Keep 'practicing', Madame Speaker

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a self-described, "ardent, practicing Catholic". Transcript excerpt via Drudge:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

Here's the YouTube excerpt Drudge also linked.

Celebrate (Sanctity of Human) Life (Day)

Wouldn't this be a nice way to mark the Sunday before the Roe v. Wade anniversary every year (h/t K-Lo and the Corner):

National Sanctity of Human Life Day, 2009
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us.

The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent. My Administration has been committed to building a culture of life by vigorously promoting adoption and parental notification laws, opposing Federal funding for abortions overseas, encouraging teen abstinence, and funding crisis pregnancy programs. In 2002, I was honored to sign into law the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which extends legal protection to children who survive an abortion attempt. I signed legislation in 2003 to ban the cruel practice of partial-birth abortion, and that law represents our commitment to building a culture of life in America. Also, I was proud to sign the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, which allows authorities to charge a person who causes death or injury to a child in the womb with a separate offense in addition to any charges relating to the mother.

America is a caring Nation, and our values should guide us as we harness the gifts of science. In our zeal for new treatments and cures, we must never abandon our fundamental morals. We can achieve the great breakthroughs we all seek with reverence for the gift of life.

The sanctity of life is written in the hearts of all men and women. On this day and throughout the year, we aspire to build a society in which every child is welcome in life and protected in law. We also encourage more of our fellow Americans to join our just and noble cause. History tells us that with a cause rooted in our deepest principles and appealing to the best instincts of our citizens, we will prevail.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 18, 2009, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon all Americans to recognize this day with appropriate ceremonies and to underscore our commitment to respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

GEORGE W. BUSH

President Bush has done this each January since at least 2002. I don't know if any Presidents issued similar proclamations before then. I wonder what it would take to make this a permanent observance?

Help Wanted @ Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good?

From the Columbus Dispatch (tip, Jonah Goldberg at The Corner):

Ex-state official charged in online-prostitution case

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 10:52 PM

By Theodore Decker

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Columbus vice detectives monitoring online discussions among clients of prostitutes for years have noticed a man posting under the names "Sullivant Guy," "Broad Street Guy," "Toby" and "God O Thunder."

The man, like many others on the sites, would trade information about street hookers and online escorts. He would recommend some prostitutes, issue warnings about others and give advice on ways to avoid law enforcement.

Detectives said today that they arrested the "go-to guy" behind those posts.

Robert Eric McFadden, who was the director of Gov. Ted Strickland's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until his transfer to another state job in fall 2007, was arrested in Dublin.

McFadden, 46, of 6290 Hyland Dr. in Dublin, was taken into custody on seven prostitution-related counts, including charges that he promoted a 17-year-old prostitute online.

The charges include compelling prostitution involving a minor, promoting prostitution and pandering. He is being held in the Franklin County jail pending an appearance in Municipal Court this morning.

Police said they have seized a computer and two vehicles. One was his wife's car, which detectives said was the setting for photos of the 17-year-old girl that McFadden then posted online.

Police have identified the girl, who is cooperating with the investigation.

Detectives said McFadden was one of the men involved in a hooker-review Web site that spawned what police called a raffle for sex last fall and the creation of a Brewery District brothel.

Police had arrested an academic adviser at Ohio State University, a sex-abuse caseworker at Franklin County Children Services and a real-estate agent in connection with the brothel.

Through that investigation they learned that McFadden had been promoting the girl, who already had been advertising her sex services online, Sgt. Stan Latta said.

It is unclear how McFadden was compensated, if at all, for furthering the girl's business, police said.

Vice detective Jeff Ackley, stressing that he was speaking only generally, said johns have been known to promote prostitutes in return for sexual favors.

Before joining the Strickland administration, McFadden served as field director for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.

He was hired in February 2007 to lead the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He was paid $36 an hour but was transferred to the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in late October that year, Strickland spokesman Keith Dailey said.

The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is charged with making it easier for such organizations to compete for public funding, encouraging partnerships among the groups and measuring the impact those partnerships have on needy Ohioans.

"It had become clear that he wasn't a good fit for the office," Dailey said. "It wasn't working out. The position was a leadership position. He wasn't the right person to lead such an important office."

McFadden, who told police today that he is unemployed, was laid off by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in March because of budget cuts.

Dispatch reporters Mark Niquette and Alan Johnson contributed to this story.

In addition to Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (are pro-lifers and conservatives against the common good?), McFadden was past president of Catholics for Faithful Citizenship; worked for Catholics for Kerry in 2004; and was the State Faith & Values Outreach Director for Hillary Clinton in 2008.

It is widely held that many pro-life and conservative voters stayed home because of apathy, or voted Obama because of economy. The next time it's difficult for you to be inspired by the candidate your well-formed conscience should vote for, remember what positions this guy might have aspired to in a President Hilary Clinton administration.

Taking a Stand[-up] against Guiliani

Bishop Tobin of Providence, R.I. has a tongue-in-cheek-lashing for Mayor Guiliani. (HT: Fr. Larry Gearhart)

Who was the genius on Guiliani's staff who thought sending a fund-raiser invitation to the Bishop would end well?

Church and State

Topic warning - politics style.

Two successive posts from First Things examine the selective vision of some Catholic leaders.

Michael Novak sheds some light upon progressive (even imperialist?) domination of Catholic social and political action where conservative thought is excluded from the arena of ideas. The Cliff's Notes version:

In short, there is more than one way of grasping the principles, working out the middle axioms, and examining with accuracy and through open, respectful debate the concrete realities addressed by Catholic social thought [SNIP] Catholic social thought has more than one wing. It needs at least two to fly.
Alas, the imperialist Catholics try to foist off their monolithic, myopic vision of Catholic social thought as though it were the whole of that beautiful, long-lived, and many-colored intellectual tradition. Theirs is only a splinter, not the whole beam.
If Mr. Brennan were content to present his own views, and those of his allies, as one option among many, I would have no quarrel with them. We could then have many useful arguments about the concrete realities, as well as about the policy options most likely ofsuccess.

James Kerian notes how selectively the USCCB chooses to apply church teaching in this article. He concludes:
It seems far more likely that after over three decades of succumbing to cultural pressure, our clergy are simply eager to show their courage in the face of the law on the first safe issue that has presented itself. [SNIP] If one is going to stand up to the law, it may as well be a law that many people already ignore.