Vatican: Islam Overtakes Catholicism Globally

By Thomas A. Shakely

The Vatican said today that Muslims are now more numerous than Catholics in a worldwide report compiled by Monsignor Vittorio Formenti. According to the report, Muslims comprise 19.2 percent of the world’s population and Catholics account for 17.4 percent.

“For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us,” Formenti told Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world’s population — or about 2 billion people.

The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion.

Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world’s population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.

He said the data on Muslim populations had been compiled by individual countries and then released by the United Nations, adding the Vatican could only vouch for its own statistics.

I think this news should serve as a wake up call to all Catholics, especially those in the United States, that the entire world really is one giant missionary zone. These numbers are not startling if you’ve read Mark Steyn’s “America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It,” but the high birthrates among nearly every Islamic nation versus the anemic birthrates at or below the replacement level of 2.1 per couple in the vast majority of Western nations is both a serious problem and a great opportunity for Catholics.

Our children and grandchildren, though, may grow up in a world dominated by Islam with both radical strains and more moderate strains. We have the opportunity to “make all things new again” in our lives spiritually and in our communities with our witness to Christ and the Good News of the Gospel. Only through a deeper relationship with God through the Mass, through prayer and through everyday witness to Him can we be effective advocates for the Gospel.

We are being called to a new kind of commitment toward Christ and His Eternal Word. Unless we make ourselves new again and make our communities and families more living examples of faith, it will be our grandchildren who face a world entirely unfriendly and unwelcoming to the life of Christ.

Planned Parenthood & RHAPP: Ignoring the People of New York

By Thomas A. Shakely

Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin reported yesterday in the wake of New York Governor Elliot Spitzer’s prostitution-ring scandal that Planned Parenthood was planning to meet with him yesterday morning on a new piece of legislation that would dramatically expand the abortion industry in that state.

The Reproductive Health & Privacy Protection Act, or RHAPP, is being pushed as a necessary step toward “codifying Roe v. Wade.” According to Malkin’s information, it would:

• Allow non-doctors to perform abortions, including a dentist, a social worker, or a health care practitioner.
• Let girls as young as 12 obtain abortions throughout all 9 months of pregnancy without ever having to tell their parents.
• Force health practitioners or Catholic hospitals to lose their medical licenses if they don’t perform abortions since they would be denying women the “fundamental right” of an abortion.

Given that Planned Parenthood’s legal services have been somewhat curtailed under President Bush’s administration with the ban on partial birth abortion — which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court — it’s not entirely surprising that Planned Parenthood would seek to expand their business operations into previously untapped markets. This is accomplished, of course, by manipulating or fighting to establish legal precedent.

What’s most astonishing to be about RHAPP is not even that it would allow non-doctors to perform abortions, but that it actively seeks to destroy the fiscal viability of religiously affiliated hospitals for opting to deny abortion requests. If RHAPP passes in New York, this key plank would certainly be overturned on judicial review, but that Planned Parenthood has included this attack on the free operation of hospitals in their agenda signals what is potentially a new phase in the “culture war.”

Pope John Paul the Great called Catholics to uphold and defend a “culture of life”. Meanwhile, despite falling abortion rates in recent years and legal restrictions like the ban on partial birth abortion, Planned Parenthood continues to advocate abortion-on-demand, throwing all reason caution to the wind on the fundamental question of whether life begins at conception or birth.

Why? Quite simply, business is good. Planned Parenthood brings in more than $1 billion every year, and that’s only if you account for their abortion arm and the government grants — taxpayer funding — that this non-profit receives.

RHAPP, through its intimidation tactics toward Catholic hospitals, makes clear that there is no room for reasonable disagreement on the abortion issue. If you’re not with them in providing abortions and providing their industry profit, then you’re against them and you’ll be stripped of your medical accreditation and denied the ability to practice medicine as a corporate entity.

What we’re seeing here is corporate warfare, initiated by Planned Parenthood with the goal in mind of silencing and shutting down not just critics of their business practices, but those who are ethically or morally at odds with the abortion. Coercion, intimidation and religious discrimination are not the values of the American people, and we pray to God that they do not become the law of the land for New Yorkers.

Planned Parenthood’s attempt to hoodwink the people of New York by advancing a bill that claims to protect “reproductive health” is dispiriting given that the people of New York have already spoken. According to a 2007 Gallup Poll of New Yorkers, 73 percent want greater restrictions on abortion, and have affirmed their belief that “late-term abortion” — the kind promoted in RHAPP, should be illegal.

Planned Parenthood stands opposed both to judicial precedent and public opinion on abortion in New York. In fair competition in the “marketplace of ideas” between pro-abortion and pro-life voices, Planned Parenthood lost the game. With RHAPP, they’re brazenly attempting to change the rules of the game.

Thankfully, advocacy groups have sprung up in a united effort to protect human life and defend New York hospitals from RHAPP. New Yorkers for Parental Rights is maintaining a fairly comprehensive alert system on RHAPP, while Kathleen Gallagher, Director of Pro-Life Activities for the New York State Catholic Conference, appears in a forceful video rebuttal of RHAPP and Planned Parenthood’s efforts to criminalize medical free choice in their state.