This week on Reclaiming the Culture: "Salafism: Understanding a Strain of Radical Islam"

Today, on "Reclaiming the Culture," host Dolores Meehan interviews Brian Fairchild of the Intrepid Group on the threats posed by Salafist Islam. Parts one and two of a three part interview are presented; part three airs next week. Left: with Crown Prince Sheikh Saud bin Saqr al Qasimi of the Emirate of Ras al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates.

In part one, Mr. Fairchild describes his background and experiences in Arabia, and begins to describe what Salafism is. In part two, he expands on Salafism, and on the inadequate conceptual and instrumental response of our government.

Listen here:

http://www.reclaimingtheculture.org/fairchild.html

Mr. Fairchild is the co-founder of Intrepid Group, LLC. Since 9/11, Mr. Fairchild and his partner have trained over 10,000 US counterterrorism officials on the subject of Islamist terrorism, including officials from CIA, FBI, military special operations, and state and local law enforcement.

Podcasts can be downloaded, too.

Other Reclaiming the Culture shows:

Most Reverend Salvatore Cordileone, Bishop of the Diocese of Oakland: "The Manhattan Declaration: A Call to Christian Conscience"

Father Robert A. Sirico, President, The Acton Institute "The Principle of Subsidiarity and the Service of the Poor"

Dr. Janet Smith, the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, "The Right to Privacy."

Dr. Maria Fedoryka, Ave Maria University, "The Gift of Woman"

And upcoming on September 14: Father Michael Sweeney, OP, President, Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology will discuss "Authentic Catholic Education and the Impact of the Land o' Lakes Conference"

What to do about the CCHD?

Jude Huntz, Director of the Human Rights Office of the Diocese of Kansas City - St. Joseph, offers some suggestions. Excerpts below is from "The Catholic Key."

"In recent years the Catholic Campaign for Human Development has come under a great deal of scrutiny and criticism. CCHD had a relationship with the national organizing group ACORN that was problematic, and when a variety of problems were discovered with ACORN the national CCHD office took steps to defund the organization. Yet, the relationships with community organizing groups across the country have been the fundamental problem with many CCHD grants in all parts of the country...

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development offers two possible national grant opportunities: community organizing grants and economic development grants. In studying the various problems with CCHD grants nationally, we noticed that the problematic grants all fell under the community organizing area. These organizations have traditionally attempted to create a voice for populations that have historically had no voice in the political and economic decisions of society. This goal is laudable in itself, but as time progressed the nature of organizing evolved. Many organizing groups began to develop a partisan edge to their work. What is more, many organizing groups began to advocate for causes that are contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, most notably in the areas of abortion, same sex marriage, and health care reform."

Of course. I've described before how in my (and Fr. Malloy's) experience with a community organizing group the organizer refused to say what goals the created power structure would pursue, only that he wanted to create one. And, as Huntz says, what happens when the structures start pursuing goals contrary to the teaching of the church? You find out that you have funded your enemies.

Unfortunately, the two remaining groups being funded by the CCHD in the Archdiocese of San Francisco seem to fall into this category: the San Francisco Organizing Project certainly, and Nuestra Casa probably.

For a good counterpoint to the CCHD, visit the page of Fr. Robert Sirico, President of the Acton Institute, on Reclaiming the Culture.

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney

Nice: Deacon Keith on "Restoring Honor" Rally

"The crowd easily exceeded 500,000 people. The event stage was set up at the base of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. However, the massive crowd stretched along the Lincoln Memorial, on both sides of the reflective pond stretching all the way to the Washington Monument....

The address given by Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, secured this heroic and inspiring woman's place in American history. This is the 47th anniversary of her uncle, the late, great Christian minister and human rights hero, Dr Martin Luther Kings' famous "I Have a Dream" Speech. He would have been proud of his niece. She is an heir of his legacy and certainly has his extraordinary gift for prophetic rhetoric which can rouse the heart of a Nation.

This was a masterful and inspired speech, given on the day when the Nation honors one of our greatest Americans. Dr Alveda King candidly and honestly declared that 'our material gains seem to be going the way of our moral losses....'"

Full article here:

http://www.catholiconline.com/national/national_story.php?id=38033

Rally in DC Big Cause for Encouragement

A couple of photos of today's "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington DC.

"They spoke in soaring terms of the rally's importance, repeatedly telling the crowd that America is at a moment of spiritual and moral peril, and that their gathering represented the path to revival."

300,000+ Americans who take "honor" seriously is a very good sign.

Recommended Book of the Week: "The New Science of Politics" by Eric Voegelin

This week's recommended book is "The New Science of Politics" by Professor Eric Voegelin. The New Science of Politics was published in 1954. This is the book that introduced Voegelin to the American public. I first read it more than 20 years ago, and it had a massive effect on me.

All excerpts are from the introduction.

"To pursue a theoretical problem to the point where the principles of politics meet with the principles of a philosophy of history is not customary today. Nevertheless, the procedure cannot be considered an innovation in political science; it will rather appear as a restoration, if it be remembered that the two fields which today are cultivated separately were inseparably united when political science was founded by Plato. This integral theory of politics was born from the crisis of Hellenic society. In an hour of crisis, when the order of a society flounders and disintegrates, the fundamental problems of political existence in history are more apt to come into view than in periods of comparative stability....

A restoration of political science to its principles implies that the restorative work is necessary because the consciousness of principles is lost. The movement toward retheoretization must be understood, indeed, as a recovery from the destruction of science which characterized the positivistic era in the second half of the nineteenth century. The destruction worked by positivism is the consequence of two fundamental assumptions. In the first place, the splendid unfolding of the natural sciences was co-responsible with other factors for the assumption that the methods used in the mathematizing sciences of the external world were possessed of some inherent virtue and that all other sciences would achieve comparable success if they followed the example and accepted these methods as their model. This belief by itself was a harmless idiosyncrasy that would have died out when the enthusiastic admirers of the model method set to work in their own science and did not achieve the expected successes. It became dangerous because it combined with the second assumption that the methods of the natural sciences were a criterion for theoretical relevance in general."

I think of the following passages every time I hear the cringe-making 1973 ICEL translation: "Father, help us to seek the values that will bring us lasting joy in this changing world..."

"In order to arrive at clarity about the issue, it must first of all be realized that the terms "value-judgment" and "value-free" science were not part of the philosophical vocabulary before the second half of the nineteenth century. The notion of a value-judgment (Werturteil) is meaningless in itself; it gains its meaning from a situation in which it is opposed to judgments concerning facts (Tatsachenurteile). And this situation was created through the positivistic conceit that only propositions concerning facts of the phenomenal world were "objective," while judgments concerning the right order of soul and society were "subjective." Only propositions of the first type could be considered "scientific," while propositions of the second type expressed personal preferences and decisions, incapable of critical verification and therefore devoid of objective validity. This classification made sense only if the positivistic dogma was accepted on principle; and it could be accepted only by thinkers who did not master the classic and Christian science of man. For neither classic nor Christian ethics and politics contain "value-judgments" but elaborate, empirically and critically, the problems of order which derive from philosophical anthropology as part of a general ontology.

A few pages later, Voegelin describes this attitude while discussing the work of Max Weber:

"The amount of materials which he (Weber) mastered in these voluminous studies on Protestantism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Israel, and Judaism, to be completed by a study on Islam, is indeed awe-inspiring. In the face of such impressive performance it has perhaps not been sufficiently observed that the series of these studies receives its general tone through a significant omission, that is, of pre-Reformation Christianity. The reason of the omission seems to be obvious. One can hardly engage in a serious study of medieval Christianity without discovering among its 'values' the belief in a rational science of human and social order and especially of natural law. Moreover, this science was not simply a belief, but it was actually elaborated as a work of reason. Here Weber would have run into the fact of a science of order, just as he would if he had seriously occupied himself with Greek philosophy. Weber's readiness to introduce verities about order as historical facts stopped short of Greek and medieval metaphysics. In order to degrade the politics of Plato, Aristotle, or St. Thomas to the rank of 'values' among others, a conscientious scholar would first have to show that their claim to be science was unfounded. And that attempt is self-defeating. By the time the would-be critic has penetrated the meaning of metaphysics with sufficient thoroughness to make his criticism weighty, he will have become a metaphysician himself. The attack on metaphysics can be undertaken with a good conscience only from the safe distance of imperfect knowledge."

He can be funny when he wants to be, too:

"The theoretical issue of positivism as a historical phenomenon had to be stated with some care; the variety of manifestations themselves can be listed briefly, now that their uniting bond is understood. The use of method as the criterion of science abolishes theoretical relevance. As a consequence, all propositions concerning facts will be promoted to the dignity of science, regardless of their relevance, as long as they result from a correct use of method. Since the ocean of facts is infinite, a prodigious expansion of science in the sociological sense becomes possible, giving employment to scientistic technicians and leading to the fantastic accumulation of irrelevant knowledge through huge 'research projects' whose most interesting feature is the quantifiable expense that has gone into their production. The temptation is great to look more closely at these luxury flowers of late positivism and to add a few reflections on the garden of Academus in which they grow; but theoretical asceticism will not allow such horticultural pleasures."

and:

"Weber, as has just been set forth, still conceived history as an increase of rationalism in the positivistic sense. From the position of a science of order, however, the exclusion of the
scientia prima from the realm of reason is not an increase but a decrease of rationalism. What Weber, in the wake of Comte, understood as modern rationalism would have to be reinterpreted as modern irrationalism. This inversion of the socially accepted meaning of terms would arouse a certain hostility."

Ya think? Reflect on the intellectual contortions pro-abortion thinkers must embrace in order to deny the humanity of the fetus, all the while claiming to be rational, scientific, objective, modern.

Professor Voegelin's influence probably cannot be overstated. By now, a couple of generations of first rate scholars have explored, and continued to explore, his works, via institutes and symposia. You can help the Eric Voegelin institute at LSU (which no longer receives any state funding) by going to http://www.lsu.edu/artsci/groups/voegelin/donate.shtml

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney

"End the incontestable evil of abortion, anywhere and everywhere it exists."

The great Reverend Walter Hoye is speaking out about the overturning of his unjust conviction:

"It is my hope that this victory will encourage Pastors to both take a public stand against abortion in the pulpit and to minister the love of Christ to the men, women and children going into an abortion clinic from the public square. It's time for men of God to come together and end the incontestable evil of abortion, anywhere and everywhere it exists."

Now that's a Shepherd!

The LifeNews article also has interesting comments from the Life Legal Defense Foundation attorneys who represent Pastor Hoye.

In SF: Walk for Life: 1, Planned Parenthood: Zero

Back in 2005, the first Walk for Life West Coast took place. In response, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (all Democrats) issued Resolution 05-0019:

"Resolution recognizing January 22, 2005 as "Stand Up For Choice Day" in honor of the 32nd anniversary of the landmark 1973 United States Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade establishing a woman's constitutional right to decide when and if to have a child; and further supporting the local Pro-Choice community demonstrating in San Francisco..."

The full resolution cited the Planned Parenthood abortion business a number of times.

Well, the Planned Parenthood abortion business is no longer in San Francisco. Full details of the severing of ties with their SF affiliate have not been made public, but certainly include financial mismanagement. We note that in FY2006-2007 Planned Parenthood Golden Gate's revenue was $22,345,629--40% of which comes from state funds and 16% from Medi-Cal reimbursements, which is $12,513,552 of your tax dollars.

By contrast, the Walk for Life West Coast is quite healthy. The 2010 event drew 40,000 participants, up from 7,500 in 2005 (when Fr. Malloy received the first annual Saint Gianna Molla award from founders Dolores Meehan and Eva Muntean).

Here's a great video of the 2010 Walk by the artists "Shadow of the Locust":

Mark your calendars! The next Walk for Life West Coast will be on January 22, 2011!

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney

Reverend Walter Hoye's Conviction Overturned: "The pastor may have been convicted for legal activities."

A three judge superior court panel has overturned the conviction of pro-life hero Reverend Walter Hoye.

From today's SF Chronicle:

"An Alameda County court panel has overturned an anti-abortion pastor's convictions for illegally approaching patients outside an Oakland clinic, saying a judge's flawed instructions could have allowed jurors to find him guilty for conduct that was legal.

Walter Hoye of Union City, a pastor at a Berkeley church, was the first person convicted under a 2008 Oakland ordinance that created an 8-foot "bubble" around patients entering reproductive health clinics. The law prohibited knowingly entering that zone to harass a client or offer counseling without the person's consent.

A Superior Court judge sentenced Hoye to 30 days in jail in March 2009 after he refused a probation condition that would have required him to stay 100 yards from the Family Planning Specialists Medical Group at Second and Webster streets.

Hoye served his jail term while appealing his two misdemeanor convictions. He has also challenged the ordinance in federal court, where a judge upheld it in August 2009.

In a ruling Wednesday, a three-judge Superior Court panel said trial Judge Stuart Hing had failed to tell jurors what they had to conclude before convicting Hoye.

When jurors asked Hing during deliberations to define the "approach" that the ordinance prohibited, the judge told them to use the everyday meaning of the word.

But the panel said the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a similar case from Colorado in 2000 that an abortion protester who stands still, and speaks or hands leaflets to patients who walk by, cannot be convicted of knowingly approaching the patient.

Hoye said he had been standing still during some of the incidents for which he was charged. As a result of Hing's misleading instruction, the court panel said, the pastor may have been convicted for legal activities.

The panel also said Hing should have told the jury that it must agree unanimously about what Hoye did that broke the law.

Jurors found only that he had approached patients illegally on two days in 2008. But because Hoye had multiple encounters with patients on both days, the panel said, individual jurors might have disagreed about which acts were illegal, violating his right to a unanimous verdict.
Kevin Dunleavy, the county's chief assistant district attorney, said prosecutors are reviewing the ruling before deciding whether to challenge it in a state appeals court."


To learn more about Reverend Hoye, or to contribute to his work, visit www.issues4life.com

His site has a chilling statistic that I had roughly known but never seen before right down in black and white: In 2005 there were 452,000 black babies killed in the womb. ALL other causes of death for African-Americans put together amounted to only 292,808. There were 157,000 more deaths than births in the African-American community in 2005.

As Walter says:

"Brothers, we have got to talk about this."

Ed Whelan Defends Marriage at Northwestern Law School

The great Ed Whelan, who has done so much to expose Judge Walker's injudicious shenanigians, will be taking part in a forum discussing same-sex "marriage" at Northwestern Law School in Chicago on September 7. There is not yet an online link for the event.

Speaking of shenanigans, last week Maggie Gallagher observed:

"Gay marriage advocates are now hoping for a technical knockout -- for the 9th Circuit to rule that the voters of California have no standing to challenge Walker's ruling. This may be a sign they understand how extreme and weak Walker's ruling actually is, how unable it is to withstand substantive review by higher courts. Ted Olson goes on TV claiming he has proved there's no possible case for opposing gay marriage. Now he's in court trying to block any higher court from reviewing his handiwork.

Does that sound like the behavior of people with an airtight logical case to you?"

Reasonable Arguments

The attack on defenders of heterosexual marriage that they are motivated by religious prejudice is common. A useful reply to this came in the second book of a series titled "Why vs Why" in which contrasting views on topical issues are books laid out in debate form. In the second one titled "Gay Marriage," published in May by Australian publisher Pantera Press, Bill Muehlenberg, secretary of the Family Council of Victoria, took up the case against same-sex marriage concerning Proposition 8 none of them based on religious grounds:

1. It negates what marriage is. Marriage is not just a social construct, but a cultural universal. Marriage is the basis for family formation and is not simply a way of legitimizing sex. Evolutionary biologists acknowledge that male-female bonding in lasting pairs was the critical step in human evolution and is something built into us by nature.

2. The percentage of homosexuals who want to marry is very small and in places where it has already been legalized there have been relatively few same-sex marriages. It has been legal in the Netherlands since 2001 and only about 4% of homosexuals married during the first five years after legalization.

3. There is another agenda here. A fundamental goal of the homosexual lobby is the complete social and public endorsement of them. Being able to marry is like having a stamp of approval from governments and society. It also changes the institution of the family and essentially redefines marriage out of existence.

4. Not all relationships are alike. Homosexual relationships are much more unstable and promiscuous than heterosexual ones. Research has also found that among married homosexual couples the rate of divorce is much higher than for heterosexual couples.

5. Claims of discrimination and denial of rights are spurious. People are entitled to the benefits of marriage if they meet the requirements. Just as family members and minors cannot marry, so too homosexuals cannot. Social goods are denied to all sorts of people and that is how life operates. Societies discriminate in favor of heterosexual unions because of the social good derived from them. Homosexuals are seeking to re-write the rules to get all the benefits, while avoiding the obligations.

6. The arguments used to justify legal same-sex marriage could be used to legalize incest, polygamy or any number of sexual combinations.

7. It is not good for children. In most cases a child will do better with a mother and a father. As well children need role models as they are growing up. Children should be given priority, and not used as political footballs. These arguments, amply documented in the book, show clearly just how wrong-headed was Judge Walker's decision.
Fr. John Flynn, LC as quoted in Zenith

Dr. Maria Fedoryka on "The Gift of Woman"--this week's "Reclaiming the Culture"

Today, on "Reclaiming the Culture," Dr. Maria Fedoryka discusses the topic of her recent essay "The Gift of Woman" with host Dolores Meehan. Dr. Fedoryka is Professor of Philosophy at Ave Maria University.

Listen here:

http://www.reclaimingtheculture.org/fedoryka.html

Podcasts can be downloaded, too.

Other Reclaiming the Culture shows in August:

Most Reverend Salvatore Cordileone, Bishop of the Diocese of Oakland: "The Manhattan Declaration: A Call to Christian Conscience"

Father Robert A. Sirico, President, The Acton Institute "The Principle of Subsidiarity and the Service of the Poor"

Dr. Janet Smith, the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, "The Right to Privacy."

And upcoming on August 31: Father Michael Sweeney, OP, President, Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology will discuss "Authentic Catholic Education and the Impact of the Land o' Lakes Conference"

Professor Robert George to Speak at Oakland Cathedral this Wednesday!

Our friend Bill May reminds us that the great Professor Robbie George will be speaking at Oakland's Cathedral of Christ the Light this coming Wednesday:

"The Clash of Orthodoxies"
Manhattan Forum Lecture Series features Robert P. George, Ph. D, a principal author of the Manhattan Declaration.

Wed, August 25, 7:00pm – 9:30pm
The Cathedral of Christ the Light Conference Center
2121 Harrison St. Oakland, CA
Admission: $50*

"In the Eighth Manhattan Forum lecture, Robert George will tackle the issues at the heart of the contemporary conflict of worldviews. Secular liberals typically suppose that their positions on morally charged issues of public policy are the fruit of pure reason, while those of their morally conservative opponents reflect an irrational religious faith. George will show that this supposition is wrong on both counts. Challenging liberalism’s claim to represent the triumph of reason, George argues that on controversial issues like abortion, euthanasia, same-sex unions, civil rights and liberties, and the place of religion in public life, traditional Judaeo-Christian beliefs are rationally superior to secular liberal alternatives."

*Registration fee includes admission to the upcoming September 18th Manhattan Forum Conference.
Register here: http://sapi.org/mforum/eventregister.htm. (For more information on the September 18 conference go to: http://www.sapi.org/mforum/speakers.htm

Professor George holds the McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence at Princeton University. Speaking of the Manhattan Declaration, and the Diocese of Oakland, be sure to listen to Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of Oakland on "The Manhattan Declaration: A Call to Christian Conscience" on Reclaiming the Culture: http://www.reclaimingtheculture.org/cordileone.html