GOP rep who skipped pope’s speech: "Pope should focus less on climate change, more on fighting religious extremism, abortion and other issues".

GOP rep who skipped pope’s speech: "Pope should focus less on climate change, more on fighting religious extremism, abortion and other issues". (TheHill).

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) said he has no regrets about skipping Pope Francis’s speech Thursday, even though the pontiff spoke little about climate change.

Gosar announced last week that he would boycott the speech over his expectation that Francis would focus heavily on climate change and press Congress to take action, something that Gosar disagrees with strongly.

But Gosar, a Roman Catholic, said skipping the speech got across his point, which is that Francis shouldn’t be putting so much of his energy into climate change, and should focus more on fighting religious extremism, abortion and other issues. “I think I made my point, and I think the point needed to be made,” Gosar said hours after Francis gave his speech, adding that he at no point wished he were in the House chamber.

The Arizona Republican and former dentist watched the speech instead from his office in the Cannon House Office Building, just across the street from the Capitol where Francis spoke.

Gosar complained that the speech “lacked a lot of details,” though he agreed with Francis’s emphasis on the importance of families.

“He was very specific about climate change, a lot more dynamic on that regard than in right to life,” Gosar said. “He made one sentence and then transitioned it right into trying to advocate against the death penalty.”

On Friday, Gosar wrote that Francis could speak against violent Islam or persecution of Christians.

“But when the Pope chooses to act and talk like a leftist politician, then he can expect to be treated like one,” he said.

“Climate change is subjective. And when you have a pope putting out an encyclical and then challenging Catholics, that ‘if you disagree with me you’re wrong,’ I have problems with that. Especially a man of science, and I’m a man of science, and we can debate that all day.” Hmmmm......At least one man with guts and integrety in the whole crowd.

Italian Mother: ‘My son the only Italian at school’ - This is not integration but integration in reverse

Italian Mother: ‘My son the only Italian at school’ - This is not integration but integration in reverse.(RT).

"To me, having a school with 65 foreign children and only one Italian seems like an educational and teaching mistake,” Eleonora Baccaro said in a letter, addressed to Massimo Bitonci, the mayor of Padua, northern Italy.

The letter was published in Il Mattino di Padova, a local newspaper.

Baccaro added that she is very concerned about what's happening at Quadrifoglio pre-school in the city's Arcella area, which takes children aged three to six.
“The ratio is so disproportionate; we can't even talk about integration. Unless it's integration in reverse, with Italian children being among a large group of foreigners,” she wrote, as cited by the Local.

Baccaro added that she is not a racist and her concerns are not based on “intolerance towards those who come from afar." She explained that the question she poses is only from a cultural and pedagogical standpoint.

"With so many children from a different cultural background, and having a different religion to ours, how can you arrange, for example, any kind of Christmas play inspired by our Catholic faith? This is not good."
Gabriella Balbo, a teacher at Quadrifoglio School, said that the majority of the children were born in Italy.

"We have always been multiethnic," she told the Local, "We do our best to welcome all children and have had to come up with strategies to maintain a good level of education and ensure all children are taken care of.”

However, she added that the school needs cultural and linguistic mediators, adding that the teachers’ goodwill and organizational efficiency are not enough.

Other teachers at school complain of linguistic problems they face while dealing with metalinguistic parents.

"On the first day of school [September 15] a Chinese mother wanted, at all costs, to speak to us teachers about her son, who was in his first year," one teacher told Il Mattino di Padova.
According to the teacher, the woman had only been in Padua “for a short time and didn't speak a word of Italian.”“So we had to find another Chinese mother to translate," she added.

By January 1, 2014, the number of foreign residents in Italy had reached 4,987,721. The majority of migrants came from Romania, Morocco, Albania and China.


The numbers, however, exclude illegal immigrants, whose numbers are difficult to determine. The country has been hit by an influx of illegal immigrants since the beginning of this year, with over 50,000 seeking refuge in the Mediterranean country since January. The government has been hard-pressed to deal with the situation and has called on the EU to intervene.

"In God We Trust" - Proposal would allow state religion in North Carolina.

"In God We Trust" - Proposal would allow state religion in North Carolina.(WRAL). By Laura Leslie.Raleigh, N.C. — A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.

The legislation grew out of a dispute between the American Civil Liberties Union against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In a federal lawsuit filed last month, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.

Overtly Christian prayers at government meetings are not rare in North Carolina. Since the Republican takeover in 2011, the state Senate chaplain has offered an explicitly Christian invocation virtually every day of session, despite the fact that some senators are not Christian.

House Bill 494, a resolution filed by Republican Rowan County Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, would refuse to acknowledge the force of any judicial ruling on prayer in North Carolina – or indeed on any Constitutional topic:

"The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people," the bill states. "Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion." Read the full story here.

Overnight Music Video - I will follow him - CEBU Dancing Inmates .

Egypt - BREAKING: Bishop Tawadros chosen as Egypt's 118th Coptic pope.

Egypt - BREAKING: Bishop Tawadros chosen as Egypt's 118th Coptic pope.(A).Bishop Tawadros has become Egypt’s 118th Coptic pope after his name was picked from a box by a blindfolded child during Sunday's altar lottery at St Mark's Cathedral in Abbasiya, Cairo. The new Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa in the Holy See of St Mark the Apostle succeeds Pope Shenouda III who passed away last March.
Pope Shenouda led the church for forty years and was chosen in a similar lottery in 1971.
Following an 8am mass on Sunday, acting pope Bishop Pachomios led altar boy Bishoy Gerges Mossad, to the altar, where the young blindfolded boy chose the name of the new pope.
The three finalists who entered Sunday’s lottery were: Bishop Rafael, Father Rafael Ava Mina and Bishop Tawadros. The road to choosing a new pope began immediately after Pope Shenouda’s death, when 76-year-old Pachomios' was appointed as interim pope. The Church then formed a committee mandated with drawing up a shortlist of nominees to become Shenouda's successor. Another committee was also tasked with choosing electors – those members of the Coptic community who would have the right to cast ballots in the papal electoral process. A total of 2,406 electors were chosen, drawn from among Coptic archbishops, bishops, lay council members and agents of the archdioceses, as well as prominent Coptic laymen including Coptic newspaper editors-in-chief and members of the Egyptian Journalists' Syndicate. Bishop Tawadros, the General Bishop of El-Beheira, in Egypt's Delta region received 1623 votes, taking 26.53 per cent of total votes. Father Raphael received 1530 votes, totalling 25 per cent of the votes. Bishop Pachomios had kicked off the final ceremony early Sunday, by reading the names of each candidate out loud to the congregation. The names were written in bold on large rectangle shaped papers. Each paper was then tied and placed in a black box, which was sealed with red wax. The new pope is faced with the task of leading Egypt’s Coptic community in a politically uncertain climate, following the last year's popular uprising. Islamists and Salafists continue to push their religious agendas, following the election of a Muslim Brother as Egypt's president and the ongoing constitution-drafting process. Challenges also lie within the Church. The new pope will also have to tackle critical issues including obtaining state approval to amend the church's 1938 bylaws – which lay down the rules governing Coptic divorce and remarriage – and the controversial 1957 bylaws regulating papal elections. The Bishop will be officially enthroned as Egypt's 118th pope on the 18th of November.Read the full story here.

Black pastors group launches anti-Obama campaign around gay marriage, claim there were 3,742 African-American pastors on board.

Black pastors group launches anti-Obama campaign around gay marriage, claim there were 3,742 African-American pastors on board.(CNN).By Dan Merica.A group of conservative black pastors are responding to President Barack Obama’s support of same-sex marriage with what they say will be a national campaign aimed at rallying black Americans to rethink their overwhelming support of the President, though the group’s leader is offering few specifics about the effort. The Rev. Williams Owens, who is president and founder of the Coalition of African-Americans Pastors and the leader of the campaign, has highlighted opposition to same-sex marriage among African-Americans. He calls this campaign “an effort to save the family.” 

“The time has come for a broad-based assault against the powers that be that want to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women,” said Owens, in an interview Tuesday after the launch event at the National Press Club.

“I am ashamed that the first black president chose this road, a disgraceful road.” At the press conference, Owens was joined by five other black regional pastors and said there were 3,742 African-American pastors on board for the anti-Obama campaign. When asked at the press conference for specifics about the campaign – funding, planned events and goals – Owens said only that the group’s first fundraiser will be on August 16 in Memphis, Tennessee. But Owens insisted that “we are going to go nationwide with our agenda just like the president has gone to Hollywood.” At the Tuesday press conference, Owens questioned Obama’s commitment to black Americans, stating that the president is just “half-black, half-white” and has long “ignored the black press.” He is “ignoring the people that put him in the White House,” Owens said.Read the full story here.