Tuesday
AS PROMISED
AS PROMISED: NO ONGOING COVERAGE
OF THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN, BUT
EMPHASIS ON ITEMS WHICH ARE
OF INTEREST TO CHRISTIANS
The continuing abortion problem for Catholics:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be meeting with
her Roman Catholic Archbishop to discuss her
personal views as to church teaching on abortion.
Meantime, two leading Catholic bishops last week
issued a joint pastoral letter making it clear that pro-
life issues like abortion and euthanasia must be the
top priority for Catholic voters in November. The
Kansas City (KS) Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann
and Kansas City - St. Joseph Bishop Robert W.
Finn wrote in their statement: “When it comes to
pro-life issues, the Church strongly believes a
pro-life policy is necessary without compromise…
There are some issues that always involve doing
evil, such as legalized abortion ... as well as
public policies permitting euthanasia ... or
destructive human embryonic stem cell research.
To vote for a candidate who supports these
intrinsic evils…is to participate in a grave
moral evil. It can never be justified." It will be
interesting to see if self-described devout Catholics
like Pelosi, Joe Biden, John Kerry and Ted
Kennedy, for example, will follow the teachings of
their church, or go along with the positions of the
Democrat party, and thereby face being denied
communion.
In last week's issue we reported on the extremely
important challenge facing Christians in California --
to enact in the November 4 election Proposition 8
which will amend the state constitution and define
marriage as between a man and a woman. Naturally
the liberals and the homosexual community oppose
this effort. Now they have been joined in their
opposition by California's six Episcopal bishops,
who are flaunting this slogan,"Jesus calls us to
love rather than to hate; to give rather than
receive." (Any logical application is difficult to
grasp.) The six bishops are joined in their support
for same-sex marriage by the Union of Reformed
Judaism, and the Unitarian-Universalist churches.
Now the ACLU has entered the battle by donating
$1.2 million to oppose the adoption of Proposition 8.
It's always nice when events prove our position to
be right. Steve Linder, of ProtectMarriage.com
said, "The ACLU is picking this fight for a reason.
They know that if we fail, there will be nothing
stopping them and their radical vision for a
society dictated to by activist judges." Urge
your California friends to put voting for Proposition
8 on their "to do" lists!
The Church of England is at it again! A few
issues ago we discussed the shortcomings of the
Anglican Communion -- which includes the Church
of England and the American Episcopal church --
because of their endorsement of same-sex marriage
and the ordaining of openly gay and lesbian priests.
Last week the C of E took another unprecedented
step which some observers in Great Britain have
characterized as "ludicrous."
The church officially apologized to Charles Darwin
for not having embraced his theory of evolution. The
official statement reads, in part, "Charles Darwin,
200 years from your birth [in 1809] the Church
of England owes you an apology for misunder-
standing you, and by getting our first reaction
wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand
you still."
Church officials said that senior bishops wanted to
atone for the vilification their predecessors heaped
upon Darwin in the 1860s when he promulgated his
theory that man was descended from apes. The
church also wants to distance itself from Bible
believing Christians who accept the Scriptural
record of God's creation of the world.
The statement was written by Rev. Malcolm Brown,
a director of the Archbishop's Council, the church's
governing body, which is in turn headed by the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. This
action would be amusing if it were not so serious.
On important conferences and media attitudes:
the most recent in the ongoing series of conferences
on religion, morals, ethics, etc. was last week's
Value Voters Summit in Washington. Organized
by Family Research Council, it featured a very
impressive list of speakers, essentially adherents
of Conservative, Evangelical, Pro-Life, Pro-Family
principles. One major speaker was CNN News
Anchor Lou Dobbs, who said that a prominent
Evangelical leader had changed his views about
the role of faith in politics. He said that the FRC
president Tony Perkins "kept talking long enough
and making enough sense" that he finally agreed
with Perkins that religious faith should influence
public policy. Dobbs also commented that if his
colleagues in the liberal media knew about his change
of heart, he would be in trouble. And he added,
"The truth is, we have a national media that is
liberal in tone, liberal in its bias and that is
dominant in the stories that we choose to report
and the way in which we report them."
This change in attitude by a featured reporter on a
major liberal network (CNN) came right on the
heels of MSNBC removing two key reporters,
Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, from their
anchor positions during the presidential campaign
because of their obvious opinionated pro-Obama
bias. Who knows? We might yet see "freedom of
the press" become "fairness of the press."
Teddy Roosevelt again; he was so perceptive:
"...the man who really counts in the world is the
doer, not the mere critic-the man who actually
does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly,
not the man who only talks or writes about how
it ought to be done." - Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
[Remind you of any men in the news today?]
Some Random Afterthoughts . . .
There are times when an advertisement expresses
the facts of life as well as any print or video reporter
can do. Consider this one, for example: "Someday
soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from
a Muslim muezzin. Millions of Europeans already do.
And liberals will still tell you that 'diversity is our
strength' -- while Talibanic enforcers cruise our
cities burning books and barber shops... the
Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate
the 'separation of church and state' ... and the
Hollywood Left gives up gay rights in favor of the
much safer charms of polygamy.
“If you think this can't happen, you haven't been
paying attention, as the hilarious and brilliant Mark
Steyn -- the most popular conservative columnist in
the English-speaking world -- shows to devastating
effect in his New York Times bestseller, "America
Alone: The End of the World As We Know It.”
This is not an offer to sell this book -- but we here
have read it and have found it to be not only
enjoyable but also remarkably informative.
For what it's worth: the "all American" game of
baseball may be British in origin. It seems that a
diary has been discovered which tells of playing
a game of baseball on Easter Monday in 1755,
in Guildford, Surrey, some 35 years before the
earliest American claimed date of approximately
1790. And as for the long accepted myth that
Abner Doubleday invented the game in 1839 --
there is no solid historical evidence that Doubeday
had anything to do with the origin of the sport. Old
legends die hard . . . but they do die.
A thought about US citizenship: It is reported that
immigrants aren't seeking US citizenship right now,
and the reason may be that the cost of doing so has
gone up. Last summer there was a 69% increase in
citizenship fees, from $400 to $675, and currently
some 281,000 have applied to become US citizens
in the first half of 2008 -- less than half the number
of applicants in the same period last year, according
to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It
is one of those factors we don't often consider in
expressing concern about the huge population of
illegal aliens in this country.
Shades of "It Can't Happen Here" -- the title of
Sinclair Lewis' great novel has long been a slogan
of reassurance that bad things won't happen to
good people, or something like that. But in England
that theory was exploded a few days ago, with an
email message to all 51 members of the Tower
Hamlets Council in East London from the Head of
Democratic Services, that for the duration of
Ramadan, the Muslim holy month (September this
year), every one of them, Muslim, Catholic, Jew
or atheist - must behave during council meetings as
strict Muslims. They are not to eat or drink; they are
to break for Muslim prayers; they are to do as they
are ordered by the Muslim religion. There was a time
when "It Can't Happen Here" would have covered
such an eventuality in Britain. . . but it is happening.
And there was a time when that assurance phrase
would have been true in America . . . and for the
moment we must pray that it still is true, and will
remain so.
A Founding Father's quote on a timely subject:
"How could a readiness for war in time of peace
be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in
like manner, the preparations and establishments
of every hostile nation?" -- James Madison, 1788
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