Kresta in the Afternoon - October 24, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on October 24
 
4:00 – Kresta Comments - Al talks about Oprah and atheists, Miss World, and some stark admissions from the Catholic Theological Society
 
4:20 – Down Syndrome Awareness Month: A Personal Witness
With October being Down Syndrome Awareness Month, a celebration of these precious lives comes in the form of a new novel, The Things Lily Knew, by Sherry Boas. Boas, a Catholic stay-at-home mother of four adopted children, including a daughter with Down syndrome, was inspired to begin the story of Lily from her own family’s experiences and from imagining her daughter’s future. Sherry is with us to share her story.

5:00 - Kresta Comments - Al talks about Oprah and atheists, Miss World, and some stark admissions from the Catholic Theological Society

5:20 - Transforming Yourself Into a Dynamic Catholic
When 70% of Catholics don’t go to church on Sunday, isn’t it time someone did
something? We think so and the people at Dynamic Catholic do too. The tide is going out on Catholicism in America. Catholics are leaving the Church at an alarming rate, and disengagement among those who remain is staggeringly high. Growing numbers of Catholics are disillusioned, questioning their faith, and filled with doubts about the modern relevance of Catholicism. Dwindling Mass attendance, scarcity of vocations, and Catholic school closures are just a few of the signs. The sad truth is that most Catholics have never really been shown the genius of Catholicism and how it could animate their lives. At The Dynamic Catholic Institute they believe that millions of ordinary Catholics want to be involved in a movement that provides a game-changing strategy for the Church today. They are passionate about finding a way for every Catholic to play a role in the great renewal that everyone knows the Catholic Church desperately needs. Vice-President Allen Hunt joins us.

"Why is it that no Muslim group has ever been created to condemn...terrorists who kill themselves to become 'martyrs for Islam'?"

 Jihad Watch
Posted by Robert
on October 22, 2013 12:44 PM


This article makes a great many true and accurate observations. After detailing a number of recent jihad attacks, the author says, "The West is deluding itself when it says that 'this is not the real Islam.' Indeed, what is the real Islam? Since terrorists and Salafists say they are Muslims and acting in favour of Islam, only a violent Islam has taken central stage."

He asks: "why is it that these masses of moderates never protest? Why is it that no Muslim association or group has ever been created to condemn Salafist violence and terrorists who kill themselves to become 'martyrs for Islam'?

But he does so in a very apologetic and hesitant way, going on to affirm his commitment to a "dialogue" that has in every instance proved spurious and chimerical, and saying: "I just want to make sure that people in Italy will not come to accept what Domenico Quirico, La Stampa envoy to Syria, said. Held captive for months by Islamic guerrillas, he wrote, 'We refuse to realise that moderate Islam does not exist, that the Arab Spring is over and that its new phase involves an Islamist and jihadist plan to build the Great Islamic Caliphate, a political plan that is being implemented starting in Syria with weapons, armies, and money.'"

Why does he not want people in Italy to accept that? What if it's true? Is he really doing a favor to the people of Italy (or anywhere else) or furthering any genuine "dialogue" by pretending that things are not as they are?

"Anti-Christian violence and the silence of 'moderate' Muslims," by Piero Gheddo for Asia News, October 22 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Milan (AsiaNews) - An Italian man, who recently came back from the Philippines, told me that on the big island of Mindanao, hundreds of extremists came at night from the island's interior and from smaller islands to attack a suburb of the city of Zamboanga, looting and burning houses and huts. They retreated taking dozens of hostages, leaving behind dead and wounded victims. The Italian said that targeted killings and kidnappings are frequent, but perhaps this is the first time that such a large-scale attack on Christians was carried out. Fear of new attacks has spread and nothing will be as before. The government is bound to send in the army and more fighting, revenge attacks and destruction are to be expected. Those who can have fled to other parts of the country, as people's lives and the economy are on hold. From Gulf countries, money is being sent to ulemas, mosques and Qur'anic schools to train young people to fight and accept to become "martyrs for Islam" against the Christian state. Salafists want an autonomous region for the Muslim minority on the island of Mindanao, which would join Malaya and Malaysian Borneo to form a single Islamic state.

All this does not make its way into front-page news, and yet there is more. Three days ago, an attack was carried out against a Christian wedding in Giza, in southern Cairo, that left four people dead and 18 wounded according to the latest report.
 

Read the rest at:  http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/why-is-it-that-these-masses-of-moderates-never-protest-why-is-it-that-no-muslim-association-or-group.html

Commentary: The Eugenics Legacy of the Nobelist Who Fathered IVF

An inventor of the technology that led to the first test-tube baby was an active member of Britain’s Eugenics Society

ByOsagie K. Obasogie

Scientific American

 

Human embryos undergoing development in vitro.
 Image: Wikimedia Commons

Robert G. Edwards might not be a household name, but the innovation he pioneered along with Patrick Steptoe certainly is. In vitro fertilization (IVF), the process whereby human eggs are fertilized outside of the body and the resulting embryos implanted in a woman's womb, led to the 1978 birth of Louise Brown—the world's first "test tube baby." To date, an estimated five million children worldwide have been born using this innovation. Edwards received the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this remarkable achievement.

Edwards’s passing earlier this year prompted an outpouring of praise. He has been widely described as a maverick researcher disinterested in personal recognition who simply wanted to give babies to those who couldn’t make them on their own. The New York Times quoted Edwards’s former collaborator, Barry Bavister, as saying “Dr. Edwards’s motivation—his passion, in fact—was not fame or fortune but rather helping infertile women.” Bavister continued, “He believed with all his heart that it was the right thing to do.”

But Edwards’s views on the technology he created and the uses to which it should be put may be more complicated than this portrayal. One detail omitted from the obituaries published around the world was that Edwards was a member in good standing of the Eugenics Society in Britain for much of his career. Recently uncovered documents show that Edwards served on the organization’s Council—its leadership body—as a trustee on three separate occasions: from 1968 to 1970, 1971 to 1973 and once again from 1995 to 1997 after the group euphemistically renamed itself "The Galton Institute" for the founder of the eugenics movement, Francis Galton. As we consider Edwards’s legacy in light of his recent passing, it is important to think critically about the relationship between Edwards’s development of IVF and his participation in an organization that was dedicated to promoting one of the most dangerous ideas in human history: that science should be used to control human reproduction in order to breed preferred types of people.

‘Father of IVF’ Edwards, with Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby

Coined by Galton in the late 1800s to mean "well-born," eugenics became a dominant aspect of Western intellectual life and social policy during the first half of the 20th century. It started with the seemingly simple proposition that one's social position is rooted in heritable qualities of character and intellect.

Eugenicists of that era also believed that people with what they considered the least desirable traits tend to have the most children, precipitating what they saw as an inevitable decline in a society’s intellectual and physical vigor. Taking their cue from livestock breeders, eugenicists argued that socially disadvantageous characteristics could be bred out of human populations through policies that limited the reproduction of "the unfit"—the "feebleminded," the poor and the weak.

Read the rest here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eugenic-legacy-nobel-ivf

The opposite faith policies of two presidents, both unprecedented

              Reagan went out of his way to promote religious freedom while Obama works to suppress it

By Shafer Parker
The Christians
Oct 22, 2013

Reagan and Gorbachev: At one point the former set out to convert the latter

                           

Americans will forever argue over the part religion played in the founding of their nation, but it cannot be denied that they have turned to God in times of trial. “In God we trust,” for example, became the official motto of the United States in 1956 at the height of the Cold War. All the same, they defend religious freedom, including the freedom not to believe.

Thus when president Ronald Reagan actively promoted religious freedom in the former Soviet Union during his several summits with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he was well within the parameters established by his predecessors in office.

Reverend Ron reaches out

Less known, and only recently revealed, is that Reagan went further and sought in a private meeting to convert Gorbachev away from atheism, if not quite to Christianity. That was unprecedented. The story of Reagan’s evangelistic efforts appeared in James Mann’s 2009 book The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War. Mann based the story of Reagan’s evangelism on declassified notes taken by two Reagan aides – now available for viewing at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.

Obama and Pope Benedict: Fifty documented
administration attacks on Judeo-Christianity.

In an excerpt reprinted in the Wall Street Journal, Mann reported that at the fourth summit with the Russians, Reagan, in a private meeting with Gorbachev, turned a discussion about human rights into a talk about religion. He began by stating that what he was about to say had to be kept secret, and that if any portion of their discussion got out, he “would deny he had said anything about it.”

After some preliminary discussion of religious freedom, Reagan went into full evangelist mode, telling Gorbachev a story about the battlefield conversion of a Russian soldier in the Second World War, and then mentioning that his son, Ron, was also an atheist. It was his idea, the president said, to serve his son a gourmet dinner and then “ask him if he believed there was a cook.” Gorbachev was non-reactive.

President Obama Slaps Down Faith

Contrast that with President Barack Obama. Instead of defending religious freedom internationally, he has attacked the principle in his own country, with the result that over 60 lawsuits have been filed against the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), by hospitals, charities, religious colleges, and other for-profit institutions, because it forces Christian employers and caregivers to violate their consciences over contraception and abortion.

 - See more at: http://thechristians.com/?q=node/761&utm_source=The+Christians+Book+Buyers&utm_campaign=7fd0c830b6-TCH-Issue0139-BB&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e2d8bf6d30-7fd0c830b6-57142977#sthash.vV5zybQc.dpuf

Slavery is back – with 30 million victims worldwide

The work of past Christians must be renewed as the world returns to its old ways

By Steve Weatherbe
The Christians
Oct 22, 2013

A nine-year-old slave girl in India, whose whole family belongs to a brick maker and works seven days a week.

                           The media spotlight was turned briefly on slavery last week by the year-old Walking Free Foundation. Its first report, The Global Slavery Index 2013, turns old ground already ploughed by the U.S. State Department and the International Labor Organization (ILO) while drawing headlines with the highest yet estimate of slaves worldwide – 30 million, equivalent to the population of Canada.

The brainchild of Australian mining tycoon Andrew Forrest, the report points to developing countries such as India, Nigeria and tiny Mauritania, where as many as 160,000 live in hereditary bondage, but it does not ignore slavery in the U.S. and other developed countries. It does miss the work being done by many Christian organizations, such as the evangelical Protestant International Justice Mission and the Coalition of Catholic Organizations Against Human Trafficking.

India has the most

Though people now associate modern slavery with the sex trade and forced marriages, the ILO estimates only about a third of its victims suffer that fate. It estimates that 44 percent of slaves have actually been bought and sold. Over half are hereditary or bonded into servitude for debts, most often in India, which has half the world’s slaves according to the Walk Free Foundation’s report – as many as 14.7 million.

China comes next in absolute numbers, with as many as 3.1 million. In per capita terms, Haiti has more than anyone except Mauritania, and Pakistan comes third in both lists, with up to 2.2 million. Out of 160 countries covered by the report, the United States comes 134th on a per capita scale, with 63,000 slaves or forced laborers, while Canada comes 144 with an estimated 6,200.

Trafficked for organ transplants

While China has long been reported to be harvesting body parts for transplants from its political prisoners, Britain has just reported its first known case: a young girl from Somalia. In Canada and the U.S. women and girls are more commonly smuggled in to work as domestic servants, prostitutes or second or third wives, while male slaves are usually forced laborers – a return to practices of the 18th and 19th centuries, when slavery was still legal in both countries.

- See more at: http://thechristians.com/?q=node/762&utm_source=The+Christians+Book+Buyers&utm_campaign=7fd0c830b6-TCH-Issue0139-BB&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e2d8bf6d30-7fd0c830b6-57142977#sthash.MirQtVUm.dpuf

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - October 23, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on October 23

 

4:00 - Direct to My Desk

 

5:00 - Common Core and Catholics

We have received an overwhelming amount of e-mails, letters, phone calls, columns, press releases, articles and more regarding the Common Core Curriculum. Today we delve into it with Dan Guernsey, headmaster at the Donohue Academy and serves on the board of the National Association of Private Catholic and Independent Schools, (NAPCIS), which provides consulting and accreditation services for more than 150 independent Catholic schools across the nation

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - October 22, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on October 22

4:00 – The New Evangelization: What It Is and How It Affects the Life of Every Catholic – Continued Conversation From Last Week
"No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples."-- Blessed John Paul II. With the encouragement of Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, discover a renewed urgency and growing enthusiasm for sharing the Gospel with those in your life, both non-believers and those who are no longer practicing their faith. In The Urgency of the New Evangelization: Answering the Call, Ralph Martin explains: It's not just a churchy buzzword, It's not just for priests and missionaries to carry out, YOU and every individual Catholic play a role, it is literally a matter of life or death for everyone in your life, And… it's not as hard as you think. Ralph joins us to continue a conversation we started last week.

5:00 - Graphic Images: An Apologia – Their History and Role in the Pro-Life Movement
The Nazi Holocaust ended nearly seventy years ago. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of the systematic extermination of European Jews, there are those who deny that these atrocities actually occurred. Much, if not all, of such denial is motivated by a politically or philosophically based anti-Semitism. One of the most persuasive rebuttals to Holocaust denial is the photographic record of its victims. This record, both still photos and film, was used to great effect by the prosecutors during the Nuremberg trials. They are often graphic and hard to look at, but they are real. They show something that is real. Why not the same for the reality of abortion? Dr. Monica Miller offers an apologia for graphic images of abortion.

Faith schools may lose the right to teach religion from their own perspective and be forced to tell pupils more about other faiths

Faith schools could be banned from teaching their own
  denomination if proposals to add RE to the national
curriculum go ahead

• Report says RE should be added to national curriculum
• Fears that subject has been marginalised and is being badly taught
• Faith schools would be legally required to teach standard syllabus
• Currently RE is a compulsory subject but with no agreed content

By Chris Pleasance
PUBLISHED:07:11 EST, 19 October 2013| UPDATED:07:11 EST, 19 October 2013

 

Faith schools could lose the right to teach their own belief and instead have to give more weight to other religions.

A report by the Religious Education Council for England and Wales says RE has become marginalised and should be added to the national curriculum.

But that would make it a legal requirement for all school to teach the same syllabus, regardless of their faiths.

The report, a three year review of religious teaching in schools, could form the basis of a new curriculum when it is released next week.

Chairman John Keast has admitted that it would be difficult for faith schools to teach their own denomination, but said one solution could involve optional modules for students.

Speaking to The Times, he said: 'These are quite important and difficult issues to overcome. I don't personally think they are insuperable.

'I think you could get sufficient agreement on a national body of religious education knowledge and skills and understanding that everyone should know for the modern world.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2467231/Faith-schools-lose-right-teach-religion-perspective-forced-tell-pupils-faiths.html#ixzz2iQLnrWPt
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Drunk, But Not on Whiskey

 

by Anthony Esolen

October 21st, 2013

The Public Discourse

We have the worst of both worlds: a Prohibitionary State that gives license to all kinds of evil, but that regulates and restricts actions that are not evil, to manage the chaos that results from the license.
 

In October, 1919, a heavily “progressive” Congress passed the Volstead Act enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting, for almost all purposes, the production, sale, and distribution of alcoholic beverages. There are two things everybody has learned from Prohibition. First, it is wrong to try to legislate morality. Second, you cannot do it, for Prohibition failed. But neither of these things is true, and the real lessons of Prohibition go unheeded.

First, law is nothing if not the codification of morality. All laws bear some relation, however distant, to a moral evaluation of good and bad. We cannot escape making moral distinctions. One man’s theft is another man’s redistribution of income. One man’s defense of family honor is another man’s murder. Even people who reduce law to utilitarian calculations cannot evade this truth. They may say, “It is useful to refrain from stealing, because then everyone’s goods will be secure,” appealing to self-interest. But why should security be prized higher than the thrill of danger? And how can mere usefulness bind my conscience? A man may fight to the death for justice, and to hell with utility.

Second, if Prohibition was intended to curtail hard drinking, it did work. It’s always easier to look at something that happened than to imagine what would have happened but didn’t. Most people obeyed the law. Of course there were speakeasies and bootleggers. The Kennedy family made their fortune on illegal whiskey. But there wasn’t a speakeasy on every street or a still in every backyard. Actuarial tables show that, shortly after Prohibition began, deaths from cirrhosis of the liver dropped considerably, and continued to drop through the twenties, leveling off by the time Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

After all, Prohibition did enjoy some wide support. Billy Sunday, baseball player and itinerant preacher, campaigned for it. Even Irish Catholics were not uniformly in opposition. I recall a photograph of a parade held in my coal-mining town in 1918, to celebrate the armistice. Prominent were the Knights of Father Mathew, an Irish temperance society.

So, then, what does Prohibition teach us?

Read the rest here: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/10/7577/

“What was Auschwitz?” “I don’t know…”

October 17, 2013 By Elizabeth Scalia
The Anchoress

No rant here, just clear demonstration of our terrifying ignorance and disconnection from our recent past:

Questioner: What was the Holocaust?
American College Student: Um…I’m on the spot.

Questioner: Which country was Adolf Hitler the leader of?
American College Student: I think it’s Amsterdam?

Questioner: What was Auschwitz?
American College Student: I don’t know.
.....


Watch it to the end. The woman makes her point, very well, and with no acrimony.

 

Read the rest here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2013/10/17/what-was-auschwitz-i-dont-know/

Some Hard Spiritual Truths That Will Set You Free.

A Meditation on a Teaching from St. John of the Cross

By: Msgr. Charles Pope

Archdiocese of Washington

 

I have written before on Five Hard Truths That Will Set You Free. In this post I would like to ponder Some Hard Spiritual truths that will set us free.

 

In calling them “hard truths,” I mean that they are not the usual cozy bromides that many seek. They speak bluntly about the more irksome and difficult realities we confront. But, if we come to accept them, they have a strange way of bringing serenity by getting us focused on the right things, instead of chasing after false dreams.

 

For it sometimes happens that a person can spend his whole life being resentful that life isn’t peachy, forgetting all the while that we are in exile, that we are making a hard journey, we pray, to a life where, one day, every sorrow and difficultly is removed, and death and sorrow are no more. But not now.

 

There is a kind of unexpected serenity in living in the world as it is, rather than resenting the world for not being what we want it to be. For now, the journey is hard and we have to be sober about our obtuse desires and destructive tendencies. And that is why there is a value in calling these insights, “hard truths that will set us free.”

 

In the very opening section of his Spiritual Canticle, St. John of the Cross lays out a presumed worldview that the spiritually mature ought to have attained. And because he presumes it of his reader, he states it only briefly.

 

Yet, for us who live in times not known for spiritual maturity, we ought to slow down for a moment and ponder these truths which are not only poorly understood, but even actively resisted today by many who call themselves wise and spiritually mature.

 

Remember now, these are hard truths, and many today wish to bypass the harder teachings of God. Thus we do well to pay special attention to a Spiritual Master who is deeply immersed in Scripture, as a remedy for the soft excesses of our modern times.

 

Read the rest here: http://blog.adw.org/2013/10/some-hard-spiritual-truths-that-will-set-you-free-a-meditation-on-a-teaching-from-st-john-of-the-cross/

Church Flooded With Calls After 15-Year-Old Orphan Pleads to be Adopted

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 10/18/13 3:44 PM

Davion Henry made national headlines two weeks ago when he pleaded with members of a local church he attends to be adopted into a loving family. From the story about his request for someone to adopt him.

In church, Davion scanned the crowd. More than 300 people packed the pews. Men in bright suits, grandmoms in sequined hats, moms hugging toddlers on their laps. Everyone seemed to have a family except him. Davion sat beside Going, his caseworker from Eckerd, and struggled to follow the sermon: something about a letter Paul wrote. “He was in prison,” said the Rev. Brian Brown. “Awaiting an uncertain future … ”
The preacher spoke about orphans, how Jesus lifted them up. He described an epidemic, “alarming numbers of African-American children who need us.” Then he introduced Davion, who shuffled to the pulpit. Without looking up, Davion wiped his palms on his pants, cleared his throat, and said: ”My name is Davion and I’ve been in foster care since I was born … I know God hasn’t given up on me. So I’m not giving up either.”

Davion said he’d take anyone. “Old or young, dad or mom, black, white, purple. I don’t care. And I would be really appreciative. The best I could be.”
Now, Fox News says the church has been flooded with calls.

“It has been just an awesome outpour,” Cynthia Coney, a secretary at St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church, said. “We’ve been getting calls from as far as Utah and forwarding them to his adoption agency.”

Read the rest here:  http://www.lifenews.com/2013/10/18/church-flooded-with-calls-after-15-year-old-orphan-pleads-to-be-adopted/

 

Abortionist Kills Disabled Babies as Old as 37 Weeks if They Won’t Have “Productive Lives”

by Dave Andrusko | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 10/20/13 3:30 PM

Ask yourself why would an Irish publication call one of the four American abortionists who will openly abort after 30 weeks? In this case it’s the Irish Independent’s Caitriona Palmer who phoned Susan Robinson, whose late abortion clinic is in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

There are two obvious answers. We have written several times about the documentary “After Tiller,” in which (a) Robinson (left) and three others are placed on a pedestal for aborting huge babies, and (b) abortionist George Tiller, killed in 2009, is glorified as one of the pioneers of this grisly trade.
Tomorrow “After Tiller” will be shown at the Irish Film Institute. Perfect timing.

Another reason may be that Ireland’s once firmly pro-life law on abortion has been breached. (Not surprisingly, this was made possible largely by a lie. See “Savita Halappanavar Died Due to Litany of Failures, Health Information and Quality Authority Report Confirms.”)

There is currently an effort to include more grounds for abortion and anyone who has followed abortion “reform” knows when pro-abortionists sense weakness, they push to remove one “impediment” after another until they have attained abortion on demand. That Robinson “scoffs” at that possibility hardly comes as a shock.

Whatever the combination of reasons, every time Robinson gives an interview, she undercuts the rationales and rationalizations that are presented as justifications to abort babies who have long since passed the point of viability.

Read the rest here: http://www.lifenews.com/2013/10/20/abortionist-kills-disabled-babies-as-old-as-37-weeks-if-they-wont-have-productive-lives/

Sebelius on the Run

The HHS Secretary refuses to testify about ObamaCare's rollout.

Oct. 18, 2013 7:04 p.m. ET

WSJ

 

The Affordable Care Act's botched rollout has stunned its media cheering section, and it even seems to have surprised the law's architects. The problems run much deeper than even critics expected, and whatever federal officials, White House aides and outside contractors are doing to fix them isn't working. But who knows? Omerta is the word of the day as the Obama Administration withholds information from the public.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is even refusing to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a hearing this coming Thursday. HHS claims she has scheduling conflicts, but we hope she isn't in the White House catacomb under interrogation by Valerie Jarrett about her department's incompetence.

The department is also refusing to make available lower-level officials who might detail the source or sources of this debacle. Ducking an investigation with spin is one thing. Responding with a wall of silence to the invitation of a duly elected congressional body probing the use of more than half a billion taxpayer dollars is another. This Obama crowd is something else.

What bunker is Henry Chao hiding in, for instance? He's the HHS official in charge of technology for the Affordable Care Act, and in March he said at an insurance lobby conference that his team had given up trying to create "a world-class user experience." With the clock running, Mr. Chao added that his main goal was merely to "just make sure it's not a third-world experience."

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Capitol Hill in Washington in April. Associated Press

He didn't succeed. Whatever is below third-world standards would flatter the 36 federally run exchanges as they've started up. But perhaps Mr. Chao or someone else, if not Mrs. Sebelius, can answer even the simple question of how many Americans have managed to enroll for coverage. HHS could easily resolve any confusion but it won't even talk to Democratic allies, friendly reporters and what it calls the insurance industry "stakeholders" that it will need to make ObamaCare work.

Read the rest at: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303680404579143343379804228

Pope to Auction Harley Davidson Motorcycle to Benefit Homeless

The sale of the motorcycle will fund the renovation of Caritas’ Don Luigi di Liegro Hostel and Soup Kitchen at Rome’s Termini station.

by CNA/EWTN NEWS
National Catholic Register
10/16/2013

A contingent of Harley-Davidson motorcycle riders

were among the pilgrims in St. Peter's Square f

or the Pope's Sunday Angelus on June 16.

– Lauren Cater/CNA

 

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has donated his Harley Davidson motorcycle to be sold to raise money for a hostel and soup kitchen that serves Rome’s homeless.

“It is a precious gift that has once again made us happy in feeling the closeness of our bishop to the poor of the Church of Rome. We are deeply grateful to Pope Francis for this,” Msgr. Enrico Feroci, the director of Caritas Rome, said at an Oct. 12 press conference.
 The sale of the motorcycle will fund the renovation of Caritas’ Don Luigi di Liegro Hostel and Soup Kitchen at Rome’s Termini station. The two projects have operated since 1987 to help relieve the suffering of about 1,000 people every day, Caritas Rome reports.
Msgr. Feroci thanked Pope Francis on behalf of everyone who will benefit from “this act of hospitality and solidarity.” He assured the Pope that the poor will continue to pray for the “precious work that he is doing in the vineyard of the Lord.”

The Harley Davidson Motor Co. presented two of its motorcycles and a biker jacket to Pope Francis in June, when Rome hosted the 110th anniversary celebration of the iconic American motorcycle. On June 16, the Pope blessed about 800 bikers and their rides in St. Peter’s Square.
Pope Francis has encouraged clergy and religious to show humility in their choice of transportation.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-to-auction-harley-davidson-motorcycle-to-benefit-homeless#ixzz2i8SEB2EJ

Auburn’s new homecoming queen has a ridiculously inspirational life story

by Cliff Sims

14 Oct, 2013
Yellowhammer News

Molly Anne Dutton, Auburn University’s 100th Homecoming Queen

Over the weekend, Auburn University’s student body elected Molly Anne Dutton the school’s 100th Miss Homecoming, and boy what a story this young woman has to tell.

A couple of decades ago, Dutton’s biological mother, who was living in California at the time, was the victim of a sexual assault that resulted in her becoming pregnant. She was given an ultimatum by her husband: either abort the baby, or face divorce.
Lifeline Children’s Services, a Birmingham-based Christian adoption agency, got involved and helped the woman through her courageous decision to keep the baby and put her up for adoption instead of aborting.

This past weekend, the little girl born into those tough circumstances was elected her university’s homecoming queen after running on a platform entirely devoted to adoption advocacy.
“Because that resource was made available to my mother, she decided to give birth to me,” Dutton said. “And here I am talking to you guys 22 years later.”

“Light Up LIFE” was Dutton’s slogan, the perfect summation of her campaign’s goal to spread the word that adoption can bring light into a dark situation. It took Auburn’s campus by storm.

On a related note, Lifeline’s 11th annual fundraising dinner is coming up Nov. 7 in Birmingham. Team Yellowhammer will be there in full force and would love to have you join us. This is a no-brainer cause to get behind. Check out Lifeline’s website for more information.

Source: http://yellowhammernews.com/faithandculture/auburns-new-homecoming-queen-ridiculously-inspirational-life-story/
 

Pope Plans to Visit Israel as Early as Next Year

Trip to Israel Would Come After Pontiff's Strong Condemnations of Anti-Semitism

Wall Street Journal

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By Liam Moloney

Updated Oct. 17, 2013 7:25 p.m. ET

Six days after the death of former Nazi commander Erich Priebke, the furor over his burial continues, with Italian and Vatican officials refusing a funeral. Priebke had been serving a life sentence in Italy when he died at age 100. (Photo: Getty)

ROME— Pope Francis plans to visit Israel as soon as next year, the Vatican said, in what could be a landmark visit for a pontiff who has already won plaudits from the Jewish community for his strong condemnation of anti-Semitism.

On Thursday, the pope also met at the Vatican with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who invited him to visit Palestine as well. Israeli President Shimon Peres had already extended an invitation to the pope to visit the Holy Land shortly after the pontiff's election in March.
Following the invitation from Mr. Abbas, "we can now start thinking in a more concrete way regarding the planning of the visit," said Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi, adding that it could take place in 2014.

Pope Francis met Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas also known as Abu Mazen, during a private audience at the Vatican on Thursday. Poll Press

A papal trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories would follow in the footsteps of Pope Francis's predecessors, Benedict XVI and John Paul II. Both sought to promote Christian reconciliation with Judaism as emphasized in the key 1962-65 Second Vatican Council and do away with any vestiges of anti-Semitism after centuries of ambiguity within the church.

A visit by Pope Francis, who has so far made only one overseas trip since his appointment, could advance that dialogue. "We can see the steady and ongoing commitment of the Catholic Church on improving Catholic-Jewish relations," said Chad Pecknold, assistant professor of theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington DC.

During his young papacy, Pope Francis has reached out to the Jewish community on several fronts. Last week, he met with members of Rome's Jewish community to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of deportations of Italian Jews from Rome to Nazi concentration camps during the German occupation of Italy. On Oct. 16, 1943, more than 1,000 Roman Jews were deported. Only 16 returned home.

"For many centuries…the Jewish community and the Church of Rome have lived in our city, with a history—as we well know—that was often traversed by misunderstandings and even true grievances," Pope Francis said at the meeting.

Read the rest here:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303680404579141563422438386

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - October 18, 2013

Talking about the "things that matter most" on October 18
 
4:00 – Writing from Left to Right: My Journey from Liberal to Conservative
Engagingly, writing as if to old friends and foes, in his memoir, Writing from Left to Right: My Journey from Liberal to Conservative, Michael Novak shows how Providence (not deliberate choice) placed him in the middle of many crucial events of his time: a month in wartime Vietnam, the student riots of the 1960s, the Reagan revolution, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Bill Clinton's welfare reform, and the struggles for human rights in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also spent fascinating days, sometimes longer, with inspiring leaders like Sargent Shriver, Bobby Kennedy, George McGovern, Jack Kemp, Václav Havel, President Reagan, Lady Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II, who helped shape—and reshape—his political views. Yet through it all his focus on helping the poor and defending universal human rights remained constant; he gradually came to see building small businesses and envy-free democracies as the only realistic way to build free societies. Without protections for liberties of conscience and economic creativity, democracies will fail. Free societies need three liberties in one: economic liberty, political liberty, and liberty of spirit. Michael tells us his story.

5:00 - Making Sense of Mary
The world is full of nonsense when it comes to the Blessed Virgin Mary from simple confusion and ignorance to disrespect and blasphemy. Gary Michuta has done us a great service by blowing away the fog and shining the light of clarity on a matter so important to the story of God's salvation. Drawing from Scripture, Sacred Tradition, Councils and the Fathers of the Church, Gary helps scholars and beginners alike to understand the ABC's of the person and role of Mary. Gary joins us today.

Covering All the Bases With World Series Champion Jeff Suppan

The 2006 NLCS MVP discusses the MLB playoffs, family, prayer and Catholic media.

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by TRENT BEATTIE
10/16/2013
National Catholic Register

 

Jeff Suppan delivers a pitch in the 2006

World Series against the Detroit Tigers.

– Dan Donovan/St. Louis Cardinals

With only four teams left in the playoffs, Major League Baseball is heading into the climax of its season, and Jeff Suppan knows exactly what the players are going through.

Suppan initially looked upon the playoffs with awe and trepidation, but, eventually, he gained a more accurate view of the dynamics at play. This helped to bring about a 2006 World Series Championship for him and the rest of the St. Louis Cardinals.


Now that Suppan has been away from professional baseball for over a year, he spends most of his time in southern California with his wife, Dana, and their two small children, ages 2 and 4. He makes the Sign of the Cross on their foreheads before putting them in bed, and he even gets a blessing back from his 4-year-old daughter.

Jeff Suppan, the 2006 National League Championship Series MVP, recently recounted this winsome story and many others to Register correspondent Trent Beattie.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/covering-all-the-bases-with-world-series-champion-jeff-suppan/#ixzz2i2Xdsln0

Mixed message: ‘If you can’t be good, be careful.’

              Public pressure forces a Catholic school system to compromise its teaching on chastity

By Steve Weatherbe
Oct 17, 2013
The Christians

Teens: Which works better, telling them not to or telling them how to?

            

The divergent religious and secular views of humanity collided recently in Alberta, Canada, where Catholic Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary is opposing mandatory Gardasil vaccinating of Catholic junior high school girls for Human Papilloma Virus, a sexually transmitted disease they can’t get if they remain chaste. Never known to duck a challenge, Bishop Henry has fought gay human rights complainants to standstill and the Canadian government right to the Supreme Court of Canada. This week he lost, or half-lost, the sex-vaccination debate in the small city of Medicine Hat. There the Catholic school board has decided to allow HPV vaccinations at school without encouraging them. Students will bring home permission forms.

Board chairman Peter Grad cautions parents not to sign these without thinking it through. “If they did that in this case,” he says, “it would be an abrogation of responsibility.” He hopes it will prompt “a meaningful parent-child talk about morality.”

Bishop Henry objects that the inoculation is self-defeating, but the province’s Catholic schools, one by one, have bowed to parental pressure, frightened by media coverage favoring a public health establishment led by Dr. John Meddings, head of the University of Calgary medical school.

Bishop Henry: ‘Safer sex’ effectively contradicts ‘no sex.’

Bishop Henry is ‘deplorable’?

Meddings termed Bishop Henry “deplorable…You are increasing the rate of spread of this virus in the population as a whole…Death rates, for both Catholics and non-Catholics, will increase as a consequence. I find it hard to appreciate the morality of this position.”

Henry, however, has laid out his position clearly enough. The public health “harm prevention” approach to sexual behavior is not immoral but it does fall far short of the Catholic view of sexuality, which Henry insists is supported by science: as evidence he cites the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada stating “Abstinence is the most efficient way to prevent HPV infection.”People of liberal inclinations seem to find it inconceivable that encouraging no sex among youth produces fewer problems than encouraging “safer sex.” In fact, Henry is up against the same disbelief that Pope Benedict XVI encountered when he declared in 2009 that condoms wouldn’t solve Africa’s AIDS epidemic. As Edward Green of the Harvard AIDS Prevention Project explained at the time, the public health industry prefers technological fixes to behavioral change, and has a visceral hostility to church groups.

See more at: http://thechristians.com/?q=node/746&utm_source=The+Christians+Book+Buyers&utm_campaign=996ac23637-TCH-Issue0136-BB&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e2d8bf6d30-996ac23637-57142977#sthash.Irw7BHyS.dpuf