Men of Ten - Serving Parishes in North Georgia

CNS STORY: Homilies should be under eight minutes long, says head of synod office

2010-03-10T16:14:00.001-05:00

CNS STORY: Homilies should be under eight minutes long, says head of synod office

Posted using ShareThis

A rite that’s passing - The Boston Globe

2010-03-10T11:27:00.001-05:00

A rite that’s passing - The Boston Globe

Posted using ShareThis

Cogito Ergo Sum: Comatose Patients Think and Communicate - Catholic Online

2010-02-17T16:54:00.000-05:00

Cogito Ergo Sum: Comatose Patients Think and Communicate - Catholic Online

Opposing the Homosexual Agenda: Religious Bigotry or Science and Justice? - Catholic Online

2010-02-15T20:15:00.000-05:00

Opposing the Homosexual Agenda: Religious Bigotry or Science and Justice? - Catholic Online

State is not source and beginning of ethics, Pope tells Pontifical Academy for Life :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

2010-02-15T13:45:00.000-05:00

State is not source and beginning of ethics, Pope tells Pontifical Academy for Life :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

The Latest in Stem Cell Research and Cloning

2009-08-18T09:47:00.002-04:00

An end of summer Q & A update—Part I

stem cells Buried under all the uproar over proposed healthcare reform legislation, there has been some significant news this summer regarding stem cell research. To begin, let’s recall some of the basics of this issue.

What are stem cells?

Maureen Condic, Senior Fellow with the Westchester Institute, concisely responds to that question in a recent article in Ethics and Medics:

A stem cell is any cell that exists in a relatively immature state, and is able to divide to produce one cell that replaces itself and one that will go on to become a more specialized cell type. Because stem cells replace themselves every time they divide, they are considered self-renewing, or “immortal.”

There are three broad classes of stem cells: embryonic, adult, and reprogrammed. Human embryonic stem cells are obtained by the destruction of human embryos that are between three and six days old. At this early stage, cells of the embryo are still very primitive and are pluripotent; i.e., they are able to produce all of the cell types found in the mature human body.

In contrast, any stem cell that is found in a specific type of tissue (whether in an older embryo, a fetus, or a more mature individual) is considered an adult stem cell. Adult stem cells are thought to be more limited, making only the types of cells appropriate to the tissue in which they reside. Thus, they are seen as merely “multipotent.”

Finally, recent studies have shown that adult body, or “somatic,” cells can be reprogrammed to a state very similar to a human embryonic stem cell. These induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, are not identical to embryonic stem cells, but they are functional equivalents.

Why is stem cell research important?

It is hoped that stem cell research will unearth scientific clues that will one day lead to remarkable breakthroughs in dealing with diseases treatable by tissue replacement therapies.

Does the Catholic Church oppose stem cell research?

The Catholic Church has enthusiastically supported the better part of stem cell research, especially adult stem cell research and new techniques such as cell reprogramming. We cannot, however, support research which involves the creation and destruction of human embryos.

What is happening with adult stem cell research?

Scientists in this specialized area of stem cell research continue to be fully engaged in their work and well funded, even though adult stem cell research gets much less media attention. Do No Harm, the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics keeps a running tally on reported applications of adult stem cells that produce therapeutic benefit for human patients. Experts are currently at work on updating that list, but estimate that approximately 80 different diseases have now been shown to be treatable in some degree by adult stem cells.

Are scientists still trying to clone human embryos?

Some scientists continue to be irreversibly committed to using cloning techniques to create human embryos which, after about six days of development, would then be destroyed to cull embryonic stem cells from them. These stem cells would be genetically matched to the donor who was the source of the cloning; tissues derived from the cloned cells could then potentially be used to treat the donor.

This prospect, of course, has proven to be easier said than done. To date, only three research teams are known to have successfully cloned human embryos, but no team was able to derive stem cells from the clones. Technical hurdles remain which make human cloning extremely difficult, inefficient, and expensive. One lingering hurdle is the dearth of available human eggs for such experiments. Given the paucity of women willing to undergo the dangerous procedure of ovarian stimulation for the retrieval of their eggs, at least one British team of researchers attempted a repulsive variation of human cloning using bovine eggs, the resulting product of which has been termed a ‘cybrid’.

Next week, in part II of this column on stem cell news, I’ll explain how the dearth of available human eggs for stem cell research has led to a cash-for-eggs scheme in New York, and I’ll discuss recent breakthroughs in ethically acceptable areas of research.
***

Catholic college faces lawsuit over contraceptives - Washington Times

2009-08-17T10:05:00.001-04:00

Catholic college faces lawsuit over contraceptives - Washington Times

Shared via AddThis

Religious Identity: States Differ Widely

2009-08-10T11:06:00.001-04:00

Religious Identity: States Differ Widely

Shared via AddThis

True Friendship -- None of that Sissy stuff

2009-07-31T09:31:00.001-04:00

Are you tired of those sissy 'friendship' poems that always sound good, But never actually come close to reality?

Well, here is a series of promises that actually speak of true friendship.

You will see no cute little smiley faces on this card -- Just the stone cold truth of our great friendship.

1.... When you are sad -- I will help you get drunk and plot revenge against the sorry bastard who made you sad.

2.. When you are blue -- I will try to dislodge whatever is choking you.

3.... When you smile -- I will know you are thinking of something that I would probably want to be involved in.

4.. When you are scared -- I will rag on you about it every chance I get until you're NOT.

5.. When you are worried -- I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be until you quit whining..

6.. When you are confused -- I will try to use only little words.

7.. When you are sick -- Stay the hell away from me until you are well again. I don't want whatever you have...

8.. When you fall -- I will laugh at your clumsy ass, but I'll help you up.

9.. This is my oath.... I pledge it to the end. 'Why?' you may ask; because you are my friend.

Friendship is like wetting your pants, everyone can see it, but only you can feel the true warmth.

Is Assassination Ever Justified?

2009-07-30T11:10:00.000-04:00

The recent disclosure that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was developing a program to track down and kill individual Al Qaeda leaders has re-awakened legal and ethical questions about assassination as a tool of national policy. The program had been kept hidden from Congress until this spring, when it was uncovered and cancelled by the current C.I.A. director, Leon Panetta. In a succession of executive orders, Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan had proscribed assassination as a policy of the U.S. government.

President George W. Bush, in “an intelligence finding,” without formally rescinding the earlier prohibitions, authorized “lethal covert actions” against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda operatives. Previously, the government had been using pilotless aircraft to target terrorist camps. The new plan involved deploying teams of assassins to kill individual senior terrorists, requiring the assassins to strike “at two feet instead of 10,000 feet,” according to an intelligence official quoted by The Washington Post. The anticipated benefit of assassination over drone attacks is a potential decrease in “collateral” civilian casualties.

The new program, according to some analysts, violated the spirit, if not the letter, of executive orders issued by previous presidents. Those executive orders came in the wake of a series of government reports on U.S. intelligence activities in the 1970s that detailed abuses of power. Among the matters investigated were attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Fidel Castro of Cuba and the brothers Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu of Vietnam.

Just War Analysis. The new disclosures have prompted a debate about how government-sponsored assassination should be viewed in light of the Catholic moral tradition on just war theory. Traditional just war theory was inclined to prohibit assassination of political and military leaders on two grounds. The first was that to “decapitate” the enemy might make negotiation of peace more difficult and lead to protracted fighting as a result of chaos or competition for command in the enemy ranks. The other was that civilian political leaders were technically “innocents”—that is, they were not bearing arms and directly threatening the other side. Armed personnel were permitted to attack only other armed personnel.

The emergence of global terror networks intent on mass terror raised new questions. Are terrorists, who are not members of a national army, but are carrying out lethal attacks often under civilian cover, open to direct attack as if they were armed military? Is the fight against terrorism best carried out as “a war against terror” or as an international police action?

David L. Perry, a former ethics professor at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., addressed the matter in a 1995 issue of The Journal of Conflict Studies: “Just as it is not a crime to kill the enemy during wartime, so too should it not be regarded as a crime or a morally reprehensible act when a nation, acting in concert with its obligation to protect its own citizens from harm, seeks out and destroys terrorists outside its borders who have committed, or are planning to commit atrocities on its territory or against its citizens.” Yet “the assassin in effect acts as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner combined; the target is precluded from being represented by counsel before an impartial court,” added Perry.

Gerard F. Powers of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, distinguished among targets of assassination. “You’re not talking about killing political leaders. You’re talking about killing Al Qaeda leaders. You’re talking about killing terrorists,” he said. “If terrorism is treated primarily as a crime, then the targeted killings would probably be problematic, unless they occurred in the effort to arrest. And all the normal rules of police work apply,” Powers added.

“But to the extent that terrorism can be seen as an act of war, then the targeted killings of known terrorists who are actively engaged in terrorism, or actively planning terrorist acts, then the terrorist becomes more like a combatant in war,” he explained. “And the same criteria that would apply to war would apply to the killings of terrorists.” In the case of Al Qaeda, Powers said, there “are elements akin to war” and “others more akin to crime. That’s where the issues become blurred.”

Obamacare and Abortion

2009-07-28T13:15:00.001-04:00

Obamacare and Abortion

Shared via AddThis

Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and the Natural Law - Catholic Online

2009-07-23T14:15:00.001-04:00

Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and the Natural Law - Catholic Online

Shared via AddThis

Government monopsony distorts climate science, says SPPI

2009-07-23T10:45:00.001-04:00

Government monopsony distorts climate science, says SPPI

Shared via AddThis

Oft-forgotten Catholic rite is revived - Springfield, IL - The State Journal-Register

2009-07-21T10:10:00.001-04:00

Oft-forgotten Catholic rite is revived - Springfield, IL - The State Journal-Register

Posted using ShareThis

A Disturbing Finding on the Abortion Front

2009-07-21T09:52:00.000-04:00

Use of RU-486 quietly on the rise
July 21, 2009

Special Note: Please visit our new blog, "While We're at It," dedicated to enriching the quality of contemporary moral discourse. We hope you'll stop by often.

ru486 Planned Parenthood, the nation's single largest provider of abortions, has recently engaged in some damage control to mend its image, tarnished by association with the chemical abortifacient RU-486. First some background.

RU-486, the "abortion pill" (chemical name mifepristone and not to be confused with the "morning after pill" Levonorgestrel, an over the counter emergency contraceptive) was approved by the FDA in 2000.

Mifepristone works by blocking the normal functioning of progesterone, a hormone necessary for the maintenance of pregnancy. The immediate consequence is the degeneration of the uterine lining and the blocking of nutrition to the fetus resulting in its death. Mifeprex is used in combination with a prostaglandin called misoprostol which then causes the cervix to dilate, and the uterus to contract and expel its lining and the now-deceased child.

RU-486, we might add, is also the only FDA-approved drug that has as its purpose the death of a living human being.

The drug's approval was forced through by President Clinton's administration, which dubiously approved the drug under a provision of drug law reserved solely for drugs developed to treat "serious or life-threatening illnesses" (of which pregnancy is not).

RU-486 was under intense scrutiny by the House of Representatives' Drug Policy Subcommittee before the Democrats took over the majority in 2006. The Subcommittee reported that as of April of 2006, the FDA acknowledged the deaths of six women associated with the drug, nine life-threatening incidents, 232 hospitalizations, 116 blood transfusions, and 88 cases of infection.

The high infection rate, deaths of otherwise healthy women who took this drug, and the intense scrutiny (at the time) of Congress and the FDA prompted Planned Parenthood, in particular, to change the way it administers the drug.

Tragically, use of RU-486 has slowly been on the rise, and according to the most recent study, accounts for 25 percent of all early abortions (abortions through 9 weeks gestation).

Under the FDA-approved protocol for administering the drug, it must be administered within 49 days gestation; patients are to be given 600mg of Mifeprex to consume at once; they are then to be instructed to return two days later to consume orally 400mcg of misoprostol. Many providers, including Planned Parenthood, deviated from the FDA protocol by extending the use of RU-486 to as long as 56 and even 63 days of gestation, cutting the dose of Mifeprex by two-thirds, and providing patients with misoprostol pills to insert vaginally at home two days later. In 2006, there were two more deaths of women who received RU-486 from Planned Parenthood facilities. For its part, the nation's biggest abortion provider quickly corrected itself to get in line with the FDA protocol. But its image was tarnished.

That brings us to last week's news that Planned Parenthood has sponsored a study which found that the altered regimen (providing antibiotics and administering the drugs orally according to the FDA protocol) causes fewer severe infections in the women taking the drug.

The study was blatantly self-serving for PP, but then again, that doesn't surprise us, does it?

So fewer women are developing infections and other severe health effects, but babies continue to be aborted. That RU-486 accounts for 25% of all early abortions is a sobering and disturbing statistic. And abortion providers are taking advantage of that stat to present this procedure as a "safe," (notwithstanding the lingering dangers) "natural" (because it mimics a natural abortion, or miscarriage) and convenient (do-able "in the privacy of your own home" though in actuality it involves at least 3 visits to the abortion provider).

A convenient, safe, natural way of surmounting the inconvenience of an embryonic human life.

Fortunately, the science of human embryology continues to steer our culture -- and the language we employ to talk about the human embryo -- toward clarity, honesty and truth. Truth on the beginning of human life, and the dangers to women's health in the age of chemical abortions, cash-for-eggs and other schemes, is the only way ahead.

***

Rev. Thomas V. Berg, is Executive Director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a Question of Eugenics by Jonah Goldberg on National Review Online

2009-07-20T09:47:00.001-04:00

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a Question of Eugenics by Jonah Goldberg on National Review Online

Shared via AddThis

Southern Catholic College to become Legion of Christ institution

2009-07-17T17:25:00.001-04:00

Southern Catholic College to become Legion of Christ institution

Shared via AddThis

Pope Benedict XVI Undergoing Surgery After Fall - Europe | Map | News - FOXNews.com

2009-07-17T09:08:00.001-04:00

Pope Benedict XVI Undergoing Surgery After Fall - Europe | Map | News - FOXNews.com

Posted using ShareThis

Married and Ordained

2009-07-16T16:15:00.001-04:00

The ministry of deacons
William T. Ditewig | JULY 20, 2009
the cover of America, the Catholic magazine

I had been a deacon for about a year and was on active duty in the U.S. Navy as executive officer of the Security Group Activity at Hanza, Okinawa, Japan. My family lived on Kadena Air Base, where I served at the Kadena chapel—the only deacon on Okinawa. One day I received a call from the senior Catholic chaplain, a friend. Laughing, he told me of a conversation he had just had with a young Air Force man reporting to Kadena for duty. Father Mike explained the chapel programs, and the young man said he had been to Mass there. Father described the pastoral staff, including the participation of a Navy Commander (me) as deacon. “Oh, was he the tall man who preached last Sunday?” the young man asked. “That’s right,” Father replied. The young maån complimented my homily, but complained that he had seen me do something “just not right” after Mass: he saw me get into a car “with a woman and her children” and drive off! Father Mike explained that I was a married deacon, and that “the woman and her children” were my wife and our children. The young man said he knew deacons could be married, but that I should not have driven off with my family like that. Cognitively, he understood; affectively, he couldn’t imagine a married cleric.

In another story of confusion, a woman visiting our parish once asked my wife, “When you die, will Bill become a real priest?”

For more than a millennium, Latin Catholics saw an overwhelmingly celibate corps of ordained ministers, though for the last 40 years a new pattern has emerged that includes deacons who are both ordained and married. It is not surprising that confusion persists over the “double vocational sacramentality” of a married deacon.

Scholarship also lags behind current practice, with centuries of writing on the relationship of celibacy to ordained ministry, but nothing comparable on the relationship of matrimony and holy orders. One exception is Chapter Five of Sacrament of Service: A Vision of the Permanent Diaconate Today, by Patrick McCaslin and Michael G. Lawler (1986). This did not reverse the trend, but it does, I hope, offer food for conversation and understanding.

Just as the permanent diaconate is not only for celibates, neither is it a “married ministry,” though currently most deacons are married. Rather, the permanent diaconate is a major order of ecclesial ministry open to married and to unmarried men.

While much theological and pastoral work is needed to help the church recognize the blessings of a married ordained ministry, work is also needed on the celibate permanent deacon, who lives a significantly different state of life than do transitional deacons and priests.
A Theology of Marriage and Orders

Centro Altagracia presnts Noche de Cancion con Hna. Glenda. Oprime aqui para mas informacion.

Until the renewal of a permanent diaconate, most discussion of “vocation” presented an either-or approach: a man could either marry or enter religious life/priesthood; a woman could either marry or enter religious life. Those were the vocational choices in the Latin Church.

The Second Vatican Council reminded the church that the source and foundation of Christian vocation is sacramental initiation itself. In his homily to the bishops at the end of the council, Pope Paul VI declared that underlying the council’s work was the identity of the church as servant to the world. Vocations must be seen first through this lens: that all disciples are called to pour themselves out in service to others, following the kenotic example of Christ.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, reflecting conciliar teaching, describes the sacraments of matrimony and orders as having a mutuality of purpose. Both are “directed towards the salvation of others; if they contribute as well to personal salvation, it is through service to others that they do so. They confer a particular mission in the Church and serve to build up the People of God” (No. 1534). The catechism goes on to describe both sacraments in terms of consecration: the ordained are consecrated “to feed the Church by the word and grace of God,” and Christian spouses are consecrated “for the duties and dignity of their state” (No. 1535). This mutual approach to both sacraments builds on the consecration to discipleship celebrated through the most basic sacraments of vocation: the rites of Christian initiation. The sacraments of matrimony and orders add a leadership responsibility and specificity to the baptismal vocation—a particular responsibility for another person in a covenant marriage, and particular pastoral responsibilities toward a portion of the people of God.

The two sacraments share a common foundation. Both make unique demands on the time and resources of the married deacon’s family. These demands must be carefully balanced, but the sacraments are relational, not conflictual. There is no point where the sacrament of matrimony is not graced by the sacrament of orders, and no point where the sacrament of orders is not graced by the sacrament of matrimony. At no point does one sacrament end and the other begin. The two sacraments become one in the person of the deacon and in the married state of life shared with spouse and family.

In marriage, spouses are called to give themselves totally to each other in love; this is nothing more or less than a kenotic diakonia: a self-emptying in service to another. The married deacon has a responsibility based on ordination to be a public and permanent ecclesial leader-in-service who not only speaks of such diakonia but who lives it within the sacramental covenant relationship of matrimony. Both sacraments call those who receive them to model Christ and, through their respective consecrations by the Spirit, to extend this model to the church and world at large. One could easily say that matrimony focuses on the domestic church while orders focuses on the broader community. But this would be far too facile a contrast, because both rites of initiation carry a leadership dimension within the family circle itself and to the wider world.
Priorities and Obligations

Deacons must be masters of balance. Married deacons must juggle the obligations of marriage, job and ministry. It became very popular in the early days of the renewal to speak of the “deacon’s priorities”: first in relationship to God, then to family, to job (because deacons are required to provide for themselves and their families by secular occupations) and to ecclesial ministry. Many people have come to see the list as impractical and theologically problematic. If approached incorrectly, the list tends to compartmentalize the Christian vocation of discipleship. Some people have used the list as a checklist, though its simplicity is a weakness: discipleship and the choices we must make are often messy.

A deacon must find balance between the obligations of matrimony and orders; he cannot routinely shirk one to attend to the other. It has been said that because matrimony precedes ordination, marriage has a fundamental priority over ordination. While I agree up to a point, I think it cannot be an absolute priority. Ordination carries its own obligations, which one freely accepts when requesting it. Married couples travel the formation journey together so that both have a sense of what they are undertaking. My family and I have worked hard at balancing the demands of public ministry with family privacy. The fact that I am a public minister does not mean the whole family wants to be that.

Shortly after my ordination and assignment to a new parish, the pastor approached my wife, Diann, and asked what he could expect her role to be there. We struggled with how to respond. Neither of us wanted to disappoint the pastor. But Diann did not want to take on a public role; she did not feel called to do so, and she felt she needed to stay focused on our home and children. Other couples might have reached a different conclusion.

Diann used to love to sing in the church choir. As we were assigned to different parishes, however, something began to change. Choir directors sometimes assumed she would want to sing solos or be a cantor because “she’s the deacon’s wife.”

One night I came home from work to find my youngest daughter very upset. A religion teacher had taken her to task for not knowing the names of the Twelve Apostles. “Why don’t you know that? Your dad’s a deacon!” My daughter didn’t understand. “Dad, you’re the deacon, not me!”

Then I took a job as associate principal and dean of students at a Catholic high school, where our oldest daughter was an incoming freshman. Not only did she have to make an adjustment from elementary school to high school, she had to do it with her dad as the school disciplinarian and a deacon.

Such pressures have made us careful to preserve and protect family privacy. But they have also helped me to understand other family dynamics better. When someone approaches me about a family situation, I appreciate not only the challenge, but the courage it takes to tell someone else about private matters. Being married with children and grandchildren gives me a solid grounding in something all families face: how to do what is good for each other. “Kenotic self-sacrifice” is not just a theological concept; it is, “Dad, please help that person out; we’ll go to the movies later.”
Concerns

Since this article focuses the discussions our church should be having on the relationship of matrimony and orders, I have set down four other issues that theologians, formation programs (for lay ecclesial ministers, deacons and priests) and anyone else interested in ministry in today’s church would do well to consider.

1) More theological attention should be paid to the relationship of the diaconate to the presbyterate and the episcopate. For half of the church’s history, deacons were understood as “priests-in-training” (or as a theologian once quipped, “priests junior grade”). Recently, however, theologians have begun to articulate areas in which deacons are not “priestly.” While there is a common foundation of ordination, each order is unique; the unique features of the diaconate need more theological and pastoral reflection.

2) Because deacons are not priests, the work of theologians and historians like Gary Macy and Phyllis Zagano must be considered vis-à-vis the ordination of women as deacons. The history of the church is clear: women have been ordained to diaconal ministry in the past and they could be again. The entire church would benefit from a full and open conversation on this issue.

3) The practical impact of diaconal service on a deacon’s family needs greater scrutiny. Yes, “only the husband is ordained.” But that truism ignores an adequate theology of matrimony in which “the two become one flesh.” Since a deacon’s spouse and children are all affected by ordination, any suggestion that attention need be paid only to the deacon is problematic. Experience gained in diaconate formation has made clear that if the spouses are to grow together, they need to share the personal, spiritual and intellectual growth offered through formation. If they do not, divisions can occur and problems result. This insight is often ignored after ordination, however, as pastors and others begin their new relationship with the deacon.

4) Attention must also be paid to the “role” of the deacon’s spouse. There is no singular role. Some wives share in a “couples’ ministry” with their husbands, giving retreats, teaching, sharing hospital or prison ministry and so on. Other wives prefer to minister in areas different from their husbands. Still others have no interest in or availability for participation in public ministry. Each response must be respected by pastors and parishioners, as well as by deacons and spouses themselves. A deacon’s spouse responds to God’s call to discipleship in ways as diverse as those of any other Christian, and ought not be “pressured” into ministry. Conversely, some spouses, highly educated and experienced ministers, are suddenly relegated to the sidelines “because they are the deacon’s wife.”

With more than four decades, since Vatican II, of a diaconate open to both married and single men, it is time for all the baptized to engage in a healthy, lively conversation about the opportunities and challenges that the renewed diaconate offers the church.

Deacon William T. Ditewig, ordained in 1990, was for five years executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for the Diaconate and the Secretariat for Evangelization. He is currently a professor of theology and director of graduate programs in theology at Saint Leo University, near Tampa, Fla.

Liturgy translations fall short of two-thirds; mail balloting needed

2009-06-19T09:21:00.001-04:00

BISHOPS-MISSAL (UPDATED) Jun-18-2009 (950 words) With photos posted June 17 and 18. xxxn

Liturgy translations fall short of two-thirds; mail balloting needed

By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service

SAN ANTONIO (CNS) -- The U.S. bishops will have to poll members missing from their spring meeting in San Antonio before it's known whether they have approved liturgical prayers, special Masses and key sections of an English translation of the Order of the Mass.

Five texts being prepared for use in English-speaking countries failed to get the necessary two-thirds votes of the Latin-rite U.S. bishops during the June 18 session of the bishops' meeting.

With 244 Latin-rite bishops in the United States eligible to vote on the questions, the required two-thirds would be 163. With 189 eligible bishops attending the meeting, only 134 voted to accept the first section, Masses and prayers for various needs and intentions.

On four subsequent translations, the votes also failed to reach two-thirds, meaning the 55 bishops not present will be polled by mail on all five parts. That process is expected to take several weeks.

The items that failed to pass contain prefaces for the Mass for various occasions; votive Masses and Masses for the dead; solemn blessings for the end of Mass; prayers over the people and eucharistic prayers for particular occasions, such as for evangelization or ordinations.

The section receiving the highest level of approval -- with a 159-19 vote, with three abstentions -- was the Order of the Mass II, with its prefaces, blessings and eucharistic prayers.

The bishops did have enough votes to approve a sixth action item from the Committee on Divine Worship, a Spanish-language Lectionary. After that vote of 181-2, with three abstentions, the bishops' conference president, Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, joked: "Ahora, vamos a continuar en espanol," or "Now we will continue in Spanish."

Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., chairman of the Committee on Divine Worship, warned that delaying approval or failing to send the Vatican guidance by the end of November will risk shutting the U.S. bishops out of the English-language translation approval process.

Bishop Donald W. Trautman of Erie, Pa., had several times raised questions about the timetable for submitting the liturgical texts and voiced frustration with their grammar, sentence structure and word choices that he said were not suited to contemporary worship.

"I say yes to more accurate Latin translation ... yes to a more elevated tone," Bishop Trautman said from the floor. "But a resounding no to incomplete sentences, to two and three clauses in sentences, no to 13 lines in one sentence, no to archaic phrases, no to texts that are not proclaimable, not intelligible and not pastorally sensitive to our people."

In an interview with Catholic News Service Bishop Trautman singled out for example a phrase included in the translations for votive Masses and Masses for the dead: "May the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Lord, cleanse our hearts and make them fruitful within by the sprinkling of his dew."

"What does that even mean?" he asked, citing frustration also with phrases such as "the sweetness of your grace."

"I don't think the word 'sweetness' relates to people today," at least not in the way the translation intends, he told CNS.

Bishop Serratelli, a member of the International Committee on English in the Liturgy, known as ICEL, told the meeting that ICEL members pray the texts aloud as they draft the English versions. ICEL is made up of representatives of 11 main English-speaking bishops' conferences.

He also emphasized that after an eight-year process to get to this point, the Vatican is waiting on the U.S. bishops to weigh in with their approval.

"We're at the end of the process," Bishop Serratelli said. Of the missal text, he said it's "a very, very good text. ... It's not perfect, but we're at the end of a long, healthy process."

In June 2008 the Vatican granted its "recognitio" or confirmation to the translation of the main parts of the Mass, which the U.S. bishops had voted to approve in June 2006.

Bishop Serratelli told reporters at a news conference that he expects enough votes among the bishops being polled by mail to approve all of the texts. If any fail to get two-thirds support, those pieces will come back to the bishops as a whole at their November meeting.

Typically, attendance is higher at the November meeting, which is where the USCCB conducts most of its conference business.

In November 2008 the U.S. bishops signed off on another section, the Proper of the Seasons, which includes the proper prayers for Sundays and feast days during the liturgical year.

Yet to come for approval by the U.S. bishops are new translations of the Proper of the Saints, propers for the dioceses, antiphons, eucharistic prayers for Masses with children, introductory material and appendices. The propers are expected to be taken up by the U.S. bishops at their regular business meeting in the fall.

When the material was introduced a day earlier, among a handful of questions raised was Bishop Trautman's about the timetable for sending the finished missal changes off to the Vatican and what he found to be too short a time for review.

Noting that the text came to the bishops at a very busy time of year, close to Holy Week and Easter, he said its 812 pages -- 406 each of English and Latin -- meant few bishops had time to do detailed reviews.

Bishop Serratelli disagreed that time was too short, saying the material went to the bishops for review in March.

"The Holy See wants it in November," he said.

Response to immigration a ‘test of our humanity,’

2009-06-15T11:29:00.001-04:00

Response to immigration a ‘test of our humanity,’ Archbishop Chaput says at forum
Comments: 0
Imprimir Incrementar tamaño de fuente Disminuir tamaño de fuente

Archbishop Charles Chaput

Denver, Colo., Jun 13, 2009 / 04:31 pm (CNA).- Saying the immigration crisis is “a test of our humanity,” Archbishop of Denver Charles J. Chaput on Saturday told an open forum on immigration reform that Catholics must not ignore immigrants in need and cannot remain silent about flawed immigration policy.

He also noted that Catholics’ commitment to the immigrant arises from the same source as Catholics’ commitment to the unborn. The archbishop spoke at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in the Denver suburb of Northglenn on Saturday afternoon. He was joined by Congressmen Jared Polis (D-CO) and Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL).

Archbishop Chaput opened with a prayer asking God to help man “build a culture of life” and to “live the Gospel.”

“Make us quick to forgive each other, quick to listen to each other, and eager to serve those who are suffering and in need,” he prayed. “And finally Lord, in all things, fill us with the courage to follow St. Paul when he urges us to ‘speak the truth in love.’”

Beginning his remarks, the archbishop said that immigration reform has been “gridlocked” for more than three years. He blamed both Democrats and Republicans for creating “paralysis.”

“We made our immigration crisis in a bipartisan way. Now we need to solve it in a bipartisan way that involves good people from both parties or no party.”

He noted that he and Rep. Polis, who is openly homosexual and a supporter of abortion rights, would disagree “vigorously” on “some very serious social issues.”

However, the archbishop said the agenda for that day concerned the improvement of immigration laws.

“We have a mutual interest in that important work -- and I respect the congressman’s sincerity and energy in trying to do something about it,” he said.

“The Catholic commitment to the dignity of the immigrant comes from exactly the same roots as our commitment to the dignity of the unborn child,” since being pro-life also means making laws and social policies that will care for “those people already born that no one else will defend.”

“In the United States today, we employ a permanent underclass of human beings who build our roads, pick our fruit, clean our hotel rooms, and landscape our lawns,” Archbishop Chaput remarked.

Stating that most immigrants are law-abiding and “simply want a better life for their families,” he noted that many have children who are American citizens or have been in America for most of their lives.

These people live in a “legal limbo,” he stated.

“They’re vital to our economy, but they have few legal protections, and thousands of families have been separated by arrests and deportations,” he reported.

“We need to remember that how we treat the weak, the infirm, the elderly, the unborn child and the foreigner reflects on our own humanity. We become what we do, for good or for evil.”

Archbishop Chaput insisted that the Catholic Church respects the law, including immigration law, and also respects those who enforce it.

“We do not encourage or help anyone to break the law. We believe Americans have a right to solvent public institutions, secure borders and orderly regulation of immigration.”

However, he said Catholics cannot ignore those in need and cannot be silent about laws that “don’t work” and also create “impossible contradictions and suffering.”

Characterizing the present immigration system as one that adequately serves no one, he urged reform that will address economic and security needs while regularizing “the many decent undocumented immigrants.”

“We become what we do, for good or for evil. If we act and speak like bigots, that’s what we become. If we act with justice, intelligence, common sense and mercy, then we become something quite different. We become the people and the nation God intended us to be.”

He said he hoped those present at today's forum will all take part in immigration reform.

“The future of our country depends on it,” he concluded.

The June 13 forum is part of a national outreach tour called “Familias Unidas.” The tour will visit 22 major cities across the United States and is intended to advance a better understanding of the harm caused to individuals and families by the present immigration system.

Cash-for-Eggs Scheme

2009-06-08T10:51:00.002-04:00

Press Release

June 8, 2009

9:30 AM EST

Ethicist and Women Bioethics Leaders Criticize New York Stem Cell Board for Pursuing Cash-for-Eggs Scheme

"Cash-strapped and college-aged women will be exploited by the state in this scheme."

ALBANY, NY, JUNE 8, 2009 -- New York's Empire Sate Stem Cell Board (ESSCB) is considering a plan that would pay women to provide human eggs for research purposes.

Bucking a national trend seen in states like California and Massachusetts, which prohibit payment for eggs for research, the ESSCB Ethics Committee voted at its May 12 meeting to recommend that state research funds be provided to researchers who pay women for their eggs, making New York the only state in the union to tacitly endorse a cash-for-eggs scheme. At its upcoming meeting on June 11, the ESSCB will consider providing state money for direct payments to women to try to obtain human eggs for research.

"In a desperate quest and unprecedented measure to obtain women's eggs to create embryos for research purposes, New York will waste taxpayers money on unproven science, and women who take the bait will be risking their health and future fertility," said Fr. Thomas Berg, a member of the ESSCB's Ethics Committee, and Executive Director of the Westchester Institute, a Catholic think tank. "I can assure you, it won't be the upper-class set who responds to state inducement and risks potentially life-threatening side-effects of human egg harvesting; it will be the vulnerable classes of cash-strapped and college-aged women who will be exploited by the state in this scheme," said Fr. Berg.

Jennifer Lahl, founder and national director for the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, addressed the risks that are involved in the egg harvesting procedure: "The egg donation process has well documented risks associated with the dangerous drugs taken to produce abnormally large numbers of eggs along with the risks of anesthesia and surgery to remove the eggs. Added to these dangers are the longer term risks associated with cancers and damage to the donors' future fertility.

"In an effort to encourage cures for the sick, the NYESSCB is considering a dangerous campaign to permit them to compensate healthy young women for their eggs. It is a twisted sort of logic that seeks cures for some while ignoring the risks to healthy young women," said Ms. Lahl.

Dorinda Bordlee, Vice President and Senior Counsel for the Bioethics Defense Fund, also criticized the ESSCB plan in light of recent scientific advances in the field of stem cell research. "It is outrageously irresponsible for the New York Stem Cell board to incentivize the exploitive practice of paying cash-strapped young women thousands of dollars to be injected with high doses of hormones to produce eggs for embryonic stem cell research. This unethical move that endangers women's health is completely unnecessary given the breakthrough methods that produce patient-specific stem cells without the need for cloning, embryos or eggs," said Ms. Bordlee.

Fr. Thomas Berg discusses more fully the exploitation and consent issues in a special commentary, "Scrambled Ethics," posted June 2 on National Review Online.

The Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human person was founded in 1998 to renew, deepen, and promote the Western tradition of moral reflection. The institute pursues its objectives in cultural, political, and academic settings. Through seminars, lecture series, and research fellowships, the Westchester Institute seeks to reinvigorate contemporary moral discourse at all levels.

More information: Contact Daniel Kane at dkane@westchesterinstitute.net or visit www.westchesterinstitute.net.

Gingrich's Film Project; Brothers Helping Others

2009-06-05T07:56:00.000-04:00

Former Speaker Highlights John Paul II in Documentary

By Edward Pentin

ROME, JUNE 4, 2009 (Zenit.org).- An event which took place 30 years ago this week would change the world forever.

Over just nine days, from June 2-10, 1979, John Paul II made what was probably his most historic apostolic trip, a pilgrimage back to his native Poland.

He landed in communist Warsaw on the eve of Pentecost, and went on to give 37 speeches and homilies that articulated what most Poles had felt for years: that Poland was a Catholic nation, cursed with a communist state. In doing so, he unleashed a spiritual and political revolution that would eventually free Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union from the shackles of Marxist rule.

In particular, it led to Poland's communist government agreeing to recognize the legality of "Solidarność" - the "Solidarity" trade union movement. Together with the help of international political leaders and the Church, it would become the leading force in the collapse of the communist regime.

Now, 30 years on, a group of filmmakers led by the American politician Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista, are making a 90-minute documentary on that momentous papal pilgrimage. Called "Nine Days that Changed the World," and set for release in the fall, the film aims to take the viewer through those pivotal events, but also to lay out the context of the visit. The program begins with John Paul's election and goes on to make brief references to Karol Wojtyla's life, first under Nazism, then Stalinism, and his vocation to the priesthood.

Last week, as the filmmakers visited Rome to shoot footage of St. Peter's basilica, I spoke with Kevin Knoblock, the program's writer, producer and director, to find out more. The idea for the documentary, he said, came after he and the Gingriches had made a recent film on Ronald Reagan. "When doing that film, we saw the three key players in the founding of the Solidarity movement," he explained. "Reagan had a huge influence, also Thatcher, but most importantly, John Paul II."

The crew had already filmed in various places on John Paul II's 1979 pilgrimage including Krakow, Auschwitz, Czestochowa and Victory Square in Warsaw -- the location of a huge papal Mass that attracted 250,000 people.

John Paul II's famous motto -- "Be Not Afraid" -- was, Knoblock explained, not just an exhortation to be unafraid of opening one's arms to Christ, "but also to be unafraid of the changes and challenges that will come ahead -- the challenges of the Soviet regime and totalitarianism."

He recalled how nine out of 10 Poles heard or saw the Pope speak during those nine short days, and how every effort the regime made to try to prevent the pilgrimage from taking place almost comically backfired.

In its promotional material, the filmmakers say the program will show how John Paul II "helped the Poles find their courage and reclaim their culture." Moreover, they say the documentary aims to express the Pope's message that contrary to the lies of Nazism and communism, "authentic human freedom is only possible through the truth of Jesus Christ."

Such a momentous time continues to be relevant today, Knoblock said. "There's always a need to remember what can happen under authoritarian regimes, always important to remember freedom and religious freedom, and John Paul II certainly brought that to the people of Poland."

The documentary will eventually be available on DVD in English, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. For more information, visit: http://ninedaysthatchangedtheworld.com/

One of South Carolina's first deacons turns 100

2009-06-04T08:25:00.001-04:00

BY BILL PERRY | THE CATHOLIC MISCELLANY

Miscellany Photo/Joe Benton
At left, Deacon Joseph Kemper Sr. talks with his son, Joe Kemper Jr., during a birthday
celebration held for the permanent deacon, who turned 100 on May 29.

MOUNT PLEASANT — Joseph Kemper, one of the Diocese of Charleston’s first permanent deacons, reached another landmark on May 29. He turned 100 years old.

Family members and friends traveled to Sandpiper Village Senior Living Community to celebrate with him.

Deacon Kemper was ordained with two other men in August 1971, by Bishop Ernest L. Unterkoefler as the first permanent deacons in the state of South Carolina.

After Pope Paul VI issued the Sacrum Diaconatus Ordinem in 1967, the U.S. bishops received permission to ordain permanent deacons in 1968. The first group of ordinations took place in May 1971.

Deacon Kemper retired from the diaconate in 1999, but remained active in his ministry for several more years, conducting communion services, visiting the poor and writing.

Today, his small room at Sandpiper Village is a testament to the humble way he has lived in service to God. The only picture hanging in his room is a portrait of St. Peter. Next to that hangs a crucifix and a clock just below.

“The clock represents the world, with Christ ruling over it,” Deacon Kemper told The Miscellany in an interview.

He has worked hard and helped others almost all of his life, according to his family.

“My father started working on the farm at age 8 and was expected to be responsible for his mother, brothers and sisters,” said Claire Kemper Johnson, his daughter from Charlottesville, Va. “I can’t help wishing he had more of a real childhood. Without his intervention, I know his siblings would not have the success stories they did. He has given, given, given.”

Deacon Kemper was a woodworker and cabinet-maker by trade who owned his own business in New Jersey for many years.

After spending time in Florida with his wife Eleanor, who was dying of cancer, he returned to New Jersey to do missionary work with the church. He moved to South Carolina for his ministry of service in 1966.

“I arrived in Charleston, drove to Broad Street, parked my van in the Cathedral school yard and met with Msgr. Bernardin and then the bishop,” he said.

For the next five years, Deacon Kemper served throughout the state, working in construction and driving the bishop around the country. In 1967, Bishop Unterkoefler was the only American bishop summoned to Rome to advise Pope Paul VI on the need for a permanent diaconate.

“The bishop related to the Holy Father my work in South Carolina as an example of why permanent deacons were needed in the church,” Deacon Kemper said.

Later that year, the pope established the order of the permanent diaconate and Deacon Kemper began intensively training and preparing for ordination.

Msgr. John Simonin, retired pastor of St. Mary Church in Charleston, fondly remembered his 27 year association with “Deacon Joe.”

“We started at St. Patrick’s, and he went with me to Nativity, St. Joseph’s and finally St. Mary’s,” Msgr. Simonin said.

Utilizing talents he learned as a young man, Deacon Kemper did much of the construction and repair work around the parishes in which he served. He built portable confessionals, rebuilt rectory porches, rewired electrical circuitry or whatever needed to be done.

“Msgr. Simonin and I did 27 building projects together,” he said. “He was a wonderful man to work with.”

Michael Robinson, a longtime St. Mary parishioner and finance council chair, said Msgr. Simonin and Deacon Kemper were quite a team for 17 years.

“They left our parish in very sound financial and structural condition,” he said.

One side of the man that most people never saw was his willingness to help the poor and those in distress. Regina Alberti, former St. Mary housekeeper, recalled a lady in the community with a severe kidney illness which required numerous medications she could not afford.

“Deacon Kemper befriended her and paid for the medicines out of his own pocket for years, and no one ever knew,” she said.

Alberti said people would knock on the front door of the rectory and the deacon would help them out.

“Under a sometimes gruff, temperamental exterior was a heart of pure gold,” she said.

Now Deacon Kemper spends his days in prayer, reading the Bible, and talking with his many visitors at Sandpiper. On his 99th birthday, his family surprised him by driving him to St. Mary for Sunday Mass followed by a reception.

“He talked about that day for months, and how many old friends he met that were mere children when he first knew them,” his daughter said. “It was a wonderful day.”

Published June 4, 2009, The Catholic Miscellany

Stem cell breakthrough gets closer to the clinic

2009-05-29T11:54:00.001-04:00

By Mira Oberman – 23 hours ago

CHICAGO (AFP) — The technology for versatile, grow-in-a-dish transplant tissue took a step toward clinical use Thursday when researchers announced they have found a safe way to turn skin cells into stem cells.

Researchers say the method is so promising they hope to apply for approval to begin clinic trials by the middle of next year.

"This is the first safe method of generating patient specific stem cells," said study author Robert Lanza, the chief scientific officer at Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine International.

"This technology will soon allow us to expand the range of possible stem cell therapies for the entire human body," Lanza told AFP.

"This allows us to generate the raw material to solve the problem of rejection (by the immune system) so this is really going to accelerate the field of regenerative medicine."

The research builds on an award-winning breakthrough in 2007 by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University.

Yamanaka and his team introduced four genes into skin cells, reprogramming them so that they became indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells.

That achievement conjured the distant vision of an almost limitless source of transplant material that would be free of controversy, as it would entail no cells derived from embryos.

But the downside of the technique for creating these so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) is that the genes are delivered by a "Trojan horse" virus.

Reprogramming cells using a virus modifies their DNA in such a way that they cannot be given to patients without boosting the risk of cancer and genetic mutation.

Other researchers have succeeded in delivering the genes with a method called DNA transfection or using a chemical wash, but these techniques also posed health risks.

Lanza and the team led by Kwang Soo Kim of Harvard University succeeded in delivering the genes by fusing them with a cell penetrating peptide which does not pose the risk of genetic mutation.

While this method took twice as long to generate pluripotent stem cells, Lanza said he believes his team can increase the efficiency of the transmission by purifying the protein.

The study was published in the online edition of Cell Stem Cell.

Stem cells have excited huge interest over the past decade.

Promoters say this material could reverse cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and other diseases and also allow researchers to grow patient-specific organ and tissue transplants which will not require harmful anti-rejection drugs.

But the dynamic has been sapped by opposition from religious conservatives, who argue that research on embryos -- the prime source of stem cells so far -- destroys human life.

Generating stem cells from skin cells bypasses the controversy and also dramatically increases the availability of patient-specific stem cells.

Is Mary the "Coredemptrix" of Humanity?

2009-05-27T11:01:00.002-04:00

May 26, 2009

by Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY -- When Pope Benedict XVI told a crowd in St. Peter's Square in April that the Virgin Mary "silently followed her son Jesus to Calvary, taking part with great suffering in his sacrifice, thus cooperating in the mystery of redemption and becoming mother of all believers," most listeners probably heard nothing remarkable in the statement.

After all, devotion to Mary is a pervasive element of the Catholic faith, and one of the features that most clearly distinguishes it from Protestantism.

Yet for one group of devotees, Benedict's statement was a milestone -- a sign that he had moved one step closer to granting their wish for a new dogma on Mary's contribution to human salvation.

At least 7 million Catholics from more than 170 countries, including hundreds of bishops and cardinals, have reportedly signed petitions urging the pope to proclaim Mary "the Spiritual Mother of All Humanity, the coredemptrix with Jesus the redeemer, mediatrix of all graces with Jesus the one mediator, and advocate with Jesus Christ on behalf of the human race."

In other words, the Virgin Mary -- though always subordinate to and dependent on the will of Christ -- plays an active, unique and irreplaceable role in helping her son deliver mankind from sin and death.

Proponents say that such a statement would represent the culmination of the church's traditional teaching on Jesus' mother, and bring the world untold spiritual and material benefits.

But critics of the proposed dogma say it would exaggerate Mary's true importance and undermine efforts toward unity with other Christian denominations.

The idea of Mary as Christ's collaborator in the redemption of humanity is deeply rooted in Catholic tradition, said Monsignor Arthur B. Calkins, an American priest working at the Vatican who has written extensively on the subject.

"The church has been meditating on this role for two millennia," Calkins said in an interview, "and so the Holy Spirit continues to draw forth what is there already in seed."

According to Mark Miravalle, a professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, the new dogma would mean the "climax of the `Age of Mary'," a period that began in 1830 with apparitions of the Virgin in France, and witnessed papal proclamations of her Immaculate Conception (1854) and bodily Assumption into heaven (1950).

Supporters of the dogma of Mary Coredemptrix began petitioning the Holy See in the 1920s, Miravalle said, but it was in the 1990s that the movement drew millions of supporters and its goal began to appear within reach.

Pope John Paul II publicly used the term "Coredemptrix" at least six times in his pontificate, and at one point Miravalle predicted that he would proclaim the dogma before the millennial year of 2000.

The professor now believes that John Paul was persuaded not to act by advisers who feared that the new dogma would pose an obstacle to ecumenical dialogue.

At least one non-Catholic participant in that dialogue says such fears were well-founded.

"Anglicans require that any dogma be provable from Scripture," said the Rev. William Franklin, academic fellow at the Anglican Centre in Rome and a visiting professor at the Vatican's Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Anglican ecumenists are still struggling to reconcile their beliefs with the papal dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, Franklin said. "Making a new Marian dogma would complicate the journey toward full communion between our two churches," he said.

Proponents of the dogma insist that it would actually promote ecumenism by dispelling any ambiguities about Catholic doctrine.

"This would bring new clarity that Catholics do not adore Mary as a goddess," Miravalle said. "It would underscore what Catholics do believe
-- that she is your spiritual mother -- but at the same time that she is not the fourth person of the Blessed Trinity."

By far the most significant criticism, if only on account of its source, has been that of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.

Ratzinger told a German interviewer in 2000 that the "formula `Co-redemptrix' departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the (church) Fathers and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings," threatening to "obscure" the status of Christ as the source of all redemption.

"I do not think there will be any compliance with this demand (for papal proclamation of the dogma) within the foreseeable future," he said at the time.

But Benedict has shown increasing openness to the dogma in the years since, proponents say, even though he has never used the word "Coredemptrix" as pope.

"Joseph Ratzinger has never been more Marian than since he became Benedict XVI," Miravalle said.

Calkins, who carefully tracks the pope's statements on "Mary's role in the work of our redemption," said Benedict's words on the subject already fill up 25 pages.

Most of the church's academic experts on Mary continue to oppose the dogma, however, deeming it unnecessary to encourage a proper devotion to Christ's mother.

"To give Mary honor, I would institute a new feast, or a special title," said the Rev. Johann G. Roten, director of the International Marian Research Institute in Dayton, Ohio, and a member of a Vatican panel that unanimously advised against the new dogma in 1996.

Yet Miravalle says papal recognition of Mary as Coredemptrix would be more than a formality; it would lead to an "outpouring of grace," helping to dispel a range of contemporary problems, including abortion, terrorism and natural disasters.

"To the extent that we acknowledge Our Lady's roles, to that extent God allows her to fully exercise those roles," he said. "And we can use some extra grace at this time."

Angels and Demons - Dan Brown's America

2009-05-20T16:50:00.002-04:00

May 19, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

By ROSS DOUTHAT

The movie treatment of his novel, “Angels and Demons,” is cleaning up at the box office this week. The sequel to “The DaVinci Code,” due out in November, might buoy the publishing industry through the recession. And if you want to understand the state of American religion, you need to understand why so many people love Dan Brown.

It isn’t just that he knows how to keep the pages turning. That’s what it takes to sell a million novels. But if you want to sell a 100 million, you need to preach as well as entertain — to present a fiction that can be read as fact, and that promises to unlock the secrets of history, the universe and God along the way.

Brown is explicit about this mission. He isn’t a serious novelist, but he’s a deadly serious writer: His thrilling plots, he’s said, are there to make the books’ didacticism go down easy, so that readers don’t realize till the end “how much they are learning along the way.” He’s working in the same genre as Harlan Coben and James Patterson, but his real competitors are ideologues like Ayn Rand, and spiritual gurus like Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra. He’s writing thrillers, but he’s selling a theology.

Brown’s message has been called anti-Catholic, but that’s only part of the story. True, his depiction of the Roman Church’s past constitutes a greatest hits of anti-Catholicism, with slurs invented by 19th-century Protestants jostling for space alongside libels fabricated by 20th-century Wiccans. (If he targeted Judaism or Islam this way, one suspects that no publisher would touch him.)

But Brown doesn’t have the soul of a true-believing Enemy of the Faith. Deep down, he has a fondness for the ordinary, well-meaning sort of Catholic, his libels against their ancestors notwithstanding. He’s even sympathetic to the religious yearnings of his Catholic villains — including, yes, the murderous albino monks.

This explains why both “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” end with a big anti-Catholic reveal (Jesus had kids with Mary Magdalene! That terrorist plot against the Vatican was actually launched by an archconservative priest!) followed by a big cover-up. A small elect (Tom Hanks and company, in the movies) gets to know what really happened, but the mass of believers remain in the dark, lest their spiritual questing be derailed by disillusionment and scandal. Having dismissed Catholicism’s truth claims and demonized its most sincere defenders, Brown pats believers on the head and bids them go on fingering their rosary beads.

In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.

The polls that show more Americans abandoning organized religion don’t suggest a dramatic uptick in atheism: They reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they’re making or how many times they’ve been married.

These are Dan Brown’s kind of readers. Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospels and alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus who’s a thoroughly modern sort of messiah — sexy, worldly, and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.

But the success of this message — which also shows up in the work of Brown’s many thriller-writing imitators — can’t be separated from its dishonesty. The “secret” history of Christendom that unspools in “The Da Vinci Code” is false from start to finish. The lost gospels are real enough, but they neither confirm the portrait of Christ that Brown is peddling — they’re far, far weirder than that — nor provide a persuasive alternative to the New Testament account. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — jealous, demanding, apocalyptic — may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but he’s the only historically-plausible Jesus there is.

For millions of readers, Brown’s novels have helped smooth over the tension between ancient Christianity and modern American faith. But the tension endures. You can have Jesus or Dan Brown. But you can’t have both.

Obama Scored Big at Notre Dame

2009-05-19T07:44:00.000-04:00

Seldom does dawn rise on an America where the morning's New York Times displays a more intuitive grasp of a story than the New York Post. The coverage of Barack Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame, however, was such a day. Where the Post headlined an inside spread with "Obama In the Lions' Den," the Times front page was dominated by a color photograph of a beaming president, resplendent in his blue-and-gold Notre Dame academic gown, reaching out to graduates eager to shake his hand or just touch his robe.

It was precisely the message President Obama wanted to send: How bad can he be on abortion if Notre Dame is willing to honor him?

We cannot blame the president for this one. During his campaign for president, Mr. Obama spoke honestly about the aggressive pro-choice agenda he intended to pursue -- as he assured Planned Parenthood, he was "about playing offense," not defense -- and his actions have been consistent with that pledge. If only our nation's premier Catholic university were as forthright in advancing its principles as Mr. Obama has been for his.

In a letter to Notre Dame's Class of 2009, the university's president, the Rev. John Jenkins, stated that the honors for Mr. Obama do not indicate any "ambiguity" about Notre Dame's commitment to Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life. The reality is that it was this ambiguity that the White House was counting on; this ambiguity that was furthered by the adoring reaction to Mr. Obama's visit; and this ambiguity that disheartens those working for an America that respects the dignity of life inside the womb.

We've been here before. In his response to an inquiry from this reporter, Dennis Brown, the university's spokesman, wisely ignored a question asking whether "ambiguity" would be the word to describe a similar decision in 1984 to give Mario Cuomo, then governor of New York, the Notre Dame platform he so famously used to advance his personally-opposed-but argument. Or the decision a few years later to bestow its highest Catholic award on Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, another supporter of legal abortion. It seems that whenever Democratic leaders find themselves in trouble over their party's abortion record, some Notre Dame honor or platform will be forthcoming to provide the needed cover.

Probably Notre Dame is rich enough that it can safely thumb its institutional nose at the 70 or so bishops who publicly challenged the university for flouting their guidelines on such invitations. Nor can we expect much from Notre Dame's trustees. At a time when Americans all across this country have declared themselves "yea" or "nay" on the Obama invite, the reaction of Notre Dame's board is less the roar of the lion than the silence of the lambs.

Pro-lifers are used to this. They know their stand makes them unglamorous. They find themselves a stumbling block to Democratic progressives -- and unwelcome at the Republican country club. And they are especially desperate for the support of institutions willing to engage in the clear, thoughtful and unembarrassed way that even Mr. Obama says we should.

With its billions in endowment and its prestigious name, Notre Dame ought to be in the lead here. But when asked for examples illuminating the university's unambiguous support for unborn life, Mr. Brown could provide only four: help for pregnant students who want to carry their babies to term, student volunteer work for pregnant women at local shelters, prayer mentions at campus Masses, and lectures such as a seminar on life issues.

These are all well and good, but they also highlight the poverty of Notre Dame's institutional witness. At Notre Dame today, there is no pro-life organization -- in size, in funding, in prestige -- that compares with the many centers, institutes and so forth dedicated to other important issues ranging from peace and justice to protecting the environment. Perhaps this explains why a number of pro-life professors tell me they must not be quoted by name, lest they face career retaliation.

The one institute that does put the culture of life at the heart of its work, moreover -- the Center for Ethics and Culture -- doesn't even merit a link under the "Faith and Service" section on the university's Web site. The point is this: When Notre Dame doesn't dress for the game, the field is left to those like Randall Terry who create a spectacle and declare their contempt for civil and respectful witness.

In the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, there is a wonderful photograph of Father Ted Hesburgh -- then Notre Dame president -- linking hands with Martin Luther King Jr. at a 1964 civil-rights rally at Chicago's Soldier Field. Today, nearly four decades and 50 million abortions after Roe v. Wade, there is no photograph of similar prominence of any Notre Dame president taking a lead at any of the annual marches for life.

Father Jenkins is right: That's not ambiguity. That's a statement.

Write to MainStreet@wsj.com

Guest Commentary: The Bishops Who Speak... And Those Who Don't

2009-05-13T11:28:00.001-04:00

By Deal W. Hudson, Ph.D

5/12/2009

Inside Catholic

As Catholics face important issues today, many are looking to the bishops to speak out. Both the bishops who are speaking out on issues as well as those who do not may be saying something about the Catholic Church in the United States.

WASHINGTON (Inside Catholic) - A popular pastime among Catholic commentators lately could be called "counting the bishops." In the last election, we counted the bishops who spoke out regarding their document on voting, "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," or on the qualifications of Barack Obama as a Catholic candidate. With the latest controversy over the upcoming Notre Dame commencement, another count is underway: 68 bishops have criticized the choice of President Obama to receive an honorary degree.

This is a noteworthy trend in the postconciliar Church that doesn't go back far: Between the late 1960s and the 1990s, it was very unusual for a bishop to address an issue (outside the collective voice of the bishops' conference) that had either national significance or tacitly challenged brother bishops to greater action.

The exceptions to this rule are few: John Cardinal O'Connor and Bernard Cardinal Law during the pro-life skirmishes of the 1980s; and from the left and right of the Church, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton and Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz. There were often consequences for bishops who ignored the code of collegiality -- isolation or, sadly, retribution.

The reticence of bishops to put aside collegiality started to diminish during the 2004 presidential campaign. Many prelates began going public to defend Archbishop Raymond Burke, then from St. Louis, who was being hotly criticized for his comments to the St. Louis Post Dispatch that presidential candidate John Kerry "should not present himself for communion."

More than 20 bishops made statements that supported Archbishop Burke's position, and among them some familiar names: Chaput, Wenski, Aquila, Smith, Olmsted, Sheridan, Saltarelli, Harrington, Hughes, Boland, Finn, Gracida, Gossman, and Myers. (One significant preview of what lay ahead in 2004 was Bishop William Weigand's warning to Gov. Rick Davis in January 2003 not to receive communion.)

The bishops' growing willingness to speak individually has blunted the power of official statements issued by the USCCB. The commitment to collegiality had given greater authority to conference statements, but often at the cost of sending a forthright and prophetic message about the growing acceptance of abortion. The latest document, "Faithful Citizenship," is an example of how a "compromise statement," representing all the bishops, can contain language which is confusing at best and, at worst, subversive of pro-life aims.

Now that "counting the bishops" has become a factor in determining the direction of the Church, it will be necessary to count those who do not speak. Or, at least, it is important to consider the meaning in the silence of those bishops. The 2008 election did produce one episode that suggests what the silence means for some bishops.

The Sunday before the election, Mass was held by the bishop of a major Midwestern city, one of the key war zones between McCain's and Obama's Catholic supporters. (It is not necessary for me to reveal the name of the bishop.) After Mass, the bishop held a question-and-answer session, which became quite heated when he did not answer questions about the priority of life issues to the satisfaction of some present.

One of those dissatisfied waited to speak with the bishop after the session was over. She asked him why his comments sounded so out of line with the many bishops who had spoken publicly to underscore the importance of voting pro-life. The bishop replied testily, "Well, there are many of us who are not speaking out," then turned and walked away.

In other words, there were bishops in the 2008 election who purposely did not speak out, and who did not agree with those who did. Their silence implied consent to the way Catholic teaching was being construed by Obama supporters like Doug Kmiec and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

What does this tell us about the silence of the remaining bishops on the upcoming commencement at Notre Dame? Certainly there are those who agree with the 68 who have gone on the record against his selection. Perhaps they think the issue has been sufficiently flogged, especially with the public statement by USCCB President Francis Cardinal George.

But how many simply disagree with those bishops and think Notre Dame is doing the right thing by honoring President Obama? Is this the meaning of their silence? Do the majority of U.S. bishops agree with Notre Dame? If so, that may well be one of the reasons Notre Dame's officials felt free to issue the invitation in the first place.

-----

Deal W. Hudson is the director of InsideCatholic.com and the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster).

The Torture Memos

2009-05-12T16:29:00.000-04:00

What Catholic Teaching Has to Say

BY JOAN FRAWLEY DESMOND

May 17-23, 2009 Issue | Posted 5/8/09 at 7:02 AM

WASHINGTON — The release of an official memorandum outlining U.S. government-approved torture of suspected al-Qaida operatives has provoked a national debate on the use of harsh interrogation techniques.

Yet, the ensuing political firestorm not only reveals widespread confusion and disagreements regarding the morality, lawfulness and effectiveness of torture; it also exposes fissures within the Catholic community regarding the relationship between the moral prohibition against torture and Church teaching on other life issues.

While experts debate whether or not water boarding constitutes torture, many Catholics suggest that in cases of imminent threat, the “ends justify the means.”

Seeking to educate their flock and influence public policy, the U.S. Catholic bishops have presented the moral foundations of the Church’s position on torture in statements issued over the last year.

At a January press conference organized by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, John Carr, executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, reviewed the fundamental moral principles at work.

“Pope Benedict XVI has said that the prohibition against torture ‘cannot be contravened under any circumstances.’ Simply put, torture is a classic moral case of ends and means,” said Carr. “Good ends cannot legitimize immoral means. In the context of torture, we cannot defend our life and dignity by threatening the lives and attacking the dignity of others.”

But recent polls signaling increased support for the use of torture during times of national crisis suggest Church leaders will have to work harder to impart Catholic teaching, particularly when they seek to influence a debate that has become deeply politicized.

“The teaching of the Catholic Church could not be more clear,” said Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell. “In Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World), one of the central documents of the Second Vatican Council, in Veritatis Splendor (Pope John Paul II’s encyclical The Splendor of Truth), and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, physical and mental torture are deemed intrinsically evil.”

The Church, said O’Connell, is in the forefront of supporting the principles that provide the foundation for international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. “Convention Against Torture.” “Universal law and moral principles bind us as a community,” she noted.

A legal expert on interrogations married to a former military interrogator, O’Connell describes torture as “always immoral, unlawful and impractical.”

In her classroom, however, some students question this assessment, arguing that torture “works” and helps keep America safe. O’Connell said it can be a struggle for students to understand that “as Catholics, we should resist attempts to place the United States, or any state, above the law.”

‘A Nation of Laws’

When the Department of Justice released the four classified memos on the interrogation of suspected terrorists issued by the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel between 2002 and 2005, President Obama issued a statement outlining a number of practical reasons for releasing the memos and for prohibiting the application of techniques that “undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer.”

“Enlisting our values in the protection of our people makes us stronger and more secure,” Obama said. “A democracy as resilient as ours must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals.”

The president’s statement affirmed that the “United States is a nation of laws. My administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals.”

Then, during a visit to the CIA designed to reassure intelligence officers and field agents that he backed their efforts, the president went a step further and acknowledged that his anti-torture policy carried a measure of risk.

“I’m sure that sometimes it seems as if that means we’re operating with one hand tied behind our back or that those who would argue for a higher standard are naive,” he told agents. But “what makes the United States special … is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy.”

The president’s implicit acknowledgement that — with regards to torture — the ends do not justify the means, earned approval from Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. bishops’ Pro-life Secretariat.

“It was a good statement against a utilitarian approach to the government’s treatment of human beings,” said Doerflinger. “Logically, these values and ideals should be applied in all contexts and across the entire spectrum of human life.”

A pro-life activist who spends a good deal of time drafting statements opposing Obama’s policies on abortion and embryo-killing stem-cell research, Doerflinger has long observed the inconsistent application of moral principles on Capitol Hill. “Each society and political faction has its exceptions and its blind spots,” he said. “But the Church is against any attack on the dignity of the human person.”

During one week in January, he recalled, the U.S. bishops issued statements applauding Obama’s executive order banning torture and criticizing his reversal of the Mexico City Policy banning U.S. funds for abortion advocacy abroad. “A cynic might say that the president should respect embryos with the same commitment that he respects suspected terrorists,” observed Doerflinger.

Practical and Moral

In fact, while Obama has remained an outspoken opponent of the use of torture, his recent public statements have not specified the precise national “ideals” or moral principles violated by the Bush policy condoning the coercive interrogation of three terrorist suspects from 2002 to 2005.

Further, judging from the “memos” and other recent news stories retracing the internal debate within the Bush administration and the CIA regarding the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the Office of Legal Counsel also kept the focus on “the facts” that provided the necessary context for evaluating the utility and legality of the methods under review.

Patrick Buchanan, the conservative commentator and author, understands why the memos focused on “the facts” that provide the context for the interrogations, though he is cautious about endorsing or repudiating the legal counsel they supply.

“I don’t like the term, ‘torture.’ I’d rather focus on the moral action itself. If it is moral at times to take human life in self-defense, then it may be moral, at times, to do something much less serious — inflict pain for the purpose of saving the lives of thousands from an imminent terrorist attack.”

Buchanan says he would like the “people who recommended this policy to stand up and defend their decision.” But the spectacle of Bush-era lawyers publicly defending their legal judgment appears unlikely, to say the least. Republicans worry that the memos’ release has harmed national security, but they also fear that politically dominant Democrats may prosecute Bush administration officials who provided legal approval for torture.

Michael Novak, the theologian and author, questions whether critics of the Bush White House have fully considered the moral and practical complexities attendant in the post-9/11 era. “I respect those moralists who say, ‘never,’ and I believe we must come as close to ‘never’ as the extremities of some human situations allow,” said Novak, “and even in such extremities, great legal, medical and moral care must be used so as not to do lasting harm to the one interrogated.”

After a moment’s reflection, Novak proffers, “a test case for every moralist to answer truthfully: Would they allow such strictly limited interrogation in order to save the lives of the 10 or 12 people they love the most, or would they allow those people to perish for want of timely information? Either way, each moralist is complicit in the outcome.”

Clearly, some Catholics believe it is unjust to condemn as “torturers” government officials who issued legal judgments intended to protect American lives.

But Thomas Romig, the dean of Washburn University School of Law and the former judge advocate general of the U.S. Army from 2001 to 2005, wants the public to grasp the strong connection between the moral and practical reasons for prohibiting torture.

“It’s a very slippery slope when you make an exception to the ban on torture. Once the word got out that we were making exceptions, it caused serious confusion in detention centers,” Romig recalled.

“We have always been the gold standard in the treatment of detainees and people captured on the battlefield,” he said. “If we want to see treaties enforced, we have to live up to a high standard.”

Joan Frawley Desmond writes

from Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Torture - The Catholic Response

2009-05-07T16:49:00.002-04:00

The following is a posting from Vox Nova - a Catholic Blog. It raises some interesting points concerning torture that need our attention.

Recently, a comment showed up on Vox Nova signed by Judie Brown, linking to the American Life League. We have no reason to doubt that she left the comment, though we did attempt to contact her to verify. She did not return our emails. The comment is regarding M.Z.’s post on EWTN’s cowardice in not condemning torture and not affirming the clear teaching of the Catholic Church.

I am posting Brown’s comment in full along with my own interpolations:

Dear Friends and Foes, Torture of prisoners can be approved in some cases when there are specific reasons for doing so, but my belief is that in the case of torture, we have to examine first and foremost the case of the innocent preborn child. His limbs can be ripped off and noone calls that torture. His head can be crused with forceps and noone calls that torture.

I am not sure who Judie Brown’s foes are at Vox Nova or why she feels compelled to presume that there are, indeed, persons inimical toward her here. In fact, we have had a link to the American Life League since the Vox Nova was first initiated, and we certainly have made no effort to conceal it (it occupies the top place in our alphabetical list of Catholic Organizations, Institutes and Ministries in the right sidebar).

More apropos of the matter at hand, I want to direct your attention to the very first line of Brown’s comment. She affirms unequivocally that torture of prisoners (i)can be approved in (ii)some cases when there are (iii)specific reasons for doing so.

As to (i), whose approval is needed? Brown doesn’t say. We know, obviously, that the act of government-sponsored torture, which is the sort we have been discussing at length at Vox Nova, needs only the approval of the Executive Branch of government without the consent of the legislature or the American people in order to be performed. But Brown seems to want to say more than that since, after all, she left her comment on a post that discusses the moral legitimacy of torture from the Catholic prospective. Is Brown suggesting that torture of prisoners may be approved of according to the magisterium of the Catholic Church? If she is, she is dead wrong. This is well-traveled terrain at Vox Nova, but it bears repeating that the Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II, whose teaching authority unquestionably extends to morals, both condemned torture as intrinsically evil without qualification (i.e., under no conditions is an act of torture morally licit). For those teachings, see Gaudium et spes 27 and Veritatis Splendor 80.

As to (ii), we have already ruled out from the Catholic stance any circumstances in which an act of torture may be morally licit. So Brown’s suggestions that there are “some cases” where torture can be approved are well outside Catholic boundaries. What is less astonishing, but no less irresponsible, is that Brown blithely mentions “some cases,” but leaves us only with an indeterminate idea. To which cases is she referring? It seems to me the Brown herself does not know.

As to (iii), once more Brown short-changes her friends and foes by neglecting to indicate which and whose reasons may be supplied to justify morally an act of torture. Such vagueness is reprehensible, especially in discussions about what the Church considers a grave human rights violation. It seems to me that, in her haste to justify torture, Brown has not thought about the matter in any depth. In the absence of reasons, we can only desire that something be true. Does Brown desire torture to be legitimate and morally acceptable in some way? If so, her belief stems from an inordinate will, not from responsible, pro-life reasoning.

Brown continues her thought:

…but my belief is that in the case of torture, we have to examine first and foremost the case of the innocent preborn child. His limbs can be ripped off and noone calls that torture. His head can be crused with forceps and noone calls that torture.

Indeed, the description of certain methods of abortion that Brown provides is horrific and accurate. And, indeed, I do acknowledge that the pain inflicted on the child is indescribably cruel and abominable. But all Brown is suggesting is that in common parlance we extend our talk of torture to the pain and suffering inflicted on a human fetus. This in no way advances a case for torture.

There are many other examples I could provide but I think you get the picture.

I do.

When you write about torturing someone guilty of murdering innocent soldiers, civilians and the like and you compare that with what is being done to preborn babies under cover of law, I have to say … no contest.

The safeguarding of human rights and the condemnation of an intrinsic evil is never a contest. We are not in the business as Catholics of cashing out intrinsic evils in some sort of comparative or competitive enterprise.

In this one line, Brown shows her true colors. She submits that the pain inflicted upon a “guilty” person through torture is not in the same moral realm as the pain inflicted on the unborn through abortion. First, from a logical point of view, this a red herring (fallacy of relevance). The introduction of the pain inflicted on aborted children does not change the reality or status of any other intrinsic evil, be it torture or euthanasia. Furthermore, noting the pain and suffering involved in abortion does not establish Brown’s previous point about torture being morally licit in “some cases” for “specific reasons.” In other words, Brown is not making any sort of point here, but is instead distracting from the relevant discussion. Again, in the absence of reasons, Brown’s case is just a matter of hand-waving.

Also telling is Brown’s assumption (unsubstantiated and empirically false) that those who are torture are “guilty” of murdering innocent soldiers and civilians (can we really talk about the innocence of soldiers in the same way as we do the innocence of civilians?). First, torture can be done (and has been done) on human persons who have not been judged guilty by any tribunal or court. Second, torture can be done (and has been done) on human persons who have not murdered innocent persons. So the concept of torture in no way contains the idea of “guilt” as one of its essential features. Rather, torture is defined without respect to guilt or retribution. Now, torture can, indeed, be done on those who are found guilty of murder or other crimes, but this is only a contingent connection, not a necessary one. One of the hallmarks of Catholic teaching on morals specifically, and logical analysis generally, is precision in analytic description. We are able to conduct ourselves morally in view of Catholic teaching because we understand its moral concepts. That’s what makes morality, according to Aquinas, reasonable. The prohibition on torture extends to all cases without respect to specific reasons to torture, no matter if the human person who is to be tortured is innocent or guilty.

In her last gasp to make a cogent argument, Brown turns to the Catechism:

As for the Catechism, this might interest those of you with a logical thought process:

2297 Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.

Brown wants us to utilize our “logical thought process.” She then quotes the Catechism, which paraphrases the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II. This passage condemns torture as contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. The “logical thought process” is not Brown’s. She contradicts her earlier comments about torturing being legitimate in “some cases” and for “specific reasons” by citing this passage, which in turn draws from the teachings of Vatican II and John Paul II. The truth of the matter is, Brown has no argument from morality and no argument from the Church’s teaching to support her claim. She is right, however, to put a premium on logical thought process, and she would do well to employ it herself.

To close, allow me to post the paragraph in the Catechism that immediately follows the paragraph Brown quotes, which she conveniently omitted:

In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors. (CCC 2298)

The Catechism itself states that the practices of torture that were overlooked or permitted by clerics in the past were cruel and out of conformity with the rights of the human person. Furthermore, we are to work for the abolition of torture (notice the Catechism switches from a reference to the past to a present imperative).

I do not doubt the sincerity of people like Judie Brown, David Carlin, and Deal Hudson in promoting respect for the unborn. But they have shown themselves to be in deep need of catechesis and moral formation on the issue of torture. And as long as they continue to try to find loopholes in the Church’s doctrine (such as Brown’s emphasizing that the victims of torture are guilty or Hudson’s outrageous claim that torture can be permissible when subsumed as a measure of a just war), they remain at odds with the Church. They very well may be the “foes” of certain Catholic moral principles that Brown acknowledged in her comment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Human Rights, Morality, Policraticus, Torture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

To Love As Jesus Loves

2009-04-04T15:44:00.001-04:00

TOM REICHERT, Commentary

Published: April 2, 2009

Our authentic self is the sanctuary where God dwells within us. It is here in solitude that we can sense the innermost movement of God and what it means to be “one” with God.

Thomas Merton wrote: “The inner self is precisely that self which cannot be tricked or manipulated by anyone, even by the devil. He is like a very shy wild animal that never appears at all whenever an alien presence is at hand, and comes out only when all is perfectly peaceful, in silence, when he is untroubled and alone. He cannot be lured by anyone or anything, because he responds to no lure except that of the divine freedom.”

During Lent we go to the desert. It is here that our self-righteous, false sense of self feels most vulnerable. This is where the devil roars and tempts us to trade our soul for the kingdoms of the world. Unlike the devil, Jesus won’t claim equality with God. Jesus undermines our false gods and false sense of self. His power is not used to exploit, manipulate and dehumanize, but to build up, heal and serve. He tells us that what we do unto others, we do unto him.

Lent reminds us just how bound we are to illusions and false gods.

When someone undermines our worldview, we dig for shortcomings, become angry and demonize our adversaries. Adversaries of Jesus did the same thing. “Why should we listen to him? He’s a drunkard, a glutton, and an intimate associate of sinners; he’s possessed; a devil and a liar. Better to just kill him for the common good of the people.”

If, like the Eucharist, Christ is truly present in the least of our brethren, what claim does that have on us—as followers of Jesus? Like it or not, we have to take up our cross even as Jesus took up his. We must stand up for what is right, not just what is politic, expedient or self-serving on our side of an ideological cultural divide.

We’re given fair warning that we will be misunderstood, rejected and persecuted. But we’re also promised that the truth will set us free and that one day every tear will be wiped away.

“It’s Our Best Kept Secret”

Catholic social doctrine is written to help us love as Jesus loves. If it’s our best kept secret, that’s because to embrace it is to invite abuse, even by fellow Catholics. If the teachings of Jesus are difficult, so is Catholic social doctrine. If we apply church teaching to an unjust war, to torture, or capital punishment, our names will be taken in vain—even if the pope, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops or someone like Mother Teresa says the exact same thing. If we advocate for the right to basic necessities like food, or the right to work or basic health care, which Catholic social doctrine advocates, we may well be called a bleeding heart liberal, a socialist or a communist. If we speak in accord with Catholic social doctrine and the pope against abortion, we may well be called a rabid right-wing conservative hypocrite who cares about life in the womb but won’t lift a finger to help a child once they’re born. None of this name-calling helps us discern the truth or what it means to love as Jesus does.

Whenever human life is aborted, be it in the womb, or by terrorism, unjust war, starvation, torture, crucifixion, Christ in the “distressing disguise” of the least is still left hanging from a tree.

What does it say about our world when the U.N. estimates that there are between 40-50 million abortions worldwide each year? Does the Golden Rule apply here? We know we came into being at conception. We know that had we been aborted at nine days, nine weeks or nine months, we wouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t the burden of proof be on the person who wants to take our life to prove we’re not an ensouled human person—than for us to prove we are? How do we pragmatically prove the presence of a metaphysical reality like love, human dignity, the presence of a soul—or God? Pro-choice advocates can no more prove a child in the womb doesn’t have a soul or human dignity with human rights than a sexist can prove a woman doesn’t have a soul or a racist can prove a person of a different race doesn’t have a soul.

Goethe once said, “As the atom goes so goes the universe.” What does it mean to a Christian then when humankind has developed enough chemical, biological and nuclear weaponry to abort our entire collective human experience umpteen times over?

It seems the world has done a better job evangelizing fear, greed, violence, individualism and extreme moral relativism than Christians and people of good will have in evangelizing a culture of life and a civilization of love whereby the truth of our being is honored, human dignity is respected and basic human rights are protected by law.

One thing’s for sure. Partisan left- and right-wing political ideologies and their pundits can’t tell us what it means to be Christ-like. They can’t tell us the Christian response to the great moral questions of our day. They can inspire great self-righteous hatred toward “enemies,” but who among them can teach us how to love one another as Christ loves us? Can they teach us what it means to be born anew in the Spirit?

God Can Speak In The Silence

For those actually seeking truth, better off going to the desert instead, where God can speak in the silence. If we seek real freedom and true happiness, better off struggling to be an authentic person than aspiring to worldly success and power.

In 2005 the Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine was published at the request of Pope John Paul II to “give a concise but complete overview of the Church’s social teaching.” The document states: “The Church’s social doctrine must be seen as the basis of an intense and constant work of formation, especially of the lay faithful. … The Church … intends with this document … to propose to all men and women a humanism that is up to the standards of God’s plan of love in history, an integral humanism capable of creating a new social, economic and political order, founded on the dignity and freedom of every human person to be brought about in peace, justice, and solidarity. This humanism can become a reality if individual men and women and their communities are able to cultivate moral and social virtues in themselves and spread them in society. Then, under the necessary help of divine grace, there will arise a generation of new men and women, the molders of a new humanity.”

Unfortunately, as fear escalates and the dehumanizing components of technology advance, defending authentic human freedom and the sacred dignity of the human person is an area that will be increasingly contested. On the one hand, like Mother Teresa, we must simply do small things in loving ways. On the other, to be a leaven in a complex, pluralistic culture requires an educated laity. “It belongs to the laity, without waiting passively for orders and directives, to take the initiative freely and to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws, and structures of the community in which they live.”

What does this mean? To the nearly one billion Catholics in the world, this doctrine is a pastoral effort to help us figure it out. Put another way, this doctrine is designed to help us do our part in ushering in the kingdom of God, which is both a grace from God and a human work requiring us to use our gifts and expertise in cooperation with the will of God.

Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn it but to save it. May we sense the kingdom of God is at hand, all the way to heaven.

Tom Reichert is the director of pastoral and outreach ministry at St. Joseph Church, Marietta. He may be contacted at treichert@

saintjosephcc.org or (770) 422-5633, ext. 25.

The Tyranny of Liberalism

2009-03-29T20:39:00.000-04:00

James Kalb on the Ideology's Totalitarian Impulses

By Annamarie Adkins

NEW YORK, MARCH 27, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Liberals -- on both the Right and Left -- may posit that they favor freedom, reason and the well-being of ordinary people. But some critics believe that liberalism itself erodes the very institutions -- family, religion, local associations -- necessary to restrain its excesses.

One such liberal skeptic is attorney and writer James Kalb, who recently wrote a book entitled, "The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command" (ISI).

Kalb explained to ZENIT why he believes liberalism inevitably evolves into a form of soft totalitarianism, or a “dictatorship of relativism,” and why the Church is well positioned to be its preeminent foe.

Q: What is liberalism?

Kalb: We're so much in the middle of it that it's difficult to see it as a whole. You can look at it, though, as an expression of modern skepticism.

Skeptical doubts have led to a demand for knowledge based on impersonal observation and devoted to practical goals. Applied to the physical world, that demand has given us modern natural science.

Applied to life in society, it has led to a technological understanding of human affairs. If we limit ourselves to impersonal observations, we don't observe the good; we observe preferences and how to satisfy them. The result is a belief that the point of life is satisfying preferences.

On that view, the basic social issue is whose preferences get satisfied.

Liberalism answers that question by saying that all preferences are equal, so they all have an equal claim to satisfaction. Maximum equal satisfaction therefore becomes the rational ordering principle for life in society -- give everyone what he wants, as much and as equally as possible. In other words, give everybody maximum equal freedom.

Q: How can an ideology of freedom become tyrannical?

Kalb: Equal freedom is an open-ended standard that makes unlimited demands when taken seriously.

For example, it views non-liberal standards as oppressive, because they limit equal freedom. Liberal government wants to protect us from oppression, so it tries to eradicate those standards from more and more areas of life.

The attempt puts liberal government at odds with natural human tendencies. If the way someone acts seems odd to me, and I look at him strangely, that helps construct the social world he's forced to live in. He will find that oppressive. Liberal government can't accept that, so it eventually feels compelled to supervise all my attitudes about how people live and how I express them.

The end result is a comprehensive system of control over all human relations run by an expert elite responsible only to itself. That, of course, is tyranny.

Q: You argue that liberalism, especially its "advanced" form, corrupts and suppresses the traditional aspects of life that defined and kept Western society together for centuries such as religion, marriage, family and local community. How does it do that?

Kalb: Equal freedom isn't the highest standard in those areas of life. They have to do with love and loyalty toward something outside ourselves that defines who we are. That love and loyalty involve particular connections to particular people and their ways of life.

Such things cannot be the same for everyone. They create divisions and inequalities. They tell people they can't have things they want.

So equal freedom tells us traditional institutions have to be done away with as material factors in people's lives. They have to be debunked and their effects suppressed.

At bottom, liberalism says people have to be neutered to fit into a managed system of equal freedom. They have to be encouraged to devote themselves to satisfactions that don't interfere with the satisfactions of others.

In the end, the only permissible goals are career, consumption and various private pursuits and indulgences.

That doesn't leave much room for religion or for family or communal values. The only permissible public value is liberalism itself.

Q: How does mass media advance the cause of liberalism?

Kalb: The relationship is almost mechanical. It's one of the great strengths of liberalism.

Television and the Internet give us a world chopped up into interchangeable fragments.

To make that world comprehensible to journalists and viewers it has to be put in order in a simple way that can be understood quickly without regard to particularities.

That's impossible if complex distinctions and local habits are allowed to matter.

For that reason the mass media naturally favor a top-down managerial approach to social life with a bias toward sameness and equality -- in other words, something very much like contemporary liberalism.

To put it differently, the mass media prefer things to be discussed publicly and decided centrally based on a simple principle like equality. If that's done they can understand what's going on and what it all means.

Also, they themselves will serve an important function because they provide the forum for discussion and the information for decision. That situation naturally seems appropriate to them.

Q: What about the distinction between Anglo-American liberalism and continental liberalism, and their different models of secularism? Is it inaccurate to lump everything together under the heading of "liberalism"?

Kalb: The fundamental principle is the same, so the distinction can't be relied on.

In the English-speaking world the social order was traditionally less illiberal than on the continent.

King and state were less absolute, the Church had less independent authority, standing armies were out of favor, the aristocracy was less a separate caste, and the general outlook was more commercial and utilitarian.

Classical liberalism could be moderate and still get what it wanted.

Liberalism is progressive, though, so its demands keep growing. It eventually rejects all traditional ways as illiberal and becomes more and more radical.

For that reason state imposition of liberal norms has become at least as aggressive in Britain and Canada as on the continent.

The United States is still somewhat of an exception, but even among us aggressive forms of liberalism are gaining ground. They captured the academy, the elite bar and the media years ago, and they're steadily gaining ground among the people.

The international dizziness about President Obama and the violent reaction to the narrow victory of Proposition 8 concerning same-sex marriage in California show the direction things are going.

Q: Does rejecting "liberalism" mean rejecting freedom of conscience, political equality, free markets and other supposed benefits of "liberalism"?

Kalb: No. A society can still have those things to the extent they make sense. They just need to be subordinated, at least in principle, to a larger order defined by considerations like the good life.

The Church has noted, for example, that free markets are an excellent thing in many ways. They just aren't the highest thing. The same principle applies to other liberal ideals.

Q: Both Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII condemned liberalism, but it seems the Church has embraced it since the Second Vatican Council in its defense of democracy and human rights. The tone of Church social teaching has also focused more on influencing liberal institutions, and less on shaping individuals, families, and local communities. How does one account for this shift in the Church's attitude?

Kalb: The Church apparently decided modernity was here to stay. Liberal modernity looked better than fascist modernity or Bolshevik modernity.

It claimed to be a modest and tolerant approach to government that let culture and civil society develop in their own way. So the Church decided to accept and work within it.

Also, the development of the mass media and consumer society, and the growth of state education and industrial social organization generally, meant Catholics were more and more drawn into liberal ways of thinking. Hostility to liberalism became difficult to maintain within the Church.

The problem, though, is that liberal modernity is extremely critical and therefore intolerant. In order to cooperate with it you have to do things its way.

The recent, virulent attacks on Pope Benedict for many different reasons by the liberal elite illustrate that phenomenon perfectly.

For that reason, if there's going to be joint social action today, it inevitably focuses on extending liberal institutions rather than promoting local and traditional institutions like the family, which are intrinsically non-liberal. Many people in the Church have come to accept that.

Q: You argue that religion can be the unifying force that offers resistance to advanced liberalism, and that the Catholic Church is the spiritual organization most suited to that task. Why do you think so?

Kalb: To resist advanced liberalism you have to propose a definite social outlook based on goods beyond equal freedom and satisfaction.

A conception of transcendent goods won't stand up without a definite conception of the transcendent, which requires religion. And a religious view won't stand up in public life unless there's a definite way to resolve disputes about what it is.

You need the Pope.

Catholics have the Pope, and they also have other advantages like an emphasis on reason and natural law. As a Catholic, I'd add that they have the advantage of truth.

Stem Cells for Dummies

2009-03-25T07:37:00.001-04:00

ZE09032410 - 2009-03-24
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-25472?l=english

Explained by Senior Fellow at Culture of Life Foundation

By E. Christian Brugger

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Given the new Presidential order allowing federal funds for research using human embryonic stem cells, it might be helpful for readers to become more familiar with the terminology used in any discussion of controversies surrounding embryonic stem cell research.

What is a Stem Cell?

A stem cell, whether of the adult or embryonic type, is an undifferentiated cell (i.e., a cell that has not yet specialized into a particular cell type, e.g., liver cell, pancreatic cell, or cardiac cell) with two unique capacities: the first, for rapid and prolonged self-multiplication into daughter cells identical with itself; and the second, for development and differentiation into specific types of cells such as liver and cardiac cells.

What is a Stem Cell’s Potency?

A stem cell’s “potency” refers to its capacity for differentiation, that is, for developing into particular kinds of human cells, e.g. liver, kidney, blood, etc. Different types of stem cells have different scopes to their potency: e.g., totipotent, pluripotent, multipotent or unipotent. A totipotent cell is capable of differentiating into every tissue in the human body, including extra-embryonic support tissues necessary for human gestation (e.g., placenta, umbilical cord, amniotic sac); a single-celled embryo, also called a zygote, possesses the capacity of totipotency; also, the individual cells of an embryo’s body, called blastomeres, in the first few days of the embryo’s life are totipotent; if a blastomere splits off from the embryo’s body, it has the capacity for complete human development, which is how we get identical twins. A pluripotent cell is capable of differentiating into almost all the tissues of the human body, but not the extra-embryonic support tissues; embryonic stem cells are pluripotent. Stem cells can also be multipotent (capable of differentiating into the cells of a cell group type, e.g., blood cells) and unipotent (unable to differentiate into any other cell type than itself).

What are the Differences between Embryonic and Adult Stem Cells?

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are undifferentiated, self-renewing, pluripotent cells. They are harvested from the bodies of embryos at approximately day five of human development. At day five the embryo’s body takes the shape of a hollow sphere (the embryo at this time is called a “blastocyst”). The blastocyst has an outer cell layer and an inner cell mass (picture a basketball with a small group of marbles clumped together on the inside). The cells of the inner cell mass will eventually differentiate into the varied tissues of the person’s body; and the outer cell layer will develop into the placenta and other support tissues. But it is important to understand that at this point, both the outer cell layer and inner cell mass constitute the embryo’s body. The inner cell mass can be understood to be the embryo’s internal organs. These cells are what we call embryonic stem cells and have the capacity of pluripotency; they are coveted by ESC researchers precisely because of their pluripotency. Just as harvesting all the internal organs of an adult would kill the adult, harvesting the stem cells of an embryo kills the embryo.

Adult stem cells (ASCs) also have the capacities of self-proliferation and differentiation, but are not derived from the bodies of embryos. They are ‘adult’ not because they’re found only in adults, but because the tissue in which they’re found is differentiated tissue (as opposed to the undifferentiated tissue of an embryo’s body). Thus ASCs can be found in newborn tissue. In fact, some of the most clinically valuable ASCs are found in umbilical cord blood. Although some ASCs have been found with the capacity of pluripotency, most are only capable of differentiating into the tissue type or related group type of the tissue in which they’re found.

Ethical controversy surrounding stem cell research

Every reasonable person agrees that the clinical end being sought in stem cell research is praiseworthy -- namely, finding clinical solutions for remediating serious illnesses. Controversy surrounds the means by which that end is pursued. The familiar ethical question raised by ESC research is this: Is it justifiable to kill human embryos in order to explore potentially healing remedies for other persons? Those who judge human embryos to be human beings, albeit at an early stage of development, think it’s wrong. Those who believe embryos are “pre-human” entities, developmental precursors to whole human beings, think it sometimes can be justified.[1]

ASC research avoids this ethical problem by avoiding research on embryos altogether. The ethical questions surrounding ASC research then are similar to those involved with all research on human subjects: Do the benefits promised by the research outweigh the burdens imposed by it for the human subjects of the research? Is fully informed consent being secured? Is truthfulness in reporting of data being maintained? Are unwarranted promises of benefit being eschewed? And so on. If the answer to these is yes, then one may proceed with confidence that the research is legitimate. In fact, the Vatican and the United States Conference of Catholic bishops have consistently supported research on stem cells that does not exploit or destroy human embryos[2]. This support is reaffirmed in the new Vatican document on bioethical questions, Dignitas Personae[3].

Don’t current findings demonstrate that ESC research is clinically unnecessary?

This is a very important question and should be asked often of scientists and public officials. Let me elaborate it: since ASCs have already proven remarkably effective in treating serious diseases, including formerly untreatable diseases[4], and since ESC research, despite billions of dollars spent, has produced nothing but failures on the clinical front, and even human tragedies[5], and since the desire to develop clinically useful patient-specific pluripotent stem cells is being rapidly and efficiently fulfilled by the new and remarkable Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs)[6], why aren’t embryonic stem cells obsolete in the minds of scientists? Why does the scientific community insist on greater liberties for embryo-destructive experimentation when both moral reasoning and cutting edge science point in another direction? Why this lust for the embryo?[7]

I don’t have a satisfactory answer to this. Some researchers obviously believe that embryonic stem cells, despite current evidence, promise benefits that ASCs and iPSCs do not. I’m also told that many of the best researchers are turning away from ESCs because of the mounting problems they pose, and turning towards research with iPSCs. If this is the case, then the questions posed above need to be put frankly to our politicians, because some still seem to think that the future of stem cell research lies with ESCs.

In the shadow of President Obama’s executive order overturning the Bush stem cell policy, the House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) stated on the House floor that the U.S. House will take up a bill in early April to overturn the 1996 Dickey-Wicker Amendment prohibiting federal funding from research involving the creation or destruction of human embryos [8]. With all we now know, why is Congress bent on spending taxpayer money for embryo destructive experimentation? Isn’t that scientifically retrogressive and economically wasteful, not to mention morally unjust to the embryos killed as a result of the decision and to taxpayers who object to public funds being used for such research when alternatives are available?

Postscript:

Some might be wondering what distinguishes the “Bush stem cell policy” (Aug. 2001) from the restrictions imposed by the Dickey-Wicker amendment (1996). Dickey-Wicker was passed before ESC research was launched in 1998 by the first successful isolation of ESCs by James A. Thomson’s lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It simply restricted funding on research that created or destroyed human embryos. After 1998, pressure was exerted on the Clinton administration to free up funds for this new ‘promising’ type of research. But Dickey-Wicker stood in the way. Thus, to sidestep the restrictions Clinton, as he was leaving office (2000), approved federal guidelines permitting the NIH to fund research on stem cells derived from ‘spare’ embryos slated for destruction at fertility clinics. Do you see the slight of hand? By the time stem cells are derived, the killing is over. If private funds paid for the killing, then the federal government would fund the subsequent research. Clinton’s lawyers argued that his guidelines conformed to Dickey-Wicker, and legalistically construed, they did. At once, the NIH began accepting grant proposals from scientists bent on embryo destructive research. Aware of the loophole, newly elected President George W. Bush passed an executive order permitting federal funds for ESC research only on certain pre-approved stem cell lines created by that date. Since stem cells can self-proliferate indefinitely, these sixty lines, he thought, would provide subject matter for years of viable research. But under the new policy, funding would be prohibited from all stem cell lines derived after August 2001. NIH grant proposals thereafter were carefully reviewed to ensure that federal funds would not be used to facilitate harm to human embryos. Obama’s recent presidential order overturned the Bush restrictions. Dickey-Wicker however still stands. But for how long?

Notes:

[1] I critiqued several of the most prominent theoretical arguments against the personhood of human embryos in my June 2008 CLF Brief entitled “Arguments for and Against the Personhood of the Embryo”, so I do not intend to engage that question here.

[2] See Pontifical Academy for Life, Declaration on the Production and the Scientific and Therapeutic Use of Human Embryonic Stem Cells (August 25, 2000); Catholic Online, “American Bishops Reaffirm Church Support for Adult Stem-Cell Research,” www.catholic.org, June 26, 2006, www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=20275.

[3] See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Dignitas Personae (On Certain Bioethical Questions) (2008), nos. 24, 31, 32.

[4] For an enlightening updated summary of clinical successes using ASCs prepared by the Family Research Council, see
http://www.frc.org/insight/adult-stem-cell-success-stories-2008-update-july-december

[5] Recall the recent tragic story of the 9 year old Israeli boy, who received embryonic stem cell injections in Russia for a lethal brain disease, and contracted as a result tumors on his brain and spinal cord; see CBS News report, “Study: Stem Cell Injections Caused Tumors: Israeli Researchers Say Fetal Stem Cells Led To Benign Tumors For Boy With Rare Genetic Disease,” Feb. 17, 2009; available at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/17/health/main4808339.shtml?source=RSSattr=Health_4808339

[6] Induced pluripotent stem cells are differentiated cells such as a skin cell that are “reprogrammed” back to a state of pluripotency. They were first reported in research with human cells in November 2007. I describe their advent and initial promise in my CLF Brief from January 2008, “A Moral Tsunami”. Since then dozens of studies have been carried out (and published) perfecting the initiate technique. For example, researchers at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., recently converted skin cells from patients with Parkinson’s disease into the type of neuron destroyed by the disease. Although the technique needs perfecting, it promises to provide a therapy one day that replaces the damaged neural tissue of Parkinson’s sufferers with healthy tissue derived from the patient’s own body, and therefore with no risk of immune rejection. See the NY Times on line report, “Converting Cells Shows Promise for Parkinson’s”, March 6, 2009, available at www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/health/06parkinsons.html

[7] See Bernadine Healy’s piece in US News and World Report on line, “Why Embryonic Stem Cells Are Obsolete” March 04, 2009, available at http://health.usnews.com/blogs/heart-to-heart/2009/3/4/why-embryonic-stem-cells-are-obsolete.html

[8] The exchange between Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on March 12, 2009 can be read in the Congressional Record, House, page H3376, March 12, 2009.

* * *

E. Christian Brugger is a Senior Fellow of Ethics at the Culture of Life Foundation and is an associate professor of moral theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado. He received his D.Phil. from Oxford in 2000.

[Article published with permission of the Culture of Life Foundation (http://culture-of-life.org)]

Blessings at Holy Communion

2009-03-25T07:28:00.001-04:00

ZE09032401 - 2009-03-24
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-25463?l=english

ROME, MARCH 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.

Q: In America, the custom of giving blessings to people who are unable to receive Communion is growing rapidly. In my parish, in Texas, it appears that the practice of extraordinary ministers of holy Communion tracing a cross onto the head of small children and visitors has become more important than the Eucharist itself. Many have commented to me that it is so "unwelcoming" not to do this. I have pointed out in liturgy meetings that neither the Rite of Blessings nor the Roman Missal envisions this practice. As a deacon I am greatly bothered by this trend, but my "parish administrator" is hesitant to change the habit of the previous pastor. In fact, at weddings and funerals this behavior is encouraged for non-Catholics by our presiding priests. I would greatly appreciate reading or hearing your opinion/suggestions on what appears to be an insert into the Eucharistic rite and perhaps a disservice to our ability to create a true desire and understanding for receiving Christ at Mass in holy Communion. -- D.I., Texas

A: We have addressed this topic on a couple of occasions (May 10 and 24, 2005) in which we expressed misgivings regarding this practice. At the same time, we pointed out that the legal situation of the usage is murky with bishops making statements falling on both sides of the argument.

Recently, however, a document has appeared in several Internet sources which indicate that the Holy See is tending toward a negative view of the practice. The document is a letter (Protocol No. 930/08/L) dated Nov. 22, 2008, sent in response to a private query and signed by Father Anthony Ward, SM, undersecretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship.

As a private reply the letter is not yet a norm with legal force and, as it makes clear, is not a definitive reply. However, it provides some valuable pointers on the legitimacy of this practice and the mind of the Holy See regarding it.

The letter said that "this matter is presently under the attentive study of the Congregation," so "for the present, this dicastery wishes to limit itself to the following observations":

"1. The liturgical blessing of the Holy Mass is properly given to each and to all at the conclusion of the Mass, just a few moments subsequent to the distribution of Holy Communion.

"2. Lay people, within the context of Holy Mass, are unable to confer blessings. These blessings, rather, are the competence of the priest (cf. Ecclesia de Mysterio, Notitiae 34 (15 Aug. 1997), art. 6, § 2; Canon 1169, § 2; and Roman Ritual De Benedictionibus (1985), n. 18).

"3. Furthermore, the laying on of a hand or hands -- which has its own sacramental significance, inappropriate here -- by those distributing Holy Communion, in substitution for its reception, is to be explicitly discouraged.

"4. The Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio n. 84, 'forbids any pastor, for whatever reason or pretext even of a pastoral nature, to perform ceremonies of any kind for divorced people who remarry'. To be feared is that any form of blessing in substitution for communion would give the impression that the divorced and remarried have been returned, in some sense, to the status of Catholics in good standing.

"5. In a similar way, for others who are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in accord with the norm of law, the Church's discipline has already made clear that they should not approach Holy Communion nor receive a blessing. This would include non-Catholics and those envisaged in can. 915 (i.e., those under the penalty of excommunication or interdict, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin)."

Although the letter as such is not legally binding, some of its points, such as No. 2 on the prohibition of lay ministers giving liturgical blessings, are merely restatements of existing law and as such are already obligatory.

Nor did the letter deal with all possible circumstances, such as the case of small children mentioned by our reader. Because of this, some dioceses have taken a prudent wait-and-see attitude regarding these blessings. For example, the liturgy office of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, while reiterating that "the Archdiocese has no policy prohibiting the use of blessings at the time of Holy Communion," prudently suggested to pastors that it "may be appropriate to avoid promoting the practice until a more definitive judgment regarding its value in the liturgical celebration can be obtained."

Statement from Cardianl George on Conscience Protection

2009-03-19T09:52:00.003-04:00

click here => Conscience Protection

Protecting Conscience Rights in Health Care: Our Voice is Needed!

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is inviting public comment on a proposal to rescind an important federal regulation issued in December. The regulation implements and enforces three federal laws protecting the conscience rights of health care providers, especially those at risk of being discriminated against because of their moral or religious objection to abortion.

The Catholic community must speak out to protect Catholic doctors, nurses and hospitals.

Conscience Rights: From Choice to Coercion

2009-03-19T09:46:00.001-04:00

Life Issues Forum

Conscience Rights: From Choice to Coercion
By Susan E. Wills

January 23, 2009

A hallmark of free nations is the recognition of the individual's freedom of conscience. Tyrant states do not protect conscience; they strangle it.

The right of conscience is as old as Western civilization. Over 2,400 years ago, Sophocles' fictional Antigone was esteemed for following her conscience in burying her brother in defiance of the king's edict.

The first recorded claim of conscience rights for medical personnel is the 4th Century B.C. Hippocratic Oath: "I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients. ... I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion."

The right of conscience is recognized in the U.S. Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the World Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics, and in 47 states, laws protect the conscience rights of healthcare providers.

The Catechism callsconscience "man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths" (CCC, 1776).

Given the universality and history of the right of conscience among free peoples, it is shocking that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others have sued to overturn regulations implementing long-standing federal laws enacted to protect the conscience rights of healthcare professionals and institutions.

In attacking the recent regulations, the ACLU is taking aim at three federal laws. Congress enacted the "Church Amendment" immediately after the Roe v. Wade decision to ensure that health care professionals and hospitals would not be coerced into involvement in abortions or sterilizations. The Coats Amendment was enacted over a decade ago to nullify the attempt by the medical accreditation council to coerce medical schools into training ob-gyn residents in abortion procedures. Since 2004 the Weldon Amendment has prevented governmental discrimination against healthcare entities on account of the entity's refusal to "provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions."

Despite all their talk of "choice," the abortion industry and its supporters are determined to eliminate the choice of medical professionals and entities to not become accomplices in killing unborn boys and girls. Despite all their talk about "privacy," the abortion industry and its supporters are determined to trample on healthcare professionals' innermost zone of privacy, that "secret core and sanctuary" known as conscience. It is no longer enough, in their eyes, that women and girls can obtain potentially abortifacient drugs in virtually every pharmacy in the U.S. or that women and girls can have abortions on request in every city where there's a profit to be had. They will not rest until every pharmacy, hospital, healthcare provider, and taxpayer collaborates in the culture of death.

In the coming weeks, we may see an unprecedented assault on conscience rights: taxpayers could be forced to fund organizations that promote and perform abortion overseas, including UNFPA, the enabler of China's abusive population control policy; taxpayers may be required to fund contraceptives and abortifacient drugs at ever-higher levels; taxpayers may be required to fund abortions for the low-income and uninsured; and healthcare professionals and institutions may be forced to violate their consciences or quit providing services.

We must pray and act to stop the assault on conscience.

Susan Wills is assistant director for education and outreach, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities. Go to www.usccb.org/prolife to learn more about the bishops' pro-life activities.

Cardinal Denounces Obama's Stem Cell Ban Reversal

2009-03-10T12:07:00.000-04:00

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-25313?l=english

Calls It a Victory of Politics Over Science

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 9, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. bishops' conference pro-life committee chairman is denouncing President Barack Obama's executive order that will allow federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Cardinal Justin Rigali issued a response to the U.S. president's order today that will allow federal tax dollars to be used to fund scientists in the destruction of live human embryos to develop stem cells for research.

The cardinal said: "President Obama's new executive order on embryonic stem cell research is a sad victory of politics over science and ethics.

"This action is morally wrong because it encourages the destruction of innocent human life, treating vulnerable human beings as mere products to be harvested.

"It also disregards the values of millions of American taxpayers who oppose research that requires taking human life. Finally, it ignores the fact that ethically sound means for advancing stem cell science and medical treatments are readily available and in need of increased support."

The cardinal also cited a letter written Jan. 16 by Cardinal Francis George, president of the bishops' conference, to Obama, urging him not to allow funding for this research. Cardinal George stated three reasons why this research is "especially pointless at this time."

"First," he wrote, "basic research in the capabilities of embryonic stem cells can be and is being pursued using the currently eligible cell lines as well as the hundreds of lines produced with nonfederal funds since 2001."

He continued: "Second, recent startling advances in reprogramming adult cells into embryonic-like stem cells -- hailed by the journal 'Science' as the scientific breakthrough of the year -- are said by many scientists to be making embryonic stem cells irrelevant to medical progress.

"Third, adult and cord blood stem cells are now known to have great versatility, and are increasingly being used to reverse serious illnesses and even help rebuild damaged organs.

"To divert scarce funds away from these promising avenues for research and treatment toward the avenue that is most morally controversial as well as most medically speculative would be a sad victory of politics over science."

President Obama's action reverses the ban on federal funding for this type of research enacted by former president George W. Bush, who limited the use of taxpayer money to the 21 stem cell lines already developed before his order.

Cardinal George stated, "If the government wants to invest in hope for cures and promote ethically sound science, it should use our tax monies for research that everyone, at every stage of human development, can live with."

Why the John Paul Generation Will Welcome New York's Next Archbishop

2009-03-06T09:13:00.001-05:00

By CHRISTOPHER WILLCOX

It was no accident that Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan visited St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., during his first hours on the ground in the archdiocese of some 2.5 million parishioners that, beginning next month, he will lead. Earlier, at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, he told a news conference that increasing priestly vocations was his "first mandate." In archbishop-speak, this means he has his marching orders from Rome.

His task won't be easy. Vocations are way down. St. Joseph's will ordain three priests this year, compared with the 30 or more who were ordained yearly at the high-water mark during the 1960s. To make matters worse, influential dissenters within the church are heavily invested in the archbishop's failure.

Advocates for married priests and the ordination of women have not gone away, and they have made it an article of their particular faith that celibacy and an all-male priesthood are at the root of all church problems, from declining attendance at Mass to the sexual abuse of minors. They have been frozen out of the leadership ranks since John Paul II, the current pope's predecessor, was elected in 1978, but they have "burrowed in" and are thriving at Catholic universities and even a few seminaries. Some, like theologian Richard McBrien, of the University of Notre Dame, have even carved a part-time career out of contradicting the Vatican in the media. In recent weeks he has been quoted twice by the New York Times, criticizing church efforts to revive the sacramental confession of sins.

Nevertheless, Archbishop Dolan has something of a track record as a shepherd of new seminarians. His current, much smaller, archdiocese of Milwaukee will ordain six priests this year -- the most since 1992. The Milwaukee seminary expects to meet or exceed that number in coming years, based on the number of men in its pipeline. Archbishop Dolan also spent seven years as rector of the North American College in Rome, where clerical highfliers are sent for advanced study and grooming. He has written a book full of spiritual advice for aspiring clergymen, "Priests for the Third Millennium," which has been used as a textbook in seminaries. But, above all, the people who know him well say that Archbishop Dolan's charisma and ebullience -- in sharp contrast to the reticent manner of Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the current archbishop of New York -- are bound to be a shot in the arm for the church in its efforts to attract the next generation of clerics.

The viability of a celibate male priesthood is a centerpiece of the agenda first promoted by John Paul II that continues under Benedict XVI. It is an agenda designed to restore the teaching authority (magisterium) of the pope, provide doctrinal clarity and unity, and put an end to the deviations and diversions that sprang up in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. While John Paul and Benedict, until 2005 known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, never publicly criticized Vatican II itself, they clearly took a dim view of the interpretation of the council's work by the church's left wing. "Liberation theology," which was often indistinguishable from Marxism, was the first trend to be squelched. Advocacy for women priests and married priests, and calls for doctrinal change that would better reflect secular society's norms -- on issues such as abortion or same-sex unions -- have been discouraged and resisted at every level. Because personnel moves are policy decisions in any large organization, the past two popes have been scrupulous in appointing bishops with orthodox views. So much so that Father McBrien has stated that John Paul's "most serious deficiency" was "the poor quality" of the bishops he appointed.

It's not always easy to get the balance right in matters of authority and tradition, as the Vatican discovered recently when it badly fumbled an effort to bring some right-wing rebels back into the fold, including one who had denied the Holocaust. And the almost incalculable institutional damage done by the clerical sex scandal also has emboldened the church left and, more important, created a serious credibility problem with people still in the pews. That so much of the criminality occurred decades ago is hardly a defense or a comfort to the many victims. It will be years before the scandal recedes, and it can't be an easy time to be recruiting for the priesthood anywhere in the U.S.

One trend favoring the traditionalists -- often overlooked in the media but much remarked upon in church circles -- is the apparent orthodoxy of the young priests who are being ordained these days. In contrast to the stereotypical generational split that has older people favoring conservative views and the young advocating change, younger priests often tend to be more in tune with Rome than some of their elders were and are. It's not entirely clear why this is, but observers have suggested that the older generation identified so closely with Vatican II that it has had difficulty adjusting to the leadership of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The youngsters, in fact, have been described as the "John Paul" generation in church publications. Like the Marines, they may be few but they evidently are proud.

Still, there is a great deal riding on one obviously affable Irish-American from Milwaukee who appears as comfortable talking sports stats as vocations. Based on reports from the field, Archbishop Dolan will be a conciliator who knows where to draw the line. In an email he once sent his priests in Milwaukee, he said he would support the appearance of most speakers at parishes even if they weren't his "cup of tea," but he made clear that Marquette University theologian Daniel C. Maguire, a pro-choice former priest, was off the list. Mr. Maguire, he noted, was "so radically outside church teaching that his appearance at any parish would be a grave scandal."

Mr. Maguire recently returned the compliment in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, declaring Archbishop Dolan a "backslapping autocrat." Autocrat or not, if he can turn the New York program around in coming years, Rome will be pleased and Rome's dissidents will be stymied.

Mr. Willcox is a writer in Ridgefield, Conn.

Reading and Responding to the Signs of the Times

2009-03-05T13:28:00.000-05:00

Fr. Roger J. Landry

The Anchor
Editorial
March 6, 2009

There’s a necessarily prophetic dimension to the proclamation of the faith. While the Gospel is fundamentally, supremely and not merely etymologically “good news” — a jubilant “yes” to the revelation of the love of God for us incarnate in Jesus Christ — it can only be understood in its fullness by contrast to the darkness it illuminates, to the evil it defeats and redeems.

This contrast between the positive and the negative, between the good and bad, was the subject of Jesus’ first homily, which echoes on the lips of priests every Ash Wednesday as they impose ashes on Catholic foreheads. First, Jesus announces the good news: “The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand.” Then he presents without nuance what response that must provoke in others: “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”

Jesus’ whole ministry shows this balance between the comforting beauty of his words in the Parable of the Prodigal Son and his bitter castigations of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, between the tenderness with which he treated the woman caught in adultery and the ferocity with which he drove the moneychangers from the temple. Jesus’ balance — which, while not being “fifty-fifty,” proportionately involves both blessings and censures —resonates in his body the Church, which was constituted by him to welcome everyone, but call everyone to conversion and the fullness of life.

It’s not surprising that many believers prefer to focus on the more comforting and less challenging aspects of Jesus’ words and deeds, but it’s important to remember that Jesus was not schizophrenic: the same redeeming love he showed in his interactions with Zacchaeus, the woman at the well, and the Good Thief was still at work when he called Pharisees “whitewashed sepulchers,” challenged the Rich Young Man to treasure him more than his possessions, and told each of us that unless we deny ourselves, pick up our Crosses and follow him, we cannot be his disciple.

Similarly, the Church’s maternal nature is shown not just in the compassionate works of the vast network of hospitals and schools and the provision of the nourishment of God’s word and the sacraments. It is also shown when she provides the loving discipline — in words and in deeds — without which we could not be true disciples.

This is the context in which properly to interpret the recent prophetic statements and actions of Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver and Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton on the issue of abortion. In the last few years, both have earned the reputation for being two of the boldest and most outspoken prelates in the country in defense of those who have no voice.

In an interview with LifeSiteNews.com last week, Archbishop Chaput described that while the Church’s proclamation of the Gospel of Life often falls on deaf ears — including some who have been baptized Catholic — he said that the Church must continue to be faithful in calling our culture to repentance and warning of the personal and cultural consequences of continued ignorance of that prophetic call.

“It seems human history has been a series of times of us not taking the warning signs seriously,” Archbishop Chaput stated, and cited the story of Noah and the flood. “They were eating and drinking and carrying on and the flood came. They just weren't willing to take the warnings that God sends us and I think it is true about our time that we are not taking the situation concerning the Church and the world seriously now. … [We need to] be persistent in our preaching and in our continuing to give the warning and that God bring fruit from that if He chooses. We shouldn't give up.”

He said that part of the problem is that it’s harder to change people’s minds than form them correctly in the first place. “I don't know how clearer the bishops, at least as a body, can be speaking about these matters beginning with the Holy Father,” but he acknowledged that this has become a process of reformation rather than formation. “I don't know if it's because we've let it go on for such a long time and haven't challenged it before now, but this attitude of being comfortable with being pro-choice and Catholic at the same time seems to be deeply set in the lives of these folks. …Either someone taught them that or they've arrived at it themselves and weren't challenged on it, …but they seem so firmly set in the course they've taken. … I'm not aware of a single case of a Catholic politician who is pro-choice who has changed his or her mind.”

That points first, he said, to a “very bad period of catechesis” in the last 40 years in our country — not merely with respect to the laity but also the clergy — that is “bearing bad fruit in our time.” This situation requires more decisive action on the part of clergy today to remedy the confusion. “It's very important for clergy to advise political leaders of the great scandal that they might be part of because this can lead not only to the death of the unborn but it can also lead to the spiritual death of the political leaders who vote that way.”

This catechesis ought to begin with the simple truth of what happens in abortion, that an innocent human being is slaughtered in a grotesquely inhuman way. “We need to reinvigorate the Church's understanding of the horror of abortion,” Archbishop Chaput stressed, saying we need to be as horrified by abortion as we are about genocide and slavery. “It seems that we have become deadened to the horror of abortion. If we can reinvigorate our understanding of that, become more sensitive to great evil that abortion is, then we can make a difference.”

Once the Catholic Church achieves that reinvigoration of the evil of abortion, then many of the other scandals associated with the abortion issue would likely take care of themselves, such as the ignominy of Catholic politicians who support abortion, the shame Catholics who support them, and the sacrilege of those who are not in communion with the Church’s teachings on abortion receiving Holy Communion.

Because we don’t yet understand sufficiently the horror of abortion, Archbishop Chaput declares, “we can put up with people who are pro-choice or pro-abortion and not challenge their Catholic identity. … Of course, we hope they will come back to the faith and to the truth, so we don't want to chase them away from the Church but … Communion means not only union with the Lord but also union with His Church which is His body.”   That is the reason why the Church has consistently taught that those who are not in communion with the Church’s teaching on abortion should not present themselves for Holy Communion at Mass.

Since various Catholic politicians have ignored that consistent message just as they’ve disregarded the Church’s teachings on life, Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino last week upped the ante, instructing all the ministers of Holy Communion, both clerics and lay, to refuse the Sacrament to those who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin,” in accordance with the Church’s code of canon law.

The purpose of the decree, he said, is “to prevent sacrilege and to prevent the Catholic in question from committing further grave sin through unworthy reception.” He cited the protocol described in a 2004 letter of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to U.S. bishops that said that when a person consistently campaigns and votes for permissive abortion laws, his pastor should meet with him to instruct him on the Church’s teaching, inform him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he repents, and, that, if he fails to repent and continues to present himself for Communion, he will be denied.

No bishop would ever look forward to such actions, but they are consistent with the balance inherent in the prophetic, sanctifying and shepherding duties of his office. Let us all pray and hope that it brings the offenders to repentance and to embrace the whole Gospel, including the Gospel of Life.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

2009-03-03T17:04:00.002-05:00

From the Deacon's Bench: Should deacons wear the collar?

Every now and then, I hear from deacons and deacon candidates who ask that very question. Some have seen pictures of deacons in other dioceses in clerical attire and asked, "What's up with that?" I can almost hear them scratching their heads.

I decided to pose that question to someone who knows a lot more about this than I do: William Ditewig, Ph.D. Bill was for a long time the executive director of the Secretariat for the Diaconate with the USCCB. Ordained for 18 years, he is now the Director of Graduate Programs in Theology and Associate Professor of Theology at Saint Leo University in Tampa.

He's the author of 101 Questions and Answers About Deacons, and The Emerging Diaconate, among others.

In other words, he's a brainiac.

And he's a great guy, to boot. He gave a superb retreat to my class just before ordination.

So here's some of what he e-mailed me on the subject of deacons wearing the collar:

To begin, we need to know what the law says or doesn't say about the matter. Canon law requires clerics to wear the clerical attire prescribed by the episcopal conference and/or the bishop of the diocese. Notice that even canon law doesn't mandate "collars" per se; it's just that collars have -- over the last century or so -- become the standard clerical attire in the United States and other parts of the world. As late as the late 1800s, "clerical attire" in the US often consisted of simple, plain clothing -- and it was usually the black "frock coat" that often marked the cleric, not a "collar" -- their neckware was the same as anyone else. (This also parallels the development of clerical "titles": back in the 1800s, it was not unusual for a priest or even a bishop to go by "Mister" or perhaps "Reverend Mr." Some bishops and priests who had doctorates might go by "Doctor", or "Reverend Dr." but this was rather rare. Even to this day, in Europe, most bishops don't go by "Most Reverend." Titles are affected greatly by local or national practice.) Bottom line: clerics are bound by law to wear "clerical attire" -- however that is defined in the region.

But then we get to the permanent deacon. Our famous canon (c. 288) relieves us of the obligation to wear clerical attire. Why? Because it is assumed that most permanent deacons are still working men, and the law doesn't want to impose a conflict on such deacons. As you know, I was a career Navy officer, and I was ordained while still on active duty. If c. 288 didn't exist, I would have had to show up for duty wearing a collar, not my Navy uniform! That would not have worked well! OK, so, the OBLIGATION is removed; that doesn't mean we CAN'T wear clerical attire as determined by lawful authority. The lawful authority on this question can be either the USCCB or the diocesan bishop, or both. Let's look at each.

The USCCB, since the first Guidelines on Formation for deacons were promulgated in 1971 (the "Green Book") has adopted the position that, nationally, the preference is that deacons should dress in a manner "resembling the people they serve." Obviously, this means dressing like lay persons (at least one person has joked that since we serve bishops, we should start wearing collars and pectoral crosses!), but it was never promulgated as PARTICULAR LAW. This position has remained throughout the three documents which address the issue (the 1971 Guidelines, the 1984 Guidelines, and the 2004 National Directory), and the US bishops are in agreement: THEY DO NOT WANT A NATIONAL LAW ON THIS ISSUE, because that would tie the local diocesan bishop's hands. They have reviewed this decision several times; they even considered a proposal to pass a law that each of the 14 episcopal regions could have their own policies -- this proposal also went down in flames. The bottom line: the bishops want the ability to deal with this issue in their own dioceses, and don't want some other supradiocesan authority to dictate it to them.

So, let's move on to the diocesan bishop. We have 196 dioceses and eparchies in the United States, and the pastoral situation in each is unique, and that affects how bishops deal with this. Many, many dioceses have policies in which deacons wear clerical attire. The policy in Washington, DC (my home diocese) is quite good: "If, in the professional judgment of the deacon, the wearing of clerical attire will enhance his ministry, he may do so." Under previous archbishops, this meant wearing the same kind of (black) clerical attire as the presbyters. Archbishop Wuerl decided to adapt the practice, and directed what I call the "St. Louis option" (because this is where I first saw this practice): deacons would wear grey clerical shirts, while priests would continue to wear black. This offers a measure of distinctiveness. Not all dioceses worry about the color of the shirts. Still other dioceses absolutely FORBID the wearing of clerical attire by deacons, and this is the right of the bishop. They do this for a variety of reasons, but usually it's over concerns of confusion. But probably by far the MOST COMMON PRACTICE is that deacons may wear clericals on an "ad hoc" basis with the bishop's permission. In other words, the deacon calls the bishop and explains what he wants to do and why he feels he needs to wear the collar; more frequently, of course, the bishop himself will communicate those situations in which he wants deacons to wear the collar. Again, in Washington, even WITH our policy, Cardinal Hickey used to REQUIRE that we wear collars whenever we served in hospitals and prisons; it was no longer up to us. The bottom line here: Each bishop wants to have this flexibility. By the way, I can't give specific numbers on which dioceses follow which policies for the simple fact that these policies can change from bishop to bishop. So, as in Washington, while one policy is followed under one bishop, it may change or be modified by a successor bishop.

A word about the reasons pro or con for wearing collars. We've heard them all. And deacons themselves are almost equally split on it themselves. For example, there are deacons in many dioceses who would REFUSE to wear collars unless they were directly ordered to do so, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THAT THE COLLAR WOULD GET IN THE WAY of their ministry! They believe that, whatever benefits might be present in terms of identifying the deacon, they don't think those benefits outweigh the negatives. Of course, other deacons are concerned that no one will know that they are deacons if they don't wear a collar. Here's where my personal experience rears its head. I have worn the collar on many occasions, sometimes routinely, while in the Archdiocese of Washington. In other dioceses, I have NEVER worn it. You know what? It didn't make one iota of difference. People knew who and what I was either way. Secular clothes with a nametag; clerical attire with nametag: IT DIDN'T MATTER in practice.

And, ironically, in the nearly 10 years I was in and out of the USCCB headquarters in Washington, including the five full years I served as Executive Director of the Secretariat for the Diaconate, I didn't wear the collar once, even though I could have, given the policy of the Archdiocese of Washington. In all of the trips I made in that capacity to more than 150 dioceses (including the wonderful diocese of Brooklyn!) in our own country and numerous countries overseas representing the diaconate of the United States, I never wore the collar. And it never mattered one bit. When we're serving in a parish, our parishioners don't need a collar to identify us; and I've found that in most other venues, we don't need a collar either. "Cleric ID cards" and nametags usually work just as well, and they don't carry the "baggage" of the clerical collar. (By the way, I don't wear a collar here on campus either; yet all of my undergrads refer to me as "Deacon" -- or "Doctor"; actually, my nickname is "Triple D": "Deacon Doctor Ditewig").

So there you have it. Thank you, "Triple D."

Alternative to Deadly Embryonic Stem cell Procedure?

2009-03-03T16:23:00.001-05:00

By Wesley Smith

3/3/2009

Second Hand Smoke

Scientists have developed what appears to be a safer way to create a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells.

SAN FRANCISCO (Second Hand Smoke) - President Obama still hasn't rescinded the Bush stem cell policy. He will, but it may matter a lot less than people once thought. The IPSC advances continue, opening the door possibly for a way forward in biotechnology that all Americans can support. And, it is reported in the Washington Post! From the story:

"Scientists have developed what appears to be a safer way to create a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells, boosting hopes that such cells could sidestep the moral and political quagmire that has hindered the development of a new generation of cures.

"The researchers produced the cells by using strands of genetic material, instead of potentially dangerous genetically engineered viruses, to coax skin cells into a state that appears biologically identical to embryonic stem cells. "It's a leap forward in the safe application of these cells," said Andras Nagy of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, who helped lead the international team of researchers that described the work in two papers being published online today by the journal Nature. "We expect this to have a massive impact on this field."

The IPSCs are already being used in drug testing and etc. But can't be used in patients:

"The alternative cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, appear to have many of the same characteristics as embryonic stem cells but are produced by activating genes in adult cells to "reprogram" them into a more primitive state, bypassing the moral, political and ethical issues surrounding embryonic cells. Until now, however, their use has been limited because the genetic manipulation required the use of viruses, raising concerns the cells could cause cancer if placed in a patient. That has triggered a race to develop alternative approaches. "These viral insertions are quite dangerous," Nagy said."

Well, so are embryonic stem cells. Pluripotency itself is a problem due to potential tumor formation, and if the stem cells come from "leftover" embryos, immune rejection issues--which is why with the exception of the Geron approved trial, they haven't been used in humans. And the story doesn't get into the amazing adult stem cell successes in early human trials, which are patient specific and don't appear to pose the tumor threat.

Be that as it may, let us all hope the IPSC advances continue. If they work, it could bring about a rapprochement between both sides of the great ESCR debate, while not opening the door to human cloning.

Designer baby row over US clinic

2009-03-02T17:37:00.000-05:00

A US clinic has sparked controversy by offering would-be parents the chance to select traits like the eye and hair colour of their offspring.

The LA Fertility Institutes run by Dr Jeff Steinberg, a pioneer of IVF in the 1970s, expects a trait-selected baby to be born next year.

His clinic also offers sex selection.

UK fertility experts are angered that the service will distract attention from how the same technology can protect against inherited disease.

The science is based on a lab technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD.

“ I would not say this is a dangerous road. It's an uncharted road ”
Dr Steinberg

This involves testing a cell taken from a very early embryo before it is put into the mother's womb.

Doctors then select an embryo free from rogue genes - or in this case an embryo with the desired physical traits such as blonde hair and blue eyes - to continue the pregnancy, and discard any others.

Dr Steinberg said couples might seek to use the clinic's services for both medical and cosmetic reasons.

For example, a couple might want to have a baby with a darker complexion to help guard against a skin cancer if they already had a child who had developed a melanoma. But others might just want a boy with blonde hair.

His clinic is offering this cosmetic selection to patients already having genetic screening for abnormal chromosome conditions in their embryos.

“ This is the inevitable slippery slope of a fertility process which results in many more embryos being created than can be implanted ”
Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics

"Not all patients will qualify for these tests and we make NO guarantees as to 'perfect prediction' of things such as eye colour or hair colour," says the clinic's website.

Dr Steinberg said: "I would not say this is a dangerous road. It's an uncharted road."

He said the capability to offer such services had been around for years, but had been ignored by the medical community.

"It's time for everyone to pull their heads out of the sand."

Slippery slope

But Dr Gillian Lockwood, a UK fertility expert and member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' ethics committee, questioned whether is was morally right to be using the science in this way.

"If it gets to the point where we can decide which gene or combination of genes are responsible for blue eyes or blonde hair, what are you going to do with all those other embryos that turn out like me to be ginger with green eyes?"

She warned against "turning babies into commodities that you buy off the shelf."

Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: "This is the inevitable slippery slope of a fertility process which results in many more embryos being created than can be implanted. Choices will always have to be made. Do you choose octuplets or the ones with the prettiest noses?"

In the UK, sex selection is banned and choices are currently permitted only in relationship to the baby's health.

Italian fertility law does not permit the creation of surplus embryos or selective testing. Ms Quintavalle said that was "one sure way to avoid the slippery slope".

Meanwhile, new legislation in the UK, due to come in on 6 April, will allow IVF mothers to name anyone as "father" on the birth certificate - even another woman.

The only restriction on naming a second parent will be if they are close blood relatives or if the second person does not agree.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7918296.stm

Published: 2009/03/02 10:17:50 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Pope Says Freedom Is Realized in Service

2009-02-24T11:01:00.000-05:00

Delivers "Lectio Divina" on Paul's Letter to Galatians

ROME, FEB. 23, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Human beings are truly free when we live in the truth of our dependency on God's love, count on him to provide all things, and serve others, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope affirmed this Friday in a visit to Rome's major seminary, in which he delivered a "lectio divina" on the text of St. Paul to the Galatians: "You were called to freedom."

"At all times," he noted, "freedom has been humanity's great dream, since the beginning, but particularly in modern times."

The Pontiff posed these questions to the seminarians: "What is freedom? How can we be free?"

Referring to St. Paul's exhortation to not use freedom as an opportunity for the "flesh," the Holy Father noted that this "flesh" refers to "the absolutizing of the I, of the I that wants to be all and have everything for itself."

He explained: "In short, the absolute I, which does not depend on anything or anyone, seems really to possess freedom. I am free if I do not depend on anyone, if I can do everything I wish."

However, he pointed out, this is not freedom but rather the "degradation of man."

True freedom

Benedict XVI asserted that "we are free if we become one another's servants."

He added: "To reduce oneself to the flesh, apparently raising oneself to the rank of divinity -- 'I, man alone' -- introduces a lie […].

"This goes against the truth of our being. Our truth is, above all, that we are creatures, creatures of God and we live in relationship with the Creator.

"We are rational beings, and only by accepting this relationship do we enter into truth, otherwise we fall into falsehood and, in the end, are destroyed by it."

The Pope underlined the dependency that we as creatures have on God, who loves us. Thus, he said, "our dependence implies being in the realm of his love, in this case, in fact, dependency is freedom."

He added: "And because of this to see God, to orient oneself to God, to know God, to know the will of God, to insert oneself in his will, that is, in the love of God is to enter increasingly into the realm of truth."

Serve others

The Pontiff turned his focus to the relationship each person has with each other. He said, "In other words, human freedom is, on one hand, to be in the joy and great realm of the love of God, but it also implies being only one thing with the other and for the other."

"Only a shared freedom is human freedom," he affirmed, and "in being together we can enter the symphony of freedom."

The Holy Father stated: "To serve one another becomes an instrument of freedom, and here we can include a whole philosophy of politics according to the social doctrine of the Church, which helps us to find this common order that gives each one his place in the common life of humanity.

"The first reality that must be respected, therefore, is truth: Freedom against truth is not freedom. To serve one another creates the common realm of freedom."

"By participation in the sacraments," he pointed out, "by listening to the Word of God, the Divine Will, the divine law really enters our will, our will identifies with his, they become only one will and thus we are really free, we can really do what we will, because we love with Christ, we love in truth and with truth."

Nationwide Initiative to Combat Global Poverty

2009-02-24T10:52:00.000-05:00

2/24/2009

Catholic Relief Services

The Initiative is being launched by catholic Relief Services and the U.S. Bishops and calls upon Catholics to act and advocate for the poor.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) today launched the much-anticipated Catholics Confront Global Poverty initiative. Introduced at the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering on Capitol Hill, the two-year nationwide effort calls upon one million Catholics to confront global poverty by defending the life and dignity of people living in poverty throughout the world and to urge our nation to act and advocate.

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard, Chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace at the USCCB, announced the launch of the initiative, followed by Ken Hackett, President of CRS. Both speakers urged Catholics throughout the country to help educate and mobilize their fellow Catholics in confronting the many faces of poverty around the globe.

“We are part of a worldwide community of faith,” said Hackett. “Both CRS and the USCCB listen carefully to the Church in developing countries as we seek to serve the needs of the poorest members of the human family.”

The Catholics Confront Global Poverty initiative focuses its efforts on seven key areas that require more attention to effectively confront global poverty: promoting comprehensive foreign assistance reform; completing the debt relief agenda; addressing global climate change; promoting reform of U.S. trade and agriculture policies; supporting transparency, participation and consent of local communities in natural resource development; employing significant resources in peace building; and addressing the root causes of migration.

“Catholics throughout the country can help address these very important issues through prayer, learning, advocacy, education and giving, the five main pillars of action for this initiative,” says Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, Chairman of CRS’ Board of Directors. “There are countless stories of poor persons and communities all over the world rising above crushing poverty. Our mission as Catholics is to stand in solidarity with them and help them in this fight.”

The Catholics Confront Global Poverty initiative was inspired by Pope Benedict XVI's 2009 World Day of Peace Message, Fight Poverty to Build Peace, in which our Holy Father declares: "Effective means to redress the marginalization of the world's poor through globalization will only be found if people everywhere feel personally outraged by the injustices in the world and by the concomitant violations of human rights."

Background information, sign-up instructions, action alerts, podcasts and other information is all available on the new Catholics Confront Global Poverty website:
www.usccb.org/globalpoverty or www.crs.org/globalpoverty. The new site allows visitors to take action and access real stories of people harmed by global poverty. The site also includes a variety of resources for use by families, parish youth groups, college campuses, religious communities, catechists and other groups that wish to participate in the initiative.

The Octomom Moment

2009-02-24T09:51:00.000-05:00

Will we finally start regulating the IVF industry?

February 24, 2009

Some of the more disturbing aspects of contemporary western culture all seem to have converged in the recent birth of octuplets to Nadya Suleman, a single mother in California: voluntary single parenthood via sperm donors, manufacturing of babies in Petri dishes, freezing live human embryos indefinitely, a renegade scientific and medical community. It's hard to get one's head around the situation and address it directly because nothing about it is normal or natural, from beginning to end.

Let me be quick to preface my thoughts, however, by asserting my gratitude to God for the lives of these eight tiny babies, all unique human individuals whose gift of existence we welcome and cherish. We pray for them and for their mother.

That said, a case like this reminds us that in the brave new world, the bizarre is quickly becoming the new normal -- underscored by the fact that countless observers were arguably more stunned by images of Suleman's supersized, pre-birth abdomen than by the consideration of the choices she made.

Space and time limitations don't allow me to touch on all of the aspects of the octomom phenomenon which demand our reflection. I might mention in passing two questions we should be asking.

First of all -- as Kay Hymowitz asked in last Friday's Wall Street Journal -- 'Where in the World is Octodad?' While other countries have banned sperm donor anonymity, the U.S. leaves an easy out, allowing clinics to pay men an average fee of $200 per deposit of ejaculate, to "suggest" that they volunteer to be identified to their eventual offspring, but reassuring them in the end that responsibility ends at conception.

Secondly, why did Suleman, in an interview on the Today Show, describe in vitro fertilization (IVF) as her "only option" for having a "big family"? Traditional marriage did not end up on her short list of options. Call me utterly naïve, but I would like to know her reasons.

Notwithstanding the chaotic plethora of social disarray all combined into the Suleman incident, there is one common thread here that invites vehement and immediate public scrutiny from multiple sectors and across all ideological lines: the billion-dollar artificial reproductive technology (ART) industry.

Suleman was the poster child of Beverly Hills infertility specialist Michael Kamrava. Only 33, Suleman is single and unemployed. She has had six pregnancies resulting from fertility treatment by Kamrava. Four of her pregnancies were of single children, one pregnancy resulted in twins, and the last pregnancy resulted in octuplets. Single women longing to have children are no problem for the ART industry.

Nor is it a problem for the unregulated ART industry to spawn renegade physicians -- like Kamrava -- who take the industry's normal disregard for human life to new extremes. The octuplet birth is about as close as you can get to a medical miracle. Multiple gestation pregnancies are fraught with danger for both the mother and the children: maternal risks include preeclampsia, miscarriage, high blood pressure, and stroke. Fetal risks include premature birth, low-birth weight, cerebral palsy, still-birth, as well as the long-term health problems associated with premature birth or low-birth weight.

According to Nadya Suleman, her doctor transferred six embryos in the procedure that led to her octuplet pregnancy (and if this is true, two of the embryos each gave rise to a twin). Of course, transferring multiple embryos in the face of unacceptable risks is perfectly legal in the wild west of ART medicine. There is no legal regulation on the ART industry beyond physician certification and certain lab standards. There are no professional sanctions, and the "suggested" guidelines certainly do not prevent physicians from doing the unthinkable.

The process begins when doctors hyper-stimulate a woman's ovaries to prompt the release of dozens of eggs at a time (a process that is itself fraught with serious, and potentially deadly, health risks). The eggs are mixed with sperm (either from the woman's partner, or -- in the case of Suleman -- from an anonymous friend) and by the hand of a laboratory technician, a small cohort of living human embryos comes into being. The doctor, in consultation with the mother, determines how many of these to implant, and how many to freeze for potential future implantation.

Some European countries try to minimize the human loss involved in ART by limiting the number of embryos that can be created to two or three, and requiring the transfer of all living embryos, so none are consigned to the absurd fate of being frozen for potential future "use." In the U.S., however, it is not uncommon for doctors to transfer as many as 3 or 4 embryos in fertility treatment in the hopes that one embryo will survive and grow. When two or more embryos implant and grow, the physicians routinely recommend "fetal reduction": abortion of one or more of the growing babies to lessen the compound health risks associated with multiple gestation. (According to Suleman, her doctor implanted six embryos for each of her successful pregnancies.)

It's no surprise that even proponents of IVF are crying foul. "I find it a huge ethical failure that she was even accepted as a patient," University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan told the New York Times, given that Suleman was already a single mom with six children.

The ART industry is fiercely defended on the grounds that it helps desperate, infertile couples bring "wanted" children into the world who otherwise might not exist. This defense wholly embraces the idea that the ends justify the means. In ART, the "means" are the deliberate creation and destruction of some human beings in favor of others. And for this completely unregulated, very powerful, billion-dollar industry -- where "success" is defined as the birth of a child and innovative techniques move quickly to clinical practice without oversight -- no cost, it seems, is too great.

Suleman's doctor profits from her "success" because his clinic gets to report successful pregnancies that result from treatment. The information about clinic success rates is public, gathered and reported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The higher the success rates, the more attractive the practice. Therefore, in the highly competitive, highly lucrative and completely unregulated field of ART, there is tremendous incentive to implant multiple embryos to increase the chances of a pregnancy.

In the United States, out of the more than 138,000 treatment cycles reported in 2006 (the most recent data available), almost 90% of treatment cycles involved the transfer of more than one embryo; 44% involved the transfer of three or more embryos. Clinics are supposed to report the number of embryos that implant along with the subsequent number live birth babies that result from the treatment. But the CDC doesn't publish information on number of babies in the established pregnancy, so the number of babies that are destroyed by "selective reduction" -- likely thousands a year -- is not publicly available.

Taking a step back, it's hard to deny that the ART industry is almost solely responsible for the current social climate where a living human embryo is now regarded more as a product or resource than as the individual human being that it is. Through ART, the scientific and medical community has been able to create, manipulate, study, and destroy hundreds of thousands of human embryos. And currently, about 400,000 are frozen indefinitely in the United States alone, according to the most recent, reliable data. Additionally, these frozen individual human embryos have been targeted for years now by researchers who want to cull new lines of human embryonic stem cells from them.

To say that ART has opened a Pandora's Box of cultural ills is among the grossest of understatements. But perhaps the octomom episode will constitute a watershed moment ushering in the long overdue era of regulation for an industry that feeds on innocent human life in the name of fostering it, thinly concealing unbridled greed with a veneer of putative compassion

2009-02-18T14:40:00.000-05:00

Pelosi's mouse slated for $30M slice of cheese

2009-02-12T10:33:00.002-05:00

Talk about a pet project. A tiny mouse with the longtime backing of a political giant may soon reap the benefits of the economic-stimulus package.

Lawmakers and administration officials divulged Wednesday that the $789 billion economic stimulus bill being finalized behind closed doors in Congress includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi represents the city of San Francisco and has previously championed preserving the mouse's habitat in the Bay Area.

The revelation immediately became a political football, as Republicans accused Democrats of reneging on a promise to keep so-called earmarks that fund lawmakers' favorite projects out of the legislation. Democrats, including Mrs. Pelosi, countered that the accusations were fabricated.

See related story: Deal reached on historic stimulus

Politics aside, the episode demonstrates that no matter how hard lawmakers argue that they technically lived up to their pledge to keep specific projects from being listed in the bill, there is little stopping the federal money from going to those projects after the legislation passes and federal and state agencies begin deciding where to spend their newfound dollars.

Programs for sexually transmitted diseases, smoking prevention, a clean-burning power plant and a computer center also appear ready to get infusions of money once the bill becomes law, congressional offices told The Washington Times.

"One of the proudest boasts of Democrats supporting their trillion-dollar spending plan is that it doesn't contain earmarks. But it seems like powerful Democrats will still find a way to bring home the bacon," said a frustrated Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, who took direct aim at the mouse.

"This certainly doesn't sound like it will create or save American jobs," Mr. Steel said. "So can Speaker Pelosi explain exactly how we will improve the American economy by helping the adorable little" critter?

A spokesman for Mrs. Pelosi said Republicans "fabricated" the claim.

"The speaker nor her staff have had any involvement in this initiative. This is yet another contrived partisan attack," Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said. "Restoration is key to economic activity, including farming, fisheries, recreation and clean water."

Republican lawmakers said they learned of the marsh money when asking about how various agencies plan to spend stimulus money. The vitality of the mouse has been an issue for Mrs. Pelosi and other California Democrats since the early 1990s.

President Obama boasts that the stimulus plan contains no earmarks because Congress technically did not use the earmark process for lawmakers to request and drop in specific spending items. Congressional leaders were putting the finishing touches on a $789 billion final version of the bill Wednesday night. It was not clear how many of the programs criticized by Republicans remained in the package.

Some of those items that Republicans are calling earmarks include $200 million for a clean-burning power plant in Mattoon, Ill., and $750 million for the National Computer Center and $500 million for the National Institutes of Health offices, both located in Maryland.

Other spending questioned by Republicans -- but not considered on the chopping block -- are $275 million for flood prevention, $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges and libraries, and $650 million for the digital TV converter-box coupons.

The list goes on: $1 billion for administrative costs and construction of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office buildings, $100 million for constructing U.S. Marshals office buildings, and $1.3 billion for NASA, including $450 million tagged for science.

Then there is the $300 million for hybrid and electric cars for the federal government. The funding includes golf carts for federal workers.

For more political news, check out the latest Washington Times blog posts.

Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey

2009-02-10T15:31:00.001-05:00

Commentary by Betsy McCaughey

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Elderly Hardest Hit

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

More Scrutiny Needed

On Friday, President Obama called it “inexcusable and irresponsible” for senators to delay passing the stimulus bill. In truth, this bill needs more scrutiny.

The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.

(Betsy McCaughey is former lieutenant governor of New York and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Betsy McCaughey at Betsymross@aol.com

Last Updated: February 9, 2009 00:01 EST

2009-02-03T21:47:00.001-05:00

Legionaries Acknowledge Founder’s Behavior

2/3/2009

Catholic News Agency

“We can confirm that there are aspects of his life that weren’t appropriate for a Catholic priest.'

NEW HAVEN (CNA) - Responding to unconfirmed revelations of misconduct by the Legionaries of Christ Founder Fr. Marcial Maciel, the U.S. spokesman for the Legionaries of Christ has acknowledged unspecified actions that “weren’t appropriate for a Catholic priest.” However, he insisted that Fr. Maciel “was and always will be the father of the Legion.”

The blog “Exlcblog” claimed that Fr. Scott Reilly, the Legionaries of Christ Territorial Director in Atlanta, Georgia announced to those in the Territorial Direction that Fr. Maciel had a mistress, fathered a child, and lived a double life. The blog claimed that the Legionaries of Christ is therefore renouncing Father Maciel as their spiritual father.

CNA contacted Legionaries of Christ spokesman Jim Fair, but received no specific confirmation of any allegations.

“We’ve learned some things about our founder’s life that are surprising and difficult to understand,” Fair told CNA on Tuesday.

“We can confirm that there are aspects of his life that weren’t appropriate for a Catholic priest.

“Obviously he had human feelings but it remains true that through him we received our charism, which has been approved by the Church.

“Our commitment remains and we‘re going to go forward and love Christ and serve the Church,” he remarked.

Asked to verify the specific allegations, Fair replied:

“Fr. Maciel died over a year ago and obviously whatever has happened is between him and God and God’s judgment and mercy, so we’re going to let him take care of that.”

CNA asked Fair to verify whether the Legionaries of Christ were distributing information on the allegations through their regional directors.

“We communicate internally, but I can’t make any comment beyond that,” Fair replied.

“I know that there have been rumors about are we somehow denouncing him. Obviously we are not. Fr. Maciel was and always will be the father of the legion.

“One of the mysteries of our faith is that God sometimes works through flawed human beings.”

In 2006, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, citing Fr. Maciel’s advanced age and declining health, decided to forgo a hearing into allegations he sexually abused around 20 different teenage recruits to the Legionaries of Christ as far back as the 1980s. The Congregation invited Fr. Maciel “to a reserved life of penitence and prayer, relinquishing any form of public ministry.”

Fr. Maciel died on January 30, 2008.

2009-01-29T21:51:00.000-05:00

2009-01-29T21:41:00.001-05:00

Superbowl 43: America Needs some Football, Faith and Fun

By Deacon Keith Fournier
1/29/2009

Catholic Online

The outspoken Christian witness of players on both of these teams offers a chance to keep the worries away after the big game concludes.

TAMPA, Fl (Catholic Online) – The big football game is only days away. Most American families are busy planning the fare for their popular American past time, the “Super Bowl Party”. The teams this year, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals, generate extraordinary enthusiasm among their supporters and equally powerful animosity in the hearts of their opponents.

This year, many Americans are fearful for the future and hoping that something can turn this ailing economy around. They are worried about their family’s future and deeply concerned over so many of what seem to be a host of multiplying problems.

Perhaps this Sunday, at least for a little while, those worries will be put aside and the sheer enthusiasm of the game will lift that concern. However, it will take more than a successful outcome; however we may define it, to keep our spirits lifted come Monday morning.Once again we can look to the players on the field to give us some help.

This year, the outspoken Christian witness of players on both of these teams offer a chance to many of us to keep the worries away even after the big game concludes, no matter which team wins.

From the Cardinals outspoken evangelical Protestant quarterback Kurt Warner and running back Tim Hightower to the devout Greek Orthodox Safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Troy Polamalu, the Christian faith, in its many expressions, is alive and well on the football field and provides a guiding light for many of our favorite athletes.

None of the players who speak so openly of their Christian faith have prayed for a successful outcome for their team. At least they do not admit to having succumbed to the temptation.Instead, they demonstrate a mature understanding of both the power and the purpose of prayer.

Aaron Smith, defensive lineman for the Steelers, openly speaks of the comfort he found in his relationship with the Lord when his young son was diagnosed with leukemia. Running back Willie Parker has shared with both friends and the Press that he prayed for recovery from his own multiple injuries this season. Their stories are repeated among many of their team members.

We all need the sheer enjoyment and release that will come from watching this big game. We all need a little fun and relaxation. It all seems so intense these days doesn’t it? I will admit to having a favorite team on Sunday, my adopted Pittsburgh Steelers.

My love for the Steelers goes way back to my days, now so long ago, as a student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Back when Terry Bradshaw led that team, the fans of that wonderful sports town stole my heart. That extraordinary team managed to turn me into a real football fan and I have enjoyed this wonderful sport ever since.

I truly hope that on this Sunday, along with the sheer enjoyment of stretching out in our living rooms, or in various centers of celebration throughout the Nation - along with family and friends - and rooting for our favorite team, we will all stop and listen to the simple message of so many of these athletes. They are refreshing in their willingness to simply share their faith in the Lord.They remind us all that faith is not complicated.

Quarterback Kurt Warner told an interviewer for a story released by the Associated Press, “You just have to embrace it, whatever God does in your life and wherever he puts you." Steeler’s Defensive lineman Aaron Smith, when asked about his reaction to the hard news of his son’s leukemia diagnosis, told another reporter, "It's really through the Lord's strength that I've been able to cope with this."

So it can be for all of us as we face the many struggles in these difficult days in America. We can let go and believe that the One to whom we direct our prayer is trustworthy. He has a plan for each one of us and for each of our families. He will also give us the strength to persevere through any of these struggles, if we will stop worrying and turn to Him.

I will be flying back from Canada on Sunday. However, I should arrive home in time for the kick off. I can’t wait! I need some relaxation and good human fun. Let this 43d Super Bowl begin, and, oh, by the way, “Go Steelers!”

2009-01-29T10:54:00.001-05:00

The Amazing Story Behind Tho Global Warming Scam

By John Coleman
January 28, 2009

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.

How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it?

The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the opportunity to obtain major funding from the Navy for doing measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting atomic bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute’s areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels. Revelle tagged on to Suess studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957. The paper raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming. It seems to be a plea for funding for more studies. Funding, frankly, is where Revelle’s mind was most of the time.

Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide. In 1960 Keeling published his first paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels.

These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures.

Now let me take you back to the1950s when this was going on. Our cities were entrapped in a pall of pollution from the crude internal combustion engines that powered cars and trucks back then and from the uncontrolled emissions from power plants and factories. Cars and factories and power plants were filling the air with all sorts of pollutants. There was a valid and serious concern about the health consequences of this pollution and a strong environmental movement was developing to demand action. Government accepted this challenge and new environmental standards were set. Scientists and engineers came to the rescue. New reformulated fuels were developed for cars, as were new high tech, computer controlled engines and catalytic converters. By the mid seventies cars were no longer big time polluters, emitting only some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes. Likewise, new fuel processing and smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants and their emissions were greatly reduced, as well.

But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue. So the research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment. And, with them came the birth of an issue; man-made global warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing. Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger for funding saw this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants began to flow and alarming hypothesis began to show up everywhere.

The Keeling curve showed a steady rise in CO2 in atmosphere during the period since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. As of today, carbon dioxide has increased from 215 to 385 parts per million. But, despite the increases, it is still only a trace gas in the atmosphere. While the increase is real, the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about .41 hundredths of one percent.

Several hypothesis emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric component of CO2 might cause a significant warming. But they remained unproven. Years have passed and the scientists kept reaching out for evidence of the warming and proof of their theories. And, the money and environmental claims kept on building up.

Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meeting.

Strong developed the concept that the UN could demand payments from the advanced nations for the climatic damage from their burning of fossil fuels to benefit the underdeveloped nations, a sort of CO2 tax that would be the funding for his one-world government. But, he needed more scientific evidence to support his primary thesis. So Strong championed the establishment of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This was not a pure climate study scientific organization, as we have been lead to believe. It was an organization of one-world government UN bureaucrats, environmental activists and environmentalist scientists who craved the UN funding so they could produce the science they needed to stop the burning of fossil fuels. Over the last 25 years they have been very effective. Hundreds of scientific papers, four major international meetings and reams of news stories about climatic Armageddon later, the UN IPCC has made its points to the satisfaction of most and even shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

At the same time, that Maurice Strong was busy at the UN, things were getting a bit out of hand for the man who is now called the grandfather of global warming, Roger Revelle. He had been very politically active in the late 1950’s as he worked to have the University of California locate a San Diego campus adjacent to Scripps Institute in La Jolla. He won that major war, but lost an all important battle afterward when he was passed over in the selection of the first Chancellor of the new campus.

He left Scripps finally in 1963 and moved to Harvard University to establish a Center for Population Studies. It was there that Revelle inspired one of his students to become a major global warming activist. This student would say later, "It felt like such a privilege to be able to hear about the readouts from some of those measurements in a group of no more than a dozen undergraduates. Here was this teacher presenting something not years old but fresh out of the lab, with profound implications for our future!" The student described him as "a wonderful, visionary professor" who was "one of the first people in the academic community to sound the alarm on global warming," That student was Al Gore. He thought of Dr. Revelle as his mentor and referred to him frequently, relaying his experiences as a student in his book Earth in the Balance, published in 1992.

So there it is, Roger Revelle was indeed the grandfather of global warming. His work had laid the foundation for the UN IPCC, provided the anti-fossil fuel ammunition to the environmental movement and sent Al Gore on his road to his books, his move, his Nobel Peace Prize and a hundred million dollars from the carbon credits business.

What happened next is amazing. The global warming frenzy was becoming the cause celeb of the media. After all the media is mostly liberal, loves Al Gore, loves to warn us of impending disasters and tell us "the sky is falling, the sky is falling". The politicians and the environmentalist loved it, too.

But the tide was turning with Roger Revelle. He was forced out at Harvard at 65 and returned to California and a semi retirement position at UCSD. There he had time to rethink Carbon Dioxide and the greenhouse effect. The man who had inspired Al Gore and given the UN the basic research it needed to launch its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was having second thoughts. In 1988 he wrote two cautionary letters to members of Congress. He wrote, "My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways." He added, "…we should be careful not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes clearer."

And in 1991 Revelle teamed up with Chauncey Starr, founding director of the Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, to write an article for Cosmos magazine. They urged more research and begged scientists and governments not to move too fast to curb greenhouse CO2 emissions because the true impact of carbon dioxide was not at all certain and curbing the use of fossil fuels could have a huge negative impact on the economy and jobs and our standard of living. I have discussed this collaboration with Dr. Singer. He assures me that Revelle was considerably more certain than he was at the time that carbon dioxide was not a problem.

Did Roger Revelle attend the Summer enclave at the Bohemian Grove in Northern California in the Summer of 1990 while working on that article? Did he deliver a lakeside speech there to the assembled movers and shakers from Washington and Wall Street in which he apologized for sending the UN IPCC and Al Gore onto this wild goose chase about global warming? Did he say that the key scientific conjecture of his lifetime had turned out wrong? The answer to those questions is, "I think so, but I do not know it for certain". I have not managed to get it confirmed as of this moment. It’s a little like Las Vegas; what is said at the Bohemian Grove stays at the Bohemian Grove. There are no transcripts or recordings and people who attend are encouraged not to talk. Yet, the topic is so important, that some people have shared with me on an informal basis.

Roger Revelle died of a heart attack three months after the Cosmos story was printed. Oh, how I wish he were still alive today. He might be able to stop this scientific silliness and end the global warming scam.

Al Gore has dismissed Roger Revelle’s Mea culpa as the actions of senile old man. And, the next year, while running for Vice President, he said the science behind global warming is settled and there will be no more debate, From 1992 until today, he and his cohorts have refused to debate global warming and when ask about we skeptics they simply insult us and call us names.

So today we have the acceptance of carbon dioxide as the culprit of global warming. It is concluded that when we burn fossil fuels we are leaving a dastardly carbon footprint which we must pay Al Gore or the environmentalists to offset. Our governments on all levels are considering taxing the use of fossil fuels. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of naming CO2 as a pollutant and strictly regulating its use to protect our climate. The new President and the US congress are on board. Many state governments are moving on the same course.

We are already suffering from this CO2 silliness in many ways. Our energy policy has been strictly hobbled by no drilling and no new refineries for decades. We pay for the shortage this has created every time we buy gas. On top of that the whole thing about corn based ethanol costs us millions of tax dollars in subsidies. That also has driven up food prices. And, all of this is a long way from over.

And, I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it.

Global Warming. It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a high jacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history.

John Coleman
1-29-09

2009-01-22T12:47:00.002-05:00

Judge Bork on Threats to Religious Freedom

1/22/2009

Catholic News Agency

“You are going to get Catholic hospitals that are going to be required as a matter of law to perform abortions,” he claimed.

Washington, D.C. (CNA) - Former Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork has predicted that upcoming legal battles will have significant ramifications for religious freedom. He names as issues of major concern the continued freedom of Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform abortions and the likely “terrible conflict” resulting from the advancement of homosexual rights.

Speaking in an interview published Tuesday by Cybercast News Service, Judge Bork discussed the contentious nature of modern politics.

“Everything is up for debate these days. I can’t think of anything that isn’t,” he said.

“You are going to get Catholic hospitals that are going to be required as a matter of law to perform abortions,” he claimed.

“We are going to see in the near future a terrible conflict between claimed rights of homosexuals and religious freedom… You are going to get Catholic or other groups’ relief services that are going to be required to allow adoption of a child by homosexual couples. We are going to have a real conflict that goes right to the heart of the society.”

Asked whether there was a freedom of conscience clause anywhere in the Constitution that might prohibit the U.S. government from compelling a religious hospital to perform abortions, he replied:“Well, the free exercise of religion clause might fulfill that role.”

He agreed with the CNS interviewer, Editor in Chief Terry Jeffrey, that such coercion forces someone to act against their religion and could be construed as a violation of the right to free exercise of religion.

However, Judge Bork was unsure about whether the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold such a right. He predicted the decision would rest with Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in some cases sides with liberals and at other times with “originalists,” those who profess to hold a more tradition-minded interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

“It depends upon Anthony Kennedy,” Judge Bork told CNS. “Now, it’s a funny situation in which the moral life of a nation is in effect decided by one judge, because you have four solid liberal votes, four solid originalist votes, and one vote you can’t predict too accurately in advance.”

Though Justice Kennedy is a Catholic, he sided with the majority who upheld the pro-abortion rights Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Judge Bork said that a decision involving the freedom of Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform abortions would split by a 5-4 vote.“But I don’t know which way,” he added.

The Cybercast News interview with the jurist also touched upon the place of religion in public life.

“I don’t think the disputants talk much about God anymore,” Judge Bork commented. “That’s one of the things that I think is regrettable--and I know liberals have said the same thing, it is not a conservative position particularly--but it is regrettable that religion has dropped out of our public discourse. I think it impoverishes it and makes it more violent.”

He explained that he believed this violence was not armed conflict, but rather “violent language and propaganda.”

Judge Bork said he also thought that America is “now going down a path towards kind of a happy-go-lucky nihilism.”

“A lot of people are nihilists,” he continued. “They don’t think about religion. They don’t think about ultimate questions. They go along. They worry about consumer goods, comfort, and so forth.

“As a matter of fact, the abortion question is largely a question about convenience. If you look at the polls about why people have abortions, 90 percent of it has nothing to do with medical conditions. It’s convenience. And that’s I think an example of the secularization of an issue that ought to have a religious dimension.”

When asked whether a nihilistic society can remain “happy-go-lucky” for long, Judge Bork replied: “I don’t know. I guess we are going to find out.”

Fun day with Shelter Kids and Formation Brothers

2009-01-22T11:41:00.003-05:00

The Miracle of Life

2009-01-19T16:02:00.000-05:00

2009-01-13T14:39:00.001-05:00

OUCH!

Invest in Abortion

2009-01-08T08:14:00.001-05:00

January 07, 2009, 5:00 a.m.

Invest in Abortion
Planned Parenthood’s post-Christmas wish.

By David Freddoso

On the way out the door, President Bush has delivered a bailout of the domestic automotive industry, which under its current business practices could not possibly survive in a free market. President Obama, on the other hand, may see as his first task a bailout of the abortion industry.

Among the many left-wing interests that have submitted wish lists to the Obama transition team is a conglomeration of 50 abortion-advocacy groups, all of whom want the U.S. taxpayer to stand and deliver. When their 55-page report to Obama calls for an end to “ideologically driven government restrictions,” it really means that the government should be paying more of the bills for groups that advocate and perform abortions.

To provide some context, the government has been “bailing out” Big Abortion for years. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, feeds off the taxpayer to the tune of $337 million in government funds that would otherwise have to come from donors. If the recommendations in this report are enacted, they and other abortion providers and advocates will have even more spoils upon which to feast.

“Bans on public funding for abortion services have severely restricted access to safe abortion care for women who depend on the government for their health care,” the report states. “These policies create an unjust obstacle to quality health care and inflict disproportionate harm on poor women, women of color and certain immigrant women. . . .”

The report is audacious in the scope of its demands, most of which would mean more money for the groups that authored it. In all, it calls for $1.5 billion for groups that engage in abortion advocacy and perform abortions. Among its demands is an expansion of funding for Title X health clinics, from $300 million to $700 million, and greater freedom in how that money is spent. Of the 4,400 such clinics in America, about 450 are run by Planned Parenthood, whose domestic and international arms are listed as co-authors of the report.

The report also calls for an increase in international “family planning” funds from $461 million to $1 billion, much of which would go to the groups that authored the report and their affiliates. And it calls for an end to the ban on using this money for abortion. The report requests $65 million for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), whose officials were discovered in 2000 to be assisting Chinese officials in enforcing that country’s coercive population-control program.

Meanwhile, conscience protections for medical professionals in federally funded facilities are targeted in the report for elimination. Those who refuse to perform or refer abortions are protected under current law, but the elimination of appropriations laws and federal rules could make them vulnerable to discrimination by governments or institutions that seek to require cooperation in abortion. This is no unimportant issue — recall that in 2002, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a policy of forcing all medical students who train in public hospitals to participate in abortion (with students who object on moral or religious grounds allowed to opt out).

Another goal of the 50 abortion groups is to expand direct federal funding for abortions by repealing various laws that protect taxpayers from paying for them. This is particularly interesting to read, considering the popular opposition to taxpayer funding of abortions. Currently, appropriations amendments prevent Medicaid or Medicare funding for abortions in most cases (the Hyde amendment) and prevent the Department of Defense from paying to facilitate abortions on military bases in foreign countries. The report calls for these provisions to be repealed. Importantly, the report also calls for abortion to be covered under any national health-care plan produced by the Obama administration.

“There are a lot of restrictions on current funding, and they are looking to overturn all of those restrictions,” says Joy Yearout of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life political action committee.

The abortion groups’ biggest goal, though, is to kill all these birds with one stone through passage of the Freedom of Choice Act. That bill would overturn all state and federal restrictions not only on abortion (such as the partial-birth abortion ban) but also on government funding of abortions. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to sign that bill. He has also promised, in line with the report’s recommendation, only to nominate individuals to the bench who believe in “the right to have an abortion.”

Some of these items, such as the Freedom of Choice Act, seem unlikely to pass. Others look far more likely — particularly the increase in funding for abortion advocates. But in presenting and fighting for their demands, pro-choice advocates may be helping to bring the culture war back to the forefront of America’s electoral politics, after an election in which it played nearly no role.

“The majority of Americans are opposed to taxpayer funding of abortion,” said Yearout. “We’re hoping to leverage that popular pressure even with lawmakers who consider themselves pro-choice.”

While Americans are divided on the question of restricting abortion, polls have found as many as 69 percent opposed to using federal funds to pay for abortions. Amid the dark cloud of a government dominated by proponents of abortion on demand, pro-lifers may find a silver lining in the form of a new debate they can win decisively. There is nothing “pro-choice” in requiring taxpayers to subsidize the abortion industry.

— David Freddoso is an NRO staff reporter.

On True Worship"The Era of the Temple and Its Worship Had Ended"

2009-01-08T07:56:00.001-05:00

VATICAN CITY, JAN. 7, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered during today's general audience in Paul VI Hall.* * *

Dear brothers and sisters,

In this first general audience of 2009, I want to offer all of you fervent best wishes for the New Year that just began. Let us renew our determination to open the mind and heart to Christ, to be and live as his true friends. His company will make this year, even with its inevitable difficulties, be a path full of joy and peace. In fact, only if we remain united to Jesus will the New Year be good and happy.

The commitment of union with Christ is the example that St. Paul offers us. Continuing the catecheses dedicated to him, we pause today to reflect on one of the important aspects of his thought, the worship that Christians are called to offer. In the past, there was a leaning toward speaking of an anti-worship tendency in the Apostle, of a "spiritualization" of the idea of worship. Today we better understand that St. Paul sees in the cross of Christ a historical change, which transforms and radically renews the reality of worship. There are above all three passages from the Letter to the Romans in which this new vision of worship is presented.

1. In Romans 3:25, after having spoken of the "redemption brought about by Christ Jesus," Paul goes on with a formula that is mysterious to us, saying: God "set [him] forth as an expiation, through faith, by his blood." With this expression that is quite strange for us -- "instrument of expiation" -- St. Paul refers to the so-called propitiatory of the ancient temple, that is, the lid of the ark of the covenant, which was considered a point of contact between God and man, the point of the mysterious presence of God in the world of man. This "propitiatory," on the great day of reconciliation -- Yom Kippur -- was sprinkled with the blood of sacrificed animals, blood that symbolically put the sins of the past year in contact with God, and thus, the sins hurled to the abyss of the divine will were almost absorbed by the strength of God, overcome, pardoned. Life began anew.

St. Paul makes reference to this rite and says: This rite was the expression of the desire that all our faults could really be put in the abyss of divine mercy and thus made to disappear. But with the blood of animals, this process was not fulfilled. A more real contact between human fault and divine love was necessary. This contact has taken place with the cross of Christ. Christ, Son of God, who has become true man, has assumed in himself all our faults. He himself is the place of contact between human misery and divine mercy; in his heart, the sad multitude of evil carried out by humanity is undone, and life is renewed.

Revealing this change, St. Paul tells us: With the cross of Christ -- the supreme act of divine love, converted into human love -- the ancient worship with the sacrifice of animals in the temple of Jerusalem has ended. This symbolic worship, worship of desire, has now been replaced by real worship: the love of God incarnated in Christ and taken to its fullness in the death on the cross. Therefore, this is not a spiritualization of the real worship, but on the contrary, this is the real worship, the true divine-human love, that replaces the symbolic and provisional worship. The cross of Christ, his love with flesh and blood, is the real worship, corresponding to the reality of God and man. Already before the external destruction of the temple, for Paul, the era of the temple and its worship had ended: Paul is found here in perfect consonance with the words of Jesus, who had announced the end of the temple and announced another temple "not made by human hands" -- the temple of his risen body (cf. Mark 14:58; John 2:19 ff). This is the first passage.

2. The second passage about which I would like to speak today is found in the first verse of Chapter 12 of the Letter to the Romans. We have heard it and I repeat it once again: "I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship."

In these words, an apparent paradox is verified: While sacrifice demands as a norm the death of the victim, Paul makes reference to the life of the Christian. The expression "offer your bodies," united to the successive concept of sacrifice, takes on the worship nuance of "give in oblation, offer." The exhortation to "offer your bodies" refers to the whole person; in fact, in Romans 6:13, [Paul] makes the invitation to "present yourselves to God." For the rest, the explicit reference to the physical dimension of the Christian coincides with the invitation to "glorify God in your bodies" (1 Corinthians 6:20): It's a matter of honoring God in the most concrete daily existence, made of relational and perceptible visibility.

Conduct of this type is classified by Paul as "living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God." It is here where we find precisely the term "sacrifice." In prevalent use, this term forms part of a sacred context and serves to designate the throat-splitting of an animal, of which one part can be burned in honor of the gods and another part consumed by the offerers in a banquet. Paul instead applied it to the life of the Christian. In fact he classifies such a sacrifice by using three adjectives. The first -- "living" -- expresses a vitality. The second -- "holy" -- recalls the Pauline concept of a sanctity that is not linked to places or objects, but to the very person of the Christian. The third -- "pleasing to God" -- perhaps recalls the common biblical expression of a sweet-smelling sacrifice (cf. Leviticus 1:13, 17; 23:18; 26:31, etc.).

Immediately afterward, Paul thus defines this new way of living: this is "your spiritual worship." Commentators of the text know well that the Greek expression (tçn logikçn latreían) is not easy to translate. The Latin Bible renders it: "rationabile obsequium." The same word "rationabile" appears in the first Eucharistic prayer, the Roman Canon: In it, we pray so that God accepts this offering as "rationabile." The traditional Italian translation, "spiritual worship," [an offering in spirit], does not reflect all the details of the Greek text, nor even of the Latin. In any case, it is not a matter of a less real worship or even a merely metaphorical one, but of a more concrete and realistic worship, a worship in which man himself in his totality, as a being gifted with reason, transforms into adoration and glorification of the living God.

This Pauline formula, which appears again in the Roman Eucharistic prayer, is fruit of a long development of the religious experience in the centuries preceding Christ. In this experience are found theological developments of the Old Testament and currents of Greek thought. I would like to show at least certain elements of this development. The prophets and many psalms strongly criticize the bloody sacrifices of the temple. For example, Psalm 50 (49), in which it is God who speaks, says, "Were I hungry, I would not tell you, for mine is the world and all that fills it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer praise as your sacrifice to God" (verses 12-14).

In the same sense, the following Psalm 51 (50), says, " …for you do not desire sacrifice; a burnt offering you would not accept. My sacrifice, God, is a broken spirit; God, do not spurn a broken, humbled heart" (verse 18 and following).

In the Book of Daniel, in the times of the new destruction of the temple at the hands of the Hellenistic regime (2nd century B.C.), we find a new step in the same direction. In midst of the fire -- that is, persecution and suffering -- Azariah prays thus: "We have in our day no prince, prophet, or leader, no holocaust, sacrifice, oblation, or incense, no place to offer first fruits, to find favor with you. But with contrite heart and humble spirit let us be received; As though it were holocausts of rams and bullocks … So let our sacrifice be in your presence today as we follow you unreservedly" (Daniel 3:38ff).

In the destruction of the sanctuary and of worship, in this situation of being deprived of every sign of the presence of God, the believer offers as a true holocaust a contrite heart, his desire of God.

We see an important development, beautiful, but with a danger. There exists a spiritualization, a moralization of worship: Worship becomes only something of the heart, of the spirit. But the body is lacking; the community is lacking. Thus is understood that Psalm 51, for example, and also the Book of Daniel, despite criticizing worship, desire the return of the time of sacrifices. But it is a matter of a renewed time, in a synthesis that still was unforeseeable, that could not yet be thought of.

Let us return to St. Paul. He is heir to these developments, of the desire for true worship, in which man himself becomes glory of God, living adoration with all his being. In this sense, he says to the Romans: "Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice … your spiritual worship" (Romans 12:1).

Paul thus repeats what he had already indicated in Chapter 3: The time of the sacrifice of animals, sacrifices of substitution, has ended. The time of true worship has arrived. But here too arises the danger of a misunderstanding: This new worship can easily be interpreted in a moralist sense -- offering our lives we make true worship. In this way, worship with animals would be substituted by moralism: Man would do everything for himself with his moral strength. And this certainly was not the intention of St. Paul.

But the question persists: Then how should we interpret this "reasonable spiritual worship"? Paul always supposes that we have come to be "one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28), that we have died in baptism (Romans 1) and we live now with Christ, through Christ and in Christ. In this union -- and only in this way -- we can be in him and with him a "living sacrifice," to offer the "true worship." The sacrificed animals should have substituted man, the gift of self of man, and they could not. Jesus Christ, in his surrender to the Father and to us, is not a substitution, but rather really entails in himself the human being, our faults and our desire; he truly represents us, he assumes us in himself. In communion with Christ, accomplished in the faith and in the sacraments, we transform, despite our deficiencies, into living sacrifice: "True worship" is fulfilled.

This synthesis is the backdrop of the Roman Canon in which we pray that this offering be "rationabile," so that spiritual worship is accomplished. The Church knows that in the holy Eucharist, the self-gift of Christ, his true sacrifice, is made present. But the Church prays so that the celebrating community is really united to Christ, is transformed; it prays so that we ourselves come to be that which we cannot be with our efforts: offering "rationabile" that is pleasing to God. In this way the Eucharistic prayer interprets in an adequate way the words of St. Paul.

St. Augustine clarified all of this in a marvelous way in the 10th book of his City of God. I cite only two phrase: "This is the sacrifice of the Christians: though being many we are only one body in Christ" … "All of the redeemed community (civitas), that is, the congregation and the society of the saints, is offered to God through the High Priest who has given himself up" (10,6: CCL 47,27ff).

3. Finally, I want to leave a brief reflection on the third passage of the Letter to the Romans referring to the new worship. St. Paul says thus in Chapter 15: "the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in performing the priestly service (hierourgein) of the gospel of God, so that the offering up of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the holy Spirit" (15:15ff).

I would like to emphasize only two aspects of this marvelous text and one aspect of the unique terminology of the Pauline letters. Before all else, St. Paul interprets his missionary action among the peoples of the world to construct the universal Church as a priestly action. To announce the Gospel to unify the peoples in communion with the Risen Christ is a "priestly" action. The apostle of the Gospel is a true priest; he does what is at the center of the priesthood: prepares the true sacrifice.

And then the second aspect: the goal of missionary action is -- we could say in this way -- the cosmic liturgy: that the peoples united in Christ, the world, becomes as such the glory of God "pleasing oblation, sanctified in the Holy Spirit." Here appears a dynamic aspect, the aspect of hope in the Pauline concept of worship: the self-gift of Christ implies the tendency to attract everyone to communion in his body, to unite the world. Only in communion with Christ, the model man, one with God, the world comes to be just as we all want it to be: a mirror of divine love. This dynamism is always present in Scripture; this dynamism should inspire and form our life. And with this dynamism we begin the New Year. Thanks for your patience.

2008-12-24T06:53:00.001-05:00

Sacred texts: Vatican embraces iTunes prayer book

1 day ago

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican is endorsing new technology that brings the book of daily prayers used by priests straight onto iPhones.

The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications is embracing the iBreviary, an iTunes application created by a technologically savvy Italian priest, the Rev. Paolo Padrini, and an Italian Web designer.

The application includes the Breviary prayer book — in Italian, English, Spanish, French and Latin and, in the near future, Portuguese and German. Another section includes the prayers of the daily Mass, and a third contains various other prayers.

After a free trial period in which the iBreviary was downloaded approximately 10,000 times in Italy, an official version was released earlier this month, Padrini said.

The application costs euro0.79 ($1.10), while upgrades will be free. Padrini's proceeds are going to charity.

Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications, praised the new application Monday, saying the Church "is learning to use the new technologies primarily as a tool or as a mean of evangelizing, as a way of being able to share its own message with the world."

Pope Benedict XVI, a classical music lover who was reportedly given an iPod in 2006, has sought to reach out to young people through new media. During last summer's World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, he sent out mobile phone text messages citing scripture to thousands of registered pilgrims — signed with the tagline "BXVI."

The Bailout economy: A house Built on Sand

2008-12-01T10:27:00.001-05:00

by Rev. Robert A. Sirico

In a very familiar parable, Jesus tells the story of two home builders. One built a house on sand, the other on rock. The house on the rock withstood the weather. The one built on sand did not fare so well: "The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof" (Matthew 7:24-29).

If the parable were retold today, it might include an episode in which treasury officials and members of Congress cobbled together a bailout program for the owner and lender of the house on the sand. No matter how much money they spent, however, the ending would be the same.

Six weeks ago, when the $700 billion bailout of failing financial firms was being considered, the country was swept up in the debate. The bill, which created the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), passed with thin public support. Washington claimed that the bill was necessary to keep the world from an economic Armageddon. Many people suspected that it amounted to little more than welfare for Wall Street.

Who was right? Consider the dramatic change made to the way the program works, as announced last week by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. He said that the government would no longer purchase toxic assets from failing institutions. It would now start giving the money directly to lenders. In other words, the entire rationale of the bailout changed overnight.

Why the change? The problem with the original idea is that it violated every common-sense rule of business. The government would pay far more than the market would bear and then, no doubt, we would watch as the market price slid to the bottom. Every time a supporter claimed that this was a good deal for taxpayers, you could almost sense the rise in deep skepticism. If you believed them, I've got a house built on sand to sell you.

Recent weeks have illustrated just how difficult it is to turn bad assets into good ones, and reverse the direction of downward price pressure. Short of suspending all market trading, it can't be done. The case of the insurance giant AIG demonstrates the point. In September, the government gave AIG $85 billion. The money vanished and AIG reported more losses. Now it is expanded to $150 billion. That should last a few weeks anyway.

It seems that Paulson and others have learned a valuable lesson here. The house can't be saved. Instead they are turning to save the lenders, a course of action which seems a bit more viable but no less a path of folly. Washington is now looking carefully at which banks to save and which to let go. This amounts to a process of picking winners and losers. It gives a competitive advantage to those institutions that were marginally worse at assessing risk.

Think about what it means for policy priorities. The lender who made possible the house on the rock does not need a bailout. That which lent money to the builder who built on sand is getting assistance from taxpayers. How does this constitute a just solution?

The pressure to continue buying bad assets, however, is not going away. Today we see demands for direct infusions of cash to auto makers, airlines, ever more insurance companies and mortgage dealers. Next we will see demands for bailouts of even such national essentials as coffee retailers. Where does it all end?

What are we being saved from here? The free market system is one of discovery, one of trial and error and one of trial and success. It is a continuous process of learning. To seek to protect those who make errors from the consequences of their choices is to distort and destroy the system itself. It is as futile as trying to save the house built on sand.

It is as though we woke up one morning to discover that failure has been outlawed, and that even if some banks do not want the money, money will be forced upon them anyway, to save them from themselves - indeed, to save them from capitalism.

We have heard many pronouncements on the vice of greed, but we need to remember that the consumerist mentality is not merely the desire to live better, but is rather the confused idea that only in having more can we be more. Some have invented a new rule of life that might be put thus: "consumo ego sum." ("I know that I exist because I consume goods").

How common it has become to live outside one's means, whether it's the huge flat screen TV we think we can't do without or the newest automobile or the house larger than our income can afford. Then there are the imprudent risks assumed in piling up debt on mortgages with a hubris which assumed that values could only continue to rise at 10 percent or better per year.

Thrift, that "handmaid of enterprise," was mothered by scarcity, a scarcity that unregulated pricing in a free market has, better than all economic systems in human history, served best to mitigate. What an obscenity, then, that the principle of thrift should be invoked by those who oppose this system of natural rationing and allocation, preferring instead top down systems of distribution that would bring poverty and ruin to any economy that took them seriously for any length of time.

Wall Street has been skewered and denounced in almost every attempt to examine the moral dimension of this crisis. Yet, Wall Street is too often denounced for all the wrong reasons -- as a surrogate for the free economy, for seeking and making a profit, as though the alternative was somehow a preferable moral result.

No, if we are going to offer a moral critique of Wall Street, this should not be done because free markets allocate and produce capital, without which people's homes and savings evaporate. Rather, it should be done because all these previously private businesses are now waddling up to the governmental trough begging to be nationalized and asking for their share of the dole.

It was the institution of government that unleashed those vices of greed and avarice encouraging people to build on sand. It did so by first placing a policy priority on the good idea of home ownership but pursued it with a fanaticism that neglected other goods such as prudence and rational risk assessment.

Moreover, official banking centers enjoyed subsidies that distorted that most sensitive of price signals--the very price of money--to delude both investors and consumers into believing that capital existed to support vast and extravagant consumerism when in fact such capital and savings did not exist. More sand! These tendencies to encourage consumerism and greed occurred in a market deluded by interventionism, not a market that was permitted to work within its own indigenous mechanism of risk, reward, and justice.

As we have seen so often in the past century's experiment with socialism, the real story is in the Parable. It is a story of economic and moral folly. May we finally learn its lesson.

A Deacon's Deacon - Dale Lister

2008-11-26T15:53:00.004-05:00

Yesterday we laid to rest one of our brothers, Deacon Dale Lister. Though I have know Dale for many years, I never knew much about him. What I did know, and respect, was the holiness and gentleness of this man. We know of his courageous struggle for 10 years with cancer. We also know of his love of God, his family and his Church. You could not help but feel the mixture of joy and sadness at the church yesterday. The joy of knowing with great confidence that we have a new advocate in the presence of Our Lord who will intercede for us. As with all important occasion in our lives, funerals bring together old friends that help to lessen the sorrow by sharing a few moments with loved ones. I think Dale smiled when he saw some of the hugs being shared - he was the Master of Hugs. So we continue on our journey with the hope we will again feel the bone-crushing hug of this wonderful husband, father, grandfather, friend and Deacon. There is much to be learned from Dale - he walked the walk. Let's follow his path to salvation.

Bob Hauert

Fooling Some of the People, some of the time

2008-11-26T15:49:00.002-05:00

Responding to the non-argument that duped many Pro-Obama Catholics
November 25, 2008

9:00AM EST

52% of Catholics -- the vast majority of whom would identify themselves as "pro-life" -- voted on November 4, 2008 for the man who will almost certainly become the most pro-abortion President in American history.

I have already dedicated this column, and writings elsewhere, to respond to some of the putative justifications under which my Catholic brothers and sisters cast their votes for the pro-abortion candidate. In Economy Matters, Life Matters (NRO, October 8, 2008), and in two previous columns here I tried to respond to the pseudo-argument that support for Mr. Obama was justified on the basis that "abortion is not the only issue; other 'Catholic' issues are crying out for attention and Mr. Obama is best equipped to address them" or "abortion is simply not the most fundamental issue facing our nation" (at least not in this election cycle).

It turns out there was another pseudo-argument afloat in the minds of many. It goes something like this: Mr. Obama actually supports the pro-life agenda because he intends to enact policies that will reduce poverty, raise the minimum wage, create jobs, get folks off welfare, enact a more just and humane immigration policy, enact tax cuts for the benefit of the most needy Americans, give greater access to affordable healthcare... And all of this in the end will reduce the number of abortions in America.

Professor Doug Kmiec, of Pepperdine Law School, well prior to the election gave intellectual expression to these ideas and to its corollary: the pro-life focus on overturning Roe v. Wade was wrong-headed and ill-fated to begin with; as a strategy, it has failed, and it is time for a new approach.

Kmiec holds that the best way to victory was to support the man who would best implement principles of Catholic social teaching in a manner best suited to getting at the "root causes" of abortion. And in Kmiec's estimation, Obama was the man for the job.

Kmiec saw this evidenced in the Obama platform proposal which, while affirming Roe, promised also "to strongly support a woman's decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and postnatal health care, parenting skills, income support and caring adoption programs."

The question for the rest of us then is this: Do we hold such an argument to be plausible? And furthermore, do we believe the pro-life movement or its strategies have "failed"?

For answers, I turned to two pro-life veterans and dear friends: Nikolas Nikas and Dorinda Bordlee, co-founders of the Bioethics Defense Fund.

Nikas and Bordlee believe that prominent Catholics who publicly justified their support for President-elect Obama on the claim that the pro-life movement has lost the battle "acted under dangerous fallacies."

First, Bordlee points out that these voters failed "to recognize that President-elect Obama has promised to devastate the life-saving legal infrastructure that was built with great effort by the pro-life movement over the last 35 years, and recently bolstered by the U.S. Supreme Court in it's 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart decision which recognized '[t]he State's interest in respect for life' which 'finds an ultimate expression in a mother's love for her child.'"

Nikas and Bordlee question the sincerity of the conviction that the pro-life movement has "failed" given the steady increase in life-protective state and federal laws that now stand on the chopping block of Obama's promised passage of FOCA, including:

· laws that require abortionists to give women informed consent about the dangers of abortion and their access to public and private agencies that will help them bring their child to term;
· state laws that help stop sexual predators who benefit from secret abortions on minors by requiring parental notice or consent;
· laws that prohibit killing a child in the process of delivery by banning partial birth abortion; and
· laws that prevent discrimination against healthcare professionals and medical students who object to using their vocation to heal in a way to destroys human lives.

"All of these laws and more will come crashing down if President-elect Obama makes good on his promise to sign FOCA and reverse the Hyde Amendment," notes Bordlee. Bordlee pointed to an important analysis by Professor Michael New showing that parental involvement laws and Medicaid funding restrictions are correlated with reductions in the incidence of abortion among minors. "Effective pro-life measures are at risk of being 'lost' because of Obama's planned strategy, not because of any failed strategy of the pro-life movement," said Bordlee

Nikas and Bordlee made a further salient observation about the short-sighted failure of pro-Obama pro-lifers to understand a historic truth about social-reform movements -- that it takes perseverance to achieve victory.

In The Young Battle for Life,

Nikolas Nikas noted ever so cogently that the 35-year struggle against federal court-imposed abortion on demand is still a relatively young one. He points to the lessons of the long struggle for black civil rights as instructive:

· 246 years from the advent of American slavery to the end of the Civil War;
· 100 years from the ratification of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery to the passage of the Civil Rights Act;
· 58 years from the announcement by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" public accommodations for blacks and whites was constitutional to the reversal of that decision by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education.

So, after only 35 years, it would seem that the pro-life movement is only at the beginning of its battle, not at the (failed) end of it. I hope to continue this discussion next week, with further input from pro-life leaders who are nowhere near throwing in the towel.

***

Rev. Thomas V. Berg, L.C. is Executive Director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person.

Vatican goes GREEN

2008-11-26T15:46:00.001-05:00

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - And then there was light -- and it was powered by the sun. The Vatican on Wednesday activated a new solar energy system and announced an ambitious plan that could one day make it an alternative energy exporter.

The massive roof of the "Nervi Hall" where popes hold general audiences and concerts are performed, has been covered with 2,400 photovoltaic panels to provide energy for lighting, heat and air conditioning.

After weeks of tests, the system went on line at full throttle hours before Pope Benedict held what officials called the "first ecological general audience in the Vatican."

The new system on the 5,000 square meter roof will produce 300 megawatt hours (MWh) of clean energy a year for the audience hall and surrounding buildings.

The 1.2 million euro ($1.6 million) system, devised and donated by German companies SolarWorld and SMA Solar Technology, will allow the 108-acre city-state to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by about 225 tons and save the equivalent of 80 tons of oil each year.

"This is a very courageous initiative," said Carlo Rubbia, the Italian who won the 1984 Nobel Prize in physics and attended the unveiling ceremony in the Vatican.

"The sun has 100,000 times the energy produced by traditional sources of energy on earth. This why we need so much science, so much investment in research for the future," Rubbia said at the unveiling.

FIELDS OF SOLAR PANELS

Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, the governor of Vatican City, said the Vatican was thinking of a much more ambitious project at a huge tract of land it owns north of Rome which is used as a transmission center for Vatican Radio.

"We are thinking of a solar energy system on 300 hectares (740 acres) at the site," he said.

Pier Carlo Cuscianna, head of technical services for Vatican City, said such a project could produce six times the amount of energy needed to power the transmission antennas.

"The rest could be transferred to the (Italian) national grid for power for surrounding communities," Cuscianna said.

The site, called Santa Maria di Galeria, is owned by the Vatican and such a project would make it an exporter of alternative energy.

Cuscianna said it was "just an idea" for now but that he expected it to move on the project stage eventually.

Officials said the Vatican planned to install enough renewable energy sources to provide 20 percent of its needs by 2020, broadly in line with a proposal by the European Union.

The Nervi Hall has a sweeping, wavy roof and the solar panels are virtually invisible from the ground. Church officials have said the Vatican's famous skyline, particularly St. Peter's Basilica, would remain untouched.

(Editing by Dominic Evans)

2008-11-20T09:24:00.001-05:00

November 19, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt

MITT ROMNEY

Boston

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support — banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around — and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers.

First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.

That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.

Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.

The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”

You don’t have to look far for industries with unions that went down that road. Companies in the 21st century cannot perpetuate the destructive labor relations of the 20th. This will mean a new direction for the U.A.W., profit sharing or stock grants to all employees and a change in Big Three management culture.

The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.

Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options. Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies — especially fuel-saving designs — that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.

Just as important to the future of American carmakers is the sales force. When sales are down, you don’t want to lose the only people who can get them to grow. So don’t fire the best dealers, and don’t crush them with new financial or performance demands they can’t meet.

It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research — on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like — that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.

But don’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass — they bet on management and they lost.

The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.

In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was a candidate for this year’s Republican presidential nomination.

2008-11-19T20:33:00.002-05:00

Pope Clarifies Luther's Idea of Justification

ZE08111911 - 2008-11-19
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-24309?l=english

Says It's True, if Faith Is Not Opposed to Love

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 19, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI says Martin Luther's doctrine on justification is correct, if faith "is not opposed to charity."

The Pope said this today during the general audience dedicated to another reflection on St. Paul. This time, the Holy Father considered the Apostle's teaching on justification.

He noted that Paul's conversion experience on the road to Damascus "changed his life radically: He began to regard all his merits, achievements of a most honest religious career, as 'loss' in face of the sublimity of knowledge of Jesus Christ."

"It is precisely because of this personal experience of the relationship with Jesus that Paul places at the center of his Gospel an irreducible opposition between two alternative paths to justice: one based on the works of the law, the other founded on the grace of faith in Christ," the Pontiff explained. "The alternative between justice through the works of the law and justice through faith in Christ thus becomes one of the dominant themes that runs through his letters."

What is law

But in order to understand this Pauline teaching, Benedict XVI affirmed, "we must clarify what is the 'law' from which we have been freed and what are those 'works of the law' that do not justify."

He explained: "Already in the community of Corinth there was the opinion, which will return many times in history, which consisted in thinking that it was a question of the moral law, and that Christian freedom consisted therefore in being free from ethics. [...] It is obvious that this interpretation is erroneous: Christian liberty is not libertinism; the freedom of which St. Paul speaks is not freedom from doing good."

Instead, the Pope said, the law to which Paul refers is the "collection of behaviors extending from an ethical foundation to the ritual and cultural observances that substantially determined the identity of the just man -- particularly circumcision, the observance regarding pure food and general ritual purity, the rules regarding observance of the Sabbath, etc."

These observances served to protect Jewish identity and faith in God; they were "a defense shield that would protect the precious inheritance of the faith," he remarked.

But, the Holy Father continued, at the moment of Paul's encounter with Christ, the Apostle "understood that with Christ's resurrection the situation had changed radically."

"The wall -- so says the Letter to the Ephesians -- between Israel and the pagans was no longer necessary," he said. "It is Christ who protects us against polytheism and all its deviations; it is Christ who unites us with and in the one God; it is Christ who guarantees our true identity in the diversity of cultures; and it is he who makes us just. To be just means simply to be with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Other observances are no longer necessary."

And it is because of this, the Bishop of Rome continued, that Luther's expression "by faith alone" is true "if faith is not opposed to charity, to love. Faith is to look at Christ, to entrust oneself to Christ, to be united to Christ, to be conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence, to believe is to be conformed to Christ and to enter into his love."

"Paul knows," he added, "that in the double love of God and neighbor the whole law is fulfilled. Thus the whole law is observed in communion with Christ, in faith that creates charity. We are just when we enter into communion with Christ, who is love."

Reprinting ZENIT's articles requires written permission from the editor.

Obama and the Bishops

2008-11-14T15:36:00.000-05:00

By Richard John Neuhaus Friday, November 7, 2008, 8:16 AM

In a few days, the American bishops of the Catholic Church will be holding their annual fall meeting in Baltimore. High on the agenda is how Catholic bishops can better communicate Catholic teaching on social justice both in the Church and in the public square. It is understood that the priority issue of social justice is the protection of innocent human life—from the entrance gates of life to the exit gates, and at every step along life’s way. The most massive and brutal violation of justice is the killing of millions of children in the womb.

In recent months, an unusually large number of bishops have been assertive, articulate, and even bold, in their public affirmation of the demands of moral reason and the Church’s teaching. Some estimate the number of such bishops to be over a hundred. Critics of these bishops, including Catholic fronts for the Obama campaign, claim that bishops have only spoken out because prominent Democrats stepped on their toes by egregiously misrepresenting Catholic teaching. Why only? It is the most particular duty of bishops to see that the authentic teaching of the Church is safeguarded and honestly communicated.

Not all bishops covered themselves with honor in the doing of their duty. Ignoring their further duty to protect the integrity of the Eucharist and defend against the faithful’s being led into confusion, temptation, and sin by skandolon, some bishops issued statements explaining why they had no intention of addressing the problem of public figures who claim they are Catholics in good standing despite their consistent rejection of the Church’s teaching on the defense of innocent human lives. Some such bishops took the position that publicly doing or saying anything that addressed that very public problem would be viewed as controversial, condemned as politically partisan, and misconstrued by those hostile to the Church. Therefore, they explained, they were doing and saying nothing except to say why they were doing and saying nothing. Such calculated timidity falls embarrassingly short of the apostolic zeal exemplified by the apostles whose successors the bishops are. Fortunately, these timorous shepherds seem to be in the minority among the bishops.

Others seem to have taken to heart in this Pauline Year the counsel of Paul to Timothy: “Fight the good fight . . . I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

After the election, some Catholics with itching ears who are manifestly embarrassed by the Church’s being out of step with the new world of “the change we’ve been waiting for” have gleefully pointed out that the assertiveness of the bishops had little political effect. In the presidential and other races, Catholics voted for pro-abortion candidates. So what? It is not the business of bishops to win political races. It is the business of bishops to defend and teach the faith, including the Church’s moral doctrine. One hopes they will keep that firmly in mind in their Baltimore meeting.

The reading for Mass on the day following the election was Philippians 2, in which St. Paul prays that the faithful “may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.” That is as pertinent now as it was in the first century, and will be until our Lord returns in glory. It is the business of bishops to help equip the faithful to let the splendor of moral truth shine through their life and witness as lights in the world. If, on occasion, that coincides with political success, it is to be viewed as an unexpected, albeit welcome, bonus. It is a grievous degradation of their pastoral office, as well as a political delusion, for bishops to see themselves as managers of the Catholic voting bloc.

Earlier this year, the bishops issued “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.” It was, as I wrote at the time, a fine statement in almost every respect. But its elaborate attention to nuance and painstaking distinctions made it a virtual invitation for the Catholic flaks of Obama to turn it upside down and inside out. The statement was regularly invoked to justify voting for the most extreme proponent of the unlimited abortion license in American presidential history.

That unintended invitation to distort, eagerly seized upon by those with a mind to do so, was especially evident in the statement’s treatment of a “proportionate” reason to support pro-abortion candidates. The bishops must do better next time. To be sure, any statement must be carefully reasoned, as Catholic moral theology is carefully reasoned. Yet an episcopal statement is not an invitation to an academic seminar but, above all, a call to faithfulness. The task is to offer a firm, unambiguous, and, as much as possible, a persuasive case on the basis of revelation and clear reason.

The events of these months have once again exposed deeper problems in the leadership of the bishops, although certainly not of the bishops alone. To cite an obvious instance, only 25 to 35 percent (depending on whose data you believe) of the 68 million Catholics in this country regularly attend Mass. That means that, except for a few bishops who have larger media access, bishops are being heard by only a minority of their people. Moreover, many parish pastors and priests are embarrassingly eager to avoid controversy, and others are openly disdainful of the Church’s teaching and/or its implications for public justice. Some bishops are tremulously intimidated by their presbyterates. Such bishops and priests need to read again, and with soul-searching prayer, Paul’s counsel to Timothy.

There are deeper problems. In the last four decades, following the pattern of American Protestantism, many, perhaps most, Catholics view the Church in terms of consumption rather than obligation. The Church is there to supply their spiritual needs as they define those needs, not to tell them what to believe or do. This runs very deep both sociologically and psychologically. It is part of the “success” of American Catholics in becoming just like everybody else. Bishops and all of us need to catch the vision of John Paul II that the Church imposes nothing, she only proposes. But what she proposes she believes is the truth, and because human beings are hard-wired for the truth, the truth imposes. And truth obliges.

It is not easy to communicate this understanding in our time, as it has not been easy in any time. In the twentieth century, the motto of the ecumenical movement was “Let the Church be the Church.” The motto was sometimes betrayed by that movement, but it should be courageously embraced by the bishops meeting in Baltimore. The bishops must set aside public relations and political calculations, and be prepared to surrender themselves anew to the task for which they were ordained, to uncompromisingly defend and communicate the faith once delivered to the saints.

Which brings me, finally, to another and related matter that will surely be discussed in Baltimore and deserves to be on the agenda. The Campaign for Human Development (CHD) is an annual collection in parishes, usually on one of the last two Sundays in November. It used to be called the Catholic Campaign for Human Development but the Catholic was dropped, which is just as well since it has nothing to do with Catholicism, except that Catholics are asked to pay for it. Some bishops no longer allow the CHD collection in their dioceses, and more should not allow it. In fact, CHD, misbegotten in concept and corrupt in practice, should, at long last, be terminated.

Ten years ago, CHD was exposed as using the Catholic Church as a milk cow to fund organizations that frequently were actively working against the Church’s mission, especially in their support of pro-abortion activities and politicians. Now it turns out that CHD has long been a major funder of ACORN, a national community agitation organization in support of leftist causes, including the abortion license. ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is under criminal investigation in several states. In the last decade CHD gave ACORN well over seven million dollars, including more than a million in the past year. It is acknowledged that ACORN, with which Sen. Obama had a close connection over the years, was a major player in his presidential campaign. The bishops say they are investigating the connection between CHD and ACORN. They say they are worried that it might jeopardize the Church’s tax-exemption. No mention is made of abusing the trust of the Catholic faithful.

What most Catholics don’t know, and what would likely astonish them, is that CHD very explicitly does not fund Catholic institutions and apostolates that work with the poor. Part of the thinking when it was established in the ideological climate of the 1960s is that Catholic concern for the poor would not be perceived as credible if CHD funded Catholic organizations. Yes, that’s bizarre, but the history of CHD is bizarre. The bishops could really help poor people by promptly shutting down CHD and giving any remaining funds to, for instance, Catholic inner-city schools. In any event, if there is a collection at your parish this month, I suggest that you can return the envelope empty—and perhaps with a note of explanation—without the slightest moral hesitation.

After this week’s elections, we must brace ourselves for very difficult times, keeping in mind that difficult times can be bracing. As for the meeting of bishops next week: Let the Church be the Church, and let bishops be bishops.

Richard John Neuhaus is editor in chief of First Things.

2008-11-12T08:39:00.000-05:00

Catholic Bishops Vow to Confront Obama Administration Over Abortion

Roman Catholic bishops say they will confront Barack Obama over his support for abortion rights.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

BALTIMORE -- The nation's Roman Catholic bishops vowed Tuesday to forcefully confront the Obama administration over its support for abortion rights, saying the church and religious freedom could be under attack in the new presidential administration.

In an impassioned discussion on Catholics in public life, several bishops said they would accept no compromise on abortion policy. Many condemned Catholics who had argued it was morally acceptable to back President-elect Obama because he pledged to reduce abortion rates.

And several prelates promised to call out Catholic policy makers on their failures to follow church teaching. Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton, Pa., singled out Vice President-elect Biden, a Catholic, Scranton native who supports abortion rights.

"I cannot have a vice president-elect coming to Scranton to say he's learned his values there when those values are utterly against the teachings of the Catholic Church," Martino said. The Obama-Biden press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Diocese of Kansas City in Kansas said politicians "can't check your principles at the door of the legislature."

Naumann has said repeatedly that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic Democrat who supports abortion rights, should stop taking Holy Communion until she changes her stance.

"They cannot call themselves Catholic when they violate such a core belief as the dignity of the unborn," Naumann said Tuesday.

The discussion occurred on the same day the bishops approved a new "Blessing of a Child in the Womb." The prayer seeks a healthy pregnancy for the mother and makes a plea that "our civic rulers" perform their duties "while respecting the gift of human life."

Chicago Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is preparing a statement during the bishops' fall meeting that will press Obama on abortion.

The bishops suggested that the final document include the message that "aggressively pro-abortion policies" would be viewed "as an attack on the church."

Along with their theological opposition to the procedure, church leaders say they worry that any expansion in abortion rights could require Catholic hospitals to perform abortions or lose federal funding. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago said the hospitals would close rather than comply.

During the campaign, many prelates had spoken out on abortion more boldly than they had in 2004, telling Catholic politicians and voters that the issue should be the most important consideration in setting policy and deciding which candidate to back.

Yet, according to exit polls, 54 percent of Catholics chose Obama, who is Protestant. The new bishops' statement is meant to drive home the point in a way that cannot be misconstrued.

"We have a very important thing to say. I think we should say it clearly and with a punch," said New York Cardinal Edward Egan.

But some bishops said church leaders should take care with the tone of the statement.

Bishops differ on whether Catholic lawmakers should refrain from receiving Communion if they diverge from central church beliefs. Each bishop sets policy in his own diocese.

"We must act and be perceived as acting as caring pastors and faithful teachers," said Bishop Blase Cupich of Rapid City, S.D.

But Dr. Patrick Whelan, a pediatrician and president of Catholic Democrats, said angry statements from church leaders were counterproductive and would only alienate Catholics.

"We're calling on the bishops to move away from the more vicious language," Whelan said. He said the church needs to act "in a more creative, constructive way," to end abortion.

Catholics United was among the groups that argued in direct mail and TV ads during the campaign that taking the "pro-life" position means more than opposing abortion rights.

Chris Korzen, the group's executive director, said, "we honestly want to move past the deadlock" on abortion. He said church leaders were making that task harder.

"What are the bishops going to do now?" Korzen said. "`They have burned a lot of bridges with the Democrats and the new administration."

Warning the President elect

2008-11-11T20:57:00.001-05:00

By Carmen Villa

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 11, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry is warning the president elect of the United States that it is unethical to give the green light to embryonic stem-cell research.

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán said this today during a press conference to present the dicastery's upcoming international conference on child illness. He was responding to a question regarding an announcement Sunday from Barack Obama's team that the future president would reverse the policy of George Bush and give the go-ahead to embryonic stem cell research.

A basic principle of bioethics, the cardinal recalled, is that "what builds up man is good, what destroys him is bad."

Noting that human dignity is an end in itself, and not a means that can be manipulated, the Vatican official affirmed: "One person can never be used as a means for another."

It is not possible to kill one human being to save another, he insisted.

Moreover, Cardinal Lozano Barragán noted that there are many other ways to get stem cells, such as by extracting them from the umbilical cord or other organs.

"When we're dealing with transplants that endanger neither the donor nor the receiver, everything is welcome; there is no question to the contrary," he said.

Furthermore, the prelate noted, there is misinformation in the public sphere about stem cells. They were initially presented as a "panacea," he said, but stem cells taken from embryos have yet to give any of the promised results.

Professor Alberto Ugazio, coordinator of the department of pediatric medicine at the Bambino Gesù hospital of Rome, seconded the cardinal's affirmation.

With the use of embryonic stem cells "not even one study has given positive results," he said. Meanwhile, the doctor explained, lives have been saved with stem cells taken from other parts of the body.

Abortion Foes' Dilemma: Confront or Cooperate?

2008-11-11T09:01:00.001-05:00

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

By STEPHANIE SIMON

After making significant gains during the Bush administration, the anti-abortion movement was dealt sharp setbacks in last week's election with the defeat of three state ballot measures restricting abortion.

Now, strategists are debating whether the way forward should be based on confrontation or cooperation with the incoming Democratic administration.

Supporters of a state ballot measure that would have banned nearly all abortions rally in Sioux Falls, S.D., on Election Day. The measure failed.

Hard-liners say they cannot compromise on their goal of criminalizing the roughly 1.2 million abortions in the U.S. each year. Judie Brown, president of American Life League, calls it "the civil rights movement's final battle."

But others fear their cause has lost its urgency as a defining issue for many voters of faith, replaced by opposition to gay marriage. In contrast to the defeated anti-abortion measures, three states passed bans on same-sex marriage last week.

With state courts continually resetting the rules, gay marriage feels more fresh and urgent to voters than abortion, which has settled into a status quo that polls show a large number of Americans can accept. The issue may also have lost potency as the abortion rate has steadily declined. In the early 1980s, nearly 1 in 3 pregnant women chose abortion. That's now down to about 1 in 5.

"It could be we're at a tipping point in this culture," said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "Ignoring the obvious will not help."

President-elect Barack Obama and other Democrats have promised to work to make abortion rare, so long as it remains legal. "Maybe it's time to take them up on the offer" instead of "bashing our heads over and over again against the same wall," writes Paul Strand, a blogger for the Christian Broadcasting Network.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, an influential megachurch pastor in Florida, sees a new willingness among pro-life activists to cooperate with pro-choice forces in search of a middle ground. He traces that openness in part to the flourishing of crisis pregnancy centers. As volunteers meet women struggling with unplanned pregnancies, they begin to view abortion less as an absolute evil and more as a practical challenge: How do we get this single mother a job, or help that college student with child care so she doesn't feel as though abortion is her only option?

Both sides have also worked hard to frame abortion as a women's health issue -- to conservatives, it's a danger, to liberals, it's a fundamental right. That, too, has stripped the debate of some of its moral and religious overtones.

Dr. Hunter and others advocating a truce in the abortion wars call for federal programs to reduce the abortion rate by promoting adoption and more counseling, as well as day-care subsidies, health coverage and other aid to women.

But such an approach draws fire from hard-core activists on both sides. The left fears it could be coercive, or stigmatize those who choose to abort. They'd prefer that the government focus on sex education and access to contraception to help women prevent unwanted pregnancies.

The right, meanwhile, says working to reduce the number of abortions misses the point: "It's like saying, 'Let's work to make sure they kill fewer Jews in the concentration camps this year,"' said the Rev. Mark Dever, a pastor in Washington D.C.

Any emerging cooperation could also be torpedoed, anti-abortion activists warn, if Mr. Obama follows through on his campaign pledge to sign the Freedom of Choice Act. In draft form, the act asserts abortion as a "fundamental right," and says no government can "interfere with a woman's right to choose." That would give pro-choice activists legal grounds to challenge every restriction states have put in place over three decades, from parental notification to waiting periods to mandatory counseling.

Abortion-rights groups say they'd like to see the bill enacted, but that it's not a top priority in an era when tensions at last seem to be easing.

"Folks want to get back to solving problems, not creating divisions," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.

Write to Stephanie Simon at stephanie.simon@wsj.com

Election of Black Pope

2008-11-06T15:06:00.002-05:00

From Times Online

November 6, 2008

Richard Owen in Rome

The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American US President could pave the way for the election of the first black Pope, according to a leading black American Catholic.

Wilton Daniel Gregory, 60, the Archbishop of Atlanta, said that in the past Pope Benedict XVI had himself suggested that the election of a black pontiff would "send a splendid signal to the world" about the universal Church.

Archbishop Gregory, who in 2001 became the first African American to head the US Bishops Conference, serving for three years, said that the election of Mr Obama was "a great step forward for humanity and a sign that in the United States the problem of racial discrimination has been overcome". Like Mr Obama Archbishop Gregory comes from Chicago, and was previously Bishop of Belleville, Illinois.

He said that recent Popes, beginning with John XXIII and Paul VI, had brought prelates "from all nations and races" to Rome to take up senior positions in the Curia, the Vatican hierarchy. This offered "an international vision of a Church rich in diversity", he told the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

Pope Benedict — whose next encyclical is on globalisation and social justice — had a "world outlook" as a theologian whose thought had "opened hearts and minds on five continents", Archbishop Gregory said. The former Joseph Ratzinger, who as a young man in his native Germany had witnessed "the horrors of the Second World War", spoke a "universal language".

Archbishop Gregory said that the next time cardinals gathered to elect a Pope they could "in their wisdom" choose an African pontiff. "My own election as head of the US Bishops Conference was an important signal. In 2001 the American bishops elected someone they respected regardless of his race, and the same thing could happen with the election of a Pope."

He said that in a papal conclave, the cardinal-electors were "guided by the Holy Spirit to choose the person who best responds to the exigences of the moment". At the last conclave in 2005, after the death of John Paul II, it was widely thought that the cardinals would choose a Third World pontiff, perhaps from Africa or Latin America.

The choice of Cardinal Ratzinger, who had been at John Paul II's side for over twenty years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was seen by many as a vote for a man who embodied continuity and had stressed the need to shore up the faith in the West itself in an age of secularism and materialism.

This week Pope Benedict XVI congratulated Mr Obama on his "historic" victory, offering his prayers for the President-elect "and for all the people of the United States".

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said that the Pope's message was "personal" and would therefore not be published. However he said that the papal message referred to the "historic occasion" of the election and congratulated Mr Obama, his wife and family.

"He assured him of his prayers that God would help him with his high responsibilities for his country and for the international community," Father Lombardi said. The Pope had also prayed that "the blessing of God would sustain him and the American people so that with all people of good will they could build a world of peace, solidarity and justice." The message was sent via Mary Ann Glendon, the US ambassador to the Holy See.

The Bridge

2008-10-29T08:57:00.001-04:00

This is a powerful video about sacrifice. Click here

Expect Obama to Sign FOCA in the First 100 Days

2008-10-28T14:19:00.000-04:00

An interview with Susan Wills
October 28, 2008

9:00AM EST

The pundits are beginning to ponder in earnest what might transpire during the first 24 months of an Obama administration. The more obvious contentions foresee him raising taxes on high earners, ratcheting up trade protections, overseeing the retooling of financial regulations, and so on. What many seem to have overlooked is one factoid: Barack Obama is an enthusiastic supporter of the Freedom of Choice Act or FOCA. In fact, on July 17, 2007, he told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund: "The first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom Of Choice Act."

Sponsored by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Ca) in the Senate (S. 1173), and Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) in the House (HR 1964), FOCA is a piece of legislation designed "to prohibit, consistent with Roe v. Wade, the interference by the government with a woman's right to choose to bear a child or terminate a pregnancy, and for other purposes."

In fact, FOCA, if it became law, would go well beyond Roe, sweeping away all limits on abortion -- state and federal -- including restrictions on government funding of abortion and conscience protections for healthcare providers. We have no reason to believe Obama would hesitate to sign FOCA into law as soon as it were to passed by the 111th Congress -- a probable outcome in early 2009 if Democrats gain enough new seats in November.

To find out more about FOCA and its potential cultural impact, I recently spoke with Susan E. Wills, Assistant Director for Education and Outreach at the Committee on Pro-Life activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Here is what Susan had to say.

Berg: Where did FOCA come from? What is its history on the Hill?

Wills: FOCA has been introduced in Congress multiple times, in various versions, since at least 1989. Cosponsoring FOCA has become a sort of "oath of fealty" to Planned Parenthood and NARAL for those members of Congress most beholden to the abortion industry for their election. Its popularity has been limited to the hard core extremists on abortion -- those, for example, who support even late-term abortions by the barbaric partial-birth abortion method. In the past, FOCA has not posed an imminent danger to the status quo. I can't recall a time in the past 20 years when we've faced the possibility of a pro-choice majority in both Houses of Congress and a President willing to sign such a bill. The threat of a veto under President Bush during the past 8 years has kept recent versions of the bill from going anywhere.

The current version of FOCA was introduced just hours after the Supreme Court's decision in Gonzales v. Carhart upholding the federal ban on partial-birth abortion. Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) explained the rationale and timing of FOCA in an April 18, 2007 "Dear Colleague" letter: "Today, the Supreme Court declared open season on women's lives and their right to control their own bodies, their health and their destinies." The current Senate version (S. 1173) attacks Carhart for "threatening" Roe v. Wade and failing to protect women's health. Co-sponsors in the House version (H.R. 1964) number 109 and Senate cosponsors number 19.

Berg: If FOCA were to be signed into law by the next president, what series of immediate consequences do you foresee, and what would be the long-term consequences?

Wills: FOCA would call into question virtually every abortion-related state and federal law currently in force. It would immediately supersede every federal law, such as the partial-birth abortion ban, restrictions on federal funding of abortion through Medicaid, and the ban on abortions in military hospitals. On the authority of FOCA, state laws protecting the lives of unborn children and their mothers could be immediately unenforceable. All the modest and reasonable state laws of the past 35 years (which have also been successful in reducing abortions) would fall to legal challenges based on FOCA. These include the following laws: protecting parental rights to be involved in an abortion decision, ensuring informed consent, regulating abortion clinic "safety," protecting the conscience rights of doctors, nurses and hospitals to not be involved in abortion, and protecting women from non-physician abortionists among others. Significantly, taxpayers could also be forced to fund abortions for the uninsured.

FOCA not only looks backward -- invalidating all these and other abortion regulations, laws, policies, practices, actions, etc.; it also forbids all governments (state, federal, local, agencies, officials, etc.) in the future from denying or interfering with a woman's "right to choose" and forbids them from "discriminat[ing] against the exercise of the[se] rights... in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information."

So any time the government addresses childbirth, it must address abortion equally favorably -- superseding prior Supreme Court precedents. Public hospitals which offer maternity services must offer abortion services. Health benefits for pregnant uninsured women must include abortion services.

It's tough to gauge the long-term consequences of FOCA. A future Congress could, of course, pass legislation to undo the law. We can say with certainty that evil would occur at an even greater scale in the interim.

Modest regulations of abortion -- funding restrictions, informed consent and parental involvement laws in particular -- have been proven to be very effective in reducing abortion rates in the United States. In their absence, abortions would certainly go up. One researcher estimates an increase of 125,000 abortions annually. How does one gauge the impact on health care? Fewer hospitals offering maternity services, fewer doctors and nurses engaged in obstetrics so they won't be forced to violate their consciences? The mental health toll on parents of aborted children, the increased incidence of premature births and low-birth-weight infants due to a prior abortion with associated health problems like cerebral palsy: it's impossible to calculate the full extent of the harm to individuals and society without even touching on the slippery slope of the culture of death or the spiritual consequences of abortion. Perhaps it will take a law as extreme as FOCA to awaken people to the already appalling extent of abortion law in America.

Berg: If FOCA becomes law, would the pro-life movement be forced to concede: 'game over'?

Wills: Any inclination to declare "game over" will have to be resisted with energy and determination. Overturning Roe is imperative, but it is only one aspect of what Catholics and other pro-lifers have been doing for 35 years. FOCA -- if enacted -- will shut off legislative avenues for the immediate future, so we'll need to step up our ongoing efforts in other areas:

1. Electing representatives who are pro-life and vigorously lobbying those who aren't about our fundamental opposition to killing all innocent human beings;

2. Educating about the value and dignity of human life (and the inhumanity and risks of abortion);

3. Encouraging abstinence among teens and young adults (teen abortion rates have dropped 60% since 1984 largely due to increased abstinence, not contraceptives); and

4. Expanding pregnancy-support services.

Americans oppose almost all abortions, but many have failed to understand their personal responsibility to oppose abortion by electing people who will uphold the dignity of human life. The October Marist poll, commissioned by the Knights of Columbus, again demonstrated that only 8% of Americans support unlimited abortion policy (for all nine months for any reason). Fully 60% of Americans would restrict abortion to the "hard cases" of rape, incest, of risk to the mother's life. But we have not succeeded in helping them connect the dots between their pro-life convictions and who they elect to the Senate and who sits on the Supreme Court (or who they elect to their state and federal legislatures and the kind of policies that get enacted).

Berg: Assuming FOCA fails and that Roe is overturned in the next couple of years: how exactly will that impact the availability of abortion and the pro-abortion mentality? How do you see that all playing out?

Wills: Law is a teacher and the more secular a society becomes, the more people turn to law (rather than the teaching of faith traditions) for their moral compass. Roe taught generations that an unborn child is not really a human being worthy of protection and it taught generations that one did not have to be married to conceive a child or be responsible for that child's life. The government condoned and promoted sexual activity outside of marriage and the callous disregard of children's rights by providing the escape route of abortion: "Don't worry, kids. If you get pregnant, we won't allow you to be 'punished with a baby'."

Laws that foster irresponsibility produce unintended consequences. Young men began to see abortion as an entitlement and many have become coercive, even to the point of causing the death of their unborn child when the mother resists an abortion.

When Roe is overturned, the pro-life beliefs of the majority of Americans will be validated and reinforced. Obviously abortion will continue to be available under almost all circumstances in a dozen or more states whose populations lean pro-choice, but I think the stigma associated with killing innocent unborn children will return. Already the number of abortion providers has fallen to under 1,800. Many providers are in their sixties already and would probably retire rather than relocate states where abortion would remain legal. The absence of providers does have a dramatic impact on abortions. For example, after one of two abortionists in Mississippi was indicted on dozens of counts of malpractice and violations of state abortion regulations, abortions in that state dropped 60%. Interestingly, parental involvement regulations have been shown to reduce both teen abortions and teen pregnancy rates without increasing teen birth rates. Clearly, kids are capable of avoiding behavior that could get them in trouble with their parents.

* * *

Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia addressed a letter to all members of Congress on the matter of FOCA on September 19^th in which he reminded elected representatives that:

We can't reduce abortions by promoting abortion. We cannot reduce abortions by invalidating the very laws that have been shown to reduce abortions... No one who sponsors or supports legislation like FOCA can credibly claim to be part of a good-faith discussion on how to reduce abortions.

Now, is there any part of what Susan just shared or what the Cardinal states here that does not make perfect sense? I don't think so.

Thanks to Susan Wills for taking the time to talk about this transcendent issue. And I alert my readers that you can find an extremely useful FOCA fact sheet here and many other useful FOCA-related articles and materials here, courtesy of the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life activities.

***

Rev. Thomas V. Berg, L.C. is Executive Director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person.

2008-10-27T15:24:00.003-04:00

As we approach the Christmas Season, please support this very worthy cause by purchasing from CRS Fair Trade Catalog. Click here

Legal Protection for Unborn, Support for Mothers Both Needed

2008-10-27T09:34:00.000-04:00

USCCB News Release

08-154
October 21, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Legal Protection for Unborn, Support for Mothers Both Needed,
Say Cardinal Rigali and Bishop Murphy

WASHINGTON—"Our faith requires us to oppose abortion on demand and to provide help to mothers facing challenging pregnancies," Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia and Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., said in an October 21 statement. The bishops urged Catholics to study the teaching of the Church, rather than rely on statements and materials from outside groups and individuals.

Cardinal Rigali and Bishop Murphy made the joint statement in response to arguments that the Church should accept the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision on abortion as a "permanent fixture of constitutional law" and should concede that the only way to reduce abortions is to provide more government support for pregnant women. At the same time the two bishops also responded to those who argue that the Church's efforts against abortion should focus solely on restoring recognition for unborn children's human rights and that proposals to provide social and economic support for pregnant women distract from that effort.

Cardinal Rigali chairs of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities. Bishop Murphy chairs the bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

"Providing support for pregnant women so they choose to have their babies is a necessary but not sufficient response to abortion. Similarly, reversal of Roe is a necessary but not sufficient condition for restoring an order of justice in our society's treatment of defenseless human life," they said.

The bishops also noted that "in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision knocked down laws against abortion in all 50 states, fabricating a constitutional 'right' to abortion that continues to haunt and divide our society....Roe v. Wade is a clear case of an 'intrinsically unjust law' we are morally obliged to oppose. Reversing it is not a mere political tactic, but a moral imperative for Catholics and others who respect human life," they said.

The bishops added that legalizing abortion had greatly increased annual abortions in the United States. "The law is a teacher, and Roe taught many women, physicians and others that abortion is an acceptable answer to a wide range of problems."

The bishops noted strides made in modifying Roe v. Wade's unjust legal precedent and drew attention to the many lives saved by the modest laws and regulations allowed under Roe. They voiced concern that the pending pro-abortion "Freedom of Choice Act" (S. 1173, H.R. 1964) in Congress would threaten strides made in limiting abortions.

"Bans on public funding [of abortion], laws requiring informed consent for women and parental involvement for minors, and other modest and widely supported laws have saved millions of lives. Laws made possible by reversing Roe would save many more," they said.

"On the other hand, this progress could be lost through a key pro-abortion proposal, the 'Freedom of Choice Act,' which supporters say would knock down hundreds of current pro-life laws and forbid any public program to 'discriminate' against abortion in providing services to women," Cardinal Rigali and Bishop Murphy said.

"By protecting the child's life to the maximum degree possible, improving life-affirming support for pregnant women, and changing the attitudes and prejudices imposed on many women to make them see abortion as an acceptable or necessary solution, we will truly help build a culture of life," they said.

The full text of the joint statement may be found at www.usccb.org/prolife/Rigali-Murphy-Joint-Statement.pdf.

Fifty bishops say US election is about abortion

2008-10-27T09:32:00.001-04:00

Rocco Palmo 25 October 2008

A quarter of America's bishops have said that the most important issue for voters in the forthcoming presidential election is abortion - comments that may help boost the fortunes of Republican candidate John McCain.

Some 50 out of the nation's 197 active bishops have published articles or given interviews during the run-up up to the election urging abortion as the key issue on which voters should decide which way to vote.

Senator McCain opposes the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, which legalised abortion in the US, but has refused - most recently, at last week's final television debate between the presidential candidates - to impose an abortion-based "litmus test" on his Supreme Court nominees. The Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, has repeatedly indicated his support for the 1973 ruling alongside a pledge to sign a proposed Freedom of Choice Act that would invalidate any state or local ordinance intended to "deny or interfere" with a woman's choice to have an abortion.

Among the bishops who have intervened is Bishop Robert Hermann of St Louis who last Friday wrote: "the issue of life is the most basic issue and must be given priority over the issue of the economy, the issue of war or any other issue." His comment came in a column for the archdiocesan newspaper that appeared hours before Mr Obama addressed 100,000 people in the heavily Catholic city.

In Missouri - a normally Republican state where Mr Obama has taken a lead in the polls over recent weeks - Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St Joseph wrote in his diocesan newspaper that "despite hardship, beyond partisanship, for the sake of our eternal salvation", Catholic voters "should never" support a candidate who favours the continued legalisation of abortion.

In Colorado, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver made national headlines after calling Mr Obama "the most committed abortion-rights presidential candidate of either major party since the Roe v. Wade abortion decision". Later that same day, saying that he was speaking solely as a "private citizen", Archbishop Chaput told a dinner for a Catholic women's organisation in his archdiocese that the assertion by his Catholic supporters "that Senator Obama is this year's ‘real' pro-life candidate requires a peculiar kind of self-hypnosis, or moral confusion, or worse".

But a growing group of clergy has sought to counter the abortion-dominant focus. Speaking to The Washington Post, Bishop Gabino Zavala, auxiliary in Los Angeles, said: "There are many other issues we need to bring up," and listed "racism, torture, genocide, immigration, war and the impact of the economic downturn on the most vulnerable among us".

Bishop Zavala's comments were echoed by Bishop Terry Steib of Memphis in Republican-dominated Tennessee, who wrote in his diocesan newspaper: "We cannot be a one-issue people." He continued: "I have received letters from well-meaning people telling me for whom I should vote and how I should inform parishioners regarding the candidates for whom they should or should not cast their ballot ... It is not my duty, nor is it my role."

In a heavily anticipated discussion, the bishops are to debate the gravity of political support for abortion at their next Baltimore plenary, a week after the 4 November vote.

The US bishops issued voter guidelines last year which were approved by 98 per cent of the bishops' conference. But the 30-page text has been seized upon by lay-led Catholic interests supporting both Mr Obama and Mr McCain. As Mr McCain's backers have sought to focus on the document's assertions that "intrinsic evils" such as abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research and human cloning "must never be supported", Mr Obama's advocates emphasise passages that state Catholics "are not single-issue voters" and "should not use a candidate's opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity".