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Archive for July, 2010

More Persecution of Christians at the Universities

Posted in Biomedical Ethics on July 26, 2010| 52 Comments »

“URBANA, Illinois, July 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Catholic professor who was barred from teaching after he explained Catholic teaching on homosexuality to the students in a class on Catholicism, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has defended the decision by saying that the professor was not actually “fired” – he’s just not allowed to teach any more classes.

“UIUC administration has reportedly been deluged with outraged emails and phone calls after news broke that Dr. Kenneth Howell was abruptly disallowed to teach after a student complained about an e-mail in which Howell outlined the arguments for how homosexual behavior is contrary to natural moral law – words the student deemed “hate speech.” The remarks were made in the context of an email to students in a class on Catholicism; Howell had taught classes on Catholicism at the school and its Catholic Newman Center for several years.”

Get the rest here

Yesterday I posted on a graduate student in psychology whose faculty are recommending a Maoist reeducation regimen to teach her sensitivity to homosexuals for suggesting that her Christian faith has a different take on the issue.

Today we hear of a professor who simply taught what the Catholic Church teaches about homosexuality in a course on…Catholicism!! For the crime of being intellectually honest about his subject matter, Dr. Howell is being barred from teaching any more classes. Welcome to the age of tolerance and inclusivity, of mutual respect and diversity.

Liberalism is as fascist as Nazi Germany, and Mao’s China. No dissent is tolerated, and all who dare to speak another point of view are crushed. This is what has become of the greatest university system ever known. I’m fortunate enough to say that I am one of the last who was educated when colleges were great intellectual arenas where people came and were free to state and defend any given position.

When talk began in the 1980’s of bringing tolerance and inclusivity to campus, many of us were confused as it already existed. Then came the speech codes, the sensitivity training, and finally the lists of forbidden ideas. It is into this grinder that we feed our children during the most formative years of their lives. In far too many colleges, education died an ugly death twenty years ago. Now what remains is a grotesque parody of all that once was, husks devoid of their seeds. Now what remains is the bastardization of education: Indoctrination.

All of the intellectual heavy lifting today is being done at the think tanks. Increasingly the universities are being filled with third-rate hacks, idealogues whose ideology can not withstand criticism from nineteen year-old students. How are we do address the ethical issues of the Culture of Death when Christian witness is considered hate speech, when natural law is considered hate speech, when the Bible is considered hate speech?

Having knocked theology, philosophy and anthropology out of the conversation, what is left for grounding one’s argument? The dismissal of thousands of years of religious tradition, the distillation of three hundred years of Enlightenment Philosophy, all in the attempt to squelch opposition is the end of the university system.

In all of this it has become abundantly clear that ethical and moral formation must take place in the home and be substantially in place before our children go off to college. Their faith, likewise must be solid as they go off to school.

A hostile faculty, administration and campus culture await all persons of genuine faith.

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University Persecution of Christians: Game On

Posted in Biomedical Ethics, tagged , , , , , on July 25, 2010| 35 Comments »

A great many Christians face the choice daily in our universities to either bear faithful witness to their beliefs and suffer the consequences, or lie to get by. The unholy alliance of radical feminists and gays/lesbians has been the anchor on the left for far too many years. The following story is not at all uncommon.

AUGUSTA, Georgia, July 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed suit against Augusta State University Wednesday on behalf of a counseling student who was allegedly told that her Christian beliefs are unethical and incompatible with the prevailing views of the counseling profession. The student, Jennifer Keeton, says she has been told to stop communicating her beliefs and that she must undergo “training” to accept homosexuality in order to graduate from the counseling program.

Augusta State ordered Keeton to undergo a re-education plan, in which she must attend “diversity sensitivity training,” complete additional remedial reading, and write papers to describe their impact on her beliefs. If she does not change her beliefs or agree to the plan, the university says it will expel her from the Counselor Education Program.

“A public university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here. Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform,” said ADF Senior Counsel David French.

“Abandoning one’s own religious beliefs should not be a precondition at a public university for obtaining a degree. This type of leftist zero-tolerance policy is in place at far too many universities, and it must stop.”

Keeton, 24, is pursuing her master’s degree in counseling at Augusta State. Lawyers say that after her professors learned of her biblical beliefs, specifically her views on homosexual conduct, the school imposed the re-education plan. Keeton says she never denigrated anyone in communicating her beliefs but merely stated factually what they were in appropriate contexts.

Read the rest here.

Clinical Truth is on Keeton’s side. Psychologists and Psychiatrists have a diagnostic manual entitled Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Mental Disorders (DSM), currently in its fourth edition. As DSM II was being prepared, homosexuality was listed in DSM I as a disorder. It was a bizarre and fascinating set of political machinations that led to homosexuality being dropped from DSM II as a disorder, part of which was deliberately changing the diagnostic criteria.

The story is chronicled by the late Dr. Charles Socarides, an expert in the field of sexual disorders and a leader in the field of treating homosexuality, in the following excerpt from the American Journal of Psychotherapy:

“In early 1973, a group superheaded by several leaders of the A.P.A., other psychiatrists, and members of the Gay Activists Alliance, the Mattachine Society, and the Daughters of Bilitis undertook to influence the Nomenclature Committee of the A.P.A. at a closed meeting at Columbia University Psychiatric Institute by requesting deletion of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual(9).

“By spring 1973 the A.P.A. Committee on Nomenclature and Statistics was seriously considering the removal of homosexuality from the DSM II without consultation with the psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who had long labored in this area of clinical research, and held opposing views.

“A Symposium held in Hawaii on May 9, 1973 was entitled “Should Homosexuality Be in the A.P.A. Nomenclature?” As a member of this panel, I presented the conclusions of the eleven-member Task Force on Homosexuality appointed in 1970 by the New York County District Branch of the A.P.A., of which I was chairman. (10)”

Read the rest here

Keeton’s story, and Socarides’ tale are both cautionary. The fields of psychology and psychiatry do not recognize post-traumatic stress arising from abortion. This stems in part from an official APA position paper in 1978 denying any harm done to women by abortion. Medical schools screen out pro-life candidates in their interviews, a phenomenon discussed at length at a recent bioethics conference. The unholy alliance is firmly in control of our educational institutions from kindergarden to post-doctoral fellowship training, with few notable exceptions.

It is the reason why I and other scientists have stepped forward into the breach. There are many others who would love to give voice to the truth but do not for fear of the consequences being experiences by Keeton, including Maoist indoctrination training or loss of academic rank and standing. Pray for these professors and students.

In our universities the truth is irrelevant.

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Planned Parenthood and Abortion Misinformation: Why?

Posted in Uncategorized on July 21, 2010| 1 Comment »

Live Action has released another video showing a PP worker misleading a young woman over the human identity, and developmental status of her purportedly 10 week-old baby.

Note in the video how the worker kept pausing to choose her words with great care? Words meant to deny the human status of the baby.

Why?

Apart from PP’s racist eugenics there needs to be something deeper that animates low level employees such as the one in this video, something narrower and more personal than a sharing of Sanger’s disdain for the broad sweep of humanity. In all revolutions only the upper echelon are hard core idealogues. The grunts fight for more parochial interests.

So what animates the people who perform the interviews, who staff the front desk, who kill the babies?

The abortionists are mostly the bottom of the barrel as physicians go. This is the last stop for many of them before license revocation.

For all who sit and lie, there is no doubt to us or them that they are lying. Look at how carefully this PP worker stopped to parse her words. These are the people who see the sonogram and persist in saying to the unknowing mother that the baby is just a blob of tissue. At its root, this evil has its beginnings in unlove, or anti-love, because it is so caught up in deliberate deception.

It is no mere lie, but raging contempt for the pregnant patient and her baby. It is the deliberate will to destroy at all costs, beginning with the destruction of the truth.

That’s why these people fight tooth and nail to derail legislation requiring informed consent before abortions. That’s why they fight against parental notification laws.

Unlove and anti-love.

The wounds that create these twin evils run deep and are inflicted during the formative years. They are the maladaptive response to evil, the loss of perspective and the absence of forgiveness.

We become what we think we are: The deception propagating itself in the victim. The victim becoming the victimizer. The ongoing cycle of despair.

Campaigning with the truth will certainly educate mothers to be. CPC’s have a 90% success rate at changing women’s minds when they see the sonograms. But we must never cut off the clinic workers from our care or love. To do so is to make ourselves become as the unforgiving servant in Jesus’ parable. It is the beginning of our own loss of perspective, our own sinking into despair.

We must do as Jesus commands and love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, and do good to those who hate us. These weren’t suggestions from the divine healer. They were commands for our own spiritual well-being.

In viewing this video, I felt no rancor, but only a deep, deep sadness for this woman who sat and attempted to coerce through deception what she thought was a young woman seeking abortion. While it may seem paradoxical, the killers among us are most in need of our love. That begins with prayer.

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Rest In Peace, James Cooke

Posted in Uncategorized on July 16, 2010| 9 Comments »

Tomorrow (Saturday), we will bury a giant who lived among us.

Jim Cooke died this week at the age of 49 of a very rare genetic liver disease. Jim was a member of my parish, a fellow Fourth Degree Knight of Columbus, President of the Holy Name Society, President of the Family Association, Author and liason who brought to our parish school a Universal Pre-K program, architect of innumerable parish projects, counselor, sage, friend to all, model husband and father.

A good many of us offered Jim our livers for transplant, knowing the risks associated with such surgery (They transplant 75% of the donor’s liver, which then grows back in the donor!). Such was the love this man inspired in our Church. Jim refused all offers and placed his trust in the God he loved. That hope and trust were brought to fruition this week as he returned to the God he loved with absolute faith that all would be well for his wife Joan and three adolescent children.

So in the morning we will celebrate the life of a man who was my age, and a great inspiration to me. Jim made me want to reach for being a better husband and father. We will have Jim’s Funeral Mass and formally commend his soul to God. If anyone has a moment around 10:30, please whisper a quiet prayer for Joan and the children, and the saint we will be commending to God at that hour.

Thank You.

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Culture of Death: Rationing Abundance

Posted in Health Care, tagged , , on July 16, 2010| 5 Comments »

My article in today’s HeadlineBistro.

The recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has triggered alarm among various quarters for his self-professed admiration of health care rationing as seen in other countries such as Britain’s National Health Service. The issue here moves well past the politics and begs the question: How have we as a society become so deadened to the value of human life, that in our abundance of wealth and blessing from God we could seriously entertain the word “rationing” as applied to health care for our elders, for the poorest among us?

This move is a game-changer on so very many levels. Juxtaposed with the almost weekly reports of breakthroughs in cancer therapy, treatment of chronic conditions and adult stem cell therapies, this is not only an odd moment for considering rationing health care, but a dire threat to the advancement of science. A society that commits itself to death as a solution to its self-inflicted financial wounds cannot long endure as a pioneer of extending and improving the quality of life through research in the biomedical sciences; not when the government that funds such research is busy eliminating the need for it.

So how did we get here?

Twenty years ago when I was studying and working as a psychiatric research assistant at Columbia University, I was invited by one of the faculty to attend a talk being given by a medical economist. The topic was the new system of managed care and HMOs. In this talk, the economist made a very prescient observation that I took as a harbinger. He said that increased access to high quality health care does not make for a healthier population. It creates a larger, more chronically ill population of people who will exceed the lifespan dictated by their illness by twenty to thirty years.

Consider those who undergo coronary bypass surgery, who have pacemakers, treatments for cardiac dysrhythmias, diabetes, HIV, hypertension, vascular disease, COPD, cancer, etc. Advances in medical treatments and access to those treatments produces a population who live decades longer, mostly by taking medications daily. The longer we live, the greater the likelihood of new conditions arising needing surgical and medical interventions. All of this costs money.

The economist went further. Are we prepared to extend social security benefits to an ever-burgeoning population of retirees? Can the civil servant pension systems cope with people who retire after twenty years in their early forties and collect pensions well into their eighties and nineties? What do we expect from managed care?

Two decades later we are now being forced to address these questions. It seems that death is being proffered as the solution. Ridding ourselves of the elderly not only saves Medicare dollars, but also saves social security dollars as well as civil servant pension payouts. Cutting Medicaid services also saves on welfare and related money. Such solutions to vexing financial difficulties requires little intellect and even less heart and soul.

Death is cheap and easy.

The coarsening that has led us down this path began with the sexual revolution and legalization of abortion. Mother Teresa of Calcutta cut straight to the heart of the issue when she stated that it is a poverty that a child must die so that we may live as we wish. That has been the great selling point of abortion, that babies are an economic encumbrance that will hold us back from being and doing all that we wish to be and do.

The coarsening continued to unfold with the “Death with Dignity” movement, which really appeals to the same obsessive need for radical control and moral autonomy that has gripped us ever tighter during the past five decades of the sexual revolution. Now we have a political appointee whose duties could foreseeably include saving the nation money by institutionalizing a system of treatment refusals that make the worst of the HMOs pale in comparison.

In Immunology, the process of opsonization – the marking of a pathogen for destruction – has its etymology in the Greek word meaning “to mark for death.”

We opsonize the unborn, the poor, the elderly. With the steady rise in autism diagnoses, which are breaking the backs of school districts across the country (one out of every 110 children), will we return to eugenic sterilization that is still Constitutional Law, enshrined in the 1927 Buck v. Bell decision?

We cannot absolve ourselves of culpability in this trajectory toward the Culture of Death. Pope Paul VI warned us of this in Humanae Vitae back in 1968. Pope John Paul II warned us repeatedly for over twenty-five years in all of his writings, in which he gave us the roadmap, philosophically and theologically, back to a Culture of Life.

We should not deceive ourselves: The raised issue of health care rationing represents significant momentum for the Culture of Death that will require a muscular response to slow, halt and reverse. We need to become very vocal in our affirmation of life in all of its stages. We are in dire straits, but we have all the answers before us, and all of the graces of Heaven for the asking.

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Self-Evident Truth

Posted in Uncategorized on July 4, 2010| 6 Comments »

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

In two sentences, Thomas Jefferson distilled two centuries of Enlightenment Philosophy.

The truths of which he speaks are, according to Jefferson, so fundamental and not needing explanation as to be self-evident.

It is self-evident that there is a “Creator”

It is self-evident that humans are endowed by that Creator with unalienable rights, meaning that man cannot take them away, as they come from God.

It is self-evident that these rights begin with the most fundamental of all-Life.

It is self-evident that the next two follow in logical sequence: Liberty, and then the Pursuit of Happiness.

It is self-evident that the role of government is to protect those three greatest rights.

It is self-evident that the people reserve the right to alter or abolish that government if it becomes destructive of those rights.

We have seriously lost our way.

November 2012 is coming.

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Ending Abortion: Force Concentration as A New Strategy

Posted in Abortion, tagged , on July 3, 2010| 7 Comments »

Brother Paul O’Donnell gave courageous public voice at last week’s NRL Convention to what I have heard several pro-lifers say in private. There needs to be less territoriality and greater sharing of resources within the pro-life movement. I’ll take that a step further and suggest that the pro-life movement too often is like a superior military dividing its forces in the face of the enemy and at best gaining very little ground.

The opposition knows how to deploy their forces, and does so in a tightly disciplined fashion. We have the superior forces though, with some astounding special operations forces such as the post-abortive mothers and fathers of Silent No More, the healing ministries such as Lumina and Rachel’s Vineyard, the vast network of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, information clearing houses and legislative action centers such as Priests for Life and the National Right to Life Committee, scientific and medical groups such as American Association of Pro-life OB/GYN’s, Physicians for Life, National Association of Pro-Life Nurses, and the list goes on and on. These groups and many others are linked in the side panels of this blog. Add to them great news outlets and blogs such as Jill Stanek, LifeNews, LifeSite News, and over a thousand pro-life blogs.

The number of pro-life organizations numbers over a thousand.

What is needed now is a coordination of these groups that actually multiplies their firepower. In the military it’s called Force Concentration, where all of one’s forces are brought to bear on a particular point of the enemy’s forces so as to overwhelm them and capture that territory. Then the forces are turned on the next enemy objective in an overwhelming manner and so on.

By way of example, there was a brilliant billboard campaign recently in Atlanta, Georgia that heightened the awareness that black babies are an endangered species. Such a billboard campaign is great in opening the conversation. But how much preparation went into the ground campaign?

Was Priests for Life brought in to do preaching at all area Catholic churches?
Silent No More events?
Rachel’s Vineyard?
Speakers on behalf of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, Abortion/Breast Cancer Coalition?
Methodists for Life?
Teens for Life?
Students for Life?
Extensive screenings of Maafa 21?
40 Days for Life?
Other picketers for Planned Parenthood?
Truth Trucks?
A coordinated March for Life starting outside of Martin Luther King’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church?
Teach-ins?
CPC’s?

Were there objectives to follow up this campaign with starting new chapters of Rachel’s Vineyard and Silent No More?

The black community is a great place to start because of Planned Parenthood’s genocidal campaign against blacks, operating 80% of their clinics in inner city neighborhoods. That’s where this despicable group can be hurt the most; by bringing in as many groups as possible for a three month saturation campaign in one city. This can make an unbelievable difference in a city such as Atlanta. Such a campaign clearly helps to magnify the capability and visibility of each organization.

It isn’t enough to fight honorably. We must do so strategically and tactically as well. When we identify a city and declare it a “No Abortion Zone”, we need to marshal our resources and bring them to bear relentlessly until we break the back of Planned Parenthood and the local abortionists in that town.

This needs to be our goal in moving forward: the complete and utter destruction of abortion through a relentless campaign of truth-telling, especially among blacks and hispanics. It must be accomplished through mutual cooperation between the many special operations organizations in the pro-life movement. It must be entirely legal and peaceful, as pro-lifers always are. It must be tactical and strategic.

If it is, it will be devastatingly effective.

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