LIVING HOST - PART II - James Larson

Open Letter

His Eminence
Cardinal Timothy Dolan
Archbishop of New York

21 August 2012

A MOST URGENT OBJECTION FROM AFRICA

Your Eminence,

I write to express my profound dismay and astonishment at the invitation you have extended to the very personification of the world-wide Culture of Death, namely President Obama, to speak at the prestigious Catholic Al Smith Dinner on 18 October.

I have read the most truly astonishing reasons that you give on your Website - following the objections you have received - to justify your invitation to the President “for an evening of positive, upbeat, patriotic, enjoyable civil discourse.” I cannot imagine Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich and Freising or Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen of Munster having invited Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler to such a “positive, upbeat, patriotic, enjoyable” event. Nor do I think your justification will garner much applause from the heavenly host of children slaughtered due to the barbaric policies of Obama.

From my extensive international experience and knowledge of the pro-life battle, I must advise you that you have caused most grievous harm. Particularly your invitation coming as it does while you as Chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops are ostensibly leading/mounting a defence against Obama’s most wicked HHS Mandate. You know full well that this Mandate is an undisguised full frontal assault by President Obama on freedom of conscience; the denial of which fundamental right will result in the exclusion of faithful conscientious Catholics from the professions of medicine and nursing. It will see huge financial penalties inflicted upon individual Catholics, Catholic businesses and all Catholic institutions and organisations, hospitals, schools, universities, colleges and so on, resulting in their bankruptcy or closure or the possible abandonment of their Catholic identity.

I sincerely ask you to consider those few consequences and to contemplate how Catholics will now read your opposition to this blatant attack on religious freedom embodied in the President’s HHS Mandate. “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” [1 Cor.14:8]. St. Paul’s warning is especially germane to the appalling consequences your imagined obligation of “civility” towards President Obama will have on the coming US Presidential elections. I understand that 54% of Catholics, despite knowledge of his extreme open support for abortion, voted for Obama in the last election. Your invitation to the President may well result in Catholics voting for him once again, thus significantly increasing the chances of his re-election; a fearful prospect since we must anticipate that his behaviour during that second and final term would be very much worse than at present.

Your failure to withdraw the invitation, despite the many thousands of objections that you have received from Catholics and others, is all the more remarkable since you are effectively spreading still more confusion about the evils of abortion and contraception. The negative impact of the invitation on the pro-life crusade, conducted by Catholics and other persons of good will in America and beyond, is compounded by the credibility it bestows upon the President’s vile behaviour and the encouragement it gives to the global anti-life forces that he sustains and promotes. This is quite apart from the grave harm that you do to your own authority, leadership, reputation and credibility as well as to your high office as Cardinal Archbishop of New York and Chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

What possible benefit do you hope to gain by honouring on a prestigious Catholic platform this aggressive agent of the Culture of Death? He has honoured many individuals and organisations promoting abortion and other kinds of moral depravity around the world. He even protects the murder of children in the very process of them being born. You must know of the unprecedented administrative, moral and financial support that President Obama has given to the International Planned Parenthood Federation and its many other murderous surrogate organisations both inside and outside of the USA. Sharing centre stage with such a man at the Al Smith dinner will only fuel his arrogance and evil designs. And I repeat and emphasise, not only will the harm and scandal affect Catholics in your Archdiocese and in the rest of the USA, but it will affect pro-life efforts by people who still strive all around the world - against almost unimaginable odds and difficulties, many of which are largely attributable to the direct and indirect support for the Culture of Death by Presidents Clinton and Obama- to shield unborn children and their mothers from abortion.

I therefore implore you, Eminence, to withdraw your invitation to President Obama. I am certain that such a humble withdrawal would cause the accrual to you and to the USA of great blessings and graces. First and foremost, it would send a very clear message to the President and his followers, as also to Catholics and pro-life workers everywhere. In so doing, it would contribute greatly to a Catholic revival and to the restoration of your own reputation, status and leadership.

Yours in the service of the Lord of Life

Dr. Claude E. Newbury.

M.B., B.Ch., D.T.M & H., D. P.H., M.F. G.P., E.C.F.M.G. (USA), D.O.H., D.C.H., D. A., M.Med.
Consultant in Accident and Emergency Medicine

ADDENDUM:

Dr. Claude Newbury, is Medical Practitioner, now working as a Consultant in Accident and Emergency Medicine. He has been in medical practice for 51 years and for 42 years has followed his vocation as a pro-life missionary at the service of cardinals, bishops and priests in Africa and in various other parts of the world.

Immediately after qualification Dr. Newbury worked as a Catholic Missionary Doctor in Zululand. He founded the Catholic Doctors Guild of St. Luke, Cosmas and Damian in South Africa; was invited by His Holiness Pope John Paul II to participate in the Vatican’s first world-wide symposium on Abortion; was Physician Advisor to the Missionaries of Charity of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta; was instrumental in establishing Natural Fertility Regulation in South Africa; together with his wife founded Victims of Choice, the first organisation in South Africa devoted to helping women who have had abortions, also receiving with her the 1992 Human Life Award as “The Persons Who Had Done The Most To Defend Unborn Babies”).

As well as serving as personal physician to two previous Bishops of Johannesburg, he served on a subcommittee of The Catholic Bishops Conference of South Africa and has advised many Catholic Bishops Conferences in Sub-Saharan Africa on issues pertaining to the Gospel of Life. He brought the first charge of Murder by Medical Infanticide in South Africa; gave evidence in South Africa’s Parliament on four separate occasions against the legalisation of abortion in South Africa; informed the Catholic Bishops Conference of South Africa of the abortifacient nature of most methods of “contraception”; submitted extensive Heads of Argument and Treatises on Abortion, Euthanasia, Sex-Education, Population Control and Artificial Reproduction to various Parliamentary Committees Enquiring into these matters.

For 25 years he served as President of Pro-Life South Africa, on whose behalf he initiated in the South African Constitutional Court the sole action to oppose the incorporation of abortion into the new South African Constitution. For 22 years he also represented Human Life International in Africa and served on its International Advisory Board; served on the advisory boards of many other Catholic pro-life organisations around the world; advised Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila on birth control, abortion and the work of International Planned Parenthood; and is a founding member of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life.