Ireland Pro-Lifers Fighting to Keep Unborn Children Protected | LifeNews.com

The following excerpts are from LifeNews.com:

• Ireland has been known for being a very pro-life nation, which outlaws abortion in all cases. However, there is increasing pressure to review the current law. A European Court of Human Rights panel will release a report in September that may recommend that Ireland’s government allow abortion in the case of risk to a mother’s life. It comes in response to a 2010 ruling the court made, saying women with cancer had their rights violated since they would have to seek an abortion outside the country. According to its 2011 Census, 84% of Ireland is Catholic, which can help explain the country being pro-life.
• Liam Gibson, Northern Ireland spokesperson for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, expressed his concerns on a phone interview. “The decline in interest in religion in Ireland has serious implications for the pro-life movement in the country. It is not simply the loss of faith in Irish society which will affect the pro-life message but the change in the culture’s view of human life which will be decisive.”
• Kathleen Lynch, minister of state at The Department of Health, thinks that the government has no choice but to allow changes in legislation in order to maintain membership with the European Union.

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Ireland Pro-Lifers Fighting to Keep Unborn Children Protected | LifeNews.com

In Memoriam of Patrick W. Danahy

 Patrick W. Danahy Victim of 9/11

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Patrick W. Danahy was in his office on the 90th floor of Tower 2 in the World Trade Center. As he did every morning, Patrick called his home at 8:30AM, just before the attacks occurred, to tell his wife and girls that he loved them. It would be the last time any of them would hear his voice.

Patrick and his wife Mary, were expecting their third child, already having two girls at the time Alison 3, and Katie 2 . When they were discussing girls names for the third child, Mary had suggested Grace, although Patrick was somewhat hesitant. Mary explained that Our Lady of Grace was the patron saint of motorcyclists (which is true). "It'll have to be," he said. "She'll look out for me when I go out riding." Patrick loved motorcyles, cars (he had bought himself an old Porsche for his last birthday), and mountain bikes. He had participated in a couple of 100 mile bikeathons. He was a man who loved life, and especially his life with his girls.

Mary said that "his girls were his life. He'd do blocks and read books to them every night. He always had to rush home to his girls. He's outgoing, athletic, loved mountain biking, driving his Porsche and his motorcycle." His wife said, "he was the go-to guy. Friends from all over were always calling him, from London and upstate. He was a guy who everybody depended on to get things done."

Mary Danahy spoke to her husband by phone a few minutes before the attack began. She later spoke to a survivor who was with him that morning. "She attributed her being alive to him because he told her to get out quickly," she said.

Mary Danahy tries to help her girls cope. "My older one knows now, and is very angry and doesn't want me to leave her. She asked God for help. She said, 'We need our daddy.' "

Patrick Danahy grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson and in 1988 he graduated from Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y. He was vice president for investor services at Fiduciary Trust. His parents, Frank and Mary Anne Danahy, lived in Kingston for years before moving to Connecticut. On the morning of September 11, 2001, along with 2,996 other innocent victims, Patrick W. Danahy was taken from his family by an act of pure hatred. There was no little Grace to protect him.

One month to the day after a terrorist piloted a plane into the South Tower of The World Trade Center , on October 11, 2001, Mary Danahy gave birth to the couple's third child, Grace.

WE SHALL NEVER FORGET

Are We Being Too Political?

Almost everyone agrees that the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election is one of the most important, if not the most important elections in the nations history.

People are somewhat divided however as to what issue is the most pressing or important issue of the day. The economy...abortion...same sex marriage...religious liberty...education...and the list goes on and on.

People are disagreeing right, left, and center about what is the most pressing and important issue of the day, and many feel, that there is more than one pressing issue, and that we shouldn't focus on just one issue alone, and throw the rest under the proverbial bus.

My question is, have we been so focused on the "issue of the day", that we Christians have taken our focus off of God?

Many of us have gotten so caught up in politics that we have allowed our faith to take a back seat to the elections. For instnce, I shared the news from Fox News on Saturday, that Iranian pastor, Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who was origianlly sentenced to death for his Christian faith, was released after 3 years in an Iranian prison. A reason for great joy among Christians around the world. Yet that news seems not to have been noticed until today.

Apparently, the ending of the Democratic Convention was still too fresh in people's minds for them to take any notice of anything not related to politics. While there should have been, and still should be great rejoicing over Nadarkhani's release, there was instead an almost deafening silence.

Therefore, I have decided that on my blogs there will be no mentions of either candidate except in ways that relate to religious liberty, abortion, or same sex marriage.

Why? Because I don't want to be a party to focusing our attention on the world when we should focus our attention on God, and as Catholic, those are the faith issues I will be sharing as regards the elections. If we would all take the time to focus our attention on God, ask for His help, His belssings, and His Grace, then through Him the rest would take care of itself.

Below are some scripture passages for you to consider:

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you: my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled: nor let it be afraid.

John 16:33 These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you shall have distress. But have confidence. I have overcome the world.

Romans 12: 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and the acceptable and the perfect will of God.

1 Corinthians 1: 20 - 21 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?  For, seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe.

1 Corinthians 3: 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written: I will catch the wise in their own craftiness.

James 1: 27  Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation and to keep one’s self unspotted from this world.

2 Peter 2: 20  For if, flying from the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they be again entangled in them and overcome: their latter state is become unto them worse than the former.

1 John 2: 15 - 17  Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not of the Father but is of the world.  And the world passeth away and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever.

1 John 4: 1 - 6 Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. By this is the spirit of God known. Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God. And this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh: and he is now already in the world. You are of God, little children, and have overcome him. Because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world. Therefore of the world they speak: and the world heareth them. We are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us. He that is not of God heareth us not. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.