Red Mass Speaker From Illinois… Tells Public Officials Of Importance Of Conscience

By DEXTER DUGGAN

PHOENIX — An Illinois bishop reminded the annual Red Mass for public officials here that honoring conscience truly can require that a price be paid, even though “conscience” also is invoked by those who want to exempt themselves from following God’s law expressed in Church teaching.
Thomas Paprocki, bishop of Springfield, told listeners at St. Mary’s Basilica here on January 20 that his diocese’s Catholic Charities lost a $6 million contract with the state of Illinois because, honoring orthodox moral teaching, the diocesan adoption services wouldn’t place children with homosexual or cohabiting couples.
Paprocki, an accomplished prelate who also is an attorney and a hockey player, told his audience at the evening service that he would reflect on the implications when the civil law and tenets of the Catholic faith diverge or even disagree with each other.
The Red Mass has been celebrated in Phoenix since 1970 to mark the beginning of the year’s work at the state legislature. The service is attended by legislators, judges, attorneys, and other officials. … Continue Reading

Defining Liberalism

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

The difference between economic conservatives and social conservatives has been raised several times in First Teachers over the past decade. It is a question worth exploring with high school students. Both Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are labeled as “conservatives” and described as “on the right” by the media and in the vernacular, even though their views on foreign policy and social policy are sometimes far apart. White it is true that both senators usually vote the same and are unequivocally opposed to modern liberalism, they do so for different reasons.
It is not a new issue. I can remember L. Brent Bozell (the father of Brent Bozell, head of the Media Research Center and frequent quest on Sean Hannity’s program) and Frank S. Meyer back in the early 1960s digging deep into the reasons for the division between what they called the “traditionalist” and the “libertarian” wing of the conservative movement.
Their analysis usually took place within the pages of William F. Buckley’s National Review. It was always an enlightening and entertaining exchange, especially for someone like myself, in my late teens at the time and trying to figure out what it meant to be a conservative. (I knew I wasn’t a liberal. Watching Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden made that clear to me. But I wasn’t sure what a conservative was.) … Continue Reading

What Does The High Court Have To Fear If It Imposes “Gay Marriage”?

By DEXTER DUGGAN

It used to sound like a persuasive argument that the Supreme Court wouldn’t dare impose “same-sex marriage” on the nation because that only would be inviting decades of unresolved social strife, much like the court caused by imprudently and impudently forcing radical permissive abortion throughout the land in 1973.
After all, Americans from coast to coast voted to uphold traditional marriage in state ballot measures. But that was before lower-court judges arrogantly began to overturn these democratically enacted affirmations of historic marriage from east to west. What would the High Court have to lose now, in its own eyes, by forcing through more judicial imperialism? What, indeed?
The justices would know the social strife to come. But, given the degenerate elite’s current urgency to mandate sex-disoriented “marriage” on the entire society, maybe that’s some strife the justices are willing to endure. … Continue Reading

Across The Nation . . . States Remember Roe v. Wade And Vow To Stop Abortion

By KIRSTEN ANDERSEN and LISA BOURNE

(Editor’s Note: The Wanderer went to press this week on January 22, limiting the amount of up-to-date coverage of the March for Life we could include in this issue. More coverage will appear in next week’s issue.
(LifeSiteNews provided the article below. Kirsten Andersen wrote the first part on the various, early Roe v. Wade anniversary marches, and Lisa Bourne wrote the second part on Chicago’s record-breaking January 18 rally. All rights reserved.)

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — As hundreds of thousands of people prepared to make the annual pilgrimage to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., for the 42nd annual January 22 March for Life, thousands more who couldn’t make the trip gathered earlier in communities across the nation to commemorate the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
In Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin (R), U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R), and Cong. French Hill (R) led a crowd of thousands on the steps of the state capitol in Little Rock. … Continue Reading

De-Barnicalization And Re-Inculturation

By PHILIP TROWER

In its voyage across the ocean of time or journey through the waters of history, the hull of the bark of St Peter inevitably gets encrusted with barnacles from the civilizations and cultures it passes through.
Examples would be the sedia gestatoria on which the Popes used to be carried into St. Peter’s and the flabellae or ostrich feather fans which accompanied him. Another example would be the bishop’s or cardinal’s cappa magna, a kind of cloak with a long train carried by an altar boy used on solemn occasions to emphasize the exalted nature or dignity of the episcopal office.
These “barnacles” were not bad in themselves and they could have a practical purpose. The sedia gestatoria was a kind of early Pope-mobile before the age of cars, a way of ensuring that when the Pope came into St. Peter’s for a solemn High Mass, as many people as possible could see him. … Continue Reading

Selma, 50 Years On

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

On Martin Luther King Day, 2015, how stand race relations in America?
Selma, a film focused on the police clubbing of civil rights marchers led by Dr. King at Selma bridge in March of 1965, is being denounced by Democrats as a cinematic slander against the president who passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In the movie, King is portrayed as decisive and heroic, LBJ as devious and dilatory. And no member of the Selma cast has been nominated for an Academy Award. All 20 of the actors and actresses nominated are white.
Hollywood is like the Rocky Mountains, says Rev. Al Sharpton, the higher up you go the whiter it gets.
Even before the Selma dustup, the hacking of Sony Pictures had unearthed emails between studio chief Amy Pascal and producer Scott Rudin yukking it up over President Obama’s reputed preference for films like Django Unchained, 12 Years a Slave, and The Butler.
“Racism in Hollywood!” ran the headlines. … Continue Reading

Although McCain Hits Obama . . . Senator Loses His Bid To Rein In GOP Critics On Home Turf

By DEXTER DUGGAN

TEMPE, Ariz. — If Sen. John McCain hoped his rebuke of Barack Obama for whizzing right past the Phoenix veterans hospital on January 8 would win the senator credibility with conservatives, he failed.
McCain’s local machine still suffered a stinging loss two days later when the Republican Party in his populous home county rejected his big-dollar effort to take over the Maricopa County GOP chairmanship. Like many Republicans elsewhere, Arizona conservatives aren’t in love with “maverick” McCain.
It has been about a decade since a McCain operative headed the GOP in a county of about 4 million people, where Phoenix is county seat — leaving McCain so distant from control that in January 2014, both the Maricopa County and the Arizona GOP annual meetings censured McCain for being untrue to the Republican platform.
Other Arizona county GOPs also issued the embarrassing censures. … Continue Reading

What Do The Islamic State And Communists Have In Common?

By TERENCE P. JEFFREY

How should a free society react when confronted with a subversive movement that seeks to exploit our liberty to destroy it?
Matthew Olsen, who was then director of the National Counterterrorism Center, gave a speech at the Brookings Institution in September that pointed to a growing threat to people in the Middle East and to the free nations of the West.
Radical Muslim terrorists fighting in Iraq and Syria under the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had revealed their great vision.
“By late June, ISIL declared the establishment of an Islamic caliphate under the name the ‘Islamic State’ and called for all Muslims to pledge support to the group and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” said Olsen. … Continue Reading

Joseph Farah Vs. Pope Francis

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

The question of how evolution should be handled in Catholic schools and by Catholic parents continues to be an issue. Pope Francis offered some comments recently to those who feel there is no reason for Catholics to defend a literal interpretation of Genesis. Speaking at an unveiling of a statue of Pope Benedict XVI at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope stated flatly that evolution and the Big Bang theory are “not incompatible” with the Church’s teachings on the origins of the universe and human life:
“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine Creator, but, rather, requires it. Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
Francis went on to say that God should not be seen as a “magician with a magic wand able to do everything.” Rather, “God created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that He gave to each one so that they would reach their fulfillment.” … Continue Reading

The Challenge Of Being A Catholic American

By LAWRENCE P. GRAYSON

Our nation was established by people who desired freedom — freedom in both their private and public lives, freedom in their homes, churches, enterprises, and associations. They wanted a person’s conscience to be held inviolable so that individuals could freely express themselves on political and social matters and worship the Almighty as they choose. The genius of the Founders lies in the basis they pronounced for that freedom.
In the England they had left, liberties and rights were granted by the king and a parliament. In the France they knew so well, liberties and rights were rooted in the will of the majority of the populace and set forth in a constitution. But views can change and constitutions altered. If a king or a parliament or a majority of the people can grant rights, they can also take them away. … Continue Reading