Wednesday, September 26, 2007

S.F. , What's the Deal

(photo: WND)


Now that’s just plain sick. This was out in plain public or everyone to see with the full consent of the City Officials.

I know there are people in this City that don’t agree with this, so why don’t they do something?!
The City officials there have totally lost it.

They allow these kind of events to litter the city streets but won’t allow these Marines to do theirs.
(Photo:FoxNews)




(Visit the http://www.our.marines.com/ website for the commerical)

What's the deal? I don't get it.

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly also tried to get rid of the Navy Blue Angels ... but the Gay Pride event with it's horrible Last Supper poster is acceptable.

Unbelievable...

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

...More on the Dignity of Life

Also from Zenit.org

Commentary on Artificial Hydration and Nutrition

The Sick "Have the Right to Basic Health Care"

VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 14, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a commentary issued today by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on "Responses to Certain Questions of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Concerning Artificial Nutrition and Hydration."

* * *

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has formulated responses to questions presented by His Excellency the Most Reverend William S. Skylstad, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a letter of July 11, 2005, regarding the nutrition and hydration of patients in the condition commonly called a "vegetative state.

"The object of the questions was whether the nutrition and hydration of such patients, especially if provided by artificial means, would constitute an excessively heavy burden for the patients, for their relatives, or for the health care system, to the point where it could be considered, also in the light of the moral teaching of the Church, a means that is extraordinary or disproportionate and therefore not morally obligatory.

The address of Pope Pius XII to a congress on anesthesiology, given on Nov. 24, 1957, is often invoked in favor of the possibility of abandoning the nutrition and hydration of such patients. In this address, the Pope restated two general ethical principles. On the one hand, natural reason and Christian morality teach that, in the case of a grave illness, the patient and those caring for him or her have the right and the duty to provide the care necessary to preserve health and life.

On the other hand, this duty in general includes only the use of those means which, considering all the circumstances, are ordinary, that is to say, which do not impose an extraordinary burden on the patient or on others. A more severe obligation would be too burdensome for the majority of persons and would make it too difficult to attain more important goods. Life, health and all temporal activities are subordinate to spiritual ends. Naturally, one is not forbidden to do more than is strictly obligatory to preserve life and health, on condition that one does not neglect more important duties.
MORE

JPII...Euthanized?



I tell you, the Time Magazine of late is getting worse than the tabloids that I see in line at the super market.

This story in the latest edition of Time (Tabloid) Magazine.


Was John Paul II Euthanized?

In a provocative article, an Italian medical professor argues that Pope John Paul II didn't just simply slip away as his weakness and illness overtook him in April 2005. Intensive care specialist Dr. Lina Pavanelli has concluded that the ailing Pope's April 2 death was caused by what the Catholic Church itself would consider euthanasia. She bases this conclusion on her medical expertise and her own observations of the ailing pontiff on television, as well as press reports and a subsequent book by John Paul's personal physician. The failure to insert a feeding tube into the patient until just a few days before he died accelerated John Paul's death, Pavanelli concludes. Moreover, Pavanelli says she believes that the Pope's doctors dutifully explained the situation to him, and thus she surmises that it was the pontiff himself who likely refused the feeding tube after he'd been twice rushed to the hospital in February and March. Catholics are enjoined to pursue all means to prolong life.


Where were they when Terry Shiavo was starved to death... no food or water and she wasn't on her death bed until then.

This from Zenit.org

















This also from Zenit.org:

Dignity in Life and Death

































I guess politics are run pretty much the same all over the world. Inject a lie and present it as the truth as in the Time article.

The Catholic Church has been consistant in it's stance on Abortion and Euthanasia. The election season is upon us, and I'm sure we will see an abundance more of this kind of "perhabs it's true" garbage ment to place doubt in the mind of the faithful.

..... lets pray that Catholic Christians and non-Catholic Christians (everyone actually) know the truths about these two important issue during the elections. If we don't get it right on these issues, we'll never work out heathcare, imagration, war, environment and others.

Monday, September 24, 2007

60's Hippy Movement Part II - The Sequel

(photo: Drudge Report)



Now I was rather young during the 60’s and being youthful (elementary school thru middle school) I have a rather a different memory of those times than I do now that I’m older and wiser (some what wiser).

Some of the music that I liked came from the Beatles (...what is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds mean?), Jimi Hendrix (…what does purple haze mean?), Dillon (…what does blowing in the wind mean?). Joni Mitchell was another favorite. Lyrics like “…pave paradise, put up a parking lot.” Or “Help me I think I’m falling, in love again…” were catchy and I didn’t really pay too much attention to the lyrics. The beat was cool toying the hidden messages was kind of fun as well.

Today, with a few decades of forming my thoughts, and opinions; of living through many mistakes as well as few good decisions, and developing my faith and realizing how the latter was most important in my life’s journey; I have a keener eye on what that 60’s era was all about.

Some of it was good, a lot bad and there was a whole lot of ciaos. I’ve been noticing (as well as others who I’ve talked to) the reemergence of some aspects to this era. I’ve noticed how some are actually looking forward to this chaotic time making a come back. They make their comparisons, some truthful, some totally off base.

60’s activist and musicians from that time seem to be making good on this perception to blow off the dusty anti-war signs and speeches. And while most of them are in their 60’s and older they seem to be trying to spread some of the anti-establishment, anti-religion sentiment that today’s youth and especially many (although not all) college students seem to be eating up.

I heard it today as Ahmadinaejad was cheered and applauded on the campus of Columbia University; the President of the University (“I’d invite Hitler…) with his monologue of statements and questions that didn’t get answered. The winning smile of a ruthless dictator, madman winning over the crowd with his transparent half truths and down right lies (“…there are no Homosexuals in Iran” and “women are treated with respect in our country”).

More applause….

Joni Mitchell has come out swinging in her new album in hopes of a musical come-back. She bashes the Catholic Church (…what a surprise). Hey, it’s safe public piñata to take a swipe at. Better that than upset the wonderful Islamic State, paradise according to President Ahmadinaejad.
(photo:Foxnews)

Last week, one of the young anti-war protesters made clear why she was protesting. “I read my history (of the 60’s) and I know what my rights are…and Pataeus is a traitor and he’s no General of ours…we’re our own general”.

Scary times.

Just some observations I’ve made that I thought I’d share….

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Painting Treasures in Tehran Valult

(Photo: LATimes)
The LAtimes has this piece on painting treasures kept under lock and key in the basement of one of their museums.




The article is pretty interesting. Too dangerous to show in public in Tehran... a victim of their own faith.

Dead Man Wakes up.....under Autopsy Knife

(Photo:abcNews.com- Carlos Camejo)
Wow!
I read this yesterday and it gave me the hebee-gebee's.

You've got to read this one...


Spinning the B16's actions

Breitbart.com is reporting that the Pope Benedict XVI not meeting with the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was because of some "...divergence of view" between the Vatican and the White House about the "initiatives of the Bush Administration in the Middle East".

How about the real reason... He was on vacation.

Read the Article: Pope refuses to meet Rice

...and here: Pope declined meeting with Rice, Italian paper reports (cwn)

Monday, September 17, 2007

God and Evolution

Carl of InsightScoop has pointed out this piece in First Things Mag.
Thanks Carl you always have some great things to read...

God and Evolution
by Avery Cardinal Dulles

During the second half of the nineteenth century, it became common to speak of a war between science and religion. But over the course of the twentieth century, that hostility gradually subsided. Following in the footsteps of the Second Vatican Council, John Paul II at the beginning of his pontificate established a commission to review and correct the condemnation of Galileo at his trial of 1633. In 1983 he held a conference celebrating the 350th anniversary of the publication of Galileo’s Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, at which he remarked that the experience of the Galileo case had led the Church “to a more mature attitude and a more accurate grasp of the authority proper to her,” enabling her better to distinguish between “essentials of the faith” and the “scientific systems of a given age.”


From September 21 to 26, 1987, the pope sponsored a week of study on science and religion at Castel Gandolfo. On June 1, 1988, reflecting on the results of his conference, he sent a positive and encouraging letter to the director of the Vatican Observatory, steering a middle course between a separation and a fusion of the disciplines. He recommended a program of dialogue and interaction, in which science and religion would seek neither to supplant each other nor to ignore each other. They should search together for a more thorough understanding of one another’s competencies and limitations, and they should look especially for common ground. Science should not try to become religion, nor should religion seek to take the place of science. Science can purify religion from error and superstition, while religion purifies science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each discipline should therefore retain its integrity and yet be open to the insights and discoveries of the other.

In a widely noticed message on evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, sent on October 22, 1996, John Paul II noted that, while there are several theories of evolution, the fact of the evolution of the human body from lower forms of life is “more than a hypothesis.” But human life, he insisted, was separated from all that is less than human by an “ontological difference.” The spiritual soul, said the pope, does not simply emerge from the forces of living matter nor is it a mere epiphenomenon of matter. Faith enables us to affirm that the human soul is immediately created by God.

Read More...

MoveOn. Org's Mark on Society

Suzanne Fields, columnist for the Washingtimes has a good take on the General Petraeus Slur. I know this is old news from last week, however this issue came to the forefront of my thoughts this weekend as I heard the news of the anti-war protesters in Washington on Sunday.

Now there is nothing wrong with anti-war protesters, we should all be anti- war, no one should root for war, even if one thinks this conflict in Iraq is a Just-War, one should be against war.

Anyways, the news reporter interviewed one of the protesters and among the questions he asked was, “Do you think General Petraeus is a traitor” or a question close to that in wording. The answer was of no surprise to me but one that still left a rather bad feeling about where we are in this war debate.

The answer to the question was something like ‘Petraeus is a liar…yes he is a traitor…he’s no General to us. We are our own general’

It appears that the MoveOn .Org ad has left its slanderous mark on society. Individuals are now quoting the ad as their stance on the character of General Petraeus. Now to be fair I don’t know if the General had given the opposite news if others on the opposing side would in turn have the same slanderous attitude, however in this instance that is not the case and this why I thought this particular article was worth highlighting…

Read on…..

When Decency Goes AWOL
By Suzanne Fields


When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.-- St. Augustine, "On Lying"
Lying is a moral issue difficult to be absolute about. Most of us accept a little white lie to spare a person's feelings. A roguish Southern politician I know dutifully compliments every baby held out by a beaming mother, but occasionally a child is thrust at him that's so plain he can't think of a single thing to compliment. So with a big smile he exclaims: "That's some baby!" The fib is acceptable because the mother is pleased. No harm is done. We accept a lie that spares a life or a lie that defends a life, including the speaker's own. But a slander is the most grievous sin of all.


In Dante's Inferno, deceivers are dispatched to the eighth circle of hell enduring cruel enough punishment, but traitors, "sowers of schism and of discord," are sent to the ninth circle and suffer even greater torment. That's why the attacks on the character and integrity of Gen. David Petraeus are little short of heinous. If the lie imperils the fighting men and women entrusted to his care, the general is a traitor to his country. The lie gives the edge to the enemy.

There is no greater lie than to falsely accuse a person of being a liar. The slander by MoveOn.org, the smearing machine of the Democratic lunatic left, rises to the highest office of the land, falsely accusing the president of lying about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which was not a lie but a mistake based on the intelligence gathered by several nations of the coalition. A mistake is not a lie; an accusation of mistake has no power to destroy a reputation.


Lying in politics is not new, but what is new is the thundering silence from critics of policy who know better and who say nothing. In time truth generally wills out, but when media is instantaneously ubiquitous, a lie, in the words of a senator of the previous century, runs halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on. A lie distracts debate, inhibits rational discussion, curtails the free expression of ideas and reduces honest differences of opinion to vicious tirades. And it lives forever in the infinity of the Internet, even after exposed as a lie.

Lies poison the debate, which is exactly what Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, set out to do when he opened hearings to listen to Gen. Petraeus. He accused him, without evidence, of delivering a report ghost-written by the White House, and delivered a broadside: "We cannot take anything this administration says on Iraq at face value." Every one of his colleagues who refused to condemn the slander perpetuated in the MoveOn.org ad were co-conspirators in the lie. Lantos' slur was particularly sad because, as a survivor of the Holocaust and a onetime hero of the Hungarian resistance, he knows about such lies.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, infamously said. "The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state."

Those who let the slanders against Gen. Petraeus stand can't even take satisfaction from the general's judgment that thousands of troops can be brought home by next summer. If there is no confidence in his truthfulness on one issue, can he be trusted on another?

Pundits have compared the poisonous slander against Gen. Petraeus to Sen. Joseph McCarthy's smear of Gen. George C. Marshall in 1951. Where is that crusty old Boston lawyer Joseph Welch, who famously demanded of Joe McCarthy: "Sir, have you no decency?"

Decency is an old-fashioned virtue fusing manners and morals, and it often seems to have gone AWOL in the modern world. Decency once served as guide for both public and private behavior. In our free-for-all politics, when anything goes, where conflicts on Capitol Hill have long since lost all trace of civility, it's a virtue rarely recalled. That's too bad. We need an honest and robust debate about the war. But when every debating point is dismissed as a lie and every adversary is scorned as a liar, debate becomes impossible. Dante's eighth circle becomes a crowded place.

Suzanne Fields is a columnist with The Washington Times.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Shameful...


This is one of the most shameful ads I've seen in a newspaper.

This ad even before General Petraeus spoke. This General who has spent the majority of his life fighting for the freedoms that the originators of this ad, in my opinion, abuse.

In fact I don't believe those freedoms include dragging the good name of someone through the mud.

You may disagree with the message of the General or for that case, agree with the message (just to state what I believe), slander is not an option.

Shameful...

Moment of Silence - 911


I spent the morning watching the 911 memorial on TV. Sometimes I think we forget what happened.

We should never forget...

Prayer for those that lost their lives and for the families that survived them.

WCC +<><

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Human Cows?


You know, it never ceases to amaze me what is deemed acceptable in today's world of ethics.

This story from London on creating stem cells from Human DNA and a Cow's egg.

Jimmy Akin has the low down on this with a nice graphic. These cells are 99% Human.
American Papist also covers the story.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer




With temperatures around 105 in my area (So. Cal) I was able to justify spending a little more time at my local air conditioned Borders store.

So with a Tazo Giant Peach Ice Tea, an over stuffed reading chair and a few choice selections from the shelves, I spent the afternoon in a cool air conditioned state.


I found this great book by Fr. Tomas Dubay, S.M. entitled 'Deep Conversion Deep Prayer', published by Ignatius Press.

The books' back cover says it all:

"In this new book, he responds to the call by both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI to help believers and all those interested in spirituality developing a deeper prayer life and union with God."

This book was so good I just couldn't put it down..... so I bought it.

Fr. Thomas Dubay is an expert on the teachings and writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross and being the retreat master that he is, his explanation of the deeper prayer life and how to attain it is kept simple yet packed with insightful daily examples. It's an easy read and not in a over-my-head format.
Check it out...


It's only 122 pages long but It's one for the personal library