Marriage, Procreation and Historical Amnesia

 best i have read yet, hope to find the followups as well

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By Ross Douthat

 

 http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/marriage-procreation-and-historical-amnesia/

 

Not surprisingly, my Sunday column raising the possibility that the successes of the gay marriage movement might be having some modest influence on marriage’s overall decline left liberals (and many others) unpersuaded. Kevin Drum has a usefully representative rebuttal, whose three major points I think I’ll take up in separate posts. Here’s the first, which dismisses the idea that the push for same-sex marriage has tended to weaken the legal and cultural connection between marriage and procreation by … blaming social conservatives for injecting that supposed connection into the debate in the first place:

My sense of the debate is that the procreation argument was introduced by opponents of same-sex marriage, not supporters. Those advocating SSM just wanted gays and lesbians to be able to marry each other. It was opponents, after realizing that Old Testament jeremiads weren’t cutting it any more, who began claiming that SSM should remain banned because gays couldn’t have children. This turned out to be both a tactical and strategic disaster, partly because the argument was so transparently silly (what about old people? what about women who had hysterectomies? etc.) and partly because it suggested that SSM opponents didn’t have any better arguments to offer. But disaster or not, they’re the ones responsible for making this into a cornerstone of the anti-SSM debates in the aughts. Without that, I doubt that most ordinary people would ever have connected gay marriage to procreation within straight marriages in the first place. If this really has had an impact on traditional marriage, the anti-SSM forces have mostly themselves to blame.

The notion that nobody would have entertained what Drum later calls the “esoteric” idea that marriage has an essential link to the way that human beings procreate if desperate social conservatives hadn’t grasped at it is apparently quite a popular view, judging by the fact that other writers raised it on Twitter over the weekend, and its popularity testifies to the way that the gay marriage debate has encouraged a strange historical amnesia about the origins of marriage law.
If gay marriage opponents had essentially invented a procreative foundation for marriage in order to justify opposing same-sex wedlock, it would indeed be telling evidence of a movement groping for reasons to justify its bigotry. But of course that essential connection was assumed in Western law and culture long before gay marriage emerged as a controversy or a cause. You don’t have to look very hard to find quotes (like the ones collected in this Heritage Foundation brief) from jurists, scholars, anthropologists and others, writing in historical contexts entirely removed from the gay marriage debate, making the case that “the first purpose of matrimony, by the laws of nature and society, is procreation” (that’s a California Supreme Court ruling in 1859), describing the institution of marriage as one “founded in nature, but modified by civil society: the one directing man to continue and multiply his species, the other prescribing the manner in which that natural impulse must be confined and regulated” (that’s William Blackstone), and acknowledging that “it is through children alone that sexual relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution” (that’s the well-known reactionary Bertrand Russell).
Nor, perhaps more importantly, is it difficult to find various traditional features of marriage law that only make sense given the procreative understanding: For instance, the granting, not of divorces, but annulments in the case of marriages that weren’t or couldn’t be consummated — a provision with deep roots in the common law tradition, and one that remains in force today in contexts as diverse as California and England. (Current English annulment law went on the books all the way back in the dark medieval year of … 1973.)
Note, too, that by saying that a marriage left unconsummated through coitus is invalid, the common-law tradition makes precisely the distinction that Drum (and many others) find so self-evidently ridiculous and assume was obviously just invented for the gay marriage debate — a distinction between relationships that involve the reproductive act and those that don’t, with the former being valid marriages even when they’re infertile and the latter not. This Robert George-esque view of what is and isn’t marriage may or may not make sense, but it was considered a perfectly reasonable way of drawing distinctions between heterosexual relationships long before the homosexual claim to equal marriage rights began to be advanced. Wise or not, it was a distinction inherited from centuries of legal tradition, not invented as a made-up way to keep the gays from contaminating marriage.
Now if Drum wants to argue that this “first purpose of matrimony” understanding was eroding by the time the gay marriage debate began, and that its post-sexual revolution erosion explains why marriage’s inherent connection to reproduction went from being self-evident in 1971’s Baker v. Nelson decision (the first major gay marriage ruling, whose invocation of marriage’s necessary connection to the “procreation and rearing of children” nobody at the time found “transparently silly”) to being contested in the 1990s and dismissed in the 2000s — well then, yes, he would have an entirely plausible case. But he and others seem to be making a much stronger claim than this — that basically nobody would have imagined that the gay marriage debate had any implications for marriage’s connection to procreation if the anti-gay marriage cause hadn’t seized on the idea, and that the marriage-procreation link is (at best) a medieval relic exhumed to serve the ends of homophobia, and at worst just something invented by social conservatives out of animus and desperation.
That so many people find this claim credible or even self-evident is a small but potent example of exactly the two phenemona that my column’s conclusion discussed: First, the way that gay marriage inevitably has widening cultural ripple effects, in this case revising not only the law itself but also the stories people tell about where those laws came from and what they’re meant to do; and second, the way that some of these ripple effects are making it almost impossible for liberals to show magnanimity in victory, and accept the continued existence of people and institutions that still take the older view of what marriage is and means. After all, if that supposedly “older” view was just invented by Clinton or Bush-era homophobes when their Bible-thumping stopped working, then what’s to respect or even tolerate? Once you’ve rewritten the past to make your opponents look worse, then you’re well on your way to justifying writing them out of the future entirely.

Hello Supremes?

 

 

once again from the Sword of Peter

this says a mouth full

Stupidity: A Malady of the Cultural Elite

 Nail meet Hammer, explains so many Catholics in name only, poorly educated and taught to "feel" not "think". If you notice Rush has said that for years, "what do you THINK, I don't care how you feel, feel is a sigh of intellectual laziness. Liberalism and the progressives constantly appeal to feelings and shout down intellectual debate

Egyptain

by James Kalb

We live in something of a meritocracy, and our rulers believe they are by far the most enlightened and well-informed people who ever lived. For that reason they feel entitled to make the aspirations of the present day, or what they consider such, the compulsory standard for public life. They view the claim that there are principles that transcend those aspirations as the sort of thing that led to 9/11, and treat the past as worth considering only as something to escape from or a foreshadowing of the glories of the present.

Nonetheless, a variety of conditions, from the state of education and the arts to that of political discussion, makes it evident that Western society is growing less and less able to think clearly and effectively. That’s a big problem, and one that’s hard to deal with, because it is difficult to cure oneself of mindlessness. Still, we should do our best to understand what’s going on.
A basic part of the problem is that the kind of meritocracy we have leads to stupidity. Its effect is that local and subordinate groupings are deprived of talent and respect, and the leadership at the top becomes unable to think or function outside established understandings. The people at the top mostly went to the same highly competitive schools, where they were all told the same things, and it’s taken all their effort and devotion to get where they are today. The result is that they’re absorbed in their social function and setting, and would find it very difficult to adopt an independent perspective if the desire to do so ever entered their heads.
The results are evident in our public life. How often do our leaders say or write anything that would be of interest if a different name were attached? Can anyone imagine Hilary Clinton thinking something she isn’t supposed to think? And to get to the bottom line, do our rulers give the impression that they know what’s going on or what to do about it?
Naturally, meritocracy isn’t the only culprit. There are other factors at work that also stem from the nature of a society ruled by technology and technocratic ideals. Their effect is that the understandings that guide thought are becoming increasingly nonfunctional:

• Electronic diversions train people out of the habit of consecutive thought. Tweets, texting, and multitasking mean discussions never get to the point and are hardly discussions at all.
• Rejection of transcendent standards leads to denial of the good, beautiful, and true in favor of rhetoric and power. That means the subordination of thought to politics, propaganda, and partisanship.
• Bureaucracy, commerce, and the media absorb functions once performed by individuals, families, and tradition. Instead of the arts of life, which require thought, we have consumer goods, social programs, and industrially-produced pop culture. The result is that thought becomes less important as a day-to-day matter.
• Thought requires engagement with reality. Electronic entertainment and the distance between cause and effect in a complex globalized society mean people do not engage reality, while skepticism as to truth means they consider it theoretically impossible to do so.
• A technological approach to society means mechanical unity of components, and thought and discussion are not mechanical. Common histories, understandings, and commitments, as well as freedom of association, are necessary for complex and subtle activities such as scholarly inquiry and speculative thought, and technocracy disrupts such things.
• Thought depends on recognizing and applying patterns, and technology rejects pattern recognition in favor of simple relations of cause and effect. To make matters worse, relating individual cases to patterns means stereotyping and discrimination. Ideals of diversity and inclusiveness, which draw their institutional strength from the technocratic desire to turn people into interchangeable components, thus require suppression of the habits of mind that make thought possible.
• Thought also depends on standards of cogency, which are disfavored because they are at odds with diversity. People want to include marginalized voices, so they feel called upon to treat thoughts nonjudgmentally, as long as they are politically acceptable.
• In any event, standards require effort, so they’re at odds with consumerism, comfort, and lifestyle libertarianism, and the technological outlook makes those the goals of life. Such an attitude may help explain the recent startling decline of academic achievement among thoroughly assimilated Jewish and Japanese Americans.

If America and the West are getting stupider as a result of the basic nature and tendency of our society, including the measures that have been adopted to increase the intelligence with which it is run, we have to ask about the future. Some say that the no-nonsense Chinese will take over everything, others that genetic engineering will save the day, still others predict a period of general disorder, something like the Middle East but on a global scale.
It seems unlikely the Chinese will take over, since they have their own problems. For starters, selective abortion and the one-child rule mean they’re going to have a huge population of young men with no prospect of marriage, and an even huger population of elderly people with no one to support and look after them. Nor does genetic engineering look like a cure-all for stupidity, if only because the problems are mostly cultural and grow out of an understanding of man and society that reduces human life to an engineering problem. So the obvious outcome of present trends in the West is growing incoherence of thought, leading to nonfunctional public life and a retreat into inward-turning networks of survival. We’ve tried to turn Iraq into Minnesota, but it’s more likely we’ll turn Minnesota into Iraq.
What’s needed, then, is a basic change of cultural direction that allows better things to develop. That’s not impossible. Intelligence is more functional than stupidity, and cooperation works better than chaos, so why shouldn’t they have a competitive advantage?
What’s caused the problem is the habit of viewing the world exclusively as a mechanical system. That approach has been fruitful in the physical sciences, but it has no place for intelligence, meaning, or agency, so it defeats itself when applied to the world as a whole. It can deal with protons, but not with physics as a science carried on by intelligent human beings, so in the long run it undermines even science.
Man is rational, at least to the extent that if he drives intelligence and meaning out of his understanding of the world he will eventually drive them out of his way of life. What we need, then, is a fundamental change of understanding that makes intelligence and meaning integral to how things are. To be functional and stable the new understanding must be concrete enough to give determinate results, and to deserve confidence it must have a way that can be counted on to settle disruptive questions.
That sounds a lot like Catholicism. Things haven’t been going well for the Church lately, but we’re not the only ones with problems. In the long run basic principles determine results, so if we can remain true to what we are then even from a purely this-worldly standpoint we have advantages that the forces of secular modernity can’t match. The conversion of the Roman Empire became final when thinkers like Augustine found they needed the Church to make sense of life and the world. What works best wins out, so there are reasons to expect something similar to happen again.

In honor of the new Pope, Francis

Just in case you have the wrong impression of St Francis, he did NOT go around prancing among the birds and wildflowers hugging everyone and everything, he was a REAL piece of work, this could be very interesting. Hopefully he will "kick some butt" if you'll pardon the slang, however it is needed in the Curia and the church as a whole.

God Bless Him, and may His Pontificate be a good one.
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From the Sword of Peter, one good catholic cartoon site

But they won't be lib religion hating leftist progressives like us

from the blog of Ann Althouse

Clueless, totally CLUELESS, almost painful to hear, realizing that contracepting aborting  libs are facing the biological solution

Priceless
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Daily Beast writers Harry Siegel and Allison Yarrow get the vapors over the possibility that conservative religion...

... might be the only viable solution to America's low birth rate problem. They get the vapors, they might be vapid, and Harry vapes.



Listen to the desperation as they sidetrack into the topic of whether the children of conservative religionists will veer into decently acceptable liberalism (and become... tattoo artists!). They never return to the issue of whether religion is needed to keep the population going into the future. If the offspring don't maintain the conservative values that caused their parents to have children, how do you get the next generation?

same old same old, the liberals keep trying

 
they keep hoping to drag the church into the "Modern World"

We are to be in this world not of this world

why does it take an athiest to explain things

He makes  Piers Morgan look like the ass he is, Penn is closer to an understanding of Catholicism that the idiot catholic on the other side of the table

To Anonymous

Anonymous said...

I'd love to hear about how your parish finally decided that they needed to hire a Youth Minister, prompting the Coordinator of Religious Education to "spend more time with her family."

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Which parish are you referring to?
an explanation, I was born and raised in the Egypt area, but now reside just over the line to the west in the "Marion School district, however my heart will always be in that little parish church full of farmers and their kids that was built on my families land
---------------------------------------------
That being said, over here in the Marion catholic Community,

If you are talking about our new "old" deacon, well I have some reservations about him that is for sure. He seems to be another 80's holdover, I sent him a post from Holy Souls Hermitage about servers
 http://holysoulshermitage.com/2013/02/20/on-acolytes-altar-boys-girl-altar-boys-altar-servers/#comments

I was hoping to stir some kind of improvement in the absolutely sloppy, who cares attitude in our servers. Lets just say the response was underwhelming at best.

" My formative years were prior to the mid-sixties. So, I know a little about the pre-Vatican approach to worship and truly, I don't ever want to go back there".

 His remarks told me that any discussion with him is a dead end, regardless of the Holy Fathers wishes

To quote Twain  "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always twenty years behind the times."

and it seems there is another 5 to 10 till it gets up here 

I guess if i want to attend a truly holy NO mass I'll have to go to Russia and Fr Amberger, I suggest that all try to go to at least one. I'm not talking about a Latin mass, his NO mass is outstanding, it literally moved me to tears the last time, something I will never experience with the hand holding, happy clappy semi prot activity in our local parishes.

Even my 14 year old son is sensing something wrong, he is questioning the Mass and told me very few of his friends really want to go and claim that it is boring and they get absolutely get NOTHING out of it, just go because they are forced. Oh and the "hip relevant music" bores the teens to tears, it is "hip" to the "old" organist.and her age group not the kids, and don't go there, we do NOT need a drummer and guitars in the sanctuary.  I would love to expose some of them to chant and polyphony, but for now I grit my teeth and pray, "forgive them they know no what they do"

As we worship and pray, so we believe

 

well I'm back

Well I guess I'm back, group blogs aren't for everyone, my interests were too broad and eclectic for the group and so with no malice to Rich or anyone at Over the Rhine and into the Tiber I take my leave, It was fun however my interests go far and wide beyond the Arch Diocese of Cincinnati and involve a critical and sometimes snarky, love of the Church and the world as a whole, I will endeavor to post my opinion and views, occasionally an update from the farm, usually expressed through articles and pictures from others and sometimes my own. (I'm a hopeless cut and paster)

If anyone has any hints at goings on that are worth covering, drop me a line in the comments box, there is so much going on here in our little slice of heaven, good and bad but it usually goes unnoticed. It is about time to put many of the bad things going on in the mass in the light of day. Don't worry i wont use you name and if you would like to post we can use a blog name

to anyone happening on this old blog, I now post at Over the Rhine and into the Tiber, come on in and lok around, it's a group effort, enjoy

aint it a BITCH

Pro-Lifers Make Women Cry

Pro-aborts are actually accusing pro-lifers of making women cry. Yup. That's the new tactic. The ol' "pro-lifers are a bunch of meany pants" defense.

Fox News reports:

The requirements of Oklahoma's new abortion law are drawing some emotional responses from patients, a clinic director said Wednesday, now that women must have an ultrasound and hear a detailed description of the fetus before the procedure can be done.

The law went into effect a day earlier, when the state Senate overrode Gov. Brad Henry's veto of that measure and one that prohibits pregnant women from seeking damages if physicians withhold information or provide inaccurate information about their pregnancy.

"It's been difficult for some of the patients," said Linda Meek, executive director of Reproductive Services of Tulsa. "We've had patients leave the ultrasound room in tears because of what they had to hear."

...The new statute requires the person performing the ultrasound to describe the dimensions of the fetus, whether arms, legs and internal organs are visible and whether there is cardiac activity. It also requires the doctor to turn a screen depicting the ultrasound images toward the woman to see them.

Meek said no patient at the clinic had yet canceled an abortion after hearing a description of the fetus. Jennifer Mondino, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights that filed the lawsuit, said that so far no patient at the Tulsa clinic has decided to view the images.

You can understand how hard it must be for abortionists to hear crying in their clinic as they're not used to hearing the screams of their victims (See the Silent Scream).

And here's the kicker. I don't believe them anyway. They're lying that the law is having no effect on the women's decision. It's interesting to watch because these abortionists are really walking a fine line here because they have to argue that the information these women is so traumatizing that they're breaking out in tears but then they have to turn around and argue that it also has no effect on the women's decision. It's really a Catch-22 for abortionists.

These abortionists are fighting tooth and nail to have this law overturned because they know when a woman hears the truth or sees the truth they are much more likely not to get an abortion. They don't give a hoot about these women. They care about the cost of the abortion. That's it.

Posted by matthew archbold at 8:54 PM

In honor of Marx's Birthday err, sorry, Earth Day

You did know that Earth Day is on Carl Marx birthday didn't you? I believe on purpose, to vilify capitalism and catholic and Christian belief. I mean, really, the first video shows Earth Firsters acting out their pagan religion. Marx would be proud. The second is a hoot but only makes sense if you watch the first one, puts the Tree worshipers in their place, enjoy.
The Egyptian
ps. I agree with the elm tree

The human being is a threat to the ideals of a Progressive New World Order.

I will be running Michaels columns as they become available, he is right up my alley
The Egyptian

Ordinary Miracle

by Michael Moriarty

For me the human being is a miracle.

For Progressive Americans, however, because of the particularly Progressive Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade Decision of 1973, the human being has become less than ordinary.

The human being is now an easily disposable or aborted threat to the ideals of a Progressive New World Order.

With this “fundamental transformation of the United States of America,” as President Barack Obama has reminded us, I begin the first excerpt of a possibly endless series entitled, The Ordinary Miracle.

As a self-imposed exile, my life’s journey from my birthplace in Detroit, Michigan to Canada is a bit longer than the mild jaunt across the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario.

The country I left under the subtly unconstitutional care of Bill and Hillary Clinton has now exploded into the incipiently treasonous arrogance of the Obama Nation.

My life is now a miraculous melodrama in which those who would make me and many fellow members of the human family less than ordinary are an indisputable villainy.

From my personal experience, the American Progressive Movement has endeavored to paint what is traditionally American into an increasingly vilified form of irrelevance.

Meanwhile, the Progressives now move from legalized abortion to Health Care Death Panels.

It’s progress, you see.

It is actually thanatos, the love of death … as versus eros and agape, the love of life … that is being offered as the best solution to the problems of life.

More on those wonderfully ancient words in later excerpts of this offering.

It is, indeed, the replacement of a Judeo-Christian God with the Marxist God of Science.

To Karl Marx even his suicidal economic theories were a science.

Now with Global Warming, a tyrannizing delusion arising from Marxist Science, we’re in the last big chapter of the Bible.

Revelations.

And we’re the Good Guys!

This is as certain as the goodness of the Allies versus the evil of the Nazi, Fascist and Imperialized Japanese Axis.

Instead of the Axis we face Red Islam, Communist Jihads best represented by our unquestionably mortal enemy, Osama bin Laden and the equally Marxist imprint that President Barack Obama would like to leave upon not just the earth, but all of Mankind.

This cast of good guys and bad guys is so clear, so eternally indelible, that this editorial series of mine may soon turn into either a Batman/Superman epic or into The Ordinary Miracle of G.I. Joe.

Those to the rescue, however, are in the millions and, yes, most of them are The Ordinary Miracles of the Tea Party Movement.

With that intensely short introduction, let me begin my American recollections, not necessarily in chronological order.

Much of this will be an improvisation which I am occasionally good at.

Let’s start with my first introduction to Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood.

Yes, many of you were there and, of course, Big Hollywood’s interest in me was its discovery of my persistently dedicated commitment, through my writings for enterstageright.com, my immense trust in the proven power of not the American Constitution but her Declaration of Independence and its “inalienable” tribute to our “Creator.”

I am, indeed, a self-described, pro-life, Catholic libertarian.

Catholic libertarian may seem like a contradiction in terms.

However, when you compare my own form of faith to the Progressive Catholic hypocrisy of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, their pro-abortion defilement of a Judeo-Christian, five thousand year old commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”?!

Well … here’s my first Moriarty Pause in this possibly endless trip down memory lane.

I sigh and take a breath to recover from the cardinal sins committed every passing second by the Biden/Pelosi hypocrisy.

“Ye hypocrites!”

“Ye lawyers, you heap on people pains that you yourselves could not endure!”

That’s my rather Dionysian version of Christ engaging in a counter-revolutionary but very French pastime entitled J’accuse!

Ye Progressives!

You heap on your citizens, and their future generations, agonies which you, as Congressmen, Congresswomen and White House CEO’s cannot, will not and could never, in your most hypocritically brave or falsely humble moments, endure!

If you don’t like my Dionysian Catholicism blame it on the Jesuits who fed me Greek and Latin for two to four years.

My vocation in the theater was ordained by the Black Robes as certainly as they themselves were ordained priests.

Meanwhile, back amidst the counter-revolutionary dens of Big Hollywood, I have the great privilege of not only having a Tea Party audience but the very Third Millennium freedom to carry on a post-editorial conversation via an entirely state-of-the-art Town-Hall Meeting.

And we all have the courage to “go on the record!”

Life is good.

It is and can be so good that Christ’s words are confirmed daily.

“Unless ye become like little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

What is our counter-revolution but the classic child’s exclamation, “The Emperor has no clothes … and our President obviously cannot tell the truth about anything.”

His “transparency” is a big, fat, juicy, utterly irreversible, historically recorded Lie!

Now there’s a truth that cannot only set you free, it can release you into a whole new level of catharsis.

I also highlight that word because it, along with thanatos, eros and agape, will return repeatedly as the main force and rules of evidence for unseating the entire American Progressive Movement.

Send Progressivism back to France, where the whole, Communist nightmare began!

Here is my lesson for the day.

There has been a human genius so old that the “enlightened despots” of Harvard think it so antiquated that it no longer has contemporary relevance, except as a foil for their Progressive Comparative History Lessons, their “teachable moments”, their vision of Mankind’s inevitably scientific progress to the clearly envisioned destination: The Completion of The Progressive, One-Thousand-Year Plan For All of Humanity.

In other words, The New World Order.

The last Progressive of that ilk was Adolf Hitler.

We have seen and spoken of … repeatedly … the image of our President looking down his flared nostrils at us, and we’ve heard the words that accompany such arrogant certainty.

“The fundamental transformation of the United States of America!”

Within one year of office, President Obama has been captured in photos that make some of Mussolini’s grandstanding grimaces look reticent.

Oh, before I leave off, I will leave a “teaser” for you, one previously left on the response blog for my editorial, Bradley’s.

“Who is the new Jane Fonda?”

I’ll await your guesses with a few hints in future offerings from this, my apparently autobiographical series, The Ordinary Miracle.

Real Priests, we have it so easy today

How sad the poor people in attendance could not participate, they were so deprived and didn't even know it. Bet they appreciated it more.

The Egyptian
From the Crescat.

mass in Bataan...

Posted by The Crescat

We now find out what is all in this piece of crap health care bill, a standing domestic army,

A few quotes for you

"I propose a standing domestic army as strong as the regular army" Barrack Obama
Proof here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwaAVJITx1Y&feature=player_embedded

"We have to vote this bill through to find out what is in it", Nancy Pisslousy
proof here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoE1R-xH5To

Well guess what is in the fine print of this "health care bill" watch and try to not bitch out loud.
The Egyptian

Try to hold your Breakfast

Abortionist: "Abortion is Birth Control”

Here's your stomach turning quote of the day from Lila Rose's blog. Abortionist Peter Kopf said in a recent interview:

Abortion is birth control. Adoption is giving up your child and not accepting your duties as a mother. Most women are not interested in that. It’s only in a religiously-altered mind that that’s a true option.

What?! Check out the rest at Lila Rose's Live Action blog.

Another Progressive False God, er, OK Fruitcup will do

Leftist Fruitcup Deepak Chopra Knows What Caused Baja Quake… His Powerful Meditation

Tuesday, April 6, 2010, 9:58 PM

Jim Hoft

Leftist fruitcup Deepak Chopra knows what caused the Baja earthquake on Sunday…
His powerful meditation.

Remind me not to mess with this guy.
AOL News reported:

The U.S. Geological Survey is blaming day-to-day seismological changes for Sunday’s 7.2 earthquake along the U.S.-Mexico border. But Deepak Chopra, the famed alternative-medicine practitioner and transcendental meditation guru, is pretty sure he knows what really happened.

“Had a powerful meditation just now — caused an earthquake in Southern California,” Chopra wrote to his nearly 179,000 Twitter followers shortly after the quake.

And then, to clarify: “Was meditating on Shiva mantra & earth began to shake,” he tweeted. “Sorry about that.”

Chopra might want to apologize directly to those in California, who haven’t suffered significant infrastructure damage but are still bracing for more temblors, and to those in Mexico, where two are dead, hundreds are injured and thousands are still without power.

Maybe this is progress?…
Last time he was pointing fingers he blamed the US for the Mumbai terror attacks.

My Rant on the Bogus Attacks on the Pope

IT'S THE LAVENDER PRIESTHOOD
THAT CAUSES CATHOLIC CHURCH SCANDALS
BUT NOBODY WANTS TO SAY SO
Finally, Finally the truth of the matter is the VAST MAJORITY of abuse, SEXUAL ABUSE, by priests is NOT pedophilia, ( the abuse of a female child by an adult male) but GAY assault, these gay priests will not be helped or changed by marrying, THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN WOMEN. They are rump rangers on the prowl, and the whole mess can be laid at the feet of the Second Vatican Calamity, liberalism is a sickness in society and the church, we have confused tolerance with acceptance and are now paying the price. Please read the LONG piece I post just below, the facts are not pretty, but the POPE is not the culprit, just the scapegoat to attack any return to proper worship and catechists. to quote Rush" The Catholic Church has a bunch of leftists in it who would just as soon destroy the church and remake it, as the government has liberals in it who want to remake our government and destroy the Constitution. Liberals are liberals. They do not value institutions until they run them and remake them in their own way, and nothing is sacred. Not the Catholic Church, not the Methodist Church. Nothing! Zilch, zero, nada. "

Second the definition of assault has changed, the Popes brother is accused of "boxing the ears of a choir boy" WHOOPTY DO probably not half a hard as the ass kickings I got and deserved as a mouthy kid, GROW UP, these people are out for money, nothing else

Finally someone is bringing this up.

IGNORING THE OBVIOUS

IT'S THE LAVENDER PRIESTHOOD
THAT CAUSES CATHOLIC CHURCH SCANDALS
BUT NOBODY WANTS TO SAY SO

by Tom Roeser
"On The Other Hand"

The last time I wrote about the responsibility the Vatican has for sweeping pedophilia and other sexual sins under the rug, some guy contacted me brimming with erroneous theological rectitude saying—“who are YOU to judge the Popes?”

Huh? All of us can judge popes--since we have the gifts of free-will, critical judgment and utterly no prohibition on making our views known if they are malice-free and informed. Criticism in historic context is not verboten. But at the same time, those who have accepted the Faith under the magisterium of the Church can never have any just reason for changing that faith or calling it into doubt. Why not? Because God is never sparing with His grace and the evidence for accepting the Faith is such that a Catholic does not have objectively valid grounds for doubting or denying what he claims is trouble in believing.

Criticism of past popes if one the issues should not be confused with Satan’s work.

Peter was the greatest. Viewing popes in my lifetime, Pius XI was a liberal scholar, he a forerunner (with Leo XIII who was far more balanced skewing excesses of capitalism, socialism) of the “social justice” papal and theological mindset seeking to instill some “morality” in the capital markets --Quadragisimo Anno implied international bankers are wicked: okay but then as with most clerics, economics was not his strong suit.

Pius XII outstanding, maintaining an even keel in World War II, promulgating brilliantly that Communism was an evil force; and for this as payback, victimized cruelly because of this to allege he was a crypto Nazi from a fictitious play, “The Deputy,” that fabricated his alleged anti-Semitism out of whole cloth (ignoring his heroic rescue efforts of hundreds of Jews for which he received accolades from the chief rabbi of Jerusalem).

John XXIII rightly called Vatican II into session but it was the so-called “spirit of Vatican II” in his latter years and following his death that embraced often thoughtless, excessive and mindless “reform” by theological liberals. Read the documents and you’ll see that the doctrines ratified were sound—sample: pantheism condemned…clerical celibacy upheld….abortion condemned…the Bible prominent…brilliant on the essence of religious life, freedom of education, historicity of the Gospels, the morality of war, purgatory, on the teaching of sexual pleasure, on the universal call to holiness, on veneration of saints etc. Paul VI suffered mightily in striving to turn back the revolutionaries imbued with the “spirit of Vatican II”… saving the day and who by the grace of God rallied and wrote Humanae Vitae which earns him 4 stars in my book.

JPI died too early to be rated. JPII a classic world leader despite administrative curial difficulties who collaborated with Reagan, Thatcher and Lech Walesa to help overthrow communism. Benedict XVI with a weakness for eco-liberalism and “capitalist greed is bad” theories is still one of the world’s greatest theologians…and even enforced more strictly rules against priestly sexual abuse despite serious personal and curial administrative lapses which let some erring bishops go free.

You shouldn’t judge popes? That’s the kind of goofy misplaced robot-style blind-folded-ness that led the human side of the papacy into grievous error many times in the past…has produced the Protestant reformation…as it threatens to stir disunion again. Fortunately sometimes deluged by a sea of zircons the Church has developed great diamonds… popes who served civilization brilliantly every 500 years or so…including:

Gregory II, five hundred years after the crucifixion of Peter, a former Roman senator turned Benedictine monk, who stood tall against the barbarian tidal wave that threatened to sweep away all vestiges of Christianity—starting the counter-revolution that converted the barbarians into the ballast that became Christian Europe for a thousand years…

Gregory VII, another Benedictine monk 500 or so years later… who inspired scholasticism, saving the great manuscripts of antiquity…including Aristotle and Plato…to enrich and fortify the ages….Pius V a great Dominican 500 years after that who applied the doctrines of the Council of Trent building a canonical structure that exists to this day…and 500 years after that John Paul II with all his imperfections administratively who strove mightily to overturn communism and who with aforementioned help did.

But lest you think the litany of popes is the whole story of Catholicism, hang tight to the end of this long (I confess) post.

The Lavender Emerges
Largely the institutional laxity of curia and diocesan functionaries is responsible for undue toleration of the Lavender Priesthoo including failure to discipline the seminaries, religious orders and so-called “Catholic” universities…due to a largely absentee and compliant papacy, aided by weak, bishops, putty in the hands of their bureaucracies —dominated by a mindset that prattles “we must not allow scandal that engulfs the Church to scandalize the world.” Important: not all homosexuals are child abusers—but all child abusers…especially of little boys…are homosexuals. Spurious so-called statistics from the psychological industry are politically correct accommodations.

Permissiveness of the Lavender Priesthood has been… and will continue to be… disastrous unless it is corrected immediately. The toleration and winking at it…as with the case of the Chicago jailed pedophile ex-priest Dan McCormack where the then rector of Mundelein told the Sun-Times he would ordain McCormack yet again…and went from there to auxiliary bishop of Chicago…bishop of Tucson and number two in the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops—soon to be number one…while the paper’s religious reporter was let go since after its publication she could get no archdiocesan spokesman to return her call--is inexcusable…and shows that in pushing her out, the ultra-liberal paper collaborated with the archdiocese.

--That and the fact that the p. r. spokesman for the archdiocese was quoted as telling the press “well, he didn’t rape anybody”. How’d you like to have your 8-year-old boy sexually fondled and hear that comment?

In all too many cases the papacy, curia and offending bishops have not applied the view of the Apostle Paul who said

“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortionists shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

Lest some other Simple Mind thinks I am going south on the Church I love and have venerated since childhood, let’s review the theological facts.

7 Inflexible Truths
Let’s review the bidding of indelible lessons from Fr. Ernie.

It has been the unanimous teaching of the ancient Fathers that
the Church was born from the side of Jesus Christ on the cross. 2. By Christ’s death and resurrection, the New Testament replaced the Old Law. 3. By His death on the cross, Christ merited human salvation—making it possible for those before and since to receive the manifold graces they need to reach heaven. 4. In Against Heresies, St. Ireneus identified the root of all heresies as the unwillingness to accept the Church’s teaching centered in the Vicar of Christ on earth, the visible head of the Church, the bishop of Rome.

5. This means there is one Church established by Christ: the Catholic Church which is governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him. Does this mean other Christian churches have no standing? No, but they exist in greater or less measure in their divinely ordained fullness (read this as subsisting) in the Roman Catholic Church.

6. The infallibility of the popes, defined by Vatican I teaches that when they speak ex cathedra or “from the chair” on doctrines of faith and morals, they are immune from error. This may seem like hair-splitting but being immune from error on faith or morals is not the same as the perception that everything they say on any subject is infallible. So far a perfect record although Honorius I came close, did not attend a consistory where his representative promulgated error and shrugged it off pragmatically—for which he was properly anathematized.

7. Again: Infallibility does not mean that popes are immune from error on matters where they don’t speak ex cathedra or judgments they may make on social issues as human beings or administrative failings…nor that their judgments are free from error in the realm of non-doctrinal matters. To think otherwise is to confer on them impeccability which is a far different thing.

What we have here with pedophilia swept under the rug is this: This disgraceful condition of toleration for the Lavender Priesthood has invaded the bureaucracies of many archdioceses including Chicago’s…and has permeated the Vatican curia. The latest case is toxic. But let’s be clear anent The New York Times’ revelations insisting Benedict alone is to blame.

Not so. To insist that Benedict or John Paul II solely are responsible for laxity in dealing with pedophilia is akin to saying a president of the United States is guilty of the derelictions of subordinates (though conceding, that in Watergate Nixon was personally involved in cover-up and in Bill Clinton’s abuse of the intern Monica Lewinsky after which he lied under oath, he undeniably was). As we know from a practical point of history, there have been given latitude to presidents…JFK for the Bay of Pigs (by believing without checking what the CIA’s Alan Dulles and Richard Helms insisted would be a success)…Jimmy Carter for believing that the stupid rescue attempt of the Iranian hostages via helicopters could work.

In most cases of gross error, popes and rulers aren’t personally involved. But they must take responsibility. There is no doubt that the secular media want to indict Benedict personally for dereliction for one reason alone: He stands for absolutes in moral theology that the relativist media find objectionable. God-hater and atheist fulminator Christopher Hitchens who assailed Mother Teresa on TV during her funeral and Irish rock singer baldy Sinead O’Connor are the most extreme examples.

Saying thisdoesn’t absolve the Vatican of responsibility or popes who are supposed to administer their office meticulously. And it is a fact that the Vatican declined to defrock a Milwaukee priest who abused as many as 200 deaf boys even though a number of bishops repeatedly warned it about the consequences. It is also a fact that correspondence addressed to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was often ignored and that he and/or his subordinates did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests when he served as an archbishop in Germany or as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer. But before you make the final judgment, consider this:

The New York Times Inquisition
For these things The New York Times is assailing Benedict. If they were objective they would also be assailing Obama for evading culpability for allegedly offering the post of secretary of the navy to ex-admiral Rep. Joe Sestak get him out of the way from running against Arlen Specter—a federal crime worthy of impeachment if provable. If they wanted to be true to their so-called “objective” investigative image The Times wouldn’t be sweeping THAT under the rug…as indeed it IS.

Several reservations must be considered before we get to the facts. First, , contrary to implications in The Times Ratzinger was not the point man from 1981 until his election as pope in April 2005. He did not have any responsibility for handling the overall Vatican sex abuse response until 2001, four years before he became pope.

Second, that which the media considers a “smoking gun” is no. They refer to a May, 2001 letter from Ratzinger to the bishops recommending that certain grave crimes including sexual abuse of a minor should be referred to his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and that they are subject to “the pontifical secret.” Sounds conspiratorial but it pertains to the church’s disciplinary measures—not to be construed as holding back on reporting cases to the police.

Third, a story that relatively few cases were subjected to a full canonical trial is misleading. Strong American bishops fought canonical trials because Roman trials can last years and even then may not be conclusive. In fact handling 60% of the cases by the bishops themselves is seen as evidence of renewed need for action. In the recent past, Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl removed a priest after allegations of sexual abuse. The priest appealed to Rome. The Vatican ordered the priest reinstated. Wuerl himself went to Rome and got the job done—but the experience convinced many U.S. bishops that canonical trials were not the right way to handle this. The problem seemed to be then that the Vatican was more concerned about the rights of accused priests than the child victims.

The Milwaukee Case
Still, the facts are extremely serious. The case against the Milwaukee priest was called to the Vatican’s attention in 1996 by none other than Archbishop Rembert Weakland (himself later a self-admitted homosexual…although there could be some speculation as to his motivation). Whoever was responsible…Ratzinger’s staff or him personally…the fact remains that Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters from Weakland.

After eight months of inexcusable laxity and non-response Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to the priest’s dismissal. The fact remains that Bertone ended the process after the priest wrote to Ratzinger saying he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was beyond the Church’s own statute of limitations—and was given a pass.

Meaning the criminally guilty pedophile priest was never tried or disciplined by the Church itself but got a pass from police and prosecutors who ignored reports from the victims. A total of three archbishops of Milwaukee were told about the priest’s derelictions but never told civil authorities. So don’t get the idea the Milwaukee case was an exception. We all know it isn’t. In fact, while Dan McCormack was awaiting sentencing for a crime he confessed, he and a group of archdiocesan clergy…including at least one Higher Up—not the archbishop, though-- went off on a vacation together.

The question remains: What will the Church and the Pope do about this laxity? Merely writing tracts and issuing statements of remorse without reforming the Curial deficiencies are insufficient. Everyone dealing with the Curial bureaucracy on this and other matters know the legendary Italianate winking and inefficiency. The anomaly of last week was Benedict’s lecturing Irish bishops for laxity which he himself showed as bishop of Munich. There’s no avoidance of the fact that his handling of the crisis, in Munich, at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or as pope cannot be improved. To me, it should include far more than the ordinary reforms—but should concentrate on The Lavender Priesthood that also affects too many bishops.

Benedict must reform it now and replace it with an alert immediate response action team. The cases are endemic. More than a decade ago a downstate Illinois prelate was reported as constantly on the prowl in his automobile for young men to pick up. What happened? Nothing: the guy was allowed to retire when his successor was appointed.
(For more on that click HERE and HERE)

The laxity throughout the Church on the Lavender Priesthood was and is a virulent disgrace.
Then there is this fact: Most of the charges and convictions come from an organization known as SNAP.

SNAP’s Denial of Fact
While there is no doubt the media enjoys exploiting leaks in the bark of Peter, slurring of the curia and its officials including the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger now Benedict XVI…much of their reports have come not from their investigations…but from an organization which is worthy of some scrutiny itself.

I say this as one who works as a columnist for The Wanderer, the oldest and most venerable national Catholic weekly in America…the first and to a startling degree the only Catholic newspaper to sustainedly spotlight these abuses with definitude…investigators who belong to an organization called SNAP [Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests]…whom I interviewed repeatedly…have personal axes to grind against the Church beyond the immediate charges they make. Those axes do not erase the validity or their original charges but nevertheless exist. Two major points.

First: The SNAP people as social and political liberals cannot bring themselves to admit that homosexuality which has run rife, producing the Lavender Priesthood, is the overwhelming cause of the scandal. They have adopted the same cultural bias of today’s liberals and media about homosexuality…that it is not a sinful choice or a weakness and definitely not an abuse of the sexual faculty…but misled by certain liberal pathologies they believe that it is neither reversible but merely a normal variation, like being left-handed.

In fact if SNAP had used its findings to blast the Lavender Priesthood, the chances are great that the media would be loath to run the stories.

Most SNAP authorities declare that if in fact homosexuality is the cause, the so-called “repression” factor is responsible: victims are those too ashamed of the sin that “dare not tell its name.” Many feel that matters would be improved if only the Church would relent in its insistence of the male only priesthood. Others have told me that celibacy should be relaxed (not understanding that the celibate priesthood is not covered by inflexible moral norm but is a tradition).

But most important: The conclusion of the SNAP people is adamant—that homosexuality is NOT the cause of pedophilia. That’s every bit as much denial as the Church has done with erring priests. This goes hand-in-hand with a drive, popular in our culture, that homosexuality is on the way to being accepted by the nation, the armed services and it’s only a matter of time when it is embraced by the Church totally.

Louvain’s Heresy
Such is the statement of none other than the chairman of the department of moral theology of the up-to-now renowned Catholic University of Louvain:

“I think we are virtually on the edge of accepting the homosexual relationship. The Church will accept the homosexual relationship like those divorced and remarried. We must live as brother or sister or brother and brother and sister and sister as the case may be…What is important is that the relationship be recognized as valuable, fruitful, meaningful, alternative, creative relationship. We are on the verge of accepting this.” [The Meanings of Human Sexuality, New Ways Ministry, 4th National Symposium] as cited in Catechism on Homosexuality [Eternal Life publication 2003, written by the late theologian Fr. John Hardon SJ and published with the imprimatur of Bishop Raymond Burke, then bishop of LaCrosse, Wis.].

The Louvain chairman’s words are, of course, heretical and at total variance with the traditional teaching of the 2000-plus year old Catholic Church. The definitive position that while homosexual inclination is of itself not a sin but something to be disciplined…practiced homosexuality is a mortal sin and has been declared many times by the Popes as matters of faith and morals.

The document of Vatican II On the Church in the Modern World states that in matters of morality man cannot make value judgments according to personal whim. “In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose on himself but which holds him to obedience…For man has in his heart a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged.”>

That is this: the sexual nature of man and the human faculty of procreation are essentially superior to all other lower forms of life. At the root of this superiority is that human sexuality pertains exclusively to marriage and to a finality which is unique in the visible world of living beings.

Further that sexual actions belong to conjugal life, do not depend solely on sincere intentions or on people’s motives but are determined by objective standards—based on the nature of human beings and their acts while preserving the full sense of mutual self-giving and procreation in the context of true love.

Cultural decadence and laxity have led some thinkers and theologians to defend homosexuality by analyzing the morality of human acts regarding their intention. How a person enjoys sexual pleasure is seen by many as unimportant…and the sin that the Apostle Paul maintained excludes one from the kingdom of heaven is seen…with tortured linguistics…as a form of gay-ness or gayety.

Second: I asked both the founder and the executive director of SNAP to tell me if their organization is funded heavily…or at all… by the Personal Injury Bar which has a direct financial stake in suing the Church…making SNAP a direct beneficiary of their largesse as well. That was several years ago. To date I have not received any systematic denial that they are not so funded and they have not submitted financial records that would deny it. The conclusion is that they indeed do have a tie-in with the personal injury bar.

Thus they have a pecuniary reason for digging up scandal that harms the Church: their jobs and livelihood depend on it. Nor do they make a pretense of being devout Catholics who fulfill their obligations by going to Mass each Sunday. The founder told me she does when she thinks of it but her attendance if irregular at best. The executive director makes no pretense that he is an observant Catholic—in fact he told me he is no longer a Catholic at all.

Catholicism’s Greatness Beyond the Popes
In conclusion, Catholicism’s priceless lineage is far more than the litany of popes. Consider the brilliant examples of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Padre Pio, Theresa of Avila, Theresa of Lisieux, Dominic, Benedict the founder of monasticism, Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, Augustine, Anselm, John of The Cross…on and on through the ages.

Moreover who can not acknowledge that civilization was saved by the monks, the creation of academic life by the great clerical professors, the contribution the Church made to science (notwithstanding the fiction concerning Galileo which cannot stand scrutiny), its gigantic contributions to art and architecture…its devising the foundations of international law, its birthing the original idea of widespread charity, its inscribing the origins of western law, its up-building of the concept of western morality.

If this article puts into perspective the contemporary scandals with the stature of the Church as an essential conduit for eternal salvation and a civilizing treasure—at the forefront of the development of laws, science, and institutions constituting western civilization—it will serve this writer’s intention.


Thomas F. Roeser is radio talk show host, writer, lecturer, teacher and former VP of The Quaker Oats Company of Chicago. A former John F. Kennedy Fellow, Harvard and Woodrow Wilson International Fellow, Princeton, N. J., Roeser is the author of the book Father Mac: The Life and Times of Ignatius D. McDermott. To read more about Tom, Click here.

A True Priest

And now days we have ecumenicism, and interfaith talks, would any priests be willing to serve as father Coyle ? Many are afraid (or embarrassed) to even act Catholic.
The Egyptian

From the Knights of Columbus

	Tragedy in Birmingham
	by Sharon Davies Remembering the 1921 slaying of Father James E. Coyle Father James E. Coyle courageously spoke against anti-Catholic prejudice in the South. (Bill Fex Collection, Birmingham, Alabama) Father James E. Coyle, an extraordinary priest and Knight of Columbus in the early 20th century, courageously stood up against widely-held anti-Catholic views at the risk, and then cost, of his life. The Irish-born priest was scarcely in his 20s when, after his ordination in Rome, he was dispatched to Alabama to begin his priesthood. The Catholic population in Alabama had exploded with a promise of jobs, especially in and around Birmingham’s network of coal mines, steel mills and iron foundries. Father Coyle arrived in the city shortly before a wave of anti-Catholicism flooded the country, and the revived Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rebranded itself as a “patriotic” fraternity, targeting blacks, Catholics, Jews and foreigners. It was a tense time in America, and fear of the new immigrants gripped more than a small band of hysterics. A number of states passed “convent inspection laws,” which authorized the warrantless search of convents, monasteries and even Catholic hospitals. Investigators looked for Protestant women and children purportedly being held against their will and for weapons and ammunition the Knights of Columbus had supposedly stashed there. Knights were plotting an insurrection, the fear-mongers said. They were the pope’s secret foot soldiers and could never be “true Americans.” Against these baseless accusations, Father Coyle defended the faith and the Order, becoming a lightning rod for attacks. Federal agents warned Bishop Edward Allen of Mobile, Ala., of threats against Father Coyle’s life and of plans to burn his church to the ground. Then, on Aug. 11, 1921, Rev. Edwin R. Stephenson, a Methodist minister and Klansman, stepped onto the porch of St. Paul’s rectory with a loaded handgun. About an hour earlier, Father Coyle had officiated the wedding of Rev. Stephenson’s 18-year-old daughter, Ruth, to Pedro Gussman, a Catholic migrant from Puerto Rico. Like many other Klansmen, Rev. Stephenson despised Catholics. When he learned that Father Coyle had married his daughter to Gussman, he was livid. He shot the priest in cold blood, and Father Coyle died within minutes. The climate for bringing Rev. Stephenson to justice could not have been worse. A veteran prosecutor spent weeks trying to convince a grand jury to return an indictment, and when it finally did, the Klan ran a statewide drive to raise funds to hire a young lawyer named Hugo Black to lead Rev. Stephenson’s defense. Black would later be elected to the U.S. Senate and appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Klan’s presence at Rev. Stephenson’s October 1921 trial was manifest. Historians would later report that the jury foreman and the presiding judge were both Klansmen. Hugo Black himself would join the ranks of the KKK less than two years later to forward his own political aspirations. On the eve of trial, Rev. Stephenson’s lawyers announced they would amend his plea to “not guilty by reason of insanity” to permit the argument that Rev. Stephenson was not responsible for his actions after he learned Father Coyle had married Ruth to Pedro. The minister and his wife both claimed that “the Catholics” had tried to seduce Ruth away from her Protestant faith; news of their daughter’s marriage was the last straw. Though little remembered today, Rev. Stephenson’s weeklong trial was a national sensation. Reporters from far-flung cities raced to Birmingham to observe the spectacle. The jury, however, took only a few hours to return their verdict: “Not guilty.” Catholics in Birmingham have never forgotten the outrage. “It is our hope that the sharing of the life and death of this holy man may promote greater understanding, reconciliation and peace among all of God’s children,” writes James Pinto Jr., a member of Father James E. Coyle Council 9862 and an organizer for the Father James E. Coyle Memorial Project. Before his death, Father Coyle served as the chaplain of Birmingham (Ala.) Council 635 and was a charter member of Mobile (Ala.) Council 666. He remains a model of faithful and courageous priestly service today. For more information about Father James E. Coyle, visit www.fathercoyle.org.