A Word from Patrick Monaghan, Executive Director

When man fell, the world fell. Thus this vale of tears into which we all are born has always been at the least in­ternational -actually cosmic.

The Christian revelation came through Bethlehem, a small provincial town in the known world empire of Rome. From the very beginning, this revelation of the Word went forth to all nations, for all nations were en­slaved to sin and in need of salvation. So, that Planned Parenthood is international in its destructive outreach should be no surprise. In our name as Americans, with our money and power commandeered by them, their tentacles of evil respect no boundaries in any sense, political or fa­milial.

When I traveled to Brazil two years ago for a Pontifi­cal Conference on the family, particularly two points struck me. First, the material problems of underdeveloped countries are ripe for a Christian response. Second, the United States's official international response has embod­ied not American virtues, but the worst of faithless, mate­rialistic American culture. A family needs clean water, stable land titles, and vaccines -and the developed countries' contraceptive imperialism sends them condoms, abortion programs, and a philosophic outlook that undermines family integrity, thereby assuring poverty, both spiritual and material.

The issues of life and the assault on God's values are worldwide and interplay with one another. Thus, certain evils are sold abroad as advanced American thinking and here as sophisticated foreign insights. "Everyone in Paris or New York or California is doing this." The glamour of evil, which we formally reject each Easter, presents itself as haute couture. Accordingly, our concern, response and resistance, as is God's love, must be without frontiers.

During the past few months, I had the opportunity to help lawyers in France organize a Center for Law and Jus­tice International to battle in their country the same issues that face us here: schools providing contraception or facilitating abortions, parents kept uninformed, and a general educational program aimed at in­doctrinating Godlessness and immorality. Until we presented ourselves and our position, the only American representatives they had seen had been those espousing moral disorder, and doing so with vast material resources. If we do nothing else but show that not all American professionals are contraceptive and abortion imperialists, we have accomplished something.

In Latin America, we are helping to save an unborn child from abortion and working to protect medical per­sonnel who are threatened with prosecution because they refuse to do abortions. Already, the Church is there pro­claiming the Gospel of Life -this I have seen -but they are being undermined and thwarted in their proclamation by media, legal, and governmental interests supported with American money. Make no mistake about it, our home-produced bad guys can, in this fallen world, always find enough indigenous idiots to work with. But at the very least, we should help those tending the Lord's vine­yards to counter those forces and money that come from the United States to undermine God's Word.

Let me share with you part of a letter to me from a Special Envoy of the Holy See:

I am very pleased that you, with the Center for Law and Justice [International], have now an Office in Europe. Your exper­tise and experience are needed here. There is, as you are well aware, an emerging liberal agenda, not only at the international United Nations level but also, at the regional European level, which is well funded with money in part from the U.S.A. I feel that develop­ments in the USA have an immediate impact in Eu­rope as also socio-political evolutions in Europe cannot but affect political philosophy in the U.S.A.

The evils we face from principalities and powers are cosmic and our prayerful and bold response must be Catholic and catholic. We have been asked to help galva­nize support in the United States and to take part in the international response. I ask you to join with us in this apostolate in this springtime of the new millennium. Given our circumstances and our responsibilities, it is a reasonable and justified request.