"The Pope healed our baby's heart."

Lynn Cassidy has no other words to explain what happened to her 3-month-old daughter Ave. Ave was born with Down syndrome, eye problems and hearing complications. Most concerning were the two holes in her heart.

"It seems like it was really meant to happen," Lynn said. "And it's as close to a miracle as we'll ever see, I'm sure."

In Easter of 2014, the family planned a Rome trip to see Pope Francis in person during the canonization of John Paul II and John XXIII.

"It was raining," Lynn said. "We were told that if we stood on a barricade in St. Peter's Square, the metal fences in front, the Pope would come by in his 'Pope'-mobile."

The Cassidy family waited for hours at the barricade. When the motorcade turned into the square, Lynn's husband Scott held Ave up in the air.

"It was like the Lion King," Lynn said. "The secret service person, Johnny, stopped and took her from Scott and held her up to the Pope. The Pope asked my husband, 'How old is she? What's her name?' He told (the Pope) she has two holes in her heart. When we got home in May, we went back to the cardiologist for a check-up. One of the holes was completely closed and one was half the size."

--snip--

"I mean it's possible that it closes just over time," she said. "But when you see the picture that the professional photographer took, his hand is here and he's a servant of God."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/inspiration-nation/2015/09/23/inspiration-nation-pope-holds-baby/72671356/

On Monday, the BBC posted an edited interview with the Dalai Lama in which, among other things, the highest-ranking Tibetan Buddhist expresses some unexpectedly fucked-up opinions about women and their “use.”

Around 4:50 in the video, journalist Clive Myrie asks if there will be a 15th incarnation of the Dalai Lama after him—and if so, could the next Dalai Lama be a woman?

“Yes!” he replied. “The female biologically [has] more potential to show affection... and compassion.”

The Dalai Lama said that a reporter in Paris had asked him the same question awhile back, and he had responded similarly.

“Today in a more troubled world, I think females should take more important roles, and then I told that reporter, if a female Dalai Lama comes, their face should be very attractive.”

“So you can only have a female Dalai Lama if they’re attractive? Is that what you’re saying?” asked Myrie, trying valiantly to let him take it back.

“I mean if female Dalai Lama come, then that female must be very attractive, otherwise not much use.”

“You’re joking, I’m assuming,” says Myrie. “Or you’re not joking?”

“No. True!”

http://jezebel.com/dalai-lama-a-female-dalai-lama-must-be-attractive-oth-1732350732?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

The number of American children raised without religion has grown significantly since the 1950s, when fewer than 4% of Americans reported growing up in a nonreligious household, according to several recent national studies. That figure entered the double digits when a 2012 study showed that 11% of people born after 1970 said they had been raised in secular homes. This may help explain why 23% of adults in the U.S. claim to have no religion, and more than 30% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say the same.

So how does the raising of upstanding, moral children work without prayers at mealtimes and morality lessons at Sunday school? Quite well, it seems. Far from being dysfunctional, nihilistic and rudderless without the security and rectitude of religion, secular households provide a sound and solid foundation for children, according to Vern Bengston, a USC professor of gerontology and sociology.

For nearly 40 years, Bengston has overseen the Longitudinal Study of Generations, which has become the largest study of religion and family life conducted across several generational cohorts in the United States. When Bengston noticed the growth of nonreligious Americans becoming increasingly pronounced, he decided in 2013 to add secular families to his study in an attempt to understand how family life and intergenerational influences play out among the religionless.

He was surprised by what he found: High levels of family solidarity and emotional closeness between parents and nonreligious youth, and strong ethical standards and moral values that had been clearly articulated as they were imparted to the next generation.

“Many nonreligious parents were more coherent and passionate about their ethical principles than some of the ‘religious' parents in our study,” Bengston told me. “The vast majority appeared to live goal-filled lives characterized by moral direction and sense of life having a purpose.”

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parenting-20150115-story.html#page=1

Pope Francis has a limited-time offer just for women who have abortions: Confess, and you won’t be excommunicated. Hurry! Only women who confess to a priest before November 20, 2016—during the “Year of Mercy”—will remain eligible to kneel and pray at the instruction of an all-male hierarchy that insists upon the subordination of women.

“I am well aware of the pressure that has led [women who have abortions] to this decision,” the Pope said. He suggested women “believe they have no other option.” Priests will have the “discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it and who, with contrite heart, seek forgiveness for it.”

It seems the Pope Francis Sex TalkTM brand is expanding. With his latest comments, Pope Francis has built a shiny new smokescreen to distract from the grave and immoral harms caused by the Vatican’s opposition to abortion and women’s equality.

This has practically become a formula: Cool Pope says something that sounds like he cares about the huge swaths of people routinely discriminated against by the biggest patriarchy in the world for being women, gay, or unwilling to have children. But the doctrine doesn’t change, which means that nice comments don’t make for nice policy. Lobbyists representing the Catholic Church’s leadership continue to wreak great destruction around the world, whether messing with the Affordable Care Act at home or insisting on denying condoms to people in AIDS-ravaged areas abroad. And billions of public dollars are funneled into Catholic institutions that insist they have a right to discriminate on the taxpayer dole.

--snip--

A woman who has had an abortion has done nothing wrong. She doesn’t need to apologize, and she certainly doesn’t need to apologize to a man representing an institution that denies her equality. (Remember when Pope Benedict compared the ordination of women to pedophilia? Pope Francis has enforced the same toxic nonsense about keeping women out of the priesthood; he just says things that make it sound nicer.) So, then, this isn’t actually about reassuring women who have had abortions. This is about continuing to single them out and shame them.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/09/02/pope-francis-apologize-abortion/