How will gay ‘marriage’ hurt us? Here’s how.

June 28, 2012 (Breakpoint.org) – Christians are often asked by gay activists why they oppose same-sex “marriage.” “How does our marriage hurt you?” they ask.

Well, I can think of one significant way it will hurt us: It will destroy religious freedom and free speech rights.

The handwriting is on the wall in Canada, which legalized same-sex “marriage” in 2005, in effect completely changing its true meaning. Since then, as Michael Coren notes in National Review Online, “there have been between 200 and 300 proceedings … against critics and opponents of same-sex marriage.” Of course he means legal proceedings.

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Maternal mitochondrial DNA traces British man’s heritage back to Garden of Eden.

Researchers from Britain’s DNA, who carried out the tests, said the result meant that in genetic terms he was a “thoroughbred”, and could be described as the “grandson of Eve, or the grandfather of everyone in Britain”.

They were so surprised by the results that they phoned Mr Kinnaird, a widower who lives in the far north of Scotland, to break the news to him.

They told him his mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), passed through the female line, was 30,000 years old and only two genetic mutations removed from the first woman, while most men have a genome with around 200 mutations since the earliest humans.

Alistair Moffat, the historian and rector of St Andrews University, who was involved in setting up the DNA project, said: “It is an astonishing result and means he could have been in the ‘Garden of Eden’.

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No kidding: Dad and son ordained Catholic priests.

Chuck Hough the third (left) and fourth (right) are Deacons from the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. They are a part of 60 Anglican priests who will become Catholic priests within the next year. Six will be ordained Saturday morning at Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Church. It may be the first time a father and son have been ordained in the same Mass.

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Kansas Gov. Brownback: “Freedom is a gift from God, not a privilege a government is entitled to take away. This unconscionable mandate must not be allowed to stand.”

TOPEKA — Thousands of people rallied Friday at the Kansas statehouse with Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and the state’s Roman Catholic bishops against a federal mandate for health insurance coverage of birth control, protesting it as an attack on religious freedom.

The event was part of a nationwide “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign organized by Catholic bishops nationwide in opposition to the policy announced in January by President Barack Obama.

Speakers urged the crowd to keep protesting the mandate and remain active politically.

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For a 1950s TV Evangelist, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, a Step Toward Sainthood.

For Archbishop’s Sheen’s admirers, the announcement came as an official stamp of approval that meant Archbishop Sheen’s life was worthy of emulation.

“He is the patron saint of media and evangelization,” said the Rev. Robert Barron, whose Illinois-based ministry, Word on Fire, seeks to spread the Gospel through television and the Internet. And the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who often appears on television, said:  “Sainthood has come to the media age. In another couple of years we will have the first Twitter or Facebook saint.”

Archbishop Sheen brought Catholicism into the living rooms of Catholics, Protestants and people of other faiths at a time when anti-Catholic sentiment was still common in the United States. Wearing his full clerical garb, with scarlet cap and robe, he preached and offered simple lessons, like the importance of laughing at oneself. Signing off at the end of his show, “Life Is Worth Living,” he often raised his hands above his head with a performer’s pizazz.

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Fortnight for Freedom Issue #10: The High Personal Costs of President Obama’s “Free” Birth Control.

by Richard M. Doerflinger

(This was written before the implementation of the now infamous HHS Mandate.)

On July 21, the health news site Natural Society. . . featured these breaking news headlines: “Newer Birth Control Pill Linked to Higher Risk of Blood Clots”; “Birth Control Increases Risk of Contracting, Transmitting HIV”; and finally, “Medical Panel Pushes for Free Birth Control for Women.”

Hmm, one might ask, who was on this medical panel? Dr. Kevorkian? But no, it was the Institute of Medicine, advising the Department of Health and Human Services on “preventive services for women” to mandate in virtually all private health plans under the new health care reform act.

HHS says it delegated this task to the IOM so people would see the outcome as based on “science” rather than politics. But IOM’s report seems based less on science than on the ideology of authors who share Planned Parenthood’s view of sex and procreation, several of whom have served on the boards of PP affiliates and other pro-abortion organizations. The report says enhanced access to contraception will reduce abortions, though there is ample evidence against that claim (PDF).

In fact, the panel recommends that health plans must cover all drugs approved by the FDA as prescription contraceptives – including the newly approved “emergency contraceptive” called Ella, which like RU-486 can cause an abortion weeks into pregnancy. When asked about a conscience exemption for those who have a moral or religious objection to this, an IOM spokesperson said it wasn’t her panel’s job to take account of other people’s personal “feelings.” Many fear HHS will take the same approach.

Secular news media – Time, U.S. News, USA Today, L.A. Times – obediently repeated the panel’s public relations message that it is offering “free” birth control for women. That message is nonsense. Currently women who want birth control coverage pay for it through their premiums, and sometimes also have a co-pay or out-of-pocket expense. Under the new mandate they will still pay for it, but the cost will be buried in the overall premium – and everyone else, including churches and other religious employers as well as individual Catholics, will be forced to pay for it in their premiums too, so payments coerced from those who object will make birth control coverage a bit cheaper for those who want it.

And what about the “cost” in women’s lives from those blood clots and cases of AIDS? Researchers have known about both problems for years. In 2005, for example, a study funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control noted: “The positive link between pill use and HIV infection was… supported by a meta-analysis of 28 studies, including seven prospective studies.” Most American women haven’t been told this. Ironically, other “preventive services” recommended by the IOM include screening for sexually transmitted diseases. But why would you mandate something that can cause what the other services on your list seek to prevent?

The other big “cost,” of course, is the cost to freedom of religion and respect for conscience. Though not alone in its view, the Catholic Church has long been prophetic and counter-cultural in warning that artificial contraception and sterilization do not enhance women’s well-being. No American, of course, is required by law to believe that teaching. But should the government, in the name of all Americans, now coerce even the Church’s institutions into acting on the opposite view — when the evidence supporting its message is stronger than ever?

Link

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On Infant Baptism and the Complete Gratuity of Salvation

It is a simple historical fact that the Church has always baptized infants. Even our earliest documents speak of the practice. For example the Apostolic Tradition written about 215 A.D. has this to say:

The children shall be baptized first. All of the children who can answer for themselves, let them answer. If there are any children who cannot answer for themselves, let their parents answer for them, or someone else from their family. (Apostolic Tradition # 21)

Scripture too confirms that infants should be baptized if you do the math. For example

People were also bringing babies to Jesus to have him touch them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. (Luke 18:15-17 NIV)

So the Kingdom of God belongs to the little Children (in Greek brephe indicating little Children still held in the arms, babes). And yet elsewhere Jesus also reminds that it is necessary to be baptized in order to enter the Kingdom of God:

Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. (John 3:5 NIV)

If the Kingdom of God belongs to little children and we are taught that we cannot inherit it without baptism then it follows that Baptizing infants is necessary and that to fail to do so is a hindering of the little children which Jesus forbade his apostles to do.

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Fortnight for Freedom Issue #9: President Obama’s ill-fated attempt to redefine authentic Catholicism.

The word ‘catholic’ means universal,” he said. “We don’t put signs in our hospitals saying, ‘No Jews apply.’ We don’t put signs in our schools saying, ‘No Protestants need apply.’”

“We are proud to serve people who are not of our faith,” Donahue said. “We are proud to hire people who are not of our faith in the schools and social services and the like.

“So, here we have an unprecedented assault, trying to ask us to pay as nonprofits for abortion-inducing drugs in our insurance plans. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

More text and video

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Bad news for the President: Supreme Court upholds Obamacare.

by Doug Lawrence

The Supreme Court today defined the number one issue for the 2012 election: ObamaCare.

If you like ObamaCare … vote for Barack Obama and his fellow socialist democrats, who have pledged to foist the program on Americans, no matter the cost.

If you don’t like ObamaCare … vote for Mitt Romney and his fellow conservative republicans, who have pledged to repeal it.

It doesn’t get much simpler than that!

As for the court … those guys are lucky they’re appointed for life, and not subject to getting reelected.

“We serve others not because they are Catholic, but because we are Catholic.”

Washington rally brings 2,000 together in support of religious freedom

The original definition of social justice is better

“Today,” Messmore writes, “political activists often use the phrase ‘social justice’ to justify government redistribution of wealth.” However, Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio, the ninetheenth- century Jesuit Italian priest who coined the phrase, prefaced the word justice with social in order to “emphasize the social nature of human beings” and “the importance of various social spheres outside civic government.”

Social justice to Taparelli entailed a “social order in which government doesn’t overrun or crowd out institutions of civil society such as family, church and local organizations.”

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How the States Are Funding Abortion and How to Stop It

Sometimes it’s possible for us to become so obsessed with winning the war that we fail to win the battle right in front of us.

A few months ago I had the honor of serving with State Senator Mike Crane (R-Newnan) in the Georgia state legislature. In performing research for him, we discovered something that surprised many in the Georgia Right to Life lobby. We discovered that our state — and more than three-fourths of the states in the U.S. — are paying for abortions with their citizens’ tax money. We knew that this was happening on a federal level, but finding out about it at a state level was shocking. That means that most likely your pay check is helping to murder thousands of American babies each year.

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How did we get to the pink Pentagon?

The forces of social convention enlisted on the side of the rationalization of moral misbehavior are very powerful. Because of them, no one can now serve as a Secretary of Defense, or indeed of any other government agency, without endorsing Gay Pride Month. If you insist on publicly maintaining moral principles, you are officially part of the problem.

Why is it so very important not to be changed by this? What is the price of assent to and collaboration with Gay Pride? The answer is clearly spelled out in Romans 1. Saint Paul describes a situation eerily like our own in which those “who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” fell into “shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts, one toward another: men with men, working that which is filthy…” So those, “Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.” (Italics added) Gay Pride is that consent, the price for which is the death of your soul.

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Fortnight for Freedom Issue #8: Praying for saintly intercession.

St. Thomas More
Patron of Religious Freedom
Pray for Us

O God our Creator,
from your provident hand we have received
our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You have called us as your people and given us
the right and the duty to worship you, the only true God,
and your Son, Jesus Christ.
Through the power and working of your Holy Spirit,
you call us to live out our faith in the midst of the world,
bringing the light and the saving truth of the Gospel
to every corner of society.
We ask you to bless us
in our vigilance for the gift of religious liberty.
Give us the strength of mind and heart
to readily defend our freedoms when they are threatened;
give us courage in making our voices heard
on behalf of the rights of your Church
and the freedom of conscience of all people of faith.
Grant, we pray, O heavenly Father,
a clear and united voice to all your sons and daughters
gathered in your Church
in this decisive hour in the history of our nation,
so that, with every trial withstood
and every danger overcome—
for the sake of our children, our grandchildren,
and all who come after us—
this great land will always be “one nation, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Source: USCCB website

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Flannery O’Connor’s personal remedy for “vague belief” is similar to Pope Benedict’s (and mine).

There’s nothing vague about Jesus Christ!

At the center of what I have termed vague belief is the notion that Jesus is simply one religious figure among many and that God is without a name and therefore cannot enter into relationship with the world—nor would he want to, even if he could. Put simply, vague belief is a denial of revelation—a denial of the specificity of Christ.

The way back to specific belief, therefore, will come by way of exposing the naiveté of vague belief, specifically by addressing the power of God’s name and proposing an adequate understanding of the person of Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior of the world. Of course, this has been Benedict’s life-long project, beginning with Introduction to Christianity all the way to his latest volume of Jesus of Nazareth. But, this return to specific belief is a major component of O’Connor’s project as well.

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Hillary Clinton Upset UN Document Didn’t Promote Abortion

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is upset the document the United Nations adopted at its Rio+20 conference last week did not promote abortion by inserting terms like “reproductive rights” into the language of the text.

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Editor’s note: Maybe if these people were honest about their penchant for world-wide, unrestricted baby-killing they wouldn’t feel so bad when they experience set backs.

Court pleading reveals alleged details of the Fr. Thomas Euteneur affair

Doe claims she was sexually abused repeatedly by her “exorcist,” Thomas J. Euteneur, who was president of Human Life International and the HLI Endowment; Euteneur, however, is not named as an individual defendant.

Doe claims that Euteneur, a Roman Catholic priest, offers “‘spiritual deliverance’ and the performance of the rite of exorcism,” and did it “with the knowledge and consent of the Diocese and the Most Rev. Paul S. Loverde. … On at least one previous occasion, the Diocese and Bishop Loverde gave permission to Euteneur to conduct an exorcism within the Diocese.”

Doe claims that the defendants know that exorcism could be “potentially dangerous to the participants.” She says: “The defendants knew that a basic principle in the administration of an exorcism is that the priest should never act alone, and that he should always be accompanied by a support team who have been duly prepared to assist him.”

Doe says that her relationship with Euteneur began on Feb. 28, 2008, when she signed “a document entitled ‘Agreement for spiritual help.’

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Fundamental political moral battleground: Earned success vs learned hopelessness.

“Anyone who reads the words of the Founders,” Mr. Brooks writes, “cannot miss their keen emphasis on the morality of the systems they intended to create. Our ideas about free enterprise and liberty were born from a sense of what is right and what helps us to thrive as people, not from a monomaniacal obsession with what makes us rich.”

Historian Matthew Spalding echoes this theme in his 2009 book, “We Still Hold These Truths”: “As the Founders saw it, the right to property was not simply an economic concept, and was much more than owning a bit of land. It was a first principle of liberty. The essence of liberty is the freedom to develop one’s talents, pursue opportunity, and generally take responsibility for one’s own life and well-being.”

Mr. Brooks calls that “earned success,” and he’s got plenty of social science research that shows people are happier when they have a chance to earn their success. That doesn’t mean equality of outcome, however. Some people are always going to do better than others, and Americans understand and accept that.

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Peter Kreeft on what we know for sure about apples … and abortion!

I will try to prove the simple, common-sensical reasonableness of the pro-life case by a sort of Socratic logic. My conclusion is that Roe v. Wade must be overturned, and my fundamental reason for this is not only because of what abortion is but because we all know what abortion is.

This is obviously a controversial conclusion, and initially unacceptable to all pro-choicers. So, my starting point must be noncontroversial. It is this:

We know what an apple is. I will try to persuade you that if we know what an apple is, Roe v. Wade must be overthrown, and that if you want to defend Roe, you will probably want to deny that we know what an apple is.

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When premarital sex, homosexuality, contraception, and abortion are encouraged in health class, isn’t pint-size Mayor Bloomberg’s crusade against sugary drinks a bit odd?

 

As the Church is backed into a corner because of its teaching on sexuality, and its institutions face increasing pressure to compromise and cooperate with abortion, gay marriage, and contraception, and after the city bans religious groups from using public property, lawmakers are getting moralistic about food. It’s a good thing if people eat less fat and sugar, to be sure, but let’s put first things first.

The alternative to bodily obsession is an integrated view of human existence, a concern for body and soul in due proportion, in which appetites are in harmony with right reason, and pleasure is not disdained but enjoyed properly (“insensibility” is also a vice, St. Thomas points out). For millennia, spiritual writers have remarked that corporal mortification, such as fasting, purifies the soul. Ordering one’s appetite goes a long way in ordering another. But it’s a sign of sickness when food and fitness become a rival religion.

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Editor’s note: This type of ideology is also very popular with homosexuals. Perhaps the pint-size mayor is being less than candid with the people of New York City.