Month: February 2009

Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana and a convert from Hinduism to Roman Catholicism, quoted in Newsweek (Dec. 2008) on religion: “If I wanted the aesthetics without the inconvenient morality, I could become Episcopalian.”

Source: Newsweek

A word of warning from Joseph Loconte on the seductive appeal of government funding for Church-based social ministries. Loconte, a senior research fellow at The King’s College in New York City, says that the faith-based initiative, as it’s being reformulated under the Obama administration, will likely be filtered though a Religious Left/Social Gospel ideology which holds that “compassion is defined by government budgets and delivered by government agents.” From my point of view, the faith-based initiative has always been problematical because it surrenders the autonomy of the Church, and its ancient ethic of freely given charity, to federal bureaucrats. The danger here is the secularization of social ministries and a dependence on federal funding. Just say no.

Witness the bizarre debate that erupted in 2001, recently revived by Obama, about the right of religious organizations to make faith commitment a criterion for employment. Earlier this week, the New York Times demanded that the president revoke this right — the freedom of association, that is, once considered intrinsic to democracy — for churches and charities that receive government support. The writers at the Times failed to mention that the 1964 Civil Rights Act (banning employment discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or religion) nevertheless upheld this freedom for faith-based organizations, allowing them to choose staff for religious reasons. Until recently, it did not occur to policymakers to accuse the venerable Jewish Social Service Agency of discrimination for hiring Jews, or to insist that the Salvation Army, an evangelical ministry, open its employment posts to atheists. Continue reading →

Ed. GOA leaders could learn from the moral courage of Pope Benedict. They remained silent when Orthodox Senators Olympia Snowe and Paul Sarbanes voted against a ban on partial birth abortion. See: Senators Sarbanes and Snowe Betray the Moral Heritage of the Orthodox Christian Faith.

VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday told U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic who supports abortion rights, that Catholic politicians have a duty to protect life “at all stages of its development,” the Vatican said.

Pelosi is the first top Democrat to meet with Benedict since the election of Barack Obama, who won a majority of the Catholic vote despite differences with the Vatican on abortion.

The Vatican released remarks by the pope to Pelosi, saying Benedict spoke of the church’s teaching “on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death.” That is an expression often used by the pope when expressing opposition to abortion.

Benedict said all Catholics—especially legislators, jurists and political leaders—should work to create “a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.”

Continue reading →