Federal appeals court upholds Virginia’s ban on partial-birth abortions

Judge Paul V. Niemeyer authored the majority opinion in Wednesday’s decision, which won the concurrence of Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III.

“A partially born child is among the weakest, most helpless beings in our midst and on that account exerts a special claim on our protection,” Judge Wilkinson wrote. “The fact is that we — civilized people — are retreating to the haven of our Constitution to justify dismembering a partly born child and crushing its skull,” his opinion continued. “Surely centuries hence, people will look back on this gruesome practice done in the name of fundamental law by a society of high achievement. And they will shudder.”

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“The Origin of the Specious”

(Posted 06/16/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) At a scientific convention in Chicago in 1980, over 150 of the world’s leading evolution experts faced the facts of the fossil record and virtually pronounced the death of Darwinism.

They admitted that after 120 years of digging, the fossil record showed that there are no fossil links between one species and another, i.e., there are no transitional fossils. Thus, it was acknowledged that there is indeed a genetic barrier between species which renders impossible the theory that mankind evolved from apes.

These findings should have buried evolutionism forever as a serious scientific concept. Yet, the opposite has happened. Staggering numbers worldwide have continued to embrace evolution’s false doctrines in preference to scriptural and other evidence relating to man’s true origin.

Writing in Nature, vol.123, evolutionist D.M.S Watson offers a typically atheistic, yet revealing, explanation for this phenomenon: “The theory of evolution”, he says, “is universally accepted not because it can be proven true but because the alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.”

There we have it! Evolutionism is not science versus religion but religion versus religion. It is the religion of those who oppose God, even if that opposition contradicts all that human reason and the laws of nature dictate.

Read the article

Submitted by Doria2

Retouching the Egregious Distortions of the Crusades

Retouching the Egregious Distortions of the Crusades

Review: November 2007 By Philip Blosser. Philip Blosser is Professor of Philosophy at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina.
God’s War: A New History of the Crusades.  By Christopher Tyer­man. Harvard University Press (Belknap). 1040 pages.

The Crusades are generally viewed today as the historical Western equivalent of the jihad — only, in this case, against Islam — a series of holy wars instigated by power-crazed popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are thought to have been the epitome of Western arrogance, self-righteousness, and intolerance — a shameful skeleton in the closet of the Catholic Church and the Western world. By their rampaging incursion into Palestine, Crusaders are supposed to have introduced proto-imperialist Western aggression and barbarism into the peaceful Middle East and debased the enlightened Islamic culture, leaving it in shambles. From Sir Steven Runciman’s classic three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, to the BBC/A&E documentary on the Crusades hosted by Terry Jones several years ago, one needn’t look far for variations on this theme. These pass for standard Western histories these days, even though they are as appallingly inaccurate as they are entertaining.

Thanks to the work of historians such as Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge), Edward Peters (University of Pennsylvania), Donald E. Queller (University of Illinois, ret.), and Thomas Madden (St. Louis University), some of the more egregious distortions of this portrait are being retouched. Perhaps not all would go as far as Madden in describing the Crusades as defensive wars in direct response to Muslim aggression, but there is little question that the colossus of the medieval world was Islam, not Christendom. The Crusades were clearly attempts to meet the challenge of the Muslim conquests of Christian lands in the East. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that Crusading, far from being a lucrative undertaking, was notoriously bad as an economic investment. Many wealthy noblemen were practically bankrupted by mounting a Crusading expedition. Rather, as Peters shows, a spiritual purpose animated Crusaders: While killing was normally wrong, avenging the deaths of fellow Christians as instruments of God’s justice came to be seen as a positively redemptive undertaking. Crusading, as Riley-Smith has argued, was understood in this light as “an act of love” — articulated as a self-sacrificial ideal in Christ’s words, “Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13). In Madden’s view, the two primary goals of the Crusades were, first, to rescue Christians of the East who had been conquered by Muslim invaders and, second, to liberate Jerusalem and the Holy Land, which had been made holy by the Incarnation and earthly life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

Oxford historian Christopher Tyerman is no stranger to the views embodied either in the textbook tradition represented by Runciman’s classic history of the Crusades or the more recent corrective — others would say “revisionist” — efforts represented by Riley-Smith and others mentioned above. Tyerman’s perspective is that of a self-consciously Western secular European, trying to offer as even-handed an account of the Crusades as possible. He does not cynically assume that the Crusades were motivated only by politics and economics, or that they were precursors of colonialism and racism. Instead, he respectfully corrects the errors and untenable suppositions underlying these earlier views of the Crusades, while also giving due respect to prior scholarship where it is warranted. He neither demonizes Islam nor engages in Euro-bashing. Rather than configuring the past as “comfortingly different from the present” or as a “mirror to the present,” he undertakes to explore the history of the Crusades “as far as possible on its own terms.”

Tyerman thus seeks to avoid two common pitfalls of historical interpretation. The first is seen in an attitude of “condescending historical snobbery” that dismisses our ancestors as less educated, less refined, more brutal, credulous, and hypocritical than we are today. This attitude is simply born of ignorance. The second is to presume direct causal connections between atrocities committed by Crusaders and terrorist acts committed by Muslim jihadists today, or direct parallels between U.S. strategies today and the medieval Crusades. Tyerman does not excuse the Crusaders’ slaughter or exonerate Christendom for its sanctification of it; neither does he vilify medieval Christianity.

Perhaps nothing so clearly illustrates Tyerman’s nuanced approach to his subject as his treatment of the Fourth Crusade and its notorious sacking of Constantinople, which is usually portrayed as an irrefutable indictment against the whole Crusading endeavor. By all accounts, excesses were committed in the sacking of Constantinople. However, as Tyerman writes, “the indiscriminate violence and pillage of the assault was reined in the day after the crusaders’ entry…. The sack of Constantinople was an atrocity, but in terms of the day not a war crime.” Tyerman repeatedly points out that a concern that surfaced during the Crusades was whether or not their battles met the criteria for a “just war.” The Crusaders did not view their own cause in every instance as being automatically just, but as one that frequently needed to be reviewed and justified.

No less unsparing is Tyerman in his efforts at even-handed and brutal honesty where it concerns memories painful to Christians, as in the Jewish pogrom of 1096. After a detailed account of forced baptisms and slaughter, he writes: “The lust for money alone cannot explain the consistent flouting of canon law and religious teaching witnessed by the repeated forcible conversions. Nothing in official Christian doctrine justified slaying Jews. Pope Alexander II had explicitly prohibited it….”

Crusading, of course, finally waned in European history. The last formal Crusade was the Holy League against the Ottomans in 1684-1699. According to Tyerman, it was the weakening of papal power and the rise of secular governments in Europe that finally doomed the Crusading impulse in Europe. This did not mean that the Crusading spirit died out altogether. “Crusading, far from an anachronism, provided one impetus for the European age of discovery,” he writes. “In presenting a spiritualized vision of reality, it recognized the temporal world and the actual experience of man while offering to transform both.”

Tyerman’s is a massive and monumental book. Many medievalists have hailed it as the single best book on the Crusades to date, as one that may supplant, if not surpass, Runciman’s three-volume classic. God’s War is truly encyclopedic, treating not only the conventional Crusades in the East, but the Albigensian Crusades in France, as well as the Crusades in Spain, the Baltic, and Balkans. It brings us to the summits to view the panoramic historical sweep and recollect the insights gleaned in the course of the journey.

Submitted by Doria2

Buy it at Amazon

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The education paradox

LET ME BE SURE I UNDERSTAND……..?

 After being interviewed by the school administration, the prospective
teacher said:  ‘Let me see if I’ve got this right:

 “You want me to go into that room with all those kids, correct
their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse, monitor
their dress habits, censor their T-shirt messages, and instill in them a
love for learning.

You want me to check their backpacks for weapons, wage war on drugs and
sexually transmitted diseases, and raise their sense of self esteem and
personal pride.

You want me to teach them patriotism and good citizenship,
sportsmanship and fair play, and how to register to vote, balance a
checkbook, and apply for a job..

You want me to check their heads for lice, recognize signs of
antisocial behavior, and make sure that they all pass the final exams.

You also want me to provide them with an equal education regardless
of their handicaps, and communicate regularly with their parents in
English, Spanish or any other language, by letter, telephone,
newsletter, and report card.

You want me to do all this with a piece of chalk, a blackboard, a
bulletin board, a few books, a big smile, and a starting salary that
qualifies me for food stamps.

You want me to do all this and then you tell me … I CAN’T PRAY?”

Submitted by Doria2

Sobering video just in time for Independence Day. Watch it … before it’s too late!

Click here to watch

Submitted by Doria2

Father Pavone of Priests for Life: Abortion causes unparalleled human devastation.

Make no mistake, abortion is the most horrible of all atrocities. Sometimes people in our own Church attempt to trivialize abortion by lumping it together with the other evils of the world – by comparing it with poverty, disease, war, etc. But as the numbers clearly demonstrate, there is no comparison. Since 1973 there have been 50 million abortions in the United States alone. Worldwide, there are 42 million abortions every year. That means that in the last thirty years, there have been over 1.5 billion abortions!

1.5 billion! That’s the equivalent of approximately one quarter of the entire population of the planet! One quarter of the earth’s population, murdered; snuffed out; gone.

There’s a famous poem about Jesus that concludes with the memorable lines: “All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as that One Solitary Life.”

Unfortunately, we can say about abortion:

All the wars ever fought,
All the holocausts ever perpetrated,
All the plagues that ever raged,
All the bombs that ever dropped,
All the famines that ever laid waste to the land, put together,
have not killed the number of human beings wiped out by abortion.

Click here to read the whole article
Click here to listen to this column in MP3 format
Fr. Frank’s Columns are podcast, see www.priestsforlife.org/podcast

And yet, hope endures, because God’s grace abounds, even amidst such devastation.

Seen on the web: Comment about the Catholic Church

This is from a cradle-Catholic, on her way to 82 years old.

There have been many changes in the Roman Catholic Church since I was carried there to be baptized many, many years ago. Some of these changes were mind-boggling to me at the time, but the church changed, nonetheless.

It boggles the mind to imagine the changes that will come to the church in the next 80+ years. God be with it. I loved the church of my youth, and I love the church of today. How can I not? The church has forgiven me, how can i not forgive the church. Thanks be to God.

— gep

The New Catholic Manliness

Theological curiosity and rigor are not solely male qualities. The mind and the heart, dogma and experience, definition and mystery, truth and love — both men and women need to receive the Faith from all angles and engage it with all their faculties. But we return to natural gender differences again, to what Bollman calls “percentages and proportions” favoring this or that trait: Not only do they want to be spiritual “providers and protectors,” but men will, on average, be drawn more strongly to a religion that provides purchase for their intellects to grasp, distinguish, and, finally, submit to.

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Cardinal O’Malley pulls out from health joint venture over abortion

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley said in a statement, “I am pleased that Caritas Christi was able to achieve this outcome. Throughout this process, our singular goal has been to provide for the needs of the poor and underserved in a manner that is fully and completely in accord with Catholic moral teaching. By withdrawing from the joint venture and serving the poor as a provider in the Connector, upholding Catholic moral teaching at all times, they are able to carry forward the critical mission of Catholic health care.”

The protection of human life and dignity demands that Catholic institutions never contribute to procedures which are inconsistent with Catholic moral teaching, such as abortion and sterilization. These procedures and others are prohibited by the Ethical and Religious Directives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The decision to withdraw from the joint venture follows an extensive analysis by the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) which was undertaken at the request of the Cardinal.

Cardinal O’Malley explained that the goal of the review was to ensure that Caritas Christi could “serve the poor through a plan for participation in the Connector that is in complete accordance with Catholic moral teaching.”

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Barack Obama the ABORTION President says one thing … does another

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The following is a compilation of bill signings, speeches, appointments and other actions that President Barack Obama has engaged in that have promoted abortion before and during his presidency. While Obama has promised to reduce abortions and some of his supporters believe that will happen, this long list proves his only agenda is promoting more abortions.

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Related Catholic Q&A 

The 4th of July is here! Read the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and more.

Click to read the Declaration of Independence

Click to read the Constitution of the United States of America

Read amendments to the Constitution (click the appropriate link below):

• Amendment 1 – Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression
• Amendment 2 – Right to Bear Arms
• Amendment 3 – Quartering of Soldiers
• Amendment 4 – Search and Seizure
• Amendment 5 – Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings
• Amendment 6 – Right to Speedy Trial, Confrontation of Witnesses
• Amendment 7 – Trial by Jury in Civil Cases
• Amendment 8 – Cruel and Unusual Punishment
• Amendment 9 – Construction of Constitution
• Amendment 10 – Powers of the States and People
• Amendment 11 – Judicial Limits
• Amendment 12 – Choosing the President, Vice President
• Amendment 13 – Slavery Abolished
• Amendment 14 – Citizenship Rights
• Amendment 15 – Race No Bar to Vote
• Amendment 16 – Status of Income Tax Clarified
• Amendment 17 – Senators Elected by Popular Vote
• Amendment 18 – Liquor Abolished
• Amendment 19 – Women’s Suffrage
• Amendment 20 – Presidential, Congressional Terms
• Amendment 21 – Amendment 18 Repealed
• Amendment 22 – Presidential Term Limits
• Amendment 23 – Presidential Vote for District of Columbia
• Amendment 24 – Poll Taxes Barred
• Amendment 25 – Presidential Disability and Succession
• Amendment 26 –  Voting Age Set to 18 Years
• Amendment 27 – Limiting Congressional Pay Increases

Chicago elementary school openly supporting Gay Pride Parade … or not?

Nettelhorst Elementary School parent Amy Goodman prepares a wagon
for the 40th annual Pride Parade with daughter Sadie Blade, 3,
while son Ben Blade, 6, plays in their home.
(Tribune photo by Phil Velasquez / June 24, 2009)

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Chicago’s Nettlehorst Elementary School will be the first public school in the community to march in the city’s gay pride parade.  

According to the Tribune, the school’s fence is adorned with thousands of green, blue, purple, and red strips of fabric — each hand-tied by a student. A sign by the gate stated that the elementary school will “be the first Chicago public school to march in the city’s gay pride parade.” The sign also stated that the school believes that family means everybody.
 
OneNewsNow contacted Nettlehorst Elementary School and requested an interview with school principal Cindy Wulbert. However OneNewsNow was informed that she was unavailable, but the person who answered the phone told OneNewsNow that the school does not endorse the gay pride parade; neither is it participating in the event.
 
She also told OneNewsNow that some of the parents of students were participating in the event with their children but that, again, the school is not supporting that effort. When asked about the strips of fabric, OneNewsNow was told that they do not exist.
 
Laurie Higgins is with the Illinois Family Institute and was also told that the school was not participating in the event, but that parents and students who are participating can identify themselves as being a part of Nettlehorst elementary. Higgins was also informed that the sign referred to in the Tribune did not exist.
 
“I’m sorry; this just sounds very fuzzy to me. I find it difficult to believe that the reporter who quoted the sign imagined that the sign was there. And this morning I was told that they were participating, and now we’re told that they are not participating, but that the parents who are marching can actually identify that they are going to Nettlehorst,” she notes. “So I think that it’s a distinction without a difference. It sounds to me like they caught a lot of flack today, and they are trying to find a way to wiggle out of this.”
 
Higgins is currently attempting to contact a Tribune reporter. As far as the participation by some of the parents and students in the gay pride parade, Higgins notes that some of the parents are homosexual, but she believes that is no excuse to expose young children to such an event.
 
“These parades are noted for nudity. Sometimes there are open sex acts. They have cross-dressers in these parades. Any parent who takes their child to this is not a responsible parent, she contends. “To me this is the equivalent to child abuse; it’s exposing their kids to live pornography, and I find it very shocking.”
 
Higgins notes that it would be a pleasant surprise if nudity laws were enforced at this event.

Read the Chicago Tribune article

Article courtesy of OneNewsNow.com

‘Ark of the Covenant’ about to be unveiled?

Ethiopian patriarch supposedly tells pope he will show artifact to world … but doesn’t really mean it!

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

The patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia says he will announce to the world Friday the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, perhaps the world’s most prized archaeological and spiritual artifact, which he says has been hidden away in a church in his country for millennia, according to the Italian news agency Adnkronos.

Abuna Pauolos, in Italy for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI this week, told the news agency, “Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God delivered to Moses and the center of searches and studies for centuries.”

Read the original  article

Read the denial

More about the Ark of the Covenant from the Catholic Encyclopedia

Ann Coulter discusses George Tiller murder on O’Reilly show

Coulter: “I am personally against shooting an abortionist, but I don’t want to impose my moral view on others.”

Watch

Catholic College Leaders Tell Bishops to Butt Out!

In the wake of the Notre Dame commencement scandal, Catholic college leaders representing some of the worst violators of the U.S. bishops’ 2004 ban on honoring public opponents of fundamental Catholic teachings are apparently lobbying the bishops to withdraw their policy.

Read the article

News Headlines and Commentary on Life Issues from Illinois Right To Life

June 23, 2009:
House Health Care Restructuring Bill Funds Pro-Abortion Planned Parenthood
Sonia Sotomayor Worse on Abortion Than David Souter, Pro-Life Leader Says
June 22, 2009:
Late-Term Abortions are Never Necessary: Former Abortionist
Undercover Videos Prompt Tennessee Lawmakers to End Preference for Planned Parenthood
June 19, 2009:
Global “Safe Abortion” Conference Denies Conscience Protections, Risks of Abortion
Pro-Lifers Relieved with Outcome of Geneva UN Human Rights Council Meeting
June 18, 2009:
Federal Civil Rights Commission Warns Hate Crimes Bill Poses “Menace” to Civil Liberties
June 17, 2009:
Pro-life Leaders Face Death Threats, Require Protection from Abortion Rights Radicals
Catholic Colleges Support Internships with Pro-Abortion Orgs, Including PP and NARAL
June 16, 2009:
Abortionist Killed: National News — Abortionist Kills Woman: Ignored
June 15, 2009:
Pro-Life Action League’s Message to Obama: “Abortion Is Not Health Care”
Pro-Life Democrat Saves Abortion Funding Limits Obama Suggested Overturning
Wisconsin Democratic Leaders Prevent Vote to Stop UW Late-Term Abortions

  

Commentary:
PBS Celebrates Late-Term Abortions, Attacks Pro-Life Advocates  (Brent Bozell)
The Return of Anti-People Propaganda  (Steven W. Mosher)
Planned Parenthood is All About Sex  (Judie Brown)
Where’s the Choice in This?  (Chuck Colson)
Obama Scraps Bioethics Council After Forcing Embryonic Tax-Funding  (David Prentice)
Obama on Tiller Murder: Not Presidential, Inappropriate & Politically Motivated  (Dan Zanoza)
Abortion vs. cat ‘murders’  (Jill Stanek)

University of Michigan researchers rail against “pervasive heterosexuality” blaming Grimm, Disney, others

It looks like homosexuals have been victims of  the blatant “heteronormativity” that has been part and parcel of the bulk of the world’s literature and films, since the beginning of time … at least if you believe the “researchers” at the University of Michigan!

From Plato to Shakespeare, to the Little Mermaid, “heteronormativity” is evidently the MAIN reason that we’re not ALL homosexual already.

And of course, homosexuality is perfectly “normal”.

See what your college tuition and tax dollars are paying for?

Read the article, if you have the time to waste on this sort of thing 

Operation Rescue seeking women who had abortions by notorious late term abortionist LeRoy Carhart

June 25, 2009

Wichita, KS – Operation Rescue is asking women who have had abortions by LeRoy Carhart in the past five years to contact them.

“We are conducting a research project and are encouraging women who are ready to share their stories about their abortion experiences with LeRoy Carhart to contact us as soon as possible,” said Operation Rescue Senior Policy Advisor Cheryl Sullenger. “Of course, all communications with us will be held in strictest confidence.”

Carhart operates an abortion clinic known as the Abortion and Contraception Clinic of Nebraska in Bellevue, Nebraska, a suburb of Omaha. He was employed until its closure at Women’s Health Care Services in Wichita, Kansas. He is also licensed to operate in Indiana, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. He may have done abortions in Iowa in the past, as well.

If you had an abortion at by LeRoy Carhart in any of these states over the past five years we would love to speak with you. Your communications will remain confidential and your identity will be protected. Contact Operation Rescue by e-mail at info@operationrescue.org.

John the Baptist, Unborn Witness to Christ

John the Baptist, Unborn Witness to Christ

The touching story of the two unborn children who were present at the Visitation should give us a reason to rejoice with Elizabeth and Mary at the dawning of our salvation. While the mothers basked in the overwhelming grace of the moment, the older of the two children was already working for our salvation in the way decreed for him by the Almighty from all eternity. That little baby was announcing the coming of the Savior even from the womb!

One has to marvel at the life of St. John the Baptist whose feast we celebrate each year on June 24th. Perhaps we take him for granted because his story is so familiar to us, but his vocation to holiness is beyond comparison with any other saint in history. With the exception of Jesus’ most holy Mother, never has there been a human being so perfectly united to the Person of Christ than John. He was so perfect a man that Jesus Himself said that there was “no man born of woman greater than John.” Great men of the world exalt themselves over their subjects as a way to assert their grandeur; yet, John’s greatness was precisely in lowering himself to the depths of the earth (i.e., the Dead Sea, geographically the world’s lowest point on land) and turning the attention of men away from himself onto Another. What worldly man does that? A man who lives in the desert and wears camel hair garments is hardly going to be accepted among the movers-and-shakers of society, but it was this greatest of men who said that he actually had to decrease if he were to fulfill his essential mission. Truly John’s was a life of striking paradoxes which, when examined closely, point out the holiness of the man whose whole existence was to bear witness to Holiness Himself.

John’s greatest witness was not in his words, however. It was in his actions. We know of only two actions outside of his baptizing and preaching that give us a window into this man’s pure soul: his joyful leap in the womb of Elizabeth and his ultimate act of self-sacrifice in martyrdom. In birth and death he was the Lord’s, as in every other moment of his existence. His pre-natal rejoicing at the Christ Child wordlessly proclaimed that all children, no matter the circumstances of their conception or birth, are unqualified blessings to us, joyful additions to the human family of which God never repents. We have the testimony of the “greatest man born of woman” as our witness to the sanctity of each and every human life!

John also valiantly embraced the multiple crosses of his life: penitence, suffering, imprisonment and beheading before the Perfect Sacrifice of the Cross was consummated. No wonder the scriptures tell us that even the wicked Herod, “felt the attraction of his words.” John had that rare integrity of life that filled his words with grace. It was his life, his appearance, his humility, his mission and his gift of self that make John attractive to all generations, especially those who suffer injustice for the cause of righteousness.

I have no doubt that if John the Baptist were alive today he would be standing in front of abortion clinics witnessing to the unborn Christ in each child, calling people to account for their promiscuity, challenging the powers that keep this immoral industry in business, healing the wounded souls victimized by abortion, washing men clean of their sins that lead to death, teaching us to find joy even in our suffering and ready to lay down his own life so that others could live.

Truly there is no greater man born of woman than John the Baptist. He is the Unborn Witness to Christ who shows us the way out of the culture of death; if only we will listen to the silent eloquence of that little baby leaping in his mother’s womb.

Sincerely,

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer,

President, Human Life International

Pope to meet with Obama on July 10

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI will welcome U.S. President Barack Obama to the Vatican July 10 for an audience scheduled to begin at 4 p.m.