The Very Different Legacies of Two Court Decisions

Americans Show Themselves at Odds With Roe v. Wade

By Carl Anderson

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut, JUNE 1, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Of the many U.S. Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, two are perhaps the best known: Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade.

So important are these two cases that it was no accident that in a recent speech to graduates at Notre Dame University, President Obama based much of his remarks on their legacies.

But the legacies of these two decisions, and their level of acceptance by the American people, couldn’t be more different.

In 1990, as a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, I had an opportunity to gauge the degree to which America had embraced the legacy of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education: the decision that ended the legal sanction of racial segregation in the United States.

At that time, three and a half decades after Brown, the embrace of the ideal of racial equality had grown steadily, and was clearly embraced by the vast majority of Americans. That is even more the case today.

But if Brown was almost universally accepted by the American people, the opposite is true of Roe v. Wade: the decision that legalized abortion.

Today, three and a half decades after Roe, the consensus among the American people is increasingly -- and overwhelmingly -- opposed to its legacy. As much as Americans have embraced the legacy in Brown, they have moved further and further away from that of Roe, which has been interpreted to allow abortion without restrictions.

And opposition to Roe’s legacy by Americans is a fact: one made very clear by several recent polls.

Now, as the United States prepares for hearings on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to fill an opening on the Supreme Court, they -- and she -- should consider carefully the legacy of both court decisions: the widespread acceptance of the legacy of the first, and the overwhelming rejection of the legacy of the second.

And just how do Americans feel about Roe?

Beyond just agreeing on ancillary issues like adoption or help for women in crisis pregnancies, surveys have found common ground among Americans on the issue of abortion itself.

The Pew survey found that only 18% favored legalized abortion “in all cases,” 28% said it should be legal in “most cases,” 28% said it should be “illegal in most cases,” and 16% said it should be illegal in all cases.

That is, 72% of Americans oppose unrestricted abortion; only 18% are in favor.

The even more recent Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans now identify themselves as “pro-life.” Overall, it -- like the Pew survey -- found that 76% of Americans disagree with of the Roe regime of unrestricted abortion, while only 22% agree.

Taken together, these polls show that Americans, by a more than 3:1 margin, want restrictions on abortion -- a remarkable, if largely unnoticed consensus.

A more detailed survey of Americans’ opinions on abortion several months ago revealed just how deep this consensus among Americans runs. In October 2008, a Knights of Columbus-Marist poll was taken in which the number of those identifying as “pro-choice” was slightly greater than those who called themselves “pro-life.”

Looking back, it accurately predicted the growing consensus we see today on abortion by asking very specific questions about the respondents’ views.

By giving a wide range of options on the subject, here’s what the survey found: Only 8% of Americans agreed with abortion “any time during a pregnancy,” and another 8% supported abortion only during the first six months. But 84% of Americans wanted more significant restrictions.

Sonia Sotomayor has had little to say about abortion, and, of course, as the Senate considers her for the Supreme Court, a small but vocal group will push for her to declare herself a Roe apologist.

But seeking such a litmus test would continue the legacy of a court decision at odds with the moral sense of the American people and would fail to capture the moment or to build real common ground on abortion.

Moving beyond Roe’s limitless breadth in law and in politics generally wouldn’t just make political sense -- and moral sense -- it would be a real change that Americans have been waiting for.

* * *

Carl Anderson is the supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus and a New York Times bestselling author.

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.

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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

Transnational Supporter of Abortion Advances to Top U.S. Legal Job

Transnational Supporter of Abortion Advances to Top U.S. Legal Job

By Austin Ruse

(WASHINGTON, DC – C-FAM) It was clear from the opening moments of the Senate hearings for the proposed new top legal advisor at the United States (US) State Department that widespread criticism of the nominee had struck a nerve. Rather than a love feast for a liberal hero, the committee seemed to be, in the words of one observer, in a “defensive crouch.”

Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry immediately denied charges that former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh wants to subordinate the US Constitution to foreign legal sources. To chuckles all around, Kerry said to Koh, “And you don’t want to do away with Mother’s Day, do you?” This referred to criticism from social conservatives that Koh supports US ratification of a United Nations (UN) treaty whose monitoring committee criticized Mother’s Day as promoting a negative cultural stereotype.

With the exception of a few Republicans, each member of the Committee felt it necessary to rebut criticism of Koh that has been building in the conservative media and blogosphere.

In his voluminous writings, Koh has vigorously supported a legal theory known as “transnationalism.” This theory holds that federal judges and Supreme Court justices should use foreign legal sources like European Court of Human Rights opinions to interpret the US Constitution and determine US law. In the hearing, Koh distanced himself from his own writings, saying he was only interested in “knowing” foreign law and mocked those who felt that American lawyers should not “know” foreign law.

A broad-ranging “sovereignty coalition” has formed in opposition to the Koh nomination, and a letter from the coalition to the Senate is expected any day. The group represents a broad range of center-right concerns over national security, economic, social, foreign, and constitutional policy.

Troubling to social conservatives is Koh’s support of UN regimes forming -- and sometimes coercing – the social policy of sovereign states. Koh, for instance, supports US ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Koh seems unaware or indifferent to the threat posed by the UN committee that monitors CEDAW compliance. In 2002 testimony before the Senate, Koh testified that CEDAW was “abortion neutral,” when in fact the CEDAW committee had read abortion into the treaty through its “health” provisions. Moreover, he seemed at that time to be unaware or indifferent to the CEDAW committee directing states parties that they had to legalize abortion.

In written testimony provided to the committee, Koh denied there was a customary international legal norm on the death penalty. Given that there is greater international uniformity on the death penalty than on abortion, it would follow that Koh would also deny such a norm exists for abortion. However, given the way that Koh dodged and weaved before the committee and at times seemed to deny his own writings, one cannot be sure he would follow his own logic.

It is expected Koh will be voted out of committee but that there will be a floor fight over his confirmation.

Obama/Clinton Position on Family Planning and Abortion Violates Cairo Agreement

Obama/Clinton Position on Family Planning and Abortion Violates Cairo Agreement

By Samantha Singson

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Last week at a United States (US) House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that there was a new administration in place with different values, beliefs and global agenda. Nothing illustrated this rupture with previous US policy more than her admission that the Obama administration interprets the term “reproductive health” to include abortion.

In response to a question from Congressman Christopher Smith (R-NJ) on whether her definition of the phrases “reproductive health,” “reproductive services,” and “reproductive rights” includes abortion, Secretary Clinton stated that, “We [the current US administration] happen to think that family planning is an important part of women’s health and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare.”

Clinton’s linkage of family planning with abortion is not just a severe break with the previous administration; it is a clear violation of the Cairo Program for Action, which her husband’s government helped to negotiate in 1994. The Cairo document explicitly states in two places that abortion should in no case “be promoted as a method of family planning.”

Secretary Clinton’s statement of the current administration’s position is in stark contrast to previous US policy. Over the last eight years at the United Nations (UN), the US delegation made dozens of interventions underscoring that there is no international consensus on abortion. Up until the week prior to Barack Obama’s election, the US delegation at the UN stated that “sexual and reproductive health does not include abortion or constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion or the use of abortifacients” and that “none of these references can be interpreted to constitute support, endorsement, for promotion of abortion.”

At the UN, nations regularly engage in heated debates over “reproductive health” language. When the term was introduced at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, states only agreed to its inclusion in the non-binding outcome document with the understanding that it could not be used to create any new right to abortion. More than 13 states also made explicit reservations to ensure that none of the terms related to reproductive health would be defined to include abortion.

To date, no international consensus on the precise meaning of the term “reproductive health” exists. At the Commission for Population and Development meeting earlier this month, several countries made explanations of position reiterating that there is no international consensus on the term “reproductive health” and that abortion should not be included as part of its definition.

The term “reproductive health” is currently the focus of legislation in a number of countries like the Philippines and contained in various declarations and proposals at the Organization of American States, the African Union and the UN. As the Philippines’ Constitution explicitly protects unborn life, its usage in national legislation excludes any abortion linkage.

For years, pro-life UN lobbyists have urged countries to issue strong interpretive statements to protect their laws on abortion.

The Infamous Ben June Incident

A CLASSIC REVISITED!
“On this date, Leo Swineheart…” continues with… “The Infamous Ben June Incident”
~ Baron Von Winder

The date was, April 11, 2003, exactly 2 years, and 7 months ago. The suspects were the usual: Eddy “The Legend” Futch, Squanto A.K.A. “Albert E. Pigeous” and Leo “The Party Pervert” Swineheart. This was a night that young Swineheart would remember in infamy for the rest of his life. The other players who had a supporting role in this debacle were Hamburger Bliss, Windy A.K.A. “The Wiley Wheel”, Zeefis “He Cheats” Aphelius and the legendary Eddie “Amino Acids” Odell. “T.O. Viddler”, who claimed to have no foreknowledge of the incident under examination, may have been the mastermind behind the night’s events, though this has yet to be proven and is only mere speculation.

The night started out harmless enough, as is usually the case when something monumental is about to occur. The three juvenile lads, Futch, Pigeous and Swineheart were in Baltimore for the weekend, staying at the home of The Wheel, Bliss and Aphelius. All were is good spirits, enjoying each others company until the keen eye of the “The Legend” spotted a bottle of Ouzo, a Greek liquor. T.O. Viddler decided to retire for the night, and was talking to Bliss, The Wheel and Aphelius in the upper room, leaving Eddy Futch, young Pigeous and the susceptible Leo Swineheart all alone with the bottle of Ouzo. An hour passed as Viddler shared his words of wisdom with the older boys, while the younger sort indulged themselves with booze and revelry. By the time The Wheel, Aphelius and Bliss had rejoined the insufferable youngsters, the effects of their festivities were in full effect. Said Swineheart in an obnoxious voice: “Bob!! Who is that Bob!?! Awe yeah Bob!!”

The six companions made their way over to the WAWA house, a destination of ill-repute particularly notorious for corrupting young souls in the prime of their youth. Along the way, the mild-mannered Swine was getting noticeably bolder, with “The Legend” and crew egging him on all the more. His voice was amplified and gestures gregarious as he beleaguered passersby, in a most jolly way, of course. Upon entering the WAWA House, there were a plethora of buxom beauties to behold. One can only imagine what was going through young Leo’s mind as “Dr. Leo Swineheart prepared to operate.” Witnesses described seeing a certain Mr. Swineheart cornering unsuspecting young ladies and flashing mischievous grins, turning on the charm, if you will, and laying it on thick.

But this behavior was not enough, no, #64 had not had his fill. Swineheart, borrowing a page out of Zeefis’ childhood playbook, who, in his more formative years claimed that he wanted to be a doctor so he could “squeeze girls’ deez’s”, did just that! He crossed the line, and he liked it! These antics went on for a good 20 minutes; Swine was utilizing the “hit & run” technique to perfection, until that fateful moment…

The shameless Swineheart eyed up his next victim, a particularly voluptuous rump. His delusionary mind was clouded by visions of grandeur as he… moved… in… for… the… kill… He waited for the opportune time and struck! The satisfaction was short lived however! Much to his chagrin, the young beauty’s boyfriend witnessed the whole episode and, in outrage lashed out at the confused Swineheart, who by now was in disarray. Stunned that his antics had been exposed, Leo turned and ran for shelter, with five frat boys hot on his embarrassed quakin’. He found refuge in a bathroom and frantically tried to close the door as angry fists rained down on him through the half-opened doorway. A mediator, we shall refer to him as “The Glitch”, eventually calmed down Ben June, the maligned boyfriend of the young women Swineheart had assaulted. After some threatening remarks and a black eye, Swineheart was allowed to go free.

Meantime, The Wheel was wondering where his volatile companion had wondered off to; all of the crew was accounted for except Mr. Swineheart. After a thorough search of the premises, The Wheel found the Swine, dazed and confused on the top floor, blinking profusely and babbling to himself. Ben June’s coward ass was nowhere to be found, so the two compadres made their way downstairs to the room of Eddie “Amino Acids” Odell, where Swineheart explained the whole exploit in detail to his five companions and the much celebrated Odell. At that point, the magnanimous Odellios, stormed to his feet as all 330 pounds exclaimed in a high-pitched voice: “Nobody hits Leo Swineheart and gets away with it!! NOBODY !!!” At that exact moment, someone offered the livid “Amino Acids” a Yoohoo. He calmed down immediately, feigned deny, then retorted: “Well, if you’re offering.” He then started babbling about how he was entitled to the Yoohoo, but nobody was paying much attention by that point.

Squanto was sitting in the corner soaking up every detail with glee.

After some time, the six friends left the WAWA house, laughing about the nights events and eventually made it back to the place where it all began. To give Leo credit, he immediately went up to T.O. Viddler’s room and heaped copious apologies on the old man who was laughing hysterically because he had never seen Leo in such a state of debacle. T.O. appropriately nicknamed Swineheart the “Party Pervert” which was received with another side-splitting round of laughter. It was then confirmed that Swineheart had inadvertently stepped in dog chid, which was the perfect ending for the night. This leaves us with just one question: which was worse, the smell in the room or Leo “The Party Pervert” Swineheart’ behavior, you decide…

Glendon turns down ND's Laetare Medal

Cites Obama honor as reason for refusal
By Catherine Harmon

In a letter addressed to University of Notre Dame President John Jenkins, former U.S. Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon declined the prestigious Laetare Medal, which she was set to receive during the university’s commencement ceremony on May 17.

In her letter, which was dated April 27, Glendon cites Notre Dame’s decision to honor President Barack Obama as 2009 commencement speaker as her reason for turning down the award.

“I could not help but be dismayed by the news that Notre Dame also planned to award the president an honorary degree,” Glendon said in her letter. “This, as you must know, was in disregard of the U.S. bishops’ express request of 2004 that Catholic institutions ‘should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles’ and that such persons ‘should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.’”

Glendon also expressed displeasure that the university appeared to believe awarding her the Laetare Medal “would somehow balance the event,” referencing the “talking points” distributed to the Notre Dame Board of Trustees in response to criticism of the Obama invitation.

“A commencement…is supposed to be a joyous day for the graduates and their families,” Glendon said. “It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dame’s decision…to honor a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church’s position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice.”

Glendon stated that she intended to release the letter to the press, but that she would not make any further public comment at present. Glendon is a member of the editorial board of First Things, and she posted her letter on the magazine’s blog.

In response to Glendon's letter, Jenkins issued a brief statement via the university's Office of News and Information: “We are, of course, disappointed that Professor Glendon has made this decision. It is our intention to award the Laetare Medal to another deserving recipient, and we will make that announcement as soon as possible.”

Since Notre Dame announced on March 20 that Obama would be the speaker at their 2009 commencement and would receive an honorary degree, Catholic communities across the country—as well as many of their bishops—have voiced their opposition, citing the president’s virulently pro-abortion views and actions. An online petition to Jenkins was quickly drafted and touted across the Internet on Catholic blogs and websites; the petition has been signed by more than 300,000 individuals.

Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University, was U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican from 2007 to 2009. Named president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences by Pope John Paul II in 2004, she has also served on the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics and was head of the Holy See’s delegation to the U.N. Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995. She is a world-renowned scholar of law, philosophy, and political theory.

The Laetare Medal was established at Notre Dame in 1883. It is awarded every year to a Catholic “whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church and enriched the heritage of humanity,” according to the university’s website. Among the past recipients of the Laetare Medal—which Notre Dame considers its most prestigious award—are President John F. Kennedy, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Dorothy Day, and novelist Walker Percy.

Catherine Harmon is managing editor of Catholic World Report.
Link to original article.

UNICEF Calls for Legal Abortion in Dominican Republic

By Piero A. Tozzi, J.D. and Paola Ocejo

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Despite direct intervention by a top United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official, the Dominican Republic appears poised to adopt a new constitution that protects human life “from conception until death.”

While Dominican lawmakers were debating the merits of such a provision and the nation’s penal prohibition of abortion, Nils Kastberg, UNICEF’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, interjected himself, calling on Dominican legislators to consider liberalizing abortion so women would not be forced into “unsafe procedures.” He also suggested they would be “hypocrites” unconcerned with the nation’s higher than average teen birth rate. Kastberg made his unusual statements while visiting the capital of Santo Domingo at the end of March.

Rather than bowing to external pressure from UNICEF and pro-abortion non-governmental organizations, this week members of the bicameral constitutional assembly voted 167-32 to approve the proposed charter, including Article 30, which states, “The right to life is inviolable from conception to death.” Another article would define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Pro-lifers are considering the constitutional reform to be a fait accompli, though a second reading followed by formal promulgation by the President is also required. Support crossed party lines, with the opposition Partido Revolucionario Dominicano and Partido Reformista Social Cristiano and most members of the President’s Partido de la Liberación Dominicana declaring their support for the right-to-life provision.

The meddling by Kastberg, a Swedish national, also brought to mind another pro-abortion Latin American intervention by UNICEF and other United Nations agencies. When Nicaragua strengthened legislation protecting the unborn in 2006, UNICEF joined agencies like the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Development Fund in signing a letter to the head of the Nicaraguan National Assembly that asserted – incorrectly – that the legislation violated rights contained in various international documents such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, or CEDAW.

In addition, four Scandinavian countries, Holland and Canada signed the letter, with Sweden reportedly cutting over $20 million in foreign aid to Nicaragua as a result of the legislative reform, and Finland threatening to link continued aid to changes in Nicaragua’s abortion law.

Despite its image as a benign agency dedicated to assisting children in the developing world, in recent years UNICEF has supported liberalized abortion. According to Douglas Sylva, a senior fellow of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) [publisher of the Friday Fax] and the author of a White Paper on the agency, UNICEF is “an opportunistic advocate of abortion rights.” One longtime UNICEF watcher told the Friday Fax, “Where does UNICEF get the authority to interfere in the constitutional decisions of a sovereign state?”

When formally adopted, the Dominican Republic will join other Latin American nations whose constitutions explicitly protect unborn life, including Chile, Paraguay, and Guatemala. In addition, at least 10 Mexican states have amended their state constitutions to protect life from the moment of conception, including most recently, the Pacific coast state of Nayarit. The pro-life constitutional revisions in Mexico and the Dominican Republic signal popular reaffirmation of pro-life principles throughout the region.

Archbishop Myers on Obama at Notre Dame

Statement of The Most Reverend John J. Myers, Archbishop of Newark, On Notre Dame University’s Decision to Host and Honor President Obama at its Commencement Ceremony

It pained me to hear that one of the symbols of Catholic education in our nation, Notre Dame University, had extended an invitation to President Obama to speak at its commencement.

Not all people believe what the Church teaches, and in our society today we sometimes must work on issues of importance with people who do not agree with us on the primacy of the sanctity and dignity of life -- a moral issue on which there can be no compromise.

When we extend honors to people who do not share our respect and reverence for life in all stages, and give them a prominent stage in our parishes, schools and other institutions, we unfortunately create the perception that we endorse their public positions on these issues. We cannot justify such actions, and the Bishops have stated so clearly and strongly.

If the president of Notre Dame University truly wishes to show that his institution is rooted in Catholic teaching and tradition and committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he must underscore this message at commencement plainly and clearly, and invite everyone to embrace an immutable and all-inclusive reverence for life.

Source: The Archdiocese of Newark

he Truth of the Resurrection

The Truth of the Resurrection | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger | From Introduction to Christianity

To the Christian, faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is an expression of certainty that the saying that seems to be only a beautiful dream is in fact true: "Love is strong as death" (Song 8:6). In the Old Testament this sentence comes in the middle of praises of the power of eros. But this by no means signifies that we can simply push it aside as a lyrical exaggeration. The boundless demands of eros", its apparent exaggerations and extravagance, do in reality give expression to a basic problem, indeed the" basic problem of human existence, insofar as they reflect the nature and intrinsic paradox of love: love demands infinity, indestructibility; indeed, it is, so to speak, a call for infinity. But it is also a fact that this cry of love's cannot be satisfied, that it demands infinity but cannot grant it; that it claims eternity but in fact is included in the world of death, in its loneliness and its power of destruction. Only from this angle can one understand what "resurrection" means. It is" the greater strength of love in face of death.

At the same time it is proof of what only immortality can create: being in the other who still stands when I have fallen apart. Man is a being who himself does not live forever but is necessarily delivered up to death. For him, since he has no continuance in himself, survival, from a purely human point of view, can only become possible through his continuing to exist in another. The statements of Scripture about the connection between sin and death are to he understood from this angle. For it now becomes clear that man's attempt "to be like God", his striving for autonomy, through which he wishes to stand on his own feet alone, means his death, for he just cannot stand on his own. If man--and this is the real nature of sin--nevertheless refuses to recognize his own limits and tries to be completely self-sufficient, then precisely by adopting this attitude he delivers himself up to death.

Of course man does understand that his life alone does not endure and that he must therefore strive to exist in others, so as to remain through them and in them in the land of the living. Two ways in particular have been tried. First, living on in one's own children: that is why in primitive peoples failure to marry and childlessness are regarded as the most terrible curse; they mean hopeless destruction, final death. Conversely, the largest possible number of children offers at the same time the greatest possible chance of survival, hope of immortality, and thus the most genuine blessing that man can expect. Another way discloses itself when man discovers that in his children he only continues to exist in a very unreal way; he wants more of himself to remain. So he takes refuge in the idea of fame, which should make him really immortal if be lives on through all ages in the memory of others. But this second attempt of man's to obtain immortality for himself by existing in others fails just as badly as the first: what remains is not the self but only its echo, a mere shadow. So self-made immortality is really only a Hades, a sheol": more nonbeing than being. The inadequacy of both ways lies partly in the fact that the other person who holds my being after my death cannot carry this being itself but only its echo; and even more in the fact that even time other person to whom I have, so to speak, entrusted my continuance will not last--he, too, will perish.

This leads us to the next step. We have seen so far that man has no permanence in himself. And consequently can only continue to exist in another but that his existence in another is only shadowy and once again not final, because this other must perish, too. If this is so, then only one could truly give lasting stability: he who is, who does not come into existence and pass away again but abides in the midst of transience: the God of the living, who does not hold just the shadow and echo of my being, whose ideas are not just copies of reality. I myself am his thought, which establishes me more securely, so to speak, than I am in myself; his thought is not the posthumous shadow but the original source and strength of my being. In him I can stand as more than a shadow; in him I am truly closer to myself than I should be if I just tried to stay by myself.

Before we return from here to the Resurrection, let us try to see the same thing once again from a somewhat different side. We can start again from the dictum about love and death and say: Only where someone values love more highly than life, that is, only where someone is ready to put life second to love, for the sake of love, can love be stronger and more than death. If it is to be more than death, it must first be more than mere life. But if it could be this, not just in intention but in reality, then that would mean at the same time that the power of love had risen superior to the power of the merely biological and taken it into its service. To use Teilhard de Chardin's terminology; where that took place, the decisive complexity or "complexification" would have occurred; bios, too, would be encompassed by and incorporated in the power of love. It would cross the boundary--death--and create unity where death divides. If the power of love for another were so strong somewhere that it could keep alive not just his memory, the shadow of his "I", but that person himself, then a new stage in life would have been reached. This would mean that the realm of biological evolutions and mutations had been left behind and the leap made to a quite different plane, on which love was no longer subject to bios but made use of it. Such a final stage of "mutation" and "evolution" would itself no longer be a biological stage; it would signify the end of the sovereignty of bios, which is at the same time the sovereignty of death; it would open up the realm that the Greek Bible calls zoe, that is, definitive life, which has left behind the rule of death. The last stage of evolution needed by the world to reach its goal would then no longer be achieved within the realm of biology but by the spirit, by freedom, by love. It would no longer be evolution but decision and gift in one.

But what has all this to do, it may be asked, with faith in the Resurrection of Jesus? Well, we previously considered the question of the possible immortality of man from two sides, which now turn out to be aspects of one and. the same state of affairs. We said that, as man has no permanence in himself, his survival could. only be brought about by his living on in another. And we said, from the point of view of this "other", that only the love that takes up the beloved in itself, into its own being, could make possible this existence in the other. These two complementary aspects are mirrored again, so it seems to me, in the two New Testament ways of describing the Resurrection of the Lord: "Jesus has risen" and "God (the Father) has awakened Jesus." The two formulas meet in the fact that Jesus' total love for men, which leads him to the Cross, is perfected in totally passing beyond to the Father and therein becomes stronger than death, because in this it is at the same time total "being held" by him.

From this a further step results. We can now say that love always establishes some kind of immortality; even in its prehuman stage, it points, in the form of preservation of the species, in this direction. Indeed, this founding of immortality is not something incidental to love, not one thing that it does among others, but what really gives it its specific character. This principle can be reversed; it then signifies that immortality always" proceeds from love, never out of the autarchy of that which is sufficient to itself. We may even be bold enough to assert that this principle, properly understood, also applies even to God as he is seen by the Christian faith. God, too, is absolute permanence, as opposed to everything transitory, for the reason that he is the relation of three Persons to one another, their incorporation in the "for one another" of love, act-substance of the love that is absolute and therefore completely "relative", living only "in relation to". As we said earlier, it is not autarchy, which knows no one but itself, that is divine; what is revolutionary about the Christian view of the world and of God, we found, as opposed to those of antiquity, is that it learns to understand the "absolute" as absolute "relatedness", as relatio subsistens.

To return to our argument, love is the foundation of immortality, and immortality proceeds from love alone. This statement to which we have now worked our way also means that he who has love for all has established immortality for all. That is precisely the meaning of the biblical statement that his Resurrection is our life. The--to us--curious reasoning of St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians now becomes comprehensible: if he has risen, then we have, too, for then love is stronger than death; if he has not risen, then we have not either, for then the situation is still that death has the last word, nothing else (cf. I Cor 15:16f.). Since this is a statement of central importance, let us spell it out once again in a different way: Either love is stronger than death, or it is not. If it has become so in him, then it became so precisely as love for others. This also means, it is true, that our own love, left to itself, is not sufficient to overcome death; taken in itself it would have to remain an unanswered cry. It means that only his love, coinciding with God's own power of life and love, can be the foundation of our immortality. Nevertheless, it still remains true that the mode of our immortality will depend on our mode of loving. We shall have to return to this in the section on the Last Judgment.

A further point emerges from this discussion. Given the foregoing considerations, it goes without saying that the life of him who has risen from the dead is not once again bios, the biological form of our mortal life within history; it is zoe, new, different, definitive life; life that has stepped beyond the mortal realm of bios and history, a realm that has here been surpassed by a greater power. And in fact the Resurrection narratives of the New Testament allow us to see clearly that the life of the Risen One lies, not within the historical bios, but beyond and above it. It is also true, of course, that this new life begot itself in history and had to do so, because after all it is there for history, and the Christian message is basically nothing else than the transmission of the testimony that love has managed to break through death here and thus has transformed fundamentally the situation of all of us. Once we have realized this, it is no longer difficult to find the right kind of hermeneutics for the difficult business of expounding the biblical Resurrection narratives, that is, to acquire a clear understanding of the sense in which they must properly be understood. Obviously we cannot attempt here a detailed discussion of the questions involved, which today present themselves in a more difficult form than ever before; especially as historical and--for the most part inadequately pondered--philosophical statements are becoming more and more inextricably intertwined, and exegesis itself quite often produces its own philosophy, which is intended to appear to the layman as a supremely refined distillation of the biblical evidence. Many points of detail will here always remain open to discussion, but it is possible to recognize a fundamental dividing line between explanation that remains explanation and arbitrary adaptations [to contemporary ways of thinking].

First of all, it is quite clear that after his Resurrection Christ did not go back to his previous earthly life, as we are told the young man of Nain and Lazarus did. He rose again to definitive life, which is no longer governed by chemical and biological laws and therefore stands outside the possibility of death, in the eternity conferred by love. That is why the encounters with him are "appearances"; that is why he with whom people had sat at table two days earlier is not recognized by his best friends and, even when recognized, remains foreign: only where he grants vision is he seen; only when he opens men's eyes and makes their hearts open up can the countenance of the eternal love that conquers death become recognizable in our mortal world, and, in that love, the new, different world, the world of him who is to come. That is also why it is so difficult, indeed absolutely impossible, for the Gospels to describe the encounter with the risen Christ; that is why they can only stammer when they speak of these meetings and seem to provide contradictory descriptions of them. In reality they are surprisingly unanimous in the dialectic of their statements, in the simultaneity of touching and not touching, or recognizing and not recognizing, of complete identity between the crucified and the risen Christ and complete transformation. People recognize the Lord and yet do not recognize him again; people touch him, and yet he is untouchable; he is the same and yet quite different. As we have said, the dialectic is always the same; it is only the stylistic means by which it is expressed that changes.

For example, let us examine a little more closely from this point of view the Emmaus story, which we have already touched upon briefly. At first sight it looks as if we are confronted here with a completely earthly and material notion of resurrection; as if nothing remains of the mysterious and indescribable elements to be found in the Pauline accounts. It looks as if the tendency to detailed depiction, to the concreteness of legend, supported by the apologist's desire for something tangible, had completely won the upper hand and fetched the risen Lord right back into earthly history. But this impression is soon contradicted by his mysterious appearance and his no less mysterious disappearance. The notion is contradicted even more by the fact that here, too, he remains unrecognizable to the accustomed eye. He cannot be firmly grasped as he could be in the time of his earthly life; he is discovered only in the realm of faith; he sets the hearts of the two travelers aflame by his interpretation of the Scriptures and by breaking bread he opens their eyes. This is a reference to the two basic elements in early Christian worship, which consisted of the liturgy of the word (the reading and expounding of Scripture) and the eucharistic breaking of bread. In this way the evangelist makes it clear that the encounter with the risen Christ lies on a quite new plane; he tries to describe the indescribable in terms of the liturgical facts. He thereby provides both a theology of the Resurrection and a theology of the liturgy: one encounters the risen Christ in the word and in the sacrament; worship is the way in which he becomes touchable to us and, recognizable as the living Christ. And conversely, the liturgy is based on the mystery of Easter; it is to he understood as the Lords approach to us. In it he becomes our traveling companion, sets our dull hearts aflame, and opens our sealed eyes. He still walks with us, still finds us worried and downhearted, and still has the power to make us see.

Of course, all this is only half the story; to stop at this alone would mean falsifying the evidence of the New Testament. Experience of the risen Christ is something other than a meeting with a man from within our history, and it must certainly not be traced back to conversations at table and recollections that would have finally crystallized in the idea that he still lived and went about his business. Such an interpretation reduces what happened to the purely human level and robs it of its specific quality. The Resurrection narratives are something other and more than disguised liturgical scenes: they make visible the founding event on which all Christian liturgy rests. They testify to an approach that did not rise from the hearts of the disciples but came to them from outside, convinced them despite their doubts and made them certain that the Lord had truly risen. He who lay in the grave is no longer there; he--really he himself--lives. He who had been transposed into the other world of God showed himself powerful enough to make it palpably clear that he himself stood in their presence again, that in him the power of love had really proved itself stronger than the power of death.

Only by taking this just as seriously as what we said first does one remain faithful to the witness borne by the New Testament; only thus, too, is its seriousness in world history preserved. The comfortable attempt to spare oneself the belief in the mystery of God's mighty actions in this world and yet at the same time to have the satisfaction of remaining on the foundation of the biblical message leads nowhere; it measures up neither to the honesty of reason nor to the claims of faith. One cannot have both the Christian faith and "religion within the bounds of pure reason"; a choice is unavoidable. He who believes will see more and more clearly, it is true, how rational it is to have faith in the love that has conquered death.