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Pope Francis And Pope John Paul II Re Humanae Vitae

March 20, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on Pope Francis And Pope John Paul II Re Humanae Vitae

By JOHN F. KIPPLEY (Editor’s Note: John F. Kippley is the author of Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality and other books and articles. With his wife Sheila, he is a coauthor of Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach. The commentary below is reprinted with permission from his blog at johnkippley.com. All rights reserved.) +    +    + In an interview commemorating the first anniversary of his election as the Bishop of Rome on March 13, 2013, Pope Francis made some wide-ranging comments. Of special interest are his comments on Humanae Vitae. “It all depends on how the text of Humanae Vitae is interpreted. Paul VI himself, toward the end, recommended that confessors show great kindness and attention…Continue Reading

The Price Of Innocence

March 19, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on The Price Of Innocence

By DONALD DeMARCO Pro-life students at Oklahoma State University, called “Cowboys for Life,” asked permission from their university to erect a pro-life display on campus back in October 2012. The university turned them down for the dubious reason that attracting students to walk through the grass to the display would damage “the declining condition” of the school’s lawns. But, as “Cowboys for Life” pointed out, the school had approved other displays in the same area. The university also forbade the students from distributing leaflets. For these and other prohibitions, not imposed on any other campus group, CFL filed a lawsuit in federal court maintaining that the university was guilty of discrimination. Brently Olsson, the students’ lawyer, argued that the school’s…Continue Reading

Keep The Community Organizing Off Church Property

March 18, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on Keep The Community Organizing Off Church Property

By REY FLORES For the past few weeks I have been asking readers to share information with me about any troubling political activities that may be taking place in their respective parishes and dioceses. I have received a few e-mails from people who are very concerned as to why some of these political activities persist undisturbed. Many of these e-mails have a recurring theme and almost always ask the same question: “Why aren’t our bishops doing anything about it?” That is a great question. People should be going to their parish for spiritual edification and guidance. The house of our Lord is a place to get right with Him through all of the vital sacraments with which we have been…Continue Reading

Federalizing Four-Year-Olds

March 16, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on Federalizing Four-Year-Olds

By TERENCE P. JEFFREY Will America be a better and freer country three decades from now if the children who turn four in this decade spend most of their waking hours with members of a government teachers union rather than with their moms? President Barack Obama’s vision of America, not surprisingly, starts with very young children spending their time in the custody of government employees. “I believe we should start teaching our kids at the earliest ages,” Obama said last week. When he used the word “we” here, Obama was not talking about Michelle and himself, he was talking about the government. When he used the words “our kids,” he was not talking about his own children — who attend…Continue Reading

Erwin Jöris… A German With Many Years In Hitler’s And Stalin’s Prisons

March 15, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on Erwin Jöris… A German With Many Years In Hitler’s And Stalin’s Prisons

By MAIKE HICKSON Part 3 (Editor’s Note: In this three-part article, Dr. Hickson details the life of the late Erwin Jöris, a prisoner of totalitarian regimes, and explains how his life offers lessons for us today. In this concluding article, she comments on how his experiences show the need to resist gradual violations of our privacy and freedom of thought and speech, before they are further eroded or effectively destroyed. (Maike Hickson holds a doctorate in French literature from the University of Hannover. (Throughout this series, Dr. Hickson has cited quotations from the following work: Andreas Petersen, Deine Schnauze wird Dir in Sibirien einfrieren. Ein Jahrhundertdiktat. Erwin Jöris, Wiesbaden: Matrixverlag, 2012.) +    +    + From August 1951 until the end…Continue Reading

Democracy And The Need For Virtue

March 13, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on Democracy And The Need For Virtue

By DONALD DeMARCO Syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell, who is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, reiterated democracy’s need for special virtues in a February 23, 2014 article appearing in the Toronto Sun. “If we learn nothing else from the bitter tragedy of the war in Afghanistan,” he wrote, “it should be that we should put an end to the self-indulgence of thinking we can engage in ‘nation-building’ and creating ‘democracy’ in countries where nothing resembling democracy has ever existed.” Politicians are exceedingly slow, however, in grasping fundamental moral principles. The noted Harvard sociologist Gordon Allport published his classic study, The Nature of Prejudice, during the aftermath of World War II. It was 1954, a global situation very much…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . Maimonides And Philosophy’s Role In Religion

March 12, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . Maimonides And Philosophy’s Role In Religion

By JUDE DOUGHERTY Halberral, Moshe. Maimonides: Life and Thought. Translated from the Hebrew by Joel Linsider. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Pp. 385. This is an exposition, analysis, and assessment of two major works of the medieval philosopher and theologian, Moshe ben Maimon (1135-1204), known in the West as Maimonides. The two works are Mishneh Torah (14 volumes), a codification of Jewish law, considered to be Maimonides’ magnum opus, and the better-known philosophical work, Guide for the Perplexed. The Mishneh Torah consolidated and codified an array of Jewish halakhah rules and norms and set them in a unified and accessible structure without the usual back-and-forth discussion of opinions, major and minor, that characterize the halakhah of the period. Maimonides sought…Continue Reading

Culture Of Life 101 . . . “Profile: Religious Coalition For Reproductive Choice”

March 11, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on Culture Of Life 101 . . . “Profile: Religious Coalition For Reproductive Choice”

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 8 of The Facts of Life, “Christian Teachings on Abortion,” e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.) +    +    + The mission of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) is nearly identical to its member organization Catholics for [a Free] Choice, but it is carried out on a wider scale. RCRC’s mission has three elements. The first component is to create confusion among the public as to what Christians actually believe about abortion. RCRC intends to cause doubt in people’s minds by claiming that the Church did not always oppose baby-killing. So, when the Church does…Continue Reading

A Potpourri… Biting The Bullet, And Other Matters

March 10, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on A Potpourri… Biting The Bullet, And Other Matters

By GEORGE A. KENDALL The Church has made some moves in recent years toward a restoration of Catholic tradition and orthodox teaching, but it strikes me that there is a bullet she has yet to bite — namely, open and uncompromising teaching in areas where Catholic teaching is widely rejected and hated, especially sexual ethics — contraception, abortion, and homosexuality in particular. These issues are regarded as matters not to be touched with the proverbial ten-foot pole. Even generally quite orthodox bishops are afraid to tell their priests to preach against these things. That is understandable, since a lot of the priests would refuse to obey and many might even leave the Church. And where these matters were preached on,…Continue Reading

Leftist Zombie Alert

March 9, 2014 Featured Today Comments Off on Leftist Zombie Alert

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK Our readers have responded to a variety of recent topics addressed in this space in recent months. They offer much food for thought. N.H., for example, points out that we should not assume that groups organizing against Common Core are doing so for the same reason as ourselves. He issues what he calls an LZA, a “leftist zombie alert.” He compares his LZA to an APB, an all points bulletin about left-wing maneuvering in the country. He writes of a “nascent teachers’ organization positioning itself to use the disenchantment over Common Core. This organization is still in the incubation phase, but it may prove to be a potentially viral movement soon.” Those on the right who…Continue Reading