TELFORD, England, March 14, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – At the International Pro-Life Youth Conference in Telford, England last weekend, nearly 100 pro-life youth leaders hailing mostly from universities around Europe were challenged to join the “revolution” against the culture of death.
Dr. Thomas Ward, a long-standing member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and the founder and vice-president of the National Association of Catholic Families, gave a riveting address warning the youth in no uncertain terms that, “It is not impossible that all laws protecting the family, human sexuality, the unborn will be removed in the European Union and elsewhere.”
“The only protectors of your family from a coercive state will then be you parents, the Primary Educators and Protectors of your children,” added Dr. Ward.
The doctor continued:
Throughout the world two paradigms, or complete blue prints for families are at total war — The Civilization of Love and the Culture of Death. And in this the year of the Canonisation of Pope John Paul, the Great I wish to propose to you your life’s work: Revolution. A revolution in which you replace today's Culture of Death of aggressive, atheistic, wealthy, Western elites with a new Civilisation of Love based on God and upon your marriages and future families.
The caliber of the students in attendance was impressive including many youth leaders who founded pro-life groups in their own nations. Youth present travelled from all over England, Scotland (including the Shetland and Orkney Isles), Wales, France, Malta, Spain, and Romania for the weekend.
Other speakers included Dr. William Newton of the Austrian campus of Franciscan University Steubenville, John-Henry Westen of LifeSiteNews, and Dr. Helen Watt from the Anscombe Bioethics Centre. Also speaking was SPUC Chief Executive John Smeaton, SPUC Chairman and solicitor Robin Haig, bioethicist Anthony McCarthy, UN lobbyist Pat Buckley, and researcher and novelist Fiorella Nash. The talks were well received, and will appear on the SPUC YouTube channel in the near future.
Conference organizers saw to it that the most difficult questions in the culture war were addressed, knowing that the youth would have to face such questions as they spread the truth on life and family. Dr. Newton, for instance, in his talk spoke of contraception as “the lynch-pin in a cultural revolution that has abortion as one of its effects.” He explained that “contraception uncouples (in the mind of the individual who accept it as normal behaviour) the relationship of sexual intercourse to babies and to life long commitment: in a word, it trivializes sex. Trivial sex, in turn, leads inevitably to unwanted pregnancies, which inexorably leads to abortion.”
Smeaton closed the conference candidly, informing the youth about the controversies within the Catholic Church that are harming the proclamation of the Gospel of Life. “We’re up against evil,” he said.
He called on pro-lifers to work together and remember to pray, just as secular culture still prays in time of war. “This abortion war is the most costly war in all history,” he concluded.