Deal W. Hudson

Giuliani on the Move Among California Catholics

Deal Hudson

I guess it comes as no surprise that Giuliani would get the most traction among Catholics in -- guess where? -- California.  As Bob Novak reports this morning, the Giuliani effort is being led by Bill Simon, Jr. who is joined by fellow Catholics like former LA mayor, Richard Riordan (a definite RINO and CINO).  I was surprised, however, that Novak described Simon as a "conservative," which he is not.

A real pro-life conservative, Curt Pringle, former speaker of the California Assembly, was another early Giuliani supporter.  Pringle, who has always been a reliable ally of religious conservatives, bought into the "Only Rudy Can Beat Hillary" argument. 

Oh well.....he could be right, but that doesn't mean you give up the primary fight to nominate a pro-lifer.

Good News for Fred Thompson

Deal Hudson

Fred Thompson needed to bowl them over at the Family Research Council Values Voter Conference in DC, and he did just that. 

It looks like it's going to be a horse race to the nomination after all.  Thompson is surging ahead of Giuliani with the GOP base.  Watch for Giuliani to stop picking on Romney and start picking on Fred. 

But don't count McCain out yet, either. He is about to pick up a pretty powerful endorsement, which could really throw this race into a dither.

Bishop Malone Outraged at Birth Control Pills for Middle Schoolers

Deal Hudson

The Window for October 19, 2007

Bishop Outraged at Birth Control Pills for Middle Schoolers

Bishop Richard J. Malone is "outraged" about the decision of the Portland, Maine, school board to make birth control pills available to 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-grade girls at King Middle School. On Wednesday, the Portland School Committee voted 5-2 to make contraceptive pills available to girls, ages 11 to 13, at the student health center.

 

What makes this decision even more unbelievable is that the girls can receive the pills without parental permission. Students are required to have a parent's permission to go to the health center, but subsequent treatment is confidential.

 

In other words, it's up to the student to notify her parents about any treatment she receives. (It seems pretty unlikely that a daughter would come home from 6th grade and say to her parents, "Hey, Mom and Dad, I went on the pill today.")

 

The only way parents can make sure their daughter does not receive contraceptives is by signing a statement barring them from using the school's health service entirely.

 

In other words, families have to give up the medical services paid for by their tax money in order to protect their children from being given medical intervention that contradicts their religious beliefs.

 

Condoms have been made available at King Middle School since 2002. As it turns out, that's not unusual. "About one-fourth of student health centers that serve at least one grade of adolescents 11 and older dispense some form of contraception," said Divya Mohan, a spokeswoman for the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care.

 

Proponents of the new Portland policy argue that many parents don't act to "protect" their sexually active children. Only five of the 134 students who visited King's health center during the 2006-07 school year reported having had sexual intercourse.

 

Rita Feeney, president of Maine Right to Life, commented: "This is the traditional doublespeak of people and organizations who claim they would counsel young children to avoid early sexual activity but then actively assist them in participating in risky behaviors, they say, because they're going to do it anyway."

 

Peter Doyle, a former middle school teacher, said the proposal violates the rights of parents, potentially ignoring their special knowledge of their children's health, and puts young girls at risk of cancer from too early use of hormone-based contraceptives.

 

"You all are going to be responsible for the devastating effects on young women when this goes through," he told the Associated Press.

 

Brian Gail, a Catholic writer from Philadelphia, is hosting a symposium on the dangers of contraception at this year's Catholic Leadership Conference to be held in Charleston, South Carolina, October 25-26. Gail organized the CLC symposium because he predicted the pervasive contraceptive mentality would result in decisions like that of the Portland school board.

 

Sadly, Gail's forecast came true just one week before the start of the symposium.

 

Gail told the Window, "The decision to provide hormonal contraceptives to middle school children defies incredulity. Last year the Mayo Clinic published the results of a comprehensive study which concluded that young women who use the pill for eight years before their first full-term pregnancy are 36 percent more likely to contract breast cancer later in life."

 

Bishop Malone issued a formal statement later in the day. We can only hope his outrage will translate into a reversal of the school board decision. It's absolutely unacceptable to exclude parents from the medical attention given to their children. It's contrary to nature, and it should be contrary to law.

Letting Children Choose Their Predators

Marjorie Campbell, marjorie@marjoriecampbell.com

While researchers reported a STD "epidemic" in California among its highly "sex-educated" young people,  school board members approved the distribution of birth control pills and patches to girls in 7-8 grades (11-14 year olds) at a Maine Middle School where condoms available since 2000 have failed to prevent all pregnancies there.  Apparently unaware or unwilling to address the disastrous results being reported from California's broad sex education program - a program that receives no federal funds in order to exclude abstinence education - school officials in Portland Maine asserted, ""This isn't encouraging kids to have sex. This is about the kids who are engaging in sexual activity." 

I beg your pardon?  When did we extend the Culture of Adult Desire to 11 year old girls to make their own choice to have sex?  That's called "child depredation" because 11 year old girls have not formed the judgmental capacity to choose responsibly and without influence from, say the 16 year old boys, the school nurse offering free birth control pills and a school board saying "kids will be kids ... they just  love to have sex these days!"

I smell Baby Boomer finks here, deciding to impose upon our children their own taste for sexual irresponsibility and refusing to protect growing girls from sexual predators - a growing national disaster evident in reports like Miriam Grossman's "Unprotected" and the Center for Disease Control's alert over the rise in female suicide rates.

It does not take a rocket scientist to conclude that 11-14 year old girls should not be sexually servicing anyone, including the cute boys who know the way to the student health center.  We consider these kids "children" which is why a girl cannot "choose" to drive to school, buy a round of martinis for the gang, ride her bike without a helmet, quit school to get a job or buy cigarettes.  Imagine offering free cigarettes in the student health center not to encourage smoking, but for the little children who are already enjoying cigarettes!"

This Board no doubt longs to educate and protect these children in a challenging culture - but it is no protection to let children choose their own predators.

Pew Forum Poll on GOP Social-Issue Voters

Deal Hudson

The Pew Forum has just released a poll on what it calls Republican social-issue voters.  There are a few surprises. Guiliani, for example, is seen more favorably than Romney or McCain (Thompson comes out on top).  You really have to ask yourself what is going on with the GOP electorate for Giuliani to have this level of favorability over candidates whose social conservative credentials are stronger.

The other finding that surprises me is the relatively low percentage of non-Hispanic white Catholics that make up the social-issue voter in the GOP, only 14% versus 37% of white Evangelical voters.  (This seems low to me.) Mainline white Protestants make up 13%.

It comes as no surprise that 70% of these voters attend religious service once a week.

Something that the GOP strategists should notice, however is that 50% of these voters described themselves as "working class"  and 52% are women. 

This means that the GOP message should not be tailored toward the upper middle class white male, which is the usual profile of the GOP strategist.

The Only Catholic Candidate Drops Out

Deal Hudson

I read with sadness that Sen. Brownback is dropping out of the presidential race. As long as he was in the race there was a authentic Catholic voice in the campaign.  Let's hope that Brownback's effort has given him a national platform that he lacked before.  Someone needed to step forward to fill the gap left by the defeat of Rick Santorum. Brownback is that man.

High Noon at Holy Cross

Deal Hudson

High Noon at Holy Cross
The Window for Oct 17, 2007

The Jesuit College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, is in trouble.

Bishop Robert J McManus, S.T.D., issued a statement on October 10th warning President Michael McFarland, S.J., that the official Catholic status of Holy Cross was at risk.

The reason for the showdown? On October 24, representatives of both Planned Parenthood and NARAL are scheduled to speak on campus as part of a "Teen Pregnancy Conference" sponsored by the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy.

This could be historic -- a clash that has been decades in coming between a bishop and a Jesuit college. Remember, even Jesuit colleges receive their "Catholic" status from the local bishop.

"No university, even if it is in fact Catholic, may bear the title 'Catholic University' except by the consent of the competent ecclesiastical authority" (Code of Canon Law 808). The "competent authority" within each diocese is the bishop.

Holy Cross is renting space to the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy for the conference, and President McFarland responded to Bishop McManus by saying Holy Cross has "contractual obligations" and cannot cancel the conference or dictate its speakers. (Sorry, but Holy Cross had plenty of time to cancel the conference. A spokesman for the diocese, Raymond L. Delisle, said the bishop had a number of discussions with Father McFarland over the past two weeks.)

The Holy Cross statement also included the following:

The college believes a meeting of adult professionals pooling resources, engaging in a dialogue and exchanging information is a beneficial way of grappling with pressing issues related to the health and well-being of Massachusetts teenagers and children.

When October 24 arrives and the Holy Cross Jesuits have not acted in accord with the statement of Bishop McManus, a domino effect may begin toward the official secularization of Jesuit institutions in the United States, beginning in Massachusetts.

Will Father McFarland lead his school out of the Catholic Church? He's already remembered for defending the honorary degree awarded to Chris Matthews in 2003, in spite of Matthew's explicit comments about being "pro-choice."

Bishop McManus's warning doesn't sound like an idle threat:

It is my fervent wish that the administration of the College of the Holy Cross will unequivocally dissociate itself from the upcoming conference . . . so that the college can continue to be recognized as a Catholic institution committed to promoting the moral teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

Like so many Catholic colleges inviting their students to embrace "the dialogue" of the virtues of abortion, Holy Cross alumni are dividing on the issue. John P. Hamill, chairman of the college's board of advisers, commented, "I find it very hard to understand why this is an issue of great concern after six years." (As it turns out, NARAL and Planned Parenthood had been guests on the campus for the previous five years.)

Vic Melfa, a Holy Cross alumnus, class of 1957, is co-founder and president of the Holy Cross Cardinal Newman Society. "It's a great concern to me because the group that's sponsoring the conference is diametrically opposed to Catholic teaching on life. President McFarland should have said 'no.'"

If this clash does reach a head, it will be the direct result of a document signed in 1967 at the Land O'Lakes Conference organized by then-president of the University of Notre Dame, Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C.

The opening statement of the document set the wheels in the motion for a sea change in Catholic colleges and universities:

The Catholic University today must be a university in the full modern sense. . . . To perform its teaching and research functions effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself (Emphasis added).

Now, forty years later, Bishop McManus has challenged the heart of the Land O' Lakes statement (one of the signatories was the president of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, the former-Right Rev. Theodore E. McCarrick).

Will the local bishop and Canon 808 prevail over the Jesuit president and the Land O' Lakes document? We shall see.

Leading Fundamentalist Endorses Romney

Deal Hudson

Candidate Romney's recent push to capture Evangelical support in the wake of Dr. Dobson's call for a third party produced some surprising fruit today in Greenville, SC. Bob Jones III, fundamentalist chancellor of the university of the same name, endorsed former Gov. Romney.  Calling Mormonism an "erroneous religion," Jones said he was not endorsing a religion but a politician.

In the 2000 campaign, Bush's appearance at Bob Jones University earned him the accusation of anti-Catholicism from John McCain.  At the time, some anti-Catholic propaganda could be found in the bowels of the university web site.

Bob Jones III will help Romney in South Carolina but not nationally -- Jones' influence is strictly regional.  Jones has broken ranks publicly with most of the political initiatives of Evangelical leaders.

Jones endorsement, however, could have major impact on the important South Carolina primary.  A smart move for the Romney campaign.

Commercial Free Family Hours: Cell phones

Marjorie Campbell, marjorie@marjoriecampbell.com

Technically, this post does not belong here.  But I consider my evening hours with my three children and husband, well, sacred.  For that reason, I long ago registered our home telephone with the National Do Not Call Registry, which greatly limits the commercial use of my home phone number.  It brought immediate, near-bliss results.

What about my cell phone number?

The Federal Trade Commission claims that "Despite Re-Circulating E-mail" warning of a commercial offensive within the cell phone data base," It is Still Not Necessary to Register Cell Phone Numbers" since those numbers remain protected.  I have received several versions of this "urban legend" e-mail, but ignored them . . .

. . . until .... two nights ago.  That's when the "Atlantic Southern Reinsurance Company" rang on my cell phone and I found myself, in disbelief, chewing my dinner and mumbling "no, no, no".

Today, I registered my cell number with the Do Not Call Registry.  It's allowed ("The DNC Registry accepts registrations from both cell phones and land lines");  it's good for 5 years and , if it keeps my family hours commercial free, it's worth the slight trouble.  Visit   https://www.donotcall.gov/ or call 1-888-382-1222 from the number you wish to register.

When a Bishop Stumbles....

The post of Marjorie Campbell from a few days ago defending Archbishop Neiderauer as a "Fool for Us" has garnered much comment, both pro and con.

Marjorie was critical of commentators (bloggers) who immediately criticized the Archbishop for serving communion to two Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence.

I must admit that my first reaction was to regard the Archbishop's action as another compromise to the world of Catholic dissent, but Marjorie's post, and the discussion that followed, got me to thinking. 

Last evening an Evangelical friend, a national leader, called me to discuss this issue before going on TV where the issue might be raised.  He didn't want to get into a situation where he, an Evangelical, was perceived as telling Catholics what their Archbishop should have done.

I told him that I understood the concern with the Archbishop's actions, but he had apologized, so where's the story?  Neiderauer realizes that when these two "sisters" presented themselves to him he should have blessed them and waited for them to move on. 

These decisions, I said, are made in the blink of the eye, as a bishop faces a long line of people in a (usually) crowded church aisle.

Then I asked him, "Where is the outrage toward these "sisters" who ambushed the Archbishop with the deliberate intent of embarrassing him,  mocking the Eucharist, and disrespecting the Church? Why is all the discussion about the man who didn't respond right when suddenly put on the spot?"

What about the people who connived to put him there, and create a scene where, one way or the other, there was going to be a national media story?

Should the Archbishop have been better prepared for this kind of ambush going into a "war zone" of the Church? Yes.  He has admitted as much.

There is little that is more divisive in the Church today than the issue of homosexuality: the Church teaches that homosexual acts are a sin and that the disposition itself is a "disorder." 

Homosexuals, therefore, deal with a double whammy, so to speak. Not only are their acts wrong, but their way of being, their natural inclination toward persons of the same sex, is considered "unnatural," a "disorder" of the human person. 

Why are we surprised when they feel angry about this teaching?  Why are we surprised when they want to shake their fist at the Church?  Why are we surprised when they want to accuse the Church of denigrating them? 

Perhaps looking into the face of that anger, bearing the brunt of it, is a difficult thing to do in its own right.

Archbishop Neiderauer will get no where by indulging the Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence -- he knows that now, if he didn't know it before. 

He can't remove their anger by telling them the Church teaches something other than what it teaches about homosexuality.  But he can't run and hide from their anger either. 

He must face it head on, and decide how he will respond when they act out.  He should realize that what happened with the "sisters" is only the tip of the possible iceberg.