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Pope Francis believes it is fine for parents to smack their children as punishment for bad behaviour. He made the remarks, which were condemned by campaigners for child protection, in front of thousands of people at his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square during a homily about the responsibilities of fatherhood. The Pope recalled a conversation he had had with a father, who told him that on occasion he hits his children if they have been naughty. The Pope, smiling and miming the action of slapping a child on the bottom, said: “One time, I heard a father say,...

Pondering Punishment as an Act of Love By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn the first reading from today’s Mass (Wednesday of the fourth week of the year) came this admonition:My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges.In our times, we have tended to set love and punishment in opposition; we also set mercy and punishment in opposition. But this is wrong. It is possible, at least with human beings, that a certain punishment can be excessive. But of itself, punishment...

“You can’t spank me, that’s abuse!” was the response of a Florida man’s 12-year-old daughter shortly after he grabbed the paddle (I’m taking some creative license with her quote, but I don’t think I’m far off). So this dad did what was, apparently, a relatively common thing in Florida: he called the police to come supervise the paddling, which ultimately passed their inspection. The incident that occurred on December, 29, 2014, has received an unusual amount of media attention. Perhaps it’s the unwelcome notion of government intervention in parental affairs, or the outrage that so many kids think consequences don’t...

The Minneapolis public school system announced a major new district-wide policy for disciplining students: any suspension of a non-white student requires the district superintendent's approval. The MPS has been stung by reports that students of color are 10 times more likely to receive a suspension than white students. The Minneapolis school system has an enrollment of over 32,000 students. Seventy percent are non-white. School superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, a black woman, maintains that she wants to "disrupt" the current suspension trends. Superintendent Johnson says that her new policy is aimed at forcing local school administrators to deeply "probe" the reasons for...

Beguiled once again from her purpose — to apply to Tom Sawyer’s jam-stealing rump the well-deserved business end of her switch — Aunt Polly falls to ruminating: “Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks.” Mark Twain is careful to end The Adventures of Tom Sawyer while Tom is still a boy — “the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man,” he warns — but with Tom encouraging his pal Huck Finn to quit his ragamuffin ways and...

Barkley told CBS’s Jim Rome that if tough standards were applied, that would lead to a lot of black parents potentially being in jail. ROME: It doesn't matter where you're from, right is right, and wrong is wrong. It doesn't matter where you're from – BARKLEY: I don't believe that because listen we spank kids in the South. I think the question about did Adrian Peterson go overboard. But listen Jim we all grew up in different environments. Listen, every black parent in my neighborhood in the South would be in trouble or in jail under those circumstances. BARKLEY: Oh...

An arrest warrant was issued Friday in Texas for Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson after he was indicted on a child abuse charge for using a branch to spank his son. He won't play in Sunday's game against the New England Patriots. The Vikings said they had deactivated Peterson for Sunday's game Friday evening, just after his lawyer and the Montgomery County sheriff's office confirmed he was Read Adrian Peterson's lawyer Rusty Hardin's statement in full below: Adrian Peterson has been informed that he was indicted by a grand jury in Montgomery County, Texas for Injury to a...

Students at the nation’s second largest school district will be shielded from prosecution and sent to administrators for low-level offenses as part of a sweeping reform to the way school police respond to bad behavior. Zoe Rawson of the Community Rights Campaign says students caught fighting or possessing alcohol or marijuana will receive interventions by a guidance counselor or school administrator, a shift that will prevent students, especially minorities, from becoming mired in the criminal justice system. …

NEW YORK, NY- When is spanking a crime? A New York court just ruled in favor of a Long Island Dad who hit his 8-year-old son for cursing. The court found that spanking was a reasonable use of force. And other states are okaying it too. Spanking is at the center of the New York state court case. The state appellate court dismissed neglect charges against a Long Island father who spanked his 8-year old son for cursing at an adult, saying spanking did not constitute excessive punishment. Criminal defense lawyer Arthur Aidala says the judge says as long as...

Nine out of 10 parents admit that spanking their children is sometimes appropriate. This week, a New York court ruled in favor of a father charged with child abuse, saying that it was a “reasonable use of force.” On Fox and Friends this morning, psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow said it’s “never a good idea” to spank kids. “The bottom line is it’s always the end of the discussion—hitting your kids. It’s never the beginning of a discussion. It teaches them nothing,” he said.

Another little boy has gotten in trouble at school for having something that represents a gun but isn’t actually anything like a real gun. This time, eight-year-old Asher Palmer rolled up a piece of paper, called it a gun and pointed it at other kids, reports the New York Post. Officials at the special-needs school in New York City which Palmer attended then expelled him. The school is the Lang School, a ritzy private bastion which specializes in educating students with language difficulties. Annual tuition is $51,500. “Asher is exactly the type of student Lang is supposed to be serving,”...

The late Michael Hastings wrote the definitive magazine profile of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for Rolling Stone in June 2012. Now that America's Last Prisoner of War has been released, in a prisoner exchange for five high-ranking Taliban officials, Hastings' piece continues to offer crucial context – about why Bergdahl volunteered for service in the first place, about how this intense, moral young man became so horrified by America's "good war" that he walked away from his unit's remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan in 2009, and about the abortive negotiations that could have secured Bergdahls release years ago. Here 13...

WASHINGTON — Some legislators are going to battle with the Defense Department over Army uniform regulations they say discriminate against African-American women wearing their hair naturally.The Army issued AR 670-1 changes in a 57-page directive [1] in mid-March addressing male and female grooming standards, fingernails (“males may not wear nail polish”), jewelry, tattoos, and other items for clarification.The male standards focused on strips of hair left on otherwise shaved heads, sideburn length (no lower than the bottom of the ear opening), and how wide a regulation mustache can be (not up into the nose and not past the corners of...

SOUTH HUNTINGTON, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) – Two Long Island high school students have been suspended for allegedly bringing a Confederate flag to school. Brother Gary Cregan, principal of St. Anthony’s High School in South Huntington, said the two seniors walked in with a Confederate flag draped around their shoulders during an after-hours sporting event at the school. As CBS 2′s Kathryn Brown reported, there is outrage and disgust on Long Island. “The African-American students who immediately saw it really exercised heroic restraint and fortunately a teacher immediately confiscated the flag and took the students out of the gym,” Cregan said. The...

George Leef, director of research for the North Carolina-based John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, authored a Forbes op-ed article titled "Obama Administration Takes Groupthink To Absurd Lengths." The subtitle is "School Discipline Rates Must Be 'Proportionate.'" (http://tinyurl.com/mxnlg9h). Let's examine some of the absurdity of the Obama administration's take on student discipline. Last January, the departments of Justice and Education published a "guidance" letter describing how schools can meet their obligations under federal law to administer student discipline without discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin. Its underlying threat is that if federal bureaucrats learn...

17-year-old Gregory Vied was suspended for flying a confederate flag atop his pickup truck, "which was parked in the student lot at Steinert High School in Hamilton Township." According to News 12 New Jersey, Vied said he was suspended on March 25th after being repeatedly told he could not fly the flag.

<p>By FOX NEWS - A New Jersey high school student says he was suspended from school after refusing to remove a Confederate flag on his truck.</p> <p>Gregory Vied, 17, told News12 he was suspended for flying the flag on his pickup truck, which was parked in a student lot at Steinert High School in Hamilton Township.</p>

A longtime peace and human rights activist arrested countless times, Franciscan Fr. Jerry Zawada has been removed from public ministry for concelebrating Mass with a woman priest in 2011. The letter removing the 76-year-old's public priestly faculties -- a copy of which NCR obtained March 21 -- came from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which reviewed documentation related to the Nov. 22, 2011, liturgy Zawada concelebrated with Roman Catholic Womanpriest Janice Sevre-Duszynska. "Having carefully examined the acts of the case, and the vota of the former Minister General and the Rev. Zawada's Provincial Superior, this Dicastery...

We teach kids that honesty is the best policy, but at one Virginia Beach middle school it might be better to keep the truth to yourself. Last Thursday at Bayside Middle School, sixth grader Adrionna Harris came to the aide of a classmate who was cutting his arm. She faces expulsion for taking a razor from the student, throwing it away and convincing him what he was doing wasn’t right. She thought she was doing the right thing, so on Friday she told the school administration what happened. The way school officials responded led to this question: was the school’s...

Did an Ohio elementary school jump the gun in its punishment of a 10-year-old? Devonshire Alternative Elementary School in North Columbus, Ohio, suspended a fifth grader for three days after he pointed his finger in the shape of a gun at another student’s head. Paul Entingh said his 10-year-old son, Nathan, was just messing around during science class. "He asked his friend to borrow a pencil and when his friend dropped it, my son Nathan was playing around and he did that with his fingers. Pointed it at the kid, said 'boom,'" Entingh told Fox 28. Paul and Nathan were...