FIRST, OUR ESSAY:      
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Bear One Another's Burdens

Bear One Another's Burdens

WE NEED YOUR HELP! Perhaps you've read this before and are wondering, "Why am I seeing this again?" But millions of other Christians haven't seen it! So please use the "share" buttons above to share it with your social media friends. Thanks!!

How are we to "bear one another's burdens"? When Jesus Christ first started His ministry, He said: "The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-19).

Then He showed His disciples how to preach the Gospel and minister to the sick, handicapped and poor (Luke 5:12-15). Next, He sent them out two by two and they practiced what He taught (Luke 9:1-2): preach the Gospel, care for the needy and heal the sick. After that, He taught His followers to minister to the same audience: "the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind" (Luke 14:12-13 and 21), and He put it into practice: "Jesus went about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people" (Matthew 9:35).

And in the Great Commission, Jesus commanded His disciples to make more disciples and teach their disciples to FULFILL ("observe" but not just spectate!) everything He had taught His disciples to DO (Mat. 28:18-20). What was it that He taught His disciples to DO? Proclaim the Good News and Minister to "the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind"!   P&M - Proclaim & Minister - that's Practical Ministry! It's not an "either-or" solution: either preach, evangelize, witness for Christ; or do social action things like feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless, helping the jobless find work. It's a "both-and" proposition: Do Both!

Later, the Apostles selected seven deacons (Greek "diakon" = "minister") to carry out this diakonia-ministry to the poor, widows, etc. "...and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly" (Acts 6:1-7). St. Paul taught that the bishops, pastors and deacons should equip the saints to do the work of diakonia-ministry "to the building up of the body of Christ" (Eph. 4:12). This is not just dry theory or theology: it is practical, hands-on ministry that helps the church grow! Enroll in our free courses to see how YOU can do diakonia-ministry!

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NEXT, THE NEWS:

 


 

PRIEST WHO HELD FUNERAL FOR 115 ABORTED CHILDREN FOUND IN D.C. SPEAKS: 'MAKE SURE THIS EVIL COMES TO AN END'
from: LiveAction News

Fr. Bill Kuchinsky (13 Apr.) The Catholic priest who held a funeral for the remains of the 115 aborted children recently found in Washington, D.C., has spoken out about his experience. In an interview with LifeSite News, Fr. Bill Kuchinsky of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston West Virginia spoke of the reason he felt a proper funeral and burial was necessary and explained what he hopes will come of the tragedy.

The children's aborted remains were discovered on March 25 by pro-life activists Lauren Handy and Terrisa Bukovinac, who received them from a medical waste truck driver. Inside a box collected from the driver, they found the remains of 115 aborted children – five who appear to have been old enough to survive outside the womb and whose injuries may be consistent with illegal abortion or infanticide. Handy and Bukovinac then arranged with Fr. Kuchinsky to say a funeral mass for the children. The remains of the 110 first-trimester children were given a respectful burial, while the five older children were held so that their deaths could be investigated.

As he spoke with LifeSite News, Fr. Kuchinsky related why he felt it was important to give these babies a proper funeral and burial, saying he felt in a particular way it was a mission from God:

Each of us is created in the image and likeness of God. And so… the body is the outward sign and expression of the soul. So the bodies themselves, even though the soul has departed, have a sacredness to us. And indeed, when they were turned over to me, it became a mission of mine to make sure that these babies receive a burial. It is one of the corporal works of mercy to bury the dead, and so I thought as a priest I was given the honor to make sure that these babies were afforded an honor they weren't in life, not being able to be born.

And it's kind of funny, I look back over the course of my priesthood, and we know that there are things we're called to every day… to me it was very clear that this was a mission from God to make sure that these babies made it into a proper burial.

Fr. Kuchinsky also commented that he hasn't quite had time to process the emotions that came with seeing and handling the dead children. "I need the time to allow the Lord to work on me,” he said. “It is, it's a horrible experience. As others have said, they've seen abortion imagery, but I was holding these baby parts with my own hands. The babies did not have a voice in this life, so maybe as a testimony to the sacredness of life and the evil that is going on, in the hopes that that evil might be put to an end, I did take pictures. I guess sometimes I think I've seen too much." [read more...]

COMMENTARY: (See the article "SHE BURIED THEIR BODIES" below.) Thank the Lord for brave and faithful servants like Fr. Bill Kuchinsky. Go to www.2363.org to see what LiveAction is doing about the 2363 babies who are aborted every day in the U.S.A. and get their 2,363 Activism Kit now!

 


 

REPORT: CHINESE DOCTORS HAVE PARTICIPATED IN 'ORGAN DONATION' EXECUTIONS OF PRISONERS
from: BioEdge.org

'organ donation' executions (12 Apr.) Shocking allegations about Chinese organ donation have been made in a leading journal, the American Journal of Transplantation. An Australian researcher and an Israeli transplant surgeon claim that "physicians in the People's Republic of China have participated in executions by organ removal."

Mathew Robertson, of the Australian National University in Canberra, and Professor Jacob Lavee, of Tel Aviv University, scanned 2,838 papers drawn from a dataset of 124,770 Chinese-language transplant publications from 1980 to 2015. In 71 of these, from medical centers around the country, they found evidence that brain death had not been properly declared and that "the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the proximate cause of the donor's death."

"There were two criteria by which we claimed a problematic brain death declaration," Robertson, who translated the Chinese papers, told WebMD News. "One was where the patient was not ventilated and was only intubated after they were declared brain dead, the other was that the intubation took place immediately prior to the surgery beginning."

This damning assertion has been flatly denied by Chinese authorities. "While some anti-China forces fabricate and spread rumours on China's organ transplantation, their true, malicious intentions are becoming increasingly clear to and rejected by the international community," the Chinese embassy in Israel told the newspaper Haaretz.

The authors have produced no evidence from eyewitnesses, but they discovered that the authors of these 71 papers unwittingly disclosed, albeit indirectly, that they had ignored the dead donor rule when removing hearts and lungs from the donors. And since most of the donors between 1980 and 2015 were prisoners, this implies that the transplant operation must have been the means of executing them.

"Transplanting organs from a person who has been executed, is brain dead and whose heart is still beating, requires complex and delicate coordination between the executioners and the doctors salvaging the organ," Lavee told Haaretz. "The papers analysed in the study show that Chinese physicians have essentially joined the execution procedure to avoid losing the organ due to a lack of coordination."

In 2015, China agreed to stop using prisoners for transplant operations and declared that it would rely upon voluntary donations. However, the number of organs available for transplant never stopped growing. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: Which is worse: selling one's own body for sex, or selling the body parts of other people for profit? This ranks as some of the worst, most hellish, practices in the world, along with selling the organs and tissues of aborted babies [see below].

 


 

U. OF PITT CONTACTED NIH DIRECTOR FOR HELP WITH PUSHBACK ON CRITICISM OF FETAL ORGAN EXPERIMENTS
from: Judicial Watch

U of Pitt fetal tissue collection (18 Apr.) U. of Pitt, which has been accused of procuring tissues from born-alive aborted babies, pleads to NIH for help with criticism of their grisly experiments, including research on grafting fetal scalp tissue onto mice.

Judicial Watch announced today it obtained 34 pages of new records revealing that the Associate Senior Vice Chancellor for Science Strategy and Planning in the Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Jeremy Berg, contacted then-Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins requesting help to combat, "efforts to undermine important science using fetal tissue." Additionally, the records include a scientific report containing information about grafting human scalp and other tissues onto mice.

Judicial Watch obtained the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for records of communication related to a September 21, 2021, letter sent by Sen. James Lankford and nearly 100 members of Congress demanding an investigation into the University of Pittsburgh's potentially illegal fetal tissue research (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:22-cv-00296)).

This lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after HHS and its component, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), failed to respond to November 16, 2021, FOIA request for:

All records of communication, including emails and text messages, regarding the September 21, 2021 letter co-authored by Sen. James Lankford and other congressmen to Director Francis Collins, demanding an investigation into the University of Pittsburgh's program of fetal body parts procurement and experimentation (copy attached), sent to and from the following NIH officials: Director Collins, Principal Deputy Director Lawrence A. Tabak, Acting Chief of Staff John T. Burklow, and Acting Associate Director Renate H. Myles.

In August 2021, Judicial Watch and the Center for Medical Progress through a separate FOIA lawsuit uncovered HHS documents that revealed nearly $3 million in federal funds were spent on the University of Pittsburgh's quest to become a "Tissue Hub" for human fetal tissue ranging from 6 to 42 weeks gestation. Among other findings, the records revealed:

*The aims of the project listed in the original 2015 proposal were to "develop a pipeline to the acquisition, quality control and distribution of human genitourinary [urinary and genital organs and functions] samples obtained throughout development (6-42 weeks gestation). … [and] generate an ongoing resource to distribute fresh developmental human genitourinary samples from various stages (6-42 weeks) to the GUDMAP [GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project] Atlas projects."

*In the proposal, Pitt notes that is has been "collecting fetal tissue for over 10 years ... include[ing] liver, heart, gonads, legs, brain, genitourinary tissues including kidneys, ureters and bladders." Pitt noted in 2015 "we have disbursed over 300 fresh samples collected from 77 cases. The collections can be significantly ramped up as material could have been accrued from as many as 725 cases last year." The Health Sciences Tissue Bank at Pitt is "embedded within the Department of Pathology ... thus providing rapid access to very high quality tissue and biological specimens." [How convenient!]

*Pitt boasts it has a number of internal connections as well as a "strong working relationship with UPMC [University of Pittsburgh Medical Center] and the Department of Pathology" as well as three "laboratories in the flagship UPMC hospitals." This includes a lab boasting a "ButcherBoy band saw for sectioning bone," and a "frozen section room has digital video feed to and from the operating rooms. This also allows for instantaneous discussions with the surgeons as well [as] immediate ‘show and tell' for them." The proposal ironically also boasts about the laboratories at the "Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh."

*Later in the proposal, Pitt states that it records the "warm ischemic time on our samples and take steps to keep it at a minimum to ensure the highest quality biological specimens." [The "warm ischemic time" refers to the amount of time an organ remains at body temperature after blood supply has been cut off. Warm ischemic time differs from cold ischemic time which refers to amount of time the organ is chilled. Pitt's statement suggests the time between the abortion and collection is minimal.]

The newly obtained records include an email dated October 16, 2021, from the University of Pittsburgh's Dr. Jeremy Berg, associate senior vice chancellor for science strategy and planning, contacting then-Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, requesting help with the negative press they were receiving about their work with aborted human tissue.< [read more...]

COMMENTARY: It is deeply disturbing – "sickening" is a better word – to realize that the hospital system where I am sitting right now (because my wife Cheryl is recovering from broken femur surgery) is also involved in this disgusting practice of aborting babies and likely at times killing those who are born alive ... all so they can contribute to the "science" of experimenting on human tissues and using them for other purposes such as making cosmetics.

 


 

FEDS REVERSE COURSE ON ALZHEIMER’S DRUG AFTER OUTCRY FROM DOWN SYNDROME ADVOCATES
from: Disability Scoop

Alzheimer drug for Down syndrome people (18 Apr.) After complaints of discrimination, federal officials are backing off a plan that would have kept people with Down syndrome from accessing a new Alzheimer's treatment even though they're predisposed to the disease.

Aduhelm was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year despite questions from many experts about how effective it truly is. However, CMS makes its own coverage decisions and since most people with Down syndrome are covered by Medicare or Medicaid, the agency's determination is significant.

Under a proposal released in January, CMS sought to make Aduhelm available to people with Medicare only if they were participating in clinical trials, citing concerns about potential harm to patients from the treatment. People with Down syndrome and any other conditions that "may significantly contribute to cognitive decline" would be excluded from such trials, the CMS proposal said.

"This would mean that anyone with Down syndrome and Alzheimer's who, in consultation with their medical and support teams, wanted to try this very expensive drug as a treatment option, would not have had their costs been covered by Medicare because they were not allowed to be part of the clinical trials," said Heather Sachs, policy and advocacy director at the National Down Syndrome Congress.

The Down syndrome community flooded CMS with more than 1,800 comments blasting the proposal for explicitly excluding people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Not only would the policy prevent people with Down syndrome from accessing Aduhelm, but without clinical trial data on this population, advocates feared that doctors would lack important information to guide treatment decisions for those with the chromosomal disorder.

Now the agency is changing course. In its final determination issued earlier this month, CMS removed the exclusion for people with Down syndrome. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: This is simply another example of the commodifying of human life. Those who are deemed "less fit" – of lesser economic value to society, less valuable "human resources" like mineral or petroleum resources – are ignored, skipped over, or deliberately euthanized. Every day a news article or opinion piece pops up that directly or indirectly asserts one of two common premises: humans are insignificant compared to the vastness of the Universe, or humans can and will be replaced by robots. It is amazing how many people believe these ideas are true. This is directly contrary to the belief that human life is valuable because we are created in the image of God so we can have communion with Him.

 


 

UOC-MP CLERGYMEN COLLECT ALMOST HALF A THOUSAND SIGNATURES FOR THE CHURCH TRIBUNAL OVER KIRILL
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine

General Kirill (18 Apr.) Priests of the UOC-MP (Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate) have collected 430 signatures for the international ecclesiastical tribunal over Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church. This was reported to Radio Liberty by Archpriest Andriy Pinchuk, a clergyman of the Diocese of Dnipropetrovsk, UOC-MP, who was one of the initiators of the collection.

The priests' signatures were collected under the appeal of the clergy to the Primates of the Eastern Churches regarding the trial of Patriarch Kirill. According to Fr Andriy Pinchuk, now the appeal, translated into Greek, will be submitted for consideration to the Council of Primates of the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Cyprus which has jurisdiction over Patriarch Kirill.

"They must first be accepted for consideration, and then make a decision on the appointment of a meeting. But I do not know about the timing," the priest said. According to him, the English version will be submitted to the Primates of other Orthodox Churches for review. The appeal, translated into Russian, will be sent to Patriarch Kirill "to understand what he has done in Ukraine and what the Ukrainian clergy accuse him of," says Fr. Andriy Pinchuk.

"The main accusation is to support the spread of the doctrine of the 'Russian World,' which, in our opinion, is a kind of heresy of ethnophyletism. This is when something National is put over Christian universalism when Christ and God's truth are not visible behind the smoke[screen] of 'national ideas'," the priest said.

He noted that in history there are precedents regarding the deprivation of church leaders of dignity precisely because of such a procedure. 450 years ago in Russia, it was the Council of Primates that defrocked Patriarch Nikon. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: That is "Patriarch" Kirill in a Russian general's uniform, obviously photoshopped. But what it points out is that by mouthing the party line, Kirill is a tool of the Russian government, especially of Putin, the former KGB agent. I can personally attest that Kirill's office reports to the FSB, the successor agency of the KGB: when we were living in Moscow, I became acquainted with someone who worked in then-Metropolitan Kirill's office. This person naively told me that the FSB asked him to report on me, and he told them that I was not a threat to Russia.

 


 

SHE BURIED THEIR BODIES
from: The American Conservative

Lauren Hardy of PAAU (13 Apr.) The left is blaming Lauren Handy for "tampering" with the remains of the more than 100 aborted children she discovered in Washington, D.C. On April 5, pro-life activist Lauren Handy is shown here listening during a news conference on the five fetuses found inside the home where she and other "anti-abortion" activists were living on Capitol Hill, at a news conference at the Hyatt Regency on April 05, 2022 in Washington, DC. The activists, who are members of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) group, held the news conference to answer questions on how the group came to attain the remains of the aborted fetuses

But after a long time, Salmanasar the king being dead, when Sennacherib his son, who reigned in his place, had a hatred for the children of Israel: Tobias daily went among all his kindred, and comforted them, and distributed to every one as he was able, out of his goods: He fed the hungry, and gave clothes to the naked, and was careful to bury the dead, and they that were slain.

And when king Sennacherib was come back, fleeing from Judea by reason of the slaughter that God had made about him for his blasphemy, and being angry slew many of the children of Israel, Tobias buried their bodies. (Tobias 1:18-21)

The disfigured corpses of more than 100 aborted children were recovered in Washington, D.C. late last month by a pro-life activist named Lauren Handy. They were reportedly found in a box on a medical-waste truck on their way to be incinerated. In an act of perfect moral inversion, the only person facing prosecution in connection with the children's deaths is the woman who discovered their remains.

Handy claims to have found the remains of 115 unborn children in a medical-waste container in a truck departing from Washington Surgi-Clinic, an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C., late last month. She says five of the recovered children were aborted post-viability. Photos of the five viable children's remains were leaked to the pro-life group Live Action.

The first child pictured in the report is called "Baby Boy #1." He is fully formed, roughly the size of a healthy newborn. One of the neonatologists quoted by Live Action estimates his gestational age at 32 weeks. The child's limbs are discolored, jaundiced from decay. His head is shriveled like a prune and stomach distended. His mouth is frozen agape and eyes swollen shut. The skin on his left leg is peeling.

The second child, "Baby Girl #1," is curled in the fetal position. Her face is misshapen, and her head is stuck to her chest. There are deep lacerations on the back of her neck. She has all ten of her toes—they're pinkish, and at a glance could be mistaken for the feet of a live newborn.

"Baby Girl #2" is pictured third. All that remains of her little body are severed limbs and a portion of her spine. A neonatologist interviewed by Live Action believes the child was decapitated during a "dilation and extraction" abortion. The last child pictured is blue from apparent oxygen deprivation. The baby's sex is unknown.

Handy claims she came to possess the remains after confronting an employee of Curtis Bay Waste Management, who was loading what he supposed to be medical waste from Washington Surgi-Clinic to the back of his truck to be disposed of at the company's industrial-grade incinerator. In her telling, she asked the employee if he knew what was in the boxes. He did not. Handy told him she believed the boxes contained the remains of aborted children, which shocked the employee. She asked if she could take one of the boxes from the truck. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: (See the article "PRIEST WHO HELD FUNERAL FOR 115 ABORTED CHILDREN FOUND IN D.C." above.) The world's embracing of "free market" economics and its rejection of Christian values considers only the market value of a human life. This commodifying of humans differs little from slavery in which slaves were bought and sold like cattle. These days, the genocide of abortion is called "freedom of choice" and "a human right" – actually a human wrong, a deliberate obfuscation of what it really is: the mass murder of innocent human beings. This is the result of the "slippery slope" of moral degeneration, as Justice Antonin Scalia described in his dissenting opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court "Lawrence v. Texas" case of June 2003: see "About Scalia: 'He Wasn't Wrong'" by Rod Dreher.

 


 

NOW, OUR VIEWS:

 


 

'If I Didn't Speak Out, I Wouldn't Be a True Christian'

 

Nina BelyayevaMoscow Times, Apr. 8: Nina Belyayeva has fled Russia because a "case" (criminal investigation) was being opened against her. Once it is opened, there is virtually no escape. In this article, Nina Belyayeva explained why she opposed the war – and is paying the price.

She is a deputy of the Voronezh regional council from the Communist Party (!) and spoke out against the war in Ukraine at a council session. "I am against the decision that was made by the president and against the what is happening today on the territory of the "sovereign state of Ukraine. I consider what is happening to be a war crime," Belyayeva said.

After her statement, the deputies demanded that Belyayeva be expelled from the council for what they called "speeches directed against the nation." The deputies also removed her from the deputy ethics commission and requested that the prosecutor's office evaluate her actions. She has since left the country. (Imagine that: standing up against war crimes is considered "unethical" in Russia!)

Belyayeva told The Moscow Times why she decided to speak out against the war and whether she regrets her words: "You have to ask yourself: What would Jesus Christ say? Ask yourself: Would you want to be 'liberated' like this? To have people come into your home with this kind of 'deliverance' and 'brotherly love'?"

(Get this as a separate blog article: "ARC-News-blog" at blogspot.com).

 


 

On a personal note: At about 1 pm on Monday, April 18, my wife Cheryl fell from a 1-step kitchen stool and broke her left femur as she was looking for spices to finish fixing lunch. I called an ambulance and they took her to the ER at Shadyside hospital here in Pittsburgh. They did CT scans and x-rays that showed a clean break and no other injuries (hip, back, neck, or head). I was there from 2:15 pm to 7:30 pm - she was still in an ER room when I left and until 11 pm. At 8 pm, I ate the "lunch" she had fixed.

The next day, she was in and out of pre-op, surgery, and recovery in 2.5 hours, in her room and had supper. Our son Rob visited her with me, and our daughter Tanya in Madison, WI sent flowers. Cheryl has a titanium rod and 4 screws in her femur and was feeling better than before surgery – probably the pain med was doing it. She was discharged on Friday and and will have rehab at home 2-3 times a week. Please pray for her speedy return to full health and mobility.

 


 

Prayer and Praise:   For a daily reminder to pray for the items below, go to My Daily Prayer Guide and click on the "A-N pr." link!

Sun. - Pray that Christians will "bear one another's burdens," not simply live for themselves, for pleasure or success.
Mon. - Thank the Lord for Fr. Bill Kuchinsky's initiative to hold a funeral for and bury 115 aborted babies.
Tue. - Ask God to stop the execution of prisoners in China in order to sell their internal organs for money.
Wed. - Pray for God to stop the slaughter of innocent unborn babies to sell their internal organs for money.
Thu. - Thank the Lord that the FDA has decided to give people with Down syndrome a new Alzheimer's med.
Fri. - Praise God that 430 Moscow-Patriarchate priests in Ukraine signed a petition to defrock Patriarch Kirill.
Sat. - Thank God that Lauren Handy found and passed on the bodies of 115 aborted babies in Washington D.C.

 

Who Are We?   Please remember to pray for Christians in Secularized Countries, and for...

  Your fellow-servants,

  Bob & Cheryl

  p.s. There are two kinds of pain: the pain of discipline, and the pain of regret. The choice is yours.

 

 

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