Chairman’s Thoughts

During our last Cleveland Catholic Forum event, “Cleveland Church Clustering: Building Faith Communities Beyond Parish Boundaries,”  I gave a brief talk prior to Bishop Roger Gries keynote address, that highlighted a simple fact: 

As good Christians we often focus on the flaws of the Catholic Church and look for ways to improve them.  However, every now and then, it is important to remember the tremendous amount of good that the Church does.

So here are some facts about the Catholic Church and what it is:

A Church that feeds and clothes millions of people every day

A Church that provides medical care to those that can’t afford it or find it

A Church that provides hope to the oppressed

A Church that stands up for the rights of the innocent – the unborn, the elderly, the orphan, the refugee

A Church that unifies the family

A Church that schools our children and gives back to the community

A Church that teaches forgiveness, love and patience

A Church that can provide the moral leadership that can help to bring down tyrants and free nations

A Church that lifts the sinner to sainthood

A Church that betters our own lives

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Dear Friends,

On behalf of the Cleveland Catholic Forum I want to wish you and yours a very blessed & Merry Christmas!

Warm Wishes,

Joe Soltis

P.S. Starting January 2nd I will be resuming regular blog postings. 

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It was March 16th of 2006, and I was looking at my newborn, premature son in the neo-natal intensive care unit.   I prayed to God with all my might that he would be alright and make it through.

As he lay in his incubator taking 160 breaths every minute to stay alive, I looked at him with such love.  I reached into his incubator and touched his hair and listened to the cries that he pushed out with his breaths.  I saw his chin dimple, his perfect toes, his perfect eyes, his perfect chest and his perfectly formed body.  Despite the stress of the situation, I beamed with the joy of being a new dad.

My son was breathing without any help.  He was looking around, crying, cooing, and looking for milk that could help to sustain him.  As my son reached for my hand in his incubator and grabbed my pinky finger, I silently wept with an overwhelming love for him and a burning desire to protect him from any harm.

Just a few months later, I heard a Supreme Court Justice by the name of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg and attorneys on behalf of Planned Parenthood arguing within the United States Supreme Court that all unborn children should be allowed to be killed before they had a chance at life.  I heard scholars and doctors of the law argue that my son, ­ even as he was old enough to look into my eyes and hold my hand,­ was not worthy of his own life so as long as he was within his mother’s womb.

Ruth Bader-Ginsburg argued for unfettered rights to abortion during all 9 months of pregnancy, and she argued that the Federal ban on partial-birth abortion be declared unconstitutional.  Thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg was in the minority and Partial-Birth Abortion is now illegal within the United States.  Yet, abortion is still legal in all 9 months of pregnancy, and every day the lives of little kids like my son are snuffed out even when the child is old enough to yearn to be held by his mother.

God have mercy on those beautiful pre-born children and may God have mercy on a country that has so great a calling yet has still failed to protect the weakest among us.

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OneNewsNow.com reported the following story:

Two teams of scientists have reported that they have succeeded in directly reprogramming human skin cells to turn into embryonic-like stem cells. The groups have produced what are called “iPS” cells (induced Pluripotent Stem cells) by adding four genetic factors to a human skin cell. No embryos are created or destroyed, and no cloning or eggs are needed in the process.

The breakthrough is welcome news to people like Dr. David Prentice, a senior fellow for life sciences at the Family Research Council, and prominent critic of embryo-destructive research. “It looks like very soon they’ll be able to get around the use of viruses … and just use some simple chemicals probably to do that reprogramming with the genes,” he explains. “So that’s really not a great hurdle.”

Prentice says federal funding of existing embryonic stem-cell lines should be used to further the new technique, even though scientific questions about the research remain.

“You’re still going to have the typical problems you have with any embryonic stem cell — the potential for tumor formation, being able to control them and get the right cell,” he says. “They have not yet proven that these will match the person that they’re taken from.”

But that does not discourage the cloning expert from calling for federal funds to be redirected. “The funds that are being used now for those embryonic stem-cell lines that were derived by destroying human embryos ought to be shifted to this research,” he argues. “That way we don’t have to worry about taxpayer funds going towards anything unethical.”

Prentice says there also ought to be a push now to pass the Brownback-Weldon cloning ban in Congress in light of the fact that Dr. Ian Wilmut, who cloned “Dolly” the sheep, has turned his back on cloning in favor of using the iPS cells.

“They ought to just drop this whole push to destroy more embryos or to clone,” he insists. “We’re already hearing that some members of Congress who might have been on the fence and were sort of biting the bullet” in the embryonic stem cell debate will decide they do not need to support that bill that President Bush vetoed.

Prentice believes the new discovery is sure to “let the wind out of the sails” of proponents of embryo-destructive research.

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The American Family Association recently notified their membership that Lowe’s, the home improvement store, was no longer calling Christmas Trees, “Christmas Trees”, but instead was referring to them as “Family Trees.”   Once the network of religious conservatives was notified, a flurry of emails and phone calls was sent to Lowe’s corporate headquarters.  In less than 24-hours, Lowe’s reversed its policy calling it a mistake in the editing process.

The fact is simple: money talks.

Corporations want to make a profit.  Profit, in reality, is their main purpose.  Christmas is, by far, the biggest shopping season of the year.

So if you truly want to enjoy your Christmas Shopping and you believe that Christmas deserves to be called “Christmas” as opposed to “A Season” or “A Holiday”, you CAN make a difference along with the millions of other Americans that have decided to do the same: only shop at places that acknowledge Christmas as Christmas when doing your Christmas shopping.  In addition, reward Christmas-friendly stores with your patronage all year long.

Stores that DO Acknowledge Christmas*
Sears
Lowe’s
Kohl’s

Stores that DO NOT Acknowledge Christmas*
Nordstrom
Office Max
Kmart
Home Depot
Best Buy
SC Johnson
L.L. Bean
Zales
Lexus
Old Navy
Kroger

*Source: American Family Association

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A New American Research Group Poll came out yesterday that has Governor Huckabee at 24% in Iowa – that is within 2% of Governor Romney.  Governor Romney has spent $10,000,000 in television ads in Iowa and Governor Huckabee has spent $0.  This definitely is going to show that money is not the most important thing when it comes to winning elections. 

 Like I said before, money can corrupt public life and often causes elected officials to fail in their calling to serve the American people.  Hopefully we can see something like this happen more often - from both sides of the isle.

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The Houston Chronicle reported the following story this morning:

Proclaiming a sense of new energy and empowerment, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on Wednesday instructed Catholic voters that their eternal salvation could be at stake when they cast ballots.

Bishops emphasized that voters must consider the church’s teachings on abortion and other moral issues when they select a candidate for the White House or any other office. If they don’t, bishops said, it’s not clergy who will judge them but God.

“It is important to be clear that the political choices faced by citizens have an impact on general peace and prosperity and also the individual’s salvation,” the bishops said in the document.

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I am an American.  I love my country.  I love my heritage.  I love my God.  A group of well funded “elitists” don’t want me or you to love our country, its heritage, or the God of our forefathers.

In recent weeks The Washington Monument was stripped of its religious history by a work to hide the Latin translation of “Praise be to God.”   The Architect of the Capital also tried to ban any reference to “God” when issuing personal flag certificates – even when that request is made specifically by the person receiving the flag certificate.  The Veteran Administration also attempted to ban religious references to God at veteran’s burials as part of the historical and heartfelt U.S. Flag folding ceremony.

Thanks to millions of patriotic, God-loving Americans and groups such as the Alliance Defense Fund these anti-American and anti-God “bureaucratic decrees” have either been overturned or are in the process of being overturned.

The bottom line is this: unelected bureaucrats, radical left-wing politicians and anti-American elitists want to ban God from your heart.  The fact of the matter is that they can’t.  Love of God is imprinted on every human heart. 

Let your heart be strong.  Let your will be known.  Remember that when you unite your will to the will of your brothers and sisters, you create the national will.  In the United States the national will prevails.

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Catholic League president Bill Donohue discussed the league’s reaction to the upcoming movie, “The Golden Compass”:

“New Line Cinema and Scholastic Entertainment have paired to produce ‘The Golden Compass,’ a children’s fantasy that is based on the first book of a trilogy by militant English atheist Philip Pullman. The trilogy, His Dark Materials, was written to promote atheism and denigrate Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism. The target audience is children and adolescents. Each book becomes progressively more aggressive in its denigration of Christianity and promotion of atheism: The Subtle Knife is more provocative than The Golden Compass and The Amber Spyglass is the most in-your-face assault on Christian sensibilities of the three volumes.

“Atheism for kids. That is what Philip Pullman sells. It is his hope that ‘The Golden Compass,’ which stars Nicole Kidman and opens December 7, will entice parents to buy his trilogy as a Christmas gift. It is our hope that the film fails to meet box office expectations and that his books attract few buyers. We are doing much more than hoping—we are conducting a nationwide two-month protest of Pullman’s work and the film. To that end, we have prepared a booklet, ‘The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked,’ that tears the mask off the movie.

“It is not our position that the movie will strike Christian parents as troubling. Then why the protest? Even though the film is based on the least offensive of the three books, and even though it is clear that the producers are watering down the most despicable elements—so as to make money and not anger Christians—the fact remains that the movie is bait for the books. To be specific, if unsuspecting Christian parents take their children to see the movie, they may very well find it engaging and then buy Pullman’s books for Christmas. That’s the problem.

“We are fighting a deceitful stealth campaign on the part of the film’s producers. Our goal is to educate Christians so that they know exactly what the film’s pernicious agenda really is.”
 

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