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Will Five Justices Give One Man Control Of U.S. Immigration Law?

November 14, 2015 Frontpage Comments Off on Will Five Justices Give One Man Control Of U.S. Immigration Law?

By TERENCE P. JEFFREY (Editor’s Note: Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor-in-chief of CNSnews.com. Creators Syndicate provided this column. All rights reserved.) + + + President Barack Obama told the truth — perhaps by accident — when he spoke last November at a Chicago community center. Hecklers shouted at him for not doing enough, in their view, to stop deportations. He responded by defending his new policy. “I understand you may disagree. But we’ve got to be able to talk honestly about these issues. All right?” said Obama, according to the White House transcript. “Now, you’re absolutely right that there have been significant numbers of deportations. That’s true,” he said. “But what you’re not paying attention to is the fact…Continue Reading

Catholic Education: Designed To Fail?

November 13, 2015 Frontpage Comments Off on Catholic Education: Designed To Fail?

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK S.M. writes to recommend a book to our readers: Designed to Fail: Catholic Education in America by Steve Kellmeyer. S.M. describes the book as a “chronicle of the development, the purpose, and (primarily) the absence of formal schools during the first 1,500 years of the Church’s existence”; education for the most part took place during those years in the home, under the direction of parents. S.M., paraphrasing Kellmeyer, writes, “Mass public education became a part of our life only after American educators adopted the Prussian model during the 19th century. These schools promoted a Protestant view of morality and the role of the citizen. To counter this influence, Catholic bishops in the United States established the…Continue Reading

The Kaleidoscope Of Culture

November 12, 2015 Frontpage Comments Off on The Kaleidoscope Of Culture

By DONALD DeMARCO “Culture,” writes the existentialist philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset, “is what saves human life from being a mere disaster; it is what enables man to live a life which is something above meaningless tragedy or inward disgrace” (Mission of the University). Wild animals live in an environment. Human beings live in a culture. Animals conform to their environment. Human beings have the freedom and ingenuity to change their culture. But this change is kaleidoscopic. It can move in the direction of a more humanized civilization, or it can degenerate in the direction of a closed environment in which everyone thinks in the same way. In the absence of culture, as Ortega remarks, “Life is a chaos, a…Continue Reading

Catholic Media Coalition . . . Schedules Meeting To Examine Medical Culture Of Death

November 11, 2015 Frontpage Comments Off on Catholic Media Coalition . . . Schedules Meeting To Examine Medical Culture Of Death

By DEXTER DUGGAN Some Catholic media experts are scheduled to examine the Culture of Death that’s seeking to control medicine, and how people can fight this takeover of health care, at a by-invitation gathering in Virginia in mid-November. “Exposing the Death Peddlers: Brain Death and Palliative Death Care” is the theme of the November 13-15 meeting in Woodstock, Va., for the Catholic Media Coalition (CMC). Topics are to include “The role of community organizing in spreading the system of death,” “Trojan Horse legislation and the bureaucratic takeover of palliative care,” “Using false death to end life and take organs,” and “Repackaging death as life: Transformation from traditional care to palliative death care.” The CMC (catholicmediacoali tion.org) describes itself as “an…Continue Reading

Restoring The Sacred . . . Reverencing The Saints

November 10, 2015 Frontpage Comments Off on Restoring The Sacred . . . Reverencing The Saints

By JAMES MONTI We all recently began the month of November with the Solemnity of All Saints. Some of us, no doubt, were told that day from the pulpit or elsewhere that “we are all saints,” the implication being of course that we need to stop associating the word “saint” with people who stand on pedestals, wear halos, and get canonized after spending their lives doing things that no modern man or woman could possibly be expected to imitate. I even knew a pastor who would begin addressing the people at Mass on this day with the greeting, “Hello, saints!” This sort of talk reduces the Solemnity of All Saints to little more than a celebration of ourselves. But if…Continue Reading

A Disastrous Beginning . . . Catholic Ryan Stumbles Into His Role As House Speaker

November 9, 2015 Frontpage Comments Off on A Disastrous Beginning . . . Catholic Ryan Stumbles Into His Role As House Speaker

By DEXTER DUGGAN While CNBC’s liberal moderators at the third Republican presidential debate on October 28 in Colorado sought to embarrass the candidates, new House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) did more than enough to embarrass himself and the GOP thoroughly and astoundingly shortly thereafter. The Catholic Ryan had just assumed the powerful House post at the strong urging of the failed departing speaker, John Boehner (R., Ohio), also a Catholic. Boehner told CNN that God Himself wanted Ryan to be speaker, and that Boehner “laid every ounce of Catholic guilt I could on him” to shove Ryan into the role. With this background, the newly crowned, muscular Ryan quickly issued lame excuses and assertions of powerlessness when the topic…Continue Reading

Hillary’s Hatchet Men

November 8, 2015 Frontpage Comments Off on Hillary’s Hatchet Men

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK Critics of Hillary Clinton have been focusing of late on the evidence that came to light in her testimony before the U.S. House committee on Benghazi, especially the email that documents her deception of the American people and the families of the men killed at the embassy about the role played in their deaths by the anti-Islamic YouTube video. And rightly so. We now know that Hillary was aware that the raid on the embassy was not the result of a spontaneous demonstration over the video, but a planned terrorist attack, in spite of what she and her supporters said in public. It is hard for an honest observer to come to any other conclusion than…Continue Reading

The Synod Of Bishops Concludes . . . Relief, Confusion, And Uncertainties Follow

November 7, 2015 Frontpage Comments Off on The Synod Of Bishops Concludes . . . Relief, Confusion, And Uncertainties Follow

By MAIKE HICKSON The Synod of Bishops on the Family is formally over. And we are grateful. For, as much as many of us feared its arrival, we also came to dread its equivocal continuation. This synod was tinctured from its inception with reasonable suspicions and fears. From its beginning, it seems, many things — not only the procedural rules — were stacked against those prelates who had intended to uphold Christ’s own teaching whole and entire: The papal appointees (45 of them) were mostly liberal-leaning; the commission members for writing the final report were mostly liberal-leaning; and many of the synod’s spokesmen — among them Fr. Thomas Rosica and Fr. Bernd Hagenkord — were liberal-leaning. In addition to all…Continue Reading

An Apple A Day

November 6, 2015 Frontpage Comments Off on An Apple A Day

By DONALD DeMARCO St. John Paul II, at the Eighth World Youth Day in Denver, urged his audience “not to be afraid to take up the challenge of making Christ known in the modern ‘metropolis’.” My venture into a particularly modernized segment of this “metropolis” is still fresh in my memory. The family iPad was in need of repair. Now responsibility for taking care of electronic gadgets usually falls to the man of the house even if he knows virtually nothing about how they work. I could not shirk my responsibility, daunting as it may be. My bold adventure took me to an Apple Store which seemed to me more like a combination of a public library and a general…Continue Reading

The Disharmony Between Science And Politics

November 5, 2015 Frontpage Comments Off on The Disharmony Between Science And Politics

By DONALD DeMARCO It is commonly believed that science and faith are incompatible with each other. The truth is that science itself rests on faith, namely, faith that the world which scientists study is intelligible and will yield its order to them in a consistent fashion. Science and politics is a different matter. Politics is often at odds with science. In such cases it often presumes itself to be a higher authority while reserving the right to modify or even veto scientific findings. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to this danger clearly and eloquently in an address he gave to the Massachusetts Medical Society back in 1860: Although “theoretically medicine ought to go on its own straightforward inductive path without…Continue Reading