Pornography’s Growing Technological Reach

One week from today, the star of [some pornographic movies] will walk onto the campus of Truman State University in Kirksville to debate a pastor on the subject most dear to his heart: porn. It will fall to the Rev. Craig Gross to rebut actor Ron Jeremy’s arguments that pornography is a harmless activity that most people pursue in the privacy of their own homes. . .

The Future of Food: Watch What You Eat

He Threw It All Away

In an excellent new First Things article, Robert George writes:

In the early 1970s, Lutheran pastor Richard John Neuhaus was poised to become the nation’s next great liberal public intellectual—the Reinhold Niebuhr of his generation. He had going for him everything he needed to be not merely accepted but lionized by the liberal establishment. First, of course, there were his natural gifts as a thinker, writer, and speaker.

Then there was a set of left-liberal credentials that were second to none. He had been an outspoken and prominent civil rights campaigner, indeed, someone who had marched literally arm-in-arm with his friend Martin Luther King. He had founded one of the most visible anti-Vietnam war organizations. He moved easily in elite circles and was regarded by everyone as a “right-thinking” (i.e., left-thinking) intellectual-activist operating within the world of mainline Protestant religion.

Then something happened: Abortion. It became something it had never been before, namely, a contentious issue in American culture and politics. Neuhaus opposed abortion for the same reasons he had fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. At the root of his thinking was the conviction that human beings, as creatures fashioned in the image and likeness of God, possess a profound, inherent, and equal dignity.

This dignity must be respected by all and protected by law. That, so far as Neuhaus was concerned, was not only a Biblical mandate but also the bedrock principle of the American constitutional order. Respect for the dignity of human beings meant, among other things, not subjecting them to a system of racial oppression; not wasting their lives in futile wars; not slaughtering them in the womb. . . . (read more)

In Praise of P.J. O'Rourke, Slayer of Stem-Cell Myths

For two decades now, I have read with gusto many of P.J. O’Rourke’s articles and almost all his books (Parliament of Whores, Give War a Chance, Age and Guile, Driving Like Crazy, All the Trouble In the World, etc., etc., etc.) and I, like his myriad of other avid readers, not only chortle, laugh, and wine-shooting-out-of-my-nose guffaw my way through his unrelentingly funny social commentaries (read any of the aforementioned titles to get the gist of this), I almost always learn something in the bargain.

Free Stations of the Cross Booklet to Enrich Your Lenten Prayers

and receive your free copy ($4.95 for shipping and handling) of our inspiring new booklet, Meditations on the Stations of the Cross. It will enrich your Lent by helping you deepen your relationship with Love Himself, Jesus Christ. Here is just a sample of the lovingly-crafted words and images that await you in these pages:

Caught on Tape: More Abortion-Clinic Chicanery

Bishop Martino of Scranton Bars Pro-Abortion Officials From St. Patrick’s Day Masses

Explaining that he is determined to “prevent scandal,” Bishop of Scranton, Joseph Martino, has said that he will cancel Masses for St. Patrick’s Day or for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade if any pro-abortion officials are honored at the holiday events.

The bishop said that scandal could arise if the Catholic Church is seen to be involved in honoring such officials.

John M. Dougherty, the Auxiliary Bishop of Scranton, explained Bishop Martino’s views in a Feb. 6 letter to John Keeler, President of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick of Lackawanna County.

Saying that St. Peter’s Cathedral plays “no small role” in the local observance of St. Patrick’s Day, Bishop Dougherty noted that local celebrations often honor elected public officials. This honoring takes place when they are given parade positions or dais opportunities.

“While some of the officials have merited the pride our local people take in them, others have positions and voting records that have contributed to the daily killing of the unborn by abortion,” Bishop Dougherty wrote. . . . (source)

Israeli Ambassador Confirms Pope Benedict May Wear Cross at Western Wall

Contrary to comments attributed to an Israeli rabbi, Pope Benedict XVI will not be barred from entering the holy area of Jerusalem’s Western Wall while wearing a cross.

On Tuesday the Jerusalem Post quoted Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, who oversees worship matters at the Western Wall, as saying that the Pope should not wear a cross during his visit to the area.

“It is not fitting to enter the Western Wall area with religious symbols, including a cross,” the rabbi reportedly said, according to SIR.

Mordechay Lewy, Israel’s Ambassador to the Holy See, issued a clarifying statement saying that the Jerusalem Post’s quotation was “misleading.”

Ambassador Lewy said that Israel will “respect, as a matter of course, the religious symbols of the Holy Father and of his entourage, as expected in accordance with rules of hospitality and dignity,” following the same procedure applied in Pope John Paul II’s papal visit to Israel in 2000.

(source)

"What About Me? Protect My Life!"

Catholic Church in Spain joins academics in protest against proposed abortion reforms.

More than 300 scientists, professors, and scholars signed a manifesto in Madrid yesterday, opposing proposed reforms to Spain’s abortion laws. The Church has also launched a campaign against the proposed laws, using billboards depicting a toddler beside an Iberian Lynx – one of the most highly protected species in Spain. The caption reads: “What about me? Protect my life.”

The current law allows abortion up to 12 weeks in cases of rape and 22 weeks in cases of foetal malformation. The proposed law would allow abortion up to 22 weeks if a doctor certified a serious threat to the health of the mother or foetal malformation.

Defending the right to life, beginning at conception, the manifesto says: “neither the embryo nor the foetus form a part of a organ of the mother,” “an abortion is a simple and cruel act of terminating a human life,” that mothers should be made aware of the psychological damages of post-abortion syndrome and that “the zygote is the initial corporeal reality of the human being.”

Among the 12 points mentioned in the manifesto, they defend “human life in its initial stage, as an embryo and as a foetus” and they reject “the use of abortion for economic or ideological lucrative interests.”

They call for a written and “correct interpretation of the scientific facts on human life in all its stages.” They also mention the social consequences of abortion, which they call “tragic” and regret the fact that “a society that remains indifferent to the slaughter of nearly 120,000 babies each year, is a society that is unwell and a failure.”

They reject the possibility that at 16 years of age, a girl can abort without parental consent and claim that “an abortion law without restrictions would make the woman the only one responsible for a violent act against the life of her own son.”

Among the signatories are Professors Nicolás Jouve, Dean of Genetics; César Nombela, Dean of Microbiology; Francisco Abadía Fenoll, retired Dean of Cellular Biology; and Julio Navascués Martínez, Dean of Cellular Biology.

(source)

A Quick Catholic Case Against Condoms

Joanna Bogle, a prominent English Catholic commentator, knocks one out of the park with this excellent interview on British television in which she explains why the whole “condoms prevent AIDS” argument is vacuous and based on junk science. The woman Joanna is debating, while articulate, is simply out of touch with the biomedical realities involved in condom use. And the show’s host, when he’s not interrupting Joanna as she drives home some new point, throws some red meat to the pro-contraception people in his audience when he avers (stupidly) that Pope Benedict, by his reiteration of Catholic moral teaching, has “condemned many Africans to death.” Although the host and the other woman are good examples of fuzzy thinking, I think Joanna did a yeoman’s work in presenting the facts, clearly and compellingly. What do you think?

« Previous Page — Next Page »