More Ave Maria News

AveWatch: Safranek Wins Settlement from Ave Maria and Monaghan

Detroit attorney Deborah Gordon announced today that former Ave Maria School of Law professor Stephen Safranek accepted a settlement offer in his October 2007 wrongful termination suit against Tom Monaghan, the Ave Maria Foundation, the Law School, and Bernard Dobranski (the recently-resigned AMSL Dean and President). The Law School’s Board of Governors will rescind its earlier revocation of Professor Safranek’s tenure; further, the Board will rescind the preceding suspension and all censures imposed by then-Dean Dobranski.

Lots of links and reaction. Check it out.

Ouch

Peruse this article in American Thinker: The Catholic Bishops and ACORN by Mark Wauck. He goes into detail, quoting many previous articles, in describing the Catholic Campaign for Human Development's history and relations with the world of ACORN (before CCHD severed ties with it amid news of massive embezzlement at ACORN) and community organizing at large. (Guess which organization funded a few of our present president's jobs?)

Summing up:

The article [a CNS article quoted by Wauck] goes on to relate a CCHD spokesman's claims that CCHD subjects its grantees to a great deal of scrutiny, and that they had no suspicion of irregularities in voter registration drives. You can take those claims for what they're worth, but the fact remains that CCHD -- which is to say, the Catholic Church in America -- has for decades been funneling millions of dollars into an organization founded by radical leftists.

That's bad news. Bad for the bishops, bad for the Church, bad for America.

In an addendum written after the new revelation on CCHD's funding of pro-abortion and prostitution groups, Wauck refers to the widely-quoted words of Father Neuhaus of First Things regarding where the Catholic laity's money is going: down the rabbit hole:

He called the organization "misbegotten in concept and corrupt in practice," and went so far as to urge that it be terminated. "What most Catholics don't know, and what would likely astonish them," wrote Fr. Neuhaus, "is that CHD very explicitly does not fund Catholic institutions and apostolates that work with the poor." Neuhaus suggested that the bishops would do better to spend their money on more Catholic-related projects, such as "Catholic inner-city schools."

Bolding mine.

Pretending and Reality

Father Z has pointed out an article at the website of the Cincinnati Enquirer regarding the actions of the local ordinary in dismissing a female religious for advocating on behalf of women's (pretend) ordination. They're also doing a poll.

Check it out.

Last checked: 6:10 PM CDT

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Should the Church allow women to be ordained as priests?
Yes (1560) 55.85%
No (1157) 41.42%
I'm undecided (76) 2.72%
Total Votes: 2793

Dipping Into Health Care

His Excellency R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City has this to say regarding the health care debate (hat tip to Hotair.com):

First and most important, the Church will not accept any legislation that mandates coverage, public or private, for abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem-cell research.

We refuse to allow our own parish, school, and diocesan health insurance plans to be forced to include these evils. As a corollary of this, we insist equally on adequate protection of individual rights of conscience for patients and health care providers not to be made complicit in these evils. A so-called reform that imposes these evils on us would be far worse than keeping the health care system we now have.

Second, the Catholic Church does not teach that “health care” as such, without distinction, is a natural right.

The “natural right” of health care is the divine bounty of food, water, and air without which all of us quickly die. This bounty comes from God directly. None of us own it, and none of us can morally withhold it from others. The remainder of health care is a political, not a natural, right, because it comes from our human efforts, creativity, and compassion.

As a political right, health care should be apportioned according to need, not ability to pay or to benefit from the care. We reject the rationing of care. Those who are sickest should get the most care, regardless of age, status, or wealth. But how to do this is not self-evident. The decisions that we must collectively make about how to administer health care therefore fall under “prudential judgment.”

Third, in that category of prudential judgment, the Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care.

Unlike a prudential concern like national defense, for which government monopolization is objectively good – it both limits violence overall and prevents the obvious abuses to which private armies are susceptible – health care should not be subject to federal monopolization.

Preserving patient choice (through a flourishing private sector) is the only way to prevent a health care monopoly from denying care arbitrarily, as we learned from HMOs in the recent past. While a government monopoly would not be motivated by profit, it would be motivated by such bureaucratic standards as quotas and defined “best procedures,” which are equally beyond the influence of most citizens. The proper role of the government is to regulate the private sector, in order to foster healthy competition and to curtail abuses. Therefore any legislation that undermines the viability of the private sector is suspect.

Emphasis mine. The bolded parts are excellent illustrations of his point.