CatholicVoteAction.org

One of the exciting things about collaborating with the CatholicVote team (Brian, Josh, Kara and Pat) is that they always have something cool up their sleeve. This time it’s a chance for YOU to appear in our next CatholicVote election commercial Our last election video has been viewed almost 3 million times!

CatholicVote is a community of several hundred thousand members, but because it’s primarily a virtual community, we don’t get much face time with each other. Now that can change, thanks to our new “I am the Catholic Vote” campaign:

1. Send us your name and mailing address. We will mail you a “I AM THE CATHOLIC VOTE” campaign sign immediately. Contact us at iVote2010@catholicvote.org.
2. Write a message for your sign (the young woman in the photo chose “because … American Deserves Better” – nice!)
3. Take a video or photo of you/your friends with the sign. The most creative/awesome submissions will be chosen! But remember to be safe, and don’t break any laws. 
4. Send your completed HD video or high-res digital photo to us at iVote2010@catholicvote.org. If the file is too big to email, upload it here. 

I’m excited to see what the CatholicVote community comes up with. Every time I’ve met someone in person who is a CatholicVote member I’ve been impressed by their faith, joy and energy. I’m trusting these traits will shine through in the submissions we receive, and that they will prove to be a great witness in our next election video.

I just got my “I am the Catholic Vote” poster in the mail and I’m already busy plotting my submission!

Our petition asking Sister Carol Keehan and her Catholic Health Association to support the Protect Life Act has almost passed 34,000 signatures!

My goal for this petition, which I have every confidence we will meet, is 200,000 signatures. So we’re already 17% of the way there!

As a reminder, the Protect Life Act is not an “activist” piece of legislation:

“The Protect Life Act represents a genuine bipartisan effort to ensure that no taxpayer funds will be used for abortion, or abortion related services, and would add needed conscience protection for healthcare workers. The rest of the healthcare law remains untouched.”

There’s no valid reason not to support the Protect Life Act. We believe that the CHA’s support of the legislation will begin the process of healing the division caused between them and the U.S. Bishops (as well as concerned U.S. faithful) that took place during the heated health care debate.

Two easy ways to tell your friends about the petition are to tweet about it (here’s a sample status I posted which you can copy) or post something on your Facebook wall so your friends can see it (again, here’s a sample status I posted on my official AmP facebook fanpage). There’s also the ever-useful email and word-of-mouth approach. 

Whichever way you decide, please take five seconds and sign on to our efforts to provide unified and real Catholic support for the unborn (as well as Catholic health workers) in our country, especially in the midst of our changing health care system.

My friend Dave Bathon reminded me that there are still a few spots open for all four of this year’s Crossroads pro-life walk across America. Several of my friends have done this apostolate before and found it fruitful:

This is a great opportunity to spend your summer being a voice for the voiceless! Crossroads walks in response to the challenge made by our late Holy Father, John Paul II that we should “not be afraid to go out on the streets … [to] preach Christ and the good news of salvation in the squares of cities, towns and villages.”

Crossroads is a walk of prayer, sacrifice, and peaceful witness. The goal is to change hearts and minds one at a time as we make our 12-week walking pilgrimage from the West Coast to Washington, D.C. Walks start in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Walkers can expect daily Mass, praying all 20 decades of the Rosary, and praying the Divine Office. Walkers individually walk between 15-20 miles a day, Monday through Friday and spend the weekends in major cities praying at abortion mills and speaking at Churches and to Youth Groups. Our shirts simply say “PRO-LIFE.” A simple, but profound message of Love.

Walks start May 22nd (with training on the 20th & 21st) and go until the weekend of August 14th and 15th. We also have a Pro-Life Walk Across Canada from Vancouver to Ottawa.

Crossroads is still accepting applications for this year’s walks. Are you 18-30 and you up to the challenge? To apply or find out more visit crossroadswalk.org or email Dave Bathon: dave@crossroadswalk.org

Also, as a reminder, if you want to support the ministry of Crossroads with your daily purchases, you can purchase the Crossroads VISA.

CatholicVote hired a camera crew take to the streets of Chicago and film people’s reactions to our Earth Day bus ad campaign.

Here’s what they found:

As I mentioned, your generosity allowed us to expand this campaign outside of Chicago to Seattle, San Francisco and – most recently – Los Angeles!

Click here if you want to help us reach more people with this truly universal message.

And of course, feel free to spread the good news by sharing this video!

April 22nd is the 40th annual Earth Day, and this year, CatholicVote has decided that Catholics should commemorate it the right way – by celebrating Nature’s Greatest Gift!

Today CatholicVote is launching a bus ad campaign with this image (click for larger-size):

We hope this will create a positive conversation about the relationship between caring for the Earth and caring for the most vulnerable on the earth – like the unborn who will be its future custodians.

CatholicVote will soon be releasing more information about this campaign, but the first cities where these bus ads will debut are San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle (with others to be hopefully added soon – if anyone with some extra resources wants to help us that would be great!).

Here’s a challenge for AmP readers and CatholicVote members in these three cities: if you spot one of our bus ads, please take a picture or video of it and send it to me (photo@catholicvote.org) so I can post it here! The first person to submit a photo/video of this ad on a bus IN EACH CITY will win a free CatholicVote mug! Please be safe when you are trying to capture these images – no texting while driving, for instance.

Let’s see if you can help us “discover” the true message of Earth Day this year.

And if you are a blogger or Catholic media person ~ please help us spread the word!

I wonder which city will be the first location of a CV Earth Day ad-sighting?!

UPDATE – official press release here.

It provides us an opportunity to respond to errors like this:

Sure, it’s easy to love [Mother Teresa] because she fed and clothed people in one of the world’s poorest areas. But the reality is that she did nothing to address the roots of that poverty.

In fact, she helped keep people poor by urging them to continue having children when they couldn’t afford to feed the ones they had. She preached against contraceptives as well as abortion. In a world that is overpopulated, she helped keep poor women barefoot and pregnant. (BeyondChron)

Where to begin? 

First, the response to poverty is not to eliminate those who are poor – it is to care for them, as Mother Teresa dedicated her life to doing. And as she famously said, “How can there be too many children in the world? That is like saying there are too many flowers!”

Second, join 70,000+ people who have signed our “Stamp Out Bigotry” petition. And tell your friends.

50,000 signatures, that is. And Tebow’s Super Bowl television debut, that is.

Most of you already know the Tim Tebow super bowl ad story.

Yesterday CatholicVote.org president Brian Burch sent an update to members of the CV/CVA family on our efforts:

The President of CBS received a surprise at 9:53 a.m. Thursday morning.

A large Fed Ex box filled with nearly 500 pages of signatures from over 50,000 friends of CatholicVote arrived at the office of CBS President Leslie Moonves.

Enclosed in the package was a personal letter thanking CBS for standing firm and agreeing to air the ad produced by Focus on the Family featuring Florida football star Tim Tebow and his mother.

… I know when I see the ad this Sunday, my heart will swell with pride. This ad is not merely a story about Pam Tebow and her son, but also a statement about being pro-life in America.

We aren’t outsiders. We are mainstream, proud, and inspiring the rest of America with what we believe.

And more people every day are coming to see what we see: Life is indeed beautiful.

Amen to that. Moreover, good for you … and thank you for showing concrete support for CBS’s openness to allowing this life-affirming message to become mainstream.

We are inspired and proud by their right choice. May it bring about other right choices.

We shouldn’t forget about Haiti.

AmP readers Cory at Likeableart.com and Dan from Popple.us haven’t forgotten. They sent me the video below, along with this press release explaining what’s it about:

A collection of 15 Catholic music and visual artists have come together to produce a digital multimedia compilation titled AfterMass Sampler Platter: Haiti Relief, in an effort to contribute to the work of Catholic Relief Services in Haiti.

The compilation includes 15 audio tracks from 13 artists spanning Jazz, Hip Hop, Acoustic and Rock genres, as well as two short videos from Catholic media production groups, Likable Art and Spirit Juice Studios.

The artists have all donated their content and in return AfterMass Records is asking for consumers to either make a donation for access to download the Sampler and/or pledge to pray for the people of Haiti and the relief workers there. 100% of the donations to the project will go to Catholic Relief Services specifically for the Haiti earthquake relief effort.

Find out more at the AfterMassRecords.com website, and please spread the word!

A video from Stop the Abortion Mandate (an excellent website for pro-life activism):

Also take a look at their The Pro-Life March 2010: Action Pack.

Here’s my list of March for Life events.

The next 36 hours are going to be very important, both in terms of politics and Catholic identity in the United States.

Tomorrow is the day of the special election in Massachusetts where the Repubican Scott Brown is challenging the Democrat Martha Coakley for the seat previously held by Ted Kennedy.

Incredibly – Brown actually has some chance of defeating Coakley even in this heavily-democrat state (see the latest polls at my APP Blog).

Joshua Mercer noted over the weekend on the CVA Blog that Martha Coakley thinks that serious Catholics “shouldn’t work in the emergency room.”

Yes you read that right – Coakley thinks Catholics don’t deserve religious freedom on the issue of abortifacient contraceptives.

Even political watchers at the Washington Times blog can’t believe Coakley is actually telling 39 percent of voters in her state that they should, in effect, be forced to check their faith-formed moral conscience at the door if they work in health care situations.

And I can’t help but also note that the fake “Catholycs” at Catholics Democrats have, with devastating predictability, come out endorsing Martha Coakley. This decision despite the fact that Coakley, from everything I have read, is simply viciously pro-abortion.

She would be a vote in the Senate, for instance, in favor of removing pro-life language if it should be introduced. She is completely in the pocket of, and in ideological lock-step with, the pro-abortion lobby. And the substance of her political campaign up to this point has been, essentially, that she deserves the seat because she is a democrat.

I think Catholics and all Americans deserve better.

A picture that should prompt a thousand prayers – this image was captured this morning on a cellphone camera in Port-au-Prince:

Early reports from the region suggest an unmitigated disaster: the Archbishop of Haiti, Joseph Serge Miot has died in the rubble, hundreds of priests and seminarians dead, and a total death toll that may reach 100,000. One hundred thousand.

Haiti is already a country of the poorest-of-the-poor. I have found the Anchoress’ roundup of links very helpful in identifying good Catholic relief organizations where we can donate money and other things to the people of Haiti.

And for all of us, let us keep the victims in our close prayers.

Photo Ph/t: AmP reader William.

Here at AmP I tend to focus on national issues, and especially the political scene when it comes to topics such as abortion.

It’s important to remember, however, that unsung pro-life heros in this country are tirelessly providing real, practical help to young women facing problem pregnancies every day.

Sometimes, those noble efforts are besieged by their hateful opponents, in this case by two pro-abortion students who refer to themselves as the “FemDems.”

This email sent by Suzanne Abdalla, the director of one such pro-life pregnancy center, located in the heart of liberal Ann Arbor’s University of Michigan campus, gives us a glimpse of the challenges these brave souls face.

[After the jump, some gems from the "FemDems", and how you can help these instrumental pro-life centers.]

Read the rest of this entry »