Now that it's sports, the tables have turned

I was driving home not long ago when I heard Jian Gomeshi on his program Q on CBC Radio speaking with journalist Jane Leavy, from the Washington Post. She wrote an article in which she tries to sympathize with Mike McQueary, a wide receiver for the team, who witnessed Jerry Sandusky allegedly rape a 10-year-old boy. Mike told two school officials and Joe Paterno about the incident but did not contact the police or any other law enforcement agent.

Jane Leavy then wrote an article exploring all the possible psychological issues a person faces in these situations and says he is perhaps not all that blameworthy.

Her article takes the form of a letter to Mike McQueary, beginning with the following:

Dear Mike,

We don't know each other and I doubt we will ever meet, though I'm available if you want to talk.

She goes on to explain away the action or inaction of this man.

The reason I am writing this is not to say she wasn't hard enough on Mike. I'm writing to show the hypocrisy in the world of journalism. No one ever wrote a letter saying they understand the actions of the handful of bishops who did not report the activities of a small number of priests to the authorities. These bishops were lambasted for not going to the police. In fact, people have condemned the entire church, and have tried to implicate the Holy Father himself.

I have seen no attempt in all the years since the Catholic sex abuse story broke to try to explain the actions of the bishops from everyday journalists. This is an amazing double standard.

And this is not the only case of childhood sexual assault to be found in the sports sector. More and more cases emerge all the time of sexual abuse of minors by hockey coaches. So it's not an isolated incident.

But even though these abuse cases seem widespread in sports, just as much or more than in the Catholic Church, I don't hear anyone say the entire NCAA or NFL or NHL are guilty of these crimes. I don't see multi-million or billion dollar lawsuits emerging. I certainly don't hear anyone say marriage must be the cause for the actions of this minority of sports leaders.

One thing about all these stories is that it is emerging that sexual abuse does not only happen in the Catholic Church, it happens anywhere where there are children. That is becoming very clear, and in some areas it's far worse than in the Church. Nowadays the Church is the safest place for kids anywhere. For example, out of 40,000 priests in the US in 2008, there were only 6 accusations of sexual impropriety. That's accusations, not convictions.

If this lady wants to write an article which attempts to understand the actions or inactions of this sports player, that's fine, I don't have a problem with that. My main problem is that the Catholic Church is portrayed as uniquely bad, and cut absolutely no slack. Rather the entire Church is implicated and hardly a journalist anywhere tries to correct that misperception. How about less bias?

Dr. Scott Hahn at Franciscan University of Steubenville

Amazing video by Dr. Scott Hahn explaining Mass. He is such a great speaker. I urge you to listen to even the first ten minutes of this presentation. You won't regret it.

Seven Deadly Sins: Pride - History Channel - WATCH

There's a lot of iffy stuff in this documentary about Pride, but it's fun to watch and actually does contain some truth. So check it out.

USCCB marriage advisor resigns after suggesting devil plays role in homosexuality

First of all, I don't know of any evidence that homosexuality is genetic. But what if some people were predisposed to it, and they were born like it. Would that justify homosexual actions or even gay marriage? I would say no. Within Catholic teaching, something doesn't automatically become acceptable as long as someone has a "natural" desire for it. Adultery is wrong. But you could argue that a man is naturally predisposed to want to have sex with a woman who is not his wife. Should we then be accepting of this because it's "natural"?

Just imagine a man who cheats on his wife reassuring her by saying "This is just who I am. It's natural, I was born this way! God wouldn't have created me this way if he didn't want me to act on it!" I doubt his wife would be very convinced.

But the same argument could be made for all kinds of behavior. A serial killer could argue he was "born that way", that he didn't choose to be a killer, but it's just how God made him. Or a pedophile. He could also argue that's how God made him, and then rhetorically ask "if God didn't want me to act on my pedophilia, why would he create me like this?"

I'll probably get a bunch of comments blasting me for comparing homosexual actions to murder, but all I can say to this is that you are missing the point. The point I'm trying to make is that just because we find a "natural" desire to do something, that doesn't automatically legitimize it.

Article here by LifeSiteNews.com

Pope ranks 7th on Forbes 2011 Most Powerful List

Gluttony: One of the Seven Deadly Sins

Good History Channel show on this vice:

IVF vs. C-section

Ok, so I wrote a comment on that last video on Youtube outlining my objection to IVF. Another user responded to my comment by asking what the difference between IVF and a C-section is. I didn't fully know how to answer his question, so I decided to see if by chance Catholic Answers Live had an appropriate guest on the show to answer my query. Amazingly, Fr. Tad Pacholczyk was there and was the perfect guy to ask.

Here is the response I received from him:



Then I typed in Fr. Tad's name into Google, and the second result that appeared was Fr. Tad talking about IVF and the Catholic position on it. That video can be found here:

Alison Motluk: A Primer on Assisted Reproductive Technology

This clip talks about the terribly immoral act of IVF. Most of the time embryos are destroyed. Children have the right to be conceived in the loving embrace of their parents and not at the hands of a lab technician in a petri dish in a sterile laboratory. Not only that, some of these innocent children never discover their real parents. What a sad story. A moral country would ban such a practice.

Unfortunately, besides briefly saying the word "moral", there is no discussion of the morality of this act. Truly horrible.

A Very DISGUSTING Harold and Kumar Christmas

Thank goodness for movie reviews. The only way I would suggest going to Harold and Kumar Christmas Movie would be if you were in immediate need of an emetic. The kind of absolute filth you will find in this film is staggering. But don't worry, they make sure only to mock Christians, and mostly Catholics. That's right, they wouldn't dare criticize any other faith, only society's perennial whipping boy, the Christians.

If the foul language and disgusting jokes aren't enough to make you upset, the inappropriate sexual references to Catholics priests and nuns will surely put you over the edge. From the reviews, this movie seems to have no redemptive quality to it whatsoever, just a roller coaster ride of gag-inducing humorless schtick that's only funny through its sheer shock value.

Apparently you can say whatever you like about Catholics and get away with it in Canada. How many human rights cases will emerge because of this work of depravity? None of course. But I don't have a problem with that. I don't think there should even be a Human Rights Tribunal. The whole idea is stupid. All I'm saying is there is complete hypocrisy here. Criticize any other group like this and you would be in deep "descriptor this movie". You'd be lucky if this movie got a PG rating in Canada. Probably go in as G. Teachers will probably bring their students to see it.

For some Christian reviews of this production that somehow passes as a movie, please visit this site.

Overpopulation on Night Line

This is an audio clip of me on VOCM Night Line speaking about the 7 Billionth child being born

Scary CBC commenters solution to so-called "overpopulation problem"

As the world celebrates the birth of the 7 billionth person, others are not so happy. The population extremists, who have existed since Malthus in the 18th and early 19th century when the population was only 1 billion, are sounding the alarm on our impending doom unless we enact freedom-destroying legislation to curb the growth of the human disease, uh, I mean population.

As you may rightfully point out, not everyone who thinks the Earth is overpopulated has bad intentions. Some genuinely believe we are in a crash course to a population-caused disaster. Some say we are already there. But some of the comments I read on CBC are rather frightening. Perhaps even more frightening is that many of them have high approval ratings from other readers. Here are just a few:

12 out of 16 agreed with this statement:

Yes we should care, but it's not the West's fault. It's the East's. They need to stop having so many damned kids. Countries with over 1 BILLION people just in the one country? That's insane.

15 out of 22 agreed with this statement:

This is just plain scary! Which brings up the question, "why are we here?" We are just destructive, selfish, wasteful creatures, and have done absolutely nothing good for this planet.

This one is particularly scary. 14 out of 23 people gave this one a "thumbs up":

I'm sure there will be a plague in Asia or Africa sometime in the next 50 years that will bring the population back in check.

A majority, 7 out of 12, even agreed with this callous statement:

Luckily global warming will help reduce those numbers.

34 out of 40 assented to this comment:

global warming and the next ice age will sort out the population problem

36 out of 66 people agreed with this comment:

As long as people believe it is somehow a "right" to have children - regardless if you can feed, shelter and clothe them - the Earth is doomed.

A rebuttal to these comments and those who support them could be that often people will indicate they like a statement but if they don't like it, they will simply ignore it. However, I found the majority of people gave a thumbs down to the following comments:

5 out of 7 people disliked this comment:

Steven W. Mosher is an internationally recognized authority on China and population issues, as well as an acclaimed author, speaker. He has worked tirelessly since 1979 to fight coercive population control programs and has helped hundreds of thousands of women and families worldwide over the years.

I find it scary that there is a group of people who have such a callous disregard for human life and see it only as a disease on the planet. Some people seem to think that certain others do not have a "right" to reproduce. Let's try to maintain human dignity and remember that everyone has a right to be here.

Burgeoning Population Now is Being Termed a Graver Threat to Human Society than Nuclear Bombs

So said an article published in the October 26th, 1965 edition of the Free Lance-Star, and written by Associated Press Science Writer Alton Blakeslee, when the Earth had only reached 3 billion people. Ever since human population has been calculated, there have been alarmists who have insisted that unless massive, centralized action is taken worldwide, the human race was bound to destroy itself.

It doesn't seem to matter how many people there actually are, the threat always concerns some inexact time in the future when the proverbial excrement hits the fan. I think people see it like everyone in the world is in a huge Boston Marathon, just running the race, not realizing there is a sheer cliff just up ahead. The population controllers feel it is their duty to informs these individuals of their impending doom and to enact draconian laws which often violate human rights to "save the masses".

These predictions have been made since Thomas Malthus, a late 18th, and early 19th century scholar who predicted dire consequences for the earth because food production increases at a lower rate than population growth. This was back when the population was only 1 billion, compared to our current 7 billion.

What people seem to forget is that humans are very adaptable. If a particular resource runs dry, we develop new ones. If we run out of oil, there are dozens of other technologies emerging. Who could have known 200 years ago that Uranium could be used to produce energy? Or even oil for that matter. Scientists have shown that there is currently enough food to feed more people than the entire population of the Earth. A lot of food is even diverted away from food, like corn, which is often used as biofuel.

There are many fallacies about the population. In the next article, I will talk about some of the scary comments people have made about their "solutions" to these problems and how others have reacted to these solutions.

Welcome, baby 7 billion

Article from LifeSiteNews.com

Libyan Christians – All Foreigners: Leader Says Sharia Law is Law of Libya: What Do You Know About Noah’s Grandfather? | Maggie's Notebook

According to the following article, "Libya is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, and missionary activity is not allowed, though clergy say the regime has respected Christians’ freedom of worship."

How will this change now that Libya has said the main source of their new legal code is Sharia Law?

Libyan Christians – All Foreigners: Leader Says Sharia Law is Law of Libya: What Do You Know About Noah’s Grandfather? | Maggie's Notebook

The great population debate: too many carbon footprints?

I've watched about half of this video so far. It's around an hour. I think it's important for Catholics to watch who take their faith seriously, even though it's not a religious video. The video concerns the idea of overpopulation, and there is a debate between two men in their respective fields.

The first man, in my opinion, is rather annoying. He represents a group which believes people are having too many children and that the Earth is overpopulated. He believes in using contraception to reduce the population of the planet. But the thing that struck me about him is his enormous arrogance. He speaks about those who do not believe in overpopulation as if they are very stupid. He talks down to anyone who disagrees with him. In fact, in one part he refers to "rednecks". This all comes back to a form of elitism, where certain people feel they must tell others what to do and use the government to back them up, or else those people will not know. He thinks he can plan out the whole planet.

And something else he says is actually kind of shocking. Without any prompting whatsoever, he mocks the idea of salvation and God. I have no idea why he tried to bring religion into the debate, but he does. Also, he seems extremely critical of the pope.

Feel free to skip the first guy. He does seem rather intelligent, but you can strongly sense what the second man calls "misanthropy". Basically, the population control people seem to view human beings as viruses of the Earth.

Anyway, the second guy who speaks does present some very good arguments. He is great to listen and will provide ammo to anyone debating against the myth of overpopulation.

Occupy Rome Protesters destroy Statue of the Virgin Mary

I saw a video today which was very disturbing. I don't want to post it here because it is rather offensive, and I think a lot of people would prefer not to see it. Basically in the video, a protester in Occupy Rome finds a large status of Our Lady, takes it out to the street, lifts it up, and the smashes it onto the ground. It is basically destroyed or at least badly damaged. Some people then kick it or do other actions. This is absolutely deplorable and very sad. Let's say a special prayer of atonement.

Canadian Anti-Catholic Bigotry Kills African Women | Blogs | NCRegister.com

Canadian Anti-Catholic Bigotry Kills African Women | Blogs | NCRegister.com

This is another article about Dr. Walley and his crusade to save women's lives. He is in charge of MaterCare, an international organization whose goal is to prevent the deaths of women during childbirth. Unfortunately, the so-called Conservative government refuses to fund MaterCare because it does not provide abortion and contraception, which as Dr. Walley points out, is very irrelevant when it comes to maternal deaths.

Other organizations are being sponsored by the government, which is really our hard-earned taxpayer dollars. These include abortion-loving organizations like Planned Parenthood. Apparently it's okay to want to save the life of women as long as you're also open to killing babies.

My solution to this problem is not to fund MaterCare with taxpayer dollars, but rather to defund all other institutions, give us back our tax money and let people decide for themselves who they want to sponsor. It's sickening to think that tax money goes to slaughtering babies, but a pro-life organization is summarily dismissed even though there are plenty of pro-lifers out there.

For anyone in doubt, think about this: right now we have a Conservative government at least in name. All the other parties are more liberal and even more in favor of abortion and contraception. But even with this government, we are forced to pay for abortion. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that the Canadian Government will ever use its power to provide funding to pro-life organizations. The best course of action is to reduce the government. There is a huge movement toward this in the United States, but we are a little behind the times in Canada. We still see the government as our maternal care-giver. But remember, once the government has the power, it can use it for good or evil. Give the power back to the people!

Ron Paul Ad - Life