La Iglesia en Guatemala condena el asesinato de un sacerdote

El misionero oblato estadounidense Lorenzo Rosebangh

CIUDAD DE GUATEMALA, jueves, 21 mayo 2009 (ZENIT.org).- La Iglesia católica en Guatemala condenó este 20 de mayo el asesinato del sacerdote estadounidense, Lorenzo Rosebangh, perpetrado el pasado lunes en una lejana región del norte de este país centroamericano, a través de la Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala.

El padre Lorenzo Rosenbangh había nacido en Wisconsin, Estados Unidos, el 16 de mayo de 1935 y llegó a Guatemala en 1993. El misionero de 74 años trabajaba en la parroquia Santa Cecilia de la capital.

"La Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado condena enérgicamente el asesinato del padre Lorenzo, misionero Oblato de María Inmaculada", y exige una pronta investigación y esclarecimiento del hecho, señala un comunicado de este organismo eclesial.

Así mismo los Oblatos en América Latina han expresado su dolor por esta nueva muerte de un misionero oblato.

"Una vez más estamos de luto en nuestra región. Seguramente ya se hayan enterado del asesinato del padre Lorenzo Rosebaugh de la Delegación de Guatemala. Iban a un encuentro a Playa Grande, donde fueron asaltados. Le mataran a él e hirieron al padre Jean Claude Ngoma. Es el tercer oblato matado en los últimos años", afirma el padre Miguel Fritz, presidente de la Conferencia Interprovincial de América Latina (CIAL) de los Oblatos de María Inmaculada.

"Unámonos en oración por su llegado al Reino de la Alegría y que desde allá pueda intervenir por nuestro sufrido continente --añade--. ¡Nuestra oración y solidaridad para nuestros hermanos en Guatemala en este momento difícil!".

Según indica la página web de los Oblatos en América Latina, a eso de las 4 de la tarde, de este lunes 18 de Mayo, a la altura de la laguna Lachúa, cuando se dirigía de la ciudad capital hacia la parroquia de Cantabal, Ixcán, junto con otros cuatro sacerdotes, el vehículo en el que viajaban, fue interceptado por dos hombres armados cubiertos con pasamontañas, quienes les dispararon, Asesinando al Padre Lorenzo, mientras que otro sacerdote tambien misionero Oblato, quedó herido y fue trasladado a un centro asistencial.

El padre Lorenzo fue misionero en el Quiché durante varios años. "Muy cercano a la gente, de excelente buen humor, se ponía la botas para ir a las comunidades en los años previos a la firma de la paz, cuando la comunidades estaban acechadas por una dura violencia represiva del conflicto armado interno en Guatemala", indica la página de los Oblatos.

A la pregunta sobre los motivos de este hecho, el padre Erasmo Vásques, de Guatemala, señaló simplemente: "es parte de la violencia que vivmos aquí".

Un novicio, Luis Lorenzo Luján, retrata al padre Lorenzo: "Un Oblato muy especial para todos nosotros aquí en el noviciado, vivía en la casa de adelante junto a Erasmo, en este corto tiempo que el Señor quiso que lo conozcamos lo apreciamos mucho por su sencillez, entrega hacia los más pobres y por su estilo de vida de mucha oración y servicio".

El padre Rosebangh, cuyos restos fueron inhumados este miércoles en un cementerio de la capital guatemalteca, había llegado al país en 1993 para servir como misionero en los poblados de Playa Grande y Chicamán, regiones que fueron las más golpeadas durante el conflicto armado interno (1960-1996).

Denver Prelate Calls Obama Invitation Inexcusable

Says Catholics Have Duty to Defend Life

DENVER, Colorado, MAY 21, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The archbishop of Denver had some "hard words" for Notre Dame's president, Father John Jenkins, after last Sunday's commencement.

Archbishop Charles Chaput criticized the university president Monday in a statement posted on the diocesan Web site, denouncing his decision to invite U.S. President Barack Obama to give the address to the school's graduating seniors.

"There was no excuse -- none, except intellectual vanity -- for the university to persist in its course," the prelate said. "And Father Jenkins compounded a bad original decision with evasive and disingenuous explanations to subsequently justify it."

More than 70 U.S. bishops voiced disagreement with the university's decision to invite President Barack Obama as the commencement speaker and bestow on him an honorary law degree. They noted that it went against the 2004 guidelines set by the U.S. bishops' conference for Catholic institutions of higher education, which states that schools should not bestow honors on individuals who "act in defiance" of the Church's fundamental teachings.

"Let’s remember that the debate over President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame was never about whether he is a good or bad man," Archbishop Chaput recalled. "The president is clearly a sincere and able man. By his own words, religion has had a major influence in his life.

"We owe him the respect Scripture calls us to show all public officials. We have a duty to pray for his wisdom and for the success of his service to the common good -- insofar as it is guided by right moral reasoning."

The prelate also noted as equally important the duty to defend Catholic teaching on "foundational issues" such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research.

"And we also have the duty to avoid prostituting our Catholic identity by appeals to phony dialogue that mask an abdication of our moral witness," Archbishop Chaput said. "Notre Dame did not merely invite the president to speak at its commencement. It also conferred an unnecessary and unearned honorary law degree on a man committed to upholding one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our nation’s history: Roe v. Wade."

The archbishop accused Father Jenkins of ignoring the concerns of the local bishop, more than 70 other bishops from around the country, including the president of the U.S. episcopal conference, as well as "thousands of Notre Dame alumni and hundreds of thousands of other American Catholics."

"The most vital thing faithful Catholics can do now is to insist -- by their words, actions and financial support -- that institutions claiming to be 'Catholic' actually live the faith with courage and consistency," the archbishop concluded. "If that happens, Notre Dame’s failure may yet do some unintended good."

CEDAW Committee Targets East Timor on Abortion

By Amy De Rosa

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) As pre-session working groups of the committee charged with overseeing compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) meet in advance of the committee's July session, the small Asian nation of East Timor has come under pressure for its continued criminalization of abortion. East Timor’s new penal code, which will take effect early next month, continues to penalize the practice, including abortion in cases of rape or incest, but with the added proviso that exceptions can be made in cases where the mother’s health is in jeopardy.

As East Timor, or Timor-Leste, states in its report to the Committee, "Abortion is still an extremely sensitive issue in Timor-Leste, especially given the traumatic events of recent years." The report goes on to explain some Timorese cultural practices which impact "reproductive health." Contraception is generally unpopular in the predominantly Catholic state, with both men and women seeing it as fueling promiscuity and sexually-transmitted diseases while decreasing the number of children.

A newly independent nation as of 2002, East Timor claims that it is still recovering from 24 years of Indonesian occupation, during which time the Indonesia allegedly imposed family planning programs that were widely resented by the Timorese population. Both men and women remain sensitive to suggestions of limiting family size and to abortion.

Despite general support in Timor for the continued criminalization of abortion, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as the Alola Foundation and Rede Feto, have been agitating for reconsideration the legal status of abortion. The Alola Foundation has received support from certain United Nations agencies, namely the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Though CEDAW is silent as to abortion, CEDAW committee members have also pushed it under the guise of promoting "gender equality."

East Timor notes that NGOs promoting gender equality are often seen as "meddling" and many Timorese (including women) feel that gender distinctions are important in protecting the integrity of the family, a valued institution in Timor, and that loss of these distinctions could be harmful to women. According to the report, many Timorese also express satisfaction with adat, their native system of justice, despite its failure to treat women as equal to men. Adat represents part of the Timorese adherence to deep-rooted traditions. "Foreign laws" are seen as irrelevant to tradition and therefore ineffective.

Timor’s repeated references to its long-standing customs, its distrust of foreign influence and its discussion of "reproductive rights" abuses suffered by Timorese women during Indonesia’s rule appear to have been met with opposition or indifference from the CEDAW committee. The committee has called upon the Timorese to engage in "modification of customs and practices" it regards as "discriminatory." It also is demanding clarification on how certain CEDAW provisions have been implemented in court cases.

The 44th session of CEDAW will be held in New York from July 20 to August 7. Japan and Tuvalu are also among the eleven nations up for CEDAW review in July.

from C-FAM

World’s Most Powerful Population Lobby Targets Dominican Pro-Life Reforms

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) The Dominican Republic has come under fire from some of the world’s most powerful abortion advocates, aiming to block a proposed constitutional amendment that would enshrine legal protection of the country’s unborn.

The International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), backed by European nations, major foundations and the UN Population Fund, has launched an aggressive campaign to thwart proposed Article 30, which would protect human life “from conception.” The country’s national assembly approved the amendment in a first reading by an overwhelming majority of 167-32 on April 21st, but it must go through a second reading before final promulgation by the President.

IWHC is seeking to draw Dominicans into street protests and letter writing campaigns to the legislature claiming that Article 30 “violates international agreements signed and ratified by the Dominican Republic, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR], the American Convention on Human Rights [ACHR] and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women [CEDAW].”

In fact, the ACHR states that, “Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception.” The two UN treaties cited, ICCPR and CEDAW, do not mention abortion at all, and the committees that monitor them have come under increased scrutiny for reading a right to abortion into the treaties and pressuring States party to the treaties to liberalize abortion laws.

According to its latest annual report , IWHC’s largest backers for its $5.5 million annual contributions include the governments of Denmark, Britain, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), De Beers, and powerful foundations including Ford, the Open Society Institute, Hewlett, MacArthur, Packard, Rockefeller, Woodstock, and Bill & Melinda Gates. IWHC also holds $3 million in assets.

As its funding sources suggest, IWHC maintains strong ties to the population lobby from which it emerged. A recent history of population control details the Population Crisis Committee (today’s Population Action International) founded IWHC to distribute abortion kits in the 1980s. The Hewlett Foundation promoted IWHC to fund abortion that lost U.S. aid under the then newly-enacted “Mexico City Policy.” When “population control” fell out of favor in the midst of massive scandals, the major foundations and feminist organizations re-branded the movement as promoting women’s rights. Today, IWHC’s mission is promoting “sexual reproductive rights and health” for adolescent girls and women.

IWHC’s first president was Joan Dunlop, protégé of John D. Rockefeller, 3rd. Soon after the group’s founding Dunlop recruited Adrienne Germaine, IWHC’s current president from the Ford Foundation where she had successfully convinced Ford to include abortion services in its extensive population control programs. Germaine was a chief negotiator for the Clinton administration’s attempts to get abortion recognized as an international human right at the 1994 Cairo and 1995 Beijing UN conferences. When that effort failed, she joined an elite group of UN officials that launched the 1996 Glen Cove “Roundtable” Report . The report lays out a strategy, which IWHC is using in the Dominican case, to misuse UN human rights treaties to establish a right to abortion by claiming that it already exists.

from C-FAM

Can Notre Dame Turn Back the Tide?

Interview with Cardinal Newman Society President


By Genevieve Pollock

MANASSAS, Virginia, MAY 20, 2009 (Zenit.org).- In the wake of the recent Notre Dame controversy, an opportunity arises to renew Catholic higher education in its identity and mission, says the Cardinal Newman Society president.

Patrick Reilly is the founder and president of the Cardinal Newman Society, an organization dedicated to renew and strengthen the Catholic identity at colleges and universities across the United States.

In this interview with ZENIT, he shares his perspective on the recent controversy surrounding the University of Notre Dame's decision to honor President Barack Obama at its commencement ceremony, and explains how this issue can be a springboard for strengthening Catholic identity at colleges.

Q: Many stories have been emerging about the pro-life response to the Notre Dame commencement ceremony. What kind of response did Notre Dame see that day from students and others who came together for the pro-life cause?

Reilly: The response to the Notre Dame scandal was immense and unprecedented.

More than 367,000 Catholics signed the Cardinal Newman Society's petition against the honor at NotreDameScandal.com.

Bishop John D'Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the local ordinary for Notre Dame, boycotted the commencement ceremony.

Nearly 80 bishops, representing about one-third of the dioceses in the United States, spoke out against the honor, and none publicly supported it.

Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, who was to receive Notre Dame's prestigious Laetare Medal, declined the honor rather than share the stage with America's pro-abortion leader.

Notre Dame students organized prayer rallies, a Mass and an alternate ceremony for graduates.

I prefer to call it a Catholic response, since Americans tend to use "pro-life" as describing a political position. For the bishops and for the Cardinal Newman Society, this was not a political protest against the president, but a protest against Notre Dame's disobedience and betrayal of Catholic values.

Certainly the concerns about honoring President Obama centered on his support for abortion rights, embryonic stem-cell research and U.S. funded family planning programs. But the outrage was directed at Notre Dame and its refusal to abide by the U.S. bishops' 2004 policy against Catholic institutions providing honors and platforms for public opponents of Catholic moral teaching.

It was American Catholics drawing a line in the sand, after decades of harmful dissent and declining Catholic identity at leading Catholic colleges and universities. It is the political left in the United States that tried to portray the scandal in a political context, while hypocritically accusing the bishops of political motivations against the president.

Q: Do you think it met the expectations of the organizers?

Reilly: It depends how one defines success. In the end, Notre Dame ignored the bishops. President Obama was honored by a Catholic university and delivered a well-received address, despite reasserting his pro-abortion position.

That has done significant damage, not only to the pro-life movement but to Notre Dame's integrity as a Catholic university. And it has caused many of us great anguish.

But as Christians, we have to see God's plan in everything. We share a Eucharistic faith; it is through the betrayal of Judas and the Passion that Christ is risen, and the Church is no stranger to suffering and betrayal from within.

These skirmishes only bring the truth to light in a culture that would rather avoid it. In the context of political power and worldly prestige, the Church lost this battle, and secularist educators and the political left enjoyed a minor victory. That victory is illusory, though, in the light of faith.

I believe this may have been a graced moment that gives us an opportunity to move forward in the renewal of Catholic higher education and the pro-life cause.

The extraordinary witness of the bishops and lay Catholics has brought much needed attention to the lack of Catholic identity at many U.S. Catholic colleges and universities.

Faithful Catholics are more committed than ever to a renewal of Catholic higher education.

I predict that the Notre Dame scandal will someday be looked upon as a watershed moment in the project begun by Pope John Paul II with "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" and continued by Benedict XVI with his vision for Catholic education, presented at The Catholic University of America in April 2008.

Q: Now that the graduation day is over, has the controversy ended? Or where do you see it going now?

Reilly: Already some university leaders have indicated plans to lobby the bishops to weaken or perhaps even rescind their 2004 policy against Catholic honors for opponents of Catholic moral teaching. Other "progressive" Catholics have lashed out against the Cardinal Newman Society and against the bishops for opposing Notre Dame's action.

So I suspect that the controversy is only growing, and the secularists in American Catholic education will continue their prolonged fight against the Church. They see no useful role for the bishops and orthodox Catholic theology in higher education. I would not at all be surprised if some of the major Jesuit universities are already clamoring for President Obama's participation in next year's commencement ceremonies.

But the Holy Spirit is working in the Church in America, and the Vatican and the bishops have established a clear direction for Catholic education.

I have no doubt that the future is bright, and that Catholic institutions will be increasingly attentive to their essential purpose of bringing young people to Christ.

Q: What has been the general response and attitude on other college campuses? How have other colleges been affected by this Notre Dame controversy?

Reilly: There are several outstanding, faithful institutions which we recommend to Catholic families in "The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College" and at TheNewmanGuide.com.

Their response to the Notre Dame scandal was typically dignified: By contrast, they chose Catholic and pro-life leaders to honor at their commencement ceremonies, and their public statements helped focus attention on the great value of authentic Catholic education.

For instance, the president of Wyoming Catholic College, America's newest Catholic college, wrote in a letter to Notre Dame, "We are committed to preserving ... faithfulness above all else, for it is the key to our very existence as an institution."

On the other hand, other college leaders have sought to vilify those who opposed Notre Dame's action, by accusing the bishops and lay Catholics of being driven by politics and not Catholic teaching.

The president of Trinity University in Washington, D.C. -- who has been controversial for her own public accolades for pro-abortion politicians like Trinity alumna Nancy Pelosi, now speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the late Jesuit Father Robert Drinan -- used Trinity's commencement ceremony as an opportunity to denounce the "religious vigilantism" of Notre Dame's critics. "A half-century of progress for Catholic higher education is at risk of slipping back into those insular, parochial pre-Vatican II days […when] academic freedom was not valued within the Catholic Church," she claimed.

That is secularist nonsense, though sadly not an uncommon belief at many Catholic universities.

Pope Benedict clearly laid out an authentic version of academic freedom for all of the U.S. Catholic college presidents when he met with them last year. The Holy Father has linked the crisis of truth on Catholic campuses to a crisis of faith. That is what is at the core of the problem in Catholic higher education.

Q: How can Catholics use this as an opportunity to move forward, and to advance the cause of strengthening the Church at colleges and universities?

Reilly: Catholics cannot retreat after making such a strong statement about Notre Dame.

Every time a Catholic college or university acts contrary to its Catholic identity, Catholics should express the same concern.

The Cardinal Newman Society has worked for 16 years to build support for authentic Catholic education by remaining faithful to the bishops and the Magisterium, and we hope that the Notre Dame scandal will convince thousands more Catholics to join the movement in the Church for renewal.

Public witness to scandal has a long-term impact. The Cardinal Newman Society's repeated protests against commencement scandals led to the U.S. bishops' 2004 ban on honors and platforms for public opponents of Catholic moral teaching.

And it was our continued reporting on the disobedience of Catholic colleges and universities that helped motivate hundreds of thousands of Catholics to stand up to Notre Dame. That witness must continue.

But the real hope in Catholic higher education is found in the forward-looking, faithful activity of the best Catholic institutions and individuals within universities like Notre Dame who are working for a renewal of Catholic identity.

Last year we launched the Center for the Study of Catholic Higher Education to study critical issues and promote best practices in Catholic higher education. In the midst of the Notre Dame scandal, the Center issued "The Enduring Nature of the Catholic University" -- posted at CatholicHigherEd.org -- featuring Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, Wisconsin; Father Augustine DiNoia, undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Father David O'Connell, president of the Catholic University of America; and others.

Father DiNoia writes: "Surely, if the example of Pope Benedict XVI teaches us nothing else, it should teach us confidence in the inherent attractiveness of the Christian faith, and, in particular, the Catholic vision of higher education and of the vocation of the theologian. While the assumptions of the ambient culture will not always be friendly to it, this vision nonetheless deserves to be presented fully and without compromise."

Fully Catholic without compromise. That's the approach to Catholic higher education that Pope Benedict proposes, and exactly what Notre Dame failed to exhibit in its honor to President Obama.

--- --- ---

On the Net:

The Cardinal Newman Society: www.cardinalnewmansociety.org

Bishop D'Arcy Joins Notre Dame Prayer Protest

Calls Student Coalition a Group of Heroes

SOUTH BEND, Indiana, MAY 20, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Bishop John D'Arcy intended to stay away from Notre Dame last Sunday, but he says he belonged on campus to accompany a group of Notre Dame students in prayerful protest.

The bishop of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese informed Notre Dame in March that he wouldn't attend this year's commencement ceremony after the university announced its decision to invite President Barack Obama as the speaker and bestow on him an honorary law degree.

Eighty-two other prelates soon joined Bishop D'Arcy in voicing disagreement with the university's gesture toward Obama, saying it went against the guidelines set by the U.S. bishops' conference for Catholic institutions of higher education.

The 2004 statement says schools should not bestow honors on individuals who "act in defiance" of the Church's fundamental teachings.

But the activity of a coalition of 12 Notre Dame student groups, formed to protest the administration's plans for graduation day, and to organize a parallel event in support of life and Catholic values, caught Bishop D'Arcy's eye.

The coalition, called ND Response, organized a prayer vigil the night before the commencement ceremony, including a directed meditation by Father John Corapi of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity.

The vigil launched an all-night Eucharistic adoration, which concluded on Sunday -- graduation day.

Sunday Mass was held outside on one of the campus quads to accommodate the 3,000 people who had traveled from as far away as Mexico, New York, California and Florida to support the Catholic identity of the university and its pro-life mission.

The outdoor Mass, concelebrated by eight priests and presided over by Holy Cross Father Kevin Russeau, was followed by a rally featuring speakers with ties to Notre Dame.

Cameo

Bishop D'Arcy made a surprise appearance, and after being invited to take the podium, he admitted, "It was not my intention to come today."

He explained, however, that he had visited the Marian grotto on campus and had observed students praying, and later visited the chapel where Eucharistic adoration was being held.

These moments of prayer, he said, "showed me the place for the bishop to be is here."

"The office of bishop is very important," the prelate added. He echoed the words of Pope John Paul II, and affirmed the importance of standing up "for life, all the time, everywhere, without exception."

Bishop D'Arcy told the crowd: "I found myself saying in recent weeks that this is a sad time, that there are no winners. But I was wrong."

He affirmed that the "heroes" are "the young people on campus, the students" who followed in "the great tradition of Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict."

The bishop continued: "Their protest was carried out with love, and with prayer, and with dignity and with respect. But with a firmness, also, as to what is right."

The diocesan newspaper reported that outside groups protested the college's decision at the university entrance with demonstrations that "grabbed national headlines," while ND Response chose to "prayerfully, respectfully and faithfully make their opposition known in a different way."

Bishop D'Arcy concluded, "So there are heroes; all of you here today are heroes, and I'm proud to stand with you."

Inspiration

After the rally, Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, led a rosary at the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, in a prayer vigil dedicated to the 40 graduates present there as a boycott to the official commencement ceremony.

Father Russeau gave tribute to these students in his homily, stating that despite all the media's coverage of the controversy, "one story that I don't hear enough about […] is the response of the student body."

He continued: "In the face of this controversy, I have witnessed countless students who have given me inspiration.

"Students who instinctively know to approach God in prayer about their trials, students who reach out to others in attempts to offer care, students who have demonstrated to me an ability to listen and obey the scripture we proclaim this day."

In these past months, the priest said, it has been inspiring to see the student body's "instinct to come to the altar of the Lord to ask for guidance and strength."

He added: "I can't tell you the number of rosaries and Masses and prayer meetings that have been intentional responses to what many feel is a concession to the culture of death.

"Students, family, friends, alumni, and many of you, have spent hours in adoration looking for the proper response.

"The students that I have come to know here on campus have reminded me that in all things we must respond with love. And to respond with love in hard times, we must ask our Lord for grace. We are here today to bear witness and to love."

A press statement from ND Response affirmed, "Sunday's events not only provided powerful witness to the sanctity of human life but also expressed constructive disappointment at the University of Notre Dame's decision to honor President Barack Obama, who has publicly supported abortion and embryo-destructive stem cell research during his tenure in office."

Cardinal Arinze Defines a Truly Catholic College

Says Intellectual Formation Must Be Accompanied by Morals

MANASSAS, Virginia, MAY 19, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The mark of a good Catholic university is success at turning out model Christians who are good citizens, says Cardinal Francis Arinze.

The cardinal, former prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, affirmed this May 10 in a commencement address he delivered at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire.

He said that a Catholic college that adopts an attitude of "courageous creativity and rigorous fidelity" contributes much to promoting a "healthy synthesis between faith and culture in society," the Cardinal Newman Society reported.

Cardinal Arinze contended that a Catholic institution of higher learning should teach its students "to appreciate that moral rules of right and wrong apply also to science, technology, politics, trade and commerce, and indeed to all human endeavors."

"In the complicated world of today, where all kinds of ideas are struggling for the right of citizenship, a university student needs a clear and viable orientation on the relationship between religion and life," he continued. "The Catholic college or university is ideally positioned to help him see the light and equip himself for a significant contribution in society."

The cardinal recognized that universities need to offer premium intellectual formation, but he affirmed that formation in upright behavior is also a need.

"But what does it profit us if a student is an intellectual giant but a moral baby," he asked, "if he or she can shoot out mathematical or historical facts like a computer but is unfortunately a problem for the parents, corrosive acid among companions in the college, a drug addict and sexual pervert, a disgrace to the school, a waste-pipe in the place of work and 'Case No. 23' for the criminal police? It is clear that intellectual development is not enough."

The former Vatican official acknowledged that defending morality can bring difficult consequences. "A person who holds that certain actions, like direct abortion, are always objectively wrong, is regarded as 'judgmental,' or as imposing his views on others," he said.

But, citing the teachings of Benedict XVI, the cardinal added: "The exercise of freedom in pursuit of the truth is very much a part of integral education. If a Catholic college or university does not help in this way, should we not say that it has failed in one of its important roles?"

"If a Catholic college or university answers to its vocation in the ways outlined above, then it will be educating, forming and releasing into society model citizens who will be a credit to their families, their college, the Church and the state," the cardinal stated. "It will prepare for us members of Congress or the Senate who will not say 'I am a Catholic, but ...' but rather those who will say 'I am a Catholic, and therefore ...'"

Serendipitous Encounter Changes Course of Life's Research

For nearly two decades, Michael McCloskey has studied an unusual visual deficit.

By Lisa De Nike

Michael McCloskey is a scientist, so he doesn't often use words like "serendipity." But perhaps he should, as few other terms so accurately describe how an after-class encounter with a student 18 years ago would unearth a profound and unique deficit in visual perception that changed forever the course of the cognitive scientist's research.

McCloskey had given a lecture on his research specialty — language deficits in brain-damaged individuals — and had described a person who could no longer spell words correctly after a stroke. The student, described by her initials "AH," was intrigued and approached her professor, saying that she was a bad speller herself. McCloskey offered to give her the same spelling test that he routinely used in his research, and he was surprised to find that this obviously bright student, a history major, misspelled nearly half the words.

Much more surprising, however, was the conclusion McCloskey reached after many additional tests: AH had an extraordinary visual deficit that caused her often to see objects on the opposite side from where they actually were.

"When AH looks at an object," McCloskey said, "she sees it clearly and knows what it is, but she's often dramatically wrong about where it is."

For example, she may reach out to grasp a coffee cup that she sees on her left but misses it completely because it is actually on her right; and when she sees an icon at the top of her computer screen, it may really be at the bottom.

"AH doesn't feel confused about where an object is," McCloskey said. "She sees an object in a particular place just like anyone else does, but in her case the object is often somewhere else."

To the casual observer, AH seemed normal. She had no obvious difficulty in school or daily life. She often made mistakes in spelling or math or everyday tasks such as watering plants (she sometimes missed the flowerpot and poured the water on the floor), but her family, friends and teachers attributed the mistakes to "carelessness" or "clumsiness."

"It was absolutely extraordinary," said McCloskey, a professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins. "Here was this intelligent high achiever who was apparently born with an amazing perceptual deficit and learned to compensate for it. I was extremely interested, to say the least, so much so that it changed my research focus from words to visual perception."

The result of that research — which now spans almost two decades — is a book titled Visual Reflections: A Perceptual Deficit and Its Implications, recently published by Oxford University Press. In the book, McCloskey discusses AH's deficit and explains how she is able to adapt and compensate so well. The book also describes how AH's perceptual errors, combined with many other clues, led McCloskey to some very interesting conclusions about how we perceive the world.

"Studying AH has taught us about how the brain codes where things are. Some parts of the visual brain use codes very much like the x and y coordinates we learned about in algebra class," he said.

Through their study of AH, McCloskey and his colleagues also learned much about subsystems within the brain's visual system. They noted that when an object remained stationary, and in view for a least a second or two, AH would often see it in the wrong place. However, they observed that if an object was shown very briefly, or if it moved, she was able to pinpoint its location accurately.

"These results tell us that the visual system has separate pathways, one for perceiving stable, nonmoving objects, and another for objects that are moving or otherwise changing. AH's pathway for stable objects is abnormal, but her pathway for moving or otherwise changing objects is normal," McCloskey said. "We can learn a lot about how healthy visual systems work by studying a system like AH's that works, well, differently. The truth is, we can often learn more about a process like visual perception when something goes wrong than when it functions perfectly. This is a perfect example."

The cognitive scientist says that one of the most important lessons from the study of AH is that vision is not as simple as we are inclined to assume.

"The signals sent from our eyes to our brains must undergo complex processing in several brain regions before we can see the scene in front of us. If that processing malfunctions, as in AH, we may quite literally see something different from what is actually there," he said.

Source: JHU Gazette

EU Intervenes in Internal Philippines “Reproductive Health” Debate

By Piero A. Tozzi, J.D., Katharina Rothweiler

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) The head of the delegation of the European Commission in the Philippines, Ambassador Alistair MacDonald, has vocally intervened in a contentious legislative debate in that nation, pushing legislators to pass a controversial "reproductive health" bill while linking increased foreign aid to passage, according to critics.

Speaking at a forum sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to promote the Reproductive Health Care Act of 2008 in Manila last week, MacDonald chided Filipino legislators for failing to pass the bill, calling the "provision of effective and accessible" reproductive health services "a responsibility of the State towards the people of the Philippines."

Australia's Agency for International Development and Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional, the international aid agency of Spain's socialist government, also called for passage of the bill at the UNFPA forum.

According to news reports , MacDonald noted that 60 percent of European Union (EU) aid is already channeled to reproductive health programs. He hoped to link increased direct aid at the provincial level to increased contraceptive usage, rewarding those provinces that most effectively promoted contraception.

MacDonald denied that he was linking passage of the bill to funding, stating that passage simply "would help secure that the health care funds would be spend for the welfare of those who need the health care the most."

MacDonald’s intervention has rankled some Filipino critics, however, who consider it an unwarranted intrusion in the legislative affairs of a sovereign nation.

It calls to mind the actions of the European Commission ambassador to Nicaragua, Francesa Mosca, who in 2006 joined UNFPA, other UN agencies and several European donor nations in demanding that Nicaragua rescind legislation strengthening protection of unborn life. Sweden reportedly cut over $20 million in foreign aid to the Central American nation, and Finland threatened to link continued aid to changes in Nicaragua’s abortion law.

Among other things, the Filipino reproductive health legislation would promote sex education and contraceptives, including some which critics say function as abortifacients.

Some UN committees and non-governmental organizations -- and, most recently, new U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- have included abortion within the term "reproductive health," though this has never been agreed to by the UN General Assembly. Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, and the Constitution protects “the life of the unborn from conception.” MacDonald stopped short of linking abortion with "reproductive health," claiming instead that a lack of "an effective framework for reproductive health" was a cause of "illegal abortion."

EU officials in the past have denied that it is EU policy to promote abortion under the framework of "reproductive health." A senior staff member in the European Parliament reminded the Friday Fax that in response to a direct question in 2003 from Dana Rosemary Scallon, then an Irish Member of the European Parliament, as to whether the "term 'reproductive health include[s] promotion of abortion," the EU Council responded "no," adding that "we do not accept that abortion should form part of the policies on reproductive and birth control education."

In order to enter into effect, the reproductive health bill would need to pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate of the Philippines and be then signed into law by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

New Report Details Fudged WHO Numbers on Maternal Mortality

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) A newly released research paper identifies structural flaws in United Nations (UN) data collection and analysis of global maternal health, finding that UN maternal heath policies based on the bad data are jeopardizing women's health in the developing world.

The paper, “Removing the Roadblocks from Achieving MDG 5 by Improving the Data on Maternal Mortality,” by Donna Harrison, M.D., was published by the International Organizations Research Group (IORG) [IORG is a division of C-FAM, publisher of the Friday Fax]. The paper shows how the World Health Organization's (WHO) guidelines to UN member states require nations to collect faulty data while at the same time pressuring them to enact UN policies such as liberalizing abortion laws based on that data.

Harrison finds that the WHO's Reproductive Health Indicators are flawed because of “quasi-legal, rather than scientifically-based definitions used to define maternal health.” Specifically, she examines WHO documents that equate “safe abortion” to legal abortion, and “unsafe abortion” to illegal abortion. Harrison said that even pro-abortion groups have taken WHO to task for its faulty definitions. She gives the example of Marie Stopes International, which claims that the abortions it performs in countries where it is illegal are safe.

WHO definitions also create confusion about the true number of deaths attributable to abortion, Harrison argues. This is because WHO guidelines require hospitals to count deaths from miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) in calculating maternal mortality, but not deaths from planned abortions. Maternal deaths due to planned, induced abortion are therefore not required to be recorded in government statistics, and the extent to which such abortions harm women is impossible to measure.

Despite this fact, WHO is promoting planned abortion as a way to improve maternal health. Citing WHO's 2006 report “Sexual and Reproductive Health: Laying the Foundation for a More Just World through Research and Action,” Harrison says that “the report details its extensive research and promotion of chemical or medical abortions in develop¬ing countries using mifepristone and misoprostol and manual vacuum aspirators, a technique used by some to perform abortions in countries where the practice is illegal under the auspices of ‘fertility regulation.’…Without accurate data collection and analysis, the effects of such changes are often not perceived until years after damage has been done and may not be reversible at that late point.”

Harrison quotes WHO researchers who admit to “adjusting the data" up to 50 percent based upon what they "expect to find” in order “to make the numbers turn out right.” To improve WHO statistics and policies Harrison offers several policy recommendations, including the collection of data “for all pregnancy outcomes,” separating the data on miscarriages and induced termination, and refining the definition of “induced abortion” to distinguish among terminations medically necessary to save the life of the mother, voluntary terminations performed in the hospital, and voluntary terminations performed in an outpatient setting.

If WHO does not improve what one World Bank researcher calls “tortuous statistical techniques and educated guessing,” Harrison concludes, “Policy decisions will be founded on political assumptions, rather than scientific fact.”

Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote

from Yahoo
Irish student hoaxes world's media with florid but phony quote from dead French composer

Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer, On Monday May 11, 2009, 12:07 pm EDT

DUBLIN (AP) -- When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.

The sociology major's obituary-friendly quote -- which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 -- flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia twice caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets they'd swallowed his baloney whole.

"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.

"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."

So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version -- or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources -- none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.

When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.

He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre's actual life experiences. He noted that the Wikipedia listing on Jarre did not have any other strong quotes.

If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source -- and even might trigger alarms as "too good to be true." But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.

He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal who was solely to blame for their cut-and-paste content.

"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the readers' editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.

"It's worrying that the misinformation only came to light because the perpetrator of the deception emailed publishers to let them know what he'd done, and it's regrettable that he took nearly a month to do so," she wrote.

Fitzgerald said he had waited in part to test whether news organizations or the public would smoke out the quote's lack of provenance. He said he was troubled that none did.

And he warned that a truly malicious hoaxer could have evaded Wikipedia's own informal policing by getting a newspaper to pick up a false piece of information -- as happened when his quote made its first of three appearances -- and then use those newspaper reports as a credible footnote for the bogus quote.

"I didn't want to be devious," he said. "I just wanted to show how the 24-hour, minute-by-minute media were now taking material straight from Wikipedia because of the deadline pressure they're under."

Guardian article on controversy, http://tinyurl.com/djqd8w

Soundtrack Geek blog on Jarre, http://tinyurl.com/d527zh

Wikipedia site criticizing itself, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism--of--Wikipedia

Listen to the Pope on Condoms - a Letter from Africa

Listen to the Pope on Condoms

A response to: Vatican Deplores Belgium's Criticism of Pontiff

I am a Kenyan woman, a teacher, wife and mother.

I fully support the Pope's message that condoms are not the solution to HIV/AIDS. With the promotion of condoms in my country, HIV/AIDS has only got worse. Let us listen to Pope Benedict.

I wish I could shout, but I will not; but the truth of the matter is that in my life I have not seen anybody more interested in the welfare of Africa than the Catholic Church.

These other governments and organizations just talk for their own political correctness, hidden agenda and to defend all the myths they hold in their heads about Africa.

Even before Pope Benedict said it, we knew the answer to HIV/AIDS and we agree with him, with clear minds.

Eme Oduor

http://www.zenit.org