Anglican Opinion

WHY IS ABORTION STILL LEGAL ?

2012-01-30T21:04:00.000-08:00

The human mind can hold onto blatant contradictions, but in order to do so it must block out certain unpleasant truths. One such uncomfortable truth has now come knocking at the door in Philadelphia, where a "house of horrors" abortion clinic was discovered. At this clinic viable babies were outright murdered after their births had been induced and they had been fully delivered. Clinic staff have testified that on hundreds of occasions, second and third trimester babies that were breathing, moving and even crying were slaughtered by having their necks slit or their spines severed.

Almost everyone agrees that killing newborn babies constitutes murder.

And yet, late-term abortions, effectively right up to the moment of natural birth, are not illegal in many parts of the United States.

Given all that we know about the unborn human being, it is clear that force of will, rather than genuine ignorance, now seems to be the driving force behind abortion. Our society simply wants abortion to stay legal regardless of the facts. It is not that we don't know the truth; rather, that we don't want to be reminded. It's a strange madness, with teams of doctors struggling to keep premature infants alive in hospitals where just a floor away, babies are being killed and discarded.

The truth is a powerful thing; over time, throughout history, it has always won the moral battles, and there is no doubt that one day, abortion will be rejected and recognized as an unspeakable evil. Until that day comes the journey continues to require courage and sacrifice on the part of those who carry the responsibility of knowing the truth. It is up to us to awaken the conscience of our society, one person at a time.

SOROS MONEY AGAIN

2012-01-20T17:01:00.001-08:00

The so-called leaderless Occupy movement was caught red-handed operating a nerve center staffed by professional agitators deeply tied to groups funded by billionaire activist George Soros.

The groups, most prominent among them being the Tides Center, was involved with Occupy since the anti-Wall Street movement's inception.

The radical connections were largely missed by the general public. CNN, the only news media outlet to receive exclusive access to Occupy's alleged headquarters, did not fully identify the activists found running them.

A LIST OF MODERN THINKING ERRORS

2012-01-12T14:33:00.001-08:00

I. PANTHEISM, NATURALISM AND ABSOLUTE RATIONALISM
1. There exists no Supreme, all-wise, all-provident Divine Being, distinct from the universe, and God is identical with the nature of things, and is, therefore, subject to changes. In effect, God is produced in man and in the world, and all things are God and have the very substance of God, and God is one and the same thing with the world, and, therefore, spirit with matter, necessity with liberty, good with evil, justice with injustice. -- Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.
2. All action of God upon man and the world is to be denied. -- Ibid.
3. Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations. -- Ibid.
4. All the truths of religion proceed from the innate strength of human reason; hence reason is the ultimate standard by which man can and ought to arrive at the knowledge of all truths of every kind. -- Ibid. and Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846, etc.
5. Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the advancement of human reason. -- Ibid.
6. The faith of Christ is in opposition to human reason and divine revelation not only is not useful, but is even hurtful to the perfection of man. -- Ibid.
7. The prophecies and miracles set forth and recorded in the Sacred Scriptures are the fiction of poets, and the mysteries of the Christian faith the result of philosophical investigations. In the books of the Old and the New Testament there are contained mythical inventions, and Jesus Christ is Himself a myth.
II. MODERATE RATIONALISM
8. As human reason is placed on a level with religion itself, so theological must be treated in the same manner as philosophical sciences. -- Allocution "Singulari quadam," Dec. 9, 1854.
9. All the dogmas of the Christian religion are indiscriminately the object of natural science or philosophy, and human reason, enlightened solely in an historical way, is able, by its own natural strength and principles, to attain to the true science of even the most abstruse dogmas; provided only that such dogmas be proposed to reason itself as its object. -- Letters to the Archbishop of Munich, "Gravissimas inter," Dec. 11, 1862, and "Tuas libenter," Dec. 21, 1863.
10. As the philosopher is one thing, and philosophy another, so it is the right and duty of the philosopher to subject himself to the authority which he shall have proved to be true; but philosophy neither can nor ought to submit to any such authority. -- Ibid., Dec. 11, 1862.
11. The Church not only ought never to pass judgment on philosophy, but ought to tolerate the errors of philosophy, leaving it to correct itself. -- Ibid., Dec. 21, 1863.
12. The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman congregations impede the true progress of science. -- Ibid.
13. The method and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to the demands of our times and to the progress of the sciences. -- Ibid.
14. Philosophy is to be treated without taking any account of supernatural revelation. -- Ibid.
III. INDIFFERENTISM, LATITUDINARIANISM
15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true. -- Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862; Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.
16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation. -- Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846.
17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. -- Encyclical "Quanto conficiamur," Aug. 10, 1863, etc.
18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church. -- Encyclical "Noscitis," Dec. 8, 1849.
IV. SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM, SECRET SOCIETIES, BIBLICAL SOCIETIES, CLERICO-LIBERAL SOCIETIES
Pests of this kind are frequently reprobated in the severest terms in the Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846, Allocution "Quibus quantisque," April 20, 1849, Encyclical "Noscitis et nobiscum," Dec. 8, 1849, Allocution "Singulari quadam," Dec. 9, 1854, Encyclical "Quanto conficiamur," Aug. 10, 1863.
V. ERRORS CONCERNING THE CHURCH AND HER RIGHTS
19. The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free- nor is she endowed with proper and perpetual rights of her own, conferred upon her by her Divine Founder; but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church, and the limits within which she may exercise those rights. -- Allocution "Singulari quadam," Dec. 9, 1854, etc.
20. The ecclesiastical power ought not to exercise its authority without the permission and assent of the civil government. -- Allocution "Meminit unusquisque," Sept. 30, 1861.
21. The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion. -- Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.
22. The obligation by which Catholic teachers and authors are strictly bound is confined to those things only which are proposed to universal belief as dogmas of faith by the infallible judgment of the Church. -- Letter to the Archbishop of Munich, "Tuas libenter," Dec. 21, 1863.
23. Roman pontiffs and ecumenical councils have wandered outside the limits of their powers, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even erred in defining matters of faith and morals. -- Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.
24. The Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect. -- Apostolic Letter "Ad Apostolicae," Aug. 22, 1851.
25. Besides the power inherent in the episcopate, other temporal power has been attributed to it by the civil authority granted either explicitly or tacitly, which on that account is revocable by the civil authority whenever it thinks fit. -- Ibid.
26. The Church has no innate and legitimate right of acquiring and possessing property. -- Allocution "Nunquam fore," Dec. 15, 1856; Encyclical "Incredibili," Sept. 7, 1863.
27. The sacred ministers of the Church and the Roman pontiff are to be absolutely excluded from every charge and dominion over temporal affairs. -- Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.
28. It is not lawful for bishops to publish even letters Apostolic without the permission of Government. -- Allocution "Nunquam fore," Dec. 15, 1856.
29. Favours granted by the Roman pontiff ought to be considered null, unless they have been sought for through the civil government. -- Ibid.
30. The immunity of the Church and of ecclesiastical persons derived its origin from civil law. -- Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.
31. The ecclesiastical forum or tribunal for the temporal causes, whether civil or criminal, of clerics, ought by all means to be abolished, even without consulting and against the protest of the Holy See. -- Allocution "Nunquam fore," Dec. 15, 1856; Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852.
32. The personal immunity by which clerics are exonerated from military conscription and service in the army may be abolished without violation either of natural right or equity. Its abolition is called for by civil progress, especially in a society framed on the model of a liberal government. -- Letter to the Bishop of Monreale "Singularis nobisque," Sept. 29, 1864.
33. It does not appertain exclusively to the power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction by right, proper and innate, to direct the teaching of theological questions. -- Letter to the Archbishop of Munich, "Tuas libenter," Dec. 21, 1863.
34. The teaching of those who compare the Sovereign Pontiff to a prince, free and acting in the universal Church, is a doctrine which prevailed in the Middle Ages. -- Apostolic Letter "Ad Apostolicae," Aug. 22, 1851.
35. There is nothing to prevent the decree of a general council, or the act of all peoples, from transferring the supreme pontificate from the bishop and city of Rome to another bishop and another city. -- Ibid.
36. The definition of a national council does not admit of any subsequent discussion, and the civil authority car assume this principle as the basis of its acts. -- Ibid.
37. National churches, withdrawn from the authority of the Roman pontiff and altogether separated, can be established. -- Allocution "Multis gravibusque," Dec. 17, 1860.
38. The Roman pontiffs have, by their too arbitrary conduct, contributed to the division of the Church into Eastern and Western. -- Apostolic Letter "Ad Apostolicae," Aug. 22, 1851.
VI. ERRORS ABOUT CIVIL SOCIETY, CONSIDERED BOTH IN ITSELF AND IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH
39. The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits. -- Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.
40. The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well- being and interests of society. -- Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846; Allocution "Quibus quantisque," April 20, 1849.
41. The civil government, even when in the hands of an infidel sovereign, has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs. It therefore possesses not only the right called that of "exsequatur," but also that of appeal, called "appellatio ab abusu." -- Apostolic Letter "Ad Apostolicae," Aug. 22, 1851
42. In the case of conflicting laws enacted by the two powers, the civil law prevails. -- Ibid.
43. The secular Dower has authority to rescind, declare and render null, solemn conventions, commonly called concordats, entered into with the Apostolic See, regarding the use of rights appertaining to ecclesiastical immunity, without the consent of the Apostolic See, and even in spite of its protest. -- Allocution "Multis gravibusque," Dec. 17, 1860; Allocution "In consistoriali," Nov. 1, 1850.
44. The civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government: hence, it can pass judgment on the instructions issued for the guidance of consciences, conformably with their mission, by the pastors of the Church. Further, it has the right to make enactments regarding the administration of the divine sacraments, and the dispositions necessary for receiving them. -- Allocutions "In consistoriali," Nov. 1, 1850, and "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.
45. The entire government of public schools in which the youth- of a Christian state is educated, except (to a certain extent) in the case of episcopal seminaries, may and ought to appertain to the civil power, and belong to it so far that no other authority whatsoever shall be recognized as having any right to interfere in the discipline of the schools, the arrangement of the studies, the conferring of degrees, in the choice or approval of the teachers. -- Allocutions "Quibus luctuosissimis," Sept. 5, 1851, and "In consistoriali," Nov. 1, 1850.
46. Moreover, even in ecclesiastical seminaries, the method of studies to be adopted is subject to the civil authority. -- Allocution "Nunquam fore," Dec. 15, 1856.
47. The best theory of civil society requires that popular schools open to children of every class of the people, and, generally, all public institutes intended for instruction in letters and philosophical sciences and for carrying on the education of youth, should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, control and interference, and should be fully subjected to the civil and political power at the pleasure of the rulers, and according to the standard of the prevalent opinions of the age. -- Epistle to the Archbishop of Freiburg, "Cum non sine," July 14, 1864.
48. Catholics may approve of the system of educating youth unconnected with Catholic faith and the power of the Church, and which regards the knowledge of merely natural things, and only, or at least primarily, the ends of earthly social life. -- Ibid.
49. The civil power may prevent the prelates of the Church and the faithful from communicating freely and mutually with the Roman pontiff. -- Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.
50. Lay authority possesses of itself the right of presenting bishops, and may require of them to undertake the administration of the diocese before they receive canonical institution, and the Letters Apostolic from the Holy See. -- Allocution "Nunquam fore," Dec. 15, 1856.
51. And, further, the lay government has the right of deposing bishops from their pastoral functions, and is not bound to obey the Roman pontiff in those things which relate to the institution of bishoprics and the appointment of bishops. -- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852, Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.
52. Government can, by its own right, alter the age prescribed by the Church for the religious profession of women and men; and may require of all religious orders to admit no person to take solemn vows without its permission. -- Allocution "Nunquam fore," Dec. 15, 1856.
53. The laws enacted for the protection of religious orders and regarding their rights and duties ought to be abolished; nay, more, civil Government may lend its assistance to all who desire to renounce the obligation which they have undertaken of a religious life, and to break their vows. Government may also suppress the said religious orders, as likewise collegiate churches and simple benefices, even those of advowson and subject their property and revenues to the administration and pleasure of the civil power. -- Allocutions "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852; "Probe memineritis," Jan. 22, 1855; "Cum saepe," July 26, 1855.
54. Kings and princes are not only exempt from the jurisdiction of the Church, but are superior to the Church in deciding questions of jurisdiction. -- Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.
55. The Church ought to be separated from the .State, and the State from the Church. -- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852.
VII. ERRORS CONCERNING NATURAL AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS
56. Moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction, and it is not at all necessary that human laws should be made conformable to the laws of nature and receive their power of binding from God. -- Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.
57. The science of philosophical things and morals and also civil laws may and ought to keep aloof from divine and ecclesiastical authority. -- Ibid.
58. No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter, and all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure. -- Ibid.; Encyclical "Quanto conficiamur," Aug. 10, 1863.
59. Right consists in the material fact. All human duties are an empty word, and all human facts have the force of right. -- Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.
60. Authority is nothing else but numbers and the sum total of material forces. -- Ibid.
61. The injustice of an act when successful inflicts no injury on the sanctity of right. -- Allocution "Jamdudum cernimus," March 18, 1861.
62. The principle of non-intervention, as it is called, ought to be proclaimed and observed. -- Allocution "Novos et ante," Sept. 28, 1860.
63. It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel against them. -- Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1864; Allocution "Quibusque vestrum," Oct. 4, 1847; "Noscitis et Nobiscum," Dec. 8, 1849; Apostolic Letter "Cum Catholica."
64. The violation of any solemn oath, as well as any wicked and flagitious action repugnant to the eternal law, is not only not blamable but is altogether lawful and worthy of the highest praise when done through love of country. -- Allocution "Quibus quantisque," April 20, 1849.
VIII. ERRORS CONCERNING CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
65. The doctrine that Christ has raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament cannot be at all tolerated. -- Apostolic Letter "Ad Apostolicae," Aug. 22, 1851.
66. The Sacrament of Marriage is only a something accessory to the contract and separate from it, and the sacrament itself consists in the nuptial benediction alone. -- Ibid.
67. By the law of nature, the marriage tie is not indissoluble, and in many cases divorce properly so called may be decreed by the civil authority. -- Ibid.; Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852.
68. The Church has not the power of establishing diriment impediments of marriage, but such a power belongs to the civil authority by which existing impediments are to be removed. -- Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.
69. In the dark ages the Church began to establish diriment impediments, not by her own right, but by using a power borrowed from the State. -- Apostolic Letter "Ad Apostolicae," Aug. 22, 1851.
70. The canons of the Council of Trent, which anathematize those who dare to deny to the Church the right of establishing diriment impediments, either are not dogmatic or must be understood as referring to such borrowed power. -- Ibid.
71. The form of solemnizing marriage prescribed by the Council of Trent, under pain of nullity, does not bind in cases where the civil law lays down another form, and declares that when this new form is used the marriage shall be valid.
72. Boniface VIII was the first who declared that the vow of chastity taken at ordination renders marriage void. -- Ibid.
73. In force of a merely civil contract there may exist between Christians a real marriage, and it is false to say either that the marriage contract between Christians is always a sacrament, or that there is no contract if the sacrament be excluded. -- Ibid.; Letter to the King of Sardinia, Sept. 9, 1852; Allocutions "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852, "Multis gravibusque," Dec. 17, 1860.
74. Matrimonial causes and espousals belong by their nature to civil tribunals. -- Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9 1846; Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851, "Ad Apostolicae," Aug. 22, 1851; Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852.
IX. ERRORS REGARDING THE CIVIL POWER OF THE SOVEREIGN PONTIFF
75. The children of the Christian and Catholic Church are divided amongst themselves about the compatibility of the temporal with the spiritual power. -- "Ad Apostolicae," Aug. 22, 1851.
76. The abolition of the temporal power of which the Apostolic See is possessed would contribute in the greatest degree to the liberty and prosperity of the Church. -- Allocutions "Quibus quantisque," April 20, 1849, "Si semper antea," May 20, 1850.
X. ERRORS HAVING REFERENCE TO MODERN LIBERALISM
77. In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship. -- Allocution "Nemo vestrum," July 26, 1855.
78. Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship. -- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852.
79. Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism. -- Allocution "Nunquam fore," Dec. 15, 1856.
80. The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.- -Allocution "Jamdudum cernimus," March 18, 1861.
The faith teaches us and human reason demonstrates that a double order of things exists, and that we must therefore distinguish between the two earthly powers, the one of natural origin which provides for secular affairs and the tranquillity of human society, the other of supernatural origin, which presides over the City of God, that is to say the Church of Christ, which has been divinely instituted for the sake of souls and of eternal salvation.... The duties of this twofold power are most wisely ordered in such a way that to God is given what is God's (Matt. 22:21), and because of God to Caesar what is Caesar's, who is great because he is smaller than heaven. Certainly the Church has never disobeyed this divine command, the Church which always and everywhere instructs the faithful to show the respect which they should inviolably have for the supreme authority and its secular rights....
. . . Venerable Brethren, you see clearly enough how sad and full of perils is the condition of Catholics in the regions of Europe which We have mentioned. Nor are things any better or circumstances calmer in America, where some regions are so hostile to Catholics that their governments seem to deny by their actions the Catholic faith they claim to profess. In fact, there, for the last few years, a ferocious war on the Church, its institutions and the rights of the Apostolic See has been raging.... Venerable Brothers, it is surprising that in our time such a great war is being waged against the Catholic Church. But anyone who knows the nature, desires and intentions of the sects, whether they be called masonic or bear another name, and compares them with the nature the systems and the vastness of the obstacles by which the Church has been assailed almost everywhere, cannot doubt that the present misfortune must mainly be imputed to the frauds and machinations of these sects. It is from them that the synagogue of Satan, which gathers its troops against the Church of Christ, takes its strength. In the past Our predecessors, vigilant even from the beginning in Israel, had already denounced them to the kings and the nations, and had condemned them time and time again, and even We have not failed in this duty. If those who would have been able to avert such a deadly scourge had only had more faith in the supreme Pastors of the Church! But this scourge, winding through sinuous caverns, . . . deceiving many with astute frauds, finally has arrived at the point where it comes forth impetuously from its hiding places and triumphs as a powerful master. Since the throng of its propagandists has grown enormously, these wicked groups think that they have already become masters of the world and that they have almost reached their pre-established goal. Having sometimes obtained what they desired, and that is power, in several countries, they boldly turn the help of powers and authorities which they have secured to trying to submit the Church of God to the most cruel servitude, to undermine the foundations on which it rests, to contaminate its splendid qualities; and, moreover, to strike it with frequent blows, to shake it, to overthrow it, and, if possible, to make it disappear completely from the earth. Things being thus, Venerable Brothers, make every effort to defend the faithful which are entrusted to you against the insidious contagion of these sects and to save from perdition those who unfortunately have inscribed themselves in such sects. Make known and attack those who, whether suffering from, or planning, deception, are not afraid to affirm that these shady congregations aim only at the profit of society, at progress and mutual benefit. Explain to them often and impress deeply on their souls the Papal constitutions on this subject and teach, them that the masonic associations are anathematized by them not only in Europe but also in America and wherever they may be in the whole world.
To the Archbishops and Bishops of Prussia concerning the situation of the Catholic Church faced with persecution by that Government....
But although they (the bishops resisting persecution) should be praised rather than pitied, the scorn of episcopal dignity, the violation of the liberty and the rights of the Church, the ill treatment which does not only oppress those dioceses, but also the others of the Kingdom of Prussia, demand that We, owing to the Apostolic office with which God has entrusted us in spite of Our insufficient merit, protest against laws which have produced such great evils and make one fear even greater ones; and as far as we are able to do so with the sacred authority of divine law, We vindicate for the Church the freedom which has been trodden underfoot with sacrilegious violence. That is why by this letter we intend to do Our duty by announcing openly to all those whom this matter concerns and to the whole Catholic world, that these laws are null and void because they are absolutely contrary to the divine constitution of the Church. In fact, with respect to matters which concern the holy ministry, Our Lord did not put the mighty of this century in charge, but Saint Peter, whom he entrusted not only with feeding his sheep, but also the goats; therefore no power in the world, however great it may be, can deprive of the pastoral office those whom the Holy Ghost has made Bishops in order to feed the Church of God.

HOMO LOBBY GROUP MOSTLY FUNDED BY TAXES

2012-01-07T08:16:00.001-08:00

European human rights lawyer J.C. von Krempach has taken a close look at the funding stream of the International Gay and Lesbian Association – Europe (ILGA) and concluded that most of the money comes from governments. Writing in the foreign policy blog Turtle Bay and Beyond, von Krempach found a vast majority of ILGA’s funds come from just two governmental entities, the European Commission and the Dutch government.

MIND-ALTERING DRUGS

2011-12-08T14:58:00.001-08:00

Women who take the contraceptive pill are interfering with the way they remember information, research suggests. Experts say women who take oral birth control tend to remember different aspects of an incident from those with natural menstrual cycles. By changing a woman’s hormone balance, the Pill alters the way she remembers information, the study suggests.

Those taking the drug are less likely to remember details of an event, but instead retain its overall emotional impact. These 'left brain' chemicals have been linked with women’s ability to remember events logically.

GIRL SCOUTS AND ABORTION

2011-11-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

The Girl Scouts “100th Anniversary” Convention in Houston this past weekend sparked a firestorm of protests from conservatives and pro-life advocates over the Girl Scouts’ speakers: an A-list of entertainers, journalists, and philanthropists that included many champions of pro-abortion and LGBT causes.

The speaker lineup was but a symptom of a deeper pathology, according to current and former Girl Scouts. Behind the badges, slogans, and cookies is a deadly reality: the Girl Scouts’ ongoing partnerships with U.S. and international advocates, like Planned Parenthood and affiliated organizations, which sell a distinctly un-holy vision of sexual empowerment secured by contraception and abortion.

Particularly troublesome is the Girl Scouts’ relationship with WAGGGS, the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, an international agitator for abortion, contraceptives, sexual diversity and “comprehensive” sexuality education. WAGGGS delegates, for example, helped draft the controversial 2010 World Youth Conference NGO document demanding global support for “abortion” and “LGBTTIQ issues." (See the excellent links at 100questionsforthegirlscouts.org, girlscoutswhynot.com and honestgirlscouts.com.)

It’s a situation that’s unconscionable for Christians. And a growing number have left the Girl Scouts, embracing a mission to tell other families what they’ve uncovered.

Christy Volanski, a former Scout leader, and her daughters Tess and Sydney are prime examples. They left the Scouts in 2010 when they saw evidence—materials, resources, and partnerships--that their Girl Scout dues promoted an agenda of abortion, contraception, explicit sex education, and homosexuality. Their website, speaknowgirlscouts.com, tells their story and offers details, screen shots, and web links that lay the facts bare. “We felt so hurt and betrayed when we found out about this agenda…There is no reason for other families to…be deceived,” says Christy.

So where’s the Catholic Church in all this?
Not where you’d expect.

It’s quite literally in the Girl Scouts’ camp. The National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry (NFCYM), the Church’s representative and “advocate” for Catholic Girl Scouts, occupied Booth 932 in the Girl Scout Exhibit Hall in Houston. The NFCYM, which connects some 700,000 Catholic Scout members with the Church and provides Catholic materials for the Girl Scouts’ religious recognition program, set up shop near the official Girl Scouts’ booth and the large WAGGGS exhibit—a great space to “meet and greet” as they promoted their religious recognition materials.

Nary a public word about the Girl Scouts’ links to groups promoting abortion, homosexuality, and sexual “rights” for teens. Or about the controversial speakers.

For parents like Christy Volanski, the NFCYM’s cozy relationship with the Girl Scouts creates a smokescreen that obscures a disturbing reality. The NFCYM website and FAQs, along with the NFCYM-GSUSA position papers, gloss over the Girl Scouts’ involvement with pro-abortion advocates, suggesting erroneously that parents need not worry. As a result, parents who do see problems with the Scouts find themselves stymied by pastors, bishops and laypeople who interpret NFCYM’s relationship with the Scouts as unqualified approval.

Rochelle Focaracci, a former Scout leader from Georgia and the co-founder of girlscoutswhynot.com, believes that the NFCYM posture simply “confuses the youth they are there to protect.” Her Florida-based co-founder and sister, Lisa Larsson, puts the problem simply: “We need NFCYM to speak out, to acknowledge that there is a problem with the Girl Scouts.”

They’re not holding their breath.

In spite of the documentation on websites like speaknowgirlscouts.com and 100questionsforthegirlscouts.org, the NFCYM and its Executive Director, Bob McCarty, have failed to acknowledge the extent of the Girl Scouts’ problems—and they’ve failed at least in part because the NFCYM’s fact-finding process is seriously flawed. Instead of insisting on rigorous, independent investigations of credible complaints, the NFCYM states in its position statement that questions will be resolved by “directly contacting GSUSA” for answers.

This first step, however, is typically the last, as the NFCYM seems willing to accept GSUSA answers as gospel truth without independent factual corroboration, parent interviews, or consultations with knowledgeable experts (including former Girl Scouts).

It makes no sense, says Rochelle, from girlscoutswhynot.com “If we had to investigate a robbery, we would not ask the robber if he robbed the bank.”

McCarty’s July 2011 interview with Our Sunday Visitor added insult to injury for these Girl Scout activists. McCarty dismissed out of hand the possibility that the Girl Scouts might advocate or partner with pro-abortion groups. “Most of the concerns I hear from parents are about what they heard or saw written on blogs and websites engaging in misinformation. It’s never anything they saw themselves.”

Perhaps McCarty needs to look more closely.

For example, the NFCYM FAQs flatly state that it’s “not true” that national and local councils support Planned Parenthood. In an interview last week, McCarty referred often to the “position statement” in which GSUSA promised that no Girl Scout “monies” will flow to organizations like Planned Parenthood---as if written assurances settled the matter.

Even Girl Scout spokeswoman Michelle Tompkins (who deferred comments on these topics until later this week) has distinguished between partnerships by the national organization and those of local councils. “We have not and do not partner with Planned Parenthood on the national level,” she claimed. However, ”local councils are free to partner with whomever they choose…”

And they do. For example, a quick web search yielded 2011 evidence of a Girl Scouts of NY PENN partnership with a Planned Parenthood initiative (with links to explicit websites) for the Scouts’ body image project.

Susan Riedley, a current Girl Scout leader who created the site honestgirlscouts.com “challenges” McCarty to go directly to source materials---on her website and others--and “investigate the links for himself.” McCarty says he’s “clicked around” a few times to address concerns but feels that the grievance procedure established with the GSUSA bears better results. He insists that, “We need to be in these conversations [with the Girl Scouts]…You can’t even raise the questions if you are not in relationship with them.”

True enough, but the follow-up question is, “Then what?”

The point of raising questions with the Girl Scouts isn’t to prompt technical compliance as they sanitize websites and books. Similarly, the narrow scope of the GSUSA-NFCYM position statement—whether the Girl Scouts directly fund or partner with Planned Parenthood, through dues versus cookie profits, locally or nationally, with parental permission or without, etc.--misses the point. And it deftly redirects attention away from the enmeshed relationship between abortion-promoting-WAGGGS and the Girl Scouts USA.

In my view, McCarty’s failure to commission a thorough, independent review of the facts behind the Girl Scouts’ affiliations—while taking the Girl Scouts’ denials at face value--betrays the trust of Catholic youth and their parents.

While McCarty insists NFCYM must “stay in the conversation” with the GSUSA, concerned parents find themselves on the outside, rarely consulted and with little opportunity to present their evidence or see it taken seriously. And, they wonder, when does the desire to “stay in the conversation” morph into playing the willing dupe, providing “Catholic” cover for the Girl Scouts’ complicity in feminist and liberal causes?

“Process” isn’t the only reason why NFCYM needs a push to address the seriousness of the Girl Scouts’ issues. McCarty also disagrees on the relative importance of certain Girl Scout affiliations, including the WAGGGS relationship. McCarty’s current focus is not on the WAGGGS relationship, but on getting buy-in from the Girl Scouts for an approval process for materials, plus an initiative to establish relationships between diocesan youth ministers and local council leaders.

Reasonable goals, certainly. But they strike me as the scouting equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.

He doesn’t see it that way. McCarty believes that the WAGGGS influence is “fairly far removed from our kids” and “doesn’t filter down.” As for the millions of dollars that flow into WAGGGS coffers from GSUSA? McCarty likens the WAGGGS dues (a head count based on a country’s number of Girl Scouts) to the U.S. taxpayer’s support for the United Nations.

The analogy limps. Girl Scouts’ membership is voluntary. The Church doesn’t have to sponsor troops. (In fact, there’s even an excellent alternative that’s exploding in popularity—the values-rich, American Heritage Girls.) And the Church’s voluntary participation looks like an endorsement.

Jane Petry, a 67-year-old Girl Scout veteran, spent last weekend at the Houston convention distributing flyers highlighting the Planned Parenthood—GSUSA connection. To her, the money flow is a repugnant cooperation with moral evil. Volanski calls it “mind boggling” that, through GSUSA membership, “Catholic Girl Scouts are supporting this global agenda to bring sexual rights (including emergency contraception and abortion) to all young people.”

Volanski says WAGGGS’ influence does have “a real impact on the local Catholic girl in a local troop in many different ways,” from the WAGGGS pin girl wear to express global sisterhood, to the problematic Journeys project books that routinely plug WAGGGS, to WAGGGS-related fundraising activities, to international visits to WAGGGS chalets, and to global advocacy.

Even so, McCarty doubts that the influence “is as pervasive as you think.” Besides, he maintains, “We can pretend that we can protect our kids from this stuff or we can prepare them…”

In spite of the disagreement between NFCYM and the Girl Scout activists over the significance of the Girl Scouts’ issues, McCarty did intimate that while he’s committed to dialogue, lack of “movement” by the Girl Scouts on these issues may trigger “decisions” in the future.

The Church has financial leverage, if it’s willing to use it. McCarty estimates 700,000 Christians are members of the GSUSA. At $12 per year, Catholic support delivers roughly $8.4 million to the Girl Scouts, not including funds earned by Catholic Girl Scouts’ fundraising or cookie sales, or the millions of volunteer hours donated by Catholic adults.

How to move forward?

I strongly urge the NFCYM, or the USCCB in its oversight capacity, to create a focused working group with a mandate to assess the extent and impact of the Girl Scouts’ connection to WAGGGS’ and other groups.

That working group should include at least three leaders from the Girl Scouts watchdog websites. They know the issues, have spent hundreds of hours on their own time tracking down facts, and have been overlooked by the NFCYM for too long. If the NFCYM can spend hours in conversation with the Girl Scouts, it needs to engage these committed Catholic parents as a resource to be taken seriously.

The project should have a short deadline, delivering a report in advance of Bob McCarty’s planned meeting Anna Maria Chavez, the new CEO of the Girl Scouts. (Reportedly Catholic, in 2009 Chavez spoke at a women’s event co-sponsored by the local Planned Parenthood.)

Finally, the end game must be clearly defined, more than vague “movement.” GSUSA has stonewalled its critics by splitting hairs, arguing narrow points, with semantics about official or unofficial relationships with Planned Parenthood, national versus local level, parental permission or not, whether monies flow from membership dues, cookie sales, or other funds, etc.

In my view, either GSUSA severs its ties to WAGGGS and creates an explicit policy forbidding partnerships, affiliations, and resources from Planned parenthood-like organizations—or the Churches should withdraw sponsorship of all Girl Scouts troops (convert to American Heritage Girls) and recommend that individual Christians withdraw from the Scouts as well.

It’s time. Christian families deserve clarity, delivered with courage

SAME SEX "MARRIAGE" IS UNHEALTHY FOR EVERYONE.

2011-11-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

The defenders of marriage should take advantage of what is known about same-sex attraction (SSA), because those promoting the redefinition of marriage have manipulated public opinion by distorting the facts and research. The five main distortions are:

1) Persons with SSA are born that way.
2) Persons with SSA can’t change.
3) Persons with SSA are just as healthy as persons in husband/wife marriages.
4) Same-sex relationships are just like husband/wife marriages except for the sex of the partners.
5) Children acquired by persons in same-sex relationships don’t have excess problems.

There are numerous studies refuting the first two points and no credible studies supporting either.
There are numerous well-designed large studies which have found that persons with SSA are far more likely that married men and women to suffer from:

· Psychological disorders
· Sexual additions and paraphilias
· Suicidal ideation and attempts
· Substance abuse and addiction, including to drugs, alcohol and cigarettes
· To have unstable, unfaithful, non-permanent, non-exclusive relationships
· To have health problems, particularly STDs including HIV and cancer
· To have been victims of sexual abuse, rape, or domestic violence

Those defending marriage frequently point out that same-sex relationships lack complementarity, but fail to explain how that lack affects the quality of the relationship and causes one or both of the partners to sacrifice something essential to their human dignity. Same-sex relationships fall into a number of patterns. The following list covers some of these patterns and how the lack of natural complementarity negatively impacts individuals involved:

1) Pseudo husband or wife – The man imitating the role of the wife senses it is unmanly to be dependent on another man. The woman imitating the role of husband often still wants to mother.
2) Parent/child – The younger male partner by accepting the child role sacrifices his right to become a full adult. The woman accepting the child role becomes permanently dependent. The relationship is inherently incestuous.
3) Asexual friendship – Many same-sex relationships start passionately and quickly devolve into asexual friendships. The same-sex friend no longer excites passion. The males in asexual friendships engage in casual sex outside the relationship. Among women, the “dead bed” is common. Asexual friendships do not need to be recognized as marriages.
4) Clones/fusion – Persons in some same-sex relationships try to eradicate all differences. Individuality is not tolerated
5) Loneliness caused by absence of the other sex or fear of the other sex caused by abuse – The persons involved sacrifice their natural heterosexuality. These relationships are inherently unstable and the person may, when the opportunity occurs, return to a heterosexual relationship.

Same-sex relationships do not promote the best interests or meet the real needs of the persons involved. The push for social recognition may be motivated by the erroneous belief that their relationship problems are caused by external forces rather than the inherent lack of true complementarity.
Children acquired by same-sex couples are also subject to problems inherent in their status. In addition, same-sex couples are more likely to be at risk for a number of problems which directly impact their ability to parent.
1) Intrinsic Factors – Every child acquired by a same sex couple has by definition been separated from one or both of his biological parents, through death, desertion, single parenthood, foster care, adoption, artificial insemination donor, or surrogate motherhood. Even in the best of circumstances such separation is perceived by the child as a loss. A same-sex couple is never the best of circumstances. It is by definition second best because it lacks a parent of both sexes. Worse still this particular tragedy is not accidental, but the result of the conscious, planned action of the persons on whom the child is dependent. These children are purposefully and permanently made fatherless or motherless. In addition, same-sex families with children function like a cult. The child’s loss is denied. The children are made to feel that their legitimate desire for a parent of both sexes is a betrayal of their family’s sacrifice in the face of a hostile, non-accepting, homophobic culture.
2) Risk Factors —Persons with SSA are far more likely than married men and women to suffer from psychological disorders, sexual addiction and paraphilias, suicidal ideation and attempts, unstable relationships, health problems, and to have been victims of abuse or violence. These problems rarely occur singly. Many persons with SSA suffer from a combination of disorders. In addition each same-sex relationship contains two persons who are at high risk, doubling the potential for a sub-optimum outcome. One has to ask: Are social workers intentionally ignoring problems when placing children with same-sex couples who have serious problems?
Those defending marriage need to make this information known.

ALL SOUSL DAY - NOVEMBER 2

2011-11-02T12:59:00.000-07:00

A thick fog has settled on the shore. The sun looks bleached and bone-white, almost like the moon.
Usually I head to the beach in the warmer months, but some impulse has called me here on this crisp November morning. Strangely, the beach is filled with other people, walking slowly and huddled together against the chill.
Suddenly I realize someone is walking with me, a young man with luminous blonde hair and – oh, no, am I losing my mind? I swear he has wings!
He sees my perplexed expression and nods in a friendly way.
“Yes, an angel, you’re correct.” He falls into step with me.
“But I thought angels couldn’t be seen.” I’m growing more nervous by the second.
“Oh, usually that’s the case,” he says, “but every so often, we make an exception.”
The fog is growing thicker, and the people on the shore look cold and somewhat forlorn. As if reading my thoughts, the angel draws closer to me, and I feel warmth radiating from him.
“Most people don’t realize how cozy feathers are,” he chuckles.
Now I know something is wrong, because here I am on the beach in November and I’m talking to an angel.
“Who are all these people?” I just have to know, even if the answer might be scary.
“They are the souls in Purgatory,” he replies. “The ones we call the faithful departed.”
I notice many people are dressed in the fashions of centuries ago, so they have clearly been walking the beach a long time.
The angel seems to read my mind. “You see, some poor souls don’t have people on Earth to pray for them,” he explains. “Perhaps their relatives abandoned the Church, and no longer believe in Purgatory --or maybe these souls have no living family members left on Earth.”
Just then, I notice a few people wading into the ocean and then swimming toward an island, which looks sun-streaked and dense with trees.
Even though it’s far away, I can see everything distinctly: people climbing out onto the sloping shore and being met by angels, who wrap them in blankets and hand them steaming cups of tea.
“That’s heaven, of course, and it’s just a short swim away,” the angel says. “The faithful departed who are swimming there have families on Earth having Masses celebrated in their memory and praying for them.”
I feel an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I have no children, and most of my relatives are not Catholic, so I have to ask: “Do only souls who have people praying for them get to heaven?”
The angel smiles in the kindest way. “Even if no one prays for you, heaven awaits all who die in a state of grace. It just takes longer to get there.”
Suddenly I hear an owl hooting quite insistently, and in that instant, the angel starts dissolving.
“No, don’t leave me!” I cry out, but he’s gone.
I wake up and realize the owl is hooting in a tree outside my window.
I glance at the clock: It is 3 a.m. on November 2, All Souls’ Day.
It was just a dream, I assure myself, but as I scrunch the pillow to make it more comfortable, a feather drifts out of the case and flutters to the floor.
A few hours later, I go Mass and offer up my Holy Communion for the souls of the faithful departed on my list: my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends.
But the angel’s message struck deep, so I don’t stop there. I also remember the poor souls who have no one to pray for them.
And as I offer my prayers for these forgotten ones, I imagine them one day leaving the foggy shore and swimming to that distant golden island.

SLAVERY HAS NOT BEEN ABOLISHED - IN CERTAIN COUNTRIES

2011-10-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

Muslim slave trade in Africa has lasted 14 centuries and continues to this day in places like Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.

2. Over 17 million slaves (mostly black women and children) were transported out of Africa by Islamic traders. Another 85 million are believed to have died en route.

3. The Prophet Muhammad practiced and approved of slavery, and directed his men to do the same.

4. The Qur’an devotes more verses to informing Muslim men of their right to keep women as sex slaves, than it does to telling them to pray five times a day.

5. The Arabic word for “black” (Abd) is synonymous with the word for “slave”.

6. Muhammad’s father-in-law, Umar declared that Arabs could not be taken as slaves, and freed all Arab slaves. This led to the wide Islamic campaign to capture slaves in Africa, Europe and Asia.

7. Western slave trade exploited Africans primarily for agricultural labor. The Arab slave trade on the other hand, has more often used men for military service, and women for sex and for their wombs – to produce children who will be Muslims.

8. Many Muslim leaders since Muhammad have had harems of hundreds (or even thousands) of non-Muslim young girls and women to service their desires.

9. Converting to Islam does not automatically grant a slave his freedom, although this is said to increase the slave master’s heavenly reward.

10. According to Islamic courts, slave masters may treat their slaves however they choose without fear of penalty.

ISA EDUCATION REALY BRAINWASHING?

2011-10-11T17:05:00.001-07:00

Is religious education a form of brainwashing? Should children be free to make their own decisions about fundamental matters of faith? These questions are provoked by the new poster sponsored by the British Humanist Association. Two gloriously happy children hold their hands in the air as if they are about to do a cartwheel. The main text reads: “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.” And floating in the background are the various labels under attack: “Buddhist child. Agnostic child. Protestant child. Humanist child. Catholic child. Atheist child...” The call to liberate children is superficially appealing but fundamentally naïve. Here are four reasons why:

First: The exercise of freedom requires some prior foundation. Children have to learn how to make choices: how to weigh things up, how to judge what is best, how to take responsibility. Any child psychologist knows this. Freedom doesn’t just happen. And an essential part of learning to choose is having some sense of the meaning of the world we inhabit, of the value of our actions, and of the significance of their consequences. In other words, freedom can’t be learnt outside a context of meaning and values.

Religious faith can help establish this context; so can a robust humanism. But to think that freedom can be learnt in a vacuum, without the sharing of any moral or philosophical convictions, is simply naïve. Children who are brought up without inherited values of any kind are actually less able to exercise their freedom and choose for themselves. Just as children who are brought up without boundaries will never be able to learn the significance of crossing them.

Second: If you believe something important to be true, then you shouldn’t pretend it is an open question. This goes for secular humanists as much as for religious believers. If, for example, you are a convinced atheist, and you think that belief in God is false at an intellectual level and damaging through its distorting effects on morality, then of course you would want to share this conviction with your children. It would be unjust to keep it from them. Similarly, if you believe in God, and you believe that this faith is not just a lifestyle choice or a cultural imperative but an objective truth with profound implications for human existence, how could you not share this conviction with your children? Yes, you want to nurture their freedom and you hope they will discover things for themselves. But if it is a question of truth – whether scientific or moral or spiritual – then you will inevitably want to guide your children along a certain path, knowing full well that they may one day choose to veer off in another direction.

Third: It’s a fantasy to imagine that children can be raised in a philosophically neutral environment without some dominant world-view. Theism – as much as atheism, materialism, or secular humanism (these terms are not synonomous) – provides a particular understanding of the meaning of the world and of human life, which will help structure a child’s understanding and values. But if you try to bring your children up in an environment which is indifferent to questions of ultimate meaning, then your purported neutrality will already have been lost. If, in effect, you say to your children, “I don’t care enough about these values or convictions to share them with you”, or “they are important to me but not important in themselves”, then you are presenting them with a very particular world-view. In this view, religious questions and all questions of ultimate meaning are relativised, and indifference is taken to be the predominant value.

To say to a child, “I don’t mind – you choose!” is to give the child the strongest possible impression that the available options are all equally significant, which is to say that none is uniquely significant. So this apparently ‘soft’ form of neutrality suggested in the poster is actually a ‘hard’ form of relativism which relegates religious and philosophical questions to the periphery of human interest.

Fourth: A strong notion of autonomy, which is essential to an individual’s freedom, requires an appreciation of one’s human dignity. Children need to know not just that they are loved but that their life has meaning and is valuable in itself. If this is not communicated in some way, then the love of the parents, however profound, will become distorted, because the children will see themselves as valuable to their parents but not valuable as persons in their own right. It doesn’t matter how this innate value is framed (‘human dignity’, ‘the sanctity of life’, etc.) as long as it is articulated somehow.

Human autonomy, rightly cherished by secular humanists, needs some notion of intrinsic human dignity to support it - otherwise it has no foundation and no meaning. So, paradoxically, in order to liberate children from the limited vision of their parents and culture, you have to imbue them with a strong sense of their own worth, of their dignity, of their significance in a framework of meaning. The humanism of the early Enlightenment held on to a strong notion of human dignity and human uniqueness, even as it became more secular. But as secular humanists have become more and more materialist in their outlook, and as materialism has failed to offer any satisfying accounts of human dignity, it has become almost impossible to avoid describing human nature in reductivist terms.

Contemporary secular humanists are largely unable to explain to children why their freedom and autonomy have any significance, why their life has any meaning – and this is why the exaltation of freedom proposed in this poster feels a bit hollow. If you really want your children to be free, you need to tell them why their freedom matters, and help them appreciate some of the values they might pursue. And to do that, you need to use at least a few labels.

THE WORK AGAINST ABORTION TAKES A HIT.

2011-09-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

What about Father Pavone?

At one time I worked with up-and-coming DJ Don Imus at a radio station in Sacramento. Although Don and I have not spoken for years, I tend to follow a bit of his newsworthiness.

Since we two collaborated in THE 70s, Don has become famous, engendered the ill-will of one Hillary Clinton and founded a ranch for disabled children in the Southwest.

The reason for grouping fame, Hillary and the ranch is the idea that, when someone is out to get you, he can usually find a way, often by unexpected means.

In Don’s case someone persuaded the IRS to investigated the nonprofit records of Don’s ranch. The someone learned that the ranch was a good nonprofit and doing its work well; however, Don and his wife lived in the ranch house rent-free some a few weeks each year. The someone through the IRS threatened the nonprofit status of the ranch unless Don paid rent to the nonprofit corporation for the use of the ranch house when he was there. News reports intimated that Don was corrupt.

One can see an enemy’s work in the IRS investigation. The enemy is obvious and she shall go unnamed.

Father Pavone has a much more powerful enemy, whose name is Satan. The work that Fr. Pavone does is successful and is helping toward elimination of legal baby-killing known as abortion. It would serve an enemy’s best interests to remove the good priest from his work.

Thus, as in Don’s case, the enemy has use alleged mis-handling of finances, or at best mis-handling of the transparency of financial records for his purpose. It is intimated that Fr. Pavone is a crook.

The enemy is intelligent but has a weak spot. It is YOU and your prayers. You are asked to use your weapon of prayer on behalf of Father Pavone.

HOW TO DRAW AN AUDIENCE OF ONE AND A HALF MILLION

2011-08-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

How does a rather shy academic guy who is in his mid-80s draw an audience of one and a half million people who are in their teens and 20s.

ANSWER: He is talking about the meaning of life, rather than about politics.

The man, of course is Joseph Ratzinger, Bishop of Rome and now Benedict XVI.

What he does is:

He teaches them that they are the future of Christianity and of the world.
He continually holds Christ up as the answer to personal and worldly problems.
He points out that Christ is found by becoming involved in the Church.
He lets them know that all of life is not joy and that as followers of Christ they will have to accept of a certain amount of suffering.
He reminds them that they are a flame of joy that needs to be carried to the ends of the earth.

A rock star could not even dream of such a large audience. There MUST be something to the Pope’s message.

We need to take it to heart.

HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR CAN BE CURED

2011-07-21T07:58:00.001-07:00

Remember that in 1 Corinthians, God's Word instructs, "Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Notice the operative phrase there: "that is what some of you were."

In other words, change from sexual immorality, including homosexuality, is possible through Jesus. Thus, when homosexual lobbyists or federal judges make the barefaced accusation that such a belief is "bigoted," we should be sure to understand that they are demonizing not just a singled Christian, but 2,000 years of Christian doctrine, and the inspired text of God Himself.

Michelle Bachmann and Ex-Gays

2011-07-18T15:04:00.001-07:00

Why have homosexual activists instigated media attention over ex-gays and the husband of Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann?
Apparently, Mr. Bachmann, who has a PhD in clinical psychology, operates several counseling centers which also offer services to homosexual clients seeking to overcome unwanted same-sex attractions. But because even one ex-homosexual proves that homosexual behavior is not innate or immutable, the homosexual lobby's fear of their former members results in false claims and attacks aimed at preventing homosexuals from exercising their right to self-determination. They cannot bear to have even one homosexual leave homosexuality, hence their outrage at Dr. Bachmann.

The ex-homosexual community includes thousands of former homosexuals who benefitted from counseling. Such men exercised their right to seek help to change those feelings.
Contrary to the myths being generated by outraged homosexuals, counseling for unwanted same-sex attractions is not prohibited by any medical association. Unhappy homosexuals are not children in need of parental permission and can freely choose their own therapeutic treatment just like anyone else.
The Bachmann incident demonstrates that as homosexuals gain more civil rights, heterosexuals are losing theirs. Because homosexuals are a wealthy and politically powerful minority, they claim access to media attention, political power and corporate influence that middle America does not have.
Dependent on the wealth of the homosexual community for his election and reelection campaigns, President Obama vigorously implements homosexual, bisexual and transgender policies at every level of the federal government, yet omits the only unpopular status of sexual orientation -- that of ex-gay.
While the media look the other way, the ex-gay community is being harassed and publicly denounced by pr-homosexual activists because of (in their eyes) an unpopular sexual orientation.
Wayne Besen of the hate group Truth Wins Out, and other modern day Sauls, stalk and expose 'out' ex-gays in a negative light to ensure that they retreat back into the closet. Lambda Legal (a pedophile group) supports the establishment of Homosexual-Lesbian-BiSexual-Transgender Centers at public universities but blocks any attempt at ex-homosexual equal access.
The Human Rights Campaign demands same-sex “marriage” for homosexuals while fighting ex-homosexual equality. One of their latest victories is to successfully bully the World Bank into denying funds to ex-gay charities while allowing homosexual organizations to participate.
Yet ex-gays are not dangerous or deluded as homosexual extremists charge. They are the National Education Association's Ex-Gay Educators Caucus. They are Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Homosexuals, which successfully sued the District of Columbia government for refusing to recognize former homosexuals in its sexual orientation protections. They are your doctors, teachers, ministers, family, and neighbors.
The American Psychological Association adheres to a code of ethics which calls on their members to respect a person's right to self-determination. Therefore the only question about the Dr. Bachmann news is this: Should homosexuals have the right to seek help and haling? That is, if a homosexual man decides he wants to live as a healthy heterosexual, should homosexuals have the right to veto that decision?

IF THEY HAVE A DISBILITY, KILL THEM

2011-06-16T17:24:00.001-07:00

Right to Life applauds the producer of TV3’s 60 Minutes programme for providing a service to our community by producing an excellent investigative documentary on the antenatal national screening programme for Down syndrome. The national screening programme targets unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome, with around 75% of them being killed. It is hoped that this TV 3 documentary will promote an informed public debate on the government’s discrimination and destruction of babies with Down syndrome

LOOK AT ALL THE EMPTY HOUSES

2011-05-29T08:27:00.000-07:00

Proclamations of overpopulation have circulated for over a century. Are they

true?

First off, what is meant by the word “overpopulation”? It has nothing to

do with the amount of people but rather to the resources and the capacity

of the environment to sustain human activities.

To be overpopulated, a nation must have insufficient food, resources and

living space.

With the world population at around 6.8 billion last year, food and

living space are hardly a concern. In 1990, it was estimated that the

world could feed up to 35 billion people. Most sources estimate that the

global population will level out at around 9.2 billion in 2050, and then

start to decline.

Indian economist Raj Krishna estimates that India alone is capable of

increasing crop yields to the point of providing the entire world’s food

supply.

Lack of food is not the problem but rather the need for more efficient

distribution.

Another supposed problem is living space.

In 2003, the entire population of the world could fit inside the state of

Arkansas. The world may seem crowded, but it’s because humans cluster

together for trade and companionship, not for lack of room. Even so, there

are those who insist that we will continue to breed exponentially, causing

a population explosion.

Paul Ehrlich first introduced this idea in 1968 with his book, “The

Population Bomb.” It succeeded in scaring the masses, just as Thomas

Malthus did, but these theories suffer under the impression that humans

are the only thing fluctuating.

“Population rose six-fold in the next 200 years. But this is an increase,

not an explosion, because it has been accompanied, and in large part made

possible, by a productivity explosion, a resource explosion, a food

explosion, an information explosion, a communications explosion, a science

explosion, and a medical explosion,” wrote community development

specialist Abid Ullah Jan in an article earlier this year called

“Overpopulation: Myths, Facts, and Politics.”

Poverty, too, is not the effect of overpopulation, but rather the

aftermath of poor leadership. In Ethiopia, government officials are blamed

for causing poverty by confiscating food and exporting it to buy arms.

In Africa, economic problems are seen as a result of excessive government

spending, taxes on farmers, inflation, trade restrictions and too much

government ownership.

Depopulation is more likely to cause economic distress than these other

factors.

Consumers are the largest component of GDP. If you drop that, it drags

down the whole economy. Schools close for lack of students, neighborhoods

are void of children, labor shortages cramp productivity and the list goes

on.

With fewer children we would be faced with an aging population causing

generational warfare on government spending. Social Security and Medicare

are unsustainable unless each generation of taxpaying workers is larger

than the one before it. Fertility should be encouraged, not seen as a

crime.

The myth of overpopulation has been exposed as fertility rates continue to

fall drastically, in many cases below replacing rate. The lowest

replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman, yet many countries like Italy

and Russia are closer to 1.69.

Even without so-called “population control,” fertility rates have dropped

as women put off marriage and children to pursue higher education.

Population control, often mislabeled as “reproductive rights,” today

consists of sterilization, contraception, abortion and open discouragement

of fertility.

China’s notorious one-child policy which includes forced abortions and

sterilizations will lead to a collapsing culture as the population

plummets.

The sad reality of sterilization is if a woman has a child, and gets

sterilized afterwards, and her child tragically dies young, she can never

have another.

Not only are forced abortions a waste of human potential (which

developing child could have been the next Mozart or Einstein?), abortion

drugs administered to women in foreign countries also often cause serious

complications. Medical posts in Africa or Peru are filled with

contraceptives and other population control related items, but they often

lack basics needed for overall health.

These options are wrong, not just morally, but logically and medically

speaking. If the money spent on population control were moved to child

survival programs, imagine the positive results.

Instead of pushing so-called “safe sex” we should promote the Catholic

Church’s teachings on responsible parenthood. In this modern world, sex

has become solely a source of pleasure, with children as a side effect.

Sex should be recognized for what it is — an act of life.

Natural family planning, in which couples are open to the miracle of new

life, is the only form of spacing of children acceptable to the church

because it does not separate the two components of the sexual act — union

and procreation. Catholicism stresses heavily the importance of both

components being present.

Our faith calls us to be generous in welcoming children into this world.

Yes, our lifestyles need to change, but not in the way population control

advocates prescribe. The world’s problems cannot be defined by one false

theory.

The myth of overpopulation needs to be dispelled. The proof is before our

eyes.

CHARITY

2011-04-25T09:22:00.001-07:00

When an earthquake devastated Haiti last year, the West, led as always by the Great Satan, instantly opened its heart and pocketbook. Within days, as the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Claudia Rosett reported, the U.S. government had pledged $90 million in public funds, 44 percent of the total anted up by governments worldwide. That was just a fraction of the true American contribution. Despite a deep recession and widespread unemployment, private citizens contributed tens of millions of dollars to the relief efforts. In addition, our armed forces mobilized to provide food, medical treatment, and other humanitarian aid. Untold additional millions in American aid backed relief efforts by the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the World Bank. The economic downturn was global, but still European, Canadian, Japanese, and South American governments and citizens also donated millions.

What of the world’s Muslims? Over the same period of time, they accounted for a whopping 0.1 percent of the total donations committed by governments — basically, a rounding error for a Saudi sheikh’s weekend in Vegas. Drawing a telling contrast, Ms. Rosett noted that the House of Saud’s annual contribution to ICRC operations in 2008 came to a grand total of $216,460 — less than a penny per Saudi, though quite generous compared with the $50,000 kicked in by Iran, whose population is three times larger. By contrast, the United States gave $237.8 million.

How could it be that the oil-drenched realm of zakat – of what we are to believe is obligatory benevolence — lags so embarrassingly behind Dar al-Greed? Very simple: Zakat is not “charity” as we understand that term.

Muslims are taught that charity means Muslims aiding Muslims, for the purpose of fortifying and extending the ummah until all the world is Islam’s domain. “Of their wealth, take alms,” instructs Allah in the Koran (9:103), “that so thou mightest purify and sanctify them.” Thus, zakat may be given only to Muslims.

Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law (Umdat al-Salik) was compiled by the renowned Muslim jurisprudent Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri in the 14th century. It is the most authoritative source on the subject of sharia (Islamic law), having been certified by al-Azhar University in Cairo — the font of Sunni learning — as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.” In fact, when an English edition of Reliance (now available through Amazon.com) was published in 1994, it won gushing praise from the government of Saudi Arabia (where sharia is the only law), as well as the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, all of which incorporate sharia in their legal systems. Reliance is quite blunt on the matter: “It is not permissible to give zakat to a non-Muslim.”

THE WAR AGAINST FATHERS CONTINUES

2009-02-08T17:27:00.000-08:00

An article from the current issue of Touchstone Magazine:

Divorced from Reality
"We’re from the Government, and We’re Here to End Your Marriage."
by Stephen Baskerville
The decline of the family has now reached critical and truly dangerous proportions. Family breakdown touches virtually every family and every American. It is not only the major source of social instability in the Western world today but also seriously threatens civic freedom and constitutional government.
G. K. Chesterton once observed that the family serves as the principal check on government power, and he suggested that someday the family and the state would confront one another. That day has arrived.
Chesterton was writing about divorce, and despite extensive public attention to almost every other threat to the family, divorce remains the most direct and serious. Michael McManus of Marriage Savers writes that "divorce is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today’s challenge by gays."
Most Americans would be deeply shocked if they knew what goes on today under the name of divorce. Indeed, many are devastated to discover that they can be forced into divorce by procedures entirely beyond their control. Divorce licenses unprecedented government intrusion into family life, including the power to sunder families, seize children, loot family wealth, and incarcerate parents without trial. Comprised of family courts and vast, federally funded social services bureaucracies that wield what amount to police powers, the divorce machinery has become the most predatory and repressive sector of government ever created in the United States and is today’s greatest threat to constitutional freedom.
Unilateral Divorce
Some four decades ago, while few were paying attention, the Western world embarked on the boldest social experiment in its history. With no public discussion of the possible consequences, laws were enacted in virtually every jurisdiction that effectively ended marriage as a legal contract. Today it is not possible to form a binding agreement to create a family. The government can now, at the request of one spouse, simply dissolve a marriage over the objection of the other. Maggie Gallagher aptly titled her 1996 book The Abolition of Marriage.
This startling fact has been ignored by politicians, journalists, academics, and even family advocates. "Opposing gay marriage or gays in the military is for Republicans an easy, juicy, risk-free issue," wrote Gallagher. "The message [is] that at all costs we should keep divorce off the political agenda." No American politician of national stature has ever challenged involuntary divorce. "Democrats did not want to anger their large constituency among women who saw easy divorce as a hard-won freedom and prerogative," observes Barbara Whitehead in The Divorce Culture. "Republicans did not want to alienate their upscale constituents or their libertarian wing, both of whom tended to favor easy divorce, nor did they want to call attention to the divorces among their own leadership."
In his famous denunciation of single parenthood, Vice President Dan Quayle was careful to make clear, "I am not talking about a situation where there is a divorce." The exception proves the rule. When Pope John Paul II criticized divorce in 2002, he was roundly attacked from the right as well as the left.
The full implications of the "no-fault" revolution have never been publicly debated. "The divorce laws . . . were reformed by unrepresentative groups with very particular agendas of their own and which were not in step with public opinion," writes Melanie Phillips in The Sex-Change Society. "Public attitudes were gradually dragged along behind laws that were generally understood at the time to mean something very different from what they subsequently came to represent."
Today’s disputes over marriage in fact have their origin in this one. Demands to redefine marriage to include homosexual couples are inconceivable apart from the redefinition of marriage already effected by heterosexuals through divorce. Though gays cite the very desire to marry as evidence that their lifestyle is not inherently promiscuous, activist Andrew Sullivan acknowledges that that desire has arisen only because of the promiscuity permitted in modern marriage. "The world of no-strings heterosexual hookups and 50 percent divorce rates preceded gay marriage," he points out. "All homosexuals are saying . . . is that, under the current definition, there’s no reason to exclude us. If you want to return straight marriage to the 1950s, go ahead. But until you do, the exclusion of gays is . . . a denial of basic civil equality" (emphasis added). Gays do not want traditional monogamous marriage, only the version debased by divorce.
Contrary to common assumptions, divorce today seldom involves two people mutually deciding to part ways. According to Frank Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin in Divided Families, 80 percent of divorces are unilateral, that is, over the objection of one spouse. Patricia Morgan of London’s Civitas think tank reports that in over half of divorces, there was no recollection of major conflict before the separation.
Under "no-fault," or what some call "unilateral," divorce—a legal regime that expunged all considerations of justice from the procedure—divorce becomes a sudden power grab by one spouse, assisted by an army of judicial hangers-on who reward belligerence and profit from the ensuing litigation: judges, lawyers, psychotherapists, counselors, mediators, custody evaluators, social workers, and more.
If marriage is not wholly a private affair, as today’s marriage advocates insist, involuntary divorce by its nature requires constant government supervision over family life. Far more than marriage, divorce mobilizes and expands government power. Marriage creates a private household, which may or may not necessitate signing some legal documents. Divorce dissolves a private household, usually against the wishes of one spouse. It inevitably involves state functionaries—including police and jails—to enforce the divorce and the post-marriage order.
Almost invariably, the involuntarily divorced spouse will want and expect to continue enjoying the protections and prerogatives of private life: the right to live in the common home, to possess the common property, or—most vexing of all—to parent the common children. These claims must be terminated, using the penal system if necessary.
Onerous Implications
Few stopped to consider the implications of laws that shifted the breakup of private households from a voluntary to an involuntary process. Unilateral divorce inescapably involves government agents forcibly removing legally innocent people from their homes, seizing their property, and separating them from their children. It inherently abrogates not only the inviolability of marriage but the very concept of private life.
By far the most serious consequences involve children, who have become the principal weapons of the divorce machinery. Invariably the first action of a divorce court, once a divorce is filed, is to separate the children from one of their parents, usually the father. Until this happens, no one in the machinery acquires any power or earnings. The first principle and first action of divorce court therefore: Remove the father.
This happens even if the father is innocent of any legal wrongdoing and is simply sitting in his own home minding his own business. The state seizes control of his children with no burden of proof to justify why. The burden of proof (and the financial burden) falls on the father to demonstrate why they should be returned.
Though obfuscated with legal jargon (losing "custody"), what this means is that a legally unimpeachable parent can suddenly be arrested for seeing his own children without government authorization. Following from this, he can be arrested for failure or inability to conform to a variety of additional judicial directives that apply to no one but him. He can be arrested for domestic violence or child abuse, even if no evidence is presented that he has committed any. He can be arrested for not paying child support, even if the amount exceeds his means (and which may amount to most of his salary). He can even be arrested for not paying an attorney or a psychotherapist he has not hired.
The New York Times has reported on how easily "the divorce court leads to a jail cell." Take the case of Marvin Singer, who was jailed without trial for not paying an attorney he never hired $100,000—only half of what the court claimed he "owes." In Virginia, one father was ordered to pay two years’ worth of his salary to a lawyer he also did not hire for a divorce he did not request. Once arrested, the father is summarily jailed. There is no formal charge, no jury, and no trial.
Family court judges’ contempt for both fathers and constitutional rights was openly expressed by New Jersey municipal court judge Richard Russell: "Your job is not to become concerned about the constitutional rights of the man that you’re violating," he told his colleagues at a judges’ training seminar in 1994. "Throw him out on the street. . . . We don’t have to worry about the rights."
Generated Hysteria
Why do we hear almost nothing about this? Aside from media that sympathize with the divorce revolution, the multi-billion-dollar divorce industry also commands a huge government-funded propaganda machine that has distorted our view of what is happening.
The growth of the divorce machinery during the 1970s and 1980s did not follow but preceded (in other words, it generated) a series of hysterias against parents—especially fathers—so hideous and inflammatory that no one, left or right, dared question them or defend those accused: child abuse and molestation, wife-beating, and nonpayment of "child support." Each of these hysterias has been propagated largely by feminists, bar associations, and social work bureaucracies, whose federal funding is generously shared with state and local law-enforcement officials.
The parent on the receiving end of such accusations—even in the absence of any formal charge, evidence, or conviction—not only loses his children summarily and often permanently; he also finds himself abandoned by friends and family members, parishioners and pastors, co-workers and employers (and he may well lose his job)—all terrified to be associated with an accused "pedophile," "batterer," or "deadbeat dad."
It is not clear that these nefarious figures are other than bogeymen created by divorce interests, well aware that not only the public generally but conservatives and family advocates in particular are a soft touch when it comes to anything concerning irresponsible behavior or sexual perversion.
Christians are especially vulnerable to credulity about such accusations, because they are disposed to see moral breakdown behind social ills. Moral breakdown certainly does lie behind the divorce epidemic (of which more shortly), but it is far deeper than anything addressed by cheap witch-hunts against government-designated malefactors.
It is also largely credulity and fear that leads Congress by overwhelming majorities to appropriate billions for anti-family programs in response to these hysterias. The massive federal funds devoted to domestic violence, child abuse, and child-support enforcement are little more than what Phyllis Schlafly calls "feminist pork," taxpayer subsidies on family dissolution that also trample due process protections. Family law may technically be the purview of states, but it is driven by federal policies and funded by a Congress fearful of accusations that it is not doing enough against pedophiles, batterers, and deadbeats.
In fact, each of these figures is largely a hoax, a creation of feminist ideology disseminated at taxpayers’ expense and unchallenged by journalists, academics, civil libertarians, and family advocates who are either unaware of the reality or cowed into silence. Indeed, so diabolical are these hysterias that some family advocates simply accept them as additional evidence of the family crisis.
But while sensational examples can be found of anything, there is simply no evidence that the family and fatherhood crisis is caused primarily or even significantly by fathers abandoning their families, beating their wives, and molesting their children. Irrefutable evidence indicates that it is driven almost entirely by divorce courts forcibly separating parents from their children and using these false accusations as a rationalization.
Divorce Gamesmanship
During the 1980s and 1990s, waves of child abuse hysteria swept America and other countries. Sensational cases in Washington state, California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ontario, Saskatchewan, the north of England, and more recently France resulted in torn-apart families, blatantly unjust prison sentences, and ruined lives, while the media and civil libertarians looked the other way.
Today it is not clear that we have learned anything from these miscarriages of justice. If anything, the hysteria has been institutionalized in the divorce courts, where false allegations have become routine.
What is ironic about these witch-hunts is the fact that it is easily demonstrable that the child abuse epidemic—which is very real—is almost entirely the creation of feminism and the welfare bureaucracies themselves. It is well established by scholars that an intact family is the safest place for women and children and that very little abuse takes place in married families. Child abuse overwhelmingly occurs in single-parent homes, homes from which the father has been removed. Domestic violence, too, is far more likely during or after the breakup of a marriage than among married couples.
Yet patently false accusations of both child abuse and domestic violence are rampant in divorce courts, almost always for purposes of breaking up families, securing child custody, and eliminating fathers. "With child abuse and spouse abuse you don’t have to prove anything," the leader of a legal seminar tells divorcing mothers, according to the Chicago Tribune. "You just have to accuse."
Among scholars and legal practitioners it is common knowledge that patently trumped-up accusations are routinely used, and virtually never punished, in divorce and custody proceedings. Elaine Epstein, president of the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association, writes that "allegations of abuse are now used for tactical advantage" in custody cases. The Illinois Bar Journal describes how abuse accusations readily "become part of the gamesmanship of divorce." The UMKC Law Review reports on a survey of judges and attorneys revealing that disregard for due process and allegations of domestic violence are used as a "litigation strategy." In the Yale Law Review, Jeannie Suk calls domestic violence accusations a system of "state-imposed de facto divorce" and documents how courts use unsupported accusations to justify evicting Americans from their homes and children.
The multi-billion dollar abuse industry has become "an area of law mired in intellectual dishonesty and injustice" writes David Heleniak in the Rutgers Law Review. Domestic violence has become "a backwater of tautological pseudo-theory," write Donald Dutton and Kenneth Corvo in the scholarly journal Aggression and Violent Behavior. "No other area of established social welfare, criminal justice, public health, or behavioral intervention has such weak evidence in support of mandated practice."
Feminists confess as much in their vociferous opposition to divorce reform. A special issue of the feminist magazine Mother Jones in 2005 ostensibly devoted to domestic violence focuses largely on securing child custody.
Both child abuse and domestic violence have no precise definitions. Legally they are not adjudicated as violent assault, and accused parents do not enjoy the constitutional protections of criminal defendants. Allegations are "confirmed" not by jury trials but by judges or social workers. Domestic violence is any conflict within an "intimate relationship" and need not be actually violent or even physical. Official definitions include "extreme jealousy and possessiveness," "name calling and constant criticizing," and "ignoring, dismissing, or ridiculing the victim’s needs."
For such "crimes" fathers lose their children and can be jailed. "Protective orders" separating parents from their children are readily issued during divorce proceedings, usually without any evidence of wrongdoing. "Restraining orders and orders to vacate are granted to virtually all who apply," and "the facts have become irrelevant," writes Epstein. "In virtually all cases, no notice, meaningful hearing, or impartial weighing of evidence is to be had."
Cycle of Abuse
Trumped-up accusations are thus used to create precisely the single-parent homes in which actual abuse is most likely to occur. According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), "Children of single parents had a 77% greater risk of being harmed by physical abuse, an 87% greater risk of being harmed by physical neglect, and an 80% greater risk of suffering serious injury or harm from abuse or neglect than children living with both parents." Britain’s Family Education Trust reports that children are up to 33 times more likely to be abused in a single-parent home than in an intact family.
The principal impediment to child abuse is thus precisely the figure whom the welfare and divorce bureaucracies are intent on removing: the father. "The presence of the father . . . placed the child at lesser risk for child sexual abuse," concludes a 2000 study published in Adolescent and Family Health. "The protective effect from the father’s presence in most households was sufficiently strong to offset the risk incurred by the few paternal perpetrators." In fact, the risk of "paternal perpetrators" is miniscule, since a tiny proportion of sexual abuse (which is far less common than physical abuse) is committed by natural fathers, though government statistics lump them in with boyfriends and stepfathers to make it appear that incest is widespread.
Despite the innuendos of child abuse advocates, it is not married fathers but single mothers who are most likely to injure or kill their children. "Contrary to public perception," write Patrick Fagan and Dorothy Hanks of the Heritage Foundation, "research shows that the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child’s mother, not a male in the household." Mothers accounted for 55 percent of all child murders according to a Justice Department report. HHS itself found that women aged 20 to 49 are almost twice as likely as men to be perpetrators of child maltreatment: "almost two-thirds were females." Given that "male" perpetrators are not usually fathers but boyfriends or stepfathers, fathers emerge as by far the least likely child abusers.
Yet government logic is marvelously self-justifying and self-perpetuating, since by eliminating the father, officials can present themselves as the solution to the problem they have created. The more child abuse there is—whether by single mothers, boyfriends, or even (as is often the case) by social workers and bureaucrats themselves—the more the proffered solution is to further expand the child abuse bureaucracy.
Waxing indignant about a string of child deaths at the hands of social workers in the District of Columbia, federal judges and the Washington Post found solace in the D.C. government’s solution: to hire more social workers (and lawyers too, for some unspecified reason). "Olivia Golden, the Child and Family Services’ latest director . . . will use her increased budget to recruit more social workers and double the number of lawyers." Children die at the hands of social workers, so we must hire more social workers.
Likewise, it is difficult to believe that judges are not aware that the most dangerous environment for children is precisely the single-parent homes they themselves create when they remove fathers in custody proceedings. Yet they have no hesitation in removing them, secure in the knowledge that they will never be held accountable for any harm that may come to the children. On the contrary, if they do not remove the fathers, they may be punished by the bar associations and social work bureaucracies whose funding depends on a constant supply of abused children.
A commonplace of political science is that bureaucracies relentlessly expand, often by creating the very problem they exist to address. Appalling as it sounds, the conclusion is inescapable that we have created a massive army of officials with a vested interest in child abuse.
Trafficking in Children
The child abuse industry also demonstrates how one threat to the family creates another. Just as the divorce revolution eventually led to the demand for same-sex "marriage," the child abuse deception has led to demands for parenting by same-sex couples.
Most discussion of homosexual parenting has centered on questions of children’s welfare versus the rights of homosexuals. Few have questioned the politics whereby prospective homosexual parents obtain the children they wish to parent. Granting same-sex couples the right to raise children means, by definition, giving at least one of the partners the right to raise someone else’s children, and the question arises whether the original parent or parents ever agreed to part with them or did something to warrant losing them.
Current laws governing divorce, domestic violence, and child abuse render this question open. The explosion in foster care based on the assumed but unexamined need to find permanent homes for allegedly abused children has provided perhaps the strongest argument in favor of same-sex "marriage" and homosexual parenting. Yet the politics of child abuse and divorce indicate that this assumption is not necessarily valid.
The government-generated child abuse epidemic and the mushrooming foster care business that it feeds have allowed government agencies to operate what amounts to trafficking in children. A San Diego grand jury reports "a widely held perception within the community and even within some areas of the Department [of Social Services] that the Department is in the ‘baby brokering’ business."
Introducing same-sex "marriage" and adoption into this political dynamic could dramatically increase the demand for children to adopt, thus intensifying pressure on social service agencies and biological parents to supply such children. While sperm donors and surrogate mothers supply some children for homosexual parents, most have been taken from their natural parents because of divorce, unwed parenting, child abuse accusations, or connected reasons.
Massachusetts Senator Therese Murray, claiming that 40 percent of the state’s adoptions have gone to gay and lesbian couples, rationalizes the practice by invoking "children who have been neglected, abandoned, abused by their own families." But it is far from evident that these children are in fact victims of their own parents. What seems inescapable is that homosexual parenting has arisen as the direct and perhaps inevitable consequence of government officials getting into the business—which began largely with divorce—of distributing other people’s children.
Child-Support Racket
The "deadbeat dad" is another figure largely manufactured by the divorce machinery. He is far less likely to have deliberately abandoned offspring he callously sired than to be an involuntarily divorced father who has been, as attorney Jed Abraham writes in From Courtship to Courtroom, "forced to finance the filching of his own children."
Child support is plagued by the same contradictions as child custody. Like custody, it is awarded ostensibly without reference to "fault," and yet nonpayment brings swift and severe punishments. Contrary to popular belief, child support today has nothing to do with fathers abandoning their children, reneging on their marital vows, or even agreeing to divorce. It is automatically assessed on all non-custodial parents, even those divorced against their will who lose their children through no legal fault or agreement of their own. It is an entitlement for all single mothers, in other words, regardless of their behavior.
Originally justified as a method of recovering welfare costs, child support has been transformed into a massive federal subsidy on middle-class divorce. No-fault divorce allowed a mother to divorce her husband for any reason or no reason and to take the children with her. Child support took the process a step further by allowing the divorcing mother to use the now-fatherless children to claim her husband’s income—also regardless of any fault on her part (or lack of fault on his) in abrogating the marriage agreement.
By glancing at a child-support schedule, a mother can determine exactly how large a tax-free windfall she can force her husband to pay her simply by divorcing, money she may spend however she wishes with no accounting requirement. It is collected at gunpoint if necessary, and nonpayment means incarceration without trial.
Like the welfare it was supposed to replace, child support finances family dissolution by paying mothers to divorce. Economist Robert Willis calculates that child-support levels vastly exceeding the cost of raising children create "an incentive for divorce by the custodial mother." His analysis indicates that only one-fifth to one-third of child-support payments are actually used for the children; the rest is profit for the custodial parent. Kimberly Folse and Hugo Varela-Alvarez write in the Journal of Socio-Economics that child support serves as an "economic incentive for middle-class women to seek divorce."
Mothers are not the only ones who can profit by creating fatherless children. Governments also generate revenue from child support. State governments receive federal funds for every child-support dollar collected—money they can add to their general funds and use for any purpose they choose. This gives states a financial incentive to create as many single-parent households as possible by encouraging middle-class divorce. While very little child support—or government revenue—is generated from the impecunious young unmarried fathers for whom the program was ostensibly created, involuntarily divorced middle-class fathers have deeper pockets to loot.
This is why state governments set child support at onerous levels. Not only does it immediately maximize their own revenues; by encouraging middle-class women to divorce, governments increase the number of fathers sending dollars through their systems, thus generating more revenue. Federal taxpayers (who were supposed to save money) subsidize this family destruction scheme with about $3 billion annually. "Child support guidelines currently in use typically generate awards that are much higher than would be the case if based on economically sound cost concepts," writes Mark Rogers, an economist who served on the Georgia Commission on Child Support. Rogers charges that guidelines result in "excessive burdens" based on a "flawed economic foundation." The Urban Institute reports that arrearages accrue because "orders are set too high relative to ability to pay." Federal officials have admitted that the more than $90 billion in arrearages they claimed as of 2004 were based on awards that were beyond the parents’ ability to pay.
All this marks a new stage in the evolution of the welfare state: from distributing largesse to raising revenue and, from there, to law enforcement. The result is a self-financing machine, generating profits and expanding the size and scope of government—all by generating single-parent homes and fatherless children. Government has created a perpetual growth machine for destroying families, seizing children from legally blameless parents, and incarcerating parents without trial.
Responsibility of Churches
While many factors have contributed to this truly diabolical, bureaucratic onslaught against the family, we might begin by looking within. The churches’ failure or refusal to intervene in the marriages they consecrated and to exert moral pressure on misbehaving spouses (perhaps out of fear of appearing "judgmental") left a vacuum that has been filled by the state. Clergy, parishioners, and extended families have been replaced by lawyers, judges, forensic psychotherapists, social workers, and plainclothes police.
Family integrity will be restored only when families are de-politicized and protected from government invasion. This will demand morally vigorous congregations that are willing to take marriage out of the hands of the state by intervening in the marriages they are called upon to witness and consecrate and by resisting the power of the state to move in. This is the logic behind the group Marriage Savers, and it can restore the churches’ authority even among those who previously viewed a church’s role in their marriage as largely ceremonial.
No greater challenge confronts the churches—nor any greater opportunity to reverse the mass exodus—than to defend their own marriage ordinance against this attack from the government. Churches readily and rightly mobilize politically against moral evils like abortion and same-sex "marriage," in which they are not required to participate. Even more are they primary stakeholders in involuntary divorce, which allows the state to desecrate and nullify their own ministry.
As an Anglican, I am acutely aware of how far modernity was ushered in not only through divorce, but through divorce processes that served the all-encompassing claims of the emerging state leviathan. Politically, this might be seen as the "original sin" of modern man. We all need to atone.
Stephen Baskerville is Associate Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College and the author of Taken into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family (Cumberland House, 2007).
Copyright © 2009 the Fellowship of St. James. All rights reserved.