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Archbishop: For the Clergy, Obedience to Church "Requires Preaching About the Moral Evil of Contraception"

By John-Henry Westen

BARRY'S BAY, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Archbishop of the Canadian capital city of Ottawa addressed the convocation of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy in Barrys Bay Ontario last week, leaving attendees awestruck.  The speech focused on Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae. Faithful Catholics leaving the event told LifeSiteNews.com "I've been waiting 35 years to hear that from a Canadian bishop."

Archbishop Terrence Prendergast described for the graduates and their families the tumultuous times of the 60's when Humanae Vitae was published (July 25, 1968).  He recalled that many expected a "green light" on contraception from the Vatican and were "thunderstruck" when the encyclical was published.

"In the midst of the chaos caused by the sexual revolution and the arrival of the birth control pill, many Catholics felt unsure of the Church's position on artificial contraception," said Archbishop Prendergast. "The Church responded to this urgent need for clear teaching and sound pastoral guidance when Pope Paul VI released his encyclical, Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) in 1968."

"We celebrate this year the 40th anniversary of that prophetic document," said Prendergast.  "Time has shown it to be a gift from Christ to men and women everywhere. The late Edouard Cardinal Gagnon, former President of the Pontifical Council for the Family and one of Canada's great churchmen, called Humanae Vitae 'one of the most important documents in the history of the Church.'"

He explained: "The encyclical gives the Church a deeper understanding into the beauty of married love and responsible parenthood. It offers a clearer understanding of the harm of contraception and the great value of Natural Family Planning (NFP). Further, it challenges married couples, healthcare professionals and clergy to live and teach these profound truths about human sexuality and dignity."

Archbishop Prendergast's approach to the matter was refreshing and new, while he did not shy away from the fact that Catholics must obey Christ on the matter, he pointed out that embracing the teaching had tremendous benefits.  "Should Catholics embrace this teaching just because the Church tells them they must? While obedience is a necessary virtue, the benefits of learning and living Humanae Vitae should convince couples of its wisdom," he said. One of the many blessings he listed as coming from couples embracing the teaching was, "Having happier children within stronger families."

Moreover, he said that obedience to Humanae Vitae's teaching fell not only on married couples but also the clergy. "For the clergy," he said, "this same obedience and submission of will and intellect requires preaching about the moral evil of contraception and how it violates God's plan for marriage, human happiness, and the dignity each person."

See related coverage:

Exclusive Interview: Ottawa Archbishop Explains Why Pro-Abortion Politicians are Denied Communion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08031411.html

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8000-Strong March for Life Gets another National Media Blackout in Canada

By John-Henry Westen

OTTAWA, May 12, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Apart from a few second audio remark on Mike Duffy's show on CTV there was absolutely no national coverage of the 8000-strong March for Life which took place in the national capital on May 8.  The national broadcaster CBC ignored the March despite having given extensive coverage to abortionist Henry Morgentaler earlier this year as he celebrated his Supreme Court victory which struck down any limit on abortion in Canada.

Moreover, CBC has failed to cover the finding of a 1973 private letter from Morgentaler to then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau which suggests blackmail which was reported by Macleans magazine. (see coverage: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08050801.html )

The silence of the state-controlled CBC was compared to that of the Chinese government media in failing to report on Tiananmen Square.  "I guess we should expect that the state media not to want to report on the state-sanctioned holocaust, it was the same in Tiananmen Square" said Mary Ellen Douglas, National Coordinator for Campaign Life Coalition - the group which organized the march.

The National Post and the Globe and Mail carried nothing on the March, and even the local Ottawa Citizen had nothing to say. 

One local paper, The Ottawa Sun carried a photo of the march on the front page and contained a very short story. 

"A massive anti-abortion march wound its way from Parliament Hill to the Human Rights Monument on Elgin St. Thursday, creating some major traffic headaches in the downtown core," reported the Sun in its first line.  The rest of the coverage on the March dealt with a police officer who was struck by a car while re-directing traffic from the route of the March.  Of note, the Ottawa Citizen covered the fact that the police officer was hurt without mentioning the March.

The CTV local Ottawa station CJOH did do a short one minute slot on the March for Life for the 6pm news on May 9. The local Christian radio station CHRI promoted the March and covered it.  Ottawa talk radio CFRA also covered the demonstration as did two local free daily papers.

In a report titled "Is the End of Abortion Near?" in the Medical Post newspaper, Janet Dollin, President of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada, warned that a women's 'right' to abortion was in danger of being lost.  She was "very concerned" with the "8,000 strong'' that took part in the Ottawa March.

Surprisingly, the French-language media in Quebec gave the March for Life coverage. La Presse, the main news wire service and LCN (the French News channel) gave the March full coverage. Radio-Canada Ottawa also provided French-language coverage.

To voice concerns over lack of coverage:

letters@GlobeAndMail.ca
letters@nationalpost.com
http://www.cbc.ca/contact/
http://www.ctv.ca/contactus

See the French mainstream media coverage:

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/article/20080509/CPACTUALITES/8050...
 
http://lcn.canoe.ca/cgi-bin/player/video.cgi?file=/lcn/actua...

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Texas Pastor Connected with Prominent Gay Porn Website

By Michael Baggot

MCKINNEY, TX, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Texas residents are alarmed that Bishop Kevin Farrell has appointed Fr. Arthur Mallinson, a priest associated with a prominent website for actively homosexual priests and religious, pastor of the newly renovated St. Michael's parish in McKinney, Texas.

Fr. Arthur Mallinson's picture has appeared on the St. Sebastian's Angels (SSA) website, a now defunct online network for actively homosexual priests and religious that featured pornographic images, sexually explicit comments, and derogatory remarks about Vatican churchmen, particularly against then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. 

In 1999, the reform organization Roman Catholic Faithful (RCF) exposed SSA and the fifty-three priests involved in the site.  South African Bishop Reginald Cawcutt resigned after his activity on the site was revealed.
 
Barbara Kralis, concerned ex-parishioner of St. Michael, encouraged readers to take action in a Sunday column for CatholicCitizens.org.

"He is a priest who put his photo on a gay priest's website so that he could make contact with other like-minded priests," Kralis wrote of Fr. Mallinson.

"If anyone on this email list has family who are in this diocese of Dallas, who are worried about them being exposed to the machinations of such a perverted priest, please consider writing a letter Dallas Bishop Kevin Farrell and express your concern regarding this priest"

When she spoke with LifeSiteNews.com, Kralis had a series of questions.

"Why would our bishop promote a priest like this, what good is this going to do the people? Why wouldn't he [Bishop Farrell] read all of the priests' files very carefully? Why would he [Fr. Mallinson] be moved to a big, glorious parish?"

A spokeswoman for Bishop Farrell told LifeSiteNews.com that Fr. Mallinson is not supportive of any of the crude images or words found on the SSA site.

She noted that the SSA site was initially "not a site meant to provide an arena to find sexual partners."  Instead, it was meant to give participants "prayer and spiritual support to maintain and live a celibate lifestyle."

According to the Bishop's spokeswoman, Fr. Mallinson ceased activity with SSA in 2001 when it became involved in immoral activity.

"When it strayed from its original mission, he no longer wanted to be involved.  He did not agree or condone comments about the Pope on the website.  He ceased participation when pornography went on the website"

Stephen Brady, founder of RCF, told LifeSiteNews.com that his group first exposed SSA's lewd activities in September 1999, more than a year before Fr. Mallinson's departure from the group.

"We never caught him sending pornography," Brady said of Fr. Mallinson.  Nonetheless, Brady expressed concern that a priest would seek help to live celibacy from a pornographic site recounting male homosexual exploits.

"If he has to run to a website-that speaks volumes for flaws in his diocese."

To politely express concerns:

Bishop Kevin Farrell
Bishop of Diocese of Dallas
PO Box 190507
Dallas, TX 75219
214-528-2240

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With Blocking and Bed Sheets Pro-Abortion Activists Attempt to Shut Down March for Life in Nova Scotia

By Jenna Murphy

HALIFAX, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Aggressive pro-abortion demonstrators made physical attempts to shut down Nova Scotia's first annual "March for Life" Thursday.  Beginning with an evening candle-lit prayer vigil on Wednesday May 7th, 2008 followed by a demonstration on Thursday the event was organized and co-sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Women's League and the Campaign Life Coalition.  The roughly 90 March for Life participants were infiltrated on both occasions by several pro-abortion activists.

In the coverage following the event, a reporter with the Chronicle Herald (local Halifax paper) wrote erroneously that the rally was in promotion of the Unborn Victims of Crime Bill C-484 rather than the commemoration of the legalization of abortion in 1969 and the millions of Canadian unborn children who have died as a result.

In a May 9th article entitled "Taking it to the Streets: Pro-choice, Pro-life Groups Square Off Over Fetus Bill" a Chronicle Herald reporter wrote at length about the stance of pro-abortion activists and their opposition to Bill C-484. The "March for Life" demonstration was presented as being an explicitly political endeavor with the bill as its central focus. While the pro-abortion perspective was given much play, pro-life leaders were not contacted for comment.

"The event 'March for Life Nova Scotia' was a peaceful rally to memorialize the anniversary (May 1969) when the abortion law was struck down in Canada.  This WAS NOT a rally to oppose Bill C-484, contrary to what [was] written", said Executive Director of Campaign Life Coalition Ellen Chesal.

Though security and permission for the event had been obtained, both the evening prayer vigil on May 7th and the 'March for Life' annual event on the following day were met with aggressive confrontation from pro-abortion activists.

The pro-abortion demonstrators appeared on the scene with signs reading "My body my choice", and "Pro-woman, pro-choice". They attempted to block the procession physically and then proceeded to kick signs over and hold sheets and blankets over the pro-life placards in an attempt to block the signs from view, according to witnesses.

This is not the first time that pro-life demonstrators in Halifax have been accosted by pro-abortion groups. Similar attempts at shutting down pro-life demonstrations have been made in the past with the same 'bed sheet tactics' in an attempt to curtail the message being presented by the pro-life signage and the presence of pro-life demonstrators.

"It's disheartening and chilling to discover that there is no freedom of speech here in Nova Scotia", said Chesal.

Campaign life Coalition's Nova Scotia President Herm Wills is actively seeking rectification and clarification in response to the Chronicle Herald's false reporting on the March for Life event of May 8th. "I would like for the Herald to sit down with us and discuss the issues calmly and retract that horrible coverage and do what is right and cover the issue and not the event that was hijacked by the mob and the reporter".

Any comments surrounding the Halifax "March for Life" coverage article of May 9th, 2008 may be directed to:
 

Dan Leger
Director of News Content
Chronicle Herald
dleger@herald.ca

OR:

Bev Dauphinee
Letters Editor
(902) 426-2811 ext 2839

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Princeton Prof: Fetuses are Like Plants, They Don't "Count Morally In The Way That People Do"

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

PRINCETON, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "Look, when we think about ending an early human life, this is something that is really bad for the embryo or early fetus that dies, it's losing out tremendously-I agree with that as I already said. And then you said that it's one of the things that we should care about. And, um, I think that I should have said before that I think it's really dangerous to slide from noticing that something is bad for something, to thinking that that gives us a moral reason. And just to prove that that doesn't follow, think about plants. So lots of things are bad for trees, and plants, and flowers, and often that gives us no reasons whatsoever, certainly no moral reasons. In my view, fetuses that die before they're ever conscious really are a lot like plants: They're living things, but there's nothing about them that would make us think that they count morally in the way that people do."

So argued Princeton philosophy professor Elizabeth Harman at last week's symposium at Princeton University titled "Is It Wrong to End Early Human Life?" that included well respected philosophers and bioethicists who represented both sides of the abortion and embryo- destruction debate.

In an essay about the symposium published in First Things, Ryan T. Anderson summarized the arguments presented and praised the civility and dignity with which the participants offered their arguments and rebuttals.

"It has been through exchanges such as this one, for example, that the pro-life side has refined its argument to the intellectually persuasive position that it is today. And championing this developed argument has its effects-on the young, who are consistently polled as being more pro-life than their parents' generation, and even on older converts, like NARAL cofounder Bernard Nathanson," Mr. Anderson observed.

The rational high ground was achieved by the pro-life participants, as Mr. Anderson commented that "... the pro-life argument was every bit as intellectually sophisticated as the pro-choice alternatives- indeed, from my perspective it is more coherent and more plausible, since it did not entail bizarre premises ("I was never an embryo" - a postulation presented by Jeff McMahan of Rutgers who argued that some threshold has to be crossed in human development before we exist, which drew noticeable (and decidedly skeptical) chuckles from the audience) or repulsive conclusions (such as the moral legitimacy of infanticide)."

"None of the panelists announced a change of heart under the pressure of criticism. Each stuck to his or her guns while probing for weaknesses in the alternative positions. Still, it must be said that the internal inconsistencies among the various pro-choice views was telling: Whereas the pro-choice panelists all agreed that there was nothing wrong with killing an unborn baby, they couldn't agree on why. And their internal disagreements actually undermined aspects of their competing pro-choice views. Some of the pro-choicers resisted the utilitarianism of Peter Singer, some of them resisted the dualism of Jeff McMahan, all of them seemed to resist the "actual future" theory of Elizabeth Harman."

Mr. Anderson commented that the intellectually honest reflection offered at the discussion was a rare achievement.

"Though ethical disagreement about such important matters as killing human beings, restricting women's liberty, and forestalling scientific research often generate more heat than light, one of this panel's many virtues was its consistent civility. The participants themselves stressed that intelligent and reflective people of goodwill can and do disagree. Eschewing ad hominem attacks, they opted to offer arguments and rebuttals, a mutual exchange whose currency is reason. This brought to mind Fr. John Courtney Murray's famous remark that "disagreement is a rare achievement, and most of what is called disagreement is simply confusion." So it is a credit to the panelists that the discussion was marked by a lack of confusion, albeit much disagreement."

Ryan T. Anderson's essay "The Rare Achievement of Disagreement" is available here:
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1065

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Coast Guard Relents, Allows Officer to Refuse Abortion-Tainted Vaccine

WASHINGTON, DC, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - U.S. Coast Guard officials who initially refused to excuse an officer from being injected with a vaccine derived from an aborted child have relented in the wake of a lawsuit filed on behalf of the officer by Alliance Defense Fund attorneys. The U.S. Coast Guard had refused to grant an exemption for Officer Joseph J. Healy, who is Catholic, even though it allows exemptions based on other religious beliefs.

"Christians shouldn't be punished for abiding by their beliefs against abortion.  The Coast Guard has done the right thing in recognizing that those who lay their life on the line to defend our shores are entitled to same freedom as anyone else not to have their particular beliefs disregarded," said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman.

"Members of the U.S. military should never be forced to make an unconstitutional choice between honoring their country and adhering to the belief that health and medicine can prosper without exploiting the killing of preborn children," Bowman said.

In May 2006, the Coast Guard, which requires its personnel to be vaccinated against a variety of diseases, ordered all active-duty personnel to receive one of two vaccines against Hepatitis A or show proof of immunity.  The vaccines are derived from cells taken from the lung tissue of a child who was electively aborted at 14 weeks gestation and then dissected.  The Coast Guard allows religious exemptions for those who hold a "religious tenet or belief contrary to immunization."

In compliance with Coast Guard requirements, Healy, a lieutenant commander, submitted a memo requesting religious exemption based on his Catholic faith and strong opposition to abortion.  In response, a higher ranking officer denied the request because he disagreed with Healy's theology, claiming that Catholic teaching "does not state that these immunizations are against the religious tenets of the Catholic Church."

Friday, the Coast Guard notified the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that it will grant Healy a religious exemption.  As a result, ADF attorneys plan to file a motion to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit they filed Jan. 2, Healy v. United States Coast Guard (http://www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=4348).

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Time Magazine: "Want to wreck the environment? Have a baby." - Prince Philip Concurs

LONDON, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A feature in the current issue of Time Magazine asks a rhetorical question, "What's an an environmentally conscious parent to do?" Time's Pamela Paul gives the response most frequently pushed by radical environmentalists, saying the answer is 'don't have children'. In a television interview this week, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, concurs, saying the recent increase in global food prices is due to too many children. At the same time, the Italian Prime Minister is seeking ways to turn around his country's disastrously low birth rate that currently stands at well below replacement level.
 
"Want to wreck the environment?" the Time feature starts, "Have a baby."
 
"Each bundle of joy gobbles up more of the planet's food, clogs garbage dumps with diapers, churns through plastic toys and winds up a gas-guzzling, resource-consuming grown-up like the rest of us. Still, babies are awfully cute. Given that most people still intend to procreate, what's an environmentally conscious parent to do?"
 
The Duke of Edinburgh followed the same environmentalist playlist when he said this week that the only way to save the planet is for people to stop having babies.
 
Prince Philip told a television interviewer this week that the solution to the burgeoning global food crisis is simply to have fewer mouths to feed. The prince, who has four children, said, "Food prices are going up. Everyone thinks it's to do with not enough food, but it's really that demand is too great - too many people."
 
In recent months, food prices have risen dramatically around the world and economists are struggling to identify the reason. Most have said it is the result of rising oil prices which have affected the cost fertilizers, food transport, and industrial agriculture.
 
The prince admitted that implementation of a massive population control movement might be a problem for governments. "Basically, it's a little embarrassing for everybody. No one quite knows how to handle it. Nobody wants their family life to be interfered with by the government."
 
Indeed, the only governments to try a systematic programme of population control are known to be among the world's most oppressive regimes. The communist government of China has had its One Child policy in place since 1979 when it was put in place ostensibly to alleviate social and environmental problems. The result has been social unrest, arrests of pregnant women and forced abortions and state-sponsored infanticide.
 
It has also caused a massive and likely incurable imbalance in the population's sex ratio in favour of boys and resulted in a dramatic aging of the population. The Chinese government, while maintaining the One Child policy, is now struggling to find answers to the problem of millions of elderly with few children grown to adulthood to care for them.
 
Ironically, Prince Philip's wish has already come true. Currently the British birth rate stands at approximately 1.66 births per woman, well below the 2.1 level at which a population is sustained naturally.
 
Meanwhile, the recently elected Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, is casting about for ways to stop the plummeting of the Italian birth rate. He told journalists today that he would try to remove "material reasons" that push women to seek abortions. In his inaugural speech before parliament, Berlusconi promised "new and important expenditures for demographic development".
 
Italy is facing a demographic crisis. The country once noted for its fervent Catholicism and dedication to large families, is aging as the birth rate drops. Italy is now the "greyest" country in the European Union, with the highest "ageing index," according to the Italian National Statistics Institute (Istat).
 
Istat estimates that the birth rate has climbed slightly from 1995 to 2005, from 1.19 births per woman to 1.32, but the government agency said this was almost entirely the result of immigration.
 
Government interference with family life has long been a major goal of the environmental movement's population control goals through enforced abortion, contraception and sterilization. It is axiomatic among environmentalists that the human population would outstrip the world's food supply.
 
Last year, Paul Watson, founder and president of the radical Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, denounced the "human virus" said that a "radical and invasive approach" was required. Watson who has called human beings the "AIDS of the Earth" said, "Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach."
 
In 2007, the UK's leading population control lobbyist group, the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), issued a warning of environmental disaster if British couples do not restrict themselves to a two-child maximum.
 
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Government Must Institute Two-Child Policy says Leading UK Population Control Group
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07071201.html
 
Environmentalist Extremists Call Humanity Virus, a Cancer, Large Families Guilty of "Eco-Crime"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/may/07050812.html

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UK Efforts to Lower Abortion Age Limit will Backfire with More Abortions than Ever

Conservative Health Spokesman Confirms

By Hilary White
 
LONDON, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Conservative party’s health spokesman has called for abortion-on-demand in Britain in the early stages of pregnancy, confirming fears from pro-life groups that attempts to lower the legal gestational age limit for abortion would backfire.
 
In yesterday’s Commons debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, Conservative shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley told the House that “there continue to be far too many abortions”, and that therefore it is “better for it to be an early, medical abortion than a later, surgical one.”
 
At Monday’s second reading MPs voted 340 to 78 for the bill. This means it will go back to committee for further study and amendments. 
 
At the same time, some MPs continue to press for an amendment that would lower the legal gestational age for abortion from its current 24 weeks to 22 or 20 weeks. The leader of this movement, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, has said that she has no essential moral objection to abortion, but has said that lowering the age limit would “slow down” abortion.  
 
Experienced pro-life advocates in Britain have warned repeatedly that any attempt to bring in an amendment to the HFE bill to lower the gestational age limit would result in a situation of near-lawlessness.
 
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) are warning that with nearly all abortions already being committed within the 20 week proposed limit, lowering the legal age limit would accomplish little in saving lives, and could only be achieved by MPs agreeing to remove all existing restrictions on early-term abortions, such as the requirement to have two doctors sign approval.
 
Lansley confirmed this fear when he told MPs he would seek to make it easier for women to have an abortion at an early stage, while lowering the time limit for late procedures.
 
The term “medical abortion” was developed by the abortion lobby and media to refer to the use of the abortion drug RU-486. Lansley continued,  “I therefore hope that the House will consider whether the  requirement for two doctors to consent to an abortion being performed, and the restrictions on nurses providing medical abortions, needs to be maintained”.
 
In a further indication that this would do nothing to restrict abortions and would succeed only in increasing the availability of abortion, the Labour government indicated it would not oppose the move, meaning it will almost certainly be passed.
 
Pro-life groups are asking the public to contact their MPs to ask them to defeat the bill in its entirety.
 
Even unamended, the bill will allow human cloning, the creation of human/animal hybrid clones, the use of living human embryos for experimentation and will abolish the requirement that children created by artificial means have a father.
 
Meanwhile, public opinion is against most of the provisions of the bill. According to a ComRes poll, 79 per cent think it is important to consider a child's need for a father in IVF; 60 per cent think it is wrong to create animal-human embryos; and 51 per cent agree that the creation of 'saviour sibling' embryos to be used in medical treatment, denies the child a choice in how its body is used.
 
Amendments from more overtly pro-abortion MPs are also being put forward. Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris said the bill should allow the creation of children from artificial ova and sperm for “reproductive” purposes, not just experimentation. The method involves reprogramming adult cells to develop into either sperm or ova.
 
This would allow the creation of children from artificially derived gametes from same-sex “partners”. A group of scientists is lobbying the MPs to have the bill amended to allow artificial sperm and eggs to be used in fertility treatment.
 
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

UK Committee Recommends RU-486 and Scrapping Two Doctor Requirement for Abortion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/oct/07103107.html
 
909 British Babies Born and Survive Under 24-Week Legal Age Limit for Abortion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08032710.html
 
To find out who your MP is and how to contact him or her:
http://www.spuc.org.uk/mps
(SPUC recommends lobbying parliamentarians by post rather than via the internet/by email, because parliamentarians are more likely to read, take seriously and reply to postal letters.)
 
To contact Nadine Dorries:
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Phone: 020 7219 4239
Fax: 020 7219 6428
dorriesn@parliament.uk

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New Online Video Details Suppression of Any Mention of Christianity in Texas Public Schools

By Michael Baggot

TUPELO, MS, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new program from the American Family Association (AFA) revealed on Saturday what Texas has done to address the widespread suppression of Christians' right to religious expression in public schools.

"Lone Star Justice," the sixth episode of AFA's "Speechless…Silencing the Christians" series, outlined the numerous violations of religious liberty Christians have endured in the state's public school.

Hazel Pattison Elementary School student Kendall Pounds recounted being admonished for mentioning Jesus when asked about the meaning of Easter.

Kendall's mother Dawn reported her alarm when her daughter's school prohibited participants in its "Winter Party" from wishing one another a "Merry Christmas."

Dawn was told that the country was not founded on Judeo-Christian principles and that the school needed to remain neutral regarding religion, even though the school allowed students to color images of Kwanzaa, Ramadan, and Hanukah.

Another parent recounted how the daughter of a local associate pastor was told to "tell daddy to keep his job at work" after she shared a poem about Jesus in class.

Christian persecution in Texas extended beyond Pattison.

Students in the Plano school district were told that they couldn't write "Merry Christmas" in letters sent to troops overseas.  Another Plano district student had his "Jesus loves you" pencils confiscated when he tried to pass them out after the school day was over.

In a one meeting with the community, the Plano superintendent even admitted to plans to "shut down religious speech" in school.

The program went on to attribute the suppression of religious speech to an unconstitutional notion of the separation of church and state used to prohibit Christians from expressing their beliefs in the public square.

As the program noted, the phrase "separation of church and state" is not found in the US Constitution, but instead originated in a 1802 Thomas Jefferson address to Baptists meant to quell fears that the US government would impose a single religion on its citizenry.

In response to attacks on religious speech in public schools, Texas became the first state to pass a law devoted exclusively to protecting students' freedom of religious expression.

Last June, Governor Rick Perry signed the Religious Viewpoint Anti-Discrimination Act (RVADA), also Schoolchildren's Religious Liberties Act, to protect voluntary expression of religious viewpoints of the state's 4.5 million public schools students.

The RVADA outlines students' rights to express their religious viewpoints in homework, art, school speeches. The act also protects students' right to organize religious extra-curricular activities with the same access to school facilities as non-religious activities are afforded.

"Schools are not faith-free zones, and teachers shouldn't be asked to be prayer police. Rather, schools are required to ensure a level playing field in treating student's voluntary religious expression the same as all other expression. This bill settles the issue once and for all," stated religious liberties advocate attorney Kelly Coghlan.
 
Each episode of the "Speechless…Silencing the Christians" series can be accessed for free on the SilencingChristians.com after its initial Saturday airing.

View "Lone Star Justice" and learn more about the series:
http://www.silencingchristians.com

Learn about protecting religious expression in your state:
http://capwiz.com/afanet/issues/alert/?alertid=11352286

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