A solução da crise - por Nuno Serras Pereira

Creio que se estranhará o título deste texto fundamentalmente por duas razões. A primeira, consistirá na peremptoriedade daquele artigo inicial A, como se não houvera uma gama alargada de possibilidades alternativas para a resolução da mesma; a segunda, advirá de o autor deste escrito ser um sacerdote, sem qualquer outra qualificação, a não ser a de franciscano, supondo-se assim incompetente para tratar daquilo que parece ser próprio dos fiéis leigos.

Convirá, no entanto, atender a que, sem merecimento algum da minha parte e, num certo sentido, mesmo contra a minha vontade, fui constituído por Deus Criador e Redentor, pelo Sacramento da Ordem, Seu embaixador. Ora, Deus, autor de tudo quanto existe, em virtude da Sua Omnisciência tudo conhece e tudo sabe, e em virtude da Sua Providência acompanha e conduz o universo e a história. Ao fazer-Se um de nós, nascendo da Imaculada sempre Virgem Maria, Redimindo-nos do pecado e da morte pela Sua Paixão e Ressurreição, e tornando-nos participantes dessa Sua vitória pelo Espírito que nos comunica, em íntima união com a Sua Igreja, capacita-nos para vencer todo o mal pessoal, social, cultural, económico, político.

Ele próprio, quando passou aqui na terra fazendo o Bem e curando todos os que eram oprimidos pelo demónio, nos disse com toda a clareza qual a solução da crise: “Procurai antes de tudo o Reino de Deus e a Sua Justiça e o resto ser-vos-á dado como acréscimo” (Mt 6, 33; Lc 12, 31).

O Reino de Deus, ou o Reino dos Céus, é o próprio Jesus Cristo; e a Sua Justiça é a Sua verdade, o Seu Amor, a Sua vontade. Sem Ele, de facto, toda a erudição é ignorância, toda a sabedoria é estultícia, toda a competência é ineptidão, toda a experiência é trapalhice, todo o progresso é regressão, toda a economia é trafulhice, toda a política é ardilosa e salteadora, toda a lucidez é inépcia, toda a prudência é doidice, todo o enriquecer é empobrecer, toda a democracia é tirania, toda a lei é violência, toda a justiça é iniquidade, todo o amor é egoísmo, toda a fecundidade é esterilidade e crueldade.

Que isto é assim é facilmente verificável se tivermos em conta as últimas décadas. Fomos avisando insistentemente da tragédia. Muitos nos deram por obsessivos… Pois bendita seja esta obsessão!, digo eu.

Quem se afasta de Deus, quem renega a Jesus Cristo, produz para si e para os outros um inferno antecipado na terra, uma sombra ténue do verdadeiro Inferno.

É tempo de nos convertermos.

À Honra e Glória de Jesus Cristo. Ámen.

Abortion “absolutely never medically necessary”: maternal care expert symposium - by Hilary White

DUBLIN, September 10, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An international group of obstetricians and other physicians meeting in Dublin this weekend has issued a statement denying that abortion is ever “medically necessary” for women. 

“As experienced practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynaecology,” the declaration said, “we affirm that direct abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman.” 

“We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatment results in the loss of life of her unborn child.

“We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women.”

(Click “like” if you want to end abortion! )

Over 140 medical professionals attended Friday’s symposium, organised by the Committee for Excellence in Maternal Healthcare and chaired by Prof. Eamon O’Dwyer, professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynaecology at the National University of Ireland in Galway. They released the statement along with new papers on maternal health issues including high-risk pregnancies, cancer treatment during pregnancy, foetal anomalies, mental health and maternal mortality.

The symposium, with its panel of experts in obstetrics and gynaecology, mental health, and molecular epidemiology, “provided clarity and confirmation to doctors and legislators,” said O’Dwyer. This “clarity” comes at a crucial moment as legislators are wrestling with demands by the Labour party and abortion lobbyists to abolish the country’s constitutional protection for the unborn.  

Over the last two years, abortion industry lobbyists have stepped up their campaigns, and are working hard to convince the Irish public that Ireland’s law banning all abortion is a “threat to women’s health”. A ruling in 2010 by the European Court of Human Rights is being used as a pretext by the Labour Party to push forward plans to legalise abortion. But the ECHR ruling did not say that the law is a violation of women’s rights or that Ireland was obligated to change its laws. 

Dr. Eoghan de Faoite, a physician who attended the symposium, spoke with LifeSiteNews.com saying that abortion is being pushed forward under a “false pretense” that abortion is medically necessary. The problem, he said, has stemmed from one of the women who brought the complaint to the ECHR who, he said, “didn’t get correct treatment from her family doctor”. This one case is now being used to make the claim to the public that in difficult pregnancies women need access to abortion as part of their health care, which they are being denied under the law. 

The public and medical practitioners, he said, “needed to hear from the experts that it is safe to deliver chemotherapy to pregnant women,” both for the woman and her unborn child. 

Currently, Ireland’s parliament is waiting on the decision of a panel of government-appointed experts examining the ECHR ruling to issue recommendations on how to proceed. But the government has cut off access to the expert group, and is not allowing any submissions from the public or from medical experts. 

“The purpose of the symposium was so that the real experts could be heard,” he told LSN. “Those who care for pregnant women in their daily working lives.” 

Right now, he said, because of the media’s interest in pushing forward the abortion agenda, and because of the lack of a consultation on the question, “In the debate we’re having in Ireland, the voices of people who actually care for pregnant women aren’t being heard.” The expert group, he said, is “having closed shop hearings” which is not allowing for expert testimony.

The abortion lobby, he said, has jumped into this gap and is “scaremongering people into believing that women are being deprived of good maternal care because of the ban on abortion.”

UK lawyers say Christians may have to choose between faith and job

Strasbourg, France, Sep 12, 2012 / 12:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Attorneys representing the United Kingdom said last week that Christians might have to forfeit their jobs if they wish to express their faith in the workplace.

“Employees are free to resign if they find their employment incompatible with their religious beliefs,” government lawyer James Eadie said.

“They can obtain alternative employment in which they can reflect their religion as they wish.”

His comments were made at a Sept. 4 hearing in Strasbourg before the European Court of Human Rights, involving four cases of British Christians who claim to have suffered faith-based discrimination at their places of employment.

The plaintiffs assert that existing U.K. law insufficiently protects their rights to freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination at work.

Two were kept from wearing crosses, Nadia Eweida, an employee of British Airways, and Shirley Chaplin, a long-time nurse.

The remaining two are Lilian Ladele, who lost her job with a London borough government for refusing to conduct civil partnerships, and Gary McFarlane, a therapist who was fired for saying he was unable to give sex therapy to homosexual couples.

According to the Daily Mail, Eadie claimed there is “a difference between the professional sphere where your religious beliefs conflict with other interests and the private sphere.”

“Everyone has the right to express their beliefs, including the right to display religious symbols, but not an absolute right or a right without limits,” he added.

“That does not mean that in their professional sphere anyone can manifest their religious belief in any way they choose.”

The lawyers maintained that because the wearing of a cross is a not a “scriptural requirement” of Christianity, employers are not obliged to allow it, also noting that the government believes same-sex couples have a right to equal access to public services.

However, leaders of both the Catholic Church and the Church of England have expressed concern that Christianity is unwelcome in the public sphere in Britain.

Prime Minister David Cameron had told the House of Commons in July that the right to wear crosses at work was “an absolutely vital freedom.”

Pope Benedict also spoke to the tensions in the case when he addressed Parliament during his papal visit to the country in 2010.

“There are those who argue – paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination – that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience,” the pontiff told lawmakers.

“These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square.”

All four plaintiffs brought their cases before the U.K. Employment Tribunal, which dismissed their claims. Their lawsuit before the court is based on the articles of the European Convention on Human Rights which concern freedom of religion and prohibition of discrimination.

The court's deliberations are held in private, and the ruling will likely be made in a few months, reported the Daily Mail.

Adult stem cells from blood to cure wrinkles - by Hilary White

GLASGOW, September 11, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) -  British researchers announced this week that they may have discovered a cure for wrinkles using stem cells taken from a person’s blood. A Glasgow based biotechnology company, Pharmacells, has announced they will begin human clinical trials next year on a method of inducing stem cells taken from blood to replace the skin’s own cells as they break down during the aging process. 

Athol Haas, the company’s chief executive, told British media, “The skin has a natural elastic property which comes from cells known as fibroblasts. 

“The ability of the body to produce this elastic material slows down with age because the number of these fibroblasts decrease. 

“By introducing large numbers of stem cells into the right place, we are increasing the ability of the body to produce this material. It is still in its early stages but we hope to begin phase one trials within the next 12 months.” 

Pharmacells owns the patent on a method of harvesting, isolating and storing a newly discovered type of blood derived adult stem cell. The company says they have created a private stem cell bank, which people can use to store their cells “for future use in personalised medicine”. 

“We also supply ‘our’ adult cell line into many types of research projects, allowing others access to one of the more significant stem cell lines available anywhere in the world.”

Older methods of obtaining stem cells from fat are not as successful, he said, being able to produce only five or ten million at a time. The company says that as many as 500 million stem cells can be obtained from only a small amount of normal blood, collected in the same way as any regular blood test. 

“By introducing large numbers of stem cells into the right place, we are increasing the ability of the body to produce this natural material. It will be long lasting, we think at least five years if not longer,” Haas added.

Blood-derived, or haematopoietic stem cells are currently used in treatment of some cancers, and researchers are working towards using them to treat a variety of illnesses including leukemia and kidney diseases. Pharmacells hopes to use its method of extracting stem cells to work towards treatments for heart disease and osteoarthritis.

‘The Notebook’ director says if we back gay marriage, why not incest? - by Ben Johnson

HOLLYWOOD, September 11, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) –  Defenders of marriage have long said if the institution is redefined beyond one man and one woman, there is no clear end to the new combinations that could be considered “marriage.” A growing body of evidence shows the popular culture, led by Hollywood elites, do not intend to stop with same-sex unions.

Nick Cassavetes, the director of the romantic film The Notebook, told reporters at the debut of his new film that incest is no different than allowing same-sex weddings.

“Love who you want, isn’t that what we say? Gay marriage – love who you want,” he said.

“If you’re not having kids, who gives a damn?” the son of legendary director John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands asked in an interview with The Wrap while premiering his new film, Yellow, which features an incestuous affair between a brother and sister. “If it’s your brother or sister it’s super-weird, but if you look at it, you’re not hurting anybody except every single person who freaks out because you’re in love with one another.” 

Click “like” if you want to defend true marriage.

 

Meanwhile, a celebrity gossip rag has become the latest publication to support polygamy and polyandry.

In a column entitled “Three Shouldn’t be a Crowd,” the digital tabloid The Frisky stated, “Polygamy and polyamory get a bad rap.” 

Carrie Nelson wrote, “Opening marriages and expanding what makes a marriage…may well end up saving relationships and the institution as a whole.”

“Believe me, I’m not some undercover agent trying to bring down the institution of marriage from within. If anything, I feel so strongly about marriage equality including polygamy because I love marriage,” Nelson said. 

The call for broadening the number of people in a marriage has intensified since a judge in Sao Paolo, Brazil, registered a three-person “stable union” last month.  

The decision led UK Guardian writer Jean Hannah Edelstein to ask, “If three, or four, or 17 people want to marry each other simultaneously and equally, why should they not be granted the same status as two people who want to become a legal family?” Banning such an arrangement would be “a bit illiberal,” she said. 

The publicity does not surprise Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defending Freedom. He told NPR in May that if marriage is “about adults and not the kids that flow from procreative relationships, then from a policy standpoint you have to ask the question, then why can’t three or more adults be just as loving and committed to each other?” 

As the skeptical host listened, Nimocks said, “If it’s about the procreative relationships that produced and raised the next generation and we keep it a child-centered institution, then the risk of polygamy and plural marriage does not exist.”

Escuela diferenciada - por Juan Manuel de Prada

En las últimas semanas, se han sucedido los ataques contra la llamada escuela diferenciada, a la que se acusa de favorecer la «desigualdad» entre chicos y chicas; razón que se esgrime, en sentencias judiciales y resoluciones administrativas, para apartarla del régimen de conciertos del sistema público de enseñanza. Anticiparé que estudié en un colegio mixto y después en un instituto también mixto; y que a mi hija la tengo matriculada en un colegio también mixto, del que hasta la fecha sólo puedo predicar bondades. Quiero decir con ello que, al escribir este artículo, no me mueve ningún interés, mucho menos una preferencia personal, sino tan sólo cierta perplejidad o estupor de la razón ante lo que, a todas las luces, es irracional.

A la escuela diferenciada se le podría acusar de favorecer la desigualdad si en las escuelas de chicos se impartiese un programa distinto al que se imparte en las escuelas de chicas, presuponiendo que la inteligencia de chicos o chicas no puede alcanzar la comprensión de tal o cual disciplina; o si se enfocase el futuro profesional de sus alumnos de forma divergente, presuponiendo que los chicos o las chicas no son aptos para el desempeño de tales o cuales oficios. Pero en la escuela diferenciada no se imparte un programa distinto, según su alumnado sea masculino o femenino; ni se pretende encauzar la elección profesional de sus alumnos. En la escuela diferenciada no se presupone que hombres y mujeres posean una capacidad intelectiva mayor o menor, ni que haya oficios o habilidades que les estén vedados. La acusación que se le hace de fomentar la desigualdad es, pues, de una irracionalidad obscena y rampante; y lo más desquiciante es que muchos de los que la lanzan estudiaron, aunque sólo sea por imperativo cronológico, en escuelas diferenciadas. Y allá donde una acusación tan obscenamente irracional se sostiene de modo tan enconado, hemos de deducir que el sectarismo ideológico ha ocupado el lugar de la razón.

Cuando los detractores de la escuela diferenciada la acusan de fomentar la desigualdad hemos de entender, en realidad, que la están acusando de contemplar las diferencias que existen entre chicos y chicas, evidencia sobre cuya negación se erige la ideología de género, que pretende que la diferencia sexual entre el varón y la mujer no es una realidad innata propia del ser humano. Naturalmente, tal afirmación es una patraña burda: pero ya se sabe que la misión de toda ideología que se precie consiste en negar la realidad y la evidencia; y, en el caso concreto de la ideología de género, en negar la más real de todas las evidencias, que es la naturaleza. Porque hombres y mujeres somos distintos: distintas son nuestras fisiologías; y distintas también nuestras psicologías, aunque las posibilidades de nuestra inteligencia sean parejas. Y la escuela diferenciada lo único que pretende es, atendiendo a esas evidentes diferencias psicologías que existen entre hombres y mujeres, instrumentar métodos de aprendizaje y asimilación del conocimiento que, adaptándose a las particulares psicologías masculina y femenina, extraigan los mejores resultados de la capacidad intelectiva de chicos y chicas.

A partir del reconocimiento de esta diferencia, podremos alegar muchas razones para decantarnos a favor de la escuela diferenciada o la mixta. Pero quienes acusan a la escuela diferenciada de fomentar la «desigualdad» están negando irracionalmente esa diferencia; e impidiendo que usted pueda decantarse a favor de la escuela que prefiera para sus hijos. Quieren, en fin, imponerle su santa voluntad; que, por ser una voluntad viciada por la ideología, será inevitablemente más puta que santa.

www.juanmanueldeprada.com

Obama’s Attack on Religious Freedom: It’s Worse Than You Think - by David Paul Deavel

In CRISIS 

It is the election campaign season and all of you need to know that no possible statement from anybody anywhere anytime is free from hyperbole, WORDS IN ALL CAPS, and exclamation marks!  This stricture applies very much to No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom, penned by the 88 year-old conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly and American Spectator contributing editor George Neumayr.  There is first of all the fact that it is a “War” that the President is waging.  His policies “represent the greatest government-directed assault on religious freedom in American history” and the President himself is “at war with Christianity, seeking to defeat it from without through regulatory decrees and from within through ecclesiastical traitors who do his bidding.”  His administration “wants to transfer the American people’s faith in God to unquestioning faith in the state” and children in public schools “may already have been indoctrinated in the cult of Obama-worship” which is directed to a “cosmopolitan dilettante” deity who “see[s] himself not so much as a president, but as a supreme revolutionary leader or head of a church.”  This is a church of secularism that acknowledges “no higher power exists than godless government.”   The cover photograph has the president in profile, gazing sternly off into the east—presumably at the even more godless Europe—as dark storm clouds gather over him.

The rhetoric itself fits with the polemical style of argument that is unrelenting in attacking its target, with nary an admission that the supreme head of this church of secularism may not indeed be all bad or that not every single aspect of his agenda smells of sulphur.  Very serious points about the HHS Mandate and the administration’s active sabotaging of federal law in the case of the Defense of Marriage Act or the 1996 Welfare Reform act bump up against left-wing environmental bias in textbooks which recommend not flushing if one has only urinated.  Documentation of Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) grants to ACORN-type groups is next to a reprinted letter from former bishop Norbert Gaughan the authors tell us is “pressuring” priests to work with socialist organizer Gerald Kellman, one of the young Obama’s mentors and co-workers.  The directive from the bishop—“Please give him your support and cooperation”—does not give even the sympathetic reader that rubber-hose and bright lights feel.

Such a total polemic is thus not really of service if one wants to convince one’s left-wing friends that the danger to religious freedom—and to the freedom and rights of parents to direct their children’s moral and religious educations—in a second Obama term is real.  (A useful comparison might be Mary Eberstadt’s Adam and Eve After the Pill which, while not pulling punches in its attack on the sexual revolution, gives off the distinct impression that she is only dealing with the ten percent of the iceberg that is visible.)  One’s friends will probably be put off by Chapter Six, titled “Useful Idiots,” describing religious supporters of the Obama administration as, well, I guess we already know, don’t we?

 

But if it is not a book that is geared toward changing hearts and minds, it is an ideal book to put in the hands of people who are worried about the Obama administration’s approach to religious freedom, but don’t have all the facts at their hands.  In the case of No Higher Power, the reader has been given too much reliably sourced information about the very public record of the current administration to simply shrug and mutter, “Don’t believe the hype.”  The dust jacket’s threatening storm clouds might look cheesy but they are real.

The first chapter uses the very recent controversies over the HHS contraceptive mandate and the 2012 Supreme Court case Hosanna Tabor vs. EEOC, in which the Obama administration unsuccessfully sided against a religious school that believed it could make personnel decisions on the basis of their own religious mission, in order to introduce the much broader category of policies and personnel decisions that have threatened and already effected religious freedom in the United States.  The third chapter, “The Index of Obama’s Hostility to Religion,” is the longest chapter in the book and presents a detailed list of those decisions in enough detail to see a larger pattern of hostility to the free exercise of religion on the part of Christians, including a great number of actions against Catholic organizations.  The throw-everything-at-’em strategy is nowhere more evident than in this chapter, but it must be said that the great majority of the issues are very serious.

In a number of cases, skeptics of the Schlafly/Neumayr case can point to the fact that there were bad decisions that were reversed.  A case in point is the July 2011 Department of Veterans’ Affairs decision to ban the mention of Jesus Christ at Houston National Cemetery funerals.  Vigorous protest on the part of Texas veterans brought the policy to an end.  A similar case was the September 2011 revision of Army guidelines at Walter Reed Medical Center which demanded, “No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading materials and/or facts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.”  Again, reversal came after protest.  But it is somewhat astounding, and indeed revealing, that even though President Obama has a tendency to refer to “freedom of worship” rather than the more robust “freedom of religion,” that such policies could pass through government channels unimpeded.  Even the defense of “freedom of worship” seems to be a rather wispy conception, not something that can pass through any doors marked for government use.

But if some wrongs have been righted, many have not.  The HHS Mandate still stands. (As I write, the Mandate’s provisions have again been re-written slightly, but do not address the substantive religious freedom concerns.) Attached to that controversy a letter against the Mandate from the archbishop for military services, Timothy Broglio, was forbidden to be read from the pulpit by military officials.   And before that incident, the HHS had another controversy.  A long-time grant from that department to the U. S. Catholic bishops for work helping the victims of sex trafficking was denied in 2011 against the advice of both the independent review board that assesses applications and many career HHS staffers.  Many in the latter group refused to attach their signatures to the documents, believing that, as the Washington Post put it, “the process was unfair and politicized.”  Sister Mary Ann Walsh of the USCCB observed that it seems that the Catholic Church’s refusal to use contraceptives, sterilization, or abortion means we have an “ABC Rule, Anybody But Catholics.”

That Catholic and other religious allies of the Obama administration have been all too willing to go along with it on limiting the ability of the Catholic Church and other Christian groups to act in accord with their consciences is actually the theme of the “Useful Idiots” chapter.  While there is certainly some overkill in the presentation of the troubled history of the CCHD and the Chicago archdiocese’s troubled history of co-optation by anti-religious leftists from Saul Alinsky on down, it is nevertheless important for Catholics to know about these events in order to understand why it is that so many Catholics are untroubled by the Obama administration’s own behavior.

The Obama administration has been hostile to many other groups, excluding to some extent Islam, as the authors detail in one chapter.  But while the overt hostility to Islam is not as obvious with this administration, it is clear that even with regard to Muslims, the agenda of sexual liberation trumps all sympathies.  Ironically, while President Obama campaigned with a message that he would end the perceived cultural imperialism of the Bushies while then pressing a foreign policy campaign not of religious freedom but of gay rights.

Chapters on the judiciary and Obama’s large use of “czars” who exercise power without any oversight are certainly worrisome, but the most frightening aspects of what has happened in Obama’s first term are the personnel and policy moves in the Department of Education.  Toilet-flushing advocacy is not worrisome, but the support of the concept of the state as parent is.  The rights of parents to control the moral teaching their children receive has been attacked on numerous levels.

The real challenge in the book is not just to the current administration, but to the Democratic Party as a whole.  Many Catholics like to say that neither party fully instantiates the concerns of the Catholic Church in its policies.  While no doubt true, it somewhat misses the point.  Republicans do not perfectly instantiate the Church’s vision, but they have not been in the vanguard of attacking her rights.  Catholics who interpret Catholic Social Teaching as best represented by the contemporary welfare state as defended by Democrats have to question whether that judgment trumps the evidence that their party is actively strangling the other aspects of Catholic life that put flesh on that social teaching.

Why Normalizing Same-Sex Parenting Inevitably Led to Triple-Parenting - by Jennifer Roback Morse

In The Public Discourse 

A California bill allowing children to have three legal parents will not help children, but instead will unnecessarily complicate their lives. The supposed need for California’s SB 1476 flowed directly from the drive to normalize same sex parenting and recognize same sex unions.

 

Can a child have three parents? If California State Senator Mark Leno has his way, children in California will be able to have three legal parents. Before we dismiss SB 1476 as another example of California Weird, we had best look into it more closely. After all, the bill has passed both houses of the California Assembly and is awaiting Governor Brown’s signature or veto.

I believe this development was inevitable, more inevitable in fact than the much-vaunted inevitability of gay marriage. Once we started trying to normalize parenting by same-sex couples and redefine marriage to remove the dual-gender requirement, we had to end up with triple-parenting.

A deeper look at the whole picture surrounding SB 1476 reveals that not only should the three-parent law fail, same-sex “marriage” should fail as well. As we will see, embedded in this bill is an appalling power-grab by the state, and a grotesque misrepresentation of the facts by the bill’s authors.

Why Normalizing Same-Sex Parenting Inevitably Led to Triple-Parenting 

Let us state an obvious fact: a same-sex couple cannot have a child unless someone gives them one, or part of one, namely either an egg or a sperm. If two women, for instance, decide they want to have a baby, they must still involve a man in the process. They can use some form of artificial reproductive technology with sperm from a man who is unknown to them. Or, they can find an accommodating friend to have sex with one of them, or to donate his sperm.

The question is this: how is the same-sex couple going to manage the relationship with this third party? In some cases, the women do not want any relationship with the father. Our government will give them this. Through the legal institution of anonymous sperm donation, the government agrees perpetually to separate a mother and a father from a legal relationship with each other.

If all same-sex couples were completely and permanently committed to ensuring that their child would never have a relationship with his or her other biological parent, then there would be no particular drive for same-sex parenting to lead to triple-parenting. But this is obviously a very strong condition. Some female couples will want their children to have an ongoing relationship with their father. Some fathers will want a relationship with their children. Hence, we can see that through situations such as these, normalizing same-sex parenting creates momentum for triple-parenting.

Some of these three-party relationships will be agreeable and cooperative and amicable. But again, it is obviously a very big presumption to suppose that every such relationship will be completely harmonious for a lifetime. Only some known donor fathers will be fathers on the exact terms desired by the two women. Other fathers will desire something different, either more or less involvement than the women want. We cannot count on private agreements among the parties to solve all problems and manage all disputes. A subset of these cases is going to end up being settled by the family courts. Therefore, not only does same-sex parenting create an impetus to triple-parenting, it creates an impetus for state involvement in the ongoing management of these complex relationships.

It all sounds very nice and agreeable to allow people to make any parenting agreements they want on the front end of their relationships. But when a relationship breaks down, the long arm of the law will end up involved in the life of the family, on the back end, to resolve disputes. We are replacing the natural pre-political concept of biological parenthood with an artificial, government-created concept of parenthood that is entirely socially constructed. Instead of the government simply recognizing and recording the pre-political reality of biological parenthood, we are giving agents of the state the authority to construct parenthood, all in the best interests of the child, of course.

In one sense of the word, you could say that this is the circumstance that led to Senator Leno’s bill. This is the new “real world.” Children in this situation have three people involved and interested in their lives who desire to take care of them. Why shouldn’t the law have the power to create a legal structure that supports this situation?

The problem is that Senator Leno’s bill will create legal structures that cannot be confined to this one type of relatively benign case. SB 1476 attempts to solve this problem through the family courts in this way:

In an appropriate action, a court may find that a child has more than two natural or adoptive parents if required to serve the best interest of the child. In determining a child’s best interest under this section, a court shall consider the nature, duration, and quality of the presumed or claimed parents’ relationships with the child and the benefit or detriment to the child of continuing those relationships.

“A court may find” covers the case of three cooperating parents, which is the scenario that advocates of redefining marriage emphasize. Such cases appeal to a person with libertarian inclinations as well. But this expansion of judicial discretion also covers cases in which multiple adults are not cooperating at all, but who are contesting custody rights and support responsibilities.

Under this bill, the judge can make this determination without the consent of the other parents. None of the three parties would necessarily have to give their consent to being counted or discounted as a parent. The judge decides based on the best interests of the child.

Judges don’t normally have this much discretion. Biology, marriage, and adoption are usually pretty bright-line indicators of who counts as a parent. The only reason we are giving judges this much discretion is so we can accommodate the triple-parenting cases that are sure to arise when the law normalizes same-sex parenting. I would think that anyone who values liberty and limited government would get the shivers thinking about judges having power of this type and magnitude.

The Case Behind the Three-Parent Law: In re M.C.

 

Same-sex marriage itself generates triple-parenting situations. We can see this by considering the specific case that inspired Senator Leno’s bill. In principle, the triple-parenting bill might have been motivated by a case of three cooperating parents, consisting of the loving, stable, same-sex couples we hear so much about, and an agreeable opposite-sex friend. But this was not the impetus for Mark Leno’s three-parent bill. According to NBC News:

Leno said inspiration for the bill came from a 2011 state appellate court case in which a young girl had two mothers. When one of the mothers was sent to prison and the other was hospitalized, the girl’s biological father wished to care for her.

The court, however, ruled the biological father could not be a legal guardian because of California’s current law allowing only two parents per child.

The state took custody of the child.

This is an extremely abbreviated characterization of the case In re M.C. What led to one mother being hospitalized and the other imprisoned? Was this some kind of ill-fated alignment of the stars, an unfortunate, but random series of events that could have happened to any innocent parties?

Not exactly. The biological mother, Melissa, went to prison because her boyfriend, José, had stabbed Irene, the “other mother,” so severely that she had to be hospitalized. Melissa was charged with accessory to attempted murder.

Little M.C. had three parents, recognized under different parts of the law. Melissa counted as a mother because she gave birth to the child. Irene was married to Melissa when Melissa gave birth to M.C., so Irene counted as a presumed mother under a gender-neutral reading of the statute that was formerly used to establish paternity. José, the boyfriend who stabbed Irene, was not M.C.’s father. A man named Jesus was the biological father. Melissa had a relationship with him during one of her separations from Irene.

No court ever denied that Jesus was a father. Nor did any court find him an unfit father in any way. So with Melissa in prison and Irene in the hospital, why couldn’t the court simply give M.C. to Jesus, her biological father?

The reason M.C. was placed in foster care was that the courts found that this would jeopardize the child’s interest in reunification with Irene. Bear in mind that Irene was not the biological mother. She was not an adoptive mother. She had lived with Melissa and M.C. for about three or four weeks after the child was born. Let us face facts: Irene was not a mother to M.C. in any meaningful sense.

Irene was a “presumed” mother for one reason and one reason only: same-sex marriage. Irene and Melissa were married in October 2008, during the window of time when same-sex couples were permitted to marry in California. Their marriage is what prompted the court to call Irene a “presumed mother,” under a gender-neutral reading of the Uniform Parentage Act.

This part of the statute was designed to assign paternity, that is, fatherhood. A woman’s husband is presumed to be the father of any children she bears during the life of their union. One of the attorneys for M.C. pointed out the absurdity of a gender-neutral reading of this statute, substituting for the husband, who is almost always the child’s other biological parent, a female partner who can never be the child’s other biological parent.

But no matter: the court was attempting to do its job, impossible though that may have been in the circumstances. Irene was found to be a “presumed mother.”

The solution to this tragic case is not to amend the law to allow three parents. The solution is to amend the law to remove the possibility of a person unrelated to the child, either by biology or adoption, being counted as a parent. The solution is to stop requiring a gender-neutral reading of a statute that is based on the biological, gendered facts of human reproduction.

In other words, the way to have kept M.C. out of foster care was to abandon the idea of “marriage equality.” In fact, the voters of California did exactly that, when they passed Proposition 8, affirming that the term “marriage” only can be used to refer to the union of one man and one woman. It is “marriage equality” that created the tragic circumstances in this case.

Marriage is a complex social institution. Not everyone agrees that the essential public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to each other and to their children. But I do not see how anyone can deny that attaching children to their mothers and fathers is one of the significant social purposes of marriage. And I do not see how any reasonable person can deny that same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are situated differently with respect to this purpose. It is simply not possible to treat same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples identically in all the areas of law that marriage touches.

Let us return to Senator Mark Leno and his bill and his characterization of this case. His description of In re M.C., while not technically false, is so incomplete as to be deeply misleading. He surely knew of the volatile history of the parties to this case, which includes drug abuse, mental illness, homelessness, and domestic violence. He surely knew that without the “marriage” between Irene and Melissa, the courts would have placed M.C. with her father immediately.

I have no idea why he wanted to use this case as a pretext for his three-parent bill. If I were on his side of this issue, I would not call attention to this case, filled as it is with unappealing facts for gay marriage proponents. Irene was not a parent in any meaningful sense. In addition, Melissa was not a lesbian in any meaningful sense. She had not one, but two boyfriends during the course of this drama: José, who attacked her ex-girlfriend, and Jesus, who fathered her child.

And this case had an obvious and much-less-radical solution: give the child to her father. There was and is no rational basis for granting such unprecedented power to the family courts by allowing them to declare a third party to be a parent.

Triple-parenting and genderless marriage are destructive policies. They must be stopped. SB 1476 has passed both houses of the California Assembly. Governor Brown has the power to veto or to sign this ill-conceived law. He must decide, one way or the other, by September 30.

Let us hope he does the right thing.

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the Founding President of the Ruth Institute, an educational organization promoting lifelong married love to college students and young adults. She thanks Mr. Austin Muck, her 2011 Blackstone Legal Fellowship intern, for his assistance with the legal research on In re M.C.

O mal-entendido - por João César das Neves

In DN

Uma das poucas coisas em que há acordo é que Portugal precisa de crescimento. Não só é a única forma de vencer a recessão e desemprego, mas a sua falta é a causa da desconfiança financeira. A Irlanda, muito mais endividada que nós, deixou de ser alvo dos mercados porque a sua economia revelou um dinamismo que tem faltado a outros, como nós.

Infelizmente este consenso, que deveria levar a atitudes e projectos comuns, quebra logo a seguir, devido a um estranho mal-entendido. É espantoso mas muitos dos que afirmam com clareza a urgência de promover o crescimento e criação de emprego, logo na frase seguinte se põem a falar de outro tema, propondo medidas e intervenções que não só pouco têm a ver com a dinâmica produtiva, mas até a prejudicam.

Este terrível erro, que pode ter consequências gravíssimas no futuro, advém do esquecimento de um facto simples, evidente, incontornável, base central da vida económica, mas frequentemente omisso nos raciocínios de muitos que se dizem especialistas nessas coisas. O crescimento económico só se pode verificar nas empresas, através do trabalho produtivo e investimento rentável, envolvendo mercados equilibrados e eficientes, para satisfazer as necessidades da população. Através do esforço, engenho, iniciativa e dinamismo dos agentes económicos, empenhados a fundo em actividades lucrativas, é que se consegue o tão desejado progresso.

Deste princípio básico e indiscutível saem vários corolários elementares, que as discussões comuns violam de forma ingénua. Por exemplo, se crescimento é isto, então não se trata de uma questão de política, decretos e institutos. Trata-se de economia, empresas, empregos, não diplomas, estudos, discursos. O Estado tem um papel decisivo na sociedade, mas não é fazer crescimento, ter bébés ou marcar golos.

Só que o segundo fôlego de quem fala sobre estes assuntos é sempre dedicado à intriga ministerial. Promover crescimento é, segundo eles, dar subsídios (que implica impostos que oprimem a economia), criar incentivos (que distorcem o dinamismo e rigidificam a estrutura), fazer planos (que estabelecem clientelas e prejudicam negócios), ajudar sectores (que perpetua favores e encarece produtos). Esta foi precisamente a política seguida pelos sucessivos ministérios que nos trouxeram à crise. Eles achavam saber melhor que a sociedade o que havia a fazer, e o resultado está à vista. A década perdida da economia portuguesa, que já se aproxima de década e meia, foi o mais intenso período de política de crescimento da nossa história. Isto não constitui um paradoxo pelo simples facto de que crescimento económico não é política, mas economia. Em certo sentido é o oposto da política.

A razão deste mal-entendido não é distracção ou ignorância. O motivo é que grande parte daqueles que exigem crescimento têm uma agenda própria, que pretendem mascarar de progresso. O que se passa é que na nossa comunicação social raramente se ouve a voz das forças produtivas, dos consumidores, dos pobres. Quem domina o espaço mediático são os grupos de pressão, interesses instalados, organismos de poder. Esses são os que ganham dinheiro com os subsídios, incentivos, planos e ajudas. Esses, mesmo que o crescimento nunca chegue a ser promovido, já receberam o seu. O que eles querem não é crescimento mas política de crescimento.

Portugal precisa de crescimento. Para isso é urgente liberalizar a economia, deixar trabalhadores e patrões fazerem aquilo que sabem, satisfazer clientes, nacionais ou estrangeiros, sem terem ministros, deputados, burocratas e intrigistas a tapar o caminho. É urgente que as principais preocupações das empresas sejam as necessidades dos consumidores e a ameaça dos concorrentes, não os regulamentos e formulários, requerimentos e licenças, grupos de pressão e interesses. Disso temos tido a nossa conta nas últimas décadas, e com eles aprendemos a destruir o crescimento. Agora está na altura de inverter o processo porque, como todos estamos de acordo, Portugal precisa de crescimento.
 

Clergy Sexual Abuse: The Unaddressed Question of Same-Sex Attraction - by Fr. Regis Scanlon, O.F.M. Cap

In CRISIS

In 2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a 1.8 million dollar study, popularly known as the “John Jay study,” to uncover the patterns and causes of the sex abuse crisis since 1950. The National Review Board—the entity designated to implement the study—gave the first John Jay report in 2004. In this report, which describes the “Nature and Scope” of clergy sexual abuse, the board pointed out that more than 80 percent of the victims were teenage boys and young men.

This conclusion, in itself, should have been a solid roadmap for truly correcting the sex abuse problem.

Indeed, the bishops quickly responded. They issued guidelines for tough diocesan policies, such as the immediate reporting of abuse to civil authorities, and better oversight of children’s safety.

However, despite those good reforms, clergy with sexual abuse histories were still active in public Church ministry. In early 2011, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia revealed it was involved in yet another major “roundup” of sex abuse cases, a majority of them (82%) involving the original category of identified victims—male teens and young men.

Also in 2011, the Vatican called on bishops and local dioceses to develop comprehensive plans to stop sex abuse. It urged “an even greater importance in assuring a proper discernment of vocations.” Clearly, the Vatican still sees a need to encourage more thoroughness when screening priesthood candidates.

These developments—still surfacing seven years after the original John Jay findings—suggest that reforms have not been wholly adequate. Why? I would suggest that, from the start, reforms concentrated on defensive measures—protecting young people from predators who may be lurking in the clergy. That is well and good. However, a more important question remains unanswered: why should the Church allow predators to be lurking among the clergy in the first place?

 

The fault is not with the original John Jay data. It pointed to the predator issue by identifying the overwhelming victim demographic as young men and male teens. Here are the statistics, in Part 4.2 of the study: “four out of five (80%) alleged victims were male,” and “the majority of alleged victims were post-pubescent (87.4%), with only a small percentage of priests receiving allegations of abusing young children.”

This statistic paints a vivid picture: the sex abuse crisis was the overwhelming work of a very small number of clergy targeting young males as their victims.  This fact suggests one reform that has yet to be addressed: the Church must screen out clergy candidates with same-sex attractions.

At first, this reform appeared to be on the radar. In 2004, the National Review Board stated that while the sex abuse crisis had no single cause, “an understanding of the crisis is not possible” without reference to “the presence of homosexually oriented priests.” The board cited the data: “eighty percent of the abuse at issue was of a homosexual nature.”

Dr. Paul McHugh, a former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a member of the National Review Board, put it more strongly. Quoted in an August 25, 2006 National Catholic Register editorial, he observed that the John Jay study had revealed a crisis of “homosexual predation on American Catholic youth.”

But that warning soon disappeared from the public perception. The John Jay conclusions began to be explained as an “environment” problem. This new interpretation was made official in a 2011 John Jay report, “Causes and Context.”

Two years earlier, Dr. Karen Terry, the lead spokesperson and coauthor of the John Jay study, offered this interpretation at the bishops’ November 2009 meeting in Baltimore. According to the account in the National Catholic Reporter, Dr. Terry inferred that the sexual orientation of the predators didn’t matter. In Dr. Terry’s words, “It’s important to separate the sexual identity and the behavior … Someone can commit sexual acts that might be of a homosexual nature, but not have a homosexual identity.”

Quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the National Catholic Reporter, Dr. Terry said the problem was that clergy “had access to boys” rather than because they had “a homosexual identity” or a “homosexual orientation.”

But “access to boys” avoids one glaring issue: the data reveals that a very small contingent of clergy did most of the sexual exploiting, and they overwhelmingly chose same-sex victims.

Dr. Terry’s own interpretation notwithstanding, it is absolutely crucial to examine who these exploiters are. At the very least, it’s a cop-out to blame the crisis on the “field” of victims, and the implication is potentially dangerous: It suggests that future crises could be avoided if the Church bans “access to boys.” This inevitably would include banning: priests from all-male high schools; priestly vocation retreats; and any gathering designed to specifically encourage young men in the pursuit of a Christian way of life. These kinds of gatherings have raised generations of good Catholic men for centuries—and, rest assured, morally strong and healthy priests have never had any interest in sexually stalking young men at these gatherings.

Instead, we owe it to generations of Catholics to get to the heart of the issue, and examine what kind of man would sexually pursue post-pubescent males.

Before going further, let’s be clear: sexual predators come in both homosexual and heterosexual orientations. In either variety, sexual predation is evil, and homosexual behavior isn’t the only sexual sin, or the only problem. All sexual sins can gain strength unless the clergy formation process includes an emphasis on spirituality, prayer, and asceticism. But the data from the John Jay study strongly suggests that a homosexual influence in the clergy is a key factor in the sex abuse crisis.

And yet, this factor has been consistently ignored in the reform process. In fact, in the John Jay report issued in 2011, homosexuality was definitively discounted as an issue.  The study cited “organizational” (and institutional) causes among the explanations for the sex abuse crisis. It concluded that perhaps the real causes are the result of “certain vulnerabilities” accompanied by “opportunities to abuse,” as in “access to boys.”

The second report did not suggest screening anyone from the seminary. Rather, the “Conclusions and Recommendations” suggested that the solution lay in “education,” “situational prevention models,” and “oversight and accountability.” The report stated: “By regularly surveying priests, administrative staff, and parishioners about their responses to, and satisfaction with, the priests with whom they have contact, dioceses are more likely to be alerted to questionable behavior that might have been undetected in the past.”

In effect, now all priests will be considered guilty until proven innocent! More insidiously, the report calls for closer surveillance or “oversight” of the activities of all priests. According to a July 22, 2011 article in the National Catholic Reporter, this means “ensuring at least one adult is present whenever clergy and children (young men) are together.”  Big Brother, welcome to the Church.

Significantly, this second John Jay report was challenged by a top psychiatrist who treats sexually abusive priests. Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons told the Catholic News Agency on May 20, 2011, that “he is ‘very critical’ of the latest findings because they avoid discussing important causal factors in clerical sex abuse cases, namely homosexuality.”

Of course, anything critical of homosexuality offends modern standards, even the standards of some within the Church. But those are not the standards of the Catholic Church, and her teaching.  Pope Benedict XVI, for example, says in his recent book, Light of the World, that one of the “disturbing problems” in the Church today is that “homosexuality exists in monasteries and among the clergy.”  He goes on to say that “homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation.”

The Pope’s statements are backed by the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” (#2358), and other documents which declare that homosexual behavior is “objectively disordered.”

The question is: will objective data, like the John Jay study, be interpreted by Church standards, or by other standards?

So far, the answer is unsettled. Unfortunately, what should be the Church’s primary concern seems to be currently off the table. Instead, the study’s new direction and warning about “access to boys,” carries a subtle, but troubling, challenge to the Christian formation of young men—including the male-only priesthood.

When it comes to “access to boys,” the Church should have only one goal: to protect every young man who has discerned a call to religious life, and any male who sees, in priests and deacons, worthy role models of Christian values. For now, this vast demographic of human souls is still vulnerable to sexual targeting within the very walls of the Church.

We must face facts. The data overwhelmingly identifies the main victims of the sex abuse crisis as young men. Furthermore, what critics call “access to boys” is a natural consequence of Church life, and the male priesthood. Therefore, true reform should not be to question “access to boys,” but to reconsider, with compassion and wisdom, whether clergy roles are appropriate for any man who finds “access to boys” a sexual temptation.

Until this human problem is addressed, we cannot expect a complete solution to sexual predation within the Church.