FIC Blog

For those of us who actually live in the Archdiocese of Hartford, the announcement of Toledo Bishop Leonard P. Blair as the next Archbishop of Hartford was a happy occasion:

Peter Wolfgang, the executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut and a Catholic, said the announcement of the new bishop “is huge news for the Catholic faithful of the archdiocese and really, the entire state of Connecticut.

“The office holds tremendous importance for believing Catholics in the Archdiocese of Hartford,” Wolfgang said. “Every citizen in the state has a stake in this appointment.”

And:

Peter Wolfgang, the executive director of the Connecticut Family Institute , said Blair’s appointment runs contrary to the media narrative of Pope Francis giving up on defending the unborn and marriage.

“Pope Francis has given the Catholic faithful of Hartford a shepherd who is renowned for guarding the truth in all its fullness. Connecticut’s ecumenical and multi-faith pro-family movement is proud to stand with Archbishop-designate Leonard P. Blair and we pray that his midwestern faith, hope and love will be a balm to New England’s aggressive secularism,” Wolfgang said.

But for Michael Sean Winters, a writer for the left-wing National Catholic Reporter who does not live here, our cause for hope was his cause for fear. He believes yesterday was “Not a happy day in Hartford”:

In naming Bishop Leonard Blair to become the next archbishop of Hartford, Conn., the Holy See has sent what can only be described as a counter-sign. This was a missed opportunity to send a signal to all the bishops in the United States that the Holy Father is calling for a different style of pastoral leadership in the Church. In June, Pope Francis spoke to the nuncios from around the world assembled in Rome. He sketched the type of pastoral leadership he expected in the appointment of bishops. The pope said he wanted pastors who would serve their people, not serve as overlords. They were, he famously said, to be men who “have the smell of the sheep.”

The good news is that Archbishop-designate Blair has the smell of the sheep. The bad news is that one suspects he thinks the sheep stink.

Classy.

Winters seems to agree with Archbishop-designate Blair on many of those issues that will disappoint the Left: the “theological silliness” of certain religious orders and that Komen is problematic for its funding of Planned Parenthood and, potentially, embryo-destructive stem cell research. Rather, what concerns Winters is what he believes to be “a lack of delicacy” in the Archbishop-designate’s episcopal leadership.

The Catholic blogosphere is a universe unto itself and Family Institute of Connecticut would be content to let pass without a word from us this or any other topic that occupies that universe…were it not for this:

I cannot refrain from expressing the concern — dare I say it, the fear — that this lack of delicacy is going to come back and bite the Church in the behind. In 2012, largely through the efforts of the Catholic Church, a referendum on physician-assisted suicide was narrowly defeated at the polls in Massachusetts. The supporters of physician-assisted suicide will not give up. They will move on. They have already passed legislation in Vermont. You can bet they will soon target Connecticut. And who can doubt that Archbishop-designate Blair’s culture warrior style will play right into the hands of those who wish to attack the human dignity of the old and the suffering? People of hope. People of hope. People of hope. Let us hope that +Blair catches some of the fever of Pope Francis — and some of the credibility of Pope Francis — before we must face that fight in Connecticut.

What do you mean “we,” Kemosabe? Since this is the Catholic blogosphere FIC is addressing, we’ll let the veteran pro-life Catholic writer Anne Hendershott be the one to bring Michael Sean Winters up to speed on the fact that Connecticut has already been targeted and that the good guys already won the first round.

To be sure, round two is coming up and there is no guarantee of victory. FIC and our allies are working now to counter what we expect to be a much stronger push for assisted suicide in next year’s legislative session. But in our preparations for that fight, we count it a very happy day when we learned that the next Archbishop of Hartford is Leonard P. Blair. And we object to our defense of the elderly and people with disabilities being exploited by a writer who does not even know what is happening here in Connecticut, just so that he can take a jab at the next Archbishop of Hartford.

We suspect that Pope Francis would object too.

Last weekend Connecticut welcomed a group which hosted its first secular conference. Heralded by bill boards across Connecticut proclaiming themselves “good”, the coalition seeks to build networking opportunities and increase their political involvement. Despite a few jabs at folks whose politics are formed by Judeo-Christian values, the Family Institute welcomes everyone to participate in the public square in good faith, even atheists. We hope, despite growing cases of discrimination and persecution against Christians, that social conservatives will continue to enjoy the same freedom to associate, organize, earn a living, worship and participate in our culture.

Also last weekend, Yale hosted its first pro-life conference, Vita et Veritas (Life and Truth), and one of the panelists represented a national secular pro-life organization. From the Yale Daily News:

Secular Pro-Life President Kelsey Hazzard predicted “that there are currently 6 million Americans who are non-religious and pro-life, adding that this is a function of the current generation being both more pro-life and more secular than previous generations.” According to the article, the panelists “discussed the importance of cooperation in the pro-life community between religious and secular groups”.

As a former atheist, who came to the faith by way of first accepting the truths about abortion, I want everyone to know that in some circles, these secularists make the best converts (and on converts making great Christians, just ask St. Paul). The Family Institute of Connecticut has worked with diverse groups and has members of all faiths and none, but we are united in our resolve to make Connecticut a better place for families, including the most nascent and vulnerable among us. With God’s grace and your help, we look forward to continuing these efforts.

Donny: “Are they going to hurt us?”

Walter: “No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

~ The Big Lebowski

It’s that time of year again. I’m seeing pink. Everywhere.

Here…Here…

Here…

Here…

Even at the deli. I’m serious: sliced meat now comes with a pink pedigree.

With few exceptions, the pink lovefest seems to involve Susan G. Komen, who appeared ready to finally throw off the yoke of funding to Planned Parenthood and be more true to the cause, only to allow themselves to be bullied into submission. FIC member Jessica blogged last year about how St. Mary’s hospital’s efforts to provide free mammograms were affected by the loss of a Komen grant. I’ve been examining a lot of fine print on various products and growing more than a little cynical.

I’m not the only one, nor do I have anywhere near the most just claim on the right to cynicism. I have read two outstanding, illuminating blog posts by women who survived breast cancer regarding the ‘pinkwashing’ phenomenon (I didn’t realize it had a name…this is one thing I have learned, with wide-eyed gratitude).

The first piece deals with the insensitive and nonsensical ways in which well-meaning people sometimes try to “help” – like shedding their bras, which looks like a pretty dubious show of solidarity even to someone who hasn’t suffered debilitating disease. In a very small way, I relate. I once saw a retail outlet selling a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan, “Save the fun bags.” Fun bags? FUN BAGS? Are our bodies worth saving for their entertainment value? It may or may not be a good thing that at the time, I was too steamed even to go in and give some bewildered underling a piece of my mind. Instead, I resolved never to set foot there again.

The second, a personal narrative replete with helpful links, delves into the relationship between Susan G. Komen and Planned Parenthood and reminds us that there are pro-life alternatives. Frankly, it makes the Courant’s ‘special section’ on young women with breast cancer look like a bit of a farce, minus the humor; it looks all these influential allies square in the eye and shouts, “J’accuse!”

Just witness the impressive dance of avoidance done here over the course of four pages:

Johnson’s latest research, meanwhile, shows another disturbing trend: a small but statistically significant increase in the incidence of advanced breast cancer for women 25 to 38 without a corresponding increase in older women. (The researchers did not find a rise in earlier-stage breast cancer in young adults.)
The study, published in the February issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, showed the number of young adult women getting metastatic breast cancer has nearly doubled since the 1970’s.
“It used to be 4 percent, now it’s 7 percent,” she said. “It’s still thankfully a small increase but we didn’t find a single risk factor to explain it.”
Estrogen-sensitive cancers appear to make up the bulk of the increase, which is “comparatively fortunate,” the Journal authors note, because those cancers are somewhat more responsive to treatment and have longer average survival rates.

Really? Are they at a total loss to think of anything significant that might have changed in the 1970s?

Later, we are told:

Though Johnson’s study didn’t look at the reasons for the potential increase, one theory to explore looks at whether overeating and lack of exercise are driving up early-life metastatic breast cancer rates, Johnson said. The use of hormonal birth control could play a role, but the risk level goes back to normal about a decade after going off the drugs, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Ah, I see. All we twenty- and thirty-somethings need to do is try to avoid getting cancer for ten years. So simple, so practical.

Offhand mention of hormonal contraception aside, the article goes on to discuss all sorts of possible factors, except for the six-ton woolly mammoth in the room: legal, induced abortion. I suppose it would also take a miracle to hear them call out Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards for misleading the public into thinking that Planned Parenthood does a single mammogram in-house, which makes the loss of funding to St. Mary’s all the more shameful.

One other, invaluable resource I think all Connecticut pro-lifers ought to know about – doubtless, some already do – is Dr. Gerard Nadal’s blog. I had the honor of meeting Dr. Nadal when he sat on a discussion panel with Peter Wolfgang and Nicole Peck. His credentials are solid, and he began as a skeptic on the breast cancer connection, believing that there were sufficient reasons to be pro-life already; gradually, the scientific literature itself convinced him.

Have a charitable October while it lasts, friends, but do check that fine print to make sure your money goes where it ought.

As FIC email recipients know, on Saturday, October 19th, FIC will have an exhibit at the Respect Life Conference in South Meriden. You can download a form to register for the conference, which will feature former presidential candidate Alan Keyes, here.

As FIC email recipients know, Iron Sharpens Iron, the evangelical Christian men’s conference, will be held at the First Assembly of God in Danbury (Brookfield) on Saturday, October 19th. FIC strongly encourages participation in this event, which you can register for here. FIC will be present with an exhibit but, more importantly, Jim Daly, President of Focus on the Family, will be one of the speakers! Focus on the Family is, in a certain sense, FIC’s parent organization, and having its national president in Connecticut is an honor. Chaplain Barry Black of the US Senate will also be at the conference.

There will be a Celebration of Life Service at 6 pm on Saturday, October 19th, in recognition of the launching of Got Life ministries. Georgette Forney, President of Anglicans for Life and Silent No More will be joining the service. It will be held at Mary of Bethany, located at Church of the Good Shepard, 163 New Canaan Avenue, Norwalk.

Got Life, which appears not to have a website yet, is an African-American pro-life ministry.

They say Connecticut is not a pro-life state and, at least in terms of our laws and politicians, they are right. But anyone following the pro-life calendar in Connecticut for the month of October would be hard-pressed to deny the presence of a vigorous grassroots pro-life movement here. Indeed, there are so many events that some of them are occurring at the same time in different locations. FIC recommends that you attend the ones that work for you, but please, do come to as many as you reasonably can.

Here is one of our favorites. The Choose Life at Yale (CLAY) club is holding a days-long conference later this week with national speakers. Details are here.

From our friend Christine Murphy:

40 Days for Life, Bridgeport is sponsoring a Pro-Life Living Rosary. Anyone interested in participating can go to the website, listed below, to sign up. If you have any questions please feel free to call George Meagher at (203) 377-6886.

Pro-Life Living Rosary

Saturday, October 19, 2013 – 11 AM

St. Margaret’s Shrine

2523 Park Avenue, Bridgeport

RAIN or SHINE

to sign up or for more info please go to: prolifelivingrosary@gmail.com

No Republican has been elected Secretary of State in Connecticut in over twenty years (and the one before that was thirty-six years earlier). So Peter Lumaj’s 2014 campaign for that office is, admittedly, a long shot. But how can we resist a candidate with a logo like the one above, especially with our friend William Landers pulling for him?

Peter Wolfgang will be at tomorrow’s Save the State Festivity. We invite FIC Action Committee members to join him. Details:

Confirmed Date: Oct. 5. 2013

Free Event

Come join us at the “Save The State” a festivity in West Simsbury.
The event is being hosted by The Patrina’s.

Guest Speakers include:

Don Pesci, columnist.

JR Romano, president of Americans for Prosperity Connecticut

Peter Wolfgang, president, FIC Action

Feature Speaker:

Peter Lumaj candidate for Secretary Of The State

…who escaped from communism in Albania to seek freedom and liberty in the Untied States, came here and sought out the American Dream to own his own successful law firm and stand with our founding fathers to keep America a place for opportunity and liberty. Peter is now running for Sec. Of The State of Connecticut and wants to bring fair and honest elections to the state that is known as the “Constitution State”.

And some surprise Political Speakers that will be announced at the event.

Food, Fun and Music.

Patrina’s:
93 West Mountain Rd
West Simsbury, CT

Time: 2 pm to 5 pm

Press is welcome!

Please send a confirmation you are attending to:
events@peterlumaj.com

(Paid for by FIC Action Committee, Lawrence Taffner, Treasurer.) 

“But we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what’s in it….” —Nancy Pelosi

With the advent of the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges, also known as health care marketplaces, we are now beginning to find out what is really in the massive health care law. As a person of very modest means, I stand to benefit from the subsidies and cost-sharing reductions offered to people who earn a little more than the maximum allowed to qualify under the Medicaid expansion. Regardless of how I may feel about the law’s disincentives toward work (even the left-wing Mother Jones understands the steep marginal tax rate of declining subsidies with increased income), the “Obamacare Wedding Tax” that dramatically penalizes marriage and encourages cohabitation, and the discouraging of medical innovation, I would be foolish not to take advantage of the subsidized coverage available through the exchanges.

So on October 1, the first day for people to sign up for the new subsidized health insurance plans, I went online to check out Access Health CT, Connecticut’s official health insurance marketplace, to browse what I might be able to choose for a health plan. From the home page, I clicked on the light blue “Get Health Coverage” tab, which took me to a page where one enters basic information, including the county you and other family members live in, your age and that of other family members, and total household income.

There is one other question on this page listed under “Optional Information”: “For detailed pricing, please provide the optional information below. Is the applicant pregnant?” Next to the question mark after “pregnant” is a black background question mark tool tip. Just wondering what this was about, I placed my mouse over the tool tip and lo-and-behold, the following message appeared:

Select ‘Yes’ for any female who is expecting a baby. Unborn children are counted as members of her household, so this information helps determine if she is eligible for help with health care costs. Medicaid also has rules to help pregnant women.

Read that again. Unborn children—not “fetuses,” “uterine contents,” “products of pregnancy,” “clump of cells,” “blob of tissue,” or any of the other euphemisms frequently used by those who profess to be pro-choice on abortion. Nor is Access Health CT the only Obamacare exchange that uses the term “unborn children.” Massachusetts pioneered the system of a health care exchange, guaranteed issue, an individual mandate, and subsidies for low and moderate income people that became the model for Obamacare. The Massachusetts Health Connector website also refers to “unborn child(ren)”:

How many people are in your family? (Include unborn child(ren) if someone is pregnant.)

Moreover, a woman can claim the extra family member as soon as she has a confirmed pregnancy—no waiting for a trimester or two. So for the purpose of determining family size for the health care exchanges, Obamacare declares unborn children, even at the earliest stages of life, to be full-fledged persons, so that pregnant women and their families can qualify for increased subsidies and cost-sharing on the exchanges.

Yet in a stunning double standard, these very Obamacare healthcare exchanges can offer coverage for abortion on demand—a procedure that rips these same unborn children apart limb by limb, or in the case of some abortions beyond 20 weeks gestation, expels a live baby who can be left to die gasping for breath. FIC successfully fought to stop abortion from being treated as an “essential health benefit” on Connecticut’s exchange.

Connecticut even lacks a state Born Alive Infant Protection Act that would protect newly born but unwanted babies surviving failed abortion attempts from abandonment. When he was a state senator from Illinois, Barack Obama voted three times to block born alive infant protections (a Federal version with the same abortion-neutral language in the Illinois legislation passed the US Senate in 2002 by a vote of 98-0), saying on the Illinois Senate floor:

“if that fetus, or child, however you want to describe it, is now outside of the mother’s womb and the doctor continues to think that it’s non viable but there’s let’s say movement or some indication that they’re not just coming out limp and dead, that in fact they would then have to call in a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved?”

“Fetus, or child, however you want to describe it”—when the baby is wanted, as for Obamacare subsidies, it is a child, but when it is unwanted—maybe it has an extra chromosome and will be born with a significant disability—then President Obama and other abortion supporters call the baby a fetus that can be disposed of at will—even when the baby does not come out limp and dead. Somehow, calling even a newborn baby a person entitled to human rights is, at least for Obama, above his pay grade. It is also above the pay grades of Congresswomen Rosa DeLauro and Elizabeth Esty to protect those unborn children nearing viability by setting a 20-week limit on the procedure. DeLauro claimed that supporters of this modest measure were “trying to insert their extreme and divisive ideological preferences into law” when eleven states have already passed similar measures.

Often the most important thing we must do to end any immoral practice is to call things by their real names. Prior to the Civil War, the US Constitution abided by the obnoxious legal fiction that African-American slaves were “three-fifths persons.” Today, in spite of medical technologies like ultrasound that reveal the beating hearts, brain waves, and developing bodies of unborn children, some continue to use euphemisms to justify killing them. Let us be consistent and count our unborn children so they are fully welcomed in life and protected by our laws.