A Mother's tears

What a marvelous couple of days the Church has given us. On Monday, She gave us the memorial of St. Monica and today we were given the memorial of her son, St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church.

You have to wonder if Monica, in her years and years of praying for Augustine's conversion, ever pondered Psalm 56 (especially verse 9), You have kept a record of my tears; are they not written in your book?

She couldn't rest until her son was "home."
It reminds me of my own Mother's tears, praying to God that I'd be open to His grace in "coming home." And it happened.
Ironically enough, my Mother called me the other night to tell me that she was going through some old notes and found her recollection of a phone call I made to her on August 30, 2005, when I said "it was time."

So I thank my Mother now for all of her prayers while I was away at college and I thank all mothers for the prayers of God's lost sheep. May their tears be turned into dancing.


Saints Monica and Augustine.....

....Pray for us!

The Negro Project

If we're too understand abortion in America today, we need to go back to the birth of Planned Parenthood and it's founder, Margaret Sanger. I encourage you to read more on the subject here.

*Margaret was one of eleven children born in Corning, New York, in 1879.

*In 1902, she married William Sanger and had 3 children.

*In 1912, she separated from her husband and a year later began publishing monthly newsletters advocating contraception under slogans such as "No Gods and No Masters." To avoid public persecution, she fled to Europe (having multiple affairs in the process) and a month after she returned to the United States in 1915, her youngest child died at the age of 5.

*The next couple of years saw Sanger embrace the ideas of eugenicist Thomas Robert Malthus, a 19th century political economy professor who believed:

All children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room is made for them by the deaths of grown persons. We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality.


*In 1917, she founded The Birth Control Review which regularly published articles by eugenicists, who called for racial supremacy and purity of the Aryan race. The eugenicists believed a better world was obtainable by the "fit" to reproduce and the "unfit" to restrict their reproduction: the inferior races would be contained by birth control and abortion.

Does this not sound like Nazi Germany?


Well, Nazi Germany did adopt this philosophy (after she shared her ideas with them in the 1930s) in search for a master race and we sadly know how they went about "containing inferior races."

* In 1921, built on the ideology of the eugenics movement, Sanger co-founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) with Lothrop Stoddar and C.C. Little and in 1923 established the Clinical Research Bureau (the United States' first legal birth control clinic), which received "anonymous" grants from the Rockefeller family who supported her efforts in population control.

* In 1929, Sanger's ABCL founded an "experimental clinic" in black Harlem "for the benefit of the colored people" (her own words): an ideal place to begin her irrational movement. To gift wrap the idea of eugenics, she convinced black community leaders, as well as a respected black newspaper (The Amsterdam News), Harlem's largest black church (Abyssinian Baptist Church), and W.E.B. DuBois, that:

• birth control was merely a solution to better health and better family planning and that it was necessary to regulate births in proportion to income;
• spacing births would help mothers recover physically and fathers financially;
• physically strong and mentally sound babies would result;
• and incidences of communicable diseases would decrease.

Keep in mind that at this time in the late 1920s, the black population in Harlem made up about 12% of NYCs population, 18% of its unemployment, and 10% of the city's infant mortality rate (200% greater than whites!). It truly was an ideal place for her.

To further gain respect and acceptance, she appointed blacks in visible positions (staff physician and social worker) of the clinic and created an advisory board where she invited prestigious black civic leaders “so that our work in birth control will be a constructive force in the community." She knew that her "idea" would need acceptance and got it when the Urban League took control of the clinic.

*In January of 1939, Sanger's vision saw her Clinical Research Bureau and American Birth Control League merge to form the Birth Control Federation of America (BCFA) and appointed Dr. Clarence J. Gamble (Procter and Gamble) as its regional director of the South. In November of that year, Gamble wrote a memorandum entitled, "Suggestions for the Negro Project," in which he suggested blacks be placed in positions where it would appear they were in charge. Sanger echoed Gamble's sentiments in a reply letter to him when she said:

I note that you doubt it worthwhile to employ a full-time Negro physician. It seems to me from my experience ... that, while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors, they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table, which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. They do not do this with white people and if we can train the Negro doctor at the clinic, he can go among them with enthusiasm and ... knowledge, which ... will have far-reaching results among the colored people.

Preying on the religious blacks was imperative and to do this, she encouraged black church ministers to propagate birth control to the laity:

"The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the Minister is the man who can straighten out the idea if it ever occurs to any of their rebellious members."


*In 1940, the BCFA was to display its exhibit at the American Negro Exposition (ANE) in Chicago, a fair which documented the progress of blacks since the Emancipation Proclamation, but they were cancelled for "last minute changes in floor space." This did not please Sanger and she objected by saying the cancellation was a result of a “concerted action on the part of representatives of the Roman Catholic Church.”
With Sanger urging the need for protest of the ANE and investigation of the cancellation, Attorney Wendall E. Green, sponsor of the ANE, after investigation into the matter by the ANE commission stated:

“That in the promotion, conduct and accomplishment of the objectives (of the Exposition) there must be an abiding spirit to create goodwill toward all people" and since funding for the ANE "came from citizens of all races and creeds, any exhibit in conflict with the known convictions of any religious group contravenes the spirit of the resolution."


Maybe her paranoia of the Catholic Church (having never changed It's position) wasn't crazy after all.

The Negro Project, with Sanger at the reigns, continued its work in the south until the most influential of all Black America were convinced that their "demonstration programs" were for "life-saving benefits." Sanger's clinics were strategically placed in heavily populated black areas and all because she offered them the only solution to their problems (previously mentioned). She later changed the name from the Birth Control League to Planned Parenthood to further cloak her message as "friendly."

And so it continues.

In 1973, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion and here are some alarming statistics:

Worldwide abortions per year (approx. 46,000,000)
Worldwide abortions per day ( approx. 126,000)
U.S. abortions per year (1,370,00 million in 1996)
U.S. abortions per day ( approx. 3,700)

U.S. abortions by whites per year (approx. 822,000 or 0.7% of white female population)
U.S. abortions by blacks per year (approx. 401,350 or 2.3% of black female population)


My dear brothers and sisters, abortion isn't just a religious fight. It's a fight for ALL mankind. We need to make a difference.

An Intimate Encounter with God

To say I've been slacking is an understatement.
To the Pentecostals in Ohio and the "good Deacon" from South Philly, who so graciously bring this to my attention often, I do apologize. It has been too long, my dear brothers in Christ.

In response, I offer a quick reflection.
This morning as I walked to work, I noticed a woman carrying a tote bag with print on it. The print read: "I had an 'Intimate Encounter' with God in 2007" - I assume it referred to a conference or seminar she attended this year. Immediately I felt a closeness to these words as I too had an intimate encounter with God, only it was this morning at Mass (Liturgy of the Word/Liturgy of the Eucharist).

I thought about the word intimate. Intimate can be defined as, "having, or being likely to cause, a very close friendship or personal or sexual relationship."

Well, we can have an intimate (personal) relationship/encounter with God in many ways: We can pray to Him, sit in silence and let Him speak to us, or we can meditate on His Word.
For the purpose of this entry, I will examine how we can have a intimate (sexual) relationship/encounter as well. (Yes I know...just bear with me.)

We first learn of a sexual relationship/encounter in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 1, Verse 28, when God says: "Be fertile and multiply" and in Genesis 2:24: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body."
As St. Paul later tells us in his Letter to the Ephesians 5:29-32, he refers to that "one body" or "one flesh" as the union of Christ to the Church. That one flesh (intimate relationship/encounter) must be a physical union, either between husband and wife or between Christ and His Church (one of the great mysteries).

What happens when we consume food and digest it (a physical action)? Well, it biologically becomes part of us, hence the phrase "You are what you eat." I physically become what I eat, whether it's proteins, fats, or complex sugars.


So, in defining and examining the word intimate, I too had an intimate (in the fullest sense of the word!) encounter with the Living God this morning at Mass when I consumed His Son's flesh and blood.



May the peace of Christ dwell in you richly.

Where are we headed?

I finally got to read the talk given at St. Charles Seminary by the archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap., in which he covered philosophical ideas of the past (and present) and the effects of silence and "liberal thinking" in our modern world.

I've always been confused when people proclaim themselves as "liberal" (at least my friends that do so). They seem to be the ones who think doing what you want is true freedom. How can you truly be free, when you're a slave to your desires and whims? That REALLY isn't being liberal and in our context, a slave to sin (satan) isn't really being free at all. Freedom is what Christ won for us on Calvary. We just have to say yes to Jesus and take on his yoke, which is "easy." We're not learning from history if we continue to listen to that whisper in the garden: "...you will be like gods..."

So, here it is in its entirety. A little lengthy, but WELL worth it...

Religion and the Common Good