Filling our city with the fragrance of the Gospel of Life

Clive Christian No. 1 Perfume Imperial Majesty Edition

Imagine taking a whole bottle of  Clive Christian No. 1, and pouring it all over someone's feet.  You probably wouldn't dab as little as a drop of it on your own feet.  Clive Christian No. 1 is the world's most expensive perfume, with a price tag of over $200 000 per bottle.  At that price, most people would say that's a waste.  What an inefficient way to spend money. What good would it do?
Last week as I was sidewalk counselling on Bank street,  a passerby, a young woman, visibly angered, took the brochure I offered her and proceeded to tear it up, saying, "Why don't you get a REAL job and make yourself useful".

My outward reaction was as meek and humble as I could make it. I insisted that we were offering real help to women as I picked up the torn up brochure she had just thrown on the ground and put it in the garbage bin. 

Inwardly, though, I struggled.  She had hit a sore spot.  "Why don't you make yourself useful" -- ouch!  -- that hurt.  It hurt because on that day, a rainy, cold and windy day, my efforts seemed to amount to nothing, as  I had to watch the endless spectacle of child after child being brought to the killing chamber while my efforts to reach out to their mothers was met with indifference. On that morning, I was battling with a sense of futility. 

As I pondered her words and their effect on me, I was reminded of an experience my husband and I had while praying during the first 40 Days for Life campaign in Ottawa, back in the fall of 2008.  It was a Friday night, close to midnight.  A group of revellers were walking by,  in transit between two night-clubs, when they stopped to speak to us, curious to find out we were praying on the street at that time of day. 

One of them said "I agree with your position, but I think you're going about it the wrong way.  Standing here in the middle of the night, praying is not going to get you results.  You need to do something that will give you more bang for your buck".  That seems sensible enough, but it's wrong-headed.  It's the cult of efficiency.

The cult of efficiency overcome by the fragrance of the Gospel of Life

John-Paul II in Evangelium Vitae (section 12) explains the source of the culture of death as being "an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency."  He goes on to say that it is "a war of the powerful against the weak. (...) A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style of those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated."

Countering the culture of death and the cult of efficiency requires sacrifice, lavish self-sacrifice.  We must be like Mary, the sister of Lazarus,  who poured a whole jar of expensive perfume on Jesus' feet, filling the house with its fragrance. It wasn't Clive Christian No. 1, but she did use the costliest and purest she could find. 

Spending our time (a precious commodity in our busy society) praying at Ground Zero is like pouring perfume on Jesus' feet. He did say "what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me" (Mt 25:45)

The Beatitudes   are a lesson in inefficiency

• Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
• Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land. 
• Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted. 
• Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill. 
• Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. 
• Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. 
• Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. 
• Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  

That's what we do when we go to Ground Zero

• We sacrifice our own power, our own strength by praying to God, acknowledging his infinite power and strength. 
• We give a voice to the powerless, the weakest among us,  by meekly standing up in their defence. 
• We mourn for those whose human dignity has been violated -- our tears like perfume on the feet of Jesus. 
• We publicly denounce the injustice of the culture of death. 
• We offer mercy to those who are caught up in this evil. 
• We uphold a vision of purity and bring God's presence in the public square. 
• We renounce any use of violence (physical or verbal) to achieve our means. 
• We are willing to endure the insults heaped upon us for defending the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters. 

It is not the whole solution, it is not the only means of combating the culture of death, but it is necessary. Someone has to stand up to denounce the killing and to break the stranglehold that indifference and the cult of efficiency has on our fellow citizens. Someone has to show that these little ones are worth the time we spend there, time seemingly wasted from a human point of view, but in the eternal scheme of things, infinitely precious.
Most importantly, we are there to pray, thereby giving God his due in a world that refuses to acknowledge Him.

Mary spent a year's wages on Jesus.  That's 8760 hours.  Would you be willing to spend one hour? Let us not be distracted by the Judases who complain that we could be more efficient with our time and resources (i.e. sell the perfume for 300 denarii -- a year's wages in New Testament times) for we don't necessarily see the fruits of our efforts. Many of those fruits are spiritual and probably delayed in time. Spiritual things tend to take longer to come to fruition.
Going to Ground Zero is not an option, it is a duty.  We cannot be content with just showing up at the March for Life once a year.  That is like a Christian only going to church at Christmas. It just doesn't cut it. 

Every generation of Christians has had to be counter-cultural where the culture is most sinful.  This is where the rubber hits the road, where the going gets toughest.  Will we be tough enough to get going?
God is calling us to this work.  He is calling some of us to specific tasks in this work.  May we respond generously, with a full jar of perfume and may it fill our city with the fragrance of the Gospel of Life.

---

Free screening of "Nefarious: Merchant of Souls" coming to Ottawa region

Nefarious:" Merchant of Souls" 

A documentary shedding light on the reality of human trafficking in our world, as many as 2 million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade (US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report 2011).

Let us educate ourselves in order to stop this exploitation.

Now is the time.

Come out to Holy Spirit Catholic Church,

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013 at 6:30pm

1489 Shea Road, Stittsville, Ont.

Dianne Van Der Putten of CHRI Christian radio station will be presenting the film.

There will be a question period after.
 Spread the word, bring your friends and attend the free screening, you won't regret the investment of your time.

Stephanie Gray (of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform) in Ottawa January 24th, 2013

The Abortion Debate:  A Scientific and Philosophical Review

Come out on Thursday January 24th, to hear international speaker Stephanie Gray, of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. Stephanie has spoken across Canada, in the U.S., England, Latvia, and Costa Rica, and has formally debated abortionists, university professors, and activists about abortion. She will give a scientific and philosophical review of the abortion debate, followed by a question and answer period.

Date: Thursday, January 24th, 2013

Time: 7:30p.m.

Location:  Albert the Great Hall
               Dominican University
               96 Empress Avenue
               Ottawa ON-- 

Click on either image below to download poster:

Pro-life Mass and Rosary Procession

Saturday, September 8th, 2012 From St. Patrick's Basilica to abortion facility at 65 Bank St.

Times (approx.) are as follows :

8:00 am - Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

• St. Patrick's Basilica (corner of Kent and Nepean Streets)

8:30 am - Holy Rosary Procession

• Prayerful and peaceful procession to abortion facility at 65 Bank St.

• Holy Rosary, Prayers and Hymns (Total walking approx. 12 blocks)

10:00 am - Eucharistic Benediction

• Return to St. Patrick's for Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament

• Refreshments and social to follow.

Please join us - you really do make all the difference.Bring a friend.
For those who are unable to come in person, please be with us in prayer.

← To download a poster, click the image to the left: To download small flyers, click on the image to the right: →

Pro-Life Mass and Rosary Procession

Saturday June 16th, 2012
From St. Patrick's Basilica to abortion facility at 65 Bank St.

Lead by Fr. Daryl Kennedy

Times (approx.) are as follows :

8:00 am - Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

• Offered by Fr. Daryl Kennedy at St. Patrick's Basilica

• (corner of Kent and Nepean Streets)

8:30 am - Holy Rosary Procession

• Prayerful and peaceful procession to abortion facility at 65 Bank St.

• Holy Rosary, Prayers and Hymns (Total walking approx. 12 blocks)

10:00 am - Eucharistic Benediction

• Return to St. Patrick's for Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament

• Refreshments and social to follow.

Please join us - you really do make all the difference.Bring a friend.
For those who are unable to come in person, please be with us in prayer.


To download a poster, click on the image below.

Abortion is idolatry

Here's a speech I gave at the 40 Days for Life - Mid-point Rally in Ottawa:

If you've been following the news on the 40 Days for Life website, you'll have seen an article posted by Shawn Carney, Campaign Director of the 40 Days for Life in the US. He writes about abortion workers' peculiar view of the work they do. He describes a banner located just above the entrance to the Planned Parenthood facility in Virginia Beach, which reads: "Planning for Parenthood is Sacred Work".
I guess, depending on what one is worshipping, what one's worldview is, abortion can be considered sacred work.
One example of such a worldview is Warren Hern, an abortionist in Boulder Colorado and the author of a book entitled Abortion Practice which is used as a reference in medical schools for teaching the abortion procedure. A visit to his website www.drhern.com gives us quite an insight into his worldview.
Warren Hern believes that the human race is literally devouring the planet. Under the heading: Homo Ecophagus - The human species as a malignant process he lists a few of his works:
A 1993 article, in Current World Leaders, entitled: Has the human species become a cancer on the planet?: A theoretical view of population growth as a sign of pathology.
More recently, in 2008, in the International Journal of Anthropology, an article entitled: Urban Malignancy - Similarity in the fractal dimensions of urban morphology and malignant neoplasms.
In a 1990 article in the journal Population and Environment, titled : Why are there so many of us?  Description and diagnosis of a planetary ecopathological process, he describes the similarities he sees between urban growth and the spread of a cancerous tumour:

Because spectacular growth and invasiveness are outstanding characteristics of the human population, the similarity of the human species to a cancerous process comes readily to mind, especially to a physician. A schematic view of the growth of London from 1800 to 1955 looks like nothing so much as an expanding, invasive, metastatic, malignant tumor.

This abortionist's worldview would be laughable were it not for the dire consequences his thinking has for the unborn and also for the fact that it is being taken seriously in academic circles.
In yet another article, he takes pride in the efficiency of his abortion work:

One of the principal advantages of this procedure for patients, aside from safety, is the freedom from having to experienced (sic) unattended expulsion of a fetus that may or may not show signs of life. Delivery of the fetus or uterine evacuation is performed by the physician under controlled conditions.

Blessed John Paul II, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, rightly identified the idolatry of efficiency as the foundation of the culture of death. He wrote: "This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency." (section 12)
G.K. Chesterton, in his book The Everlasting Man demonstrated how this cult of efficiency finds its religious expression. He stated,

To start with, some impulse, perhaps a sort of desperate impulse, drove men to the darker powers when dealing with practical problems. There was a sort of secret and perverse feeling that the darker powers would really do things; that they had no nonsense about them. (Part 1, chapter 6)

He describes Phonecia as one such civilization:

The civilization that centered in Tyre and Sidon was above all things practical. It (...) prided itself upon being very efficient; and it followed in its philosophy and religion that strange and sometimes secret train of thought which we have already noted in those who look for immediate effects. (Part 1, chapter 6)

In (...)Carthage, as in the parent cities of Phoenicia, the god who got things done bore the name Moloch. (Part 1, chapter 7)

Speaking about this false worship in various civilizations such as the Aztecs, Chesterton notes that there is a certain “anti-human antagonism”, even a “mystical hatred of the idea of childhood” in this idolatry. (Part 1, chapter 6)
Another fact of interest, the child sacrificing cultures seem to be mostly highly advanced and refined cultures, as is ours. For this false worship has not disappeared, it has been a constant throughout human history: Pharaoh's decree to kill all firstborn Hebrew males, Herod's massacre of the Innocents, the Aztec's continuous blood-shed to the deity with the unpronouncable name, the Canaanites and Phoenician sacrifice to Moloch and the Roman practice of infanticide, just to name a few.
Today, abortion is also considered a sacrament by its adherents. In 1992, French-Canadian author Ginette Paris, published a book entitled The Sacrament of Abortion. In it, she claims that abortion is a sacred act, a sacrifice to the goddess Artemis (known in the Roman empire as Diana). She ponders:

The same goddess thus offers protection and also death to women, children, and animals. Why these apparent contradictions ... personified in a feminine divinity? Is it a way of saying that a woman's protective power cannot function properly if she does not also possess full power, namely, the power over death as well as life? Her image belongs to us as well as to antiquity, because like all fundamental images of the human experience, which C.G. Jung called 'archetypes,' she never really ages but reappears in different forms and different symbols ... She encourages us to become more aware of the power of death, its inescapable nature, and its necessary role in a living ecology. Abortion is about love, life, and death.(p. 2)

Note here the parallels between her thinking and Warren Hern's extreme ecologism.
As can be seen by this book's product description on Amazon.com, this view of abortion as a sacrament has spread throughout the abortion industry.

Since its original publication, the book has been widely used in abortion clinics in Canada and in France and has even been given by some doctors to each and every women(sic) who had the procedure, along with pain killers. (Source)

There is an undeniable spiritual reality to abortion, infanticide and all human sacrifices that runs through human history and it hasn't disappeared, as Ginette Paris reminds us.
Fr. John Hardon told us that " behind the murder of unborn children is the superhuman mind and malevolent will of Satan and his minions. To know this is to also know that only divine power is a match for the demonic power behind abortion."
That divine power, that divine conquest of Satan and death happened at Calvary. There, Jesus-Christ, God Incarnate, offered himself as a perfect sacrifice. This divine sacrifice is the only hope for the human race. We are now at a crossroads in our country. Unless we as a society regain our collective sanity, we will continue along this path of self-destruction. Make no mistake, unless our culture radically turns towards the Triune God, it will sink into despair and destruction. The false gods are insatiable - sooner or later, they will consume their own worshippers.
Let us then turn our eyes towards Jesus-Christ, for He is our Strength. As we read in Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains; where is my help to come from?
My help comes from Yahweh who made heaven and earth.
May he save your foot from stumbling; may he, your guardian, not fall asleep!
You see -- he neither sleeps nor slumbers, the guardian of Israel.
Yahweh is your guardian, your shade, Yahweh, at your right hand.
By day the sun will not strike you, nor the moon by night.
Yahweh guards you from all harm Yahweh guards your life,
Yahweh guards your comings and goings, henceforth and for ever.

Perverted justice - set right through virtue

 (Here's my speech at the 40 Days for Life opening rally in Ottawa on September 25th, 2011)

How long, Yahweh, am I to cry for help while you will not listen;
to cry, 'Violence!' in your ear while you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrong-doing,
why do you countenance oppression?
Plundering and violence confront me,
contention and discord flourish.
And so the law loses its grip
and justice never emerges,
since the wicked outwits the upright
and so justice comes out perverted. (Hab.1:1-4)

Justice did indeed come out perverted on September 9th, 2011 when a judge in Edmonton, Justice Joanne Veit, gave Katrina Effert a three-year suspended sentence for the killing of her newborn son in 2005.
Justice Veit based her decision on the fact that Canada has no abortion law. She states:

while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support.[1]

She added:

Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother.[1]

You can't really blame Justice Veit for thinking that Canadians are so accepting of abortion as to accept infanticide along with it. All she has to go on is the mantra of our political class and mainstream media that the debate on abortion is closed. I hope this will serve as a wake-up call for our politicians, particularly Stephen Harper.
Let. The. Debate. Take. Place.
We don't really know what Canadians want, for this debate has not yet been allowed to happen. Abortion is not a political football to be kicked around. To do nothing about this issue is to endorse the status quo - which is also to endorse infanticide.
Equating abortion to infanticide is nothing new for abortion proponents. In 1972, before Roe v. Wade, Michael Tooley, of Stanford University was already defending abortion AND infanticide.
In 1993, Peter Singer of Princeton University, an advocate for both abortion and infanticide, admitted that "the liberal search for a morally crucial dividing line between the newborn baby and the fetus has failed to yield any event or stage of development that can bear the weight of separating those with a right to life from those who lack such a right."[2]
Some feminist and pro-abortion thinkers have at least recognized the humanity of the unborn. In 1995, Naomi Wolf wrote:

So, what will it be: Wanted fetuses are charming, complex REM-dreaming little beings whose profile on the sonogram looks just like Daddy, but unwanted ones are mere "uterine material"? How can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real?[3]

In 2008, author Camille Paglia stated:

...I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.[4]

This reasoning, although quite lucid because it actually looks abortion in the eye without resorting to euphemisms, is appalling for its irrationnality. To advocate for the extermination of the powerless by the powerful is nothing other than what Dr. Bernard Nathanson called the Eclipse of Reason.
Faced with Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell's late-term abortions and infanticides, a case the media has called the "House of Horrors", some, such as Frances Kissling and William Saletan, have chosen to take a step back and to question the rightness of late-term abortions. This has earned them some stern rebukes from fellow abortion proponents such as Ann Furedi, CEO of The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (the primary abortion provider in the United Kingdom) who insists that "early and late abortions carry the same moral burden because (...) all abortions end a potential human life." [5]
I could go on quoting many other abortion proponents but time is short. Having nothing to go on but their own rationalizations of the indefensible, abortion proponents show a lack logical consistency. Each trying to worm his or her way around the truth. Truth must correspond to reality, and the reality is that modern medicine has confronted us with the undeniable reality of human life in the womb. The pathetic attempts by the pro-abortion crowd to discredit and censor displays of intra-uterine life and graphic abortion pictures are a testimony to the fact that we have the truth on OUR side, all they have is power. But power is a very fickle god and will trample you underfoot as soon as you've served your purpose. Truth endures.
The culture of death is indeed about power - the powerful sacrificing the powerless. In the case of abortion and infanticide, the sacrifice is a consummation of the ideology of sexual anarchy, which, by divorcing sex from its procreative power, leads to a kind of sexual bulimia of bingeing and purging.

How are we to undo this?

We know we have the truth on our side, but have we the virtue? This culture of death will only be overcome by self-sacrifice. Those of us who are strong and able must sacrifice ourselves for the most vulnerable.
The unborn need us. They need us to be their voices, to stand in their defense, to make real and immediate their humanity to those who would "exterminate" them and to the indifferent masses. The abortuaries, particularly, are where the innocent are being put to death. This is where we must go again and again, as long as the killing takes place.
May we not be found wanting in virtue.

What should be our attitude?

Firstly, we must go as embassadors of Christ, to extend His mercy to those enslaved in the culture of death. We must remove from our presence anything that would prevent those going to or working in the abortuary from experiencing in us the unconditional merciful love of God for them.
At the foot of the Cross of Christ, Mary, John and the others were not chatting or shouting or condemning, but were in prayer and fasting with love and compassion. Just as Jesus did not die alone, but was surrounded by prayer, may we surround the unborn with prayer, compassion and love in their final hours on this earth.
Secondly, we must be what Msgr Philip Reilly, founder of the Helpers of God's Precious Infants, calls sidewalk contemplatives. This quiet, peaceful presence at the abortuary is a radical departure from the idolatry of movement and expediency which drive the culture of death.
As sidewalk contemplatives, we sacrifice ourselves, we sacrifice our time, for what?
To be still.
We stop all activity in order to pray for those enslaved in the culture of death. We forego the next appointment, the phone calls, the texting, and stand still in the midst of the rush of the busy city.
In this stillness, we are also willing to suffer.
In this stillness, the wind will whip around us, the days will become cold and bleak, and even those enslaved by the culture of death will seem to ignore us.
Then will come the temptation to say to ourselves "Is this the best use of my time? Am I really being effective?"
These questions might have popped into the minds of Mary, John and Mary Magdalen as they followed Jesus up to Golgotha. Maybe they could have been more effective by going to the authorities to stop this madness. Maybe their time might have been better used in trying to gather some support to free Jesus.
Mary, John and Mary Magdalen knew better though. Following the example of Jesus embracing His Cross, they embraced their suffering, as we must on those difficult days praying at the abortuary, that modern day Golgotha. To be willing to suffer is to be willing to Love, and where Love is, death can have no victory.

The book of Habbakuk ends with:
But I shall rejoice in Yahweh,
I shall exult in God my Saviour.
Yahweh my Lord is my strength,
he will make my feet as light as a doe's,
and set my steps on the heights. (Hab. 3:18-19)

Our strength is in God our Saviour, not in politics, not in the media. Let us proclaim the truth in season and out of season. Let us also embody the truth of what love is. Love is to lay down one's life for others. Only on such virtue can a civilisation of love and a culture of life be built.

---

Sources cited:

[1]Infanticide conviction nets Alberta woman suspended sentence CBC News 9 sept. 2011
[2]Peter Singer, Practical Ethics 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 142
[3]Naomi Wolf, Our Bodies, Our Souls: Rethinking pro-choice rhetoric The New Republic 16 Oct. 1995
[4]Camille Paglia, Fresh blood for the vampire Salon.com. 10 Sep. 2008
[5]Ann Furedi, Late abortion: the new clash in the Choice Wars. Abortion Review. 3 March 2011.