Church Against the Right

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

Link to original...

Muslim Inmates in Britain's Prison System Enforce Sharia

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

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

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

Link to original...

Pro-gay marriage CCHD group de-funded

Now, we're starting to see some results.

March 26, 2010

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

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

Dallas Catholic Blog...

The Ayn Rand follies - The New Criterion

The Ayn Rand follies - The New Criterion

Cardinal Ratzinger acted powerfully against abusers, says Archbishop Vincent Nichols

Cardinal Ratzinger acted powerfully against abusers, says Archbishop Vincent Nichols

SNAP Arrested in Rome

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


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

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

Link ....

Conway Concerned with Homosexuals in the Barracks

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

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

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

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

Link to military today...

The Death of Math

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

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

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

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

Link to Taki's...

ADL'S Foxman Under Attack

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

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

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

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

Goldberg says this critique is abounding.

Link to NPN...

Whoever sows hatred of the Church, will reap damaged Churches

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

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

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

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

I'm not the Messiah, Says Food Activist

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

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

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


Link to Guardian...

Bishop Weakland says Pope Wasn't Aware of Case

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

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

Link to CBC...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Genesis of a Crime

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

by Sandro Magister

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

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

Link to Chiesa...

Bill Donahue Promotes New Book on CNN

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

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

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

Link to CNN...

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

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

George Weigel Likes Pope Benedict's Letter

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

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

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

Link to original...

Glenn Beck on Marxist Ministers

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

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

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

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

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

Link to original...

Archdiocese of San Francisco Paper Drops a Bomb - Today

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

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

Archdiocese of San Francisco Paper Drops a Bomb - Today

NARAL Supporting Socialist Chancellor of Portland Promotes Judaism

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

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

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

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

Seminarians experience a key Jewish rite

by Ed Langlois

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

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

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

Link to Portland's Diocesan Paper....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


From the "Pray, Tell" blog...

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

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

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

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

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

Brother Aelred Senna, OSB
Saint John’s Abbey