“Our once great western Christian civilization is dying. If this matters to followers of Jesus Christ, then we must set aside our denominational differences and work together to strengthen the things that remain and reclaim what has been lost. Evangelicals and Catholics must stand together to re-establish that former Christian culture and moral consensus. We have the numbers and the organization but the question is this: Do we have the will to win this present spiritual battle for Jesus Christ against secularism? Will we prayerfully and cooperatively work toward a new Christian spiritual revival ― or will we choose to hunker down in our churches and denominationalisms and watch everything sink into the spiritual and moral abyss of a New Dark Age?” - Mark Davis Pickup

Monday, July 28, 2008

Vacation time


I will be on vacation until August 18th. Check back for my new blog entry then. Hope you're having a good summer.

Mark Pickup

Friday, July 25, 2008

The Truth Booth!


Please view the video at this link (http://www.truthbooth.org/). What a beautiful celebration of life in the womb! It's the video shown in shopping mall kiosk called "Truth Booth". The kiosk display uses a flat screen and shows modern 3D and 4D ultrasound imaging interspersed with color photographs of life in the womb to illustrate prenatal development. Using flat screen TVs, accompanied by tasteful and informative brochures, the unmanned Truth Booths are located near stores geared to young people.

This brilliant and simple educational concept targeting young people and teenagers was developed by Mike and Maureen Nuzzi of Atco, New Jersey. Well done!

If you are intersted in obtaining a Truth Booth for your community, go to the website for information.

The more the truth get out of the humanity of prenatal life gets out, the more the "Choice" mentality will become unsustainable.

Oh yes, the image at the top of this blog entry is a 3D image of my granddaughter Erin at 16 weeks gestation.

Mark Pickup

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Unspeakable conversations for good atheists


Read Mark Pickup's latest blog entry "Unspeakable conversations for good atheists" at http://markpickup.blogspot.com

Thursday, July 17, 2008

When child welfare isn't


I know a woman who was a foster parent until recently. She is my sister-in-law. Her foster child is 11 years old. I will not give the child’s name; let me refer to the little girl as T. Her biological mother is a drug addict. The social services department in the Canadian province where I live (Alberta) took T into foster care very early in her life. I don’t know about foster parenting where you live but foster care in Alberta has a less than stellar reputation. The chances were high T would be bumped about through numerous foster homes, then back to her bio-mom, then back into foster care and so forth. The merry-go-round with child welfare officials would begin. There’s nothing merry about it.

By the time T arrived at my sister-in-law’s home nine months ago, she had been through 27 fosters home – although the social worker initially lied at said it was 11 homes. They also understated the trauma of T’s emotional state and stunted development. It didn’t take long to detect that social services had not been exactly forthcoming about T’s case. Her emotional and spiritual scars began to surface.

It seemed that an epidemic of nose growth was sweeping through the department of social services. When the bureaucrats came clean about the number of foster homes T had been through, they also mentioned a small item about some sexual torture T experienced at the age of five. Apparently somebody took a potato peeler to T’s genitals. Social services promised help with the psychiatric support for T. Yeah right. If she hadn't received the proper counselling and care between ages five and eleven, it probably would not be a high priority.

T began to threaten my sister-in-law, stealing, lying and fantasizing about being in a gang (at eleven!). She was cruel to animals. In other words T acts out. Without the psychiatric support T desperately needed, the 28th foster placement was doomed to fail -- which it did after nine months. Social services put T in a group home. Good thinking. Not surprisingly, T ran away from the group home. After she was missing for more than a day, my sister-in-law, her former foster mom, sent out an APB into the community, when she heard about it. She contacted the police, put posters up in the community, contacted the media and basically went into panic mode. After all, T is only eleven years old. Where could she be?! I think Social Services yawned.

Eventually T went back to the group home. She has no where else to go.

Her social worker informed my sister-in-law that the department would be launching a lawsuit against her in the range of $50,000 for going public, putting up posters and going to the media ... and making the incident public. My sister-in-law was told she would never be allowed to foster again.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN
Why am I relating this story? It’s all so reminiscent of my wife’s and my experience being foster parents twenty-five years ago under the same department. We fostered a four year old boy named David. In his short life he too had experienced the revolving door of foster placements, beginning in infancy. The last placement, prior to coming to my wife and I, was with a foster family headed by a cruel and sadistic man with a twenty year history of mental illness. His initials were P.F.. David lived in a virtual torture chamber from age 18 months until four years.

LIES AND COVER UP
Foster Care officials discovered their horrible mistake and removed David, then placed him with my wife and me as our first and last experience at being foster parents. They assured us his last home was “a good Christian home.” I replied, “Then why remove the child?” They responded with a bold-faced lie that the “good Christian home didn’t want him any more.” Huh?

The social worker placed David in our home without checking our references (we could have been far worse than the previous home, as far as the social services knew). They didn’t tell us about the numbers placements or the dreadful environment David came from. They were too busy covering up their colossal mistake to level with us.

MEDIA GET INVOLVED
Of course, it didn’t take long for David’s bizarre twists in behavior to start spilling the beans on the despicable cruelty of his former foster father and Alberta’s Social Services department. The department would not level with us nor provide promised psychological help for David. We eventually discovered about David’s ghastly former life by talking to the adult children and acquaintances of his former foster father, P.F.. – and went to the media. And just like my friend's experience with the child welfare authorities, we were threatened with lawsuits for embarrassing the department, and told we would never foster again. We took the threats along with names of officials who were doing the threatening to the media. They scurried under the cracks of their departmental doors, like cockroaches. The threats stopped.

PROMISES TO CHANGE
David’s appalling story received wall-to-wall news coverage and shone a bright and garish light of media attention on the department of Social Services, Foster Care program and bureaucrats scattered again under the woodwork. David’s story broke open a festering wound of ineptitude and callous corruption within the department. More cases of child abuse, neglect and even death while under the “care” of child welfare authorities. Eventually a departmental investigation was instigated. It culminated in politicians promising major reforms. Yeah right.

My sister-in-law's recent experience 25 years after my wife and mine show that things have remained the same. The child welfare department isn't.

Mark Pickup

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Humanity's inhumanity to humanity


http://www.abortionno.org/

The US based Center for Bioethical Reform has a graphic abortion video at the above link. It's tough stuff with a tough message -- but it's real and it's happening all across North America thousands of times every day. If you choose to watch it, make sure the volume on your computer is on.

Someone may ask, "Why such upsetting videos?" The sad fact is that the horror, injustice and violence must be understood in order to stop it. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Some injustices are beyond words. The images on the video are terrible. There are times when humanity's inhumanity to humanity must be confronted. This is such a time. Only cowards and perpetrators hide from the truth.

Just like the Second World War concentration camp photographs and film footage were necessary to shock the world, the horror of this generation's inhumanity of the abortion holocaust (which dwarfs the previous holocaust) must be seen or we will keep tolerating it.

Even worse, a society can even become so twisted that will even celebrate the perpetrators of this evil -- as we saw in Canada when it was announced that the infamous abortionist, Henry Morgentaler, will receive the highest civilian honor in the land: the Order of Canada.

Mark Pickup
Founder
HumanLifeMatters

To see the photographer's statement go to link below.
http://www.abortionno.org/pdf/Photographer%20Videographer%20Certification%20Hardcopy%20Pixelated.pdf

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Formal request filed to terminate Morgentaler's Order of Canada



This press release was received today. I wonder if the government will stick to their speaking notes of non-interference, or the Governor General will simply ignore. The Morgentaler award must be rescinded if the integrity of the Order of Canada is to be respected. This award was a politically motivated by abortion ideologues. It also calls into question the ability of Canada's Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin to be impartial.

MP


For Immediate Release


Formal Request Filed to Terminate
Henry Morgentaler’s Appointment to the Order of Canada


On behalf of the 41,000 members of Canada Family Action Coalition and the hundreds of thousands of like-minded Canadians, on July 3rd, 2008 CFAC filed a formal request in accordance with the Paragraph 25(c) of the Constitution of the Order of Canada for the Advisory Council to recommend that the Governor General terminate Henry Morgentaler’s appointment to the Order of Canada.



Dr. Charles McVety, CFAC President says “Henry Morgentaler’s conduct is unbecoming a member of the Order of Canada, violating paragraphs 3 (b) (i) and (ii) of the Constitution of the Order of Canada, thereby tarnishing all recipeints of this tremendous award.”



For nineteen years, 1969 to 1988, Dr. Morgentaler’s admittedly violated Canadian law. His conduct constituted a significant departure from generally recognized standards of public behaviour violating regulation 3 (b) (i) . In 1976, Dr. Morgentaler was sanctioned by the Disciplinary Committee of the Professional Corporation of Physicians of Quebec, suspended his medical license for one year, violating regulation 3 (b),(ii).



Also according to reports, it appears that the Advisory Council violated long standing protocol requiring unanimous consent approving a nominee by resorting to a mere majority vote.



“With such manipulation of the system we question if the Advisory Council Chair, Justice Beverly McLachlin’s well-known “unwritten constitutional principles” subverted accepted Council procedures. The integrity of the Order of Canada has been undermined as it has become a political award administered by a judicial activist”, said Brian Rushfeldt, Executive Director of Canada Family Action Coalition.



CFAC also calls upon Prime Minister Stephen Harper to explain how the Government’s Privy Council Secretary, Deputy Minister of the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Deputy Minister of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade voted.



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For further information, contact Charles McVety at 416.456.0096 or Brian Rushfeldt at 403.295.2159