An in-person Engaged Weekend is scheduled for June 17-18 at St. Benedict Church in Duluth. Engaged Weekends are part of the preparation for couples as they ready to approach the sacrament of matrimony. More information and registration can be found at www.dioceseduluth.org/marriage-and-family-life.
Thinking about separation or divorce? Hurting? Angry? Feel helpless? Retrouvaille is a lifeline for troubled marriages. Couples learn the tools to rediscover each other and heal their marriage. 100% confidential. Since 1977, more than 40,000 marriages have been saved worldwide. Weekend experiences will be held June 2-4, Aug. 4-6, Oct. 6-8, and Dec. 1-3 at the Best Western Hotel in Eagan. Email [email protected] or visit www.helpourmarriage.org for more information.
Thomas More Society attorneys filed a federal lawsuit on April 5 against Minnesota’s largest city on behalf of Pro-Life Action Ministries and several of the Christian nonprofit’s staff members. The complaint, as submitted to United States District Court, District of Minnesota, challenges Chapter 405 of the Minneapolis City Code, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief from the violation of free speech, the right of expressive association, and the free exercise of religion, all constitutionally protected rights. “The Minneapolis ordinance, Chapter 405, enacted in November 2022, deliberately attempts to stifle our peaceful offers of life-affirming alternatives and support to pregnant women and their companions outside the Minneapolis Planned Parenthood abortion facility,” said Thomas Wilkin, spokesman for the plaintiffs. “In fact, the ordinance also restricts the constitutional right of Planned Parenthood clients to associate with us and access our life-affirming choices that are now being repressed.” The offending Chapter 405 of the Minneapolis City Code prohibits disrupting access to reproductive healthcare facilities and occupying driveways. It defines these activities in a way that makes calm, polite invitations to converse, from the public right-of-way, difficult to achieve. Essentially, it created “an unconstitutional, content-based exclusion zone solely for the purpose of shutting down pro-life speech outside abortion facilities,” Wilkin said. “The City of Minneapolis can’t do that; it violates the Constitution.”
By The Northern Cross
On April 25, Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life and Center of the American Experiment drew attention to what they described as serious rationing problems in the Minnesota House Omnibus Health bill, saying the bill would create a commission with the power to impose spending caps that incentivize cuts in care to the most vulnerable patients.
“We are an aging population,” said MCCL Co-Executive Director Cathy Blaeser in a press conference at the Capitol. “Aging brings health issues, even disability issues. Aging brings increased health care costs. Every Minnesotan is threatened by the inevitable rationing that will be forced by the actions of the board created by this bill.”
Peter Nelson, a senior policy fellow at Center of the American Experiment, said: “Everyone agrees health care costs too much. But empowering the government to strong-arm lower costs will inevitably lead to other problems. The hard truth is that any one mandate to lower health care costs will likely come at the expense of the most vulnerable. This includes people with expensive chronic conditions, the disabled, and the elderly. … There are better opportunities to control health care costs which do not pose the same risks to vulnerable patients.”
“We believe that human beings have dignity from the moment of conception until natural death,” said Dr. Martha Guzman, past president of the Catholic Medical Association. “… We need to … save wasted resources that we know happen in the medical community and address those, and not just get a bunch of people that are worried about the bottom line deciding who gets health care and who doesn’t.”
Blaeser also drew attention to the House bill’s repeal of protection for newborn babies. The bill would strip out the existing requirement that reasonable measures be taken to “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant,” replacing it with a mere requirement for care. “Sadly, if that newborn baby has disabilities or a genetic disease, all the more reason [under the House bill] to just offer her comfort care instead of lifesaving care,” Blaeser said.
The House Omnibus Health bill could be voted on soon.
