Nobel-winning stem cell work helps curtail embryonic research

Stockholm, Sweden, Oct 8, 2012.

Moral theologian Father Thomas Berg is praising the work of Shinya Yamanaka, the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in medicine, for helping to “put human embryonic stem cell research largely out of business.”

Yamanaka and John B. Gurdon, researchers in cell biology, were awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries about the generation of stem cells.

“Yamanaka will be remembered in history as the man who put human embryonic stem cell research largely out of business, motivated by reflection on the fact that his own daughters were once human embryos,” Fr. Berg, professor of moral theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y. told CNA Oct. 8.

Gurdon's research was conducted in 1962 and showed that it is possible to reverse the specialization of cells. He removed a nucleus from a frog’s intestinal cell and placed it into a frog's egg cell that had its nucleus taken out.

That egg cell was then able to develop into a typical tadpole, and his work was the basis for later research into cloning.

Until Gurdon's findings, it was believed that cell development could only happen in one direction, and that a mature cell nucleus could never become immature and pluripotent. A cell is called pluripotent if it can develop into any type of cell in the body.

Building on Gordon's work, Yamanaka published a paper in 2006 demonstrating that intact, mature cells can become immature stem cells. He inserted genes into mouse cells which reprogrammed those cells so that they became stem cells.

These reprogrammed cells are pluripotent. Yamanaka's breakthrough opened the door to studying disease and developing diagnosis and treatments.

Since this technique can produce a stem cell from any cell, it provides an alternative to embryonic stem cells, which are derived from destroyed human embryos.

Continue reading at Catholic News Agency (CNA).

Why California’s Three-Parent Law Was Inevitable

September 19th 2012. Jennifer Morse. Catholic Exchange.

Can a child have three parents? If California State Senator Mark Leno has his way, children in California will be able to have three legal parents. Before we dismiss SB 1476 as another example of California Weird, we had best look into it more closely. After all, the bill has passed both houses of the California Assembly and is awaiting Governor Brown’s signature or veto.

I believe this development was inevitable, more inevitable in fact than the much-vaunted inevitability of gay marriage. Once we started trying to normalize parenting by same-sex couples and redefine marriage to remove the dual-gender requirement, we had to end up with triple-parenting.

A deeper look at the whole picture surrounding SB 1476 reveals that not only should the three-parent law fail, same-sex “marriage” should fail as well. As we will see, embedded in this bill is an appalling power-grab by the state, and a grotesque misrepresentation of the facts by the bill’s authors.

Why Normalizing Same-Sex Parenting Inevitably Led to Triple-Parenting

Continue Reading at Catholic Exchange

Progressive Artists Show Their Hypocrisy Again

“PISS CHRIST” COMING TO NYC
From the Catholic League, 21st September 2012

Bill Donohue comments as follows:

On September 27, the Edward Tyler Nahem gallery in mid-town Manhattan will host an exhibit, “Body and Spirit: Andres Serrano 1987-2012,” that features Serrano’s “Piss Christ” piece; it shows a crucifix submerged in a jar of his own urine. The exhibit ends October 26.

Serrano has said that “Piss Christ” was “meant to question the whole notion of what is acceptable and unacceptable.” There is not much to question: decent people know it is unacceptable. But in elite cultural circles, anti-Christian art is not only acceptable, it is laudatory. Just don’t offend Muslims. To wit: this week a disrespectful French cartoon of Muhammad was not shown on any of the network or cable TV news shows.

In 2006, when the Danish cartoons that angered Muslims appeared, not only were they not shown on the networks or cable, newspapers all across the nation refused to do so. In fact, the leading newspapers echoed the position of the New York Times: it said it was wrong to publish “gratuitous assaults on religious grounds.” Yet this same newspaper, in the same article about the Danish cartoons, reproduced the “dung on the Virgin Mary” artwork that was shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s “Sensation” exhibition in 1999! To show how acceptable anti-Christian art is, three days after “Sensation” opened, Christie’s sponsored a “Piss Christ” print exhibit.

“Piss Christ,” which dates back to the late 1980s, wouldn’t matter as much to Christians in 2012 if it weren’t for the supine statements offered by the Obama administration in the wake of an anti-Islamic video. Never before have Americans learned how deeply offended our elites are by anti-religious fare. If only we could believe them. When have they ever condemned anti-Christian movies or art?

I will be there on Thursday with a contingent from the Catholic League. Details to follow next week.

Dolores Hart - From Hollywood Starlet to Cloistered Nun

Obama and Vatican Spokesman Loose the Plot

Hitler's Pope Myth Started as Atheist Propaganda

Former Romanian intelligence leader says Pius XII victim of Soviet smear campaign

From CatholicCulture.org 

17 August 2012

Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former Romanian intelligence leader who defected to the United States, has coauthored a forthcoming book with Ronald Rychlak on the Soviet Union’s framing of Pope Pius XII as “Hitler’s pope.” James Woolsey, the former CIA director, has written the book’s introduction.

“The Kremlin’s attempt to frame Pius XII as Hitler’s Pope was rejected by that contemporary generation that had lived through the real history and knew who Pope Pius XII really was,” Pacepa said in an interview. “The Kremlin tried again in the 1960s, with the next generation, which had not lived through that history and did not know better. This time it worked.”

More...

Additional information:

Operation Seat 12  (Wikipedia)

Ion Mihai Pacepa  (Wikipedia)

Hitler, Nazis and the Catholic Church

Some memorable quotes by Jews during and after World War II regarding the Nazis and the Catholic Church

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I had never any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom.

Albert Einstein. Quoted in Time Magazine, December 23, 1940.

We share in the grief of humanity [at the death of Pius XII]…. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.

Golda Meir (Former Israeli Prime Minister)

No keener rebuke has come to Nazism than from Pope Pius XI and his successor, Pope Pius XII.

Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, chancellor, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

In the most difficult hours of which we Jews of Romania have passed through, the generous assistance of the Holy See…was decisive and salutary. It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the supreme pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings of deported Jews…. The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance.

Rabbi Alexander Safran, chief rabbi of Romania

The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion, which form the very foundation of true civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world.

Rabbi Isaac Herzog, chief rabbi of Israel

I told [Pope Pius XII] that my first duty was to thank him, and through him the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public for all they had done in the various countries to rescue Jews…. We are deeply grateful to the Catholic Church.

Moshe Sharett (who later became Israel’s first foreign minister and second prime minister)

Some memorable quotes from the New York Times (1935 - 1944) regarding the animosity felt between the Catholic Church and the Nazis.

• "NAZIS WARNED IN LOURDES": reporting the protest in 1935 of then Cardinal Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) against "superstitions of race and blood." When Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939, the Times reported "nearly general applause around the world," except in Germany.

• "POPE CONDEMNS DICTATORS, TREATY VIOLATORS, RACISM": three-column front-page headline reporting the Pope’s first encyclical, October 28, 1939.

• "VATICAN DENOUNCES ATROCITIES IN POLAND; GERMANS CALLED EVEN WORSE THAN RUSSIANS" (January 23, 1940).

• "JEWS’ RIGHTS DEFENDED": reporting the Pope’s "burning words to [Nazi Foreign Minister] Ribbentrop in defense of the Jews in Germany and Poland" (March 14, 1940).

• "Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas. . . . The Pope put himself squarely against Nazism" (December 25, 1941).

• "The papacy is throwing the whole weight of its publicizing facilities into an exposé" of Nazi atrocities. (through Vatican radio): January 24, 1942.

• "POPE IS SAID TO PLEAD FOR JEWS LISTED FOR REMOVAL FROM FRANCE" (August 6, 1942). And on August 27: "VICHY SEIZES JEWS; POPE PIUS IGNORED."

• "This Christmas [1942] more than ever [the Pope] is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent": editorial on the Pope’s reference to "the hundreds of thousands who, . . . solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction."

• On August 21, 1944, Pulitzer Prize laureate Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote in the Times that the Pope had given "first priority" to saving Jews.

• "Under the Pope’s direction the Holy See did an exemplary job of sheltering and championing the victims of the Nazi-Fascist regime. . . . None [in Rome] doubts that the general feeling of the Roman Curia was anti-Fascist and very strongly anti-Nazi": Times reporter Herbert L. Matthews, October 15, 1944.

Did Pope Pius XII Help the Jews? Yes of course.

Pro-Choice Sloganeering

Living Saint Jailed

The Catholic Leader. Published: 13 May 2012 By: Peter Bugden

BRISBANE pro-life activist Graham Preston was arrested at his home on May 2 to spend eight months behind bars.

Mr Preston was arrested on charges relating to unpaid fines incurred as a result of his sit-in "rescue" actions outside abortion clinics.

He has refused to pay the fines on principle.

In previous interviews with The Catholic Leader the father of seven has said that, having spent more than a total of eight months in custody on four different occasions since he started his protest actions in 2002, "jail is no longer an unknown quantity to me".

Mr Preston, a member of Protect Life, said his conscience would not let him pay the fines, which had resulted from trying to block mothers from entering an abortion clinic to have abortions.

"My actions were completely non-violent and I believe have achieved the desired result," he said.

"For example, one of the women who worked at an abortion clinic said on oath in one court case that potential clients who came to the abortion clinic on the days I was there hadn't gone through with their appointments.

"Neither had they made new appointments.

"No doubt the witness said this to make me look bad, but I was delighted to hear my actions had this impact."

Mr Preston said his wife and seven children were supportive o0f his decision not to pay the fines although his imprisonment would be "a big challenge for them all".

He sees his situation as just "another step on the way to trying to do what any person would if they say somebody was about to be killed".

Sourced from The Catholic Leader.

Protect Life web-site.

Amazing Images from Conception to Birth