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The Komen Fiasco’s Silver Lining
Mollie Hemingway at Christianity today:
Now everyone knows that Komen funnels money to the abortion business. For years, pro-life activists had been attempting to alert Komen donors to its entanglement with Planned Parenthood. Progress had been made in recent years, with Komen acknowledging and attempting to downplay its association. But now, only those who don’t watch the nightly news, read a newspaper, or have a Facebook account are oblivious to Komen’s relationship with the abortion business. The media pushed the line that declining to fund Planned Parenthood is political, but they may be surprised to find out that funding Planned Parenthood is also viewed as political.
...
Planned Parenthood is damaged goods. The Daily Caller‘s Mary Katharine Ham joked that Planned Parenthood is “The Hotel California of charitable donations.” Abortion rights supporter Will Wilkinson said it appeared Planned Parenthood was “throwing its weight around, knocking a few pieces of china off the shelves, sending a message to its other donors: ‘Nice foundation you got there. Wouldn’t want anything to, you know, happen to it.’”
Mark Steyn: The Komen Incident and the Liberal Enforcers
Liberals take the same view as the proprietors of the Dar al-Islam: Once they hold this land, they hold it forever. Notwithstanding that those who give to the foundation are specifically giving to support breast-cancer research, Komen could not be permitted to get away with disrespecting Big Abortion. We don’t want to return to the bad old days of the back alley, when a poor vulnerable person who made the mistake of stepping out of line had to be forced into the shadows and have the realities explained to them with a tire iron. Now Big Liberalism’s enforcers do it on the front pages with the panjandrums of tolerance and diversity cheering them all the way. In the wake of Komen’s decision, the Yale School of Public Health told the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff that its invitation to Nancy Brinker to be its commencement speaker was now “under careful review.” Because God forbid anybody doing a master’s program at an Ivy League institution should be exposed to anyone not in full 100 percent compliance with liberal orthodoxy. The American Association of University Women announced it would no longer sponsor teams for Komen’s “Race for the Cure.” Sure, Komen has raised $2 billion for the cure, but better we never cure breast cancer than let a single errant Injun wander off the abortion reservation.
Same-Sex Science
Stanton L. Jones, First Things
The social sciences cannot settle the moral status of homosexuality.
Many religious and social conservatives believe that homosexuality is a mental illness caused exclusively by psychological or spiritual factors and that all homosexual persons could change their orientation if they simply tried hard enough. This view is widely pilloried (and rightly so) as both wrong on the facts and harmful in effect. But few who attack it are willing to acknowledge that today a wholly different, far more influential, and no less harmful set of falsehoods—each attributed to the findings of “science”—dominates the research literature and political discourse.
We are told that homosexual persons are just as psychologically healthy as heterosexuals, that sexual orientation is biologically determined at birth, that sexual orientation cannot be changed and that the attempt to change it is necessarily harmful, that homosexual relationships are equivalent to heterosexual ones in all important characteristics, and that personal identity is properly and legitimately constituted around sexual orientation. These claims are as misguided as the ridiculed beliefs of some social conservatives, as they spring from distorted or incomplete representations of the best findings from the science of same-sex attraction.
Dear kids: sex is good
By Carol Maxwell, LifeSite News
“Is sex a good or a bad thing?” I asked my stunned children recently. After the shock wore off, they were confident of the correct answer.
“Baaaad!” they piped in unison.
“You’re wrong,” I replied, satisfied that I had their attention as evidenced by their baffled expressions.
As a cradle Catholic, I was not catechized properly in the teachings of the Church. It took more than nine years of being a parent to finally yearn to understand the faith connected to our Sunday family custom. After realizing that sexual sins are normalized and celebrated in society, especially in the media, my husband and I did everything to protect our children from having their perception of sex twisted into the opposite of natural law established by God.
Exposing children to sexual themes before they’re ready robs them of their innocence, and misinformation warps their perception of normal. Having five boys, we know visual images are more powerful to them than to our girls and can lead to a desire for sexual pleasure before they are physically, mentally, spiritually, and financially ready to handle it.
[...] Directly before I asked my kids if they perceived sex as a good or bad thing, I was researching a children’s movie to determine if it contained inappropriate content (which Hollywood seems to include in the most innocuous-sounding films). I heard the kids complain that it would be unfortunate if the film had “bad parts” and wasn’t suitable for the family. The negativity they exhibited toward sex struck me that I had been lax in emphasizing the beauty of the intimacy between husband and wife. That’s why I asked them that loaded question – even though four and a half of my children aren’t even sure what “sex” entails.
I corrected their negative impressions by explaining that, between spouses in a sacramental marriage, sex is beautiful and pleases God—and it’s a very good thing. I emphasized to the older children later that conjugal love has the potential to transmit life to create a family. When intercourse is disordered and not what God intended through marriage, society must face a host of consequences, such as unwanted pregnancies, neglected and fatherless children, and worst of all, the murder of unborn babies through abortion.
Military Seeks to Censor Letter from RC Chaplains
The emerging conflict between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration may have a new front: in the U.S. military itself.
The Catholic Church is fighting mad about an HHS ruling that would have them buy insurance for things they consider sinful–contraception, sterilization and abortion.
All the bishops in the country sent out a letter to be read in their parishes promising that the Church “cannot-and will not-comply with this unjust law.”
Even Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who is in charge of Catholic military chaplains sent out the same letter.
But after he did, the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains sent out another communication forbidding Catholic priests to read the letter, in part because it seemed to encourage civil disobedience, and could be read as seditious against the Commander-in-Chief.
More than one Catholic chaplain who spoke to us off the record confirmed that many chaplains disobeyed this instruction and read the letter anyway. Others sought further instructions from their Archbishop.
Be sure to read it all so you can learn that Big Brother has completed editing of the letter.
Hat tip: To All The World
UPDATE: NRO has an update which reads in part:
So not only were chaplains told not to read the letter, but an Obama administration official edited a pastoral letter . . . with church buy-in?
Didn’t people flee across an ocean-sized pond to be free of this kind of thing?”
A.S. Haley Analyzes the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia’s Motion for pre-judgment interest
The only thing that changed the Judge's view was the Virginia Supreme Court's quixotical decision, two years later, to read the statute in such a way that it could never apply to that sacred category of religious institutions defined as "hierarchical" by the courts. From that date on, perhaps, it was now "clear" in Virginia that the Diocese would prevail -- or was it? At any rate, the point is that all of the evidence which the Diocese (leaning on Judge Bellows, to be sure) now characterizes as "compelling" did not amount to anything approaching that description in 2008, and could have become so only after June 2010.
But the principal point here is that with this motion, the Diocese has revealed its truly impecunious state, and hence its inability to maintain and operate all of the properties it has won in the judicial jackpot. Moving for an award of prejudgment interest in these unique circumstances -- secular lawsuits between thousands and thousands of Christians on each side, contrary to the tenets of the Christian religion -- is to rub salt into a gaping wound in the body of Christ.
Read it all.
TEC Files Motion In Virginia Seeking Pre-judgment Interest on Anglican Parish accounts
DEAR MOM AND DAD
In this last year, your Diocesan Council and the Diocesan Staff have been willing to engage in creative adaptation. We’ve found many ways to save money, to do more with less, and still accomplish more for the mission of the Church in Georgia. I’m pleased to say that, for second consecutive year, the Diocesan budget has ended in the black. And even though our revenue has been essentially flat for two years, we have greatly increased the services and support we offer the clergy and congregations of our Diocese. In other words, we’ve adapted. We’re doing an excellent job of putting Billy Beane’s principles to work by getting every ounce of mission out of the scarce resources we have. As you’ll hear in the reports today, this comes from a lot of hard work.
Jack.
All analogies in the end fall short, but let me stretch this one out some more. The Diocese of Georgia is currently like the Oakland A’s. We have a good, competitive team on the field. But what if our competitive team on the field, in this analogy that would be the clergy and lay leaders of the Diocese, what if we had that same team but with the resources of the New York Yankees? Oh my, what we could do to follow Jesus’ command to “produce fruit, fruit that will last.”
Scratch.
It’s my belief that we’ve reached the limits of what we can do with the resources we currently have.
Dead presidents.
But this can only take us so far. Believe me, I love the team we have. They’re the most hard-working and creative disciples any church could have. I wouldn’t trade them for anyone on any other team, say, for example, in the Diocese of Atlanta (the NY Yankees of GA). Yet, there’s only so much we can do with less.
Benjamins.
That’s why our Campaign for Congregational Development is essential for our future. The last time our Diocese had a campaign was 20 years ago. It was for $1.6 million. And $500,000 of that came as a grant from the Episcopal Church. For those who say we send money to the Episcopal Church and we never get anything back, I say to you that 20 years ago we got a $500,000 gift. That campaign helped build buildings and buy land. And 20 years later we can see the good fruit that campaign produced.
Hundies.
When your Diocesan Council and I see an opportunity for such mission and we reach into our pockets for the resources to engage that mission, we discover our pockets are near empty. That has to change if we’re to fulfill the Great Commission and to live the Great Commandment in this Diocese. You put the Great Commission together with the Great Commandment and it’s clear: We’re called to make disciples by bringing them into a Church that loves God by loving our neighbors.
Simoleons.
That’s what this Campaign for Congregational Development is all about: Making disciples by bringing them into a Church that loves both God and neighbor actively and audaciously. So, it can’t be about tinkering around the edges. It can’t be just a nip or tuck for the Body of Christ in Georgia. It has to be about a reformation of the age-old mission Jesus embodied. It has to be about ending once and for all the seven last words of the Church: “We’ve never done it that way before.”
Cabbage.
The Campaign we’re entering now, however, is not focused on building buildings or buying land. We don’t need more buildings or more land today. What we need is to make more disciples and to make a bigger difference in our communities. This campaign is about building up our congregations so they can be even more effective in their witness to the truth of God found in Jesus Christ.
Kaysh.
This Campaign will be successful if all of us are on the team and on the field. We can’t afford to have any of us on the bench burying our talents in the ground. You know that parable of Jesus. The servants of the master please their master by taking some risks, by putting their talents into play. The parable concludes with those who took the risks seeing their risks rewarded, but the one who buried his talent in the ground, well, let’s just say, things didn’t end well for him.
Your loving son,
Scott Benhase.
(LA Times) Roman Catholics plan counterattack on new contraception coverage
"The White House information about this is a combination of misleading and wrong," said Anthony Picarello, general counsel of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He said the bishops would "pursue every legal mandate available to them to bring an end to this mandate. That means legislation, litigation and public advocacy. All options are on the table...."
Read it all.
NOSTALGIA
Remember back when the Church allegedly burned people at the stake for translating the Bible into various national languages so people could read it on their own? Ah, thinks George Clifford, sadly and wistfully. Those were the days:
For years, I, like most clergy, frequently and indiscriminately exhorted Christians to pick up a Bible and read it. No more. I have realized that this advice, although well intentioned, is usually counterproductive, causing more disaffection from Christianity and guilt than spiritual growth.
Why is that, George? Because the idiots in the pews aren’t intelligent enough to know what it is that they’re reading.
The Bible, written over a period of more than one thousand years, contains multiple diverse worldviews, all of them foreign to twenty-first century life in the United States. The person who genuinely wants to understand the biblical text benefits by beginning with good introductions to both the Old Testament and New Testament. These provide overviews of important historical, linguistic, textual, and literary issues. Commentaries and Bible dictionaries offer more specific assistance related to particular passages.
In other words, to read the Bible with even a moderate level of informed comprehension, a reader needs to invest substantial time and effort in acquiring the knowledge and skills that seminarians generally learn in their first year or two of biblical studies. In contrast to the pseudo-scholars with their interlinear versions, developing the linguistic knowledge to appreciate and ponder the text in Hebrew or Greek requires even more years of work.
Translation: don’t try this at home. Just stick to your Danielle Steel or your John Grisham or whatever other brain-dead crap you people read and leave the Bible alone because only highly-trained professionals like us are able to tell you what it means. Nothing good can come of letting you people read your Bibles unsupervised.
Beginning when I was in seminary over three decades ago, I have frequently heard seminarians lament the alienation and disaffection that they experienced as they began their biblical studies. Devotional reading of the Bible had nurtured their faith and often played an instrumental role in the spiritual journey that led them to seminary en route to seeking ordination. Now their academic studies challenged, if not actually contradicted, what they believed was the Word of God they had previously heard in their devotional reading of beloved texts.
Søren? Want to field that one?
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
Thanks, man. But you don’t get it, says Clifford. Let people read Bibles by themselves and who knows what weird crap they might start believing.
Devotional reading was the pervasive approach among Bible reading Protestants – whether mainline Church members, evangelicals, or fundamentalists – to whom I ministered in the Navy. These good people considered themselves Christians in spite of both their theological ignorance and (being kind) eccentricities.
On the one hand, the reader may uncritically accept the text as authoritative and adopt an unscientific (creation in seven days; people walking on water), unhistorical (hundreds of thousands of slaves exiting Egypt; the slaughter of innocents), and theologically bogus (God ordering mass slaughter; women subservient to men) reading.
Unfortunately, the Episcopal Church is complicit in giving people this unfortunate choice. In sermons, confirmation classes, and other venues – most recently, a campaign to get people to read the Bible through in a year – we regularly encourage people to pick up the Bible and read it. Bible studies typically consist of the blind leading the blind: well-meaning, devout believers telling one another what God is saying to them through a particular text. Lectio divina is similar: listen to the text and hear the Holy Spirit speak to you.
Ballgame, thanks for playing. Nobody and I mean NOBODY does sneering theological condescension better than Episcopalians.
Do you the best way to evaluate a particular church? Read a statement of its theological positions? Evaluate its theology based on how closely it adheres to the Bible and the theology of the Church as a whole?
No and no. The best way to evaluate a church is to evaluate the kinds of people it produces. And there’s only one effective place to do that.
Coffee hour.
When I was still part of it, the Episcopal Church used to publicly say nice things about other churches and worked with other churches all the time. Even today, many Episcopalians profess great respect for Catholic saints and various aspects of the Catholic tradition, even to the point of giving Catholic names to their “religious orders.”
The term “Anglo-Catholic” exists for a reason.
I don’t really care what you publicly proclaim. I do care what you say in private when you think no one is listening. And I have never heard more visceral contempt toward other Christian traditions than I used to hear while walking around my Episcopal parish dining hall with a cup of coffee in my hand.
Is Clifford concerned about heresy taking hold in someone’s life? Yes and no. He is not at all concerned about the possibility that you might read your Bible, go off, start some kind of cult and begin speaking in tongues or something.
But George is concerned, gravely concerned, that you might read your Bible, decide that, “Biblical scholarship” notwithstanding, it means exactly what it says, conclude that the Episcopal Church is dead wrong about practically everything and join the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Southern Baptist or some other Christian church that actually believes all this mythological garbage.
After all, if Romans 10:9 has a specific cultural context and if its meaning can only be interpreted by trained professionals and no one else, the Christian religion is worthless.
(Baltimore Sun) Jason Poling—Evangelicals and Mormons: Can we talk?
I know many individual Mormons and historic orthodox Christians who believe people in one another's communities to be genuine followers of Jesus Christ. But the religious movements of historic Christianity on the one hand and Mormonism on the other do not recognize one another's movements as Christian. That doesn't mean individual people within those movements reject one another as citizens, or as political leaders — let alone as friends and colleagues. But it does mean that these religious traditions have things to say about one another.
Read it all but please note that what Mr. Poling attributes to Luther ["With Luther, I would rather be governed by an honest and capable man of a different religious faith than by a corrupt and ineffective politician who attended my church"] is something you often see quoted, but no one has ever been able to show me a reference where this was said in Luther's own works [and I recall the now late Richard John Neuhaus saying much the same]. If any blog readers can find such a reference, do let me know--KSH.
Final Slate for Episcopal Bishop Suffragan of Virginia Announced
The Rev. Randy AlexanderYou may also find more about the nominees in the committee report there.
Rector of Christ Church, Pelham
Diocese of New York
The Rev. Canon Susan Goff
Canon to the Ordinary
Diocese of Virginia
The Very Rev. David May
Rector of Grace Church, Kilmarnock
Diocese of Virginia
The Very Rev. Dr. Hilary Smith
Rector of St. Paul's on-the-Hill, Winchester
Diocese of Virginia
The Very Rev. Shirley Smith Graham
Rector of St. Martin's, Williamsburg
Diocese of Southern Virginia
The Rev. Canon Sue Sommer
Subdean and Canon Pastor of Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral
Diocese of West Missouri
The Latest Numbers from Intrade on the Rep. Primary and Nomination Process and the Fall Election
(RNS) Mainline Protestants Up for Grabs Heading into November
That's according to a new poll released Thursday (Feb. 2) that found white mainline Protestants are more evenly split between President Obama and his Republican challengers than other religious groups.
"They're the most important ignored religious group in the country," said Dan Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute, which conducted the poll in partnership with Religion News Service.
Read it all.
(World) Two weeks after a violent terrorist attack, residents of Kano remain cautious
The attacks have been followed by sporadic episodes of explosions, gunfire, and kidnappings attributed to Boko Haram, the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group that has since last year launched an increasing number of attacks in northern Nigeria. These continued threats have forced police to extend a curfew put in place after attacks on Jan. 20 and to lengthen it by one hour. Offices, stores, and restaurants now must close and all residents must be off the streets from 6 p.m. until 7 a.m.—in a city of about 9 million that is Nigeria’s second largest....
Read it all.
ATTENTION LADIES
No sane man alive finds this attractive. That is all.
(NY Times Beliefs Column) A Counselor’s Convictions Put Her Profession on Trial
That seemingly simple request became a problem for Ms. Ward when the university expelled her for having made it. Ms. Ward sued, and her case raises the question of whether a counselor’s religious convictions can disqualify her from the profession.
A federal court dismissed Ms. Ward’s claim of religious discrimination. But on Jan. 27, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ordered the lower court to rehear the case, finding that Eastern Michigan “cannot point to any written policy that barred Ward from requesting this referral.”
Read it all.
‘Homosexuality is not a civil right’ – Greg Quinlan at marriage equality hearing
Greg Quinlan is President of PFOX (Parents and friends of Ex-Gays)
"Homosexuality is not a civil right. Civil rights are based on innateness, whether or not you were born that way. To date, there is zero evidence that anyone is born a homosexual. Zero. In fact it's homosexual researchers and scientists that are proving that homosexuality is not innate and has no biological ideology. Homosexuality is not immutable. People do change. People have a right of self-determination. They can choose to change from being gay to straight. Why can't they choose to change from being straight to ga?
"People do it all the time. There are many ex-gays. Anne Heche, to name one. Sinead O'Connor. And myself. I left the homosexual lifestyle almost 20 years ago. Lived as a homosexual activist for 10 years of my life. I'm a registered nurse. I watched 100 of my friends and acquaintances die of AIDS before I stopped counting. I've seen lots of things but homosexuality does not deserve to be codified or recognized as marriage in any state."
“I want to talk first of all about something I heard from the very beginning by people of this Legislature that we are bigots as people of faith, because we do not hold that homosexual marriage should be codified. That somehow we are bigots and we are ideologues because we are people of faith. I want to address that hate. Everyone in this room who is a person of faith deserves an apology from one of the sponsors of this bill for calling us bigots.”
Risking frostbite, Canadian Anglicans bless waters
Yet it's worth the discomfort if you're there for divine purposes. Such was the case for some Indigenous Anglicans who this year picked up the Eastern Orthodox tradition of the Great Blessing of Water. The outdoor event happens on or close to Jan. 19, the feast of Christ's baptism known as "Theophany."
Read it all.
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