Free Republic

President Barack Obama's pledge to continue the ban on the use of federal funds for abortion and to maintain conscience protections for health care workers in any health reform legislation was welcomed by two officials of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the president of the Catholic Health Association. Speaking with Catholic News Service Sept. 10, hours after Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and a nationwide television audience, Kathy Saile, director of domestic social development in the USCCB Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, said the president's address offered an encouraging sign that the administration has...

“NCR makes ATMs,” Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher said Tuesday. “And to me this is equivalent to going to your ATM and finding out that your bank that you and your family have banked with for 125 years has, without even talking to you, transferred all your funds to another company.”

When L'Osservatore Romano published an essay this week suggesting that U.S. President Barack Obama's positions on abortion and other life issues "have not confirmed fears of radical changes," it provided the latest confirmation of a glaring difference in tone between the Vatican and the most ardently pro-life circles in the American Catholic church, including a growing number of American bishops. In general, several voices in the Vatican have taken a moderate and conciliatory line on the Obama administration, while several U.S. bishops, buoyed by a network of pro-life activists, have been more pugnacious. The essay, by L'Osservatore's frequent foreign affairs...

On Friday, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed critics of federal funding of life-killing embryonic stem-cell research with this argument: “We’ve had a situation where it’s faith or science — take your pick,” Pelosi said about how the administration of George W. Bush allegedly dealt with the funding issue and other hot-button issues that involve making moral choices about scientific research. “We’re saying science is an answer to our prayers.” Added Pelosi, “We need science, science, science, science, science.” At his Secondhand Smoke blog, bioethicist Wesley Smith demolishes Pelosi’s claim that embryonic stem-cell research represents state-of-the-art science. In fact,...

Here’s Josh Brahm explaining this “Oprah” spot, in which Dr. Oz comes out against embryonic stem-cell research on scientific grounds (Warning: In it he handles, pokes and slices a real human brain).  Catholics remember sadly that Michael J. Fox was a huge proponent of clone-and-kill stem-cell research. How ironic that President Obama, who claims to want to “follow science” is funding precisely the kind of research that the medical community is abandoning. See Josh Brahm’s essay “9 Things the Media Messed Up About the Obama Stem Cell Story.”On the “Oprah” show, Dr. Mehmet Oz handles the brain of a 50-year-old...

As part of my ongoing efforts to keep this blog up-to-date, I regularly peruse myriad sources of news and commentary to find something that piques my interest. If I find it interesting, perhaps, some of the readers of CMR might find it interesting as well. However, every once in a while after more than an hour scouring the Internet desperately searching for something to write about, I come up completely empty. Today was such a day. Oh sure, there are important things happening in the world such as Peru, lost miners, hurricanes, etc. These are all important stories to be...

’Twas the Night before Christmas and in many a store,  The words “Merry Christmas” could be heard once more…Each year, it seems, the Register reports on Christmas losing ground in the increasingly secular public square. This Christmas is different.  Christians seem to have made progress at winning back some ground. After all, this is the Christmas you could see the Christ Child on screen in The Nativity Story.  You could hear “Merry Christmas” at Wal-Mart and other retailers.  And a Zogby poll found that an overwhelming majority of people are not offended by Christian Christmas greetings.  According to a Zogby...

To all those in positions of leadership in the Roman Catholic church who also happen to be homosexual, we offer our commiseration and sorrow that once again you have been forced to hear your sexuality, an element intrinsic to your humanity, described as an objective disorder. This time the phrase appears in the document with the ridiculously unwieldy title: “Instruction concerning the criteria of vocational discernment regarding persons with homosexual tendencies, considering their admission to seminary and to Holy Orders.” In other words, the document on gays and seminaries. The description is repugnant, of course, to all those in the...

Back in April of last year, NCR editor Tom Roberts said good-bye to reporter Chuck Colbert: At that time, we talked about the situation and Colbert understood that becoming a public activist on the gay marriage issue would prohibit him from reporting on our pages.Roberts was acknowledging Colbert's falling afoul of the so-called "Rosenthal Rule" -- a canon of journalistic self-discipline (named after the former NYT editor who gave it pithy expression) -- according to which a newsman known to be an active partisan for some cause has thereby forfeited his claim to objectivity and is barred from reporting on...

US State Department Report Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service. The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, by Kenneth Katzman. Washington, Nov 1992. 6 p. Doc. call no.: M-U 42953-1 no.92-824F Announcement of US about Mojahedin United States Department of State Washington, D.C 20520 UNCLASSIFIED DECL: OADR Dear Mr. Chairman: In accordance with section 523 of the FY 1994-95 Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Public Law No. 103-236, I am pleased to submit on behalf of the secretary of state the report, "people's Mojahedin of Iran." The Administration has welcomed the opportunity to conduct a comprehensive review of the people's Mojahedin of...

    Cover story The Vatican’s enforcer By JOHN L. ALLEN JR. NCR StaffCardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born in rural Bavaria on April 16, exactly 72 years ago. Perhaps it is fate that the day was Holy Saturday and his parents were Joseph and Mary -- eerie foreshadowing for a child who would grow up to become a stark sign of contradiction in the world’s largest Christian church.Like so much else about Ratzinger, how far to press that biblical parallel is contested. Some say his 18 years as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,...

SCHIAVO CASE REVEALS MORAL PRIORITIES Catholic League president William Donohue issued the following news release today on the Terri Schiavo case: “Mention Terri Schiavo to left-wing Christians and feminists and immediately they panic. That’s because they find it impossible to think about euthanasia without first thinking about abortion. And anything that might jeopardize their precious right to abort a child must be resisted at all cost. Tragically, as this case has revealed, even when the specter of domestic violence is raised, it is not enough to get the ‘pro-women’ advocates to take Terri’s side. Consider the following. “The most left-wing...

You cannot help but feel sorry for Austria's Catholics. Their local church has been plagued by a number of incompetent bishops. They call themselves conservatives, but betray Christian traditions for the sake of ecclesial power. In the name of what they call orthodoxy they betray core Christian values of human dignity, compassion and service. Far from being shepherds, they have engaged in actions viewed as criminal by the faithful and wider community Austria's Catholics -- those who have not altogether given up on the church in disgust -- are outraged. Yet they remain largely impotent to effect change and rescue...

      Michael DellChairman and CEO, Dell, Inc. Meg WhitmanPresident & CEO, eBay, Inc. Craig McCawChairman & Co-CEO, Teledesic Mark HurdPresident and CEO, NCR Corporation John ChambersCEO & President, Cisco Systems Jim BarksdalePresident & CEO, Barksdale Management Carol BartzChairman of the Board & CEO, Autodesk Leaders in Technology, Telecommunications and Biotechnology Launch Innovators for Bush-CheneyDell, Whitman, McCaw, Bartz Chambers, Barksdale and More Announce Support for President Bush and Vice President CheneyArlington, VA – Today, some of the nation’s top leaders in technology, telecommunications and biotechnology announced in a web video their endorsement of President Bush. The web video...

In my opinion, the NCR (different from the National Catholic Register and from the Catholic World Report) appears to be classic type of a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is the most anti-Catholic weekly publication that I know, and yet it continues pretending to be "Catholic." The evidence of NCR's anti-Catholic and anti-Christian agenda is somewhat camouflaged, so let it be dug up and brought to daylight in this thread. - Why, and who cares? Under normal circumstances I couldn't care less, but very many American priests and religious read the NCR, and it has poisonously influenced a generation or...

  National Catholic ReporterThe Independent Newsweekly 1Archives  | NCROnline.org  *Send This Page to a Friend  Today's Take:  NCR's daily Web column Each weekday over the course of a week, a member of the NCR staff offers a commentary on one or more topics in the news.  It's our way of introducing you to some of the people carrying out the NCR mission of faith and justice based journalism. November 17, 2003 Vol. 1, No. 151           Supporting gay and lesbian Catholics By Tom Fox, NCR publisher As a journalist, I avoid joining organizations. However, I recently felt...

Companies Rated on Their GLBT Policies Tuesday, August 26, 2003 Twenty-one companies received a perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign for their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees and consumers, almost doubling the number of companies with the same distinction last year. "What we see this year is improvement in every category measured, from written nondiscrimination policies to domestic partner health insurance benefits and beyond. Corporate America continues to be a leader in the quest for GLBT civil rights," says HRC Education Director Kim I. Mills, who oversees HRC WorkNet, the organization's workplace project. "The bottom...

Some members of Congress are refusing to drop their support of a Middle Eastern group, even though the State Department says its terrorist fighters are attacking U.S. and coalition troops in southern Iraq. The group, known as the National Council of Resistance (NCR), is the political arm of the Mujahedin-e Kalq (MEK), an organization of Iranian dissidents backed by Saddam Hussein. “They’re a combatant,” said Greg Sullivan, a spokesman for the State Department’s Near East Affairs bureau. “They’re being targeted. Targeting data is being provided to the Pentagon. We believe they are undertaking some of the action in the south...