Pope to consecrate world to Mary's Immaculate Heart

Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square on Pentecost
Sunday, May 19, 2013.
Credit: Stephen Driscoll/CNA.

 

Vatican City, Aug 14, 2013 / 12:03 am (CNA).- Pope Francis will consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary this Oct. 13 as part of the Marian Day celebration that will involve the statue of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima.

“The Holy Father strongly desires that the Marian Day may have present, as a special sign, one of the most significant Marian icons for Christians throughout the world and, for that reason, we thought of the beloved original Statue of Our Lady of Fatima,” wrote Archbishop Rino Fisichella.

Archbishop Fisichella, who serves as president of the pontifical council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, made his remarks in a letter to Bishop Antonio Marto of Leiria-Fatima.

According to the Portuguese shrine's website, the statue of Our Lady of Fatima will leave for Rome on the morning of Oct. 12 and return on the afternoon of Oct. 13. The statue normally resides in the shrine’s Little Chapel of Apparitions.

Read the rest at Catholic News Agency.

Beer-brewing monks!

From New Advent:
Beer-brewing monks celebrate their first year of production...

Even before retired Pope Benedict XVI set up a pontifical council for new evangelization and convoked a world Synod of Bishops on the theme, a new group of Benedictine monks was using Latin and liturgy to reach out to those whose faith was weak or nonexistent. (For more information, see http://www.osbnorcia.org.)

Atonement and the Undoable

August 26, 2013 By Rebecca Hamilton

This is an excerpt from Rebecca's recent article. Read the entire article at: Public Catholic 

Representative Rebecca Hamilton,
18-year member of the Oklahoma House
of Representatives talks about life
as a Public Catholic.

...But the truth is that the first requirement for atonement has to be an action that wounds someone else.

Let me give you an example. Back in my misspent youth, I was the NARAL Director for Oklahoma. I referred women for abortions. I helped organize the first abortion clinic in Oklahoma and got it up and running.

In short, I helped kill people.

Lots of people.

Helpless little people that I denied were people while I was advocating for their deaths.

Now there’s something that needs a little atonement.

But how? How does anyone atone for so heinous a crime?

For those of you who are reading this with baited breath, waiting for me to give you an answer, I’ll cut to the bottom line: You can’t. You can not atone for sins as black as the ones I’ve committed.

Can’t do it.

Nothing you can do, nothing you can say, nothing, but nothing, but nothing will ever make right again what you have done wrong.

But if, for reasons that confound all comprehending, God still loves you, even after what you’ve done; if He welcomes you home to Him with joy that defies your ability to find words to describe it, and if He then puts you back into the same place where you committed some of your worst sins in the past –

– If He does all that, then, just maybe, you get the chance to … not do it over, because nobody ever gets the chance to do anything over … but to do it again, and this time to do it better.

How does an adulterer atone for his or her adultery? By being faithful to their spouse.

How does a wife-beater atone for beating his wife? By loving her the way God intended.

But even this kind of living atonement cannot undo the harm you have done. One of the hardest penalties of committing grave sin is that you can’t un-sin it.

You can’t unadulter, unbeat, unrape, unkill anyone.Without Jesus Christ you are stuck there in the pit of your sin and remorse forever. You will be a murderer/adulterer/liar/beater all your days. This is why I sometimes get so impatient with people who come on this blog and demand that the Catholic Church change the rules to tell them that their sins aren’t sins. They never do this about eating too many cookies or being a volunteer firefighter for the “wrong” motives.

Nope. They’re ok with those things and the Church’s teachings about them.

It’s the biggies that get them on here demanding a hall pass to heaven. They want the Church to tell them that their adulteries, abortions, disordered sex and lying, cheating ways are not a sin. They claim that anyone, anywhere, who says otherwise is “judging” them.

There are days when I want to put my arms around these lost souls and hug them. There are other days I want to ask, Are you kidding? Where do you get the arrogance to do these things and then demand that the Church — the Church — say that they are not sins?

Do you know what saved me?

The knowledge that I had sinned.

Without that, I would still be lost.

As for atonement, that came long afterwards, when I was mature enough in Christ to survive it. Atonement for me was being given an extra measure of forgiveness I most assuredly did not deserve. God put me in the place and almost coerced events so that I would be given the opportunity to pass pro life legislation. Atonement for me was being pilloried by pro abortion people. I was forced (against my will, I have to admit) to suffer public hazing for the babies....

Read the rest at Public Catholic.

Joseph Bottum: “There are a couple things that I regret in the article

The CWR Blog

“I didn’t really think that it would be misread in quite the way that it has been.”

August 26, 2013 09:48 EST

By Catherine Harmon

This afternoon Joseph Bottum, former editor of First Things whose article in Commonweal on same-sex marriage ignited a firestorm of Internet commentary over the weekend, spoke with Al Kresta on his radio show about the controversial essay. Bottum says the piece (which can be found here) has been widely misunderstood by people on the right and the left, and that he has not, in fact, changed his position on same-sex marriage. Rather, he believes the issue has become a “distraction”and that “the culture is just in the weirdest place, and that the message that we have to teach is not being successfully learned.”

 

The full interview touches on the several controversial elements of Bottum’s lengthy essay—including that very lengthiness!—and can be heard here. A couple excerpts:

 

I’ve been, for the last few years, coming around to a position that Paul Griffiths, the theologian down at Duke, proposed some years ago—and he in turn got beat up for it by people I respected, like Father Neuhaus—which was: the cultural situation is getting so strange, we should probably get out of the civil marriage business. At the time I kind of went along with Father Neuhaus and the others who were saying, “No Paul—you can’t counsel Catholicism to withdraw from the public square.”

 

Kresta: You’re giving up the fight, you’re moving in the direction of a separatist community…

 

Bottum: Right. Exactly. That was the argument at the time. And I went along with it, probably even agreed with it. But as time’s gone by, [...] I think many of us are coming around to the idea that the culture is just in the weirdest place, and that the message that we have to teach is not being successfully learned, on what marriage is in its full, rich sacramental sense. […]

I’m still on-board the Magisterium here, all the way. But I’m also looking at the culture. […]

 

Kresta: If your fundamental position hasn’t changed, what has changed?

 

Read the rest at Catholic World Report.

Fed Judge Declares Anti-Gay Sermon a "Crime Against Humanity"

Written by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

The New American

A federal judge ruled that a biblically based denunciation of homosexuality was a “crime against humanity.”

In his decision in the case of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) v. Lively, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Ponsor held that Scott Lively, an evangelical pastor, was “aiding and abetting a crime against humanity” when Lively spoke in Uganda and in America against homosexual behavior.
Ponsor wrote in his 79-page opinion that Lively’s message was “analogous to a terrorist designing and manufacturing a bomb in this country, which he then mails to Uganda with the intent that it explode there.”

The plaintiff in the case is a consortium of groups based in Kampala, Uganda that fight for “fair and equal treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people” in the East Africa region.

Ponsor says that Lively, by publishing tracts and delivering discourses condemning same-sex relationships, was acting as “an upper-level manager or leader of a criminal enterprise.”
While in Uganda, Lively praised local pastors working to fight the proliferation of sexual activity between those of the same gender, basing his remarks on his interpretation of the Bible’s condemnation of such behavior.

“I’ve never done anything in Uganda except preach the Gospel and speak my opinion about the homosexual issue,” Lively told the New York Times.

Reading between the lines, it becomes apparent that the “criminal enterprise” in which Ponsor found Lively engaged was that of believing, preaching, and promoting Judeo-Christian morality in an age that glorifies ungodliness and exalts satisfaction of appetites above the sacrifice of self to the will of God.

Ponsor, a 1994 Clinton appointee, calls Lively’s Ugandan hosts “co-conspirators” in Lively’s violations of “international norms.”

Harry Mihet, Lively’s lawyer, responded to Ponsor’s decision to allow the case against his client to proceed.

We are disappointed with the decision because we believe SMUG’s claims are firmly foreclosed, not only by the First Amendment right to free speech, but also by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Kiobel, which eliminated Alien Tort Statute claims for events that allegedly occurred in foreign nations. We are still reviewing the court’s ruling, and will continue to vigorously defend Mr. Lively’s constitutional rights, with confidence that he will ultimately be vindicated.

 

Mihet’s comments were echoed by Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Council, the organization representing Lively. “Like all American citizens, Lively enjoys a fundamental First Amendment right to engage in nonviolent political discourse anywhere in the world,” Staver said.

Beyond the de jure banning of biblical morality by a Bill Clinton appointee, there is another curious political connection in the persecution of Pastor Lively.

Read the rest here: http://thenewamerican.com/culture/faith-and-morals/item/16415-fed-judge-declares-anti-gay-sermon-a-crime-against-humanity

Gay Spouses in All States Now Married Under U.S. Tax Law

By Richard Rubin & Margaret Collins - Aug 29, 2013 5:19 PM ET     
Bloomberg 

 

Gay spouses in all U.S. states will be treated as married under federal tax law even if local authorities don’t recognize their marriages, in what gay-rights advocates are calling a victory.
The decision by the Treasury Department today implements the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which had forbidden the Internal Revenue Service from letting married homosexual couples file joint tax returns.
                   

Mario Tama/Getty Images

U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Shyla Smith, right, and Courtney Burdeshaw during their wedding ceremony at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau the day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on DOMA on June 27, 2013 in New York City.

Gay Spouses in All States Can File Joint Taxes, Treasury Says

 

   

The U.S. government’s decision is a win for same-sex couples who were married in one of the 13 states, the District of Columbia or foreign countries that recognize such relationships and now live in one of the 37 states that don’t.

“This is a very positive development,” said Derek Dorn, a partner at Davis & Harman LLP in Washington and outside counsel to the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for lesbian and gay Americans. “Additional details need to be worked out in more nuanced areas of the tax law.”
More than 200 provisions in the tax code and federal regulations reference marriage, affecting a range of financial matters such as retirement accounts and health benefits, according to the IRS. Couples with unequal incomes will benefit from the marriage bonuses in the tax code, while those with relatively equal incomes will have to pay more.

The ruling also will make it easier for spouses to inherit money tax-free.

Read the rest at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-29/gay-spouses-in-all-states-can-file-joint-taxes.html

Hubble telescope spots 'cosmic caterpillar' that's six TRILLION miles long, formed by harsh winds from some of our hottest stars

By Ellie Zolfagharifard
PUBLISHED: 05:22 EST, 30 August 2013 | UPDATED: 05:33 EST, 30 August 2013

 

 

A stellar ‘caterpillar’ in the midst of a metamorphosis has been spotted by astronomers.
The light-year-long cosmic squiggle is currently collecting material from an envelope of gas surrounding it.

Astronomers are now keen to see what will emerge from the protostar, which is in a very early evolutionary stage.

Scroll down for video...

This light-year-long knot of interstellar gas and dust resembles a caterpillar on its way to a feast. Harsh winds from extremely bright stars are blasting ultraviolet radiation at this 'wanna-be' star and sculpting the gas and dust into its long shape

 

A previous study has called the object, which lies 4,500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, a ‘tadpole in an interstellar pond.’

Harsh winds from extremely bright stars are blasting ultraviolet radiation at this 'wanna-be' star, named IRAS 20324+4057, and sculpting the gas and dust into its long shape.

 

 

The culprits are 65 of the hottest, brightest known stars, classified as O-type stars, located 15 light-years away from the knot, towards the right edge of the image.

VIDEO: The 'cosmic caterpillar' zoom sequence

Cygnus OB2 (pictured) is home to some of the largest and most luminous stars known. Astronomers believe that the envelope of gas surrounding the protostar is being eroded by the radiation from Cygnus OB2

 

These stars, along with 500 highly luminous B-type stars, make up what is called the Cygnus OB2 association.

However, astronomers believe that the envelope of gas surrounding the protostar is being eroded by the radiation from Cygnus OB2.

Protostars in this region should eventually become young stars with final masses about one to ten times that of our sun.
If the eroding radiation from the nearby bright stars destroys the gas envelope before the protostars finish collecting mass, their final masses could be cut.

COSMIC CATERPILLAR: KEY FACTS

Object name:    IRAS 20324+4057
Object description:    Protostar in early evolutionary stage

Constellation:    Cygnus

Distance:    4,500 light-years away
This image is based on data gathered by the Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2006.
It also combines data from ground-based hydrogen data collected by the Isaac Newton Telescope.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2406611/Cosmic-caterpillar-spotted-Hubble-telescope-thats-6-TRILLION-miles-long.html#ixzz2dVwYOPzq
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Where Did Billy Ray Go?

 

Meg Meeker, M.D.

When I watched Miley Cyrus slither on stage at the recent MTV Video Music Awards looking like a cross between a 12-year-old boy and a seasoned pole dancer, I felt as though someone had kicked me in the stomach. Clearly she was coached to act sexually outrageous in order to get attention.  But her handlers forgot to tell her that she would embarrass herself and, hopefully, her family.  Her performance showed how seriously she has been prostituted by adults wanting to gain one thing: a lot of money. And as she moved on stage I wondered, Where is Billy Ray?

I remember an interview that Billy Ray did in 2007 when he described his relationship with his then 14-year-old daughter. He remarked that he enjoyed teaching her to cook hot dogs and play games with her but when it came to discipline, he wasn’t very keen on it. That was her mother’s territory.

Clearly over the past six years, his fatherly influence has waned miserably. I don’t know Billy Ray and before I would indict him as a bad father, it is important to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps Miley and/or her mother cut him out of Miley’s life. What happened on stage several nights ago shows what happens to young girls who have no fatherly influence; for no dad who cherishes his daughter would advocate such sexually ridiculous behavior.

But rather than point fingers, I think that it is important to learn a few things.

First, Miley, at 20 years of age, is still cognitively not yet an adult. We know through studies on brain development that the higher brain functions (those that help young people understand behavior and their consequences) aren’t complete. That means that parents must still give strong and clear guidance to 20-year-old children in order to keep them safe. I wonder if Billy Ray knows this.

Second, we must recognize that the same forces, which seduced Miley to behave as she did, are at work on our kids too. The difference between our kids and Miley are only two things: she has more money and more exposure. But with access to the Internet, many of our young daughters can acquire enormous exposure and let’s not be fools. They know how to get attention, just like Miley does. So we must be relentlessly diligent in keeping tabs on what our girls show to whom and when.

Third, Miley’s behavior shows us how desperately girls crave male attention. That means, dads, you’re on. We can glean from her performance that she didn’t get nearly enough attention from Billy Ray because we know that girls who get attention at home are far less likely to seek it outside the home.

As I wrote in Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, the most effective way to boost a girl’s self-esteem is to have her father show her more physical affection.

Can changing a girl’s behavior be as simple as having her father hug her, pay attention to her and show her that he loves being with her?

Yup.

Read the rest at Meg Meeker's website: http://www.megmeekermd.com/2013/08/where-did-billy-ray-go/

And just for fun, here's a short youtube clip on "how to twerk" - but it's not what you think!! Watch it, you'll love it! This woman tells it like it is.

 

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - August 30, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on August 30

4:00 – What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster
Look around you and think for a minute: Is America too crowded? For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else. It’s all bunk. The “population bomb” never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Jonathan Last is here to explain why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world. Because if America wants to continue to lead the world, we need to have more babies

5:00 – History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium
The Catholic Church is the longest-enduring institution in the world. Beginning with the first Christians and continuing in our present day, the Church has been planted in every nation on earth. The Catholic Church claims Jesus Christ himself as her founder, and in spite of heresy from within and hostility from without, she remains in the twenty-first century the steadfast guardian of belief in his life, death, and resurrection. The teachings and redemptive works of Jesus as told in the Gospels are expressed by the Church in a coherent and consistent body of doctrine, the likes of which cannot be found in any other Christian body. The history of the Catholic Church is long, complicated, and fascinating, and historian James Hitchcock is here to tell it.

Miley v. Muslims

August 29, 2013

Bill Donohue comments on reactions to Miley Cyrus and the Miss World pageant:

Last Sunday, at the MTV Video Music Awards, Miley Cyrus simulated masturbation with a giant foam finger, grabbed her crotch, rubbed herself against a man old enough to be her father, pretended the man was performing anal sex on her, and walked around in a nude latex bikini. Her mother loved it. So did her manager. Millions of young girls and guys loved it as well.
  
  Next month, the Miss World pageant will be held in Indonesia. Some Muslims are urging the government to cancel the event. According to the leader, Riziek Shihab, “The Miss World pageant is only an excuse to exhibit women’s body parts.”

Who are the real feminists? Miley’s fans? Or the Muslims? If debasing women is the yardstick, the Muslims win.
  
Read the rest at The Catholic League.

Anger over Virgin Mary dressed in tribal sari

BBC: The 'tribal' statue of Virgin Mary and baby Jesus was installed on 26 May

Around 20,000 march on church in protest over statue

Ritu Sharma, New Delhi

India
August 27, 2013
UCA News

Some 20,000 tribal people in Jharkhand state in eastern India have marched on a village church, accusing local Christians of trying to convert them by dressing up a Virgin Mary statue in tribal clothing.

Members of the animist Sarna faith have been complaining since the statue was inaugurated in the Singpur village church in May.

But the standoff escalated on Sunday when the marchers took a normal statue of Mary to the church, aiming to replace the offending item, which depicts the Virgin Mary wearing a sari with traditional red borders, holding the infant Jesus.

Police blocked the protesters 25 meters from the church. Local head of police Jagannath Oraon said that they were seeking to avoid a confrontation and peace was quickly restored.

Bandham Tigga, head priest of the Sarna tribals, said the sari-clad statue marks the latest effort to deliberately confuse and convert tribal people in the area.

Read the rest here: http://www.ucanews.com/news/anger-over-virgin-mary-dressed-in-tribal-sari/69114

Normalizing Pedophilia 2

By Wesley J. Smith

August 27, 2013 11:40 AM

National Review

 

I have written about this before. In our growing hedonistic culture, pedophilia is in the process of being normalized, downgraded by some from a severe sexual perversion into a mere ”orientation.”
The Atlantic–mainstream media!–has two articles that push us in that direction. First, “I Pedophile,” by David Goldberg–a Canadian journalist convicted for viewing child pornography–argues that his obsession with children is a “sexual orientation:”

The main query that I am convinced will always be without an answer is why I am a pedophile. It is the equivalent of trying to determine why someone is heterosexual or gay. We don’t choose our sexual orientations. If we could, believe me, no one would choose mine.

Then, he says incarceration isn’t the right approach to child porn consumers:

I am not advocating the cross-generational lifestyle. In fact, there is never an instance when an adult should engage in sexual behavior with a child. But until we as a society learn that help for those who view child pornography is a far better alternative to incarceration, we are doomed to see the continued proliferation of this problem. Scientists don’t know for certain if there is a correlation between viewing child pornography and offending against children. Wouldn’t it be nice to get pedophiles help before we find out for certain?

“Cross generational lifestyle?” Watching child porn is “offending against children!”
Goldman says he is “lucky” to have been caught in Canada and given only a 90-day jail sentence. Otherwise he would have had to spend time with “hardened” criminals. But who is a more hardened criminal than someone who victimizes children?
It’s one thing for a pedophile to rationalize his perversion. It is another for ”experts” in treating the condition to claim that pedophilia is a sexual orientation. From, “What Can Be Done About Pedophilia?”

“Sexual orientation” means different things in different contexts. When they say “sexual orientation,” most people mean a sexual interest that is inborn and unchangeable. No one chooses to be sexually attracted to children, although people do choose whether they act on their sexual attractions. Therapists have been attempting to turn pedophiles into non-pedophiles for a very long time, but no one has presented any objective evidence of any enduring change in sexual interests.

Wesley Smith

The expert isn’t suggesting that pedophilia should be treated as the same as homosexuality–yet:

Scientists have more specifically called it an “age orientation.” Caution has to be used, however, so as not to confuse the scientific use of the phrase “sexual orientation” with its use in law. Because the phrase “sexual orientation” has been used as shorthand (or as a euphemism) for homosexuality, there exist laws and policies barring discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.” These were not likely intended to refer to pedophilia.

Read the rest: http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/356856/normalizing-pedophilia-2-wesley-j-smith

ACLU ‘stunned’ as N.M. judge rules gay marriage legal, despite law

Photo by: T.S. Last

Angelique Neuman, left, and Jen Roper, right, celebrate their wedding at

Christus St. Vincent Regional Cancer Center, where Roper is undergoing

treatment, Friday Aug. 23, 2013 in Santa Fe, N.M.

(AP Photo/The Albuquerque Journal, T.S. Last)

By Cheryl K. Chumley

-

The Washington Times

Tuesday, August 27, 2013    

 

New Mexico doesn’t have a specific constitutional provision or law that allows same-sex marriages, but a judge said on Monday that prohibiting the unions is a form of sexual discrimination — and by proxy, ruled gay marriage legal.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico called the judge’s actions “monumental” and unexpected, The Associated Press reported.

 

ACLU attorney Laura Schauer Ives said she was shocked by the broad interpretation of law handed down by State District Judge Alan Malott, seen as a far-reaching thumbs-up to gay marriage in a state that doesn’t have a law allowing the unions, AP reported.

The case started with a dying woman’s request that the state recognize on her death certificate her long-time lesbian partnership with another woman. A short hearing ensued, and nobody objected to the request, AP reported.
And so Mr. Malott ruled in the woman’s favor — but then he also went above and beyond and ruled on the larger issue that couple and five other gay couples wanted legally addressed: Can the state prevent them from obtaining marriage licenses?

The judge said no. Doing so violates state laws against sexual discrimination, he ruled, AP reported.
“We were stunned and amazed,” Ms. Ives said, about the judge’s ruling, largely seen as a judicial stamp of approval for gay marriages to go forth in New Mexico.

Bernalillo County, on the heels of the order, reported it would start issuing gay marriage licenses on Tuesday, AP reported.

But some legal minds are cautioning against running statewide with that ruling. Assistant Attorney General Scott Fuqua warned that the judge’s decision wasn’t applicable to all 30 counties in New Mexico, but rather only on the two counties involved with that particular case: Santa Fe and Bernalillo, AP reported.

Still, it’s not yet clear how clerks in those 30 counties might weigh the judge’s decision against the assistant attorney general’s caveat.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/27/aclu-stunned-nm-judge-rules-gay-marriage-legal-des/#ixzz2dK9QEA8T
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

California trying to strike out tax-exempt status for Little League, ‘discriminatory’ groups

By Cheryl Wetzstein

Photo by: Matt Slocum

Chula Vista, Calif.'s Grant Holman reacts after striking out to Tokyo, Japan's

Kazuki Ishida during the second inning of the Little League

World Series Championship baseball game, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2013,

 in South Williamsport, Pa. Tokyo, Japan won 6-4. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

-

The Washington Times

Monday, August 26, 2013

   

A California bill that could strip tax-exempt status from Little League, the Boy Scouts of America and other “discriminatory” nonprofit youth-serving groups could come up for a final vote this week.

The first-of-its-kind bill, SB 323, passed the California Senate and sailed through Assembly com
mittees to a floor vote, possibly this week.

But opponents are taking heart that there might not be enough votes in the state Assembly to pass the bill.

The chamber did not consider the bill in its Monday session, but may take it up when it convenes Friday.

The bill, introduced by State Sen. Ricardo Lara, names the Boy Scouts, Little League, Future Farmers of America and 19 other organizations as examples of groups that could be stripped of their tax-exempt status if found to discriminate based on gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, race, religion or religious affiliation.

The measure also threatens tax-exempt status for public and private schools found to sponsor discriminatory youth groups. One critic said it could even threaten an exemption status held by a church.

“Traditional values regarding heterosexuality are being branded as the legal equivalent of racism, and so there’s the quite genuine fear that the tax code really is the battleground against the traditional churches,” said Alan Reinach, executive director of Church State Council, which opposes SB 323.
“It’s not about ‘live and let live.’ If the churches do not conform to the values of homosexuality, then we will lose our standing in society,” he said.

 

Proponents of Mr. Lara’s bill — called the Youth Equality Act — say groups that discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) or atheist youths should not receive preferential tax status.

LGBT youths need to be assured that they can have “equal access to participate in all youth organizations,” said Mr. Lara, who has spoken of his own experiences as a gay youth.
Supporters of the bill include Equality California, the American Civil Liberties Union, the California National Organization for Women, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, the city of West Hollywood and the Service Employees International Union of California.

Opponents include traditional-values groups, as well as three churches: Calvary Assembly of God, First Christian Church and Lighthouse Baptist Church.

They say SB 323 discriminates against organizations that have faith-based convictions and forces them to adopt the government’s viewpoint on sexual orientation and gender identity in their hiring, practices, membership, objectives or activities.

Many youth groups do not even hold their own tax-exempt status, but operate under the exemption of their church conference, said Mr. Reinach, whose public policy organization focuses on religious-freedom issues.

So if a youth group is found to be discriminatory, “what are you going to do — revoke the tax exemption for two dozen schools and 150 churches or at least all of their youth groups?” he asked.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/26/california-bill-targets-tax-exempt-status-for-disc/#ixzz2dK4Wwlqd
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Joseph Bottum claims fidelity to Church stance on marriage

By Carl Bunderson

 

Hot Springs, S.D., Aug 27, 2013 / 05:48 pm (CNA).- Author Joseph Bottum says that while parts of his controversial article on Catholic responses to “gay marriage” may have been unclear, he did not intend to suggest a divergence from Church teaching.

“I'm not dissenting from Church doctrine here, in any way,” said Bottum, who wrote the essay “The Things We Share” in Commonweal last Friday.


Joseph Bottum.

Rather, he told CNA Aug. 26, “I am taking exception to some prudential judgment about the way in which we try and evangelize the world.”

In the more than 9,000 word essay, subtitled “A Catholic's Case for Same-Sex Marriage,” Bottum suggested that federal and state recognition of same-sex “marriage” is already so far advanced that Catholics would do well to not expend energy fighting it in judicial and legal spheres, but rather to evangelize and share the Christian world-view in other ways.
Bottum's essay was popularized by an interview which appeared in the New York Times by Mark Oppenheimer headlined “A Conservative Catholic now backs same-sex marriage.”
This characterization was the first introduction to the article for many, both on the political right and left.

“Much as I was grateful for the publicity” of the Times article, he said, “I think one of the problems with that was our conservative Catholic friends read the New York Times essay first, and then read the Commonweal piece, and it's effect was, 'Catholic deserter comes to our side.'”

“They look at it through the lens of 'Catholic deserter', and the first blog posts about it really blocked me into a position.”

Similarly, he said, that the left's first reaction, “based on the New York Times profile” was “'hooray, hooray, we've got a defector'; and then they actually read the essay, and now they're all out after me.”
Since his essay itself conveys a different tone than did Oppenheimer's article, Bottum said, “I didn't expect the immediate knee-jerk reaction of a sizable chunk of the conservative world to be angry at me.”

While continuing to view homosexual acts as “manifestly not in accord with divine law,” in alignment with Church teaching, Bottum said it is “right to make the distinction over what evils we allow without rebellion.”

“Just as there's no rebellion in Nevada among Catholics over the counties that have legalized prostitution, I think we've probably reached a point where the Catholic teaching here has no purchase on the larger culture, and we're going to get same-sex marriage – it's already mostly here.”
While wanting to make clear that “there's no doubt” he accepts that marriage as being between two persons of the opposite sex, Bottum said merely wanted to write the piece about his thinking having come to the position that, in the U.S., “the Church just needs to get out of the civil marriage business, because the culture is just too bizarre to hear” her teaching about marriage.

“In the short-run anyway,” Bottom said, Catholics should tolerate the civil recognition of same-sex unions. “I also think we need to re-evangelize the culture, but, in the short run … I think we have to accept that the facts on the ground is, it's here, and it's going to be here for some time.”

“I was always very careful to, any time I said something affirming of same-sex marriage, I was very careful to put in the word 'civil', 'state recognition of', some kind of qualifying phrase like that.”

“I did kind of assume that it would be taken as writ that I'm an orthodox Catholic,” Bottom reflected, though adding, “maybe I should have just said it, to pre-empt some old friends from reading the piece as though I was saying, this is sacramental marriage as much as anything else.”

The essay is “very long,” Bottom admitted, explaining that it is written in a literary style he's been exploring lately, calling it “a style of personal essay that takes two steps forward and one step back, that circles around and circles around, that's more impressionistic than it is argumentative.”

“I open for instance with that description of a lost friendship … and immediately afterwards I say, personal anecdote isn’t argument, and then I say, we're all Americans, America's got this, we should probably just accept this insofar as we're Americans,” he said, reflecting on his writing style.
“And then immediately after, I say that of course the bishops shouldn't be persuaded to take the (popular) cultural position out of some feel-good call for consensus. And the whole essay kind of proceeds by this back and forth method.”

He cited the style of Michel de Montaigne, a French essayist of the 16th century renaissance, as an inspiration for the admittedly “complicated” and “impressionistic” voice of his personal essay.
“I set myself up to be misinterpreted, in a way, just by making the conscious literary decision to write an essay in an essayistic style, and it didn't occur to me at the time that it would be quite so open to misinterpretation,” Bottum shared.

Saying that he is “not entirely free from blame” for the essay's subtitle, since he discussed it with the editors and consented to it, Bottum said that instead of being a Catholic advocate for same-sex “marriage,” “the case that I am making, is a case for Catholics who work in these sorts of fields to recognize that same-sex marriage is something the culture has, and is going to get completely,” though “in the civil sense only.”

“I certainly didn't intend to undermine the bishops, by making anything more than a prudential argument about their fight over same-sex marriage,” Bottum said.

Moreover, he pointed out, “I explicitly said in the piece that they should not be persuaded by purely cultural reasons.”

Bottom said there are two passages that he should have phrased differently, because “they're getting misinterpreted consistently” – one section on the judicial cases made in favor of marriage, and another on natural law.

Please read the rest here: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/joseph-bottum-claims-fidelity-to-church-stance-on-marriage/

Woman drinks water from a Muslim’s cup … death sentence.

Posted on 26 August 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

In the New York Post I saw an article about a Christian woman who was sentenced to death for drinking water from a cup owned by a practitioner of the Religion of Peace.

Sentenced to death for a sip of water
As her religion faces persecution across the Middle East, a Christian woman explains why she faces hanging in Pakistan for the crime of ‘blasphemy’

By ASIA BIBI

Daughters of Asia Bibi hold a photo of their mother.

 To her neighbors, Aasiya Noreen “Asia” Bibi, a poor mother of five in the tiny village of Ittan Wali in central Pakistan, was guilty — guilty of being Christian in a nation that is 97% Muslim. For four years she has languished in a prison cell for this, facing death by hanging. Her new memoir, “Blasphemy,” was dictated to her husband from jail, who relayed it to French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet. Fifty percent of the proceeds the book will go to support Bibi and her family. Tollet says the situation is dire. Embarrassed by Bibi’s case but still refusing to release her because of angry protests by extremists, the Pakistan government has transferred her to a more remote prison, hoping the 42-year-old dies quietly behind bars, perhaps poisoned by another inmate. Already two government officials who have spoken out on her behalf have been murdered, including Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, who was killed by the Taliban. In this excerpt, Bibi explains the simple “transgression” that led to her plight.

[...]

Read the rest there.
Sts. Nunilo and Alodia, pray for us.

Coptic Catholic leader: Egyptian government is not stopping hate speech against Christians

By Staff Reporter on Tuesday, 27 August 2013

Catholic Herald

Coptic Catholic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sedrak (CNS)

 

Egypt’s new interim government is doing nothing to prevent hate speech, which is inciting violence against Christians, a prominent Egyptian Catholic leader has said.

“The state is paying no attention to sermons coming out of the mosques, which are inciting Muslims against Christians,” said Coptic Catholic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sedrak.

In a statement he said perpetrators involved in a wave of attacks on Christian institutions across the country since early July were not being apprehended, and those involved in the burning and destruction of churches should have been forced to repair them at their own expense and not at the cost of the state.

He said southern parts of the Minya governorate had seen some of the most severe anti-Christian violence so far, and that “people there are so extreme that they are threatening the Copts with expulsion from their homes”.

Muslim-Christian tension in Egypt has long been a problem, but it reached unprecedented levels after the July 3 military ousting of the Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and worsened after security forces raided two Cairo camps of pro-Morsi demonstrators on August 14. Hundreds of people, most of them protesters, were killed that day.

About a week later, the Coptic Catholic Church reported that more than 70 churches, schools, community centres, homes and other properties belonging to Christians had been ransacked in the violence. The military and the new interim government have said they will repair the damage done to Christian institutions.

Coptic Christians make up as much as 15 percent of Egypt’s population. Coptic Catholics account for as many as 300,000. The rest of Egypt’s 82.5 million people are predominantly Sunni Muslims.
Christian leaders, including Patriarch Sedrak, have come out in support of military leaders, who they say are “fighting a war on terror” launched by people sympathetic to Morsi.

Source: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/08/27/coptic-catholic-leader-egyptian-government-is-not-stopping-hate-speech-against-christians/

TLM Workshop at Sacred Heart Major Seminary

by Jennifer Donelson

New Liturgical Movement

Certainly a sign of the continued movement towards tradition among new and future clergy is the increase in workshops and classes dedicated to teaching seminarians and priests the usus antiquior (for example, the expressed desire of Bishop Morlino that all the seminarians in the diocese of Madison learn to celebrate the TLM, or the liturgical practicum in the EF offered by the Pontifical College Josephinum).

A recent announcement in the Archdiocese of Detroit offers news of the same:

Fr. Dan Jones, Professor of Patristics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, announced on August 23, 2013 that the Seminary has invited the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius of Chicago to offer a workshop on celebrating the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

Fr. Jones said that the Canons Regular have been invited because they have a particular charism for the restoration of the sacred in the Latin rite and "an expertise both in celebration of the EF and in the training of others to celebrate it." [...]

The workshop will be held at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Thursday Oct. 10th - Sunday Oct. 13th, and that seminarians in their third and fourth years of Theology at the Seminary (T3 and T4), as well as the priest faculty from the Seminary and priests serving in the Archdiocese of Detroit are invited to participate.

More information is available here.

Too dangerous for New Jersey

A new law against ‘change therapy’ begs questions about the high health risks of gay sex

             Aug 23, 2013, The Christians 
            

Gay bar: Not a recipe for a long and healthy life.

            

If you lived in New Jersey, say in Newark or Paterson, and just found out from your 16 year old that he thinks he’s gay, here’s one right you just lost: hiring a professional counsellor to try changing his orientation, even if he wanted to.

State Governor Chris Christie signed a law this week, passed by the legislature in June, making it a de-licensing offence for any professional counsellor to try changing the sexual orientation of a minor. In this regard New Jersey is the first state to follow the lead of California.

Reading more like a gay manifesto than a government statute, Bill 3371 opens with the declaration, “Being lesbian, gay, or bisexual is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming.” It ascribes “critical health risks” to any therapy seeking to alter a same-sex inclination in an adolescent.

A caring parent might slip over to New York anyway

Whether or not “change” therapy actually works – a highly contested question – it’s not as though the gay lifestyle is safe. The medical hazards of homosexual sex are severe, and though rarely acknowledged, have been well known for decades.

Most homosexuals have far more sexual partners than straight men do: the self-reported lifetime totals range fairly evenly from “over 100” to “over 1,000.” Despite three decades of “safe sex” badgering, many gays – about 40 percent – continue to have anal sex without condoms, and many HIV-infected gays don’t tell their partners. Though committed homosexual relationships are not uncommon, almost none are faithful. Some 60 percent of gays are infected with the transmittable, often incurable Human Papilloma Virus. Gays are at significantly increased risk of Hepatitis A and B, often fatally harmful to the liver. They suffer an exceptionally high incidence of Gonorrhea , particularly of the anus and throat. They have very high rates of syphilis infection, and of a uniquely homosexual condition known to doctors as Gay Bowel Syndrome, leading to serious diseases such as enteritis. Many of these health risks expose them to higher rates of various cancers.

To our knowledge, the many sources for these observations have not been discredited, merely ignored. The one assertion that has been heavily challenged is that the average gay life span is eight to 20 years shorter than the male average, making it twice as harmful as smoking. Given the scarcity of data available, it may be an exaggeration; but given the lifestyle’s known medical risks, it’s even harder to believe the assurance we now hear so often, that it’s natural, normal and healthy.

Don’t believe anything the medical establishment says

Since successfully bludgeoning the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the manual of mental disorders in 1973, gays have achieved unchallenged political control over national mental health associations in the U.S. Parents can therefore ignore the dozen such organizations listed in the New Jersey bill that criticize “change therapy” as dangerous. Until they start talking candidly about homosexual health risks, they have nothing to say worth hearing.

- See more at: http://thechristians.com/?q=node/563#sthash.WfLHjZV9.dpuf

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - August 27, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on August 27

4:00 - How To Wolf-Proof Your Kids
Gary Michuta has produced a product of years of work in the field of apologetics and evangelism. A few years ago, he gathered his experiences and ideas into a series of talks titled "How to Wolf-Proof Your Kids." Catholic parents around the country were extremely enthusiastic about the talks. Parents frequently approached him after the talks and encouraged him to put the information into book form because their own experiences so closely mirrored what he said. Some of these parents would proceed to share their own heart-breaking stories when their child had been pulled out of the Church. These discussions with parents also helped him to decide what information to include in his talks. He took these parents' advice to heart and the result is this book. Gary joins us to discuss "How To Wolf-Proof Your Kids."

Show more

Show less

5:00 – Kresta Comments: Jody Bottum, Generosity of Spirit, and the Battle for Marriage 

5:40 – Economic Plight and the Hope of the Church
The city of Detroit announced in July that it would go into bankruptcy, setting in motion the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Archbishop Allen Vigneron was installed as the archbishop of Detroit in 2009, a year after General Motors declared bankruptcy. Critics blame Detroit’s troubles on the struggles of the U.S. automotive industry to adapt to a changing global marketplace, corruption in city hall and public employee unions, which negotiated generous pensions for their members that now cannot be funded. But Archbishop Vigneron sees hope – he sees an opportunity for the Church to be the Church. He joins us to explain.

Alice Cooper's Christian testimony

 

 

Fruitful Sacramental Preparation

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Disputations

Ralph Martin, president of Renewal Ministries

Ralph Martin, president of Renewal Ministries and associate professor of theology at Detroit's Sacred Heart Major Seminary, has an article in Nova et Vetera titled, "The Post-Christendom Sacramental Crisis: The Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas."

The sacramental crisis of the title has two interrelated aspects:

1. A "radical drop in the numbers of those who still bother to approach the sacraments."
2. "[T]he apparent lack of sacramental fruitfulness in the lives of many who still partake of the sacraments."

Obviously, an unreceived sacrament is a fruitless sacrament, but if a sacrament is not fruitful, why bother to receive it in the first place?

The key section of the essay is a discussion on making reception of the sacraments more fruitful, in light of St. Thomas's teaching on adult baptism. Specifically, Martin recommends recovering a balance in sacramental preparation, reflected in St. Thomas's writings, that was thrown off after the Protestant revolution:

The reaction to the theology of the Protestant reformers produced in the Catholic Church what could be regarded as an overemphasis on the ex opere operato (by the fact of the action being performed) aspect of the sacraments working, to the neglect of the practical importance of the ex opere operantis (from the action of the doer) aspect. The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms the importance of both aspects:

From the moment that a sacrament is celebrated in accordance with the intention of the Church, the power of Christ and his Spirit acts in and through it, independently of the personal holiness of the minister. Nevertheless, the fruits of the sacraments also depend on the disposition of the one who receives them.
 

While no one would intentionally ignore the disposition of the one in sacramental preparation -- I use "no one" in a rhetorical sense here; empirically, people are capable of anything -- it's not only inadequate to argue that the sacrament itself will make up for what is lacking in the recipient, it's flat-out contrary to what the Church teaches. If "Ex opere operato" is how a given sacramental preparation program addresses the question of subjective disposition, then, objectively, that sacramental preparation program doesn't address the question of subjective disposition.

Martin quotes St. Thomas's article on "Whether sinners should be baptized" to explain why subjective disposition needs to be addressed in the sacramental preparation of adults:

Read the rest here: http://disputations.blogspot.com/2013/08/fruitful-sacramental-preparation.html

The Preemptive Surrender of Jody Bottum

By Robert Royal

Sunday, 25 August 2013

The Catholic Thing   Joseph Bottum, sometime friend of several of us at TCT, published a painfully long, painfully rambling article Friday in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal saying that the Church is wasting its time – is even harming itself – opposing gay marriage. He was fired as editor-in-chief of First Things three years ago, years in which he has mostly been living in his native South Dakota, where one hoped he was growing in wisdom and grace. But that is not our subject today.   The subject involves the fact that the liberal Luce Foundation provided the money for the writing of the Commonweal article, whose release included an announcement of the publication of Jody’s book, An Anxious Age (scheduled for in February), and coincided with a large story in The New York Times Saturday. A cynic might think that this shows less an argument about Church policy than a PR campaign, as in “former First Things editor turns.”   But let’s start by getting the record straight: if you take his argument seriously, which I mostly do not, Jody is not saying that he “supports” gay marriage, which the New York Times headline, as is its wont in matters Catholic, gets wrong.   He is saying that the Church cannot win this cultural battle, indeed is being harmed by it, given the forces arrayed against Her. Our bishops should not waste time on it and instead focus on the deep “re-enchantment of the world,” which is what it will take to get people to see the real point of the Church’s richer notions of Creation – and sexuality.   In a way, true enough, and many people, myself included, have been saying that – minus the surrender on same-sex marriage – for decades. But I personally don’t have a large investment in the “beauty will save the world” argument, which tends to work some of the same veins as “re-enchantment.” The Beautiful is one of the transcendentals, but only one, a lot of bad can happen while we’re waiting for it to kick in.   There are hundreds of art galleries all over the world filled with first-rate Christian painting and sculpture. Religious music is regularly performed. Christian literature is abundant and still being produced. There are beautiful liturgies in many churches. People I admire write brilliantly about the deep significance of such things. I don’t see that any of this has prevented, slowed, much less reversed, our sharp cultural decline.   Bottum’s argument is the equivalent of saying: fighting terrorism will not establish the peace that passeth all understanding, so we shouldn’t bother with such skirmishes. Leave aside that a large and sophisticated entity like the Catholic Church can walk and chew gum at the same time. Walking away from this fight will not gain the Church friends or placate her enemies.   The proof will be in the people who rally to his cause. The National Catholic Reporter, Planned Parenthood, Catholics for a Free Choice, most Catholic universities, and the most secular in the secular world. Be ready for the public wave of support for Church efforts to “re-enchant” the world – along with greater time spent on social justice and inclusiveness. I’m sure Luce Foundation funding can be found for those campaigns. In other words, they will all be happy to send Catholics off on a wild goose chase that threatens nothing in our desert of a culture: “Have a nice trip. Here are a few Euros to tip the waiters. See you guys the day after the Second Coming.”   That would be a best-case scenario. Actually, once the Church gives up the legal and cultural pushback, it won’t appease gay activists and their many more or less passive supporters. They know it means weakness. We’ll see an increase in attacks on the Church to simply shut up, and maybe even get onboard about homosexuality.   Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George just got a letter signed by eight Catholic lawmakers in Illinois chiding him for cutting archdiocesan funding to a pro-immigrant group that decided to endorse gay marriage. Imagine, a Cardinal of the Catholic Church defunds a non-profit group that goes out of its way to take a non-Catholic position inessential to its mission – and, for his trouble, reaps a stinging rebuke from Catholic pols.   The Cardinal is famous for saying that he expects to die in his bed, his successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr. The Cardinal is 76, but he’s in pretty good health, and with the highest respect, may be entirely too optimistic.   Jody asserts that there’s no coherent, principled legal argument against gay marriage and that we should simply accept it “as Americans.” I leave the legal niceties to the lawyers and legal beagles, but an awful lot of them seem to think otherwise.   And that notwithstanding, there’s a very coherent and principled – if outrageous – legal effort to extend alleged “hate crimes” further and further. One hears that Cardinal George has already been threatened by groups saying that they have eyes and ears on him. And he’s not the only one.   Jody cited G. K. Chesterton on enchantment and St. Thomas Aquinas on tolerating certain evils in making his case. The implausibility and formlessness of this argument – about which he’s already published some defensive reflections – show his own nervous ambivalence. Take one step back from the controversy. Can you imagine either of these men retreating from this battle? I can’t.   In 1976, Henry Kissinger, known as “the smartest man in the world,” told Admiral Elmo Zumwalt: “The day of the United States is past and today is the day of the Soviet Union. My job as Secretary of State is to negotiate the most acceptable second-best position available.” The Soviets had only thirteen years left.   The gay surge in the West may seem much less likely to be reversed. There are days we all feel that way. And it may be so. But there’s only one way to find out. And it’s not pre-emptive surrender.   Read the full article here: http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/the-preemptive-surrender-of-jody-bottum.html Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, now available in paperback from Encounter Books. © 2013 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.