Monday, September 27, 2010

Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

 25th September 2010 – Cardinal George Pell – The Australian
FAR from bringing equality, contraception has redistributed power away from women, says George Pell.
THIS year is the 50th anniversary of the contraceptive pill, a development that has changed Western life enormously, in some ways most people do not understand.
While majority opinion regards the pill as a significant social benefit for giving women greater control of their fertility, the consensus is not overwhelming, especially among women.
A May CBS News poll of 591 adult Americans found that 59 per cent of men and 54 per cent of women believed the pill had made women's lives better.
In an article in the ecumenical journal First Things that month, North American economist Timothy Reichert approached the topic with "straight-forward microeconomic reasoning", concluding that contraception had triggered a redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men.
Continue reading at The Australian

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Pro-Choice Planned Parenthood enabling statutory rape?

What the Pro-Choice Lobby don't want you to see

Have you any conception what abortion is all about?
The ad supposedly banned from Irish TV.

Catholics may be sick of clerical sex abuse stories, but they can't be ignored

 By Greg Erlandson – Our Sunday Visitor

We’ve received several emails and letters from readers, pleading, essentially, “Enough!” of our coverage of the clerical sex abuse crisis. One said she was “weary of the continuing barrage of information on the sexual scandal in the Church. I know that it has happened; I know that the Holy Father is doing everything in his power to respond to it. I just do not think that we need to hear so much about it.”

Even as the co-author of a recent book on Pope Benedict XVI and the crisis, I find myself wanting to agree. We are all tired of this topic. It is a bad news story that won’t go away. Many of us have been dealing with news of the scandals since 1985 — a quarter of a century.

Continue reading Catholics may be sick of clerical sex abuse stories, but they can't be ignored: Our Sunday Visitor

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Stephen Hawking's God gaffe

by Simon Rowney

With a series of conceptual confusions, many inherited from his predecessors but some completely original, Stephen Hawking has revealed his stunning lack of philosophical subtlety.  His latest contribution is to challenge the validity of proofs for the existence of God but the bizarre argumentation and obvious misunderstandings severely damage his credibility as a cosmologist.
Continue reading at CathBlog - Stephen Hawking's God gaffe

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Abortion 'Doulas' and the Twisted Message of the Abortion Industry - Catholic Online

By Jennifer Hartline. 11th September 2010 - Catholic Online
baby blocks on belly The abortion industry wants to seem caring and compassionate. But they can't have it both ways.  If abortion truly is what the supporters of abortion insist it is, there is no need for a doula; there's no need for emotional support of any kind or any reason to extend compassion. This is the tiger giving you bandages for your wounds right before he mauls you, plus arranging for a "companion" to hold your hand and remind you how painless and great it's going to be.
Continue reading Abortion 'Doulas' and the Twisted Message of the Abortion Industry -  Catholic Online

How the New Atheists are abusing the truth | Spiked

Monday 13 September 2010. Brendan O’Neill.

Apparently the British state is about to roll out the red carpet for a seriously evil rape facilitator. Pope Benedict XVI is the boss of a church that acts as a ‘patron, protector and financier of child rape’, says one secularist writer. Last week the UK Independent reported that in America, ‘over 10,000 people have come forward to say they were raped as part of this misery-go-round’ overseen by His Holiness and His Lackeys. In Ireland alone, a tiny country of 4.5million people, ‘Thousands were raped in reform schools’, said a British broadsheet headline last year, ramming home the ugly truth of how many kids have been raped by the Catholic Church’s army of paedophile priests.

But how true is this ugly truth? Were 10,000 children in America and thousands more in Ireland really raped by Catholic priests? In a word, no.

Continue reading - How the New Atheists are abusing the truth | spiked

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

ANGELUS: God always comes out to meet us

VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE (VIS)

VATICAN CITY, 12 SEP 2010 (VIS) - At midday today, before praying the Angelus with faithful gathered in the central courtyard of the Apostolic Palace in Castelgandolfo, Benedict XVI remarked on the readings of today's Mass and invited people to pray for his forthcoming trip to the United Kingdom.

  In today's Gospel "Jesus narrates the three 'parables of mercy'", said the Pope. "When He speaks 'of the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, of the woman who looks for the lost coin, of the father who goes to meet and embrace his prodigal son, these are no mere words: they constitute an explanation of His very being and activity'. The shepherd who finds the lost sheep is the Lord Himself Who, with the Cross, takes sinful man upon Himself in order to redeem him".

  "How can we not open our hearts to the certainty that, though sinners, we are loved by God? He never tires of coming out to meet us, He is always the first to start down the road that separates us from Him. The Book of Exodus shows how Moses, with a faithful and audacious prayer, managed to move God, so to say, from the throne of justice to the throne of mercy. Penitence is the measure of faith, thanks to which we return to Truth".

  With reference to the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Holy Father noted how "when the elder son is offended by the festive welcome shown to his brother, it is again the father who goes out to meet him. ... Only faith can transform selfishness into joy and re-establish proper relations with others and with God", he said.

  Finally, the Holy Father asked for prayers for his apostolic visit to the United Kingdom where, next Sunday, he is due to beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman. "To the Virgin Mary", he said, "whose Holy Name is celebrated in the Church today, we entrust our journey of conversion towards God".

VIS news - Holy See Press Office: ANGELUS: GOD ALWAYS COMES OUT TO MEET US

Anti-Catholic Nutters have their Day in the Sun.

From the Catholic League. September 2010.
The following is a sample of the all-out attack on Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church prior to the pope's visit to the U.K. All quotes appear in original form:
Continue reading at the Catholic League: For Religious and Civil Rights

Monday, September 13, 2010

Pro-Choice group convince Mexican officials to reduce punishment for infanticide :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

 Mexico City, Mexico, Sep 9, 2010 / 09:53 pm (CNA).

Feminist groups and leaders have pressured officials in the Mexican state of Guanajuato to drastically reduce the punishment for infanticide.

For weeks, feminist organizations such as Las Libres confused the public by claiming that six women in Guanajuato, who were in prison for killing their babies, were in fact in prison for abortion.

After being dismissed by local officials and U.N. delegates, the feminists changed their strategy to seeking a reduction in punishment for women who kill their children during the first hours following birth. Such a crime, punishable in the past by 35 years in prison, will now be punishable be only three to 10 years due to a controversial reform of the state's civil code.

Continue reading at Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Friday, September 10, 2010

The Journey Home - Scott and Kimberly Hahn

The Journey Home program on EWTN is one of the networks best. In this episode Marcus Grodi interviews Scott and Kimberly Hahn about their conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism. The Hahn's converstion story retold in their book "Rome Sweet Home" is one of the all time favourite conversion stories.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Has Geoffrey Robertson Lost The Plot?

From a Sydney Morning Herald article 9th September 2010:

THE Vatican should be treated as a kind of ''rogue state'' by the rest of the world until it stops using statehood - and the ancient rules of the canon law - to protect paedophile priests.

So says Geoffrey Robertson, QC, the veteran human rights lawyer and United Nations judge, arguing that the Catholic Church is the only religion permitted under international law to claim the privileges of statehood and its leaders immunity from civil or criminal action.

A response from Austen Ivereigh at America Magazine to similar claims of Geoffery Robertson:
Where to begin? [in addressing the nuttiness of Robertson's claims] (a) the Vatican does not deal with abusive priests, local dioceses or congregations do; (b) Where these have failed to act against abusive priests, it has not been because they have resorted to canon law instead of civil law, but because they failed to resort to either canon OR civil law; (c) the cases which have been referred to the Vatican (since 2001) have been referred precisely in order to ensure appropriate action IS taken; (d) confidentiality is imposed in canonical legal processes in those cases where -- as in solicitation in the confessional -- these are canonical crimes, not civil ones; (e) the canonical process (eg laicisation) only takes place after any civil action (prosecution, trial, sentencing) has taken place; (f) it wasn't the Vatican which back in the 1980s moved priests accused of abuse to other parishes, it was bishops. And so on.
If only Pope Benedict were an ordinary citizen, he could rightly sue Robertson for his wholly untrue and grossly defamatory claim that clerical abuse was allowed to take place because "Joseph Ratzinger, both as head of the CDF and as Pope, has insisted for the past 30 years that all such cases be dealt with in secrecy under canon law." That is a monstrous lie -- and, given Cardinal Ratzingers record in this area, simply laughable.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Another Pro-Choice lobby group caught out lying.

Mexico City, Mexico, Sep 3, 2010 / 09:50 pm (CNA).

The governor of the Mexican state of Guanajuato, Juan Manuel Oliva Ramirez, expressed regret this week that some feminist groups lied in their desire to push for abortion. He also rejected the groups' claims that women in his region were imprisoned for having an abortion.

“From the onset we determined that no women were imprisoned for abortion, which was the accusation these feminists groups were making against the state government.” He added, “we have demonstrated that such cases do not exist in Guanajuato.”

Ramirez underscored that the state human rights office and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights both determined that “no women are in prison for abortion” and that accusations to the contrary were completely false.

Several days ago the U.N. dismissed claims by the feminist group “Las Libres” that “dozens of women” have become victims of Mexican law that protects life from the moment of conception and have been jailed for causing the deaths of their newborn children.

Mexican governor says feminists lied about women being imprisoned for abortion :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)


UPDATE:
Pro-Choice group lobbies to reduce the punishment given to women who murder their new born baby.

STATISTICS FOR THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN GREAT BRITAIN

From the Vatican Information Service (VIS) – September 2010

For the occasion of Benedict XVI's forthcoming apostolic trip to the United Kingdom, due to take place from 16 to 19 September and during which he will beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman, statistics concerning the Catholic Church in that country have been published. The information, updated to 31 December 2009, comes from the Central Statistical Office of the Church.

Great Britain has a surface area of 230,762 square kilometres and a population of 59,381,000 of whom 5,264,000 (8.87 percent) are Catholic. There are 32 ecclesiastical circumscriptions and 2,977 parishes. Currently there are 59 bishops, 5,225 priests, 6,497 religious, 160 lay members of secular institutes and 34,669 catechists. Minor seminarians number 2, and major seminarians 245.
Continue reading at VIS News

Saturday, September 4, 2010

The Problems with Gay Marriage

EWTN's Raymond Arroyo interviews Dr Robert George who discusses numerous reasons as to why Same Sex Marriage should be rejected.

Video player may be too small for some people, if so click the full screen button on the right side bottom of the Video player for full screen viewing.