SEE this amazingly forceful presidential election ad by Catholics Called to Witness that goes so far as to suggest that Catholics who vote for Obama in November will jeopardize their salvation. This commercial is unlike any anti-Obama advertisement I have ever seen.

The commercial has one weakness and that is its reference to the talking point of “religious liberty.” Obamacare is not essentially a question of religious liberty, at least not for Catholics. Is that what Catholicism stands for — freedom for all religions? It makes me cringe to hear bishops speak this way. Do we wish liberty for cults that believe in human sacrifice? Should we countenance liberty for a religion that entombed live people in pyramids or one that believed in killing infidels? It’s a question not so much of religious liberty but of the government supporting immorality, actively encouraging people to do wrong, and of marginalizing one particular religion: Christianity. And, as a commenter points out below, it’s a matter of individual freedom of commerce. So far there has been no serious repudiation by Catholic organizations of the idea that universal health care is in itself anti-Catholic even if it does not subsidize abortion and contraception.

Nevertheless, this is a very compelling video that should give pause to many liberal Catholics.

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AT Tradition in Action, Carol Byrne writes about disturbing efforts within the Catholic Church to beatify Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement. Archbishop Timonty Dolan has called Day “one of the most significant women in the life of the Church in the United States.” Writes Byrne:

Every so often the name of Dorothy Day pops up in the media, especially in the Catholic press, where she is invariably presented as a revered icon of social reform, a peace-loving and charitable figure who dedicated her life to helping the poor.

In fact, Byrne argues, Day’s thinking was that of a radical who wished to overturn the existing economic and social order.

The data [recommending Day] repeat the same hackneyed ideas that we have heard and read ad nauseam in the standard hagiographies of Day – how she had “a passion for the poor and dispossessed,” gave up Communism on becoming a Catholic, and rejected all forms of violence and war. But how true are all these claims?

We have every reason to doubt the veracity of these claims because they all have one basic flaw in common: Their authors pick and choose from among details of Day’s life in order to put as much distance as possible between her and Communism. But, as authentic documentary evidence has shown, Day never gave up her communist friends or philosophy. (6) (more…)

HERE is a scene vastly different from the sunlit domestic idylls of the nineteenth and early twentieth century by Carl Larsson. The Stone Grinder’s Family (1653-55) is the work of Dutch painter Gerard ter Borch. Here is a scene of squalor and toil, with the knife grinder in the background and a mother picking lice from her daughter’s hair. And yet it also conveys a domestic ideal. In his book, The Embarrassment of Riches, on the Golden Age of Dutch culture, Simon Schama wrote:

Some of the most affecting family scenes in Dutch genre painting are of children submitting to their mother’s inspection of their heads for nits and lice. Gerard ter Borcher painted two: one as much an image of domestic virtue as a lace worker or a distaff spinner, the second in the much more unusual setting of an impoverished knife grinder’s yard. This is all the more extraordinary for being anything but the idealized image of the kempt bourgeois household. It is, in fact, one of the few authentic pictures of the kinds of hovels in which many of the poorest artisans and semiskilled laborers lived in Dutch towns. Yet, for all the dereliction and squalor, it is also unmistakably an image of domestic virtue. It is virtue offered within the same canvas, at work and at home, the knife grinding invoking the universal image of hard unremitting toil, and in the foreground the mother at the threshold of the dwelling, occupied with the moedertaak, her labor of love. (p. 395)

Here is another view from the same era of a mother delousing a child. Pieter de Hooch’s The Mother’s Task (1658-60) shows the immaculate surroundings more typical of Dutch domestic scenes and the illumination of the darkened and serene home by light from two windows. Thus the prosaic act of removing bugs from a child’s hair is glorified and rendered a meditative form of connection. As in so many Dutch paintings, the contemplative quality of domesticity is masterfully conveyed as an anchor of the spiritual world.

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HANNON writes:

Here is a rather striking example of official British cowardice in all things social. A poster campaign by police warning women that drunkenness may end in “regret” has roused the ire of feminists, who say the posters blame rape on women. (more…)

MARY writes:

It’s interesting that homosexual activists were so furious over the success of the day promoting Chick-fil-A. Some have responded by calling for protests and aggressive tactics against Chick-fil-A in response, which is unfortunate. There must be multitudes of businesses, musicians (Melissa Etheridge et al), etc. that are thriving solely due to the devotion of homosexuals, but apparently this fact is lost on them. (more…)

KAREN I. writes:

The post about liberalism leading people to error, and then exploiting their error reminds me of something I saw a family do recently.

I live in a large apartment complex. It features townhouse-style apartments in a country setting, and it is very affordable, with heat included. Several families with stay-at-home parents have chosen to live here because the good value allows families to live on one average income fairly comfortably. I will be the first to admit, it is not a lavish lifestyle, but an average family determined to have a mother at home can do so without tremendous difficulty.  (more…)

  SAGE McLAUGHLIN writes: The constant drudgery of a desk job was always an attractive target for some uber-vitalist freak. Exercise balls to sit on? That’s nothing. Try this on.

JONATHAN writes:

Greetings!

I read your article on boycotting General Mills due to the company’s public support of homosexual marriage. The company’s stance originated in a blog post by Ken Charles, General Mills’ vice president of “global diversity.”

I believe his direct e-mail would be:  Ken.Charles@genmills.com. (more…)

PAUL writes:

Deep-Southern-fried death to be sure, but I will find something to eat at Chick until I am assured Chick will prosper. I don’t know where one is, but I will find one and become a Chick customer until the crisis is over. (more…)

JAMES P. writes:

The International Olympic Committee browbeat the Saudis into including women on their Olympic team, according to CNN. In Saudi Arabia, women are, for all practical purposes, forbidden to participate in sports. Therefore, the Saudis had trouble finding any female athletes to take part in the IOC-mandated charade. Finally, the Saudis nominated an 18-year-old judo fighter who “is a virtual novice, a blue belt who has only been at the sport for two years.”

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KATHLENE M. writes:

I just found out today that the government-subsidized Amtrak is now promoting “Ride with Pride,” a pro-same-sex-family advertising campaign. The ads show two white “fathers” with a boy, and two black “mothers” with a girl. The Blaze has more background but you can also see this for yourself at Amtrak’s website.

I fully expect the Post Office will be next to promote homosexuality since, like Amtrak, it’s government-owned and losing money. So I won’t be surprised to see rainbow stickers on delivery trucks and a pro-homosexual stamp in the near future.

Is it hyperbolic of me to state that our government, especially the Obama administration, is evil? It is now overtly promoting abortion (with Planned Parenthood) and homosexuality with our taxpayer monies.

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PETER writes:

I was thinking about how all these progressive “freedoms” liberals impose by default now come with hefty penalties for any dissent. It’s deceptive by nature. A campaign of value replacement sold as rights expansion is obviously devastating all known liberty. Their call to denounce the human experience betrays liberalism’s inherent inhumanity. (more…)

   IBITSAAM writes: Since the start of the Olympic Games, Google has been featuring daily cartoons depicting different sporting events. I have yet to see a cartoon that depicts a male participant.

DOMINIC writes:

I just returned from the Chick-fil-A in Hilliard, Ohio, and it was packed. The drive-thru line wrapped around the building twice, and the inside line went out the door. I parked in a nearby Target lot, walked to the Chick-fil-A, and then I stood in line for a good 15 to 20 minutes before I finally got inside (a few were taking pictures so I’m sure they’ll be lots of Facebook and blog page updates). (more…)

MARY K. writes:

The Obama campaign came to my neighborhood on Saturday. I spent the morning working in my front garden, so I observed about a dozen canvassers making their rounds two by two. Every single one of them was a white female baby boomer! Most were also overweight and very poorly dressed: shorts and ratty t-shirts or tanks with bra straps hanging out, tube socks, even a few visors and fanny packs. Certainly an appropriate representation for the most proletarianizing (if that’s a word) president in history, but I doubt they could appreciate that. (more…)