Vatican Newspaper Responds to New York Sex Education

The Question of Sex Education
Not Just Any Matter

Now it is New York’s turn: Dennis Walcott, Chancellor of the city’s Department of Education, has mandated that with the new school year students between the ages of 11 and 18 will be required to attend a course in sexual education for at least one semester. The new course is part of an initiative launched by Mayor Bloomberg to improve the lives of black and latino teenagers, saving them from a misery to which they seem destined. To avoid religious controversy, chastity will be cited among birth control methods and teachers will have to speak about sex with some caution. But this is not enough according to Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who criticized the initiative, stating that in this way authorities allow “the public school system to substitute its beliefs and values for those of the parents”.

Once again, we see the repetition of a model already tried by many other countries: the State decides to include compulsory sexual education in schools, and the Catholic Church opposes it, earning the image of an obscurantist force, cruel because of it indifference to the consequences its refusal could have among young people, that is, unwanted pregnancies and disease. However, that is not how things stand.

It is not clear why public institutions in the West continue to have such magical trust in the effectiveness of sex education. After years of courses, focused, of course, on contraceptive methods, we see that – for example in the UK – boys and girls continue to have early sexual intercourse without any kind of protection, and the number of pregnancies and abortions among adolescents has multiplied. By now, it is clear that to avoid these tragedies it is not enough to explain to them how they can use contraceptives, and where to easily find them, but that the problem is further upstream, in education and in the family.

At heart, Italy – where there is no compulsory sex education in schools –is one of the countries which is better off from this point of view: here young people have a lower risk of disease and early pregnancy. This is thanks to the family, to the loving vigilance of parents over their children, to the fact that kids are not left to themselves with a box of contraceptives as the only defense against their passions and mistakes.

And, in part, it is also thanks to the Catholic Church, who continues to teach that sexual relations are much more than some kind of pleasurable exercise to be practiced in an unbridled and risk-free way. In fact, the Church considers the sexual life of human beings to be one of the most meaningful proofs of their human and spiritual maturity, a test to be faced with preparation and seriousness, that is, to be connected to life’s fundamental choices like marriage, and therefore, to the foundation of family in which procreation is one of the principal ends. The Church teaches respect for one’s own body, which means giving importance and weight to the acts that are done with it, not just taking into consideration the possibility of enjoyment or narcissistic gratification: and this is precisely contrary to what those who criticize her say.

In Catholic tradition the body is extremely important, it plays a central role in the human and spiritual life of every person. Catholics, therefore, cannot accept that sexual life become considered a subject for teaching like that of any other activity, setting out a few dangers it would be best to avoid; for, as is well known, young people are often attracted to danger, and will strive to avoid it only if they are educated in the underlying reasons of a different kind of moral behavior.

Of course, for increasingly dysfunctional families it’s very difficult to teach a sexual morality that is not testified to by the parents and or the environment in which children live. So, it seems easier to renounce any kind of moral teaching and leave the problem to schools, which substitute moral education with technical information. If the results are disastrous, you pretend not to know it: it is much easier to ignore the problem, pretend to resolve it with useless, and even harmful, school courses, rather than address the issue which underlies it… that is, the resounding failed utopia of the sexual revolution and subsequent breakdown of the first institution of moral education, the family.

Lucetta Scaraffia
August 31, 2011

Another German Journalist to the Fold

The German Journal "Vatican Magazin" has an article by Barbara Wenz which is a laudatory synopsis of these six years of the pontificate to which she attributes her discovery of the Catholic faith: "The Pope of my life. Six years ago I was not Catholic."

Hopefully the German nation will hear this type of message in preparation for the Holy Father's first state visit to Germany and Berlin in September.

Nobel Prize Laureate Praises Benedict's Spanish World Youth Day

Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote the following article published in yesterday's Spanish daily El Pais. The Peruvian author's is one of many eloquent un-biased testimonies to the grand event. The vice president of the Madrid Jewish Community, David Hatchwell, was another.

La Fiesta y La Cruzada

PIEDRA DE TOQUE. Creyentes y no creyentes debemos alegrarnos del éxito de la visita del Papa a Madrid. Mientras no tome el poder político la religión no solo es lícita, sino indispensable en una sociedad democrática.

El País, Madrid

Bonito espectáculo el de Madrid invadido por cientos de miles de jóvenes procedentes de los cinco continentes para asistir a la Jornada Mundial de la Juventud que presidió Benedicto XVI y que convirtió a la capital española por varios días en una multitudinaria Torre de Babel. Todas las razas, lenguas, culturas, tradiciones, se mezclaban en una gigantesca fiesta de muchachas y muchachos adolescentes, estudiantes, jóvenes profesionales venidos de todos los rincones del mundo a cantar, bailar, rezar y proclamar su adhesión a la Iglesia católica y su "adicción" al Papa ("Somos adictos a Benedicto" fue uno de los estribillos más coreados).

Salvo el millar de personas que, en el aeródromo de Cuatro Vientos, sufrieron desmayos por culpa del despiadado calor y debieron ser atendidas, no hubo accidentes ni mayores problemas. Todo transcurrió en paz, alegría y convivencia simpática. Los madrileños tomaron con espíritu deportivo las molestias que causaron las gigantescas concentraciones que paralizaron Cibeles, la Gran Vía, Alcalá, la Puerta del Sol, la Plaza de España y la Plaza de Oriente, y las pequeñas manifestaciones de laicos, anarquistas, ateos y católicos insumisos contra el Papa provocaron incidentes menores, aunque algunos grotescos, como el grupo de energúmenos al que se vio arrojando condones a unas niñas que, animadas por lo que Rubén Darío llamaba "un blanco horror de Belcebú", rezaban el rosario con los ojos cerrados.

Hay dos lecturas posibles de este acontecimiento, que EL PAÍS ha llamado "la mayor concentración de católicos en la historia de España". La primera ve en él un festival más de superficie que de entraña religiosa, en el que jóvenes de medio mundo han aprovechado la ocasión para viajar, hacer turismo, divertirse, conocer gente, vivir alguna aventura, la experiencia intensa pero pasajera de unas vacaciones de verano. La segunda la interpreta como un rotundo mentís a las predicciones de una retracción del catolicismo en el mundo de hoy, la prueba de que la Iglesia de Cristo mantiene su pujanza y su vitalidad, de que la nave de San Pedro sortea sin peligro las tempestades que quisieran hundirla.

Una de estas tempestades tiene como escenario a España, donde Roma y el gobierno de Rodríguez Zapatero han tenido varios encontrones en los últimos años y mantienen una tensa relación. Por eso, no es casual que Benedicto XVI haya venido ya varias veces a este país, y dos de ellas durante su pontificado. Porque resulta que la "católica España" ya no lo es tanto como lo era. Las estadísticas son bastante explícitas. En julio del año pasado, un 80% de los españoles se declaraba católico; un año después, solo 70%. Entre los jóvenes, 51% dicen serlo, pero solo 12% aseguran practicar su religión de manera consecuente, en tanto que el resto lo hace solo de manera esporádica y social (bodas, bautizos, etcétera). Las críticas de los jóvenes creyentes -practicantes o no- a la Iglesia se centran, sobre todo, en la oposición de ésta al uso de anticonceptivos y a la píldora del día siguiente, a la ordenación de mujeres, al aborto, al homosexualismo.

Mi impresión es que estas cifras no han sido manipuladas, que ellas reflejan una realidad que, porcentajes más o menos, desborda lo español y es indicativo de lo que pasa también con el catolicismo en el resto del mundo. Ahora bien, desde mi punto de vista esta paulatina declinación del número de fieles de la Iglesia católica, en vez de ser un síntoma de su inevitable ruina y extinción es, más bien, fermento de la vitalidad y energía que lo que queda de ella -decenas de millones de personas- ha venido mostrando, sobre todo bajo los pontificados de Juan Pablo II y de Benedicto XVI.

Es difícil imaginar dos personalidades más distintas que las de los dos últimos Papas. El anterior era un líder carismático, un agitador de multitudes, un extraordinario orador, un pontífice en el que la emoción, la pasión, los sentimientos prevalecían sobre la pura razón. El actual es un hombre de ideas, un intelectual, alguien cuyo entorno natural son la biblioteca, el aula universitaria, el salón de conferencias. Su timidez ante las muchedumbres aflora de modo invencible en esa manera casi avergonzada y como disculpándose que tiene de dirigirse a las masas. Pero esa fragilidad es engañosa pues se trata probablemente del Papa más culto e inteligente que haya tenido la Iglesia en mucho tiempo, uno de los raros pontífices cuyas encíclicas o libros un agnóstico como yo puede leer sin bostezar (su breve autobiografía es hechicera y sus dos volúmenes sobre Jesús más que sugerentes). Su trayectoria es bastante curiosa. Fue, en su juventud, un partidario de la modernización de la Iglesia y colaboró con el reformista Concilio Vaticano II convocado por Juan XXIII.

Pero, luego, se movió hacia las posiciones conservadoras de Juan Pablo II, en las que ha perseverado hasta hoy. Probablemente, la razón de ello sea la sospecha o convicción de que, si continuaba haciendo las concesiones que le pedían los fieles, pastores y teólogos progresistas, la Iglesia terminaría por desintegrarse desde adentro, por convertirse en una comunidad caótica, desbrujulada, a causa de las luchas intestinas y las querellas sectarias. El sueño de los católicos progresistas de hacer de la Iglesia una institución democrática es eso, nada más: un sueño. Ninguna iglesia podría serlo sin renunciar a sí misma y desaparecer. En todo caso, prescindiendo del contexto teológico, atendiendo únicamente a su dimensión social y política, la verdad es que, aunque pierda fieles y se encoja, el catolicismo está hoy día más unido, activo y beligerante que en los años en que parecía a punto de desgarrarse y dividirse por las luchas ideológicas internas.

¿Es esto bueno o malo para la cultura de la libertad? Mientras el Estado sea laico y mantenga su independencia frente a todas las iglesias, a las que, claro está, debe respetar y permitir que actúen libremente, es bueno, porque una sociedad democrática no puede combatir eficazmente a sus enemigos -empezando por la corrupción- si sus instituciones no están firmemente respaldadas por valores éticos, si una rica vida espiritual no florece en su seno como un antídoto permanente a las fuerzas destructivas, disociadoras y anárquicas que suelen guiar la conducta individual cuando el ser humano se siente libre de toda responsabilidad.

Durante mucho tiempo se creyó que con el avance de los conocimientos y de la cultura democrática, la religión, esa forma elevada de superstición, se iría deshaciendo, y que la ciencia y la cultura la sustituirían con creces. Ahora sabemos que esa era otra superstición que la realidad ha ido haciendo trizas. Y sabemos, también, que aquella función que los librepensadores decimonónicos, con tanta generosidad como ingenuidad, atribuían a la cultura, esta es incapaz de cumplirla, sobre todo ahora. Porque, en nuestro tiempo, la cultura ha dejado de ser esa respuesta seria y profunda a las grandes preguntas del ser humano sobre la vida, la muerte, el destino, la historia, que intentó ser en el pasado, y se ha transformado, de un lado, en un divertimento ligero y sin consecuencias, y, en otro, en una cábala de especialistas incomprensibles y arrogantes, confinados en fortines de jerga y jerigonza y a años luz del común de los mortales.

La cultura no ha podido reemplazar a la religión ni podrá hacerlo, salvo para pequeñas minorías, marginales al gran público. La mayoría de seres humanos solo encuentra aquellas respuestas, o, por lo menos, la sensación de que existe un orden superior del que forma parte y que da sentido y sosiego a su existencia, a través de una trascendencia que ni la filosofía, ni la literatura, ni la ciencia, han conseguido justificar racionalmente. Y, por más que tantos brillantísimos intelectuales traten de convencernos de que el ateísmo es la única consecuencia lógica y racional del conocimiento y la experiencia acumuladas por la historia de la civilización, la idea de la extinción definitiva seguirá siendo intolerable para el ser humano común y corriente, que seguirá encontrando en la fe aquella esperanza de una supervivencia más allá de la muerte a la que nunca ha podido renunciar. Mientras no tome el poder político y este sepa preservar su independencia y neutralidad frente a ella, la religión no sólo es lícita, sino indispensable en una sociedad democrática.

Creyentes y no creyentes debemos alegrarnos por eso de lo ocurrido en Madrid en estos días en que Dios parecía existir, el catolicismo ser la religión única y verdadera, y todos como buenos chicos marchábamos de la mano del Santo Padre hacia el reino de los cielos.

© Derechos mundiales de prensa en todas las lenguas reservados a Ediciones EL PAÍS, SL, 2011.

© Mario Vargas Llosa, 2011.

ISI's College Ratings

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has listed the top ten and the bottom ten colleges in America. Check it out.

The two Catholic colleges in the top ten are #7 Providence College (Dominican) and #10 Christendom College.

New Jersey's Princeton University is #1!!! Go New Jersey!

There is also a Catholic college in the bottom ten, #3 Holy Cross (Jesuit).

Those rated the worst are the worst colleges only relatively, i.e. having deteriorated far below their prestigious reputations they are considered the most retrograde. That is what ISI means by "train wreck" colleges. They are the greatest examples of the numerous erstwhile excellent colleges which have fallen from their former glory: corruptio optima pessima!

Spain Says No to Communion in the Hand, Standing

Here is a great video by Michael Voris on the heretical history of communion standing and in the hand and the Spanish history rejecting it in favor of kneeling and directly on the tongue, to our own day! the Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Worship, from Toledo Spain (Canizares), leading the way.

Unfortunately, the organizers of the World Youth Day Masses are still getting it very wrong with countless people stretching out one hand to haphazardly grab hosts in the chaotic communion mob distribution which is so typical of those massive Masses. The candles of the altar we not properly designed to stay lit nor was the distribution of Holy Communion properly organized. The diocesan liturgical organizers need to pay more serious attention to every detail of the Mass so that so obvious problems not occur. Anyone should know that you need a special type of torch or candle or candle covering to keep a flame on the altar at an airstrip! and that it should be tested beforehand if there is any doubt. Probably the regular tabernacle sanctuary vigil candles in a bottle would work fine, especially if they are partially consumed.

The problem of communion distribution should be entrusted to a group like Opus Dei. I heard once of a Eucharistic Congress in Spain for which they organized the distribution of Holy Communion. The isles were in the form of spokes from a central point radiating out and a limousine in each isle with a tabernacle in each limo stopped at each communion station along the isle, the priest opened the door and took a ciborium and distributed communion and later waited for the returning limo at the end of the distribution and the ciboria, which had been brought from the parishes of that region where later reverently taken back to their respective parishes by the priests that had brought them from their parishes for that purpose. Consider how edifying it would be for the world to see us using our best modern vehicles exclusively for God.

Communion at Papal Masses should never be out of order. That needs to stop immediately! And for that to stop the poor bishops need to be liturgically more pro-active in union with the reform of the reform!!! The Holy Father is doing his part by marking the way and setting the standard (communion only on the tongue and kneeling), but that needs to trickle down soon, now! Enough with chaotic communions! Don't tell us about successful World Youth Days in which our Eucharistic Lord is handed around as if a simple cracker!

World Youth Day 2011 Official Number of Participants 1.5 Million

Why is it so difficult for the world media to get an accurate estimate of the number of participants at the massive World Youth Day gatherings? I sense some bias here.

The BBC this morning said "hundreds of thousands" while the New York Times reports "more than a million." Participants on the ground told me over the phone that there were "about two million people" at the airstrip today for the closing Mass. Finally, I googled the question in Spanish and the first hit from a Spanish daily paper said 1.5 million, which, the Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, said would be a very safe estimate.

Is the world's media afraid to admit that there are still many many youth in the world who are capable of and actually enjoy good clean fun and that the Pope is well suited in leading them in that noble action? I would think that we could get more accurate estimates in our age of such great sophistication in such a controlled and examined event viewed by the most savvy journalists. Enough with the anti-Catholic foul play. It is prime-time for the media and for the world to admit that the Catholic faith is relevant, very relevant today, just as relevant as ever.

Apropos, Jesus Himself, in the Gospel reading of today's Mass (Mt. 16:19) tells Saint Peter (the first Pope) that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church: the Catholic Church, the Church built on Peter the Rock. Well, perhaps the world media might fit nicely in the "gates of Hell" category in downplaying the magnificence and wonder of the thriving of the Church of Peter in our antagonistic age. Christ Himself promises: "they will not prevail!" The Church of Peter will prevail!!! Why, because Jesus Christ guarantees it and He is alive and real and is with His Church and with the Pope and with all who are with Him in the unity of the Papal faith.

We Are All Learners: "Faith Cannot be Presupposed!"

"Do not be called 'Rabbi'; for one is your Master, and all you are brothers." (Mt. 23:8, Gospel for Saturday XX per annum.)

Some quotes are evoked by this lesson of Our Blessed Lord, all of which indicate that every human being, be he Pope, Bishop, Priest, Layman, Man, Woman, or Child, every one is an apprentice, a humble learner under Christ our common Master. There are no true experts in Christianity. Holiness is the proper possession and characteristic of God alone and each person must cling to Him to have it. The clinging itself is the acquisition. Holiness is real union with the living God Jesus Christ. He is the only Expert Saint and all others who are truly expert are so by divine union, by being with Him.

"For you I am a bishop, with you I am a Christian (a fellow follower [of Christ])." --Saint Augustine



"The decisive thing [in true religion] is not (as in the great religious personalities of the 'mystical religions) one's own religious experience, but the divine call. Therefore, in the last resort, everyone who believes in that call is in the same situation: each one is being called in the same way...

"...While in mystical religion the mystic has 'firsthand' and the believer 'secondhand' religion, here God alone deals at 'first hand'. All men without exception are dealing at second hand: servants of the divine call." Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, 44



His Holiness re-echoed the same thought (with the consequent urgent need for a new evangelization of the living God) at this year's annual Convention for the Diocese of Rome, 13 June.

"In this very Basilica, in an intervention during the Synod for Rome, I quoted a few words that Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote to me in a short letter: “Faith must never be presupposed but proposed”. This is just how it is. Faith is not preserved in the world by itself, it is not automatically passed on to the human heart, but must always be proclaimed...

"If people forget God it is partly because the Person of Jesus is often reduced to that of the figure of a wise man and his divinity weakened, if not denied. This manner of thinking is an obstacle to understanding the radical newness of Christianity, because if Jesus were not the Only Son of the Father then God did not come to visit human history either. We only have human ideas about God. The incarnation, on the other hand, belongs to the heart of the Gospel! Therefore may there be a growing commitment to a renewed season of evangelization, which is not only the task of some of the members of the Church but rather of them all. Evangelization tells us that God is close: God has shown himself to us. In this period of history, is this not the mission that the Lord entrusts to us: to proclaim the newness of the Gospel, like Peter and Paul when they reached our city? Should we not today too show the beauty and reasonableness of faith, carry God’s light to the people of our time, with courage, with conviction, with joy? There are many people who have not encountered the Lord: special pastoral care should be dedicated to them. Beside the children and young people of Christian families who ask to begin the process of Christian initiation, there are adults who have not received Baptism or who have drifted away from the faith and from the Church. This pastoral attention is especially urgent today and asks us to commit ourselves with confidence, sustained by the certainty that God’s grace works in the human heart today too..."



And now at World Youth Day in Madrid

"Above all, seek the Truth, which is not an idea or an ideology or a slogan, but a person: Christ, God himself, who has come into our midst! "

"God is looking for a responsible interlocutor, someone who can dialogue with him and love him. Through Christ we can truly succeed and, established in him, we give wings to our freedom. Is this not the great reason for our joy? Isn’t this the firm ground upon which to build the civilization of love and life, capable of humanizing all of us?" (Welcome Ceremony Plaza de Cibeles, Thursday 18 August)

"Many of the [youth] have heard the voice of God, perhaps only as a little whisper, which has led them to search for him more diligently and to share with others the experience of the force which he has in their lives. The discovery of the living God inspires young people and opens their eyes to the challenges of the world in which they live, with its possibilities and limitations. They see the prevailing superficiality, consumerism and hedonism, the widespread banalization of sexuality, the lack of solidarity, the corruption. They know that, without God, it would be hard to confront these challenges and to be truly happy, and thus pouring out their enthusiasm in the attainment of an authentic life. But, with God beside them, they will possess light to walk by and reasons to hope, unrestrained before their highest ideals, which will motivate their generous commitment to build a society where human dignity and true brotherhood are respected. Here on this Day, they have a special opportunity to gather together their aspirations, to share the richness of their cultures and experiences, motivate each other along a journey of faith and life, in which some think they are alone or ignored in their daily existence. But they are not alone. Many people of the same age have the same aspirations and, entrusting themselves completely to Christ, know that they really have a future before them and are not afraid of the decisive commitments which fulfill their entire lives. That is why it gives me great joy to listen to them, pray with them and celebrate the Eucharist with them. World Youth Day brings us a message of hope like a pure and youthful breeze, with rejuvenating scents which fill us with confidence before the future of the Church and the world." (Airport Welcoming Ceremony Thursday, 18 August)

San Juan de Avila Doctor of the Church

At the end of the Madrid Cathedral Seminarian Mass this morning His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI announced that he shall solemnly declare Saint John of Avila, the patron saint of diocesan priests of Spain, a Doctor of the Church. "Laus Deo Matrique Sua!"

Pedophilia is the Number One Problem in Hollywood

Actor Corey Feldman says that there are very powerful abusers in Hollywood who seem to be "above the Law." Corey, 40, says he was abused repeatedly from the time he was 14, and that his fellow actor and friend, Corey Haim's, death was due to his abuse by a Hollywood mogul who needs to be stopped.

Looks like Hollywood needs a clean up like the Catholic Church has gotten. Then we should go to the school teachers and physicians, etc. Abuse is deep in this corrupt culture. The clergy crisis is just the tip of the iceberg and a sign of the immorality of our times. When you reject God then there is no moral sanity.

You Will Take It With You

On this Solemnity of the Glorious Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary that is my concise reflection.

You will take it with you: your body, that is, as Mary did; and, hopefully, to the same place.

What you do with your body is gravely important, therefore. It has eternal consequences.

"Now the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Now God has raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? By no means! Or do you not know that he who cleaves to a harlot, becomes one body with her? 'For the two,' it says, 'shall be one flesh.' but he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with him. Flee immorality. Every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought at a great price. Glorify God and bear him in your body" 1Cor. 6:13

"Our citizenship is in heaven from which also we eagerly await a Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will refashion the body of our lowliness, conforming it to the body of his glory by exerting the power by which he is able also to subject all things to himself. So then, my brethren, beloved and longed for, my joy and my crown, stand fast thus in the Lord, beloved." Phil. 3:21-4:1.

This idea of the grandeur of human flesh as accented by the Virgin's Glorious Assumption was triggered by Ratzinger's meditation for 15 August in Co-Workers of the Truth.

Condoms Can't Protect You New York

Contraception can't protect you because it does not cover your heart.

Sin always harms you: spiritually, intellectually, in your social capacity and creativity, emotionally and, yes, physically too.

Condoms do not protect the heart, nor do they address the heart of the matter, which is sin. That is why contraception is bad. It doesn't deal with the problem, just the symptoms. Using a condom is like putting a band-aid on gangrene. Cut out the gangrene and the band-aid is not necessary.

The goal is not simply external cleanliness. We are not pharisees or puritans. We believe in the heart. We believe in the human person. We believe in Jesus Christ who said that it's not about keeping the outside of the cup clean but rather the inside! "Thou blind Pharisee! clean first the inside of the cup and of the dish, that the outside too may be clean." Mt. 23:26

The problem is being good and not just looking good.

For...beauty passes and virtue remains.

New York Sex Education: Elementary Perversion

Compulsory sex education has been mandated by Mayor Bloomberg without any public hearings or release of curriculum and teaching texts to the media.

The mandated course contains a conflicting and perverse message because it instructs children to abstain while training them how to use condoms and have "safe sex," beginning at 11 years old. All of this without parental consent. That, simply stated, is a violation of all New York families and parental rights. The material, being sexually suggestive, is pornographic and, therefore, sexual abuse of children.

One of the evils of child pornography is that it is the introduction of sexually provocative material to under age children. The City of New York is mandating the systematic corruption of our kids. This needs to be stopped. It is, at the very least, indecent!

Yes, instruct the children about the dangers and encourage them to abstain and encourage and assist their families to help their children "say no to fornication." New York should begin a "SAY NO TO FORNICATION" campaign similar to the nationwide anti-smoking campaign which has proven so effective. It should be a categorical and uncompromising battle to eliminate the evil of child sex. The evil here is the sexual immorality and the problem is that those who are most vocal in the campaign to stop the diseases and the unwanted pregnancies do not want to stop the fornication. They believe extramarital sex is OK. Or they are, at least indifferent to the morality of it. They want to smoke and be healthy too. It does not work.

Sexual immorality is always unhealthy. Sexual sins always damage the person(s) involved: spiritually, physically, intellectually, creatively, and emotionally, with or without a condom, with or without "the pill." To willfully expose our children to an evil which is so personally damaging is criminal, even under the false guise of "education" and "risk prevention." For City Hall to undertake such a project, without hearing the New York parents and the larger community is unjust and tyrannical.

Contact Bloomberg’s Press Secretary, Stu Loeser: sloeser@cityhall.nyc.gov.

Pope Benedict's Popularity Grows in Sweden

Book by Ambassador Ulla Gudmundson: Pope Benedict: The Church and the World


This article is by Ulf Jonsson, SJ
L'Osservatore Romano, 10 August 2011

The Catholic Church is a tiny minority of less than two percent of the population in the Nordic countries. After the Lutheran reformation in the 16th century adherence to Catholicism was declared criminal, and civic society and cultural life have for centuries been marked by strong anti-Catholic sentiments. Remnants of those attitudes can sometimes be found also today even among otherwise well educated persons.

In Nordic mass media and public life, influences from the Catholic Church – if not completely ignored – are usually being described in pejorative terms as unhelpful or directly detrimental. True enough, during the last decades Catholicism has often been presented somewhat less negatively in the public square compared to earlier times, especially in the aftermath of the successful visit of the late Pope John Paul II to the Nordic countries in 1989. However, reports about pedophilia among Catholic clergy in different parts of the world have lately tended to corroborate old anti-Catholic attitudes.

Given this somewhat rough context for Catholicism in the Nordic countries it is worth noticing the new booklet ”Pope Benedict, the Church and the World” (Påven Benedictus, Kyrkan och världen) published by Ulla Gudmundson, Sweden’s Ambassador to the Holy See, in the series ”Issues of Contemporary World Politics” (Världspolitikens Dagsfrågor) by The Swedish Institute of International Affairs. It provides something that is not often to be found in the Nordic context: an informative, well-balanced and easily read presentation of the current Pontificate and of the role of the Holy See on the international level. It is no surprise that it was commented on by Sweden’s largest daily newspaper ”Dagens Nyheter” as a unique and valuable source of information for understanding the role of Catholicism in today’s world.

Ambassador Gudmundson writes as the person she is: eloquent, reflecting, respectful and straightforward. I vividly remember meeting her for a first interview for the Swedish Jesuit journal ”Signum” in 2008, shortly after she had been appointed Ambassador to the Holy See. Being not a Catholic herself, she made it clear how eager and serious she was to arrive at a deeper knowledge and understanding of the Catholic Church. In her typically straightforward manner she immediately also conveyed that she had her own views about things, and that probably not all of them would be the Catholic ones. That mixture of a respectful wish to understand the other and a straightforward articulation of her own points of view also permeates her account of the present Pope and of the Catholic Church in her new publication.

The picture of the person of the Pope that shines forth from the booklet is that of a devout academic intellectual, a Professor of Theology, who rather spends his time in the library than with board meetings and public ceremonies. This side of the Pope readily evokes the esteem of the author. Her appreciation for the intellectual strain of the Catholic tradition she has, by the way, made clear also in other ways. For instance by providing us the honor of her presence at the opening of the one and only Catholic academic institution in the Nordic countries, the Jesuit university college ”Newman Institute” in Uppsala, that was solemnly inaugurated by the General Superior of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Adolfo Nicolás SJ, on September 5th, 2010.

In her booklet ”Pope Benedict, the Church and the World” Ulla Gudmundson begins by presenting the historical roots of the Papacy, as well as those of the former Papal state and, later on, of the Vatican state. She thereby explains the historical developments that have led to the contemporary role of the Holy See as a key player on the arena of international affairs. For her readers in Sweden, where many have quite dizzy notions about the status of the Holy See in international diplomacy, she disentangles the role and impact of the Vatican in organizations such as the UN and the OSSE.

Just like many contemporaries, Ambassador Gudmundson shares the impression that we are today witnessing a come back of influence from religion also in the fields of diplomacy and politics. Despite her respect and esteem for the spiritual values inherent in religious belief, she nevertheless makes it clear that she has mixed feelings with regard to that present day development. The relation between religious belief and the world of politics is a tricky topic. The world does actually listen when the Pope speaks, she writes, but this does not mean that the world always agrees with him. It sometimes even reacts with fury.

On the following pages of ”Pope Benedict, the Church and the World” the author expands on the first five years of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. ”Hermeneutics of continuity”, ”Inter religious dialogue”, ”Climate change”, ”Catholic sexual ethics”, ”The Vatican and the Middle East” and ”The Pedophilia crisis” are among the topics that she reports about and reflects upon. A lot of interesting information about the Pope’s position on different pressing issues of our time is to be found here. The facts are reported correctly and the tone is always respectful, also when the author explains why she looks at things in a different way than the church does.

Special attention is also given to a set of events that have stirred exceptional reactions in the mass media during the Pontificate of Benedict XVI, such as the Pope’s lecture at the University of Regensburg on September 12th, 2006, and the abhorrent interview with SSPX-bishop Richard Williamson broadcasted by Swedish Television in January 2009 on the topic of the Holocaust. It is suggested that the handling with these and some other exceptional events have necessitated the Pope to develop a more modern and accurate way of confronting problems within the Church.

Under the heading ”A Dialectical Pope” Gudmundson suggests that these exceptional events have caused the Pope to express his position more clearly on a number of issues, while trying to solve problems that followed from these moments of crisis within the church and in its relations to different other groups. Moreover, many of these responses ­ – lengthy interviews published as books, public letters formulated in a more personal language, and also including humble excuses for failures and mistakes on the part of the Church – are here being described as indicating a more up to date way of reacting to problems. Some of the responses and decisions that were first propelled under such circumstances of crisis have later actually opened up new possibilities for future positive developments within the church, Ambassador Ulla Gudmundson concludes her well written contribution about Pope Benedict XVI and the role of the Catholic Church on the contemporary global arena.

Ulf Jonsson SJ, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Newman Institute in Uppsala and Editor-in-chief of the Jesuit journal ”Signum”.

On Lookin' Good

"If you're not bad, and yet you seem to be, then you're a fool. And that foolishness--a cause of scandal--is even worse than being bad." --Escriva The Way, 370

This is a common predominant fault among otherwise very saintly Catholics in our own time who often ignore, disregard or neglect, how they are perceived by others. Holy people should also make a reasonable effort to make themselves presentable and agreeable, and not ridiculous!

Ratzinger begins the first chapter of Introduction to Christianity referring to Kierkegaard's famous story of the clown and the burning village, to sum up the ridiculous appearance of the convinced Christian making a case for faith in the modern world. "[There is an] oppressive reality in which theology and theological discussion are imprisoned today and [a] frustrating inability to break through accepted patterns of thought and speech and make people recognize the subject-matter of theology as a serious aspect of human life." p. 16


"For the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light." Luke 16:8

Jesus Christ was like us in every way (indistinguishable among the ordinary men of Nazareth), except regarding sin.

The Catholic University of America Looks Forward to Single-Sex Dormitories

Check out this long overdue first-step to common sense in campus living, as reported by Barbara Curtis on her blog: Mommy Life. She includes CUA President John Garvey's Wall Street Journal article in full. This very eloquent and clear headed President also gave an interview to Raymond Arollo of EWTN's World Over Live last week on the urgent need for virtue formation in college. (Go to the 17:38 minute of the news hour.)

June 13, 2011 8:43 AM
Catholic University returning to single-sex dorms
Absolutely brilliant! Please check my comments below. From today's Wall Street Journal:


Why We're Going Back to Single-Sex Dorms
Student housing has became a hotbed of reckless drinking and hooking up.
By JOHN GARVEY
My wife and I have sent five children to college and our youngest just graduated. Like many parents, we encouraged them to study hard and spend time in a country where people don't speak English. Like all parents, we worried about the kind of people they would grow up to be.

We may have been a little unusual in thinking it was the college's responsibility to worry about that too. But I believe that intellect and virtue are connected. They influence one another. Some say the intellect is primary. If we know what is good, we will pursue it. Aristotle suggests in the "Nicomachean Ethics" that the influence runs the other way. He says that if you want to listen intelligently to lectures on ethics you "must have been brought up in good habits." The goals we set for ourselves are brought into focus by our moral vision.

"Virtue," Aristotle concludes, "makes us aim at the right mark, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means." If he is right, then colleges and universities should concern themselves with virtue as well as intellect.

I want to mention two places where schools might direct that concern, and a slightly old-fashioned remedy that will improve the practice of virtue. The two most serious ethical challenges college students face are binge drinking and the culture of hooking up.

Alcohol-related accidents are the leading cause of death for young adults aged 17-24. Students who engage in binge drinking (about two in five) are 25 times more likely to do things like miss class, fall behind in school work, engage in unplanned sexual activity, and get in trouble with the law. They also cause trouble for other students, who are subjected to physical and sexual assault, suffer property damage and interrupted sleep, and end up babysitting problem drinkers.

Hooking up is getting to be as common as drinking. Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, who heads the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, says that in various studies, 40%-64% of college students report doing it.

The effects are not all fun. Rates of depression reach 20% for young women who have had two or more sexual partners in the last year, almost double the rate for women who have had none. Sexually active young men do more poorly than abstainers in their academic work. And as we have always admonished our own children, sex on these terms is destructive of love and marriage.

Here is one simple step colleges can take to reduce both binge drinking and hooking up: Go back to single-sex residences.

I know it's countercultural. More than 90% of college housing is now co-ed. But Christopher Kaczor at Loyola Marymount points to a surprising number of studies showing that students in co-ed dorms (41.5%) report weekly binge drinking more than twice as often as students in single-sex housing (17.6%). Similarly, students in co-ed housing are more likely (55.7%) than students in single-sex dorms (36.8%) to have had a sexual partner in the last year--and more than twice as likely to have had three or more.

The point about sex is no surprise. The point about drinking is. I would have thought that young women would have a civilizing influence on young men. Yet the causal arrow seems to run the other way. Young women are trying to keep up--and young men are encouraging them (maybe because it facilitates hooking up).

Next year all freshmen at The Catholic University of America will be assigned to single-sex residence halls. The year after, we will extend the change to the sophomore halls. It will take a few years to complete the transformation.

The change will probably cost more money. There are a few architectural adjustments. We won't be able to let the ratio of men and women we admit into the freshman class vary from year to year with the size and quality of the pools. But our students will be better off.

Mr. Garvey is president of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

While Catholic University is national university of the Catholic Church in the United States with direct ties to Rome, it has pretty much followed the lead of America's secular colleges many areas of campus life. This year looks like a turning point.

As one of his first acts as president elect, John Garvey rallied with CUA students then marched with his wife beside him in the 2011 March for Life. The next day he was inaugurated.

Today he revealed the kind of leadership we can expect from him. In a bold move, President Garvey not only made a sweeping change in campus policy, but also rather than waiting for the onslaught of media backlash he's sure to receive, he carefully laid out his reasons in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

What strikes me about this brilliant but reader-friendly piece is the amount and range of persuasion in 660 words, the confident manner in which it is written, as though it will be received by reasonable people.

Of course nowadays, that's not so certain. . . .

President Garvey offers his experience/hope as a parent, the philosophical underpinnings of the knowledge/virtue relationship (a big theme at CUA), and cold hard statistics to show why mixed sex dorms have failed our children.

When you think about it, it has been a ludicrous situation. Thank you, President Garvey for your common sense and caring about the students entrusted to your care.

Our confidence in Maddy's future at Catholic University has just increased exponentially.
Love,
Barbara

Website Tracking "Pro-Choice" Violence

Human Life International has launched its expanded and improved "pro-choice" violence website on July 5, 2011. Pro-lifers all over the world can use this tool to document the frequent and extreme violence committed by "pro-choicers," and to prove that pro-lifers belong to the most peaceful social movement of its kind in history.

The main body of the site consists of a state-by-state and city-by-city listing of more than eleven thousand documented incidents of "pro-choice" violence and lawbreaking, from mass murder, rape, arson, cannibalism, kidnapping and maiming to cheating in sports events, animal neglect and cruelty, indecent exposure, child sexual molestation and bank robbery. Each incident is backed up by references so that "pro-choice" people cannot claim the site is mere "anti-choice propaganda."

In addition to more than 1,200 pages of descriptions and documentation, the site includes:


An spreadsheet summarizing the types of "pro-choice" violence;


A list of hundreds of women killed by so-called "safe and legal" abortion;


Short summaries of the stories of pregnant women who were murdered by their boyfriends or husbands because they refused to get abortions;


A PowerPoint document that can be used for presentations.


This is the largest compendium of "pro-choice" violence ever assembled. Even pro-lifers are astonished when they see hard evidence that "pro-choicers" have committed more than 300 murders since Roe v. Wade and an incredible 192 murders just since the year 2000, most of these against women who refuse their demands to have abortions. Add to this the at least 550 fatal botched abortions committed by abortionists, and we can see that the "pro-choice" movement is responsible for more than 850 deaths since Roe v. Wade. In fact, "pro-choicers" have averaged more murders per year since 1985 than supposed "pro lifers" have in the history of the entire conflict over abortion.

But, of course, all we hear about in the press is the people killed by allegedly "pro-life" people. Not surprisingly, abortionists, whose entire business is killing, are the most violent members of the "pro-choice" movement. They have murdered their wives, butchered women during abortions and walked away to let them die; some have even committed such hideous crimes as cannibalism and the production of child pornography. This database provides detailed information on the crimes committed by more than 350 abortionists, from Mehrdad Aalai to Theresa Zumwalt.

The site comes with a warning, as it relates often gruesome details of crimes that might not be suitable for young or sensitive readers. It thoroughly investigates and presents many aspects of the abortion mentality that most pro-lifers are not even aware of:


It proves that abortion is essential to covering up child molestation, giving nearly one hundred detailed accounts of how older men have molested very young girls and, when they get pregnant, have taken them to abortion mills where the abortionists ask no questions. All they do is take the man's money, perform the abortion, and send the girl home to be raped over and over again.


The "pro-choice" mentality leads not only to deadly violence, but to sexual violence as well. HLI has documented more than 2,500 sex crimes by "pro-choicers," including more than 200 cases of rape, more than 500 incidents of sexual assault of children, and more than 700 cases of sexual abuse and assault.


Abortionists have committed more than 3,000 medical crimes, from gross negligence and incompetence to grave robbery and forced abortions. In fact, since abortionists occupy the lowest rung of the medical profession, it is almost impossible to find one who has not committed such crimes in their mad dash to accumulate as much cash as quickly as possible.


Abortion is also the sex slave trader's best friend, and this database gives information on how "pro-choicers" use it to keep their sex slaves "in line."


When abortionists murder or sexually molest women, the "pro-choice" groups always take the side of the [usually male] abortionist against the victims. This proves once and for all that the "pro-choice" movement values the availability of abortion above the health and the very lives of women it claims to care about.


The site shows that murderous "pro-choice" violence does not only occur in North America, but all over the world. It presents dozens of examples of abortion supporters committing violence in other countries.


Not only have "pro-choicers" murdered pro-lifers (Jim Pouillon being only the latest victim), but they have attempted to murder pro-lifers more than thirty times. This database also documents nearly 400 "pro-choice" physical assaults against pro-lifers, including nearly fifty by abortionists. "Pro-choice" people have violently attacked pro lifers with guns, cars, acid, hypodermic syringes, and baseball bats, and other "pro-choicers" have actually applauded and supported these actions.


There are many particularly hideous and depraved crimes committed by "pro-choicers," crimes committed to frame pro-lifers to make us look violent, detailed accounts of many disgusting and dangerous "front-alley" abortion mills, and the racism and hate crimes committed by "pro-choicers."


Throughout history, many of the worst mass murderers and fiends have been "pro-choice." For example, the Marquis de Sade -- whose novels celebrated the torture and murder of pregnant women -- advocated the legalization of abortion in France more than two centuries ago. After he escaped Germany at the end of World War II, one of the most notorious Nazis of all, Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death" from the Auschwitz concentration camp, moved to Argentina and set up shop as an abortionist. And Chicago abortionist Henry Howard Holmes, known as "America's Arch-Fiend," was our nation's first serial killer, murdering more than fifty people by slowly burning them to death and dissolving them in acid.


The pro-life movement, contrary to its portrayal in the media, is remarkably non-violent among social movements, by any historical standard. In contrast, this site documents extreme violence by the "gay rights," animal rights, environmentalist, anti-apartheid, Communist and union movements.

The "pro-choice" violence website is located at http://www.prochoiceviolence.com/. Every pro-lifer should bookmark the site so that they can use it to refute errors encountered on the Internet. It's about time we put to rest the myth that pro-lifers are the violent ones in the struggle over abortion.

This article was by Matt C. Abbott (Posted on renewamerica.com 15 July 2011)
(A version of this article, written by Brian W. Clowes, Ph.D., appeared in a recent issue of The Wanderer.)

Noticieros Catolicos de Primera

Tres grandes y excelentes fuentes de noticias en espanol son:

Religion en Libertad (Madrid, Espana)

ACI Prensa (Agencia Catolica de Informaciones Lima, Peru)

Zenit (Roma, Italia)