And Keillor was permitted to speak and allowed to give the impression that Catholic doctrine is as mutable as Keillor's choice of spouses, religion and locale.
Given Keillor's own Episcopalian religious affiliation, we don't understand why he insists on speaking on behalf of an organization he openly and shamelessly despises? Does this mean that he, in the parlance of the character assassins at NPR and the NYTs, support the "Nazi" Pope and his secrecy and medieval ism?
Perhaps it has something to do with the money and those city-slicker ways he learned when he got booted from New York City for being too boring and came crawling back to the little pond in flyover land.
What's really strange in Lake Woebegone is how the Communications Director will spin this, despite the 200k plus salary he receives to dither in his office and offer "no-comment" to journalists covering important stories.
It may not happen too soon, but these Archdiocesan offices really need to get the Todd Tambergs (Communications Director for Los Angeles) and Dennis McGraths into retirement.
Why is it that because it's religion based, that you can be incompetent, evil and lascivious but still make a lot of money? Even if you get caught at the above, you can always cry on camera and elicit sympathy from your supporters like Jim Baker did before he went to prison.
Check out the list of speakers. It's a practical guarantee that if you looked up their writings you'd find all manner of heresy, and these are people who are running Catholic education. No wonder Catholics don't know their Faith...
Saturday, April 10, 2010
The Two Campaigns are Alike: as one Egg to Another
When Joseph Goebbels plotted his abuse campaign against the church, the bishops at that time did not drop to their knees.
By Hubert Hecker.
(kreuz.net) In the years 1936/37 Reich propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels († 1945) battled -- national-socialist-morality criminal cases against the church with enormous press campaigns.
Goebbels - a lapsed catholic and a notorious adulterer - pursued several goals. Thus he presumed "thousands and thousands and thousands of church sex offenders".
With this lie he wanted to drive a wedge between the Clergy and Laity. The believers should be estranged from their hierarchy.
The numbers of those leaving the Church went up promptly in the years 1937 and 1938.
The withdrawing were however mainly Nazi Party members and marginal Catholics.
The Catholic people did not let themselves be impressed by the lies of the Anti-Catholic propaganda Minister.
The believers gathered only more closely around their priests and bishops and participated more intensively in their slandered Church.
Bishops: Truth instead of Cringing
The German bishops did not put their heads into the sand. They met the propaganda of the Goebbels media with courage and referred to the small number of misdemeanours in the church:
In the diocese Paderborn from 9.380 priests and religious and in 1937 six persons had been condemned.
From the 14,300 religious persons in the Diocese of Münster, seven persons had been punished.
Eight condemnations came from the Archdiocese of Munich's 11,250 secular priests and religious-- nearly always because of homosexuals' misdemeanours.
A Forerunner of "We are Church"
The Goebbels' press fight tried to pull in the Pope into the invented "moral swamp of the Roman church“ as well, in order to undermine the confidence of Catholics in their Roman Shepherds.
A sect around the magazine "the Rome-free Catholic" - a forerunner of the today's Anti-Church group of sects `We are Church' - grumbled on 16 June 1936:
"Thus the joint responsibility for the exposed monstrosity rests completely on Rome."
The magazine 'Rome-Free Catholic' was close to at that time the Nazi friendly Old-Catholic Church in the German Reich.
The Nazi Daily `West Deutscher Beobachter' headlined on 3 July 1936 "Vatican circles wrap themselves in silence“.
This tactical assumption is gladly repeated at present by media swarm.
The Mortally Hated Church
The German bishops did not go to its knees before the coordinated Nazi press.
The citizen of Berlin bishop Konrad von Preysing († 1950) wrote in his Pastoral Address on 7 May 1937:
"This very loud press front wants to strike the mortally despised church to destruction."
"One wants to declare the reputation of the Pope and the German bishops for Christianity and freedom of conscience in our German Fatherland."
"The Church's enemies use the morality of legal cases against priests and religious", in order to undermine the authority of the Pope and his words.
Only before - in March 1937 - Pope Pius XI had two months in the encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" frontally attacked the ideology of National Socialism.
Naturally the Nazis hated Celibacy Too
The German press coordinated by the National Socialists was made to represent the obscenities, much discussed by Goebbels, as "symptoms of the unnatural system" of the Church.
Goebbels' fight was directed - similarly as today - particularly against celibacy.
It was put together with "the Catholic bourgeois morality " as reactionary and outdated way of life.
Goebbels trumped up rare misdemeanours of individual clergyman, in order to provoke a general demoralization in the Clergy - as if he would never again be "in this frightening and infuriating extent able to determine the entire cultural history of mankind."
The Church Becomes Triumphant
The Bishops did not let Nazi propaganda sit idly. Thus Msgr von Preysing said clearly in his Pastoral Address:
„The Church's enemies use indecent assaults on Catholic clergyman in order to approach their goal: to exterminate the public believers of Christianity in Germany, unrestrainedly, without consideration for truth, justice and freedom of conscience."
In the conclusion he explained his Pastoral Letter:
"My Dear Children! Do not let yourself be confused in the faith or in the eternal mission of the Church."
"The Church of Christ will also victoriously overcome decline, error and vice in its own ranks as in the past."
"You will also triumph powerfully over the great droves and the more powerful the attacking opponent - the gates of hell will not be overcome by them. “
© used picture: Zyada,
Link to original...
Friday, April 9, 2010
USCCB Urges Nuclear Disarmament
Cardinal George is fascinated by destined to fail liberal foreign and domestic policy goals. It's not so much that the Bishops are playing a political role, it's not even that they are incompetent to play such a role, for political issues are well within the competency of a Bishop. Yet when socialist-style national Bishops Conferences speak out on various issues, it's almost entirely guaranteed to illicit a suspiciously pre-masticated and slavish adherence to the liberal social agendas of the day.
It's suspicious because many of these policies can be demonstrated to be deleterious to the health of the host nation, and it's especially poisonous to the credibility of Catholic institutions ultimately, because it is very clear that the Bishops aren't really responding from their own beliefs, (although many of them by virtue of their education hold such poisonous beliefs) but from an agenda established independent of the Catholic Church.
To put it another way, the USCCB is an organ with no authority, claiming to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church in a country, and yet it consistently works against the interests of both its host country and the Catholic Church.
Whoever is pulling the strings at the USCCB does not have the best interests of the Catholic Church at heart.
Read the article...
It's suspicious because many of these policies can be demonstrated to be deleterious to the health of the host nation, and it's especially poisonous to the credibility of Catholic institutions ultimately, because it is very clear that the Bishops aren't really responding from their own beliefs, (although many of them by virtue of their education hold such poisonous beliefs) but from an agenda established independent of the Catholic Church.
To put it another way, the USCCB is an organ with no authority, claiming to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church in a country, and yet it consistently works against the interests of both its host country and the Catholic Church.
Whoever is pulling the strings at the USCCB does not have the best interests of the Catholic Church at heart.
WASHINGTON—"The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) welcomes the signing of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) between the United States and the Russian Federation," said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, President of the USCCB, in an April 8 letter to President Barack Obama.
“The horribly destructive capacity of nuclear arms makes them disproportionate and indiscriminate weapons that endanger human life and dignity like no other armaments. Their use as a weapon of war is rejected in Church teaching based on just war norms,” Cardinal George wrote. The cardinal cited teaching from both the U.S. bishops and Pope Benedict XVI calling for a world without nuclear weapons.
“Based on a moral imperative to rid the world of nuclear weapons,” Cardinal George said, “the Conference of Bishops will be a steadfast supporter of strong and bipartisan action on the new START Treaty as an important and essential step toward a nuclear-weapons-free future.”
Read the article...
NYTs is Dying and Not even a Church Scandal Can Help
This isn't the first time the New York Times has lied about something or done poor research. Their assertions were based on a computer translation of a correspondence between +Weakland and Cardinal Bertone. Don't they have enough money to hire a translator? Their first mistake was in receiving the story from a 2nd rate Law Firm from the Midwest, but this isn't the first time they've been caught in a lie.
Will people still be willing to view NYTs as a credible news source?
Link to Father Z...
Will people still be willing to view NYTs as a credible news source?
Link to Father Z...
Pflegerizing Catholicism
By Michelle Malkin
Read further...
h/t: HA
So much that you need to know about the Catholic Church’s social-policy problems can be summed up in one word: Chicago. On race, abortion, guns, immigration, and “community organizing,” Catholic Church officials in the Windy City have forged unholy alliances with radical left-wingers and enablers who undermine the faith — and the faithful.
Exhibit A: the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office for Racial Justice and one of its most notorious priests, the Rev. Michael Pfleger. This week, Chicago cardinal Francis George — who also is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — presided over a gala ceremony honoring Pfleger with a “lifetime-achievement award” for his “service in pursuit of dismantling racism, injustice, and inequalities on behalf of African Americans and all people of color.”
Read further...
h/t: HA
A return of Penal Times in England?
The amusingly named Guardian has printed an article which suggests in tones of hope and glee, that the Holy Father might be arrested when he comes to England.
There hasn't been this much talk about arresting a Pontiff since the days of Joe Garibaldi and Napoleon Bonaparte who had himself arrested Pius VII and imprisoned him with the expectation that he would agree to Napoleon's subjugation of the Church. Upon refusing to submit to Napoleon's demands, occasionally, it was purported, Napoleon would threaten and physically beat the Pontiff. After failing to get Bl Pius IX in their clutches during the wars Italian Unification 1848-1870, the forces of evil have concocted another trick by creating a media frenzy throughout the world by appealing to people's natural sense of the sacredness and innocence of children, and attempting to portray the Catholic Church as responsible for the corruption of the same.
The irony of all of this shouldn't be lost on anyone familiar with such propaganda campaigns of the past, calculated to produce the destruction of an institution. French revolutionaries produced pornographic cartoon drawings of Marie Antoinette to obtain the downfall of her family and husband; strangely, the anger of the mob didn't turn against her tormentors, it turned against her.
It's taken many years to rehabilitate the memory of this woman and expose the lies which were told about her to perpetrate a political evil, and it may be that the Catholic Church will once again enjoy the same persecuted status It once enjoyed in England after Henry VIII, in France after Robespierre or in Russia after Lenin.
We fully expect that if Pope Benedict isn't arrested, the various governments will use this event as a pretext to confiscate church lands, supervise priests and bishops and even persecute individual Catholics whom they dislike for any number of arbitrary reasons.
The dictatorship of relativism is upon us, and we don't expect the forces of evil to triumph in destroying the Papacy.
There hasn't been this much talk about arresting a Pontiff since the days of Joe Garibaldi and Napoleon Bonaparte who had himself arrested Pius VII and imprisoned him with the expectation that he would agree to Napoleon's subjugation of the Church. Upon refusing to submit to Napoleon's demands, occasionally, it was purported, Napoleon would threaten and physically beat the Pontiff. After failing to get Bl Pius IX in their clutches during the wars Italian Unification 1848-1870, the forces of evil have concocted another trick by creating a media frenzy throughout the world by appealing to people's natural sense of the sacredness and innocence of children, and attempting to portray the Catholic Church as responsible for the corruption of the same.
The irony of all of this shouldn't be lost on anyone familiar with such propaganda campaigns of the past, calculated to produce the destruction of an institution. French revolutionaries produced pornographic cartoon drawings of Marie Antoinette to obtain the downfall of her family and husband; strangely, the anger of the mob didn't turn against her tormentors, it turned against her.
It's taken many years to rehabilitate the memory of this woman and expose the lies which were told about her to perpetrate a political evil, and it may be that the Catholic Church will once again enjoy the same persecuted status It once enjoyed in England after Henry VIII, in France after Robespierre or in Russia after Lenin.
We fully expect that if Pope Benedict isn't arrested, the various governments will use this event as a pretext to confiscate church lands, supervise priests and bishops and even persecute individual Catholics whom they dislike for any number of arbitrary reasons.
The dictatorship of relativism is upon us, and we don't expect the forces of evil to triumph in destroying the Papacy.
Dying Left Coast Paper Lashes out at Vatican in its Death Agony: Op Ed
THE DETONATIONS occur with all the regularity of bombs going off in downtown Baghdad: the Church of Rome — the church of pomp, hierarchy, and authority — is imploding. The damage already sustained qualifies as catastrophic. There is more to come.
For Catholics, Easter this year was a joyless occasion. [For him perhaps, but for many, it certainly was. Chalk this comment up to spite] Rather than celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus, anguished pastors lamented the continued disintegration of the institution to which they have devoted their lives. In the pews, their dwindling flocks listened with a combination of sadness, dismay, and disgust.
The crisis touched off in 2002 by the clergy sex abuse scandal in Boston has now gone global. The Holy See’s obtuse response, combining self-denial with self-pity — it’s all the fault of a gossip-mongering media apparently — has shredded the last vestiges of Vatican credibility. [Wishful thinking. But what about media credibility, what about your credibility?] Simply put, what Rome says no longer matters. The bishops — those of this country in the vanguard — have already squandered any claim to trust. The pope himself now seems hell-bent on forfeiting what remains of his authority. If Wall Street rules applied, the Catholic Church would today be filing for Chapter 11 protection while fending off an Anglican takeover bid — depending on your point of view, a delicious or ironic prospect. Yet this moment of painful mortification holds great potential for clarification and renewal. The collapse of Christendom — the concept of a secular order based on Christian precepts — is now fully complete. So too is the triumph of modernity. No encyclical handed down from on high will reverse that verdict. We ourselves must deal with the consequences.
Link to original..
Extradition of Priest could Take Years: Minneapolis
MINNEAPOLIS — Extraditing a Roman Catholic priest from his native India to face charges of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Minnesota could take several years, the prosecutor in the case said Thursday.
Roseau County Attorney Lisa Hanson said federal officials told her the extradition of Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul could last four or five years if he's uncooperative. A formal extradition request was filed with the Department of Justice last fall, she said.
"I'm told the process is very slow and convoluted," Hanson said. "If he decides to fight it, we could be looking at a very long process."
Link to original...
photo: AP
Abbot Gabriel and Sister Maria Cordata, RIP
Two of the founding members of the Saint Benedict Center passed away auspiciously and peacefully in the days before Easter:
Abbot Gabriel passed away on Saturday, March 27, 2010, Sister Maria Cordata on March 30.
They were preceeded in death by the saintly and learned Brother Francis Maluf, the Ghassanid, who led the Slaves of Richmond Richmond for many years.
Although we have lost great teachers, mentors and spiritual benefactors, we must labor on in their apparent absence till we too are called to our particular judgements.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Koch Defends Papacy: "He who is without sin cast the first stone"
believe the continuing attacks by the media on the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI have become manifestations of anti-Catholicism. The procession of articles on the same events are, in my opinion, no longer intended to inform, but simply to castigate.
The sexual molestation of children, principally boys, is horrendous. This is agreed to by everyone, Catholics, the Church itself, as well as non-Catholics and the media. The pope has on a number of occasions on behalf of the Church admitted fault and asked for forgiveness. For example, The New York Times reported on April 18, 2008, that the pope "came face to face with a scandal that has left lasting wounds on the American church Thursday, holding a surprise meeting with several victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Boston area.... 'No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,' the Pope said in his homily. 'It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention.'"
On March 20, 2010, the Times reported that in his eight page pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, the pope wrote, "You have suffered grievously, and I am truly sorry ... Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated."
The pope also "criticized Ireland's bishops for 'grave errors of judgment and failures of leadership.'"
The primary explanation for the abuse that happened - not to excuse the retention of priests in positions that enabled them to continue to harm children - was the belief that the priests could be cured by psychotherapy, a theory now long discarded by the medical profession. Regrettably, it is also likely that years ago the abuse of children was not taken as seriously as today. Thank God we've progressed on that issue.
Many of those in the media who are pounding on the Church and the pope today clearly do it with delight, and some with malice. The reason, I believe, for the constant assaults is that there are many in the media, and some Catholics as well as many in the public, who object to and are incensed by positions the Church holds, including opposition to all abortions, opposition to gay sex and same-sex marriage, retention of celibacy rules for priests, exclusion of women from the clergy, opposition to birth control measures involving condoms and prescription drugs and opposition to civil divorce. My good friend, John Cardinal O'Connor, once said, "The Church is not a salad bar, from which to pick and choose what pleases you." The Church has the right to demand fulfillment of all of its religious obligations by its parishioners, and indeed a right to espouse its beliefs generally.
Read further...
The sexual molestation of children, principally boys, is horrendous. This is agreed to by everyone, Catholics, the Church itself, as well as non-Catholics and the media. The pope has on a number of occasions on behalf of the Church admitted fault and asked for forgiveness. For example, The New York Times reported on April 18, 2008, that the pope "came face to face with a scandal that has left lasting wounds on the American church Thursday, holding a surprise meeting with several victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Boston area.... 'No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,' the Pope said in his homily. 'It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention.'"
On March 20, 2010, the Times reported that in his eight page pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, the pope wrote, "You have suffered grievously, and I am truly sorry ... Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated."
The pope also "criticized Ireland's bishops for 'grave errors of judgment and failures of leadership.'"
The primary explanation for the abuse that happened - not to excuse the retention of priests in positions that enabled them to continue to harm children - was the belief that the priests could be cured by psychotherapy, a theory now long discarded by the medical profession. Regrettably, it is also likely that years ago the abuse of children was not taken as seriously as today. Thank God we've progressed on that issue.
Many of those in the media who are pounding on the Church and the pope today clearly do it with delight, and some with malice. The reason, I believe, for the constant assaults is that there are many in the media, and some Catholics as well as many in the public, who object to and are incensed by positions the Church holds, including opposition to all abortions, opposition to gay sex and same-sex marriage, retention of celibacy rules for priests, exclusion of women from the clergy, opposition to birth control measures involving condoms and prescription drugs and opposition to civil divorce. My good friend, John Cardinal O'Connor, once said, "The Church is not a salad bar, from which to pick and choose what pleases you." The Church has the right to demand fulfillment of all of its religious obligations by its parishioners, and indeed a right to espouse its beliefs generally.
Read further...
24% of Russians are for the Monarchy
In Belgorod (a regional centre in Middle Russia) at the end of March 2010 the Russian Imperial Union-Order organised a sociological research of public attitude to the monarchy and the Russian Imperial House. 180 people of different age and social status agreed to participate in the research.
13.4% of the participants are monarchists under their views. At the same time 69.5% are democrats and 10.5% are communists. 24.8% of the participants support the idea to restore monarchy in Russia. 50% of the supporters of the restoration are democrats under their political views, but they believe that the monarchy doesn’t contradict to democratic institutions.
52.4% of the participants have heard about existence and current social and charity activity of the Russian Imperial House, but only 25.8% of the participants know who is the current Head of the Russian Imperial House.
84.8% of the participants support the idea of the Russian Imperial House to return to Russia. 13% are sure that the Russian Imperial House would be the symbol of national unity. Only 2% are afraid of possible restitution of property to the Russian Imperial House (it is necessary to emphasize that the House always underlines that it is against the idea of restitution itself) and because of it are against the return of the Romanoff House.
Under the information of the Belgorod Department of the RIU-O
h/t: Russian Monarchist
To Monarchy Forum...
13.4% of the participants are monarchists under their views. At the same time 69.5% are democrats and 10.5% are communists. 24.8% of the participants support the idea to restore monarchy in Russia. 50% of the supporters of the restoration are democrats under their political views, but they believe that the monarchy doesn’t contradict to democratic institutions.
52.4% of the participants have heard about existence and current social and charity activity of the Russian Imperial House, but only 25.8% of the participants know who is the current Head of the Russian Imperial House.
84.8% of the participants support the idea of the Russian Imperial House to return to Russia. 13% are sure that the Russian Imperial House would be the symbol of national unity. Only 2% are afraid of possible restitution of property to the Russian Imperial House (it is necessary to emphasize that the House always underlines that it is against the idea of restitution itself) and because of it are against the return of the Romanoff House.
Under the information of the Belgorod Department of the RIU-O
h/t: Russian Monarchist
To Monarchy Forum...
What Neocatholics don't like You to Know: LA Episcopal Appointment
Back on Monday this week, New Advent reported that they had an "exclusive" report of Archbishop Gomez' appointment ot LA. That was false. We'd reported it on Sunday Morning, and a lot of people saw it in happy hours of the Easter Feast. It was a festive occasion.
Well, it's been a few days since we found out that the next Archbishop of Los Angeles was going to be Msgr Gomez, and it's been a few days since we made the announcement here in confirmation of American Papist's forewarning that an appointment would be named "some time at the end of February". It's alright that a few other groups made the claim to an "exclusive" coverage and didn't mention us -- but it would be nice if some of the Seminary faculty resign as they promised they would do if a "conservative" were assigned to LA. At any rate, those guys who claim they got the scoop are neocatholics anyway. They didn't even make mention of a report that Archbishop Gomez doesn't use Eucharistic Monsters. In our announcement, we made some mention of Cardinal Mahony's controversial attacks on Tradition and compared and contrasted that with the much milder and "Traditionalist friendly" incoming Archbishop Gomez. We also made mention of the fact that Cardinal Gomez doesn't complain about the vocations shortage, he does something about it, like get the women out of the sanctuary and get men into the Seminary. We later learned that he has more than 100 Seminarians according to Harlequin King who sings in the Cathedral Schola.
The other neocatholic folks might not have appreciated our mention of Cardinal Mahony's planned wreckovation of St. Barbara's Parish, which now may be put indefinitely on hold, we hope, now that there's a new Sheriff in LA.
Our neocatholic friends didn't mention these details in their reports. We don't blame them so much for stealing our scoop, but we blame them chiefly for not drawing attention to some very interesting highlights we mentioned above like the Bishop's love of Vocations and promotion of the same, and Cardinal Mahony's detestable wreckovation, or the fact that Archbishop Gomez, who is in Opus Dei, tries to control the Universities in his See, horrible we know.
Sure, Rocco wanted to talk about Cardinal Mahony's marching around with Cesar Chavez. To his credit, we didn't get the impression that Rocco thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. But Rocco didn't say that Cardinal Mahony had bad labor relations and that depriving a worker of his just wage isn't the only sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. He just reported it matter of factly and we're grateful for it, but no one mentioned the fact that this new conservative Archbishop has currently 100 plus seminarians in formation right now. That's the mark of Benedict there for you and we think it's great; hope you do too.
Finally, this news has been known to the seminarians since 3 years. Why no one bothered to tell us Cardinal Mahony was out three years ago is beyond me. It might have lame ducked him had we known, before the Motu Propio, that the grand dragon of Los Angeles was destined for a mercifully foreseeable retirement.
Anyhow, we reported this story before New Advent did. It's not a big deal, but it would have been much nicer had you neocatholics said something about the planned wreckovation and the awesome vocations record of our new LA Bishops.
Finally, we'll leave you with one of the commenters at America, complaining bitterly (perhaps too bitterly to be convincing) about the appointment:
Prepare for Tridentine 1962
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Apr. 06, 2010.
Prepare for Tridentine 1962 rites in a few of your churches. And he does not EVER let women serve as Extra Ordinary Ministers in his masses ...even if it is in your own parish ! Your liturgies will be scrutinized and your music reviewed. It's all about the patriarch. He does not speak English well and seems sensitive that he doesn't. He sees the collection as his - your archbishops appeal amount will be doubled as the amount or even tripled as to the amount he wants. His focus is on seminary, seminary, seminary. He also likes to think that he controls the Universities during political times (ex. St. Mary's University was rented out by democrat H. Clinton as a speaking location, after it was held, he spoke out against it.). Do not give up, just keep on marching !
Btw, we support and encourage the idea of logging onto alien and non-Catholic forums like America and posting satirical things.
photo: St. John Valdosta blog
Bozell Column: The Media's Vatican Coup
[newsbusters] Our secular liberal media elites are never more poisonously insincere than when they recommend that conservatives should move closer to liberals, for their own good. Witnessing the relentless media attacks on the Catholic Church, no member of the flock should assume that the agitators at Newsweek or the New York Times know best how to steer the faithful – or even believe they want to help the faithful. Much like Ted Turner, who called Catholics “losers,” his media colleagues see Catholics – and particularly Pope Benedict XVI – as loathsome political obstacles.
One can conclude from all the coverage of sexual-abuse charges that those charges aren’t really the primary point for the “truth” seekers. These leftist media elites have hijacked those heinous actions for a much broader goal. Theirs is a very political crusade, with the goal of sacking Pope Benedict and “reforming” the ancient church in their hipster image, one that celebrates gay bishop Eugene Robinson’s Episcopalian gospel of “tolerance” and “inclusion” and “pluralism.” That kind of church would pose zero threat to the global goals of the left. In that kind of church, there is no stained-glass ceiling to untrammeled abortion and unlimited “marriage” of everyone to everyone.
Link to original...
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2010/04/06/bozell-column-medias-vatican-coup
One can conclude from all the coverage of sexual-abuse charges that those charges aren’t really the primary point for the “truth” seekers. These leftist media elites have hijacked those heinous actions for a much broader goal. Theirs is a very political crusade, with the goal of sacking Pope Benedict and “reforming” the ancient church in their hipster image, one that celebrates gay bishop Eugene Robinson’s Episcopalian gospel of “tolerance” and “inclusion” and “pluralism.” That kind of church would pose zero threat to the global goals of the left. In that kind of church, there is no stained-glass ceiling to untrammeled abortion and unlimited “marriage” of everyone to everyone.
Link to original...
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2010/04/06/bozell-column-medias-vatican-coup
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Persecution of Christians in Palestine
http://www.christatthecheckpoint.com
http://www.pcpj.org/
http://www.kairospalestine.ps
http://www.bethlehemaffirmation.com/
Factsheet
Israeli Zionist Restrictions on Easter Celebrations in Occupied Jerusalem
“Christians all over the world can celebrate Easter, but for Christian Palestinians, the Israeli Zionist military occupation have made of everyday a good Friday (sad Friday in Arabic), and we are still waiting for our own resurrection as a free nation.” Fr. Firas Areedah, Jifna, Palestine.
Restrictions on the Freedom of Worship:
• Entry to Jerusalem for West Bank and Gaza Christians is always restricted. On the occasion of Easter, Palestinian Christians living outside of Jerusalem in the West Bank and Gaza are being required to apply for permits to access their holy sites in occupied East Jerusalem. It is estimated that of those, only 2000 – 3000 Palestinian Christians have received permits. Jews do not have to apply for permits to access their holy sites during their holy days nor in any other day.
• The permit system instated by Israel is in obvious violation of the ICPRR, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international covenants and treaties to which Israel is a signatory.
• Worshipers will be restricted by road blocks and check points around the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem.
• This year, buses going to Jerusalem from Ramallah and Bethlehem with worshipers planning to attend the Palm Sunday procession were stopped on the way by Israeli occupation forces (IOF). Many were unable to attend the historic procession.
Example: The Holy Family Scout Group, which belongs to the Roman Catholic Church in Ramallah, took four hours to reach occupied Jerusalem. They missed the procession from the Mount of Olives to the Old City. The drive, without checkpoints, would take about 20 minutes.
• During Jewish holidays, Palestinian areas are put under military closure.
• Palestinian Christians living in Jerusalem and the West Bank were denied entry to the Old City for the first two days of the holy week.
• Israeli Zionist military occupation police banned Palestinian Christians and scout groups from flying the Palestinian flag during the Palm Sunday procession.
• The heavy presence of Israeli Zionist Police and Military forces (around and in the Old City and surrounding the holy sites) disturbs the spiritual traditions of Easter.
• Every year Christians try to spiritually connect Bethlehem, the city were Jesus was born with city were the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus have taken place. This connection is made through the traditional Sunday Palm march, in which this year many Palestinians and foreign supporters were arrested on their way. The two spiritual centers for Christians are separated by a complex network of apartheid walls, checkpoints and apparatuses.
• Last year, Israel prevented Palestinian Christians from attending the Holy Fire Saturday in Jerusalem. This year the church has objected to a permit system that was instated in an effort to limit those who attend the Saint Jacob church to witness the lightening of the Holy Fire. So far, Palestinian Christians are uncertain about what kind of restrictions they will face this Easter weekend.
Israeli Zionist Colony Activity in the Christian Quarter is changing the Face of the Old City:
Along the Via Dolorosa, the path on which Christians believe Jesus was taken from captivity to the cross, there are the 14 ‘Stations of the Cross’. Colony activity is prominent at most of those Stations:
o At Station 1: There is colony activity at the exit from the tunnels under the Old City.
o At Station 3: A colony building – the house of former Israeli terrorist Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which was confiscated from the Palestinian Christian Francis Tams.
o At Station 5: A heavily protected colony located over Christian Palestinian homes and shops has changed the landscape of the station, where it is believed by Christians that Jesus fell the first time on his way to the crucifixion.
o At Station 9: Colony located over the Souq (market) going to Al Aqsa compound, visible from the Coptic neighborhood.
o At Stations 11, 12, 13 and 14 (Holy Sepulcher): The Moristan colony, known by Palestinians as Saint John. This property confiscation led to the forced eviction and cleansing of an estimated 44 Christian Palestinian families. Zionist Colonists have also taken over a Christian Monastery located in front of the Holy Sepulcher.
o There have been reports of hundreds of attacks by heavily armed Jewish religious colonists against Christian pastors, bishops, and nuns from all denominations, as well as Christian Palestinian civilians, in the Old City of Jerusalem.
o Zionist Colony activity in the Christian Quarter in the old city of Jerusalem has increased lately, aiming to change the identity of the place. Examples: Work nearby the Jaffa Gate, threats to close the Petra and Empire hotels within the Old City.
The number of Palestinian Christians in 1948 was more than 20% out of the total population, since then it has declined to 10% in 1967 and 2% today. This decline has been attributed to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, the occupation and the continuous harassment and humiliation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.
For information, please contact:
Nadia Awad, GMC, 00972 54 534 9671
Xavier Abu Eid, NSU, 00970 598 950 300
Father Firas Areedah (available for interviews) 00970 599 325 957
Yusef Daher, Jerusalem Inter-Church Centre 00972 50 554 5179
http://www.christatthecheckpoint.com
http://www.pcpj.org/
http://www.kairospalestine.ps
http://www.bethlehemaffirmation.com/
http://www.pcpj.org/
http://www.kairospalestine.ps
http://www.bethlehemaffirmation.com/
Factsheet
Israeli Zionist Restrictions on Easter Celebrations in Occupied Jerusalem
“Christians all over the world can celebrate Easter, but for Christian Palestinians, the Israeli Zionist military occupation have made of everyday a good Friday (sad Friday in Arabic), and we are still waiting for our own resurrection as a free nation.” Fr. Firas Areedah, Jifna, Palestine.
Restrictions on the Freedom of Worship:
• Entry to Jerusalem for West Bank and Gaza Christians is always restricted. On the occasion of Easter, Palestinian Christians living outside of Jerusalem in the West Bank and Gaza are being required to apply for permits to access their holy sites in occupied East Jerusalem. It is estimated that of those, only 2000 – 3000 Palestinian Christians have received permits. Jews do not have to apply for permits to access their holy sites during their holy days nor in any other day.
• The permit system instated by Israel is in obvious violation of the ICPRR, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international covenants and treaties to which Israel is a signatory.
• Worshipers will be restricted by road blocks and check points around the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem.
• This year, buses going to Jerusalem from Ramallah and Bethlehem with worshipers planning to attend the Palm Sunday procession were stopped on the way by Israeli occupation forces (IOF). Many were unable to attend the historic procession.
Example: The Holy Family Scout Group, which belongs to the Roman Catholic Church in Ramallah, took four hours to reach occupied Jerusalem. They missed the procession from the Mount of Olives to the Old City. The drive, without checkpoints, would take about 20 minutes.
• During Jewish holidays, Palestinian areas are put under military closure.
• Palestinian Christians living in Jerusalem and the West Bank were denied entry to the Old City for the first two days of the holy week.
• Israeli Zionist military occupation police banned Palestinian Christians and scout groups from flying the Palestinian flag during the Palm Sunday procession.
• The heavy presence of Israeli Zionist Police and Military forces (around and in the Old City and surrounding the holy sites) disturbs the spiritual traditions of Easter.
• Every year Christians try to spiritually connect Bethlehem, the city were Jesus was born with city were the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus have taken place. This connection is made through the traditional Sunday Palm march, in which this year many Palestinians and foreign supporters were arrested on their way. The two spiritual centers for Christians are separated by a complex network of apartheid walls, checkpoints and apparatuses.
• Last year, Israel prevented Palestinian Christians from attending the Holy Fire Saturday in Jerusalem. This year the church has objected to a permit system that was instated in an effort to limit those who attend the Saint Jacob church to witness the lightening of the Holy Fire. So far, Palestinian Christians are uncertain about what kind of restrictions they will face this Easter weekend.
Israeli Zionist Colony Activity in the Christian Quarter is changing the Face of the Old City:
Along the Via Dolorosa, the path on which Christians believe Jesus was taken from captivity to the cross, there are the 14 ‘Stations of the Cross’. Colony activity is prominent at most of those Stations:
o At Station 1: There is colony activity at the exit from the tunnels under the Old City.
o At Station 3: A colony building – the house of former Israeli terrorist Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which was confiscated from the Palestinian Christian Francis Tams.
o At Station 5: A heavily protected colony located over Christian Palestinian homes and shops has changed the landscape of the station, where it is believed by Christians that Jesus fell the first time on his way to the crucifixion.
o At Station 9: Colony located over the Souq (market) going to Al Aqsa compound, visible from the Coptic neighborhood.
o At Stations 11, 12, 13 and 14 (Holy Sepulcher): The Moristan colony, known by Palestinians as Saint John. This property confiscation led to the forced eviction and cleansing of an estimated 44 Christian Palestinian families. Zionist Colonists have also taken over a Christian Monastery located in front of the Holy Sepulcher.
o There have been reports of hundreds of attacks by heavily armed Jewish religious colonists against Christian pastors, bishops, and nuns from all denominations, as well as Christian Palestinian civilians, in the Old City of Jerusalem.
o Zionist Colony activity in the Christian Quarter in the old city of Jerusalem has increased lately, aiming to change the identity of the place. Examples: Work nearby the Jaffa Gate, threats to close the Petra and Empire hotels within the Old City.
The number of Palestinian Christians in 1948 was more than 20% out of the total population, since then it has declined to 10% in 1967 and 2% today. This decline has been attributed to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, the occupation and the continuous harassment and humiliation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.
For information, please contact:
Nadia Awad, GMC, 00972 54 534 9671
Xavier Abu Eid, NSU, 00970 598 950 300
Father Firas Areedah (available for interviews) 00970 599 325 957
Yusef Daher, Jerusalem Inter-Church Centre 00972 50 554 5179
http://www.christatthecheckpoint.com
http://www.pcpj.org/
http://www.kairospalestine.ps
http://www.bethlehemaffirmation.com/
Saudi Court Postpones Execution of Levantine Sorcerer
Lebanese Sorcerer condemned to death by Saudi Court will be post-postponed for now.
Link to original...
Until he was arrested in 2008 while on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, Ali Sabat was the host of a satellite television program in which he promised to give “advice and predictions about the future,” to callers from around the Arab world to his studio in Beirut, as Britain’s Channel 4 News explained in a report on his case on Thursday. (That report, embedded above, includes scenes from Mr. Sabat’s show and of his televised confession which was broadcast in Saudi Arabia.)
Link to original...
Accused Indian Priest Returned to USA to Face Charges
More authority is needed. May I recommend restoring the Papal States and perhaps arming the Papacy with Nuclear Weapons?
Link to original...
Link to original...
Gomez holds both conservative and progressive views - latimes.com
The various antediluvian reptiles who inhabit the halls of the major propaganda organs in the United States have been reeling from the effects of new technology on their media as circulations have dropped almost 10% in the last 6 months in all major papers.
Arguably, there are advances, perhaps unforseen by Marx, which are undermining their nearly unquestioned authority and unshakeable faith in irreligion, central command economies and the essential goodness of government.
Post-modern man can now make his own news and the horse and buggy of the Los Angeles Times is quickly losing pace with the instantaneous reach of the common man and his computer.
Gomez holds both conservative and progressive views - latimes.com
Posted using ShareThis
Arguably, there are advances, perhaps unforseen by Marx, which are undermining their nearly unquestioned authority and unshakeable faith in irreligion, central command economies and the essential goodness of government.
Post-modern man can now make his own news and the horse and buggy of the Los Angeles Times is quickly losing pace with the instantaneous reach of the common man and his computer.
Gomez holds both conservative and progressive views - latimes.com
Posted using ShareThis
Legal Eagles or Opportunistic Buzzards?
Dante's Inferno contains a place just outside of Hell for Opportunists, men who avoided life's choices between good and evil and earned the contempt of both Hell and heaven. A conventional definition of the term, however, presents us with a more active declaration of evil in that opportunists are unprincipled people, often politicians, who pursue goals without respect to principle, without respect to good or evil. Indeed, St. Thomas Aquinas once said that "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
What can be said of Communists is that they make use of witting or unwitting soft-hearted and soft-headed men who believe that they are serving the greater good by working with them.
The American Civil Liberties Union, to which Jeff Anderson belongs, has long made a Crusade of its own attacking the appearance of Religion in public life wherever it can be found, and makes common cause in defense of perniciousness in society, while attacking the aemeliorating balm of Religion. They rather make a virtue of a vice and will trample every principle to defend the deliterious and crush the Church with calumnies, but insisting,conveniently, that there is no good or evil and that religion is solely at best a personal choice, at worst a severe debilitating delusion barring one (and perhaps one's surrounding society) from mental health, which should, therefore, not be shown any preferential treatement by the government or its representatives. Beneath all the rhetoric of neutrality and fairness ACLU maintains, it is never the less an organization poised with deliberate hostility and malice towards religion and particularly the Catholic Church.
Unfortunately, you won't read about this in the LA Times.
If ever there was justification for unleashing the law's hounds of hell, complicity in harming a child is it. Few are sympathizing with the church hierarchy who looked the other way from the pedophilia and pederasty in their midst. But it is the faithful who are being asked to pay millions for the sins of the fathers, and innocent children who must bear the scars. [Again, failure to put the blame where it belongs] So INSIGHT recently found two of the most active advocates to square off in separate interviews on the issue of the more than 200 sexual-abuse lawsuits targeting the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.
The legal fallout from the sexual-abuse scandals currently threatening Catholic archdioceses around the country soon may be large enough to bankrupt them. And the frenzy shows little sign of abating--next in the crosshairs as these scandals grow, say critics, will be the Protestant churches.
"I brought one of the first cases in the U.S. against the Catholic Church involving child sexual molestation" Minnesota attorney Jeffrey Anderson of Reinhardt and Anderson tells INSIGHT. "Since that time [1983] I've handled over 1,000 cases of child sexual molestation by various religious organizations. Over 600 of them were Catholic clergy." [It has long been a tactic of Communists to back a cause that people unsympathetic to dialectical materialism can get behind.]
Link to original...
A vast sex and money scandal threatens the Vatican. But, once again, Ratzinger emerges as the campaigner against 'filth'
Legionaires couldn't buy off Ratzinger. He saw through their mask of orthodoxy. h/t: young fogey
A vast sex and money scandal threatens the Vatican. But, once again, Ratzinger emerges as the campaigner against 'filth'
A vast sex and money scandal threatens the Vatican. But, once again, Ratzinger emerges as the campaigner against 'filth'
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Vatican Blasts Anti-Catholic Campaign
VATICAN CITY— The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.
Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope and the Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.
"The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.
http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/9000/10882689/Vatican_blasts_anti-Catholic_hate_campaign
Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope and the Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.
"The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.
http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/9000/10882689/Vatican_blasts_anti-Catholic_hate_campaign
The Gay Sex Abuse Coverup
April 5, 2010
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on two news stories released today by the Associated Press:
[Catholic League]One of the AP stories on priestly sexual abuse admits that "The overwhelming majority of the victims were adolescents. That means very few guilty priests were pedophiles, a term mental health professionals reserve for those who target pre-pubescent children." Fine. But then it says something which is positively remarkable: "Even though about 80 percent of victims were boys, the John Jay researchers and other experts on sex offenders say it does not mean the perpetrators were gay." So what would they be? Heterosexual?
The AP article relied on the extraordinary remark by Margaret Smith, a professor who worked on the John Jay study. She said that while Donohue "quoted the study's data correctly," I nonetheless "drew an unwarranted conclusion." What? That most of the molesters have been gay? Here is what she said: "The majority of the abusive acts were homosexual in nature. That participation in homosexual acts is not the same as sexual identity as a gay man." So if two men sodomize each other, no one really knows if this qualifies as gay sex. Now I must admit that when I was studying for my doctorate in sociology at NYU, they never taught me such logic.
Both AP stories say the reason why there were so many male victims is because the priests did not have access to girls as altar servers. Nonsense. There have been girl altar servers in some U.S. dioceses since 1983, and almost everywhere since 1994. The statistics actually show that the more priests have access to girls, the less likely it is for girls to be abused.
Here's the tally. As reported in 2004, between 1950 and 2002, 81 percent of the victims were male; in 2005, it stayed the same; in 2006, it dropped to 80 percent; in 2007, it climbed to 82 percent; in 2008, it jumped to 84 percent; and in 2009, it stayed at 84 percent.
In other words, even though priests have less access to males, homosexual priests are molesting them at a higher rate. It's time to end the gay cover-up once and for all.
Read further...
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on two news stories released today by the Associated Press:
[Catholic League]One of the AP stories on priestly sexual abuse admits that "The overwhelming majority of the victims were adolescents. That means very few guilty priests were pedophiles, a term mental health professionals reserve for those who target pre-pubescent children." Fine. But then it says something which is positively remarkable: "Even though about 80 percent of victims were boys, the John Jay researchers and other experts on sex offenders say it does not mean the perpetrators were gay." So what would they be? Heterosexual?
The AP article relied on the extraordinary remark by Margaret Smith, a professor who worked on the John Jay study. She said that while Donohue "quoted the study's data correctly," I nonetheless "drew an unwarranted conclusion." What? That most of the molesters have been gay? Here is what she said: "The majority of the abusive acts were homosexual in nature. That participation in homosexual acts is not the same as sexual identity as a gay man." So if two men sodomize each other, no one really knows if this qualifies as gay sex. Now I must admit that when I was studying for my doctorate in sociology at NYU, they never taught me such logic.
Both AP stories say the reason why there were so many male victims is because the priests did not have access to girls as altar servers. Nonsense. There have been girl altar servers in some U.S. dioceses since 1983, and almost everywhere since 1994. The statistics actually show that the more priests have access to girls, the less likely it is for girls to be abused.
Here's the tally. As reported in 2004, between 1950 and 2002, 81 percent of the victims were male; in 2005, it stayed the same; in 2006, it dropped to 80 percent; in 2007, it climbed to 82 percent; in 2008, it jumped to 84 percent; and in 2009, it stayed at 84 percent.
In other words, even though priests have less access to males, homosexual priests are molesting them at a higher rate. It's time to end the gay cover-up once and for all.
Read further...
Buchanan: Anti-Catholicism and the Times
"Now we learn the sickening news that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, nicknamed 'God's Rotweiler,' when he was the church's enforcer on matters of faith and sin, ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys."
In Goodstein's piece, Weakland is a prelate who acted too slowly. The controversy over his clouded departure from the Milwaukee archdiocese is mentioned and passed over at the bottom of the story. It belonged higher.
For Weakland was a homosexual who confessed in a 1980 letter he was in "deep love" with a male paramour who shook down the archbishop for $450,000 in church funds as hush money to keep his lover's mouth shut about their squalid affair.
According to Rod Dreher, Weakland moved Father William Effinger, who would die in prison, from parish to parish, knowing Effinger was a serial pederast.
When one of Effinger's victims sued the archdiocese but lost because of a statute of limitations, Weakland counter-sued and extracted $4,000 from the victim of his predator priest.
Pat Buchanan responds to Abuse Crisis...
In Goodstein's piece, Weakland is a prelate who acted too slowly. The controversy over his clouded departure from the Milwaukee archdiocese is mentioned and passed over at the bottom of the story. It belonged higher.
For Weakland was a homosexual who confessed in a 1980 letter he was in "deep love" with a male paramour who shook down the archbishop for $450,000 in church funds as hush money to keep his lover's mouth shut about their squalid affair.
According to Rod Dreher, Weakland moved Father William Effinger, who would die in prison, from parish to parish, knowing Effinger was a serial pederast.
When one of Effinger's victims sued the archdiocese but lost because of a statute of limitations, Weakland counter-sued and extracted $4,000 from the victim of his predator priest.
Pat Buchanan responds to Abuse Crisis...
St. Stephens is a Parish in Transition: Catholic Tradition Reborn
Many of the members of this troubled inner city parish have left it for the suburbia of protestantism. It's part of an overall transformation going on in the Church where things that haven't worked seem to be getting replaced by things that have always worked, but were ill-used and discarded, like the High Altar that once graced this lovely Neo-Gothic edifice in the midst of post-modern decay and housed Minneapolis' finest and most Catholic families.
Father Williams won't deny it, he's definitely running behind, but Latinos are now making up the difference both in numbers and fervour, where the dwindling Irish and English descendants have mostly left. But Father Williams isn't exactly deterred by this, he's looking for a High Altar. You might think this bodes well for tradition and we'd like to think it does; for Father has trained in the Immemorial Mass of all ages, but says he likes to say the Mass according to the New Rite, however, he's a big fan of JRR Tolkien and has no doubt read Tolkien's thoughts on the matter.
In any event, the Immemorial Mass isn't a preference, nor should it be a cause for division, Father Williams has a very kindly demeanor and suffers fools gladly. He is even liked by his visible opponents who've left the Church to found their own social-justice community nearby. Not to be too naive, but there's hope in this as there is hope in the Catholic Faith, that no matter how terrible things seem, there is a game at play we only dimly understand but will be filled with Joy one day to see it in its fullness when we persevere in the truth.
Father Joseph Williams came to St. Stephen’s in April. “Some people said I was hand-picked by the bishops to dismantle the church. If I was, they didn’t tell me about it.”
By JON TEVLIN, Star Tribune
Father Joseph Williams came "from the farm to the hood" less than a year ago, to a congregation in a spiritual crisis and a neighborhood riddled with poverty and crime. He is only 34, but as he sits in a low-ceilinged office in the basement of St. Stephen's Catholic Church, it seems like the weight of the 110-year-old structure, and the centuries-old institution itself, sit squarely on his shoulders.
When Williams arrived in April, there were 350 families at the church, maybe more. On a recent Sunday, during the only remaining mass in English, coughs echoed off the empty pews as a couple of dozen people mumbled through the service.
That's it, he said.
The rest have fled, or just given up.
Williams, under the direction of a new pope and new archbishop, has steered one of the country's most liberal churches in a more orthodox direction. No more services in the "egalitarian" school gym. No more laity saying mass or celebrating the eucharist. No more prayers to "our father and mother in heaven."
The collection plate is down 90 percent. This spring, the priest who not long ago led a congregation in an idyllic small town, will tell the charter school known for a peace-and-justice curriculum that it must go because the church needs more rent.
Please read further...
Upon the Negligence of Pastors
The following reflections are part of an e-mail we received from an annonymous Catholic who has thought long and deeply about the subject and the link he sent from a John Vennari article from 2002:
Clerical Scandals and the
"Negligence of the Pastors"
by John Vennari
Note: In light of the recent Church scandals in the news, this article published in 2002 is of even greater relevance.
It is hard to imagine a more distasteful subject than pedophilia and homosexuality in the Roman Catholic priesthood. It is even more disturbing to consider that homosexuals successfully targeted the Catholic Church for infiltration.
Yet these are the issues we are forced to confront at the same time Fatima revisionists claim that the 1984 Consecration of the world fulfilled Our Lady’s request for the Consecration of Russia, and that we are now witnessing the triumph of the Immaculate Heart. If the current state of the Church is an indication of Her triumph, I shudder to think of what would be Her defeat.
Crisis Foretold
In 1981, Father Joaquin Alonso, who had many conversations with Sister Lucy, and who was the official Fatima archivist for sixteen years, said, "It is therefore completely probable that the text (of the Third Secret of Fatima) makes concrete references to the crisis of faith within the Church and to the negligence of the pastors themselves [and the] internal struggles in the very bosom of the Church and of grave pastoral negligence of the upper hierarchy."(1)
Today’s clerical scandals are not because of mandatory celibacy, nor are they because we do not have women priests, married priests, or because there are no laity in Church authority. Rather, they are the result of the "negligence of the pastors" that Father Alonso (pictured above) maintained to be the essence of the Third Secret of Fatima.
The scandals are also the result of what Sister Lucy called the "diabolical disorientation" afflicting "so many persons who occupy places of responsibility" in the Church.(2) As will be demonstrated, the upper hierarchy has been so negligent and disoriented that it presided over a massive influx of homosexuals into the Catholic priesthood and religious orders.
And homosexuality is the real issue.
Most of today’s clerical scandals are not
Read further...
Well, there is modernist clericalism and a clericalist mentality in the modernist Church. That doesn't explain entirely the molestation crisis. Some people have been suggesting that priests become pedophiles. It's the other way around. The question they need to be asking is why homosexual deviants become priests. Priestly celibacy is not what causes them to molest teenage or young adult males. Vatican II created a new lifestyle and atmosphere in the priesthood which enables and attracts homosexuals. Now, this is a VERY strange and very bizarre phenomenon in abnormal psychology.
I'm not sure that the answers are that clear. But I think it is similar to
why sexual deviants are attracted to professions like police officers, Physical
Education teachers, and sports coaches, Boy Scout leaders.
It gives them a certain power and authority over others.
I also think the perverted voyeurism that they experience in Confession gives a certain aggrandizement and thrill in sadistic power over others. It's a perverse and deviant way of evening the score with heterosexuals. (i.e., getting compromising information on others).
But this whole issue makes me feel nauseated and I have no desire to ever have to deal with the homosexuals and psychologically abnormal modernists in the modernist Church EVER again.
One would also have to reserve some role for the diabolical in this Church crisis. It's not completely caused by clericalism although that can be a part of it. It's why homosexuals have chosen to use the Church as a political arm (and for freeloading) that is the real issue. That's a very complex issue in the area of abnormal psychology.
There is a perversion of deviant, psychoneurotic voyeurism (via Confession) that attracts some homosexuals. One thing you will notice about homosexuals is that they love to gossip (almost like women following soap operas or tabloids). Someone with perverse, deviant, or abnormal sexual hangups will be attracted to Confession in an abnormal way (that a normal priest would not be).
It may also be because blackmail is a part of perverted sexual underworlds. For the sexual pervert, the priesthood is about power.
Entering the priesthood may also be a way to impress the parents. As this secures their support in a way that "coming out" would not (for religious families). Also, it's not that big of a step, as they have already been pretending to be normal in interactions with the parents and other straight Catholics.
So what's really involved? In becoming a priest they are handed the combination to the parish safe, control of the collection plate, etc. Seeing all of that money being collected has been something on their mind FOR YEARS...
The institutional Church has been naive about this problem.
Clerical Scandals and the
"Negligence of the Pastors"
by John Vennari
Note: In light of the recent Church scandals in the news, this article published in 2002 is of even greater relevance.
It is hard to imagine a more distasteful subject than pedophilia and homosexuality in the Roman Catholic priesthood. It is even more disturbing to consider that homosexuals successfully targeted the Catholic Church for infiltration.
Yet these are the issues we are forced to confront at the same time Fatima revisionists claim that the 1984 Consecration of the world fulfilled Our Lady’s request for the Consecration of Russia, and that we are now witnessing the triumph of the Immaculate Heart. If the current state of the Church is an indication of Her triumph, I shudder to think of what would be Her defeat.
Crisis Foretold
In 1981, Father Joaquin Alonso, who had many conversations with Sister Lucy, and who was the official Fatima archivist for sixteen years, said, "It is therefore completely probable that the text (of the Third Secret of Fatima) makes concrete references to the crisis of faith within the Church and to the negligence of the pastors themselves [and the] internal struggles in the very bosom of the Church and of grave pastoral negligence of the upper hierarchy."(1)
Today’s clerical scandals are not because of mandatory celibacy, nor are they because we do not have women priests, married priests, or because there are no laity in Church authority. Rather, they are the result of the "negligence of the pastors" that Father Alonso (pictured above) maintained to be the essence of the Third Secret of Fatima.
The scandals are also the result of what Sister Lucy called the "diabolical disorientation" afflicting "so many persons who occupy places of responsibility" in the Church.(2) As will be demonstrated, the upper hierarchy has been so negligent and disoriented that it presided over a massive influx of homosexuals into the Catholic priesthood and religious orders.
And homosexuality is the real issue.
Most of today’s clerical scandals are not
Read further...
Monday, April 5, 2010
It's Official: Los Angeles Gets Conservative Prelate
Update: As Rorate reports from Vatican Website, here, as we predicted this weekend that Vatican would declare him.
We received the good news over the weekend, according to the good word of Maximilian Hanlon on Saturday afternoon. It was most welcome news that the conservative, Archbishop Gomez, was going to be the next Archbishop of Los Angeles.
Kevin Knight over at New Advent has a New Advent Exclusive up. It's a big picture of His Lordship with a link to the San Antonio Archdiocesan website.
The prodigious announcement of the new Archbishop of Los Angeles who will be Archbishop Gomez, could be made as soon as tomorrow according to Rocco at Whispers in the Loggia. There will be a press conference tomorrow at 10am at the Cathedral in San Antonio.
We hope that the change will take place before Cardinal wreckovates St. Charles Boromeo Cathedral.
It doesn't come as a surprise that Cardinal Mahony was a co-collaborator with radical Cesar Chavez back in the day. He certainly did that for show since he wasn't very kind to his own grave diggers back in the day, but perhaps it's best just to bask in the goodness of this moment now that it is known he is going and will be replaced by someone with a lot more integrity and fervor.
Austen Ivereigh: "The Crisis of Clericalism"
Austen Ivereigh whose girlfriend had an abortion while he was an undergraduate at Oxford (which he says he attempted to waylay) and who impregnated another woman with whom he was unmarried during his work as a PR Man for Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, insists that the Catholic Church has little capacity for self reform. One could wonder whether or not he was actually talking about himself, since his previous behavior indicates a strong sign of reluctance to reform, as he writes:
It wouldn't be for us to mention any of this about Mr. Ivereigh's poor moral character, except that he wanted to point out what he calls the Church's inabillity to reform itself, and his insistence that the scandal is a result of anything but what truly ails it, that it suffers from a "Clerical Culture". Perhaps a barb aimed at his former employer? But no, a man who could defend an organization as readily as he did while flaunting its moral teachings, is unlikely to find fault where it belongs. Like Noonan, Weigel and other ecclesiastical mouthpieces, either self-appointed or not, he struggles and fails in his own regard in his ability to self-reform, but he also fails in another regard, that he fails to appreciate the divine nature of the Institution he once defended and says he's continuing to defend by his written word.
It might be good that he feels enough sympathy to report the sufferings of the Church in the French Revolution and in the 20th Century at the hands of Revolutionaries of all kinds. He's wrong incidentally to underrate the persecution of the Church in Latin America in the 19th Century, but his condescending tone is reminiscent of other writers, wielding their pen and attempting to defend her with faint praise, while jumping on the bandwagon, either for motives of malice at their own personal moral failures and lack of integrity as Iveriegh does, or in terms of their deeper-seated philosophical impediments like Noonan and Weigel, who are so Hegelian, they will never be able to look beyond their poorly chosen allegiances to truly defend the Church; they will always be cynics who are too intelligent, really, for the "obscurantist" and "irreformable" leadership and culture of the Catholic Religion. Their barely concealed antagonism to the Catholic Faith nay see them in future, belonging to more palatable protestant sects.
Austen Ivereigh's, The Crisis of Clericalism....
h/t: wrigleys
Like all powerful institutions, the Church has little capacity to reform itself, but it can embrace purgation as an opportunity for change. As the crisis spreads from country to country, one after another the hierarchies will be bewildered by the onslaught and anger. Some will blame the media for its often crude and misleading reports, others will retreat more tightly into their bunkers, others will point out (correctly) that clerical abuse has nothing to do with celibacy or an all-male priesthood. Some will have the courage to recognise that it is, however, a consequence of a culture of clericalism which still prevails, an attitude that places concern for a priest's reputation above the welfare of a child, and a mindset that leads to dissident theologians being prosecuted more swiftly than abusers of children.
It wouldn't be for us to mention any of this about Mr. Ivereigh's poor moral character, except that he wanted to point out what he calls the Church's inabillity to reform itself, and his insistence that the scandal is a result of anything but what truly ails it, that it suffers from a "Clerical Culture". Perhaps a barb aimed at his former employer? But no, a man who could defend an organization as readily as he did while flaunting its moral teachings, is unlikely to find fault where it belongs. Like Noonan, Weigel and other ecclesiastical mouthpieces, either self-appointed or not, he struggles and fails in his own regard in his ability to self-reform, but he also fails in another regard, that he fails to appreciate the divine nature of the Institution he once defended and says he's continuing to defend by his written word.
It might be good that he feels enough sympathy to report the sufferings of the Church in the French Revolution and in the 20th Century at the hands of Revolutionaries of all kinds. He's wrong incidentally to underrate the persecution of the Church in Latin America in the 19th Century, but his condescending tone is reminiscent of other writers, wielding their pen and attempting to defend her with faint praise, while jumping on the bandwagon, either for motives of malice at their own personal moral failures and lack of integrity as Iveriegh does, or in terms of their deeper-seated philosophical impediments like Noonan and Weigel, who are so Hegelian, they will never be able to look beyond their poorly chosen allegiances to truly defend the Church; they will always be cynics who are too intelligent, really, for the "obscurantist" and "irreformable" leadership and culture of the Catholic Religion. Their barely concealed antagonism to the Catholic Faith nay see them in future, belonging to more palatable protestant sects.
Austen Ivereigh's, The Crisis of Clericalism....
h/t: wrigleys
Weigel Defends (Neocons) Pope
As Zoe Romanovsky reports, Weigel gets praise from America Magazine. If he gets praise, it might have to do with he fact that Weigel echoes the tired anti-clerical language of Liberal Catholics, but invokes it to praise the person of the Holy Father, if not the institution of the Papacy, how masonic...
Really, George Weigel is a Hegelian statist who likes the idea of religion, even if he does find its deeper claims and political aspirations distasteful.
Like Peggy Noonan, a careerist, "defending" the Catholic Church, perhaps, more like Grima Wormtoungue in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: these flatterers leave much to be desired in the league of sincerity, but owe everything to their status as infighters and journalistic schemers:
From InsideCatholic:
Read the article already...
Really, George Weigel is a Hegelian statist who likes the idea of religion, even if he does find its deeper claims and political aspirations distasteful.
Like Peggy Noonan, a careerist, "defending" the Catholic Church, perhaps, more like Grima Wormtoungue in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: these flatterers leave much to be desired in the league of sincerity, but owe everything to their status as infighters and journalistic schemers:
To be sure, the Catholic Church ought to hold itself to a higher moral standard than other similarly situated institutions. But after too long a period of denial, the Catholic Church is now at the forefront of combating the sexual abuse of the young in the United States. And no one in the church has done more, over the last decade, to compel the sclerotic institutional culture [Wow, somebody's mad that he doesn't have the free access he enjoyed when John Paul II was in power] of the Vatican to face these problems than Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI.
These are the facts. [No, these are your impressions] Thus the concern naturally arises, on this Easter, that those who continue to portray Catholicism as a global conspiracy of sexual predators are indulging in the last acceptable prejudice, anti-Catholicism, while aiming at nothing less than the destruction of the Catholic Church's credibility as a global moral teacher.
From InsideCatholic:
Read the article already...
The Archbishop of Canterbury eats his words
With very interesting comments from Shane:
The Archbishop of Canterbury eats his words
Like every other western country, the Church has been declining here, with ever increasing rapidity, since the 1960s. The impact of the abuse scandals is easily overblown; I think more people are worried about their jobs.
Almost all priestly abuse is historic. Only 2 priests in Ireland have been convicted for sexual abuse offences committed within the last 20 years.
I am the first to argue that the bishops have been scapegoated to an alarming degree and that Cardinal Brady’s actions have been much misrepresented. But that does not account for the lethargic incompetence the Irish episcopacy displays in the discharge of their duties. In the old days, in a mostly rural Ireland, it was common for priests to be personally well-acquainted with all, or most, of their parishioners. The old communal tribal ties which knitted society together have since become untangled, and with them, the very nature of how priests relate to their parishioners. In the early-to-mid 60s Archbishop McQuaid got very hurt when newspaper columnists, in the liberal fervour of the times, suddenly took it upon themselves to criticize him in often venomous language. This was a new experience for him, and he didn’t know quite how to react [previously anti-Catholicism was most forcefully expressed in the Irish Times, then the newspaper of the Protestant minority]. Often he would stir in his room for many hours in sullen dismay. The confusion that set in during this time, on the relationship between the church and the media, has never been conclusively settled.
Mc Quaid’s replacement, Dermot Ryan, epitomized the class of ‘new priests’ appointed to bishoprics in the 70s. Perceived as revolutionary at the time, they are now the Church Establishment. Everywhere you look in the Irish Church, you see them. McQuaid had previously dismissed Ryan from teaching at Clonliffe seminary because he was allegedly teaching modernism to the seminarians. Ryan’s appointment to the see of Dublin was seen as a political statement by the Vatican. Ryan had a powerful friend in the papal nuncio Gaetano Alibrandi, and under the influence of the two, and by the careful appointment of preferred bishops to dioceses, the Irish Church was reconstructed into what it is today. The chair of the Dublin Council of Priests was on a TV discussion panel a few months ago to discuss the contents of the Murphy Report. He expressed amusement at the audience’s media-imbibed tendency to protray bishops like Donal Murray as paragons of reaction, remarking that when he in the seminary these prelates were seen as the ‘new priests’, whose cool outgoing ‘pastoral’ nature contrasted with the relics of obscurantism they were supplanting. This was supposed to be a new dawn for the church, but the church disintegrated in the interim because clergy kept changing what the church meant.
As a recent editorial in Church & State noted:So the Pope came [in 1979 - shane] and he was received with mindless adulation, lay and clerical, with only two noticeable expressions of dissent — this magazine and the Bishop of Cork, who is now taken to be a by-word for obscurantist reaction, Con Lucey.
The Taoiseach was Cork City politician Jack Lynch, who had won an overall majority in 1977 in an election campaign which was unusually Catholic clericalist for Fianna Fail. But, two years later, the Pope did not visit the second city in the state because the Bishop did not invite him. And, some time later, Lucey retired and went off to be a missionary in Africa. He did not ever explain his failure to invite the Pope to Cork, but it is not hard to see a reason for it.
Vatican 2 Catholicism undermined and trivialised the earnest Catholicism of Pius IX on which the Irish Church had formed itself, in association with the developing national movement, since the mid-19th century. That phase of development was not exhausted in Ireland when it was halted by Vatican 2. It was still filling itself out when it was ordered to stop. If the original impulse given by the triumph of Anti-Vetoism in the Veto Controversy was running out of momentum, there would have been evidence of this in the appearance of a sceptical intelligentsia to dispute certain areas of ground with the Hierarchy, and by so doing to provide for an evolutionary transition to a new relationship of Church and State.
What happened instead was that the new Church formed in Ireland in the mid-19th century—by O’Connell’s Roman colleague, Cardinal Cullen—was stopped in its tracks by the Vatican, while there was still no social development against it to take its place. The Vatican 2 changes had to be imposed on Ireland. And their imposition devalued the values to which the generations then in their prime had dedicated themselves.
Religious development in Ireland, with which social development was connected, was suddenly written off as an aberration. My Lord Bishop suddenly became Bishop Jack or Bishop Jim. Communion and Confirmation became occasions for display of fashion. Hell was abolished—and Heaven along with it, for all that was said to the contrary. And convents and monasteries were deprived of meaning.
The ersatz intelligentsia, which is now kicking the Church because it is down, did nothing to bring it down. It was the Vatican that undermined it. But that is an inadmissible thought in the fashion of the moment because the futile scepticism which is the outcome of Vatican 2 must have it that Vatican 2 was good thing. (The creature must love its creator.)
The Archbishop of Canterbury eats his words
Fr. Reginald Foster Honored by Notre Dame
Here is the full list of honorees.
Reggie, as many of you know, was for many years a senior Vatican Latinist. He is also a world-famous teacher of Latin. He has been miraculously recovering from a series of serious health problems. He’s doing much better now!
I studied with Reggie in his summer program, and it was a truly wonderful experience. He managed to create a community with an amazingly diverse group of students–secular grad students from Cambridge, Harvard, and Berkeley, and priests and religious in soutanes and habits. Students from all over the world. We worked at little desks in the auditorium of an elementary school across from his monastery. Reggie knew, just knew, how much you knew–and how much you didn’t. He unfailingly asked you to translate a sentence that was a little –but not too much–beyond your ability. And so it became part of your ability.
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=7685
Archbishop Rowan Angers Irish Bishops
No doubt, still smarting from +Benedict's Ecumenical Blitzkrieg, the Archbishop of Canterbury found time to vent some long internalized chagrin at men whose education and philosophical inclinations and integrity aren't that much different from his own.
Anglican%20leader%20angers%20Irish%20clergy
Anglican%20leader%20angers%20Irish%20clergy
USCCB Head Honors Two Heretical Comrades
Rather than running, stumbling to honor heretical Communists who pose as champions of Justice and Truth, how about using this national podium you've created for yourself at the USCCB to do something constructive? Antonio Gramsci much?
Link to Flyer...
German archbishop calls to examine Church's 'dark aspects'
[Expatica] The leader of Germany's Roman Catholic bishops said in an Easter message on Saturday that "we must examine the Church's dark aspects" and called for a new beginning amid widening child abuse scandals.
"Today particularly we must set out together and examine inconceivable events, awful crimes, the Church's dark aspects as well as our shadowy sides," Archbishop Robert Zollitsch wrote in an Easter message on his diocese website.
"The Church must not be inactive: we need a new beginning," he wrote on the site of his own archdiocese of Freiburg im Breisgau, southwest Germany.
Germany's Catholic Church has been thrown into crisis in recent weeks as dozens of people have come forward alleging they were abused as minors by priests. Most cases date back many years.
Zollitsch called already on Good Friday for the day, when Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Christ, to "mark a new departure which we so badly need".
The child abuse scandal has engulfed much of Europe and the United States with new cases emerging almost daily, drawing in the Vatican for harsh criticism over its handling of the affairs.
Read further...
"Today particularly we must set out together and examine inconceivable events, awful crimes, the Church's dark aspects as well as our shadowy sides," Archbishop Robert Zollitsch wrote in an Easter message on his diocese website.
"The Church must not be inactive: we need a new beginning," he wrote on the site of his own archdiocese of Freiburg im Breisgau, southwest Germany.
Germany's Catholic Church has been thrown into crisis in recent weeks as dozens of people have come forward alleging they were abused as minors by priests. Most cases date back many years.
Zollitsch called already on Good Friday for the day, when Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Christ, to "mark a new departure which we so badly need".
The child abuse scandal has engulfed much of Europe and the United States with new cases emerging almost daily, drawing in the Vatican for harsh criticism over its handling of the affairs.
Read further...
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Man Attacks Bishop of Muenster
MUENSTER, Germany (AP) — Police say a man attacked the Roman Catholic Bishop of Muenster with a broom handle during an Easter service in the city's cathedral. Police said in a statement Sunday that 60-year-old bishop Felix Genn defended himself with an incense bowl and was unharmed. A police spokesman tells the German news agency DAPD that "courageous church officials and other service attendants restrained the attacker until police arrived." After the incident, the bishop continued celebrating the Easter service.
http://fratres.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/it-was-only-a-matter-of-when-not-if-german-bishop-attacked-during-easter-service/
http://fratres.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/it-was-only-a-matter-of-when-not-if-german-bishop-attacked-during-easter-service/
An Opus Dei Replacement for Cardinal Mahony
Based on earlier reports that Cardinal Mahony is stepping down at 75, from American Papist, we have a report as to the identity of the man who will head the wealthiest and possibly most troulbed Archdiocese in the world.
According to Maximilian Hanlon, and other sources, the replacement for Cardinal Mahony should be the Opus Dei Archbishop from San Antonio, His Lordship, Jose Gomez.
Bishop Gomez was sent to the San Antonio See in 2004 and had been shepherding the Archdiocese of Denver as Auxiliary Bishop prior to that.
He was a lot more generous with the Immemorial Mass than Cardinal Mahony was and had this to say about the Motu Propio:
If he promises to be like his fellow Opus Dei Bishop, Archbishop Finn of Kansas City, this should be a real welcome to the auto-destructive regime of one of the most scandal ridden clerics in the history of the American Church. Archbishop Finn once reminded Catholics that we are in the Church militant and "in a war". Such triumphalist language shows well on Opus Dei.
We would also like to say that this posting is typical of the appointments by Pope Benedict. Earlier this year, he appointed the most conservative Bishop in Belgium to lead the country in Brussels, Archbishop Andre Joseph Leonard . Or the new Auxiliary Bishop of Linz, Father Wagner, who was shouted down by the liberals in that most challenging Austrian Diocese. Or Bishop Jose Munila of Spain in December.
Another not so surprising appointment was Archbishop Carlson, formerly of Sioux Falls and Saginaw, who had a legendary reputation for administration and conservatism.
According to Maximilian Hanlon, and other sources, the replacement for Cardinal Mahony should be the Opus Dei Archbishop from San Antonio, His Lordship, Jose Gomez.
Bishop Gomez was sent to the San Antonio See in 2004 and had been shepherding the Archdiocese of Denver as Auxiliary Bishop prior to that.
He was a lot more generous with the Immemorial Mass than Cardinal Mahony was and had this to say about the Motu Propio:
... pope's move will help Catholics "be able to clearly see the growth and progress we have realized since Vatican II, while at the same time preserving the rich heritage and legacy of the church." [1]
If he promises to be like his fellow Opus Dei Bishop, Archbishop Finn of Kansas City, this should be a real welcome to the auto-destructive regime of one of the most scandal ridden clerics in the history of the American Church. Archbishop Finn once reminded Catholics that we are in the Church militant and "in a war". Such triumphalist language shows well on Opus Dei.
We would also like to say that this posting is typical of the appointments by Pope Benedict. Earlier this year, he appointed the most conservative Bishop in Belgium to lead the country in Brussels, Archbishop Andre Joseph Leonard . Or the new Auxiliary Bishop of Linz, Father Wagner, who was shouted down by the liberals in that most challenging Austrian Diocese. Or Bishop Jose Munila of Spain in December.
Another not so surprising appointment was Archbishop Carlson, formerly of Sioux Falls and Saginaw, who had a legendary reputation for administration and conservatism.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Bishop Williamson is Back
There's another smear piece now too of someone telling the tale that there's anti-semitism at Winona Seminary at Fisheaters thanks to Gerard.
Read further...
He's back. Holocaust-denying British Bishop Richard Williamson is giving interviews again, adding Israel-bashing to his opinion portfolio.
He gave a 15 minute interview with a minor French politician known for anti-Zionist views, Pierre Panet, that was, posted in various French media, just in time to compete for headlines with Pope Benedict XVI's synagogue visit this week.
Williamson is quoted saying there were "absolutely irreconcilable" differences between traditionalists and discussions at the Vatican "will end up as a dialog of the deaf."
Williamson is one of four bishops who were excommunicated decades ago for their refusal to accept the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Benedict made critical headlines last winter when he tried to envelop them back into the church -- if they let go of their discordant views and were rehabilitated.
Williamson continued to give Holocaust denial interviews so alarming even his own leader in the ultra-right Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) gagged him, and brought him back from his seminary post in Argentina to England, reports Reuters religion editor Tom Heneghan at FaithWorld.
Read further...
ACLU "Saddened" that Catholics are Catholics
This is really what it's all about, a fundamental hatred of Catholic doctrine and dogma. So when we report that Jeff Anderson, the famed attorney attacking the Catholic Church, is a member of the ACLU, it should account for what this whole thing is really about.
Read further...
ACLU 'Stunned and Saddened' by Bishops’ Rejection of Domestic Partnership
The ACLU of New Mexico (ACLU-NM) released a statement today saying it's stunned and saddened by yesterday’s announcement that the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops will actively oppose the Domestic Partners Rights and Responsibilities Act. After indicating that they would consider a neutral stance on the bill if all reference to “marriage” was removed, the archdiocese now refuses to collaborate with equality advocates outright.
Throughout the State of New Mexico, thousands of committed couples—both same-sex and straight—live without the benefits and protections that married couples take for granted. Domestic partners and their families are denied basic and essential protections such as health insurance, disability benefits and the right to care for a partner with sick or paid leave. When tragedy strikes, domestic partners currently have no say in the medical, legal and financial decision making on behalf of their loved ones.
Disregarding the thousands of men, women and children this bill would protect, the Conference of Catholic Bishops chose to oppose this crucial legislation for fear it might be a “steppingstone to marriage.”
"We are deeply disappointed by the archdiocese's refusal to collaborate with us on this important legislation,” said ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson. “The ACLU and allied partners did everything humanly possible to satisfy their concerns about the language of the bill, and still the archdiocese would not budge. It is a shame that such a powerful voice has chosen to speak out against equality and fairness for New Mexican families.”
Read further...
Bishops of Venezuela Warn that Marxism Threatens the Church
Someone should tell the USCCB
Link to original...
Politics
Leaders of the Catholic Church in Venezuela on Thursday criticized President Hugo Chavez's attempt to turn the country into a Marxist State, and urged political opponents to resolve their differences peacefully.
The Venezuelan Bishops' Conference (CEV) issued a statement voicing concern about the growing anti-religious spirit spread by Marxism, AP reported.
Chavez often asks Venezuelans to adopt Marxism and socialism, but insists that it is also compatible with Christianity. Further, he has referred to Jesus as "the major socialist in history."
The Venezuelan ruler often has verbal clashes with Catholic Church leaders, and accuses them of siding with the opposition. Once he called the Church "a cancer." In response, several representatives of the Church have condemned what they describe as increasing authoritarianism under Chávez.
Link to original...
Do you know this Priest?
A frequent commenter, Don Altabelo, on Rod Dreher's Crunchy-Con site made this personal observation about a Catholic priest he knews. There is a sizeable chunk of them who have these significant character flaws, almost as if they were chosen based on their abillity to be "unseemly", annoying and disedifying.
There was once a priest very much like the one Don Altabello describes, who later turned out to be exposed as a homosexual, who was arrested for soliciting a prostitute in the bad neighborhood around the church where he said Mass and taught "theology" at the parish school. He kept a seperate house far away from the rectory in another town and sometimes came to Mass to "help out" in full biretta, baroque chasuble, amice, stole and maniple.
He was more of a caricature of a Miramax production villain than the good priest, often invoking unreasonable arguments against the students in the school, his students, whom he often referred to as "losers". Well, we get a lot of these types in seminary:
There was once a priest very much like the one Don Altabello describes, who later turned out to be exposed as a homosexual, who was arrested for soliciting a prostitute in the bad neighborhood around the church where he said Mass and taught "theology" at the parish school. He kept a seperate house far away from the rectory in another town and sometimes came to Mass to "help out" in full biretta, baroque chasuble, amice, stole and maniple.
He was more of a caricature of a Miramax production villain than the good priest, often invoking unreasonable arguments against the students in the school, his students, whom he often referred to as "losers". Well, we get a lot of these types in seminary:
Don Altabello
April 23, 2008 2:21 PM
[chop]
Rod--I'll give a "common sense" anecdote of what I'm talking about (in addition to yours). A certain priest (recently ordained) frequents some of the same events I do. He is boorish, self-obsessed, and (though this word is much mis-used) rigid. He injects himself into conversations constantly, dominating the conversation to talk about theology. The man also seems to have control issues--likes to lord his authority and knowledge over others. Once in a discussion group that he visited, the leader asked him about his vocation story (as a courtesy), and he took about 25 minutes. There's other stuff I have personal knowledge of (nothing criminal or deeply immoral, just unseemly), but I won't disclose it here.
Every time he comes near a group I'm in, I'll just walk away. Now--many people will give this type of person deference because he is a priest. My contention is this--why in the world wasn't someone scratching their head or pulling him aside during seminary? I have no reason to believe he is abusive--but ordaining these types of people just influxes the priesthood with men who have all manner of character problems.
Clergy Sex Abuse Study: Time for Common Sense
April 1, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Here we go again. The skeletons of clergy sexual abuse are once again being resuscitated by ambitious lawyers and finding sensational new life in a secular media that is increasingly uninterested in reporting the facts.
Now don't get me wrong; the instances of abuse themselves are absolutely reprehensible; that much is indisputable. As Cardinal Ratzinger said of these terrible transgressions shortly before becoming pope, "How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to God."
Whenever the root cause of this "filth" is discussed, faithful Catholics need to pay close attention as those who are less interested in cleansing the Church than attacking her moral foundation make themselves known through their actions.
read further...
Now don't get me wrong; the instances of abuse themselves are absolutely reprehensible; that much is indisputable. As Cardinal Ratzinger said of these terrible transgressions shortly before becoming pope, "How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to God."
Whenever the root cause of this "filth" is discussed, faithful Catholics need to pay close attention as those who are less interested in cleansing the Church than attacking her moral foundation make themselves known through their actions.
read further...
Peggy Noonan's Catastrophe
Responding to Father Amorth's statement, confirming the lamentation of Paul VI about the "smoke of Satan" and Father Malachi Martin's lengthy fiction and non-fiction treatement of this systemic and spiritual problem, some people who don't believe in the Devil suffer from the mistaken apprehension that to point out to his power and influence in the world amounts to an attempt to escapt responsibillity for what one has done.
But the Devil is indeed very influential with various ministers within the Catholic Church, some of whom don't believe in him, who make important decisions about how the Church presents her authoritative teaching.
Peggy Noonan, often celebrated as a defender of the Church, joins Her enemies today by insisting that the press has got the story right and has "forced" the Church to "reform".
She says:
No one in the press is talking aboout the rampant heresy which has plagued the Roman Church and is the source of this problem. No one is talking about the need for more strict Catholicity in the Colleges and Catholic Hospitals. They can't talk about it because their minds and hearts are not large enough to encompass the idea that the Catholic Faith is the one true Faith outside of which no one at all can be saved.
What we need to realize is that it has been a failure to live up to the Church's teachings on the part of the clergy and laity that have led to this artificial crisis, which is far worse outside of the Church than within.
Many Catholic Bishops and laity succumbed the line of argument posed by our enemies.
But the Devil is indeed very influential with various ministers within the Catholic Church, some of whom don't believe in him, who make important decisions about how the Church presents her authoritative teaching.
Peggy Noonan, often celebrated as a defender of the Church, joins Her enemies today by insisting that the press has got the story right and has "forced" the Church to "reform".
She says:
In both the U.S. and Europe, the scandal was dug up and made famous by the press. This has aroused resentment among church leaders, who this week accused journalists of spreading "gossip," of going into "attack mode" and showing "bias."
But this is not true, or to the degree it is true, it is irrelevant. All sorts of people have all sorts of motives, but the fact is that the press—the journalistic establishment in the U.S. and Europe—has been the best friend of the Catholic Church on this issue. Let me repeat that: The press has been the best friend of the Catholic Church on the scandals because it exposed the story and made the church face it. The press forced the church to admit, confront and attempt to redress what had happened. The press forced them to confess. The press forced the church to change the old regime and begin to come to terms with the abusers. The church shouldn't be saying j'accuse but thank you.
No one in the press is talking aboout the rampant heresy which has plagued the Roman Church and is the source of this problem. No one is talking about the need for more strict Catholicity in the Colleges and Catholic Hospitals. They can't talk about it because their minds and hearts are not large enough to encompass the idea that the Catholic Faith is the one true Faith outside of which no one at all can be saved.
What we need to realize is that it has been a failure to live up to the Church's teachings on the part of the clergy and laity that have led to this artificial crisis, which is far worse outside of the Church than within.
Many Catholic Bishops and laity succumbed the line of argument posed by our enemies.
Cardinal George wants to silence Tom Roeser
Tom Roeser isn't going to stop.
Every Catholic who goes regularly to Sunday Mass knows that every so often after the priest reads the gospel and begins to shuffle through announcements there’ll be a letter from the boss.Read further...
Let's not leave the Jews out of it
Well, perhaps it's because Jewish Rabbis are more likely to abuse children than Catholic priests, here, that we should not leave the Jews out of it. Cantalamessa has never been a particularly orthodox sermonizer and his offensive and less than masculine addresses are always an opportunity for disappointment and embarrassment.
That Jews are more likely to be abusers of children and others is born out by some of these revelations:
Whispers in the Loggia thinks that only "rightists" are rising in defense of Benedict, here. Actually, he underscores an important point, that those who foment the scandal and the enemies of the Church within who are largely responsible for the conditions which created the grist of the scandal, are one in the same. As it has been mentioned before, the chiefest accusers of Pope Benedict and the Church are themselves (or people in the coalitions they belong to) eager to legitimize the sexualization of children both under the law and in the culture at large. It seems to be the next brave step from legitimization of homosexuality.
Long list of Rabbinical offenders...
A Jewish organization reports on Rabbinical sexual abuse...
Jews have also hidden a sex abuser in Brazil, finally captured by Interpol, here.
One commenter here, complained that Jews weren't persecuted because they had:
What he neglects to mention is that Jews were often accused of things like sexually abusing children, and murdering them.
Jews were also accused during the Middle Ages of sexual abuse as much as they were during the Nazi period.
Read further...
That Jews are more likely to be abusers of children and others is born out by some of these revelations:
Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly, reports that 30 percent of rabbis who changed positions in 2000 did so involuntarily, and that sexual abuse was a factor in many instances.[xxiv] The Awareness Center devotes an entire website to “Clergy Abuse: Rabbis, Cantors & Other Trusted Officials.” It is a detailed and frank look at the problem of sexual abuse by rabbis.[xxv] [here]
Whispers in the Loggia thinks that only "rightists" are rising in defense of Benedict, here. Actually, he underscores an important point, that those who foment the scandal and the enemies of the Church within who are largely responsible for the conditions which created the grist of the scandal, are one in the same. As it has been mentioned before, the chiefest accusers of Pope Benedict and the Church are themselves (or people in the coalitions they belong to) eager to legitimize the sexualization of children both under the law and in the culture at large. It seems to be the next brave step from legitimization of homosexuality.
Long list of Rabbinical offenders...
A Jewish organization reports on Rabbinical sexual abuse...
Jews have also hidden a sex abuser in Brazil, finally captured by Interpol, here.
One commenter here, complained that Jews weren't persecuted because they had:
What?! That is incredibly absurd. The Jews weren't persecuted for raping and molesting little boys. They were persecuted for being Jewish, wish is incredibly wrong.
What a sad, pathetic attempt at covering up a dirty deed; a SINFUL, MORALLY WRONG, SICKENING, dirty deed. Why don't people just own up to their mistakes anymore?
What he neglects to mention is that Jews were often accused of things like sexually abusing children, and murdering them.
Jews were also accused during the Middle Ages of sexual abuse as much as they were during the Nazi period.
That changed today when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher of the papal household, delivered remarks in the traditional Good Friday prayer service in St. Peter's Basilica with Pope Benedict in attendance.
According to the New York Times account of the event, Father Cantalamessa noted that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year. "They (the Jews) know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms," he said.
Read further...
Friday, April 2, 2010
"Ethicist" Randy Cohen thinks Its Ok Not to Report Sex-Abuse
After attacking the Church on the National Public Radio program, Midmorning, hosted by Keri Miler, Randy Cohen launched on a brief explanation of how the Church should have intervened to protect those who were victimized by Catholic priests (who were overwhelmingly homosexual) and that their failure to protect children in these cases is the source of their liabillity.
This was a call-in show. The first caller was a man named Ted who explained his own ethical conundrum, that he had failed to report a sexual abuse that happend about 20 years ago. A child came into his school office, where he was counselor for GLBT students. The 16 year old said that he was having a relationship with an older man, but Ted didn't report the situation to the police and asked the 16 year old if he was practicing "safe-sex" instead. Ted felt bad about his failure to report the incident to the police as he was legally and ethically required to do, thus allowing a predator to go free and pursue another adolescent at another time.
Mr. Cohen tried to reassure Ted that it was ok, and that he should't be so hard on himself. When Ted pointed out that his situation was just like that of the Catholic Church, Mr. Cohen tried to pawn this out by suggesting that a 16 year old boy might be mature enough to handle the situation after all. Suddenly, there was hope for a GLBT guidance counsellor where before there had only been darkness and condemnation. Suddenly, Mr. Cohen's principled stand gave way to a special allowance.
When Ted failed to act to protect a 16 year old student from a homosexual predator, he was given a pass, but when Mr. Cohen views the Catholic Church doing the same thing, he is more than prepared to offer a condemnation. According to Mr. Cohen's own argument, Ted failed to protect a child who came to him for counsel, and Mr. Cohen excused him. We hope that Mr. Cohen could be more Solomonic when it comes to his judgement of the Catholic Church, because it is clear that he is operating from a double-standard.
This was a call-in show. The first caller was a man named Ted who explained his own ethical conundrum, that he had failed to report a sexual abuse that happend about 20 years ago. A child came into his school office, where he was counselor for GLBT students. The 16 year old said that he was having a relationship with an older man, but Ted didn't report the situation to the police and asked the 16 year old if he was practicing "safe-sex" instead. Ted felt bad about his failure to report the incident to the police as he was legally and ethically required to do, thus allowing a predator to go free and pursue another adolescent at another time.
Mr. Cohen tried to reassure Ted that it was ok, and that he should't be so hard on himself. When Ted pointed out that his situation was just like that of the Catholic Church, Mr. Cohen tried to pawn this out by suggesting that a 16 year old boy might be mature enough to handle the situation after all. Suddenly, there was hope for a GLBT guidance counsellor where before there had only been darkness and condemnation. Suddenly, Mr. Cohen's principled stand gave way to a special allowance.
When Ted failed to act to protect a 16 year old student from a homosexual predator, he was given a pass, but when Mr. Cohen views the Catholic Church doing the same thing, he is more than prepared to offer a condemnation. According to Mr. Cohen's own argument, Ted failed to protect a child who came to him for counsel, and Mr. Cohen excused him. We hope that Mr. Cohen could be more Solomonic when it comes to his judgement of the Catholic Church, because it is clear that he is operating from a double-standard.
Randy Cohen: Writer of "the Ethicist" column for the Sunday New York Times Magazine and author of "The Good, the Bad & the Difference: How to Tell Right From Wrong in Everyday Situations.Link to Midmorning show...
ATTEMPTS TO CENSOR DONOHUE FAIL
April 1, 2010
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on recent attempts to censor him:
TV producers have been telling me for years that my critics have implored them never to invite me back on any program. But they always do. While the media are overwhelmingly liberal, they have an obligation to offer different points of view. [Yours being the official opposition view] Hence, their non-stop invitations asking me to speak.
The latest attempt to silence me comes from GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), Call to Action and the Interfaith Alliance. The three left-wing organizations have joined hands demanding that the media "ignore Bill Donohue." Their complaint? My telling the truth about the role homosexual priests have played in the abuse scandal. [Which is a welcome thing indeed]
The data collected by John Jay College of Criminal Justice show that between 1950 and 2002, 81 percent of the victims were male and 75 percent of them were post-pubescent. In other words, three out of every four victims have been abused by homosexuals. By the way, puberty, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, begins at age 10 for boys.
No problem can be remedied without an accurate diagnosis. And any accurate diagnosis that does not finger the role that homosexuals have played in molesting minors is intellectually dishonest. The cover-up must end. And so must attempts to muzzle my voice. Everything I am saying is what most people already know, but are afraid to say it. It's time for some straight talk.
link to original...
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on recent attempts to censor him:
TV producers have been telling me for years that my critics have implored them never to invite me back on any program. But they always do. While the media are overwhelmingly liberal, they have an obligation to offer different points of view. [Yours being the official opposition view] Hence, their non-stop invitations asking me to speak.
The latest attempt to silence me comes from GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), Call to Action and the Interfaith Alliance. The three left-wing organizations have joined hands demanding that the media "ignore Bill Donohue." Their complaint? My telling the truth about the role homosexual priests have played in the abuse scandal. [Which is a welcome thing indeed]
The data collected by John Jay College of Criminal Justice show that between 1950 and 2002, 81 percent of the victims were male and 75 percent of them were post-pubescent. In other words, three out of every four victims have been abused by homosexuals. By the way, puberty, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, begins at age 10 for boys.
No problem can be remedied without an accurate diagnosis. And any accurate diagnosis that does not finger the role that homosexuals have played in molesting minors is intellectually dishonest. The cover-up must end. And so must attempts to muzzle my voice. Everything I am saying is what most people already know, but are afraid to say it. It's time for some straight talk.
link to original...
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