3 Quick Takes: Vampire Atheists, Jesus Stomping Class Assignments and Gay Marriage

April 20, 2013 By 6 Comments

Religious freedom and gay marriage have taken a couple of turns while we were looking at other things. Here are 3 Quick Takes.

World Trade Center 9 11 cross 1

1. Vampire Atheist Case Against 9/11 Cross Tossed by Judge

The bizarro case filed by American Atheists claiming that the sight of the 9/11 Cross caused them to experience  “depression, headaches, anxiety and mental pain and anguish” was tossed out of court by a federal judge. The case had sought to have the cross removed from the 9/11 Museum in New York City.

AttheNameofJesus 1

2. Florida Atlantic University Drops Charges Against Student Who Refused to Stomp on Jesus’ Name

Ryan Rotela, a devout Mormon student, refused to stomp on the name of Jesus as he was requested as part of a class exercise. After complaining to administrators, Rotela says he was suspended from the class. The university has now dropped all charges against Rotela and apologized.

3. New Zealand, Uruguay, legalize gay marriage. 

New Zealand’s Parliament voted 77-44 to legalize gay marriage on April 17. Uruguay Chamber of Deputies voted to legalize gay marriage on April 10.

Filed Under: Calling Evil Good, calling good evil, Christian Persecution, Culture, Education, Faith, Family, Following Christ, Marriage, Politics, Religious Freedom, Same Sex Marriage, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , 6 Comments

West, Texas and a Failure of City Planning

April 20, 2013 By 16 Comments

Waco plant explosion

West, Texas is not a region of the State of Texas.

West is the name of a town that almost blew itself off the map this week through a combination of poor city planning and lax enforcement of safety laws.

Fertilizer makes plants grow. It also explodes. Remember the nitroglycerin in dynamite? The “nitro” part of that is the same “nitrates” found in the fertilizer you sprinkle on your rose plants. The difference is quantity and, hopefully, the stability of compound.

I won’t go into the sad history of fertilizer bombs. But I will say that the town of West, Texas played host to a humongous fertilizer bomb in the form of West Fertilizer plant.

There is nothing wrong with having a fertilizer plant as part of your town’s economy. People have to make a living, and fertilizer, if it’s used properly, allows us to grow the crops that feed our planet’s population. We need the stuff, and making it is an honest living.

But it can also be dangerous. That’s why government officials have a responsibility to plan how they allow a town to grow around plants like these. For reasons unknown, the town of West allowed a school and a nursing home, along with a number of private residences, to be situated near a fertilizer plant.

I know full well that the people of this little town are shattered over what has happened. They’ve lost people that, in a community of this size, they all knew and most of them probably loved. Many more were injured. Others have lost their homes. There is no reason for a janey-come-lately from Oklahoma to butt her nose into this and tell these people that they made some mistakes in how they situated this fertilizer plant.

Huge explosion at Texas fertiliser plant 1838708 zps15050523

I am not writing this post to chide or criticize the hurting folks of West. I want to use it to forewarn the rest of us. City planners in lots of places, including my own town, often seem to make their decisions in a sort of moral isolation tank where the preservation of communities and the safety and well-being of residents doesn’t enter into their deliberations. 

Likewise, government inspectors are often either too lax or too punitive in their approach to businesses. I’ve read that the West Fertilizer plant had not been inspected since 1985. 

We need a housecleaning at the local level about things like this.

If you are a Christian and you hold one of these jobs, you have a responsibility to do it honestly and with concern for the common good. I realize that a lot of people who hold these positions would lose their jobs if they tried this, but that doesn’t change what Jesus asks of us.

It also doesn’t ameliorate the responsibility of elected officials to oversee these processes and guarantee that the citizens’ needs are not overlooked. That is their job, even if it means going against the local Chamber of Commerce and getting beat in the next election. Whatever our job, we ultimately answer to God for how we do it.

I’m sure there will be recriminations and ugliness about the tragically wrong-headed city planning that took place in West, Texas. I am equally sure that after the news cycle has moved on, little will change in the future Wests around the country.

We really need to stop driving our government by looking in the rear view mirror and face forward. If you are in city government, you need to replay the videos of West, then give some serious thought to the potential Wests in your town.

We can’t undo things like this once they happen. We can’t bring the dead back to life. I also know that we will never be able to stop terrible things from happening altogether. From the Tower of Siloam to West, Texas, people die in tragedies like this.

But that does not excuse us from doing our best. It does not exempt government officials from careful thought and planning that places the welfare of the citizens it governs as its primary concern.

If you don’t understand that, then you shouldn’t be in government at all.

Filed Under: America, Following Christ, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , 16 Comments

Boy Scouts Leadership Pushes Revised Plan Allowing Homosexual Members

April 20, 2013 By 6 Comments

Scouting sm

Boy Scouts of America’s executive committee produced yet another attempt to change the organizations long-standing ban on homosexual members Friday.

They announced a resolution that would reverse the ban on homosexual boy scouts as individual members, but keep the ban on homosexual scout leaders. The resolution will be voted on by national council at the end of May. 

This comes on the heels of a sometimes rancorous debate about an earlier plan to allow across the board participation in the Boy Scouts by openly gay men and boys.

The state of California has been considering a change in its tax laws that would revoke the Boy Scouts non-profit tax status if they do not admit homosexuals to the organization. This proposed law is called The Youth Equality Act. 

Boy Scouts of America

Supporters of the Boy Scouts’ current position which refuses membership in the organization to openly homosexual members or leaders raise concerns about openly gay members using the Boy Scouts to promote homosexual political and social agendas.

A CNA article describing the situation reads in part:

In an April 19 statement, the Boy Scouts said that “the Executive Committee, on behalf of the National Executive Board, wrote a resolution for consideration that would remove the restriction denying membership to youth on the basis of sexual orientation.”

It added that the resolution would “maintain the current membership policy” of prohibiting openly gay men to serve as adult troop leaders.

The resolution will be receive a vote at the organization’s annual national council in late May.

The announcement of the resolution follows several months of policy review after the Boy Scouts lost funding from high-profile donors such as UPS over the current rules, which bar openly homosexual members.

… Eagle Scout John Stemberger warned that the resolution would create “a myriad of problems for how to manage and ensure the safety of the boys in the program.”

Stemberger is the founder of OnMyHonor.Net, a nationwide coalition of scouts, parents and leaders who support the Boy Scouts’ current policy.
 
“The current membership policy of Scouting, which is backed by more than 100 years of tradition, allows anyone to participate irrespective of sexual orientation, but only disallows the open and aggressive promotion of homosexuality and political agendas,” he explained in an April 19 statement.

Arguing that “parents should still have the final say on the issues of sexuality and politics,” he cautioned that a policy change “injects both those topics right into the program.”  (Read the rest here.) 

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, calling good evil, Child Rearing, Culture, Family, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , 6 Comments

President Obama: The Gun Lobby and Its Allies Willfully Lied

April 18, 2013 By 12 Comments

“This bill represented moderation and compromise,” President Obama said after his gun registry bill went down to defeat yesterday. The President appeared angry at the press conference discussing the bill. He vowed, “This effort is not over … so long as the American people don’t give up” on the effort.

What this means in terms of real politics remains to be seen. The President used political blackmail against Democratic senators to force them to support the Affordable Health Care Act. He also lied to Democratic Congressmen, saying that he would support religious and conscience exemptions to the bill. He then signed and has stood by the HHS Mandate.

I think this led to mistrust of the president in some quarters. I would guess that this played a part in why gun owners were “upset” about this bill and why they did not trust the president’s statements in support of it.

There is a large segment of the population that believes the president absolutely. Unfortunately for him, those were not the citizens whose support he needed to push this bill over. In order to pass gun control, the president needed the votes of Senators and Representatives who are from areas in the country who do not trust the president and who are also strongly in favor of the right to keep and bear arms.

Blaming the “gun control lobby” for “willful lying” seems disingenuous, considering the attitudes of the people in those states. I doubt very much that they needed to lie, willfully or otherwise to get people in those areas to let their elected officials know how they felt about these pieces of legislation.

This is a clip from President Obama’s statement on the gun control vote yesterday.

YouTube Preview Image

Filed Under: America, Gun Control, Gun Violence, Politics, Uncategorized, Violence in America Tagged With: , , , , , , 12 Comments

Gun Control, The Gun Lobby, the Prez and Voters Who Mean It

April 18, 2013 By 10 Comments

Gary england We had weather in Oklahoma last night. 

It wasn’t too bad; just some small hail, winds, driving rain and a couple of little tornadoes. But anytime we have weather, we watch Gary England. Weatherman in Oklahoma is a serious job. People trust their lives to those folks on tv and most of us feel safest when the person we’re trusting is Gary England.

Watching the weather gave my family and I a healthy dose of other news, along with watching the radar screen and storm chasers. We worked in some channel flipping to see what was happening with the fertilizer plant explosion in Waco. Somehow or other that led to a momentary pause at MSNBC in which they were deploring what they said was the “gun lobby’s” total “control” of Congress.

This particular public deploring was a reaction to the defeat of President Obama’s plan for strict background checks on would-be gun purchasers. I didn’t watch it long enough to sort it out, but I’m betting that the defeat was more difficult for the bill’s supporters to take because it was handed to them by the Democratically controlled Senate instead of the Republican-controlled House.

I mean, what’s a prez to do when his own party leaves him standing at the curb like that?

NRA Enter the “gun lobby” boogie man. 

I don’t mind when critics of legislation get upset over the hammerlock special interests have over so much of our public policy in this country. In fact, I share their pain. But I am little tired of hearing about the draconian “gun lobby.” 

My experience as a voting member of a legislative body for these past 17 years is that the “gun lobby” couldn’t persuade anybody to do anything if the people themselves didn’t back them up. The real “lobby” that killed this legislation is almost certainly the American people. 

That’s a painful pill for gun control backers to swallow. It appears to be so tough that they will not admit the truth of it, no matter how obvious it is.

The people of this country do not, by and large, want gun control. You can slice it and dice it and poll it until your spreadsheet software crashes and it doesn’t change anything. If you pass a gun control law, people who haven’t voted since heck was a pup will register just for the purpose of voting against you.

Back in 1994, I had relatives who had never voted in their lives and who were no more political than your average goldfish get themselves registered to go vote against a Congressman who was running for the United States Senate. Why did they do this? The Congressman had voted for the Brady Bill that President Clinton passed.

That, of course, is part of the  reason why polls don’t mean much with these fire-brand issues. Pollsters poll “likely voters,” which is another way of saying that they poll people who are in the habit of voting. But issues like gun control get the Saturday Night Wrestling crowd off the couch and out to the polls.

This kind of voter can not be massaged. They can not be persuaded by other issues. There is nothing you can say or do that will change their minds once they’ve set them on voting you out of office. If you represent certain parts of these United States and you do something as dumb as vote against these folks on one of their I-mean-it issues, you’d better be ready to pack up your office and go home, because your time in elected office is through.

That, and not the draconian machinations of the “gun lobby,” is why that bill bit the dust yesterday. It is also why if it hadn’t bitten the dust, the United States Senate would most likely be in Republican control come December 2014.

These aren’t tea leaves you need a sooth sayer to read for you. They’re the plain facts of what matters to a big swath of the electorate in a good many states.

Obama

Based on the news stories I’ve read, President Obama is steamed about losing his bill. He’s pledged to fight on and has accused the “gun lobbies and their allies” of “willfully lying” about the legislation. Frankly, I find the notion of a president who publicly promised conscience and religious exemptions in order to pass the Affordable Health Care Act and then turned around and signed the HHS Mandate accusing anyone of “willfully lying” to be pretty rich.

Whatever.

My only thought is that if the Senators in question represent people who don’t want gun control as much as Oklahomans don’t want it, they’d be wise to stick with what they did yesterday. The only reason to go against your constituents when they feel as strongly as people around here do about this is if you personally believe in it enough to sacrifice your career for it.

The following excerpt from a Newsmax article will give you a taste of the President’s angst over this vote.

An angry President Barack Obama denounced Senate Republicans on Wednesday for failing to pass stricter background checks on gun purchases, calling it a “pretty shameful day” for Washington.

Speaking in the Rose Garden as the families of some of the victims of the Newtown, Conn., shootings looked on, Obama vowed to press on in the fight for tougher gun laws.

“Families that know unspeakable grief summoned the courage to petition their elected leaders,” he said, standing alongside former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who left Congress after suffering a life-threatening gunshot wound to the head. “A few minutes ago a minority in the United States Senate decided it wasn’t worth it. They blocked common-sense gun reforms even when these families looked on from the gallery.”

Earlier, Senate Republicans, backed by rural-state Democrats, blocked legislation to tighten restrictions on the sale of firearms.

In recent weeks, the families of some of the victims of the December shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School pressed lawmakers with stories of personal loss, as Second Amendment advocates countered that none of the proposed changes would have stopped the grisly tragedy.

Attempts to ban assault-style rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines also faced certain defeat in a series of showdown votes.

The background check measure commanded a majority of senators, 54-46, but that was well short of the 60 votes needed to advance. A total of 41 Republicans and five Democrats pulled together to scuttle the plan.

“The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill,” Obama said, referring to fears by some that the law would allow for creation of a federal gun registry.

The president alluded to polls that peaked at 90 percent of Americans supporting expanded background checks for convicted criminals and the severely mentally ill. He said “90 percent” of Democrats supported the bill, but “90 percent” of Republicans opposed it.

“There were no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn’t do this,” Obama said. “It came down to politics.”
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/Obama-Senate-background-checks/2013/04/17/id/500024?promo_code=F323-1&utm_source=Life_Site_News&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1#ixzz2QqimRzua Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!

Filed Under: America, Gun Control, Gun Violence, Politics, Uncategorized, Violence in America Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 10 Comments

State Senator with Mind of Two-Year Old Wins Dumb-Off with Constituent

April 18, 2013 By 15 Comments

Brian nieves This guy clearly has senator-itis. 

Senator-itis is a deadly brain disease that leads to delusions of self-importance, rudeness and bizarre behavior. Coupled with the instantaneous communication of the internet and the “send” button on email software, it can cause homeric public stupidity.

Something happens to people’s poor little brains when they walk into capitol buildings and take their seats in legislative chambers. They start believing the flattery. They start thinking that they are as important as the office that they hold on a temporary basis.

In truth, elective office belongs to the people. The house seat I represent is not “mine.” It belongs to the people of District 89. They chose me to speak for them in state government and they allow me to exercise their bit of power in government in their name. But both the power and the position belong to them, not me.

I’m just the messenger.

Missouri State Senator Brian Nieves appears to have forgotten all this. He got an email from someone who didn’t like the newsletter he sends. The emailer told him to take them off the mailing list.

In my office, the reply would have been I apologize and of course we will remove your name from our list. Thank you for letting us know your preferences. Done and done.

But Senator Bozo replied with a hectoring insult, initiating an email exchange that sounds for all the world like a couple of bratty kids yelling barbs at each other across a playground.

Aside from wondering how this guy managed to get himself elected, I do find his veiled threat about being “threatened” more than a little over the top. It is against the law to threaten an elected official, but so far as I know, there is no law whatsoever against insulting them.

Here’s how it works: If you tell me that you’re going to harm me or my family if I don’t vote the way you want, then that’s a crime. And it should be. We can’t run a government if the people we elect are in fear for their lives because of controversial votes.

However, if you tell me I’m 20 kinds of fool who could easily be replaced with a snail in a business suit, that’s not a crime. It’s an insult. If you tell me that you’re going to take my newsletters and flush them down the drain and that if I ever show up at your house to ask for your vote, you’ll sic the dogs on me, that’s still not a threat. In fact, I’d probably think that was funny … before I x-ed you off my list.

But Bozo the Senator evidently thinks that when someone insults him or tells him to go soak his head, they’re threatening him. And he feels obliged to issue a veiled threat back. I find that disturbing.

All in all, I think this senator needs to consider a return to private life. He’s doesn’t appear to have the mental equipment to handle public office. As for the John Q Citizen who thinks his senator is a douchetard … what can I say? He lost the dumb-off, but not by much.

From Yahoo News:

When an unsolicited email arrives, most people hit delete and move on with their lives. Not Bart Cohn.

The Wildwood, Mo., resident received a newsletter from Brian Nieves, a Republican member of the Missouri Senate with whom Cohn does not see eye to eye on the issues. According to River Front Times, which originally reported the story, Cohn wrote a seven-word reply to Nieves’ newsletter. “Take me off your mailing list. Freak.”

And thus began a wackadoo exchange of insults between Cohn and Nieves, all of which were forwarded by Cohn to River Front Times.

After Cohn’s tersely worded response, Nieves issued a retort:

Who are you? Is there something wrong with you? Are you incapable of communicating in a way that common, decent people do?

Tell me this, how did you ever even get on MY Distribution list?

Cohn fired back:

Remove me from your list. I despise you.

Nieves then wrote this:

Tell me who you are and how you ever got on my list. I don’t take we’ll to some troll sneaking on to my distribution list.

Things get weird(er). From Cohn:

I don’t care what you take well to. Take me off your list. I don’t know how I got on your list. And I don’t sneak. I’ll tell you to your face I think you’re a freak. Now act like a big boy, senator, and remove me from your list as I’ve requested. And stop harassing me or I’ll make an issue of it.

Nieves apparently took issue with the word “issue.” He wrote:

Explain “issue”

Are you threatening an elected official? I’m sure your very Big & Bad & Tuff.

The ONE and ONLY way for you to have gotten on my list is by YOU having communicated with me via email. I guess your the type who wants to be able to throw something my way but not hear back?

You’ll be removed but be Very Careful to NEVER Threaten me! Also, don’t ever send anything to this email address again because every time you do, you automatically get put back on the distribution list. :-)

Think that’s the end? Nope. Cohn responded with more insults:

I didn’t threaten anyone, you tool. You are such a douchetard it’s not even funny. Now go do some work on your insane conspiracy theories that everyone laughs about behind your back. You’re a joke!

Read the rest here.

Filed Under: America, Humor, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , 15 Comments

There is No Reason for Late-Term Abortion

April 15, 2013 By 35 Comments

Kermit Gosnell 25

Late-term abortionist, Dr Kermit Gosnell

There is no reason for late-term abortions.

Abortion supporters are fond of saying that people like Dr Kermit Gosnell, the late Dr George Tiller and Dr LeRoy Carhart perform a “necessary service” for “desperate women” when they “provide” late term abortions.

Not true.

Not even close to being true.

There is no reason for a late-term abortion. None. Zip. Zilch. 

Designall dll

 The legislators I work with, and (I would guess) much of the general public, lives in a fantasy land about abortion. They seem to think that an elective abortion involves a preternatural procedure where the doctor waves a medical magic wand over the pregnant woman and — poof! — she is no longer pregnant.

In their self-consoling dream world, abortion is just a re-wind that doesn’t put women through a surgery or, in the case of late-term abortions, a labor and delivery. All they will allow themselves to think that happens with “safe, legal abortion” is that the woman pays her money and is, through a miraculous medical intervention, made unpregnant.

In this fantasy world, there are no dismembered little baby bodies and their scrambled parts to reassemble and check to make sure the abortion is complete. In fantasy abortions, women do not experience pain during the fantasy procedure and danger is non-existent. 

This “thing” that will one day “become a baby” is not a human being. In the cowardly imaginations of those who won’t face facts, no one suffers, no one dies, and in fact, nothing much happens in an abortion. It’s all painless, deathless problem solving for problems they don’t want to actually solve.

That’s where most of the resistance to pro life legislation lives. It is a product of convenient lies that allow people to do monstrous things and keep their own mental skirts clean, at least so long as they box themselves off from reality and never know the truth. 

This nonsense about “necessary services” for “desperate women” concerning the work of Gosnell/Tiller/Carhart is  fantasy carried to the point of deliberate delusion. 

Let’s stop for a moment and try thinking about the reality rather than the fantasy.

Pregnant

Late-term abortion refers to the deliberate killing of babies whose mothers are far along in their pregnancies. That’s where the phrase “late-term” comes from. What does that mean? It means that the baby looks like a baby, acts like a baby, sounds like a baby and, if it’s born at this point, would have a fighting chance of living like a baby. 

Late-term abortions are performed on women who advanced months into their pregnancies before their “desperation” set in. This “service” requires that the women be put through horrific medical procedures that involve giving them large doses of contraction-stimulating hormones to induce unusually violent and painful labor and delivery. A nurse who assisted in these things told me that the doctors they worked for deliberately stimulated contractions so violent that the contractions would usually kill the baby while it was being born.

Aside from what this does to the baby, what do you think it does to the woman? The grisly and illegal procedure we call “partial birth abortion” requires that the baby be delivered feet first, then the delivery stopped so that the doctor can suction out the baby’s brain before it is legally born. Proponents of this procedure talked about how it was necessary for “women’s health.” But I ask you, aside from what it does to the baby, what do you think that does to the woman? How is that consistent with “women’s health?”

I’m not talking about her emotions here. I am talking about labor and delivery practices that are painful, dangerous and quite horrible for the woman. How is this something that protects “women’s health?”

The answer is, it doesn’t.

In addition to what this does to the woman, consider for a moment that many of these babies must be deliberately killed before the procedure takes place to keep them from being born alive. The way I’ve heard that this is usually done is to give the baby a shot of poison directly into its heart. This means jabbing a needle through the mother’s abdomen and into the baby. It means the mother has to feel her baby thrash around the avoid the needle, then feel it die. All this is done to keep the legal fiction that this late-term abortion is not, in fact, a cold-blooded murder.

In spite of this, many of these babies are born alive. The doctor might miss the mark and not shoot the poison into the baby’s heart. Or, the dose might be too small. Or, the doctor doesn’t administer the death-dealing drug and the baby is strong enough to survive the excessively violent contractions the doctor puts the mother through.

Gianna jessen 500x625

Gianna Jessen, survived late-term abortion as a baby.

 However it happens, babies do manage to survive these deliberate attempts to medically murder them and are born alive. When that happens, what does a doctor do? For decades, they killed these babies. Changes in the law now require them to administer medical care to the babies, but as we’ve learned, that doesn’t always happen.

How does all this support my contention that late-term abortion is never necessary? What about abortion to save the mother’s life?

The answer is so obvious it’s hard to believe people don’t see it. 

Premature baby

If the woman is going to have to go through a labor and delivery anyway, there is no reason whatsoever to kill the baby. If the mother’s life is at stake, all that needs to be done is deliver the baby. Then, do your medical best to save both the child and its mother. 

There is no reason to kill these babies. There is no medical reason. No moral reason. No situation that requires it.

In some instances, late-term abortions are performed on very young girls. Proponents don’t argue their case, because they don’t have one. They simply point to the young girl and yammer about how can anyone “force” her to have a child. Their whole argument is based on the magic rewind fantasy abortion.

It ignores the fact that a late-term abortion will put the young girl through a much harsher labor and delivery than she would experience if she received life-saving medical care designed to save both her and her baby. It ignores the reality that the baby is already here. There is a child.

All late-term abortion does is kill the child. It does not save the mother anything. It is not “necessary” and it is not done to “save” “desperate” women. 

There is no reason for late-term abortion. 

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, calling good evil, Culture, Health Care, Misogyny, Politics, Pro Life, The War on Girls, Uncategorized, Violence Against Women, Violence in America, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 35 Comments

Pope Backs Reforms of US Sisters’ Leadership Conference

April 15, 2013 By 27 Comments

So far as I’m concerned this settles it. Cq5dam web 1280 1280

According to Archbishop Gerhard Muller, prefect for the Vatican’s doctrine congregation, the Holy Father has reaffirmed the Vatican’s assessment of the American Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The assessment found “serious doctrinal problems” and the findings also said that the Conference needed to be reformed.

This action resulted in public controversy and bitter comments that the bishops were a just a bunch of men attacking women for supporting the poor. I think quite a bit of the backlash could have been avoided if the bishops had done a better job of explaining what their concerns with the Leadership Conference for Women Religious were.

The situation was complicated by partisan electoral politics and the fact that the bishops were forced to take a stand against the HHS Mandate at the same time the assessment came down.

Us catholic bishops

It was poor timing, that played into the hand of secular politicians, to say the least. 

What followed is what has happened far too often. Supporters and attackers of the assessment inside the Church went right past the issues in question and headed straight on into name-calling and slander of both the bishops and the sisters. If you listened too long to either side in this debate, you would come away convinced that the other side was evil incarnate.

Nuns on the bus AP12061819474 fullwidth 620x350

We really need to stop this kind of behavior if we are going to continue calling ourselves Christians. I am not talking here about private conversations with your closely-held friends, family and clerical advisers. I am talking about the sorry practice of Catholics trashing Catholics in public discussion.

So far as the issue of reform in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is concerned, the Pope has spoken and that settles it. At least it does for me. I support my Church in its struggle to conform itself in all its members to the Gospels of Christ.

At the same time, there is no way that I am going to engage in an attack on the sisters. I was the Oklahoma contact for their legislative alerts for a couple of years and I can say they never once asked me to support or oppose any piece of legislation where I thought their position was contrary to Church teaching. I think they do a lot of good.

However, if the Holy Father has reviewed the report and says that he supports its findings, including the need for reform of the Conference, then I believe it, trust it and am not going to give it one more thought.

I will however, pray that this whole situation will be resolved in a manner that leads to the greater glory of the Kingdom and the increased holiness of all involved. 

From Catholic News Agency:

Vatican City, Apr 15, 2013 / 07:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has reaffirmed the Vatican’s assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which found it had “serious doctrinal problems” and needed to be reformed.

Archbishop Gerhard L. Müller, the prefect for the Vatican’s doctrine congregation, met in Rome with conference president Sister Florence Deacon on April 15, along with Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, who was named to carry out the reform of the group.

Archbishop Müller told Sr. Deacon that he “recently discussed the Doctrinal Assessment with Pope Francis, who reaffirmed the findings of the Assessment and the program of reform for this Conference of Major Superiors,” an April 15 statement from the congregation said.

“It is the sincere desire of the Holy See that this meeting may help to promote the integral witness of women Religious,” the communiqué stated, and this requires “a firm foundation of faith and Christian love, so as to preserve and strengthen it for the enrichment of the Church and society for generations to come.”

Since it was his first time meeting with the leadership of the group, Archbishop Müller thanked the sisters for their “great contribution” to the Church in the United States, “as seen particularly in the many schools, hospitals, and institutions of support for the poor” that have been founded and staffed by religious.

He also “emphasized that a Conference of Major Superiors, such as the LCWR, exists in order to promote common efforts among its member institutes as well as cooperation with the local Conference of Bishops and with individual Bishops.

“For this reason, such Conferences are constituted by and remain under the direction of the Holy See,” he stated, citing canons 708-709. (Read more here.) 

Filed Under: America, Catholic, clergy, Following Christ, HHS Mandate, Nuns, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , 27 Comments

Five Abortion Workers Quit on First “Leave the Abortion Industry Day”

April 15, 2013 By 3 Comments

No Abortion Workers = No Abortions

It’s a simple equation. One that Abby Johnson seeks to employ with her ministry Then There Were None. The ministry held its first Leave the Abortion Industry Day on Monday, April 8. Five abortion workers have contacted her ministry for help in quitting the industry so far.

In addition to the babies this ministry will save, these five people have been saved as well.

Thank you Abby, for what you are doing.

From LifeSiteNews:

April 11, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Abby Johnson, the organizer behind the first-ever “Leave the Abortion Industry Day,” also known as Exodus 2013, says she is thrilled with the outcome of Monday’s event.

So far, she says, five abortion industry workers have contacted her ministry for help to leave their jobs. In addition, numerous media outlets, including the Mike Huckabee show and America’s News HQ show, and 30 radio stations, publicized the event.

“On Monday, we were able to talk to 5 employees who were looking to quit their jobs!!” she wrote in an e-mail to supporters today. “Five more people OUT OF THE ABORTION INDUSTRY!!  Five more people on the road to healing!” (Emphasis in original.)

Former Planned Parenthood clinic manager Abby Johnson.

Johnson, who is a former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic, started her ministry to abortion workers, And Then There Were None (ATTWN), in June of last year. Even before Monday’s event, the ministry had already helped 47 abortion workers leave the industry.

ATTWN provides emotional, financial, and spiritual support for workers who have left their jobs and are looking for a new line of work.

ATTWN’s motto is: “No more abortion clinic workers, no more abortion clinics, no more abortions. It starts with the workers.” (Read more here.)

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Catholic, Christianity, Culture, Following Christ, Misogyny, Politics, Pro Life, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , 3 Comments

Dame Margaret Thatcher: Women, Power and Politics

April 13, 2013 By 10 Comments

Thatcher zpsa7255709

Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has been excoriated this week in a way that makes no sense.

After all, she was a duly elected official who served her term in office in a way that received approval from a good number of the people she governed. Nothing in her governance that I know of lends itself to the unseemly, downright crude behavior that has followed her death.

Jessica Hof, who blogs at All Around the Watchtower, wrote an interesting post, Women, Power and Politics, which was published on nebraskenergyobservor, taking the Iron Lady’s attackers to task.

I’ve been disturbed by the viciousness of the post-mortem attacks on Dame Thatcher myself. I saw a photo of one sign (which was held by a woman) proclaiming “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead.” If anyone dared to use language that caricatured African Americans in this way when speaking of President Obama, they would be rightly criticized and shamed for it. However, as usual, when the object of this sort of thing is a woman, no one remarks on it.

Here is Jessica’s fine post in its entirely. Published with permission.

Women and power

by JessicaHof

womenandpowerWe live in a society in which men still dominate the political scene. Relax, this isn’t the prelude to a rant about how unfair that is – quite the opposite. Politics takes the sort of dedication which the gender which does obsession with stuff well has in spades. From my limited experience, men quite like power and they don’t, on the whole, regret (much) the loss of family time which it necessitates. Men seem happy to put the time and the effort in, so I see no reason why they shouldn’t reap the rewards.

When Mr Blair became Prime Minister he came to office with a lot of new female MPs, and we were told that a new era had opened. Well, nearly twenty years on, little has changed. Few of those women have got on in politics, and they have not inspired a new generation of women to try their hand.  It does not seem how hard feminists try, women don’t want to play that game. Sure, you’ll get some women who want to do it, but the idea that most women want to do it seems, by the evidence, to be wrong.

Maybe that’s why there is an unpleasant tine of misogyny in some of the leftist criticisms of Mrs Thatcher. Would anyone be calling a dead Tony Blair a ‘warlock’, and what, pray, is the male equivalent of ‘the bitch’. It is hard not to see in some of this a sense by men (and some women) that there was something fundamentally wrong in Mrs T even being in power.

A difficult one for the Left of course. They are supposed to be in favour of equal opportunity and female empowerment – and there was Mrs Thatcher, who was very powerful and owed nothing to equal opps.  She took on the men at their own game and she was better at it. That may lead a woman like Glenda Jackson (whose idea of empowerment was to run round in the nude in a Ken Russell film) to say she wasn’t her idea of what a woman should be, but that is more evidence, were any more needed, of the inability of leftist women to actually understand the majority of their own sex. Most of us don’t want to be men. We like men, we think they are wonderful, and we know that properly handled, they are God’s greatest gift. But there’s a whole art in that :)

Mrs Thatcher never pretended to be like men. She used her femininity as a powerful weapon. She knew that most men like a good-looking woman, and that being strong, efficient and capable are no bars to being attractive. By all accounts, she was perfectly capable of flirting with Mr Reagan, and even the socialist Mitterrand was struck by her combination of the mouth of Marilyn Monroe with the eyes of Caligula. She made her husband a cooked breakfast every morning, and she fussed over her staff like a mother hen.

The plain fact is that in our society there is no template for what being a woman in power is supposed to be like. No one makes anyone go into politics, and if you don’t want people to comment on your looks, don’t go into politics. If you do, don’t complain that you don’t get treated like a man – do what Mrs T did and take advantage of that.

Filed Under: Misogyny, Politics, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , 10 Comments