Abortion Business May Not Advertise as ‘Alternative’

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Before he decided to run for governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer was the state’s attorney general. And in that position he sued crisis pregnancy centers for misleading advertising. He lost.

Now, the crisis pregnancy centers have won another victory, this time against an abortion business trying to pass itself off in the Yellow Pages of the phone book as an abortion alternative.

In a settlement signed Oct. 26 by state Supreme Court Justice Bruce Tolbert, the Dr. Emily abortion business agreed to “refrain from advertising in the ‘abortion alternatives’ section of Ambassador Yellow Pages” and similar directories.

The business was defended by the New York Civil Liberties Union against a suit by Expectant Mother Care-EMC FrontLine Pregnancy Centers. The New York Civil Liberties Union conceded.

Said EMC’s president, Chris Slattery, “No longer will a hurting or desperate woman reach out for an ‘abortion alternative’ in the Yellow Pages, and unwittingly find the icy grip of an abortion mill.”

(Register staff)

New Guide for Annulment Process Published

WASHINGTON — The Canon Law Society of America has published the first English-language commentary on norms the Vatican issued last year for the Church’s marriage annulment process.

‘Dignitas Connubii’: Norms and Commentary is co-written by German canonist Klaus Ludicke and Msgr. Ronny Jenkins, an associate general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who also teaches canon law at The Catholic University of America. Dignitas Connubii (The Dignity of Marriage) is the title of a normative handbook of marriage tribunal procedures issued in January 2005 by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, in consultation with several other Vatican agencies.

The new commentary includes the text of the 2005 norms in the original Latin with an English translation in a parallel column. Each norm is followed by a commentary expanding on its meaning and relating it to other Church laws and official judicial interpretations of those laws. The 556-page hard-bound text costs $60 and can be ordered through the Canon Law Society of America.

(CNS)

Texas Church Remembers Exiled Bishop, Now a Saint

SAN ANTONIO — St. Rafael Guizar Valencia, a saint with a personal connection to San Antonio, was honored on the day of his canonization in Rome with a special Mass at San Fernando Cathedral, where he preached while in exile from his native Mexico during the late 1920s.

The main celebrants for the Oct. 15 Mass were Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio and his predecessor, retired Archbishop Patrick Flores. “Blessed be God who gave us this great man,” said Archbishop Flores in his homily. “And blessed be this great man for all that he has taught us.”

He noted there was a lesson to be learned from the new saint about the day’s reading from the Gospel of St. Mark — about the wealthy man who was invited to sell all he owned and follow Jesus. It applies not just to the materially rich, the archbishop said, “but to everyone who, in some way or another, has something they can share with others.”

St. Rafael was born in 1878 to a wealthy family. As a priest and later as bishop of Veracruz, Mexico, he used his wealth to help build orphanages, clinics and a seminary, and was known for giving away all he had to help those in need, even selling his beautiful pectoral cross of gold encrusted with diamonds to help the poor.

(CNS)