A Good Night for a Christmas Party

Our staff Christmas Party is tonight.

You might be thinking: Isn't January 5 a little late for a Christmas party?

To which I would reply:

Nonsense.

On the contrary, it's a great day to have a Christmas party, because today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas, which means tonight is Twelfth Night, and therefore worthy of a celebration.

We started the tradition of having our staff Christmas party during the first week of January a few years ago at the suggestion of one of my co-workers, who made the point that it's a bit unsuitable to have a Christmas party before, you know, Christmas. Especially when the "before" time is that of Advent, which is supposed to be a penitential season.

Having our staff Christmas party when we do is also nice for another reason. Inevitably, the month of December — especially the week before Christmas, when many office Christmas parties are held — is crazily hectic, and it's nice to not have to worry about One More Thing during that time, and instead to be able to put it off until the relatively less hectic first week of January.

So tonight, we celebrate.

What Have I Done Lately?

Today, the Church celebrates the feast of St. Lucy, patron saint of — among others — the blind.

While looking at the calendar a few days ago and taking note of this feast day, I was prompted to recall an encounter I had ten years ago.

After graduating college, I got a job teaching Religion at Good Counsel High School, a girls’ school on the Northwest Side of Chicago run by the Felicians Sisters.

After one of the teacher in-services at the beginning of the school year, Sister Mary Justilla Podgorski, who ran the attendance office, invited me to visit the Felicians’ Chicago Province Motherhouse (where she lived) next door to the school, where she introduced me to many of the other sisters in her community.

One of the sisters I met that day — whose name, I regret, escapes me — had been blind for ten years. After Sister Justilla and I talked to her for a few minutes (and listened to her play a song on her electric piano), we moved on. Sister Justilla then whispered to me that this sister offers up all of her suffering related to her blindness for those addicted to pornography.

I remember thinking at that moment that I felt like The Great Slacker of the World.

I’ve just met a saintly woman who hasn’t been able to see for ten years, and all this time she’s been offering up to God all of the pain, frustration, and suffering her blindness has caused her on behalf of porn addicts. And what have I done lately?

Penance and mortification are key aspects to a healthy spiritual life. And so it’s important for us to consider from time to time, especially during this penitential season of Advent: What have I offered up lately for my family? My friends? My co-workers? The guy down the street who’s out of work? The woman on the Hooters billboard I saw on the way to work this morning?

Etc.

What have I done lately?

[Cross-posted at Catholic Dads]

Joe and Ann Scheidler's Home Vandalized

In the early morning hours yesterday, the home of Joe and Ann Scheidler (my bosses) was vandalized. Asphalt chunks were thrown through two of their windows, and a strange note was attached to one of them.

You can read Ann Scheidler's account of the vandalism to their home on the Pro-Life Action League's site.

What "Comprehensive" Sex Ed Is Really All About

The Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health is at it again.

In 2006, ICAH held its annual fundraiser at Playboy's executive offices.

That event—view the invitation here [PDF]—included a VIP reception with Playboy CEO Christie Hefner, the daughter of Hugh Hefner, who founded the magazine in 1953. Several years ago, Christie decided that the company could make more money by producing increasingly harder-core pornography—something that even her father was reluctant to do for a long time.

The next year, their annual fundraiser featured a stripper.

At this year's event on June 15, ICAH will be honoring sex advice columnist Dan Savage with the group's "Sexuality Activist Award."

The fact that Savage is being honored tells us everything we need to know about ICAH's values and the advice they believe should be given to kids.

On his website, Savage recommends things like group sex and encourages his readers to enter amateur porn contests. For the sake of propriety, most of the advice he gives I won't even mention obliquely.

He also ridicules a support group for pornography addicts by claiming "porn addiction is bulls***."

This despite reams of evidence showing how devastatingly harmful and addictive porn really is. (For but one example, witness pop singer John Mayer's candid admission that he would rather watch porn than form a new relationship with a real woman.)

In its press statement [PDF] announcing this year's event, ICAH blames "harmful abstinence-only-until-marriage messages that have proven inaccurate and ineffective" for the alarmingly high rates of pregnancy and STDs among teens.

Yet the evidence for successful abstinence education programs continues to mount, and meanwhile, it's increasingly clearer that the message of Condoms, Condoms, More Condoms, And Even More Condoms doesn't, you know, work.

So let's review:

For 3 of the last 5 years, the honored guests at ICAH functions have included the CEO of Playboy, a stripper, and a lurid sex columnist.

And they expect the people of Illinois to believe they have our children's best interests at heart when they push for so-called "comprehensive" sex education.

How stupid do they think we are?

Related Coverage on the Generations for Life Blog

• What Really Goes On In "Comprehensive" Sex Ed Class


• When did Playboy Become Respectable?

[Cross-posted at Pro-Life Action League and Generations for Life]

"Deplorable and Unsanitary Conditions"

Last week, authorities made a shocking discovery while investigating a West Philadelphia abortion clinic run by Kermit Gosnell where a woman died following an abortion in November 2009.

In Gosnell's office, they found two dozen frozen fetuses.

On Sunday, Gosnell's license was suspended, with the suspension order detailing "deplorable and unsanitary conditions" that made his practice "an immediate and clear danger to the public health and safety."

Today, on the pro-choice blog RH Reality Check, Rachel Larris has a post on Gosnell and the woman who died at his facility in November (the woman is identified by the Philadelphia Inquirer as Karnamaya Mongar).

Who does Larris blame for the woman's death?

Why, pro-lifers, of course.

Overpopulation Underpopulation Is the Problem

Population Research Institute has just released the second installment in its "Overpopulation Is a Myth" series— a slickly produced video that explains in easy-to-understand terms why underpopulation is the real looming demographic disaster:



I first saw this video last week, and about an hour later I received an e-mail from a journalist in the UK asking for a brief comment for a story he was writing about a young British woman who, based on a belief that having children would have damaging effects on the quality of life of people already living, had decided to be sterilized.

I commented on how how tragic it is that someone would decide to not have children based on a mistaken belief that the world is somehow overpopulated—and that, quite the contrary, the real danger in our world is underpopulation. I further pointed out that this is the looming demographic and economic threat that no one wants to talk about. If there are not enough babies being born today, who will support tomorrow's pensioners?

It's a shame that such frantic handwringing about overpopulation still persists in our day. How much more stuck in the Stuck-in-the-Sixties can you get? It's as if Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb had just hit bookstore shelves (and thus had not yet been proven completely wrong), and the writers of Star Trek were still hard at work producing birth control propaganda.

[Cross-posted at Pro-Life Action League and Generations for Life]

Abstinence Education Works

If you asked 100 people at random if they believed abstinence education is effective, most of them would probably say no.

Most would probably say that teaching abstinence is “unrealistic”, that it doesn’t work, and that schools should instead be teaching so-called “comprehensive” sex education.

A big part of the reason why so many people believe abstinence education is ineffective is because its opponents—not the least of which are the major players in the abortion industry and other pro-abortion choice organizations—have been relentlessly tub-thumping for years trying to convince people that it is so, such that it's now one of those things that "everybody knows".

And most mainstream media outlets have carried water for them every step of the way.

So ingrained in popular consciousness is this idea that when the Washington Post reported on a "landmark" study released Monday that demonstrated remarkable comparative effectiveness of abstinence education vs. so-called "comprehensive" sex education, they couldn't bring themselves to fully admit what the research showed.

March for Life

If any of this here weblog's readers will be in Washington, DC for the March for Life on Friday, feel free to stop by and say hi.

I'll be one of the ones holding the Generations for Life banner a block west of 4th St. and Madison Dr. NW, starting at 12:00 noon.

I'm also giddy that I'll get to hear the uber-intelligent Robert George speak at the Rose Dinner Friday night.

The best description of George that I've seen comes from a review of his book The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis, in which Daniel Moloney writes:

A few of the essays show secularist professors hopping in the ring with George, only to find that the diminutive professor of political philosophy does a fair impression of Hulk Hogan—he doesn’t just win; he throws the opponent out of the ring and begins to chase after him with a chair, so relentless is he in argument.

George is also a co-author of the Manhattan Declaration, which, if you haven't already signed, you should. (I signed it a few weeks ago.)

A Good Day for a Christmas Party

Our staff Christmas Party is tonight.

You might be thinking: Isn't January 6 a little late for a Christmas party?

To which I would reply:

Nonsense.

On the contrary, it's a great day to have a Christmas party, because we are still in the Christmas season. Today, of course, is also the traditional feast of Epiphany, which makes this date doubly worthy of a celebration.

We started the tradition of having our staff Christmas party during the first week of January a few years ago at the suggestion of one of my co-workers, who made the point that it's a bit unsuitable to have a Christmas party before, you know, Christmas. Especially when the "before" time is that of Advent, which is supposed to be a penitential season.

Having our staff Christmas party when we do is also nice for another reason. Inevitably, the month of December — especially the week before Christmas, when many office Christmas parties are held — is crazily hectic, and it's nice to not have to worry about One More Thing during that time, and instead to be able to put it off until the relatively less hectic first week of January.

So tonight, we celebrate.

(And speaking of work, just this week — after a great deal of time and preparation on the part of our webmaster Eric Scheidler — we launched our newly designed website. Check thou it out!)

Good Publicity

A couple of my co-workers, Corrina Gura and Matt Yonke, are featured in a story in today's RedEye that looks at opinions on abortion among young adults. Corrina is also on the cover (see right).

Considering The Gomer Pyle Axiom of High and Low Expectations, we can't help but be pleased with the story.

As we noted on our website today, it makes perfectly clear that 37 years after Roe v. Wade, abortion is still headline news, and pro-lifers will never be cowed into silence.

Law & Order: "Anti-Choice Propaganda"?

Last week I found out via my friend Jill Stanek (you know, Jill "Worst Person in the World" Stanek) that Friday's "ripped from the headlines" episode of Law & Order was to deal with the murder of a late-term abortionist in his church.

For several years, I used to watch Law & Order quite a bit, until I realized that there are Much Better Things To Do than watch TV with any frequency. But since this episode dealt with work, I decided to watch it.

Now, bearing in mind the Gomer Pyle Axiom of High and Low Expectations, I'm of the opinion that whenever the MSM deals with abortion, we have to set the bar very low.

That said, going into it, I feared Jill would be right—i.e., that "the show will throw ideological bones to both sides but ultimately come down favoring pro-aborts".

Yet after watching it, I don't think pro-lifers could have expected to have as many bones thrown to us as there were. I posted a comment on Jill's blog indicating as much, and noted that I'd also be curious to see what strident pro-aborts have to say about it—suspecting that the episode may cause not a few of them to work themselves into a lather about how Law & Order is "selling out" or something.

Sure enough, today, in a post titled "Is Pro-Life the New Gay?" (which includes the episode itself) Jill notes that indeed, some pro-choicers aren't happy.

Quoth Kate Harding at Salon:

"Law & Order's" anti-choice propaganda

On Friday night's "Law & Order," the abortion debate was represented by two separate, yet equally important, groups: The anti-choicers, who believe fetuses' rights trump women's, and the pseudo-pro-choicers, who are conveniently persuaded to agree with them by the end of the episode.

That sound? It's my head exploding.

To which Jill responds:

Kind of like a late-term baby being aborted, Kate? Not quite. Read Kate's review for descriptions of more surprising pro-life apologetics in the show, even on minor rape.

What's up? In a town bent on stirring controversy, does Hollywood now think the pro-life view is in, hot - the new gay?

Or perhaps NBC is trying to recoup lost mainstream viewers?

Or most likely, since L&O's previous 2 episodes dealing with abortion slanted way left, this was its attempt at balance?

Whatever, I'll take it.

Me too.

Another Bubble Zone Update

We learned on Friday that Mayor Daley intends to sign the free-speech choking Bubble Zone ordinance.

In an attempt to justify his decision, the Mayor remarked, "There has to be some civility left in our society."

How ironic. The mission of sidewalk counselors is to try to prevent mothers from having their children killed — and, in the process, sparing them a lifetime of pain and regret — and they're the ones who are uncivil?

Watch No Greater Joy, our documentary on sidewalk counseling, and judge for yourself:

Bubble Zone Update

The City Council passed the Bubble Zone ordinance yesterday by a vote of 28-13. It will go into effect November 17 unless Mayor Daley vetoes it.

Since last week, we've been encouraging people (regardless of where they live) to call his office and ask him to oppose it. So many people have called that when you call his office now, instead of having a real, live person answer the phone, it goes to an automated menu which asks you to press 1 if you're calling about the Bubble Zone. It then allows you to vote no by pressing 2.

You can — nay, should — make your voice heard by calling 312-744-3300 between 8:00am and 5:00pm CDT.

Here's the video of the press conference at the conclusion of our protest yesterday — at which 150 people showed up:

If You Happen to Be Near Chicago City Hall Tomorrow

Join our Bubble Zone protest!

"Do You Support a Woman's Right to Choose?"

Note: I had intended to cross-post the following entry on Friday (I had originally posted it on the Generations for Life Blog that morning), but in my exuberance at the big news of the day, it slipped my mind. So I'm posting it now.

***

This morning as I was waiting to catch the train to get to work, I was approached by a guy named Robert Marshall, who is planning to run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Roland Burris. He asked if I would sign a petition to put his name on the Democratic primary ballot.

So I asked him the first question I ask anyone who tells me he's running for office:

Do you support a woman's right to choose?

The first question I used to ask was: "Are you pro-life?" But I soon realized that this is the wrong question to ask, because

Chicago City Council Committee Votes to Choke Free Speech

I'm still waiting on details, but I just found out from one of our attorneys that the Chicago City Council's Human Relations Committee passed a "bubble zone" ordinance this morning.

Now it goes to the full City Council next Wednesday. If it passes there, we'll sue.

Here's more background from our press release this morning:

Members of the Pro-Life Action League and attorneys from the Thomas More Society will attend the Human Relations Committee meeting of the Chicago City Council TODAY at 9:00 AM Wednesday, Sept. 30. The Committee is considering an amendment to the Municipal Code to prohibit picketing within 50 feet of any medical clinic. These organizations strongly suspect this amendment is aimed at preventing pro-life people from praying and reaching out to clients of abortion facilities with information on alternatives to abortion.

Pro-life activists routinely stand on the public sidewalk at the entrances to abortion clinics in Chicago to offer information to anyone seeking services at the abortion clinics. The groups know of no incidents of intimidation, harassment or threats as referred to in the amendment introduced on Sept. 9 by Alderman Vi Daley (43rd Ward).

Both the Thomas More Society attorneys and the Pro-Life Action League contend that the amendment is unconstitutional.

Note that the IOC makes its decision in two days. If the city council is taking measures like this now, one can only imagine what sorts of tricks they'll try to pull — under the guise of ensuring "safety" and "security", natch — to restrict demonstrations near Olympic venues come 2016.

"Even Jesus Hates You"

There has been much written in the pro-life blogosphere of late about the diabolical character of the Northern Illinois Women's Center abortion facility in Rockford, Illinois.

Just last week, the Catholic League sent a letter to the city's legal director asking that he take "appropriate action against the Center to put an end to such needless provocation" regarding a poster displayed in the center's window depicting Jesus showing His middle finger, and with the inscription "Even Jesus Hates You" below it. (The next day, the office ordered that the poster be removed.)

I know one of the pro-lifers who regularly prays outside this abortion clinic, and I happened to talk to him a few months ago. Almost anticipating what I was thinking, he told me that a lot of people tell him they would never want to pray outside an abortion clinic like this, where the evil is so palpable.

On the contrary, he said he'd rather pray outside a place like this rather than, say, the $7 million "Abortion Fortress" of Aurora — some 70 miles away — whose outside appearance completely masks the evil within (not unlike a "whitewashed tomb").

He told me, "When you see a rubber chicken on a crucifix, it makes you want to pray harder."

I hadn't thought of it that way.

A Life Saved

I'm reposting below this entry I posted one year ago:

Today, September 14, will always hold a special place in the hearts of Jocelyn and me.

On this day in 2002, we had our first save. (For those of you unfamiliar with sidewalk counseling, a "save" happens when a mother, just steps away from entering a clinic where she has an abortion scheduled, decides instead to choose life for her baby.)

This was an especially fitting date for this manifestation of God's infinite goodness, as September 14 is the feast of the Triumph of the Cross.

For several months, we had gone on Saturday morings to stand outside of an abortion clinic on Chicago's northwest side (which, incidentally, is to be the site of a 40 Days for Life prayer vigil starting next week) to join others in prayer for the abortion-bound mothers, and for the sidewalk counselors who speak to them to warn them of the dangers abortion poses to them personally.

On this particular day, we had just finished praying the rosary, and were about to head home. Just then, one of the veteran sidewalk counselors spoke a few words to an abortion-bound mom who had just arrived with another woman, and hastily called for Jocelyn and me to come over. Both women spoke only Spanish.

The sidewalk counselor knew only a few Spanish words, but knew that Jocelyn and I spoke more than she did. (Neither of us is fluent, to be sure, but I speak it better than I understand it, and Jocelyn understands it better than she speaks it, so between the two of us, we can communicate with someone who speaks only Spanish fairly well.)

I don't remember what I said to this woman -- her name was Blasa -- but it was clear that she did not want to have an abortion. All I remember is that we offered to bring her to a place where she could get real help (a pregnancy resource center just around the corner).

Just steps away from the abortion clinic entrance, it took less than a minute for Blasa to decide that she was going to keep her baby.

The Search for a Unique Third-Class Relic of Mother Teresa

As September 5th was the twelfth anniversary of the death of Blessed Mother Teresa, I'm reposting here this entry I originally posted on that date two years ago:

For some time, Mother Teresa has had a special place in my heart, likely stemming from my great fortune at being part of the crowd at a papal audience at Castel Gandolfo with Pope John Paul II, of happy memory, two days after she died, at which he paid tribute to his dear diminutive friend.

We named our first daughter after her. It’s especially fitting that we did so, since Teresa was born on January 21, 2003 (January 21 is the feast of St. Agnes; and Agnes was Mother Teresa’s baptismal name -- although we didn't know that at the time our Teresa was born!), and 2003 was the year she was beatified.

A few months ago I had lunch with a friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in three years. I guess you could say Jan and I were "colleagues", although I'm generally inclined to think the word "colleague" sounds hifalutin.

At any rate, she and I are both former Religion teachers at Good Counsel High School in Chicago, where she also served as our department chairman for two years. (The school closed in 2003; the building now houses a charter school.)

During the course of our conversation, Jan asked me if I had ever heard the story about the time Mother Teresa had visited Good Counsel. I said that I remembered some of the teachers mentioning something about it one time, but I was sketchy on the details.

As it turns out, Mother Teresa once visited the school for some sort of convocation on religious life (presumably sponsored by the Felician Sisters, who operated the school and whose Mother of Good Counsel Province motherhouse was located next door).

One of the Felician sisters in attendance at the convocation had the foresight to recognize that Mother Teresa would surely one day become a saint, and so, after the event, this sister took the chair in which Mother Teresa had sat, put some sort of identifying mark on the underside of it -- with masking tape, as I recall -- and put it in a storage room. For, were Mother Teresa to become a saint, the sisters would then have their very own third-class relic.

After it was announced in the fall of 2002 that Good Counsel would be closing the following spring, the sister who had stored Mother Teresa's chair contacted Jan about it, because she couldn't remember where she put it! By that time, Jan had left GC and taken a teaching job in another state, but she called another former of colleague of ours -- Nancy, also a Religion teacher -- and told her about the missing chair/third-class-relic-to-be.

Nancy was teaching freshmen that year, and so decided to elicit the help of her charges in looking for said chair. So, she led them on what could, in a manner of speaking, be considered a mini-pilgrimage -- it was, after all, a quest for a relic -- and dispatched them to search the nooks and crannies of the school.

Sure enough, they found the chair. I'm told it's now in safe keeping at the Felician Sisters' motherhouse.

Walk Like a Man

I mentioned last week that our recent Face the Truth Tour went swimmingly, and that unlike the previous two years, we had no major run-ins with local police.

Leading up to our recent Tour, we extensively researched the municipal codes of the various communities we would be visiting and assembled copies of the relevant ordinances for each in a binder that we could have on hand to show local law enforcement if we were questioned about our right to conduct such a demonstration. (As it turned out, this binder came in very handy at one site in particular, as it helped to defuse a potentially difficult confrontation with police in south suburban Burbank on 16 July.)

In many communities, the ordinances governing demonstrations like ours — wherein we coordinate groups of people who stand alongside the street holding large, graphic abortion pictures — are in the same section as ordinances governing parades.

In the course of researching these municipal codes, we noted with interest how the village of Chicago Ridge defines a "parade":

Parade means any organized procession or march as for display or to march, or walk through as for display, or to make a display of or to show off, to walk about ostentatiously, or the assembly in formation by any persons upon the public streets, sidewalks or public places in the village. Public assemblages or addresses and meetings shall come within the scope of this definition for purposes and requirements of obtaining a permit or license.

It was the fact that "walk[ing] about ostentatiously" without a permit is actually on the books as verboten that gave us all a good laugh.

This discovery prompted me to recall this: