Francis Cardinal George, RIP . . . A True Prince Of The Church

By PAUL LIKOUDIS (Editor’s Note: We welcome Paul Likoudis back to our pages for this commentary on Francis Cardinal George, OMI, whom Paul covered extensively as The Wanderer’s news editor. Paul continues his battle with cancer; the prayers and the support of Wanderer readers are greatly appreciated.) + + + Francis Cardinal George, OMI, archbishop of Chicago, died April 17 after a long battle with cancer. Appointed bishop of Yakima in 1990, archbishop of Portland, Ore., in 1996, and then archbishop of Chicago a year later, Cardinal George was the towering intellect in the U.S. episcopacy, and a prelate whom Pope St. John Paul II could rely on to reorient the Church in Chicago with its notoriously “independent” clergy and…Continue Reading

What Is Life Becoming For Us?. . . California Pols Call For Pioneer Fr. Serra To Be Exiled

By DEXTER DUGGAN Hundreds of feet above the streets, the urban northern California reader at the breakfast table opened her San Francisco Chronicle the morning of January 23 to see an opinion column, including a photo of a stern-looking friar’s face, that covered a half-page and was headlined, “Serra an oppressor — not a saint.” Eighteenth century Franciscan friar Junipero Serra, it said, had imposed “devastating losses” on the land’s indigenous peoples due to his colonial system. “Under Serra’s leadership, a first generation of mission Indians began to create the vast wealth of California through forced residence and labor in the mission,” wrote Lisbeth Haas, a history professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is Spanish for…Continue Reading

Catholic School Teachers As Ministers: All Catholic School Teachers?

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK Many of those who are protesting Archbishop Cordileone’s “morality clause” for teachers in San Francisco’s diocesan schools are the usual suspects, left-wing activists with an anti-Catholic agenda. The clause, as widely reported, requires that employees of the diocesan schools “conform their hearts, minds and consciences, as well as their public and private behavior, ever more closely to the truths taught by the Catholic Church” on moral matters such as “adultery, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography and homosexual relations” and “the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.” The protesters, in an online petition with 5,000 signatures, contend that this requirement would “create a repressive environment in which not only dissent,…Continue Reading

The Obama Doctrine

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN At the Summit of the Americas where he met with Raul Castro, the 83-year-old younger brother of Fidel, President Obama provided an insight into where he is taking us, and why: “The United States will not be imprisoned by the past — we’re looking to the future. I’m not interested in having battles that frankly started before I was born.” Obama was not yet born when Fidel rolled into Havana, January 1, 1959. He was one year old during the missile crisis. His mother belonged to a 1960s generation that welcomed the Cuban Revolution. His father came from an African generation that won independence from the European empires. Churchill’s bust may have resided in the Oval…Continue Reading

Rey Flores . . . Appears on Mic’D Up