Note to Barry: The pro-lifers are the good guys! They are not terrorists! I pray in front of an abortuary every week, and it is always a peaceful protest.
Documents LifeNews.com obtained today reveal the Obama administration partnered with leading pro-abortion organizations to host an FBI training seminar in August with the main focus of declaring as "violent" the free speech activities of pro-life Americans.
On August 25, 2010, the FBI and the United States Department of Justice co-sponsored a training seminar with Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation and the Feminist Majority Foundation.
When information about the seminar, which took place at FBI headquarters in Portland, Oregon, reached pro-life advocates, they asked officials for permission to attend and were granted access to the seminar and the training materials.
FBI and Obama administration officials provided participants with an 84-page document entitled “Resource Guide: Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers" that contained print copies of Power point presentations prepared by the Justice Department an analysis of alleged pro-life "violence" prepared by the pro-abortion groups.
A sad reflection of the poor state of catechesis in the Church.
Citizens of the United States might be among the most religious of the developed world, but when it comes to knowing about religions, U.S. atheists score higher than U.S. Christians.
This is one of the results shown by a survey from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, which was released Tuesday.
The survey asked 32 questions about religion -- such as what religion was Mother Teresa, where Jesus was born, what religion are most inhabitants of Indonesia, and if the Dalai Lama is Buddhist.
Catholics averaged the lowest score, getting 14.7 correct, below the national average of 16 out of 32 correct answers.
Atheists and agnostics averaged 20.9 correct answers. Jews averaged 20.5; Mormons 20.3; and Protestants 16.
Hey Barry, if you want to express Christ's teachings, how about "Thou shall not kill"?
Following reports of widespread skepticism over his professed Christianity, President Obama on Tuesday invoked the teachings of Jesus Christ as the inspiration for his public agenda, which he called part of an "effort to express my Christian faith" - and in his next breath defended the legalized killing of unborn children.
When a teacher's assistant asked him why he was a Christian during a townhall Q&A in Albuquerque, the president answered, “I’m a Christian by choice.”
The president admitted that his parents “weren’t folks who went to church every week" and that his mother "didn’t raise me in the church.” "I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead - being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me," he said.
The Saint of the Day for September 30 is St. Jerome.
One of the greatest Biblical scholars of Christendom, Saint Jerome was born of Christian parents at Stridon in Dalmatia around the year 345. Educated at the local school, he then studied rhetoric in Rome for eight years, before returning to Aquilea to set up a community of ascetics. When that community broke up after three years Jerome went to the east. He met an old hermit named Malchus, who inspired the saint to live in a bare cell, dressed in sackcloth, studying the Scriptures.
He learned Hebrew from a rabbi. Then he returned to Antioch and was reluctantly ordained priest. With his bishop he visited Constantinople and became friendly with Saints Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa. And then in 382 he went again to Rome, to become the personal secretary of Pope Damasus. Here he met his dearest friends, a wealthy woman called Paula, her daughter Eustochium and another wealthy woman named Marcella.
Here too he began his finest work. Commissioned by the pope, he began to revise the Latin version of the psalms and the New Testament, with immense care and scholarship. Jerome eventually translated the whole of the Bible into the Latin version which is known as the Vulgate. But when Damasus died, his enemies forced the saint to leave Rome.
Accompanied by Paula and Eustochium, Jerome went to Bethlehem. There he lived for thirty-four years till his death in 420, building a monastery over which he presided and a convent headed first by Paula and after her death by Eustochium. The saint set up a hospice for the countless pilgrims to that place. His scholarship, his polemics, his treatises and letters often provoked anger and always stimulated those who read them. 'Plato located the soul of man in the head,' he wrote, 'Christ located it in the heart.'
For a dozen years, James Wyler has raised his brothers and sister since their parents died. Andrea is married now, Dennis has numerous problems, and Bobby is still living with James and about to turn 16. James has done a pretty good job of trying to teach Bobby Christian values.
It is now time for their parents' will to be read. Andrea is greedy and hoping she gets everything. Dennis hopes to get enough to pay off the 'anarchists' (part of his problems).
In addition to these issues, Bobby has a friend Eric who is dealing with an alcoholic mother. Bobby also meets a girl named Liz in school. He likes to dress gothic, but he's been dressing more like other students to impress her. She challenges him him to show her who he really is. That's exactly what he tries to do: found out who he is.
A nice family-oriented movie with just enough quirkiness and humor to be entertaining.
Since Jay Leno is so hung up on priestly misconduct, we thought he might want to switch gears a little and try dumping on public school teachers. After all, that's where sexual misconduct is rampant these days. To this end, we are sending him some great script material, hot off the press.
There is a wonderfully rich story in the news about a New York City public school teacher who was just awarded tenure, even though she has a history of working as a prostitute and school administrators knew about it. Oh, yes, her punishment was to be reassigned to a desk job, one of the favored ways of "passing the trash." That's what happens when it costs over $200,000 to pay for an appeal in New York.
If Leno thinks this is anecdotal, we have reams of data that we can share with him, and not just about cases in New York. A few years ago, Dr. Charol Shakeshaft, who did the most authoritative work on this subject, estimated that the degree of sexual abuse in the public schools was 100 times greater than in the Catholic Church. Moreover, while this problem is almost non-existent in the Church today, it is at record-high levels in the public schools.
We're providing Leno with the script. Now let's see if he has the guts to use it.
Are you listening USCCB? We don't see enough good Bishops standing up for life.
In time for the upcoming Respect Life Month of October, Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo, North Dakota presided over an annual Mass and led a procession over 700 people to a local abortion clinic last Saturday, encountering oppositional protestors for the first time.
The Diocese of Fargo estimated that on Saturday, 700 to 800 people from St. Mary’s Cathedral processed to the local Red River Women’s Clinic, North Dakota’s only abortion facility in downtown Fargo. Director of Communications for the diocese Tanya R. Watterud told CNA that Bishop Aquila led the procession several blocks, carrying a monstrance with Blessed Sacrament and also sprinkling the clinic with holy water amidst pro-abortion demonstrators.
During his homily at the Mass preceding the procession, Bishop Aquila stated that the purpose of the event was “to give witness to the gift of life and particularly the dignity of human life from the moment of conception to natural death.”
Rose is the head of Live Action, a student-led pro-life group that has relied on the use of undercover investigations and hidden camera work to catch Planned Parenthood officials.
The abortion business staffers have been shown covering up cases of statutory rape and sexual abuse, misleading women about abortion's risks and dangers, and giving women erroneous information about the development of their unborn child.
The CNN program "Right on the Edge" will debut next month, according to an article today in WorldNetDaily.
The network talked about the new type of activist journalists like Rose who are "armed with video cameras and ideas," and "post their videos online to get their message directly to the public, bypassing the mainstream media."
"It's a new wave of what they say is old-fashioned guerilla (sic) journalism," said CNN, adding that it is done because there's a "growing distrust of the mainstream media among young conservative activists."
Barry is pushing pretty hard for research which destroys lives while showing NO results.
The Obama administration argued with an appeals court on Monday to overturn the decision a federal judge issued to temporarily halt taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research that destroys human lives to produce. They claimed the temporary funding ban would hurt scientific research. What a joke...the ban is saving the lives that the 'research' would destroy.
A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is considering whether or not to reverse the temporary injunction U.S. district court Judge Royce Lamberth granted while the lawsuit continues.
The Obama administration appealed the decision and the U.S. Court of Appeals put the injunction on hold pending today's hearing.
Once the injunction issue is decided, Judge Lamberth will issue a ruling on the lawsuit itself, which adult stem cell research scientists filed against the executive order President Barack Obama issued forcing taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research.
The appeals court originally allowed both sides 15 minutes to make their case, but the Associated Press indicates the judges wound up questioning the attorneys for more than an hour.
Congressman Joseph Cao (R-La.), a self-described “proud co-sponsor” of a bill ending a policy against open homosexuals in the military, has received an award from the Log Cabin Republicans. He told the group that his Catholic faith and Jesuit background helped drive his support to change the ban. If Mr. Cao had truly been driven by his Catholic faith, he should have read the catechism (instead of misleading others):
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
The stance of Rep. Cao, who has previously cited his faith as a justification for other political positions, contradicts that of the Archbishop of the Archdiocese for Military Services who has opposed changes to the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy.
Last Wednesday the Log Cabin Republicans held their 2010 National Dinner in Washington, D.C. at the Capitol Hill Club. The group gave the “Spirit of Lincoln” Award to Rep. Cao, three other congressmen and a British MP. The award recognizes “leaders and allies who have been steadfast supporters of the fight for equal rights.”
St. Wenceslaus, duke of Bohemia, was born about the year 907 at Prague, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). His father was killed in battle when he was young, leaving the kingdom to be ruled by his pagan mother. Wenceslaus was educated by his grandmother, Ludmilla, also a saint. She taught him to be a Christian and to be a good king. She was killed by pagan nobles before she saw him king, but she left him with a deep committment to the Christian faith.
Throughout his life he preserved his virginity unblemished. As duke he was a father to his subjects, generous toward orphans, widows, and the poor. On his own shoulders he frequently carried wood to the houses of the needy. He often attended the funerals of the poor, ransomed captives, and visited those suffering in prison. He was filled with a deep reverence toward the clergy; with his own hands he sowed the wheat for making altar breads and pressed the grapes for the wine used in the Mass. During winter he would visit the churches barefoot through snow and ice, frequently leaving behind bloody footprints.
Wenceslaus was eighteen years old when he succeeded his father to the throne. Without regard for the opposition, he worked in close cooperation with the Church to convert his pagan country. He ended the persecution of Christians, built churches and brought back exiled priests. As king he gave an example of a devout life and of great Christian charity, with his people calling him "Good King" of Bohemia.
His brother Boleslaus, however, turned to paganism. One day he invited Wenceslaus to his house for a banquet. The next morning, on September 28, 929, as Wenceslaus was on the way to Mass, Boleslaus struck him down at the door of the church. Before he died, Wenceslaus forgave his brother and asked God's mercy for his soul. Although he was killed for political reasons, he is listed as a martyr since the dispute arose over his faith. This king, martyred at the age of twenty-two, is the national hero and patron of the Czech Republic. He is the first Slav to be canonized.
St. Lawrence Ruiz
Lawrence Ruiz is the first Filipino to be canonized a saint. He and 15 others were martyred at Nagasaki, Japan in 1637. The group included two consecrated women, two other laymen, two brothers and nine priests.
Lawrence was born in Manila in the Philippines; his father was Chinese and his mother Filipino. He became associated with the Dominicans, and was a member of the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary. These Dominicans taught him Spanish, and from his parents he learned Chinese and Tagalog. He became a professional calligrapher and transcribed documents.
He married and had three children. In 1636, he fled the Philippines after being accused of murder. He joined a missionary group headed for Japan, where Catholics were being persecuted. It was soon found out that the members of this group were Catholic, so they were arrested and taken to Nagasaki. They were tortured for several days, first crushed while hanging upside down for three days, then the bodies were burned, with the ashes thrown into the Pacific Ocean on September 30, 1637. Pope John Paul II canonized these martyrs on October 18, 1987.
Not a minute too soon...and thank God we are finally getting some decent, reverent music for the Mass.
The new English translation of the Roman Missal-- hailed by Helen Hull Hitchcock of Adoremus as “accurate, reverent, and beautiful”-- will include texts and music for chants in English and Latin.
“ICEL is putting a very strong push behind the Missal chants,” notes Jeffrey Tucker. “No question that their use would amount to a vast upgrade in most parishes, and represent a big improvement over the current missal. Whether they are what they should be, and what effect their use would have in a parish that is already singing the Latin, is another issue.”
Some musicians are composing or revising contemporary settings for the new translation. Oregon Catholic Press’s missalettes will inclue the “Mass of Christ the Savior” by Dan Schutte, who composed the hymns “City of God,” “Sing a New Song,” and “Glory and Praise to Our God.”
The new missal will go into effect in Advent 2011.
Gordon Gekko is back after spending 8 years in prison. One of the first people he connects with is Jacob Moore, the fiance of Gordon's estranged daughter Winnie.
Gordon and Jacob have a common enemy: Bretton James. Bretton caused the downfall of Jacob's company, causing the suicide of someone close to Jacob. Bretton also contributed to the evidence that put Gordon in jail.
The common theme is, of course, greed. I did feel that Shia Labeouf brought some humanity and sincerity to the character of Jacob. He is devastated when someone close to him commits suicide. He also really believes in the new fusion energy startup that he is trying to help get started. Gordon's motives, however, are always unclear. I found the character of Winnie to be very self-righteous and very slow to forgive. She was the only character I didn't care for. Gordon's character actually showed more about accepting people as they are.
I really enjoyed the integration of the characters with the story. Although it is not necessary to have seen the original Wall Street movie to understand and appreciate this one, I think I did enjoy it more because I did see the original. And yes, Charlie Sheen does make a very brief cameo as Bud Fox :)
St. Vincent de Paul was a great apostle of charity, and brought a great revival of the priesthood in the 17th century. He was born near Dax in the Landes (France) in 1581. As a young priest he was captured by Moorish pirates who carried him to Africa. He was sold into slavery, but freed in 1607 when he converted his owner.
Having returned to France, he became successively a parish priest and chaplain to the galley-slaves. He founded a religious Congregation under the title of Priests of the Mission or Lazarists (now known as Vincentians), and he bound them by a special way to undertake the apostolic work of charity; he sent them to preach missions, especially to the ignorant peasants of that time, and to establish seminaries.
In order to help poor girls, invalids, and the insane, sick and unemployed, he and St. Louise de Marillac founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity, now better known as the Sisters of St. Vincent.
St. Vincent worked tirelessly to help those in need: the impoverished, the sick, the enslaved, the abandoned, the ignored. He died in 1660 at St. Lazarus's house, Paris. His motto: "God sees you."
"Let us love God; but at the price of our hands and sweat of our face."
Born February 18, 1013, at Altshausen (Swabia), St. Hermann Contractus was born crippled and unable to move without assistance. It was an immense difficulty for him to learn to read and write, however he persisted and his iron will and remarkable intelligence were soon manifested.
Upon discovering the brilliance of his son’s mind, his father, Count Wolverad II, sent him at the age of seven to live with the Benedictine monks on the island of Reichenau in Southern Germany.
He lived his entire life on the island, taking his monastic vows in 1043.
Students from all over Europe flocked to the monastery on the island to learn from him, yet he was equally as famous for his monastic virtues and sanctity.
Hermann chronicled the first thousand years of Christianity, was a mathematician, an astronomer, and a poet and was also the composer of the Salve Regina and Alma Redemptoris Mater – both hymns to the Virgin Mary.
Kate and Humphrey are two wolves in the same pack, but she's an alpha and he's an omega. They have fun together, but she is supposed to marry Garth, an alpha from the Eastern pack. The two packs are rivals for the food in the valley, and their wedding is supposed to unite the packs. While out goofing around, Kate and Humphrey are shot with tranquilizers and driven to Idaho to repopulate there. Instead, they work together to find their way home.
I found the story very entertaining, as the wolves are portrayed as pretty fun creatures who sing and dance. There is quite a bit of humor, quite clever, and not the crude type.
a very wholesome movie, entertaining for the whole family.
Archbishop of Washington Donald Wuerl will guide the incorporation of interested Anglican groups into the Catholic Church in the United States under the apostolic constitution “Anglicanorum Coetibus,” a Vatican congregation has announced.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has named the archbishop as its delegate in this position, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) reports. Archbishop Wuerl also heads the U.S. bishops’ ad hoc committee that is assisting the CDF in implementing the apostolic constitution, which Pope Benedict XVI issued in November 2009.
“Anglicanorum Coetibus” is intended to provide for the establishment of personal ordinariates for Anglican groups who seek to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church as a group.
Anton Martin Slomshek who was born November 26, 1800 at Ponikva, Slovenia is the first Slovenian to be beatified.
Slomshek is known as a great educator, largely responsible for the nearly 100% literacy rate among Slovenians, a remarkable turn around from the very poor state of the nation's educational levels at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
In the late 18th and early 19th century, the Slovenian education system had been crippled by the Austrian empire's suppression of their native language and culture. This left them without their own schools, texts and magazines and newspapers.
As bishop, Anton Martin Slomshek reformed the schools in Slovenia, and rebuilt the education system, giving it Catholicism and Slovene history as a foundation. He wrote many textbooks, began a weekly review, and wrote many books and essays concerning whatever questions he considered relevant to the intellectual needs of his people.
He founded a society for the spread of Catholic literature, an organization responsible in large part for making possible the rejuvenation of the Catholic cultural base of the Slovenian nation.
He was known as a simple and humble man, possessed with a childlike purity, and was loved by his priests and his flock.
Blessed Anton once remarked, "When I was born, my mother laid me on a bed of straw, and I desire no better pallet when I die, asking only to be in the state of grace and worthy of salvation."
Blessed Anton died September 24, 1862 in Maribor, Slovenia and was beatified September 19, 1999 by Pope John Paul II.
The central character is FBI agent Patrick Bowers. He is a widower (he's still mad at God about that) with a teenage stepdaughter he has trouble relating to. Pat is called into help catch a serial killer dubbed the Illusionist, who leaves a yellow ribbon and a chess piece at his kills.
The case becomes more complicated when it is tied to the Jonestown massacre and apparently might involve the Governor of North Carolina (the story takes place in Asheville, NC).
This is the first, but definitely not the last, novel of Steven James I've read. He is masterful at diverting the reader from the true killer, and the twists and turns will leave you constantly wondering what is next, and who the guilty person is.
Mr. James devoted more time to the plot than to character development, which was very successful, because we get a more detailed and entertaining story as a result. The two characters we learn most about are Pat himself and his daughter Tessa. However, we do learn enough about the killer's childhood and life to life to see why he kills. I like the plot twists at the end,and especially that a relatively insignificant character plays a key role in saving people.
Content warnings include the gore of the murder scenes.
House Republican leaders plan to officially released the 21-page "Pledge to America" on Thursday morning, but advance copies of the yet-to-be-approved document show it includes a call for a ban on all taxpayer funding of abortions and an aggressive strike against the ObamaCare law.
"With this document, we pledge to dedicate ourselves to the task of reconnecting our highest aspirations to the permanent truths of our founding by keeping faith with the values our nation was founded on, the principles we stand for, and the priorities of our people. This is our Pledge to America," the document says.
The document focuses primarily on economic issues with a reference in the "preamble" section to pro-life concerns.
"We pledge to honor families, traditional marriage, life, and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values," the document is expected to say.
Born to a southern Italian farm family, the son of Grazio, a shepherd. At age 15 he entered the novitiate of the Capuchin Friars in Morcone, and joined the order at age 19. He suffered several health problems, and at one point his family thought he had tuberculosis. He was ordained at age 22 on 10 August 1910.
While praying before a cross on September 20, 1918, Padre Pio received the stigmata. He is the first priest ever to be so blessed. As word spread, especially after American soldiers brought home stories of Padre Pio following WWII, the priest himself became a point of pilgrimage for both the pious and the curious. He would hear confessions by the hour, reportedly able to read the consciences of those who held back. He was reportedly able to bi-locate, levitate, and heal by touch.
In 1956 he founded the House for the Relief of Suffering, a hospital that serves 60,000 a year.
Today there are over 400,000 members worldwide in prayer groups began by Padre Pio in the 1920's.
His canonization miracle involved the cure of Matteo Pio Colella, age 7, the son of a doctor who works in the House for Relief of Suffering, the hospital in San Giovanni Rotondo. On the night of June 20, 2000, Matteo was admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital with meningitis. By morning doctors had lost hope for him as nine of the boy's internal organs had ceased to give signs of life. That night, during a prayer vigil attended by Matteo's mother and some Capuchin friars of Padre Pio's monastery, the child's condition improved suddenly. When he awoke from the coma, Matteo said that he had seen an elderly man with a white beard and a long, brown habit, who said to him: "Don't worry, you will soon be cured." The miracle was approved by the Congregation and Pope John Paul II on 20 December 2001.
Responding to allegations of money laundering, the president of the Vatican bank told Vatican analyst Andrea Tornielli that "there's nothing hidden, nor (anything) to hide." The president said the bank hopes to be on the "White list" for banks that conform to international anti-money laundering policies by December.
President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi of the Vatican's Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), or as many call it, the "Vatican Bank," told Andrea Tornielli of the Italian daily "Il Giornale" that he feels "bitterness and humiliation" at the allegations made against him this week. He and the IOR are being investigated by Italian authorities for money laundering to the tune of $30 million.
The authorities seized this quantity after it was deposited by the IOR at the private Italian bank Credito Artigiano SpA, saying that the Vatican institution had not complied with an Italian anti-money laundering law from 2007 that requires the disclosure of information about account holders and beneficiaries.
The good Bishop sheds some light on a dissenter group.
After receiving a letter from the group Catholics for Equality urging a change to the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy, the Archbishop for Military Services responded, saying that the archdiocese's position is “clear.” The prelate added that the group “cannot be legitimately recognized as Catholic.”
Catholics for Equality had requested a meeting with Archbishop for the Military Services Timothy Broglio, claiming he offered misleading and false arguments in his June 1 statement against allowing open homosexuals to serve in the U.S. military.
Last week leaders of the group joined a lobbying effort sponsored by Servicemembers United. They lobbied Congress and asked key senators and Catholic leaders to support changing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Catholics for Equality Board Member Patsy Trujillo, a former New Mexico state legislator, said the group was confident that senators would vote to change present policy.
After the New Jersey state Senate defeated an attempt to override the decision of Gov. Chris Christie to cut off state taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood abortion businesses, the first facility run by the national abortion giant is closing.
The Cherry Hill Courier Post newspaper says a Planned Parenthood facility located on Haddonfield Road and operated by Planned Parenthood of Southern New Jersey will close down.
PP-SNJ stands to lose as much as $160,000 in taxpayer funds because of Christie's decision and the upholding of his veto. With the closing of the Cherry Hill center, Planned Parenthood customers seeking abortions or other "services" must go to PP centers in Camden, Bellmawr, and Edgewater Park.
Parenthood of Southern New Jersey president Lynn Brown told the newspaper, "We are in think mode and creative mode and we are doing all that we can to try and salvage to see as many people as we need to see."
A U.S. bishop urged Congressional leaders to remember the plight of low income families as it debates future tax policy. In a recent letter, Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, New York warned that neglecting to renew the Child Tax Credit – a provision that reduces federal income tax for families – would create 600,000 newly impoverished children in the U.S and plunge some four million minors deeper into poverty.
Bishop Murphy also serves as chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
“On behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, I urge Congress as it debates and decides future tax policy to give priority attention to poor families and their children,” he wrote on Sept. 20.
A record 238 locations in the US, Canada, Australia, England, Northern Ireland and Denmark are participating 40 Days for Life campaigns of prayer and fasting through October 31.
Saint Maurice was a member of the Theban Legion, a Roman legion said to have been constituted by Christian soldiers from Africa, which was called to put down a revolt in Aaunum, located in modern day Switzerland, in the year 287.
Two legends exist about the martyrdom of St. Maurice and his companions. According to the legends, the legion's soldiers were either ordered to take part in pagan sacrifices, or ordered to harass and kill some local Christians. In either event the 6,600 men of Maurice's legion refused. In punishment for their disobedience, every tenth man in the legion was killed. When the remaining soldiers, fortified by St. Maurice, still refused other legions were called in to force them to follow their orders. Persisting in their refusal, they were all massacred.
The U.S. Senate blocked a controversial military bill on Tuesday afternoon which would have repealed the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy and allowed elective abortions to be carried out on military bases at home and abroad.
In May of this year, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the full U.S. House approved measures to repeal the 1993 policy allowing homosexuals to serve only if they do not reveal their sexual orientation as part of the overarching Defense Authorization Bill of 2011.
However, on Sept. 21, a Republican-led filibuster blocked a vote on repealing the measure, with Democrats failing to garner the 60 votes needed to bring the defense bill up for consideration. According to the Chicago Tribune, the vote was 56-43 in favor of starting debate on the legislation.
It is both sad, and a bit scary, to witness this erosion of religious rights.
Officials with the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference have urged the Department of Health and Human Services not to require coverage of contraception and sterilization, saying such mandates could compel coverage for abortion-causing drugs and could threaten freedom of conscience.
Anthony Picarello, general counsel of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and Michael Moses, USCCB associate general counsel, in a September 17 letter to HHS, said that the drugs, devices and procedures under consideration “prevent not a disease condition, but the healthy condition known as fertility.” Contraception and sterilization pose “significant risks” to women’s lives and health, while mandating their coverage would pose “an unprecedented threat to rights of conscience.”
According to the USCCB, Picarello and Moses said such a mandate would threaten the rights of conscience for religious employers and others with moral or religious objections to these procedures.
The Senate is slated to vote this week on the Department of Defense Authorization bill, which includes a provision to allow abortions on military base hospitals both domestically and abroad. The Senate will vote on a motion filed by pro-abortion Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid.
He will ask lawmakers to stop the filibuster against the bill and approve a motion to proceed to a vote on the measure.
Most Republicans, potentially joined by a couple of Democrats like Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, are expected to oppose the Reid cloture vote motion and continue with their strong opposition to the bill.
Several pro-life groups have been working actively to urge pro-life advocates to contact their senators to oppose the bill and support the filibuster against it.
U.S. Ambassador to Malta Doug Kmiec has said his life will be haunted “forever” by the car crash in which caused the deaths of his friend Sr. Mary Campbell and his confessor Msgr. John Sheridan. Writing in a Maltese newspaper, he praised the lives of the deceased and thanked those who had prayed for the accident’s victims.
“Thank you, Malta, for your prayers and for your many warm messages of concern and caring. In this very moment, your thoughts are sustaining me against the agonizing physical pain of multiple surgeries and procedures,” he wrote in The Times of Malta on Sept. 12.
“Many of you know that before coming to Malta, it had been my special blessing to be together often with Mgr Sheridan and Sr. Mary. Before that horrible accident a week or so ago now, it was as before as we shared the special joy of being back together for the first time in many months,” he commented.
The Saint of the Day for September 21 is St. Matthew.
No one was more shunned by the Jews than a publican, who was a Jew working for the Roman enemy by robbing his own people and making a large personal profit. Publicans were not allowed to trade, eat, or even pray with others Jews.
One day, while seated at his table of books and money, Jesus looked at Matthew and said two words: "Follow me." This was all that was needed to make Matthew rise, leaving his pieces of silver to follow Christ. His original name, "Levi," in Hebrew signifies "Adhesion" while his new name in Christ, Matthew, means "Gift of God." The only other outstanding mention of Matthew in the Gospels is the dinner party for Christ and His companions to which he invited his fellow tax-collectors. The Jews were surprised to see Jesus with a publican, but Jesus explained that he had come "not to call the just, but sinners."
St. Matthew is known to us principally as an Evangelist, with his Gospel being the first in the New Testament. His Gospel was written in Aramaic, the language that our Lord Himself spoke and was written to convince the Jews that their anticipated Messiah had come in the person of Jesus.
Not much else is known about Matthew. According to tradition, he preached in Egypt and Ethiopia and further places East. Some legends say he lived until his nineties, dying a peaceful death, others say he died a martyr's death.
In the traditional symbolization of the evangelists, based on Ezech. 1:5-10 and Rev. 4:6-7, the image of the winged man is accorded to Matthew because his Gospel begins with the human genealogy of Christ.
To think that the Bishop of Rome would travel to Great Britain and stand on the very spot where the death sentence was passed on St. Thomas More - and praise his memory. Who'da thunk it?
Kenneth Smith had been a fixture in the highly rated Upperline Restaurant of New Orleans, Louisiana, where for the past 11 years he served as the executive chef. But after about two decades working there, he has moved out of the kitchen and into New Orleans' Notre Dame Seminary, on his way to becoming a priest. CNN sat down this summer with Smith, 50, before he took off his apron. Below, in his own words, he explains how serving up faith is a logical leap.
The bishops of Minnesota are “alarmed” by continuing attacks on marriage, Bishop of Winona James Quinn has said. He reported that Catholics of his diocese will receive a DVD and a letter from him to remind Catholics of church teaching and to explain the dangers of the legal recognition of same-sex “marriage.”
“From the beginning, the church has taught that marriage is a lifetime relationship between one man and one woman,” the bishop wrote in his diocese’s newspaper The Courier. “It is a sacrament, instituted by Jesus Christ to provide the special graces that are needed to live according to God’s law and to give birth to the next generation.”
The “most threatening” of current attacks on marriage are efforts to legalize “same-sex” marriage, he remarked.
This first native Korean priest was the son of Korean converts. His father, Ignatius Kim, was martyred during the persecution of 1839 and was beatified in 1925. After baptism at the age of fifteen, Andrew traveled thirteen hundred miles to the seminary in Macao, China. After six years he managed to return to his country through Manchuria. That same year he crossed the Yellow Sea to Shanghai and was ordained a priest. Back home again, he was assigned to arrange for more missionaries to enter by a water route that would elude the border patrol. He was arrested, tortured and finally beheaded at the Han River near Seoul, the capital. Paul Chong Hasang was a lay apostle and a married man, aged forty-five. Christianity came to Korea during the Japanese invasion in 1592 when some Koreans were baptized, probably by Christian Japanese soldiers. Evangelization was difficult because Korea refused all contact with the outside world except for an annual journey to Beijing to pay taxes. On one of these occasions, around 1777, Christian literature obtained from Jesuits in China led educated Korean Christians to study. A home church began. When a Chinese priest managed to enter secretly a dozen years later, he found four thousand Catholics, none of whom had ever seen a priest. Seven years later there were ten thousand Catholics. Religious freedom came in 1883.
When Pope John Paul II visited Korea in 1984, he canonized Andrew, Paul, ninety-eight Koreans and three French missionaries who had been martyred between 1839 and 1867. Among them were bishops and priests, but for the most part they were laypersons: forty-seven women, forty-five men.
Among the martyrs in 1839 was Columba Kim, an unmarried woman of twenty-six. She was put in prison, pierced with hot awls and seared with burning coals. She and her sister Agnes were disrobed and kept for two days in a cell with condemned criminals, but were not molested. After Columba complained about the indignity, no more women were subjected to it. The two were beheaded. A boy of thirteen, Peter Ryou, had his flesh so badly torn that he could pull off pieces and throw them at the judges. He was killed by strangulation. Protase Chong, a forty-one-year-old noble, apostatized under torture and was freed. Later he came back, confessed his faith and was tortured to death.
Today there are approximately four million Catholics in Korea.
