Los Pequeños Pepper

Publication of Los Pequeños de Cristo

October 2017

Debunking the Sun Miracle Skeptics

Page 4

Vatican Liturgy Chief Calls for ‘Revolt’ to Defend Traditional Family Values

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Comfort Catholicism Has to Go; It is Time to Prepare for Persecution

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Cover: October 7– Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. October is the month of the Rosary.

On October 13, 1917, the final apparition of a woman who called herself “The Lady of the Rosary” appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal. She told them: “I want you to continue saying the Rosary every day.”

Los Pequeños Pepper

Newsletter of Los Pequeños de Cristo October 2017 Volume 19, Number 10 Debunking the Sun Miracle Skeptics By Mark Mallett

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Five New Scientific Discoveries that Show Unborn Babies are Human Beings We are all humans, and our stories start on our very first day

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David Daleiden Wins Legal Battle against University Trying to Cover Up Its Purchase of Aborted Baby Parts By Micaiah Bolger

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Vatican Liturgy Chief Calls for ‘Revolt’ to Defend Traditional Family Values By Jeanne Smits

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Comfort Catholicism Has to Go; It is Time to Prepare for Persecution We are at war for our own souls and the souls of people we love. We are at war for the soul of this culture and nation. And like any soldier, we must train to fight well. By Msgr. Charles Pope

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October Calendar Page 15

Newsletter of Los Pequeños de Cristo Stephanie Block-editor, Carol Suhr-copy editor

Correspondence to The Pequeños Pepper may be addressed to: P.O. Box 20428, Albuquerque, NM 87154-0428

Phone: 505-293-8006 or email: www.lospequenos.org The Pequeños Pepper is published monthly

We are an Archdiocesan-wide Catholic lay organization committed to a charitable defense of the Catholic Faith by means of education, communication, and prayer. We are devoted to the Roman Catholic Magiste-

rium, the Holy Father, and to the bishops and clergy in union with him. Our members believe what the Church believes and we promote what the Church teaches. To this end, we believe that no individual, whether

cleric or lay person, has the right to alter the substance of the gospel message or moral truths which have been inerrantly and infallibly held by the Catholic Church since Her founding.

Pequeños Pepper 4 October 2017

Debunking the Sun Miracle Skeptics By Mark Mallett The rain pelted the ground and drenched the crowds. It must have seemed like an exclamation point to the ridi-cule that filled the secular newspapers for months prior. Three shepherd children near Fatima, Portugal claimed that a miracle would occur in the Cova da Ira fields at high noon that day. It was October 13, 1917. As many as 30, 000 to 100, 000 people had gathered to witness it.

Their ranks included believers and non-believers, pious old ladies and scoffing young men. —Fr. John De Marchi, Italian priest and researcher; The Immaculate Heart, 1952

And then it happened. Or something did. According to eyewitnesses, the rain stopped, the clouds broke, and the sun appeared as an opaque, spinning disc in the sky. It cast a rainbow of colors across the surrounding clouds, the landscape, and the people who were now fixated upon the solar spectacle. Suddenly, the sun seemed to become unhinged from its place and began to zigzag toward the earth casting the throngs into a panic as many believed it was the end of the world. Then, all at once, the sun returned to its original place. The “miracle” was over… or al-most. Witnesses reported that their soaked clothes were now “suddenly and completely dry.”

Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was bib-lical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws—the sun ‘danced’ according to the typical expres-sion of the people. —Avelino de Almeida,writing for O Século (Portugal’s most widely circulated and influential newspaper, which was pro-government and anti-clerical at the time. Almeida’s previous articles had been to satirize the previously reported events at Fátima).

From another secular newspaper:

The sun, at one moment surrounded with scarlet flame, at an-other aureoled in yellow and deep purple, seemed to be in an exceedingly swift and whirling movement, at times appearing to be loosened from the sky and to be ap-proaching the earth, strongly radiating heat. —Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho, writing for the newspaper Ordem.

Other eyewitnesses reported much the same, emphasizing one aspect or another of the phenomenon that was witnessed.

The sun’s disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible. —Dr. Almeida Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University. As if like a bolt from the blue, the clouds were wrenched apart, and the sun at its zenith appeared in all its splendor. It began to revolve vertiginously on its axis, like the most magnificent firewheel that could be imagined, taking on all the colors of the rainbow and sending forth multicolored flashes of light, pro-ducing the most astounding effect. This sublime and incomparable spectacle, which was repeated three distinct times, lasted for about ten minutes. The immense multitude, overcome by the evidence of such a tremendous prodigy, threw themselves on their knees. —Dr. Formigão, a professor at the seminary at Santarém, and a priest.

In my long and ongoing debates with an atheist, he sent me an article…. [that attempted] to show that science

Observers of the “Miracle of the Sun”

Pequeños Pepper 5 October 2017

can explain away every single miracle—including what occurred at Fatima. Now, what happened there may be con-sidered one of the most remarkable public miracles since the time of Christ. Given that three children predicted that it would occur, as they were allegedly told by the Mother of God herself, the stakes are high. Add to that the fact that atheists, socialists, the secular press and opponents of the Church were present, this would really seem to be the créme de la créme miracle to debunk. I read through the article and the “critical evaluation” of various “experts” and their explanations of how this mira-cle could have simply been a natural phenomenon and nothing more. Here are their comments followed by my re-sponses: C. (Critique) Joe Nickell, a skeptic and investigator of paranormal phenomena, rightly notes that the “Sun Miracle”

has also allegedly occurred at various Marian sites throughout the world. During one such instance in Con-yers, Georgia in the mid-1990s, a telescope outfitted with a “vision-protecting Mylar solar filter” was pointed at the sun. …more than two hundred people had viewed the sun through one of the solar filters and not a single per-son saw anything unusual. —Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 33.6 November / December 2009

R. (Response) While one can assume that the observation in Conyers was only a test of the alleged “Sun Miracle” in that location, the question begs as to why use a telescope in the first place, given the reported nature of “the miracle of the sun”? At Fatima, eyewitnesses described the sun spinning, revolving “vertiginously on its axis”, and then zig-zagging toward the earth as if it had become unfixed from the heavens. Any amateur astronomer can tell you that this is impossible. While planets and moons move in an orbit, the sun itself is “fixed” in its place. It would be impossible for the sun to change positions. Therefore, the people in Portugal saw something else, something that is outside the boundaries of the law of physics and beyond the lens of a telescope. [As a sidenote, was the miracle of the sun a por-tent not so much of what may happen to the sun some day, but to the earth and its orbit?] It is worth noting that at other Marian sites, the miracle of the sun, while reportedly witnessed by many, is usually never witnessed by all. This was also the case at Fatima.

…the prediction of an unspecified “miracle,” the abrupt beginning and end of the alleged miracle of the sun, the varied religious backgrounds of the observers, the sheer numbers of people present, and the lack of any known scientific causative factor make a mass hallucination unlikely. That the activity of the sun was re-ported as visible by those up to 18 kilometres (11 mi) away, also precludes the theory of a collective hallucination or mass hysteria.. . Despite these assertions, not all witnesses reported seeing the sun “dance.” Some people only saw the radi-ant colors. Others, including some believers, saw nothing at all. No scientific accounts exist of any unusual solar or astronomic activity during the time the sun was reported to have “danced”, and there are no witness reports of any unusual solar phenomenon further than 64 kilometres (40 mi) out from Cova da Iria. —www.answers.com

Why only some see this “miracle” is a mystery. Is it a “gift” for some for a par-ticular reason in their lives? Some people I have spoken to, who have claimed to have seen the miracle of the sun in modern times, have tried to record with a camera what they were witnessing. However, the sun appeared normal on film or video tape. Eye-witness accounts are pretty much all we have to rely on, it seems. This usually pre-

sents a problem of subjectivity. However, in the case of Fatima, the sheer number of witnesses bolsters the case that something extraordinary took place. The fact that not everyone in Portugal that day witnessed the event adds to the evidence in support of a miracle, since, a solar phenomenon passing over the country could and should have been witnessed by all present at the site.

The… solar phenomena were not observed in any observatory. Impossible that they should escape notice of so many astronomers and indeed the other inhabitants of the hemisphere… there is no question of an astro-nomical or meteorological event phenomenon… Either all the observers in Fátima were collectively deceived and erred in their testimony, or we must suppose an extra-natural intervention. —Fr. John De Marchi, Italian priest and researcher; The Immaculate Heart, 1952b:282

The three shepherd-visionaries

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C. Professor Auguste Meessen of the Institute of Physics, Catholic University of Leuven, has stated that the

reported observations were optical effects caused by prolonged staring at the sun. Meessen contends that retinal after-images produced after brief periods of sun gazing are a likely cause of the observed dancing effects. Similarly Meessen states that the colour changes witnessed were most likely caused by the bleach-ing of photosensitive retinal cells. —Auguste Meessen ‘Apparitions and Miracles of the Sun’ Interna-tional Forum in Porto “Science, Religion and Conscience” October 23–25, 2003 ISSN: 1645-6564

R. It has long been established by ophthalmologists that to stare into the sun can cause permanent eye damage. It

can take as little as seconds before temporary or permanent damage can begin to occur. In the reports from eyewitnesses in Fatima, the miracle of the sun lasted not seconds, but minutes, and per-haps as long as “ten minutes.” Eyewitnesses stated that the clouds had broken and “the sun at its zenith ap-peared in all its splendor,” and so onlookers were staring directly at the sun. To stare at the bare sun at noon for even a minute—if that were even possible—would likely have been enough to cause permanent eye dam-age in at least a few people. But out of tens of thousands of people, there were no reports of a single person having incurred eye damage, let alone blindness. (On the other hand, this has occurred at some alleged Marian apparition sites where certain people have gone looking for a miracle). Professor Meesen’s logic further falls apart by stating that the dancing effects of the sun were merely the result of retinal after-images. If that were the case, then the miracle of the sun witnessed at Fatima should be easily duplicated in your own backyard. In fact, to be certain, the thousands gathered that day would have looked up at the sun later that afternoon and in the days following to see if the miracle would repeat. If the “miracle” that October 13th was only the result of retinal images or “the bleaching of photosensitive retinal cells,” the skeptics and secular newspapers who had earlier been ridiculing the three shepherd children would surely have pointed this out. The aftermath of excitement would have quickly dissipated as people began to readily duplicate “retinal after-images.” The opposite is true. Eyewitnesses described the sight as a “prodigy,” something “incapable of describing,” and a “remarkable spectacle.” What is remarkable about something that one could easily duplicate an hour later?

C. Nickell also suggests that the dancing effects witnessed at Fatima

may have been due to optical effects resulting from temporary retinal distortion caused by staring at such an intense light. —Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 33.6 November / December 2009

R. In no cases do we read of any eyewitnesses reporting lingering optical

effects. The prodigy seemed to simply end when the sun, after appear-ing to zig-zag to the earth, resumed its normal course; eyewitnesses reported that the phenomenon lasted only so long and then abruptly ended. However, if Nickell’s explanation were true, the retinal distor-tion should have continued as long as people continued to stare at the sun… an hour, three hours, all day long. This contradicts reports that indicate that the miracle had a definitive ending. Furthermore, eyewitnesses specifically noted that the sun did not appear as an ‘intense light,’ but rather it appeared “pale and did not hurt my eyes” and “enveloped in… gauzy grey light” and began to emit “multicolored flashes of light, producing the most astounding effect.” It is worth noting that during an eclipse of the sun, or when the sun is under thick cloud covering, it can be looked at without any perceived discomfort. However, in these cases the sun is blocked by another object, and in fact, can still cause serious and permanent harm.

C. Steuart Campbell, writing for the 1989 edition of Journal of Meteorology, postulated that a cloud of

stratospheric dust changed the appearance of the sun on 13 October, making it easy to look at, and causing it to appear yellow, blue, and violet and to spin. In support of his hypothesis, Mr. Campbell reports that a blue and reddened sun was reported in China as documented in 1983. —Fátima’s dusty veil”, New Hu-manist, Vol 104 No 2, August 1989 and “The Miracle of the Sun at Fátima”, Journal of Meteorology, UK, Vol 14, no. 142, October, 1989

The rain-soaked Cova da Ira field

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R. Once again, this hypothesis contradicts eyewitness reports. Not everyone present at Fatima that day witnessed a miracle in the sky. If this was a solar anomaly, a “cloud of stratospheric dust” that lasted several minutes, surely it would have been in plain view to everyone. Campbell’s assertion also falls short of explaining the third aspect of the spectacle that day: the sight of the sun zig-zagging and appearing to hurl toward to the earth. Lastly, such a stratospheric dust cloud would surely be an event that no one could predict months in advance in that time period, let alone three sheep-herding children. Neither does a cloud of dust explain how everyone’s clothing, which had been drenched by a downpour of rain that only ended just minutes before, were now “suddenly and completely dry.” Something outside of the normal laws of physics and thermodynamics took place that day producing not only an optical, but physical “miracle.”

C. Joe Nickell claims that the position of the phenomenon, as described by the various witnesses, is at the

wrong azimuth and elevation to have been the sun. He suggests the cause may have been a sundog, some-times referred to as a parhelion or “mock sun.” A sundog is a relatively common atmospheric optical phe-nomenon associated with the reflection/refraction of sunlight by the numerous small ice crystals that make up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. A sundog is, however, a stationary phenomenon, and would not explain the reported appearance of the “dancing sun”… Nickell concludes that there was likely a combination of factors, including optical and meteorological phenomena (the sun being seen through thin clouds, causing it to appear as a silver disc; an alteration in the density of the passing clouds, so that the sun would alter-natively brighten and dim, thus appearing to advance and recede; dust or moisture droplets in the atmos-phere, imparting a variety of colors to sunlight; and/or other phenomena). —www.answers.com

R. There comes a point where a skeptic turns into a fanatic, that is, one who refuses to face the truth despite the

overwhelming evidence. Here in Canada, I witness regularly the solar effect known as a “sun dog.” It appears, not within the sun, but quite far off to the left or the right or some-times above. However, at Fatima, observers described the sun itself—not objects close to it—as putting on a spectacle. Besides, as pointed out, sundogs are stationary. They are bright refractions of light that appear like small, ver-tical rainbows. They are pretty, no doubt. But seeing them myself on a fre-quent basis, they look nothing like what has been described as the “miracle of the sun,” and no more inexplicable than a rainbow after a storm. As for Nickell’s other conclusions, they are obviously a potpourri of guesses. I suppose when one single answer doesn’t fit, then several single answers thrown together might be enough to dazzle the uncritical mind. Ulti-mately, I think the people—including the scientific observers present that day—deserve a bit more intellectual credit than Nickell is giving them. Be-

sides, he still hasn’t answered how the children could have predicted the “perfect storm” of anomalies that Nickell has conjured up. So it is with other scientific guesses that have been made:

Paul Simons, in an article entitled “Weather Secrets of Miracle at Fátima”, states that he believes it possi-ble that some of the optical effects at Fatima may have been caused by a cloud of dust from the Sahara. — “Weather Secrets of Miracle at Fátima”, Paul Simons, The Times, February 17, 2005.

Odd that no one present that day commented on dusty weather. On the contrary, it was pouring rain—which tends to dampen a dust storm quite quickly.

Kevin McClure claims that the crowd at Cova da Iria may have been expecting to see signs in the sun, as similar phenomena had been reported in the weeks leading up to the miracle. On this basis he believes that the crowd saw what it wanted to see. But it has been objected that McClure’s account fails to explain similar reports of people miles away, who by their own testimony were not even thinking of the event at the time, or the sudden drying of people’s sodden, rain-soaked clothes. Kevin McClure stated that he had never seen such a collection of contradictory accounts of a case in any of the research he had done in the previous ten years, although he has not explicitly stated what these contradictions were. —www.answers.com

An example of a “sundog”

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C. Many years after the events in question, Stanley L. Jaki, a professor of physics at Seton Hall University, New

Jersey, Benedictine priest and author of a number of books reconciling science and Catholicism, proposed a unique theory about the supposed miracle. Jaki believes that the event was natural and meteorological in nature, but that the fact the event occurred at the exact time predicted was a miracle. —Jaki, Stanley L. (1999). God and the Sun at Fátima. Real View Books, ASIN B0006R7UJ6

R. Here, it must be said, that the idea that some sort of natural phenomena contributed to what is known as “the miracle

of the sun” is not incompatible with the miracle. Just as God saved mankind working through nature—the incarnation of Jesus Christ in the womb of a virgin— so too, miracles do not necessarily eliminate the “participation” of nature. What makes a miracle a miracle is that some aspect of the event is inexplicable and can only be explained as supernatural in origin. Catholicism is not opposed to science. It is opposed to atheism that makes science into a religion and the answer to all things existential. And neither has the Catholic Church, to her credit, historically been in a hurry to declare something a miracle. She often takes years to study events and eliminate the possibility of a hoax. Regarding the miracle of the sun, a declaration finally came some thirteen years later…

The event was officially accepted as a miracle by the Roman Catholic Church on 13 October 1930. On 13 October 1951, papal legate Cardinal Tedeschini told the million gathered at Fátima that on 30 October, 31 October, 1 November, and 8 November 1950, Pope Pius XII himself witnessed the miracle of the sun from the Vatican gardens. —Joseph Pelletier. (1983). The Sun Danced at Fátima. Double-day, New York. p. 147–151.

CONCLUSION While some scientific explanations have been proposed as to what happened that October day, none completely satisfy logic and the overall picture: that three small children were told by the Blessed Virgin Mary, months in advance, that at noon on the 13th, a miracle would occur. An extraordinary and inexplicable event occurred as predicted. It was a miracle. But there is another prophetic aspect to this event that, unfortunately, is often overlooked. It is one of the central mes-sages that accompanied the Blessed Virgin Mary as part of her apparitions to the children. She warned, shortly before Vladimir Lenin stormed Russia and began the Marxist revolution there, that the world was at a turning point:

When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Com-munion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. —Our Lady of Fatima, Message of Fatima, www.vatican.va

As it turned out, a great light did illumine the sky on January 25, 1938 followed a year later by the outbreak of World War II—but the consecration of Russia was delayed with no small consequences:

Since we did not heed this appeal of the Message, we see that it has been fulfilled, Russia has invaded the world with her errors. And if we have not yet seen the complete fulfillment of the final part of this prophecy, we are going towards it little by little with great strides. If we do not reject the path of sin, hatred, revenge, injustice, vio-lations of the rights of the human person, immorality and violence, etc. —Sr. Lucia, one of the three Fatima seers, Letter to Pope John Paul II, May 12th, 1982; www.vatican.va

If the atheist refuses to believe in a supernatural event he was not alive to witness, perhaps he is able to recognize that a prophecy made by the Mother of God last century is being fulfilled right before his eyes. God exists. He loves us. And He is intervening in our times in the most extraordinary, miraculous, and soon, definitive ways…

Russian Revolution 1917—Vladimir Lenin

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Five New Scientific Discoveries that Show Unborn Babies are Human Beings We are all humans, and our stories start on our very first day

Science is constantly advancing, revealing to us what’s been going on behind the scenes in the extraordinary human journey of pregnancy. The details have always been real, but now, with these scientific discoveries, we can actually explain some of life’s earliest realities. And a few of them can even be witnessed with our own eyes, thanks to modern technology.

When we consider the child in the womb, recent scientific discoveries are nothing short of amazing. 1. Life’s flash of fluorescence Researchers from Northwestern University in Chicago were able to discover that a burst of fluorescence can be seen at the exact moment fertilization occurs for every new human being. This zinc burst was described as a “flash of light,” an “explosion of sparks,” and “fireworks on film.” People across the world were awed by this discov-ery that highlights the moment a unique human life is created. 2. Music and sound in the womb Scientists at the Institut Marques in Barcelona, Spain, researched a preborn child’s ability to respond to sound in the womb. As some sus-pected, this ability comes at a very early point: when the child is 14 weeks old and her mother is 16 weeks pregnant, she can be recorded responding to music. Before this research, many believed the child

could not hear music until 26 weeks. Yet science continues to demonstrate the human traits of the preborn child at earlier and earlier times in the womb. From the moment of conception, her humanity can be scientifically proven. A professional resource for parents and teachers, Early Childhood News, reports:

The ability to speak and hear language begins before birth. … [A} fetus can feel sound and, at around four months, hear. At twelve weeks the fetus moves spontaneously. At five months the fetus responds to phonemes (the smallest unit of a word/letter that has sound) it hears through the amniotic fluid, spoken by the mother. A fetus will respond to music by blinking or moving to the beat. Dr. Alfred Tomatis, who will be discussed in the next paragraph, used fiber optic cameras to observe the movement of the fetus in re-gard to sound.

In a study relating to the dangers of cocaine use in pregnancy, a baby’s cry and chin quiver in response to a sound was captured and shown to the world by the Discovery Channel: 3. A very early heartbeat

The heartbeat has consistently been one of the most recognizable traits of a new life. For decades, scientists have believed that the human heartbeat starts beating in utero at 22 days — usually just at the time a woman can dis-cover she is pregnant. Now, researchers at the University of Oxford have realized that every human being may experience her first heartbeats even earlier. The 2016 study gives day 16 as the time of the first heart beat.

The Endowment for Human Development partnered with National Geographic to make the award-winning docu-mentary, “The Biology of Prenatal Development.” EHD has also released a short video showing a baby’s heart beating at only four-and-a-half weeks after fertilization (which is equivalent to six-and-a-half weeks pregnant). According to new research at Oxford, this baby’s heart has already been beating for about one-and-a-half weeks. 4. A preference for human faces In addition to the adorable thumb sucking, mouth opening, eye blinking, hand waving, and other cute activities preborn babies participate in, scientists have discovered these children can also recognize faces they see for the first time in the womb. A June 2017 study in Current Biology details the amazing reality of a baby’s high aware-

7 – 8 week old embryo in the womb

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ness in the womb and her ability to share basic human preferences. Lancaster University’s Vincent Reid ex-plained that the preborn child is “not just a passive processor of environmental information. It’s an active re-sponder.”

“We have shown the fetus can distinguish between different shapes, preferring to track face-like over non-face-like shapes…This preference has been recognized in babies for many decades, but until now explor-ing fetal vision has not been attempted.”

5. Self-correcting abnormalities

Early prenatal testing is a scientific advance, but it is also plagued with flaws. Not only can the results be incor-rect, but the tests also ignore the very real possibility that diagnosed abnormalities can self-correct in the womb, prior to birth.

In 2016, scientists from the University of Cambridge, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Leuven, Belgium, discovered that there is a natural process through which many early-diagnosed abnormalities “self-correct.” The head scientist, Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz was motivated to research in part due to a prenatal diagnosis she received for her own son, who was later born completely healthy. She said:

The embryo has an amazing ability to correct itself. We found that even when half of the cells in the early-stage embryo are abnormal, the embryo can fully repair itself. This means that even when early indica-tions suggest a child might have a birth defect because there are some, but importantly not all abnormal cells in its embryonic body, this isn’t necessarily the case.

The scientists uncovered the reality that part of a child’s healthy development in the womb is ridding herself of

abnormal cells — cells that, in utero, may lead to a devastating diagnosis. When the child is left to develop natu-rally, she may be born without any abnormalities at all, just like the Professor Zernicka-Goetz’s son, Olivia-Jax, and many other children who defy their prenatal diagnoses. Regardless of diagnosis, no child deserves to have her life terminated through the violence of abortion.

David Daleiden Wins Legal Battle against University Trying to Cover Up Its Purchase of Aborted Baby Parts By Micaiah Bolger

Pro-life undercover investigator David Daleiden won a victory in court this week against the University of Washington after researchers who use aborted baby body parts asked for key information to be re-dacted from public records.

Last year, Daleiden requested public records from the taxpayer-funded university about its use of aborted baby body parts in research and its relationship with the Planned Parenthood abortion chain.

However, the university and several employees of the University of Washington Birth Defects Research Laboratory sued to block cer-tain information from the records, claiming they would “likely face threats, harassment and violence” if information about their work was disclosed to the public.

Fox News reports a U.S. court of appeals ruled in Daleiden’s favor this week, reversing a lower court decision to block information from the public records.

David Daleiden

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Thomas More Society Special Counsel Peter Breen, who argued the appeal, told Fox News that the decision is a victory for taxpayers who deserve to know how their money is being used.

Breen explained: “[Daleiden] asked that names and personal contact info be redacted from the records, but the abortion advocates and government employees pressed for full censorship, even of entity names, job titles and de-partments within the university. Such heavy redactions render these public documents useless for investigative purposes.

“The Court of Appeals, by reversing this decision and remanding this case back to district court, has prevented a serious threat to the public’s right to know how their tax dollars are being spent,” Breen continued.

The Family Policy Institute of Washington also requested public records from the university pertaining to its use of aborted babies’ body parts in research.

“We know that Planned Parenthood and the University of Washington have a relationship,” Joseph Backholm, a spokesman for the Washington pro-life group, told NBC K5 last year. “What are the invoices? What are the con-tracts?

“We’re not looking for information on people,” he continued. “We’re looking for information about connec-tions between entities and whether money was exchanged for human body parts.”

This information is vital as it could reveal the amount of money exchanged between the university lab and Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington & North Idaho (PPGWNI), Daleiden said previously. The documenta-tion could show if there were any additional costs for the abortion clinics, and if Planned Parenthood was reim-

bursed by the lab. It also could show if any abortion procedures were changed to procure more valuable body parts. The Washington state program is a key component of the abortion group’s aborted baby parts transactions. In October 2015, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards sent a letter to director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, after Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress released the first undercover videos. In the letter, she stated that all Planned Parenthood affili-ates would henceforth imitate the PPGWNI model and not receive any payment for the provided baby parts. However, it is unclear what the Washington state affiliate’s model is. As Daleiden pointed out, if the abortion business does not have anything to hide, it would not need to conceal documentation. He emphasized that he is not asking for individuals’ names or other

personal information. “They have recruited eight anonymous plaintiffs to assert–entirely falsely–that my public records request seeks

the personal contact information of UW, Planned Parenthood, and other associated employees. My public records request nowhere seeks any one individual contact information whatsoever,” Daleiden said previously.

Vatican Liturgy Chief Calls for ‘Revolt’ to Defend Traditional Family Values By Jeanne Smits

Faced with gender ideology and the deliberate and methodical plan to destroy the traditional family, an “interior Vendée must arise in the heart of every family, of every Christian, of every man of good will!”

With this rousing call, Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Disci-pline of Sacraments, has asked for a “revolt” against the new lies of the continuing revolution against God’s law. His call to prayer and action was made during a homily given during a Mass on August 12 in the foyer of the grandstand of France’s award-winning historical theme park, the Puy-du-Fou.

The Vendée is the region in Western France where an uprising took place during the Reign of Terror – the

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“Terreur” – in 1793 and 1794 when the leaders of the French Revolution conscripted ordinary men to serve in the revolutionary army and required Catholic priests to vow submission to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and repudiate their commitment to obey the Pope.

For the faithful peasants of the Vendée, on whom the “missions” of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort some 80 years back had left a profound mark, these requirements were unacceptable. They forced many nobles of the province to lead them into war with the new Republic, courageously fighting “for God and King” in an uneven battle that would culminate with the genocide of the Vendée. The Committee of Public Safety – the revolutionary government in Paris led by Robespierre – expressly ordered every man, woman and child from the province to be killed, their houses and villages to be destroyed, and the very earth of the province to be burned.

The reality of this fully-fledged genocide, truly a founding act of the French Revolution, was long negated in French politics and history books. The defeat of the Vendée would lead to its relegation in oblivion, or as French historian and specialist of the Vendée Reynald Secher puts it, to “memoricide.”

Cardinal Sarah’s visit to the diocese of Luçon in the Vendée, which this year celebrates the 700th anniversary of its founding, would not have been complete without a visit to the Puy-du-Fou theme park where Philippe de Villiers, former presidential candidate in France and visionary entrepreneur, created a profoundly original “sound and light show” 40 years ago presenting the history of a ruined castle in the form of a live cinematographic performance. Forty years later, the show has morphed into a spectacular embodi-ment of the history of the Vendée where several thousand volunteers act several times the week during the summer months, honoring the memory of the “Vendéens,” their forebears, especially in their uprising for their “God and King.”

The theme of the “Wars of the Vendée” is also present in the theme park that has grown into an international award-winning venture whose aim is to rekindle love for their homeland and for beauty in the hearts of the many millions of visitors who have come there over the years.

Cardinal Sarah certainly caught the spirit of the Puy-du-Fou in paying homage not only to those who have taken part in this unique cultural adventure but to the peasant warriors of the Vendée. Armed only with their “staffs, scythes, rosaries and the Sacred Heart” sewn on their coats, they stood up to fight and then, by their thou-sands, “died for their faith, for their churches and for their priests.”

“You give a voice to all those whom the ‘Terreu’ wanted to silence, because they refused the lie of atheistic ideology! You honor those whom it wanted to drown in oblivion, because they would not allow the liberty to be-lieve and to offer Mass to be stripped from them!” the Cardinal said during his homily on Saturday evening.

“Your work is necessary! For our times seem to have been numbed! As we face the dictatorship of relativism, as we face a new thought terrorism that once again seeks to rip God from the hearts of children, we need to redis-cover the freshness of mind, the joyful and fervent simplicity of these saints and these martyrs,” he preached, standing before the reliquary where the ring of Saint Joan of Arc reposes after having been providentially brought back from England last year by Philippe de Villiers to be honored in the Puy-du-Fou. Saint Joan’s ring had been taken to England in 1431 by Cardinal Henry Beaufort after she was burned at the stake in Rouen.

Cardinal Sarah insisted that even though death and martyrdom was the “Vendéens” lot, they were mysteriously victorious in that after the throes of the Revolution, Catholic priests in France were once again freely allowed to serve God without having to submit to the “lie of ideology” that had threatened to “reign supreme.”

He went on to speak of the present-day persecutions that stem from the atheistic “matrix” of the French Revo-lution, calling all Christians and people of good will to accept and follow the heritage of the Vendée against new forms of totalitarianism.

“Even now, perhaps more than ever, the ideologues of the revolution want to annihilate the natural place for gift of self, of joyful generosity and of love! I am speaking of the family! Gender ideology, the contempt of fruit-fulness and of fidelity are the new slogans of this revolution. Families have become the new Vendées to extermi-nate. Their disappearance is being methodically planned, as was that of the Vendée in the past,” said the African

Wars of the Vendée

Pequeños Pepper 13 October 2017

cardinal, particularly condemning modern-day attempts to force “sterilization, abortion, and contraception” on his home continent.

“These new revolutionaries are worried by the generosity of large families. They mock Christian families, be-cause these embody everything that they hate. They are ready to attack Africa with new infernal columns in order to put pressure on families and to force on them sterilization, abortion and contraception. Africa, like the Vendée, will resist! Families everywhere must be the joyous spearheads of revolt against this new dictatorship of egoism! It is now in the heart of every family, of every Christian, of every man of goodwill that an interior Vendée must arise! Every Christian is, spiritually, a Vendéen!” said Cardinal Sarah, presenting today’s God-hating and man-hating ideology as every bit as violent and deadly as the violent killings of more than 200 years ago.

The Cardinal concluded that this uprising must be a peaceful one, founded in adoration and prayer and careful to uphold “forgiveness and mercy,” because “love only conquers the powers of death.”

______________________________________ The translation of the full text of this homily is available: https://www.lifesitenews.com/all/today#article-

cardinal-sarah-we-are-called-today-to-witness-which-means-martyrdom

Comfort Catholicism Has to Go; It is Time to Prepare for Persecution We are at war for our own souls and the souls of people we love. We are at war for the soul of this culture and nation. And like any soldier, we must train to fight well.

By Msgr. Charles Pope

There is a growing consternation among some Catholics that the Church, at least in her leadership, is living in

the past. It seems there is no awareness that we are at war and that Catholics need to be summoned to sobriety, increasing separation from the wider culture, courageous witness and increasing martyrdom.

It is long past dark in our culture, but in most parishes and dioceses it is business as usual and there is anything but the sober alarm that is really necessary in times like these.

Scripture says, Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle (Psalm 144:1). Preparing people for war — a moral and spiritual war, not a shooting war — should include a clear setting forth of the errors of our time, and a clear and loving application of the truth to error and light to darkness.

But there is little such training evident in Catholic circles today where, in the average parish, there exists a sort of shy and quiet atmosphere — a fear of addressing “controversial” issues lest someone be offended, or the parish be perceived as “unwelcoming.” But, if there ever was a time to wear soft garments, it is not now. The Church of the 1970s-1990s was surely well described as the era of “beige Catholicism” (a term coined by Bishop Robert Barron, and not by way of flattery either). Those of us who lived through that era, especially in the 1970s, remember it as a time when many parish signs beckoned people to “come and experience our welcoming and warm Catholic community.” Our most evident desire was to fit in and be thought of as “normal.” Yes, Catholics were just like everyone else; and we had been working very hard to do that, at least since the early 1960s when John F. Kennedy was elected. Catholics had finally “made it” into the mainstream; we had been accepted by the culture.

Church architecture and interiors became minimalist and non-descript. Music and language in the liturgy be-

….Catholics need to be summoned to sobriety, increas-ing separation from the wider culture, courageous wit-ness and increasing martyrdom.

Pequeños Pepper 14 October 2017

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came folksy. Marian processions, Corpus Christi processions, many things of distinctive and colorful Catholicism all but disappeared. Even our crucifixes disappeared, to be replaced by floating “resurrection Jesus” images. The emphasis was on blending in, speaking to things that made people feel comfortable, and affirming rather than chal-lenging. If there was to be any challenge at all it would be on “safe” exhortations such as not abusing the environ-ment or polluting, not judging or being intolerant, and so forth.

Again, if there ever was a time to wear soft garments, it is not now. It is zero-dark-thirty in our post-Christian culture. And while we may wish to blame any number of factors for the collapse, we cannot exclude ourselves. We who are supposed to be the light of the world, with Christ shining in us, have preferred to hide our light under a basket and lay low. The ruins of our families and culture are testimony to the triumph of error and the suppression of the truth.

More than ever we need to shift toward being distinctive from the culture we have refused to critique and call to reform. More than ever our faith needs to shine brightly and clearly in our churches and communities.

And if a world now accustomed to great darkness calls our light harsh, so be it. If our light does not shine, there is no light at all. Our Catholic faith is the sole and last hope for this world. It has always been so.

Simply put, it is time for clergy to prepare themselves and God’s people for sacrifice. Seeking to compromise with this culture is now unthinkable. Our only recourse is to seek to lance the boils. And the culture will cry foul. And we who do the lancing will be made increasingly to suffer. But we have to be willing to embrace and endure such suffering in increasing ways in the months and years ahead.

We are at war for our own souls and the souls of people we love. We are at war for the soul of this culture and nation. And like any soldier, we must train to fight well. We must study our faith and be more committed than ever. We must also know our enemy and his tactics, and we must be prepared to suffer — and even to lose our life.

We have to retool and provide every opportunity to get clear about our faith. Sermons and other teachable moments must sound a clear call to personal conversion and to battle for souls and to stop treating lightly the sinful disregard for God’s law in our families and communities.

Our bishops especially need to shift into another mode entirely. Collec-tively and currently they seem more interested in protecting what little we have left, than summoning the Catholic people to battle. Priests too seem loath to summon people to anything challenging or uncomfortable. The image of Peter trying to keep Christ from the Cross comes to mind. Peter said, “This shall never be for you!” And the Lord severely rebuked him saying that he was thinking as man, not God, and was in the service of Satan.

And what of us? The Church cannot even seem to ask people to attend Mass on a Holy Day if it is on a Monday or a Saturday. It is apparently too much to ask people to come to Mass two days in a row. If that be the case, who will summon them to withstand and vigorously protest unjust and evil laws, even if it means financial penalties or even jail? And blood martyrdom? It hardly seems likely that most clergy today would counsel readiness for such a thing or even be close to being ready ourselves. Bishops or priests who do so can expect to be called reckless and imprudent in shy and soft times like these. The cry will surely go up, “It is not yet the time for such things!”

But if not now, when? Scripture says, If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle? (1 Cor. 14:8). It cannot

simply be priests who must make this call. Parents and other leaders need to sound it as well. Yes, parents need to prepare their children for more than a career. They need now to prepare them for difficult days ahead — days that will include persecution and even martyrdom if they decide to follow Christ unambiguously.

Am I wrong? I sure hope so. But we can no longer, as a Church, sit idly by and hope things just magically get better. As a culture, and even in segments of the Church, we have sown the wind, and now we are reaping the whirlwind.

Many, these days, like to criticize the Church of the past for any number of failings. But I wonder how the fu-ture members of the Church will remember the Church in our times. Columnist Joseph Sobran, writing over 15 years ago, wondered the same thing and wrote:

It is zero-dark-thirty in our post-Christian culture.

Pequeños Pepper 15 October 2017

October Calendar

Los Pequeños Monthly Meeting October 20, 2017

Call (505) 293-8006 for information.

Pro-life Prayer: Planned Parenthood Abortuary

701 San Mateo Blvd. Holy Innocents Chapel:

(505) 266-4100 Times: Monday-Friday 8 AM – 3 PM

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Planned Parenthood Abortuary 701 San Mateo Blvd.

Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays: 8 AM – 11:30 AM Wednesdays: 12 Noon – 3:00 PM

For more information, call Phil Leahy: (505) 440-3040

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[Catholics of the future] certainly won’t accuse us of exces-sive zeal. They might be shocked by our lukewarmness, our cowardice masquerading as tolerance, our laxity, our willing-ness to countenance heresy, sacrilege, blasphemy, and immor-ality, even within the Church itself, our eagerness to ingratiate ourselves with the secular world … (Subtracting Christianity, p. 268)

Yes, I too wonder. From St. Peter to Constantine there were 33 Popes. Thirty of them were martyred and two died in exile. Countless clergy and lay people too were martyred. It is hard to imagine the Church in the decadent West being willing to suffer so. Surely our brethren in many less affluent parts of the world are dying in large numbers. But I wonder: After all these years of “comfort Catholicism”, would the average American parish-ioner or clergyman be willing or able to endure such loss?

It is time, past time, to retool. It is time to prepare for perse-cutions that will get bolder by the month and year. The dark movements that marched in under the banners of tolerance never meant it. And having increasingly gained power, they are seeking to criminalize anyone who resists their vision. No toler-ance for us. Religious liberty is eroding, and compulsory com-pliance is already here. The federal courts increasingly shift to militantly secular and activist judges who legislate from the bench.

When will we as a Church finally say to the bureaucrats who demand we comply with evil laws: “We will not comply. If you fine us we will not pay. If you seek to confiscate our buildings, we will turn maximum publicity against you, but we still will not comply. If you arrest us, off to jail we go! But we will simply not comply with evil laws or cooperate with evil.”

Right now, most of us can barely imagine our clergy stand-ing so firm. Quiet compromises and jargon-filled “solutions” will be a grave temptation to a Church ill-prepared for persecu-tion.

Call me alarmist or call me idealist, but I hope we find our spine before it is too late. It is usually a faithful remnant that saves the day in the Biblical narrative. I pray only for the strength to be in that faithful remnant. Will you join me too? Let’s pray and start retooling now. Only our unambiguous faith can save us or anyone we love. Pray for strong and courageous faith.

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"Parishioners are incarnate beings whose senses are dulled by pedestrian liturgy, banal art, amateurish music and graceless architecture. ... When we worship, should we not exult in the glory of God? Should we not offer God our best? 'My soul doth mediocritize the Lord' is not an inspiring motto."

- Dana Gioia, California's poet laureate

"Parishioners are incarnate beings whose senses are dulled by pedestrian liturgy, banal art, amateurish music and graceless architecture. ... When we worship, should we not exult in the glory of God? Should we not offer God our best? 'My soul doth mediocritize the Lord' is not an inspiring motto."

- Dana Gioia, California's poet laureate