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Those who wish to apply a 'hermeneutic of continuity' to Vatican II, or who deny that there can be any opposition or rupture between the documents of that council and Catholic tradition, or who claim that the assertion that the authentic teachings of Vatican II formally contradict the tradition of the Church is false, might consider the following passage from the council's pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes: Gaudium et Spes 24: 'Quapropter dilectio Dei et proximi primum et maximum mandatum est.' For non-Latinists, this claim (it is a complete sentence in the conciliar document) can be translated as follows: 'For...

A HuffPo interview with Duck Dynasty couple Al and Lisa Robertson has gone viral after the TV family member said that she was pro-choice, but regrets her abortion at 16 years-old. Lisa now says that her words are being taken the wrong way because, she says, she opposes abortion and is, “pro-choice only when it’s God’s choice.” Nancy Redd spoke with the couple about their book, A New Season: A Robertson Family Love Story of Brokenness and Redemption and specifically covered the section of the book where Lisa speaks about her abortion. The questions were no doubt leading. Lisa appears...

WASHINGTON - President Obama will allow insurance companies to continue offering individual health plans that do not meet the standards of the Affordable Care Act through next year, according to a Democratic source on Capitol Hill familiar with the plans. The plan, which the president will announce Thursday morning, is intended to placate millions of consumers who have received cancellation notices from insurers in recent weeks. Obama had repeatedly promised that consumers would be able to keep plans that they liked. The president was under intense pressure from Democrats on Capitol Hill to find a fix. House Democrats have increasingly...

Two months ago Obama made a bet with the devil. “I bet that I can make a convention night where all the high profile speakers, including the chair of my own party, are absolutely shameless liars.” Bad news. The devil lost the bet. The keynote speaker was Bill Clinton, who is known for two things. One of them is becoming the first president to be impeached in the court of public opinion after blatantly lying to the public on camera. Before him there was Elizabeth Warren, known for two things, “You didn’t build that” and lying about being a Cherokee....

Last week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the final findings of their four year investigation into pre-war intelligence on Saddam's Iraq. The report was amazing. In direct contradiction, on the very first page of the report, Democrats controlling the committee chose to seize the opportunity to target the Bush Administration and cover up any and all accountability for anyone else (particularly themselves) regarding pre-invasion statements about how threatening Saddam's regime was to the United States. Previous reports have been bi-partisan and even unanimously supported by the committee. This one was not. This time, the Republican minority used their...

ASHINGTON, June 24 — A top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons told Congressional committees in closed-door hearings last week that he had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views, several Congressional officials said today. The officials described what they said was a dramatic moment at a House Intelligence Committee hearing last week when the weapons expert came forward to tell Congress he had felt such pressure. By speaking out, they said, the senior intelligence expert, identified by several officials as Christian Westermann, became the first member...