Click here to read Sister Mary Ann Walsh’s article from today’s Huffington Post on HHS’ new regulations mandating that contraception be covered by all health plans.
Sister Maureen Fiedler, one of the most outspoken veteran dissenters in the Catholic Church, commented honestly yesterday on the meeting of the American Catholic Culture last weekend in Detroit. She admitted that those in attendance were part of the “graying” crowd, and bemoaned that it was also “a very ‘white’ crowd.”
Thus did she validate our news release on the meeting that we issued prior to the conference. We mentioned how it would be filled with octogenarians. We didn’t mention that only old white people would be drawn to event, but next time we’ll be sure to mention how lacking in diversity the dissidents really are. Thank you, Sr. Maureen, for getting it right.
Click here to read Bill Donohue’s defense of Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph.
Jill Abramson has been named the new executive editor of the New York Times. “In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion,” she said. “If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”
We appreciate her honesty, knowing full well that she speaks for millions. We await her conversion, and those like her.
Yesterday, Catholic League president Bill Donohue appeared on the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion’s podcast “Research on Religion.” Donohue discussed how cultural nihilists are engaging in secular sabotage as well as other current topics. Click here to download and to find out more about the podcast.
There is an article written by Father John Dear, SJ, in the National Catholic Reporter that is a must read for Catholics who think they’ve heard it all. Just click here.
We can’t quite figure out how Father Dear’s professed commitment to feeding the world’s poor squares with his decision to dine at pricey restaurants like the former “Windows on the World.” Does he realize all the soup kitchens he could have contributed to if he just elected to go to McDonald’s instead?
More important, those who can’t tell the difference between fighting for evil, and fighting against it, are not speaking the language of Catholicism. Furthermore, they owe their very existence to those of us—we are called veterans—who know better.
CAVU Pictures is releasing the faith-based independent film, “Vito Bonafacci,” on May 6th in New York City; it opens at the AMC Lowes Village 7, on 3rd Avenue and 11th Street.
“Vito Bonafacci” is billed as a powerful movie about a successful and wealthy Italian American Catholic businessman who has a crisis of faith. Driven by a deeply personal calling to create a film that glorifies God, first-time filmmaker John Martoccia helms this daring independent production. Actor Paul Borghese gives an intense and deeply moving performance as Vito Bonafacci, a man who wakes up to the reality that he has turned his back on God for the pleasures of the material world.
In a dream, Bonafacci’s mother appears imploring her son to abandon his pursuit of greed and materialism. “Beware of the false gods of money, power, status and pleasure,” she warns, and instead “return to the true path of life.” When he awakes, his vision propels him to explore the meaning of faith and the role of religion in tempering one’s soul. As the echo of his mother’s words fill his thoughts, he reaches out to his local priest to begin the renewal of his Catholic faith.
Bill Donohue recommends the movie as a much-needed cultural antidote to the contemporary fixation on materialism. He also salutes Isil Bagdadi of CAVU Pictures for projecting Catholicism in a favorable light.
The idea that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was largely elected to fix New York State’s fiscal house, is lobbying gay activists to lobby New Yorkers to support same-sex marriage is wrong politically, economically and morally. It is wrong politically because Gov. Cuomo was not elected to promote this radical agenda, and has no mandate to do so. It is wrong economically because the economic costs associated with this manipulation of marriage will help to cripple an already wobbly economy. And it is wrong morally: gay marriage will ineluctably relativize the institution of marriage, turning it into nothing more than an alternative lifestyle
The ultimate losers are not the voters. The ultimate losers are children, boys and girls who deserve a father and a mother, the only two persons ordained by nature to create them in the first place.
The following letter was published in today’s edition of the New York Times:
To the Editor:
Gail Collins (“Behind the Abortion War,” column, April 14) obscures the main point of opposition to federal funding for Planned Parenthood by stating that doctrinaire (in her view) opinions against contraception actually motivated the opponents, who seek to defund all forms of artificial contraception.
Such opinions, however, are of little moment before the stark truth that Planned Parenthood performed 330,000 abortions in 2009, as the largest provider in the country, and that if, in truth, it doesn’t use federal money for that enterprise, such financing nonetheless frees up other money to bolster its abortion industry.
These facts joined to the conviction that abortion is the (often savage) destruction of the innocent embryo or fetus — a human being in development — warrants cessation of financing, even when used only for nonabortion services, and awarding it to agencies in no way associated with this high-production abortion industry.
(Msgr.) DANIEL S. HAMILTON
Lindenhurst, N.Y., April 15, 2011