Rome, Italy, Dec 14, 2017 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and longtime pro-life advocate, has it in her blood to fight for the causes she believes in, one of which is to promote “civil rights” for the unborn.
King, 66, grew up in the heat of the civil rights battle led by her uncle, and surrounded by the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
Eager to stand for a cause she believed would liberate women, she joined the budding “pro-choice” movement at a young age.
But after experiencing the crushing physical and emotional effects of two abortions, and receiving what she believes was a prophetic intervention from her grandfather, Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., she had a change of heart. She became pro-life and committed herself to carrying forward what she feels is a mission to defend the rights of the unborn.
King spoke to a small group of journalists, including CNA, after arriving in Rome for a Dec. 11-13 conference organized by the Forum of Catholic-inspired NGOs, titled “Promoters of Humanity in a Transforming World.”
The event drew a swath of representatives from various NGOs around the world, including non-Catholics, to discuss how Catholic-inspired organizations can help safeguard core Christian values and ensure that a proper integral human development is achieved in the context of a rapidly changing global society.
King was present on behalf of her project “Civil Rights for the Unborn,” which she directs in partnership with Priests for Life. She is also in charge of Priests for Life’s African-American outreach branch, and is involved with various other pro-life entities, including Rachel’s Vineyard.
On the last day of the gathering, King had the chance to meet Pope Francis, who often cites her uncle in his speeches.
She told CNA that she was honored to meet the Pope, and when she told him that she was related to Martin Luther King Jr., his face lit up and “he seemed very happy.”
She was also moved by the fact that Pope Francis asked her to pray for him, saying it was “a delightful moment,” and that she was “very blessed to of course do that. I do pray for him and for all who are in authority, that we can live a peaceful life.”
Although King is Protestant, she is a firm believer in working with the Catholic Church, which she sees as a “natural ally.” She said that she is inspired by the Pope’s spontaneous spirit, engagement with everyone he meets, and defense of life at all stages.
Francis, she said, “doesn’t take one issue and make that his issue, he seems to be able to connect it and see that it all belongs together…I appreciate his work.”
“The Catholics were very supportive of the civil rights movement (of the) 20th century,” she said, adding that her uncle and father both “worked very closely with the Catholic community.”
When it comes to her own advocacy, life issues have always hit home for King, whose parents in 1950 became pregnant with her before they were married.
At the time, The Negro Project launched by Margaret Sanger in 1939 was continuing to gain steam. Among other things, the project worked to promote contraception and abortion in the black community.
King said her parents had considered getting an abortion until her grandfather, Martin Luther King Sr., “prophetically” intervened. Though they didn’t have ultrasound machines at the time, King said her grandfather had strongly rejected the claim that the fetus was “just a lump of flesh.” He said that the baby was a granddaughter whom he had seen in a dream three years prior.
After hearing Martin Luther King Sr. describe how his granddaughter would look, Alveda King’s parents decided against the abortion and she was born in 1951.
Despite hearing this story many times in her youth, King took a different path after her father and uncle died. She had been married, divorced, and no longer had the support system she once did, so when the pro-choice women’s movement began to grow, “I joined it because I’m a freedom fighter.”
However, she said, following the birth of her first child, she was coerced into having two abortions. When she became pregnant again, and was planning to have another abortion, her grandfather gave her the same message he had given her mother: “That’s not a lump of flesh, that’s my great-grandchild.”
She decided to keep the baby. Seeing her baby’s heartbeat on the sonogram confirmed that decision.
“I heard with new ears,” she said, explaining that her uncle’s words, “injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere,” began to take on a new meaning in her mind.
“He also said the Negro cannot win if he’s willing to sacrifice the future of his children for immediate comfort and safety,” she said, and recounted how, after being “born again” in 1983, she immediately began advocating for life.
In addition to her famous family ties, King had a career in law, was a college professor and served in the Georgia State House of Representatives. In law classes she taught, King said she would bring up the abortion issue and make the argument that “a woman has the right to choose what she does with her body, but the baby’s not her body. Where’s the lawyer for the baby?”
“It began to rock everything,” she said, explaining that she began to face resistance from Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, which had been re-named as “Planned Parenthood.” The organization objected to her pro-life views, arguing that her uncle had received the group’s “Maggie Award” in 1966.
However, King said that Martin Luther King Jr. had never supported the organization’s agenda. He declined to attend the award ceremony, she noted. It was his wife and secretary – both of whom were more sympathetic to the cause at the time – who attended and wrote a thank you note to the group instead.
“Martin Luther King Jr. never accepted the agenda of Planned Parenthood,” Alveda King said. “They lie. They lie today. They put their abortion mills on or near streets that are named after Martin Luther King, and they want to attach that to the civil rights movement of the 20th century, (but) it doesn’t belong.”
Part of why the Negro Project grew as fast as it did, she said, is that it funded scholarships and grants for the black community that were tied to support for the abortion movement.
Additionally, the organization promoted abstinence, while also handing out condoms and advertising abortions, she said.
“If you tell a kid…yeah, be abstinent, but let’s give you Cosmo magazine with teens having sex and let’s give you free condoms, then they knew they were going to get all those abortions,” she said.
“So that’s how you ended up with a whole culture of abortion-minded people. It was slick, very slick. Evil.”
She added that the target group was initially the black community, “then it became the Latinos and then…the Caucasians with the money became a big target because they could pay.”
King said that if her uncle were alive today, she has no doubt that he would be adamantly pro-life. And while she works most directly with the African-American community in the United States, “its not just a black and white issue, its a human issue.”
“With one blood God made all people. Regardless of our color…we all bleed red,” she said. “So where’s the lawyer for the little ones, where’s the lawyer for the sick or the elderly?”
Looking ahead, King is encouraged by the millennial generation, whom she sees as being able to speak to modern society in a direct, passionate, and fresh way.
“The millennials get it,” she said, adding that “the (pro-life) fight has had a shot in the arm (from) millennials.”
She also noted the importance of fertility awareness and care for post-abortive women, two issues that she would like to see receiving more attention.
Several movie stars from her youth “went to their death” with the regret of abortion, she said, giving the example of singer Kenny Rogers, whose music voices regret over an abortion he and a former girlfriend decided to have.
Despite obstacles, King is hopeful that the level of awareness and resistance in the United States could indicate a turning point on the issue of abortion.
“Do I believe there’s going to be an end to the barbaric practices of killing our weakest, which are the babies and the sick, elderly and poor? I do,” she said, pointing to the March for Life events held across the globe, often filled with young people.
These events show the strength of the pro-life community, she said. “The world is taking note.”
[…]
It might be helpful to have more specifics from the Cardinal.
This court jester, who has outlasted his shelf life, has been specific in the past…
With the mentality of a careerist amoeba, he can’t tell the difference between a distinct “synod of Bishops” within the Apostolic Succession, and a broader and distinctly different “ecclesial assembly”—as in communio.
Sexually, he channels his own pontifications, thusly: “I think that’s wrong. But I also believe that we are thinking ahead here in [terms of] teaching. As the Pope has expressed in the past, this can lead to a change in doctrine. Because I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct.” https://www.newwaysministry.org/2022/02/04/leading-cardinal-in-synod-seeks-change-in-church-teachings-on-homosexuality/
The “sociological and scientific foundation”? This forwardist and clericalist-extraordinaire can’t tell the difference between the front and the back!
SUMMARY: the red-hat cardinal fails the red-face test. Don’t let your son or daughter near this self-referential man, or whatever.
“SJ” might be a useful clarification.
On another site, there used to a poster who went by the pseudonym “Art Deco” who used to say that parts of the Jesuit order ran on “single malt scotch and sodomy”.
Jimmy Martin has given us the Jesuit view.
It’s time for the final suppression of the Jesuits.
Well, obviously Cardinal Hollerich is far more spiritually advanced than St. Paul and St. John — and, yes, Jesus.
Let’s face it. The purpose of marriage is to assure individuals of an uninterrupted supply of easily accessible orgasms.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Any association with reproduction is strictly incidental.
Leave it to those brilliant Jesuiticals to figure everything out for all of us.
“Some look to the past with nostalgia, others with fear. Both are wrong. We are part of a history — this we must accept and learn from. But we must also move forward.”
Well, he’s right about one thing. We must learn to highten awareness of how stupid progressives are. He even has gone so far, as Francis did, to insist that a fallible God is in need to “learn from history.”
Yet to an actual honest mind, history reveals that not only does truth never change, because it all comes from an infallible perfect God, but neither does foolhardy human pride that refuses to recognize that truth never changes ever change. God has not been on vacation through the pages of history. Also notice that halfwits who cite science in support of their stupidity can never name the “science.”
Neither can they name exactly what happens in that magical land of “forward.”
Unbelievable. May God help the Church led by such popes and bishops. They go against Holy Scripture and the best thinkers of the Church:
Romans 1:26-27
New International Version
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
New International Version
9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a]
10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
AND SAINT AUGUSTINE
“Those sins which are against nature, like those of the men of Sodom, are in all times and places to be detested and punished. Even if all nations committed such sins, they should all alike be held guilty by God’s law” (Confessions 3.8).
Hear, hear!!! Scripture has spoken. Take heed.
Catholic morality is not narrow, insofar as it is part of a consistent whole that touches every aspect of life. What it is is sharp, sharper than any two-edged sword. Some things are always wrong, regardless of the number on the calendar or how popular these things might be with the media, the courts, or the voters. Or the seminaries.
I doubt he is really talking about narrowness, but if he is, he probably has a point. Just look at the mess that is the stance of current bishops on the death penalty. This is never about justice, because they wouldn’t win the argument that the death penalty is always unjust — that would, by the way, require them to say that God not merely permitted but COMMANDED something that is always unjust, which is something only a heretic could believe. They don’t even link it to the broader question of how secular leaders responsible for the public good in this life can reconcile justice and prudence with mercy and forgiveness. They instead make the claim that they are wiser and holier than all previous generations, which is why they can contradict their predecessors boldly. Such a claim lacks evidence, to put it mildly. But back to my main point: this is an example of a moral issue which would be better treated if it were treated within a broader context, rather than treated as a narrow exception.
Away with him.
A diabolical man.
Moron Hollerich’s “sociological and scientific foundation:” genome research does not support the fictions of Hollerich. Instead, https://news.yahoo.com/no-gay-gene-study-finds-180220669.html
A selection: “This means that non-genetic factors – such as environment, upbringing, personality, nurture – are far more significant in influencing a person’s choice of sexual partner, just as with most other personality, behavioral and physical human traits, the researchers said.
“The study – the largest of its kind – analyzed survey responses and performed analyses known as genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on data from more than 470,000 people who had given DNA samples and lifestyle information to the UK Biobank and to the U.S. genetics testing company 23andMeInc.”
SUMMARY: About the Hollerich alchemy, Galileo rolls over in this grave.
“Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, SJ, stated in a recent interview that he “would not define morality — especially sexual morality — as narrowly as the Church does today.””
Then he would be wrong, and it is to be hoped that many people tell him so, forcefully.
“SJ” ’nuff said.
One is left to wonder who this mortal actually thinks he is. The hot air emerging from him and his cohort is noxious. Their time is past. He need tug his head out of the 60’s.
I traded in my truck earlier this year for a newer model. I can “narrowly ” follow the owner’s manual for maintenance and operation or I can choose to ignore the rules and make up my own. But I know which choice will benefit the life and performance of my vehicle
It works in a similar way for Church teaching on marriage and family. We ignore the owner’s manual at our own peril.
This is yet another Jesuit who does not teach the Catholic faith.
Not unlike Senator Tim Kaine, a product of the Jesuit apostolate of the 70’s and 80’s who can’t figure out from whence derive our human rights.
Where do they cook up this stuff?
The hubris is toxic.
Kaine thinks he’s a theologian as well as a political philosopher just because he went along on some jesuit missionary trips. That, no doubt, is where his brainwashing took place. He also stikes me as an effeminate-sounding male.
May I, as a convert to Catholicism, ask why such a Cardinal is not being disciplined, re-educated, and/or even dismissed from his position in the Church? His words seem so harmful and contrary to Christian Church teachings and the Holy Scriptures.
Assault on Christ and the true faith should not be understood as primarily the work of one morally disordered man given the leadership role as Relator general for the Synod on Synodality.
Cdl Hollerich SJ is given privilege as the advocate for adult homosexual relations by a host of powerful, intermediary clergy. He represents the trend, now a virtual doctrine based first on widespread practice, particularly by homosexual, SSA oriented, the latent, the empathetic among our clerical ranks perhaps reaching the summit. This, based on the conviction that numbers prove viability. That somehow after thousands of millennia human nature has changed. That the dramatic explosion of coming out of the closet was a natural phenomenon mysteriously waiting for the 1960s.
We need keep in mind that the assumed anomaly of Hollerich could not exist unless he were empowered from above. Not the heavenly above. Our mission is to bravely, with due respect confront that authority.
Message to Eminence Hollerich, from a dear friend, who escaped from the torture chamber of the sodomy-lifestyle:
“It is insanity for adults like you to teach young people that it is OK for a man to inseminate the intestines of another person.”
In times of great challenge, the Church is called to be a beacon of clarity, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ with unwavering conviction. There is a profound need to articulate what is good and holy, and what stands in opposition to the truth revealed by God. The faithful yearn for their shepherds to speak with a voice that is strong and unequivocal, like a lion defending the flock.
A leader’s silence in matters of faith and morals are a source of confusion and disunity. The truth of Christ is a gift, and it requires a firm and clear witness. To remain silent when the integrity of the Church’s doctrine and Tradition is at stake risks giving the impression of tacit approval, or worse, indifference to the very teachings entrusted to us. The lukewarm approach to the deposit of faith can leave the faithful adrift, lacking the sure guidance they need to navigate a complex world. The Church must always be a guide to eternal happiness and joy for the world, never an echo of its passing fads. When shepards such as Cardinal Hollerich actively teach a false religion, there must be others such as Pope Leo XIV to firmly, clearly stand on a foundation of truth rather than remain quiet as a mouse.
I guess the cardinal might say that honesty is essential, but he would not define armed robbery as narrowly as the government does today.
It almost seems like our Pope doesn’t want to offend anyone. God help us! Sexual license is the devil’s ‘modern’ tool for destroying belief. Saint Paul, the Church of history and the most obvious experience of faithful ordinary people strengthen our belief and morals. Debauched cleric double talk and ambiguities must be exposed in the must explicit way. God has not abandoned our created human nature to the Devil. Souls are at stake.
Bernard,
I agree. It appears that Pope Leo doesn’t want to offend anyone including the lavender mafia within the hierarchy and the Vatican, the LBTG crowd, atheistic Communist China, et al. By his recent actions, and inaction, he has already undermined his pontificate.
Very disappointing. Yet I believe we need to continue to pray for him.
When can we stop hearing from this guy?
Someone should post a sign at the entrances to Luxembourg:
Caution: Malfunctioning Cardinal
muddying up the clear waters
That’s a perfect way of expressing it, knowall.
I’m back to the farming analogies again but it reminds me that per our extension service proper cattle management fences them away from streams. Otherwise they can muddy & foul the water supply flowing downstream.
If Hollerich hopes to define a “more modern” church as one with only liberal sexual morality, he will soon find that church broke and with no folks in the pews.Most of us have been there and done that, and are not interesting in a repeat.
The “let it all hang out” and “do what feels good” crowd are not church-goers. Maybe someone should tell Hollerich that his brand of Christianity is not wanted.
As for the new Pope, I had high hopes for him. But his appointments have been gravely disappointing.
Jesuits should not be bishops.