St. Augustine Parish - Pro-Life Ministry

St. Augustine liasion for Pregnancy Care Center - Benoit Thibeault, bthibault@tibolumber.com

Protection of every innocent human life is primary and fundamental. Our parish has a vibrant pro-life ministry whose main focus is to shed light on the distinct value of the unborn person, a truth that is vehemently opposed by our secular society in this culture of death. We love both the baby and the mother: you cannot love one without loving the other, and cannot harm one without harming the other.

Pro-life parishioners weekly provide pro-life information and sidewalk counseling at Planned Parenthood in Boston. We sponsor a baby shower each June to help local pro-life pregnancy care centers. We give pro-life talks at schools and in other forums. We help pro-life candidates seek political office. We coordinate an overnight bus trip to Washington DC each January to participate in the annual March for Life in our Nation's Capitol.

God created human beings in His own image and each of us has a unique dignity. "Of all visible creatures only man is 'able to know and love his creator' and he alone is called to share by knowledge and love, in God's own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 356)

Since they can't do it for themselves, we all have a duty to speak out in protection of the unborn.

Vatican News (Sept 2007): VATICAN AFFIRMS CHURCH TEACHING ON NUTRITION AND HYDRATION FOR INDIVIDUALS IN ‘VEGETATIVE STATE’

In response to a request by the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Vatican has reaffirmed the Church teaching that patients in a “vegetative state” are living human beings with inherent dignity and deserve the same basic care as other patients. This basic care would include nutrition and hydration, even when provided through artificial assistance. The bishops also asked for clarification as to whether nutrition and hydration could be removed if physicians determined that the patient would never recover consciousness. The Vatican affirmed that the patient must receive “ordinary and proportionate care which includes, in principle, the administration of water and food even by artificial means” regardless of the prognosis of recovery of consciousness. Bishop William E. Lori, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee for Doctrine said they hope the Church’s documents on this issue will provide help and guidance to pastors, ethicists, doctors, nurses and families involved in such care.

If you have any questions about this subject matter or problems that arise in the future, please feel free to call the Friary and talk to one of the friars.

Pro-life organizers must continue their strong, long-term battle against abortion, the number one killer of innocent people in the USA.

Still, we must not lose sight of the potentially still greater killer, the organized euthanasia movement, popularly known as mercy killing. Driven by the inevitable increase in cost of medical care, the growing number of elderly citizens and the diminishing number of supportive younger people, euthanasia will rear its ugly head in the next few years and we must begin now to develop a plan for stopping it.

The politicians and others who will favor euthanasia will not label it a cost issue. They will, instead, call it a quality of life phenomenon, as this always goes over better with our secular world. Absent a strong belief in the creative wisdom of God, the quality of life people will argue that euthanasia is normal and a thing to be sought after. They will, of course, arrange to have each person at an appropriate age and living condition agree to his or her own elimination as a merciful thing to do.

The slippery slope which brought abortion from a taking of life in the first trimester of pregnancy to partial birth abortion in just a few years will also occur with euthanasia and quality life issues will affect more and more patients who will succumb to euthanasia.

Mercy killing is not the alternative to simple comfort offered to the dying patient; our creator alone can determine the time of death.

We must begin a serious, overt and determined effort to offset the beginning of euthanasia.