New England Catholic

In Hoc Anno Domini

2011-12-23T19:37:00.000-05:00

Each Christmas, the Wall Street Journal publishes this editorial:

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.
But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

..So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.

But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

This editorial was written in 1949 by the late Vermont Royster and has been published annually since. (by the Wall Street Journal)

Too Funny! Stephen Colbert Takes on OWS

2011-11-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Christmas is a Holy Day, not a Secular "Holiday"

2011-11-26T19:33:00.000-05:00

No Money for Pagans!

2011-11-15T18:47:00.000-05:00

The next time you get some catalog, or promotions to give to charities...look carefully.

Are they appealing to you to give or spend "for the holidays?"

Don't open your wallet.

Instead, write back (using the prepaid envelope, if possible):

"Did you forget that Jesus is the reason for the season? NO MONEY FOR PAGANS!"

Two abortion clinic employees plead guilty to murder

2011-10-28T14:22:00.000-04:00

Presented without comment:

Thu Oct 27, 2011 5:57pm EDT
Story contains graphic descriptions in paragraphs five through eight.
By Dave Warner
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Two employees of a Philadelphia abortion clinic where live, viable babies were allegedly killed and a patient died after being given on overdose of painkillers pleaded guilty on Thursday to murder.

Guilty pleas to third-degree murder were entered by Adrienne Moton, 34, and Sherry West, 52, who both worked for Dr. Kermit Gosnell at what prosecutors have described as a decrepit and unsanitary clinic known as Women's Medical Society in West Philadelphia.

Due to a court-issued gag order, attorneys declined to comment on reports that no plea agreement was reached in the case.

Sentencing was set for December 2 by Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner. The maximum penalty for third-degree murder is 40 years in prison.

Seven more defendants face charges in the case, including Gosnell, who a grand jury in January said, "killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy -- and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors."

The grand jury said that a clinic co-worker of Moton's testified that a woman gave birth to a large baby at the clinic, delivering the child into a toilet. The jurors identified the newborn as "Baby D."

The jurors said the co-worker told them that the baby was moving and looked like it was swimming.

"Moton reached into the toilet, got the baby out and cut its neck," the grand jury said in its report.

West was accused of murder in the death of a 41-year-old patient, Karnamaya Mongar.

"The evidence presented to the grand jury established that Karnamaya Mongar died of cardiac arrest because she was overdosed with Demerol," the grand jurors said.

The grand jury said West and another employee administered the drug at Gosnell's direction and that Mongar died as a result of "wanton reckless conduct."

Disturbing Images of the Flea Party (OWS)

2011-10-24T21:04:00.000-04:00

This video clip is definitely not suitable for children, or for the faint of heart. Watch at your own risk.

Mirabile Dictu!

2011-10-23T20:28:00.000-04:00

It takes a licking and keeps on ticking....my plucky little flash drive, which went through the wash cycle several times.....drumroll.....WORKS!
All of my employer's documents are safe! Praise God and thank you Saint Anthony!

PS: It's by Sandisk

Another Gem from Patrice Lewis

2011-10-22T16:07:00.001-04:00

Patrice Lewis gives the Occupy Wall Street(OWS) moonbats a dose of reality:

Economics for Dummies

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that, my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

– Dr. Adrian Rogers

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is now entering its second month. I guess I can't blame the protesters for sticking around so long. It's exciting, isn't it? All the media attention, the celebrities and politicians fawning over them, the free food and goodies … Hey, if all it takes is camping in a park, pooping on police cars and waving signs – especially if I didn't have to show up to anything as restrictive as a JOB for a month or more – then I might consider joining the protests, too.

But this campaign apparently is not raising the IQ of any of the protesters, because they are still incapable of coherently explaining WHY they should receive something for nothing. When asked to pinpoint specific objectives, they wilt under logical questioning about how those objectives should be accomplished.

On Oct. 19, I caught a radio program by Dave Ramsey in which he invited OWS supporters to call in and explain their goals. Almost to a person, the callers were embarrassingly vague and unclear, unable to find what exactly they found objectionable with capitalism and big businesses that couldn't be traced back to unconstitutional government interference. The callers showed an almost frightening ignorance of basic economic concepts, including the laws of supply and demand and how wealth is created. Callers complained that wealth disparity is unfair, without being able to articulate what should be done to correct the unfairness (except to sanction government-backed theft). It got pretty funny to hear the callers start to backpedal whenever Mr. Ramsey politely asked pointed and logical questions.

Look, I'm not an economist. I'm just a rural housewife. So why am I able to grasp the basics of economics so much better than the Ivy League elites supporting the protesters? It reminds me of a toddler attitude: What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine. The OWS crowd has apparently never matured beyond the economic awareness of toddlers.

So for all our Wall Street protesters and sympathizers, I would like to offer a primer of basic economics. I'll call it, for obvious reasons,
Economics for Dummies.

•No one owes you a thing. No really. No one owes you food, or an education, or a car, or anything else others must sacrifice for. If you want those things, work your butt off and get them yourself.

•Rights do not cost anyone anything. If you think you have a "right" to something (such as a free college education), ask yourself whether that something will cost someone else time, labor, or money to provide it to you. If it does, it's not a right.

•Along those lines, no one owes you a living. No one owes you a job or a "living wage." If you're not willing to work hard, sacrifice, take risks and invest your own capital, then you don't deserve an income on par with a CEO's.

•The more government regulates business, the less efficient business becomes. Government regulations mean a business can't hire as many people, or pay its employees as well, or expand as the market would allow, because it is forced to spend its resources fulfilling all the insane nitpicky bureaucratic paperwork the government requires.

•Businesses are not in business to employ you. Businesses are in business to make a profit. If employing you will bring them a profit, they will employ you. If employing you means they will lose money, they will fire you (or not hire you in the first place).

•Loans are not gifts. If you borrow money, you are obliged to pay it back – so don't borrow money you can't repay. That includes borrowing massive amounts of money to attend elite universities and not studying anything of value to a free market.

•Along these lines, you are not entitled to anything you can't afford. No one is entitled to a $50,000/year college education. No one is entitled to a $350,000 house. No one.

•The borrower is slave to the lender. Whether it's on a national scale or a personal level, debt is very, very bad news. And here's the thing: Most personal debt is acquired on a voluntary basis. Oh sure, you can protest that you didn't read the fine print, but it was your responsibility to read that fine print to see what you were getting yourself into. Your signature is (or should be) your sacred word. Remember, loans are not gifts.

•Competition is good, not bad. Competition weeds out inferior products and services and expands superior products and services. Government-forced monopolies produce crap. If you doubt this, take a look at the computer industry on one hand, and at America's public schools on the other.

•Government redistribution programs are wildly inefficient. The amount of money reaching an intended goal is inversely proportional to the number of hands it passes through. Witness the comical inefficiency of government-sponsored "charity" programs.

•Receiving "free" money reduces the incentive to work. This is a hard concept for progressives to grasp, but I knew very few people who want to give up "free" money by working hard instead. A research paper by Michael Tanner and Tad DeHaven points out, "The choice of welfare over work is often a rational decision based on economic incentives. Empirical studies confirm that welfare is a disincentive for work."

•Whining does not make you a more attractive prospective employee. Nor does dressing inappropriately, cursing, piercing every orifice, lavishly tattooing yourself, or other "personal expressions" of your individuality. (Patrice descibes my former neighbors to a T)Yes, you have the right to do all these things. But a business has the right not to hire you as a result.

•Life isn't fair. People are born with handicaps or suffer accidents or illness. The most admirable people are those who make lemonade out of their lemons. The worst thing the government can ever try to do is to make things "fair," because in so doing, it will make things drastically more unfair for everyone else.

•What's yours is yours, but what's mine is most assuredly NOT yours. It's mine. The government may steal what's mine and give it to you, but that doesn't make it yours. It just makes you the recipient of stolen property.

As I've said before, I don't necessarily disagree with everything the OWS protesters are protesting. But unlike them, I don't solely blame the corporations or banks for what's wrong in our country. I blame the government, which has spent decades making illegal (or at least, unconstitutional) deals with corporations and banks in exchange for money and power.

Strip away the unconstitutional government interference, let the free market flourish, and see how quickly prosperity and wealth return to Americans … or at least to those willing to work for it.

Unfair and Biased

2011-10-22T15:06:00.000-04:00

h/t Sancte Pater

Thank You, St. Anthony!

2011-10-22T14:23:00.000-04:00

Doing laundry this morning, I dropped the cap of the liquid detergent into the washing machine. Grrrrrr.......

Being short and thus unable to reach the bottom of the machine, I used a dowel rod to drag the cap, haul it high enough to grab hold of it. YES! SUCCESS!

And then I saw it....bright blue, peeking out from under the agitator.....and gasped!

It was the flash drive I had lost last week....the flash drive belonging to my employer....the flash drive with an entire hard drive's worth of documents on it.

Immediate contrition flooded me. I had prayed to St. Anthony to find it for me, and he knew I had to drop the detergent cap into the washing machine in order to see where the flash drive was hidden. Mea culpa.....All my growling and grumbling and complaining.....mea maxima culpa!

So, you are wondering, does a flash drive that's been through several loads of laundry still work?

I am letting it dry out for at least 24 hours before inserting it into my computer.

Stay tuned!

And do what your mother always told you to do: CHECK ALL POCKETS BEFORE YOU PUT CLOTHES IN THE LAUNDRY!

Fairfield Students Bussed to Hear Gay Advocate Bash the Church

2011-10-19T12:04:00.000-04:00

The Cardinal Newman Society reports:Fairfield University’s student newspaper The Mirror reports that Fairfield provided transportation for students to hear openly gay sex columnist Dan Savage bash the Catholic Church in his keynote address for the “Pro-Queer Life” conference on Saturday.

The lecture contradicts assurances reportedly made by Fairfield President Fr. Jeffrey von Arx, S.J., to Bishop William Lori that the conference would “not be a vehicle for dissent.”

The Jesuit university reportedly bussed students to Union Theological Seminary in New York as part of their “More Than a Monologue: Sexual Diversity and the Catholic Church,” (the moral teachings of the Church are not subject to 'dialogue') an effort by Fairfield and Fordham Universities along with two non-denominational divinity schools to apparently cast doubt on Catholic teaching on homosexuality.

The Mirror reported that Savage:

…denounced the Bible as a credible source of model behavior, saying that sins, like masturbation, premarital sex and use of condoms and birth pills, once so adamantly prohibited in the past, can no longer be judged by the authorities of the church. (WRONG! Christ gave such authoritiy to the Church)

“We have got to ignore the b——t in the Bible about gay people, just as we’ve learned to ignore what the b——-t in the Bible have said about women … about polyester, about farming and about slavery,” said Savage.(the Bible speaks about....polyester?)

Priests cannot see the sins of people, and according to Savage, homosexuality cannot be so easily judged from the outside. (which is why we have the Sacrament of Confession)

“They can’t see past our homosexuality to see our shared and common humanity, which is hugely ironic considering how many of those priests behind those pulpits are gay,” he said. (Confessors look at the state of the soul. Appealing to 'our shared and common humanity' is shorthand for saying we just can't help ourselves [true] so why make anything a sin?)

In a slightly ironic twist, The Mirror reports that after Savage called for everyone to “see our shared and common humanity,” he called traditional marriage supporter Maggie Gallagher “vile.” (Hypocrite...)

Savage’s lecture contradicts assurances to the bishops reportedly made by the presidents of Fairfield and Fordham Universities that the “More Than a Monologue” conferences, ”while sensitive to the experience of the participants, will not be a vehicle for dissent.” (yeah, right) Those assurances were revealed in a September 22nd public statement by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York and Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, following a letter from The Cardinal Newman Society requesting Archbishop Dolan’s intervention and public concern arising from The Cardinal Newman Society’s reports on the conference series.

The bishops said, “With the assurances we have now received, we now must trust that the conferences will turn out as intended: not as a criticism or questioning of the faith and morals of the Church, but as a sincere attempt to listen to those who are trying their best to believe and live it, and who have some positive ideas about pastoral strategy to present it even better.” (are the bishops blind or just stupid?)

At least one Fairfield administrator reportedly seems to prefer Savage’s approach:

Meredith Marquez, assistant director of Student Diversity Programs, felt Savage’s speech was a fitting opener for LGBTQ History month.

“I feel like while we’re celebrating LGBTQ people of America,” she said, “One of the pressing things that’s going on right now … are the suicides that have been happening. This event allows students to go and hear from probably the most popular and the funniest—definitely the funniest—and, I would argue, the most effective person to talk about this issue.”

Marquez also noted that the conversation between homosexuals and the Church needs to continue.

“To [Fairfield University], being Catholic is being accepting,” (but not of sin and depravity) she said. “That’s how we can be the best Catholic institution if we live up to that mission.(Honey, it ain't Christ's mission) [It] is to be the most accepting that you can of all people. I am hoping that little messages will get through and it’s things like these that I would love all students will come to.” (this woman has trouble constructing a coherent sentence)

As part of the same series Fairfield will host its part of “More Than a Monologue” with a “Care of Souls” conference on October 29th. The theme of the event, according to The Mirror is, “pastoral care of and by LGBTQ Catholics.”(Ohhh....'pastoral'.....that means being soft on Church teaching in order to salve malformed consciences)

Because 'Tammy' Has Two Mommies, That's Why

2011-10-17T19:02:00.000-04:00

Fox news reports:
A lesbian couple in California who say their 11-year-old son Tommy who wants to be a girl named Tammy are giving their child hormone blockers that delay the onset of puberty -- so that he can have more time to decide if he wants to change his gender. (sigh.....)

Tommy

The couple’s supporters say the Hormone Blocking Therapy has only minor side effects (really? and they know this how?) and is appropriate for a child who is unsure of his gender. "This is definitely a changing landscape for transgender youth," said Joel Baum, director of education and training for Gender Spectrum, a California-based non-profit group. "This is about giving kids and their families the opportunity to make the right decision." (how about deciding to get help working through your dysfunction)

But critics of the treatment say 11-year-olds are not old enough to make life-altering decisions about changing their gender, and parents should not be encouraging them. They say it’s too soon to tell what the side effects of the treatments may be, and they say Tommy’s parents, Pauline Moreno and Debra Lobel, are irresponsible for seeking them and allowing them to be administered. (AMEN!)

"This is child abuse. It's like performing liposuction on an anorexic child," said Dr. Paul McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University.

"It is a disorder of the mind. Not a disorder of the body. Dealing with it in this way is not dealing with the problem that truly exists."

“We shouldn't be mucking around with nature. We can’t assume what the outcome will be," McHugh said.

Dr. Manny Alvarez, senior managing health editor of FoxNews.com, said the hormone blockers also may pose a medical risk. "I think that it’s highly inappropriate to be interfering with natural hormonal growth patterns,” Alvarez said. “There are significant potential problems necessary for growth and development.

"Potential long-term effects can include other abnormalities of hormones, vascular complications and even potential cancer. I think that if this child – as he finishes his puberty and teenage years – decides to undergo a transgender procedure – then there are proper channels to do so.

“But to do it at the age of 11 -- to me -- could be potentially dangerous to the health of this child," he said.

Tommy's parents, Moreno and Lobel, say they support their child and feel this is the best way for him to find an answer to a question he’s been asking all his life. They say Tommy – whom they now call Tammy – began taking GnRH inhibitors over the summer so that he will remain a prepubescent boy until he turns 14 or 15. They say they want to give him more time to explore the female gender identity that he associates with.

Thomas began saying he was a girl when he was 3 years old, his parents said in an interview with the Daily Mail. He was learning sign language due to a speech impediment, and one of the first things he told his mothers was, “I am a girl.” They say they thought he was confused or mistaken, and signed back, 'No. No. Thomas is a boy."

But Thomas insisted, they said. He shook his head “no” and repeated what he had signed.

They said Thomas threatened to mutilate his genitals when he was 7, and psychiatrists diagnosed a gender identity disorder. (Do you think maybe Little Tommy had picked up on his two mommies hatred for males, and was acting out?)

One year later, he began transitioning to Tammy.

After much deliberation with family and therapists, the child began taking hormone blockers a few months ago. The medication, which must be changed once a year, was implanted in the boy’s upper left arm.

Tommy will continue this treatment until he turns 14 or 15, at which point he will be taken off the blockers and pursue the gender he feels is the right one. He will then either start his puberty cycle as a boy – or begin making the full transition to a girl.

"Tammy"

"There's an increase of children who are telling their parents that they are a different gender. We're trying to understand why there's an increase," said Diane Ehrensaft, a developmental and clinical psychologist and author of the book, "Gender-Born. Gender-Made," who says the trend may be due to a more open society. (How about due to a morally bankrupt society?)

But while chemicals are giving children like Tommy more time to decide which side of the fence they belong on, some critics say that some children who question their identity at a very young age might change their mind when they start adolescence. (ya think?)

"Most transgender patients will say that they knew at 6 years old. But what we don't know is how many others had those thoughts and feelings that went away once they hit puberty," said Dr. Jeffrey Spiegel, a professor at Boston University and a plastic surgeon who specializes in facial feminization operations for transgender men.

"While it may be a good therapy for those who've committed to transgender, it may not be good for those who might have changed their mind once they hit puberty and beyond."

Walt Heyer, whose book "Paper Genders" details his own experience transitioning from a man to a woman and back again, agreed. "The blockers should NOT be introduced to a child," Heyer said. "If they are going to make a transition, they should wait to do so when they reach 18 to 20 years old. When you start the therapy at that age you are not dealing with the fact that the mind is not fully developed."

Heyer also cited a Dutch study that said 61 percent of individuals who desire a gender change are found to have secondary psychiatric disorders, such as depression or dissociative disorder, which he suffered from.

Other critics asked whether Tommy’s same-sex parents may be unknowingly influencing his questions about his gender. (NO! Really?)

“Undue influence on the child simply has to be ruled out,” said psychiatrist Keith Ablow, a Fox News contributor. “It's the psychologically correct thing to do, the ethical thing to do and the moral thing to do." (Then his mommies won't do it, having parted company with ethics and morality when they introduced a child into their sterile relationship)
"Obviously, when two females adopt a male child, then assert that the child is not actually male, but is, instead, actually a female -- like both of them. Everyone in the family should be psychologically evaluated in a comprehensive way before a step like gender reassignment is considered,” said Ablow. (Don't hold your breath)

How Stupid Sells Better Than Smart

2011-10-01T16:23:00.001-04:00

City Journal has a fine article on "bringing back stigma." Now, don't bolt to the comments section and accuse me of wanting to see loose women forced to wear a scarlet letter. But stigma does have it's place in the social economy. Has the disappearance of stigma created a better society? Just look at the unwed mothers and their multiple partners, and pity their offspring.

When is a flawless, gleaming, plate-glass shopwindow a broken window? Boston mayor Thomas Menino had no trouble answering the question after one look at the Nike sneaker shop’s display on his city’s upscale Newbury Street. There, above the company’s just do it slogan, were eight T-shirts bearing, in boldly graphic lettering, such messages as GET HIGH, F**K GRAVITY, and DOPE, this one accompanied by an open pill bottle with skateboards spilling out. The mayor clearly understood George Kelling and James Q. Wilson’s theory that one broken window left unrepaired in an empty building suggests that nobody is watching and nobody cares, sparking more vandalism and disorder, which in turn emboldens the violent and lawless to commit hard-core crimes. Here, the mayor saw, was cultural vandalism: Nike’s fashion statement, so to speak, was that it is trendy to take drugs. And the company was happy to turn its teen and preteen customers into walking billboards for drug use.

Menino fired off a sharp letter to the store manager, with copies to her CEO and the press, reprimanding her for her display’s assault on the young and on common sense. He urged her to remove the shirts and remarked that if Nike decided “to take more seriously the issue of drug abuse,” he could point out several successful Boston antidrug programs. With the sulky peevishness of its adolescent clientele, the company refused the mayor’s request, but a week later, at the end of June, a new display replaced the offending garb, though the DOPE shirt defiantly remained.

Menino’s letter, along with the publicity he generated by it, was exactly the right approach. He didn’t try to outlaw the offending display; the First Amendment guarantees us free speech, after all, even down to protecting the right of kids to play hyper-violent video games, the Supreme Court has just ruled. But when what is legal is also disgusting and wrong, the proper response is criticism and stigma, especially effective when the prominent—like Boston’s mayor—publicly express it.

A kid in a DOPE shirt should draw the sneers of passersby, and business executives should tell their Nike counterparts that their supposed edginess pollutes the culture. The top brass of the Diesel clothing chain, now running a BE STUPID ad campaign, (Really?!! Be Stupid!! Just what we need to propel our cultural decline) should hear the same disapproval. Until recently, their Fifth Avenue store, which has defaced an urbane classical building with a 30-foot-high cast-stone bas-relief of an angry lout in a Mohawk haircut, proclaimed from its window: SMART MAY HAVE THE BRAINS, BUT STUPID HAS THE BALLS. The chain’s website asserts, “Smart may have the authority, but stupid has one hell of a hangover,” (I lived near rowdy rude neighbors who lived by this creed) and “Stupid is the relentless pursuit of a regret free life.” Outfitting thugs and bar brawlers, while egging them on, is not an honorable way to make a living, nor is selling gangsta rap that glorifies lawbreaking and mistreating women, nor is hawking video games that have kids pretend to kill, maim, and rape. And parents who let their kids buy such junk merit the scorn of their neighbors.

Our culture isn’t something we merely consume. We also all participate in creating it.

Lost Souls, Lame Bishops, Militant Homosexuals

2011-09-24T19:41:00.000-04:00

Pray the 'Gay' Away

2011-09-14T18:53:00.000-04:00

I purloined this article from Fr. Z. Written by a friend of his, it's a great approach to answering arguments in favor of same-sex marriage.

Some people can make the gay go away

by: JAMES LIVINGSTON
There's a choice beyond living in shame or living immorally.

I am glad for Ron Bates that he was able to overcome the guilt and shame that burdened him for years and find that God loves him. ("I tried for years to pray away the gay. It didn't work," Sept. 1).

But while I respect Bates' personal experience, I respectfully disagree with his conclusions about same-sex attraction and traditional marriage.

I am the lead chaplain for the local Courage/Faith in Action group. Courage/FIA is a confidential support group for people who have same-sex attraction and who want to practice the virtue of chastity as understood by the Catholic Church.

As a confessor and confidant to many men and women who have homosexual attractions, I can say that people are not limited to the choices Bates offers.

The plain truth is that people with same-sex attractions experience them differently.

For some, those desires are deeply rooted and long-lasting, while others experience them as symptoms of something else: loneliness, lack of confidence or frustrated childhood bonding with same-sex parents or peers, just to begin the list.

In other words, some people really do find developmental and environmental roots to their same-sex attractions. And yes, some find release from them through therapy or through the mysterious grace of a spiritual awakening.

Bates was not able to pray away his same-sex attraction, but some people actually do. And others, while unable to avoid homosexual temptations, still live lives of chastity and virtue by the grace of God and with the help of good friends.

Marriage to a woman did not work for Bates, but for this you don't redefine marriage. And especially for this you don't tattoo a "GLBT" label onto teenagers who may be simply confused about their life choices. It took Bates 54 years to find his life direction after an imprudent start.

By the same logic, many young people could be trapped for years with a mistaken gay or lesbian identity, goaded on by our disintegrating, sexually untethered culture.

Like it or not, heterosexual behavior is rooted in human nature and the universal moral law. Both the body and the Bible witness to this truth in their own ways.

Traditional marriage is rooted in this ancient if inconvenient truth, and it can't be scolded or legislated away by one misguided generation. History is not and never will be on the side of gay marriage.

But what about the nerve root question that Bates addresses? What do you do when the "gay" just will not go away and your religious standards and traditions just seem to accuse, to point out what you can never do or be? Are the choices limited to either living in shame or just pitching the moral code out the window?

Many of us can relate in our own way. You were unfaithful and your spouse will not allow you to forget; you have a prison record that shows up every time you try to get a job; you have a weakness for alcohol or spending or food and your life is unmanageable.

Add your own weakness to the list. Regardless of how it got there, you want to move beyond it, but you can't. Who among us is righteous and qualified to cast the first stone?

St. Paul confided in a letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 12:7-10) that he had a "thorn in his flesh" that wouldn't go away. What God said to him was not "you're going to hell" or "you are disordered."

He said, "My grace is sufficient for you." In the midst of his weakness, Paul found both steady direction and contentment in his friendship with Christ.

My point is this: Whoever you are and whatever insurmountable problem you have, don't jettison your moral compass. Find friends who will support you in truth and virtue.

Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, "Does anyone here condemn you? Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more" (John 8:10-11). Minnesota citizens, you can support traditional marriage and be a friend to persons with same-sex attractions. It's not an "either/or" issue.

* * *
The Rev. James Livingston is a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. He is the lead chaplain for the local Faith in Action support group, a prochastity ministry for men and women with same-sex attraction.

Withdrawal Symptoms

2011-09-03T12:21:00.000-04:00

Gentle Readers,

This blog is not dead. I am simply without internet access....and I'm suffering withdrawal.

Here's what happened: I moved. Stayed within the same town, moved even closer to Verizon's hub.

Verizon denied me my DSL, said they could not even grant me dial-up, because I was too far away from the hub.

NOT EVEN DIAL-UP?!!!!

Apparently, the folks who man the computers dont have accurate information, and if you can flag down a Verizon truck, the DSL guy can get you what you need. But Verizon is on strike, and I'm not sure if waiting around for a truck is a good use of my time.

So I struck a deal with the Devil. Yes, that's right........COMCAST!!!

I haven't had TV reception for years, have only had cable once, many many years ago. I hate having to give my money to Comcast, with all that it represents (HBO series with soft-porn) and its huge arachnoid tentacles.......

But here I am, in internet withdrawal. Installation is scheduled for September 8, the Blessed Mother's birthday.

Pray for me please, and pray that the installation goes smoothly.

Pray also for those affected by Hurrican Irene....so many lost everything in the floods. I didn't even lose electricity, and here I am complaining about having no internet. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I Can Do Anything I Want

2011-08-14T17:53:00.000-04:00

The riots in London don't seem all that far away. I found the infantile selfishness expressed by the rioters to be eerily similar to what my young neighbor said to me when I asked for an end to the late night beer and bonfire parties: "This is my yard and I can do anything I want." Never mind that it's the landlord's yard, not his, and that I, as another tenant, have a right to quiet enjoyment of the premises. Thugs rule. Little old ladies have to run for cover.

Fr. Tim Finigan of The Hermeneutic of Continuity has some pointed words about the London riots:

If you are looking for an explanation of what is behind the "civil unrest" that seems to have taken everyone by surprise, here is an account from two girls in my childhood home, Croydon:

"Just showin the Police and the rich people we can do what we want" about sums it up, I think. "I can do what I want" is the net result of moral relativism applied by the ordinary teenager affected by original sin and educated in a system that undermines any real foundation of duty to God, country or neighbour.

Few people have noted the irony of the appeals by the Police to parents to "contact their children." For several decades our country has undermined marriage, the family, and the rights of parents. Agents of the state can teach your children how to have sex, give them condoms, put them on the pill, give them the morning-after pill if it doesn't work, and take them off for an abortion if that fails - and all without you having any say in the matter or necessarily even knowing about it. Now all of a sudden, we want parents to step in and tell their teenage children how to behave.

Feral Youths aka Flash Mobs

2011-08-13T13:30:00.000-04:00

Patrice Lewis has an article about the recent rioting and flash mobs. She has coined a term, "feral youth." I can't think of a more appropriate term. Now that I am older and more vulnerable physically, this out-of-control mob behavior truly frightens me. I reproduce Patrice's entire article below:

The world has been riveted by the riots in London over the past week. The degree of lawlessness, violence, looting, assault, arson, murder and every other conceivable vice has been appalling. Centuries-old buildings have been gutted. Innocent people have been killed.

What I find fascinating is how hard the progressive media has worked to excuse it all. The verbal gymnastics necessary to twist horror into pity for the "protesters" is astounding.

"The violence on the streets is being dismissed as 'pure criminality,' as the work of a 'violent minority,' as 'opportunism,'" sniffs blogger Laurie Penny. "This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk about viral civil unrest. Angry young people with nothing to do and little to lose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it. Tonight, in one of the greatest cities in the world, society is ripping itself apart."

And why do these angry feral youths have "nothing to do"? It's simple: They've been spoon-fed government entitlements for their entire lives. They have no skills, no education, no motivation, no aspirations. Since they've never had to work for what they needed but instead have received everything for free, they have nothing to do.

The feral youth of today are the product of sometimes multiple generations of welfare. They are not motivated to cultivate job skills of any sort because they already receive free money. The only job training most of these recipients are motivated to acquire is how to work the system and receive additional, unending benefits … perhaps by having multiple illegitimate children through multiple men, or claiming disability where none exists, or some other sly and underhanded technique.

It is difficult for these feral youth to find jobs because no one will hire them. Employers are kind of fussy about requiring employees to show up on time, be dependable, dress appropriately, have clean language and otherwise demonstrate a work ethic. Feral youth seldom have a work ethic. They were not raised with one. Therefore they have nothing to do but riot when the opportunity presents itself.

This isn't unique to Britain, of course. Here in America we're seeing increasing incidences of flash mobs and other examples of social chaos. The perpetrators are just as feral as the mobs in London. And just as with Britain's mobs, the participating youth are feral because they were made that way. They were cultivated through dependency.

While the original intent of welfare was compassionate (preventing the poor from starving), the useful-idiot progressives just cannot get over the fact that the ideal has gone astray. Welfare was never meant to support generations of strong and able-bodied young people in the prime working years of their lives. But it has, and the result is millions of people unable and unwilling to take responsibility for their lives. Why should they? They get free money.

Free money is like a drug. You'll do anything to continue getting it. You'll lie, cheat, steal, murder and riot to get your "fix." You'll produce endless numbers of fatherless children who grow up on the dole and know no other life. The poison of dependency extends for generations. A government that creates a dependent class through the addiction to easy money is no better than a drug pusher creating addicted clients. It leaves unimaginable chaos and heartbreak in its wake.

"We witnessed the very beneficiaries of government largesse exhibiting their gratitude as they stole from an already beaten and bloodied man and forced people to strip naked to prove they'd not withheld any assets," notes David Limbaugh.

Ann Coulter writes, "We're beginning to see the final result of that idea [welfare] in Britain. The welfare state creates a society of beasts. Meanwhile, nonjudgmental elites don't dare condemn the animals their programs have created."

A dependent class never learns personal responsibility. Take away independence and you take away the incentive to be responsible as well. My guess is none of the rioters will accept any personal responsibility for their actions – instead, they'll try to blame anything and everything except themselves. They burned cars, looted shops and beat people because (choose one) the rich should give me more money / I had a bad childhood / the government is cutting my benefits / you're all racists / it's my right to loot since wealth is so unevenly distributed.

Deprived of what they feel are their "rightful" entitlements – and given a spark – it's no surprise whenever the dependent class erupts into chaos.

If I had to pick a single issue that has been the biggest destroyer of our nation, I would choose welfare. Welfare has destroyed the financial need for marriage; it has removed the stigma of illegitimacy; it has taken away the pride and dignity of providing for one's family; it has cultivated an entitlement mentality unassociated with hard work; it has manufactured imagined "rights" out of thin air; it has destroyed our moral compass; and it has encouraged men to abandon their children and thereby eroded the family unit, which was the foundation of this nation.

Like drugs, welfare cannot be quit cold turkey. Victims must be weaned slowly away from their addiction. Their lives must be remediated. They must be taught to understand the connection between work and pay, between effort and reward.

Also as with addiction, many will never be able to kick the habit. These lost souls will always be filled with hatred and malice for those who try to deny them their next "fix." And they will, like all addicts, continue to be a danger and a drain on decent society.

If you doubt this, then please find me some statistics about the number of crimes committed by welfare recipients verses non-welfare recipients. I'm sure they're out there somewhere.

These problems were 70 years in the making, and they may take 70 years to correct. But mark my words: If we don't destroy the pushers and wean the addicts off the drug addiction of welfare, societies will crumble. It has already begun.

Catholic Charities USA’s gay lobbyist

2011-07-17T15:13:00.000-04:00

The Washington Blade, a homosexual newspaper in the nation's capital, has this report:

"Catholic Charities USA, the nation’s largest network of faith-based agencies providing services to the poor, has hired a Washington lobbying firm owned by a gay man to promote a recently launched anti-poverty initiative before Congress and the Obama administration.

In a little noticed development, Catholic Charities USA retained the Sheridan Group, founded in 1991 by social worker and gay rights advocate Tom Sheridan, to coordinate the development of legislation and related advocacy programs aimed at “starting a new national conversation on poverty and opportunity.”

Lobbying disclosure reports filed with the House and Senate show that Catholic Charities USA paid the Sheridan Group $476,750 between April 2010 and April 2011 for lobbying services and advocacy work related to the Catholic organization’s anti-poverty projects. (if you still give to 'Catholic' Charities, STOP!)

News of the Sheridan Group’s lobbying work for Catholic Charities USA comes at a time when local Catholic Charities agencies — including those in D.C., Massachusetts, and Illinois — have withdrawn from providing adoption services for state or local governments rather than be forced to provide such services to same-sex couples. (remember this when people say same-sex marriage has not produced any adverse effect on society)

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington spoke out against a same-sex marriage law at the time the D.C. City Council deliberated over the measure.

Executive Director Edward Orzechowski announced shortly after the D.C. Council passed the same-sex marriage law in December 2009 that Catholic Charities of Washington would discontinue providing adoption services in D.C. rather than be forced to facilitate adoptions by gay and lesbian couples.

Orzechowski also announced that his organization would no longer offer health insurance benefits to the spouses of its employees to avoid having to offer such benefits to same-sex partners.

“This allows us to continue providing services, comply with the city’s new requirements and remain faithful to our church’s teachings,” he said at the time. (would that all local affiliates did this)

Sheridan points out that Catholic Charities USA, while serving as a trade association that represents as many as 165 local Catholic Charities agencies linked to the Catholic Church, is independent from the local agencies, including those that have voiced opposition to same-sex marriage.

“They’re only together as service providers on poverty issues, which is why I have no problem representing them,” Sheridan said of Catholic Charities USA. “And I’m proud to represent them because they do such outstanding work.”

Sheridan said he began his career as a social worker. As a gay Catholic (if you're out and proud instead of being a repentant sinner, don't call yourself Catholic) interested in social justice causes, he said he has long admired the dedicated social services work Catholic Charities groups have performed throughout the country.

Prior to founding the Sheridan Group, Sheridan worked as a lobbyist in the early 1980s for the AIDS Action Council, one of the nation’s first national advocacy organizations for people with AIDS. In subsequent years, he said the Sheridan Group has represented a number of AIDS advocacy organizations as well as other non-profit, social justice oriented groups as clients.

Sister Jeannine Gramick, a Catholic nun and one of the founders of New Ways Ministry, which provides support for LGBT Catholics, said Catholic Charities USA and some local Catholic Charities agencies have provided behind-the-scenes support for the LGBT Catholic community. (from the horse's mouth!)

“Catholic Charities in general have been the most progressive wing of the church other than the nuns,” she said. “In some cases, Catholic Charities USA has supported our events. I feel they personally are pro-gay but they can’t do this publicly.” (does this mean they still have some sense of shame, or more likely, does it mean they're covering their butts to keep their paychecks?)

Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry’s executive director, said Catholic Charities agencies on the local level shouldn’t be viewed as adversaries to the LGBT community. (they're not adversaries because they're supporters)

When asked to comment on its decision to retain a lobbying firm owned by an openly gay man, Catholic Charities USA issued a written statement to the Blade from its president, Rev. Larry Snyder, a Roman Catholic priest.

Snyder said Catholic Charities USA has utilized the “strategic leadership of the Sheridan Group” to launch its centennial project that “incorporates policy development as well as legislative, communications, grassroots and fundraising efforts” to prevent and alleviate poverty over the next 100 years.

“We have been pleased with the success of this project to date and will continue to work with a bipartisan team of consultants on this campaign as we see our work grow in importance and urgency every day,” he said. (we're not afraid of getting fleas if we lie down with dogs....see Jay's comment below)

Among Sheridan and his firm’s key duties for Catholic Charities USA was the drafting of a bill called the National Opportunity and Community Renewal Act. Catholic Charities USA officials say they hope the bill, if approved by Congress, will serve as a catalyst for innovative new programs aimed at eradicating poverty in America in 10 years.

Sheridan said some of the money his firm received from Catholic Charities USA has gone to subcontractors that he hired in his role as “general contractor” on behalf of the anti-poverty initiative. The objective, he said, is to put together a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and community leaders to sign on to the legislation. (is anyone vetting the subcontractors? No?)

Although the bill has not attracted much support in Congress so far, Sheridan said its introduction last year was linked to Catholic Charities USA’s 100th anniversary and the group’s special centennial celebration.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) (Catholic in Name Only) introduced the National Opportunity and Community Renewal Act in the Senate last year with no other senator signing on as a co-sponsor. Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) (Catholic in Name Only) introduced the bill in the House, with just three co-sponsors signing on – all Democrats. (all Dems? Surprise, surprise!)

One congressional staffer, who spoke on condition of not being identified, said bills attracting so few co-sponsors usually have little or no chance of passing.

But Sheridan said he will be working closely with Catholic Charities USA and its allies and supporters over the next several months to build a broad-based, bipartisan coalition that he expects will prompt a sizable number of lawmakers to co-sponsor the bill.

Among other things, the bill would provide $100 million for 10 separate grants to fund anti-poverty demonstration projects on the state and local level."

Commenting on this article, "Jay" had this to say:

Jay July 14, 2011 at 3:01 pm I respect Tom Sheridan’s work over decades. But he should realize “when you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas.” I’m not sure how effective he’ll be in parsing the corporate disctinctions between CC USA and it’s bigoted local affiliates. I’m afraid his reputation will be hurt, and that’s a shame.

Well, Jay, this Catholic feels just the opposite. Catholic Charities will be hurt by its association with Sheridan. Oh, and thanks so much for calling us flea-ridden dogs.

Sacrilege in Boston

2011-07-13T19:13:00.000-04:00

Time to Rock the Boat

2011-07-11T18:49:00.000-04:00

Do What Needs To Be Done

2011-07-05T21:12:00.002-04:00

How Same-Sex 'Marriage' Became Law in New York

2011-06-26T20:18:00.001-04:00

The New York Times has a sobering article on the political machinations behind the push for gay marriage.

Revealing a shameful combination of Catholic cowardice and political deals, the article paints the sad truth: the Church caved, the Republicans didn't lead, and gays were well organized, with NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo spearheading the effort.

Some quotes:

By the time a Catholic bishop from Brooklyn traveled to Albany last week to tell undecided senators that passing same-sex marriage “is not in keeping with the will of their people,” it was clear the church had been outmaneuvered by the highly organized same-sex marriage coalition, with its sprawling field team and, especially, its Wall Street donors. "

"It was befuddling to gay-rights advocates: The Catholic Church, arguably the only institution with the authority and reach to derail same-sex marriage, seemed to shrink from the fight.

As the marriage bill hurtled toward a vote, the head of the church in New York, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, left town to lead a meeting of bishops in Seattle. He did not travel to Albany or deliver a major speech in the final days of the session. And when he did issue a strongly worded critique of the legislation — he called it “immoral” and an “ominous threat” — it was over the phone to an Albany-area radio show. ....

Come and Kneel Before Him

2011-06-25T19:12:00.000-04:00

Many interesting comments over at Father Z's blog.

The Curious Case of Corapi

2011-06-23T21:43:00.000-04:00

Do you know what is really going on with Fr. Corapi? Me neither. Which is why I haven't joined the media howl taking place. I see a swamp of confusion before me, and I hesitate to set foot in it.

Once again, Michael Voris cuts through the fog with clarity.

Very Vulva

2011-06-16T22:51:00.002-04:00

Maybe I'm nuts....BUT....this 'welcome' card from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton 'Parish Community' in Northampton seems a bit off.

It's very...ummmm....female.
And what's with the X in the middle? Where's Jesus?
I mean, yeah, it's NoHo, home of the Lesbian Avengers and other wholesome groups, but sheesh!
If you go to the parish website, you'll see 2 priests and 8 females on the staff.
Those females must have chosen this design just to show those boys in black who really rules the roost.

And You Thought Mass at Your Parish Was Bad...

2011-06-15T22:28:00.000-04:00

Oh, no, O'Malley!

2011-06-14T22:18:00.000-04:00

The Boston Catholic blog, "Bryan Hehir Exposed" is reporting that Sean Cardinal O'Malley has flipflopped on allowing a scandalous 'gay pride' prayer service to be held.

Read the full article, and take action.

But remember, if you oppose immoral behavior, they'll call you a 'hater'.

Moonbat Manor

2011-06-12T21:53:00.000-04:00

Walburga is having housing problems. Prayers needed, please!

Here is one apartment Walburga will not be renting: 'redacted' of course means I have removed indentifying data.

"An unexpected apartment vacancy has just opened in an evolving residence where 90 people making change in the Valley have lived somewhat collectively since the 70s, redacted in Leverett. Not quite a retirement community (!), it has been a retreat for somewhat older activist energy in living transition.

Pages 3 and 4 of artist/architect/author redacted Catalog of Houses at redacted.org show Edgehouse, midst 10 acres of field and forest since he built it in 1966. An efficiency apartment at ground level is available renting with utilities for $800, laundry, Satellite TV and Hughes.net available. It is fully furnished except bed.

Adjacent and connected to Edgehouse is a double-envelope low/no tech redacted Project survival house that will operate without electricity or fuel or technology and grow its own food in a large 2-story garden space, thermally anchored as most of redacted houses have been. The consciousness of this 10 acre arboreatum is very much centered in a view of the world and its realities, including an upcoming pole shift, that is completely hidden from the populace. A book about it can be downloaded from redacted.pdf . We are looking for someone not just looking for rooming, but seeking some involvement in our agricultural survival undertaking preparing for the pole shift now in progress with Japan as its latest wake-up call and much of the Pacific already sinking (of course you would not have heard about it as the government and NASA, not to mention the CIA and NSA have lied and continue to for 60 years and are in no way coming clean today). 9 people live here in 3 buildings, with 5 acres under cultivation. A focus of the extended building where the suite is located and shares one 11 room house with redacted and three others, is Gaian harmony in awareness of the living transitions our souls are participating in these days of Our time.(!) And the understanding that the purpose of life is to have fun.

Here you find access to everything about the world they won't tell you as personal and world change accelerates as it never has before and never will again. Our souls, including yours, chose to incarnate at this time for its learnings.

Call redacted at redacted if you are interested and compatible with an apartment in this environment with this kind of energy."

Whew! That's some mighty powerful Gaian weed-whacked drivel!

Never Mind!

2011-05-23T21:37:00.001-04:00

Let's Split the Baby

2011-05-23T20:14:00.000-04:00

From Walburga's fave James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal:

"The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof has a "Religion and Sex Quiz" that aims to deny that sexual moralists can find support for their views in the Bible. Here's the first question:

1. The Bible's position on abortion is:

a. Never mentioned.

b. To forbid it along with all forms of artificial birth control.

c. Condemnatory, except to save the life of the mother.

The answer: "A. Abortion is never mentioned as such." That "as such" is a pretty big qualifier, but in a Solomonic spirit, we'd like to propose a truce: Antiabortion advocates will quit asserting the Bible backs their position, and in exchange, pro-abortion ones will drop the claim that the Constitution supports theirs."

Moonbats Raising 'Gender-Free' Kids

2011-05-23T19:23:00.000-04:00

A Canadian couple have decided that their new baby, Storm, will make up its own mind about what gender it wants to be. To enable this experiment, the parents are refusing to reveal the baby's gender.

"The only people who know are Storm’s brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2, a close family friend and the two midwives who helped deliver the baby in a birthing pool at their Toronto home on New Year’s Day."

"Witterick and Stocker believe they are giving their children the freedom to choose who they want to be, unconstrained by social norms about males and females. Some say their choice is alienating."

"They don’t want to isolate their kids from the world, but, when it’s meaningful, talk about gender.

This past winter, the family took a vacation to Cuba (!!!!) with Witterick’s parents. Since they weren’t fluent in Spanish, they flipped a coin at the airport to decide what to tell people. It landed on heads, so for the next week, everyone who asked was told Storm was a boy. The language changed immediately. “What a big, strong boy,” people said.

The moment a child’s sex is announced, so begins the parade of pink and barrage of blue. .."

Of course, the parents are dyed-in-the-wool lefties, who also vacation in Mexico with the Zapatistas (left-wing revolutionaries) and believe in 'unschooling,' which is rule-free chaos. Dad teaches at an alternative school "whose lessons are framed by social-justice issues around class, race and gender"

"“What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious,” says Stocker" Ummm....it's actually called parenting, you moonbat!

These folks are so misguided, I can't even comment. You'll have to read it for yourself. They are also media whores. Only a lefty moonbat would publicize such a stupid stunt.

Perverted Novel Paints Christ as Bisexual Libertine

2011-05-16T21:55:00.000-04:00

You think things can't get any worse, then something like this comes along. James Frey, whose 'memoir,' "A Million Little Pieces" was exposed as a hoax (but only after Oprah boosted it and it sold millions) has written what he calls a third Bible. He imagines what Christ's Second Coming might really look like.....if Christ was to come back as a bisexual and and usher in the age of orgies.

Apparently the Washington Post thinks it's just ducky.

James Frey mugshot

WaPo Critic Hails Novel 'Re-Imagining' Jesus As Bisexual Free-love Advocate NewsBusters.org

Pierce the Darkness

2011-05-15T17:09:00.001-04:00

Northampton, and its Valley partner, Amherst, are often referred to as Sodom and Gomorrah.

May 7, 2011 saw the 30th Annual "Gay Pride" March in the streets of Northampton. The darkness of that town was manifest. Children were part of the shameful display, as trophies for those who cannot conceive in their sterile unions.

But.....the Light will always overcome darkness.

I invite all who are able, to attend The Ninth Annual Diocesan Eucharistic Rosary Procession.

Sunday, June 12, 2011 rain or shine
2:00PM to approx. 4:30PM
The Church of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (formerly Sacred Heart)
99 King Street
Northampton

The Procession will conclude with Adoration and Benediction.
A reception will follow.

The Holy Eucharist will be carried in solemn procession through the streets of Northampton, proclaiming the Good News to those who live in darkness and the shadow of death.

This is a very powerful witness. It will boost your spirits.

The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come!"

In the Name of Me, Selfishness, and Options

2011-05-07T15:31:00.002-04:00

Slut Pride: Have We Really Come to This?

2011-05-06T16:04:00.000-04:00

Don't get me wrong. Rape is rape. It's a violent crime. It's not about sex, it's about power. It's assault & battery.

But this new "Slut Walk" movement is too much. Some cop in Toronto makes an offhand remark that women probably wouldn't get raped if they didn't dress like sluts, so now there are "sluts and their male supporters" protesting in the streets.

Quoth MSNBC:BOSTON — An international series of protests known as SlutWalks, sparked by a Toronto police officer's flippant comment that women should avoid dressing like "sluts" to avoid being raped or victimized, is taking root in the United States. (of course, the USA is the breeding ground for PC)

Some women and men who protest dress in nothing more remarkable than jeans and T-shirts, while others wear provocative or revealing outfits to bring attention to "slut-shaming," or shaming women for being sexual, and the treatment of sexual assault victims.

"It was taking the blame off the rapist and on the victim," said Nicole Sullivan, 21, a student at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and an organizer of the SlutWalk planned Saturday in that city. "So we are using these efforts to reclaim the word 'slut.'" (are there any movements afoot to reclaim modesty and virtue? No? I guess not.)

The police officer made his comments in January to a group of York University students at a safety forum. He later apologized, but his comments were publicized widely on Facebook and Twitter. They inspired a march in Toronto last month that drew more than 3,000 people, as well as SlutWalks since then in Dallas, Asheville, North Carolina, and Ottawa, Ontario.

'Shame and degradation'

In addition to Boston, marches are planned in cities including Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, Reno, Nevada, and Austin, Texas.

"The event is in protest of a culture that we think is too permissive when it comes to rape and sexual assault," said Siobhan Connors, 20, of Lynn, Massachusetts, another Boston organizer. "It's to bring awareness to the shame and degradation women still face for expressing their sexuality ... essentially for behaving in a healthy and sexual way." (no, it's about displaying your candy in public and expecting men to ignore you)

The events are similar to "Take Back the Night" rallies and other marches that aim to bring attention to sexual violence. But there are key differences.

SlutWalkers have danced to hip-hop, worn T-shirts with the word "slut" and held signs that read "sluts pay taxes." Some women have skated around on inline skates in lingerie, while their male supporters wore shirts reading, "I love sluts." (gee, what horny pervert doesn't?)

The rallies typically end with speakers and workshops on stopping sexual violence and calling on law enforcement agencies not to blame victims after sexual assaults.
Family event (Mom and Grandma were sluts before me)

In San Francisco, SlutWalk organizers want to make their protest a family event. "Singles, couples, parents, sisters, brothers, children, friends," the SlutWalk SF BAY Facebook page announces. "Come walk or roll or strut or holler or stomp with us."

Connors said organizers had initially planned for about 100 people to attend the Boston event; by Thursday, more than 2,300 had responded to a Facebook shout-out. Another 2,000 people have similarly committed to attend the SlutWalk Seattle on June 19. (Do none of these people have jobs?)

"Everything happened organically," Sullivan said. (organically....what happens when manure is spread around)

The officer who made the comments, Constable Michael Sanguinetti, was disciplined but remains on duty, Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash said Thursday."We said at the time that his comments were entirely unacceptable, that they didn't reflect in any way what we train and teach our people," Pugash said.

'Pimp Walk' (the logical next thing)

Pugash wouldn't comment on the movement the officer's comments have spawned.

The Boston SlutWalk group has had to delete several "inappropriate comments" about women and faced criticism from a group that promised to organize a counter "Pimp Walk" in Boston, Connors said.

"We think it was put there as a joke, but it's disturbing that a number of young people still feel that way," said Connors, referring to sexist comments left on the page.

Pages dedicated to other cities' SlutWalks also deleted inappropriate comments. (good thing I'm ignorant of Facebook)

Altar Girls Drive Out Altar Boys...and Vocations

2011-05-03T19:44:00.000-04:00

Bishops Issue Statement on Controversial State Website

2011-04-30T15:39:00.000-04:00

My comments and emphases:

The following statement has been issued today (April 29, 2011) by the Board of Governors of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, OFM Cap., of the Archdiocese of Boston, Bishop George W. Coleman of the Diocese of Fall River, Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell of the Diocese of Springfield, and Bishop Robert J. McManus of the Diocese of Worcester in response to the controversy surrounding the government-funded website MariaTalks.com: (finally showing some back-bone)

The critical social issue of teen pregnancy warrants the attention of the entire community. However, not all means proposed for solving this challenge conform to the dignity of the human person. A great number of elected state officials and concerned citizens have objected to a government-funded website intended to respond to teen pregnancy rates in Massachusetts. This website employs demeaning and sexually explicit terminology, an approach that rightly deserves the criticism it is receiving. This tactic only succeeds in talking down to minors under the mistaken assumption that the young are incapable of responding positively to challenging and uplifting appeals to their better nature.

The problems at stake here go much deeper than word choice and phrasing; a simple re-editing cannot resolve them. Those defending the website argue that it simply conveys medically accurate information, but this view is contested. As observed by those who seek the well-being of children and yet oppose the website, it promotes an overall message that sexual conduct for unmarried minors is acceptable whenever it “feels right.” Additionally, the website describes abortion in misleadingly opaque terms, touting the procedure as “easier than you think,” and emphasizes ways to obtain an abortion without parental knowledge. The website fails to acknowledge that many women, especially those undergoing an abortion in their teenage years, suffer long-term negative consequences. Furthermore, the website limits the list of available resources to organizations that advocate for or provide abortion and contraception.

For these reasons, we strongly support and join with those in the public policy arena who urge the state to eliminate funding for the website and who are asking the state to assist in its removal. We do not agree that the only choices available are limited to keeping the website running with tax dollars or doing nothing at all to address the problem of teen pregnancy. The state should work together with all sectors of the community, not just those with a vested interest in offering teens contraception and abortion, to find solutions that respect the dignity of young people and their capacity to make good and wholesome choices.

AMEN!

Why Catholic Schools Matter

2011-04-28T22:03:00.000-04:00

The always excellent City Journal has an article by Sol Stern on Catholic schools in New York City, their importance, their successes, their precarious future. Some excerpts:

"Given these financial and contractual restrictions, what accounts for St. Aloysius’s muscular academic performance? One factor is doubtless a time-intensive and hands-on education program. Recognizing that inner-city children need extra time on task, the school offers after-school tutoring for the early grades, and it extends the school day for students in grades six through eight until 5 pm. Middle school students must attend a four-week summer session followed by a two-week summer camp. St. Aloysius also offers intense guidance services to help eighth-graders apply to high schools, particularly to the city’s more selective Jesuit schools, and it provides tuition aid for needy graduates, who repay it by returning and doing volunteer work with the younger children......

I was able to appreciate the power of that mission-driven culture when I attended one of St. Aloysius’s Friday afternoon staff meetings. The teachers and the principals were working on revising a statement of core principles for the school, derived from Jesuit education doctrines, called “The Graduate at Graduation.” The purpose of the document is to remind St. Aloysius teachers in every grade of the character traits and intellectual qualities that they should develop in their students before graduation. Teachers discussed the “competencies” that graduates should exhibit in areas like intellectual growth, commitment to social justice (as defined by the Gospels, not by Teachers College), openness to others, and religious knowledge. As several teachers made clear, the underlying premise of the document was to nurture good “Christian behavior” in the children. At one point, several teachers brought up the Jesuit ideal of becoming “men and women for others” and how that might translate into specific guidelines for classroom instruction. There then ensued a wide-ranging conversation about the meaning of generosity in students’ everyday behavior.

I listened to the conversation with amazement and thought about how unlikely this would have been in any public school. The constitutional prohibitions against religion-based activities in tax-supported institutions wouldn’t be the only obstacle; another would be the entirely self-imposed taboo against encouraging such virtues and practices as sexual restraint, hard work, and charity. At St. Aloysius, I heard ordinary elementary school educators get to the heart of what it means to be fully educated, as well as how their school might be able to mold young people into responsible citizens of a diverse democracy."

To read the full article, click Here

Close Churches! Build Gymnasiums!

2011-04-25T19:33:00.002-04:00

The Diocese of Springfield, MA closed 5 churches in Northampton, consolidating them into one new parish, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, at the site of the former Sacred Heart Church on King Street. Many shook their heads, not only at the closings, but also, at the choice of Sacred Heart to house the new combined parish. Many other church buildings were larger, more beautiful. Parking was cited as the reason for abandoning St. Mary's, in the city's most prominent location. St. Mary's presides grandly at the crest of a hill, her spires piercing the clouds above downtown Noho. Other parishes, such as Annunciation, in Florence, had ample parking, but Sacred Heart was chosen nonetheless.

Now it appears, the diocese has had plans all along for remaking Sacred Heart's modest campus. The old school building had been torn down years ago. The old convent, which had been converted into offices, was torn down last year. And now, the rectory and the Christian Life Center are to be torn down.

Why? To build a 14,000 square foot parish hall, and accommodate more cars.

I can think of no good reason to do any of this.

What's more, I learned about these plans from an alternative website, Northampton Media, not from the diocese.

Here's a diagram of the proposed construction:

As you can see, the proposed parish center is larger than the church.

What, oh what, are they thinking? Where will the money come from?

According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette:

"The work will be paid for from the proceeds of a parish fund drive (oh, yeah...how many people whose home parishes were shut down will be eager to donate to this useless parish hall?), the anticipated sale of a building, and reserve funds.."
In addition to the exterior work, St. Elizabeth parish will see a bevy of interior renovations, including a redesign of the sanctuary, new pews, enhanced lighting and a handicapped-accessible restroom."

"Redesign of the sanctuary?" In other words, it will be wreck-o-vated.

God help the Catholics still left in Northampton. It's clear the bishop has abandoned their souls and their inheritances, feeding them instead a mess of pottage.

How Low Can You Get!!!

2011-04-20T21:34:00.000-04:00

A left-lib website, Wonkette, has this shockingly disgraceful article about Trig Palin on his 3rd birthday:

"That strange man yelling unintelligibly at Sarah Palin? He’s merely a lowly shepherd proclaiming the birth of our savior. Today is the day we come together to celebrate the snowbilly grifter’s magical journey from Texas to Alaska to deliver to the America the great gentleman scholar Trig Palin. Is Palin his true mother? Or was Bristol? (And why is it that nobody questions who the father is? Because, either way, Todd definitely did it.) It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are privileged to live in a time when we can witness the greatest prop in world political history.

“Why just celebrate tax day today, April 18th? It’s also Trig Paxson Van Palin’s 3rd birthday. His mom went to a lot of trouble to leak amniotic fluid over 8 states to make sure that he arrived in this world somewhat alive,” writes Wonkette operative “Barbara_i,” reminding us of the occasion. “Sarah went to a whole lot of trouble to name him ‘Van Palin,’ a ‘Van Halen’ reference he will never get.” Indeed.

Enjoy yourself today, Trig. Have fun! Get drunk (on purpose this time)! We can hardly wait for 15 years from now, when you will finally be able to vote and will be sent off by your mother’s junta to fight the Union in the Great Alaska War. It’ll be quite a loss. You’re the smartest one in that family."

This is so despicable, I am at a loss for words. Contact Wonkette's advertisers and complain. I understand several have already withdrawn.

.

Don't Do This in Rome

2011-04-19T22:18:00.000-04:00

SNAP Shrink Imprisoned for Child Porn

2011-04-15T16:39:00.001-04:00

SNAP Psychiatrist Sent to Prison
Dr. Steve Taylor, a Louisiana psychiatrist who has worked with the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP), has been sentenced to two years in prison for possession of child pornography.

The news drew the following response from Catholic League president Bill Donohue:

"How many more morally debased psychiatrists are working with SNAP? Did SNAP leaders know about the leisure-time activities of Dr. Taylor? When did they know and what did they do about it? It's time we learned the truth. What we know already is nauseating.

"In 2008, Dr. Taylor's computer was seized by the authorities after they learned that he was downloading child pornography. He was jailed on 107 counts at the time, and in September of last year a grand jury indicted him. The court accepted a plea bargain from him this week.

"Dr. Taylor got off easy, at least according to his own standards. In 2003, speaking for SNAP clients, he argued that the confidentiality of the confessional seal should not be respected by the law. In a contemptuous statement against the Catholic Church, he voiced his objections to a unanimous decision by the Louisiana House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice protecting the confidential communication of priests, ministers, rabbis and other clergy members. He said at the time that the seal has to be broken because "We have faces now."

"Well, SNAP, we now have the faces of the children your colleague downloaded to feed his sick habits. If breaking the priest-penitent privilege is something you support, will you now support turning over the patient records of Dr. Taylor? Will you support a probe of this matter? What if there is more evidence against him? What if there are more victims? You're always looking for new victims, aren't you? Strike when the iron is hot—who cares about psychiatrist-patient privilege?"

Read more about SNAP

What 'Tolerance' Looks Like

2011-04-14T21:12:00.001-04:00

Speak Against the 'Day of Silence'

2011-04-14T20:55:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow, April 15, 2011, homosexual activists will promote a day of propaganda in schools across America.

If you are a parent with school-age children, you must inform yourself about what goes on in the name of 'tolerance and diversity.'

Mass Resistance is a fearless organization which tracks the homosexual agenda. Visit their website for more information on what you can do to stop the so-called Day of Silence.

Same-Sex Romeo & Juliet at St. Michael's College

2011-04-13T22:06:00.000-04:00

From the student newspaper of St. Michael's College in Vermont, comes this disturbing tale of faith lost, homosexualist propaganda swallowed, and souls betrayed.

"We all know the tragic story of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” but you may have never seen it quite like this. The upcoming production of “Romeo and Juliet” at St. Michael’s will focus on the forbidden love between two female actresses. (of course, this was bound to happen sometime, somewhere, but why at a Catholic college?)

Christopher Edwards is the guest director of this production. Edwards, the administrator of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival and the artistic director of the Point of Entry Theater, said that the female energy was undeniable at the recent tryouts for “Romeo and Juliet.” (yeah, that female 'energy' will get you into trouble everytime)
“I didn’t set out to do an all female ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or same-sex theme,” he said. “[But] the women were strong.” (i.e., he was turned on)

Edwards said he was excited (see above) to give females the opportunity to act in a role they may never be able to play otherwise. Because of the lack of female roles written into Shakespeare’s play, many female actresses would have been turned away in an ordinary production of “Romeo and Juliet.”

One could argue that this production strays from its original context or format, but some say it is in the spirit of the classic tradition.

“In Shakespeare’s time,” said Cathy Hurst, the associate professor of the theater department of fine arts, “all of the roles, male and female, were played by men.”

Yet unlike in Shakespeare’s time, the actresses are not pretending to be men in this production. Edwards said he wanted the actresses to allow themselves to embody their roles, in whatever way they felt was right.

“Shakespeare is hard enough,” Edwards said, “If the actress sets up to try to be a girl pretending to be a man, she will miss 99 percent of that amazing play.” (hmmm...why not just get a man to play Romeo?)

Because of this, Edwards said he encourages the actresses to be themselves and to explore their emotions through these roles. (he wants to watch them make out)

“In our society, women are conditioned into wanting to be beautiful and feminine,” Edwards said. He has also made the actors and actresses train in martial arts for this production, providing them with the opportunity to learn acting skills that would ordinarily be taught only to men.

He said he hopes training in martial arts and the overall strong sense of masculinity of the play will allow the females to step out of the identities society has given them. (God has given them their identities)

“It’s challenging to find the femininity in a character that’s written to be so masculine and aggressive,” said Katherine “Kit” Rivers, a first year, who has been cast as Romeo.

Rivers said Edwards told her she may be cast as a male, but she never imagined she would be cast as Romeo. Rivers said she was excited to take on the challenge.

For many on this (allegedly) Catholic campus, this production may seem like an artistic or political statement about same-sex relationships. (ya think?) But that is not necessarily the case.

“People may come and take a political statement away [from this play],” Edwards said, “but at the end of the day, it’s a love story.” (no, you are making it into a propaganda piece)

Rivers said St. Michael’s is a great campus for this kind of experiment. The liberal atmosphere of not only the college, but the state of Vermont as well, gives these actresses and actors the ability to go all out with this production, she said. Rivers also added that this idea has been done before, there have been other productions of a same-sex “Romeo and Juliet.” (snarl...)

Edwards and Rivers both spoke about the societal view of same-sex marriage in America.
“In our country right now, there is a movement to say there is something wrong with [same sex marriage or union],” Edwards said. “This is a form of forbidden love.” (it is a sin, a serious sin)

Forbidden love is the theme of “Romeo and Juliet,” as shown through the battle between family lines in the play. This adaptation adds another spin by focusing on one of the biggest issues in our society.

Yet weather (sic) one supports same-sex marriage is beside the point. (no, it IS the point)

“Regardless of what genders have fallen in love, the bottom line is that they have fallen in love,” Rivers said. (fallen into sin)

Rev. Brian Cummings said this is not the first time this sort of production has been reenacted at St. Michael’s. (for shame)
“In 1995, the role of Jesus in Godspell was played by a female,” Cummings said. (Lord have mercy!)

This was due to the lack of male student actors available for the part. (somehow I doubt that) Cummings said it is common for women to outnumber men in many student programs. (when a director can't find suitable talent for a particular production, why not choose another play?)

“I think we should remember this is an artistic and practical decision,” Cummings said, adding that the students should be supported in this learning experience. (learning to approve of sin is supported at Catholic colleges?)

“I am trying to use aspects and themes and energies that are accessible to younger generations,” Edwards said.

Edwards said he plans to use the cultural and artistic influences of hip-hop culture and the bright colors of street art to better embody a production aimed toward the younger generation.

Don't send your kids to St. Michael's College, unless you don't care about their souls.

Holy Celibate Male Meets Bridezilla

2011-04-12T19:10:00.002-04:00

One of Father Z's most hilarious posts. Remember when you were a kid, and you started laughing while drinking milk, and you would snort the milk up your nose....and then out your nose? That's how funny I found this post!

Father's comments are in red

"[Raising my eyes to heaven even as I grope for that third rail with my outstretched toe.]

From a readerette:

"I’m having a bit of a conflict with my bride-to-be best friend, who has gone Bridezilla on me. She asked me to be her Maid of Honour, and she agreed on the conditions (I could only witness her marriage, nothing else because I’m a student with no time or money to plan or pay for her bridal shower and stagette, and no immodest dress). When it came time for dress shopping and only being able to find strapless dresses, we agreed that I could wear a matching bolero. [Dunno "bolero" ... ummm ... really big hat? Some sort of bull-fighting cape? Okay.. I have no idea what a bolero is, but I assume it will make you look less of a tart while wearing it.]

That was eight months ago, and now that the wedding is almost here, she has decided she wants all of her bridal party to having matching necklines. [Lord, strengthen me to the end of this...] She is strongly convinced “it will look funny” if we don’t all wear strapless dresses and won’t let me wear the bolero in the church or for pictures.

Things are getting ugly and I’m trying to be patient with her because I know these are stressful times. [I know what you mean.] I know strapless dresses are inappropriate, especially in a Catholic Church.

This brings me to the other problem. [There's more?] When the dress was undergoing alterations, the seamstress and I didn’t make a big fuss that the huge bra support-band [?!?!?] was visible in the back because it was going to be fully covered by the bolero. It really should not be worn without the bolero. [The ... ummm... right... ]

I want to make one last attempt to try to make her to understand why it’s important to wear modest clothing in the church, but I don’t know what to tell her, or how to tell her. Her priest doesn’t want to get involved with this either, [NO! Really? How come? Actually, I'd be more concerned if he wanted to get into this.] so I’m on my own. What would you recommend? [Who... me?]

If that doesn’t work, given the situation, would it still be inappropriate for me to participate in the wedding party in a strapless dress with the bra visible in the back, [I am guessing that the strapless dress and no bra sort of defeats the aim of modesty.] or should I stick to what I know to be appropriate and quietly bow out of the wedding party?"

SIGH

Okay… I have the perfect solution. King Solomon himself could not do better, and it doesn’t involve threatening to cut anything in half, especially straps of any kind or … purpose.

Switch to the groom’s party and wear a tux.

Seriously, if the bride wants you to wear what you consider immodest clothing in church, and you don’t want to wear immodest clothing in church, then don’t.

Graciously bow out.
Still on the serious note … I am sorry that this is causing strain in your friendship. You want to be part of this happy event, but you are in a bind. You have to chose if your friend won’t budge.

Thanks for wanting to be modest.

Part of situations like this is the incessant imposition on women and girls that they have to look like tarts. Another part of situations like this is that the Catholic Church has in so many places abandoned decorum and a true sense of liturgical worship, has neglected to instruct people what sacraments are, that women and girls think they can and even should tart-it-up in church.

No tarts in church, please. Well… let me rephrase that. Tarts are welcome. We are all sinners, after all, and sinners are welcome in their Father’s house. BUT, for any tarts reading this… if you are a tart, please don’t dress like a tart for weddings. Please?

And then there are the funerals. "

Beware of The American Catholic Council

2011-04-11T17:49:00.002-04:00

I'm back, after a break from blogging due to sheer exhaustion. But spring is here, the car-sized mound of snow in my back yard has finally melted, and my neighbors have resumed their outdoor beer-and-bonfire parties.

Hey, two out of three ain't bad.....

Some things never change. Among them, the dissenters in the AmChurch. They have a new incarnation (ew, poor word choice!), having morphed from Call to Action to The American Catholic Council. I learned of this group from kind blog-follower, 'Newt.'

They are gathering in June 2011 in Detroit, paying homage to Call to Action's founding.

To save you from having to attend, here are some tidbits of what you can expect from ACC:

The Church is in the world, not above it. (gag! choke! hurl!)
Be Inspired by Great Speakers: (is this the best they can do?)Hans Kung, Joan Chittister,Anthony Padovano, Jeanette Rodriuez,
James Carroll and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

And.....drumroll, please............A Catholic Bill of Rights!

1. Primacy of Conscience. Every Catholic has the right and responsibility to
develop an informed conscience and to act in accord with it. (unless of course, it conflicts with orthodoxy, then go ahead, do what you want)

2. Community. Every Catholic has the right and responsibility to participate
in a faith community and the right to responsible pastoral care. (is this the religious equivalent of Obamacare?)

3. Universal Ministry. Every Catholic has the right and responsibility to
proclaim the Gospel and to respond to the community’s call to ministerial
leadership. (womyn priestesses)

4. Freedom of Expression. Every Catholic has the right to freedom of
expression and the freedom to dissent. (not while remaining a faithful Catholic)

5. Sacraments. Every Catholic has the right and responsibility to participate
in the fullness of the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church. (which means womyn get to be priestesses)

6. Reputation. Every Catholic has the right to a good name and to due process. (due process? are we in jail or something?)

7. Governance. Every Catholic and every Catholic community have the right
to a voice in the selection of leaders and in the manner in which
governance and decision making are exercised. (dream on! whatever you're smoking, it's some leftover 'Spirit of Vatican II')

8. Participation. Every Catholic has the right and responsibility to share in the
interpretation of the Gospel and Church tradition. (OUCH! These people are seriously deranged! Do they think we're Southern Baptists?)

9. Councils. Every Catholic has the right to summon and speak in assemblies
where diverse voices can be heard. (speaking in assemblies.....is that anything like speaking in tongues while speaking in assemblies?)

10. Guarantee of rights. Church leaders shall respect the rights and responsibilities
of the baptized and their faith communities. (no one's gonna tell ME what to do!)

So, there it is. Superannuated adolescents throwing a nutty.

Time to Say "NO!" to Planned Parenthood

2011-03-03T21:19:00.002-05:00

If This Doesn't Make You Laugh...You Must Be Dead!

2011-02-28T20:44:00.003-05:00

h/t Creative Minority Report

Eucharistic Adoration Transforms Acushnet Parish

2011-02-28T20:37:00.001-05:00

A little church in a small town, St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church was facing tough times. The congregation was dwindling, and Mass attendance was at an all-time low. The empty confessional was collecting dust, and donations were dismal.

But then the unthinkable happened.

Today, St. Francis Xavier is one of the most vibrant parishes in the diocese with standing-room only Masses, confessional lines, a busload of parishioners participating in the March for Life, and an abundance of freewill donations that will make them debt-free by April.

"Jesus is on the property," said Mary Cardoza, the spark that inflamed the parish. "We are a church on fire."

'I was always a zombie catholic'

Brought up in a Catholic family, Mary Cardoza attended Catholic schools.

"I had one foot in the world and one foot in the Church," she said.

But although she fulfilled her Sunday obligation, she never participated in church activities and often rebelled against the laws of the Church.

"I was always a zombie Catholic," she said laughing.

When she turned 40, she decided it was time to cultivate a relationship with God.

"You only go to Him when you are in trouble," she said.

She began meeting with a group for moms after church, who began teaching her about the faith.

It was on a group pilgrimage to the Divine Mercy Chapel in Stockbridge, where she had a life-changing experience. A message board of activities listed "Eucharistic Adoration".

"What's Adoration?" she asked the group. "Jesus is really in the Eucharist," they answered. "But what do you do?" she asked. "You talk to Him," they said. "Okay, so I go in there, kneel down and something happens — a spiritual experience. I'm on fire for an hour,' she said." I knew without a doubt Jesus was in the Eucharist. He was real. We were connected."

Back at home, she had no idea what to do with her newfound faith.

After Sunday Mass, her pastor, the Rev. Daniel Lacroix, asked her to attend a Stewardship Committee meeting.

"So I go to this meeting, and it is the most depressing meeting I've ever been to," she said. "They start telling me all the stuff that is wrong — church attendance and collections were down; no one was going to Confession; not many people were attending church activities. I go home and cry."

But then, she said her prayers were answered with the solution to all that ailed her parish.

"I go back to Father Dan and tell him I have the answer — Adoration," she said.

Lacroix offered her the use of a little room in the church basement, an exit hall to the elevator, but he had no funds to spare.

Shortly after, Cardoza received a phone call from a neighbor who had a package for her. It contained step-by-step instructions on how to start Adoration in your church.

"Her uncle had mailed it to her 10 years prior," said Cardoza. "She had kept it until she found out about me."

The next problem was that they needed kneelers, which cost about $500 each.

She received a call from another friend, who had started up a conversation with a woman wearing a Divine Mercy pin at Dunkin Donuts. When her friend mentioned that her church needed kneelers, the lady gave her a number to call.

"I called the number, and the Franciscans Sisters of the Immaculate in Fairhaven told me to pick up four kneelers that night," Cardoza said.

Now, all they needed were adorers.

Cardoza spoke to the parishioners at all the Masses that weekend. She needed adorers to serve one-hour increments from Friday at 9:30 a.m. through Saturday at 3 p.m.

"Personally, I think Adoration is the best kept secret," she told them. "I give Him all my problems; He gives me answers. I give Him all my fears; He gives me peace beyond any human understanding. I give Him my tears; He gives me joy. If you're looking for a place to refuel with God's graces to get through another hectic week, then Adoration is the place to be."

Fifty people signed up.

In 2008, Lacroix was assigned to a parish on Cape Cod, and the Rev. Monsignor Gerard P. O'Connor became pastor of St. Francis Xavier's.

"Monsignor looked at me and said, 'Adoration in an exit hall? Put Jesus in the church,'" recalled Cardoza. "He loves Jesus with his whole heart and soul, and he loves his people. He puts Eucharist first and makes it the center, which brought the people back. As soon as he put Jesus in the church, Adoration exploded."

Read the whole article here for many inspiring testimonies of those whose lives were changed by Adoration.

Try This in Front of a Mosque, Why Dontcha?

2011-02-26T15:50:00.000-05:00

Anti-Life Priest was Gay Prostitute

2011-02-19T16:31:00.002-05:00

Pro-aborts Favor Death by Ramen

2011-02-19T16:15:00.001-05:00

That zany dude at Creative Minority Report has done it again with this satire:

Euthanoodle - Let's Poison Ramen Noodles

In what will surely become one of the most infamous comments ever made about abortion, Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin said yesterday that it is better to have an abortion than make a child be forced to live “eating Ramen noodles” and “mayonnaise sandwiches.”

So the CMR Institute for Advanced Suicidal Studies is now endorsing a plan for the government to poison all stocks of Ramen noodles so that the poor souls eating Ramen Noodles will find a merciful and quick end to their miserable existence.

CMR is calling this new form of euthanasia via noodles "THE EUTHANOODLE." (Patent pending)

The way CMR and Gwen Moore see it is we're doing them a favor because they don't even realize that their lives aren't worth living. The poor dears are so ignorant and clearly don't make enough money that we can even hand out Ramen noodles for free to people who look like Ramen noodle people, if you know what I mean. That way we can feel good about ourselves for our charity and they can feel...dead.

Hopefully CMR's endorsement of the euthanoodle will encourage others to have Ramen Noodle Parties where they'd invite the people they suspect of being miserable or living lives not worth living. Or if someone you know sometimes struggles at the end of a paycheck to feed their children, make it a EUTHANOODLE night.

Remember, they're better off dead than eating oriental pasta. (ROTFLMAO!)

Come on America, let's EUTHANOODLE our way back to prosperity by ridding ourselves of anyone who might go hungry.

Shame on Anti-life Priest Fr. Raymond Gravel

2011-02-19T14:57:00.001-05:00

Fr. Raymond Gravel

According to an article published today:

A (alleged)Roman Catholic priest (not wearing the clerical collar)who claims he was falsely characterized as "pro-abortion" has filed a $500,000 libel lawsuit against LifeSiteNews.com that could shut down the pro-life news source.

In a message to its readers, Toronto-based LifeSiteNews explained that the damages sought by Fr. Raymond Gravel, a Quebec priest and former member of Canada's Parliament, is the equivalent of a full year's budget and would put the anti-abortion news service out of business.

Gravel admits in his complaint that he is "pro-choice" but argues he is not "pro-abortion." (oh, puh-leeeze!)

John-Henry Westen, LifeSiteNews.com co-founder and editor-in-chief, told WND he believes the case has serious ramifications for free speech, with the potential of dictating how the pro-life movement describes its opponents.

"We are going to defend this case vigorously," he said. "We stand behind what we have written."

LifeSiteNews, which also has an editorial office in Washington, D.C., contends it has largely reported on what Gravel himself has publicly stated.

In a 2004 radio interview, the priest said: "I am pro-choice and there is not a bishop on earth that will prevent me from receiving Communion, not even the pope." (what an arrogant horse's patoot!)

The lawsuit is against LifeSiteNews' Canadian organization.

During his political career, Gravel was rated as "pro-abortion" by the political arm of Canada's pro-life movement, LifeSiteNews pointed out. He has also repeatedly has criticized his church's teachings on homosexuality and abortion.
The news source said Gravel also defended the awarding of Canada's highest civilian award to the country's "father of abortion," Henry Morgentaler. (Gravel's bishop needs to discipline him)

Gravel, who complained about LifeSiteNews during a speech on the floor of the House of Commons, blamed the newssite for his exit from politics. He said in April 20, 2009, that his bishop received a letter from the Vatican "which forced me to retire from political life." (maybe Gravel's bishop needs to laicize him) NOTE: Gravel was suspended from priestly duites in 2008

Attached to the letter, he said, "was a file almost exclusively in English made up of negative comments about me … which came from those ultra-conservative media."

He also blamed the newssite for the removal from his position as a chief catechist for his diocese. (let us praise God and Life Site News for this!)

In its appeal to readers, LifeSiteNews said that despite the fact "that LSN has made it clear that we wish no harm to Fr. Gravel, and that, in fact, we are concerned for his wellbeing, he has launched a suit that could severely, even permanently disrupt our life- and culture-saving work." (won't that look good on Gravel's 'eternal resume')

"At LSN we are completely dependent upon Divine Providence; we usually have just enough in our bank account to get by until our next quarterly fundraiser (if even!). We simply have no money to spend on potentially crippling legal fees."
The first preliminary hearing in the case was held Thursday in Joliette, Quebec.

Intolerance

2011-02-16T21:03:00.000-05:00

“The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes;
she is tolerant in practice because she loves.

The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle because they do not believe; they are intolerant in practice because they do not love.”
Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

Wrong Isn't Right

2011-02-13T13:49:00.000-05:00

Gay rights groups attack iPhone confession app for Roman Catholics
Group claims app fosters 'anti-gay spiritual abuse' as it shoots up list of popular downloads

The launch of an iPhone app that guides Catholics through confession has prompted a furious response from gay rights groups, who accuse it of "promoting anti-gay spiritual abuse".

"Confession: A Roman Catholic App", which costs £1.19 from the Apple iTunes store, has shot to 26 in the download charts, behind Sims 3 and Resident Evil 4: Platinum.

The app allows "a personalised examination of conscience for each user", and has already won the backing of senior members of the Catholic church. A spokesman for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales said it was a "useful tool to help people prepare for the sacrament of reconciliation". Among the questions users are asked is: "Have I been guilty of any homosexual activity?"

Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a group that campaigns on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people, accused the app of "helping to create neurotic individuals who are ashamed of who they are".

"This is cyber spiritual abuse that promotes backward ideas in a modern package," said Besen. "Gay Catholics don't need to confess, they need to come out of the closet and challenge anti-gay dogma. The false idea that being gay is something to be ashamed of has destroyed too many lives. This iPhone app is facilitating and furthering the harm."

Gay rights groups have become concerned at the use of technology to target minorities. Besen pointed to the Manhattan Declaration app, which was released last October on the back of a 5,000-word petition drawn up by several Christian groups, and opposed LGBT rights and gay marriage. A furore among liberal commentators prompted iTunes to pull the app from its store.

A spokesman for the Confession App's creator declined to comment. However, the company has insisted it did not write the questions, which were posed by Catholic priests.

LINK

This Could Be My Diocese...O wait..it IS!

2011-02-12T15:24:00.001-05:00

Reagan on Socialized Medicine

2011-02-11T17:27:00.000-05:00

Phil Lawler's Tribute to Larry Filiault

2011-01-29T15:35:00.000-05:00

Phil Lawler posted this article on his blog:

This year Larry Filiault organized a busload of pro-lifers from around Greenfield, Massachusetts, to attend the March for Life in Washington, as he had done so many times in the past. But this year Larry himself couldn’t make that trip. Surrounded by his family and nourished by the sacraments, Larry died on January 22 (that date again!) of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Most of the people who read this column have probably never heard of Larry Filiault. But if you’re fortunate, perhaps you know someone like him. His death reminded me how much we all owe to the loyal foot-soldiers, the tireless organizers, the generous volunteers, the unsung heroes of the pro-life movement.

Until 2000, I had never spent much time in Greenfield. But when a Senate campaign took me all around Massachusetts searching for pro-life supporters, I quickly discovered that in that part of the state, Larry was always at the center of things.

You might recognize the type: Larry was the director of religious education simultaneously for two parishes. He ran a Catholic men’s group. He was an active board member and fundraiser for Catholic schools and pregnancy-resource centers. And whenever the pro-life movement needed something done, there was Larry with his sleeves rolled up.

After giving a talk at a luncheon that he had organized in 2000, I wanted to thank Larry before hurrying off to my next engagement. It took me quite a while to find him. He was alone in the kitchen, washing dishes. “I figured that I’m not needed out there,” Larry said, nodding toward the hall where the party was still going strong. “So I might as well do something useful.” Not needed? Baloney! If Larry hadn’t done the work beforehand, there might never have been a party that day. But now that the preparations were complete, and everyone else was enjoying the results of his efforts, Larry had already moved on to the next task. Typical.

A few years later, I ran into Larry at another social event and greeted him. He was stunned that I remembered his name, and began raving about my memory. This too was typical of this self-effacing man. Rather than entertaining the possibility that he himself might be worth remembering, instead Larry saw a virtue (a good memory) in someone else.

Well, let me now correct the record. Despite Larry’s efforts, I lost that 2000 Senate race. (The late Ted Kennedy edged me out, by a margin of just over 1 million votes.) But later I would tell my friends that during the political campaign I had identified the most effective, reliable pro-life activists in the state, who could form the backbone of some other candidate’s future campaign. Whenever I said that, I was thinking first and foremost of Larry Filiault. He died too soon to see the victory of the pro-life movement in America, but when that day comes, it will be due to the work of indefatigable, selfless people like him.

Please say a quick prayer for the repose of Larry’s soul, for the comfort of his widow Maureen, for their 4 children and their grandchildren. Say a prayer of thanksgiving for all the unsung heroes of the pro-life movement, who give so much and ask so little. And ask God to raise up a half-dozen good men for the pro-life movement in Greenfield. That’s about what it will take to replace Larry.

Larry Filiault

2011-01-28T20:16:00.002-05:00

A Pro-Life Warrior

2011-01-23T18:25:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, January 22, 2011, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade,
Larry Filiault passed on to his reward.

Larry and his wife Maureen founded Catholics for Life in Franklin County. Every January, on the frigid anniversary of the triumph of the culture of death, Larry would organize busloads of pro-lifers, especially youth, to go forth to witness that there is indeed light in the darkness.

He organized local vigils and pro-life walks. He was tireless in defense of the unborn.

All who were privileged to know him mourn his untimely death. He was 53 years old, and died from ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease. He received this diagnosis only six months ago. His health declined rapidly.

Yet, he accepted his cross bravely and, with faith in God's mercy, inspired all whose lives he touched.

At the hour of his death, he was surrounded by his family, his friends, his pastor, and, no doubt, a host of heavenly beings waiting to receive his soul.

"Having become perfect in a short while, he achieved the fullness of a long career; for his soul was pleasing to the Lord." Wisdom 4:13-14

Court Rules Against Springfield MA Diocese

2011-01-12T19:34:00.000-05:00

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (RNS) A federal judge ruled that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield must bow to the altar of historic preservation in a dispute over who controls the fate of shuttered church buildings.

The diocese sued the city in federal court after the city council voted to designate the shuttered Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church a historic district, presumably to stymie demolition and maintain a certain amount of control over future plans.

Diocesan officials accused the city of “religious gerrymandering,” and said the vote interfered with their constitutional rights by standing in the way of preservation of sacred symbols in and around the building.

In a 56-page ruling issued Tuesday (Jan. 4), U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor ruled in the city’s favor while noting the dispute placed at odds religious rights and secular interests.

“This lawsuit places the court at the intersection of two important, protected rights: the right of a religious entity to manage its places of worship ... and the right of the larger community to have a role in the preservation of a beloved landmark that was once a church,” the decision reads.

Our Lady of Hope held its last Mass in January 2010. It—along with dozens of other churches across the region—fell victim to declining demographics as the diocese closed some parishes and merged others.

Although the diocese never submitted any proposed plans for the site to the Historical Commission, church lawyers initially argued it flew in the face of canon law to even ask. Ponsor disagreed, saying merely asking to review proposals violated no laws.

However, the judge signaled the commission’s treatment of future proposals for the site by the diocese could trigger further court action.

“The response of the Historical Commission may change the constitutional picture significantly and entitle (the diocese) to further judicial consideration,” the decision said.

The decision did protect religious symbols and stained glass windows that adorn the building, however, which the diocese applauded in a written statement, along with the court’s concession that a historic designation created a hardship for the diocese.

Church spokesman Mark Dupont said, that as a practical matter, the diocese will not explore future plans for the site until the Vatican rules on parishioners’ appeal of the closing.

The Hateful Left

2011-01-11T15:39:00.000-05:00

City Journal continues to be a source for clear thinking and well-written commentary. Andrew Klavan takes on the media's shameful exploitation of the shootings in Arizona:

Judging from his website, I would guess that Jared Lee Loughner suffers from schizophrenia. The man who opened fire with a nine-millimeter Glock in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday was obsessed with mind control and bizarre, incomprehensible theories of currency and government. He read books by Hitler, Marx, Plato, and Orwell, among others. He did not believe in God. By all appearances, his mind was ruined by madness and his soul by evil. In any case, he murdered a nine-year-old child, a federal judge, and four others while wounding at least twelve, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a Blue Dog Democrat well liked on both sides of the aisle.

I wasn’t going to write anything about the incident because—unlike, say, the frequent and ongoing atrocities inspired by the very intent of Islamism or Communism—it didn’t seem to be a murder caused by any sort of coherent idea. Bad ideas have to be answered by the best ones we’ve got, or they continue to claim the minds of believers and the lives of the just. Madness and evil, on the other hand, are simply things that happen in this broken world. The only proper response is the one in King Lear: “Howl, howl, howl, howl!”

But while little useful can be said about the murders themselves, the rush to narrative of our dishonest and increasingly desperate leftist media does have to be addressed. The Left—which has been unable to discover any common feature uniting acts of Islamist violence worldwide—nonetheless instantly noticed a bridge between the Tucson shooting and its own political opponents. The Chicago Sun-Times ran a slavering editorial blaming “the right.” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson suggested that the killings were inspired by right-wing rhetoric. Politico’s Roger Simon did the same.

But the New York Times was perhaps the worst offender. On its front page, and in its patented smarmily suggestive style, it also implied that Loughner was somehow set off by conservative rhetoric and the Tea Party. “The original health care legislation stirred strong feelings that flared at angry town hall meetings held by many Democratic lawmakers during the summer of 2009,” said the Times, stroking its figurative chin over possible motives for the atrocity. “And there has been broader anger and suspicion rising about the government, its finances and its goals, with the discourse partially fueled by talk shows and Web sites. Tea Party activists also condemned the shooting.”

The Times’s Paul Krugman—who once encouraged readers to hang pro-war Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman in effigy—chimed in on his blog, deploring right-wing political rhetoric and linking a Sarah Palin–backed political ad to the murders. The Palin ad depicted rifle crosshairs on several lawmakers’ names, including Gifford’s, indicating that they were targeted to be voted out of office. (Prominent left-winger Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos website did much the same thing, putting a bull’s-eye on Gifford because her views were too moderate for him.)

To be sure, there is a lot of heated rhetoric in American politics, as ever. For instance, last spring, three Democratic congressmen cruelly slandered Tea Party members by accusing them of spitting on them and calling them racial slurs—a charge that was reported as true by the Times even after it was thoroughly debunked by videotapes of the event. Film director Rob Reiner compared the Tea Party to the Nazis on Bill Maher’s HBO show last October. And in May, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg infamously blamed an Islamist attempt to bomb Times Square on “someone who didn’t like health care or something.” Indeed, the Left’s hysterical response to all who disagree with it—that they are racist or sexist or “phobic” or somehow reminiscent of Hitler—has become so predictable that satirists, from the libertarian Greg Gutfeld to the liberal Jon Stewart, have made fun of it in routines.

But never mind that, because the Left’s sudden talk about incendiary political rhetoric in the wake of the Arizona shooting isn’t really about political rhetoric at all. It’s about the real-world failure of leftist policies everywhere—the bankrupting of nations and states by greedy unions and unfundable social programs, the destruction of inner cities by identity politics, and the appeasement of Muslim extremists in the face of worldwide jihad, not to mention the frequently fatal effects of delirious environmentalism. Europe is in debt and on fire. American citizens are in political revolt. Even the most left-wing president ever is making desperate overtures to his right.

But all that might be tolerable to leftists if they weren’t starting to lose control of the one weapon in which they have the most faith: the narrative. The narrative is what leftists believe in instead of the truth. If they can blame George W. Bush for the economic crisis, if they can make Sarah Palin out to be an idiot, if they can call the Tea Party racist until you think it must be true, they might yet retain power in spite of the international disgrace of their ideas. And though they still mostly dominate the narrative on the three broadcast networks, most cable stations, most newspapers, and much of Hollywood, nonetheless Fox News, talk radio, the Internet, and the Wall Street Journal have begun to respond in ways they can’t ignore.

That’s the hateful rhetoric they’re talking about: conservatives interrupting the stream of leftist invective in order to dismantle their arguments with the facts. As for leftists’ reaction to the Arizona shooting, call it Narrative Hysteria: a frantic attempt to capitalize on calamity by casting their opponents, not merely as racist or sexist or Islamophobic this time, but as somehow responsible for an act of madness and evil. Shame on them.

Be My Baby

2011-01-08T15:01:00.000-05:00

Monty Python's "Military Fairy"

2010-12-30T22:07:00.002-05:00

Semper Fi? Not Any More

2010-12-27T21:18:00.001-05:00

Boycott Pepsi Redux

2010-12-26T20:23:00.002-05:00

A kind commenter has provided this link to the offensive Pepsi SuperBowl commercial, which I blogged about on December 6:

UPDATE: January 8, 2011
Once again, this video is no longer available. News reports say it has been removed from consideration for the Super Bowl. Thanks be to God!
Feed Your Flock Doritos and Pepsi Max from Feed Your Flock on Vimeo.

A Catechism in Song: 12 Days of Christmas

2010-12-20T22:05:00.001-05:00

Here is an explanation of the song we all love at this time of year. No matter what challenges the "world" gives Catholics, we find a way to remember the -REASON FOR THE SEASON
The Twelve Days of Christmas - December 25 until January 6th Epiphany.

Catholics in England during the period 1558 to 1829 were prohibited by law to practice their faith either in public or private. It was illegal to be Catholic until Parliament finally emancipated Catholics in England in 1829.

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" was written in England as one of the "catechism songs" to help young Catholics learn the basics of their faith. In short, it was a coded-message, a memory aid. Since the song sounded like rhyming nonsense, young Catholics could sing the song without fear of imprisonment. The authorities would not know that it was a religious song.

"The 12 Days of Christmas" is in a sense an allegory. Each of the items in the song represents something significant to the"The 12 Days of Christmas" is in a sense an allegory. Each of the items in the song represents something significant to the teachings of the Catholic faith. The hidden meaning of each gift was designed to help Catholic children learn their faith. The better acquainted one is with the Bible, the more these interpretations have significance.

The song goes, "On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…"
The "true love" mentioned in the song doesn’t refer to an earthly suitor, but it refers to God Himself. The "me" who receives the presents refers to every baptized person. i.e. the Church.

1st Day: The partridge in a pear tree is Christ Jesus upon the Cross. In the song, Christ is symbolically presented as a mother partridge because she would feign injury to decoy a predator away from her nestlings. She was even willing to die for them.

The tree is the symbol of the fall of the human race through the sin of Adam and Eve. It is also the symbol of its redemption by Jesus Christ on the tree of the Cross.

2nd Day: The "two turtle doves" refers to the Old and New Testaments.

3rd Day: The "three French hens" stand for faith, hope and love—the three gifts of the Spirit that abide (1 Corinthians 13).

4th Day: The "four calling birds" refers to the four evangelists who wrote the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—which sing the song of salvation through Jesus Christ.

5th Day: The "five golden rings" represents the first five books of the Bible, also called the Jewish Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

6th Day: The "six geese a-laying" is the six days of creation.

7th Day: The "seven swans a-swimming" refers to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord.

8th Day: The "eight maids a milking " reminded children of the eight beatitudes listed in the Sermon on the Mount.

9th Day: The "nine ladies dancing" were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

10th Day: The "ten lords a-leaping" represents the Ten Commandments

11th Day: The "eleven pipers piping" refers to the eleven faithful apostles

12th Day: The "twelve drummers drumming" were the twelve points of belief expressed in the Apostles’ Creed: belief in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, made man, crucified, died and arose on the third day, that he sits at the right hand of the father and will come again, the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting.

This is the time of martyrs too, St. Stephen and the Holy Innocents. May 2011 be a year when we remember those who have suffered real losses for Christ. Let us continue to bring real peace and justice to earth by valuing the sanctity of life.

The 12 Days of PC

2010-12-14T21:58:00.000-05:00

What Will They Think of Next?

2010-12-12T21:27:00.000-05:00

Great concept, funny and pertinent. h/t The Last Papist Standing

Remember Pearl Harbor

2010-12-07T14:00:00.001-05:00

December 7, 1941...a day that will live in infamy.Or will it? Patriotism is no longer fashionable. We no longer have enemies, just misguided individuals acting out their rage at being oppressed by the Great Satan, America. Us. You and me.

The incomparable Don Feder muses on what might have happened if Pearl Harbor had been attacked today.

Some tidbits from his article:

• He (FDR) would have referred to December 7, 1941 as “a day pretty much like any other and let’s not make a big deal of it” and cautioned that, “I think that at a time when the country is anxious generally and going through a tough time, then fears can surface, suspicions can surface. We have to make sure that we don’t start turning on each other.” To put the emphasis where it properly belonged, the president would have said that anniversaries of Pearl Harbor would be officially designated National Days of Service.
• The minister of the church FDR attended in Hyde Park would have said the Day of Infamy was “America’s chickens coming home to roost” and “G-d damn America!”
• The President would have proclaimed Shintoism “a religion of peace” which had nothing to do with the “man-caused disaster” of Dec. 7th, and explained that “Banzai” pertains to a spiritual struggle.

• America’s slogan would have become “Remember, Pearl Harbor was no one’s fault.”
• Actor Errol Flynn might have speculated that Pearl Harbor was “an inside job,” and suggested a Zionist conspiracy to push the U.S. into a war with the Axis powers.

But, hey, Feder is only writing satire. Pearl Harbor isn't the World Trade Center. Ya think?

Make This Video Viral

2010-12-06T19:08:00.000-05:00

Pray for the USA to get some politicians with backbone like this guy.

Boycott Pepsi and Frito Lay

2010-12-06T19:06:00.002-05:00

UPDATE: I had no sooner posted this video when they pulled it from YouTube. For those who didn't see it: It featured a cleric in Roman collar praying for guidance on how to get more people into the church. The solution: free Pepsi and Doritos. You know, just like Communion, only it has more taste appeal. It showed the Pepsi in a tray of little shot glasses like protestants use. People in what appeared to be a legitimate Communion line asked for the Pepsi and were told, "It's over there"......you know, in the snack line.

Lemme see....do I want the Body and Blood of Christ.....or soda and chips?

Utterly, utterly blasphemous.

They wouldn't try this with any other religion. Write to them.
Business Addresses:
PepsiCo, Inc.
700 Anderson Hill Road
Purchase, NY 10577
(914) 253-2000

Frito-Lay North America
7701 Legacy Drive
Plano, TX 75024
(972) 334-7000

Shareholder and Investor Contacts
Jamie Caulfield
Senior Vice President, Investor Relations
PepsiCo, Inc.
investor@pepsico.com

Planned Parenthood's Founding Harridan

2010-12-04T16:49:00.002-05:00

An amazing TV program from 1957, with Mike Wallace interviewing Margaret Sanger, has made its way to the internet. Start here at LifeSite news, and click on the link near the bottom of the article to view the video.

This is a digitized version belonging to the University of Texas, so it can't be embedded here.

But do go check it out. Watch Sanger itching and twitching and scratching herself as Mike Wallace asks the kind of questions he would never ask today.

It's also a hoot to see Wallace with his shiny Brylcream hair hawking Phillip Morris cigarettes, with their "man's kind of mildness."

'Tis the Season...for Christian Bashing

2010-11-30T15:42:00.000-05:00

We're no doubt accustomed to, and numbed by, the anti-Christian bigotry on display at this holy time of year, the refusal to allow Christ to remain the reason for the Season. In Philadelphia, a Christmas Village is renamed Holiday Village because a few misfits were "offended." This is nothing new

Atheists in New Jersey have ratcheted the animosity up a few notches with a billboard showing a silhouette of a manger scene, with the words, "You know it's a myth. This season, celebrate reason."

But the worst of all is the tax-payer funded Smithsonian Institute's tribute to gay and lesbian artists, featuring Crucified Jesus covered with ants. Just in time for the Christmas season. Oops, make that Holiday Season. Ooops again, make that Reason Season.

The image at left is the only one I will show on my blog. You can click the link above to view the smut posing as art.

Worse than the images themselves is the glowing prose in the exhibit's catalog, and the stunningly inane comments by the museum staff.

Like this blather describing a photo of a leather and chain clad pair of Sado-Masochist men:

"Another piece in the exhibit is Robert Mapplethorpe's 1979 photograph "Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter."
"In this playful inversion (PLAYFUL INVERSION!!! How about destructive perversion?) of the classic family photograph, leather-clad Brian Ridley sits in an ornate wingback chair, chained and shackled to his dominant, horsewhip-wielding partner, Lyle Heeter," says the National Portrait Gallery's description of this Mapplethorpe photo. (Remember Mapplethorpe, the pervert who photographed naked homos doing sick things to each others' bodies?)

"Far from submissive, Ridley’s wide-legged stance, upright posture, and direct address to the camera indicate that he willingly acts out his chosen sadomasochistic role," says the description. "The machismo of the couple’s leather gear is undercut by the flamboyance of their living room--replete with an Oriental rug, pewter vases, sculpted lamp and clock, and grasscloth wall covering. That this homosexual S&M ritual takes place in the context of the couple’s 'normal' life (which also includes antique collecting) powerfully challenges what it means to be a 'normal' or 'domestic' couple."

Makes you want to run right out and collect some antiques, doesn't it? Who wrote this stuff? The staff at Better Homos & Gardens?

Then there's this about the 'artist' who portrayed Christ covered with ants:

"The Smithsonian-published catalog also notes (p. 54) that “Wojnarowicz earned a reputation for public, and for many, an utterly cathartic, portrait of rage.” It then quotes a passage from Wojnarowicz’s 1991 book, Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration, in which the artist writes of daydreaming about shooting darts dipped in HIV-positive blood into the necks of politicians and expresses his enmity for “walking swastikas that wear religious garments.” (emphasis mine)

As several commenters wrote in response to the article, "What if it had been Mohammed covered with ants, and featured in a homosexual exhibit?"
Yeah, don't hold your breath for that kind of 'diversity' to be on display any time soon.

In the mean time, you may choose to contact your representatives in the federal government asking that the Smithsonian be de-funded. You can't mock my God with my tax dollars!

But please pray! The people who walk in darkness, like the ones who created and promote this sacrilege, are those who most need the mercy of God. As we celebrate The Dawn from On High, please keep the lost souls in our prayers.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Objectivity!

2010-11-29T20:35:00.001-05:00

One of my daily must-reads on the web is James Taranto's Best of the Web Today feature at the Wall Street Journal. Today he skewers the New York Times for its dishonesty:

Two Papers in One!
■"The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted here."--New York Times, on the Climategate emails, Nov. 20, 2009

■"The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. . . . The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match."--New York Times, on the WikiLeaks documents, Nov. 29, 2010

We're not partisan here! We don't have an agenda! Yeah, right.

An Amusing Take on the TSA Pat-Downs

2010-11-26T14:18:00.002-05:00

When I think of Peggy Noonan, I don't usually think of humor. However, her column in today's WSJ made me laugh out loud.

She constructs a dialogue between Pres. Obama and an imaginary staffer, the Special Assistant for Reality (SAR for short). Read the whole article, please. But here's a small taste, wherein the SAR tries to explain the public's rebellion against the TSA pat-downs:

SAR: Mr. President, the rebellion isn't shame-based, it's John Wayne-based.
President: I don't follow.

SAR: John Wayne removes his boots and hat and puts his six-shooter on the belt, he gets through the scanner, and now he's standing there and sees what's being done to other people. A TSA guy is walking toward him, snapping his rubber gloves. Guy gets up close to Wayne, starts feeling his waist and hips. Wayne says, "Touch the jewels, Pilgrim, and I'll knock you into tomorrow."

President: John Wayne is dead.

SAR: No, he's not. You've got to understand that. Everyone's got an Inner Duke, even grandma.

President: What should I do?

SAR: Back off. Say you spent a day watching YouTube. You're not giving in to pressure, you're conceding to common sense. "Free men and women have a right not to be trifled with. We'll find a better way."

President: If I don't?

SAR: Well, every businessman in America already thinks you've been grabbing his gonads. You'll continue that general symbolism.

President: Janet Napolitano won't like it. Drudge is always after her. He'll get all "Big Sis Bows Now." She might quit.

SAR: Oh God, yes. A twofer!

President: I'd look like I got rolled.

SAR: Then look strong. Fire her. She's been a disaster from day one.Now she's the face of the debacle.

President: Won't they think I'm weak?

SAR: No. They'll think you returned to Earth. They'll think ground control broke through to Major Tom. They'll think you took a step outside the bubble.

More on the Condom Confusion

2010-11-21T19:48:00.002-05:00

This is a case where the media, hearing what they think affirms their world view, jump up and down like deranged cheerleaders, congratulating themselves that that wicked old pope finally sees things their way.

If the excerpt from his new book had been about abstinence, the media would have yawned.

Thank heaven for Dr. Janet Smith. Writing in Catholic World Report, Dr. Smith carefully explains the Holy Father's intent and downplay's the media's chortling at the Pope's expense.

The best paragraph is this one:

An analogy: If someone was going to rob a bank and was determined to use a gun, it would better for that person to use a gun that had no bullets in it. It would reduce the likelihood of fatal injuries. But it is not the task of the Church to instruct potential bank robbers how to rob banks more safely and certainly not the task of the Church to support programs of providing potential bank robbers with guns that could not use bullets. Nonetheless, the intent of a bank robber to rob a bank in a way that is safer for the employees and customers of the bank may indicate an element of moral responsibility that could be a step towards eventual understanding of the immorality of bank robbing.

Bottom line: The Holy Father did not approve condom use.

The Pope DID NOT Say Yes to Condoms

2010-11-20T21:36:00.000-05:00

Don't you just love it when the press distorts and twists things all out of proportion? In a his new book, "Light of the World," the Pope makes a two-paragraph mention of condoms. Guess which two paragraphs the press is quoting......while of course ignoring the entire rest of the book. Aaarrggh!

Here's the true story:

Vatican City, Nov 20, 2010 / 07:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Excerpts of Pope Benedict XVI’s new book are already causing a stir. Though some media reports claim he offers a change in papal teaching about condom use, Pope Benedict in fact says that a humanized sexuality, not condoms, is the right response to HIV.

The Nov. 21 edition of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano (LOR) will release excerpts of the pontiff’s book "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times.”

The book contains the Pope's responses to questions from Peter Seewald, a German reporter who spoke with him over a week last summer about the most sensitive and important questions in Church life today.

The 21 themes treated in the book are edgy and the reception of the Pope's words is likely to be varied, but his answers offer a unique look into his teachings and his perspective on the Church and the world.

In the excerpts, just two brief paragraphs provide the Pope's response to a question on sexuality in the world today. He says that concentrating on the use of the condom only serves to trivialize sexuality.

This trivialization leads many people to no longer see sex as an expression of love, but as a self-administered drug. The fight against the banalization of sexuality is part of a great effort to change this view to a more positive one.

According to one much-commented excerpt printed in L'Osservatore Romano, the Pope concedes that there can be single cases in which the use of a condom may be justified.

He uses the example of prostitutes (other sources say he meant male prostitutes) who might use prophylactics as a first step toward moralization, that is, becoming moral. In such a case, condom use might be their first act of responsibility to redevelop their consciousness of the fact that not everything is permitted and that one cannot do everything one wants.

While secular outlets such as Time Magazine characterized this remark as “a stunning turnaround” for the Church, Pope Benedict goes on to explain that this is not the true and proper way to defeat HIV. Instead what is necessary is the humanization of sexuality.

Elsewhere in the excerpts from the forthcoming book, the pontiff speaks of the footprint of Judaism, Islam and Christianity in the modern world.

He also expresses his shock at the extent of the sexual abuse of minors in the Church and the evident wish of mass media to discredit the Church for these abuses rather than purely to investigate the truth.

He warns that true tolerance can fall victim to current misunderstandings of the concept. He also speaks of the destruction of families, young people and society due to drug consumption.

Another controversy Pope Benedict addresses is whether the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood is possible.

In brief, Pope Benedict says that it is not a question of responding to the wishes of the people, but a question of whether the Church has the power to ordain women. Repeating the words of John Paul II from a 1994 document on the priesthood, he said the Church "has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.” (AMEN!)

He explains that following Christ's establishment of Church leadership on the foundation of the original 12 male apostles is a question of obedience. It is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects to obey, he explains, but this is what makes it important.

The Church is not an arbitrary regime, he comments, and the priesthood is supposed to be a form of service and not domination.(Doesn't it ever strike you how much those fake womyn priests are all about power?) Even though it might be difficult, the Church follows the Lord's will and cannot be molded to the wishes of the people. (nor should it bow to the whims of feministas)

The function of women in the Church is too significant to speak of discrimination, says the Pope, who notes the importance of historic figures such as (The Blessed Virgin) Mary, (Saint) Monica and Mother Teresa.

Women are so important, he says, that in many ways they define the face of the Church more than men.

Elsewhere in the excerpts, Pope Benedict describes himself as a beggar who relies on his friendship with the Lord, Mary and the saints to live his vocation. His life without Christian joy would be unsupportable, he declares. (Hey, all you rad-fem wannabe priests.....the Pope calls himself a beggar.....not a demander! Do you think you could say the same about yourselves?)

Just Say "NO!" to the CCHD!

2010-11-18T21:39:00.002-05:00

This weekend, Catholics through out the United States will be asked to contribute to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).

Sure, you're a good Catholic who generously gives to the poor, so you dig deep and donate to the CCHD.

DON'T DO IT!

Why not? Because the CCHD has been hijacked by professional radicals, community organizers, and progressives who use CCHD funds on projects that contradict Church teachings.
By its own design, CCHD does not give any money directly to poor people. In fact, direct giving is forbidden. So who gets your money? Community organizers, pro-abortion and pro-homosexual groups posing as friends of the poor. "Poverty pimps" earning a paycheck by trying to radicalize the underprivileged into rising up against systemic injustice and oppression. Do they actually feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, visit the sick and those in prison? Nooooo....they ORGANIZE ad nauseum. Hey, some one has to foot the bill for that new Prius that poverty pimp is driving!

Fortunately, things are changing.

Ten Dioceses that have already stopped participating in the Catholic Campaign for Human Development collection or announced plans to do stop doing so are: Allentown, Altoona-Johnstown, Greensburg and Harrisburg, Pa.; Green Bay and Madison, Wis.; Lincoln, Neb.; Birmingham, Ala.; St. Augustine, Fla.; and Tulsa, Okla.

Hmmm....none of those dioceses are in New England. Are you actually surprised?

Some groups are organizing to put an end to this wasteful, misleading collection. Reform CCHD Now has a petition you can sign, and this coupon you can place in your CCHD envelope this weekend:

Still not convinced? Watch this video, do some research of your own. And give your money to a local charity worthy of the name Catholic.

All Saints Day

2010-11-01T21:47:00.004-04:00

On November 1, 1983 I began an experiment that I was sure would fail. I decided to pray for one week to the Christian God, whom I was certain did not exist. I would give this Christian thing a try, but just for one week. After that, it was to be full steam ahead into Wicca.

So, feeling quite foolish, I sat in the darkness near a window and began to speak to 'nothing'.

I had read or heard that people who believed in God would do things like turn over to Him all their fears, their longings etc, so I decided I would try that.

As I began speaking all the things I would surrender to God.......I can't describe what happened next except to say that I knew God was real, and that he had been patiently waiting for me to surrender to Him.

That was 27 years ago. My one week experiment became a life long adventure. I became, by God's grace, a Catholic. I love God, I love His Church, and I can't imagine any other way of life.

My prayer for my readers is that they, too, may come to know the Living and True God, and be saved. To God be the glory!

Hell

2010-10-31T20:50:00.001-04:00

If this picture doesn't scare you into behaving yourself, nothing will.

Just Don't Call Her Re-Elected

2010-10-28T20:23:00.000-04:00

Wonderful Barbara Boxer parody ad:

Catholic Taliban?

2010-10-24T20:40:00.000-04:00

I was going to comment on this, but Fr. Z has beat me to it. Check out the ignorant, hateful comments below this article on Mass Live.

From Mass Live:

New breed of conservative bloggers say Catholic Church isn't Catholic enough
RACHEL ZOLL AP Religion Writer
Pressure is on to change the Roman Catholic Church in America, but it's not coming from the usual liberal suspects. A new breed of theological conservatives has taken to blogs and YouTube to say the church isn't Catholic enough.
Enraged by dissent that they believe has gone unchecked for decades, and unafraid to say so in the starkest language, these activists are naming names and unsettling the church.
— In the Archdiocese of Boston, parishioners are dissecting the work of a top adviser to the cardinal for any hint of Marxist influence.

-- Bloggers are combing through campaign finance records to expose staff of Catholic agencies who donate to politicians who support abortion rights.

— RealCatholicTV.com, working from studios in suburban Detroit, is hunting for "traitorous" nuns, priests or bishops throughout the American church.

"We're no more engaged in a witch hunt than a doctor excising a cancer is engaged in a witch hunt," said Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV.com and St. Michael's Media. "We're just shining a spotlight on people who are Catholics who do not live the faith."

John Allen, Vatican analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, has dubbed this trend "Taliban Catholicism." But he says it's not a strictly conservative phenomenon — liberals can fit the mindset, too, Allen says. Some left-leaning Catholics are outraged by any exercise of church authority.

Yet on the Internet and in the church, conservatives are having the bigger impact.

Among Voris' many media ventures is the CIA — the Catholic Investigative Agency — a program from RealCatholicTV to "bring to light the dark deeds of evil Catholics-in-name-only, who are hijacking the Church for their own ends, not the ends of Christ."

In an episode called "Catholic Tea Party," Voris said: "Catholics need to be aware and studied and knowledgeable enough about the faith to recognize a heretical nun or a traitorous priest or bishop when they see one — not so they can vote them out of office, but so they can pray for them, one, and alert as many other Catholics as possible to their treachery, two."

The blog "Bryan Hehir Exposed" is aimed at a top adviser to Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, who is the former head of national Catholic Charities and a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Among the bloggers' claims is that Hehir is a Marxist sympathizer who undermines Catholic teaching on abortion and marriage.

Hehir, who has advised church leaders for four decades, hasn't responded to any accusations and neither has O'Malley, a Capuchin Franciscan friar known for his humility. However, O'Malley said in April on his own blog that Hehir "inspires us with his compassion, vision and fidelity to the work of the Church." In August, O'Malley blocked access from archdiocesan headquarters to one of the critical blogs, the anonymously penned Boston Catholic Insider.

"The lack of civility is very disturbing," said Terrence C. Donilon, the archdiocesan spokesman.
The work of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is another frequent target.

Activists and bloggers, including Bellarmine Veritas Ministry of Texas, have been investigating the bishops' Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a national grantmaking program created in the 1970s to support community organizing and economic development.

The activists concluded that some of the grantees back same-sex marriage, artificial contraception or abortion rights. As part of the push, activists accused the director of the bishops' national social justice office of serving on the board of a nonprofit while it advocated for gay marriage and abortion. The claims against him were shown to be unfounded.

Still, the bloggers had an impact.
The bishop who oversees the anti-poverty grants said that a few, but not all, of the accused grantees had indeed taken positions contrary to church teaching and had been defunded. Since the controversy erupted, 10 of the 195 U.S. dioceses have suspended or dropped annual parish collections for the program, and the bishops are reviewing their grant policies.

Thomas Peters, who runs the popular "AmericanPapist" blog, said fellow orthodox Catholics have embraced the Web because they feel they finally have a platform that can compete with well-established liberal Catholic publications, such as the National Catholic Reporter. (Some conservative bloggers call the paper "the National Catholic Destroyer.")

Peters, 25, considers himself on the more positive side of the orthodox Catholic blogosphere, although some targets of his commentary disagree.

He condemns the vitriol he sees online, and promotes a blog feature called "bishops with backbone," in praise of church leaders who rein in dissenters. He also added an online function to send thank you notes when leaders take tough stands, recently generating 500 letters in one day for Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis who refused Holy Communion to gay rights protesters at a recent Mass.

"All of these things that we say in public are meant for the best good of the church," said Peters. He began his blog several years ago and now works for the American Principles Project, a conservative advocacy group founded by Princeton University scholar Robert George.

The rise in lay conservative fervor comes at a time when the need for activism would seem less urgent. The U.S. hierarchy has seen a wave of retirements in recent years that has swept out leading liberals. The men taking their place are generally more traditional and willing to take a harder line against disobedient Catholics, from politicians to parishioners.

But even with these changes, bloggers say too few prelates speak out. The activists also say that since the 1970s, after the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, liberals have filled the bureaucracy of the church, hiding dissent from the bishops they serve.

"There's an old saying: Once you become a bishop you never get bad news or a bad meal," said Carol McKinley, 53, a Boston-area blogger who named her site "The Tenth Crusade." ''Not a single bishop will look at the whole. They enjoy their ignorance."

Critics of the bloggers contend the activists are motivated mostly by politics, not theology. The blogs feature nearly as many attacks on President Barack Obama as church leaders. McKinley's site, until recently, was called "Throwthebumsoutin2010," in anticipation of the midterm elections.

The late Saul Alinsky, the father of modern community organizing, is also a common topic on the conservative Catholic blogs. Activists complain that many groups that receive grants from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development use the tactics of Alinsky, a hero of the political left and a preoccupation of the political right since the 2008 election. When Obama was a community organizer in Chicago, he worked with people trained by Alinsky.

However, the conservative Catholic activists insist their faith, especially church teaching on abortion, inspires all their work.

Catholic officials are struggling to come to terms with the bloggers and have organized several recent media conferences on the topic, the latest at the Vatican this month. The U.S. bishops' conference issued social media guidelines in July calling for Christian charity online.

Still, no one expects the Catholic blogosphere to change tone anytime soon. Many of the conservatives most active online had spent years raising the alarm about dissent on their own in their local dioceses without much effect. Now, they feel they are finally being heard online.

"There's a general sense among many faithful Catholics that no matter how much they write their bishops, no matter how much they go to the pastors, all of these unfaithful things keep getting taught," Voris said. "I think enough Catholics are saying, 'That's it. I've had it.'"

Missy Smith Abortion Ad

2010-10-23T13:38:00.002-04:00

Bravo to Missy Smith for using her right to use any images she chooses in her campaign ad. It's the only way such images will get past the broadcast censors.

Something is wrong when I try to embed the ad here. Hmmmm........

So here's the url:

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=hdSUprDkVr

Be Not Afraid!

2010-10-10T18:48:00.000-04:00

While this is a vocations video, it is also about taking Our Eucharistic Lord to the streets.

Do you have Eucharistic processions where you live? If you do, please tell us about it in the comments.

Catholic Hippies, Dissidents, Feministas, You're Outta Here!

2010-09-30T16:39:00.001-04:00

Okay, I only wish they were outta here. Deal Hudson, writing at Inside Catholic, proposes that what we may need is a Catholic version of the Tea Party.

"Over the past two weeks, I've had extensive discussions with a wide group of Catholic leaders about the state of the Church in the United States. The frustration and impatience among Catholics, which I discussed last February in "Is It Time for a Catholic Tea Party?," continue to grow.">The occasions for this discussion were the Catholic Leadership Conference held in Philadelphia earlier this month, immediately followed by the Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference and the 15th Annual Partnership Dinner benefiting InsideCatholic, both held in Washington, D.C.

The broad background for this discontent is well known: Lay Catholics cannot understand why, over the past 30 years, more bishops haven't taken a stronger public stand on Catholic politicians who openly dissent on life and marriage issues.

This level of discontent remained at a simmer until the 2008 presidential campaign and the election of Barack Obama as president -- at which point it reached a boil. From parishes around the nation came reports of priests and lay staff making clear their preference for Obama, in some cases arguing openly that their support for Obama was offset by "proportionate reasons," such as Sen. John McCain's support for the Iraq War.

When the concerned faithful began to hunt down this "proportionate reasons" argument, they found it in the bishops' own 2007 document, "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility." Stunned Catholics wondered aloud how the bishops themselves could have provided Obama's Catholic supporters the very argument they needed to rebut any concern about his advocacy for infanticide as a state senator.

In response to the outcry, a record number of bishops issued statements during the presidential campaign either seeking to clarify "Faithful Citizenship" or to correct misinterpretations of the Catholic faith set forth by Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Joe Biden. Yet none of them targeted the grassroots and parish-based campaign efforts of pro-Obama groups, like Catholics in Alliance, using the "proportionate reasons" argument to distract Catholic voters from Obama's abortion record.

The one bishop to confront this interpretation of "Faithful Citizenship" head-on was Bishop Joseph Martino in Scranton, Pennsylvania, who famously interrupted the speakers to say, "No USCCB document is relevant in this diocese. The USCCB doesn't speak for me. The only relevant document… is my letter. There is one teacher in this diocese, and these points are not debatable."

Obama was elected with the help of the self-identified Catholic vote, though weekly Mass-attending Catholics slightly preferred McCain. Some Obama sympathizers publicly applauded his election given the history of racism in our nation, and although they never explicitly called this a "proportionate reason," it was certainly treated as such.

President Obama's record has, unsurprisingly, tracked closely to his record as an Illinois state senator. Immediately discarding the Mexico City Policy upon his election, he has undone, or sought to undo, every aspect of the "abortion reduction" policy put in place by the Bush administration.

Most importantly, he found a way around the Hyde Amendment by inserting a massive abortion mandate in his health-care legislation. With the passage of Obamacare and the inability of USCCB lobbying efforts to either defeat it or strip out its abortion funding loopholes, many lay Catholics have come to assume a Tea Party posture of "enough is enough."

Many of them wonder why Sr. Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, is still in the good graces of the USCCB. It was Sister Keehan, after all, who neutralized the bishops' opposition to the health-care bill and denied the presence of its abortion funding.

Sister Keehan has become a virtual symbol of what is wrong with the Church: There is no accountability, and no consequences for open dissent on the preeminent moral issues. Thus, when it came to light that the Catholic Campaign for Human Development of the USCCB has been funding organizations that openly support abortion and gay marriage, the reaction of the laity was a cynical "more of the same."

Some of the leadership I spoke with cited examples of overall improvement in episcopal leadership, both in individual dioceses and at the USCCB, and warned of becoming too negative.

Attention to tone is always important, but the simple fact is this: Of the 97 Democrat Catholic members of the House, only 9 voted against a health-care bill containing abortion funding, in spite of the fact that the USCCB and cardinals like Justin Rigali and Francis George spoke out clearly against it. (All 38 GOP House members voted against the bill.)

Something has gone wrong when those who publicly profess the Catholic faith feel no compunction about openly defying its teachings at the urging of their bishops. On top of that, a group called "Catholics United" announces it will spend $500,000 to reelect those same politicians, all Democrats -- and not a single bishop makes any comment.

The Catholic tea kettle continues to boil, as the patience of many of the lay faithful is running out.

Would Bishop McDonnell Do This? NAH!

2010-09-29T22:35:00.002-04:00

CNA reports:

In time for the upcoming Respect Life Month of October, Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo, North Dakota presided over an annual Mass and led a procession over 700 people to a local abortion clinic last Sunday, encountering oppositional protestors for the first time.

The Diocese of Fargo estimated that on Sunday, 700 to 800 people from St. Mary’s Cathedral processed to the local Red River Women’s Clinic, North Dakota’s only abortion facility in downtown Fargo. Director of Communications for the diocese Tanya R. Watterud told CNA that Bishop Aquila led the procession several blocks, carrying a monstrance with Blessed Sacrament and also sprinkling the clinic with holy water amidst pro-abortion demonstrators.

During his homily at the Mass preceding the procession, Bishop Aquila stated that the purpose of the event was “to give witness to the gift of life and particularly the dignity of human life from the moment of conception to natural death.”

“Even reason and science would point to the truth that life begins at the moment of conception,” he noted. “For those who are unbelievers, they can come to know the truth of the dignity of human life through both reason and science.”

“We must also, when speaking of abortion, speak the truth about it,” and refrain from using terms such as “interruption of pregnancy” or “only a mass of cells.”

“Every time a child is aborted it is murder and it is important for us to call it by its proper name.” Individuals, he added, should not use the “politically correct language” of the media but “speak the truth and to speak it clearly.”

He then encouraged those present to pray for the gift of fortitude “to be those people who constantly remind our society and remind others that life is a gift…that every human being created is created in the image and likeness of God from the moment of conception…that every human being has the right to life.”

The bishop also explained that the holy water that would be used to sprinkle the facility showed “prayers for purification…in terms of reparation for what happens there because, ultimately, it is the murder of unborn that takes place there.”

Watterud told CNA that later at the procession following the sprinkling, Bishop Aquila again took the monstrance into his hands and continued back to the Cathedral, while parishioners in attendance prayed the Rosary while walking.

Planned Barrenhood Folds Without Tax Payer Money

2010-09-23T14:42:00.001-04:00

The National Review reports:

Part of Gov. Chris Christie’s belt-tightening plan for New Jersey was the termination of $7.5 million in public funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in the state, a decision Democrats in the legislature countermanded with a bill that cleared the Senate with a 30-10 vote — sufficient to override a veto. But when that veto came and the Democrats scheduled an override vote, Republicans in the legislature backed down, and the measure failed 23-17.

Now, Planned Parenthood facilities in the state are shuttering their doors:

After the New Jersey state Senate defeated an attempt to override the decision of Gov. Chris Christie to cut off state taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood abortion businesses, the first facility run by the national abortion giant is closing.

The Cherry Hill Courier Post newspaper says a Planned Parenthood facility located on Haddonfield Road and operated by Planned Parenthood of Southern New Jersey will close down.

PP-SNJ stands to lose as much as $160,000 in taxpayer funds because of Christie’s decision and the upholding of his veto. With the closing of the Cherry Hill center, Planned Parenthood customers seeking abortions or other “services” must go to PP centers in Camden, Bellmawr, and Edgewater Park.

Do you think maybe those Republicans who changed their votes were influenced by the Tea Party Revolution? Maybe the RINO's are finally getting the message: no more business as usual.

Planned Barrenhood should never have been receiving public funds in the first place. They run a million dollar business. I suspect that behind these closings, there is an agenda at work. The pro-aborts will use this to gin up controversy and to enhance their fund raising. They would never actually lower their fees for 'services' or cut their own salaries. How much do you want to bet they were going to close the Cherry Hill center anyway?

More in The Mirror

2010-09-16T21:20:00.005-04:00

This excuse for a magazine is so bad, if I didn't poke fun at it, I would cry.

I got a real kick out of the blurb they put on the back cover:

"Welcome to The Catholic Mirror our new diocesan magazine!
We sincerely hope that this publication will affirm the faith of some and
build up the faith of others so that we can truly be a united and active family
of God's holy people."

"...will affirm the faith of some..."......what the hell does that mean?

Some possibilities:

a) only some of us need our faith affirmed

b) some of us will be so offended by The Catholic Mirror that our faith will be undermined

c) whoever wrote the blurb needs to go back to J-school

d) the diocese is only aiming at a small demographic ('some')

It's hardly on a par with the disputes over translating "pro multis" but it does suggest some theological loopiness.

Another gem is "your marriage matters," an advice column by Deacon Tom Fogle and JoAnne Fogle. Note right off that they are not Tom and JoAnne Fogle. They each have a separate name. Presumably this is to encourage a deacon-wife to use her 'own' name (which is actually her father's name...but rad-fems don't dwell on that...too patriarchal) instead of her husband's name (which is absolutely patriarchal and demeaning to a woman's personhood). So much for the unitive aspect of marriage.

The 'deacon-couple' offer advice to this problem: a young wife thinks her husband may be an alcoholic. Remarking on the number of beers the husband drinks in a day, Deacon-wife Jo "believes Paul (the husband) receives too large of an allowance from Stephanie (the wife). Otherwise, how could Paul continue to afford the amount of beer he evidently consumes each day?"

Am I the only one who sees something wrong here? Paul is receiving an allowance from Stephanie? We can guess who wears the pants in the Fogle family!

Speaking of wearing pants, long-time diocesan editor Rebecca Drake serves up a treacly article on a girl altar-boy in Monson. Nothing against the 9-year-old kid herself, but Drake is obviously stuck in her feminist rut. I doubt she would showcase an altar boy. Scratch anyone who thinks girl altar-boys is a wonderful advancement for women, and you'll find a dissenter who thinks women should be priests.

Let's conclude this rant by pausing for a moment to consider the title of this fishwrap: The Mirror.

What do you see when you look in a mirror? You see yourself. This is part of the same philosophy that spawned churches in-the-round "so we can see each other," the emphasis on community meal over holy sacrifice, the preference for the horizontal aspect of worship (we are the people of God) versus the vertical aspect (we are creatures of God Almighty). Enough said.

Oi vey, Maria!

2010-09-16T16:16:00.006-04:00

Lifesite News reports that in Austin, TX, a pro-abort rabbi will be given permission to use a Catholic Church to celebrate the high holy days, since his synagogue is too small to accommodate the expected crowd. This was also permitted last year. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was shunted aside to a chapel to allow this. The bishop, Joe Vasquez, is now saying he didn't know the rabbi was a favorite of Planned Parenthood, and that, since the high holy days are now upon us, it's too late to withdraw permission.

“Earlier this summer, Bishop Vásquez was informed that for the purpose of offering interreligious hospitality, St. Louis Parish would open its doors to Temple Beth Shalom (Austin, Texas), which did not have a place large enough to celebrate its high holy days,” explained Msgr. Sis.

“Now that Bishop Vásquez is aware of the associations of this particular rabbi, he will be in dialogue with his advisers and with Father Larry Covington, pastor of St. Louis, to determine what course of action might be appropriate in future years. Since our Jewish brothers and sisters are presently in the midst of their high holy days, the parish will, for this year, honor its commitment to the community of Temple Beth Shalom and will allow them to use the facilities of St. Louis on Yom Kippur,” Sis concluded.

He will "be in dialogue with his advisers and with Father Larry Covington." Aaarrgh! Dialogue!? This is the response of a moral weenie. And don't even get me started on Monsignor "Sis"........those rad-fems are everywhere!

Rabbi Alan Freedman is a big name in the abortion industry in Texas; according to his information page at Temple Beth Shalom, he is currently “serving on the Board of Planned Parenthood in Austin.”
Rabbi Freedman heads up Planned Parenthood's Clergy Advisory Group, as noted in the Spring 2008 Planned Parenthood newsletter. The article on page 2 of the newsletter, which includes a photo of the rabbi and his wife, states that the advisory group "provides an affirming and compassionate message for women who too frequently hear messages of condemnation and criticism about their reproductive health care decisions."
In his email response, (to LifeSite News)Fr. Covington refused to address the question of Rabbi Freedman, instead saying only that he, the Jewish community and the majority of his parishioners were pleased with the church’s “outreach.”

Outreach. I guess that's another word for, "I'm not really Catholic, but I like collecting my paycheck from the diocese."

To respectfully express concerns:

Diocese of Austin Texas

Bishop Joe Vásquez

Email: http://www.austindiocese.org/contact_staff

Bishop's Office

Pastoral Center

6225 Highway 290 East

Austin, TX

(512) 949-2415

The Lost Soul of Bill Maher

2010-09-14T14:26:00.006-04:00

Newsbusters has this story today on alleged comedian Bill Maher's remarks about religion:

"Comedian Bill Maher took his anti-religion, anti-conservative views off HBO and into the mainstream Sept. 13 during an appearance on NBC's "Tonight Show." Maher told host Jay Leno he's against the Ground Zero Mosque, because he's "against a mosque anywhere. I'm against a church anywhere, or a Hindu temple or a synagogue."

Maher declared that houses of worship are "places that people go to retell nonsense stories from a time before men understood what a germ or an atom was, or where the sun went at night. They try to telepathically communicate with their imaginary friend. These are places that fleece people, and scare people and they perpetuate mass delusion. We shouldn't build any of them."

But Maher conceded that because the First Amendment protects freedom of religion, "they should be able to build them anywhere."

One of my favorite liberal buzzwords is 'evolve,' as in a bumper sticker I saw which petulantly demanded,

"Oh, evolve!"

A former neighbor of mine, when hearing that a town in Pennsylvania I visited was laissez-faire on recycling, said, "They must not be very evolved."

Yeah, let's all evolve to the point where we don't need imaginary friends, where we no longer cower in fear as night descends, where we all think just like liberals. "Imagine there's no heaven...."

John Lennon was a lost soul, and so too is Bill Maher. Don't 'evolve.' Evangelize.

Looking in The Mirror

2010-09-13T22:02:00.005-04:00

O Joy Sublime! The premier edition of the Springfield, MA diocese's new publication, "The Catholic Mirror" arrived in my mailbox today.

Billed as a monthly replacement for the biweekly newspaper The Catholic Observer, The Mirror is a glossy dose of Catholicism-lite. If you like the banalities and treacle of Our Sunday Visitor, you'll love The Mirror.

Before I get going on particulars, let me just point out that this is a canned publication, put out by an organization called FAITH Catholic from Lansing, Michigan. It's like a giant template, a pre-fab layout. All a diocese has to do is insert a few local items, email the text to Lansing, and voila! Gloss! Photos! Art!

The brochure for using the candy-coated services of FAITH Catholic publishing lists such selling points as these:
Encourages me to support my parish financially: 61%
Encourages me to give to the diocesan appeal: 59%

Those sure are important to any business' bottom line. (Paying attention to the bottom line.....I'm certain that's in the Bible somewhere!)

But I guess my favorite aspect of this glossy fishwrap is the list of homogenized writers. One might be led to believe that this staff resides in and works for our diocese. But no, they are part of the deceit that this is a diocesan product.

From FAITH Catholic's brochure:

In the know with Fr. Joe: A former major network comedy writer who became a priest, Father Joe Krupp writes FAITH’s best-read column. Its success is due to a mix of teaching, straight talk and humor. (yeah, we need more comedy writers in the pulpit)
Saint of the month: A lively biography of a saint whose feast is this month. (it starts off by listing the saint's 'claim to fame')
Liturgical calendar border: The liturgical calendar runs along the bottom of the front section of the magazine format. (and a verrry teeeny tiny border it is)
Theology 101: Elizabeth Solsburg and Doug Culp interview seminary professors and theologians to present catechetical material in a quick, easy-to-digest format. (we wouldn't want to present anything you might actually have to chew on)
Marriage matters: Tom and Jo Anne Fogle and our marriage matters team provide useful faith-based tips and ideas about how to strengthen marriage. This section addresses communication, finances, time and romance. (oohh! one of those 'deacon couples' who are being used to prepare the sheep for a married priesthood)
Work Life: Nick Synko is a management professional who gives readers ideas about how faith plays a role in the workplace. (I'm at a loss for a smart remark on this one. Readers, please chime in!)
The parenting journey: Dr. Cathleen McGreal, a certified spiritual director and professor of psychology, bridges faith with parenting techniques. (I have faith she'll never mention 'spare the rod and spoil the child')
Spiritual fitness: Sister Ann Shields offers a reflection on the theme, and walks us through a related prayer experience or spiritual exercise. (labyrinth walk, anyone?)
Conflict Resolution: Dr. Gelasia Marquez gives quick tips about how to deal with difficult relationships. (Dear Doctor, my relationship with Jesus makes me feel guilty for sleeping with my sister's husband. Should I ditch my lover and keep Jesus, or ditch Jesus and keep my lover?)
Culture: Michelle Sessions DiFranco and our other culture columnists treat readers to our rich tradition – expressed in food, music, books and movies. FAITH’s recipes tie in to our spiritual heritage and taste as good as they look. (Our parish liturgy commission wants to make chocolate hosts. Got any recipes?)

Well, it's bedtime here at Walburga's hermitage. Stay tuned as we look further into The Mirror.

Judd Not

2010-09-07T22:44:00.007-04:00

Christine Judd, athletic director at Cathedral High in Springfield, MA, married her lesbian lover this August. She has resigned, under duress, after 12 years at the school.

The media banshees are out in force. Students are protesting in front of St. Michael's Cathedral.

A perfect storm of controversy has spiked the comments to MassLive, with much ignorance on display, as well as the usual anti-Catholicism.

What is overlooked amid the outrage and self-righteousness is this simple fact: she broke the rules, and now she is paying for it.

My question to the diocese: why was she hired in the first place? Did the administrators think that an 'out' lesbian was a good role model for students? Was anyone concerned that she might not support Catholic moral teachings?

Oh, wait....I get it now! DIVERSITY!!!!

We're so cool we're barely Catholic! See....we think the Bible is only for fundamentalists. We have evolved way beyond that.

Like naughty little brats, the Sisters of St. Joseph must have been full of glee at hiring an admitted lesbian right under the bishop's nose. And the bishop carefully kept his nose from detecting the obvious.

Until someone (God bless 'em!) shoved a photo of the lesbian 'wedding' in his face and forced the issue.

The diocese is caught with its morals down, and the media demons are dancing its authority into dust.

In This Heated Atmosphere

2010-09-05T21:30:00.008-04:00

Of the many distressing facets of the priest sex-abuse scandals is one that seldom gets media coverage: the falsely accused priest.

Once rightly charged with inaction in the face of evidence of priestly misconduct, some bishops and dioceses have now gone to the other extreme.

In my diocese, a priest accused of showing "The Pink Panther" to altar boys was charged with 'boundary violations,' was removed from his parish and hung out to dry in the media. "The Pink Panther," for crying out loud! The accusers said it was pornographic. A case that should have been resolved with a phone call from the bishop mushroomed into a time of terror. A priest and a parish were placed at the foot of the Cross and suffered the indignities of slander and innuendo.

Now, in Pennsylvania, a Benedictine priest is suing his bishop and his abbott for accusing him of being a pedophile, even though he was exonerated by the state police. Rev. Mark Gruber was charged with having child pornography on his computer. The computer was in a common room, and someone else has confessed to viewing the pornography.

When I was in PA two winters ago, I heard Fr. Gruber preach at a Pro-Life Day of Reflection at St. Emma's Monastery. He was electrifying and captivating. His talks were conducted without notes of any kind. He spoke with a commanding mastery of the Scriptures, weaving Bible quotes into pro-life themes, merging them both into a critique of modern culture. He had the ease of an experienced teacher (which he is) as well as the vocabulary of a professional writer (which he is).

I couldn't get enough. I wanted to sit at his feet and listen for days. He answered all questions with grace and verve. It was energizing, invigorating, like a cool breeze on a hot day.

He celebrated Mass with reverence, dignity and humility.

I felt privileged to be there.

Imagine my shock when I read of the charges against him, his exoneration by the police, and his suit aginst Bishop Lawrence Brandt (whom I also met while I was in PA...in fact, he imposed ashes on me on Ash Wednesday).

The diocese also suggested that Fr. Gruber undergo psychiatric treatment in Maryland, which most likely is St. Luke's Institute....the very place that used to recommend that true pedophiles could be rehabilitated and returned to parishes. Oi vey!

The cover-up of the scandals was a great wrong, almost as wrong as the abuse itself. Bishops now seem afraid to apply common sense and sound practices lest they be crucified by SNAP and the media. When weak bishops make bad decisions, good priests suffer.

What is the truth of Fr. Gruber's situation? Obviously, I don't know. But I'm glad he's not taking this lying down.

Read more about Fr. Gruber here: Protecting a Punished Professor

Life Behind Closed Academic Doors Fr Mark Gruber's Home Page

Off-Pitch Vocations Pitch

2010-09-05T16:35:00.007-04:00

On the vocations page of the Aug. 29-Sept 11 National Catholic Register, there is an ad by the Sisters of The Holy Family of Fremont, CA.

Three fifty-ish nuns in street clothes ask: Has your search led you here?

Sister, if it has, you better look elsewhere to fulfill your vocation.

"With the courage of Joseph, the faithfulness of Mary and the compassion
of Jesus, Sisters of the Holy Family are committed to promoting
justice and ecological sustainability through
the Earth Charter and the Millenium Development
Goals."

Whew! At least they mentioned Jesus. But when they trot out that other 'J' word, justice, run for your life! Justice, a fine sentiment one can scarcely argue with, has become a code word for 'down with patriarchy and hierarchy.' Yes, I'm cynical. So shoot me.

OIKS!

2010-08-28T22:40:00.007-04:00

From James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today" online at the Wall Street Journal:

" ....the bigotry of the elites.
The Ground Zero mosque is an affront to the sensibilities of ordinary Americans. "The center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence," as the Associated Press has reported. That Americans would find this offensive is a matter of simple common sense. The liberal elites cannot comprehend common sense, and, incredibly, they think that's a virtue. After all, common sense is so
common.

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude: oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' " What a perfect description of the pro-mosque left.

Scruton was writing in 2004, and his focus was on Britain and Europe, not America. But his warning about the danger of oikophobes--whom he amusingly dubs "oiks"--is very pertinent on this side of the Atlantic today, and it illuminates how what are sometimes dismissed as mere matters of "culture" tie in with economic and social policy."

As Charles Krauthammer summarizes the disdain the left elites have for ordinary Americans:

"...promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.
Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.
Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.
Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.
Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.
Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?
....
The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the Tea Party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president's proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms."

Remember, that when Journo-list exposed the manipulations of left-wing reporters, one of the things that was recommended: when in doubt about how to impugn someone, just call them a racist.

An Individual Lifestyle Accessory

2010-08-26T16:17:00.005-04:00

Archbishop Chaput's remarks on the secularization of Faith and culture:

"We face an aggressively secular political vision and a consumerist economic model that result - in practice, if not in explicit intent -- in a new kind of state-encouraged atheism.

To put it another way: The Enlightenment-derived worldview that gave rise to the great murder ideologies of the last century remains very much alive. Its language is softer, its intentions seem kinder, and its face is friendlier. But its underlying impulse hasn't changed -- i.e., the dream of building a society apart from God; a world where men and women might live wholly sufficient unto themselves, satisfying their needs and desires through their own ingenuity.

This vision presumes a frankly "post-Christian" world ruled by rationality, technology and good social engineering. Religion has a place in this worldview, but only as an individual lifestyle accessory. People are free to worship and believe whatever they want, so long as they keep their beliefs to themselves and do not presume to intrude their religious idiosyncrasies on the workings of government, the economy, or culture."

We need to be reminded more often of the connection between the so-called 'Enlightenment' and the rise of totalitarianism. The Enlightenment's first bastard child was the French Revolution, when blood ran in the streets of Paris, when priests and nuns were executed and Churches desecrated. An orgy was held on the altar of the great cathedral of Notre Dame. Behind the impulse to sexual license also lies the impulse to kill and to control. In a world without God and citizens without faith, only dictatorships thrive.

The Mosque at Ground Zero

2010-08-21T21:40:00.007-04:00

Since everyone else is offering their opinion, I thought I'd join in.

My two cents: build it somewhere else.

Of all the opinions flying around, the worst I have seen come from our very own USCCB. In an article entitled "New York mosque controversy echoes anti-Catholicism of another era" put out by the USCCB's Catholic News Service, the author dares to equate nativist anti-Catholicism with opposition to building a mosque at Ground Zero.

Patricia Zapor tries to impute mere xenophobia to the opposition: "a historic cycle of distrust of immigrants -- and their faith."

She forgets that the Islamic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center have no counter-part in the history of Catholic immigration to the United States.

She quotes at length from Georgetown theology professor Chester Gillis. My comments are in red.

"The neophytes in society are always on the outside," Gillis said. "With Catholics, people feared they would have loyalty to a foreign power, the Holy See." With Muslims, he added, people fear a possible connection to an Islamic government or to a terrorist organization." and rightly so.

It took more than 100 years after the large waves of Irish and Italian immigrants from Europe arrived for Catholics in the United States to become enough of a mainstream part of society (Islam teaches that the dhimmis (that's us Catholics) must submit to Shari'a law...so it seems to me that Islam is not interested in becoming mainstream) that the prejudices and hurdles they experienced began to fade, said Gillis.

It may not take 100 years for Muslims to be similarly accepted in the United States, Gillis said, but it will take time. Until then, he suggests, "it may sound simplistic, but you really need to know Muslims as people."

At the core of the controversy is one giant problem: Muslims don't behave like reasonable Christians. The two faiths are not like Catholic vs. Protestant. It's more like Reason vs. Insanity.

Reasonable Christians, when told that the Catholic convent at Auschwitz is an affront and an offense to the Jews who were slaughtered there, move the convent to another site.

Reasonable Christians persuade and pray for conversions. Muslims coerce and demand conversion, and punish severely any who apostasize.

Islam has always been about force and conquest. As one writer has said, "Islam has bloody borders."

And at the core of the core, if you will, is the difference between Jesus and Mohammad.

Jesus, the Lamb of God.

Mohammad the polygamist prophet.

Footnote: I was going to write something a bit stronger about Mohammad, and was gripped by a certain fear. This, too, is part of the problem. If our Beloved Lord Jesus is insulted, we Catholics pray for the one who insults, and make reparations through acts of penance. If Mohammad is insulted, even in a stupid cartoon, his followers make death threats, and try to carry them out.

No, the USCCB is quite wrong, and so are all the critics who say opposition is based on bigotry. Islam is not compatible with Western Civilization, the civilization that grew from the bosom of the Catholic Church.

If Muslims truly wish to be part of western civil society, they should acknowledge that building a mosque at Ground Zero is like thumbing their noses at all who died on September 11, 2001.

Build the mosque somewhere else.