Category: Controversies

“I am resigning my position as the director of religious outreach because it is no longer possible for me to do my job effectively,” Rev. [Brenda Bartella] Peterson said, as reported by Talon News. The Washington Post added Thursday that her decision was made “after the New York-based Catholic League issued three blistering news releases attacking her positions.”

Blistering and but appropriate! If the democrats want to be taken seriously by people of faith they should hire a liason who at least believes in God.

“Why are Kerry and the DNC imploding on religion? Because too many of the elites running the show are devout secularists who put a premium on freedom from religion,” [William] Donohue maintains. “Their idea of religious liberty is banning nativity scenes on public property. Their idea of diversity is censoring ‘under God’ from the Pledge. Their idea of tolerance is forbidding a moment of silence in the schools. Their idea of a good Catholic is Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice. Their idea of compassion is hiking taxes. Their idea of helping the poor is giving them directions to a soup kitchen. And their idea of choice is abortion, not school vouchers,” he said.

Link via Bill Cork

A Gloucestershire vicar is to launch a nude calendar in his church after a group of 13 women posed naked to raise money for rape victims in Rwanda.
…”A lot of thought has gone into this and it is about empowering Rwandan women who have been so debased. It is about reasserting women’s essential female selves,” he said.

I just heard three U.S. Bishops have stated today they will deny pro-abort politicians communion. Ah, here’s the link – on spiritdaily.com of all places.

Here’s the end of the letter, signed by Most Reverend John F. Donoghue, Archbishop of Atlanta; Most Reverend Robert J. Baker, Bishop of Charleston; and Most Reverend Peter J. Jugis, Bishop of Charlotte.

Because of the influence that Catholics in public life have on the conduct of our daily lives and on the formation of our nation’s future, we declare that Catholics serving in public life espousing positions contrary to the teaching of the Church on the sanctity and inviolability of human life, especially those running for or elected to public office are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in any Catholic church within our jurisdictions: the Archdiocese of Atlanta, the Dioceses of Charleston and Charlotte. Only after reconciliation with the Church has occurred, with the knowledge and consent of the local bishop, and public disavowal of former support for procured abortion, will the individual be permitted to approach the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.
We undertake this action to safeguard the sacred dignity of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, to reassure the faithful, and to save sinners.

This is not going to play well with the Barney Jesus crowd.

“Jesus is nice! He wants us to all take communion, even if we persist in manifest grave sin!”

The Battle of the Mosque by Arnold Kling. Publish 07/27 on Tech Central Station
If the Dead Could Talk by Victor David Hansen. Publish today on NRO.

Both of these speak to the challenges of the terror war and how it’s not going to be won with platitudes and irrational idealism. I would add that entrusting our national security to the party of those who formerly eviscerated our intelligence capabilities with budget cuts and who suggest now that we make every islamofascist read “All I Ever Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” to change their minds about us is not going to win this war.

We need to face the fact that we’re at the beginning of an active conflict with Islamic terrorism, not at the end. This is going to be won by besting the enemy, not surrending to their capability to influence the media. It seems to me the terrorists are in control of the debate in this country, not us.

As VDH says,

billions of American dollars flow to Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. We have even given billions to that wretched Arafat kleptocracy and saved Muslims from Kuwait to Bosnia. U.S. jets, not deranged riff-raff from Afghanistan, stopped Milosevic. There is no legitimate complaint of the Arab world against the United States — any more than Hitler had a right to Czechoslovakia or the Japanese to Manchuria. Just because the Japanese whined that the cutting-off of U.S. petroleum forced them to bomb Pearl Harbor didn’t make it true.

I apologize in advance for the disjointedness of this missive. I’m in a hurry as I have an exam for my summer class today.

Liberal Catholic meets Conservative Catholic for the second time

A friend from high school recently emailed me after seeing my name on an alumni website. She remembered me being Catholic in High School and was writing to tell me she entered the Church this year. I was positively elated. We began an email dialogue in order to catch up after more than a decade of no contact.

I’d like to share some snippets from our emails, if for no other reason than she is very liberal and I am, as you know, conservative. I want to believe modern liberalism is compatible with the faith but I think it involves a suspension of disbelief that, in the final analysis, is contrary to the demands of faith itself. More on that unsupported premise later. Now, on to the emails.

I’ll call her “Ms. Often Wrong Silly Pants” to protect her true identity. But I jest! I will call her “Dianne.” Nope, I never liked that name. How about “Maria”? Maria is it! Ok, now on to the emails!