Those dark anglicans

Surprising that I had the default assumption that anglicans would naturally be against abortion.

I know they are splitting along homosexual and femine disagreements, but I thought a church that considers itself somehow close to Catholic would get abortion right. Not so.

I must have given too much credit to anglicans having John Henry Newman before his conversion to Catholicism.

And the theological reasons for their abortion support? None really. Just a boat cut loose from common natural sense and Jesus. Much like their liberal wing, they feel the bible is rather irrelivent now, since it was written so long ago... in this case, before the wisdom of modern medicine could be turned against the children.

They hold the ugly nazi view that human life has worth in proportion to it's value as it develops. Which of course supports the killing of people in their early and late life since we develop this anglican value as we progress through grade school, and lose this value as we progress through the old age home.

And let's not forget the value-poor folks caught somewhere inbetween in a coma, or perhaps just born too stupid to be an anglican.

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THE DIOCESE of Melbourne has backed the legalization of abortion. In a submission to the Victorian Law Reform Commission made by an all-women panel appointed by Archbishop Philip Freier, the diocese stated public acceptance of abortion ‘indicates that a change in the law is timely.’

There were ‘no specific biblical texts addressing therapeutic or induced abortion’ the diocesan panel said, and explained that ‘the Bible is a collection of texts written in a world without our modern medical practices and so does not speak specifically to the ease and safety with which a pregnancy may be terminated today.’

It rejected the ‘absolutist position’ that life begins at conception and the ‘pro-choice perspective’ that held that women were free to ‘do what they like with their own bodies.’ The diocese stated ‘that while the embryo/foetus is fully human from the time of conception, it accrues moral significance and value as it develops.’

Thus while the ‘destruction even of an early embryo is of moral significance, we believe the moral significance increases with the age and development of the foetus.’

The abortion of a foetus at 28 weeks was ‘more serious’ than at 10 weeks, they said, but added there should not be ‘a legislated absolutist end-point after which an abortion could not proceed.’

Writing to his diocese on Dec 10, Dr Freier said Melbourne did ‘not have a definitive viewpoint on abortion’ and as a whole the Anglican Church ‘has predominantly been silent about abortion.’

Christmas church-goers

I am always happy to see the churchs generally swell the pews for Christmas and Easter. The Priests always throw in a welcome to 'visitors', and hope to see them again soon.

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Some of this swelled population effect comes from regular parishioners bringing in their extended families and friends.

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Some of this is Catholics drawn be the season's nostalgia and extra church decorations... the manger scene, and all the lilies at Easter.

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The religious headlines today are that in England more Catholics now go to church on Sunday than the landed Anglicans.

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Anglican pastor Lynda explains that...

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...She added that, as Anglicans were not under the same obligation as Catholics to go to church every Sunday.

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She said that while the Church of England encouraged adherents to go to worship weekly, many who only went once or twice a year could consider themselves full members of the Church.

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Well now, that's interesting. I was discussing mortal and venial sins one day with a Franciscan Priest, and he said "Come on, do you really believe that God will condem you to hell for missing Mass?"

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Well, that's what the Church still maintains, so I said Yes.

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After all, what makes it right to go along with popular culture's general loss of the sense of sin? It's just too new to be automatically accepted as recently wise.

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There's also the element that if we do not wish to enter God's presence at least weekly, what makes us think we would tolerate heaven, where God's presence is even more pevasive.

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Missing weekly Mass is a big and clear marker of our relationship. Friends we do not care to see too often, are a particular type of friend... usually a weak type.

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So there's another thing about Anglicans I was not aware of. Namely that regular church participation is optional. Encouraged but optional. Weak.

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Anyway, Merry Christmas and good luck to them. And for those like Blair that work to come home, welcome.

Normal not

What is it when man's eyes stare at the material and deny the spirit either good or evil? Man as human animal vs. man as human spirit.

It is then "as we are born", vs. as we are born of God. The stuff of the cosmos. Dust in, and dust out, so make the best of it.

And if that's the outlook, then mother and father become parent 1 and parent 2. No longer spouses, but partners in some strange handshake agreement. And so far, they get what they beget, things are fair. They have made their bed so to speak.

But then comes adoption. Many formative years captive to abnormality. Real child abuse of the mind, if not also of the body. Real pride in decay.

Save the kids. Save the kids' sanity and salvation. Forbid the making normal of this aberration.

Link thanks to stay at home mom and Catholic in Arlington.

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When GLBT individuals or couples begin their journey to adoption, the first and most critical step is finding an agency that is welcoming. This often occurs through word-of-mouth references shared by experienced adoptive parents, as well as through websites dedicated to advocacy and education within the GLBT community.

HRC will provide the All Children – All Families Seal to agencies that achieve at least nine of the 12 benchmarks. You can continue to improve over time and the rating will change accordingly. Once you earn the All Children– All Families Seal, you can proudly display it on your website, on your office door or in printed materials.

1.
The agency’s mission or values statement uses GLBT-inclusive language.

2.
The agency’s non-discrimination statement for clients clearly bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

3.

The agency’s non-discrimination statement for clients clearly bans discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

4.
The agency’s non-discrimination statement for staff clearly bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

5.
The agency’s non-discrimination statement for staff clearly bans discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

6.

Comprehensive GLBT-specific content is included in the agency’s new staff orientation.

7.
Comprehensive GLBT content is included in the agency’s homestudy trainings.

8.
All agency-controlled forms use inclusive language (e.g., "partner" instead of "spouse" or "parent 1" and "parent 2" rather than "mother" and "father").

9.
The agency’s website and printed materials explicitly identify the agency’s commitment to working with GLBT individuals and families.

10.
All client/prospective family trainings integrate GLBT-inclusive language, examples and exercises.

11.
The agency actively recruits GLBT foster and adoptive individuals and families.

12.
The agency has had successful GLBT foster or adoptive parents.

Christmas controversy, protestants give up

If you run across early Christmas Cards from the 1800's, you can tell that times were very different.

This article is a reminder that protestants, having set themselves back to sola scriptura, could not abide celebrating Christmas on any certain day since that exact date was not listed in the Gospels.

Somewhere since the reformation, this pagan Catholic practice must have been dropped proudly. But shucks, since it seemed to do so little harm, and culture was getting so friendly with it, and since they had no better idea of when to celebrate Christ's birth... they just forgot about the whole thing.

Now most everyone can say Merry Christmas.

Catholics still have that pesky culture friction Advent period that we attend to. Imagine, no Christmas songs until Midnight Mass. Yes, we can imagine it very well.

This same culture that made Christmas acceptable to the protestants has corrupted its celebration, not knowing when to stop the evolving consumerism.

Nevertheless, Jesus is our hero and saves us. He deserves a birthday rememberance.

So every year for 1,700 years, we can't help ourselves, we celebrate.

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His church's objection to Christmas is rare among U.S. Christians. Gallup polls from 1994 to 2005 consistently show that more than 90 percent of adults say they celebrate Christmas, including 84 percent of non-Christians.

That's a huge change from an earlier era, when many Protestants ignored or actively opposed the holiday. But as it gradually became popular as a family celebration, churches followed their members in making peace with Christmas.

The change didn't happen overnight. Through much of the 19th century, schools and businesses remained open, Congress met in session and some churches closed their doors, lest errant worshippers try to furtively commemorate the day.

In researching his book, "Christmas: A Candid History," Forbes discovered that major American denominations--Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, Methodists and Congregationalists--either ignored the holiday or actively discouraged it until the late 19th century.

That rejection was rooted in the lack of biblical sanction for Dec. 25 as the date of Jesus' birth, as well as suspicion toward traditions that developed after the earliest days of Christianity. In colonial New England, this disapproval extended to actually making the holiday illegal, with celebration punishable by a fine.

Christmas benefited from a 19th century "domestication of religion," said University of Texas history professor Penne Restad, in which faith and family were intertwined in a complementary set of values and beliefs. Christmas became acceptable as a family-centered holiday, Restad said, once it lost its overtly religious significance.

At the same time, aspects of the holiday like decorated trees and gift-giving became status symbols for an aspirant middle class. When Christmas began its march toward dominance among holidays, it was because of a change in the culture, not theology.

"In America, the saying is that the minister follows the people, the people don't follow the minister," Restad said. "This was more of a sociological change than a religious one. The home and the marketplace had more sway than the church."

That's partly why Christians like the United Church of God reject the holiday: They say divine instruction, rather than culture and society, should determine whether the holiday is appropriate. "It's common knowledge that Christmas and its customs have nothing to do with the Bible,"

Obama mindlink with VOTF

O Obama.

Oh what 8 years of Democrats' thinking will bring us.

As we cringe at VOTF rhetoric, we might expect to cringe much more as the President speaks, and speaks, and acts.

A big shot at VOTF now a chief advisor to Obama.

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So what is Obama's attitude toward Catholics?

In his speech last summer to the Call to Renewal Conference he explained, "The majority of Catholics practice birth control because they, like all Americans, 'intuitively' recognize religious teachings that are 'more culturally specific' and may be modified to accommodate modern life."

Dimwitted but excusable coming from a non-Catholic. A non-Catholic wouldn’t be expected to understand Catholic theology, but then again what’s he doing commenting on it I wonder? Perhaps indicative of Obama’s Democrat grand visions.

Marshall Ganz, a Harvard sociologist, was a major force behind organizing Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), a dissenting Catholic organization devoted to "structural" change in the Church. VOTF, you may recall, used the occasion of the priest sex scandals to call for changes in Catholic doctrine, such as the addition of a married priesthood and popularly-elected bishops. Ganz is a nationally known expert in political organizing. In 2004 he was an adviser to Howard Dean -- Ganz now advises Democratic presidential candidate, Barak Obama.

Obama has Catholic support, including a priest from Chicago, Fr. Michael Pfleger who said,"I think Barak Obama is in a class of his own." Not really, Father. Just like presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Rudy Giuliani, Obama is pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage. Now that Clinton is sliding downward in the polls, and the Obama campaign is gaining ground, we may be hearing more of Obama's opinions on Catholic teaching.

WWJD.. the next healthy thing

You know that in China, if you have the sniffles, or even worse a cough and cold... you can not go around face naked. You must wear a mouth filter or suffer shame.

You see it all over, especially publicized in the government big meeting rooms.

They're leading edge atheistic. You know the kind... better live long since that's all there is.

I predict that the next big healthy thing coming to the not so Wild West U.S.A. will be exactly this. Face guards for the germ laden.

If you doubt my prediction, remember you heard it 1st here, and then give me some posthumus credit by saying a prayer for me in purgatory.

Anyway, my point is that along with my inability to picture Jesus laughing, I just can not see the Man going along with this prolonged life health fetish we are so absorbed in. Yes, I'm talking about helmets on all the kids for bike riding, smokers having to stand 30' away from buildings to protect the health of other people (God help us!), and the general avoidance of death oxymoron stance.

Here's a God that I would think could get, and did get sick at times, yet pressed flesh with the lepers. Same for many of our Saints during the plauge Black Death episodes.

Jesus and his followers are no sissies. Rip off your face mask and throw you bike helmit in the curb. Let's die with a little dignity. You know, like we really believe that there is something better just beyond this veil of tears.

And yes, I must advise that that goes for kids too. Even if it means that they might travel in a car without their seat belt fastened at times, or heaven forbid, feel the wind in their hair in the back of a pickup truck.

Pause. Didn't the previous paragraph sound absurd? It isn't you know. You just can't help yourself. You can not imagine not belting your kids in, and would never let them ride in the back of a pickup. And you know why. Something might happen.

Shame on you really. Do you realize how Europe/USA centric our view is. How otherwordly our attitude is compared with the starving, diseased, dying children outside our immediate world reach? The whole world is dying, and always will be.

WWJD after all? Would he lock all the kids of Europe and the U.S.A. up in safety devices so that they could live long enough to die to the world? Would he advise a long long life aided by the extraordinarily expensive health industry?

I don't think he would care about these things one whit. As he showed us, it's not really about how long you live at all.

Just for smiles, here a little story of another place where obsession with health (and oh yes, obsession with our precious children) has taken us...

Mother and baby ordered to leave

7 Priests, one father, single mommy

7 Priests, one woman, $500,000.

And it's worse really, because the dad did not want to care for the child, but rather kill the child.

As nice as the Filipino people are, and as nice as their Catholic religion has made that corner of Asia, their native Priests have a reputation for having a problem with staying chaste. 3rd hand knowledge says that many have women on the side, and that it's accepted by the lay people.

Maybe it's in the genes, maybe it's the culture, maybe it's the heat. 4th hand knowledge says it's something of the same in Africa.

This story involving 7 Priests is unusual in the number of men involved, and the willingness of the woman. As she says, the main injury was "Milla returned to California after giving birth to her daughter, Jacqueline, and pleaded with the archdiocese for help but was refused.".

From that point, she turned to revenge.

"While she once planned to become a nun, Milla no longer believes in God. She said she lost her faith because of the church's callousness."

"I thought that the church would make everything OK, that they would punish them," she said. "After the church showed me that they didn't care about what happened, I realized what they were really about, that they were more like a business."

"They have no fear of God."

And the Priests? They turned to cowards and the dad turned into an abortion advocate.

"After she was impregnated in 1982 by Tugade at a Los Angeles-area church, Milla said, Tamayo suggested that she get an abortion, then devised a plan to send her to the Philippines to have the child."

These things always turn ugly, and are feed for the afternoon talk show viewers.

But really, we have a Filipino tendency to be unchaste, and from that evil, others follow.

An abandoned child, a woman with at least 7 men looking for financial help and revenge, and a daddy. Priests looking for an escape, and $500,000 to make things right.

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College level Catholicism, and Bush too

It's World AIDS Day. And what is the common thought? We must 'fight' it.

Much like people with cancer, who 'battles' or dies after a long 'battle' with disease, if you're a good guy, let's fight AIDS.

And what is the common answer to AIDS? Condoms of course.

Is there nothing humorous about a fight conducted with a rubber? I think it is very odd if not humorous.

Well I must admit that to get the whole humorous effect, you must also consider that millions and millions of copulating people without the benefit of monogamous marriage, are fighting for the ability to continue their activities using a piece of latex for protection against death.

OK, it's not humorous, but plainly sad.

It's not humorous because it is based on ignorance. Not the plain ignorance of never having heard the truth, but the IQ based ignorance of not being able to comprehend. One needs to be either an obedient Catholic, or a college level Catholic to embrace the truth of Humanae Vitae.

Obedience has not been in vogue since the 1700's. A college level Catholic understanding is scarce in the pews. The percentages of catholics who support the use of condoms is important because it tells us how many pew sitters are just hanging around listening to the music and shaking hands and smiling.

We may pray that these people receive some sort of understanding from Priest's homily teaching. But no. I can not remember a single sermon about Humanae Vitae.

Could it be that the Priests do not understand? I'm sure in some cases the answer is yes. In other cases, the Priests use their discretion to adjust teaching to the needs of the congregation. In other words, a kingergarten approach for a kindergarten congregation.

This article with all the percentages, mentions nowhere chastity. To the common audience, it's simply not on the culture's radar. Yet it is the only answer.

Culture unable to stop copulating, so wear some rubber. Invincible ignorance, and eventual death. Ugly and unfunny.

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And let's hear a cheer for Mr. Bush. Not a Catholic, but he get's it and uses his position to say it...

U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday stressed the role of faith-based groups in the fight against AIDS, calling the struggle one of conscience and morals on the eve of World AIDS Day.

"Faith-based groups like these are the foot soldiers in the armies of compassion," he said. "They are helping to defeat this epidemic one soul at a time."

Of course, CNN had to also add... Despite some successes, the program has been criticized for requiring that participating groups emphasize abstinence education.

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