10 minute read
From the editor
EDITOR Maria Madise
EDITORIAL BOARD Liam Gibson Matthew McCusker John Smeaton John-Henry Westen
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DESIGN & PRODUCTION EDITOR Selina Fang
EDITORIAL OFFICE VOICE OF THE FAMILY Unit B, 3 Whitacre Mews, Stannary Street, SE11 4AB, London, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)20 7820 3126 Email: editor@voiceofthefamily.com www.voiceofthefamily.com/calxmariae
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DISCLAIMER: Great care is taken to credit photos and seek permission before publishing. If you have a query regarding copyright, please contact the Editor. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission. Donations for the continuation of this magazine in print will be gratefully received by Voice of the Family at the address above or online via: www.voiceofthefamily.com/donate
Calx Mariae seeks to contribute to the rebuilding of Christian civilisation by providing features and analysis in the areas of life, family and culture. Our aim in producing this magazine is to strengthen our readers in the faith and in their witness to the truth about human life and the family. Calx Mariae is published by Voice of the Family, an international coalition of prolife and pro-family organisations formed in support of Catholic teaching on the family. The following truths are particularly at the heart of Voice of the Family’s work:
9 Marriage, the exclusive, life-long union of one man and one woman, is the foundation of a stable and flourishing society and is the greatest protector of children, born and unborn. 9 The procreative and unitive ends of the conjugal act cannot licitly be separated; the rejection of this truth lies at the root of modern attacks on life and the family. 9 Parents are the primary educators of their children and the protection of this right is essential for building a new
“culture of life”.
ISSN:2517-6455
2020 VOICE OF THE FAMILY ©
FROM THEeditor
As this extraordinary year now draws to a close, how it will be remembered depends largely on us. In this special endof-year editorial, I do not wish to discuss the course of the coronavirus crisis or how its exploitation has dominated 2020. Instead, I would like to reflect on the possible divine strategy that draws good out of evil and always works for the salvation of man.
The crisis this year has shaken the core desire of the secular culture: being in control. This year, we have not been able to maintain control in some of the most basic aspects of our daily life. Furthermore, we have been forcefully reminded of the threat, and some of us of the reality, of illness and death, a consequence of our fallen nature which will always be beyond our control.
Many have responded with fear and despair. But the Catholic attitude is never devoid of hope. Not infrequently, God uses physical illness to restore spiritual health.
In Fatima, our heavenly Mother said plainly: “Do not offend the Lord our God any more, because He is already so much offended.” If God was much offended in 1917, the situation has certainly not improved. On the contrary, we have multiplied the offences – not necessarily as individuals but as a people.
Would it not be justified for God to react? And considering the gravity of our offences, is this reaction not more merciful than we deserve? Could not this be God, in His infinite mercy, calling His people, who often appear to have abandoned the very foundations of the faith that saves them, back to Himself and the Truth which the Church teaches?
This year, the enemy seems to have made significant progress on several fronts. At the time of writing, in Britain, as in several other European countries, the lockdown continues. In Westminster, the Mother of Parliaments, a vote was taken which resulted in the suppression of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the first time since the Catholic Relief Act of 1791. And yet, the abortion industry is protected as an essential service and has even extended its reach into British homes, taking the killing of the unborn to an unprecedented level. When the children who have been born go to school, they are exposed to compulsory sex “education” that destroys their innocence, corrupts their minds with the LGBT ideology and signposts them to contraception and abortion without the knowledge of their parents. While international travel is tightly restricted, travelling to Switzerland for assisted suicide is regarded as sacrosanct.
Other European countries are also struggling. A snapshot of the streets of Poland this past October would show baptised “Catholics” defacing statues, vandalising churches, assaulting priests – all in retaliation for a judgment from the country’s highest court declaring it unconstitutional to kill an unborn child diagnosed with a disability.
And across the ocean, the American people are divided like never before in our living memory. In the US and all over the world, pro-life people were naturally deeply shaken by the prospect of a Joe Biden/Kamala Harris administration and its support for the slaughter of unborn children through all nine months of pregnancy.
But the darkness of this moment in world history has been made all the deeper by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in its rush to welcome Biden’s apparent victory. In a statement published on 7 November 2020, the USCCB said: “We congratulate Mr Biden and acknowledge that he joins the late President John F. Kennedy as the second United States president to profess the Catholic faith.”
Buried at the heart of this statement is the lie that we can shed innocent blood, promote it across the globe as a human right and yet profess to be Catholic. If we wish to stop offending God as a people, this lie must be uncovered and uprooted.
To profess the Catholic faith means to believe all that the Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God. We cannot promote abortion and other evils that flout God’s law and remain in communion with His Church. This applies to each one of us as well as to our elected representatives and our spiritual leaders.
The situation in the world is certainly dramatic, yet the world will go the way of the world. Those who profess to be Catholics have greater duties – namely to live, protect and promote the fullness of the faith. If we are the salt of the earth, we must not lose our savour. We must remain faithful to the truth in season and out of season. And we must evangelise – by truly making reparation for widespread Communion in the hand; by strongly resisting the abundant irreverent, minimalist and reductionist treatment of our Eucharistic Lord; by deepening our interior life and growing in Christian charity.
If we do this, could we, in fact, remember this year as a time of spiritual awakening and rejoice in finding “the pearl of great price”? (Mt. 13:45) If not, are we not likely to look back on it as an opportunity wasted on a fruitless struggle to “get our life back”?
ADORATION OF THE MAGI (1423).GENTILE DA FABRIANO. THE UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE. PUBLIC DOMAIN
Our suffering is not undeserved. But it can be united with God’s great mission to save souls. Reviewing this year in the light of our apostolate, it stands out, above all, as a tremendous opportunity to evangelise. People around us have become more sensitive to the fragility of this earthly existence and, perhaps, more open to the reality of eternal life, death, judgment, as well as to divine providence that arranges everything, excluding sin, to work towards our sanctification.
Where do we go from here? In this Christmas issue of Calx Mariae, we consider how the Christian faith and civilisation were born in a family and how the family, rooted in the faith, must be the bedrock for rebuilding that civilisation. On the way forward, we endeavour to give a voice to the family – to individual human families, as well as to the family which is the Body of Christ. As members of the Church we need to give a voice to the Truth, to the Word, even when many with authority remain silent. “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” (Eph. 4:15-16)
But sin is the deadly virus that infects the body of the Church. It weakens our appetite for prayer – the breath of the Holy Spirit. It deprives us of our sense of the supernatural and, in the increasingly feverish pursuit of universal brotherhood, in lieu of the universal Church, we gradually lose the taste for the one true faith.
Death is a certainty. In fact, as St Alphonsus Liguori so often reminds us, it is the only thing certain in this life. As Catholics, we must not fear death but prepare for it, since a holy death can only be the fruit of a holy life. In heaven, there are no observers, only saints. Ultimately, either sainthood or damnation are our only options.
The events of this year should lead us to renew our desire to die a saint and live forever in heaven. Certainly, we must engage in the affairs of the world as much as necessary for the completion of this mission. Politicians are not going to announce that we go back to February 2020, nor are the bishops. So we must resist the temporary measures that undermine love and reverence due to Our Lord. If we do not, soon these measures will be permanent and habitual.
But we have powerful weapons to fight against the crisis in both the world and the Church, such as adoration. This is the antidote to the offences against God. In adoration, we acknowledge Our Lord as the supreme good on Whom all life and death, all sickness and health depend. Let us then follow the example of the Magi – their generosity in the gifts they offered, their perseverance in the hardships of the journey they willingly endured and especially their humility which brought them to their knees before the Newborn King lying in the arms of His Blessed Mother.
As our Mother, too, she has promised us the ultimate hope – the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart. It is the Triumph of the Heart so pure, where only God could enter.
We are not in control. But through our sacrifices, we can play a part in the divine strategy for the conversion of souls. When we look back on 2020, let it not be remembered only as the year of restrictions, but as the year when we began to seek anew for that true freedom, which can be found in God alone.
THE COMMERCIAL USE
of aborted children in the new vaccines
by LIAM GIBSON
Many people are concerned by the news that scientists at Oxford University are using cell-lines derived from an aborted baby in the development of a Covid-19 vaccine. While it’s too early to say whether they will produce a marketable vaccine, the issue has focused renewed attention on the commercial exploitation of unborn children. Since the widespread legalisation of abortion, the harvesting of tissue, organs and body parts from unborn children for use by the pharmaceutical industry, biotech companies, universities, and the cosmetics sector has become routine.1,2 This highly lucrative trade has also built-up a vast financial network with a vested interest in blocking attempts to protect unborn children from abortion.
THE TRADE IN FOETAL TISSUE In 2000, Life Dynamics3 exposed the trade in foetal tissue in the USA.4 Abortion facilities rent space to “harvesters” or procurement technicians who retrieve body parts to order and forward them to researchers. Life Dynamics obtained documents detailing what laboratories ask for. Sometimes these instructions would require tissue to be extracted within 5 to 10 minutes of the abortion to ensure that it’s fresh. The babies whose mothers meet the right criteria are delivered as intact as possible to facilitate harvesting since undamaged specimens command a higher price. This has been verified by eye-witness testimony. In March 2000, Dean Alberty, a former technician told ABC television that clinics were harvesting eyes, brains, hearts, limbs,
