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Washington D.C., Aug 8, 2017 / 10:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- David Daleiden, the undercover journalist behind the 2015 Planned Parenthood videos, has appealed to the US Supreme Court for the release of more undercover footage from National Abortion Federation conventions.

 “We are appealing to the highest court in quest of justice,” Tom Brejcha, president of the Thomas More Society, which is representing Daleiden in court, stated Friday.

“This lawsuit was brought against Mr. Daleiden by National Abortion Federation, the abortion industry’s trade group, because he dared to expose the truth about their members’ profiting from an illegal trade in the remains of human beings,” Brejcha said Aug. 4.

“But what is ultimately at stake here is whether those who ‘blow the whistle’ on illegal or inhumane misbehavior in any industry may be silenced and even punished for telling the truth to the public at large and to those charged with enforcing criminal and regulatory bans on nefarious practices.”

Daleiden is the project lead at the Center for Medical Progress, a citizen journalist group that has worked to document the role of Planned Parenthood, other abortion providers, and tissue procurement companies in the trade of body parts of aborted babies.

Beginning in July 2015, CMP began releasing undercover footage of Planned Parenthood officials and current and former employees of the company StemExpress, which obtained fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood clinics for compensation.

The journalists posed as representatives of a fetal tissue procurement company and discussed prices for fetal tissue of aborted babies with Planned Parenthood officials. The officials also described the gruesome practice of abortion procedures and of obtaining the tissue from aborted babies.

Federal law allows for reasonable compensation to clinics for fetal tissue of aborted babies used for research purposes. The amount of compensation cannot be for “valuable consideration,” but can only cover operating costs like preservation of tissue and transport.

Daleiden’s group had more undercover footage taken at 2014 and 2015 National Abortion Federation conventions which CMP gained access to by paying the admission fees and providing false personal identifications and the name of a non-existent medical supply company.

NAF filed a suit to prevent Daleiden from releasing the footage to the public, alleging a breach of contract that attendees could not publish undercover footage of the convention. CMP, meanwhile, said convention proceedings were not secret, in that hotel staff were privy to conversations and speeches yet they did not have to sign confidentiality agreements.

An emergency “gag” order by U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick III in February 2016 prevented the footage from being released to the public. The judge’s order was extended indefinitely. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the lower court’s order.

The district court had said that “there is no doubt that members of the public have a serious and passionate interest in the debate over abortion rights and the right to life, and thus in the contents of defendants’ recordings,” but Orrick ruled that to release the footage to the public could result in violence against abortion clinics in retaliation for the content in the videos.

Then in May, CMP released footage from the NAF conventions in Baltimore and San Francisco.
Attendees were shown to be casually discussing how they encountered fetal body parts like eyeballs and skulls in abortion procedures.

Footage also showed Planned Parenthood officials discussing monetary compensation for fetal tissue from aborted babies, and attendees apparently admitting to performing illegal partial-birth abortions.

In response, Orrick held Daleiden in contempt of court and fined him, CMP, and his lawyers $136,000 for releasing the footage that was held under the gag order.

CMP said the footage was “the same video evidence” as “the California attorney general is using in his prosecution [against Daleiden].”

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the center said that the order barring the release of the videos was “imposed specifically for the purpose of hiding information from the public, precisely because the information is of such significant public interest and concern – the procurement and sale of aborted fetal body parts.”

The Ninth Circuit’s upholding that order, CMP said, was unprecedented in that it barred “the publication of information of legitimate public interest, based solely on the private agreement of parties.”

Furthermore, in upholding the lower court’s order, the Ninth Circuit used a standard of review “patently inconsistent with this Court’s established First Amendment jurisprudence.”

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Vatican City, Aug 8, 2017 / 11:59 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A congratulatory letter sent from Pope Francis to a same-sex couple regarding the baptism of their children was a standard form letter sent to all who write to the Pope, a Vatican source has confirmed.

The letter was not an endorsement of gay unions, the source told CNA, and the Pope may not have known that the letter was going to a gay couple, since it was addressed to a single individual.

Tony Reis, an LGBT activist, and his partner David Harrad published on Facebook in April that they sent a letter to the Pope, telling him about the baptism of their three adopted children in a church in Curitiba, Brazil.

The couple told AFP that they had received a congratulatory letter in return, signed by the Vatican Secretariat of State, Monsignor Paolo Borgi.

The letter, translated from Portuguese, said that the Holy Father “looks with appreciation” at the letter on the baptism of the children, and “expressed his feelings of esteem...and his wishes for the good spiritual fruits of his ministry as Pastor of the Universal Church.”

“Pope Francis wishes him well, invoking for his family the abundance of divine graces, so that they may live constantly and faithfully the condition of Christians, as good children of God and of the Church, and sends them a propitious Apostolic Blessing, asking them not to stop praying for him,” the letter concludes.

Along with the letter in Portuguese, the couple received a photograph of the Pontiff.

“(T)hat letter is the standard model of courtesy response that the Vatican sends to all the people who write to the Pope, and therefore was not a letter (that was) expressly thinking about them,” the Vatican source told CNA.

The same source said the letter is addressed to one person, “further evidence that the Secretary of State was unaware that it was a homosexual couple” who had written the first letter. The couple has not published the text of the letter they sent to Pope Francis, so it is unknown whether they presented themselves as a same-sex couple.

In 2015, the Vatican clarified a similar incident, when Fr. Ciro Benedittini, the deputy director of the Vatican Press Office, confirmed that a standard form letter sent to a lesbian couple who had written the Pope was not an endorsement of same-sex marriage.

On numerous occasions throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has reaffirmed Church teaching on marriage, voicing concern about what he sees as attacks on marriage and the family.

“(T)he family – as God wants it, composed of a man and a woman for the good of the spouses and also the generation and education of children – is deformed by powerful contrary projects supported by ideological colonization,” the Pope told a group in Rome in September 2015.

That same year, he voiced support for “efforts in defense of the family” in a greeting to pilgrims from Slovakia, on the day before a country-wide vote on whether to legalize same-sex unions.

Speaking during a trip to the Philippines, Pope Francis warned bluntly, “The family is also threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage.”

And in an October 2014 audience, he warned that “the family is being bastardized,” cautioning against a common view in society that “you can call everything family, right?”

“What is being proposed is not marriage, it's an association. But it's not marriage! It's necessary to say these things very clearly and we have to say it!” he stressed, lamenting that there are so many “new forms” of unions which are “totally destructive and limiting the greatness of the love of marriage.”

 

 

 

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Chris Sheridan

By Armando Machado

NEW YORK (CNS) -- At the Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in Lower Manhattan, Polina Maller, 11, took a few moments from her violin lesson to talk about her appreciation for music.

"It's fun, and I like it. Music makes me feel like I'm free inside; it makes me feel like I could create things, and then I feel good about myself," Polina, a classical music aficionado, said July 26 in an interview with Catholic New York, the archdiocesan newspaper.

She was midway into a week of a summer music camp on the cathedral grounds.

Eleven children took part in the first-time program, "Pipes, Pedals & Peals," sponsored by the Friends of the Henry Erben Organ. The group is a charitable organization devoted to the conservation and restoration of the 1868 Henry Erben Organ inside St. Patrick's Old Cathedral.

The five-day camp, which operated three hours each morning, was open to children ages 7 to 12. Organizers expect to make it an annual summer program.

The Friends group also supports live musical performances, education and training of young musicians and organists, after-school music education programs and organ demonstrations, coordinators said. In addition, it supports concerts for visiting tour groups, arts and cultural organizations, schools and universities.

The week's activities for the music camp children included lessons in playing the violin and handbell chimes, and hands-on lessons about the history, uniqueness and intricacies of the Henry Erben Organ -- yes, hands-on, they got to play the special organ. Polina played a prelude by Bach.

The wood Erben Organ has three manuals, or keyboards -- an organ keyboard played by the hands is called a "manual." It stands about 45 feet high and has 2,500 pipes. "It's about the size of a small apartment," said Anne Riccitelli, president of the Friends group.

The children also assembled a special kit, creating a small, functioning organ similar to the Henry Erben Organ. The Orgel miniature organ kit was developed in the Netherlands; it is an educational organ that measures about 3 by 3 by 2 feet, weighs more than 40 pounds, and has about 48 pipes.

Additionally, the children performed at a summer camp recital -- with violin and handbell chimes -- during a July 30 Mass at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral; the liturgy, celebrated by the pastor, Msgr. Donald Sakano, was followed by an Erben Organ demonstration, and later a festive reception in the undercroft.

The cathedral's organist is Jared Lamenzo, who gave the demonstration. The children casually played the small organ at the reception.

"They're learning a lot in one week -- the small organ will help them understand how the big organ works," Lamenzo said while the children were learning how to play the handbell chimes July 26, a lesson given by Michael Bodnyk, a cantor at both St. Patrick's Old Cathedral and St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, the mother church of the New York Archdiocese.

The violin lessons were taught by Addie Deppa, who noted, "Music in general, I feel, brings on a window of purity and beauty to children's lives. I think it's super important for children to have music. ...They (the music camp children) are wonderful; they're very eager to learn, a lot of energy."

Robert Hodge, 10, also was among the music camp children. "I love the class, and the teachers are nice. It's very educational," Robert told Catholic New York.

Msgr. Sakano noted the old cathedral community's love of the arts. "We have a program called Basilica Voices, where our young people who are preparing for first holy Communion and confirmation are also being trained to sing. ... And then we have the camp, which is not a Catholic teaching program per se -- but it is faithful in the sense that music is the sound that God likes hearing."

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Machado writes for Catholic New York, newspaper of the Archdiocese of New York.

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