Via John Cole, this five minutes of actual reason and common sense from a member of our Congress:

Weston, Wis. - The mother of an 11-year-old girl who died of untreated diabetes said Wednesday that she did not know her daughter was terminally ill as she prayed for her to get better. Madeline Neumann died Sunday from an undiagnosed and treatable form of diabetes. Her mother, Leilani Neumann, told The Associated Press she never expected her daughter, whom she called Kara, to die. The family believes in the Bible, and it says healing comes from God, but they are not crazy, religious people and they have nothing against doctors, she said. The girl’s father, Dale Neumann, a former police officer, said he has friends who are doctors. He started CPR “as soon as the breath of life left” his daughter’s body, he said. Other family members called 911 to seek emergency help, Leilani Neumann said. “We are remaining strong for our children,” she said. “Only our faith in God is giving us strength at this time.”

Go wild!

According to the Center for Disease Control, a quarter of teenage girls — more than 3 million — have a sexually transmitted disease. There doesn’t appear to be any corresponding research for teenage boys.

The numbers likely seem overwhelming

CHICAGO (AP) — At least one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in this age group.

A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls ages 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls — nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20% among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

About half of the girls acknowledged ever having sex; among them, the rate was 40%. While some teens define sex as only intercourse, other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some infections.

For many, the numbers likely seem “overwhelming because you’re talking about nearly half of the sexually experienced teens at any one time having evidence of an STD,” said Dr. Margaret Blythe, an adolescent medicine specialist at Indiana University School of Medicine and head of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on adolescence.

I hate to come off like a prude or seem naive, but I find the fact that 3 million teenage girls have or have had a sexually transmitted disease a bit disturbing.

ROME (Reuters) - A footballing priest has been sent off in a church tournament for throwing his shirt at the referee, Italian media reported Sunday.

The incident, reminiscent of Antonio Cassano’s red card for Sampdoria last weekend, happened in the Clericus Cup with the actions of the Burkina Faso priest leading to Paul the Apostle’s College being eliminated.

In a memorable day for Italian amateur football, the president of minor league club Doria has decided to pull his side out of the championship, the division below Serie C, because of anger at refereeing decisions.

“We are retiring the team,” Franco De Rose told Italy’s ANSA news service. “We are tired of having to submit to injustices every Sunday.”

The Vatican has cracked down on feminist interpretations of the liturgy, ruling that God must always be recognised as Our Father.

In a move designed to counter the spread of gender-neutral phrases, the Holy See said that anyone baptised using alternative terms, such as “Creator”, “Redeemer” and “Sanctifier” would have to be re-baptised using the traditional ceremony.

The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith said yesterday: “These variations arise from so-called feminist theology and are an attempt to avoid using the words Father and Son, which are held to be chauvinistic.”

Instead, it said that the traditional form of “Father, Son and Holy Ghost” had to be respected.

The alternative phrases originated in North America and started to become popular only in the past few years.

The new phrases are particularly popular in the Church of England. It was recently reported that guidelines to bishops and priests advised them to avoid “uncritical use of masculine imagery”.

The Catholic Church and the Church of England are split over feminist issues.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Pope, met in Rome last year, but admitted that the ordination of women priests was a “serious obstacle” to closer ties.

The Pope, who wrote the latest ruling, has been a strong opponent of feminism in the Catholic Church.

In his book, The Ratzinger Report, he wrote: “I am, in fact, convinced that what feminism promotes in its radical form is no longer the Christianity that we know; it is another religion.”

Rosemary Radford Ruether, a professor of feminist theology at the Graduate Theological Union in California, said that among “liberal” Catholics, the Pope “is not our Pope”.

The Vatican said anyone baptised under the feminist terms could invalidate their marriage. Cardinal Urbano Navarrete, who wrote a formal commentary on yesterday’s ruling, gave warning that anyone who attempted to baptise someone with a gender-neutral form would be penalised. “It is seriously illegitimate and unjust,” he said.

Monsignor Antonio Miralles, a professor at the Pontifical Holy Cross University, said the new baptism “subverts faith in the Trinity” because it does not make the relationship between the three persons clear. “God is eternally Father in relation to His only begotten Son, who is not eternally Son except in relation to the Father.”

Meanwhile, the Pope also spoke out against gay marriage and abortion before his first trip to the United States before Easter. He praised Americans who respected the “institution of marriage, acknowledged as a stable union between a man and a woman”.

Source

For the first time since 1940, St. Patrick’s Day will fall during Holy Week, the sacred seven days preceding Easter.

Because of the overlap, liturgical rules dictate that no Mass in honor of the saint can be celebrated on Monday, March 17, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

But a few Roman Catholic leaders are asking for even more moderation in their dioceses: They want parades and other festivities kept out of Holy Week as well.

Bishop J. Kevin Boland of the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia, wrote to practically every agency in his city, from the Chamber of Commerce to the Board of Education, saying the diocese was changing the date of its celebration this year. In response, the citywide Irish festival was moved to Friday, March 14, when schools will close and bagpipe-driven parties will carry into the streets.

More than half a million people stream into the Southern city for the festival, one of the nation’s largest St. Patrick’s Day affairs, said Bret Bell, Savannah’s public information director. Savannah bars will be open March 17, but no organized events will be held that day, he said.

“The city has a very strong Irish Catholic community, a very traditional Irish Catholic community,” Bell said. “They attend Mass regularly. And the last thing they want to do is get in the bad graces of the Catholic Church.”

Source

HAMILTON, N.J. (AP) — A civilian New Jersey State Police employee is accused of sneaking into a church to look at pornography on a nun’s computer. Police arrested Thomas G. Findler Wednesday and charged him with burglary and theft. Authorities say Findler had been sneaking into Grace St. Paul Episcopal Church in the night over the last three weeks to look at pornography. Wednesday morning, a church custodian found Findler, who worships at the church, on a nun’s computer. The custodian chased him out, right into a police officer who happened to be nearby.

Catholics criticize risque health club ad

An advertisement appearing in Boston magazine this month that depicts a group of nuns sketching a naked male model is spurring outrage in the Catholic community in the area.

Terry Donilon, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston, called the Equinox Fitness Club ad “disrespectful and degrading” to women who have committed themselves to serving the church and their communities. “It’s offensive,” Donilon said. “I hope they make the decision not to run it again and perhaps offer an apology to the religious community.”

The ad wasn’t in the article, but a google search reveals something the article didn’t mention: it’s an Ellen von Unwerth ad, and look:

Source

AP updated 6:49 a.m. PT, Fri., Jan. 11, 2008

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A man claiming to be a Catholic priest was arrested Friday at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport after he was caught carrying 3.5 kilograms of cocaine under his robes, a spokesman for Dutch border police said.

The suspect, whose identity was being traced, initially refused to undergo a routine body check “for religious reasons,” spokesman Robert van Kapel said.

He said the man was then spotted lining up at a different entrance gate. He was searched and the drugs were found in packages taped to his body.

“We’ve seen a lot of things, baseballs filled with cocaine, wine bottles, plaster casts, but this is a first,” Van Kapel said.

He said the man, who was traveling from Bolivia, continued to insist he is a priest and did not confess any wrongdoing, arguing his rights had been violated by the search.

Van Kapel said that was bunk.

“If you want to enter (Europe) you have to pass a security check, you have to cooperate and you can’t refuse a body search,” he said. “He’ll be brought before a judge today.”