Posted on 06/16/2005 11:43:48 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Eight million at the voting booths, sixteen million at Mass. The sixteen million were boycotting the referendum... And by doing this, they were upholding a law which places some moral restrictions on IVF...[It]forbids the production of an excessive number of embryos, embryonic selection, their use and elimination, and recourse to fertilization outside of the couple.
This grassroots mobilization of the Catholic world received little national media coverage, but it was responsible in great part for the result of the June 12-13 referendum.
For example, Radio Maria, which is directed by Fr. Lino Fanzaga and counts six million faithful listeners, began promoting the boycott of the vote last November, with an impressive intensification coming in the last weeks. The radio network issued an invitation to fast on bread and water the Wednesday and Friday before June 12, in the name of defending unborn life, and on Sunday it suggested that everyone make a pilgrimage to one of the five thousand Marian shrines in Italy.
The two hundred thousand Charismatics of Renewal in the Spirit arranged to meet in churches on the evening before the vote for an entire night of prayer.
And that same night, sixty-five thousand pilgrims, many of them from Communion and Liberation, walked from Macerata to the sanctuary of Loreto, led by the patriarch of Venice, Angelo Scola.
For months, the Catholic world was given a thorough education on the difficult topics that were the object of the referendum. There were thousands of gatherings in the parishes to discuss the theology, philosophy, and science involved, all at the initiative of individuals or of existing or newly formed groups. The promoters of these initiatives were decidedly young on the average.
(Excerpt) Read more at chiesa.espressonline.it ...
It is good that believers, catholic and otherwise, are making a stand in a country well noted for its liberalism.
Thanks for the ping. There is life in Old Europe yet!
not in Europe... Only in Italy...
"Behind this referendum is a project to reinvent man in the laboratory, to transform him into a product to sell like steak or a bomb. Here we return to Nazism," wrote Oriana Fallaci, the Italian author of a series of best-selling books pouring scorn on Islam and asserting the superiority of Western culture.
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