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The Dissolution Of Democracy

June 3, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on The Dissolution Of Democracy

By DONALD DeMARCO The fall of Communism presaged, for many, a new era of democracy in which people themselves would choose how their government would operate. It was widely held that governmental leadership would be determined no longer from without but now from within. In his encyclical Centesimus Annus (1991), however, John Paul II warned that in many cases “agnosticism and skeptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life.” He challenged those who saw democracy as a way of determining what truth is through the majority. The Holy Father warned that if “there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated…Continue Reading

Appeals Court . . . Denies Stay Of Ruling Against California Assisted Suicide Law

June 2, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Appeals Court . . . Denies Stay Of Ruling Against California Assisted Suicide Law

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (CNA/EWTN News) — A state appellate court on May 23 denied a request for an immediate stay of a ruling which said California’s assisted suicide law was wrongly passed in a special legislative session. The May 23 decision by California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal did give the state attorney general, Xavier Becerra, more time to provide arguments as to why the lower court’s ruling should be overruled. Judge Daniel Ottolia of the Riverside County Superior Court had ruled May 15 that lawmakers had unconstitutionally passed the law in a 2015 special session of the legislature dedicated to health-care funding. Ottolia’s ruling was welcomed by the California Catholic Conference, whose executive director, Ned Dolejsi, said May 18…Continue Reading

Beijing Arrests 21 Japanese Citizens For Evangelizing

June 1, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Beijing Arrests 21 Japanese Citizens For Evangelizing

BEIJING (AsiaNews) — The Chinese authorities have arrested 21 Japanese citizens for alleged missionary activities. A source informed about relations between the two countries reported the news May 25. In China, the religious activities of foreigners are regulated by a strict law banning proselytism and unauthorized religious meetings. The authorities arrested members of the Christian group between May 5 and 15 in five different provinces – Hebei, Henan, Guizhou, Shanxi, and Liaoning — as well as in the autonomous region of Ningxia. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that five of them have returned to Japan. According to the source, three of them were deported and others are likely to remain in the custody of the Beijing authorities. Their…Continue Reading

Australian Court… Finds Archbishop Wilson Guilty Of Concealing Abuse

May 31, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Australian Court… Finds Archbishop Wilson Guilty Of Concealing Abuse

By HANNAH BROCKHAUS ADELAIDE, Australia (CNA/EWTN News) — Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson has been found guilty of failing to report allegations of child sexual abuse disclosed to him in the 1970s. The guilty verdict was announced May 22 by local magistrate Robert Stone. Currently the head of the Archdiocese of Adelaide, Wilson is the most senior Catholic Church official to be convicted of concealing abuse. The bishop, who has maintained his innocence throughout the trial, could face up to a maximum of two years in jail. It is unknown if he will appeal the verdict. The sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 19. Archbishop Wilson said in a statement May 22 that he is “obviously disappointed at the decision” and…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . Building Strength For Performing The Works Of Charity

May 30, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . Building Strength For Performing The Works Of Charity

By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN Fit For Eternal Life: A Christian Approach to Working Out, Eating Right, and Building the Virtues of Fitness in Your Soul, by Kevin Vost, Psy.D. (Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, NH, 2007), 229 pp. $17.95. Available from www.SophiaInstitute.com or 1-800-888-9344. Informed by St. Paul’s teaching about the body as a “temple of the Holy Spirit” and citing Pope Pius’ XII’s statement that “the Church, without any doubt whatsoever, approves of physical culture, if it be in proper proportion,” Vost’s book integrates perfectly the principles of physical fitness to the moral life. Quoting Christ’s words, “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” he applies this teaching to the life of both the soul and the body.…Continue Reading

Burma’s Agony While The World Watches

May 29, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Burma’s Agony While The World Watches

By JOHN J. METZLER UNITED NATIONS — Amid continuing destruction of villages, attacks on children, and a widening displacement of refugees, members of the UN Security Council visited Burma and neighboring Bangladesh to assess the widening humanitarian carnage. The officially dubbed Mission to Myanmar (as the country is officially known) offered diplomats a “vivid and stark revelation” of an unfolding tragedy both in the Southeast Asian country and in neighboring Bangladesh, where more than a million people have been forced from their homes. Burma’s victims are the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in an overwhelmingly Buddhist state. Living in the Rakhine state, the downtrodden people flee into bordering Bangladesh, itself a poor country, which now hosts the world’s largest refugee camp.…Continue Reading

Life On The Edge

May 28, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Life On The Edge

By DONALD DeMARCO Our appreciation for anything we love is greatly intensified when it is on the verge of being lost. This is especially true about life itself. Under ordinary circumstances, we take life for granted and assume it will be indefinitely extended into the future. But when death is imminent, we come to cherish life more than ever and wish that we had not taken it so lightly in the past. Perhaps no one understood this better and profited from it more than Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-1881). His life, fraught with a series of excruciating difficulties as it was, is nonetheless an example and inspiration for everyone. His first novel, Poor Folk (1844), received the highest praise from the…Continue Reading

Can A Pope Change Moral Truth?

May 27, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Can A Pope Change Moral Truth?

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN (Editor’s Note: Please see commentary from The Wanderer on p. 4A.) + + + That joking retort we heard as children, “Is the Pope Catholic?” is starting to look like a serious question. Asked five years ago about a “gay lobby” in the Vatican, Pope Francis responded, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” As judgment was thought to be part of the papal job description, traditional Catholics were startled at what the new Pope had volunteered. Now the Holy Father has apparently fleshed out what he meant. According to a childhood victim of a pedophile priest in Chile, Juan Carlos Cruz, a homosexual to whom…Continue Reading

Teacher-Strike Movement . . . Looks Ahead To Using Experience Gained To Help Dems In November

May 26, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Teacher-Strike Movement . . . Looks Ahead To Using Experience Gained To Help Dems In November

By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — It looked like one of those YouTube man-at-the-beach interviews by Mark Dice where random clueless passers-by don’t know what country Mt. Rushmore is located in, or where Donald Trump lives. But these particular questions were posed to red-clad protesters outside the Arizona State Capitol. They had answers, all right, but probably not what the majority of Arizonans believed. They were representing the #RedForEd movement for higher teacher pay. Their strike kept about 850,000 public-school students out of class for just over a week, from April 26 to May 4, even though the Republican governor, Doug Ducey, surprisingly had agreed to demands for a 20 percent pay increase by 2020, even before their demonstrations led to…Continue Reading

Laboratory Rats And Their Masters

May 25, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Laboratory Rats And Their Masters

By GEORGE A. KENDALL I recently heard a story which upset me more and more the longer I thought about it. It concerned a young man getting ready to go off to college. The young man’s father is a very successful executive, and his son has been accepted for admission to his father’s alma mater, a very prestigious (and expensive) university. Now, when I was getting ready for college, back in the dark ages, getting admitted to the college of one’s choice was enough. Not anymore. Now, I’m told, you need to get into “advanced placement” in your field in order to get a head start and have an advantage over others, so this young man signed up, at his…Continue Reading