Meg Meeker | May 31 2017

I am often asked to speak about sex to high school students. Many adults shudder at the thought of talking to kids about sex, but I love it. First, I have a captive audience, and second, I get to talk about two things that I am very passionate about: the dangers of teen sex and the joys of sex in marriage. Many adults worry that kids will be too shy to ask questions but on the contrary, I have found them eager to have ever their questions answered in an honest, upbeat manner.

I do not take the topic of teens and sex lightly. I have seen the pain of STDs in 13- and 14-year-old children in my office along with other serious health issues caused by sex.

Most people are aware of the physical repercussions of sex:

• We now have 35 known STDs. In 1960, we only had two.
• Teenagers make up one-third of the U.S. population, but they carry 50 percent of STDs.
• One in four teens has an STD. (Over 80% of those infections have no symptoms, so they can go undetected, which is dangerous for the teen, their future sexual partners and their future children.)

You may be familiar with those numbers, but few are aware of the emotional repercussions teen sex can have.

For the thousands of teens I’ve treated and counseled, many of them—yes, teen boys too—have depression related to sexual activity. You rarely hear the correlation made, but I consider depression an STD with effects as devastating as HPV, chlamydia or any physical infection.

Depression related to teen sex can be as devastating as any STD 

Consider these numbers:

• In 2015, an estimated 3 million adolescents age 12 to 17 in the U.S. had at least one major depressive episode in the past year—that’s about 12.5% of all 12 to 17 year olds.
• From 1999-2014, the suicide rate in girls age 10 to 14 tripled.
• About 20% of teens will experience depression before they reach adulthood.

I believe it is no coincidence that as STDs have become an epidemic in teens, so has depression. The correlation is startling.

Depression in a teen occurs on a biochemical as well as psychological level and the two are linked. We know that the levels of specific hormones in the cerebral spinal fluid of depressed teens are different from those of non-depressed teens.

We know that depression occurs when a teen experiences un-grieved losses—hurts that have been buried in their psyche, festering like abscesses. When a teen doesn’t deal with a traumatic or hurtful event, he ends up stuffing it and the negative emotions come out sideways. He becomes angry, withdrawn and depressed.

Teenagers don’t have the maturity to handle sex

Think about a 17-year-old boy who has had multiple sexual partners (as most 17 year old boys these days are encouraged to do.) He has sex because he believes this is what he must do to be a “man”. However, not all of those sexual encounters go well. He is too ashamed to admit this to his friends and knows he can’t talk to his parents about it, so he pretends like everything is fine, stuffs his feelings and continues having multiple partners.

Or consider a 15-year-old girl who feels pressured to have sex with her boyfriend. She finally does and two weeks later, he breaks up with her. She can’t explain to her parents why the break-up is so upsetting (she may not even know why herself), so she tries to find consolation in the next boy she dates, starting an unhealthy cycle and not dealing with the grief and the loss.

Teenagers don’t have the psychological or cognitive maturity to handle sex, regardless of what adults in our culture say. And they certainly can’t handle sex with multiple partners. Depression occurs by un-grieved losses and the truth is, sex for teen boys and girls causes many losses on many levels.

The misconceptions many parents have about their teenagers are these: that teen boys are nothing more than vats of hormones, that girls want to be sexually active in high school and college because that’s what girls do, and that sex is really fine for kids if they use “precautions” and stay “safe.” I discuss the dangers of both of these misconceptions, as well as the link between teen sex and depression in a recent episode of my Parenting Great Kids podcast.

First, boys have minds, hearts and spirits and treating them otherwise is wrong. Second, most girls don’t want to be sexually active but have no one to counsel them how to postpone sex. Finally, terms like “precautions” and “safe” are meaningless. How is a teen to avoid hurt if he has sex, bonds to a girl and then breaks up? And studies show that condoms don’t protect equally against different diseases, so being “safe” is nonsense.

I can’t tell you how many 16- and 17-year-old boys come up to me after I’ve spoken at their school to talk about the emotional scars they have from sex.

Parents, make sure your teens understand the mental and emotional connection of sex

This is why simply talking to your child about “safe sex” (a phrase that even the CDC won’t use anymore) is not enough. It’s your job as your son or daughter’s parent to help set them up for a lifelong, monogamous relationship and to get them there as emotionally unscathed as possible; not to simply cross your fingers and hope your child doesn’t get one of the over 35 STDs.

Do more than teach your child about the physical harm that can result from sex. Talk to them about their feelings and make sure they understand the emotional and mental connection that sex has. You need to be the person to tell your child this and know that they want to hear what you have to say. Work very hard to protect their hearts and minds as much as their bodies because trust me, nobody else is going to help teach them what you will.

Dr Meg Meeker is a US pediatrician, mother and best-selling author of six books. She is a leading authority on parenting, teens and children’s health. This article is republished from her blog with permission. Refer to the original article for promotions and other information.

– See more at: https://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/teenagers-and-the-std-nobody-is-talking-about/19892#sthash.bJ4bufSW.dpuf

ROME, May 18, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — There is a need to “prioritize” procreation as the primary end of marriage today, because when this “distinctive” and “proper” purpose is questioned or doubted, the “marriage institution itself — and society thereafter — begins its slide down the slippery slope,” the head of Human Life International’s (HLI) Rome office told an international gathering of pro-life and family groups there today.

Father Francesco Giordano, a professor in Rome who addressed the fourth annual Rome Life Forum today, said that a de-emphasis of procreation within marriage has not only resulted in legalized abortion, but homosexual “marriage.”

To illustrate his point, he presented the main argument behind the U.S. Supreme Court 2015 decision that legalized same-sex “marriage.”

We read in a Catholic World News article from the day: “Claiming that the institution of marriage has “evolved over time,” Justice Kennedy wrote that the essence of the marital bond is a sharing of intimacy, which does not require partners of opposite sexes. He argued that the plaintiffs in the Obergefell case were not undermining the institution of marriage, but showing their respect for that institution by seeking to participate in it. The majority opinion reasoned that the ability to marry would help to stabilize same-sex unions, and benefit the children raised by homosexual partners. Justice Kennedy explicitly rejected the notion that marriage is intrinsically oriented to procreation, writing: “An ability, desire, or promise to procreate is not and has not been a prerequisite for a valid marriage in any state.”” With the stress on the end or good of union, we are seeing these sorts of results, so it only confirms me in stressing the procreative end as the proprium of marriage.

Giordano noted how Pope Paul VI’s 1968 Encyclical Humanae Vitae, which outlined the moral evil of contraception, was a “novel” approach to conjugal relations in that it “placed the unitive end of marriage at par with the procreative end.”

He said that while the unitive purpose of the conjugal act “works with the procreative end in harmonizing the love between the parents” it is the procreative purpose which makes the act “unique” when compared to any other human act.

“The telos [purpose by nature] of the union between man and woman is generative. It is the proprium of marriage after all. It is the first end of the sexual act to be intimately united to the second end, but we have to prioritize the procreative end of marriage because it is the distinctive, proper and privative end of marriage,” he said.

He went on to quote the first account of Creation, including that God created man in his image, created them male and female, and told them: “Be fertile and multiply.”

“So it is clear that the first duty of the first family was to generate children,” he said.

Not only is this the Church’s teaching, he said, it is substantiated by natural law, not something we just follow in an abstract way.

“We adhere to a teaching because of its compelling truth,” Giordano said, “a truth which the Church naturally defends.”

Giordano’s presentation comes days after rumors began circulating in Rome of a secret committee set up by Pope Francis to study Humanae Vitae. Francis’ position on contraceptive practices — which the Church has always taught to be gravely immoral — remains sufficiently ambiguous to be interpreted as lending support to the use of contraception and condoms, in certain cases.

In a March 2014 interview with Corriere della Sera, Francis said that the question of birth control must be answered not by “changing the doctrine” but by “making pastoral (ministry) take into account the situations and that which it is possible for people to do.”

During a November 2015 press conference on his return flight from Africa, Francis, when asked if it was time for the Church to allow the use of condoms to prevent HIV agreed that condom use is “one of the methods,” but that it brought into conflict the fifth and sixth commandments.

And during his February 2016 return flight from Mexico, Francis said that contraception may be the “lesser of two evils” for parents wanting to avoid conceiving a child in areas affected by the Zika virus. Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi confirmed the pope’s words the following day, stating: “The contraceptive or condom, in particular cases of emergency or gravity, could be the object of ‘discernment’ in a serious case of conscience. This is what the Pope said.”

Giordano also outlined a number of threats facing the family, including gender ideology and transhumanism.

“The end of man is the adoration of God. The end of gender ideology is the adoration of the body,” he said.

Giordano also discussed how the negative social changes resulting from the family’s decline, including the breakdown in the understanding of the human being as male or female, are now being advanced by a transhumanist mentality.

“Unlike animals, men can truly shape their lives, and this the transhumanists understand. However, what the transhumanists do not seem to understand is that there are limits posed by our nature on what we can do to shape our lives,” he said.

“In order to bring about the reduction of human identity to a freely chosen, mutable sexual orientation and avoid its formation in the countless influences besides sex, the elimination of these other influences—such as family, culture, and religion—are necessary [for the transhumanists,]” he said.

This mentality represents a sign of man’s demise, he said, “and the only response to all of these threats is found in strong traditional family units.”

Giordano went on to explain how the transhumanist movement is based on the belief that man is a failed experiment, and its assumption that man can come to salvation by knowing or doing something particular displays elements of the Gnostic-Pelagian heresies.

As man moves further away from human nature today, and we also see an increase in barbarous acts, it shows rejection of God and His law, said Giordano.

Conversely, he said, “When we search for that which is most elevated, dignified, and noble, we inevitably find God who is Truth, Beauty, and Goodness itself.”

“The Magisterium in the papal teachings on Marriage and the Family has been attentive to the family seeing it as a real jewel of a social institution to be protected for the greater common good of society and each man,” stated Giordano.

“If the family unit is hurt, man is ultimately hurt, and the results are evident all around us that there is indeed an abolition of man in course. If instead, the family unit is united and faithful to God, focused on Our Lord, then there is order in its life and that of its members,” he added.

From ‘us to ‘me’

In discussing the importance of marriage, Giordano said emphasis has shifted from the family to the individual since the time of the French Revolution.

The family is understood as an institution that is beyond social functions, however, the priest said. And he told the forum “the family is very much under attack, starting with the very sacrament that is its foundation: marriage.”

He explained how problems have emerged from the center of work being moved from the household to outside the home since the Industrial Revolution.

Further, divorce has come about from many social, economic and political issues. Giordano cited the sexual revolution, the move to an industrial society over the last 200 years, and the way governments have interfered in marriage, being agents of divorce.

“We know from our fight with the abortion industry just how important legalization of such matters is in influencing the mindset,” said Giordano.

A long time coming

A look at the works written by the popes since the 19th-century on the subjects of family and marriage show they were already addressing the crisis then, he continued, citing Benedict XIV, Pius IX and Leo XIII.

“The popes were very conscious of the fact that the Church’s role was to protect sacred matrimony from all sorts of confusion because both the Church and society as a whole would suffer,” Giordano stated.

“Marriage is not merely a convention which the State can decide upon at whim,” he said, quoting Pope Leo XIII’s Arcanum divinae Sapientiae. “Marriage was established by God after the creation of our first parents so that they would transmit the life that He had given to them.”

“Marriage sanctifies the union of man and woman, and in these two accounts we see two ends of marriage clearly identified: procreative and unitive,” explained Giordano. “Through marriage, there is a remedy in store for man’s wounded nature.”

He told the forum that the Congregation for Rites having inserted the Feast of the Holy Family in the Calendar of the Roman Rite in 1921 upon the directive of Pope Benedict XV, while not the beginning of the devotion to the Holy Family, displayed the deep concern of the Holy Father for the breakdown of the family.

“Each time I read documents from the early part of the 20th century I notice that many good Catholic writers were lamenting the breakdown of the family and society back then, and I wonder: what would they say today?” the priest queried for those in attendance. “In many ways, they predicted what is happening today.”

Regarding gender, Giordano discussed St. Thomas Aquinas’s definition of man as a composite of body and soul; the two are not separate.

He explained how a number of subsequent modern philosophies reject this. And also that disruption of the natural order of man’s make-up, whether material, physical, spiritual or psychological, can have devastating effects on the whole.

These can lead to gender confusion and transhumanism.

“In a time when nature itself is questioned,” Giordano said, “when its goodness is doubted and reproduction altered, when it is no longer considered enough in itself, and attempts are made to go beyond it in the realm of transhumanism, St. Thomas’ insights are now quite valuable to consider.”

“St. Thomas teaches that even in the state of being separate, the soul is inclined to being united to its specific body,” he told the forum. “It is in this union that we see how maleness and femaleness characterize the whole person, uniting the body’s biological structure to the soul.”

“Even if this can be a debated position,” said Giordano, “we affirm that the soul is itself not a gender, or else the distinction between men and women would make them different species. The gender is in the body, but the soul is not immune from its influence since it is so integrally united to the body.”

Further, he said, if gender deals with the whole person the way that the soul does, then sex-reassignment surgery really cannot change one’s gender.

According to St. Thomas, the common end between male and female is the procreative end, he said. The particular material ends between male and female, though, are complimentary, but different.

Editor’s note: Pete Baklinski contributed to this report. 

Anne Hendershott

http://www.catholicworldreport.com

In an attempt to continue her desired “transition” from female to male, Evan Michael Minton was scheduled by her surgeon to undergo a hysterectomy at Dignity Health chain’s Catholic Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, California last summer.  The surgery was denied by the Catholic hospital’s policy.  And, although Minton was able to have the surgery at another Dignity Health chain hospital in September, she told a reporter for the Sacramento Bee that she was “devastated” by the denial. Claiming that the hospital’s unwillingness to perform the surgery caused such “frustration and disappointment,” the American Civil Liberties Union has now stepped in to file a lawsuit against the hospital last week on his behalf.

Filed in San Francisco Superior Court, the ACLU lawsuit claims that Minton was “discriminated against” when she sought a hysterectomy as part of her transition from female to male.  Spokeswoman Melissa Jue, of the Mercy San Juan Medical Center, told reporters that “sterilization procedures, such as hysterectomies or tubal ligations are permitted by Catholic hospitals only to cure or alleviate a serious pathology.”  She pointed out that Dignity Health officials helped Minton obtain the hysterectomy the following month at one of Dignity’s non-Catholic hospitals, Methodist Hospital of Sacramento.

Minton’s surgeon, obstetrician gynecologist Dr. Lindsey Dawson, told reporters: “I don’t blame the administrators.  I blame the (Catholic) doctrines.”  Minton has already had a double mastectomy and a phalloplasty in her quest to become a male.  The hysterectomy was the final step in Minton’s journey to “be able to be congruent with who I am.”  Telling reporters that “When I got my complete body, the rest of my life starts here,” Minton added that: “I don’t want it to affect my transgender brothers and sisters the way it affected me…No one should have to go through that.” That is exactly what should concern all Catholic institutions—including Catholic colleges and universities—as they are all vulnerable to transgender discrimination lawsuits. Minton’s suit is a cautionary tale for Catholic institutions.

All of this is emerging from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services rule issued on September 8, 2015, by the Obama administration.  The rule is really a new interpretation of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to extend Title IX’s definition of “sex” to include gender identity. The Rule was published as final on May 18, 2016, and it expanded the HHS definition of gender identity even further from the proposed definition to mean an individual’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female. HHS stated in the new rule that “gender identity spectrum includes an array of possible gender identities beyond male and female,” and individuals with “non-binary gender identities are protected under the rule.”  This means that doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers—including those receiving nursing or medical training on Catholic college campuses—may not “deny or limit treatment” to those seeking sex reassignment procedures, even when those procedures run contrary to the provider’s religious beliefs and medical judgement.

Religious institutions have attempted to fight back. Last August, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed a lawsuit in a Texas federal court on behalf of a coalition of religious healthcare providers, charging that Obama’s Health and Human Services Administration “overstepped its bounds” by requiring medical providers to participate in sex-reassignment procedures—including sex reassignment services and procedures on young children.

More recently, on November 7, 2016 the Beckett Fund filed yet another lawsuit—this time including a Catholic college in the lawsuit—against the federal government’s HHS mandates on behalf of the Religious Sisters of Mercy and the University of Mary. The State of North Dakota also joined Becket’s legal challenge. According to the complaint, Becket points out that the HHS mandate forces healthcare professionals and the University of Mary to violate their deeply held religious beliefs.  One of the plaintiffs, the University of Mary, maintains that the Catholic school “infuses Benedictine values throughout its educational experience, including its premier nursing program,” yet will be forced to violate their deeply held religious beliefs by participating in what the Catholic Church teaches are “harmful medical transition procedures.”  The regulation also requires that they pay for these same medical transition procedures in their health plans on pain of massive financial liability.

The Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed inclusion of gender identity in federal health care laws barring sexual discrimination.  In a November 6, 2015 letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services the bishops claimed that “that medical and surgical interventions that attempt to alter one’s sex are, in fact, detrimental to patients” and “are not properly viewed as health care because they do not cure or prevent disease or illness. Rather they reject a person’s nature at birth as male or female.”

As the Sisters of Mercy/University of Mary lawsuit points out, since the Sisters of Mercy Health System provides hysterectomies to some patients, such as those diagnosed with uterine cancer, the HHS Regulations force the Catholic health care providers to provide a hysterectomy and remove an otherwise healthy uterus for a medial transition—notwithstanding the serious potential harm to the patient, and the violation of the religious beliefs of the providers.  The Becket complaint also points out that the Regulations require Plaintiffs to “compel the speech of healthcare professionals” (including Catholic university nursing students) in several ways—mandating revisions to healthcare professionals written policies, requiring them to promise to provide transition related procedures, and requires healthcare providers to use gender-transition affirming language in all situations regardless of circumstance.

Unless President Trump actually repeals the Affordable Care Act—including its religious liberty destroying mandates surrounding gender identity—the Catholic Church is likely in for a long battle.  The Church cannot change her teachings on non-negotiable issues such as the nature of man and woman.  Pope Francis has already joined his predecessor Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in condemning contemporary gender theory as denying “the order of creation.” In a Christmas-time homily on December 23, 2008, Pope Benedict directly addressed transgender issues by cautioning Catholics about “destroying the very essence of the human creature through manipulating their God-given gender to suit their sexual choices.”  Likewise, Pope Francis rejects the social constructionist view of gender as fluid and changeable, maintain that gender is God-given.

The Church understands that there are several dimensions to gender dysphoria—including a sociological dimension and a psychological dimension—that gender transitioning procedures cannot begin to treat.  UCLA and the National Foundation for Suicide Prevention data reveal that more than 41 percent of those identifying as “transgender” or gender nonconforming have attempted suicide, compared with only 4.6 percent of the overall U. S. population who report a lifetime suicide attempt.  It is also higher than the 10-20 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults who report ever attempting suicide.  This data come from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and UCLA’s Williams Institute, which analyzed results from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey.  More than a dozen other studies since 2001 have found similar results for the alarmingly high rates of suicide for transgender individuals.

In 2013, a 44-year old Belgian female-to-male transsexual chose to die by euthanasia after expressing her unhappiness with her sex-change operation.  Claiming that the surgery had turned her into a “monster,” doctors assisted her in ending her life on the grounds of “unbearable psychological suffering”.  While progressives insist that the reason for the high suicide rates for the LGBT community is due to the stigma and discrimination they have historically faced, the reality is far more complex.  In fact, the prevalence of suicide attempts is actually elevated among those transgendered individuals who are open about their transgender identity.  Those who disclose to others that they are transgender have the highest rates of suicide (50%).

The Obama administration’s HHS mandate seems to ignore the documented evidence of the risks associated with medical transition procedures.  Yet, as the November 2016 Becket Fund lawsuit points out, “HHS’s own medical experts recently wrote, ‘Based on a thorough review of the clinical evidence available at this time, there is not enough evidence to determine whether gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries with gender dysphoria.”  Some of the best designed studies have reported serious harms.

Unless the Trump administration is willing to repeal the HHS mandates that violate the religious liberty of all Catholic institutions—including Catholic colleges and universities—these  institutions will continue to be vulnerable to costly lawsuits for “discriminating” against transgendered individuals desiring transition procedures.

March 28, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — I had always dreamed as a little girl of Prince Charming, castles, and fairytale endings. But what took place exactly one week before my birthday in September 2009 was no childhood dream, but an evil nightmare filled with pain and utter disbelief.

When I was violently raped by my fiancé, my dreams were dashed. My world came crashing down. That violent act shattered my very core.

I’m often asked when sharing my story how a fiancé could be guilty of rape.

What some people fail to understand is that when a girl says “No,” she means “No,” regardless of whether or not there is an intimate/sexual relationship. Yes, we were engaged, but this does not mean we were having sex. In fact, we weren’t. We had decided as followers of Jesus Christ that we would wait until we got married to have sex.

My fiancé had even said, “It will be difficult to wait, but it will be worth the wait!” I had no idea that the man who vowed to always protect me was capable of hurting me so much. How could the man who planned a future with me, who prayed with me every night for our future children, and who read and quoted scriptures to me be the same man who could cause me such harm?

It was through this situation that I had a true understanding of the meaning behind the phrase “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Not only had my body been violated, but also my heart had been betrayed.

I had been visiting him out of state. There was no family around. After he violated me, I called my sister and asked her what to do. I was in pain. She suggested I go to a hospital for urgent care, though I was still very much in denial with all that had just happened. My fiancé’s actions were, for the first time, the opposite of his words, and it was a lot to process.

After I relayed every harrowing detail of the traumatic event to the urgent care doctor, he sat on his spinning chair in front of me and told me by law he had to report it to authorities. He gave me the choice to make the call to the police and turn in my own fiancé for rape, or else he would.

All I could do was cry. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

The doctor said he would make the call and would come back once the police arrived. Meanwhile, my family and friends were hundreds of miles away as I sat by myself in the urgent care room, wondering how my happily ever after had turned so dark and violent. This was not at all how I expected to spend my weekend: Raped, then in urgent care with a doctor turning my fiancé in for rape, then having the rape kit (to collect evidence of sexual assault) performed on me as the police searched for my now ex-fiancé.

It was a woman’s worst nightmare. I went from being blissfully in love to feeling like the most unloved and alone woman in the world.

Most are unaware of the logistics of what a rape kit involves. It is horrifying to have it performed, but it is made even worse when you are so scared and facing so many unknowns. I found myself lying down in that hospital room as the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) nurse performed the rape kit on me, all while a SART nurse-in-training looked on.

How did I get here? I was terrified and an emotional wreck. I couldn’t help but sob and feel so utterly alone, as my future now looked so bleak.

Now, I’ve been pro-life all my life. As the painful rape kit was performed on me, one thought that went through my mind was that I finally understood why some rape victims would be tempted to have an abortion. And that thought deeply disturbed me because of the strong pro-life beliefs I have always stood for. Yet, I could not bear the thought of becoming pregnant with the child of my rapist.

Just then the nurse asked me, “Do you think you could be pregnant?”

Her question made me want to crawl out of my skin and scream. The nurse discussed with me the timing of everything and determined that I was likely pregnant.

She then told me she was going to give me the “Morning-After” pill. I lay there crying, pleading with God to let me somehow die or escape this nightmare.

I knew the purpose of the Morning-After abortion pill was to terminate a pregnancy, to destroy the life of another human being. There are three ways the Morning-After Pill operates: 1) If a woman has not yet ovulated, it prevents ovulation. 2) If she has ovulated, but has not conceived, it prevents conception. 3) If she has conceived, it prevents the tiny baby (referred to as a “blastocyst”) from implanting in the uterine wall, which causes the baby to die because he or she cannot receive the nutrients needed to survive.

The SART team deceives a raped woman if they tell her that the Morning-After pill does not “terminate a pregnancy.” If she is pregnant, the pill does kill.

As I lay there crying and in pain, I knew in my heart that a life, no matter how it is conceived, is still a precious gift created by God. It is a gift that I knew I had no right to destroy, regardless of the trauma I was now experiencing. No pre-born child deserves capital punishment for the sins of the father. So, I knew, as I sobbed while they took the most graphic pictures of my injuries, that regardless of the future, I would choose life.

That night I not only declined the Morning-After pill, but I refused to take any of the STD emergency antibiotics, not sure which pills the SART nurse might slip in if I took any. So, I took the risks with my health and trusted God.

I have since learned that it is standard practice that while the rape kit is being performed, not only is the Morning-After pill given to victims of rape, but also emergency antibiotics to combat sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including AIDS, just in case the victim has been exposed. All the pills are usually administered together. There is no way for a girl to know which pill is what.

Even though I had declined the abortion pill, the nurse continued to strongly advise that I take it, saying, “Who would want a baby out of rape?”

I was shocked and saddened by her comment. I felt very much like the nurse was trying to manipulate me into doing what she wanted me to do, not what was in the best interest for a potential pregnancy, or for me.

I eventually was released from the hospital and drove home throughout the night, not knowing what the future held. But I knew who held my future: my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The next few weeks were physically painful and ridden with anxiety as I waited to see if the pregnancy tests I took would either show one line or two. But the tests were only showing one line. I was surprised when a doctor confirmed that I was not pregnant.

Tests that I took six months later also showed that I had not been exposed to any type of STDs.

As I reflect on that low valley I walked through in 2009, I am able to say that, regardless of what the pregnancy tests revealed weeks after my rape, I did choose life under the most unthinkable and traumatic circumstances while facing a world of unknowns. It’s a choice I would make again.

Since my rape, I have forgiven my rapist. I have become an advocate for abuse victims, speaking about rape, choosing life, and domestic violence. I have found hope and healing through God. Today I am an advocate for the pre-born.

I refused the Morning-After pill after rape because I am pro-life. It is deeply woven within the very core of who I am. My choice for life has helped make me into the woman I am today.

Editor’s Note: Witlee Ethan’s story is used here by permission from the author. It has been edited. Witlee can be reached on twitter: @VoiceUrRights

When I get in touch with Rosa Pich by Skype during Holy Week, I discover that she is on holiday with 12 of her children in Torreciudad, a shrine dedicated to Our Lady in northern Spain. “We are trying to return to normal life,” she says, following the death of her husband, Chema, of liver cancer little more than a month earlier. “We have cried a lot, we have prayed a lot, but life continues,” she says. “I have come to see that when God gives you a cross to carry, he always gives you the grace you need to bear it.”

Rosa is a supernumerary member of Opus Dei and is the ninth of 16 siblings. Chema Postigo, who also belonged to Opus Dei, came from a family of 14. They got married young and aspired to have a family as large as those they came from. Their first child, however, was born with a congenital heart defect and was not expected to survive for long (although she actually lived till the age of 22). The second and third children died in infancy. It was then that a doctor advised the couple not to have any more children.

But after much prayer and discernment they decided against this advice. “Nobody other than the spouses should enter the marriage bed,” she explains, “not the doctor, or one’s mother or mother-in-law, or the priest.” Rosa and Chema resolved not to give up on their dream of a large family and went on to have 15 more children, all alive to this day, aged now from 25 down to seven. They became the parents of Spain’s largest family and have appeared in documentaries in several countries including one made by the BBC.

How did they manage? They lived in an apartment in Barcelona with five bedrooms: two for boys, two for girls and one for the couple. In one of the boys’ rooms, there is a four-level bunk bed and another two-level bunk bed with a spare bed for guests, since their children are positively encouraged to bring their friends home to play and to stay the night.

Each of the older children is assigned a younger sibling to look after, ensuring that they make their bed, eat enough, do their homework, clear their toys and get their clothes ready for the next day. Chores in the house are distributed monthly according to a schedule which is agreed by all. This allowed Chema to have a full-time job and Rosa to work part time in the mornings, while they spent many weekends travelling the world to help other couples make their families a success through a programme developed by the Family Development Foundation (FDF).

Rosa’s daily schedule entails getting up early to go to Mass, then on to work as a sales executive in a textile firm, getting back home for lunch. Meanwhile, the children help each other to get up, have breakfast, and travel to school and university.

Their dining table is round, with room for 20 people. This allows everyone to see and hear everyone else as the conversation around the dinner table is always very animated.

“We have three rules about our meals,” Rosa tells me. “First, you need to ensure the person to your right and to your left are served before you start eating. Secondly, when you get the tray of food, you should choose the worst for yourself, leaving the better portions for your siblings. And third, all of us, including mum and dad, should aim to do one small sacrifice in each meal.”

This sacrifice could be as simple as taking a bit more of what you don’t like or a bit less of what you like, or delaying drinking the glass of water till the end of the meal – something small that shows solidarity with those who don’t have enough to eat or are otherwise suffering.

These and many other experiences are collected in a book that Rosa wrote in 2013 and has now been translated into 10 languages, including Chinese. It was published in English by Scepter Publishers in New York this year, with the title Rosa, What’s Your Secret?: Raising a Large Family with Love.

But isn’t it very expensive to have such a large family? The Postigo-Pich family consumes 1,300 biscuits, 420 pints of milk and seven lots of a dozen eggs per month. But they are extremely careful where they buy their provisions, searching for the biggest discounts they can get. Every day one of the children walks to a bakery 15 minutes away from home because each loaf is 20 cents cheaper. This adds up to a saving of many euros per month. Sometimes the fridge becomes empty before the end of the month, so they have to skimp and make do with the basics until the next salary comes in.

In the last four months of Chema’s life the couple were able to travel to six countries in three different continents to promote FDF courses: South Korea, China, Ivory Coast, Portugal, Italy and Belarus. In the latter they had the distinct feeling they were being followed by KGB-type secret police who were about to deport them. But all was fine, and in fact they appeared in the main news programme in Minsk.

Chema felt ill during these months, losing almost two stone in weight. Eventually he went to hospital to have a number of tests. In late February, he was diagnosed with aggressive liver cancer with a metastasis in the lungs. Clearly he was not going to live much longer. He then called all his children together.

“Jesus is very good. He loves us a lot,” he told them. “He took Javi and Montse to himself when they were young and Carmina when she was 22. Now it is my turn.”

He then spoke to them one by one. Less than two weeks later he died.

The funeral was held in the largest church in Barcelona and was attended by more than 4,000 people from all over the world. At least 30 people told Rosa that Chema was their best friend. Each person who attended was given a rosary in a little pouch prepared by the children the day before. One of the people who came to the funeral said that “in the midst of the pain, these days we have touched heaven.”

Their son Gaby, 17, went to Rome for Holy Week and was able to greet Pope Francis personally after the Wednesday audience. Chema had written to the Pope, who had answered by sending his prayers and blessings. Gaby told the Holy Father that his father had died recently: would he have a message for his mother? Pope Francis said: “Tell your mother to always look up to heaven, as your father looks at her from there.”

How can Rosa cope as a young widow with so many children? Yet it is precisely having so many children which allows her to live surrounded by love. The week after the funeral there was a family meeting at which all the jobs done by Chema up to then were distributed among the family members. Rosa admits that dealing with banks is not her forte and is happy that one of the older children has taken that on. As she puts it: “In a large family, joys are multiplied and sorrows are divided.”

Recently she spotted her 10-year-old reading the newspaper, something he had never done before. When she asked him, he said that dad would always explain the news to him every night but that now he had to find it out by himself.

Rosa knows she will never be alone. “The problem today in developed societies is loneliness,” she says, “something we have never known in our families.” She adds that, although having small children takes a lot of time and effort, the years of looking after them pass quickly, and then you have around you “these wonderful human beings, who will exist forever, forever, forever”.

Each child was a gift of God and there was nothing like it: “I have many friends,” Rosa says, “who later in life have one regret: not having had more children.” She believes this is the best present parents can give to their older children.

At school, many of the boys and girls want to be friends with her children because they are used to being generous and sharing their lives with others. “I believe in this house they are getting the best possible training to run multinationals,” she says, “because they learn to negotiate, to spot the needs of others, to make the case for their suggested course of action, to give in when needed, to ask for forgiveness when they make a mistake.”

What is the most important thing in a family, I ask her as we are finishing our conversation. She does not hesitate: “That the mum and dad love each other. Everything else comes from that.”

Jack Valero is the press officer of Opus Dei UK and a founder of Catholic Voices

This article first appeared in the May 19 2017 issue of the Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

The message of Fatima is, in its basic nucleus, a call to conversion and repentance, as in the Gospel. This call was uttered at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it was addressed particularly to this present century.  … The call to repentance is a motherly one, and at the same time it is strong and decisive. (Pope Saint John Paul II, homily given in Fatima on May 13, 1982)

May 15, 2017 (HLI) — On Saturday the universal Church remembered and celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the miraculous events at Fatima, recalling the wondrous appearance of Our Heavenly Mother and the life-giving message she brought. In considering the meaning of her message as it pertains to us today, I am reminded of something Sister Lucia wrote in a letter to Cardinal Caffarra:

[T]he final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid, she added, because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue… however, Our Lady has already crushed its head.

In my many travels, I experience firsthand the prophetic words of Sister Lucia concerning marriage and the family. These sacred institutions are at the heart of the battle because they touch upon the very pillar of creation, which is the truth about the relationship between man and woman, who are made in the likeness and image of God. If these heavenly created institutions are compromised, then the entire building collapses.

We should not view the message of Fatima as merely a historic moment, but rather as a living message purposely spoken to this age. The moral crisis we see in the world demands continued prayers, penance and sacrifices. Our response to the perverse secular culture is our ongoing conversion and spiritual renewal. We are being called to holiness.

We are prompted by the example of the visionaries, Francisco, Jacinta and Lucia, to offer acts of mortification with heroic virtue. At the height of their innocence, the two younger children, Francisco and Jacinta, offered themselves as expiatory victims. Sister Lucia, told she would live a long life, would exhaust her life in the service of prayer and mortification for the salvation of souls. Lucia asked Our Lady if she would take them to heaven. Our Lady answered:

Yes, I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon. You, however, are to stay here a longer time. Jesus wants to use you to make me known and loved. He wants to establish the devotion to my Immaculate Heart in the world. I promise salvation to those who embrace it, and their souls will be loved by God as flowers placed by me before His throne.

When Lucia asked if she were going to be left alone, Our Lady responded:

No, my daughter. Does this cause you to suffer a great deal? I will never leave you, my Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.

Our Lady’s appeal for prayer and penance made to the children, to which the children responded with joy and complete obedience, also applies to us. Striving for holiness and mortifying our senses enables us to be fervent in prayer, gives us interior strength in resisting temptations, helps us to detach from worldly concerns, and unshackles our hearts from earthly vanities and attachments. Seeking holiness increases clarity of thought, making us more sensitive to the discernment of what is holy and what is abomination.

The evil one also knows the significance of marriage and the family. This is why he attacked our first parents and continues his assault today upon marriage and family. Marriage is the only institution that unites parents with their children, that recognizes the natural right of a child to have a mother and father. The family is the first cell of society, the domestic church, first government, first school, first hospital, first economy and the first mediating institution of society. Within this primary school, children learn moral and gospel values, which ultimately give shape to our cultures and societies. After all, society passes through the family, the first school.

Defending the truth about life, marriage and family is costly. The visionaries of Fatima suffered greatly because of the apparitions. Family and friends who failed to understand what the children received from Our Lady persecuted them. Newspapers waged a bitter campaign to discredit the apparitions and the visionaries. Despite all the ill treatment, the children bore it all with patience and charity, always mindful of Our Lady’s request to offer their sacrifices for the sake of poor sinners.

As we enter the good fight in the battle over marriage and family, we know that we too will be besieged by hatred and rejection. Our Lord reminds us, “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you” (John 15:18-19). We stand before two opposing views; one set upon a path of obedience and life and the other upon disobedience and death.

We also know that the attacks against God’s divine plan for marriage and family do not come only from outside the Church but also come from within – born of sins from disobedience, dissent and rejection. This is why the Church, the people of God, needs the message of Fatima to be a constant reminder as to the universal call for repentance conversion, and renewal. Only in this spirit, renewal of heart and soul, can we be the leaven in the dough. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear…(1 John 4:18) We draw strength and comfort from Our Lady of Fatima who reminded Sister Lucia that she was not alone in this great battle – in her Immaculate Heart we find refuge.

There is still much for us to learn from Our Lady of Fatima. Her message is a sign of hope to a world torn by strife and discord. The answer to the attacks on marriage, family and society is the same today as it was 100 years ago – repent and be obedient to the will of God.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Reprinted with permission from Human Life International.

Howard Kainz

In his book Heretics, G. K. Chesterton writes,

There are some people — and I am one of them — who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy’s numbers, but still more important to know the enemy’s philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether in the long run, anything else affects them.

Chesterton is making the point that one’s general system of values is an all-important factor in the choices he makes. For example, someone who subscribes to Ayn Rand’s “philosophy of selfishness,” or to Peter Singer’s judgment that infanticide is permissible because of utilitarian values, or to Christopher Hitchens’s view that religion is the most dangerous thing on earth, or to theologian Rev. Richard McBrien’s claim that popes have no authority in morals, can be expected to act in certain ways and take certain positions when confronted with choices. If we know their world view, we do not have 100 percent certainty about particular choices they might make under particular circumstances — but we do have high probability.

The Catholic analytic philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe (1919-2001), whose 1958 article “Modern Moral Philosophy” instigated new movements in “virtue ethics” and renewed interest in natural law, astonished her academic colleagues at Cambridge University in 1979 by publishing Contraception and Chastity, a defense of the Catholic Church’s position on contraception. Anscombe’s influence is still being felt in the United States via the Anscombe Society at Princeton University.

Analytic philosophy is famous for investigating logical connections, even in ethics, and Anscombe draws out the inescapable deductions that can be made from a value system accepting contraception:

If contraceptive intercourse is permissible, then what objection could there be after all to mutual masturbation, or copulation in vase indebito, sodomy, buggery, when normal copulation is impossible or inadvisable (or in any case, according to taste)? … But if such things are all right, it becomes perfectly impossible to see anything wrong with homosexual intercourse, for example. I am not saying: if you think contraception all right you will do these other things; not at all. The habit of respectability persists and old prejudices die hard. But I am saying: you will have no solid reason against these things. You will have no answer to someone who proclaims as many do that they are good too. You cannot point to the known fact that Christianity drew people out of the pagan world, always saying no to these things. Because, if you are defending contraception, you will have rejected Christian tradition…. For in contraceptive intercourse you intend to perform a sexual act which, if it has a chance of being fertile, you render infertile. Qua your intentional action, then, what you do is something intrinsically unapt for generation (emphasis added).

In other words, Anscombe is saying that, if you believe you have a right to non-procreative sexual intercourse, you have no right to criticize non-procreative sex by others — for example, by a gay couple. You may justify your personal practices on the basis of your genuine mutual love and commitment to lifelong fidelity. But homosexuals may be even more intensely in love with each other and even more firmly committed to mutual fidelity. They may even be more open to procreation than you are, through adoption or through in vitro fertilization. To want to have sex without the possibility of offspring, and condemn others for similarly non-procreative sex, would be blatantly inconsistent.

According to polls, more than 80 percent of Catholic married couples are using various kinds of contraceptives in order to prevent or separate births. But there is no necessary connection between control of births and contraception. Natural family planning (NFP), which is approved by the Church and often used by couples who want to identify a woman’s fertile periods in order to have children, can also be used to space out births without contraceptives. NFP has been shown in various studies to be just as effective as the contraceptive pill. Systematic development and improvement of the Billings method of NFP over the years has been carried out at Creighton University. The Pope Paul VI institute at Creighton has a good history of assisting married and unmarried women with irregular cycles and other problems.

A variety of objections to gay marriage have been offered. Some oppose it because it arbitrarily redefines marriage, or because it is not suitable for children to have gay parents, or because it will involve greater taxpayer burdens for Medicare and Social Security down the line, and so forth. But if we are part of that 80 percent of Catholics who are also involved in non-procreative sex, we cannot take the “high road” and be opposed to gay marriage because of “immorality.” At the very least, Catholics who choose artificial contraceptive methods, in the interests of consistency, should modify their opposition to gay marriage. If and when they follow the Church’s teaching on contraception, which has not changed over two thousand years and was reiterated by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, they will have a more secure moral justification for their opposition.

Nexplanon, a contraceptive implant promoted as Long Acting Reversible Contraceptive, is a single-rod, progestogen-only implant measuring 4 cm in length and 2 mm in diameter. It is not biodegradable, and it contains 68 mg etonogestrel.

Nexplanon should be placed subdermally at the inner side of the upper nondominant arm.

Subdermal contraceptive implant embolism to a pulmonary artery is an emerging iatrogenic condition.

This case was reported in  The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

An 18-year old woman underwent a voluntary termination of pregnancy in July 2014 and had a concomitant subdermal contraceptive implant (Nexplanon) inside her left upper arm.

During the procedure, the performed an inappropriate movement of flexion of her elbow. Because the gynecologist could not feel for the device to ensure that was placed correctly, a nonhormonal birth control method was advised and upper arm roentgenography was prescribed to check the device location. As the patient presented with no symptoms, she did not attend the outpatient clinic until March 2015. At that time, she asked for the removal of the device because of unfavorable change in her menstrual bleeding pattern. Examination and roentgenology of the patient’s arm failed to localize the implant, and it was deduced that it had migrated elsewhere. Chest radiography and computed tomography confirmed that the device was lodged in a subsegmental branch of the left lower lobe pulmonary artery.

The implant was removed from the pulmonary artery thoracoscopically, thereby avoiding the need of thoracotomy or lung resection.

Maria Gallagher   May 17, 2017   |   3:59PM    Washington, DC

A champion of life—that title expertly captures the work and legacy of Pope John Paul II. More than a decade after his death, the author of Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) remains one of the greatest heroes of the pro-life movement, respected by people of all faiths and all walks of life.

The story of Pope John Paul II’s life is filled with suspense, heroism, and intrigue. What is particularly striking is the number of times during the course of his long life, he escaped death. His life hung in the balance when he was hit by a vehicle in his youth. His life was certainly at risk when the Nazis invaded Poland. In 1981, after assuming the Papacy, he nearly died from an assassin’s bullet.
In the new book The Pope and the President, author Paul Kengor paints an intriguing portrait of the lives of pro-life stalwarts Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan. The two have been credited with playing key roles in the breaking down of the Berlin Wall, a long-standing symbol of Communism. The two also shared a passion for defending innocent human life and played hugely instrumental roles in combating what the Pope memorably described as a “culture of death.”

The Pope and the President notes that the future Pope’s life was at risk even before he was born. Kengor points to a report that the Pope’s mother “was in such precarious health that her doctor advised her not to continue her pregnancy.”

According to Kengor’s account, the doctor told Emilia Wojtyla, “You have to have an abortion.” The physician’s rationale was that Emilia’s life was at stake and that she should abort her child to preserve it. The Vatican Insider said of the incident, “John Paul II was in danger of not being born.”
But Emilia proved the doctor wrong. She came through the pregnancy and childbirth and delivered a baby Kengor described as “healthy and strong as an ox.” Emilia predicted that Karol Józef Wojtyła, who would become John Paul, would be “a great man someday.”

A great man who could have easily lost his life to abortion.

Ponder for a minute how different the world might be had this champion of life never entered into it.
His absence would have created a vacuum that no one else could fill—because no one else was quite like him.

And therein lies one of the great tragedies of abortion. It creates a dark abyss where our heroes might have stood.

With the birth of Karol Wojtyla, history changed—so very, very much for the better. May all of us, of all faith traditions, live out his legacy by defending mothers and their children from the scourge of abortion.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, is pictured at the Vatican in this Oct. 9, 2012, file photo (CNS); right: Monastère de la grande chartreuse, in the Chartreuse Mountains, France (Wikipedia)

About 365 miles south-east of Paris, high in France’s remote Chartreuse Mountains, lies one of the world’s most well-known monasteries. Since its foundation in 1084 by the religious order that would become known as the Carthusians, La Grande Chartreuse has been characterized by a daunting quietness. This was famously captured and brought to the world’s attention in the award-winning 2005 documentary Into Great Silence. The power of that silence forms the backdrop to a new book, La Force du Silence, by Cardinal Robert Sarah, the African-born Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, who first came to the universal church’s attention with his best-selling God or Nothing (2015).

On many levels, this is a very different book to God or Nothing. The latter is about a journey of faith of a poor boy from an impoverished and obscure rural village in the then-colony of French Guinea to one of the highest offices at the Holy See. Cardinal Sarah’s new book, however, is a spiritual testimony to that faith: the type of witness that more of the Church’s prelates should—but often don’t—provide as successors of the Apostles. Working again with the distinguished French journalist Nicolas Diat, Sarah focuses the reader’s mind upon something easily trivialized in an age preoccupied with equality. And that is the sheer grandeur of God. To grasp this unfathomable depth, Sarah urges us to be mastered by a silence which liberates us from the Babel of distractions surrounding us.

Silence functions as a metaphor for many things in this book. It evokes the wonder that anyone should experience in God’s presence. But the silence of which Sarah speaks also embodies fidelity, humility, charity, and the clarifying light of reason. Noise, for Sarah, concerns the confusion and sentimentalism of unreason; the bombast of those who scorn the faith of the simple and the saints, and the unfaithfulness of those who would sell out the Church to the applause of the world—primarily a Western world—that tries to disguise its abandonment of God with the type of franticness that’s a sure sign of superficiality.

Pascal’s way

Having described the nature of the noise that surrounds us, Sarah illustrates how God’s silence speaks to humanity. He then turns to that most difficult of questions: God’s apparent silence in the face of unspeakable evil. The last chapter consists of a three-way exchange in which Diat poses questions to Sarah and the current prior of La Grande Chartreuse and minister-general of the Carthusian order, Dom Dysmas de Lassus. Sarah and de Lassus take turns to explore how silence reveals not only our need of God, but also sheds light on what isn’t essential as we seek this God who is beyond historical contingency and yet always with us.

Sarah’s approach throughout this book is reminiscent of the posthumously-published Pensées penned by the French scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). Like the Pensées, each numbered paragraph in La Force du silence may be read as a stand-alone counsel upon which readers can reflect. The similarities do not end there. Sarah references, for example, numerous Church Fathers and saints. Among others, these include Jerome, Ignatius of Antioch, Maximus the Confessor, John of the Cross, Teresa of Calcutta, Thomas More, and Thérèse of Lisieux. Yet, like Pascal, the life and thought of Saint Augustine looms large throughout Sarah’s reflections and Diat’s questions.

Pascal and Augustine were not shy about naming the problems they regarded as characterizing the Church of their respective times. Nor is Sarah. The noisy sophistry of many contemporary Western theologians (particularly that, some might add, presently emanating from the German-speaking Catholic world) is named for what it is: a prattle which reflects a lack of humility and a disinterest in truth. More generally, Sarah suggests that the propensity of many Christians to talk endlessly about that which is peripheral to the faith reflects their loss of a sense of who God is.

So too does a tendency that Sarah singles out for particular criticism: those forms of activism which marginalize the truths proclaimed by the Church and the life of prayer in the name of “relevance”. In this connection, Sarah points out that saints who were especially immersed in the hustle and bustle of the world, such as John Bosco, John Paul II, Thomas More, and Josemaría Escrivá, maintained especially intense prayer lives, much of which was characterized by silent adoration. This is a reminder that, without regularly immersing ourselves in quiet contemplation of Christ, God’s presence in any Christian’s life will inevitably fade. That is how a church starts collapsing into being just another activist group or NGO.

Into the Darkness

Addressing these contemporary matters, however, don’t preoccupy the bulk of Sarah’s reflections. Far more attention is expended on some of the hardest questions with which every person—Christian or non-Christian, believer or atheist—wrestles. Why was God silent, for example, in face of the genocide of European Jewry? Where was God when seven Trappist monks from the Tibhirine monastery in Algeria were beheaded by Islamists in 1996? How could God not save those who remain his Chosen People? Why did God not stay the hand of jihadist executors?

The problem of evil—not mere discomfort or inconvenience, but evil—has long preoccupied Jews and Christians. They have also produced answers that many find intellectually convincing and to which atheists don’t have especially convincing rebuttals. Yet these Jewish and Christian responses can’t provide by themselves immediate or even long-term release from bewilderment and pain. Intellectual certainty is one thing, the experience of suffering is quite another.

Like any good bishop, Sarah patiently outlines some of the theological and philosophical responses to the problem of evil. Here he draws upon Catholic and Protestant theologians such as Maurice Zundel (1897-1975) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) as well as the German Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas (1903-1993) and his famous 1968 essay, The Concept of God after Auschwitz. But, Sarah cautions, there is a limit. The existence of evil doesn’t disprove the existence of the rational and loving God revealed in the Scriptures. Nonetheless, Sarah warns, evil “is a mystery that humanity can never completely comprehend.” Part of the genius of Sarah’s meditation is how he uses the motif of silence to illuminate this darkness.

For Sarah, it is important that humans resist and combat evil. He himself had no hesitation in denouncing the crimes and terrorism of Sékou Touré’s Marxist regime in Guinea—the same Communist dictator who imprisoned Sarah’s predecessor as Archbishop of Conakry in a concentration camp for eight years and placed Sarah himself on a death-list. That said, Sarah states, we need to remember two things.

First, God’s silence reflects the truth that he is working through time to renew all things, often in ways that we often cannot understand, precisely because we are not God. That’s not a call to be passive. Rather, it’s a caution against imagining that we can master evil in a god-like fashion.

Second, we cannot contest evil, Sarah holds, unless we are willing to quieten ourselves, enter into God’s presence, and meet his silence. In this context, silence implies neither a deaf and mute God nor a master-watchmaker God who does nothing except set time in motion. Instead, God’s silence serves to shed light upon the truth and thus the nature of the injustice and the identity of its perpetrators. Christ himself, Sarah points out, is silent before his accusers. Yet Christ’s stillness discredits the false accusations made against him. More than any words, it convinces Pilate that he’s being asked to sentence an innocent man to death. Likewise Christ’s silence on the Cross testifies to God’s willingness to let himself be humiliated and sacrifice himself in reparation for the evils we have all done. Only the one true God could do this.

Silence and the interior path to God

Silence, however, concerns not only that which is exterior to us. For Sarah, it’s also indispensable if we really want to come to know the God who would allow himself to be nailed to a tree to atone for our sins.

Sarah recalls that as a young priest and archbishop, he often retreated into the Guinean desert to find the solitude and silence he needed to find God. In doing so, he sought to create what he calls “an interior desert”. The models Sarah has in mind are Biblical figures such as Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, and Christ himself—all of whom took themselves into the wilderness to contemplate God. Entering into this silence, Sarah maintains, helps us to strip away those exteriorities that prevent us from encountering the hidden presence of God which Augustine discovered after his conversion to Christianity. Experiencing that presence, Sarah says, can be “terrifying” and “destabilizing”. Those who choose to embark on this path therefore need enormous courage to do so. Yet at the end of the quest, Sarah promises, we will find true life and true peace.

And that is ultimately where Cardinal Sarah’s at-times mystical reflections on silence are meant to take us: the place of true joy in which the silence no longer frightens us because we are alone with the God who is Love—the Love who is the only alternative to Nothing.

La Force du silence: Contre la dictature du Bruit
by Cardinal Robert Sarah with Nicolas Diat
Fayard, 2016
Paperback, 374 pages

Related at CWR: “Cardinal Robert Sarah on ‘The Strength of Silence’ and the Dictatorship of Noise”(Oct 3, 2016): An exclusive English translation of a wide-ranging interview by Cardinal Sarah with the French newspaper “La Nef”.

posted on May 13, 2017 by Cassie Moriarty      

Of the fluidity of motherhood

Motherhood comes in all shapes and sizes. There’s the mom who sat through hours of blood tests, chart analyses, and waiting rooms. The one who saw countless negative pregnancy tests and was crestfallen every time. There’s the mom who only saw one positive pregnancy test, you know the one I’m talking about. The unexpected one. The test that made the room spin and her ears ring a little. The mom who tried, the mom who took her pill loyally every night by the bedside. There’s young moms, older moms, moms of many, and moms of one. Single moms, moms with little ones whose lives were lost far too soon, and moms who didn’t birth a child, but still give out love like it’s limitless.

Mother and child by Graham Crumb

Mother’s Day is a loaded holiday, that’s for sure. Everyone’s journey to motherhood looks a little different, but every mother holds a love like no other for her children. American culture frequently talks about entering motherhood and family planning as if it’s a play book. Each couple chooses their plays and goes about their life. But in actuality, family planning is about as fluid as…well, cervical fluid. Constantly changing. Constantly ebbing and flowing. Might be one thing one week and another, another week. Couples who use fertility awareness methods are generally more in tune with this ebb and flow. I mean literally, but also emotionally. Each cycle is a new chance to deliberate the playbook.

Fertility Awareness Methods are anything but set it and forget it. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It puts you in touch with your fertility every cycle, and quite intimately. I think that’s a really cool part about it. I get to make decisions, but also work with the many moving parts of deciding when or if to grow my family.

But we don’t always get a say – life sometimes has its own plans. Infertility, miscarriage, unplanned pregnancy, they happen. Family planning isn’t always so planned. And maybe that’s a beautiful thing. No matter how many childbirth ed classes you take, no matter how many parenting books your read, we can only control so much. I’m so grateful that using fertility awareness as a method of family planning allows me to be flexible.

So this Mother’s Day, we want to honor everyone’s journey to motherhood. It’s the most common and somehow unique job in the world. No two moms’ journeys are alike. What a shame that parenthood gets placed into two boxes, planned and unplanned. Sometimes life happens and sometimes we just need a support system to help us through. Be it miscarriage, infertility, unexpected pregnancy, and all the things that happen after birth that we simply can’t plan for.

To every mama, we see you and we are ever grateful for the tireless work, the sleepless nights, the early mornings, the playdates, the many doctor’s visits, and the tears (often your own). You’re rocking it.

Steve Jalsevac

Note: numbers before quoted paragraphs are as published in Cardinal Sarah’s book.

May 12, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Why have we seen such a dramatic increase in anxiety, fear, personal disorientation, irrational anger and forced imposition of political correctness over the past 50+ years in developed nations? Have you noticed how many now reject reason and sound arguments and accept only “facts”, “evidence” or “studies” that agree with what they desire – no matter how pathetically flawed their supporting items are? There is a surprising cause for most of this and an ages-old, surprising remedy.

We are in an age of increasing social madness. Cardinal Robert Sarah, in his new book, The Power of Silence, reveals this to be symptomatic of a widespread spiritual illness in modern Western culture. This illness, according to him, is largely caused by an absence of crucially needed, God and truth-revealing periods of silence of the ears, of the eyes and of the heart in the life of modern men and women.

Yes, silence. Sarah shows the way out of the tyranny of destructive external and internal noise and the incredible power and necessity of silence, which he proclaims is “more important than any other human work.”

Reading the comments under LifeSite’s well-researched and written reports, we are frequently struck by the inability of so many to calmly think and reason and to appreciate the implications of what the news reports reveal. Reason, facts, solid research – are all given much less importance, if any, these days than politically correct and especially emotional considerations. Modern man allows feelings and images to dominate and enslave him, much to his personal and social detriment.

Cardinal Sarah warns us that,

47. Humanity itself has returned to the sad prophecy of Isaiah, which was repeated by Jesus: “seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand…. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with heart, and turn for me to heal them”. (Mt 13:13, 15) p.44

Because of all the noise experienced by our eyes, ears and hearts, modern man no longer hears, experiences and knows God. He is unable to comprehend the purpose and even the value of his life and the lives of others. Hence the acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, transgenerism and many other anti-human perversities. Today’s men and women and youth are lost and swirling in a downward spiral of self-destroying anxieties, fears, vulgarity, disorientation and violence.

Sarah goes so far as to proclaim that, “In killing silence, man assassinates God.” p.57

Modern civilization does not know how to be quiet

Let me further quote liberally from Cardinal Sarah and the astonishing insights in his book:

74. Our world no longer hears God because it is constantly speaking, at a devastating speed and volume, in order to say nothing. Modern civilization does not know how to be quiet. It holds fourth in an unending monologue. Postmodern society rejects the past and looks at the present as a cheap consumer object; it pictures the future in terms of an almost obsessive progress. It’s dream, which has become a sad reality, will have been to lock silence away in a damp, dark dungeon. Thus there is a dictatorship of speech, a dictatorship of verbal emphasis. In this theatre of shadows, nothing is left but a purulent wound of mechanical words, without perspective, without truth, and without foundation. Quite often “truth” is nothing more than the pure and misleading creation of the media, corroborated by fabricated images and testimonies.

When that happens the word of God fades away, inaccessible and inaudible. Postmodernity is an ongoing offence and aggression against the divine silence. From morning to evening, from evening to morning, silence no longer has any place at all; the noise tries to prevent God himself from speaking. In this hell of noise, man disintegrates and is lost; he is broken up into countless worries, fantasies, and fears. In order to get out of these depressing tunnels, he desperately awaits noise so that it will bring him a few consolations. Noise is a deceptive, addictive, and false tranquilizer. P. 56

Those are powerful, perceptive words! Much of the chaos that we report every day in LifeSite stories is reflected in those two preceding paragraphs. Cardinal Sarah does not “beat around the bush.” He gives it to us straight so that we might be able to fully understand and respond to our illness. That is what a genuine doctor of the soul must do. This is not facile “accompaniment,” but rather true shepherding and acceptance of the call to be a prophet for our time.

The silence of the eyes

Sarah carefully explains that the silence he is talking about involves much more that what enters the ears. Everything that enters the mind and heart through the senses, emotions and memories can create howling internal “noise” and greatly disturb our internal equilibrium, sense of being and relationship to our Creator.

I have never heard the term, “silence of the eyes,” but Cardinal Sarah explains it well, especially as it applies to our modern culture:

46. The silence of the eyes consists of being able to close one’s eyes in order to contemplate God who is in us, in the interior depths of our personal abyss. Images are drugs that we can no longer do without, because they are present everywhere and at every moment. Our eyes are sick, intoxicated, they can no longer close. It is necessary to stop one’s ears too, because there are sonic images that assault and violate our sense of hearing, our intellect, and our imagination. P.44

43. For some years now there has been a constant onslaught of images, lights, and colours that blind man. His interior dwelling is violated by the unhealthy, provocative images of pornography, bestial violence, and all sorts of worldly obscenities that assault purity of heart and infiltrate through the door of sight. P.42

44. The faculty of sight, which ought to see and contemplate the essential things, is turned aside to what is artificial. Our eyes confuse day and night because our whole lives are so immersed in a permanent light. In the cities that shine with a thousand lights, our eyes no longer find restful areas of darkness, and consciences no longer recognize sin.

Negative impact on the conscience

All this external and subsequent internal “noise” has had a profoundly negative impact on the consciences of modern men and women. Our otherwise natural perceptions of right and wrong are suppressed or confused. Modern man can’t comprehend the reality of moral absolutes and instead wallows in ever-changing, emotionally self-serving and personally destructive moral relativism.

Cardinal Sarah continues,

To a large extent, humanity has lost an awareness of the seriousness of sin and of the disorder that its presence has introduced into personal, ecclesial, and social life. More than 50 years ago, in his homily on September 20, 1964, Blessed Paul VI stated this tragedy in these terms:

In the language of respectable people today, in their books, in the things that they say about man, you will not find that dreadful word which, however, is very frequent in the religious world – our world – especially in close relation to God: the word is “sin”. In today’s way of thinking, people are no longer regarded as sinners. They’re categorized as being healthy, sick, good, strong, weak, rich, poor, wise, ignorant; but one never encounters the word sin. The human intellect having thus been detached from divine wisdom, this word “sin” does not recur because we have lost the concept of sin. One of the most penetrating and grave words of Pope Pius XII, of venerable memory, was, “the modern world has lost the sense of sin.” What is this if not the rupture of our relationship with, God, caused precisely by “sin”.

Those words were written by Paul VI in 1964, but so much has happened since then that we can confidently say that the word “sin” is no longer even “very frequent in the religious world.” Pastors, bishops and even the current Pope don’t like to inflict guilt on the flock, and especially on those engaged in immoral behaviours, by using the word “sin”. If any sin is mentioned at all it is often in relation to supposed “sins” against the environment or economic or other worldly issue “sins” or the sin of being too “rigid” and faithful.

Sarah next presents a poetic and powerful quote from Saint John Paul II in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitencia dated December 2, 1984 (no. 18).

45. Far from God and from the lights that spring from the true Light, man can no longer see the stars, cities have become such flashlights the dazzle our eyes. Modern life does not allow us to look calmly at things. Our eyelids remain open incessantly, but our eyes are forced to look at a sort of ongoing spectacle. The dictatorship of the image, which plunges our attention into a perpetual whirlpool, detests silence. Man feels obliged to seek ever new realities that give him an appetite to own things; but his eyes are red, haggard, and sick. The artificial spectacles and the screens glowing uninterruptedly try to bewitch the mind and the soul. In the brightly lit prisons of the modern world, man is separated from himself and from God. He is riveted to ephemeral things, farther and farther away from what is essential. P.43

I have so far only read up to page 56 in the The Power of Silence, but already Sarah has given a few prescriptions here and there on how to overcome this tyranny of noise.

He quotes Mother Teresa who wrote, “silence of speech, gesture, or activity finds its full meaning in the search for God. This search is truly possible only in a silent heart.” Sarah says that “This nun did not like to speak and fled the storms of worldly noise.”

“Silence needs meekness and humility”, writes Sarah, “and it also opens for us the way to these two qualities. The humblest, meekest, and most silent of all beings is God. Silence is the only means by which to enter into this great mystery of God… In silence, man is absorbed by the divine and the world’s  movements no longer have any hold on his soul.” There is the solution.

I am very much looking forward to reading the rest of The Power of Silence. There is no doubt that many LifeSite readers would also benefit from obtaining and reading this timely, exceptionally insightful book.

Aleteia . | Abr 29, 2017

Never like now a beautiful scene of a baby, his family and the experience of faith is conquering smiles and tenderness in social networks: the baptism of little Gustavo, a Brazilian baby who literally “found grace” in the middle of baptismal font!

During the ritual of baptism by immersion, the celebrant priest immerses the baby three times in the baptismal font while pronouncing the formula “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” After the first partial immersion, Gustavo releases an enormous and spontaneous laughter, of the type that only the babies manage to give, infecting the whole church with his joy.

To complete this true feast, the new baptized clap his hands together with the assembly, who applauded him by welcoming him as a Catholic! The contagious joy of baptism, in a video that will not leave you indifferent.

John-Henry Westen

May 4, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — As I’ve been researching Fatima for several speaking engagements this year, I was confronted over and over again by Our Lady’s insistence on Russia’s consecration. That after it was done, as well as the practice of the First Five Saturdays of reparation, Our Lady promised Russia would be converted and a period of peace would be given to the world. If not, the Queen of Heaven warned, Russia “will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.” She added, “The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.”

“In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph,” she said. “The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”

Of course, St. Pope John Paul II entrusted the world to the Immaculate Heart in 1984, but we still await that period of peace. We have seen more war, massacres, martyrs, and abortions in the last half century than ever before. Ominously, we have not yet seen the annihilation of various nations. But what does all this have to do with Russia?

Russia, in the minds of most people, is the originator of communism – thought mainly to be an economic system competing with capitalism. However, when we really comprehend communism, the spread of Russia’s errors becomes recognizable.

“The Naked Communist” is the most concise and straightforward source outlining communist goals and ideology. It was written by W. Cleon Skousen, a former FBI agent who used many original sources, and the best intelligence of the FBI during its investigation of communist infiltration into the United States. The book is recorded in the Congressional Record and President Ronald Reagan commented on it saying: “No one is better qualified to discuss the threat to this nation from communism.”

A selection of the goals of communism listed by Skousen serve to illustrate its spread to all nations, especially the West:

• Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
• Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
• Present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
• Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion.
• Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
• Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
• Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity, masturbation, and easy divorce.
• Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute ”prejudices, mental blocks, and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.”

Beyond communism, however, another of Russia’s errors has spread throughout the world – abortion. Abortion was first legalized in Russia in 1920. To this day, Russia has the highest abortion rate in the world per capita. With a population of 143 million, there are 1.2 million abortions per year.

There is no doubt Mary’s predictions and promises will come true. Our Lady of Fatima predicted the Second World War and even noted a warning sign that would precede it. She warned of the massive plague of impurity that has infested the planet. She gave the faithful tasks to fulfill in order to see the Triumph her Immaculate Heart and she will be faithful to those prophecies too.

So, as we honor our own mothers this month, let’s examine again the requests of Our Blessed Mother and put them into practice. She asked for prayer, particularly the Holy Rosary and the devotion of the Brown Scapular. She urged reparation for the sins and outrages perpetrated against God’s Grace and blasphemies against the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary, especially with the practice of the First Five Saturdays. And finally, she asked for consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, both on a personal basis and, publicly, that of Russia by the Pope and all the world’s bishops.

Almost all of those matters are within our personal control. There is no better time than this year, especially during the season of the Resurrection, the season of Easter, to implement these practices in our lives. Let us take up the weapon of the rosary – our umbilical cord to Our Heavenly Mother. Let us make the First Five Saturdays devotion and teach them to our children. Let us consecrate ourselves to the Immaculate Heart as St. Louis de Montfort taught and St. John Paul called “indispensable to anyone who means to give himself without reserve to Christ and to the work of redemption.”

When doctors told Chelsea Torres that she was carrying conjoined twins, they warned her that the babies probably would not survive past the first trimester.

Doctors encouraged Torres and her husband, Nick, of Blackfoot, Idaho, to consider having an abortion, The Daily Mail reports. They refused.

The Idaho parents now are so thankful that they did not listen to their doctors’ advice. Their twin girls, Callie and Carter, were born in January, and they are doing well, according to the report.

Here’s more from the report:

Callie and Carter are omphalo-ischiopagus twins, which make up less than five per cent of conjoined twins.

This means they have just two legs and one pelvis between them, but have two separate torsos that face each other.

The girls do not appear to share any vital organs.

Today, the girls are three months old and healthy. The family said Callie and Carter are doing so well that doctors do not recommend separating them.

Daily living is more difficult with conjoined twins. The twins require a lot of custom-made things, like car seats and clothes. Chelsea said she sews clothing together to fit the twins.

She said a few people stare when they see the twins, but most are very supportive.

“I’m so happy I didn’t terminate Callie and Carter, they are amazing,” their mother told the Mail. “I knew termination would not happen and I’m glad that little speck of thought I did have, I pushed away.”

Research from the University of Maryland indicates that between 40 percent and 60 percent of conjoined twins are stillborn.

But the length of a child’s life inside or outside the womb should not justify killing them. Too often, parents are pressured to abort their unborn babies because of a disability or a short lifespan.

In the case of Callie and Carter, the odds were against them; but because their parents chose life, they are alive and well today. Stories like the Torres family’s demonstrate why every unborn baby deserves a chance to live.

MICAIAH BILGER MAY 4, 2017 | 10:15AM MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA

Baby Dexter was not supposed to be.

His mother, Lucy Hellein of Fort Mitchell, Alabama, was using a supposedly highly effective birth control device when doctors believe she conceived Dexter, according to the Daily Mail.

And when Dexter was born on April 27, the IUD coil that was supposed to prevent his life from being conceived came out, too. A photo of the newborn grabbing the contraceptive device has been catching people’s eyes on the internet. More than 70,000 people have shared it on Facebook, the report states.

Mirena, the contraceptive coil, or IUD, that Hellein used, is advertised as 99-percent effective.

According to the Mayo Clinic: “A T-shaped plastic frame that releases a type of progestin, Mirena thickens the cervical mucus to prevent sperm from reaching or fertilizing an egg. Mirena also thins the lining of the uterus and partially suppresses ovulation.” Some think the IUD also may act as an abortifacient by preventing a newly-conceived unborn baby from attaching to the womb.

Hellein told the Metro that she had the Mirena inserted last August, and then discovered she was pregnant with Dexter in December. Doctors said she likely conceived him just a few days after she had the device inserted.

“I assumed I was only a few weeks along, but the ultrasound confirmed that I was already 18 weeks along,” she said. “My Mirena was nowhere to be found on ultrasound so my OB assumed that it had fallen out, but I wasn’t convinced.”

The news of an unplanned pregnancy often is followed by suggestions of abortion, but Hellein chose life for her son.

“Dexter was definitely meant to be,” she said. “Although he wasn’t planned, my family and I feel incredibly blessed.”

When Dexter was born last week, doctors found the IUD behind Hellein’s placenta, according to the report.

It is believed that nurses posed newborn Dexter with the contraceptive device in the hospital to highlight his unplanned — but not unwelcome — life. Hellein later shared the image on Facebook, where tens of thousands of people have viewed it.

Pro-lifers take varying positions on artificial contraception. Some argue that birth control can help reduce abortion rates by preventing unwanted pregnancies, while others argue that it leads down a slippery slope to abortion.

No matter what their position on birth control, pro-lifers agree that every baby’s life, planned or unplanned, is worth celebrating.

Scientists discover estrogen-heavy pills hamper memory and increase anxiety in females with a certain gene variant

• Estrogen alters a memory circuit in women with a gene variant
• When women’s estrogen levels were maniupulated, there was activity in the hippocampus while performing a working memory task
• However, during such tasks, activity in this area is typically suppressed
• The researchers say this explains why women are affected differently by the pill as well have differences in their menstrual cycles

By Mary Kekatos For Dailymail.com

Birth control pills can seem like a lottery.

Some say it gives them mood swings, stress and even depression. Others insist it clears their skin and balances their emotions.

According to a new study, it could all boil down to your genes.

Although studies have long shown estrogen-heavy pills ease depression symptoms, researchers at the National Institutes of Health found it has the opposite effect in women who carry a certain gene variant.

Brain scans revealed modified activity was linked to changes in the sex hormone in women with the gene while they performed a working memory task (the ability to hold memories for a short time while performing a separate task).

The researchers say their findings not only shed light on individual differences in the menstrual cycle but also mechanisms underlying differences in the onset, severity, and course of mood and anxiety disorders.

The authors, from the National Institutes of Mental Health in Maryland, say that prior to the study, there was little evidence from research that might account for individual differences in cognitive and behavioral effects of sex hormones.

‘Why do some women report that estrogen replacement improved their memory, whereas large studies of postmenopausal estrogen therapy show no overall improvement in memory performance?’ they wrote.

The study hypothesized that estrogen alters circuit function by interacting with a gene that codes for brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).

BDNF is a key protein in brain plasticity and acts on certain neurons to help support the survival of existing neurons and promote the growth and development of new ones.

Researchers experimentally manipulated estrogen levels in healthy women with one or the other version of the BDNF gene over a period of months.

Brain scan showed activity in the hippocampus, or the brain’s memory hub, in response to estrogen in women performing a working memory task – if they carried the gene variant.

However, activity in this area is typically suppressed during working memory, causing the researchers to conclude that the gene-hormone interaction affects thinking and behavior.

There is mounting evidence that sex steroids, such as testosterone, estrogen and progesterone, play an important role in a number of serious mood disorders, such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.

Women who have episodes of depression associated with reproductive events (premenstrual or postpartum) are prone to them because of a heightened sensitivity to intense hormonal fluctuations.

While estrogen is an ‘upper’ when released naturally during the menstrual cycle, at high doses it has the opposite effect, according to Dr Deborah Sichel, a psychiatrist specializing in female mood disorders.

Estrogen induces side effects such as nausea, breast tenderness, headaches and lower libido.

‘Women may not notice their negative mood because they have been on the pill for so long, they don’t know what their mood would be like if they were off hormones,’ Dr Sichel told Shape.

‘These are all real biochemical disorders that can and should be treated.’

MICHAEL COOK   MAY 2, 2017   |   5:45PM    BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

One of the last substantial barriers to increasing the number of euthanasia cases for non-terminally-ill psychiatric patients in Belgium seems to have crumbled.

A religious order in the Catholic Church, the Brothers of Charity, is responsible for a large proportion of beds for psychiatric patients in Belgium – about 5,000 of them. The international head of the order, Brother René Stockman, is a Belgian who has been one of the leading opponents of euthanasia in recent years.

Nonetheless, in a surprise move this week, the board controlling the institutions of the Brothers of Charity announced that from now on, it will allow euthanasia to take place in their psychiatric hospitals.

In a statement posted on their website the Brothers of Charity explain the policy shift. “We take seriously unbearable and hopeless suffering and patients’ request for euthanasia. On the other hand, we do want to protect lives and ensure that euthanasia is performed only if there is no more possibility to provide a reasonable perspective to treat the patient.”

Euthanasia for psychiatric patients has already happened dozens of times in Belgium. But from now on it will probably be easier for people suffering from schizophrenia, personality
disorders, depression, autism, or loneliness to access it. In fact, it will be hard to find an institution in Belgium where euthanasia is not being offered as an option.

Brother Stockman was stunned. “We deplore this new vision,” he told the media.

Nursing homes and hospitals opposing euthanasia have been under even more pressure after a court fined a Catholic nursing home a total of €6,000 last year for blocking a resident from accessing euthanasia.

However, Stockman felt that this was not an open and shut case. “I am confident that we have the right to refuse euthanasia,” Stockman told De Morgen. “We want to take seriously the needs of the patients, but the inviolability of life is for us an absolute. We cannot accept that euthanasia is carried out within the walls of our institutions. “

The leading figure in Belgian euthanasia, Dr Wim Distelmans, was delighted. Fifteen years after legalisation, he wrote in a newspaper op-ed, the Brothers of Charity have finally admitted that they had excluded the democratically approved policy of euthanasia from their institutions and forbidden doctors to follow their conscience and professional judgement.

Rubbing it in further, a member of the Belgian Parliament, Jean-Jacques De Gucht, summed up the situation: “the last relics of the paternalism of the shepherd have been replaced by individual self-determination”.

The chairman of the board, Raf De Rycke, an economist who has worked with the Brothers of Charity for years, denied that the ethos of their hospitals had changed “We have not made a 180 degree turn,” he told De Morgen newspaper. “It is not that we used to be against euthanasia and now suddenly are for it. This is consistent with our existing criteria. We are making both possible routes for our patients: both a pro-life perspective and euthanasia.”

Although this seems odd for a Catholic group, especially when the Pope has been outspoken in denouncing euthanasia, De Rycke believes that the inspiration of the Belgian Brothers of Charity fundamentally remains the same. “We start from the same basic values: the inviolability of life is an important foundation, but for us it is not absolute. This is where we are on a different wavelength from Rome.”

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet where this story appeared.

DAWN SLUSHER   MAY 1, 2017   |   5:39PM    WASHINGTON, DC

ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy”

In a society where preborn children are treated as disposable property, and disregarded in the name of cold, sterile, euphemisms such as “reproductive rights” and “choice,” it’s rare to find a mother who actually does the opposite of putting herself above her child.

Patient Veronica is in the ER at Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital for back pain. She’s almost 35 weeks pregnant and her body is riddled with cancer. She decided to forgo cancer treatment because, as she put it, “I didn’t want to microwave the baby.”

The storyline is a continuation from earlier this season when Veronica refused to abort her baby despite pressure from Doctor Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) to kill her child to begin treatments for her terminal pancreatic cancer. (See previous article for factual information on cancer during pregnancy as well, as this episode did not accurately reflect the truth on the effects of chemotherapy and radiation on a preborn baby.)

The prognosis isn’t good, as was expected, and as Veronica planned for. The doctors give her two months at best left to live, as the cancer has spread even further and is compressing her spinal cord. And they tell her that they must deliver the baby that day..

“All right. Let’s cheer up, everybody. We’re having a baby,” Veronica announces optimistically, looking forward to having two months to spend with her baby and the baby’s father.

But during the C-section, things take a turn for the worst:

Amelia: Heart rate’s up to 130. Veronica, how’s your breathing?

Veronica: It’s fi– um, it’s a little tough.

Jeremy: What’s happening? What’s going on?

Veronica: Hey, Jer, come on. Look at him. He has the sweetest eyes.

Arizona: Her sats are dropping. She’s persistently tachycardic.

Amelia: Let’s put her back on high-flow oxygen. It could be an embolus.

Veronica: Time to get him out of here.

Alex: Yeah, in a minute.

Arizona: If it’s an embolus, we don’t have a minute.

Alex: She did all this so she can meet the baby. Just give them another damn minute.

Veronica: Jer, can you take him?

Alex: He needs to go to the NICU now.

Jeremy: And, uh, what — what about Veronica?

Alex: She’s in good hands. She’ll be just fine. I’ll take good care of her.

Veronica: Jer, you stay with him. You promised. I’m counting on you.

Jeremy: But I don’t —

Veronica: Go on. Stay with him. I’ll see you in a little bit.

Amelia: Are we pushing heparin or going straight to thrombolytics?

Arizona: Thrombolytics are contraindicated. We need to do an embolectomy, and let’s get an ivc filter.

Amelia: Veronica, you’ve thrown a blood clot, and it’s traveled all the way to your lungs. It’s very serious. We need to remove it immediately, so we’re gonna need to put you under and open up your chest.

Veronica: Is that… Uh… Uh, will that work?

Amelia: The procedure will only last about a half an hour.

Veronica: Will it work?

Amelia: There’s no guarantee you’d survive it.

Veronica: And what if we didn’t do anything?

Arizona: Veronica, we need to do this procedure. If we don’t, you might not make it off this table today.

Amelia: Okay, pressure’s dropping. Get a cart ready!

Veronica: No. I signed that dnr for a reason.

Arizona: You can rescind. Let us help you.

Veronica: I did what I wanted. My baby’s…okay. It — I’m so tired.

Amelia: I know. I know.

Too bad Dr. Miranda Bailey wasn’t around to see that beautiful baby alive and well thanks to his mother not listening to her pro-abortive advice.

Later, we see Veronica in her last moments and realize even further what an amazing mother she was to give up her own life for her child’s:

Amelia: What do you want? What do you need right now?

Veronica: I’m so cold.

Amelia: I’ll get a warming blanket.

Veronica: No! No. Can you — Will you just hold me? We did good? The baby’s good?

Amelia: Baby’s good.

Yes, Veronica, you did good. And your baby is so very good because of your beautiful sacrifice.

LifeNews Note: Dawn Slusher writes for Newsbusters, where this originally appeared.