7 Quick Takes Friday (set #64)
This week: From the Susan B. Anthony list… Welcome to the Bureau of Womanhood Conformity. The Fathers of Mercy: supporting the new evangelism since 1808. A child’s story of survival, born 4 months premature. Candid comments on the abortion business, from a former clinic owner. A whole new market snuffing-out life at the other end – Planned GrandParenthood. The liberal magazine cover craze.
Welcome to the Bureau of Womanhood Conformity. Independent thoughts are considered subversive. Rule #1: all must agree with Our Leader. Deviations will not be tolerated.
Tell President Obama to respect a woman’s choice to practice her beliefs… not his. It is not Obama’s opposition who is waging a war on women.
This is not the first time the Church has had a call for a new evangelism. The Fathers of Mercy were founded in 1808 to fulfill this very purpose. They are still going strong! Stop by their website to learn more about them or visit their YouTube channel for some excellent homilies. For example, there is this one on superficial preaching:
…or this on on the warnings and prophecy of Pope Paul VI in his 1968 masterpiece Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life):
Fallen away Catholics and those interested in the fullness of the Christian faith might be interested in the basics:
Only 1 pound, 2 ounces and 12 inches long – Ezekiel Cal Lugo was born 4 months early. This beautiful video tells the story:
Pregnancy services such as abortion protect a woman’s right to choose and make it the “safe, legal and rare” option that it is today. Women’s health, not profit, is the motive. Yea, right.
Laugh now, but for the culture of death, the implications of this are not at all far-fetched:
Thanks to a new California law, school students will now receive mandatory indoctrination instruction on the historical contribution of homosexuals. California lawmakers are determined to brainwash teach their young children that which is necessary to become successful adults. Apparently, that does not include things like science. California now ranks 47th in the nation in science at the 8th grade level. Only 22% of California 8th grade students managed to even pass the national standardized test.
Oh, and while California lawmakers are focused on honoring the gay agenda, the state itself is sinking fast. Governor Moonbeam (Jerry Brown) announced the deficit is now $16 billion (up from $9.2 billion in January). Expect drastic cuts and huge tax increases, followed by an exodus of individuals and companies to… anywhere else.
Newsweek, irrelevant as ever, pays homage to their candidate. If you have been under a rock, that first cover is real. The others are products of The Looking Spoon and The People’s Cube.
Some random thoughts or bits of information are worthy of sharing but don’t warrant their own full post. This idea was started by Jennifer Fulwiler at Conversion Diary to address this blogging need. So, some Fridays I too participate when I have accumulated 7 worthy items. Thank you Jen for hosting this project!
Myth: Catholics oppose science
Nothing could be further from the facts. Catholics love truth, science reveals truth – ergo, Catholics love science! It is through science that we explore the beauty and richness of God’s ordered and intelligible creation. Science and Catholicism are completely compatible without qualification.
Those without faith will tell you that “the right to look through telescopes and speculate about the result was obstructed by the Church.” Let’s just say that the truth is not in them. J. L. Heilbron (former professor and vice chancellor of UC Berkeley) notes “the Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.”
You might be surprised who proposed the theory of the expanding universe (the “big bang”), Hubble’s law and the first estimation of the Hubble constant. It was NOT Edwin Hubble! In fact, it was Georges Lemaître. That is, Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître – a Catholic priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven.
At this point I had intended to include a list of famous Catholic scientists. Since such a list would be immense, I was thinking a more manageable list would be only Catholic scientists who were priests – similar to Monsignor Lemaître mentioned above. Most people would likely assume such a list to be tiny. Alas, even Wikipedia lists 236 priests who “have made significant contributions to science“.
Of course, there was the Galileo incident – commonly misreported by secularists, anti-Catholics and others against the Church. Even in their misreporting, one can see that the Church and science were not separate. In a nutshell, the issue the Church had with Galileo was that he published as fact that which, at the time (and for many decades later), was an unproven theory. Modern scientists do not accept such behavior either. Galileo also did not win any friends when he jumped far outside of his area of competence to lecture Church authorities publicly on the true meaning of Holy Scripture. To learn more, see this and this.
We still build observatories. Our roots here go back to Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, ultimately resulting in the Observatory of the Roman College (1774), the Observatory of the Capitol (1827) and the Vatican Observatory (1789, refounded 1891 by Pope Leo XIII). In subsequent years more were built, including the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) in Arizona in 1993.
Much of my focus above was on astronomy. The Church has been just as involved in every other field be it physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine and other scientific disciplines.
BTW, guess who invented the University System? It wasn’t the Greeks or Romans, Eastern mystics or even mathematically literate Arabs. It most certainly wasn’t atheists. It was the Catholic Church from centuries before the Renaissance the Catholic Church has built and operated universities throughout the world. Most major universities trace their roots to the Church.
An excellent source of additional information is Thomas Woods’ How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Online, two extensive archives on the Church in science are at the Catholic Education Resource Center and at Catholic Answers. Numerous, well-researched, detailed articles are available from both.
7 Quick Takes Friday (set #63)
This week: Obama has now “evolved” and is out of the closet on so called “gay marriage.” Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi teach the Catholic faith and explain how it moves them to support unnatural unions. “Occupiers” have been showing their political leanings via their t-shirts. “Hope and Change” has become “Hype and Blame,” so a new slogan has been unveiled. The Copenhagen Philharmonic takes us away from all of this in a flash mob.
Obama has now “evolved” and is out of the closet. He has given his full support to “gay marriage”. If given the opportunity, he will back that with the full power and might of the federal government. “Gay marriage” is not about discrimination, bigotry or equality. See my earlier piece But how does “gay marriage” hurt you? for a primer. The Manhattan Declaration folks also recommend the following:
- What is Marriage?
- Why I’m Optimistic About Natural Marriage
- Why Is Marriage Important? (video)
- Who Needs Marriage?
- Marriage in Society: The Generation Clash (pps. 47-57)
- What Would Bonhoeffer Do?
- Dennis Prager Debates Perez Hilton on Same-Sex Marriage (video; contains objectionable content)
- Religion, Reason, and Same-Sex Marriage
- A Marriage in Full
- On Marriage and the Moral Limits of Human Sexuality
Father Joe (Biden) has again been teaching the faith to all who will listen. His lessons span wide ranging topics from abortion to unnatural sexual unions to social teaching. Always interesting and always wrong. His bishop has corrected him before, but can not be on alert 24/7 to counter every statement this guy makes.
Why does he do it? After all, Biden could simply give his support to all these things and his reason for doing so, WITHOUT identifying himself as a Catholic or falsely claiming congruity with Catholic teaching. Answer: to give cover to those who wish to place political interests above God. To those inclined to think of his “teaching” as giving “plausible deniability,” remember that God knows your heart.
Father Z does a great job as always commenting on a Life News piece in his: Joe Biden: Theologian!.
Nancy Pelosi has added her own colorful comments, explaining that her Catholic faith “compels” her …[to be]… for same-sex marriage.
Biden and Pelosi both are speaking loudly and proudly for the Catholic faith. This is not ignorance, given that they have been clearly told of their error. Access to any Catholic Catechism or faithful Catholic would also have quickly cleared up any misunderstanding. This is continuing, purposeful scandal to mislead the faithful and general public.
Father Z also covers this well, commenting on a CNSNews piece in his: Nancy Pelosi, Doctrix of the Church, cites Theologian Obama and calls evil “good”.
Are they simply stupid or historical ignorant? The “occupiers” have a strong affinity for communist icons as evidenced by the popularity of t-shirt images. Then again, it may simply be a proclamation of their politics:
Obama’s last campaign slogan was “Hope and Change.” As president, this has morphed into “Hype and Blame,” fundamentally transforming America away from Christianity into something we do not want and from which recovery will be difficult.
Obama officially announced his presidential reelection campaign last week on Karl Marx’s birthday. His new, official campaign slogan was also announced – Forward. “Forward” has long been a rallying cry for Marxist propaganda as explained by The Washington Times. See their piece: New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism. Really, comrade.
Too much depressing political news this week. For something much lighter and uplifting – the Copenhagen Philharmonic participate in a flash mob:
The music (Grieg’s Peer Gynt) was performed and recorded on the subway. The Danish metro is very quiet. They used 3 camera mounted mics, two microports glued to the ceiling and one stereo mic in the middle of everything. Spotted by Deacon Greg.
Some random thoughts or bits of information are worthy of sharing but don’t warrant their own full post. This idea was started by Jennifer Fulwiler to address this blogging need, but is guest hosted this week by Hallie Lord at Betty Beguiles. So, some Fridays I too participate when I have accumulated 7 worthy items. Thank you Jen (and Hallie) for hosting this project!
Elsewhere: Catholic bashing
Just this morning I was lamenting with friends the complete loss of truthful, unbiased news reporting. In place of practicing journalism, mainstream media unabashedly seeks to leverage their power position to gain political and social goals.
A frequent thorn in their side is the Catholic Church. Sometimes I feel like we have absolutely no voice in society, but when I consider the unceasing, slanderous statements made against us – maybe truth does threaten the media. People of good will should look critically at media bias. They make little effort to hide it any longer.
The Catholic League regularly reports on the duplicity of the media. Yesterday was typical… they reported on two very frequent offenders — The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on editorials that appear today in the New York Times and Washington Post:
Both of these newspapers misstate the facts, fail to mention relevant data, and then make unfair accusations against the Catholic Church on the issue of sexual abuse.
Both newspapers today editorialize on the subject of “pedophile priests.” It is one of the biggest myths of our time that the Catholic Church has had a problem with pedophile priests: as the John Jay College for Criminal Justice showed in its 2011 report on this subject, less than 5 percent of the abusers were pedophiles. In almost all cases, the victims were adolescent males who were inappropriately touched by homosexual priests. Both newspapers cover this up, thus perpetuating a lie.
Today’s New York Times criticizes Timothy Cardinal Dolan for opposing legislation by Assemblywoman Margaret Markey which would lift the statute of limitations for one year on civil lawsuits involving the sexual abuse of a minor. Once again, we have a cover-up: what the editorial does not say is that this bill does not apply to the public schools.
Today’s Washington Post adds to the cover-up by pretending that the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is a legitimate organization that is being harassed by the Church. But anyone who has read the report we issued last year on inside information that was obtained from a SNAP conference knows that it is driven by raw hatred of Catholicism and intentionally manipulates the media. Also, the deposition from earlier this year of SNAP’s leader shows beyond a doubt that he lies to the media, and that he counsels alleged victims without a license in a coffee house.
Moreover, 85 Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn have recently been arrested for the sexual abuse of minors and yet neither newspaper reports on this.
Nothing unusual. The same stuff every day. If you keep repeating lies again and again, do people eventually believe you?
Another good example is media sensitivity to outrageous statements. Remember the Georgetown University student who could not afford contraception? Her apparent sexual activity level is so high (based upon her staggering contraceptive bill) that Rush Limbaugh called her a “slut.” I don’t like Rush Limbaugh and it was offensive for him to call her that. However, it was her choice to publicly testify to her high level of sexual “protection” needs. His comment did not seem like a big deal to me. The liberal media went wild.
OK. Clearly the media is sensitive to name calling. You would think then that they would report on and vigorously condemn another (liberal in this case) radio talk show host who referred to Christ’s Church and his Vicar as “you child-raping sons of bitches in the Catholic Church, I am so sick of all of you – especially your priests and your bishops and your scum, the Nazi Pope.” Absolute silence. No outrage. No condemnations.
NewsBusters (tagline: exposing & combating liberal media bias) did cover it:
Liberal radio hosts were furious with the Catholic League for mocking Hillary Rosen after she attacked Ann Romney for not working. Their tweet said “Unlike Rosen, who had to adopt kids, Ann raised 5 of her own.” This was seen by liberals as signaling Rosen’s children adopted with former partner Elizabeth Birch were “less valid, less worthy of respect” and homophobic.
On Friday, Bill Press confused the Catholic League with the nation’s bishops (they are not connected), but on Thursday, rabid atheist Mike Malloy was nudged into erupting about “child-raping” Catholics and their scummy “Nazi pope”:
MALLOY: And the Catholic League – that piece of human waste Bill Donohue – then twitted or tweeted or tweaked – ‘glad to know Hilary’s fans are in a state of apoplexy – you’d think she was outed by their hysterical reaction. Get over it and grow up! You child-raping sons of bitches in the Catholic Church, I am so sick of all of you – especially your priests and your bishops and your scum, the Nazi Pope, I am so sick of all of you. And this Donohue freak — wow.
He then circled around to attacking Mrs. Romney:
MALLOY: She has never worked a damn day in her life. She has not a clue. When’s the last time Ann Romney cleaned a toilet? When’s the last time Ann Romney had to catch a bus at four o’clock in the morning and make uh two or three transfers so she could go clean somebody else’s goddamn house? When’s the last time Ann Romney went to work as, uh, some chump bastard’s secretary taking all – excuse me – administrative assistant – taking all the flak, knowing that the job was only as secure as the creep she worked for”
Ann Romney, you’re a multi-millionaire you’re net worth is almost a half a billion dollars! Don’t try to compare or find equivalence between you and working mothers! There is none and you know it! And so does your funky husband! And so does every single disgusting right-wing cockroach in this country who just couldn’t wait to come screwing up over the slime and jump on this one! And isn’t it nice that the first thing that the fascist Bill Donohue Catholic Nazi goes for is Hilary Rosen’s sexual orientation ya filthy pig! Have I mentioned yet tonight how MUCH I hate these right-wingers”
Tim Graham’s entire piece is: Liberal Radio Hosts Rant at Catholic League, Scummy ‘Nazi Pope’.
Again, nothing unusual. This blatant bias is now an every day thing. Expect things to actually worsen in this election year. For example, see this simple example from Elizabeth Scalia.
7 Quick Takes Friday (set #62)
This week: To Be Born – a video short story exploring one woman’s “choice.” Paul Ryan speaks sensibly at Georgetown, result as expected. More background on the LCWR (lest anyone still thinks action was either unnecessary or rash). Our hope is in our young and there is reason to be optimistic. Some good pieces last [...]
If Protestantism is True
Devin Rose is a smart, thoughtful Evangelical convert and Catholic apologist. His book, If Protestantism is True is not his conversion story. It is a rather unique exploration of Protestant claims and beliefs. Instead of saying Protestantism is in error and why the truth is in the Catholic Church… author Rose simply takes Protestant [...]
Obama’s war on religion (update #6)
More and more people are beginning to understand the staggering implications of the war on religious liberty. It has united all of the Catholic bishops, together with leaders of other religions and other people of good will who simply want to preserve and protect the constitution. This is not a war we started or want, [...]
7 Quick Takes Friday (set #61)
This week: A powerful video: If I wanted America to fail. Father Z takes us on a trip down memory lane with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The Mississippi governor nails it. What a post-ObamaCare world will look like. Wheelchairs are so 20th century. Federal debt is an enormous social justice issue. A quote [...]
