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Shame on Al. For that he should walk to work for a week: http://www.wnd.com/index.ph...

Wayfarer probably isn't going to like that the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in America is enamored with The One to the point of comparing him to Alexander the Great, but Catholic blogger Tito Edwards thinks the archbishop may be onto something:

http://the-american-catholi...

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And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for Hillary after the rash of gaffes marring her debut as secretary of state. Now word comes out that she asked who painted the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe during an unexpected stop at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe during her recent trip to Mexico. The response from the monsignor who served as her host: "God."

Oh ...

And that's to say nothing of the sheer irony of her paying homage to the virgin who, as the ribbon tied around her midsection shows, is pregnant, then receiving the highest award from Planned Parenthood the next day. How appropos of her to wear red for the former occasion and black for the latter: http://www.splendoroftruth....

Behold the many links to websites dogpiling on her:

http://www.catholicblogs.co...

http://www.google.com/searc...

The zingers among the comments at the Fresno-based FreeRepublic.com are particularly amusing: http://www.freerepublic.com...

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I'd hope this report sends a chill up the spine of those who mock God, his commandments and the church founded by his son. The owner of a string of California abortion clinics, including the one in Bakersfield (Family Planning Associates at 2500 H St., which I confirmed through Internet research), lost several members of his family in a plane crash in Montana.

Of all places, the plane crashed near a memorial to the unborn in a Catholic cemetery.

Here's the report: http://www.christiannewswir...

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Unbelievable. Just when I thought Notre Dame was turning a corner toward Catholic orthodoxy, the dying-on-the-vine liberal old guard manages to get the Teleprompter of the United States to deliver the commencement address in May.

My buddy, Dave Hartline, has this to say in his blog The Catholic Report:

My friends the battle lines have been drawn. This will bring the pro life debate front and center like few events have. The mainstream media can ignore the March for Life but this type of anger against the President will be hard to sweep under the rug. As I have reported here before, this website has friends at Notre Dame. I have been there twice in the last year for meetings with senior officials. I know the old liberal guard is very nervous about the growing orthodoxy seen in the student body and in newer faculty members. I can't help but think the old guard is behind this to try to bolster the Notre Dame of Father McBrien rather than the new orthodoxy. I know for a fact that at certain Catholic colleges liberal commencement speakers are pushed forward not the by the student body (as reported) of the institution, but by a small group of liberals, often militant liberals, to push forward at least the appearance that we are not far from 1968.

I will do some checking on this and let you know what I find out. I would encourage all those in the know at Notre Dame, faculty and student to e-mail me with any pertinent information. Note the timing of this release on a late Friday afternoon/evening. Imagine the uproar had this come down on Monday? I don't think the old guard at Notre Dame knows what it just stepped into. I was told by some students that those who were considered conservative or orthodox five years ago are moderate compared to those underclassmen now. While indifference to this decision may be large on campus, the pro-life presence is larger than it has ever been. Because of this drastic measure, the forces for life can make their stand and at least be loudly heard. Here is our chance to shine. As Father Corapi so often reminds us; Why does God allow evil and suffering?  Because a greater good needs to occur.

A petition by the Cardinal Newman Society is being circulated to urge Notre Dame's president to withdraw the invitation: http://notredamescandal.com...

If the school sticks to the invitation, then I hope the students will take it upon themselves to send a strong message to the usurper of the presidency, perhaps by following an excellent suggestion that one person made -- leaving one-third of the chairs for the graduates empty to reflect the percentage of our brothers and sisters who had fallen victim to "choice" since Roe v. Wade took effect.

Meanwhile, here's a new fight song for Notre Dame, thanks to the Creative Minority Report:

Jeer Jeer for old Notre Shame
Bury your past, you're just Catholic by name
No more prayers to God on high
Praise to Obama and his pro-choice lies.

To hell with babies great or small
Old Notre Shame turns their backs on them all
While her loyal sons are marching
Onward to perfidy!

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For all the flak Pope Benedict XVI has been taking over his recent comments about condoms serving only to worsen the AIDS crisis in Africa where he is visiting, I had utmost faith the truth would come to light. A doff of the miter to Mac McLernon at Mulier Fortis for her post sure to set off yet another round of gnashing of teeth and wailing: A Harvard professor -- gasp! -- showing the empirical evidence that Benedict was spot on with his remark. Excuse me if this itches your ears:

Now Who's Ignoring The Evidence...?

The Pope is killing thousands of people with HIV/AIDS because he won't allow condoms... because condoms have been shown to be the most effective way to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS, haven't they?

"We have found no consistent associations between condom use and lower HIV-infection rates, which, 25 years into the pandemic, we should be seeing if this intervention was working."

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Dang Bill Maher, hogging four berths in the Gomorrah Region!

From Creative Minority Report (www.creativeminorityreport.com):

March To Madness

CMR is here to rescue you from the annual humiliation and ridicule of your office NCAA pool by offering an alternative that CMR readers can sink their teeth into. Look, you're not the one with satellite television watching every single college basketball game and watching for the weaknesses in Oklahoma State's point guard. And you don't even care that Morehead State's Center has a bad knee.

But CMR is offering you some brackets that you know a thing or two about. As a CMR reader you've had a front row seat to the spiral of Western civilization into an apathetic, politically correct, death-fetish culture. From abortion to euthanasia to just plain bad taste, let's find out who's responsible for destroying our culture.

With this in mind, the CMR think tank after months of study is now announcing the "March to Madness" brackets. Monday through Thursday of this week, the competitors will battle it out until we reach the Final Four. And on Monday the battle to crown the winner of the most destructive person in our culture will end.

Join CMR and "March to Madness" by choosing your winners in the combox because you can influence the judging by lobbying to see certain people to advance or fall.

In the end, there can be only one. Vote early. Vote often.

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That's my senator! Just got this today in an e-mail. It comes as absolutely no surprise that Ashburn aced the  test on traditional family values while our other lawmakers, Dean Florez and Nicole Parra, could muster only 35% and 33%, respectively. At least their scores are not as woefully dismal as many of their way-out-of-touch Democratic peers, bringing up the rear with approval ratings in the single-digit range. Is it any wonder that I have left the Democratic Party? Or should I say it has left me? The link to a spreadsheet is at the end of this announcement:

Capitol Resource Family Impact is pleased to announce its Legislative Scorecard for the last legislative session, which ran from 2007 to 2008.

"This scorecard is California's only pro-family tool for tracking how Sacramento legislators vote on social issues," said Karen England, Executive Director of Capitol Resource Family Impact. "CRFI salutes nearly 20 elected officials for earning perfect scores over two years of voting."

In the Assembly, these legislators are Joel Anderson, Chuck DeVore, Michael Duvall, Doug La Malfa, Alan Nakaniski, Jim Silva, Audra Strickland, Michael Villines, and Mimi Walters.. The Senate is represented by Dick Ackerman, Roy Ashburn, James Battin, Dave Cogdill, Dave Cox, Bob Dutton, Dennis Hollingsworth, Tom McClintock, and George Runner.

"These men and women stood for timeless family values in an environment that is not always friendly to such convictions," said Meredith Turney, Legislative Liaison for Capitol Resource Family Impact. "We hear from citizens all around California who are grateful for their work."

Another 19 assemblymembers and senators came within one vote of receiving perfect scores.

Over half of California's assemblymembers, however, received scores of 12 percent or lower. In the Senate, more than half received voting scores of 13 percent or less on vital social issues.

"It is our hope that, as CRFI works with new and returning legislators over the next two years, California will benefit from the strong voting records of even more 'perfect score' legislators,"
England said.

CRFI Legislative Scorecard

Also, the leader of the group that gave us this scorecard, Karen England, recently talked about the Prop. 8 issue on CNN: http://www.capitolresource....

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I've mentioned Fulwiler before. It's worth doing so again after spotting this article on www.ncregister.com. After all, it does take more than a couple of blows of a hammer and chisel to break down hardened objects, including hearts ...

From Atheist to Catholic

BY Nona Aguilar

March 22-28, 2009 Issue | Posted 3/13/09 at 8:04 AM

Jennifer Fulwiler “always thought it was obvious that God did not exist.”

Fulwiler grew up a content atheist. Having a profound respect for knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, Fulwiler was convinced that religion and reason were incompatible. Not surprisingly, she was also emphatically anti-Christian and, especially, anti-Catholic. “Catholic beliefs seemed bizarre and weird,” she says.

Fulwiler would have been astonished to know that she and Joe Fulwiler, her husband, would come to embrace those “bizarre,” “weird” beliefs. On Easter 2007, they entered the Catholic Church with deep joy and a sense of coming home — and a blog aided their conversion.

Register correspondent Nona Aguilar spoke to Jennifer Fulwiler about the couple’s unexpected journey.

There is always a first step that leads to belief in God. What was yours?

Thanks to meeting and knowing my husband, I learned that belief in God is not fundamentally unreasonable. We met at the high-tech company where we both worked. Joe believed in God — something that, fortunately, I didn’t know for a while.

Why was that fortunate?

To me, belief in God was so unreasonable that, by definition, no reasonable person could believe in such a thing. I felt I could never be compatible with someone that unreasonable. Had I known that Joe believed in God, I would never have dated him.

What was your reaction when you found out?

It gave me pause. Joe is too smart — brilliant, really, with degrees from Yale, Columbia and Stanford — to believe in something nonsensical. I also met many of his friends. They, too, are highly intelligent — some with M.D.s and Ph.D.s from schools like Harvard and Princeton — and believed.

None of this made me believe in God, of course, but I could no longer say that only unreasonable or unintelligent people believe.

What caused you to consider the question more seriously?

I have always been a truth-seeker, which is why I was an atheist. But I had a prideful, arrogant way of approaching questions about life and meaning. I now realize that pride is the most effective way to block out God so that one doesn’t see him at all. Certainly, I didn’t.

The birth of our first child motivated me to seek the truth with humility. I can’t emphasize this point enough: Humility, true humility, is crucial to the conversion process.

Most atheists are unchanged after their children’s births. Why were you so affected?

First, I had already begun thinking about the possibility of God’s existence. After our son’s birth, I wanted to know the truth about life’s great questions — for his sake. For the first time, I was motivated to seek truth with true humility. For example, I began reading, studying, and thinking about the great minds. Most, if not the majority, believed in some other world, some higher power, a god or gods — something. Even the great pre-Christian thinkers like Plato, Aristotle and Socrates believed.

Another avenue of exploration: I always revered the great scientists, including the founders of the significant branches of science. Very few were atheists. Indeed, some of the greatest were profoundly believing Christians.

It could be argued this was because they were steeped in the Christian culture and beliefs of their times.

That ignores a larger question I began asking myself: Is it really likely that great minds like Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Descartes and others didn’t know how to ask tough questions? Do these people seem to be men who didn’t know how to question assumptions and fearlessly seek truth? Of course not.

Was your husband a help in this process?

Eventually, but not at first. Religion wasn’t something we talked about. Joe was a non-churchgoing Baptist, which was fine by me. In fact, since I was an atheist, I considered not talking about God to be a good compromise. Our lives were completely secular — just like our wedding.

No church wedding?

Definitely not! I wore a purple dress; we married in a theater with a friend officiating, using vows we wrote ourselves. The ceremony took seven minutes, then we all partied all night long. In fact, we didn’t even technically get married at our wedding: We did that at city hall a few days before.

Was there ever an aha moment that finally made you abandon atheism?

Several, but one in particular actually shocked me.

I asked myself two questions: What is information? And: Can information ever come from a non-intelligent source?

It was a shocking moment for me because I had to confront the fact that DNA is information. If I remained an atheist, I would have to believe that all the intricate, detailed, complex information contained in DNA comes out of nowhere and nothing.

But I also knew that idea did not make sense. After all, I don’t look at billboards — which contain much simpler information than DNA — and think that wind and erosion created them. That wouldn’t be rational. Suddenly, I found that I was a very discomfited atheist.

Is that the point at which you began to believe in God?

No. But now I was a reluctant atheist. I had lots of questions but knew no one who might have answers: I had always consciously, deliberately distanced myself from believers. So, coming from the high-tech world, where did I go for answers? I put up a blog, of course! I started posting tough questions on my blog.

One matter stood out from the beginning: The best, most thoughtful responses came from Catholics. Incidentally, their answers were consistently better than the ones from atheists. It intrigued me that Catholics could handle anything I threw at them. Also, their responses reflected such an eminently reasonable worldview that I kept asking myself: How is it that Catholics have so much of this all figured out?

Was your husband helpful to you at this point?

As I started telling Joe some of the answers that I was getting, especially from Catholics, his own interest in religion — and Catholicism — was piqued. We have always been a great team, so it was wonderful that we were exploring these issues and questions together, especially since we were so anti-Catholic.

Both of you?

Yes. I thought the Church’s views on most things, but especially marriage, contraception and abortion (since I was then ardently pro-choice), were simply crazy. Joe’s anti-Catholicism, while different, was stronger and more settled. He didn’t understand any Catholic doctrine or apologetics, so he fell into a stereotyped view of Catholics, thinking that they made idols of the pope and Mary, etc. Also, it never really occurred to him to take seriously the idea that Jesus founded one Church. He just assumed the way to pick a church is to find one that fits your personality.

Your conversion has impacted your daily life. What change, in particular, stands out in your mind?

Community! There is nothing like it in atheism. I never understood what people meant by members of the Church being part of the body of Christ, but now I really get it. By being part of the one, holy Catholic Church, there is a palpable connection I now have with other Catholics, even people I don’t know. It’s been amazing to experience that connection and community.

Nona Aguilar writes

from New York City.

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Mark Shea hits the nail squarely on the head in what he has to say about the "Boomers of the Generation Narcissus."