Going the Distance - Patrick Madrid

Here They Come, Walkin' Down the Street
Hey, hey, it's the Watchtower!
Everybody knows about Jehovah's Witnesses. They always seem to show up at the wrong time -- like when you're engrossed in Saturday morning "Gilligan's Island" reruns or napping or doing just about anything else. There's no "good" time to open the door and find a pair of missionaries, especially if you're not prepared for the discussion. Being a nervous, tongue-tied oaf is not my idea of fun (been there, done that).
So I pictured myself as a Jehovah's Witness, trying to convert Catholics. How would I go about it? Well, pretty much the way they go about it, but exactly how do they go about it? We get the answer from Ken Guindon, a former Jehovah's Witness. He takes you inside the Watchtower and shows how the Witnesses target, barrage and conquer Catholics. This article reveals JW strategies for making converts. Ken knows what he's talking about -- he was a Jehovah's Witness leader and full-time missionary and he successfully used these tactics himself for years. He starts his debriefing on page 14.

Your baby or your job
And you thought enforced abortions only happened in places like China and India? The British press recently reported the harrassment visited on 27-year-old Sara Mitchell, an unmarried woman in South Yorkshire. She had a well-paying job as a regional manager for a courier company when she became pregnant. When she informed her boss, Mr. Simon Bliss, about the pregnancy, he responded with an ultimatum: Have an abortion or lose your job. In a written memo to Miss Mitchell, he said, "You have a great future ahead of you career-wise, at (our company) and beyond. Having the baby could ruin this now and in the long term. At a time that suits you professionally, financially, and in your personal life, have all the children you want, but please don't do it now." Luckily for her unborn child (Joseph, now an angelic nine-month-old), the young woman chose his life over her career. She was promptly fired and, losing her health insurance in the process, was left with no means of paying for her baby's delivery. "My boss ruined my career and turned my life upside down," she was quoted as saying. "I can't believe this can still happen in the '90s. How can someone make me choose between keeping my baby and the job I loved? I was happy to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week. Now I've lost it all -- my career, my home, my health and I even nearly lost my partner (the father of her baby) -- because I refused to have an abortion."

Another goof
It's about time the facts about population growth caught up with the international frenzy to downsize the planet. The United Nations recently admitted that its earlier population growth estimates were high -- way high. The United Nations' Population Fund admitted that its 1994 estimates of global population growth were too large and its references to a ticking "population bomb" were overblown. The organization had predicted that global population would swell by 94 million people annually for the next 25 years. The projection was off by 20 percent in 1996, which saw a population growth of just 81 million. The Catholic World News recently pointed out that this tendency to exaggerate population growth for the purpose of scaring the public into accepting measures aimed at reducing population growth was predicted by Pope John Paul II. The "population time bomb" crowd laughed at the Holy Father's warning then, and now they have egg on their faces.