The ludicrous nature of this story has me at a loss for words (Hey! Stop cheering! 😉 ). This is only slightly less idiotic than so-called "wrongful birth" cases.
Melbourne boy gets "divorce" from mother
A 14-year-old Melbourne boy has been granted a divorce from his mother on the grounds of irreconcilable differences.
You say potahto. Either way, it’s spin. I take back the nice things I said about the Bishops’ response to Communiongate. Like so many Church documents, it has too much wiggle room to have any real force or meaning (for any side).
In a further indication that the leadership of the Church is endeavouring to take the heat out of communion being used as a political battering ram, the respected CNS news agency is reporting that the American Bishops are trying "to move abortion politics away from the Communion rail and into the hearts of individual Catholics".
Proposal Warns Evangelicals on Politics
Sun Jun 20, 6:31 PM ET
LOS ANGELES – A national evangelical group is mulling guidelines that would warn the faithful against allying themselves too closely with any one political party, “lest nonbelievers think that Christian faith is essentially political in nature.”
I’m all for keeping faith separate from party affiliation. If you vote for a certain party’s candidate because his views line up well with those your faith inspire in you, that’s fine. However, the blind faith most Evangelicals seem to have in Bush is disturbing and impedes any intelligent debate about religion and politics with them. “Let the Christian who opposes Bush be anathema.”
The American Life League seems to not find the USCCB’s recent political statement
as tasteful as I did.
American Life League Response to USCCB Statement on ‘Catholics in Political Life:’ The American Bishops Have Failed
Mon Jun 21,10:46 AM ET
Contact: Joseph R. Giganti of the American Life League, 703-928-9695 or jgiganti@all.org,
Web site: http://www.all.org
WASHINGTON, June 21 /U.S. Newswire/ — “The American bishops have failed,” said American Life League president Judie Brown. “The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had an opportunity to provide strong leadership on the question of Catholic public figures who favor legal abortion. However, their statement misses the mark on several points. As a result, election year politics has trumped the right to life of the innocent and the protection of Christ from sacrilege.”
The sick and sinful behavior of non-Catholics does not give me joy (though I can't help but think "Whew. I'm glad the Church doesn't produce all the world's scandals."), but this story, seemingly ignored by most, shows that other venerable institutions have cracks in their armor. Sure, we knew that American public schools don't educate children as well as they should. Classrooms are overcrowded, money is distributed unfairly, and teachers are forced to teach to the "middle". I'd imagine, though, that few know about this hidden scandal.
Report: Up to 10 percent of students sexual targets
By Maggi Newhouse, TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, June 14, 2004
"While the Catholic Church continues to wrestle with the ramifications of decades of sexual misconduct by some priests, another institution responsible for even more children has its own shameful record of protecting child molesters — public school systems."