The Virginia Catholic Conference is happy to announce today's launch of its new blog, "From the Tiber to the James." We hope this new tool will engage, update, inform and educate our network members, friends and interested fellow travelers about the Conference's public policy work here in Richmond and, with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in Washington DC, as it relates to Catholic social teaching.
Our goal for "From the Tiber to the James'' is to provide engaging, thought-provoking posts – respectful of our reader's busy lives – about why and how we do the work we do, and how our readers can become more involved in advocacy on behalf of the common good.
Attuned readers will not miss the symbolism of the blog's name: our Faith traces its past, present and future to the Vatican on the banks of the Tiber River. Our daily work – living in the public square – takes us to Virginia's capital, on the shores of the James.
The Virginia Catholic Conference is the public policy agency of Virginia's Catholic Bishops and their two dioceses.
I am walking in the local Walk for Life on May 4 at 10:00 a.m. to raise funds for the Pregnancy Resource Center (formally known as the Crisis Pregnancy Center). If you are not planning on walking yourself, I was wondering if the members of the respective groups would consider sponsoring me (and Carol).
No money is due at this time…just send an e-mail to ckoz654@aol.com with your name and address and the amount you'd like to pledge. You will receive a bill from the PRC at a later date after the Walk for Life. No amount is too small (or too large!).
Thank you for your consideration and, again, please forward this to the respective groups.
Despite what amounted to a blackout at many media outlets until last week, you've probably now heard at least some of the details. According to the grand-jury report, Gosnell's Philadelphia "clinic" was a filthy abattoir. It stunk of urine. Flea-ridden cats defecated freely, including in procedure rooms. Fetuses — or, rather, parts of fetuses — were all over the place, in jars, on shelves. The remains of 45 babies were found by authorities. Gosnell collected baby feet in jars.
Karnamaya Mongar, 41, a refugee from Nepal, died at Gosnell's clinic, allegedly because he and his staff used too much of a cheap sedative and because the clinic was so crammed with junk that it took paramedics 20 minutes just to find their way out. Authorities later found her intact 19-week-old fetus in a freezer. It had been there for three months.
So obviously, this is a story about the mainstream media.
My fellow Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers wrote a USA Today column last week shaming the media for not covering the Gosnell case enough or, in many cases, at all. She got results. Suddenly everyone was talking about it, though a dismaying amount of the coverage is about why there was a lack of coverage.
Ironically, the same factors that might have discouraged the mainstream media from covering the story in the first place now give them an incentive to turn it into a story about the media. CBS News, for instance, broke its broadcast boycott of the trial by running a piece on the political firestorm over the lack of coverage. Now, for understandable reasons, the bombing at the Boston Marathon is likely to push the Gosnell story out of the news once again.
In fairness, some feminist writers have been talking about the case all along. But their outrage has not been over the fact that Gosnell fully delivered live babies and then cut their spines with scissors. Their outrage was focused on the legitimately outrageous conditions of the clinic and the economic and racial inequities involved. Gosnell preyed mostly on poor and minority women. He was even something of a racist, reportedly reserving a clean visiting room for white patients.
Tiller was murdered by an anti-abortion fanatic in 2009 because he was one of the most prominent providers of late-term abortions. And though Gosnell's patients would no doubt have gotten better care from Tiller, the truly significant difference is that the fetuses would have been killed without seeing the light of the day.
Many prominent Democratic politicians oppose any meaningful restrictions on late-term abortions. President Obama, as a state senator, fought a law that would have protected live infants accidentally delivered during an abortion. Senator Barbara Boxer once said that constitutional rights begin when you bring the baby home from the hospital. Prosecutors almost never try to enforce violations of late-term abortion laws, in part because the Supreme Court says any abortion is constitutional if the mother's psychological health would be endangered by continuing the pregnancy.
Regardless, Gosnell isn't only being charged with performing illegal late-term abortions. He's being charged with delivering viable babies and killing them. The really profound question here: What is the moral difference between killing a living baby that is outside the mother for a few seconds and killing one that's still inside? It's no wonder the media would rather talk about themselves.
All in the pro-life cause should be outraged by the previous lack of coverage by the mainstream "media" of the horrors practiced by the Philadelphia "clinic." Please forward to your groups as you see fit. The depravity of the efforts to "ensure the demise of the fetus" is cogent evidence of where society is led when it is ambivalent to the daily destruction of innocent life.
Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven't heard about these sickening accusations? It's not your fault. Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page.
None of the three major television networks in the United States had mentioned it. Nor had major newspapers like the Washington Post published any original articles on the trial. This despite the fact that testimony (and the Grand Jury report leading up to the trial) has been horrifying: teenagers being told to administer anesthetics without medical training; aborted infants stored in the refrigerator next to employees' lunches; accusations of preferential treatment for patients based on race; babies born alive who had their spines subsequently snipped by Gosnell and his staff; seventeen years of government, accrediting agencies, and hospitals looking the other way despite numerous complaints of medical negligence at the clinic.
Following the publication of Powers' article, Get Religion's Mollie Ziegler Hemingway (who had earlier in the week noted the lack of Gosnell coverage) took to Twitter, directly asking reporters why they and their news agencies were ignoring the story. Other Twitter uses started doing the same. And pro-life agencies began organizing a "Tweetfest" for Friday, asking people to highlight media blackout on the story by using the hashtag #Gosnell.
Note: I've made a small addition (April 13, 2013) in order to include a link back to one of Hemingway's pieces on Get Religion which had earlier highlighted the media blackout.
Manje means food in Haitian Kreyol. Food for the mind, body and spirit.
The joint Haiti Committee has an annual fund raising gala celebration in its home city of Richmond, Virginia.
Anyone who makes a $150 donation in the name of a student during the 2012 school year drive, will receive 2 complimentary tickets to our annual celebration.
ROME, March 29, 2013 (Zenit.org) – One of the major social changes in recent times is the postponement of marriage. A recent report examined the implications of this development.
In February 2013 the Obama administration published a new "proposed rule" containing revisions to its earlier mandate requiring most health plans to cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. These revisions did very little to correct the underlying problem with the mandate. A large number of religious organizations, including schools, colleges and universities, hospitals and charitable organizations will be forced to provide objectionable coverage. Businesses and individuals of faith will lose the right to provide health care coverage that respects their deeply held religious and moral convictions.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has expressed serious concerns about the new proposed rule and its violation of religious freedom.
Public comments on the proposed rule are due on April 8.
The link provides draft language for your email. Please also feel free to add your own comments.
The struggle for religious freedom is at a decisive moment in our nation. We must protect this right not only for own sake, but for the sake of our children, our grandchildren and all future generations.