The Clinton Legacy: North Korea's Bomb
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Monday, Oct. 9, 2006
North Korea's first detonation of a nuclear weapon may have taken place during the watch of George W. Bush — but it was under the Clinton administration's watch that the communist regime began gathering necessary materials and constructing the bomb.
As Western powers race to confirm that North Korea did in fact explode a nuclear device in Gilju, a remote region in the Hamgyong province, some see it as a culmination of weak U.S. action during the 1990s that led to this fateful day.
Fateful Beginnings
After entering into an agreement with the United States in 1994, the Clinton administration ignored evidence the North Koreans were violating the agreement and continuing to build a nuclear weapon. "In July of 2002, documentary evidence was found in the form of purchase orders for the materials necessary to enrich uranium," NewsMax's James Hirsen previously reported.
"In October 2002, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly met with his North Korean counterpart for scheduled talks. Kelly confronted North Korea with the tangible evidence of its duplicity. After a day of outright denial, North Korea abruptly reversed its position and defiantly acknowledged a secret nuclear program."
Timeline of a Nuclear Bomb
A review of recent history shows that that the Clinton administration gave up a clear and perhaps last best chance to nip the North Korean bomb in the bud:
1985: North Korea signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
1989: The Central Intelligence Agency discovers the North Koreans are building a reprocessing facility — a reactor capable of converting fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. The fuel rods were extracted 10 years before from that nation's Yongbyon reactor.
The rods represent a shortcut to enriched plutonium and an atomic bomb.
Spring, 1994: A year into President Clinton's first term, North Korea prepares to remove the Yongbyon fuel rods from their storage site. North Korea expels international weapons inspectors and withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• Clinton asks the United Nations Security Council to consider sanctions. North Korean spokesmen proclaim such sanctions would cause war.
• The Pentagon draws up plans to send 50,000 troops to South Korea — along with 400 war planes, 50 ships, Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, and Patriot missiles. An advance force of 250 soldiers is sent in to set up headquarters for the expanded force.
• Clinton balks and sets up a diplomatic back-channel to end the crisis — former President Jimmy Carter. Exceeding instructions, Carter negotiates the outlines of a treaty and announces the terms live on CNN.
Oct. 21, 1994: The United States and North Korea sign a formal accord based on those outlines, called the Agreed Framework. Under its terms:
• North Korea promises to renew its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, lock up the fuel rods, and let inspectors back in to monitor the facility.
• The United States agrees — with financial backing from South Korea and Japan — that it will provide two light-water nuclear reactors for electricity, send a large supply of fuel oil, and that it will not invade North Korea.
• Upon delivery of the first light-water reactor, inspections of suspected North Korean nuclear sites were supposed to start. After the second reactor arrived, North Korea was supposed to ship its fuel rods out of the country.
• The two countries also agreed to lower trade barriers and install ambassadors in each other's capitals — with the United States providing full assurances that it would never use nuclear weapons against North Korea.
(None of the above came to pass. Congress did not make the financial commitment — neither did South Korea. The light-water reactors were never funded. The enumerated steps toward normalization were never taken.)
Jan. 2002: In President Bush's State of the Union Address, he famously labels North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as an "axis of evil."
Oct., 2002: Officials from the U.S. State Department fly to Pyongyang, where that government admits it had acquired centrifuges for processing highly enriched uranium, which could be used for building nuclear weapons.
• It is now clear to all parties that the promised reactors are never going to be built. Normalization of relations fizzles.
• The CIA learns that North Korea may have been acquiring centrifuges for enriching uranium since the late 1990s — probably from Pakistan.
Oct. 20, 2002: Bush announces that the United States is formally withdrawing from the Carter-brokered 1994 agreement.
• The United States. halts oil supplies to North Korea and urges other countries to cut off all economic relations with Pyongyang.
Dec., 2002: North Korea expels the international weapons inspectors, restarts the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, and unlocks the container holding the fuel rods.
Jan. 10, 2003: North Korea withdraws from the Non-Proliferation Treaty — noting, however, that there would be a change of position if the U.S. resumed its obligations under the Agreed Framework and signed a non-aggression pledge.
March, 2003: President Bush orders several B-1 and B-52 bombers to the U.S. Air Force base in Guam — within range of North Korea.
April, 2003: North Korea's deputy foreign minister announces that his country now has "deterrent" nuclear weapons.
May, 2003: Bush orders the Guam-based aircraft back to their home bases.
October, 2003: The North Koreans announce they have reprocessed all 8,000 of their fuel rods and solved the technical problems of converting the plutonium into nuclear bombs.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
Was There Peace During the Clinton Administration?
Many Americans have very busy lives and pay little attention to the news, especially foreign affairs.
Some hold President Bush responsible for the current situation in may have the impression that it was the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq. Most Americans love peace and hate war. They hope that if we withdraw from Iraq terrorists will leave us alone. But this ignores the many times America has been attacked before the war in Iraq.
It's difficult to fix the exact date that we've been at war with Islamic fanatics. Was it support for Israel in 1967 during the Six Days War? Perhaps it was when President Carter withdrew support for the Shah of Iran, which led to the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. Carter's weak response to the Iranian hostage situation led Iran to conclude that America was a paper tiger. After a failed rescue attempt Khomeni said "America can't do a damn thing."
See: America Can't Do A Thing by Amir Taheri
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/8781
Whatever the date, it was long before September 11, 2001. Whether Al Qaeda was in Iraq before the Iraq War is a debatable point. We have been at war with Islamic Fascists for a long time. That they are there now is not. There is no question that they are there now.
The terrorist menace grew increasingly worse during the Clinton administration and the attacks were never responded to effectively. Below is a partial list of the attacks just during Clinton's term in office. The following is a list is from:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/015216.php
* January 25, 1993: Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani, fired an AK-47 into cars waiting at a stoplight in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia, killing two CIA employees.
* February 26, 1993: Islamic terrorists try to bring down the World Trade Center with car bombs. They failed to destroy the buildings, but killed 6 and injured over 1000 people.
* March 12, 1993: Car bombings in Mumbai, India leave 257 dead and 1,400 others injured.
* July 18, 1994: Bombing of Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 86 and wounds 300. The bombing is generally attributed to Hezbollah acting on behalf of Iran.
* July 19, 1994: Alas Chiricanas Flight 00901 is bombed, killing 21. Generally attributed to Hezbollah.
* July 26, 1994: The Israeli Embassy is attacked in London, and a Jewish charity is also car-bombed, wounding 20. The attacks are attributed to Hezbollah.
* December 11, 1994: A bomb explodes on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman. It develops that Ramzi Yousef planted the bomb to test it for the larger terrorist attack he is planning.
* December 24, 1994: In a preview of September 11, Air France Flight 8969 is hijacked by Islamic terrorists who planned to crash the plane in Paris.
* January 6, 1995: Operation Bojinka, an Islamist plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean, is discovered on a laptop computer in a Manila, Philippines apartment by authorities after a fire occurred in the apartment. Noted terrorists including Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are involved in the plot.
* June 14—June 19, 1995: The Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, in which 105 civilians and 25 Russian troops were killed following an attack by Chechan Islamists.
* July—October, 1995: Bombings in France by Islamic terrorists led by Khaled Kelkal kill eight and injure more than 100.
* November 13, 1995: Bombing of OPM-SANG building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia kills 7
* November 19, 1995: Bombing of Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan kills 19.
* January 1996: In Kizlyar, 350 Chechen Islamists took 3,000 hostages in a hospital. The attempt to free them killed 65 civilians and soldiers.
* February 25 - March 4, 1996: A series of four suicide bombings in Israel leave 60 dead and 284 wounded within 10 days.
* June 11, 1996: A bomb explodes on a train traveling on the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line of the Moscow Metro, killing four and unjuring at least 12.
* June 25, 1996: The Khobar Towers bombing, carried out by Hezbollah with Iranian support. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed and 372 wounded.
* February 24, 1997: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from several countries. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".
* November 17, 1997: Massacre in Luxor, Egypt, in which Islamist gunmen attack tourists, killing 62 people.
* January 1998: Wandhama Massacre - 24 Kashmiri Pandits are massacred by Pakistan-backed Islamists in the city of Wandhama in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
* February 14, 1998: Bombings by Islamic Jihadi groups at an election rally in the Indian city of Coimbatore kill about 60 people.
* August 7, 1998: Al Qaeda bombs U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000.
* August 31 – September 22, 1998: Russian apartment bombings kill about 300 people, leading Russia into Second Chechen War.
* December 1998: Jordanian authorities foil a plot to bomb American and Israeli tourists in Jordan, and arrest 28 suspects as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.
* December 14, 1998: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States–Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.
* December 24, 1998: Indian Airlines Flight 814 from Kathmandu, Nepal to Delhi, India is hijacked by Islamic terrorists. One passenger is killed and some hostages are released. After negotiations between the Taliban and the Indian government, the last of the remaining hostages on board Flight 814 are released in exchange for release of 4 terrorists.
* January 2000: The last of the 2000 millennium attack plots fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.
* August 8, 2000: A bomb exploded at an underpass in Pushkin Square in Moscow, killing 11 people and wounding more than 90.
* August 17, 2000: Two bombs exploded in a shopping center in Riga, Latvia, injuring 35 people.
* October 12, 2000: AL Qaeda bombs USS Cole with explosive-laden speedboat, killing 17 US sailors and wounding 40, off the port coast of Aden, Yemen.
Top Democrats have written a letter to ABC threatening to withdraw the network's broadcast license in response to the TV movie "Path to 9/11" because it shows that that the Clinton Administration's response to these attacks were weak and ineffectual. These same thugs are quick to cry "Censorship!" whenever a conservative raises objections to a controverial film or book.
The historical record is undeniable. President Clinton and his Administration never responded effectively to these attacks. They were treated as isolated incident and crimes. How could a movie be faithful to the truth and portray anything else?
President Clinton was quick to take credit when things did occasionally go right. Ahmed Ressam had planned to blow up Los Ingeles International Airport on December 31, 1999. The attack called the 'Millenium Plot' was thwarted by an alert female Customs agent during a routine inspection. Despite the claims of President Clinton, customs officials were given no special warning to be on alert at that time.
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=ressam12m&date=20040412
It was police in the Philippines who thwarted the 'Bojinka' plot to kill Pope John Paul II and destroy eleven U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean. President Clinton tried to take credit for this too. He played no role whatsoever in uncovering this plot.
The Democrat Party has changed sice the days of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. While many Republicans disagreed with their policies and decisions, hardly anyone questioned their detrmination to protect our nation from its' enemies. But times have changed. The modern day Democrat Party's reputation for being weak on national defense is well deserved.
Some hold President Bush responsible for the current situation in may have the impression that it was the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq. Most Americans love peace and hate war. They hope that if we withdraw from Iraq terrorists will leave us alone. But this ignores the many times America has been attacked before the war in Iraq.
It's difficult to fix the exact date that we've been at war with Islamic fanatics. Was it support for Israel in 1967 during the Six Days War? Perhaps it was when President Carter withdrew support for the Shah of Iran, which led to the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. Carter's weak response to the Iranian hostage situation led Iran to conclude that America was a paper tiger. After a failed rescue attempt Khomeni said "America can't do a damn thing."
See: America Can't Do A Thing by Amir Taheri
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/8781
Whatever the date, it was long before September 11, 2001. Whether Al Qaeda was in Iraq before the Iraq War is a debatable point. We have been at war with Islamic Fascists for a long time. That they are there now is not. There is no question that they are there now.
The terrorist menace grew increasingly worse during the Clinton administration and the attacks were never responded to effectively. Below is a partial list of the attacks just during Clinton's term in office. The following is a list is from:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/015216.php
* January 25, 1993: Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani, fired an AK-47 into cars waiting at a stoplight in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia, killing two CIA employees.
* February 26, 1993: Islamic terrorists try to bring down the World Trade Center with car bombs. They failed to destroy the buildings, but killed 6 and injured over 1000 people.
* March 12, 1993: Car bombings in Mumbai, India leave 257 dead and 1,400 others injured.
* July 18, 1994: Bombing of Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 86 and wounds 300. The bombing is generally attributed to Hezbollah acting on behalf of Iran.
* July 19, 1994: Alas Chiricanas Flight 00901 is bombed, killing 21. Generally attributed to Hezbollah.
* July 26, 1994: The Israeli Embassy is attacked in London, and a Jewish charity is also car-bombed, wounding 20. The attacks are attributed to Hezbollah.
* December 11, 1994: A bomb explodes on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman. It develops that Ramzi Yousef planted the bomb to test it for the larger terrorist attack he is planning.
* December 24, 1994: In a preview of September 11, Air France Flight 8969 is hijacked by Islamic terrorists who planned to crash the plane in Paris.
* January 6, 1995: Operation Bojinka, an Islamist plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean, is discovered on a laptop computer in a Manila, Philippines apartment by authorities after a fire occurred in the apartment. Noted terrorists including Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are involved in the plot.
* June 14—June 19, 1995: The Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, in which 105 civilians and 25 Russian troops were killed following an attack by Chechan Islamists.
* July—October, 1995: Bombings in France by Islamic terrorists led by Khaled Kelkal kill eight and injure more than 100.
* November 13, 1995: Bombing of OPM-SANG building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia kills 7
* November 19, 1995: Bombing of Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan kills 19.
* January 1996: In Kizlyar, 350 Chechen Islamists took 3,000 hostages in a hospital. The attempt to free them killed 65 civilians and soldiers.
* February 25 - March 4, 1996: A series of four suicide bombings in Israel leave 60 dead and 284 wounded within 10 days.
* June 11, 1996: A bomb explodes on a train traveling on the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line of the Moscow Metro, killing four and unjuring at least 12.
* June 25, 1996: The Khobar Towers bombing, carried out by Hezbollah with Iranian support. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed and 372 wounded.
* February 24, 1997: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from several countries. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".
* November 17, 1997: Massacre in Luxor, Egypt, in which Islamist gunmen attack tourists, killing 62 people.
* January 1998: Wandhama Massacre - 24 Kashmiri Pandits are massacred by Pakistan-backed Islamists in the city of Wandhama in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
* February 14, 1998: Bombings by Islamic Jihadi groups at an election rally in the Indian city of Coimbatore kill about 60 people.
* August 7, 1998: Al Qaeda bombs U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000.
* August 31 – September 22, 1998: Russian apartment bombings kill about 300 people, leading Russia into Second Chechen War.
* December 1998: Jordanian authorities foil a plot to bomb American and Israeli tourists in Jordan, and arrest 28 suspects as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.
* December 14, 1998: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States–Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.
* December 24, 1998: Indian Airlines Flight 814 from Kathmandu, Nepal to Delhi, India is hijacked by Islamic terrorists. One passenger is killed and some hostages are released. After negotiations between the Taliban and the Indian government, the last of the remaining hostages on board Flight 814 are released in exchange for release of 4 terrorists.
* January 2000: The last of the 2000 millennium attack plots fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.
* August 8, 2000: A bomb exploded at an underpass in Pushkin Square in Moscow, killing 11 people and wounding more than 90.
* August 17, 2000: Two bombs exploded in a shopping center in Riga, Latvia, injuring 35 people.
* October 12, 2000: AL Qaeda bombs USS Cole with explosive-laden speedboat, killing 17 US sailors and wounding 40, off the port coast of Aden, Yemen.
Top Democrats have written a letter to ABC threatening to withdraw the network's broadcast license in response to the TV movie "Path to 9/11" because it shows that that the Clinton Administration's response to these attacks were weak and ineffectual. These same thugs are quick to cry "Censorship!" whenever a conservative raises objections to a controverial film or book.
The historical record is undeniable. President Clinton and his Administration never responded effectively to these attacks. They were treated as isolated incident and crimes. How could a movie be faithful to the truth and portray anything else?
President Clinton was quick to take credit when things did occasionally go right. Ahmed Ressam had planned to blow up Los Ingeles International Airport on December 31, 1999. The attack called the 'Millenium Plot' was thwarted by an alert female Customs agent during a routine inspection. Despite the claims of President Clinton, customs officials were given no special warning to be on alert at that time.
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=ressam12m&date=20040412
It was police in the Philippines who thwarted the 'Bojinka' plot to kill Pope John Paul II and destroy eleven U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean. President Clinton tried to take credit for this too. He played no role whatsoever in uncovering this plot.
The Democrat Party has changed sice the days of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. While many Republicans disagreed with their policies and decisions, hardly anyone questioned their detrmination to protect our nation from its' enemies. But times have changed. The modern day Democrat Party's reputation for being weak on national defense is well deserved.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Be Leery of the Anti-War Movement
Catholic teaching directs us to avoid war and work for peace. However, it does not require pacifism. Nations have a right to defend themselves against unjust aggressors. Also to be against war, does not require that we align ourselves with various anti-war movements, which often have other agendas.
True patriots who desire the good of their country can disagree with one another on a wide range of issues. Patriotism does not mean defending the policies of the administration in power. Nor does it require supporting war when your nation is in conflict, but it certainly excludes aiding the enemy or rooting for your country’s defeat in war, unless your nation is truly evil such as Nazi Germany or the Communist Soviet Union.
In the ancient Chinese book on military strategy called The Art of War, Sun Tzu says:
America’s enemies realize that war that a big part of war is psychological They seek to win by breaking our will. Osama Bin Laden said that he was encouraged to attack America when we pulled out of Somalia. In May of 1998, ABC reporter was able to interview Osama. John Miller asked Bin Laden to describe the situation when your men took down the American forces in Somalia. Bin Laden answered:
It was the bodies of American soldiers being dragged through the streets that led many Americans to want to pull troop out of Somalia that we had entered because of a humanitarian crisis. Somalia is now a failed, stateless country and a breeding ground for terrorism.
The enemy was also able to effectively use the anti-war movement to defeat the United States in Vietnam. Colonel Bui Tin fought against Americans for the People’s Army of Vietnam (North Vietnam). In an interview about the war in the Thursday August 3, 1995 edition of the Wall Street Journal he spoke about how important the anti-war movement was in helping them to defeat the United States in the Vietnam War. He said:
Colonel Tin realized, as did George Washington, that military victories were not as important as breaking the will of the enemy:
General Võ Nguyên Giáp was a North Vietnamese four star general and leader of a guerilla group under Hồ Chí Minh.
Ion Mihai Pacepa was acting chief of Romania's espionage service. He is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. According to Pacepa, the KGB helped to organize a conference in Stockholm to condemn America's aggression, on March 8, 1965, as the first American troops arrived in South Vietnam.
The KGB financed the World Peace Council. Yuri Andropov ordered Romesh Chondra, the Chairman of the World Peace Council, to create the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam as a permanent international organization to aid or to conduct operations to help Americans dodge the draft or defect, to demoralize its army with anti-American propaganda, to conduct protests, demonstrations, and boycotts, and to sanction anyone connected with the war. The Stockholm Conference was staffed by Soviet-bloc undercover intelligence officers and received $15 million annually from the Communist Party. This was in addition to the $50 million a year they received from the Soviet Union.
The Romanian DIE (Ceausescu's secret police) helped the The World Peace Council to distribute propaganda throughout Western Europe which helped to contribute to the virulent anti-American sentiment there today.
In speaking of Senator John Kerry's role in the anti-war movement, Pacepa said:
Pacepa says
Another Soviet defector, Stanislov Lunev, tells the same story in the book 'Through the Eyes of the Enemy':
Today anti-war critics exaggerate U.S. war crimes and prisoner abuse at Guantanomo Bay , charge abuses of the Patriot Act, claim that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), despite the fact that the Clinton Administration and many other foreign intelligence services thought that Sadddam Hussein had WMDs.
Does this mean that every person who opposes the war in Iraq is an unpatriotic Communist? Obviously not, but it should make us skeptical of the leftist propaganda that is transmitted by a press corps who despises President Bush.
It is not patriotic to jump to conclusions and believe the worst about your country on the basis of news reports by biased propagandists in the media who are too willing to let themselves be used. An example of this recently were a series of doctored pictures out of Lebanon that were used by the Reuters news service. It took bloggers to discover that the photos had been altered and Reuters was forced to pull them.
It should also give us pause about with whom we align ourselves, even in supporting good and noble causes. There are unintended consequences to war. There are also unintended consequences to supporting the anti-war movement. The America pullout of Vietnam led to religious persecution, the killing of many innocent people and a refugee problem of enormous proportions. It also caused destabilization in the region that led to the “Killing Fields” in Cambodia. It is estimated that Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge killed between1.2 or 3 million people in Cambodia. This is one reason why the Vatican, which was opposed to the original invasion of Iraq, has now called for more nations to send troops there.
Some people oppose the war in good conscience, but others, including many leftists in America and Europe, hate America and want to see her defeated.
For more information see:
Interview: Osama Bin Laden by ABC reporter John Miller
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html
Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel by Bui Tin (1999):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/explorer/0824822331/1/ref=pd_lpo_ase/104-2045727-6949539?ie=UTF8
Kerry’s Soviet Rhetoric by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, February 26, 2004
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pacepa200402260828.asp
How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam by Gil Merom
http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521804035
Why the Strong Lose by Jeffrey Record
http://www.army.mil/professionalwriting/volumes/volume4/january_2006/1_06_3.html
Reuters Doctoring Photos From Beirut August 5, 2006
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21956_Reuters_Doctoring_Photos_from_Beirut&only
Left-Wing Monster: Pol Pot by John Perazzo FrontPageMagazine.com August 8, 2005
http://www.genocidewatch.org/cambodialeftwingmonsterpolpot.htm
Boat People
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people
---end---
True patriots who desire the good of their country can disagree with one another on a wide range of issues. Patriotism does not mean defending the policies of the administration in power. Nor does it require supporting war when your nation is in conflict, but it certainly excludes aiding the enemy or rooting for your country’s defeat in war, unless your nation is truly evil such as Nazi Germany or the Communist Soviet Union.
In the ancient Chinese book on military strategy called The Art of War, Sun Tzu says:
There are four matters in which concord may be lacking. When there is discord within the country the army can not be mobilized. When there is discord in the army it can not take the field. When there is lack of harmony in the field the army can not take the offensive. When there is lack of harmony in battle the army can not win a decisive victory.
America’s enemies realize that war that a big part of war is psychological They seek to win by breaking our will. Osama Bin Laden said that he was encouraged to attack America when we pulled out of Somalia. In May of 1998, ABC reporter was able to interview Osama. John Miller asked Bin Laden to describe the situation when your men took down the American forces in Somalia. Bin Laden answered:
After our victory in Afghanistan and the defeat of the oppressors who had killed millions of Muslims, the legend about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished. Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. ... As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press after the Gulf War in which it destroyed the infrastructure and the milk and dairy industry that was vital for the infants and the children and the civilians and blew up dams which were necessary for the crops people grew to feed their families. Proud of this destruction, America assumed the titles of world leader and master of the new world order. After a few blows, it forgot all about those titles and rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers. America stopped calling itself world leader and master of the new world order, and its politicians realized that those titles were too big for them and that they were unworthy of them. I was in Sudan when this happened. I was very happy to learn of that great defeat that America suffered, so was every Muslim. ...
It was the bodies of American soldiers being dragged through the streets that led many Americans to want to pull troop out of Somalia that we had entered because of a humanitarian crisis. Somalia is now a failed, stateless country and a breeding ground for terrorism.
The enemy was also able to effectively use the anti-war movement to defeat the United States in Vietnam. Colonel Bui Tin fought against Americans for the People’s Army of Vietnam (North Vietnam). In an interview about the war in the Thursday August 3, 1995 edition of the Wall Street Journal he spoke about how important the anti-war movement was in helping them to defeat the United States in the Vietnam War. He said:
Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9:00 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war, and that she would struggle along with us.
Colonel Tin realized, as did George Washington, that military victories were not as important as breaking the will of the enemy:
Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for reelection.
General Võ Nguyên Giáp was a North Vietnamese four star general and leader of a guerilla group under Hồ Chí Minh.
Ion Mihai Pacepa was acting chief of Romania's espionage service. He is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. According to Pacepa, the KGB helped to organize a conference in Stockholm to condemn America's aggression, on March 8, 1965, as the first American troops arrived in South Vietnam.
The KGB financed the World Peace Council. Yuri Andropov ordered Romesh Chondra, the Chairman of the World Peace Council, to create the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam as a permanent international organization to aid or to conduct operations to help Americans dodge the draft or defect, to demoralize its army with anti-American propaganda, to conduct protests, demonstrations, and boycotts, and to sanction anyone connected with the war. The Stockholm Conference was staffed by Soviet-bloc undercover intelligence officers and received $15 million annually from the Communist Party. This was in addition to the $50 million a year they received from the Soviet Union.
The Romanian DIE (Ceausescu's secret police) helped the The World Peace Council to distribute propaganda throughout Western Europe which helped to contribute to the virulent anti-American sentiment there today.
In speaking of Senator John Kerry's role in the anti-war movement, Pacepa said:
As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, 'our most significant success'.
Pacepa says
“I can no longer look at a petition for world peace or other supposedly noble cause, particularly of the anti-American variety, without thinking to myself, "KGB….. As far as I'm concerned, the KGB gave birth to the antiwar movement in America. In 1976, Andropov gave my own Romanian DIE credit for helping his KGB do so.”
Another Soviet defector, Stanislov Lunev, tells the same story in the book 'Through the Eyes of the Enemy':
The GRU and KGB helped fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad... What will be a great surprise to the American people is that GRU and KGB had a larger budget for antiwar propaganda in the United States than it did for economic and military support to the Vietnamese.
Today anti-war critics exaggerate U.S. war crimes and prisoner abuse at Guantanomo Bay , charge abuses of the Patriot Act, claim that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), despite the fact that the Clinton Administration and many other foreign intelligence services thought that Sadddam Hussein had WMDs.
Does this mean that every person who opposes the war in Iraq is an unpatriotic Communist? Obviously not, but it should make us skeptical of the leftist propaganda that is transmitted by a press corps who despises President Bush.
It is not patriotic to jump to conclusions and believe the worst about your country on the basis of news reports by biased propagandists in the media who are too willing to let themselves be used. An example of this recently were a series of doctored pictures out of Lebanon that were used by the Reuters news service. It took bloggers to discover that the photos had been altered and Reuters was forced to pull them.
It should also give us pause about with whom we align ourselves, even in supporting good and noble causes. There are unintended consequences to war. There are also unintended consequences to supporting the anti-war movement. The America pullout of Vietnam led to religious persecution, the killing of many innocent people and a refugee problem of enormous proportions. It also caused destabilization in the region that led to the “Killing Fields” in Cambodia. It is estimated that Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge killed between1.2 or 3 million people in Cambodia. This is one reason why the Vatican, which was opposed to the original invasion of Iraq, has now called for more nations to send troops there.
Some people oppose the war in good conscience, but others, including many leftists in America and Europe, hate America and want to see her defeated.
For more information see:
Interview: Osama Bin Laden by ABC reporter John Miller
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html
Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel by Bui Tin (1999):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/explorer/0824822331/1/ref=pd_lpo_ase/104-2045727-6949539?ie=UTF8
Kerry’s Soviet Rhetoric by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, February 26, 2004
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pacepa200402260828.asp
How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam by Gil Merom
http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521804035
Why the Strong Lose by Jeffrey Record
http://www.army.mil/professionalwriting/volumes/volume4/january_2006/1_06_3.html
Reuters Doctoring Photos From Beirut August 5, 2006
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21956_Reuters_Doctoring_Photos_from_Beirut&only
Left-Wing Monster: Pol Pot by John Perazzo FrontPageMagazine.com August 8, 2005
http://www.genocidewatch.org/cambodialeftwingmonsterpolpot.htm
Boat People
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people
---end---
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The Patriot Act
On March 9, 2006, President George W. Bush signed the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act. The Patriot Act, as it is commonly known, allows intelligence and law enforcement officials to share information. It allows law enforcement to use the same tools used against drug dealers and other criminals. The bill strengthens the Justice Department so that it can better detect terrorist cells and disrupt terrorist plots, and it brings the law up to date with new technologies. The legislation also includes toughens penalties for attacks on mass transportation systems and commercial aviation.
Law enforcement now has new tools to combat threats. Before the Patriot Act was enacted law enforcement organization were legally prevented from sharing vital information with one another. The Patriot Act helped to break down the legal and bureaucratic walls which prevented intelligence officers from sharing information with criminal investigators, to help them connect the dots before a terrorist strike.
The Patriot Act corrected certain double standards. Before the Patriot Act, law enforcement could not use the same tools investigative tools that they use to track a drug dealer's phone contacts to track terrorist's phone contacts. It was legal to obtain the credit card receipts of a tax cheat, but not to trace the financial support of an Al-Qaeda fundraiser.
Before the Patriot Act, the law did not account for new communications technologies such as e-mail, voicemail, and cell phones. For example, a subpoena to wiretap had to be obtained for each phone instead of being attached to a person. So if a terrorist could switch from one cell phone to another to avoid a wiretap. Now law enforcement can use what is called a "roving wiretap", the same tool they use to track drug dealers.
The Patriot Act allows law enforcement, with court authorization, to monitor data such as numbers called on a phone or to track web sites visited by the terrorist. It allows Internet service providers to disclose customer records voluntarily to the government in emergencies involving an immediate risk of death or serious physical injury. If a person’s computer has been hacked they can now request the assistance of law enforcement to monitor trespassers on their computers.
The Patriot Act makes it illegal to run an unlicensed foreign money transmittal business. This was necessary because terrorists didn’t use traditional financial institutions. They transfer money through informal networks which makes the money difficult to trace. Under the Patriot Act, U.S. banks, securities brokers and dealers and certain cash businesses are required to file Suspicious Activity Reports for a wider range of financial transactions. The new bill also increased penalties for financing terrorism and made it easier to seize terrorists’ assets.
The new Patriot Act created an Assistant Attorney General for National Security. This brings national security, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and foreign intelligence surveillance operations under a single authority in the Justice Department.
The Patriot Act has been a success in preventing further acts of terrorism since it was first enacted in October 2001. Since then, the Patriot Act has helped law enforcement break up terror cells in Ohio, New York, Oregon, and Virginia. It has also helped in the prosecution of terrorists or their supporters in California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois Washington, and North Carolina.
Due to political pressure after September 11, 2001, most Democrats voted for the original Patriot Act, signed into law by President Bush on October 26, 2001. The Act passed in the Senate by a vote of 98 to 1, and in the House of Representatives by 357 to 66.
But many of these same Democrats now oppose the Patriot Act. They claim the Act is an attack on our civil liberties. Their claims about the infringement of civil liberties are exaggerated and extreme. Since the Patriot Act was first enacted, there has not been a single verified abuse of any of the Act's provisions. The Patriot Act simply allows commonsense principles to be used in combating terrorism while at the same time safeguarding our civil liberties. The new and improved Patriot Act, signed in March, adds 30 new significant civil liberties provisions.
Key provisions of the Patriot Act almost expired last year, when Senate Democrats along with four liberal Republicans attempted to filibuster a proposal to extend the Patriot Act. Republicans warned that allowing the current provisions to expire could have devastating consequences. After a vote last year, in which the Republican majority fell seven votes shy pro-life the 60 votes needed to overcome the Democrats’ filibuster, Senator Harry Reid, the Democrat Minority Leader boasted, "We killed the Patriot Act" at a political rally. The crowd erupted in cheers.
The recent terrorist plot that was thwarted in England reminds us that we face real enemies who are determined to kill us. The Patriot Act is helping to keep America safe while at the same time respecting our civil liberties. It is not a matter of trading our civil liberties for the security. A balance can and must be attained. The Patriot Act maintains that balance.
Protecting national security is the ultimate pro-life issue. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, as part of its teaching on the Fifth Commandment in paragraph #2265 states the following:
The Patriot Act is one of many vital programs to protect national security that the leaders of the Democrat Party in the House and the Senate oppose. Others include the data mining program, the detention of enemy combatants at Guantanomo Bay, and the surveillance of foreign terrorists. Thus, in my judgment, the Democrats and a handful of liberal Republicans are unfit for leadership. If Democrats take over the House of Representatives and/or the Senate in November, America will be more vulnerable to attack. A Democrat victory will embolden the terrorists and the effects will reverberate throughout the world.
Law enforcement now has new tools to combat threats. Before the Patriot Act was enacted law enforcement organization were legally prevented from sharing vital information with one another. The Patriot Act helped to break down the legal and bureaucratic walls which prevented intelligence officers from sharing information with criminal investigators, to help them connect the dots before a terrorist strike.
The Patriot Act corrected certain double standards. Before the Patriot Act, law enforcement could not use the same tools investigative tools that they use to track a drug dealer's phone contacts to track terrorist's phone contacts. It was legal to obtain the credit card receipts of a tax cheat, but not to trace the financial support of an Al-Qaeda fundraiser.
Before the Patriot Act, the law did not account for new communications technologies such as e-mail, voicemail, and cell phones. For example, a subpoena to wiretap had to be obtained for each phone instead of being attached to a person. So if a terrorist could switch from one cell phone to another to avoid a wiretap. Now law enforcement can use what is called a "roving wiretap", the same tool they use to track drug dealers.
The Patriot Act allows law enforcement, with court authorization, to monitor data such as numbers called on a phone or to track web sites visited by the terrorist. It allows Internet service providers to disclose customer records voluntarily to the government in emergencies involving an immediate risk of death or serious physical injury. If a person’s computer has been hacked they can now request the assistance of law enforcement to monitor trespassers on their computers.
The Patriot Act makes it illegal to run an unlicensed foreign money transmittal business. This was necessary because terrorists didn’t use traditional financial institutions. They transfer money through informal networks which makes the money difficult to trace. Under the Patriot Act, U.S. banks, securities brokers and dealers and certain cash businesses are required to file Suspicious Activity Reports for a wider range of financial transactions. The new bill also increased penalties for financing terrorism and made it easier to seize terrorists’ assets.
The new Patriot Act created an Assistant Attorney General for National Security. This brings national security, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and foreign intelligence surveillance operations under a single authority in the Justice Department.
The Patriot Act has been a success in preventing further acts of terrorism since it was first enacted in October 2001. Since then, the Patriot Act has helped law enforcement break up terror cells in Ohio, New York, Oregon, and Virginia. It has also helped in the prosecution of terrorists or their supporters in California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois Washington, and North Carolina.
Due to political pressure after September 11, 2001, most Democrats voted for the original Patriot Act, signed into law by President Bush on October 26, 2001. The Act passed in the Senate by a vote of 98 to 1, and in the House of Representatives by 357 to 66.
But many of these same Democrats now oppose the Patriot Act. They claim the Act is an attack on our civil liberties. Their claims about the infringement of civil liberties are exaggerated and extreme. Since the Patriot Act was first enacted, there has not been a single verified abuse of any of the Act's provisions. The Patriot Act simply allows commonsense principles to be used in combating terrorism while at the same time safeguarding our civil liberties. The new and improved Patriot Act, signed in March, adds 30 new significant civil liberties provisions.
Key provisions of the Patriot Act almost expired last year, when Senate Democrats along with four liberal Republicans attempted to filibuster a proposal to extend the Patriot Act. Republicans warned that allowing the current provisions to expire could have devastating consequences. After a vote last year, in which the Republican majority fell seven votes shy pro-life the 60 votes needed to overcome the Democrats’ filibuster, Senator Harry Reid, the Democrat Minority Leader boasted, "We killed the Patriot Act" at a political rally. The crowd erupted in cheers.
The recent terrorist plot that was thwarted in England reminds us that we face real enemies who are determined to kill us. The Patriot Act is helping to keep America safe while at the same time respecting our civil liberties. It is not a matter of trading our civil liberties for the security. A balance can and must be attained. The Patriot Act maintains that balance.
Protecting national security is the ultimate pro-life issue. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, as part of its teaching on the Fifth Commandment in paragraph #2265 states the following:
Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.
The Patriot Act is one of many vital programs to protect national security that the leaders of the Democrat Party in the House and the Senate oppose. Others include the data mining program, the detention of enemy combatants at Guantanomo Bay, and the surveillance of foreign terrorists. Thus, in my judgment, the Democrats and a handful of liberal Republicans are unfit for leadership. If Democrats take over the House of Representatives and/or the Senate in November, America will be more vulnerable to attack. A Democrat victory will embolden the terrorists and the effects will reverberate throughout the world.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Promote Marriage to Reduce Poverty
Ten years ago welfare reform legislation was passed by the Republican Congress and signed into law by President Clinton. The legislation established work requirements and caps on benefits. This legislation finally acknowledged that there was indeed a link between poverty, fatherless families, children born out of wedlock and the decline of the work ethic. Since the passage of this legislation in 1996, child poverty among African-Americans has fallen to its lowest level in history. There are 1.5 million fewer children in poverty today, but many problems remain and marriage is the unfinished business of welfare reform.
Daniel Patrick Monihan was among the first government leaders to recognize and address the negative consequences of welfare dependence and the dissolution of the family. In 1965, Moynihan was the Assistant Secretary of Labor in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. Moynihan was a committed liberal, but he came to be skeptical of the ability government programs to solve the problem of poverty. He published a report that noticed a disturbing trend in the black community in America. Despite desegregation and efforts to ensure equal opportunity, welfare dependence was on the rise among blacks, Moynihan and his fellow researchers pointed to the disintegration of family as a major cause.
Moynihan called for upholding the “social ideal” in public policy which was the married two-parent family. As Moynihan said, “The principal objective of American government at every level should be to see that children are born into intact families and that they remain so.”
Here is part of the prophetic warning from the Moynihan Report:
“Indices of dollars of income, standards of living, and years of education deceive.… The fundamental problem…is that of family structure. The evidence…is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle-class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated, city working class the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated.… So long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.” [1]
Unfortunately, his words have proved all too true. When the Moynihan Report was released, one out of four black children was born to an unwed mother. As late as 1970, marriage was still the norm in the black community. In 1970, 64 percent of all black adults over 18 were married. And that number was not dramatically lower than it was in the general population at the time, which was 72 percent. But by 1980, only 51 percent of black adults were married, and by 2004 that had dropped further to 41 percent. Today, two out of three black children are born outside of marriage. During the 1970s we saw the percentage of children born to unwed African-American mothers jump from 35 percent to 55 percent. The problem of single parenthood is not limited to the African-American community. The out-of-wedlock childbearing rate is at 25 percent for whites, 45 percent for Hispanics, and 68 percent among blacks.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a prophet, but as with many prophets, his message was not very welcome at the time and went largely unheeded. An acrimonious debate followed the Moynihan report. Many misread the report as “blaming the victim.” The charge was unfair. Moynihan clearly indicated the role that slavery and discrimination had played in harming the black community. Moynihan discussed joblessness and discrimination facing blacks, especially men. He noted the growing gap between girls and boys in terms of education and money earned. (Girls, as they are now, were doing much better). He talked a lot about the lack of education, the high rejection rate from the military, high crime rates, but also on the victimization experienced by blacks in that period. Finally, he commented on the role of the family.
The criticism focused on his remarks about the dissolution of the black family. Despite the criticism, Moynihan kept writing and talking about the problem of the collapse of the family, particularly within African-American communities, but increasingly within all ethnic groups, but most liberal social scientists were intimidated. They avoided further research on the topic, for fear of being labeled as racists. They avoided describing any behavior that could be construed as unflattering or stigmatizing to racial minorities. Some claimed that the disintegration of the family was a result of low wages and high unemployment among black men. But as wages went up, particularly in the 1950s and ’60s, this is exactly when the black family started to disintegrate and out-of-wedlock childbearing rose.
The Moynihan Report was not debated as much as it was disparaged and ignored. The “debate” began a paralysis of political correctness that continues, to some extent, to this day. The disintegration of the family as a root cause for the inability to rise from poverty was largely ignored until the 1990’s. Now even liberals will occasionally venture to talk about the problem. For example, in 1996 Hillary Clinton wrote, “Every society requires a critical mass of families that fit the traditional idea, both to meet the needs of most children and to serve as a model for other adults who are raising children in difficult settings. And we are at risk of losing that critical mass today.” [2]
Dr. Wade Horn is the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Horn was recently at a conference on new strategies for reducing poverty at the University of North Carolina. Former Senator John Edwards was the moderator of the conference, and after his talk on why marriage is important in the context of anti-poverty strategies, he remarked, “I agree with everything that Wade Horn just said.” And then he added, “And that really, really worries me.” It probably worries him since most liberals still are hesitant to talk about the problem fearing criticism from fellow liberals who are still inclined to regard criticism of single parent families as antiquated, even bigoted.
Until recently, social theorists and government operated on the principle that the only distinguished the poor from the middle class was the amount of money they had. So, they though, if you just provided money to the poor that would solve the problem. It was a very appealing policy since it didn’t require confronting issues of family structure and other social problems. Forty years of experience has shown us that this approach not only doesn't work, it has been disastrous, trapping generation after generation in a cycle of poverty.
Some social scientists proposed other solutions, which took family structure into account, but they found it very difficult to eliminate financial disincentives to marry within the existing system of welfare benefits.
One approach tried by Congress and various Presidents were initiatives aimed at reducing out of wedlock births and single parenthood. But these initiatives focused mostly on providing birth control, which tended to increase sexual activity outside of marriage and led to increased pregnancies that ended in either abortion or more non-marital births. At the same time increased benefits were given to single parents that created an incentive which encouraged single parenthood.
It is difficult to eliminate negative incentives to marriage while at the same time maintaining the social safety net. What makes it so difficult is that you phase out benefits as people do better financially. Marrying a partner who works means adding an extra earner to the family. Adding the extra earner means that benefits are phased out more quickly. If there was no social safety net, there would be a financial incentive to marry, but if getting married means a loss of benefits than adding the extra earner is not much help. Starting in the 1960’s, it’s almost as if government told poor people to stop getting married. Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) guaranteed a woman a lifetime entitlement to cash as long as she had a dependent child. But she was told if you work or marry someone who is working your benefits will be cut off.
One of the goals of the 1996 welfare reform legislation was to increase the proportion of children who grow up in healthy two-parent families, and it is not possible to accomplish that goal simply by shifting single mothers from welfare into work. Many of the union formation trends are moving in the wrong direction. They are shifting away from stable marital unions toward less stable non-marital unions. Moreover, these trends are becoming deeply entrenched among young adults.
One of these trends is unwed childbearing: 1.5 million children were born out of wedlock in 2004, which is an all-time high. There has been a steep and recent increase in the proportion of women in their ’20s having unwed births. These years used to be the prime marrying years for women. But now women in their ’20s are forgoing marriage and having babies on their own, and there has been a cultural shift that supports this trend, once women are past the teen years. This is not a teen pregnancy problem; only about 14 percent of these non-marital births occur to girls under 18. It is really a crisis in the relationship of young adults, and primarily low-income young adults.
A second trend is the rise in cohabiting unions with children. Over 40 percent of cohabiting households today include children. Some cohabiting parents plan to marry; others have no plans to marry; still others are thinking about marriage. But what we can say with confidence is that cohabiting unions are not like marital unions. They are more likely to break up over a shorter period of time, more likely to involve infidelity, and more likely to pose risks of domestic violence, child abuse, and the like. So again, if the goal is healthy two-parent families, this is a troubling trend.
The third trend is what researchers call multiple partner fertility: people have children with more than one partner. And here again there is a stark contrast between the unmarried and the married couples. In almost 60 percent of unmarried couples who have a child together, one or the other partner has a child from another relationship. But in almost 80 percent of married couples who have a child together, neither partner has a child from another relationship. Many problems arise for children due to this new trend. It is more difficult to enforce or establish paternal responsibility, there is more likely to be conflict within the current relationship, and there can be difficulty in trying to navigate past relationships and co-parenting. The man who is most likely to be committed to a specific child is the man who is the biological father of that child. It is most likely to be a step-parent or boyfriend that abuses a child than a biological parent.
What the trends of unwed childbearing, cohabitation and multiple partner fertility have in common is the loss of the social norm of a family which begins with a marriage between a man and a woman who then have children.
Since the 1996 welfare reform legislation there has been some good news and some not so good news. The good news is out-of-wedlock births have declined. In the African-American community in 1995, the percentage of black children born out of wedlock hit a record 70 percent. It has dropped every year since then, and although not huge drops, it is now at about 68 percent. A study by the late Paul Offner in Social Science Quarterly documents the decline in unwed motherhood among poor teens, and it demonstrates that the decline is at least in large measure the result of provisions in the 1996 law.[3]
The bad news is that we are in danger of losing the idea of marriage as an important social institution in America. According to the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey, more than half of high school seniors agree with the statement “having a child out of wedlock is experimenting with a worthwhile lifestyle and not affecting anyone else.” According to another survey, close to 60 percent of 15–17-year-old teenage girls approve of unwed childbearing. That figure rises to 73 percent among teen girls ages 18–19. In 1995, 43 percent of adult blacks were married, and today 41 percent are married. Why should it be that the out-of-wedlock birth rate among teens is dropping, but we are not seeing an increase in marriage? We have convinced people that it is a bad idea to have a child in your teens. However, we have not convinced them that it is a good idea to be married before you have children.
On March 26, 2006 the Washington Post ran an article by Joy Jones who was teaching a class career exploration class for sixth-graders at an elementary school in Southeast Washington. She was pleasantly surprised when the boys talked about the importance of being good fathers. She assumed they hoped one day to marry and raise a family, but with further discussion she discovered that the boys had no intentions to marry. One boy in the class explained why. He said "Marriage is for white people." Yet according to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Ph.D., the Co-Director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, recent ethnographic studies show the ideal and aspiration to marriage remains very strong for women in communities with low marriage rates. The problem is that most see the ability to achieve married parenthood as beyond their grasp.
Many young women tend to be pickier about the man they would marry than about the man they would have a child with. So we see this split between marriage on the one hand and parenthood on the other. We have to begin to bring the two together. Going forward, the most important goal of welfare reform is to reestablish the norm and the achievable possibility of married parenthood.
We have established the idea that if you have children, you have the responsibility of working and supporting those children. The next step is to establish the norm of married parenthood—that is, if you want children, you should be prepared to form a healthy and stable marriage first.
Dr. Horn recommends reading Kathy Edin’s book, Promises I Can Keep, on young single mothers in urban areas. This book shows that poor mothers want what most other women want in society. Most of them want to be married, to have a house in the suburbs, two kids, a dog, and a minivan. The problem is that they have absolutely no practical plan to get there. We need to find opportunities to intervene with a positive and instructive message that will help young women to see the ideals and design a pathway to accomplish those ideals. The earlier we intervene, the better.
The second thing that we learn from this book, unequivocally, is that these women very much want to have children. Children are the center point of their lives. Liberals complain about lack of access to birth control. This is completely irrelevant. The mothers have all the birth control they could want, they know all about it, but they are having children because children are absolutely essential to their vision of what they want to be and to their life fulfillment. The problem is that they have the sequence mixed up.
Most middle class, couples generally begin by forming an attachment to each other, followed by commitment, followed by marriage, and then having children. In low-income groups today, that sequence has been reversed and the couple starts by having a child, then the mother seeks commitment—not necessarily to the father of the child. He may not what she considers marriageable material. Then, she ultimately seeks marriage perhaps 10 or 15 years down the road. This is a matter of attitude and perceptions. These young women do not see that sequence as in any way abnormal. Most people, liberal or conservative, can see that that sequence is a disastrous one. But we do not communicate that message to the young women who need to hear it.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan said “The decline of marriage is a terrible thing and I don’t have any idea what to do about it.” But I think there is a lot we can and should do to promote marriage.
1.) We must promote chastity. Chastity is not just a religious virtue. There are good secular reasons for it as well. Abstinence before marriage is the best way to avoid an early unwed pregnancy. Young women who avoid sexual activity before marriage are more likely to finish their education and gain decent employment. If they can do these things they are more likely to find a suitable marriage partner.
2.) We need more marriage education programs before marriage. Marriage programs can begin to teach young people about how to form and sustain healthy relationships. These programs could begin as early as middle school, in order that kids will have the skills, knowledge, and ability to build a foundation for future marriage. Young people need to learn what constitutes a suitable marriage partner. We can help young people to seek marriage partners who are of good character, reliable, faithful and who intend to marry. We need to help young women realize that having a strong, committed relationship with the father of that child will be the key to the success of that child. We also need to spread the word about how marriage helps men. They live longer. Their work effort increases. Their earnings increase as their work effort increases and they mature in marriage. Not everyone can be helped by marriage education programs, but the overwhelming majority of the couples that are having children out of wedlock can and should be helped.
3.) We can also reach couples in fragile families, cohabiting, or otherwise in a romantic relationship, who want to marry and have the capacity to form healthy marriages to acquire the skills and tools and knowledge to do so. Today the popular culture creates unrealistic expectations about what marriage is and what it entails. If people’s expectations are too high they become overly selective. This may drive more people toward cohabitation, particularly as “trial marriage.” And unfortunately the more trial marriages you have, the less likely you’re going to have a marriage that these marriages will last. Studies have also shown that people who live together before marriage are more likely to get divorced.
We need to provide programs that young woman people information about life skills planning, marriage, and relationship skills. The program could begin by asking about their life goals and plans. Most of them would have pretty conventional life plans. We could then encourage them to build the skills to achieve those plans. Most women will want children. Obviously they don’t want their children to be poor. We might then say tell them that a child that is born and raised outside of marriage is seven times more likely to be poor than not. What may seem like common knowledge to most people is something many poor people can’t relate to because it is outside of their experience within their local community. We need to talk with them about where they want to go and what sequence of choices they need to make so they are able to give their children all they hope for them.
4.) Faith based initiatives promoting marriage need to be encouraged. As Christian values have declined, we have seen a decline in marriage. Those who attend church are much less likely to become pregnant outside of marriage. Young people who go to church, it not only has a positive impact on them, but they actually have a positive effect on their peers. Dr. Wade Horn’s Healthy Marriage Initiative is building coalitions of pastors and other faith-based groups to come together around this issue in their local communities. Many pastors feel overwhelmed by the problem. It’s very difficult to stand firm on this issue if two-thirds of your parishioners have had children out of wedlock. Pastors need to support one another. Government also has a role to play in promoting healthy marriages.
5.) Young people need help in finding good marriage partners. Too many young people are unable to meet the members of the opposite sex in their local social networks who would make good marriage partners. Virtually every society helps to match young men and women for the purposes of marriage and parenthood.
6.) When we speak of these issues we should avoid the use of the term “committed relationship and use “marriage” instead. If we’re afraid to use the word, we shouldn’t be surprised if the institution disappears.
7.) As Moynihan said, “the principal objective should be to see that more children are born into intact families and remain so.” Dr. Wade Horn oversees $46 billion, part of a $2 trillion federal budget. $100 million of this is spent to fund the Healthy Marriage Initiative. This amounts to one penny spent to support marriage for every $15 we spend to support single parenthood. He suggests that we need to integrate the idea of marriage into all of the social programs that support low-income families. It’s not the amount of money that is so critical. It is recapturing the idea that marriage is fundamental to the social good, and encouraging healthy marriages is an important objective of government policy.
8.) Help should help men to become more attractive as marital partners. Job skills education and job training should be incorporated into marriage preparation programs.
9.) We can promote apprenticeship. In the last several decades is that the age at which men reach a higher earnings level has gone up and the age of sexual activity has gone down, so there is a big gap between when young people are having lots of sex and the time when they can really afford to have children. Young men are not making enough money to from families. Apprenticeship helps young people develop positive relationships with responsible who can share their wisdom and who can encourage young people to prepare for the future.
Conclusion
In 1992 there was a popular television show in which the main character, Murphy Brown, played by the actress Candace Bergen, had a child which she planned out of wedlock. On May 19, 1992 Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the show’s producers promoting out of wedlock child birth and ignoring the importance of fathers. Most liberals were enraged and attacked Quayle in the media viciously. But Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote an article in The Atlantic entitled “Dan Quayle Was Right”.[4] The popular culture is as hostile as ever to marriage and responsible parenthood. One popular show, Friends, portrays a youthful mating culture where people just exchange sex partners.
Dan Quayle was right when he criticized the popular culture and it’s attitudes toward marriage and fatherhood. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was right when he said that marriage matters and family matters. What Moynihan said about the black family now pertains to all families. Marriage is important not only as an expression of the love and affection that two people have for each other, but also because it is critical to the common good in our culture and society. The main problem behind out-of-wedlock childbearing and the decline of marriage is a matter of attitudes.
Marriage is the unfinished business of welfare reform. The new provisions of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) are a good start. For the first time, federal tax dollars are being spent to focus on helping couples form and sustain healthy marriages. This is a dramatic shift in social policy. Just ten years ago it was impolite to even use the word “marriage,” and now $100 million in the federal budget is dedicated to promoting and encouraging marriage, but much work is yet to be done. It starts with each one of us daring to challenge “politically correct” ideas that have damaged our society. The dissolution of the family has led to a lack of self esteem in men,increased alcohol and drug abuse and all their attendant problems. It has burdened women either with the guilt of an abortion or the hardships of single parenthood. Most of all, it has deprived children of a stable family consisting of a loving mother and loving father who are married each other and are ready to demonstrate unconditional love for their child. The child has a right to this love from the moment he or she is conceived in the womb. The child deserves care from both of his parents throughout their childhood and adolescence and love from both for the rest of his or her life. Most parents who make the sacrifices required of love experience that they are repaid in many ways that can never be counted.
[1]Office of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” March 1965, at http://dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm (August 2, 2006).
[2]Hillary Rodham Clinton, It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (New York: Touchstone, 1996), p. 50.
[3]Paul Offner, “Welfare Reform and Teenage Girls,” Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 86 (June 2005), pp. 306–322.
[4] Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, “Dan Quayle Was Right,” The Atlantic, April 1993.
For more information see:
‘The Collapse of Marriage and the Rise of Welfare Dependence’by Jennifer A. Marshall, Robert Lerman, Ph.D., Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Ph.D., Hon. Wade Horn, Ph.D., Robert Rector Heritage Lecture #959 August 15, 2006 (Delivered May 22, 2006) http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/hl959.cfm
'Marriage Is for White People' by Joy Jones Washington Post, March 26, 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032500029.html
‘Dan Quayle Was Right' By Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Atlantic, April 1993 http://www.franks.org/fr01243.htm
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Daniel Patrick Monihan was among the first government leaders to recognize and address the negative consequences of welfare dependence and the dissolution of the family. In 1965, Moynihan was the Assistant Secretary of Labor in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. Moynihan was a committed liberal, but he came to be skeptical of the ability government programs to solve the problem of poverty. He published a report that noticed a disturbing trend in the black community in America. Despite desegregation and efforts to ensure equal opportunity, welfare dependence was on the rise among blacks, Moynihan and his fellow researchers pointed to the disintegration of family as a major cause.
Moynihan called for upholding the “social ideal” in public policy which was the married two-parent family. As Moynihan said, “The principal objective of American government at every level should be to see that children are born into intact families and that they remain so.”
Here is part of the prophetic warning from the Moynihan Report:
“Indices of dollars of income, standards of living, and years of education deceive.… The fundamental problem…is that of family structure. The evidence…is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle-class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated, city working class the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated.… So long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.” [1]
Unfortunately, his words have proved all too true. When the Moynihan Report was released, one out of four black children was born to an unwed mother. As late as 1970, marriage was still the norm in the black community. In 1970, 64 percent of all black adults over 18 were married. And that number was not dramatically lower than it was in the general population at the time, which was 72 percent. But by 1980, only 51 percent of black adults were married, and by 2004 that had dropped further to 41 percent. Today, two out of three black children are born outside of marriage. During the 1970s we saw the percentage of children born to unwed African-American mothers jump from 35 percent to 55 percent. The problem of single parenthood is not limited to the African-American community. The out-of-wedlock childbearing rate is at 25 percent for whites, 45 percent for Hispanics, and 68 percent among blacks.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a prophet, but as with many prophets, his message was not very welcome at the time and went largely unheeded. An acrimonious debate followed the Moynihan report. Many misread the report as “blaming the victim.” The charge was unfair. Moynihan clearly indicated the role that slavery and discrimination had played in harming the black community. Moynihan discussed joblessness and discrimination facing blacks, especially men. He noted the growing gap between girls and boys in terms of education and money earned. (Girls, as they are now, were doing much better). He talked a lot about the lack of education, the high rejection rate from the military, high crime rates, but also on the victimization experienced by blacks in that period. Finally, he commented on the role of the family.
The criticism focused on his remarks about the dissolution of the black family. Despite the criticism, Moynihan kept writing and talking about the problem of the collapse of the family, particularly within African-American communities, but increasingly within all ethnic groups, but most liberal social scientists were intimidated. They avoided further research on the topic, for fear of being labeled as racists. They avoided describing any behavior that could be construed as unflattering or stigmatizing to racial minorities. Some claimed that the disintegration of the family was a result of low wages and high unemployment among black men. But as wages went up, particularly in the 1950s and ’60s, this is exactly when the black family started to disintegrate and out-of-wedlock childbearing rose.
The Moynihan Report was not debated as much as it was disparaged and ignored. The “debate” began a paralysis of political correctness that continues, to some extent, to this day. The disintegration of the family as a root cause for the inability to rise from poverty was largely ignored until the 1990’s. Now even liberals will occasionally venture to talk about the problem. For example, in 1996 Hillary Clinton wrote, “Every society requires a critical mass of families that fit the traditional idea, both to meet the needs of most children and to serve as a model for other adults who are raising children in difficult settings. And we are at risk of losing that critical mass today.” [2]
Dr. Wade Horn is the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Horn was recently at a conference on new strategies for reducing poverty at the University of North Carolina. Former Senator John Edwards was the moderator of the conference, and after his talk on why marriage is important in the context of anti-poverty strategies, he remarked, “I agree with everything that Wade Horn just said.” And then he added, “And that really, really worries me.” It probably worries him since most liberals still are hesitant to talk about the problem fearing criticism from fellow liberals who are still inclined to regard criticism of single parent families as antiquated, even bigoted.
Until recently, social theorists and government operated on the principle that the only distinguished the poor from the middle class was the amount of money they had. So, they though, if you just provided money to the poor that would solve the problem. It was a very appealing policy since it didn’t require confronting issues of family structure and other social problems. Forty years of experience has shown us that this approach not only doesn't work, it has been disastrous, trapping generation after generation in a cycle of poverty.
Some social scientists proposed other solutions, which took family structure into account, but they found it very difficult to eliminate financial disincentives to marry within the existing system of welfare benefits.
One approach tried by Congress and various Presidents were initiatives aimed at reducing out of wedlock births and single parenthood. But these initiatives focused mostly on providing birth control, which tended to increase sexual activity outside of marriage and led to increased pregnancies that ended in either abortion or more non-marital births. At the same time increased benefits were given to single parents that created an incentive which encouraged single parenthood.
It is difficult to eliminate negative incentives to marriage while at the same time maintaining the social safety net. What makes it so difficult is that you phase out benefits as people do better financially. Marrying a partner who works means adding an extra earner to the family. Adding the extra earner means that benefits are phased out more quickly. If there was no social safety net, there would be a financial incentive to marry, but if getting married means a loss of benefits than adding the extra earner is not much help. Starting in the 1960’s, it’s almost as if government told poor people to stop getting married. Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) guaranteed a woman a lifetime entitlement to cash as long as she had a dependent child. But she was told if you work or marry someone who is working your benefits will be cut off.
One of the goals of the 1996 welfare reform legislation was to increase the proportion of children who grow up in healthy two-parent families, and it is not possible to accomplish that goal simply by shifting single mothers from welfare into work. Many of the union formation trends are moving in the wrong direction. They are shifting away from stable marital unions toward less stable non-marital unions. Moreover, these trends are becoming deeply entrenched among young adults.
One of these trends is unwed childbearing: 1.5 million children were born out of wedlock in 2004, which is an all-time high. There has been a steep and recent increase in the proportion of women in their ’20s having unwed births. These years used to be the prime marrying years for women. But now women in their ’20s are forgoing marriage and having babies on their own, and there has been a cultural shift that supports this trend, once women are past the teen years. This is not a teen pregnancy problem; only about 14 percent of these non-marital births occur to girls under 18. It is really a crisis in the relationship of young adults, and primarily low-income young adults.
A second trend is the rise in cohabiting unions with children. Over 40 percent of cohabiting households today include children. Some cohabiting parents plan to marry; others have no plans to marry; still others are thinking about marriage. But what we can say with confidence is that cohabiting unions are not like marital unions. They are more likely to break up over a shorter period of time, more likely to involve infidelity, and more likely to pose risks of domestic violence, child abuse, and the like. So again, if the goal is healthy two-parent families, this is a troubling trend.
The third trend is what researchers call multiple partner fertility: people have children with more than one partner. And here again there is a stark contrast between the unmarried and the married couples. In almost 60 percent of unmarried couples who have a child together, one or the other partner has a child from another relationship. But in almost 80 percent of married couples who have a child together, neither partner has a child from another relationship. Many problems arise for children due to this new trend. It is more difficult to enforce or establish paternal responsibility, there is more likely to be conflict within the current relationship, and there can be difficulty in trying to navigate past relationships and co-parenting. The man who is most likely to be committed to a specific child is the man who is the biological father of that child. It is most likely to be a step-parent or boyfriend that abuses a child than a biological parent.
What the trends of unwed childbearing, cohabitation and multiple partner fertility have in common is the loss of the social norm of a family which begins with a marriage between a man and a woman who then have children.
Since the 1996 welfare reform legislation there has been some good news and some not so good news. The good news is out-of-wedlock births have declined. In the African-American community in 1995, the percentage of black children born out of wedlock hit a record 70 percent. It has dropped every year since then, and although not huge drops, it is now at about 68 percent. A study by the late Paul Offner in Social Science Quarterly documents the decline in unwed motherhood among poor teens, and it demonstrates that the decline is at least in large measure the result of provisions in the 1996 law.[3]
The bad news is that we are in danger of losing the idea of marriage as an important social institution in America. According to the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey, more than half of high school seniors agree with the statement “having a child out of wedlock is experimenting with a worthwhile lifestyle and not affecting anyone else.” According to another survey, close to 60 percent of 15–17-year-old teenage girls approve of unwed childbearing. That figure rises to 73 percent among teen girls ages 18–19. In 1995, 43 percent of adult blacks were married, and today 41 percent are married. Why should it be that the out-of-wedlock birth rate among teens is dropping, but we are not seeing an increase in marriage? We have convinced people that it is a bad idea to have a child in your teens. However, we have not convinced them that it is a good idea to be married before you have children.
On March 26, 2006 the Washington Post ran an article by Joy Jones who was teaching a class career exploration class for sixth-graders at an elementary school in Southeast Washington. She was pleasantly surprised when the boys talked about the importance of being good fathers. She assumed they hoped one day to marry and raise a family, but with further discussion she discovered that the boys had no intentions to marry. One boy in the class explained why. He said "Marriage is for white people." Yet according to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Ph.D., the Co-Director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, recent ethnographic studies show the ideal and aspiration to marriage remains very strong for women in communities with low marriage rates. The problem is that most see the ability to achieve married parenthood as beyond their grasp.
Many young women tend to be pickier about the man they would marry than about the man they would have a child with. So we see this split between marriage on the one hand and parenthood on the other. We have to begin to bring the two together. Going forward, the most important goal of welfare reform is to reestablish the norm and the achievable possibility of married parenthood.
We have established the idea that if you have children, you have the responsibility of working and supporting those children. The next step is to establish the norm of married parenthood—that is, if you want children, you should be prepared to form a healthy and stable marriage first.
Dr. Horn recommends reading Kathy Edin’s book, Promises I Can Keep, on young single mothers in urban areas. This book shows that poor mothers want what most other women want in society. Most of them want to be married, to have a house in the suburbs, two kids, a dog, and a minivan. The problem is that they have absolutely no practical plan to get there. We need to find opportunities to intervene with a positive and instructive message that will help young women to see the ideals and design a pathway to accomplish those ideals. The earlier we intervene, the better.
The second thing that we learn from this book, unequivocally, is that these women very much want to have children. Children are the center point of their lives. Liberals complain about lack of access to birth control. This is completely irrelevant. The mothers have all the birth control they could want, they know all about it, but they are having children because children are absolutely essential to their vision of what they want to be and to their life fulfillment. The problem is that they have the sequence mixed up.
Most middle class, couples generally begin by forming an attachment to each other, followed by commitment, followed by marriage, and then having children. In low-income groups today, that sequence has been reversed and the couple starts by having a child, then the mother seeks commitment—not necessarily to the father of the child. He may not what she considers marriageable material. Then, she ultimately seeks marriage perhaps 10 or 15 years down the road. This is a matter of attitude and perceptions. These young women do not see that sequence as in any way abnormal. Most people, liberal or conservative, can see that that sequence is a disastrous one. But we do not communicate that message to the young women who need to hear it.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan said “The decline of marriage is a terrible thing and I don’t have any idea what to do about it.” But I think there is a lot we can and should do to promote marriage.
1.) We must promote chastity. Chastity is not just a religious virtue. There are good secular reasons for it as well. Abstinence before marriage is the best way to avoid an early unwed pregnancy. Young women who avoid sexual activity before marriage are more likely to finish their education and gain decent employment. If they can do these things they are more likely to find a suitable marriage partner.
2.) We need more marriage education programs before marriage. Marriage programs can begin to teach young people about how to form and sustain healthy relationships. These programs could begin as early as middle school, in order that kids will have the skills, knowledge, and ability to build a foundation for future marriage. Young people need to learn what constitutes a suitable marriage partner. We can help young people to seek marriage partners who are of good character, reliable, faithful and who intend to marry. We need to help young women realize that having a strong, committed relationship with the father of that child will be the key to the success of that child. We also need to spread the word about how marriage helps men. They live longer. Their work effort increases. Their earnings increase as their work effort increases and they mature in marriage. Not everyone can be helped by marriage education programs, but the overwhelming majority of the couples that are having children out of wedlock can and should be helped.
3.) We can also reach couples in fragile families, cohabiting, or otherwise in a romantic relationship, who want to marry and have the capacity to form healthy marriages to acquire the skills and tools and knowledge to do so. Today the popular culture creates unrealistic expectations about what marriage is and what it entails. If people’s expectations are too high they become overly selective. This may drive more people toward cohabitation, particularly as “trial marriage.” And unfortunately the more trial marriages you have, the less likely you’re going to have a marriage that these marriages will last. Studies have also shown that people who live together before marriage are more likely to get divorced.
We need to provide programs that young woman people information about life skills planning, marriage, and relationship skills. The program could begin by asking about their life goals and plans. Most of them would have pretty conventional life plans. We could then encourage them to build the skills to achieve those plans. Most women will want children. Obviously they don’t want their children to be poor. We might then say tell them that a child that is born and raised outside of marriage is seven times more likely to be poor than not. What may seem like common knowledge to most people is something many poor people can’t relate to because it is outside of their experience within their local community. We need to talk with them about where they want to go and what sequence of choices they need to make so they are able to give their children all they hope for them.
4.) Faith based initiatives promoting marriage need to be encouraged. As Christian values have declined, we have seen a decline in marriage. Those who attend church are much less likely to become pregnant outside of marriage. Young people who go to church, it not only has a positive impact on them, but they actually have a positive effect on their peers. Dr. Wade Horn’s Healthy Marriage Initiative is building coalitions of pastors and other faith-based groups to come together around this issue in their local communities. Many pastors feel overwhelmed by the problem. It’s very difficult to stand firm on this issue if two-thirds of your parishioners have had children out of wedlock. Pastors need to support one another. Government also has a role to play in promoting healthy marriages.
5.) Young people need help in finding good marriage partners. Too many young people are unable to meet the members of the opposite sex in their local social networks who would make good marriage partners. Virtually every society helps to match young men and women for the purposes of marriage and parenthood.
6.) When we speak of these issues we should avoid the use of the term “committed relationship and use “marriage” instead. If we’re afraid to use the word, we shouldn’t be surprised if the institution disappears.
7.) As Moynihan said, “the principal objective should be to see that more children are born into intact families and remain so.” Dr. Wade Horn oversees $46 billion, part of a $2 trillion federal budget. $100 million of this is spent to fund the Healthy Marriage Initiative. This amounts to one penny spent to support marriage for every $15 we spend to support single parenthood. He suggests that we need to integrate the idea of marriage into all of the social programs that support low-income families. It’s not the amount of money that is so critical. It is recapturing the idea that marriage is fundamental to the social good, and encouraging healthy marriages is an important objective of government policy.
8.) Help should help men to become more attractive as marital partners. Job skills education and job training should be incorporated into marriage preparation programs.
9.) We can promote apprenticeship. In the last several decades is that the age at which men reach a higher earnings level has gone up and the age of sexual activity has gone down, so there is a big gap between when young people are having lots of sex and the time when they can really afford to have children. Young men are not making enough money to from families. Apprenticeship helps young people develop positive relationships with responsible who can share their wisdom and who can encourage young people to prepare for the future.
Conclusion
In 1992 there was a popular television show in which the main character, Murphy Brown, played by the actress Candace Bergen, had a child which she planned out of wedlock. On May 19, 1992 Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the show’s producers promoting out of wedlock child birth and ignoring the importance of fathers. Most liberals were enraged and attacked Quayle in the media viciously. But Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote an article in The Atlantic entitled “Dan Quayle Was Right”.[4] The popular culture is as hostile as ever to marriage and responsible parenthood. One popular show, Friends, portrays a youthful mating culture where people just exchange sex partners.
Dan Quayle was right when he criticized the popular culture and it’s attitudes toward marriage and fatherhood. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was right when he said that marriage matters and family matters. What Moynihan said about the black family now pertains to all families. Marriage is important not only as an expression of the love and affection that two people have for each other, but also because it is critical to the common good in our culture and society. The main problem behind out-of-wedlock childbearing and the decline of marriage is a matter of attitudes.
Marriage is the unfinished business of welfare reform. The new provisions of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) are a good start. For the first time, federal tax dollars are being spent to focus on helping couples form and sustain healthy marriages. This is a dramatic shift in social policy. Just ten years ago it was impolite to even use the word “marriage,” and now $100 million in the federal budget is dedicated to promoting and encouraging marriage, but much work is yet to be done. It starts with each one of us daring to challenge “politically correct” ideas that have damaged our society. The dissolution of the family has led to a lack of self esteem in men,increased alcohol and drug abuse and all their attendant problems. It has burdened women either with the guilt of an abortion or the hardships of single parenthood. Most of all, it has deprived children of a stable family consisting of a loving mother and loving father who are married each other and are ready to demonstrate unconditional love for their child. The child has a right to this love from the moment he or she is conceived in the womb. The child deserves care from both of his parents throughout their childhood and adolescence and love from both for the rest of his or her life. Most parents who make the sacrifices required of love experience that they are repaid in many ways that can never be counted.
[1]Office of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” March 1965, at http://dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm (August 2, 2006).
[2]Hillary Rodham Clinton, It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (New York: Touchstone, 1996), p. 50.
[3]Paul Offner, “Welfare Reform and Teenage Girls,” Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 86 (June 2005), pp. 306–322.
[4] Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, “Dan Quayle Was Right,” The Atlantic, April 1993.
For more information see:
‘The Collapse of Marriage and the Rise of Welfare Dependence’by Jennifer A. Marshall, Robert Lerman, Ph.D., Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Ph.D., Hon. Wade Horn, Ph.D., Robert Rector Heritage Lecture #959 August 15, 2006 (Delivered May 22, 2006) http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/hl959.cfm
'Marriage Is for White People' by Joy Jones Washington Post, March 26, 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032500029.html
‘Dan Quayle Was Right' By Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Atlantic, April 1993 http://www.franks.org/fr01243.htm
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Friday, September 01, 2006
The Beheading of John the Baptist
The image above and the article below is from the Web Gallery of Art: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.wga.hu/art/l/luini/herodias.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.wga.hu/html/l/luini/herodias.html&h=750&w=936&sz=93&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=GnhNdHh3exdXbM:&tbnh=119&tbnw=148&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dherodias%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG
LUINI, Bernardino
(b. 1480, Luino, d. 1532, Milano)
Herodias
1527-31
Tempera on panel, 51 x 58 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Until 1793 the painting was attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Then it was recognised as the work of his Lombardian follower, Luini.
The absence of biographical information on this painter makes a reconstruction of his cultural background somewhat difficult, although his airy perspective constructions would certainly suggest a link with the Venetian school.
Luini was a prolific artist of easel paintings, mostly of religious subjects, with which - as this Herodias reveals - he arrived at a type of classicising painting, rich in chiaroscural intensity, the prelude to an almost North European-style pathos.
The biblical source for the painting is Matthew 14:6-11 or Mark 6:21-8, where the daughter of Herodias danced for her stepfather, Herod, on his birthday. As a reward he promised her anything she wanted and, prompted by her mother, she chose the head of Saint John the Baptist, which she then carried to Herodias on a silver charger. The daughter subsequently became known in literature as Salome, and the theme was memorably treated in the nineteenth century by Richard Strauss and Oscar Wilde amongst others.
The painting was restored in 1977.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Good Economic News
We must take a number of issues into consideration before casting our vote. The economy is one of these important issues.
The Catholic Church is opposed to both communism and unrestricted capitalism. The Church recognizes that the economy is for people and not the other way around. In The United States we have many regulations that protect both workers and consumers. It can be argued that some of the regulations are too restrictive. Some would argue that more regulations are necessary.
When the Church condemns unrestricted capitalism, she is not condemning the American spirit of entrepreneurship. This spirit has helped many to rise out of poverty and live happy and successful lives.
Who has the best approach in fighting the war on poverty? There are many issues on which people of good will can come down on different sides, debate and disagree. People of good will can disagree about the best way to help the poor, but not whether or not we have an obligation to help the poor.
Democrats place their emphasis on higher taxes and increased government spending on programs that give direct aid to the poor. Republicans, while not neglecting government’s role to provide a safety net for the poor, tend to emphasize the role of the private sector; Churches, keeping families together, teaching personal responsibility and creating enterprise zones to fight poverty. Republicans tend to believe that families should be able to keep more of what they earn and that they are better able to decide how to spend it than the government.
This fits in very well with the Catholic principle of subsidiarity which was defined in Pope John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical Centisimus Annus in this way:
Because the dominant mainstream media tend to have a bias against Republicans, they tend to downplay good news and emphasize the bad when a Republican Administration is in power. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is constantly predicting a recession. Some day there will be a recession and he no doubt will remind us if what a prophet he was. In the meantime, the United States is experiencing a booming economy thanks at least in part to the leadership of President Bush.
First let’s look at what President Bush inherited. At the end of the Clinton Administration there was a sharp decline in the stock market. This was due to corporate scandals at companies like Enron and Tyco. High technology stocks were found to be priced far above their real value. This was the Internet bubble-meltdown. Then the attacks of September 11 also took a huge toll on the economy.
But since then the economy has recovered remarkably, despite the Iraq War and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. In mid-2003, President Bush slashed the high marginal tax rates on investment in mid-2003.
Since August of 2003, 5.5 million jobs have been created. The unemployment rate is at an historic low of 4.8%. An old Chinese proverb says that if you give a man a fish, you have fed him for the day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Isn't it better to create a strong economy that produces jobs, rather than strangle the economy with high taxes and increase government spending on anti-poverty programs which have proved to exacerbate the problem of poverty by creating dependency and breaking up families?
In Centisimus Annus Pope John Paul II, while acknowledging government's role to help the poor, strongly criticized the "Social Assistance State by saying:
Gross domestic product (GDP) measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States. GDP is considered the best measure of the country's economic condition. GDP has grown 4 percent in the first half of 2006. In fact, there have been only 6 negative GDP quarters since President Reagan’s tax cuts of 1981. Top tax rates were at 70 percent before Reagan cut them. They were at 91 percent when Democrat President John F. Kennedy cut taxes. Kennedy’s tax cuts also helped to spur economic growth in the 1960’s.
How does cutting taxes help economic growth? When individuals are allowed to keep more of the money they earn, they spend it and invest it. Businesses use this money to grow their business and hire new workers who also spend and invest. In turn, this leads to even more revenues collected in taxes. Tax revenue has grown around 14.5 percent for the second year in a row. 11.4 percent was expected. This is the biggest gain in 25 years. Total tax receipts collected in 2006 are on target to be $2.4 trillion. This is about $400 billion the amount collected in the peak year of 2000. Income-tax collections have grown largely due to the success of owner-operated business entrepreneurs and other self-employed.
There are two measures of employment in the United States. One is called the household survey. The self-employed are not always taken into account in other surveys. They tend to prefer unincorporated Subchapter S or limited-liability company partnerships and are often not counted. They are counted in the household employment survey which is at a record high.
Rising tax revenue also means that federal budget deficit is shrinking. Deficits are 30% lower than expected. The Congressional Budget Office now acknowledges that deficit projections were $100 billion too high.
Among other signs of a thriving economy are that retail sales in July were far above Wall Street’s expectations. Industrial production is up 5%. Productivity rates are high. Mortgage rates are declining. The stock market is close a five year high. Inflation also remains low. The Federal Reserve decided at its August 8 meeting to hold interest rates at 5.25%. Long term bond rates are falling. Gold prices are also falling. This is another sign of low inflation.
Growing economies in China and India have increased demand and higher prices, but finally, gas prices are falling. Higher prices have led to less gas consumption. Gas companies have also used their profits to increase production. For the first time in fifteen years, over 1000 oil wells have been drilled in the United States. Total oil exploration and development is 30 percent higher than in 2005. Unleaded gasoline futures have been dropping. Thus we can expect relief at the pump soon. Obviously we need to focus on alternatives to fossil fuels, so that we are no longer dependent on foreign counties at enmity with us.
Larry Kudlow, a recent convert to the Catholic faith, says of the current economy ”With low tax-rates, strong economic growth, and shrinking budget deficits,— it’s still the greatest story never told.
Many of the issues discussed above are issues about which people of good will can debate and disagree. We can debate over the best way to help the poor, but not about whether we have an obligation to help the poor. We can debate and disagree about how to bring legal protection to unborn children, but not whether unborn children deserve such protection.
In debating various approaches to the economy and helping the poor, no policy proposed by either of the major political parties rises to the level of the protection of the unborn. Thus if all other things were equal, if one were to agree with a particular candidate’s approach to the economy over another candidate’s position, it would not be a sufficient reason to vote for the candidate if that candidate, if your favored candidate was “pro-choice” on the issue of abortion. Since the choice involves the taking of an innocent human life.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjIxNDVlYmZhZjI4ODk3ZDMzMjViZjdhMTE3NjMwZjA=
http://author.nationalreview.com/latest/?q=MjE0OA==
The Catholic Church is opposed to both communism and unrestricted capitalism. The Church recognizes that the economy is for people and not the other way around. In The United States we have many regulations that protect both workers and consumers. It can be argued that some of the regulations are too restrictive. Some would argue that more regulations are necessary.
When the Church condemns unrestricted capitalism, she is not condemning the American spirit of entrepreneurship. This spirit has helped many to rise out of poverty and live happy and successful lives.
Who has the best approach in fighting the war on poverty? There are many issues on which people of good will can come down on different sides, debate and disagree. People of good will can disagree about the best way to help the poor, but not whether or not we have an obligation to help the poor.
Democrats place their emphasis on higher taxes and increased government spending on programs that give direct aid to the poor. Republicans, while not neglecting government’s role to provide a safety net for the poor, tend to emphasize the role of the private sector; Churches, keeping families together, teaching personal responsibility and creating enterprise zones to fight poverty. Republicans tend to believe that families should be able to keep more of what they earn and that they are better able to decide how to spend it than the government.
This fits in very well with the Catholic principle of subsidiarity which was defined in Pope John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical Centisimus Annus in this way:
... the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.
Because the dominant mainstream media tend to have a bias against Republicans, they tend to downplay good news and emphasize the bad when a Republican Administration is in power. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is constantly predicting a recession. Some day there will be a recession and he no doubt will remind us if what a prophet he was. In the meantime, the United States is experiencing a booming economy thanks at least in part to the leadership of President Bush.
First let’s look at what President Bush inherited. At the end of the Clinton Administration there was a sharp decline in the stock market. This was due to corporate scandals at companies like Enron and Tyco. High technology stocks were found to be priced far above their real value. This was the Internet bubble-meltdown. Then the attacks of September 11 also took a huge toll on the economy.
But since then the economy has recovered remarkably, despite the Iraq War and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. In mid-2003, President Bush slashed the high marginal tax rates on investment in mid-2003.
Since August of 2003, 5.5 million jobs have been created. The unemployment rate is at an historic low of 4.8%. An old Chinese proverb says that if you give a man a fish, you have fed him for the day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Isn't it better to create a strong economy that produces jobs, rather than strangle the economy with high taxes and increase government spending on anti-poverty programs which have proved to exacerbate the problem of poverty by creating dependency and breaking up families?
In Centisimus Annus Pope John Paul II, while acknowledging government's role to help the poor, strongly criticized the "Social Assistance State by saying:
...excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the "Social Assistance State." Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State.
....By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbors to those in need.
Gross domestic product (GDP) measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States. GDP is considered the best measure of the country's economic condition. GDP has grown 4 percent in the first half of 2006. In fact, there have been only 6 negative GDP quarters since President Reagan’s tax cuts of 1981. Top tax rates were at 70 percent before Reagan cut them. They were at 91 percent when Democrat President John F. Kennedy cut taxes. Kennedy’s tax cuts also helped to spur economic growth in the 1960’s.
How does cutting taxes help economic growth? When individuals are allowed to keep more of the money they earn, they spend it and invest it. Businesses use this money to grow their business and hire new workers who also spend and invest. In turn, this leads to even more revenues collected in taxes. Tax revenue has grown around 14.5 percent for the second year in a row. 11.4 percent was expected. This is the biggest gain in 25 years. Total tax receipts collected in 2006 are on target to be $2.4 trillion. This is about $400 billion the amount collected in the peak year of 2000. Income-tax collections have grown largely due to the success of owner-operated business entrepreneurs and other self-employed.
There are two measures of employment in the United States. One is called the household survey. The self-employed are not always taken into account in other surveys. They tend to prefer unincorporated Subchapter S or limited-liability company partnerships and are often not counted. They are counted in the household employment survey which is at a record high.
Rising tax revenue also means that federal budget deficit is shrinking. Deficits are 30% lower than expected. The Congressional Budget Office now acknowledges that deficit projections were $100 billion too high.
Among other signs of a thriving economy are that retail sales in July were far above Wall Street’s expectations. Industrial production is up 5%. Productivity rates are high. Mortgage rates are declining. The stock market is close a five year high. Inflation also remains low. The Federal Reserve decided at its August 8 meeting to hold interest rates at 5.25%. Long term bond rates are falling. Gold prices are also falling. This is another sign of low inflation.
Growing economies in China and India have increased demand and higher prices, but finally, gas prices are falling. Higher prices have led to less gas consumption. Gas companies have also used their profits to increase production. For the first time in fifteen years, over 1000 oil wells have been drilled in the United States. Total oil exploration and development is 30 percent higher than in 2005. Unleaded gasoline futures have been dropping. Thus we can expect relief at the pump soon. Obviously we need to focus on alternatives to fossil fuels, so that we are no longer dependent on foreign counties at enmity with us.
Larry Kudlow, a recent convert to the Catholic faith, says of the current economy ”With low tax-rates, strong economic growth, and shrinking budget deficits,— it’s still the greatest story never told.
Many of the issues discussed above are issues about which people of good will can debate and disagree. We can debate over the best way to help the poor, but not about whether we have an obligation to help the poor. We can debate and disagree about how to bring legal protection to unborn children, but not whether unborn children deserve such protection.
In debating various approaches to the economy and helping the poor, no policy proposed by either of the major political parties rises to the level of the protection of the unborn. Thus if all other things were equal, if one were to agree with a particular candidate’s approach to the economy over another candidate’s position, it would not be a sufficient reason to vote for the candidate if that candidate, if your favored candidate was “pro-choice” on the issue of abortion. Since the choice involves the taking of an innocent human life.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjIxNDVlYmZhZjI4ODk3ZDMzMjViZjdhMTE3NjMwZjA=
http://author.nationalreview.com/latest/?q=MjE0OA==
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
The Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew
This picture and the article below is from the Web of Gallery Art.
TIEPOLO, Giovanni Battista
(b. 1696, Venezia, d. 1770, Madrid)
Tiepolo was the most exuberant and influential, and arguably the greatest, painter in eighteenth-century Europe before the rise of Neo-Classicism. He revived the full glories of the Venetian Renaissance enriched with references to Rubens, Rembrandt, and the Roman Baroque. Tiepolo helped create the style of large-scale decorative programs embarked on by courts across the continent. His fame rests chiefly on his huge frescos but he should also be remembered as an extremely versatile painter, able to move freely from one art form to another and to adapt to the most disparate subjects. He was a pupil of Gregorio Lazzarini but soon surpassed him, being just 21 when he became a member of the Venetian Painters' Guild. In 1719 he married Cecilia Guardi, sister of the two painters Francesco and Gianantonio. He was attracted by the experimental work being done by Piazzetta and Sebastiano Ricci (working alongside them on the paintings in S. Stae in 1722).
The subject of the painting is the martyrdom of St Bartholomew, whose tormentors are on the point of flaying him alive. The awfulness of the scene is matched by the extremely powerful composition which places the writhing body of the saint along the diagonal between the two henchmen. The eerie contrast between light and shade makes the scene all the more vivid. The expressive gesture with which the despairing saint stretches his arm heavenward transforms the picture into a wonderful depiction of divine grace, the existence of which is already signaled by the bright light emanating from above.
Iraq War: Vatican Has Called For More Troops to Stabilze Iraq
It is widely known that the Vatican opposed the Iraq War in 2003 and the Persian Gulf War before that in 1991. What is not as widely known is that the Vatican has called on more countries to send troops to Iraq to stabilize the nation
In an interview with La Stampa on September 22, 2004 Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State said of Iraq:
"The child has been born. "It may be illegitimate, but it's here, and it must reared and educated."
Some have also given the false impression that Christianity demands we be pacificists. The Church's teaching on just war, which neither Pope John Paul II nor Pope Benedict XVI contradicted, is also not well known. Here is a link to this teaching in the Catechism stated in the context of 5th Commandment: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a5.htm
Some try to give the impression that if a person disagrees with the Vatican's position against the Iraq war, it is the same as dissenting against Catholic teaching.
In his memo to Cardinal McCarrick which was made public in July 2004, Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger in his position as the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faiith, made it clear that the Vatican's position against the Iraq War was not equivalent to the Church's teaching against abortion.
In his memo, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the following:
"3. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia."
See the complete memo at: http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/bishops/04-07ratzingerommunion.htm
At the end of this post see the words of Cardinal Camillo Ruini invoking the memory of September 11, 2001 of a clash of civilizations and his strong call for the international community to oppose organized terror with the greatest energy and determination.
Here is more on the Vatican's view of the situation in Iraq from:
http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=8460&eng=y
The follwing article was published September 29, 2004.
The Vatican Deploys its Divisions in Iraq – Under the Banner of NATO
An interview with Cardinal Sodano and an editorial in "Avvenire" invoke greater military support for Allawi's government and for the emerging Iraqi democracy, through a heavy deployment of troops from the Atlantic Alliance
by Sandro Magister
ROMA – The pope and the leaders of the Roman Church did not say it themselves, but they conveyed an unmistakable message. They are strongly in favor of a massive NATO commitment in Iraq, to support the government of Iyad Allawi and to guarantee free elections.
Speaking on their behalf, on the front page of its Sunday, September 26 edition, was the newspaper "Avvenire," which is headed by the Italian bishops' conference and by the organization's president, the pope's cardinal vicar, Camillo Ruini.
In an editorial by the newspaper's leading expert on international policy, Vittorio E. Parsi, a professor at the Catholic University of Milan, "Avvenire" reminded Europe and the West of its "duty" to assure free elections in Iraq, by reinforcing their military presence in the country through "the only body with the necessary resources: NATO."
An editorial so strongly exhortatory, printed on a Sunday on the front page of the bishops' newspaper, cannot be the result of chance. It is born from a decision made at the highest levels of the Church.
That such a decision was brewing could be guessed from a growing number of indications during the days immediately beforehand.
The first indication came on September 20. Cardinal Ruini spoke to the permanent council of the Italian bishops' conference, and repeated the duty of the Christian West to "oppose organized terror with the greatest energy and determination, without giving the slightest impression of considering their blackmail and their impositions," and at the same time, to transform into "our principal allies" the elements of the Muslim world that desire liberty and democracy.
Ruini is known to have been one of the protagonists of the apparent turnaround in Vatican policy on Iraq, in the fall of 2003: from the condemnation and rejection of war to determined support for the presence of western "peacekeeping" troops in the country.
The second indication came on Tuesday, September 21. An appeal was made in the newspaper "Il Foglio" for the Italian government to become a promoter within NATO and the European Union of a massive deployment of the troops of the Atlantic Alliance, "for the time necessary to secure the right of the Iraqis to vote and to select for the first time their parliament, their constitution, and their government."
The appeal was signed by Marta Dassù, the director of the magazine of the Aspen Institute in Italy; Giuliano Ferrara, the director of "Il Foglio"; Piero Ostellino, the former director of "Corriere della Sera," the leading Italian daily; and Vittorio E. Parsi, for "Avvenire." This last name is the most intriguing. Observers of Vatican affairs wondered to what extent, in taking this step, he was reflecting the orientation of pontifical diplomacy.
And the third indication gives an initial response to the question. On Wednesday, September 22, the New York correspondent of the newspaper "La Stampa," Paolo Mastrolilli, published an interview with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano (in the photo).
Sodano was in New York at the time for an international conference on world hunger, as a guest of the Vatican observer at the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore. In the interview, he expressed admiration for the United States and biting criticism of an excessively anti-American and secularist Europe, and also against the "wearing down" of the UN.
He was silent on the theory of preventive war. But he asked that the UN Charter recognize the right to intervene militarily in countries that trample upon human rights.
Sodano was elusive about what Cardinal Ruini calls the "global threat" of Islamic origin – as is the practice in Vatican diplomacy, which is anxious not to worsen conditions for the Christian minorities in Muslim countries. Sodano limited himself to speaking of "criminal gangs."
But he clearly defined as a "duty" the international community's support for the government of Iyad Allawi, independently of judgments about the war:
"The child has been born. It may be illegitimate, but it's here, and it must be reared and educated."
But he didn't say how to help Iraq concretely, especially in terms of the crucial passage of the future elections.
It was Vittorio E. Parsi who explained this – or, better, explained it again – in his editorial in the bishops' newspaper on Sunday, September 26. How? With "tens of thousands of soldiers" sent by NATO to complete the forces of the troops already in the field, both American and others.
Parsi expresses harsh criticism of the "laziness" of countries like France and of those who dream of rights undefended by the force of arms. But his strongest polemics are reserved for those who wish to "isolate" and "abandon" Iraq.
Vatican policy – he writes – is opposed to this. It was opposed when it came out against sanctions, which brought hunger to the people instead of isolating and overthrowing the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. And it is still opposed, when it asks, not for the withdrawal, but for the reinforcement of peacekeeping troops:
"It is no coincidence that those who authoritatively opposed both sanctions and the war now ask that the Iraqi people not be left defenseless."
Here, in its entirety, is the front page editorial from the Sunday, September 26, 2004 edition of "Avvenire":
Scenarios for Iraq. At this point, only the NATO card is left
by Vittorio E. Parsi
The situation in Iraq worsens by the day, confirming the easy predictions that the months between the appointment of the interim government headed by Allawi and the first free elections would be terrible. It must be said that the terrorists and the followers of the old regime are doing their best to bring about a plan as simple as it is outrageous: to isolate Iraq from the world, to feed a xenophobic war that may then leave them free to settle accounts in the only way they know, a brutal butcher's way.
What they want is, in fact, not "Iraq for the Iraqis," but "Iraq for the assassins," assassins above all of the Iraqi people. When the last foreigner – whether soldier or volunteer – leaves the country, the terrorists will have won, and the Iraqi people will again have lost. Thus all of Iraq will become a colossal common area for fundamentalist terrorism, for the brigands of Baath, and for the most extremist Shiite mullahs.
The international community, and the West, which objectively holds within this community the greatest share of power, culture, and responsibility, have the duty of blocking the realization of this plan.
The first necessary step in that direction is that of guaranteeing that the January elections be carried out as freely as possible. To accomplish this, it seems indispensable to identify the objectively qualified political-military instrument capable of translating these principles into action.
As difficult as the prospect may seem, and as arduous as obtaining the pledge may be, there is today only one instrument that has the necessary prerequisites: NATO.
The Atlantic Alliance, with its attitudes and counterbalances, is the multilateral institution that can assume the onus of protecting the right of the Iraqis to express their political will by voting.
Even the European countries that opposed the American decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime with a unilateral war know well that an Iraq in the hands of the worst terrorists and criminals goes against the interests of all: of the West as of the Arab-Islamic world. Thinking that the withdrawal of American troops would of itself permit the improvement of the situation, or even the reduction of concern, is pure naiveté. Moreover, the only condition that can bring about a reduction in the American presence in Iraq is the multilateralization of the crisis: including, and especially, from the military point of view.
So the West is again facing the decision of whether to marginalize Iraq or to anchor it more stably within the international community.
During the time of Saddam Hussein, for more than ten years, the disastrous decision was that of isolating him through sanctions: this brought hunger to the people and left intact the power of tyranny, a power that only an extremely controversial war was able to overthrow.
Today, in order to avoid "Islamist contagion,” some delude themselves that it may be possible to abandon Iraq behind a security barrier made of laziness and pretended indifference.
It is no coincidence that those who authoritatively opposed both sanctions and the war now ask that the Iraqi people not be left defenseless. What is at stake here is no longer the ambitious plan to export democracy through the force of arms, but allowing the force of arms to be employed to defend the right of the Iraqis to vote for their own parliament, which is the first and indispensable step to bring the country toward true autonomy, and away from the ravages of systematized violence.
* * *
And these are the salient passages of the interview with the Vatican secretary of state in "La Stampa," September 22, 2004:
Cardinal Sodano: “Why we must support Allawi”
by Paolo Mastrolilli
Q: What is your opinion on Iraq?
A: "I realize that opinions on the present situation in Iraq vary greatly because of the differing political orientations of those who nevertheless seek to examine the whole in a comprehensive view. But we should all agree on one thing: now we must help those people who live between the Tigris and the Euphrates to live in peace and to be reconciled among themselves. They have already suffered too much. Now we must help the Allawi government. In Europe, there is a discussion about the legitimacy of the new executive [in charge in Baghdad], and perhaps history's judgment on the intervention in Iraq will be severe. But we must face facts: the child has been born. It may be illegitimate, but it's here, and it must be reared and educated. Soon the government will even appoint an ambassador to the Holy See. The Holy See already has an apostolic nunzio in Baghdad, Archbishop Filoni, who has remained in Iraq throughout this difficult time. The present challenge is that of reconciliation. This is also the challenge issued by the Christians of Iraq, who remember well that it was there, in Ur of the Chaldeans, that the great adventure of the three great monotheistic religions began, with Abraham: Jews, Christians, and Muslims, who must recognize each other as children of the same omnipotent and merciful God."
Q: But the kidnappings and violence continue.
A: "This is often a matter of criminal gangs that are taking advantage of the lack of authority. This also happened to us, in Italy, at the end of the Second World War. I remember when I was a young man in Asti, and one day I heard shouting in the street. I came out, and I saw one man beating another. I came over to separate them, and the man being beaten told me that he had been a fascist, but had never touched his aggressor. Another young man had worse luck, and was found dead beneath a tree. Let's be clear: the nazis committed terrible atrocities. But how many crimes were committed in Italy after the war, for example in the Emilia Romagna region, because of the lack of authority! And yet our country is a cradle of civilization. Something similar is now happening in Iraq, where there is also an important political factor."
Q: What would that be?
A: "The terrorists know that a foothold of democracy in Baghdad would cause difficulty for the neighboring countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, where one can still be imprisoned for the possession of a crucifix." [...]
Q: President Bush has spoken to the UN in a "glass palace" armored against the threat of terrorism.
A: "New York has seemed to me like a city under siege, but self-defense is a primary obligation. This anti-Americanism is easy in Europe, but someone who has been burned once has different priorities. Naturally, terrorism cannot be defeated solely through security measures and military instruments, but the people must be protected,"
Q: In the United States, faith and values play a central role.
A: "It's true. In the United States, religious values are deeply held. This is to the credit of this great country where a model of society has been created that other peoples should also reflect. Frequently, in Europe, the proper secularism of the state has degenerated into a militant secularism that erases the memory of the historical heritage of our continent." […]
Q: There is an intense debate in progress at the UN about reform. What is the position of the Holy See?
A: "Any human organization can be improved. The Holy See has always supported this institution, notwithstanding its exhaustion with the passage of time. John Paul II has often expressed hope that it will really become 'a family of nations', elevating itself from a purely administrative level. […] On the part of the Holy See, there is hope that a new principle that a new principle will be introduced into the Charter of the United Nations; that is, the possibility, even the duty, of 'humanitarian intervention' in extreme situations in which human rights are trampled upon within a country."
__________
Links to the newspapers in which appeared Parsi's editorial, the interview with Sodano, and the appeal for sending NATO troops to Iraq:
> Avvenire
> La Stampa
> Il Foglio
__________
The full text of the appeal from Parsi, Dassù, Ferrara, and Ostellino:
> “La proposta è questa: un solido contingente della NATO...”
__________
The salient passages, on Iraq and the Islamist "global menace," from the relation by Cardinal Camillo Ruini to the permanent council of the Italian bishops' conference on September 20, 2004:
"Three years after September 11, 2001, we must unfortunately recognize the fact that the foreshadowings and intentions of destruction contained in that terrible event continue to be played out in the world. In recent months, they have found ever more frequent and radical expression. Iraq has been, for some time now, the principal hotbed of destabilization. […] But Iraq is certainly not the only area and the sole motive of conflict. […] Faced with this global menace, which was unforeseen until just a few years ago, we are all put to the test: as individual peoples, as an international community, and even specifically as Christians. […] In effect, the international community must oppose organized terror with the greatest energy and determination, without giving even the impression of considering their blackmail and impositions. At the same time, it is called to work, insofar as possible and on different levels, to remove the causes of terrorism – cultural, moral, economic, and political – and to reclaim its areas of cultivation, which does not mean in any way giving terrorism itself alibis or justifications. In this arduous but necessary effort, our principal allies must be all those persons and groups that belong to Islam but do not acknowledge the ideology of the clash of civilizations, much less the strategy of terror."
__________
On this website, on the apparent turnaround of Vatican policy in the fall of 2003:
> Iraq: The Church Goes on a Mission of Peace (28.11.2003)
Also on this site, a selection of articles on Iraq and the Muslim world:
> Focus on ISLAM
__________
English translation by Matthew Sherry: > traduttore@hotmail.com
Go to the home page of > www.chiesa.espressonline.it/english, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.
Sandro Magister’s e-mail address is s.magister@espressoedit.it
In an interview with La Stampa on September 22, 2004 Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State said of Iraq:
"The child has been born. "It may be illegitimate, but it's here, and it must reared and educated."
Some have also given the false impression that Christianity demands we be pacificists. The Church's teaching on just war, which neither Pope John Paul II nor Pope Benedict XVI contradicted, is also not well known. Here is a link to this teaching in the Catechism stated in the context of 5th Commandment: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a5.htm
Some try to give the impression that if a person disagrees with the Vatican's position against the Iraq war, it is the same as dissenting against Catholic teaching.
In his memo to Cardinal McCarrick which was made public in July 2004, Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger in his position as the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faiith, made it clear that the Vatican's position against the Iraq War was not equivalent to the Church's teaching against abortion.
In his memo, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the following:
"3. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia."
See the complete memo at: http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/bishops/04-07ratzingerommunion.htm
At the end of this post see the words of Cardinal Camillo Ruini invoking the memory of September 11, 2001 of a clash of civilizations and his strong call for the international community to oppose organized terror with the greatest energy and determination.
Here is more on the Vatican's view of the situation in Iraq from:
http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=8460&eng=y
The follwing article was published September 29, 2004.
The Vatican Deploys its Divisions in Iraq – Under the Banner of NATO
An interview with Cardinal Sodano and an editorial in "Avvenire" invoke greater military support for Allawi's government and for the emerging Iraqi democracy, through a heavy deployment of troops from the Atlantic Alliance
by Sandro Magister
ROMA – The pope and the leaders of the Roman Church did not say it themselves, but they conveyed an unmistakable message. They are strongly in favor of a massive NATO commitment in Iraq, to support the government of Iyad Allawi and to guarantee free elections.
Speaking on their behalf, on the front page of its Sunday, September 26 edition, was the newspaper "Avvenire," which is headed by the Italian bishops' conference and by the organization's president, the pope's cardinal vicar, Camillo Ruini.
In an editorial by the newspaper's leading expert on international policy, Vittorio E. Parsi, a professor at the Catholic University of Milan, "Avvenire" reminded Europe and the West of its "duty" to assure free elections in Iraq, by reinforcing their military presence in the country through "the only body with the necessary resources: NATO."
An editorial so strongly exhortatory, printed on a Sunday on the front page of the bishops' newspaper, cannot be the result of chance. It is born from a decision made at the highest levels of the Church.
That such a decision was brewing could be guessed from a growing number of indications during the days immediately beforehand.
The first indication came on September 20. Cardinal Ruini spoke to the permanent council of the Italian bishops' conference, and repeated the duty of the Christian West to "oppose organized terror with the greatest energy and determination, without giving the slightest impression of considering their blackmail and their impositions," and at the same time, to transform into "our principal allies" the elements of the Muslim world that desire liberty and democracy.
Ruini is known to have been one of the protagonists of the apparent turnaround in Vatican policy on Iraq, in the fall of 2003: from the condemnation and rejection of war to determined support for the presence of western "peacekeeping" troops in the country.
The second indication came on Tuesday, September 21. An appeal was made in the newspaper "Il Foglio" for the Italian government to become a promoter within NATO and the European Union of a massive deployment of the troops of the Atlantic Alliance, "for the time necessary to secure the right of the Iraqis to vote and to select for the first time their parliament, their constitution, and their government."
The appeal was signed by Marta Dassù, the director of the magazine of the Aspen Institute in Italy; Giuliano Ferrara, the director of "Il Foglio"; Piero Ostellino, the former director of "Corriere della Sera," the leading Italian daily; and Vittorio E. Parsi, for "Avvenire." This last name is the most intriguing. Observers of Vatican affairs wondered to what extent, in taking this step, he was reflecting the orientation of pontifical diplomacy.
And the third indication gives an initial response to the question. On Wednesday, September 22, the New York correspondent of the newspaper "La Stampa," Paolo Mastrolilli, published an interview with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano (in the photo).
Sodano was in New York at the time for an international conference on world hunger, as a guest of the Vatican observer at the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore. In the interview, he expressed admiration for the United States and biting criticism of an excessively anti-American and secularist Europe, and also against the "wearing down" of the UN.
He was silent on the theory of preventive war. But he asked that the UN Charter recognize the right to intervene militarily in countries that trample upon human rights.
Sodano was elusive about what Cardinal Ruini calls the "global threat" of Islamic origin – as is the practice in Vatican diplomacy, which is anxious not to worsen conditions for the Christian minorities in Muslim countries. Sodano limited himself to speaking of "criminal gangs."
But he clearly defined as a "duty" the international community's support for the government of Iyad Allawi, independently of judgments about the war:
"The child has been born. It may be illegitimate, but it's here, and it must be reared and educated."
But he didn't say how to help Iraq concretely, especially in terms of the crucial passage of the future elections.
It was Vittorio E. Parsi who explained this – or, better, explained it again – in his editorial in the bishops' newspaper on Sunday, September 26. How? With "tens of thousands of soldiers" sent by NATO to complete the forces of the troops already in the field, both American and others.
Parsi expresses harsh criticism of the "laziness" of countries like France and of those who dream of rights undefended by the force of arms. But his strongest polemics are reserved for those who wish to "isolate" and "abandon" Iraq.
Vatican policy – he writes – is opposed to this. It was opposed when it came out against sanctions, which brought hunger to the people instead of isolating and overthrowing the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. And it is still opposed, when it asks, not for the withdrawal, but for the reinforcement of peacekeeping troops:
"It is no coincidence that those who authoritatively opposed both sanctions and the war now ask that the Iraqi people not be left defenseless."
Here, in its entirety, is the front page editorial from the Sunday, September 26, 2004 edition of "Avvenire":
Scenarios for Iraq. At this point, only the NATO card is left
by Vittorio E. Parsi
The situation in Iraq worsens by the day, confirming the easy predictions that the months between the appointment of the interim government headed by Allawi and the first free elections would be terrible. It must be said that the terrorists and the followers of the old regime are doing their best to bring about a plan as simple as it is outrageous: to isolate Iraq from the world, to feed a xenophobic war that may then leave them free to settle accounts in the only way they know, a brutal butcher's way.
What they want is, in fact, not "Iraq for the Iraqis," but "Iraq for the assassins," assassins above all of the Iraqi people. When the last foreigner – whether soldier or volunteer – leaves the country, the terrorists will have won, and the Iraqi people will again have lost. Thus all of Iraq will become a colossal common area for fundamentalist terrorism, for the brigands of Baath, and for the most extremist Shiite mullahs.
The international community, and the West, which objectively holds within this community the greatest share of power, culture, and responsibility, have the duty of blocking the realization of this plan.
The first necessary step in that direction is that of guaranteeing that the January elections be carried out as freely as possible. To accomplish this, it seems indispensable to identify the objectively qualified political-military instrument capable of translating these principles into action.
As difficult as the prospect may seem, and as arduous as obtaining the pledge may be, there is today only one instrument that has the necessary prerequisites: NATO.
The Atlantic Alliance, with its attitudes and counterbalances, is the multilateral institution that can assume the onus of protecting the right of the Iraqis to express their political will by voting.
Even the European countries that opposed the American decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime with a unilateral war know well that an Iraq in the hands of the worst terrorists and criminals goes against the interests of all: of the West as of the Arab-Islamic world. Thinking that the withdrawal of American troops would of itself permit the improvement of the situation, or even the reduction of concern, is pure naiveté. Moreover, the only condition that can bring about a reduction in the American presence in Iraq is the multilateralization of the crisis: including, and especially, from the military point of view.
So the West is again facing the decision of whether to marginalize Iraq or to anchor it more stably within the international community.
During the time of Saddam Hussein, for more than ten years, the disastrous decision was that of isolating him through sanctions: this brought hunger to the people and left intact the power of tyranny, a power that only an extremely controversial war was able to overthrow.
Today, in order to avoid "Islamist contagion,” some delude themselves that it may be possible to abandon Iraq behind a security barrier made of laziness and pretended indifference.
It is no coincidence that those who authoritatively opposed both sanctions and the war now ask that the Iraqi people not be left defenseless. What is at stake here is no longer the ambitious plan to export democracy through the force of arms, but allowing the force of arms to be employed to defend the right of the Iraqis to vote for their own parliament, which is the first and indispensable step to bring the country toward true autonomy, and away from the ravages of systematized violence.
* * *
And these are the salient passages of the interview with the Vatican secretary of state in "La Stampa," September 22, 2004:
Cardinal Sodano: “Why we must support Allawi”
by Paolo Mastrolilli
Q: What is your opinion on Iraq?
A: "I realize that opinions on the present situation in Iraq vary greatly because of the differing political orientations of those who nevertheless seek to examine the whole in a comprehensive view. But we should all agree on one thing: now we must help those people who live between the Tigris and the Euphrates to live in peace and to be reconciled among themselves. They have already suffered too much. Now we must help the Allawi government. In Europe, there is a discussion about the legitimacy of the new executive [in charge in Baghdad], and perhaps history's judgment on the intervention in Iraq will be severe. But we must face facts: the child has been born. It may be illegitimate, but it's here, and it must be reared and educated. Soon the government will even appoint an ambassador to the Holy See. The Holy See already has an apostolic nunzio in Baghdad, Archbishop Filoni, who has remained in Iraq throughout this difficult time. The present challenge is that of reconciliation. This is also the challenge issued by the Christians of Iraq, who remember well that it was there, in Ur of the Chaldeans, that the great adventure of the three great monotheistic religions began, with Abraham: Jews, Christians, and Muslims, who must recognize each other as children of the same omnipotent and merciful God."
Q: But the kidnappings and violence continue.
A: "This is often a matter of criminal gangs that are taking advantage of the lack of authority. This also happened to us, in Italy, at the end of the Second World War. I remember when I was a young man in Asti, and one day I heard shouting in the street. I came out, and I saw one man beating another. I came over to separate them, and the man being beaten told me that he had been a fascist, but had never touched his aggressor. Another young man had worse luck, and was found dead beneath a tree. Let's be clear: the nazis committed terrible atrocities. But how many crimes were committed in Italy after the war, for example in the Emilia Romagna region, because of the lack of authority! And yet our country is a cradle of civilization. Something similar is now happening in Iraq, where there is also an important political factor."
Q: What would that be?
A: "The terrorists know that a foothold of democracy in Baghdad would cause difficulty for the neighboring countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, where one can still be imprisoned for the possession of a crucifix." [...]
Q: President Bush has spoken to the UN in a "glass palace" armored against the threat of terrorism.
A: "New York has seemed to me like a city under siege, but self-defense is a primary obligation. This anti-Americanism is easy in Europe, but someone who has been burned once has different priorities. Naturally, terrorism cannot be defeated solely through security measures and military instruments, but the people must be protected,"
Q: In the United States, faith and values play a central role.
A: "It's true. In the United States, religious values are deeply held. This is to the credit of this great country where a model of society has been created that other peoples should also reflect. Frequently, in Europe, the proper secularism of the state has degenerated into a militant secularism that erases the memory of the historical heritage of our continent." […]
Q: There is an intense debate in progress at the UN about reform. What is the position of the Holy See?
A: "Any human organization can be improved. The Holy See has always supported this institution, notwithstanding its exhaustion with the passage of time. John Paul II has often expressed hope that it will really become 'a family of nations', elevating itself from a purely administrative level. […] On the part of the Holy See, there is hope that a new principle that a new principle will be introduced into the Charter of the United Nations; that is, the possibility, even the duty, of 'humanitarian intervention' in extreme situations in which human rights are trampled upon within a country."
__________
Links to the newspapers in which appeared Parsi's editorial, the interview with Sodano, and the appeal for sending NATO troops to Iraq:
> Avvenire
> La Stampa
> Il Foglio
__________
The full text of the appeal from Parsi, Dassù, Ferrara, and Ostellino:
> “La proposta è questa: un solido contingente della NATO...”
__________
The salient passages, on Iraq and the Islamist "global menace," from the relation by Cardinal Camillo Ruini to the permanent council of the Italian bishops' conference on September 20, 2004:
"Three years after September 11, 2001, we must unfortunately recognize the fact that the foreshadowings and intentions of destruction contained in that terrible event continue to be played out in the world. In recent months, they have found ever more frequent and radical expression. Iraq has been, for some time now, the principal hotbed of destabilization. […] But Iraq is certainly not the only area and the sole motive of conflict. […] Faced with this global menace, which was unforeseen until just a few years ago, we are all put to the test: as individual peoples, as an international community, and even specifically as Christians. […] In effect, the international community must oppose organized terror with the greatest energy and determination, without giving even the impression of considering their blackmail and impositions. At the same time, it is called to work, insofar as possible and on different levels, to remove the causes of terrorism – cultural, moral, economic, and political – and to reclaim its areas of cultivation, which does not mean in any way giving terrorism itself alibis or justifications. In this arduous but necessary effort, our principal allies must be all those persons and groups that belong to Islam but do not acknowledge the ideology of the clash of civilizations, much less the strategy of terror."
__________
On this website, on the apparent turnaround of Vatican policy in the fall of 2003:
> Iraq: The Church Goes on a Mission of Peace (28.11.2003)
Also on this site, a selection of articles on Iraq and the Muslim world:
> Focus on ISLAM
__________
English translation by Matthew Sherry: > traduttore@hotmail.com
Go to the home page of > www.chiesa.espressonline.it/english, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.
Sandro Magister’s e-mail address is s.magister@espressoedit.it
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
August 22 The Queenship of Mary
The following is from: http://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/marye6.htm
Ad caeli Reginam
Encyclical of Pope Pius XII on proclaiming the Queenship Of Mary, 11 October 1954.
Excerpts from sections 1-40.
From the earliest ages of the Catholic Church a Christian people, whether in time of triumph or more especially in time of crisis, has addressed prayers of petition and hymns of praise and veneration to the Queen of Heaven. And never has that hope wavered which they placed in the Mother of the Divine King, Jesus Christ; nor has that faith ever failed by which we are taught that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, reigns with a mother's solicitude over the entire world, just as she is crowned in heavenly blessedness with the glory of a Queen.
From early times Christians have believed, and not without reason, that she of whom was born the Son of the Most High received privileges of grace above all other beings created by God. He "will reign in the house of Jacob forever,"[5] "the Prince of Peace,"[6] the "King of Kings and Lord of Lords."[7] And when Christians reflected upon the intimate connection that obtains between a mother and a son, they readily acknowledged the supreme royal dignity of the Mother of God.
Hence it is not surprising that the early writers of the Church called Mary "the Mother of the King" and "the Mother of the Lord," basing their stand on the words of St. Gabriel the archangel, who foretold that the Son of Mary would reign forever,[8] and on the words of Elizabeth who greeted her with reverence and called her "the Mother of my Lord."[9] Thereby they clearly signified that she derived a certain eminence and exalted station from the royal dignity of her Son.
So it is that St. Ephrem, burning with poetic inspiration, represents her as speaking in this way: "Let Heaven sustain me in its embrace, because I am honored above it. For heaven was not Thy mother, but Thou hast made it Thy throne. How much more honorable and venerable than the throne of a king is his mother."[10] And in another place he thus prays to her: ". . . Majestic and Heavenly Maid, Lady, Queen, protect and keep me under your wing lest Satan the sower of destruction glory over me, lest my wicked foe be victorious against me."[11]
She is called by St. John Damascene: "Queen, ruler, and lady,"[23] and also "the Queen of every creature."[24] Another ancient writer of the Eastern Church calls her "favored Queen," "the perpetual Queen beside the King, her son," whose "snow-white brow is crowned with a golden diadem."[25]
As We have already mentioned, Venerable Brothers, according to ancient tradition and the sacred liturgy the main principle on which the royal dignity of Mary rests is without doubt her Divine Motherhood.
But the Blessed Virgin Mary should be called Queen, not only because of her Divine Motherhood, but also because God has willed her to have an exceptional role in the work of our eternal salvation. "What more joyful, what sweeter thought can we have"--as Our Predecessor of happy memory, Pius XI wrote --"than that Christ is our King not only by natural right, but also by an acquired right: that which He won by the redemption? Would that all men, now forgetful of how much we cost Our Savior, might recall to mind the words, 'You were redeemed, not with gold or silver which perishes, . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb spotless and undefiled.[43] We belong not to ourselves now, since Christ has bought us 'at a great price'."[44]/[45]
Now, in the accomplishing of this work of redemption, the Blessed Virgin Mary was most closely associated with Christ; and so it is fitting to sing in the sacred liturgy: "Near the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ there stood, sorrowful, the Blessed Mary, Queen of Heaven and Queen of the World."[46] Hence, as the devout disciple of St. Anselm (Eadmer, ed.) wrote in the Middle Ages: "just as . . . God, by making all through His power, is Father and Lord of all, so the blessed Mary, by repairing all through her merits, is Mother and Queen of all; for God is the Lord of all things, because by His command He establishes each of them in its own nature, and Mary is the Queen of all things, because she restores each to its original dignity through the grace which she merited.[47]
From these considerations, the proof develops on these lines: if Mary, in taking an active part in the work of salvation, was, by God's design, associated with Jesus Christ, the source of salvation itself, in a manner comparable to that in which Eve was associated with Adam, the source of death, so that it may be stated that the work of our salvation was accomplished by a kind of "recapitulation,"[49] in which a virgin was instrumental in the salvation of the human race, just as a virgin had been closely associated with its death; if, moreover, it can likewise be stated that this glorious Lady had been chosen Mother of Christ "in order that she might become a partner in the redemption of the human race";[50] and if, in truth, "it was she who, free of the stain of actual and original sin, and ever most closely bound to her Son, on Golgotha offered that Son to the Eternal Father together with the complete sacrifice of her maternal rights and maternal love, like a new Eve, for all the sons of Adam, stained as they were by his lamentable fall,"[51] then it may be legitimately concluded that as Christ, the new Adam, must be called a King not merely because He is Son of God, but also because He is our Redeemer, so, analogously, the Most Blessed Virgin is queen not only because she is Mother of God, but also because, as the new Eve, she was associated with the new Adam.
Certainly, in the full and strict meaning of the term, only Jesus Christ, the God-Man, is King; but Mary, too, as Mother of the divine Christ, as His associate in the redemption, in his struggle with His enemies and His final victory over them, has a share, though in a limited and analogous way, in His royal dignity. For from her union with Christ she attains a radiant eminence transcending that of any other creature; from her union with Christ she receives the royal right to dispose of the treasures of the Divine Redeemer's Kingdom; from her union with Christ finally is derived the inexhaustible efficacy of her maternal intercession before the Son and His Father.
Hence it cannot be doubted that Mary most Holy is far above all other creatures in dignity, and after her Son possesses primacy over all. "You have surpassed every creature," sings St. Sophronius. "What can be more sublime than your joy, O Virgin Mother? What more noble than this grace, which you alone have received from God"?[52] To this St. Germanus adds: "Your honor and dignity surpass the whole of creation; your greatness places you above the angels."[53] And St. John Damascene goes so far as to say: "Limitless is the difference between God's servants and His Mother."[54]
Notes
5. Luc. 1, 32.
6. Isai. IX, 6.
7. Apoc. XIX, 16.
8. Cf. Luc. 1, 32, 33.
9. Luc. 1, 43.
10. S. Ephraem, Hymni de B Maria, ed. Th. J. Lamy, t. II, Mechliniae, 1886, hymn. XIX, p. 624.
11. Idem, Oratio ad Ssmam Dei Matrem; Opera omnia, Ed. Assemani, t. III (graece), Romae, 1747, pag. 546.
23. S. Ioannes Damascenus, Homilia I in Dormitionem B.M.V. : P.G. XCVI, 719 A.
24. Id., De fide orthodoxa, I, IV, c. 14: PG XLIV, 1158 B.
25. De laudibus Mariae (inter opera Venantii Fortunati): PL LXXXVIII, 282 B et 283 A.
43. I Petr. 1, 18, 19.
44. I Cor. Vl, 20.
45. Pius XI, litt. enc. Quas primas: AAS XVII, 1925, p. 599.
46. Festum septem dolorum B. Mariae Virg., Tractus.
47. Eadmerus, De excellentia Virginis Mariae, c. 11: PL CLIX, 508 A B.
49. S. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. , V, 19, 1: PG VII, 1175 B.
50. Pius XI, epist. Auspicatus profecto: AAS XXV, 1933, p. 80.
51. Pius XII, litt. enc. Mystici Corporis: AAS XXXV, 1943, p. 247.
52. S. Sophronius, In annuntianone Beatae Mariae Virginis: PG LXXXVII, 3238 D; 3242 A.
53. S. Germanus, Hom. II in dormitione Beatae Mariae Virginis: PG XCVIII, 354 B.
54. S. Ioannes Damascenus, Hom. I in Dormitionem Beatae Mariae Virginis: PG XCVI, 715 A.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from Pope Pius XII's encyclical letter on proclaiming the Queenship of Mary, Ad caeli Reginam, 11 October 1954
View the complete text of Ad caeli Reginam from the EWTN Online Services ftp site.
Electronic text (c) Copyright EWTN 1996. All rights reserved.
Ad caeli Reginam
Encyclical of Pope Pius XII on proclaiming the Queenship Of Mary, 11 October 1954.
Excerpts from sections 1-40.
From the earliest ages of the Catholic Church a Christian people, whether in time of triumph or more especially in time of crisis, has addressed prayers of petition and hymns of praise and veneration to the Queen of Heaven. And never has that hope wavered which they placed in the Mother of the Divine King, Jesus Christ; nor has that faith ever failed by which we are taught that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, reigns with a mother's solicitude over the entire world, just as she is crowned in heavenly blessedness with the glory of a Queen.
From early times Christians have believed, and not without reason, that she of whom was born the Son of the Most High received privileges of grace above all other beings created by God. He "will reign in the house of Jacob forever,"[5] "the Prince of Peace,"[6] the "King of Kings and Lord of Lords."[7] And when Christians reflected upon the intimate connection that obtains between a mother and a son, they readily acknowledged the supreme royal dignity of the Mother of God.
Hence it is not surprising that the early writers of the Church called Mary "the Mother of the King" and "the Mother of the Lord," basing their stand on the words of St. Gabriel the archangel, who foretold that the Son of Mary would reign forever,[8] and on the words of Elizabeth who greeted her with reverence and called her "the Mother of my Lord."[9] Thereby they clearly signified that she derived a certain eminence and exalted station from the royal dignity of her Son.
So it is that St. Ephrem, burning with poetic inspiration, represents her as speaking in this way: "Let Heaven sustain me in its embrace, because I am honored above it. For heaven was not Thy mother, but Thou hast made it Thy throne. How much more honorable and venerable than the throne of a king is his mother."[10] And in another place he thus prays to her: ". . . Majestic and Heavenly Maid, Lady, Queen, protect and keep me under your wing lest Satan the sower of destruction glory over me, lest my wicked foe be victorious against me."[11]
She is called by St. John Damascene: "Queen, ruler, and lady,"[23] and also "the Queen of every creature."[24] Another ancient writer of the Eastern Church calls her "favored Queen," "the perpetual Queen beside the King, her son," whose "snow-white brow is crowned with a golden diadem."[25]
As We have already mentioned, Venerable Brothers, according to ancient tradition and the sacred liturgy the main principle on which the royal dignity of Mary rests is without doubt her Divine Motherhood.
But the Blessed Virgin Mary should be called Queen, not only because of her Divine Motherhood, but also because God has willed her to have an exceptional role in the work of our eternal salvation. "What more joyful, what sweeter thought can we have"--as Our Predecessor of happy memory, Pius XI wrote --"than that Christ is our King not only by natural right, but also by an acquired right: that which He won by the redemption? Would that all men, now forgetful of how much we cost Our Savior, might recall to mind the words, 'You were redeemed, not with gold or silver which perishes, . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb spotless and undefiled.[43] We belong not to ourselves now, since Christ has bought us 'at a great price'."[44]/[45]
Now, in the accomplishing of this work of redemption, the Blessed Virgin Mary was most closely associated with Christ; and so it is fitting to sing in the sacred liturgy: "Near the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ there stood, sorrowful, the Blessed Mary, Queen of Heaven and Queen of the World."[46] Hence, as the devout disciple of St. Anselm (Eadmer, ed.) wrote in the Middle Ages: "just as . . . God, by making all through His power, is Father and Lord of all, so the blessed Mary, by repairing all through her merits, is Mother and Queen of all; for God is the Lord of all things, because by His command He establishes each of them in its own nature, and Mary is the Queen of all things, because she restores each to its original dignity through the grace which she merited.[47]
From these considerations, the proof develops on these lines: if Mary, in taking an active part in the work of salvation, was, by God's design, associated with Jesus Christ, the source of salvation itself, in a manner comparable to that in which Eve was associated with Adam, the source of death, so that it may be stated that the work of our salvation was accomplished by a kind of "recapitulation,"[49] in which a virgin was instrumental in the salvation of the human race, just as a virgin had been closely associated with its death; if, moreover, it can likewise be stated that this glorious Lady had been chosen Mother of Christ "in order that she might become a partner in the redemption of the human race";[50] and if, in truth, "it was she who, free of the stain of actual and original sin, and ever most closely bound to her Son, on Golgotha offered that Son to the Eternal Father together with the complete sacrifice of her maternal rights and maternal love, like a new Eve, for all the sons of Adam, stained as they were by his lamentable fall,"[51] then it may be legitimately concluded that as Christ, the new Adam, must be called a King not merely because He is Son of God, but also because He is our Redeemer, so, analogously, the Most Blessed Virgin is queen not only because she is Mother of God, but also because, as the new Eve, she was associated with the new Adam.
Certainly, in the full and strict meaning of the term, only Jesus Christ, the God-Man, is King; but Mary, too, as Mother of the divine Christ, as His associate in the redemption, in his struggle with His enemies and His final victory over them, has a share, though in a limited and analogous way, in His royal dignity. For from her union with Christ she attains a radiant eminence transcending that of any other creature; from her union with Christ she receives the royal right to dispose of the treasures of the Divine Redeemer's Kingdom; from her union with Christ finally is derived the inexhaustible efficacy of her maternal intercession before the Son and His Father.
Hence it cannot be doubted that Mary most Holy is far above all other creatures in dignity, and after her Son possesses primacy over all. "You have surpassed every creature," sings St. Sophronius. "What can be more sublime than your joy, O Virgin Mother? What more noble than this grace, which you alone have received from God"?[52] To this St. Germanus adds: "Your honor and dignity surpass the whole of creation; your greatness places you above the angels."[53] And St. John Damascene goes so far as to say: "Limitless is the difference between God's servants and His Mother."[54]
Notes
5. Luc. 1, 32.
6. Isai. IX, 6.
7. Apoc. XIX, 16.
8. Cf. Luc. 1, 32, 33.
9. Luc. 1, 43.
10. S. Ephraem, Hymni de B Maria, ed. Th. J. Lamy, t. II, Mechliniae, 1886, hymn. XIX, p. 624.
11. Idem, Oratio ad Ssmam Dei Matrem; Opera omnia, Ed. Assemani, t. III (graece), Romae, 1747, pag. 546.
23. S. Ioannes Damascenus, Homilia I in Dormitionem B.M.V. : P.G. XCVI, 719 A.
24. Id., De fide orthodoxa, I, IV, c. 14: PG XLIV, 1158 B.
25. De laudibus Mariae (inter opera Venantii Fortunati): PL LXXXVIII, 282 B et 283 A.
43. I Petr. 1, 18, 19.
44. I Cor. Vl, 20.
45. Pius XI, litt. enc. Quas primas: AAS XVII, 1925, p. 599.
46. Festum septem dolorum B. Mariae Virg., Tractus.
47. Eadmerus, De excellentia Virginis Mariae, c. 11: PL CLIX, 508 A B.
49. S. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. , V, 19, 1: PG VII, 1175 B.
50. Pius XI, epist. Auspicatus profecto: AAS XXV, 1933, p. 80.
51. Pius XII, litt. enc. Mystici Corporis: AAS XXXV, 1943, p. 247.
52. S. Sophronius, In annuntianone Beatae Mariae Virginis: PG LXXXVII, 3238 D; 3242 A.
53. S. Germanus, Hom. II in dormitione Beatae Mariae Virginis: PG XCVIII, 354 B.
54. S. Ioannes Damascenus, Hom. I in Dormitionem Beatae Mariae Virginis: PG XCVI, 715 A.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from Pope Pius XII's encyclical letter on proclaiming the Queenship of Mary, Ad caeli Reginam, 11 October 1954
View the complete text of Ad caeli Reginam from the EWTN Online Services ftp site.
Electronic text (c) Copyright EWTN 1996. All rights reserved.
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