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University to students: 'All whites are racist' Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:27 pm (GMT -5) Tuesday, October 30, 2007 BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS University to students: 'All whites are racist' Mandatory program 'treats' politically incorrect attitudes By Bob Unruh © 2007 WorldNetDaily.com link to original University of Delaware President Patrick Harker A mandatory University of Delaware program requires residence hall students to acknowledge that "all whites are racist" and offers them "treatment" for any incorrect attitudes regarding class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality they might hold upon entering the school, according to a civil rights group. "Somehow, the University of Delaware seems terrifyingly unaware that a state-sponsored institution of higher education in the United States does not have the legal right to engage in a program of systematic thought reform. The First Amendment protects the right to freedom of conscience – the right to keep our innermost thoughts free from governmental intrusion. It also protects the right to be free from compelled speech," said a letter from Samantha Harris, director of legal and public advocacy for The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to university President Patrick Harker. The organization cited excerpts from the university's Office of Residence Life Diversity Education Training documents, including the statement: "A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. 'The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination….'" The education program also notes that "reverse racism" is "a term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege." And "a non-racist" is called "a non-term," because, the program explains, "The term was created by whites to deny responsibility for systemic racism, to maintain an aura of innocence in the face of racial oppression, and to shift the responsibility for that oppression from whites to people of color (called 'blaming the victim')." The "education" regarding racism is just one of the subjects that students are required to adopt as part of their University of Delaware experience, too, FIRE noted. The "shocking program of ideological reeducation," which the school itself defines as a "treatment" for students' incorrect attitudes and beliefs, is nothing less than "Orwellian," FIRE said. The school requires its approximately 7,000 residence hall students "to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy and environmentalism." "FIRE is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students' rights to freedom of conscience and freedom from compelled speech," the organization said. On a foundation blog, a student noted that one residence assistant told students, "Not to scare anyone or anything, but these are MANDATORY!!" And the training program for those who indoctrinate students includes the order: "A researcher must document that the treatment/intervention was faithfully applied (ex: specific lesson plans were delivered to every student, etc.)." Further, the school requires "a systemic change" as a result of the program, FIRE noted. As one RA told students: "Like it or not, you all are the future Leaders, and the world is Diverse, so learning to Embrace and Appreciate that diversity is ESSENTIAL." "The University of Delaware's residence life education program is a grave intrusion into students' private beliefs," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. "The university has decided that it is not enough to expose its students to the values it considers important; instead, it must coerce its students into accepting those values as their own. At a public university like Delaware, this is both unconscionable and unconstitutional." According to university materials, RAs are instructed to ask students during one-on-one sessions questions such as: "When did you discover your sexual identity?" "When were you first made aware of your race?" and "Who taught you a lesson in regard to some sort of diversity awarness? What was the lesson?" "Students who express discomfort with this type of questioning often meet with disapproval from their RAs, who write reports on these one-on-one sessions and deliver these reports to their superiors. One student identified in a write-up as an RA's 'worst' one-on-one session was a young woman who stated that she was tired of having 'diversity shoved down her throat,'" FIRE said. This particular student responded to the question, "When did you discover your sexual identity?" with the terse: "That is none of your damn business," FIRE said. Requirements for students include: "Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society," "Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression," and "Students will be able to utilize their knowledge of sustainability to change their daily habits and consumer mentality," FIRE said. The foundation said students even are "pressured or even required" to make social statements that meet with the school's approval. "The fact that the university views its students as patients in need of treatment for some sort of moral sickness betrays a total lack of respect not only for students' basic rights, but for students themselves," Lukianoff said. "The University of Delaware has both a legal and a moral obligation to immediately dismantle this program, and FIRE will not rest until it has." A spokesman for the school, contacted by WND, said he was not ready to make a statement about the situation right away. But the foundation's letter to Harker noted, "we have never encountered a more systematic assault upon the individual liberty, dignity, privacy, and autonomy of university students than this program," which "requires students to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues." "Such utter contempt for the autonomy and free agency of others is the hallmark of totalitarianism and has no place in any free society, let alone at a public university in the state of Delaware," the letter said. Especially alarming, Harris told WND, is that the school defines learning specifically as "attitudinal or behavioral changes," not acquiring any sort of knowledge and ability. Such thinking "represents a distorted idea of 'education' that one would more easily associate with a Soviet prison camp than with an American institution of higher education," FIRE said. "As another example, after an investigation showed that males demonstrated 'a higher degree of resistance to educational efforts,' the Rodney complex chose to hire 'strong male RAs.' Each such RA 'combats male residents' concepts of traditional male identity,' in order to 'ensure the delivery of the curriculum at the same level as in the female floors.' This language is disturbingly reminiscent of a pivotal scene from George Orwell's '1984,' in which the protagonist's captors tell him that 'The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them.'" No small danger, FIRE noted, is being presented to the university through such apparent constitutional violations. "Simply put, the residence life education program is a legal minefield," the group said. One student reacted to the indoctrination with rebellion. On the FIRE blog, he wrote: "Take the issue of homosexuality, and the rights that should or should not be associated with it. As a Christian, I believe that the Bible says homosexuality is wrong, and is a sin against God. As such, I cannot accept it as a legitimate lifestyle. While I accept homosexuals as people, I do not accept their choice as right, and subsequently I do not think that homosexual couples should be given marital rights. I accept that others do not hold the same views as me. But it is wrong that under the Residence Life curriculum and school mandated curriculum that I should made to feel guilty for my views. … It is not the school's right to try to convince me to embrace the values that Residence Life has chosen. Essentially, if I do not change my views, I will be labeled by my RA as not embracing diversity, and not accepting of certain groups, and thus my RA will try all the harder to change me. This is not the school's job, or right."

Cardinal, Quebec is ripe for a new profound evangilization Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 7:13 pm (GMT -5) Cardinal Marc Ouellet Lapsed Catholics at root of diversity debate: cardinal Kevin Dougherty, The Gazette Published: 1 hour ago QUEBEC - Quebecers' malaise over the reasonable accommodation of religious minorities is rooted in their abandoning the Catholic faith, Cardinal Marc Ouellet told public hearings on the issue yesterday. Ouellet, who heads the Roman Catholic church for all of Canada, blamed "secular fundamentalists" for leading Quebecers astray. Until the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, the vast majority of French Quebecers were devout Catholics. Now, while most identify with their Catholic heritage, few practise actively. "I think the major problem is the malaise of the Catholic majority which needs to find a religious reference point, which needs to renew with its spiritual values," Ouellet told reporters. "The distress of youth, the sharp drop in marriages, the weak birth rate and the frightening number of abortions and suicides, to name some of the consequences, add to the precarious conditions of seniors and of public health. "Quebec is ripe for a new profound evangilization," he added. In his brief, Ouellet said this crisis of values has "serious repercussions on public health," arguing it explains the runaway cost spiral in Quebec's health system. "What affects our soul also affects our body," he said. "I believe Quebecers really need to rediscover their religious identity." The cardinal said if Quebecers went back to their Catholic symbols and observance, they would be more open to foreigners. "Because Catholicism, the Bible and the gospel insist a lot on loving your neighbour, welcoming strangers, the good Samaritian," he said. "If we practised that we would not have problems with the handful of Muslims who are on our streets, or with the Jews who live in our neighbourhood," Ouellet said. "On the contrary we would establish harmonious relations, welcoming relations, sharing, not only tolerance but respect toward all cultural communities." In English he added, "We have lost contact with the regular preaching of the gospel on Sunday, you know, the gathering around the eucharist which was key to the identity of the Quebec people. "The day you take distance from this source of grace and blessing, you will find down the road social consequences." Commission co-chair Charles Taylor said Ouellet's presentation was "very interesting," but questioned him on his opposition to new religion courses in Quebec's public schools, drawing on the teachings of seven major faiths. Ouellet said he is opposed to the approach, because it is imposed and said the option of Sunday school for Catholics is not in Quebec's traditions. Max Gros-Louis, grand chief of the Huron-Wendat nation, which has a reserve within the limits of Quebec City, told the commission "the Jesuits did a good job with us. Most Hurons are Catholics." But Gros-Louis deplored that the first nations have been forgotten in the current debate, and suggested his people may have been too welcoming when Europeans arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. "We believed that the land is for everybody," he said. "But we didn't know that we were going to be pushed and pushed and pushed into a little Indian reserve where we don't have any rights and where we don't have any autonomy. "Can you see all the Quebecers on a reserve?" he asked. "No, I can't see that." kdougherty@thegazette.canwest.com © The Gazette (Montreal) 2007 Video in french _________________ http://www.geocities.com/demographic_crash

Got sin? Some novel ways to get rid of them. Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:59 pm (GMT -5) http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=66428 Found post on Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam blogspot http://slatts.blogspot.com/ Got sin? YouTube, shredders your modern confessional. New ways to confess your sins point to a revival of the ancient religious rite By Alexandra Alter | The Wall Street Journal Published: 10/30/2007 12:45 It never goes out of style, but confession is undergoing a revival. This February at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI instructed priests to make confession a top priority. U.S. bishops have begun promoting it in diocesan newspapers, mass mailings and even billboard ads. And in a dramatic turnaround, some Protestant churches are following suit. This summer, the second-largest North American branch of the Lutheran Church passed a resolution supporting the rite, which it had all but ignored for more than 100 years. To make confession less intimidating, Protestant churches have urged believers to shred their sins in paper shredders or write them on rocks and cast them into a "desert" symbolized by a giant sand pile in the sanctuary. Three Capuchin friars now hear confessions six days a week at a mall in Colorado Springs., Colo. Worshippers are answering the call. When priests from five Chicago parishes joined forces last year to welcome penitents from 9 a.m. on a Friday to 9 a.m. the next morning, about 2,500 people showed up. Several factors are feeding the resurgence. Aggressive marketing by churches has helped reinvent confession as a form of self-improvement rather than a punitive rite. Technology is also creating new avenues for redemption. Some Protestants now air their sins on videos that are shared on YouTube and iTunes or are played to entire congregations. And the appetite for introspection has been buoyed by the broad acceptance of psychotherapy and the emphasis on self-analysis typified by daytime talk television. "Every day on Jerry Springer we see people confessing their sins in public, and certainly the confessional is a lot healthier than Jerry Springer," says Orlando Bishop Thomas Wenski, who last March sent out 190,000 pamphlets calling on Catholics to confess. Scholars also say the return to confession is part of a larger theological shift in which some Catholics, mainline Protestants and evangelicals are returning to a traditional view of churches as moral enforcers. Catholic leaders have sought to make the tradition less onerous to keep it from dying, while Protestants are embracing it as a way to offer discipline to their flocks. Several Protestant pastors said they felt their churches had become too soft on sinners, citing the rise of suburban megachurches that seek converts with feel-good sermons, Starbucks coffee and rock-concert-like services, but rarely issue calls to repent. "I never want to be accused of the namby-pamby, milquetoast, 'Jesus is my boyfriend' kind of worship," says John Voelz, a pastor at Westwinds Community Church in Jackson, Mich. "People want to come face to face with what's going on inside them." An evolving rite Confession is no longer strictly a private matter between a sinner, a priest and God. More than 7,700 people have posted their sins on ivescrewedup.com, a confession Web site launched by an evangelical congregation in Cooper City, Fla. Last year, several members of Life Church in Edmond, Okla., appeared in a video sermon titled "My Secret," in which they spoke openly about having an abortion or taking methamphetamine. The video was shown to about 21,000 people. The XXX Church, a Christian antipornography ministry, has videotaped people confessing their addictions to X-rated material and posted the video on YouTube. Confession has been in steep decline for decades. In 2005, just 26 percent of American Catholics said they went to confession at least once a year, down from 74 percent in the early 1980s, according to researchers at two Catholic universities. After the Vatican softened some of its doctrine on sin in the 1960s, the rite "went into a tailspin," says William D'Antonio, a sociologist at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. There is only so far the Vatican will go to revive confession -- the church has taken a hard stance against technology, declaring in 2002 that "there are no sacraments on the Internet." Some conservative Protestants have also criticized public forms of atonement, arguing they owe more to exhibitionism than contrition. Confession hasn't always been a forgiving ritual. In Christianity's early centuries, worshippers confessed publicly before the priest and the entire congregation. Penalties were severe. Sinners had to prostrate themselves, fast and wear sackcloths and ashes. Adulterers were sentenced to a lifetime of celibacy and thieves were ordered to give their belongings to the poor. Repeat offenders were banished, says Notre Dame theology professor Randall Zachman. Private confession, which arose in monasteries in the seventh century, became mandatory for Christians in 1215. Centuries later during the Reformation, theologian Martin Luther took issue with the "acts of satisfaction" that priests required of sinners, arguing that faith alone absolved them. Following the split, most Protestant churches instructed followers to confess to God directly or to each other. In their attempt to revive the rite, Catholic leaders have portrayed it as a healing sacrament. Kathleen Taylor, 43, a substitute teacher in Daytona Beach, Fla., hadn't been to confession in some time when she received a mailer from her bishop this March urging Catholics to atone for their sins. She packed her husband and two sons, then 9 and 16, into the car and drove to a nearby church where a priest was waiting in the confessional booth. Taylor confessed to impatience and anger with her sons. She talked about her marriage. She expressed feelings of guilt over fighting with her first husband, who died two years ago. "It was hard at first. It was scary, the room gets kind of hot. But once you open up it's better." Reaching out People are confessing in unlikely places. On a recent Saturday morning in Colorado Springs, seven people lined up outside an office next to a Burlington Coat Factory at the Citadel mall. At the appointed hour, Father Matthew Gross, 72, strode up wearing his brown friar's habit. "Three minutes each, that's all you get," he joked to two women waiting in line. Since 2001, the Rev. Gross and two other Capuchin friars have come to the mall to hear confessions 11 hours a day, six days a week in a small office with a box of Kleenex and a laminated copy of the Ten Commandments. They now hear about 8,000 confessions a year. Protestant theologians are also rethinking the rite. This past summer, the Lutheran Church -- Missouri Synod, a 2.5 million-member branch whose members are spread across North America, voted to revive private confession with a priest. Some theologians have pointed to the writings of Martin Luther and argued that the Protestant reformer, while criticizing the way the rite was administered, never advocated abolishing it. "Some of us were saying, 'Why in the world did we let that die out?' " says the Rev. Bruce Keseman, a Lutheran pastor in Freeburg, Ill. The Rev. Keseman has sought to revive confession in his congregation by bringing it into pastoral counseling, giving demonstrations to youth groups and preaching about its benefits. Leslie Sramek, 48, a lifelong Lutheran and financial manager who lives near St. Louis, says she never heard about private confession and absolution in church when she was growing up. But two years ago, when the Rev. Keseman announced he would be taking confession privately, she decided to give it a try. At these sessions, the pastor wears vestments and stands near the altar while she kneels and recounts her sins. "I won't say that looking at my sins is pleasant, but they have to be dealt with," says Sramek. Restoring confession to its heyday won't be easy. Most Catholic parishes set aside one hour or less on Saturdays for the rite. And while the U.S. Catholic population has grown by 20 million in the last 40 years, the number of priests has fallen to 41,000, a 29 percent decline over the same period. Group absolution, while allowed in some circumstances, is discouraged, and bishops have banned Internet and text-message confessions, which had been popular in the Philippines. Says Monsignor Kevin Irwin, dean of the school of theology at Catholic University, "We don't do drive-by confessions."

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