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The Person Of The Church And Her Personnel

May 21, 2014 Frontpage Comments Off on The Person Of The Church And Her Personnel

By JUDE P. DOUGHERTY At a time when the Church is accused of clerical malfeasance on both sides of the Atlantic, Maritain’s treatise on the Church and her personnel is worth revisiting. To speak of the “person” of the Church is to recognize a certain transcendence in time of a body that remains essentially the same. Just as a human being is not to be identified with the personality it manifests on a given day or at a given period in life, the visible Church cannot be identified with one council or one papacy. Maritain’s reflections on the subject are to be found in his last complete book, On the Church of Christ: The Person of the Church and Her…Continue Reading

A (Devious) Plea To Pope Francis

May 20, 2014 Frontpage Comments Off on A (Devious) Plea To Pope Francis

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK Am I sure it is a devious plea? I am. But you can judge. Let’s take a look at it. The “plea” was made in an ad sponsored by the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams furniture stores. I had never heard of these stores before the company took out the full-page ad in The New York Times on April 13. The headline was, “A Plea to Pope Francis: On Behalf of Homeless LGBT Youth.” It turns out that there are quite a few of the stores across the country, usually in the upscale urban areas favored by people in their 20s and 30s with some money to spend on trendy decor for their apartments and co-ops.…Continue Reading

Three Hispanics . . . Reflect On Why U.S. Catholic Church Is Being Told, “Adios”

May 19, 2014 Frontpage Comments Off on Three Hispanics . . . Reflect On Why U.S. Catholic Church Is Being Told, “Adios”

By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — Three Phoenix-area Hispanic Catholics commented to The Wanderer about a recent nationally publicized study of Hispanics in the United States leaving the Catholic Church, either to become Protestants or to drop religious practice. All three cited an environment in the U.S. that’s either less supportive of or more hostile to their religion. The three, all orthodox, practicing Catholics, spoke during separate interviews in early May. Nearly one in four Hispanic adults in the U.S. is a former Catholic, said the Pew Research Center’s 2013 National Survey of Latinos and Religion, as reported at the web site of Pew Research’s Religion & Public Life Project. It said that “a majority (55 percent) of the nation’s estimated…Continue Reading

Abolish The Corporate Income Tax!

May 18, 2014 Frontpage Comments Off on Abolish The Corporate Income Tax!

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN News that Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, plans to buy Britain’s AstraZeneca for $106 billion, renounce its U.S. citizenship, and declare itself a British company, has jolted Congress. Pfizer is being denounced as disloyal to the land of its birth, and politicians are devising ways to stop Pfizer from departing. Yet Pfizer is not alone. Hedge fund managers are urging giant corporations like Walgreens to go nation-shopping for new residences abroad to evade the 35 percent U.S. corporate income tax. Britain’s corporate income tax is 20 percent, and Pfizer stands to save over $1 billion a year by moving there. In what are called “inversions,” dozens of U.S. companies have bought up foreign rivals, and…Continue Reading

The Disappearance Of Common Sense

May 17, 2014 Frontpage Comments Off on The Disappearance Of Common Sense

By DONALD DeMARCO Fr. Vincent McNabb, OP, begins his edifying little book, The Catholic Church and Philosophy, with an unusual, though perfectly valid, definition of philosophy. He refers to it as “orchestrated, supreme common sense.” Philosophy, far from being an esoteric enterprise, is well within the reach of the untutored person. “Its first duty,” therefore, according to Fr. McNabb, “is to justify mankind’s intuitions.” It is essential that philosophy orchestrate its knowledge not in an accidental way, such as the way a person might organize the stamps in his stamp collection, but according to realistic principles. Because philosophy is tethered to reality, it respects the very principles that hold reality together and give it an objective order. Its common sense…Continue Reading

Getting Specific About Common Core

May 16, 2014 Frontpage Comments Off on Getting Specific About Common Core

By  JAMES K. FITZPATRICK Without exception, the correspondence we receive at First Teachers is opposed to Common Core, the federal government’s program to establish standards for local schools around the country. And yet, I continue to discover an editorial or column from someone on the right in support of the plan. That is not surprising. After all, for many years it was conservatives who were pushing the notion that there was a need to establish standards in our schools, to promote academic excellence and to prevent the academic left from politicizing curricula around the country. One has only to think back a decade or so, when people like William Bennett and Lynne Cheney were making the rounds on the talk…Continue Reading

Culture Of Life 101 . . . “The Beauty Of Statistics On Abortion”

May 15, 2014 Frontpage Comments Off on Culture Of Life 101 . . . “The Beauty Of Statistics On Abortion”

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 19 of The Facts of Life, “United States Abortion Statistics,” e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.) +    +    + Edward Tufte, a professor emeritus at Yale, is an information guru. He travels the world teaching people the art of “data visualization,” or how to most effectively present the power and the beauty of evidence. His work highlights the fact that the battle over social issues is largely one of images that activists from all sides attempt to establish in people’s minds. No battle is more rich in imagery than the struggle over abortion. We have seen…Continue Reading

Remembering A Saint Who Changed World Politics

May 14, 2014 Frontpage Comments Off on Remembering A Saint Who Changed World Politics

By JOHN J. METZLER John Paul II, the Pope from Poland, has been declared a saint. According to canon law, the Pope performed the requisite miracles and was thus then canonized by the Vatican. Yet, one unspoken miracle of John Paul was playing a pivotal role in the ending of the Cold War. The 27-year pontificate of John Paul II was marked by a whirlwind of pastoral visits, pilgrimages, and meetings with both the faithful and world leaders, more than any of his Predecessors. JPII, as he became known, became a religious “rock star” in a profoundly secular world; a man whose humble spirituality, but yet extraordinary political sense, and tireless moves toward global religious reconciliation, earned him esteem in…Continue Reading

Benghazi: Case Closed

May 13, 2014 Frontpage Comments Off on Benghazi: Case Closed

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK You would think that even the most partisan liberal Democrat would be ready to propose a plea bargain as the best response when anyone mentions the Obama administration’s story about the attack on our embassy in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. The more Obama’s supporters try to spin themselves out of this one, the deeper they spin themselves into a hole. They are becoming laughingstocks. What might the plea bargain look like? Something along the lines of, “Yes, we pushed a false narrative about an Internet video being the cause of the attack on the embassy, but you have to cut us some slack. Those were confusing days. It appears that people in our administration permitted…Continue Reading

Is Obama Wrong On Ukraine?

May 12, 2014 Frontpage Comments Off on Is Obama Wrong On Ukraine?

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN “What Would America Fight For?” That question shouts from the cover of this week’s Economist. It is, asserts the magazine, “the question haunting its allies.” While most agree that America would fight to defend her treaty allies and to protect vital interests if imperiled, the question is raised by President Obama’s reticence in Crimea, Ukraine, and Syria. Asked in Manila how he answers critics who say his foreign policy appears to be one of “weakness,” the president, stung, replied: “Typically, criticism of our foreign policy has been directed at the failure to use military force. And the question…I would have is, why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force after we’ve just…Continue Reading