Crystal Renn & Karolina Kurkova | Steven Klein | Interview Magazine March 2012 | ‘Strict Institution’ AOC Private Studio

Steven Klein’s ‘Strict Institution’ editorial for Interview Magazine’s March issue is a blockbuster of talent and Smart Sensuality meaning. Just a few minutes ago on Facebook, one of my new friends asked me why Conservative women support Rush Limbaugh in his relentless verbal assaults on women like First Lady Michelle Obama and this week Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke, who spoke about women’s medical need of affordable birth control. This editorial says it all.

Daily French Roast

Anne is reading …

Rush Limbaugh on a happier day. JUST IN: Responding to furor raised by bloggers and websites like AOC who has asked our 350,000 readers not to support ProFlowers, the company has announced it’s following other Rush Limbaugh advertisers in dropping the show. On the ProFlowers Facebook page, it criticized Limbaugh’s comments as “beyond political discourse to a personal attack”, stressing that Limbaugh comments “do not reflect our values as a company.”

The company is the seventh advertiser to drop its association with the show.

Rick Santorum. Image Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York TimesToday’s New York Times writes a balanced story on Rick Santorum’s evolution from being “a nominal Catholic” to one making religion the center of his views about the best government for America. Having written extensively about Rick Santorum we didn’t learn very much new about the candidate until page 3.

Our new learnings include:

1) In 2002 then Senator Santorum spoke in Rome at a centenary celebration of the birth of Saint Josemaria Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. In an interview with the Catholic Reporter, the candidate said then that John F Kennedy had caused “much harm to America” with his 1960 speech calling for strict separation of church and state.

2) Mr. Santorum wrote in a 2002 essay that too many Catholics had been exposed to “uninspired, watered-down versions of our faith”. The candidate called for more committed Catholics to reclaim religious institutions, like colleges, schools and hospitals, “for the sake of our souls.”

He also blamed liberal culture for the sexual abuse scandal involving Catholic priests. “When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected,” he wrote.

3) In a chilling piece of information, we read that Rick Santorum has been a supporter of Regnum Christi, the lay wing of a very conservative, “cultish” says the NYT Legion of Christ.

In 2003, he was the keynote speaker at a Regnum Christi event in Chicago that drew protesters because the group’s charismatic founder, who had spent years denying that he had sexually abused seminarians, was scheduled to share the podium.

The founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, did not show up, but critics faulted Mr. Santorum for agreeing to appear at the group’s forum. “He was certainly lending them legitimacy,” said Jason Berry, a documentary filmmaker and the author of a book about Father Maciel.

We continue a discussion of Rev. Marcial Maciel in the center column More DFR.

4) Rick Santorum’s views are regarded as extremist by the majority of American Catholics. Polls show that Santorum has lost the Catholic vote in every primary, some by wide margins. Noted author Garry Wills, a professor emeritus at Northwestern University and cultural historian, and one of the millions of American Catholics who embrace the Second Vatican Council from 1962-65 and briefly opened Catholicism to the modern age calls Santorum “a papist”.

Rick Santorum’s support for the Legionaries of Christ and his prominent position as a Regnum Christi member should be cause of great concern among moderate and progressive American citizens. Read on.

More DFR

Rick Santorum & Legionaries of Christ

AOC has followed the Legionaries of Christ sex abuse scandal and investigation for several years.

Will Dyke Hold for Global Religious Patriarchy? Updated 3/4/12; originally 5/3/10

Kristof makes it clear that there are two Catholic churches at work in the world, and he’s passionate in his defense nuns and priests on the ground in Sudan and all over Africa. We honor these caretakers also, especially when they look the other way as condoms from Britain are slipped into the lives of wives whose husbands are infected with AIDS.

In their own documents, the Vatican knows that African women do not say ‘no’ to their husbands, just as they know that there’s a huge problem in Africa with nuns saying ‘no’ to African priests and bishops who demand sex.

Read The Vatican’s own document ‘The Problem of the Sexual Abuse of African Religious in Africa and In Rome.’ It’s a stunner.

Former Regnum Christi women found new consecrated community in Chile 2/26/12

Jimmy Carter’s Speech on Women & World Religions Matters As Catholic Bishops Join Southern Baptists & Evangelicals 2/15/2012

The Vatican was hit with another thunderbolt yesterday, when Malen Oriol announced that she had asked to leave her duties as the assistant to the general director of the Legion of Christ, which Pope Benedict XVI took over in 2010 at the height a sex scandal embroiling its founder Rev Marciel Maciel.

Legionaries of Christ Investigation | Another New Sex Abuse Scandal 3/16/2010

The Vatican said Tuesday its five investigators have completed their initial examination into the Legionaries 120 seminaries, schools and communities around the globe, and that a final report would still take several months for Rome to complete.

The Legionaries was formed in 1941 and became one of the most influential and fastest-growing orders in the Roman Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II championed the group, which became known for its orthodox theology, military-style discipline, fundraising prowess and success recruiting priests at a time when seminary enrollment was generally dismal. via AP

The group says it now has some 800 priests and 2,600 seminarians worldwide, along with 75,000 Regnum Christi members.

War on Women Roundup

Have You No Shame, Rush? Maureen Dowd

Santorum and the Sexual Revolution Charles M Blow

When States Abuse Women Nicholas Kristof

Wisconsin GOP Leader Proposes Legislation To Blame Single Parents for Child Abuse and Neglect Forbes

Rush Limbaugh Apologizes - But Did His Contraception Contretemps Cost the GOP Valuable Voters Forbes