Missouri priests and deacons stand up for life, opposing embryo farming.
November 2005 Archives
Some people seem to regard this as a problem, but a report in Britain has found about 50 babies per year surviving attempts to abort them.
The investigation, by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH), comes amid growing unease among clinicians over a legal ambiguity that could see them being charged with infanticide.
Think of that: abortionists accused of killing babies! Of all things!
Still, I guess it's worth pointing out that Europe, for all its reputation of social libertinism, has abortion laws that give more protection to children than do US laws [some is better than none], and there are proposals to bring down the time limits in the UK:
The number of terminations carried out in the 18th week of pregnancy or later has risen from 5,166 in 1994 to 7,432 last year. Prenatal diagnosis for conditions such as Down’s syndrome is increasing and foetuses with the condition are routinely aborted, even though many might be capable of leading fulfilling lives. In the past decade, doctors’ skill in saving the lives of premature babies has improved radically: at least 70%-80% of babies in their 23rd or 24th week of gestation now survive long-term.
Abortion on demand is allowed in Britain up to 24 weeks — more than halfway through a normal pregnancy and the highest legal limit for such terminations in Europe. France and Germany permit “social” abortions only up to the 10th and 12th weeks respectively.
Doctors are increasingly uneasy about aborting babies who could be born alive. “If viability is the basis on which they set the 24-week limit for abortion, then the simplest answer is to change the law and reduce the upper limit to 18 weeks,” said Campbell, who last year published a book showing images of foetuses’ facial expressions and “walking” movements taken with a form of 3-D ultrasound.
Mark Mallett, Canada's top Catholic singer, was passing through Northern Ontario this past Friday. So as part of my final break before the election campaign begins, I brought my wife and oldest daughter to his concert.
Mark is a great guy and a wonderfully talented musician, as you can see from his official website. He and his wife has seven children -- the seventh of which is still in the womb. Mark was kind and gentle, however, he doesn't mince words. We met up before the show so that I could interview him for the Wanderer and the Interim (excerpts of which I hope to blog later on this month) and talk a little shop. We both agree with our fellow Canuck Michael O'Brien that Canada is now undergoing a "velvet" persecution of the Christian faithful.
Mark gave a solid interview. He is obviously a man of deep prayer. Being half-slav he also does a wonderful impression of Pope John Paul II whenever he quotes the late Holy Father. As Mark notes in the interview, Pope John Paul II was a very powerful inspiration to his wife and him. In fact his CD "Song for Karol" is devoted to the late Holy Father and the audience really responded when Mark sang the title song from this CD.
Near the end of the concert, Mark had a couple of draws for his new CD. His wife invited my five-year old to come up and pull two winning ticket from the basket. She was quite good with my daughter and a fun time was had by all.
My archbishop's continuing to help the drive to end same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, with a letter that defends the effort and the Church's teaching:
It is never easy to deliver a message that calls people to make sacrifices or to do difficult things. Sometimes people want to punish the messenger. For this reason we priests at times find it difficult to articulate the Church’s teaching on sexual morality. We must never deliver the message in a self-righteous way, but rather with compassion and humility. It is important to express the moral teachings of the Church with clarity and fidelity. The Church must be Church. We must teach the truths of the Gospel in season and out of season. These recent times seem to us like it is “out of season”, but for that very reason it is even more urgent to teach the hard words of the Gospel today.
Abp. Sean also announced he's passing up a controversial awards dinner of the local Catholic Charities, because the honoree is the mayor of Boston who has been pushing the gay and sex-ed agendas on the schools for years. Protests against the award probably made a difference, so I suppose we lay people have to keep pointing out these problems. Is that a sad reality, or just one of our gifts to the Church: that we can tell the hierarchs when they foul up?
Follow-up: Sometimes people are a little too eager to tell the bishop he's fouled up. Take, for example, CWN's headline for the story ("Boston archbishop raps discrimination against homosexuals"). It gives the prominence to the conciliatory things the Archbishop wrote, and downplays the Christian challenge he was presenting. From that, one might get the impression that he were going P.C. and saying things only to please the unbelievers. I think the editor's missing the point of the exercise. In stating both the "hard" and the "soft" aspects of Church teaching, the Archbishop is defending Catholic doctrine against the errors of the non-believers, and defending the Church from the false accusations they throw at her. This is how you engage in apologetics.
 | You scored as Roman Catholic. You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is the Holy Mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you.
What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com |
Still gotta work on that seven percent!
(And in case you're not familiar with the term "neo-orthodox", it refers to a Protestant school of thought associated with the 20th-century theologian Karl Barth.)
As I type, two legs of lamb are marinating at Panjshir's, my town's Afghan restaurant. We'll pick them up tomorrow and let them flavor through until roasting on thurday.
Who needs a Turducken when you can have an exotic Thanksgiving!
I'll report with the results later this week.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
St. Dismas has been on the job in Rome lately.
News report from the latest Bishop's conference:
Cardinal Francis George of Chicago noted that a long-standing division between bishops who prefer standard American English and those who want a literal rending of Latin has become more complex. Some bishops on both sides have realized that the current English text is more familiar and meaningful to many Catholics than the centuries-old Latin text once was, he said."There are those who have been quite critical of the present translation, but who are now saying that we don't want to disturb the people, especially in the situation of weakened episcopal authority we have now," he said, referring to distrust of bishops who failed to remove child molesters from the priesthood.
Two points:
It's amazing that Cardinal George believes some Bishops don't want to upset the apple cart because, gee - the people think we are jackasses for how we handled priests guilty of sexual misconduct. We'll need a generation to pass before we can act decisively on moral and disciplinary issues.
Can you actually weaken authority that has been given by God? Only if you presume to weaken it yourself.
Second issue: I'm all in favor or reviewing the banal English translations we've been given for something that is more meaningful, even if that takes some time to stick.
More later when I have time...
But it sounds sort of tasty... has anyone tried this concoction?
Even our prime minister has admitted that Canada's government will likely fall within the next month, if not weeks. I've been asked to take on some pretty heavy local responsibilities in this election. This comes as I am putting the final polish on lectures for a distance education course on canon law that Catholic Distance University invited me to write (and for those who are interested, teach this January -- there are still some open spaces if you sign up before December 1st). Therefore, I would ask you to please spare any prayers you can send Canada's way. Additionally, this also means a leave from blogging as well as day-to-day private emails over the next couple of months. Thanks for your understanding.
Doohan Space Flight Delayed
HOLLYWOOD - A rocket which will blast the ashes of Star Trek star James Doohan into space has had its take-off delayed because of engine trouble. ...more
Despite Huge Profits, Catholic Hospitals Gouge Uninsured
This article is about as one-sided as it gets.
But apparently not!
In his first program, Fr. Bryce has a lesson about concepts of human nature, natural law, and morality. Human freedom, a great good, exists within a context: the reality of human nature. Ignoring human nature leads to erroneous thinking about human action: that is, about morality.
Admittedly, I find myself respectfully disagreeing with a rather formidable lineup. After all, it is not everyday that Karl Keating, Bob Sungenis, Tom Woods, John Pacheco, Jimmy Akin, and the Dimond Brothers find themselves in agreement on something. Yet like everything else when it comes to Gerry, I don't feel the answer is as clear as it first appears. This is why, over at Lidless-Eye Inquisition, I've been offering my own perspective on the whole Matatics affair. One thing I will agree with, however, is that Keating has now been vindicated.
For all those who wonder just how geeky I really am (name one other northerner who would set up his indoor firing range next to his computer so that he can target practice while writing articles about canon law), please check out EWTN Bookmark this week. Doug Keck and and I will be discussing Surprised by Canon Law.
This Veteran's Day, it's worth remembering the sacrifices that veterans have made, in America and in other free nations. It is also worth remembering that many groups on the Left, and not a few Democrats, are terrorist collaborators who are trying to undermine those sacrifices.
Before you click away in exasperation, let me explain what I mean. "Collaboration" is from the Latin cum + labore, literally "to work with." Left-wing groups don't have face-to-face strategy sessions with al Qaeda, nor do they share information and tactics. They do not carry out terrorist attacks themselves. But Western left-wing activists and the terrorist networks function as complimentary halves of the same whole.
Al Qaeda's strategy in Iraq is simple and coherent: wreak enough mayhem and kill enough U.S. servicemen to convince the American public that the Iraq War is "unwinnable." Then they will move, in conjunction with their Baathist allies, to convert the country into a vast terrorist training camp from which they can ship jihadi thugs into the moderate Gulf states, Israel, Europe, and the U.S.
The Left doesn't agitate for the overall strategic goal of creating a new Taliban-like Islamofascist state (though I note that according to their own noninterventionist principles, if such a state became reality, they could do nothing other than wring their hands.) However, their proximate goal is the same as al Qaeda's: get the U.S. out of Iraq, and humiliate the Bush Administration so thoroughly that no future American government will consider a similar foreign venture.
Consider two groups that get a decent amount of press coverage: Code Pink and Veterans for Peace. The former group has protested regularly outside of Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, carrying messages like "You were maimed for a lie." Walter Reed is where servicemen go to recuperate after being wounded in Iraq. On Nov. 17, they are promoting something called "NOT YOUR SOLDIER: National Student Day of Action." "We demand for our schools and communities to be military-free zones," their Web site screeches. The next day, they are participating in "National Stand Down Day," where they will block the entrances of military recruiting stations.
It goes without saying that Code Pink claims to "support the troops."
Catholic Light readers may recall my confrontation with two members of Veterans for Peace last May. One of the men, Marcus Eriksen, told me that the display they were setting up -- a thousand white crosses next to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial -- was non-political, and contrary to my concerns, it did not use the names of the dead as if their families gave their endorsement.
Marcus was lying to my face. As this Web site demonstrates, their display does include photos and names of the fallen (something I didn't know until I read about it in a news account). Furthermore, Veterans For Peace supports the non-political idea of impeaching President Bush. They have a prominent link to thoroughly non-political funnyman Michael Moore's Web site. Another link is to a group that helps people escape their military service. A huge graphical banner promotes "BEFORE YOU ENLIST!," aimed at discouraging young people from joining the military.
As Marcus said, this is how they "support the troops."
If al Qaeda could run a negative advertising campaign in the U.S., it would probably try to undermine our country's leaders, discourage people from signing up for military service, encourage the belief that the Iraq War is futile, and downplay the idea of defeating terrorism by building a more just order in the Middle East. Lucky for them, they don't have to run an advertising campaign. The Left is making al Qaeda's points for them every day, through activist groups and through the mainstream media.
As I have said repeatedly here on CL, if you believe the Iraq War to be unjust, that's your right. It would also be, as far as I understand, your Christian duty to attempt to stop it. But to do so in such a way that encourages this country's enemies is worse than irresponsible, it is reprehensible. And I don't see too many Democrats standing up to denounce that.
Maybe the man is getting loopy in his old age, in which case somebody ought to gently shuffle him out of the broadcast studio permanently. You may recall that Rev. Pat Robertson blamed the ACLU and feminists (among others) for the September 11 terrorist attacks. I yield to nobody in my disagreement with both of those groups, but since Mohammad Atta and his merry men were not First Amendment fetishists, nor did they believe in "equal work for equal pay," that remark was more than unfair.
Pat has also expressed support for nuking the State Department. Today, Pat thinks that the little town of Dover, Pennsylvania might get smited for throwing out politicians they don't like:
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they "voted God out of your city" by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design....Having worked for a company owned by an eccentric religious megalomaniac, I feel like I have some insight into Robertson's mentality. He has been around for so long, commands such a vast not-for-profit empire, and has absorbed so much criticism (deserved and undeserved), that he knows he can say pretty much whatever he wants without any consequence. Otherwise, why would he presume to know God's motivations for permitting a particular evil?"God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in his eye forever," Robertson said. "If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."
Reverend Robertson, for the sake of the religion you profess, I beg you: please shut up.
Update: Blogs4God expresses similar thoughts at greater length, with a bonus critique of a cretinous editorial by USA Today that "intelligent design is the scientifically untestable theory that life forms and the universe are so complex that a higher being must have been involved in making them. Put another way, it's creationism with clever new packaging."
Creationism is the belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old and that all life sprang de novo from the hand of God. Intelligent design accepts that the earth is millions of years old, but attempts to show that it is mathematically improbable that mere chance can explain the emergence of new species, or the formation of complex biological processes at the molecular level. In that sense, it is falsifiable: orthodox Darwinians simply have to show that all of the staggeringly complex biochemical reactions within higher organisms could be the result of chance.
This makes me sick. Our government invites vets (many of eighty years old) to the capital for Remembrance Day, then warehouses them in substandard (reportedly condemned) decrepit housing.
To all our Canadian and British veterans, especially the local men and women of the 49th Artillery Field Regiment and the 26th Service Batallion. And a blessed Veterans' Day to all our American veterans.
"All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time" - "Chesty" Puller, USMC
It's the Marine Corps' 230th birthday today. Mackubin Thomas Owens has a birthday essay in NRO which is worth reading. Three institutions instilled in my whatever virtue I possess: my family, the Roman Catholic Church, and the United States Marine Corps. I am eternally grateful to them all, but today I will be lifting a glass in honor of the latter along with some of my brothers.
May the Corps continue to protect the United States with vigor and fidelity. May the enemies of freedom continue to fear and hate the name "Marine."
It looks like Virginia has its very own weasel-Judas governor! I know you guys for you guys in the northeast, you're used to this kind of thing, but down here we were hoping that our first Catholic governor would be, ya know, Catholic. I know, Kaine was a missionary and all that, but now he will be the Defender of the Faith -- the faith of the Culture of Death. He promised it.
Luckily, Kaine won't have many people to work with, since the legislature is overwhelmingly Republican. No pro-abortion legislation will be submitted for his signature.
Arthur of the Angry Twins gives us the top ten coming changes. I like this one:
5) On close votes, the Justices will consult a statue of St. Thomas More. If the statue weeps, they affirm; if no tears, then they reverse.
France continues its nightly bouts of rioting and mayhem, perpetrated by "youths" (i.e., north African Muslims). The French assumed their vastly superior culture would overawe the backward immigrants. They assumed wrong.
Some articles worth reading on the subject: First, there is always, always, Mark Steyn. Ever his own best publicist, Steyn points out that he predicted this "uprising" in February of this year. (At the time, I thought he was extrapolating too far, but as he notes, he was being optimistic.)
Second, Israeli professor Steven Plaut recommends that France ought to take its own advice that it gives to Israel: give up large parts of its territory and capital city in exchange for vague promises of "peace." His words are bitter, but his logic is compelling. I would add that we should refer to the Muslim thugs as "freedom fighters."
Finally, Newsweek has a good overview of the riots.
What is France supposed to do? From the reports, it sounds like most of the rioters are citizens, and as such they cannot be deported back to north Africa. Even if they could, how would the authorities go about deporting that many people?
The "nice" approach doesn't seem plausible, either. Unemployment surely fuels the rioters' anger, but if the French government knew how to create economic opportunities it would have done so already. It cannot hand out jobs because there are no jobs to be had in France.
The smart money says the French will do what good leftists always do when confronted with evil on the march: blather and capitulate. If the jihadis are smart, they will present "community leaders" to the French government, to receive the customary promises of government money, slobbering declarations of "respect" for Islam that they would not dream of applying to Christianity. They will say things like....
Please don't incinerate 1,300 cars every night. A few dozen would be acceptable.
Didn't you notice that we hate America just as much as you do?
When you are done with all the other infidels, please slit our children's throats last.
A tornado in Indiana killed 22 residents of a mobile home community yesterday. It's safe to say that given a choice, most people wouldn't live in a mobile home, and so the residents lived there because of economic circumstances. My grandparents used to live in a mobile home due to the high cost of living in southern California, and it was quite nice, but probably not what they might have wanted.
The only way to prevent these tragedies, therefore, is to work for an ever-growing economy to make mobile homes obsolete. In economically advanced societies, houses don't have thatched roofs or walls made of bundled sticks; people also don't live in caves or mud huts. Those materials and structures are undesirable and often dangerous, so they aren't used anymore.
The more economically productive the lower segments of society are, the more wealth they can create and hang onto — including the wealth in the homes where they live. Creating wealth isn't seen as a social-justice issue, but it can frequently mean the difference between life and death.
JERUSALEM - Israeli archaeologists said Saturday they have discovered what may be the oldest Christian church in the Holy Land on the grounds of a prison near the biblical site of Armageddon.The Israeli Antiquities Authority said the ruins are believed to date back to the third or fourth centuries and include references to Jesus and images of fish, an ancient Christian symbol.
"This is a very ancient structure, maybe the oldest in our area," said Yotam Tepper, the head archaeologist on the dig.
Dawn Eden writes that a NJ newspaper's article about a supposed no-blogging policy for high school students was misleading. A diocesan spokesman told her that the school only banned the posting of certain types of material: personal identifying information, comments about the school, and comments about other students. If that more moderate policy is actually being followed by the school administrators, then I think the fuss is settled.
The following Lifesite story (through FreeDominion) has me fuming, particularly the following paragraphs:
DIOCESE UNABLE TO INTERVENE UNDER CANON LAW
The diocese says it is unable to act on the matter of Katelyn's expulsion. Rev. Charles S. McDermott, S.T.D. Chancellor and Vicar Episcopal for Theological Affairs for the Diocese of Sacramento, explained to LifeSiteNews.com that the school is run by an order of nuns popularly known as the Loretto Sisters. Rev. McDermott described the order as "A religious institute in the church which is of pontifical right," explaining that "they are subject in their internal affairs directly to the Holy See and not to the local bishop."
In the matter of the pro-abortion teacher the bishop exercised special powers reserved to him in canon (church) law permitting him to intervene in cases of faith and morals, explained the diocesan Chancellor.
Rev. McDermott did however provide key information shedding light on the disagreement between the family and the school. He told LifeSiteNews.com that "The mother approached Loretto high school about it quite quietly, as far as I understand, and asked them to respond to the situation." The school failed to act, and the matter was "eventually" brought to the attention of Bishop Weigand.
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This is incorrect in my opinion. Because the case concerns the common good, the girl can and should appeal through the local tribunal, which is more than competent to hear the case. She can also appeal to Rome. That being said, even if she wins, if she were my daughter, I wouldn't send her back to that school. Rather, I would demand a tuition refund, financial compensation for additional damages, and an apology.
Before long, we'll all be getting spam in our mailboxes "from Mrs. Aristide" asking our help to get his embezzled/diverted/dope-funded loot to a safe country.
It used to puzzle me that so many naive Catholics around here, even devout people, thought that that demagogue-priest was some hero of social justice. Were they just trained Massachusetts Democrats, reflexively responding to an appeal to class envy?
I mean, when he started talking to the crowds about necklacing his enemies with burning tires, that should have been a clue he was not exactly a stickler for the observance of human rights.
Incidentally, speaking of the '419' scammers, a profile of them appeared online a few days ago; in Africa, there's even a comic pop song about them: "I Go Chop Your Dollar". (If I get the QT player working here, I'll get to hear it too.)
Members of the Religion That Dare Not Speak Its Name have been rioting in the Paris area for the last week. Perhaps they were upset about France's support for the Iraq War, who knows?
The Left reflexively tries to explain such things in terms of "root causes." Very well: France has marginalized Christianity and aggrandized the state's power for two centuries; imported large numbers of unskilled or low-skilled immigrants for the purpose of exploiting their cheap labor; and tried to buy the immigrants' loyalty with multicultural pieties and generous welfare benefits.
Far from being grateful, the immigrants figure that France is so enervated that it will probably not defend its own culture. If some reports are right, and these riots are organized by someone (or a loose network of groups), then these aren't because of "frustration" — they are a show of strength designed to intimidate the French public into accepting Islam's ascendance in their society.
Pushing multiculturalist relativism, giving welfare to the able-bodied, and pushing God out of the public square is a toxic mix for a culture. As execrable as France's leaders are, let's hope they take the hard steps necessary to regain control over their own country. And it should sober us to realize that the same conditions — relativism, welfare, de facto atheism — are alive and well in the USA, too.
Don't forget to pray for the souls of the dead today. Here's a refresher on the doctrine of purgatory from Catholic Answers.
Far from being a medieval invention, praying for the dead was a Jewish practice that pre-dated Christ by at least a couple of centuries. The early Christian Fathers believed in purgatory, though they did not treat it in the detailed, systematic way that the medieval theologians did. C.S. Lewis believed in purgatory -- "The Screwtape Letters" contains a reference to it in the final chapter.
I know some of y'all out there are parents, and that most of you care about what gets dumped into your kids' souls. We gave the kids a hand-me-down computer a few months ago, and there are a few Web sites we let them visit. My question is this: What is the best Web-site blocking software? Our needs are simple: we want to block all sites unless my wife or I permit them.
Our oldest child is six, and I seriously doubt he can figure out how to defeat access-control software. The safest thing would be to filter sites at the router, which I could do, but it would be a pain for my wife.
Your thoughts?
