Post Office: Stamp for Pro-Life Heroine Mother Teresa Coming September
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 5, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Postal Service officials have confirmed it will print a new stamp honoring pro-life heroine Mother Teresa and that it will be released in September. The stamp has come under fire from atheist groups who say the government shouldn’t be honoring a pro-life religious figure.
The USPS Mother Teresa stamp is one of 23 new issues the United States Postal Service recently unveiled for 2010.
After it came under criticism, the pro-life group CatholicVoteAction launched a campaign to generate support for it.
"Over 138,000 friends of CatholicVote joined together to defend the stamp to honor Mother Teresa. And the Postal Service took notice," Brian Burch, the group’s president, said.
Roy Betts, a spokesman for the Postal Service, told CatholicVote yesterday, “The stamp will be dedicated September 5 [at] the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. Feel free to post information about the stamp, the image and the dedication ceremony on your web site."
Burch was excited about the news but surprised at the location of the unveiling ceremony.
"Wow. Launching the stamp at a church. The anti-religion radicals are going to go wild," he said.
Mother Teresa gave a pro-life speech when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. But when the Postal Service announced the stamp, a group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation began spreading lies about Mother Teresa, accusing this holy nun of having a "darker side," and calling her a "polarizing Roman Catholic figurehead."
"Too often only one side of this debate is heard. This time the Post Office heard from us. A separate spokesperson for USPS even told a reporter that our efforts were appreciated," Burch said. "You would think attacking Mother Teresa would be off limits. But in our world, respect and decency can be discarded so long as you’re bashing Christianity. A small but vocal segment of our country will stop at nothing to cut down the role of religion in our public life."
In February 1997, in her remarks at the White House Prayer Breakfast, with President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton — two unswerving supporters of abortion — Mother Teresa laid out her case clearly.
"What is taking place in America is a war against the child," she said. "And if we accept that the mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another."
Three years earlier, Mother Teresa was quoted in The Wall Street Journal saying, "America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation."
She added: "The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts — a child — as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters."
And in response to critics who asked who would care for an unwanted child, Mother Teresa said, "Please don’t kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted, and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child, and be loved by the child. From our children’s home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3,000 children from abortions. These children have brought such love and joy to their adopting parents, and have grown up so full of love and joy!"
Related web sites:
Catholic Vote – https://www.CatholicVoteAction.org
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