Just listen to the Pope and answer: Who am I?....Equal pay act: More B*S* from the progressives "communists with patience"....LGBT Historians: "No ONE is born Gay"

Pope: Meditate on Christ's passion during Holy Week

By Kerri Lenartowick

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Pope Francis celebrates Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square on April 13, 2014. Credit: Lauren Cater / CNA.

Vatican City, Apr 13, 2014 / 05:41 am (CNA).- In his Palm Sunday homily, Pope Francis urged the congregation to consider how their actions and attitudes reflected the various characters in the story of Jesus’ passion and death.

“We have heard the (Gospel reading of the) Passion of the Lord. Only, it does us good to ask a question: Who am I? Who am I before my Lord? Who am I before Jesus who enters festively into Jerusalem?” the Pope said on April 13.

“This week moves towards the mystery of the death of Jesus and of his resurrection,” noted the pontiff. “Where is my heart and which of these persons am I most like? It is this question that accompanies us throughout the week.”

The crowds filled a sunny St. Peter’s Square to attend the papal liturgy, clutching olive branches and woven palms as they listened to Pope Francis reflect on the different persons in the Gospel.

Departing entirely from his prepared remarks, the Holy Father considered each figure in the story, followed by questions about their relation to Jesus.

First, the Gospel recounts Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where he is welcomed by adoring crowds. “Do I have the capacity to express my joy, to praise him? Or do I move away? Who am I, before Jesus who suffers?” queried the pontiff.

Then, there are several groups of leaders, priests, pharisees, and teachers of law who decide to kill Jesus. “Am I like one of them?”

“Am I like Judas, who pretends to love and kisses the master to hand him over, to betray him? Am I a traitor?” he reflected.

“Or am I like the disciples who did not understand what it was to betray Jesus?” The Pope continued. They “did not understand anything...they fell asleep while the Lord suffered. Is my life asleep?”

The pontiff went on to several other figures, including Pontius Pilate, who saw that “the situation was difficult” and decided to “wash his hands of it,” refusing to “assume responsibility.”

The crowd who had once welcomed Jesus so joyfully turned on him, finding it “more amusing” to “humiliate Jesus,” while the soldiers “spit on him, insulted him.”

When Jesus takes up his cross, more compassionate figures emerge. “Am I like Simon of Cyrene who was returning from work, tired, but had the good will to to help the Lord carry the cross?” asked the Holy Father.

“Am I like to courageous women, and like the mother of Jesus, who were there, suffering in silence?”

“Am I like the two Marys who remained in front of the tomb, weeping, praying?”

After his homily, the Pope continued the Mass but concluded with a special welcome to those gathered in Rome to plan the next World Youth Day.

At the close of the liturgy, several Brazilian youth handed off the large wooden cross used at World Youth Day to young people from Poland. The 2013 event had been held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, while the next gathering in 2016 will be in Krakow, Poland.

Pope Francis noted that Blessed John Paul II had entrusted the cross to youth 30 years ago. “He asked them to carry it in all the world as a sign of the love of Christ for humanity.”

The pontiff then announced that he hopes to meet with the youth of Asia during his trip to Korea on August 15 of this year.

“Let us ask the Lord that the Cross, together with the icon of Mary ‘Salus Populi Romani’ (Protectress of the Roman People), will be a sign of hope for all, revealing to the world the invincible love of Christ,” said the Holy Father.

He went on to lead the crowds in the Angelus prayer at the conclusion of the Mass.

America's Crisis Isn't About Women's Wages. It's About Men's Wages.

Stephen Moore

April 12, 2014 at 9:15 am

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Photo: Getty Images

The Equal Pay Act, sponsored by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), is a laughably bad idea — almost a parody of liberal interventionism in the market. Under the law, there is federal funding for girls’ negotiation training and grant awards for reducing gender discrimination. It bestows on disgruntled employees yet more grounds on which to sue their employers for alleged discrimination – when, in most cases, the malcontents are just sub-par employees.

But that’s not even the major flaw of this latest Democratic measure against gender discrimination. The crisis in America today isn’t about women’s wages; it’s about men’s wages. Men are still the chief breadwinners in most families, and their wages are not moving much at all. If we look at Census Bureau data, we find that while men’s wages have risen by about 6 percent in real terms since 1980, women’s wages have risen by about 60 percent. Any gap in pay — real or imagined — is rapidly shrinking.

President Obama uses the figure of 77 cents earned by a woman for every dollar earned by a man. But that is a comparison of all women with all men (and even Mr. Obama’s own economists say a woman earns 81 cents for every dollar earned by her male counterpart). In fact, a 2009 Labor Department study found that, when we control for work experience and education, the gap is only about 5 percent. And when we account for the fact that men are more likely to be injured or suffer an accident on the job, and do riskier work and often more unpleasant jobs than women, the gap virtually disappears. My friend Mark Perry, an economist who runs the Carpe Diem blog at the American Enterprise Institute, has documented all this.

Furthermore, the latest surveys of college graduates find virtually no pay discrepancy between men and women, so for this generation the 77-cents mantra is as outdated as bell-bottom jeans.

The real wage crisis has to do with men. The latest education statistics show that women are about 53 percent of college enrollees and almost 60 percent of those pursuing advanced degrees. Pay rises with educational attainment. There is almost no gender gap for the latest generation entering the workforce; if the current educational trends continue, it is quite possible that women will start having higher earnings than men, and this will be especially true of women who do not have children.

What are the implications of a society in which women earn more than men? We don’t really know, but it could be disruptive to family stability. If men aren’t the breadwinners, will women regard them as economically expendable? We saw what happened to family structure in low-income and black households when a welfare check took the place of a father’s paycheck. Divorce rates go up when men lose their jobs.

The problem here is especially acute with respect to black families. Black women have been on a 30-year trend of outpacing black men in terms of education and thus earnings. Men are becoming financially expendable. It is also true that the decline in men’s wages is necessitating women to work to supplement family income. Sometimes this is by the woman’s choice, but in this rough economy it is less a matter of free will than of economic necessity.

Gender gaps in pay are also a distraction from the other real financial problem, which is declining pay for almost all groups. Between 2009 and 2012, every racial group and both genders have done worse. Actually, women’s paychecks have fallen slightly more than men’s in this phony recovery — and that is despite the fact that one of Mr. Obama’s first acts as president was to sign the Lilly Ledbetter paycheck-equality act. So much for the government’s being able to equalize incomes through edict.

Since more and more families have two earners — the husband and the wife — women are hardly going to cheer if the gender gap falls only because their husbands are earning less. But that is the way Mr. Obama has pursued equality — by devising policies that make us all a little poorer.

Income, race, and gender inequality have been clever distractions for the president. The gap that matters most he chooses to ignore: the gap between what middle-class people should be earning and what they are in fact taking home. Wages are falling for nearly everyone, Mr. President: for men, women, blacks, whites, the poor, and the middle class.

The $1,800 decline in middle-class incomes since the recovery began is the issue that matters to most Americans, and this is what Republicans should be shouting from the rooftops.

Originally published in National Review Online.

Even LGBT Historians Admit No One Is 'Born Gay'

7:00AM EDT 4/9/2014 ALEX KOCMAN

 

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In his article, David Benkof writes, "Sure, there’s substantial evidence of both discreet and open same-sex love and sex in pre-modern times. But no society before the 19th century had a gay minority or even discernibly gay-oriented individuals." (Original photo: Flickr/Mike Krzeszak)

Whether it's Macklemore's "Same Love" or Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," our culture is pretty convinced that homosexuality is inherent from birth.

But as it turns out, those within the LGBT movement aren't that convinced themselves.

In an article in the Daily Caller, gay writer David Benkof presents the solid case of the historians—several of whom are also LGBT—who maintain that the sexual orientation of homosexuality didn't exist until about 150 years ago.

While same-sex relationships and behavior have happened from time to time throughout history, LGBT scholarly studies show zero evidence of any culture with gay-oriented individuals at any point in history.

The mountain of scholarly research also continues to show no "gay gene" accounting for sexual orientation from birth.

The basis of these claims is that sexual orientation, as part of a person's identity, is entirely a modern invention. Even in Greek culture, where homosexual behavior is known to have occurred, the line of reasoning goes, there is nothing to show that even a minority of individuals identified as gay or homosexual in any way. Rather, homosexuality was supposedly considered a supplement to one's regular heterosexual relationships.

The reasoning of such historians also reveals that there was no heterosexual orientation in cultures past at all. Not that no one was attracted to the opposite sex—hardly—but that the idea of heterosexuality as an identifier couldn't have existed in a world were homosexualit didn't exist either. (Fish don't know they're wet.)

In other words, sexual orientation isn't a core identifier like race or gender; it's fully a social construct.

Although Benkof maintains that the LGBT cause can survive in spite of such findings, only the biblical worldview fits in with the facts. So shouldn't this lead to a victory in the so-called culture war?

The Challenge for Christians

The Bible doesn't directly mention the gay orientation because the concept of sexual orientation is a non sequitur both in Scripture and in (as we now know) most of history. The Bible clearly condemns homosexual actions and desires, along with any kind of sexual action or desire outside of marriage. Genesis 5:2, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Matthew 5:28, Romans 1:27, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 leave no room for doubt.

But as long as the LGBT movement keeps the debate framed around sexual identity, Christians will be seen as hating people for who they are.

Christians are seen as saying, "Who you are is wrong, so here's some moral actions that will fix it." But that isn't the gospel at all. When we identify ourselves with Christ's death, we are rendered dead to our human nature and forgiven of all our sins; and through Christ's resurrection, we are both declared innocent and given the ability to live in a new nature—a righteous nature—through God's own Spirit.

On the question of "Who am I?" the New Testament really gives only two options: I am either a natural-born sinner or reborn righteous through Christ. (See Romans 5.)

Thus, who we all areis wrong because we're naturally born into a state of sinfulness. But no actions can change our nature. (No amount of time spent in airplanes will make me a bird, and no amount of time doing good deeds will make me anything other than a sinner.) We need a new nature, and only then can we exchange sinful actions and desires for righteous ones.

Evangelicals must not only 1) faithfully represent the Word's teachings on controversial issues like homosexuality, but also 2) make it known that your true identity from God's standpoint is far weightier than modern social constructs about sexuality.

If culture catches up to the fact that the gay sexual identity is a social construct, then perhaps it will understand that the Bible's condemnations of sexual immorality are directed against our sinful actions, thoughts and nature—not our basic personalities.

But until then, we in the church still have an uphill battle: to preach a gospel that doesn't just correct wrong behavior but creates rebirth.