{"id":452,"date":"2006-03-03T14:01:52","date_gmt":"2006-03-03T14:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hostkabob.com\/vote\/?p=452"},"modified":"2006-03-03T14:01:52","modified_gmt":"2006-03-03T14:01:52","slug":"3306","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=452","title":{"rendered":"3\/3\/06"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night I gave a Pro-Life talk at St. Mary’s of the Desert Church in Rosamond, California. Afterward, parishioner Mike Adams approached me. He was wearing a big button that read: “Pro-Woman, Pro-Family, Pro-Life.” He said he wondered about the terminology: “Pro-Choice.” That is, the baby in the womb has no ‘choice’ in an abortion. “We should call it what it is,” he said. “Pro-Death…” At the beginning of the week, I had talked with Henry Hickey of San Bernardino, California. He regularly protests in front of two abortion clinics there. He said that many of the clergy in America seem almost complicit by their silence on this issue… While in San Bernardino, I also interviewed Danny Megrete who has been a counselor at the Veronica House here the past eight years. The Veronica House is for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. Megrete said as people are addicted to drugs, many of the women and children he sees are “addicted to sadness,” because of their tragic home situations. He also said the length of stay at the Veronica House is open-ended and the women learn, not only about the dynamics of domestic abuse; but there are also: feelings groups, groups on general life “responsibility,” groups on self-esteem, parenting sessions, alcohol and drug recovery groups… In all this, Megrete said he often sees miracles. That is, he starts to see some of the sadness start lift from the women, lift from the children. (Veronica House is non-profit and has a combination of both paid and volunteer staff.) Note: <\/strong> The L.A. Ti<\/em>mes ran an article which said: “Researchers have found that although about 80% of Americans profess to be Christians, and many say they believe in tithing, consistent tithers are a small group — about 3% of adults. Modest tithing is espeically noticeable among Roman Catholics, who give to their parishes about half as much as Protestants. In 2003, Protestants gave 2.6% of their income to their churches and Catholics gave 1.2%…” Given our lifestyles in America, in comparison to how most of the rest of the world lives, these figures (whether Protestant or Catholic) are absolutely anemic. Also, in Bellingham, Massachussetts, during our Campaign 2000 travels, we came across St. Blaze Church, which averages a tithing figure of: 17% per parishioner<\/em>. Right off the top, St. Blaze gives 20% to an impoverished Native American Reservation out west and to an overseas mission. What’s more, a woman in the church writes monthly essays on what effect the money is having. A little Native American girl being able to get her first dress, a family in the Third World being able to afford medicine for a sick child who otherwise would have died… The tithing envelopes at St. Blaze are passed out monthly with one of these essays in them. And a parishioner told me that because of these stories, tithing had become much more than feeling like she was “paying just another bill.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I gave a Pro-Life talk at St. Mary’s of the Desert Church in Rosamond, California. Afterward, parishioner Mike Adams approached me. He was wearing a big button that read: “Pro-Woman, Pro-Family, Pro-Life.” He said he wondered about the …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}