At the end of June, it looked like the US was about to pass a remarkable milestone in its fight against the coronavirus.

After plummeting for months, the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases appeared poised to drop below 10,000 for the first time since March 2020.

That day never came. Instead, cases began rising and had been going up ever since.

New cases are now back to 118,000 a day - the highest since February when only a small proportion of the country was vaccinated against the virus.

Other countries such as Britain and Israel have experienced big increases in cases in recent months. But, thanks to their high vaccination rates, the surges did not lead to a big increase in deaths.

It's a different story in the US. After falling as low as 180 in early July, the average number of daily deaths is back at more than 600 and climbing rapidly.

On Tuesday, US time, the country recorded 1049 COVID-19 deaths, the most since March.

The reason is simple, tragic and entirely preventable. Not enough Americans have been willing to get vaccinated, despite having access to an abundance of free and stunningly effective vaccines.

Media outlets across the country are full of stories of Americans fighting for their lives in hospital and expressing regret at not getting vaccinated when they had the chance.

"I messed up big time, guys," Virginia father, Travis Campbell, said through an oxygen mask in a video posted to Facebook last week. "I didn't get the vaccine ... I made a mistake, I admit it."

Compare the US to Canada, which has no vaccine manufacturing capacity and had to beg to gain access to America's stockpile of unused AstraZeneca vaccines.

At the end of May, just 6 per cent of Canadians had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 compared to 41 per cent of Americans.

Just two months later, Canada had overtaken its neighbour: 63 per cent of Canadians are now fully vaccinated compared to 51 per cent of Americans.

Forget so-called vaccine hesitancy; America is now in the grip of outright vaccine refusal.

Americans have been offered all manner of incentives to get vaccinated, from free beer to doughnuts and even guns.

Yet 30 per cent of the adult population has declined - a far higher level of resistance than comparable countries such as Canada, Britain and, based on trends, Australia.

Communities with large numbers of white conservatives and African Americans stand out for their low vaccination rates.

Loopy conspiracies that the vaccines contain microchips or make you infertile get a lot of attention when explaining vaccine refusal.

But something else was at play in late June when The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age visited Mississippi, the state with the lowest vaccination rate in the nation.

Some hold-outs were ideologically opposed conservatives; others were lazy, apathetic or worried about potential side effects. What they all had in common was that they perceived getting vaccinated as an entirely personal decision about what they put into their bodies.

There was no sense that they had a role to play in a shared, nationwide effort to prevent the spread of the virus and prevent people from dying.

The dark side of American individualism and liberty is selfishness and a lack of empathy.

As a result, vaccinated Americans feel increasingly angry at their fellow citizens for refusing to get the jab. The sense of bliss and relief of just a few months ago is quickly giving way to fear and frustration. Continue reading

It's a foolishly high-stakes challenge in which two drivers risking death, drive on a collision course towards each other until one of the drivers chooses to swerve away.

Since neither driver wants to be called "chicken," meaning coward, they both push the decision to swerve away to the last possible moment, each hoping that the other driver will be the one to back down and swerve away.

This is a very dangerous game - a game now being played between North Korea and the United States.

But in this game of chicken the high-stakes of two possible deaths increases to hundreds of thousands of probable deaths. And if it goes nuclear, the stakes rise to millions dead.

During the course of this year North Korea has launched over 20 missiles - some flying over Japan - and according to seismic readings may have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. And if not already, it is getting close to being able to hit the U.S. with one or more nuclear armed missiles.

For its part, the U.S. has deployed in the Pacific three aircraft carrier strike groups. This armada of warships carrying attack aircraft and cruise missiles is capable of launching a massive preemptive attack upon North Korea.

Now add to this perilous saber rattling, highly insulting verbal attacks from President Trump on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission," and the counter insults from Kim Jong-un that Trump is a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard," and we have before us a nuclear-armed war game of chicken.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Un grow up! This is no time to act like macho, self-centered adolescents. Think of the carnage that will result if you continue on this collision course.

Policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, James McKeon, told me that the U.S. and North Korea need to have "talks about talks," that is, conversations with no preconditions, in order to set the stage for formal negotiations.

McKeon added that "No preconditions diplomacy is the only viable option. If the Cold War proved anything it is that talking to adversaries is not appeasement, it is smart policy that helped avoid nuclear war."

A clear example here of difficult, serious and successful diplomacy took place between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missiles Crisis - 55 years ago - when calmer heads prevailed in avoiding nuclear war (see: http://bit.ly/2z7JpRV).

President Trump during his U.N. speech threatened to "totally destroy North Korea" (see: http://cnb.cx/2ypyGFy). This runs completely against Catholic social teaching.

The world's Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council solemnly declared: "Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation" (see: http://bit.ly/1lmUu1K).

Like the world's bishops of Vatican II, today's bishops, and every single disciple of the nonviolent Jesus, should condemn this dangerous violent brinkmanship - before it's too late!

Let us never forget that we are called to follow not the god of war, but the Prince of Peace.

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings about Catholic social teaching. His keynote address, "Advancing the Kingdom of God in the 21st Century," has been well received by diocesan and parish gatherings from Santa Clara, Calif. to Baltimore, Md. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net

Three years after our marriage, I became eligible for citizenship, passed the citizenship test, proudly took the oath of allegiance, sang the "Star-Spangled Banner", waved my little souvenir flag, and - with a few tears - began a wonderful new life.

One of the things a prospective citizen studying for that citizenship test learns about is the Bill of Rights - a powerful testament to the American love of freedom, especially so, for me, in the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Have you perhaps heard about the "checkpoints" that are so familiar in the Arab Middle East? A "checkpoint" is nothing more or less than an unreasonable search, always with the risk of arrest by the mukhabarat or secret police.

How grateful I was, how liberated I felt, to be at last the citizen of a free country where such searches and seizures were forbidden by the most basic law of the land.

But does the Fourth Amendment apply to me, a Muslim-American citizen in a simple hijab? Does it apply at Los Angeles International Airport?

On February 23, 2016, I arrived at LAX booked on a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul and then to Gaziantep. Gaziantep is a city in South-Central Turkey, near the Syrian border, where my aged mother and two brothers are living as refugees from the Syrian wars. Continue reading

• Lubana Adi cares for her three children at home in Los Angeles County and volunteers in the neighborhood school.

Father Reese had good reason to be afraid. One of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's last acts before becoming Pope Benedict XVI was to fire Reese, who was then editor in chief of the Jesuit magazine "America," which published the Pope Francis interview last week.

Ratzinger fired Reese while Pope John Paul II was dying in 2005.

It wasn't the editorials in "America" that riled Ratzinger. "I never had an editorial about abortion, women priests or gay marriage," he says. "That would have been touching the third rail. It was mostly a dialogue."

How things have changed.

As it turns out, Reese was ahead of his time, espousing for years the views that Francis espouses. And he paid the price for it. Put another way, it is clear to Reese that Francis would not have been Benedict's choice to succeed him.

According to Reese, the Vatican had indicated its displeasure at "America" for five years before Reese was fired.

They accused him of being anti-hierarchical.

But the "high point of my career," Reese said, were two articles he published by Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican official in charge of ecumenics.

Kasper challenged Ratzinger on church theology. Reese submitted the galleys to Ratzinger, who wrote a response. "That was the kind of communication I wanted to have in the magazine," he says.

Big mistake, it turns out. Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the watchdog of the Vatican.

Word came from Rome: "Reese has got to go," he says.

"I was running a journal of opinion and they only wanted one opinion. They wanted an echo chamber of what was coming out of the Vatican."

Once fired, Reese went to the Woodstock Theological Center, which closed in June. He is now on sabbatical before returning in January to a job with the National Catholic Reporter. The church won't be able to fire him this time. It's an independent publication, unlike "America."

"Francis is saying, 'Get out in the streets and do something. You'll make mistakes. That's fine,' " says Reese. "Staying in the sacristy is killing the church...." Continue reading

Professor Guzman Carriquiry, secretary for the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, said there is a growing tendency for Americans' faith to be lived with a lack of enthusiasm, lukewarmness and ignorance.

"How many Christians today have buried their baptism under a cloak of consumerism and indifference?" he asked during an international conference on America in the Vatican's Synod Hall.

Continue reading

Nor, apparently, can anyone else. If they could have, then they would have done so already. Some of us are old enough to remember when a madman poisoned packages of Tylenol in 1982. Seven people died, and the reaction was immediate: the entire run of the product was recalled. Packaging was changed so that the buyer would know it's safe and wasn't tampered with. Liberal or conservative had nothing to do with it. It was not treated as a political issue. No one claimed that making it marginally harder to get at those headache pills was the first step toward dictatorship. Read more

Sources

• D L Hughley in Huffington Post
• Image: The Guardian

D L Hughley is an actor and stand-up comedian.

Those with long memories remember that the first George Bush Gulf War ended as we slaughtered the helpless remnants of the Iraqi army fleeing from Kuwait, bombing their defenseless convoy.

The Bush Junior phase of the war ended symbolically when American troops staged the yanking down of Saddam's statue in a Baghdad square, and again when Bush landed on an aircraft carrier to declare victory, and again when Saddam was hanged.

Today it is over again because all the American troops are coming home—except for those who are remaining and those who will be sent back when the terms have been negotiated.

Continue reading Iraq's moral legacy

Image: US Military

That is the moment, three years ago, that Mr. Gingrich says he decided to become a Roman Catholic, after having been born a Lutheran and joining the Southern Baptist Church in college. In 2009, Mr. Gingrich was baptized in the same Catholic parish church on Capitol Hill where Senator Robert F. Kennedy once attended noonday Mass and sometimes assisted the priest as an altar server.

But Mr. Gingrich represents a new kind of Catholic, one very different from the Kennedys, who were Democrats, political liberals and cradle Catholics shaped by the Irish immigrant church.

He was responding to a Dec. 14 Pew Research analysis that indicates marriage rates in the U.S. are at a record low, as young couples are delaying marriage longer than ever before.

According to Pew Research Center's analysis of U.S. Census data, only 51 percent of adults in the U.S. are currently married, compared to 72 percent in 1960. In addition, new marriages in America dropped by five percent between 2009 and 2010.

While the decline in marriage is taking place among all age groups, it is most drastic among young adults. The analysis observed that only 20 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are married, a drop from 59 percent in 1960.

Part of the decrease in currently married individuals may be tied to young adults delaying marriage, the report said. Both men and women are about six years older when they enter into their first marriage than couples 50 years ago were.

"Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights," said in a speech marking Human Rights Day at the United Nations' human rights body in Geneva.

Clinton said religious objections and cultural values to homosexuality should not stand in the way of vigorous United Nations action to promote the homosexual rights agenda.

The global acceptance of "gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people" is "one of the remaining human rights challenges of our time," likening the effort to ending racial, sexual, or religious discrimination, said Clinton.

She noted that perhaps the "most challenging issue arises when people cite religious or cultural values as a reason to violate or not to protect the human rights of GLBT citizens."

These objections, she said, are "not unlike the justification offered for violent practices towards women like honor killings, widow burning, or female genital mutilation."

She stated worldwide "opinions are still evolving" on homosexuality as they did with slavery, and "what was once justified as sanctioned by God is now properly reviled as an unconscionable violation of human rights."

"In each of these cases, we came to learn that no [religious] practice or tradition trumps the human rights that belong to all of us," she said.

According to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, homosexual acts are punishable by death in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen, as well as in parts of Nigeria under shari'a law.

Countries whose laws allow for imprisonment of 10 years or more for homosexuality include Libya, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea and Guyana, it says.

In announcing the launch of a US$3m Global Equality Fund to assist civil organizations that promote equal rights for gays abroad, Clinton held out a challenge to other governments to join US efforts against gender discrimination.

Sources

• LA Times
• CNS News
• LifeSite News

"If we comply, as the law requires, we will be helping our students do things that we teach them, in our classes and in our sacraments, are sinful — sometimes gravely so," Catholic University President John Garvey wrote in The Washington Post. "It seems to us that a proper respect for religious liberty would warrant an exemption for our university and other institutions like it."

But while some insist that the rules, which spring from last year's health law, break new ground, many states as well as federal civil rights law already require most religious employers to cover prescription contraceptives if they provide coverage of other prescription drugs.

While some religious employers take advantage of loopholes or religious exemptions, the fact remains that dozens of Catholic hospitals and universities currently offer contraceptive coverage as part of their health insurance packages.

The ban has opened a war of words between worshippers in the Pike County community and provoked accusations of discrimination.

It was imposed after Stella Harville, the church secretary's daughter, attended a service with her black fiance Ticha Chikuni.

"Intuitively, we understand that acts of violence, destruction, and murder are antithetical to the message and person of Jesus Christ and have no rightful place in our society, especially sacred places," the bishops said in a statement.

"Whatever an individual parish decides to do regarding its policy on concealed weapons, we ask that all people seriously consider not carrying weapons into church buildings as a sign of reverence for these sacred spaces."

Permitted under the new concealed weapons law are handguns, electric weapons such as stun guns or tasers, knives other than switchblades, and billy clubs. Machine guns, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns are prohibited.

The bishops said a decision on whether to ban concealed weapons was up to individual churches.

Catholic Mutual Insurance group says that a parish's insurance cover is no altered by the new law, but recommends a complete weapons ban for parishioners, employees and volunteers.

The Wisconsin law leaves Illinois as the only state that does not allow residents to carry concealed firearms.

Sources

• National Post
• The Register
• Image: Daily Caller

Speaking ahead of ceremonies to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Cheney said "enhanced interrogation" produced "phenomenal" results, and he rejected the use of torture undermined the moral authority of the United States.

Cheney dismissed President Obama's investigations in the legality of US use of torture, labelling them as "objectionable" and a "terrible precedent."

"The notion that somehow the United States was wildly torturing anybody is not true," he said.

"One of the most controversial techniques is waterboarding ... Three people were waterboarded. Not dozens, not hundreds. Three. And the one who was subjected the most often to that was Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, and it produced phenomenal results for us."

Waterboarding Mohammed "helped produce the intelligence that allowed us to get Osama bin Laden", he said.

"It was out of the enhanced interrogation techniques that some of the leads came that ultimately produced the result when President Obama was able to send in Seal Team 6 to kill Bin Laden."

"They've been successful in part because of the capabilities we left them with, the intelligence we left them with, because of what we learned from men like Khaled Sheikh Mohammed back when he was subjected. I think it's a mistake not to have an enhanced interrogation programme available now. I don't know what they would do today if they captured the equivalent of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed."

Earlier this week, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, repudiated the use of waterboarding as torture and illegal even if, she said, it did produce valuable intelligence.

"It is a sadness and worse that the previous government of our great ally, the United States, chose to waterboard some detainees. The argument that life-saving intelligence was thereby obtained, and I accept that it was, still does not justify it," she said.

"Torture should be utterly rejected even when it may offer the prospect of saving lives".

Defending waterboardsing, Cheney said the US used it in training its operatives so it could not be that bad.

Cheney said very member of the national security council, including Cheney critic and former secretary of state, Colin Powell was informed of the decision and signed up to it.

Sources

• The Guardian
• Associated Press (Video)
• Image: Red Ice Creations

Already, however, governments had bought the pill for another reason: as a means of thinning the ranks of the poor. To reduce the burden of supporting them the United States government, for example, has funded birth control for those on welfare or near the poverty line ever since 1972.

Today, both agendas are incomplete; if anything, they are more formidable than ever.

Millions of women the world over are raising children on their own; countless others have endured an abortion, suffered a sexually transmitted disease, lost their fertility, developed cancer. Birthrates have plunged — although not as much as desired among the target populations — but welfare spending continues to grow as states replace fathers and breadwinners in an increasing number of homes.

To address these problems the American President has authorised a bold new scheme. From August 1st next year, all contraception and voluntary sterilisations will be free, sort of.

Continue reading "Can contraception make America better?"

Source

• Image: Kora Organics

The pledge, written and supported by the Susan B. Anthony Fund, has been signed by other presidential hopefuls including Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman and Hermain Cain.

The Susan B. Anthony Fund plans to raise US$14 million this election and will use it to promote anti-abortion candidates and legislation that will block funding for Planned Parenthood.

Perry also recently became the latest Republican presidential candidate to sign a pledge saying, if elected, he will defend marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Perry joins Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum adding his name to the pledge written by the National Organisation for Marriage.

The Texas governor's decision to endorse the marriage pledge came weekes after he stirred controversy when he said New York's decision to legalise same-sex marriage was "their business" and "fine with me."

Perry later clarified his "fine with me" view to mean "it's fine with me that a state is using their sovereign rights to decide and issue. Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me. My stance hasn't changed."

Sources

• Catholic Online
• Christian Post
• Image: The Atlantic Wire

California's governor attended Jesuit seminary, where he studied to become a Catholic priest, and in 2005 was married in the Catholic Church.

The governor of New York is a practicing Roman Catholic who was raised in a family steeped in traditional Church teachings.

And the nation's vice president is open about the role of faith in his life, saying that he finds comfort in carrying his rosary and attending Mass weekly.

These confirmed Catholics, attached to the church by birth and educated in parochial schools, are also progressive democrats.

Nancy Pelosi and Jerry Brown support abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research, Andrew Cuomo made same-sex marriage the law of New York; and Joseph Biden along with Jerry Brown support the death penalty - stances sharply at odds with church teachings.

Then, over the summer, the issue of same-sex marriage hit the news.

Continue reading How progressive Democrats remain Catholic

Source

• Image: I love my Gov

Our Sunday Visitor reports that 77%, which is equivalent to more than 44 million adult American Catholics, remain unaware of the changes.

Perhaps more alarming is that 40% of those who attend Mass on a weekly basis have not heard that the words of the Mass will be under-going a significant change.

Some of the biggest differences in awareness are by generation. Younger Catholics will seem to be more surprised by the changes in Advent; the millennial Catholics in particular, whereas those born before 1943 are the 'most aware' generation.

Those who are more aware of the liturgical changes include those

• who attend Mass on a weekly basis
• enrolled in a parish
• at a catholic school
• more educated Catholics, that is those with a bachelors degree
• mid-west as opposed to north east or southern Catholics

The study was conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

The US bishops have asked pastors to undertake an educational effort in the fall, preparing parishioners for the new translation.

Sources

• OSV