Watch it all. So encouraging!

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • * General Interest • Animals

The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, will portray good fathers as the unsung heroes of modern Britain – having a direct positive effect on crime rates, school results and even the nation’s mental health.

In a speech in London, he will urge politicians to take “every opportunity” to support fathers and call on families to “celebrate” fatherhood.

Crucially, he will also argue that employers have a moral responsibility to pay fathers who work them a proper wage to enable them to support their families with “pride and dignity”.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

Despite repeated requests from religious leaders and anti-abortion activists, city officials in Philadelphia plan to cremate and bury the 47 bodies from abortion provider Kermit Gosnell's case.

In May, Gosnell was convicted on three counts of first-degree murder. He waived his rights to appeal but has 30 days to reconsider his decision.

Once the appeal period is over on Saturday, the city will follow its normal procedures by conducting cremation and burial, city spokesman Mark McDonald said. McDonald did not have information on when it would take place.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Google is to spend $5m (£3.1m) fighting child pornography and abuse, the company will announce today, after criticism that it is not doing enough to prevent the spread of harmful online imagery.

With a Whitehall summit on online protection set for.... [today], chaired by the Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, the internet giant has pledged to tackle child sex abuse images through "hashing" technology that gives each picture a web "fingerprint" that can be identified and removed.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Children • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Pornography • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Three male widowers were last Sunday empowered by the men's fellowship of the Cathedral Church of St. Batholomew, Kubwa, with the sum of N3.5million to assist them in taking care of their families.

The President of the fellowship, Innocent Ekeopara, who spoke to our reporter, said the gesture is in line with the organisation's mandate to empathise with members, who are faced with financial challenges.

He said the assumption that some men who lost their wives would not find it difficult in taking up the family responsibilities might be wrong especially when the woman was the bread winner before her demise.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Nigeria • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men • Women • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Nigeria

The vast majority of the 1,430 education programs that prepare the nation’s K-12 teachers are mediocre, according to a first-ever ranking that immediately touched off a firestorm.

Released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based advocacy group, the rankings are part of a $5 million project funded by major U.S. foundations. Education secretaries in 21 states have endorsed the report, but some universities and education experts quickly assailed the review as incomplete and inaccurate.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Walk into any American high school and nearly one in five boys in the hallways will have a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, 11% of all American children ages 4 to 17—over six million—have ADHD, a 16% increase since 2007. When you consider that in Britain roughly 3% of children have been similarly diagnosed, the figure is even more startling. Now comes worse news: In the U.S., being told that you have ADHD—and thus receiving some variety of amphetamine to treat it—has become more likely.

Last month, the American Psychiatric Association released the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the bible of mental health—and this latest version, known as DSM-5, outlines a new diagnostic paradigm for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Symptoms of ADHD remain the same in the new edition: "overlooks details," "has difficulty remaining focused during lengthy reading," "often fidgets with or taps hands" and so on. The difference is that in the previous version of the manual, the first symptoms of ADHD needed to be evident by age 7 for a diagnosis to be made. In DSM-5, if the symptoms turn up anytime before age 12, the ADHD diagnosis can be made.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Psychology • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

...we live in a country where too many of us have broken relationships with Dad. In America, 1 in 3 kids live apart from their biological fathers. A recent Washington Post article addressed the dad dilemma with the eye-catching title: The new F-Word – Father. In it, Kathleen Parker addresses a question being asked as we discuss the latest stats on America's female breadwinners: In the evolving 21st-century economy, "what are men good for?"

Parker concludes:

Women have become more self-sufficient (a good thing) and, given that they still do the lion's share of housework and child rearing, why, really, should they invite a man to the clutter? Because, simply, children need a father… . Deep in the marrow of every human child burbles a question far more profound than those currently occupying coffee klatches: Who is my daddy? And sadly these days, where is he?

....[and] that's unfortunately where the church often ends the conversation. We lament the shift in the family structure, express outrage at the latest statistics....[yet we cannot stop there].

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The importance of physical proximity, when it comes to fatherhood, may help explain why the sociological story about fatherhood is remarkably similar to the biological story. Fatherhood is socially transformative for men—but only, once again, if they are living proximate to their children. By contrast, men who don’t live with their children, either because they never married the mother in the first place, or got divorced, often don’t look much different than childless men. Three findings illustrate the point:

1) Steering clear of the blues. Fathers who live with their children are significantly less likely to be depressed, and more likely to report they are satisfied with their lives, compared to childless men. But men who live apart from their children have levels of life satisfaction and depression that largely parallel those of their childless peers. In other words, men who don’t live with their children don’t benefit psychologically from fatherhood....


Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men • Sociology

In the walk of manhood, we have tremendous responsibility and possibility for blame. As a child, I never understood the decisions that the men in my life made. But now as a man, I fully understand the kind of positions that they were placed in and the difficult choices they had to make. When we face these difficult choices, we make the wrong ones sometimes, and understandably so.

As men, we have been taught that we are supposed to fix everything. Hence when we make these wrong decisions we are not very good at asking for help. We should. It’s OK to ask for help, especially when it comes to our children. We don’t have to figure everything out on our own; we should always be willing to ask for help. There’s no shame in that.

As fathers, it is particularly important to understand that asking for help to do our job is OK. Making mistakes doing our job is OK. Neglecting our job as a father is not OK.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men • * South Carolina

Found here and used in worship yesterday:

God our Father,
you govern and protect your people
and shepherd them with a father’s love.
You place a father in a family as a sign
of your love, care, and constant protection.
May fathers everywhere be faithful to the
example shown in the Scriptures: steadfast
in love, forgiving transgressions, sustaining
the family, caring for those in need.
Give your wisdom to fathers
that they may encourage and guide their children.
Keep them healthy so they may support a family.
Guide every father with the Spirit of your love
that they may grow in holiness
and draw their family ever closer to you.
Amen

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men

Filed under: * By Kendall • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Children • Marriage & Family

92% of lone parent families are headed by the mother. Even at birth, 20% of children live with only 1 parent, by the time they are teenagers this is nearly 50%. For up to 3 million children tomorrow will be Absent Fathers Day, and here are some of the the consequences:
Children who experience family breakdown are more likely to

--experience behavioural problems;
--perform less well in school;
--need more medical treatment;
--leave school and home earlier;
--become sexually active, pregnant or a parent at an early age;
and report more depressive symptoms and higher levels of smoking, drinking and other drug use during adolescence and adulthood.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

For years, the LGBT movement has invoked the twin spectres of equality and human rights in their war against traditional marriage. Defenders of the "one man, one woman" model for marriage have been slandered as hateful bigots who would relegate same-sex couples to second-class status. We've been told that the "march towards marriage equality" is inevitable, that we're on the "wrong side of history." We've been told that the embrace of alternative relationship models is the way of the future.

As society continues to "progress" towards greater equality and enlightenment, more and more people will recognize that traditional notions of gender and sex are stifling and archaic. Increasingly, it's being asserted that opposition to this view constitutes a danger to society that must be eliminated through force of law. Freedom of speech and religion are being threatened in the name of tolerance and equality. If the LGBT agenda is successful, defenders of traditional marriage will be hamstrung in their efforts by the threat of legal prosecution and the certainty of social ostracism.

In the face of such vitriol, traditionalists have struggled to find a coherent, compassionate, and compelling response. We've allowed the histrionics of hyperbole and red herring tactics to distract and disorient us. In France, there is no such confusion. Defenders of traditional marriage are very clear about why the institution must remain as it's always been: it's about the children.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * International News & Commentary • Europe • France • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Dan Selec, whose son was diagnosed with autism, had a big idea: to train and then hire autistic students to work with technology. In 2008 he founded his nonprofit, the nonPareil Institute, which teaches software skills to those with autism and then hires many of them. Now, these workers are increasingly finding themselves in demand for the skills they've learned.

Watch the whole wonderful video report.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Men • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

At the annual Q conference this spring, Christian engagement with public schools was a big topic. Among the quick-hit presentations was a talk on a church-school partnership in Portland, Ore., that many churches around the country are viewing as an inspiration and a model.

Captured in a documentary titled “Undivided,” the Portland story goes like this: As part of a day of service by the area’s evangelical churches, members of a large suburban congregation gathered at a struggling city high school to spend a day sprucing up the building and grounds.

The people from SouthLake Church were not content with one and done, however; they have “adopted” Roosevelt High School and made the relationship the central component of the church’s ongoing public engagement these past five years.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Read them all, very stimulating stuff.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Energy, Natural Resources • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Some mothers — and some fathers, too — will do just about anything to see their marriage-age offspring settle down, even if that means going where parents ordinarily should never go — online and into their children’s posted dating profiles.

“It’s almost like outsourcing your online dating to your mom,” said Kevin Leland, chief executive of TheJMom.com, a Jewish matchmaking site and one of several Web sites that have arisen to cater to parents, some with more money than patience, who want to see that ideal match made.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Children • Marriage & Family • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending

Bioethicist Peter Singer compared women and children to cows overgrazing a field and said — at the global Women Deliver Conference last week, hailed as the most important meeting to focus on women and girls’ human rights in a decade — that women’s reproductive rights may one day have to be sacrificed for the environment.

The controversial Princeton University professor, known for championing infanticide and bestiality, was a featured panelist on Thursday at the three-day Women Deliver conference attended by Melinda Gates and more than 4,000 abortion and contraception activists in Kuala Lumpur.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Globalization • Marriage & Family • Women • * Economics, Politics • Energy, Natural Resources • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

When I first started in youth ministry, I did everything I could think of to attract and engage high school youth. I held monthly social events and service projects. My Sunday school classes and weekly youth group meetings included crazy games, youth-only worship with contemporary Christian music, and discussions of relevant topics.

I chose topics based on what I thought youth cared about, so we talked a lot about friendships, sex and alcohol. While I tied these topics to scripture, I rarely focused on Jesus. I assumed that the youth, who had grown up in the church, already knew the Jesus story well and were likely to be bored by it. Rather than help students cultivate a lifelong relationship with Christ, I focused on getting them to live a Christian lifestyle. I had zero tolerance for inappropriate behavior.

Only a handful of the youth I worked with in that year are attending church today. My extensive efforts at reaching them seem to have made little difference.

Research suggests that my approach to ministry was not unusual—nor was the outcome. According to research by the Fuller Youth Institute, 40 to 50 percent of kids who are part of a youth group in high school fail to stick with their faith in college. To find out why, researchers at FYI conducted a six-year, comprehensive and longitudinal study from 2004 to 2010 called the College Transition Project. The study’s findings are found in Sticky Faith: Practical Ideas to Nurture Long-Term Faith in Teenagers, a 2011 book by Kara E. Powell, Brad M. Griffin and Cheryl A. Crawford.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Teens / Youth • * Theology • Anthropology • Soteriology

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has vetoed a bill that would have made his state the seventh in the nation to prohibit judges from considering Shari'ah, or Islamic law, and other “foreign laws” in their decisions.

But rather than citing the usual arguments about anti-Muslim discrimination and the freedom of religion, Nixon introduced a new argument against such legislation, asserting it would make it harder for Missouri families to adopt children from overseas.

Nixon said if state judges would not be able to consider foreign decrees that are sometimes required to finalize adoptions, adoptive families and children would be left stranded.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • State Government • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Why did gay marriage meet such resistance in France, when the same law was passed with little opposition in other liberal democracies – even in traditionally Catholic societies such as Spain, Portugal and Quebec?

France is distinct. Despite its image as a country of free-thinkers and libertines (which it is, in part), France remains a conservative country where family links are extremely strong. The family Sunday lunch is a sacred ritual and it’s not uncommon to see three generations vacationing together.

Contrary to Quebec, where a majority of children are born to unmarried couples, most French middle-class couples get married as soon as they’re having their first child, which will likely be followed by two siblings.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * International News & Commentary • Europe • France • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

I don’t have children, so it might seem that my story lacks relevance to the work-life balance debate. Like everyone, though, I did have relationships — a spouse, friends and family — and none of them got the best version of me. They got what was left over.

I didn’t start out with the goal of devoting all of myself to my job. It crept in over time. Each year that went by, slight modifications became the new normal. First I spent a half-hour on Sunday organizing my e-mail, to-do list and calendar to make Monday morning easier. Then I was working a few hours on Sunday, then all day. My boundaries slipped away until work was all that was left.

Inevitably, when I left my job, it devastated me. I couldn’t just rally and move on. I did not know how to value who I was versus what I did. What I did was who I was.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Women • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

[With a family of 8 children, 4 of their own and 4 of whom were adopted, Danna Hopkins] and her husband, and the Journey Church where he is lead pastor, are part of a fast-growing evangelical Christian movement that promotes adoption as a religious and moral calling. Its supporters say a surge in adoptions by Christians has offered hope and middle-class lives to thousands of parentless or abandoned children from abroad and, increasingly, to foster children in the United States as well. Hundreds of churches have established “orphan ministries” that send aid abroad and help prospective parents raise the tens of thousands of dollars needed to adopt.

But the movement has also revived debate about ethical practices in international adoptions, with fears that some parents and churches, in their zeal, have naïvely entered terrain long filled with pitfalls, especially in countries susceptible to corruption. These include the risk of falsified documents for children who have relatives able to care for them, middlemen out to profit and perhaps bribe officials, and even the willingness of poor parents to send a child to a promised land without understanding the permanence of adoption.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

“The decade of the 2000s witnessed the most rapid change in the percentage of married mothers earning more than their husbands of any decade since 1960,” said Philip Cohen, a University of Maryland sociologist who studies gender and family trends, in The Washington Post. “This reflects the larger job losses experienced by men at the beginning of the Great Recession. Also, some women decided to work more hours or seek better jobs in response to their husbands’ job loss, potential loss, or declining wages.”

There are substantial differences between single mothers, who make up nearly two-thirds of mom breadwinners, and the 37 percent of mothers who are married and primary breadwinners.

The median family income of married mothers who earn more than their spouses was about $80,000 in 2011, nearly four times the $23,000 median for families led by a single mother. In comparison, the national median family income for all families with children is $57,100.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Women • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance

A record 40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The share was just 11% in 1960.

These “breadwinner moms” are made up of two very different groups: 5.1 million (37%) are married mothers who have a higher income than their husbands, and 8.6 million (63%) are single mothers.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Women • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance

Both of Jenn McNary’s sons suffer a deadly disease known as Duschene muscular dystrophy. But while one son qualified for a drug that has given him new life, the other didn’t – and his condition is slowly deteriorating. NBC’s Janet Shamlian reports.

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family

Twenty-year-old Wilfredo “Cusi” Pantaleon Zamora was more at peace than he’d been in a while.

After spending the last four months serving the U.S. Army in Vietnam, he’d finally found a Catholic church.

On July 1, 1968, he wrote a letter home to his parents in Miami, Fla. He told them he had just enjoyed a day off when he attended mass and was able to confess and receive communion. It was a shred of normalcy among the chaos of war.

At the end of his letter, he sent love and kisses to his mom and dad and to his brother and sisters. Before that letter ever reached them overseas, he was dead.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Our language about sexuality is dominated by public health, with its talk of risk, “protection,” health, choice, and rights. In so doing we scoff at babies—the crowning glory of human creativity—and where they come from.

For all of their intelligence, sophistication, and cosmopolitan ways, Westerners are increasingly uncomfortable with where babies come from.

I realize it’s a humorous and ironic claim to suggest that moderns—who dwell in an over-sexed, over-sensualized world—might actually be uncomfortable with the subject matter of sex. But I’m serious. They’re growing increasingly uncomfortable with where babies come from.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Men • Psychology • Sexuality • Women • * Theology • Anthropology

Even before rogue abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted in Philadelphia May 13 of delivering and then killing late-term infants, abortion opponents were convinced they had a case that could reshape an abortion debate that has remained static over the years.

After the verdict, they were even more confident.

“Dr. Gosnell is only the front man; and the real trial has only just begun. The defendant is the abortion license in America,” Robert P. George, a Princeton law professor and leading conservative activist, wrote after a jury convicted Gosnell of three counts of first-degree murder for snipping the spines of babies after botched abortions.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

A Philadelphia abortion doctor convicted of killing three babies who were born alive in his grimy clinic agreed Tuesday to give up his right to an appeal and faces life in prison but will be spared a death sentence.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in the deaths of the babies who were delivered alive and killed with scissors.

In a case that became a flashpoint in the nation's abortion debate, former clinic employees testified that Gosnell routinely performed illegal abortions past Pennsylvania's 24-week limit, that he delivered babies who were still moving, whimpering or breathing, and that he and his assistants dispatched the newborns by "snipping" their spines, as he referred to it.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Archbishop of York John Sentamu is setting up an independent inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse made against a Church of England cleric.

A former Archbishop of York has denied being negligent by failing to notify police when made aware of the claims.

Dr Sentamu's office said the probe would look "specifically into the issues surrounding the reports" and the findings would be made public.

It said child abuse allegations were treated "with the utmost seriousness".

Read it all and there is more here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Sexuality • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

One September day in eighth grade, when he was walking home from school, Mike saw his maternal grandfather, Charlie Wesson, pull up beside him in a car. Wesson had always been there for Mike, attending his games, winking when he faked a fever in grade school so they could spend the day together. This time, the news was bad. He needed to go home, immediately.

Young Mike saw a crowded house and knew something was wrong. His father had died of a heart attack after hip surgery. A short and difficult life was over, at 43, but the son thought largely about his mother. His parents were not married anymore, but he knew her life would change, too.

“I just felt like I had to pick myself up and my mom up,” he said. “It was a very tough time for her. I felt like I was trying to take control of my life and not rely on other people to do things for me.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • History • Marriage & Family • Sports • Young Adults

We now approach quite a challenging period for the family--two graduations and one knee replacement surgery for yours truly over the next few weeks. We head this afternoon to Vanderbilt for Nathaniel's graduation, then Elizabeth graduates from MUSC (Medical University of South Carolina, a doctorate in the nursing practice [ie D.N.P.]) next week, and then (ugh!) I have surgery on Tuesday the 21st. We would be grateful for your understanding and prayers especially in this time, thanks--KSH.

Filed under: * By Kendall • Harmon Family • * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family

Watch it all. It will brighten your day.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Psychology • * General Interest • Animals

When the news broke that her father was about to be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Katharine Welby found herself in floods of tears.

“I ended up crying and crying,” she says, but not because she didn’t want her dad to get the job....

Her weeping was caused by depression. The illness is “a constant struggle” in her life and creates moments of crisis in which she wants to “run away and hide in a hole”. In the past, it has brought her to the brink of suicide.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Stress • Suicide • Religion & Culture • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

We are becoming a society in which “choice” and self-defined identities trump once-common values and traditional beliefs. But contrary to the rhetoric of its defenders, this shift is not a simple advance for freedom. The privileging of “choice” above all else in fact requires re-engineering the human person and society as a whole, and this will inevitably involve a great deal of coercion.

Wesley J. SmithThis shift, if it didn’t begin with Roe v. Wade, could be said to have been dramatically accelerated by it. Despite continuing opposition by over 50 percent of the American people, abortion is now universally available, in some places through the ninth month. Two states have legalized assisted suicide for the terminally ill—once strictly prohibited by the Hippocratic Oath. Now, some doctors actively collaborate in lethally overdosing their patients.

Advocacy for legalizing “after birth” abortion—e.g., infanticide—as a natural extension of the abortion right is growing more prominent, and not just among acolytes of Princeton’s Peter Singer. A Florida Planned Parenthood representative, opposing a bill that would require medical treatment for an infant who survives abortion, said the choice to care for the child should be a private one made between a mother and her doctor.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Philosophy • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Secularism • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Its surprising how many people still marry. As everyone knows, it’s a risky proposition; the divorce rate, though down from its peak of one in two marriages in the early 1980s, remains substantial. Besides, you can have a perfectly respectable life these days without marrying.

When the Pew Research Center asked a sample of Americans in 2010 what they thought about the “growing variety in the types of family arrangements that people live in,” 34 percent responded that it was a good thing, and 32 percent said it made no difference. Having a child outside of marriage has also become common. According to a report by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, 47 percent of American women who give birth in their 20s are unmarried at the time.

And still, demographers project that at least 80 percent of Americans will marry at some point in their lives.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Middle Age • Psychology • Sociology • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Between the ages of 36 and 38, I spent nearly $50,000 to freeze 70 eggs in the hope that they would help me have a family in my mid-40s, when my natural fertility is gone. For this baby insurance, I obliterated my savings and used up the money my parents had set aside for a wedding. It was the best investment I ever made.

Egg freezing stopped the sadness that I was feeling at losing my chance to have the child I had dreamed about my entire life. It soothed my pangs of regret for frittering away my 20s with a man I didn't want to have children with, and for wasting more years in my 30s with a man who wasn't sure he even wanted children. It took away the punishing pressure to seek a new mate and helped me find love again at age 42.

I decided to freeze on the afternoon of my 36th birthday, when I did a fresh round of baby math on the back of a business card at Starbucks. Even if the man I was dating at the time agreed to start a family in the near future, I was cutting it close to have one baby, let alone a second. Several months later, after injecting myself for nearly two weeks with hormone shots, I was in surgery at a Manhattan fertility clinic as my doctor pierced my ovaries, suctioned out nine eggs and handed them to the embryologist to freeze until I was ready to use them. As soon as I woke up in the recovery room, I no longer felt as though I were watching my window to have a baby close by the month. My future seemed full of possibility again.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Science & Technology • Sexuality • Young Adults • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The final report for the enquiry into the operation of the diocesan child protection policies in the Diocese of Chichester has today been published.

The report was written by Bishop John Gladwin and Chancellor Rupert Bursell QC who were appointed in 2011 as the former Archbishop of Canterbury’s commissaries to carry out the enquiry.

In responding to the final report, Archbishop Justin has made the following statement:

“I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to not only the Commissaries for their care and concern in the course of carrying out this Visitation, but also to the survivors of abuse who have been able to share their experiences. The hurt and damage that has been done to them is something the Church can never ignore and I can only repeat what I have said before - that they should never have been let down by the people who ought to have been a source of trust and comfort and I want to apologise on behalf of the Church for pain and hurt they have suffered. I remain deeply grateful for their cooperation in the work of the Visitation....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children

The way some schools in Nevada teach sex education could be changing.

A bill moving its way through the Nevada Legislature would require all districts to provide uniform, medically accurate and age-appropriate sex education lessons. Topics would include abstinence, abortion, contraceptives, domestic violence and sex trafficking. Students would be automatically enrolled in sex education classes under the proposed law, and parents would need to sign a document for their children to opt out of the instruction.

Currently, sex education instruction varies by county, although all counties have sex education advisory boards by law.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Sexuality • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

Same-sex marriage will never be widely accepted in America for a simple reason: It’s based on a lie. But don’t take my word on this; leading LGBT scholars and activists say as much.

Take Masha Gessen, acclaimed author and former Russian director of Radio Liberty. “Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change,” Gessen said last year.

Last month, I was part of a debate at the NYU School of Law at which Judith Stacey, a sociology professor at the university, declared: “Children certainly do not need both a mother and a father.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Perhaps the hardest part is that her son once was such a normal boy, a Mount Pleasant kid with loving parents, extended family and a life full of friends and dreams.

But at 17, Jack Youngs’ thoughts turned down a disturbing new path.

He began to rub his hands together anxiously. He hung his head at the table and avoided friends.

The boy who once swam on the neighborhood team and rode his scooter along its tree-lined streets now hid in the safety of his bedroom as he plunged deeper down that lonely turn in his mind.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Mental Illness • Young Adults • * South Carolina

The day Franklin Graham was born, he received a telegram.

“Welcome to this sin-sick world,” the Western Union message said, “and to the challenge you have to walk in your daddy’s footsteps.”

It didn’t take long for Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, to realize that being a preacher’s kid would be both a blessing and a burden.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The community of Roxbury had high hopes for its newest public school back in 2003. There were art studios, a dance room, even a theater equipped with cushy seating.

A pilot school for grades K-8, Orchard Gardens was built on grand expectations.

But the dream of a school founded in the arts, a school that would give back to the community as it bettered its children, never materialized.

Read it all (Video highly recommended).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Art • Children • Education • Music • Urban/City Life and Issues

The nephew of bishop Yohanna Ibrahim, one of the two archbishops kidnapped in Syria a week ago, said he hopes Syrian Christians will not use the incident as an incentive to flee the country.

Bishop Ibrahim, head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Aleppo, was kidnapped last Monday, alongside his counterpart from the Greek Orthodox Church, Bishop Boulos Yaziji, close to the Turkish border.The driver of the vehicle, Fathallah Kaboud, was killed.

Kaboud had been the personal chauffeur of bishop Ibrahim for a number of years. He leaves behind a wife and two children.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Syria • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church

It’s hardly a new prediction—we’ve been hearing it for years. Gay marriage is a slippery slope! A gateway drug! If we legalize it, then what’s next? Legalized polygamy?

We can only hope.

Yes, really. While the Supreme Court and the rest of us are all focused on the human right of marriage equality, let’s not forget that the fight doesn’t end with same-sex marriage. We need to legalize polygamy, too. Legalized polygamy in the United States is the constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive choice. More importantly, it would actually help protect, empower, and strengthen women, children, and families.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • Women • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Millennials got a bad rap during the recession. They have been working less, earning less, and, as I’ve pointed out in this magazine before, buying far fewer houses and cars than their parents did—or than the economy needs them to in order to move forward. But all of this is poised to change. In the near future, these same young people may be the very ones to supercharge the recovery. How? By growing up.....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance

Hundreds of Europeans are fighting with rebel forces in Syria and intelligence agencies are concerned some could return home to launch terrorist attacks. One Belgian family says their son has joined rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime.

A camera shakily films a group of rebel fighters preparing to pray, lined up in rows, their weapons at their feet. A young man walks into shot and takes off his rifle before briefly turning towards the camera.

"That's Brian," says Ingrid de Mulder, pointing at her nephew in the online video on her computer. "I'm 100% sure. That's him. No doubt."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Religion & Culture • Violence • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Belgium • Middle East • Syria • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

A state House bill aimed at giving S.C. courts clearer guidelines on when to terminate parental rights, especially in cases where parents or guardians have a history of child or drug abuse, passed a key vote in the House Thursday.

The House voted 104-0 to give second reading to the bill, named Jaidon’s Law after a toddler who died from a drug overdose a week after the state returned him to his parents, who had prior drug charges.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina

When Christan Rainey joined other firefighter recruits on an orientation tour of North Charleston, he grew silent as they passed by the mobile home where his family once lived.

Rainey, 28, had not laid eyes on the old homestead in Ferndale in seven years. Not since his mother and four siblings, ages 6 to 16, were slaughtered there in a burst of inexplicable violence attributed to his stepfather.

“Looking at it made me feel like it was Day One all over again,” he said softly. “It gave me one of the most eerie spiritual feelings ever.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Marriage & Family • * South Carolina

The daughter of the Archbishop of Canterbury has called on the church to do more to eradicate the stigma of mental illness, revealing that she sometimes suffers from “unbearable” depression.

Katharine Welby, the 26-year old daughter of Archbishop Justin Welby who took up his new post last month, says she sometimes feels “very low”, with a “black veil of nothing hanging in front of me”....

Read it all (requires subscription) and please take the time to read Katharine Welby's blog post also.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Mental Illness • Women • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

"Saving abandoned animals, one ride at a time..."

Guaranteed to brighten your day--watch it all (Note: video is linked at the top, if no video capacity you can read the story. Make sure to check out the map of how long the ride is from Texas to Tok, Alaska where the dog was delivered).

Also, please note that the website for Operation Roger Operation Roger (a ministry which, as the video notes, was begin through a prayer) is there.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Travel • * General Interest • Animals • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc.

Pastor Rick Warren will join Ed Stetzer on his webshow, "The Exchange," Tuesday afternoon to talk about his 27-year-old son's suicide earlier this month.

Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, will host The Exchange live from the Exponential church planting conference in Orlando, Fla., where Warren had been scheduled to lead two Bible studies.

Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, Calif., agreed to an interview with Stetzer about what pastors need to know about grief in their congregations, how his son's death has changed him and what church leaders can do to raise awareness and reduce the stigma of mental illness.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Suicide • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • * Theology • Anthropology • Eschatology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

These and other appalling details of the Gosnell trial elicit reactions that might be called revulsion or disgust or horror. The word that eminent bioethicist and physician Leon Kass prefers is “repugnance.” This intense human reaction reflects a sort of deep moral intuition, he says, and it is one that deserves much more serious consideration than our too-sophisticated culture allows.

“As pain is to the body so repugnance is to the soul,” Dr. Kass says as we sit down for an interview in his book-lined office at the American Enterprise Institute, where he is the Madden-Jewett Scholar. “So too with anger and compassion. Repugnance is some kind of wake-up call that there is something untoward going on and attention must be paid. These passions are not simply irrational. They contain within them the germ of insight. You cannot give proper verbal account of the horror of evil, yet a culture that couldn’t be absolutely horrified by such things is dead.”

The observation may not sound controversial, yet Dr. Kass, who was the chairman of President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005, has often found himself in a minority among bioethicists when it comes to abortion, euthanasia, embryonic research, cloning and other right-to-life questions. Dr. Kass's emphasis on what he calls "the wisdom of repugnance," for example, has been assailed by liberal thinkers.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

In March, 7.6 million Americans who want more hours were stuck in part-time jobs, about the same as a year earlier and three million more than there were when the recession began at the end of 2007.

These almost invisible underemployed workers do not count toward the standard jobless rate of 7.6 percent. A broader measure, which includes the involuntary part-timers as well as people who want to work but have stopped looking, stands at 13.8 percent.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with people taking part-time jobs if they want them,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago. “The problem is that people are accepting part-time pay because they have no other choice.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

"The city that started the American Revolution is proving its strength by simply moving forward; NBC’s Katie Tur reports."

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Marriage & Family • Music • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Just how many Copts have fled to the United States no one can say with certainty, since immigration statistics do not include religious affiliation. But the number of Egyptians seeking asylum has jumped since the revolution; in 2011, 1,028 Egyptians were given asylum — 4.1 percent of all of those granted asylum — up from 531 in 2010, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics. With that increase, Egypt ranked fourth on the list of countries whose citizens were given asylum in the United States....

For Copts in Egypt, church is more than just a place to go on Sunday mornings; it is the center of their social life outside the family. For Copts newly outside Egypt, the church is a familiar oasis in a strange country.

“It is our church everywhere,” said Gameel Girgis, a 36-year-old pharmacist who came to the United States in October to seek asylum with his wife and two children after his father-in-law, a priest in the central Egyptian city of Asyut, was stabbed to death. When he searched for a place to live, “my first consideration was distance from the church,” Mr. Girgis said, adding, “I want to raise my kids in the church.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Egypt

Hollywood movie critic and author Theodore “Ted” Baehr came to Columbia this week with the hope of persuading Christian parents and children they have a moral obligation to take on the popular culture moguls who traffic in sex and violence in movies, video games and online entertainment.

Baehr has spent a lifetime teaching, writing and lecturing on the importance of spreading Christian values on the widescreen. He has challenged the movie industry through his biblically based movie reviews to recognize that there is money to be made in family-oriented movies.

“I’ve often said we need more Christians in Hollywood and less Hollywood in Christians,” Baehr, the son of a television actor, said.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Movies & Television • Religion & Culture

Profiled in the Lowell Sun in 2004, Tamerlan [Tsarnaev] said he liked the USA.

“America has a lot of jobs. That’s something Russia doesn’t have,” he told the newspaper. “You have a chance to make money here if you are willing to work.”

He later said, in a photo essay about his boxing exploits, that he hoped to be selected for the US Olympic team, and that he dreamed of becoming a naturalized citizen. But he also lamented his alienation, saying, “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.’’

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

In the beginning, there was widespread concern that [Robert] Edwards's in vitro technique would result in more children born with birth defects. When Louise Brown, the first "test tube" baby, was born healthy in 1978, these concerns evaporated, though questions of the long-term health of IVF children continue to be raised. As the original cohort ages, we should get clear answers one way or another.

The eminent bioethicist Leon Kass of the University of Chicago raised other concerns. IVF would, he feared, "lead to cloning, genetic manipulation of embryos, surrogate pregnancies, and the exploitation of nascent human life as a research tool." For those like me who share Dr. Kass's view of these practices as incompatible with respect for the dignity of human beings, these fears have proven to be well-grounded....

...the real question of "who is in charge" cannot be resolved by proving that something is technically possible. Rather it is whether it is right to or wrong—consistent with or contrary to the dignity of the human being—to do what it may well be technically possible to do. Edwards's technical achievement has brought joy to millions of parents. And each life created, no matter how it was created, is inestimably precious and intrinsically good.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

“I’d never imagined in my wildest dreams this would ­ever happen,” Norden said, sitting on a bench outside the Beth Israel Deaconess emergency room Monday night.

As she looked at her feet, with socks mismatched ­because she had dressed so quickly to leave the house, tears fell to the sidewalk.

“I feel sick,” she said. “I think I could pass out.”

She had yet to see either son, because doctors had not authorized visitors. Both are graduates of Stoneham High School and had been laid off recently from their jobs as roofers. The oldest, age 33, still lives in Stoneham, the younger in Wakefield. Both are avid fishermen.

Read it all.

If you can stomach it, there are photos that are (warning--contains some graphic images including one which requires you to click on it to see {I didn't do so]) collected there.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism

Each suicide leaves behind on average six to ten survivors – husbands, wives, parents, children, siblings, other close friends or family members. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people, including many of our church members, will grieve the loss of a loved one to suicide.

I am one of those people. Some years ago, my father had a stroke that left him partially debilitated. Though he began rehabilitation, one of the side effects of the stroke was clinical depression. He lost all hope and eventually sank into despair. He couldn't see any reason to go on. Three months after the stroke, at age 58, he killed himself.

Though all deaths are tragic, suicide affects us differently than when someone dies in car accident or from a terminal illness. Counselors call death by suicide a "complicated grief" or "complicated bereavement," like death by murder or terrorist attack. Not only do family members grieve the loss of the loved one, they must also face the trauma of the suicide.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Suicide • * Theology • Anthropology • Eschatology • Pastoral Theology

Among the statistics cited are theses:

One in every four young people will experience a mental disorder in any 12 month period (most commonly substance abuse or dependency, depression or anxiety, or a combination of these).

Depression and anxiety are the most prevalent mental health issues experienced by young people, with around 30% of
adolescents experiencing a diagnosable depressive episode by the age of 18 years.

Mental disorders were the leading contributor to the burden of disease and injury (49%) among young Australians aged
15–24 years in 2003, with anxiety and depression being the leading specific cause for both males and females

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Australia • * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

I remain an enthusiastic advocate of homeschooling, but recent years have found me occupied with reforming “real” school. Two much-heralded but very different books, Joseph Murphy’s new survey of the professional literature on homeschooling, Homeschooling in America, and Quinn Cummings’ story of homeschooling her daughter Alice, The Year of Learning Dangerously, rekindled my interest in the movement that once so engaged my family.

A professor of education at Vanderbilt, Murphy is a social scientist, not an advocate, which makes his generally positive evaluation of homeschooling all the more significant. His survey of the social science literature on the topic usefully, if sometimes turgidly, compiles the growing evidence that homeschooled children learn more than their counterparts, at least to the extent that standardized tests measure learning, and are emotionally healthier as well, at least to the extent that psychologists’ “self-esteem and self-concept” scales truly capture emotional health. They volunteer many more hours in their communities and even spend more time participating in extracurricular activities.

While these findings have been widely reported, some of the other studies he describes deserve more attention. For example, low-income children who are homeschooled often reach or exceed national academic averages, whereas the average low-income children in public schools score “considerably below” the national norm.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Children • Education • Marriage & Family

(Please be advised that the specifics of the subject matter in this trail may not be appropriate for some blog readers--KSH).

The dead babies. The exploited women. The racism. The numerous governmental failures. It is thoroughly newsworthy....

[Yet]...this isn't solely a story about babies having their heads severed, though it is that. It is also a story about a place where, according to the grand jury, women were sent to give birth into toilets; where a doctor casually spread gonorrhea and chlamydiae to unsuspecting women through the reuse of cheap, disposable instruments; an office where a 15-year-old administered anesthesia; an office where former workers admit to playing games when giving patients powerful narcotics; an office where white women were attended to by a doctor and black women were pawned off on clueless untrained staffers. Any single one of those things would itself make for a blockbuster news story. Is it even conceivable that an optometrist who attended to his white patients in a clean office while an intern took care of the black patients in a filthy room wouldn't make national headlines?

But it isn't even solely a story of a rogue clinic that's awful in all sorts of sensational ways either. Multiple local and state agencies are implicated in an oversight failure that is epic in proportions! If I were a city editor for any Philadelphia newspaper the grand jury report would suggest a dozen major investigative projects I could undertake if I had the staff to support them.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Absolutely, positively not to be missed--read it all and enjoy all the wonderful pictures (Hat tip: AH).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * General Interest • Humor / Trivia

No one knows if Atlanta's school superintendent or any of the people accused of falsifying test results will go to jail, but they wouldn't be the first if they do.

Lorenzo Garcia, the former superintendent of schools in El Paso, Texas, has been sitting in a federal prison since last year. He's the nation's first superintendent convicted of fraud and reporting bogus test scores for financial gain.

Now, the school district is in turmoil and everybody is blaming everybody else for the scandal.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Law & Legal Issues • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The Leclaire boys share a cheerfully cluttered bedroom in their family’s modest ranch located in a rural village about 20 miles north of Brattleboro. A pair of twin beds line up against one wall and sky-blue curtains printed with planets frame the windows. Pet turtles, crabs and lizards inhabit a row of cages and stuffed animals and art projects fill corners.

The brothers have the same thatch of copper-brown hair, deep green eyes, freckled fair skin and they also share something else. Both Austin, 14, and Max, 11, have a rare genetic disease called Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a fatal condition characterized by progressive muscle degeneration and weakness due to lack of dystrophin, a protein that helps preserve muscle cells. There is no cure for DMD and standard treatments like steroids, heart medication and surgery only manage the symptoms. Typically, people with DMD die by their mid-20s.

There is, however, a new drug in trial that shows promise in stabilizing the disease and possibly even allowing some health improvement. The catch is that this is something the Leclaire brothers cannot share; only Max qualified for the trial, and though he has experienced significant health gains during the past 18 months, his older brother can only look on from his wheelchair as his physical condition continues to deteriorate.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology

... a shocking number [of responses to the Warrens] are taking the moment of media attention to lash out at Warren on their digital tom-toms. The attacks are aimed both at him personally and at his Christian message.

Some unbelievers want to assure Rick and Kay Warren, his wife and Matthew’s bereaved mother, that there’s no heaven where they’ll meet their son again.

“Either there is no God, or God doesn’t listen to Rick Warren, despite all the money Rick has made off of selling false hope to desperate people,” one poster from Cincinnati wrote in to USA Today.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Young Adults

Take the time to listen to it all (and note there is a live excerpt of the Kenyon Commencement address).

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Poetry & Literature • Psychology • Mental Illness • Suicide • * Theology • Anthropology

I too have had a son die, so I have a sense of the pain Rick and Kay are facing. But their circumstances are different and my heart goes out to them.
At times like these, there really are no words, but there is the Word.
There is no manual, but there is Emmanuel.
God is with us.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Suicide • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • * Theology • Christology • Pastoral Theology

On April 1, the Health Care Committee of the Washington State Senate held a two-hour hearing on what its proponents euphemistically call the “Reproductive Parity Act,” and its opponents describe as the “abortion insurance mandate.” If passed, EHB 1044 would require that if any health insurance plan provided coverage for maternity care, it “must also provide a covered person with substantially equivalent coverage to permit the voluntary termination of a pregnancy.”

The bill has already passed the Washington House of Representatives, 53-43, but in the Senate it may be a different matter. At the hearing one of the bill’s proponents claimed to have a written commitment from twenty-five senators (a bare majority) to vote for the bill, but from the comments of at least one committee member it appeared that the bill might have trouble making it out of committee. (There is a procedure for a bill to be brought to the floor even if it has died in committee, but such cases are rare.)

In his inaugural address (“The World Will Not Wait”), Jay Inslee, the state’s newly elected Democratic governor, surprised many by featuring the bill as one of his priorities.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

To my dear staff,

Over the past 33 years we’ve been together through every kind of crisis. Kay and I’ve been privileged to hold your hands as you faced a crisis or loss, stand with you at gravesides, and prayed for you when ill. Today, we need your prayer for us.

No words can express the anguished grief we feel right now. Our youngest son, Matthew, age 27, and a lifelong member of Saddleback, died today.

You who watched Matthew grow up knew he was an incredibly kind, gentle, and compassionate man. He had a brilliant intellect and a gift for sensing who was most in pain or most uncomfortable in a room. He’d then make a bee-line to that person to engage and encourage them.

But only those closest knew that he struggled from birth with mental illness, dark holes of depression, and even suicidal thoughts. In spite of America’s best doctors, meds, counselors, and prayers for healing, the torture of mental illness never subsided. Today, after a fun evening together with Kay and me, in a momentary wave of despair at his home, he took his life.

Kay and I often marveled at his courage to keep moving in spite of relentless pain. I’ll never forget how, many years ago, after another approach had failed to give relief, Matthew said “ Dad, I know I’m going to heaven. Why can’t I just die and end this pain?” but he kept going for another decade.

Thank you for your love and prayers. We love you back.

Pastor Rick

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Suicide • Religion & Culture • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Watch it all--good things do indeed sometimes come from small towns; KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Music • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

[Elementary School Teacher] Ms. Parks admitted to {Georgia state investigator] Mr. Hyde that she was one of seven teachers — nicknamed “the chosen” — who sat in a locked windowless room every afternoon during the week of state testing, raising students’ scores by erasing wrong answers and making them right. She then agreed to wear a hidden electronic wire to school, and for weeks she secretly recorded the conversations of her fellow teachers for Mr. Hyde.

In the two and a half years since, the state’s investigation reached from Ms. Parks’s third-grade classroom all the way to the district superintendent at the time, Beverly L. Hall, who was one of 35 Atlanta educators indicted Friday by a Fulton County grand jury.

Dr. Hall, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements. Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her; she could face up to 45 years in prison....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Watch it all (a little over 13 1/2 minutes) or if you need to (second best) read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Marriage & Family • Movies & Television • Theatre/Drama/Plays • Women • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

One month after the Coalition’s ‘mid-term review’ sidestepped a pledge to cap social care funding, it appears the Government are finally willing to show their hand.
Today's announcement will impose a limit of £75,000 on the amount that individuals will have to pay towards their own care – after which point, the state will cover further costs.
Demos analysis shows a cap set at that level is miserly, helping only 16% of older people.
However, there remains another significant problem - one that risks further alienating the kind of middle class families already reeling from having their child benefit cut and marriage tax break postponed. The scheme contains a hidden penalty for couples, and for their children.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

(Note that last season Dickey played with the New York Mets and he will be with Toronto this season--KSH).

This is Kamathipura, the red light district of Mumbai, among the most notorious sex-trafficking locations in the world. I am here as a guest of Bombay Teen Challenge (BTC), a charity that has been fighting human trafficking for more than 20 years, one I joined forces with last year, when two friends and I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and raised $130,000 , much of it from generous and kind-hearted Mets fans. I have come with my two daughters, Gabriel, 11, and Lila, 9, to witness the fruits of our climb – the conversion of a former brothel to a health clinic. I want my daughters to share the experience not so much as a gratitude check, but to learn that each of us has a capacity to make a difference in this world, and to see that God’s grace makes that possible.

Read it all, noting please that its content may not be appropriate for some blog readers.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Poverty • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Sports • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • India • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

In America, all men are believed to be created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. But Nigerians are brought up to believe that our society consists of higher and lesser beings. Some are born to own and enjoy, while others are born to toil and endure.

The earliest indoctrination many of us have to this mind-set happens at home. Throughout my childhood, “househelps” — usually teenagers from poor families — came to live with my family, sometimes up to three or four of them at a time. In exchange for scrubbing, laundering, cooking, baby-sitting and everything else that brawn could accomplish, either they were sent to school, or their parents were sent regular cash.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Poverty • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Take interstate highways between South Carolina's largest metropolitan areas and the scene remains similar — thick forests, meandering rivers and lush farms punctuated with thriving suburbs and vibrant downtowns.

Get off those interstates and something else emerges — towns where poverty rules, illiteracy passes to children like an inherited disease, and diabetes strikes 9-year-olds because of bad diets and obesity.

This is the other South Carolina. It runs along the “Interstate-95 Corridor” through the mostly majority black counties made infamous by the “Corridor of Shame” documentary about inequities in public schools. It also includes the “Mill Crescent,” the swath of rural, largely white, old textile mill counties between the I-85 economic powerhouse and greater Columbia.

If you took this other South Carolina away, the state would no longer rank at the bottom of nearly every list you want it to be at the top of. Instead, it would basically mirror the nation as a whole in income, education and health.

Many crippling disparities linger in these metropolitan counties, but the areas have been pushed into the national mainstream by four decades of economic growth, desegregation and an influx of people from other states and countries with new ideas and high expectations.

The other South Carolina remains shrouded in despair by the legacies of slavery, dependence on a marginally educated workforce, and political and economic domination by an elite few.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • History • Marriage & Family • Poverty • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * South Carolina • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

If Steve Boedefeld graduates from Appalachian State University without any student loan debt, it will be because of the money he earned fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and the money he now saves by eating what he grows or kills.

Zack Tolmie managed to escape New York University with no debt — and a degree — by landing a job at Bubby’s, the brunch institution in TriBeCa, where he made $1,000 a week. And he had entered N.Y.U. with sophomore standing, thanks to Advanced Placement credits. All that hard work also yielded a $25,000 annual merit scholarship.

The two are part of a rare species on college campuses these days, as the nation’s collective student loan balance hits $1 trillion and continues to rise. While many students are trying to defray some of the costs, few can actually work their way through college in a normal amount of time without debt and little or no need-based financial aid unless they have an unusual combination of bravery, luck and discipline.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Our news media suffer from a terrible supply-side problem. The number of people paid to offer opinions greatly outstrips the number of things worth having an opinion about. Even now, several weeks after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, I don’t think the slaughter was the kind of event toward which one can profitably form an interesting point of view. Leaving church one morning, so the story goes, the great Coolidge was asked the subject of his pastor’s sermon. “Sin,” Coolidge replied. And what did the pastor say about sin? “He said he was ag’in it.” Some things don’t require much elaboration.

In an important sense—in the literal sense—what happened at Sandy Hook was unspeakable, which is why, I suppose, the public disputations that followed it were a towering jumble of non sequitur and irrelevance, a rodeo of hobby horses ridden by straw men. The disputations began even before the authorities had released a final count of victims. Indeed, at the time, good information was hard to come by. For as much as 10 hours after the first reporters arrived on the scene, print and TV journalists were misreporting the killer’s name, his place of residence, his relationship to the elementary school, his mother’s line of work, the types and source of the guns he used, the reaction of school officials in the immediate aftermath of the crime—the long string of mistakes we have come to expect when the compulsion to get it first overwhelms the need to get it right.

The slaughter at Sandy Hook wasn't merely a rebuke to politics or law enforcement or government regulation--it was a rebuke to our desperate hope that evil can be destroyed, or at least quarantined.

--From the February 2013 issue of Commentary, pages 63-64

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Media • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Violence • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theodicy

On Jan. 30, the Obama administration unveiled a long list of exemptions from the ObamaCare insurance mandate. Flaws and contradictions in the law will cause millions of people to be uninsured. The administration also estimated that the cheapest family plan will cost $20,000 by 2016. This new information indicates that the Affordable Care Act is failing in both goals: making insurance affordable and covering the uninsured.

Children are the biggest victims. The hastily drafted law, passed before it was read, overlooked them.

The law says that beginning in 2014, employers with 50 or more full-time employees must offer coverage or pay a penalty. The law's sloppy drafting left it unclear whether that meant worker's coverage or family coverage.

Read it all from IBD.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • Senate

....our marriage culture started to fracture long before the current debates, and a recent article in the Economist nicely summarizes the consequences. With the decline in marriage “come rising out-of-wedlock-birthrates” and “with illegitimate births come single-parent homes.” The effects of single-parent homes (which in most instances mean fatherless homes) are well-documented and well-known: “Children brought up in such homes fare worse than children raised by married parents in a range of academic and emotional outcomes, from adolescent delinquency to dropping out of school.”

Regardless of how the dust settles at the end of the Supreme Court’s term, the steady erosion of the American family will remain a significant and pressing concern in the coming years. But the ability of marriage, as a public institution, to address the issue will be further weakened if the court finally imbibes the arguments it dismissed in 1972.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Arranged marriages can work “because they remove so much of the anxiety about ‘is this the right person?’ ” said Brian J. Willoughby, an assistant professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. “Arranged marriages start cold and heat up and boil over time as the couple grows. Nonarranged marriages are expected to start out boiling hot but many eventually find that this heat dissipates and we’re left with a relationship that’s cold.”

He also credited supportive parents.

“Whether it be financial support for weddings, schooling or housing, or emotional support for either partner, parents provide valuable resources for couples as they navigate the marital transition,” Dr. Willoughby said

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Globalization • History • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Sociology • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

For those of you who know the story/like the movie, etc. here is the Baltimore Raven's Michael Oher with his adopted mother after winning the Super bowl, and here he is with his adopted sister.

If interested, you may read a lot more about this over here.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Movies & Television • Sports

What was happening to black families in the ’60s can be reinterpreted today not as an indictment of the black family but as a harbinger of a larger collapse of traditional living arrangements—of what demographer Samuel Preston, in words that Moynihan later repeated, called “the earthquake that shuddered through the American family.”

That earthquake has not affected all American families the same way. While the Moynihan report focused on disparities between white and black, increasingly it is class, and not just race, that matters for family structure. Although blacks as a group are still less likely to marry than whites, gaps in family formation patterns by class have increased for both races, with the sharpest declines in marriage rates occurring among the least educated of both races. For example, in 1960, 76 percent of adults with a college degree were married, compared to 72 percent of those with a high school diploma—a gap of only 4 percentage points. By 2008, not only was marriage less likely, but that gap had quadrupled, to 16 percentage points, with 64 percent of adults with college degrees getting married compared to only 48 percent of adults with a high school diploma. A report from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia summed up the data well: “Marriage is an emerging dividing line between America’s moderately educated middle and those with college degrees.” The group for whom marriage has largely disappeared now includes not just unskilled blacks but unskilled whites as well. Indeed, for younger women without a college degree, unwed childbearing is the new normal.

These differences in family formation are a problem not only for those concerned with “family values” per se, but also for those concerned with upward mobility in a society that values equal opportunity for its children.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Sociology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Homosexuals enjoy the same civil and conjugal rights as everyone else, but they are not at liberty to describe their relationships as marriages. The reason for this does not originate in some mean-spirited and nasty prohibition: it is a matter of plain logic. Analogously: everyone may run about on a field and be awarded goals, penalty shoot-outs, corner kicks and line-outs; but no one is at liberty to describe what they are doing there as cricket.

When this Act comes into force – and it is a matter of when not if – the damage done will be first to the rational use of the English language. But it will not end there. Create a language and you create a world. So when marriage is redefined as an institution open to homosexual couples, then the nature of marriage will be revolutionised. This will not come about by some sort of fluke or procession of unintended consequences. The change will follow necessarily from the altered definition.

[We must fave the fact that]...homosexual marriage will have profound consequences for Christian spirituality and psychology. There is a spiritual and psychological hiatus when a woman stands at the altar and says, “This is my body.” In so saying, she is representing Christ. What then happens to the ancient spiritual imagery of the church as the Bride of Christ? When homosexual marriage becomes law, the Bride of Christ might well sport a moustache and a beard and certain other physical characteristics, unmentionable here.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theology: Scripture

As the Duchess of Cambridge emerges from the ordeal of pregnancy sickness and displays her discreet bump to the world’s press, it is sobering to remember that more than one in five women becoming pregnant in the UK choose not to give birth, but to have an abortion. The latest available figures show that only 1 per cent of these are carried out because the baby would be born handicapped. Another 98 per cent are on the grounds that the continuation of the pregnancy would carry a risk to the woman’s mental health.

All told, more than 190,000 abortions are carried out each year on this basis – yet Professor Clare Gerada, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, has admitted that the risk is not objectively tested. “What we have is what the woman tells us,” she says. “It isn’t for me to judge her or be moralistic. It’s for me to explore potential other options but to take her at face value.” In other words, if a woman asks for an abortion, she will almost certainly get one.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

For more than three decades, Chinese women have been subjected to their country's brutal one-child policy. Those who try to have more children have been subjected to fines and forced abortions. Their houses have been razed and their husbands fired from their jobs. As a result, Chinese women have a fertility rate of 1.54. Here in America, white, college-educated women—a good proxy for the middle class—have a fertility rate of 1.6. America has its very own one-child policy. And we have chosen it for ourselves.

Forget the debt ceiling. Forget the fiscal cliff, the sequestration cliff and the entitlement cliff. Those are all just symptoms. What America really faces is a demographic cliff: The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate.

The fertility rate is the number of children an average woman bears over the course of her life. The replacement rate is 2.1. If the average woman has more children than that, population grows. Fewer, and it contracts. Today, America's total fertility rate is 1.93, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; it hasn't been above the replacement rate in a sustained way since the early 1970s.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

I have heard from many leaders in business and finance that when a graduate from Catholic elementary and secondary schools applies for an entry-level position in their companies, the employer can be confident that the applicant will have the necessary skills to do the job. Joseph Viteritti, a professor of public policy at Hunter College in New York who specializes in education policy, recently said, "If you're serious about education reform, you have to pay attention to what Catholic schools are doing. The fact of the matter is that they've been educating urban kids better than they're being educated elsewhere."

The evidence is not just anecdotal. Researchers like Helen Marks (in her 2009 essay "Perspectives on Catholic Schools" in Mark Berends's "Handbook of Research on School Choice") have found that students learning in a Catholic school, in an environment replete with moral values and the practice of faith, produce test scores and achievements that reliably outstrip their public-school counterparts.

This is why, to the consternation of our critics, we won't back away from insisting that faith formation be part of our curriculum, even for non-Catholic students.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

Children’s ministry is a busy ministry that often needs lots of people to get involved for it to work well. People are needed to lead groups at church, teach SRE, help in after school clubs, prepare materials, and so on. It is a ministry that gives lots of opportunities for people to be involved in serving their community. But not everyone in a church is gifted, available or interested in getting involved in these ways.

However, prayer is an essential part of children’ ministry, and it is something that every Christian can do. When church members pray for children’s ministry they invite God into all our planning, programs and people. Praying also connects people with a ministry that they may otherwise have no involvement in. It helps them to understand the complexity, challenges and joys of children’s ministry. Sometimes, as people pray they become more interested in the ministry and choose to get more involved.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Children

In a move unprecedented in the American Catholic Church, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez announced Thursday that he had relieved his predecessor, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, of all public duties over his mishandling of clergy sex abuse of children decades ago.

Gomez also said that Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who worked with Mahony to conceal abusers from police in the 1980s, had resigned his post as a regional bishop in Santa Barbara.

The announcement came as the church posted on its website tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel files for 122 priests accused of molesting children.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

One of the ministers responsible for steering the same-sex-marriage legislation through the House of Commons denied this week that the Government was acting hastily or without a mandate.

Speaking on Monday, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, and Women and Equalities, Helen Grant (right), said that she did not think that the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill had been "rushed".

"The consultation on this matter actually started in March 2012, and the consultation itself was comprehensive. We received something in the region of 228,000 responses to that consultation, including 19 petitions. The consultation was open, fair, [and] transparent. Every- thing was looked at very carefully indeed."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Though same-sex activists would like the debate about the redefining of marriage to be about equal rights for adults, it is not. There are three different parties to the discussion, not just two.

The core of the discussion about redefining marriage is primarily about whether society needs a social space where the child's natural right and desire to be raised by its two, biological parents is upheld.

Any sensible debate has to admit that children have rights too. They are naturally born wanting to be loved by the two opposite-sex people who gave them life. Also, children, on average, have the best start in life when raised by their two, biological parents. No amount of social engineering can change this.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

The Holy Orthodox Christian Faith is unabashedly pro-life. The Lord Jesus Christ was recognized and worshipped in His mother’s womb while yet unborn by the Holy Forerunner who was also still in his mother’s womb (Luke 1:44); St. Basil the Great (4th Century), one of the universal teachers of the faith, dared to call murderers those who terminate the life of the fetus. The Church has consistently held that children developing in the womb should be afforded every protection given to those outside the womb. There is no moral, religious or scientific rationale which can justify making a distinction between the humanity of the newly-conceived and that of the newly-born.

Abortion on demand not only ends the life of a child, but also injures the mother of that child, often resulting in spiritual, psychological and physical harm. Christians should bring the comfort of the Gospel to women who have had abortions, that our loving God may heal them. The Orthodox Church calls on her children, and indeed all of society, to provide help to pregnant mothers who need assistance brining their children safely into the world and providing these children loving homes.

On the occasion of this sorrowful anniversary, and as we mourn the violence we all too often visit upon one another, as exemplified by the recent mass killings in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut, we pray for an end to the violence of abortion. Surely the many ways in which we as a people diminish the reverence and respect for human life underlie much of this violence. The disrespect for human life in the womb is no small part of this. Let us offer to Almighty God our repentance for the evil of abortion on demand and extend our hearts and hands to embrace life.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Philosophy • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • Violence • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

A longtime Nashville daycare operation is being evicted, leaving dozens of families in the lurch, after it found itself caught in the middle of a brutal legal battle over the role of sexuality in the Episcopal Church.

The fight over sexuality and the Bible seemed like a legal disagreement between the Diocese of Tennessee and St. Andrew's Parish, but the innocent victim in all this is the daycare that sits on church property in Green Hills.

Cooperative Child Care has had a successful model - no scandals, no issues and 30 years of quality service - but now it has been given six months to get out.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Tennessee • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending

The Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a teacher of mathematics at Oxford and a deacon of the Anglican Church. Some colleagues knew him as a somewhat reclusive stammerer, but he was generally seen as a devout scholar; one dean said he was “pure in heart.” To readers all over the world, he became renowned as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Alice was popular almost from the moment it was published, in 1865, and it has remained in print ever since, influencing such disparate artists as Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, just released in movie theaters nationwide, is only the latest of at least 20 films and TV shows to be made from the book. But if Alice has endured unscathed, its author has taken a pummeling....

In 1999, Karoline Leach published yet another Dodgson biography, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild, in which she quoted the summary of the missing diary information and argued that her predecessors, misunderstanding the society in which Dodgson lived, had created a “Carroll myth” around his sexuality. She concluded that he was attracted to adult women (including Mrs. Liddell) after all.

The reaction among Dodgson scholars was seismic. “Improbable, feebly documented...tendentious,” thundered Donald Rackin in Victorian Studies. Geoffrey Heptonstall, in Contemporary Review, responded that the book provided “the whole truth.”

Which is where Dodgson’s image currently stands—in contention—among scholars if not yet in popular culture. His image as a man of suspect sexuality “says more about our society and its hang-ups than it does about Dodgson himself,” Will Brooker says.

Read it all (in honor of his birthday this past weekend, and, yes, the emphasis is mine).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Books • Children • Education • History • Psychology • Sexuality • * Theology • Anthropology

Watch it all and you can find out more at their website there..

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • Children • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology