EWTN Interview: Dr. George Harne A Convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism

US Navy's newest anti-missile interceptor in successful test

Video released by the Department of Defence shows what it claims to be the first successful test of the Navy's newest anti-missile interceptor. Full story at The Telegraph

Ireland: IFA Calls for YES Vote in Fiscal Treaty Referendum

This is the IFA Statement: 

YES for the Irish Economy and Growth 

Membership of the EU and a stable euro is critical for exports, jobs, inward investment and economic recovery, through:
 – Access tomarkets and exchange rate stability
 – critical for our export dependent sectors including the agri-food sector, with exports of €9b in 2011; – Low Interest Rates for investment and borrowing
– essential to achieve growth targets of Food Harvest 2020 ;
– Access to funding –
 to meet existing public expenditure requirements and to provide access to European Stability Mechanism (ESM), if necessary; and
 – Foreign Direct Investment in Ireland – supporting employment and national income.

Agriculture is the only major sector with a common EU policy, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), centrally funded from the EU budget.
The CAP benefits both producers and consumers:
– Supporting the provision of high quality, sustainably-produced food at reasonable prices and maintenance of the rural environment; and
– Supporting economic activity in all parts of the country, with 300,000 jobs in agriculture and the food industry.
 Negotiations on the future size and structure of the CAP post-2013 are on-going. It is important that Ireland has maximum influence and goodwill in the negotiations.

Why Farmers and their Families should vote YES to the Fiscal Treaty.

VOTE YES IN IRELAND’S INTEREST 

Questions and Answers on The Fiscal Treaty. What is new about the Fiscal Treaty? 

• The Fiscal Treaty puts existing EU legislation on the rules covering Member States’ debts and deficits into national legislation. What are the technical debt and deficit rules in the Fiscal Treaty?

1. Balanced budgets should be the norm, with a limit of 0.5% on “structural” deficits.
2. A limit of 3% on budget deficits in years of economic downturn or exceptional external event.
3. A 60% Debt: GDP ratio (or taking steps to approach this at a rate of 1/20th of the gap per year).

• Note: These rules have already been agreed by Ireland and other Euro member states, through the Stability and Growth Pact and the more recent ‘Six Pack’ of economic reform measures (2011).

What happens if Ireland does not ratify the Fiscal Treaty? 
• Unlike previous EU referendums, Ireland does not have a veto. Failure by Ireland to ratify the Treaty will not prevent it coming into force.
 • The Treaty will come into force at the beginning of 2013 once 12 or more Member States have signed up to it.
 • A country outside the Treaty will not have access to the new permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). What is the potential impact of Ireland being excluded from the ESM?
 • Ireland’s general government deficit in 2011 was €16b. The budget adjustment for 2012 (cuts in public expenditure and increases in taxation) was €3.8b.
• Ireland is currently dependent on ‘bailout’ funding from the EU/ECB/IMF to support this deficit and to continue to fund its public expenditure requirements (e.g. health and education). This programme of support runs until the end of 2013.
 • If Ireland did not have access to the ESM, this would severely weaken the Government’s ability to borrow funds in future at affordable interest rates.
• If the Government was unable to borrow funds, the budget deficit may have to be eliminated immediately through cuts in public expenditure and increases in taxation.
• In this way, rejecting the Treaty could lead to even more austerity and job losses. (Source: Irish Farmers Association)

Abortion: Vice President Joe Biden's Hypocrisy

Joe Biden engages in verbal gymnastics in an effort to justify the unjustifiable: Interviewer-When does life begin?

BIDEN: I’d say, Look I know when it begins for me. It’s a personally and private issue. For me as a Roman Catholic, I’m prepared to accept the teachings of my church. But let me tell you, there are an awful lot of people of great confessional faiths — Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and others — who have a different view. They believe in God as strongly as I do, intensely as religious as I am religious. They believe in their faith and they believe in human life. And they have differing views as to when life — I’m prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am, seems to me isn’t appropriate in a pluralistic society. … BROKAW: But if you believe that life begins at conception, and you’ve also voted for abortion rights — BIDEN: No, what I’ve voted against was curtailing the right, criminalizing abortion. I voted against telling everyone else in the country that they had to accept my religiously based view that it’s a moment of conception. …. How am I going to out and tell you or anyone else that you must insist upon my view that is based on a matter of faith?

So Joe Biden accepts that life begins at conception but strenuously supports laws that kill the unborn on the spurious grounds that he does not want to impose his views on others. Any Catholic politician who casts a vote which supports the legalization of abortion, or protects laws allowing abortion, or votes for a widening of access to abortion, commits a mortal sin. Such a politician incurs a sentence of automatic excommunication, under canons 751 and 1364, because of heresy.

ProLifeBook: New social networking site

This story Via Jill Stanek
Creator and lead web developer Todd Bullis explained in a press release:

This tool will allow pro-life people and groups to communicate real time the activities they are involved in and promote collaboration amongst groups like never before. This is the first social networking site of its kind that is designed specifically for pro-life activism. We wanted to create a way for pro-life activities and networking to be shared world wide without censorship that often occurs to pro-life groups that try to use other conventional social networking sites.

Sign Up Here

Report:Anti-Christian discrimination a serious problem right across Europe

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has acknowledged that anti-Christian discrimination has become a serious problem right across Europe, and has called for public debate about it.
The Organisation passed a resolution that “the right of Christians to participate fully in public life be ensured.”
It added that “in view of discrimination and intolerance against Christians, legislation in the member States, including labour law, equality law, laws on freedom of expression and assembly, and laws related to religious communities and right of conscientious objection [should] be assessed.”
The OSCE resolution was highlighted in the latest annual report of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDCE).
The Observatory, which monitors intolerance of Christianity in the countries of Europe, reported that discrimination against Christians right across the continent is becoming a significant problem.
But it expressed satisfaction that a number of politicians and international organisations such as the OSCE are starting to acknowledge the injustice.

In a sample of “most striking” cases last year, it noted how the Norwegian killer Anders Breivik was “instantaneously” but wrongly labelled a “Christian fundamentalist” by the world’s media.
“Anti-Christian prejudices needed a Christian equivalent to Muslim terrorism,” said Dr. Gudrun Kugler, one of the report’s authors.
As a result, a “thoughtlessly” and too-hastily attributed label “was gratefully received by the world’s media.”
The OIDCE report highlighted over 200 cases where Christians in Europe encountered either outright hate crimes or legal restrictions, including arrests and lawsuits, targeting their freedom of expression, belief and conscience.

Catholic adoption agencies in the UK, for example, have had to close down because they insisted that they could not in conscience give children for adoption to homosexual pairs.
Earlier this year a committee of Lords and MPs in the UK noted that the Equality Act passed by Labour under Tony Blair set up a “pecking order of competing equalities.” In every case the religious rights of Christians come last.

Speaking on Vatican Radio, Martin Kugler, the head of the Observatory, pointed to increasing limitations on the legal right of Christians to speak out on issues of concern.
“Medical staff in a hospital should be able to refuse collaboration in certain acts which they consider unethical, like abortion, euthanasia, sterilisations,” he said.
“This human right, which is called conscientious objection, is not really granted in some of the EU member states.”
As a result, some medical professions, are being “step by step closed up for Christians if they really take their faith seriously.” Also affected are midwives, doctors, nurses and pharmacists.
For Kugler, “raising awareness” is the first step in countering anti-Christian religious discrimination.
The OIDCE report was welcomed by Bishop András Veres of Hungary on behalf of the commission of the EU’s Catholic bishops.It confirmed, he said, “how some values and fundamental rights proper to Europe, such as freedom of religion and the legal recognition of our Churches, are far from being an established reality in some nations of the continent.” (Source:Alive.ie)

Apparition to Mirjana on 2 May 2012 at Medjugorje

Message to Mirjana on May 2, 2012

"Dear children! With motherly love I implore you to give me your hands, permit me to lead you. I, as a mother, desire to save you from restlessness, despair and eternal exile. My Son, by His death on the Cross, showed how much He loves you; He sacrificed Himself for your sake and the sake of your sins. Do not keep rejecting His sacrifice and do not keep renewing His sufferings with your sins. Do not keep shutting the doors of Heaven to yourselves. My children, do not waste time. Nothing is more important than unity in my Son. I will help you because the Heavenly Father is sending me so that, together, we can show the way of grace and salvation to all those who do not know Him. Do not be hard hearted. Have confidence in me and adore my Son. My children, you can not be without the shepherds. May they be in your prayers every day. Thank you."