The Great Abortion Reduction Scam of 2008

Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren told us that voting from Obama was all right because Obama was in favor of reducing abortion. This was their way of trying to convince Evangelicals to vote Democrat even though Evangelicals know very well that abortion is evil and should be illegal.

So during his first week in office, late on Friday afternoon when no one was around, Obama rescinds the Mexico City Policy. The effect of his action is to promote abortion in the Third World. This policy was put in place so as to prevent fanatical abortion organizations from receiving US federal funding to try to solve the problem of poverty by means of encouraging the poor to kill their children. (For a detailed explanation of this policy see this wonderful pastoral letter from Bishop Joseph Martino to Senator Bob Casey: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2009/02/bp-martino-instructs-sen-casey-on-the-mexico-city-policy/)

Now that the election is over, we now have proof that Wallis and co. were merely front men in a partisan Democratic scheme to siphon off votes from Evangelicals who know that abortion is morally evil, but might be confused into thinking that the Democrats would reduce abortions by means of their pro-welfare policies. Now we know that it was all just a partisan scam.

You think that is too harsh? Consider this. Wallis and co. made a big deal of the study posted on the website Catholics in Alliance for Common Good that purported to "prove" that increased welfare funding to single mothers decreases abortion. Once the election was over, the study was pulled down and then replaced a couple of days later. The reason? The data on the number of abortions was "discovered" to be wrong. The study did not actually "prove" what it purported to prove. (See Michael New's article: http://www.moralaccountability.com/obama-on-abortion/holding-catholics-in-alliance-for-the-common-good-morally-accountable/)

A few weeks later, it was revealed that the Board chair of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, was an Obama fundraiser and even a member of his National Finance Committee. She raised over $350,000 for Obama during his run for president. Yet the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good organization claimed to be "non-partisan" as it consistently argued for positions taken by Obama. (See the article for more information: http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=32249&wf=rsscol)

For years, Wallis has harped on how bad it was that Evangelicals were "in bed with" the Republican Party and how corrupting it is to sell your soul to a party. He liked to give the impression that, being non-partisan himself, he was free to be "prophetic" rather than playing party politics, unlike the Dobsons and Colsons and Robertsons, who had sold out. What utter hypocrisy on Wallis' part! At least, Dobson, Colson and Robertson came right out and admitted that they were voting Republican, rather than trying to hide their partisanship behind a cloak of neutrality.

It is the right of Wallis, McLaren and Campolo to vote Democrat all they want. All I ask is that they stop trying to play both sides of the street by pretending that non-partisan people vote Democrat and only ideologues vote Republican. And they should admit that private, legalized killing is just not as important to them as increasing welfare. Let's debate the real issues, not "abortion reduction scams."

Ashes to Ashes

From The Catholic League (via Father Z of "What Does the Prayer Really Say?") comes this interesting insight:

"Progressives Celebrate Ash Wednesday

We thought you’d like to know how progressives view penance. Here is what Roger Ray had to say about the issue in today’s edition of the News-Leader, a Springfield, Missouri newspaper:

"As a member of a progressive Christian church, I am more likely than most to encounter folks who angrily reject all penitence and prayers of confession as being associated with the neurotic guilt and neo-puritanical judgment of their past church experiences. One friend recently told me, ‘I just don’t believe in sin.’"

Thanks, Roger, for providing this insight. It explains a lot.

We attended an Ash Wednesday service today at Tyndale Unversity College & Seminary Chapel. It was a stark and healthy reminder of our sin, our mortality and our need to remember that it is only by grace that we are saved.

I am writing a review of a book right now that argues against the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement in favor of, well . . . any other kind of theory anyone can come up with. But this kind of liberalism strikes at the heart of the Gospel. It denies that we are sinners, it denies that we are under the wrath of a just and holy God, it denies that Christ took our place to save us, actually effected our salvation, it denies that we need to repent of our sins and believe the Gospel in order to be saved.

Ash Wednesday is a no-nonsense reminder of our true nature and why we need God's grace. No wonder the liberals dislike it. It gets right to the heart of the issue and forces us to face the uncomfortable truth about ourselves. The basic issue of substitution is not that Christ took our place; before we even get to that glorious truth we must first see that we deserved the death he died.

In 1153 Bernard of Clairvaux wrote these lines, which have become a great hymn O Sacred Head Now Wounded. Note particularly the second line of the second stanza:

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
O sacred head, what glory, what bliss till now was thine!
Yet, though despised and gory, I joy to call thee mine.

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners' gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! 'Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.

I'm Working on Serenity

I tend to major on lament and minor on praise - quite unlike the Psalms, which include both but never get stuck permanently in lament mode. Two experiences in the past 18 hours have made me realize that I need more serenity.

1. Last evening I had the pleasure of hearing Archbishop Charles Chaput speak in person at St. Basil's Church on the University of St. Michael's campus. Archbishop Chaput is the author of Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholics Beliefs in Political Life (Doubleday, 2008) . He is one of the most candid, courageous and articulate spokesmen for orthodox Christianity in the United States today and a model bishop. His book is a great gift to lay people who struggle with how to be effective witnesses in the public arena. His witness is a great blessing to the Church.

Anyway, the point is that what I noticed from listening to him speak and field questions for 90 minutes or so and then in a personal word with him after the talk was (you guessed it) his serenity. He is not mad or angry and yet he says things more directly and clearly than many who are. For example, on the topic of ecumenism he said that 12 years ago when he went to Denver most of their interactions were with "mainline" Protestants but that now they don't have so much to do with them and are much more likely to be involved with joint ventures with Evangelicals. Another example was his treatment of the topic of hope. He criticized the lame, thin, sloganering version of hope offered by certain recent political campaigns that one could name and the Christian theological virtue of hope. One more example; he pointed out that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. It is a pragmatic response to public disagreement that is strategically necessary (even prudent) at times, but it is not a virtue because it is not an end in itself.

He gives the impression that he takes God very seriously, political issues such as abortion also very seriously and himself not very seriously. He reminds me of the saying of St. Francis de Sales that one should take the truth and dip it in charity until it is sweet to the taste. He can be the public spokesman for my faith any day of the week.

2. Today I read an article by John Webster entitled "Principles of Systematic Theology" in the new issue of IJST. Here is a quotation:

". . . it is worth remarking that the contraiety of the conception of systematic theology in what follows ought not to be allowed to generate an enduring posture of lament for a lost dogmatic culture. Lament is fitting on some occasions, but as a permanent attitude it can do damage, breeding intellectual vices such as vanity or pessimism, inhibiting a clear-sighted view of the situation and drawing theology away from its contemplative vocation. Likewise, polemic arrests and coarsens the mind when allowed to become habitual. What should hold lament and polemic in check is a gospel-derived awareness of the necessary pathos which attends theological work, the roots of which lie in the fact that the world is at enmity with the church and is reluctant to learn about the divine wisdom with which the saints have been entrusted. Yet even a due sense of pathos ought not to overwhelm the tranquil pursuit of theology, made possible and fruitful not by the capabilities of its practitioners or the opportunities afforded by its cultural settings, but by the infinite power of divine goodness shedding abroad the knowledge of itself." (International Journal of Systematic Theology, vol. 11, no. 1 (January 2009): 58)

Neither Chaput nor Webster will ever be mistaken for craven compromisers; yet both are characterized by serenity and tranquility, both of which are the virtues of the faithful. They are examples to be emulated and gifts of God to His Church, for which we give thanks.

Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate

I was reading J. R. R. Tolkein's poem Mythopoeia last night and these lines jumped out at me as luminous and poignant:

All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfilment we devise - for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.

Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
though small and bare, upon a clumsy loom
weave tissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.
(from Tree and Leaf, p. 88)

Thoughts:
1. Tolkein knew that evil is real and personal; note that Evil and Shadow are capitalized to indicate that evil is not merely an abstract force, but subsists in actual, personal beings. Yet, in the first line of the second stanza, "evil" is not capitalized because we are to love the sinner but hate the sin.

2. Evil is mysterious. All that can be said of it is that it is. One thinks of Barth's characterization of sin as the "impossible possibility."

3. In the second of the two stanzas, the words that jumbed out to me were "seek no parley" and "hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway." The former phrase describes the attitude of the one faithful to the King; the latter one describes the serenity of faith in the midst of great evil. Serenity is the opposite of compromise; the more you have of one the less you have of the other.

4. Would it be too much of a stretch to understand the "gilded tissues" as books, or even blog posts? All I do all day these days is sit in my home study, my "guarded room" timidly writing my book about how believing in God is necessary for a true and enduring humanism. Change the world? What a joke! I'd just like to change myself. We live by hope in the far-off day even under Shadow's sway.

Further Thoughts on the British Governments's Stand Against Teaching Children Basic Morality

Further to my post yesterday about the British Labour government minister telling parents not to teach their children right from wrong when it comes to sex, the thought occurs to me that the government is actually promoting child abuse. It is a matter of parental duty to teach children the Ten Commandments and to instil the golden rule in them. It is not an option or a trivial matter; it is a matter of basic, fundamental duty - a matter of right and wrong.

It also occurs to me that it is astounding that, precisely at the moment the government displays its lack of concern for the moral, physical and emotional health of children in such a blatant and obvious way, it also sees fit to instruct parents on how to go about raising children. This is evidence of a degree of moral blindness that indicates a willful and rebellious rejection of the moral order and God. It is proof that this government has lost all semblance of moral legitimacy and deserves nothing but scorn from those it presumes to rule.

This is not even matter of concern limited only to Christians. It goes beyond that. It is a matter of basic humanism and decency. No major religion in the world and few agnostics actually believe that sex is a completely amoral area of life. This government consists of people who are not mature enough to be trusted to babysit for the evening, let alone govern a modern nation-state. There is stupidity and there is evil; a mixture of the two is lethal.

Anti-Semitism and Liberal Complicity

Here is an article by Irwin Cottler, MP in the National Post. Of course he is right that anti-Jewishness is on the rise all ove the world and he is also right that harsh and unrelenting on the state of Israel, in which Israel is singled out for criticism over and over again, is cover for anti-Semitism. It is also true that militant, hate-filled Islam is responsible for most of the anti-Jewish activities in the world today and behind the attempt to commit genocide in the Middle East.

What I don't understand, however, is why Cottler persists in alliance with the Canadian Left, which has shown its anti-Jewish colours on so many occasions recently. He needs to join the Conservative Party and recognize that only Evanglical Christians, Conservative Catholics and true Conservatives are going to stand up to anti-Semitism in Canada this time around. Liberal Protestants are in bed with the Muslim extremists.

Liberals are terrified of Mulim violence and are just trying to keep the lid on so they can enjoy their hedonism, individualism and materialism until the end of their days. Since they are reproducing more and more infrequently and have weaker and weaker ties to their children, they have little concern for the future. Their days of caring about moral principles are in the distant past. Conservatives, who are regularly called Nazis by Liberals, are the only ones ready to stand against anti-Jewish discrimination. What the liberals do with talk of Nazis and apartheid is called moral inversion.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/21/irwin-cotler-the-global-reawakening-of-anti-sematism.aspx

Parents told: avoid morality in sex lessons

Well, just when you think you have heard everything, the British Labour government comes up with something so whacky and demented that you think you have somehow wandered into the twilight zone. With teen pregnancy rates the highest in Europe and the recent case of the 13 year old who fathered a child after the girl's mother left the two alone, (for reasons no one has been able satisfactorily to explain), the government wades in with this gem of advice: "Parents, don't try to introduce the question of morality into sex talks with your children."

"Parents should avoid trying to convince their teenage children of the difference between right and wrong when talking to them about sex, a new government leaflet is to advise. Instead, any discussion of values should be kept “light” to encourage teenagers to form their own views, according to the brochure, which one critic has called “amoral”.

Talking to Your Teenager About Sex and Relationships will be distributed in pharmacies from next month as part of an initiative led by Beverley Hughes, the children’s minister.

The leaflet comes in the wake of the case of Alfie Patten, the 13-year-old boy from East Sussex who fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl and sparked a debate about how to cut rates of teenage parenthood.

It advises: 'Discussing your values with your teenagers will help them to form their own. Remember, though, that trying to convince them of what’s right and wrong may discourage them from being open.'”

Here is the link. Who would believe me if they could not read it for themselves?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5780725.ece

So that is what it has come to in the UK today. Official government policy is 1) sex is not a moral issue and 2) the government feels competent (and brazen enough) to lecture (order? advise? require?) parents to refrain from passing on morals to their children. God forbid that anyone might teach the children right from wrong! Will somebody get these clowns out of office before they manage to destroy the country?

It is a joke, but it is not funny. If this minster is not forced to resign over this, then one might as well consider Britain a goner. What a dispicable, pitiful and immoral bunch of losers. What a horrible society to be a teenager in today. And to think that at one time Britain was a Christian nation. Difficult to believe.

Sunday urged to be ‘day of fervent prayer’ for Pope Benedict

In the last few weeks, the aging, decadent liberals of the Roman Catholic Church have risen up once again in a spasm of ugliness to attack everything orthodox and biblical in the Church in the name of "the spirit of Vatican II," which really means "the spirit of '68," that is, the spirit of the leftist revolution, the sexual revolution and the culture of death. Notice that RC liberals never talk about the "texts" of Vatican II as Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI endlessly do. That is because the spirit of rebellion against the Bible and Tradition that the liberals promote cannot be found in the actual texts of Vatican II. To hear them tell it, Vatican II was an attack on Vatican I and an admission that modernity has been right all along and the Church wrong. In the perception of the liberals, Vatican II was the surrender of the Roman Catholic Church to the theological and ethical liberalism that had already come to dominate the formerly "mainline," now "sideline," Protestant denominations.

If all that Hans Kung and the other liberals could wish for were to come true, the Roman Catholic Church would resemble nothing so much as the Episcopal Church in the US with rabid support for abortion, utter capitulation to the sexual revolution, Unitarian theology, bishops riding in Gay Pride Parades and 1,000 members per week leaving the denomination. Liberal Protestantism is on a fast slide to irrelevancy and close to degenerating into a heretical cult like the Unitarian-Universalist Association.

Pope John Paul II and now Benedict XVI are courageous, saintly and intellectually brilliant bulwarks against the anti-humanism of the culture of death and all that liberal modernity has wrought. Protestants need not agree with them on every doctrine in order to appreciate that thier witness has been a crucial one in upholding the reality of God, the glory and deity of Jesus Christ and the truth of the Gospel in this world. All those who take the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds seriously should be grateful for their rock-solid witness. Right now, Pope Benedict XVI needs the prayers of not only Catholics, but all Christians of good will around the world. As a recent article on the Cathoic News Agency says:

"Saying Pope Benedict XVI has been “unjustly attacked,” the head of the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need has called for this Sunday, the Feast of the Chair of Peter, to be a day of fervent prayer for the Holy Father."

“The dignity of the papacy and the person of Benedict XVI himself have been crudely insulted. Many people have manipulated the facts, while others have frivolously abandoned the important fundamentals of our humanist tradition.

“This unworthy dealing with the truth does grave damage to the dialogue between civil society and the great religions. It is a sign of cultural degeneration.”

Read it all here: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=15159

"May God bless and protect Pope Benedict XVI and keep him faithful to the truth of Scripture and the orthodox teaching of the doctors of the Church, the great saints and the mystics down through the ages. May he know the power and comfort of the Holy Spirit bearing him up in the face of adversity. May he continue to shine the light of reason and faith on a world that desperately need to embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

The Best Pro-life Speech Ever - by a 12 Year Old!

You really should check out this video. Despite being told by her teacher that she should not speak against abortion and that she would be disqualified from the speech competition, this Grade 7 student from Toronto gave one of the best speeches I have ever heard on abortion and ended up being acclaimed the winner instead of being disqualified. "And a little child shall lead them."

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=89135

Congratulations Lia!

The Fraud of Abortion Reduction

During the 2008 US Presidential Election, a small number of left-wing Evangelical leaders (Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Tony Compolo) and left-wing Catholics (Doug Kmeic, Alexis Kelley, etc.) claimed that the best way to reduce the number of abortions was to vote for Obama, despite Obama's rabidly pro-choice record and stance. This counter-intuitive proposition was based on two claims: 1) that passing pro-life laws such parental notification requirements in the case of minors or waiting periods do not work and 2) improving welfare payments to single mothers and families do work to reduce the number of abortions. A much -heralded study was released by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good that purported to prove the second claim.

Now that study has turned out to be fatally flawed.

Until recently, a Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good study of abortion data claimed that increased spending on welfare programs results in substantial reductions in state abortion rates but many pro-life laws do not. However, the study’s results have been revised following the discovery that incorrect abortion data was used and after criticism from a professor that the group’s conclusions did not follow from the data.

Jim Wallis' blog "God's Politics" referenced this study as if it were evidence for voting Democrat in the 2008 Presidential election. See:

http://blog.sojo.net/2008/09/04/new-study-on-abortion-reduction-by-mary-nelson/

The Sex Vote

Rod Dreher has an excellent post at The Crunchy Con discussing "God, the Sex Vote and Human Dignity." He mentions a post by James Paulos, who mentions "the Sex Vote." Here is Dreher:

He defines "Sex Vote" as a "snappy term for people who are generally willing or even eager to trade away political and economic freedoms for broad (in terms of scope, variety, protection and enforcement) social and cultural freedom." I'd love to read more of his thoughts on this provocative concept, but if I take his meaning, he's arguing that there's really nothing that the Sex Vote crowd won't accept as long as its sexual freedom is protected. I have believed for some time now that for liberal elites (by which I mean academics, journalists, political activists, politicians and the left-wing donor class), the one hill they'll die defending is the Sexual Revolution. And that's true to some degree for us religious conservatives, because sex and culture is not just about canoodling, but has everything to do about the kind of cultural order we'll live in, and even what it means to be human.

Read it all at: http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/02/god-the-sex-vote-and-human-dig.html

The significance of Obama's election is that he won with the sex vote and he knows it. I've said before and I still say that we can expect centrist economic policies from Obama but a strong committment to leftist stances on social issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and euthanasia.

We need to think of the sex vote in terms of Nietzsche's "Last Men" and Huxley's Brave New World, which depicts a perfectly Nietzschean world - one that is becoming more and more real every day in the West. With the UK on its knees, only the much-despised and hated social conservatives in the US stand between us and the realization of the Nietzschean vision. Something to think about the next time you read a media slur on social conservativism and Christianity as obstacles to "progress."

A Botched Abortion in Florida Opens Eyes

You can read here an interview with the mother of a baby aborted by an abortion clinic in South Florida. The baby was born alive, but the abortionist didn't show up on time leaving non-medical clinic personel to deal with the situation. The clinic director (who was not a doctor or a nurse) cut the cord and put the baby, which was still gasping for breath, into a bio-hazzard bag.

http://www.thefloridacatholic.org/mia/2009_mia/2009_miaarticles/20090205_mia_shanice.php

Once the 18 year old mother saw that it was a real baby, not a blob, her natural maternal instincts kicked in and she wanted her baby. But the killers made sure it was dead.

The doctor has lost his medical license and the mother is now suing the clinic. The police are still investigating. They recovered the baby girl's body and it has now been buried in a Catholic cemetary. Here is a story from the Washington Times:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/07/abortion-doctor-loses-state-license/

The mother says:

“They never said anything to me that would make me think it was a baby. They never said anything like baby, fetus. Nothing. They only said things like ‘termination’ and ‘pregnancy’ and ‘termination of pregnancy,’” she said. “They cheated me because they didn’t tell me everything and the doctor wasn’t there.”
She said the staff’s reaction to the live birth made her feel disrespected. “They tried to make it look like this was my fault. Like I asked for this. … They wouldn’t admit to me the whole time something went wrong,” she said. “I feel like they treated me like nothing, like a nobody.”

She said she and other post-abortive women need love, support and family. She also has changed her mind about abortion. “No one should lose their life if you get pregnant,” she said. “If I got pregnant again I would have the baby.”

Her advice to women in unplanned or crisis pregnancies is to make abortion their last option, if at all. “I would tell them not to do it. I’ll say whatever to make them have second thoughts so they don’t do it,” she said. “There is help out there.”

A tragedy has opened one young woman's eyes. Why is society as a whole so willfully blind to the barbarity that is modern abortion?

Animal Farm at St. Mary's University

In George Orwell's Animal Farm the chant that drowned out discussion was "Four legs good, two legs bad." If you want to see it in real life, go to this article from the Calgary Herald and check out the link to the video of pro-abortion fanatics disrupting a pro-life meeting. Campus security eventually shut down the meeting instead of ejecting the morons and the Student Union is trying to de-certify the pro-life group. Why? Because they dared to express an opinion on abortion that is verboten, politically incorrect, already decided, not permitted to be debated.

The university has shamefully failed to live up to its responsibility to protect free speech and open debate of controversial ideas. They think they have academic freedom just because issues that everyone on campus agrees on can be debated on campus. They are wrong.

It is time to start asking why universities have failed so miserably in promoting critical thinking, free and open debate. Why should they be funded with public money if they do not serve as places where debate on the great moral issues of the day can take place? Are Canadian universities so focussed on therapy and entertainment plus job training that producing students who can defend their positions with rational argument is no longer of any concern? What happens to a country when the universities become ideologically driven by one narrow ideology that is not shared by the majority of the population? Where does real debate take place? How does such a society come to shared views on the great political and ethical issues of the day? Where do young people learn to debate in a civil manner with those with whom they disagree?

Incidents like these (and they are becoming increasingly common across Canada today) raise many questions. But I don't have lot of answers. Do you?

Anti-Semitism in Denmark

http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/88-national/43930-schools-caught-up-in-palestinian-conflict.html

Real Conservatism: A Helpful and Hopeful Article

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10608

Continuing Anti-Semitism in Venezeula

Now the Catholic Church is under attack for condemning the vandalization of the Jewish synagogue in Caracas. Note that this is the 7th (!) attack. Zenit reports:

"Three teargas bombs were thrown at the apostolic nunciature in Caracas, in the seventh attack against this diplomatic see, and the second in less than 15 days. According to a communiqué from the nunciature, on Wednesday several unidentified men on motorcycles threw "three devices, of which two fell and exploded in the exterior area of the property, and the third fell and exploded in the interior patio of the diplomatic see.

"The nunciature described the act as one of vandalism and irresponsibility, and authorities were called on to "take the needed measures so as to guarantee the security and safety of the diplomatic mission and its personnel, as is established by the Vienna Convention."Several attacks by pro-government groups have taken place since a student leader Nixon Moreno, who opposes President Hugo Chávez, was given asylum at the nunciature.

The most recent attack, with five teargas bombs, happened last Jan. 19.Wednesday's incident comes just a few days after the Venezuelan bishops' conference released a statement denouncing an attack against the principal synagogue of Caracas.On Jan. 31, 15 unidentified people broke into the synagogue, destroyed objects for worship, and left anti-Israel graffiti.

[See my recent post "An Anti-Jewish Pogram in Venezeula?"]


The statement of the bishops, published Wednesday, expressed their "consternation and sorrow at the violation of the sacred space and the profanation of the religious symbols most dear to the Jewish religion." It asserted that this event "is far from the spirit of tolerance and welcome that is traditional for the Venezuelan people."
http://www.zenit.org/rssenglish-25014

It would appear that the Catholic Church is under attack from anti-Semitic Leftists in Venezeula; under the circumstances, that is appropriate. What I mean is that the Church should not sit quietly by and let the Jews be attacked; it should take risks in order to speak out. It reminds me of a German Christian pastor who is supposed to have visited Martin Niemoller in prison. He asked Niemoller "What are you doing in prison?" and Niemoller evenly replied: "What are you doing not in prison?"

When the Kids Have to Educate the "Grown-ups"

Here is a heartening story from the excellent new on-line journal Public Discourse about the founding of the Anscombe Society at Princeton University. Undergraduates there have decided that the lame and degenerate sexual education provided by the university administration needs correction, so they have taken it upon themselves to attack the problem with organizational skill, intellectual vigor and the employment of reason in defense of traditional marriage. Here is how it begins:

"Every fall, kids arrive on college campuses and learn that their basic moral intuitions on sexual matters don’t square with the reigning ideas. Thanks to debased campus culture and overreaching on the part of administrators and professors, students are beginning to respond systematically—and they’re having an impact. Here’s how."

Read it all here:http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2009.02.03.001.pdart

Here is a link to the Anscombe Society: http://www.princeton.edu/~anscombe/default.htm

My favorite part is in the "About" section where they explain why they chose to name their society after Gertrude Elizabeth Anscombe. A Cambridge philosophy professor, literary executor of Ludwig Wittgenstein and mother of seven, she once bested C. S. Lewis in a debate at the Socratic Club and he had to revise a chapter of his book, Miracles, as a result. She was once arrested for protesting outside an abortion clinic in the 1970's. But it is a toss up whether I admire her most for her outstanding essay "Contraception and Chastity" or for her protest of Oxford University's decision to award an honorary doctorate to Harry S. Truman despite the fact that it was he who ordered the atomic attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Clearly, she did not fear to swim upstream and she took her Christian faith seriously.

Anti-Jewish Pogram in Venezeula?

It appears that the ground is being laid for the leftist government of Hugo Chavez to scapegoat the Jews of Venezeula for the hard times being brought on by the drop in oil prices due to the world-wide recession. The signs are ominous and, to anyone with any sense of history, all too sickeningly familiar.

CNN reports:

"Armed men forced their way into a Caracas synagogue, defacing its administrative offices with anti-Semitic graffiti and vandalizing an interior room where the Torah is kept, officials said. Vandals smashed items in an interior room where the Torah is kept, officials said.

About 15 men forced their way into the Mariperez Synagogue in Venezuela's capital about 10 p.m. Friday, staying until about 3 a.m., police said. They tied up a security guard at the synagogue before vandalizing the rooms.

Graffiti left at the scene included the phrases "Damn the Jews," "Jews out of here" and "Israel assassins." The men also left behind a picture of a devil, authorities said.

The men stole computers and administrative papers or documents, officials said. They did not cover their faces, but took the recordings from security cameras with them. The synagogue had canceled services in recent weeks because of a feared backlash from the Israeli military operations in Gaza, which resulted in the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from Venezuela.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/31/venezuela.synagogue/index.html?section=cnn_latest

In this article from the Washington Times, we learn why the Jewish community had better not hold its collective breath waiting for the government to come to its aid:

"The regime — which boasts of cozy friendships with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran and Fidel Castro's Cuba — has also engaged in steady anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda. Mr. Chavez declared in a Christmas Eve speech little more than a year ago that, "The world has wealth for all, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ, have taken over all the wealth of the world."

Publications by the government's Culture Ministry have featured titles like "The Jewish Question" with cover art showing a Star of David superimposed over a swastika. Jews were accused of complicity in the murder of a prosecutor. An article in a leading newspaper, El Diario de Caracas, asked whether it would become necessary "to expel [the Jews] from the country."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jan/31/a-pogrom-in-venezuela/

Here is a good analysis by Daniel Debow:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-debow/venezuelan-kristallnacht_b_163202.html

Note especially 3 points:
1. In times of economic depression, the Jews throughout history (all over the world and not just in the West) always have been more vulnerable.

2. Venezeula is a socialist country not a right-wing or Fascist one. This supports my sense that the Left is increasingly turning Anti-Semitic these days.

3. Every time Israel is embroiled in a conflict (eg. Lebanon, Gaza) the Western (left-wing dominated) media goes into an anti-Israel flap and this clearly provides cover for anti-semites like Chavez and his friends. Don't think that Hamas and its patrons are oblivious to this fact.

Last word: I find it doubly offensive that Hugo Chavez would utter his anti-semitic slurs in the context of Christmas. What he said was evil and attempting to link it to a Christian holy day was also evil. All Christians should consider themselves slandered by this low-life and should consider themselves to be attacked by him.

Totalitarianism at the University of Calgary

So the University of Calgary administration can't handle a debate about one of the great moral issues of our time on their campus. So they are sending the police to the homes of female students to charge them with trespassing on their own university campus public spaces! What is next? Hoses? Dogs? Thugs with baseball bats?

What a bunch of wimps these people are. Who ever let them into positions of authority in a university anyway? These nervous nellies claim that the scary pictures "disturb" other students. Is this a university or a daycare? Who ever guaranteed a student that he or she could go to a university and never be disturbed? Isn't getting disturbed and learning to defend your point of view in a real debate with real people part of getting an education? Or do they still do education at the University of Calgary? Maybe it is just a pretentious Soviet-style indoctrination camp with nicer cafeterias. Honestly, it sounds more like North Korea than Alberta.

See this story in the National Post: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=1245751 and this bracing dose of reality from Ezra Levant: http://ezralevant.com/2009/02/university-of-calgary-alumni-s.html

All across Canada, free speech and conservative morality are under attack. Our society has been taken over by people who are determined to impose their own (low) moral standards on everyone else and those who object are increasingly at risk of harassement and worse. The sexual revolutionaries are no longer intrested in tolerance; that was just a temporary tactic useful when they were in the minority. Now they demand acquiesence or else. Even the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is now chiming in on the side of conservatives, which is heartening. But it may be too late.

If I hear one more sanctimonious appeal to academic freedom from a Canadian university administrator, I may throw up. Most of them could not distinguish clearly between academic freedom and political correctness. And most are so unprincipled that we can have no doubt that down the road when the Fascists take over, they will happily work for them. They may not even notice much difference, if this case is anything to go by.

Benedict XVI described this situation accurately and concisely in his famous phrase "the dictatorship of relativism."

Why "Abortion Reduction" is a Smokescreen

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86:antlefeb09&catid=36:cwr2009&Itemid=53

If You Can Read This Without Weeping, You Have Officially Been Desensitised and You Need an Empathy Transfusion

Back in the 60's they said that all they wanted was to be tolerated and left alone. Where does it end?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4427191/Grandparents-anguish-at-losing-gay-couple-adoption-children.html

The Euthanasia Blues

Here is a protest song from the disabled person's rights movement:

The Anti-Human Agenda of Population Controllers

Here is the latest moralistic, judgmental, anti-humanist, government expert arguing for the culture of death. It is important to see that this is the sort of advice the Labour Government seeks out as it implements its anti-humanistic policies in bioethics, human rights and so on. He claims that:

"Couples who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment . . . curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming."

You can read it all here: http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article5627634.ece

Poritt is upset that not enough women are "choosing" abortion, depsite its availability:

"He said: “We still have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in Europe and we still have relatively high levels of pregnancies going to birth, often among women who are not convinced they want to become mothers."

Notice the implication that "We have got to do something." In other words, abotion is not about choice - it is about the right choice, i. e. the choice to abort. Give them choice and see if that works. But if enough of them don't choose abortion, well then, we need to think of what to do next. At all costs, we must reduce the population! The article notes that the birth rate for women born in Britain is 1.7 (which is well below the replacement level of 2.1). But this is not good enough for our determined crusader. He wants less people and he is determined that Government should make is so.

Clever fellow that he is, he lets on that the crux of his argument is that resources are finite and there is only so much to go around. So the fewer of us there, the bigger each person's share is. This is fallacious reasoning because population growth spurs economic growth by creating demand plus a pool of entrepreneurial talent that can meet the demand. This is precisely why countries with declining populations like Britain are compelled to bring in more and more immigrants, lest living standards fall dangerously. But arguments like this appeal to the selfishness and narcissism of shallow, contemporary hedonists so they can attract votes.

But in the end, it would appear that this fellow's real agenda is that of the hard-core fanatics who believe that the ideal would be human extinction. (See the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement website here: http://www.vhemt.org/. Their motto is "Live long and die out.")
I call this kind of atheism "anti-humanistic" because it starts by rejecting God in the name of man, but ends by rejecting man. The lesson of the Twentieth century is that to reject God is to reject humanism and that Christianity is not the cause of evil, but of all that is good in Western culture insofar as it points us to the Creator who loves us and made us for fellowship with Him.

Update:
Stephen Barr shows that the real-life implications of following this man's advice would be catastrophic for human life on this planet in a relatively brief period of time, as far as human history is concerned. Read it here: http://www.firstthings.com/blog/2009/02/02/green-guru/
Mr. Barr charitably attributes the wrong-headed thinking here to a "matematical error" and I'm sure that most people who buy the population control line are sincere but in error. But the leaders are not ill-informed. Some of them really want human extinction, just as some mentally ill people want to commit murder-suicide.