By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

The mother of a third grade girl attending Mill Plain Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington is demanding changes in a school room program where students are required to pay to use the bathroom. The program was to be a lesson in money management where students received and worked for Monopoly Money to buy items in the classroom but the teacher required a payment of M$50.00 in order to use the bathroom.

Jasmine Al-Ayadhi told reporters her nine year old daughter, Reem, did not want to pay to use the bathroom and ultimately had an accident, causing her both discomfort and having to endure teasing by other children. In agreeing with the need to teach children the value of money Jasmine said, “Work for your money, to earn it, to buy like a little toy or a little squirt gun or a little ball. When it…

In the area of human sciences, laws of genetics and laws of behavioral interactions as well as rich descriptions of the processes that lead to sickness and to health are accepted by all as incontrovertible givens. Humanity conforms and acquiesces with nary a murmur or complaint. And yet with respect to moral values, the spiritual life, and liturgical practices, people feel that it is permissible, perhaps even desirable, to adjust and even discard the givens of faith, the givens of revelation, and even the givens of sin and holiness. It is as though the claims of science have such a hold on us that the claims of history and tradition may seem to be too much. And yet, the givens of faith can free the human spirit and open up horizons that scientific causality could never imagine.

That is why the desire to re-fashion Christian teaching or find a “new…