PAUL writes:

I was told in the last year that New Orleans was the only place in America where people in casual conversation with a newly met person routinely will ask what high school they went to once both know they are fellow Orleanians. We might get a clue as to their breeding/class and the people we both might know. Unusual considering the cosmopolitan nature of New Orleans.

The next question usually is, “When?” Pretty cheeky, but it happens more often than not. I don’t ask the year of a female unless she is significantly younger, my age, or older. Males always ask it of one another. And everyone, I am not exaggerating, knows several people you know. The metro area is a big small town of over one million. Louisiana has by far the highest percentage of people who have never left.

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JAMES N. writes:

It’s very important to understand why those in power are opposed to stopping arrivals of passenger aircraft from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.

On October 1, 2014, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an opinion paper co-authored by Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., Rahm’s brother and an important Obama adviser in his own right. It was titled “Why Should High-Income Countries Help Fight Ebola”, and it contained the following language:

“…there are obligations of global justice to combat Ebola and strengthen health systems and infrastructure in affected countries in the longer term. Advocates of so-called cosmopolitanism – a key position in the philosophical debate about global justice – argue that national borders have no significance and that all people, regardless of where they live, are entitled to the same education, health care services, and other social resources…”

The people in power have been creating a borderless world for at least sixty years. They have achieved functional borderlessness in the U.S.A., using the covert revolutionary tactic “think of it always, speak of it never.” Most Americans still believe we have the ability to close our borders on short notice, when clearly we do not.

In any event, Obama, his Health and Human Services secretary, his Labor secretary, his acting Surgeon General, his Centers for Disease Control Director – all of them would DIE before they agreed to stop the flights, because doing it would affirm our borders as actual physical objects and demonstrate that it could be done, and they are mortally opposed to both of those things.

FROM Novus Ordo Watch:

It is an absolute theological freak show in Rome at this point. Finding “positive” aspects in fornication, adultery, sodomy? Poor St. John the Baptist (see Matthew 14) — he could have kept his head attached to his neck if only he had known about what the “Holy Spirit” would be telling the Vatican in the future. You see, if he had only avoided such “insensitive” language against King Herod, language that clearly “discriminated” against him, making him feel “unwelcome” and “judged”, oh, how much more could have been accomplished! If only the Baptist had recognized the “good elements” in the king’s adultery, all would have been well! ….

Likewise, our Blessed Lord: Instead of “encouraging” the woman at the well to strive for the “ideal” of a valid marriage, He flat-out told her, “For thou hast had five husbands: and he whom thou now hast, is not thy husband” (Jn 4:18). That is so insensitive! What about the positive aspects of her adultery? What about the “fidelity” and “love” she was surely showing to her “Husband No. 5”? Wasn’t she making sacrifices and such? Didn’t she cook him meals? Clearly, the Holy Spirit of 2000 years ago hadn’t yet “smelled the scent of the people.” Good thing we’ve got Bergoglio now to straighten it all out!

ANN COULTER writes:

There had never been a case of Ebola in the U.S. until a few months ago. Since then, thousands of people have died of the disease in Africa, and millions upon millions of dollars have been spent treating Ebola patients in the U.S. who acquired it there, one of whom has died.

But the Obama administration refuses to impose a travel ban.

This summer, the U.S. government imposed a travel ban on Israel simply to pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu into accepting a ceasefire agreement. But we can’t put a travel restriction on countries where a contagious disease is raging. Read More »

The highest perfection consists not in interior favors, or in great raptures, or in visions, or in the spirit of prophesy, but in the bringing of our wills so closely into conformity with the will of God, that as soon as we realize He wills anything, we desire it with all our might, and take the bitter with the sweet.

— St. Teresa of Avila

MATTHEW H. writes:

I think the movement toward euthanasia is driven by the fear of death, not the longing for death. Secular materialists who don’t know God are terrified of death, and euthanasia gives them a feeling of “control” over their own mortality. They may not be able to avoid death, but choosing the time and manner of dying allows them to think that they are in “control” of the process.  That’s what the euthanasia movement is really about.

I also think that the proponents of socialized medicine are motivated by a fear of death, too.  Death is terrifying, but the state is strong and powerful, and even though the proponents of socialized medicine are probably aware that the state cannot save them from death, it feels better to have a mighty ally in the struggle against death.

Finally, I think that the recent phenomenon of men and women who are 50 years of age and older obtaining sex change surgery is, once again, motivated by a fear of death.  These people sense that the grim reaper is approaching, and a sex change operation allows them to convince themselves that they have been “reborn” as a member of the opposite sex.

In March, Francis publicly took the hand of Fr. Luigi Ciotti, an openly pro-homosexual priest.

WHEN Jorge Bergoglio uttered his famous phrase, “Who am I to judge?” last year, many Catholics refused to believe that he was saying what he was saying. They made copious excuses. They complained of the deviousness of the media. They said his message of mercy had value. Even as he was lavished by awards and praise by homosexual organizations and publications, they claimed Bergoglio was being misinterpreted. Now perhaps those who were in denial can recognize the truth: Bergoglio does not consider sodomy gravely sinful and believes that homosexuals should be publicly welcomed into the Church. The recent midterm report by the “Extraordinary Synod of the Bishops on Family” goes much farther than Bergoglio’s seemingly off-the-cuff statement in a plane interview. The report was introduced and read in front of Francis, who has not repudiated it.

Would it ever occur to you to say that thieves have good qualities? Thieves and even murderers do have good qualities. But if someone said to you, “Thieves and murderers have much to offer the Christian community,” you would probably find that offensive because a thief cannot offer anything good to a Christian community until he first stops being a thief or the Christian community first stops being Christian. 

The following statement in the synod report is entirely predicated on the idea that homosexual activity is not wrong and that those engaged in the sin of sodomy can be members in good standing of the Catholic Church:

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JANE writes:

My reaction to the photo in the entry “States Forced to Abandon Marriage Laws” was a question. Doesn’t anyone ever dress up anymore? Is it shallow that I don’t think someone should wear a T-shirt to their own wedding?

Really, it’s not about the clothes. But I do think appearance can reflect values. We used to dress up for things that mattered — church, ceremonies, weddings. This haphazard gathering reflects the lack of seriousness with which our culture regards marriage.

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COMMENTS have been added to the entry about Brittany Maynard, the subject of an orchestrated media blitz in favor of assisted suicide. There are so many distortions in her story it’s hard to get to them all. One of the main lies is that laws are somehow preventing people from committing suicide. The goal of the organization Compassion and Choices, formerly the Hemlock Society, is to make suicide publicly affirmed and aided.

As one commenter points out, there can be great financial incentives for the living to support suicide of the old. Brittany Maynard is not old, and that’s why the choice of her as a symbol of the beauty of suicide is so clever and obviously calculated.

THE inactivity rate is the proportion of the population not in the labor force.

Source.

A READER writes:

The Synod’s report this week is punditry, not theology; it is intended for public consumption, loaded with liberal clichés and buzzwords. The entire world has already concluded on the basis of the midterm report alone that the Catholic Church has fully embraced the sexual revolution. Whatever comes next is practically irrelevant.

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JORGE BERGOGLIO and his Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family dropped a heavy load of incendiaries yesterday with the synod’s mid-way report, Relatio post disceptationem, which urges the Catholic world to see positive elements in the sins of divorce, cohabitation, homosexuality, same-sex unions and even polygamy and arranged marriages. The smoke is still rising above the debris. Vatican II’s adulteration of Catholic worship, with rock masses and Holy Communion in the hand, leads inevitably to the adulteration of Catholic doctrine — and now to the ultimate project of trashing the Catholic family. Confirming all the worst fears regarding its revolutionary intentions, the Synod report, written by Cardinal Péter Erdő, affirmed the need to proclaim the “Gospel of the Family” with “profound conviction” and then proceeded to bury it in an avalanche of cultural relativism and psychotherapeutic talk of “fragility” and “dialogue:”

Anthropological and cultural change today influences all aspects of life and requires an analytic and diversified approach, able to discern the positive forms of individual freedom.

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I WASN’T able to read or post e-mails yesterday. I was preoccupied with the illness of a relative. I hope to get to comments shortly. A belated Happy Columbus Day!

Inspiration of Christopher Columbus, Jose Maria Obregon; 1856

DAN R. writes:

I’d guess many of your readers have already seen this, but in case not, here’s a country duo, Lewis & Lewis, putting the homosexual “marriage” debate in its most basic and truthful terms.

FROM DailyKenn.com:

DailyKenn.com is pleased to announce the first ‘Hug-A-Thug Sunday.’

The initiative is designed to bring peace and harmony to Ferguson, Missouri and surrounding black neighborhoods where gentle giant black teens en route from choir practice to enroll in college are shot dead by racist white police.

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A couple “marries” in Asheville, North Carolina.

AS laws enacted by democratic means have been effectively overturned in numerous states by the wizened ecclesiastics of the U.S. Supreme Court, there has never been more justification for secession. This week’s events reveal the naked, absolutist power of our federal government like nothing else. Those who have harbored unrealistic hopes are perhaps now enlightened. Today is the beginning of a brighter tomorrow if more people realize what this all means. This is not primarily about homosexual “marriage.” It’s about the cult of freedom. It’s about the worship of the state. It’s about serious defects in the very principles upon which America was founded. It’s about the triumph of money and the failure of community. America is dissolving before our eyes.

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BRITTANY MAYNARD is the latest poster child for the pro-suicide movement. Diagnosed with brain cancer not long ago, Maynard, 29, has decided she will kill herself on November 1 to avoid acute suffering. Compassion and Choices, the former Hemlock Society and a leading advocate of laws legalizing assisted suicide, has produced an artful video of Brittany that has gone viral with more than five million views. I was visiting a relative in a nursing home the other day, surrounded by the sick and disabled, when I heard on a nearby screen this self-absorbed woman being interviewed. The media can’t go wrong with a story like this. It rends emotions and stirs controversy. Organized suicide is great for the news business. I wondered how many people in how many nursing homes and hospitals around the country were watching this willful, painfully superficial woman explain how pointless suffering is.

Maynard believes she is entitled to a life of health and adventure. Deprived of that, she has chosen to plan her own suicide, and, while she is at it, promote the idea for others. Some who also have terminal illnesses, understandably agitated by her story, have begged her to reconsider. Little do they know they are playing the part of useful fools to the propaganda machine at “Compassion and Choices.”

Dave Andrusko writes:

Maynard’s case is what groups like Compassion & Choices live for. A beautiful young woman apparently about to be cut down in the prime of her life. It matters not that such cases—terminal illnesses—are always the opening wedge after which, once the principal is established, the “right” to be “assisted” expands to a whole panoply of reasons none of which are about terminal illnesses.

The principles of Compassion and Choices are perfectly consistent with assisted suicide for those who are not terminally ill but are experiencing unhappiness and chronic illness of some kind. Legal suicide, much farther ahead in Europe, has already gone in that direction in Belgium, and it will likely go in that direction in the United States too.

The ironic thing about Maynard’s case is that the art and science of relieving pain are highly developed and she apparently has family and friends willing to care for her. But she sees no point in living a little longer unless she can have it her way. She is planning to continue to travel and have fun after her death too. Sadly, it seems to never have occurred to Maynard that she may experience intense suffering after her death.

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