Support abortion restrictions? Americans Protest.

Americans continue to show strong support for abortion restrictions, according to a new survey that finds even self-described “pro-choice” Americans reject permissive abortion laws. “Four decades after Roe v. Wade, the American people remain unhappy with its legacy,” Carl Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus, said Jan. 21. “The survey makes clear that the American people understand that abortion is far too common, and causes great harm.”

Jan. 22 marks the 42^nd anniversary of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which mandated legal abortion nationwide.

While current constitutional law and other major political forces often prevent abortion restrictions from being enacted, a Marist Institute poll sponsored by the Knights of Columbus found that 84 percent of Americans want significant restrictions on abortion and would limit it to the first three months of pregnancy, at most.

Their numbers include about 69 percent of self-described “pro-choice” respondents.

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said abortion is morally wrong, while only 38 percent said it was not. Another 60 percent said that abortion does more harm to a woman than good in the long run.

Pope Francis' talk's tough against horrors of human trafficking.

We all need to put hands together in fight against human trafficking.

Pope Francis marked the Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking by calling on governments to remove this “shameful wound” which has no place in “civil society.” 

“Each one of us feels committed to being the voice of these, our brothers and sisters, humiliated in their dignity,” the Holy Father said to the crowds gathered in Saint Peter's Square, moments after the recitation of the Angelus.

The Feb. 8 the Day of Prayer coincides with the feast of Saint Josephine Bakhita, the 19th century Sudanese nun who as a child had been a victim of slavery, the Pope noted. 

Pope Francis offered his encouragement to those working to end the trafficking of “men, women, and children” who are “enslaved, exploited, abused as instruments of work or pleasure, and often tortured and humiliated.” 

He then called governments to action in “removing the cause of this shameful wound... a wound unworthy in a civil society.”

The United Nations estimates that as many as 2.5 million people are living as victims of human trafficking at any given time

The two Polish priests martyred in Peru?

They where both killed the same day.

Two Polish priest killed by a Communist group in Peru were among those recognized as martyrs by Pope Francis on Feb. 3.

Father Michele Tomaszek and Father Zbigneo Strzalkowski of the Conventual Friars Minor, were killed Aug. 9, 1991, by the “Shining Path” terrorist group in Peru. At the time of their death, they were 31 and 33 years old, respectively.

Both Franciscan priests worked in the town of Pariacoto in the Peruvian Andes, where they lived for 11 years. At the time, the region was struggling to climb out of an economic slump, while terrorists from the Shining Path killed thousands of civilians and local government leaders in an effort to bring a Communist regime to power.

The work carried out by the two Polish priests to help the poor in Pariacoto was considered a threat by the terrorists, who saw their efforts to recruit new members thwarted.

The priests were undaunted by the continuous threats against them and continued their work. On Aug. 9, 1991, members of the terrorist group covered the walls of Pariacoto's central square with graffiti and later that evening kidnapped the mayor.

At the same time, Fr. Strzalkowski exposed the Blessed Sacrament at their parish while awaiting his brother priest for the celebration of the Eucharist. Once Mass ended, they closed the church. Shortly after, a few men wearing ski masks knocked on the door and demanded to speak with the priests.

When the two priests came to the door, the masked men bound their hands and threw them into a pickup truck. Along with the mayor, they were taken to the nearby town of Pueblo Viejo. Along the way, they subjected the priests to an interrogation and accused them of “deceiving the people” and “infecting people by distributing food from the imperialist Caritas.” They also accused the priests of thwarting their revolution by preaching peace. Upon arriving at the local cemetery, the three men were executed.

The Peruvian Bishops' Conference denounced the killing of the two missionaries saying, “Once again committed to the creation of the Civilization of Love in our nation, the Church strongly condemns this bloody disgrace that leads to no way out of the critical situation Peru is facing.”

Upon learning of the news, Pope John Paul II called the friars “the new martyrs of Peru.” 

The Conventual Franciscans of Spain in a blog post noted the words of a nun who worked with the Polish priests. A few days after the murder, she said the whole experience felt like a dream.

“I am amazed once again by Fr. Michele and Fr. Zbigniew's fidelity to the Lord and to this Andean town, their will to live what they preached. I remember their enthusiasm for their Franciscan and missionary vocation and their willingness to serve, despite being tired so often,” she said.

“They stayed there until the end. This is not something you improvise; it's a gift,” the nun reflected. “I saw Fr. Zbigniew a few days before his martyrdom, and I asked him if they were being threatened, he smiled and said, 'We cannot abandon the people. One never knows, but if they kill us, bury us here'.”

“I saw Fr. Michele one month before, he was living as if there was nothing wrong, as always abandoned to God. Both men of God perhaps lived thinking their time had not yet come. However, it was God's time,” she said.

The martyrdom of the two Polish priests was recognized this Tuesday by Pope Francis, along with the martyrdom of Italian priest Father Alessandro Dordi, who was killed by the Shining Path 16 days later, and Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero, who was shot while saying Mass in San Salvador in 1980.

Jordan's Christians pray for religious harmony,

After pilot's heinous execution.

This is a call for Prayers 

Christians in Jordan have responded to the Islamic State's gruesome execution of a captured Jordanian pilot with sorrow, calling for prayer and religious and national unity. 

Father Rifat Bader, general director of the Jordan-based Catholic Center for Studies and Media, said the Christian churches of Jordan conveyed their “deep sorrow and sadness” over Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh’s execution, which Fr. Bader characterized as a “martyrdom” and a “heinous crime against humanity.”

He said the churches called for all their bells to be rung at noon on Wednesday, and for special Masses and prayers at 6 p.m.

“The churches will hold prayers as well in the first week of February for harmony among religions, so that religions will constitute a factor conducive for peace, harmony and unity among the people rather than a factor leading to division, killing, oppression and dispute,” the priest said in a Feb. 4 statement.

British Lawmakers Voted to allow Embryos with three parents? The risks are yet to come, critics warn.

Despite warnings from religious leaders and scientists, British lawmakers have voted to allow a version of in-vitro fertilization that uses the DNA of three different people to conceive a baby.

“Since this is uncharted territory and the children born from this technology would have heritable genetic changes, there are also significant unknown risks to future generations,” Dr. Paul Knoepfler, an associate professor at the University of California-Davis, told the British newspaper The Telegraph.

He said the move to legalize two procedures could be an “historic mistake” that poses “serious medical risks” to the people conceived in the procedures. These risks could include developmental defects or increased rates of aging and cancer, he warned.

On Tuesday the House of Commons voted 382-128 to approve a bill allowing the embryo-modification techniques.

One focus of the techniques is mitochondrial disease, in which a woman’s eggs have faulty mitochondria, which normally convert food into energy that the body can use. Diseased mitochondria can lead to brain damage, muscle wasting, heart failure and blindness, BBC News reports.
 
The techniques are intended to replace the mother’s mitochondria with those from a donor.

The regulations allow two techniques: pronuclear transfer, in which two human embryos are destroyed in the process of creating a modified embryo with donor mitochondria; and an “egg repair” method called maternal spindle transfer in which the mother’s genetic material is inserted into a donor egg with good mitochondria, after which the egg is fertilized in vitro. 

Ahead of the Feb. 3 vote, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales said there are “serious ethical objections” to the procedures, noting that one technique involves “the destruction of embryos as part of the process.”

“The human embryo is a new human life, and it should be respected and protected from the moment of conception,” said Bishop John Sherrington of the bishops’ conference Department for Christian Responsibility and Citizenship.

“This is a further step in commodification of the human embryo and a failure to respect new individual human lives,” the Bishops of England and Wales said.

The bill now faces a vote in the House of Lords. Member of Parliament Fiona Bruce was among those who voted against the procedure. She cited concerns about the genetic modification of human beings, saying “the implications of this simply cannot be predicted.”

“But one thing is for sure, once this alteration has taken place, as someone has said, once the gene is out of the bottle, once these procedures that we're asked to authorize today go ahead, there will be no going back for society.”

U.K. Public Health Minister Jane Ellison supported the bill, saying it is “a considered and informed step.”

“This is world leading science within a highly respected regulatory regime,” she said, according to the BBC. “And for the many families affected, this is light at the end of a very dark tunnel.” 

The Catholic bishops noted that there have been no clinical trials of the techniques proposed for approval. A clinical trial of the technique could be legally problematic under the European Commission’s 2001 directive barring clinical trials of gene therapy that modifies a subject’s “germ line,” that is, their sex cells which pass on inheritable genetic characteristics.

Dr. Trevor Stammers, Program Director in Bioethics and Medical Law at St. Mary's University, said that even if babies conceived through the technique are born, “they will have to be monitored all their lives, and their children will have to be as well.”

“We do not yet know the interaction between the mitochondria and nuclear DNA. To say that it is the same as changing a battery is facile. It’s an extremely complex thing,” he said, according to The Telegraph.

Rev. Brendan McCarthy, national adviser on medical ethics for the Church of England, said that changing the human germline “represents an ethical watershed” and proposals about the techniques deserve caution and “comprehensive debate and degree of consensus.”

In a Jan. 30 statement, he said the Church of England’s position is that the law should not be changed without further scientific study and debate about the techniques’ efficacy and safety.

Indian Church prepares youth to be tomorrow's leaders; St Don Bosco Inspired.

St. John Bosco, founder of the Salesians, was born Aug. 16, 1815, and his feast day is celebrated Jan. 31. He dedicated himself to the betterment of the youth in Turin, and there founded the Salesian order to educate the young poor and to prepare them for an occupation.

Celebrating the feast of St. Don Bosco on Saturday, the Diocese of Miao held pilgrimages, a Bible quiz, and a variety of cultural events.

Fr. Felix Anthony said that they are continuing in St. John Bosco's legacy of educating impoverished youth and preparing them for leadership, for it is the youth of a nation that can bring a transformation and social change in the nation. 

Is religion to blame for war and violence?

 Karen Armstrong’s book, Fields of Blood, is an ambitious project that looks closely at the interrelationship of religion and violence. In it she seeks to challenge the scapegoating of religion as the cause of all war and violence, a simplistic assumption she seems to hear all too frequently from the mouths of politicians, academics and taxi drivers.

With what is happening round the whole world, you can judge from your own point of view (the killings of ISIS, BOKO Haram,etc).