PERTH, WA: June 13, 1991
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Abortion holocaust
POPE REMINDS FELLOW POLES OF THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT RADOM Poland: Abortion cries out against the fifth commandment's injunction not to kill, Pope John Paul told his fellow Poles during a nine-day visit. He said that abortion also violated the fourth commandement's obligation on parents to accept their children, who are not intruders or aggressors, even if unplanned. Pope John Paul said he was using the Ten Corn-
mandments as the track of his fourth journey to his homeland. He condemned the liberal abortion laws of Poland and linked aborted foetuses and the Jews murdered in the Holocaust as victims of 20th century cruelty. "What human institution, what parliament has the right to legalise the killing of an innocent and defenceless human being?" Under a liberal abortion
law enacted by the communists in 1956, some 600,000 abortions are performed every year in Poland, a country which is 95 per cent Catholic. A bill which would have banned abortion was tabled indefinitely by the Polish parliament along with a proposal to subject it to a national referendum. Poland has had firsthand experience with widespread violations of
the commandement "Thou shalt not kill", the pope said in a continuing series of talks about the Ten Commandements. "Among these outrages, particularly appalling were the systematic killings of entire nations — of Jews in particular," he said. "Among the nations of Europe, the Polish people had an exceptionally large share of suffering in this bloodoffering," he said. The Nazis built most of
their extermination camps in Poland. Most of the 3.3 million Jews living in Poland were killed within the country's borders. "'The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn," the pope said. They are "the defenceless whose faces even their own mothers had not seen before accepting, or being pres-
sured into accepting, that their lives be taken away from them before the birth", he said. Pope John Paul told his fellow Poles he had seen the film, "The Silent which Scream", "recorded a desperate defence by an unborn child in the womb of his mother". "It is hard to visualise a more appalling drama," he said. The American film, using ultrasound images,
shows an abortion by dilation and evacuation, which dismembers the foetus. It was released in 1985 by Dr Bernard Nathanson, a former abortion activist who become a pro-life advocate. The pope asked those gathered at the Mass to do all they could to help women "accept with joy their child who — speaking in human terms — has arrived, shall we say, at the wrong moment".
Blessing by bishop Pictured is the widened transept and new sanctuary of St Columba's church Bayswater blessed by Bishop Healy last Sunday. See Page 3 for another picture and what the bishop said, and more on Pages 14 and 15.
Honour your father and mother, one million told KIELCE Poland: At a windy evening Mass attended by an estimated one million people, the pope moved on to the commandment to "honour your father and mother". The commandment "secures the basic good of
the community", because families are its foundation, he said. Setting aside his prepared text and raising his voice the pope said: "This is my homeland, you are my brothers and sisters." Those who "treat mor-
ality so frivolously" share responsibility for the breakup of the family and "plunge" the country into immorality. Poles know from their experience under communism that the "original evil which is dormant
in the soul of each and every person, and which at its base is coupled with the rejection of the fatherhood of God, manifests itself frequently in an upset moral order in matrimony and the family". Endless quarrels, sepa-
ration, divorce and the "excessive consumption of alcohol" have all hit Polish families, he said. "Behind the statistics, analyses and descriptions there stands a human being, complete with the tragedy of his heart, his life and his
vocation." Parents have to be deserving of the honour which the commandement asks of children, he said. Children must be accepted with love and not seen as "a mere material encumbrance and a hazard to their
stabilisation" or as a 'costly and redundant appendage". "You cannot strengthen the enfeebled family ties, you cannot heal the wounds inflicted by human weakness and sin unless you return to Christ," he said.
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