspondent

 

Thousands of pro-lifers gathered for the 8th annual Paris March for Life.

Photo: Olivier Figueras

January 23, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The 8th annual March for Life attracted a record number of French pro-lifers on Sunday.

This year's march was considered especially crucial by local pro-lifers, since 2012 will see presidential and legislative elections in France. While the abortion issue has been more or less ignored in political debate in recent years, the organizers of the March for Life hope that the increasingly popular event will help draw attention to the issue.

One of the more hopeful signs this year was the increasing support of the French hierarchy of the Catholic Church for the event, including a surprising about-face from the Paris cardinal.

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Just before the 2009 edition of the March for Life, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois had clearly dissociated himself from the initiative during an interview on the official Parisian Catholic radio station, Radio Notre Dame. The cardinal suggested that from a "tactical" standpoint, "I don't think the objective should be to yell things from the rooftops: what's needed is work, to help with the work. And if you're serious about that, results will follow and you'll be heard."

However, since then Pope Benedict XVI has sent messages of support to the Paris March for Life in 2011 and again this year.

Increasing pressure from pro-life Catholics, a growing number of bishops throwing their weight behind the March – 32 in total – and the enthusiasm of the young generation of Parisian priests have tipped the balance. In November Cardinal Vingt-Trois, in his final speech to the Assembly of the French episcopate, named the March for Life as "one of the means of action Christians choose" to promote respect for human life.

Young Parisians hold the March for Life sign at the Parish event.

Photo: Olivier Figueras

 

As a result, the March for Life was announced in many parishes and dioceses this year. The total number of marchers was up at least 20%, with an unprecedented number of diocesan priests from the Paris region taking part.

Cardinal Barbarin, primate of Gaul and archbishop of Lyons, sent his personal blessing: "May God bless you all, who will be taking part in the March tomorrow. My prayer will join yours, so that your March may bear fruit, and bring light and peace to our country."

Three bishops attended the March in person. Mgr. Marc Aillet, bishop of Bayonne, told LifeSiteNews that he came to accompany the members of his flock who came to Paris for the occasion.

"I encourage the Catholic faithful to commit themselves to promote the culture of life and the Gospel of Life," he said.

"I believe one of the ways to proclaim the Gospel of Life is to proclaim it in the streets, peacefully, joyfully and positively, as I believe it is being done today. That is why I think I am in my role as a pastor in accompanying and encouraging the faithful who are really committing themselves, and who sometimes give their life for this great cause."

Noting that the "fears" which marked previous years are slowly being dispersed, Mgr. Aillet spoke of the new hope which is growing for life thanks to the presence of many young people and families.

More and more young people are present each year at the March for Life. Jean-Marie Le Mené, president of the Fondation Jerôme-Lejeune – which perpetuates the work of the famed French pro-life geneticist for children with Down's syndrome – has been taking part in the March since its first year. He commented that a large part of the battle has already been won as young people who weren't even born when the French abortion law came into effect in 1975 have heard the pro-life message and are ready to take up the battle without being hampered by preconceived ideas. "We all know that demography is what makes geopolitics. I think that is also true in the area of law-making."

The Paris March for Life explicitly demands "laws for life," support for the traditional family and an end to public measures that increasingly undermine respect for human life. The media kit for the March included a list of the many unfortunate measures taken by the government since Nicolas Sarkozy was elected into office. They include free distribution of condoms in high schools, social security refunds for morning-after pills, increased screening for Down's syndrome and other genetic illnesses, propaganda for contraception and gender ideology in all publicly funded schools, increasing alignment of civil unions on marriage, and the financial reevaluation of abortions to make the activity more attractive to hospital doctors. More and more politicians of Sarkozy's governing UMP party are making their support for homosexual "marriage" and adoption known.

To date, only one party has explicitly promised to abolish French laws that make abortion legal: the "Parti de la France" was largely represented at the March. The Christian Democrat Party was represented by its president, Christine Boutin. She intends to create better conditions to "welcome life" but is stopping short of advocating for abolishing legal abortion.

Boutin told the glossy women's magazine Elle: "I do not want to question the principle of the abortion laws, even though my own position is public knowledge. I am not favorable to abortion. It is, I think, a tragedy. I think the trivialization of abortion is not a good thing. That being said, it seems to me to be necessary that one should be able to accompany women who are facing difficulties."

Over 220,000 legal abortions are performed every year in France and numbers are rising, while France is one of the world's most contracepting nations.

ETHICS: 54,559,615 USA abortions alone since Roe v. Wade

Shock: estimated 54,559,615 abortions since Roe v. Wade

by John Jalsevac

 

January 23, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new analysis from the National Right to Life Committee's (NCLC) education department estimates that since the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973, over 54.5 million American babies have died through abortion.

Dave Andrusko, the editor of National Right to Life News, said that the number is "so huge that we can't really come to grips with it."

"But what it means is that there are over 3,300 abortions every day—137 per hour–or about one dead baby every thirty seconds."

This week pro-life advocates are mourning the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, with tens of thousands having marched past the national Capitol today in the national March for Life. NRLC's estimate was released to coincide with the grim anniversary.

Click "like" if you want to end abortion!

The pro-life organization based its estimate upon data both from the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), a research institute founded by Planned Parenthood.

The NRLC analysis says that abortion rates peaked in 1990, during which year there were 1.6 million abortions. That number has dropped 25% to about 1.2 million abortions annually.

The pro-life organization observes that while the CDC bases its abortion numbers upon figures sent from the country's 52 central health agencies, AGI obtains its data from direct surveys of abortionist. AGI's data consistently shows higher abortion numbers than the CDC.

The abortion numbers are cast into further uncertainty due to the fact that the CDC has not included abortion numbers from two states since 1998; the numbers from various other states have also not been included in annual data from time to time.

Abortion leading to less respect for lives of disabled, archbishop says

By Catholic News Service

PHILADELPHIA (CNS) -- A Philadelphia hospital's alleged refusal to provide a kidney transplant to a mentally disabled 3-year-old is yet another example of the harm caused in the United States by the Roe v. Wade court decision legalizing abortion, according to Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput.

"The habit of treating genetically disabled children as somehow less worthy of life is growing across the country," the archbishop said in a column posted Jan. 19 on the website of his archdiocesan newspaper, The Catholic Standard & Times.

He was commenting on the case of Amelia Rivera, whose parents say she was denied a kidney transplant at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia because she has Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, a chromosomal disorder that results in severe developmental retardation.

The child's parents say a doctor at the hospital told them that a kidney transplant would not be performed on Amelia at the hospital using a donated kidney because she was "mentally retarded." The hospital has declined to comment on the specifics of the case, citing patient confidentiality, but said that transplant eligibility decisions were "based on widely accepted, medically valid methods, with many factors considered."

Archbishop Chaput said it is "unwise to assume that news media get all the details of a story like this right, or that the motives of an entire hospital's leadership and staff are as unfeeling as an individual doctor might seem."

But he added, "We need to understand that if some lives are regarded as unworthy, respect for all life is at risk. We should pray that Amelia Rivera gets the help she needs, and that God surrounds her parents with the support they need."

Anticipating the 39th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade on Jan. 22, Archbishop Chaput said, "More than 45 million abortions later, the damage of that decision continues to grow -- undermining our reverence for the life not just of unborn children but of the mentally and physically disabled as well."

The archbishop said some of his friends are the parents of children with special needs, whose doctors or genetic counselors might have warned before the child's birth of possible genetic anomalies.

"Some doctors deliver this information with sensitivity and great support for the woman," he said. "But, as my friends know from experience, too many others seem more concerned about avoiding lawsuits, or managing costs, or even, in a few ugly cases, cleaning up the gene pool."

Archbishop Chaput said the parents of children with potential disabilities should not be denied "vital information" nor given "an implausibly upbeat picture of life with a child who has a disability."

But he recommended that those parents also hear from other parents of special-needs children, special education teachers and therapists, and pediatricians who have treated children with disabilities, who "often have a hugely life-affirming perspective."

"The real choice in accepting or rejecting a child with special needs is never between some imaginary perfection or imperfection," the archbishop said. "None of us is perfect. No child is perfect. The real choice in accepting or rejecting a child with special needs is between love and unlove; between courage and cowardice; between trust and fear."

END

British cardinal: Suspicion, inertia, impatience damage ecumenism

CHESTER, England (CNS) -- A British cardinal encouraged Christians to overcome the "three enemies of ecumenism" and to pray for the progress of closer unity. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, retired archbishop of Westminster, said "suspicion, inertia and impatience" had damaged the ecumenical project. The former co-chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission also told about 500 worshippers gathered in the Anglican cathedral in Chester that prayer and grass-roots initiatives were the best means of keeping the ecumenical dream alive. "To mend the ruptures of the past is a task that devolves on each one of us here this evening," the cardinal said at the Jan. 22 service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. "For too long we have lived, as it were, apart, and one of the joys of my years as a priest and bishop has been the growing friendship that has come amongst us," he said. "For when we meet together and pray together, the suspicions of the past dissolve, and we reach the heart of the ecumenical movement, which is a spiritual movement focused on Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to whom we pray and in whom we reach the Father," he said. "And, of course, we overcome inertia by what we do together," the cardinal added. "We can have many notional ideas of what we want to do, but do we actually do them? In every village and every town, everywhere, there ought to be some things which Christians are doing together. It may be a prayer group; it may be an expression of social concern for the poor and needy; it may be joint services, especially at key times such as today," he said.

USA Religious Freedom Eroding

Pope sees religious freedom eroding in US

January 19, 2012

From Our Store: Witness of Suffering (eBook)

Pope Benedict XVI issued a solemn warning about the erosion of religious freedom in the United States, in a January 19 address to visiting American bishops.

The Holy Father told the American prelates, who were making their ad limina visits, that "it is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church's public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres." He added: "The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life."

The US should be a land thoroughly committed to religious freedom in light of its history and the fundamental principles of the nation's founding, the Pope argued. He said:

At the heart of every culture, whether perceived or not, is a consensus about the nature of reality and the moral good, and thus about the conditions for human flourishing. In America, that consensus, as enshrined in your nation's founding documents, was grounded in a worldview shaped not only by faith but a commitment to certain ethical principles deriving from nature and nature's God. Today that consensus has eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity as such.

The loss of religious freedom, the Pontiff warned, is "a threat not just to Christian faith, but also to humanity itself." He explained: "When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey, as the late Pope John Paul II so clearly saw, to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society."

Pope Benedict urged the American bishops to take every opportunity to defend religious freedom and to promote moral reasoning based on the natural law. He reminded them that the natural-law tradition does not impose restrictions on true human freedom. That tradition, he said, should be properly understood as "a 'language' which enables us to understand ourselves and the truth of our being, and so to shape a more just and humane world."

The Pope said that he was dismayed by reports from the American bishops about new threats to religious freedom. He mentioned especially the initiatives that would "deny the right of conscientious objection" to people who are morally opposed to "cooperation in intrinsically evil practices." Here the Pontiff was obviously referring to policies that would require health-care personnel to cooperate in abortions, or force both public officials and private individuals to participate in the celebration of same-sex marriages or refer children for adoption by gay couples. The US bishops have sharply criticized the Obama administration for its unwillingness to afford "conscience clause" protections to religious believers.

An AP story on the Pope's address accurately reported that American Catholics have been divided on the duties of Catholic lawmakers regarding policies that violate the precepts of Church teaching. The AP story concluded: "In recent years, a small but growing number of local bishops have publicly told Catholic lawmakers who support abortion rights not to present themselves for communion because of their stance on the issue."

Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Pope: Religious freedom most American of freedoms (Vatican Radio)
• Difficulties and Hopes of the Catholic Church in America (VIS)
• Convincing witness?in the face of radical secularism (Full text of Pope's remarks, from L'Osservatore Romano)
• Pope hits out at `radical secularism' (AP)

OBAMA Mandates Against Catholic Moral Teaching

Cardinal Mahony blasts HHS contraception mandate

January 24, 2012

From Our Store: The Documents of the Second Vatican Council: A Summary and Guide (eBook)

Cardinal Roger Mahony, who served as Archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, has blasted the Obama administration for announcing that Church-related institutions will be required to provide contraceptive and sterilization coverage for employees in their health-care plans. The new rule confirmed on January 20 does not apply directly to houses of worship, but does affect schools, hospitals, and charitable organizations.

Calling the mandate "probably the most expansive decision on the part of the US Federal government ever," Cardinal Mahony said that "I cannot imagine that this decision was released without the explicit knowledge and approval of President Barack Obama. And I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience than this ruling today. This decision must be fought against with all the energies the Catholic Community can muster."

Cardinal Mahony added:

For me there is no other fundamental issue as important as this one as we enter into the Presidential and Congressional campaigns. Every candidate must be pressed to declare his/her position on all of the fundamental life issues, especially the role of government to determine what conscience decision must be followed: either the person's own moral and conscience decision, or that dictated/enforced by the Federal government. For me the answer is clear: we stand with our moral principles and heritage over the centuries, not what a particular Federal government agency determines.

As Bishops we do not recommend candidates for any elected office. My vote on November 6 will be for the candidate for President of the United States and members of Congress who intend to recognize the full spectrum of rights under the many conscience clauses of morality and public policy. If any candidate refuses to acknowledge and to promote those rights, then that candidate will not receive my vote.

"This is a sad moment in the life of our country, where religious freedom and freedom of conscience led to the formation of this new Nation under God," he concluded. "Let us all pray that the power of the Holy Spirit will come upon all elected officials of our country, and that all will make decisions based upon God's revealed truth."

Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Federal Government Mandate for Contraception/Sterilization Coverage (Cardinal Roger Mahony Blogs LA)
• Obama administration denies 'conscience clause' exemption on contraceptive coverage (CWN, 1/20)

Church unity requires conversion for all, Pope says

January 23, 2012

From Our Store: The Documents of the Second Vatican Council: A Summary and Guide (eBook)

The quest for unity among all Christians "will be realistic if change first comes about within us," Pope Benedict XVI told a midday audience on Sunday, January 22.

Reminding his listeners that the Church is still observing the annual Week for Prayer for Christian Unity, the Pope went on to say that ecumenical work will bear fruit "if we let God act, if we allow ourselves to be transformed in the image of Christ, if we enter into new life in Christ Who is the true victory."

Pope Benedict encouraged all Catholics to continue their prayers for Christian unity through the week. He looked forward to an ecumenical service that will be held on January 25 at the Roman basilica of St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls as the formal closing of the annual observance.

As he closed his Sunday audience, the Pope sent his greetings to the Asian countries that will be celebrating the new lunar year. Offering them his wishes for a peaceful and successful year, he said: "My particular wish is that the young, with their enthusiasm and ideals, may offer a new hope to the world."

Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Christian Unity, a Gift of God and a Daily Task (VIS)

Blind Catholic Missionary's Sermons Online

Here're several really good sermons in audio recording online

by a blind missionary priest in the USA :)  http://www.awildcanary.com/library.html

Peace in Jesus !

JC

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"The protection of human life [at all its stages] is the "rock solid and inviolable" foundation upon which all other human rights are based." - Benedict XVI