Religion Archives - Page 231 of 407

PBS: The Un-American Classroom

July 22, 2018/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Education, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Tabitha Korol

Soon after the horrific bombing of the World Trade Center, I happened upon a television production of the history of Islam presented by PBS, an American public broadcaster and television program distributor, self-declared as “America’s largest classroom.” This trusted provider of television programming reaches 350 member-television stations, educational institutions, non-profit groups tied to public schools, college educational institutions, and state-government-owned or -related entities. The narrator of the History of Islam, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, was already recognized for his outrageous proposal to establish a triumphal rabat-style mosque on Ground Zero. He’d hoped to name it Córdoba to echo Islam’s conquest of Spain in 711 AD.

Rauf presented the spread of Islam as the color of butter spread across the pastel map, as though untold thousands had not been enslaved or slaughtered by the ferocious and determined warlord, Mohammed. Conquest was achieved by the merciless decapitation of 800 Jewish men, the rape and sexual enslavement of their women and children, the pillaging of the metalworks and crafts of the town’s Jews, Christians, and pagans who had been living in harmony. PBS was permitting itself to be used to promote a false narrative that concealed the true purpose of Islam and its continued bloody methods of conquest.

Christian Action Network, in 2017, revealed the introduction of the Islamic indoctrination program, “Access Islam,” by the U.S. Department of Education to public schools, when no similar material for Christianity, Judaism, or Hinduism exists.

PBS provides “the largest classroom” for teaching these “educational” resources to schools and libraries, replacing the term “Religion of Peace” with “Empire of Faith.” Americans for Peace and Tolerance has investigated and reported the world studies and history books in use today, and confirms that they embrace radical social activism, ideological indoctrination, and coerced conformity. The textbooks and PBS’s films are replete with erroneous information, demonize Israel and America while glorifying Islam, and encourage fealty to Islam and identification with radical jihadists. This is brazen-faced stealth jihad against our own country done without fear of negative consequence.

The social studies lesson plan for grades 5 – 12 begins with the Five Pillars of Islam, enhanced by the BBC’s supplemental visual material for easy memorization and scrupulous study. This is total immersion into Islamic vocabulary with intense thought and discussion, acting out and reciting prayer, learning and performing customs along with changes of dress, and comparing superficial information of Judaism and Christianity with the favored Islam. In addition to the books, papers, computer, and visual aids, students “fulfill their duty” with “impromptu” visits into the Islamic community, without parental consent. Thus, they learn to feel like a Muslim (assuming the false victimization), view the world from a Muslim perspective (that all the world is Muslim and must be retrieved), think like a Muslim (lay blame elsewhere and justify abuse on women and the west), and to BE a Muslim (be a jihadi warrior).

Under the first pillar of faith, students must learn the Islamic calligraphy and memorize the shahada, a proclamation of faith and fidelity to Islam, despite their family’s beliefs.

PBS’s online film about the Ten Commandments of Judaism does not equal in depth of experience the Pillars of Faith. Whereas the former operates at a purely informational level, the latter is indoctrinal, proselytizing, so that the child is imbued with the beliefs and views.

The second pillar is prayer, its importance, the words, sounds, movements, direction and frequency, an unparalleled intimate engagement.

This stage does not reveal the violent Islamic verses calling for jihad (warfare against non-Muslims) as a permanent obligation upon the Muslim community until the world is conquered for Islam (9:5, 9:29, and others), or the commands to wage war against non-Muslims until they: (1) convert to Islam, (2) pay the jizya (poll tax) and submit to sharia, or (3) are killed.

The third pillar is Zakat or almsgiving, with a video for media interaction, questions and answers. They review the purpose of donations, the amount of charity, relationship between prayer and money, and why this differs from ordinary charity.

However, it is not made clear that zakat or charity is designated only for Muslims, never for the infidel.Israel, the US, and other western civilizations are first responders to tend others in times of natural disasters, Islamic countries do not respond with manpower or funds.

The fourth pillar, fasting, brings the discussion of the month-long holiday of Ramadan, its guidelines for fasting, challenges, and spiritual rules.

They do not learn that Ramadan mandates daily and increased attacks on hapless Christians and Jews in Israel, the Arab Middle East, Africa, Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and throughout Asia, with each year’s death toll superseding the previous one. The Bible’s tales of violence provide lessons to be learned; the Koran’s are open-ended, everlasting decrees of exhortation to violence. The Muslim community has a responsibility to wage war against the unbelievers.

Students are not told about the inhumane, torturous pain purposely inflicted on animals en route to their slaughter for Islam’s holiday celebrations. Halal may be falsely compared to kashruth (Kosher), but a cardinal tenet of the Jewish faith is shechita – the swift and painless dispatch of the animal, marked by compassion and consideration for its welfare. In many instances, animals are accorded the same sensitivity as for human beings.

The fifth pillar is the compulsory pilgrimage or Hajj to Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, which was Mohammed’s failed courtship of the Meccan Jews and his humiliation that now requires revenge and subservience of non-Muslims. PBS presents a compulsory “virtual Hajj.”

WGBH, PBS’s Boston Public Radio, provides “the journey,” the purpose of the special clothing, the gravity of the experience, and how it would feel to make the trek to Arabia. The children are forced to “live” the experience over their own religious and national birthright, to “feel” disdain and disrespect for their parents’ heritage and country, to ‘become stealth warriors. Until they are sufficient in number to take up arms and overthrow America’s government, students are encouraged to meet with local Islamic clerics and to leave class for political riots and marches.

The sixth pillar, not revealed to the infidel, is jihad, which guides the thought and life of every Muslim, from the pregnant woman who will deliver the next jihadi warrior to the child who is taught to dedicate his life to martyrdom for conquest. Military might is the base for their ideology, the origin of Islam, the sine qua non of the faith, which is why the Islamic culture cannot adapt and accept ideas of modernity and secular government.

Despite the term “inner struggle,” jihad is their eternal war against the non-Islamic world. Lessons encourage the children to identify with jihadis

Portraying Islam as the religion of peace is Daniel Pipes explains that jihadists understand the terms with its “usage through fourteen centuries of Islamic history” as “the compulsory effort to forcibly expand Muslim territory and influence.” “It is the boldly offensive intent to achieve Muslim dominion over the entire world,” – war, dispossession, slavery, and death for its victims. Islamic imperialism.

An Iraqi cleric in Baghdad, during a November 9, 2002, sermonized, “We challenge [President George W] Bush and the Americans with our words, before challenging [them] with our weapons . . . We are patient . . . and we will fight them with all kinds of weapons. Jihad, Jihad, Jihad, Jihad. . . .” He exhorted all Muslims to “welcome death, welcome martyrdom for the cause for Allah.”

Beginning with the very young, jihadis are taught to hate Jews and are praised for becoming suicide bombers, dying for martyrdom. “The day of Jihad is the day of blood.” The foremost Egyptian cleric of Al Azhar University urged Palestinians to intensify their suicide attacks against Israeli women and children – murder for the sake of their deity, with all manner of rewards in the next world.

The study of the Pillars of Islam is but one facet of what is being taught in our public schools today and what is supported by PBS’s “largest classroom” through lessons, plans and films.

In closing: An Olmsted Falls, Ohio, mother noted that her 7th grader was required to memorize the 5 Pillars of Islam and watch a proselytizing video, “30 Days: Muslims and America,” and asked the teacher if they were also to memorize the 10 Commandments and any other religion’s major core beliefs. When she learned they were not, and asked the school district to remove and replace the video with an objective historic film, her request was denied by the superintendent and Board of Education. She pursued the matter further with the state school board, state senator, representative, Ohio Department of Education and Ohio’s Governor Kasich, asking also that that the Israelites be added to the Ohio Standards.

It took more than a year and a half of discussion, discord, assistance, legal intervention by the Thomas More Law Center, and involvement by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to exact the changes in accordance with the parent’s constitutional right to free speech and duty to oversee her children’s education. The school system replaced the Islamic film and agreed to add the study of the ancient Israelites, including Abram and Moses, to the curriculum, thereby giving credibility to the Jewish people on their land and their bestowal of the Ten Commandments and morality to a world of impiety. One outraged and dedicated parent was able to pave the way and show us that it could be done.

RELATED ARTICLE: Podcast: More Proof Colleges Have Become Insane

The Courage of Our Convictions

July 22, 2018/in Culture War, Policy, Politics, Religion/by The Catholic Thing

Nicholas Senz writes that soon civil society won’t just reject Catholic teaching; it may feel compelled to silence and squash the Church itself.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie Becket (if one can single out a thread from that masterpiece) is the moment when the eponymous archbishop is confronted by King Henry’s lieutenants, who try to arrest him on trumped-up charges. Archbishop Becket appears fully vested, mitered and coped, with ferula in hand. As he approaches the crowd of soldiers and nobleman, he holds out the crucifix-topped staff, causing the gruff men to backpedal. When Robert de Beaumont begins to read out the charges, Becket calls him by his first name, then warns him, “Robert de Beaumont, hear me for the sake of your soul, which is in the gravest danger.”

He then denies the charges and announces to the gathered mob, “As head of the Church of England and as your spiritual father, I forbid you to pass judgment on me. I command you and all who would charge me to hold your peace on pain of endangering your immortal souls.” As he begins to leave and is confronted by one soldier, he upbraids him, “Sheathe your sword, Morville, before you impale your soul upon it!” Becket is allowed to depart.

It is difficult to imagine such a scenario today in a film, let alone in the Western world. Would a bishop who is confronted with such animosity stand up to his accusers and invoke his apostolic authority? Would such a rabble back down rather than simply seizing the cleric and clapping him in irons, as a prelude to much worse?

Such questions seem academic, relating only to tales from a world long gone. Yet in certain parts of the world today, these spiritual and moral encounters are being repeated. China has no qualms about arresting bishops, or of holding them for years until they die in prison. Even in nations with deep Christian histories, such as the quickly disintegrating Nicaragua, bishops and cardinals are finding themselves under attack.

But surely such things are for dictatorships and failed states, we say. Surely it could not happen here.

I think that, before very long, we shall see.

Becket (Richard Burton) confronts his accusers.

The animosity of formerly Christian countries toward the Church is ramping up. After voters eliminated Ireland’s constitutional protection for the unborn, the Irish government has said that Catholic hospitals that wish to keep their government funding will be required to perform abortions. This from a nation that still televises the Angelus every day. And some Australian states have recently passed a law requiring priests who hear of child sexual abuse and other serious crimes in the confessional to break the sacramental seal and report it to the police.

Many Australian priests and at least one bishop have publicly stated they will not comply with the law, which – depending on the state – would mean a hefty fine or even jail time.

If push comes to shove, will they follow through? Will bishops help to pay the fines of their priests, or visit them if they are jailed? Will the Irish bishops be willing to forgo government funding rather than submit to the new abortion regime?

One can hope that the bishops will have the courage, should the time come, to stand by their convictions. Even in a time of increasing secularization and hostility toward the Church in Western countries, bishops still have largely remained respected figures. They are invited to important civil functions and given places of honor. They receive politicians and are pleased to release statements on this or that bill proposed in the legislature.

But things could become quite different quite quickly. In fact, seem likely to. The late Cardinal Francis George may have had it exactly right when he said, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”

Too strong? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But consider this, too: imagine the opportunity suddenly present to give a living testimony for the faith. As Alfie Evans lay dying in a Liverpool hospital, (while his parents were barred from removing him to seek further help), one commentator wrote, “What if the archbishop walked into the hospital and said, ‘This boy and his family are leaving with me’?” If he were allowed to leave, what solace that would have given the family; if he were arrested, what a powerful witness that would have shown.

It may soon be the case that it will not be enough for society to reject the Church’s teaching; it may feel compelled to silence and squash the institution itself. But this will not be because secular society is finding itself growing strong and wishes to crush a rival. It will be because society, having rejected truth, finds itself terminally ill, and it will rage at the physician whose diagnosis is sound but undesired.

Then, God willing, the last portion of Cardinal George’s statement may come to fruition: “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Nicholas Senz

Nicholas Senz is the Director of Children’s and Adult Faith Formation at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Arlington, TX, where lives with his wife and two children. He holds master’s degrees in philosophy and theology from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, CA. His website is nicholassenz.com.

EDITORS NOTE: © 2018 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

VIDEO: ‘We found over 1,500 errors’ in public school social studies textbooks

July 20, 2018/in Culture War, Education, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Roy White

Truth In Textbooks (TNT) gives insights into the influence of Sharia supremacy in the nation’s school system, particularly in social studies textbooks.

RELATED ARTICLE: A Textbook for Snowflakes

VIDEO: America Needs Real Men to Stand in The Gap!

July 19, 2018/in Culture War, Policy, Politics, Religion, Video/by Bill Finlay

America needs good men who will stand in the gap to defend or way of life.

Soccer Moms Take On Islamic [Sharia] Law In New Book

July 15, 2018/in Culture War, Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

Valerie L. Greenfeld

“The best defense is grassroots education,” concludes Valerie L. Greenfeld concerning domestic jihadist dangers in her new book Backyard Jihad: How Parents Can Detect the Invisible Threat of Radicalization. Her primer for Main Street communities contending with Muslims dreaming dangerous dreams of establishing Islamic states in the West raises important issues for the citizens of the free world in America and beyond who are seeking a first line of civil defense against sharia supremacism.

Greenfield’s book dismisses myths about jihadist terrorism involving disadvantaged individuals turning to violence out of despair. “Contrary to some media reports, those joining terrorist organizations in the U. S. rarely do so as a result of poverty or lack of education, dignity, or occupation,” she writes. “Why leave the U.S. after being fortunate enough to enter the freedom of America?” she perceptively notes of individuals in Islamic immigrant communities who leave America’s Promised Land for jihad in foreign hellholes.

Greenfeld draws upon a 2007 New York City Police Department (NYPD) study to show that recruits to jihad seek to fulfill various longings of the heart. “The prospective recruits are struggling with frustration, anger, loneliness, or disagreement,” she notes. “Finding a new identity or ideology fulfills the need to feel important and included.”

Jihadist recruiters’ techniques are “not unlike telemarketers,” notes Greenfeld. Her telephone interview with German Institute on Radicalization and De-radicalization Studies Director Daniel Koehler is particularly telling. The “enemy is a sophisticated, psychologically trained jihadi recruiter with huge networks and large coffers of money,” he has explained.

Greenfeld cites the book Son of Hamas by former Hamas terrorist Mosab Hassan Yousef to emphasize the particular Islamic doctrines that can lead to jihadist violence. “Most suicide bombers began as moderates,” Yousef has written, because “Islamic life is like a ladder, with prayer and praising Allah as the bottom rung,” while the “highest rung is jihad.” Accordingly, “American Muslims are more susceptible to radical messaging than non-Muslims,” Greenfield concludes from the NYPD study.

Greenfeld examines how jihadists translate theology into violent action on the basis of a 2009 recruitment manual. “Create vulnerability and isolate them. Talk about heaven and hell,” she explains is the manual’s recommended strategy for recruiters seeking to enlist prospective martyrs. Radicalization “normally happens to those who fear the torment of the afterlife and who come to know that jihad is the salvation from eternal damnation. The result is that jihad is desired and craved,” the manual argues.

Greenfeld analyzes the jihad doctrine’s potential for creating theological ticking time bombs that are often impervious to subsequent defusing through ideological reeducation. “It is uncertain if or when a non-jihadist Muslim will suddenly decide to act on their jihadi fantasies,” she writes. Meanwhile, as numerous de-radicalization failures indicate, Representative Peter King in a conversation with her “didn’t confirm that a feasible, effective program exists that can de-radicalize or rehabilitate terrorists.”

Along with individual acts of jihadist terrorism, Greenfeld warns of a “stealth jihad, an invisible threat of radicalization” presented by those Muslims who have little desire to assimilate into Western societies. “Immigration and procreation are the two most potent waves of invisible recruiting and cultural jihad,” given that orthodox “Islam is not only a religion, it is a way of life, social, political, intellectual, physical.” Therefore, often Islamic proselytization or “da’wa is an invitation to deceive,” such as with claims that Islam in Arabic means peace, when actually the “word Islam means submission.”

Greenfeld examines issues presented by various American Muslim communities, such as the Detroit suburb of “Hamtramck, Michigan, America’s first and only majority Muslim city.” “Five times each day the minaret sounds beginning at 6:00 a.m.” from a local mosque, one fact among others that means that “[s]ome residents are not sure if they are living in Michigan or somewhere in the Arabian desert.” “There is a certain resentment by the original residents, as their lifestyle is pushed aside for the import of a large number of immigrants who don’t intend to blend into the culture that was there before,” she writes.

A Greenfeld reunion in her hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota, prompts interesting immigration policy observations about the influx of Somalis that has formed North America’s largest Somali community. “From the desert heat of Somalia to the cold tundra of 10,000 lakes, why would Somalis choose to live in Minnesota?” she wonders about this Muslim community that has become a source of jihadists in the land of Lake Wobegon. That “Minnesota spends more money per low-income individual on public welfare than any other state” is one significant factor.

Greenfeld notes that “media reporting is not always accurate and usually has a political goal,” something that only abets subversive jihadist influences such as the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque in northern Virginia’s “Wahhabi Corridor.” This mosque has numerous terrorism ties, “yet the evidence is not enough to convince politicians representing Virginia’s citizens to close the place down,” she states. In fairness to these lawmakers, it is precisely America’s freedoms that limit the legal possibilities to “close down” groups no matter how extreme, whether promoting jihad or white supremacy. By contrast, she reviews the record of former University of South Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian, ultimately convicted of material support for terrorism. “How do you feel about paying tuition for this guy to teach?” she asks.

Facing such enemies among us, Greenfeld’s homeland security strategy rightly prioritizes civil society taking on the challenge of jihadist ideology. “The extreme ideology must be addressed. While after-school teen programs are nice — they will not solve the problem,” she writes. This includes ever-elusive Islamic reform; thus “tolerance and respect for non-sharia Muslims is imperative — they lead the way to reformation” that “must come from the inside the moderate Muslim community.”

Greenfeld’s book provides a salutary reminder that, as with past totalitarian challenges, victory begins with a battle of ideas that instructs Americans why we fight. This ideological struggle requires a grassroots, Tea Party-like movement that understands lessons such as the fact that “[m]orals and values are best taught with family at the dinner table.” The “power in the United States is not in Washington, D.C., but in homes and neighborhoods around the country. We must return to American values, history and heritage and empower our children to protect our nation.”

The Priest’s Role in Marriage Preparation

July 14, 2018/in Culture War, Religion/by The Catholic Thing

Fr. Gerald E. Murray: Engaged couples have an instinctive trust that the priest, as a man of God, will tell them what God expects of them in marriage.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life, made some provocative remarks about priests and marriage preparation in an interview that appeared recently in the Irish Catholic magazine Intercom. He said: “They have no credibility; they have never lived the experience; they may know moral theology, dogmatic theology in theory, but to go from there to putting it into practice every day . . . they don’t have the experience.”

He also spoke about the priests of the Diocese of Dallas where he served as bishop for nine years: “We have a million and a half Catholics and 75 priests, with a 45 to 50 percent rate of (Mass) attendance. Those 75 priests are not going to be interested in organizing marriage meetings.”

Do priests really lack credibility and interest in preparing couples for the sacrament of marriage? That has not been my experience. Most priests, and more specifically, most parish priests take a lively interest in marriage preparation.

Couples almost always appreciate their efforts as they prepare for marriage. Fr. Roger Landry has described the reality on the ground in most parishes in a recent column. Most priests are credible witnesses to the Church’s teaching on marriage, and they speak with insight – and often wisdom – from their extensive experience dealing with engaged couples, families, and children.

What’s most troubling here are the premises underlying Cardinal Farrell’s remarks. He implies that the primary purpose of marriage instruction is to communicate experiential advice on how husbands and wives can live so as to produce marital happiness and familial harmony. To attain this goal, what couples need is to hear is practical advice from married people who, from their own experiences, will share “best practices” with engaged couples. He also claims that overworked priests would rather not take time from their busy schedules to meet with and instruct couples seeking to be married in the Church.

Marriage preparation programs should include advice on marital life from couples who are serious Catholics and have years of valuable experience in living out the demands of Christian marriage. And many priests are overworked. Yet should we promote the notion that priests should avoid working with engaged couples and are not really suited to this task?

Is it really better for them, instead, to dedicate time to other, relatively less important tasks such as building management and office work, which are in fact unavoidable and time-consuming tasks for most parish priests? Isn’t sacramental preparation a vital part of the spiritual paternity of the men ordained to celebrate the sacraments?

I had plenty of instruction in the seminary about Christian marriage, and none about building maintenance and parish office management. The seminary’s priorities were correct.

The number of Catholics seeking to be married in the Church has declined significantly. One reason is the ignorance of many Catholics about the sacramental nature of marriage and their obligations as Catholics. When a couple comes to the rectory seeking to be married in the Church we should view this as an opportunity to give doctrinal and spiritual formation to these obviously good willed, believing people. Who knows? They may tell their friends what a good experience it was to learn from a priest about the state in which they plan to spend the rest of their lives.

Poorly catechized Catholics need to understand Church teaching about the nature and purpose of marriage. Priests spend years in the seminary acquiring a deep understanding of that teaching, and how to explain its truth and value to the people of our times. They are meant to share that doctrinal formation with the laity.

The priest is important in communicating to the couple the seriousness of what they are undertaking. Our laws and social customs largely reject Christ’s doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage. Catholics need to know that fidelity to Christ Himself is central to this matter and that Christ gives the grace to live with fidelity, against all temptations to treat the marriage vows as something that can be lightly abandoned or retracted.

Engaged couples have an instinctive trust that the priest, as a man of God, will tell them what God expects of them and how He will help them. This is not a theoretical matter for abstract consideration. Christ’s teaching on marriage is the foundation for happy and holy marriages.

The spiritual paternity of the priest means that he takes a lively interest in all aspects of the religious formation and growth of the people entrusted to his care. His fatherhood finds particular relevance when he is speaking with those who seek to be mothers and fathers of the next generation of believers.

The priest brings Christ into the picture in a very important way when he sits down and speaks at length with a couple who have come to him for guidance about getting married. His intentional absence from this important time of preparation, because of the misguided claim that he is unqualified and thus unwelcome, would be a disaster for that parish.

When the parish has a fundraising campaign, the advice given by professional fundraisers is that the personal involvement of the priest is vital to the success of the campaign. The more people he speaks with, the more money comes in. This is so even when the priest says at first: “I don’t know anything about fundraising.” He can learn quickly, and the results will show just how valuable he is to the effort.

The same applies even more to marriage preparation. Success in this case cannot be measured in dollars raised, but rather in the number of well-formed couples who enter marriage with a true knowledge of the greatness of this sacrament, and the assurance that God will assist them at all times to live in loving fidelity to their vows and to their duties as husband and wife.

Fr. Gerald E. Murray

The Rev. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D. is a canon lawyer and the pastor of Holy Family Church in New York City.

EDITORS NOTE: © 2018 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own. The featured image is by Unsplash/Josh Applegate.

HuffPo maligns ‘white Christians’ says ‘White evangelicals will never make America great again’ – Take Action!

July 12, 2018/in Culture War, Must Read, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Florida Family Association

Huffingtonpost.com’s most recent racist anti-white, anti-Christian column titled “White evangelicals will never make America great again” was published on July 1, 2018. If a HuffPost.com article ever denigrates “black” Christians it would most likely lose all advertisers including Hewlett Packard. But some advertisers are okay with racist articles directed at white Christians.

The Huffington Post has published numerous articles that promote Islamist propaganda. Huffington Post articles have defended the Muslim Brotherhood, fundraised for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), blamed Christian Islamophobia for worldwide conflict with Muslims, promoted an anti-Semitic blog, encouraged Islamist demagoguery, and promoted other Islamist propaganda. The Huffington Post has former Al Jazeera journalists writing articles and Huffington Post Arabic is led by hard line Islamists from Al Jazeera.

The Huffington Post published an article written by Ben Piven on January 12, 2017 titled “Why Al Jazeera America Failed, And Why We Need It More Than Ever.” The subtitle stated “America desperately needs something similar to pioneer this new era of uncertainty and misinformation.” Ben Piven “was at Al Jazeera for over 5 years, including several years at AJAM in New York City and also in Doha at AJE during the height of the Arab Spring.”

Huffingtonpost.com calls America’s finest, our soldiers racist in its article titled “Becoming A Racist: The Unfortunate Side Effect Of Serving Your Country?” In addition to smearing America’s finest with the racist title it trashes our police as well.

Twenty one examples of Islamist propaganda articles have been provided to Hewlett Packardofficials.

Why is it important to urge companies to stop advertising at Huffingtonpost.com?

The Huffington Post’s large number of readers and high volume of pro-Islamist reports makes it a leading proliferator of Islamist propaganda in the United States.
Islamophobia propaganda is the top tool Islamists use to influence Americans to ignore advancement of Sharia doctrine in the United States. Unfortunately, it intimidates people to the point of stifling free speech in a manner that hurts public safety and allows Sharia to thrive.
The Huffington Post’s frequent pro-Islamist reporting feeds the Hate America crowd with more reasons to defend Islamists and ignore the harmful direction that results from its acceptance.
HuffPost and HuffPost Arab employ several former Al Jazeera reporters and Islamist advocates who have pushed the Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood agenda.
Florida Family Association’s opposition campaign educates thousands of officials at American companies about the harm caused by erroneous Islamophobia propaganda and pro-Islamist reporting. The thousands of emails that company officials receive reveal that there are many Americans who find Islamist propaganda deceitful, harmful and offensive.

Hewlett Packard certainly has the right to advertise in whatever forum it chooses. You have the same right to voice concern regarding the content on such forums and choose to patronize companies that will not spend your consumer dollars supporting Islamist propaganda and spewing hate at Christians, Jews and white people.

Florida Family Association has prepared an email for you to send to encourage Hewlett Packard officials to stop supporting Huffingtonpost.com propaganda with its customers’ money.

To send your email, please click the following link, enter your name and email address then click the “Send Your Message” button. You may also edit the subject or message text if you wish.

Click here to send your email to encourage Hewlett Packard officials to stop supporting Huffingtonpost.com vitriolic and Islamist propaganda with its customers’ money.

Freedom From Religion Foundation Tries to Bully School Into Removing Prayer From Graduation

July 11, 2018/in Culture War, Education, Policy, Politics, Religion/by The Daily Caller

The Freedom From Religion Foundation accused a Tennessee school of violating constitutional law by allowing prayer at its graduation ceremony, but the school won’t budge.

Christopher Line, legal fellow with FFRF, wrote in a letter to Catoosa County Schools district that Ringgold High School should not have permitted public prayer at their May graduation ceremony, claiming that it was unconstitutional and that it alienated non-religious students, according to Chattanooga Times Free Press (CTFP). The school district responded, however, that graduation ceremonies were and would continue to be planned by students, and therefore the involvement of prayer was legal.

“The Supreme Court has continually struck down prayers at school-sponsored events, including public school graduations,” Line wrote to Renzo Wiggins, the school board’s attorney, according to CTFP. “… School officials may not invite a student, teacher, faculty member, or clergy to give any type of prayer, invocation, or benediction at a public high school graduation.”

Line claimed that a parent had contacted FFRF to alert them about the use of prayer at the school’s graduation ceremony.

Catoosa County Schools Superintendent Denia Reese responded to Line’s letter, saying that students plan and lead graduation ceremonies and that if FFRF wanted to file a formal legal complaint, the school district’s lawyer would be happy to respond.

“Graduation ceremonies are planned and led by students. If and when the system receives a complaint, the system’s attorney will thoroughly research the allegations, and when he has completed this research he will respond to the Freedom from Religion Foundation explaining how our students can continue to develop graduation programs and lead the ceremonies,” Reese wrote.

Line said that this was the sixth letter that FFRF had sent to Catoosa County Schools since 2013 complaining about a variety of school related events involving religion.

EDITORS NOTE: Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image is of residents of DeSoto County pictured on Sept. 4, 2011 in Hernando, Mississippi while they gathered on the courthouse lawn to pray for and preach against the Supreme Court ruling that bans prayer at public-school events. (Photo: Robert King/Polaris/Newscom)

Three Years Past Obergefell: From “Equality” To Totalitarianism

July 11, 2018/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Policy, Politics, Religion/by 2ndvote .com

Three years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that marriage must constitutionally be expanded to include people in same-sex sexual relationships. Back then, LGBT activists said they simply wanted “equality” through the expansion of legal rights, but the marriage debate has quickly spring-boarded the left to a new assault on conservative principles.

Now it is Christians who are fighting for the basic American values of religious liberty and free speech. With so-called “Pride Month” ending tomorrow, 2ndVote wanted to ensure that readers are aware of the corporations which stand behind the LGBT movement’s totalitarianism.

Probably the most important corporate backers of LGBT activism are those which stand behind the Human Rights Campaign. This is an organization which literally rewards efforts to crush religious liberty and left at least one advocate of traditional sexual values concerned for his and his family’s safety. Four corporations which don’t deserve your second vote dollars are Target, Starbucks, PayPal, and Apple — all of which provide financial and other support to radical LGBT activism.

These corporations aren’t just supporting the Human Rights Campaign’s redefinition of marriage. They are standing behind this totalitarian organization’s bullying of North Carolina, Georgia, and Indiana over common-sense measures to protect businesses, religious organizations, and women in restrooms. Then-Indiana governor Mike Pence quickly capitulated to pressure in 2015, and his state’s measure was overturned just a week after Pence signed it into law.

We found that Apple and Starbucks joined this disinformation campaign. We also noted that PayPal’s alleged desire for “equality” in North Carolina did not prevent it from doing business in dictator-run Cuba. Shockingly, PayPal and Apple also hopped onto the Human Rights Campaign’s effort to declare that baker Jack Phillips shouldn’t have the right to bring his religious views into his own business practices.

Finally, Apple and Target have long supported the Human Rights Campaign’s push for the dishonestly-framed “Equality Act.” If enacted, this measure would make it illegal for millions of businesses and other institutions to run their businesses as they see fit.

As they say, the times — they are a-changing. This is perhaps seen no more starkly than in how “equality” and “tolerance” have been replaced with government enforcement of LGBT ideology. It’s also notable that three years ago, LGBT activists said they wanted same-sex sexual couples to be given special treatment. Now, they declare that anyone who believes biological sex is consistent despite how a person feels is nothing short of a bigot.

Starbucks, Target, Apple, PayPal — these groups are the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Not spending your second vote dollars on them will be a strong warning to other corporations that Americans don’t want corporations using government to enforce radical LGBT totalitarianism.

Help us continue developing the content and research that conservatives are using to hold corporations for their activism by becoming a 2ndVote Member today!

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I Will Make You Fishers of Wild Boars — Humanity’s need for salvation meets humanity at its best.

July 10, 2018/in Culture War, Religion/by The Catholic Thing

Michael Pakaluk on the efforts to rescue the Thai soccer team trapped in a flooded cave. Humanity’s need for salvation meets humanity at its best.

May all the Wild Boars be saved! – That is my prayer, joined with those of many others, please God, by the time you read these words it will have been answered.

They are the soccer team of twelve boys and their coach, trapped by monsoon floods in a small chamber, 2.5 miles within a network of caves in northern Thailand. It takes imagination to appreciate their plight.

Caves are pitch-black, with no light whatsoever. Their passageways are not like Luray or Carlsbad, cleaned up and smoothed down for average tourists to stroll through, but more like picking one’s way, up and down, along a rigorous cliff trail.

“Lemon-squeezers” are not uncommon – small cracks that barely let the body through, only if you bend in exactly the right way. Now place the whole scene under cold water with rushing currents. Consider your favorite two-mile cliff walk and picture yourself covering that same distance but swimming, in complete darkness, through narrow passageways, against the current. That’s what it means to get to them or to get them out. Meanwhile, they have been huddled on a small ledge in that small chamber, running out of oxygen.

They could have been any kind of group of boys, but they are a soccer team. This fact may mean little to you or to me. But 40 percent of the world’s population has been watching the Earth’s Greatest Sporting Event these days, a soccer competition called the World Cup.

The boys entered the cave almost exactly when the first World Cup game was played this year. The President of the association that organizes the tournament has invited the Wild Boars to the final game in Moscow on Sunday, if they are able. If you wanted to shine a spotlight of worldwide publicity on their plight, you couldn’t find a better way.

It is part of the Christian conception of providence that such “public” trials do not just happen by accident, but are by design, within God’s plan, and meant to teach. That is why good art (and not so good art) can be based on them: “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” “Into Thin Air,” “The Titanic,” “The Endurance”.

We have Our Lord’s own example for this:

“Those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” (Lk 13:4-5)

Then what might we learn from the plight Wild Boars, along with our need to repent?

We have creative freedom here. As a philosopher, I am struck by the combination of images – a cave, which is underwater. Many have sensed that life involves some kind of struggle or test. Plato conceived of it as a cave, and philosophical types have since found the image congenial.

Plato’s cave was steep and rugged, not totally dark within, but lit by a fire that cast shadow figures. In principle, you could climb out of it yourself. But a guide made the ascent easier, and you definitely needed to be set free by a guide to start on the journey at all.

Christ could have used the image of a cave, since caves are abundant in the Holy Land. But he pictured salvation instead as a matter of getting rescued from water – pulled out of it like a fish. This is itself interesting.

Caves are inherently inhospitable to life; water is a source of life: a man drowning in water, then, is not where no living being should be, but where no human being should be. Moreover, his rescue will be instantaneous: simply get him above water. Then, he can breathe, and he is in the sun. Any necessary ascent through the water is secondary, since, after all, one can drown in a shallow pond. Besides, time is limited. Thus, a drowning man’s main task is not to struggle upwards, but to stop straining and accept the help of the Fisher of Men.

And yet perhaps many of our contemporaries – maybe (against expectation) the apparently wildest bores among them – are more like that soccer team. They need to be fished out of water, indeed, while, at the same time, they seem to place themselves deeper and deeper into a cave. Their rescue, then, would require a deft combination of faith and reason: both a sacrificial witness of faith, to the point of death, and also the consummate skill that is capable of finding passageways through dark caves.

To me, this is the deepest lesson of the current event. Take Man to be stranded on a shelf inside a cave breeched by floods. The Church must rescue him. Has it thought enough in advance to have its own elite SEAL team? Will it be able to identify those expert “amateurs” who really know how to deal with such circumstances, or will it even want their help, if they come forward on their own to volunteer? It has had apostles like that, including some priests famous in the city where I live. But it needs many more.

There are many other lessons to draw, and I’ll leave them to you, except for this thought. Does the international cooperation surrounding the rescue of the boys teach us anything about human nature?

If humankind were by nature in a war of all against all, then, when an elite Thai naval SEAL team swims 2.5 miles through waters in a cave, in order to rescue, not to eliminate, the group within, it would be acting against human nature: their apparent heroism would be merely the work of convention and threats of punishment for non-compliance.

But this is clearly false, and we like to remind ourselves that it is false. We like the story of the cave rescue because it teaches that military men are, fundamentally, agents of peace, because humankind, despite sin and death, is finally, by nature, at peace.

Michael Pakaluk

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is professor at the Busch School of Business and Economics at The Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children.

VIDEO: ‘Personal Liberty’ Litmus Test for Supreme Court Nominees

July 9, 2018/in Courts & Law, Elections, Featured, Healthcare, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Church Militant

by Bradley Eli, M.Div., Ma.Th.

Democrats fear constitutionalists will overturn Roe v. Wade

WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) – Fearing that devoted constitutionalists if placed on the High Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, pro-abortion activists are urging Democratic senators to screen judicial nominees using a new personal liberty standard.

At a press conference Thursday in Washington, Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, unveiled a new litmus test for discerning nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court who could reverse Roe. Speaking on behalf of several pro-abortion groups, Laguens said:

We are calling for a personal liberty standard, that a Senate must only confirm a justice who affirmatively declares that they believe that the Constitution protects individual liberty and the right of all people to make personal decisions about their bodies and their personal relationships, including the use of contraception, the right to have an abortion and the freedom to marry who you choose.

Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, explained during the press conference that the new standard is needed because Justice Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts both affirmed during their confirmation hearings that Roe was “settled law” and “precedent,” only seeming to rule otherwise once seated on the High Court.

Fallen added, “We’re here to warn Trump’s nominee … that calling Roe a precedent or settled law is not enough, not even close.”

He then brought up the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who was adamant about enforcing the Constitution as it was originally understood by its writers — a judicial philosophy known as originalism.

“Trump’s own litmus test has raised the bar for what a nominee must answer at a hearing. Because so many of these people on Trump’s shortlist are scholars of the late Antonin Scalia, we are not going to accept any jiggery-pokery on Roe v. Wade, and we are not going to accept any applesauce answers on the Affordable Care Act,” Fallen said.

Gorsuch is seen by many as closely following in the judicial footsteps of Scalia. Gorsuch was promoted by Leonard Leo, vice president of the conservative Federalist Society, which seeks to have the Constitution applied according to the original understanding of its authors and the American people. Leo is credited with helping Trump form his list of Supreme Court nominees. But most, if not all, of these judges see Roe as indefensible when pitted against the Constitution.

Even liberals believe the Constitution doesn’t explicitly contain a so-called personal right to abortion. Rodney Smolla, a professor at the University of Richmond, last year conceded, “I think the framers were inviting future generations of Americans to apply their own experiences in saying that there may be certain rights, like rights of privacy, that we now think of as vital that they didn’t put down explicitly on the list of rights in the bill of rights.”

Constitutionalists on the Supreme Court must overturn Roe in order to restore jurisprudence, says Evan Bernick of the Federalist Society. Roe, left unchallenged, presents a serious danger to society, writes Bernick:

It exposes ordinary citizens to government power of a kind that the Framers regarded as “the very definition of tyranny.” The minotaur of arbitrary government, unlike that of “judicial supremacy,” is no myth — it is all too real, and it is fast devouring rights once held sacred. It is time that constitutionalists cease encouraging judges to keep it satiated.

Check out our full Supreme Court coverage

Afghan soldier murders American serviceman who was training him, wounds two others

July 8, 2018/in National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad Watch

One of the most commonly repeated elements of the Leftist/Islamic supremacist rap sheet against me, supposedly establishing that I am an “anti-Muslim extremist,” is that I said that there was no reliable way to distinguish between peaceful Muslims and jihadists, and no distinction between the two in Muslim communities. Yet if I were wrong in saying that, this American service member would be alive today, because the jihadi who murdered him or her would never have been accepted into the Afghan National Army.

“‘Insider Attack’ Kills U.S. Service Member in Afghanistan,” by Mujib Mashal and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, New York Times, July 7, 2018

KABUL, Afghanistan — An American service member was killed and two others were wounded in southern Afghanistan on Saturday in what officials described as an “apparent insider attack.”

The United States military, announcing the death in a statement, did not provide further details. The wounded service members were in stable condition, the military said. The name of the soldier who was killed was being withheld so the next of kin could be notified.

An American military officer familiar with the attack said it had occurred at a small base in Tarinkot, a town in Uruzgan Province, where roughly 150 soldiers who are stationed in Kandahar often rotate through to train Afghan soldiers. The outpost is one of several in the country where the Army’s Security Force Assistance Brigade is stationed. The unit — tasked with training and assisting the Afghan National Army — is one of the leading elements of the Trump administration’s new strategy in Afghanistan….

It also offered a reminder that insider attacks, also known as green-on-blue attacks, have been a recurring problem in Afghanistan, carried out by Afghan security forces loyal to the Taliban or harboring grievances against American troops. About 150 troops from the American-led coalition have been killed in such attacks during the nearly 17-year-old war, according to data from the United States military, with the number of the attacks peaking in 2012.

The assault on Saturday is the first insider attack of 2018 against American troops, roughly 14,000 of whom are stationed in Afghanistan. In 2017, there were three such attacks on American forces and one against Romanian troops. In June of that year, three United States soldiers were killed in Nangarhar Province when an Afghan commando opened fire at a small outpost used in the battle against Islamic State militants….

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Jihad Watch.

Vesting in Lavender

July 5, 2018/in Culture War, Policy, Politics, Religion, Science/by The Catholic Thing

Anthony Esolen recalls a time when there was a solidity in belief: in the differences between the sexes and in the Church and its servants.

Do you remember a time, readers, when you could spend a whole day, actually a whole month, occasionally even a year, and not give one passing thought to the issue of sexual perversions?

Do you remember a time when not one liberal in a thousand would have thought it a good idea to have drag queens do story-hour for children in a public library? When people who fell into sexual perversion, or who are alleged to have done so, or who are alleged to have wanted to do so though they did not, or who are alleged to have been the sorts of people who would have wanted to do so if they had known What We Know Now, were not held up for the admiration of children, in their school textbooks?

Do you remember a time when not one liberal in a thousand would have thought that a man who said he was a woman or a woman who said she was a man was in touch with reality and not prey to a destructive fantasy or delusion?

Do you remember a time when liberals, precisely because they were liberals, held men and women up to high standards of sexual decency, and (wrongly) believed that they were capable of maintaining those standards without the ministrations of the Church?

Do you remember a time when it would not have occurred to you in a hundred years that your priest was anything other than an ordinary man, a real man, following the special call of the Lord? A man who in another life, with a different call, would have been married with a passel of children, a pillar of his community?

Do you remember a time when a priest could march alongside miners and auto workers and look like one of them, not like a breathless female reporter in the locker room of a football team? Do you remember when nobody, absolutely nobody, would have considered that a female reporter should even be in that locker room?

Do you remember a time when divorce was a scandal? I do. Do you remember a time when family-owned motels would not let unmarried people book one room instead of two? Do you remember a time when boys and girls actually dated, and when the vast territory between loneliness and going to bed as a married couple had not been strafed and scorched and left with not a single healthy custom standing – a cultural Nagasaki and Hiroshima, from sea to sea?

And now this, about Cardinal McCarrick.  The cardinal, choosing his words precisely, says he has no memory of ever having engaged in the sexual abuse of the erstwhile young man who is now accusing him.

About that accusation I have no confident opinion, nor need I have. For when you have a gorilla in the living room, thrashing the furniture, chewing the upholstery, and defecating in plain sight and smell, you do not ask whether it was also the gorilla who smashed the light bulb.

The cardinal has cautiously denied one sin, while not bothering to address the thousand others. For all these years, according to witnesses at last speaking out, he has been vesting in lavender, compromising young men in his charge, including those who he made sure would see his misdeeds though they did not participate in them, and exerting all the subtle pressure of power and prestige to keep those who demurred – who did not enjoy bunking with Uncle Ted – from speaking out.

He has pointedly not said, “I have never had sexual relations with a seminarian or a priest.”  It was a perversion of the male protective brotherhood, whose noblest and purest manifestation is the apostolic band.

Unlike those brothers the apostles, who went forth into the world to lay down their lives for Christ and the Church, these bands in our day have used the Church as a cover, and a means of procurement. They have turned the Church inward upon themselves and their essentially narcissistic and childish desires and deeds.

We should not then be surprised that the Church, in their hands, becomes contentedly anti-apostolic and anti-evangelistic. The leaders make common cause with ambitious women against their enemies: ordinary, healthy, self-assured, masculine men and the women who love and esteem them.

The Mass itself is made soft and effeminate – neither masculine nor feminine. I have often noted that every single hymn in vast repertory of Christian hymnody that has anything to do with fighting for Christ, hymns going back all the way to Prudentius and Venantius Fortunatus, has been banished from the hymnals, except for For All the Saints.

That one exception we may attribute to the need to have something or other for All Saints’ Day, and even then, in many hymnals I have seen, the lyrics are made squishy, or the stanzas with the most fight in them are simply dropped.  These leaders are simply not interested in taking on the world.

But that is the raison d’être of the brotherhood. Men who are friends, soldiers in the field, do not gaze into each other’s eyes, melting. Your drill sergeant does not call himself Uncle Ted. He does not write lovey letters to you, after he has snuggled you into a compromise. He does not engage in spiritual bribery and blackmail.

Men who stand shoulder to shoulder – you can picture them in your mind’s eye, leaning against a fence or a car or a tank – look out in the same direction, towards the world to conquer. That has been the orientation, the direction to take, of every true leader of men the Church has known, from Peter and Paul to Benedict, from Francis and Dominic to Ignatius, from John Bosco to Jose Maria Escriva.

We have the Lord’s own choice to follow, ordaining men to form that band of brothers. Men, not just anatomical males. They might get something done.

Anthony Esolen

Anthony Esolen is a lecturer, translator, and writer. His latest books are Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child and Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture. He directs the Center for the Restoration of Catholic Culture at Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts.

Why the Escalation in Suicides?

July 5, 2018/in Commentary, Culture War, Religion, Science/by Tim Bryce

A couple of months ago, I produced a presentation titled, “The PRIDE Renewal Tour,” which noted the changes in our culture and what can be done about them. Among the subjects discussed, I reviewed a recent report from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) regarding how youth suicides have skyrocketed 70% over the last decade. “According to the CDC, nearly 45,000 Americans age 10 or older died by suicide in 2016, making it the 10th leading cause of death.” It is also the 2nd leading cause of death among young people, ages 15-24.

According to Tom Simon, one of the authors of the CDC report, the increase in suicides is not limited to just our youth, “We know that overall in the US, we’re seeing increases in suicide rates across all age groups.”

This was amplified by the recent suicides of designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain. Although it is unclear as to precisely why they decided to take their own lives, it was reported they suffered from depression. Despite their success, they simply couldn’t find happiness and contentment.

From their deaths, the public is slowly becoming aware of the growing trend in suicide, particularly among our youth. So what is causing this, failure? This certainly was not the case with Spade and Bourdain. Perhaps it was triggered by the influx of drugs and technology. Maybe it is simple depression, which has also been growing over the years. A recent REPORT claims “15 percent of the adult population will experience depression at some point in their lifetime.” Of that, “nearly 50 percent of all people diagnosed with depression are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.”

Again, we can look at the influences of drug and technology addiction, but I believe it goes deeper than this, specifically a loss of meaning in life which particularly affects our youth. To this end, let us consider the slow erosion of our MORAL VALUES as reported annually by the Gallup organization.

I have been following this since 2012 and in just the past six years alone, there has been a noticeable decline; when asked, “HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE OVERALL STATE OF MORAL VALUES IN THIS COUNTRY TODAY?”

2012	2018
20%	14%	EXCELLENT/GOOD
36%	37%	ONLY FAIR
43%	49%	POOR

We can blame this erosion on the media’s distorted views of morality, the failure of the family unit to properly teach their youth, and the decline of organized religion. As to the latter, both Gallup and Harris have produced polls showing the belief in a Supreme Being is slowly declining. Further, attendance at religious institutions is also dwindling; “65 percent of churches are declining or plateaued.”

Even more disturbing is fewer younger people are going to church which, of course, affects membership. Consequently, “for every new church that opens, four close.” For many years, churches and temples preached the lessons of right and wrong, but with fewer attendees, these lessons now go unheeded. It has become glaringly obvious to churches they must change in order to survive, be it the venue or how to disseminate their message.

More importantly, STUDIES make a direct connection between the rise of youth suicides on a loss of sense of purpose as derived from the decline of religion. In other words, as religion declines, youth suicides skyrocket. It is not a coincidence.

We would like to believe money, fame, and success leads to happiness. As evidenced by celebrities such as Spade and Bourdain, this is not the case. It’s a matter of how we see ourselves, our role in society, and learning to live a meaningful life, which are all lessons we should learn from our family, our schools, and our places of worship. However, if we do not support such institutions, we are doomed to watch our suicide rate continue to escalate unabated.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Keep the Faith!

How did accused molester Cardinal McCarrick keep his secret for so long?

July 3, 2018/in Culture War, Featured, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad Watch

“Why were so many journalists willing to let the rumors go unexplored? Or, if they did explore the rumors, why were they willing to drop the story, at a time when so many other allegations were splashed across the headlines? Could it be because, for anyone seeking to influence a cardinal, the threat of disclosure is more effective than disclosure itself?”

This leads to a related question: with Christians, including Catholic Christians, being persecuted for their faith at unprecedented rates around the world, why is there not a single bishop (with the notable exception of Cardinal Burke) who is willing to break with the ecclesiastical lockstep and acknowledge the obvious and readily demonstrable fact that Islam is not a religion of peace? Why is there not even one bishop who will decry the relentless harassment and attempts to silence those who dare to point that Islam is indeed not a religion of peace? The U.S. Catholic bishops are much more concerned that you believe that Islam is a religion of peace than that you believe in, say, the Nicene Creed. Could this be a clue as to why there has emerged not even one bishop who dares to state and stand upon the truth?

“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

“How did Cardinal McCarrick’s secret last so long?,” by Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, June 20, 2018:

At least fifteen years ago, I wrote a confidential email message to a few trusted friends, telling them to brace themselves. Within a few days, I said, a major secular newspaper would break a sensational story about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. To my surprise, the newspaper never ran the story—which finally came out today.

At the time, several reporters had spoken with me about the cardinal. Most had been unable to find anyone willing to go on record with complaints. Rod Dreher, one of the journalists who was investigating the rumors, now writes about the frustration he felt when witnesses refused to go public….

Now that the story has finally surfaced, Dreher wants to know: “Why were so many bishops willing to run cover for Ted McCarrick all these years?” That’s a good question. But I have another.

Why were so many journalists willing to let the rumors go unexplored? Or, if they did explore the rumors, why were they willing to drop the story, at a time when so many other allegations were splashed across the headlines? Could it be because, for anyone seeking to influence a cardinal, the threat of disclosure is more effective than disclosure itself?

RELATED VIDEO: Cardinal Theodore McCarrick alleged to have sexually abused minor.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Jihad Watch.