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I'm afraid I have no time to comment on anything this week. Enjoy the update and please pray for this apostolate. - J. Fraser Field
(View our last issue of the CERC Bi-Weekly Update) | ||||||
| New
Resources: • Demand
Increasing for Catholic Schools - Washington Post
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| NEW RESOURCES ADDED TO THE SITE THIS WEEK: |
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| 01 If ever a tiny child began life with nothing in his favor it was Joseph of Cupertino; he had only one hopeful and saving quality — that he knew it. Other boys of his own age were clever, he was easily the dullest of them all. Others were winning and attractive, nobody ever wanted him. |
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| 02 The Oxford Movement began in 1833 under the leadership of John Keble, E.B.Pusey and John Henry Newman. Another movement which began in Oxford a century later and which has given us shelves of great books is that of The Inklings. |
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| 03 To anyone who hungers for truth, the Church's indifference to opinion polls can only be a recommendation, even a consolation. Christ warned his followers to expect worldly scorn and persecution. These are in fact the very marks of his Church. |
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| 04 The Temporal Power of the Popes: Church and State in the Middle Age - Chapter 8 in "A Catechism of Church History" - Father Robert J. Fox We must beware of judging history in terms of our own times. The popes as temporal rulers may seem strange to the modem mentality, but we must remember how the Church was born into a world largely pagan and how it had to Christianize the nations and use the circumstances of the time to serve the cause of Christ. |
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| 31 What is the Holy See? - Fr. William Saunders - Arlington Catholic Herald I was watching the televised bishops' conference, and the "Holy See" was frequently mentioned. I am sure that this refers to the Pope and the Vatican. Am I right? Could you please explain the term? |
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| 05 Toward the First Great Renaissance Carolingian and Romanesque Church Architecture - Michael Rose - Lay Witness Charlemagne, King of the Franks, regarded the restoration of the West as both a spiritual and a political duty. He set about to revive the traditions of ancient Rome in light of the universal call to recognize Christ as the center of the new emerging culture. This, the beginning of the first great Renaissance in Christendom, found expression in architecture. |
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| 06 The Meaning of Love - Donald DeMarco - Lay Witness No other word in our language is more abused, misused, and confused than the word "love." Yet, its essential meaning is not difficult to understand. The weight of the entire Christian tradition tells us, quite simply, that love is a tendency toward the real. |
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| 07 The Population Dud - Austin Ruse - Catholic World Report After years of "successful" population-control efforts, experts are realizing that their fears were groundless. And as fertility rates continue to drop, well below expected levels, new concerns are emerging. |
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| 08 Human Rights for All - Mary Ann Glendon - Caritas Helder Camara Lecture Series 2002 The parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that speak to economic and social justice are almost completely ignored today; even by the major human rights organizations. It seems to me that the most pressing task for friends of human rights today is to re-unite the two halves of the divided soul of the human rights project — its commitment to personal freedom and its sense of one human family for which we all bear a common responsibility. |
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| 09 St. Thomas More - Bearing Witness Long After His Death - Mark Shea - Catholic Exchange June 22 is the Feast of one of our greatest saints: Thomas More. St. Thomas More (1478-1535) was one of the most gifted men of his day. He entered Oxford at about age 15, was a brilliant scholar, writer, and lawyer (thereby showing that lawyers can get to heaven) was fluent in Greek, Latin and French, was schooled in mathematics and was an accomplished musician. |
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| 10 Anthropology Afoul of the Facts - National Catholic Register In 1928, Margaret Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa which established the author as the most famous and most influential anthropologist of the 20th century. It has turned out, however, that Mead's work in Samoa, which allegedly established the naturalness of casual sex, was a complete work of fraud and fiction. |
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| 11 Don't Get Mad, Get Holy: Overcoming Evil with Good - Leon Suprenant, Jr. - Catholics United for the Faith The size and gravity of the current clerical sex abuse scandal can lead to anger, discouragement, and a sense of powerlessness. In point of fact, there are many things we can do to be "part of the solution," to cooperate with divine grace to make a difference in this crisis. Therefore, we offer the following eight practical steps Catholic laity can take to help bring some good out of this unspeakable evil. |
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| 12 Spiderman's Gift - Sean Murphy In the midst of the scandals that have broken in the United States, Spiderman has a timely message; with authority and power come responsibility. From those to whom much has been given, it is written, much will be expected — and not just by anguished laity, outraged media and determined attorneys general. |
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| 13 Recommended Video Rentals For Summer Viewing - Barbara Nicolosi - The Ligourian Summertime generally means more time to spend hanging out with family and friends. Here's a list of recent films now available on video or DVD that parents and kids can enjoy together and perhaps find what Joseph Conrad called "that measure of truth for which they had forgotten to ask." |
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| EDITORIALS OF INTEREST: |
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| 25 Free markets in slaves - Nat Hentoff - Jewish World Review Earlier this year, an American-led commission, which included representatives from the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Norway, was forced by the growing public protest in this country to investigate slavery in Sudan. |
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| 25 As Seen on TV Ads: Marriage Is Cool Again - USA Today Recently, a few TV commercials have promoted marriage. |
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| 26 Is this man bigger than Newton and Darwin? - The Telegraph (U.K.) British physicist Stephen Wolfram tells why his new book, already number one on Amazon.com, will revolutionise science. |
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| 27 The Voice of the People Reveals Why Evolution Remains Controversial - Scientific American There is no more contentious subject in science today than evolution. This fact was brought to light for me in the overwhelming response to my February column on evolution and "intelligent design" creationism. |
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| 28 A Designer World - Boundless Opponents of Intelligent Design theory are incensed at the inroads the movement is making. They claim ID is religiously motivated and evolution is not. John Martin sets the record straight. |
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| 30 Promoting marriage - Linda Chavez - Townhall.com Marriage has suddenly become a hot political topic with George W. Bush in the White House. After decades of government programs that provided disincentives to marriage, especially among the poor, President Bush has proposed $300 million in his welfare re-authorization budget to encourage state demonstration projects to strengthen marriages. |
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| 31 Doonesburied - Reason Online The decline of Garry Trudeau — and of baby boom liberalism. |
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| 32 Double Standard - Reason Online The bias against male victims of sexual abuse. |
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| 33 Medieval Children - Institute of Historical Research Most people view medieval parenting and family life as being entirely different from today. In his new book Medieval Children, Nicholas Orme dispels that myth. |
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| 25 Genocide as Art - George F. Will - Washington Post An iron law of avant-garde art is that theorizing expands to fill a void of talent. That law explains the execrable exhibit "Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art," now in its final days at the Jewish Museum at the corner of 92nd Street and Fifth Avenue. |
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| 25 Six-year-olds benefit from gay parent books: teacher - National Post A public school board cannot prevent a teacher from reading books about same-sex parents to a kindergarten class, the Supreme Court was told yesterday by teachers who want children to learn that gay families are as loving and caring as any other. |
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| 26 U.S. AIDS Charity Comes Under Fire - Fox News South African politicians are accusing American charitable dollars of helping to promote oral sex between teenagers in their country. |
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| 27 Missing Diversity - David Horowitz - Townhall.com "When my generation of liberals was in control of university faculties in the Sixties, we opened the doors to the hiring of radicals in the name of diversity. We thought you would do the same. But you didn't. You closed the doors behind you." |
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| 28 Court Approves Vote on Same-Sex Unions - New York Times The state's highest court today upheld the legality of a ballot initiative that would make same-sex marriages unconstitutional in Massachusetts. |
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| 29 Clone Wars, Part II - National Review If the science of cloning is advancing rapidly, the politics of it are changing almost as fast. We've come a long way from the debates of the summer of 2001. |
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| 30 Bishops Ignore Elephant - and Camel - Michael Novak - National Review It could have been worse, that Dallas meeting of bishops. Bishop Wilton Gregory came out with an enhanced reputation. But not the bishops as a whole. |
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| 31 Pontiff picks Lake Simcoe for his first holiday abroad - National Post Pope John Paul II's week-long trip to Toronto next month will include an unprecedented four-day holiday at Strawberry Island, a religious retreat on a tiny island on Lake Simcoe. |
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| 32 Pedophile priests - Thomas Sowell - Townhall.com The appalling story of the pedophile priests deserves all the negative press it has been getting. But is the press critical of them because they are pedophiles or because they are priests? |
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| 33 Al-Qaeda cathedral plot foiled - National Post Police have foiled an al-Qaeda plot to destroy the 14th-century Bologna cathedral because it contained a medieval fresco depicting the prophet Mohammed in hell, one of a number of signs that observers say indicate the terrorist organization is regrouping as a lethal threat. |
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| 30 'No ice, no spice' during papal holiday - National Post Pope watchers know the routine of a Pope John Paul II vacation — he has been doing it for 24 years in northern Italy. But the usual rules won't apply when the Pope makes his four-day stop this summer at Lake Simcoe's Strawberry Island. |
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| 31 Evangelizing for Evil In Our Prisons - Chuck Colson - Wall Street Journal No civilized nation would allow the preachers of violence access to places packed with angry, alienated men. Inmates are easy targets. International terrorism analyst Peter Brown told the Washington Times that up to 2,000 American recruits "have shown up in the ranks of al Qaeda in the past decade." |
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| 32 1-800-SUE-MIKE - New York Post As everyone knows, common-sense concepts of responsibility and negligence have long left the courtroom. As things stand now in New York, you are not liable for damages if someone slips in the snow in front of your house and falls on your sidewalk. Unless, that is, you have attempted to shovel your sidewalk. Then you may be sued for "negligence" in failing to do a good job. |
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| EDUCATION MATTERS: |
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| 34 Demand Increasing for Catholic Schools - Washington Post The sex abuse crisis that threatens to erode confidence in the Catholic Church has done nothing to dull the demand for parochial school education, a demand that Catholic educators in the Washington region are meeting with two new middle schools and plans for two more high schools. |
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| 31 Voucher ruling court's best since Brown - George F. Will - Washington Post The opposition to school choice for the poor is the starkest immorality in contemporary politics. It is the defense of the strong (teachers unions) and comfortable (the middle class, content with its public schools and fretful that school choice might diminish their schools' resources and admit poor children to their schools) against the weak and suffering — inner-city children. Happily, yesterday, socially disadvantaged children had their best day in court since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. |
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| 32 The Stuff of Kids' Dreams - National Review At its essence, the school-choice movement is a civil-rights crusade-an effort to vindicate the sacred and unfulfilled promise of equal educational opportunities. It's not just about ideas, but about the real lives of real people. |
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| 25 Pledge of Allegiance ruling to get rehearing - L.A. Daily News A day after he shocked the nation by declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, because of the word God, federal appeals court judge Thursday blocked his ruling from being enforced. Meanwhile, Attorney General John Ashcroft said the Justice Department plans to seek a rehearing. |
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| 25 Board: New SAT to produce better writers - CNN News College Board officials say they hope the addition of essay-writing and grammar questions to the SAT college entrance test will lead students to pay more attention to those skills and produce a nation of better writers. |
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| 35 "Sensitivity" censorship is a huge industry in the world of education. Textbook publishers and test makers hire people to draw up sensitivity guidelines. In school systems, more people apply guidelines, and still more review and argue about the censorship process. |
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| 36 College settles suit on free speech - World Net Daily Students at Miami-Dade Community College in Florida have settled a dispute with college administration personnel who had denied them the chance to pass out literature on campus without prior approval. |
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| 37 Parents outraged over school sex survey of 10-year-olds - Los Angeles - Daily News Seven Mesquite School parents whose children were given a controversial survey that asked questions of a sexual nature have filed a claim against Palmdale School District of the Antelope Valley, about 50 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. |
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| 38 The shifting 'canon' of multicultural lit - Christian Science Monitor It's not easy to assemble a reading list of books dealing with racial discrimination. |
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| 39 Dead Language Brought to Life - Washington Post More students are taking Latin because of teachers who find new ways to stir interest in the literary works of ancient Rome. |
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| 40 Fight looms over Bible plan - Miami Herald A Christian teachers group's proposal to offer a secular course on the Bible in Miami-Dade middle and high schools may reignite a national debate on the propriety — and legality — of studying the religious text in public schools. |
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| 40 Is Harvard's President a Conservative? - National Review Following custom, the ceremony began with the Star-Spangled Banner. It was then that Jason Brinton noticed something amiss: "[A] good dozen of the professors and administrators on stage were either silent or didn't have their hands over their heart or both. But Larry Summers was singing enthusiastically. |
| St.
Justin Martyr, pray for us |