Yes, our sympathies go out to the Haitians, but...
An earthquake of magnitude seven would be devastating for any country. In the wake of such force, death and destruction is tragically inevitable. However, the repercussions for Haiti, this small ill-fated Caribbean country, will be worse than almost anywhere else in the world, because of the long-term political, economic and cultural context that surrounds today's natural disaster.
There is a story often told among Haitians that when the Spanish came to Hispanola (the small island shared between the Dominican Republic and Haiti) they surrendered Haiti to the devil in order to dedicate the Dominican Republic to God. When you consider their relative situations it is not hard to see why this myth is so commonly believed.
Read further...
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
"The Master" lectures on T.S. Elliot
Bishop Williamson has all of the urbanity, mystical wonder and startling uniqueness of St. Augustine and Albert Camus, but he also has the childlike simplicity of St. John Vianney. His discussions on art, poetry and popular culture resonate with the kind of urgency and appreciation that Archbishop Sheen once commanded on his radio shows so long ago. Like a rare and precious unrepeatable prodigy, Bishop Williamson is, dare we say it, like a gift from heaven, although we don't deserve it, of a great 19th Century mind, spanning the years to reach us with long discarded and forgotten treasures and graces.
As the apostasy of the nations in modern times takes the whole world further and further away from God, so there are ever fewer artists and writers who have kept any sense of the things of the human spirit. All that matters henceforth is things material, which is why poetry is widely despised, and serious art, literature and music are all dying or dead. In this land of the blind, the American-born poet, dramatist and critic, T.S.Eliot (1888-1965) is a seer, but his well-known poem, “Journey of the Magi”, shows how he too lost one eye in his struggle with the modern wasteland.
That struggle is reflected in the main event of his life: his move at the age of 26 from the United States where he was born and bred, to England where he was based for the remainder of his life, hardly re-visiting the land of his birth. He once said that while his poetry represented a combination of his being born in the USA with his staying in England, nevertheless “in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America.” Surely what he meant was that the problem set for him in his early years by the materialism of modern civilisation remained the driving force of his writing, like the grain of sand by its irritation generates the pearl in the oyster, but it was his move back from the New World to the Old that enabled him to get a handle on the problem, and to express in his poetry an at least partial solution.
But the spiritual problem set by the mass of men giving themselves over to materialism runs deep, and that is why many of Eliot’s poems are not easy to understand. He would say that poetry in modern times “has to be difficult”, meaning no doubt that if it is easy, it can hardly be true to the world around us. Thus his first published poems, written around the time of the first World War, already so broke with the century-old tradition of Keatsian romanticism that they were accused by some critics of not being poetry at all ! See for instance in the “Journey” how there are no rhymes at all, nor regular length of lines, nor regular rhythm.
Yet it is enough to read the poem aloud to appreciate the approximate four beats to a line which do make the “Journey” a poem, as opposed to mere prose. The comparison with Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” is interesting. Observably Arnold is already (1851) loosening classical poetic discipline as to rhyme and rhythm, and Eliot loosens it still further. But Eliot does still have discipline. Alas, successors of Eliot can pretend to be following him when they have no discipline at all !
However, if one stops to think about it, old-fashioned rhymes would be too pretty for the problematic monologue of Eliot’s Magus (singular of the Latin plural “Magi”), whose modernity in search of the Christ Child requires a re-working of the Gospel story, found in Matthew II, 1-12. Then the three Magi, or astrologers, Kings from the East, followed a miraculous star over a long distance to pay homage and bring precious gifts to the new-born King of Kings, still a little child in the arms of his blessed Mother. Now we have in Eliot’s “Journey” an old man (line 32) recalling from long ago neither star, nor gifts, nor Mother, but in the poem’s three sections only the painful travelling (l.1-20), the arrival (l. 21-31) and the huge question of what it all meant (l. 32-43). Eliot’s is no Christmas card poem, nor short cut to comfort !
The poem’s first section (1-20), easy enough to understand, recreates the physical discomfort of the long journey from the East to Bethlehem, not mentioned. Nor does Eliot suggest there were any of the spiritual consolations that no doubt sustained the three original Magi on their historic journey. On the contrary (l.19,20), their modern successor has only the voices singing in his ears to tell him that he is crazy to be making such a journey.
The poem’s middle section (l.21-31) is less easy to understand. As the journey draws to its close, so the scenery has more warmth and life (21,22). In the next six lines (23-28), the “three trees” evoke the three crosses on Calvary while the “pieces of silver” evoke Judas Iscariot. All other details, e.g. the stream, mill, horse, tavern and wineskins, no doubt had a particular significance for Eliot himself, so that they are somehow suggestive, but of exactly what, it is difficult to say. Together they create a surreal scene which serves as transition from the material discomfort of the first section to the mysterious discomfort of the last section, for (28-31) our modern Magus is not necessarily happy to have arrived at his destination – “you may say” the place was “satisfactory”, he himself seems not so sure…
Indeed, in the poem’s third section (32-43) the old man is sure that the journey was worth the trouble (32,33), but it left him nevertheless with a huge question mark (35-39): how could a scene of birth, the scene of a new-born child, have left him at the same time with such a sensation of death, of “hard and bitter agony” (39) ? Because when the Magus got back to his kingdom (40), he found he could no longer live as he had lived before. He found his own people now “alien” to him, clutching hold of the pagan gods of his old way of life, which could no longer satisfy him, because after meeting the Child he could no longer be a pagan. But he had gone through no rebirth of his own into any new dispensation, so that the whole experience felt only like death. In conclusion (43), he would not be unhappy to die.
Contrast the story of the Magi as told by St Matthew. The Magi make the journey, full of faith that the star will lead them to the Child they mean to adore. It disappears when they visit the court of the treacherous Herod, but when it appears to them again on their way to Bethlehem, “they rejoiced with exceeding great joy” (v.10). It stands to reason that their faith and perseverance were rewarded by the divine Child with a flood of light and joy. They died as Saints, and their sacred relics are honoured to this day in the great Cathedral of Cologne which is dedicated to them.
Why then does our modern poet present such a different version of their journey to find Christ ? Because he does not have the faith of the original three Kings. Experts in the life and works of T.S.Eliot are unanimous that the “Journey of the Magi” is a largely autobiographical poem, having been published in August of 1927, just two months after Eliot had converted at 39 years of age to Anglicanism (Episcopalianism in the USA). Let us illustrate the poem by the life.
Eliot had begun life immersed in the “old dispensation” of Protestant Mid-west America (188-1906), Calvinist Harvard (1906-1910; 1911-1914) and liberal Oxford (1914-1915) which he quit after a year – “It’s pretty”, he said, “but I don’t like to be dead”. In 1915 he made an unfortunate marriage which caused him untold stress until (and after) he and his wife separated in 1933. From 1917 to 1925 he worked in a London bank, during which penitential time he published in 1922 what was no doubt the single most influential poem in English of the entire 20th century, “The Wasteland”.
In this poem Eliot could not have given expression to so much of the disorder of an “old dispensation” dying unless he had sensed that disorder, and he could not have sensed that disorder had he not had within him a considerable sense of the order that was missing. This sense of that order he had from the past and its masters. The “Wasteland” is steeped in quotations from them, notably Dante and Shakespeare, Eliot’s two favourites. Scratching his way back to the source of their order, Eliot nearly converted to Catholicism, but he stopped short at Anglicanism, partly because of Pius XI’s controversial condemnation in 1926 of “Action Francaise”, partly because Eliot wished to remain loyal to the country of his adoption. Five months after joining the Anglican Church he took out British citizenship.
This was the same year in which he published “Journey”, and now we can understand why Eliot’s Magus was so lacking in joy. Full marks to Eliot for not contenting himself with the plentiful delights of the disintegrating West (l.10); full marks for persevering on the journey towards Christ (l.33); full marks for never again being “at ease” in the “old dispensation”; but – mystery of grace and free-will – Eliot never made it all the way to Christ in his one true Church, and that is surely why his Magus never “rejoiced with exceeding great joy”.
Yet “God writes straight with crooked lines”. Many readers today immerse themselves in Eliot and feed on his poetry because it grapples with, and grasps, their dying dispensation, without imposing on them any of the demands of Christ’s dispensation. In this way Eliot must have served as at least a first step towards order and salvation for many souls who might not have gone near him had he made himself openly and fully a “Papist”. The same applies to a number of writers and artists who combine a grasp of modern disorder with a more or less disguised conveyance of the values of Christian order. If we should be grateful for small mercies, we should certainly be grateful for a large mercy like the poems of T.S. Eliot even if they are not always easy.
Posted by Stephen Heiner at 7:08 PM
http://truerestoration.blogspot.com/2010/01/poetry-project-vi-journey-of-magi-by-ts.html
As the apostasy of the nations in modern times takes the whole world further and further away from God, so there are ever fewer artists and writers who have kept any sense of the things of the human spirit. All that matters henceforth is things material, which is why poetry is widely despised, and serious art, literature and music are all dying or dead. In this land of the blind, the American-born poet, dramatist and critic, T.S.Eliot (1888-1965) is a seer, but his well-known poem, “Journey of the Magi”, shows how he too lost one eye in his struggle with the modern wasteland.
That struggle is reflected in the main event of his life: his move at the age of 26 from the United States where he was born and bred, to England where he was based for the remainder of his life, hardly re-visiting the land of his birth. He once said that while his poetry represented a combination of his being born in the USA with his staying in England, nevertheless “in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America.” Surely what he meant was that the problem set for him in his early years by the materialism of modern civilisation remained the driving force of his writing, like the grain of sand by its irritation generates the pearl in the oyster, but it was his move back from the New World to the Old that enabled him to get a handle on the problem, and to express in his poetry an at least partial solution.
But the spiritual problem set by the mass of men giving themselves over to materialism runs deep, and that is why many of Eliot’s poems are not easy to understand. He would say that poetry in modern times “has to be difficult”, meaning no doubt that if it is easy, it can hardly be true to the world around us. Thus his first published poems, written around the time of the first World War, already so broke with the century-old tradition of Keatsian romanticism that they were accused by some critics of not being poetry at all ! See for instance in the “Journey” how there are no rhymes at all, nor regular length of lines, nor regular rhythm.
Yet it is enough to read the poem aloud to appreciate the approximate four beats to a line which do make the “Journey” a poem, as opposed to mere prose. The comparison with Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” is interesting. Observably Arnold is already (1851) loosening classical poetic discipline as to rhyme and rhythm, and Eliot loosens it still further. But Eliot does still have discipline. Alas, successors of Eliot can pretend to be following him when they have no discipline at all !
However, if one stops to think about it, old-fashioned rhymes would be too pretty for the problematic monologue of Eliot’s Magus (singular of the Latin plural “Magi”), whose modernity in search of the Christ Child requires a re-working of the Gospel story, found in Matthew II, 1-12. Then the three Magi, or astrologers, Kings from the East, followed a miraculous star over a long distance to pay homage and bring precious gifts to the new-born King of Kings, still a little child in the arms of his blessed Mother. Now we have in Eliot’s “Journey” an old man (line 32) recalling from long ago neither star, nor gifts, nor Mother, but in the poem’s three sections only the painful travelling (l.1-20), the arrival (l. 21-31) and the huge question of what it all meant (l. 32-43). Eliot’s is no Christmas card poem, nor short cut to comfort !
The poem’s first section (1-20), easy enough to understand, recreates the physical discomfort of the long journey from the East to Bethlehem, not mentioned. Nor does Eliot suggest there were any of the spiritual consolations that no doubt sustained the three original Magi on their historic journey. On the contrary (l.19,20), their modern successor has only the voices singing in his ears to tell him that he is crazy to be making such a journey.
The poem’s middle section (l.21-31) is less easy to understand. As the journey draws to its close, so the scenery has more warmth and life (21,22). In the next six lines (23-28), the “three trees” evoke the three crosses on Calvary while the “pieces of silver” evoke Judas Iscariot. All other details, e.g. the stream, mill, horse, tavern and wineskins, no doubt had a particular significance for Eliot himself, so that they are somehow suggestive, but of exactly what, it is difficult to say. Together they create a surreal scene which serves as transition from the material discomfort of the first section to the mysterious discomfort of the last section, for (28-31) our modern Magus is not necessarily happy to have arrived at his destination – “you may say” the place was “satisfactory”, he himself seems not so sure…
Indeed, in the poem’s third section (32-43) the old man is sure that the journey was worth the trouble (32,33), but it left him nevertheless with a huge question mark (35-39): how could a scene of birth, the scene of a new-born child, have left him at the same time with such a sensation of death, of “hard and bitter agony” (39) ? Because when the Magus got back to his kingdom (40), he found he could no longer live as he had lived before. He found his own people now “alien” to him, clutching hold of the pagan gods of his old way of life, which could no longer satisfy him, because after meeting the Child he could no longer be a pagan. But he had gone through no rebirth of his own into any new dispensation, so that the whole experience felt only like death. In conclusion (43), he would not be unhappy to die.
Contrast the story of the Magi as told by St Matthew. The Magi make the journey, full of faith that the star will lead them to the Child they mean to adore. It disappears when they visit the court of the treacherous Herod, but when it appears to them again on their way to Bethlehem, “they rejoiced with exceeding great joy” (v.10). It stands to reason that their faith and perseverance were rewarded by the divine Child with a flood of light and joy. They died as Saints, and their sacred relics are honoured to this day in the great Cathedral of Cologne which is dedicated to them.
Why then does our modern poet present such a different version of their journey to find Christ ? Because he does not have the faith of the original three Kings. Experts in the life and works of T.S.Eliot are unanimous that the “Journey of the Magi” is a largely autobiographical poem, having been published in August of 1927, just two months after Eliot had converted at 39 years of age to Anglicanism (Episcopalianism in the USA). Let us illustrate the poem by the life.
Eliot had begun life immersed in the “old dispensation” of Protestant Mid-west America (188-1906), Calvinist Harvard (1906-1910; 1911-1914) and liberal Oxford (1914-1915) which he quit after a year – “It’s pretty”, he said, “but I don’t like to be dead”. In 1915 he made an unfortunate marriage which caused him untold stress until (and after) he and his wife separated in 1933. From 1917 to 1925 he worked in a London bank, during which penitential time he published in 1922 what was no doubt the single most influential poem in English of the entire 20th century, “The Wasteland”.
In this poem Eliot could not have given expression to so much of the disorder of an “old dispensation” dying unless he had sensed that disorder, and he could not have sensed that disorder had he not had within him a considerable sense of the order that was missing. This sense of that order he had from the past and its masters. The “Wasteland” is steeped in quotations from them, notably Dante and Shakespeare, Eliot’s two favourites. Scratching his way back to the source of their order, Eliot nearly converted to Catholicism, but he stopped short at Anglicanism, partly because of Pius XI’s controversial condemnation in 1926 of “Action Francaise”, partly because Eliot wished to remain loyal to the country of his adoption. Five months after joining the Anglican Church he took out British citizenship.
This was the same year in which he published “Journey”, and now we can understand why Eliot’s Magus was so lacking in joy. Full marks to Eliot for not contenting himself with the plentiful delights of the disintegrating West (l.10); full marks for persevering on the journey towards Christ (l.33); full marks for never again being “at ease” in the “old dispensation”; but – mystery of grace and free-will – Eliot never made it all the way to Christ in his one true Church, and that is surely why his Magus never “rejoiced with exceeding great joy”.
Yet “God writes straight with crooked lines”. Many readers today immerse themselves in Eliot and feed on his poetry because it grapples with, and grasps, their dying dispensation, without imposing on them any of the demands of Christ’s dispensation. In this way Eliot must have served as at least a first step towards order and salvation for many souls who might not have gone near him had he made himself openly and fully a “Papist”. The same applies to a number of writers and artists who combine a grasp of modern disorder with a more or less disguised conveyance of the values of Christian order. If we should be grateful for small mercies, we should certainly be grateful for a large mercy like the poems of T.S. Eliot even if they are not always easy.
Posted by Stephen Heiner at 7:08 PM
http://truerestoration.blogspot.com/2010/01/poetry-project-vi-journey-of-magi-by-ts.html
Two Protected Classes Go to War
We're rooting for the Jews in this struggle and we think they'll win, much to the simmering and infeffectual hatred of their homosexual opponents.
“Tolerance” Panel Causes Uproar at Orthodox Jewish University
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
NEW YORK, January 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Canadian homosexual student at New York’s Yeshiva University has caused an uproar and precipitated a fierce backlash from students and school administration after he organized a panel discussion defending "tolerance" of homosexuals within the school and the wider Orthodox Jewish community.
According to the Yeshiva University student newspaper, The Commentator, the event was organized by the YU Tolerance Club, which was founded last year by Avi Kopstick of Toronto.
The panel discussion, titled “Being Gay in the Modern Orthodox World,” attracted about 700 supporters, many of whom, The Commentator reported, were from other universities, including NYU, Columbia, Queens College, and the University of Pennsylvania.
read further...
“Tolerance” Panel Causes Uproar at Orthodox Jewish University
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
NEW YORK, January 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Canadian homosexual student at New York’s Yeshiva University has caused an uproar and precipitated a fierce backlash from students and school administration after he organized a panel discussion defending "tolerance" of homosexuals within the school and the wider Orthodox Jewish community.
According to the Yeshiva University student newspaper, The Commentator, the event was organized by the YU Tolerance Club, which was founded last year by Avi Kopstick of Toronto.
The panel discussion, titled “Being Gay in the Modern Orthodox World,” attracted about 700 supporters, many of whom, The Commentator reported, were from other universities, including NYU, Columbia, Queens College, and the University of Pennsylvania.
read further...
Fatima Vandalized with Islamic Symbols
It is possible that Muslims didn't do this, but if they did, they should be expelled wholesale from Portugal. Pehraps they don't like the ugly architecture which is more reminscent of vandalism than anything that's been done so far, like the pagan Hindu ritual approved by the rector a while back.
Now, THIS is vandalism:
[Portugal] In a press release Monday, officials from the shrine announced that in the early hours of Sunday morning, four statutes on the sides of the church as well as the church itself were painted with graffiti.
In the John Paul II Plaza, statutes of Popes John Paul II and Paul VI were painted. In the Pius XII Plaza, statues of Pope Pius XII and Bishop José Alves Correia da Silva were painted.
The graffiti includes the words “Islam,” “moon,” “sun,” “Muslim” and “mosque.”
According to the statement from shrine officials, “the difficult work of cleaning” is under way.
The communiqué added: “In reporting what has happened and without knowing who has done this, the shrine [officials] confirm [our] sadness and assure that the issue has been reported to the police.”
h/t james mary evans.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Vietnamese Police Attack Priest, Journalist
Catholic Culture
Vietnamese police, joined by pro-government thugs, attacked a priest and a Catholic journalist in the village of Dong Hoi, about 40 miles south of Hanoi, on January 11. The priest, Father Nguyen Van Lien, was escorting Nguyen Huu Vinh on a tour of the village when the police stopped them, pulling the priest aside an clubbing the journalist into unconsciousness. The beating ended when the police took the journalist’s camera, leaving him bleeding on the road; he was diagnosed with a concussion.
Police in the region have accused Catholic priests of stirring up anti-government sentiments, and several Catholic residents have reported been roughed up by police officers and pro-government forces.
Link to original...
Vietnamese police, joined by pro-government thugs, attacked a priest and a Catholic journalist in the village of Dong Hoi, about 40 miles south of Hanoi, on January 11. The priest, Father Nguyen Van Lien, was escorting Nguyen Huu Vinh on a tour of the village when the police stopped them, pulling the priest aside an clubbing the journalist into unconsciousness. The beating ended when the police took the journalist’s camera, leaving him bleeding on the road; he was diagnosed with a concussion.
Police in the region have accused Catholic priests of stirring up anti-government sentiments, and several Catholic residents have reported been roughed up by police officers and pro-government forces.
Link to original...
Fr Kenneth Baker SJ to Retire from Homiletic and Pastoral Review
With Pope Benedict XVI continuity is in and discontinuity is out. In its 110 years of life, HPR has had a lot of continuity. Two great Dominicans, Fathers Callan and McHugh, edited it for forty years, from 1917 to 1956. Father Aidan Carr was at the helm for twelve years. This month, yours truly is beginning his fortieth year as editor. Much has changed in the Church and we have seen much turmoil since Vatican II. Through it all we have tried to steer a straight course for HPR, always in conformity with the doctrine and morals taught by the Holy Catholic Church, which is the one and only Church of Jesus Christ who is both God and man.
Ignatius Press, owner and publisher of HPR, thinks now is a good time to replace me with a young editor to direct the magazine well into the twenty-first century—and I agree. The new editor is a Jesuit friend and scholar, Father David Vincent Meconi. Currently he is teaching patrology at St. Louis University. Father Meconi will officially assume the editorship on January 15. From now on all articles, homilies, letters to the editor and other editorial materials should be sent to Father Meconi in St. Louis.
During the past ten years or more Father Meconi has written articles and book reviews for HPR, so he should be known to many of our readers. Recently he has also contributed to our homily section. He is totally committed to orthodoxy and support of the Magisterium, just as I have been.
This is not a swan song. I will still be taking an active part in the publication of the magazine. My responsibility will be for the book review section and I will also continue to write the monthly editorial on the last page. My new title is “Editor Emeritus.” I will also help in any other way I may be needed.
This is a difficult time for magazines and the print media generally. Several large newspapers and many magazines have been forced for financial reasons to cease publication. HPR also faces a difficult future. I recently learned from Ignatius Press that HPR lost over $100,000 last year. Obviously that cannot continue. Accordingly the price, which has not been raised since 1995, is being increased from $26 to $34. Even that is not enough to solve the problem. So when you renew your subscription this year please add a donation of $25 or more to help us balance our budget. If you can send $100, we will not object.
I have very much enjoyed editing this monthly magazine for busy priests. I am constantly amazed at the quality of the articles I receive. We receive many more than we can print. It averages out to about thirty each month, or one a day. Since so many articles come in unsolicited, it has not been necessary to seek articles. For example, when the Pope publishes a new encyclical letter, it is not necessary to solicit an article on it. I know from experience that shortly thereafter a few articles analyzing it will be sent to me.
I urge you to support Father Meconi just as you have supported me and encouraged me with your letters and phone calls. Since no two editors are exactly the same, his style will differ from mine but it will be in conformity and continuity with the Church.
As I mentioned above, Benedict XVI is keen on continuity. The appointment of Father Meconi as the new editor of HPR is a clear signal from Ignatius Press that HPR will continue to be a bastion of orthodoxy and continuity with its history of fidelity to the Catholic Church. HPR is by priests and for priests. It is here to help priests grow in knowledge and love of the Church and of their own priesthood. Our Holy Father has declared this to be the year for priests. HPR is honored to take part in that, not only this year but every year.
Link to article...
Cardinal Sean O'Malley is Euthanizing his Priests
While Boston College has been funding abortions and birth control, +Sean has been embracing the culture of death.
From "Throw the Bums Out", here, Cardinal O'Malley is moving some of the priests to a treatment facillity for pederasts, although their names have been cleared at a Diocesan tribunal.
Carol McKinley maintains that the six priests are "falsely" accused. Apparently they have been cleared of wrongdoing by the Diocese but are still being moved and having their benefits cut off.
According to an updated article, here, two of the priests, Father Tivnan and Father Plourde are actually missing somewhere between the Canada facillity which couldn't admit them and the home they left in Boston.
Of course, Cardinal Sean is already trimming priests' benefits to save archdiocese pension system.
From "Throw the Bums Out", here, Cardinal O'Malley is moving some of the priests to a treatment facillity for pederasts, although their names have been cleared at a Diocesan tribunal.
Carol McKinley maintains that the six priests are "falsely" accused. Apparently they have been cleared of wrongdoing by the Diocese but are still being moved and having their benefits cut off.
According to an updated article, here, two of the priests, Father Tivnan and Father Plourde are actually missing somewhere between the Canada facillity which couldn't admit them and the home they left in Boston.
Of course, Cardinal Sean is already trimming priests' benefits to save archdiocese pension system.
Dissidents Want to Immitate the Society of Pius X
Well, the Devil is God's ape.
This just in over at Catholic Media Coalition in an article aptly named "Katholic Carma" It features the American Catholic Council which aims to form its own organization called the Laical Society for Blessed John XXIII (LBJXXIII) much like the Society of Saint Pius X was formed, outside of the sphere of influence of the Vatican. One poster complained that she has to drive for many miles to find parishes that are committed to the "Spirit of Vatican II".
This just in over at Catholic Media Coalition in an article aptly named "Katholic Carma" It features the American Catholic Council which aims to form its own organization called the Laical Society for Blessed John XXIII (LBJXXIII) much like the Society of Saint Pius X was formed, outside of the sphere of influence of the Vatican. One poster complained that she has to drive for many miles to find parishes that are committed to the "Spirit of Vatican II".
Because we are “conservative” and “traditional” Roman Catholics (in the true sense of those words), we will be returning to some practices of the Early Church which have long been neglected, but which are in the Spirit of Vatican II. Among these practices are the election of bishops by the people, ordination without regard to marital status, gender, or sexual orientation, and ownership of property by the people rather than by the hierarchy.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Alaska's Episcopalians Prepare to Ordain another Woman Bishop!
Alaska's troubled Episcopal Church is getting ready to possibly ordain another woman Bishop. It will be good for Catholics if this happens, because it will give many Episcopalians a not-so-subtle reminder why they should leave.
The candidates are:
• The Rev. Canon Virginia Doctor, canon to the ordinary, Diocese of Alaska, and assisting vicar, St. James' Mission, Tanana.• The Very Rev. Mark Lattime, rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church, Geneseo, New York (Diocese of Rochester)
• The Very Rev. Timothy W. Sexton, provost and canon administrator, Cathedral Church of St. Andrew, Honolulu (Diocese of Hawaii)
• The Rev. Suzanne Elizabeth Watson, congregational development officer, Episcopal Church Center, New York.
"We're thrilled, joyous and very excited about these candidates," said Dan Hall, the chair of the bishop's search committee. "We're satisfied that each is the kind of candidate we need to move the Diocese of Alaska forward," he added.
Hall said a previous bishop search ended without an election when "for various reasons and circumstances … we ended up with only one candidate and the standing committee decided not to go to an electing convention with just one person."
The Jan. 11 announcement also opens the way for a process by which clergy and laity in the diocese can nominate other candidates. The deadline for those nominations is Feb. 12, according to Stacy Thorpe, diocesan communications officer. Information about that process is available here.
The election will take place during an April 9-10 electing convention at the Meier Lake Conference Center in Wasilla, Alaska.
The person elected will succeed the Rt. Rev. Rustin Kimsey, who has served as interim bishop for three years, since Bishop Mark MacDonald left in 2007 to become the first indigenous bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.
As Virtue Online reports, one homosexual Episcopal activist was arrested for offering his 5 year old son up to be abused. He was also a big fan of Gay Bishop Gene Robinson.
The candidates are:
• The Rev. Canon Virginia Doctor, canon to the ordinary, Diocese of Alaska, and assisting vicar, St. James' Mission, Tanana.• The Very Rev. Mark Lattime, rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church, Geneseo, New York (Diocese of Rochester)
• The Very Rev. Timothy W. Sexton, provost and canon administrator, Cathedral Church of St. Andrew, Honolulu (Diocese of Hawaii)
• The Rev. Suzanne Elizabeth Watson, congregational development officer, Episcopal Church Center, New York.
"We're thrilled, joyous and very excited about these candidates," said Dan Hall, the chair of the bishop's search committee. "We're satisfied that each is the kind of candidate we need to move the Diocese of Alaska forward," he added.
Hall said a previous bishop search ended without an election when "for various reasons and circumstances … we ended up with only one candidate and the standing committee decided not to go to an electing convention with just one person."
The Jan. 11 announcement also opens the way for a process by which clergy and laity in the diocese can nominate other candidates. The deadline for those nominations is Feb. 12, according to Stacy Thorpe, diocesan communications officer. Information about that process is available here.
The election will take place during an April 9-10 electing convention at the Meier Lake Conference Center in Wasilla, Alaska.
The person elected will succeed the Rt. Rev. Rustin Kimsey, who has served as interim bishop for three years, since Bishop Mark MacDonald left in 2007 to become the first indigenous bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.
As Virtue Online reports, one homosexual Episcopal activist was arrested for offering his 5 year old son up to be abused. He was also a big fan of Gay Bishop Gene Robinson.
Holy Father Castigates Homosexual Marriage Laws
Gene Robinson's Special Day
In a move that is ultimately calculated to be critical of Cardinal Fideles of Portuagal, Holy Father has applied some directive pressure to insure that the people of Portugal know that their Shepherd is with them. Could it be that mercenary shepherds like Cardinal Fideles are on their way out?
AFP
Pope Benedict XVI on Monday called laws ignoring the difference between the sexes an "attack" on creation just days after Portugal moved to legalise gay marriage.
Creatures, including humans, "can be protected or endangered", the pope, 82, told the Vatican diplomatic corps in a traditional January address focusing mainly on environmental issues.
"One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes," he said, citing "certain countries in Europe or North and South America".
Portugal's parliament last Friday approved plans to legalise gay marriage, and a final vote could occur before a visit by the pope in May.
Also last week, two men became the first homosexual couple to legally marry in Latin America, in the southern Argentine province of Ushuaia.
"Freedom cannot be absolute," the pontiff said.
"For man, the path to be taken cannot be determined by caprice or wilfulness, but must rather correspond to the structure willed by the Creator," he said.
Mexican Church also under fire.
Pope condemns murder of Coptic Christians in Egypt
(AFP) – 1 day ago
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday condemned the murder of six Coptic Christians in a January 6 attack in Egypt, and denounced violence against Christians.
"The violence against Christians in certain countries has caused indignation among many people, among other reasons because it has manifested itself during the holiest days of the Christian tradition," the pope told pilgrims in St Peter's Square.
The drive-by shooting happened in the southern Egyptian town of Nagaa Hammadi as Copts celebrated their Christmas Eve along with other Orthodox communities.
"There can be no violence in the name of God," Benedict said.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday condemned the murder of six Coptic Christians in a January 6 attack in Egypt, and denounced violence against Christians.
"The violence against Christians in certain countries has caused indignation among many people, among other reasons because it has manifested itself during the holiest days of the Christian tradition," the pope told pilgrims in St Peter's Square.
The drive-by shooting happened in the southern Egyptian town of Nagaa Hammadi as Copts celebrated their Christmas Eve along with other Orthodox communities.
"There can be no violence in the name of God," Benedict said.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
Thiberville: Victoire!
It just got reported that after a talk with the Nuncio, Archbishop Ventura, the local ordinary of the Diocese, Bishop Norrichard is going to allow Father Michel to continue his ministry.
The uproard started when the liberal Bishop Norrichard wanted to stop the popular and traditional priest, Fr. Michel from continuing his ministry. He came to deliver this unhappy news in a homo colored rainbow chasuble and the people rebelled and went somewhere else for Mass.
The uproard started when the liberal Bishop Norrichard wanted to stop the popular and traditional priest, Fr. Michel from continuing his ministry. He came to deliver this unhappy news in a homo colored rainbow chasuble and the people rebelled and went somewhere else for Mass.
Monarchy is Nepal's Only Hope
Kamal Thapa, chairman of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal has once again demanded referendum to decide the fate of Monarchy, Secularism and Federalism.
He said that his party will not accept the new constitution unless referendum was conducted to engage sovereign Nepali people to take decisions on the crucial but contentious issues.
Speaking at a program in Kathmandu organized by his party, Saturday January 9, 2010, Kamal Thapa also claimed that if Nepal adopts Federalism, the country will be divided into several pieces.
“To save the country from disintegration, restoration of monarchy was the best solution”, he also said.
http://www.telegraphnepal.com/news_det.php?news_id=6968
He said that his party will not accept the new constitution unless referendum was conducted to engage sovereign Nepali people to take decisions on the crucial but contentious issues.
Speaking at a program in Kathmandu organized by his party, Saturday January 9, 2010, Kamal Thapa also claimed that if Nepal adopts Federalism, the country will be divided into several pieces.
“To save the country from disintegration, restoration of monarchy was the best solution”, he also said.
http://www.telegraphnepal.com/news_det.php?news_id=6968
Father Schwartz's New Year's Book List at Our Lady of Grace
It was a quiet evening at the spirituality retreat offered at Our Lady of Grace in properous Edina, Minnesota, and Fr. Burke SJ, the homosexuality promoting speaker, welcomed and endorsed by Archbishop Nienstedt, came and went without too much of a fuss. Just from looking at that American colonial town hall, you wouldn't think anything insidious was going on, you'd think the Archdiocese was on a solid course. But there were books left behind, as if a GLBT Santa had left them in stockings on Epiphany, revealing a familiar agenda, given by some familiar authors whose homosexual advocacy of heresy often conflicts with their stated ministry as Catholic priests and religious. We know that homosexuals are not supposed to be ordained, but somehow, a few slipped thorugh, a few wrote some books too, books and ideas that are actually hostile to Catholicism but promote homosexuality. This is Father Bob Schwartz's reading list:
Father Richard Rohr OFM
Father Richard Rohr is the author of many best-selling self-help books, like Adam's Return, which is the book Fr. Bob has asked his flock to read. Fr. Rohr is a noted speaker and author who is beyond belief, beyond "good and bad". He says, incitefully, "belief systems ask nothing of you and hasn't led to praxis". This is simply heresy, but no one is asking us.
He appears at homosesxual events, eager to help out down in New Mexico at a Gay Spirituality retreat, but that's no reason why he can't be featured prominently in Fr. Bob's spirituality retreat as a suggested reading.
Blasphemous Cover Art
"Adam's Return"
Here are some citations from Father Richard Rohr's book:
"I believe that the truth is more likely to be found at the bottom and the edges of things than at the top or the center. The top or center always has too much to provea nd too much to protect. I learnd this by connecting the dots of Judeo-Christian Scriptures, from my Franciscan background -- the pedagogy of the oppressed and the continued testimony of the saints and mystics -- and from the first tep of Alchholics Anonymous. Final authority in the spiritual world does not tend to come from any agenda of success but from some form of suffering that always feels like the bottom. Insecurity and impermanence are the best spiritual teachers, as Alan Watts and so many others demonstrate. The good news is clearly not a winner's script, although the ego and even churches continually try to make it so.
Finally, I believe that our images and words for God matter deeply in the way we live our practical lives because we all become the God we worship. This has been a central breakthrough in awareness in recent decades, thanks largely to feminist theologians. I believe that God is the ultimate combination of whatever it means to be male and whatever it means to be female. [(She who i: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse(New York : Crossroad, 1993), and Elizabeth Schuessler Forienza, In Memory of Her (New York: Crossroad, 1984) These two fine theolgians give feminism a very good name and give God a new chance.] [u]God is fully sexual in the deepest meaning of the term.[/u]
"... we must... find public ways to recovinize honor, and name the feminine nature of God, since we have overly limited our metaphors for God for centuries." (xiii)
Now we need enlightened and transformed magicians, lovers of life and beauty, and strong nonviolent warriors to produce truly big-picture men -- or kings. (P. 124)
The only religion that chews on the flesh of God has a very sensuous, sexual symbol for the transformation of the lover; we call it the Eucharist. Christianity says that God is Love but does not appear to really enjoy the lover. Despite all the BAch Masses, Baroque churches, incense, vestments, and luxriant art, we still made our religion into a moralistic matter instead of a mystical joy. .... the hot sins ofor the Baptists and Catholics are always associated with the body. This is no religion of incarnation. [!] (P. 130)
I will not eliminate or disallow all those wonderful sexually charged words for God -- such as Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, Bride, Bridegroom, friend, Guest Loveer, Jealous Lover, or even Seducer. Even more, I am not willing to eliminate the ntion of God, a relationship with God, or the very word "God" (even though I know that every name for God, including the word in itself, will always be a very limited metaphor and will carry a lot of baggage. (xiv)
In that sense God does save us, precisely by giving himself/herself to us and drawing us into the greater story. (xiv)
If there were any homophobic or emotionally wheitheld types among the twelve, I cannot imagine what they made of John with his head on the breast of Jesus during a proper reoligious ceremony. (P. 148)
Jesus was a layman (P. 149)
This was held on to for a long time with the Mass of the Catechumens, and people had to leave at a certain point because they were not ready to reeive the full gift yet. Now Eucharist has to do with achieving moral worthiness and passing ritual requirements instead of stirring holy desire. This unfortunately leaves most church rituals outside the realm of radical grace except fo rhose who have done their inner journey and personally experienced it elsewhere. (P. 175)
Father James Martin SJ,
Is the Jesuit editor of America, another author of the books which Fr. Bob recomends. He writes a troubling Op-ed piece for the New York Times in which he uses his homosexual friend's meeting with the Pope to highlight how homosexuals don't feel welcomed in the church. What with the predominence of homosexuals in the ministry, it's rather hard to come to that conclusion. Fr. Bob's selected Jesuit author here is problematic for a least three reasons:
1)He's not really pro-life: http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/05/father-james-martin-sj-responds.html
2) Promotes Centering Prayer which Mitch Pacwa SJ warns against, and is heretical http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=6337&CFID=25108504&CFTOKEN=27120249
3) Teaches the Bible is in error, this is heresy: "There are some major continuity problems in the Gospels" in the his book, My Life with the Saints.
Father Ronald Rolheister OMI
Bio from his website: Ronald Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas.
He is a community-builder, lecturer and writer. His books are popular throughout the English-speaking world and his weekly column is carried by more than ninety newspapers worldwide.
His book is Forgotten Among the Lilies,
The Catholicism I was raised in had, a fault, and it did, it was precisely that it did not allow for mistakes. It demanded that you get it right the first time. there was supposed to be no need for a second chance. If you made a mistake, you lived with it and, like the rich young man, were doomed to be sad, at least for the rest of your life. A seerious mistake was a permanent stigmaticzation, a markt hat you wore like Cain.
I have seen that mark in all kinds of people: divorcees, ex-priests, ex-religious, people who have had abortions, married people who have had affairs, people who have had children outside marriage, parents who have made serious mistake with their children, and countless others who have made serious mistakes
There was too little around to help them. We need a theology of brokenness." [so gay]( p 145)
On Women's Ordination
When you love someone, unless they actively reject that love, the are bound -- bound to the body of Christ, sustained in salvation." p 167"Superficially, one might conclude that their pain is most acute at Eucharist because a male presides there. This however, I submit, is a secondary explanation. Their pain touches on something deeper, that must send a signal to the whole church. Irerespective of the fact that it is mixed with other pains, they are experiencing the pain of the prophet. (P. 241)
Mentioned in Heresy Hunter: http://heresy-hunter.blogspot.com/2009/11/ron-rolheiser-borderline-dweller.html
Sister Joan Chittester:
Her recomended book was, The Gift of Years.
She has long been a very controversial and most heterodox speaker and author for the Benedictine order. We're sure that she has no business teaching at a Catholic faculty, but what rationale could Father Bob have for recomending her?
We would not recommend reading her book because it doesn't really deal with the spirtual problems of growing old and dying, something which we all must do, and preparing for death by ensuring that our souls are in a state of Sanctifying Grace. The disappointments of life are momentary, but the punishments and rewards for life are eternal.
Her own words:
Talking about Thomas Reese SJ who was forced to resign from America Magazine, she wrote, "He published articles in America that looked at both sides of the communion-for-politicians issue, at both sides of the gay marriage issue, at both sides of the role of Congregation of the Faith, at both sides of the church as institution and religion. " http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/fw051205.htm
Attacks Church teaching on Homosexuality: "I am completely commited to the achievement of full civil rights for gay and lesbian people. To deny these people rights in the name of morality is immoral. The Church is a human institution and it grows slowly." http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/1007257
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Bad Jesuit!
On "Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit" it looks like the Jesuits are engaging in some socially conscientious voting in the shareholder meeting to engage their Human Rights Concerns. This sort of thing is fairly common amongst Jesuits, but try finding one that has an understanding of and belief in personal sin.
On May 27, the Jesuit-led resolution will again be considered at Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting. In the weeks prior to the meeting, Chevron stockholders will be casting their votes regarding this resolution.
On May 27, the Jesuit-led resolution will again be considered at Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting. In the weeks prior to the meeting, Chevron stockholders will be casting their votes regarding this resolution.
Italy: Scientology cult sues Catholic author and publishing house
Italy: Scientology cult sues Catholic author and publishing house
Scientology is an even bigger crock than Medjugorje and its adherents are even more eager to sue than the American Civil Liberties Union.
Scientology is an even bigger crock than Medjugorje and its adherents are even more eager to sue than the American Civil Liberties Union.
Father Schmidberger of SSPX Criticizes Schismatic Germans
The Local [Germany]
Father Franz Schmidberger said members of country’s clergy had called into question Catholicism as the only true faith – which indirectly cast doubt on Christ’s divinity.
“A certain group of bishops isn’t primarily opposed to or critical of the priest brotherhood of St. Pius X – they actually have a disturbed relationship with the pope and the theology of the Church over the centuries,” Schmidberger said.
He said past statements by the head of the German Bishops’ Conference Archbishop Robert Zollitsch and his predecessor Karl Lehmann to back up his claims. The Bishops' Conference refused to comment on Schmidberger's remarks.
Here...
The rest of the article is mostly garbage and untrue, what it doesn't tell you is that Father Schmidberger is right. German Bishops have had a very strained relationship with the Papacy for 100s of years, and their complicity in the "spirit of Vatican II" is well documented in the book by Fr. Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber.
Father Franz Schmidberger said members of country’s clergy had called into question Catholicism as the only true faith – which indirectly cast doubt on Christ’s divinity.
“A certain group of bishops isn’t primarily opposed to or critical of the priest brotherhood of St. Pius X – they actually have a disturbed relationship with the pope and the theology of the Church over the centuries,” Schmidberger said.
He said past statements by the head of the German Bishops’ Conference Archbishop Robert Zollitsch and his predecessor Karl Lehmann to back up his claims. The Bishops' Conference refused to comment on Schmidberger's remarks.
Here...
The rest of the article is mostly garbage and untrue, what it doesn't tell you is that Father Schmidberger is right. German Bishops have had a very strained relationship with the Papacy for 100s of years, and their complicity in the "spirit of Vatican II" is well documented in the book by Fr. Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber.
Come, Drink the Coolaid at Medjugorje
In a testament to the persistence of false religious beliefs and the gullibility of mankind, Spirit Daily Drinks the coolaid at Medjugorje. They gloss over details like Medjugorje's heretical and modernist "locutions", of Cardinal Schönborn's rank infidelity to Catholic teaching, his snubbing of the Austrian Pro-Life movement, scandalous promotion of blasphemous art and worst of all his disloyalty to the Holy Father. We think there are two possible causes for this and one is financial and the other is psychological.
Spirit Daily
The rumors last autumn swirled. After long years of confusion among the flock, after virulent debate -- and diatribes, especially from those who opposed it -- and after periods of outright befuddlement, the Vatican was going to issue guidelines on the famous apparition site of Medjugorje, said the Cardinal of Sarajevo, with hints that those guidelines would not be interpreted as favorable. It would come, they said, by the end of the year.
"I don't think we must wait for a long time, I think it will be this year, but that is not clear... I am going to Rome in November and we must discuss this," said Cardinal Vinko Puljic last October.
Read further...
Incredibly, there is even another or related website out there endorsing the Cardinal thusly:
Spirit Daily
The rumors last autumn swirled. After long years of confusion among the flock, after virulent debate -- and diatribes, especially from those who opposed it -- and after periods of outright befuddlement, the Vatican was going to issue guidelines on the famous apparition site of Medjugorje, said the Cardinal of Sarajevo, with hints that those guidelines would not be interpreted as favorable. It would come, they said, by the end of the year.
"I don't think we must wait for a long time, I think it will be this year, but that is not clear... I am going to Rome in November and we must discuss this," said Cardinal Vinko Puljic last October.
Read further...
Incredibly, there is even another or related website out there endorsing the Cardinal thusly:
Cardinal Schonborn is a towering figure in the Catholic Church, a member of the powerful Roman Curial, he sits on the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith and is a close friend of Pope Benedict XVI. When he speaks people should listen but we are not sure the American Catholic press is really listening.
It's hard to see how he could be such a powerful figure in the curia at this point if he was so ill-informed about the meeting in Rome between the SSPX and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; probably because he was kept in the dark. Surely, these kinds of statements bespeak a certain kind of desperation on the part partizans of Medjugorje.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Catholic bishops begin postcard campaign for immigration reform - San Bernardino County Sun
Catholic bishops begin postcard campaign for immigration reform - San Bernardino County Sun
Yes my Master. George Soros and company are working their magic charms on the USCCB.
A Tale of Two Bishops
Two Bishops have made the news over the last few weeks. Sex Abuse Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee who paid half a million dollars in hush money to his boyfriend is going to further outrage the citizens of Milwaukee by appearing at a Mass alongside retired Archbishop Pilarczyk and incoming Archbishop Listeki; and Pro-Gay Marriage Cardinal Fideles is being silent about the "Gay Marriage" issue that is up in the Portuguese Parliament and became rather persnickety when a journalist pressed him as to why, according to Lifesite:
The meeting in Milwaukee of Catholic luminaries should provide adaquate fodder for those clamouring for more "transparency" and "democracy" in the Roman Catholic Church, hoping, who really knows why, that the Church will change her doctrines on Birth Control and Clerical Celibacy. If it's hard to see why people get worked up about it, perhaps it's because that, apart from a coterie of elitist scribblers at the big newspapers, most people don't really care. We think they'd rather that their local Bishops were the good men they are often portrayed to be. We think they'd rather, perhaps against the corrupt expectations of the liberal press corp, that the Catholic Church really were the organization it's portrayed as being in those old Bing Crosby movies.
Unfortunately, Archishop Listeki has really lost a golden opportunity to stand up against the tyrany of evil and to date, it seems that most Bishops would prefer to spend their treasure on their Public Image at the expense of their eternal souls.
On the other hand, in Portugal, the government, ever Masonic in its general lack of principles, is promoting Gay Marriage. Like the previous example-- there's what Noam Chomsky calls some manufactured going on-- most people don't approve of the Catholic Church harboring sex predators like Archbishop Weakland, and most of the Portuguese people despise the idea of gay marriage.
Here's a news story on the Bronzed Sex Abuse Archbishop and you can really read in the comments that they are angry that something they cherish has been tarnished by a vile predatory, homosexual Bishop.
And then there's an obituary for a recently deceased Anglican Bishop, who pounded on the door to the Catholic Church, sorry, we're not interested in converts was the reply, he was actually refused by the local Nuncio, but persisted till he was finally let in. Despite becoming a Catholic, he remained sceptical about the leadership (we wonder why), and wrote, according to Catholic Culture:
This really does give more lie to the leftists in the media who can only harp about same-sex marriage, married priests and other pet issues, when their criticisms are actually held by a small number of elitists in the Church, but are really quite irrelevant.
The cardinal, who openly supports legal privileges for same-sex couples in conflict with Vatican teaching, is also a close confidant of Portugal's socialist prime minister, Jose Socrates.
The meeting in Milwaukee of Catholic luminaries should provide adaquate fodder for those clamouring for more "transparency" and "democracy" in the Roman Catholic Church, hoping, who really knows why, that the Church will change her doctrines on Birth Control and Clerical Celibacy. If it's hard to see why people get worked up about it, perhaps it's because that, apart from a coterie of elitist scribblers at the big newspapers, most people don't really care. We think they'd rather that their local Bishops were the good men they are often portrayed to be. We think they'd rather, perhaps against the corrupt expectations of the liberal press corp, that the Catholic Church really were the organization it's portrayed as being in those old Bing Crosby movies.
Unfortunately, Archishop Listeki has really lost a golden opportunity to stand up against the tyrany of evil and to date, it seems that most Bishops would prefer to spend their treasure on their Public Image at the expense of their eternal souls.
On the other hand, in Portugal, the government, ever Masonic in its general lack of principles, is promoting Gay Marriage. Like the previous example-- there's what Noam Chomsky calls some manufactured going on-- most people don't approve of the Catholic Church harboring sex predators like Archbishop Weakland, and most of the Portuguese people despise the idea of gay marriage.
Here's a news story on the Bronzed Sex Abuse Archbishop and you can really read in the comments that they are angry that something they cherish has been tarnished by a vile predatory, homosexual Bishop.
And then there's an obituary for a recently deceased Anglican Bishop, who pounded on the door to the Catholic Church, sorry, we're not interested in converts was the reply, he was actually refused by the local Nuncio, but persisted till he was finally let in. Despite becoming a Catholic, he remained sceptical about the leadership (we wonder why), and wrote, according to Catholic Culture:
While certain that he had made the right decision in moving to Rome, he remained uneasy about the lack of rigour shown by the Catholic bishops on a range of issues, particularly their approach to ecumenicism.
This really does give more lie to the leftists in the media who can only harp about same-sex marriage, married priests and other pet issues, when their criticisms are actually held by a small number of elitists in the Church, but are really quite irrelevant.
Coalition of American Assyrians and Maronites Rebukes Arab American Institute
The Coalition of American Assyrians and Maronites (CAAM), which includes seven Assyrian and Maronite Organizations, has sent an official letter to the Arab American Institute, asking it to stop identifying Assyrians and Maronites as Arabs. CAAM represents over 2.2 million Assyrians and Maronites in the United States. The letter was also sent to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, all twelve Cabinet members, all members of the House and Senate, The Chicago Tribune, Time Magazine and Groliers Multimedia Encyclopedia.
read further...
read further...
The World of GK Chesterton And What's Wrong With It
Guardian
This year is the centenary of one of Chesterton's oddest, but most intriguing, booksRenewal of interest in the work of GK Chesterton continues apace. The writer whose career began when he dictated his first story to his aunt Rose at the age of three started early and aimed high, and his intellectual development was among the more conspicuously interesting of the Edwardian age. His Orthodoxy of 1908 has become a sort of touchstone text during the present vogue for philosophical theology, much cited by the likes of Slavoj Zizek and the radical theologian John Milbank, while oddball novels such as The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) retain the power to entertain and bemuse in equal measure.This year, however, sees the centenary of one of his rather less high-profile publications. What's Wrong with the World represents an extrapolation of Chesterton's original response to a query posed in so many words by the Times to a selection of eminent writers and thinkers of the day. "Dear Sirs," ran GK's succinct rejoinder, "I am". The publication of the book suggested that, on reflection, there might have been more to say on the subject.The Chesterton offered us by his latter-day biographers and critics is a lost proto-radical, if we could but make him out as such. Along with his close friend Hilaire Belloc, he was the proponent of a species of Third Way politics avant la lettre, a plague-on-both-your-houses confutation of capitalism and socialism known as distributism. Drastically simplified, the vision was of an atomised entrepreneurialism in which as many individuals as possible pursued the goal of profit, so as to wrest capital accumulation from both a few vastly powerful interests (such as "Jewish banking families") and a monolithic socialist state.What's Wrong with the World opens with an analysis of the predicament of modern humanity, too obsessed in the great age of political idealism with visions of the future. Has the Enlightenment ideal of continual social progress been a reality, or has it all been a piece of western myth-making? "Are we still strong enough to spear mammoths, but now tender enough to spare them?" he wonders. But then again, "Does the cosmos contain any mammoth that we have either speared or spared?"What it does contain is the wreckage of half-realised ideals. There is a lack of conviction in attempts to enact the radical doctrines of Christianity or of political justice, and too often the espousal of great causes results in panic at the consequences of one's own actions. Where national leaders paid lip-service to such humanist ideals as egalitarianism, they came to rue their faith in humanity. "Joseph of Austria and Catherine of Russia quite agreed that the people should rule; what horrified them was that the people did."Much in the section on women would take a lot of swallowing today. Woman is naturally thrifty, as against the prodigality of man, "the aim of the good woman [being] to rummage in the dustbin". This is cognate with her moral inclination to chastity in the face of masculine concupiscence. There is scarcely any point in female suffrage (the burning question of the day) where it is so little wanted. The saving grace of not having the vote is that it allows a woman to remain above the level of the baying mob. What she really needs is liberation from drudgery. A paradise of domestic labour-saving devices will spread more spiritual freedom than would the vote. Where many saw the constitutional equality of the sexes as an ideal, meanwhile, Chesterton suspected only the urge to "plodding, elaborate, elephantine imitation" of the male by the female. "Boys play football, why shouldn't girls play football … boys go to Oxford, why shouldn't girls go to Oxford – in short, boys grow mustaches, why shouldn't girls grow mustaches[?]"The cumulative impact of the book is a little like reading a supremely elegant, aphoristic Nietzsche, but one domesticated for the English gentleman's study. There is the same vertiginous thrill at lurching from exemplary declarations of universalist ethics ("Men have never wearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it") to the flared-nostrilled defence of Edwardian privilege, such as public schools. But for its sober humanism, as much as its infuriating patrician conservatism, it deserves to be read.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/jan/08/gk-chesterton-world-whats-wrong
This year is the centenary of one of Chesterton's oddest, but most intriguing, booksRenewal of interest in the work of GK Chesterton continues apace. The writer whose career began when he dictated his first story to his aunt Rose at the age of three started early and aimed high, and his intellectual development was among the more conspicuously interesting of the Edwardian age. His Orthodoxy of 1908 has become a sort of touchstone text during the present vogue for philosophical theology, much cited by the likes of Slavoj Zizek and the radical theologian John Milbank, while oddball novels such as The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) retain the power to entertain and bemuse in equal measure.This year, however, sees the centenary of one of his rather less high-profile publications. What's Wrong with the World represents an extrapolation of Chesterton's original response to a query posed in so many words by the Times to a selection of eminent writers and thinkers of the day. "Dear Sirs," ran GK's succinct rejoinder, "I am". The publication of the book suggested that, on reflection, there might have been more to say on the subject.The Chesterton offered us by his latter-day biographers and critics is a lost proto-radical, if we could but make him out as such. Along with his close friend Hilaire Belloc, he was the proponent of a species of Third Way politics avant la lettre, a plague-on-both-your-houses confutation of capitalism and socialism known as distributism. Drastically simplified, the vision was of an atomised entrepreneurialism in which as many individuals as possible pursued the goal of profit, so as to wrest capital accumulation from both a few vastly powerful interests (such as "Jewish banking families") and a monolithic socialist state.What's Wrong with the World opens with an analysis of the predicament of modern humanity, too obsessed in the great age of political idealism with visions of the future. Has the Enlightenment ideal of continual social progress been a reality, or has it all been a piece of western myth-making? "Are we still strong enough to spear mammoths, but now tender enough to spare them?" he wonders. But then again, "Does the cosmos contain any mammoth that we have either speared or spared?"What it does contain is the wreckage of half-realised ideals. There is a lack of conviction in attempts to enact the radical doctrines of Christianity or of political justice, and too often the espousal of great causes results in panic at the consequences of one's own actions. Where national leaders paid lip-service to such humanist ideals as egalitarianism, they came to rue their faith in humanity. "Joseph of Austria and Catherine of Russia quite agreed that the people should rule; what horrified them was that the people did."Much in the section on women would take a lot of swallowing today. Woman is naturally thrifty, as against the prodigality of man, "the aim of the good woman [being] to rummage in the dustbin". This is cognate with her moral inclination to chastity in the face of masculine concupiscence. There is scarcely any point in female suffrage (the burning question of the day) where it is so little wanted. The saving grace of not having the vote is that it allows a woman to remain above the level of the baying mob. What she really needs is liberation from drudgery. A paradise of domestic labour-saving devices will spread more spiritual freedom than would the vote. Where many saw the constitutional equality of the sexes as an ideal, meanwhile, Chesterton suspected only the urge to "plodding, elaborate, elephantine imitation" of the male by the female. "Boys play football, why shouldn't girls play football … boys go to Oxford, why shouldn't girls go to Oxford – in short, boys grow mustaches, why shouldn't girls grow mustaches[?]"The cumulative impact of the book is a little like reading a supremely elegant, aphoristic Nietzsche, but one domesticated for the English gentleman's study. There is the same vertiginous thrill at lurching from exemplary declarations of universalist ethics ("Men have never wearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it") to the flared-nostrilled defence of Edwardian privilege, such as public schools. But for its sober humanism, as much as its infuriating patrician conservatism, it deserves to be read.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/jan/08/gk-chesterton-world-whats-wrong
Friday, January 8, 2010
Bombing In Thailand: Analysis of Islamist Presence There
By Martin Petty
BANGKOK, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Bombs killed one security officer and wounded another in Thailand's restive deep South on Thursday during a visit by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to promote an economic stimulus programme aimed at restoring peace.
The bombings underlined the failure of successive governments to tackle a separatist insurgency in the Malay Muslim-dominated region, which entered its sixth year on Monday with a death toll of nearly 4,000.
WHO IS BEHIND THE INSURGENCY?
No group has publicly come forward but most analysts believe the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) Coordinate is running the show, possibly in cooperation with remnants of the Patani United Liberation Front (PULO).
BRN is said to be a military offshoot of the Patani Malay National Revolutionary Front, a political movement established in the 1960s to seek independence, or at least autonomy, for the region's ethnic Malay Muslims.
The current leaders are unknown. The government believes they may be hiding in Malaysia, Indonesia or Europe. The authorities have long suspected prominent local politicians, religious leaders and Islamic teachers of involvement.
Link to original....
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2010/01/07/qa-whats-fuelling-insurgency-in-thailands-malay-muslim-south/
BANGKOK, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Bombs killed one security officer and wounded another in Thailand's restive deep South on Thursday during a visit by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to promote an economic stimulus programme aimed at restoring peace.
The bombings underlined the failure of successive governments to tackle a separatist insurgency in the Malay Muslim-dominated region, which entered its sixth year on Monday with a death toll of nearly 4,000.
WHO IS BEHIND THE INSURGENCY?
No group has publicly come forward but most analysts believe the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) Coordinate is running the show, possibly in cooperation with remnants of the Patani United Liberation Front (PULO).
BRN is said to be a military offshoot of the Patani Malay National Revolutionary Front, a political movement established in the 1960s to seek independence, or at least autonomy, for the region's ethnic Malay Muslims.
The current leaders are unknown. The government believes they may be hiding in Malaysia, Indonesia or Europe. The authorities have long suspected prominent local politicians, religious leaders and Islamic teachers of involvement.
Link to original....
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2010/01/07/qa-whats-fuelling-insurgency-in-thailands-malay-muslim-south/
He Knows His Neoconservative Bootlickers
Welcome to Vienna: If Cardinal Christoph Schönborn participates in the unrest of a foreign Diocese, then other Bishops may do the same in Vienna.
Kreuz.de Commentary
While photos are being published of the Vienese Cardinal in Medjugorje, there was a protest in Vienna.
It was directed against the honouring of a notorious child slaughterhouse by the unscrupulous Viennese blood-mayor.
The old liberal and politically devious Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn did everything in order to put stones in the way of the Catholic supervisors of the demonstration.
He even forbade admitting Salzburg's Bishop Andreas Laun to participate in the demonstration against the infamous commemoration.
In a private discussion the Cardinal explained himself in this way: „I won't permit in any event a bishop to drive here from three hundred kilometers away into my Diocese and blame the mayor.“
The Bishop obeyed.
Why, however, does Cardinal Schönborn travel 800 kilometers, in order to incite unrest in another Diocese: was it clear from the beginning that it would stir a wasp's nest?
The answer is found fast.
A goal of this exercise of the old liberal of a Cardinal was to pull disappointed neoconservative Catholics over the table.
Because in the meantime the most naive neoconservative truth denier must have recognized that Cardinal Schönborn works against the Church.
In December 2004 he stabbed the pro-life organization `Youth for Life' in the back, when it demonstrated against the introduction of the child slaughter at the Salzburg national hospital.
In October 2005 the sacrilegious pancake Consecration was effected by the Cardinal followed during one of his youth fairs.
In February 2006 Cardinal Schönborn permitted a homo-perverse mating in his Cathedral blessing.
In the December of the same year he defended deprivation of fluids and sustenance for the terminally ill.
When Catholics demonstrated in February 2007 before a child slaughterhouse in a Viennese shopping center, Cardinal Schönborn as expected, stabbed them into the back.
Then the inexpressible exhibition in the Viennese Cathedral museum in March 2008, which showed the Apostles as homo-perverse piglets and Christ as bound masochist with an erection.
Despite world-wide protests the Cardinal did not stop this outrage.
Besides he denied the Church's mission to convert the Jews in April 2008.
The award of the Papal Gregorian Medal followed to the baby-murdering, Viennese Ideologue, Comrade Renate Brown in June 2008.
As a Pope Benedikt XVI, highly regarded priest of Windischgarten, Mons. Gerhard Wagner, appointed to Linz Diocese, found Cardinal Schönborn in prominent place busily preventing his appointment.
In May 2009 the honoring of the Viennese Martyr Sister Restituta Kafka followed. You Cardinal, seemed to miss the demonic and bare breasted representation, which got the name in Vienna of "Prostituta".
But the Cardinal is smart enough, in order to know that its neoconservative bootlickers have a short memory and are stupid.
It is sufficient to throw to them a Medjugorje bone at his feet so that they forget the old liberal changes of the church in Austria, he has made.
After his Medjugorje journey the Viennese Cardinal can turn, therefore, again unimpaired to the cocktail parties with comrades and abortion politicians and work on the next plot against Catholics.
Because the neoconservative dullards are for a further seven years in the seventh Medjugorje heaven.
However, the resounding slap, which the Cardinal received after his Medjugorje visit from bishop Ratko Perić from Mostar Duvno, neither will resound for long:
"I regret it that the Cardinal with its visit, his appearance and his explanations added the present suffering of the local Church anew, which does not contribute to the necessary peace and to the Diocese.“
Cardinal Schoenborn plans to return to Medjugorje.
Despite actual Vatican condemnation of the priest chiefly associatd with this "Apparition", the Cardinal actually intends on creating quite a bit of a fuss. The Catholic Online report reads:
The Catholic Review Online, the Baltimore Diocesan Newpaper has this interesting piece of information to add to the rest, despite going on a bit about the good things that are attributed to the shrine, which may, it is not reported, have more to do with the intention of the pilgrims and the pre-existing shrine than the things that Fr. Vlasic and the Seers are up to.
Kreuz.de Commentary
While photos are being published of the Vienese Cardinal in Medjugorje, there was a protest in Vienna.
It was directed against the honouring of a notorious child slaughterhouse by the unscrupulous Viennese blood-mayor.
The old liberal and politically devious Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn did everything in order to put stones in the way of the Catholic supervisors of the demonstration.
He even forbade admitting Salzburg's Bishop Andreas Laun to participate in the demonstration against the infamous commemoration.
In a private discussion the Cardinal explained himself in this way: „I won't permit in any event a bishop to drive here from three hundred kilometers away into my Diocese and blame the mayor.“
The Bishop obeyed.
Why, however, does Cardinal Schönborn travel 800 kilometers, in order to incite unrest in another Diocese: was it clear from the beginning that it would stir a wasp's nest?
The answer is found fast.
A goal of this exercise of the old liberal of a Cardinal was to pull disappointed neoconservative Catholics over the table.
Because in the meantime the most naive neoconservative truth denier must have recognized that Cardinal Schönborn works against the Church.
In December 2004 he stabbed the pro-life organization `Youth for Life' in the back, when it demonstrated against the introduction of the child slaughter at the Salzburg national hospital.
In October 2005 the sacrilegious pancake Consecration was effected by the Cardinal followed during one of his youth fairs.
In February 2006 Cardinal Schönborn permitted a homo-perverse mating in his Cathedral blessing.
In the December of the same year he defended deprivation of fluids and sustenance for the terminally ill.
When Catholics demonstrated in February 2007 before a child slaughterhouse in a Viennese shopping center, Cardinal Schönborn as expected, stabbed them into the back.
Then the inexpressible exhibition in the Viennese Cathedral museum in March 2008, which showed the Apostles as homo-perverse piglets and Christ as bound masochist with an erection.
Despite world-wide protests the Cardinal did not stop this outrage.
Besides he denied the Church's mission to convert the Jews in April 2008.
The award of the Papal Gregorian Medal followed to the baby-murdering, Viennese Ideologue, Comrade Renate Brown in June 2008.
As a Pope Benedikt XVI, highly regarded priest of Windischgarten, Mons. Gerhard Wagner, appointed to Linz Diocese, found Cardinal Schönborn in prominent place busily preventing his appointment.
In May 2009 the honoring of the Viennese Martyr Sister Restituta Kafka followed. You Cardinal, seemed to miss the demonic and bare breasted representation, which got the name in Vienna of "Prostituta".
But the Cardinal is smart enough, in order to know that its neoconservative bootlickers have a short memory and are stupid.
It is sufficient to throw to them a Medjugorje bone at his feet so that they forget the old liberal changes of the church in Austria, he has made.
After his Medjugorje journey the Viennese Cardinal can turn, therefore, again unimpaired to the cocktail parties with comrades and abortion politicians and work on the next plot against Catholics.
Because the neoconservative dullards are for a further seven years in the seventh Medjugorje heaven.
However, the resounding slap, which the Cardinal received after his Medjugorje visit from bishop Ratko Perić from Mostar Duvno, neither will resound for long:
"I regret it that the Cardinal with its visit, his appearance and his explanations added the present suffering of the local Church anew, which does not contribute to the necessary peace and to the Diocese.“
Cardinal Schoenborn plans to return to Medjugorje.
Despite actual Vatican condemnation of the priest chiefly associatd with this "Apparition", the Cardinal actually intends on creating quite a bit of a fuss. The Catholic Online report reads:
In a statement posted on the website of the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno, Bishop Peric explained that Fr Vlasic has been reported to the CDF "for the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspicious mysticism, disobedience toward legitimately issued orders", and accusations of sexual immorality.
The Catholic Review Online, the Baltimore Diocesan Newpaper has this interesting piece of information to add to the rest, despite going on a bit about the good things that are attributed to the shrine, which may, it is not reported, have more to do with the intention of the pilgrims and the pre-existing shrine than the things that Fr. Vlasic and the Seers are up to.
Bishop Peric, who repeatedly has questioned the authenticity of the apparitions and struggled to limit the influence of religious living in the diocese without permission, issued a statement Jan. 2 saying that while he recognized the right of a cardinal to celebrate Mass anywhere in the world, “there also exists a certain etiquette in the church” that encourages a visiting cardinal to discuss a visit with the local bishop. He said neither the cardinal nor anyone from his office contacted him.
In addition, Cardinal Schonborn’s visits to unauthorized religious communities “could be interpreted as supportive,” Bishop Peric said.
Boston College Feminist Dies
Mary Daly was a force for changing attitudes and diminishing the importance of the Catholic Faith at this Jesuit school. The editorial remarks about her contribution to the "vibrant debate". It's difficult to surmise from reading the article or assessing some of her positions just how her contribution was "vibrant", but the article is correct in that it identifies her presence as a sign that Boston College is a liberal institution. How it is that a woman whose very presence championed the normalization of homosexuality at a Catholic institution is a very curious indicator, but that she did it is still further proof that this allegedly Catholic and Jesuit institution is far removed from the namesakes that inspired the brick and mortar to house generations of the surrounding flower of youth the Irish-Catholic community of Boston had to offer.
One Jesuit commenter, "aidan01" wrote:
It's hard to take seriously the author's previous statements about Daly being a "joke of a human being" and then going on to praise her for her talent as a scholar and her contribution, but it highlights the point of confusion. No doubt, despite the Jesuit's contention that Boston College did not damage his faith, he seems to suffer from that lack of integrity which comes as a result of not really believing in anything with any conviction. His attitude plays into the rationale that the presence of instructors like Daly enrich the experience in a spirited dialogue when most of the students graduating from Boston College don't have the fundamentals to know the Catholic Faith which is supposed to be the reason behind the College's existence in the first place.
Saying she was right about things doesn't address whether she should have been at a Catholic College in the first place, or whether or not she helps the students do anything more than realize the pure vanity of religion in the first place. The only thing we suspect she was right about was her opposition to the evils of co-education.
Requiem for a feminist - The Boston Globe
One Jesuit commenter, "aidan01" wrote:
As a male seminarian taking classes at B.C. in the eighties I recall that men were banned from Daly's class. Of course none of us were interested in trying to set up a private tutorial with her. We all thought Daly was a joke of a human being, and that B.C. had been corrupted by liberals and didn't have the spheres to boot her to the curb. Mary Daly was a sign of the decline of Boston College's standing in the Catholic World.
Years later, as a cynical move to impress a radical feminist professor, I cited one of Daly's works in a paper. To make sure the Prof. questioned my motives I also cited Mary Ann Glendon, the very conservative Harvard Professor, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. Interestingly, Daly and Glendon agreed completely in their blisteringly negative critiques of Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree", but Glendon was particularly cutting, and sounded even more "feminist" than Daly. Even the Professor was surprised by that. But, imagine my surprise when I couldn't put Daly's book down, even after writing the paper.
As strange and alienating as Mary Day was to many, she was a serious thinker and her ideas are worthy of consideration. [Really?] While reading her work did not push me to abandon my own thinking, or my faith, it did bring to light for me a perspective on the Church and Society that was illuminative and insightful. She was a very accomplished scholar, somewhat off the deep end, but she had insights that cannot be dismissed lightly, and she conveyed them with a wicked sense of humor. Mary was very funny, and when I think about her I have to smile because, although it kills me to admit it, her work contributed something significant and meaningful to my life.
It's hard to take seriously the author's previous statements about Daly being a "joke of a human being" and then going on to praise her for her talent as a scholar and her contribution, but it highlights the point of confusion. No doubt, despite the Jesuit's contention that Boston College did not damage his faith, he seems to suffer from that lack of integrity which comes as a result of not really believing in anything with any conviction. His attitude plays into the rationale that the presence of instructors like Daly enrich the experience in a spirited dialogue when most of the students graduating from Boston College don't have the fundamentals to know the Catholic Faith which is supposed to be the reason behind the College's existence in the first place.
Saying she was right about things doesn't address whether she should have been at a Catholic College in the first place, or whether or not she helps the students do anything more than realize the pure vanity of religion in the first place. The only thing we suspect she was right about was her opposition to the evils of co-education.
Requiem for a feminist - The Boston Globe
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Tea at Trianon: Cathar Country
A new book by Elena Maria Vida tells the story of the war against the Cathars.
The modern vampire fascination as with much else in Catharism also includes a radical connection to the dark and anarchic associations of witchcraft which have haunted Europe even before Simon Magus challenged St. Peter, the Priests of Baal tried to vie with Elija, or Moses set the power of God against the vain sorcery of Pharoh's priests. It's not suprising, as Tea at Trianon reports that there is a strange kind of fascination for the Cathars of the Languedoc who don't know the consolations of the Faith, but only the restless curiositas of frenetic modernity.
Tea at Trianon: Cathar Country
The modern vampire fascination as with much else in Catharism also includes a radical connection to the dark and anarchic associations of witchcraft which have haunted Europe even before Simon Magus challenged St. Peter, the Priests of Baal tried to vie with Elija, or Moses set the power of God against the vain sorcery of Pharoh's priests. It's not suprising, as Tea at Trianon reports that there is a strange kind of fascination for the Cathars of the Languedoc who don't know the consolations of the Faith, but only the restless curiositas of frenetic modernity.
Tea at Trianon: Cathar Country
Come All Ye Faithful: Benedict's Counter-Reformation
William S. Lind is a doctrinaire sort of man with his own axe to grind. His prose resembles the stiff powder blue suit of an Evangelical protestant going door-to-door. We couldn't even finish reading his article, but made comments before we started to fall into a torpor of sleep by the protestantic contempt for the First Vatican Council which many Bishops and Cardinals, even those who resisted, backe with their lives, like the Cardinal of Paris who was murdered by the spiritual descendants of the Protestants, the Communists in the 1870 Commune. This periodical isn't conservative, it's dead.
When my mother was a young woman, in the 1930s, Cousin Lily, then in her 80s, gave her some sound advice: “Wherever you go, join the Episcopal Church and you will meet all the best people in town.” “Best” in this instance referred not to the Book of Life but the Social Register. The staid, proper, elevated Episcopal Church, the Republican Party at prayer, was respectability’s keep.
Starting sometime in the 1960s, God’s frozen people melted, generating the mother of all theological mud puddles. From the abandonment of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer to the introduction of priestesses in the 1970s and the ongoing election of homosexual bishops, the Episcopal Church forsook traditional Christian doctrine in favor of its own invented religion. Not surprisingly, this apostasy fractured both the Episcopal Church and the larger Anglican Communion. The upshot has been a variety of continuing churches that maintain historic ties to Anglicanism, multiple movements within the Episcopal Church to restore orthodoxy, and the breaking away of many Anglican churches in the Third World, where most Anglicans now live.
On Oct. 20, Rome parachuted into this dogfight like a division of Fallschirmjager. [Yes, we wrote "Benedict's Ecumenical Blitzkrieg"] In a move that stunned the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglicanism’s titular leader, Pope Benedict XVI, opened the Roman Catholic Church’s door to Anglicans as Anglicans. He invited them to move in—individuals, parishes, whole dioceses—while retaining their Anglican identity. They could keep their Book of Common Prayer, their liturgies, their priests—even married ones.
Importantly, Anglican parishes affiliating with Rome would not come under the authority of local Roman Catholic bishops. In the U.S. and UK, most of those bishops are liberals. They dislike traditional Anglicans as much as they dislike traditional Roman Catholics and the Latin Mass. Given the chance, they would simply close down any Anglican parish that swam the Tiber, telling the congregation to go to Roman Catholic churches. This would leave most former Anglicans unchurched, as few could stomach the snakebelly-low post-Vatican II vernacular Roman Mass. To Anglicans, no sin is more grievous than bad taste.
Not to worry: Anglicans rallying to Rome will stay under their own bishops, or priests acting as bishops, known as “ordinaries.” Pope Benedict knows his American and British bishops all too well. His whole package is neatly wrapped up just in time for Christmas in an Apostolic Constitution, the most definitive form of papal legislation. The rough American equivalent would be a constitutional amendment. It’s not just a bon-bon.
How Anglicans will react to Rome’s offer has yet to be seen. [Rome already knew how they would react, since there were many letters asking for this, and it was well known in the news that Liberal Prelatistas in the Magic Circle hated the idea that these people were coming. Anglican Bishop Ebbsfleet himself threatened to swim the Tiber and has yet to do so, although he said something last time about Advent.] Many details remain unclear. One problem is likely to be the doctrine of papal infallibility, [Not really, where do you people come from?] a 19th-century Roman innovation. [Is this really a conservative publication?] The Apostolic Constitution stipulates that Anglicans would have to accept “The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church as the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the ordinariate.” [Many of them already do] This could mean accepting papal infallibility as expressed in the catechism, and if Rome remains inflexible on that point, Pope Benedict’s initiative seems likely to fail. [Wishful thinking on your part, no doubt.]
But should it succeed, Rome’s offer has implications far beyond Anglicanism. Pope Benedict just might have taken the first step toward a second Counter-Reformation. The split within Anglicanism between those who believe the Christian faith was revealed and is to be received and those who think you just make it up to accord with the temper of the times is duplicated within virtually every other denomination. [Yes, that was the problem in the first place]
The root cause is the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School, [You'll probably never appreciate just how much the Frankfurt School is indebted to the Protestant Revolt] commonly known as political correctness. Following Antonio Gramsci’s plan for a “long march through the institutions,” cultural Marxists have penetrated every mainline church. Their driving force is political ideology, not theology. They view the church as just one more venue for radical politics.
Their goal is Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values,” where the old sins become virtues and the old virtues, sins. In churches where they take power, the Holy Trinity is replaced by a trio of bogeymen: racism, sexism, and homophobia. Every denomination so afflicted is bitterly split between remaining Christians and the politically correct. (No, you can’t be both, as Marxists would agree.)
What is now happening, and what Rome may have discerned, is that the people on each side of this division find they have more in common with those in other denominations who share their basic faith, Christianity or cultural Marxism, than with the people on the other side of that divide within their own churches. A potential is emerging for a vast realignment, one transcending the divisions that came out of the Reformation. [Uh, Protestant Revolt] That realignment, in which the remaining Christians in every church would gather in a single, new (small “c”) catholic church, needs a leader. Who better than Rome? Indeed, who other than Rome could possibly pull it off? [No one]
Seen in that light, the Pope’s offer to the Anglicans takes on broader meaning. Some observers have seen a parallel with the arrangement a number of Eastern Catholic Churches have had with Rome since 1595. Those Churches recognize their own liturgical rites, systems of canon law, and procedures for ordination. Immediately after the announcement of the constitution—before the document was published—Father Dwight Longenecker, a former Anglican now Roman Catholic priest, wrote on the Inside Catholic website:
He is willing to take risks to welcome those who follow the historic Christian faith, although separated from full communion with Rome. On the other hand, he sees those who prefer the modern gospel of relativism, sexual license, and a denial of the historic Christian faith that have taken over the mainstream Protestant churches. He knows there are plenty of them in the Catholic Church, and to them Benedict is quietly saying, “There’s the door.”
Yet what the Apostolic Constitution actually offers Anglicans is substantially less accommodating than Rome’s deal with the Eastern Rite churches. While Anglicans could keep their historic liturgical rite, Anglican churches affiliating with Rome would come under what are in effect non-geographical dioceses. That is a long way from the independence of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. [I'm not getting the relevance or truth value of this statement?]
Here we come to the crux of the matter: is Rome’s offer final, or is it negotiable, an opening gambit? If it is final, it is not likely to draw many Anglicans and would have virtually no appeal to other Protestants. Papal infallibility alone might doom it, and as a vehicle for Christian unity, it would prove, well, fallible. But let us hopefully assume that the Apostolic Constitution is not Rome’s last offer, that something closer to the arrangement given to the Eastern Rite churches could prove acceptable to Rome.
What then? It is possible to visualize not only Anglicans but all Protestants, in a new Counter-Reformation, leaving behind the cultural Marxists in the husks of their denominational institutions and joining in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. They could do so while remaining what they are—Lutherans and Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists, even some evangelicals—just as Greek Catholics remain in their Eastern rite. To Rome, they would give formal allegiance, recognizing the Pope as the titular and symbolic head of the Church. What both would gain would be a reunion of Christendom in the West in a church free of cultural Marxism—no small thing.
It is obvious that we are talking about a big leap for the Protestants. While few still speak openly of the “tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities,” that attitude has shaped their histories. [Much to the diminishment of European Civilization and involving the loss of many souls.] Interestingly, however, one of the more enthusiastic responses to the constitution came from the Methodists. A senior official told the Methodist Recorder that “[the constitution] may open up ways in which Methodism, whose origins were as a movement in the Church rather than a separate denomination, may find its place in future, as a Church, alongside others within the universal Church.”
Protestants’ usual Sunday services would have to alter little, if at all, except for communion services, which are infrequent. Less obvious, perhaps, is the height of the wall the Roman Catholic Church would have to vault. That barrier is built largely of beliefs that, in the Ultramontane years of the 19th century, were turned into formal doctrines. [These dogmas were defined because the world needed to understand them, things that Christians had always and everywhere believed] Neither Anglicans nor Protestants are likely to swear to any of them, although they ought to be willing to accept them as what they were before the 1800s, long-standing traditions that were widely believed. (Papal infallibility is an exception; it was an invention rammed through Vatican I in 1870.) [What's with this guy?]
For Rome, there is a possible way around this wall rather than over it: status quo ante. Anglican and Protestant congregations and jurisdictions joining in full communion with Rome would not be required to accept as doctrine anything postdating their split from Rome. The Catholic Church would lead a second Counter-Reformation by backing away from some of the first.
Before the Council of Trent (1545-63), which begat the Counter-Reformation, Rome’s hand rested lightly on national churches. For example, we think of the Roman Catholic Church as having a single rite, after Trent the Tridentine Rite and following Vatican II the sad and dispiriting Novus Ordo. Before Trent, Rome allowed a vast variety of rites, as she would again. England alone had three major rites and a host of minor ones in a country of 4 million people. Rome saw no problem as long as the rites for communion services followed what Dom Gregory Dix called “the shape of the liturgy.” Anglicans might again chant in the litany, “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.”
Pre-Trent, the same decentralization reigned in other matters as well. Kings generally had a good deal of say in who became a bishop. The Church might “volunteer” to pay some form of tax to a needy monarch. (After all, Church lands might make up a third of his kingdom.) When, occasionally, a Pope would overreach, king and bishops would come together to oppose him.
If Rome’s ambitions for a reunited Western Church go beyond Anglicans, and the Vatican is willing to bend beyond what the Apostolic Constitution currently offers, it may be time for Vatican III. The goal of such a council would be twofold: to sweep away obstacles to Christian unity stemming from the Council of Trent and Vatican I and reverse the disastrous consequences of Vatican II, including the vandalizing of the liturgy and abandonment of practices (such as fish on Friday) that buttressed Roman Catholic identity among laymen. Ultramontane doctrinal innovations would all have to be on the table; they might remain for Roman Catholics but would not be required of others seeking full communion with Rome.
Is all this just wishful thinking? The division between Christians and cultural Marxists in every denomination is certainly real: it screams from the religion page of every newspaper. With that division comes the potential for realignment and Christian reunion. Understanding the mind of the Curia is more difficult than penetrating North Korea, but Rome’s offer to the Anglicans suggests that Pope Benedict XVI is looking beyond the usual games. The ice has cracked, and a new spring may be coming.
Pope Benedict is a good German. Perhaps the question he could put to himself is this: who do I want to be, Kaiser Wilhelm II or Bismarck? Kaiser Wilhelm II was a bright and well-intentioned fellow. He was almost always right in what he wanted to do (including not going to war in 1914). But over and over he deferred to his advisers, who were almost always wrong. Bismarck, in contrast, knew exactly what he wanted—the reunification of Germany—and was both opportunistic and ruthless in making it happen. He brooked no opposition. As Kaiser Wilhem I once said, “Sometimes it is a hard thing, being a Kaiser under Bismarck.”
Now there’s a vision to gladden the heart: a German Pope proclaiming the reunion of the Western Church in the hall of mirrors at Versailles. Be a Bismarck, Benedict, be a Bismarck.
__________________________________________
William S. Lind is author, with Paul Weyrich, of The Next Conservatism.
The American Conservative...
When my mother was a young woman, in the 1930s, Cousin Lily, then in her 80s, gave her some sound advice: “Wherever you go, join the Episcopal Church and you will meet all the best people in town.” “Best” in this instance referred not to the Book of Life but the Social Register. The staid, proper, elevated Episcopal Church, the Republican Party at prayer, was respectability’s keep.
Starting sometime in the 1960s, God’s frozen people melted, generating the mother of all theological mud puddles. From the abandonment of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer to the introduction of priestesses in the 1970s and the ongoing election of homosexual bishops, the Episcopal Church forsook traditional Christian doctrine in favor of its own invented religion. Not surprisingly, this apostasy fractured both the Episcopal Church and the larger Anglican Communion. The upshot has been a variety of continuing churches that maintain historic ties to Anglicanism, multiple movements within the Episcopal Church to restore orthodoxy, and the breaking away of many Anglican churches in the Third World, where most Anglicans now live.
On Oct. 20, Rome parachuted into this dogfight like a division of Fallschirmjager. [Yes, we wrote "Benedict's Ecumenical Blitzkrieg"] In a move that stunned the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglicanism’s titular leader, Pope Benedict XVI, opened the Roman Catholic Church’s door to Anglicans as Anglicans. He invited them to move in—individuals, parishes, whole dioceses—while retaining their Anglican identity. They could keep their Book of Common Prayer, their liturgies, their priests—even married ones.
Importantly, Anglican parishes affiliating with Rome would not come under the authority of local Roman Catholic bishops. In the U.S. and UK, most of those bishops are liberals. They dislike traditional Anglicans as much as they dislike traditional Roman Catholics and the Latin Mass. Given the chance, they would simply close down any Anglican parish that swam the Tiber, telling the congregation to go to Roman Catholic churches. This would leave most former Anglicans unchurched, as few could stomach the snakebelly-low post-Vatican II vernacular Roman Mass. To Anglicans, no sin is more grievous than bad taste.
Not to worry: Anglicans rallying to Rome will stay under their own bishops, or priests acting as bishops, known as “ordinaries.” Pope Benedict knows his American and British bishops all too well. His whole package is neatly wrapped up just in time for Christmas in an Apostolic Constitution, the most definitive form of papal legislation. The rough American equivalent would be a constitutional amendment. It’s not just a bon-bon.
How Anglicans will react to Rome’s offer has yet to be seen. [Rome already knew how they would react, since there were many letters asking for this, and it was well known in the news that Liberal Prelatistas in the Magic Circle hated the idea that these people were coming. Anglican Bishop Ebbsfleet himself threatened to swim the Tiber and has yet to do so, although he said something last time about Advent.] Many details remain unclear. One problem is likely to be the doctrine of papal infallibility, [Not really, where do you people come from?] a 19th-century Roman innovation. [Is this really a conservative publication?] The Apostolic Constitution stipulates that Anglicans would have to accept “The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church as the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the ordinariate.” [Many of them already do] This could mean accepting papal infallibility as expressed in the catechism, and if Rome remains inflexible on that point, Pope Benedict’s initiative seems likely to fail. [Wishful thinking on your part, no doubt.]
But should it succeed, Rome’s offer has implications far beyond Anglicanism. Pope Benedict just might have taken the first step toward a second Counter-Reformation. The split within Anglicanism between those who believe the Christian faith was revealed and is to be received and those who think you just make it up to accord with the temper of the times is duplicated within virtually every other denomination. [Yes, that was the problem in the first place]
The root cause is the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School, [You'll probably never appreciate just how much the Frankfurt School is indebted to the Protestant Revolt] commonly known as political correctness. Following Antonio Gramsci’s plan for a “long march through the institutions,” cultural Marxists have penetrated every mainline church. Their driving force is political ideology, not theology. They view the church as just one more venue for radical politics.
Their goal is Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values,” where the old sins become virtues and the old virtues, sins. In churches where they take power, the Holy Trinity is replaced by a trio of bogeymen: racism, sexism, and homophobia. Every denomination so afflicted is bitterly split between remaining Christians and the politically correct. (No, you can’t be both, as Marxists would agree.)
What is now happening, and what Rome may have discerned, is that the people on each side of this division find they have more in common with those in other denominations who share their basic faith, Christianity or cultural Marxism, than with the people on the other side of that divide within their own churches. A potential is emerging for a vast realignment, one transcending the divisions that came out of the Reformation. [Uh, Protestant Revolt] That realignment, in which the remaining Christians in every church would gather in a single, new (small “c”) catholic church, needs a leader. Who better than Rome? Indeed, who other than Rome could possibly pull it off? [No one]
Seen in that light, the Pope’s offer to the Anglicans takes on broader meaning. Some observers have seen a parallel with the arrangement a number of Eastern Catholic Churches have had with Rome since 1595. Those Churches recognize their own liturgical rites, systems of canon law, and procedures for ordination. Immediately after the announcement of the constitution—before the document was published—Father Dwight Longenecker, a former Anglican now Roman Catholic priest, wrote on the Inside Catholic website:
It has always been Benedict’s view that the way forward ecumenically is to replicate the existing structures that the Eastern Rite churches enjoy, and that this can be done with new flexibility and creativity.
He is willing to take risks to welcome those who follow the historic Christian faith, although separated from full communion with Rome. On the other hand, he sees those who prefer the modern gospel of relativism, sexual license, and a denial of the historic Christian faith that have taken over the mainstream Protestant churches. He knows there are plenty of them in the Catholic Church, and to them Benedict is quietly saying, “There’s the door.”
Yet what the Apostolic Constitution actually offers Anglicans is substantially less accommodating than Rome’s deal with the Eastern Rite churches. While Anglicans could keep their historic liturgical rite, Anglican churches affiliating with Rome would come under what are in effect non-geographical dioceses. That is a long way from the independence of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. [I'm not getting the relevance or truth value of this statement?]
Here we come to the crux of the matter: is Rome’s offer final, or is it negotiable, an opening gambit? If it is final, it is not likely to draw many Anglicans and would have virtually no appeal to other Protestants. Papal infallibility alone might doom it, and as a vehicle for Christian unity, it would prove, well, fallible. But let us hopefully assume that the Apostolic Constitution is not Rome’s last offer, that something closer to the arrangement given to the Eastern Rite churches could prove acceptable to Rome.
What then? It is possible to visualize not only Anglicans but all Protestants, in a new Counter-Reformation, leaving behind the cultural Marxists in the husks of their denominational institutions and joining in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. They could do so while remaining what they are—Lutherans and Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists, even some evangelicals—just as Greek Catholics remain in their Eastern rite. To Rome, they would give formal allegiance, recognizing the Pope as the titular and symbolic head of the Church. What both would gain would be a reunion of Christendom in the West in a church free of cultural Marxism—no small thing.
It is obvious that we are talking about a big leap for the Protestants. While few still speak openly of the “tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities,” that attitude has shaped their histories. [Much to the diminishment of European Civilization and involving the loss of many souls.] Interestingly, however, one of the more enthusiastic responses to the constitution came from the Methodists. A senior official told the Methodist Recorder that “[the constitution] may open up ways in which Methodism, whose origins were as a movement in the Church rather than a separate denomination, may find its place in future, as a Church, alongside others within the universal Church.”
Protestants’ usual Sunday services would have to alter little, if at all, except for communion services, which are infrequent. Less obvious, perhaps, is the height of the wall the Roman Catholic Church would have to vault. That barrier is built largely of beliefs that, in the Ultramontane years of the 19th century, were turned into formal doctrines. [These dogmas were defined because the world needed to understand them, things that Christians had always and everywhere believed] Neither Anglicans nor Protestants are likely to swear to any of them, although they ought to be willing to accept them as what they were before the 1800s, long-standing traditions that were widely believed. (Papal infallibility is an exception; it was an invention rammed through Vatican I in 1870.) [What's with this guy?]
For Rome, there is a possible way around this wall rather than over it: status quo ante. Anglican and Protestant congregations and jurisdictions joining in full communion with Rome would not be required to accept as doctrine anything postdating their split from Rome. The Catholic Church would lead a second Counter-Reformation by backing away from some of the first.
Before the Council of Trent (1545-63), which begat the Counter-Reformation, Rome’s hand rested lightly on national churches. For example, we think of the Roman Catholic Church as having a single rite, after Trent the Tridentine Rite and following Vatican II the sad and dispiriting Novus Ordo. Before Trent, Rome allowed a vast variety of rites, as she would again. England alone had three major rites and a host of minor ones in a country of 4 million people. Rome saw no problem as long as the rites for communion services followed what Dom Gregory Dix called “the shape of the liturgy.” Anglicans might again chant in the litany, “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.”
Pre-Trent, the same decentralization reigned in other matters as well. Kings generally had a good deal of say in who became a bishop. The Church might “volunteer” to pay some form of tax to a needy monarch. (After all, Church lands might make up a third of his kingdom.) When, occasionally, a Pope would overreach, king and bishops would come together to oppose him.
If Rome’s ambitions for a reunited Western Church go beyond Anglicans, and the Vatican is willing to bend beyond what the Apostolic Constitution currently offers, it may be time for Vatican III. The goal of such a council would be twofold: to sweep away obstacles to Christian unity stemming from the Council of Trent and Vatican I and reverse the disastrous consequences of Vatican II, including the vandalizing of the liturgy and abandonment of practices (such as fish on Friday) that buttressed Roman Catholic identity among laymen. Ultramontane doctrinal innovations would all have to be on the table; they might remain for Roman Catholics but would not be required of others seeking full communion with Rome.
Is all this just wishful thinking? The division between Christians and cultural Marxists in every denomination is certainly real: it screams from the religion page of every newspaper. With that division comes the potential for realignment and Christian reunion. Understanding the mind of the Curia is more difficult than penetrating North Korea, but Rome’s offer to the Anglicans suggests that Pope Benedict XVI is looking beyond the usual games. The ice has cracked, and a new spring may be coming.
Pope Benedict is a good German. Perhaps the question he could put to himself is this: who do I want to be, Kaiser Wilhelm II or Bismarck? Kaiser Wilhelm II was a bright and well-intentioned fellow. He was almost always right in what he wanted to do (including not going to war in 1914). But over and over he deferred to his advisers, who were almost always wrong. Bismarck, in contrast, knew exactly what he wanted—the reunification of Germany—and was both opportunistic and ruthless in making it happen. He brooked no opposition. As Kaiser Wilhem I once said, “Sometimes it is a hard thing, being a Kaiser under Bismarck.”
Now there’s a vision to gladden the heart: a German Pope proclaiming the reunion of the Western Church in the hall of mirrors at Versailles. Be a Bismarck, Benedict, be a Bismarck.
__________________________________________
William S. Lind is author, with Paul Weyrich, of The Next Conservatism.
The American Conservative...
San Francisco Archdiocese Reinvestigates, Approves Pro-Abortion CCHD Grantee
by Katie Walker
Released January 4, 2010
Washington, D.C. (04 January 2010) – The Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Archdiocese of San Francisco continue to support an organization that helped create and promote contraception, elective-abortion and sex-education programs for kids, American Life League has learned.
In November, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development issued “For the Record – The Truth about CCHD Funding” in response to criticism that the group funds organizations that support pro-abortion programs.
The document contains this defense of the San Francisco Organizing Project:
The initial investigation conducted by the Reform CCHD Now campaign (of which American Life League is a member) revealed the SFOP’s strong support for health care facilities that provide family planning and “emergency” contraception.
Further investigation reveals the SFOP was instrumental in establishing the Healthy Kids and Healthy San Francisco insurance programs. Covering the full range of birth control, from drugs to devices, and elective abortion, SFOP worked to launch Healthy Kids, enrolling over 2,000 children through the San Francisco Health Plan. SFOP not only engaged in public campaigns to get Healthy San Francisco, which also covers birth control and elective abortion, passed, but a member of SFOP served on the Healthy San Francisco Advisory Board, which provided expert consultation on "implementation of employer spending mandate, membership, benefits, provider network, utilization, costs, and evaluation."
“The SFOP was cleared for funding after a reinvestigation – how could the Archdiocese of San Francisco not know about SFOP’s involvement in Healthy Kids and Healthy San Francisco?” asked Michael Hichborn, American Life League’s lead researcher on the CCHD.
In August, Bellermine Veritas Ministry, another participant in the Reform CCHD Now campaign, released its first report on the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the CCHD, showing that the CCHD-funded organizations "Young Workers United" and the "Chinese Progressive Association" issued 2008 voter guides advocating abortion, homosexual marriage and decriminalized prostitution. The report prompted the CCHD to defund them.
“Given that the CCHD and the Archdiocese of San Francisco have a history of clearing pro-abortion groups for funding, a disturbing pattern is beginning to emerge,” said Hichborn. “Bishop Roger Morin (chairman of the USCCB’s Subcommittee on the CCHD) called our charges against the CCHD ‘outrageous.’ In light of the latest revelations, he and Archbishop Niederauer owe Catholics across the country an explanation,” Hichborn said.
American Life League was cofounded in 1979 by Judie Brown. It is the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States and is committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to natural death. For more information or press inquiries, please contact Katie Walker at 540.659.4942.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
•American Life League: CCHD http://www.all.org/cchd
•Reform CCHD Now: http://reformcchdnow.com/
•Bellarmine Veritas Ministry: CCHD
http://bellarmineveritasministry.org/campaigns/cchd/
Released January 4, 2010
Washington, D.C. (04 January 2010) – The Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Archdiocese of San Francisco continue to support an organization that helped create and promote contraception, elective-abortion and sex-education programs for kids, American Life League has learned.
In November, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development issued “For the Record – The Truth about CCHD Funding” in response to criticism that the group funds organizations that support pro-abortion programs.
The document contains this defense of the San Francisco Organizing Project:
Archdiocese of San Francisco strongly supports the work of the SFOP to expand access to health care to children. Both Archbishop Levada and Archbishop Niederauer have spoken at SFOP events; SFOP has met regularly with [a]rchdiocesan staff to coordinate work on health care access and other issues that affect the poor and immigrant families.
The initial investigation conducted by the Reform CCHD Now campaign (of which American Life League is a member) revealed the SFOP’s strong support for health care facilities that provide family planning and “emergency” contraception.
Further investigation reveals the SFOP was instrumental in establishing the Healthy Kids and Healthy San Francisco insurance programs. Covering the full range of birth control, from drugs to devices, and elective abortion, SFOP worked to launch Healthy Kids, enrolling over 2,000 children through the San Francisco Health Plan. SFOP not only engaged in public campaigns to get Healthy San Francisco, which also covers birth control and elective abortion, passed, but a member of SFOP served on the Healthy San Francisco Advisory Board, which provided expert consultation on "implementation of employer spending mandate, membership, benefits, provider network, utilization, costs, and evaluation."
“The SFOP was cleared for funding after a reinvestigation – how could the Archdiocese of San Francisco not know about SFOP’s involvement in Healthy Kids and Healthy San Francisco?” asked Michael Hichborn, American Life League’s lead researcher on the CCHD.
In August, Bellermine Veritas Ministry, another participant in the Reform CCHD Now campaign, released its first report on the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the CCHD, showing that the CCHD-funded organizations "Young Workers United" and the "Chinese Progressive Association" issued 2008 voter guides advocating abortion, homosexual marriage and decriminalized prostitution. The report prompted the CCHD to defund them.
“Given that the CCHD and the Archdiocese of San Francisco have a history of clearing pro-abortion groups for funding, a disturbing pattern is beginning to emerge,” said Hichborn. “Bishop Roger Morin (chairman of the USCCB’s Subcommittee on the CCHD) called our charges against the CCHD ‘outrageous.’ In light of the latest revelations, he and Archbishop Niederauer owe Catholics across the country an explanation,” Hichborn said.
American Life League was cofounded in 1979 by Judie Brown. It is the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States and is committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to natural death. For more information or press inquiries, please contact Katie Walker at 540.659.4942.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
•American Life League: CCHD http://www.all.org/cchd
•Reform CCHD Now: http://reformcchdnow.com/
•Bellarmine Veritas Ministry: CCHD
http://bellarmineveritasministry.org/campaigns/cchd/
Monarchy, Versailles, Museums, Jesuits and Mystery Science 2000
Catholic Caveman has found an article by California Catholic on the most recent foray of the Society of Jesus into art, scandal and sacrilege. The Jesuits in California are doing scary things while turning sacred space into a cultural venue for fascinating multi-cultural goings on, as if the originators of the event had taken a page from Harvey Cox's Secular City.
We thought the above pictured pagan idol reminded us a lot of Crow from Mystery Science 2000.
It may be true that museum goers need not have a religious bent to enjoy sacred art, but we wonder whether these California Jesuits at St. Ignatius Church in San Franciso have a properly formed sensus catholicus. No doubt, their desire to shock and break with tradition have all but completely overwhelmed their stated purpose of doing everything for the glory of God.
In a related event at Versailles, France, a similar kind of artistic, cultural terrorism is happening, which may afright and confuse those of us who are accustomed to a more or less conventional experience. It really is a tribute in a way to the revolutionary nature of Museums in the first place, which were really designed according to an Enlightenment idea that the public could be educated by herding them into large public buildings to view art, apart from their privileged and aristocratic associations.
The Measure
In his New York Times decade-in-art retrospective, Holland Cotter singled out the Jeff Koons exhibition at Versailles as the most significant exhibition of the aughts, and next fall Japanese Pop art star Takashi Murakami (pictured) will have an opportunity to set the tone for the 2010s. (The other contemporary artist to have a show at Versailles, French conceptualist Xavier Veilhan, was featured there in 2009.) Agence France Presse reported yesterday that the Murakami retrospective that was first announced last summer will open on September 12, 2010 and run for three months at the palace outside Paris.
Sadly, [happily for us] because the French have a serious complex about the former seat of their dearly departed monarchy, the art shown therein must be as tame as possible. Or, as AFP puts it:
the palace, a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy, is being careful to avoid displaying works with pornographic or morbid connotations that might offend some visitors.
Papal liturgist endorses 'reform of the reform' | National Catholic Reporter
Papal liturgist endorses 'reform of the reform' | National Catholic Reporter
The fun part is reading all of the whinging from the local leftist yokels who are happy with praise and worship at the peace pulpit.
The fun part is reading all of the whinging from the local leftist yokels who are happy with praise and worship at the peace pulpit.
Copts Clash with Egyptian Police
CAIRO — Clashes erupted on Thursday as thousands of Coptic Christians in a southern Egyptian village gathered to bury six of their number gunned down on Coptic Christmas Eve by men believed to be Muslims, security officials said.
Officials and the local bishop said three men in a car had raked pedestrians with gunfire along a street containing two churches and a shopping precinct late on Wednesday.
Bishop Kirilos said the victims were people who had just emerged from church after attending a Christmas Eve service, and the proximity of the shopping area might have drawn some of them to it.
Six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed, while at least nine more Copts were wounded, two of them seriously, a security official said.
Read further...
Officials and the local bishop said three men in a car had raked pedestrians with gunfire along a street containing two churches and a shopping precinct late on Wednesday.
Bishop Kirilos said the victims were people who had just emerged from church after attending a Christmas Eve service, and the proximity of the shopping area might have drawn some of them to it.
Six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed, while at least nine more Copts were wounded, two of them seriously, a security official said.
Read further...
Quaker group nominates excommunicated priest for Nobel Peace Prize :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Modernism is a dragon that must be relentlessly pursued and destroyed. Its many heads rear up to attack the Church and its allies are many. Father Roy Bourgeois, another freeze dried hippie priest left over from radical days is being honored by another increasingly elderly and soon to be non-existent group, the Quakers. Why anyone would want a Nobel Prize and sit in the same company with Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arrafat and Obama is beyond us. The Nobel Prize is more of a target than a honor.
We'd like you to see a confluence between various cultural and political attacks resulting in the cultural and political decline of society at large abetted by Catholic priests of a radical stripe who ordinarily receive such uncritical praise from the main news organs that it's difficult for many people to disassociate them in their minds from an authentic Catholic identity. Father Bourgeois is, not surprisingly, a proponent of women's ordination.
Fortunately, he was excommunicated for his pains, but unfortunately, there are quite a few more like him posing as Catholic Priests and we dare say it, Bishops as well to say nothing of all aspects of Catholic social work and education where a Catholic professor or healthcare provider is often the exception rather than the rule. We hope you bear that in mind before you send your children there to have their innocense destroyed and their abillity to think critically seriously undermined, or send your money to causes which are Catholic in name only.
Quaker group nominates excommunicated priest for Nobel Peace Prize :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
We'd like you to see a confluence between various cultural and political attacks resulting in the cultural and political decline of society at large abetted by Catholic priests of a radical stripe who ordinarily receive such uncritical praise from the main news organs that it's difficult for many people to disassociate them in their minds from an authentic Catholic identity. Father Bourgeois is, not surprisingly, a proponent of women's ordination.
Fortunately, he was excommunicated for his pains, but unfortunately, there are quite a few more like him posing as Catholic Priests and we dare say it, Bishops as well to say nothing of all aspects of Catholic social work and education where a Catholic professor or healthcare provider is often the exception rather than the rule. We hope you bear that in mind before you send your children there to have their innocense destroyed and their abillity to think critically seriously undermined, or send your money to causes which are Catholic in name only.
Quaker group nominates excommunicated priest for Nobel Peace Prize :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Copts Clash with Egyptian Police
At last, there's wider recognition of this problem.
CAIRO — Clashes erupted on Thursday as thousands of Coptic Christians in a southern Egyptian village gathered to bury six of their number gunned down on Coptic Christmas Eve by men believed to be Muslims, security officials said.
Officials and the local bishop said three men in a car had raked pedestrians with gunfire along a street containing two churches and a shopping precinct late on Wednesday.
Bishop Kirilos said the victims were people who had just emerged from church after attending a Christmas Eve service, and the proximity of the shopping area might have drawn some of them to it.
Six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed, while at least nine more Copts were wounded, two of them seriously, a security official said.
Read further...
CAIRO — Clashes erupted on Thursday as thousands of Coptic Christians in a southern Egyptian village gathered to bury six of their number gunned down on Coptic Christmas Eve by men believed to be Muslims, security officials said.
Officials and the local bishop said three men in a car had raked pedestrians with gunfire along a street containing two churches and a shopping precinct late on Wednesday.
Bishop Kirilos said the victims were people who had just emerged from church after attending a Christmas Eve service, and the proximity of the shopping area might have drawn some of them to it.
Six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed, while at least nine more Copts were wounded, two of them seriously, a security official said.
Read further...
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