Archbishop Wuerl responds to the petition posted on the White House Web site to label the church a “hate group”. Here are a couple of nice snippets from a good article.

… Although these precepts may be misunderstood by many today, the fundamental vocation of the Catholic Church is to provide the witness of love and truth to the world, including offering the voice of an informed conscience. Catholics are taught to respect the fundamental, inherent dignity of every person, each made in the image of God, and to work to establish a just society. The church teaches that it is our obligation to manifest love of neighbor, to provide charitable service to others, and to promote truth, genuine freedom and authentic humanism. We work for the poor, the oppressed and the suffering, because that is what our faith teaches we must do. There is thus a positive side to being dogmatic: The teachings and works of the church advance the common good throughout civil society. Just as our dogma is constant, so is the work it commands.

… The church is dogmatic, and that is good — even if it means that the church is a sign of contradiction in the world and the object of animus and disdain. It is a positive, attractive feature that what we profess is unchanging and unchangeable — the good news of a love and truth that we are called to share with the world. It is good for Catholics and non-Catholics. Were the church to compromise its creed, if we were to simply go along with today’s secularized culture, not only would the church cease to be the church but the common good would suffer greatly.

Archbishop Wuerl calls this petition “beyond the pale” and as I noted in a previous post that the petition the White house considered “beyond the pale” was the one against Beyonce which got pulled.

“In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don’t know it.” — G.K. Chesterton

Funny how we can go from the Obama Administration talking about the “War on women” to “Women in war” now that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has lifted the ban on women in combat.

Although these two things are totally related. The false “War on women” was about contraception and women in combat derive from the same roots. Contraception is demanded so that women can functionally be like men. Having and maintaining a desirable job can be torpedoed by that inconvenient pregnancy. Children if desired must only appear in the fullness of time when everything is situationally perfect. To do this women must be able totally control their fecundity. What feminism has brought us is not femininity but a desire to be men with “lady parts” as the Obama campaign used the term. This view leads to a view of equality that flatten any physical differences between men and women puts “anything you can do, I can do better” into the law. Thus women in combat is the natural progression of this thought process.

What it also means is that once again military readiness will be sacrificed for political correctness. I served on the U.S.S. Eisenhower (CVN–69) when it was the first aircraft carrier to deploy with women in the crew. It does not take a genius to imagine the consequences of putting men and women together at sea for months at a time. Almost every wrinkle of those consequences occurred when we went on cruise. There were many scandals and I remember a cartoon in the newspaper showing our ship with a Stork asking permission to land. I also witnessed first hand that the majority of the women were not up to the physical requirements for carrying equipment during the drills run at sea. Yet we were not allowed to note this problems or to complain about them. It was the Emperors’ new clothes when it came to observing such problems. I observed this multiple times during my Navy career and things like women techs who weren’t able to carry a toolbox up into the cockpit. Somebody else had to do it for them. If an emergency would have occurred while deployed and fire-fighting was called for breaking out the hoses and P–250 pumps and other equipment it was obvious that our readiness for that scenario was diminished. A scenario where more deaths would likely result.

We won’t be seeing men and women compete in the same events in the Olympics because the events would be dominated mostly by men. We won’t be seeing women linebackers in the NFL anytime soon or almost any professional sport. Great women athletes will be competing against other great women athletes. There are just physical differences that can’t be overcome by even the most intense training.

Yet while the segregation of men and women in sports teams is totally understandable it takes a bit of political correct insanity to think women in combat makes sense. We won’t be legislating the NFL to force them to hire women players (at least for now), but somehow in the PC universe it is fine to put women in combat situations and pretend that it will have no effect in the intense physical environment of combat. Democrats in recent decades have used the military like a social experiment. The fact that people will die because of this is not their concern. I remember when the U.S.S. Stark was hit by a missile one crewman was able to evacuate two other crewman who were unconscious by carrying them up a ladder to safety. If that crewman was a women what do you thing the odds are of the same result occurring?

On the Laura Ingraham show today I heard one women who was a former Marine officer defend this change. At least she was realistic enough to not believe that the majority of the women in the military would be up to the physical requirements of combat. She placed it at around 1 percent or less. She thought that women should have a choice in whether they wanted to be in combat situations. That perhaps if they met some level of physical qualifications and volunteered. Now I would freely admit that there are some women who are probably more physically capable than some men in the military. This female officer apparently has no real understanding about how things work. For one things the gods of PC would never admit that not all women would be qualified for combat duty. The military is forced to accept all women to this role and will not be allowed to set specific criteria. For example Physical Readiness Tests, at least in the Navy, were specific for sex. Men and women had different physical requirements despite serving in the same jobs. The physical standards for women were lower than that for men. It is a given there will be disparities like this in combat situations and many have already occurred. For example women being flown out at Kandahar to be able to take showers. This disparity in testing and treatment angers people. PC fairness almost never results in actual fairness, but to closing your eyes to expected results.

This is not a harangue against women serving in the military. Just putting women in combat situations or possible combat situations like shipboard. Even if you could remove the physical differences in capability you still have the dynamic of men and women in close quarters that introduces problems and does nothing to increase capability.