[This is well worth reading.]
New York Times
October 16, 2005
Scientists Devise Stem Cell Methods to Ease Concern
By NICHOLAS WADE
In a development that may shift the political debate over embryonic stem cells, researchers have devised two new techniques designed to alleviate ethical concerns.
In one, the cells are derived without the need to destroy an embryo, the principal objection of abortion opponents who have strenuously opposed federal financing of the research. The other technique makes skin cells revert to the embryonic state in a way that prevents the embryo from implanting in the uterus. Both are described in today's online edition of Nature.
The technique for making embryonic stem cells without compromising the embryo was developed in mice and has yet to be adapted to humans, but the two species are very similar at this level of embryonic development. "I can't think of a reason why the technique would not theoretically work" in people, said Brigid M. Hogan, an embryologist at Duke University.
If it does work in people, the technique could divide the pro-life movement into those who accept or reject in vitro fertilization, because the objection to deriving human embryonic stem cells would come to rest on creating the embryos in the first place, not on their destruction.
"This gets around all of the ethical arguments except for that small minority of the pro-life community that doesn't even support in vitro fertilization," said Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett, Republican of Maryland, whose Web site describes him as "a pro-life legislator."
Until now, the only way of deriving human embryonic stem cells has been to break open the embryo before it implants in the uterus, a stage at which it is called a blastocyst, and take out the inner cell mass, whose cells will form all the tissues of the future infant.
Although the blastocysts used in the procedure are ones that fertility clinics have rejected for implantation, opponents of abortion say destruction of any embryo is wrong. Congress has forbidden the use of federal funds for any such research, and federally supported scientists can work with only a small number of existing lines of embryonic stem cells that have been exempted from this stricture by President Bush.
Robert Lanza and colleagues at Advanced Cell Technology, a biotechnology company in Worcester, Mass., have now developed an alternative way of generating embryonic stem cells that leaves the embryo viable.
At the eight-cell stage, reached by a fertilized mouse egg after its third division and just before the blastocyst is formed, they removed one cell. They then coaxed that cell, known as a blastomere, into growing in glassware and forming cells that have all the same essential properties as embryonic stem cells derived from the inner cell mass, Dr. Lanza's team reported.
The seven-cell embryo was implanted in the mouse uterus and grew successfully to term. That part of the procedure is known to work with humans too, because it is the basis of a well-established test known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. In the test, one cell is removed from each of a set of embryos and tested for any of 150 genetic defects, giving the parents the choice of implanting an embryo that is disease free.
Dr. Lanza's technique is likely to be welcomed by many in the middle of the debate, although it has not won over the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Richard M. Doerflinger, its deputy director for pro-life activities, dismissed the technique, saying that pre-implantation genetic diagnosis itself is unethical. The technique "is done chiefly to select out genetically imperfect embryos for discarding, and poses unknown risks of future harm even to the child allowed to be born," he said in an e-mail message.
Only a procedure that generated embryonic stem cells without creating or destroying embryos "would address the Catholic Church's most fundamental moral objection to embryonic stem cell research as now pursued," Mr. Doerflinger said in testimony last December to the President's Council on Bioethics.
. . . Markus Grompe, a leading stem cell scientist and a Roman Catholic who supports the church's teaching on the unacceptability of destroying embryos, praised the Lanza approach, provided that the extracted blastomere could not develop into an embryo all by itself. "I find it clearly less objectionable than the outright destruction of the embryo," said Dr. Grompe, who studies liver stem cells at the Oregon Health and Science University.
In response to Dr. Grompe's reservation, Dr. Lanza said that individual human blastomeres had never been shown to create viable embryos. The reason is that by the eight-cell stage, each blastomere is probably committed to becoming either the outer shell of the blastocyst, which later forms the placenta, or the inner cell mass, which forms the fetus. Only the fertilized egg and the two-cell and perhaps four-cell stages retain the ability to form all the placental and embryonic tissues, Dr. Lanza said.
[There's more. To read the whole article, click here.]
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Sunday, October 16, 2005
THE STEM CELL CONTROVERSY
Friday, October 14, 2005
WHAT'S NEXT?
Jesuit Magazine Condemns Pro Boxing
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The article in Civilta Cattolica, titled ''The Immorality of
Professional Boxing,'' compared the sport to the bloody gladiator
contests in ancient Rome. It also criticized the business side of
boxing as being equally ruthless.
The magazine provided advance copies of the article, which will appear Saturday.
Boxing is a ''legalized form of attempted murder, in the short or in the long run,'' the magazine said. It also noted that fighters who don't die in the ring often suffer long-term physical and psychological injuries.
The article cited the deaths of hundreds of fighters in the last
century, including Leavander Johnson, who died last month in Las Vegas.
Johnson collapsed on his way to the dressing room after taking a
beating in his IBF lightweight title defense against Jesus Chavez.
Johnson underwent surgery and never came out of a medically induced
coma.
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Wednesday, October 12, 2005
BEARING THE CHILD AND BEARING THE COST
[This paper, posted on SSRN, looks quite interesting.]
"Should Bearing the Child Mean Bearing All the Cost? A Catholic
Perspective on the Sacrifice of Motherhood and the Common Good"
BY: ELIZABETH ROSE SCHILTZ
University of St. Thomas - School of Law
Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=814104
Paper ID: U of St. Thomas Legal Studies Research Paper No. 05-07
Date: August 2005
Contact: ELIZABETH ROSE SCHILTZ
Email: Mailto:[email protected]
Postal: University of St. Thomas - School of Law
1000 La Salle Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55403-2005 UNITED STATES
Phone: 651-962-4922
Fax: 651-962-4971
ABSTRACT: One of the most significant factors in the persistent wage gap between men and women in the United States is the economic penalty suffered by working mothers. As a Catholic legal academic struggling with the complex issues involved in securing mothers' access to financial security, I discovered some surprising compatibilities between the Catholic Church's teachings on the importance of family and the role of women, and recent writings of feminist legal scholars. In this essay, I argue that Catholic thought could contribute to the development of an emerging theory of justice that is compatible with both Catholic and feminist theorist agendas, which in turn could facilitate the difficult work of translating Church teachings on this topic into concrete policy proposals. Over the past decade, feminists such as Martha Fineman, Eva Feder Kittay, Robin West, and Joan Williams have argued that the dominant equality-based theory of justice needs to be replaced or supplemented by a theory of justice that incorporates the reality of dependency and the need for dependency care. An important component of this argument is a critique of the devaluation of the dependency care work mainly performed by women - primarily raising children but also caring for the old and the infirm. There are two predominant approaches to addressing this marginalization of care work - either change the fact that women do most of this kind of work, or change the fact that this work is accorded no economic value. I argue that the latter approach is the most promising, the most realistic, and, when translated into concrete policy proposals, the most consistent with the positions taken by the Catholic Church in writings such as Laborem Exercens, Familiaris Consortio, and Evangelium Vitae. These proposals for according proper economic value to care work range from reforming welfare and tax policies to subsidize unpaid childcare work, to guaranteeing maternity leave, to more radial proposals to restructure the workplace to permit parents to care for families without undue penalties in career advancement. All of these proposals shift some of the cost of childraising from individual parents (particularly mothers) to society as a whole. I argue that Catholic thought could make significant contributions to articulating persuasive rationales for shifting these costs. Catholic teachings support feminist arguments that children are a 'public good' and that the current market structures incorporate unjust 'free-riding' on the unpaid work of mothers. More significantly, though, Catholic teachings on the role of women, particularly the powerful arguments in Mulieris Dignitatem about women's contributions to the realization of a truly humane social order, could provide support for feminist arguments for more radical restructuring of the workplace to ensure mothers' access to the public sphere. At the same time, I argue that the work of Catholic scholars on these topics could be enriched by engaging the dependency-based theories of justice being developed by the feminists, and by considering the feminist perspective that women, including mothers, have a significant role to play in the public as well as the private sphere.
[Click here to download the paper.]
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Evangelicals in London protest at hatred bill
[MOJ friend Gerry Whyte, of Trinity College Dublin, sent this along:]
BRITAIN: Evangelical Christians demonstrated outside the British parliament yesterday against government moves to introduce a new law against incitement to religious hatred.
Hundreds of evangelicals, singing and waving placards, converged opposite the Palace of Westminster in a protest timed to coincide with the second reading of the racial and religious hatred bill in the House of Lords.
The demonstration was organised by a coalition of Christian groups including the Evangelical Alliance, the African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance (ACEA) and the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship.
The Rev Katei Kirby, ACEA's chief executive, said the right to debate and discuss without fear of prosecution was threatened. "It affects everyone so deeply. This is not just about doctrine, this is not even about theological opposition, this is about our basic freedom to speak and to preach. "It affects people's freedom to discuss and to critique anything because it might upset or offend somebody else and that is very serious."
The National Secular Society was at the forefront of the demonstration. Terry Sanderson, its vice-president, said the group had been campaigning on the issue for the past three years.
"We are coming at it from a completely different angle from the Christians. They are looking at the restrictions on their right to evangelise," he said. "We are looking at the restrictions on our being about to criticise religion per se so we can make common cause with them on this. "I think this is an indicator to the government of just how wide the opposition is."
The campaign received support yesterday from former lord chancellor Lord Mackay. He said the religious hatred offence had been so broadly defined that Tony Blair and his ministers could find themselves falling foul of it. The prime minister, home secretary Charles Clarke and other members of the government had repeatedly blamed terrorism on people who subscribed to "a perverted form of Islam", Lord Mackay told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
"That is just as much a religion, of course, as Islam itself," he said. "Therefore, when they are making it a crime to stir up hatred on religious grounds, what they are doing is exactly that in relation to those who follow the perversion of Islam." - (PA)
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Saturday, October 8, 2005
CARDINAL BEVILACQUA AND THE PHILADELPHIA COVER-UP
National Catholic Reporter
October 7, 2005
Grand jury findings:
Philadelphia cardinals 'excused and enabled abuse, covered up crimes'
By RALPH CIPRIANO
A grand jury that investigated the Philadelphia archdiocese for more than three years has concluded that two former archbishops orchestrated a systematic cover-up spanning four decades that managed to successfully shield from prosecution 63 priests who had sexually abused hundreds of children.
In a 418-page report issued Sept. 21, the grand jury said that the two archbishops -- the retired Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and the late Cardinal John Krol -- “excused and enabled the abuse” by “burying the reports they did receive and covering up the conduct ... to outlast any statutes of limitation.”
The Philadelphia grand jury used blunt language to describe the sex abuse uncovered during the investigation, which they said was often recorded by the archdiocese in more than 45,000 pages of documents from secret archdiocese archives with such “delicate euphemisms” as “inappropriate touching.”
“We mean rape,” the grand jury report said. “Boys who were raped orally, boys who were raped anally, girls who were raped vaginally.”
The church records, once kept under lock and key in a room at archdiocesean headquarters accessible only to the archbishop, the secretary for clergy and their aides, contained accusations of “countless acts of sexual depravity against children.” The cases involved a total of 169 priests and hundreds of alleged child victims. The records were turned over to Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham after multiple subpoenas were served on officials at the archdiocese. The grand jury chose to investigate the acts of 63 priests in their report.
The grand jury said its findings might be interpreted by some as a tragedy, such as a tidal wave. But the report said that tidal waves are “beyond human control,” and added, “What we found were not acts of God, but of men who acted in his name and defiled it.”
The report noted the behavior of archdiocesan officials who oversaw the priests was “not as lurid” as that of the sex abusers, “but in its callous calculating manner, the archdiocese’s handling of the abuse scandal was at least as immoral as the abuse itself.”
“What makes these allegations all the worse, the grand jurors believe, is that the abuses that Cardinal Bevilacqua and his aides allowed children to suffer -- the molestations, the rapes, the lifelong shame and despair ... were made possible by purposeful decisions, carefully implemented policies, and calculated indifference,” the report said.
“The evidence before us established that archdiocese officials at the highest levels received reports of abuse,” the report said. The diocese, according to report, “chose not to conduct any meaningful investigation of those reports” and “left dangerous priests in place or transferred them to different parishes as a means of concealment. ... They chose to protect themselves from scandal and liability rather than protect children from the priests’ crimes.”
[To read the rest of this disturbing article, click here.]
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Friday, October 7, 2005
WHO SHOULD BUSH HAVE NOMINATED?
For one outstanding choice, click here.
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Sunday, September 25, 2005
The Rashomon Phenomenon
On the Vatican review of Cathoilic seminaries in the United States: It's hard to believe that Amy Welborn, in this mornings's NYTimes, and Peter Steinfels, in yesterday's, were reading the same document. Compare Steinfels with Welborn. --mp
Friday, September 23, 2005
Gay Priests and the Vatican
[A piece worth pondering from the September 24th issue of The Tablet. Excerpts follow. To read the whole piece, click here.]
Don’t dare to speak its name
Paul Michaels
The long-awaited Vatican document on homosexuality and the priesthood is expected to be released soon. The signs are that, while it may please a few in the Church, it could cause acute distress to many gay priests who are faithful to their vows of celibacy
IS THERE ANY purge coming in the Catholic Church? There are clues detected by the secular media that this may be the case. Last week the Associated Press flagged a story in the right-leaning National Catholic Register, a weekly American newspaper published by the Legionaries of Christ, the ultra-conservative religious order. In a front-page report, dated 7 September, Archbishop Edwin O’Brien told the Register: “I think anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity, or has strong homosexual inclinations, would be best not to apply to a seminary and not to be accepted into a seminary.”
Archbishop O’Brien told the paper that even a man who had been celibate for 10 years or more should be barred from entering seminaries. As an aside, he noted: “The Holy See should be coming out with a document about this.” Later he told the Associated Press that he expected such a Vatican directive would appear before the end of the year.
His blunt comments reveal what many priests have long feared: blame for that clerical crisis is being placed squarely on the shoulders of celibate gay men in the priesthood rather than on the bishops who moved paedophile priests away from the scene of their assaults to new locations where they struck again, abusing more children. . . ..
Certainly the vast majority of the reported sexual abuse cases in the United States were those of men preying on boys and adolescent males. But the Vatican and many bishops have repeatedly blamed all gay priests indiscriminately, and, as Archbishop O’Brien’s comments indicate, are about to declare that even a psychologically healthy gay man who can live a celibate life will be barred from seminaries.
This is the worst kind of prejudice, and should be seen as an embarrassment for the Church, rather than the basis for its selection of candidates for the sacrament of orders.
If a Vatican directive barring homosexuals from the priesthood appears, it will be a disaster for the Catholic Church. First, it would mean setting aside the example of countless hardworking and faithful gay men who have served as priests, and who have lived their promises of celibacy with integrity. Many American Catholics accept their gay pastors, trusting that they lead celibate lives and valuing their ministry in their parishes. Others go further in praising the contribution of gay priests. In an article in the conservative journal First Things, Father Richard John Neuhaus wrote, “It would seem more than likely that, in centuries past, some priests who have been canonised as saints would meet today’s criteria as having a homosexual orientation.”
Second, such a ban would unjustly place blame for the abuse crisis on all gay priests, even the celibate ones, not just those few psychologically sick men who preyed on young boys. It wrongly conflates homosexuality with paedophilia, which is not only bad science, it is an affront to gays and lesbians, as well as an indication of just how little the Vatican seems to understand about human sexuality.
Third, during a crisis of plummeting vocations, any ban would drastically diminish the pool of applicants to seminaries and religious orders. And a number of gay men already in the process of training for the priesthood – in novitiates and seminaries around the country – have confided to me that if they were no longer officially permitted to advance to ordination, they would have to leave. It’s hard not to feel special sorrow for these men, who, after many years of discernment and prayer, will be faced with a terrible choice: either lie and be ordained, or leave and deny your vocation.
The reduction in the pool of applicants would not result simply from fewer gay vocations. Some heterosexual men have told me that they would be less likely to enter a religious order or seminary that evinces such an attitude to some of their fellow human beings.
Finally, a document like the one Archbishop O’Brien predicts would in effect say to gay priests: you should never have been ordained. It would further demoralise a cohort of priests already burdened by the vilification they received in the wake of the abuse crisis. . . .
Purging the seminaries would contradict [an] injunction in the Catechism. “[Homosexuals] must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided” (2358). It is difficult to see how expelling a celibate man from a seminary simply because he is gay could be construed as “respect”. And a clearer example of “unjust discrimination” is hard to imagine. . . .
Most gay priests, like myself, have been prevented from speaking about our own experiences, and sharing with our parishioners our rewarding lives as celibate men. Most have been formally silenced by bishops or religious superiors on the topic, so the Church can deny our existence. (That is the reason for my pseudonym: I would much prefer to write under my own name.) And many who have not been formally silenced fear reprisals from their bishops and some parishioners. As a result, the only public model of the “gay priest” is the notorious paedophile. So what appears to be the Vatican’s stance is unsurprising. What moral theologians used to call “invincible ignorance” only breeds prejudice, fear and hatred.
I estimate that between 20 and 30 per cent of Catholic priests in the United States are gay, with the percentages being slightly higher in religious orders. But since the American bishops have never (and will never) commission a study, this is an entirely subjective guess.
What I can say for sure is that the vast majority of these men who I know and work with are not only compassionate, hardworking and faithful priests; they are also celibate. And a Vatican declaration that we should cease to exist would not be the last cross pressed down on us by the Church that we serve.
Fr Paul Michaels, a pseudonym, is a priest in active ministry in the United States.
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COME TO FORDHAM!
Faith and FreedomThe 40th Anniversary of Vatican II and the Declaration on Religious Liberty |
Monday, October 17, 2005, 9:00-4:30
Fordham University, McNally Amphitheatre, 140 West 62nd Street
Free and Open to the Public
Sponsored by: The Fordham Center on Religion and Culture
The Curran Center for American Catholic Studies
Institute on Religion, Law, and Lawyer’s Work, Fordham Law School
To ensure a seat at this event, kindly RSVP by calling 212-636-6927, or you may register on line at http://www.Fordham.edu/Religculture_registration
More information about this event:
"Faith & Freedom:
The 40th Anniversary of Vatican II and the
Declaration on Religious Liberty"
Dignitatis humanae, the Declaration on Religious Liberty, was adopted by Vatican II on December 7, 1965. This landmark event in Catholic history transformed the church’s teaching on religious freedom, church and state, and conscience. Scholars, intellectuals, lawyers, and theologians from the United States and Europe will explore the background of this historic change as well as examine developments in the understanding of religious freedom both within faith groups and in the civil order over the last forty years.
Session 1: A Change of Mind on Religious Freedom- The American and European Contribution
What was the important American contribution (and in particular that of the Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray) to the Declaration on Religious Liberty? How did the American view interact with the corresponding contributions of the European experience and theological analysis?
Speakers: The Reverend Joseph Komonchak is John C. and Gertrude P. Hubbard Professor of Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He is an ecclesiologist specializing in the history and reception of Vatican II.
The Reverend Jean-Yves Calvez, S.J., a philosopher and theologian, is currently Director of the Department of Public Ethics, Centres Sèvres, Paris, and teaches at the Institut Catholique. He served as a member of the Pontifical Council for Non-Believers and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and is author of many books dealing with ecumenism, social development, and the social doctrine of the church.
Session 2: Conscience, Freedom, and Community in the 21st Century
The Declaration on Religious Liberty affirmed traditional views of the binding power of religious truth while also stressing the right of conscience to be free of every kind of coercion, including psychological. What does that mean for the formation and exercise of conscience? How can religious communities respect individual conscience while maintaining their own standards of belief, practice, and identity?
Speaker: The Reverend J. Bryan Hehir is the Parker
Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public
Life at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is
also the Secretary for Social Services and the President of Catholic
Charities in the Archdiocese of Boston. His research and writing focus
on ethics and foreign policy and the role of religion in world politics
and in American society.
Respondent: Marie Failinger is Professor of Law at
Hamline University School of Law and is editor-in chief of the Journal
of Law and Religion. She has also served on the editorial council of
the Journal of Lutheran Ethics.
Session 3: Faith Traditions and Public Discourse
What is the appropriate place of religion in the public and political discourse of a society marked by religious diversity and the separation of church and state?
Panel:
Melissa Rogers is Visiting Professor of Religion and Public Policy,
Wake Forest University Divinity School. She has served as Executive
Director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and general
counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs.
M. Cathleen Kaveny is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School. Her writing and teaching focuses on the relationship among theology, philosophy, and law. She is a columnist for Commonweal magazine.
Russell Pearce is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham University. He teaches, writes, and lectures in the field of professional responsibility, including the role of religion in a lawyer's work. He is the co-author of Religious Lawyering in a Liberal Democracy: A Challenge and an Invitation, and the author of The Jewish Lawyer's Question.
Asifa Quraishi is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin, where she teaches course in Islamic law and U.S. constitutional law. She is the author of “No Altars: An Introduction to Islamic Family Law in U.S. Courts,” in Islamic Family Law.
Margaret Steinfels, Co-director
Fordham Center on Religion and Culture
113 West 60th Street, Room 224
New York, NY 10023-7484
Phone: 212-636-7624
Fax: 212-636-7863
e: [email protected]
web: www.Fordham.edu/religculture
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Monday, September 19, 2005
Catholicism and American Politics
[From the September 23rd issue of COMMONWEAL. The author, David O’Brien, is Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross. He specializes in the history of American Catholicism.]
David O’Brien
Catholics are everywhere. John Roberts is likely to become the first Catholic Chief Justice of the Supreme Court since the Civil War, bringing the Court’s denominational lineup to four Catholics, two Protestants, two Jews, and a vacancy. The president’s team to win endorsement of the Roberts nomination is headed by Ed Gillespie, Catholic-vote hunter for the GOP in the last election, and enthusiastic Senate backers include a self-identified pillar of Catholic orthodoxy, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. When the fight gets going, we will see daily comments by Democratic Senators Kerry and Kennedy, Leahy, Biden, and Durbin, Catholics all. A few years ago a candidate’s religion would most likely not have come up in the confirmation process. Now we wonder what form “Catholic questions” will take.
Last year, in debate about the confirmation of a conservative Catholic for the Court of Appeals, Republican Senators accused Richard Durbin (Ill.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.) of being anti-Catholic when they questioned the nominee’s views on abortion. When Durbin in an early interview asked Roberts a question about their shared faith, another firestorm broke out. The intensity arises from the last election cycle, when the Vatican and some media-savvy bishops made the question of abortion a “litmus test” for Catholics in public life. Some bishops even threatened to withhold Communion from Catholic politicians who did not toe the line. A few even made that threat against presidential nominee John Kerry, fueling the unprecedented efforts of Republican strategists and conservative Catholic activists to win the votes of faithful Catholics. In November a crucial 5 percent of Catholic voters moved into the GOP column. Excited by their success, Karl Rove and his Catholic collaborators can hardly wait for a prochoice challenge to their impressive prolife nominee, John Roberts.
If some bishops don’t like this, they have no one to
blame but themselves. While the church speaks out regularly on many
important issues, it is unequivocal opposition to abortion that Rome
and its favorite American bishops have chosen to define American
Catholic political integrity, and no one in authority has challenged
them.
[To read on, click here.]
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