Down Memory Lane

Report by Fr Thomas Euteneuer on "Asian Family Under Siege" 2005

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HLI’s Missionary Trip to Sri Lanka

19-25 October 2005

As an Emirates Airlines 777 was whisking Dr. Brian Clowes and me over Iraq on our way to Sri Lanka we could not help but compare America’s war for the liberation of the Iraqi people with HLI’s ongoing struggle for the lives of innocent babies all over the world. Maybe it is better to say we “contrasted” these two wars because several real differences make pro-life the harder struggle: for one, the battlefield is not limited to one country, it is every country. Secondly, the enemies are not black-masked terrorists hiding in dirty caves and underground dwellings, they are “respectable” terrorists dressed in business suits and judges’ robes who wield the weapons of immense secular power against the poorest of the poor. And finally, as our founder, Fr. Paul Marx, was relentless in telling people, abortion is by far the world’s most violent conflict since it has racked up a greater number of casualties than any other war in history. These insights indeed prepared us for HLI’s first missionary trip to Sri Lanka.

It is not an exaggeration to say that our visit to this island nation just off the south eastern tip of India was the result of a miracle. In 2003 Fr. Jerry Novotny of HLI Japan joined us for the HLI conference in Bangalore, India. He spent a few days in Sri Lanka before the conference and there met the dynamic 29-year-old chemical engineer, Dr. Eshan Dias whose pro-life awareness is extraordinarily developed for a country that does not have legal abortion—yet. He has formed his own pro-life organization called Cultura Vitae, the first of its kind in his country. Dr. Dias then came to HLI’s 2004 conference in Indonesia and told us the story of what is happening in his country to install the killing. From there it took all of three minutes to know that Sri Lanka was the next battle ground for HLI. As St. Paul felt the Holy Spirit “opening a door” to the preaching of the Gospel in Macedonia, so we knew that Dr. Dias was opening a door to HLI in his beautiful and profoundly pro-life culture. We don’t just believe in miracles, we depend on them.

The killing has already started in Sri Lanka

Anyone familiar with HLI publications will recognize the Marie Stopes organization as one of the arch-enemies of life. Everywhere I go in the Third World I see their blue and white sign advertising their nefarious business. A contemporary of Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes was to England what Sanger was to the US: the mother of free sex, the demon of hatred for marriage, and the goddess of birth control. She is less well-known because her organization was overshadowed by the Planned Parenthood empire of death until it was resurrected in the 70s and sent into the poorest countries of the world to prey on unsuspecting pro-life cultures. Marie Stopes International now proudly operates “reproductive health” clinics in 39 countries and provides abortions clandestinely in the areas of the world where abortion is not legal. They boast that their “network of centers and outreach services covers most of the country.” I saw four or five of these death centers with my own eyes during my visit.

Note that abortion is outlawed in Sri Lanka except under the strict exception of saving the life of the mother—which as we all know is a false and deceptive “reason” for abortion and is never medically necessary. Yet, abortion is routinely practiced because contraception is routinely practiced. The Sri Lankans have dropped their fertility rate from 5.7 children per family in 1950 down to an estimate of 1.85 now. That is such a catastrophic drop in fertility that Dr. Dias continuously says, “Sri Lanka is a dying country,” and he is right. The informal number of abortions practiced illegally in Sri Lanka is estimated to be between 700-1000 a day.

Within eight hours of arrival on our first day in Sri Lanka Dr. Dias took us to a Marie Stopes “reproductive health” center that operates literally in the shadow of the dome of the Catholic Cathedral of the capital city of Colombo. How proud I was of Dr. Dias, Dr. Enid Prabhu (from HLI-Bombay, India) and her friend Marjorie who walked into that place of death with the sole purpose of talking the “doctor” out of his killing practice. Brian Clowes and I stood outside and prayed the Rosary and the St. Michael the Archangel prayer so that this doctor would see and repent of his evil ways. The demons were on high alert that day as two white guys stood in front of the death chamber with cameras and rosaries! Dr. Prabhu is an ob-gyn and had a heart-to-heart with the abortionist while Dr. Dias appealed to his sense of decency to recognize the damage he was doing to women and his own conscience. After a short while they had the doctor in tears such that he eventually had to tell our friends to leave in order not to be converted there on the spot! Conversion or not, our people gave him a dose of conscience that he will never forget.

The next day we did the same at another Marie Stopes death center in the central Sri Lankan town of Hatton, but the abortionist saw Dr. Dias coming and apparently tried to make a quick get-away in a motorized rickshaw! The three clinic workers also decided to close up shop for the day because the spiritual environment must have proven too hot for them. This is the effect of one humble man whose mere presence causes such fear in the servants of darkness. I told Dr. Dias that what we had just witnessed was a form of exorcism—when the Church actually shows up at the place of death “the gates of hell shall not prevail.” When Dr. Dias pointed out the fleeing abortionist, I stopped his rickshaw and asked him if he was the one who killed babies in the clinic and of course he categorically denied it, much to the amusement of Dr. Dias. Killers are always liars too. Sadly, his surname indicated that he was also a Christian (most probably a Catholic in that region) and so I told him that the judgment seat of Almighty God will be very hot for him unless he gets out of the dirty business of killing God’s innocent children.

Planned Parenthood never sleeps

There is an old expression that says the devil never sleeps, but that can be easily applied to Planned Parenthood who are operating here as the Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka (FPASL). They have been here since 1953. Believe it or not their brazen motto is “to usher in a culture of life”—my goodness! Brian Clowes says that this is like saying the plan to legalize prostitution is “to usher in a culture of virtue”!

The liars in the family planning business follow a predictable pattern as they do everywhere abortion is still illegal: they make exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims of rampant illegal and “unsafe” abortion but then dredge up some hard case of a poor woman who has been butchered by an abortionist like the ones we met and push for legalized abortion which according to them miraculously becomes “safe” after it becomes legal.

I have never understood this logic because it is no logic at all: the abortion procedure is the same before and after legalization, the quack practitioners are the same and babies are always slaughtered whether it is legal or not. The only difference that legalization makes is that more unscrupulous medical quacks get into the game and join the festival of butchery until the body count rises exponentially because it is legal. Everywhere I go I tell them that legalization does not regulate abortion or make it “safe:” it only intensifies the slaughter. Abortion in America grew from 100,000 illegal abortions in 1972 to 700,000 legal abortions in the first year! The second year the number grew to 900,000 and every year thereafter it blasted beyond a million and counting.

FPASL is also behind the plans to repeal section 303 of the Penal Code which declares abortion a crime, to pass a “women’s rights” bill. This is a disguised attempt to give girls as young as ten years of age access to “sexual and reproductive health” (read: contraception) and to legalize abortion. The government of Sri Lanka has already been instructed by a 23-feminist panel of the UN to legalize abortion but so far has not caved in to the pressure. Now FPASL is backing legislation called the “Bill on the Elimination of Violence Against Women” which is a UN-mimic piece of work which de facto legalizes abortion through deceptive terminology.

Six days to inaugurate the pro-life movement

HLI’s pro-life missions are an answer to all this death and destruction. When Dr. Dias welcomed us to his country he cast HLI’s visit as the first of a kind: we were “inaugurating” the whole pro-life movement in Sri Lanka. If there is any gift that HLI offers to the world in humility and gratitude to Almighty God it is this zeal to establish a professional pro-life movement in areas of the world which are unprepared for the onslaught to come. We do that with the resources provided for us by you, our generous North American benefactors, and we take the wisdom of our well-developed pro-life movement and spread the wealth to pro-lifers in other countries who are so grateful for our help and patronage. I never tire of saying that if it were not for HLI there would be no pro-life movement in many countries, and Sri Lanka is only the most recent example.

The Apostolic Nuncio for Sri Lanka, Archbishop Mario Zenari, inaugurated our mission with an opening Mass and wonderful blessing for this new horizon of the Church in this land. He was joined by most of the staff of the Caritas (Catholic Charities) organization at their compound in Colombo and sent us out with a burst of enthusiasm on a six-day missionary excursion which logged approximately a thousand land miles with nine presentations in half a dozen venues up and down this country of 20 million people. The nation of Sri Lanka is about the size of our State of West Virginia so traveling up and down the coast through hill and dale in less than a week was no small task.

Our missionary team consisted of two Americans, one Filipino and two Indians together with a host of Sri Lankans who provided the immense hospitality, transportation, lodging and opportunities to speak in every place we went. Dr. Enid Prabhu mentioned above was our expert on medical matters and told stories about how her neighboring India legalized abortion in 1971 to a catastrophic effect in her country. Dr. Ligaya Acosta from the Philippines has an extraordinary story of being “converted” to the pro-life cause by HLI workers in her country after having been a population controller and “reproductive health” worker in the Ministry of Health for 28 years. Hers is an absolutely stunning testimony to the power of grace working hand in hand with HLI zeal for life. Now she works for our side! Brian Clowes of course is an expert on the UN, all manner of population control programs and the deadly connection between abortion and contraception around the world. I talked to them about the way in which the anti-lifers conquered the west and are now gunning down the remaining pro-life cultures of the world. They can learn an object lesson from us. Dr. Dias of course was there to fill them in on the situation in their own country.

Six days of grueling road travel, difficult living conditions and relentless missionary fervor left us all exhausted but grateful for the privilege to work for life. Most of our audiences were civic leaders and workers in non-governmental organizations of some sort or another. We also spoke to medical and legal professionals, United Nations workers and Catholic nuns and religious. The audiences were made up of Buddhists (the official religion of Sri Lanka) and Hindus but we spoke to anyone who would listen to our message! We are immensely grateful to the well-developed social support system of Caritas (Catholic Charities) who made it possible to have audiences for our talks even in the most remote villages of the high country and tea plantations. Thankfully the Catholic Church is already providing social services in these areas so we did not have to reinvent the wheel.

Seminarians again!

Perhaps the most significant visit we made was to the National Seminary at Kandy where we spoke to over 100 major seminarians and priests who literally absorbed the messages we brought them. We are happy to report that this was the very first time that we have formally presented Brian Clowes’ new “Pro-Life CD Library” to seminarians free of charge thanks to the generosity of HLI donors who make it possible to put this magnificent resource into the hands of our future Church leaders. We also delivered as many of Brian’s Facts of Life books that the airlines would let us carry overseas! In both cases we ask the seminarians to pray for the HLI donors who make these gifts possible, and I can assure you that these are gifts that keep on giving. We are following up with the seminarians by sending tons more literature and materials for these pro-life hungry young men.

A first for HLI—mission to the Tamil Tigers

I am sure that HLI’s visit to the northern part of Sri Lanka which is a war zone is a first for our mission, but it was a truly fantastic visit. Hulls of burned out vehicles and buildings were permanent remnants of a war that has gone on for twenty years for control of the mainly Tamil-speaking areas of the country. Thankfully they are in a three-year cease-fire, and so we traveled to the capital city of Jaffna and had talks in two Caritas centers and Jaffna University. The heavy scrutiny we received as we went through the militarized zones check points was made all the smoother by the presence of Sr. Kathleen Fleming, a Holy Rosary Sister and Sr. Eudoxia who spoke the language and loosened up the ubiquitous twenty-something soldiers to our pressing mission. Brian also took the opportunity to distribute “Little Feet” pins and 10-week fetal models to the soldiers and officials at the check points, and I got in trouble from a female soldier who did not like me taking a picture of it!

When Dr. Prabhu and I were giving our talks at the Catholic Jaffna University we expected something of a warm reception, but we got a fight instead—did I say we were in a war zone? A German “peace and justice” worker stood up and castigated me for telling the 100 nuns, students and civic leaders that self-control is the human alternative to birth control. In the course of his diatribe against us this man publicly admitted that he engaged in sex outside of marriage, that he used condoms and taught young people that it was “normal” to do so. He had no problem with homosexual activity and called it “natural.” We, preaching a medieval doctrine in his mind, were out of touch with progressive culture and needed to enter the 21^st century and stop forcing our morality on others. He even went so far as to claim that all people, married or unmarried, have a “right to sexual expression” that we should not deny them.

Well, fight fire with fire I did! I first asked him if he worked for the UN because he sounded like he was toting the UN party line. He denied it but refused to tell me who he worked for. I then used him as an object lesson for the rest of the class—it is always handy to have such a pure hedonist to prove your point! I told those beautiful young Sri Lankans that this Westerner, with his doctrine of sexual freedom and homo-erotic values was living in their land and using his guest status to bring his corrupt foreign values into their culture. Far from we imposing our values on them, this man symbolized the whole program of western sexual imperialism that was being forced on the Sri Lankans by the likes of the UN, Planned Parenthood and USAID, and it is only a matter of time before their leaven corrupts the whole mass. I refrained from demanding that they evict the man from their town…but that would have been on the only correct response!

It was only after the talk that I learned that the man worked for the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and “represented” the values of the Catholic Church to perhaps thousands of Sri Lankans he worked with in his “ministry.” What a blasphemy against Our Lady’s purity. Our hope is that they got a new picture of American culture and true Catholic values from us.

A press conference to be remembered

Our mission to Sri Lanka concluded with a press conference aimed at counteracting the force of several pieces of anti-life legislation on the docket in Sri Lanka. Since there has been no serious opposition to the invading culture of death up to this point, HLI’s press conference became the other point of view that most Sri Lankans have never heard. We planned it at the ritzy Hotel Taj Samudra in Colombo, and we drew about sixty media people and dignitaries to the press conference to hear the Gospel of Life. It was a marvelous way to kick off the pro-life movement in this country and counted the participation of the Provincial Governor, the Secretary General of the Bishops’ Conference, the Deputy Inspector General of the Colombo Police Force and the National Television station as well as a host of other news outlets, medical personnel and various other professionals. 

Our efforts bore some surprising “fruits”

All of the speakers at the press conference gave a similar version of the talks we had been giving during the speaking tour, but this time it was in a much more formal setting. The very first question we received was from a lawyer who was challenging our assessment of the United Nations, and when she did not hear what she wanted to hear she walked out on us! We also received heat from the medical professionals who, not surprisingly, objected to our claim that birth control leads to abortion. They inevitably see birth control as a way to avoid abortion since it avoids bringing “unwanted children” into the world. We encounter this argument everywhere we go and are never surprised by it. Most shocking though is the lack of insight from medical professionals who should know that contraception always leads to abortion. The fact that sixty percent of women entering abortion facilities in the US are doing so because their birth control failed does not seem to sway them. Their minds have been corrupted by the population control lobby that got to them first and now they will not be confused with the facts.

Among the more positive fruits of the press conference was an invitation by the Bishops’ Conference for the main NFP experts in Sri Lanka to address them at their next plenary session. We also were asked by the Police Inspector to provide resources and training to his police force so that they can begin to enforce the law on abortion and begin shutting down the illegal abortion mills in Colombo and beyond. What a magnificent result of our efforts—all credit goes to God! We could not have asked for a better result.

Conclusion: planting the pro-life seeds deep in fertile soil

We could not help but be profoundly impressed by our Sri Lankan hosts and the tremendously beautiful culture of life that we found in this small but important island nation. They are a gem shining in the southern Indian Ocean and in their poverty have a great deal to teach us about life and family. Above all, although the anti-lifers are seemingly entrenched, I also think that we may have gotten there in time to make a difference before the killing is legalized. Our speaking tour and kick-off of the pro-life movement seemed to generate tremendous enthusiasm for an issue that few thought about prior to that, and I believe that we planted our pro-life seeds very deeply in the “good soil” of the Gospel which will yield 30-, 60- and 100-fold in time to come.

Let us pray for Dr. Eshan Dias, Cultura Vitae and all his co-workers for life in Sri Lanka. They have their work cut out for them, but they have HLI behind them all the way. The Lord has begun a good work in Sri Lanka—may He bring it to fruition in time and eternity!