Al Kresta's Blog, page 347

Today on Kresta - March 2, 2001

Talking about the "things that matter most" on March 2

4:00 – First Hand Report on the New Zealand Earthquake
The massive 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand last week has resulted in 160 deaths thousands of injuries and countless homes and businesses destroyed. Christchurch retail spending has almost halved and the central city is in lockdown as many retail and office buildings there were destroyed. Thousands of residents have fled the city for a while and those there have focused on supporting their families, relatives and friends in the aftermath of the devastation. We talk with Christchurch resident Emily Matthews about the day of the earthquake and the aftermath.

4:20 – Christians Out as Foster Parents in UK?
A British court has ruled that a Christian couple can no longer care for foster children because of their opposition to homosexuality. Eunice and Owen Johns provided foster care for nearly two dozen children in the 1990s — but after Great Britain instituted equality laws, they were banned from the program in 2007. Social workers red-flagged the couple during an interview when they explained that they did not approve of homosexuality because of their Pentecostal faith. Judges at London's Royal Courts of Justice determined that laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination take precedence over the couple's religious beliefs. We talk about this case with Peter LaBarbara of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality.

4:30 – Crisis Pregnancy Centers In Danger in NYC
Today, New York's City Council will vote on a bill that tries to dictate what privately funded, pro-life pregnancy centers say to their clients. The bill demands that pro-life centers insert boilerplate language promoting abortion and contraception into their ads, and even into their conversations with pregnant women. Pro-life leaders charge that the bill violates New Yorkers' right to free speech, and is designed simply to hamper the operations of pregnancy centers and increase the number of abortions in the city. Chris Slattery , founder of Expectant Mother Care in NYC is here.

4:40 – Westboro Wins at US Supreme Court
The Supreme Court ruled this morning that the First Amendment protects fundamentalist church members who mount anti-gay protests outside military funerals, despite the pain they cause grieving families. The court voted 8-1 in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church, upholding an appeals court ruling that threw out a $5 million judgment to the father of a dead Marine who sued church members after they picketed his son's funeral. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the court. Justice Samuel Alito dissented. We talk to Kevin Govern of Ave Maria Law School about this decision.

5:00 – From the White House to Ave Maria University: Jim Towey Takes the Reins
The former head of the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and president of Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., has been named president and CEO of Ave Maria University. Jim Towey will begin his new position on July 1 and will succeed Nicholas Healy. Towey is also assuming the role of CEO, in the place of Ave Maria founder Tom Monaghan, who will continue as just the chancellor. Towey, who also served as the attorney for Mother Teresa of Calcutta for 12 years, joins us to talk about his accomplishments, his plans, and the future of Ave Maria University.

5:20 – Why Two Judgments? The Individual's Reckoning at Death Fulfills God's Justice Only in Part
Stretching out across the altar wall of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel is Michelangelo's magnificent fresco "The Last Judgment." Homilies about Judgment Day are rare these days, so even Catholic visitors to the Chapel may sometimes puzzle over the arresting images. In particular, Catholics often wonder why the Church teaches we will go through two judgments after death. We talk to apologist Paul Thigpen about why the two judgments.

5:40 – The Last Acceptable Prejudice Rides Again
Anti-Catholicism has long been a feature of both the high and the low culture in America. From the nineteenth-century to the middle of the twentieth-century, it was out in the open: many editorialists, cartoonists, politicians, and other shapers of popular opinion in that era were crudely explicit in their opposition to the Catholic Church. But then, in the latter half of the twentieth-century, anti-Catholicism went relatively underground. It still existed, to be sure, but it was considered bad form to be too obvious about it. However, in the last ten years or so, the old demon has re-surfaced. We talk about it with Fr. Robert Barron .

Witness to God's Mercy: A Doctor's Peace

by Kathryn Jean Lopez
Headline Bistro

The funeral Mass for Bernard Nathanson on Monday at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan was a celebration and thanksgiving for mercy and love.

Nathanson was the infamous co-founder of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws and director of the largest abortion clinic in the world who turned pro-life activist. Dr. Nathanson died last week at age 84.

Inescapable, too, as pro-life leaders and activists joined his family and friends, was an overwhelming sense of the work yet to do. His courage both nudges and inspires. If he could reverse himself so publicly and dramatically, working to undo his foundational work in our current culture of death, surely we can each do our part – whatever our role – in prayer and sacrifice, and labor. Speaking the truth with love. Living our lives as beacons of life and love and truth.

In his 1996 book The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind, Nathanson wrote:

As I look back across the twenty-five years separating me from that revolting extravaganza playing itself out on the bodies of pregnant women and their slaughtered babies, I am struck by the uncritical nature of the task we had set for ourselves, by the moral and spiritual vacuum at the core of this fantastic operation, by our unquestioned certainty of the high level of moral rectitude on which we operated. And yet, the thing was so obviously sordid. Why couldn't we make the link between the ethical and the moral, between the shoddy practices and shabby practitioners, the evident greed and callous motives, between the crassness of the enterprise and those involved in it, between all these ethical indicators and the grotesque immorality of the act itself?

"St. Thomas teaches," Nathanson continued, "that God has given it to us to apprehend Being under each of its four transcendental aspects: the Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Oneness. The apprehension of each aspect helps us to uncover the others so that we can apprehend, for instance, the Truth by its Goodness, or the Good by its Beauty. Why could we not triangulate from the shoddy to the shameful?"

Nathanson saw the light, the Good that is God. But as we know from Philadelphia, as we know from Lila Rose's videos, shoddy and shameful practices continue. And as we know from the unjust persecution of Phill Kline in Kansas, the only prosecutor who has thus far dared to bring charges against Planned Parenthood, shedding a light on the criminal behavior requires real courage and sacrifice. Which is why as Dr. Nathanson was laid to rest, we must rededicate ourselves.

In his funeral homily, Fr. Gerald E. Murray, pastor of St. Vincent de Paul, where Dr. Nathanson was a member, compared Dr. Nathanson's journey to that of Whittaker Chambers, "another great witness against evil and in favor of the truth in the twentieth century."

Chambers famously renounced his Communist past as a Soviet spy, shedding light on the conspiracy he was a part of, for which he was "vilified" and "suffered," as Fr. Murray recalled. Still: "He stood firm. He spoke the truth."

In the "Foreword in the Form of a Letter to My Children" in his book Witness, Chambers well captured "Dr. Nathanson's courageous witness on behalf of innocent human beings menaced by abortion," Fr. Murray noted: "A man is not primarily a witness against something. That is only incidental to the fact that he is a witness for something. A witness, in the sense that I am using the word, is a man whose life and faith are so completely one that when the challenge comes to step out and testify for his faith, he does so, disregarding all risks, accepting all consequences."

Having just read the account of former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson's journey from the heart of the business of the abortion industry today, one cannot but pray that her message – of ultimately connecting the dots between that which doesn't work and yet is proclaimed as if it's biblical – is heard and echoed in the brave witness of others who feel called by truth to speak to our common humanity, in defense of the innocent, and in pursuit of a future where we no longer pretend that sex can ever be safe from emotion, commitment, consequences and new life. Rather, it is at the heart of life – that which is life-giving – our participation in creation. It's actually not anti-sex or repressive to liberate ourselves from the last decades' insistence that the fullness of life is anything less than this.

Life won't always be bliss, of course. But putting everything in its place, and resting our burdens in God's hand, allows the reality and promise of fulfillment in Him, now and for eternity. It's something Nathanson knew. After quoting Chambers again, Fr. Murray wrapped up his homily reminding us:

Our life indeed is meant to be lived in intimate union with the crucified Lord. Golgotha, Calvary is indeed the place where we learn to be wise. The pain we experience, if united to Christ's pain, is then understood to be a blessing that opens our hearts to the only Love that can take away that pain. That Love is Christ, and the gift of eternal life wipes away all pain and suffering. To live and to die in hopeful expectation of that redemption is God's great gift to us fallen creatures here below. That gift was joyfully received by Dr. Nathanson in this very Cathedral 14 years ago.

The late John Cardinal O'Connor received Nathanson into the Church in 1996.

And so we prayed "that the fullness of joy, which is the blessed vision of God seen face to face, be given to his son and our brother, Bernard Nathanson."

And that we may continue the work on the fruitful land Dr. Nathanson so faithfully tilled, assured of God's mercy and love.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a nationally syndicated columnist. She speaks frequently on faith and public life.

Catholic Relief Services barred from Darfur

Sudanese government forces continue interfering with NGOs operating in Darfur. Most recent is Catholic Relief Services, which has been denied the right to operate in Western Darfur, accused of having distributed bibles. News of the decision was confirmed by the Sudanese government's Mohamed Awad, according to whom CRS has been found to distribute bibles in refugee camps and schools.

A "Truce" on Abortion and Marriage?

By Hadley Arkes
The Catholic Thing

Mr. Robert Heiler acquired part of his seasoning in politics by putting in a stint as a speechwriter for John McCain during the late presidential campaign – an assignment surely as enduring in its satisfaction as serving as a gag writer for Harry Reid. Heiler has sought to offer some instruction to those of who have taken Gov. Mitch Daniels at his word – and drawn dark implications from that word – when Daniels suggested that we ought to call a "truce" on the "social issues" of abortion and marriage as we move toward 2012. (See "The Strategy Behind Mitch Daniels' Truce," Real Clear Politics, February 19)

Heiler has come to tell us that "truce" does not mean "surrender." Daniels's concern is that the pro-lifers don't turn away that vast middle cohort of "independents." Those people tend to be indifferent to the matter of abortion and marriage, and may even recoil from those who seem to them overheated on these issues.

But Mr. Heiler delivers the wrong lecture on the meaning of the wrong words. On matters lexical, we need no instruction that "truce" does not mean "surrender." But those of us who speak ordinary English took the urging of a "truce" to mean that we should not make those issues of abortion and marriage central issues in our politics. Or make them too prominent by insisting on talking about them, too often, too loudly, as though they were just too important to put aside. An old adage, stemming from Machiavelli, has it that when a wise man preserves his silence on a matter that everyone else thinks important, he gives us to understand that it is not really that important after all.

Of course, Gov. Daniels has other matters pressing immediately upon him, including a matter of high, strategic importance: scaling back the out-of-scale power of public service unions. But Gov. Daniels is perfectly capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. Like the rest of us, he must encounter the experience of dealing with many problems hitting at once – problems with the job and children and illnesses in the family. Somehow the means are found to say something on all these questions, even if we have to put our main energies into the matter immediately pressing.

It is the inescapable function of the statesman to alert us to the things that are in principle important, even when most people do not especially care about them. Lincoln drew out for the public the implications of making slavery national in scope, and when he did, he broke the news through to large portions of the public that preferred, overall, not to think much about it.

Do people these days think that real human beings are killed in abortions? If so, about 1.2 million innocent lives have been taken every year without the need even to render a justification. In the scale of things, would the dismembering or poisoning of 1.2 million humans be as important as the level of unemployment? This country may still look the same twenty-five years from now even if keep putting patches on Social Security. But it will not be the same country if marriage, already weakened, is cast anew on terms that alter its very meaning.

Of course, the strategic focus of politics at the moment is on the dramatic expansion of the power of the state, marked by the political takeover of medical care. But that does not require silence on everything else. Mr. Heiler and Gov. Daniels fail to notice that it is critical simply to put something on the table, even if it is quite modest. For even a modest bill can raise the critical points in principle.

As I've argued in these columns, the Republicans have the issue in hand with the Born-Alive Infants' Protection Act (2002). We now know that the killing of babies who survive abortion occurs far more often than we had even imagined when the bill was passed. And yet that bill mainly planted premises in the law for the protection of the child; it contained no penalties. A Republican candidate for president can propose that we simply focus on this bill, which drew the support of Democrats and even of people who call themselves "pro-choice."

And we pose the question of just what the penalty should be for killing a child born alive? Would it be more serious than a moving violation in traffic? But just to raise the question and draw attention to this part of the problem draws the attention of the public to every question of consequence contained in the matter of abortion.

When Gov. Daniels called for a "truce," that was a clear sign to the media and the Democrats that he didn't want to talk about those vexing issues of abortion and marriage. And of course, as William McGurn has pointed out, nothing will guarantee more that the media will be asking him about those matters in a persisting, needling way. One way or another, Gov. Daniels will be compelled to talk about these matters, even if he waves the flag of a truce. The question is whether he will talk about them on the terms framed by the media, or whether he will talk about them on the terms that he and the pro-lifers frame, with the focus pointed at the moral heart of the matter.

Hadley Arkes is the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence at Amherst College. His most recent book is Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law.

Catholic teaching's pro-union bias

Fr. Robert A Sirico
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

There is a long-standing bias in Catholic social teaching toward unions, and this dates from the long history of labor struggles for fair wages and safe working conditions. There is a romance associated with this history, and it is bound up with strong moral concerns. And it is not just historical. The Catholic Church played a heroic role in the fall of Communism in Poland through its influence on labor unions that were striking against oppression, which is to say state coercion.

Pope John Paul II, who knew something about the social role of labor unions, also warned about their drift into politics. In his encyclical Laborem Exercens, he wrote: "Unions do not have the character of political parties struggling for power; they should not be subjected to the decision of political parties or have too close links with them."

The reality with all public affairs, however, is that conditions change. Just because something is called a union does not make it automatically good and moral. Essential considerations of justice and freedom must be in place. Generally speaking, the long history of unions has been bound up with the right of free association. So far as I can tell, the current practice of public-sector union organizing has little or nothing to do with this principle, so it is right and proper that Catholic social teaching should also recognize this.

This reality comes to mind because of the protests in Wisconsin against proposed changes in collective bargaining for public-sector unions. But the driving force behind the budgetary move has nothing to do with human rights, unless one considers the rights of Wisconsin taxpayers.

The alarming reality of state and federal overspending and debt is something that cannot be denied. Prudent and necessary cuts must be made in the Wisconsin budget, and state employees must be part of that plan. How do public-sector unions fit into this? It is nearly impossible for anyone to work for the public sector without being a member, and unions collect dues, which operate like taxes for most everyone else.

This was not always the case. Public-sector unions emerged after World War II in the wake of the crack-up of many big-city political machines, and they were a convenient way for government employees to extract higher salaries and benefits at public expense.

What does this have to do with the freedom of association? Industrial unions have been on the decline for decades precisely because of the freedom of association. Organizing activity for years has shifted to the public sector, where union political contributions carry a lot of weight. Unions that remain strong are that way because they push against the freedom of association, denying alternatives to workers and taxpayers.

A one-time member of a Wisconsin union, Stephen J. Haessler, tells me: "My previous experience with agency shop as a former member of a WEAC (Wisconsin Education Association Council) local affiliate is instructive. I opposed my dues monies going to endorse pro-choice political candidates, but my opinions and preferences did not matter because dues were automatically deducted from my pay whether I joined the union or not. This was a violation of the principle of the freedom of association."

Here's the question Catholics need to ask themselves: Are the unions I support of the same type that are idealized in Catholic social teaching? Or have they changed to the point where they are unions in name only but actually just political machines for coercing workers and extracting money through the political process?

The bias toward unions in Catholic social teaching is rooted in a perception that unions fulfill certain moral conditions. When they fail to do so, the application of moral teaching can change. There is no a priori reason to back every union demand and no reason for Catholics to feel under any doctrinal obligation to do so.

The Rev. Robert A. Sirico is president of the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Afghan who faced death sentence for converting to Christianity released

Musa Sayed, an ex-Muslim Red Cross worker who faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity, has been released from prison in the wake of international political pressure. Sayed said he suffered severe mistreatment in his Kabul jail.

Afghan justice department official Jamal Khan had said in February that "the sentence for a convert is death and there is no exception" and that converts from Islam "must be sentenced to death to serve as a lesson for others."

WYD song contest shines light on pop stars across the world

Outrage of the Day: Adult Wii Game Approved For 12 Year Olds in Europe

A new raunchy game for the Nintendo Wii has been approved as appropriate for 12 year olds in Europe. The game game has not come to America yet, but can be purchased on the internet.

Cartoon of the Day - Grip of Gadhafi

Alberto Cutie Exposed

We have uploaded our video of the interview with Alberto Cutie to our YouTube page. You can enjoy it below.