US sending troops to Poland

The Obama administration is sending ground troops to Poland in response to Russia's moves in Ukraine, Poland’s defense minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, tells The Washington Post.

The move, he said, was agreed to as part of an expansion of the NATO presence in the region.

The New York Times, meanwhile, said the troops would participate in small exercises in Estonia as well as Poland.

The Poland exercise, which is to be announced next week, involves one U.S. Army company — about 150 soldiers — and would last about two weeks. The Estonia exercise is similar, said a Western official who declined to be identified, the Times reports.

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Polish Bishops Oppose Dangerous "Gender" Ideology

In a Pastoral Letter from the Polish Bishops' Conference

Bishops attack dangerous "Gender" ideology and redefinition of marriage

The gender ideology is the product of many decades of ideological and cultural changes that are deeply rooted in Marxism and neo-Marxism endorsed by some feminist movements and the sexual revolution. This ideology promotes principles that are totally contrary to reality and an integral understanding of human nature. It maintains that biological sex is not socially significant and that cultural sex which humans can freely develop and determine irrespective of biological conditions is most important. According to this ideology, humans can freely determine whether they want to be men or women and freely choose their sexual orientation. This voluntary self-determination, not necessarily life-long, is to make the society accept the right to set up new types of families, for instance, families built on homosexual relations.

The danger of gender ideology lies in its very destructive character both for men, people contacts and social life as a whole. Humans unsure of their sexual identity are not capable of discovering and fulfilling tasks that they face in their marital, family social and professional lives. Attempts to form different types of relations de facto seriously weaken marriage as a community created by a man and a woman and the family built on marriage.

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John Paul II and Change in Poland

In a new documentary, Nine Days that Changed the World, Newt and Callista Gingrich, in partnership with Citizens United and Peace River Company, explore this claim.

The Polish trade union movement languished for years prior to June of 1979, attracting only modest popular support. Sixteen months after John Paul II’s nine day visit to Poland, and the 1980 Gdansk shipyard strike, the Solidarity movement became the first officially recognized free trade union in the Communist bloc, with over 10 million members.

What transpired during these nine days that so moved a nation to begin to free itself of its Communist shackles? Why did millions of Poles, almost one third of the entire nation, come to see the Pope during his public appearances? What was the nature of the Communist system in Poland that made John Paul II’s visit a liberating moment?

Nine Days that Changed the World answers these questions and presents the Pope’s historic trip to Poland as the cataclysmic event that transformed Poland and Eastern Europe.

Read more about this project here.