Isaiah 3:4,9-12

And I will make boys their princes,
and babes shall rule over them.
.
.
Their partiality witnesses against them;
they proclaim their sin like Sodom,
they do not hide it.
Woe to them!
For they have brought evil upon themselves.
Tell the righteous that it shall be well with them,
For they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.
Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him,
For what his hands have done shall be done to him.
My people - children are their oppressors,
and women rule over them.
O my people, your leaders mislead you,
and confuse the course of your paths.

Small in number, big in commitment

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
  maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
  deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
  - Ps. 82:3,4

Continuing the "Pro-life strike" theme: A recent Google search directed me to an online debate on the question of paying taxes that fund abortion. Delighted to find others who are asking this important question, I joined the debate. The initial delight was tempered upon finding the majority of debaters on the side of obediently paying the murder tax. It was further squelched when my opening comment was censored for pointing to the new Pro-life strike website. But let not my words be misconstrued: these folks are at least debating the idea, and that is a good thing. One can hope that at least some of them will pick up the mantle of righteous pro-life tax resistance. One can hope; but there obviously exists a great reluctance to cross certain social lines. The very thought of legal or financial turmoil sends many hurrying for plausible excuses.

Earlier today, I happened across a blog post that simply reproduced Dr. King's famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" of 1963. Some of King's words jumped out at me.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany...

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"

...In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed... Small in number, they were big in commitment.

Better thinkers than myself have called abortion the new civil rights issue of our time. As before, it may be a small but committed few who recognize this, and who are willing to sacrifice, to stir things up for the sake of justice.

Related: A citizens' movement to refuse abortion taxes

Pro-life strike website

"Dogpatch_Ergo_Sum" has recently featured and praised a number of pro-life leaders who are not household names, but who personally sacrifice much for the sanctity of human life. I especially esteem those who resist the taxpayer funding of the abortion industry. We pray for life; we must stop paying for death.

This recurrent "Pro-life strike" theme has now led to a new website. ProLifeStrike.org is premised on the idea that most of us can become active pro-life heroes in resisting the tax tyranny, and that we should try to do so in a coordinated way. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who quipped, "Let us hang together, or we shall surely hang separately." Like John the Baptist, we may raise our voice, and be crushed by worldly powers. Or we may work more quietly and unobtrusively, yet heroically. In either case, we must materially resist evil laws.

Are you ready to take the gloves off? Might you be willing to join with others in actively resisting the abortion tax tyranny? Maybe you or someone you know is already so engaged. I'd love to learn more. Let us work and pray together, not separately. Anyway, feel free to visit ProLifeStrike.org, and let me know what you think.

Lawrence Rosano

Returning to a recurrent theme for this blog: of showing respect for life in the way we spend our money, of refusing to fund the abortion industry. We must not pray for life, and then pay for death.

I've met many fine pro-life individuals recently, both in person and on the web. Most recently, I've run across another fellow pro-life blogger, one who shares the above conviction. In fact, he seems to have coined the term 'Pro-life strike' before I did. His name is Lawrence Rosano, and he has, among others, a blog entitled "ProLifeTaxStrike". No kidding.

Like David Little, Mr. Rosano is involved in a legal battle involving his refusal to fund the slaughter of the innocents. In his case, he has refused to cooperate with an employee-provided group health insurance plan which pays for procured abortions. I'm no lawyer, and will not claim to know more than a little about this case. Rather, I invite anyone interested to read Lawrence's own words at his blog, with links to others in a similar vein.

From table to chair

This post, long overdue, follows up on two previous posts. Here's the synopsis:

Our Superior, WI diocesan paper, The Catholic Herald, was regularly publishing a number of softly heretical items, the most inane being Fr. Richard McBrien's weekly column. In April 2007, we wrote a letter of complaint on this which was published, but when several liberal readers responded with complaints about our complaint, we were not allowed to reply further. (This is quite puzzling, since the opposition's mantra was that of allowing a free exchange of diverse ideas.) The May 2007 blog post entitled "Roundtable" was an attempt to provide a forum in which folks on both sides of this issue could debate openly. The debate question: Should Catholic publications embrace diversity of thought, or teach Catholic truth clearly?

Well, a few loyal Catholics joined the discussion, but no one on the staff of the Herald, nor anyone in sympathy with the McBrien agenda bothered to come and defend their viewpoints, so it was a fairly one-sided table, and the "debate" soon petered out. (Ref. "Folding table".)

Speaking of Peter: that summer, a new bishop, Peter Christenson, was consecrated and appointed to the Superior diocese. This past summer, after one year of getting to know the diocese, this successor to the Apostles acted, and the McBrien column was quietly dropped, thanks be to God.

You Catholics already know that the bishop's cathedra is not a chair of repose, but of Apostolic authority, traceable to the authority of Jesus himself. This is an essential Catholic strength. As a Catholic son, I must say that tables may be OK, round or otherwise, but a solid chair is so much better.

U.N. Petition for the Unborn Child - 2

Have you heard about C-Fam's U.N. Petition for the Unborn Child? I promoted it in an earlier post ("U.N. Petition for the Unborn Child"), and many others have weighed in, too.

This is an interesting story, dating back to mid-2007, when Marie Stopes International, one of the largest and richest abortionists in the world, was running an online petition calling for the U.N. to read a right to abortion into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After well over a year, their petition still has only a few hundred signatures.

In response, Austin Ruse of C-Fam launched a counter petition on Sept 29, 2008. By Nov. 10, when I wrote my blog post, the C-Fam petition had garnered over 100,000 signatures, including 67,000+ just from English-speaking respondents. By Dec. 10, when Ruse presented the petition to the UN, the total number of signatures had grown to 437,000 from 168 countries. To the many nations who are not marching to the abortionsts beat, such a show of solidarity can be very powerful.

C-Fam, and Austin Ruse continue to impress me. They are a strong, faithful, and prophetic witness in the United Nations, a crucial arena today. And besides that, Mr. Ruse himself visited my little blog and left a comment, thanking me for the post. (See the comments section of the aforementioned post.) That's class.

So, thank you, Austin, for what you are doing. Thanks, too, to all of you who signed the petition. And for those of you who haven't signed, you still may. They are keeping the petition up for a few more months, now aiming at a million signatures.

You may read more at this C-Fam page. You may also read the petition itself (it's brief) here. If you agree with the petition, fill out the form and click the 'Submit' button to sign it. You may receive email updates from C-Fam, or you may opt out of those updates.

STMS website

The previous post suggests that the public funding of abortion has been a key factor in the demise of our culture, and may be key in turning it around again. Yes, I know that post was written nearly three weeks ago, but I've not been idle. Apart from shovelling snow and keeping the house stocked with firewood, I've been busy with another website close to my heart and in keeping with this idea.

Under the patronage of St. Thomas More, this website and the St. Thomas More Society (STMS) is dedicated to prayer and acts of conscience to end tax funded abortion in Canada. The founder, David Little, has refused to file tax returns until the law is changed to ensure that no tax money will pay for the slaughter of the innocents. David is in legal hot water over this, but is currently preparing an appeal to the highest court in New Brunswick. I have written of David in two other posts below: "David Little" and "Law-abiding criminals".

So feel free to visit the STMS website to read more. See the "Recent news" page to keep up with this legal case. And - please pray, expecting a miracle. This has the potential to be quite significant.

Well, you might say, that's good for Canada, but what about the USA and the rest of the world? Good point. I hope to write more about this soon.