Leadingchurch.com

Someone Breaks 10 Commandments Monument in OK

Wonkblog

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/catholicauthenticity/2015/08/the-folly-of-intellect-a-demons-reflections/

NYTimes

Because here’s the thing: The cultural consensus in favor of contraception and contraceptive access in this country – in favor, that is, of Milbank’s view of family planning policy, and Marcus’s, and Linker’s, and Saletan’s — is really very, very strong. Separated from the abortion question, as a pro-contraception argument alone, their argument would mostly be a political winner. Yes, many conservatives oppose certain forms of public funding for birth control on limited-government grounds; yes, many religious conservatives fear that contraception and abortion are bound together in a kind of socio-cultural unity, in which no matter what happens on the margins with this program or that one, in the aggregate acceptance of one necessarily feeds the prevalence of the other. But whether or not those fears are justified (here’s my provisional case for why some of them might not be), those combined conservative sentiments matter politically, and increasingly so, primarily because the pro-contraceptive case is wedded, and intimately, to pro-abortion politics. And they would have much, much less influence over our health care debates if the contraception-providing institution constantly defended by liberals as the embodiment of All That Is Worthy of Support were not also … an industrial-scale purveyor of abortion!

So let’s be clear about what’s really going on here. It is not the pro-life movement that’s forced Planned Parenthood to unite actual family planning and mass feticide under one institutional umbrella. It is not the Catholic Church or the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles or the Southern Baptist Convention or the Republican Party that have bundled pap smears and pregnancy tests and HPV vaccines with the kind of grisly business being conducted on those videos. This is Planned Parenthood’s choice; it is liberalism’s choice; it is the respectable center-left of Dana Milbank and Ruth Marcus and Will Saletan that’s telling pro-life and pro-choice Americans alike that contraceptive access and fetal dismemberment are just a package deal, that if you want to fund an institution that makes contraception widely available then you just have to live with those “it’s another boy!” fetal corpses in said institution’s freezer, that’s just the price of women’s health care and contraceptive access, and who are you to complain about paying it, since after all the abortion arm of Planned Parenthood is actually pretty profitable and doesn’t need your tax dollars?

How Diverse is Your Church? Amazing Graph http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/08/04/how-diverse-is-your-church-amazing-graph/

Dianna e Anderson

Public Discourse

Melinda Selmys

This brutality is fuelled by a sense of absolute moral righteousness, and by complete contempt for anyone who doesn’t immediately fall in lock-step with one’s own convictions. Perhaps the greatest weakness of the left is the increasing reliance on bullying tactics in order to silence those who disagree – or even those who simply don’t understand. To the righteous warrior, the justice of the cause is so self-evident that the only possible reasons for failing to believe in it are obstinacy, privilege, entitlement, stupidity or simple evil.

Too often, any attempt at dialogue, or even honest questioning, is shut down. The attitude seems to be “You didn’t immediately agree with what I said? Well, in that case I don’t have time for you. Also you’re sub-human filth.” There’s no space for conversation, and no willingness to try to understand where the other person is coming from. In some cases, any attempt to even try to comprehend or dialogue with those who disagree is seen as betrayal. “If you were serious about being my ally, you would block that scum.”