* Note: "day of doom" is an Old English term meaning "Day of Judgment." ____________________________________ | |||
17 March 2010
Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!
15 March 2010
KILL THE BILL- HT Gateway Pundit
Monday, March 15, 2010, 12:03 PM
Jim Hoft
Another Democrat flees the scene…Ohio Dem Rep. John Boccieri skipped out on Barack Obama’s dog and pony health care rodeo today in Ohio.
But, the “Kill the Bill” protesters were out in force… Despite the rain…
Protestors line the street near where President Barack Obama will speak later in Strongsville, Ohio, Monday, March 15, 2010. (AP/Mark Duncan)
The New York Times reported:
Representative John Boccieri, Democrat of Ohio, whose vote on major health care legislation could be crucial to the outcome, will not be attending President Obama’s health care rally on Monday in Strongsville, Ohio, not far from Mr. Boccieri’s own district, a spokeswoman said.Via Michelle Malkin
Mr. Boccieri is focusing instead on a major infrastructure announcement this morning at Akron-Canton Airport, where the chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, Randy Babbitt, delivered a $16.6 million check for a runway extension and improvement project.
Mr. Boccieri has said the runway project would create up to 60 jobs and lift the local economy.
Last week the liberal Carnahan siblings, Robin and Russ, skipped Obama’s fundraiser in St. Louis. They didn’t want to be seen with the Washington radical in pub
14 March 2010
Rule 5 Sunday- Irish Edition, Part 2- Colin Farrell
Part 2 stars Colin Farrell, who first came to fame in Ballykissangel, a great Irish tv show that is shown here in the US on PBS
Rule 5 Sunday- Irish Edition
IN honor of St Patrick's Day, which is this coming Wednesday, I offer proof that God does indeed love the Irish, and for which I am eternally grateful that my ancestry in both the paternal and maternal lines, is indeed Irish-
First up- Pierce Brosnan, who was first introduced to America in the miniseries- The Manions of America. Then he burst into stardom on Remington Steele, before becoming a movie star and then James Bond
First up- Pierce Brosnan, who was first introduced to America in the miniseries- The Manions of America. Then he burst into stardom on Remington Steele, before becoming a movie star and then James Bond
12 March 2010
Words of Wisdom!!!
The Spot-On Quotes Of The Week…
12 March 2010 @ 10:19
…is awarded to the Sam Adams of the modern Right, Andrew Breitbart:
Spot-on, gentlemen.
They call us tea-baggers. They call us racist, sexist, homophobic, and we are finally punching back. It’s over, dude. It’s over. You think you’re gonna be able to put the genie back in the bottle? It’s over. And if you don’t like my aggression, there are going to be millions more of me. Because the new media provides the tools and there are millions out there who are outraged. Now they realize, ‘Wow, anybody can do that. We can hold these people accountable. We have the means. We have the technology’.…is also awarded to Stacy McCain [who turned me on to this Breitbart quote] for his comments on Mr. Brietbart:
…Some people are fearful of superior intelligence and others are envious. Admiration is more appropriate, and Breitbart combines raw brain power with a fierce contempt for liberalism and a refusal to be intimidated by power.We need a Sam Adams and Mr. Breitbart fits the bill.
This is not to say that Breitbart is faultless or immune to criticism. It is, however, to say with unexaggerated sincerity that he is a man as potentially valuable to American conservatism today as Buckley was in 1951….
Spot-on, gentlemen.
Girl Scouts OK Pro-Abortion Planned Parenthood Sex Guide at United Nations Mtg
Girl Scouts OK Pro-Abortion Planned Parenthood Sex Guide at United Nations Mtg
Girl Scouts OK Pro-Abortion Planned Parenthood Sex Guide at United Nations Mtg
Girl Scouts OK Pro-Abortion Planned Parenthood Sex Guide at United Nations Mtg
by Terrence McKeegan, J.D.
March 11, 2010
LifeNews.com Note: Terrence McKeegan writes for the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. This article originally appeared in the pro-life group's Friday Fax publication and is used with permission.
The brochure, aimed at young people living with HIV, contains explicit and graphic details on sex, as well as the promotion of casual sex in many forms. The brochure claims, “Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse… But, there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!”
The brochure goes on to encourage young people to “Improve your sex life by getting to know your own body. Play with yourself! Masturbation is a great way to find out more about your body and what you find sexually stimulating. Mix things up by using different kinds of touch from very soft to hard. Talk about or act out your fantasies. Talk dirty to them.”
The brochure also tells students that national laws requiring HIV-positive people to reveal their status to their partner(s) “violate the rights of people living with HIV” and calls for advocacy to “change laws that violate your rights.” It explains, “There are many reasons that people do not share their HIV status. … They may worry that people will find out something else they have kept secret, like they are using injecting drugs, having sex outside of a marriage or having sex with people of the same gender.”
The Girl Scouts, along with the YMCA have been co-moderating a young women’s caucus that included an “Intergenerational Conversation” side event on “universal access” and “reproductive health.” One recent Girl Scout project “aims at securing the right of women, men and adolescents aged between ten and twenty-five, to better reproductive and sexual health.”??
Also at CSW last week, the heads of various powerful UN agencies including the UN Population Fund, UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UN Children's Fund and the World Health Organization released a “UN Joint Statement” under the name of the “UN Adolescent Girls Task Force,” which calls for their agencies to promote and support programs “that empower … adolescent girls, particularly those aged 10 to 14 years.”
One of the chief priorities for empowerment is ensuring access to “life-skills based sexuality education, HIV prevention, and sexual and reproductive health.”
The New York Times recently reported that UN Population Fund had co-sponsored a very controversial curriculum with UNESCO, that included teaching children as young as five to be sexually active and training adolescents to advocate for abortion.
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women of America told the Friday Fax, “Governments and NGOs should be aware of Planned Parenthood’s insidious plan to work with UN agencies and girls’ organizations in order to profit from encouraging kids to be sexually active.”
Girl Scouts Distribute Planned Parenthood Sex Guide at UN Meeting » Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute
HT from Potluck blog- AND WHY ARE THE GIRL SCOUTS ALLOWED IN CATHOLIC DIOCESE AND PARISHES?????
Girl Scouts Distribute Planned Parenthood Sex Guide at UN Meeting » Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute
Volume 13, Number 13
March 11, 2010
Girl Scouts Distribute Planned Parenthood Sex Guide at UN Meeting
By Terrence McKeegan, J.D.
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) The World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides hosted a no-adults-welcome panel at the United Nations this week where Planned Parenthood was allowed to distribute a brochure entitled “Healthy, Happy and Hot.” The event was part of the annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) which concludes this week.
Happy, Healthy and Hot The brochure, aimed at young people living with HIV, contains explicit and graphic details on sex, as well as the promotion of casual sex in many forms. The brochure claims, “Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse… But, there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!” The brochure goes on to encourage young people to “Improve your sex life by getting to know your own body. Play with yourself! Masturbation is a great way to find out more about your body and what you find sexually stimulating. Mix things up by using different kinds of touch from very soft to hard. Talk about or act out your fantasies. Talk dirty to them.”
The brochure also tells students that national laws requiring HIV-positive people to reveal their status to their partner(s) “violate the rights of people living with HIV” and calls for advocacy to “change laws that violate your rights.” It explains, “There are many reasons that people do not share their HIV status. … They may worry that people will find out something else they have kept secret, like they are using injecting drugs, having sex outside of a marriage or having sex with people of the same gender.”
The Girl Scouts, along with the YMCA have been co-moderating a young women’s caucus that included an “Intergenerational Conversation” side event on “universal access” and “reproductive health.” One recent Girl Scout project “aims at securing the right of women, men and adolescents aged between ten and twenty-five, to better reproductive and sexual health.”
Also at CSW last week, the heads of various powerful UN agencies including the UN Population Fund, UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UN Children's Fund and the World Health Organization released a “UN Joint Statement” under the name of the “UN Adolescent Girls Task Force,” which calls for their agencies to promote and support programs “that empower … adolescent girls, particularly those aged 10 to 14 years.” One of the chief priorities for empowerment is ensuring access to “life-skills based sexuality education, HIV prevention, and sexual and reproductive health.”
The New York Times recently reported that UN Population Fund had co-sponsored a very controversial curriculum with UNESCO, that included teaching children as young as five to be sexually active and training adolescents to advocate for abortion.
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women of America told the Friday Fax, “Governments and NGOs should be aware of Planned Parenthood’s insidious plan to work with UN agencies and girls’ organizations in order to profit from encouraging kids to be sexually active.”
09 March 2010
The Doctrine of the Catholic Kennedy? Worthless
The Doctrine of the Catholic Kennedy? Worthless
ROME, March 2, 2010 – Precisely fifty years after the memorable speech, preserved in the anthologies, that John F. Kennedy gave to the Protestant pastors of Houston in order to convince them and the entire nation that as a Catholic he could be a good president (see photo), the archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, has returned to the scene of the crime, in Houston, for a Baptist conference on the role of Christians in public life.
The "crime" was precisely the one committed by Kennedy with that speech, Chaput maintained in his talk, given yesterday evening at Houston Baptist University and reproduced in its entirety further below.
"Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage," said Chaput, who of all the bishops of the United States is the one most active in the area of relations between the Church and political leadership. He has also written a book on this topic, "Render Unto Caesar," the central thesis of which is that Caesar must be given his due, but that a Christian serves his nation by living his faith in political life in complete consistency and visibility, without hiding or diluting it.
In Chaput's view, the rigid separation between Church and state exalted by Kennedy has nothing to do with the origin and history of the United States. It is a concept introduced only in the middle of the twentieth century by a secularist current. Kennedy submitted to this current, opening the way to the privatization of religious belief in the individual conscience and to its definitive collapse, even among Catholics.
Today the paradox of these Catholics in love with secularism in the United States and elsewhere is that they espouse and exalt this paradigm in an uncritical fashion, even applying it to the Church, precisely when it appears to be increasingly in crisis everywhere.
In contemporary culture, the word "secularism" can be traced back to the "laïcité" typical of France, highly aggressive toward religion and determined to exclude it from the public sphere or in any case subject it to its own command.
But this concept is under revision in France itself, and elsewhere it has been duplicated in significantly different versions, all of them rather unstable.
Not only that. In Europe itself, as well as in North America, "laïcité" has always had to face a very different model of relations between Church and state, the "religious freedom" of Anglo-Saxon origin that has thrived most in the United States.
Both of these models were born within Christianity, but they have produced different forms of the Church's role in society.
The United States is the nation where today the confrontation between "laïcité" and "religious freedom" is most vigorous and decisive. And the Catholic Church is part of it.
In Italy, the scholar who is most insistently calling attention to this confrontation is Luca Diotallevi, professor of sociology at the Università di Roma Tre, vice president of the scientific committee of the "Social Weeks" for Italian Catholics, and an expert in high demand among the leadership of the bishops' conference.
Diotallevi has entitled his latest essay, published by Rubbettino and in bookstores for a month, "Una alternativa alla laicità."
He published an enlightening preview of his essay, with references to Europe and America, in the magazine of the Catholic University of Milan, "Vita e Pensiero":
> Se possiamo non dirci laici
But here is the talk given by the archbishop of Denver on the evening of March 1, 2010, at the Baptist University of Houston:
__________
THE VOCATION OF CHRISTIANS IN AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE
by Charles J. Chaput
One of the ironies in my talk tonight is this. I'm a Catholic bishop, speaking at a Baptist university in America's Protestant heartland. But I've been welcomed with more warmth and friendship than I might find at a number of Catholic venues. This is a fact worth discussing. I'll come back to it at the end of my comments. But I want to begin by thanking Drs. Sloan and Bonicelli and the leadership of Houston Baptist University for their extraordinary kindness in having me here tonight. I'm very grateful for their friendship.
I also want to thank my friend Dr. John Hittinger of the University of St. Thomas. Part of my pleasure in being here is to encourage his efforts with the John Paul II Forum on the Church in the Modern World. The Forum is hugely important – and not just for Catholics, but for the whole Christian community. I'm grateful to the leadership of the University of St. Thomas for supporting him.
I need to offer a few caveats before I turn to the substance of our discussion.
The first caveat is this: My thoughts tonight are purely my own. I don't speak for the Holy See, or the American Catholic bishops, or the Houston Catholic community. In the Catholic tradition, the local bishop is the chief preacher and teacher of the faith, and the shepherd of the local Church. Here in Houston you have an outstanding bishop – a man of great Christian faith and intellect – in Cardinal Daniel DiNardo. In all things Catholic tonight, I'm glad to defer to his leadership.
Here's my second caveat: I'm here as a Catholic Christian and an American citizen – in that order. Both of these identities are important. They don't need to conflict. They are not, however, the same thing. And they do not have the same weight. I love my country. I revere the genius of its founding documents and its public institutions. But no nation, not even the one I love, has a right to my allegiance, or my silence, in matters that belong to God or that undermine the dignity of the human persons He created.
My third caveat is this: Catholics and Protestants have different memories of American history. The historian Paul Johnson once wrote that America was “born Protestant” (1). That's clearly true. Whatever America is today or may become tomorrow, its origin was deeply shaped by a Protestant Christian spirit, and the fruit of that spirit has been, on the balance, a great blessing for humanity. But it's also true that, while Catholics have always thrived in the United States, they lived through two centuries of discrimination, religious bigotry and occasional violence. Protestants of course will remember things quite differently. They will remember Catholic persecution of dissenters in Europe, the entanglements of the Roman Church and state power, and papal suspicion of democracy and religious liberty.
We can't erase those memories. And we cannot – nor should we try to – paper over the issues that still divide us as believers in terms of doctrine, authority and our understandings of the Church. Ecumenism based on good manners instead of truth is empty. It's also a form of lying. If we share a love of Jesus Christ and a familial bond in baptism and God’s Word, then on a fundamental level, we're brothers and sisters. Members of a family owe each other more than surface courtesies. We owe each other the kind of fraternal respect that “speak[s] the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). We also urgently owe each other solidarity and support in dealing with a culture that increasingly derides religious faith in general, and the Christian faith in particular. And that brings me to the heart of what I want to share with you.
*
Our theme tonight is the vocation of Christians in American public life. That’s a pretty broad canvas. Broad enough that I wrote a book about it. Tonight I want to focus in a special way on the role of Christians in our country’s civic and political life. The key to our discussion will be that word “vocation.” It comes from the Latin word "vocare," which means, “to call.” Christians believe that God calls each of us individually, and all of us as a believing community, to know, love and serve him in our daily lives.
But there’s more. He also asks us to make disciples of all nations. That means we have a duty to preach Jesus Christ. We have a mandate to share his Gospel of truth, mercy, justice and love. These are mission words; action words. They’re not optional. And they have practical consequences for the way we think, speak, make choices and live our lives, not just at home but in the public square. Real Christian faith is always personal, but it’s never private. And we need to think about that simple fact in light of an anniversary.
Fifty years ago this fall, in September 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He had one purpose. He needed to convince 300 uneasy Protestant ministers, and the country at large, that a Catholic like himself could serve loyally as our nation’s chief executive. Kennedy convinced the country, if not the ministers, and went on to be elected. And his speech left a lasting mark on American politics. It was sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong. Not wrong about the patriotism of Catholics, but wrong about American history and very wrong about the role of religious faith in our nation’s life. And he wasn’t merely “wrong.” His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation. Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.
Now those are strong statements. So I’ll try to explain them by doing three things. First, I want to look at the problems in what Kennedy actually said. Second, I want to reflect on what a proper Christian approach to politics and public service might look like. And last, I want to examine where Kennedy’s speech has led us – in other words, the realities we face today, and what Christians need to do about those realities.
*
John Kennedy was a great speaker. Ted Sorensen, who helped craft the Houston speech, was a gifted writer. As a result, it’s easy to speed-read Kennedy’s Houston remarks as a passionate appeal for tolerance. But the text has at least two big flaws (2). The first is political and historical. The second is religious.
Early in his remarks, Kennedy said: “I believe in an America where the separation of Church and state is absolute.” Given the distrust historically shown to Catholics in this country, his words were shrewdly chosen. The trouble is, the Constitution doesn’t say that. The Founders and Framers didn’t believe that. And the history of the United States contradicts that. Unlike revolutionary leaders in Europe, the American Founders looked quite favorably on religion. Many were believers themselves. In fact, one of the main reasons for writing the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause – the clause that bars any federally-endorsed Church – was that several of the Constitution’s Framers wanted to protect the publicly funded Protestant Churches they already had in their own states. John Adams actually preferred a “mild and equitable establishment of religion” and helped draft that into the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution (3).
America’s Founders encouraged mutual support between religion and government. Their reasons were practical. In their view, a republic like the United States needs a virtuous people to survive. Religious faith, rightly lived, forms virtuous people. Thus, the modern, drastic sense of the “separation of Church and state” had little force in American consciousness until Justice Hugo Black excavated it from a private letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Association (4). Justice Black then used Jefferson’s phrase in the Supreme Court’s Everson v. Board of Education decision in 1947.
The date of that Court decision is important, because America’s Catholic bishops wrote a wonderful pastoral letter one year later – in 1948 – called “The Christian in Action.” It’s worth reading. In that letter, the bishops did two things. They strongly endorsed American democracy and religious freedom. They also strongly challenged Justice Black’s logic in Everson.
The bishops wrote that “it would be an utter distortion of American history and law” to force the nation’s public institutions into an “indifference to religion and the exclusion of cooperation between religion and government.” They rejected Justice Black’s harsh new sense of the separation of Church and state as a “shibboleth of doctrinaire secularism”(5). And the bishops argued their case from the facts of American history.
The value of remembering that pastoral statement tonight is this: Kennedy referenced the 1948 bishops’ letter in his Houston comments. He wanted to prove the deep Catholic support for American democracy. And rightly so. But he neglected to mention that the same bishops, in the same letter, repudiated the new and radical kind of separation doctrine he was preaching.
The Houston remarks also created a religious problem. To his credit, Kennedy said that if his duties as President should “ever require me to violate my conscience or violate the national interest, I would resign the office.” He also warned that he would not “disavow my views or my church in order to win this election.” But in its effect, the Houston speech did exactly that. It began the project of walling religion away from the process of governance in a new and aggressive way. It also divided a person’s private beliefs from his or her public duties. And it set “the national interest” over and against “outside religious pressures or dictates.”
For his audience of Protestant ministers, Kennedy’s stress on personal conscience may have sounded familiar and reassuring. But what Kennedy actually did, according to Jesuit scholar Mark Massa, was something quite alien and new. He “‘secularize[d] the American presidency in order to win it.” In other words, “[P]recisely because Kennedy was not an adherent of that mainstream Protestant religiosity that had created and buttressed the ‘plausibility structures’ of [American] political culture at least since Lincoln, he had to ‘privatize’ presidential religious belief – including and especially his own – in order to win that office” (6).
In Massa’s view, the kind of secularity pushed by the Houston speech “represented a near total privatization of religious belief – so much a privatization that religious observers from both sides of the Catholic/Protestant fence commented on its remarkable atheistic implications for public life and discourse.” And the irony – again as told by Massa – is that some of the same people who worried publicly about Kennedy’s Catholic faith got a result very different from the one they expected. In effect, “the raising of the [Catholic] issue itself went a considerable way toward ‘secularizing’ the American public square by privatizing personal belief. The very effort to ‘safeguard’ the [essentially Protestant] religious aura of the presidency... contributed in significant ways to its secularization.”
Fifty years after Kennedy’s Houston speech, we have more Catholics in national public office than ever before. But I wonder if we’ve ever had fewer of them who can coherently explain how their faith informs their work, or who even feel obligated to try. The life of our country is no more “Catholic” or “Christian” than it was 100 years ago. In fact it's arguably less so. And at least one of the reasons for it is this: Too many Catholics confuse their personal opinions with a real Christian conscience. Too many live their faith as if it were a private idiosyncrasy – the kind that they’ll never allow to become a public nuisance. And too many just don't really believe. Maybe it’s different in Protestant circles. But I hope you’ll forgive me if I say, “I doubt it.”
*
John Kennedy didn’t create the trends in American life that I’ve described. But at least for Catholics, his Houston speech clearly fed them. Which brings me to the second point of my talk: What would a proper Christian approach to politics look like? John Courtney Murray, the Jesuit scholar who spoke so forcefully about the dignity of American democracy and religious freedom, once wrote: “The Holy Spirit does not descend into the City of Man in the form of a dove. He comes only in the endlessly energetic spirit of justice and love that dwells in the man of the City, the layman” (7).
Here's what that means. Christianity is not mainly – or even significantly –- about politics. It's about living and sharing the love of God. And Christian political engagement, when it happens, is never mainly the task of the clergy. That work belongs to lay believers who live most intensely in the world. Christian faith is not a set of ethics or doctrines. It's not a group of theories about social and economic justice. All these things have their place. All of them can be important. But a Christian life begins in a relationship with Jesus Christ; and it bears fruit in the justice, mercy and love we show to others because of that relationship.
Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Mt 22:37-40). That's the test of our faith, and without a passion for Jesus Christ in our hearts that reshapes our lives, Christianity is just a word game and a legend. Relationships have consequences. A married man will commit himself to certain actions and behaviors, no matter what the cost, out of the love he bears for his wife. Our relationship with God is the same. We need to live and prove our love by our actions, not just in our personal and family lives, but also in the public square. Therefore Christians individually and the Church as a believing community engage the political order as an obligation of the Word of God. Human law teaches and forms as well as regulates; and human politics is the exercise of power – which means both have moral implications that the Christian cannot ignore and still remain faithful to his vocation as a light to the world (Mt 5:14-16).
Robert Dodaro, the Augustinian priest and scholar, wrote a wonderful book a few years ago called "Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine". In his book and elsewhere, Dodaro makes four key points about Augustine's view of Christianity and politics (8).
First, Augustine never really offers a political theory, and there's a reason. He doesn't believe human beings can know or create perfect justice in this world. Our judgment is always flawed by our sinfulness. Therefore, the right starting point for any Christian politics is humility, modesty and a very sober realism.
Second, no political order, no matter how seemingly good, can ever constitute a just society. Errors in moral judgment can't be avoided. These errors also grow exponentially in their complexity as they move from lower to higher levels of society and governance. Therefore the Christian needs to be loyal to her nation and obedient to its legitimate rulers. But he also needs to cultivate a critical vigilance about both.
Third, despite these concerns, Christians still have a duty to take part in public life according to their God-given abilities, even when their faith brings them into conflict with public authority. We can’t simply ignore or withdraw from civic affairs. The reason is simple. The classic civic virtues named by Cicero – prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance – can be renewed and elevated, to the benefit of all citizens, by the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity. Therefore, political engagement is a worthy Christian task, and public office is an honorable Christian vocation.
Fourth, in governing as best they can, while conforming their lives and their judgment to the content of the Gospel, Christian leaders in public life can accomplish real good, and they can make a difference. Their success will always be limited and mixed. It will never be ideal. But with the help of God they can improve the moral quality of society, which makes the effort invaluable.
What Augustine believes about Christian leaders, we can reasonably extend to the vocation of all Christian citizens. The skills of the Christian citizen are finally very simple: a zeal for Jesus Christ and his Church; a conscience formed in humility and rooted in Scripture and the believing community; the prudence to see which issues in public life are vital and foundational to human dignity, and which ones are not; and the courage to work for what's right. We don't cultivate these skills alone. We develop them together as Christians, in prayer, on our knees, in the presence of Jesus Christ – and also in discussions like tonight.
*
Now before ending, I want to turn briefly to the third point I mentioned earlier in my talk: the realities we face today, and what Christians need to do about them. As I was preparing these comments for tonight, I listed all the urgent issues that demand our attention as believers: abortion; immigration; our obligations to the poor, the elderly and the disabled; questions of war and peace; our national confusion about sexual identity and human nature, and the attacks on marriage and family life that flow from this confusion; the growing disconnection of our science and technology from real moral reflection; the erosion of freedom of conscience in our national health-care debates; the content and quality of the schools that form our children.
The list is long. I believe abortion is the foundational human rights issue of our lifetime. We need to do everything we can to support women in their pregnancies and to end the legal killing of unborn children. We may want to remember that the Romans had a visceral hatred for Carthage not because Carthage was a commercial rival, or because its people had a different language and customs. The Romans hated Carthage above all because its people sacrificed their infants to Ba’al. For the Romans, who themselves were a hard people, that was a unique kind of wickedness and barbarism. As a nation, we might profitably ask ourselves whom and what we’ve really been worshipping in our 40 million “legal” abortions since 1973.
All of these issues that I’ve listed above divide our country and our Churches in a way Augustine would have found quite understandable. The City of God and the City of Man overlap in this world. Only God knows who finally belongs to which. But in the meantime, in seeking to live the Gospel we claim to believe, we find friends and brothers in unforeseen places, unlikely places; and when that happens, even a foreign place can seem like one’s home.
The vocation of Christians in American public life does not have a Baptist or Catholic or Greek Orthodox or any other brand-specific label. John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” – which is so key to the identity of Houston Baptist University, burns just as hot in this heart, and the heart of every Catholic who truly understands his faith. Our job is to love God, preach Jesus Christ, serve and defend God’s people, and sanctify the world as his agents. To do that work, we need to be one. Not “one” in pious words or good intentions, but really one, perfectly one, in mind and heart and action, as Christ intended. This is what Jesus meant when he said: “I do not pray for these only, but also those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (Jn 17:20-21).
We live in a country that was once – despite its sins and flaws – deeply shaped by Christian faith. It can be so again. But we will do that together, or we won’t do it at all. We need to remember the words of St. Hilary from so long ago: "Unum sunt, qui invicem sunt", they are one, who are wholly for each other (9). May God grant us the grace to love each other, support each other and live wholly for each other in Jesus Christ – so that we might work together in renewing the nation that has served human freedom so well.
__________
(1) Paul Johnson, “An Almost-Chosen People,” First Things, June/July 2006; adapted from his Erasmus Lecture.
(2) Full text of the Kennedy Houston speech is available online from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
(3) John Witte, Jr., “From Establishment to Freedom of Public Religion,” Emory University School of Law, Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, Research Paper No. 04-1, 2003, p. 5.
(4) Ibid., p. 2-3.
(5) U.S. Catholic bishops, pastoral letter, “The Christian in Action,” No. 11, 1948; see also Nos. 12-18; reprinted in "Pastoral Letters of the American Hierarchy, 1792-1970," Hugh J. Nolan, Our Sunday Visitor, 1971.
(6) Mark Massa, S.J.; quotations from Massa are from “A Catholic for President? John F. Kennedy and the ‘Secular’ Theology of the Houston Speech, 1960,” Journal of Church and State, Spring 1997.
(7) John Courtney Murray, S.J., “The Role of Faith in the Renovation of the World,” 1948; Murray’s works are available online from the Woodstock Theological Center Library.
(8) Robert Dodaro, O.S.A.; see private correspondence with speaker, along with "Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine," Cambridge University Press, 2008 (first published in 2004), and “Ecclesia and Res Publica: How Augustinian Are Neo-Augustinian Politics?,” collected in "Augustine and Post-Modern Thought: A New Alliance Against Modernity?," Peeters, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 2009.
(9) Referenced in Murray, “The Construction of a Christian Culture;” essay originally delivered as three talks in 1940, available as noted above.
__________
The complete text of the speech given by John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1960, to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association:
> "While the so called religious issue..."
__________
On the book "Render Unto Caesar" by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput:
> How to Conduct Politics as Catholics. The Denver Memorandum (13.8.2008)
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The Doctrine of the Catholic Kennedy? Worthless
In 1960, he theorized the most rigid separation between Church and state, in order to be acceptable as president. Half a century later, Archbishop Chaput is accusing him of causing serious damage. An essay by Professor Diotallevi on the limits and shortcomings of secularism
by Sandro Magister
ROME, March 2, 2010 – Precisely fifty years after the memorable speech, preserved in the anthologies, that John F. Kennedy gave to the Protestant pastors of Houston in order to convince them and the entire nation that as a Catholic he could be a good president (see photo), the archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, has returned to the scene of the crime, in Houston, for a Baptist conference on the role of Christians in public life.
The "crime" was precisely the one committed by Kennedy with that speech, Chaput maintained in his talk, given yesterday evening at Houston Baptist University and reproduced in its entirety further below.
"Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage," said Chaput, who of all the bishops of the United States is the one most active in the area of relations between the Church and political leadership. He has also written a book on this topic, "Render Unto Caesar," the central thesis of which is that Caesar must be given his due, but that a Christian serves his nation by living his faith in political life in complete consistency and visibility, without hiding or diluting it.
In Chaput's view, the rigid separation between Church and state exalted by Kennedy has nothing to do with the origin and history of the United States. It is a concept introduced only in the middle of the twentieth century by a secularist current. Kennedy submitted to this current, opening the way to the privatization of religious belief in the individual conscience and to its definitive collapse, even among Catholics.
Today the paradox of these Catholics in love with secularism in the United States and elsewhere is that they espouse and exalt this paradigm in an uncritical fashion, even applying it to the Church, precisely when it appears to be increasingly in crisis everywhere.
In contemporary culture, the word "secularism" can be traced back to the "laïcité" typical of France, highly aggressive toward religion and determined to exclude it from the public sphere or in any case subject it to its own command.
But this concept is under revision in France itself, and elsewhere it has been duplicated in significantly different versions, all of them rather unstable.
Not only that. In Europe itself, as well as in North America, "laïcité" has always had to face a very different model of relations between Church and state, the "religious freedom" of Anglo-Saxon origin that has thrived most in the United States.
Both of these models were born within Christianity, but they have produced different forms of the Church's role in society.
The United States is the nation where today the confrontation between "laïcité" and "religious freedom" is most vigorous and decisive. And the Catholic Church is part of it.
In Italy, the scholar who is most insistently calling attention to this confrontation is Luca Diotallevi, professor of sociology at the Università di Roma Tre, vice president of the scientific committee of the "Social Weeks" for Italian Catholics, and an expert in high demand among the leadership of the bishops' conference.
Diotallevi has entitled his latest essay, published by Rubbettino and in bookstores for a month, "Una alternativa alla laicità."
He published an enlightening preview of his essay, with references to Europe and America, in the magazine of the Catholic University of Milan, "Vita e Pensiero":
> Se possiamo non dirci laici
But here is the talk given by the archbishop of Denver on the evening of March 1, 2010, at the Baptist University of Houston:
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THE VOCATION OF CHRISTIANS IN AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE
by Charles J. Chaput
One of the ironies in my talk tonight is this. I'm a Catholic bishop, speaking at a Baptist university in America's Protestant heartland. But I've been welcomed with more warmth and friendship than I might find at a number of Catholic venues. This is a fact worth discussing. I'll come back to it at the end of my comments. But I want to begin by thanking Drs. Sloan and Bonicelli and the leadership of Houston Baptist University for their extraordinary kindness in having me here tonight. I'm very grateful for their friendship.
I also want to thank my friend Dr. John Hittinger of the University of St. Thomas. Part of my pleasure in being here is to encourage his efforts with the John Paul II Forum on the Church in the Modern World. The Forum is hugely important – and not just for Catholics, but for the whole Christian community. I'm grateful to the leadership of the University of St. Thomas for supporting him.
I need to offer a few caveats before I turn to the substance of our discussion.
The first caveat is this: My thoughts tonight are purely my own. I don't speak for the Holy See, or the American Catholic bishops, or the Houston Catholic community. In the Catholic tradition, the local bishop is the chief preacher and teacher of the faith, and the shepherd of the local Church. Here in Houston you have an outstanding bishop – a man of great Christian faith and intellect – in Cardinal Daniel DiNardo. In all things Catholic tonight, I'm glad to defer to his leadership.
Here's my second caveat: I'm here as a Catholic Christian and an American citizen – in that order. Both of these identities are important. They don't need to conflict. They are not, however, the same thing. And they do not have the same weight. I love my country. I revere the genius of its founding documents and its public institutions. But no nation, not even the one I love, has a right to my allegiance, or my silence, in matters that belong to God or that undermine the dignity of the human persons He created.
My third caveat is this: Catholics and Protestants have different memories of American history. The historian Paul Johnson once wrote that America was “born Protestant” (1). That's clearly true. Whatever America is today or may become tomorrow, its origin was deeply shaped by a Protestant Christian spirit, and the fruit of that spirit has been, on the balance, a great blessing for humanity. But it's also true that, while Catholics have always thrived in the United States, they lived through two centuries of discrimination, religious bigotry and occasional violence. Protestants of course will remember things quite differently. They will remember Catholic persecution of dissenters in Europe, the entanglements of the Roman Church and state power, and papal suspicion of democracy and religious liberty.
We can't erase those memories. And we cannot – nor should we try to – paper over the issues that still divide us as believers in terms of doctrine, authority and our understandings of the Church. Ecumenism based on good manners instead of truth is empty. It's also a form of lying. If we share a love of Jesus Christ and a familial bond in baptism and God’s Word, then on a fundamental level, we're brothers and sisters. Members of a family owe each other more than surface courtesies. We owe each other the kind of fraternal respect that “speak[s] the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). We also urgently owe each other solidarity and support in dealing with a culture that increasingly derides religious faith in general, and the Christian faith in particular. And that brings me to the heart of what I want to share with you.
*
Our theme tonight is the vocation of Christians in American public life. That’s a pretty broad canvas. Broad enough that I wrote a book about it. Tonight I want to focus in a special way on the role of Christians in our country’s civic and political life. The key to our discussion will be that word “vocation.” It comes from the Latin word "vocare," which means, “to call.” Christians believe that God calls each of us individually, and all of us as a believing community, to know, love and serve him in our daily lives.
But there’s more. He also asks us to make disciples of all nations. That means we have a duty to preach Jesus Christ. We have a mandate to share his Gospel of truth, mercy, justice and love. These are mission words; action words. They’re not optional. And they have practical consequences for the way we think, speak, make choices and live our lives, not just at home but in the public square. Real Christian faith is always personal, but it’s never private. And we need to think about that simple fact in light of an anniversary.
Fifty years ago this fall, in September 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He had one purpose. He needed to convince 300 uneasy Protestant ministers, and the country at large, that a Catholic like himself could serve loyally as our nation’s chief executive. Kennedy convinced the country, if not the ministers, and went on to be elected. And his speech left a lasting mark on American politics. It was sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong. Not wrong about the patriotism of Catholics, but wrong about American history and very wrong about the role of religious faith in our nation’s life. And he wasn’t merely “wrong.” His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation. Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.
Now those are strong statements. So I’ll try to explain them by doing three things. First, I want to look at the problems in what Kennedy actually said. Second, I want to reflect on what a proper Christian approach to politics and public service might look like. And last, I want to examine where Kennedy’s speech has led us – in other words, the realities we face today, and what Christians need to do about those realities.
*
John Kennedy was a great speaker. Ted Sorensen, who helped craft the Houston speech, was a gifted writer. As a result, it’s easy to speed-read Kennedy’s Houston remarks as a passionate appeal for tolerance. But the text has at least two big flaws (2). The first is political and historical. The second is religious.
Early in his remarks, Kennedy said: “I believe in an America where the separation of Church and state is absolute.” Given the distrust historically shown to Catholics in this country, his words were shrewdly chosen. The trouble is, the Constitution doesn’t say that. The Founders and Framers didn’t believe that. And the history of the United States contradicts that. Unlike revolutionary leaders in Europe, the American Founders looked quite favorably on religion. Many were believers themselves. In fact, one of the main reasons for writing the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause – the clause that bars any federally-endorsed Church – was that several of the Constitution’s Framers wanted to protect the publicly funded Protestant Churches they already had in their own states. John Adams actually preferred a “mild and equitable establishment of religion” and helped draft that into the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution (3).
America’s Founders encouraged mutual support between religion and government. Their reasons were practical. In their view, a republic like the United States needs a virtuous people to survive. Religious faith, rightly lived, forms virtuous people. Thus, the modern, drastic sense of the “separation of Church and state” had little force in American consciousness until Justice Hugo Black excavated it from a private letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Association (4). Justice Black then used Jefferson’s phrase in the Supreme Court’s Everson v. Board of Education decision in 1947.
The date of that Court decision is important, because America’s Catholic bishops wrote a wonderful pastoral letter one year later – in 1948 – called “The Christian in Action.” It’s worth reading. In that letter, the bishops did two things. They strongly endorsed American democracy and religious freedom. They also strongly challenged Justice Black’s logic in Everson.
The bishops wrote that “it would be an utter distortion of American history and law” to force the nation’s public institutions into an “indifference to religion and the exclusion of cooperation between religion and government.” They rejected Justice Black’s harsh new sense of the separation of Church and state as a “shibboleth of doctrinaire secularism”(5). And the bishops argued their case from the facts of American history.
The value of remembering that pastoral statement tonight is this: Kennedy referenced the 1948 bishops’ letter in his Houston comments. He wanted to prove the deep Catholic support for American democracy. And rightly so. But he neglected to mention that the same bishops, in the same letter, repudiated the new and radical kind of separation doctrine he was preaching.
The Houston remarks also created a religious problem. To his credit, Kennedy said that if his duties as President should “ever require me to violate my conscience or violate the national interest, I would resign the office.” He also warned that he would not “disavow my views or my church in order to win this election.” But in its effect, the Houston speech did exactly that. It began the project of walling religion away from the process of governance in a new and aggressive way. It also divided a person’s private beliefs from his or her public duties. And it set “the national interest” over and against “outside religious pressures or dictates.”
For his audience of Protestant ministers, Kennedy’s stress on personal conscience may have sounded familiar and reassuring. But what Kennedy actually did, according to Jesuit scholar Mark Massa, was something quite alien and new. He “‘secularize[d] the American presidency in order to win it.” In other words, “[P]recisely because Kennedy was not an adherent of that mainstream Protestant religiosity that had created and buttressed the ‘plausibility structures’ of [American] political culture at least since Lincoln, he had to ‘privatize’ presidential religious belief – including and especially his own – in order to win that office” (6).
In Massa’s view, the kind of secularity pushed by the Houston speech “represented a near total privatization of religious belief – so much a privatization that religious observers from both sides of the Catholic/Protestant fence commented on its remarkable atheistic implications for public life and discourse.” And the irony – again as told by Massa – is that some of the same people who worried publicly about Kennedy’s Catholic faith got a result very different from the one they expected. In effect, “the raising of the [Catholic] issue itself went a considerable way toward ‘secularizing’ the American public square by privatizing personal belief. The very effort to ‘safeguard’ the [essentially Protestant] religious aura of the presidency... contributed in significant ways to its secularization.”
Fifty years after Kennedy’s Houston speech, we have more Catholics in national public office than ever before. But I wonder if we’ve ever had fewer of them who can coherently explain how their faith informs their work, or who even feel obligated to try. The life of our country is no more “Catholic” or “Christian” than it was 100 years ago. In fact it's arguably less so. And at least one of the reasons for it is this: Too many Catholics confuse their personal opinions with a real Christian conscience. Too many live their faith as if it were a private idiosyncrasy – the kind that they’ll never allow to become a public nuisance. And too many just don't really believe. Maybe it’s different in Protestant circles. But I hope you’ll forgive me if I say, “I doubt it.”
*
John Kennedy didn’t create the trends in American life that I’ve described. But at least for Catholics, his Houston speech clearly fed them. Which brings me to the second point of my talk: What would a proper Christian approach to politics look like? John Courtney Murray, the Jesuit scholar who spoke so forcefully about the dignity of American democracy and religious freedom, once wrote: “The Holy Spirit does not descend into the City of Man in the form of a dove. He comes only in the endlessly energetic spirit of justice and love that dwells in the man of the City, the layman” (7).
Here's what that means. Christianity is not mainly – or even significantly –- about politics. It's about living and sharing the love of God. And Christian political engagement, when it happens, is never mainly the task of the clergy. That work belongs to lay believers who live most intensely in the world. Christian faith is not a set of ethics or doctrines. It's not a group of theories about social and economic justice. All these things have their place. All of them can be important. But a Christian life begins in a relationship with Jesus Christ; and it bears fruit in the justice, mercy and love we show to others because of that relationship.
Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Mt 22:37-40). That's the test of our faith, and without a passion for Jesus Christ in our hearts that reshapes our lives, Christianity is just a word game and a legend. Relationships have consequences. A married man will commit himself to certain actions and behaviors, no matter what the cost, out of the love he bears for his wife. Our relationship with God is the same. We need to live and prove our love by our actions, not just in our personal and family lives, but also in the public square. Therefore Christians individually and the Church as a believing community engage the political order as an obligation of the Word of God. Human law teaches and forms as well as regulates; and human politics is the exercise of power – which means both have moral implications that the Christian cannot ignore and still remain faithful to his vocation as a light to the world (Mt 5:14-16).
Robert Dodaro, the Augustinian priest and scholar, wrote a wonderful book a few years ago called "Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine". In his book and elsewhere, Dodaro makes four key points about Augustine's view of Christianity and politics (8).
First, Augustine never really offers a political theory, and there's a reason. He doesn't believe human beings can know or create perfect justice in this world. Our judgment is always flawed by our sinfulness. Therefore, the right starting point for any Christian politics is humility, modesty and a very sober realism.
Second, no political order, no matter how seemingly good, can ever constitute a just society. Errors in moral judgment can't be avoided. These errors also grow exponentially in their complexity as they move from lower to higher levels of society and governance. Therefore the Christian needs to be loyal to her nation and obedient to its legitimate rulers. But he also needs to cultivate a critical vigilance about both.
Third, despite these concerns, Christians still have a duty to take part in public life according to their God-given abilities, even when their faith brings them into conflict with public authority. We can’t simply ignore or withdraw from civic affairs. The reason is simple. The classic civic virtues named by Cicero – prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance – can be renewed and elevated, to the benefit of all citizens, by the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity. Therefore, political engagement is a worthy Christian task, and public office is an honorable Christian vocation.
Fourth, in governing as best they can, while conforming their lives and their judgment to the content of the Gospel, Christian leaders in public life can accomplish real good, and they can make a difference. Their success will always be limited and mixed. It will never be ideal. But with the help of God they can improve the moral quality of society, which makes the effort invaluable.
What Augustine believes about Christian leaders, we can reasonably extend to the vocation of all Christian citizens. The skills of the Christian citizen are finally very simple: a zeal for Jesus Christ and his Church; a conscience formed in humility and rooted in Scripture and the believing community; the prudence to see which issues in public life are vital and foundational to human dignity, and which ones are not; and the courage to work for what's right. We don't cultivate these skills alone. We develop them together as Christians, in prayer, on our knees, in the presence of Jesus Christ – and also in discussions like tonight.
*
Now before ending, I want to turn briefly to the third point I mentioned earlier in my talk: the realities we face today, and what Christians need to do about them. As I was preparing these comments for tonight, I listed all the urgent issues that demand our attention as believers: abortion; immigration; our obligations to the poor, the elderly and the disabled; questions of war and peace; our national confusion about sexual identity and human nature, and the attacks on marriage and family life that flow from this confusion; the growing disconnection of our science and technology from real moral reflection; the erosion of freedom of conscience in our national health-care debates; the content and quality of the schools that form our children.
The list is long. I believe abortion is the foundational human rights issue of our lifetime. We need to do everything we can to support women in their pregnancies and to end the legal killing of unborn children. We may want to remember that the Romans had a visceral hatred for Carthage not because Carthage was a commercial rival, or because its people had a different language and customs. The Romans hated Carthage above all because its people sacrificed their infants to Ba’al. For the Romans, who themselves were a hard people, that was a unique kind of wickedness and barbarism. As a nation, we might profitably ask ourselves whom and what we’ve really been worshipping in our 40 million “legal” abortions since 1973.
All of these issues that I’ve listed above divide our country and our Churches in a way Augustine would have found quite understandable. The City of God and the City of Man overlap in this world. Only God knows who finally belongs to which. But in the meantime, in seeking to live the Gospel we claim to believe, we find friends and brothers in unforeseen places, unlikely places; and when that happens, even a foreign place can seem like one’s home.
The vocation of Christians in American public life does not have a Baptist or Catholic or Greek Orthodox or any other brand-specific label. John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” – which is so key to the identity of Houston Baptist University, burns just as hot in this heart, and the heart of every Catholic who truly understands his faith. Our job is to love God, preach Jesus Christ, serve and defend God’s people, and sanctify the world as his agents. To do that work, we need to be one. Not “one” in pious words or good intentions, but really one, perfectly one, in mind and heart and action, as Christ intended. This is what Jesus meant when he said: “I do not pray for these only, but also those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (Jn 17:20-21).
We live in a country that was once – despite its sins and flaws – deeply shaped by Christian faith. It can be so again. But we will do that together, or we won’t do it at all. We need to remember the words of St. Hilary from so long ago: "Unum sunt, qui invicem sunt", they are one, who are wholly for each other (9). May God grant us the grace to love each other, support each other and live wholly for each other in Jesus Christ – so that we might work together in renewing the nation that has served human freedom so well.
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(1) Paul Johnson, “An Almost-Chosen People,” First Things, June/July 2006; adapted from his Erasmus Lecture.
(2) Full text of the Kennedy Houston speech is available online from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
(3) John Witte, Jr., “From Establishment to Freedom of Public Religion,” Emory University School of Law, Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, Research Paper No. 04-1, 2003, p. 5.
(4) Ibid., p. 2-3.
(5) U.S. Catholic bishops, pastoral letter, “The Christian in Action,” No. 11, 1948; see also Nos. 12-18; reprinted in "Pastoral Letters of the American Hierarchy, 1792-1970," Hugh J. Nolan, Our Sunday Visitor, 1971.
(6) Mark Massa, S.J.; quotations from Massa are from “A Catholic for President? John F. Kennedy and the ‘Secular’ Theology of the Houston Speech, 1960,” Journal of Church and State, Spring 1997.
(7) John Courtney Murray, S.J., “The Role of Faith in the Renovation of the World,” 1948; Murray’s works are available online from the Woodstock Theological Center Library.
(8) Robert Dodaro, O.S.A.; see private correspondence with speaker, along with "Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine," Cambridge University Press, 2008 (first published in 2004), and “Ecclesia and Res Publica: How Augustinian Are Neo-Augustinian Politics?,” collected in "Augustine and Post-Modern Thought: A New Alliance Against Modernity?," Peeters, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 2009.
(9) Referenced in Murray, “The Construction of a Christian Culture;” essay originally delivered as three talks in 1940, available as noted above.
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The complete text of the speech given by John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1960, to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association:
> "While the so called religious issue..."
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On the book "Render Unto Caesar" by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput:
> How to Conduct Politics as Catholics. The Denver Memorandum (13.8.2008)
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08 March 2010
02 March 2010
What Does The Prayer Really Say?»Blog Archive » Archbp. Chaput’s HOMERUN in Houston!
What Does The Prayer Really Say?»Blog Archive » Archbp. Chaput’s HOMERUN in Houston!
This will stir controversy… and it should.
For a long time we have known that someone with a MITER on his head should have gone after John F. Kennedy’s speech in Houston? It will be 50 years… think of that.
Archbishop Chaput of Denver has.
Sandro Magister has the entire text with footnotes on his site, also in Italian. The speech was delivered last night. We conclude from this that someone close to Archbp. Chaput in Denver knows what he is doing.
Archbp. Chaput’s speech relies heavily on Augustine of Hippo. Someone really knows what is going on.
Ask yourself this question as you read:
Are the consciences of politicians subject to the Catechesim of the Catholic Church or not?
My emphases:
Remember Ratzinger to McCarrick… USCCB letters about voting… the Pelosi and Bidens of the world… the Card. Cottier nonesense… Notre Shame.
And do you remember the 2006 letter written by 55 Democrat Catholics in the House of Representatives who wrote to Card. McCarrick claiming, based on a twisting of Christifideles laici, that they can shape social doctrine from their role as laypeople because of their expertise, etc?
It goes all the way back to the hellish 1964 conclave in Hyannisport.... and before.
The rot set in and it began with John F. Kennedy.
This will stir controversy. And it should.
2 March 2010
Archbp. Chaput’s HOMERUN in Houston!
This will stir controversy… and it should.For a long time we have known that someone with a MITER on his head should have gone after John F. Kennedy’s speech in Houston? It will be 50 years… think of that.
Archbishop Chaput of Denver has.
Sandro Magister has the entire text with footnotes on his site, also in Italian. The speech was delivered last night. We conclude from this that someone close to Archbp. Chaput in Denver knows what he is doing.
Archbp. Chaput’s speech relies heavily on Augustine of Hippo. Someone really knows what is going on.
Ask yourself this question as you read:
Are the consciences of politicians subject to the Catechesim of the Catholic Church or not?
My emphases:
JFK speech on faith was ‘sincere’ but ‘wrong,’ Archbishop Chaput states
Houston, Texas, Mar 2, 2010 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday evening, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver delivered a talk at Houston Baptist University, in which he criticized President John F. Kennedy’s historic campaign speech on his faith impacting his possible presidency as “sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong.” The archbishop called on his audience to get involved in the Christian “vocation” of being engaged in public service, at a time when religion is being increasingly ignored in the political sphere.
Archbishop Chaput gave his address, “The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life,” on the evening of March 1 at the Houston Baptist University’s Morris Cultural Art center. The lecture was presented in coordination with the Pope John Paul II Forum for the Church in the Modern World at the University of St. Thomas.
After offering caveats about his remarks, Archbishop Chaput emphasized the need for ecumenism and dialogue based on truth as opposed to superficial niceties. He then remarked, “We also urgently owe each other solidarity and support in dealing with a culture that increasingly derides religious faith in general and the Christian faith in particular.”
During his talk, the archbishop noted that there are currently “more Catholics in national public office” than there ever have been in American history.
“But,” he continued, “I wonder if we’ve ever had fewer of them who can coherently explain how their faith informs their work, or who even feel obligated to try. The life of our country is no more ‘Catholic’ or ‘Christian’ than it was 100 years ago. In fact it’s arguably less so.”
One of the reasons why this problem exists, he explained, is that too many Christian individuals, Protestant and Catholic alike, live their faith as if it were “private idiosyncrasy” which they try to prevent from becoming a “public nuisance.”
“And too many just don’t really believe,” he added.
Recounting the historical context that led to the current state of affairs, Archbishop Chaput referred to a speech that the late John F. Kennedy made while running for president in 1960 which greatly effected the modern relationship between religion and American politics. At his speech almost fifty years ago, President Kennedy had the arduous task of convincing 300 uneasy Protestant ministers in a Houston address that his Catholic faith would not impede his ability to lead the country. Successful in his attempt, “Kennedy convinced the country, if not the ministers, and went on to be elected,” he recalled.
“And his speech left a lasting mark on American politics,” the prelate added.
“It was sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong. Not wrong about the patriotism of Catholics, but wrong about American history and very wrong about the role of religious faith in our nation’s life.”
“And he wasn’t merely ‘wrong,’” the archbishop continued. “His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation. Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.”
“To his credit,” he noted, “Kennedy said that if his duties as President should ‘ever require me to violate my conscience or violate the national interest, I would resign the office.’ He also warned that he would not ‘disavow my views or my church in order to win this election.’”
“But in its effect, the Houston speech did exactly that. It began the project of walling religion away from the process of governance in a new and aggressive way. It also divided a person’s private beliefs from his or her public duties. And it set ‘the national interest’ over and against ‘outside religious pressures or dictates.’”
Archbishop Chaput then clarified that although “John Kennedy didn’t create the trends in American life that I’ve described,” his speech “clearly fed them.”
In light of this separation of religion from the public sphere, “What would a proper Christian approach to politics look like?” the archbishop queried.Drawing on St. Augustine [In this section he quotes the work, by name, of a scholar of of Augustine, Fr. Robert Dodaro, OSA, who is my thesis director. His book Christ and the Just Society is really hard, but worth time for the scholar. I have had it on the side bar for a long time! The average reader will find this book to be tooo haaard. Really.] and several theologians, Archbishop Chaput answered, “Christianity is not mainly – or even significantly – about politics. It’s about living and sharing the love of God. And Christian political engagement, when it happens, is never mainly the task of the clergy.”
“That work belongs to lay believers who live most intensely in the world,” he asserted.
“Christian faith is not a set of ethics or doctrines. It’s not a group of theories about social and economic justice. All these things have their place. All of them can be important. But a Christian life begins in a relationship with Jesus Christ; and it bears fruit in the justice, mercy and love we show to others because of that relationship.” This fundamental relationship then informs how we involve ourselves in public life, he explained.
“As I was preparing these comments for tonight,” he added, “I listed all the urgent issues that demand our attention as believers: abortion; immigration; our obligations to the poor, the elderly and the disabled; questions of war and peace; our national confusion about sexual identity and human nature, and the attacks on marriage and family life that flow from this confusion; the growing disconnection of our science and technology from real moral reflection; the erosion of freedom of conscience in our national health-care debates; the content and quality of the schools that form our children.”
Because of the immensity of these issues, the Denver archbishop stressed that Christians need to united in their societal involvement. “The vocation of Christians in American public life does not have a Baptist or Catholic or Greek Orthodox or any other brand-specific label. Our job is to love God, preach Jesus Christ, serve and defend God’s people, and sanctify the world as his agents. To do that work, we need to be one. Not ‘one’ in pious words or good intentions, but really one, perfectly one, in mind and heart and action, as Christ intended,” he said.
Archbishop Chaput concluded his remarks by saying that “We live in a country that was once – despite its sins and flaws – deeply shaped by Christian faith. It can be so again. But we will do that together, or we won’t do it at all.”
“We need to remember the words of St. Hilary from so long ago: Unum sunt, qui invicem sunt. ‘They are one, who are wholly for each other.’ May God grant us the grace to love each other, support each other and live wholly for each other in Jesus Christ – so that we might work together in renewing the nation that has served human freedom so well.”
And do you remember the 2006 letter written by 55 Democrat Catholics in the House of Representatives who wrote to Card. McCarrick claiming, based on a twisting of Christifideles laici, that they can shape social doctrine from their role as laypeople because of their expertise, etc?
It goes all the way back to the hellish 1964 conclave in Hyannisport.... and before.
The rot set in and it began with John F. Kennedy.
This will stir controversy. And it should.
01 March 2010
Illegal Immigration By the Numbers
Illegal Immigration By the Numbers
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Illegal Immigration By the Numbers
| 240,000: the number of illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States, a "conservative" estimate according to a study by the Violent Crime Institute. Over the 88-month study, illegal aliens were responsible for an estimated 960,000 violent sex crimes in the U.S. 4-10,000,000: the number of illegal aliens who crossed into the United States in 2005, bringing with them 5.6 to 11.2 million pounds of cocaine and 34.3 to 68.6 million pounds of marijuana. As many as 19,500 aliens originated in countries identified as state sponsors of terror, according to the Department of Homeland Security. This figure includes members of Hezbollah who have already entered the United States across the southwest border; and agents of Venezuela, which is providing falsified documentation for entry into the U.S. illegally. $2,200,000,000: the amount spent on food assistance programs for illegal aliens including food stamps, WIC, free school lunches, etc. each year. $2,500,000,000: the amount spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens annually. $3,000,000,000: the approximate annual federal spending to house non-U.S. citizens in federal prisons, which represents roughly 30% of the prison population according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Most of non-citizen prison population is comprised of illegal aliens. $12,000,000,000: the amount spent each year on primary and secondary public education for children in the U.S. illegally, many of whom cannot speak English. $17,000,000,000: the amount spent each year on primary and secondary public education for American-born children of illegal aliens, known as 'anchor babies'. $11-22,000,000,000: the amount spent on welfare for illegal aliens by state governments each year. $50,000,000,000: the amount spent annually on providing welfare and social services to illegal aliens by federal taxpayers. $200,000,000,000: the amount of "suppressed American wages" caused by illegal immigration and lax policies such as H-1B programs. What are the true costs of illegal immigration to American citizens? In hard dollar terms, it's hundreds of billions -- all of which could be better used elsewhere, especially in these tough economic times. |      |
Saint Louis Catholic: Austen Liturgical Allegory
Saw this over at Father Z's site- wdtprs, and since I love Jane Austen, I found the allegory deliciously accurate!
Saint Louis Catholic: Austen Liturgical Allegory
If today's faithful Catholic is represented by Elizabeth Bennet, bright, hopeful and coming of age, then the liturgical forms would have to be represented by Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham.
Saint Louis Catholic: Austen Liturgical Allegory
26 February 2010
Austen Liturgical Allegory
If today's faithful Catholic is represented by Elizabeth Bennet, bright, hopeful and coming of age, then the liturgical forms would have to be represented by Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham.Mr. Wickham is immediately accessible, loves to talk--especially about how bad ol' Darcy is-- has some initial minor flash but soon proves to be tedious and unreliable.
Mr. Darcy at first glance looks stuffy and condescending, but proves over time to be noble, true, of high quality and charitable.
The ordinary and the extraordinary.
_____________
Yes, I actually thought this, and then typed it, and therefore I am a loser.
P.S. Mrs. Bennet would represent Marek Bozek. Just sayin'.
Transformation - Andy McCarthy - The Corner on National Review Online
Transformation - Andy McCarthy - The Corner on National Review Online
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Transformation [Andy McCarthy]
On Sean's panel last night, when the conversation turned to how nervous Democrats supposedly are over what for now is teeing up like a very bad November, I felt like I was channeling Mark Steyn, Mark Levin and Rush. That is, I think our side is analyzing this all wrong: Today's Democrats are controlled by the radical Left, and it is more important to them to execute the permanent transformation of American society than it is to win the upcoming election cycles. They have already factored in losing in November — even losing big. For them, winning big now outweighs that. I think they're right.
I hear Republicans getting giddy over the fact that "reconciliation," if it comes to that, is a huge political loser. That's the wrong way to look at it. The Democratic leadership has already internalized the inevitablility of taking its political lumps. That makes reconciliation truly scary. Since the Dems know they will have to ram this monstrosity through, they figure it might as well be as monstrous as they can get wavering Democrats to go along with. Clipping the leadership's statist ambitions in order to peel off a few Republicans is not going to work. I'm glad Republicans have held firm, but let's not be under any illusions about what that means. In the Democrat leadership, we are not dealing with conventional politicians for whom the goal of being reelected is paramount and will rein in their radicalism. They want socialized medicine and all it entails about government control even more than they want to win elections. After all, if the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority. This is about power, and there is more to power than winning elections, especially if you've calculated that your opposition does not have the gumption to dismantle your ballooning welfare state.
Consequently, the next six weeks, like the next ten months, are going to be worse than we think. We're wired to think that everyone plays by the ususal rules of politics — i.e., if the tide starts to change, the side against whom it has turned modifies its positions in order to stay viable in the next election. But what will happen here will be the opposite. You have a party with the numbers to do anything it puts its mind to, led by movement Leftitsts who see their window of opportunity is closing. We seem to expect them to moderate because that's what everybody in their position does. But they won't. They will put their heads down and go for as much transformation as they can get, figuring that once they get it, it will never be rolled back. The only question is whether there are enough Democrats who are conventional politicians and who care about being reelected, such that they will deny the leadership the numbers it needs. But I don't think we should take much heart in this possibility. Those Democrats may well come to think they are going to lose anyway — that's why so many of them are abandoning ship now. If that's the case, their incentive will be to vote with the leadership.
At the end of the summit debacle, President
This post from Irwin Stelzer at the Standard caught my eye this morning (my italics):
Americans overwhelmingly say that their main concern is jobs, and that they are satisfied with their current health care arrangements. In response, an allegedly chastened President Obama “pivoted,” and says his primary concern from now on will be job creation, which will take priority over his controversial plan to radically change the nation’s health care
Yup.
02/27 08:25 AMShare
Fly Now, Pay Later | The Weekly Standard
Fly Now, Pay Later | The Weekly Standard
Fly Now, Pay Later
Irwin M. Stelzer
February 27, 2010 12:00 AM
“Watch what we do, not what we say,” President Nixon’s attorney general told the press. Unfortunately for both men, the press eventually did that, and we got the first of the “gates:” Watergate. The consequences for President Obama of watching what he does rather than what he says will be less dire, but nevertheless revealing.
Americans overwhelmingly say that their main concern is jobs, and that they are satisfied with their current health care arrangements. In response, an allegedly chastened President Obama “pivoted,” and says his primary concern from now on will be job creation, which will take priority over his controversial plan to radically change the nation’s health care system.
Yet, last week he backed a $15 billion job-creation bill, which passed the Senate, and a $1 trillion health care bill. Since the federal balance sheet is already under huge pressure, this set of priorities tells us that the Obama administration intends to concentrate available resources on transforming the economy -- a long-term, permanent restructuring of the health care and energy sectors that was planned long before the failure of Lehman Brothers triggered the financial mess Obama inherited.
Not that the president will try to rein in stimulus spending: more is in the pipeline. Which is why Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke warned congress last week that although it is too soon to turn off stimulus spending, it must address the structural deficit -- the red ink that will continue to flow even when the economy has recovered. Bernanke says that structural deficit will run somewhere between 4 percent and 7 percent of GDP, well above the sustainable level of 2.5 percent - 3 percent or less. He also told the assembled congressional committee -- television coverage insures good attendance by committee members -- that if the congress and the president don’t soon plan to attack the structural deficit, the market might decide that enough is enough, and interest rates would rise.
Investors are watching not only the size of the federal deficit, but of state deficits as well, since they are guessing that in the end the federal government will not allow state governments to go bust. Instead, if the states can’t satisfy their creditors, the federal government will take their $146 billion of debts onto its own balance sheet, raising its deficit to 11.6 percent of GDP. And that doesn’t count the $1,000 billion funding gap in state pension reserves.
But austerity is for later. Now, policy makers and politicians worry that the economic recovery is showing signs of premature ageing. New home sales fell in January to an all-time low annual rate of 309,000 units. Mortgage applications plummeted. The number of loans past due by 30 days is the second highest on record. In short, the important housing sector is still struggling.
Janet Yellin, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, doesn’t see the economy hitting its full stride until 2013. Bernanke is predicting “low rates of resource utilization” -- econospeak for high unemployment and unused factories -- and “an increasing incidence of long-term unemployment” for some time to come. And he worries that commercial property loans that are unlikely to be repaid will bring down more small and medium banks. The number of banks on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s “problem” list stood at 702 at the end of last year, up from 252 a year earlier.
Given news of this sort, it should come as no surprise that consumer confidence is plunging: Consumers’ assessment of current economic conditions is at its lowest level in 27 years. Add to gloomy consumers banks that don’t want to lend or businesses that don’t want to borrow (depends who you talk to), businesses that are reluctant to hire, and an anti-business government, and there is reason enough for worry. President Obama did attempt to rebut those who accuse him of having little faith in market capitalism by spending part of last week trying to reassure business leaders -- primarily heads of the nation’s largest companies -- that he is not a socialist, that he is deeply committed to the private enterprise system, and that his plans to raise taxes on foreign earnings, on banks, and on “the wealthy” are merely a rebalancing of inequities introduced by his predecessor. One top White House economist tells me that he spends a considerable amount of energy damping down the president’s anti-business rhetoric.
Any hope for an export-led recovery seems to be receding as European growth stalls, several countries are being forced to institute austerity programs, and turmoil in the market for sovereign debt drives interest rates higher. Even China, which American businessmen have for decades seen as a huge potential market for their products, is reining in credit to cool the economy, and persists in an import-unfriendly set of policies.
All of this has produced an important change in policies. Scrooge has become Lady Bountiful: The International Monetary Fund, long famous for prescribing austerity as the medicine for ailing economies, now warns that it is too soon to start reining in budget deficits. Bernanke more or less agrees, although he wants the U.S. to begin formulating plans to reduce the structural deficit once anti-recession spending winds down. This is music to the ears of politicians such as Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, both presiding over massive deficits, both facing elections, both unwilling to cut spending just yet, if ever.
The rating agencies and investors in sovereign debt are less enchanted with the newly blessed profligacy, and it may well be that in the end the bond markets will dictate policy by forcing interest rates up to growth-stifling levels unless the government cuts its deficit. Recall that James Carville, one of Bill Clinton’s advisers, frustrated at his inability to get his spending programs adopted, lamented, “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”
For now, it is safe to assume that the government will keep on spending, deficits will continue rising, and the Fed will keep interest rates low. That delicious, heady cocktail of loose fiscal policy -- congress is busily drafting more stimulus bills as you read this -- and easy monetary policy will, Bernanke says, produce growth of 3 percent - 3.5 percent this year, and 4 percent next year. With little inflation. Rather like the old airline slogan, “Fly now, pay later.”
Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute, and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London).
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