Friday 26th April 2024

Home » Featured Today » Recent Articles:

Culture Of Life 101 . . . “The History Of The RU 486 Abortion Pill”

January 14, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Culture Of Life 101 . . . “The History Of The RU 486 Abortion Pill”

By BRIAN CLOWES (Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For an electronic copy of chapter 2 of The Facts of Life, “Abortifacients,” e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.) + + + At one time, the lives of preborn children were valuable to researchers for the pharmaceutical corporations. The scientists worked hard to avoid injuring them as they developed new drugs. But times have radically changed. Big Pharma now spends millions of dollars annually developing drugs and devices that deliberately kill the preborn child as efficiently and as easily (to the mother) as possible. One 1980s political cartoon showed researchers saying, “Our new drug kills unborn children! We’re ruined!” Now they say,…Continue Reading

San Diego Catholic Bulletins . . . Promote Obama’s “Executive Amnesty”

January 13, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on San Diego Catholic Bulletins . . . Promote Obama’s “Executive Amnesty”

By DEXTER DUGGAN San Diego-area Catholics were reminded again of their U.S. Church’s push to embed millions of illegal aliens in this nation when a notice appeared in weekly parish bulletins proclaiming “a big victory!” because of Barack Obama’s November announcement of his “executive amnesty.” Obama’s highly contentious and unconstitutional action — Obama himself repeatedly had said he had no power to confer it — was presented in the official parish bulletins as if it’s not controversial at all, but is an “opportunity.” One can only think of the impossibility of Catholic Church bulletins carrying, say, an official notice proclaiming pleasure over Republican Party victories in last November’s general election. But left-wing activists, even those opposing basic Church moral teaching,…Continue Reading

Court Protects Catholic-Owned Company From HHS Mandate

January 12, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Court Protects Catholic-Owned Company From HHS Mandate

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (CNA/EWTN News) — The federal government cannot force a Catholic-owned Michigan company to provide insurance coverage for sterilization, contraceptives, and drugs that could cause abortion, a court ruled January 5. “Coercing citizens to violate their conscientious religious beliefs makes a mockery of the very notion of religious freedom,” Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Chicago-based Thomas More Society. He said the ruling “sets another strong precedent for the free exercise of religious faith on the part of all American citizens.” John Kennedy, CEO of Autocam Medical, LLC, and other family members who own the company, had filed a legal challenge to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate that companies must cover drugs…Continue Reading

Deconstruction And The Incarnation

January 11, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Deconstruction And The Incarnation

By DONALD DeMARCO The word “deconstruction,” very much like the word “existentialism,” has a certain cachet. It enjoys currency among those who want to be “hip to what is hip.” It presumes to be a legitimate branch of philosophy, but its trendiness and superficiality are hardly consistent with philosophy as the perennial search for wisdom. It is fashionable among university intellectuals who pride themselves for being avant-garde. For those outside of academe, “deconstruction” is regarded as a synonym for gobbledygook. The deconstructionist begins by doubting the firm reality of just about everything. As a result, he comes to believe that certain verities that people have long taken for granted, such as morality, religion, nature, and art, have all been arbitrarily…Continue Reading

Pope Francis’ New Cardinals… Diverse In Both Geography And Theology

January 10, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Pope Francis’ New Cardinals… Diverse In Both Geography And Theology

By HILARY WHITE VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The 20 new cardinals-to-be, announced by the Pope on January 4 for the February consistory, have a broad range of names and nationalities, but also of ideological positions within the spectrum of current critical issues in the Catholic Church. While the media tout the Pope’s diverse choices of nationalities from the world’s economic and political “peripheries” — such far-flung nations as Tonga, New Zealand, Myanmar, and Thailand — some have noted the wide disparity of opinion among the choices on homosexuality, possibly the most contentious strategic issue in the Church’s ongoing internal struggles. One of those named, Archbishop Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel, of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is the head of a small but historically…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . A Fresh Exploration Of The Shire

January 9, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . A Fresh Exploration Of The Shire

By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN The Hobbit Party: The Vision Tolkien Got and the West Forgot by Jonathan Witt and Jay W. Richards (Ignatius Press: San Francisco: 2014, 232 pp.), $21.95. Available through www.ignatius.com or by calling 1-800-651-1531. + + + To read about a Hobbit party is to expect a scene of hospitality in the home of Bilbo Baggins in the setting of the shire, but the title of the book also plays on the word “party” to denote a political view or social teaching that Tolkien’s novels offer in addition to their charm and imaginative power as works of fiction. The authors present a fresh, insightful reading of Tolkien’s masterpieces that interprets them in the light of the social teachings…Continue Reading

A Party At War With Itself

January 8, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on A Party At War With Itself

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN For the third time, the cops of the NYPD have turned their backs on the mayor of New York. The first time was when Mayor Bill de Blasio arrived at Woodhull Hospital where mortally wounded officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu had been taken on December 20. The second was when the mayor spoke at Ramos’ funeral. The third was at Liu’s service on Sunday, January 4. Detestation of de Blasio among the NYPD and the cops who came from across the country to stand in solidarity with their slain brothers is broad and deep. And, in a way, de Blasio served as stand-in for Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, and President Obama. For all four gave…Continue Reading

Neither Left Nor Right, But Catholic . . . Thoughts On Policing In Light Of Recent Events

January 7, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Neither Left Nor Right, But Catholic . . . Thoughts On Policing In Light Of Recent Events

By STEPHEN M. KRASON (Editor’s Note: Stephen M. Krason is professor of political science and legal studies and associate director of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is also co-founder and president of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. Among his books is The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic [Transaction Publishers, 2012], and most recently two edited volumes: Child Abuse, Family Rights, and the Child Protective System [Scarecrow Press, 2013] and The Crisis of Religious Liberty [Rowman & Littlefield, 2014]. This column originally appeared in Crisismagazine.com. All rights reserved.) + + + The developments of the past several months have focused sharp national attention on police practices and actions around the…Continue Reading

Bishops Praise The President’s Executive Decree Bypassing Congress

January 6, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Bishops Praise The President’s Executive Decree Bypassing Congress

By FR. MARK A. PILON (Editor’s Note: This editorial is provided by Littlemore Tracts, © 2014 by Fr. Mark A. Pilon and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, www.fgfbooks.com. All rights reserved.) + + + Does the title sound far-fetched? No, that is essentially what CNBC reported several weeks ago. Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, auxiliary bishop in Seattle and chairman of the USCCB Committee on Migration, is quoted as saying, “We’ve been on record asking the administration to do everything within its legitimate authority [my emphasis] to bring relief and justice to our immigrant brothers and sisters.” Clearly, this chairman of a small committee in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has put the bishops on record as supporting the president’s interpretation of…Continue Reading

Saving Our Children From The Nutcracker

January 5, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Saving Our Children From The Nutcracker

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK A thought that has intrigued me over the years is whether there will ever be an event that will cause America’s Christian parents to rise up and demand an end to the secular humanist campaign to drive every hint of the Christian beliefs of the American people from our schools. I sometimes think maybe not, that it is our fate to go quietly into some post-Christian night. The country acquiesced in the end of school prayer, to the relabeling of the Christmas holiday as the “winter break” (while at the same time accepting the official closing of schools for Yom Kippur), and to the exclusion of songs with any reference to Christmas at school winter concerts,…Continue Reading