THE media around the world has proclaimed that Pope Francis approves of homosexuality because of remarks he made to reporters on a plane returning to Rome from Rio. The New York Times has the story on the front page with this headline, “On Gay Priests, Pope Francis Asks ‘Who Am I to Judge?” thus suggesting that open homosexuals will be welcomed into the priesthood.

On the one hand, this is blatant distortion. The Pope did not come close to saying that homosexuals would be admitted to seminaries. On the other hand, the Pope’s remarks are disturbing, not least because he used the euphemistic label “gay” — the first time a pope has ever done so publicly — and because his words suggest that homosexuality is a permanent “orientation.”

Thetimann at the blog St. Louis Catholic has a reasonable summary of the incident:

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THE Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate comprise the second largest Catholic religious congregation that regularly celebrates the Tridentine Mass. Pope Pius V promulgated the missal for the Tridentine mass in 1570 and it was in effect for almost 400 years, until 1969. Catholic Culture reports that Pope Francis has consented to a decree forbidding the friars from using the ancient Latin liturgy without specific approval. Rorate Caeli also reports on the news.

Listen to a polyphonic choir of the Franciscans singing here.

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  ARS ORANDI offers this reflection on the Feast of St. Martha, whose story is an example to women everywhere to value things of the spirit over necessary chores: When Martha received Jesus into her house, she was naturally busy in preparations for such a Guest. Mary sat at His feet, intent alone on listening to His gracious words. Her sister thought that the time required other service than this, and asked our Lord to bid Mary help in serving. Once again Jesus spoke in defence of Mary. "Martha, Martha," He said, "thou art lovingly anxious about many things; be not over-eager; do thy chosen work with recollectedness. Judge not Mary. Hers is the good part, the one only thing really necessary. Thine will be taken away, that something better be given thee." The life of action ceases when the body is laid down; but the life of contemplation endures and is perfected in heaven.

  THE Catholic Church's World Youth Day 2013 ended yesterday in Rio de Janeiro. Novus Ordo Watch writes: This is what a church looks like that has absolutely nothing relevant to offer to modern man - and desperately tries to appeal to the young and "fit in." You'd think that after 50 years of this bunk, they'd finally realize it's not working. On his way home from the event, Pope Francis made another one of his confusing ex tempore statements. He reportedly said, regarding homosexual clergy, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” It is now being broadcast around the world that the Pontiff believes we should not condemn homosexuality, which is a reasonable inference from his words. The Pope makes many off-the-cuff remarks that are ambiguous. See more on World Youth Day here and here.

JOHN T. REED, a graduate of West Point, argues that military women will always be subject to sexual exploitation by their superiors, even at top military academies. He writes:

Fundamentally, the military cannot handle having women integrated into male units. Civilian colleges can handle it, as can civilian grad schools and civilian police and fire. But the military cannot handle it and anyone who votes to continue the current situation is complicit in the ongoing rapes, harassments, and retaliations against females who spurn the advances of their male superiors. Any parent who countenances their daughter going into the military is complicit in the rape or harassment of their daughter.

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JOE writes:

I  know three women in my working-class neighborhood who don’t have children – and never will have children. It’s a choice they made for themselves.They’re very proud of it.

The thing is: No one ever brings the subject up. No one mentions it. No one hassles them. They themselves are the ones who always bring the subject up.

I find it really difficult to believe the 67-year-old actress Helen Mirren when she says people – especially men – often asked her about her childlessness, especially as she traveled in very liberal circles. Even down here in working-class land no one hassles childless women. Most likely, Mirren is the one who made her childlessness the focus of conversation, just like the three childless women I know.

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ADAM writes:

Yesterday, The Arizona Republic published an exuberant follow-up article about a pair of homosexual superdads: Gay dads adopt 2 more children for total of 14.

The Republic previously promoted this nontraditional blended “family” of foster children in 2011 and 2012. The story was picked up nationally by ABC News (which cast the group as a real-life Brady Bunch), Esquire (which named the “dads” among their 2012 Fathers of the Year), and the Huffington Post.

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AT The American Thinker, Don Wilkie explains why he moved his small manufacturing business out of Detroit. He blames government. But when one reads carefully, one discovers it wasn’t government so much as a corrupt and dishonest workforce. In order to get one good employee, Wilkie had to hire eight. But the workers he fired in order to get that one good employee came back to haunt him when they accused him of violating their civil rights or said they had been injured on the job in order to get Workers Compensation benefits. He had to go to extreme fortress-building measures to make sure his buildings were secure, but these were nothing compared to the problems with the workers. He writes:

After a period of time, my insurance company put me in what was called the “Assigned Risk” pool. What that meant in practice was that my Workman’s Compensation insurance costs doubled overnight.  Every new employee hired became a huge financial burden not in terms of wages but in terms of Unemployment and Workman’s Comp costs. (more…)

DON VINCENZO writes:

The summer edition of West Point Magazine demonstrates beyond cavil that “inclusiveness” and “diversity” are the hallmarks of the institution that gave us Generals Lee, Grant, MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton. We learn that Nadja West, a 1982 graduate of West Point, has been promoted to a two-star general. General West is both female and black. Female cadets are omnipresent in the photos and stories that comprise the magazine.

The cover is a clear indication of what is perceived as the U.S. Army’s future. An aging white officer is pictured with his successor: a female, probably Hispanic or black. That emphasis on the “diversity” of future graduating classes at West Point can be seen throughout the magazine. What is evident from each of the articles is that the military academies, especially under this administration, have bought the feminist siren’s song of “inclusiveness” and “diversity” as much as other higher education institutions. (more…)

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

Two cheers for Prince George Alexander Louis!  Hip, Hip …

I should give three if Prince George were intended to become a Catholic monarch one day.  But Great Britain’s last Catholic sovereign, James II of England and VII of Scotland, was driven illegally from his dual throne in 1688 in “The [in]Glorious Revolution,” undoing such good as the Stuart Restoration had accomplished.  Might that eruption and its aftermath – the generally dismal sequence of Germanic Protestants on the throne since – have anything to do with the morally moribund state of no-longer-Great Britain?  Speculation, and no doubt idle.

Which leads to an update from what our late and greatly missed comrade, Lawrence Auster, was wont to call the Dead Island.  David Cameron, the contemptible chancer now squatting in No. 10 Downing Street, has embarked on a crusade (The Telegraph‘s term, not mine) against children’s seeing pornography on the Internet. Well, bully for him.  Can anyone imagine an easier political target for some cost-free grandstanding?  (more…)

THE DISCUSSION continues in the entry, “What Destroyed Detroit.” Bill R., who has eloquently held his own, responds to a reader who says Africans, when comparing themselves to American blacks, are “very glad to be in Africa.” Bill writes:

With all due respect, it is utterly the opposite. Let me begin by drawing your attention to a book review recently published in The Wall Street Journal of a book called Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora by Emily Raboteau. Miss Raboteau appears by all accounts to be, in her political beliefs at least, a rather predictably liberal American black academic (or mixed race, according to the article), convinced, for example, that race is nothing but a social construct. The reviewer describes the book as “the author’s decade-long attempt to discover just where, if anywhere, an African-American might feel at home.” Suffice it to say for the present that her quest turned out to be something of a disappointment. To quote one passage from the article, “Many Ghanaians she speaks with—some of whom appear to still own slaves—concur. Most are incredulous that blacks from the U.S. should wish to come back. At one point a taxi driver mistakes her for a white woman and launches into an unchecked tirade about blacks: ‘These blacks truly expect too much. . . . Don’t they know that if tomorrow a slave ship arrived at Elmina to carry us to America, so many Ghanaians would climb on board that this ship would sink to the bed of the ocean from our weight?'”

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  EIGHTY people were killed in a train crash outside Santiago de Compostela in Spain on Wednesday night. The driver of the train was reportedly exceeding the speed limit by some 40 miles an hour when it crashed into a wall. Many of the passengers were tourists or Catholic pilgrims to the famous city, which is the destination point for the Way of St. James pilgrimage. "Santiago" is Gallician for  Sanctu Iacobu, or St. James, to whom the city's cathedral, below, which was built in the 12th century, is dedicated.

KARL D. writes:

The Oxford dictionary is now changing the definition of marriage in light of legalized homosexual marriage. In other news, homosexual activists are up in arms over the treatment and sometimes physical beatings they have been receiving in Russia. I don’t condone the beatings of homosexuals, but like most Western homosexuals they claim to be about “rights” but are more about putting it in your face and forcing you not only to accept them, but to cheer them on as well! Why the need for a “gay pride” parade? Why the need for public “Kiss in’s”? Russia actually has anti-homosexual propaganda laws which forbid the promotion of homosexuality to minors. Something which they seem to find beyond the pale and were protesting.

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HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

“Catholic” Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the Supreme Court’s liberal majority in last month’s Windsor decision, pretended that the majority’s attack on the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act was limited to striking down its provisions forbidding federal agencies to recognize homosexuals’ “marriages.”  Conservative commentators, Catholic and otherwise, warned even before the Supreme Court had handed down its unconstitutional ukaze that overturning any part of DOMA would throw open the door – through judicial abuse of the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause – to forcing all states to recognize any homosexual “marriage” contracted in any other state. They were right. It did not take long for what pro-marriage advocates warned against to happen.

In a sad situation — sad because one of the men is near death — two Ohio-resident homosexual men have sued to compel that state to recognize their Maryland “marriage,” contracted on an airfield in Anne Arundel County in the jet chartered to fly them to and from Maryland, as the ALS-afflicted member of the pairing could not move.  (more…)

M. MASON writes:

While engaged in online research about 19th century gardens I came across an article in the Shreveport Daily News of April 26, 1861 that I thought might interest you.  Titled “The Marriage Ring,” it gives a short historical overview of the symbolic matrimonial love-token which, the article states, “Many women regard as a precious treasure and preserve with great care.”  Then a certain personal story is related:

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IN a June column, Phyllis Schlafly wrote about Obama’s efforts to introduce universal preschool, which is in this case another name for day care. This is one of the most cherished fantasies of feminists despite massive evidence that day care does not benefit children in the long run. It’s not enough that children are imprisoned from ages five to 18. Obama wants to get them earlier. Schlafly wrote:

Under the media’s radar, Obama has been aggressively promoting one of his fiscally extravagant projects announced in his 2013 State of the Union Address: “preschool available to every single child in America.” The plan for the federal government to take over the care of preschool children, a longtime goal of the feminists that used to be called universal child care, is now (probably to sound academic) called Pre-K. (more…)

SUSAN-ANNE WHITE writes from Northern Ireland:

I am somewhat confused by your post and comments about the new royal baby. Have you changed your opinion of the Duchess of Cambridge, now describing her face in flattering terms? In a previous post, you described her as “mesmerizingly insipid.”

Your post about the new royal baby included reference to the fact that Prince William will take “paternity” leave, and you have nothing to say about that, even though the whole idea of paternity leave is a capitulation to feminism. (more…)

BUCK writes:

Jay from Goshen argues in this post that progressive policies and politics didn’t destroy Detroit, but that blacks did. Or, as I extend it, that modern liberal policies and politics, implemented by a ruling white majority, aren’t destroying our civilization, “others” are.

Three years ago, there was a discussion at VFR, kicked-off by a discussion between Bonald and Alan Roebuck at Throne and Altar. They debated which threat to us was greater: liberalism or Islam. Mr. Roebuck brought the discussion to VFR. He stuck to his guns and eventually secured the agreement of Lawrence Auster. Others of us, as did Bonald, argued that modern liberalism is the supreme threat. I’m more convinced than ever, that it is the threat of all threats – that modern liberalism spawns the others. (more…)