Michael Brown - Thou Shalt Not be Catholic

It was prescience, not paranoia, that prompted some social commentators to predict that gay activism would become the principle threat to religious freedoms in America. A recent incident at George Washington University provides the latest confirmation.

In 2010, the University of Illinois fired a Catholic professor who taught courses on Catholicism in the school’s religion department after a student accused him of hate speech because the professor affirmed what the Catholic Church taught about homosexual practice. After a national outcry and a swift legal response, the professor was reinstated, but the fact that he was initially fired is an absolute outrage.

Now, two gay seniors at George Washington University are seeking to have the Catholic chaplain at the university’s Newman Center removed over his alleged anti-gay stance. (The Newman Center is named after Cardinal Newman and is there to serve the school’s Catholic students who make up roughly 3,000 of the university’s 10,000 students.)

The two students, Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen, have mounted a campaign to get Father Greg Shaffer dismissed, accusing him of being ardently anti-gay and (perish the thought!) anti-abortion as well.

What? A Catholic priest who opposes homosexual practice and abortion? How can this be? What has become of the Catholic Church? (Dripping sarcasm intended.)

According to published reports, “Legacy and Bergen say they are primarily upset about the counseling Shaffer offers. They say he urges students who have homosexual feelings to lead a life of celibacy.”

What else would Shaffer be expected to do when a gay Catholic comes to him for counseling? Encourage promiscuity? Encourage serial, gay monogamy? Encourage redefining marriage so the gay Catholic could “wed” a same-sex partner? And since the priest has committed himself to celibacy and is, hopefully, being faithful to his commitment, is it so outlandish for him to counsel others to be celibate as well? (As a married man, I’m not claiming that I could easily be celibate. I’m simply discussing the situation at hand.)

We are told that Damian Legacy “spent considerable time at the Newman Center during his first two years at George Washington. He was an altar server at mass. He believed that he would become a Catholic priest after graduating.

“All that changed, though, when Legacy told Shaffer that he and Bergen had entered a homosexual relationship. Shaffer allegedly charged Legacy with being immoral and lacking in faith.”

So, the young Mr. Legacy believed that he could be a good, faithful Catholic while being involved in an active homosexual relationship? And he was offended that the priest allegedly told him he was being immoral? Seriously?

Well here’s a newsflash for Damian Legacy: According to the Bible and Catholic teaching, sex outside of marriage (which is only the union of a man and woman) is immoral, be it heterosexual sex or homosexual sex. That’s exactly what a faithful Catholic priest (or Protestant pastor) would tell you, and so, rather than trying to get him fired for telling you the truth, you should be thanking him for caring enough to warn you.

According to Legacy, “To have my faith leader view me that way, just because of one piece of the way that God made me, and to think that one part is responsible for the destruction of my human dignity, it just didn’t…I can’t even begin to describe the mental conflict that it creates.”

Perhaps the priest was trying to help this young man see that he was more than a sexual being and that there was a way to exercise self-control and find a deeper place of satisfaction within his own religious faith? Or is Legacy telling us that God made him in such a way that he was not able to refrain from sex with another man, even while in college? Perhaps the “mental conflict” of which he speaks is caused in part by his actions?

The two students are also upset with Father Shaffer’s statement made after President Obama announced his support for same-sex “marriage” last May, when Shaffer wrote, “As Vatican II states, God is the author of marriage. He has defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Every single rational person knows that sexual relationships between persons of the same sex are unnatural and immoral. They know it in their hearts.”

Shaffer may have stated his opinion strongly, but this is hardly over-the-top for a Catholic priest, and overall, he is simply affirming the teaching of Vatican II.

Legacy and Bergen are also distributing “a letter to high-ranking administrators” citing “academic studies connecting homophobic behavior to loss of appetite, insomnia and other detrimental psychological consequences.” (I imagine they will not be citing academic studies connecting homosexual practice with greatly increased risks of contracting deadly STD’s, among other health issues.)

The bottom line is that two students are telling the Catholic chaplain of a university’s Catholic center, “Thou shalt not be Catholic.” George Washington University, what will you do? Will you stand with the right of a Catholic chaplain to be Catholic (and I write this as a non-Catholic myself), or will you will stand with anti-religious bullying?

The good news is that Catholic students are rallying around the chaplain. Perhaps their courage will prove contagious.

Dr. Michael Brown

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and is the author of 20 books. He has served as a professor at a number of seminaries and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.

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Austin Hill - Obama Losing With Catholics? Think Again

“Can Obama win his battle with the Catholic Church?”

The words scrolled across the bottom of my screen. The cable channel “experts” were debating the President’s mandate that Catholic institutions provide employee insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortion inducing drugs.

“The President is helping women with their reproductive health needs,” one of the pundits noted. “But how will the voters respond?” the host replied.

Indeed, the President of the United States instigated a battle with an entire church, and did so quite intentionally. And it’s futile to now ask “can he win?” (he’s already scoring political points– I’ll explain in a moment).

Americans should instead be asking some different questions: Why have we come to accept a U.S. President’s attack on a church as normal, as though it’s nothing more than the subject of armchair quarterbacking? Why do polls show that nearly half of the American electorate wants to re-elect him? And why did a clear majority of American Catholics vote to empower this man in the first place?

After touching-off a global fury with his ruling on healthcare expenditures within religious organizations, the President announced last Friday that he would allow an “attempt to accommodate” (notice that he did not propose to “exempt”) religious organizations with the mandate. Rather than requiring religious groups to pay for birth control, Barack Obama plans instead to require all insurance companies to offer birth control to all women that they insure, and to do so at no extra cost to their customers.

Reaction from prolife leaders to the “accommodation” was swift and negative, while many pundits still argued that it was un-constitutional. Yet the non-profit, Washington, DC-based Catholics United, Inc., offered its blessing on Mr. Obama, noting that “the new regulation will ensure that Catholic hospitals, universities and social service providers that are religiously opposed to contraception and sterilization do not have to provide or even refer for those services, while also requiring insurance companies provide contraceptive services free of charge to any enrollee who wishes to have the coverage.”

And herein lays President Obama’s political victory: he has yet again driven a wedge between some of the Catholic laity, and many of the Catholic clergy. He jabbed a stick in the collective eye of Catholic Church hierarchy over teachings that some Catholics don’t take seriously to begin with, and he now has at least some Catholic lay-organizations praising him for being reasonable and negotiable – even as Catholic Clergy remain disgruntled, and “un-reasonable.”

And notice how the President has yet again advanced his legacy of transforming the collective American psyche. According to Catholics United, hospital, university and social service workers will be able to live within their personal moral convictions, not because each human individual is endowed by their creator with the right to do so (as the U.S. Constitution tells us), but because Barack Obama’s “new regulation” will allow it to happen.

It’s disgraceful and frightening – and it’s brilliant politics by the President. Catholics and pundits like to pretend that the Church is monolithic on “sanctity of life” issues, but it is not. This was apparent when Father John Jenkins invited President Obama to speak at Notre Dame University in 2009.

Some Catholic clergy and laity were outraged at the time, yet Father Jenkins, the university’s President, insisted that it was a good thing. Sure, Barack Obama is the most enthusiastic abortion supporting President ever. But he belonged at Notre Dame because, as Father Jenkins noted, he is a symbol of “overcoming racial barriers.”

And here we are in 2012. The President proactively created a crisis (as community organizers and agitators do); he then repositioned himself as the sensible moderator; and he has now once again received the blessing and approval of American Catholics that are more in love with him, and Democrat politics, than they are with their church’s teachings.

But notice, further, what is being ignored by both the faithful, and not-so-faithful: a loss of personal freedom. The President of the United States is using his bully pulpit to force private businesses (insurance companies) to provide a service, while forbidding those businesses from being compensated for it. This tramples upon the right to private property, and our most basic understandings of human freedom, yet Catholics United not only fails to question this, they actually have blessed it – and they don’t seem to even consider what the constitutional ramifications of this might be.

Catholics, of all people, should know better - especially given the recent legacy of the late Pope John Paul II. Born in communist Poland and forced to flee to the U.K. to complete his theological studies (the Soviet Union apparently did not issue “accommodations” as President Obama has so benevolently done), Pope John Paul II warned the world after Eastern Europe’s collapse about the evils of government controlled economies.

Yet today, many American Catholic clergymen remain ambivalent to their Church’s recent teachings on economics and liberty. Many of them blessed Barack Obama’s candidacy, willingly handed-over more control of private economic resources to our government by approving of Obamacare, and now seem shocked that a politician is using that power in selfish and destructive ways.

It’s difficult to know if American Catholics will regain an adequate understanding of human liberty anytime soon. But Barack Obama will no doubt continue to score points with his own “true believers.”

Austin Hill

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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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Barack Obama's War On The Catholic Church

There are 624 Catholic hospitals in the U.S., and the Catholic Health Association says they make up 13% of the country's nearly 5,000 hospitals and employ more than 600,000 people. In addition, CHA says that one out of every six Americans hospitalized in the U.S. is cared for in a Catholic hospital.

There were 37,120,387 Total patient Admissions in all registered US Hospitals in 2008 and 6,199,105 of those patients were in Catholic Hospitals.

Statistics show that at any given time, approximately 1 in 13 Hospitalized patients are in a Catholic Hospital.

NOTE: Many other religious Hospitals e.g. Baptist Hospitals may fall in the same category on Abortion as Catholic Hospitals.

Barack Obama wants to close 'ALL' of those Hospitals and then either purchase them with taxpayer money, or Nationalize them for 'The Common Good'.

Barack Obama knows that his 'ObamaCare' will ultimately fail unless he can take over the largest provider of health care services in the United States - The Catholic Church.

RG

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Doug Giles - Muslims Miffed That Catholic University Has Catholic Imagery

Last week I was asked to lend my aging mug and highly attuned smart mouth for a documentary film regarding how the “religion of peace”—via political correctness in the public school system—is anesthetizing our kids to Islam’s malevolence toward all things American.

Like a good trooper I acquiesced (to the producer’s delight) and gave my best shot at trying to wake dull parents up to the fact that their dense kids are getting a steady diet of “Christianity, Judaism and America suck” and “Islam is awesome” from their local Marxist schoolmarm on a Monday through Friday basis. The director says there’s already a pre-Oscar buzz surrounding my performance. I am beautiful. Christina Aquavelva said so.

Anyway, no sooner did that week end than a new week began with a fresh ladle of Muslim petulance tossed in America’s face. It seems that an investigation has been sparked by Muslim “outrage” against a Catholic university (called Catholic University) for being, well, Catholic. Evidently Muslim students feel their human rights have been violated by not getting special digs on campus, minus Catholic imagery, to do their daily prayers on college grounds.

Let’s see, what can I compare this situation to? Hmmm. Dig deep, Doug, dig deep. Channel your inner Dennis Miller. I’ve got it! That’s like going to Hooters and being offended at all the bodacious hooters bouncing about. People don’t go to Hooters for their chicken wings; it’s called Hooters. Hoot-ers. Hooters. Geez, people. What the heck did you expect, students? It’s called Catholic University for a reason.

Human rights violated? That’s rich. Yes, let’s talk about human rights violations with Islam, shall we? How many Christians were killed in Egypt this week?

In the latest installment of how Islam is enacting their not-so-stealthy-any-longer jihad on America via our schools, Muslims are now taking on Catholic University for their Catholic art and imagery that insults delicate Muslim sensibilities.

This is nonsense. It’s another test to see how far we’ll bend over and take it like Europe has (to their own demise). It will not end with this one college, I guarantee. Who’s next? I’m thinkin’ Notre Dame.

Look, I’m not a Catholic and don’t work for good old CU, but if I did I’d be ticked and would stand my Catholic ground. I’d start swinging incense pots like a ninja warrior working a pair of nunchucks at any group trying to eradicate our cherished traditions and vision for our established university.

Here’s a thought: If you, as a Muslim, don’t like Catholic stuff, you might not want to go to Catholic University. Similarly, when I was seeking out an institution at which to do my grad work I immediately scratched Rosie O’Donnell University off my list.

Why? Well, I didn’t care to look at the paintings of her and her bulbous neck scattered about the campus, nor did I want to pay money to hear her bogus thoughts regarding how the world should tick peddled in the classroom.

This common sense approach to school selection makes me highly suspicious of this special treatment Muslims are demanding in our institutions and what their charges are really—really—all about. Stand your ground, Catholic U.

Doug Giles

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Doug Giles’ new book “If You're Going Through Hell, Keep Going!" is now available. Ann Coulter says "Doug Giles is a substantive and funny tour de force for traditional values.” Doug’s talk show and video blog can be seen and heard at www.ClashRadio.com.

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