Mandated abortion coverage threatens health care reform, U.S. bishops’ official says

Washington D.C., Aug 8, 2009 / 08:00 am (CNA).- Tom Grenchik, director of the U.S. bishops’ Pro-Life Secretariat, has said that mandated abortion health care coverage and funding is “a line we can never cross,” charging that some U.S. leaders are threatening health care reform by forcing Americans to accept such mandates in proposed reform bills.

Writing in a Friday column on the U.S. bishops’ web site, Grenchik said that health care proposals need to be examined during the congressional recess to see how well they provide affordable quality health care and how they impact immigrants and the poor.

“But one thing is certain,” he emphasized. “The bills approved so far by House and Senate committees include mandated abortion coverage and abortion funding, and that is a line we can never cross.”

He also noted that amendments to exclude abortion from health care legislation have been defeated.

Reporting that abortion was not specifically mentioned in draft health care bills until recently, he recalled that Medicaid also did not mention abortion but nonetheless funded 300,000 abortions per year in the 1970s until the Hyde Amendment forbade such funding.

Grenchik quoted Bishop of Rockville Centre William Murphy’s July 17 comments to Congress, in which the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Rights said the bishops looked forward to working with congressional leaders to reform health care “in a manner that offers accessible, affordable and quality health care that protects and respects the life and dignity of all people from conception until natural death.”

Bishop Murphy added: “no health care reform plan should compel us or others to pay for the destruction of human life, whether through government funding or mandatory coverage of abortion.”

Cardinal Justin Rigali, Chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, in a July 29 letter to the U.S. House’s Energy and Commerce Committee, declared that “much-needed reform must not become a vehicle for promoting an ‘abortion rights’ agenda” or for reversing “longstanding” policies against federal abortion mandates.

Grenchik also highlighted a postcard campaign in which millions of American Catholics sent postcards asking Congress to “retain laws against federal funding and promotion of abortion.” He said that Congressmen need to be reminded of this message “at the local level.”

“Support genuine health care reform that respects the life and dignity of all,” he urged. “A fair and just health care reform bill must exclude mandated coverage for abortion, and uphold longstanding laws that restrict abortion funding and protect conscience rights.”

“Now is the time to take action,” Grenchik said, urging congressional members be contacted through e-mail, phone or fax. He also encouraged pro-lifers to attend local town hall meetings.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Pro-Life Secretariat has created a Health Care Reform Action Alert with more information and an e-mail form at www.usccb.org/prolife.

PapaBear emailed me the following article to post since she is still unable to post on the forum. I'm not sure if this is the best thread to put this on but it seems to kind of bridge politics, religion, and culture. Here is what PapaBear had to say:


"Here's a post on the website of the US Bishops about a TV program to be released Sept 13. At this time of the visitations to the religious sisters' congregations, perhaps it is well to recall the great faith and heroism of those who suffered under Stalin for over 40 years and remained steadfast and loyal to Christ. Here it is, from the front page of the USCCB.org website:"



Interrupted Lives, Story of Nun Heroes, Distributed to ABC TV

WASHINGTON—Some were nurses. Many were educators. Still others cared for orphans, the elderly, the mentally ill. But all were women religious enduring the communist regime in Eastern Europe after World War II.

Their story is told in “Interrupted Lives: Catholic Sisters Under European Communism,” a one-hour documentary distributed on Sunday, September 13 to ABC-TV stations and affiliates (Check local listings. Scheduling is at the discretion of the local station.)

Interrupted Lives explores the experiences of Greek and Roman Catholic Sisters of Eastern and Central Europe sisters who at the end of World War II were trapped under Soviet domination as Josef Stalin seized control.

Until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many of these religious women endured imprisonment, exile to Siberia, forced farm and factory labor, deportation, seizure of their schools and hospitals and expulsion from their convents. Also included are interviews with “secret sisters” who joined religious life during this Communist period and lived out their vocations in the underground. “We are inspired and strengthened by the faith and commitment of these sisters who endured over forty years of oppression under communism,” says Sister of St. Joseph Margaret Nacke, one of the executive producers of the documentary.

Filmed on location in Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and the United States, Interrupted Lives documents their stories and takes viewers to the apartment buildings, prisons, concentration convents, and seized properties where Communism intersected with the sisters’ lives.

Interviews with Eastern European scholars as well as sisters offer a powerful testimony to the faith, courage and endurance of these religious women. Their own stories raise awareness of those who still today undergo persecution for political or religious beliefs.

Interrupted Lives: Catholic Sisters Under European Communism is part of the Vision & Values series created by the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission. Members include the National Catholic of Churches of Christ, the Islamic Society of North America, a consortium of national Jewish organizations, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The program was produced by NewGroup Media, South Bend, Indiana, with Sister of St. Joseph Mary Savoie and Sister Nacke, as executive producers.

The program was funded in part by the USCCB’s Catholic Communication Campaign and Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Catholic Communication Campaign is an activity of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that develops media programming, projects and resources to promote Gospel values. Donations of Catholic parishioners make possible the work of the CCC.

To order DVDs, call 1-800-234-USCC (8722). More information is available at www.interfaithbroadcasting.com.
---
For more information on the USCCB position on Health Care Reform, visit www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/healthcare and www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/health1.shtml.

Reinventing Popes

by John Gerardi
The D.C. Writeup
Posted on 10 August 2009

Liberal American Catholics love to reinvent dead Popes. When John Paul II was alive, liberal Catholics ignored his teaching on a whole host of issues, from the all-male priesthood to liberation theology. But after Pope Benedict XVI’s election, they have attempted to contrast the suddenly “moderate” and “beloved” John Paul with his “conservative” and “hard-line” successor. John Paul is not the only one to be subject to this historical revisionism. Almost every Pope from Leo XIII to Paul VI has been recast to appear more or less liberal or conservative than he really was, so as to fit some leftist template of “liberal = good, traditionalist = bad.”

The principle is simple: Liberals despise Popes who oppose them and pretend to like Popes whom they can portray as supporting their agenda.

Liberal Catholics are now (at least momentarily) changing their tune on Pope Benedict to justify their support for the fiercely pro-choice Barack Obama. Though Josef Ratzinger was derided before and after his election with such epithets as “God’s Rottweiler,” “the Grand Inquisitor,” and “a Nazi” (no joke), his meeting with President Obama this month, along with his new encyclical Caritas in Veritate, are being hailed by the left as proof that the Church is over her silly fixation on abortion, and is now equally concerned with peace, “social justice™,” universal government health care, rainbows, ponies, and the Socialist Utopia.

Some context for those who don’t know what’s going on with the Catholic Church in America would be useful. The Church in the U.S. has been rocked by two closely-related events: the 2008 election and the University of Notre Dame’s 2009 commencement address by President Obama.

An emerging new Catholic Left, led by such thinkers as U.S. Ambassador to Malta Doug Kmiec and such groups as Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, put forward a significant case in favor of supporting Obama’s candidacy in 2008. They based their support in Obama’s commitment to bringing about peace in Iraq, protecting the environment, providing health care for the uninsured, and reducing abortions by improving the social conditions of the usually-poor women who choose it.

As great as that all sounds, more traditional and conservative Catholics attempted to point out two inconvenient facts. First, these goals expressed by Obama as priorities for his presidency were also shared by John McCain. The two differed in terms of how to accomplish them, but, though the Catholic Left acted like Obama had the Catholic market cornered on these issues, McCain’s approaches to them were not inherently immoral or opposed to Church teaching.

Secondly, Obama (unlike McCain) wholeheartedly endorses the legal status of on-demand abortion, federal funding for embryo-destructive stem cell research, repealing the Mexico City Policy to allow federal funding for abortion overseas, a publicly-funded health care plan that covers abortions, and appointing Supreme Court justices who will protect Roe v. Wade. Oops. Many American bishops, led by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, were forceful in asserting to their flocks the logical priority that Catholics had to give to the abortion question in their vote.

For these same reasons, approximately eighty American bishops publicly opposed the decision of the University of Notre Dame to honor President Obama by naming him their 2009 commencement speaker and by giving an honorary doctorate. The bishops thought it was scandalous for a Catholic school to honor someone whose positions and actions are antithetical to the most important social issue the Church faces today. Liberal Catholics howled in protest to the bishops, saying that the Church needs to engage the broader culture (by kissing its ass, apparently) and accusing bishops of wanting to put us back into the “Catholic ghetto.”

So, you can see that the Catholic Left position, under assault from the hierarchy, really could use a bit of magisterial help. Well, along came two P.R. godsends from no less authority than the Pope himself.

First, President Obama met the Pope for the first time on July 17 at the Vatican. With their uncanny gift for ignoring important distinctions, liberals gleefully shrieked, “See! See! The Pope met with him, that must mean the American bishops are just a bunch of reactionary partisan frauds!” Of course, the Pope just met and talked with Obama, as he meets and talks with almost every world leader with whom he has diplomatic relations. He did not render Obama any conspicuous honors or hold him up as someone to model—as Notre Dame did.

Secondly, the Pope’s magnificent teaching letter (or “encyclical”), Caritas in Veritate, was publicly released on July 7. The encyclical was broad, providing a summary of a huge swathe of the Church’s social doctrine, including certain more particular comments about the recent financial crisis. Statements indicating the importance of protecting the environment, of the rights of workers to unionize, of rejecting motives of excessive greed in business, of preserving some social welfare programs, and one particular paragraph that seemed to recommend an expanded role to the United Nations were hailed by liberals as a sign that the Pope was now a progressive who joined them in an utter rejection of capitalism.

However, none of these “liberal” ideas were exactly new sentiments coming from the Papacy, and I don’t think I can find many conservatives who would object in principle to anything the Pope suggested. As for his statement on the United Nations (the one novelty in the document), who would oppose giving the UN authority over some limited aspects of international trade, so long as it were first reformed so as “to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth,” as the Pope stated?

And, by the way, what is “authentic integral human development” in the Pope’s mind? He said earlier in the encyclical, “Openness to life is at the centre of true development.” He decried the spread of abortion, euthanasia, and the sterilization of women in developing countries, specifically criticizing the NGOs that provide these services to women (CoughMexicoCityPolicyCough!). It is clear that defending the dignity of human life is the central, foundational concern of the Pope in this encyclical, and that it is at the heart of the Church’s social teaching in the modern era.

And this is the problem with the Catholic Left. They care about abortion, but apparently not enough to, you know, try to make it illegal or anything. Maybe they should try to take in the words Benedict quotes from John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae: “…a society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized.”


John Gerardi, an undergraduate at Notre Dame, is a regular contributor to The D.C. Writeup.

Knights of Columbus Condemn Porn Industry

By Hilary White
8/11/2009
LifeSiteNews

The Knights called upon law enforcement to vigorously investigate and prosecute criminal conduct surrounding the pornography industry.

PHOENIX (LifeSiteNews.com) - A set of resolutions adopted by the 127th Supreme Convention of the Knights of Columbus condemns the pornography industry and reaffirm the Knights' commitment to defending natural marriage. The Knights also voted to establish a fund for projects aimed to help restore "a common respect for the sanctity of human life" in the culture as a whole.

In their resolution opposing pornography, the Knights said, "modern society" is "saturated" with sexually explicit and violent content in films and TV, video games and "especially" the internet, citing the 4 million websites, approximately 35 per cent of the 'net's content, dedicated to porn.

The resolution stated that the pornography industry, worth US$12 billion a year, is linked to organized crime and is a major contributor to societal disintegration, including infidelity, broken marriages, harm to children and "a general breakdown of moral standards". The Knights called upon law enforcement to "vigorously investigate and prosecute criminal conduct" surrounding the pornography industry, especially in child pornography.

In another resolution the Knights opposed trendy theories on marriage, saying, "marriage is not a chance sociological or historical construction" but one that is a "natural institution" that predates religious and legal institutions.

Marriage, they said, is "based on the natural biological complementarity of man and woman," for support of spouses, the raising and protecting of children and "is woven into the social and religious fabric of every major culture and society".

They pledged themselves to join with the bishops in the struggle to "achieve legal and constitutional protection" for marriage at all levels, as "the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others".

A third resolution agreed to establish the Knights of Columbus Culture of Life Fund, acknowledging that the steady erosion of the legal protections for human life are part of a broad anti-life cultural picture, the combating of which "will be much more demanding than enacting individual pieces of legislation". The fund, to come from an annual assessment of $2 per member, will be dedicated, to the "much larger goal of moving public opinion toward respecting the dignity of the human person and the fundamental right to life".

Established in 1882, the 1.78 million member Knights of Columbus is the world's largest Catholic fraternal and philanthropic organisation covering the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, the Philippines, Guam, Saipan, Japan, Cuba, and Poland. In 2007, Knights donated US $144,911,781 directly to charity, with a total of 1.1 billion in charitable contributions over the last 10 years.

Krakow Nun Cooks Up Success

Nun has sold over 1 million books in Poland

Eduardo Murillo
Krakow Post
12th August 2009



Sister Anastazja Pustelnik, a 59-year-old nun, has become one of Poland’s best selling authors thanks to her cookbooks. She has been cooking for the Jesuits for years, and they got the idea to put some of her recipes together in a brochure, which later became her first book, 103 Cakes of Sister Anastazja. Published in 2001, it is her most popular book, with around 400,000 copies sold to date.

Her later books include recipes for some polish classics and a selection of international dishes, which she learned to cook when some of the Jesuit priests returned from their studies abroad with new requests. Her latest book, which was published last year, puts together 123 salad recipes.

Her talent to create easy recipes has resulted in five cookbooks that have sold at least 1.1 million copies in her country, and negotiations are underway to translate and publish her books in countries like Slovakia and the Czech Republic. [What about here?]

Despite her success as a writer, she says that all of her efforts are in service to God. After morning prayers, she goes to the Jesuit Centre in Krakow and cooks lunch for 20 priests. She claims God gives her the recipes. Profits from the books go to good causes, including, of course, Jesuit programs.

Sister Anastazja’s success reflects how the Roman Catholic Church still plays a very important role in the life of millions of Poles and in Polish society itself – right down to the food.

Good grief! Why is it that, at a time when so few women are nuns, so many of those who are can't figure out what being one means? (My apologies to Sister Anastazja in the post above who does seem to get it.)


American Nuns Honor Pro-Abortion Cokie Roberts as Vatican Investigation Continues

Roberts has attacked Pope Benedict XVI as "really lacking in the theological virtue of charity."

By Kathleen Gilbert
August 13, 2009

(LifeSiteNews.com) - While American Catholic nuns continue to undergo scrutiny from a Vatican investigation, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) invited Cokie Roberts, a political commentator who has criticized the Church's prohibition against abortion, contraception, and homosexuality, as the keynote speaker for their annual meeting this week. Another Catholic group, Supporting Our Aging Religious (SOAR), has announced it will host a dinner in honor of Roberts and her husband Steve in November of this year.

New Orleans native Cokie Roberts spoke at the LCWR summit in the same city Tuesday, according to a Times-Picayune report.

Cokie Roberts, a Roman Catholic, is an ABC News political commentator and National Public Radio senior news analyst who has spoken out against laws restricting abortion. Roberts characterized the partial-birth abortion ban as "cynical game-playing" by pro-life activists, and said she found it "offensive as a woman" that the Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2007.

In a 2006 column, Roberts also ridiculed bishops who proclaim the Catholic Church's teaching against contraception and homosexuality. "It's as if they are asking to be ignored," she wrote. Roberts also attacked Pope Benedict XVI as "really lacking in the theological virtue of charity."

Ironically, LCWR's president indicated discussion at the four-day summit would likely focus on the apostolic visitation Rome initiated earlier this year, which will examine the orders' work and life in light of authentic Catholic Church teaching.

LCWR president Sister J. Lora Dambroski indicated that the leaders had closed ranks in reaction to the visitation, and might issue an official rejoinder.

"This will be an opportunity to be who we are and to speak our truth, not to back away from that, and to understand what our common response will be," she said. "It's a good chance for the sisters to be honest and to tell the story of who we are without fear."

While "we don't want to be in a defensive posture," said the nun, "we have to clearly be who we are."

In addition, the non-profit organization Save Our Aging Religious has announced that its next event will be a Washington D.C. benefit dinner on November 7 to honor Cokie and Steve Roberts with their Elizabeth Ann Seton Award. SOAR is chaired by D.C.'s Monsignor John J. Enzler.

A Test of Faith in Mexico's Drug War

Religion Endures an Inner, Outer Struggle

By Steve Fainaru and William Booth
Washington Post
Tuesday, August 11, 2009

TEPALCATEPEC, Mexico -- Father Miguel López drives the parish pickup truck across the muddy river that separates two warring drug cartels. He follows the winding road through the dark green foothills of the Sierra Madre until he comes to a rusting archway where traffickers hung the severed head of his friend.

The Roman Catholic priest spends his days navigating this dangerous terrain, a world he describes as "fallen." He prays with widows whose husbands disappeared in broad daylight, and gives Communion to the men who may have killed them. In the village where he grew up, at the end of this lonely road, his lifelong neighbors were too afraid to unbolt their doors when they heard screams for help in the middle of the night -- when an entire family, including four children, was kidnapped in June amid a clash between rival gangsters.

"The fear is one that we all share," López said, steering his gray truck through hills that conceal a vast network of marijuana farms and methamphetamine labs. "Sometimes I can't sleep at night. But these are the times when you have to define who you are. To do anything less is to be an accomplice."

Beyond the reach of the U.S. and Mexican governments in their fight against drug traffickers is an intimate, complex world of communal violence and crippled institutions. At the center of the drug war is Michoacan, a rugged, rural state in the southwest where all forms of traditional authority -- city hall, the military, police and even the Catholic Church -- have been unable to protect the people against the assassinations, kidnappings and extortions associated with the narcotics trade.

It is a world in which individuals like López struggle on their own.

President Felipe Calderón deployed 5,500 additional soldiers and federal police officers to Michoacan last month after an ascendant cartel called La Familia, which cloaks itself in religious extremism as it dismembers enemies, killed a dozen federal police officers and stacked their tortured bodies next to a highway. Soldiers and federal police retaliated by arresting two top lieutenants last week, as La Familia leaders attended church services in nearby Apatzingan. On Friday, La Familia hit men mounted an ambush against a convoy of federal police as they traveled down the main highway, wounding two officers.

How to confront this kind of violence against the state was a central topic in talks between President Obama and Calderón during their talks in Guadalajara this week.

"Every single town is now under the protection of one of the cartels," López said.

The Hot Land

Last week, as he drove two reporters through "tierra caliente," the heavily conflicted region dubbed the hot land, the introspective 42-year-old priest said the chaos is testing his faith. Most difficult for him to reconcile, he said, is the realization that the people responsible for creating "this reality of death and hopelessness in which we live are the same people we once baptized."

López said his own fear of dying was outweighed by the fear that he will not be brave enough to save his people. His struggle reflects those of other Catholic priests in Latin America who use their moral authority to defend the disenfranchised, sometimes at great personal risk.

"You know, they're going to [expletive] you one way, or they're going to [expletive] you another," the priest said of the traffickers. "And what can you do? Or, to be more exact, what are you most afraid of? To me, the worst thing would be that out of naivete, or out of stupidity, or out of fear, you didn't know when to speak or you didn't know what to say. What I ask from God is that He illuminate me so that I can do what I need to do."

The armed presence in Michoacan has been grafted atop an intricate network of social, political and economic relationships from which the cartels draw support. Julio César Godoy, the half brother of Michoacan's governor and a recently elected federal legislator, is currently on the run from authorities, accused of ordering the massacre of the federal police. Authorities say that Godoy is a leader of La Familia and that he is called "comandante" within the group. López's own uncle, Genaro Guizar Valencia, a U.S. citizen who was elected mayor of the tierra caliente town of Apatzingan, was recently arrested on charges of aiding La Familia.

"I think President Calderón has good intentions, but he doesn't have the support of the people," the priest said. "To put a soldier on every street corner, that is never going to bring us peace."

Man of the Cloth

López has thick black hair that sweeps back from his deeply creased forehead. At 6-foot-2, with a powerful build, he towers over most of his parishioners and the two younger priests who live with him in the church compound at Tepalcatepec, a farm town of about 10,000 where the mayor -- the brother of an alleged drug lord -- was also arrested in May by federal authorities, accused of assisting the traffickers. When not performing services, López wears polo shirts and jeans.

The priest speaks in a rich baritone, his florid words spilling out in a mix of barroom profanity and the poetry he once wrote in the seminary. A Bible sits next to the bed in his studio apartment, beside volumes of Balzac, Kafka and Dickens, and copies of Proceso, a weekly newsmagazine that covers the drug war extensively. On his wall is a photo of Archbishop Óscar Romero, the activist religious leader who was assassinated in 1980 during the civil war in El Salvador.

A true son of Michoacan, López drinks beer and knows the going price farmers receive for a kilo of marijuana out in the countryside.

Raised in tierra caliente, López said he always drives the same vehicle so traffickers do not mistake him for an outsider as he moves from one disputed territory to another for ministering.

On a Sunday evening, after an afternoon performing baptisms, López traveled to a nearby village to say Mass. At the end of a bumpy dirt road atop a hill, a congregation of farmers and fishermen celebrated the feast day for Saint Anne, the patron protector of housewives and women in labor. In the sweltering night air, as dogs wandered among the wooden pews, López delivered his sermon in the small concrete church.

"In most ways, we are richer than we were years ago," he said. "We harvest more crops. We have more to eat. But what are we missing? What we lack is peace in our communities."

It is a dilemma that runs through the Catholic Church, one of the strongest institutions in Mexico. Three priests have been killed in drug-related violence in tierra caliente during recent years.

Church Proclamation

In some ways, with its religious doctrine, La Familia has positioned itself as a rival of the church. "We think La Familia is a new kind of cartel that takes advantage of the religious nature of the Mexican people," said Ramón Pequeño García, chief of anti-drug operations at Mexico's Public Security Ministry. He said the cartel was attempting to become "a kind of parallel institution to satisfy the social demands of the people."

Because authorities cannot or will not solve murders and kidnappings, victims sometimes appeal directly to La Familia for help.

"This is not a form of religion, it's a perversion," López said of the cartel. "It's just something they have applied to themselves, like varnish."

In June, the Michoacan state bishops issued a joint proclamation calling for an end to the violence without specifically mentioning the traffickers.

López said he found the proclamation a good beginning, though "timid."

"We need to say clearly, 'Drug trafficking is a sin,' and that there is nothing more to say," he said. "And the truth is the church has not done that."

In López's home town, El Limon, he said the violence began a few years ago with the return of a man who had migrated to the United States but came back as a member of Los Zetas, another drug cartel vying for territory in Michoacan.

The man was wealthy, and he threw parties for the entire town. But he quickly ran afoul of another cartel. The man fled last year, but the violence that came with him stayed in El Limon.

Over the past two months, two families were kidnapped. One 17-year-old came back with a scar on his chest in the shape of the letter Z, apparently to mark his affiliation with the Zetas.

Dozens of people have since fled El Limon; in the middle of the afternoon, just a few people wander the dusty streets. There are no police.

"What has happened to my town is the story of just about every town in the tierra caliente," López said.

He steered his truck back onto the road. Each town had its own story of violence. In Aguililla, three bodies were recently discovered in plastic bags. In El Aguaje, traffickers hung the head of López's friend, Héctor Espinoza, from a green arch that welcomes people to town in Spanish and English and bids them farewell with the message, "Your family awaits your return."

"Now you are going to hear another story," said López, continuing to drive north.

He pulled up at a small corner house in Apatzingan, a town reportedly controlled by La Familia. Black curtains were drawn over the windows. Adelida Valencia, a woman with dark brown hair wearing a black dress, answered the door.

She said that one morning in 2004, her husband, Daniel, walked her to work at the stand where she sold yogurt. He was never seen again. Valencia was three months pregnant with her third child. Six months ago, her eldest son was walking down the street with a friend in the state of Guanajuato, where he had gone to study computer science. A gunman drove up on a motorcycle and sprayed automatic-weapons fire at them, killing her son and wounding his friend.

Valencia said authorities grilled her about whether her son was connected to the cartels. She was unaware of any connection, she said. Authorities later arrested a man they identified as a member of La Familia in the killing.

"How far can this go?" Valencia asked, quietly crying in her living room.

She then made dinner: quesadillas and rice and beans. López drank wine and recited poetry at the table.

The priest said he took hope from a recent meeting with an older priest, who was nearly 90. López asked him: How will we survive this crisis?

"This won't last. This can't last. Don't forget that the beast has been defeated. Satan has been defeated," the older man told him.

"Those words, so optimistic, from someone so wise, I have to believe them," López said. "It left me convinced that this can't go on forever."

This is one of the most intriguing stories I have come across lately!



The 'real Mt. Sinai' discovered?
It could change the Middle East forever!

New books and documentaries claim that archaeological evidence
for the Jewish Exodus has been located in Saudi Arabia.

by Ryan Mauro

August 14, 2009


It may be the biggest archaeological discovery to date, but it is also the most dangerous.

In an adventure story rivaling an Indiana Jones movie, Bob Cornuke and Larry Williams snuck into Saudi Arabia to investigate whether the Wahhabist home of Mecca and Medina is also home to one of the holiest sites in Judaism and Christianity: Mt. Sinai. They have each written page-turning books about their story.

Dr. Lennart Moller, a Swedish scientist, has gone one step further, writing a must-read book full of images and scientific analysis titled The Exodus Case, which puts together the stunning evidence that the Biblical events of the Exodus are historical, not mythical.

Cornuke’s BASE Institute has released a documentary titled Search for the Real Mt. Sinai and Moller’s additional work was made into The Exodus Revealed.

Now, a forthcoming documentary to be released in theaters titled The Exodus Conspiracy is being produced that will have far-reaching effects Michael Moore could only dream of.

A quick look at what has been found easily explains all the fuss. Dr. Moller points out that the site at Nuweiba he identifies as the Red Sea crossing point has an underwater land bridge, upon which damaged chariot parts and bones remain, engulfed in coral.

The top of Jabal al-Lawz, the alleged real Mt. Sinai, is black, as if burned from the sky as described in Exodus 19:18, where it says “the Lord descended upon it in fire.” This feature sets it apart from all the other surrounding mountains which do not have darkened tops.

The BASE Institute’s film shows Cornuke, who snuck onto the mountain, examining the rocks he cracked, observing that they are not merely black rocks and that only the outside had become darkened by whatever had occurred at the site. Moller has a photo of one of these rocks, which he identifies as “obsidian or volcanic glass, a mineral formed at high temperatures.”

One of the greatest — and most doubted — miracles of the Exodus is the story about God instructing Moses to hit a large rock with his rod, which resulted in a flow of water for the Hebrews to drink from.

Near Jabal al-Lawz is a large rock, standing about 60 feet high, split down the middle. The edges of the split and the rock underneath it have become smooth, as if a stream of water had poured forth from the rock, creating a river.

Given the annual rainfall in Saudi Arabia and the fact that the erosion is only present on that rock and no other ones in the surrounding area, it’s hard to find a plausible explanation for this remarkable find.

A site matching the description of the altar of the golden calf is also at this site. As the Biblical story goes, while Moses was away for 40 days on Mt. Sinai, the Hebrews created an altar with a golden calf on top of it, which they worshiped. Moses, incensed at the betrayal, crushed the calf into smithereens.

A large altar with inscriptions of Egyptian bulls engraved onto it is also near Mt. Sinai, making it the only location in Saudi Arabia to have such inscriptions. Moller notes in his book that “one block of stone at the altar had a slight depression and after a brief shower something glistened at the bottom, which turned out to be small flakes of gold. This rock could well have been the place where Moses ground the golden calf into powder.”

This is just scratching the surface. The 12 wells of Elim, the altar constructed by Moses after the defeat of the Amalekites, evidence of large encampments, the boundary markers and stone pillars the Bible says were placed around Mt. Sinai, and several other sites identified in the Old Testament are located.

Simply put, everything that the Bible indicates should be there is present. The researchers even describe how the locals refer to the site as “Moses’ Mountain” and it is common knowledge that Moses passed through the area.

The finds are extremely significant and have the potential to change the dynamics of the Middle East. If a site of such importance to Jews and Christians exists in Muslim Saudi Arabia, then a conflict may arise that matches the intensity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hordes of non-Muslim researchers and tourists will demand access to the site, placing pressure on the Saudi government and creating internal instability that could be impossible to contain.

The Saudis are aware of the consequences of this find and have surrounded Jabal al-Lawz, the alleged altar of the golden calf, and other sites with armed guards, patrols, and barbed wire with a sign designating them as off-limits archaeological sites. Ironically, the strict form of Islam enforced by the Saudi government has allowed these sites to be preserved.

Perhaps you think this is all hogwash. Regardless of your stance on these findings, the fact remains that if the deserved publicity follows the release of The Exodus Conspiracy, a new clash between Islam and Judaism and Christianity will erupt in Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina, with results no one can predict.


Ryan Mauro is the founder of WorldThreats.com and the director of
intelligence at the Asymmetrical Warfare and Intelligence Center (AWIC). He’s also the national security researcher for the Christian Action Network and a published author. He can be contacted at TDCAnalyst@aol.com.

What a fascinating story, Teresa. It sounds almost too good to be true. We have become so accustomed to present day Bible scholars who doubt much (most?) of the historical data in the Old Testament that I can't wait to see how they wil react to these finds. Some of the findings reported here sound a bit far-fetched even for me who would want it to be true. There has been so many reports on the "real" Ararat (for instance) that has been found, ark-rests etc. that are supposed to be authentic,but nothing scientifically conclusive as yet.

Perhaps we can expect another interesting, even fiery, debate now!

The Church of Something vs. The Church of Nothing

By John Gerardi
The D.C. Writeup
August 17, 2009

America’s churches are currently wrestling with a profound dilemma. Faced with the two-headed monster of aggressive secularism and the sexual revolution, Christian denominations in the United States need to decide whether they will preserve their Christian identities or join the Church of Nothing.

What is this Church of Nothing?

The Church of Nothing is an intellectual virus that infects and corrupts once-fervent religious bodies, sapping them of their original fervor cell by cell, congregation by congregation, until it ultimately corrupts them into little more than an every-Sunday social club of plastic, politically correct niceness. In short, it attempts to separate Christian churches from their Christian identities.

What are the symptoms? First, there is a complete abandonment of preaching on any controversial moral issue. The Church of Nothing forbids preaching against abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, homosexual activity, and contraception. In all moral issues where there is some degree of possible controversy, the Church of Nothing will inevitably turn to its Sacred Scripture of the popular media for an authoritative position on the matter. No one who questions the dogma that such activity must at least be overlooked, and may even be promoted and celebrated, can consider themselves a member in good standing of the Church of Nothing.

After a religious body’s views on these controversial issues are brought into conformity with the Church of Nothing’s stance, a general weakening takes place, such that the Church will hardly speak on any serious matter of personal morality, even on topics that seem obvious. Preaching against the evils of pornography and fornication — which are huge, extremely widespread evils engaged in by large percentages of the population — gives way to sappy exhortations to “love” one another in some vague, wussy, effete fashion. A preacher infected with the virus of the Church of Nothing will, week after week, deliver sermons that are general, vague, intellectually vapid, and uninspiring; the sort of sermon you forget about 5 minutes after the service is over. Under no circumstances should a priest or pastor ever suggest that people change how they live, and absolutely not how they vote. The essence of the Church of Nothing can be summed up by the title of Dr. Thomas A. Harris’ wildly popular 1969 pop-psychology book (an important text of the Church of Nothing): I’m OK — You’re OK.

The Church of Nothing is also a bastion of relativism, including religious and doctrinal relativism. Hence, they feel almost no urgency to attract converts. Instead, they are wildly enthusiastic in engaging in what they like to call “ecumenical activity.” Now, such non-Nothingist individuals as Pope Benedict XVI see much good in an authentic sort of Ecumenism, one in which Christians acknowledge their true differences, cooperate where they can, and engage in a dialogue that searches for truth. However, it doesn’t just accept where people are. Somebody is right and somebody is wrong, and the wages of the truth are serious — i.e., the person who believes in falsehood needs to change. But when the Nothingists take truth out of the equation …well, then the main purpose of Ecumenism vanishes. All that’s left then is to kibitz, hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and spend parishioners’ money on dinner. This writer continues to be puzzled by how anybody could be so enthusiastic in promoting something so pointless.

Many mainline Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church, and some sectors of the Catholic Church have been completely overcome by the Church of Nothing. This is just the way the Left wants it. A Christianity that remains listless, a Christianity that offers nothing to people beyond “Be nice!” is the greatest asset that the cultural Left has, since such a Christianity will raise no voice in opposition to Left’s march towards abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, and turning public schools into leftist training facilities. At best, these Christians will do nothing; at worst, they will serve as useful leftist stooges.

However, it is every bit as true that much of American Christianity refuses to lie down. Many Catholics and Evangelical Christians have stood firm in attempting to build a culture of life, and they have let their Faith actually influence their actions and their vote.

In this regard, possibly the greatest leader Christianity currently possesses is Pope Benedict XVI. His entire pontificate has been focused on trying to establish for Catholics what their identity is — a question that has plagued Catholicism since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Without a firm identity, without a firm grasp of who he is and what he must believe and defend, a Christian cannot offer anything to the culture. Catholics have wrestled with the idea, promoted forcefully by Nothingist Catholics, that there is a great divide between the Church before and after the Second Vatican Council, and that Catholics must throw out their traditional beliefs to become, basically, a Church of Nothing. A “Spirit of Vatican II,” which seemingly had no connection whatsoever to the 16 teaching documents of the Council, was invoked by the Nothingists to promote this shift. Throughout the pontificates of Paul VI and John Paul II, and in spite of their efforts, this Nothingist “Spirit of Vatican II” was a dominant force in the life of the Church.

However, Pope Benedict managed to almost entirely banish such an idea from acceptable Catholic discourse by aligning his entire pontificate against it. He has taught that for Catholics to embrace the living tradition of Christianity — not merely the ancient deposit of the faith received from the past, but also its modern transmission carried on faithfully by the Church today — is a necessity. He put it this way in an address in 2005: “The Church, both before and after the Council, was and is the same Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, journeying on through time; she continues ‘her pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God,’ proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes.” Christianity will not be able to overcome in the cultural battles of the West unless it accepts this strong identity, and continues to be what it always has been, “a sign that will be opposed” (Luke 2:34).

John Gerardi is an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame.

Brilliant. Thank you very much for sharing!!

The Book of Harry

How the boy wizard won over religious critics -- and the deeper meaning theologians now see in his tale

By Michael Paulson
Boston Globe
August 16, 2009

The world of religion was not, at first, particularly enthusiastic about the arrival of the Potter boy.

For several years, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series topped the American Library Association’s lists of the most-challenged books (reasons cited in 2001: “anti-family, occult/Satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence”). Evangelical Protestants were skeptical: would the positive depiction of wizardry mislead children? And some Catholics were worried too, ranging from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), who warned that “subtle seductions” in the text could “corrupt the Christian faith,” to the Rev. Ronald A. Barker, a Wakefield priest who yanked the books from his parish school library.

But over the last several years, religion writers and thinkers have warmed to Harry - both Christianity Today, the evangelical magazine, and L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, have praised the latest film. The Christian Broadcasting Network, home of Pat Robertson, now features on its website a special section on “The Harry Potter Controversy,” with the acknowledgment, “Leading Christian thinkers have disparate views on the Harry Potter products, and how Christians should respond to them.”

At the same time, scholars of religion have begun developing a more nuanced take on the Potter phenomenon, with some arguing that the wildly popular series of books and films contains positive ethical messages and a narrative arc that is worthy of serious scholarly examination and even theological reflection. The scholars are primarily interested in what the books have to say about the two big issues that always preoccupy people of faith - morality and mortality - but some are also interested in what the series has to say about tolerance (Harry and friends are notably open to people and creatures who differ from them) and bullying, the nature and presence of evil in society, and the existence of the supernatural.

Scholarly interest in the Harry Potter books began long before the series was finished, and shows no signs of slowing. There have been several academic books, with titles such as “The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon” and “Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives.” The American Academy of Religion last fall offered a panel at its annual convention titled “The Potterian Way of Death: J. K. Rowling’s Conception of Mortality.” And there is a raft of articles in religion journals with titles including “Looking for God in Harry Potter” and “Engaging with the spirituality of Harry Potter,” as well as the more complex, “Harry Potter and the baptism of the imagination,” “Harry Potter and the problem of evil,” and the crowd-pleasing “Harry Potter and theological libraries.”

“There is a whole burgeoning field of religion and popular culture, not just looking at what exact parallels there are, does it jibe with religious beliefs or is it counter to religious beliefs, but looking at these stories as a reflection of the spiritual or religious sensibilities of the culture,” says Russell W. Dalton, an assistant professor of Christian education at Brite Divinity School in Texas and the author of “Faith Journey through Fantasy Lands: A Christian Dialogue with Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings.”

“When stories become as popular as the Harry Potter stories, they no longer simply reflect the religious views of the author, but become artifacts of the culture, and they say something about the culture that has embraced them,” Dalton says. “And that is certainly the case with Harry Potter.”

The academic interest in The Boy Who Lived is part of a larger search by religion scholars and writers for signs of faith, and in particular for echoes of the Christian narrative, in culture. The search is not new, though scholars have historically concentrated on high art - like painting and literature. More recently, religion journalists have turned their attention to popular culture, authoring books with titles like “The Gospel According to the Simpsons,” by Mark Pinsky, and “The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers,” by Cathleen Falsani, while scholars are examining the role of religion in Madonna’s videos, in the Star Trek series, and on “Lost.”

“We have to be engaged with the conversation that’s going on in the public,” says Jeffrey H. Mahan, a professor of ministry, media and culture at the Iliff School of Theology in Colorado and an early proponent of studying religion and popular culture.

There is also a long history of children’s literature being used as a form of religious pedagogy. Amy Boesky, an associate professor of English at Boston College, says that the use of children’s literature to teach moral values goes back at least as far as Erasmus, who wrote during the Renaissance, and includes children’s classics from “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” published in 1678, to “A Wrinkle in Time,” published in 1962. The best known example is the seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia, written in the early 1950s by the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, which, in addition to being entertaining fantasy literature, is often read as a Christian allegory featuring Aslan, a heroic lion and obvious Christ figure.

Although some scholars now see Harry Potter as a Christ-like figure, the parallels are subtler, and, undoubtedly, for many readers vastly overshadowed by a dizzying torrent of magical spells, strange creatures, and Quidditch games. Harry is, himself, a complex adolescent hero, haunted by the murder of his parents but at times conflicted about his own role in the world and unsettled, as anyone would be, by his mind’s strange connection with that of the series’s evil antagonist, Voldemort.

“The Potter books are not explicitly religious in the way that C.S. Lewis’s Narnia tales are, but there is a strong sense of evil, and issues of good and evil are not only philosophical issues but also theological issues,” says Gareth B. Matthews, a professor of philosophy at UMass Amherst.

Some scholars take the search for Gospel themes in the Harry Potter series quite far. Oona Eisenstadt, an assistant professor of religious studies at Pomona College, offers a particularly elaborate analysis, arguing that Rowling explores the complex natures of biblical characters by presenting two versions of each in the Potter books. Snape and Malfoy, she argues, represent competing understandings of Judas - each seeking to kill Dumbledore, but one because he is serving evil and one because destiny demands it. Eisenstadt sees Dumbledore and Harry, in different ways, as Christ figures - perhaps Harry representing the human Jesus, and Dumbledore the divine. And she posits that the New Testament depiction of elements of the Jewish community is represented by the goblins (unappealing bankers) and the Ministry of Magic (legalistic and small-minded).

“Rather than offering a one-to-one allegory which would shove a theology down the throats of her child readers, Rowling’s role doublings, her one-to-twos, are an invitation to them, and to us all, to think,” Eisenstadt writes.

Some religion scholars seem most interested in the Potter series as social commentary - in particular, they focus on Harry’s refusal to take part in the anti-Muggle bias demonstrated by some pure-blood witches and wizards, as well as the hostility toward giants and ghosts and other menacing magical creatures that some characters in the series evince. “One of the overall themes of the Harry Potter series has to do with race and race-based persecution,” says Lana A. Whited, a professor of English at Ferrum College in Virginia and the author of “The Ivory Tower And Harry Potter.” And Dalton, of Brite Divinity School, takes the argument a step further, suggesting that the series’s association of tolerance with the heroic characters is a critique of fundamentalism.

“To Dumbledore and Harry and his friends{hellip} it didn’t matter whether you were Muggle-born, or whether you were a giant,” Dalton says, “whereas clearly the Death Eaters, the evil ones, were intolerant of people who were unlike them.”

But not all scholars are quite so enthusiastic. Elizabeth Heilman, an associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State University and the editor of “Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter” says that, unlike Hermione, who adopts the cause of the house elves, “you don’t see Harry Potter ever taking up a cause for the sake of the downtrodden. He’s really a reluctant hero, and I’m not convinced the narrative has him effectively going beyond personal motives.”

The interest of religion scholars in the Potter series has intensified in the wake of the much-anticipated seventh and final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which was published in 2007. The question of whether Harry would die (Spoiler Alert!) was much debated before the book was released, and it doesn’t require a divinity degree to see the themes of sacrifice and resurrection in the resolution of that question.

“I remember anticipating book seven, and having conversations with my kids about whether Harry Potter would die, and a lot of that conversation was about to what extent Rowling was going to make this a Christian book: was Harry going to die and save the world?” says Stephen Prothero, a religion professor at Boston University.

The denouement (really: Spoiler Alert!) is the starting point for many religion scholars, because in the final scenes, Harry realizes “that his job was to walk calmly into Death’s welcoming arms,” Rowling writes. Harry allows himself to be killed - or at least struck by a killing curse - in order to save the wizarding world, but then returns to life, egged on by a vision of Dumbledore that tells Harry, “by returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart.” Harry then vanquishes Voldemort, and is described in the book as being seen by the crowd that witnessed the final battle as “their leader and symbol, their savior and their guide.”

“At the end of the last book, we have a dying and rising Potter - he has to be killed to deliver the world from the evil personified by Voldemort,” says Paul V.M. Flesher, director of the religious studies program at the University of Wyoming and the author of an article about Harry Potter for the Journal of Religion and Film. “There’s a Christian pattern to this story. It’s not just good versus evil. Rowling is not being evangelistic - this is not C.S. Lewis - but she knows these stories, and it’s clear she’s fitting pieces together in a way that makes sense and she knows her readers will follow.”

Rowling herself, in the wake of the final book’s publication, says she thought the religious themes had “always been obvious,” and scholars note there were at least two unattributed quotations from the New Testament in the series, one on the tomb of Dumbledore’s mother and sister (“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” from Matthew), and one on the tomb of Harry’s mother and father (“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” from I Corinthians).

Harry’s ultimate struggle with death has cemented the romance between religion scholars and the Potter series, the initial controversies over wands and wizardry now largely overshadowed by discussion of Harry’s character and life choices.

“Rather than decrying as wicked certain elements of the series - as far too many Christians have done - we ought to be inviting our communities into deeper appreciation of both the similarities and the contrasts between the stories and our Christian faith,” Mary Hess, of Luther Seminary in Minnesota, writes in the journal Word & World.

Sure enough, Leonie Caldecott, writing in Christian Century a few months after the publication of book seven, opines, “As is revealed in ‘Deathly Hallows,’ far from trying to cheat death, Harry willingly embraces death when he comes to understand that this is necessary to save others, and not just those he particularly loves.”

Dumbledore, early in the series, makes clear his own views on this subject, saying, “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”

At the American Academy of Religion conference, panelists mined the final scene, as well as other depictions of death in the Potter series, for meaning. Paul Corey, a religious studies lecturer at McMaster University in Canada, rhetorically asked, “What is the difference between a Christian and a Death Eater?” as a starting point for thinking about how Voldemort’s quest to conquer death might differ from, or resemble, the desire of Christians for eternal life in heaven. And Lois Shepherd, a bioethicist at the University of Virginia, said she found in the series an argument against prolonging physical life at all costs - a rejection of what she called a “quest to avoid death” that she said was played out in the real-world debate over Terri Schiavo.

“Death, in the philosophy of the series, is not to be feared,” Shepherd says. “It is in fact those who fear death the most - Voldemort being the supreme example - who engage in unspeakable acts of evil.”

Michael Paulson is the Globe’s religion reporter.

What is Going on at Ignatius Press?

A Status Report

California Catholic Daily
Published: August 19, 2009

After 27 years of working from a three-story building generously provided for them rent-free by the Carmelite nuns next door, the staff of Ignatius Press decided in September, 2008 to pull up stakes from McAllister Street, a stone’s throw from the University of San Francisco, and move to the other side of Golden Gate Park into a turn-of-the-century historic firehouse in the Sunset area.

Ignatius is the largest publisher in English of current Catholic leading theologians, including Joseph Ratzinger, Henri De Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, plus the distributor of hundreds of other Catholic books, not to mention the magazines Catholic World Report and

Finally this year, in May, 2009, the renovation and move were complete and this summer, the executive work of Ignatius Press takes place in the firehouse (brass firepole included) on 1348 Tenth Avenue.

Much of the work of the press is done elsewhere - printing in Michigan, order taking in Colorado, copy editing and proofreading at copy editors’ and proofreaders’ homes.

But the executive work – decisions about which books to publish, how to market them, the layout decisions – are made at the San Francisco headquarters.

The biggest project now is converting all new titles and much of the backlist to electronic format—both as e-books and as downloadable audio files. “Within the next 12 months, we should have all our new titles and the most popular titles of our backlist ready to download and read in Kindle or similar devices,” says Father Joseph Fessio, the founder of Ignatius Press.

Fessio’s constant presence at the press is news, too. In 2002 after Fessio started Campion College, whose classes took place in the shadow of the University of San Francisco on McAllister Street, the local Jesuit superior banished him to a hospital chaplaincy at Santa Teresita, 20 miles east of Los Angeles. It was only by means of the intervention of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Cardinal Christoph Schönborn before the Jesuit General Fr. Kolvenbach that the Jesuits relented and allowed Father Fessio to take up the position as provost with Ave Maria University in Florida later in 2002.

From 2002 onward Mark Brumley, who had worked at Catholic Answers and for the diocese of San Diego before joining the Ignatius Press, assumed the title of president and Father Fessio made only episodic visits to the press.

Finally on July 21 of this year, Tom Monaghan, Ave Maria’s chancellor, severed all ties with Fessio.

So what did this mean for the ban by the San Francisco Jesuits? According to sources who did not want to be identified, Fessio spoke to the new provincial for the Western province before the final word came from Ave Maria, and the new provincial told Father Fessio there was “no problem” with Fessio working full-time with Ignatius Press in San Francisco.

Says Fessio about the future of Ignatius Press: “Print publishing is undergoing a revolution. No one is sure of the outcome. Ignatius Press intends to continue to publish ‘real books’, but also to address the demand for electronic books and audio books. There is still a demand for solid Catholic books. Last year, the books we sold would have made a stack 18 miles high.”

This is sad. They are following the path of the Episcopalians.


Lutherans to allow sexually active gays as clergy

By PATRICK CONDON, Associated Press Writer
August 21, 2009

MINNEAPOLIS – Leaders of the nation's largest Lutheran church voted Friday to allow sexually active gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy.

Gays and lesbians are currently allowed to serve as ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America only if they remain celibate. The proposal to change that passed with 68 percent approval.

At 4.7 million members and about 10,000 congregations in the United States, the ELCA is one of the largest U.S. Christian denominations yet to take a more gay-friendly stance on clergy.

The final decision on whether to hire gay clergy in committed relationships will lie with individual congregations.

Some critics of the proposal have predicted its passage could cause individual congregations to split off from the ELCA, as has been the case with other Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church.

The debate over the so-called "ministry recommendations" got under way first thing Friday, and delegate Al Quie, a former Republican governor of Minnesota, proposed an alternative: "Practicing homosexual persons are excluded from rostered leadership in this church."

The proposal, which would have left the church's policy more or less unchanged, failed.

Conservatives had lost an important vote Wednesday night when the convention's 1,045 delegates approved by a two-thirds supermajority a "social statement on human sexuality" that said the ELCA could accommodate diverging views on homosexuality.

The Rev. Katrina Foster, a pastor in the Metropolitan New York Synod, pointed out that the church has ordained woman and divorced people in violation of a literal interpretation of scripture.

"We can learn not to define ourselves by negation," Foster said. "By not only saying what we are against, which always seems to be the same — against gay people. We should be against poverty. I wish we were as zealous about that."

First a whisper, then the wind


Cross hanging upside down from damaged steeple


In my last post above is an article about the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the U.S. voting to allow practicing gays and lesbians to be ministers. I have seen a couple of other news stories on this vote and they mention that the discussion about it by church leaders was interrupted when a tornado hit the area and damaged the steeple of a Lutheran church across the street. One of the leaders joked that he hoped that wasn't a commentary on their discussion.

In the Bible, at one point, God's voice is described as a whisper. When Jesus was crucified, a terrible storm arose. Personally, I think when we don't heed the whisper, we better be prepared for the storm.

The German Lutheran Church (Evangelical Church in Germany) has turned into a society for the benefit of the poor, the oppressed and in general the less fortunate on our planet. In general, there is nothing wrong with that. I can actually see the connection to Christ and his teaching.

I believe homosexuals are considered oppressed/less fortunate and are therefore on the priority list of that 'Church'.
I think they are justifying their pro-homo attitude by the 'Jesus loves all of us / anti-discrimination' 'dogma' that they wield against anything which would exclude people from a certain privilege or positions.

I don't know how they negate the references to the sinfulness of homosexuality in the bible. I don't even want to know.
Possibly again with the 'Jesus ate with sinners' generalization.

The ex-Lutheran cynic that I sometimes am, I actually believe that they are looking to score points in our nut case society by leaning in whatever direction the Zeitgeist will give them.
Did they fight against the condemnation of homosexuality before it became socially acceptable and politically correct? As far as I remember: no!

There is nothing sacred about the Lutheran Church in Germany.
The services are dry and pragmatic. There is no connection to God or Christ. Mary is basically not mentioned (even though Luther was very devoted to her). It's like a social club meeting.

I had a long conversation with our local Pastor whom I've known for years and who is a really nice, sweet person. We’ve been to a few parties together and are actually on the informal ‘Du’ basis.
He actually told me he was happy that I didn't ditch Christianity completely, but ended up in the Catholic Church. He then went on a private lecture on how there isn't much of a difference anyway, and, if the local Churches would be even more defiant to Rome, it would all be blissful and fine! I didn't exactly agree with him and he was a bit shocked.


Personally, I think Martin Luther is turning in his grave at the state of the reformed churches across the globe.
If he knew what his little project of rejecting roman authority and pure defiance out of stubbornness was going to turn into this... don't know he would have taken on all the hard times.

Sorry 'bout the ramblings, I've only converted a year ago. There is still a LOT of unfinished business in my head.

Here is a fuller account of the implications of the Lutheran vote described in the article above.


Lutheran Group Eases Limits on Gay Clergy

By MICHAEL LUO and CHRISTINA CAPECCHI
The New York Times
August 22, 2009

After an emotional debate over the authority of Scripture and the limits of biblical inclusiveness, leaders of the country’s largest Lutheran denomination voted Friday to allow gay men and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as members of the clergy.

The vote made the denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the latest mainline Protestant church to permit such ordinations, contributing to a halting sense of momentum on the issue within liberal Protestantism.

By a vote of 559 to 451, delegates to the denomination’s national assembly in Minneapolis approved a resolution declaring that the church would find a way for people in “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships” to serve as official ministers. (The church already allows celibate gay men and lesbians to become members of the clergy.)

Just before the vote, the Rev. Mark Hanson, the church’s presiding bishop, led the packed convention center in prayer. When the two bar graphs signaling the vote’s outcome popped up on the hall’s big screens seconds later, there were only a few quiet gasps, as delegates had been asked to avoid making an audible scene. But around the convention hall, clusters of men and women hugged one other and wept.

“To be able to be a full member of the church is really a lifelong dream,” said the Rev. Megan Rohrer of San Francisco, who is in a committed same-sex relationship and serves in three Lutheran congregations but is not officially on the church’s roster of clergy members. “I don’t have to have an asterisk next to my name anymore.”

But the passage of the resolution now raises questions about the future of the denomination, which has 4.6 million members but has seen its ranks steadily dwindle, and whether it will see an exodus of its more conservative followers or experience some sort of schism.

“I think we have stepped beyond what the word of God allows,” said the Rev. Rebecca M. M. Heber of Heathrow, Fla., who said she was going to reconsider her membership.

Conservative dissenters said they saw various options, including leaving for another Lutheran denomination or creating their own unified body.

A contingent of 400 conservative congregations that make up a group that calls itself Lutheran Core is to meet in September. Leaders of the group said their plans were not to split from the Evangelical Lutheran Church but to try to protect its “true tenets” from within.

Among so-called “mainline” Protestant denominations, distinguishable theologically from their more conservative, evangelical Protestant counterparts, both the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ already allow gay clergy members.

The Episcopal Church has endured the most visible public flashpoints over homosexuality, grappling in particular in the last few years with the consecration of gay bishops. It affirmed last month, however, that “any ordained ministry” was open to gay men and lesbians.

Earlier this year the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) rejected a measure that would have opened the door for gay ordination, but the margin was narrower than in a similar vote in 2001. The United Methodist Church voted not to change its stance barring noncelibate homosexuals from ministry last year, after an emotional debate at its general conference.

But the Evangelical Lutheran Church’s heavily Midwestern membership and the fact that it is generally seen as falling squarely in the middle of the theological milieu of mainline Protestantism imbued Friday’s vote with added significance, religion scholars said.

Wendy Cadge, a sociology professor at Brandeis University who has studied Evangelical Lutheran churches grappling with the issue, said, “It does show, to the extent that any mainline denominations are moving, I think they’re moving slowly toward a more progressive direction.”

Describing the context of Friday’s vote, several religion experts likened it to the court decision last year in Iowa legalizing same-sex marriage.

“In the same sense that the Iowa court decision might have opened people’s eyes, causing them to say, ‘Iowa? What? Where?’” said Laura Olson, a professor of political science at Clemson University who has studied mainline Protestantism. “The E.L.C.A. isn’t necessarily quite as surprising in the religious sense, but the message it’s sending is, yes, not only are more Americans from a religious perspective getting behind gay rights, but these folks are not just quote unquote coastal liberals.”

The denomination has struggled with the issue almost since its founding in the late 1980s with the merger of three other Lutheran denominations.

In 2001, the church convened a committee to study the issue. It eventually recommended guidelines for a denominational vote. In 2005, however, delegates voted not to change its policies.

On Friday, delegates juggled raw emotion, fatigue and opposing interpretations of Scripture.

Before the vote but sensing its outcome, the Rev. Timothy Housholder of Cottage Grove, Minn., introduced himself as a rostered pastor in the church, “at least for a few more hours,” implying that he would leave the denomination and eliciting a gasp from some audience members.

“Here I stand, broken and mournful, because of this assembly and her actions,” Mr. Housholder said.

The Rev. Mark Lepper of Belle Plaine, Minn., called for the inclusion of gay clergy members, saying, “Let’s stop leaving people behind and let’s be the family God is calling us to be.”

Michael Luo reported from New York, and Christina Capecchi from Minneapolis.

Pro-life groups organize prayer and protest in response to 'abortion mandate'

Washington D.C., Aug 23, 2009 / 07:06 pm (CNA).- Responding to President Barack Obama’s efforts to rally sympathetic religious groups to back his proposed health care legislation, pro-life groups have organized prayer campaigns and issued protests of the proposal’s “abortion mandate.”

During a Wednesday teleconference sponsored by the left-leaning religious organizations Catholics United, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Faith in Public Life, both White House Director of Domestic Policy Melody Barnes and President Obama denied that the health care bill would allow for federally funded abortions.

Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), charged that Obama "brazenly misrepresented the abortion-related component of the health care legislation that his congressional allies and staff have crafted.”

The NRLC said that the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Capps-Waxman Amendment explicitly authorizes the government plan to cover all elective abortions.

In response to the situation Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, has announced an effort to build the “largest prayer group in history” by promoting membership in a “Pray to End Abortion” cause on the social network site Facebook.

At present the effort has posted a special prayer regarding the health care reform debate.

The prayer, addressing Jesus as the “Divine Physician,” intercedes for elected officials and asks that they have both “the humility to know that they are servants, not masters” and also “the wisdom to realize that every life has equal value.”

“Let every reform in our public policy be based on the reform of our hearts and minds,” the prayer concludes.

The prayer site is accessible at www.ProLifePrayers.org

The group Concerned Women for America has joined the large coalition known as Stop the Abortion Mandate, which opposes the coverage of abortion in proposed federal health care legislation.

Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America, claimed that “liberal religious leaders” of a dwindling population are siding with the dwindling numbers of those who support the “Obama/Reid/Pelosi government takeover of health care” that she says would require Americans to fund abortions.

Wright noted liberal Evangelical leader and Obama supporter Rev. Jim Wallis’ July 22 statement in which he said that the prohibition on federal abortion funding should be maintained.

“This last-minute rally for legislation that includes taxpayer funding for abortion and special privileges for abortionists to have access to school children (with Planned Parenthood in position to run school-based clinics) reveals that liberal religious leaders and Obama are not sincere in their claim to 'reduce abortions' and 'find common ground',” she charged.

“The vast majority of Americans, even those who call themselves pro-choice, do not want to fund abortions because they know that what the government funds, we get more of," she said.

The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) was also critical of the health care legislation.

"Nationalized health care is a recipe for disaster, for our country, for the unborn and for the elderly. The Party of Death cannot be trusted with such profound life decisions," C-FAM told CNA in an e-mail.

This article is not so much about Fr. Reese (who is constantly sought after by the liberal media for commentary) as it is about the Most Holy Redeemer Parish he visited in San Francisco. It is the site of a very active and open gay congregation that has been a scandal to the church on a number of occasions. The situation is beyond sad.


Father Reese Comes to San Francisco

What Most Holy Redeemer Has Come to Mean

California Catholic Daily
August 24, 2009

Father Thomas Reese, SJ, former editor of the Jesuit weekly America, has been in San Francisco this summer. Fr. Reese resigned his editorial position from the magazine back upon Pope Benedict’s election, “after repeated complaints from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.”

Over the past five weeks, Reese has given a series of lectures at the Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought at USF. The themes were “Religion and Politics: What is Forbidden, What Allowed, What Prudent?” (July 19); “Pope Benedict XVI on The World Economy, Capitalism & Government: The New Encyclical Caritas in Veritate" on August 16; and “Catholics and Obama: Bishops, People and Issues” on August 23.

Under Fr. Reese’s leadership America was noted for its dissenting positions, and, like Kevin Dowling, the pro-condom bishop of South Africa who visited USF a few months back, Fr. Reese made the obligatory dissenters’ pilgrimage to Most Holy Redeemer Church in the Castro district. In an August 21 talk at the parish, Reese reprised his July 19 subject "Religion and Politics: what is forbidden, what allowed, what prudent." According to the parish, the talk was sponsored by the Most Holy Redeemer young adult group. (This young adult group is unique. They are the only young adult group in the history of the Catholic Church to be presented as debutantes at a transgender cotillion. They were escorted to the event by a transgender man named Lisa Marie Dummer who also serves as eucharistic minister at the parish.)

The visitations made by dissenters to Most Holy Redeemer are not harmless. Bishop Dowling and Fr. Reese are significant figures. So is Bishop Thomas Gumbleton. So are openly homoactivist politicians Bevan Dufty and Mark Leno.

The list could be extended. In 2009 Professor Jerome Baggett of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley published Sense of the Faithful: How American Catholics Live Their Faith. Baggett interviewed the members of six parishes, including Most Holy Redeemer. But nowhere in an Amazon.com search of the book do you find the names of Roz Gallo and Catherine Cunningham, who were “married” in 2008, and who both serve as lectors and acolytes at the parish. Gallo is a former president of the pastoral council and Cunningham is the current secretary of the council. Nor will you find the name of Philip Carrisoza, a same-sex “married” man who serves as a lector and acolyte. Carrisoza and his “husband” were photographed in the nave of the church. You do not find the names of Marty Bednarek and Michael Vargas, a member of the parish’s music ministry and a lector, respectively. In a letter to the editor of the Catholic San Francisco newspaper, they proudly declared they were “husbands,” while attacking Archbishop George Niederauer for his defense of natural marriage. You do not find the names of Nanette Lee Miller and Olga Barrera, who were “married” in 2004 and who serve, respectively, as lector/acolyte and eucharistic minister. Miller is also a member of the Church’s worship committee. You do not find the name of David Differding, the worship committee’s liturgy planner, who was one of the judges at the 2006 SF Leather Daddy’s Boy Contest and has been photographed at other public s/m events.

Did Professor Baggett know these things? It is hard to believe he didn’t. On February 27, 2008, Baggett was the guest speaker at a Lenten Vespers Service in the Church -- with Mr. Differding presiding. By ignoring such facts, Baggett’s book does not present a true picture, and contributes to the “mainstreaming” of the parish. Admittedly, he does provide an informative table: 78% of MHR parishioners polled think one can be a good Catholic without obeying the Church’s teaching on abortion; 93% without obeying the Church’s teaching on engaging in homosexual acts; 95% without obeying the Church’s teaching on birth control; 83% without going to Church every Sunday; 34% without believing in the real presence; and 28% without believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

This year, a student at Notre Dame University received a grant from the university’s Institute for the Study of Liberal Arts for the project “A Comparison of the Theologies and the Philosophies of the Metropolitan Community Church and the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church.” Why compare the two? The Metropolitan Community Church has 250 congregations in 23 countries. Most Holy Redeemer is a single parish. Individual Catholic parishes do not have theologies. They share the theology of the universal Church.

Ironically, the Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco’s homosexual community newspaper, may provide an unsettling answer to the mystery of the archdiocese’s continuing tolerance of the parish. On July 30, 2009 Brian Jackle reviewed Fr. Donal Godfrey’s admiring study of the parish, Gays and Grays. He concluded by observing: “… Most Holy Redeemer's own population rapidly ages, and increasingly there is little difference between gay and gray in its members.” It would be sad indeed if the archdiocesan “solution” to the problem of Most Holy Redeemer amounted to waiting for the parishioners to die off.

I love the Screwtape Letters.


C.S. Lewis' devilish tale adapted for stage in U.S. tour

Oakland, Calif., Aug 28, 2009 / 03:29 am (CNA).- An acclaimed theatrical adaptation of C. S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” has been bringing the spirit of Screwtape, the sardonic fictional demon of Lewis’ invention, to theaters across the country.

Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” purports to be a collection of correspondence between the senior devil Screwtape and Wormwood, his novice understudy in the arts of temptation and damnation. Screwtape advises his trainee how to best prevent God from saving the soul of a modern man.

In the introduction to his book, Lewis criticizes two “equal and opposite errors” mankind has concerning devils. The first is to disbelieve in their existence, while the second believes, and feels “an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”

“They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar,” Lewis adds. “Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true, even from his own angle. There is wishful thinking in hell as well as on earth.”

The theatrical adaptation was created by Jeffrey Fiske and Max McLean. Fiske directs the performance, while McLean plays Screwtape, referred to as “His Abysmal Sublimity.”

Karen Eleanor Wight plays Toadpipe, Screwtape’s personal secretary.

According to an announcement from the C.S. Lewis Society of California, the play was “critically acclaimed” in New York and enjoyed a standing room only audience at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C.

The Chicago Tribune called it “the most successful show in the history of the Chicago Mercury Theater.”

An upcoming performance of the play is scheduled for the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California on October 2 and 3.

According to the C.S. Lewis Society of California, the October 3 performance will include a special post-show program with Fiske and McLean.

A video of a performances from Fiske and McLean’s adaptation is available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdBNimP7eaw.

Cincinnati's Pilarczyk bans nun from teaching

CathNewsUSA
Published: September 03, 2009

Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk has banned Sister of CharityLouise Akers from teaching at archdiocesan parishes and institutionsbecause she has refused to renounce support for the ordination of womenpriests.

"The principle here is that someone who is teaching in the name of the church should be in accord with the teachings of the church," said archdiocese spokesman Dan Andriacco, Cincinnati.com reports.

Akers' supporters say she has served the church well for decades and her views on the ordination of women should not overshadow her other work.

"This is just bullying," said Erin Saiz Hanna, executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference.

Pilarczyk told Akers his decision was unrelated to the Vatican "apostolic visitation" of women's congregations.

Akers, 66, said she asked for a meeting with Pilarczyk last month after she learned he was concerned about comments she made about the ordination of women. She was teaching a class for religious educators at the time and said she wanted to clarify "what was expected of me."

She said Pilarczyk gave her an ultimatum: Remove her name from the web site of the Women's Ordination Conference, which supports the ordination of women, and publicly renounce her support of women priests.

She told him she was willing to take her name off the web site, but she could not reject her strong belief in the ordination of women and embrace the church's male-only doctrine.

"For me, it's an issue of justice within the church," Akers said Wednesday. "To make a public statement in support of the doctrine would be to go against my conscience, and I can't do that."

"The primary motive for taking the stand I've taken is the value, dignity and equality of women in the church," Akers said.

THE DISHONEST FATHER REESE

A rather belated reaction to the Father Reese article, but this has nothing to do with the article, rather with Father Reese himself. While I was looking for something in the early NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT files, I came across this item that I posted in April 2006.

It is something I wish I could e-mail to every Catholic blogger and editorial room in the United States because it unmasks the dishonest guise under which Father Reese has been 'basking' all these years as a supposed victim of Cardinal Ratzinger's displeasure.




Posted in April 2006

This may seem out of place here, but I am re-posting this bit here because almost every other wrap-up article on the Pope's first 12 months cites the resignation of Father Thomas Reese as editor of the Jesuit magazine America as an 'isolated' instance of Benedict showing his Panzer-Pope side.

For example, a female theologian is quoted in the Kieron Wood article earlier in this page as saying: ‘‘Thankfully, the forced resignation of Fr Thomas Reese, the Jesuit editor-in-chief of America magazine, has not led to the purge of theologians that might have been expected by the ‘grand inquisitor’" - all but attributing the "force" to the Pope!

Last March, John Allen interviewed the Jesuit Superior-General, Fr. Kolvenbach, and asked him specifically about this:

---

One early controversy of his papacy centered on Fr. Tom Reese from America magazine. What are the lessons of that episode for Jesuit-sponsored publications?
America magazine, under the competent and dynamic guidance of Fr. Tom Reese, believed that the best service to a mature Catholic public was to let the two sides of a controversial question to defend their views. … However, this orientation did not meet the approval of some pastorally concerned priests who were worried about a negative effect on the faith-growth of the Catholics. They expect that Jesuit publications will offer clear standings to meet the questions of the day, avoiding confusion and relativism. Unhappily, instead of changing his policy, Fr. Reese resigned. This episode takes us back to St. Ignatius when he speaks about sentire cum ecclesia (feeling with the church). …

Did the initial concerns about America come from the United States rather than the Vatican?
Yes, from clergy outside the Jesuits in the United States, including some in senior positions.

---

It is clear that even Father Reese's superior, the head of all the Jesuits, found Father Reese's conduct in this respect unfortunate, and worse, that he is going against the order's founder's own dictum of sentire cum ecclesia.

So why is the Pope made the villain in all this?

The next time you come across another reference to America and Father Reese, remember what Fr. Kolvenbach said, and even better, remember what St. Ignatius admonished his priests!

New book focuses on pseudo-Catholic colleges and organizations

Dr. Ann Hendershott

Hamden, Conn., Sep 7, 2009 / 10:44 pm (CNA).- Dr. Anne Hendershott, a former faculty member at the University of San Diego has recently released her new book, Status Envy: the Politics of Higher Education, in which she explains that Catholic higher education is distancing itself from Catholic teaching in order to keep up with its secular counterparts.

Hendershott spoke to the Catholic Transcript, newspaper for the Archdiocese of Hartford, about how her experiences as a 15-year faculty member at the University of San Diego helped her to write her latest book on Catholic higher education.

In a description on the cover of her book she explains that since Catholic universities are not generally regarded as “top-notch,” they strive to define their success and status based on secular standards. Because of this, faculty and administration work to “distance universities from Catholic ideas and curriculum,” she said. Hendershott explains that some schools “have distanced themselves so far from their Catholic origins that the church no longer recognizes them as Catholic institutions.”

Some Catholic colleges and universities “have these beautiful statues and they take their prospective students and their moms and dads and say, ‘This is our statue of Mary,’ and, 'This is our grotto,’” Hendershott explained in her interview. “They don’t say, ‘This is where we have the transgender fashion show.’ They have this façade of pious people. But what goes on inside … it’s fake. I worked at one for 15 years. I know how fake it is."

She also revealed that during her time at the university, she was one of the few pro-life faculty members.

"I kept saying, ‘What are we doing with internships at Planned Parenthood?’ You’re not popular when you say things like that because all of the pro-choice feminists on campus will hate you. And they did," she noted.

Hendershott moved back to her home of Connecticut five years ago and is now a professor of urban studies at The King’s College in New York. "I love it. It’s a place where I’m allowed to be Catholic," she said. She also mentioned that she did not attend a Catholic college as a student. “That’s how I stayed Catholic, and I didn’t let my children go to Catholic colleges."

In addition to writing, she also currently focuses on "pseudo-Catholic organizations like Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good" as well as Voice of the Faithful and the roles they play in her state.

Hendershott’s previous writings include: The Politics of Abortion; The Politics of Deviance, and The Reluctant Caregivers: Learning to Care for a Loved One with Alzheimer's.

Polka Mass to be held Oct. 4 as part of two-day Octoberfest

Catholic Times
Sunday, 13 September 2009 00:00

STAUNTON — A "Polka Mass" will be celebrated in St. Michael Church, Staunton, at 10 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 4. Playing for the Mass will be the Plavi Dunav Tamburitans, featuring Dave Dopuch, bugaria; Mark Ozorizzi, bass fiddle; Ray Slapak, accordion, and Ted Dragovich and Paul Godasich, brach. The word “tamburitzan” comes from “tambura,” the Croatian word for musical instrument.

The first polka Mass was celebrated in Resurrection Church, Eveleth, Minn. Old ethnic melodies cherished by generations of Slovenian and Croatian people had been especially arranged and adapted with hymn lyrics in English. The result, say organizers, is a joyous, inspiring worship service with the most unusual music and orchestration presented in a manner of dignity which enhances the solemnity of the Mass.

The Polka Mass is part of a two-day celebration of Octoberfest. Following Mass, there will be a chicken dinner, dancing, games, and refreshments available all day. Staunton is located at Exit 41, off I-55.

Uh-oh!


CARDINAL PELL TO DEBATE CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Festival of Dangerous Ideas Aims to Provoke Discussion

SYDNEY, Australia, SEPT. 15, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The first ever Festival of Dangerous Ideas will pit Sydney's archbishop, Cardinal George Pell, against one of the most prominent exponents of modern atheism, British journalist Christopher Hitchens.

A press release from the Sydney Archdiocese announced today that this festival will take place Oct. 3-4 in the Sydney Opera House.

In his address, titled "Without God We Are Nothing," Cardinal Pell plans to speak about secularism as a "minority sport and a temporary phenomenon" that only survives "by attacking Christianity or living off Christianity's moral capital."

The communiqué stated that the prelate will respond the anti-theist address by drawing on his own faith and scholarship, as well as the example of scientific figures.

In a preliminary description of his presentation, Cardinal Pell stated, "Science by itself cannot provide an answer to the God or atheism options. To make such enquiries we need to engage in meta-physics."

He referred to Anthony Flew, a philosopher who converted from atheism, who affirmed, "How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self replication capabilities and 'coded chemistry?'"

The festival will feature over 50 speakers, and is being organized by the St James Ethics Centre in partnership with the Special Broadcasting Service, Foxtel and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Some of the other speakers include: Germaine Greer, Carmen Lawrence, Gary Foley, Susan Greenfield and Keysar Trad.

Other topics include: the merits of democracy, the effect of online networking on developing brains, polygamy and other Islamic values, genetic enhancement, and whether people really want freedom.

The festival Web site states that this event aims to "push the boundaries enough to stimulate, provoke and engage people in wider discussion."

It adds: "Bombs, guns and bullets may be dangerous. Closed or complacent minds make them lethal."


*****************


Making Jesus Fashionable

POSTED BY TOM MCFEELY
National Catholic Register
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 12:35 PM

This is a new twist on evangelization: Christian fashion photographer Michael Belk has assembled a gallery of high-quality images portraying Jesus, combining biblical settings with contemporary dilemmas.

The collection is called “Journeys with the Messiah,” and the images can be viewed at the website Belk has set up to promote them.

The photographs are compelling. So is the story of how the Florida-born Belk became a highly successful fashion photographer in New York, and subsequently developed his Christian faith and decided to dedicate his photographic talents to the service of spreading the Gospel.

Here is the website with the photos and story:

www.thejourneysproject.com/

2009-09-16
17:55:02

This is a new twist on evangelization: Christian fashion photographer Michael Belk has assembled a gallery of high-quality images portraying Jesus, combining biblical settings with contemporary dilemmas.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you, benefan, for the link.  I went there and viewed many of the images, read the accompanying narratives.  The photos are beautiful, just by themselves ...  black and white, a little grainy but very sharp.  They make you think.

I viewed the Samaritan woman image first because that Gospel plays a significant role in the RCIA Scrutiny rites in Lent along with two other Gospels from John - John 9 (Jesus Heals the Man Blind from Birth) and John 11 (The Raising of Lazarus from the Dead). 

Aloha from Hawaii ....

Journeys with the Messiah

PapaBear, did you watch the video too? I thought it was very well done. The young Italian fellow who plays Jesus is a wonderful mix of beauty and dignity. It's a very interesting project. I'm eager to explore the rest of the site.

Pro-Lifers Filmed Acorn Videos

POSTED BY TOM MCFEELY
National Catholic Register
Thursday, September 17, 2009 2:28 PM

Lifenews reports that James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, the two young people who posed as a pimp and a prostitute and covertly videotaped ACORN officials who counseled them on how to apply for federal funding for their prostitution activities, are committed pro-life advocates.

And O’Keefe got his start in making video exposés by collaborating with UCLA student Lila Rose in producing the series of Live Action videos in which Rose recorded Planned Parenthood officials in a number of states counseling her as she posed as a minor seeking to abort her unborn baby. The Planned Parenthood employees discussed how to obtain an abortion without reporting her adult boyfriend to authorities for having committed acts of statutory rape, as required by law.

Major media outlets have downplayed coverage of the apparent Planned Parenthood scandals, and according to this Media Research Center article some news organizations initially tried to do the same about the ACORN revelations. But the information unearthed by O’Keefe and Giles appears so damning that the future of the organization — which last year lost its funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development because of other improper activities that ACORN has undertaken — is now in real peril, with federal and state legislators moving to cut all government funding from ACORN.

Pro-lifers can only hope and pray that the exposés of Planned Parenthood’s apparent misconduct will lead eventually to a similar halt in taxpayer funding of the nation’s largest abortion provider.

************

Pro-Lifers Who Exposed Planned Parenthood on Abortion Made ACORN Videos

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 17, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The political activists who masterminded the ACORN videos that are drawing national attention to the problems in the liberal organization are the same pro-life advocates who were behind a series of videos that have exposed the Planned Parenthood abortion business.

Graduate student James O'Keefe is a national phenomenon thanks to his ACORN videos, but he got his start with Live Action pro-life activist Lila Rose.

With Rose, he headed a string of videos showing how staff at Planned Parenthood abortion centers would cover up potential cases of sexual abuse and statutory rape. In some instances, Planned Parenthood staff would advise Rose about how she could get around state parental involvement laws to get a secret abortion.

In one video, O'Keefe posed as Rose's 23-year old "boyfriend" and a Los Angeles Planned Parenthood staffer offered them advice on how to arrange an abortion that could cover up the alleged statutory rape.

O'Keefe is a 25 year-old Fordham university student who also took part in calls Live Action orchestrated asking Planned Parenthood local affiliates if it would accept donations form someone because they supported the abortions of black babies for racist purposes. In many cases, the staff at the centers gladly accepted the donations and appeared to agree with the motivation behind them.

The abortion center staff were more than happy to accommodate his request, with one Planned Parenthood employee saying, "for whatever reason, we'll accept the money."

O'Keefe emailed pro-life blogger Jill Stanek about the ACORN videos and said he's happy because they are prompting the public to take a second look at the Planned Parenthood videos.

"Millions and millions are reading about the Planned Parenthood videos Lila and I did," he said. "What serendipity."

O'Keefe also talked with the New York Post and told the newspaper that the videos are "the future of activism and investigative reporting."

"This is now my full-time job," he said.

Hannah Giles, a 20-year-old pro-life advocate who is a journalism student at Florida International University, is also behind the latest ACORN videos.