Harry Reid Declares It’s a Good Day Because “Only” 36,000 People Lost Their Jobs
Published March 5, 2010 | 
On March 5, 2010, Senator Harry Reid said,
“Today is a big day in America.
Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today,
which is really good.”
RUSH QUOTES
Published March 5, 2010 |
Sen. Kit Bond Spars with Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood - Transparency? We have no idea where Obama’s slush fund cash is going. –Rush
Fear of RINOs: Republicans In Name Only and the Christian Right - Blue-blood, country club Republicans are ashamed of Christians because of the abortion issue. It’s something their wives nag them about, so they want “those people” to shut up. –Rush
FOUNDER’S QUOTE DAILY
Published March 5, 2010 | “We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge.”
–Fisher Ames, speech in the United States House of Representatives, 1789
HBU Presents An Evening with Archbishop Chaput: “The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life”
Published March 5, 2010 |
J.F.K Was Wrong on Church and State
Published March 5, 2010 |
The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life
By Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Catholic Education Resource Center
Precisely fifty years after the memorable speech that John F. Kennedy gave to the Protestant pastors of Houston in order to convince them and the entire nation that as a Catholic he could be a good president, the archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, has returned to the scene of the crime, in Houston, for a Baptist conference on the role of Christians in public life.
 |
|
President John F. Kennedy
speaking at Houston Baptist University September 12, 1960 |
One of the ironies in my talk tonight is this. I’m a Catholic bishop, speaking at a Baptist university in America’s Protestant heartland. But I’ve been welcomed with more warmth and friendship than I might find at a number of Catholic venues. This is a fact worth discussing. I’ll come back to it at the end of my comments. But I want to begin by thanking Drs. Sloan and Bonicelli and the leadership of Houston Baptist University for their extraordinary kindness in having me here tonight. I’m very grateful for their friendship. I also want to thank my friend Dr. John Hittinger of the University of St. Thomas. Part of my pleasure in being here is to encourage his efforts with the John Paul II Forum on the Church in the Modern World. The Forum is hugely important—and not just for Catholics, but for the whole Christian community. I’m grateful to the leadership of the University of St. Thomas for supporting him. Continue reading
Repairing the Damage, 50 Years Later
Published March 5, 2010 |
Fr. Roger J. Landry, The Anchor, Editorial, March 5, 2010
Fifty years ago this September, while campaigning for the presidency, John F. Kennedy went to Houston to try to convince the Protestant Ministers of the Great Houston Ministerial Association, and through them the Protestant majority in the United States, that they had nothing to fear from electing a Catholic to the highest political office in the land.
There the future 35th president of the United States said, “I believe in an America where the separation of Church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President — should he be Catholic — how to act, … where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source.… I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him¹ as a condition to holding that office. … I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does not speak for me.”
On Monday, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver was invited by Houston Baptist University to come to assess the legacy of that historically noteworthy address. In a speech entitled, “The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life,” the shepherd of the Rockies declared that Kennedy’s speech has certainly had an enduring impact, but one that is fundamentally negative.
“Fifty years ago this fall, in September 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association,” Archbishop Chaput said. “He had one purpose. He needed to convince 300 uneasy Protestant ministers, and the country at large, that a Catholic like himself could serve loyally as our nation’s chief executive. Kennedy convinced the country, if not the ministers, and went on to be elected. And his speech left a lasting mark on American politics. It was sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong. Not wrong about the patriotism of Catholics, but wrong about American history and very wrong about the role of religious faith in our nation’s life. And he wasn’t merely ‘wrong.’ His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation. Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.”
Archbishop Chaput openly admitted that his were “strong words,” but went on to back them up by showing, first, how Kennedy misunderstood or misrepresented the meaning and consequences of the First Amendment and, second, how Kennedy’s principles led him and so many after him to moral and political incoherence.
Analyzing Kennedy’s position in favor of an “absolute” separation of Church and state, Archbishop Chaput said that the then-Massachusetts Senator seriously misread the Constitution. “The Founders and Framers didn’t believe [in an absolute separation of Church and state]. And the history of the United States contradicts that [claim]. Unlike revolutionary leaders in Europe, the American Founders looked quite favorably on religion. Many were believers themselves. In fact, one of the main reasons for writing the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause – the clause that bars any federally-endorsed Church – was that several of the Constitution’s Framers wanted to protect the publicly funded Protestant Churches they already had in their own states.”
He went on to describe how the Founding Fathers not only opposed an absolute separation between Church and state but actually believed and promoted that government should strongly encourage the practice of religion. “Their reasons were practical,” Archbishop Chaput asserted. “In their view, a republic like the United States needs a virtuous people to survive “ and it was clear to them that “religious faith, rightly lived, forms virtuous people.” He clarified that the drastic misunderstanding of the separation of Church and state was basically unknown in American civic consciousness until Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, in 1947, “excavated it from a private letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802.” The following year the U.S. bishops demonstrated in a pastoral letter how Black’s 1947 opinion was “an utter distortion of American history and law” and a “shibboleth of doctrinaire secularism.” Archbishop Chaput noted that, even though Kennedy mentioned the bishops’ pastoral letter in his 1960 speech, “he neglected to mention that the same bishops, in the same letter, repudiated the new and radical kind of separation doctrine he was preaching.”
Not only did Kennedy’s speech popularize an erroneous notion of the First Amendment that has had negative consequences for churches and American public life ever since, Archbishop Chaput insisted, but it also did enormous damage to the conscience formation of citizens and those engaged in public life.
He gave Kennedy credit for stating both that he would resign his office if his presidential duties should “ever require me to violate my conscience or violate the national interest” and that he would not “disavow my views or my church in order to win this election.” However, the prelate added, “In its effect, the Houston speech did exactly that. It began the project of walling religion away from the process of governance in a new and aggressive way. It also divided a person’s private beliefs from his or her public duties. And it set ‘the national interest’ over and against ‘outside religious pressures or dictates.’”
The end result was that he “secularized the American presidency” and “privatize[d] presidential religious belief — including and especially his own — in order to win that office.” That had enormous “atheistic implications for public life and discourse,” which have gone a “considerable way toward ‘secularizing’ the American public square by privatizing personal belief.”
“Fifty years after Kennedy’s Houston speech,” Archbishop Chaput continued, “we have more Catholics in national public office than ever before. But I wonder if we’ve ever had fewer of them who can coherently explain how their faith informs their work, or who even feel obligated to try. …Too many Catholics confuse their personal opinions with a real Christian conscience. Too many live their faith as if it were a private idiosyncrasy — the kind that they’ll never allow to become a public nuisance. And too many just don’t really believe.” He said that Kennedy “didn’t create these trends in American life” but “his Houston speech clearly fed them.”
The Archbishop went on to describe, in contrast to Kennedy’s principles and basing himself heavily on the thought St. Augustine, the authentic vocation of a faithful Christian in public life. He said that a believer’s relationship with Christ must have public consequences if Christianity is not to become merely a “word game and a legend.” There is a need to “live and prove our love [for God and others] by our actions … in the public square.” Since human law forms the character of citizens and since politics is the exercise of power, both have “moral implications that the Christian cannot ignore” if he is to remain “faithful to his vocation as a light of the world.”
Rather than a separation between faith and life, he sketched out the proper harmony that is supposed to exist in American Catholics with regard to faith and public life at the beginning of his speech, when he said, “I’m here as a Catholic Christian and an American citizen – in that order. Both of these identities are important. They don’t need to conflict. They are not, however, the same thing. And they do not have the same weight. I love my country. I revere the genius of its founding documents and its public institutions. But no nation, not even the one I love, has a right to my allegiance, or my silence, in matters that belong to God or that undermine the dignity of the human persons He created.”
It was an outstanding statement that deserves to be read in full. Let’s hope that, in fifty years, Americans will be able to look back and say that this Houston speech has had as much an impact for good as, looking back now over the past half-century, John F. Kennedy’s speech has had for public and private ill.
SEE RARE VIDEO CLIP BELOW.
Rare video JFK 1960 Speech at the Houston Ministers
Published March 5, 2010 | The moment Kennedy publicly surrendered the integrity of his private conscience.
Onward, He Said, Regardless
Published March 5, 2010 | ….Obamacare is heading into its fifth act, and it’s looking like a tragedy. . . . The time for debate is over, declared the nation’s seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington’s wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of “budget reconciliation.” The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote….
By Charles Krauthammer, Real Clear Politics, March 5, 2010
WASHINGTON — So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts’ devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obamacare lives.
After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health care reform.
The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House “summit” with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans’ way.
Show is the operative noun. Among the few Republican suggestions President Obama pretended to incorporate was tort reform. What did he suggest to address the plague of defensive medicine that a Massachusetts Medical Society study showed leads to about 25 percent of doctor referrals, tests and procedures being done for no medical reason? A few ridiculously insignificant demonstration projects amounting to one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the cost of Obama’s health care bill.
As for the Blair House seminar, its theatrical quality was obvious even before it began. The Democrats had already decided to go for a purely partisan bill. Obama signaled precisely that intent at the end of the summit show — then dramatically spelled it out just six days later in his 35th health care speech: He is going for the party-line vote.
Unfortunately for Democrats, that seven-hour televised exercise had the unintended consequence of showing the Republicans to be not only highly informed on the subject, but also, as even Obama was forced to admit, possessed of principled objections — contradicting the ubiquitous Democratic/media meme that Republican opposition was nothing but nihilistic partisanship.
Republicans did so well, in fact, that in his summation, Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments) they are in favor.
Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be?
Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.
However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed — say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?
Perhaps something like 3-1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry’s feeling about the current Democratic health care bills.
Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.
Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.
Which is what drove even strong Obama supporter Warren Buffett to go public with his judgment that the current Senate bill, while better than nothing, is a failure because the country desperately needs to bend the cost curve down and the bill doesn’t do it. Buffett’s advice would be to start over and get it right with a bill that says “we’re just going to focus on costs and we’re not going to dream up 2,000 pages of other things.”
Obama has chosen differently, however. The time for debate is over, declared the nation’s seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington’s wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of “budget reconciliation.” The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.
Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/05/the_health_care_bill_is_a_failure.html
ARE AMERICANS BEING DUPED…AGAIN? 3 Things You Should Know About Health-Reform “Inside Baseball”
Published March 5, 2010 | Dorinda C. Bordlee, National Review, March 04, 2010
As Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” While the country awaited President Obama’s promised “new” health-care reform proposal, we were instead treated on Wednesday to a speech revealing that his much-anticipated Plan B is simply a recommitment to Plan A — with A still standing for Abortion (at your expense).
I’m not going to bore you again with five ways the Obama-backed Senate bill promotes public funding of elective abortions. Instead, let’s launch from another Yogi Berra line — “It ain’t over till it’s over.” As a matter of public education, the following is a brief summary of exactly how the president hopes to put one over on the American people, and what you should know:
* Point 1: Focus on the House. At the current time, everyone is distracted by the decision of the president and his leadership to go the reconciliation route in the Senate. But it is important to understand that reconciliation in the Senate doesn’t even come into play until after the House passes the Senate bill exactly as it is right now, and after the president signs the pro-abortion mega-bill into law. Now proceed to Point 2.
* Point 2: Show me the language. The president and his leadership claim they will craft a bill that will “incorporate Republican ideas” and “fix” the Cornhusker deal through language that would later be added through reconciliation (50 plus 1) in the Senate — again, after the Senate bill has passed the House as-is and been signed into law by the president. But the president has not produced any actual legislative language to show us exactly how he would “fix” things. The language will purportedly be drafted over the next couple of weeks, but no one — not even House Democrats, who would have to trust the president and Harry Reid to “fix” the bill after they pass it — has seen any language. It is therefore entirely possible that if Speaker Pelosi jams the Senate bill through the House, it will all be over with the president’s signature. In other words, if the Senate decides to follow its own rules and not use the budget process of reconciliation to pass substantive health-care policy, then we will have the current Senate version of Obamacare as the law of the land. I kid you not.
* Point 3: Beware of the public option. Don’t forget that there is an active move afoot in the Senate to pass the Pelosicare public-option bill, which narrowly passed the House in November after Pelosi was forced to allow Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) and a bipartisan coalition to remove public abortion funding (leaving a host of other pro-life problems in the bill, such as incentivized end-of-life rationing). MSNBC reports that 34 senators have publicly indicated their support for the House public-option bill via reconciliation. Therefore, if the House bill were to pass the Senate under the 50-plus-1 reconciliation scheme, then it, too, could head to the president’s desk. And then, well, you guessed it. It’s over.
But at this point it’s far from over. Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine claims that “the American people elected this president to get results. They don’t care about the inside baseball.” Really? Perhaps Mr. Kaine should review a few polls showing the historic engagement of the American people on both sides of this issue. While Bioethics Defense Fund neither endorses nor opposes any particular legislation, it is our mission as a public-interest group to educate citizens about this inside baseball. Because contrary to Mr. Kaine’s opinion, we know that you do care. And that you just might want to stay in the game.
— Dorinda C. Bordlee is vice president and senior counsel of Bioethics Defense Fund, and editor of YourHealthcare411.com.
http://healthcare.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGQ5ZGZkOTNlOWQ0MmUxMjhlMWU5MjdjZDMxZjJlYzg=
PROTECT THE UNBORN
Published March 5, 2010 | 
Perfect Reading for Lent
Published March 5, 2010 | Posted By Catholic Exchange Recommends, March 5, 2010
St. Benedict taught that spiritual reading is a prayerful activity, and he even required his monks to read a good spiritual book during Lent. Daily prayer has always been the food of the soul, and good spiritual reading helps to elevate the soul and prepare it for deeper communion with God.
Lent is the perfect time to renew a focus on spiritual reading and prayer. One area of growing importance in Catholic spirituality is devotion to the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary. A new book, written by Catholic theologian, Dr. Kelly Bowring [1], discusses the relationship between the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and how they are together warning us, guiding us and leading us on to lives of increased holiness, especially in these difficult times. About our times, John Paul II, just before becoming pope, said: “We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel.”
This new book on the Two Hearts, “The Secrets, Chastisement, and Triumph,” [1] invites us to respond to our times by depending on Mary, the Mother of Jesus, because she is our mother as well: “Since Jesus is sending his mother from Heaven to speak with us, to warn us, to call us to conversion and holiness, as her spiritual children it rightly behooves us to respond with childlike simplicity, and to say yes to our heavenly Mother,” the book states. The book explains how Mary is being sent by God as the prophetess of our times to call her spiritual children to prepare for the apocalyptic times that are quickly approaching. In his book, Dr. Bowring puts things in perspective, saying: “It makes sense that the most important issue of our times is the one that Heaven has been focusing on, and repeating with greater emphasis, over the past century [through Marian apparitions] – and it’s all about our time. This being so, one could say that this message from Heaven is in some ways the most important issue of our day.”
Dr. Bowring’s book has received the Church’s Imprimatur from Archbishop and noted Marian expert, Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal. “The Secrets, Chastisement, and Triumph,” [1] has been honored as “BOOK OF THE YEAR!” by Jerry Morin of Servants to the World. Others are praising it as the best book ever written on Marian prophecy and a book that readers will not want to put down. “A Book That You Will Read More Than Once – You have my word!” says Fr. Neil Buchlein of Ascension Church in Hurricane, West Virginia, and host of a Marian Internet blog. “I COULD NOT put it down. It kept my interest from beginning to end… Do yourself a favor and get this book. I promise you will not be disappointed.”
A most important book for our times and a book that has received its share of positive acclaims together make for a perfect book for Lent!
The Secrets, Chastisement, and Triumph of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary (and What Heaven is Calling Us To Do) [1], by Kelly Bowring, published by Two Hearts Press, LLC, can be ordered at www.TwoHeartsPress.com [1].
To watch a brief video introducing Bowring’s new book, please click this link or paste it in your web browser: http://www.youtube.com/user/ [2]
SOURCE: http://catholicexchange.com/2010/03/05/127780
LIFENEWS.COM HEADLINES: MARCH 5, 2010
Published March 5, 2010 | OBAMA, DEMOCRATS SET MARCH 18 AS DATE FOR VOTE ON PRO-ABORTION HEALTH CARE BILL
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – Mark your calendars for March 18 as that is the target date President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress have set as the target date for a vote on the pro-abortion Senate health care bill. That means pro-life advocates have two weeks to contact lawmakers and urge them to vote no.
PRO-LIFE DEMOCRATS CONFIRM: WE WILL KILL HEALTH CARE BILL OVER ABORTION FUNDING
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – More than a dozen pro-life Democrats could decide the fate of the Senate health care bill that contains massive abortion funding and other pro-abortion problems. They are led by Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, who confirmed again this morning that they are prepared to kill the health care bill over abortion.
POLLS: VOTERS IN DISTRICTS OF PRO-LIFE DEMOCRATS OPPOSE PRO-ABORTION HEALTH CARE
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – The Susan B. Anthony List today released the results of new polls showing the voters who live in the districts of key pro-life Democratic members of Congress oppose funding abortion in the health care bill. The polls are designed to encourage the members to vote no on the Senate health care bill.
PELOSI CALLS PRO-LIFE DEMOCRATS LIARS, THIRD ABORTION FUNDING DENIAL THIS WEEK
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – In a press conference today. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied the abortion funding in the Senate health care bill for the third time in the last seven days. Reacting to a promise from pro-life Democrats to kill the bill over the massive abortion funding it contains, Pelosi essentially called them liars.
SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE OKS OBAMA PRO-ABORTION PICK DAWN JOHNSEN
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – The Senate Judiciary has confirmed pro-abortion activist Dawn Johnsen, whom President Barack Obama appointed for a powerful Justice Department position. Johnsen’s nomination now heads to the full Senate, where Democrats are battling to stop a filibuster against her.
SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS NOT STEPPING DOWN, REPORT FALSE
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – A rumor that sprang up Thursday and would have severe repercussions for the pro-life movement has quickly been put to rest. Reports indicate Chief Justice John Roberts will not be stepping down just five years after winning Senate confirmation to seer the nation’s most influential court.
WASHINGTON REPORT: AT LEAST 36 PEOPLE DIED IN ASSISTED SUICIDE LAW’S FIRST YEAR
Olympia, WA (LifeNews.com) – A new report from the Washington health department reveals at least 36 people died after they killed themselves under the first year of the state’s new law legalizing assisted suicides. The law was only enacted for nine months during 2009 after voters approved it on the 2008 ballot.
PRO-ABORTION WOMEN WANT MORE FUNDING FOR NEW UNITED NATONS SUPER AGENCY
New York, NY (LifeNews.com/CFAM) – The annual United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) began this week in New York and marks the 15-year review of the Beijing Conference on Women. While governments are supposed to be meeting to examine national commitments to implementing the UN Millennium Development Goals, the fight so far has been over the structure and funding for a new women’s super-agency.
The Stupak Showdown: ‘Mr. President, Put it in There!’
Published March 5, 2010 | Tempers flare as abortion issue threatens to take down health care overhaul
WASHINGTON, DC – At the same time as President Obama has stepped up the pressure on Congress to “get it done” on health care reform, Rep. Bart Stupak, the author of the amendment banning abortion funding in the House health care bill, has issued a challenge of his own.
“Mr. president, put it in there,” the Michigan Democrat urged, referring to placing his amendment into the Senate bill, in an appearance on FOX Business.
Stupak pointed out that every poll on the topic of public funding for abortion in the U.S. has found the majority in favor of his funding restrictions. Therefore, he said, the president should show the same level of openness to his amendment that he boasted he had shown to some Republican ideas that were included in the bill.
“If we’re trying to reflect the will of the American people,” he said, “this certainly is one amendment where you can show your flexibility and actually do what the American people want: no public funding for abortion.”
Stupak also asserted that, “in its present form, the Senate health care bill is going nowhere in the House of Representatives.” On Thursday, Stupak confirmed to NBC’s Chris Matthews that about a dozen lawmakers who voted for the House bill would kill the abortion-expanding Senate version if it lacked his amendment.
Shifts in the House demographic since passing the House health bill last year means Democrat leaders need to net about four more votes from members of their own party who had previously voted against the House bill, to pass the Senate bill – in addition to winning over those dissatisfied with the upper chamber’s vastly more liberal version.
Tempers also appear to be rising elsewhere on Capitol Hill: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday shot back at the notion that she lacked the votes to push the Senate bill through the House, and expressed frustration when faced with the abortion issue.
“Let me say this: This is not about abortion! This is a bill about providing quality, affordable health care for all Americans,” Pelosi said Thursday.
Capitol Hill insiders cited by the Financial Times indicated that Pelosi may rely on threats to strip uncooperative Democrats of committee chairmanships. Continue reading
Millions For the Sex Predator, Death For His Victim
Published March 5, 2010 |
Pro-life Pharmacy in D.C. Area Closes Due to Financial Difficulties
Published March 5, 2010 | 
Chantilly, Va. – The only pro-life pharmacy in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area has announced that it is closing because of financial difficulties.
The business’ pharmacist Robert Semler, quoted at the Save DMC Pharmacy website, said he could not stay open past March 4.
He reported that he needed “a couple of hundred thousand dollars and 5,000 customers” to stay open, five times as many customers as the business had at present.
A March 1 letter from Dr. John T. Bruchalski, M.D., President of Divine Mercy Care (DMC), announced that he had been authorized by the DMC Board of Directors to take necessary steps to close the pharmacy due to “financial difficulties.” Continue reading
Catholic News Roundup 03-04
Published March 5, 2010 | Today’s Stories:
Censorship run amok;
God defended in the classroom;
Catholic professors back radical pro-abort;
Still no official word;
John Paul and the Scapular
The Church and (Bad) Science 03-04
Published March 5, 2010 |
As Liberals storm around the Church, their latest agenda is global warming – and they’re using the Bishops to for validation.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE? HAS THE USCCB GONE BONKERS?
Published March 5, 2010 | http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/ejp/
The Catholic Coalition on Climate Change
http://www.lcwr.org/lcwrsocialjustice/eoclentcalendar2010.pdf
“We … call for a civil dialogue and prudent and constructive action to protect God’s precious gift of the earth’s atmosphere with a sense of genuine solidarity and justice for all God’s children.” —U.S. Catholic Bishops
What are the moral implications of climate change? Who is most impacted? What should the Catholic community do? The Catholic Coalition on Climate Change was launched in 2006 to help the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Catholic community address these issues.
Learn about Catholic Principles and Teachings applied to the issue of global climate change:
- Prudence—thoughtful, deliberate, and reasoned action
- Poverty—concern for those least able to bear the burden
- The Common Good—promotion of solidarity over self-interest
Catholic Coalition on Climate Change supports and complements USCCB’s Office of Social Development and World Peace and the bishops’ Environmental Justice Program. The Coalition is funded with generous assistance from the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.
Vote Buying? Bachmann Demands Probe Into Obama Judgeship Pick
Published March 5, 2010 |
“Every aspect of the health care bill has been negotiated behind closed doors, whether it’s the substance of the bill or whether it has been a certain amount of what you might call vote buying.”
GOSPEL & MEDITATION: The Just Retribution
Published March 5, 2010 | Father Andrew Mulcahey, LC
Matthew 21: 33-43, 45-46
Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: “Hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned. Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, ´they will respect my son.´ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ´This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.´ They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?” They answered him, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.” Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the scriptures: ´The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes´? Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they knew that he was speaking about them. And although they were attempting to arrest him, they feared the crowds, for they regarded him as a prophet.
Introductory Prayer: Lord, though I cannot see you with my eyes, I believe you are present to me now, in my innermost being, and that you know me far better than I know myself. I also know that you love me much more than I love my own self. Thank you for loving and watching over me, though I don’t deserve your love. In return, I offer you my sorrow for my sins and my hopes to love you more each day.
Petition: Sanctify me in my work, Lord. May it bring me closer to you.
1. Administrators of God’s Treasures It’s one thing to purchase an already functional property. It’s quite another thing to purchase a rundown property and fix it up yourself. Once tidied up, the latter is worth much more to you. It has become the fruit of your sweat and blood. It is not simply a possession; it is a part of you. In today’s Gospel, the landowner purchased the land and did the work himself to set up the vineyard before he handed it over to the tenants. When he entrusted it to them, he was not simply looking for a profit, but for someone to manage his vineyard. He valued it greatly, greatly enough to risk the life of his son. Christ has established his vineyard—the Church—and put it into our hands. Christ pays us the compliment of entrusting us with his work, with what he values. He not only gives us a job to do, but mysteriously puts the eternal salvation of other souls in our hands.
2. The Patient Landowner The landowner did not stay around to supervise the tenants tightly. He did not even lay down rules or specify methods of cultivation. The master left the tenants to do their job as they saw fit. God is not a tyrannical taskmaster. He knows that laboring in his vineyard is hard work. At harvest time the master sent messenger after messenger. He did not become irate or condemn the tenants after one messenger had been abused and another mistreated. Rather, he sends them his son: he does everything possible to bear with their egotism and inspire them with his understanding and generosity.
3. The Evildoer and the Slothful Are Both Rejected “Because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15). The graver sin for the Pharisees was not what they decided, but rather their selfish and blind sterility in choosing not to decide. When Christ levies the sentence against the Pharisees, he does not say, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that respects life” (as serious as this is); rather, he chides them for not producing fruit. Note that the sentence is essentially equally severe: the one offense takes life, the other refuses to give it.
Conversation with Christ: Lord Jesus, your hands knew human labor, and you sanctified your life and the lives of those around you through your toil. Help me to see the virtue you teach. Help me to return all my talents to you by the work of my hands and mind. I want to be your working apostle.
Resolution: I will accomplish today an apostolic task that I have been putting off.
http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/articulo.phtml?se=363&ca=975&te=735&id=20302
ST. JOHN JOSEPH OF THE CROSS
Published March 5, 2010 | CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY, MARCH 05, 2010
Self-denial is never an end in itself but is only a help toward greater charity—as the life of Saint John Joseph shows.
John Joseph was very ascetic even as a young man. He devoted himself even at his youngest years to a life of poverty and fasting. At 16 he joined the Franciscans in Naples; he was the first Italian to follow the reform movement of Saint Peter Alcantara. John’s reputation for holiness prompted his superiors to put him in charge of establishing a new friary even before he was ordained.
Obedience moved John to accept appointments as novice master, guardian and, finally, provincial. His years of mortification enabled him to offer these services to the friars with great charity. As guardian, he saw himslef with no higher priveledge and insisted on working in the kitchen or carrying the wood and water needed by the friars.
When his term as provincial expired, John Joseph dedicated himself to hearing confessions and practicing mortification, two concerns contrary to the spirit of the dawning Age of Enlightenment. John Joseph was canonized in 1839 and he is the patron saint of Ischilia, Italy, the place where he was born.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint.php?n=421
Sanger: “We Want To Exterminate The Negro Population”
“We Want To Exterminate The Negro Population”
– Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. [1]