{"id":651,"date":"2021-02-17T22:56:46","date_gmt":"2021-02-18T03:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/?p=651"},"modified":"2021-02-17T22:56:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-18T03:56:46","slug":"feb2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/17\/feb2021\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;We Have Not Nor Will We Ever Give Up&#8221; (Feb. 2021 Newsletter)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Frank Tinari, Ph.D., Life Education Council Board of Trustees<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Full-Page Display in Wall Street Journ.<\/h4>\n<p>Under a sonogram photo of a developing baby, on Jan. 22nd National Right to Life wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWe don\u2019t see a potential life&#8230;.<br \/>\nWe see a life with potential\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The full-page display was placed by the group because: \u201cAn unborn baby\u2019s heart is beating until she dies from abortion. Her brain waves can be recorded as early as six weeks. If you believe a life with the potential to laugh, to love, and to do great things is worth saving, please join with us.\u201d [www.facts.nrlc.org]<\/p>\n<h4>Guess the Leadership\u2019s Religion<\/h4>\n<p>1. Force the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide contraceptives &amp; abortifacients to their employees<br \/>\n2. Have taxpayer money fund abortion in the U.S. and in our foreign aid to other nations<br \/>\n3. Promote euthanasia &amp; physician-assisted suicide<br \/>\n4. Eliminate federal regulations that protect the conscience rights of Catholic doctors, nurses and health-care workers<\/p>\n<p>In other words, deliberately facilitate what the Gospel &amp; the Church teach are grave moral evils &amp; injustices. [George Weigel, The Beacon, 1\/21\/21]<\/p>\n<h4>Until Every Unborn Child is Protected<\/h4>\n<p>On the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade decision, we recall the late great Fr. Richard John<br \/>\nNeuhaus. \u201cWe shall not weary, we shall not rest,\u201d he declared at the 2008 National Right to Life Convention, \u201cuntil every unborn child is protected in law and welcomed in life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We are called to be faithful to this mission, no matter how daunting. And, though Roe still reigns, the cause for the unborn has nevertheless made &amp; continues to make great strides saving precious lives every day. Forty-eight years into this, there are millions of good people working at every level to protect the unborn, from the dedicated volunteers at pregnancy centers to pro-life educators, journalists, clergy, lawyers, &amp; legislators, including 18 pro-life women who were elected to Congress in Nov. We have not nor will we ever give up.<\/p>\n<p>A recent article features a fresh look at the Roe travesty. \u201cA Case for the Revocation of Roe v. Wade,\u201d says Editor Anne Conlon, is by Lyle Strathman, an 85-year-old retired electronics engineer. His multi-faceted argument, that legalized abortion under the guise of Roe is an aberration of human reason, of biological science, of philosophical analysis, &amp; the U.S. Constitution, is presented with the kind of elegant economy and interlocking logic even Steve Jobs could have admired.\u201d[https:\/\/humanlifereview.com\/issue\/fall-2020\/]<\/p>\n<h4>Who Are the Sisters of Life &amp; Why Did<br \/>\nEight More Young Women Just Join?<\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/sistersoflife.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-655\" src=\"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/sistersoflife-1024x683.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/sistersoflife-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/sistersoflife-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/sistersoflife-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/sistersoflife.jpeg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a>The Catholic religious order is one of the fastest growing orders in the U.S. The photo shows the most recent group of young women who joined as postulants. Here is the order\u2019s mission statement: \u201cLike other Catholic religious Sisters, we\u2019vemade a decision to leave behind what the world offers to give our whole lives to God by professing vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. What does that mean? It means we don\u2019t personally own anything \u2013 Jesus is our treasure. We don\u2019t get married \u2013 Jesus is our one love. And we freely surrender to lives of obedience \u2013 Jesus is our one will.<\/p>\n<p>This sets us free to love in a universal way, and commit wholeheartedly to the mission Jesus entrusts as we live in community with one another.<\/p>\n<p>And, as Sisters in love with life, we\u2019ve also made another decision: We vow to protect and enhance the sacredness of every human life. Why? Because we want to uphold the dignity and worth of each person, created from and for God\u2019s great love. Entrusting ourselves completely to the Lord of Life, we commit our lives to the protection of human life and to the promotion of new life in Christ, acknowledging the goodness of every person, and sharing the gift of God\u2019s abundant mercy with all those we meet. In this way, we seek to help reveal to each person their own innate goodness, the particular love God has for them, and invite them to something greater: a life of truth, joy, and hope.\u201d [<a href=\"https:\/\/SistersofLife.org\">https:\/\/SistersofLife.org<\/a>]<\/p>\n<h4>Are You a Man or a Woman?<\/h4>\n<p>According to a new federal order, school restrooms, locker rooms, &amp; sports can now no longer be organized on the basis of sex\u2014or \u201csex-based stereotypes,\u201d to use the current administration\u2019s favored terminology. There has been an understandable outcry about the consequences of this, most obviously for women\u2019s sports, where physical differences exert rather a significant influence. For example, women\u2019s running, from the 100m to the marathon, will easily be dominated by men who identify as female. Worryingly, contact sports such<br \/>\nas women\u2019s rugby will become very dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>I am the faculty advisor to the women\u2019s rugby team at Grove City College. Will it become illegal for me to refuse to allow the women to play opposite a team containing biological males who have rejected \u201csex-based stereotypes\u201d? Whatever might be the legal case, I would consider it criminally irresponsible to allow such a match to take place.<\/p>\n<p>What constitutes a person is now apparently nothing more than your feelings, your psychology. You feel you are a woman, despite what your body tells you? Then understand that your body has no authority here; go with your gut. Transgenderism is really just the latest, most radical expression of the notion that humans are just matter, the biology of which has no moral significance. The body has no intrinsic purpose, for it can be manipulated to serve those feelings in which we have come to invest decisive authority.<\/p>\n<p>Any form of social organization that denies or challenges the identity of transgender people is by definition discriminating against them. It is not just women\u2019s sports. It is anything that can be categorized as oppressive\u2014be they religious organizations, traditional moral convictions, or previously unexceptionable pronouns.<\/p>\n<p>Traditionally, the legitimate and the illegitimate could be distinguished on the basis of agreed-upon human ends, which all humans share and which transcend the individual. Once those ends have been abandoned in favor of personalized forms of individual happiness, an odd thing happens. With no consensus on what human beings are for, someone still has to make choices about which identities are legitimate and which are not. And thus the freedom of radical individualism ironically requires the authoritarianism of governmental decrees, with appropriate penalties<br \/>\nattached. [Carl R. Trueman, First Things, 1\/26\/21]<\/p>\n<h4>UN Reneges on Key Principles<\/h4>\n<p>The UN Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that \u201call members of the human family\u201d have \u201cinherent dignity.\u201d The UN also claims in Article 3: \u201cEveryone has the right to life, liberty and security<br \/>\nof person.\u201d In 1959 the UN adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and in 1989 reaffirmed it at its Convention on the Rights of the Child, declaring: \u201cthe child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, <strong>before as well as after birth.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since then the UN has reneged on these basic principles. \u201cWorldwide, there were 73.3 million abortions each year between 2015-2019 according to [a] Lancet study. The injustice is beyond words! In our nation, there are 862,230 precious children\u2014with what the UN once called \u201cinherent dignity\u201d\u2014that are killed by the social injustice of abortion annually.\u201d [Ryan Bomberger, Remember When the UN Declared Unborn Babies Should be Protected?, LifeNews.com, 11\/20\/20]<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture, is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.\u201d Saint John Paul II, Christi Laici #38<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h4>Studies Show Girls Prefer Dolls<\/h4>\n<p>The toys provided by parents deliver some of the earliest gender-based messages by encouraging children to engage in activities associated with, for example, dolls and trucks.<\/p>\n<p>In the current study, we measured the influence of parental socialization by assessing 5-month-old and 12 1\u20442-month-old infants\u2019 exposure to dolls and trucks and by experimentally manipulating parents\u2019 encouragement to play with these toys. We found that infants displayed gender-typical toy preferences at 12 1\u20442 but not 5 months, a pattern characteristic of previous studies. Further, encouragement by a parent to play with toys from each category was ineffective in altering infants\u2019 preferences. [John L.<br \/>\nBoe, Rebecca J. Woods, Parents&#8217; Influence on Infants&#8217; Gender-Typed Toy Preferences, Springer Science-Bus. Media, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s11199-017-0858-4]<\/p>\n<h4>\u201cI\u2019ve Been Kicked Out of My Home\u201d<\/h4>\n<p>[Ed.\u2019s Note: There are literally tens of thousands of support agencies and homes to help pregnant women who have been rejected by their families. This is a brief report on one of them.]<\/p>\n<p>Kelly, pregnant and 19, was abandoned by the father of her child &amp; her entire family. She searched online for \u201chomeless programs New York New Jersey\u201d &amp; Good Counsel Homes popped up. That evening she was in one of its four homes, welcomed by the manager with open arms and a warm smile.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood Counsel, homes for mothers and babies, started by the late Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR, and me back in 1985, is here to help any pregnant and parenting mothers \u2018take the next good step\u2019 as Fr. Benedict would say. That usually means going back to school or working or both. Good Counsel offers free babysitting for a mom during the year she is in the home in order for her to take those next good steps.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood Counsel has served more than 7,800 mothers and children. Last year 30 babies were born from moms living in our homes as we kept the doors open in spite of the lockdowns.\u201d [Christopher Bell,<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodcounselhomes.org\">www.GoodCounselHomes.org<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p><strong>This free monthly newsletter is used by dozens of churches as a bulletin insert, and has had over 30,000 readers. To receive a copy in your inbox, email Frank Tinari, Ph.D. at tinarifr@shu.edu<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Frank Tinari, Ph.D., Life Education Council Board of Trustees Full-Page Display in Wall Street Journ. Under a sonogram photo of a developing baby, on Jan. 22nd National Right to Life wrote: \u201cWe don\u2019t see a potential life&#8230;. We see a life with potential\u201d The full-page display was placed by the group because: \u201cAn unborn&hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/17\/feb2021\/\" title=\"Continue reading &lsquo;&#8220;We Have Not Nor Will We Ever Give Up&#8221; (Feb. 2021 Newsletter)&rsquo;\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeeducationcouncil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}