The bishops of Michigan and the Michigan Catholic Conference are undertaking an unprecedented statewide educational effort to assure that the Catholics of Michigan are fully informed and able to contribute to the civic debate about embryonic stem cell research.  
The Conference will send to every Catholic household in the state a packet of material that includes a cover letter from the seven bishops, a brochure, and a short 14-minute DVD.  

After President Bush vetoed legislation that would have required national funding for research that kills human embryos, the following comment was made: 
“It is encouraging that the progress and awareness of adult stem cell research has helped to drive support for federally funded embryonic stem cell research down to 53 percent. While the public must be continually made aware of the ethical and proven advancements made by adult stem cell research, Michigan Catholic Conference is urging the Governor and like-minded supporters to abandon their efforts to overturn Michigan’s 30-year policy of protecting human embryos from destruction.”

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, taken May 4-6, 2007 with a margin of error of 3 percent, asks the following question: “Do you think the federal government should or should not fund research that would use newly created stem cells obtained from human embryos?” Some 53 percent of those polled said the government should fund such research, with 41 percent saying it should not and six percent unsure.

According to a Public Opinion Strategies poll commissioned by the Michigan Catholic Conference on April 14-16, 2007, 85 percent of Michigan residents support stem cell research that uses adult stem cells or stem cells from umbilical cords, with 12 percent opposed. The poll surveyed 500 likely voters with a margin of error of 4.38 percent.

Michigan Catholic Conference is the official public policy voice of the Catholic Church in this state. 
Visit: micatholicconference.org/

Pope John Paul II has written: “Whoever suffers from mental illness ‘always’ bears God’s image and likeness in themselves, as does every human being. In addition, they ‘always’ have the inalienable right not only to be considered as an image of God and therefore a person, but also to be treated as such.”

Incidence of Mental Illness

It has been estimated that worldwide, as many as 500 million people are affected by some sort of mental illness. It is also said that the United States has the highest rate of mental illness of all the advanced nations: one in four adult Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

Mental Illness and Our Culture

Causes of mental illness vary widely, from inherited chemical imbalances responsible for the development of such illnesses as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, to brain disease, to causes that are more immediately under our control. These man-made causes include, in many areas of the world, the spread of terrorism, the very purpose of which is to inflict widespread mental and emotional suffering. War, with its related atrocities and crimes, can bring out the worst aspects of our nature.

Additional challenges to mental health arise from the general state of culture, the weakening of moral standards, and trends within the culture that work against the true goods of the human person. Our increasingly technocratic and production-oriented culture tends to neglect the goods of the spirit, the things that make life more properly “human.” Human values are defined more in terms of a “culture of having” rather than a “culture of being.”

Our Response to People with Mental Illness

In a society that judges a person on the value of what he produces, the mentally ill person is easily seen merely as a burden on society. As Christians, then, we are called unceasingly to affirm their dignity as human beings made in the image and likeness of God and to recognize their value to the community. 

The dedication of so many individuals at work in the field of mental health points us to the dignity of people with mental illness. Often they work amid many difficulties, and it can be challenging to recognize the human dignity of the persons they serve. Caregivers and mental health care workers with a deeply Christian understanding of the redemptive value of suffering will go beyond mere human sympathy to authentic solidarity in suffering, a bond between persons rooted in love.

Society in general and the Church community also has an obligation to foster a serene, balanced way of life in stable families, a workplace promoting true human goods and authentic growth of individuals, a solid consensus on clear moral standards by which we will live together, and real objectivity about behaviors which are detrimental to the health of the culture.  The parish community must create that counter-cultural environment, in which all people can claim an equal place and contribute through presence and action.

What can you do?

• Understand and show others that the rehabilitation of mentally ill persons is a duty of all society, with special preference for those in greatest need.

• Welcome all persons with disabilities into the parish community and embrace successful parish-based programs.

• Promote social and physical environments that enhance human relations and create for mentally ill persons a sense of belonging to a community.

• Foster the healthy development of children, including their mental functioning.

• Fight against mentalities of moral relativism, consumerism, sexual license and instant gratification.

• Share the Word of God with persons with mental illness, as their mental and physical condition allows it.

Rev. Richard Gill, L.C., was the Founding President of the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, VA. Since 2005 he is Director of Our Lady of Mt. Kisco Family and Retreat Center in Mt. Kisco, NY.

The full-length version of this article is posted at
www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/gill.pdf.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Respect Life Program found at: www.usccb.org/prolife/programs .

Protecting Children in Their First Environment, the Womb by Roxana Barillas, Project Administrator, Department of Social Development and World Peace, USCCB   www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/BarLongEn.pdf
Protegiendo a los niños en su primer ambiente: el vientre, Roxanna Ulloa Barillas    www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/BarLongSp.pdf

Respect Life Sunday, on the first weekend of October, falls near the October 4 feast of St. Francis of Assisi, named the patron saint of the environment by Pope John Paul II in 1979. St. Francis can inspire us to reflect anew on the ways our attitudes, uses, and abuses of creation affect the poor and vulnerable, especially our children both before and after birth. 
 

Protecting Human Life and Caring for Creation 

Among the most susceptible to environmental hazards are children, born and unborn. In the womb, especially, they face a disproportionate threat to their neurological development from environmental toxins like mercury and lead. 

Exposure to air pollutants and toxins is also significantly more harmful to children than to adults. Their developing organs are not as efficient as those of adults in dealing with pollutants. Many children are exposed to environmental hazards at an early age, giving them more time to develop slowly-progressing, environmentally-triggered conditions such as asthma, learning disabilities and certain cancers

It was once assumed that children in the womb were protected from the outside environment.  We know now, for example, that the placenta does not protect umbilical cord blood and the developing baby from most chemicals and pollutants the mother encounters in the environment. And, exposure to toxins in utero can harm the unborn child.
 

The Disproportionate Burdens of Pollution 

Children living in poverty, disproportionately consisting of black and Hispanic children, face multiple obstacles to their development, including rates of lead poisoning and asthma-related hospitalizations and deaths higher than those of the general population. Farm workers and their families who harvest the food for our dinner tables are often directly exposed to pesticides which threaten their health. Outdoor air pollution, unsafe and crowded housing, contaminated water and soil, and industrial waste are just a few of the environmental hazards that are disproportionately concentrated in low-income, minority communities. 
 

Some Findings on Mercury Pollution 

According to a consumer advisory jointly issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), women of childbearing age, pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under five are especially at risk from unsafe levels of mercury. 

Researchers find that an infant’s rapidly developing brain and central nervous system are extremely susceptible to damage because the placenta allows the passage of methylmercury, the most toxic form of mercury. Prenatal mercury exposure has been associated with toxic effects on the developing brain, including adverse effects on fine motor skills, memory, and learning ability. 
 

Addressing Mercury Pollution 

Power plants are the primary man-made source of mercury. Over 1,100 coal-fired power plants, the nation’s largest source of airborne mercury pollution, send an estimated 48 tons of mercury into the atmosphere annually.

Regulatory decisions concerning allowable levels of emissions are made using a cost-benefit analysis. The goal is to determine whether preventing the public health impacts (i.e., the neurotoxic effects of mercury on the developing child), merits the higher economic cost of more stringent regulation of mercury emissions. But public health experts assert that the neurological damage caused by mercury exposure in utero is irreversible.  Shouldn't the protection of children in the womb from irreversible damage be considered a benefit; and its cost spread throughout the public? 
 

Conclusion

As we highlight the Respect Life program and celebrate the feast day of St. Francis, we should reflect on our personal lifestyle, and also consider how abuse of our environment threatens children’s health and their ability to realize their full potential, before as well as after birth. 
 

Roxana Barillas is Project Administrator, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Social Development and World Peace
Edited by Grace Potts, parishioner 
 
 

Victim Advocates Against the Death Penalty by Andrew Rivas, Executive Director of the Texas Catholic Conference 
www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/RivasLongEn.pdf

Víctimas abogan contra la pena de muerte, Andrew Rivas www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/RivasLongSp.pdf
 
 

A common assumption in this country is that families who have suffered the death of a loved one by murder will support the death penalty.  This sweeping assumption is of course, wrong.  Let us look at how three people whose lives were tragically touched by murder, who unexpectedly became public advocates against the use of the death penalty.

Vicki Schieber:
Vicki’s daughter Shannon was 23 years old in 1998, when she was murdered by a serial rapist in Philadelphia.  In 2002, Troy Graves pleaded guilty to assaulting, raping, and killing Shannon, and to thirteen other sexual assaults in two states.

The Schiebers raised their children to oppose the killing of anyone, including murderers, if the killers could be imprisoned for life without parole and so no longer pose a danger to society.  “We believe he (Troy Graves) is where he belongs today, as he serves his prison sentence, and we rest assured that he will never again perpetrate this sort of crime on any other young women. But killing this man would not bring our daughter back. And it was very clear to us that killing him would have been partly dependent on our complicity in having it done.” Today Vicki serves on the board of directors of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights (MVFHR), a national non-profit organization of people who have lost a family member to murder or to state execution.
 

Gary Wright:
Gary Wright was one of the Ted Kaczynski's (the Unabomber) victims. Gary, the owner of a Salt Lake City computer store, happened to pick up a piece of wood behind his store in 1987. It turned out to be a bomb placed there by Ted Kaczynski. Gary was riddled with more than 200 pieces of shrapnel, one of which severed the ulnar nerve in his left arm. It was a miracle that Gary wasn’t killed, but he had to endure three years in and out of surgery, and a slow, painfilled process of rebuilding his body and contemplating what had happened to him.

He eventually came to work with David Kaczynski, the Unabomber's brother, to urge lawmakers to end the death penalty law that New York had reinstated in 1995.  In 2004 that law was found unconstitutional, and efforts to reinstate it were later rejected by the state assembly after a series of public hearings.

Gary, a practicing Catholic, explains: “While he was being executed, Jesus forgave the people who were killing him. I thought, if that’s the example Christ gave us while he was suffering on the cross, then I had to think very seriously about forgiveness in my own life.”
 

Kirk Bloodsworth:
Kirk Bloodsworth, a retired Marine from Maryland, was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault, rape and first-degree murder, and was sentenced to death in 1985. The ruling was appealed a year later on the ground that evidence was withheld at trial, and Kirk received a new trial. He was found guilty again, however, and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

In June 1993, Kirk’s case became the first capital conviction in the United States to be overturned as a result of DNA testing.  By the time of his release, Kirk had served almost nine years in prison, including two on death row, for a crime he did not commit.

Although Kirk was a retired marine “with no criminal record, who was nowhere near the scene of the crime,” he had nevertheless been convicted and sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit.  If it could happen to someone like him, he reasoned, it could happen to others. And it does. Since 1973, more than 120 people have been exonerated from death row after being cleared of their charges. 

Today Kirk is a Program Officer for the Justice Project's Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform and the Criminal Justice Reform Education Fund. 
 

If these men and women can overcome human hatred and bring a gospel of mercy and love to the world, how can we claim a right to demand the death of a killer to “honor the victim” or to “win justice” for a victim’s family? We cannot.  To do so dishonors the lives of all involved, making us complicit in perpetuating violence rather than ending it. 

Andrew Rivas is executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference.
Edited by Grace Potts, parishioner.
 
 

Partial-Birth Abortion: A Bridge too Far by Susan Wills, J.D., LL.M., Associate Director for Education, USCCB   www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/WillsLongEn.pdf

Aborto por nacimiento parcial: un puente demasiado lejano, Susan Wills, J.D., LL.M       www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/WillsLongSp.pdf

In 1992, Martin Haskell, MD presented a paper called “Dilation and Extraction for Late Second Trimester Abortion” 1  at a National Abortion Federation (NAF) seminar. There he explained the “D&X” abortion method he “routinely” used to kill unborn children at 20- to 24-weeks’ gestational age (and sometimes through 26 weeks). Within a year, D&X abortion became known outside the abortion industry. In March 1996, in riveting eyewitness testimony to Congress, a nurse gave “partial-birth abortion” (as it came to be known) a face – specifically the “most perfect angelic face” of a baby boy at 261/2 weeks’ gestational age. Dr. Haskell had delivered the boy alive, feet-first, up to his neck, then stuck scissors into the base of his skull, inserted a suction tube and vacuumed out his brain. 

The abortion industry’s defense of this grotesque procedure brings to mind the disastrous Allied attempt to break through German lines at Arnhem. It was the Nazis’ last victory on the Western front, resulting in 18,000 Allied casualties. Shortly before the operation, an Army deputy commander had told Field Marshall Montgomery: “I think we may be going a bridge too far.” 

Thanks to eight years of hearings and debates in Congress, pro-life educational efforts, and the proliferation of alternative news sources, particularly the Internet, Americans did learn about D&X abortions, and over 70% want to ban them. Dr. Haskell’s 1992 presentation has had far-reaching consequences, including the following.

Ten Consequences of D&X Abortions that Advance the Pro-Life Movement

1. Many still misrepresent Roe as legalizing abortion only “in the first three months of pregnancy.” So for many Americans, the fact that abortions are being done in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, and are legal for any reason throughout pregnancy, came as shocking news. 

2. The gruesome particulars of D&X abortion shifted the focus of the public debate away from the difficult social and economic circumstances women face, toward the act itself. The child’s obvious humanity changed the debate from a woman’s “right to choose” to the question: How can any circumstances a justify killing a child? 

3. As a result of Americans taking a second look at abortion, nationwide polls have recorded a seismic shift toward pro-life positions. From 1991 to 1995, polls showed that 32% of Americans, on average, favored unrestricted abortion.  In mid-1996, as public knowledge of D&X abortion spread, such support dropped to 25%. 

4. Initially, it was reported that the D&X procedure was extremely rare and performed only in cases of severe fetal anomalies or for serious maternal health reasons. However, skeptical journalists at publications like American Medical News and The [Bergen County] Record did their own research, and discovered that thousands of D&X abortions were being done annually, primarily on healthy mothers and healthy babies.  Americans began to realize that journalists had not given them the full truth about abortion in general. 

5. The strong public reaction against D&X abortion (over 70% in many polls) resulted in the enactment of laws banning the procedure in 30 states between 1996 and 2000. However, when the Supreme Court declared Nebraska’s law unconstitutional, Americans saw how some in government can disregard and thwart the will of the people on this issue. 

6. D&X abortion has also had a probable influence on elections.  NARAL ProChoice America (NARAL), in its 2006 report on reproductive rights, identifies twenty-four states as having pro-life legislatures, nineteen of which also have a pro-life governor; the report states that nine states have a majority pro-choice legislature, and only four of them also have a pro-choice governor. 

7. NARAL’s report also describes a flurry of pro-life legislative activity at the state level. Fifty-eight pro-life measures passed in 2005 alone, of the 614 pro-life measures considered that year. Because of this, NARAL gave the nation a grade of D-minus in protecting “reproductive rights.” 

8. In the past two years, many pro-choice pundits and legal scholars have published scathing analyses of Roe v. Wade’s legal and political deficiencies. They now recommend that abortion be regulated at the state level, as it was before the Supreme Court’s wrenching it away in 1973.

9. A growing number of federal judges are openly criticizing the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence for, among other things, unclear and inconsistent standards which often contradict the standards applied in other legal contexts.

10. Abortion supporters have long urged Senators to impose a “litmus test” on judicial nominees, requiring that they demonstrate wholehearted allegiance to Roe v. Wade. Because Roe’s system of abortion on demand throughout pregnancy is not well grounded in the Constitution or public sentiment, preserving it demands the approval of Justices who favor that decision. But Americans now strongly disagree with such a litmus test and oppose using a filibuster to keep qualified nominees who are not pro-abortion off the bench. Public opinion against the litmus test and filibuster may well have contributed to the recent Supreme Court confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, as neither jurist is known for publicly supporting Roe v. Wade. And given the disposition they’ve already demonstrated to decide cases on the basis of what the Constitution actually says, Roe’s shaky foundations may be in for renewed scrutiny.
 
 

Why Marriage Matters To Children and the Common Good by Maggie Gallagher, President of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/GallaghLongEn.pdf

Porqué el Matrimonio es importante para los hijos y para el bienestar común, Maggie Gallagher 
www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/GallaghLongSp.pdf

Despite ready access to contraception and abortion, and despite their widespread use, numerous studies confirm that sex between men and women continues to result in babies. 

For Catholics marriage is a sacrament, revealing Christ’s indestructible love. The Catholic tradition has always recognized that marriage is also a natural relationship. People of any faith or none can marry, and their marriages matter to God, to each other, to their children, and to the community. Concern for marriage is thus part of our Catholic commitment to social justice for children and of our commitment to the common good. 

While there are, of course, single parents who do a splendid job of childrearing under very difficult circumstances, what follows are some of the effects of healthy marriages.

Marriage reduces the risk of poverty for children and communities.

The majority of children whose parents don’t marry or don’t stay married experience at least a year of poverty. 
 

Fatherless households increase crime. 

Boys whose parents divorced or never married are two to three times more likely to end up in jail as adults.
 

Marriage protects children’s physical and mental health. 

Children whose parents marry and stay married are healthier and much less likely to suffer mental illness, including depression and teen suicide. 
 

Both men and women who marry live longer, healthier, and  happier lives. 

On virtually every measure of health and well-being, married people are better off.
 

Cohabiting is not the same as marriage. 

Couples who just live together without the commitment of marriage do not get the same boost to health, welfare, and happiness, on average, as spouses. Nor do their children. Children whose parents cohabit are at increased risk for domestic violence, child abuse, and neglect. 
 

Parents who don’t marry or stay married put children’s education at risk. 

Children whose parents divorced or never married have lower grade-point averages, and are more likely to be held back a grade, and to drop out of school. 
 

When marriages fail, ties between parents and children typically weaken, too.

In one large national survey, 65 percent of adult children of divorce reported they were not close to their fathers (compared to 29 percent of adults from intact marriages). 
 

Relatively little is known from a scientific standpoint about how children fare when raised by same-sex couples.  Children raised by same-gender couples remain a social experiment, about which we can say little with scientific certainty.
 

Marriage Matters for the Good of Society 

As the eminent legal scholar and religious historian John Witte notes: “Procreation ... means more than just conceiving children. It also means rearing and educating them for spiritual and temporal living. ... The good of procreation cannot be achieved in this fuller sense simply through the licit union of husband and wife in sexual intercourse. It also requires maintenance of a faithful, stable, and permanent union of husband and wife for the sake of their children.” 

Marriage is important for the intergenerational transmission of faith. Getting married, staying married, building loving marriages, and having children are the principle means through which a community propels itself into the future. When a nation or faith community succeeds in transmitting a powerful vision of marriage to the next generation, the result is not only good for children, it is vital to the future of the whole community. 

Is it possible to do a better job building a stronger marriage culture among Catholics?  Yes. We can take inspiration from other religious groups who are fighting the same de-constructing forces in the public culture.

If the Church community succeeded in finding the energy and means to transmit a Catholic vision of marriage and family only to churchgoing Catholics and their children, so that they became ten percent more likely to marry, stay married, and have children who grow up with a similar commitment to building families, both the Church and the public square would be transformed within thirty years.

The task in renewing marriage is no less than to renew, for this generation and the next, faith in love. Human beings desperately want to believe that our deepest drives and longings have a purpose, that they are directing us toward love, goodness, and renewal. In marriage, men and women come together in faith to make the future happen. These are not private and personal matters, but the shared urgent business of the entire community.
 

Maggie Gallagher is co-author of The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off Financially, and founder of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy (www.marriagedebate.com/).  Edited by Grace Potts, parishioner.