By Michael Terheyden

In a shocking turn of events on November 11, 2011, Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois announced that it intends to split from the Belleville diocese and offer adoptions and foster-care services to homosexuals and unmarried heterosexual couples in direct opposition to Church teaching.

NOXVILLE, TN (Catholic Online) – In a previous article titled "Catholic Charities Forced to Shut Down Services around the Country," I informed readers about the state of Illinois using the homosexual agenda to attack Catholic Charities. Now, one of the worst developments that could happen has happened: Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois has succumbed to the pressure of the secular state and its homosexual agenda and intends to split from the Diocese of Belleville.

It began with the implementation of the "Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act," which went into effect this past summer in Illinois. This law allows homosexuals and unmarried heterosexual couples to adopt children and become foster parents under the guise of tolerance. However, the law has absolutely nothing to do with tolerance or religious freedom. We know this because the state could easily allow secular and religious adoption and foster-care programs to coexist, but it does not want to. Instead, the state is forcing all adoption agencies operating in Illinois to place children into these promiscuous relationships or shut down. 

Consequently, Catholic Charities from three Illinois dioceses–Springfield, Joliet and Peoria–filed a lawsuit against the state. Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois in the Belleville diocese later joined the suit. However, state officials found a way to thwart the lawsuit by cancelling Catholic Charities’ 40-year contract to provide services in Illinois, thus rendering the suit moot. This forced Bishops in three of the Illinois dioceses to drop their lawsuit against the state and shut down their adoption and foster-care programs. 

The Catholic Church supports adult stem cell research and opposes embryonic stem cell research. Human embryonic stem cell research is always deadly. A human embryo is not distinct in kind from a human being, but a human being at an early stage of development. "Extracting" their stem cells is a form of embryonic execution. Efforts to promote the tired old "Catholic Church is against science" argument is perpetuated by those who do not like the Catholic Church’s uncompromising defense of the dignity of all human life, at every age and stage.

VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) – Last week the Pontifical Council for Culture – in collaboration with NeoStem, Inc. and its educational foundation – cosponsored an important conference entitled "Adult Stem Cells: Science and the Future of Man and Culture." The Pontifical Council is involved in a 5-year, $1 million partnership with NeoStem, Inc. to promote research involving adult stem cells and their potential use in medical treatments.
 

Adult Stem Cell research is fully supported by the Catholic Church. Vatican Information Services reported last June that " international biopharmaceutical company NeoStem Inc. and the Pontifical Council for Culture have announced a joint initiative between their charitable organizations to expand research and raise awareness of adult stem cell therapies.

"NeoStem’s Stem for Life Foundation, formed to create awareness about the promise of adult stem cells to treat disease, and the pontifical council’s STOQ Foundation (Science Theology and the Ontological Quest), will work to advance research on adult stem cells, to explore their clinical applicability in the field of regenerative medicine, and the cultural relevance of such research especially with its impact on theological and ethical issues".

The Pontifical Council for Culture through its charitable foundation STOQ International made an economic commitment of one million dollars to this collaboration with NeoStem, an international biopharmaceutical company with operations in the US and China.

Warren Buffett, who said he was unable to predict the prospects for Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc., is betting more than $10 billion that International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) is a different kind of technology firm.

Buffett previously focused the stock portfolio at his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) on consumer brands like Coca-Cola Inc. and financial firms like Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), saying he was able to understand their business plans. The strategy meant he missed the rally in technology companies like Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) and Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) and then their subsequent slumps.

Buffett invested $10.5 billion to $10.7 billion in IBM, betting on the company’s ability to maintain its market dominance in computer services and expand outside the U.S. Armonk, New York-based IBM gained 19 percent in the first nine months of the year as global stock markets plunged.

“Yes, they’re a tech company, but they will not have the wild swings that we’ve seen throughout history, like a RIM or a Nokia where they catapult up but then the technology shifts against them and they plummet,” said Louis Miscioscia, a Collins Stewart LLC analyst in Boston with a “buy” rating on the stock.

Before making the investment, Berkshire surveyed its own information-technology departments to see how they worked with suppliers and found many tended to stick with IBM, Buffett said today on CNBC.

“I probably read the annual report of IBM every year for 50 years,” he said. “I don’t think that there’s any company that I can think of, big company, that’s done a better job of laying out where they’re going to go and then having gone there.”

John Opel didn’t want to run a hardware store after college and the great irony (pun intended) is that he ended up running IBM, the largest data processing hardware company in the world at the peak of its mainframe and midrange prowess.

Opel, who was 86, died on November 3. He was IBM’s fifth CEO and without a doubt one of its better ones. Ginni Rometty, who will be IBM’s ninth CEO when she takes over on January 1, has several sets of big shoes to fill. (Well, the assumption is that Lou Gerstner’s were not that big physically, but virtually they were pretty big.) And as current and soon-to-be-retiring IBM CEO Sam Palmisano said, he believes Rometty is ready for the job and can do it, and there seems to be little doubt on anyone’s mind, after a few weeks, that she can.

Open grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri, where his father ran a hardware store. He got a BA in English at Westminster College in that state, fought in the Pacific Theater during World War II, and finished up his MBA at the University of Chicago in 1949. He had one job offer editing economic textbooks–the UoC is a hotbed for economics today, and was starting its rise back then–and for all we know, Opel might have gone on to be an economist had he taken that job. The other offer he had was from his dad, running the hardware biz.