Category Archives: Culture

Judge Speaks on Murphy Case – Shame on NY Times

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Thank you Anchoress: Murphy Case – NY Times Never Talked to Judge

Thank You Fr. THOMAS BRUNDAGE, JL

Setting the record straight in the case of abusive Milwaukee priest Father Lawrence Murphy

Then-presiding judge for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee gives first-person account of church trial

By Fr. THOMAS BRUNDAGE, JLC

For CatholicAnchor.org

To provide context to this article, I was the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 1995-2003. During those years, I presided over four canonical criminal cases, one of which involved Father Lawrence Murphy. Two of the four men died during the process. God alone will judge these men.

To put some parameters on the following remarks, I am writing this article with the express knowledge and consent of Archbishop Roger Schwietz, OMI, the Archbishop of Anchorage, where I currently serve. Archbishop Schwietz is also the publisher of the Catholic Anchor newspaper.

I will limit my comments, because of judicial oaths I have taken as a canon lawyer and as an ecclesiastical judge. However, since my name and comments in the matter of the Father Murphy case have been liberally and often inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and in more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals, I feel a freedom to tell part of the story of Father Murphy’s trial from ground zero. Continue reading →

Taking the Church Down – A Story of Disception

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The secular agenda has at its core a hatred for the Catholic Church.  The Church speaks with the authority of its God-given mandate and the Enemy uses his peons in the world to strike at its heel in anticipation of the moment that its Founder will crush his head.  Until then, no holds are barred in this open aggression. A world under the influence of sin and license falls easy prey to the secular media, a favorite arm for deception and bias.

George Weigel writing for First Things: Scoundrel Time(s)

The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by teachers to rape by uncles to kidnapping-and-sex-trafficking. In the United States alone, there are reportedly some 39 million victims of childhood sexual abuse. Forty to sixty percent were abused by family members, including stepfathers and live-in boyfriends of a child’s mother—thus suggesting that abused children are the principal victims of the sexual revolution, the breakdown of marriage, and the hook-up culture. Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft reports that 6-10 percent of public school students have been molested in recent years—some 290,000 between 1991 and 2000. According to other recent studies, 2 percent of sex abuse offenders were Catholic priests—a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared (six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were reported in the U.S. bishops’ annual audit, in a Church of some 65,000,000 members).

Yet in a pattern exemplifying the dog’s behavior in Proverbs 26:11, the sexual abuse story in the global media is almost entirely a Catholic story, in which the Catholic Church is portrayed as the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young, with hints of an ecclesiastical criminal conspiracy involving sexual predators whose predations continue today. That the vast majority of the abuse cases in the United States took place decades ago is of no consequence to this story line. For the narrative that has been constructed is often less about the protection of the young (for whom the Catholic Church is, by empirical measure, the safest environment for young people in America today) than it is about taking the Church down—and, eventually, out, both financially and as a credible voice in the public debate over public policy. For if the Church is a global criminal conspiracy of sexual abusers and their protectors, then the Catholic Church has no claim to a place at the table of public moral argument.

Read the rest here.

Palm Sunday and Political Correctness Run Amuck

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The young maker of this video has been taught well.  He bends over backwards not to offend anyone of any other religion who might happen upon this video instruction.  He says at the beginning (profusely), “It’s pure entertainment; nothing else!”   After transforming the palm frond into a cross, he ends with, ” Don’t take this as anything against your religion; just pure entertainment;  no stuff like that.”

Not that it is this young man’s intention, but now that this symbol of the Faith and the palm (distributed to the faithful as a reminder of  our fickleness and unfaithfulness) have been devalued to the level of a pass-time,  society must be all the better for it;  right?  The “entertainment” value of the Cross having been established, actually,  does emphasize how quickly nice people forget and dissimilate.  Little chance here that this young man will die a martyr.   Little does he know what he’s missing.  Jesus and the message the Cross, does offend and divide.

War of Words – What’s In A Name?

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NPR staff memo quoted by La Shawn Barber in NPR Drops ‘Pro-Life for'”Abortion Rights Opponents’:

NPR News is revising the terms we use to describe people and groups involved in the abortion debate.

This updated policy is aimed at ensuring the words we speak and write are as clear, consistent and neutral as possible. This is important given that written text is such an integral part of our work.

On the air, we should use “abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)” and “abortion rights opponent(s)” or derivations thereof (for example: “advocates of abortion rights”). It is acceptable to use the phrase “anti-abortion”, but do not use the term “pro-abortion rights”.

What’s in a name?  Barber points us to: “How the Public is Manipulated” which gives us a heads up and out of the sand noting:

  • It Makes a Pro-Abortion Assumption that the Debate is About Abortion Rights, Not Abortion
  • It Plays Word Games with the Word “Rights”
  • It Ignores the Fact That Abortion Can Exist Without Abortion Rights
  • It Assumes the Negative
  • It Ignores the Concept of a Right to Life
  • It Affirms the Concept of a Right to an Abortion

    • Barber makes some points of her own for the mainstream media:

    • Refer to abortion supporters as “right to life opponents”
    • Refer to gun control supporters as “gun rights opponents”
    • Refer to “hate speech” backers as “speech rights opponents”
    • Refer to racial preferences advocates as “constitutional rights opponents”

    Write me if she missed any.

    Blurring the Line Between Life and Death

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    Terri Schiavo died on March 31st, a week from today.  Next week will mark the 5 year anniversary of that murderous action/event, indicating a turning point . Next week also begins Holy Week leading to Easter.  It also marks the beginning of Passover, starting Tuesday, March 30th.  It is a good time to consider: Are we to value human life by its utility or because God has have placed His life in us?  Passover is about God delivering His people from Slavery and setting them/us free for Life. Easter celebrates the victory of Life over Death, Christ’s victory. Terri’s death brings both into focus.

    Writes Dr. Daniel Eisenberg, M.D. in The Death of Terri Schiavo: An Epilogue:

    Blurring the line between life and death, and between medical data and morality, her death signifies a disturbing turning point for American society.

    Terri Schiavo did not die of PVS; she died of starvation and dehydration

    Terri Schiavo died on March 31, 2005, after lasting 13 days without food or water. Her life and death had a profound impact on the American psyche and brought to the forefront the unresolved debate regarding how we treat severely disabled people and who should be their surrogate decision-makers. There is reason to be disturbed by the role that physicians play in molding public opinion regarding end of life issues, because their expertise is generally in medicine and not ethics.

    A letter from a neurologist in complete disagreement with Dr. Eisenberg prompted him to respond:

    He (the neurologist) states:

    …I find myself in sharp disagreement with Dr. Eisenberg. The article refers to PVS as a “cognitively impaired” condition. In fact, there is no cognition whatsoever in someone who is in a persistent vegetative state. Modern aggressive emergency care developed over the last several decades, has allowed us to resuscitate patients with what would have been terminal hypoxic brain injury (what happened to Terri Schiavo). Unfortunately, the entire brain cortex becomes nonfunctional in these people and we are left with a functioning brainstem that allows for reflex eye movements, facial movements etc. PVS patients can even track a moving object in their field of vision because collicular function of the intact brainstem reflexively guides these eye movements. It is all too easy to imagine sentience in the PVS patient because, as humans, so much of our communication is nonverbal and cued by facial and eye movements.

    Dr. Eisenberg responds:

    His assessment of the persistent vegetative state is succinct and it is accurate. To the best of our medical understanding, we presume that a person in a persistent vegetative state has no cognition whatsoever. I never gave much credence to those who argued about the rehabilitation potential of Terri Schiavo. Not because I did not believe it to be true (I have no way of knowing), but because it really does not make a difference to outsiders like myself. CT scan results, Glascow Coma Scales, and following balloons are really only of interest to neurologists and family members who need to arrange for the best possible care for the patient.

    As a society, what we must concern ourselves with are two questions: What is the significance of being so terribly impaired that there is no cognition and how should such people be treated? It is here that the doctor falls woefully short in his analysis. While I am sure that his credentials are impeccable and his understanding of neurology is excellent, he completely misunderstands the role that physicians should play in society’s evaluation of end of life issues (as we will discuss) and he clearly does not appreciate where medical knowledge ends and morality begins.

    Neurologist’s letter continued:

    Nevertheless, the activity of our cerebral cortex is what distinguishes our very “humanness”. If the cortex is dead, then the human individual is dead. . . If the cortex is destroyed, personhood ceases. PVS is an abomination of life –in essence a human shaped colony of cells with no sentience — a glorified cell culture. . .Thankfully, I have not seen this irrational preservation of “life” at all costs in this situation since my training in the early 1970’s. . . Patients with PVS and end-stage Alzheimer’s disease routinely have IV’s and feeding tubes removed in the United States every day.

    Dr. Eisenberg responds:

    The opinions expressed above are very widespread in the medical community today. Variations of these views are espoused by many of the physicians with whom I have discussed this topic. For this reason, they cannot be lightly brushed aside. Please understand that the issue is not autonomy (which is an independent and important issue), but the definition of life. Is the cerebral cortex what makes us human and is it true that “if the cortex is dead, then the human individual is dead”?

    Of course not. My physician critic clearly has stepped beyond the bounds of medicine into the realm of philosophy, and that is the problem. As any physician knows, there is neither a state in America nor any sane physician in the world who would declare that someone who is in a persistent vegetative state is dead. If PVS really equals death then why bother pulling the feeding tube? Just bury the patient with the feeding tube still in place! The doctor’s comments are clearly hyperbole, and represent a very insidious type of bias that leads people to equate PVS with death.

    People want to feel “good” about the killing they allow whether by deeming a fetus ‘not a real living person’ or a person in a persistent vegetative state ‘as good as dead.’  In matters of morality, the doctor steps beyond the data and expertise of his training to play God.  Dr. Eisenberg asks “why the medical knowledge of the physician seem to translate into skill in evaluating the value of life?”

    Dr. Eisenberg reminds us:

    “The belief that medicine can determine which lives are worth preserving was an intrinsic part of the pre-Nazi German medical establishment (see “Why Medical Ethics“). In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s:

    “a number of prominent German academics and medical professionals were espousing the theory of “unworthy life,” a theory which advanced the notion that some lives were simply not worthy of living. . . If Mengele himself (an infamous physician who performed murderous experiments on live concentration camp inmates) became a cold-blooded monster at the height of his Nazi career, he certainly learned at the feet of some of Germany’s most diabolical minds. As a student Mengele attended the lectures of Dr. Ernst Rudin, who posited not only that there were some lives not worth living, but that doctors had a responsibility to destroy such life and remove it from the general population. His prominent views gained the attention of Hitler himself, and Rudin was drafted to assist in composing the Law for the Protection of Heredity Health, which passed in 1933, the same year that the Nazis took complete control of the German government. This unapologetic Social Darwinist contributed to the Nazi decree that called for the sterilization of those demonstrating the following flaws, lest they reproduce and further contaminate the German gene pool: feeblemindedness; schizophrenia; manic depression; epilepsy; hereditary blindness; deafness; physical deformities; Huntington’s disease; and alcoholism.

    I ask again: Are we to value human life by its utility or because God has have placed His life in us?

    Read more here.

    Bart Stupak Caved! Bye Bye Baby!

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    “The Baby” SBA List Healthcare TV ad