Just astounding:
London, Feb 26, 2008 (CNA).- A committee in the British House of Commons will investigate Catholic schools following the Bishop of Lancaster’s instructions to schools to place crucifixes in every classroom and stop “safe sex” education, the Independent reports.
Patrick O’Donoghue, Bishop of Lancaster, had circulated a 66-page booklet instructing Catholic schools to stop “safe sex” education. Bishop O’Donoghue wrote, “The secular view on sex outside marriage, artificial contraception, sexually transmitted disease, including HIV and AIDS, and abortion, may not be presented as neutral information.”
Additionally, he told the schools not to support charities that support abortion. He singled out Amnesty International, which recently renounced its neutrality on abortion and now favors the abortion of children whose mothers were raped in war zones.
The government’s investigating committee is chaired by Labour Party member Barry Sheerman, who is reportedly concerned the Church is adopting a “fundamentalist” line.
“A lot of taxpayers’ money is going into church schools and I think we should tease out what is happening here,” he added. “We seem to have a shift in emphasis on the ground despite what the reasonable voices of the leadership are saying,” Sheerman said.
Why does Sheerman get to decide who is reasonable? This is the thing which is really bothersome about this – a politician is going to bring pressure on a religious body to toe the government line because the politician has arrogated to himself the right to decide what is reasonable, and what isn’t. Now, if Mr. Sheerman thinks the Church wrong; that is fine. If Mr. Sheerman thinks that the Church is so wrong that it should not receive any government funding in Britain, then he may move a bill in Parlaiment to do just that. But to use a government committee as an attempt to browbeat the Church into doing the secularists’ will, that is an abominable infringement upon the rights of the people.
Chesterton said a very long time ago that, in the end, there is the Church, and her enemies – and Mr. Sheerman is demonstrating this to us in very stark terms. It isn’t enough for the Sheermans of the world to have all sorts of taxpayer funded programs to promote the leftist agenda – arrogantly self assured about their moral superiority, lefists insist that no one be allowed to dissent from their worldview. Britain, like the rest of Europe, is far gone down the road to socialist slavery – but this is the sort of world that the left wants to bring to the United States; a government controlled world of enforced political correctness. You want it, you can have it – all you have to do is “hope for change” in 2008, rather than learn and think.
Blogs For Victory 
Oh and btw TideOfBullsh**-
Why did Congress print the Bible of the Revolution (that’s what it’s properly called) in the first place and never, NEVER again mind you, commision another printing of the Bible?
Answer:
Up to that point it was the British who regulated the printing of Bibles. Charging handsome taxes on the purchaser to boot. This is something they did quite often . That means more than once TiredofThisBullshitArtist. So the Congress in a serious F-U the the British Government took matters into their own hands and commissioned a printed Bible primarily as an act of defiance. And the never commisioned another Bible again. 232 years and not one printed Bible since. That certainly is one religiously minded Congress I’ll tell you.
Oh and btw those Scrooges in Congress were in session on Christmas Day 1789, Congress didn’t even get around to recognizing Christmas as a legal holiday until ….drum roll please……. June 26th , 1870. For those mathamatically challenged readers out there thats 94 YEARS after the Declaration of Independance or 84 YEARS for those “strict Constitutional constructionists” out there.
Hmmmm I wonder if they had just plum forgot about Jesus’ Bday. The Congressional Christmas card arrived at his door nearly a hundred years late. Boy he must have been pissed huh?
Stay tuned and we can discuss how the pastors of the day called the Constitution a “Godless document” writtten by men who have “turned their backs to the Divine creator”…..
What use a Catholic School, but to teach Catholic principals and values? Isnt that the purpose of calling it Catholic?
When the state outlaws the churches teachings, then it is no longer a free state, but instead, a communist one.
Sweating? Hardly.
Nice deflection NIP,
But we were talking about Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury baptists…..
”
entlemen, — The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association, give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect and esteem.” Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, January 1, 1802.
At the time, the Danbuty Baptists were being persecuted because they did not belong to the Congregationalist establishment in Connecticut, an establishment by the state government. Jefferson responded to reassure them that he also believed in religious liberty.
The Congregationalists wanted to use the power of government to force a belief. Jefferson stated the contrary and the Constution does as well. That is protection of religion from the exploitation of government. It is also the protection of the people from an established state religion.
Hence the wording of the first amendment CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, NOR FREE EXERCISE THEREOF.
I am not advocating religion to use the power of government. I am simply pointing out that the Constitution in the Bill of Rights LIMITS the power of government. As you know, England used the power of government to force its religion on the people. The sole reason some people came to this county and also the reason for the first amendment clause.
Now, if you read my post carefully you would have seen that I did not advocate religion in government, but I did advocate that the government stop preventing individuals from worshipping freely, which has been implemented in state institutions. Individuals are using the power of government to stop individuals from expressing their religion even to themselves. That also should be wrong – protecting religion from government.
In RE: 25. Nietzsche-Is-Pietzsche
In 1789, during the same time when the First Amendment was written, then President Washington signed into law the Northwest Ordinance, which states, “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
John Adams, who served as America’s first vice president and second president, stated, “Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. … What a Utopia. What a Paradise would this region be. I have examined all (religions)? and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.”
Noah Webster, the “father of American scholarship and education,” stated, “In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed. ? No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”
Lastly, dispelling the myth that Thomas Jefferson never intermixed Christianity and government, in 1805 he was elected the first president of the Washington, D.C., public school board, under which schools used the Bible as a text for learning. Just three years after Jefferson left the school board and Washington, D.C., for retirement at Monticello, one principal reported to the board of trustees the progress his students made in reading and spelling, using the Bible as a text:
Fifty-five have learned to read in the Old and New Testaments and are all able to spell words of three, four, and five syllables; 26 are now learning to read Dr. Watts’ Hymns and spell words of two syllables; 10 are learning words of four and five letters.
In fact, the first hundred colleges in America were founded upon Judeo-Christian tradition, belief and practice, including Yale, Princeton and Harvard, the last of which had the official motto, “For Christ and the Church.”
Why dont you lie some more?
If the Bible was endorsed by our Founders as a textbook, how can we not follow suit by doing the same? The fact is, to leave out of educative curricula the most influential text in Western civilization, including in American history, law and literature, is a blatant and biased withholding of proper public instruction
“Probably,” Story also wrote, “at the time of the adoption of the constitution and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.”8 The object, then, of the religion clauses in this view was not to prevent general governmental encouragement of religion, of Christianity, but to prevent religious persecution and to prevent a national establishment.9
This interpretation has long since been abandoned by the Court, beginning, at least, with Everson v. Board of Education,10 in which the Court, without dissent on this point, declared that the Establishment Clause forbids not only practices that “aid one religion” or “prefer one religion over another,” but as well those that “aid all religions.” Recently, in reliance on published scholarly research and original sources, Court dissenters have recurred to the argument that what the religion clauses, principally the Establishment Clause, prevent is “preferential” governmental promotion of some religions, allowing general governmental promotion of all religion in general.11 The Court has not responded, though Justice Souter in a major concurring opinion did undertake to rebut the argument and to restate the Everson position.12
http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/amdt1afrag1_user.html
Exactly, JS. American schools were established to teach the Bible and Christianity so I find it really ironic that atheists/socialists/leftists have been trying to completely eradicate the Bible from American education.
Mark,
This is simply evil. It’s just one more example of the rapid slide of formerly Great-, formerly Western Britain into the post-Christian, Islamicized socialist country it’s become. Sad and pathetic.
Neocon: “If only we could require the goverment funded European Madrassas to quit preaching death to infidels. I guess it’s easier to start with the Catholics.”
*****
Yeah, Catholics don’t behead people.
1) The UK taxpayers susidize Muslim polygamy – UK Pays Benefits for Muslim Polygamy
2) Sharia Would Create Legal Apartheid in Britain, says David Cameron – UK TimesOnline
3) Terror Trial Exposes Network of Muslim Terror Camps in Picturesque Rural England – AP
Rana,
My apologies if you took my posting wrong. I was agreeing with your view of the word “establishment” but attempting to note that only a good attorney could twist it in such a way as the second view and all too often that is exactly what they do.
Once again, my apologies if you misunderstood my posting and in closing I do not believe I will complain to any dead folks about this as I obviously have problems still with communicating with the living 😉
Freedom1-
“Yeah, Catholics don’t behead people.”
THEY DON’T?!?!?!?!
Apparently you’ve never opened up a history book my friend.
js-
“Why dont you lie some more?”
Hey, why don’t YOU find a legal document regarding the founding of this nation that says point blank the United States is a Christian nation and that there is no wall of separation between church and state.
Quit beating around the bush with these pathetic warmed over examples of this or that Founding Father’s personal view on religion. That’s the oldest trick in the Fundamentalist playbook. The Founders had plenty of time to put their personal views on religion into law but strangely they never did.
John Adams and the “utopian christian society” ?!?!?!??!
Tell me, where do we find that in the Constitution?
NiP,
Well, there is the fact that the peace treaty between the US and Britain in 1783 was done in the name of the Holy Trinity…not just a reference to God, but the Christian theology about God…if they weren’t Christians, you’d think they would have objected to that.
freedom1-
‘Exactly, JS. American schools were established to teach the Bible and Christianity so I find it really ironic that atheists/socialists/leftists have been trying to completely eradicate the Bible from American education.’
First off I’m not sure how that’s “ironic” unless you’re saying the educational system of this nation was establish by the Left. If thats the case then the Right should be ashamed of itself.
With regards to your assumption that the American educational system was devised to teach the bible I’ll borrow a line from Mr. Buckley,
“I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence.”
Mark-
“Well, there is the fact that the peace treaty between the US and Britain in 1783 was done in the name of the Holy Trinity…not just a reference to God, but the Christian theology about God…if they weren’t Christians, you’d think they would have objected to that.”
Read article 11 in the Treaty of Tripoli and then get back to me. I particularly like the added phrase “NOT IN ANY SENSE”.
Speaking of Muslims beheading people…
Imam From Virginia Mosque Now Thought to Have Aided Al-Qaeda – WashingtonPost.com
NiP,
Which one? Oh, you mean you weren’t aware there was more than one Treaty of Tripoli? Say it ain’t so – you’re supposed to know more than us conservatives!
And, guess what? Only in that one Treaty of Tripoli from 1796 is that passage to be found…and, furthermore, there is dispute as to whether article 11, the one you care about, was ever actually in the Arabic version of the treaty…meanwhile, as I said, our nation was founded, by treaty, in the name of the Holy Trinity…
NiP—“Read article 11 in the Treaty of Tripoli and then get back to me. I particularly like the added phrase ‘NOT IN ANY SENSE’.”
———–
Mark’s already answered that charge…Link:
Mark Noonan | January 20th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
And the peace treaty between the United States and Britain ending the Revolutionary War? Proclaimed, and I quote, “In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity.” Not just acknowledging God, but acknowledging the Christian conception of God. And the first sentence after that? It says that Divine Providence moved his Britannic Majesty to seek peace! And the signatures were affixed following, “Done at Paris, this third day of September in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three.”
Our Lord, is Jesus.
Additionally:
A 1783 treaty with Sweden was signed “in the year of our Lord”.
A 1787 treat with Morocco was done, “in the name of Almighty God”. It also notes that the date of the treaty, year of Hegira 1200, began on on the 28th of June in the year of Our Lord, 1786.
A 1794 treaty with Britain amended “in the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred ninety six.”
A 1795 treaty with Algiers? No mention of the US not being a Christian nation.
A 1796 treaty with Tripoli? Makes the mention you note, but in article 11.
A 1797 treaty with Tunis? Opens with the statement, “God is infinite”. It also states, I quote, “and the most distinguished and honored President of the Congress of the United States of America, the most distinguished among those who profess the religion of the Messiah”. The Messiah = Jesus. It was signed in Tunis, “in the year of the Christian era…”
A 1799 treaty with France, completed in “Anno Domini 1800″. Do I have to translate “Anno Domini” for you?
An 1805 treaty with Tripoli? Modifies the 1797 treaty and DOES NOT say that the US is not founded on the Christian religion – it merely notes that the US bears no enmity towards the Moslem religion.
An 1815 treaty with Algiers repeats the formulation of the 1805 treaty with Tripoli – merely noting that the US bears no enmity towards the Moslem religion.
An 1816 treaty with Sweden was done “In the name of the most holy and indivisible Trinity”.
An 1816 treaty with Algiers (a renewal of the older treaty) once again merely states the US bears no enmity towards Islam.
An 1818 treaty with Britain done in “the year of Our Lord”.
An 1822 treaty with Britain done in “the year of Our Lord”.
An 1822 treaty with France done in “A.D. 1822″. Shall I translate “A.D.” for you?
An 1824 treaty with Algiers, notes that it is the “Christian year” 1824.
An 1824 treaty with Russia done, “in the name of the most holy and indivisible Trinity”.
An 1824 treaty with Columbia done, “In the name of God, Author and Legislator of the Universe”.
An 1825 treaty with the (now-defunct) Federation of Central America was done, “in the year of Our Lord”.
An 1826 treaty with Denmark done, “in the year of Our Lord”.
An 1827 treaty with Sweden and Norway done, “In the name of the Most Holy and Indivisible Trinity”.
An 1827 treaty with Britain done, “in the year of Our Lord”.
An 1828 treaty with three of the Hanse Republics done, “in the year of Our Lord”.
An 1828 treaty with Mexico done, “in the year of Our Lord”.
An 1828 treaty with Prussia done, “in the year of Our Lord”.
An 1828 treaty with Brazil done, “In the name of the Most Holy and Indivisible Trinity”.
Shall I go on? I’ll let you keep your one-off, if that is what you want…but if you want to say that one treaty shows we’re not a Christian nation, then I’ve got a lot more that show we are…
Source: Library of Congress
LMAO!!!
You radical Christian Fundamentalists are just priceless. All that work to try to inject your religion fanatacism into this government and all you’ve got is “in the year of our lord” ?!?!?!?
Oh they only wrote that the US is not in anyway a Christian nation in the the original version of the Treaty and not again but hey guess what…..they wrote it, in plain english, with good black iron gall ink, on very nice parchment.
Hey Freedom1, Mark, or anyone for that matter, where is the founding legal document that states in plain english legal binding “the official religion of the United States is the Christian religion”
They didn’t even put “in God We Trust” on their currency. They did choose a much more appropriate motto though,
“E Pluribus Unum”
Do I need to translate it for you Freedom1?
Hey how about showing me the section in the Constitution that say’s America is a christian nation.
You’re all “strict constructionists” and literalists so you should be able to produce the exact line with no trouble. Don’t pussy foot around let’s have it.
39. Nietzsche-Is-Pietzsche | February 28th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Read article 11 in the Treaty of Tripoli
And this is all you have?
Ill suggest that your ignorance excedes your imagination at a minimum.
The United States indeed was not “founded on the Christian religion”. In order for that to have happened, the Church would run the Government or its constitution would require its administration to adhere to the will of the Church (much akin to the conditions in Europe which were rejected in America). This is in direct contrast with the fact that the Tripoli Govenance “IS” founded on the Islamic religion, and such religion is strictly adhered too in both daily governance and its jurisprudence.
That does not claim, in any way, shape or fashion, that the United States did not abide by nor emulate Christian morals and standards, nor encourage the belief in such.
Only a moron could assume such ever happened.
Js-
“That does not claim, in any way, shape or fashion, that the United States did not abide by nor emulate Christian morals and standards, nor encourage the belief in such.”
Are you brain damaged my friend? Thats exactly what it says. It states that the laws and governance of the United States IS NOT based in Christian teaching or doctrine. Merely being a Christian isn’t good enough.
Please don’t waste my time.
Tell me is adultery illegal?
How about working on a sunday?
What about making a graven image?
Hey is coveting your neighbor’s possesions grounds for inprisonment? If so then there goes the capitalistic free market economy.
When was the last time someone was arrested for taking the Lord’s name in vain?
How about worshipping the Great Spagetti Monster instead of God? How many years will you do in a Federal institution for that?
So all you have is murder, stealing private property, and lying in a court of law as your basis that we have Christian roots in our laws. Last time I checked every country had laws against these activities.
NiP,
Nice try, but there’s also all those mentions of the Trinity…and, at any rate, is you on the left who desperately cling on to that Article 11 of the Tripoli treaty (which is, as I said, under dispute) as your “proof” that we are not a Christian nation…
Deparately cling Mark?
You pit your flowery reference of the “Trinity” or an “in the year of or lord” against a flat out statement saying what we are and are not based on as a nation?
Who’s the desparate one here?
Besides Mark you have completely laid down in the face of my challange to find the reference to this Christian nation in the Constitution.
Deleted – off topic.
Diane Tomlinson: Know what gentlemen? None of this matters because America is not a Christian nation now, today, the next to last day of February 2008 Current Era.
I have to say your post conjured up strong images of the following analogy: Kurt Vonnegut is to Billy Pilgrim as Diane Tomlinson is to Mark Noonan. It’s like viewing time as a landscape rather than a vector, or cause and effect outside of chronology. I’m not sure whether I should be impressed or appalled. Not that it matters, lol!
Poo-tee-weet