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Article will appear in The Interim -- November 2005 edition
Lorne Gunter's recent article, "Fighting Canada's Secular Tide" which appeared in Monday's National Post, is an interesting, at points bang-on, analysis of the present challenge that faces the social-conservative community, but as my headline suggests, in the final analysis he misses the point.
You don't fight secularism with an exclusively secular method. The way to beat it back is with a better, more culturally vigorous, Christian paradigm.
Of course, Gunter makes some very good points, like when he insists that we need "backroom" strategists of the caliber of a Ralph Reed to spur us on. But his mistake is in focusing almost entirely on our lack of organization, fundraising ability, and plain political naivety. Our fundamental problem, according to him, is our lack of methodological savvy, exacerbated only by our numerical weakness.
"Can the religious right ever play a major role in this country?" he asks. No, "they lack the numbers and the mechanism to force change in the way they've done south of the border".
Look, Canada has a population about the size of the State of California (roughly 30 million). Out of that 30 million, approximately only 60% of all eligible voters cast a vote in any given federal election. Mixed in to the equation is the so-called "insignificant evangelical community" which actually totals about 3 million people (and, if we include social conservative Roman Catholics, then that number can be doubled).
Three million, in a total population of 30 million, where only 60% vote, is nothing to sneeze at.
But this is beside the point.
The point is that it is not a lack of mechanism, not even a lack of numbers that stunts our potential.
There is just no way "gay-marriage" could have ever seen the light of day in Canada, if 3 million people, who apparently believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that his morality is the key component in the great commission ("teaching them all that I have commanded" Matt 28:18-20) were serious about being engaged in the public square - JUST NO WAY!
So what is really the problem?
Most evangelicals don't believe in politics. They have embraced a pacifistic, quiet-pietism and a-historical hope that encourages personal introspection while being politically irrelevant.
We are, to use a cliché, so "heavenly minded" that we are of no use in Christ's kingdom building enterprise, and the root of this problem lies with bad theology.
I can't count the times I have heard Christians eschew political engagement because Jesus said: "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's", conveniently forgetting that Christ finished that statement by telling us that God is in control of everything, including Caesar, and therefore everything in life, including politics is an act of worship.
And what about the many instances when pastors have reminded me that Christians
are simple pilgrims passing through this dark world - "besides what right
do we have to judge a world when we're just as guilty?"
There's that introspection again.
Here's a suggestion.
Why don't we repent and then get on with it?
Gunter says: "if the religious right wants change, it now knows it will have to abandon its cultural isolation, stop preaching only to the converted and engage in the muck and mire of day-to-day politics".
I'm not so sure that the religious right "now knows" anything beyond a climate of introspective isolation. And, I'd like to know just what he means by "the converted"?
I take it he means those pew warmers who get to hear warm fuzzy church sermons on Sunday about how Christianity is "judgeless"? If that's who he means, you can bet, as sure as the Liberals will regain power in the next election, that these "converted" have heard more than their fair share of "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" - provided of course, that one's Christianity emanates with an ethereal spirituality that remains tepidly personal and private.
As I have maintained for years now, the single greatest contributing factor to Canada's slippery slide into secular hedonism hasn't been that secularists have out-maneuvered, or that we've been taken over by homosexual activists, not even Pierre Trudeau is to blame.
The problem is the church, and as an evangelical, I am referring particularly to the evangelicals here. Secularism didn't just happen. Unwitting and sincere believers of the past aided its advancement. These Christians accepted the notion that science had disproved the created origin of man, that reason and knowledge were antithetical to faith, and so, Bible believing Christians shunned the unbelieving culture. Culture came to belong to unbelievers, and social-gospelizers.
Instead of endeavoring in society, in politics, law, media and the arts, with an explicit Christian world and life view, pious believers focused on more heavenly/spiritual and PERSONAL pursuits, like Bible study, prayer and waiting for the return of Christ.
This ethos of abandonment has been handed down from generation to generation.
Gunter states that it's taken "gay-marriage" to scare us out of our Christian ghettos. But as I criss-cross Canada, I would have to ask: scare who Gunter?
Still too few Christians get it.
Still too few pastors understand.
And still, social conservative commentators miss the crucial analysis.
What is needed today is not a better mechanism but a brand new paradigm that shakes Christians out of their lethargy. Only a new paradigm can awaken the political giant within our community. Without the theological justification, strategies to increase fundraising, develop media relations, and "getting-out-the-vote" will fail.
Why?
Because without the spiritual and theological foundation, Christians simply won't be compelled to take up their God-given duty in this world, as we prepare for the next. All the strategizing in the world will die the death of a thousand pietistic qualifications.
And then yes, conservatism will be dead.
But not because it wasn't political enough.
Rather, because we, as a people of faith, died for lack of knowledge.
Article will appear in The Interim -- November 2005 edition
Name: Tristan Emmanuel
Email: temmanuel@netscape.ca
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© 2005 Tristan Emmanuel . All rights reserved. Website: www.tristanemmanuel.com
© 2005 The ECP Centre. All rights reserved. Website: www.ecpcenter.org
Shouldn't Christians
know better?
Posted: October 1, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Ted Byfield
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
A survey of Canadian readers by Indigo Books, a national Canadian retailer, discovers that Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" has defeated "some of literature's most venerable sellers." Conducted over the summer, an online poll of 7,000 readers found the Brown book proclaimed "the best of all time."
It's hard to imagine any current fact that better illustrates the disheveled state of Christian education. For by almost any standard of New Testament scholarship, the Da Vinci Code is unmitigated nonsense, and any Christian with the barest knowledge of the history of the New Testament would know this. Yet it has been passed off by the author as historically credible, and many millions of people believe him, an embarrassing number of them practicing Christians.
Today, almost any cock-and-bull fabrication about Jesus Christ can be published and offered for sale, with a host of dubious "modern scholars" testifying to its possible authenticity, and can quickly run to the top of the best-seller lists, put there in part through the ignorance and gullibility of devout and committed Christian people.
When Mark Noll, the articulate and wholly authoritative professor of history at Wheaton College, published his "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" nine years ago, he was not writing about illiterate Christians, but of educated and often otherwise literate ones who did not regard their faith as imposing obligations on their mind. God was about loving people. What did thinking have to do with it?
A great deal, writes C.S. Lewis in his "Mere Christianity." Christ wants "every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job and in first-class fighting trim. The fact that what you are thinking about is God himself (for example when you are praying) does not mean that you can be content with the same babyish ideas which you had when you were a 5-year-old."
He refuted Charles Kingsley's: "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever." Rather, says Lewis, "being good involves being as clever as you can."
If Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic, were instructed in the faith to the level which a modern, increasingly anti-Christian society demands of us, Dan Brown's concoction of pseudo-biblical claptrap would have been laughed off the market as soon as it appeared.
The average high-school educated Christian would have known that the Gnostic gospels represent the legendary phase of Christianity. Jesus Christ, among other things, was a human being, lived a human life at a specific point in human history, was sentenced to a particularly hideous death on the charge of blasphemy and, according the records left by his followers, rose triumphant over death itself "beating down death," as the Orthodox Christians say, "by death," i.e., by his own death.
As with all historical figures, especially in the ancient world, there are two kinds of accounts of Christ's life. The first, the four Gospels, are highly verifiable on historical grounds meaning that they are known to have been written within a time period that would enable them to have been first- or second-hand accounts. If you reject the Gospels because you don't believe in miracles, fair enough. However, your rejection is not based on historical, but on theological grounds. Historically, all four Gospels are entirely credible.
As the years passed, however, legends grew up around Jesus legends written a hundred or sometimes 150 years after he died. These are the so-called "Gnostic" gospels. The early Christians rejected them for inclusion in the New Testament because they knew them to be largely fictitious. Today, popularizers like Brown and a cadre of dubious "modern scholars" have seized upon them as the basis of a reconstruction of Christian history and the Christian faith. Because of the interest that has always focused on Jesus, they sell well. But they are poppycock, and we should know this.
They should also serve as a warning to us. Unlike any of our forefathers, Christians must live today under an unprecedented avalanche of information, some valuable, much useless, a great deal absurd and some actively poisonous. More than ever, we need Christian schools. But we must be sure that what we teach in them is Christianity. We must be sure they are not really secular schools whose Christianity consists entirely of crosses and biblical pictures on the wall. Christianity should touch, influence, even shape every subject taught. For we are in the midst of an ideological war, as crucial as any military one, and victory will greatly depend on what goes on in those Christian classrooms.
Ted Byfield published a weekly news magazine in western Canada for 30 years and is now general editor of "The Christians," a 12-volume history of Christianity.
______________________________________________
Greetings from LifeIssues.net (www.lifeissues.net)
FDA is taking comments on OTC Sale of "Plan B" - If you haven't sent your comments to the FDA opposing over-the-counter sale of "Plan B" (the "morning after" pill) please do so. The comment period ends on November 1.
The FDA has asked for comment on three issues: 1.) Should the FDA create and define a regulation to allow for a drug to be available both with a prescription and without?, 2.) Does the FDA have the authority or ability to enforce restricting a drug from a subpopulation when it would be available to the larger population?, and 3.) Can a drug that is approved both witha prescription for some and withouta prescription for others have the same packaging, or would it require different warning labels and instructions?
The "morning after" pill kills developing human embryos by preventing their attachment to the uterine wall, thus depriving them of life-sustaining nourishment. Young girls (16 and older) who would obtain the drug without a prescription and behind their parents' backs would be at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases, for victimization by predatory adult males who could buy the drug in advance of committing statutory rape, and for medical consequences resulting from use of a drug that has not been tested for its effects on the developing bodies of young girls.
Our efforts to stop FDA approval of "Plan B" have failed, but at the very least we must try our best to stop approval for over-the-counter sale of this dangerous and deadly drug.
(Please send your comments ASAP to:)
Food and Drug Administration, HHS
Division of Dockets Management
Docket No. 2005N-0345
RIN No. 0910-AF72
5630 Fishers Lane, Room 1061
Rockville, MD 20852 - USA
************
"Hong Kong Needs Babies." Unlike mainland China which still holds aggressively to its one child policy, Sir Donald Tsang, chief executive of Hong Kong, is urging Hong Kong couples to have three children in order to counteract falling birth rates in an aging population. Hong Kong has a fertility rate of 0.94 children per woman in her lifetime. This is less than half the number of children needed to even replace the current population.
God Bless,
Jerry Novotny, OMI
.
"The early fathers of the church wrote that the Christian is 'divinized' by God's grace - by which we are made 'Godlike.' In this they were merely following the lead of Scripture itself. This is a reality more profound than simply following Christ. We are able to follow Christ because we are in an intimate relationship with him, because we are changed to be like him." - Bishop Zipfel
.
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Lifeissues.net NEWSLETTER #245
October 2, 2005
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(TABLE OF CONTENTS):
1. Indian girl's one-rupee suicide
2. Q&A: Down's syndrome recreation
3. Over 330,000 AIDS Cases Registered in Russia
4. Legal limit destroys 6642 embryos
5. Aging population to be main culprit of stagnant growth
6. Dutch to set guidelines for euthanasia of babies
7. Adultery Is Killing the American Family
8. Maverick in 'second human cloning bid'
9. Fetal Farming is on the Horizon
10. Enlarging the family
11. British Career Women Seeking IVF too Busy to Conceive Children Naturally
12. Aborted Baby Stem Cells in Mouse Experiments a Medical and Ethical Disaster
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("NEW" ARTICLES POSTED RECENTLY at http://www.lifeissues.net)
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--Antonio P. Pueyo: http://www.lifeissues.net/writer.php?ID=pue
--Ronald Rolheiser: http://www.lifeissues.net/writer.php?ID=ron
--Peter J. Cataldo: http://www.lifeissues.net/writer.php?ID=cat
--Ignatius Perkins: http://www.lifeissues.net/writer.php?ID=per
--Raymond B. Marcin: http://www.lifeissues.net/writer.php?ID=mar
***********
(Website: LifeNews.com) http://www.scottsfight.com/. LifeNews.com is an independent news agency specifically devoted to reporting news that affects the pro-life community. It acts as a service provider to furnish news content to media that share the pro-life perspective. The topics covered by LifeNews.com include abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia, bioethics issues such as human cloning and stem cell research, campaigns and elections, and legal and legislative issues. LifeNews.com has developed a reputation for fairness, accuracy and timliness in their twelve years of service.
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ITEM #1. Indian girl's one-rupee suicide
Half of India's children are malnourished, a UN report says
A 12-year-old Indian girl committed suicide after her mother told her she could not afford one rupee - two US cents - for a school meal.
Sania Khatun lived with her mother in a village north of Calcutta under a tarpaulin sheet provided by the state.
Sania normally ate nothing at school but on Friday saw classmates eating rice and asked for one rupee.
Her mother scolded her and when she returned from work found her daughter hanged from the ceiling with a sari.
"She wanted just one rupee... but her mother could not give her the money due to poverty," government official Nakul Chandran Mahato told the Reuters agency.
To read entire article at BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4277980.stm
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ITEM #2. Q&A: Down's syndrome recreation
Scientists have been able to introduce most of a human chromosome into mice - and make the most successful recreation of Down's syndrome so far.
But what will this enable researchers to do?
What was being looking at?
The researchers were aiming to transfer as much of a human chromosome into a mouse embryonic stem cell as possible.
Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes which contain all human genes.
Males and females share 22 of these chromosome pairs; the 23rd is the sex chromosome, where women have two X chromosomes and men have one X and one Y.
Down's syndrome belongs to a class of disorders known as aneuploidies in which individuals have the wrong number of chromosomes.
Aneuploidies occur in at least 5% of all pregnancies and are a significant cause of illness, death and miscarriage.
People with Down's are born with three copies of chromosome 21.
There are an estimated 60,000 people in the UK who have Down's syndrome. They can expect to live between 40 and 60 years.
View full text at BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4274230.stm
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ITEM #3. Over 330,000 AIDS Cases Registered in Russia
Over 330,000 cases of AIDS have been registered in Russia, head of the government body for combating AIDS Viktor Pokrovsky told an offsite session held by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe commission for health and AIDS in Russia.
"The number of (HIV) carriers in Russia is estimated at 600,000 to 1 million," Pokrovsky was quoted by the RIA-Novosti news agency as saying. Half of them do not even know they have contracted the disease, he added.
AIDS has already claimed 7,500 lives in this country, the official said.
Pokrovsky noted that AIDS is moving beyond the high risk groups of drug users, sex workers and homosexuals. "The number of cases registered among heterosexuals has gone up," he said.
AIDS is on the rise in industrially developed parts of the country, especially in Siberia and the Urals. Khanty-Mansiisk, the Urals and Irkutsk regions have reported higher numbers of HIV carriers this year, as compared to 2004. "The outlook for Russia is not very good," he added.
By the year 2020, Russia will have lost over 100,000 human lives to AIDS, Pokrovsky warned.
Source: http://mosnews.com/news/2005/09/23/aidsinrussia.shtml
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ITEM #4. Legal limit destroys 6642 embryos
VICTORIAN IVF clinics have discarded more than 6600 embryos since state laws banned their storage beyond five years.
Since the legislation came into effect in 1998, at least 6642 embryos that had been frozen in Victorian IVF clinics have been destroyed.
Previously, embryos created in IVF clinics could be stored indefinitely.
The Age has found that only 5 per cent of couples choose to donate their embryos to couples who have been unsuccessful in creating an embryo through IVF.
However, clinics say that since they obtained licences from the National Health and Medical Research Council to use embryos for stem cell research, more couples who have completed their families are donating embryos to research.
View full article at The Age:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/legal-limit-destroys-6642-embryos/2005/09/25/1127586746562.html
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ITEM #5. Aging population to be main culprit of stagnant growth
The rapidly aging population is expected to become the main culprit of the nation's stagnant economic growth in the coming years, the Bank of Korea said yesterday.
Growth is estimated to remain in the mid 3-percent level between 2011 and 2030 and could drop further below 2 percent after 2030, according to the report titled "The impact of demographic changes on economic growth."
To counter the problems stemming from the drastic demographic change Korea needs a development strategy, which would put more emphasis on enhancing productivity than simply increasing the workforce, the report stressed.
"Policy measures intended to encourage more workers to participate in the labor market including extending the retirement age would not be as effective as we anticipated in uplifting economic growth," said Kim Ki-ho, an economist at the BOK's Institute for Monetary and Economic Research.
For more information go to The Korea Herald:
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2005/09/26/200509260011.asp
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ITEM #6. Dutch to set guidelines for euthanasia of babies
The Dutch government intends to expand its current euthanasia policy, setting guidelines for when doctors may end the lives of terminally ill newborns with the parents' consent.
Euthanasia is banned in most countries, although Belgium legalized it under strict conditions in 2002. Switzerland allows passive assistance to terminally ill people who have expressed a wish to die.
In the United States, Oregon is alone in allowing physician assisted suicide, but its law is under constant challenge and the U.S. Supreme Court is to hear arguments against it Wednesday.
The change in Dutch policy is especially significant because it will provide the model for how the country treats other cases in which patients are unable to say whether they want to live or die, such as those involving the mentally retarded or elderly people who have become demented.
View full article at MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9532252/
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ITEM #7. Adultery Is Killing the American Family
We hear a lot of talk these days about the need to protect and strengthen the traditional American family. Certainly, it is true that the institution of marriage is under attack from every side. But the real threat comes from the multitudes of couples that fail to honor their marriage vows.
Adultery is one of the most terrible facts of life in contemporary America. If you watch the daily soap operas on TV many of which are just soft-core pornography you might get the impression that there are more people cheating on their spouses than remaining faithful. And you might be right.
View full article at OpinionEditorials.com:
http://www.opinioneditorials.com/freedomwriters/ntabor_20050925.html
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ITEM #8. Maverick in 'second human cloning bid'
A SECOND failed attempt at human reproductive cloning was reported yesterday by maverick fertility expert Dr Panos Zavos.
Dr Zavos, from the University of Kentucky in the United States, said his team had created four cloned embryos which were transferred to the womb of a 33-year-old Middle-Eastern woman.
However, none of the embryo transfers resulted in a pregnancy.
Once again, Dr Zavos offered no scientific evidence to back up his claim, and no peer- reviewed journal is publishing the research. A similar lack of information surrounded his previous announcement of a failed cloning attempt in January 2004.
On that occasion, Dr Zavos said a single cloned embryo had been placed in the womb of a 25-year-old woman.
Speaking at a press conference in London, Dr Zavos said the latest procedure took place in a Middle Eastern country which he would not name. The identity and nationality of the woman was being kept secret.
Her 35-year-old husband was the donor whose cells were used to create the cloned embryos, said Dr Zavos.
View full text at The Scotsman:
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1998252005
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ITEM #9. Fetal Farming is on the Horizon
The biotech industry is intent on growing fetuses for body parts.
One of the leading pro-life organizations in the country is warning that the appalling possibility of fetus-farming could be closer than we think. The National Right to Life Committee suggests that even though Congress is distracted with hurricanes, they still have time to draft some "clone-and-kill" bills.
The reality of "fetus farming" is too grisly a concept for most people to get their minds around. Daniel McConchie, director of public relations and public policy at Americans United for Life, explained the term.
"Basically, it's an idea that you're taking either the early human embryo or a fetus, and using it for some sort of spare parts," McConchie told Family News in Focus.
For more information:
http://www.family.org/cforum/news/a0038045.cfm
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ITEM #10. Enlarging the family
(Is three the new two? Moves in France and elsewhere to stave off population decline are drawing attention to the importance of bigger families.)
After decades of propaganda in favour of the two-child family, it has suddenly become polite (and which nation is more polite than the French?) to speak of three - not only in Europe, where the average birthrate is 1.4 children per woman, but also in east Asia where it is down to 1.2 in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. As recently as the 1980s South Koreans were told, "even two are a lot", and they could get themselves sterilised at public expense until last year. Now they can have free reversals and free birth care for their third or fourth child.
Compared with these low-fertility countries, France looks very well-off with a buoyant birthrate of 1.9 - the highest in the European Union except for Ireland, on 2.0. According to experts, that is precisely because of family-friendly policies which make it easy for working women in France to have children - 81 per cent of women between 25 and 49 are in work. The effect of a large immigrant population with higher birthrates is generally not mentioned.
For more information:
http://www.mercatornet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=165
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ITEM #11. British Career Women Seeking IVF too Busy to Conceive Children Naturally
An article appearing in Sunday's News Telegraph, says that wealthy British career women who are either not married or who cannot be bothered to conceive the natural way are turning more frequently to private IVF treatments.
Aldous Huxley's classic novel Brave New World has become a benchmark for predictions on the trends in the new reproductive technologies. Huxley's predictions are coming true at an alarming rate in our times when babies can be manufactured according to specifications and implanted in surrogates so that busy IVF clients need not be troubled with marital sexual relations, childbearing and birth.
The next stage appears to be a sociological shift, according to an English IVF specialists, who say he is seeing more women coming into IVF facilities and ordering babies as if shopping for luxury consumer goods.
Michael Dooley, an English gynaecologist, obstetrician and fertility expert, told the Telegraph, "Conception has become medicalised. It's too clinical. There has been a trend away from having sex and loving relationships towards medicalised conception."
Dooley said that couples are coming to him for "inappropriate" IVF and are treating the procedure too casually. Dooley said, "I have people who come to me for IVF who haven't got time for sex. Those people don't care about looking for a lifestyle or maximising their natural potential."
Emma Cannon, a fertility specialist at Westover House, a private British IVF facility, said, "People want everything now. If they can't have a baby now, they want IVF. They think it's no different from putting your name down for a handbag."
This trend of reducing parenthood to a medicalized procedure and children to luxury commodities is seen by some as a result of the growing gulf between marriage and sexual activity. Before the advent of the chemical contraceptive pill, the idea of having children made to order from a specialty shop would have seemed not only futuristic but frightening and unhealthy.
Phoenix Catholic writer and blogger, Steve Skojec, wrote in response to the Telegraph article, "When natural, healthy procreation becomes an object of contempt and ridicule, the disturbing parallels to Huxley's imagined future become more clear."
Skojec writes that he fears the attitude of women "who were 'too busy' for engaging in the natural process of conception is the first step into a much more troubling mindset of utilitarian sexuality."
When it was published in 1932, Huxley's vision of a Brave New World was understood to be a dystopia, a society of alienated, shallow, near-automatons living in a rigidly controlled and artificial culture devoid of human relationships or emotional depth.
The full implications of having Huxley's dystopia coming to life before the eyes of the world seem to have escaped the attention of medical experts and legislators, however.
The organization that seems to be still most concerned is the Roman Catholic Church and continues to insist that separating procreation from marriage is a path to social disaster.
As far back as 1968, Pope Paul VI warned in his encyclical letter, Humanae Vitae, that the acceptance of artificial birth control would lead to exactly the social evils that did occur. He warned of "marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards," and that the use of contraceptives would reduce the "reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument." Pope Paul said the Church "urges man not to betray his personal responsibilities by putting all his faith in technical expedients."
Since Humanae Vitae, the Vatican issued a document, Donum Vitae, on the dangers of on artificial reproduction. The document, signed by then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, reiterated the idea, one that used to be common to all societies, religions and cultures, that "the good of the children and of the parents contributes to the good of civil society; the vitality and stability of society require that children come into the world within a family and that the family be firmly based on marriage."
Read the Telegraph coverage:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/25/nivf25.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/09/25/ixportaltop.html
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ITEM #12. Aborted Baby Stem Cells in Mouse Experiments a Medical and Ethical Disaster
(LifeSiteNews.com) - The use of human foetal brain tissue in spinal cord experiments with mice has shown some success, but is likely to alarm medical ethicists as well as raise objections from pro-life advocates.
Researchers at University of California at Irvine injected stem cells derived from the brains of human foetuses into mice with severe spinal cord injuries. The mice regained some mobility and the research team is cautiously hopeful that this experiment will lead to progress with spinal cord injuries in humans. The stem cells were derived from babies aborted at about 16 to 18 weeks.
Pro-life activists have for years decried the use of aborted babies in medical research maintaining that not only is it a desecration of the dead, but it creates an additional profit motive for killing the unborn and treating unborn children as commercial commodities.
The rationale given for using aborted children's bodies in medical research is usually that since the children are going to be killed anyway, some good might as well be had from their remains which would otherwise be discarded. Exactly that argument is regularly applied to the use of living frozen embryonic children left in storage after IVF treatments. Pro-life advocates have often pointed out that precisely the same reasoning was used at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals to justify the use of living human test subjects in Nazi concentration camps.
Problems with the ethics of using embryonic or foetal stem cells derived from aborted babies, however, are not confined to the horror of creating a medical research market for killing babies. Previous experiments with tissue or stem cells derived from embryos or foetuses have proved to be medically disastrous for patients as well.
The Washington Post reports that three California companies have applied to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to begin experiments to use foetal stem cells in direct experimentation with human patients.
The Post says that StemCells Inc. of Palo Alto, one of the most prominent of
the private stem cell companies, has asked permission to start injecting the
cells directly into the
brains of infants with Batten disease, an inherited illness that destroys the
central nervous system.
Dr. John Shea, a physician and researcher who has made extensive study of the medical consequences of using embryo cells on human patients told LifeSiteNews.com that this could be disastrous for the patients. "When they used neural cells on Parkinson's patients in 2001, it made the patients much worse," he said. "In fact, the doctors themselves called it ecatastrophic.'"
Shea is referring to a series of studies done in which foetal cells were injected into the brains of patients with severe Parkinson's disease and resulted in severe irreversible side effects. One of the researchers in the 2001 experiment, Dr. Paul Greene, a neurologist at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, said the results for patients were "absolutely devastatingc tragic, catastrophic," and "a real nightmare." Green said, "We are absolutely and adamantly convinced that [foetal transplants] should be considered for research only. And whether it should be researched in people is an open question."
Read coverage from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901365.html
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jun/04063011.html
.
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Jerry Novotny OMI, Akebono-cho 1-15-9, Kochi City, Japan, 780-8072; [tel/fax: 088-843-0406]; email: jerry@lifeissues.net
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[[ WEBSITES BY EDITOR]
English site: http://www.lifeissues.net,
Japanese site: http://www.japan-lifeissues.net,
OMI site: http://www.omijapankorea.net/index.html
MPs vote against raising age of sexual consent
CTV.ca News Staff
A Conservative MP's attempt to raise the age of consent has failed, with a resounding defeat in the House of Commons.
When Conservative MP Rick Casson's bill was put to a vote Wednesday night, 99 parliamentarians voted in favour of increasing the minimum age for sex by two years, to 16.
A total of 167 MPs voted against the bill.
Under existing law, 14-year-olds can legally have sex in Canada. Casson wanted the minimum age raised to 16, in the hope increasing the scope of the law would protect children from sexual predators.
The Lethbridge, Alberta MP had the support of his fellow Conservatives, as well as several members of the Liberal Party.
"I support it basically on the important principle that people need to be protected," Liberal MP Maurizo Bevilacqua told CTV News ahead of the vote.
And Liberal MP Dan McTeague agreed, criticizing the existing law for doing little to protect young teenagers from sexual exploitation.
[Read the rest of the article on CTV.ca]
Assisted Suicide Bill Denounced
By Mary-Jane Egan, London Free Press Reporter, July 5, 2005
Canadians should be vigilant in battling a bill that would legalize assisted suicide in this country, a meeting of the London City Kiwanis heard yesterday.
"Make no mistake that this bill introduces the slippery slope weve seen in the Netherlands where people who dont want to be euthanized are," warned Jean Echlin, a longtime palliative care nurse and vice-president of the national Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
"Canadians have to wake up because its coming."
Echlin said Bill C-407 a private members bill tabled late last month by Bloc Québécois MP Francine Lalonde should be met by a strong lobby effort to stop it.
The bill would amend the Criminal Code to make it legal to help a person die. [More]
Ethicists Seek Halt to Harvesting Stem Cells from "Fresh" Embryos
The revelation that researchers had created Canada's first human embryonic stem cells using "fresh" - as opposed to frozen - embryos has prompted two medical ethicists to call for an immediate halt to the practice, CanWest News Service reported this week.
Writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal,
Dr. Jeffrey Nisker, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University
of Western Ontario, warned that physicians who suggest to their patients that
they donate fresh embryos for stem-cell research "may unknowingly become
complicit in decreasing their patients' chance of pregnancy and increasing their
risk of harm."
. . . . "Ironically," LifesiteNews.com noted, "Dr. Nisker is
making exactly the same accusation . . . as was made by pro-life critics during
the debates on Bill C-6," the Assisted Human
Reproduction Act which MPs passed in October 2003. At the time, they argued
that the wording of the legislation was so ambiguous it "allowed a loophole
that makes legal the creation of embryos for research, despite the ostensible
prohibition."
[Read the whole article, from Today's Family News.]
MPS TO VOTE ON BILL TO LEGALIZE ASSISTED SUICIDE
In about five weeks' time, Members of Parliament will be asked to asked to give approval-in-principle to a bill that would legalize assisted suicide in Canada.
On the table is private member's bill C-407, which Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde had introduced in June.
Its aim is to amend the Criminal Code in order to give Canadians as young as 17, who are terminally ill or in unrelieved severe pain, the right to have a medical practitioner help them to end their lives. They must appear to be lucid and have clearly stated on at least two separate occasions a free and informed wish to die.
As Sun Media reported this week, MPs are scheduled to debate and vote at the second reading of C-407 on October 31.
Pro-lifers are appalled that Parliament would even be considering such legislation. "It's so generally worded as to be a virtual licence to kill in almost any circumstance and offers no reassurance at all to people who are looking for safeguards," Dr. Will Johnston, co-chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of B.C., told Today's Family News.
Johnston adds that MPs need only look at what is happening in the Netherlands, where euthanasia is legal. "The situation has now deteriorated to the point where they euthanize numerous babies born with spina bifida," he said.
It is rare that private members bills ever become law. But Pavel Reid, the director of the Office of Life and Family with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, is concerned that the government has so far not signalled its opposition to C-407.
While not publicly endorsing the bill, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler has suggested it is perhaps time that MPs debate the issue. "Parliament is the best venue for a debate that must balance the issue of dying with dignity with concerns from the disabled," he said.
Pro-life Liberal MP Paul Steckle, on the other hand, believes C-407 will be defeated. He doubts the government would want to raise such a hot-button issue on the eve of a federal election. But he also concedes that sooner or later, "we're going to have to deal with it."
And when that debate comes, Reid warns, "It's going to play out similarly to the marriage issue, where people who were opposed to changing the definition of marriage were painted as basically being the side that was less concerned with human dignity and human rights and human flourishing and so on and so forth.
"So we've got to be very careful to make sure that we don't get painted into that corner."
A September 2003 Pollara survey found that Canadians are divided on whether to legalize euthanasia, with 49 per cent in favour, 37 per cent opposed, and 13 per cent undecided.
http://www.fotf.ca/familyfacts/tfn/2005/090905.html
Cord Blood Treatment Shows Regeneration of Injured Spinal Cord, When Will Tax Funded Killing of Human Embryos Stop?
To: National Desk
Contact: Phil Magnan, director of Biblical Family Advocates, BFA, 619-933-1839
SAN DIEGO, Sept. 28 /Christian Wire Service/ -- Biblical Family Advocates is applauding the work of "Korean scientists who have used umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and mobility to a spinal cord injury patient," this according to an article at Life News.com entitled Adult Stem Cell Research Treats Spinal Cord Injury Patient.
According to the article, "The patient could move her hips and feel her hip skin on day 15 after transplantation. On day 25 after transplantation her feet responded to stimulation. On post operative day (POD) 7, motor activity was noticed and improved gradually in her lumbar Para vertebral and hip muscles. She could maintain an upright position by herself on POD 13. From POD 15 she began to elevate both lower legs about 1 cm, and hip flexor muscle activity gradually improved until POD 41. " The patient "also showed regeneration of the spinal cord at the injured cite."
"Though this is only one case, it shows astounding hope for those who have been afflicted by spinal cord injuries. With these kinds of treatments why are States like California funding the unproven and unethical killing machine of embryonic stem cell research? California is in fiscal crisis, and yet will waste 3 Billion dollars to research treatments that are decades away. There is no guarantee that those treatments will ever appear. Why do we waste tax payer money on risky research when we can invest our dollars in the ethical work of using adult and cord blood stem cells?" so says Phil Magnan of Biblical Family Advocates.
Magnan went on to say, "It should be understood that the therapeutic cloning of embryos is simply the growing of embryos to harvest their parts, which have not been proven to cure anyone. Whereas, cord blood and adult stems cells not only have amazing treatments and cures, but do not have to kill innocent life. It is reprehensible to hinge the treatment of the infirmed upon the slaughter of the innocent unborn, using embryonic stems cells, especially when we have these kinds of amazing treatments."
"There is something to consider in the use of embryonic stems cells and the golden rule given by Christ. Would you want to be killed for your parts? Of course not, then why do we allow it to be done to others?"
Calgary Sun - September 25, 2005
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Corbella_Licia/2005/09/25/1234242.htm
l
Right Manning for the job
Conservative 'do-tank' brings hope to your friendly neighbourhood
dictatorship
By Licia Corbella
Suppose, for a moment, you have been asked to join a Canadian delegation to
help - let's say, Tajikistan - to help it establish a democratic system.
That scenario is what Rick Anderson, a former strategist to Preston Manning,
asked a group of about 100 Canadian conservative patriots - including
myself - to ponder in Toronto last weekend.
In an interview following the inaugural roundtable meeting of the new
"do-tank" The Manning Centre for Building Democracy, Anderson reiterated
the
parable he relayed during the panel discussion. Suppose some person from
Tajikistan came up with a plan and said: "'OK, we're going to elect a prime
minister by an indirect process - through an internal political party vote
by a few thousand people.'"
"That person would become Prime Minister by an archaic, first-past-the-post
system whereby MPs from that party win a majority of the seats in
parliament, usually with less than 40% of the popular vote. 'And then,'
exclaims the excited Tajikistani, 'we're going to give that prime minister
the right to appoint ALL of the members of the Supreme Court, we're going to
have a second legislative body and we'll let the Prime Minister appoint ALL
the members of that. We're also going to let the Prime Minister appoint the
head of the army, the head of the national police force, the heads of all
the government departments and Crown corporations and key government
agencies and we're going to let the Prime Minister also appoint the official
head of state - the only person who can fire him - and we're going to do all
of this with nobody else having the right to review the Prime Minister's
decisions and with no recall provision for the Prime Minister, other than an
election, which can be held at the whim of the Prime Minister.'"
Imagine, asked Anderson, what you would say to that Tajikistani person who
came up with that blueprint for a democratic system. "You would say, 'not
on
your life, this would never work.' It would be totally unacceptable and
would not be considered a democracy." Yet, that's exactly the system we
have
in Canada, accurately described as a "friendly dictatorship."
Now, you'd think hearing our "democracy" described in such an unflattering
way, would be depressing to the assembled 100 from across this great and
vast country. But no. Those of us who took part in this inaugural meeting of
the Manning Centre felt more hopeful for our country since that meeting than
we have felt in a very long while. Why, because Preston Manning - the man
many people blame for sending conservatives to the political wilderness for
12 years by founding the Reform Party and splitting "the right," or,
on the
flip side, credit with bringing true conservative thought to the fore - has
a vision, and a grand one. No short term solutions, here. Rather, a 10-to-20
year plan to build "a democratic society - characterized by genuine freedom
of choice among real alternatives - guided by conservative principles."
Manning says that will be done through the not-for-profit Manning Centre,
which will act as a kind of United Way or umbrella organization that will
"support research, educational and communications initiatives" by
helping to
develop conservative democratic 'infrastructure.'"
How can that be done? Adrian Wooldridge, a British-born Washington
correspondent for the Economist and co-author of The Right Nation -
described by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George F. Will, as "the best
political book in years" - laid out how the U.S. went from being a country
where in the 1950s even Republican president Dwight Eisenhower described
himself as a liberal, to being the most conservative democratic country in
the world. In the 1960s, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy had almost
identical platforms and in 1964, John Kenneth Galbraith boasted: "These,
without doubt, are the years of the liberal. Almost everyone now so
describes himself."
But then, pointed out Wooldridge, Americans who bought into the gospel of
big government, lax laws, the welfare state, and a push toward more equality
and less freedom, "were mugged by reality." Skyrocketing interest
rates,
plummeting employment rates, burgeoning crime rates and a commensurate
decline in hope. The "right" thinkers responded with research, university
chairs, publications, think tanks, schools that train conservative political
thinkers and radio stations singing from a new hymnal of common sense and
smaller government.
In his rousing speech last weekend, Manning imagined a Canada ruled by a
truly democratic "limited government that enables rather than big government
that dictates." It was a breath-taking vision. In his speech, which can
be
read in part on page 36 of today's Sun, Manning went on to urge those in the
room to place: "Less emphasis on all that's wrong, more emphasis on what
could be if we did things right - a positive vision of a better Canada
governed by conservative principles - the necessary conservative democratic
infrastructure required to win at least two out of three elections - and all
this done on a scale commensurate with the size and scale of Canada itself."
In other words, if the Manning Centre for Building Democracy is effective in
building the right political infrastructure in Canada, then it's highly
likely we could develop a democratic system that might even be considered
acceptable by the good people of Tajikistan. Just imagine.
Supreme Court to Revisit Assisted Suicide
Oct 5, 7:43 AM (ET)
By GINA HOLLAND
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court will revisit the emotionally charged issue of physician-assisted suicide in a test of the federal government's power to block doctors from helping terminally ill patients end their lives.
Oregon is the only state that lets dying patients obtain lethal doses of medication from their doctors, although other states may pass laws of their own if the high court rules against the federal government. Voters in Oregon have twice endorsed doctor-assisted suicide, but the Bush administration has aggressively challenged the state law.
The case, the first major one to come before the new chief justice, John Roberts, will be heard by justices touched personally by illness. Three justices - Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens - have had cancer, and a fourth - Stephen Breyer - has a spouse who counsels young cancer patients who are dying.
Their longtime colleague, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who once wrote about the "earnest and profound debate" over doctor-assisted suicide, died a month ago after battling untreatable cancer for nearly a year.
In 1997 the court found that the terminally ill have no constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide. O'Connor provided a key fifth vote in that decision, which left room for state-by-state experimentation.
O'Connor is retiring, and Bush on Monday named White House lawyer Harriet Miers to replace her. If Miers is confirmed before a ruling is announced, O'Connor's vote will not count. A 4-4 tie would probably require the court to schedule a new argument session.
The appeal is a turf battle of sorts, not a constitutional showdown. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, a favorite among the president's base of religious conservatives, decided in 2001 to pursue doctors who help people die.
Hastening someone's death is an improper use of medication and violates federal drug laws, Ashcroft reasoned, an opposite conclusion than the one reached by Janet Reno, the Clinton administration attorney general.
Oregon filed a lawsuit to defend its law, which took effect in 1997 and has been used by 208 people.
The Supreme Court will decide whether the federal government can trump the state.
"It could be close," said Neil Siegel, a law professor at Duke University and former Supreme Court clerk. "It is a wrenching issue. It's one of the most difficult decisions any family needs to make. There's a lot of discomfort with having the government at any level get involved."
Under Rehnquist's leadership the court had sought to embolden states to set their own rules. Roberts, who once served as a law clerk to Rehnquist and worked as a government lawyer, may be sympathetic to Bush administration arguments that the federal government needs ultimate authority to control drugs.
In this case, that would be at odds with the concept, popular among conservatives, of limiting federal interference.
Solicitor General Paul Clement, the Bush administration's Supreme Court lawyer, told justices in a filing that 49 states, centuries of tradition, and doctors groups agree that "assisted suicide is 'fundamentally incompatible' with a physician's role as healer."
The administration lost at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which said Ashcroft's "unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide."
In Oregon, the first assisted-suicide law won narrow approval, just a 51 percent majority, in 1994. An effort to repeal it in 1997 was rejected by 60 percent of voters.
"There is a real human need" for control over one's life, said cancer patient Charlene Andrews of Salem, Ore. "We are terminal and we know when we have a few weeks left. We know when we're unconscious. We know when we're at the end."
The case before the Supreme Court is Gonzales v. Oregon, 04-623.
---
On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
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