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Pope: "Non-Negotiable Human Rights" include "Right to Life and Right to Freedom of Conscience"
Lifesitenews.com ^ | 5/5/09 | Thaddeus M. Baklinski

Posted on 05/05/2009 9:02:29 PM PDT by ReformationFan

Pope: "Non-Negotiable Human Rights" include "Right to Life and Right to Freedom of Conscience and Religion"

VATICAN CITY, MAY 5, 2009 (LifeSIteNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI addressed members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences yesterday at their plenary session which is focused on the theme of Catholic social teaching and human rights, and called for the promotion of universal human rights based on both faith and reason, affirming the "right to life and the right to freedom of conscience and religion as being at the center of those rights that spring from human nature itself."

The Holy Father noted that though these human rights are not strictly "truths of faith, even though they are discoverable - and indeed come to full light - in the message of Christ who "reveals man to man himself," they do "receive further confirmation from faith."

Giving an historical perspective to human rights as "the reference point of a shared universal ethos - at least at the level of aspiration - for most of humankind," the Pope spoke of the "vast suffering caused by two terrible world wars and the unspeakable crimes perpetrated by totalitarian ideologies," as a consequence of which "the international community acquired a new system of international law based on human rights."

(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...


TOPICS: Catholic; Current Events; History; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: catholic; freedomofconscience; humanrights; moralabsolutes; pope; prolife; religiousfreedom; righttolife
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To: TradicalRC
How Any Christian can call America's premier promoter of infanticide a pacifist is simply beyond my ken

You may want to ask members of your own parish. According to statistics, probability is that at least half of them must have voted for Obama. The fact is that abortions didn't stop under the Bush administration and that the president has very little if any power to change the abortion craze of this supposedly 75% Christian nation. But the president has a great deal to say who goes to war and who doesn't.

161 posted on 05/08/2009 9:12:14 PM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: kosta50; redgolum; BlackElk; Kolokotronis

Right, but he failed to provide an example of someone doing that.


162 posted on 05/08/2009 9:25:19 PM PDT by annalex (http://www.catecheticsonline.com/CatenaAurea.php)
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To: kosta50
kosta50: We see to it that Catholic women do not abort by making abortion a self-excommunicating offense. The pill is an abortifacient and so its use is a self-excommunicating offense. Likewise use of the IUD. Pre-marital sex or extramarital sex, likewise as mortal sins. One is not allowed to receive the Eucharist when one is guilty of unconfessed or unforgiven mortal sins. Likewise failure to make a good confession at least once per year during the Eastertime (Ash Wednesday to Pentecost). Being supportive of abortion, knowing involvement with abortifacients in any heterosexual sexual act, fornication, adultery or failure to confess one's sins as required will do the same for men. The Roman Catholic Church was not, is not and never will be some sort of anarchistic "democracy" whatever its enemies might prefer. We don't make anyone do anything. Fee will and all that, but we certainly do not have to recognize as Catholic those folks who willfully apostasize in such ways and we won't. We need the weak-kneed caucus among our bishops to do exactly what you Greek Orthodox for Obama the Peaceful Euroweenie Wannabe despise: show some backbone and punish the guilty. If that means Demonrats, that means Demonrats by their own choice and it means such "Catholics" as RINO Susan Collins and RINO Ahhhhhnold Schwarzenkennedy as well.

What good is a church if its members go around sucking up to Obama the Spineless? Or if its members somehow think that military service is somehow sinful in and of itself. If you reference St. Paul as favoring genuflecting before mere governments (the usual misplaced reliance on Romans????), then Paul was telling Russian Orthodox in Russia to serve in the soviet army because Stalin said so??? I can't tell you how glad I am not to be Orthodox in that era in Russia.

The Obamanation, as you may have noticed, is threatening to order Catholic hospitals to provide abortions, and perhaps sterilizations, sex "change" operations and other Demonratic perversions. If it were an Orthodox Hospital should it obey the South Side Chicago AntiChrist??? I am hoping that our bishops punch his lights out politically, go to jail as necessary in open resistance and engage in massive defiance of any such false laws. That may be a bit militant for your blood but such resistance deserves the support of every Catholic who has any business calling him/herself Catholic. We may judge those "Catholics" who wimp out according to their moral cowardice.

There are Catholics and there are "Catholics." The second category seldom darken the door of a church but allow their weakness for gimmes to overcome their moral obligations. As the pope says, the issues of protecting innocent human life are NON-NEGOTIABLE. Line up on the other side and you are the enemy as much as Obama is.

53% of people who CLAIM to be Catholic (their second cousin once drove by Bernardin's residence, they admire the pagan gods portrayed on the door of Roger Cardinal McPhony's monstrous cathedral in LA, their ward heeler told them to claim Catholicism when the pollster calls, they were baptized in infancy before discovering that they were more comfortable as Wiccans, they possess a collective IQ of 4.5, or whatever) may have voted for Obamanation. The majority of churchgoing Catholics have been voting Republican for decades.

There are not 26 Catholic Senators. After you deduct the self-excommunicated CINOs, you will get the real number. Even Sam Brownback has recently fallen but I would bet that he will repent his vote for Sebelius. If not, not.

If six in ten former (as in NO LONGER) Catholics left because they were upset at the Catholic opposition to perversion and infanticide, then good riddance. They were at least honest in their apostasy. The ones you think stayed in are the Senators and other officials who materially assisted millions of abortions when one was sufficient for latae sententiae excommunication.

If a bishop of the RCC manifestly apostasizes, I really don't care for a defense that somehow suggests that he is entitled to scandalize and publicly spit on morality and encourage (if only by his silence much less by his active connivance) the continuation of the American Holocaust, I welcome attacks upon him by any Catholic including other bishops and I would gladly see the worm burned at the stake along with any "Catholic" who purports to support such behavior.

One may fear that you may be elevating the kissing of the backsides of bad bishops not even your own as an overriding dogma of some sort. Those who do not adhere to the Catholic Faith are not Catholic. That they don't support the moral strictures of Holy Mother the Church simply marks them as apostates. Let them be declared anathema.

Apostates in Spain, Italy and France are no different that apostates in the USA. AND they too are not Catholic.

I think it would be a decent idea to take the actual Church underground to an extent, spiritually prepare a far leaner and much meaner laity and clergy ready to wage war against the world's degenerate "standards," and act in confidence that the victory is already won as outlined in the Apocalypse. For nearly two thousand years, the RCC has shoveled the dirt on the caskets of its enemies and Christ's, many of whom were far more talented than Obama.

It is truly amazing that Orthodox, ANY Orthodox, would even consider voting for Barack Hussein AntiChrist just because he is a peace creep too spineless to defend his country. He is beyond the pale. Every Catholic bishop ought to hold Jenkins' feet (among other things) to a corrective blazing fire and denounce him and his university and dissuade actual Catholics from sending their children to such an abominable excuse for a "Catholic" institution as Notre Dame.

If you guys love Obama so much, maybe we can transfer to you a used midwestern university once Catholic and now a footstool of the abortionist left so soiled by its connection to Obama as to not be a fit place for Catholics.

163 posted on 05/09/2009 12:31:36 AM PDT by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)
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To: narses

Every law on the books is legislating morality. Even among conservatives we find ourselves called to fight the weak minded. It is so tiring. It is like working at a deprogramming clinic.


164 posted on 05/09/2009 1:04:24 AM PDT by Maelstorm (Give me liberty and I'll handle the rest.)
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To: MarkBsnr
I am not arguing against Bishop D'Arcy. Neither is Bishop Doran who intervenes in support of Bishop D'Arcy. If the Signatura gets to decide any issue surrounding Obamanation's appearance at ND, then as one of seven judges of the Signatura, Bishop Doran and Archbishop Burke (the chief justice) will be able to cast half the votes necessary to any action against Jenkins and his superiors.

I believe that Bishop D'Arcy as diocesan ordinary of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese does have authority over Jenkins at least and over Notre Dame. I believe that only the Jesuits and Opus Dei are personal prelatures of the pope. The Holy Cross Order is not. Thus Fr, Jenkins is under the diocesan authority, must get his priestly faculties from the diocese and under a JP II document (Ex Corde Ecclesiae?) has the responsibility and authority to hold the theology faculty accountable. He can deny the necessary "mandatum" to any theology professor or teacher in his diocese and therefore deprive him of his license to teach theology. Going after the infamous Fr. Richard McBrien as well as Fr. Jenkins would be an excellent start and a great example before the Church in that diocese, in that state, in our nation and before the universal Church as well.

The orthodox may respect the pope as a patriarch but they deny his authority. Theirs is a far different system. It has evolved according to their idiosyncracies that generally grow out of their refusal of papal authority. Their bishops are somehow of equal authority with no earthly superiors and a theologically dangerous degree of individual autonymy.

The pope in his capacity as legislator of Canon Law can change it or bypass it as he sees fit.

While all Church law is to be defended, it is not at the expense of any provision of Church law that the issues most grievous (such as abortion) be accorded an emphasis proportionate to the evils being committed in defiance of specific Church law(s). 50 million dead babies in the USA alone seems a far more rampaging problem than, say, lay investiture of bishops.

One traditional remedy for the Jebbies (who educated me at a prep school so long ago that they were still Catholic) was to suppress the entire order for about 75 years. That would work with the Holy Cross disOrder as well. After 75 years re-establish.

Our bishops enjoy no status of infallibility (save the bishop of Rome). Each may be in charge of his diocese. That does not make the bishop correct. Plenty of bishops have been admonished for error.

Finally, don't deprive an aging fellow Knight of the pleasurable nostalgia for the good old days of Fra Tomas. A guy can dream, can't he?

165 posted on 05/09/2009 1:30:06 AM PDT by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)
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To: kosta50
The Church was never meant to be a secular state, which the Papal states became, and having armies was an innovation never envisioned by the Apostles.

I am sure that you are aware the the Emperor in Constantinople as well as his deputy the Exarch in Ravenna completely failed to protect that part of the Empire in the vicinity of Rome, leaving the only spokesman for the Empire and Christian Orthodoxy to be the Pope, the Patriarch of the West. The Emperor effectively put the Christians in that area in the hands of the Pope. (No I am not talking about the fictional Donation of Constantine).

166 posted on 05/09/2009 5:01:44 AM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla ("men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." -- Edmund Burke)
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To: BlackElk

***I believe that Bishop D’Arcy as diocesan ordinary of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese does have authority over Jenkins at least and over Notre Dame. ***

He doesn’t. I ran into the same thing when I lived in NE Indiana and the parishes there were run by the Franciscans rather than the diocese. It was a rather interesting situation in terms of jurisdiction.

***He can deny the necessary “mandatum” to any theology professor or teacher in his diocese and therefore deprive him of his license to teach theology. Going after the infamous Fr. Richard McBrien as well as Fr. Jenkins would be an excellent start and a great example before the Church in that diocese, in that state, in our nation and before the universal Church as well.***

But ND is not “in” his diocese. It is outside of his jurisdiction.

***The orthodox may respect the pope as a patriarch but they deny his authority. ***

The Orthodox here on FR do not.

***The pope in his capacity as legislator of Canon Law can change it or bypass it as he sees fit.***

Not really. Canon Law needs to be handled with an ecumenical council such as Nicea. First amongst equals does not mean dictator. The Church Magisterium does not mean that the Pope dictates.

***While all Church law is to be defended, it is not at the expense of any provision of Church law that the issues most grievous (such as abortion) be accorded an emphasis proportionate to the evils being committed in defiance of specific Church law(s). 50 million dead babies in the USA alone seems a far more rampaging problem than, say, lay investiture of bishops.***

We cannot depart from Church Law, just as we cannot depart from the Constitution of the United States, no matter how great the provocation or else we risk losing all.

***Our bishops enjoy no status of infallibility (save the bishop of Rome). Each may be in charge of his diocese. That does not make the bishop correct. Plenty of bishops have been admonished for error.***

Not enough in the US.

***Finally, don’t deprive an aging fellow Knight of the pleasurable nostalgia for the good old days of Fra Tomas. A guy can dream, can’t he?***

There is much good in the world, more than the mainstream media would have us believe.


167 posted on 05/09/2009 7:14:12 AM PDT by MarkBsnr ( I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: annalex; redgolum; BlackElk; Kolokotronis
Right, but he failed to provide an example of someone doing that

I think he actually quoted someone in particular.

168 posted on 05/09/2009 8:36:43 AM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: BlackElk
Or if its members somehow think that military service is somehow sinful in and of itself. If you reference St. Paul as favoring genuflecting before mere governments (the usual misplaced reliance on Romans????), then Paul was telling Russian Orthodox in Russia to serve in the soviet army because Stalin said so??? I can't tell you how glad I am not to be Orthodox in that era in Russia.

See my post #155. The entire early Church was of one mind on that issue. But what did the early fathers know, right?

And I am really sick and tired of reading about the banal arguments about the "collaborationist" Orthodox Church, as if the Catholic Church stood up to aggression and tyraany. Did German Catholic priests urge young parishoners NOT to serve in the Nazi military?

Did the Catholic church do anything about the slaughter by Fascist Croatian Catholic Ustasha military (in which even some members of the clergy participated)? No, the Catholic Church in Croatia was too busy forcefully "converting" whole villages of Orthodox Serbs! These are historical facts, not rants of someone's own private idea what Catholic is.

53% of people who CLAIM to be Catholic (their second cousin once drove by Bernardin's residence, they admire the pagan gods portrayed on the door of Roger Cardinal McPhony's monstrous cathedral in LA...

I agree about the monstrous "cathedral" but the fact is that 53% of Catholics (and you are in no position to judge them all!) voted for Obama, just as you are in no position to say that all those who voted for McPain are true Catholics.

The other fact is that Catholics and Greek Orthodox traditionally voted for Democrats and that in the past 40 years or so they all knew the pro-abortion position of that party.

The fact is also that Cathoics practice abortions because statistrics show staggering rates in predominantly cathoic countries such as Spain, Italy or France.

It's a fact that Latin women (who are predominantly Catholic) are twice as likely to have an abortion in the US than white women. It is also a fact that politicians who openly support abortion in America received the Eucharist all these decades(!) and still do.

Do I need to remind you of the liturgical abuses that took place in your Church for the past 40 years, or do yo want me to start posting them?

If a bishop of the RCC manifestly apostasizes, I really don't care for a defense that somehow suggests that he is entitled to scandalize...

Do you want to see the picture of the Pope kissing the Koran? How scandalous is that? Next thing you are going to tell me is that he wasn't relly a true Catholic, right? What makes you one? You walk on water?

169 posted on 05/09/2009 9:05:13 AM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla
I am sure that you are aware the the Emperor in Constantinople as well as his deputy the Exarch in Ravenna completely failed to protect that part of the Empire in the vicinity of Rome...

Yes, of course. He was unable to effectively resist the Lombards. However, the papal state did not come about as a result of the execution of the Exarch by the Lombards but by the Pope making a deal with the Franks who defeated the Lombards. This started the long and ambiguous relationship between the Franks and the Popes for a few hundred years. Each side treated the territories as their own. It wasn't until the 14th century that the Papal States became truly sovereign and grew in size for another few centuries.

The incompatibility of secular government with spiritual mission of the patriarch of Rome is best exemplified by the fact that the last Jewish ghetto in Western Europe was in Rome in 1864.

Regardless of who ruled the country, the popes had nor reason to assume and keep secular authority beyond power-vacuum periods (which were never very long).

The early Church not only survived but grew and strived under oppression for the first three hundred years without making political deals with Roman authorities. To the contrary, with he penalty of death looming over their heads, Christians refused to abandon their faith and chose to die. What possible justification could the Popes come up with for assuming secular authoirty over Papal States?

There was no need for Papal States, just as there was no need for imperial popes. It was simply the quest for power.

170 posted on 05/09/2009 9:49:56 AM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: kosta50

The Encyclopedia Brittanica does not seem to agree with you. In discussing the Empire’s position during the entire period of the Lombards it says:

‘Byzantine Italy was nominally a single unit, but it too in reality fell into several separate pieces. Its political centre was Ravenna, which was ruled by a military leader appointed from Constantinople and called exarch from about 590. Exarchs were changed quite frequently, probably because military figures far from the centre of the empire who developed a local following might revolt (as happened in 619 and 651) or else turn themselves into autonomous rulers. But the impermanence of the exarchs made it easier for their local subordinates to gain some measure of autonomy. The duke of Naples, the largest city of the south, was effectively independent by the 8th century, as was the duke of the newly formed lagoon city of Venice. The most important of these local rulers, however, was the pope, the bishop of Rome, for Rome remained the largest city of Italy and its bishop, in theory the spiritual head of the whole of Latin Christendom, had considerable status. Rome had dukes too, but they did not have the local support the popes had, and they remain shadowy figures. The popes, on the other hand, had a political position that in practice equaled that of the exarchs and lasted a great deal longer.’

This period started nearly 200 years before the Popes, with Frankish military support, subjected all the northern Lombards to Frankish or Papal domination. This is despite the fact that the Lombards had finally given up Arian Christianity, the factor that, together with their Barbarian heritage, had alienated them from the descendants of the classical western Romans.


171 posted on 05/09/2009 10:34:18 AM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla ("men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." -- Edmund Burke)
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To: kosta50
The Church follows in Christ's steps. Last time I checked, the Gospels sit on the Altar, not the OT. You may have been "portestantized" a bit if you follow the ways of the Old Testament.

The Church is not to judge. Judgment belongs to God.

Both Christ and St. John called Herod to task. Paul called the politicos of his time as well as Peter to task. Jurisdiction probably wasn't such a big bugaboo with him. The God of the Old Testament is the same God as in the New Testament. The Church is called to witness, instruct and discipline.

172 posted on 05/09/2009 10:48:12 AM PDT by TradicalRC (Conservatism is primarily a Christian movement.)
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To: kosta50
But the president has a great deal to say who goes to war and who doesn't.

You have the sensibilities of a Jacobin. More people have been killed BY THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS than by war in the past century, yet like all anti-war leftists you think being anti-war is a more pious position. The president can choose wisely to have justices that are not pro-infanticide on the bench, they can ensure policies that won't tax pro-life Catholics to fund the American holocaust. Voting for a dem (or is it the old shibboleth of racism that bothers you?) who supports the slaughter of the innocents and doing it under the guise of a higher principle is again, evil.

173 posted on 05/09/2009 11:11:42 AM PDT by TradicalRC (Conservatism is primarily a Christian movement.)
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To: kosta50

Arlen Specter called himself a republican for decades, did that make him one? Do you also include those dizzy wenches that call themselves Catholic priests? Hillary Clinton once declared herself a conservative, was she telling the truth? Are you telling me that the Church is all wheat and no tares? Where would you get THAT idea?


174 posted on 05/09/2009 11:17:13 AM PDT by TradicalRC (Conservatism is primarily a Christian movement.)
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To: kosta50
The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not forbid capital punishment<---What I wrote.

False.<---What you wrote.

Then you continue to prove me right and you wrong, all the while maintainting that I am wrong and you are right. When even the most rudimentary logic is beyond your capacity, I think it is time to respectfully disengage from dialogue.

Exhibit A: The Catechism is very explicit (and correct)

2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the ONLY practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.

The fact that the Church qualifies it does not mean she forbids it, which is what I said. I honestly do not know how this could be made clearer. Especially with you EOs being so intent on the letter of the law.

175 posted on 05/09/2009 11:26:26 AM PDT by TradicalRC (Conservatism is primarily a Christian movement.)
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To: TradicalRC; kosta50
Especially with you EOs being so intent on the letter of the law.

I hate to say it but I am beginning to wonder where the former Pharisees among the Jews of the Second Temple period went, since they seem not to have joined Rabbinical Judaism. Perhaps they became the source of this tendency you refer to.

176 posted on 05/09/2009 11:49:21 AM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla ("men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." -- Edmund Burke)
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To: kosta50; BlackElk
And I am really sick and tired of reading about the banal arguments about the "collaborationist" Orthodox Church, as if the Catholic Church stood up to aggression and tyraany. Did German Catholic priests urge young parishoners NOT to serve in the Nazi military?

A good many did. Remember, Himmler left the Catholic Church to join the SS. You could be Catholic (or confessional Lutheran) and be in the Whermact, but not the SS.

177 posted on 05/09/2009 1:35:40 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: BlackElk; kosta50; Kolokotronis
Do to the fact that the US adventures have destroyed the remnant of Christianity in Iraq, and drove out the Orthodox from Kosovo, I can understand why some would be upset.

But to expect that Obambi is going to do anything else than what is being done now is foolish. He will continue the policy of Bush and Clinton in that regard, and the war will not end.

And besides, abortion and war, even unjust war, are not equivalent on the scale of damage that they can do.

178 posted on 05/09/2009 1:49:11 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla
I don't see much disagreement in what EB writes. Until the exarch was deposed by the Lombards, the popes were officially subjects to the Byzantine Emperor. The Lombards ceded some territory to the bishop of Rome but they never gave him independent sovereignty. Neither did the Franks. The pope asserted independent sovereignty gradually, and only after the Frankish kingdom broke up into peaces centuries later.
179 posted on 05/09/2009 3:23:20 PM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: redgolum; BlackElk; kosta50; Kolokotronis; informavoracious; larose; RJR_fan; Prospero; ...
Do [sic] to the fact that the US adventures have destroyed the remnant of Christianity in Iraq ... I can understand why some would be upset.
See Archdiocese of Baghdad (Chaldean) , it would seem that the claims of the death of the Church in Iraq are a tad overstated.
180 posted on 05/09/2009 3:30:21 PM PDT by narses (http://www.theobamadisaster.com/)
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