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[Catholic Caucus] Cardinal McElroy: Synod could end link between diaconate and priesthood to allow ‘female deacons’McElroy said Synod members discussed ‘perhaps ending the transitional diaconate,’ which he claimed ‘could make it easier’ to introduce so-called ‘women deacons,’ according to Crux.San Diego’s Cardinal Robert McElroy has revealed that participants of the Synod on Synodality discussed ending the so-called “transitional diaconate” in order to more easily accommodate having “female deacons.”Addressing the annual Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ Religious Education Congress last week, McElroy renewed his previous calls for the promotion of women to the diaconate. His talk – only segments of which have...

Scholar stumps Cardinal Cupich, asks if Pope’s ‘paradigm shift’ means ‘radical’ doctrinal change'I would like to ask why Pope Francis acts so mercilessly in insulting and eliminating doctrinal opponents,' the professor asked the Cardinal.CAMBRIDGE, England, February 15, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A respected Catholic historian and philosopher challenged Cardinal Blase Cupich during a lecture last week about Pope’ Francis so-called “revolution of mercy” that has caused what many are defending as a “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice.Professor John Rist, after listening to a February 9 lecture at Cambridge University in which Cardinal Cupich praised Pope Francis’ “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice,...

Tools excavated from a cave in central Mexico are strong evidence that humans were living in North America at least 30,000 years ago, some 15,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists said Wednesday.​ Artefacts, including 1,900 stone tools, showed human occupation of the high-altitude Chiquihuite Cave over a roughly 20,000 year period, they reported in two studies, published in Nature. "Our results provide new evidence for the antiquity of humans in the Americas," Ciprian Ardelean, an archeologist at the Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas and lead author of one of the studies, told AFP. "There are only a few artefacts and...

I live along the Front Range of Colorado and I frequently hike in the foothills with my trusty dog. It is a common experience to look east onto the plains and on the horizon be able to clearly discern the curve of the earth. For those who have never had this experience, it can be quite an epiphany. Right there before your eyes you can actually see the curve of the globe of this wonderful place we call home.

As a scientific fact, the black race doesn’t exist. Neither does the white or Asian. There is no race gene. In the year 2000, when the scientists at the National Institutes of Health announced that they had put together a draft of the entire sequence of the human genome, the researchers unanimously declared that there is only one race -- the human race.

Over the past few hundred years we, the human race, have experienced an unparalleled explosion of knowledge. Although our advances due to swarm intelligence have been growing since the beginning of life on the planet, during the recent past knowledge of the natural world has increased exponentially. The start of this rapid increase in the growth of knowledge can traced to the Scientific Revolution. It was the spark which ignited a complete redefinition of the natural world and how we interacted with it; the ignition of a never-ending search for reality and truth. It was a paradigm shift in the...

I would like to poll Freepers their opinion to this question. We have our hands full in Iraq, keeping warring factions apart. Our biggest fear is that if we leave too soon, Iran takes over. What if we made our next priority getting rid of Ach-the-Mad's regime? How do you think this would change the dynamics for us to need to keep troops on the ground in the Middle East, as well as other consequences?

OP-ED COLUMNIST this is the most powerful question in the world today: Why not here? People in Eastern Europe looked at people in Western Europe and asked, Why not here? People in Ukraine looked at people in Georgia and asked, Why not here? People around the Arab world look at voters in Iraq and ask, Why not here? Thomas Kuhn famously argued that science advances not gradually but in jolts, through a series of raw and jagged paradigm shifts. Somebody sees a problem differently, and suddenly everybody's vantage point changes. "Why not here?" is a Kuhnian question, and as you...

i noticed that whenever osama bin laden and other terrorists leaders talk, they never once say anything against their own organization. They are always blaming somebody else's foreign policy

Hoo-boy. It's a hot time in the old blogtown. The pajamahadeen are firing their virtual bullets into the cyber-air in celebration of CBS anchor Dan Rather's announcement on Tuesday that he was retiring as the top talking face of the network after 24 years. "This has been a simply outstanding month," crowed a poster on http://www.freerepublic.com. "Bush won, Arafat died, we're kicking ass in Fallujah, and now this!" Typically, the above-quoted "Freeper" didn't get that Rather may be down, but he certainly isn't out. When he steps down as front man for The CBS Evening News on March 9, he...

Has political centre in N. America moved right? STEPHEN HANDELMAN Do elections tell us anything significant about national character? Earlier this month two British journalists came to the sobering conclusion that, in the U.S. at least, they do. "Some 41 per cent of American voters identify themselves as conservative," claims John Micklethwaite, U.S. editor of The Economist — a figure he says points to a deeper rightward shift in American culture and politics. Micklethwaite and an Economist colleague, Adrian Wooldridge, have just published a book with the double-entendre title of The Right Nation. At a recent Carnegie Institute panel in...

Whatever the precise result on Monday, and whoever forms a government, one thing should by now be clear: The political landscape of Canada is on the verge of historic change -- radical, permanent, and mostly for the better. Eight decades of Liberal dominance, punctuated by occasional Tory interludes, are about to come crashing to an end. This isn't 1984. It isn't 1979. It isn't even 1957. It's something completely new. It's new, in part, because this Tory party is something we haven't seen before. Previous Conservative uprisings have been rooted almost entirely in popular disgust with Liberal excess, and though...

Summary: Global power shifts happen rarely and are even less often peaceful. Washington must take heed: Asia is rising fast, with its growing economic power translating into political and military strength. The West must adapt -- or be left behind. James F. Hoge, Jr. is Editor of Foreign Affairs. This article is adapted from a lecture given in April at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. The transfer of power from West to East is gathering pace and soon will dramatically change the context for dealing with international challenges -- as well...

Franco-German alliance is superseded in new Europe: Sarkozy 23 June 2004 France's powerful finance minister Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday called into question the central role of the Franco-German alliance at the heart of an enlarged European Union, saying that all the big countries would now have to work together. Asked in an interview with the French and British newspapers Les Echos and the Financial Times if the expansion of the EU to 25 member states changed his vision of Europe, he replied: "Without the slightest doubt." "I believe in the Franco-German axis, in its importance and in the essential role...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The old geek's joke about the microchip so warm it can iron your pants or fry an egg could soon be an understatement, according to Intel, the world's largest chip maker. If unchecked, the increasing power requirements of computer chips could boost heat generation to absurdly high levels, said Patrick Gelsinger, Intel Corp. chief technology officer and the chip maker's research visionary. By mid-decade, that Pentium PC may need the power of a nuclear reactor. By the end of the decade, you might as well be feeling a rocket nozzle than touching a chip. And...

This was the real shock and awe, and it is being absorbed by every dictator on the planet. Warfare is different now. America's technological edge needs only two things to make it lethal: political will and public support. Those two things, as long as this president remains in power, are now in place. Bush's approval ratings are close to 80%. Most Americans needed no legal case to see the connection between Iraq and 9/11. They knew their vulnerability; and they knew Saddam's malevolence and his goal of getting the most destructive weapons known to man. Case closed. The anti-war...