Prayer and Intercession

Effective Prayer

Shawn — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:23:07 +0000

Pastor Jerry’s sermon on why most people’s prayers are not answered and how to get them answered.

Permanent Protection of Life Pro-Life Victory in the Dominican Republic

Shawn — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:29:46 +0000

Permanent Protection of Life Pro-Life Victory in the Dominican Republic

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic.- An overwhelming majority of Dominican lawmakers voted to protect the country from abortion by modifying the constitution to guarantee the right to life from conception to natural death.

The Revisory Assembly on the Constitution passed the Executive Branch’s proposal that penalizes abortion in the the Dominican Republic.

“The right to life is inviolable from conception until the death. The death penalty will not be established, pronounced nor applied in any case.” This motion passed with 167 votes against 32, though only 133 votes were needed to validate it, and will be article 11 in the new Constitution.

The proposal was voted despite Assembly vice-president Julio Cesar Valentin’s proposal to adopt article four of the American Convention on Human Rights, voted in San Jose, Costa Rica in 1969, which states: “All persons have the right to their life is respected. This right will be protected by law and, generally, as of the moment of conception. Nobody can deprive them of their life arbitrarily.”

The Assembly members heatedly debated the controversial topic, with eleven speaking to the floor, whereas 37 took turns last Thursday.

In response to recent efforts by international pro-abortion groups seeking to decriminalize abortion in the Dominican Republic, legislators permanently enshrined the right to life for pre-born humans by rewriting the Constitution of the Dominican Republic with the words “the right to life is inviolable from conception until death.”

A pro-life coalition recently traveled to the Santo Domingo to raise awareness about abortion during the hearings of this bill. The young people in this coalition of organizations included Faithful Soldier School of Evangelism, Live Action San Jose, and Personhood USA.

The group joined with local missionary Dr. Gene Antonio to distribute over 50,000 pieces of literature about abortion from Human Life Alliance.
“A true respect for human life is protecting it from the beginning; the Dominican Republic is ahead of America in building a society where all human life is truly respected.” said Ignacio Reyes Director of Live Action San Jose.

The group made a major impact by showing a graphic video of an actual abortion procedure on dozens of national television programs which broadcast to millions of Dominicans.

“We are thrilled that the protection of human life from the moment of conception is now established into the constitution in-spite of fierce international pressure to legalize abortion,” stated Dr. Gene Antonio, Pro-life Missionary in the Dominican Republic. He continued “This overwhelming victory serves as an example to the other Latin countries fighting to protect life, that we can win and we must win because the lives of little people are at stake.”

Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez said when Congress approved the ban on abortion; it interpreted the feeling of the majority of the Dominican people.

After officiating a mass in the Prime Cathedral of America to mark the Electoral Central Board’s 86th anniversary, Lopez said Congress did the correct thing and rebuffed those who criticized the church’s role and its insistent position. “We understand that that’s what the Dominican people feel and it’s necessary to be in tune. What the Church has done is to interpret what the majority feels.”

The prelate slammed those who say it’s a step backward for the country the Revisory Assembly’s approval of article 30, as the Executive Branch’s constitutional reform proposal defines life from conception until a natural death.

“The fact that there are countries, beginning with the United States and Europe that are legislating in favor of killing people means an enormous backward movement. “I’ll never understand how legislating to kill has ever been any progress.”

“As we continue to fight for the personhood rights of the Pre-born in America, we celebrate and applaud the protection of Life in the Dominican Republic. The people on the small Caribbean island understand that all life is precious and should be protected! We pray that America catches on soon” said Keith Mason of Personhood USA.

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Holocaust Survivors Rushing to Help earthquake Victims in Italy

Shawn — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:01:20 +0000

Holocaust Survivors Rushing to Help earthquake Victims in Italy

More than 65 years after villagers provided shelter to Italian Jews fleeing from the Nazis, a group of those saved from capture rushed to return the favor to the villagers in rural communities hard-hit by an earthquake.

A delegation of around 20 elderly Jews and their descendants, as well as community leaders, made their way to makeshift camps in the area around the mountain city of L’Aquila on Monday, peering into tents in a bid to find their saviors.

They offered everything from gym shoes to summer camps for children.

“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for these people,” said Alberto Di Consiglio, whose parents were sheltered in the small hamlet of Fossa during the war. “We have to help them.”

More than 100 tent cities have been built around L’Aquila and the 26 towns and villages affected by the 6.3-magnitude quake, which struck central Italy on April 6. The temblor killed 294 people and displaced another 55,000.

In the chaos of the relief efforts, Jews who had been sheltered in the area during the war lost touch with their one-time saviors, many of whom are simple farmers with no cell phones.

At least five Jewish families, including around 30 people, took shelter in the small mountainside hamlets of Fossa and Casentino between mid-1943 until the arrival of the Allies a year later, survivors said.

In one tent, Di Consiglio managed to find Nello De Bernardinis, 74, the son of the couple who sheltered Di Consiglio’s father and eight other relatives during the war.

“It was a great emotion, it’s so painful that such righteous people should suffer like this and live in a tent,” Di Consiglio said.

De Bernardinis said he was fine for the moment and greatly appreciated the gesture of the Jewish community to check in on him and his family. He said, though, that it would be useful to have help during harvest time, and Di Consiglio promised his whole family would come.

Riccardo Pacifici, the head of Rome’s Jewish community, said he was working to get recognition from Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial for people like De Bernardinis and others who sheltered Roman Jews. The memorial bestows a special honor on those who saved Jews during World War II.

Irena Steinfeldt, director of the Righteous Among the Nations department at Yad Vashem, said the museum was not familiar with the stories of Fossa and Casentino. She urged the Jewish families to come forward so the people who saved them could be recognized.

“We have not heard these stories, and we want to hear these stories,” Steinfeldt said. “There are still people who haven’t approached us and haven’t spoken, and I would be happy if the families contacted Yad Vashem and told us,” she said.

Other stories of Jews being saved in the same area were recorded, she said, usually involving Jews who fled from Rome to nearby villages. In one town, Tagliacozzo Alto, a priest named Don Gaetano Tantalo took in the Orvieto family in the spring of 1944, even preparing a traditional Passover meal for them, she said. He was recognized by Yad Vashem in 1978.

The aid brought by saved Jews to the quake zone came in parallel with help from Germany, which has offered to rebuild the church of Onna, a village that was nearly flattened by the temblor. The hamlet was the site of a massacre of civilians by German troops in 1944, but a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman stressed that the event was not the reason the place had been chosen.

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Colombia Captures Top Drug Lord

Shawn — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:36:15 +0000

Colombia Captures Top Drug Lord

BOGOTA - Colombia’s most wanted drug lord Daniel Rendon Herrera was captured Wednesday in a jungle raid involving hundreds of police officers.

Daniel Rendon Herrera 43, alias “Don Mario”, was found alone, eating rice out of his hands, hiding under a palm trees in the jungles of northern Antioquia province, from where his gang smuggled tonnes of cocaine from the Caribbean coast toward the United States, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said.

When he was surrounded, the once-feared cocaine baron was living “virtually like a dog, curled up and clinging to that palm tree, where he had been for two days,” Santos told reporters.

Herrera is accused of shipping about 100 tonnes of the drug from Colombia’s Caribbean coast to the United States. Santos said he is also responsible for at least 3,000 murders.

The bearded captive had his hands bound in front of him as he was led onto a Bogota-bound plane. In a blue and brown T-shirt and loose fitting gray pants, Rendon Herrera looked somber and disheveled as he boarded the flight.

Colombia had offered a $2 million reward for information leading to the capture of Rendon Herrera, who is wanted by the United States on drug trafficking charges.

As authorities closed in earlier this year, Rendon Herrera offered his gunmen $1,000 for every officer they killed. He also battled against rival gangs, made up mostly of former paramilitary members, that tried to horn in on his turf.

His ruthless style recalled that of Colombia’s best-known drug baron Pablo Escobar, who waged war against the state in the 1980s until he was gunned down by security forces on a Medellin rooftop in 1993.

Rendon Herrera has been charged by U.S. authorities, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in Washington. The spokesman did not say whether the United States would seek his extradition.

Herrera belonged to one of the paramilitary groups that began demobilizing after a 2003 peace deal with the government, but he refused to confess his crimes as required under the accord and went into hiding.

He is the brother of a jailed paramilitary warlord known as “El Aleman”, or “The German”, a nickname he earned for his reputation of enforcing strict discipline among his troops.

Rendon Herrera is accused of running cocaine trafficking in the area controlled by his brother in the 1990s, when right-wing paramilitaries battled leftist guerrillas for control of rural Colombia.

The South American country, the world’s largest cocaine producer, has become less violent under President Alvaro Uribe, who has used billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to battle the guerrillas and disarm the paramilitaries.

Much of the cocaine is smuggled to the United States through Mexico, where thousands of people have been killed by Mexican cartels that have taken over from Colombian gangs as the dominant drug traffickers in the Americas. Colombia continues to export about 600 tonnes of cocaine every year and law enforcement efforts have done little to reduce production, according to the United Nations.

“Don Mario was the most important drug trafficker out there, but someone will take his place very quickly and it will be business as usual,” said Bogota-based security consultant Pablo Casas.

“His organization is as well structured as any company, where the CEO can be replaced at any time,” Casas said.

The Uribe government hailed his capture as a major victory for law and order. “This is good news for the security of all Colombians and bolsters democracy,” Uribe’s press spokesman Cesar Velasquez said in a statement.

Please pray for more successes against drug cartells in South America and especially in Mexico.

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Louisiana Governor Signs Proclamation to declare April Abortion Recovery Awareness Month

Shawn — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:07:05 +0000

Louisiana Governor Signs Proclamation to declare April Abortion Recovery Awareness Month

Bobby Jindal, Governor of Lousiana signed a Proclamation and Senator A.G. Crowe of Lousiana signed a Resolution declaring April as “Abortion Recovery Awareness Month.”

In the Proclamation, Governor Jindal stated, “Abortion recovery programs offer invaluable services that help abortion’s living victims heal through individual counseling, support groups, encouragement and education.”

Senator Crowe’s Resolution commended many recovery programs and referenced the April 2007 Supreme Court ruling, Gonzales v. Carhart. In the ruling, Justice Kennedy stated, that abortion can cause “severe depression and loss of esteem…” Senator Crowe also stated in the Resolution “that it is important for women and men to come forth and receive the help they need.”

“One in three American women has had an abortion. 100,000 are in recovery every year. Many of us have held the secret pain of abortion in our hearts for years. We applaud Governor Jindal for recognizing the harm of abortion and setting aside this month to bring awareness to the need for recovery”, said Cindy Collins, founder of Louisiana Abortion Recovery Alliance and State Director of Operation Outcry.

Cynthia Labutka, of Lafayette, stated, “Since my abortion in 1980, I’ve fought clinical depression as well as suffering the loss of two children by miscarriage. As Regional Coordinator of Louisiana Silent No More Awareness, I feel it is time for the voices of women, who have experienced the trauma of abortion, to be heard.”

“I’ve spoken to many women who tell me of the shame, guilt, depression, anxiety, thoughts of suicide, drug and alcohol abuse…, said Frances Autry, who has been part of the New Orleans Abortion Trauma Hotline for 18 years.

“With the proclamation and resolution, we hope the flood gates of healing will open in Louisiana and allow more and more women and men to become aware there are places of help,” said Stacy Kramer, New Orleans Director for Operation Outcry who also facilitates abortion recovery.

Recovery programs and help are listed on the LARA web site: www.louisianaabortionrecovery.org
Confidential help is also available by calling the New Orleans Hotline at (504)734-5016 or the National Helpline at 1-866-482-LIFE.

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Mel Gibson’s Wife Files For Divorce, please pray for them

Shawn — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:04:04 +0000

Mel Gibson’s Wife Files For Divorce

Robyn Gibson has filed legal papers to divorce her longtime husband Mel Gibson. She cited “irreconcilable differences” in the papers filed Friday, according to news reports.

A joint statement released by the couple on Monday stated: “Throughout our marriage and separation we have always strived to maintain the privacy and integrity of our family and will continue to do so.”

Sources connected with Mel Gibson are saying the couple, married for 28 years, has been separated for the last 2 1/2 years.

The Gibsons have 7 children, one daughter and six sons, but only one — Tom, who is 10 — is a minor. In addition to Thomas, the Gibsons have six older children: Milo, 19, Louis, 21, William, 24, twins Edward and Christian, 26, and daughter Hannah, 28.

In Robyn’s legal papers, filed in L.A. County Superior Court, she seeks joint physical and legal custody of Tom.

According to sources the couple did not have a prenuptial agreement. When the couple met about three decades ago in Australia, Gibson was a relatively unknown actor and Moore was a dental assistant. The pair married on June 7, 1980.

Gibson and his estranged wife attended church together with other family members on Palm Sunday, just four days before Robyn signed the divorce papers.

On Easter Sunday, Mel Gibson attended Mass at the Roman Catholic church he had built in 2005. His wife wasn’t with him.

Gibson is one of Hollywood’s biggest names, with a pair of Oscar wins for best picture and director for “Braveheart.”

Please pray for the couple and their children. God has a plan for them. The man who pursued a vision and against many odds made “The Passion of the Christ” movie, which touched many people deeply, needs our prayers.

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How to be Un-Baptized in Britain

Shawn — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:40:13 +0000

How to be Un-Baptized in Britain

Should infants be baptized? This question has been debated for more than 2000 years. Britains have now taken it to another level. More than 100,000 Britons have recently downloaded “certificates of de-baptism” from the Internet to renounce their Christian faith. They say that they were too young to make decision when they were baptized.

The initiative was launched by a group called the National Secular Society (NSS) and follows atheist campaigns here and elsewhere, including a London bus poster which triggered protests by proclaiming “There’s probably no God.”

“We now produce a certificate on parchment and we have sold 1,500 units at three pounds ($ 4.35) a pop,” said NSS president Terry Sanderson, 58.

John Hunt, a 58-year-old from London and one of the first to try to be “de-baptized,” held that he was too young to make any decision when he was christened at five months old.

The male nurse said he approached the Church of England to ask it to remove his name. “They said they had sought legal advice and that I should place an announcement in the London Gazette,” said Hunt, referring to one of the official journals of record of the British government.

So that’s what he did — his notice of renouncement was published in the Gazette in May 2008 and other Britons have followed suit.

Michael Evans, 66, branded baptizing children as “a form of child abuse” — and said that when he complained to the church where he was christened he was told to contact the European Court of Human Rights.

The Church of England said its official position was not to amend its records. “Renouncing baptism is a matter between the individual and God,” a Church spokesman told AFP.

“We are not a ‘membership’ church, and do not keep a running total of the number of baptized people in the Church of England, and such totals do not feature in the statistics that we regularly publish,” he added.

De-baptism organizers say the initiative is a response to what they see as increasing stridency from churches — the latest last week when Pope Benedict XVI stirred global controversy on a trip to AIDS-ravaged Africa by saying condom use could further spread of the disease.

“The Catholic Church is so politically active at the moment that I think that is where the hostility is coming from,” said Sanderson. “In Catholic countries there is a very strong feeling of wanting to punish the church by leaving it.”

In Britain, where government figures say nearly 72 percent of the population list themselves as Christian, Sanderson feels this “hostility” is fueling the de-baptism movement.

Theologian Paul Murray at Durham University disagrees. “That is not my experience,” he said, but concedes that change is in the air. “We are in an interesting climate where Catholicism and other belief systems have moved into the public, pluralist arena, alongside secularists,” he said.

De-baptism movements have already sprung up in other countries. In Spain, the high court ruled in favor of a man from Valencia, Manuel Blat, saying that under data protection laws he could have the record of his baptism erased, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune.

Similarly, the Italian Union of Rationalists and Agnostics (UAAR) won a legal battle over the right to file for de-baptism in 2002, according to media reports. The group’s website carries a “de-baptism” form to facilitate matters.

According to UAAR secretary Raffaele Carcano, more than 60,000 of these forms have been downloaded in the past four years and continue to be downloaded at a rate of about 2,000 per month. Another 1,000 were downloaded in one day when the group held its first national de-baptism day last October 25.

Elsewhere, an Argentinian secularist movement is running a “Collective Apostasy” campaign, using the slogan “Not in my name” (No en mi nombre).

Sanderson hopes rulings in other European countries will pave the way for legal action in Britain, since European Union directives require a level of parity among member states’ legislation.
“That would be a good precedent for us to say to the British Information Commissioner: Come on, what’s your excuse?” said Sanderson.

The bus-side posters that hit London in January sported the message: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

The scheme was in response to pro-Christian advertisements on buses directing passers-by to a website warning those who did not accept Jesus would suffer for eternity in hell.

Comedy writer Ariane Sherine, mastermind of the British bus campaign that saw a copycat version in Barcelona and other cities, said she backs the “de-baptism” movement but insisted the two initiatives were separate.

Sanderson meanwhile remains resolute. “The fact that people are willing to pay for the parchments shows how seriously they are taking them,” he said.

Whatever the reason was for purchasing these certificates, there is talk about faith. Let’s pray that conversations will inspire people to search out the truth for themselves.

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Walgreens Offers Free Healthcare to the Unemployed and Uninsured

Shawn — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:37:02 +0000

Walgreens Offers Free Healthcare to the Unemployed and Uninsured

Walgreens, one of the three largest drug store chains in the US, just announced that it will offer free clinic visits to the unemployed and uninsured for the rest of the year, providing tests and routine treatment for minor ailments through its walk-in clinics.

Walgreens said patients who lose their job and health insurance after March 31 will be able to get free treatment at its in-store Take Care clinics for respiratory problems, allergies, infections and skin conditions, among other ailments. Typically those treatments cost $59 or more for patients with no insurance.

Hal Rosenbluth, chairman of the Take Care Health Systems division, described the plan as something close to an experiment: He said Walgreens isn’t sure of patient demand or how much providing the services might cost the company.

It’s likely to generate more attention for the clinics, however. Rosenbluth said a typical Take Care patient tells eight other people about his or her experience. So far, about 30 percent of Take Care patients were new customers to Walgreens.

The program is expected to last through the end of 2009. Walgreens runs 341 Take Care clinics in 35 markets around the country, including Chicago, Atlanta, Miami and Cleveland.

Free services will be offered only from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Walgreens said it will not offer free checkups, vaccinations or other injections because it is focusing on providing services patients might otherwise get at an urgent-care center or even an emergency room.

Patients must present proof they are unemployed, including a federal or state unemployment determination letter and an unemployment check stub. They will have to sign a form at the clinic saying they have lost their jobs and health benefits. If they find a new job or get new health insurance, they will no longer be eligible for free care. Spouses and children are also eligible for free services if they don’t have insurance of their own. Patients will still have to pay for prescriptions.

Medical lab operator Quest Diagnostics is participating in the program by offering free tests for strep throat and urinary tract infections.

Walgreens bought the Take Care clinics in May 2007. Take Care says it has seen about 1.2 million patients since its launch in November 2005 and estimates that up to 30 percent of them were uninsured.

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Imprisoned Pro-Life Pastor Preaches the Gospel Behind Bars

Shawn — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:36:33 +0000

Imprisoned Pro-Life Pastor Preaches the Gospel Behind Bars

OAKLAND, CA - A Baptist pastor is now behind bars for holding a poster that read, “Jesus loves you and your baby. Let us help you,” outside an Oakland abortion clinic. His wife claims he was targeted because he’s a black man who dared to take a stand against race-based abortion.

Reverend Walter B. Hoye II of the Progressive Missionary Baptist Church of Berkeley, California, filed a lawsuit in US District Court, arguing an Oakland city ordinance banning counselors or protesters from approaching within eight feet of people entering an abortion clinic is a violation of constitutional free speech rights.

Twelve days later, Hoye was arrested for allegedly violating the law he was seeking to overturn.
Hoye was charged with “unlawful approach” and “harassment.”

Several videos show the pastor standing outside Oakland’s Family Planning Specialists Medical Group at 200 Webster Street with his “Jesus loves you” poster while clinic employees in orange vests, or “escorts,” follow him and try to block his message with blank cards.

WorldNetDaily reports that Walter’s wife, Lori, says her husband never approached the escorts during his peaceful walk down the sidewalk. “Every single minute that he is on the sidewalk is recorded,” she said. “He did not violate the ordinance. If anything, he was being mugged while he was on the sidewalk. They even blocked him when no one was around.”

She said the people in the orange vests enjoy full First Amendment rights in front of the clinic.
“They can literally walk up to people, lock arms with them, talk to them, hand them pieces of paper, and they’re free,” she said. “While white pro-lifers have protested there for more than a decade, Walter’s presence quickly became a problem for the clinic - because of his skin color.

In the 90 minutes we were out there, 25 women went into that clinic and 23 of them were black,” she said. “It’s about keeping a black face off the sidewalk so the clinic can continue to target black people and not have any interference.”

When the clinic was contacted to ask if it had targeted Walter because he is a black man with a pro-life message, the operator quickly transferred the call, and a representative did not return messages.

Lori said a peaceful white female protester accompanied Walter on the day he was arrested, but he was the only person the clinic personnel cared about.

Walter, his wife said, is a soft-spoken minister who is sweet and personable. She said his message does not fall on deaf ears in a community where the majority of the population is black.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 37 percent of pregnancies among black women end in abortion, while 12 percent of pregnant non-Hispanic white women and 19 percent of Hispanic women choose to abort their unborn babies.

Many would-be parents are drawn to Walter Hoye’s peaceful message of love and hope when faced with a monumental life decision, and they sometimes choose to forgo abortions, allowing their babies to live.

“I saw one gentleman - and the men kind of feel helpless - he came out of the clinic and walked up to my husband and said ‘You need a bigger sign because your message really needs to get out.’ He is effective,” his wife said. “In fact, he’s so effective that they needed an ordinance to get him off the sidewalk.”

The clinic lists a fee schedule for abortions performed on babies up to 21 weeks and charges between $400 and $1,150 per procedure. Lori said the clinic performs at least 100 abortions every week, and Tuesday is its biggest day.

“It has 40 to 50 people coming in there on Tuesday,” she said. “So, Walter being there is a nick in their bank account. They are making $60,000 to $150,000 a week on predominantly Medicaid abortions right there in the city of Oakland.”

Court proceedings discredited clinic employee testimony when hidden camera footage showed their accusations to be highly suspect. The escorts in the case even admitted that Hoye neither threatened nor physically intimidated them.

Dana Cody, executive director of Life Legal Defense Foundation, a non-profit organization composed of attorneys and other concerned citizens committed to the sanctity of human life, said the video tape evidence should have clearly exonerated Hoye of the charges against him.
“I have never met a man whose character and demeanor is so perfect for him to stand out in front of these clinics,” Cody said. “He is the consummate gentleman. He’s not intimidating at all. In fact, on the record there’s witness testimony that part of the reason they’re afraid of him is that he is so ‘nice.’ “The man, he will tell you, ‘I am an ambassador for Christ,’” Cody said.

Nonetheless, Walter was found guilty. Judge Stuart Hing sentenced him to 30 days in jail for sharing his message. He has been ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and a $130 restitution fee. Walter will also face three years of probation with orders to stay 100 feet away from Oakland abortion clinics.

Dozens in the African-American and pro-life communities from around the nation who came out in support of Pastor Hoye were outraged by the sentence. The consensus of these leaders is that it was a travesty that Pastor Hoye was found guilty in the first place for standing in the gap for black children targeted by the abortion industry.

“It is absolutely incredible that in America an individual can be sentenced to jail for engaging in peaceful free speech activity on a public sidewalk,” remarked Allison Aranda, Staff Counsel for Life Legal Defense Foundation. Aranda further stated, “Rev. Hoye is being singled out for particularly harsh punishment because he refused to agree not to offer help to women considering abortion. Where is the justice in that?”

LLDF Legal Director Catherine Short and attorney Mike Millen, who also represented Rev. Hoye at trial, are currently challenging the constitutionality of the ordinance on Hoye’s behalf in federal court. They are hopeful the ordinance will be struck down and Pastor Walter Hoye vindicated.

“We live in America,” Cody said. “The fact that this can happen because someone has the audacity to stand out on the street and try to help women is just unbelievable to me.”

Meanwhile, more than 800 people have joined at least three Facebook groups to support and pray for Hoye while he serves time in jail.

As always, God has a plan, Walter’s wife said.
“He’s holding up pretty well. For where he is, he’s in pretty good spirits and God is using him even in jail. He’s been able to talk to the men in there about the issue of abortion.”

So Walter continues to do what he does best, said Lori, reaching out to people with the message of God’s love, even while he remains behind bars.
“He said that the men are listening, and he’s been able to talk to them about the Bible,” Lori said. “He even led one young man to Christ yesterday. God is using a terrible thing for His good.”

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Harvard Scientist confirms Pope’s Statement About Aids

Shawn — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:32:14 +0000

Harvard Scientist confirms Pope’s Statement About Aids

On his flight to Yaounde, Cameroon, Pope Benedict XVI answered questions asked by international journalists. Only a selective quote from one of his answers made the headlines around the world.

A French journalist asked him about the Catholic Church’s attitude to the fight against Aids.
Defending the church’s commitment to the fight against Aids and the care of its victims, the pope also affirmed that the problem cannot be resolved with the distribution of condoms: on the contrary, there is a risk of increasing the problem. This statement caused a tsunami of outrage all over the world.

Why? Vincent Twomey, professor emeritus of moral theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth gives his opinion in the Irish Times: Firstly, he says, the immovable stance of the church with regard to the rejection of contraceptives irrespective of the circumstances evidently touches a raw nerve with many politicians and opinion makers.

Secondly, the rage of the one-time colonial powers has revealed once again their paternalism towards Africans. It is assumed that Africans are simply not capable of abstinence outside marriage or fidelity within it, which is at the core of the church’s solution. Abstinence and fidelity are not only effective, they are also more human - and they correspond more closely to the dignity of man and woman.

Thirdly, Westerners are prone to simplistic technical solutions for humanly complex problems, indeed tragedies. We fall for slick slogans such as “Condoms help reduce Aids”. As a result, the church is attacked as though it were guilty of the deaths of millions in Africa.

The facts teach us otherwise. The percentage of non-Catholics in non-Islamic Africa is about 80 percent. Irrespective of what the church preaches, it would not be heard by them. Likewise, it is unlikely that those Catholics who ignore the church’s teaching by having multiple sexual partners - one of the main ways of contracting HIV - would listen to the church, even if it were to endorse condoms, which it won’t. The millions of condoms flung at Africans for a quarter of a century have increased not reduced the rate of infection.

Dr Edward C Green, director of the Aids prevention research project at the Harvard Centre for Population and Development Studies, has confirmed this. He has said studies, including the US-funded Demographic and Health Surveys, have shown a consistent association between greater availability and use of condoms and higher HIV infection rates.

Green has also said the pope is correct in stressing monogamy. In his own words: “The best and latest empirical evidence indeed shows that reduction in multiple and concurrent sexual partners is the most important single behaviour change associated with reduction in HIV-infection rates.”

Under the inspiration of Irish missionary Sr Miriam Duggan, Uganda promoted abstinence and fidelity. It saw a 60 percent reduction in casual sex - equivalent to a vaccine of 80 per cent effectiveness (Science, April 30th, 2004).

Uganda’s approach has recently been adopted by Swaziland and Botswana, the two countries with the worst HIV epidemics.

African bishops have surely informed the pope of the huge commitment of Catholic health personnel to caring for the sick and dying. Catholic relief services lead in the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs, which have saved thousands of lives. By contrast, condoms are often available at bush clinics, while the minimal medication and equipment to treat curable illnesses are not.

The media ignored the pope’s actual proposals to fight Aids. He spoke of a double engagement.
The first involves the need to promote the humanisation of sexuality. This implies a rejection of sexuality as a mere consumer item and its replacement with an appreciation of sexuality as the expression of conjugal love.

The second aspect of the church’s engagement is what the pope called true friendship, above all for those who suffer, and the willingness to be with the suffering. Sacrifice and self-denial are only possible to those for whom God is a living reality. To promote this was the purpose of the pope’s trip to Africa.

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