A Secular Rapper Calls American Pastors to Account

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You know we’re in trouble when a secular rapper urges pastors to get back to preaching that the Lord is a jealous God of “discipline and obedience.” As a recent article declared, “Chart-Topping Rapper Kendrick Lamar Is Preaching More Spiritual Truth Than Most of the Dead Churches In America.” So sad, but so true.

Lamar is a 29-year-old, Grammy Award-winning rapper, and his lyrics are typical, hardcore rap: filled with content, packed with protest, laced with profanity. Suffice it to say that he is not a pristine pure, born-again, Christian rapper. Yet he sees a gaping hole in many churches today, and it mirrors his experience as a boy.

A Perceived Imbalance

In an email to Hip Hop website DJ Booth he wrote,

I went to a local church some time ago, and it appalled me that the same program was in practice. A program that I seen as a kid the few times I was in service. Praise, dance. Worship. (Which is beautiful.) Pastor spewing the idea of someone’s season is approaching. The idea of hope.

He continued,

After being heavily in my studies these past few years, I’ve finally figured out why I left those services feeling spiritually unsatisfied as a child. I discovered more truth. But simple truth. Our God is a loving God. Yes. He’s a merciful God. Yes. But he’s even more so a God of DISCIPLE. OBEDIENCE. A JEALOUS God. …

And in words that mirror the words of Paul in Romans 11:22, which urge us to consider both the goodness and severity of God, he wrote, “So in conclusion, I feel it’s my calling to share the joy of God, but with exclamation, more so, the FEAR OF GOD. The balance. Knowing the power in what he can build, and also what he can destroy. At any given moment.”

Telling the Whole Truth

How ironic that a worldly rapper is more concerned to balance out his message than many a preacher in America. How ironic that someone whom the churches would damn in a moment (in fact, “Damn” is the name of his latest project) sees the imbalance in so many of our contemporary churches.

Today, in many of our churches, it’s all about making people feel good about themselves, all about the coming breakthrough (probably financial!), all about fulfilling our personal dreams.

But what about the biblical gospel? What about the fact that one day we’ll have to give account to God for our lives? What about the judgment that will come on the whole world? What about the reality that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)? What about the fact that Jesus saves us from our sins so that we will live the rest of our lives for Him?

I’m all for preaching hope and encouragement and love, but that is not the whole message. What happened to the rest of God’s holy Word?

A Quick-Fix Gospel

In my forthcoming book Saving a Sick America: A Prescription for Moral and Cultural Reformation, I devoted one chapter to the subject of “Restoring Thunder to Our Pulpits.”

In that chapter, I wrote,

Let the truth be told. There is very little thunder from our pulpits, very little preaching that creates an atmosphere of holy reverence (what the Bible calls ‘the fear of the Lord’), very little that challenges us and confronts us and stirs us and awakens us, very little that equips us to endure hardship or to be courageous or to confront the culture or to live a sacrificial life out of love for our neighbor.

Many of our leaders preach a toothless, pep-talk gospel that fits in perfectly with our convenience store, quick-fix Christianity, promising all kinds of benefits without any requirements. What a deal! Who could refuse it? No wonder we are producing consumers rather than disciples. What else can we expect when we so studiously bypass the cross in so much of our preaching? What else can we expect when we preach God the Genie rather than God the Judge?

Do you affirm these words?

‘The Pulpit is Responsible’

At the beginning of the chapter, I quoted from an 1873 sermon from Charles Finney. He said,

Brethren, our preaching will bear its legitimate fruits. If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree. If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discrimination, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it. Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart, and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation.

Although the pulpit was more influential in his day than in ours, I believe that what he said remains largely true. If America is in serious moral and spiritual decline, many of our preachers are partly to blame.

I say it’s time that we restore thunder to our pulpits. A chart-topping, secular rapper says, “Please do!” (For more from the author of “A Secular Rapper Calls American Pastors to Account” please click HERE)

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Fraternity, 18 Members Charged in Penn State Hazing Death

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Eighteen Penn State fraternity brothers have been charged with crimes ranging up to involuntary manslaughter in the death of a pledge who authorities say repeatedly fell down a flight of stairs after he and others were made to run a gantlet of drinking stations guzzling vodka, beer and wine.

Beta Theta Pi members resisted getting help for 19-year-old Timothy Piazza, causing him to suffer for hours and possibly making his injuries worse, a prosecutor said Friday in announcing the results of a grand jury investigation . . .

Eight of the fraternity brothers and the chapter were charged with involuntary manslaughter. Other charges include aggravated and simple assault, evidence tampering, alcohol-related violations and hazing. (Read more from “Fraternity, 18 Members Charged in Penn State Hazing Death” HERE)

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Turning ‘Extra’ Embryos Into Jewelry: We Must Stop Manufacturing Children

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I could not swallow the horror I felt as I read this story. Thanks to a jewelry company called Baby Bee Hummingbirds, a couple in Australia has turned their seven “extra” embryos conceived through IVF into a necklace. Yes, you heard me. The mother is wearing her babies around her neck.

Most people do not understand why the Catholic Church refuses to approve the practice of in-vitro fertilization, or any form of artificial insemination, or any method of conception at all apart from sexual intercourse. The Church teaches that all such means of conception are morally wrong. The reasons are profound, thoughtful and humble. If you’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth, read this, especially CCC 2375 – 2378.

But allow me to say it succinctly this way: What you manufacture, you own. It belongs to you, and you call the shots with authority. What you manufacture, you can control.

THAT is precisely why it is morally wrong to manufacture children. Many people will object to the word “manufacture” here, but it’s the only accurate term. Babies are ordered up and created in a lab, purchased and paid for by adults who have commissioned their creation. That’s manufacturing.

Babies are not ours to control. Human life is not ours to manipulate in that way. We have no right to create life, keep it in some suspended animation, and then decide to destroy it whenever it suits us. We are not God.

We do not own our children. We have no claim on their lives. It is not for us to decide whether they live or die and when. The Lord God is the giver and creator of life. We can only receive our children as gifts. No one can demand a gift, or claim any right to receive a gift.

Assuming the Prerogative of God

It is proper and good for a husband and wife to desire children, since that is precisely the purpose of marriage. Children are the gift and fruit of marriage; the visible result of married love as God intended. I don’t minimize the heartache and pain of couples who are unable to naturally conceive a child. Such infertility is a heavy cross to bear.

Even so, we are not justified in using any means necessary to create a child. Our longing is not a free pass to assume for ourselves the prerogative of God.

But, you may say, God has blessed our modern medicine with such amazing capabilities! How could it be wrong to avail ourselves of what modern medicine can do?

Because God has ordained marital intercourse as the method and means of procreation. It should be evident by now that bad things result when we separate sex from babies. When we believe we have the right and authority to decide when a child is conceived, how a child is conceived, and even whether or not that conceived child gets to keep living, we have grievously sinned.

We are no longer seeing the child as a human person; a gift from God. Rather, we have turned the child into a thing we can manipulate according to our own desires. We take the child as our right to have or not have as we wish. We demand new life, and destroy new life, when it pleases us.

Where’s the Humanity?

This couple in Australia said that donating those embryos “was not an option.” Why not? Why was life not an option? Seven human beings were denied the chance to live, after having been manufactured at their parents’ request, and are now mummified and encapsulated in a crystal heart on a chain. They’ve been turned into an ornament. An adornment. A thing.

See what I mean? What you manufacture, you own. You control. By that thinking, those babies had no inherent, inviolable right to live if their parents did not wish to have them.

The article also says the couple felt “the annual storage fee was an added financial strain, and disposing of them unimaginable.” We’ve made them, but now it’s just too expensive to keep them. So the babies must go away.

I am glad that “disposing of them” was unimaginable. Just typing the phrase “disposing of them” makes me want to vomit. But really, are those seven babies any less dead and disposed of now, hanging around their mother’s neck as an accessory? No, they weren’t rinsed down the drain. But their humanity was not respected.

Babies are Not a Commodity

We cannot afford to be lulled by sentimentalism. This is not honoring of human life. But this sort of thing will become more and more popular, and more people will celebrate this as a beautiful memorial, a truly special way to “keep” those precious babies you just couldn’t let live but didn’t want to “dispose of.”

I’m sorry, but it isn’t beautiful at all. It’s macabre. And I’ll say it — it’s depraved.

We simply must find the courage to recognize how wrong we are to treat human life this way. We may believe our intentions are good and right, but our actions are not justified. We keep pushing the envelope farther and farther, awarding to ourselves more and more power, more and more “rights,” yet we fail to recognize how we dehumanize our children. Pride is urging us to make ourselves like gods, and modern medicine cheers us on.

Just because we can do something, it does not follow that we ought to do it, or that we have any right to do it. Nowhere is this truth more immovable than as it applies to human life. Babies are not a commodity, and we have no right to manufacture them at will. No one — absolutely no one — has any right to a child.

The very same reasoning that approves of IVF condones abortion. They are two sides of the same coin. That will be a bitter pill for many to swallow, and I don’t say that viciously. But we must honestly confront the mess we’ve made.

There should never be any such thing as an “extra” embryo. (For more from the author of “Turning ‘Extra’ Embryos Into Jewelry: We Must Stop Manufacturing Children” please click HERE)

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Catholic School Hit for Canceling LGBT Play for 5-Year-Olds

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LGBT Canadians are furious after a Catholic school district canceled performances of a play about gender identity — meant for children as young as 5 years old.

“I fear these cancellations may be based on misinformation, grown out of fear, intolerance, transphobia, homophobia and misogyny,” wrote Jessica Carmichael, the artistic director of the Carousel Playhouse.

The playhouse had been scheduled to perform a play called, Boys, Girls and Other Mythological Creatures. The show had already been booked in five elementary schools in the Niagara Catholic School District.

The play features an 8-year-old boy who dresses as a girl and questions his gender, The Globe and Mail reports . . .

It turns out the Canadian government believes it’s appropriate to discuss transgenderism with small children — without their parents being present. I’m surprised the actors didn’t try to give the kids condoms. (Read more from “Catholic School Hit for Canceling LGBT Play for 5-Year-Olds” HERE)

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Andra Merritt Answers Felony Charges for Secretly Recording Planned Parenthood Execs

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A pro-life hero for exposing Planned Parenthood’s collusion in the baby-parts industry, Sandra Merritt appeared in criminal court Wednesday. Last month California brought a 15-count felony charge against her.

Merritt works with David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress. Posing as employees of a fake company and sing fake names and IDs, they went to a conference with abortion providers in 2014 and met with Planned Parenthood executives. They secretly recorded 14 people.

Some videos show Planned Parenthood employees describing late-term abortion methods. Others show executives haggling over compensation for fetal tissue. The conversations appear in multiple videos released since 2015.

The Charges

California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra charged them in March. He brought one charge for each of the 14 people filmed. The 15th is for conspiring to invade privacy.

Becerra is a former Democratic congressman. He took the position when former Attorney General Kamala Harris left for the U.S. Senate this year. Harris began investigating Merritt and Daleiden in 2015. She had taken donations from Planned Parenthood.

California law makes it illegal to record someone without their knowledge when they reasonably expect privacy. However, other journalists have not been charged for similar investigative work in California.

An animal rights group filmed at California poultry farms in 2014 and 2015, National Review notes. It exposed mistreatment of ducks and chickens. State authorities didn’t charge the group. They did investigate the farms.

This isn’t the first time that Merritt and Daleiden have been charged for their undercover work. A Texas grand jury charged them with felonies for using fake identification. The charges were dismissed last year.

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood claims it does nothing wrong. In March, it called the undercover videos “fraudulent.”

The organization has also claimed that the videos were “deceptively edited.” However, as LifeSiteNews noted, they released their full recordings. An independent analysis showed that the “Planned Parenthood executives caught on video clearly say what they said.”

Merritt and Daleiden’s undercover work sparked investigations of Planned Parenthood in several states. They’ve had effect.

Even though no states brought charges against Planned Parenthood, The Federalist noted, Planned Parenthood stopped receiving money for aborted fetal tissue. Two medical companies were recently charged with illegally profiting from fetal tissue. The companies are “top partners” of Planned Parenthood, The Free Beacon reported.

Committees in both the U.S. House and Senate have investigated Planned Parenthood for over a year. Rep. Diane Black of the House panel said the investigation “laid bare the grisly reality” that abortionists are “driven by profit.”

WTVB reports that Merritt and Daleiden will appear before a California court again on June 8. Liberty Counsel is seeking dismissal of the charges. (For more from the author of “Andra Merritt Answers Felony Charges for Secretly Recording Planned Parenthood Execs” please click HERE)

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Bill Allowing Adopting Agencies to Refuse Gay Couples Becomes Law

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Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a bill on Wednesday that would allow adoption agencies in the state to turn away gay couples who want to adopt a child. The law purports to support religious freedom by not forcing faith-based organizations to potentially close down or face penalties as a result of acting in accordance with religious beliefs. Like many religious freedom bills that have been passed in various states, House Bill 24‘s language frames the issue as preventing discrimination against religious people or institutions.

“This bill would prohibit the state from discriminating against child placing agencies on the basis that the provider declines to provide a child placement that conflicts with the religious beliefs of the provider,” the text of the bill says.

“The bill is not to discriminate against anyone,” Rep. Rich Wingo, who sponsored the bill, said to AL.com. “Nowhere in the bill does it say anything like that or lead you to believe that.” (Read more from “Bill Allowing Adopting Agencies to Refuse Gay Couples Becomes Law” HERE)

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Obama’s Sex Secrets Laid Bare

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The sex secrets of the young Barack Obama have been revealed in an authoritative new biography of the ex-president.

Obama slept with his girlfriend Genevieve Cook on their first date, before she wrote him a poem about their ‘f***ing’ and called their sex ‘passionate’, the book about the former president reveals . . .

Obama also considered a gay relationship while at college, twice proposed to another white girlfriend, and cheated on Michelle with his ex during the first year of their relationship.

His past is revealed in the 1,078-page biography Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, to be published on May 9.

Obama, a new Columbia graduate who was working for a firm that prepared financial reports at the time, made dinner for Cook at his apartment in Manhattan two weeks after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party and handing her his phone number. (Read more from “Obama’s Sex Secrets Laid Bare” HERE)

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The Lesbian Porn Star Who Claims to Be an Evangelical Christian

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I’m not going to mention her name, nor will I link to her story. The last thing I want to do is point a struggling reader to a website that might draw him or her into temptation. Suffice it to say that the woman in question is reputed to be a well-known porn star in her home country (which is not America).

She was being interviewed on an X-rated TV show when she explained that she had an “evangelical faith” and was a “good person at heart.”

The host of the show was surprised by her comments, saying to her, “But how do you relate that to your work because people believe a porno actress cannot be evangelical and cannot be religious?”

God Sees Our Hearts — Differently Than We Do

That’s certainly a fair question. How, pray tell, do you reconcile having sex with multiple partners on camera with being a person of evangelical faith? How do you reconcile choosing to be an object of lust to thousands of viewers with being a follower of Jesus?

Doesn’t the Bible condemn adultery and fornication? Doesn’t Jesus say that to lust after a woman is to commit adultery with her in his heart? Doesn’t He also pronounce judgment on people who lead others into sin?

The porn star responded: “People are very judgmental. They try to make you conform in a way they think an evangelical should be because society says so.”

What? It’s being judgmental to say you can’t commit sexual immorality for a living and serve God at the same time? It’s society, rather than Scripture, that says that porn movies are wrong? The Lord has no issue with videos that degrade women, with videos that celebrate perversion, with videos that incite lust?

Not according to this young star. “I think God sees inside our hearts,” she said. “He judges the good and the bad things you do, and I do good things for people.”

Yes, He sees our hearts, and He sees this woman as a poor lost soul in need of a Savior. She might be a very sweet person. She might do lots of good things for others. But she is a sinner in need of forgiveness, and what she does for a living is ugly is God’s sight.

“I’m a good person at heart and that’s what matters,” she said.

Her holy Creator differs with her assessment. And this is where all of us can learn a lesson. We can deceive ourselves as easily as we can deceive others. We may not be porn stars, but some of us are porn addicts. Yet, we say, “God sees my heart, and He knows I’m a good person.”

Right in One’s Own Eyes

Before I was a believer in Jesus, I was a heavy drug user to the point of shooting heroin at the age of 15. I stole drugs from a doctor’s office. I even stole money from my own father. I had a terrible temper and would tear people up with my words. And I indulged the flesh every way I could.

Yet when my best friends came to faith and talked to me about the Lord, I said to myself, “If there really is a God, He knows I’m a good person. He knows if I see a homeless man on the streets, I’ll give him some change. If I see an old woman entering a building, I’ll open the door for her.”

What deception. That’s why the Scriptures say that every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the hearts (Prov 16:2).

Getting back to this porn star, she explained that “my family don’t have a clue about what I do for a living. I haven’t told them, but to be honest, I really don’t care if they find out.”

In fact, her being a porn star isn’t the big issue to her churchgoing family. They’re upset because she divorced her husband and now lives with a woman.

She said, “My family was really shocked when they found out. It took them a while to accept because their evangelical beliefs and prejudice against gay relationships made it hard for them to come to terms with my decision.”

So, the plot thickens. Not only is a she a porn star. She’s in a sexual relationship with another woman. She said, “I’m prepared to live with anyone so long as they make me happy, and that could include finding love with a transsexual.”

Who cares about the will of God? This is what you call living for self. Yet for this deluded young woman, it’s all fine with the Lord.

As a teenager, she realized how much she enjoyed sex, especially when others were watching. “I love my work,” she said, “and I want people to appreciate and respect what I do. It’s a job where I make good money and I am successful. … I still have a normal life outside and when I get the chance, I go to church with a Bible in my hand.”

Are We Deceived?

As the old saying goes, deception is very deceiving.

But perhaps there’s one more lesson to learn.

There are plenty of churches in America (and other nations) where you can be a porn star (or alcoholic or wife-beater or thief) and sit comfortably through sermon after sermon without the slightest feeling of conviction. You’ll hear a pep-talk gospel or a feel-good gospel or a self-help gospel — it’s all about me! — without hearing a call to turn from sin.

And carrying a Bible in your hand without taking the words of that sacred text to heart will do you no good at all.

Could it be, then, that it’s not just this porn star who is deceived? Could some of us be deceived as well? Could it be that some of us who are the quickest to condemn this lost young woman are the biggest hypocrites of all?

I pray for the repentance of this young, deluded soul. But I pray for our repentance as well. It’s time we undeceive ourselves. Attending church services, Bible in hand, is no substitute for a holy life. (For more from the author of “The Lesbian Porn Star Who Claims to Be an Evangelical Christian” please click HERE)

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Conservatives Beware: Ivanka’s Leftism Is on the Rise

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There was a moment during the presidential campaign when then-candidate Donald Trump made conservative jaws drop as he defended Planned Parenthood on national TV during a Republican primary debate.

“Millions of millions of women — cervical cancer, breast cancer — are helped by Planned Parenthood,” Trump said more than a year ago on the CNN debate stage in Houston. “I would defund it because I’m pro-life, but millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood.”

We now know, according to a New York Times interview, it was the president’s daughter, Ivanka, who convinced him to spare those kind words for the organ harvesters at Planned Parenthood.

Now off the campaign trail and in the White House, Ivanka Trump is getting a grip on government to gain greater influence with the president of the United States.

In the Times interview, Ivanka said she is “still at the early stages of learning how everything works.”

“But I know enough now to be a much more proactive voice inside the White House,” she said. She’s proactively pushing the administration left.

According to the Times, Ivanka’s liberal influence in the White House is expanding. She meets with top administration officials and even reviews President Trump’s executive orders before they are signed.

The two trade thoughts from morning until late at night, according to aides. Even though she has no government or policy experience, she plans to review some executive orders before they are signed, according to White House officials. She calls cabinet officials on issues she is interested in, recently asking the United Nations ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, about getting humanitarian aid into Syria. She set up a weekly meeting with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary.

Ivanka, described by the Times as a “moderating force” in the White House, intends to push the administration left on climate change, immigration law enforcement, and refugee policy. She said in the interview that she has no “hidden agenda.” That’s true, as her liberal agenda in the White House is plain for all to see.

She’s already said this week that the United States may need to admit more Syrian refugees into the country. She also wants to “go beyond her father’s campaign pledge” and include both mothers and fathers in the administration’s proposal for a paid maternity leave entitlement. Early in the administration, Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner successfully defeated an executive order on religious freedom. Ivanka Trump has been a consistent voice in opposition to conservative policies.

All the while, she has held secret meetings with liberal special interest groups – including Planned Parenthood – for their input on policy coming from the White House. And she gets alone time with the president to pitch those liberal ideas.

“A lot of their real interactions happen when it’s just the two of them,” Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner told the Times. Ivanka reportedly will tell other members of the president’s staff “I need 10 minutes alone with my father” when she wants to change his mind. Though not always successful, by her own admission she has “modified” some of the president’s positions.

“I’ll go to the mat on certain issues and I may still lose those,” Ivanka said. “But maybe along the way I’ve modified a position just slightly. And that’s just great.”

As Congress prepares to pass an omnibus spending bill that does not include President Trump’s campaign priorities – cutting government spending, funding the border wall, and defunding Planned Parenthood – conservatives may wonder why President Trump is not fighting harder for his priorities. Are these positions that Ivanka Trump has “modified”?

Ivanka’s outsized influence with the president speaks to the need for conservative voices in the White House. If the president continues to yield to his daughter’s liberalism, he will fail. (For more from the author of “Conservatives Beware: Ivanka’s Leftism Is on the Rise” please click HERE)

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Kansas City Catholics Banish Girl Scouts and Their Cookies

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There’s a new commandment for Catholics: Thou Shall Not Eat Tagalongs.

The Archdiocese of Kansas City recently announced they are severing ties with the Girl Scouts. And that means no more Girl Scout cookies, too. Say goodbye to Thin Mints and Do-Si-Do’s.

The Archdiocese says Girl Scouts is no longer a compatible partner when it comes to issues like virtue and values.

The Washington Post reports that Catholics fear the Girl Scouts’ programs and materials are “reflective of many of the troubling trends in our secular culture,” and that the organization is “no longer a compatible partner in helping us form young women with the virtues and values of the Gospel.”

The Archdiocese said some of the material used in the past has been offensive, disturbing and age-inappropriate. (Read more from “Kansas City Catholics Banish Girl Scouts and Their Cookies” HERE)

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