Moral issues

The Catholic Church and the Left

by Jack Kerwick –
My pastor’s homily was but the latest confirmation of that what many an astute observer has long observed: the “progressivism” of secular leftism has made sizable inroads into the Catholic Church. This is no mean feat. In fact, the significance of the left’s infiltration into this institution has gone largely unnoticed.

Whatever one may think of its theology and ecclesiology, the cold heart fact of the matter is that the Catholic Church is not just one more institution among others. Structurally and doctrinally, it is the emblem par excellence of the ancient world, a continual reminder to our generation that its life did not begin yesterday, and that Western civilization would be unrecognizable, and probably nonexistent, without it, the Catholic Church reminds us as well that we are living off of a cultural capital that was millennia in the making. Its unabashed affirmation of the centrality of tradition to right conduct, its hierarchical conception of authority, its exclusion of females and homosexuals from the priesthood, and its demand that its clergy take a vow of celibacy are some of the more salient respects in which the Catholic Church has not only distinguished itself from the leveling impulses of our age, but resisted them. [Read more…]

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Addiction or Sinful Habit?

Addiction or Sinful Habit by Benjamin Wiker –
Is gambling an addiction or a sinful habit? What about pornography? Overeating? Drinking? Shopping? Checking email? Texting? Watching television? Playing video games? Working? They’ve all been called addictions. Is that really what they are?

If we follow this line of reasoning out to its logical conclusion, then it would be logical to call all bad or destructive behavior, “addictive,” so that “addicts” of whatever kind are helpless victims of forces beyond their control. A woman gambles because she cannot help it. A man drinks because he cannot help it. A woman shops because she cannot help it. A man throws himself into internet pornography because he cannot help it. Addicts, helpless victims, one and all.

The obvious problem with this view is that it entirely destroys morality by denying the possibility of good, freely-chosen action. We should call them what they really are: sinful habits. Or we could use the more exact and compact word, vices. A sign of the correctness of this word is that “vice” contains the notion of addiction – a kind of helpless slavery – even while it affirms the presence of free will and moral culpability. [Read more…]

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“Nobody Gets Married Any More, Mister”

Inner City Tragedy by Gerry Garibaldi –

Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.

My first encounter with teen pregnancy was a girl named Nicole, a pretty 15-year-old who had rings on every finger and great looped earrings and a red pen with fluffy pink feathers and a heart that lit up when she wrote with it. Hearts seemed to be on everything—in her signature, on her binder; there was often a little plastic heart barrette in her hair, which she had dyed in bright hues recalling a Siamese fighting fish. She was enrolled in two of my classes: English and journalism. [Read more…]

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The Art of Living: Patience and Perseverance

Patience and Perseverance by Edward P. Sri –

How do you respond when “bad things” happen to you? When you experience disappointment or setbacks? When you are hurt by something someone said?

When experiencing sorrow, we might be tempted to close in on ourselves. We might allow negative emotions to gnaw at us. We might fail to be attentive to others’ needs because we are so preoccupied with our troubles. We might also become sluggish in our responsibilities, not giving the best of ourselves at work and with our family.

Some people simply are not pleasant to be around when they experience sorrow. They become gloomy and grumpy, and might even let their frustrations out on others.

Human beings cannot escape suffering in this world. However, the way we face life’s sorrows is a question of moral character. Do we allow sorrow to dominate our existence? [Read more…]

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Marching on the Right Side of History

Christ, the Author of Life by Jennifer Roback Morse –
Defenders of marriage should draw hope and courage from the pro-life movement’s success.

As an advocate of conjugal marriage, I am often told that I am on the “wrong side of History.” The justice of “marriage equality” is overwhelming; the younger generation favors it; same sex marriage is inevitable. But this analysis is false. Indeed, there is ample reason to think that the March of History storyline will be proven incorrect. The reason? We were told all these same things about abortion.

“You need to accept Roe v. Wade. The unlimited abortion license is nothing but simple justice for women. Besides, the next generation will completely accept abortion. They will grow up knowing nothing else. They will not have all your hang-ups about sex and your squeamishness about scraping a bit of tissue out of a woman’s body. Reproductive freedom is the wave of the future. You are on the Wrong Side of History.”

A funny thing happened on the way to History: the people did not perform as promised. Last year, I took a group of Ruth Institute students up to the West Coast Walk for Life in San Francisco. [Read more…]

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Abortionist Brutally Murdered Hundreds of Living Newborns: Clinic Worker

Kermit B. Gosnell, MD - the Philadelphia Abortionist
Kermit B. Gosnell, MD - the Philadelphia Abortionist

by Kathleen Gilbert –
A massive, photograph-laden Grand Jury Report released Wednesday has detailed the bone-chilling practices of a Philadelphia abortionist, who clinic workers testified had delivered “hundreds” of living, breathing newborn children before severing their spinal cords or slitting their necks to complete the abortions.

Abortionist Kermit Gosnell was arrested Wednesday for eight counts of murder. One of the charges was for the botched-abortion death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, a Nepalese refugee. The other seven were for children who police had discovered, by examining their remains, had been born alive and then killed.

District Attorney R. Seth Williams released the 281-page report that was the basis for the murder charges against Gosnell and nine of his associates. Included in that report were photos of some of Gosnell’s victims.

In the report, the Grand Jury notes that several agencies and groups became aware of what has become known as Gosnell’s “shop of horrors,” but did nothing. [Read more…]

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Fr. Johannes: Philadelphia – The Cost of Equivocation

Fr. Johannes Jacobse
Fr. Johannes Jacobse

by Fr. Johannes Jacobse –
Why such outrage over the Philadelphia abortionist? What moral difference is there between severing the spinal cord of a newborn with a pair of scissors and dismembering a baby with a scalpel a few moments before its birth? There isn’t any.

Yet the outcry over the brutality indicates that the fiction of viability may be lifting, and not a moment too soon. Viability, the idea that an unborn child has value only when it can live outside the womb, is a concept that the ignorant still believe has scientific credibility. It’s a rhetorical pretense that helps us avoid what we don’t want to see.

The cold hand of the malefactor reveals that the brutality outside the womb occurs inside it too. It’s not so easy to pretend anymore that a difference exists because we see one but not the other. Josef Mengele at least maintained the pretense that he was serving science. This butcher wouldn’t even do that. His staff kept their lunches in the same refrigerator where they stored left-over fetal parts.

Should we be shocked that the abortionist treated the newly born like a piece of pork? Why? How is it any different than how he treats the unborn? [Read more…]

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“Now it is the Other Way Around” – The Moral Revolution in Full View

by Albert Mohler –
The breathtaking pace of the moral revolution now transforming Western cultures staggers belief. In the course of a single generation, the sexual morality that has survived for thousands of years is giving way to a radically different moral understanding. Just consider the couple in the United Kingdom who were recently found guilty of discrimination because they allowed only married couples to share a bed at their small hotel.

Peter and Hazelmary Bull own a bed and breakfast hotel in Cornwall. In September of 2008, a homosexual couple requested a single bed and was denied that accommodation by the Bulls. The couple sued, and this week a judge found the Bulls guilty of discrimination under Britain’s Equality Act of 2007. [Read more…]

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The Philadelphia Horror

Kermit B. Gosnell, MD - the Philadelphia Abortionist
Kermit B. Gosnell, MD - the Philadelphia Abortionist

by Michelle Malkin –
Let’s give the “climate of hate” rhetoric a rest for a moment. It’s time to talk about the climate of death, in which the abortion industry thrives unchecked. Dehumanizing rhetoric, rationalizing language, and a callous disregard for life have numbed America to its monstrous consequences. Consider the Philadelphia Horror.

In the City of Brotherly Love, hundreds of babies were murdered by a scissors-wielding monster over four decades. Whistleblowers informed public officials at all levels of the wanton killings of innocent life. But a parade of government health bureaucrats and advocates protecting the abortion racket looked the other way — until, that is, a Philadelphia grand jury finally exposed the infanticide factory run by abortionist Kermit B. Gosnell, M.D., and a crew of unlicensed, untrained butchers masquerading as noble providers of women’s “choice.” Prosecutors charged Gosnell and his death squad with multiple counts of murder, infanticide, conspiracy, abuse of corpse, theft, and other offenses. [Read more…]

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