Anthony Perez, Pro-Life Philippines

A few days from now, pop star Lady Gaga will be coming over for a concert. She is an artist that needs no introduction; but for those who are not aware, she is famous for her catchy tunes and has risen to fame for her even catchier persona, bordering on the scandalous and unconventional, to say the least.  Her music videos are all compelling and catchy, with scandalous outfits and occult imagery contributing much to her success as a pop icon. Needless to say, it is necessary to address some of the issues she brings with her in her concert.

Shock Value

Much of her success as an artists is due to her portrayal of herself, usually an exaggeratedly weird portrayal. She disregards the usual norm for beauty and goes for the shocking and ugly in order to bring out a totally different and unique persona onstage. This, in turn, gives her performance a certain edge over other artists, pegging herself unique from the rest who take a more conservative approach when it comes to their music and choice of wardrobe. On the other hand, to brand her as just ‘unique’ may be an understatement, for someone who wore raw meat as clothing.

If we Catholics were to look back on our heritage, we inherit a Church that has seen great pieces of art and music which we still see today. There are  great murals in churches and other catholic paintings and sculpture; there are the great cathedrals and churches whose aesthetic and engeneering values can leave one in awe, and there is Catholic music – aptly called Sacred Music, and all of these exude beauty. They are beautiful because they reflect the one, true source of beauty itself: God.

If the beauty of Catholic art and music reflect the majesty of God, what does Lady Gaga’s unflattering and shocking appearances reflect?

A Tree is Known by its Fruit

Many of her music videos are very graphic in nature, and contain obsceneties, partial nudity and blasphemy;  in her music video for the song Alejandro, she swallows a rosary, and on the same video, she wears an upside-down cross on her crotch. In Bad Romance, monsters crawl out of some sort of a coffin with a cross and the word MONSTER beneath it.  Her Born This Way is typically known to be in support of the homosexual agenda, among other things.  She employs so many occult symbols that are very incompatible to the Catholic faith, thus putting one’s soul in danger.  Scientific research has confirmed that these images are often carried over by the young to their adulthood. Are these the images we want our children to grow up with?

God is love. God is beauty, and God is life. Instead, Gaga sings, in Bad Romance: “I want your ugly, I want your disease…I want your love…” The question is, whose love?   Can one remain a faithful Catholic who loves the Church and at the same time condone the blasphemous acts and lyrics in her videos and watch her concert? We certainly do not think so.

A tree is always known by its fruits, and these are her fruits.

Towards a Culture of Beauty and Godliness

Our neighboring countries, namely South Korea and Indonesia, have expressed their outrage over Lady Gaga’s concert in their countries. While we do not call for the same action here in our country, we ask our Catholic brethren to be true to their faith, to practice better judgment, and to be more discriminating when it comes to their choice of music. This is a call for our Catholic faithful to listen to music that points toward the glory of God, or at the very least allude to the inherent dignity of man. For these are the songs that foster culture and beauty, and a culture of beauty and of Godliness.

Sincerely,

Concerned Catholics

by Denise Hunnell, M.D. | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 5/2/12 11:21 AM

In 1994, Dr. Charles Cleeland authored a study that found that 42% of cancer patients with pain were receiving inadequate therapy for their pain. This led to the Health and Human Services (HHS) guidelines for more aggressive pain management and the ubiquitous question about your level of pain “on a scale of 1 to 10” every time you visit the doctor for any reason.

The interest in pain management was actually a response to the push for legalized assisted suicide. Advocates of assisted suicide claimed that uncontrolled pain justified aiding cancer patients to end their lives. At the time, there were proclamations by medical experts that 90% of pain could be easily treated and there was no risk of addiction for those who were actually in pain.

So where are we nearly two decades later? A new study just published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology finds that while pain management has improved, a significant number of cancer patients are still suffering. Dr. Michael Fisch and his colleagues looked at over three thousand patients with breast, lung, prostate, or colorectal cancer. Of the two thousand patients who complained of pain, roughly one-third were receiving inadequate therapy for their pain. The reasons for this failure to adequately alleviate pain are varied and complex. Physicians cited concerns about raising red flags for excessive use of pain relievers monitored by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as a reason for using suboptimal doses of opiod analgesics. Patients resisted the use of pain medicine, fearing these powerful drugs would adversely affect their level of functioning. Some patients had a cultural stoicism that made it difficult for them to admit they had pain and needed medication. Many patients did not speak English well and had a difficult time communicating their need for pain relief to their physicians. In 50% of all patients with inadequate pain relief, oncologists treating the patient did not deem the pain to be related to cancer and therefore, did not aggressively pursue therapy to alleviate the pain.

Those who promote assisted suicide and euthanasia no longer limit their justifications to simply dealing with chronic pain; they now include depression and other mental illnesses, loss of cognitive abilities, and loss of independence as reasons for ending life. In light of this recent study, however, one wonders if these purveyors of death were correct twenty years ago to claim that intractable pain in cancer patients made life not worth living and gave rise to the need for legalization of assisted suicide?

Clearly, the Fisch study is not an indictment of life with cancer. The presence of suffering does not make death preferable to life. What this study does tell us is that in a significant number of patients with cancer, relief of pain is not a simple issue. Both physicians and patients create obstacles to optimal pain therapy. The answer is not to get rid of the patients in order to get rid of the pain: The answer is to address the impediments that hinder successful pain management.

Even more importantly, this study tells us is that in spite of the best efforts of medicine, there are still people among us who are suffering. Seeing others who are ill or hurting often makes us uncomfortable because it brings our own mortality to the forefront of our consciousness. Yet as Christians, we are called to suffer with those who are in pain – literally, to be compassionate. Someone you know may very well be hurting. He needs you to comfort him, listen to him, pray with him, or at least pray for him.

I remember the first time I got sick after leaving home to go to medical school. I was alone in my apartment. The fever, the aches, and the general misery were magnified by my isolation. My mother was not there to offer a cool cloth for my brow or soothing words to help me sleep. While it is important to offer and utilize medical treatments that ease suffering, no pill will ever replace the consolation provided by human presence.

Turning to assisted suicide or euthanasia as a solution for suffering says that we as a society cannot be bothered with authentic compassion. It says that we want what is easy and expedient rather than what requires effort and time. It says the healthy and powerful can decide whether the weak and vulnerable live or die. Therefore, legislative efforts to protect the disabled, the sick and the suffering from becoming victims – particularly given certain ominous elements of the Affordable Care Act – are necessary. But legislation alone will not build a culture of life.

Each of us must take the time to recognize the pain and suffering of our child, our spouse, our neighbor, and even the strangers who momentarily cross our paths each day. Compassion may mean sitting at a bedside. It may mean an unrushed conversation over coffee or taking a casserole to the family next door. It may just mean a kind word or a smile for someone who looks like they are having a bad day. Each of these small acts affirms that we are a community instead of just a collection of individuals. An authentically compassionate community desires that no one ever suffers alone, and does not seek death as the solution to pain.

LifeNews Note: Denise Hunnell, MD, is a Fellow of HLI America, an educational initiative of Human Life International. She writes for HLI America’s Truth and Charity Forum.

By Anthony Perez, Pro-Life Philippines

How far will a man’s convictions take him?

In the case of Graham Preston, 56, he will have to spend the next 8 months locked up because of his convictions. Preston was convinced that abortion is the murder, and he did his best in order to live up to his pro-life beliefs. What he did was to stage non-violent protests in front of abortion clinics around Brisbane. He was then faced with a difficult decision: pay the fines he incurred for those protests, or face time in prison.

For Preston, the choice is obvious: imprisonment it is.

Preston refuses to pay the fines on principle, arguing that trying to save the innocent from harm should not be regarded as criminal behavior.

Nor was it an easy to choice to make. Two years ago, Preston wrote on his website: “Going to jail is of course not a desirable thing, either for the person who does so, or for their family who may be very directly negatively affected. Yet our conviction is that this is probably an unavoidable part of seeing the value of all human lives given proper recognition. When anyone pays a very high price for something, it makes everyone ask the question, is it worth it? That is what we want our society to be asking, what are preborn babies worth? We want to say that babies’ lives are worth a person’s, or even many persons’, freedom.”

This is not Preston’s first time to be imprisoned. Ten years ago, he started a group called Protect Life and has endured more than ten months in jail over five separate jail-terms ever since – mostly in Brisbane’s maximum security Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre.

His family, though distraught over Graham’s imprisonment, is proud of him nonetheless. His wife Liz says of him: “I have immense respect for Graham. He is a very courageous person who has my full support in these actions. Facing the prospect of having Graham in jail for eight months is quite daunting -  however we have always realized that challenging the abortion culture would be costly and we have tried to not allow the potential cost prevent us from doing what we believe is right.”

Graham’s daughter Frances, 18, said: “I have a lot of respect for my Dad and how he takes his convictions seriously; I hope I can live as consistent a life as his. Of course I will miss him, and I will visit him as often as possible.”

Courageous as Graham is, this is also a lesson for all Pro-Lifers in the Philippines to always be vigilant against anti-life legislation. As it is with the other countries who have adopted an anti-life stance and have espoused contraception and abortion, our government, once it legalizes abortion, will do all it can to protect this ‘right’ to terminate one’s own child. Will we put to prison our own countrymen for fighting for the rights of those who cannot fight for themselves?

The RH Bill, once legalized, will open the floodgates to such abnormities like abortion and the legalization of same sex unions.  Let us just say NO.