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Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Just To Let You Know

I have been busy making a few needed changes on the Faith of the Fathers blogs.

Primarily the changes are to both of the sidebars of all the blogs. No longer will the first things a visitor sees be the advertisments and promotions on these blogs. They are still there, just located at the bottom of each sidebar. That way it's not so "in your face" with those items anymore. They have never been of the primary importance to these blogs in the first place.

On top of the left sidebar of each blog is a link to the Welcome page, and a link to our Privacy Policy. I instituted a Privacy Policy as the Google Ads program required one, and so I complied. Below that are some links to some important sites, such as Priests for Life, and 2 Catholic Charitable organizations.

As you scroll on down the left sidebar I have added an area called "Faith of the Fathers Blogs Recent Posts". These link to the most popular Faith of the Fathers blogs, and give the title of the most recent post on each blog. The most recently updated blog will be listed first in that section. Just below that is "More Faith of the Fathers Blogs" with text links to all of our blogs, and then below that are links to (in my opinion) "Some Great Catholic Blogs".

On the right hand sidebar, I kept the language translation tool, BabelFish at the top of the sidebar, with the profile block just below that. There now is a section called "My Blog List" which is a list of the blogs I visit most often. The blogs are listed alphabetically. Below that is a section called "Some Great Catholic Sites" that all Catholics might be interested in.

Speaking of sites, there are two that I want to call your attention to. The first actually only appears on two of the blogs, "Favorite Prayers and Scripture" and "Prayer Requests". The site linked to there is called "Virtual Rosary". Virtual Rosary calls itself "The Original Free Multimedia Rosary and Prayer Network". The program there is free, and it is a big help to anyone wanting to learn to pray the rosary . It also will give you the option of a daily reminder to pray the rosary on the startup of your computer. There are different modules you can add (also free) that you can use such as Saint Louis de Montfort Meditations, a scriptural rosary from Workers of Our Lady of Moint Carmel among others, and modules available for different languages such as Spanish, Chinese, German and Hungarian.

The second site I want to direct your attention to, especially the women readers of these blogs, is a site called "Women for Faith and Family". After all the talk (once again) of the ordination of women, it is wonderful  to find a site for orthodox Catholic women who follow the teachings, Traditions and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, and who are loyal to the Pope. Their about page says in part:

  • To assist orthodox Catholic women in their effort to provide witness to their faith, both to their families and to the world.
  • To aid women in their efforts to deepen their understanding of the Catholic Faith.
  • To aid faithful Catholic women in their desire for fellowship with others who share their faith and commitment.
  • To serve as a channel through which questions from Catholic women seeking guidance or information can be directed.

I hope these changes are helpful, and I hope you do visit all the sites and blogs that we link to on Faith of the Fathers blogs.

Monday, August 30, 2010

ZENIT - Pope to Brave Persecution in UK

ZENIT - Pope to Brave Persecution in UK

Friday, August 20, 2010

N.C. Court of Appeals: Religious NC College Can't Have Police

 
 
You read that headline right.

Davidson College, is a private liberal arts college located in North Carolina, just 20 miles north of Charlotte. Davidson is a Presbyterian college of about 1,800 students and is rated as one of the best liberal arts schools in the United States. Like many other schools in the state, Davidson College has its own police department.

Under North Carolina law, a police department for a school or a community must be certified by the North Carolina Attorney General’s office. The department must have undergone the training required to certify the department and its officers must meet the law enforcement standards and training required by state law.

Now, let’s get to how this started.

In 2006, a Davidson College police officer stopped a car on a street adjacent to the college campus. The driver, Julie Ann Yencer, who was not a Davidson student, pleaded guilty to driving while impaired but appealed.

The Court of Appeals ruled that because Davidson College has a religious affiliation, it's officers should not be allowed to carry out laws on behalf of the state. The court called it a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of laws establishing religion. Judge Jim Wynn in writing the unanimous opinion for the court said that allowing the officers to do so created "an excessive government entanglement with religion".

Wynn, who left the state bench last week to join the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also said in the opinion that the school's police power "is an unconstitutional delegation of 'an important discretionary governmental power' to a religious institution in the context of the First Amendment".

The unanimous ruling by the state Court of Appeals means that there is no automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court. If an appeal is sought, the other two judges urged the Supreme Court to consider the case so as to clarify whether a religious affiliated college or university should be delegated the authority to carry out the state’s laws if that school does not seek to impose it’s beliefs  or indoctrinate students.

At no point in this case was it ever claimed that the officer chastised Ms. Yencer in any way that had any religious context or undertones. He cited her for driving while impaired, and she pleaded guilty.

So, just how far reaching can this ruling go? If a police officer is wearing a Cross, a Crucifix, or a Star of David, could it not be possibly claimed that delegating that officer the power to enforce laws for the state is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of laws establishing religion? Could not some other court, or even this court say that would be “an unconstitutional delegation of an important discretionary governmental power” to a religious individual?

What about hospitals, nursing homes, retirement centers, children’s homes and orphanages that have a religious affiliation? Could not someone somewhere bring court proceedings against these because they are recipients of some governmental fundings? After all, why would the courts not rule that this was also a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of  establishing religion?

Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Digital Catholic Bible


There is a free version of the Catholic Bible available for download. It is called the Digital Catholic Bible (DCB).

Here is the information available from the DCB website:

Digital Catholic Bible contains 9 free distributable bible versions:

    * Nova Vulgata (Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio) / VATICAN (Latin)
    * Christian Community Bible / SOBICAIN (English)
    * Douay-Rheims Bible (Challoner Revision) / JMC (English)
    * La Bibbia / SOBICAIN (Italian)
    * Biblia Sagrada / SOBICAIN (Portuguese)
    * La Bible Des Communautés Chrétiennes / SOBICAIN (French)
    * El Libro del Pueblo de Dios / SOBICAIN (Spanish)
    * La Biblia Latinoamericana / SOBICAIN (Spanish)
    * La Santa Biblia / SOBICAIN (Spanish)

DCB also offers 4 bible text operations:

    * Read - read a chapter or specific verses of a book.
    * Search - search the bible text for specific text.
    * Query - invoke the bible text directly from a short biblic notation.
    * Compare - compare a chapter of a book from two different bible versions.

DCB supports 5 interface languagues:

    * English
    * Spanish
    * Portuguese
    * French
    * Italian

On their download page, there are also versions available for almost any java-enabled mobile device. You can download one language version for your device.

There is also an Android version that works with Android version 1.6 and higher, and the setup includes all 9 Bible versions.

The PC version works on any version of Windows and in Linux and MacOS under WINE, and includes all 9 Bible versions available in DCB.

You may download DCB by going to: Digital Catholic Bible

The two images on this post are my screenshots of DCB. Both show the first chapter of The Gospel of John.  The one at the top is the Douay-Rheims version in DCB, and the bottom is the Latin version.