Denver Catholic

CATHOLIC LIFE I 3 DENVER CATHOLIC REGISTER I SEPTEMBER 11, 2013 40 Days for Life now in seven Colorado cities BY JULIE FILBY The latest 40 Days for Life campaign of prayer and fasting, constant vigil, and community outreach to end abortion will be held across the country Sept. 25 through Nov. 3 including seven cities in Colorado. "This is a fantastic opportunity to take 40 days, a biblical approach to change, to make a commitment to pray and fast for the conversion of hearts," Betsy Buettgenbach, Denver 40 Days for Life coordinator, told the Denver Catholic Register. "And to ask the Lord to bring an end to abortion." The most visible components of the campaign are peaceful prayer vigils held outside abortion clinics, generally from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Individuals and groups are asked to commit to particular days to ensure continuous prayer. In the Denver Archdiocese, vigils are being coordinated in Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, Greeley and Vail; and outside the archdiocese, in Alamosa and Colorado Springs. The initiative has continued to grow into a larger ecumenical assembly. "We're standing together with Christian denominations as one in Christ to say we stand for life," Buettgenbach said. All participants are asked to sign a Statement of Peace pledging to conduct themselves in a Christ-like manner and pursue only peaceful solutions to the violence of abortion by showing compassion to all employees, volunteers and clients of a facility. "The Statement of Peace helps us know who we are," she said, "and helps others know who we are." While pro-life work can be challenging anywhere, it can be "really tough" in Boulder, according to its 40 Days' coordinator Brenda Luksch. Boulder is home to late-term abortion provider, Dr. Warren Hern, one of only four in the country. "We are praying really hard that we can close that clinic," Luksch said. "It's the root of the problem in Boulder." 40 DAYS FOR LIFE Sept. 25 through Nov. 3 Boulder 40daysforlife.com/boulder 303-579-3142 or info@colorado 4life.info PHOTO BY JULIE FILBY/DENVER CATHOLIC REGISTER In Denver, the largest abortion provider is Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains at 7155 E. 38th Ave. Planned Parenthood is the leading provider of abortion in the United States and the Denver location is the organization's second largest facility. Masses will be celebrated in the abandoned parking lot across the street from Denver's Planned Parenthood at 1 p.m. Sept. 25 by Father Doug Grandon, parochial vicar at St. Thomas More Parish in Centennial; and 11:30 a.m. Oct. 18 and Oct. 25 by Father Piotr Mozdyniewicz, pastor of Shrine of St. Anne Parish in Arvada. More Masses are expected to be announced and will be listed on the website, www.40DayforLife. com. Participants are also welcome to pray outside Lighthouse Women's Center at 3894 Olive St., across the street from Denver's Planned Parenthood headquarters, in a newly established prayer garden. Last month Stations of the Cross, handmade in Germany, were installed in the backyard of the center. "For people who would benefit from praying the Stations of the Cross, we invite them to do so," said Buettgenbach. Prayer garden hours coincide with Lighthouse business hours: 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion at the federal level, states have responded with legislation regulating abortion in their jurisdictions. When compared to other states, Colorado's abortion laws are considered middle-of-the-road. Colorado was ranked 25th among the 50 states by the country's oldest pro-life legal and policy organization, Americans United for Life—and received a "C+" average from NARAL Pro-Choice America for "choice-related laws." "We have some good things mixed in with the bad," The fruit of the bomb explained attorney Jenny Kraska, who heads up the Colorado Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the Church in Colorado. Among the bad: there is no gestational limit to abortion in Colorado—although the vast majority of states, 41, prohibit See Abortion, Page 5 See Stefanick, Page 9 Fort Collins 40daysforlife.com/fortcollins linda@colorado4life.info STATIONS of the Cross were recently installed in the backyard of Lighthouse Women's Center, across the street from Planned Parenthood. CHRISTOPHER STEFANICK We recently passed the 68th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I'm hoping our national hindsight becomes 20/20 before we reach the 70th anniversary. A first principle of Catholic moral theology is that the end of an action (that is, the hoped for outcome or a person's intention) does not justify the means (that is, what you have to do to arrive at your end). Some acts, because they are inherently evil, can never be justified, even by the best of intentions. When we undo this principle we unleash a culture of death. If the end does justify the means then we can do literally anything so long as our intentions are good enough. This was certainly the thinking of our nation in our treatment of Japan in World War II. Our intentions, we are told, were so good that they somehow sanctified the leveling of two cities. Don't get me wrong. I'm proud of our military and I love our country, but not more than God. The Church's teaching is consistent and clear that "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation" (Gaudium et Spes, 80.). But growing up, "the end justifies the means" was engrained in my psyche by public school and even by faithful Catholics as I was told taught how to think and feel about the "necessary" bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I was taught that we had to drop the bomb because all other options were explored, exhausted, and it was the only way to end the war with Japan. I was taught that the Japanese people were so brainwashed by their allegiance to the emperor that every single citizen was a part of the war machine and a legitimate enemy combatant. Most of all I was taught that, had we not dropped the bomb, countless U.S. soldiers would have given their lives fighting the Japanese. There are many problems with the above justifications, and the first is that they aren't entirely true (though they are still oft-repeated). Before we dropped the bomb, Japan was broken, on the verge of total collapse both militarily and economically, and becoming ever more open to the necessity of surrender. And the real scandal is that our government knew all that. U.S. bombers had full reign of the air over Japan and bombed indiscriminately. On the night of March 9-10, 1945, we dropped 1,700 tons of bombs on 16 square miles of the most heavily populated areas of Tokyo, killing more than 100,000 people. Many Japanese were homeless and starving to death—hardly capable combatants. The Japanese Imperial Army and Navy were limping, at best. As General Curtis LeMay rightly noted months before we dropped the bomb, we were "driving them back to the stone age." And it's now public record that countless memos (available on www.cia. gov) made it to the U.S. president's desk outlining how, at the highest levels in Japanese government, there was talk of surrender and a steady weakening of the war machine's resolve. So much for the idea that negotiation was impossible. We had convinced ourselves that every human being in Japan was part of the war machine: men, women, elderly, children, toddlers, the rich, the rice farmer on the brink of starvation, our fellow Catholics (Nagasaki's Urakami district which was the epicenter of the blast was also an epicenter of Catholic culture in Japan for 400 years)—all of them. Hundreds of thousands of people died from the blasts. Those who weren't lucky enough to be vaporized died from burning, or after days or hours (depending on how close they were to the blast) of excruciating pain from a lethal dose of radiation. Cancer took countless lives in the years following. I look at my 18-month-old and wonder how many toddlers were among our "enemy combatants." Had we lined them up and marched them off into incinerators that would've been universally condemned, but when we melt people alive from 30,000 feet it doesn't feel quite as evil to us. First-world barbarism is always "cleaner" and more sophisticated. Denver 40daysforlife.com/denver 303-321-3221 or 40days@ ccdenver.org Greeley 40daysforlife.com/greeley 65blcl@earthlink.net or jackie bellendir@msn.com Vail 40daysforlife.com/vail Vail40DaysForLife@gmail.com Alamosa (Diocese of Pueblo) 40daysforlife.com/alamosa 719-568-1927 or okieapachej 74@hotmail.com Colorado Springs (Diocese of Colorado Springs) 40daysforlife.com/colorado springs 719-659-2097 or prolifefamily of15@gmail.com through Friday. Forty Days for Life began in Bryan-College Station, Texas, in 2004. Since then, an estimated 575,000 individuals have participated in 501 cities: sparing 7,536 lives from abortion and contributing to the shut-down of 39 abortion facilities—including that Planned Parenthood in Bryan where it all began. Hundreds, including former clinic director turned pro-life activist Abby Johnson, were expected to travel there Sept. 7 to celebrate closure of the facility. To get involved, individuals and groups can contact their parish office or Respect Life committee, visit www.40days forlife.com, or contact a campaign director (see information box). Julie Filby: 303-715-3123; julie. filby@archden.org; www.twitter. com/DCRegisterJulie Awareness alert: knowing Colorado's abortion laws may help change them BY JULIE FILBY REAL LIFE CATHOLIC

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