The Roman Catholic Church went through the process and ritual of selecting the next Pope, the head of that institution. By all accounts Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the man who has chosen the name, “Francis” has great humility. He cooked is own food, rode the bus rather than having a limo and doesn’t even wear flashy shoes. He is very concerned about the poor but the liberal media is in utter shock! The new pope is not in favor of same gender marriage or abortion. Not even contraception. Imagine, they hired a Roman Catholic to head the church! At times I thought some of the news personalities were going to become apoplectic. On one of the FOX shows Juan Williams expressed his dismay at the Pope’s lack of being up with the times and it was pointed out that the Pope is Roman Catholic and a requirement in taking the position is a pledge to uphold and defend the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Juan than said that lots of American Roman Catholics favor same gender marriage and abortion. The host then pointed out that the Church is NOT a democratic institution. Perhaps part of the problem is that our President and Congress also swear to uphold and defend the Constitution but once sworn in ignore their commitment and go on to do whatever they want in violation of the Constitution. Honesty, integrity and fidelity are not highly valued commodities among liberals and progressives. Continue reading …

I became a Christian in the mid-1970s. The winds of cultural change were already evident in good old America. Even though it had long been a nation which operated on Judeo/Christian morals and values, Progressivism had been doing its work slowly in universities and amongst politicians for 60 or 70 years. Even though the nation has a sort of a Christian hangover, still generally holding biblical values in the main, it was cultural but not necessarily tied to any embrace of biblical faith. The Barna Research Group recently released its material on America’s Most Bible Minded Cities. The statistics were not overly surprising to me but rather served to confirm something we at MCOI have said for quite a long time. We need missionaries to America! In fact we did an article in our Journal in 1999 titled, of all things, Missionaries to America? A little more than a decade later, in 2011, I revisited the topic in Missionaries to America – Deux. I won’t reprise either of them today but do think Barna’s research demonstrates something we have raised on more than one occasion. The church, for all of its attempt at remaking itself in order to have a broader appeal, has lost its sense of mission and as a result its impact on and influence in culture. Continue reading …

“Jacob speak comfort to me Jacob!” he said imploring. “I have no comfort to give,” replied Jacob Marley “That comes from other regions and ministers than me” (A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens)

Last Friday news outlets across the nation sprang to life covering an unfolding grade school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. There were, according to Police: 20 children among 26 victims of Connecticut school shooting. Somehow the word “tragedy” seems an understatement. As I listened to the coverage, I thought of my grandchildren, two of which are in that age range. One of our supporters e-mailed looking for words of consolation. She said she could not stop weeping and even though this occurred in a distance state and her children were safe she felt completely crushed by the incident. Oddly, Ebenezer Scrooge’s request and his late partner, Jacob Marley’s response came to mind. Sometimes, it seems, no words of consolation can mitigate such an evil event, but I did my best in my e-mail response. Like many parents and grandparents, we looked on and participated in the grief vicariously. Continue reading …

“What you are doing speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying.”

Beside privacy issues in arguing for abortion, one of the reasons cited was child abuse. An unwanted child, it was argued, increased the instance of child abuse. So, by giving women “choice” that supposedly translated to “every child a wanted child.” That this policy hasn’t dimished child abuse but perhaps has permitted its increase is a discussion for another day. In Do Humans Have Rights That Can Be Violated? I demonstrated that in American law and legislation, humanness and personhood have traditionally been two different things. Human is a statement of biology not personhood. Someone could be biologically human but not legally a person. Since they are not legally a person they have no rights or protections under the law. The one who owns them as property have rights and can pretty much do what they want with their property. According to the Prolife Action League there has been 1.3 million abortions annually since 1973 and as of May 17, 2005 that brought the number to 46 million. This becomes important for two reasons. Economic and end of life questions. A majority of the aborted would have been wage earners and tax payers. By killing off these humans there are less persons available to support the aging cry-baby boomers. As the current administration embarked on “health care reform” one of the questions was how that would impact healthcare for the elderly. Assurances were given that the healthcare would be as good as or better at a lower cost than is currently being charged. Conservatives were firm this was untrue. Now that it has passed, unread by most in the House and Senate who voted for it, we see that conservatives were right, Medicare Reform Means Some Seniors Face Benefit Cuts. Continue reading …

“The government of Vietnam’s desire to reap the benefits of the global economy must be matched by efforts to respect comprehensive human rights,” a bipartisan group of 19 members of Congress wrote to Clinton on July 15.

This was an interesting paragraph in the article Clinton pushes Vietnam on human rights progress. It also helped to begin crystallizing something I have been thinking about. Do humans have rights solely based on being human? Rather than simply making an assertion I decided to put the question to an organization that specializes in addressing human rights violations, Amnesty International. I emailed them and asked:

There seems to be some confusion when using the term phrase “human rights.”Do you mean by this that humans have rights based solely on being human? If a nation decides that a human is not legally a person and therefore has no rights, for only persons have rights, is that something you affirm?

The question is fairly simple and straightforward. Do humans have rights because they are human or is there some other criteria for protecting rights? Perhaps a human has no rights because the law makers used some arbitrary criteria to define personhood and then only protect the rights of those who are legally a person. In this scenario non-persons, human or not, do not have any legal rights nor are deserving of protection. I received a response back in less than 24 hours: Continue reading …