Planned Parenthood is selling aborted baby parts – sorry “tissue”.
Apparently, intact livers and hearts are popular.
There is an online order form for easy part selection with an option for next day Fedex delivery.
Let’s remember, though, that the really upsetting thing about all this is that people are distributing leaflets with disagreeable images on them.
From here:
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are lining up to decry an US Army plan to cut 40,000 and shrink the size of the force from 490,000 to 450,000 by 2018.
[……]
Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the Army’s plan a “dangerous consequence of budget-driven strategy.”
“With global instability only increasing, and with just 33 percent of the Army’s brigade combat teams ready for deployment and decisive operations, there is simply no strategic basis to cut Army force structure below the pre-9/11 level of 490,000,” McCain said.
The bright side is that, although 40,000 soldiers will be fired, none of them will be transsexuals, since the military is lifting the ban on them. So all will be well: the enemy will be laughing so hard, they’ll be much easier to shoot. And think of the financial savings in having shared toilets.
WASHINGTON — Pentagon leaders are finalizing plans aimed at lifting the ban on transgender individuals in the military, with the goal of formally ending one of the last gender- or sexuality-based barriers to military service, senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
Here it is:
Unsurprisingly, having this type of disturbing image landing in one’s mailbox has upset a number of people. This person was shocked – not so much by the fact that such an atrocity is a routine occurrence in Canada, but by the fact that she and her children were confronted with an image of it:
“I do not appreciate having filth like that put where my children can see it possibly and I don’t believe that stuff should be put in anybody’s mail box unwillingly,” said Rudachyk.
“My next-door neighbour’s five-year-old granddaughter went and got the mail yesterday, saw this thing, and promptly vomited on the floor. She was so frightened by the pictures.”
Rudachyk is among many parents who have expressed concern about their children seeing the images.
“It was very shocking. I’m not easily shocked, but it was disgusting, honestly,” Ali McIlmoyl said after finding one in her mailbox.
Someone else thinks distributing the flyer is “child abuse”, although he has failed to notice the rather more severe abuse that was visited on the unborn baby:
“As far as I’m concerned, this amounts to child abuse,” he said. “My next door neighbour’s granddaughter got the mail yesterday and when she saw it she was so traumatized, she vomited on the floor.”
I have really no idea whether the distribution of these kinds of images hurts or benefits the pro-life cause, but I find it interesting that, in an age of unfettered pornography with its gaudy images of sordid fantasy, what provokes the most disgust is drawing attention to a sordid reality.
For the last twelve years, there was nothing a Church of England vicar could do to earn expulsion from the priesthood. During that time, like naughty children, many vicars have worked diligently to see just how far they could go before provoking some kind of reaction from above. It seems that paedophilia is the tipping point – as of today, that is; paedophilia is already starting to be viewed as just another orientation, so, in a few years it may receive a generous pastoral response – and paedophile vicars are to lose their licences. In the spirit of diversity, atheist vicars, are still welcome.
From here:
The Church of England is to restore its traditional powers to defrock vicars who break the law, Church leaders said yesterday. (Sun)
The punishment of expulsion from the priesthood – abolished 12 years ago – is to be reinstated as a demonstration of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s determination to stamp out child abuse.
Restoration of the most severe penalty for clergy guilty of sex abuse or other crimes was revealed after the Most Reverend Justin Welby told a survivors group that the Church is ready to launch its own examination of the extent of child sex abuse by priests.
For marriages to be equal, everyone would have to have to be hitched to a person who is no less or more attractive, capable, wealthy, fertile, sanguine, attentive, understanding, sympathetic or desirable than anyone else.
As with socialism, the only way this works is to compel all to sink to the lowest common denominator. We all have to marry unattractive, bungling, impoverished, impotent, miserable, disinterested, dense, uncaring, ugly and repugnant individuals – the sex of the person wouldn’t matter because there wouldn’t be any.
Of course, what those who tirelessly agitate for marriage equality really want is imbalance not equality: a contrived conjoining of two similarities, a consummation of anti-symmetry, a coitus of hollow infertility.
From here:
A Montana man said Wednesday that he was inspired by last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage to apply for a marriage license so that he can legally wed his second wife.
Nathan Collier and his wives Victoria and Christine applied at the Yellowstone County Courthouse in Billings on Tuesday in an attempt to legitimize their polygamous marriage. Montana, like all 50 states, outlaws bigamy — holding multiple marriage licenses — but Collier said he plans to sue if the application is denied.
“It’s about marriage equality,” Collier told The Associated Press Wednesday. “You can’t have this without polygamy.”
TEC and the ACoC don’t haven’t much of a generous pastoral response to offer Nathan, Victoria and Christine because so many North American Anglican clergy have been too busy legitimising their own sexual urges to worry about polygamy – although clerical polygamy may well be on the horizon; as long as it’s gay polygamy.
From here:
The Archbishop of Canterbury today expressed deep concern about the stress for the Anglican Communion following the US Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops’ resolution to change the definition of marriage in the canons so that any reference to marriage as between a man and a woman is removed.
While recognising the prerogative of The Episcopal Church to address issues appropriate to its own context, Archbishop Justin Welby said that its decision will cause distress for some and have ramifications for the Anglican Communion as a whole, as well as for its ecumenical and interfaith relationships.
Other than the fact that I am still waiting with considerable anticipation for an archbishop to voice a shallow concern, what I find most interesting about this is that Welby’s worry is not so much whether it is Biblically sound to redefine marriage, but whether TEC’s decision will hasten the demise of the pallid but still twitching carcass belonging to what used to be the Anglican Communion.
In order to remain credible, and in the absence of any more potent stricture on TEC than deep concern from Canterbury, what choice will Provinces that take the Gospel seriously have but to further distance themselves from TEC – and Canterbury?
Incidentally, does anyone doubt that the Anglican Church of Canada will follow in TEC’s footsteps? Anyone?
Canadian Anglicans, having little else to be proud of, paid their annual homage to the Zeitgeist yesterday:
Oakville was represented by St. Jude’s, the town’s posh church:
Someone lamented that there was only one bishop present, Terry Finlay. I think the person may have been mistaken, though: this fellow looks like a bishop to me:
The object on which an Anglican bishop rests his hope rarely fails to confirm my low expectations.
Fred Hiltz could be hoping that the outcome of the debate will align with the Biblical understanding of marriage or, to say it another way, with God’s will for a Christian marriage. Instead, he hopes that there will not be too much squabbling.
From here:
Archbishop Fred Hiltz said he is aware that there is anxiety among Anglicans about how the 2016 General Synod will deal with a motion amending the marriage canon (church law) to allow the marriage of same-sex couples.
Hiltz expressed hope that the debates that will precede any decision will be conducted with respect and patience.
He is praying, he added, that people will “know the leading of the Holy Spirit” and that there will be “grace in the midst of what will be a very difficult and challenging conversation.”
[……]
In July 2013, General Synod — the church’s governing body — approved Resolution C003, which asked Council of General Synod (CoGS) to prepare and present a motion to change the church’s Canon 21 on marriage “to allow the marriage of same-sex couples in the same way as opposite-sex couples.”
It also asked that this motion include “a conscience clause so that no member of the clergy, bishop, congregation or diocese should be constrained to participate in our authorize [sic] such marriages against the dictates of their conscience.”
It’s hard to take the prayer “know the leading of the Holy Spirit” seriously, since the “conscience clause” (not that anyone takes that particularly seriously since those that exercise it will be ridiculed, ostracised and eventually driven out) anticipates disunity, something that would not be present if the delegates were more interested in being informed by the Holy Spirit than in using him as rubber stamp for their own opinions.
I was under the naïve impression that there was nothing left to which the overused to the point of meaninglessness adjective “inclusive” could be applied – but I was wrong.
From here:
The Archbishop of Canterbury today calls on business and market leaders to be less self-serving and to adopt a new model known as “inclusive capitalism”.
[…..]
“Rather than just seeking a return on investment, there has to be a generosity that reaches out.”
Any model of capitalism that relied solely on self-interest would lead to the collapse of society, he warns, writing in the Telegraph.
“Altruism, the imitation of the God who acts in love that does not seek return, is a crucial part of a stable and functional society.”
To what organisation should we look for inspiration in eschewing financial self-interest and seeking no return on investments? The Church of England, of course:
The Church Commissioners hold investments whose value was approaching £6.7 billion at the end of 2014.
[…..]
Their long term target is a return of at least RPI [inflation] plus 5% over the long term.
A paradigm of inclusive capitalism: it includes £6.7 billion and 5% return over inflation.
