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Freedom And Federalism

November 19, 2013 Featured Today Comments Off on Freedom And Federalism

By ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO One of the bedrocks of our governmental infrastructure is federalism. This is the constitutional recognition of the legal origins of the United States as a union of independent states. America started, of course, with 13 colonies, which became 13 states, and gradually added 37 additional states. Though the federal government is a behemoth today, it was created when each of those states ceded some of their sovereignty to the federal government. They did this in writing. The writing is the Constitution, and it explicitly states that the governmental powers not ceded are retained by the states. President Reagan reminded us of the origins of the country in his first inaugural address when he stated, “All of…Continue Reading

Why No One Does Anything About The National Debt

November 18, 2013 Featured Today Comments Off on Why No One Does Anything About The National Debt

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK It is one of the great questions of our time: Why do we seem so complacent about the rising national debt? Every politician in the country says it is unacceptably high, but then changes the topic. The debt is currently well over $17 trillion. That means each American owes approximately $54,000, with each taxpayer owing about $149,000. We all have heard the clever quip about how it is no big deal because we “owe it to ourselves.” That is only partly true. It is true that many American citizens, banks, and investment houses have bought the government bonds that constitute the debt. But so have foreign countries, the Chinese, Japanese, and Saudis, especially. But, regardless of…Continue Reading

Philippines And The World… Rally With Aid For Typhoon Victims

November 17, 2013 Featured Today Comments Off on Philippines And The World… Rally With Aid For Typhoon Victims

TAIPEI (AsiaNews) — Taiwan, the United States, Australia, the Catholic Church, the UN and other international agencies are allocating aid to the victims of Typhoon Haiyan which hit the central part of the Philippines on November 10, wiping out entire villages. The Catholic communities of Taiwan, home to thousands of Filipino families, have given fund-raisers in parishes and have organized prayer vigils for the victims. The Archdiocese of Taipei, in collaboration with the Church of St. Christopher, the parish for Filipino migrants, is collecting donations for the people affected by Typhoon Haiyan. Following the example of the archdiocese, parishes throughout the country are holding fund-raisers in solidarity with the people devastated by the disaster. Fr. Mark is a Filipino priest…Continue Reading

Attacked By Leftists . . . Florence Approves Cemetery For Unborn Victims Of Abortion

November 16, 2013 Featured Today Comments Off on Attacked By Leftists . . . Florence Approves Cemetery For Unborn Victims Of Abortion

By HILARY WHITE FLORENCE, Italy (LifeSiteNews) — The mayor of Florence has roused the fury of feminists and the far left after he announced that city hall would recognize an established section of the municipal cemetery of Trespiano dedicated to babies who have died “before birth,” including by abortion. Various representatives of Italy’s extreme left, including the Radical Party, have denounced the move as “macabre” and an attack on the country’s liberal abortion law. While the area of the cemetery has existed “unofficially” since 1996, the city council of Florence in early November approved officially a section dedicated for the burial of “children who died before birth.” According to Deputy Mayor Stefania Saccardi, there are “more than a thousand unborn…Continue Reading

Culture Of Life 101 . . . “Population Control And Self-Hatred”

November 15, 2013 Featured Today Comments Off on Culture Of Life 101 . . . “Population Control And Self-Hatred”

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 18 of The Facts of Life, “The International Abortion Situation,” e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.) +    +    + “Human beings are a virus . . . you are a cancer on the earth” — “Agent Smith” in the movie The Matrix. +    +    + As we have already seen, three of the five primary motivations of the population control movement are greed, racism, and environmentalism. The fourth motivation behind population control is a hatred of the human race. This is often an underlying cause of racism because, if a person consciously or subconsciously despises himself,…Continue Reading

First Teachers — Education Debit Cards

November 14, 2013 Featured Today Comments Off on First Teachers — Education Debit Cards

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK The biggest obstacle to school voucher programs is the argument that they violate the First Amendment’s “no establishment of religion” clause. Central to the argument is the proposition that vouchers take “public dollars” — raised by taxing people from many different religious backgrounds or with no religious affiliation — and funnel them directly to schools run by a church or some other religious organization. The key, then, for those who seek some form of financial relief for parents who want to remove their children from local public schools and enroll them in a parochial school is breaking this direct link between tax dollars and the parochial school in question. Arizona may have found a way to…Continue Reading

GOP Race-Baiting?

November 13, 2013 Featured Today Comments Off on GOP Race-Baiting?

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK I admit that nostalgia may be clouding my mind, but it still seems to me that the television talk shows of old — William F. Buckley’s Firing Line and David Susskind’s program, for example — offered viewers a far more serious discussion of the issues than do the shows of today, which tend to feature representatives of the Democratic and the Republican Parties doing nothing more than exchanging talking points to push their respective agendas. Fox News commentator Bob Beckel admitted to participating in morning conference calls between Democratic Party leaders and Democrats likely to be on the talk shows that day to get their talking points. It seems safe to assume that the Republicans do…Continue Reading

Neither Left Nor Right, But Catholic… How Obamacare Offends Human Dignity

November 12, 2013 Featured Today Comments Off on Neither Left Nor Right, But Catholic… How Obamacare Offends Human Dignity

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 cofounder and president of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. He is the author of several books including The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic [Transaction Publishers: 2012], and most recently published an edited volume entitled Child Abuse, Family Rights, and the Child Protective System [Scarecrow Press: 2013]. This column originally appeared in Crisismagazine.com and the Krason column will appear monthly in The Wanderer.) +    +    + The Catholic Church’s social teaching is erected on the belief in the basic dignity of the…Continue Reading

Pope Names Bishop Matano To Head Rochester Diocese

November 11, 2013 Featured Today Comments Off on Pope Names Bishop Matano To Head Rochester Diocese

By PAUL LIKOUDIS WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pope Francis has named Bishop Salvatore Matano, bishop of Burlington, Vt., as bishop of the Diocese of Rochester, N.Y. Bishop Matano succeeds Bishop Matthew Clark, who retired in September 2012. Matano’s installation date is set for January 3, 2014. The appointment was announced November 6, by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, apostolic nuncio to the United States. That same day, at a press conference in Rochester, his first time in the city, Bishop Matano said his first priority is to encourage fallen-away Catholics to return to Mass. Since 2000, Mass attendance has dropped by more than 30 percent; in some parishes by more than 40 percent. According to Rocco Palmo, the “Church insider” who blogs…Continue Reading

Vatican Strongly Reaffirms . . . No Communion For Divorced And Remarried Catholics

November 10, 2013 Featured Today Comments Off on Vatican Strongly Reaffirms . . . No Communion For Divorced And Remarried Catholics

By JOHN-HENRY WESTEN VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — In a lengthy essay published October 22 on the Vatican newspaper’s web site in five languages, Archbishop Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), has strongly reaffirmed Catholic Church teaching forbidding divorced and remarried Catholics from receiving Holy Communion. Comments from Pope Francis on his return trip from Rio’s World Youth Day regarding divorced and remarried Catholics had led to speculation that a change in the Church’s longstanding teaching on the matter was coming. That perception was strengthened with the announcement of an upcoming synod on families for next October. But when one diocese in Germany did what many considered jumping the gun and proposed guidelines for…Continue Reading