Nate Nelson has fired up a new blog called Catholic? Rudy Watch. His mission? Oppose the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani for president. As many know, Rudy "disagrees" with Church teachings in re: to abortion, protecting marriage, and ESCR. Looks like Nate wants Catholics to get to know the real Rudy. Great idea Nate!
Reminds one of Catholic[?] Kerry Watch which Christopher, Jeff, and Oswald contributed to during the 2004 presidential campaign.
A friend has relayed news of South Dakota's battle for life:
Pope John Paul II once said: "[W]e are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the “culture of death” and the “culture of life”. We find ourselves not only “faced with” but necessarily “in the midst of” this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.” (Evangelium Vitae, "The Gospel of Life", 28).This past legislative session, the South Dakota legislature passed the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act (HB 1215). Pro-abortion individuals and groups, including Planned Parenthood and the inappropriately named "South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families", have collected enough signatures to place this bill on the November 7, 2006, ballot for a vote of the people. The bill will be entitled "Referred Law 6", and a "Yes" vote will affirm the bill, while a "No" vote will kill it.
South Dakota is "in the midst of" a great spiritual battle against the culture of death, as HB 1215 has brought the issue of abortion to the forefront in our state.
The Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls' Catholic Advocate Network has put together a page for more information on HB 1215, along with the following prayer and educational aids:Knights of Columbus pledge to fight for marriage, life, ‘under God’
ORLANDO, August 04 (CNA) - The Knights of Columbus have adopted, this week, significant resolutions on a number of critical social issues including marriage, the sacredness of life, the Pledge of Allegiance, school choice, and support for military men and women.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - U.S. Senator Sam Brownback yesterday introduced the Assisted Suicide Prevention Act, which would prohibit doctors from prescribing federally-controlled substances for the purpose of physician-assisted suicide.“When the law permits killing as a medical ‘treatment,’ society’s moral guidelines are blurred, and killing could gain acceptance as a solution for the chronically ill or vulnerable,” said Brownback. “Doctor-assisted suicide could actually create a financial incentive for insurance companies to encourage prematurely ending the lives of those in need of long-term care.”
Last May Brownback chaired a Judiciary Committee hearing to examine the impact of physician-assisted suicide in places where it has been widely practiced. . . .[read more]
Brownback Introduces Bill to Fight Assisted Suicide LifeSiteNews.com. August 4, 2006.
For more on Senator Brownback, see Catholics for Brownback.
As usual, the mainstream media is full of opinion columns and analysis pieces saying that Israel is losing the war or is in a box or offering crackpot diplomatic non-solutions. As usual, the mainstream media is wrong. They will always cry "defeat" whenever Israel or the U.S. takes strong action against the Islamist fanatics. Why? My personal opinion is that people who embrace moral relativism find any strong action against evil distasteful and repulsive. They believe that since good and evil are just matters of where you sit, you can't really condemn what the Islamist fanatics do and can't really justify strong military action to put the terrorist organizations out of business. In the morally relativist mindset of the mainstream media, the only exception to their canon of relativism is this one absolute: the U.S. and Israel are always wrong, especially if the non-relativist George W. Bush is involved. Moral relativism in international conflict equals defeatism. The mainstream media is the propaganda arm for that defeatism. It's a curious disease of the soul, but we saw it before in the West when for years Britain and France appeased Hitler, thus inducing Hitler to gamble on World War II. Fortunately, today Britain's prime minister is more Churchillian. But France, to this day, has never regained her nerve. The French moral malaise appears, right now, to be eternal.
Catholic social teaching strongly embraces a healthy pluralism in society, that is, the free, respectful expression of a diversity of views. In that vein, I offer my own analysis of the current Middle East War: Hezbollah and its patrons Iran and Syria have made a major and grave miscalculation. Iran is the leading force in this cabal. By giving Hezbollah the green light to attack Israel, Iran took the same gamble Hitler did in putting German troops back in the Rhineland region of Germany that had been demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles as a way to protect France from future German attack. Here is how one reference source summarizes what happened: "Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936. It was a dangerous venture, for Britain and France could have overwhelmed Germany, but, resolved to keep the peace, they took no action. Emboldened by this success, Hitler intensified his campaign for Lebensraum (space for living) for the German people" (Encyclopedia American s.v. "World War II"; original italics).
The failure of Britain and France to respond to Hitler's blatant defiance of a binding treaty obligation led to his further adventures: invading Austria, Czechoslovakia, and finally Poland. Only when he invaded Poland did Britain and France wake up and enter the war their appeasement helped bring to reality. Eventually, Britain got Churchill; and the rest is history. Hitler won his Rhineland gamble, but lost the war. Yet, tragically for millions, Hitler could have been put out of commission much earlier without a full-scale World War II.
Iran took the same gamble as Hitler did in the Rhineland. In defiance of a U.N. resolution, Iran and Hezbollah remilitarized south Lebanon to make it a formidable threat to Israel, as the almost daily shower of rockets on Israel proves. Israel could do nothing to meet this looming and mounting threat without a provocation. Then Iran miscalculated and allowed Hezbollah to provoke Israel by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and killing several others in an attack on Israeli territory. Unlike Hitler, Iran has lost the gamble of her "Rhineland strategy" because Churchill was, so to speak, already in place as the prime minister of Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert is not considered as hawkish as some other political leaders in Israel; but he reacted strongly, responsibly, and like Churchill in the face of the Hezbollah attack on Israel.
In fact, some of Olmert's recent remarks telling Israel to expect more pain and blood in the current war and declaring that Israel will fight on by every means echo Churchill's famous speeches when Britain stood alone against Hitler in 1940 in the Battle of Britain after Hitler had conquered France. The Israeli Prime Minister is defiant of the enemies of Israel and refuses to go along with the appeasement recommended by the lamentable U.N. and by the reflexively appeasing French. Hitler won in the Rhineland because Churchill was not yet the British Prime Minister. Iran has lost in the current war because the Israeli Churchill was already in place. That is a major miscalculation, but fanatics are prone to such major miscalculations because hatred is blinding.
So Israel is not losing this war. Iran and her proxy Hezbollah are losing big: they jumped the gun and gave Israel the green light to destroy their military buildup in Lebanon. In fact, the latest news is that Israel has just taken a welcome and overdue strategic leap and attacked the Hezbollah stronghold in northeast Lebanon. Hezbollah has no place to hide and has opened itself to a full and wide-ranging attack by Israel that is fully justified. And notice that Iran cannot openly join in assisting Hezbollah. Iran must limit its participation to covert action and to its typically hypocritical and anti-Israel rhetoric. The other Hezbollah backer, Syria, is frigid with fear that Israel will take the battle to Syria and finish off the last remaining Baathist regime in Damascus once and for all. All of this would not be possible if the appeasing forces (the U.N. and most of Europe) were in charge. All of this is possible because the Israeli Prime Minister and George W. Bush are both Churchill-like in their grasp of reality: fanatics understand only the strong and fearless application of force. When the enemy miscalculates, forcefully exploit the miscalculation to the full to prevent future attacks. If the West had done that in 1936 when Hitler put his soldiers into the Rhineland, millions would likely have been saved from the casualty lists of World War II.
And remember this: just as Britain's lonely fight against Hitler in 1940 (after France had fallen to Hitler) was really America's fight, so today Israel's fight against Iran is America's fight. Neither Hezbollah nor Iran would hesitate to send the same rockets they are dropping on Israeli towns to Chicago, Detroit, or New York, if they could. Iran is crazed enough to use even a nuclear weapon against Israel and against the U.S. So Israel is fighting our battle there, so we won't have to fight it here later at a much higher cost in lives. Let's pray daily that Israel is swiftly victorious against the forces of evil who seek her annihilation and ours. Our faith allows us to engage in self-defense, and so we can pray for a swift victory for Israel.
"I don't think the government should listen to the church - the government should listen to the people and the people should listen to the church."
(HT: New Advent)
That's the phrase being used to describe accurately and honestly the Palestinian, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syrian, and Iranian coalition against Israel, a coalition aimed at wiping Israel off the map of the Middle East, as explicitly asserted by the Hitlerite leader of Iran. My source is Charles Krauthammer's article "Israel's Existence at Stake" at this RealClearPolitics.com link , courtesy of a reader from Rhode Island. The article will make the stakes of the current war clear. Lasting peace will come only from disarmament of both Hamas and Hezbollah and from regime change in both Syria and Iran. So lasting peace is very much a long term proposition. In the meantime, the U.S. must stand fast in full support of Israel. May Israel, the country of our elder brothers in the faith (in the words of John Paul the Great), be victorious in defending herself from her rabid enemies. May the enemies of Israel be put to shame and to flight. May the enemies of Israel be scattered. May the right hand of the Lord rescue his first chosen people who are still bound to the Lord's promises, as St. Paul wrote in Romans 11:29: "For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (ESV). Many Catholics are unaware of this surprising verse from Paul that still binds the first Israel to God (the new and second Israel is the Church). But there it is. So to pray for old Israel's safety and continued existence is very Catholic, very New Testament, and very Pauline: another teaching moment.
Update: See this link for comments by Cardinal Schönborn, editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, affirming God's gift of land to Israel. The Cardinal cites John Paul the Great as agreeing that the biblical promise of land to Israel is still valid. See also Catechism, section 839.
Catholics will get a dose of election-year issues this fall as New York's priests weigh in on the statewide contests.
For the first time since the late 1980s, the Catholic Conference of New York State is putting together a voters guide to lay out where candidates for all statewide offices and the Legislature stand on 10 or 12 issues important to the church. The information will be distributed to parishes across the state, and priests will be encouraged to spread the word.So some Sunday morning, expect to be reminded that Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic front-runner for governor, supports gay marriage and legalized abortion, while John Faso, his Republican and Catholic opponent, opposes both. . . . READ MORE
Politics from the pulpit New York Daily News Originally published on July 11, 2006.
That's the bottom line as Iranian funded terrorists groups have provoked Israel by kidnapping Israeli soldiers in blatant acts of war. The Iranian regime is the Islamic version of Hitler's Nazi regime, irrationally but resolutely determined to obliterate Israel and control the entire Middle East. Even the virulence of the anti-Semitism is the same. Appeasement won't work. I predict that diplomacy alone won't work either. After September 11th, President Bush identified the Axis of Evil consisting of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Saddam is gone from power, and a democratic Iraq on the doorstep of Iran is emerging. President Bush called it as it is: an Axis of Evil now dramatically confirmed by the North Korean launching of several rockets in the past few weeks, also dramatically confirmed by the Iranian initiation of a war with Israel. The entire template of the congressional Democrats' way of dealing with foreign challenges is the pollyannish assumption that the other side is rational. Neither Iran nor North Korea is rational (just as Saddam Hussein proved his own irrationality with his bizarre, taunting shell game over weapons of mass destruction with the U.N.). Thank God that we have a Republican administration that doesn't live in the fantasy world of congressional Democrats. Pray and brace yourselves for what is ahead. Here is a link from RealClearPolitics.com that gives you the detailed analysis. I agree with the article from RealClearPolitics.com that the Iranian start of the war is based on the calculation that the U.S. does not have the will to respond forcefully. The big foundation for that premise is the rhetoric of the defeatist congressional Democrats and their media sympathizers, rhetoric that is music and inducement to the ears of America's enemies. The Iranians started the war: the rhetoric of the congressional Democrats and the mainstream media encouraged it. Now, the liberals have to wake up and see that the world is not as they imagined it for the sake of their narrow, partisan political ambitions.
Catholic pols doing good work in Louisana:
Louisiana married couples with children under 18 soon will have to wait a year before they can get a divorce -- rather than six months -- after [Catholic] Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed legislation doubling the wait time for couples with minor children.
The bill by [Catholic] Rep. Ernie Alexander, R-Lafayette, extends the current six month waiting period unless there are allegations of adultery, physical abuse or sexual abuse. Childless couples and couples with children 18 and older can get divorced after a 180-day waiting period.
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- House Republicans have unveiled a new legislative plan to tackle social issues. The "American Values Agenda," a list of ten bills House leaders will seek votes on before the end of this year, includes two pro-life pieces of legislation that could receive votes as early as later this summer. One would ban all forms of human cloning and another would tell women considering an abortion of the pain her baby will feel during the procedure. "We commend the House Republican leadership for planning votes on a bill to ensure that women seeking abortions after the fourth month of pregnancy are informed about the unborn child's capacity to experience great pain, and on a bill to ban all human cloning," National Right to Life legislative director Douglas Johnson told LifeNews.com in a statement. The House previously approved the human cloning ban, which prohibits both reproductive and research-based cloning, in 2001 and 2003. The Senate has never acted on the legislation but may do so this summer when it considers legislation that would overturn President Bush's limits on using taxpayer dollars to pay for embryonic stem cell research. Rep. Chris Smith, [Catholic and] a pro-life New Jersey Republican, is the lead sponsor of the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (H.R. 356). The bill makes sure abortion practitioners tells women considering an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy that it will likely cause severe pain for the baby. Neither the House nor the Senate have ever debated or voted on the measure. Read the complete story.
At the same time, as the International Herald Tribune notes, "Republican party leaders continue to talk seriously about a continuation of the dynasty, a Bush III administration, with Jeb as a candidate in 2012 or 2016, when the memory of the current president's dismal poll ratings will be less of a factor."
And the notion that we might have another Catholic president -- which is to say, a likely more substantially Catholic President than the "pro-choice" Kerry/Kennedy variety -- is heartening.
Some links on the subject:
The Florida Governor has been featured in numerous LifeSiteNews.com stories as a defender of human life and family values. Jeb Bush is also a devout Catholic, and has joined the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus which is known for its strong pro-life and pro-family stands.Source: US President Endorses Catholic, Pro-Life Brother Jeb for President, by Terry Vanderheyden and John-Henry Westen. LifeSiteNews May 10, 2006.He was a key reason why Terri Schiavo was able to live as long as she did, before the courts eventually ruled against "Terri's Law" - a law initiated by Gov. Bush to prevent the starvation of Terri Schiavo when her estranged husband attempted the manoeuvre in 2003. (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/may/04050601.html)
In 2004, the Governor attempted to have the unborn child of a severely disabled woman be appointed a court guardian. (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jan/04011202.html)
The Florida Governor was successful in implementing parental notification laws in the state, after nearly two decades of wrangling between the courts, the legislature, voters and governors. The law, which requires physicians to inform parents before their minor daughter is scheduled for an abortion, was signed into law by Bush last May. (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/may/05052701.html)
The Governor lamented the loss of life of an unborn child when a 13-year-old in his state was given permission by a judge to have an abortion. (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/may/05050405.html)
Last year, the younger of the Bush brothers unveiled a counselling plan for women considering abortion to help them consider alternatives such as adoption. (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/mar/05030202.html)
The Governor has been on the cutting edge of pro-life initiatives. When a pro-life film by a Hollywood filmmaker was yet to be released, a copy had already been requested by Jeb Bush. The film, A Distant Thurnder, is a courtroom thriller which exposes the horror of partial-birth abortion. (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/oct/05101105.html)
On the pro-family front, Jeb Bush has been no less active. The governor applauded the US Supreme Court last year for rejecting an appeal of the state's ban on adoption by homosexuals. Florida is the only state with a complete ban against same-sex adoption. (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jan/05011004.html)
Article from Touchstone Magazine on why there are now so many Catholic Justices on the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has been dominated since the founding of our country by mainline Protestants, but with Samuel Alito joining Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and John Roberts, five of the nine justices are now Catholics. All five have been appointed in the last 20 years. In the previous 200 years, only seven Catholics have served on the Court.
There may be political explanations for the attractiveness of Catholic justices, but I think three Catholic doctrines—natural law, subsidiarity, and religious freedom—help to explain why a majority of the justices are now Catholic. My argument is not that citizens who support, presidents who appoint, and senators who confirm these justices consciously do so because they want Catholic religious beliefs on the Court, but that these doctrines yield habits of thinking that make Catholics attractive candidates to the broad range of the American people.
Noting Senator Kerry's reception of communion at Archbishop Wuerl's installation, American Papist wonders whether Pro-abortion catholic democrats throwing down the gauntlet already?
From the Washington Times:
Two Catholic politicians fired a shot across the bow June 22 at the installation of Archbishop Donald Wuerl at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
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But now there’s a new guy in charge. On the very day of Archbishop Wuerl’s installation, two of Massachusetts’ most pro-choice [read pro-abortion] Catholics — Kerry and the state’s senior U.S. senator, Ted Kennedy — showed up and sat in the VIP section. Archbishop Wuerl shook their hands as he moved toward the altar. I didn’t see whether Kennedy took Communion, but I know Kerry did because I talked with him immediately afterward. He was there, he said, as a longtime friend of the archbishop’s.
Isn’t it odd that two of the Senate’s most liberal Catholics made time in their schedules to be at the installation Mass while their conservative Republican colleague from Pennsylvania, Sen. Rick Santorum, did not?
Santorum, I heard, had to stay close to his office for a vote. All the same, here were two Democratic senators giving the new archbishop notice that they intend to ignore any move to disenfranchise them from the Eucharist. No one could miss the message.
Via Gerald Augustinus of Closed Cafeteria.
Context:
The nation's Catholic bishops ended a long debate about whether pro-abortion politicians who attend a Catholic church should be allowed to receive communion. Referring back to a policy statement it adopted in 2004, the bishops said local bishops will make the decisions in their own diocese about how to handle each case.The decision concludes the work of a special task force Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick whose panel met with Catholics in both political parties privately last year.
For expanded commentary, see: Cardinal McCarrick Accuses his Brother Bishops of "Partisan" Politics, by Hilary White. LifeSiteNews .com June 19, 2006.
That is what Pat Buchanan is asking. I had heard about this story, but did not know the details or that the fired official is a Roman Catholic.
One of the panelists on "21 This Week" had volunteered that Mary Cheney, the vice president's daughter who has come out of the closet, would not want the federal government interfering in her life. Smith interrupted: "That's fine, that's fine. But that doesn't mean that the government should proffer a special place of entitlement within the laws of the United States for persons of sexual deviancy."
Parsing that statement, what was Smith saying? That the feds should not intrude into private lives, but neither should the feds grant special privileges to homosexuals. Smith was also saying that, in his view, homosexuals are "persons of sexual deviancy." In short, Smith was saying what most Americans have always thought.
But at the next meeting of the Metro board, he was confronted by D.C. member James Graham, a homosexual activist, who demanded that Smith recant and apologize, or be fired by the governor.
Smith held his ground. "Homosexual behavior, in my view, is deviant," Smith said. "I'm a Roman Catholic."
He added, "The comments I make outside of my (Metro board job) I'm entitled to make." Moreover, said Smith, these were personal beliefs that have "nothing to do with running trains and buses, and have not affected my actions or decisions on the board."
Five hours later, Gov. Ehrlich, in a tight re-election race, fired Smith. The episode is instructive for what it says about the correlation of forces in America's religious war.
From James K. Fitzpatrick:
Is “crunch time” the right term for what I have in mind? I am not sure. Perhaps “moment of truth” fits better. Whichever term you prefer, my point is that Catholics on the Right are going to have to take a position on the rise of Latin American leaders determined to use their national resources in a manner that conflicts with the interests of American-based corporations doing business within their borders.
And we might have to side with Pax Christi and the people who protest outside the School of the Americas this time.
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Conservative Catholics who supported American policies against Castro, Allende and the Sandinistas made a sound case. They based their arguments on the likelihood that these leaders would provide a base for Soviet expansion in the western hemisphere. But what government hostile to the United States is Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales going to invite to construct military bases on their soil? It is true that the Chinese Communists are building ports and drilling for oil in the Caribbean, but I haven’t heard anyone in our government make the case that these Latin American leaders are offering them sites for their nuclear missiles, not when we are busy trading with the Chinese Communists and offering them contracts to run our ports.
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But even if you are convinced that Butler’s view of the world would have tied our hands while Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega opened their countries to the Soviets, that does not mean that Butler-like cynicism is out of place if anyone starts beating the drums to “get tough” with Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales because they are “interfering with the free market.” Doing that may be dumb, but it is no casus belli.
Democrats lead passage of pro-life bill in Louisiana
The effort to prohibit abortion in Louisiana was a Democrat-led effort. Democrats For Life of America commended Senators Broome, Mount, Nevers and other pro-life Democratic senators and representatives who led the effort.
Sixteen Democrat senators were joined by 14 Republicans to pass the bill by a vote of 30-7. The House passed the bill by a vote of 85-17, with a majority of 45 Democrat legislators ensuring its passage.
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During the 2008 election, CPS was pleased to contribute to the efforts of both Catholics Against Rudy and Catholics Against Biden, in light of the deviations of both from Catholic teaching on abortion.
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