Manhattan Declaration Collects 232,000 Names

The Marian Shrine of Saydnaya in Syria is the second most important Christian pilgrimage site in the Middle East after Jerusalem, in terms of the number of visitors, both Christian and Muslim. The increase in its importance and popularity is due to the numerous and unlimited miracles which occur upon the intercession of Mary, Our Lady, The Mother Of God - Theotokos.

Saydnaya contains an icon of The Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus, one of eight painted by St. Luke the Evangelist in the 1st century A. D. The Icon’s name is “ Shaghoura” which means “ The Famous One.”

The story of the church and monastery which were built on a high mountain in Syria date back to 547 A. D. when the Emperor Justinian and his army were camping in the area, preparing to fight the Persians. He spotted and followed a deer to the top of the mountain, where he discovered a badly needed water supply, a large spring of fresh water for his thirsty army. Suddenly the deer changed into a brilliant icon, and he heard a voice requesting him to build a church in honor of Our Lady.

Did four decades of wandering in the desert of moral upheaval begin to come to a close with the announcement of the “ Manhattan Declaration” in Washington, D. C., on November 20, the Friday before Thanksgiving?

Nearly a quarter- million people proceeded to sign the relatively unpublicized declaration online in less than two weeks at manhattan declaration. org.

Religious and lay leaders of various denominations declared thatthey wouldn’t yield to force by any power against the truths of the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

In summary, they said: “ Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well- being of society, they are inviolable and non- negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully, no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them.”

They began with 149 signatures pledging support and posted the declaration online. By the evening of November 24, a few days later, the number of signatures had swelled to more than 103,000, even though the upcoming November 26 Thanksgiving was the focus of attention for many people. By the following Wednesday morning, December 2, signers had zoomed to 232,313.

Had the day arrived that Americans began to think of sacrificing more of themselves and their comforts to save the nation? For decade after decade, the culture of death and decadence insisted on having its way. Were people saying its game was over? Were they going to make it stick this time?

Some younger pro- lifers may not know that the push for permissive abortion began to be thrown back on its heels in the early 1970s, until the U. S. Supreme Court jumped in on January 22, 1973, to trumpet a previously unknown “ fundamental constitutional right” to abortion.

Thanks to pioneering pro- life education, people had begun learning the negatives of the experimental, less restrictive abortion laws in effect in about a dozen states, beginning in the latter 1960s.

In 1972 the voters of both Michigan and North Dakota decisively rejected pro- abortion referenda measures. One of these states was regarded as urban and industrial, the other rural and agricultural, and neither of them classically “ Catholic.”

Michigan voters rejected the pro- abortion question by a 61% majority, North Dakota by 77%. And this at a time when the dominant pro- abortion media lacked a challenge from the more conservative alternative media of today.

In that same year the New York state legislature, learning from bitter experience, repealed the permissive abortion law it had enacted in 1970, but liberal, pro- abortion Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller vetoed the legislative correction of its error.

It was only a matter of time for legal sanity to be restored in the nation. Then the tyrants of the Supreme Court jumped in the following January to save the day for slaughter. With Roe v. Wade and

Doe v. Bolton, the court proclaimed an inexplicable right to unlimited nationwide abortion. Even the 7-to-2 pro-abortion majority justices admitted they didn’t know where in the Constitution this “right” was located, but they made some guesses.

Through the years, pro-abortion radicals have been lucky that their pro-life foes are the ones who too patiently play by the rules. If this is the new law, the pro-lifers say, we’ll arduously work to change it. The pro-abortionists feel no such modesty. We immediately declare a national legal revolution without any basis, the abortionists bellow, and you’ve all got to submit.

It helped that an outrageously biased pro-abortion media pumped out a blinding fog of misinformation. Realizing that the populace would never accept the horror the media loved if people understood, the media preferred to protect the slaughter rather than the victims.

With Roe in place, the government began funding permissive abortions through Medicaid without any legislative authorization of the expenditures. Illinois Republican Cong. Henry Hyde brought that to a close in 1977 with congressional approval of the restrictive amendment named for him.

Even today the radical elite continue their push to destroy the nation’s social structure regardless of authorization or popular consent. They’re determined to impose same-sex “marriage” despite its rejection by voters in every state where it appeared on the ballot, even supposedly “safe, liberal” states like California and Maine.

And with the prospect of federalized “health care,” Barack Obama’s radicals are aching to impose tax-paid permissive abortion on everyone, with health care workers expected to bow their heads in submission, not in prayer, and cooperate in massive abortion and euthanasia.

Planned Parenthood builds new fortress- like super- abortuaries, and Obama’s White House adviser Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, and his “end-of-life” medical kin play with deadly concepts like “Quality Adjusted Life Years.”

Will Americans finally put their foot down hard on political tyrants and begin civil disobedience?

One of the first signers of the Manhattan Declaration, activist Alan Sears, toldThe Wanderer that despite little national publicity, more people are signing the statement online as word spreads through social networking, Facebook, e-mail, and personal contact.

Sears is president, general counsel, and CEO of the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) that fights in courts nationally for innocent life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty.

“I think Christian Americans, if this comes to their attention, if they read it, they’ll sign it. . . . If word gets to them, I’m more than confident more than a million Christians will sign this,” Sears said.

“One million [signatures] would be great before Christmas,” said one comment posted at the “Free Republic” web site that carriedThe Wanderer’sDecember 3 story announcing the declaration.

In addition to laity, the first signers included a number of evangelical, Orthodox, and Catholic churchmen.

Sears, like the other signers who initially announced the declaration on November 20, was speaking for himself, not as an organizational representative — “but speaking to and from our communities,” as the declaration puts it.

In a November 28 interview, Sears toldThe Wanderer, “Overwhelmingly I’ve received e-mails on people’s perspective on the significance of this.” One compared it, he said, to “an equal act of courage” with signing the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

The signers of that 18th-century declaration, severing their ties with Great Britain and assuming their responsibility for incurring British wrath, concluded that, “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Asked about the determination today of signers of the Manhattan Declaration to stand up against the culture of death and its government fist, Sears pointed to wording in the declaration itself.

The fourth paragraph begins, “We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right — and, more importantly,to embrace our obligation

— to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.”

After affirming that Christianity through the centuries “has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required,” the declarationconcludes: “Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide, and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.”

Asked about supporters of the declaration undertaking civil disobedience, Sears toldThe Wanderer, “No one that signed this declaration is looking for trouble,” but the point has been reached “where we’re having Caesar tread on what is God’s.”

He recalled that the declaration cites Saints Peter and John inActs4, refusing to obey an order to stop preaching, as well as Martin Luther King Jr.’sLetter from a Birmingham Jail.

The declaration says: “Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.”

One of the drafters of the declaration, Princeton University’s Dr. Robert George, said that “because of the circumstances in the Obama administration, this is much more urgent than in a prior time,” Sears said.

People all over the country, Sears said, are looking for spiritual leadership and asking what they should be prepared to do as Christians in drawing the lines.

“ It’s amazing if you think about…who these signers are” when the declaration was first announced, Sears said — people with various theological disagreements. “This is historical. Nobody’s saying they’ll lay down their theological differences,” but “on these issues we have commonality.”

Sears said that when The Washington Post at the November 20 media conference asked one of the first signers, Archbishop Donald Wuerl, of the Archdiocese of Washington, about civil disobedience, Wuerl replied, “ We would hope it would never come to this, but if it comes to this, this is where and who we are.”

Aggressive secularism will keep pushing against believers unless they resist, Sears indicated, citing recent cases forcing Catholic institutions to fund employee insurance coverage including abortifacients and contraceptives that seriously violate Catholic teaching, and ordering pharmacists to dispense such substances despite their own moral convictions.

Sears also pointed to a hefty punishment in 2008 by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission against a Christian wedding photographer who declined a work offer from two lesbians wanting their “commitment ceremony”honored. The commission said that Elane Photography engaged in “sexual orientation” discrimination and ordered it to pay $6,637.94 in attorneys’ fees to the two women who filed a complaint. ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence responded, “The Constitution prohibits the state from forcing unwilling people to promote a message they disagree with and thereby violate their conscience. The commission’s decision shows stunning disregard for our client’s First Amendment rights. . . .”

Lorence asked rhetorically whether the government “[c]ould . . . force a vegetarian videographer to create a commercial for the new butcher shop in town? American business owners do not surrender their constitutional rights at the marketplace gate.”

Sears toldThe Wanderer that this case is “far, far from being resolved” and could end up at the U.S. SupremeCourt. It long has been said that the Supreme Court follows the election returns. Perhaps determined Americans putting themselves on the line against morally tyrannical secularists would send even a stronger message to jurists.

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“One million [signatures] would be great before Christmas,” said one comment posted at the “Free Republic” web site that carried The Wanderer’s December 3 story announcing the declaration."

Hey, how about that!

It’s a shame that a noble declaration is fouled with primitive and superstitious idols like this primitive earth-mother worship.

They’re insulting Mary and offending Jesus by making a goddess out of her.

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