Each week, I receive reports from Madison’s Vigil for Life about the efforts of witnesses for life who stand and pray on the sidewalk outside of the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic at 3706 Orin Rd. in Madison.
It should be noted that the Women’s Care Center is located right across the street from the Planned Parenthood clinic. Women’s Care Center provides free, confidential counseling, support, and education to women facing unplanned pregnancies.
To the editor:
Thank you God that we still have people here on earth who have a conscience and won’t sign this form (reference to Little Sisters of the Poor article on their refusal to sign the Health and Human Services’ Contraception Mandate, February 4 Catholic Herald).
Why have Catholics not signed a petition to abolish this mandate? Why is this the first I have heard of this? Why is it kept from us to see?
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Among married men and women who undergo surgical sterilization through a vasectomy or a tubal ligation, it has been estimated that anywhere from 10 to 20 percent will come to regret the choice.
Sometimes there may be an immediate awareness of wrongdoing following the surgery, while in other cases, as Patrick Coffin, radio host and author of Sex au Naturel notes, sterilized couples may “. . . drift for years before acknowledging that something between them is no longer in sync. After the initial pregnancy fear subsides, and the vision of 1001 erotic nights turns out be something of a scam, spouse may (subtly) turn against spouse while doing their best to ignore the silent, disturbing ‘presence’ of the choice they made.”
Their decision to seek out a permanent form of contraception can also affect their marriage in other important ways. As Dr. John Billings has noted, there is “an effect that is even more tragic than the clinical, and it is that in many cases the use of contraceptive methods in marriage has been followed by an act of infidelity of one of the members.
My husband and I chose to send our children to Catholic schools. We were able to afford the tuition to make that choice, while at the same time paying taxes to support public school education.
We were fortunate to be able to choose the schools we wanted for our children, but not everyone has the financial resources to make that choice. Although Catholic schools provide much financial aid, there are still families that can’t afford to send their children to a Catholic school.
Twenty-three years ago, Wisconsin did something about that problem by starting the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. This program provides state-paid tuition vouchers to enable low-income students to enroll in private schools in the City of Milwaukee. The program, which has survived legal challenges in the Wisconsin and U.S. Supreme Courts, began operation in 1990 with about 340 students.
At first the Milwaukee program only provided vouchers for students attending private nonsectarian schools. However, in 1995 it was expanded to allow vouchers for children attending religious schools. It was stipulated that a school must excuse a student from participation in any religious instruction or activity at the request of the child’s parent or guardian (very few people have taken this option).
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St. Jeanne Jugan was well into her 40s when she established the Little Sisters of the Poor. Some might consider her a “delayed” or “late” vocation, but I don’t think Jeanne was delayed at all. From an early age she had a sense of her vocation.
Jeanne knew that God loved her and was calling her; she just didn’t know where the call would take her. When Jeanne turned down a marriage proposal, she told her mother, “God wants me for himself, he is keeping me for a work as yet unknown, for a work which is not yet founded.”
One widely-encountered idea today is that there is no black and white when it comes to morality, only a kind of “gray area.” This is often taken to mean that we really can’t know with certainty what is right and wrong, allowing us to “push into the gray” as we make certain moral decisions that at first glance appear to be immoral.
The behavior of the semi-legendary figure of Robin Hood is sometimes mentioned as an example of this “gray area” phenomenon, since he was a character who would steal money (morally bad) for the purposes of helping the poor (morally good).
By focusing on the good intentions motivating our choices, and by arguing that morality is ambiguous and mostly “gray” anyway, a person can more easily justify and provide cover for morally problematic actions. When we begin to scrutinize the claim that morality is “gray,” however, we encounter significant problems and contradictions.
To the editor:
In his March 29 column, Bishop Morlino hits the nail on the head when he notes how the contraceptive mandate puts a disturbing new spin on the tired, old “my body, my choice” slogan.
What strikes me in particular is how the folks who’ve been telling us for years that the government has no place legislating about what people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms are now arguing that the government has every right to do so by executive fiat.
Wisconsin’s public policy makers have increasingly focused on education reform. They do so for good reason.
Significant improvement in our education system could help alleviate many of the problems currently plaguing our state, such as skilled labor shortages and the high cost of incarceration. With “Catholic Schools Week” upon us, it’s fitting to reflect upon the Church’s approach to education reform and the unique role Catholic schools play in our community.
An electrician by trade, Tim Roach is married with two children and lives about an hour outside Minneapolis. He was laid off his job in July 2009.
After looking for work for more than a year and a half, he got a call from his local union in February 2011 with the news anyone who is unemployed longs for, not just a job offer, but one with responsibility and a good salary of almost $70,000 a year.
He ultimately turned the offer down, however, because he discovered that he was being asked to oversee the electrical work at a new Planned Parenthood facility under construction in St. Paul on University Ave. Aware that abortions would be performed there, he knew his work would involve him in “cooperation with evil,” and he courageously declined the offer.
