President Obama Mocks U.S. Catholic Bishops: “Darn Tooting!”
President Obama mocked Catholic bishops at a St. Louis fundraiser last night as he was touting the new Health & Human Services regulations that would require Catholic institutions to go against the teachings of Jesus.
“Darn right!” an audience member at the fundraiser shouted as Obama described the regulation.
“Darn tooting!” Obama said back.
The contempt that President Obama has shown towards Christians is almost palpable.
This is a man that worships himself on Sundays by lifting weights instead of attending a Church service.
It is becoming imperative that President Obama needs to be voted out of office next year due to this incident and many other policies that he has implemented.
Palin Not Running
This was just released:
October 5, 2011
Wasilla, Alaska
After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States. As always, my family comes first and obviously Todd and I put great consideration into family life before making this decision. When we serve, we devote ourselves to God, family and country. My decision maintains this order.
My decision is based upon a review of what common sense Conservatives and Independents have accomplished, especially over the last year. I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office – from the nation’s governors to Congressional seats and the Presidency. We need to continue to actively and aggressively help those who will stop the “fundamental transformation” of our nation and instead seek the restoration of our greatness, our goodness and our constitutional republic based on the rule of law.
From the bottom of my heart I thank those who have supported me and defended my record throughout the years, and encouraged me to run for President. Know that by working together we can bring this country back – and as I’ve always said, one doesn’t need a title to help do it.
I will continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets, including in the race for President where our candidates must embrace immediate action toward energy independence through domestic resource developments of conventional energy sources, along with renewables. We must reduce tax burdens and onerous regulations that kill American industry, and our candidates must always push to minimize government to strengthen the economy and allow the private sector to create jobs. Continue reading
Father Matthew Munoz Talks About The Conversion of His Grandfather: John Wayne
Hattip to Matthew Archbold at Creative Minority Report. I have written previously on the deathbed conversion of John Wayne: John Wayne-Cardiac Catholic. His grandson, Father Matthew Munoz, has recently talked about his grandfather’s conversion.
“My grandmother, Josephine Wayne Saenz, had a wonderful influence on his life and introduced him to the Catholic world,” said 46-year-old Fr. Muñoz, a priest of the Diocese of Orange in California.
“He was constantly at Church events and fundraisers that she was always dragging him to and I think that, after a while, he kind of got a sense that the common secular vision of what Catholics are and what his own experience actually was, were becoming two greatly different things.”
Fr. Muñoz’s grandparents married in 1933 and had four children, the youngest of whom – Melinda – is his mother. The couple civilly divorced in 1945 although, as a Catholic, Josephine did not re-marry until after John Wayne’s death. She also never stopped praying for her husband’s conversion – a prayer which was answered in 1978. Continue reading
Sexual Authenticity: An Intimate Reflection on Homosexuality and Catholicism
An Article by Melinda Selmys, author of the book Sexual Authenticity: An Intimate Reflection on Homosexuality and Catholicism.
Twelve years ago, I converted to Catholicism and began a long dialogue with my own sexuality. At the time, I was involved in a lesbian relationship that had been going on for a little over six years. I had, in the course of researching the Catholic position with a view to refuting it, encountered the Church’s teachings on homosexual relationships before, so when I decided to embrace the Church as my mother, I knew that meant giving up my lesbian partner. I called her that night and explained my decision.
At the time, I thought that I was signing up for a life of celibacy. I was okay with that: before I became a Catholic I was a hard rationalist, and it wasn’t a long stretch to port my idealistic devotion to rational self-possession into an iron-clad commitment to Catholic sexual teaching. I would simply apply my will to the problem, subsume my passions to the rule of Reason, and everything would be fine. Right?
Prayers, Answered and Not
I saw this on Facebook, posted by an atheist group, and in a simple and pungent way it hammers at one of our basic issues as Christians. We believe in an all powerful God. We believe that we can bring our supplications to Him in prayer, and that sometimes those prayers are answered in the affirmative.
But why, if we at times attribute the finding of some household item or a victory at a sporting event to prayer, do so many bad things, so many things that people doubtless pray about, happen? Even assuming similarity of scale, if one person is miraculously healed of cancer, why do a hundred others follow the natural course and die?
The answer, simple yet maddening to the mind which wants to know all, is that by worshiping an all powerful God we necessarily admit (as creatures neither all knowing nor all powerful) that we don’t understand all that God does. In a world of suffering, we at least have Christ’s example of prayer before us.
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.”
The Decline in Vocations: Celibacy Isn’t the Issue
In a recent interview, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, said that celibacy is not the cause of the lack of priestly vocations.
The Cardinal cites some statistics to support his assertion:
- More than 40% of marriages fail, while only 2% of priests fail in celibacy. The crisis in the sacrament of marriage as one and indissoluble is obviously greater magnitude than is the decline in the number of vocations to the priesthood.
- The decline in the number of births in recent decades inevitably has led to fewer young men and, thus, of priestly vocations.
- Protestant denominations which do not require their clergy to be celibate are in a state of deep crisis regarding vocations to the ministry.
In Cardinal Piacenza’s estimation, the issue from which these problems stem is much larger in scope:
[The issue is] the contemporary inability to make definitive choices, in the dramatic reduction of human freedom that has become so fragile as not to pursue the good, not even when it is recognized and intuited as a possibility for one’s own existence.
Discourse concerning mandatory celibacy, the Cardinal believes, must not begin with the assumption that freedom is the absence of ties and permanent commitments. Instead, this discourse must begin with the assumption that freedom consists in the definitive gift of self to the other and to God. Every human being, in freedom, must understand and welcome one’s vocation and must work every day more and more to become what God created that person to be.
Saint Francis of Assisi and Pope Innocent III
Today is the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi. Like most very great men and women, legends began to cluster about him even while he lived. One of these involved his meeting with Pope Innocent III.
While the Vicar of Christ listened attentively to a parable told by Francis and its interpretation, he was quite amazed and recognised without a doubt that Christ had spoken in this man. But he also confirmed a vision he had recently received from heaven, that, as the Divine Spirit indicated, would be fulfilled in this man. He saw in a dream, as he recounted, the Lateran basilica almost ready to fall down. A little poor man, small and scorned, was propping it up with his own back bent so that it would not fall. “I’m sure,” he said, “he is the one who will hold up Christ’s Church by what he does and what he teaches.” Because of this, filled with exceptional devotion, he bowed to the request in everything and always loved Christ’s servant with special love. Then he granted what was asked and promised even more. He approved the rule, gave them a mandate to preach penance, and had small tonsures given to all the lay brothers, who were accompanying the servant of God, so that they could freely preach the word of God.
Cf. St. Bonaventure’s Major Legend of St. Francis, III:10 Continue reading
Mira Circa Nos: Canonization of Saint Francis of Assisi
Tomorrow is the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi and I will be having a post on him then. However, I thought our readers would enjoy having a look at Mira Circa Nos, the papal bull which canonized Saint Francis less than two years after his death. There has been some criticism of recent canonizations on the ground that they occur too rapidly after the death of the person canonized. By and large this is a just criticism. However, there are some saints so remarkable that canonization seems to be simply a recognition of a self-evident reality, and the canonization of Saint Francis was certainly in that category.
Elections Have Consequences: Congress to Investigate Worse Than Murder, Inc.
Congressman Cliff Stearns (R. Fl.) , Chairman of the investigation subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee gave Cecile Richards, President of Worse Than Murder, Inc, a/k/a Planned Parenthood, a very bad day recently when he sent her a letter asking for numerous documents. Go here to read the letter.
This sets the stage for a full scale Congressional investigation of Worse Than Murder, Inc. Fields of inquiry could include:
1. The failure of Worse Than Murder, Inc to comply with laws which require reporting of possible sexual abuse of minors.
2. Just what Worse Than Murder, Inc does with all the federal money it receives each year.
3. The number of abortions conducted by Worse Than Murder, Inc.
4. Subpoena of internal e-mails involving Worse Than Murder, Inc’s use of federal funds and non-compliance with laws regarding the reporting of the sexual abuse of minors.
5. Have any federal funds been used by Worse Than Murder, Inc for political purposes? Continue reading
And Rohan Will Answer
Something for the weekend. The lighting of the beacons sequence from the The Return of the King. This sequence sets up my favorite scene in the entire trilogy. Aragorn sees the lighted beacon fire and runs to Theoden, King of Rohan, and asks for aid for Gondor. There is a long pause before Theoden can bring himself to commit his people to another desperate war, but when he makes his decision he does so decisively. Go here to view the scene.
Aragorn: The Beacons of Minas Tirith! The Beacons are lit! Gondor calls for aid!
Theoden: And Rohan will answer. Muster the Rohirrim. Continue reading
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