College Woman Speaks Out Against Pornography

USA TODAY, Oct. 19-Kimberly Palmer, a junior at Amherst College, wrote an editorial in the Oct. 19 edition of USA Today in which she laments an increase in the consumption of pornographic materials among men her age.

Porn consumption has its immediate effects, Palmer said. Women begin to sense men treating them as objects, and men find it difficult to enter into relationships without perverse expectations and disordered impulses. Palmer noted the ease with which filth now proliferates by way of the Internet, and called on men to take control of themselves for their own sake and for sake of the women they court.

Splinter Group to Build Church in Denver

DENVER POST, Oct. 16-The schismatic Society of St. Pius X is building a Church outside Denver, the Denver daily reported.

Its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988 for ordaining priests without the blessing of the Church, Members of the Church, which will be named St. Isidore the Farmer, have raised $800,000 for the project. The cornerstone was laid on Oct. 17, and workers plan to finish the large cruciform Church by next summer.

Society priest Joseph Pfeiffer, the pastor of St. Isidore's, says the Society will eventually open a primary education school on the site. The original Church is located in downtown Denver, which claims 300 Society members.

A spokesman for Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput has reaffirmed the Church's condemnation of the Society, which chooses to operate outside the control of its local ordinary and refuses to accept the validity of the revised Mass. Masses at St. Isidore's will be said according to the Tridentine rite exclusively.

Feminist Atheist Blasts Brooklyn Exhibit

SALON, Oct. 6-Camille Paglia is best known for her controversial books that challenge traditional — and contemporary — orthodoxies. In her biweekly column for Salon, she had some negative words to say about the Brooklyn Museum of Art's “Sensation” exhibit.

The exhibit has been criticized by the Catholic League and others for an image that denigrates the Blessed Virgin Mary, scattering her image with elephant dung and pornographic images.

Paglia, a lesbian and an atheist, teaches art history at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

“The rote attacks on [“Sensation” opponent New York Mary Rudolph] Giuliani have been deafening,” Paglia said. “While the mayor certainly exceeded his authority in demanding that the entire show be stopped … I am frankly enjoying his assault on the arts establishment, which is in dire need of a shake-up. …

“And I'm just as sick of ‘Catholic-bashing’ as Giuliani himself. I may be an atheist, but I was raised in Italian Catholicism, and it remains my native culture. I resent the double standard that protects Jewish and African-American symbols and icons but allows Catholicism to be routinely trashed by supercilious liberals and ranting gay activists,” Paglia said.