{"id":1433,"date":"2007-06-13T23:25:36","date_gmt":"2007-06-13T23:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/no-amnesty.html"},"modified":"2007-06-13T23:25:36","modified_gmt":"2007-06-13T23:25:36","slug":"no-amnesty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/no-amnesty.html","title":{"rendered":"No Amnesty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consequences for Amnesty International’s move to abortion support:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Abortion has driven a wedge between the Catholic Church and an organization that began as an ally.<\/p>\n

Amnesty International (AI) was founded in 1961 by Peter Benenson, a British convert to Catholicism. But today, as a result of Amnesty International\u2019s recent decision to promote abortion rights, Church leaders say that Catholics should withdraw all financial support from the London-based human-rights organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that, if in fact Amnesty International persists in this course of action, individuals and Catholic organizations must withdraw their support, because, in deciding to promote abortion rights, AI has betrayed its mission,\u201d Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, <\/a>said in an e-mail interview. <\/p>\n

The abortion policy has already cost Amnesty International the support of one long-time Catholic backer: Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan. <\/p>\n

Said Father Berrigan, \u201cOne cannot support an organization financially or even individually that is contravening something very serious in our ethic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a reaction from a human rights activist doesn\u2019t surprise Cardinal Martino. Amnesty International \u201chas betrayed all of its faithful supporters throughout the years,\u201d he said, \u201cboth individuals and organizations, who have trusted AI for its integral mission of promoting and protecting human rights.\u201d <\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

Father Berrigan said he first became acquainted with Amnesty\u2019s work in the 1960s, when the newly formed group launched a campaign on behalf of Archbishop Josef Beran of Prague, who was imprisoned by Czechoslovakia\u2019s Communist government after he spoke out against government abuses. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was very moved with the international activity on behalf of powerless people,\u201d Father Berrigan said. And, he added, no one is more powerless than unborn children in the womb who are at risk of being killed by abortion.<\/p>\n

Father Berrigan emphatically agreed with Cardinal Martino\u2019s statement that individual Catholics and Catholic organizations should withdraw all support for Amnesty International if it doesn\u2019t reverse its decision to advocate for abortion rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve supported over the years Amnesty\u2019s take on prisoners of conscience around the world, and have been a member of Amnesty,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I was quite shaken by this change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Much more in the article, including statements from an AI senior staffer and Austin Ruse of  <\/a>the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute<\/a><\/p>\n

Note: <\/u>Some have expressed surprise at Fr. Berrigan’s stand. The Berrigans have always stood in opposition to abortion. I believe Daniel has been arrested at a clinic protest or two, and I have a vague recollection (someone can fill out this memory or correct it) of Liz McAlister, Phil Berrigan’s wife (now widow) spending some time in jail for an abortion clinic protest. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Consequences for Amnesty International’s move to abortion support: Abortion has driven a wedge between the Catholic Church and an organization that began as an ally. Amnesty International (AI) was founded in 1961 by Peter Benenson, a British convert to Catholicism. But today, as a result of Amnesty International\u2019s recent decision to promote abortion rights, Church…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNo Amnesty - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/no-amnesty.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No Amnesty - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Consequences for Amnesty International’s move to abortion support: Abortion has driven a wedge between the Catholic Church and an organization that began as an ally. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}