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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Catholic</title>
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		<title>Catholic Praise for Anti-Semitic Book</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/catholic-praise-for-anti-semitic-book/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=catholic-praise-for-anti-semitic-book</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Dec 2014 05:39:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[america magazine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Goliath]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[max blumenthal]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247749</guid>
		<description><![CDATA['America' magazine joins ranks with neo-Nazis in support of Blumenthal screed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/America_Jesuit_magazine.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-247750" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/America_Jesuit_magazine.jpg" alt="America_(Jesuit_magazine)" width="232" height="300" /></a>Among critics of Israel today, there emerges a handful whose opposition to the existence of the Jewish State is so pernicious that their criticism can accurately be described as Jew-hatred. <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/the-new-york-times-hits-rock-bottom-with-max-blumenthal/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Max Blumenthal</span></a>, a marginal character who is desperately trying to make inroads into the mainstream, stands at the lead of this fringe group of miscreants. Even those on the far left, who are often critical of Israel, find Blumenthal to be a repugnant malcontent. So outrageous is his conduct that his mischief earned him a <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/max-blumenthal-banned-from-german-parliament-after-attack-blames-jewish-conspiracy/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lifetime ban</span></a> from the German parliament.</p>
<p>Blumenthal, the author of “<i>Goliath</i>: <i>Life and Loathing in Greater Israel</i>,” a book widely viewed as an anti-Semitic screed that one prominent leftist critic noted could easily make it to the top of the “<a href="http://forward.com/articles/186557/max-blumenthals-goliath-is-anti-israel-book-that-m/?p=all"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Hamas book of the month club</span></a>,” has largely been ignored by the mainstream and rightfully so. It represents the modern day equivalent of the notorious <i>Protocols of the Elders of Zion</i> and is filled with invective, conspiracy, distortion, conflation, and outright fabrication designed to malign and disparage the Mideast’s only democracy.</p>
<p>Though most within the mainstream recognize <i>Goliath</i> for what it is, an <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/176691/i-hate-israel-handbook"><span style="color: #0433ff;">unscholarly, error-ridden, heap of rubbish</span></a>, there are still some who flirt with its premise that an “undemocratic,” “racist,” “war-like” Israel is the cause of the Mideast’s ills and the angelic Muslim world remains blameless. Elements within the Catholic Church have unfortunately subscribed to this narrative.</p>
<p>In December, <i>America</i> magazine, a national weekly magazine with Roman Catholic affiliation and published by the Jesuits of the United States, <a href="http://americamagazine.org/issue/culture/majority-rules"><span style="color: #0433ff;">featured</span></a> an extremely positive review of Blumenthal’s version of <i>Mein Kampf </i>that lacked any form of critical analysis. The reviewer swallows Blumenthal’s racist calumny lock, stock and barrel and accepts its vitriolic premise without reservation or equivocation.</p>
<p><i>Goliath</i> engages is some of the most pernicious forms of anti-Semitism. Comparisons of Israel with Nazi Germany – a common tactic of Jew haters – are peppered throughout the book with chapters entitled, “The Concentration Camp” and “The Night of Broken Glass,” the latter, a reference to <i>Kristallnacht </i>when Nazi hooligans went on a rampage executing a pogrom against the Jews of Germany. There’s also a near infantile but equally malevolent chapter entitled “How to Kill Goyim and Influence People,” evoking medieval imagery of scheming Jewish plotting to murder non-Jews.</p>
<p>By subscribing to the odious views espoused by Blumenthal,<i> America</i> magazine now finds itself in the unenviable position of being in the same company of various hate groups.  Extreme neo-Nazi forums have also taken up Blumenthal’s cause, whose opinions have been cited with approval on <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2014/04/antisemite-max-blumenthal-incites-murder-of-three"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Nazi Internet forums</span></a> like <i>Stormfront</i> as well as by serial murderer, Frazier Glenn Miller, the KKK man who slaughtered three people at two separate Jewish community centers in Overland Park, Kansas.</p>
<p>I considered the possibility that the publication of this review by a prominent Catholic magazine was perhaps a mere oversight and simply reflected a lack of proper editorial review, but a <a href="http://americamagazine.org/issue/current-comment-66"><span style="color: #0433ff;">recent editorial</span></a> by the magazine trashes that possibility.  The one-sided editorial blasts Prime Minister Netanyahu and other “Zionist radicals” for obstructing a “two-state solution” and imposing “collective punishment.”</p>
<p>As is customary with Israel bashers, facts harmful to the pro-Palestinian narrative are <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/western-indifference-to-the-palestinian-culture-of-hate/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">routinely overlooked</span></a> making a mockery of any claim to impartiality and insightful analysis. The editors of <i>America</i> fail to note the <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/jihad-in-jerusalem-1416356018"><span style="color: #0433ff;">endless flow of anti-Semitic vitriol</span></a> and violently hateful rhetoric spewed forth daily from the Palestinian Authority’s propaganda apparatus. It’s an inconvenient truth they prefer to ignore.</p>
<p>They also tend to ignore the heinous acts of murder and butchery leading up to Israel’s imposition of so-called “collective punishment” and shamefully only note these murders within the context of Israeli retaliation. In other words, it takes an act of house demolition to highlight the more egregious act of murder that preceded it. Jewish blood is cheap, but heaven forbid, take down a few cinder blocks, and the self-proclaimed humanitarians of the world scream from the rooftops.</p>
<p>Another salient point brings <i>America </i>magazine’s hypocrisy into sharper focus. While they are indignant over the destruction of less than a half-dozen homes belonging to terrorist-murderers responsible for killing women and children, not a single word is uttered over Egypt’s recent decision to destroy some <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/world/middleeast/egypt-sinai-peninsula-gaza-buffer-zone.html?_r=1"><span style="color: #0433ff;">eight-hundred homes</span></a> bordering Gaza to pave the way for the construction of an anti-tunnel barrier. And while those slated for house demolition in Israel have the right to appeal (and often win), no such appellate process is offered for Egyptians whose recourse is either to comply or face the business end of an AK-47.</p>
<p>Jewish-Catholic rapprochement has come a long way since the Holocaust. Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor Pope John Paul II did much to advance relations between Israel and the Vatican. Sadly, however, old habits die hard and there remain vestiges of those within the Catholic Church who harbor anti-Semitic views and hostile attitudes toward Israel and wish to see the Church regress to positions of darker times past. Judging by its recent editorials blasting Israel exclusively and book reviews extolling the works of a rabid anti-Semite, the publishers of <i>America</i> magazine can include themselves among this ignominious group.</p>
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		<title>The Vatican Falls for the &#8216;Interfaith&#8217; Scam</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ned-may/the-vatican-falls-for-the-interfaith-scam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-vatican-falls-for-the-interfaith-scam</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ned-may/the-vatican-falls-for-the-interfaith-scam/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2014 04:10:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ned May]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dialogue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[imam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[interfaith]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pope]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prayer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prayer of peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vatican]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234907</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Unmasking the Muslim Brotherhood's ruse. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140617_vatikanimame1402954514108.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234908" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140617_vatikanimame1402954514108.jpg" alt="20140617_vatikanimame1402954514108" width="271" height="229" /></a>On June 8, 2014 — Pentecost Sunday — the Vatican hosted an “interfaith event” that included prayers by Christian priests, a Jewish rabbi, and a Muslim imam. The occasion was <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/06/06/Islamic-prayers-to-be-held-at-the-Vatican.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">well-publicized in advance</span></a> by the Holy See as a “pause in politics” that would promote peace between the Israel and the Palestinians.</p>
<p>During his visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority the previous month, Pope Francis had invited Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to attend the event. Both leaders accepted the invitation, and sat with the Pope while prayers were said and chanted in the Vatican garden.</p>
<p>The imam, however, went beyond the script that had been handed to the Vatican in advance. He included in his chanted prayer verses 284-286 of Sura 2 in the Koran, the last part of which calls for Allah to grant the Muslims victory over the infidels. His words were broadcast live to a television audience, but they were in Arabic, so most non-Muslim viewers had no idea what he had said.</p>
<p>This apparently included the Vatican hierarchy. When someone who <i>did</i> understand Arabic <a href="http://gatesofvienna.net/2014/06/the-vatican-and-islamic-prayer/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">pointed out what had happened</span></a>, a Vatican spokesman at first denied that any such thing had occurred. Those verses weren’t in the advance script — how could he possibly have said them? No Muslim, especially a respected imam, would ever go back on his word!</p>
<p>Later, when that story became untenable, the Vatican <a href="http://gatesofvienna.net/2014/06/taqiyya-vatican-style/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">soft-pedaled the added text</span></a>, saying that there was nothing really wrong with it. To further complicate matters, a <a href="http://gatesofvienna.net/2014/06/who-edited-the-tape/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">doctored tape</span></a> of the Arabic prayer was released in which the final part of verse 2:286 was edited out. It’s not clear who did the editing, but the altered version certainly did serve the interests of the Vatican.</p>
<p>With the help of <a href="http://vladtepesblog.com/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Vlad Tepes</span></a>, I was able to track down a complete video of the prayer from an Arabic television channel and then have it translated (by a volunteer who prefers to remain anonymous) and subtitled. As far as I can determine, the imam’s name was never made public, either by the Vatican or the English-language Arab news sites. I’m told he’s Palestinian, and his distinctive headgear identifies him as having the authoritative credentials of Al-Azhar University:</p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/DNnFQgGY25s" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>A German-speaking Jesuit priest, Fr. Felix Körner, made a valiant effort to demonstrate that 2:286 was in full accord with Christian doctrine, and was peaceful in intent. During <a href="http://gatesofvienna.net/2014/06/multiculturalism-in-religious-garb/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">an interview</span></a> he said (translated from the German by Rembrandt Clancy):</p>
<blockquote><p>“This verse, perhaps spontaneously selected by someone who then also recited the Koran from memory, actually fitted very well into the overall context of the Prayer for Peace! There are always three steps in the three religions: We recognise the Creator and praise Him, we recognise our guilt and confess it and we plead for the gift of peace. And all that comes out very beautifully in these three verses of the Koran.</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>“There is a certain parallel insofar as a quotation torn out of context is particularly easily misunderstood. And if one removes from the text only the reference to unbelievers, one can easily use it as a peg upon which to hang something and then say that an infringement has taken place here. On the other hand we have in this case a Koran recitation which pertains to someone who not only quotes, but recites, and who also says: what I am reciting here is also what I believe. And in the same breath he is also saying: We Muslims, as the Koran precisely tells us, <b>recognise the other religions with their prophets</b>. Therefore from the Muslim side, <b>there was by no means any deprecation or exclusion intended or expressed</b>. Rather it was said: We are bringing here a religious idea, one which welcomes and accepts you all, and naturally in certain Koranic way, tries to set things right again. But <b>there was nothing here which was meant to exclude or rebuff</b>; rather a Koran verse was recited, which is meant to express the highest respect and therefore can also be received as such.” [emphasis added]</p></blockquote>
<p>But is this interpretation true? Does Islam really “recognize the other religions with their prophets”? Was there really no “deprecation or exclusion intended”?</p>
<p>It’s always unwise to trust a non-Muslim’s interpretations of Islamic scripture and law. Our political are always telling us what Islam means — witness Boris Johnson, David Cameron, and George W. Bush — with less than complete credibility. Now we have a Jesuit priest telling us what Islam does and does not mean.</p>
<p>It’s also unwise to trust a Muslim cleric or spokesman when he explains Islam to a non-Muslim audience. There are very clear reasons for this skepticism, based in the Koran and the hadith (the sayings of Mohammed) and all major interpretations of Islamic law that are derived from those.</p>
<p>So how do we understand what happened at the Vatican on Pentecost Sunday?</p>
<p>We begin with this: last November a well-meaning Pope Francis issued a papal declaration, <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Evangelii Gaudium</i></span></a>, which said among other things that “our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”</p>
<p>Now we’re going to take the advice of Major (ret.) Stephen Coughlin, one of the foremost non-Muslim experts on Islamic law in the United States. If we want to understand Islamic law, Maj. Coughlin tells us: <i>“You must read things written by Muslims who are recognized in the Muslim community as experts in the topic they are writing about, and who are writing for a Muslim audience. If you fail to do that, you are not doing your job.”</i></p>
<p>Therefore, to provide context for the momentous events of June 8, the following information is instructive. It is derived from <i>’Umdat al-salik wa ’uddat al-nasik</i>, which is commonly referred to as <i>Reliance of the Traveller</i> when cited in English. This an authoritative source on Sunni Islamic law, because it is certified as such by Al-Azhar University in Cairo. There is no higher authority on Sunni Islamic doctrine than Al-Azhar; it is the closest equivalent to the Vatican that can be found in Islam.</p>
<p>Consider this passage from <i>Reliance of the Traveller</i>, chapter O, o9.0:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Jihad</i> means to wage war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion. And it is the lesser jihad.</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>The scriptural basis for jihad, prior to scholarly consensus is such Koranic verses as:</p>
<p>•Fighting is prescribed for you (Koran 2:216)</p>
<p>•Slay them wherever you find them (Koran 4:89)</p>
<p>•Fight the idolators utterly (Koran 9:36)</p></blockquote>
<p>In o9.8, <i>Reliance of the Traveller</i> describes the objectives of jihad:</p>
<blockquote><p>The caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians provided he has first invited them to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya, def: o11.4)… and the war continues until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax…</p></blockquote>
<p>Now it becomes clear that — contrary to what Fr. Körner said — Islam does indeed deprecate and exclude other religions, specifically including Judaism and Christianity. This deprecation and exclusion goes so far as to mandate warfare against those religions.</p>
<p>We should also bear in mind what Islamic law says about lying. In Book R “Holding One’s Tongue,” §r8.0 “Lying” at r8.2 “Permissible Lying,” <i>Reliance of the Traveller</i> cites the iconic Islamic legal jurist Imam Abu Hamid Ghazali:</p>
<blockquote><p>This is an explicit statement that lying is sometimes permissible for a given interest… When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible (N: i.e., when the purpose of lying is to circumvent someone who is preventing one from doing something permissible) and obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory.</p></blockquote>
<p>To sum up: according to an authoritative manual of Islamic law certified by Al-Azhar University — the same University that accredited the imam who prayed at the Vatican — the devout Muslim is obligated to make war against Christians and Jews until they convert to Islam, submit and pay the poll tax, or die.</p>
<p>Since this goal is <i>obligatory</i>, it is also <i>obligatory</i> for the devout Muslim to lie to Christians and Jews about what his religion means, and what it intends, <i>if such lies help Islam achieve the final conquest.</i></p>
<p>This is why we are ill-advised to take Muslim spokesmen at their word when they describe the peaceful intentions of Islam.</p>
<p>Now hear what Maj. Stephen Coughlin has to say about what happened at the Vatican on Pentecost Sunday. He explains in great detail, using authoritative sources on Islamic law, what the imam was doing when he inserted those three extra verses into his prayer in the Vatican garden:</p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/UFIF2HMcOYs" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>As you can see, Pope Francis and the leaders of the Catholic Church, not to mention the Jewish representatives from Israel, had the wool deftly pulled over their eyes by the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>The “interfaith” movement is a Muslim Brotherhood scam designed to soften up gullible Jews and Christians in advance of the inevitable Islamic victory.</p>
<p>The incident in the Vatican garden received very little Western media attention, even though it was one of the most important stories of the decade. We were all too busy paying attention to the more obvious jihad in Syria and Iraq, where Islam is reaching the same goal through fire and blood and slaughter.</p>
<p>What happened at the Vatican is understood (correctly) by Muslims as a great victory for Islam. Using stealth and deception, the Al-Azhar imam penetrated the innermost sanctum of Christendom and claimed it for the Umma.</p>
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		<title>The Vatican, the Jews and Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-puder/the-vatican-the-jews-and-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-vatican-the-jews-and-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Oct 2013 04:32:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A look back at the two popes who changed Catholic-Jewish relations forever. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/catholic_jewish_relations_3.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-207266" alt="catholic_jewish_relations_3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/catholic_jewish_relations_3.jpg" width="291" height="232" /></a>The Vatican announced on September 30, 2013 that deceased Popes John XXIII and John Paul II will be canonized as saints at a Vatican ceremony, which will take place on April 27, 2014.  By happenstance, these two popes did more than any others to foster close ties with the Jews and the Jewish State. Pope John XXIII was pontiff from 1958-1963, and the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian Pope in 400 years, led the Catholic Church from 1978-2005.  Their heroic actions cleared the way for ever warmer relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish State.</p>
<p>It was Pope John Paul II’s (born Karol Jozef Wojtyla) lifelong Jewish friend and schoolmate from his Polish hometown of Wadowice, Jerzy Kluger, who influenced him to make the historic visit to the great Rome Synagogue on April 13, 1986.  There, in a memorable expression of respect for Judaism, he intoned, “You are our dearly beloved brothers, and in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.”  His visit is acknowledged as the first by a pope since the early history of the Roman Catholic Church.  Pope John Paul II prayed together with the Chief Rabbi of Rome at the time, Elio Toaff, in an attempt to show solidarity with Jews and Judaism.</p>
<p>Earlier in 1979, John Paul II became the first pope to visit the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp">Auschwitz concentration camp</a> in Poland where many of his compatriots (mostly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland">Polish Jews</a>) perished during the Nazi occupation during World War II. In 1998 he issued <i>“We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” </i>which outlined his thinking on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust">Holocaust</a>.</p>
<p>On December 30, 1993, the Vatican established diplomatic relations with the Jewish State.  A Vatican Nunciature in Jerusalem, Israel, and an Israeli embassy in Rome were established in January 1994.  For Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church this meant reconciliation with the Jewish people, and it was viewed by the Israeli government as normalization.  Prior to the establishment of diplomatic relations, the Vatican’s interests were handled by the Apostolic Delegate to Jerusalem and Palestine, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Custodian of the Holy Land.</p>
<p>In 2000, Pope John Paul II visited Israel where he publicly apologized for the persecution of the Jews over the centuries by the Catholics, including the Holocaust (he, as Karol Wojtyla, saved a 13-old Jewish girl during the war and helped many other Jews). He also left a note in the Western Wall pleading for forgiveness.</p>
<p>In order to understand how far the Catholic Church was moved by both popes it is important to look at the actions of another pope, Pius X, who had a private meeting with Theodore Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism and the spiritual founder of the Jewish State of Israel, on January 25, 1904.</p>
<p>Following the first Zionist Congress in 1897, which took place in Basel, Switzerland, Herzl sought out Pope Pius X in the hopes of gaining his sympathetic understanding of the Zionist cause.  The meeting came in the wake of devastating pogroms against Jews of Russia, Poland, and other Eastern European lands, and rabid anti-Semitism in Western Europe.  At issue was the return of these persecuted Jews to their ancestral home.  Pope Pius X’s reaction was: “<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ITQVJjUGM2gC&amp;pg=PA73&amp;dq=Pope+John+Paul+II:+%E2%80%9CFor+the+Jewish+people+who+live+in+the+State+of+Israel+and+who+preserve+in+that+land+such+precious+testimonies+to+their+history+and+their+faith,+we+must+ask+for+the+desired+security+and+the+due+tranquillity+that+are+the+prerogative+of+every+nation+.+.+.%E2%80%9D&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=AaBUUrHKK9Xd4APbzYCgAQ&amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=Pope%20John%20Paul%20II%3A%20%E2%80%9CFor%20the%20Jewish%20people%20who%20live%20in%20the%20State%20of%20Israel%20and%20who%20preserve%20in%20that%20land%20such%20precious%20testimonies%20to%20their%20history%20and%20their%20faith%2C%20we%20mu">We are unable to favor the movement</a> [Zionism].  We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it.  The ground of Jerusalem has been sanctified by the life of Christ.  As head of the Church, I cannot answer you otherwise.  The Jews have not recognized our Lord; therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish People.”</p>
<p>The Church’s hostile stance continued despite the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel on May 14, 1948.  The <i>Osservatore Romano</i>, the official organ of the Vatican proclaimed at that time, “Modern Israel is not the authentic heir of biblical Israel, but constitutes a lay state. This is why the holy land and its sacred places belong to Christianity, the veritable Israel.”</p>
<p>In contrast are the words of Pope John Paul II who said in a 1994 interview with Tad Szulc published in<i> Parade magazine: “</i>It must be understood that Jews, who for two thousand years were dispersed among the nations of the world, had decided to return to the land of their ancestors.  <a href="http://ns1.makeahistory.com/index.php/recent-news/42996-fourth-reich-in-disguise-how-germany-is-using-the-financial-crisis-to-conquer-europe">This is their right</a>.  And this right is recognized even by those who look upon the nation of Israel with an unsympathetic eye.  This right was also recognized from the outset by the Holy See, and the act of establishing diplomatic relations with Israel is simply an international affirmation of this relationship.”</p>
<p>Italian-born Monsignor Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, later to become Pope John XXIII, will forever be remembered as the Pope that truly changed Catholic-Jewish relations.  The Second Vatican Council and the declaration, Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), are the most critical landmarks in this relationship. During WWII, Msgr. Roncalli, then the Apostolic Delegate to Turkey, saved Jews fleeing the Nazis by providing them with baptismal certificates.  He worked with the delegation of the Jewish Agency of Palestine in Istanbul in the undercover delivery of immigration certificates to Palestine for Jewish refugees in Europe.  Additionally, he urged Pope Pius XII to receive then Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Yitzhak Halevy Herzog, who wished to plead personally for the rescue of Jews throughout Eastern Europe.  Pope Pius XII flatly refused to see him.</p>
<p>Immediately upon becoming Pope John XXIII, on October 28, 1958, he announced his intention of calling for an Ecumenical Council (held on January 20, 1959).  On the ‘Declaration on Jews’ dealing with the alleged collective guilt of the Jews in the death of Jesus, 1821 delegates rejected the charge of Jewish collective guilt, while 188 (mostly Arab-Christians) approved.  And the delegates, by a vote of 1821 to 245, determined that ‘Jews must not be represented as accursed or rejected by God.’ Another vote, regarding “rejecting persecution against the Jewish people,” passed 1905 to 199.</p>
<p>Pope John XXIII ordered the Church to delete the expression “perfidious Jews” from the Good Friday prayers.</p>
<p>These positive changes in the Catholic Church towards the Jewish people were influenced by facts.  The Holocaust in Christian Europe left no doubt that the Church’s anti-Judaism (as Cardinal Cassidy once termed it in response to a question posed by this writer as to whether the pogrom in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce">Kielce</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland">Poland</a> on July 4, 1946, soon after the Holocaust was anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism) had transformed into murderous anti-Semitism, and that the Church’s teachings must change.  The re-establishment of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948, forced the Church to recognize the reality of Jewish revival.  Finally, the stunning Six-Day War Israeli victory, against all odds, convinced the Church that God, after all, is protecting his covenanted people.</p>
<p>The two-covenant theology proposed by the German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, which argued that Jews are already with the Father (God), and need no intercession of Jesus, was gradually absorbed into Christian thinking.  It is indeed reflected in the words of the <i>Nostra Aetate</i> which declares: “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes.” Nor does God abrogate his covenant with His people …</p>
<p>Reverend Dr. Bill Harter, a Presbyterian Church USA pastor, commented to this writer that he hopes that mainline Protestant churches will reach the same understanding the Catholic Church has reached in their relationship with Jews and Israel.</p>
<p>Nostra Aetate and subsequent changes in Catholic teaching regarding Jews have had positive effects in both North America, and the West &#8212; due in large measure to the two great and truly humanitarian popes, Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II.</p>
<p>Both Israel and Jewish communities worldwide should enthusiastically welcome the canonization and sainthood of these two great Catholic leaders.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Catholic Cardinal Calls for End to Blasphemy Laws</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/catholic-cardinal-calls-for-end-to-blasphemy-laws/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=catholic-cardinal-calls-for-end-to-blasphemy-laws</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 04:22:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blasphemy laws]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cardinal Angelo Scola]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Laws]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=190084</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A bold statement against increasing Islamic oppression in both the Middle East and the West. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/angelo-scola-20100906-80-size-620.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-190135" alt="angelo-scola-20100906-80-size-620" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/angelo-scola-20100906-80-size-620-450x285.jpg" width="270" height="171" /></a>Speaking at a conference in Milan, Italy, on May 8, 2013, that city’s archbishop, Cardinal <a href="http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/documents/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_scola_a_en.html">Angelo Scola</a>, called for the abolition of blasphemy laws worldwide.  Such a step would significantly help protect globally the freedom of speech and religion desperately needed by Christians in particular while countering Islamic fanaticism with freedom.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/english/2013/05/08/Archbishop-Scola-speaks-against-blasphemy-laws_8672151.html">Once favored to become pope</a>, Scola made his remarks at the <a href="http://www.unicatt.it/home?rdeLocaleAttr=en">Catholic University of the Sacred Heart</a> for the opening of a conference focusing on Roman Emperor Constantine’s 313 <a href="http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/1990/issue28/2809.html">Edict of Milan</a> granting imperial toleration to Christianity.  Scola advocated a “healthy secularism” allowing religious freedom, defined by him as a “true litmus test” for a civilized society.  To Scola, this “freedom means above all encouraging religious pluralism and opening to all forms of religious expression,” including “eliminating laws that criminally punish blasphemy.”</p>
<p>As the Catholic cable television channel EWTN reported online, the role of blasphemy laws in Muslim-majority countries in persecuting Christians and other religious minorities formed the global context of Scola’s remarks.  As <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/persecuted-on-all-sides-christians-in-the-modern-world/">reviewed previously by this writer</a>, the authors of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Persecuted-The-Global-Assault-Christians/dp/1400204410"><i>Persecuted:  The Global Assault on Christians</i></a> have extensively documented that “Christians are the single most widely persecuted religious group in the world today,” a “terrible trend…on the upswing.”  Moreover, “it is in the Muslim world where persecution of Christians is now most widespread, intense, and, ominously, increasing.”  Abolition of Muslim blasphemy laws, often used to prohibit propagation of Christian beliefs contradicting Muslim doctrine, would eliminate one important instrument of Islamic repression.</p>
<p>Such religious freedom would protect not just private rights, but also public peace.  “Religious freedom,” <a href="http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/blogs/faith-and-foreign-policy/posts/preventing-another-attack-international-religious-freedom">notes</a> Scola’s fellow Catholic, Professor <a href="http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/people/thomas-farr">Thomas F. Farr</a> of Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, &amp; World Affairs, “the evidence shows, can be an antidote to religion-related extremism, including terrorism.”  Freedom, analyzes Farr, dilutes fanaticism by forcing various faiths to justify their claims intellectually without coercion in a marketplace of ideas.  “What if,” speculates Farr,</p>
<blockquote><p>Osama Bin Laden had been raised in a Saudi Arabia that allowed for religious freedom?  What if, instead of being steeped exclusively in the toxic teachings of Wahhabism and Sayyid Qutb, he had been exposed to other forms of Islam, to critics of Islam, to other forms of religious belief, and to liberal religion-based arguments about justice and the common good?</p></blockquote>
<p>Christians like Scola and Farr have a perfectly sound theological basis for faith-based advocacy of religious freedom.  As the prominent Protestant pastor and theologian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Piper_(theologian)">John Piper</a> has <a href="http://www.worldmag.com/2006/02/being_mocked">written</a>, numerous Biblical verses relate that “Christ did his work by being insulted” in stark contrast to Islam in which the “work of Muhammad is based on being honored.”  As the somewhat religiously eclectic but committed freethinker <a href="http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/jeffersons-religious-beliefs">Thomas Jefferson</a> wrote to a majoritarian-Christian America in his landmark 1779 (adopted 1785) <a href="http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/virginia-statute-religious-freedom">Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom</a>, “all attempts to influence” individual religious belief</p>
<blockquote><p>by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations…are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone.</p></blockquote>
<p>Ironically, Christian calls for religious freedom with respect to Islam would manifest precisely the Christian concept of the “<a href="http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-calls-church-militant-an-apt-description-for-faithful-on-earth">church militant</a>” (<i>ecclesia militans</i>).  Muslim entities like the 57 Muslim-majority member states (including “Palestine”) of the <a href="http://www.oic-oci.org/home.asp">Organization of Islamic Cooperation</a> (OIC) have often tried to hide advocacy of <i>de facto</i> Islamic blasphemy laws behind a supposedly “ecumenical veneer” of opposition to “defamation of religion” in general.  Christian calls for religious freedom, come what may in criticism and/or condemnation of any particular faith, ostentatiously breaks ranks with this united front claimed by some Muslims, leaving them to defend religious repression on their own.</p>
<p>European opponents of blasphemy laws like Scola, though, will have to begin actually with their own continent.  Scola’s native Italy as well as seven other European countries (out of a total of 45, or 18%) had blasphemy laws according to a <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/Government/Laws-Penalizing-Blasphemy,-Apostasy-and-Defamation-of-Religion-are-Widespread.aspx">2011 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life</a> study.  Somewhat similar to blasphemy laws, laws against “defamation” of religion also existed in 36 European countries (80%), while collectively religious restrictions of various sorts exist in 47% of countries worldwide.</p>
<p>As many have already noted (see <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/blasphemy_of_jesus_goes_unprosecuted_in_germany.html">here</a>, <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/free_speech_roundup.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/different_rules_for_islam.html">here</a>), ultimately arbitrary European enforcement of such laws today more often than not involve the Islamic faith of recently arrived immigrant communities, not Europe’s historically dominant Judeo-Christian beliefs.  Accordingly, concerns about limiting free speech with respect to Islam played a role in the 2012 abolition of the blasphemy law in one of the eight European countries listed by Pew in 2011, <a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/dutch-parliament-revokes-blasphemy-law/24785198.html">Holland</a>.  The Dutch precedent is a model to follow for all faithful people who believe that they have a religious truth that will set free, a truth that need not fear freedom.</p>
<p><strong>This article was sponsored by <a href="http://www.legal-project.org/">The Legal Project</a>, an activity of the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/">Middle East Forum</a>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Islamist Group Congratulates Pope &#8212; While Cursing Christians Everywhere</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joe-kaufman/islamist-group-congratulates-pope-offends-catholics/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamist-group-congratulates-pope-offends-catholics</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Mar 2013 04:41:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joe Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[congratulate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[icna]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic circle of north america]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pope Francis]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=183178</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A case study in sordid deception. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joe-kaufman/islamist-group-congratulates-pope-offends-catholics/news679-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-183181"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-183181" title="news679" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/news6791-355x350.png" alt="" width="248" height="245" /></a>In order to throw off their real agendas, mainstream radical Muslims work to placate – or at least confuse – those whom they perceive as their enemies. That was the case with the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), when the group congratulated the new Pope, while cursing Christians and Catholics everywhere.</p>
<p>On March 13, ICNA issued a press release “<a href="http://www.icna.org/icna-congratulates-new-pope/">congratulating Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio</a> on his election as the pope [Pope Francis] and leader of the worldwide Catholic Church.” For a group such as ICNA to offer such well wishes for members of the Christian faith might seem strange, as the group has propagated much hatred towards Christians – and does so to this day.</p>
<p>ICNA was established in 1971 as an <a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/Beyond_Malcolm.html">American function of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI)</a>, the Muslim Brotherhood movement of South Asia. The group based its beliefs on the teachings of Syed Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of JI and a rabid anti-Christian.</p>
<p>Young Muslims (YM) is the youth division of ICNA. On YM’s official website is a book section containing the full text of Maududi’s work, ‘Towards Understanding Islam.’ In it, Maududi makes the claim that Jesus taught Islam and that Christianity was nothing more than a fabricated religion forged by Jesus’ followers. Maududi states, “Although the religion taught by Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) was none but Islam, his followers reduced it to a <a href="http://www.ymsite.com/books/tui/chp3.html">hotchpotch called Christianity</a>.”</p>
<p>And according to the YM site, not only is Jesus a Muslim, but in the future, Jesus is going to abolish Christianity. In YM’s ‘Signs Before the Day of Judgement,’ the following quote is attributed to Prophet Muhammad: “‘Jesus son of Mary will be a just administrator and leader of my Ummah. He will break the cross, kill the pigs, and abolish the Jizyah (tax on non-Muslims)… He will break the cross and kill pigs,’ i.e. <a href="http://www.ymsite.com/books/dayofjudgement/seven.htm">Christianity will be annulled</a>.”</p>
<p>Why Islam (WI) is ICNA’s religious outreach or <em>dawah</em> center. To make the point of Jesus being a Muslim even stronger – as well as other biblical figures – WI has created a <a href="http://www.icna.org/whyislam-billboards-spark-interest/">campaign to place billboards up</a> in key areas of the nation. One of the billboards is currently located adjacent to a major highway in South Florida. Complete with an ICNA logo and contact information, it reads, “What do Abraham, Moses, Jesus &amp; Mohammed have in common? Islam.”</p>
<p>All of this entirely ignores the fact that Christianity predates Islam by roughly 600 years – and Judaism, much longer than that. But why worry about facts, when the main interest is bigotry?</p>
<p>Currently on ICNA’s Why Islam site, the Christian Gospel is called a “corruption,” Christians are labeled “deluded” for their beliefs, and “Allah” is called upon to “curse” and “destroy” them.</p>
<p>In WI’s online version of the Quran, one reads: “The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the son of Allah;’ and the Christians say, ‘The Messiah is the son of Allah.’ That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved [before them.] <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/n5xd1zmatihp2yo/Destroy_Jews_Christians_Why_Islam_ICNA.jpg">May Allah destroy them</a>; how are they deluded?”</p>
<p>On the press release congratulating the Pope, ICNA’s President Naeem Baig is quoted as saying, “We hope that Catholics worldwide will benefit from the leadership of Pope Francis. We also hope and pray that he will work with religious leaders of all faiths to strive for peace and socio-economic justice across the world.”</p>
<p>According to ICNA’s corporation details, Baig has sat on ICNA’s Board of Directors <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/bab1os3dn9lmuq4/Naeem_Baig_Director_ICNA.jpg">since June 2006</a>. From then till now, ICNA and its various entities have propagated offensive and bigoted material against Christians and others. Given this information, why should anyone, especially someone describing himself/herself as a Christian or Catholic, believe that Baig is being at all honest in what he has said regarding the Pope? No one can.</p>
<p>The truth is that there are mainstream Muslim organizations within the United States who have sinister beliefs and worse goals. ICNA and its underlings attempt to subdue and/or confuse the public. They offer attractive-looking messages of peace and understanding, at the same time they propagate the worst of hatred and violence.</p>
<p>It is a grand deception that needs to be exposed.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Joe Biden&#8217;s Religion: Catholicism or Leftism?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dennis-prager/joe-bidens-religion-catholicism-or-leftism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=joe-bidens-religion-catholicism-or-leftism</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:25:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paul Ryan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social doctrine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=149049</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The vice president's bad faith arguments. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dennis-prager/joe-bidens-religion-catholicism-or-leftism/gty_joe_biden_paul_ryan_debate_ll_121012_wg/" rel="attachment wp-att-149053"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-149053" title="gty_joe_biden_paul_ryan_debate_ll_121012_wg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/gty_joe_biden_paul_ryan_debate_ll_121012_wg.gif" alt="" width="315" height="223" /></a>In the vice presidential debate, the two candidates, both Roman Catholics, were asked about their religious beliefs, how they impact the candidates&#8217; political positions and specifically about abortion. This was the response of Vice President Joe Biden:</p>
<p>&#8220;My religion defines who I am. And I&#8217;ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who — who can&#8217;t take care of themselves, people who need help.</p>
<p>&#8220;With regard to abortion, I accept my church&#8217;s position on abortion as a — what we call de fide doctrine. Life begins at conception. That&#8217;s the church&#8217;s judgment. I accept it in my personal life.</p>
<p>&#8220;But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews and — I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman.</p>
<p>&#8220;I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that women, they can&#8217;t control their body. It&#8217;s a decision between them and their doctor, in my view. And the Supreme Court — I&#8217;m not going to interfere with that.&#8221;</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s analyze this response.</p>
<p>1. &#8220;My religion defines who I am.&#8221;</p>
<p>If a conservative, evangelical Christian candidate for national office said that he defined himself by his religious beliefs, liberals would be screaming that the wall between church and state was in danger of being taken down.</p>
<p>Here is the rule in American politics: When the left uses religion to promote liberal policies, it is a beautiful thing. When the right uses religion to promote conservative policies, it threatens the separation of church and state and may lead to the creation of a theocracy.</p>
<p>2. &#8220;It has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who can&#8217;t take care of themselves, people who need help.&#8221;</p>
<p>This illustrates my previous point. Biden&#8217;s Catholicism leads him to promote liberal social policies, specifically an ever-expanding state to take care of &#8220;people who need help.&#8221; What else could his statement mean? After all, what religion doesn&#8217;t expect its adherents to take &#8220;care of those who can&#8217;t take care of themselves&#8221;? Protestant Christianity? Judaism? Islam? Buddhism? Mitt Romney&#8217;s Mormonism?</p>
<p>Since all religions do, what is the difference between Romney&#8217;s religious call to help the less fortunate and Biden&#8217;s religious call to help these people?</p>
<p>The difference, as seen in the enormous difference between Biden&#8217;s charitable donations and Romney&#8217;s, is the difference between conservatism and liberalism: Conservatism holds that we all have to take care of ourselves and our fellow citizens; liberalism holds that the state — funded by some of us — has to.</p>
<p>3. &#8220;I accept my church&#8217;s position on abortion &#8230; I just refuse to impose that on others.&#8221;</p>
<p>This sounds beautiful to liberals. But it is as un-thought-through as it is un-Catholic.</p>
<p>Why is Mr. Biden completely comfortable with policies that &#8220;impose on others&#8221; what he understands as Catholic &#8220;social doctrine&#8221;? He will use the government to forcefully take people&#8217;s money away and impose whatever policies he thinks Catholic social doctrine favors. Why, then, will he not impose on others his church&#8217;s definition of the worth of human life from conception?</p>
<p>There are three possible answers. One is that he doesn&#8217;t really believe in his church&#8217;s position on abortion. A second is that he does believe in it but would have to leave the Democratic Party if he tried to implement that policy. The third is that he believes that the Church&#8217;s views on abortion only pertain to Catholics — and even then, only on a &#8220;personal&#8221; basis.</p>
<p>If we are to take him at his word, that latter is what he believes: that his church&#8217;s view on abortion only applies to him personally: &#8220;Life begins at conception. That&#8217;s the church&#8217;s judgment. I accept it in my personal life.&#8221; But if that is his opinion, his religiosity is not morally meaningful. If an act is moral or immoral only for him, then it is not moral or immoral. Either something is immoral for everyone (in the same circumstance) or it is not immoral.</p>
<p>Which is why the Church&#8217;s teaching is that abortion is morally wrong for everyone, just as neglecting the needy is morally wrong for everyone.</p>
<p>But Joe Biden would never say that the Catholic Church&#8217;s social doctrine is only valid &#8220;in my personal life.&#8221; So, what does Joe Biden, the Catholic, believe about abortion?</p>
<p>These statements by the vice-president of the United States provide one more example of the fact that leftism — not Christianity, not Catholicism, and not Islam — has been the most influential religion in the world for the last century.</p>
<p>Only when Catholicism agrees with leftism is Joe Biden prepared to impose it. When his Catholicism does not agree with leftism, it is reduced to being a matter of personal matter of faith, no more binding on non-Catholics than receiving the Eucharist.</p>
<p>And in this regard he is no different from many Jews and Protestant Christians. Their religious expression may be Judaism or Christianity, but their religion, like Biden&#8217;s, is leftism. Which is why liberal Jews and liberal Christians have much more in common than liberal Jews have with conservative Jews or liberal Christians have with conservative Christians. They share what they deem truly important — leftism.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Mythologizing Cesar Chavez</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/mythologizing-cesar-chavez/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mythologizing-cesar-chavez</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/mythologizing-cesar-chavez/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Oct 2012 04:40:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Flynn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boycott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cesar Chavez]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[La Raza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[monument]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Union]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=147592</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Left's selective honoring of the labor activist.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/mythologizing-cesar-chavez/0330-cesar-chavez-jpg_full_600/" rel="attachment wp-att-147598"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-147598" title="0330-cesar-chavez.jpg_full_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/0330-cesar-chavez.jpg_full_600.gif" alt="" width="315" height="243" /></a>President Barack Obama declared 105 of the 187 acres of Cesar Chavez’s union headquarters a National Monument this Columbus Day under 1906’s Antiquities Act. Last year the president named a cargo ship after the organizer who had spent two miserable years in the Navy. The body of the United Farm Workers (UFW) leader rests at the newly nationalized Keene, California compound.</p>
<p>“César Chávez gave a voice to poor and disenfranchised workers everywhere,” President Obama said at Monday’s dedication ceremony. “La Paz was at the center of some of the most significant civil rights moments in our nation’s history, and by designating it a national monument, Chávez’s legacy will be preserved and shared to inspire generations to come.”</p>
<p>Like the president who praises him, Chavez traces his activism ancestry to the Saul Alinsky family tree. And like the Chicago neighborhoods that Obama organized, the unskilled farm workers that Chavez unionized aren’t much better off today than when the organizer first encountered them. The “Si, se puede” rallying cry isn’t the pair’s only common denominator.</p>
<p>The views of the two Alinskyite organizers diverge as much as they converge. As Chavez has moved from man to icon, substance has yielded to symbolism. The parts of the organizer’s outlook that inconvenience his present-day admirers have been left in the past. In Cesar Chavez the monument, we lose Cesar Chavez the man.</p>
<p>The real Chavez regarded illegal aliens as strikebreakers who drove down the wages of American workers. He found the emergence of “brown power” groups problematic. “That’s why today we oppose some of this La Raza business so much,” Chavez explained to his biographer Jacques Levy. “We know what it does. When La Raza means or implies racism, we don’t support it. But if it means our struggle, our dignity, or our cultural roots, then we’re for it. I guess many times people don’t know what they mean by La Raza, but we can’t be against racism on the one hand and for it on the other.”</p>
<p>In pandering for votes, Obama played up Chavez’s role as a union leader and as an icon for Hispanic Americans. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, reported: “Though White House officials said it was a process long in the making, the formal dedication came as Obama’s campaign shifts toward a more intensive get-out-the-vote phase of its operation, one that includes a major focus on the Latino vote and will be augmented by labor muscle.”</p>
<p>But Chavez’s faith, more than his ethnicity or his labor affiliations, informed his activism. Inspired by Christ’s example, Chavez became famous through fasting (and through boycotts of grapes). He held religious masses at the California state capitol in Sacramento. He even once used his union connections to keep a plane grounded so that he could make his flight to see the pope. Chavez told his biographer in the mid 1970s that “my need for religion has deepened. Today I don’t think that I could base my will to struggle on cold economics or on some political doctrine. I don’t think there would be enough to sustain me. For me the base must be faith.”</p>
<p>Fittingly, UFW’s headquarters bears a religious name. The president referred to Chavez’s Central Valley sanctuary as “La Paz.” Its full name is Nuestra Señora Reina de La Paz—Our Lady Queen of Peace. In making a national monument of a religious retreat named in honor of Jesus’s mother, the president risks irritating one constituency as he courts another. Surely the American Civil Liberties Union can’t be thrilled with a mystical Catholic, and his outpost named for Mary, receiving official recognition from the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Alas, there is an election to win. Disrupting the president’s fragile coalition over principles normally fiercely fought for on matters as unobtrusive as nondenominational graduation prayers and Christmastime nativity scenes just won’t do when it comes to nationalizing a religious leader’s religious retreat named for a religious saint. Here, activists, normally incapable of looking the other way, mute their objections.</p>
<p>“Cesar feels that liberals are liberal right up to the steps of the Catholic church,” explained Dorothy Huerta, co-founder of the UFW, during Chavez’s ’70s heyday. “Guys can be liberal about homosexuality, about dope, about capital punishment, about everything but the Catholic church. There the liberalism ends.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Romney Matching Reagan&#8217;s Numbers Among Catholics</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/romney-matching-reagans-numbers-among-catholics/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=romney-matching-reagans-numbers-among-catholics</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/romney-matching-reagans-numbers-among-catholics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:47:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=143563</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The latest poll numbers show Obama leading narrowly among Catholics, 46 to 44. That's a significant shift from 2008 when Obama took Catholics 53 to 47. Those numbers look fairly similar to Reagan's 1980 win among Catholics by 47 to 46.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/catholicvote_op.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-143564" title="catholicvote_op" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/catholicvote_op-300x182.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="182" /></a></p>
<p>The<a href="http://www.tipponline.com/presidency/news/presidency/race-tightens-as-obama-advantage-narrows-to-2-points"> latest poll numbers</a> show Obama leading narrowly among Catholics, 46 to 44. That&#8217;s a significant shift from 2008 when Obama took Catholics 53 to 47. Those numbers l<a href="cara.georgetown.edu/Presidential%20Vote%20Only.pdf">ook fairly similar to </a>Reagan&#8217;s 1980 win among Catholics by 47 to 46. Those numbers may not be significant, but in 1976, Carter had taken Catholics by 57 to 41.</p>
<p>Given four years, Reagan expanded that lead in 1984 to 61 percent among Catholics. That advantage crumbled in the Clinton era, Clinton won the Catholic vote  47 to 35, and 55 to 35 in the next election, but the balance began shifting again under Bush. The current numbers show both candidates running nearly even. If those numbers remain on track, then Obama will be in serious trouble.</p>
<p>Catholic voters have a history of turning against radical candidates. Catholics turned on McGovern in 1972. They turned on Carter in 1980. And they may be turning on Obama in 2012.</p>
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		<title>How to Write About the Republican National Convention</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/how-to-write-about-the-republican-national-convention/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-to-write-about-the-republican-national-convention</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/how-to-write-about-the-republican-national-convention/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Sep 2012 04:55:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marco Rubio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[republican national convention]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=142605</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A guide for the lazy mainstream media.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Republican-National-Convention_1_1.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-142621" title="Republican-National-Convention_1_1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Republican-National-Convention_1_1.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>Every four years a conclave of the most fiendish villains found this side of San Francisco gathers to anoint a reactionary running dog capitalist candidate on a platform of destroying the environment, restoring slavery and making everyone eat broccoli. It is your job as a dedicated progressive reporter to penetrate their lair wearing the token press badges of your profession and file a balanced report describing in detail what absolutely awful human beings Republicans are.</p>
<p>Covering a Republican National Convention is not for the faint of heart. It requires journalistic integrity, keen reporting skills and a willingness to make up racist incidents that didn&#8217;t happen to your knowledge but probably did happen somewhere at the convention while you weren&#8217;t looking, because everyone knows that all Republicans are racist. Especially the black ones.</p>
<p>Start by observing the reactionary creatures in their native habitat. Emphasize how white they are and mention their lack of diversity in every paragraph. Racism didn&#8217;t matter nearly as much before Obama, but these days racism is the only game in town. Even you have to admit that Obama isn&#8217;t offering much and if you can&#8217;t convince people to feel good about voting for him, maybe you can still convince them to feel bad for not voting for him.</p>
<p>The most important thing to remember about the convention is that it&#8217;s racist; so wholly racist that it might as well come with a Klan hood as its gift bag. Think of racism as Waldo: it&#8217;s lurking everywhere and only your keen journalistic instincts and a copy of something by Alice Walker from the airport gift shop can help you sniff it out.</p>
<p>Can you see any black waiters around? Are there no black waiters at all or is the number of black waiters out of proportion, in your uninformed but passionate opinion, to the number of black people in the Tampa area? Any of these is conclusive evidence of racism. Find a waiter who has a college degree and hasn&#8217;t been able to get a job in his chosen field of ethnocentric history. Get his thoughts on Republican racism. If you can&#8217;t find one, make him up. You&#8217;ve seen plenty of black people in movies. How hard can it be?</p>
<p>Study all the food on the trays and compare it unfavorably with your experience feeding an African village with the Peace Corps. Speculate that under Republicans most Americans will be divided between gun-wielding Republican warlords hoarding trays of canapés and the starving masses yearning for canapés, civil rights and schools that offer free sex-change operations to teachers as part of their union health plans.</p>
<p>To undertake this journalistic effort you need not have ever been in the Peace Corps or be able to find Africa on a map. Just think about the time that the dentist told you that you couldn&#8217;t eat for an hour and how hungry you felt walking past that bakery that makes artisanal organic arugula rolls and how you were sure that your dentist was a right-winger because only a Republican could be so oblivious to the needs and wants of another human being.</p>
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		<title>Exposing the Vatican-Islam Alliance</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/giulio-meotti/exposing-the-vatican-islam-alliance/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=exposing-the-vatican-islam-alliance</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/giulio-meotti/exposing-the-vatican-islam-alliance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 05 Jul 2012 04:40:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Giulio Meotti]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bethlehem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[danger]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jesus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vatican]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=136646</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Church's increasingly disturbing ties and positions. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Pope-Benedict-Benediction_medium1.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-136673" title="Pope-Benedict-Benediction_medium" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Pope-Benedict-Benediction_medium1.gif" alt="" width="375" height="256" /></a>The Roman Catholic Church hailed UNESCO’s decision to grant the world heritage status to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. According to the Vatican authorities, the UN decision is a “diplomatic victory” for the Palestinian Authority. Last Friday, the United Nations approved the Palestinian bid to place Jesus’ birthplace on its list of sites of World Heritage in danger. Israel called the decision “absurd” and “a sad day.”</p>
<p>The Palestinian agenda at UNESCO is the de-Judaization of the land of Israel by Islamicizing the holy sites. Oras Hamdan Taha, the Palestinian minister who deals with antiquities and gets funds from UNESCO, made clear, “it’s writing or rewriting the history of Palestine.” Less known is that the Vatican institutions are collaborating with the Palestinian autocracy.</p>
<p>The Vatican already declared its support of waving a Palestinian flag over the Temple Mount in the heart of ancient Jerusalem. Next in line is Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem, Judaism’s third most holy site, which for millennia has served as a place of longing, pilgrimage and prayer for the Jewish people. In 1996, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority began referring to the site as the “Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque,” and this is how UNESCO shamefully listed it in 2010.</p>
<p>Many Catholic groups worldwide already embraced the Palestinian myth. Pax Christi, one of the most famous Catholic organizations, on its website, repeatedly calls the Jewish site a “mosque.” Then there is the Bethlehem University of the Holy Land, the only Vatican-run educational institution in the area and whose founding can be traced back to the visit of Pope Paul VI in the holy land in 1964. The Catholic University recently launched a project about the Rachel’s Tomb. The document calls it “a historical religious site for followers of Christianity and Islam,” whose location is “on Palestinian lands.” The Vatican institution seems to ignore that all of Rachel’s Tomb belongs to Area C, which the Oslo Accords gave to Israeli jurisdiction. The very title of the Catholic project, “Rachel: An Alien in her Hometown,” suggests that the tomb is a spot hijacked by the Israelis. The tomb, the Catholic report says, “is also known by Muslims as the Bilal Ibn Rabah Mosque.” According to the Vatican university, the Jewish shrines are Arab treasures stolen by the Zionists and the Israelis are no more than invading colonizers.</p>
<p>A few months ago, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, welcomed enthusiastically the agreement reached between Hamas and Fatah, despite both the PLO and Hamas covenants&#8217; call for the use of violence against the Jews. Last September, Patriarch Twal, named by Pope Benedict XVI, was at the White House for a meeting with the American administration &#8212; as well as for the purpose to support the PA statehood bid at the UN.</p>
<p>Last January eight Catholic bishops from Europe and North America, including UK Archbishop Patrick Kelly and French Archbishop Michel Dubost, visited Gaza under Hamas control. “I asked prisoners in the largest prison in Europe (in Evry) to pray for you,” Dubost told Gazans. The inference is clear: Palestinians are living in a big prison terrified by Israel. In the same period, Father Manuel Musalam, head of Gaza’s Catholics, met with Hamas leader, Mahmoud al Zahar, and declared that “Christians are not threatened by Muslims” but that everyone faces the same problem, that of Israel’s “humiliation.”</p>
<p>A few weeks earlier, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales offered the Palestinians another piece of powerful propaganda: the comparison with Jesus’ passion. “We are to be freshly attentive to the needs of those who, like Jesus himself, are displaced and in discomfort,” Archbishop Vincent Nichols said during his last Christmas Mass sermon at Westminster Cathedral. “A shadow falls particularly heavily on the town of Bethlehem tonight … We pray for them tonight” It would have been more in keeping with Nicholas’ mission to mention hundreds of Christians losing their lives to Islamic terrorism and oppressed by Palestinian dictatorship.</p>
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		<title>How the Gay-Marriage Mob Slimed Manny Pacquiao</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/how-the-gay-marriage-mob-slimed-manny-pacquiao/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-the-gay-marriage-mob-slimed-manny-pacquiao</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/how-the-gay-marriage-mob-slimed-manny-pacquiao/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 May 2012 04:20:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Examiner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gay marriage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George Soros]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Manny Pacquiao]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=132336</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Soros-funded smear campaign against the boxing champion. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Manny-Pacquiao-001.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-132338" title="Manny-Pacquiao-001" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Manny-Pacquiao-001.gif" alt="" width="375" height="243" /></a>Boxing champion Manny Pacquiao is guilty — of being true to his Catholic faith. The gay-marriage mob is guilty — of the very ugly bigotry it claims to abhor. And left-wing media outlets are guilty — of stoking false narratives that shamelessly demonize religion in the name of compassion.</p>
<p>The attempted crucifixion of Pacquiao this week was fueled by an online army of cultural shakedown artists, generously funded by billionaire George Soros and other so-called progressive philanthropists.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, a freelance writer for the Examiner.com published an interview with Pacquiao conducted at his Los Angeles residence. Journalist Granville Ampong asked the pugilist his views on gay marriage in light of President Obama&#8217;s flip-flop-flip on the issue. &#8220;God&#8217;s words first,&#8221; Pacquiao said. &#8220;Obey God&#8217;s law first before considering the laws of man.&#8221;</p>
<p>After suggesting that Obama should consult the Bible as his &#8220;manual for life,&#8221; Pacquiao added in earnest: &#8220;It should not be of the same sex so as to adulterate the altar of matrimony, like in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah of Old.&#8221;</p>
<p>The interview then included a scriptural reference to Leviticus 20:13, which states: &#8220;If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.&#8221;</p>
<p>Publications including USA Today, LA Weekly and Village Voice all ran outraged pieces on Pacquiao&#8217;s &#8220;homophobic&#8221; calls for violence. But it was the interviewer, not Pacquiao, who made the citation. Ampong demanded apologies on behalf of Pacquiao. Feckless professional journalists blamed Ampong for their own biased reading and then grudgingly &#8220;clarified&#8221; the truth in buried updates.</p>
<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t say that, that&#8217;s a lie,&#8221; Pacquiao told anyone who would listen. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know that quote from Leviticus because I haven&#8217;t read the Book of Leviticus yet.&#8221; Too late. The politically correct bloodhounds were in full hunting mode.</p>
<p>The Courage Campaign, a community-organizing outfit that claims to have 750,000 members and is funded by the radical Tides Foundation, immediately called on Pacquiao-sponsor Nike to drop him over his &#8220;hate speech against gays.&#8221; The group took to Twitter to demand that the athletic shoe company &#8220;Drop Manny,&#8221; the &#8220;homophobic boxer.&#8221; The call was amplified by Think Progress, an online character assassination squad backed by George Soros.</p>
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		<title>The Killing of Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/kerry-patton/the-killing-of-pastor-yousef-nadarkhani/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-killing-of-pastor-yousef-nadarkhani</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:35:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kerry Patton]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=107086</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why is the Vatican silent about this atrocity?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Picture-61.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107142" title="Picture-6" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Picture-61.gif" alt="" width="375" height="257" /></a></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/278400/iran-execution-apostasy-seems-imminent-nina-shea">11th branch of Iran’s Gilan Provincial Court </a>upheld the apostasy conviction and execution sentencing of Christian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani this week. Social media accounts like <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23Nadarkhani">Twitter</a> have swarmed support for Pastor Nadarkhani. But where is the critically needed support from nation states—let alone, from where the Vatican?</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ediplomat.com/np/post_reports/pr_va.htm">Vatican</a> is an internationally recognized sovereign state with full diplomatic status. The Holy See has a legal personality under international law, giving it recognition as a sovereign state, which allows it to enter into treaties and to send and receive diplomatic representation. Knowing the Vatican has these powers, why hasn&#8217;t it spoken up on behalf of the Christian minister?</p>
<p>It is understood that the Vatican does not have its own military. However, history exemplifies the power of the Vatican to bring nations together to defeat its arch enemies through either diplomatic means or military might. This does not imply cause for a militant exhibition. However, it does imply, in a historical sense, the power of the Vatican. Has that power been lost today?</p>
<p>At the <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/urban2-5vers.html">Council of Clermont</a>, Pope Urban II addressed the world to aid the Greeks and recover Palestine from Muslim rule. It was here that Pope Urban II requested aid from the West to fight against the Seljuq Turks. Nation states listened to the Pope and launched armies to engage battle against the Muslims, which lasted approximately 175 years. Some believe the ninth crusade was initiated by Muslims ten years ago on that horrific and tragic September day often referred to as 9-11.</p>
<p>Assyrian-born Chaldean Catholic <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/1026/Tariq-Aziz-international-face-of-Saddam-s-regime-sentenced-to-hang">Tariq Aziz</a> served as deputy prime minister to Iraq until 2003. During his tenure and immediately prior to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Saddam Hussein repeatedly sent Aziz to the <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/2003/documents/rc_seg-st_20030219_migliore-security-council_en.html">Vatican</a> in an attempt to delay and or resolve military confrontation against the United States. Needless to say, when you commit crimes against humanity as Aziz had, it’s extremely tough for the Vatican to assist you.</p>
<p>Iran constantly commits <a href="http://www.unarts.org/H-II/ref/IMReport1988.pdf">crimes against humanity</a>. War crimes have been committed, relentless killings of innocent people, torture, and so much more comes directly out of this Shiite-dominated state—yet they sit on the <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/04/29/elects-iran-commission-womens-rights/">United Nations Commission on the Status of Women</a>. The Vatican failed in delivering any statement opposing this newly appointed Iranian UN position.</p>
<p>Lately, instead of fighting for the morale and values bestowed before a loving and peaceful Christian faith, Pope Benedict seems to have embraced Iran. In 2008, <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/04/30/vatican-iranian-dialogue-agrees-on-faith-reason-non-violence/">Pope Benedict</a> actually conferred that the two entities agreed with one another on faith-based principles.  Pope Urban II must be rolling in his grave.</p>
<p>Since 2001 alone, there have been well over 2,000 innocent <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/ChristianAttacks.htm">Christians brutally murdered</a> by Muslims. None of these people were military members engaged in any of the wars fought in Iraq or Afghanistan. They were faith-based community members or missionaries, some of which were actual clergy. Not once in any of the aforementioned atrocities did the Vatican make a global outcry for the victims. Yes, some statements can be found in Vatican records, but they failed to saturate international media news as they should have.</p>
<p>If anyone believes that the Vatican will step up today in safeguarding one of their own practitioners who preaches the word of God to fellow Christians, they will likely be let down. As a practicing Roman Catholic, I am at times ashamed of my own religious denomination, yet for whatever reason, I maintain my faith.</p>
<p>There are currently numerous <a href="http://freedomslighthouse.net/2011/07/15/video-urges-prayer-for-christian-pastor-yusef-nadarkhani-facing-execution-in-iran-for-his-faith/">prayer calls for Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani</a>. Numerous petitions exist requesting the <a href="http://www.pcusa.org/news/2011/7/29/pressure-mounts-iran-acquit-christian-pastor/">United States Department of State</a> intervene. While fully recognizing the power of prayer, maybe it’s time to simply do more about Iran and follow the war cry of Pope Urban II not just for the sake of Pastor Nadarkhani but for all of those who have faced the horrors of Iran’s evil.</p>
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		<title>Pakistan&#8217;s Bible Ban</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/frank-crimi/banning-bibles/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=banning-bibles</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/frank-crimi/banning-bibles/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:10:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=95797</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The climate for terrorized Christians becomes increasingly toxic.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/pak-christian.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-95804" title="pak-christian" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/pak-christian.gif" alt="" width="375" height="277" /></a></p>
<p>Pakistan’s Islamist party, Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islami (JUI), has <a href="http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pakistani-christians-shocked-by-proposed-bible-ban/">petitioned</a> to have the Bible banned from Pakistan because it violates the nation’s notorious blasphemy laws. The move by the JUI is just the latest episode in the ongoing and increasingly deadly persecution of Christians in that Islamic nation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/now-bible-faces-blasphemy-charges-in-pakistan-50789/">According</a> to JUI leader Maulana Abdul Rauf Farooqi, the Bible contains passages that show biblical figures whom Muslims regard as prophets (such as Abraham and Solomon) to be engaging in “a variety of moral crimes.” As such, the JUI has called on Pakistan’s supreme court to have the entire Book banned from the country if the offending passages are not removed.</p>
<p>While the JUI acknowledged its petition was partially in <a href="http://jonathanturley.org/2011/04/muslims-protest-burning-of-quran-by-florida-preacher-by-killing-20-people/">response</a> to the Koran burning organized by Florida pastor Terry Jones in March 2011, it also <a href="http://www.pakistanchristianpost.com/headlinenewsd.php?hnewsid=2851">dismissed</a> the notion that banning the Christian Bible would cause additional trouble between Muslims and Christians.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that is not what Pakistan’s tiny Christian community believes. Pakistani Christians have found themselves under continuous assault from both government authorities and Islamist mobs. That may explain why Pakistan’s Christian leaders urged <a href="http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pakistani-christians-shocked-by-proposed-bible-ban/">restraint</a> in wake of the Bible suit, fearful of further antagonizing Pakistan’s more fervent Muslims.</p>
<p>For his part, Farooqi was confident that Pakistan’s highest court would side with the JUI petition. However, his certainty may have less to do with the merits of his case than with the fact that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have proven to be a reliable legal cudgel with which to bankrupt, beat, jail and kill Christians.</p>
<p>As a <a href="http://www.pakistanchristianpost.com/communityarticlesv.php?editorialid=28">spokesman</a> for a Catholic advocacy group says the pervasive use of the blasphemy laws have ratcheted up Christian fears to unprecedented levels, leading them to “have no faith in the police or justice system.”</p>
<p>Evidence for their fears was on full display recently when a Pakistani anti-terrorism court <a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/70-people-accused-of-antichristian-violence-acquitted-in-pak/800621/">acquitted</a> 70 Muslims accused of attacking and setting fire to over 50 houses and two churches in a Christian colony in July 2009. In that assault, eight people &#8212; including a seven-year old child &#8212; were burned alive and 20 others wounded.</p>
<p>Perhaps more disturbingly, many Pakistani Islamists <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/now-bible-faces-blasphemy-charges-in-pakistan-50789/">believe</a> killing a blasphemous person earns a heavenly reward. As a result, extra-judicial killings are common. Since 2009, at least 30 Christians <a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/pakistan-no-country-for-freedom-analysis-07062011/">accused</a> under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have been killed by mobs of Islamist vigilantes.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=54779">According</a> to a spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan, “The problem is that all these extrajudicial killings remain unpunished. For religious minorities it is a crucial issue, since it affects the fundamental rights of every person.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately for Pakistani Christians, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws contain no provisions to punish a false accuser or false witness. Consequently, the laws have often been used to settle personal scores rather than to defend against perceived sleights to Islamic piety.</p>
<p>For instance, a Christian mother of five children has been in prison in solitary confinement since June 2009, after a verbal disagreement with some women in her village led to her being <a href="http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/BPnews.asp?ID=35319">accused</a> of having blasphemed against Mohammad.</p>
<p>In November 2010, a Christian farm worker was <a href="http://www.worthynews.com/10258-pakistan-christians-forgive-church-attackers">accused</a> of uttering blasphemous words against Mohammad during an argument with fellow workers and sentenced to death.</p>
<p>In May 2011, a group of Muslims &#8212; at the behest of a former member of parliament &#8212; <a href="http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=54135&amp;t=Pakistan%3A+++Punjab%2C+antiChristian+violence%3A+nurses+sequestered%2C+families+evicted+from+home">attacked</a> the houses of two Christians in order to force the owners to transfer the land ownership over to the politician.</p>
<p>Sadly, Christian children have not been spared the effects of this relentless persecution. For example, a young Pakistani woman claimed Christian children required to take Islamic studies in school are in <a href="http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/BPnews.asp?ID=35319">danger</a> simply “if they write anything or misspell anything to do with the prophet Mohammad.”</p>
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		<title>Why Don&#8217;t Christians Help&#8230;Christians?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/dennis-prager/why-dont-christians-help-christians/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-dont-christians-help-christians</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Apr 2011 04:04:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=90822</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A curious observation of the Christian world. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/samplestop-violence-against-indian-christians.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-90825" title="samplestop-violence-against-indian-christians" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/samplestop-violence-against-indian-christians.gif" alt="" width="375" height="315" /></a></p>
<p>In 1969, at the age of 21, I was sent to the Soviet Union. I was a young American Jew who spoke Hebrew and Russian and who practiced Judaism. My task was to bring Jewish religious items into the Soviet Union and the names of Jews who wished to leave the Soviet Union out of that country. Upon returning to the United States, I became the national spokesman for the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, one of the most effective organizations for Soviet Jews in the world.</p>
<p>As such, I spoke before synagogues of every denomination, Hadassah groups, Jewish federations, Jewish groups on college campuses. If there was a Jewish organization, it cared about the plight of Soviet Jews. For decades, virtually every synagogue in America had a &#8220;Save Soviet Jewry&#8221; sign in front of it.</p>
<p>Over time, the plight of the Soviet Jews awakened me to the plight of all Soviet dissidents, whether secular ones — such as that great man, the physicist Andrei Sakharov — or Christian.</p>
<p>The latter were particularly persecuted. Though my work was with Soviet Jewry, I had no trouble acknowledging that Soviet Christians often had it worse. Few Soviet Jews were killed or locked away in dungeon-like conditions by the Soviet authorities, but Soviet Christians were.</p>
<p>At some point in my early years, it dawned on me that I had not seen a single church with a &#8220;Save Soviet Christians&#8221; sign. Even more amazingly, I encountered Christian clergy — Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox — at every one of the scores of Soviet Jewry rallies at which I spoke. But while these wonderful Christians were outspoken on behalf of Soviet Jews, they were nearly all silent regarding — or even simply ignorant of — the dire plight of Soviet Christians.</p>
<p>Making matters worse, the world&#8217;s most famous Christian evangelist, the Rev. Billy Graham, went to the Soviet Union in 1982, and in his talk at a church told Christians to obey the authorities — the same authorities who were rounding up Christian dissidents inside and outside the very church at which Graham spoke. As columnist George Will wrote at the time:</p>
<p>&#8220;The Washington Post reports that when Graham spoke in two churches, both &#8216;were heavily guarded, with police sealing off all roads leading to them. Hundreds of KGB security agents &#8230; were in the congregation.&#8217; Graham told one congregation that God &#8216;gives you the power to be a better worker, a more loyal citizen because in Romans 13 we are told to obey the authorities.&#8217; How is that for a message from America? Graham is America&#8217;s most famous Christian. (Aleksandr) Solzhenitsyn is Russia&#8217;s. The contrast is instructive.&#8221;</p>
<p>This history is repeating itself.</p>
<p>In the Muslim world, Christians are being murdered, churches are being torched, entire ancient Christian communities — the Iraqi and Palestinian, for example — are disappearing.</p>
<p>And, again, 2 billion Christians react with silence. There are some Christian groups active on behalf of persecuted Christians around the world. They do important work, and are often the primary source of information on persecuted Christians. But they would be the first to acknowledge that the Christian world is overwhelmingly silent when it comes to the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world.</p>
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		<title>Attacking the Church and Double Standards</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/william-kilpatrick/attacking-the-church-and-double-standards/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=attacking-the-church-and-double-standards</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Apr 2010 04:23:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[William Kilpatrick]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the media attacks Catholic crimes of 20 years ago but turns a blind eye to present-day Muslim crimes against children.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/vatican.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59170" title="vatican" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/vatican.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="281" /></a></p>
<p>In the war against jihad it might seem that President Obama’s plan to remove all discussion of Islam and jihad from our national security document would rank higher as a threat to Western security than recent attempts to link the pope to 40 year-old sex crimes in Milwaukee. But the perfect storm that has hit the Catholic Church may turn out to be of greater consequence for the West’s survival. For that reason it’s important to sort out how much of the current indignation toward Rome represents justified anger, and how much of it represents a larger anti-Christian agenda.</p>
<p>Non-Catholic Christians who think the recent media blitz against the Catholic Church is mainly about sex abuse should think again.  Likewise, Christians would be naïve to think that those who would like to discredit the Catholic Church will be content, should they succeed, to leave the rest of Christianity alone.  The attack on the Catholic Church should be seen as part of a larger attack against Christianity itself.  Of course, there have been attacks on Christianity before, but never before have the stakes been so high.  From the standpoint of the West’s survival it would be difficult to imagine a worse time for the pundits to launch a campaign to undermine Christian belief.</p>
<p>There is much to suggest that media criticism of the Church is fueled less by outrage over pedophilia, and more by another agenda.  There wasn’t much outrage over Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13 year-old girl a number of years ago.  When attempts were made last year to bring Polanski back to the U.S. to serve his sentence, many of the same cultural elites who are now condemning the Church, leapt to his defense.  Likewise, there has never been much media outrage over the apparent crimes of celebrated sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.  The media continued to lionize Kinsey long after it was revealed that he had collaborated with pedophiles in order to gather data.  “What did Kinsey know and when did he know it?” has never been a pressing question for CNN or <em>The New York Times</em>.</p>
<p>In 1996—several years before the priestly sex scandal broke—Mary Eberstadt wrote the first of two in-depth articles on “Pedophilia Chic” for the <em>Weekly Standard</em>. She made a convincing case that liberal elites were moving in the direction of tearing down the taboo against pedophilia.  The only thing that stopped them, she suggests in a recent article, was the opportunity to use priestly pedophilia as a weapon to demonize the Church.  Of course, there was no pause in the liberal media’s campaign to normalize homosexuality, and this may account for the fact that much of the media coverage conveniently ignored the homosexual nature of the abuse—something that should have been difficult to ignore, given that about 90 % of male abuse victims were teenage boys, not young children.  While criticizing the Church for cover-ups, media pundits had no compunctions about their own calculated cover-up of a major aspect of the abuse.</p>
<p>Though sexual abuse remains a problem in the Catholic Church, enormous strides have been made in rooting it out, due in large part to a crackdown that originated with Cardinal Ratzinger in 2001.  So, the venomous attacks on him and the church he represents, suggest that something else is afoot.  When a major Canadian newspaper features a piece claiming that the pope’s “whole career has the stench of evil,” it’s time to reach for the decoding machine.  That particular quote comes from Christopher Hitchens, who has made a career in recent years of questioning the legitimacy, not just of Catholicism, but of Christianity, itself.  Hitchens aside, there is plenty of other evidence that Catholics are not the only ones being targeted for de-legitimization.  In Canada and in Europe, Christian pastors have been fined or jailed for expressing their beliefs from the pulpit.  In Birmingham, England, Christian evangelists were warned by police that distributing gospel leaflets in a Muslim section would be considered a hate crime.  A survey of history textbooks for American schoolchildren reveals that they present Christianity as a purveyor of bigotry and violence.  On college campuses, Christian clubs are routinely banned.  Meanwhile, Christianity is often the butt of vulgar comedy routines, and of crude cartoons that make the infamous Muhammad cartoon look benign by comparison.</p>
<p>Why the outrage?  Read between the lines of a typical assault column and you’ll find that what the columnist really hates about Catholicism and about Christianity in general is not the moral failings of Christian leaders, but the fact that Christianity still proposes moral absolutes.  It is not sexual misbehavior that galls, but rather that the churches dare to put limits on sexual behavior.  Christian churches are the main obstacle to the dominance of secular gods such as moral relativism and absolute sexual liberation.  While Christians and non-Christians are rightly disturbed by the sex scandals in the Catholic Church, they also ought to be disturbed at the motives behind some of the criticism.</p>
<p>As Brendan O’Neill, himself an atheist, writes, “Many contemporary opinion-formers are not concerned with getting to the truth [of what happened]…rather they want to milk incidents of abuse and make them into an indictment of religion itself.”  What draws militant secularists and atheists toward the Catholic-abuse story?  O’Neill says it is “their belief that religion is itself a form of abuse.”  As atheist Richard Dawkins writes, “Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.”  But, as O’Neill points out, if religious upbringing is a form of abuse, then “authorities must protect children not only from religious institutions but from their own religious parents, too.”  The dismantling of Christianity can proceed that much more smoothly if enough people can be convinced that, “It’s for the children’s sake.”</p>
<p>There is, of course, a major exemption from media condemnation of child abuse.  It appears that the abuse of children is much more acceptable to the opinion-makers when it is protected by the shield of multiculturalism.  The media has been much less willing to criticize the widespread child abuse that occurs in Islamic cultures, or to note that, in the case of Islam, the abuse is religiously sanctioned.  For example, although one can find plenty of criticism of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s political views, rarely does one see a condemnation of his views on sex.  The one-time spiritual leader of Iran not only endorsed sex with children in his writings, but he also took to himself a 13 year-old bride.</p>
<p>Here we come to the world-historical turning point of which the frenzied assaults on the Catholic Church are only a part.  The drive to undermine the Church’s moral authority, and the threat posed by Islam are linked in an ironic way.  For many centuries the Catholic faith was the main bulwark against the Islamization of Europe.  Now that Christianity is in decline in Europe, Islam is on the move again.  And with the growing presence of Islam has come an increase in child abuse—or what the West considers as child abuse.  The sexual exploitation of children is considered a far less serious offense in Islamic societies, and is often protected by the force of sharia law.  Muhammad, who consummated his marriage with Aisha when she was nine years-old, is considered by all Muslim authorities to have provided a “beautiful pattern of conduct.”  That’s why, whenever a Muslim country tries to ban child marriages (as recently happened in Yemen), you can be sure that the imams will rise up to insist on their right to marry minors.</p>
<p>And the exploitation of girls is only half the story.  There also appears to be some justification in the Koran for the culture of pederasty, which Phyllis Chesler points out is “epidemic in the Muslim world.”  A recent edition of PBS <em>Frontline</em> reported on the phenomenon of the dancing boys of Afghanistan—youngsters who are recruited, usually at age nine or ten, to provide entertainment and sex for men.  While Islam frowns on adult homosexuality, pederasty is a different matter.  Perhaps this has to do with several passages in the Koran which promise men that in addition to the dark-eyed maidens that await them in paradise, “there shall wait on them young boys of their own as fair as virgin pearls” (52: 22).  Since the boys are mentioned in conjunction with the maidens, and since they are described in the same way—“graced with eternal youth,” “fair as virgin pearls”—it seems likely that they are there for the same purpose.</p>
<p>The dancing boys haven’t yet been imported to Europe, but Europe’s waltz with the multicultural devil has already whirled it into unfamiliar territory.  A United Nations NGO study estimates that there are now 10,000 cases of female genital mutilation in Switzerland, with hundreds of thousands of cases elsewhere in Europe.  According to a National Police Chiefs report an estimated 17,000 girls and women in the UK are victims of honor crimes or forced marriages each year.  In the British Midlands girls in their early teens are routinely flown to Pakistan to marry men they have never met.</p>
<p>Europe’s Muslim girls are being mutilated and forced into marriages… therefore, according to the twisted logic of the opinion molders, it must be time to go after the Vatican for possible cover-ups of long ago.  It’s a strange juxtaposition.  Not that the abuse scandals aren’t newsworthy stories.  But there are two ways to frame them.  You can angrily focus on what wasn’t done in the past, or you can point out how much the Church has done in recent years to root out the problem.  Unlike the public schools (which have a much higher incidence of abuse) the Catholic Church has actually done something about its abuse problem.  That’s why almost all the cases highlighted by the media took place decades ago.</p>
<p>Judging by the way the story has been handled, it’s difficult to avoid the impression that the Western elites want to do as much damage as possible to the Church—which, when you think about it, betrays an almost suicidal impulse.  It really does seem that the fate of Europe is bound up with the fate of Christianity in Europe.  Europe is in trouble in large part because it has rejected its Christian heritage and embraced moral and cultural relativism, instead.  In the end, cultural relativism is a suicidal policy which is why Pope Benedict has frequently cautioned the West about the dangers inherent in a “culture of relativism.”</p>
<p>Relativism is the ultimate justification for never having to say you’re sorry.  As the climate of opinion changes in a relativist society, so will the consensus about what’s right and wrong.  And if Catholic Christianity is swept aside in Europe, the climate of opinion will increasingly be dictated by Islam.  Some may think that once Europe is free of its Catholic/Christian influence, children in lederhosen will once again romp freely through the meadows.  But don’t count on it.  Instead, look for children in hijabs being hurried into the local government approved clitorectomy clinic.</p>
<p>A lot of people find it difficult to fathom the motives of suicide bombers.  It may be time to also ponder the motives of the suicide pundits who have declared open season on the religion that built their civilization, while treating as a protected species the religion which aims to dismantle it.</p>
<p><strong>William Kilpatrick’s articles on Islam have appeared in <em>Front Page Magazine, Jihad Watch, Catholic World Report, the National Catholic Register, World, </em>and<em> Investor’s Business Daily.</em></strong></p>
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		<title>Should I Stay or Should I Go?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/timothy-radcliffe/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=should-i-stay-or-should-i-go</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:03:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Timothy Radcliffe]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[As a former Master of the Dominicans, I've decided the Church
is stuck with me, whatever happens.]]></description>
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<p><strong>This article is reprinted from <a href="http://www.thetablet.co.uk/">The Tablet.</a></strong></p>
<p>Fresh revelations of sexual abuse by priests in Germany and Italy have provoked a tide of anger and disgust. I have received emails from people all around Europe asking how can they possibly remain in the Church? I was even sent a form with which to renounce my membership of the Church. Why stay?</p>
<p>First of all, why go? Some people feel that they can no longer remain associated with an institution that is so corrupt and dangerous for children. The suffering of so many children is indeed horrific. They must be our first concern. Nothing that I will write is intended in any way to lessen our horror at the evil of sexual abuse. But the statistics for the US, from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2004, suggest that Catholic clergy do not offend more than the married clergy of other Churches.</p>
<p>Some surveys even give a lower level of offence for Catholic priests. They are less likely to offend than lay school teachers, and perhaps half as likely as the general population. Celibacy does not push people to abuse children. It is simply untrue to imagine that leaving the Church for another denomination would make one’s children safer.  We must face the terrible fact that the abuse of children is widespread in every part of society. To make the Church the scapegoat would be a cover-up.</p>
<p>But what about the cover-up within the Church? Have not our bishops been shockingly irresponsible in moving offenders around, not reporting them to the police and so perpetuating the abuse? Yes, sometimes. But the great majority of these cases go back to the 1960s and 1970s, when bishops often regarded sexual abuse as a sin rather than also a pathological condition, and when lawyers and psychologists often reassured them that it was safe to reassign priests after treatment. It is unjust to project backwards an awareness of the nature and seriousness of sexual abuse which simply did not exist then. It was only the rise of feminism in the late 1970s which, by shedding light on the violence of some men against women, alerted us to the terrible damage done to vulnerable children.</p>
<p>But what about the Vatican? Pope Benedict has taken a strong line in tackling this issue as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and since becoming Pope. Now the finger is pointed at him. It appears that some cases reported to the CDF under his watch were not dealt with. Isn’t the Pope’s credibility undermined? There are demonstrators in front of St Peter’s calling for his resignation. I am morally certain that he bears no blame here.</p>
<p>It is generally imagined that the Vatican is a vast and efficient organisation. In fact it is tiny. The CDF only employs 45 people, dealing with doctrinal and disciplinary issues for a Church which has 1.3 billion members, 17 per cent of the world’s population, and some 400,000 priests. When I dealt with the CDF as Master of the Dominican Order, it was obvious that they were struggling to cope. Documents slipped through the cracks. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger lamented to me that the staff was simply too small for the job.</p>
<p>People are furious with the Vatican’s failure to open up its files and offer a clear explanation of what happened. Why is it so secretive? Angry and hurt Catholics feel a right to transparent government. I agree. But we must, in justice, understand why the Vatican is so self-protective. There were more martyrs in the twentieth century than in all the previous centuries combined. Bishops and priests, Religious and laity were assassinated in Western Europe, in Soviet countries, in Africa, Latin America and Asia.</p>
<p>Many Catholics still suffer imprisonment and death for their faith. Of course, the Vatican tends to stress confidentiality; this has been necessary to protect the Church from people who wish to destroy her. So it is understandable that the Vatican reacts aggressively to demands for transparency and will read legitimate requests for openness as a form of persecution. And some people in the media do, without any doubt, wish to damage the credibility of the Church.</p>
<p>But we owe a debt of gratitude to the press for its insistence that the Church face its failures. If it had not been for the media, then this shameful abuse might have remained unaddressed.</p>
<p>Confidentiality is also a consequence of the Church’s insistence on the right of everyone accused to keep their good name until they are proved to be guilty. This is very hard for our society to understand, whose media destroy people’s reputations without a thought.</p>
<p>Why go? If it is to find a safer haven, a less corrupt Church, then I think that you will be disappointed. I too long for more transparent government, more open debate, but the Church’s secrecy is understandable, and sometimes necessary. To understand is not always to condone, but necessary if we are to act justly.</p>
<p>Why stay? I must lay my cards on the table; even if the Church were obviously worse than other Churches, I still would not go. I am not a Catholic because our Church is the best, or even because I like Catholicism. I do love much about my Church but there are aspects of it which I dislike. I am not a Catholic because of a consumer option for an ecclesiastical Waitrose rather than Tesco, but because I believe that it embodies something which is essential to the Christian witness to the Resurrection, visible unity.</p>
<p>When Jesus died, his community fell apart. He had been betrayed, denied, and most of his disciples fled. It was chiefly the women who accompanied him to the end. On Easter Day, he appeared to the disciples. This was more than the physical resuscitation of a dead corpse.</p>
<p>In him God triumphed over all that destroys community: sin, cowardice, lies, misunderstanding, suffering and death. The Resurrection was made visible to the world in the astonishing sight of a community reborn. These cowards and deniers were gathered together again. They were not a reputable bunch, and shamefaced at what they had done, but once again they were one. The unity of the Church is a sign that all the forces that fragment and scatter are defeated in Christ.</p>
<p>All Christians are one in the Body of Christ. I have deepest respect and affection for Christians from other Churches who nurture and inspire me. But this unity in Christ needs some visible embodiment. Christianity is not a vague spirituality but a religion of incarnation, in which the deepest truths take the physical and sometimes institutional form. Historically this unity has found its focus in Peter, the Rock in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and the shepherd of the flock in John’s gospel.</p>
<p>From the beginning and throughout history, Peter has often been a wobbly rock, a source of scandal, corrupt, and yet this is the one – and his successors – whose task is to hold us together so that we may witness to Christ’s defeat on Easter Day of sin’s power to divide. And so the Church is stuck with me whatever happens. We may be embarrassed to admit that we are Catholics, but Jesus kept shameful company from the beginning.</p>
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		<title>In Defense of the Pope</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/alan-m-dershowitz/in-defense-of-the-pope/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=in-defense-of-the-pope</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Apr 2010 04:11:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan M. Dershowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=57958</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Thou shalt not stereotype.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/pope-benedict-xvi.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57960" title="pope-benedict-xvi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/pope-benedict-xvi.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="328" /></a></p>
<p>Having criticized <a href="http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/dershowitz/entry/catholic_church_accused_of_covering">particular Catholic cardinals</a> for blaming everything&#8211;including the Church&#8217;s sex scandal&#8211;on &#8220;the Jews&#8221;, let me now come to the defense of the Pope and of the Church itself on this issue.  To begin with, this is an extraordinarily complex problem, because the Church has at least five important traditions that make it difficult to move quickly and aggressively in response to complaints of abuse.</p>
<p>The first tradition involves confidentiality, particularly not exclusively the confidentiality of the priest with regard to the penitent.  But there is also a wider spread tradition of confidentiality within the Church hierarchy itself.</p>
<p>Second, there is the tradition of forgiveness.  Those of us outside the Church often think, perhaps, that the Church goes too far in forgiving.  I was shocked when the previous Pope immediately forgave the man who tried to assassinate him.  But this episode and other demonstrate that the tradition of forgiveness is all too real.</p>
<p>Third, there is the tradition of the Church regarding itself as a state.  The Vatican is, after all, a nation state.  The Catholic Church is not big on the separation of church and state, as are various Protestant denominations.  The Catholic Church, like Orthodox Judaism, believes that matters affecting the faithful should generally be dealt within the church, without recourse to secular authorities.</p>
<p>Fourth, the Vatican prides itself on moving slowly and in seeing the time frame of life quite differently than the quick pace at which secular societies respond to the crisis of the day.</p>
<p>Fifth, the Catholic Church has long had a tradition of internal due process.  Cannon Law provides for scrupulous methods of proof.  The concept of the &#8220;devil&#8217;s advocate&#8221; derives from the Church&#8217;s effort to be certain that every &#8220;t&#8221; is crossed and every &#8220;I&#8221; is dotted, even when it comes to selecting saints.</p>
<p>None of these explanations completely justify the long inaction of the Church in coming to grips with a serious problem.  But they do help to explain how good people could have allowed bad things to happen for so long a period of time.  Nor is the Catholic Church the only institution that has faced problems of sexual abuse.  Every hierarchical body, especially but not exclusively religious ones, has faced similar problems, though perhaps on not so large a scale.</p>
<p>The problem of hierarchical sex abuse has only recently emerged from the shadows.  Singling out the Catholic Church, and for stereotyping all priests  is simply wrong.</p>
<p>Pope Benedict, both before he became Pope and since, has done a great deal to confront the issue.  He changed the policy that kept allegations of abuse within the authority of local bishops, and he acknowledged that the local option had encouraged shifting abusive priests from parish to parish, thereby hiding their sins from potential new victims.  He also met with abuse victims and recognized their victimization.  Nor has he tried, as other members of the Vatican hierarchy have, to publicly blame the problem on &#8220;the Jews&#8221;, &#8220;the media,&#8221; and others.</p>
<p>It is obvious that despite Pope Benedict&#8217;s good efforts, more must be done, and not only by the Catholic Church but by all institutions that have experienced hierarchical sexual exploitation.  They must create structures that assure prompt reporting, a zero tolerance policy and quick action, so long as these processes are consistent with due process and fairness, not only to alleged victims but to the accused as well.  It&#8217;s easy to forget, in the face of real victims with real complaints, that there have also been false accusations as well.  Processes must be put in place that distinguish true complaints from false ones.</p>
<p>Most important, this tragedy should not be used as an excuse to attack a large and revered institution that does much good throughout the world.  Blame must be placed with precision and praise should be given with precision as well.  The eleventh Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Stereotype, must never be forgotten.</p>
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		<title>Capitalism and the Jews &#8211; New York Times Book Review</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/capitalism-and-the-jews-new-york-times-book-review/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=capitalism-and-the-jews-new-york-times-book-review</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:19:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The question of why so many Jews have been so good at making money is a touchy one. For hundreds of years, it has been fraught with suspicion, denial, resentment, guilt, self-hatred and violence. No wonder Jews and gentiles alike are so uncomfortable confronting Jewish capitalistic competence. Still, in his slim essay collection “Capitalism and [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The question of why so many Jews have been so good at making money is a touchy one. For hundreds of years, it has been fraught with suspicion, denial, resentment, guilt, self-hatred and violence. No wonder Jews and gentiles alike are so uncomfortable confronting Jewish capitalistic competence. Still, in his slim essay collection “Capitalism and the Jews,” Jerry Z. Muller presents a provocative and accessible survey of how Jewish culture and historical accident ripened Jews for commercial success and why that success has earned them so much misfortune.</p>
<p>As Muller, a history professor at the Catholic University of America, explains it, much anti-Semitism can be attributed to a misunderstanding of basic economics. From Aristotle through the Renaissance (and then again in the 19th century, thanks to that Jew-baiting former Jew <a title="More articles about Karl Marx." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/karl_marx/index.html?inline=nyt-per">Karl Marx</a>), thinkers believed that money should be considered sterile, a mere means of exchange incapable of producing additional value. Only labor could be truly productive, it was thought, and anyone who extracted money from money alone — that is, through interest — must surely be a parasite, or at the very least a fraud. The Bible also contended that charging interest was sinful, inspiring Dante to consign usurers to the seventh circle of hell (alongside sodomites and murderers). In other words, 500 years ago, the phrase “predatory lending” would have been considered redundant.</p>
<p>Lending at interest was thus forbidden across Christian Europe — for Christians. Jews, however, were permitted by the <a title="More articles about the Roman Catholic Church." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Roman Catholic Church</a> to charge interest; since they were going to hell anyway, why not let them help growing economies function more efficiently? (According to Halakha, or Jewish law, Jews were not allowed to charge interest to one another, just to gentiles.) And so it was, Muller explains, that Judaism became forever fused in the popular mind with finance. In fact, Christian moneylenders were sometimes legally designated as temporary Jews when they lent money to English and French kings.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/books/review/Rampell-t.html">Book Review &#8211; &#8216;Capitalism and the Jews,&#8217; by Jerry Z. Muller &#8211; Review &#8211; NYTimes.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>Michel Gurfinkiel: War, revolution, Dreyfus and an era of religious and political turmoil in France &#8211; WSJ.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/michel-gurfinkiel-war-revolution-dreyfus-and-an-era-of-religious-and-political-turmoil-in-france-wsj-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=michel-gurfinkiel-war-revolution-dreyfus-and-an-era-of-religious-and-political-turmoil-in-france-wsj-com</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/michel-gurfinkiel-war-revolution-dreyfus-and-an-era-of-religious-and-political-turmoil-in-france-wsj-com/#respond</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:46:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[1870s]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[basilica]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Two monuments in Paris are so prominent that they&#8217;re hard to miss. One is the Eiffel Tower, of course, the all-iron tour de force of engineering, standing by the Seine amid the city&#8217;s spacious and supremely elegant West End. Then to the north, atop Montmartre, there is the Sacré-Cœur: a tall, immaculately white Catholic basilica [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704094304575029143722403852.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_6"><img src='http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/PT-AN674_BK_LED_D_20100129173527.jpg' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>Two monuments in Paris are so prominent that they&#8217;re hard to miss. One is the Eiffel Tower, of course, the all-iron tour de force of engineering, standing by the Seine amid the city&#8217;s spacious and supremely elegant West End. Then to the north, atop Montmartre, there is the Sacré-Cœur: a tall, immaculately white Catholic basilica that looks like a digitized pre-Raphaelite set from &#8220;Lord of the Rings.&#8221; What most visitors—and in fact most Parisians— don&#8217;t realize is that both monuments were designed and their construction begun at about the same time, in the 1870s and 1880s. Even more surprising: The tower and the church were intended as antagonistic national symbols during times of cultural, religious and political conflict that roiled France for decades.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704094304575029143722403852.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_6">Book Review: For the Soul of France &#8211; WSJ.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>St. Louis U&#8217;s Inverted Values</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-horowitz/st-louis-us-inverted-values/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=st-louis-us-inverted-values</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-horowitz/st-louis-us-inverted-values/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:08:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Angela Davis]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Islamists are welcome, their critics are not. 
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				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48063" title="slu_pic" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/slu_pic1.jpg" alt="slu_pic" width="500" height="376" /></p>
<p>On Tuesday and Wednesday of last week I was in Washington, where I visited with three U.S. Senators and three Congressmen, including the whips of both houses. I was meeting Eric Cantor for the first time, but all the others had appeared at events I had hosted or provided blurbs for my political books. Jon Kyl, the Minority Whip in the Senate invited me to a lunch to address the Republican Senate leadership lunch on my next trip to Washington. I mention this because while I was waiting for my return flight in Dulles airport I received a call from my office informing me that a speech I had been invited to give at St. Louis University two weeks later would be cancelled because of conditions that had been set by university administrators that could not be met.</p>
<p>In particular, the administrator in charge, Dean Scott Smith, had told the student whose group had invited me that “Horowitz would never be allowed to speak on a platform alone at Saint Louis University. He could be invited only if there was another speaker on the program to oppose his point of view.” Moreover, the dean continued, while my speaking fee had to be paid by the College Republicans who had invited me, my designated opponent would have his fees and expenses paid by the university. The clear message was that the St. Louis University would not allow its own funds to be tainted by such an unwelcome speaker.</p>
<p>This was the second attempt by the students to invite me, and the second time Dean Smith had thrown a roadblock on their invitation. In October, he had said I could not speak unattended because I would “insinuate that all Muslims are fascists,” something I have never done. In fact, there are videos of my speeches all over the web in which I say just the opposite.</p>
<p>It should be said that while administrators apply these restrictions to critics of radical Islam, no such rules are invoked for Holocaust deniers or supporters of communist genocides. Both Norman Finkelstein and Angela Davis have been invited as standalone speakers at St. Louis University, without anti-communists and defenders of Israel on stage to refute them.</p>
<p>I decided to call Smith’s bluff and suggested that I debate Cary Nelson, the well-to-the left president of the American Association of University Professors, on the subject of academic freedom. I called Cary and he agreed. Smith didn’t like this because he was aware that Nelson had responded to his attempt to bar me from speaking by saying that St. Louis University was a “university in name only.” So Smith asked the student host Dan Laub why the subject had changed from Islamo-fascism to academic freedom. Why indeed!</p>
<p>But again I decided to test his mettle and told Dan that the subject we would debate would be Academic Freedom and Islamo-Fascism. Curve ball. Smith came back with a new caveat. There would have to be a third speaker to mind Cary and me and put our discussion in the framework of “Catholic Values.” Some joke. What Catholic Values did the communist Angela Davis or the atheist Norman Finkelstein express when they spoke alone?</p>
<p>Better yet, this weekend Dean Smith and the Catholics at St. Louis University hosted a three day conference put on by the Muslim Student Association, a well-established front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The <a href="http://docs.google.com/View?id=dsks9tx_14hnw4jvf9">conference dealt with</a> religious themes such as why requiring two women to be a witness or letting them inherit only half of what a man does or requiring them to submit to their husbands represents “the perfection of our religion.”</p>
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