We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence ... Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine [of Hippo] and [Thomas] Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. In March 2009, he described President Barack Obama's lifting of George W. Bush's restrictions on embryonic stem cell research as "a sad victory of politics over science and ethics." In April 2009, he denounced the ordination ceremony of two women in Roxborough, calling it a "pseudo-ordination" that "denigrates the truth entrusted to the Church by Christ himself." He has a weekly series of Lenten discourses on YouTube. In the beginning of 2010 an official Facebook page was launched for Rigali. He is an honorary council member of the St. Louis, Missouri–based humanitarian organization Wings of Hope.