Friday 26th April 2024
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK An article by Berny Belvedere in the July 27 edition of the American Thinker sought an answer to a question that Catholics, who teach in public high schools and colleges and who are serious about their faith, have to wrestle with throughout their teaching career. They know that Jesus instructed His disciples to “go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). They are likely to have heard since they were children of the importance of being a “witness” to their faith, along with the encouragement given in many Catholic lay organizations to “live their faith in their daily…Continue Reading
By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — Heading for Arizona’s international border seems to be almost as popular with U.S. political candidates as with illegal immigrants. The candidates head southward; the aliens come north. Conservative candidates want to show their seriousness about protecting border integrity and citizens’ safety after the unauthorized entrants show their untrustworthiness about respecting U.S. law. That crisis assumed such proportions by mid-August that a mild-mannered retired pediatric neurosurgeon on the campaign trail suggested using drones to attack the supply caves of dangerous alien smugglers in southern Arizona. With border security among his topics, White House hopeful Dr. Ben Carson spoke to a cheering crowd here estimated as high as 12,000 people on August 18, followed the next day…Continue Reading
Rey Flores “You say you want a revolution, well you know . . . we all want to change the world. . . . But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out! Don’t you know it’s gonna’ be alright, alright, alright!” — Lyrics from The Beatles 1968 song Revolution, written by Lennon-McCartney Yes, ladies and gentlemen . . . there is a revolution, a pro-life revolution happening right now as you read this. Just this past week hundreds of thousands of Americans protested, rallied and got together to speak out against one of the greatest injustices, if not the greatest, injustices of our time. All across this land and other countries like England…Continue Reading
By DEXTER DUGGAN Media people and politicians who are “married” to the pro-abortion view would rather be “biting into their wrists” than give up that belief, a veteran California reporter, anchor woman and talk host told The Wanderer as the pro-life Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released its eighth sting video on selling baby parts. The abortion defenders “are married to the idea that abortion is a woman’s right, and if you do anything to undermine it, they’ll lose that right,” said Barbara Simpson, who worked at major electronic news outlets in Los Angeles and San Francisco before becoming a Bay Area radio talk host. She currently writes a weekly commentary for World Net Daily. “They just will not do…Continue Reading
By DONALD DeMARCO If Mortimer Adler, after writing his classic, How to Read a Book, authored How to Read the Newspaper, he probably would have warned his readers that newspapers convey something other than news. They convey, he would advise, propaganda carefully concealed within what the inattentive reader might assume to be mere news. Consider the following three newspaper items culled recently from the same newspaper. 1) Gretta Vosper, an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada, has declared that she believes neither in God nor in the Bible. When she decided to abandon the Lord’s Prayer, 100 of the 150 members of her congregation left in protest. She claims that belief in God can motivate bad things. Rev.…Continue Reading
By LAWRENCE P. GRAYSON A significant danger facing America today is that its people are losing their sense of religious values and allowing the culture of the country to be shaped by militant secularists. The results are unsurprising: abortion and same-sex marriage are legal; assisted suicide and euthanasia are gaining acceptance; pornography is rampant; and religious persecution is underway. When secularism dominates the culture, religious freedom must be curtailed. Secularism is a belief system that is anti-theistic, rooted in materialism and hedonism. It is alluring because it gives societal acceptance to unbridled human passions. It does away with distinctions of right or wrong, even treating wrong as right and right as wrong. Secularism is an idolatry in which the beliefs…Continue Reading
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK I guess it was in high school where I first heard the term the “lessons of Munich.” It has been part of my life from that time on, during my college years and my teaching career. Just about everyone I encountered — colleagues, professors, people in the media — whether on the left or the right, agreed that it was a mistake for the European powers to appease Adolf Hitler and the Nazis by giving in to their demands for control of parts of Czechoslovakia at the Munich Conference in 1938. As Winston Churchill phrased it, “Appeasement only feeds the appetite of the aggressor.” It was the way I taught the story of the outbreak of…Continue Reading
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK I haven’t come across many defenders of the University of New Hampshire’s “Bias-Free Language Guide,” a 4,500-word document posted on the university’s website in early August by Sylvia Foster, the school’s coordinator of equity and diversity. Even the usual suspects on the politically correct left are keeping their distance, sensing that Foster went too far, making a mockery of the university community. UNH President Mark Huddleston moved quickly to give assurances that “the views expressed in this guide are not the policy of the University of New Hampshire,” and that “no one on campus is required to obey these suggestions,” where speech is “free and unfettered.” But Huddleston’s protestation does not close the discussion. Obviously, Sylvia…Continue Reading
By REY FLORES According to the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pope Francis will be the fourth Pope to come the United States. His visit to our nation is scheduled to take place September 22-27, 2015, when he will make stops in Washington, D.C., New York, and Philadelphia. This trip will be the tenth time a Pope has made an apostolic journey to the United States. The last time a Pope visited our country was in April of 2008 when Pope Benedict XVI came to Washington, D.C., and New York. Before that, St. Pope John Paul the Great visited us seven times and traveled to about 20 American cities. Before that, the first time a Pope visited…Continue Reading