New York senator and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was asked last month about Catholic hospitals that do not wish to provide women with emergency contraception, which in some cases can act as an abortifacient. According to the Associated Press, Senator Clinton replied that "conscience clauses" are appropriate in some situations, but "if there is a justifiable [...]
Send in the straightjackets—Newsweek has cracked up. Of all the stories in the entire world to cover, Newsweek's website flagged as its "Top Story" on September 13 an insane piece about a woman (complete with photo) who thinks she is an ordained Catholic priest. They found this "woman priest" in Missouri, though had Newsweek reporter Karen Springen walked into the nearest [...]
Managers of a student newspaper at the University of Virginia, the Cavalier Daily, forced a staff cartoonist, Grant Woolard, to resign last month. This action stemmed from a drawing done by Woolard. According to the Washington Post, the cartoon depicted "nine darkened figures with bald, enlarged heads, dressed only in loincloths, fighting each other over a tree branch, [...]
On September 15, Fox's "MADtv" kicked off its 13th season by featuring a series of some of the show's past comedy skits. The new season opener, hosted by raunchy talk-show star Jerry Springer, was the first of a four-part "Best of MADtv" series. Included in the program's trip down memory lane was one of several past [...]
Manhattan Mini Storage, owned by Edison Properties, placed a billboard on Manhattan's West Side Highway in August that showed a large wire hanger with the inscription, "Your closet space is shrinking as fast as her right to choose." New Yorkers have become accustomed to Manhattan Mini Storage posting billboards that bash the Bush Administration, but by [...]
Donald J. Dietrich, Human Rights and the Catholic Tradition. Transaction Publishers: To order, call (888) 999-6778. Hardly anyone disagrees today about how bad Hitler and the Nazi regime were for the world. Besides unleashing World War II, Hitler had plans to exterminate entire peoples—plans which he proceeded to carry out before the eyes of a too-long unbelieving [...]
Beginning in the spring, and ending over the summer, the Catholic League was able to persuade Random House to make substantive revisions to its Fodor's Travel Guides. Deleted were several objectionable references to Catholicism, remarks that should never have appeared in reference books. As far back as 2000, we received complaints about the Fodor series. At [...]
As expected, Amnesty Inter-national, the group that monitors human rights around the world, approved an abortion-rights policy at its biennial conference in Mexico City; the policy was first adopted this past spring. Responding to criticism from the Vatican, as well as from American bishops, Amnesty issued a news release on June 14 saying that it does [...]
William A. Donohue In New York City schools, it is legal to ban the display of a Christian nativity scene while permitting depictions of the Islamic crescent and stars. There are no vouchers or tuition-tax credits for Catholic parents who elect to send their children to parochial schools, but a taxpayer-funded Arabic school has opened in [...]
Every now and then I read a book that makes me want to stand up and cheer. The latest entry is Who Really Cares by Arthur C. Brooks, professor of public administration at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. We've become e-mail "pen pals," and I'm happy to say that Arthur is Roman Catholic. Brooks [...]
