‘Faithful dissent’? Catholic school board sponsors lecture on how to oppose Church moral teachings | LifeSiteNews.com

The following excerpts are from LifeSiteNews.com:

• An Ontario Catholic school board sponsored a lecture last week focused on how Catholic schools can “value … faithful dissent” as a way of opposing Catholic teaching on “ordination, homosexuality, and contraception.”
• The Waterloo Catholic District School Board sponsored Graham McDonough, PhD, to speak at St. Jerome’s University (SJU) Friday night as part of the University’s lecture series on “Catholic Experience.”
• “Catholic schools often find themselves dealing with disagreements with Church teaching on topics such as ordination, homosexuality, and contraception as well as with complaints that schools are not properly teaching doctrine,” reads a description of the lecture, titled “Faithful Disagreement: an opportunity for rediscovery in Catholic education.”
• "This lecture proposes that Catholic schools can do more to include and nurture internal disagreement as a powerful opportunity to embrace intellectual diversity, learn the value of faithful dissent and enable greater participation in the Church and the world.”
• Jack Fonseca of Campaign Life Catholics called it “diabolical” to have a Catholic school board sponsor a lecture on dissent.
• “This is all a charade,” he said. “The description of the lecture seems to call for outright revolt against teachings that constitute unchangeable Catholic doctrine.”

Read more by clicking below:

‘Faithful dissent’? Catholic school board sponsors lecture on how to oppose Church moral teachings | LifeSiteNews.com

Against all the odds, abortion is losing at the UN | LifeSiteNews.com

The following excerpts are from LifeSiteNews.com (emphases are mine):

• Pro-abortion forces have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours in the past twenty years and they have not advanced their agenda even a single syllable past what they got at the Cairo Conference in 1994.
• Let that sink if for a moment, because it is something that haunts the days and nights of the UN Population Fund and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. They have dedicated a significant portion of their lives to establish an international right to abortion and all they have achieved is vague language on reproductive health and rights that most countries soundly reject as having anything to do with abortion. They are no nearer to an international right to abortion than they were when they began.
• What’s more, they have even begun to see their slight gains fade. Two years ago the UN hosted the 20-year review of the Rio Conference on the environment. Delegates rejected language related to reproductive rights. Hillary Clinton denounced the outcome document as did many other pro-abortion figures including Nafis Sadik, former head of the UN Population Fund.
• The other hot-button issue at the UN in recent years has been the attempt to make “sexual orientation and gender identity” new categories of non-discrimination in international law. Delegations have opposed this not because they hate gays but because they know that gays are already protected in international law and that these efforts are really about advancing things like gay marriage and gay adoption, things that most of the world rejects.

Read more by clicking below:
Against all the odds, abortion is losing at the UN | LifeSiteNews.com

Sen. Ted Cruz: Gay ‘marriage’ could lead to Christian beliefs being punished as ‘hate speech’ | LifeSiteNews.com

The following excerpts are from LifeSiteNews.com:

• In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he believes the legalization of same-sex “marriage” may lead to those who express religious objections to homosexuality being prosecuted for hate speech.
• “If you look at other nations that have gone down the road towards gay marriage, that’s the next step of where it gets enforced,” Cruz told CBN host David Brody. “It gets enforced against Christian pastors who decline to perform gay marriages, who speak out and preach biblical truths on marriage, that has been defined elsewhere as hate speech, as inconsistent with the enlightened view of government.”
• In Canada, where gay ‘marriage’ was legalized in 2005, Christian pastors, public officials, educators and business owners have all faced heavy fines and lengthy court battles after speaking critically of the homosexual lifestyle. In one case a pastor was fined $7000 and ordered never again to speak publicly about the issue of homosexuality after he wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper criticizing the homosexual agenda in schools.

Read more by clicking below:

Sen. Ted Cruz: Gay ‘marriage’ could lead to Christian beliefs being punished as ‘hate speech’ | LifeSiteNews.com

Homosexuality an area of ‘special protection’ to UK govt’, police: UK barrister | LifeSiteNews.com

The following excerpts are from LifeSiteNews.com:

• For hundreds of years, Evangelical street preachers have been a normal part of the English cultural scene, but in recent years, a new feature of the political and legal scene has been their frequent arrests whenever they have dared to contradict the sexual zeitgeist and reiterate the Biblical and moral injunctions against homosexuality. British barrister and chairman of the Catholic Union of Great Britain, James Bogle spoke with LifeSiteNews.com this week, saying that the phenomenon is a sign of a deeper problem with British authorities undermining the rule of law and civil liberties.
• Bogle said that it is more a matter of policy “at all levels of government” that homosexuality is “a special area” deserving of special protections and treatment. 
• “But why this particular area, and not other areas?” he said. “Why don’t pro-lifers rate this special protection? Why don’t Evangelical Christians get the same protection?” 
• In response to the large number of arrests in recent years of Christians under the notorious Section 5 of the Public Order Act, Bogle said, “Particularly in relation to homosexuality, where anybody who criticises homosexual acts or homosexual ‘marriage’ or relationships, there appears to be a police policy to treat this as what is called a ‘hate crime,’ but there isn’t such a thing in English law as a hate crime. There are crimes that might come under a very broad umbrella, but it’s the use of that very broad umbrella that is causing people to have fears about civil liberties.” 

Read more by clicking below:
Homosexuality an area of ‘special protection’ to UK govt’, police: UK barrister | LifeSiteNews.com

Students try to banish Catholic chaplain from campus for anti-gay stance | The Daily Caller

The following excerpts are from The Daily Caller:

• Two gay seniors at George Washington University say they feel alienated because the chaplain at George Washington’s Newman Center rejects homosexuality, and they aren’t going to take it anymore.
• The seniors, Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen, have announced a coordinated campaign to rid the campus of the Roman Catholic priest, reports The GW Hatchet, the school’s independent student newspaper.
• They also assert that 12 or more students have quit the Newman Center in recent years because they can’t tolerate Father Greg Shaffer’s ardent anti-gay – and, for the record, anti-abortion — beliefs.
• Shaffer has worked for five years at George Washington’s Newman Center. He told the Hatchet that religion and unrestricted speech “play a vital role at a diverse university like GW.”
• Legacy and Bergen say they are primarily upset about the counseling Shaffer offers. They say he urges students who have homosexual feelings to lead a life of celibacy.

Read more by clicking below:

Students try to banish Catholic chaplain from campus for anti-gay stance | The Daily Caller

Italian bishop confined to home by homosexual demonstration : News Headlines - Catholic Culture

The following excerpts are from the Catholic Culture's Catholic World News:

• An Italian archbishop has revealed that he was confined to his home, forced to remain inside his “besieged” residence, when homosexual activists staged a protest there earlier this month, and warned that gay-rights campaigners aim to prosecute all who oppose their agenda.
• Archbishop Giampaolo Crepaldi of Trieste was the target of a demonstration organized by ArciGay on January 12. Italian media outlets ignored the incident, and city officials in Trieste showed their support for the protest. Two members of the local city council reportedly participated in the demonstration.

Read more by clicking below:

Italian bishop confined to home by homosexual demonstration : News Headlines - Catholic Culture