October 2005 Newsletter
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"I don’t know why we never heard this before. It makes so much sense. The pro-life movement makes so much sense."
If you’re like me, your e-mailbox is filled each week with great information from dozens of other excellent pro-life groups. So you may have wondered, how is Healing the Culture different from everyone else?
Healing the Culture is an organization with an entirely new approach to pro-life education and an exciting agenda for converting hearts, winning souls, and saving lives. The proof of our success is found in quotes like the one here, in the right margin, from a couple who recently attended a Life Principles training.
What makes Healing the Culture so unique? It’s what I call “The Three P’s.” That stands for PRO-LIFE, PHILOSOPHICAL, and PURPOSE IN LIFE education. Let me explain…
As you know, Healing the Culture is explicitly PRO-LIFE in our mission and goals. It’s the issue that motivates every program we create, every resource tool we design, and every collaborative effort we embrace.
But what sets us apart from other pro-life organizations is that we are also PHILOSOPHICAL in nature. This means we recognize that, in order for other pro-life ministries to succeed, we must engage our culture in a dialogue about what we mean when we talk about things like freedom, rights, personhood, quality of life, ethics, love, and the common good. These terms can be, and have been, poorly defined and badly misunderstood by those who help shape our culture, from doctors to lawyers, and from Hollywood entertainers to lawmakers.
What makes our approach so appealing to the men and women who hear us, is that we are fundamentally concerned with how individuals today are defining PURPOSE IN LIFE. We appeal to what most people know intuitively in their hearts: that when people are living for superficial and shallow goals and pursuits, they will also have superficial and shallow definitions of freedom, rights, personhood, quality of life, ethics, love, and the common good.
Unfortunately, these superficial and shallow definitions have led the general population to view the pro-life movement with suspicion. We are frequently shoved onto the sidelines of public discourse, disregarded in policy-making, and grossly misrepresented by the media. The result is a public that buys the myth that pro-life individuals are, at best, incompetent and unrealistic. But the pro-life movement is the antithesis of incompetence, and we are anything but unrealistic. We know the truth about the horrendous damage and pain that abortion and euthanasia has inflicted on our culture, and we know that in order to change minds, we first have to heal hearts.
So what do we do at Healing the Culture? We are all about ACCESS. Access to authentic and intelligent pro-life education. Access to healthy and complete definitions of important cultural words. And access to a higher viewpoint about the true meaning and purpose of life. We help the public see and understand the depth and significance of the pro-life position.
How do we do this? We take the Life Principles curriculum laid out in Fr. Robert Spitzer’s groundbreaking book, Healing the Culture, and we create simple, user-friendly, and publicly accessible programs and resources for real people facing real life issues.
We create retreats for high school students, so that they have access to healthier understandings of love, sexuality, and freedom. We create class materials for college students so that they have access to a higher vision of human dignity and rights. We create training programs for Crisis Pregnancy Centers so their clients can have access to more fulfilling definitions of happiness, success, and purpose in life. We offer seminars and publications for health care professionals so that they have access to deeper interpretations of quality of life and suffering; and on and on.
Our ultimate goal is to create access to authentic and deep pro-life education for every audience in the nation. Our potential to transform our severely undernourished culture is vast, and we have already made great strides in the two short years since our founding (check out our website www.healingtheculture.com, which is now in Stage 2 of its development).
But we cannot do any of this without you. If you view our mission as fulfilling a real cultural need, if you agree that this work is unique, that it must be done, and that we are leading the way in doing it, then we need you to support us.
We need resources to keep moving forward. We have made huge personal sacrifices because we believe in this mission. But we also have realistic costs, and we rely on you to help keep us operating. I want to ask if you would consider making an extra sacrificial donation this month. Can you double your normal gift? If you haven’t given in a while, would you consider renewing your commitment? If you are new to our mission, will you join our team?
We are so very grateful to you, our donors, our supporters, our friends, and our teammates. We believe that your support of Healing the Culture will hasten the day when we look back at abortion and euthanasia as appalling memories of the past. Until that time, I thank you for allowing us to serve with you in this extraordinary and exciting ministry.
For Life,
Camille E. De Blasi, President
| October 2005 | ||
| Oct. 20 | Kamloops, BC Canada |
Catholic Teacher Life Principles Training (Camille De Blasi) Contact Adele Huculak, (250) 376-3351 |
| November 2005 | ||
| Nov. 2 | Kirkland, WA | Being With Volunteer Training, part 1 (Camille De Blasi) Contact Pattie Sciola, (425) 827-2277 |
Nov. 4 | Mercer Island, WA | Suffering and the God of Love (Rev. Robert Spitzer) Sponsored by Human Life of Washington |
Nov. 4 | Seattle, WA | Why Be Pro-Life? Presentation to women's studies students at a local high school (Lisa-Ann Oliver) |
Nov. 5 | Seattle, WA | Archdiocese of Seattle Annual Youth Conference (Camille De Blasi) Contact Karla Murphy, karlam@seattlearch.org |
Nov. 7 | Kirkland, WA | Northwest College classroom presentation (Camille De Blasi) |
Nov. 7 | Snohomish, WA | The Prodigal Son (Camille De Blasi) |
Nov. 9 | Kirkland, WA | Being With Volunteer Training, part 2 (Camille De Blasi) |
Nov. 16 | Kirkland, WA | Being With Volunteer Training, part 3 (Camille De Blasi) |
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