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.

Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry, “We will not be dictated to,” and proceeded to become stenographers – G.K. Chesterton

I was reminded of this quote do to the recent trend of S&M porn for women. It seems I can hardly get away from the book “50 Shades of Gray” which shows up in searches at Audible, Amazon, and appears on shelves in warehouse stores such as Costco. Recently I started seeing advertisement for a book of the same sick genre at Goodreads on their main page. This disturbing trend has hardly had any outcry from the professional feminist and some people even see it as female sexual emancipation. So we went from women who didn’t want to be tied down at home to women that want to be tied up at home – to update Chesterton’s phrase.

In related news of the perverse Mark Shea posts another example of sexual perversion moving from the “just a taboo stage” to arguments for acceptance.

Being part of the Amazon Vine program I eagerly scan through the books and other merchandise available for review when they send out their emails.

Recently one book I saw was called Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves.  Seeing that title the thought that came to me was if there was one book that had about zero chance of catching my interest this was one.  Sounds just like a title given to a typical Catholic dissent-fest.  Later the same day on EWTN I heard the same book referenced in a positive manner, so I dug up the email from the trash and had them send it to me.

Considering all the media coverage and the  phony “war on women” meme  and the fact that Catholic women who are dissenters are constantly being presented to us this book is quite timely.  This book is partly a response to the attacks on religious freedom and how the narrative was shaped concerning Catholic women and the use of contraceptives.

This book in some ways could have been called “Surprised by the truth of the Church’s teachings on sexual morality” as it is partly a “Surprised by Truth”-like format of conversion stories.  Not the common Protestant-to-Catholic conversion stories but mostly concerning Catholic women who were in opposition to Church teaching and who came to see the wisdom and the truth of her teaching.  These women from a variety of backgrounds and professional experience not only provide the genesis for how they came to accept Church teaching, but explain those teachings in a very accessible way.  All of these chapters were very well written and had me quite captivated by their personal stories. Along with these stories are also a couple of essays that go with the subject at hand.

Seeing how God worked in these women’s lives was a joy to see and a couple of the stories related really had me praising God – which unfortunately is not something I do as much as I should.  The story of one women’s affect on another headed to get an abortion is worth the price of the book – just so awesome! This book covers a lot of topics including: fear of children, contraception, same-sex attraction, beauty, the ends of dating, the sexual abuse crisis, stable marriages and family life, etc.

Even as a man I could relate to some of the background of the stories on how secular feminism had shaped their lives.  Being raised in a house that subscribed to Ms. Magazine and Psychology Today and where Alan Alda was the pinnacle of what a man should be — it is not just women who get subverted by this message.

This book is a great antidote to so much of what we hear and it presents faithful Catholic women who can fully articulate their faith and who have had the same struggles as so many others.  Maybe the title that confused me is a positive thing and I sincerely hope that those who struggle with the truth of what the Church teaches will pick this book up.  They might be seriously challenged by what this book presents, but they won’t be talked down to or feel attacked by it.

Excellent speech give by Cardinal Dolan on religious freedom which as per her usual delivery combines humor, history, and analysis. The Venerable Archbishop Sheen story he shares is also hilarious.

Which brings us to now. For the threats to our “first and most cherished freedom” are abundant, but let me list just two.

One comes from those called secularists, who will tolerate religion as long as it’s just considered some eccentric private hobby for superstitious, unenlightened folks, limited to an hour on the Sabbath, with no claim to any voice in the public square. Such, of course, is hardly “free exercise,” as Michelle Obama recently pointed out: “Our faith . . . just isn’t about showing up on Sunday . . . it’s about what we do on Monday through Saturday.”

Here is the PDF for the speech.

You can have you “deeply held beliefs” just as long as you don’t act on them is part of the pushing freedom of religion to mean being allowed to go to church

Well, as the Democratic National Convention also revealed, add another marquee Democrat to the list of blind faithful—a notably religious one, another former Democratic president: Jimmy Carter.

Carter has said many times, including very recently, that he can’t see how or where or why God or Scripture could ever justify abortion. That’s for sure. The Georgian Baptist has scoured his Bible on that one, and indeed found no justification for killing unborn human life. And Carter certainly never stumped for gay marriage.

And yet, there was Jimmy Carter, at the convention last week, stumping for Barack Obama, a president with a party platform that supports these things, and then some. To raucous applause from the “pro-choice” faithful, Carter gushed that Obama has given everyone an “equal chance in life,” creating a “fairer, stronger, and more inclusive America.”

The 87-year-old said he will be casting a vote for Obama “with confidence and conviction,” knowing that Obama has the “right policies” to lead America to a “better future.” [Source]

There are a lot of things that annoy me about Jimmy Carter – other than that I voted for him when I was 18. Mostly though what annoys me is the fact that he never really stood up for life in a meaningful way.  He could have been the conscience of the party calling them back from the brink of full throated apologists for the culture of death. He might have been able to assert some leadership as a former Democratic President, instead he will mention that he is pro-life at times – yet it never stops him from endorsing increasingly pro-abortion candidates. This type of behavior from pro-life Democrats is pretty much the norm with few exceptions such as Rep. Rebecca Hamilton.

Now if only this type of behavior was restricted to Democrats.  Unfortunately excuse making on the Republican side can be just as egregious.  Often social conservatives are treated as an embarrassment and many pro-life issues are not even addressed.  The issue of contraception is one that the GOP won’t touch despite the fact it is a gateway to abortion and that some forms of contraceptive are abortion-inducing.  When Sen. Santorum would bring this up there was pretty much a collective shoooshing for him to be quiet about such issues.  What was the last time you heard a “pro-life” politician talk about the numbers of children killed via IVF?  Then there was the recent defense of the rape and incest abortion exception.  Whenever it comes to fully following through on pro-life convictions it becomes more about political expediency than doing what is right.  We point out the hypocrisy of pro-life Democrats voting for Obamacare and then push through a presidential candidate with no pro-life trail consisting of any action other than words. We make fun of how President Clinton focused-group everything and then make pro-life policy decisions with a concern towards polls.  Certainly we can move forward incrementally in creating a culture of life – but we will achieve not even that when we compromise the protection of life and advance the fiction of the 100% pro-life politician.

It is one thing to vote to reduce evil, the problem is that we are minimizing the extent of the evil.  Politics might be the art of the possible, but it is easy to forget that with God all things are possible – even being fully pro-life and supporting those that are the same.