Pravda Defends the Catholic Church

To Confuse the Wood with the Trees ...

30.03.2010 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/society/sex/112790-to_confuse_wood_with_trees-0

Much of the news coming out, in the effort to disguise ideological propaganda, contains the fundamental error of mistaking the wood with the trees ... especially when the aim is to denigrate. That is, from an isolated case, preferably rough outlines, and generalized in order to induce the reader to think that the whole is of the same nature. This generalization obviously has ideological connotations and follows a political agenda that seeks to deconstruct traditional society and all its secular institutions and to impose a New World Order after the manner of the sinister interests of the international oligarchy, the same ones that handle the financial markets and through them, largely control the global economy. We refer to cases of pedophilia within the ranks of the Catholic Church recently publicized by international news agencies.

Indeed recent reports of pedophilia involving priests have the outlines of information that journalistic ethics require, regardless of their moral gravity. Such stories raise suspicion about their "goodness" even among non-Catholics like us. Although disagreeing with the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in some respects, but we recognize the importance of their role in our history to defend the ethical values that shape our Judeo-Christian culture and their social merit on behalf of those who have been victims of the usury and greed of the international oligarchy, which is after all more interested in destroying Catholicism and religion in general, as they constitute a serious obstacle to achieving its goal, which is to reduce mankind to the status of robotic slaves.

We emphasize, beforehand that it should not be confused with defending pedophilia, that by making the defense of the Catholic Church we are not justifying the actions of dishonorable men who have forgotten all of their most basic obligations as priests, respect for others, especially the weaker, as is the orphan child, lacking the affection of a true family.

One aspect that makes us suspicious of the "goodwill" of these stories is that they focus exclusively on cases of pedophilia of Catholic clergy, when we know that addiction cuts across all religions and organizations. We find it in all social strata and even within families. The pedophile is in principle very close to the victim and their confidence, that is not a stranger ... and may even be a father, uncle, etc.. When it is argued that priests are more prone to abuse because of the celibacy that is required, as they repeatedly try to justify the temptation toward sexual abuse, it seems to be forgotten that these buggers are not always single and are often seen as "good" heads of the family, so the person apparently seems normal.

Another detail that suggests that a campaign of demoralization of the Catholic Church is in motion, is that news of pedophilia within it appears like mushrooms born every morning, confusing the number of victims and the pedophiles, it seems they are as many as a hive of bees ... Almost all of the Catholic hierarchy ... Of course, this does not exonerate the perpetrators of sexual abuse.

In fact the victims are many, but the alleged abusers are only a tiny minority. Of the evil, better ... Even if we take into account the statistics in the USA, the number of victims in Catholic institutions compared with others, particularly in the school environment where it is much higher, there is a ratio of 157 to 1, within a time period 52 years, 1950 to 2002. Is it difficult work, no? On the other hand, this disproportion shows that in the U.S., as child abuse is an extensive social phenomenon, that is, that is not restricted to a specific sector of society.

The case of the Casa Pia de Lisboa is also illustrative as to the definition of a pedophile. The Portuguese government orphanage, founded in the late eighteenth century, by the Manager of Police, Pina Manique, a man in the confidence of the Marquis of Pombal, was a process of pedophilia in progress, and brings together more suspects accused of sexual abuse of minors than in all the cases mentioned recently in the media to tarnish the image of the Catholic Church.

Ten defendants were indicted by the public prosecution service, including an accomplice. Nevertheless some say that a "sexual binge" at the Institute involves many people and quite big, since it goes back over a decade ago in the 80's of the last century and many of the victims, now adults, are not willing to go through the torment of police investigations and still less the public shame that they have been the "rent boys" directly involved in the process.

There is a note in support of truth, that not all complaints are genuine. There are those who take advantage to extort money. It maybe difficult to ascertain how much is the truth and where does the lie begin ... either one side or the other. Moreover, it is noted that in issues of sexuality, such as sodomy and others, it always tends to occur in boarding schools, even among the confined, although they are severely repressed, it also leaves indelible marks for the rest of their lives.

The fury of the anti-clerical secular lobby goes so far as to revive old cases like that of Father Lawrence Murphy, back in 1975, to address the current Pope insidiously and in this way, the very Roman Catholic Church. On 25 March of this year, the prestigious New York Times published an article that allegedly accused Benedict XVI of covering up for the priest from Milwaukee in 1995 when the Pope was still Cardinal and responsible for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith It must be motivated by a very strong hatred of Catholicism to raise this issue 35 years afterwards...

The complaint is all the more insidious when it ignores all that this body has had is the specific function to monitor doctrinal deviations, heresies, so nothing to do with the Law, which deals with cases of indiscipline, as are the acts that violate the chastity of the clergy are required. It is ignored that this priest was acquitted by civil law, which did not find evidence of the practice of pedophilia on deaf boys who were protected. How aware are we made that the Catholic hierarchy kept him under surveillance and did so not so much for suspicion of sexual abuse of minors, but for doctrinal deviations. It was this and only for this reason that the then Cardinal Ratzinger, in 1995, sanctioned, and then limited his pastoral functions. Four months later Murphy died. We do not believe that the New York newspaper was absolutely unaware of these facts. From here, it follows that bad faith exists and a defamatory smear campaign has been articulated against the world Catholic hierarchy.

And it is understandable. The current pontiff, consistent with the principles of the Catholic Church, has developed a tenacious resistance against unnatural and divisive proposals, carried out by secular organizations seeking to impose a vision of a sexist, hedonistic society, reducing man to his animal nature to deny its spiritual dimension. These organizations obviously have not arisen by "spontaneous generation," or live on air ... they have been created and are supported by the cunning of said philanthropic foundations like the Rockefeller family. The financial interests of those are linked to a wide range of economic sectors ranging from banking, oil, pharmaceuticals, military industry, etc., to audio visual media, including the "media", which clearly meets an agenda dictated by the Global Elite to which they belong.

Besides, who is it that postulated that humankind has to be reduced to 1 / 3 of the current population and contributes to the misery of millions of human beings and cannot see the charitable activity, specifically in areas where poverty is most felt, sometimes coinciding with rich subsoils operated by the same Global Elite.

Therefore there is an intention in this kind of news that goes far beyond the desire to tell ... If the same phenomenon were not omitted in other similar institutions. Further, a balanced assessment of responsibility in Catholic Church pedophilia should refer to the canonical and civil cases that have been raised for clerics accused of sexual abuse of minors and their outcome, not just advertising complaints, which may not be genuine, as has knowledge in processes of this kind.

Artur Rosa Teixeira

Translated from the Portuguese version by:

Lisa KARPOVA

PRAVDA.Ru

h/t: FatherZ

Mexican cardinal says existence of devil must be taken seriously :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Mexico City, Mexico, Jul 16, 2009 / 02:26 pm (CNA).- The Archbishop of Mexico City, Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, said yesterday that the existence of the devil must be taken as fact, without exaggerating or minimizing his actions out of skepticism or credulity taken to the extreme.

During a conference for exorcists in Mexico, the cardinal said skepticism leads many to deny the existence of the devil and dismiss his actions as psychological, socio-cultural or paranormal phenomena. Others, out of extreme gullibility, see the devil everywhere and grant him supernatural powers as if he were God, the cardinal stated.

According to the Archdiocese of Mexico City’s news service, Cardinal Rivera said that many people embrace esoteric and occult practices because of their estrangement from God.

Mexican cardinal says existence of devil must be taken seriously :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

How Lee Atwater became Catholic: Interview with John Hardon SJ

Lee Atwater, former head of the Republican National Committee and advisor to and political strategist for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, died a Catholic at age 40 on Good Friday, 1991. Shortly thereafter, Fidelity magazine, the predecessor to Culture Wars, interviewed John A. Hardon, S.J., concerning the circumstances of Mr. Atwater’s conversion. After receiving a transcription of the interview, Fr. Hardon asked that, in deference to Mr. Atwater’s family, it not be published so soon after Mr. Atwater’s death. Fr. Hardon died in December, 2000. The interview was conducted for Fidelity by James G. Bruen, Jr., and is here set forth for the first time.

Fidelity: Father Hardon, what can you tell us about Lee Atwater’s conversion?

h/t: romancatholic report

Link to culture wars...

MSNBC Apolgizes for Hit Piece on Vicar of Christ

March 30, 2010

NBC apologized today for an article on MSNBC’s website entitled, “Pope Describes Touching Boys: I Went Too Far.” The article that readers accessed after clicking on it actually had nothing to do with the pope.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue accepted the apology today:

NBC says the attributed quote was erroneous and they have corrected the error. An apology was also extended. The apology is accepted. We hope that whoever was responsible for this outrageous post is questioned about it and that appropriate measures are taken. We look forward to hearing the outcome.

Link to original...

The Pope, the judge, the paedophile priest and The New York Times

The Pope, the judge, the paedophile priest and The New York Times

The Goal is the Destruction of Religion

The former Italian president of the Senate, Marcello Pera, sees behind the campaigning critics of the Church and the conflict of secularization against Christendom -- by Marcello Pera / Die Tagespost

The issue of pedophilia or homosexual priests which was recently kicked off in Germany is aimed at the Pope. Given the enormity of thinking in this project, it would be a grave mistake that the shot could not hit the mark. And an even more serious error would be the assumption that the issue finally, soon - like so many others - would be off the table. No. Here there will be a struggle. Not necessarily against the person of the Pope, as this would be hardly possible in this area. Benedikt XVI is complete in his authority, his calm, his clarity, his determination and his education. No, the battle is between secularism and Christianity. The secularists know: If a splash of mud gets on the white cassock of the Pope, the Church is dirty. And if the church is spotted, Christianity is spotted. Therefore, the secularists their campaign garnish with questions like "Who will send his children still in the church?" Or "Who will let his children still attend a Catholic school?" And "Who will be his children in a Catholic hospital or even allow a Catholic clinic to treat?"

"The material changes, but the goal remains the same: Today as always the goal is to bring about the destruction of Religion."
For some days one secularist has touched on this actual intention. She wrote: "Most of the incidents of the sex abuse of children by priests is covered up by the legitimization of the Catholic Church as a garanteur of the education of the smallest." It is unimportant, that this opinion lacks evidence, because "most of the incidents" at all costs, must be silenced: what is the percentage of priestly pedophiles? 10 Percent? All? It is also unimportant, that the judgement of logic is done without: one only needs "priests" to be replaced by "teachers", "politician" or "journalist", in order for the "legimiation" of the public schools, the parliment or the press to "cover up". Most importantly - even the apparent inaccuracy of the arguments --, what is suggested: Preists are pedophiles, consequently the Church has no moral authority, consequently Catholic mores are dangerous and consequently Christianity is a cheat and a danger.

"The destruction of Religion has therefore the destruction of Reaon in tow. Today is not a triumph of secularist Reason, rather it will lead to greater barbarism."

It operates in a greatly spread combat of secularism against Christendom. One must look to National Socialism and Communism to see something similiar. The material changes, but the goal remains the same: today as always one wants to promote and fulfill the destruction of Religion. Then Europe will pay for this fury of destruction with its freedom. It is unthinkable, that Germany of all places, that considering its own position to this high price, for which Europe had paid, rises up to beat its breast, today, in a democratic land, forgets and does not recognize, that the democracy will be lost, if Christendom is once again blotted out.

The destruction of Religion always proceeds to the destruction of Reason. Today they will not lead to a triumph of secularist reason, rather to a greater barbarism. And on an ethical level of barbarism which, kills a fetus, because his life will damage the "pyschological health" of the mother. Who, will kill an old person, because he has no more family to care for him. Who, will bring the end of his own children more quickly, because he has no consciousness and can not be healed. Who, thinks, that "Parental party A" and "Parental Party B" are the same as "Father" and "mother". Who, intend, the belief of the cocyx is interchangeable, a body part, that has is no longer taking part in development, because the person doesn't need a tailbone any more and can stand alone. And so on...

If one observes the political side of the battle of the secularists against Christendom, whose victory would lead to barbarism, wich would end with the destruction of Europe. For after the overthrow of Christendom, Multiculturalism will remain, which means, ever group has the right to its own culture. It leaves relatvism, which thinks, one culture is as good as another, and pacifism, which denies the existence of evil. Or it remains as a rhretorical and irresponsible "Europism", which declares, Europa should not have a special identity, rather contain all identities. Except one changes his opinion and goes to the Cathedral of Strassburg, in order to say: "Now we need a Christian soul of Europe".

The battle against Christendom would not be so menacing, if the Christians understood. Rather, many of them are uncomprehending. It manifests itslef in a theologian, who is frustrated by the intellectual conviction of Benedict XVI. IN certain uncertain Bishops, who insist, on finding a compromise with the modern, are the best ways and means, for an "Aggiornamento" to fulfill the christian mission. In certain Cardinals in a circle of belief, who consider, the celibacy of priests is not a dogma and perhaps should be reconsidered [+Schoenborn]. In certain gelded catholic intellectuals, who think, there is a crisis of women in the Church between Christendom and sexuality constitutes an unsolved problem. In some Bishop's Conferences, which are in the grip of protocals and -- while they want the politics of open boarders for everyone -- don't have the courage, to challenge the attacks, which are made against Christians, as well as the piety, which suffers all, when they are indiscriminately led to the dock. Or in certain chancellors from the East, who seduce a fun homosexual Foreign Minister, while she attacks the Pope in every ethical theme, or those from the West, they think, the West must secularize, and be therefore anti-Christian.

"The battle of the secularists will continue, and even if only from grounds, because he receives sustenance from a Pope like Benedict."

The battle of the secularists will continue, and even if only from the grounds, that he receives sustenance from a Pope like Benedict, who smiles, but never flinches a single milimeter. Indeed, whoever understands, why he never yields, who takes in the situation and does not wait for the next blow. Whoever only hesitates, to profess with him in solidarity, is either someone, who sneaks into hiding after the Gethsemini, or he is someone who doesn't understand why he is there.

h/t: kath.net

Rwanda: Anglican Archbishop Says Approval of Second Gay US Bishop is Divisive

Kigali - Anglican Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda has warned that the approval of a second openly homosexual bishop in the U.S. Episcopal Church will further tear apart the 77-million- member worldwide Anglican Communion.

In an interview with Ecumenical News International in Kigali, Kolini said the ratification will make it harder for the grouping to heal the rift created by the debate on homosexuality over the years.

"It is clear that those on both sides of the issue are not of the same mind and are not going to work together," he told ENI in an interview on 24 March during which he accused Western churches of imposing homosexuality onto the South.

Link to original...

German bishop accused of beating orphaned girls and Compared the Holocaust to Abortion!

This is hardly a surprising comment from a senior Bishop, especially in German which has such a low birth rate. What's interesting in this article is the barely concealed malice it contains for the Catholic Church.

He compared abortion to the Holocaust – a particularly shocking statement when made by a senior cleric in Germany. He also accused Israel of racism in its treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

German bishop accused of beating orphaned girls -Times Online#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

The Pattern of Priestly Sex Abuse - NYTimes Blog

It's not an original idea and our TFP friend Catholic Knight had already mentioned it, but this is good to see this article and the study indicate, quite clearly, that Holy Father has been taking decisive measures against this.

Reproduced below is a chart from the John Jay Report on sexual abuse in the Catholic priesthood, commissioned by the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, showing the number of credible accusations of abuse across the last half-century. It’s part of the basis for my column’s claim that something in the moral/cultural/theological climate of the 1960s and 1970s encouraged a spike in sexual abuse, and also for my assertion that we’ve since seen the church come to grips with the problem, at least in the United States.

Link to original...

Celibacy rebels put under pressure

Celibacy rebels put under pressure

Profile on the Author of the Milwaukee Schmear Against Pope Benedict

What you have here is a man who has unseen loyalties to powers and principalities, to organizations that have the destruction of the Catholic Church as their fundamental aim. This is the motive force behind the current orchestrated scandal, perhaps it's a part of what Fr. Malachi Martin termed, the "Superforce".

Jeffry Anderson is described as a man, ironically, on a "Crusade" against the Catholic Church. It's not just Jeffrey Anderson who is liable to be described in this way. Certain individuals, indeed, entire nations and political movements in history, have enjoyed and benefitted from their enmity with the Catholic Church, entities like Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany. Like the aforementioned regimes, Jeff Anderson has a certain affiliation and kinship to powers of such malevolence, that their hatred of Christ was the scene of mass starvation and some of the greatest untold crimes of the last two centuries. What shouldn't be so startling to anyone is the fact that Communists do use the tactics being employed by Jeff Anderson, here. The erstwhile graduate from the provincial William Mitchel School of Law,  has come to do battle with the Catholic Church, as a member of the American and Minnesota Civil Liberties Unions and also claims a certain spiritual connection with a vague and ambient spirituality reminiscent of Gnosticism, which is fitting since his claims must certainly rely and on occult knowledge of a diabolical nature.

Now, we've mentioned that he is a member of the culturally Marxist, ACLU and Minnesota Civil Liberties Union. Their hostility to Catholicism in particular and religion in general is well-established, so then it follows logically that Mr. Anderson is acting according to his principles in attacking the Catholic Church, since we can hopefully assume that he shares the views and tactics of those antagonists of Religion.

But what of the Pedophile Connection?

Well, Jeff claims to be attacking the Catholic Church on behalf of the victims. Perhaps they are more of a utility than a heartfelt aspiration on his part to see Justice done. Indeed, he had been taking these cases for 10 years prior to the event of his daughter's alleged molestation, which he maintains was what began his "Crusade" in earnest, at the hands of an ex-priest who was acting as a therapist to deal with emotional issues related to his divorce. Catholicism rejects divorce, but surely, he bears some responsibility for that and sending your daughter to an ex-priest: isn't that res ipse loquitur that the negligence belongs to the nature of the act of sending one's 8 year old daughter to an ex-priest as a result of one's own inability to hold together one's own family?

Lest you think we're being unfair, it has to be said that Mr. Anderson wasn't being terribly fair when he failed to contact any of the key figures in the case beforehand for their account, indeed, when you compare the two stories alongside, Mr. Anderson's suffers from a profound lack of coherence and, well, just plain old truth. Mr. Anderson maintains that the Catholic Church had covered up the abuse and had not done anything about it, and is clumsily attempting to portray Pope Benedict as engaging in a cover up, when the details of the case indicate plainly otherwise, that it was in fact the Vatican that stepped in and dealt with the case in 2005 as Father Thomas Brandage indicates, here calling Jeff Anderson's and the New York Times' work, "sloppy and inaccurate".

Is Archbishop Weakland a Good Source?

Well, he's been caught lying so many times that it's strange that the New York Times would rely on him as a source, as Father Raymond de Souza points out here as he lays out his own timeline of events related to the case, in defense of the Papacy, here.

Father de Souza maintains that +Weakland isn't a good source because he himself is an abuser who stole $450,000 to pay an extortionist, but what of our ACLU and MCLU member and "Crusder" Jeff Anderson whose supposed concern for the poor is far more interwoven with an international effort to discredit the Church, by any means necessary, even resorting to libel.

The Democratic Connection

We made a moment out of Jeff Anderson's supposed concern for the victims of clergy abuse, but what about the potential future victims of Democratic Party Politician abuse as the Democratic party intends on decriminalizing sex with children and wants to count pederasts as a protected class in Hate Crimes Legislation, here, and the vote count, here.

Never mind that, in a strange parallel, it is the German politician, Sabina Leuthesser, who is attacking the Catholic Church in Germany, like the Democratic Party in the United States, a party for the normalization of sex with children. Now you might not think that Jeff Anderson would have anything to do with this, but it was, after all, his party and co-religionists in Germany who are promoting the normalization of sex with children. We say this because Mr. Anderson has given a portion of the millions (according to Bill Donahue), to the various extremely liberal candidates and committees of the Democratic Party, here, as his contributions approach $60,000 in the year 2008.

Mr. Anderson professes a love for "spiritual" things and as a baptized Lutheran who was once married to a Catholic, indeed, he sits amidst what looks like a religious arts and furnishings shop (or pirate's trove) at his St. Paul office, it probably serves him well to soften his image by an appeal to the vague spiritual confessions held by so many people who'll be susceptible to his misleading and frankly mendacious account of the Pope Benedict's involvement in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee with Father Lawrence Murphy who was suspended from priestly duties in 1985 when he was dismissed from the St. John's School for the Deaf about which, he again wrongfully declares, that then Cardinal Ratzinger attempted to cover it up.

Unsatisfactory Results

If the quality of Mr. Anderson's efforts as a public relations man is any reflection on his legal abilities, it would be easy to see why he was outmaneuvered (deliberately?) at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota where he stage managed his confrontation with what he called centuries of "secrecy" and abuse of power.

We wonder why Mr. Anderson doesn't do more to chase the pederasts in the party he supports with the money he gains, but what of his effectiveness in dealing with pederasts in the past? Well, at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville where he began, the arrangement he helped forge there is no longer effectively in place and the very liberal Benedictines, who shares many of his political believes and those of the Democratic Party, are no longer in place. The 10 or so credibly accused pederasts at St. John's are free to roam the globe, despite the false claims of "restriction". One of the priests, Father Dunstan Morse, has even appeared in photographs with acclaimed author Kathleen Norris as a consultant to her book, Cloister Walk, here(pdf) and in her more recent book, Acedia and Me, here (pdf). It might be easy to see how those on the outside might view Mr. Anderson's legal work as uninspiring.

Well, the Mexican Government was certainly unimpressed with Mr. Anderson and David Clohessy's efforts, as they were barred for five years from entering Mexico when they attempted to serve the Archbishop of Mexico City.

If it weren't for all of the lawsuits he's filed against them over the years, considering the non-enforceable agreement he made with him and the fact that none of the perpetrators went to jail. It might be easy to see how they were in collusion together; perpetuating the problem, rather than adverse parties as we might suppose if we believed what was in the pages of Pinchy Sulzberger's New York Times.

MSNBC Deceitfully Attempts to Portray Holy Father as a Molester

We've long maintained that Bill Donahue is ineffective. He didn't identify the provinence of the New York Times schmear on Pope Benedict or its own perfidious source, but to his credit, he has identified another problem article. We would add that the press is getting increasingly desperate. Bill Donahue reports:

March 30, 2010

Catholic League president Bill Donohue accuses MSNBC of libeling Pope Benedict XVI:

Go to the home page of MSNBC and click on "World News." From there click on "Americas." Next click on the article, "Losing Their Religion? Catholicism in Turmoil." [Direct Link, here] Scroll down and in the "Click for Related Content" section there is an article entitled, "Pope Describes Touching Boys: I Went Too Far," here. [They've changed the title of the article since this came up, good show Bill Donahue] Clicking on this piece takes the reader to an article about a homosexual German priest who had sex with males in the 1980s. It says absolutely nothing about the pope. Yet MSNBC paints Pope Benedict XVI as a child molester in the tease to the article.

A retraction, and a sincere apology, are in order. They should also investigate how this happened and who is responsible.

Contact NBC news president Steve Capus: steve.capus@nbc.com

Liberals are to Blame for the Crisis

Suggested by the Devil: Gabriele Amorth on New York Times

The famous Rome Exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth is almost completely convinced, that the attacks on the Pope in combination with the sex abuse cases were suggested by the Devil. The Devil uses even Priests.

Rom (kath.net) The famous Roman Exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth is almost completely convinced, that the attacks on Pope Benedict in conjunction with the sex abuse cases were suggested by the Devil. "There can be no doubt", said the 85 year old Amorth to Italian TV News Service Mediaset as well as reported by ORF. Amorth refered above all to the attack by the left-liberal "New York Times", here and here. The famous Exorcist recalled then, that Benedict is a wonderful Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II. The Devil has used incidentally,  even Priests in order to strike the Church, he referred to the sex abuse cases: "He attacks the Church through the men of the Church," for even these live in the world and might be brought down by temptations.

X-lated from...

US Courts Allows Sex Abuse Cases Against Vatican to Proceed in Rare Legal Move

Since the Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandal exploded in the United States almost a decade ago, advocates have been trying to find a way to learn the role the Vatican played. Now they have gotten further than ever in their efforts to holding the Holy See accountable in a U.S. courtroom.

Two federal appeals courts in recent months have allowed sexual abuse lawsuits against the Vatican to proceed in Oregon and Kentucky. Vatican attorneys have asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the Oregon case. Attorneys for both sides in the Oregon proceeding were in Washington two weeks ago making their arguments before a roomful of U.S. government officials, who could wind up weighing in if the Vatican -- considered a foreign country with immunity to lawsuits -- is found a liable party in an American case.

If the Supreme Court declines to take up the case this summer and lets the federal appeals ruling stand, attorneys could begin subpoenaing decades of documents and calling Vatican officials under oath.

Link to original...

Troubles at Thieberville Continue

At Rorate-Coeli is the following:

The following is a quick translation of the Osservatore Vaticano article, courtesy of our friend Natasja Hoven of Katolsk Observator:

Everybody knows the very famous Thiberville case, in the diocese of Évreux. This diocese is one of the most ill-fated in France. After Mgr Gaillot and Mgr David, the not so genial Mgr Nourrichard administers the collapse of a land which in times past was Christian, a land where churches are closed one after the other, catechism is deserted, vocations discouraged and finances dried up.

In this desert, a priest, abbé Francis Michel, maintains the most flourishing of parishes, Thiberville. This parish priest, not coming from a traditionalist milieu but profoundly traditionalist, in anticipation had applied the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum since many years back. In his church the masses are celebrated according to the form in our days called “the extraordinary form” and also masses according to the “ordinary” form, but in a manner in conformity with the wishes of Pope Benedict XVI, that is, turned towards the Lord.

And what was the result? Thiberville and the 14 parishes which abbé Michel is serving formed the most living Catholic ensemble and the one with the greatest missionary zeal of the diocese of Évreux : the church of Thiberville is full at all the masses, assuring the service “in turn” for the other churches ( desserte « tournante » des autres églises), there we find sound catechism, active participation of the faithful, abundance of ministrants, confraternities, all the churches magnificently restored, funerals celebrated by the parish priest himself … Those parishes where the communion of all the Catholics are lived in an exemplary way are a model for the application of the pope’s wish.

This is exactly what the “spirit of Vatican II”, with 40 years of delay, is not able to stand. At the end of December of last year, Mgr Nourrichard informed the parish priest … that his parish was abolished and brought together with a “parish ensemble”. By this procedure, the parish of Thiberville would no more have a parish priest of its own, as he was “withdrawn”.

We all know what followed: On January 3rd the bishop went to Thiberville with his collaborators in order to announce “with distress” the decision “beyond recall”. However he met with the revolt of the whole canton, which refused the end of the Catholic faith in this corner of the Norman land. A church full to the brim, on the first row of which were present the mayor and the county councilor together with the whole municipal council, acclaimed their parish priest and hindered the bishop to announce that he was suppressing the parish and its parish priest.

An appeal was then (twice) presented within the prescribed delay, before the Congregation for the clergy. The case was overwhelming for the bishop. It is necessary to understand that such an appeal is a delaying appeal: things remain as they are as long as the Roman decision does not intervene. In similar cases the Roman decision usually comes very late, when emotions have calmed down.

On the other hand everybody knows that Rome strongly disapproves of parish regroupings that are legally indefinable, this being a problem which retains the keen interest of the Roman canonists. Since the Council the rights of the parish priest have diminished. The traditional principal of the irremovability of the parish priest remaining (as in the popular saying: “the parish priest is the pope of the parish”). But the bishops’ conferences of each country have received the faculty of disregarding this right. This is how it is in France: the parish priests are from now on nominated "ad tempus", which is something that notably puts off balance the structure of the traditional diocesan life: the post-conciliar French bishop actually has much more power over his priests through the nomination “game” than the traditional bishop had. Moreover, it frequently happens that bishops do not nominate parish priests but only “parish administrators”, which makes the priests even more dependent on the diocesan administration.

In this case there was thus now the situation where there was a slow process while the Congregation of the Clergy examined the case, and thus there was a recovering of calm and common sense told that the Catholic life would continue in the parishes of abbé Michel and that the unjust – legally – and disastrous – pastorally – decision of the bishop could be nothing but reversed.

And then it was exactly the opposite that happened! The appeal that was presented in the end of February received a reply less than a month later …: On March 26th abbé Michel was informed … that his appeal was turned down and purely and simply rejected! The decision is signed by Cardinal Hummes, Prefect of the Congregation for the clergy: the parish of Thiberville does not exist anymore and thus has no parish priest.

Even in Rome one is dumbfounded. But everybody understands that the pressure exercised by the French bishops’ conference has had an uncommon force. The most eminent French instances have made it a question of principle. And they have won.

At least as yet. This decision is certainly going to be subject to appeal, and other means may be used. There is a rumor already on this matter. I will tell you more about it as soon as possible …

However it remains that for the good people of God, the negative sign that has been given is catastrophic.

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2010/03/thiberville-saga-continues.html

Philosopher: Why we Should Ditch Religion

(CNN) -- For the world to tackle truly important problems, people have to stop looking to religion to guide their moral compasses, the philosopher Sam Harris told CNN.

"We should be talking about real problems, like nuclear proliferation and genocide and poverty and the crisis in education," Harris said in a recent interview at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California. TED is a nonprofit group dedicated to "ideas worth spreading."

"These are issues which tremendous swings in human well-being depend on. And it's not at the center of our moral concern."

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The Return of Doctor Stephen Hand

Couldn't find an actual picture of Doctor Hand, but this one should do.  You know you only kid the ones you love.  Stephen Hand has taken a lot of hits in his life and as a Catholic, but he returns continually to the fray with gusto.  He used to write for the Remnant for a time, but left there. Perhaps he'll be returning there.

His new blog is as follows, http://www.stephen-hand.blogspot.com/

Attorney Jeff Anderson Leaked Benedict-Milwaukee Sex Abuse Story to New York Times

Jeff Anderson has long been a very active person attacking the alleged "medievalism" and culture of "secrecy" of the Catholic Chuch. Now he's been responsible for conspiring with Pinchy Sulzberger's very anti-Catholic New York Times in the latest Milwaukee press release involving that old abusing boogey man hinmself, Arcbishop Rembert Weakland.

Standing beside a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr., the increasingly vocal antagonist of the Catholic Church has shown himself to have a reach extending beyond the street and quiet graceful neighborhoods of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Jeff Anderson's Crusade Against the Catholic Church

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Jeff Anderson has filed thousands of lawsuits alleging sex abuse by priests and won tens of millions of dollars for his clients, but he has had a bigger goal in mind for nearly two decades. He wants to bring his career-long legal crusade against misconduct in the Roman Catholic Church right to the top. He would love to question Pope Benedict XVI himself under oath. Though that is extremely unlikely given that the pope is a head of state, documents Anderson has unearthed have the potential to take a scandal that has plagued dozens of dioceses around the world and place it at the doorstep of Vatican leadership. The documents, which became publicly known in the past week after Anderson shared them with The New York Times, show that a Vatican office led by the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, halted a church trial against a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting some 200 boys at a school for the deaf. “This is a tipping point,” Anderson said. He found the documents in handling one of the dozens of lawsuits he has pending against various church officials, and hopes to use them to bolster a separate federal lawsuit against the Vatican itself. Since 1983, Anderson and the five other attorneys at his downtown St. Paul firm have sued thousands of Catholic priests, bishops, and dioceses over allegations of sexual abuse by priests and other church leaders. He claims to have no idea how much he has won in settlements; in 2002 he estimated that it was around $60 million. “It’s not about the money,” Anderson told The Associated Press. The self-described “former atheist” who rediscovered faith in God through his recovery from alcoholism professes a deep empathy with abuse victims – he calls them “survivors.” More than a decade after his legal battles with church officials began, Anderson’s adult daughter revealed that as an 8-year-old she was molested by a therapist she was seeing as Anderson and his first wife were going through a divorce. The therapist, Anderson said, was a former Catholic priest. Anderson, 62, said the pain of that revelation “brought another dimension to the experience.” But he said he concluded years earlier that the responsibility for shuffling around problem priests and covering up their indiscretions would extend to the Vatican. “I came to the stark realization that the problems were really endemic to the clerical culture, and all the problems we are having in the U.S. led back to Rome,” Anderson said. “And I realized nothing was going to fundamentally change until they did.” The Wisconsin documents tie Benedict, who as cardinal led the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to the decision in the mid-1990s not to defrock the Rev. Lawrence Murphy despite allegations that the Milwaukee priest molested some 200 deaf boys from 1950 to 1975. The Vatican is defending that decision, saying the case reached the Vatican only in 1996, two years before Murphy died. Church officials also say Murphy had repented in a letter to Ratzinger, and that the case’s statute of limitations had run out. They decry criticism over the case as an effort to smear the pope. The Milwaukee lawsuit does not name Pope Benedict or other Vatican leaders as defendants, but Anderson hopes to use it to bolster a separate lawsuit filed eight years ago in U.S. District Court in Oregon. In that case, an unidentified plaintiff claims he was sexually abused as a teenager in 1965 or 1966 by the Rev. Andrew Ronan at St. Albert’s Church in Portland, Ore. According to court documents, Ronan was accused of abusing boys in the mid-1950s as a priest in the Archdiocese of Armagh, Ireland. He was transferred to Chicago, where he admitted abusing three boys at St. Philip’s High School, and after that was sent to Oregon. The church removed Ronan from the priesthood in 1966. He died in 1982. The lawsuit says the Vatican had to approve the international transfer. The Holy See claims it is protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which prohibits U.S. lawsuits against foreign countries. Several lower courts have produced differing rulings on the suit, and the Holy See has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the question. The high court has not decided whether it will hear the case. Anderson said his legal team will attempt to use documents from the Milwaukee lawsuit to show the Vatican was heavily involved in decisions about how to deal with problem priests. Legal scholars have long been skeptical of Anderson’s chances of penetrating the Vatican’s foreign sovereignty. He said it may be difficult to persuade judges to consider documents from another lawsuit, but added that he feels “closer than we’ve ever been before.” “If there’s anyone to press this case, it’s Jeff,” said David Clohessy, national director for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a longtime ally of Anderson. “Jeff doesn’t get sole credit, and he wouldn’t claim it, but he was among the very first to see the magnitude of this cover-up and is still among the most dedicated to its undoing.” Jeffrey Lena, the Berkeley, Calif.-based attorney for the Holy See in the Oregon case, declined to comment for this story. Andrew Eisenzimmer, a lawyer for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, has sparred frequently with Anderson and declined to be interviewed. In earlier interviews with the AP, he described Anderson as “prone to exaggeration” but also said he’s been undeniably successful. Anderson has always had a flair for the public relations aspect of his work, and a visit to his office the day after the Milwaukee story broke found him fielding interview requests from numerous media outlets as lawyers and researchers combed through documents on the large, dark wood table in his office. Anderson was raised Lutheran and his first wedding was in the Catholic Church, though he said his spiritual journey no longer involves church attendance. His office, however, is full of religiously symbolic art and sculpture, as well as items salvaged from churches – including a kneeler and confessional booths. Anderson downplays the significance of the Christian objects, pointing out he also displays Buddhist and Native American religious relics. “I like religious iconography,” he said.

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Televised Press Conference by Jeff Anderson:

Maine Rag Accuses Diocese of Uncharity for Cancelling CCHD Grants

Catholic Charities and social justice types have done a good job in general of convincing people that they care about the poor, but they haven't actually done very well at either their stated task or being true to the name, Catholic. They are like thieves who blame society for their larceny and rage, "how dare they hold us accountable for being anti-Caholic!"

Here's another attempt to misinform the public, in the liberal Demorat (Can there be any other kind of Democrat?) accusation that it is the party of the poor, since they're pretty good at extorting money from individuals to pay for their charity.

Disagree with us, and we’ll punish the poor. That’s the attitude of the Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) in Washington, D.C. In an act of pure spite, the two groups have withdrawn their funds from Homeless Voices for Justice (HVJ), a Portland-based social service agency that serves the poor - because its fiscal sponsor, Preble Street Resources Center, came out against an antigay marriage initiative that was on the Maine ballot last fall. The Church championed that homophobic proposition.

HVJ had nothing to do with Preble Street’s stance on gay marriage. Its members voted not to take a stand on the measure, which successfully overturned Maine’s gay marriage law.

The staff of Preble Street decided to support efforts to defeat the antigay referendum because homophobia is a leading cause of queer youth homelessness in their city (as it is here in San Francisco). Preble Street joined with other social service providers in denouncing the measure.

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After the abuse scandals, EU takes action on child pornography.

After the abuse scandals, EU takes action on child pornography.

Church to celebrate feast of long-time prostitute turned hermit :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Church to celebrate feast of long-time prostitute turned hermit :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

FOXNews.com - Homicide Bombers Kill 37 on Moscow Subway

FOXNews.com - Homicide Bombers Kill 37 on Moscow Subway

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Personal Aside: It’s the Lavender Priesthood that Causes Catholic Church Scandals—but Nobody Wants to Say So.

In reality, The Wanderer, New Oxford Review, Catholic Order among oters have been saying just this for years.

The Lavender Emerges.

Largely the institutional laxity of curia and diocesan functionaries is responsible for undue toleration of the Lavender Priesthood including failure to discipline the seminaries, religious orders and so-called “Catholic” universities…due to a largely absentee and compliant papacy, aided by weak, bishops, putty in the hands of their bureaucracies —dominated by a mindset that prattles “we must not allow scandal that engulfs the Church to scandalize the world.” Important: not all homosexuals are child abusers—but all child abusers…especially of little boys…are homosexuals. Spurious so-called statistics from the psychological industry are politically correct accommodations.

Permissiveness of the Lavender Priesthood has been… and will continue to be… disastrous unless it is corrected immediately. The toleration and winking at it…as with the case of the Chicago jailed pedophile ex-priest Dan McCormack where the then rector of Mundelein told the Sun-Times he would ordain McCormack yet again…and went from there to auxiliary bishop of Chicago…bishop of Tucson and number two in the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops—soon to be number one…while the paper’s religious reporter was let go since after its publication she could get no archdiocesan spokesman to return her call--is inexcusable…and shows that in pushing her out, the ultra-liberal paper collaborated with the archdiocese.
--That and the fact that the p. r. spokesman for the archdiocese was quoted as telling the press “well, he didn’t rape anybody”. How’d you like to have your 8-year-old boy sexually fondled and hear that comment?

Link to Tom Roeser....

Pope John Paul II ignored Ratzinger's pleas to pursue sex abuse cardinal

Cardial Schoenborn's defens actually hearkens back to a scene in Father Malachi Martin's, The Jesuits, where then Cardinal Ratzinger was presenting John Paul II with a list of problematic reports from various places and John Paul II didn't want to act, and actually shouted at the then Cardinal of the CDF.

Pope John Paul II ignored Ratzinger's pleas to pursue sex abuse cardinal

Meet Fr. Mike Papesh!

Here's the blurb:

Award winning author, Diocesan Director, Priest, Scholar Michael Papesh is a presbyter of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. He has served in parishes as parochial vicar, weekend assistant, principal, CRE and pastor; in seminary spiritual formation at the undergraduate and graduate school levels; and on numerous diocesan committees and boards related to priestly life and ministry. He also spent five years as a layman in campus ministry before ordination. He is author of Good News Parish Leadership from Twenty-Third Publications, and of Clerical Culture: Contradiction and Transformation from The Liturgical Press, as well as articles on clerical culture and liturgical presiding. He has won two Catholic Press Association Awards, one for Clerical Culture and one for Good News Parish Leadership. He is currently Director for Lifelong Catechesis, Diocese of Pueblo, Colorado.

Here's his non-solution for the problem with sex abuse, coupled with a non-diagnosis from New Oxford Review in 2002. But wait, this is why there's a vocations crisis, because these are, we're told, the cream of the crop:

By now you’ve probably heard every conceivable remedy — and quack remedy — for the priestly sex scandals.

Bet you haven’t heard this one: Writing in the Jesuit weekly America (May 13), Fr. Michael L. Papesh blames the scandals on “a repressive clerical culture” and says the remedy is for priests to get together for “forthright, discerning and free discussions about male sexuality.”

Fr. Papesh, who was ordained in 1983, takes us back to his years as a seminarian: “When a friend was propositioned by a priest one evening, my friend winked and we winked. Even when, after being plied with alcohol, I was sexually assaulted, I winked. My seminarian friends winked…. Before I was 19, I learned that when it came to sexual matters, the clerical culture winked.”

Fr. Papesh doesn’t like the winking, nor do we. But his remedy is zany: “open discussion about sexual curiosity, orientation, experience, joy, fear and anxiety” among priests.

Child abuse scandal is war 'between church and world', says Italian bishop

Allegations of cover-up reach Pope in case of abusive priest who was assigned pastoral work

Members of Snap, an American group that supports those who have been abused by priests, at a demonstration in front of the Vatican.

Pope Benedict was today accused of being involved in the mishandling of the case of a child-abusing priest in his former archdiocese of Munich, an allegation which directly links him to the burgeoning scandal in the Catholic church.

The accusation, which has been only partly denied by church representatives, cast a deep shadow over the pontiff's approaching visit to Britain. It also elicited heated protests from Roman Catholic leaders and Italian politicians.

Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said on his Facebook site that the pope was being subjected to "scandalous and disgraceful" attacks. One churchman, Antonio Riboldi, the emeritus bishop of Acerra, declared that it marked the start of a war "between the church and the world; between Satan and God".

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When Skateboards Are Free

What you have is a classical Marxist household with the Father deserting the family, the Mother so inculcated in the movement that she couldn't put her son's welfare before that of the party's. The interesting thing about this is that people having read this might think that socialism is no longer the boogeyman it once was because one corner of the International movement is no longer as active, or credited with as much historical significance as it appears.

If these organizations are no longer relevant or as active as they once were, it is because the Communists have successfully infiltrated for a long time significant portions of the government, media, military and education to have accomplished virtually all of the goals set forth by Karl Marx in the first place.

One of the few things it hasn't accomplished is the effective dismantling of the Catholic Church, which still stands in its way those issues which it considers practically above holding political power itself.

A month after novelist Zoe Heller’s The Believers sketched a family of sniping New York socialists, Said Sayrafiezadeh is coming out with the real thing. When Skateboards Will Be Free is the 40-year-old playwright’s unsparing memoir of growing up in the shadow of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party — an Iranian-born father who abandoned him and Mom in the name of permanent revolution (and for another woman), and an American-Jewish mother who gave decades of her life and happiness to the party before finally breaking ties. Sayrafiezadeh, who hasn’t heard from his father since first telling all in Granta, spoke with Vulture about his father fixation, his battle with kleptomania, and his well-earned political apathy.

Do you think your life might have turned out differently if your parents hadn’t become Trotskyites?

I think it would have been the same. They were just two young, incomplete people who didn’t know what they were doing, had their own demons, and then were being inflamed by a political philosophy that says family is not important, home is not important, the only thing that matters in this world is the worker’s revolution.

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Clergy abuse threatens to tarnish pope's legacy

This could well spell the end of the cause for John Paul II's beatification.

By VICTOR L. SIMPSON
The Associated Press
Friday, March 26, 2010; 9:06 PM



VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican is facing one of its gravest crises of modern times as sex abuse scandals move ever closer to Pope Benedict XVI - threatening not only his own legacy but also that of his revered predecessor.

Benedict took a much harder stance on sex abuse than John Paul II when he assumed the papacy five years ago, disciplining a senior cleric championed by the Polish pontiff and defrocking others under a new policy of zero tolerance.

But the impression remains of a woefully slow-footed church and of a pope who bears responsibility for allowing pedophile priests to keep their parishes.

In an editorial on Friday, the National Catholic Reporter in the United States called on Benedict to answer questions about his role "in the mismanagement" of sex abuse cases, not only in the current crisis but during his tenure in the 1980s as archbishop of Munich and then as head of the Vatican's doctrinal and disciplinary office.

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A Jewish Knight's Support for Pope Pius XII

Currents

Contentious is one way to describe the debate surrounding the life of Pope Pius XII. Critics claim he did not do enough to save Jews during World War II. And recently, a group of Catholic scholars sent a letter to Pope Benedict – asking him to “slow down” the process for Pius’s canonization.

Support for Pope Pius XII – 3/16/10 : Currents

Support for Pope Pius XII – 3/16/10 : Currents

Support for Pope Pius XII – 3/16/10 : Currents

Church Against the Right

More than 1,000 participants from Church and other community groups are protesting this Saturday and Lubeck in a countermarch against "right-extremists" According to the report in Lubecker "Propstreikirche Herz Jesu" the Hamburg Archbishop Werner Theisen warned of antagonism to immigrants. Refugees must be able to find a home in Germany, "as this has happened even after the end of the Second World War", maintains Thissen. "We are going then to the streets, so that the ""other" and the foreigner may not be persecuted, rather experience friendly welcome.", said the Archbishop. - This "right-extremist" demonstratsion falls upon the bombing of Lubeck in March 1942.

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Muslim Inmates in Britain's Prison System Enforce Sharia

Officers at Britain’s high-security Long Lartin Jail have received reports of Muslim inmates forcing younger inmates to convert to Islam, while a Muslim gang has begun to enforce sharia law in the prison. The report says a similar gang culture is brewing at other high-security prisons in the UK, reports Christian Concern for our Nation.

Speaking to Radio Five Live’s Donal Macintyre show, an officer from the prison told how younger prisoners were targeted for forced conversion to Islam by the Muslim gangs.

‘They went along because they were intimidated. They genuinely weren’t of the Muslim faith. I knew one lad quite well, who was approached by the radical Muslims and he changed. He was being controlled and bossed around and he wasn’t even allowed to look at me or speak to me.

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Pro-gay marriage CCHD group de-funded

Now, we're starting to see some results.

March 26, 2010

American Life League had made the USCCB and Portland Diocese aware that an organization called Preble Street, which was supposed to help the homeless, also actively lobbied in favor of gay marriage. The group had been receiving CCHD grants for some time, and was scheduled to receive $50,000 this year. The Portland Diocese just announced that they are pulling this funding. That’s good.

What is not good is that the USCCB and Bishop Morin, who heads the part of USCCB that oversees CCHD, continue to react with hostility whenever ALL or any other group points out these problematic CCHD grantees. Several months after ALL will point out these groups that don’t support Church doctrine or actively work against it, funding will be quietly pulled, then more groups will be found, Morin will feign outrage, and then quietly defund those again. On and on ad infinitum. Meanwhile, more and more Catholics are losing faith in many of the charitable organizations with ties to the USCCB and are either reducing donations or not giving at all. We need strong leadership from Bishop Morin and/or the USCCB to finally put an end to these really poor CCHD practices. I, for one, shall not hold my breath.

Dallas Catholic Blog...

The Ayn Rand follies - The New Criterion

The Ayn Rand follies - The New Criterion

Cardinal Ratzinger acted powerfully against abusers, says Archbishop Vincent Nichols

Cardinal Ratzinger acted powerfully against abusers, says Archbishop Vincent Nichols

SNAP Arrested in Rome

March 25, 2010 (ROME) (WLS) -- As Pope Benedict XVI pleaded his own public innocence in the latest allegations of a Vatican sex scandal cover-up, four top leaders of a Chicago-based group for the victims of clerical sex abuse were detained by police.


Barbara Blaine, Peter Isely, John Pilmaier and Barbara Dorris from the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) were detained by Vatican City police after holding an "unauthorized" demonstration on the edge of St Peter's Square.

They were mid-conversation with news reporters during a protest against decades of Church "silence" when uniformed officers took them away in a police car. Before being detained the group hoisted banners and placards reading "Stop the secrecy now" and "Expose the truth."

Link ....

Conway Concerned with Homosexuals in the Barracks

They seem to be resigned to the fact that this is something which will happen.

The Marine Corps' top officer said March 25 that even if the ban on openly-serving gays in the services is lifted, he would draw the line at forcing heterosexual Marines to bunk with gays on base.

"We want to continue [two-person rooms], but I would not ask our Marines to live with someone who is homosexual if we can possibly avoid it," Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway told Military.com during an exclusive interview at the Pentagon. "And to me that means we have to build BEQs [bachelor enlisted quarters] and have single rooms."

Conway's comments came the same day that Defense Secretary Robert Gates reprimanded the Army's Pacific commander for publicly exhorting servicemembers and civilians to write to Congress to oppose repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Army Lt. Gen. Benjamin Mixon made his views known in a letter published in Stars and Stripes on March 8.

Link to military today...

The Death of Math

At some point in the early 20th Century, America started to become enslaved to educational ideas that swept in from the East. These ideas are meant to make slaves of Americans by retarding their educations.

With the Boomer Revolution came the reinvention of everything we used to take for granted. The first old guard institution they decided to shut down was, “Doing the math.” Now we have New Math and the word “Science” applies to everything from astrology to having your hair done. You can take classes in “How to be Gay,” “What not to Wear,” and “The History of Feminist Tweets.”

Of course, the side effect of all this “Nobody’s Wrong” culture is “Everybody’s Correct”—even dropouts like Michael Moore, Sean Penn, and Janeane Garofalo. You can say anything is a life-threatening epidemic because nobody took real math after freshman year of high school so nobody knows how much is too much. All of a sudden, people who did water colors of farts in college are telling you: how steel behaves under certain temperatures, how CO2 affects the global environment, how investment firms need to deal with bundled mortgages, and their favorite parts of a 2,300 page health care bill.

These same people believe: CEOs are the ones taking all our money, we need to pay more tax, our schools are underfunded, and our children aren’t safe

Link to Taki's...

ADL'S Foxman Under Attack

Goldberg is awesome. He smokes Foxman again! Now if someone would take on other legal hucksters of this kind.

The prestige of Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has never been lower. A recent biting article by J. J. Goldberg in the Jewish Forward reveals that criticism of Foxman continues to expand, especially from leaders of the American Jewish community. Increasingly, American Jewish intellectuals fear that Foxman, while decrying the anti-Obama “paranoia” of the religious right, may be a victim of his own paranoid obsession with anti-Semitism where it doesn’t exist. (See Goldberg article Foxman Fever Doesn’t Discriminate)

Goldberg: “Foxman is the country’s most prolific anti-Semitism spotter, the gestalt guy who sees Jew-haters under every bed and invents them if he can’t find them.” He writes of respected journalist James Traub’s 2007 New York Times Magazine profile:

In his telling, Foxman is “the hanging-judge of anti-Semitism,” an “anachronism” who continues to “harp on Jewish insecurity” in a world where Jews have become “the most widely admired religious group in America, as well as the most successful.” Portraying him as a blustering alarmist, Traub seemed bemused by Foxman’s warnings about “jihadist” anti-Semitism as a serious threat in today’s world and troubled by Foxman’s focus on “good for the Jews, bad for the Jews” to the exclusion of broader goals of “promoting tolerance and diversity.”

Goldberg says this critique is abounding.

Link to NPN...

Whoever sows hatred of the Church, will reap damaged Churches

The first effects of the media reports? -In Bavaria there are reports of more vandalizations of Churches.

Dinkelsbühl (kath.net/KNA) In the middle franconian hamlet where the consecrated remains of the of the Martyr Aurelius rests in a Shrine at St. George Minster, vandal(s) tore him from his glass shrine and twisted his left leg. In the upper Bavarian Bad Aibling a suspect used a songbook as toilette paper and smeared it with feces. He also urinated in the church.

In Oberpolling at Passau on the following Saturday at the daughter church, St. Hartmann, prayer books, an altar cloth, pews and clock counterweight were lit on fire, and windows were also broken. Blind destruction on the weekend visited also a lea cross in the lower Bavarian crossroads at Kelheim. The three meter high Christ figure in the Sandharlandener Meadow by Abensberg had its arms and legs struck off. Weidener detectives have become involved due to the heavy arson in a church in upper Pfalz, Bärnau. Damages for the more than eight days of acts are estimated at 30,000 Euros.

There's a petition you may sign at Ja! zur KIRCHE on facebook.

I'm not the Messiah, Says Food Activist

The trouble started when Raj Patel appeared on American TV to plug his latest book, an analysis of the financial crisis called The Value of Nothing.

The London-born author, 37, thought his slot on comedy talkshow The Colbert Report went well enough: the host made a few jokes, Patel talked a little about his work and then, job done, he went back to his home in San Francisco.

Shortly afterwards, however, things took a strange turn. Over the course of a couple of days, cryptic messages started filling his inbox.


Link to Guardian...

Bishop Weakland says Pope Wasn't Aware of Case

The guy that the BBC was calling the Sex Scandal Bishop back in 2002 is being interviewed by the CBC. In the interview he admitted that Pope Benedict didn't know much about what was going on and wasn't very involved in these processes when they were ongoing.

Unfortunately, +Weakland stretches credulity a bit. You don't need to contact Rome to suspend someone a divinis, indeed, such a priest is automatically excommunicated, so it's interesting that +Weakland, who's never been very credible anyway, would make the claim that the Vatican was slow to react on many different issues, which may be true, but they were pretty quick to suspend Father Gruner or Father Leonard Feeney.

Link to CBC...

The Crimes of Modernism Healed by Penance: The Real Import of Benedict's Letter

Christ said to the adulterous woman, "do penance and sin no more". Despite this message of redemption and the elevation of womankind which the Church has promulgated, defended and taught the world for centuries, the villainous media expects a pound of flesh from the Church, a Church which has always preached penance for sins. It remains unclear what punishments those behind the media blitzkrieg have in store for the Church, its adherants and ministers. Perhaps it will be content to preserve the deceptive mercenaries who are its own chaplains within Its bosom? But the Church is surely being persectuted elsewhere as it is from Iraq to California. Like the Bishops' Conferences throughout the world, those who hate the Church and have power, no doubt must have in the back of their collective mind some sort of legislation. At last; Herod in the West would feel bold enough to murder grown men, and not be satisfied with helpless babes as he is now.

Benedict XVI made promises to clean up the filth in the beginning of his pontificate. He's been doing that. Homosexual priests who are caught are dismissed and increasingly, Bishops and pastors hostile to Orthodoxy are being sent out to pasture, early, to be replaced by Bishops and priests who are Catholic, who don't give fawning interviews to the international press telling people how they struggle with what Rome expects of them.

The following article by Sandro Magister deals with the issue of the sexual revolution which came (like nouveau theologie) out of the post-war years with new musical styles and ways of living facilitated by personal transportation and mechanization.

Along with the plastic and radiation of the post-war years, there came cultural novelties dealing with psychology and sexuality. Like bad parents, many Bishops and priests succumbed to the spirit of the age and introduced these novelties with the conspicuous and damnable results we're experiencing today.

There are many now pointing an accusing finger at the Church for the failure of some of its ministers in sexual morality, who would not like the penitential antidote fitting for bad parents of all kinds, the kinds of penitential practices suggested by our current Pope have long been suppressed in deed if not by law in many Diocese throughout the world.

If good can come out of evil, it is that many, to include the laity, are called this year to beg God's forgiveness and make reparations for the crimes committed because we omitted to do what was demanded by justice as parents and leaders, or because we broke God's law and thought we could escape His wrath.

The Genesis of a Crime

Genesis of a Crime. The Revolution of the 1960's. The scandal of pedophilia has always been there, but it was magnified by the cultural revolution of half a century ago. Benedict XVI makes the claim in his letter to the Catholics of Ireland. Two cardinals and a sociologist comment

by Sandro Magister

ROME, March 25, 2010 – Law and grace. Where earthly justice does not reach, the hand of God can. With his letter dated March 19, Benedict XVI has given the Catholics of Ireland an order never before given by a pope of the modern era to an entire national Church.

He told them not only to bring the guilty before the canonical and civil courts, but to put themselves collectively in a state of penance and purification. And not in the privacy of their consciences, but in a public form, before the eyes of all, even of their most implacable and mocking adversaries. Fasting, prayer, reading the Bible, and works of charity on all the Fridays from now until Easter of next year. Frequent sacramental confession. Continual adoration of Jesus – " himself a victim of injustice and sin" – present in the sacred host, exposed on the altars of the churches. And for all the bishops, priests, and religious, without exception, a special period of "mission," a long and strict course of spiritual exercises for a radical review of life.

Link to Chiesa...

Bill Donahue Promotes New Book on CNN

Editor's note: Bill Donohue is president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and author of four books, including "Secular Sabotage: How Liberals are Destroying Religion and Culture in America."

New York (CNN) -- The rash of stories about priestly sexual abuse in Europe, especially in Ireland and Germany, has put many Catholics on the defensive. They should not be. While sexual molestation of any kind is always indefensible, the politics surrounding this story is also indefensible.

Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so.

Link to CNN...

A Response to Christopher Hitchens' 'The Great Catholic Coverup'

A Response to Christopher Hitchens' 'The Great Catholic Coverup'

George Weigel Likes Pope Benedict's Letter

In a March 20 pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI vigorously condemned the physical and sexual abuse of “children and vulnerable young people” in which Irish priests and religious women had engaged for decades, and mandated an Apostolic Visitation of various segments of the Irish Church.

The visitation seems likely to result in major changes in the Church’s leadership in what was once one of the world’s most intensely Catholic countries, and is now one of the centers of aggressive secularism in Europe. “Sinful and criminal acts” against the young “and the way Church authorities dealt with them” are, the Pope suggests, among the reasons that Irish Catholicism has imploded in recent decades. And Benedict does not hesitate to draw the necessary conclusion from that analysis — radical reform is the only path back to a vital and vibrant Catholic Church in the land of St. Patrick.

There is very little euphemism in Benedict’s pastoral letter; its language is both unprecedented and unsparing, as is its candor about the failures of bishops in dealing with abuse. Abusing priests and religious women are told, bluntly, that “you betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents, and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals.” Moreover, the Pope writes to the abusers, “you have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and have brought shame and dishonor upon your confreres. Those of you who are priests violated the sanctity of the sacrament of Holy Orders in which Christ makes himself present in us and in our actions” — which is to say, you have profaned holy things.

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Glenn Beck on Marxist Ministers

Glenn Beck is so right about the American Catholic Church; he's wrong about Catholicism and politics, however, contrary to what he says, it would be great if an orthodox (how sad that we have to specify that nowadays) Catholic priest made public policy. Wouldn't it be nice though, if instead of promoting socialist causes, that the Catholic Bishops in America just did their jobs? They really have, for the most part, aligned themselves with certain Devils with Washington addresses who insist on telling us that the government extorting money from taxpayers amounts to what was taught in the Gospels. Never mind that they can't convince most Christians that abortion for everyone who wants one isn't something the Gospels would have taught either, but the American people are gullible. They've been acquiescing to the tyrannous whims of our Marxist-Leninist masters and mistresses for a very, very long time. It's high time, even if it has to come from a non-Catholic, that someone actually took the USCCB to task for this and was paid attention to.

Some of us have been mentioning this for years. Still, the USCCB loves to make ineffectual statements from time to time on behalf of liberal causes.

[Foxnews] GLENN BECK, HOST: I know it seems like I'm off the rails today because I'm not talking specifically about education or immigration or health care. But this is — this is the — this is the kind of show that makes you understand the news and understand what's coming.

There is another attack coming now on me. And I'm not responding to the attack. I have to tell you the truth.

But I want you to know what the truth is, from me first. Because I have yet another, a close Obama adviser — first it was Van Jones that started a campaign against me. And now, it's a new one. Reverend Jim Wallis is starting a campaign against me.

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Archdiocese of San Francisco Paper Drops a Bomb - Today

At last, a Diocesan apparachik admits the truth that Catholic hospitals provide abortions, thanks to the Fifth Columnists who run it for the benefit of something wicked this way coming.

h/t: Father Z (who never criticizes the Diocesan organs or their leaders, but can't resist taking shots at radicals outside of that protective dome. Here, we can both agree with the authorities and avoid any undue scruples about being disloyal.)

Archdiocese of San Francisco Paper Drops a Bomb - Today

NARAL Supporting Socialist Chancellor of Portland Promotes Judaism

The premise of interfaith dialogue of the kind we are seeing here is that it's supposed to make us more "comfortable" with each other and more "tolerant" of our differences. The unspoken conclusion is that our beliefs don't actually matter, and it's not a suprising conclusion considering that the organizer of the event is an advocate for NARAL, socialist moveon.org, hommosexual enabling Oregon Catholic Press for which she's a boardmember and a really bad Catechism which diocesan funds no doubt purchase to disedify children when they are unfortunate enough to enter one of Portland's religious education programs.

Mary Jo Tully, a modernist who bosses Bishops around, who connects Catholics with moveon.org and NARAL is also connecting Catholic seminarians to a Jewish Rabbi who presumes to teach them about the importance of the Seder meal. At one point he erroneously asserts that for Jews the celebration of the liberation from Egypt is as "earthshaking for Jews as the Resurrection is for Christians". Actually, the liberation from Egypt is a prefiguration of the Resurrection, which the Jews reject. What the Rabbi doesn't discuss, and most likely isn't asked, is whether or not the Jews will apologize for the slurs against Our Lord and His Mother contained in their Talmud, the stoning of St. Stephen, or how they call non-Jews, goyim.

But, the sheepish seminarians will be herded in for the meal and will have to sit quietly and politely, while the Rabbi makes them more confused and easily manipulated than before.

Incidentally, Oregon is one of the most liberal States in the Union and it's also, coincidently, leading the Union in Sex Abuse claims against the Catholic Church.

Seminarians experience a key Jewish rite

by Ed Langlois

ST. BENEDICT — As the sun set and Mount Hood glowed in the distance, more than 130 students from Mount Angel Seminary sat shyly to pay heed to a rabbi. Within two hours, the future priests were singing traditional Jewish songs with gusto and giving Rabbi Daniel Issak thankful embraces.

Rabbi Issak, leader of Congregation Neveh Shalom in Southwest Portland, accepted an invitation to lead a Passover Seder at the place where Catholic priests are formed.

The ritual meal commemorates the liberation of the Israelities from Egypt. Rabbi Isaak explained that the historical release from bondage is as earthshaking for Jews as the resurrection of Jesus is for Christians.

Link to Portland's Diocesan Paper....

Eyewitness Account of Cardinal Mahony's Opening Liturgy for Religious Education Conference

Well, Oregon Catholic Press was there, and that says a lot. As one blog commenter mentioned, even if this does appear to be trendy, the youth aren't terribly interested, but one of the speakers seems to have an antidote for that, or not.

We're so used to there not being Catholic Speakers at the Cardinal's amazingly heterodox gatherings that we might never think to ask whether or not there was actually someone present who believes and teaches the Catholic Faith in its perfection.

Surely, when the Cardinal's not advocating for "social justice" what else would he be doing, besides planning on avoiding taking any responsibillity for the sex abuse scandal which is a direct result of him protecting his homosexual confreres who preyed on children; mostly boys.

What's even more amazing is that he's allowed to perpetuate the illusion while being responsible for almost $660 Million Dollars in sex abuse claims with more than 508 victims.

It should be more than an idle suggestion that the following account is upbeat, positive and supportive of the Cardinal, since the Benedictine Abbey in Collegevill has the same problem and has thus far, like +Mahony and his modernist confreres and supporters in LA, managed to diffuse any criticism and enjoy the harvest amid their elderly and overly credulous patrons and collaborators in politics and the media.

Ok, it's true, we admit it. Despite promulgating a campy little blog designed to celebrate the diversity at the Modernist Monastery, when they're not promoting Planned Parenthood, protecting evil child molesters, dispensing psychological advice under false pretenses, making hideous music,devoting themselves to collecting waterford crystal and executing ugly modern art, they're doing things like throwing light on the evil which is Cardinal Mahony.


From the "Pray, Tell" blog...

“In-cre-í-ble,” called the cantor, in Spanish. A barely audible and somewhat confused response came from some members of the gathered assembly. “A-bun-dan-cia,” called the cantor. “¿A-bun-dan-cia?,” responded some of the assembly, almost questioningly. Perhaps it was because people were distracted by the parade of Asian drummers ascending the stage in their colorful costumes of blue, red, green, yellow and gold. Or maybe they were still working out what the spiraled and curved figures hanging from the ceiling were intended to represent. In any case, thus began, hesitatingly, the opening session of the Los Angeles Religious Education Conference 2010.

Once it got going, however, as the drummers were drumming, and the dancers processed, lifting and swirling with flaming braziers in their hands, it was clear that something exciting was under way. I confess that, for a few moments, it seemed to me like the world’s biggest pep rally, what with all those drums, and the cheers that went up when they finished! We sang of being the “pueblo de Dios,” the people of God, and Cardinal Mahony opened the conference officially with the Sign of the Cross and a prayer.

A reading of Romans 8:35-39 reminded us that neither death, nor life, nor anything else can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The power of this reading was hindered somewhat, in my opinion, by the technique using two lectors to deliver the text in alternating phrases of English and Spanish. I speak both languages fluently, but still found the movement back and forth between the two in phrases and half sentences somewhat distracting. Our response to the reading was a song by Steve Angrisano, Falling Into You—a beautiful melody that made me want to sing (though the rhythm was very syncopated and a little difficult), with words that reminded me, at least, of Psalms 139 and 116.

Sister Edith Prendergast, RSC, Director of the Office of Religious Education for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, delivered an inspiring reflection that set the stage for the conference. We were encouraged to make the weekend, and indeed all of life, a celebration of God’s incredible abundance—of love for creation, abundance in joy, abundance in sorrow, abundance in beauty, abundance in disadvantage. We were reminded of God’s presence in all of creation, at all times, and challenged to look for God, even in those places or situations where we least expect to find the divine presence, remembering that God’s love enfolds no matter the time, the place, or the circumstance, just as St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans.

Given this message, maybe the pep rally atmosphere at the beginning of the opening rite was more appropriate than I had thought at the time. Perhaps I need that motivation to remind me of the presence and the love of God all around me, all day long. As I head out to another day, my challenge is to try to fall into God’s love, to let it wrap around me like a blanket, so I’m forced to be aware of it. It is not a tent to shelter me, where I shouldn’t get too close to its walls. It fabric is incredibly abundant—there’s enough to go around for everyone, if we allow ourselves to be wrapped in it.

Brother Aelred Senna, OSB
Saint John’s Abbey

Jesuit Georgetown University Student Government Votes to Fund Pro-Abortion Panel

If one belonged to one organizaiton that had very strong and principled opposition to a certain practice, to which one gives at least nominal assent to by one's public witness, and one belonged to another organization which contravened those principles by its frequent dissent and contempt for them, one would have to chose sides, but then, if one didn't, one would probably be a Jesuit. They have an excuse for everything.

Georgetown University Student Government Votes to Fund Pro-Abortion Panel

Mainstream Muslims Burn Christian Alive for Refusing to Convert

Islamabad (AsiaNews) – Arshed Masih, 38, is still fighting for his life in Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, a city not far from Pakistan’s capital. With the help of police, Muslim extremists last Friday set him on fire for refusing to convert to Islam and raped his wife, local sources told AsiaNews. The incident occurred in front of a local police station.

In 2005, Masih and his wife began working for a wealthy Muslim businessman, he as driver and she as his wife’s maid. Recently, the two fell out of favour with their employer and his family because they insisted on remaining Christian.

During the incident, Masih’s wife, Martha, “was raped by police agents,” local sources said. The couple’s three children, ranging in age from 7 and 12, were forced to watch their parents being brutalised.

“Masih and his wife are currently being treated in hospital,” Holy Family Hospital officials said. “He was listed in serious condition with about 80 per cent of his body burned,” the BosNewsLife agency reported. With that kind of burns, hospital officials said the 38-year-old victim (pictured) is not likely to survive.

Link to Asia News...

Real Catholics Upset Rabbi's Talk at Notre Dame

These demonstrations of this year, at Thieberville, the interruption of a Gay protest at Notre Dame and now this, really demonstrate the undeniable and admirable nature of the French martial, Catholic spirit.

Liberal prelates still don't seem to understand that this kind of "ecumenical" activity is what is turning their churches into mere museums and is a significant contributor to the "vocations crisis" they like to blame on non-factors like celibacy and the "monarchical" nature of the Church.

The warm round of applause that Krygier received when he returned to the nave after the lecture bore that out. At the same time, arch-traditionalists such as Rev. Régis de Cacqueray, head of the French section of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) congratulated protesters for their “courage” and said: “The Paris cathedral is neither a synagogue nor a Masonic temple.”

An ultra-traditionalist blog called “Les Intransigeants” (The Intransigents) spoke its mind more openly: “Notre Dame again defended against the outrage by the merchants of the Temple.” The rest of the post was worse anti-Semitic venom.

Link to Reuters...

Also, check out the differences in ages between the people there who are participating in the Religious Indifferentism and the people who are using the Cathedral for the purpose it was intended when it was built almost 1000 years ago, praying.