Tuesday 20th August 2019

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China’s Human Rights Sham

August 19, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on China’s Human Rights Sham

By JOHN J. METZLER PARIS — It’s never polite to question the deteriorating human rights situation in China, but let’s do it anyway. The hidden and systematic repression of ethnic Uighur Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang province and the high-profile crackdown on pro-demonstrators in Hong Kong, many of them Christian, are both rooted in the same glaring reality: China’s Communist Party (CCP) does not allow dissent. The regime’s crackdowns in Xinjiang are rooted largely in religious and cultural repression of the Muslim minority, usually under the specious guise of combatting terrorism. Beijing’s atheistic state does not sit well alongside genuinely practiced religion whether it’s Islam or Roman Catholicism. Thus, over the past few years more than one million Muslim civilians…Continue Reading

Wisconsin Lawmaker Lies About Catholic League

August 18, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Wisconsin Lawmaker Lies About Catholic League

By BILL DONOHUE (Editor’s Note: Catholic League President Bill Donohue commented as follows August 14 on Wisconsin state legislator Chris Taylor’s attack on the League.) + + + Having co-authored a bill that would require Catholic priests to violate the seal of the confessional, Rep. Chris Taylor distorts the Catholic League’s opposition to this bill as a stand against protecting abused children. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have always supported laws that require all professionals who work with minors — be they clergy, teachers, scout leaders, health-care workers, or abortion providers like Planned Parenthood — to report instances of child sexual abuse. Wisconsin’s current law, which we support, already includes clergy as mandatory reporters. What we oppose…Continue Reading

China, Not Russia, The Greater Threat

August 17, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on China, Not Russia, The Greater Threat

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN Ten weeks of protests, some huge, a few violent, culminated August 13 with a shutdown of the Hong Kong airport. Ominously, Beijing described the violent weekend demonstrations as “deranged” acts that are “the first signs of terrorism,” and vowed a merciless crackdown on the perpetrators. China is being pushed toward a decision it does not want to make: to use military force, as in Tiananmen Square 30 years ago, to crush the uprising. For that would reveal the character of President Xi Jinping’s Communist dictatorship, as well as Beijing’s long-term plans for this semi-autonomous city of almost 7.5 million. Yet this is not the only internal or border concern of Xi’s regime. Millions of Muslim Uighurs…Continue Reading

Cicero On Old Age

August 16, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Cicero On Old Age

By JUDE DOUGHERTY Marcus Tulius Cicero, philosopher orator, statesman completed De Senectute (On Old Age), one of many books, in July 44 B.C. Dedicated to Cato the Elder, the book addresses “the common burden of old age.” A beloved author through the ages, Cicero lived from 106 B.C. until he was murdered in 43 B.C. Harvard University Press continues to make available William A. Falconer’s 1923 laudable translation of De Senectute in its Loeb Classic Series. The book may be called “a timely treatise,” given that the U.S. population grows significantly older with each passing generation. Authorities tell us that in 2018, seventeen percent of the United States’ GNP was devoted to health care, but there were only 7,000 certified…Continue Reading

French Language Under Assault From English

August 15, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on French Language Under Assault From English

By JOHN J. METZLER PARIS — A long linguistic battle between French and English appears to have been settled: English won. Some twenty-five years after passage of legislation to specifically defend use of the French language, and protect its patrimony throughout the land, what’s known as the Toubon law has become a quaint footnote. The respected French daily newspaper Le Figaro headlines, “Advertising, Business, and Politics: Franglais is gaining territory.” Franglais, which is a mix of French heavily mixed with English words and terms, has evolved since WWII. It does not have its roots in British English but in American English, which like the Latin of old, has become the lingua franca of our modern age. This is a language…Continue Reading

We Live In A Fully Furnished Universe

August 14, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on We Live In A Fully Furnished Universe

By DONALD DeMARCO Imagine a small spheroid — a baseball — traveling through the air. A group of scientists studies it carefully and determines its velocity, its spin rate, its wind resistance, and it deviations along its trajectory. The scientists do this with scientific precision and are prepared to tell the world all about the whirling adventures of this flying orb. But what they cannot determine, given their limited field of study, is the baseball’s efficient and final causes. The thin slice of reality they examine is too small for such determinations. Herein lies a problem for scientists. They can examine what they can see and measure, but the purpose of the flight of the baseball remains hidden from them.…Continue Reading

In The Aftermath Of The 2016 Earthquakes . . . The New Benedictine Monastery In Norcia Is A Sign Of Hope

August 13, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on In The Aftermath Of The 2016 Earthquakes . . . The New Benedictine Monastery In Norcia Is A Sign Of Hope

By ALBERTO CAROSA NORCIA, Italy — As reported by ANSA, on July 18, 2019, the president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, called upon the competent authorities to speed up the reconstruction of the town of Amatrice and all areas in central Italy hit by earthquakes three years ago. “The dream of reconstruction must . . . go forward on all fronts to . . . remove the mark of precariousness,” he said during a visit to the Romolo Capranica campus in Amatrice. “The future of Italy is at stake here. But we must act quickly,” the president said in response to an appeal by a student who had said that she dreamed of “going back to living in real homes.” We…Continue Reading

Exploiting Massacres To Raise Poll Ratings

August 12, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Exploiting Massacres To Raise Poll Ratings

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN It was two days of contrast that tell us about America 2019. In El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, following the mass murders of Saturday and Sunday morning, the local folks on camera — police, prosecutors, mayors, FBI, and city officials — were nonpartisan, patient, polite, and dignified in the unity and solemnity of their grief for their dead and wounded. But for the Democratic presidential candidates, the El Paso atrocity was like a loose football in the Super Bowl. A mad scramble broke out over who would be first and most savage in indicting President Donald Trump for moral complicity in mass murder. Never let a crisis go to waste is an old political adage.…Continue Reading

Amid JPII Institute Controversy . . . Benedict XVI Meets With Recently Dismissed Professor

August 11, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Amid JPII Institute Controversy . . . Benedict XVI Meets With Recently Dismissed Professor

VATICAN CITY (CNA) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI met August 1 with a recently dismissed professor of moral theology at Rome’s Pontifical John Paul II Institute, amid ongoing controversy regarding recent changes to the Institute. Benedict XVI invited Msgr. Livio Melina to meet with him on that date, a source close to Melina told Catholic News Agency. The Pope Emeritus “wanted to receive Prof. Mons. Livio Melina at a private audience. After a long discussion of the recent events at the Pontifical Institute John Paul II, he granted his blessing, expressing his personal solidarity and assuring him of his closeness in prayer.” Melina, who was president of the John Paul II Institute from 2006 until 2016, was dismissed from the…Continue Reading

Root Cause Of Mass Shootings Is Rootlessness

August 10, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Root Cause Of Mass Shootings Is Rootlessness

By BILL DONOHUE As a sociologist who has taught criminology and written about mass shootings, it is distressing to listen to all the chatter about Republicans and Democrats being blamed for the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Most of the talk is pure bunk. At the heart of the problem are what I call the three “B’s”: beliefs, bonds, and boundaries (see my book The Catholic Advantage for the details). It is not people of faith who are the most likely to go on a shooting rampage; it is those who have no religious convictions. This does not mean that simply being an agnostic or an atheist is sufficient to cause someone to become a mass murderer. That’s…Continue Reading