Friday, January 1, 2021

Michigan bishops welcome court decision favoring funds for private schools By Christine Rousselle for CNA December 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs

Michigan bishops welcome court decision favoring funds for private schools

December 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0Print

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 31, 2020 / 02:15 pm (CNA).- The Michigan Catholic Conference is pleased with a recent state Supreme Court decision that requires a lower court to review the constitutionality of a state program which reimburses non-public schools for the costs that the schools incur to comply with health and safety mandates.

The Dec. 28 split 3-3 decision means that the Court of Claims will review the program.

“We’re pleased that the Court of Appeals decision has been upheld and that the Section 152b has been found constitutional by the state’s highest court,” David Malachnik, the vice president for communications for the Michigan Catholic Conference, said Dec. 28. The Michigan Catholic Conference serves as the official public policy voice of the Catholic Church in the state.

“Since the case has been remanded to the Court of Claims, our hope would be for the Court to quickly dispense with its review in order to allow for nonpublic schools to access the long-awaited funding,” he said.

The Michigan Catholic Conference believes “that every student in Michigan should be treated equally in terms of health and safety,” regardless of which type of school they attend, Malachnik added.

The Supreme Court was tied after Justice Elizabeth Clement recused herself from the case due to a conflict of interest; she had been a legal counsel to the governor when he signed into law the reimbursement.

The lawsuit stems from the 2016 appropriation of $2.5 million by the Michigan legislature to non-public schools for reimbursements for complying with state-mandated programs.

The distribution of these funds, however, was blocked in 2017 when a group representing public schools filed suit. The Michigan legislature continued to appropriate funds to non-public schools, despite the pending lawsuit.

Approximately $5.5 million has been appropriated to non-public schools by the Michigan legislature since 2016.

In April 2018, Judge Cynthia Stephens of the Court of Claims ruled that the reimbursement appropriation was unconstitutional. This decision was reversed by a October 2018 decision by the Court of Appeals, who ruled that the money was constitutional.

The Court of Appeals found that reimbursements would cover “incidental costs” that came with the non-public schools complying with state requirements, and would not be the state entangling itself with religion.

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Planned Parenthood’s international arm boasts financing efforts to legalize abortion in Argentina December 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs

Planned Parenthood’s international arm boasts financing efforts to legalize abortion in Argentina

December 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0Print

Pro-life demonstrator in Argentina | Photo: @connox.ph – Unidad Provida

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec 31, 2020 / 12:56 pm (CNA).- In a post published on Wednesday, December 30, just hours after abortion was legalized by the Argentinian Senate, one of the international branches of Planned Parenthood, the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region (IPPFWHR), boasted about having financed a large operation in the South American country to push to legalize abortion.

The celebratory post on the IPPFWHR website contradicts the claims of Argentinian President Alberto Fernández, who presented the abortion law and who repeatedly rebuffed pro-life concerns that the law was in fact being pushed by international organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the Ford Foundation rather than the will of the Argentinian people.

According to a November 2020 survey carried by independent pollster Giacobbe & Asociados, 60% of Argentinians opposed the law, while only 26.7% were in favor.

“Argentina’s Senate just voted to legalize abortion up to 14 weeks! This is a historic moment for our region, our incredible partners in Argentina, and the countless activists and organizers who formed ‘the green wave’,” the IPPFWHR posted.

The post also revealed that the IPPFWHR “has nurtured an ecosystem of feminist organizations and activists for more than 15 years that contributed to make today possible.”

“IPPFWHR directly supports seven partners in Argentina, who in turn sub-grant funds to 20 other grassroots organizations from around the country. They have been coalescing around shared activities, such as advocating with policymakers and ensuring communication campaigns in favor of so called abortion rights featured prominently in the public discourse. They’re also actively planning how to best support the implementation of the new law.”

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Brazilian President Bolsonaro criticizes Argentina’s legalization of abortion December 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs

Brazilian President Bolsonaro criticizes Argentina’s legalization of abortion

December 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0Print

CNA Staff, Dec 31, 2020 / 12:49 pm (CNA).- In a short message published on his Twitter account, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro criticized the decision of the Argentinian Senate to legalize abortion and vowed that abortion will never become legal in Brazil – the largest Latin American country – under his presidency.

“I deeply lament for the lives of Argentinian children, now subject to being cut in their mothers’ wombs with the consent of the State. As far as it depends on me and my government, abortion will never be approved on our land. We will always fight to protect the lives of the innocent!,” tweeted Bolsonaro.

A new abortion law was approved by the Argentinian Senate on Wednesday, December 30. The new law, in practice, will allow abortions at any time until birth and has no provisions for protecting the baby if he or she survives a late-term abortion.

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How “normal”, really, was the old normal? What exactly do we in America mean by “normal?” Just how “normal” were things to begin with? December 31, 2020 Jerry Salyer The Dispatch

How “normal”, really, was the old normal?

What exactly do we in America mean by “normal?” Just how “normal” were things to begin with?

December 31, 2020 Jerry Salyer The Dispatch 1Print

Flatten the curve. Radio, television, and Internet authorities drummed the message into us at the beginning of the COVID drama early in 2020.

That little mantra has long since been dropped, of course. In the interval we have been lectured about the wickedness of those who wear masks, and then later about the wickedness of those who refuse to wear masks; funerals for our loved ones have been suppressed as public health hazards, even as anyone daring to criticize rioters and looters has been castigated as a racist.

Almost from the very beginning, those rare souls who would emphasize modest, commonsense countermeasures against the epidemic were drowned out by opportunistic grandstanding, apocalyptic fear-mongering, and messianic rhetoric about the salvific power of “Science.” Let anybody infuriated and disillusioned by this state of affairs rest assured: I get it.

Much as I am myself fed up with COVID hype, however, whenever I hear someone demand to know when things will finally get back to normal, I can’t help but raise what seems to me a self-evident follow-up question: What exactly do we mean by “normal?” Just how “normal” were things to begin with?

First and most obviously, there is the abnormality of a society wherein mothers frequently opt to have their own children murdered. Yet it seems to me important for us to admit that abortion is only the most glaring symptom of a more pervasive underlying disease. Only those who have had their heads in the sand would hope to see our nursing homes get back to “normal,” for instance. Having heard unsavory accounts from overworked orderlies while teaching medical ethics at the Louisville community college, having an attorney brother who handles nursing home abuse cases, and having once gotten to know some nursing home residents as part of a Great Books discussion project at a facility in Maryland, I cannot but find the notion of “normalcy” with respect to nursing homes inane. Even many ancient pagan societies were sound enough to recognize elders as irreplaceable, living repositories of experience – the memory of the tribe. Enlightened America regards elders much as it regards children – as liabilities, obstacles which interfere with the frantic pursuit of happiness via mass consumption.

Just to be clear, none of this is intended to stigmatize those who for whatever reason are in no position to care for a sick or aging relative. The point is not to pass sweeping judgments over every last unique situation, but to recognize that much of what is taken for normal in American life is anything but, and was so long before Wuhan hit the news. Schools must stay open, I have heard, not for the sake of education but because many children come from single-parent homes, or from households where the mother has to work, and so if schools close said children have no one to look after them. Likewise, it goes against family values to limit interstate travel, we may be told, because then all the children and siblings who have scattered themselves across a half-dozen states cannot cross the lines to make the occasional family reunion.

Until we can reconsider some unspoken premises in the preceding arguments, we will remain a lost people.

Moreover, lockdowns really are normal, truly so, and under the right circumstances are as beneficial and American as apple pie. Those too invested in the ideology of democratic capitalism may find it distasteful, but if we look a few decades further into the past we find that pretty much every small town – and even some parts of cities – used to undergo an all-day, intensive lockdown once a week. Literally, every single week. And let it be emphasized that this was not under some socialist dictatorship, not in Communist China, not even under the Obama administration, but in America during her very heyday. Once upon a time it was customary on every seventh day for families to be stuck together, for road traffic to dwindle to an economically unproductive and inefficient trickle, for businesses to close up, for public offices to shut down, for libraries to lock their doors, and for sporting events to be postponed. In some places, in living memory, it has even been illegal on such lockdown days for a person to hunt with firearms on his own property. Liberal fascism, indeed.

That said, there was one big difference between the old-time weekly lockdowns and the more recent one: During the lockdowns back then, churches remained very open. We can contrast all this with the “normal” of 2019, for which churchgoing seems to have been one lifestyle option among many and American life as a whole was patterned upon that of New York City: go, go, go, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I can’t help but wonder if our collective refusal to submit to mild, salutary limitations like the Sabbath “lockdowns” of yesteryear has had something to do with putting us in our current predicament.

Extreme freedom always leads to extreme slavery, so Plato tells us (Republic, Book VIII 564a). Looking at the state of American culture and morals, we would be hard-pressed to come up with a more chilling thought.

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About Jerry Salyer 43 Articles

Catholic convert Jerry Salyer is a philosophy instructor and freelance writer.

The New Under Ground Church-THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD

Friday, January 1, 2021