Catholic Fire

The leaders of the four dioceses in Kansas issued a statement Thursday, June 27, in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the DOMA and Proposition 8. Here is their statement: Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, Bishop John Brungardt of Dodge City, Bishop Edward Weisenburger of Salina, and Monsignor Robert Hemberger, Diocesan Administrator of Wichita, issued the following statement today in response to the United States Supreme Court decisions in United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry: In one of two significant rulings today the United States Supreme Court struck down the section of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage as between one man and one woman for purposes of federal law and federal benefits. There had been a concern that the justices would strike down all state laws and constitutional amendments defining marriage as between one man and one woman but fortunately this did not come to pass.  A great many of the...

It’s on the lips and in the thoughts of most Kansans these days. Our parish adult education guest speaker Catholic Dave Gittrich , the President of Kansans for Life, gave us a basic introduction on stem cell research this past week, which I will briefly summarize in simple terms here, with the help of my notes from that talk, along with some of American Life League’s definitions, and excerpts from A Pastoral Letter from the Bishops of Kansas . The Basics What is a stem cell? Stem cells are unspecialized cells. One of the fundamental properties of a stem cell is that it does not have any tissue-specific structures that allow it to perform specialized functions. For example, a stem cell cannot work with its neighbors to pump blood through the body like a heart cell. Stem cells are very simple, primitive human cells. However, when stem cells divide, they can form a variety of more specialized cells. When unspecialized stem cells give rise to specialized cells, the process is called diff...