All Your Children Belong to Us

Published Monday, April 8, 2013 A.D. | By Paul Zummo
The American Catholic

Every now and then I’ll see a collective kerfuffle ensue over some piece of media that upon inspection isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. But this ad appearing on MSNBC is every bit as scary and awful as some commentators have made it out to be.

For those of you who don’t have the stomach to sit through the ad, it features college professor and MSLSD host Melissa Harris-Perry proclaiming , ”We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to their communities.”
You might think she’s simply saying that child rearing is something of a collective effort, with all members of the community responsible for helping to educate the little ones. No, she really seems to think that Socrates (by way of Plato) was onto something 2,500 years ago when he speculated that in the ideal republic families would essentially be eliminated, with children being reared communally rather than by their parents.
On top of offering a horrifying notion that children really don’t belong to their parents, Harris-Perry is simply wrong about education spending. As John Sexton notes, the US spends more per pupil than almost any other first world nation, even if the results are less than satisfactory.
Moreover, as Ace points out, this notion of shared responsibility doesn’t quite work in the real world.

One basic thing: This idea of “shared responsibility” doesn’t work. In practice, if one person (or two, in a two parent family) is responsible, then stuff gets taken care of.
If “we’re all responsible,” then actually no one is responsible, and stuff doesn’t get taken care of.

In economics, this is referred to as the Tragedy of the Commons.
Rush Limbaugh also discussed this today on his radio show, and he observes how casually Harris-Perry discusses this idea. Twenty years ago we almost all would have laughed her off the national stage, yet today she can talk about kids not really belonging to their parents and she doesn’t even bat an eyelash, as though the idea were wholly uncontroversial. Sadly, to a large segment of the population, there is not anything even remotely wrong with what she has to say, and that should scare every last one of us.

Military Archdiocese Objects to Catholic ‘Extremist’ Label

U.S. Army Reserve training brief listed Catholics alongside ‘violent and extremist’ groups.

by CNA/EWTN NEWS 04/09/2013

U.S. Army chaplain Father Carl Subler celebrates

Mass for soldiers in Badula Qulp, Afghanistan,

 on Feb. 21, 2010.

– USAF/Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez

NCR

WASHINGTON — The Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services has said it is “astounded” at a U.S. Army Reserve training brief that listed Catholics alongside “violent and extremist” groups.
“The archdiocese calls upon the Department of Defense to review these materials and to ensure that taxpayer funds are never again used to present blatantly anti-religious material to the men and women in uniform,” the archdiocese said April 4.
In its statement, the archdiocese noted that an investigation and reply from the Army chief of chaplains office said the training “appears to have been an isolated incident not condoned by the Department of the Army.”
The presentation, titled “Extremism & Extremist Organizations,” discussed religious extremism in a presentation that covered militias, neo-Nazis, Islamic extremism, terrorism and gangs.
One slide, titled “Religious Extremism,” listed Catholicism and evangelical Christianity, along with groups including al Qaeda, Hamas and the Ku Klux Klan.
The presentation described extremism as a “complex phenomenon” defined by beliefs, attitudes or feelings “far removed from the ‘ordinary.’” It said religious extremism is not limited to any religion, ethnic group or region.
“Every religion has some followers who believe that their beliefs, customs and traditions are the only ‘right way’ and that all others are practicing their faith the ‘wrong way,’ seeing and believing that their faith/religion (is) superior to all others,” the slide said.
The presentation cited sources such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, and some of its language appeared to be taken from the website Wikipedia.
The Army removed the slide after complaints.
A U.S. Army spokesperson told The Washington Times that the presentation was produced by an individual without the knowledge or permission of anyone in the chain of command.
The person who created the presentation “was not a subject-matter expert and produced the material after conducting Internet research,” the spokesperson said.
The presentation also drew criticism from the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, a non-denominational group of military chaplains.
The archdiocese said it and the Chaplain Alliance told the Army that it “can and should take steps to prevent such incidents in the future.”
The Archdiocese for the Military Services has endorsed priests at more than 220 U.S. military installations in 29 countries, serving an estimated 1.8 million Catholics worldwide.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/military-archdiocese-objects-to-catholic-extremist-label?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+National+Catholic+Register#When:2013-04-10%2002:45:01#ixzz2Q5dzI9kq

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - April 10, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on April 10

 

The Best of Kresta in the Afternoon

  

4:00 – What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense

Until recently, no society had seen marriage as anything other than a conjugal partner­ship: a male-female union. Prof. Robert George identifies and defends the reasons for this historic consensus and shows why redefining civil marriage is unnecessary, unreasonable, and contrary to the common good. He is here to offer a devastating critique of the idea that equality requires redefining marriage.

 

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.

Jihad Article of the Day: Attack On Cairo Cathedral A Message To Egypt Christians: “Leave or Die” [VIDEO]

by Oren Kessler | 04.08.13 9:58 am
The Tower
 

Six Egyptians have been killed and almost 100 injured over the last four days in sectarian violence of a kind that activists and analysts tell The Tower is unprecedented in modern Egypt.
Four Christians and a Muslim were killed in sectarian clashes in a Cairo suburb on Saturday. A Muslim mob subsequently attacked the Sunday funeral procession held for the four at Cairo’s Coptic Orthodox cathedral, leading to another death and scores of injuries. Mourners who took cover in the cathedral compound were attacked with rocks and Molotov cocktails. Sectarian tension has continued into Monday in the Egyptian capital and its surrounding areas.
Egypt’s 10-percent Christian minority has historically been subject to religious and economic discrimination. The situation has worsened since the 2011 ouster of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his replacement by the Muslim Brotherhood-linked government of Mohammed Morsi, and there has been a massive Christian exodus from the country.
But Mina Rizkalla, a U.S.-based Coptic activist, told The Tower that the weekend’s violence was a severe escalation.
“Since the establishment of modern Egypt we have never seen attacks against Copts reach the Coptic Cathedral, where the Coptic Pope lives, and which Copts view as their safest and holiest place. The scenes of tear gas and shooting in the cathedral… [can't be] removed,” he said.
Rizkalla said that attacking the cathedral sent a “clear” message to Egypt’s Coptic community: “Leave or die.”
Egyptian media continues to describe the attackers as “unknown assailants.” Egypt’s Interior Ministry blamed the mourners for the violence and said the riot police intervened to stop it. That account is in tension with eyewitness accounts, which depict Muslim attacks in response to Coptic anti-government chants:

Clashes erupted immediately after the service between the emerging mourners and a crowd outside the cathedral. It was unclear who started the violence. But later dozens of riot police with armored vehicles and tear-gas canons appeared to enter the fray on the side of crowds of young Muslim men who were throwing rocks and fire bombs at the mourners.
In what seemed like a siege of the cathedral, tear-gas canisters fell inside the walls of its compound, sending gas into the sanctuary and two nuns running for shelter in a nearby loading dock. Later, some of the young civilians who had been attacking the cathedral switched to taunts, making lewd gestures involving the sign of the cross. The riot policemen made no attempt to stop them, either from throwing rocks toward the cathedral or insulting the Christians.

The role played by Egyptian police has come in for particularly withering criticism:

But Remon Wageh, a church worker, blamed what he called radical Muslims for the violence. “The minute the Christians loaded the coffins into cars after the service, a group of bearded radicals threw rocks at us,” he said. “The police just stood by watching, doing nothing,” he said. “They protected the radicals who were hiding behind a line of officers in the street outside the cathedral.” Police officers were not available to comment on the accusation. The interior minister later went to the scene at Mursi’s request to investigate but did not speak to the media.

Video from the scene underscores the sectarian dimensions of the violence:
[Photo: TheFreeCopt / YouTube]

American-born bishop who attended Franciscan Univ. to head Lithuanian archdiocese

CWN - April 08, 2013

An American-born priest has been named Archbishop of Vilnius in Lithuania. Archbishop-elect Gintaras Lunas Grusas was born in Washington, DC, raised in Los Angeles, studied at the Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, and worked as a computer consultant before he was ordained to the priesthood in Vilnius in 1994. He was ordained as a bishop in 2010, serving as head of Lithuania’s military ordinariate until his appointment to become Archbishop of Vilnius. Archbishop-elect Grusas replaces Cardinal Audrys Backis, who is retiring at the age of 76.

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - April 9, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on April 9

 

The Best of Kresta in the Afternoon

 

4:00 – It Didn't Have to Be This Way: Why Boom and Bust Is Unnecessary-and How the Austrian School of Economics Breaks the Cycle

Why is the boom-and-bust cycle so persistent? Why did economists fail to predict the economic meltdown that began in 2007—or to pull us out of the crisis more quickly? And how can we prevent future calamities? Economist Harry Veryser tells the fascinating (but frightening) story of how our modern economic condition developed. The most recent recession, far from being an isolated incident, was part of a larger cycle that has been the scourge of the West for a century—a cycle rooted in government manipulation of markets and currency. The lesson is clear: the devastation of the recent economic crisis—and of stagflation in the 1970s, and of the Great Depression in the 1930s—could have been avoided. It didn’t have to be this way. He makes his case. 

 

5:00 – 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.

Well Done, Lady Thatcher … The Passing of the Iron Lady

April 8, 2013 | by Paul G. Kengor

 

The Center for Vision & Values

Margaret Thatcher, one of the greatest leaders of the Cold War, of the 20^th century, and of British history, has died at the age of 87.
I’ve referred to her as one of my Cold War seven: Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Boris Yeltsin, and Margaret Thatcher. They were the seven figures who dissolved an Evil Empire, and only Walesa and Gorbachev still remain with us.
The world dubbed her the Iron Lady, a title that duly fits. Many, however, mistake the Iron Lady moniker as referring solely to her strength in the Cold War. There was much more to it. Consider:
Margaret Thatcher is arguably the most complete British leader of the last 100 years, surpassing even Winston Churchill. Like Churchill, she was tough and successful in foreign policy, taking on and vanquishing totalitarian evil. Churchill warned the world as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe. Decades later, the world celebrated as the Iron Lady helped break the Iron Curtain.
But unlike Churchill, Margaret Thatcher had enormous domestic successes that Churchill couldn’t touch, and didn’t dare try to touch. When World War II closed, the British people booted Churchill from the prime ministership in preference of Labour leader Clement Attlee, who gave the British populace Keynesian socialism. The masses wanted their welfare state, and Attlee, equipped with promises of “change” and “forward,” gave them a fundamental transformation. In no time, Attlee’s party was spending money unlike anything Britain had ever seen, nationalizing everything under the sun, including with the progressive left’s coup de grace: government healthcare. It was a giant government binge that would bury Britain for decades.
This fundamental transformation to welfare-statism was so thorough, and so imbibed by the electorate, that when Churchill later returned to office for another term (1951-55) the World War II hero couldn’t stand up to the sacred cows of Britain’s new nanny state. By the late 1970s, the United Kingdom was smothered not only by massive government expenditures and debt but by the enormous and disastrous government unions that the Labour Party had built and nurtured.
All of this came to a crashing head in the late 1970s, and fittingly under the Labour Party, this time led by Prime Minister James Callaghan. The signature event was the Winter of Discontent (1978-79). The economy was an utter train wreck, debt-ridden and hampered by a prolonged un-recovering “recovery.” Things were made far worse by continual work stoppages by striking public-sector unions. Given that the government ran just about everything, thanks to decades of the British left nationalizing everything, there was garbage literally rotting in the streets and dead people not being buried because of striking government refuse workers and gravediggers.
Things got so bad that the British electorate was willing to elect a bona fide conservative to run their government: Margaret Thatcher. This was not some squishy moderate that we in the United States would have called a Rockefeller Republican or (today) a RINO. This was the real McCoy; the genuine article. Here was a new leader who actually understood and could articulate what was wrong with Britain—and had the courage to do something about it.
And so, Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first-ever female prime minister, embarked upon an extraordinary run from 1979-90 that featured three consecutive electoral victories, including the landslide that brought her to power. She then proceeded to take on not just the Soviets abroad, but, at home, the powerful government unions, the Keynesian spending, the bloated cradle-to-grave welfare state, the punitive taxes, the burdensome regulations, and decades of government nationalizations/seizures. As to the latter, Thatcher began a comprehensive campaign of privatization that returned freedom, solvency, and sanity to Britain.
It was an amazing performance. You can now expect a remarkable outpouring of emotion and appreciation in Britain, much like what America saw with the death of Ronald Reagan and what the world witnessed with the passing of John Paul II, her two Cold War partners and kindred souls. And like her two great Cold War allies, she fortunately lived to see the collapse of the Soviet empire.
Lady Thatcher outlived both Reagan and John Paul II. Her health, unfortunately, had been in decline for a long time. I recall that she recorded a video eulogy for Reagan’s funeral rather than address the audience live and directly. That was 2004, almost 10 years ago.
I also recall her parting words to Ronald Reagan: “Well done, thy faithful servant.”
And now, we can second that tribute. Well done, Lady Thatcher.

Paul G. Kengor

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values, and New York Times best-selling author of the book, “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor.” His other books include "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism" and "Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century."
High resolution photos»

View all posts by Paul G. Kengor»

The Well-Being of Children

April 8, 2013

by Dale O'Leary
Crisis Magazine

Editor’s note: Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

 

An article in the March issue of Pediatrics entitled “Marriage and the Well-Being of Children” tacitly admits that there may be empirical evidence that “children reared by same-sex couples fare worse than children in other arrangements.” However, the authors, Jeremy Garrett and John Lentos, argue that there are no “intrinsic properties of traditional marriages that make them uniquely efficacious in promoting the well-being of children” and if there were “it might make sense to grant exclusive state sanction for traditional marriage.”

There is, however, an intrinsic property of traditional marriage which makes it better for children: marriage joins the potential biological father and mother with vows to be there for each other and for the children conceived in the marital acts, which consummate and sustain their union. Anything that separates a child from his or her biological mother and/or father is a tragedy. Tragedies happen, but same-sex couples who acquire children make tragedies.
Children conceived by artificial insemination donor (AID) for female couples or by surrogate motherhood for male couples are purposefully, premeditatedly, and permanently deprived of a relationship with one biological parent. To want to know, be known by, and loved by one’s biological parents is intrinsic to who we are as people. It matters.
Some argue that there is no difference between children conceived by AID or surrogacy for same-sex couples and those destined for male/female couples, and AID is no different than adoption. A study by Elizabeth Marquardt and associates entitled “My Daddy’s Name is Donor,” addresses these questions, comparing 485 adults conceived by AID, with 562 young adults adopted as infants, and 563 young adults raised by their biological, parents.
The study found that “as a group donor offspring are suffering more than those who were adopted: hurting more, feeling more confused, and feeling more isolated from their families…And as a group, the adoptees are suffering more than those raised by their biological parents….” The AID conceived adults were more likely to suffer depression, delinquency and substance abuse.
Marquardt pointed out that the purpose of adoption is “to find parents for children who need them. Donor conception functions as a market, the purpose of which is to create children for adults who want them.”
According to Marquardt, “Donor conceived children know that the parents raising them are also the ones who intentionally denied them a relationship with at least one of their biological parents. The pain they might feel was caused not by some distant birth parent who gave them up, but by the parent who cares for them every day.”
There is a reality television series called The Locator in which the host helps adults reconnect with biological relatives, the theme is: you can’t find peace until you find all the pieces. Episode after episode demonstrates the longing for biological connections.
Children conceived by AID feel this same need. They are speaking out about their situation and have set up websites hoping to find their fathers or half-siblings.
To call a same-sex relationship a marriage, starts a process by which the same-sex, non-biological partner is legally designated as “parent.” This is a fiction and the child knows it. All children know that they have a biological mother and a biological father. The state tells the child that his or her desire for a father or mother is illegimate, and worse that this desire is a betrayal of the people on whom he or she depends.
The child’s right to a father and mother supercedes any right of a same-sex couple to change the definition of marriage. The claim that this is a civil right based on equality makes no sense, because a same-sex relationship is not equal to marriage. It cannot result in the conception of a child who is biologically related to both partners. The deprivation is intrinsic and applies to every child conceived for a same-sex couple. It does not depend of the ability of the custodians to provide “adequate child rearing.”
The Pediatrics article may be responding to a recently published, large, well-designed study by Mark Regnerus, entitled “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships,” which found significant problems among those raised by lesbian mothers. According to the study those with lesbian mothers were more likely than those with married, heterosexual parents, to have received welfare growing up (69%-17%), to currently be on public assistance (38%-10%), to be currently unemployed (28%-8%), to have had a sexually transmitted infection (20%-8%), to have been touched sexually as a child (23%-2%), to be forced to have sex (31%-8%), and to currently be in therapy (19%-8%).
While there have been a number of studies claiming to have found no difference between children raised by same-sex couples and those raised by their biological parents, a careful analysis of these studies by Loren Marks, entitled “Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination of the American Psychological Associations brief on lesbian and gay parenting” found that the studies they referenced failed to met the APA’s own standard for projectable research, because of small poorly chosen samples, no comparison group, lack of long term outcome data, and statistical power.
Calling same-sex relationships marriages harms children. It says to them your need for your own biological father and mother doesn’t matter. It is to be hoped that the Supreme Court in reviewing the marriage cases coming before it puts the rights and welfare of children before the desires of adults.

By Dale O'Leary

Dale O’Leary is the author of The Gender Agenda and One Man, One Woman. Her blog can be found at http://daleoleary.wordpress.com/

It Isn’t A Question Of If Obamacare “Collapses”

 

Tuesday, April 2, 2013, 8:27 PM

Pete Spiliakos | @petespiliakos

First Things

So I was watching Fox News’s excellent Special Report with Bret Baier. Baier was reporting about how the special exchange for small businesses is going to have to be delayed for another year. This is on top of other reports that Obamacare will cost the government more than expected, will raise health insurance premiums, will cause people to lose their employer-provided coverage, and will discourage employers from hiring workers full-time. Baier wondered if Obamacare was in danger of collapse.
I don’t think there is a danger that Obamacare will collapse. It is a certainty. The question is what Obamacare collapses into. Whatever the administration’s public relations nonsense, Obamacare was never really a long-term solution to the country’s health care policy problems. It was a halfway house for single-payer health care and centralized government rationing of health care for the working-aged. That doesn’t mean that the designers of Obamacare anticipated or intended every problem of implementation, but the whole point was to make the system of employer-provided coverage through private insurance companies undesirable. That was why Obamacare originally had a “public option.” That was why, when the public option was killed, Democrats had the otherwise nonsensical idea of expanding Medicare to people in their fifties. The point of the public option and the Medicare expansion were to give a government-provided health care option for people who were fleeing the premium increases and dropped employer-provided coverage that was produced by… Obamacare. I got the idea from reading Yuval Levin (who might have used the metaphor) that Obamacare was designed to make private health insurance coverage small enough that future Democratic presidents and congresses could drown it in a bathtub. The good news is that the public option and the Medicare expansion didn’t happen. So we are at least one, and maybe two major laws away from single-payer.
The bad news is that a “collapse” doesn’t necessarily mean what conservatives want it to mean in the context of Obamacare. As Obamacare is institutionalized, Obamacare will transform the insurance market and expectations that people had before Obamacare. Obamacare will produce new problems (and exacerbate old problems) that won’t seem fixable just by repealing Obamacare. By 2016, you won’t necessarily be getting your old employer-provided coverage back just because Obamacare is repealed. Insurance premiums on the individual market will be a lot higher and it will seem awful scary to be out there on your own without the Obamacare subsides. The case against Obamacare is fine, and conservatives should make it with enthusiasm, but the key to getting rid of Obamacare and avoiding single-payer will be determined by whether conservatives are willing to offer alternative policies that can plausibly offer lower premiums combined with health care security for catastrophic health expenses and whether conservatives can offer policies that will deal with the uninsured who have pre-existing conditions. Such policies exist. A key for whether conservatives win is whether the center-right and the Republican party can make advancing those policies a priority rather than chasing fantasies like flat taxes and national sales taxes and such.
On a related note, I think that this post I wrote over at the old No Left Turns blog holds up rather well. Here is most of it:
Megan McArdle wonders whether Obamacare will ever get much more popular than it is now. I’m not sure that is the right way to look at it. The idea that Obamacare was going to become much more popular by November 2010 was always some combination of self-delusion and a cynical attempt to gull wavering congressional Democrats from marginal or right-leaning constituencies. The more important issue is how Obamacare changes the structure of the health care market and how these structural changes will influence the politics of Obamacare in the next 2-6 years. People don’t have to learn to love Obamacare. They only need to have their interests structured in such a way that repealing Obamacare seems like a change for the worse and (eventually) that single-payer health care is the most obvious solution to the problems produced by Obamacare. The way different elements of Obamacare will play out will be uncertain.

1. Prices – If the experience of Massachusetts with insurance mandate/coverage mandate/government subsidy is anything to go by, Obamacare will lead to an even faster rise in insurance premiums. This sounds like a major weakness for Obamacare, but, if conservatives are not careful and articulate, it could actually strengthen the political case for even more government-run health care. For one thing, it won’t be obvious to everybody that Obamacare is the reason for rising premiums. The politics of rising premiums will be a jump ball. Obama supporters and liberals generally will argue that the premium increases are the result of mean, fat cat, greedy insurance companies that will benefit from Republican attempts to liberalize the health insurance market. The argument will be that the insurance companies are already bleeding you dry and that if the Republicans get their way, the insurance companies will charge you even more or even deny you coverage altogether. They will say that it is better to go with the next iteration of Obamacare (or Bidencare or Pelosicare or whatever) and crack down on those mean insurance companies with some combination of price controls and expanding programs of government-provided health insurance. Rising health care premiums will also create urgency for Obamacare’s forthcoming premium subsidies to middle-class families. Rising premiums will make people feel vulnerable and suspicious of any health care reform that seems to leave them on their own to pay for coverage that only barely seems affordable even with ‘help” from their employers and the federal government. Supporters of market-oriented health care reforms will have to offer policies that promise lower prices, but also policies that address what is reasonable about people’s feelings of vulnerability.

2. Guaranteed Issue – This provision will force insurance companies to offer policies to people with preexisting conditions (so far only for children but eventually everybody) and seemingly at about the same premium rate as everyone else. This will tend to increase premiums on everybody, but as people with preexisting conditions are guaranteed coverage (it is complicated now, but if you develop a condition while insured, it becomes a disincentive from leaving your job and possibly losing coverage), they become a constituency against repeal.

3. Medicaid expansion – Obamacare is estimated to increase the population on Medicaid by as much as twenty million by 2014. I’m not sure it will be that much, but even if it is half that, it is still a sizeable constituency against repeal of Obamacare. And it isn’t just the people on Medicaid. People who aren’t on Medicaid will worry about what happens to people who lose coverage. It will seem awfully cruel to take people off Medicaid in an environment in which premiums are rising very fast.

Here comes everybody: divorced, gays, sinners, a couple saints

Monday, April 1, 2013

USCCB blog

It amazes me when basic church teaching is received as if it were something brand new. This morning's New York Times brought the latest example with the headline: "Dolan Says the Catholic Church Should Be More Welcoming to Gay People." A glance at other media outlets finds similar news accounts. From the NBC website: "Cardinal Dolan: Church Must Embrace Gays, Lesbians." Then from the NY Daily News: "'Jesus died on the cross for them as much as He did for me’: Cardinal Dolan says church should not push away gays."

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York created this media storm with basic pastoral comments on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" and CBS's "Face the Nation" with Bob Schieffer. Cardinal Dolan said the church is there for everyone.

I have two reactions.

1. The word "catholic" means all-encompassing, so how can people get the impression that the church is exclusionary? No one is carded at a Catholic Church. Shunning is not the Catholic tradition. Other news reports this week give homey examples of the church's inclusionary nature. Ann Rodgers, a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was selected to carry olive branches in a Palm Sunday procession at the Vatican. Ann said she wasn't Catholic, but that wasn't a problem for organizers at the Holy See. A few days afterwards, a Muslim girl in a Rome youth detention facility had her feet washed by Pope Francis at the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper. Her standing outside the fold was no problem for the papal advance men. To reiterate Cardinal Dolan's point: Gays ae welcome in the church. So are divorced people. Heck, even in the rare instances that people are excommunicated, they're still expected at Sunday Mass. Although some sects ban you from the property for violating their rules, the Catholic Church still wants you in the pew.

2. More people have been excommunicated by their Aunt Minnie than by the church. Much of the media, and many Catholics, miss the fact that the Catholic Church is a church of mercy and forgiveness, and most of all, communion. It is so encompassing that writer James Joyce defined Catholicsm as "here comes everybody." The church looks for ways to make things better for people. We have seven sacraments -- and three, Baptism, the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Sacrament of the Sick, are geared to bringing people into or back into the fold, sinner or no. It's practically impossible to get out of the Catholic Church where if you leave we call you an ex-Catholic rather than a Protestant, atheist or the latest term, a "none" (the last in deference to pollsters who force you to check some box when asked about your religious practice).

Peter Foley/European Pressphoto Agency

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan greeted a crowd outside St. Patrick's Cathedral on Easter Sunday in New York.

Gay marriage is the issue de jour for media. So when Cardinal Dolan on Easter spoke kindly of the gays and lesbians, media feigned shock. In reality, the Catholic Church challenges all its members -- in different ways over different issues.

But know this: The Catholic Church will battle hard to maintain the sacredness of marriage as between a man and a woman. It also offers counseling to help people avoid divorce. It patiently insists that frenetic couples entering into marriage go through pre-marital counseling, no matter how busy they are with wedding planners and caterers. For the Catholic Church marriage is worth it all, even sadly, a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And know even more: God's love for his children is boundless. A disagreement on the definition of marriage is a serious disagreement. It is not, however, separation from the love of God.

“Morning-After” Pill for Pre-Teens

April 5, 2013



"Morning-after" emergency contraception should be made
available to girls of any age, according to Judge Korman.

Bill Donohue comments on the decision by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman ordering the Food and Drug Administration to make the “morning-after” emergency contraception pill available without a prescription to girls of any age:

A 12-year-old girl in a New York City school cannot be given an aspirin by her teacher, even if she has a fever. The same girl cannot buy a large soda during lunch time because Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decreed that it is not good for her. But she can be given a pill, unbeknownst to her parents, that could arguably abort her baby.

Neither Judge Korman nor Mayor Bloomberg has said what the aspirin-denying teacher should do if he sees a girl reaching for a large Coke to down her abortion-inducing pill.

This is what we’ve come to in our culturally schizophrenic society. Our moral code is patently incoherent, and the contempt shown for parental rights is astonishing. Hopefully, this imperial decision will be overturned.

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - April 5, 2013

Talking About the Things That Matter Most on April 5

 

4:00 – Kresta Comments

 

4:20 – Calvin Coolidge: A Spending-Cutting President

He was a president of extreme silence, but extreme success. Calvin Coolidge, our 13^th President,  began a decade of unparalleled growth that the nation enjoyed under his leadership. After a divisive period of government excess and corruption, Coolidge restored national trust in Washington and achieved what few other peacetime presidents have: He left office with a federal budget smaller than the one he inherited. We talk about this President with two recent biographers of Coolidge – Charles Johnson and then Amity Schlaes.

 

5:00 –Pope Francis: A Biography

When the curtains were drawn and our new Holy Father stepped out into view of the 150,000 people waiting in St. Peter's Square, it was a humble and gentle man from Argentina who greeted them, not in triumph, but with a gentle wave. He's a pope of "firsts" - the first Jesuit pope, the first pope from the Americas, and the first to choose the name of Italy's most famous saint. Pope Francis is still new to us, but in the first English-language biography by Matthew Bunson, you will get to know the man who became pope: A street priest at heart with a deep love for people and a pastor's touch. He teaches in word and deed the truths of the Church and God's merciful love. Matthew joins us.

A plea from abused home-schoolers

Parents seek asylum to keep family intact

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

 

The Washington Times

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 

Daniel Romeike, 13,
does school work at his
home Friday, March 13

The open border so dear to the hearts of many Democrats, eager to get the 11 million illegal aliens on the voter rolls, ends short of compassion for refugees from First World countries, as Uwe and Hannelore Romeike have found out. The administration is working overtime to deport this family because they home-school their children.
The Romeikes fled their native Germany in 2008 after uniformed police officers arrived at their home and forcibly took their children to government-run schools. Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since 1938, when the Nazis brooked no resistance to state control of everything. The Romeikes were fined thousands for their resistance.
The Romeikes, who say German schools teach subjects that go against their evangelical Christian beliefs, are parents of three boys and three girls, ranging in age from 20 months to 15 years. They live now on a farm in eastern Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains.They sought and were granted political refuge in the United States in 2010, but the Justice Department's Board of Immigration Appeals overturned the decision last year, contending that Germany’s ban on home-schooling doesn’t violate the Romeikes’ human rights. The administration essentially says parents have no fundamental right to educate their own children, hence no political asylum.Should the Romeikes be forcibly repatriated, fines are the least of their worries. They could face stiff prison sentences, and their children could be taken away from them.
These factors moved U.S. Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman three years ago to let them stay. “It does appear that there is animus and vitriol involved here, that the government of Germany really resents the home-schoolers, not just because they are not sending the children to school, but because they constitute a group that the government, for some unknown reason, wishes to suppress,” Judge Burman wrote.The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the case on April 23. Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, represents the Romeikes. “The Obama administration is basically saying there is no right to home-school anywhere,” he told the Fox News Channel. “They are trying to send a family back to Germany, where they would certainly lose custody of their children.”Mr. Farris‘ group has opened a petition on the White House website insisting that the Obama administration grant permanent legal status to the Romeikes. The petition has garnered nearly 30,000 signatures to date, and it has just over two weeks left to obtain 70,000 additional names to earn an official response from the administration. This is the chance for home-schoolers to make themselves heard.
The Justice Department argues home-schoolers “lack the social visibility required to constitute a particular social group.” That sounds like code for “they’re not a voting bloc Democrats care about.” The appellate judges should recognize the real threats against the Romeikes and grant them permanent legal status.
The Washington Times

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/3/a-plea-from-abused-home-schoolers/#ixzz2PYANHmUb
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Students try to banish Catholic chaplain from campus for anti-gay stance

Update: Fr. Greg's blog has nothing about the case specifically (perhaps for legal reasons); rather, there is simply a brief, but telling entry from yesterday.
The Daily Caller – 14 hrs ago

 

Two gay seniors at George Washington University say they feel alienated because the chaplain at George Washington’s Newman Center rejects homosexuality, and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

The seniors, Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen, have announced a coordinated campaign to rid the campus of the Roman Catholic priest, reports The GW Hatchet, the school’s independent student newspaper.



Fr. Greg Shaffer

They also assert that 12 or more students have quit the Newman Center in recent years because they can’t tolerate Father Greg Shaffer’s ardent anti-gay “and, for the record, anti-abortion — beliefs.

Shaffer has worked for five years at George Washington’s Newman Center. He told the Hatchet that religion and unrestricted speech “play a vital role at a diverse university like GW.”
Legacy and Bergen say they are primarily upset about the counseling Shaffer offers. They say he urges students who have homosexual feelings to lead a life of celibacy.
Catholic Church doctrine maintains that homosexual desire isn’t a sin, but acting on that desire is, according to the website Catholic.com.

Legacy told the Hatchet that he spent considerable time at the Newman Center during his first two years at George Washington. He was an altar server at mass. He believed that he would become a Catholic priest after graduating.

All that changed, though, when Legacy told Shaffer that he and Bergen had entered a homosexual relationship. Shaffer allegedly charged Legacy with being immoral and lacking in faith.
“To have my faith leader view me that way, just because of one piece of the way that God made me, and to think that one part is responsible for the destruction of my human dignity, it just didn’t…I can’t even begin to describe the mental conflict that it creates,” Legacy told the Hatchet.

The two gay seniors are also unhappy about a blog post Shaffer authored back in May 2012, just after President Barack Obama publicly endorsed gay marriage.

“As Vatican II states, God is the author of marriage. He has defined marriage as between a man and a woman,” Shaffer then wrote. “Every single rational person knows that sexual relationships between persons of the same sex are unnatural and immoral. They know it in their hearts.”
The plan to oust Shaffer includes the creation of a video containing the statements of several students who have left GW’s Newman Center. That video, Legacy and Bergen hope, will surely arouse the generally left-leaning campus to anger, thus forcing school officials to act.
Other aspects of the proposed GW Newman Center insurgency include filing a formal complaint with the administration and conducting a series of prayer vigils outside the center.
Legacy and Bergen will also distribute a letter to high-ranking administrators. According to The Hatchet, the letter will cite academic studies connecting homophobic behavior to loss of appetite, insomnia and other detrimental psychological consequences.
Finally, Legacy will request that GW’s Student Association defund the Newman Center (which is affiliated with the school but officially part of the Roman Catholic Church). This year, the Center reportedly collected $10,000 in funding.
Last semester, Legacy presented a report to the school’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion explaining that other schools, such as New York University, vet and evaluate religious leaders before allowing them to work with campus-affiliated groups.

 

The #1 Reason the Catholic Church Won’t Support Same-Sex Marriage…UPDATED

April 3, 2013 By Frank Weathers, Why I am Catholic
 

It’s quite simple, actually. Oh, you won’t see the reason talked about by folks being grilled by the Piers Morgans of the world. You won’t see the reason being discussed in philosophy papers, or papers expanded into book length dissertations on marriage, where all manner of other good reasons to protect and defend traditional marriage are enumerated, and bolstered with reasonable arguments.
The real reason is simple, and it’s not based on bigotry. It’s based 100% on love. The kind of love that only a mother has for her children.
But the reason isn’t popular, see, and I daresay you rarely, if ever, hear articulate, solid, well mannered, and well versed, New Evangelizers sharing this particular reason with folks they come into contact with.
So what’s absolutely, positively, the A-1, best reason why the Bride of Christ won’t recognize Same-Sex civil unions as being a good?

Because Hell burns, and for all eternity. That’s why. The Church teaches that engaging in homosexual acts will lead one to eternal damnation.


Namby-pamby New Evangelization? Wrong Saint.

Of course, the Church also teaches that committing all manner of other sinful acts, without compunction or repentance, leads one right to Hell too. Not much has changed in this regard since John the Baptist went around telling folks to “Repent!”
And the Church, that holy hospital built by Christ Himself to cleanse us, and lead us to the Promised Land, wouldn’t be doing her job properly for her Lord if she didn’t use every ounce of the Magisterial Authority she wields to do everything in her power to prevent souls from being destroyed forever in the Lake of Fire.
You want philosophical answers? Remember what St. Thomas Aquinas said in his Lenten homilies delivered in the final year of his life,

Man needs to know two things: the glory of God and the punishment of Hell. For through being drawn by His glory and terrified by His punishments, men are careful on their own account and refrain from sin.

Easy as that sounds, the Angelic Doctor goes on to remind us,



Got that?

It is also difficult to know about the punishments of Hell, for “no man hath been known to have returned from Hell,” which is said in the person of the wicked. But it cannot be said now, since just as He came down from Heaven in order to teach us heavenly things, so did He come back from Hell in order to teach us about Hell.

And as inconvenient to the zeitgeist (yesterday, today, and tomorrow) this truth may be, nothing is going to change the Churchs’ viewpoint on this. And I don’t just mean the Vatican either. I mean folks in the pews like me.
I joined the Church in order to be saved from the wide road leading straight to the Devils’ playground. I didn’t become Catholic in order to find a comfortable spot where I could get a free pass on all my sinful behaviors, while never having to change. If that was the case, I came to the wrong place, as Cardinal John Henry Newman reminds me.



I thought she was crazy too, until I didn’t.

The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse. —Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua

If the Church’s mission is to save as many souls as possible, make saints out of folks, and bring as many of us to Heaven as she can, then it’s obvious that she isn’t going to condone, or support, behaviors that will guarantee that souls are eternally put to death. Capice?
That would make absolutely no sense. It would be like your mother telling you to go outside and play on the highway, or get you drunk and then hand you the car keys with a peck on the check and a “go have fun” whispered in your ear.
It would be like giving folks, who have an equal chance for salvation (or not), and instead giving them a greater than equal chance for damnation. That isn’t the kind of calculus you want your soul saving physician to be making, is it? Blaise Pascal would point out that this is like playing with loaded dice that never roll in your favor.
That’s kind of how stuff rolls in the the world, though, what with phony-baloney teachings, and you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours gamesmanship, etc. But that isn’t what the Church is all about.
By the way, this is the same reason (Hell is Hot!) why the Church doesn’t teach that murder is okey-dokey, or stealing, or abortion, wars of conquest, rape, etc., etc., either. Nor does she condone any number of other acts that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has held as dangerous to our souls since the prophets started rebuking the children of Israel, up to when the Apostles were spreading the Good News, way back when the New Exodus was just getting off the ground.
So for folks to kid themselves that the Church would ever “get with the times, ” or up and decide to get on “the right side of history,” they are completely missing the fact that His Story is the one she has been called to share the world over, in a bid to save our very lives.
Thankfully, the Church has the power to take our sins, no matter how heinous they are, or how deep their crimson color, and make them whiter than snow. You supply the repentance and the contrition, and she provides the balm that heals. But the clean and folded laundry comes with a bill attached from Christ Himself that reads, “go and sin no more.”
If sinning is another way of saying “missing the mark,” then thinking that the Church is going to be hunky dory with folks shooting maggie’s drawers, and missing the broad side of barns over and over again, never once really trying to become more Christ-like, well…that is a pretty ridiculous notion.
It’s as ridiculous as arguing that same-sex unions are bad for society, while keeping mum on the fact that they are damning for the soul. Pope Francis knows better.

John the Baptist approves of this message

UPDATES:
Monsignor Charles Pope: What does the Catholic Church offer to the Homosexual Person?
The Compendium: Love and the formation of a community of persons.
Facebook page of note: We Defend Traditional Marriage – and We’re Gay.
Marc Barnes: The Difficulty With Engaging Gay Marriage
Terry Nelson:The Catholic Church’s ‘acceptance’ of gay people…
Taylor Marshall, Homosexuality: Does the New Testament Condemn It?
Deacon Greg Kandra: Clarity on an important news item.

Pedophilia Is A Sexual Orientation Under CA Bill

Posted by

Lisa A

February 7, 2013

Rethink Society

California Congresswoman, Rep. Jackie Speier CA (D), wants to federalize a state law to prohibit counseling to change a person’s sexual orientation. That doesn’t sound that extreme, but pedophilia is a sexual orientation according to this bill as well.
Under the bill’s language, a mental health counselor could be sanctioned if there was an attempt to get a pedophile or gay individual to change his behavior or speak negatively about their behavior as it relates to sexuality.
The bill calls on states to prohibit efforts to change a minor’s sexual orientation, even if the minor requests it, saying that doing so is “dangerous and harmful.”
The text of the legislation doesn’t specifically ban “gay” conversion therapy. Instead, it prohibits attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation.
“Sexual orientation change efforts’ means any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation,” the bill says.
Republicans attempted to add an amendment specifying that, “pedophilia is not covered as an orientation.” However, the Democrats defeated the amendment. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) stated that all alternative sexual lifestyles should be protected under the law, and accordingly decided that pedophilia is a sexual orientation that should be equally as embraced as homosexuality.
“This language is so broad and vague, it arguably could include all forms of sexual orientation, including pedophilia,” said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute. “It’s not just the orientation that is protected—the conduct associated with the orientation is protected as well.”

Who Cares If Pedophilia Is A Sexual Orientation?

It also means that, if pedophilia is a sexual orientation, that discrimination laws also apply to pedophiles. That means you cannot block a pedophile from being a preschool teacher or any other high-risk occupation.
Recently, a United States District Court Judge, William Shubb, sided with Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) by granting their plaintiffs a preliminary injunction against the legislation, which is known as California SB 1172.
“Because the court finds that SB 1172 is subject to strict scrutiny and is unlikely to satisfy this standard, the court finds that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims based on violations of their rights to freedom of speech under the First Amendment,” wrote Judge Shubb.
“This victory sends a clear signal to all those who feel they can stifle religious freedom, free speech, and the rights of parents without being contested,” said PJI President, Brad Dacus. “We at PJI are ready to fight this battle all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
“This will be a long, grueling battle with tremendous consequences for generations to come. We are grateful to those who are willing to support us in this critical time to preserve our freedoms and protect our children,” he continued.
Thankfully, for the time being, this legislation has been blocked, but many questions still remain.
This bill establishes a dangerous precedent for normalizing the behavior of pedophiles while stripping parents of their rights and peace of mind.
One can certainly make the argument that homosexuals are “born that way,” and we generally would not dispute that. However, when we have legislators that want to extend the “born that way” defense to pedophiles, this crosses a very dangerous line.
Whether a pedophile is born that way or not, it still does not make their behavior acceptable in any way.
If so, then you could declare rapists are “born that way.” They can’t help that they need to rape! Poor them!
Let’s be real.
Sex between an adult and a child too young to understand what is going on is not the same thing as sex between two consenting adults.
The operative word here is “consenting.” Children—by both law and basic common sense—cannot “consent.” If Jackie Spier had a son or daughter, and an adult “had consensual sex” with him or her, we do not believe that what she would be so adamant about protecting them.
What liberals conveniently ignore is the fact that all societies who participated in pedophilia—such as the Hittites, Canaanites, Greeks, and Romans—eventually caved in on themselves due to corruption and depravity.
Further, let’s not also forget that their favorite form of entertainment was watching people get torn to shreds by lions, hacked to death, and burned alive.
Recognizing sexual ‘orientation’ is walking a razor’s edge. Unlike gay-oriented legislation, pedophilia has victims who must be protected.
We don’t put pedophiles in prison to make them stop being pedophiles; we put them there because they threaten the safety of the most vulnerable people in a society.

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - April 4, 2013

Talking About the Things That Matter Most on April 4

4:00 – Kresta Comments

4:20 – ‘House of Horrors’ Abortionist on Trial for Murder
Longtime Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell is currently being tried on eight charges arising from deaths at his facility, now know as the “House of Horrors.” When babies were born alive in Gosnell’s facility, according to a grand-jury report, Gosnell and his staffers would slit their throats or stab them in the neck with scissors to sever their spinal cords. Gosnell even kept aborted babies in jars, sometimes in the same freezers where employees kept their lunches. Anna Franzonello, staff attorney at Americans United for Life, is here to analyze the case.

4:40 – Chaplain Priest to Receive Medal of Honor
A week from today Fr. Emil Kapaun will receive the Medal of Honor from the President of the United States at the White House, nearly 60 years after he heroically gave his life in the Korean War. The Vatican is also considering him a possible candidate for Sainthood. And today, his life, service and hero’s death is the subject of an incredible new book, The Miracle of Fr. Kapaun. One of the most remarkable aspects of his story surrounds the atypical movement of support for both his sainthood cause and his Medal of Honor award.  The witnesses to both his sanctity and his bravery have come from non-Catholics, men of Jewish faith, Muslim faith and Protestant tradition, who served with Fr. Kapaun in battle or in the brutality of conditions where he drew his last breath – a prisoner of war camp. They have spent years petitioning the Vatican to elevate him to Sainthood because of what they witnessed on the battlefield. Author Roy Wenzl joins us.

5:00 –Kresta Comments

5:20 – Analyzing the Arguments: Prop 8 and DOMA
Last week the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case to overturn CA’s Prop 8 and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. Constitutional law professor Gerrard Bradley says no case in the Supreme Court’s history was more extensively briefed than these two.  Long gone are the days when advocates could saunter through a day or two of argument.  Measured by modern standards, however, these arguments were as thorough as any since Brown v. Board of Education.  The lawyers were at or near the top of their games.  The bench was hot.  The background American legal culture is saturated with scholarship on same-sex marriage. Professor Bradley takes us through the arguments that the Court heard last week.

5:40 – Johns Hopkins Denies Pro-Life Club, Equates Them to White Supremacists
On March 12th, a pro-life group at Johns Hopkins University, Voice for Life (VFL), was denied the right to become an official student club by the Student Government Association (SGA) during a student Senate meeting, after having been recommended for approval by the SGA Appointments and Evaluations Committee. "And this is why we don't approve groups like Voice for Life," one SGA member wrote, linking to an article about a white supremacist group at Towson University. VFL President Andrew Guernsey joins us.