RNC Official Urges McConnell to Resign as Senate Majority Leader

Roger Villere, RNC vice chairman: ‘GOP brand is being damaged’

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Aug. 6, 2015, as the Senate began its summer recess. (Associated Press) **FILE**  Photo by: Jacquelyn Martin

With John Boehner now departing as House speaker, an influential Republican Party official is now seeking the ouster of another GOP leader who has frustrated conservatives: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“McConnell needs to resign!!” Louisiana GOP Chairman Roger Villere wrote in a Facebook posting.

Read more at The Washington Times >> 

Christian LeBlanc's Summapalooza, Class 6, "Hierarchy from Genesis through Revelations"

This is the sixth class in Christian LeBlanc's catechetical series which uses the Bible to teach the Catholic faith.  LeBlanc, a deeply knowledgeable and effective catechist and evangelizer, offers profound insights into Holy Scripture and the doctrines of the Church which will profoundly enrich your spiritual life. Summapalooza was part of an adult education program offered by Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

Christian LeBlanc is a revert whose pre-Vatican II childhood was spent in South Louisiana, where he marinated in a Catholic universe and acquired a Catholic imagination. During his middle school years in South Carolina, Christian was catechized under the benevolent dictatorship of Sister Mary Alphonsus, who frequently admonished him using the nickname “Little Pagan.” After four years of teaching Adult Ed and RCIA, he returned to Sr. Alphonsus’ old classroom to teach Catechism himself. This is his 12th year of teaching sixth grade.

Married to Janet, the LeBlancs have five children and two grandsons. He is the author of the highly acclaimed The Bible Tells Me So: A Year of Catechizing Directly from Scripture, on which these talks are based.

 

 

First Things: Cloward-Piven Goes to Rome

 You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just listen to me
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free.

                           Paul Simon, Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover

The pope, too, has a pen and a phone. Has Francis’ motu proprio trumped the Synod? Or handicapped conservatives? Hard to say. But one thing now is certain: Marriage is indissoluble except when it is not. Put another way, indissolubility is revealed to be more soluble than we had previously understood.

Anonymous. Illustrated Police News (19th C.). British Library Board.

Analyses of this latest twist of the mercy spanner have been piling up. Papal apologists offer their expected apologias; critics beg to differ. Among those with differences are some very serious, informed voices. Some insist nothing has changed; neater and kinder is all. Others discern a material shift: The language of endurance—until death do us part—still stands but the substance can be had gluten-free. Annulments are on track to be dispatched in short order; even, according to some commentators, in cases where one spouse contests. And a slam dunk is anticipated if both parties want out. Craft the right narrative, and your marriage never existed.

Read more at First Things >>

Pat Buchanan: US and Catholicism in Crisis

By Patrick J. Buchanan

During the 1950s, the twin pillars of worldwide anti-communism were Dwight Eisenhower's America and the Roman Catholic Church of Pope Pius XII.

During the 1980s, the last decade of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan and the Polish pope, John Paul II, were the pillars of resistance.

When Pope Francis arrives in Washington on Tuesday afternoon, the country he enters will be a very different one from Eisenhower's America or Reagan's America. And Catholics will be welcoming a new kind of pope.

In America 2015, homosexuality, abortion on demand and same-sex marriage — shameful crimes in Ike's America, mortal sins in the catechism of Pius XII — have become constitutional rights.

These represent the values that define Barack Obama's America, the values our officials defend at the United Nations, the values we preach to the world.

Christian LeBlanc's Summapalooza, Class 5, "Blood and Water"

This is the fifth class in Christian LeBlanc's catechetical series which uses the Bible to teach the Catholic faith.  LeBlanc, a deeply knowledgeable and effective catechist and evangelizer, offers profound insights into Holy Scripture and the doctrines of the Church which will profoundly enrich your spiritual life. Summapalooza was part of an adult education program offered by Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

Christian LeBlanc is a revert whose pre-Vatican II childhood was spent in South Louisiana, where he marinated in a Catholic universe and acquired a Catholic imagination. During his middle school years in South Carolina, Christian was catechized under the benevolent dictatorship of Sister Mary Alphonsus, who frequently admonished him using the nickname “Little Pagan.” After four years of teaching Adult Ed and RCIA, he returned to Sr. Alphonsus’ old classroom to teach Catechism himself. This is his 12th year of teaching sixth grade.

Married to Janet, the LeBlancs have five children and two grandsons. He is the author of the highly acclaimed The Bible Tells Me So: A Year of Catechizing Directly from Scripture, on which these talks are based.