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An email from a friend: >>Worry less about Francis on economics, but sweat the upcoming Synod on the Family instead. To paraphrase George Gilder, economic growth can get switched back on in an instant. All we need to do is set in place the right policies.<< >>But the family? Don’t mess with that. Damage to the family would be permanent. You couldn’t repair that with lower tax rates. The upcoming Synod on the Family looks to be Humanae Vitae all over again. The 1968 crowd is getting ready to make their final push before they expire.<< I wish he didn’t,...

Chinese man seeks divorce after smog drives family apart BEIJING Thu May 1, 2014 2:39am EDT 0 COMMENTS inShare 1 Share this Email Print RELATED TOPICS Oddly Enough » Environment » (Reuters) - A Beijing man is seeking to divorce his wife after she took their son to a tropical island province to escape the capital's notorious smog, saying the long-distance relationship had destroyed their marriage, state media said on Thursday. The man, identified only by his family name of Wang, married his wife in 2008 and had a son two years later, the Beijing Times reported, in a story...

A Florida congressman has accused his wife of 24 years of being wed to another man for much of the duration of their marriage. Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, alleged in divorce papers that his union with his wife, Lolita, was a “bigamous marriage” because she was already married when he wed her in 1990. In the petition, Grayson accuses his wife of having filed a false application for their marriage license 24 years ago, when she lied about not being divorced from the other man at the time of their marriage.

Eliot Spitzer's ex-wife finally has something to smile about after the details of her multimillion-dollar divorce settlement from the disgraced 'Luv Guv' were revealed today. Silda Wall Spitzer gets a $7.5million payout and to keep her luxury Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park in Manhattan as part of the deal. The ex-New York governor's former wife, who grimly stood by him when his predilection for expensive call girls came to light in 2008, will also receive $240,000-a-year maintenance for life.

Credit: Petr Kratochvil (CC0 1.0). Vatican City, Apr 25, 2014 / 02:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Marriage is indissoluble according to the doctrine of the Church and a Pope’s phone call could not change that, a canon lawyer has explained. Media speculation arose this week over an alleged phone call made by Pope Francis to a divorced and remarried Argentine woman. It is claimed he told her she could receive Communion. It is simply “impossible Pope Francis would have changed the doctrine on the indissolubility of the marriage” via a phone call, responded Fr. Hector Franceschi, a professor of canon law...

Father Federico Lombardi. Credit: CNA. Vatican City, Apr 24, 2014 / 05:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Media frenzy over an alleged phone call Pope Francis made to a divorced and remarried woman allowing her to receive Communion has seen a rise in conflicting details – and has been lamented by the Vatican as causing “confusion.” Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said today that the Holy See will not officially comment on the alleged phone call Pope Francis made to an Argentinean woman this week, as the pontiff's “personal pastoral” relationships “do not in any way form part of the Pope's public activities.”...

Obama travels to Japan without the first lady, and Japanese tongues are wagging about what that says about Japan's place on the US priority list. After all, Michelle Obama and daughters recently went to (gasp!) China. ... Now on the eve of Mr. Obama’s state visit to Tokyo this week, Japan is back to openly fretting about its place on America’s priority list – particularly in comparison to rising rival China. The reason? When Obama arrives Wednesday evening, he’ll disembark Air Force One solo – without first lady Michelle Obama. Obama will be the first US president to come to...

A prominent Japanese politician has raised hackles as Barack Obama visits Tokyo by claiming it's an 'open secret' that he and the first lady are headed for divorce, and that the president has been using Secret Service agents to cover for him as he pursues extramarital affairs. Kazuyuki Hamada, who sits in the upper house of Japan's parliament, earned his PhD a half-mile from the White House at George Washington University, and emerged as a shrill commentator on America's economy and foreign policy. In 2009 he also joined the ranks of the so-called 'birthers,' arguing in a book titled 'Who...

French press break Obama and Beyoncé possible affair. Washington Post sits on it again. This explains the early Valentine dinner the Obamas celebrated last week.

Barack Obama cheating scandal allegedThe Korea Herald/Asia News Network Mon, May 03, 2010 HAS President Barack Obama been having an affair with Vera Baker? That's the shocking allegation made by the National Enquirer in this week's edition, according to a Hollywood Gossip report. The publication claims Obama and Baker, a former campaign aide, holed up at Washington, D.C. hotel, and a "security video" could expose everything, it said. Baker, now 35, worked tirelessly to get Obama elected to the U.S. Senate, raising millions in campaign contributions, in 2004, the news report said. They grew close since. While Vera Baker insists...

The True Story Surrounding The Death of Jay Z’s Mistress Cathy White (Interesting information on the couple Obama says serve as an example to our young people. Cathy White's Suspicious Death Update: My NYPD source has just (9/2/2011 @ 17:00) confirmed with me that the cause of death is listed as natural until further investigation can be completed. —————————————————————– HSK Exclusive - HSK was the first to reveal that 28 year old Cathy White was Jay Z’s mistress. Don’t believe me? Ask Claudia Jordan. Yesterday, I got the news that Cathy Michelle White had suddenly passed away, so I quickly...

In recent years, it has been quite common to hear our politicians and top media personalities talk about the need for America to use military force to impose “our values” on the rest of the world. But what “values” could they possibly be talking about? The truth is that we don’t have any “values” worth sharing with anyone at this point. America has become a festering cesspool of garbage and filth, and it is getting worse with each passing day. As a nation, we need to humble ourselves and turn away from our wicked deeds and rediscover the values that...

As most divorce cases usually are, the recently filed, already ugly divorce case between Congressman Alan Grayson and his with Lolita, has taken another turn for worse for the self-proclaimed "Congressman with Guts." During an interview with police over the recent incident at couples home in Orlando, Florida, in which Lolita Grayson accused the congressman of assaulting her, Grayson's soon-to-be ex-wife accused him of long-term spousal abuse. Orlando's WFTV Channel 9 obtained the audio of Lolita Grayson's interview with Police. "I'm done. My husband has always been hitting me for years," she told investigators. "He's been hitting me a lot....

Aaron Del Mar — the Cook County Republican Party chairman who’s up for re-election — is the latest local GOP leader to get tangled up in a particularly nasty divorce. Del Mar, 35, fired off a series of threatening text messages to his ex-wife last year, according to court documents obtained by Early & Often.

Since 1996, the so-called "Lautenberg Amendment" (named for its sponsor, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)), has banned the acquisition or possession of firearms by anyone convicted of a "misdemeanor crime of domestic violence." Applicable crimes are limited to those that have "as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon" and that are committed by persons with a specified relationship to the victim, such as a current or former spouse or a parent. The prohibition applies no matter when the offense occurred and can include convictions that predated the 1996 law....

Celebrity power couple Gwyenth Paltrow and Chris Martin are not merely divorcing; they are consciously uncoupling.In a Tuesday night post announcing the end of their ten-year marriage, under the headline “Conscious Uncoupling” on Paltrow’s lifestyle blog Goop, the couple wrote that “it is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate.” After “working hard for well over a year, some of it together, some of it separated, to see what might have been possible between us,” they “have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate.” They will...

**SNIP**"We are parents first and foremost, to two incredibly wonderful children, and we ask for their and our space and privacy to be respected at this difficult time," the message also said. "We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and co-parent, we will be able to continue in the same manner."

Father, Forgive Them! Jesus shows us the way to forgive. When Peter asked Jesus how many times he had to forgive someone who sinned against him, Jesus told him, “seventy-seven times,” a Semitic way of saying something like “every time, every day, for the rest of your life” (Matthew 18:21). But sometimes the pain of what has happened to us is so deep that we wonder if we will ever be able to forgive.That’s where Linda was—bitter, broken, and unable to forgive her former husband. And she’s not alone. Think of the mother whose young daughter was sexually abused...

The new leader of Germany's Roman Catholic bishops is signaling support for allowing some divorced but remarried Catholics to receive Communion after a "penitential period." Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who also sits on a panel that helps advise Pope Francis on Vatican reform, was elected Wednesday to head the German Bishops' Conference. Church teaching holds that unless their first marriage is annulled, remarried Catholics can't receive Communion or other sacraments. The church is now discussing anew how to handle such cases. In an interview with the Welt am Sonntag newspaper released Saturday, Marx cited a prominent theologian's proposal that "divorced people...

Interesting parallels are being suggested between, on the one hand, Paul VI’s dithering over contraception in the 1960s (which, though reversed by his reassertion of Church teaching in Humanae vitae, contributed to widespread repudiation of that teaching by Catholics), and Francis’ recent mixed signals (or what are widely perceived as mixed signals) over the future of Church teaching against divorce-and-remarriage and the reception of holy Communion. Notwithstanding some important differences between the two men and situations, I write to suggest that the stakes for all might actually be higher this time around. Consider two points: First, Church teaching against contraception...