My sister passed along this CNN story to me about one of our local Rome, GA, citizens who got mad when a Kroger pharmacist wouldn’t order the “Plan B” “morning after” pill and stock it at the store. The story is rife with inaccuracies, stating that Plan B is not an abortion pill, that it’s a contraceptive, and so on. I say kudos to the pharmacist for sticking to their morals even in the face of reprimand from the company.

The article

Once again, the cold, hard facts: Plan B contains a high dosage of one of the artificial hormones found in “regular” birth control Pills. That hormone prevents a fertilized ovum (read tiny baby) from implanting in the uterine wall. “Regular” birth control pills typically contain two artificial hormones, one that supresses ovulation, and one that prevents a fertilized ovum (read tiny baby) from implanting in the uterine wall. In other words, if supression of ovulation fails, the failover is this hormone that prevents implantation (granted, this happens rarely). No implantation means that tiny baby dies. Plan B is an abortion pill, plain and simple. I hope and pray we can be delivered from such cavalier attitudes about such evil being so widely accepted in our society.

I think he has a couple of good ideas

“Environmentalism should belong in the social sciences,” much like the idea of communism or other “-isms” such as feminism, Klaus said, adding that “environmentalism is a religion” that seeks to reorganize the world order as well as social behavior and value systems worldwide

Article

Apparently the Discovery Channel is taking steps to keep us from talking anymore about the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” nonsense.

Departing from normal procedures, the cable network didn’t tout its big ratings win. The network also scheduled a last-minute special that harshly criticized its own documentary, and has yanked a planned repeat of “Tomb.”

“This is not one where you necessarily beat the drum, from a business perspective,” said David Leavy, executive VP of corporate communications at Discovery. “It’s not necessarily about making money, or making ratings, or shouting from the highest office building. Sometimes having some maturity and perspective is more important than getting picked up in all the ratings highlights.”

<snip>

Although Mr. Leavy said the network stands by the documentary “100 percent,” the company took several unusual steps in the wake of the controversy that could be seen as distancing itself from the content.

Last week, Discovery abruptly scheduled a panel debate to air after the documentary, moderated by Discovery newsman Ted Koppel. Discovery’s announcement of the panel emphasized that Mr. Koppel “has no connection to the production of ‘The Lost Tomb of Jesus’” and that “the panel will explore the filmmakers’ profound assertions and challenge their assumptions and suggested conclusions.”

When the panel discussion aired, guests criticized the documentary as “archaeo-porn” that played fast and loose with the facts.

The day after the March 4 airing, Discovery yanked a planned repeat of “Tomb” from its more hard-news-branded Discovery Times Channel.

That’s the beauty of America. The marketplace has determined what sells and what doesn’t. Enough of us said we weren’t interested in hearing any more about it (in spite of huge ratings) that it may well die out on its own. Then again it may not. We’ll see what happens.

Article

Sometimes you get some great mail in the box at the end of the driveway. Today, I got my very own prayer handkerchief. I’m supposed to write my name and the name of someone who needs help, open my Bible to Acts 19:11-12, set the handkerchief on it, and put the whole assembly under my side of the bed tonight. Then I am supposed to mail the thing back to them tomorrow. Then the day after tomorrow I am supposed to break the seal on my special prophecy letter.

Basically, I received the letter and the handkerchief because the Holy Spirit told them to send it to me. They feel someone connected to this home needs God’s help and blessings (duh, we all do!) “One of our ministers is 90 years old, another is 89, and several are in their 70’s…we have more than 200 years of experience as ministers…and God is doing great things every day here at this half-a-century-old church.”

Woo. Half a century old. Wow. That’s a history. /sarcasm

One of the fun things about reading this is the number of times that the word “Bible” and “church” is inserted where it doesn’t fit. “Rush this Bible, church handkerchief back, for I must write something in the spirit to you that’s good and is coming to your door.” “When our 56-year-old Church receives this Bible handkerchief back…” “You are holding a church, Bible faith handkerchief.”

Also, they keep throwing in that line about how they’re 56 years old; it’s even printed on the back of the envelope.

You get to the second page of the letter and they start talking about how as long as I am sending them the “Bible church faith handkerchief” back I should prayerfully consider “sowing a seed of faith.” For the uninitiated, that means I should send them some money. The handkerchief by the way is a piece of paper with a cheesy printed border on both sides.

Another sheet in the mailing in full of “testimonies.” Testimonials include “my son got off dope,” “my husband stopped drinking,” and 5 of them are about receiving money unexpectedly. Do you smell some prosperity theology? I do.

Anyway, I am impatient so I decided to open my sealed prophecy letter. I’m gonna fry, because on the outside of my sealed prophecy letter it says that if I am not going to return my prayer handkerchief I should destroy it without reading it. My sealed prophecy says a bunch of horoscope sounding tripe about how I am facing a major decision and because I am now closer to God I will know what I am supposed to do, that I have the power to speak blessings into my own life and the lives of others, that my own inner power is building, and so on. Two or three more references to their age, 56 years, on this document too.

Well, for those who want to look a little deeper, this is from the St. Matthews Churches. From the photos on their website, the mimic Catholic vestments and accouterments pretty well, while at the same time maintaining a mega-church feel. A quick google search will show all the sites set up talking about the scam these guys are pulling.

Amazingly, the Holy Spirit things my name is “Resident.” Guess the Holy Spirit doesn’t know my name, just my address, so that’s all He gave to the church.

At least in the Catholic Church, our sacramentals have a basis in visionary messages, not to mention a much longer history.

Excerpt from Barack Hussein Obama’s speech before to the race warlords yesterday:

We have too many children in poverty in this country and everybody should be ashamed, but don’t tell me it doesn’t have a little to do with the fact that we got too many daddies not acting like daddies. Don’t think that fatherhood ends at conception. I know something about that because my father wasn’t around when I was young and I struggled. [emphasis added]

I’ll be quite interested to see how he digs his way out of this one. As one of the commenters on the blog that posted this speech says,

“Don’t think that fatherhood ends at conception.”
Therefore, fatherhood exists at conception.
A father has a child.
A child is a human and has life.
Therefore, human life exists at conception.
Therefore, every abortion ends a human life.
We should protect innocent human life.
Therefore, we should end abortion.
Or can you point out to me the flaw in my logic?

You can find the entire speech here.

Okay, for those of you fairly new to the blog, a while back I wrote on a local politician who said that Jesus was a Democrat because He cared about children. Now a national political figure, John “Snowball’s Chance” Edwards, has said

“I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs,” Edwards told the site. “I think he would be appalled, actually.”

Now it’s not quite the same thing as Candidate Puckett said, but the implication is there.

By the way, no word on when Edwards will be calling for an end to elective abortion (since it meets our own selfish short-term needs, which Edwards is clearly against.)

Article

67 illegal immigrants were found being essentially stored at a house by human smugglers. This is the thing that those (including those in Church leadership) miss when they talk about the importance of how we treat immigrants. Not nearly enough is said about those who take such inhumane advantage of them once they have broken our laws and entered our country. Not nearly as much is said about the coyotes as is said about the business owners (who ought to be arrested for hiring illegals) who pay them low wages. The human smuggling would end if people entered the country illegally were to end (or at least it would mostly end.) Then people could enter the country legally, work legally, and not have to be subject to the inhumanities that exist. On top of that, if the Church were to call on the Mexican government to treat its citizens better, to end the corruption that exists there, then maybe they’d stop having a reason to break our laws by entering our country without proper documentation.
Article

Did you hear? Our output of carbon dioxide is so bad that there’s ice melting on Mars. Or, maybe there’s some other cause for the so-called global warming problem that we’re hearing so much about.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

“The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,” he said.

Article

This article is from National Geographic, so it’s no surprise that there is a continuous undercurrent of statements about how “most scientists” believe in global warming, and the article pretty much skewers this dissenter.

Think I am going to go out and run my car on idle for a while.

Eucharistic Spirituality. The idea of living the Mass. The whole point of tonight’s talk is to live out what is said when the Mass is ended. I have heard different priests use different final blessings. Fr. Jim usually says, “let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” Fr. Linus DeSantis, the Franciscan who officiated my wedding, says “let us go to live what we have celebrated.” Another priest whose name escapes me now says “the Mass is not ended, it is to be lived daily.”

I appreciated that Fr. Luke discussed tonight a key difference between Catholics and Protestants, that Protestants, especially fundamentalists, focus on the “personal Lord and Savior” concept, and they focus on finding a specific individual time when they “ask Jesus into their heart.” He argued that this way of thinking makes the whole concept of salvation too much “all about me.” He mentioned that a great response is that Jesus is not just my personal Lord and Savior, he’s everyone’s personal Lord and Savior, and that I invite him into my heart each time I receive Him in Holy Communion – that He is in me and I in Him by His grace. Connected to that his apologetics instruction came out long enough to also remind us of the Catholic answer to the perennial favorite question, “Are you ’saved?’” The answer of course is threefold – Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient for my savlation, I am being saved each day as I choose to follow Him, and I believe that I will be eternally saved when I die if I continue to follow Him.

A couple of nice take-aways from tonight’s talk for me were prayers that Fr. Luke shared with us. For example, the 3-minute Trinitarian prayer: spend one minute thanking God the Father for your biggest blessing today, spend one minute asking God the Son for forgiveness for your biggest failing today, and spend one minute asking the Holy Spirit for guidance through your biggest challenge today.

Tomorrow at the parish, we are having Eucharistic Adoration from 8AM to 8AM Saturday; parish supper is at 6pm, with Stations of the Cross and Benediction at 7pm.