Saturday 4th May 2024

Home » Featured Today » Recent Articles:

Culture Of Life 101 . . . “Can A Pro-Lifer Be A Feminist?”

July 9, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on Culture Of Life 101 . . . “Can A Pro-Lifer Be A Feminist?”

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 this two-part article with footnotes, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.) +    +    + Part 1 “I still believe in feminism, perhaps more than ever before. But there was a rosy day of innocence when I believed in feminists” — Dr. Phoebe Spinrad. +    +    + What exactly is “feminism”? The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines it as “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.” So our question becomes: Do pro-lifers really have the best interests of women in mind? Pro-abortionists, who seem to think that they have a monopoly on the word “feminist,” certainly don’t…Continue Reading

A Simple Solution To A Puzzling Problem

July 8, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on A Simple Solution To A Puzzling Problem

By DONALD DeMARCO The problem of free will has caused considerable confusion throughout the history of thought. Does man have free will? Or is free will just an illusion? When we take into account heredity, environmental influences, emotions, the role of the unconscious, peer pressure, and other factors, we begin to understand how they bring the notion of free will into question. Do we choose freely, or is it the case that our choices are determined for us by forces that are not always or easily recognized? Free will was not much of a problem for St. Thomas Aquinas. This is because he understood the will as the “rational appetite.” Thus, he tied the free will to reason as a…Continue Reading

USCCB President, Other Religious Leaders . . . Urge Congress To Protect Religious Freedom Restoration Act

July 7, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on USCCB President, Other Religious Leaders . . . Urge Congress To Protect Religious Freedom Restoration Act

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A coalition of leaders of diverse U.S. religious denominations and faiths, including Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced July 1 that they “are united in [their] staunch support” for protecting the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which passed with nearly unanimous bipartisan support in 1993. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 30 ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby, the Freedom From Religion Foundation called for the repeal of the RFRA, which was the basis for the ruling. The religious coalition sent a letter to congressional leadership June 30 asking that they “not amend or repeal RFRA, one of our nation’s most vital legal protections for…Continue Reading

How Do You Solve A Problem Like This Sister?

July 6, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on How Do You Solve A Problem Like This Sister?

By REY FLORES As soon as the Hobby Lobby decision was handed down last week at the Supreme Court of the United States, our dear old friend Sr. Donna Quinn must have been crying alligator tears. The poor sister has been fighting for the rights of women to keep being exploited by contraceptive drugs and for their right to abort their babies for decades now. Much has been said and written about Sr. Donna and with good reason. Sr. Donna is the ultimate example of dissidence. In her own words in a 2002 interview, she implied that even she could do a better job than God when it comes to death itself: “I think death is the first and most…Continue Reading

A Book Review… Henry VIII’s Catholic Polemic Revisited

July 5, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review… Henry VIII’s Catholic Polemic Revisited

By FRANCIS PHILLIPS Henry VIII: Defence of the Seven Sacraments. Edited and supplemented by Raymond de Souza; St. Gabriel Communications International. $33.00, including postage and handling; order from Sacred Heart Institute, Inc., P.O. Box 41, Winona, MN 55987. Raymond de Souza, founder of St. Gabriel Communications, has set himself a high-minded goal in publishing this book: to help to restore the Catholic faith in England, tragically lost at the Reformation 450 years ago. For this purpose he has issued a handsome new millennium edition of this historic work to make it more available to a new readership, lay as well as academic. De Souza rightly sees the Reformation as the first major blow in the weakening of Christianity in Europe.…Continue Reading

Prayer As Reversed Thunder

July 4, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on Prayer As Reversed Thunder

By DONALD DeMARCO George Herbert (1593-1633) is one of those rare human beings who combined both scholarship and artistry with personal sanctity. In his three years of ministry as a clergyman, he preached and prayed, visited the poor, consoled the sick, and sat by the bed of the dying — administering true pastoral care to the privileged and the plowman alike. He rebuilt his church out of his own pocket. Unfortunately, consumption cut his life short. His reputation as a major poet rests solely on a single volume that was published shortly after his death by a friend to whom it had been left. In his poem, Prayer (1), he makes the thought-provoking remark that prayer is “reversed thunder.” For…Continue Reading

But Not A Bat… You Can Kill A Baby In The Womb

July 3, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on But Not A Bat… You Can Kill A Baby In The Womb

By FR. MARVIN DEUTSCH One day when I was giving a retreat in Minnesota, a lady came up to me with a problem. She said she had bats in her attic and didn’t know how to get rid of them. I suggested that she put a cat up there who would make short work of the bats. She said it was against the law because in Scott County bats are a protected species. She said they eat mosquitoes. But, I told her, the bats have no business in your attic. She finally hired a man to watch where the bats went out at dusk and then stuff up the holes so they could not get back. And so I made…Continue Reading

Culture Of Life 101… “Can You Be Pro-Life And Support Capital Punishment?”

July 2, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on Culture Of Life 101… “Can You Be Pro-Life And Support Capital Punishment?”

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 all Culture of Life 101 articles so far with footnotes, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.) +    +    + “If the deliberate extinguishment of human life has any effect at all, it more likely tends to lower our respect for life and brutalize our values” — Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, architect of Roe v. Wade, on capital punishment. +    +    + Pro-abortionists sometimes link the issues of abortion and capital punishment in their debates, literature, and propaganda campaigns. Their goal is to try to make pro-life activists look inconsistent because we allegedly support the death penalty…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . Becoming A Domestic Church

July 1, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . Becoming A Domestic Church

By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN The Little Oratory, by David Clayton and Leila Marie Lawler (Sophia Institute Press: Manchester, NH 2014), 186 pp. $19.95. Available through www.SophiaInstitute.com; 1-800-888-9344. While everyone knows the difference between a house and a home, not everyone recognizes the difference between a home and a “domestic church.” Because the Christian faith affects all of life and needs to be lived at home and at work as well as on Sundays in church, the life of Catholic faith grows through a special place in the home the authors define as a “little oratory” or sacred space — a prayer table resembling a home altar adorned with icons, pictures of saints, holy cards, Bible, prayer book, candles, and beautiful tablecloth…Continue Reading

David Brat: Calvinist Catholic Libertarian

June 30, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on David Brat: Calvinist Catholic Libertarian

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK I don’t like admitting this in public; I like to think of myself as someone who keeps himself informed on the political issues of the day. But I never heard of David Brat before he defeated Eric Cantor in Virginia’s Seventh Congressional District Republican primary on June 10. I thought Cantor was a shoo-in, so I never spent time reading about the campaign in Virginia. To make up for my oversight, I have been racing to find out as much about Brat as I can. One thing I discovered I found especially intriguing. Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, identifies himself as a “Calvinist Catholic libertarian.” We owe it to ourselves to examine…Continue Reading