Vatican Cardinal Burke: ‘We’re well on the way’ to Christian persecution in the U.S.

BY JOHN-HENRY WESTEN
Mon Nov 28, 2011

VATICAN, November 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of the highest ranking cardinals in the Vatican has said that the United States is “well on the way” to the persecution of Christians.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, former Archbishop of St. Louis and now the head of the Vatican’s highest court, told Catholic News Agency that he could envision a time when the Catholic Church in the U.S., “even by announcing her own teaching,” is accused of “engaging in illegal activity, for instance, in its teaching on human sexuality.”

Asked if the cardinal could even see American Catholics being arrested for their faith he replied, “I can see it happening, yes.”

In his remarks to several U.S. Bishops meeting with him Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI made similarly emphatic warnings about the U.S. The pope told the bishops that “the seriousness of the challenges which the Church in America, under your leadership, is called to confront in the near future cannot be underestimated.”

He added: “The obstacles to Christian faith and practice raised by a secularized culture also affect the lives of believers.”

In the interview published today, Cardinal Burke declared that “it is a war” and “critical at this time that Christians stand up for the natural moral law.” Should they not, he warned, “secularization will in fact predominate and it will destroy us.”

Pope Benedict too urged the bishops of the United States to speak out in defense of morality. “The present moment can thus be seen, in positive terms, as a summons to exercise the prophetic dimension of your episcopal ministry by speaking out, humbly yet insistently, in defense of moral truth, and offering a word of hope, capable of opening hearts and minds to the truth that sets us free,” he said.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue told LifeSiteNews that Cardinal Burke’s remarks were accurate and not exaggerations. “Secularism has become militant,” he said. “Many elites are taking an aggressive secular approach. They have lined up against the Catholic Church and other Christian churches particularly for their stand on moral values.”

Donohue pointed to New York where gay ‘marriage’ was passed without debate or exemptions for clerks who objected to having to grant such licenses. He also noted the closing of Catholic adoption and foster care agencies since they were unable to comply with laws forcing homosexual adoptions.

“The real big one,” he added, “is the HHS of the Obama Administration.” The forcing of abortifacient and contraceptive coverage in private health care plans under penalty of fines was described by the Catholic League President as the Obama Administration “on a full court press to shove its values down the throats of the Catholic Church.”

See the full interview with Cardinal Burke with Catholic News Agency

Link to story: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vatican-cardinal-burke-were-well-on-the-way-to-christian-persecution-in-the

Christianophobia at Work in "Crucifix Trial," Says Cardinal

Roundtable Event Held in Rome Ahead of Public Hearing

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 23, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The decision of the European Court of Human Rights to ban the crucifix from Italian classrooms is a result of the encroachment of "secularist fundamentalism" and "Christianophobia," says the former president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.

Cardinal Julián Herranz Casado said this today in Rome at a round table event organized by the Christian Humanism Association, with the sponsorship of the office of Italy's prime minister. The title of the event was "Values and Rights: The Value of the Crucifix."

In November, the human rights court ruled in favor of an Italian citizen of Finnish origin who complained in 2002 that the state school where her two children studied violated their freedom by displaying crucifixes.

Italy launched an appeal in January, contending that the crucifix is part of Italian cultural patrimony. Since then, 10 other member states have joined Italy's appeal as third parties. At stake is not only the crucifix ban, but also the limits of the jurisdiction of the human rights court.

The court's Grand Chamber will hold a public hearing on June 30, and the final judgment on the case is expected by the end of the year.

Cardinal Herranz explained that the ruling is a result of a growing "secularist fundamentalism" that seeks to "relegate the Christian faith and religion in general to the mere private realms of personal conscience, excluding all signs, symbols or external manifestation of the faith in public places and civil institutions (schools, hospitals, etc.)."

Errors

The 80-year-old cardinal said the erroneous reasoning behind the court's decision asserts that the presence of the crucifix in classrooms is "contrary to the right of parents to educate their children in line with their own convictions, and to the right of children to religious liberty," as the atmosphere of the school would be "marked by a specific religion."

The court, he continued, also wrongly affirmed that the presence of the crucifix might be "emotionally disturbing," and that its display might not "foment critical thought in pupils" or the "educational pluralism" that is essential to preserve a "democratic society."

"This decision," the Spanish cardinal responded, "makes reference without a motive -- because the mere display of the crucifix does not have an imperative or discriminatory character -- to the religious liberty of non-Christian pupils, while it does not respect Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affects Christian pupils of Italian schools and the 'patria potestas' of their parents."

"This norm," Cardinal Herranz stressed, "guarantees the right of religious liberty, which includes among other things: 'the liberty to manifest one's religion or belief, individually and collectively, both in public as well as in private, by teaching, practice, worship and observance.'"

In second place, the cardinal indicated that "secularism certainly represents a constitutive principle of democratic states," but noted that the court ignores the rights of states to "determine in each case their concrete forms of application, in the light of the different circumstances and local traditions."

Secularism, he insisted, "is not an ideological principle that must be imposed on society violating the traditions, feelings and religious beliefs of the citizens."

Anti-confessional

Cardinal Herranz said that the Strasbourg Court confuses the meaning of "the neutrality or a-confessionality of the state" with the idea that "the state must be 'anti-confessional,' that is, opposed to the presence in public institutions of any religious sign or symbol."

"This attitude of rejection of religion would make of atheism a sort of ideology or state religion," he stressed.

Moreover, the Opus Dei cardinal continued, "it seems that the court has exceeded illegitimately the limits of its own competence, pronouncing itself on a question that affects the legitimate and due safeguarding on the part of the state of the national traditions and culture, as well as the commitments assumed with concordats or particular conventions with the Catholic Church and eventually with other religious confessions."

He spoke of "strong media powers and some political groups that for a long time have supported the ideology of secularist fundamentalism" and who hope for a law of religious liberty that would prohibit "crucifixes and other religious signs [...] in public institutions and official ceremonies (schools, courts, hospitals, state funerals, etc.)."

And they do this, the cardinal added, knowing that "the majority of citizens, if consulted in a referendum, would vote against this."

ZE10062306 - 2010-06-23
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29688?l=english

NO! Empire State Building refuses to light up in honor of Mother Teresa

It is sad that it doesn't surprise me that this is happening....


BY Adam Lisberg
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
Wednesday, June 9th 2010, 2:06 PM

The Empire State Building has a message to Mother Teresa - you don't deserve to be honored in lights.

The building has colored its famous lighting in the past for Mariah Carey, stock car driver Jimmie Johnson and drug-loving musicians the Grateful Dead, but its owner said Wednesday that Mother Teresa doesn't qualify.

"As a privately owned building, ESB has a specific policy against any other lighting for religious figures or requests by religions and religious organizations," said Anthony Malkin, head of the family company that owns the building.

The firm "no" comes after the Catholic League and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn both urged the city's tallest tower to turn its lights blue and white on Aug. 26 for what would have been her 100th birthday.

Quinn said she spoke to Malkin on Tuesday and hoped he would change his mind.

"He said he would reflect on it," Quinn said today. "It's a really wrong-headed decision that he has made. It's his private building, and he has the right to make it, but I think it's a hugely lost opportunity for the city."

Catholic League President Bill Donohue said the tower was lit red and white when Cardinal O'Connor died in 2000, and the lights were extinguished to mark the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005.

"Malkin has made his decision to stiff Catholics," said Donohue, who now plans an Aug. 26 demonstration outside the building. "His decision to double down at this juncture - in the face of massive support for our request - is something he will regret for the rest of his life."

Archbishop Timothy Dolan is monitoring the situation, a spokesman said. He earlier said he was stumped why a nun who devoted her life to helping the suffering was not deserving of the honor.

"I kind of shrug my shoulders with everybody else," Dolan said in March. "I guess there must be a reason. It'd be tough for me to understand a credible one, but I wish they'd kind of tell us. It's tough to be against Mother Teresa?"

The City Council is scheduled to consider a resolution Wednesday calling on the skyscraper to change its mind.

Malkin said the building lights itself up for religious holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah and Id al-Fitr, but not individuals.

"We try to use the lighting to celebrate everybody who thinks highly of the building," he told the New York Times last year. "We do important Western holidays, we have fun with the Mets versus the Yankees or the Jets versus the Giants."

The decision outraged tourists lining up to tour the building's 86th-floor observation deck today, who saw no earthly reason not to honor a heavenly nun.

"She's not just a Catholic figure - she's an inspiration to everybody," said Mary Shull, 54, visiting from northeast Tennessee.

Added Wesley Dessert, a 28-year-old social worker from Brooklyn: "It's an iconic building in New York, and she's an icon too. It's special to honor her 100th birthday. It's a milestone."



With Frank Lombardi and Samantha Shirley

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/06/09/2010-06-09_no_empire_state_building_refuses_to_light_up_in_honor_of_mother_teresa.html#ixzz0qNrFam6Z

God is not dead. He isn't even tired

Christendom College Commencement Address

Dr. Charles E. Rice, Professor Emeritus, Notre Dame Law School

May 17, 2010



The following Commencement Address was given at Christendom College, Front Royal, Virginia, on Saturday, May 15th. It is reproduced here by kind permission of Dr. Rice.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When President O'Donnell asked me to give this address, I expressed one concern: "Will there be a protest? And will you prosecute the protestors? Or at least 88 of them?" He made no commitment. I accepted anyway.

So what can I tell you? This is a time of crises. The economy is a mess, the culture is a mess, the government is out of control. And, in the last three years, Notre Dame lost 21 football games. But this is a great time for us to be here, especially you graduates of this superbly Catholic college. This is so because the remedy for the general meltdown today is found only in Christ and in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Let's talk bluntly about our situation and what you can do about it.

We are living through a transformation of our federal government. A one-party regime, the leader of which was elected with 54 percent of the Catholic vote, is substituting for the free economy and limited government a centralized command system of potentially unlimited jurisdiction and power. Its takeover of health care, against the manifest will of the people, not only funds elective abortions and endangers the elderly and conscience rights. It was enacted in disregard of legislative process and by a level of bribery, coercion and deception that was as open as it was unprecedented.

To find a comparable example of the rapid concentration of executive power by a legally installed regime, we have to go back to 1933. Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor on January 30. Over the next few weeks he consolidated his power. The decisive event was the Reichstag's approval of the Enabling Act on March 23, 1933, by which it ceded full and irrevocable powers to Hitler. That was the point of no return. The Enabling Act received the needed two-thirds vote only because it was supported by the Catholic party, the Centre Party.[1] Our "Health Care Reform," enacted with the decisive support of Catholic members of both houses of Congress, may be the Enabling Act of our time in the control it cedes to government over the lives of the people. It includes the federal takeover of student aid. What do student loans have to do with health care? The common denominator is control. No student will be able to get a federally guaranteed educational loan without the consent of a federal bureaucrat. This opens the way to make political loyalty a test for educational advancement, as it was in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This confirms the wisdom of Christendom's decision to forego all federal aid.

Unlike Germany in 1933, we have legal means of redress. I am proud to say I am a Tea Party guy. In November, the reaction may dislodge the Congressional arm of the ruling class. But that reaction will be only temporary unless we go to the source of the evil. The root problem is not political or economic. It is religious. And that is where you come in. "The social crisis," said Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, "happens when we elect people to rule over us who are immoral. .... [P]eople who don't have a moral bearing to elect other moral people, elect immoral politicians to serve over them.... So immoral lifestyles produce immoral leaders."[2] In other words, we elect immoral, rather than moral, people because we have lost the ability, or the desire, to tell the difference. The answer, said Fr. Euteneuer, is "to turn back to God. ... What we need is a conversion of heart."

We rightly urge fidelity to the Constitution. But no paper charter can survive the disappearance of the morality that produced it. In 2001, thirteen days after 9/11, Pope John Paul II, in Kazakhstan, cautioned the leaders of that Islamic republic against a "slavish conformity" to Western culture which is in a "deepening human, spiritual and moral impoverishment" caused by "the fatal attempt to secure the good of humanity by eliminating God, the Supreme Good."

You graduates will enter a culture in which the intentional infliction of death upon the innocent is widely seen as an optional problem-solving technique. The Columbine shootings set a precedent. If you have a grievance against your classmates, fellow employees or IRS agents, the answer is to blow them away. Legalized abortion is the prime example of murder as a problem solver. And the execution of someone like Terri Schiavo occurs routinely, without public notice, when the family and caregivers agree to withhold food and water because it is time for the patient to "die with dignity." The separation of morality from killing has counterparts in the separation of morality from economics, from sex and from personal decisions in general.

There is no mystery in this. We are living through what Fr. Francis Canavan, S.J., called "the fag end of the Enlightenment," the collapse of the effort by philosophers and politicians, over the past three centuries and more, to build a society as if God did not exist.[3] That Enlightenment culture is built on three lies, secularism, relativism and individualism. They are components of what Benedict XVI called a "dictatorship of relativism... that recognizes nothing as absolute and which leaves only the 'I' and its whims as the ultimate measure."[4] Those three lies are weapons deployed by our enemy, Satan, the father of lies. Your job, for which you are well equipped, is to counter his lies with the truth. If you speak the truth, you will have an impact beyond what you know. Cardinal Edouard Gagnon described a conversation he had with John Paul II:

[T]he Holy Father... told me, "error makes its way because truth is not taught. We must teach the truth.... not attacking the ones who teach errors because that would never end—they are too numerous. We have to teach the truth." He told me truth has a grace attached to it. Anytime we speak the truth.... an internal grace of God... accompanies that truth. The truth may not immediately enter in the mind and heart of those to whom we talk, but the grace of God is there and at the time they need it, God will open their heart and they will accept it. He said, error does not have grace accompanying it.[5]

Remember that Truth, with a capital T, "is a person, Jesus Christ."[6] And Christ is not some lawyer, CEO or community organizer. He is God. Cardinal Avery Dulles described three foundational principles: "that there is a God, that he has made a full and final revelation of himself in Jesus Christ and that the Catholic Church is the authorized custodian and teacher of this body of revealed truth."[7] The Catholic faith is not a set of doctrines. It is a lived encounter with Christ, who lives in, and teaches through, the Church.[8]

The Magisterium, or teaching authority of the Church, is a great gift, not only for Catholics but for others to whose conscience it appeals "on the basis of reason and natural law."[9] The forces of evil concentrate their fire on the Vicar of Christ, who is the authoritative interpreter of the moral law. We must respond with loyal defense of him and of the Church. We are not, to borrow Fr. Euteneuer's phrase, the Church Impotent. We are part of the Church Militant. Our job is to fight for the Truth. Don't be conned by their lies:

1). The first lie is secularism: There is no God or he is unknowable. They say that is what the First Amendment means, but that, too, is a lie. On September 24-25, 1789, the First Congress approved the First Amendment and called on the President to proclaim a day of "thanksgiving and prayer... acknowledging... the many ... favors of Almighty God."[10] President Washington proclaimed that day of prayer. The First Amendment required neutrality on the part of the federal government among religious sects while recognizing the power of the state and federal governments to affirm the existence of God. The Supreme Court has now imposed a duty on all governments to maintain an impossible neutrality between theism and non-theism. The words "under God," according to Justice William Brennan's still accurate description of the Court's approach, may remain in the Pledge of Allegiance only because they "no longer have a religious purpose or meaning." Instead they "may merely recognize the historical fact that our Nation was believed to have been founded 'under God.'" [11]

At all levels of government, the suspension of judgment on the existence of God has evolved into an establishment of secularism. Today, affirmations of God are considered non-rational, and are generally excluded from the public discourse which is shaped by utility and power rather than right or wrong.

The existence of God is not self-evident. But it is unreasonable, even stupid, not to believe in God, an eternal being that had no beginning and always existed. The alternative is that there was a time when there was absolutely nothing. But that makes no sense. St. Thomas Aquinas said, "if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd."[12] As Julie Andrews put it in The Sound of Music, "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could."

The only basis for transcendent rights against the State is the creation of the immortal person in the image and likeness of God. Every state that has ever existed, or ever will exist, has gone out of business or will go out of business. Every human being that has ever been conceived will live forever. That is why you have transcendent rights against the State. The person does not exist for the State. The State exists for the person. And for the family.

2). The second lie of Satan is relativism. To say that all things are relative is absurd, for that statement itself must be relative. The jurisprudence of relativism is some form of legal positivism, which asserts that there is no higher law that limits what human law can do. A law of any content is valid if it is enacted pursuant to prescribed procedure and is effective. Hans Kelsen, the leading legal positivist of the 20th century, said that Auschwitz and the Soviet Gulags were valid law. He could not criticize them as unjust because justice, he said, is "an irrational ideal."[13] Kelsen claimed that relativism is the philosophy of democracy. John Paul II said relativism leads instead to totalitarianism: "If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to ... impose his own interests ... with no regard for the rights of others."[14]

In your personal and professional lives you will be pressured to be a relativist, to lie, cheat or steal. As John Paul put it, the negative prohibitions of the Commandments, which are a specification of the natural law, "allow no exceptions."[15] But you will pay a price for your fidelity.

Let me tell you a story. Captain James Mulligan, of the United States Navy, spent seven years, half of them in solitary confinement, in the Hanoi Hilton after his plane was shot down in 1966. He was a cell-mate for a time of later Senator Jeremiah Denton. He, as were the others, was tortured severely and often to try to make him betray his fellow prisoners and his country. Captain Mulligan put his reliance on prayer, especially the Rosary. Under torture, he laid it on the line in a prayer he composed that we ought to make our own: "Lord, give me the strength and the guts to see this thing through to the end, one way or another. No one else knows, Lord, but you and I know, and that's all that's necessary. You suffered for your beliefs, and I must suffer for mine. Right is right if no one's right; wrong is wrong if everyone's wrong."[16] That is the answer to relativism.

3). The third lie you will confront is individualism. Social contract theories denied the social nature of man. They postulated a state of nature in which each person was an autonomous, isolated individual with no relation to others unless he consents. That is the origin of pro-choice as we know it today. Planned Parenthood didn't think it up. The mother has no relation to her unborn child unless she consents. The husband and wife have no continuing relation unless they continue to consent. And so on. The autonomous individual is his own god. Conscience is not a judgment about the objective rightness or wrongness of an act. It is the individual's unfettered decision as to what he wills to do. Whatever he chooses is, for him, the right thing to do. That is portrayed as the way to freedom. But "authentic freedom" cannot be separated from the truth.[17]

You are "free" to choose to put sand in the gas tank of your car. But you will no longer be free to drive your car because you have violated the truth of the nature of your car. You are "free" to choose to lie, to fornicate, etc., but you will diminish yourself because you have violated the truth of your nature. You have chosen the moral equivalent of putting sand in your gas tank. And there is one thing the autonomous individual of liberal mythology can never do. He can never put himself out of existence. He is going to live forever and will spend eternity someplace. Where, is up to him.

It is time for us to shed our inferiority complex. We allow ourselves to be conned into thinking that the smart guys are the academics who think that something can come from nothing, who are sure that they can't be sure of anything and who think that freedom means, without limit, the power and right to do whatever they want. This culture has lost not only its faith but also its mind. They need to hear the truth, especially about the right to life.

But there we have a problem. Our prolife efforts are compromised by our timidity on contraception. The Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930 was the first time that any Christian denomination had ever said that contraception could ever be objectively right. The Magisterium teaches the truth, that contraception is wrong, first, because it deliberately separates the unitive and procreative aspects of sex; second, by so changing the nature of the conjugal act, the man and woman make themselves, rather than God, the arbiters of whether and when life shall begin; and third, contraception frustrates the total mutual self-donation that ought to characterize the conjugal act. If man makes himself the arbiter of whether and when life shall begin, he will make himself the arbiter of when it shall end as in abortion and euthanasia. John Paul II described abortion and contraception as "fruits of the same tree."[18] If it is man's decision whether sex will have any relation to reproduction, why can't Freddy and Harry get a marriage license? In 2004, Pastor Donald Sensing of Trinity United Methodist Church in Franklin, TN, wrote that opponents of same-sex marriage are "a little late. The walls of traditional marriage were breached 40 years ago" with the general acceptance of the contraceptive pill.[19]

God has chosen to depend on human cooperation for the creation of new citizens for the kingdom of heaven. The contracepting couple alter the conjugal act to prevent that creation. What they say to God is something like this: "For all we know, God, it may be your will that from this act of ours a new human person will come into existence who will live forever. For all we know, that may be your will. And we won't let you do it." That is awesome. "Contraception," said John Paul II, "is so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God."[20]

Catholics practice contraception at the same rate as everyone else. One reason is that they have not been adequately informed. Many Catholic churches and schools are closing or consolidating for lack of parishioners and students. A fair response would be respectfully to say: "Most Reverend Bishop (or Father), you would not have this problem if you and your predecessors had been doing your job, over the past four decades and still today, of educating your people about the evil of contraception and about the entire positive teaching of the Church on marriage and the gift of life." Christendom graduates know the score on this. Don't be afraid to live it. And teach it, by word and example.

The link is clear between the premises of the Enlightenment and of contraception and such evils as pornography, promiscuity, divorce, in vitro fertilization, cloning and others.[21] Scientists at Newcastle University, in England, announced last month that they had created a "designer embryo" with the DNA of one man and two women, a child with two mothers.[22] Our scientists are probably not far behind.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, addressed this point in 2002. He discussed the description in Genesis 3 of the posting of angels east of Eden with flaming swords to keep man, after the Fall, from eating of the Tree of Life. After the Fall, man was forbidden to eat of that tree which gave immortality, "since to be immortal in this [fallen] condition would... be perdition." People are now, Ratzinger said, "starting to pick from the tree of life and make themselves lords of life and death, to reassemble life....[P]recisely what man was supposed to be protected from is now... happening; he is crossing the final boundary....[M]an makes other men his own artifacts. Man no longer originates in the mystery of love, by... conception and birth... but is produced industrially, like any other product.... [W]e can ... be certain of this: God will take action to counter an ultimate crime, an ultimate act of self-destruction, on the part of man. He will take action against the attempt to demean mankind by the production of slave-beings. There are indeed final boundaries we cannot cross...."[23]

This is serious business. Nineveh repented, prayed and was spared. Sodom and Gomorrah did not and were destroyed.[24] Those options could be ours.

If we look at all this in merely human terms, our cause is hopeless. But we don't depend on our own strength. And we don't know everything. Don't be discouraged when bad things happen. "God permits everything," said St. Maximilian Kolbe, "in view of a greater blessing."[25] Trust God. Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J., who spent 23 years in Soviet prisons, said what God wants, especially in times of adversity or danger, is "an act of total trust," demanding "absolute faith: faith in God's existence, in his providence, in his concern for the minutest detail, in his power to sustain me, and in his love protecting me."[26]

Trust God. And pray, especially, to Mary, his Mother and ours. At Lepanto in 1571, the odds against the Christian fleet were so great that Las Vegas would have taken that bet off the board. But they prayed the Rosary and Mary gave the victory. She can take care of our problems today. This really is a great time for us to be here. We know we are on the winning side. God is not dead. He isn't even tired.

Thank you for the privilege to be with you. God bless you, your families and Christendom College. And God bless the United States of America.


-----------------------------------

ENDNOTES:

[1]Eliot Barculo Wheaton, The Nazi Revolution: 1933-35 (1969), 286-93; William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, (1959), 88, 276-79.


[2] LifeSiteNews.com, Jan. 6, 2010.


[3] Catholic Eye, Dec. 10, 1987, 2.


[4] Homily, April 18, 2005.


[5] Lay Witness, March, 1990, 6-7.

[6] Pope Benedict XVI, Address to Youth, April 19, 2008.


[7] Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., "Catholic Colleges and Universities Today," Assumption College, Oct. 11, 2007.

[8] Ecclesiam Suam (1964), nos. 30, 55.


[9] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (2005), no. 28 (a).


[10] Annals of Congress, I, 949.


[11] Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 304 (1963).


[12] S.T., I, Q.2, art. 3.


[13] Hans Kelsen, "The Pure Theory of Law, Part I," 50 Law Quart. Rev. 474, 482 (1934).


[14] Veritatis Splendor, no. 99.


[15] Veritatis Splendor, no. 52.


[16] James Mulligan, The Hanoi Commitment (1981), 48, 93-94.


[17] Veritatis Splendor, No. 87.


[18] Evangelium Vitae, no. 13.


[19] Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2004.


[20] Pope John Paul II, Discourse, Sept. 17, 1983.


[21] See Charles E. Rice and Theresa Farnan, Where Did I Come From? Where Am I Going? How Do I Get There? (2009), 141-164.

[22] Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com, April 14, 2010.


[23] Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World (2002), 133-135.

[24] Genesis 19:1-28; Jonah 3:1-10.


[25] St. Maximilian Kolbe, Writings, 1205.


[26] Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me (1973), 77.

British author blasts the new atheists, "secular inquisition"

by Carol Olson
Ignatius Insight

Yeah, yeah, yeah—yet another hyper-reactionary papal apologist whining and complaining about how the Pope is being treated:

It’s worth asking why otherwise fairly intelligent thinkers get so dementedly exercised over the pope and the Catholic Church. What exactly is their beef? What are they objecting to? Very few (if any) of the pope-hunters were raised Catholic, so this isn’t about personal vengeance for some perceived slight by a priest or nun. And despite their current lowdown, historically illiterate attempt to equate a priest fondling a child with a state’s attempt to obliterate an entire people – under the collective tag ‘crime against humanity’ – the truth is that some of these pope-hunters don’t really think child abuse is the worst crime in the world. In 2006, Dawkins criticised ‘hysteria about paedophilia’ and said that, even though he was the victim of sexual abuse at boarding school, he would defend his abusive former teachers if ‘50 years on they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers’. Yet now he wants to put abusive priests on a par with genocidaires.

But what do you expect from a brainwashed pope-worshiper who refuses to acknowledge The Truth about Benedict the Cover Upper and the Vile Vatican Filled With Old, Perverted Men?

The reason this crusade is so hysterical is because it is not really about the pope at all – it is about the New Atheists themselves. The contemporary pope-hunting springs from a secularist movement which feels incapable of asserting a sense of purpose or meaning in any positive, human-centred way – as the great atheists of old such as Marx or Darwin might have done – and which instead can only assert itself negatively, in contrast to the ‘evil’ of religion, by posturing against the alleged wickedness of institutionalised faith. It is the inner emptiness, directionless and soullessness of contemporary secularism – in contrast to earlier, Enlightened and more positive secular movements – which has given birth to the bizarre clamour for the pope’s head.

Secularism is in crisis. In Enlightened times, progressive secular movements, those which eschewed the guidance of God in favour of relying on mankind to work out what his problems were and how to solve them, were all about having a positive view of humanity. Their vision was both terrifying and extremely liberating: that man alone could master the complexities of life on Earth and improve it for himself and future generations. Today, however, we live in misanthropic, deeply downbeat times, where mankind is looked upon as a greedy, destructive, unreliable force whose behaviour and thoughts must be governed from without.

Well, sure, what else could you expect from an ultra-right-wing, atheist-hating Romanist?

This is what drives their war against religion: an instinct for ridiculing those who still, unlike contemporary secularists themselves, have an overarching outlook on life and a strong belief system. That is really what they find so alien about the Catholic Church in particular – its beliefs, its faith, its hierarchy. An atheism utterly alienated from the mass of humanity and from any future-oriented vision can only lash out in an extreme and intolerant way against those who still seem to have strong beliefs: the religious, or the ‘deluded ones’, as the New Atheists see it.

Pah-leaze! Stop the papal propaganda already!

No doubt some will accuse me of ‘defending paedophile priests’ in contrast to the New Atheist campaign on behalf of ‘powerless victims’. In truth, my only concern, as an atheistic libertarian—

Uh. What? What?? You're not a Catholic? You're a former Catholic? And an atheist? Really?

Yes, really, he most certainly is all of that. Brendan O’Neill, the editor of spiked, is a former Catholic and an "atheistic libertarian" who has been sticking his neck out on this subject for a while now and who deserves some kudos and thanks for good Catholics, in my estimation. There's no doubt all all that O'Neill and Catholics disagree about a whole host of very significant issues, but his analysis of the ongoing media furor—"witch-hunt", he calls it—is all the more powerful because O'Neill is not trying so much to defend the Catholic Church (although he is doing so), but because he is trying to save a form of rational, reasonable atheism, and he sees the attacks by Dawkins, Hitchens, and Co. as being anything but rational and reasonable. And he's right. Is he right about there being a viable form of rational, reasonable atheism to be lived in today's world? Well, that would be a fascinating topic for a conversation over a pint, but for the time being it is worth noting that non-Catholics—non-theists!—are capable of some excellent insights and cool reasoning about all of this. Again, bravo to Mr. O'Neill, to whom I tip my hat, once again.

Brit Hume's sin: he believed what he said

Thursday, January 7, 2010

There has been a torrent of news, blogging, raging, and opinion-shucking going on over Brit Hume's remarks about Tiger Woods, Buddhism, and Christianity, (the best I've read so far is by The Anchoress), so I thought I'd toss my thoughts into the great vacuum of blogdom (or is it "wheel of blogging dharma"?). My take on the aftermath is fairly simple: Hume offended three notable groups of people:

1) Those who claim that news is meant to be completely objective and free of any opinion whatsoever.
2) Those who cannot fathom someone making an unapologetic public remark about their belief that Christianity is objectively true.
3) Those who hate FOX News.

An example of #1 is Baptist pastor Welton Gaddy on the WaPo blog, "On Faith":

The picture on the television screen and the audio of reporter Brit Hume's words struck me as contradictory. Just below the image of the reporter's face, the insignia "Fox News" appeared in three different places. Yet, the content of Mr. Hume's comments was not that of a news reporter so much as that of a televangelist.

Strangely enough, I found it disconcerting to read a piece by a Christian pastor criticizing a Christian making a positive statement on an opinion panel on FOX News, especially when that critical opinion piece was under the insignia, The Washington Post. Did I miss something? Have we lost all sense of irony? Or just commonsense?

This would make a bit more sense if, in fact, news networks and programs of all ideological persuasions were obviously dedicated to objective reporting. But, sorry, that seriously ill bird fell out of the coop, oh, many years ago. Does anyone with half a brain really think that CBS News or CNN or MSNBC is really honed in on giving us "just the facts, ma'am"? In fact, on the rare occasions that I do watch network news these days, I find that within two minutes I am being lectured (sometimes obviously, sometimes with attempts at subtlety) by some perfectly coiffed, immaculately manicured talking head with the personality of an iceburg about what ordinary, middle-class Americans should be doing and thinking when it comes to, say, carbon footprints, universal healthcare reform, immigration, President Obama, Democrats, George W. Bush, Republicans, taxes, big business, /terrorism/ man-made disasters, education, taking care of pets, driving in the snow, nutrition, buying cars, movies, summer vacations, traveling to Europe, dieting, watching television, cell phones, and surfing the Net. What, exactly, is the difference between, say, Katie Couric and Oprah Winfrey? Well, yes, Oprah might just be a better reporter. Who can really tell?

A perfect example of #2 is John Aloysius Farrell, a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, who writes:

It takes a religious zealot to strap explosives around his or her waist and, murmuring prayers, blow up a CIA facility in Afghanistan, or take down an airplane over Detroit, or steer a jet into the World Trade Center. Or, for that matter, to treat the world to Crusades and Inquisitions and the kind of faith-based savagery we've seen in places like Belfast, Bosnia, Beirut, and Jerusalem. That is what made Brit's comments so creepy: the self-certainty that "my god is better than yours."

Because, you see, the man who is completely certain that "self-certainty" about a matter of religion is the doorway to violence and savagery is himself a noble and sophisticated creature. His certainty, be assured, is completely unlike the creepy and barely contained barbarism (nay, terrorism!) hidden within Brit Hume's dapper suit. How do we know this is true? Because he said so! Hey, Farrell is a thoughtful reporter with an opinion, unlike Hume, who is a thoughtful reporter with, uh, an, um, opin—never mind.

A number of folks have rightly noted that if Hume had suggested Woods take up yoga, practice TM, undergo counselling for sex addiction, or read an Eckhart Tolle book, no one would bat an eyelash. Again, it is the Christian claim to objective truth (and the inherent call to conversion) that upsets so many people. After all, they know for a fact that objective truth doesn't exist.

While making a little 2,600-mile drive a month ago, I listened to quite of a few sports radio programs (they keep me awake, for some reason), most of them fixated on the Woods story. Again and again various "experts" and pundits were asked to offer what they thought Woods should do to recover, to rebuild his image, to get his life in order, to address his problems, and so forth. The responses were all over the map, ranging from thoughtful to funny to stupid to incredibly stupid. Each of them reflected, even if not openly, a particular belief system (often very confused and amoral). So, why should one's beliefs about the basic nature of reality, morality, and truth be off limits when it comes to considering opinions about the news? Peter Wehner makes this very point in an NRO piece about Hume-inspired Sturm und Drang:

Rather than being mesmerized by the stupefying consensus that matters of faith — especially orthodox Christian faith — ought never to be raised in public, people like Buckley and Muggeridge (and Hume) should refuse to accept it. Not because they want to advance tired religious slogans and worn-out phrases; rather, because people are interested in dealing, in an authentic way, with the deepest questions of human existence, of which faith is often a key part. “The life of religion as a whole,” William James said, “is mankind’s most important function.” That, I think, is in part what Hume was getting at.

Most of us spend an inordinate amount of time on shallow discussions about largely inconsequential and evanescent issues; talking honestly about matters of faith and meaning shouldn’t be off-limits. In fact, we should welcome such conversations more often, in more forums, and in a more relaxed, comfortable, and confident way. It might actually interest people more than the latest daily tracking poll by Scott Rasmussen or the latest mutterings of Harry Reid.

Amen to that. Oh, as for group #3: turn the dial. But remember, using Mr. Farrell's logic, no news outlet is any better or worse than another.

Source: http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2010/01/brit-humes-sin-he-believed-what-he-said.html

"On Suzi Oppenheimer's gay marriage bill lament"

December 9, 2009

To the Editor:

NY State Senator Suzi Oppenheimer lamented in a recent letter to the editor that the New York State Senate “missed an opportunity to repair a part of the world when it failed to pass the marriage equality bill last week.” I do not lament the Senate’s vote; I applaud it.

I am encouraged to see that there are senators wise enough not to bend to special interests and to see this issue for what it truly is. They saw what Ms. Oppenheimer failed to see: this is not about equal or civil rights. Rather, by redefining marriage we would be redefining the meaning of the family and society. Marriage is the backbone of the family, and the family is the backbone of society. Redefine marriage and you redefine society; it’s as simple as that. I applaud those senators who had the courage to stand up to the special interest groups and see through the smoke screen that the gay marriage agenda is pushing. It is extremely dangerous for us to tamper with the very foundation of society without thinking hard and long about the consequences of doing so.

Numerous letters to the editor have opined something to the effect of “what difference does it make?” and “Let’s worry about more important issues such as the economy.” It makes a critical difference. Economies rise and fall. Our economy will eventually improve and the effects of the present situation will pass away. But changing the definition of marriage would be shaking our very moral foundation, and when a society’s moral foundation collapses, the society collapses with it, and from that we may never recover.

Ms. Oppenheimer made reference to a belief in her religious faith that commands us to “repair the world.” But did she ever stop to look at from where the “mistake” she wishes to correct originated? It came from the very word of God. There are six scriptural texts in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures which explicitly forbid homosexual activity as sinful and contrary to God’s command. When did Suzi Oppenheimer become so enlightened that she can tell God he’s wrong? How arrogant and audacious of any of us to pass judgment on the moral dictates of the Almighty and hold Him guilty of discrimination! What Divine Being appointed her to save mankind from the errors of God? She and all those who jump on the “anti-discrimination” bandwagon seems to have forgotten who saves whom. Any society that decides it will save the world from the “errors of God” has already begun to self-destruct. I pray we will all wake up and see what we’re doing before it’s too late.

Rev. Andrew P. Carrozza
Pastor, St. Ann’s Church
854 Midland Avenue
Yonkers, NY 10704

New UNFPA Report Goes Green to Promote "Reproductive Rights"

By Piero A. Tozzi, J.D.
C-FAM / Volume 12, Number 49 / November 19, 2009

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its annual State of the World Population Report yesterday, linking efforts to promote "sustainable development" and affect "climate change" to its "reproductive rights" agenda. Critics see the report as a thinly-veiled attempt to harness popular environmental concerns in service of population control.

The report, "Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate," asserts that achieving "universal access to reproductive health" would both contribute to declines in fertility and "help reduce green-house gas emissions in the long run." It calls upon nations to "fully fund family planning services and contraceptive supplies."



Sounding alarmist, UNFPA claims that "The harsh realities of high per capita emissions among industrialized countries and swiftly rising ones among developing countries highlight the urgency of mobilizing all of humanity to stop collectively at the brink of this possible climate disaster zone." In a statement accompanying the report, UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Obaid avers that "rapid population growth and industrialization have led to a rapid rise in greenhouse gas emissions. We have now reached a point where humanity is approaching the brink of disaster."

Peter C. Smith of the International Right to Life Federation observes that agencies such as the UNFPA always need a "looming disaster" to secure their funding." Smith sees the "true looming disaster" as the "demographic implosion of the developed world" which is being exported to the developing world. The report touts declining birth rates in Japan and the European Union (EU) as positives and criticizes higher fertility in the United States (US).

In places, the report disavows overt population control arguments and acknowledges development specialists such as Bangladesh's Atiq Rahman, who attributes climate change to "consumption patterns" rather than "demographic considerations." Yet it also asserts that "Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendents. Hence, the emissions savings from intended or planned births multiply with time." 

Further, the report states that "fear of appearing supportive of population control has until recently held back any mention of 'population' in the climate debate. Nonetheless, some participants in the debate are tentatively suggesting the need at least consider the impacts of population growth." It points to an EU proposal "that population trends be among the factors that should be taken into consideration when setting greenhouse-gas mitigation targets."

Critics also point to the report's favorable citation of Obama administration's science czar, John Holdren, as signaling openness to coercive measures. In the 1970s, Holdren called for forced abortion and sterilization in his writings. 

 Concern over UNFPA's role in facilitating China's one-child policy, which is beset by allegations of forced and sex-selective abortion, contributed to a recommendation by the US State Department under then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to suspend funding of the agency. In March of this year, the Obama administration reversed the Bush administration policy and directed that $50 million be given to UNFPA, despite continued concerns over its China role.

Crucifix out, warming in

It's official – global warmingism has court-warranted standing as a religion

by Rex Murphy
Published on Friday, Nov. 06, 2009 6:45PM EST
Last updated on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009 3:17AM EST

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/crucifix-out-warming-in/article1354734/

What was once venerated is now, in many ways, dismissed and even despised.

Matthew Arnold, the great Victorian poet, marked the turning moment. He had early intimations of “the way we live now,” a way largely evacuated of its Christian allegiances, certainly – in the public sphere – evacuated of the regard and respect that the profession of Christianity once automatically evoked.

“The Sea of Faith/ Was once, too, at the full,” he wrote, before going on in lines of immense power to record:

But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Arnold was more than a bit of a prophet. Blasted by the great cold winds of secularism and scientism, faith in the old sense, faith in Christianity in once or so-called Christian countries, is not only in decline and defensive. Faith is, at the public level, being actively pushed away, visited with dismissive scorn. At the same time, ideas, attitudes and “positions” that have never been seen under the rubric of faith increasingly seek the protections of “sanctified” belief.

What else to make of a human-rights ruling (no, not from one of our own restless engines of pseudo equity) from the European Court this week. According to this ruling, the crucifixes that hang in most Italian classrooms violate religious and educational freedoms. Yes, the cross in the Catholic country violates religious and educational freedoms. Is Dan Brown on the European Court?

A case was brought before this noble court (we know it's noble because it bears the banner of human rights) by a Finnish-born woman, an atheist, who complained that her children – in Italian classrooms, mind you – were “exposed” to crucifixes. Crucifixes in Italy – who would have guessed? It's like going to Newfoundland and complaining about wharves.

The court said this imposition might “disturb” children who weren't Christian and, to ward off a wave of trauma, ordered Italy to remove the crucifixes from its schools.

A case could be made that, whenever you hear of an action by a human-rights tribunal of any kind, you should mark it down that – quite likely – they are busy circumscribing the real rights or dignity of the various branches of Christianity, with a particular focus on Catholicism.

In this case, the European Court of Human Rights – in response to one complaint, from one atheist – told an entire country that has been the centre of world Christianity for 2,000 years to get rid of its most revered and cardinal symbol. It's the same old story: In the name of official tolerance, mandated intolerance.

At least the Italian authorities mustered something of an appropriate response to this insolent busybodyness. One government minister, Roberto Calderoli, loosed this volley: “The European court has trodden on our rights, our culture, our history, our traditions and our values.” Another minister noted that preventing the crucifix from being displayed is “an act of violence against the deep-seated feelings of the Italian people and all persons of goodwill.”

Meantime, in the country of Matthew Arnold's birth, another judge was busy passing an Alice in Wonderland verdict. This case arose from a wrongful-dismissal claim by a man of intense Green passions who said he was fired because of his global warming beliefs. The judge ruled that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief” for the purpose of the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations.

So there you have it: Global warming is a philosophical belief and, if you “genuinely” believe it, has the status of a religion. And will be zealously protected by some courts when an actual religious symbol is objected to by someone who “genuinely” does not believe in any religion.

I have no idea what this “genuinely” believing something has to do with the actual belief in question. Some people genuinely believe the details of An Inconvenient Truth. Is the Al Gore sermon now protected as an “article of faith”? A PowerPoint version of the Mosaic tablets?

I have long thought that the “ism” in environmentalism was a very worrisome suffix. All “isms” are thought-blockers, flags of ardent belief, signals more of passionate intensity than mature judgment.

Well, now it's official. Global warmingism has court-warranted standing as a religion. And a 2,000-year-old religion is banned from manifesting its most precious symbol in front of the eyes of trauma-prone atheists. Lord, have mercy on us. Please.

Is everything sacred – except religion?

Disciple of Secularism Turns Catholic

Vittorio Messori Speaks About His Own Conversion


By Nicolas de Cardenas

ROME, NOV. 12, 2009 (Zenit.org).- In his latest book, the author who interviewed many people, including the last two Popes, himself becomes the subject of an inquiry, leading him to reveal his story of conversion.

Vittorio Messori, author of "The Jesus Hypothesis" (1976), is the first journalist in history to publish a book-length interview with a Pope, the best-selling "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" (1994).

He also published "The Ratzinger Report" (1987), based on an interview with then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

In this interview with ZENIT, Messori talks about his latest book, "Por qué creo" [Why I Believe] (published by LibrosLibres in Spain), in which he is interviewed by Vatican expert Andrea Tornielli.

Part 2 of this interview will be published Friday.

ZENIT: At the beginning of the book, you seem very reticent to open your soul, although you have already accepted the challenge of addressing Tornielli's questions. Was it as hard as it seems for you to take on the systematic recounting of your conversion experience?

Messori: I have waited many years before responding. First, because I have written 23 books, all of religious research, but I always refused to recount my conversion.

My readers know that in my life there is a before and after. They know I wasn't born a Catholic and that I had a very anti-clerical and anti-religious education.

And they know that now I am a "Papist," an orthodox Catholic, and they are very curious to know how this happened. Why? What happened in my life?

I have passed from being anti-clerical to being a rigorous Catholic in thought, though not so much in life. Because I don't present myself as devout. I am like everyone else, a sinner who does many inconsistent things.

I have been very guarded about my inner life; I have not had the courage to talk about it.

Actually, conversion is a mystery and it is very difficult to talk about a mystery. My work is in words, I am a journalist and writer, I work with words. But it was very difficult for me to find the necessary words to talk about this mystery.

Finally, I decided to respond not only to the request of readers, but to that of this journalist, this colleague, Andrea Tornielli, who in my opinion is the best Italian Vatican expert, in addition to being a great journalist and writer.

Now I have decided for the first time to talk about it because my life is divided into two stages, passing from unbelief to faith.

ZENIT: The Spanish edition of the book "Why I Believe" has more than 350 pages, yet even with such an impressive exposition of your experience, a doubt remains. Can one truly encompass a person's mystical experience with the printed word? Is it possible to verbalize all the intellectual and moral change that a convert experiences?

Messori: This is one of the reasons why I always said no. I repeat, it is difficult to talk about mystery.

I'm not a mystic, I am not a visionary. I have always been a very pragmatic person, very concrete, very rational. However, there was a period in my life, of some two months in the summer, I don't know why, when I discovered a new dimension in which truth, which I thought did not exist in capital letters, became evident to me. It is in the Gospel.

I was a good student, I loved to study and I prepared myself not only to be a journalist but also a university professor. I had read very many books, but I had not read that small book that is the Gospel. I did not suspect that the Truth was in it.

Now I have continued to use my reason as before, but it is open to mystery. My teachers taught me to use pure reason, but I have discovered that by using it, at the end of reason one always comes to mystery.

In all my books I have sought to reason. I have not worked at preaching, spirituality, homilies. I try to help the reader to reason on faith and, at the end, to bet on the veracity of faith.

ZENIT: Although your conversion seems to be linked also to an "extraordinary event," you do not refer to it as a process of rational argumentation, or the seeking of objective reasons and historical principles for the credibility of the Church. What is your opinion of apologetics based not so much on the rationality of the faith as on individual experiences?

Messori: There is no contradiction between the two. The truth of the faith is understood by reasoning and living.

It is 40 years since my "fracture" and in that time I have reasoned and studied a lot, but above all I have lived and have found that the fruit of my reasoning made sense in a complete life.

The Gospel recounts that the disciples asked Jesus who he was. He did not give them sermons, did not offer them reasoning, he said to them: "Come, and follow me." Come with me, live with me and you will see that I am the Messiah.

Christianity is not a philosophy, it isn't an ideology. It is a meeting of two persons.

ZENIT: In the book one perceives a certain regret because of the abandonment of your former teachers, those who introduced you to the path of agnosticism. Did you feel betrayed by those who defended reason as the only possible basis, when that same rationality is the pivot of your coming to the faith?

Messori: For me faith was a surprise. I was not seeking it, I was fine. I had no religious worry.

I was satisfied with the secular and rationalist culture of my teachers. I did not wish to be a Catholic. The faith did not resolve the problems of life. On the contrary, it complicated life, because I come from a non-believing family.

I studied in a school that was more than secular, it was based in laicism. I prepared myself to be a journalist; I always had a great vocation, but [as] a journalist of political, social and economic affairs.

In my last year of university I had my life planned and I had to change the plan completely. My parents thought I had gone mad and my professors were afflicted and disappointed. They thought that "my thing" was related to a nervous depression.

How can a disciple of our secularism become a Catholic! It was very hard, because one can think at first that faith resolves all problems.

Of course I am very happy and glad to have problems, but in fact it was quite a rupture. In any case, I have had the good fortune to work for important newspapers such as "La Stampa," FIAT's newspaper, and also with "Il Corriere della Sera," always, however, writing about religious affairs, which is the opposite of what I planned in the beginning. In the end I found my place, but it was hard to change my plans completely.

ZENIT: Let us now address a question of current importance. How to you evaluate the fact that the European Court of Human Rights has just decided that Italian schools must remove crucifixes from the walls of their classrooms because their presence might disturb the children who are not Christians?

Messori: The concordat between the Italian state and the Church states that the crucifix must be present in schools and courts and this is perfectly in tune with the Italian constitution.

I am saddened because these officials [the judges] don't know anything, because for a long time the cross has been more than a religious symbol; it is a human symbol of justice, of suffering and of hope.

The position of laicism regarding the crucifix is absurd, because the denial of the Christian roots of Europe is not a sin against religion but against history. Without St. Benedict or the Medieval Popes, Europe wouldn't exist. It is a sin against history.

I am not scandalized because I believe that mass Christianity is finished. Jesus says that his disciples will always be a small group. I am not nostalgic for mass Christianity, for the Spain at the [time of the] Inquisition, for [a world in which] 90% of people go to Mass on Sunday.

As Benedict XVI says, I believe that we Christians must discover our own vocation.

ZENIT: Very many of your answers end by making a defense of "et-et" (this and that), in contrast to "aut-aut" (either this or that), as an essential characteristic of Catholicism; it is the idea that "everything fits" in the Church, an explanation of its unfathomable richness. However, where is the limit between what fits within the Church in some interpretation, and what doesn't fit because it is contrary to it?

Messori: The fundamental principle of Catholicism, to say it in Latin, is the "et-et," as opposed to the principle of heresy "aut-aut."

Let us think of Protestantism, which is an "aut-aut": Either the Bible or Tradition. Either Jesus Christ or the Virgin and the saints. Either grace or free will. Either Christ or the Pope. The heresy of Protestantism chooses either this or that.

Whereas the motto of the Catholic is "I want all": the Pope and the Bible, Jesus and his Mother, divine grace and man's liberty, the Gospel and the Church.

Now, I believe that a Catholic must discover this synthesis, of accepting everything that is good. This is very important because today there is much Catholicism subscribing to "aut-aut." The title of my next book will be "We Want All."

ZENIT: You are a defender of the rationality of the faith, of the existence of solid, almost scientific reasons for credibility of the Church, and at the same time a defender of miracles, a promoter of the Virgin's apparitions. A Catholic understands this well, but how do you explain it to an atheist?

Messori: There is no contradiction between faith and reason. There isn't a battle.

Faith is the point of arrival of reason used to the end. I am very grateful for what my university teachers taught me, though they later denounced me. I have not denounced them, because they taught me to use reason, and to be a believer does not mean to give up reason but to use it to the maximum.

I blame these teachers, [though] I esteem them, for having converted reason to an ideology, rationalism, which says there is nothing beyond reason. They must understand that there are things beyond reason that aren't against it, which encourages them to use it to the end.

I have written much on the apparitions of Lourdes and now I am finishing a volume on this subject. However, it isn't a book of supernatural explanations, but research on the historical plane of apparitions. In the end, I must bow before the fact that history researched in depth leads to mystery.

Half of my readers in Italy are believers, and the other half are not. The majority of the latter are not in agreement with my conclusions, but they are pleased to follow my reasoning.

What I try to demonstrate is that the Christian is not a cretin, he isn't someone who gives up the use of reason.

The Christian is one who using reason, breaks the walls of rationalism to come to a reality that is greater than our own reason.




[Translation by ZENIT]

Part I: http://www.zenit.org/article-27530?l=english
Part II: http://www.zenit.org/article-27536?l=english

UK Nurse Penalized for Wearing Cross

From Zenit: http://www.zenit.org/article-26985?l=english

EXETER, England, SEPT. 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Shirley Chaplin, a Christian nurse from Exeter, has been forced to accept a transfer from her current position after disciplinary action for wearing a cross necklace to work.


The Christian Legal Centre reported that Chaplin, 54, accepted the offer of redeployment Monday "under duress," and is consequently seeking legal counsel to claim discrimination.


The nurse has served in her position for almost 30 years, and has worn the cross on a chain on a constant basis since before her training.


Recently, her boss at The Royal Devon and Exeter Trust Hospital told her to take the cross off, and she refused, stating that it is an expression of her Christian faith.


Chaplin was threatened with disciplinary action for allegedly violating the uniform policy, and wearing something that is a potential "health risk" to her and her patients.


The nurse asserted that this request from her boss is an infringement on her rights, and that the issue is irrelevant to the health and safety standards of the workplace.

A spokesman from the Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust said that wearing the cross is not seen as a "requirement" of faith, and thus the issue is about health and safety.


In the statement from the Christian Legal Centre however, Chaplin said, "This blatant piece of political correctness amounts to the marginalizing of employees' personal human rights, a blanket 'secularizing and neutralizing' […] intended to stop Christians from expressing their faith."

G. K. Chesterton on Dan Brown: The Interview

Just brilliant!

Carl E. Olson | Ignatius Insight | September 14, 2009

G.K. Chesterton, the famed British journalist, author, apologist, and wit recently sat down (in the form of his books, as he was not physically available) with Ignatius Insight editor Carl E. Olson and discussed the best-selling novelist Dan Brown—whose new novel, The Lost Symbol, is released September 15—and the importance and place of good and bad fiction.

Ignatius Insight: I was somewhat surprised to learn that you haven't been entirely negative about Dan Brown's novels, including The Da Vinci Code.

Chesterton: My taste is for the sensational novel, the detective story, the story about death, robbery and secret societies; a taste which I share in common with the bulk at least of the male population of this world. There was a time in my own melodramatic boyhood when I became quite fastidious in this respect. I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was. But on the whole I think that a tale about one man killing another man is more likely to have something in it than a tale in which, all the characters are talking trivialities without any of that instant and silent presence of death which is one of the strong spiritual bonds of all mankind. I still prefer the novel in which one person does another person to death to the novel in which all the persons are feebly (and vainly) trying to get the others to come to life. [1]

Ignatius Insight: Are you saying, then, that you believe something good can be found in Brown's novels?

Chesterton: Every now and then, after wading through a hubbub of hundreds of words, we find a word that seems to have gone right by accident. We must not complain; nothing in this mortal life is perfect; not even bad poetry. [2]

In one sense, at any rate, it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man; but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

It does much more than that, it tells us the truth about its readers; and, oddly enough, it tells us this all the more the more cynical and immoral be the motive of its manufacture. The more dishonest a book is as a book the more honest it is as a public document. A sincere novel exhibits the simplicity of one particular man; an insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind. ... men's basic assumptions and everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and halfpenny novelettes. [3]

Ignatius Insight: And yet you went through a time when you were rather disgusted with modern fiction, right? 


Chesterton: I was a great reader of novels until I began to review them, when I naturally left off reading them. I do not mean to admit that I did them any injustice; I studied and sampled them with the purpose of being strictly fair; but I do not call that "novel reading" in the old enchanting sense. If I read them thoroughly I still read them rapidly; which is quite against my instincts for the mere luxury of reading. [4]

Ignatius Insight: I want to return to your remark that "men's basic assumptions and everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and halfpenny novelettes." One of the central assumptions of The Da Vinci Code was that Jesus was a mere mortal man. Thoughts?

Chesterton: I maintain therefore that a man reading the New Testament frankly and freshly would not get the impression of what is now often meant by a human Christ. The merely human Christ is a made-up figure, a piece of artificial selection, like the merely evolutionary man. [5]

I was looking at a recent collection which contains the opinions of many famous free-thinkers about Jesus Christ. It is amusing to note how all of them differ among themselves; how one of them contradicts another and the last is always repudiated by the next. [6]

Ignatius Insight: Brown's opinion, it seems, is that Jesus was a decent man who taught the world about being kind and peaceful.

Chesterton: Of course, those who think Jesus was an ordinary man will talk of Him in an ordinary way. What I complain of is that, even then, they cannot talk of Him in a sensible way. For instance, Mr. Shaw has a long dialogue in which his imaginary Jesus feebly implies the idea that everything can be solved by love, and apparently love of any kind. Now there is not a grain of evidence that the historical Jesus of Nazareth ever said that any such emotion, selfish or sensual or sentimental, must be a substitute for everything else everywhere. Rousseau and the Romantics, in the time of Voltaire, sometimes said something a little like it; and the Church resisted it from the beginning, just as Bernard Shaw wakes up to resist it in the end. It is much more important for us to point out that the attack on the Faith breaks down, by its own folly on its own ground, than to express our own feelings about some of the random results of its invincible ignorance, when it stumbles upon ground more sacred. [7]

Ignatius Insight: And what of the claim, in The Da Vinci Code, that the Church has suppressed the gentle Jesus for a divinized Jesus who inspires fear, hatred, and violence?

Chesterton: We have all heard people say a hundred times over, for they seem never to tire of saying it, that the Jesus of the New Testament is indeed a most merciful and humane lover of humanity, but that the Church has hidden this human character in repellent dogmas and stiffened it with ecclesiastical terrors till it has taken on an inhuman character. This is, I venture to repeat, very nearly the reverse of the truth. The truth is that it is the image of Christ in the churches that is almost entirely mild and merciful. It is the image of Christ in the Gospels that is a good many other things as well. The figure in the Gospels does indeed utter in words of almost heart-breaking beauty his pity for our broken hearts. But they are very far from being the only sort of words that he utters. Nevertheless they are almost the only kind of words that the Church in its popular imagery ever represents him as uttering. That popular imagery is inspired by a perfectly sound popular instinct. The mass of the poor are broken, and the mass of the people are poor, and for the mass of mankind the main thing is to carry the conviction of the incredible compassion of God. But nobody with his eyes open can doubt that it is chiefly this idea of compassion that the popular machinery of the Church does seek to carry. [8]

Ignatius Insight: Does it surprise you that Brown, despite denying the divinity of Jesus, insists that he is a Christian? 



Chesterton: Of course it is possible to play an endless game with the word "Christian" and perpetually extend its epoch by perpetually diminishing its meaning. By the time that everybody has agreed that being a Christian only means thinking that Christ was a good man, it will indeed be true that few persons outside lunatic asylums can be denied the name of Christian. [9]

Ignatius Insight: In fact, you think it is more proper to describe Brown as a "Spiritualist" and not a Christian, based on the evidence. How so?


Chesterton: Now a Catholic starts with all this realistic experience of humanity and history. A Spiritualist generally starts with the recent nineteenth-century optimism, in which his creed was born, which vaguely assumes that if there is anything spiritual, it is happier, higher, lovelier and loftier than anything we yet know; and so opens all the doors and windows for the spiritual world to flow in. [10]

Now, being purely spiritual is opposed to the very essence of religion. All religions, high and low, true and false, have always had one enemy, which is the purely spiritual. [11]

Ignatius Insight: And so the supposedly higher nature of this spiritualism leads to an animosity toward doctrine and dogma?

Chesterton: There has arisen in our time an extraordinary notion that there is something humane, open-hearted or generous about refusing to define one's creed. Obviously the very opposite is the truth. Refusing to define a creed is not only not generous, it is distinctly mean. It fails in frankness and fraternity towards the enemy. It is fighting without a flag or a declaration of war. It denies to the enemy the decent concessions of battle; the right to know the policy and to treat with the headquarters. Modern "broad-mindedness" has a quality that can only be called sneakish; it endeavours to win without giving itself away, even after it has won. It desires to be victorious without betraying even the name of the victor. For all sane men have intellectual doctrines and fighting theories; and if they will not put them on the table, it can only be because they wish to have the advantage of a fighting theory which cannot be fought. [12] 


Ignatius Insight: Would you then argue that Brown, despite his protests to the contrary, has dogmatic convictions?

Chesterton: Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded. [13]

In the things of conviction there is only one other thing besides a dogma, and that is a prejudice. [14]

Ignatius Insight: As you surely know, Brown's books have been especially popular among younger readers, many of whom believe he has offered them a fresh and honest perspective on the origins of Christianity.

Chesterton: What we call the new ideas are generally broken fragments of the old ideas. [15]

Of course, these young people do not know anything about historical Christianity; they are rather limited sort of people in a good many ways.

They are not the first generation of rebels to be Pagans. They are the first generation of rebels not to be Pagans. The young fool, the flower of all our cultural evolution, the heir of all the ages, and the precious trust we have to pass on to posterity--the young fool can no longer be trusted to be a Pantheist, let alone a good hearty Pagan. [16]

Ignatius Insight: Do you think some of these readers have lost their Christian beliefs, or presuppositions, because of their dislike for orthodox doctrine?

Chesterton: I do not say, as so many journalists say, that they have lost their Christianity. For it is the quite simple and sober truth that most of them never had any. It is not their fault, though every day that passes convinces me more and more that it is their misfortune. But the notion, so common in novels and newspapers, that this new generation has rebelled against old-fashioned orthodoxy is sheer stark historical ignorance. It is the worst of all kinds of historical ignorance; ignorance of the historical events we have seen ourselves. [17]

But what is actually the matter with the modern man is that he does not know even his own philosophy; but only his own phraseology. [18]

Ignatius Insight: Some of Brown's fans claim his novels are asking important, deep questions and providing meaningful answers. 


Chesterton: In numberless novels and newspaper articles, we have all read about a process which is still apparently regarded as novel or new; though it has been described in almost exactly the same terms for nearly a hundred years; and in slightly different terms for hundreds of years before that. I mean what is called the growth of doubt or the disturbance of faith; and the only point about it which is pertinent here is this; that it is always described as a revolt of the deeper parts of the mind against something that is comparatively superficial. We need not deny that modern doubt, like ancient doubt, does ask deep questions; we only deny that, as compared with our own philosophy, it gives any deeper answers. And it is a general rule, touching what is called modern thought, that while the questions are often really deep, the answers are often decidedly shallow. And it is perhaps even more important to remark that, while the questions are in a sense eternal, the answers are in every sense ephemeral. [19]

Ignatius Insight: In Brown's novel, Angels & Demons, readers are informed that Christianity is the enemy of science, and that science contains the ultimate answers. What do you make of that? 


Chesterton: It illustrates the precise fashion in which modern man has provided himself with an equally modern mythology. And in practical affairs that mythology may have something of the power of a religion. The mere word "Science" is already used as a sacred and mystical word in many matters of politics and ethics. It is already used vaguely to threaten the most vital traditions of civilization—the family and the freedom of the citizen. It may at any moment attempt to establish some unnatural Utopia full of fugitive negations. But it will not be the science of the scientist, but rather the science of the sensational novelist. [20]

Ignatius Insight: Brown's new novel, The Lost Symbol, once again features, for the third time, the "symbologist" Robert Langdon, an intellectual—

Chesterton: —you don't need any intellect to be an intellectual— [21]

Ignatius Insight: —who many see as the quintessential modern hero.


Chesterton: When a modern novel is devoted to the bewilderments of a weak young clerk who cannot decide which woman he wants to marry, or which new religion he believes in, we still give this knock-kneed cad the name of "the hero"—the name which is the crown of Achilles. [22] 

It is an odd thing that the words hero and heroine have in their constant use in connection with literary fiction entirely lost their meaning. A hero now means merely a young man sufficiently decent and reliable to go through a few adventures without hanging himself or taking to drink. [23]

Ignatius Insight: And yet, despite the literary poverty exhibited in Brown's previous novels, you are still planning to read The Lost Symbol? 


Chesterton: I have learned much from the good stories and more from the bad ones. I have always maintained that trash is a good aid to truth. I will venture to say that most of our historical ignorance, and even our literary ignorance, comes from our not having read enough of the trash of different times and places. ...

It struck me that it should be very interesting to try to trace through popular stories some notion of the ideal of conduct which now prevails. What is modern morality? What does strike the ordinary reader of such stories as pardonable, and what as unpardonable? What does he take for granted as something not to be profaned, and what is he quite accustomed to profaning already? It is an important question; perhaps is the only important question. But it can only be gathered from light literature; at least much more than from good. We cannot discover what are the everyday ethics of thousands of the people by reading the pamphlet of an ethical society which appealed to about three in every thousand. We cannot even study it properly in the vision of a great poet or the view of a great philosopher. But some glimpse of it can be got in stories that are meant to be read merely for amusement; which was how I myself read them. [24]

Ignatius Insight: Finally, we've talked about Brown's poor writing—

Chesterton(shaking his head): —writing badly on such an enormous scale; writing badly with such immense ambition of design— [25]

Ignatius Insight: —let's talk in conclusion about good fiction. What is the purpose and nature of good fiction? 


Chesterton: The first use of good literature is that it prevents a man from being merely modern. To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness; just as to spend one's last earthly money on the newest hat is to condemn oneself to the old-fashioned. The road of the ancient centuries is strewn with dead moderns. Literature, classic and enduring literature, does its best work in reminding us perpetually of the whole round of truth and balancing other and older ideas against the ideas to which we might for a moment be prone. [26]


Every healthy person at some period must feed on fiction as well as fact; because fact is a thing which the world gives to him, whereas fiction is a thing which he gives to the world. It has nothing to do with a man being able to write; or even with his being able to read. [27]

You can find all of the new ideas in the old books; only there you will find them balanced, kept in their place, and sometimes contradicted and overcome by other and better ideas. The great writers did not neglect a fad because they had not thought of it, but because they had thought of it and of all the answers to it as well. [28]

ENDNOTES:

[1] "Fiction As Food", The Spice of Life and Other Essays.
[2] "On Bad Poetry", All I Survey.
[3] "On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set", Heretics.
[4] "Fiction As Food", The Spice of Life and Other Essays.
[5] "The Riddles of the Gospel", The Everlasting Man.
[6] "On Education", All I Survey.
[7] "The Scripture Reader," The Well and the Shallows.
[8] "The Riddles of the Gospel", The Everlasting Man.
[9] "The Erastian on the Establishment", The Common Man.
[10] "The Dangers of Necromancy," The Common Man.
[11] "Christian Science," The Use of Diversity.
[12] "Rabelasian Regrets," The Common Man.
[13] "Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy," Heretics.
[14] "Rabelasian Regrets," The Common Man.
[15] "On Reading," The Common Man.
[16] "On Modern 'Paganism'", All I Survey.
[17] Ibid.
[18] "The Revival of Philosophy--Why?", The Common Man.
[19] "The Well and the Shallows", The Well and the Shallows.
[20] "Popular Literature and Popular Science", Collected Works, Volume XXXIV: The Illustrated London News, 1926-1928.
[21] Father Brown Omnibus.
[22] "The Pickwick Papers", Charles Dickens.
[23] "The Heroines of Shakespeare", Brave New Family.
[24] "Modern Stories and Modern Morality", Collected Works, Volume XXXIV: The Illustrated London News, 1926-1928.
[25] "On Writing Badly," On Lying In Bed and Other Essays.
[26] "On Reading," The Common Man.
[27] "Fiction As Food", The Spice of Life and Other Essays.
[28] "On Reading," The Common Man.

Abortion Giant Joins Attacks Against Nicaragua

By Aracely Ornelas



(NEW YORK – C-FAM) One of the world’s largest abortion advocates joined the onslaught against Nicaragua’s decision to ban abortion in two recently published Spanish language reports. Ipas, known for distributing the manual vacuum aspirator – a device used to perform early term abortions, particularly in countries where it is illegal – is claiming that Nicaragua is violating women’s human rights.

The Ipas reports claim that the abortion ban is unconstitutional and a "setback" for human rights. Nicaraguan lawmakers, on the other hand, say the ban is a step forward since the law which permitted “therapeutic” abortion violated the country’s understanding of its international obligations. Nicaragua is party to the American Convention on Human Rights which states in Article 4 that life shall be protected by law "from the moment of conception."

The Nicaraguan representatives who initiated the abortion ban say that the new law also makes the penal code more consistent with the constitutional framework which was amended to explicitly recognize the right to life of every citizen after the death penalty was abolished.

Pro-life advocates point out that Ipas’ definition of “therapeutic abortion” proves that the lawmakers’ position is right: the former law allowed a loophole for ever expanding access to abortion. Indeed, one report’s glossary of terms expands the definition of saving "the life and health of the mother" as also including pregnancies resulting from particular circumstances, such as rape or incest. And while the reports say that "therapeutic abortion ban excludes many women who need it to save their lives," the Nicaraguan government insists that the ban does not prohibit medical procedures to save a woman's life. Critics also note that the reports ignore the two most successful methods of reducing maternal mortality: increasing skilled attendants at birth and improving the availability and delivery of optimum pre-natal and post-natal healthcare for mothers and their children.

Recent health data also show that the ban may be saving more women’s lives. Statistics from the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health (MINSA), released since the ban was implemented, indicates a reduction in maternal mortality by 58% between 2008 and 2009. Despite the indications of progress in reducing maternal mortality, the Ipas reports use “reducing maternal deaths” as a cornerstone of their argument against the ban. In doing so, they join various UN agencies and non-governmental organizations who are pressuring the government to overturn the ban on the grounds that liberal abortion laws are necessary to reduce maternal mortality.

The Ipas reports also paint a dire picture for doctors in Nicaragua, asserting that abortion ban violates the right to free exercise of medical professionals claiming that the ban "forces doctors to violate ethical principles of their profession to prevent an abortion while endangering the life or health of women."

The Association of Nicaraguan Doctors countered this claim stating that, "There is no situation, in current medical practice, where human life from the moment of conception, should be intentionally destroyed by abortion in order to save the life of the mother. A physician must do everything possible to save the lives of both patients – mother and child. Death should never be inflicted on any of them. "