In the news: IRS, breast cancer, abortion-infanticide; Pope Francis and Fatima

By Matt C. Abbott

There's been some interesting news in the last several days involving the Internal Revenue Service (under fire for targeting conservative groups), abortion-infanticide (the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell), and breast cancer (an announcement by Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie).

Pro-life, pro-family groups targeted by the tyrannical IRS include the following (information courtesy of press releases):

• In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent 'Ms. Richards' told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board's signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood. Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved. After a series of letters following a request for more invasive information, Thomas More Society special counsel Sally Wagenmaker sent a letter to the IRS demanding the tax exempt status be issued immediately....
  
  
• In another similar case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for charitable tax-exempt recognition of Christian Voices for Life, questioning the group's involvement with 40 Days for Life and Life Chain events. The Fort Bend County, Texas, organization was subjected to repeated and lengthy unconstitutional requests for information about the viewpoint and content of its educational communications, volunteer prayer vigils, and other protected activities....
  
  
• In July 2009, the Chicago IRS office threatened the CatholicVote.org Education Fund. As a part of our [CatholicVote.org's] response, we cited the IRS code, which explicitly states that charities like ours are permitted to reach the public with a 'pure issue message.' Nothing in the law prohibits organizations like ours from informing voters about the positions taken by candidates for public office. Our 501(c)3 entity has never endorsed, supported or expressly advocated the election or defeat of ANY political candidate. We argued that the IRS code is vague and standardless, and that no objective standard exists to regulate what might or might not constitute political intervention – thus opening the door to abuse. We told the IRS that groups like ours should not be subjected to arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement....
  
  
• Also in 2009, 'Catholic Answers filed suit in federal court against the Internal Revenue Service for violating our [Catholic Answers'] right to free speech. Yes, you read that correctly. We're standing up to the IRS. Not just for ourselves, but on behalf of non-profit organizations and churches all across the country that are constantly harassed, threatened, intimidated, and persecuted by the IRS....'
  

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Thankfully, abortionist Kermit Gosnell will be spending the rest of his miserable life behind bars. Good riddance. Too bad his fellow abortionists nationwide – and worldwide, for that matter – won't be joining him.

In an unrelated story, Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie announced via a May 14 op-ed in The New York Times that she opted for a double mastectomy, writing:

...My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman. Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.

Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex....

I've heard nothing about Jolie ever having had an abortion, but there is an abortion-breast cancer connection that the media have largely ignored over the years.

Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., FACS, wrote (click here for the article in its entirety):

There are many well established and well-known causes of breast cancer, such as inheriting a BRCA gene (a defective gene associated with increased breast cancer risk) and being exposed to oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy. There are lesser known risks of breast cancer such as cigarette smoking before a full term pregnancy and induced abortion. But just as only 15 percent of people who smoke will get lung cancer and only about 5–10 percent of women with breast cancer develop this cancer because they had an abortion, we should still advise the public of these avoidable risks, however small.

The vast majority of women with breast cancer have not had an abortion, but there are some women with breast cancer that have abortion as an attributable risk. Women need this information to make informed choices and to understand when to get screened for cancer if they are at increased risk, beginning approximately 8 to 10 years after the risk was taken...

Click here for the website of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer.

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On May 13, Pope Francis consecrated his pontificate to Our Lady of Fatima. Click here for the story.

The following is the prayer of consecration lead by Cardinal Jose Policarpo, president of the bishops' conference of Portugal (with an allusion to the third part of the secret of Fatima):

We, the bishops of Portugal and this multitude of pilgrims, are at your feet in this Cova da Iria, on this 96th anniversary of your first apparition to the little shepherds, in order to fulfill the desire of Pope Francis, clearly expressed, to consecrate to you, Virgin of Fatima, his ministry of bishop of Rome and universal pastor. Thus, we consecrate to you, Our Lady, you who are the mother of the Church, the ministry of the new pope; please fill his heart with the tenderness of God, which like no one else you yourself experienced, so that he may embrace all men and women of our time with the love of your Son Jesus Christ.

Today's mankind needs to feel loved by God and by the Church. Only feeling loved she will overcome the temptation of violence, of materialism, of forgetting God, of losing the direction towards a new world, where love will reign. Please grant Pope Francis the gift of discernment in order to be able to identify the ways to renew the Church; give him courage to follow, without hesitation, the ways suggested by the Holy Spirit; support him during the difficult hours of suffering; help him overcome, in charity, the trials he'll encounter while renewing the Church. Please always be at his side, whispering to his ear those words well known to you: 'I am the handmaid of the Lord; be it done onto me according to Thy Word!'

The ways of renewing the Church lead us to the rediscovery of the timeliness of the message you left with the little shepherds: the demand that we convert to God, Who has been so much offended, because we have forgotten Him. Conversion is always a return to the love of God. God forgives because He loves us. That is why His love is called mercy. The Church, protected by your maternal solicitude and guided by this pastor, ought to stand up evermore as a place of conversion and pardon, because in her the truth is always expressed in charity.

You have pointed out prayer as the decisive way towards conversion. Please teach the Church, of which you are a member and the model, to be, more and more, a people praying in union with the Holy Father – the first of this people to pray – and also in union with the former pope, His Holiness Benedict XVI, who chose the way of silent prayer, challenging the Church to embrace the ways of prayer.

In your message to the little shepherds here at Cova da Iria, you highlighted the ministry of the pope, the 'bishop dressed in white.' Three of the last popes came as pilgrims to your shrine. Only you, Our Lady, in your maternal love for the entire Church, can put into the heart of Pope Francis the desire to come to this Shrine as a pilgrim. This is not something one can ask for other reasons; only the silent complicity between you and him will make him feel attracted to this pilgrimage, being certain that he will be in the company of millions of believers willing to hear once again your message.

Here, on this altar of the world, he will be able to bless all mankind and make today's world feel that God loves all the men and women of out time, that the Church also loves them and that you, Mother of the Redeemer, lead them with tenderness through the ways of salvation.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

© Matt C. Abbott