Friday, November 15, 2013

Guest Post from Pro-Life Action of Oregon

Here is a guest post.  N.B. (note well) that the Archdiocese of Portland's Office of "Life", Justice and Peace needs to represent a true understanding that it is a lack of promoting Divine Justice to save unborn babies and not economic justice that is the answer. This office gives monies to pro-abortion groups and that works against the the ultimate justice to succeed: Divine. VOCAL
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OPINION

Dear Pro-Life Friends,

Pro-Life Action of Oregon is dedicated to ending all abortion, no exceptions, no compromises.  In this context, I'm calling your attention to two recent developments.

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(1)  "THE PRESIDENT'S PITCH TO THE PEOPLE OF FAITH." -- Crisis Magazine

'This year his pitch to the religious is a little more tricky in light of the HHS mandate and other overtly secularist policies of his administration. Still, he could pull it off.  Recent polling suggests that he is on track to win the Catholic vote again.'
Search result for "Obama's Abortion Reduction Strategy".  This strategy is still in play. For those of you who are new to my alerts, back in 2008 I posted an analysis of Obama and the Catholic vote.  It may be a good time to read it again.
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(2)  Matt Cato's Liberal Views Exposed
Inline image 2 Matt Cato - photo op.  (article link below)

Matt Cato, the Archdiocesan Director of Life, Justice and Peace, has some "abortion reduction" nuanced things to say:
  • Matt Cato on the government ending abortion - "...the church has an obligation to advocate for government aid [to end abortion].  If society can remove financial pressures, that will end the reason cited for 7 in 10 abortions." (In other words, he is dedicated to Obama's "abortion reduction strategy.")
  • In same article, Cato apologizes to liberal readers for being pro-life:   "I don't want anyone to think I want to limit legitimate rights, but where do we get to the point where we make individual choices for the good of a baby, for the good of the community?" Cato asks. (What is he saying, exactly??)
  • "He envisions a strong Catholic-led pro-life movement, in which people are inspired to protect all life not because of politics, but because of faith."  (He is unsure of the motivation of pro-lifers!)
  • FULL ARTICLE
Keep in mind that Matt Cato is in charge of your pocketbook (CCHD).
After reading the article, you can send an email to Matt Cato mcato@archdpdx.org .
Send a letter to the Sentinel sentinel@catholicsentinel.org .

Blessings,

Nina Rhea, Director
Prolife Action of Oregon


Dedicated to exposing the Culture of Death

P.S.  I've sent a message to Mr. Cato pointing out his lack of citations for his claims.  I also call him out as an Obama Catholic and ask for his correction if I'm wrong.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

"The Hidden Hand Behind Bad Catholic Music" - Great insight.

  J. A. Tucker

It usually starts with the missalettes — those lightweight booklets scattered around the pews of your parish church. They contain all the readings of the Sunday Masses, plus some hymns and responses in the back. There's nothing between the covers that would offend an orthodox sense of the faith, and most of the songs are traditional by today's standards.

So, what's the problem?

Well, if your missalettes are like those issued in more than half of American parishes, they're copyrighted by the Oregon Catholic Press (OCP) — the leading Catholic purveyor of bad music in the United States. Four times a year, it prints and distributes 4.3 million copies of the seemingly unobjectionable booklets (which OCP doesn't call missalettes).

But that's just the beginning of its massive product line, where each item is integrated perfectly with the others to make liturgical planning quick and easy. To instruct and guide parish musicians and liturgy teams, the OCP prints hymnals, choral scores, children's songbooks, Mass settings, liturgy magazines (with detailed instructions that are slavishly followed by parishes around the country), and CDs for planning liturgies and previewing the newest music.

This collection of products, however, does not include a hymnal — or anything else — designed to appeal to traditional sensibilities (its Heritage Hymnal is deceptively misnamed). The OCP's experts never tire of promoting the new, rewriting the old, and inviting you to join them in their quest to "sing a new church into being" (as one of their hit songs urges). The one kind of "new" that the OCP systematically avoids is the new vogue of traditional music that has proved so appealing to young Catholics.

The bread and butter of the OCP are the 10,000 music copyrights it owns. It employs a staff of 150, runs year-round liturgy workshops all over the United States, sponsors affiliates in England and Australia, and keeps song-writers all over the English-speaking world on its payroll. In fact, it's the preferred institutional home of those now-aging "St. Louis Jesuits" who swept out the old in 1969 and, by the mid-1970s, had parishes across the country clapping and strumming and tapping to the beat.


The OCP also sails under the flags of companies it has acquired, established, or represented along the way: New Dawn Music, Pastoral Press, North American Liturgy Resources, Trinitas, TEAM Publications, White Dove Productions, and Cooperative Ministries. Every time it purchases — or assumes the distribution of — another publisher, its assets and influence grow. 

Power Without Authority
 
But while the OCP dictates the liturgies of most U.S. parishes, it has no ecclesiastical authority. It's a large nonprofit corporation — a publishing wing of the Diocese of Portland (VOCAL correction, Archdiocese of Portland) — and nothing else. It has never been empowered by the U.S. bishops, much less Rome, to oversee music or liturgy in American parishes.

The OCP's power over Catholic liturgy is derived entirely from its copyrights, phenomenal sales, and marketing genius. Nonetheless, it wields the decisive power in determining the musical culture of most public Masses in the United States. 


And once a parish dips into the product line of the OCP, it is very difficult to avoid full immersion. So complete and integrated is their program that it actually reconstructs the sense that the liturgy team has about what Catholicism is supposed to feel and sound like.

But few of those subject to the power of the OCP understand that it's the reason why Catholic liturgy so often seems like something else entirely. For example, pastors who try to control the problem by getting a grip on their liturgies quite often sense that they're dealing with an amorphous power without a name or face. That's because very few bother to examine the lay-directed materials that are shaping the liturgies. Too many priests are willing to leave music to the musicians, fearing that they lack the competence to intervene.

Meanwhile, the nature of the OCP is completely unknown to most laypeople. Many Catholics shudder, for example, when they hear the words Glory & Praise, the prototypical assortment of musical candy that was already stale about 15 years ago but which mysteriously continues to be repackaged and rechewed in parish after parish. "Here I am, Lord," "Be Not Afraid," "City of God," "One Bread, One Body," "Celtic Alleluia," and (wait for it) "On Eagle's Wings" — these all come courtesy of the OCP.

But at the publisher itself, this moldy repertoire is not an embarrassment. On the contrary, the publisher brags that Glory & Praise, whose copyright it acquired in 1994, continues to be the best-selling Catholic hymnal of all time. And what about those prayers of the faithful that seem far more politically than doctrinally correct? They're probably from the OCP, too. A new edition of its Prayer of the Faithful is printed every year. (In what is surely great news for the unrepentant, the OCP brags that the volume helpfully includes "creative alternatives to the Penitential Rite.")

Hijacking Of Catholic Truth
 
It wasn't always like this. Before 1980, the OCP was called the Oregon Catholic Truth Society. It was founded in 1922 in response to a compulsory school-education law that forced Catholics to attend public schools. Archbishop Alexander Christie got together with his priests to found the society. Its aim: to fight bigotry and stand up for truth and Catholic rights. 

In 1934, the Oregon Catholic Truth Society released a missal called My Sunday Missal. It was good-looking, inexpensive, and easy to use. It became the most popular missal ever (you can still run across it in used bookstores). 

But the rest of the story is as familiar as it is troubling. Sometime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Oregon Catholic Truth Society began to lose its moorings. Catholic truth had to make room for the Age of Aquarius. Thus, in the course of a single decade, a once-reliable representative of Catholic teaching became reliably unreliable. Money given to the organization to promote truth was now being used to advance a revolutionary approach to Catholic life, one that repudiated traditional forms of the faith. The only thing that did not change was the breadth of its influence: Under the new dispensation, it was still a powerhouse of Catholic publishing.

De Profundis
 
If you've been keeping up with the OCP's latest offerings, you know that the songs from the mid-1970s don't begin to plumb the depths. The newest OCP hymnals are jam-packed with music from the 1980s and 1990s, with styles meant to reflect the popular music trends of the time. (Actually, they're about five years behind the times.)

They sail under different names (Music Issue, Journeysongs, Heritage Hymnal, Glory & Praise), but the content is similar in all of them: an eclectic, hit-and-miss bag with an emphasis on new popular styles massaged for liturgical use. (Worst choice: Spirit & Song, which "encourages the youth and young adults of today to praise God in their own style")

Some of the newer songs sound like variations on the musical themes you hear at the beginning of TV sitcoms. Some sound like Broadway-style love songs. Others have a vague Hawaiian, calypso, or blues feel. You never know what's going to pop up next.

Not all of it is terrible. In fact, there are real toe-tappers among the songs. The question to ask, however, is whether it's right for liturgy. The answer from the Church has been the same from the second century to the present day: The Mass requires special music, which is different from secular music and popular religious music. It must have its own unique voice — one that works, like the liturgy itself, to bring together time and eternity. It's a style perfectly embodied in chant, polyphony, and traditional hymnody.

The OCP revels in its ability to conflate these categories; indeed, that's the sum total of its purpose and effect. And judging from its newest new line of songs and CDs — "we just couldn't wait until our next General Catalog to tell you about it" — your parish can look forward to a variety of ska and reggae songs adapted for congregational purposes.

How It Hooks You
But let's go back to that innocent, floppy missalette. The OCP claims it has many advantages. Missalettes "make it easy for you to introduce the latest music to your parish, and changes in Church rituals are easy to implement." Thus the missalette is "always up-to-date."

It's also quite a bargain. If you buy more than 50 subscriptions to the quarterly missalette, you receive other goodies bundled inside. You'll get a Music Issue (the main OCP hymnal) to supplement the thin selection in the missalette. In addition, you'll receive a keyboard accompaniment book, a guitar book, the Choral Praise Comprehensive, a handy service binder, two annual copies of Respond & Acclaim for the psalm and the gospel acclamation, biannual copies of Prayer of the Faithful, two subscriptions to Today's Liturgy (which tells liturgy teams what to sing and say, when and how), and one master index. And the more you buy, the more you get. 

Why would you want all this stuff? Well, if you're in parish music, you'll quickly discover that the missalette has too few hymns to cover the whole season. The Music Issue seems like an economical purchase. But there's something odd about the OCP's most popular music book: There's no scriptural index. How do you know what hymns fit with what gospel reading?

No problem. Just buy a copy of Today's Liturgy, which spells it all out for you. If you want a broader selection of possible hymns, you can also order the OCP's LitPlan software or its monthly Choral Resources, which is visually more complicated than the Federal Register (but still contains no scriptural index).

If you follow the free liturgical planner closely, you'll notice you can purchase a variety of choral arrangements and special new music (copyright OCP) that match perfectly with the response, the hymnal, and the missalette (copyright OCP), which is itself integrated with the prayers of the faithful (copyright OCP) and the gospel (not yet OCP copyright). And so it goes, until you follow the complete OCP plan for each Mass, from the first "Good morning, Father!" to the last "Go in peace to love and serve others!" By making each element dependent on the next, the OCP has ensured a steady — if trapped — clientele.
Musical Gnosticism
 
But why should the liturgy team go along with this program? The average parish musical team is made up of non-professionals. Its poorly paid members are untrained in music history; they have no particular craving for chant or polyphony, which often seems quite remote to them. Most musicians in average Catholic parishes would have no idea how to plug into the rite an extended musical setting from, say, the high Renaissance, even if they had the desire to do so.

The OCP understands this point better than most publishers. In an interview, Michael Prendergast, editor of Today's Liturgy, pointed again and again to the limited resources of typical parishes. The OCP sees serving such needs as a core part of its publishing strategy; its materials keep reminding us that we don't need to know Church music to get involved.

Lack of familiarity with the Church's musical tradition would not be a grave problem if there were a staple of standard hymns and Mass settings to fall back on. But it has been at least 30 years since such a setting was available in most parishes. The average parish musician wants to use his talents to serve the parish in whatever way possible, but he's at a complete loss as to how to do it without outside guidance. The OCP fills that vacuum.

Under its tutelage, you can aspire to be a real liturgical expert, which means you have attended a few workshops run by OCP-connected guitarists and songwriters (who explain that your job as a musician is to whip people into a musical frenzy: loud microphones, drum tracks, over-the-top enthusiasm when announcing the latest hymn). These "experts" love the OCP's material because it allows them to keep up the pretense that they have some special knowledge about what hymns should be used for what occasions and how the Mass ought to proceed.

Real Catholic musicians who have worked with the OCP material tell horror stories of incredible liturgical malpractice. The music arrangements are often muddled and busy, making it all but impossible for regular parishioners to sing. This is especially true of arrangements for traditional songs, where popular chords give old hymns a gauzy cast that reminds you of the 1970s group Chicago.

The liturgical planning guides are a ghastly embarrassment. Two years ago, for example, the liturgical planner recommended "Seek Ye First" for the first Sunday in Lent ("Al-le-lu-, Al-le-lu-yah"). In numerous slots during the liturgy, OCP offers no alternative to debuting its new tunes. When traditional hymns are offered, they're often drawn from the Protestant tradition, or else the words are changed in odd ways (see, for example, its strange version of "Ubi Caritas"). The liturgical instructions are equally pathetic. On July 8 this year, the liturgical columnist passes on this profound summary of the gospel of the day: "Live and let live."
  
The Middle Way?
Nevertheless, the OCP seems to have solved a major liturgical rift affecting today's local churches. Just as every parish used to have a low-Mass crowd and a high-Mass crowd, there are now two factions in parishes: One wants more "contemporary" music of the sort seen in Life-Teen Masses— loud, rhythmic, and rockish. Another wants traditional music and sensibly asks whatever happened to the hymns of the old days. These two groups are forever at loggerheads and have been so for decades. In fact, most pastors are so sick of the dispute that they'll do anything to avoid talking about music at Mass.

This is where OCP steps in and serves as the peacekeeping moderate. After all, it's an established music publisher, and thanks to the missalette, it doesn't appear (at first) to be particularly partisan. Its literature contains enough traditional material to allow the liturgical team to claim they're sensitive to the needs of both the contemporary and traditional factions. Indeed, the OCP eschews the most extreme forms of grunge-metal Life-Teen music (though its Spirit & Song comes close). At first sight, it does appear to take the middle ground between two extremes. In truth, however, it's only slightly behind the curve of the most radical liturgical innovators — as it's always behind the curve in the popular styles it tries to imitate.

What about the other option of splitting up the Masses according to style, so that those who like traditional music can have their own Mass and the people who compose for the OCP can have theirs? Prendergast rejects this. Whether the style is traditional, contemporary, folk, or even "rock," Prendergast says, "everyone in the parish has to be exposed to it." And what if a pastor just doesn't like rock and other contemporary styles? Prendergast says, "I would talk to the [chancery's] Office of Worship about him." I asked whether that means he would turn this poor priest in to the bishop. His response: "I would try to arrange for him to attend a workshop on liturgy." 

With a great deal of knowledge, careful planning, and conscious intent, it is possible to manufacture decent liturgies even if the OCP music is all you have. You'll have to dig to find the good hymns (10 to 20 percent in the typical OCP publications), but it can be done. It's also true that not everyone involved with the OCP wants to destroy all that has gone before. There are probably many people on its middle-aged staff who from time to time cringe at the music, just as the people in the pews do. For his part, Prendergast is sure that he thinks with the mind of the Church, and there's no reason to doubt his sincerity. 

In fact, there are periodic signs of hope. Regular readers of Today's Liturgy might have been astounded to see the recent one-page article buried in its pages that urged children be taught Latin hymns and chant. "The Second Vatican Council did not destroy the tradition of chant," said the writer, who was a student of the excellent English composer John Rutter. "We can still claim our chant heritage as part of the living Church's journey into the future." Indeed we can! But the news seems to be slow in getting around the OCP office. (The same issue contained a blast against a poor old lady who read a prayer book during Mass instead of singing goodness knows what.)

What's completely amazing about the entire OCP family is how lacking it is in self-awareness. The poor quality of contemporary Catholic music is a cultural cliché that turns up in late-night shows, Woody Allen movies, and Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. It is legendary among real musicians. Ask an organist what he thinks about today's Catholic music, and you will receive a raised eyebrow or a knowing laugh.
What You Can Do Right Now
 
The truth is that no one is happy with the state of Catholic liturgical music — least of all musicians — and the OCP is a big part of the problem. So, what can you do?

Step 1 is to get rid of the liturgical planning guides and use an old Scripture index to select good hymns that have stood the test of time (if you absolutely must continue to use the OCP's materials).

Step 2 is to rein in the liturgical managers and explain to them that the Eucharist, and not music, is the reason people show up to Mass Sunday after Sunday.

Step 3 is to get rid of the OCP hymnals and replace them with Adoremus or Collegeville or something from GIA (no, none of these is perfect, but they are all an oasis by comparison).

Update 2013  St. Joseph's Salem has St. Michael Hymnal.  A step towards Sacred Music.  It is beautiful and does not include changes in wording to have a static gender neutral meaning.

Finally, reconsider those innocuous little missalettes. These harmless-looking booklets may be the source of the trouble. Parishes can unsubscribe — accept no OCP handouts or volume discounts. There are plenty of passable missalettes and hymnals out there, and all the choral music you'll ever need is now public domain and easily downloadable for free (www.cpdl.org).

In his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy (Ignatius Press, 2000), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger states clearly that popular music does not belong at Mass. Indeed, it's part of "a cult of the banal," and "rock" plainly stands "in opposition to Christian worship."

This is very strong language from the cardinal. And yet we know that many liturgy teams in American parishes will continue to do what they've been doing for decades — systematically reconstructing the liturgy to accommodate pop aesthetic sensibilities. The liturgy is treated not as something sublimely different but as a well-organized social hour revolving around religious themes.

It's up to you to decide the future course of your parish's liturgy: reverent worship or hootenanny. 

Despite what the OCP might tell you, you can't have both. 

J. A. Turner is the choral director of a schola cantorum and writes frequently for Crisis.
© 2002 The Morley Institute
Catholicculture.org  

Monday, November 11, 2013

Add on from Bill Diss Regarding Thursday, November 14th Meeting

Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman, and uncondemned?” (Acts 22:25 NKJV)


Dear Friends for Life, Purity and Healing,

I wanted to thank all of you for your messages last week.  Some asked for handouts and I am including three different handouts that hopefully can be distributed and soon. 

Some asked about signs and we will have some signs.  The important thing is that the signs should reflect 1st Amendment Rights.  Some examples follow:
  • Civil Rights Are Not Special Rights
  • Teachers are Citizens
  • We Support Rights for Teachers
  • First Amendment Rights ???
  • Freedom of Speech for Teachers
  • Freedom of Religion for Teachers
The hearing is at 4:00 PM on Thursday, November 14, 2013 at the PPS Headquarters at 501 N. Dixon Street.  (Map)  Please, please attend and please pray.  I am not sure of my fate but I do believe that good will come out of all of this.

It is so ironic that I was the subject of many hearings in 2007 and 2008 at Benson because I told people I was a "teacher".  An administrator and the district lawyer told me I could not even state my occupation.  On the other hand the highest members of the district can say (watch video) [only 17 seconds].

Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.
(Acts 22:25 NKJV)
 
God Bless You All,

Bill Diss
503-334-6183
 
3 attachments — Download all attachments  

A Catholic Lament: Catholic Cemeteries

 VOCAL received this email yesterday.  This is one Oregon Catholics opinion and experience.  We are here to give people a voice for their observations that hinder our Faith.  
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You might consider posting the following, especially during November.
Thanks.

A Catholic Lament:
One could do an interesting study as to how many people the former Archdiocesan Superintendent of Catholic Cemeteries, Pat Balfe, fired, as compared with the current Superintendent, Tim Corbett.  You will find that Pat probably never fired anyone, and that Tim has fired many.

Are people now-a-days just incompetent slobs, as compared to people in the not-so-distant past?  No.  A new inhuman and diabolical attitude has arrived.  It is that people are now not considered anything but expendable throw away items.  They have lost their human dignity and value through a new way of thinking which is spread throughout corporations via Human Resources departments.  “HR” departments only seem to care about corporate profits and expansion.  Their only interest in workers is how they might be used to advance the profits and expansions of their given corporations.  They have no concern for the worker as a person.  “Human Resources” in the Portland Archdiocese works in tandem with Tim Corbett to fire, fire, fire.

This dismissive attitude toward workers certainly does not take into account the Christian understanding that a worker (a person) is a creature created in the Love of the infinite God, in His Image and Likeness, and thereby is of an infinite value, and hence cannot be treated as something to be used and discarded at a whim.

Now, let us look again at the former Superintendent of Cemeteries, Pat Balfe.  Pat was a Catholic.  Tim Corbett, the current Superintendent, is not.  There are striking differences between the two.  It is not just a matter of how efficiently a business is run.  There is more to it than that: there is the Catholic perspective, which shows great respect for the living as well as the dead.

One really cannot adequately respond in a cemetery situation, where you have people coming in, in a highly emotional and perhaps vulnerable state who needs someone to talk to about Catholic beliefs and burial practices, and not be a Catholic.  A Catholic is truly necessary for the job.  And yet, and yet…so many non-Catholics are hired for so many positions within the Portland Archdiocese!  This is part of the reason that the Faith is not being adequately transmitted. 

We truly need to hire people who are actual practicing Catholics, who have letters from their parish priests attesting to their good standing in the Church.  Catholics are needed who have a true Catholic heart and a true Catholic way of looking at things; who have a knowledge of the Faith, and a baptismal certificate.

The hiring of actual practicing Catholics in the Catholic Cemetery system is the only way to correct the abysmal situation that Human Resources and the Catholic Cemeteries are in, in the Portland Archdiocese.  This would staunch the flow of cemetery workers being fired from their jobs, and would also restore a Catholic identity and presence in the Catholic cemeteries.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Bill Diss: Portland School joins Planned Parenthood to Destroy Award-winning Teacher on November 14th.

Also see new post from Bill Diss.
Handout downloads attached.

 


Photo: Planned Parenthood
WASHINGTON, November 8, 2013 — Bill Diss is an experienced, highly qualified and popular computer science teacher. On November 14, the Portland school district and Planned Parenthood will try to have him declared unfit to teach.

Diss is the only teacher in Oregon to earn the distinction of being credentialed to teach computer science for college credit at the high school level. Diss is a highly qualified high school educator who has been teaching for more than a decade at a desperate public school that almost closed in 2010 — a school that serves a population which is 75 percent minority.


Diss earned special recognitions for his work with at-risk black students and for helping to stop gang violence in Portland parks. But, because he refused to allow Planned Parenthood into his classroom, school administrators branded him “unfit to teach” and intend to end his career with Portland Public Schools on November 14.

Parents and students alike are thankful for his dedication. One parent (who holds an M.Ed.) wrote, “[My daughter] found a teacher that achieved tremendous balance between high expectations and accommodating individual needs.”
Another mother who says Diss is a gem wrote, “The highlight of [my son’s] day however is his math class with Mr. Diss. … It seems he goes to great lengths to make himself available for any student who needs additional help. … Mr. Diss cares enough about his students to have firm boundaries and tell them the truth, even when it hurts.”
And therein lies the problem: Diss is staunchly pro-life and does not hide those views from his students.


Diss’ fight against sex industry giant Planned Parenthood on his own time is well-known. It has raised the ire of Principal Carol Campbell and other school administrators for years.

Diss said that, on one occasion, Campbell demanded to know exactly what Diss had said at a prayer vigil. Hearing there was video, she also wanted to see that.

On September 17, 2012, things escalated. With Campbell’s backing, an “education team” went to Diss’ classroom to enroll students in the Health and Human Services’ Teen Outreach Program (TOP). One of the TOP goals is to reduce teen pregnancy. It teaches students (among other things) about premarital sex, contraception, and abortion.

Pro-life critics of the program say that TOP is just a slickly packaged comprehensive sex education program promoted by $375 million rolled into Obamacare. As the de facto defunding of abstinence education by the White House progresses, TOP agents tempt parents with a $30 payment if the parents sign a medical release giving an undefined “healthcare provider” permission to treat the students in the absence of the parents.


When three TOP agents entered Diss’ math class, they immediately put up signs and began offering gift certificates and cash incentives to his students to enroll them in the program. Suspicious, Diss asked for identification.

It turned out the presenters did not work for Uncle Sam. Rather, they were employees of Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette — the local PP that affirms homosexuality, promotes “sex-positive celebrations,” and offers abortions.

Diss asked them to leave the classroom but, within moments, Campbell arrived to enforce access to the students. Diss says that when he asked to be excused for religious preference reasons, Campbell refused.

In a formal letter to Principal Campbell written the following day, Bill Snyder, security/facilities manager for PPCW, complained that Diss told students that Planned Parenthood “was a racist organization, was involved in eugenics, and was a provider of abortions.”

While some black leaders like Jesse Jackson would not agree, Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, goes even further: “The most obvious practitioner of racism in the United States today is Planned Parenthood, an organization founded by the eugenicist Margaret Sanger and recently documented as ready to accept money to eliminate black babies.”

Ryan Bomberger, a young rising star in the black pro-life movement, echoes the sentiment. His TooManyAborted project uses video to expose “Planned Parenthood’s history of eugenic racism and unaltered present.”

Snyder’s memo went on to complain that Diss was overheard “telling students in the hallway that PPCW was going to talk to them about abortion and students were intimidated to the point that none of them signed up for the class.” 

Planned Parenthood records show the organization committed over 332,000 abortions last year, estimated to be one-third of its total clinic revenues. The national abortion ratio by race is 300 percent higher for African Americans.

After that day, Diss says Planned Parenthood was allowed to monitor his class for the next two weeks and he has been monitored almost 40 times by Campbell, Vice Principal Jeandre Carbone, Frank Scotto of human resources, and even Planned Parenthood management.

Diss says he has been subjected to over a dozen hearings. On November 14, 2013, Portland schools will bring formal charges that Diss is unfit to teach. The formal hearing is meant to end his career.
One of the charges brought against him includes talking about premarital sex, sexual purity, and abortion in his math and computer science classes.

Do these educators know how to spell i-r-o-n-y?

While Planned Parenthood hopes to get Diss’s teaching credentials revoked, the Portland Association of Teachers has hired lawyers to protect Diss’ First Amendment rights.

Upon hearing of Diss’ troubles, a former student wrote the school: “Mr. Diss has done a lot for me and my family and there is no way that we could ever repay him. I believe that the world is in desperate need of good, honest people. If Mr. Diss gets his teaching license revoked, then that will only take another good source of help from the students.”

The grateful former student concluded, “This is all despite the fact that he and I have different points of view on Planned Parenthood.”

Jim Sedlak of STOPP.org, recognized as the leading national expert on Planned Parenthood, said, “Planned Parenthood is ruthless. This is about political power, not the truth, the children, or good teachers. They will no doubt pack the hearing with pro-choice activists to sway the outcome.”

The attorney representing Diss agrees, saying that it is imperative that families and teachers who support his civil rights attend. She believes that Diss is being persecuted for his religious beliefs. The hearing will be conducted at the headquarters of Portland public schools at 501 N. Dixon Street in Portland, Oregon, beginning at 4 p.m. on November 14.

Mr. Diss told Common Sense in an e-mail:

“The hearing is divided into two parts: The first part is at 4:00 p.m., when the district will have an hour to bring charges against me for misconduct and being unfit to teach.

“[During] the second hour from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., we get an opportunity to respond to the charges. I am asking all to pray and I would cherish your presence the second hour or for the entire hearing. Please bring your families. I think it is important that the school attorney and board members understand the importance of families and children. The press will also be there and I suspect many supporters of Planned Parenthood will be there.

At press time, Campbell, Carbone, Smith and Scotto have not replied to phone calls or e-mail requests for comment.

Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/common-sense/2013/nov/8/school-joins-planned-parenthood-destroy-award-winn/#ixzz2kNNfGis0
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