University Tells Student to Remove Cross Necklace

Todd Starnes | Jul 02, 2013

 

Townhall.com

 

 

A Sonoma State University student has filed a religious accommodation request after she said she was ordered to remove her cross necklace because it might offend other students.

“It’s amazing in this day of diversity and tolerance on university campuses that a university official would engage in this type of obvious religious discrimination,” said Liberty Institute attorney Hiram Sasser.

The Liberty Institute is representing Audrey Jarvis, 19, a liberal arts major at the northern California university.

On June 27, Jarvis was working for the university’s Associated Students Productions at a student orientation fair for incoming freshmen. During the event, her supervisor directed her to remove the cross necklace.

Sasser said the supervisor told her that the chancellor had a policy against wearing religious items and further explained “that she could not wear her cross necklace because it might offend others, it might make incoming students feel unwelcome, or it might cause incoming students to feel that ASP was not an organization they should join.”

“My initial reaction was one of complete shock,” Jarvis told Fox News. “I was thrown for a loop.”
Jarvis said she is a devout Catholic, and she wears the cross as a symbol of her faith in Christ.
“I was offended because I believe as a Christian woman it is my prerogative to display my faith any way I like so long as it is not harming anyone else,” she said. “I was very hurt and felt as if the university’s mission statement -- which includes tolerance and inclusivity to all -- was violated.”
On a second encounter, her supervisor told her she should hide the cross under her shirt or remove it.
At that point, Jarvis became so upset she left her student worker job early.

Sasser, who is representing the college student, said the university should apologize for its actions.
“It’s unfortunate there are university officials out there who think that it’s okay to tell Christians to hide their faith -- but would cringe if somebody said the same thing about hiding someone’s pride in whatever political or cultural affiliation they may have,” he told Fox News.

He said the law is clear on the matter -- "state employees may wear crosses while they are performing their duties as long as the wearing does not interfere with the employees' duties or harm the employer's business interests."

University spokeswoman Susan Kashack confirmed to Fox News that the incident occurred and expressed extreme regret.

Read more at http://townhall.com/columnists/toddstarnes/2013/07/02/university-tells-student-to-remove-cross-necklace-n1632407?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

The White House Blinks on the Obamacare Employer Mandate

Businesses won't be required to cover their workers' insurance -- at least not until 2015.

David A. Graham

Jul 2 2013, 6:18 PM ET
The Atlantic

Reuters

With less than six months to go before the Affordable Care Act takes effect, the administration has decided not to implement a crucial element of the law for one year. The requirement that businesses provide insurance to their workers is being pushed back to 2015, Bloomberg News scoops:

Businesses won't be penalized next year if they don't provide workers health insurance after the Obama administration decided to delay a key requirement under its health-care law, two administration officials said.

The decision will come in regulatory guidance to be issued later this week. It addresses vehement complaints from employer groups about the administrative burden of reporting requirements, though it may also affect coverage provided to some workers.

Of course, it's the individual mandate to purchase insurance that has gotten the most attention and was the most disputed ground during the Supreme Court case challenging the law last year: Could the government force individuals to buy insurance or else pay a fee? The justices decided, ultimately, that it could -- but only if the fee was labeled as a tax. Ironically, though, the individual mandate isn't expected to cover that many Americans, since most of us have insurance through our employer, Medicare, or Medicaid.
That brings us to the employer mandate.

Read more at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/the-white-house-blinks-on-the-obamacare-employer-mandate/277497/

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - July 3, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on July 3

4:00 - Obamacare Employer Mandate Delayed to 2015 – Right After 2014 Midterm Elections
Businesses won't be penalized next year if they fail to provide workers health insurance after the Obama administration decided yesterday to delay a key requirement under its signature 2010 health care law. The government will postpone enforcement of the employer mandate until 2015. The decision pushes the issue past the 2014 midterm congressional elections, as Republicans have sought to make the health law a symbol of government overreach. Rob Muise, an attorney that has fought HHS Mandate cases, joins us to analyze this move. 

4:20 – Kresta Comments: Trust – Can a Society Survive Without It?Amid revolt by businesses, rising premiums, popular disapproval, and issues of religious liberty, the Obama administration has announced that the Obamacare employer mandate has been delayed by a year to 2015, two short months after the 2014 midterm elections. This begs the question of why a plan so hailed as the solution to healthcare in America would be postponed, now 5 years after passage. Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has apologized for telling Congress earlier this year that the National Security Agency does not collect data on millions of Americans, a response he now says was "clearly erroneous." We ask: “Can society survive without trust?

4:40 – Morsi Ousted as President in Egypt
Egypt’s military moved forcefully to seize power from President Mohamed Morsi on just hours ago, deploying tanks and troops in Cairo and other cities, restricting his travel and convening an emergency meeting of top civilian and religious leaders to devise an interim government and lay the groundwork for new elections. The government’s official English-language Web site, said the military had informed Mr. Morsi that he was no longer head of state. There was no word on Mr. Morsi’s whereabouts. The military’s actions came as enormous crowds of the president’s supporters and opponents filled the streets of the capital and soldiers were deployed in significant numbers to keep the spiraling political crisis from going out of complete control. Robert Spencer joins us.

5:00 – Immigration Bills Hotly Debated on Capitol Hill: What Does the Church Teach?
The immigration debate is shifting to the Republican-led House, where lawmakers have shown little appetite for the large-scale, comprehensive approach their Senate colleagues embraced last week. Most House Republicans insist that any attempt at comprehensive immigration legislation cannot offer a "special pathway to citizenship" before verifiable border security. Democrats have called that position a deal-breaker. We talk to Kevin Appleby, Director of the Office of Migration and Refugee Policy at the USCCB about what the Bishops have laid out as principles in this debate.

5:40 – Kresta Comments: Feedback Line Caller Says the Laity Can’t Fix the Problems in the Church – The Bishop Have to. Really? (tentative)

The Roe of Marriage

July 3, 2013 4:00 AM

 

Where do we go from the Supreme Court?

 

National Review Online                        

Maggie Gallagher

Maggie Gallagher is most recently the co-author, with John Corvino, of Debating Same-Sex Marriage, a book published by Oxford University Press whose time has certainly come. She talks about the future of the debate and the institution in culture and politics with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Are last week’s rulings on marriage as monumental, with the staying power, of Roe v. Wade?

MAGGIE GALLAGHER: What you are really asking is: Will we concede the legitimacy of Kennedy’s fatwa against us, or will we respond with a sustained opposition — legal, political, cultural, and of the moral imagination?

I don’t believe in inevitability, I believe in human freedom and our power to shape the future. So it depends on us. But certainly I believe, as I wrote in the Los Angeles Times, that the questions raised by marriage — deeply rooted in our conception of who we are as men and women, the meaning of sexuality and gender — cannot be put to rest by the power of five lawyers on however high a court.The cultural struggle I predicted in “Banned in Boston” is clearly playing out. Will they succeed in persuading us to accept the second-class status Kennedy lays out for us?

Not me, what about you?

LOPEZ: The argument that gay marriage isn’t “inevitable” got incredibly harder last week though, didn’t it? Even if the legal implications remain somewhat limited, as a cultural matter, how do you hold gay marriage back when it already is a reality in states?

GALLAGHER: The legal implications are vast. I think this is, in fact, Roe v. Wade. The majority on the Supreme Court has clearly accepted that our Founding Fathers guaranteed us all a right to gay marriage in our Constitution, and is just prudentially biding its time — probably two to three years at most — before a case with clear standing gets in Justice Kennedy’s hands.

Already Kennedy has refused to accept for review a case in Arizona limiting marriage benefits to married couples. A Michigan federal judge also ruled our Constitution requires giving marriage benefits to non-married same-sex partners.

I think we are now in the post-Roe phase. Will we accede to the Court’s right to rule our values on marriage or not? And of course into the ever-more-intense religious-freedom phase.

I don’t think gay marriage is inevitable. But if the Supreme Court imposes it, of course it will happen.
Inevitability is an excuse for refusing to engage in whatever fight you think matters. The future is never inevitable. We shape it. But of course in a fight between us and Supreme Court, the Court has a lot more power than you or I.

Read more at http://www.nationalreview.com/node/352629/print

Antonin Scalia, Bad Person

      

July 2, 2013

Elizabeth Scalia

First Things     

It was easy to miss but on June 30 the New York Post carried brief editorial remarks by Michael Goodwin that read:

Count me among those cheering the Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage. At least I was cheering until I read the part of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion where he claims the law he struck down was motivated by hate . . .[that] the law inflicts an “injury and indignity” on gay Americans and reflected a “bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group.” By extension of that logic, those who still oppose same-sex marriage are bigots.

Why yes, that’s precisely why Justice Antonin Scalia, in a dissent that is being called “intemperate,” “blistering,” “flaming,” and “dripping with contempt and sarcasm,” wrote:

In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. [It is to] “dis-parage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homo-sexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.

Scalia’s passionate opinions flow from his pen like lava, seemingly indiscriminate, but nevertheless finding every curve and crevice of what lies before them. Often referred to as the “most conservative” of the Supreme Court jurists, Scalia spends part of his Windsor dissent arguing in defense of what used to be considered a most “liberal” notion: that human beings have a right to express their point of view without fear of reprisal; a right to dissent from conventional wisdom; a right, even, to be wrong. It is a sentiment that free-thinkers (of even the recent past) would often express by quoting Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s summary of Voltaire’s thinking: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Kennedy’s opinion makes it clear that the days of defending the freedom of others to think and speak outside of the ever-narrowing corridors of what is permissible are numbered; the line of delineation he sketches out is stark, bare, and singular: there will be one (correct) thought or there will be Bad People.

What an illiberal notion!

Read more at http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/07/antonin-scalia-bad-person

"Meet Pope Francis" in 4 min, a fun cartoon about the Pontiff

BREAKING: USCCB Leads Coalition of Religious Leaders in Call for Religious Liberty

July 2, 2013 By Kathy Schiffer Leave a Comment (Edit)

By Kathy Schiffer, Ave Maria Radio

Vires in Numeris. The Latin phrase (English translation: Strength in Numbers) sounds biblical, but a quick word search failed to turn up any instances in Scripture; rather, it’s been used in music, in film, in a motorcycle parade.  More recently, the phrase has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity because it’s the motto engraved on the bitcoin.

And today, some 61 religious leaders, representing millions of Americans from many faith backgrounds, have banded together in defense of religious liberty. 

At 2:00 p.m. Tuesday, July 2, at the National Press Club, a group of national religious leaders and scholars released an open letter calling for religious freedom, in light of the finalized Health and Human Services (HHS) Mandate.

Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, representing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Russell D. Moore of the Ethical and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention are among 61 signatories on the letter, representing some 26 major denominations; 11 colleges, universities and institutes of higher education; and 16 nonprofit and concerned for-profit organizations and religious orders. 

In the letter, the leaders call upon HHS to expand conscience protections to cover any organization or individual that has religious or moral objections to covering, providing or enabling access to the mandated drugs and services.  They also ask Congress to take measures to prevent future breaches of religious freedom.

Here, in its entirety, is the text of the open letter:

Standing Together for Religious Freedom

An Open Letter to All Americans

We write as an informal and diverse group of religious leaders, theologians, lay practitioners and community servants. We believe the doctrines of our respective faiths require something of us beyond the walls of our churches, synagogues, temples, and other places of worship. Those faith convictions manifest themselves through our daily interactions among family, neighbors, strangers and institutions.

Further, we recognize the United States, at its best, is unique among the nations of the world when it defends the self-evident freedom of all people to exercise their faith according to the dictates of their consciences. This freedom contributes to the vibrancy of our nation. Unfortunately, this delicate liberty of conscience is under threat.tunately, this delicate liberty of conscience is under threat.

Through its contraceptive coverage mandate, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) continues to breach universal principles affirmed and protected by the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws. While the mandate is a specific offense, it represents a greater fundamental breach of conscience by the federal government. Very simply, HHS is forcing Citizen A, against his or her moral convictions, to purchase a product for Citizen B. The HHS policy is coercive and puts the administration in the position of defining–or casting aside–religious doctrine. This should trouble every American.

Many of the signatories on this letter do not hold doctrinal objections to the use of contraception. Yet we stand united in protest to this mandate, recognizing the encroachment on the conscience of our fellow citizens. Whether or not we agree with the particular conscientious objection is beside the point. HHS continues to deny many Americans the freedom to manifest their beliefs through practice and observance in their daily lives.

The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Free exercise includes the freedom to order one’s life, liberties and pursuits in accordance with his or her convictions. HHS breaches the free exercise clause and federal statutes (passed with broad bipartisan support) by selectively denying some Americans this constitutionally protected right.

Americans afford each other broad liberties with respect to lifestyle choices. However, the federal government has neither a compelling interest nor the appropriate authority to coerce one citizen to fund or facilitate specific lifestyle choices of another. If the federal government can force morally opposed individuals to purchase contraception or abortion-causing drugs and devices for a third party, what prevents this or future administrations from forcing other Americans to betray their deeply held convictions?

Therefore, we call upon HHS to, at a minimum, expand conscience protections under the mandate to cover any organization or individual that has religious or moral objections to covering, providing or enabling access to the mandated drugs and services. Further, because HHS claims to be acting on authority granted it by Congress, we ask Congress to consider how it might prevent such offenses from occurring in the future. Any policy that falls short of affirming full religious freedom protection for all Americans is unacceptable.

And here is a list of the signatories:

Most Rev. William E. Lori

Archbishop of Baltimore
Chairman
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Ad Hoc Committee for Religious LibertyRussell D. Moore, Ph.D.
President
Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of
the Southern Baptist Convention

Leith Anderson
President
National Association of Evangelicals

Bishop Andrew
Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church of America

John Ashmen
President
Association of Gospel Rescue Missions

Bishop Gary E. Stevenson
Presiding Bishop
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Randall A. Bach
President
Open Bible Churches

The Most Rev. Craig W. Bates
Patriarch
International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church

Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D.
Professor of Government
Patrick Henry College

A.D. Beacham, Jr., Th.M.
Presiding Bishop
International Pentecostal Holiness Church

Dr. Gary M. Benedict
President
The Christian and Missionary Alliance, U.S.

J. Brian Benestad, Ph.D
Department of Theology
Assumption College

The Rev. Roger Boucher
Commander, US Navy (ret)
Chaplain at College of St. Mary Magdalen

Bishop John F. Bradosky
North American Lutheran Church

Anuttama Dasa
Minister of Communications
Governing Body Commissioner, Vice Chair
International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)

Most Revd Robert Duncan
Archbishop
Anglican Church in North America

Rev. Jim Eschenbrenner
Executive Pastor
Christian Union

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez
President
National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
Hispanic Evangelical Association

Rev. Dr . Matthew C. Harrison
President
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Dr. William J. Hamel
President
Evangelical Free Church

Bishop Bruce D. Hill
Evangelical Congregational Church

John Hopler
Director
Great Commission Churches

Bill Hossler
President
Missionary Church, Inc.

Clyde M. Hughes               
Bishop/General Overseer
International Pentecostal Church of Christ

Dr. Jeffrey Jeremiah
Stated Clerk
Evangelical Presbyterian Church

Jo Anne Lyon
General Superintendent
The Wesleyan Church

Dr. George O. Wood
General Superintendent
Assemblies of God

Alan Robinson
National Director
Brethren in Christ Church, U.S.

Joseph Tkach
President
Grace Communion International

Most Reverend Nicholas J. Samra
Bishop of Newton
Melkite Greek Catholic Church

Rev. Susan Taylor
National Public Affairs Director
Church of Scientology

Anne Hendershott, Ph.D.
Daniel R. Kempton, Ph.D.
Patrick Lee, Ph.D.
Franciscan University of Steubenville

Assist. Prof. Richard S. Meloche, Ph.D.
Department of Philosophy & Theology
St. Gregory’s University

Sister Jane Marie Klein
Chairperson of the Board
Franciscan Alliance, Inc.

Richard Land, D.Phil. 
President
Southern Evangelical Seminary

Marc A. LePain
Professor of Theology
Assumption College

Fr. Sean O. Sheridan, TOR
President
Franciscan University of Steubenville

Tom Minnery
Senior Vice President
Focus on the Family

Greg Mitchell
President
The Mitchell Firm

David Nammo
Executive Director & CEO
Christian Legal Society

Rocky Rocholl
President
Fellowship of Evangelical Churches

Patrick J. Reilly
President
The Cardinal Newman Society

Dr. William Riordan
Director of Undergraduate Theology
Ave Maria University

Terri Marsh, J.D., Ph.D.
President
Human Rights Law Firm

Brent McBurney
President & CEO
Advocates International

Barbara Samuels
Catholics for Freedom of Religion

Steven A. Long, Ph.D
Professor of Theology
Ave Maria University 

Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Schirrmacher, and
Prof. Dr. Christof Sauer
Executive Directors
International Institute for Religious Freedom

Alan Sears
President
Alliance Defending Freedom

Matt Smith
President
Catholic Advocate

David Stevens, MD, MA 
CEO
Christian Medical Association

Rabbi Aryeh Spero
President
Caucus for America

Craig Steven Titus, S.T.D./Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Director of Integrative Studies
Institute for the Psychological Sciences

Mark Tooley
President
Institute on Religion and Democracy

Ryan Topping, Ph.D.
Fellow
Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

Sister Margaret Regina Halloran, l.s.p.
Provincial Superior, Brooklyn Province

Sister Maria Christine Lynch, l.s.p.
Provincial Superior, Chicago Province

Sister Loraine Marie Clare Maguire, l.s.p.
Provincial Superior, Baltimore Province
Little Sisters of the Poor

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - July 2, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on July 2

4:00 – Kresta Comments

4:20 – State Restrictions on Abortion: Where Do They End Up?
Should Texas legislators get another bill to ban late-term abortions to the floor of the state Senate, pro-abortion lawmaker Wendy Davis says she will not filibuster the bill a second time. The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks and hold abortion clinics accountable by making them meet basic health and safety standards that have closed facilities in other states that are unable to comply. The bill also requires all abortion clinics to meet the same health and safety regulations as an ambulatory surgical center, requires a doctor providing abortions to secure admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, and lastly, requires a doctor to personally administer the abortion-inducing drugs to the patient. Given the high publicity of this legislation, we talk to pro-life attorney Clarke Forsythe about what happens to the many state pro-life bills that are hung up in the courts. 

4:40 – An Evangelical View of Immigration Reform
As bills for comprehensive immigration reform continues to make its way in different versions on Capitol Hill, Kelly Monfor Kullberg is here to give us an Evangelical view of this legislation. In an open letter to Congress she recently wrote, “The U.S. Senate now has the opportunity to rebuild confidence that citizens have lost concerning the competence of our legislative branch. Please first enforce existing laws, secure our borders and end on-going illegal immigration.  This will go a long way towards reversing public cynicism and distrust.  Then, with the growing confidence of the American people, Congress and citizens can work together to address the challenges of immigration in the context of our calling to nurture the great story of America’s heritage and future.” ‘She expands on this letter.

5:00 – Forgiving and Moving On After Personal Tragedy
Amy O’Rourke, is a mother of four and a member of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Fenton, MI. She is also the wife police officer Patrick O’Rourke who was killed late last year after being shot during a standoff late at a home in West Bloomfield, MI. The 39-year-old’s funeral was attended by thousands of friends, family and fellow force members. Amy joins us again to talk about forgiveness, recovery and being a widowed mother.

The Supreme Court’s Misuse of Children to Justify Same-Sex Marriage

July 2, 2013

by Robert R. Reilly
Crisis Magazine

Photo credit: Reuters/photo by Jonathan Alcorn 2012

 

Of all the misconceived nonsense in the recent Windsor v. United States ruling, perhaps the most egregious was Justice Anthony Kennedy’s insinuation that “the children made me do it.” Windsor declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional because it defined marriage as being between one man and one woman. Why was DOMA a problem for children? Justice Kennedy said that by denying same-sex couples legitimacy, DOMA “humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples.” The Act “makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Thus Justice Kennedy portrays himself as riding to the children’s rescue.
 

This strategy is reminiscent of President Barack Obama’s misuse of the military to justify same-sex “marriage.” First, he forced the repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell” on the reluctant military, and then used that very same military as the excuse for endorsing homosexual “marriage,” as if it were the military asking for it. Those poor Marines in the foxholes of Afghanistan were just aching to marry each other, and Obama comes to their rescue. He shamelessly proclaimed: “When I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that “don’t ask don’t tell” is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

This was completely risible, but one has to admire the audacity of his sophistical argument, as we do Justice Kennedy’s similar one. His goes like this: First, allow same-sex couples to adopt children, but then do not blame the humiliation of the children on the situation into which they have been placed, through no fault of their own, but upon the people who objected to it in the first place. Do not fault those who created the problem through the fabrication of faux “marriage”; fault those who warned that the fabrication of faux “marriage,” along with attendant adoptions, would create this problem. First, exploit children by placing them in this situation, and then exploit them again in order to justify it. Voilà! A fully formed faux family.

If children had their rights, there would be no such “families” in which to place them. The magnitude of the injustice involved in the redefinition of marriage comes most clearly into view in regard to children, to whom justice is also owed. As Professor Seana Sugrue writes, “the ability of same-sex couples to be parents depends crucially upon the state declaring that they possess such rights, and by extinguishing or redefining the rights of biological parents. With the rise of same-sex marriage, the obligations parents owed to their biological children are reduced to mere convention. This is true for everyone. Parents come to owe obligations to their children not because they are parents, but because they choose to be parents.” What is owed to children by right becomes optional by convention. This is a staggering loss for them.

Read more at http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-supreme-courts-misuse-of-children-to-justify-same-sex-marriage?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29

 

The views expressed by the authors and editorial staff are not necessarily the views of
Sophia Institute, Holy Spirit College, or the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.

By Robert R. Reilly

Robert R. Reilly is the author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind (ISI Books). He is writing a book on the natural law argument against homosexual marriage for Ignatius Press.

Carter criticizes Catholics; Kresta corrects the confusion

By Kathy Schiffer

Ave Maria Radio

Muslims and Catholics discriminate against women?

That was the message of former President Jimmy Carter, speaking June 28 at an international conference on women and religion.  Carter expressed concern that some religions—specifically Islam and Catholicism—continue to unfairly suppress women’s rights. 

The former president cited two examples of what he considered attitudes of male superiority, as enforced by religious authorities:

1.     Some African cultures’ mutilation of the genitalia of young girls, and

2.     The Catholic Church’s practice of banning women from the priesthood

These attitudes, Carter warned, are theologically indefensible and contribute to an environment in which political leaders passively accept violence against women, sex-trafficking, and inequality in the workplace.

Speaking at the Carter Center, the human rights organization he founded in 1982 after leaving the White House, Carter said:

“There is a great aversion among men leaders and some women leaders to admit that this is something that exists, that it’s serious and that it’s troubling and should be addressed courageously.”

Dr. Susan Berry, writing on Breitbart.com, explained Carter’s judgment against adherents of both Islam and Christianity:

Carter said widespread oppression of women is found in both nations dominated by Islam as well as western countries where Christianity is the primary cultural influence.

Referring to St. Paul and his writings, Carter said, “Paul said there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, slaves or masters, man or woman.” However, he noted “gross abuses of religious texts in the Koran and in the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. Singular verses can be extracted and extorted to assert the singular dominance of men.”

Carter was especially critical of the Roman Catholic Church whose leaders established the male-only priesthood. He noted that the early Christian churches included leaders of both sexes.

Carter and his wife Rosalynn recently separated from the Southern Baptist Church, noting its ban on ordaining women or allowing them to serve as deacons. The couple’s new independent Baptist church has both male and female pastors and divides deaconships equally between men and women.

Al Kresta, CEO of Ave Maria Communications and host of “Kresta in the Afternoon”, took exception with President Carter’s charges.  

Kresta explained how Carter had gotten it wrong, and how his misunderstanding of Catholic theology was reflected in his June 28 remarks.  Kresta explained:

Jimmy Carter represents an earlier generation of Southern Baptists that didn't understand or try to understand Catholic distinctives. He doesn't understand that the Catholic theology of priesthood is qualitatively different from Protestant conceptions of an ordained minister.

Many Catholics respect Protestant denominations' right to ordain women, since they do not act in persona Christi in the way that a Catholic priest does.

Carter is in all likelihood clueless on this point. He assumes that the Catholic reservation of the ordained priesthood to males is just one more example of men lording it over women—which is a predicted consequence of the Fall of Adam and Eve.  He tries to reduce St. Paul's complex teaching on the role relationships between men and women to a single verse: Galatians 3:28; and he doesn't even reference the puzzling Pauline remarks in 1 Tim 3 or Eph 5 which might run counter to his opinion.

He is so quick to identify with the "other" that he regularly dismisses or chastises people who would be glad to work with him.  The Catholic Church is a natural ally of his on the issues of poverty, world debt relief, AIDS ministry, homelessness, Middle East peace and so on.  For him to say Catholicism and Islam in the same breath is careless. The first mass educator of women was the Catholic Church. The first religious tradition to set up communities controlled by women was the Catholic Church, through its religious orders. The Catholic understanding of Mary entitles her to be called the first disciple, the representative daughter of Sion and the most perfected human being.

President Carter's big problem seems to be a failure to understand who his friends are.  Remember the Shah and Brezhnev? Carter rejected his fellow evangelicals, calling them belligerent—and then cozied up to the Shah and Brezhnev. Evangelicals who had voted for him in 1976 as the "born again" president went over to Reagan in 1980, and they've never gone back to the Democrats.  Had Carter not abandoned his pro-life position as governor of Georgia, he might have changed the history of American politics.

Catholic Priest Executed as Foreign Arms Flood into Syria

Note: we already posted a story on the death of this monk last week, but this article includes more photos, a video of a severely damaged church, and links to articles about other similar atrocities.

Syria Report

On Sunday, June 23, Syrian Catholic priest François Murad was murdered in the locality of Gassanieh, northern Syria, according to a statement from the Custody of the Holy Land sent to the Fides Agency.
Murad (49), having led a religious life and studied in Palestine, was ordained a priest and set about building a monastery in Gassanieh, Idlib.
Murad was targeted by armed militants, while he was residing at the monastery, which was dedicated to Saint Simon Stylite.
Citing the head of all Franciscans in the Holy Land, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Vatican News Agency said that Father Murad recently chose a monastic way of life and resorted to the monastery, with Franciscan Friars, a few weeks earlier.
“The world must know that the support of gunmen by the west is helping extremists in killing Syrians”, Pizzaballa said, adding that, “with such stances, not a single Christian will remain in the East.”



According to local sources, the monastery was raided by gunmen, who proceeded to execute François Murad, loot and burn the building. Four-thousand people are reported to have since fled the area.
Christians in Syria are being increasing targeted by sectarian armed groups in Syria, of which there are between several hundred and over a thousand.

In May, a Christian village located in Homs countryside, was overrun by armed men and it’s entire population massacred.

Two Christian bishops who were kidnapped by Chechen gunmen in Aleppo earlier this year, are still missing.

In April, the remaining Christians in Deir el-Zour fled, the church having being blown up by militants. Last week, militants massacred dozens of villagers in the province’s town of Hatla. Since then, summary executions and sectarian house-to-house raids have taken place.

Sectarian bloodshed has increased following the Syrian army’s securing of the strategic Homs city of al-Qusayr earlier this month. Despite the overt sectarianism of armed groups in Syria, America and it’s allies have pledged to continue the transfer of weapons in an effort to turn the tide of the conflict. Advanced weapons have since been spotted in the hands of extremists militants.

Damaged church. Al-Qusayr previously had a significant Christian population.

“The true religion of our prophet Mohamed will be victorious over tyrants.”

Many thanks to Alaa Ebrahim for al-Qusayr photography.

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - July 1, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on July 1

4:00 – Vatican Bank Officials Resign on Heels of Msgr. Nunzio Scarano Arrest for Money Laundering
In the latest sign of a shakeup at the troubled Institute for the Works of Religion, better known as the Vatican bank, a statement today said the bank's leadership team has resigned in order "to increase the pace" of a "transformation" toward greater transparency and compliance with anti-money-laundering norms. This on the heels of Msgr. Nunzio Scarano, an official of the Vatican Bank being arrested on charges of attempting to bring €20 million (about $26 million) into Italy illegally. Vatican reporter John Allen joins us on these stories as well as the Patrizio Poggi affair.

4:20 – Kresta Comments: Calumny and Sins of the Tongue

4:40 – The Witness of the Church after DOMA and Prop 8
Following the decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down part of the Defense of Marriage Act and to decline ruling on the merits of a challenge to California’s Proposition 8, Detroit’s Archbishop Allen Vigneron said this: “The well-being of our society, our nation, and our families is intimately linked to the institution of marriage. These decisions by the United States Supreme Court will make significantly more difficult our work of upholding the truth that marriage is a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman. Such decisions, made by any civic authority, do not serve the common good.” We talk to the Archbishop about the Church’s witness to marriage.

5:00 – Has a gay pedophile prostitution ring been discovered at the Vatican? (8 things you need to know)
A few days ago, the Catholic blogosphere began buzzing with the sensational charge that a prostitution ring involving homosexual pedophiles had been discovered at the Vatican. Is this true? Or is it one more case of people running amok with rumors? Here are 8 things you need to know from Jimmy Akin.

5:20 - Direct to My Desk – Jimmy Carter, Calumny, Islam and more

Priest Arrested for 'Slander' Over 'Gay Sex Ring' at Vatican

Running to the nearest microphone to report sensational stories isn't always the best idea. As the Italian police have now determined it's legally called "slander" and can land you in jail. Catholics call it "calumny" and it can land you in confession.

By Anugrah Kumar , Christian Post Contributor

July 1, 2013|10:34 am

 

A convicted pedophile priest, who named 20 other Catholic priests saying they used underage rent-boys for sex and pointed to an underage gay prostitution ring inside the Holy Roman Church, has been arrested for "making up" the allegations.

 

Don Patrizio Poggi, who spent five years in prison for sexually abusing underage boys at his parish on the outskirts of Rome, was arrested Friday, The Telegraph reported.

 

Italian prosecutors said the claims of the 46-year-old priest were "untrue or based on mere hearsay," and that he had personal enmity with some of the clerics he named. They also charged him with an attempt to coach possible victims to support his claims.

 

"Poggi conceived and put into action a slanderous plan, presenting circumstances that were false," prosecutors were quoted as saying. Poggi was hoping to be reinstate after he finished his prison sentence, but the Vatican did not.

Poggi, former priest of the San Filippo Neri church in Rome, had alleged a former Carabinieri police officer hired boys for clergymen, according to International Business Times. The priest said he wanted to "protect the Holy Church and the Christian community."

Read more here. 

Christians join protests in Egypt

2013-07-01 Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) In Egypt, protesters stormed the Cairo headquarters of President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group Monday morning, a day after the largest protests the nation has seen since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak two years ago.

Demonstrators are calling on the President to step down, and for new elections to be held. Many Christians have joined the protests, saying discrimination and violence against minority faiths have increased since Morsi took office.“Most of the Christians do not want the president,” said , Father Rafic Greiche, the spokesman for the Greek Melkite Catholic Church in Egypt “We have to be clear about this.”

“Most of the Christians have felt during this year that nothing of his promises toward the Christians has been implemented,” Father Greiche told Vatican Radio. “ And it is very important to know that this year nearly every day we have a sectarian problem: Burning churches, deporting people, and this big attack on the Copt Orthodox cathedral that happened two months ago.”Listen to the full interview by Charles Collins with Fr. Rafic Greiche:

Hobby Lobby moves forward in seeking mandate reprieve

Denver, Colo., Jun 28, 2013 / 08:48 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A federal appeals court has paved the way for arts-and-crafts retailer Hobby Lobby to pursue an injunction that would block devastating fines while it continues its lawsuit against the federal contraception mandate.

“Today marks a milestone in Hobby Lobby’s fight for religious liberty,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is defending Hobby Lobby, in a June 27 press release.


Hobby Lobby. Courtesy of the Becket Fund.

“This is a tremendous victory not only for the Green family and for their business, but also for many other religious business owners who should not have to forfeit their faith to make a living.”

Since founding Hobby Lobby in an Oklahoma City garage in 1972, the Green family has seen its company grow to include more than 500 stores in over 40 states.

The family is among more than 200 plaintiffs – including for-profit businesses, non-profit charities, individuals and states – that have filed lawsuits challenging the federal contraception mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The mandate requires employers to cover health insurance plans covering contraception, sterilization and some drugs that could cause early abortions, even if the provision of these products violates the employer’s deeply-held religious beliefs.

Hobby Lobby’s owners do not object to the provision of contraceptives, which they already cover in their plan. However, they have deep religious objections to the “morning-after” and “week-after” pills which are also included in the required coverage and may cause early abortions by destroying the life of an already-created human embryo.

“It is by God’s grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has endured,” said David Green, founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby on his case. “Therefore we seek to honor God by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles.”

The federal government has contended that the owners of “secular, for-profit” companies cannot exercise freedom of religion in their business decisions.

Read more at http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/hobby-lobby-moves-forward-in-seeking-mandate-reprieve/

In the Quiet of Capitol Hill

In contemplation, we might make sense of this mess we’re wedded to.         

July 1, 2013 12:00 AM

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

Candlelight vigil a the U.S. Capitol on June 22

 

 

 

Kathryn Jean Lopez

Washington, D.C. — The scene was appealing to an amateur photographer who had simply been going for a walk but instead settled in on the lawn for the long haul. We were gathering on a grassy patch on the U.S. Capitol’s grounds. As it happened, we were about equidistant from the Senate floor and from the Supreme Court. The first to arrive were Dominican friars and religious sisters in full habit. Monks and nuns out of another century had to be the double-take observation for anyone passing by.

In truth, they were young — the Dominicans’ Province of St. Joseph in the eastern U.S. has 18 men entering as novices this summer — and engaged. They were here to lead about 200 families and young people in evening prayer outside the Capitol.

The occasion for the gathering was the ongoing threats to religious liberty in the United States. The prayer vigil on Saturday evening was one of the opening acts of the Fortnight for Freedom, the second annual two-week period of prayer, fasting, and education on behalf of religious liberty, led by Catholic bishops but with ecumenical participation and implications.

The next morning, at Sunday Mass, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore called the current moment “a perfect storm.” He observed that “fewer people are practicing their faith, while attacks on religion and on people of faith are accelerating, whether in the media or on college campuses or in social gatherings” and so on.

This is happening here at home, where what was once a precious, fundamental liberty from which others flow has become a pawn of sexual-revolutionary ideology and politics, even if these are sometimes motivated by the best of intentions. And it is happening in Syria, where a monk was killed during an attack on a Franciscan monastery just the other day. We must be vigilant about these threats wherever they creep in; it’s a matter of stewardship, human dignity, and gratitude.

“Segments of our government,” Archbishop Lori said, “more and more are saying to us: You can worship however you wish but when you serve the needs of the poor or educate young people, you need to check certain parts of your faith at the door.”

The issue is complicated, as he said, by the fact that even many of the people who profess to be religious — Catholics most certainly among them — don’t see what he sees, in part because of a privatized view of religious faith we’ve internalized since somewhere around the time Senator John F. Kennedy was assuring Protestant clergymen that his Catholicism wouldn’t influence his presidency.

“The fracturing of the family combined with the sexual revolution has put a great many people in the West on a collision course with certain fundamental teachings of the Christian faith,” Mary Eberstadt writes in her important book How the West Really Lost God, so we critically need an understanding of the current nexus of history involving marriage, “women’s health” claims, and the finalization on Friday of the Department of Health and Human Services’ abortion-drug, contraception, and sterilization mandate. “The unprecedented proliferation of weakened natural families and nontraditional quasi-families has left a great many individuals resistant as they never were before to fundamental features of the Christian code,” Eberstadt observes.

Read more at http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352422/quiet-capitol-hill-kathryn-jean-lopez


— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a director of Catholic Voices USA. This column is based on one available exclusively through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.