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Trump Administration… Announces New Conscience Exemptions For HHS Mandate

November 10, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Trump Administration… Announces New Conscience Exemptions For HHS Mandate

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNA) — The Departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Labor released two updated rules concerning conscience protections for organizations and individuals in relation to the HHS contraception mandate. Under the new rules, organizations and individuals objecting to the controversial mandate’s provisions on either religious or moral grounds will be exempt. According to a press release from HHS, the new rules “provide an exemption from the contraceptive coverage mandate to entities and individuals that object to services covered by the mandate on the basis of sincerely held religious beliefs.” “Thus,” the release said, “entities that have sincerely held religious beliefs against providing contraceptive services (or services which they consider to be abortifacients) would be exempt from the…Continue Reading

Cardinal Zen… Vatican Is Badly Mishandling China Situation

November 9, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Cardinal Zen… Vatican Is Badly Mishandling China Situation

HONG KONG (CNA) — The recent agreement between the Vatican and China is a step toward the “annihilation” of the Catholic Church in China, Joseph Cardinal Zen, former bishop of Hong Kong, wrote in a New York Times op-ed published on Wednesday, October 24. Zen, who has been openly critical of Vatican’s approach toward China in the past, did not hold back in his assessment of Pope Francis’ new deal and in offering his views on communist governments. A September 22 agreement between the Holy See and Beijing was intended to normalize the situation of China’s Catholics. The Church in China has been split between the “underground” Church, in full communion with Rome, and the state-run Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association…Continue Reading

Despite Vatican-China Agreement . . . Chinese Authorities Destroy Two Marian Shrines

November 8, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Despite Vatican-China Agreement . . . Chinese Authorities Destroy Two Marian Shrines

By MARY REZAC BEIJING (CNA) — As part of an ongoing crackdown on religious practice in the country, Chinese authorities demolished two Catholic Marian shrines this past week. The move comes just one month after the Chinese government signed an agreement with the Vatican regarding the appointment of bishops. According to reports from AsiaNews, government authorities destroyed the Marian shrines of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows in Dongergou (Shanxi), and Our Lady of Bliss, also known as Our Lady of the Mountain, in Anlong (Guizhou). The shrines were pilgrimage sites for both the official Chinese Catholic Church and the “underground” Catholic Church in China. Authorities claim that the shrine in Anlong was destroyed because it lacked the necessary building…Continue Reading

The Art Of Being Tactful

November 7, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on The Art Of Being Tactful

By DONALD DeMARCO Tact is a way of making a point without making an enemy. It is correcting a friend without bruising his ego. And we all know, or at least should know, how fragile the ego can be. Tact is being sensitive to other people’s sensitivities. We need to be tactful so that our friends, relatives, colleagues, or associates do not remain in error. Tact is the delicate art that involves the proper balancing of respect, support, counsel, correction, and even kindness. “The greatest kindness one can render to any man,” wrote St. Thomas Aquinas, “consists in leading him to truth.” The transition from error to truth, however, is often stubbornly resisted. People, as a rule, would rather save…Continue Reading

Could It Be The Curriculum?… Why Don’t Students Remember Anything?

November 6, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Could It Be The Curriculum?… Why Don’t Students Remember Anything?

By ARTHUR HIPPLER (Editor’s Note: Dr. Hippler is chairman of the religion department and teaches religion in the Upper School at Providence Academy, Plymouth, Minn.) + + + We readily bemoan the fact that students do not seem to retain what they have learned. This becomes painfully evident when we survey college freshman in their knowledge of history, literature, and science. Students cannot remember the author of Great Expectations or Oliver Twist, the significance of the Federalist Papers or the Nuremberg Trials, even the chemical formulas for water or salt. But the problem is not the intelligence of these students. They are the victims of a system that tries to do too much. Consider by contrast the classical education that…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . Playing With A Net

November 5, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . Playing With A Net

By JEFF MINICK When I was teaching homeschool students in AP Literature, I would on occasion ask them to write a sonnet. The first time I did so, I promised to write a sonnet with them. That composition hooked me, and I eventually produced around thirty such poems. Below is one of them, To My Errant Cousins. Robert Frost, who famously said that free verse is like playing tennis without a net, provided my inspiration. Most poets now eschew — how that chew fits! — The waltz and formal sway of metered lines; Their neoteric noses twitch at rhyme; Their guts are churned by reading lyric lit. Sestinas, sonnets, villanelles galore Beget from modern pens frenetic raves; Shall I compare…Continue Reading

Is This Worse Than ’68?

November 4, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Is This Worse Than ’68?

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN Saturday, October 27, in Pittsburgh, a Sabbath celebration at the Tree of Life synagogue became the site of the largest mass murder of Jews in U.S. history. Eleven worshippers were killed by a racist gunman. Friday, October 26, we learned the identity of the crazed criminal who mailed pipe bombs to a dozen leaders of the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. From restaurants to Capitol corridors, this campaign season we have seen ugly face-offs between leftist radicals and Republican senators. Are we more divided than we have ever been? Are our politics more poisoned? Are we living in what Charles Dickens called “the worst of times” in America? Is today worse…Continue Reading

Teach Children… Martin Luther King And Ronald Reagan Were Right

November 3, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Teach Children… Martin Luther King And Ronald Reagan Were Right

By TERENCE P. JEFFREY The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan are two of the greatest leaders in American history not only because of the struggles they won but how they won them. They were great communicators who achieved great victories without violence. And they were able to do this for the same reason: They unapologetically appealed to the ultimate truth. In 1987, when Reagan spoke at the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the media paid most attention to his direct challenge to the Soviet leader: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” But Reagan spoke even more powerful words at the end of that speech. “The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence…Continue Reading

A Book Review… Exploring The Great Delusion

November 2, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review… Exploring The Great Delusion

By JUDE P. DOUGHERTY The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities, by John J. Mearsheimer (Yale University Press, 2018, 328 pages, hardcover). John J. Mearsheimer is a political theorist and international relations scholar who holds the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professorship at the University of Chicago. The book is an indictment of post–Cold War United States foreign policy. He tells us, “When I began this book ten years ago, I was interested in why United States foreign policy in the post-Cold War period was so prone to failure. I was especially interested in explaining America’s fiascoes in the greater Middle East.” Mearsheimer finds that in the aftermath of the Cold War, the U.S. adopted a profoundly liberal foreign…Continue Reading

California Dem Candidate … Pledges To Undo Brown’s Surprise Abortion-Pill Veto

November 1, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on California Dem Candidate … Pledges To Undo Brown’s Surprise Abortion-Pill Veto

By DEXTER DUGGAN California Gov. Jerry Brown may have surprised some when he vetoed a bill requiring abortion medicines to be available at the Golden State’s public university campus clinics, but Gavin Newsom, the Democratic candidate seeking to succeed Brown in the November 6 election, quickly vowed that as governor he would sign such a measure. The strongly pro-abortion Brown didn’t express opposition to the life-ending procedure with his September 30 veto, but said students already have easy access to nearby abortion services. Katie Short, vice president for legal affairs for the California-based Life Legal Defense Foundation, told The Wanderer that she thought “Brown drew the line at incurring costs and liabilities for the state for the sake of making abortion…Continue Reading