Archbishops Nienstedt and Chaput defend the nefarious CCHD

We're surprised that Archbishop Nienstedt is openly supporting this intitiative. He must have been dragooned into doing so. When we asked a priest recently what he thought of it, he gave a very cautious answer. It seems that the Bishops are very solicitous of their programs which promote heresy, homosexuality, waste of government funds and socialism.


Minneapolis, Minn., Nov 21, 2009 / 04:50 am (CNA).- Responding to concerns about the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), Archbishop John Nienstedt and Archbishop Charles J. Chaput have said the CCHD still does “much good,” despite several “disturbing” incidents and “mistakes” in which the campaign funded groups that worked against Catholic teachings.

In his Nov. 19 column Archbishop Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis called attention to the collection for the CCHD on the weekend of Nov. 21-22.

He said the Campaign aims to “break the cycle of poverty” for 40 million people in the U.S. by funding local “self-help, anti-poverty” organizations. Many of these are not under the auspices of the Church, but agree to follow guidelines which prevent them from violating Catholic teachings, the archbishop explained.

He then noted recent controversies in which the CCHD had to stop funding for three projects that violated those guidelines. He said CCHD funding was “immediately cut off” when violations were made known.

As an example, he referred to an immigrant workers’ rights group that began advocating against California’s Proposition 8 and for same-sex “marriage.” Such a position, Archbishop Nienstedt said, “obviously has nothing to do with the rights of immigrants.”

Link to... CNS

Results of study on Religious Orders is out.

The study by Brother Bednarczyk finds that religious orders have declined steeply in the past years since the Vatican Council. Yet there is success reported by a small but influential segment of those who have maintained a traditional response with respect to disciplines and teachings.

He noted that religious organisations with the most success in attracting new members have a more traditional style of religious life, in which members live in community, participate in daily Eucharist, pray the Divine Office and engage in devotional practices together. They also are more likely to wear a religious habit.

Link to article at... totalcatholic.com.

Archbishop Nienstedt dismisses USCCB Sex-Abuse Study

Archbishop Nienstedt says that he wouldn't put too much credence in the (Soviet?) USCCB 2 Million Dollar Sex-Abuse Study, but one has to wonder about David Clohessy of SNAP who is suggesting that the problem isn't seated in the problem with homosexuals in the first place. Everyone has an agenda, and sometimes it's only as long as the nose.

We were treated to a weird statement, however, from +Sean of Boston who said something about teasing the study. How about admitting that you got rooked and think about getting rid of the people who authorized people essentially hostile to the Church to make the study in the first place? Isn't this a bit like sending seminarians to hostile, atheistic psychologists to weigh the worthiness of their vocations? Why, oh why, won't the Bishops trust the counsels of Tradition in these matters. They worked for the Dominicans of old.

Link to related article...

Socialist Snakeoil in the CCHD

Capital Research Center

That’s not quite the way I see CCHD. The charity only reluctantly cut off ACORN last year and continues to fund the equally radical community organizing group Industrial Areas Foundation that was founded by Saul Alinsky himself. It also funds PICO, DART, and the Gamaliel Foundation.

The most noteworthy thing about this is the name Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton's mentor, who was one of the intellectual lights behind Cultural Marxism in the United States. Notworthy in all of this is the Bishop's tacit support for Marxist organizations that talk a good game about charity and fishing, are actually engaged in destablilizing what's best in the Republic and turning the Church into a government controlled Bureaucracy.

Link to CRC...

Priest Criticizes USCCB Study and the USCCB

The Post-Standard
November 19, 2009, 7:10AM
In today's Post-Standard, a Roman Catholic priest criticizes bishops' handling of reported sexual abuse by priests.

To the Editor:
As a Roman Catholic priest in good standing, I find myself in the midst of a great dilemma. Of which should I be more ashamed? The fact that less than 3 per cent of my priest brothers have been credibly accused of the sexual abuse of minors? Or the fact that 97 percent of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops seem to be in a state of invincible denial?

The assertion that “homosexuality is no factor in abusive priests” (Post-Standard, Associated Press, Nov. 18) is so utterly absurd as to defy rational credibility. Fact: Ninety-five percent of all reported cases of sexual abuse by priests involved the homosexual predation of teenage boys! What was the bishops’ response as this crisis was festering for more than 50 years? Instead of reaching out in a pastorally responsible and sensitive manner to the victims and their parents, they called in their attorneys to protect their assets.

This adversarial relationship that the bishops themselves created exacerbated the problem to the point where it became completely unmanageable. They have destroyed the morale of many good and holy priests and have alienated the faithful to the point where no one now living will ever see the healing of the injuries caused by this unspeakable abuse of power.

Memo to bishops: “Denial” is not the name of a river in Egypt!

Rev. Eric K. Harer
Constantia

USCCB does not find that there is Intelligent Life at Commonweal

The USCCB is still ignoring the problem. In a usual pattern of deception, they seem bent on ignoring reality and their own canon law. By all appearances, they will most likely continue to ordain homosexuals in large numbers despite the danger they pose to the purity of boy chilren.

A preliminary report commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on the roots of the clergy sex-abuse scandal found no evidence that gay priests were more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children, the study’s lead authors said yesterday.

First their title dishonestly implies that the USCCB states that "Homosexuality is not linked to sex-abuse, rather it's the other way around. Then another journalist steps in and sights a spurious study with some poorly reasoned arguments.

The full $2 million study by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice won’t be completed until the end of 2010. But the authors said their evidence to date found no data indicating that homosexuality was a predictor of abuse.

It's still amazing that the USCCB spent all that money to tell us that sodomites and criminality were at the heart of the problem.

UPDATE: Longer analysis by David Gibson over at Politics Daily.

“What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse,” said Margaret Smith, a researcher from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, which is conducting an independent study of sexual abuse in the priesthood from 1950 up to 2002. “At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and an increased likelihood of sexual abuse.” [The Soviet Union made all kinds of "scientific" studies like this]

A second researcher, Karen Terry, also cautioned the bishops against making a correlation between homosexuality in the priesthood and the high incidence of abuse by priests against boys rather than girls — a ratio found to be about 80-20. [It's actually more than that]

“It’s important to separate the sexual identity and the behavior,” [But why?] Terry said. “Someone can commit sexual acts that might be of a homosexual nature but not have a homosexual identity.” [This is a false distinction and we don't in any case know what Terry means. Based on her special pleading, I doubt that it's very well defined.] Terry said factors such as greater access to boys is one reason for the skewed ratio. [Not really, priests have more freedom, and less accountability than average workers and can go anywhere they want. Fact of the matter is that they don't go after girls because most of them are homosexuals] Smith also raised the analogy of prison populations where homosexual behavior is common even though the prisoners are not necessarily homosexuals, or cultures where men are rigidly segregated from women until adulthood, and homosexual activity is accepted and then ceases after marriage. [Still reaching for an excuse. She's like he guardian of an alcoholic child who refuses to acknowledge reality.]

(…)

When asked by a bishop at Tuesday’s meeting whether homosexuality should be a factor in excluding men from the seminary, Smith responded, “If that exclusion were based on the fact that that person would be more probable than any other candidate to abuse, we do not find that at this time.”

Read at ... Commonweal.

Cloudy, USCCB Study on Clerical Sex Abuse

An impressionistic but very extensive and expensive study indicates that the abuse of [homosexual] clergy dropped off after 1985 and that it was most prevalent beginning with the Age of the Big Baby Boomer. It indirectly points the finger at that popular post-war generation, but shouldn't it also include "homosexuals"?

It's unclear why the Bishops had to spend all of this money to determine what the problem was. Referring to the historical nature of the problem, they would have disclosed that it was not foreign to the Middle Ages or the Ancient World and was often seated, along with homosexuality, in the actual practice of Witchcraft and the consequent diabolism or insanity, if you wish. The methods for dealing with these individuals, who in some cases murdered and raped children, as what the case with the a friend and companion of Joan of Arc, Baron Gilles de Rais and his friends, was burning at the stake.

Would that the Bishops would spend more time being environmentally as well as economically conscious and spare us the time of moving such individuals from parish to parish to escape the long arm of the law by simply handing them over to the secular arm for due punishment after an admissible ecclesiastical trial.

Strangely, the report also offers a solution, in terms of formation, related to a mysterious "human formation preparation". It sounds like something that might have caused the problem in the first place.

We don't know, but perhaps if they spent as much time affirming the truths of the Catholic Faith as they did avoiding it out of what, embarrassment (?), they might have an easier time helping people understand whether or not they're useful in the first place.

Link to spero article...

Don't support the Catholic Campaign for Human Development

California Daily

Editor: The following announcement comes from the website www.reformcchdnow.com.

Every year on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, many Catholic parishes take up a second collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

Recognize that organization? If you don’t, you should. Here’s why:

Until 2008, the campaign had been funding ACORN for several years, giving over $7 million to the corrupt organization. The same organization that is being investigated for voter fraud, embezzlement, and other wrongdoing was recently caught in undercover videos in recent months helping a pimp and prostitute set up a business and traffic underage girls for prostitution.

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Cardinal George advocates strong Leadership

"Your submission to your bishop, who is in the place of Jesus Christ, shows me that you are not living as men usually do but in the manner of Jesus himself," Antioch wrote in a citation noted by Cardinal George.

That elevated view of the bishop's authority guided George's remarks. For example, he made it clear that even the recent years of crisis would not cow the bishops in their effort to reassert their authority and relevance.

This is good news that he wishes to affirm the role of Bishop quoting St. Ignatius of Antioch, but what does it mean? He makes it clear that he will not only attempt to quell the progressive voices, but also those that are more Ultramontane and Traditionalist. How often has anyone heard the familiar cliche about turning back the clock?

"There are some who would like to trap the church in historical events of ages long past, and there are others who would keep the bishops permanently imprisoned in the clerical sexual abuse scandal of recent years," George said. "The proper response to a crisis of governance, however, is not no governance but effective governance."

If Bishops were more about teaching the Catholic Faith rather than engaging in Inter-faith and social justice, they would have an easier time asserting their authority when it comes to those dissident liberal groups who undermine the Bishop's authority not infrequently and seem to feed at the trough of social justice and religious indifferentism. If Catholics are ignorant of their Faith, they are so because American Bishops have worked so hard in the past to minimize those things, like the authority of Bishops, in favor of liberal ideas like false ecumenism, religious liberty and indifferentism.

As it is, they are "prisoners of the sexual abuse scandal" because they recruited wicked men and women to run their schools, parishes and poor relief programs. Cardinal George still seems to have a problem with this himself. Despite talking tough about dealing with the problem, the Cardinal didn't follow through as this NPR report will indicate.

He also housed a priest from Delaware who had these problems and denied knowing anything about the man's problems and is accused of dishonesty by Justice Anne M. Burke of Illinois at NPR.

San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer, chairman of the committee on Catholic media, told reporters after Monday's opening session that in recent years the political and media landscape has sprouted so many organizations and websites and lobbies using the Catholic label -- and advocating competing agendas -- that churchgoers are confused.

"Catholics will approach us, and approach their pastors in their church, and ask us, 'Well, I hear this outfit is called Catholic and it says this and another says this and another one something else. Can they all be Catholic and disagree so vehemently with each other?' That does challenge us to makes sense of it and to speak as bishops," said Niederauer, who is widely regarded as a media-savvy prelate with a moderate temperament.

This confusion is in no small part the responsibility of Bishops like Niederauer whose glowing admiration for the film "Brokeback Mountain" was evident, but he did after all, apologize for giving Holy Communion to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at Mass. All of this wouldn't have been possible without all of those "outfits" that reported the event on the internet. One wonders if anything would have been done at all if the story had only been aired in the centenarian publication, The Wanderer.


Link to article...

Catholic Church pushes Bill in House, Chapels.

Abortion rights supporters say that Bishops don't speak for the majority of Catholics, but this article says that 68% of Catholic actually support the Stupak Amendment. The author of the following article says that the US Bishops have reached out in a very definitive way on the issue of abortion, more than would have been possible for various pro-life groups.

Boston Herald

WASHINGTON — For weeks, the Catholic Church has asked its parishioners to work toward ensuring tough language restricting federal funding of abortion is included in the federal health care overhaul.

The church has gone so far as to insert a prayer into the weekly bulletins in the pews of its dioceses across the country, one that implores Congress to "act to ensure that needed health care reform will truly protect the life, dignity and health care of all."

But while the church is trying to rally its forces outside of Congress, it is also using its leverage within.

Read further...

A Questionable Champion of the Soviet "martyr" Jesuits: the infamous Bishop Hubbard

Catholic News service is eager to get the full service story about the USCCB which can't get its story straight about some revolutionary Jesuits who thought they knew better how El Salvadoran citizens should spend their money than they themselves knew, and promised us, that there was severe political repression without giving us any concrete examples or even a demonstrable understanding of economics. Unfortunately, the Salvadoran Army gave the Soviet interlopers in Central America something they could really use, "martyrs". Despite years of actual oppression by the Socialist regimes for whom they worked, Cuba and the Soviet Union, these Jesuits didn't and still don't have much to say about how they'd improve the lot of the ordinary Salvadoran; nothing workable, just pie in the sky penumbras. Maybe land reform would be the ticket? That didn't work either, and the El Salvadoran government the Communist rebels and their Jesuit allies were trying to topple actually enacted those reforms too.

But the USCCB, ever eager to show how it believes in Central Command Economy, has today stepped in to remind America about a few traitorous Jesuits who supported Communist insurgency in Central America and got in the line of fire for their troubles.

BALTIMORE (CNS) -- The U.S. bishops added their collective voice to those of others in honoring the memory of the six Salvadoran Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, all of whom were assassinated 20 years ago by a Salvadoran death squad.

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., chairman of the bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace, said in a statement issued Nov. 16 -- the anniversary date of the murders -- that the bishops joined many others in "commemorating the lives and work of the six Jesuits and their collaborators."

Remaining article...

For years we've been hearing about the shenanigans of the Jesuits. The morally and financially bankrupt Oregon Province, for example. So then, we have a credibly accused and maleficent Bishop who defends causes indicative of outright Marxism. That romantic worker's struggle in Central America. Despite all of the evidence that the Jesuits so engaged were at best fools and at worst scoundrels of the worst possible kind, these clerical men of the left insist we remember them as heroes. These leftists and their sordid connections and questionable associations, who say certain things and believe certain things or at least say they believe certain things.

His fascination with "No Nukes".

Then there's the suspicious suicide of one Bishop Hubbard's detractors, the conservative Father Minkler, just three days after he signed an affidavit denying that he'd written a 1995 letter to Cardinal O'Connor accusing Bishop Hubbard of homosexuality. Suspiciously, the autopsy took months to complete and was finally ruled a "suicide". In the wake of accusations, the Diocese hired an independant investigator, Mary Jo White to clear his name. According to John Aretakis, an attorney for many of the alleged victims of Bishop Hubbard and his priests, the cost went into the millions. Bishop Hubbard and his liberal Colleague, Bishop Mathew Clark both took lie detector tests but habitual liers can defeat them.

Link to another article by Matt C. Abbott in 2004...

And from Maurice Pinay about Bishop Hubbard's rabbinical associates also involved in pederasty and giving him some public good PR in the wake of the scandal, here.

America Magazine decries Catholicism in the USCCB

While the liberal establishment in the American Episcopacy is as old as the founding of the United States, America Magazine remains as predictable as ever, as their propaganda machine for the DNC at prayer attempts to broker liberalism and modernism as sensible and exclude actual Catholicism as mere political cynicism. One gets the feeling that you just know some of them are simmering about certain Catholic Dioceses' support for Defense of Marriage plebiscites in the last election. It's high time the USCCB shows some political independence from America's ruling elites, but the Jesuits don't think that deeply any more. Their old-style opposition to the liberalising power of the State is a long ways back in the mirror. You'd think their experience in the Spanish Civil War would give them a distaste of liberalism, but here they are.


The USCCB begins its annual plenary session today in Baltimore. On the formal agenda, the bishops will consider a proposed pastoral letter on marriage (which they should scrap and start over) and the final approval of Mass translations (some are good, some not so good but it is past time to fight over them anyway). Behind the scenes, the issue that dominates all the others is the polarization within the Conference, a polarization that seems to have been imported from the political world into the USCCB. [Modern Jesuits like to create equivalence between those who espouse Catholic points of view and political righists to delegitimize their positions] The most important thing for the bishops to do this week is to heed the voice of their president, Cardinal George, to resist the political categories of left and right and return to “simply Catholicism.”


Link here...

Indeed, the Jesuit commentator makes an attempt to salvage a bit, a situation that's looking increasingly tenuous for the modernist Jesuit.

As Pope Benedict made clear in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, life issues are social justice issues and social justice issues are life issues. The Church’s teaching must be received, understood and accepted integrally. I know that integralism is a word with a sinister history, espoused by Catholic witch-hunters during the reign of Pius X and the last years of Pius XII to brand anyone who disagreed with them as heretics. Among those caught in the web of suspicion in the reign of Piux X were Giacomo della Chiesa and Angelo Roncalli, who became Pope Benedict XV and Pope John XXIII respectively. That is not the integralism Pope Benedict XVI calls for.

Weak, Father Journalist, just because your boys were under suspicion of heresy, doesn't mean you won't be some day too.

Yes indeed, perhaps the days of going over to Fr. X. SJ's apartment, spinning Dylan records and the like are coming to an end. Seems like the Jesuits are a little more concerned these days. As their senses become enfeebled thanks to the windy decrepitude of icy old age, they're starting to find themselves outnumbered. They've always been outgunned, at least in this century, but now they have to worry that they're a minority and what's worse is that "witch-hunters" in the Church aren't too pleased with their frequent heterodox musings and crypto-Marxism.

More certainly of what the Jesuits are unhappy about these days are the calling into question of some of their fellow-traveller initiatives like ACORN and CCHD. These organizations have a lot in common with modern Jesuits, adjetives like "irrelavent", "obsolute", "Post-Marxist" and "effeminate" come to mind. But the worst of all for them is that the modern Jesuit is subject to the same kind of exposure for their charlatranry that ACORN was. Yes, you too can be held accountable by Dominican Inquisitors some day, God willing.

NCCB reports on ACORN....

George Soros is Funneling Funds to Liberal Catholic Organizations

A flock of carrion birds and packs of liberal Internet wolves, some in sheep's clothing have descended from the dark master's cavernous lair. The atheistic George Soros has been attempting to divide the American Catholic Church still further by relying on existing liberal organizations within the Church, like the USCCB, and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development to promote immorality and politically hamstring the Bishop's ability to preach the Catholic Faith.

Still more interesting in all of this is Soros' connection in this case to President Obama and the Saul Alinsky style community organizing that has been a real wet blanket at Diocesan Offices teaching the Catholic Faith. Sometimes the distinction between these charlatans and diocesan employees is completely blurred.

The critical role of the Catholic Church in passing national health care reform legislation is coming under serious media scrutiny. But the story has taken a strange turn. It has now been revealed that George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund operator and well-known atheist, has been pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into "progressive" Catholic groups that are significant players in the national debates over health care and immigration.

On the surface, it would appear that Soros would be opposed to many positions of the Catholic Church.


A major financial backer of the ACLU, Soros supports such causes as drug legalization, the rights of "sex workers" and felons, euthanasia, radical feminism, abortion rights, and homosexual rights. He does all of this in the name of promoting an "open society."

But a review of the records of his Open Society Institute finds that a group calling itself

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) has received $200,000 from them over the last several years.

James Todd of Pewsitter.com, which represents traditional Catholics, calls such groups "CINOs," or Catholics In Name Only. He explains, "This group and several others have sprung up recently-I suspect purposely organized and funded-to counterbalance the growing influence of the faithful Catholics AND to try to deceive and mislead the middle of the road Catholics that have determined the last 13 Presidential elections."

Read further...

Pewsitter Blog.

USCCB Endorses still more Liberal Social Change

Some are insisting that the USCCB's unfortunate love affair with collectivism is an example of Bishops being incapable of talking outside of spiritual affairs. If they actually referred to Church teachings on subsidiarity and considered the cancerous relationship they maintain as lapdogs of collectivism and the price to integrity they pay when they align themselves with liberal platforms, no doubt, they'd be well within the bounds of their spiritual and temporal authority. No doubt, many of the Bishops do appeal to a kind of backwater, Jim Jones style spirituality when they support Democratic National Committee talking points.

It's fair to say that the USCCB is in many respects politically liberal and that they've always failed to maintain an independent voice with respect to economics and politics, as when they drafted a letter against Nuclear Armament with the now disgraced perjuring embezzler Archbishop Rembert Weakland and Cardinal Bernardin or when earlier in the century, the liberal Archbishop Ireland supported American Imperialism in the Spanish American War and the temperance movement. This demonstrates a clear history [George Weigel, Wanderer] of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States historical committment to liberalism in opposition to actual Church teaching in this regard.

The opposition of the Bishops to so-called Health care Reform has hinged primarily upon the issue Abortion, and now, with some last minute concessions by their Democratic masters, many of them will acquiesce and endorse the rest of the bill. Of course, the concessions will be ineffective in the long run and will no-doubt include concerns about the health and welfare of the mother and cases of rape or incest.

The American Catholic leadership, which has always had a subservient role to American Government, have a long way to go before they cut the purse strings that make them little more than puppets of an increasingly national Catholic Church.

See Bishops Back Abortion Compromise...

According to Lifesite News, Archbishop Rigali has only praised the Stupchak amendment to the Bill, disincluding abortion coverage and supporting the unborn. However, the Secretary of the USCCB for pro-life secretariat says he still insists that they are for "Healthcare Reform".

Link here...

Churches celebrate 10th anniversary of 'justification' agreement

Churches celebrate 10th anniversary of 'justification' agreement

Politicizing Prelates and New York

The last few days have gotten us to thinking about politicising prelates and here we have a case of one who uses his mitre and authority to prop up his leftist political causes. Generally abortion isn't negotiable, most of the time, but sometimes (most of the time) you support the DNC talking points and candidates when your Diocese's schools, hospitals or "charitable" organizations or the semnary where conservative candidates get weeded out, need support.

A bishop’s flexibility
November 1, 2009, 5:11 pm Posted by Paul Moses



As chairman of the bishops’ committee that drafted the statement “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” Brooklyn’s Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio has had an important role in interpreting what it actually means. In the heat of the 2008 presidential campaign, he wrote in a letter to The New York Times that the newspaper had erred in a story on Joseph Biden and the Catholic vote in reporting the statement would “explicitly allow Catholics to vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights if they do so for other reasons.”

Read more...

Top Catholic bishops demand apology from Rep. Kennedy

By Michael O'Brien - 10/28/09 12:45 PM ET

Two top Catholic bishops have called on Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) to apologize for remarks blasting the church's opposition to health reform legislation.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, of the archdiocese of New York, and Bishop Thomas Tobin, who is Kennedy's bishop, called on the Catholic lawmaker's criticism of the church's opposition to healthcare reform, citing concerns over whether the bill would allow funding for abortions.

"I can’t understand for the life of me how the Catholic Church could be against the biggest social justice issue of our time, where the very dignity of the human person is being respected by the fact that we’re caring and giving health care to the human person," Kennedy said in an interview with the Catholic News Service.


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