2015 Oregon Right To Life Conference
After listening to the 2014 speakers, and having a chance to attend most of it, I went with the hope of interesting a few people in the idea of rediscovering the grace and wisdom of applying God’s laws in the areas of fornication, adultery, murder, and sodomy.
The mood was that abortions are on the decline, something like 8,300 in Oregon last year, down from an annualized peak of some 12,000. When I aired my suspicions as to why this might have other causes than Pro-Life successes to staff-member at the Clark County table he reminded me that it might be more that there are fewer moms 12-40 years-old alive to be candidates for abortions last year because we already aborted their parents -- than that we aborted the moms that might have had new abortions. He was sensitized to this because in the 40-days-for-life vigils that his group has been having, they have had an extended family standing with them holding banners something like “What a difference one life can make”. When he said this, I thought that would carry a double-meaning that would be perfect launch-point to talk about Jesus.
Then he told me the story. There was this mom with late-stage cancer that was refusing the recommended abortion to better her condition (if I have it right). She died two days after the baby was born. This horde of picketers, now, are all direct descendants of that baby.
Keynote session: Father Tad Pacholczyk
Embryos, Cloning, and the Brave New World
Talked about the American zeal of freeze-storage of live embryos? (-330 f) for future use, other countries like Germany/Italy only allow 5 per couple for short-term use with intent to fertilize and bear, that they have a backlog of zero on hand, except for Germany had 3 because the parents died in a car accident on the way home from the donation clinic. -- Whereas every major American city has more accumulating every day.
In a recent survey of 58 couples, researchers from the University of California in San Francisco found that 72 percent were undecided about the fate of their stored embryos. In another study last year of more than 1,000 fertility patients from nine clinics, 20 percent of couples who wanted no more children said they planned or expected to keep their embryos frozen indefinitely. Couples have held on to embryos for five years or more, waiting on an epiphany that never comes.
Roman Catholic Doctrine condemns any annihilation of these embryos and the speaker addressed the sticky moral dilemmas of what can be done about future options for this unnatural interference in God’s designs. They think it violates important principles when Protestants have been arranging “adoptions” to place these viable embryos with non-donor parents. Some organization advertised for a year for women to donate eggs, gratis, for research purposes, and got no responses. When they began to offer money, it began to generate a track-record of bad side-effects of the super-ovulation drugs given to maximize the harvesting of released eggs.
He had some great quotes from public figures that highlight the distortion of the meanings of words in the war, and the successful ways Pro-Life voices are countering. One test might be, if you want to think this tissue is mere “cellular life” or “Biohazard waste”, would you eat them as caviar? If not, maybe you think they are more human than you thought.
He showed this awesome electron-microscope picture of an 8-cell embryo on the head of a pin with more cells than this but fewer than this. Can you see the human soul in this picture? [Me neither, we know it is there it by faith, although all we need to know is that this is Species: Man, made in the image of God, and not something else. God has the right to call for whatever consequences He wants for those who throw darts at His image.]
He had a great analogy that has proven to have a good impact on lawmakers. You know the severe Federal punishments if you “take” a bald eagle, like if you shot one with your shotgun. However, the endangered-species-act does not regard an eagle egg from a nest to just be “cellular life”. Won’t you be punished as if that egg was regarded as a “bald eagle”?
When he fielded questions afterwards about disposing of frozen embryos he suggested a trust fund by the donors to extend life, partly because it is not clear what else to do, and partly because Biblical scholars may work out a clearer path, and/or technology may provide better options.
He used many cartoons to good effect, one where med tech entering room, asks two tiny ones in adjacent beds, looking exactly the same, and pointing to each other – “Which of you is the clone?” I can’t do justice to his, but found this one.
Embryonic cloning to “make things better” for the human race, so far can’t help murdering a brother. Wait, isn’t that where we came in (Cain/Abel). Several times during the lecture, I’m thinking, “Hasn’t salvation already been provided by human sacrifice?”
He had a good analogy for the “stickiness” of the moral dilemmas cultures can get themselves into, after long periods of violating God’s laws. Personal, Corporate, and National Debts have constructed a trap from which there is no exit without damage. Social Security, the taxes, our money system – there are lots of things like this.
He said, what if some deranged individual jumped up and slashed my face, deeply, with a knife. Medical science might be able to restore function to my eyes, and skin and bone, but probably not without leaving a scar that he would just have to live with.
I had opportunity to pose a quick question to him after his talk. Every portion of the Conference has a background assumption that that men should be in favor of a law. Laws define crimes for which they define a punishment. Question is:
How do we know what is the right punishment for a crime?
He did not know, said he was no lawyer. Abortion should certainly be treated as a serious crime. Hopefully future legal scholars will come up with something.
(Apparently other pro-life activists are not sure either: )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo&hc_location=ufi
prolife Christians are confident about 3 things:
1. Feticide (abortion) kills a life.
2. Someone else should decide what punishment (if any) should be executed upon the killer.
3. The penalty should not be execution.
Only one witness in the youtube video above grudgingly admitted possibility of life-imprisonment comparable to that for serious murder, but rejected the death penalty categorically.
Next Session was the one on Political action by a woman who had been lobbying in Salem for 16 years. Her current opinion is that the Legislature is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League. She reviewed recent bills and legislative activity: victories, losses, & threats. Some interesting issues have been on the table.
1. HB2758: Changing the Affordable Care Insurance laws so that if someone has an abortion but doesn’t want the policy holder to know what the insurance paid for and what copay amounts the holder still needs to pay. Insurance companies do not think this is a good idea. Go figure.
2. SB894 She called “Abortion for all”. More coercion about insuring tax/insurance-premiums pay for all kinds of feticide. She thinks this bill is dead in committee.
3. HB 3337 Expands 6 mo. Time frame for Physician Assisted Suicide out to 12 months.
County Health administrations will not receive tax dollars unless they refer for abortion. Mentioned a recent situation where a local incineration company found out they were burning medical waste from Canada which contained aborted fetuses. Everybody was appalled on both sides of the pro-life divide and the company quickly cancelled that contract, I think.
Bills in the works hoping to limit feticide based on Sex Selection. (She said Racial Selection as a possible leverage point -- has been discussed but no one has suggested they open the public debate from that angle as yet).
She pointed out the responsibility for every pro-life person to vote correctly on the issue. She hoped no one would ever encourage the Opposition to vote, thus revealing that she did not believe that ethical authority for law comes from a democratic majority. We wish she would come out and say where she thinks ethical authority to define crime and punishment does come from and what that Authority says should happen to father, mother, doctor & nurse when the fetus is killed. I wimped out on trying to ask her, or the attending Oregon State legislator what they thought the punishments should be, but went on to the next part of the program.
She finished up with wise pointers about how to be polite, effective, and efficient when interfacing with State lawmakers. You can review her presentation on line now.
Dr. Toffler on The Disappearing Rights of Conscience was very interesting, and the clearest witness so far.
He mentioned the case where the pizza parlor was effectively shut down by refusing to celebrate sodomite “marriage”. $850, 000 was raised for them by Crowd Funding, including $20 from a sympathetic gay couple who objected that they were being so obviously discriminated against.
He spent some time on the 05/17/2009 address at the Roman Catholic University, Notre Dame, by Mr. Obama. My ears perked up at that date, as it is the same Sunday my beloved Pastor preached an excellent sermon on the Ascension of the Savior/King to the heavenly Throne, following which he excommunicated me. [Cause of which I interpret to have been for trying to apply the law of that Savior/King in the area of money, banking, and tax-supported education.]
Quote from Obama:
“Maybe we won’t agree on abortion,” Mr. Obama told graduating students, relatives and professors, “but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually. It has both moral and spiritual dimension.
“So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions. Let’s reduce unintended pregnancies. Let’s make adoption more available. Let’s provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term.”
He mentioned John Holdren’s influence, current member of the Council on Foreign Relations, (for you conspiracy historians).
Only 3% of medical oaths mention not having sex with patients.
The US is now the #1 nation in production of petroleum products.
NY Times complains 52% of doctors are opposed to abortion as the choice way of dealing with failed attempts at contraception.
One year after a mom’s abortion, she is twice as likely to be dead as if she did not have an abortion. (can’t help noting her baby is 100% as likely to be dead).
Toffler is on staff at OHSU. Folks there complain that the school tolerates doctors who refuse to refer for abortion.
The Affordable Care Act claims no pressure will be applied to doctors unwilling to refer, but does the opposite in practice.
Quotes Ezekiel 3:18:
18 When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.
In one of his power-point tables, he referred to the un-changeability of Natural Law and that the Creator ordains what is right.
A few Principles from his list:
1. All life is valued.
2. “No one has the right to do wrong”, Abraham Lincoln 1857 (we could add, “or to help do wrong”)
3. Life is to be respected fully from natural conception through natural death.
At lunch I sat next to the folks that shut down the Oregon Adolescent Sexuality Conference. They had been attending more than one year, I think, and in the providence of God KOIN TV6 took an interest in their whistle-blowing evidence that they had already shared with School Superintendents and parents. In November they aired some coverage.
http://koin.com/2014/11/18/does-sex-ed-conference-for-students-go-too-far/
The result is plain on their website. For some reason, parents and school administrators lost interest in sending kids there. Maybe you should preview this for an idea of what Planned Parenthood is/has been feeding the kids in Oregon Sex mis-Education classes.
**The 2015 ASC has been canceled**
Hats off to a pair of activists willing to taint their own souls to plug at least one leak in the dike. Even a few can make a big difference when God works.
I recommend a review of 2015 and prior videos of their OR RightToLife conferences, asking yourself. “What is the crime in killing the fetus? How should it be punished? What will God do to the culture if the criminals are punished too harshly or too leniently?’
I had to leave the conference early.
I was in a thoughtful mood. How many, in how many churches have even thought about what the punishment should be for killing that picture of the triune God, that is the human in the safest place, when he is the most innocent and most helpless, and he is then murdered by the responsible adults God created to be the most concerned for his life?
What kind of nation would tolerate the Head of Law Enforcement that was dedicated to expanding this murder, and encouraging laws that made everyone pay for this through their taxes and through their insurance premiums?
Jeremiah had a vision where the only one who survived the destruction of his city, was a man that sighed and groaned over the abominations committed in Her midst. (and he was the only one).
If you aspire to be such a one also, tell me how I can improve this plan I have drawn from the Bible and the lifetime of Bible teaching I have received.
http://www.keepandshare.com/discuss/20648/how-to-stop-feticide-before-next-january
Help me to improve this call for Christians to responsibly think through this question that will always be answered by someone. Part of Abraham's seed being a blessing to all the families of the earth is when they have answers to this question that will still stand at the final Judgment Seat of Christ.
http://www.keepandshare.com/discuss/27246/what-makes-punishment-for-a-crime-right
My yahoo address is LeperWatchman
Adendum: Movie review
The following Monday night my household watches the film/movie: “Calvary”
It starts off in an Irish confessional with the “impenitent”, on a Sunday, explaining that during his boyhood an Irish Roman Catholic priest found his pleasure committing capital crimes upon his body. Our priest does not offer the Gospel to heal, only asks if he has made a complaint. The Abused explains the criminal is already dead and asks what would be done to him anyway. This is a theme, discussed later, when another known instance of this results in an aborted attempt to discipline a priest, who is sent, instead, to a far away country to a new parish, with the implication that he will have more freedom to do what he wants to do to young boys there.
The Abused asks the priest what justice should do to such an one, and implies that it would do no good to execute a bad priest, but perhaps it would be good for the world if a good priest would be killed, then promises to meet our “hero” priest, here, on the beach and murder him next Sunday.
The theme is already set for Holy Week with a recapitulation of Christ’s death on the cross to atone for sin. The other theme is the demonstration of the 3 points of Genesis 9:5,6 defining the crime of shedding man’s blood, the punishment of having the criminal’s blood shed, and how God will require the neighbors to punish this way. His requirement sometimes takes the form of using the very bad men that good men should have executed to execute the good men for not being obedient in this way.
The big foreshadowing here, I believe has to do with the Trial at the center of Human History. The Son of Man is the defendant, the charge is His perjury. He says He is the one the Father has sent, and is the Prophet that speaks the words of God because the Spirit is on Him without measure, thus you can trust Him as the Lawgiver, to correctly define crime and just punishments for it. He says The Father loves Him and has given all things into His hand as the Owner who has jurisdiction over all flesh and their labors and their land, thus being their King He is responsible to execute the laws of the Lawgiver upon His subjects. HE claims He is the Great High Priest who judges whether those subjects have availed themselves of His substitutionary atonement and absolution that men escape God’s wrath and serve their King.
And men must decide if the Defendant is the true prophet, priest/judge, and king, and if not execute Him for treason against the standing government by defying the current laws, showing contumacy against the judges, and warring against the king.
The story unfolds Monday through Friday where the priest visits around his parish and fails to provide a true witness of his Prophet, Priest, and King as he faces in-your-face mocking, rebellion, and disrespect from men, children, and to a lesser degree – women. He encounters the spectrum of sins, profanity, adultery, wife-abandonment, masochism, suicidal plans, greed, despair, guilt, and, of course, more homosexuality. He listens, half-way scolds, attempts to be an understanding counselor without giving any counsel, in a way mocks the sinners. He eventually accepts donations to salve a guilty conscience, even taunting the donor to double his contribution, without providing the truth that no material gift can offer salvation from sin or a guilty conscience but only accepting Christ’s gift to him of His life-poured-out. All he offers is an ungrateful-sounding, abrupt, unimpressed, “thank you very much” when the donor doubles the amount the priest has already asked him to double.
The week goes on. Things are going downhill. While sitting at the bar beginning to drink much more than he customarily does, someone tells him his church is on fire, he (and us) instantly take this as figurative as we have been observing the corrupted, hopeless parish, and as he begins to rebuke the messenger he thinks is just teasing him -- he raises his eyes, and indeed, his church is seen through the tavern door irrecoverably in flames. His response here is one of the few times (3) “Jesus Christ” is named as curse or expletive.
We have never heard His name used in proper context as prophet, priest, atoner, forgiver, sufferer, lawgiver, judge, or king.
The priest and community wonder who did it. Which of the parishioners, who have all been revealed as his enemies in one way or another, might have done this? His homosexually-abused parishioner threatening murder? There is a flaming sodomite teasing the priest several places in the film, and I picked up that this might have been the voice of lament and threatening we heard in the confessional in the opening of the story. I thought it was the same guy until the end.
The local representative of law enforcement exhibits incompetence and loss of hope that the arsonists will be discovered, as he mocks their ability to analyze the ruins of the church. Is he saying we are not smart enough to figure out why the Church has “burnt down” in the world?
We come up to Friday night and the priest is back at the bar, with all the weight of the community’s sins, and his failure weighing him down. He packs a pistol, and we do not know if this is to defend him from his Resurrection-Day assailant, or to give to a really old man approaching death who has asked him to get him one for the obvious purpose of suicide/self-euthanasia (which is repeatedly suggested by him through the movie, right up to the last walk to the Sunday beach).
While he is starting to drink more and more whiskey, one of the mocking unbelievers comes up and begins telling a “what do you think, Father..” story.
Mother takes young boy to the hospital for a “routine operation”, the anesthesiologist slips and when the boy resumes consciousness he is blind, deaf, and paralyzed, trapped inside his body, expecting any minute for the parents to comfort him, turn on the light, rescue him, and screaming as he realizes that moment will never come again. He will not be able to see them, feel them, he cannot even hear himself scream….forever. The viewer immediately connects this story on Friday Night with what Jesus suffered on the cross in His eternal, tormented, isolation from the Father in suffering for the sins of Man.
You are all ready for the priest to recognize this and exploit it, finally, as his wide-open door to present and explain the glorious, healing, love and forgiveness to truly penitent sinners who recognize their complete helplessness to do anything about it, and their horrible, egregious, offensive, inexcusable violation of God’s pure and wonderful law, as he connects that story to the sufferings of the Lamb of God.
Instead he reacts angrily, leaps up from his bench to attack the what-if story teller, who suavely walks out saying “touchy, touchy”. Glass after glass of whisky goes down until at last the atheist bartender, and the most foreign, black, heavily-accented, disrespectful, in-your-face adulterer – are left in the bar with the owner insisting it is time to go home and the priest makes excuse not to. Finally gets up and pulls up his pistol on the owner (at some provocation, I forget why), but then empties cylinder on the glass fixtures behind the bar, and swings around on the two Unbelievers and fires spent-brass on them both. We last see the bartender/owner patting his baseball bat and coming forward expectantly.
Morning after, our next view is our priest sputtering and washing his bloody nose, mouth, and hand in his home bathroom, scathing and cursing (f-words) his wimpy, despicable, doubt-ridden fellow-priest.
Saturday shows this wimpy priest packing and leaving our priest, the priesthood, mother church, and his faith, with our priest apologizing for his behavior last night and sending him off with the ultimate disgust of accusing the apostate of a complete lack of integrity.
The next scenes show our priest almost giving in to temptation to run away from the Church, or maybe just a practical way to keep from getting murdered -- I could not interpret this. He is at the airport about to “go away for a while” next to the main good-person in the story, a wife who has lost her husband in a “random” accident, but strongly is keeping her faith while all around her people are abandoning theirs. Priest stops at the top of the steps before boarding the plane, stares at the husband’s casket (returning to Rome) and rethinks the value of killing a good priest. We next see him thoughtful, driving home again on the dark, rainy highway. He thought better of flying away.
Sunday morning he meets our old wanna-be euthanasia/suicidor but he does not offer the pistol that he has secured on his person. So now we know he has decided not to assist the suicide and are thinking he will use it to protect himself.
Next he is on the cliffs over the surf throwing away his pistol into the sea, but clinching his commitment to be defenseless against the guy threatening to kill him on the beach on Sunday Morning.
The guilt-ridden, debauched, rich-donater guy comes up beside him, says he has been very messed up, suffering for a long time and wants to talk to the priest in the closest-to-humble, receptive mood we might have seen in the whole film, but the priest offers nothing, but that he has an appointment right now, but will be happy to talk to him later, which seems to satisfy our penitent very much.
So he goes down on the sand and waits for our murderer to come up and kill him. Murderer strides up purposefully carrying his pistol openly, priest reminds, without begging or showing any fear, that he doesn’t have to go through with what he has purposed. We were not prepared for this man to be the guy that was happy (about his wife adulterating with the Black Foreigner) because she had quit monitoring and nagging and holding him to good behavior.
The priest asks him why he burnt down the church, don’t remember answer if any. The conversation assumes that this enemy might have shot his dog, which antagonist hotly denies, and mocks how the priest was much more emotionally moved over the loss of his dog than that boy (himself) abused so long and so long ago by another priest.
Ho! Church! Did you care enough about that Innocent? Enough to execute the capital criminal and comfort the victim with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
It this flash contrast between the Church’s failure to care about this abused boy (now grown up to be this deranged murderer to shoot this priest, in public, in broad daylight, and just walk off) and the dog – we also had the theme throughout of the 2nd-best heroine, the priest’s daughter (the wife/mom had died years ago) who was trying to get him to come to terms with her sense that he had not “been there” for her ever, and especially after the mother died, when he became a priest and got negligently distracted in his work (through the story she is recovering from drug-use and suicide attempt).
He hugs her, but defends/denies her analysis of his actions and never “gets it”.
In the context of contrasting the greater sympathy for dumb, old animal than the abused boy, murderer wounds him in the left side, priest falls down, they keep talking, priest keeps facing the criminal, unafraid, murderer screams don’t look at me, more conversation, finally works himself up to place revolver barrel directly on priest’s unflinching forehead and we are treated to several slow-motion angles of huge, realistic (I guess) spurt of blood out the back of the head. Murderer walks off over the sand, and then we are treated with a collage of all the characters in the story in extreme scenes, actively reveling in the very sins the priest was occasioned to confront or counsel them in.
Last scene is a deer-in-the-headlights look on the murderer's face as he comes up to the communication booth in his prison, very reluctantly and slowly bringing the phone to his ear. Then we see opposite through the glass, the priest's daughter about to talk to him.
What principles can this provide for how we all should be influencing our fellow churchmen and leaders?
