Welcome to the March 24, 2021 edition of
Just 3 Things, the weekly social action newsletter of the Office of Human Life & Dignity. Tomorrow we celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the Blessed Mother, asking her to be the Mother of Jesus. If this email was forwarded to you, and you'd like to receive it each week, please
click here. Valerie Schmalz
Director
Office of Human Life & Dignity
Archdiocese of San Francisco
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Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone in a new video statement endorses getting vaccinated, gives some moral context about the vaccine controversies, and promotes a letter-writing campaign to pharmaceutical companies. He begins:
"I am moved to speak to you at this time because I am aware of the confusion that is surrounding the question of the COVID vaccinations. I therefore wish to share some thoughts with you about what the Church teaches, in order to help you inform your decision. In addition, I would like to urge you to join in a letter-writing campaign to specific pharmaceutical companies urging them to develop vaccines that do not rely on cell lines derived from the tissue of aborted children." Click the button below and then scroll down for downloadable sample letters to pharmaceutical companies. For Spanish go
here.
Tomorrow, March 25, is the Feast of the Annunciation and for those working with the Gabriel Project, a special feast day! The Archdiocese of San Francisco Gabriel Project ministry is hands-on help for pregnant mothers and mothers of young children. The Gabriel Project has a coordinator employed by the Archdiocese and is staffed by volunteers or 'angels' at local parishes. It is named for the Angel Gabriel who God sent to ask Mary to become the mother of our Savior. Do you know someone who needs help? Would you like to join our ministry?
This month marks the 164th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Scott v. Sandford (1857), which infamously denied the freedom petition of Dred, Harriet, Eliza and Lizzie Scott — an African American family held in bondage in antebellum Missouri. Sadly, says Villanova University historian Shannen Dee Williams, "Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the high court’s first Catholic, authored the majority opinion, which ruled that free and enslaved Black people were not citizens and declared that Black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” But Williams writes further "As a historian who is Black and Catholic, I am often asked how I can keep the faith knowing that my church’s history includes people like Taney, who was also a member of one of Maryland’s most prominent slaveholding families. My answer is always the same: Martha Jane Chisley Tolton." Read Williams' column about the mother of the Venerable Father Augustus Tolton, the first known African American priest in the U.S. who is on the path to canonization. (Photo courtesy Gateway Arch National Park Service)