Catholic apologist Tim Staples, a regular at the conference, talked about how society continues to slide the the slippery slope that began with the legalization of abortion. “When you allow people to kill in the womb there is no end to what you can do,” he said adding that the elderly in Denmark now fear for their lives because some cases that should be labeled murder are being overlooked as acts of euthanasia.
“A crime that would have gotten you a death sentence at the Nuremburg Trials is now a campaign slogan,” Staples said.
Catholics can change society he said. “All that has to happen is for Catholics to realize who we are. There is no power that can stand against us when we stand up and move in one direction. We are called by Almighty God!”
Jesse Romero
Another apologist, Jesse Romero, talked about how society is putting faith in everything other than God. “We must be people of prayer,” he said. “When we pray, God works.”
He suggested that whenever we hear about or see anything sinful we say, “Jesus, I trust in you!”
“If we don’t have that burned in our soul, we will go crazy,” Romero said.
After talking about the remarks attributed to Luthern pastor Martin Niemoller about a person’s silence as the authorities rounded up various persecuted groups, Romero related the World War II era pastor’s remarks to society’s reaction today to the unborn, to the disabled, to the mentally handicapped, and to the sick and elderly. “Then they came for me and there was no one else to speak for me!”
He said if the anti-life tide is not stopped, “like a tsunami the tide will wash across America and wash us away.”
Fr. Pacholczyk
Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, a leading spokesman for the church on the issue of embryonic stem cell research, talked about the objectification of women and of babies at the conference.
“Contraception is sex without babies,” he said, “and invitro fertilization is babies without sex.”
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Couples today want to have “control” over whether they have children or not, a desire which contributes to the objectification of babies, he said.
Invitro fertilization leads to several ethical and moral questions: What do couples do with the frozen embryos? Is it moral for a woman to have an embryo implanted in her to “save” it? What about the selective “reduction” in multiple birth situations? What about the higher number of birth defects that result from IVF?
Dr. Ray Guarendi
Dr. Ray Guarendi, a psychologist and Catholic radio host, talked about his 10 adopted children and the challenges of raising children today.
“It is difficult to raise a grateful child today because life is so easy,” he said. “Grandma drives the Toys-R-Us truck up in front of the house very two weeks.”
The answer is simple, though, Guarendi said. “The less you have, the more of it that you share. If you want a more generous kid, remove 75 to 90 percent of what they have.”