Harpies Attacking Holy Place, a Shepherd Shirks His Duty, and the Demonic Offers More Proof of Its Existence.

You see, this "MUA" atrocity happens every year in some lucky Argentinian city.
According to police reports, the "National Women's March"...

 ...attempted to burn down the Cathedral Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in the city of Rosario...The attack was planned for the night of Sunday 9th September during the 31st National Women's march attended by 70,000 women. Maximiliano Pullaro, the Minister of Security for Santa Fe, acknowledged that if police had not intervened with tear gas and rubber bullets the protesters would have burnt down the cathedral with eight firebombs.
In previous weeks pro-abortionists had used social media to incite protesters to burn down the cathedral. In response to this, the group Argentina Alert circulated a petition calling on the authorities and police to protect the cathedral, collecting over 13,500 signatures. A barrier was erected around part of the cathedral in an attempt to protect it from arson.
In recent years the National Women's March has been the occasion for violent and blasphemous attacks against the cathedrals in which the protests have been held. In 2013 1500 young Catholic heroes formed a human shield to protect the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista

But this year, there was a special twist.
The police intervened! (Hard to fathom, but they don't, always.)

 During Saturday afternoon semi-naked women danced around an effigy of Pope Francis chanting slogans demanding the legalisation of abortion... [the mob] made a determined attempt to burn down the cathedral with a group tearing down the protective barrier in order to enter the cathedral. A squad of police emerged from inside the cathedral to push back the attackers with their shields. The feminists attacked the police with stones, bottles and iron bars, injuring some of the police. One was injured by a gunshot and another policeman was burnt by a Molotov bomb thrown by an abortionist. The battle to protect the cathedral from being firebombed by the protesters lasted 30 minutes. 

 Sadly, there was another surprising feature of the Rosario event

The Archbishop of Rosario, Eduardo Martin, did not support the action taken by the young men to defend the cathedral by praying the rosary and putting themselves in harms way. Archbishop Martin went so far as to describe them as "ultras" whose presence provoked the women.

Watch the video linked on the EWTN site to see on which side the blame for "provocation" lies.
I weep, every year, in gratitude to, and pride in, the men, and this year some young women, who pray and protect the churches.
And I weep, for shame that other members of my sex would behave so shamefully, and I weep in utter in mortification that a member of the Catholic hierarchy could be so spineless, and could be so cruel as to criticize those laypersons who were DOING  HIS  JOB.

I wouldn't depend on that shepherd to lay down his life for his sheep....

And yet more proof, were it needed that support for abortion -- not those who support abortion, mind you, but the support itself -- that support for abortion is diabolical.

Bastille Day, You Know, Liberte, Egliate, Fraternite; Ushering In the Secular Utopia of the Enlightnment

Sometimes, You Just Don't Know Against Whom To Root

Wealthy, conservative, wishes-he-were-still-closeted activist does battle against How-Is-Two-People-having-Sex-In-What-They-Think-Is-Private-NOT-Newsworthy? media outlet.
Former compared elite universities to the pre-Reformation Catholic Church.

“You have this priestly class of professors who aren’t doing a whole lot of work, supported by a system dedicated to convincing people to buy indulgences and amass enormous debt for the dubious salvation that a diploma represents.”

But the latter, Gawker is.... well, Gawker.

I think I'll just concentrate on a journey where the path to Virtue and Rectitude is better marked - who gets my vote in the 2016 Presidential Election.

Because Religious Freedom Means Performing Whatever Rituals You Want, Just as Long As You Don't Actually BELIEVE Any of the Things You Profess, Much Less ACT As If You Did

And no, you can't just live and let live and help those whom you cannot in good conscience advise to continue on the path they have set themselves find someone who can advise them.

You must either allow us to rub your nose in it or be driven from any active role in society.
A student was

dismissed from a master’s program in counseling at the university after his advisor claimed that it was unethical for him to decline to counsel same-sex couples and refer them to another counselor instead....
was almost finished with his degree in the program...when he sought to fulfill the degree program’s internship requirements,... at the Springfield Marriage and Family Institute. The university had approved the Christian-based counseling agency as an internship site.
[The student] asked his internship supervisor at the institute to speak to his class about Christian counseling, with the approval his instructor. ...
During the presentation, the counselor answered questions about the institute’s treatment of homosexual clients. It counsels these clients on an individual basis, but prefers to refer same-sex couples for relationship counseling to counselors whose religious views would better fit that purpose.
[Another] student complained to [the student's] faculty advisor... 
the faculty advisor ordered him to stop attending the institute and told the institute it was no longer a proper place for an internship. The university later stripped the internship hours from [the masters student's] record....
When [he] sought another internship, his advisor required him to meet certain suitability standards. The advisor later wrote to department officials and claimed that it appeared the student had not renounced his religious views and his support for the institute.

AMORIS LÆTITIA - of Content, Conjugality and Conjunctions

So, at long last... what?
The post-synodal exhortation from the Synod on the Family has finally been released and it contains, well, not very much.
Rules are rules, and reality is reality, and Truth is Truth - and we should all be kinder to other people.

My only quibble (well, apart from Amoris Laetitia being released in the annoying PDF format, rather than a nice web page)?

A conjunction.

A short, solitary little word, (emphasis supplied.)

I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion. But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a Church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness, a Mother who, while clearly expressing her objective teaching, “always does what good she can, even if in the process, her shoes get soiled by the mud of the street.”

It's about that "but."*
Surely Pope Francis cannot be saying that he prefers making statements to the Faithful which do leave room for confusion?
(That ain't merciful.)
Surely he meant to say, "I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion AND SO I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a Church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness."
Because it is precisely the presence of this "room for confusion," in what they have been told, what they have been exposed to, what they have seen, what the world teaches them, that allows us who, (yes, I agree with Anne Frank,) are basically good to be lured into actions that are basically sinful.

It is not just weakness, it's believing that regardless of circumstances or consequences  I "deserve to be happy,"  and the drumbeat of It's no big deal, it's no big deal, it's no big deal, that leaves me in the situation where I need the Church's help to find goodness.
The Good Shepherd does not come out to join me in the wilderness, but to disentangle me from the brambles and sling me over His shoulder and carry me home, and the good shepherd knows it is his job, (note the lower case "g", "s" and "h",) to do likewise.

*(And no, it's not a big "but", Peewee.)

San Fransico Thought Police and Their Media Minions Did Their Damnedest to Discredit, Demoralize and Drive Out Catholic Church in the Name of Minorities, Needy...

... apparently either unaware or simply unconcerned that the end game would be so damaging to actual minorities and the needy in the process.

Since, ya know, simply as a human institution She, like, does good stuff.
Necessary stuff.
Society-enhancing stuff.
Life saving stuff.

But as long as you're happy, er... gay, er.... happy.

Rolling Stone Reporter Not Noted For Her Journalistic Rigor Strikes Again, But That's Not My Question

A "journalist" who's been down this road before apparently helped whip up outrage about a innocent man accused of rape.
But, you know, it was a chance to get in some licks on an institution that stands against everything much of what Rolling Stone is for, so what difference did it make if it was all a lie, and if men went to jail while the liar made a financial killing, and had their reputations ruined, and died in prison?

What difference?

It served its purpose.

It's a horrible, horrible, ugly, ugly story, and it's pretty completely covered in the linked Newsweek article, but I am left with one very off topic question.

How is a 67-year-old man suffering from heart disease handcuffed to a hospital bed, kept under armed guard, and possibly "denied a ... lifesaving heart operation"; when we are a society so solicitous of the welfare of our prison population that their elective sex-change operations are covered?

Maybe Pennsylvania is backward....
(Yes, I'm aware that that is not a trans-sexual, much less a prison inmate, but rather than marvelous Sean Bean. Or is it Seane Beane? or Swhawn Bhawn? Anyway, it's a joke. Just because it isn't funny doesn't mean it's not a joke.)

Do We Really Want To Give Such a Guy PR?

Supposing....
A fat sex offender with bad skin and a worse coiffure, who had been kicked out of his former kaffee klatsch of "satanists," announces that he is coming out of his room in his mom's basement long enough to perform a sacrilegious act in a small city in the middle of nowhere, in public.

Why would a Christian help him to publicize his activities?

Toddlers who learn foul words, or how to maximize the sound produced by passing gas are less interested in the obscenities or the noise than in the reaction they get from adults. (Don't ask me how I know...)

Pray, perform acts of reparation, but why fall for his ploy by giving this poor sod the attention he wants?

When did "civil liberties" stop....

.... meaning "my right to do things without government interference" and become "my right to have the government interfere to make you do things I want you to do" instead?

And did the ACLU rewrite its charter to reflect this?

"Standing up for what you believe is right" =/= "standing up for your rights," or at least it didn't use to.

After the repeal of prohibition was anyone convinced that he had a right to alcoholic beverages such that places did not serve it should be compelled to do so?
Does the right to bear arms compel anyone to sell them?
Does freedom of the press require that a newspaper publish every jackhat's letter to the editor manifesto?

Or has bleeding your adversaries with continuous meritless lawsuits become a noble practice?

Trinity Health Corporations, one of the largest Catholic health care operations in America, is seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union over its refusal to provide women with abortion services at their medical facilities.  ....
The health group adheres to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ ethical and religious protocol for medical practice, which includes the refusal to perform abortions and tubal ligations within their hospitals.
These directives for Catholic health services from the USCCB have been consistently followed by Trinity Health Corporation hospitals, which also cover various other medical issues from palliative care to birth control.
The ACLU and the ACLU of Michigan are suing Trinity Health over allegations that pregnant women are being denied "emergency health care" - specifically abortions - when they seek care at their hospitals. The ACLU is also underscoring Trinity Health’s refusal to perform operations such as tubal ligations on pregnant women because of the medical directives they follow.....
The ACLU has long opposed Catholic hospitals operating according to Catholic teaching. The ACLU and the group the MergerWatch Project co-authored a 2013 report that claimed the growth of Catholic hospitals was a “miscarriage of medicine.”
The report says the ACLU’s work in this area is supported by the “generous support” of two anonymous donors as well as the Arcus Foundation, the Herb Block Foundation, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, the George Gund Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Scherman Foundation. [emphasis supplied, I just thought it might be a good idea to note who is funding the attacks on Catholic practice.]

"But at least this pope guy isn't like that awful one he replaced..."

(Ooops.
I put that heading in quotes, and no one actually said that.
Well, I said it, but I was being sarcastic, mocking the position taken by... never mind.)
But.....
Seriously?

On one fringe of the Catholic cloth, and one side of the political divide, I believe, on very little evidence, a writer puts a particular construction on an event.
On another, a different slant is put on that event, by means of putting a particular construction on words from an unnamed source, some of which may or may not have supported that construction, since after using direct quotes, we lapsed into free indirect speech, a style much beloved of writers of fiction or those wishing to put their own slant on matters that actual quotes would not support.
On the basis of that, still others claim that one person involved in the event is a liar. 
Which may be, but it would be unfair, actually impossible to say so with no more evidence than someone else's misconstruction, and I don't see anywhere that any particular thing the woman so accused said is contradicted by anyone in a position to know.
The only "official" statement actually speaks more to the various construction various partisans are putting on the event rather than anything the woman in question said.
A semi-official spokesman who previously admitted he knew nothing about it, was nonetheless bravely willing to go on record of how it "would" have been, how it must have happened even though, um... he wasn't told and wasn't there.

 the pope would have been given a list of people who were invited to bid him farewell as he departed Washington, but was unaware of the details of the... case or any possible implications of the meeting.

Furthermore, this semi-official, rumored-to-be-litigious, spokesperson,

"believed the pope would have been given a list of names of the several dozen people who were invited to the embassy to bid farewell as he left Washington, but was unaware of the details of [the]case or any possible implications of the meeting."

But he was glad to,

"hypothesize that the reception amounted to a receiving line-type event, with people in various rooms [hm, how many in each room?] on the first floor of the embassy to greet the pope and receive a rosary from him.

And while in the official statement we read only,

The only real audience granted by the Pope at the nunciature was with one of his former students and his family.

... everyone upset about right-wingers making too much of this other meet-and-greet are dancing with glee and putting up billboards at the Vatican's thereby affirming... um, former students, (that's all anyone not "reading into" it would get from the official statement.)

But apparently besides being a "former student" (is that the pc term for such people?) this person engages in homosexual activity.

The Rev. James Martin, editor at large of the Jesuit magazine America, had cautioned in an article this week that the pope meets many well-wishers on his trips, and that news of the meeting... had been manipulated.

“I was very disappointed to see the pope having been used that way, and that his willingness to be friendly to someone was turned against him,” Father Martin said in an interview on Friday. “What may originally have prevented them from issuing a statement was the desire not to give this story too much air. But what they eventually came to realize was that they needed to correct some gross misrepresentations of what had happened. It shows that Pope Francis met with many people on the trip, and that she was simply another person who he tried to be kind to.”

Not sure if he's talking about the gay guy here or the other dealio, (do the young folk still say that?) but I assume his principles apply equally.

And let me see, has Pope Francis ever said any little thing that his handlers and spokespeople have had to, I dunno, "walk back" a bit?

Maybe once or twice.

Oh, dear, I have gone on....

Because what I really asked, SERIOUSLY???!?!??? about, was this piece of idiocy, which provoked my title -

"Nobody in the Catholic Church wants another Regensburg,” said [some assistant professor at some college.] He was referring to the backlash after Pope Benedict XVI, Francis’ predecessor, gave a speech in Regensburg, Germany, that appeared to denigrate Islam.

“This was not as serious as Regensburg, when Benedict read his own speech,”[the sometime writer for HuffPo and America]  said about the meeting ... “But the pope has to be able to rely on his own system, and in this case the system failed him. The question is, was it a mistake, or was it done with full knowledge of how toxic she was?”

What's the Italian for nincompoop?

The meeting ... was clearly a misstep, [the Italian professor] said, “because the whole trip to the United States he very carefully didn’t want to give the impression that he was being politicized by any side.”

He added, “And this thing is the most politicized thing that you can imagine.”

Let's see, what can I say, without using inappropriate language?

Oh, I know...

"______ "

Et tu, MSNBC?

Seriously, do major new outlets have NO ONE on their staffs who can even be bothered to learn the terminology of fields on which they report? I mean, they do get paid for it, right?

Do they hire sports guys to write about "the pointy ended leather thingies" got kicked past "those two high wooden sticks"?

No.

They do not.

So why would they let someone say  that a celebrity "opens [sic] Mass for Pope Francis"?

Or that he "delivered the first, or Lector, reading at the Mass"?

I know it's just a little added indignity, to their main purposes in reporting that, as a way of sticking it to orthodox Catholics, but still.

Do they have to be so amateurish while they are insulting us?

"Can't We All Just Get Along???!?!?!?!?"

Kidding.
A website/outlet I don't much find myself  agreeing with has a pretty funny take-down of a website/outlet I don't much find myself  agreeing with, after the latter posted a sanctimonious video of millennial Christians, ("sanctimilllennious"?)
Now that I've viewed it, (or most of it, it's pretty foolish,) I think Entity A is a little too hard on the subjects of Entity B's video, but just about right on the sanctimony of Entity B itself. (It reminds me of an article I cam across in an old magazine - it was ubiquitous in my childhood, not sure it's still around - which combated racism by reporting, among other things, that people of one looked-down-upon race actually smelled BETTER than the majority race, as proved by a blind smell test. This was an actual paper magazine, that I held in my hand, so I know it's real, but dang I wished I'd bought it at the junk store, because I can't find it online, and it really does seem unbelievable, even to me.)

I mean, obviously the poor young Christians were given the format of their statements, and are not to blame to framing their descriptions of themselves in opposition to what  they were told, or they have heard, or they actually experientially know to be, objections their friends have to Christianity.

That said... yeah, cringeworthy.

But some bits of the criticism really tickled me, such as this tweet from someone named Michael Wear:

The christianity of too many millennials is built around proving what type of Christian we are not. This is not edifying.

Ummm... isn't there a name for that? isn't it called "protestantism"?
And I think making six poor little people representative of "too many millenials," might be a bit unfair?
This sarcastic tweet, on the other hand,

"The Christian faith really boils down to be nice, don't offend anyone. That's what's behind the crucifixion of God and all those martyrs."

...pained me.
Because I've heard it, or variations on it proclaimed from ambos, read it it in silly blogs, and  saw it online from a much admired, (though not by me,)  priest/liturgist who mocks his fellow Catholics for pining after a truly Catholic identity, when a nice college girl who thinks her Faith is about singing great songs and being nice to others has the key to it all.

Anyway, when I go out pedestal shopping I'll be sure to purchase one of a suitable size, not too tall.  I want to be on a pedestal, of course, just not a "higher" one.
we deserve a chance to explain ourselves;

• A lot of people think Christianity ruins people, but to me I think it’s people that are ruining Christianity, you never really see the good that happens, you only see the hypocrites, and the people who put themselves on a higher pedestal;

• But at its core it’s really about love and acceptance and being a good neighbor;

• Just because we prescribe [sic] to a faith that has some really terrible people in it doesn’t make all of us terrible;

• I don’t think that Christians should judge people for who they are or what they do, I think everybody is in different part of life on their own path to wherever they’re trying to go. we’re all people and love is the most important thing.

Dear, Dear, and Right After I Was Whining About People Overusing the Word "Attack"

Here is Steve Skojec reporting on a rather ignorant-of-the-subject-on-which-he-wishes-to-pontificate academic ATTACKING the wonderful Cardinal Burke by unjustly accusing the Cardinal of ATTACKING the Pope's actions.
(Actually, more than merely unjust, it seems like deliberate and knowingly false calumny.)

I think the academic might be the inadvertent Crocodile Dundee of religious Poppycockery reporting.....

"THAT's not an attack...

... now, THIS is an attack.

Does Newsweek Even make a Pretense of Honest Journalism Anymore?

A really strange piece on Pope Francis in the no-longer-available-in-paper Newsweek..
To objections to his actions or criticisms of him,

Francis has not offered a counterargument but, rather, a dazzling show of faith that obviates the need for arguments over what, precisely, he believes.

But, the writer opines, Pope Francis might still be Catholic, since he,

vigorously backs Vatican [sic] positions on abortion, gay marriage, the ordination of women and other major issues,

We also are treated the revelation that not many people wear Benedict t-shirts, and to blathering and moaning about the churchman he really can't stand because that guy doesn't allow there to be any confusion as to what he stands for and what the Church teaches, part of the last named being what the write calls an "antediluvian morality code."

That's the real point of the piece, that one pope insisted on appointing, and another has not embraced the wisdom of 100 really, really important Catholics and yanked, Salvatore Cordileone, the bishop in question.

"This was done as a real insult to San Francisco,” a gay Catholic told me when I visited the city, which had been accustomed to archbishops who tempered [shut up about?] their views on homosexuality with an awareness of the city’s history as a gay refuge [refuge, meaning, "place that tries to silence those who won't get on board with gay activists' agendae"].

At least the author admits that, "Cordileone has been as thoroughly demonized," although he adds a little to that demonization in describing the "severe,"  "grim canon lawyer."
And he shows in one little word that he really is clueless about the Catholic ethos, in recalling how

[Codileone] knows the church [where he works in a soup kitchen sometimes,] is home to gay Catholics, yet everyone I spoke to said he takes great pleasure in the event.

Did you guess which word I meant?
Why, it's, it's... it's almost as if Christianity is not about hating the sin and hating the sinner even more!
I have to sit down....

He also take the time to whinge about Fr Fessio, SJ, because he follows sports and is not always upbeat. Evidence of his falling short in the cheerful/buoyant department?
Fessio had the temerity to say “Don't ask us to change our church.”

But what is all boils down to, is that under the cuddly surface, Francis is the same as all those meanies, he is cut from the same cloth.

There is one San Franciscan, formerly Catholic, with a solid grounding in theology, who is quoted extensively, who "had come to feel the church was excessively occupied with sex."

Let me understand this - you once belonged to, and presumably believed what was taught by an institution that claims to authoritatively teach who God was, how God operates, what God has said to mankind, and how God wishes us to live our lives, and how we can best attain eternal life and joy in the presence of God.

And then you left it because there was something more important to you.

And that was your sexual identity, the sexual activity in which you wanted to engage..

But it's the Church that is "excessively occupied with sex."

'Zat about right?

So, there you have it. Jorge Bergoglio, after all these years is still Catholic.
Amazing.

Office Depot and Fair Treatment

If this story turns out to be even faintly true, I smell big trouble brewing for Office Depot/Office Max.

Last month, Maria Goldstein, 42, ordered 500 copies of "A Prayer for the Conversion of Planned Parenthood" at an Office Depot in Schaumburg to distribute at her parish the following Sunday. The handout also included statistics about abortion in the U.S. and at Planned Parenthood, a non-profit organization that provides women's and reproductive health services.
The prayer, composed by the Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, an anti-abortion group, calls on God to "Bring an end to the killing of children in the womb, and bring an end to the sale of their body parts. Bring conversion to all who do this, and enlightenment to all who advocate it."
The prayer also decries "the evil that has been exposed in Planned Parenthood and in the entire abortion industry."
Karen Denning, a spokeswoman for Office Depot, said company policy prohibits "the copying of any type of material that advocates any form of racial or religious discrimination or the persecution of certain groups of people. It also prohibits copying any type of copyrighted material."
"The flier contained material that advocates the persecution of people who support abortion rights," Denning said.

I suspect Miss Denning didn't think this through, and has no clear idea what "persecution" is.
I know any place that has copiers or copy service has trouble educating its employees on what it is and is not appropriate to copy, (I once, in a small town where a national office supply "Big Box Store" was the only game in town, could not get the clerk behind the counter to understand that, yeah your boss said not to copy "music" but that didn't mean my hand written manuscript, on which Lookie! the name of the composer was the same name on my driver's license.)

My piddling amount of business doesn't mean much to the company, but they have, at least temporarily lost a customer.

They Just Don't Get It, They Don't Understand What "Pro-Life" Means

Watched a movie yesterday, I'd been vaguely interested in it when it came out a number of years ago, but never gotten around to it.
It was a four-boxes-of-kleenex tear-jerker, a bit manipulative - how could it not be? it was about a dying girl, and her sister who had been genetically engineered, no, that's not fair, designed? well, chosen, presumably from a group of sibling embryos all the rest of which were disposed of, to be grown for spare parts a "savior sibling" for the sick child.
The younger child was suing her parents for emancipation rather than be forced, or at least coerced into donating a kidney.

As is my wont, I did a little research afterwards, what else have I seen him in? what's the source material? what did the critics think of this?

That last has always been of interest to me, how was a work received by those whose business, whose life's work it is to judge a work of entertainment or art?
This fascinates me even more in the past year, trying to fathom how mass delusion, even psychosis, seems to sometimes take hold of the world of film criticism as a whole.

Because, Boyhood.

(Twelve years to shoot it? Watching it felt like twelve years of my life I'll never get back.)

I digress.
So, I'm readin a few reviews...
The late Roger Ebert was one of the few top critics who thought well of My Sister's Keeper.
But this really threw me for a loop -

Although “My Brother’s Keeper,” ... is an effective tearjerker, if you think about it, it’s something else. The movie never says so, but it’s a practical parable about the debate between pro-choice and pro-life. If you’re pro-life, you would require Anna to donate her kidney, although there is a chance she could die, and her sister doesn’t have a good prognosis. If you’re pro-choice, you would support Anna’s lawsuit.

No.
NO!
Not just "NO" but HELLLLLL NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

The Pro-Life movement is, above all, about the dignity of a human life, the dignity and rights of each individual life.
It is about fighting against the commodification of any one human person, even if it is that person's mother who is trying to usurp ownership.
Should the sibling want to help, to save the sister's life?
Perhaps.
Sacrifice is a momentous thing.
Sacrifice is a great good, a noble action.

But it is only sacrifice to give up what is truly your own to give. 
Nobody else should dare demand it of you, no one can lay claim to your body, nobody can "require" such a violation of your autonomy.
(And that includes your mother, regardless of on which end of her birth canal you currently are.)

+Cupich's Target Audience?

Archbishop Cupich, successor too the great Cardinal George in Chicago is taking a certain amount of heat for a lukewarm response to the snuff films starring various Planned Parenthood collaborators that is, at best, lukewarm.
While I can see a case for a stronger defense of innocent life from him, and as to his his admonition of those responsible for the murderous destruction of the unborn -- well, let's just say he notes others' outrage without actually expressing any himself --
So, yeah, there's a kind of "Some might say....." wording to the whole thing.

And then, the seamless garment shenanigans.

No.

No, there is no moral equivalency between dismembering babies and selling the off for parts and working for less permeable national borders.
There just isn't, and his implying stating that there is is simply wrong.

But take note of who he's talking to.
Look at where his words are appearing.
He's not preaching to the choir, here, folks, he's addressing a secular constituency who, like as not, DO NOT AGREE WITH WHAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH KNOWS TO BE TRUE ABOUT THE SCOURGE OF ABORTION.

And some of them are good people, open to dialogue, and what is the argument the opposition is always throwing in pro-lifers' faces?

That we only care about human beings before they are born.

So here is a leader of the Church putting the lie to that.

How is that a bad thing?

Godfather.... erm, Godmother... Godparent?

The selection by parents of godparents has become a very debased procedure in the Church in this country, as far as I can observe.
In what I take, (from movies and tv,) to be the Anglican/British understanding, godparents are chosen as a way to honor ones friend or relative, and insure the receipt of sterling baby mugs, so really, the more the merrier, let's get some swag!
And that is the way far too many Catholics look on the proceedings in this country.
Is the father who seeks to rope his baptised Catholic but now vaguely agnostic drinking buddy into the role, or the Mom who asks her best friend, oh, really, you're Jewish? at much remove from the poor souls in this story, when it gets right down to it?

Alex Salinas is 21 years old. [S]He was assigned [observed to be] female at birth, but is now living as his authentic self as a man. [S]He is a "firm believer" and wants to be a godparent at his her nephew's baptism but the diocese of Cadiz and Ceuta is standing in his her way. According to them, [s]he is not a "suitable" person because of the life [s]he leads, a life not "congruent with faith.”
However, they do not find their argument to be discriminatory.The diocese says that. in responding to the petition they received from Salinas to be a godparent at the baptism, the priest maintained a "cordial conversation" with him [her], indicating that [s]he must fulfill the requisites stated in the Code of Canon Law which requires that any godfather or godmother at a baptism "be Catholic, be confirmed, have received the holy sacrament of the Eucharist and, at the same time, live a life congruent with faith and the mission they are assuming."
The statement insists that in the "long chat that protected the feelings of the applicant, the priest encouraged him [her] to live congruently with faith" and that, despite not being a godparent at the baptism, [s] he could participate in some way as a "spiritual godparent," and able to encourage and help his her nephew in his life of faith....

"To the church, I am still a woman, even though my documents of identification have changed," explained Alex Salinas, who wants the diocese to reconsider their decision, which [s]he took "as a kick in the stomach" because he is a "firm believer."
Salinas, who since February of last year has had the I.D. of a man and is on a waiting list for a gender confirmation surgery, [well, there's some Newspeak, for you, "gender CONFIRMATION surgery"?] does not understand the Church's refusal ...
The young man, who identifies as Catholic, said at first the parish of San Fernando de Cadiz did not object to him being a godparent in the religious ceremony.

However, upon asking the diocese for documentation for the baptism, the parish told him he could not carry out the role.
The young [wo]man then appealed to other parishes in the town, but found all of them greeted him [her] with the same response.

"Identifies as" is rapidly becoming the most over-used and finally, meaningless phrase in the language.
Is a person who does not believe what the Church says, or do as the Church asks, or follow what the Church teaches, really "Catholic" in any meaningful sense, regardless of how he "identifies"?

I now identify as someone in want of another cup of coffee, so I shall make an end to this....

Taking Naked Tourist Snaps of Oneself in a Place Which, Oh....Which the People Whose PLACE It Is Revere??!?!??

Yeah, sure, why not...
Why does this not surprise me?

Four Western tourists, including a Briton, have been arrested in Malaysia for allegedly taking naked pictures on a mountaintop considered sacred by tribes....
Disrobing at Machu Picchu, a 15th-Century Inca citadel in the Peruvian Andes, designated as a Unesco world heritage site, has resulted in several arrests. Two sisters from Arizona were arrested and fined in February for taking pictures of their buttocks inside the Angkor Wat temple, while three French men were deported for similar offences.
Many more have got away without police action, posting their pictures on Facebook. One page shows a nude man standing in front of Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue and mimicking its pose.
It's not the nudity, it's the disrespect, the contempt for others' beliefs and traditions.

I suppose when you think about it, it's possible the ignorant adolescents, (adolescence seems to last well into the fourth decade, no?) were not aware of the offense they were giving in Malayasia, and were just being silly and playful, but the statue in Rio de Janeiro? the holy place in Angkor Wat?
That's more akin to... well, just let me ask, if anyone gets thrown in the klink somewhere for this behavior, are we all going to have to declare, "Je Suis Imbecile Que Nu"?

It's not just a 19th c. American Phenomenon, There are Members of the Know-Nothing Party in the House of Lords

Baroness Blather,.

crossbench peer and supporter of the British Humanist Association, delivered a speech yesterday in which she accused the Catholic Church of being “positively bad for women”. Speaking in the House of Lords on the subject of international development, she said: “What has religion done for women? It has done nothing for them."

Oh, really?  Peter Williams, in the Catholic Herald, continues,

It was Christian ethics that led to the end of the Roman principle of patria potestas, though which a Roman husband has power of life and death over his family (including his wife), and gave women greater equality in marriage, over property, and in her rights as a mother over her children. It was Christian monasticism that gave women profound authority and power as Abbesses, and a space for female creativity to flourish as we see in the life of St Hildegard of Bingen. It is Christianity today that promotes a sexual ethic that liberates women from the sexual exploitation and objectification to which the permissive society subjects them.
Furthermore, it is the Church today that gives education and healthcare to the poorest of women in the Third World, often through the active ministry of Catholic women, such as the Sisters of Mercy. It is Popes who have actively advocated the dignity and rights of women in documents such as Pope John Paul II’s Mulieris dignitatem in the 1980s.
By contrast, all that Baroness Flather has to offer is baseless population control advocacy, and the lazy prescription of handing out condoms. This is based on a falsehood: the idea that world population has grown because of increased fertility. Quite the opposite is in fact the truth. The number of children borne by each woman has fallen over the last fifty years. The reason why there are more people in the world today than ever before is because fewer people are dying, due to improved healthcare and economic development. Moreover, falling fertility rates mean that the world is actually likely to decline in population in the next century. People are not the problem, and therefore contraception is not the solution to either poverty or climate change.