042194 Cardinal asks for prayers to change U.N. population document

`Family Life at Stake'

Cardinal O'Connor again this week denounced a draft United Nations document on population as a grave threat to family life, and he called on worshipers at St. Patrick's Cathedral to pray one Hail Mary each day to help ensure "that this battle against the sacred will not be won."

"Your prayers are critically needed, one could say desperately needed," the cardinal said at Sunday Mass April 17.

"There are forces at work-and I would like to see some evidence that the United States is not one of these forces-who, if permitted to carry out their work unrestrained, could successfully lead to the destruction of family life throughout the world," the cardinal said.

He said the document introduces "concepts totally alien to what we've always believed to be our American philosophy, let alone our JudeoChristian philosophy."

The controversial document is being prepared for adoption at an international population and development conference to be held in Cairo, Egypt, in September. The draft has provoked a great deal of criticism, including strong protests from Pope John Paul II and the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, during a preparatory committee meeting at the U.N. April 4-22.

The preparatory committee has proposed that contraception, sterilization and abortion be made widely available throughout the world, and it calls for providing such "services" to adolescents without the involvement of parents.

"The very integrity of family life is at stake. All human life is at stake," the cardinal said.

The cardinal, who has written two recent CNY columns on the document, said many African, Latin American and Asian nations are "trying valiantly to resist" the proposals in the document, but "they're up against mighty forces of the West," including the U.S.

"It's not only the Holy See that has been combating these efforts to destroy so much that we have always believed to be inherent in our concept of the rights, dignity and sacredness of the human person," the cardinal said. "Many nations have joined the Holy See in the struggle to resist this destructive effort to advance a new vision of sexuality, a new vision of the family, at the expense of the integrity of the family."

n asking his listeners for a commitment to pray at least one Hail Mary a day to "the Mother of all human life, to the Mother who is the paragon of family life," the cardinal said the

issue is "not in any way a light or laughing matter."

He also asked worshipers to pray a Hail Mary "for those who are engaged in the development of the preparatory documents for the Cairo conference and pray right on through until that conference takes place."

"In my judgment it is one of the most critical attacks against everything that we have purported to be inherent in our Judeo-Christian way of life that I have experienced in what is no longer a brief lifetime. So please pray."