FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — Two national groups are throwing their support behind a former parochial school teacher who claims she was fired for trying to get pregnant using in vitro fertilization.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the American Civil Liberties Union filed friends of the court briefs Monday supporting Emily Herx.
Herx sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend in federal court in Fort Wayne in April, claiming she was discriminated against for a disability when her teaching contract wasn’t renewed. Herx suffers from infertility, which is protected under federal law.
She underwent in vitro fertilization, which is banned under Roman Catholic doctrine. When news of Herx’s treatment came to light, diocesan officials decided not to renew her contract. The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission ruled in her favor in January. [Source]
This is such awesome news I am stealing Phil Lawyler’s post in full.
If you aren’t excited about this news story, you probably don’t understand it. This is big. This is huge. This is exciting!
Have you been frustrated, over the years, with the political statements issued by the US bishops’ conference? If so, prepare for a welcome change. Have you wondered why the bishops never seem to listen to reasonable arguments by conservative Catholics? That’s about to change, too.
When John Carr retired from the staff of the US bishops’ conference, after helping to shape the bishops’ statements on political issues for more then 25 years, we wondered whether his departure signaled a shift in USCCB policy. Today we have our answer: Yes, it does.
Jonathan J. Reyes, who will be taking Carr’s post in December, will be coming to Washington from Denver, where he was head of Catholic Charities. His work there, and especially his involvement in projects like “Christ in the City,” testify to his belief that Christian charitable work is inseparable from evangelization. In other words he sees charitable work as a witness to faith, not a call for government support.
The resumés of these two men provide a vivid contrast. Whereas John Carr was hired by the Carter administration, and worked for the White House Conference on Families. Reyes was hired by Archbishop Chaput, and worked for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students. Carr sat on the board of the leftist Center for Community Change; Reyes is co-founder of the Augustine Institute. Carr will be taking a post at Harvard’s Kennedy School; Reyes is a former vice-president of Christendom College.
Carr’s background, interests, instincts, and alliances tied him closely to liberal Democrats. Reyes, on the other hand, moves easily in conservative circles. This does not mean that Reyes will be a political partisan, or that the USCCB will suddenly begin endorsing Republican legislative proposals. But it does mean that for the first time in decades, the staff of the US bishops’ conference will not swing reflexively into line with the latest liberal rhetoric. Gaudeamus igitur, and chill the champagne!
This is easily the first time I have cheered the head of a Catholic Charities branch be appointed to anything much less the USCCB. Hopefully this is the end of the narrowed view of social justice that focused on a segment of social justice while ignoring others. Too long there has been a schism in social justice at many levels and especially the USCCB.
The Obama campaign’s new video directed at Catholics.
“The American people should know this: In a changing world, my commitment to protecting religious liberty is and always will be unwavering. As America’s religious diversity grows, we have the chance to reaffirm the pluralism that has defined us as a nation. A pluralism that is expansive enough to protect the rights of all to speak their minds and to follow their conscience.”
That is directed at Catholics who have no idea that they are under attack and that the President cares as much about religious liberty as he does about the massive debt. Though to be fair he might have some care about the political ramifications of the debt that get in the way of him being reelected. You can follow your conscience just as long as it is an Obamafied Catholic Conscience that is formed by the Culture of Death and where the Magisterium might be a cool band name, but nothing else. His idea of pluralism is “We force you to pay for contraception, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs and you will like it because not everybody is Catholic.” A pluralism that ignores actual God-given rights and replaces it with mock-rights. When you pick losers and winners when it comes to rights – you are doing it wrong.
Surely the President is trying to be funny by producing this irony-ladened video – though I’m not laughing.
Via Thomas Peters
* Poster is from my post Recruiting posters for the Church Militant
On September 13, All Girls Allowed (AGA) sent out a press release with the bold title, “Chinese Government Bans Forced Abortion.” We wish we could agree with our colleagues at AGA. Unfortunately, this time, we cannot.
AGA’s claim that “the Chinese Government issued a document to Family Planning offices that bans forced abortion and sterilization” is based on links to two Chinese documents and a call to a family planning official in Chonqing City. The press release states, “What the officer in Chonqing said was incredible. Not only did they ban forced abortion, but the change came from the top down: “Earlier the government issued a document to all family planning committees,” he said. “Everyone has received it.” The AGA press release touted this statement as “a major change” and stated, with respect to the One Child Policy, “its days are numbered.”Women’s Rights Without Frontiers has no doubt that forced abortions continue to happen at this very moment in China. When the message goes out that this is no longer happening, it undermines the movement to stop it.Considering the facts set forth in the AGA press release, WRWF reaches the opposite conclusion: The Chinese Government has NOT BANNED forced abortion. Until proven otherwise, we believe that any rhetoric generated by the Chinese Communist Party ostensibly banning forced abortion is propaganda designed to deflect the heat generated by the notorious forced abortion at seven months of Feng Jianmei in June 2012.
LifeNews.com goes on to detail why the situation has not really changed.
CHICAGO, Ill.–September 15, 2012 – Imagine Sisters, a new online organization founded to be the nexus for media and information about discerning a vocation as a Catholic Religious Sister, will launch its first viral vocation initiative, The One Rose Project, on October 1, 2012.
The One Rose Project invites Catholics around the globe to reach out to young women they know, personally inviting them to consider that God may be calling them to be a Religious Sister.
The campaign promotes a personal encounter on October 1, 2012–the feast of St. Therese of Liseux. Participants will invite the young woman they know to consider a call to consecrated Religious Life by giving her a single rose in the spiritual legacy of St. Therese.
Imagine Sisters has received substantial testimony that a personal invitation is incredibly powerful for young women who are open to a religious vocation. Imagine Sisters asks for prayers that this invitation will be used by God to plant the seeds of religious vocations among young women, blessing the Church with many new religious sisters.
The One Rose Project can be easily shared through social media networks, personal blogs and speaking engagements. Imagine Sisters has created a short video explaining the project, and encourages supporters to share this video as the primary means of transmitting the message virally.
In the spirit of The New Evangelization, Imagine Sisters embraces social and visual media to passionately propose the possibility of becoming a religious sister in the world today. Through the grace of God, the Imagine Sister website and Facebook interact with over 100,000 individuals each week, effectively working through the new media to reach young women around the world.
When Fidel Castro wanted Elian Gonzalez the Clinton Administration complied.
When the President of Egypt wanted a filmmaker arrested:
Though to be fair he is only being taken in for an “interview” which obviously is an operation involving lots of police officials.
The crafted narrative that some obscure negative film concerning Mohammed and Islam is typical political misdirection. As Ross Douthat amply explains It’s Not About the Video. We are suppose to believe according to the Obama Administration that the assaults on our embassies and subsequent deaths were just crowd dynamics that occurred on the spur of the moment. That somehow directed and coordinated assaults from multiple directions involving rockets was just mad crowds upset about a video on YouTube. “Hey lets go down to the U.S. Embassy and protest that video! Oh and bring a rocket launcher just in case.” The extend they are trying to push this obviously false narrative is frankly sickening. To ensure no blame is attached to them the State Department, Ambassador to the U.N., and the Obama Administration are treating us as fools and lying to us.
The attack on free speech is just another attack on the 1st Amendment by the Obama Administration. The fingerprints on the taking in of this filmmaker have the Justice Department all over it since they were involved in hunting him down. The call by Gen Dempsey to the Florida Pastor Terry Jones is just another branch of this attack amplifying a false narrative. That Muslim-baiter Terry Jones had little or nothing to do with the film is of no concern to an administration that would trample our rights to smooth gened-up bad feelings.
The total incompetence of the President just makes matters worse. Here is a man who probably really thought that his election would smooth over anti-Americanism among the radical Islamists. That really the hatred of America was all about George W. Bush and previous foreign policy. He was not only going to “heal the oceans”, but heal this hatred. That bowing down to foreign dictators and never talking about radical Islam that all the problems would just go away. That hobnobbing and partying with the Hollywood elite was going to impress Muslims who see the social corruption? Unfortunately the President naiveté was note just limited to him. Sec. Hillary Clinton first responded by saying “How could this happen in a country we helped liberate.” I am not sure what world they are living in, but I heard many people warn that the so-called Arab Spring could turn into the same situation that occurred in Iran in 1979. There were many people that warned about what could happen and indeed did happen.
Remember when Candidate Obama talked about having a “Humble foreign policy”? I guess that means bragging about killing Bin Laden whenever politically opportune. They were even chanting it at the Democratic Convention. I guess killing Bin Laden and killing many radical Islamist via drones has no effect, but a video on YouTube does.
It is sad that when Catholics across the land peaceably demonstrate against the HHS mandate the Obama Administration has no time for them and is totally unwilling to remove one jot or tittle form the mandate. Yet the pretext for violent riots which kill some of our citizens is met with the hunting down of and anti-Islam filmmaker. Whatever happened to “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death of your right to say it.” Yet an Ivy League professor called for the mans arrest along with others. That so many are willing to go along with this sham is a defining point in the direction this country is going.
Mocking of religion is fine, just as long as it is not Islam. Liberal kowtow to radical Islam because a bully respects another bully. They will raze the 1st Amendment to suit them. It is even sadder when Google has more of an idea on protecting free speech than the President’s administration has. If they move to remove anything that insults Islam, the Islamists will move the definition of what insults Islam. No doubt not accepting that Mohammed is the only messenger is an insult to Islam. Well we have a lot of work to do to make this world a safe place for radical Islamists to keep them in a reality bubble and not have to grow up.

This is the 31st volume of The Weekly Benedict ebook which is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc which I pull from Jimmy Akin’s The Weekly Benedict. This volume covers material released during the last week for 29 August – 16 September, 2012.
The ebook contains a table of contents and the material is arranged in sections such as Angelus, Speeches, etc in date order. The full index is listed on Jimmy’s site.
The Weekly Benedict – Volume 31 – ePub (supports most readers)
The Weekly Benedict – Volume 31 – Kindle
There is an archive for all of The Weekly Benedict eBook volumes. This page is available via the header of this blog or from here.
At yesterday’s U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) harassment of Catholic colleges and universities, Congressman Robert Andrews (N.J.-1st) reportedly put his foot in his mouth when he characterized the hearing as a “classic case of Nero fiddling while Rome burns”—apparently to give color to his complaint that the issues being considered by the committee were not “compelling questions.”
But the image of Rome’s destruction at the hands of a tyrant who hated Christianity, and the gruesome martyrdom of Christians who were blamed for the fire, was exactly the wrong image to put forward while attempting to dismiss the Obama administration’s violations of religious freedom as unworthy of a Congressional hearing.
[Source]
NPR has a story “College Course Lumps Homosexuality, Rape, Murder”
GetReligion posts on the one-sided nature of the story and asks “Is this a smear job or simply bad journalism?” Well as a Catholic I say “both/and”.
Tim Drake of the National Catholic Register has a solid piece on the story which includes the fact that the complaining group didn’t even contact the University first to complain before taking the story to the press along with other relevant details.
This type of conflation to portray things in the worst light possible is nothing new for opponents of the Church. Not that long ago when the revised norms (Normae de Gravioribus Delictis) issued by the Holy See included women’s ordination. Headlines shouted how the Church viewed women’s ordination as the same thing as child sexual abuse. Funny how journalist can’t make the simplest distinctions when it doesn’t fit their agenda.



