Saturday, February 28, 2009

Contraceptives and the Economic Collapse

I am a hopeless cut and pastier, but when I read such articles as these, so much better than I could write, I feel that I must do so, Fr Dwight Longnecker really nails it this time, I am posting his latest two posts together, they compliment each other too well to not do so.

The Egyptian

Contraceptives and the Economic Collapse


Everything is connected and it may sound absurd to link contraception with the economic collapse, but think about it:

History will look back and decide that artificial contraception was the most radical and earth shattering invention ever devised by mankind. When the link between the sexual act and procreation was broken it not only changed our sexual behavior, it changed everything.

Most importantly, it changed the way we think about ourselves and our actions. The links between our actions and their natural consequences were broken. We began to expect that we could have whatever pleasure we wanted when we wanted and how we wanted and that we could avoid all the consequences of those actions. In sexual behavior it seemed to be so.

We became gods. We could do anything and have anything and we could avoid the cost. Extrapolate this mentality to the economic sphere and you'll see what I mean. We told ourselves that we could have anything we wanted instantly simply by taking out another loan. If we were the lenders, we insured ourselves against loss in case those loans were not re paid.

The responsibility could always be shifted. The 'problem' could always be solved. Paying the price could always be delayed. We could just re-finance. Just as we got instant sexual gratification for free, so we thought we should have everything else instantly for free.

How different our mentalities would be if we still understood that every time a man and woman come together a baby might be made. If we lived that way we would have to grow up and be more sober about all things. We would have to take responsibility, and if we did not the consequences would meet us very soon.

Instead we have become a society of spoiled brats. Stamping our feet and demanding instant gratification and entertainment and pleasure, and believing that somebody else somewhere will pick up the tab.

Where did it come from? I realize the causes are complex, but a contributing factor is artificial contraception which changed the way we think and respond at a very profound level.


UK Teens having Abortions Soar

Saturday, February 28, 2009
UK Teens having Abortions Soar
This article from the Daily Telegraph records the soaring rate of teen pregnancies in the UK. They have the highest rate of teenage girls getting pregnant in the developed world, and half of them now end by killing the baby.

The pro aborts actually say publicly that the 50% abortion rate is a good thing because the stigma of abortion is being lifted. Meanwhile the government ministers admit that the trend is 'disturbing' and believe the solution is yet more explicit sex education, more free condoms and other contraceptives.

It's madness: Keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. "Oh. Throwing that gas on the fire didn't make it go out!! I guess we didn't throw enough. Let's get that big barrel of gas over there and throw that on."

Even accepting the premise that contraceptives are ok (which I don't) the whole scheme is just about as stupid as stupid can be. Do these people not understand what it is like to be a teenager? Haven't they read all the studies that explain how the male teen mind does not have the chemicals to adequately connect actions with consequences?

It was summed up by a friend of mine, "Geesh, my teenaged son can't even put his socks in the laundry basket when he takes them off. Does anybody think he will remember to put on a doodad before jumping in the sack? Once he and the girl have had a couple of drinks the idea of responsibility is totally out the window

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Here come the Brown Shirts

Maybe I shouldn't have posted the previous rant, Oh well at least I won't be alone

The Egyptian

Big Brother Obama Supporters On the Internet Are Watching You

By Judi McLeod Thursday, February 26, 2009

imageWhile the Obama-led Democrats control the future of the United States of America, the grassroots on the Internet (The Obama Forum) are in the process of turning in “enemies of Obama”, including the parents of children who are Obama supporters.

Obama supporting children have actually posted their parents’ names and addresses on the Obama Forum. (here).

In all of its searches, Canada Free Press (CFP) has found no comment from any official in the Obama administration repudiating the Forum.

The Obamaforum.com instructs people to “Report Anti-Obama Sentiment By Your Coworkers and Peers (here) and more.

All mainstreet Americans can do is hope that the secret service who visited the Oklahoma city motorist, tooling around town with the “abort Obama sign” on his car, does not log onto the Forum.

The following is not for those who are frightened easily or for those with a weak stomach,” a CFP tipster wrote.

You can let Obama know how his stimulus bill is helping you at the website, whose name was a number, according to Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday night. The veep, of course, was really talking about: Recovery.gov- Share your experience

But Obamameisters in darker corners have a thread just for what to do with their perceived enemies:

From the Obama Forum: Ban websites with the help of officials (Italics CFP’s).

To get the ball rolling here are some of the sites:

Get the ball rolling here are some sites
www.gop.org <---Opposing party www.redstate.com <---Conservatard watering hole www.freerepublic.com <---See redstate.com www.mccain.senate.gov <---Ran against Obama and attacking him now. www.sarahpac.com <---Sarah "Carabou Barbie" Palin's "Political Action Committee." drudgereport has a bunch of firearms sites and a ton of others.

Here they are keeping a list and checking it twice...”Ok, if you see a car with a bumper sticker or anything about freedom or liberty or hatred for taxes or one of those “Nobamba” bumper stickers or anything that is against the government or Obama, do what you can to mark down the license plate number. Maybe the make and model of the car, I bet we might be able to get a statistical probability based on make and model to just go after all of a certain type of car. The government will have need for such a list pretty soon.

“I saw t his one this morning so I’ll start the list:
“License Plate: 1M1337-Texas,
“Silver Cadillac Escalade
“Infraction: Ron Paul 2008 bumper sticker and a little “don’t tread on me” sign...”

There is zero tolerance for Doubting Thomases on a website that likes to depict Obama as Jesus walking on water.

The Forum has a take-no-prisoners attitude: “Anyone overheard doubting President Obama should be immediately reported to local officials. Make the jobs of local officials easier by posting any dissent you may have overheard in the elevator from one of your coworkers, while drinking a beer at the local sports bar, or by strangers buying groceries at the grocery store, or reading Conservative books and other racist publications (Italics CFP’s) at the library. Remember to jot down as much information as possible about them. Height, weight, hair color, eye color, etc. Try to sneak a photograph of them with your cell phone, but be careful and don’t let them see you. License plate numbers, social security information, FEMA records, criminal background checks. Post it all here. “Remember, in the great words of President Obama: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!”

To suggest that it was President John F. Kennedy who inspired Americans with these words, could get you branded as a racist.

Other sentiments of Internet Obama supporters: “All gunowners should die”.

“Websites (that) don’t comply on their own, we will take them down by force,” is their promise.

“To keep hope alive, in spite of all mistakes, horrors, and crimes, recognize the obvious superiority of socialism”, their avowed mantra.

“For struggle, Solidarity and Socialism! I swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Obama. Our laws and his will, according to him. We will not overthrow the government with violence. We shall stand, remain and be the law of his realm forever. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead for Obama to deliver them from evil.”

Meanwhile, it’s going to be a long, intolerant and even excruciating four years.



Copyright © 2009
Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and Glenn Beck.

Judi can be emailed at: judi@canadafreepress.com

A FUNNY SORT OF DEPRESSION

I know off the religion topic but we need to put things in perspective here, when the Ipods are gone and the cell phones are out of commission and walmart sales drop, then, we are in a depression, right now the economy is in a down turn but if Obama's manic grasp for control is left unchecked we will be in a depression for real, now is the time for people to keep their wits about them and PRAY that sense returns to DC before it's too late.
]
PRAY for the POPE and our elected officials, that they do the right thing and not spend us down the toliet

My Rant
The Egyptian

A FUNNY SORT OF DEPRESSION

Are we headed to something like the Great Depression?

There is clearly much to be worried about. Most of America's private retirement 401(k) accounts have significantly decreased in value since last autumn's crash. Home equity has plunged. The unemployment rate is above 7 percent and climbing.

We had negative GDP growth last quarter. Stock prices are the lowest in 10 years. Almost daily some company announces layoffs. Some big banks may be nationalized. The American auto industry will not survive as we have known it for nearly a century.

Abroad, the news is worse. European banks have lost trillions of euros in bad loans to Eastern Europe and Asia. Countries like Iceland, Ireland and Greece are teetering on insolvency. China's export industries may have to lay off millions of workers.

Given all that news, we are in a funny sort of depression. Our spiraling national deficit is being financed by China, Japan and other overseas concerns at almost no interest -- saving the United States trillions of dollars in debt service costs.

Nearly 93 percent of those Americans in the workforce are still employed. The difference between what the banks pay out in interest on depositors' savings and what they charge borrowers for loans is one of the most profitable in recent memory.

The sudden crash in energy prices may be hurting Iran, the Gulf monarchies, Russia and Venezuela. Yet Americans, who import 60 percent of their transportation fuel, along with natural gas, have been given about a half-trillion-dollar annual reprieve. The reduced price of energy could translate into more than $1,500 in annual savings for the average driver, and hundreds of dollars off the heating and cooling bills for the homeowner.

For the vast majority of Americans with jobs, the fall in prices for almost everything from food to cars has, in real dollars, meant an actual increase in purchasing power. The loss in value of home equity is serious for those who need to relocate for work or want to downsize and move to an apartment or a retirement community. But when averaged over the last decade, real estate still shows a substantial annual increase in value.

Moreover, the vast majority of American homeowners -- well over 90 percent -- meet their mortgage payments. They have no plans to flip their homes for profit. For them, the fact that they have lost paper equity, or even owe more than their homes are currently appraised at, is scary -- but not equivalent to a depression. Most are confident that after a few years their houses will appreciate again. As for now, working young couples have a chance to buy a house that would have been impossible just two years ago.

The same holds true for many retirement accounts whose decline is terrible for those retirees who count on drawing out each month what they put away or must cash out their depleted accounts at vastly reduced value.

But the majority of working Americans are not yet pulling out their sinking retirement funds. Most are still putting away pre-tax money each month, apparently confident that within a few years their portfolios will return to their former value. Some are even consoled that they are now buying mutual funds at rock-bottom prices rather than investing in sky-high investments at the peak of a bull market.

Times are bad for those out of work or those who bought expensive homes with paltry down payments. Yet for those hurting, there is a vast array of government help. Both private companies and public agencies offer all sorts of ways to either walk away from mortgage obligations or have them renegotiated. The same is true for credit-card debt.

Unemployment insurance, welfare, food stamps and even more new social programs on the way have redefined poverty from what our grandparents told us of the Great Depression.

I live in southeastern Fresno County, one of the poorest regions of a now nearly bankrupt California. Many people are hurting. Yet to go to the local Wal-Mart is to see late-model cars in the parking lots and plenty of cell phones, iPods and BlackBerrys among the shoppers. Carts are stuffed with consumer goods, lots of food and Easter confections.

So are we in a depression that justifies a vast redefinition of government and a massive takeover of the private sector? Not quite. What we are a witnessing instead is a sharp downturn from the most affluent era in the history of civilization. For the last two decades, we borrowed and spent as if there were no tomorrow. Now we are living in that tomorrow of cutting back and making do.

In relative terms, it is no longer 2005, but that does not mean it is 1932 either. (Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.)

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Brothers of the Little Oratory in San Diego

What a wonderful statement of support, in this Lenten season let us pray for The Holy Father in this time of backstabbing and petty sniping as he tries to reform the church from the excesses of VII

The Egyptian

The Brothers of the Little Oratory in San Diego, along with the members of the Chorus Breviarii Gregorian Chant Schola and Liturgical Prayer Group, wish to make the following public statement regarding those liberal churchmen who are currently in open resistance to the program of continuity and church unity undertaken by our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI:

Healing divisions is a difficult task. People come to like the social security of their ghettos. They fear what lies beyond its walls. Hence the boundaries separating the Roman and Orthodox churches has entrenched itself for nearly a thousand years. Many of us may live to see its millennial anniversary. Preventing the entrenchment of such a division is, to his credit, clearly important to Pope Benedict XVI. And he has made very clear, since the first months of his pontificate, the importance that he sees fit to attach to continuity both in worship and in doctrine. Yet this Pope not only theorizes, he acts - unilaterally and in keeping with his Petrine privilege, much to the displeasure of a dominant liberal faction which seeks and has sought since the Council to monopolize its control of church praxis. But that was not the vision of the Council, nor was it the intention of Pope John XXIII. True evenhandedness takes far more courage than monopoly, and Pope Benedict XVI is demonstrating that courage and being vilified for it by the Church and Social Left. We must and will speak and act in his defense.


Therefore the Brothers express their undying gratitude to our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI for his work to repair decades of driftage and dissolution in the identity of the Catholic faithful. His courageous work has freed the church from the icepack of decadent and monopolistic liberal theology, and is promoting new growth from both the oldest branches of the church, and the youngest. The Barque of Peter is moving once again, as the breath of the Holy Spirit fills her sails. Yet forces within the church work obstinately to obfuscate and obstruct, even threaten, both the Holy Father and his work as the Vicar of Christ. This is occurring both in the religious and secular press, and even among the hierarchies of Western Europe, to their shameless culpability. The statement of the Austrian Bishops was a disgrace.

The Brothers of the Little Oratory in San Diego wish to make it clear that we will be neither silent nor invisible in the face of such disloyal opposition to our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. Most of us have grown up in the era of the dissolution of our Catholic identities, and we have worked from before the beginning of this pontificate, with little encouragement either material or ecclesial, to reclaim it for ourselves through our dedication to the offices of the Roman Breviary both in private and in public, and to an interpretation of the liturgy rooted in the Hermeneutic of Continuity. As laymen we have done work of our own volition that our priests ought to have fostered in us and in themselves all along. Now, for the first time in our adult lives we have a Pope who not only encourages, he acts in our interests. We will act both in his promotion and his defense.


We EXPECT our Diocese to do the same. It is not to its credit that no voice has yet been heard in firm support of the Holy Father while the likes of the Austrian Bishops, the Tablet in London, and Mr. Richard McBrien, Pelosi, Fr. Kennedy in Australia, and Card. Lehmann in Germany resist him to his face. We are seeing with increasing clarity the potential for treachery that they, and their accompanying political slant and vision, bring with them from the depths of the 1960's. REMEMBER: it was THIS Pope who approved the statutes of the Neo-Catechumenal Way; it was THIS Pope who accommodated the State Bishops of the People's Republic of China, and the faithful they mislead; and it is also THIS Pope who seeks to reconcile a group of traditionalists who are more Roman Catholic than either of the other two aforenamed groups.

Should he decide that is possible, then it is not up to the liberal churchmen among us to criticize. It is for them to assent and support our Holy Father. We look eagerly forward to the day when the cracks in the facade of Christianity are healed from the bottom up, not with a superficial bridge of ice which spans the gap but melts when the examining sunlight of doctrine and dogma is shined upon it. But liberal churchmen need to know that such cracks exist on both the left AND the right. And BOTH require the same urgent attention.


We have suffered patiently the years of the Post-Conciliar "child-church"; we have longed to grow up and to put away the things of childhood and to become Men of faith, yet we have seen our spiritual ambitions repeatedly slapped down over the years. We have turned BOTH cheeks already. We will not be slapped again. And so we say now, before the ecclesial situation develops past the editorial stage: There is ONLY ONE ROCK, and we stand firmly upon it; we stand firmly WITH Peter, with Pope Benedict XVI, if necessary between him and the wolves who would undo him. We will defend him both with prayer AND action, with Faith AND Works. If we, as devoted lay-faithful can be so bold in our support, we have every confidence that our Diocese can do the same. We call on the Diocese of San Diego to stand even before us, in support of the Holy Father and his program of church unity.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

NO KIDDING

A key Vatican official has called for "bold and courageous" decisions to address liturgical abuses that have arisen since the reforms of Vatican II.

Finally maybe we can get somewhere with the reform of the reform, Pray for the Archbishop and the Holy Father, Satan and the Liberal Sandalnistas will not approve and will fight all the way. Made the mistake of proposing a Latin Mass at a meeting around here and was lucky to leave with my head and arse still attached, we have a long way to go

The Egyptian



Feb. 23, 2009 (CWNews.com) -

Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, the secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, cites a flawed understanding of Vatican II teachings and the influence of secular ideologies are reasons to conclude that-- as then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in 1985-- "the true time of Vatican II has not yet come." Particularly in the realm of the liturgy, Archbishop Ranjith says, "The reform has to go on."

Archbishop Ranjith, who was called to the Vatican personally by Pope Benedict to serve as a papal ally in the quest to restore a sense of reverence in the liturgy, makes his comments in the Foreword to a new book based on the diaries and notes of Cardinal Fernando Antonelli, who was a key figure in the liturgical-reform movement both before and after Vatican II.

The writings of Cardinal Antonelli, Archbishop Ranjith says, help the reader "to understand the complex inner workings of the liturgical reform prior to an immediately following the Council." The Vatican official concludes that implementation of the Council's suggested reforms often veered away from the actual intent of the Council fathers. As a result, Archbishop Ranjith concludes, the liturgy today is not a true realization of the vision put forward in the key liturgical document of Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium (doc).

Specifically, Archbishop Ranjith writes:

Some practices which Sacrosanctum Concilium had never even contemplated were allowed into the Liturgy, like Mass versus populum, Holy Communion in the hand, altogether giving up on the Latin and Gregorian Chant in favor of the vernacular and songs and hymns without much space for God, and extension beyond any reasonable limits of the faculty to concelebrate at Holy Mass. There was also the gross misinterpretation of the principle of "active participation."

The Sri Lankan prelate argues that it in order to carry out a "reform of the reform," it is essential to recognize how the liturgical vision of Vatican lI became distorted. He praises the book on Cardinal Antonelli for allowing the reader to gain a better understanding of "which figures or attitudes caused the present situation." This, the archbishop says, is an inquiry "which, in the name of truth, we cannot abandon."

While acknowledging "the turbulent mood of the years that immediately followed the Council," Archbishop Ranjith reminds readers that in summoning the world's bishops to an ecumenical council, Blessed John XXIII intended "a fortification of the faith." The Council, in the eyes of Pope John, was "certainly not a call to go along with the spirit of the times."

However, he continues, the Council took place at a time of great worldwide intellectual turmoil, and in its aftermath especially, many would-be interpreters saw the event as a break from the prior traditions of the Church. As Archbishop Ranjith puts it:

Basic concepts and themes like Sacrifice and Redemption, Mission, Proclamation and Conversion, Adoration as an integral element of Communion, and the need of the Church for salvation--all were sidelined, while Dialogue, Inculturation, Ecumenism, Eucharist-as-Banquet, Evangelization-as-Witness, etc., became more important. Absolute values were disdained.

Even in the work of the Consilium, the Vatican agency assigned to implement liturgical changes, these influences were clearly felt, the archbishop notes:

An exaggerated sense of antiquarianism, anthopologism, confusion of roles between the ordained and the non-ordained, a limitless provision of space for experimentation-- and indeed, the tendency to look down upon some aspects of the development of the Liturgy in the second millennium-- were increasingly visible among certain liturgical schools.

Today, Archbishop Ranjith writes, the Church can look back and recognize the influences that distorted the original intent of the Council. That recognition, he says, should "help us to be courageous in improving or changing that which was erroneously introduced and which appears to be incompatible with the true dignity of the Liturgy." A much-needed "reform of the reform," he argues, should be inspired by "not merely a desire to correct past mistakes but much more the need to be true to what the Liturgy in fact is and means to us and what the Council itself defined it to be."

Archbishop Ranjith's 10-page Foreword appears in the English-language edition of a book entitled True Development of the Liturgy is written by Msgr. Nicola Giampietro, who serves on the staff of the Congregation for Divine Worship. It will be available in September from Roman Catholic Books.

Monday, February 23, 2009

America's Fastest Growing Religion... Witchcraft?

Me thinks Catholics had better step up to the plate, Bring in the SPPX the happy-clappy crap isn't keeping them in the Church, the more liberal Priests and liturgy get the more we loose

The Egyptian

from the gateway pundit

Hocus-Pocus Gingerocus
Witchcraft may be the fastest growing religion in America.
Maybe they can fix the economy?
They certainly couldn't do any worse than the democrats in Washington today.

For many new members it's all about "celebrating diversity."
...They sound like another solid Democratic voting block.
Digital Journal reported:

While Jews, Muslims and Christians fight among themselves, one religion has darted in front of all the others to become the America's fastest growing faith.

The religion of the witch trials becomes religion of the future with the membership exploding, according to experts. This is bringing consternation to believers in the Big Three of faith.

One expert claims that the number of Wiccan experts is doubling every 30 months. A recent book entitled "Generation Hex" by author Marla Alupoaicei declares that it will be the third largest religion of faith by the year 2012. This explosion of membership in Wicca has come about because of social estrangement, loneliness and the need to belong according to Dillon Burroughs co-author of the book. Although the West Coast and Salem, Massachussets is experiencing the most rapid growth, groups can be found all over the country, including the South and Mountain states.

Several years ago a news posting in Australia described the growth of Wicca in that country. One adherent, a nurse named Lilith said in an article about witchcraft in Australia that it is all about "celebrating diversity. Everything is beautiful in its own way. " Not only is the religion growing it also has different divisions within it, just like the Big Three religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There are those who are more or less orthodox in their beliefs as well.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Why the Pope Had to Do What He Did

I know this is a long read but it is worth the time, puts the SPPX controversy in perspective

From: The Society of St Hugh of Cluny blog


By Martin Mosebach

The Catholic Church is experiencing an unprecedented moment in her recent history. A sacerdotal act of the Pope – the removal of the excommunication of four bishops who had been consecrated contrary to the prohibition of his predecessor in the Petrine office – encounters an outraged lack of understanding not only of the non-Catholic public but also of many Catholics and even bishops, who have openly renounced their loyalty to the pope. Forty years after the Second Vatican Council, which attempted an “opening of the Church to the World”, the Catholic Church has been struck dumb - as if she does not recognize any more her own institutions.

What is a Catholic Bishop? Is he a senior administrative official of the Church? Is he a high-ranking politician, who can be subjected to party discipline? This is how non-Catholics (certainly contemporary ones) view the bishop, because they never have been told anything else. For Catholics, the bishop embodies the highest form of the priesthood, connected with the capacity to represent Jesus Christ himself in the giving of the Sacraments. He receives this capacity irrevocably upon his consecration and no pope or council can take it from him. That is the disturbing thing about the episcopal office: even the most unworthy and scandalous bishop always remains a bishop, capable until his last breath of adding new bishops to the line of apostolic succession.

What is excommunication? Exclusion from a political party? That’s how non-Catholics understand it - they like to call exclusion from the communist party “excommunication.” Catholics should know that a complete exclusion from their Church is absolutely impossible. For the Church, a baptized Christian cannot become an untouchable by any deed, however terrible it may be. If the Church, as the most extreme punishment, forbids a baptized Christian from confessing his sins, from receiving the Eucharistic Christ at Mass and from receiving the sacraments at death, she does so always in the hope of soon lifting the excommunication. Ultimately, no spiritual authority wants to accept the responsibility of letting a man die uncomforted. Strictly speaking, he who offends against the unity of the Church excommunicates himself. The cancellation of the excommunication cannot be denied him if he honestly desires to return to this unity.

The use of excommunication as a means of political pressure ( as it was often done in the Middle Ages) has been justly condemned. The Jewish philosopher Simone Weil called such excommunications a mortal sin of the Church. The fact that murderers and child molesters are not automatically excommunicated shows how little excommunication has to do with moral approval. The community that receives again an excommunicated person is a community of sinners.

These are likely to have been the principal considerations of Pope Benedict when he lifted the excommunication of the four bishops who had been consecrated in a manner sacramentally valid but contrary to canon law. For the pope, it must have been a tormenting thought that these bishops, in isolation, could have succumbed to the temptation to perpetuate the schism and consecrate additional bishops. The sacraments form the heart of the Church. The danger that they could be permanently dispensed while in breach of unity must have troubled the pope exceedingly.

Now, in the meantime, the whole world has had the opportunity of hearing on television one of the four bishops, the Briton Williamson, utter the most revolting theses regarding the persecution of the Jews at the time of Hitler. Behind the seemingly dispassionate poker face of the prelate there was revealed a paranoia bordering on madness. This was linked, as had been long known in the Fraternity, to a complete, insane, system composed of similar “secret knowledge.” It is understandable that a general horror prevailed, on seeing that such a man might exercise his office as an official Bishop, reconciled with the pope.

Why, however, did the general public not notice that bishop Williamson specifically cannot exercise his office, because the lifting of the excommunication did not affect his suspension from the office of bishop. Instead, they indulged in conjectures as to whether the Pope after all had a secret inclination to anti-Semitism. This, regarding a Pope, who, leaving aside his addresses in Auschwitz and in the synagogue in Cologne, has tried in his theology – one could say, like no other pope since Peter - to read and understand the Gospel as the work of the Jews. It even extended as far as the laughable report that the pope had set the conditions for the lifting of the suspension of the bishops only under the pressure of public opinion.

No one should deceive himself: this pope does nothing under the pressure of public opinion.

The question was posed whether Benedict XVI knew of Williamson’s speeches. To be sure, he can’t help but have noticed the spiritual atmosphere in the SSPX. Unreality and fanaticism resounded from the many attacks that the bishops of the Fraternity directed against Benedict. And it is very well possible that the knowledge of a growing pathological narrowing of the minds drove the pope to act.

Twenty years ago, as Cardinal and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had already labored with all his strength for a reconciliation with the SSPX. At the time their founder, the legendary Archbishop Lefebvre, still lived. He had participated in the Council and had only become an opponent when the “movement of ‘68” made inroads in the Church and made a revolution out of the reform. Lefebvre refused to give up the traditional, ancient mass rite and Paul VI responded by suspending him.

Cardinal Ratzinger attempted to win over the old man and promised that the pope would name a bishop faithful to tradition for the community. Then Lefebvre’s distrust was aroused - he felt he was being strung along. He broke off the negotiations and consecrated four bishops with whom he was excommunicated immediately thereafter. Had Lefebvre acted rightly by following his hunch? Cardinal Ratzinger in any case must have been affected by the death of this man in the state of excommunication. For, unlike most bishops of this time, it was impossible for him to deny any justification to Lefebvre’s struggle. “Whomever these teachings do not please he does not deserve to be a man.” This hymn of liberalism from Mozart’s “Magic Flute” became the maxim of the Church that had become liberal. The SSPX was hermetically sealed off. It was not permitted to participate in the discussions of a post-conciliar Church so enamored of discussion. Its young priests celebrated in basements and garages. One could say that the Fraternity had circled the wagons but around these wagons yawned a void – nobody cared about that.

Every sociologist knows what quickly becomes of small oppositional groups cut off from interaction with reality. That this group was endangered would have been sufficient for a responsible priest to care for it. But more was at stake here: as misfortune would have it, exactly this group had made its mission the preservation of the greatest treasure of the Church.

Even today it is a difficult undertaking to speak of the importance of the liturgy for the Church. Twenty years ago it was almost hopeless finding a sympathetic ear. It was a foregone conclusion for many clerics that the traditional, over 1500-year old liturgy of the Church was decorative mumbo-jumbo for the nostalgic and for aesthetes. It had the same importance for “emancipated Christians” as the string quartets played on occasions of state have for politics. What had been true throughout the entire history of the Latin Church had been forgotten: that liturgy is the visible body of the Church; that Church and liturgy are identical. It is the mystic depiction of the whole plenitude of revealed truths. It is the locus of faith, where subjective conviction and feeling become objective contemplation and encounter. It is this liturgy which carried the Christian faith through the centuries. The success of the mission in the entire world was owed to its sacrality in liturgical language and chant.

The liturgy had soared above the deep divides of European history because it was equally removed from every epoch into which it entered. It is always unseasonable and therefore always an image of the other reality which awaits man. This great form of the liturgy had been softened up by Paul VI’s radical reform of the mass – an intervention unheard of in the entire history of the Church. It splintered into a thousand improvisations.

But why was Archbishop Lefebvre the only bishop in the entire world who uncompromisingly rejected this attack against the liturgy and thus against the Church? With this no to a process of decomposition so highly dangerous to the Church, Lefebvre entered ecclesiastical history. What gave him the strength was the milieu, only found in France, of a Catholic laity which had acquired its world view in the struggle against aggressive republican secularism. This was the tragedy of Lefebvre and his movement: they rescued the ancient liturgy but linked it to the struggle of political parties in recent French history. The only refuge that the traditional liturgy had found threatened to become its prison. Pope Benedict had already freed it from this prison with his Motu Proprio and had given it back with its universal claim to the entire Church.

Must he not, however, have felt a sense obligation to the SSPX; that, for all its faults, it had become an instrument for preserving the Holy of Holies of the Church in a time of crisis? Whether the SSPX succeeds in finding a place in the multiplicity of the present day Church remains to be seen. Its historic mission, in any case, has been concluded.

In the last few days it could be heard again and again that the Vatican is incapable of conveying its concerns to the public. It is certainly true that there would have been less excitement among those of good will if, for instance, one had emphasized at the lifting of the excommunications that Bishop Williamson remained suspended until further notice. But one cannot underestimate what black holes of ignorance have been created even in believing Catholics by more than thirty years of neglected religious instruction. These cannot be closed even by the cleverest public relations work. Regarding the pope, broad circles know only that he is for human rights and against condoms. It is happily declared that “the Church can’t return to before the Second Vatican Council.” Few, however, think about the contradictions and need for interpretation of the most important texts of this council.

Does anybody notice that the pope has acted exactly in accordance with the theology of the council in his magnanimous lifting of the excommunications? The restoration of the sacral visage of the church must remain for the majority of “worldly” observers foreign and incomprehensible. Probably only later generations will grasp that the restoration of liturgical identity was worth a great sacrifice. Building up is, after all, slower than tearing down.

Naturally, things could reach a point that the state and society lose the taste for tolerating within their borders a corporation, which visibly stands under a different law and defends values other than those of the secular majority. The coarseness of a chancellor in an election campaign gives us a foretaste. As was done under Bismarck, the accusation could be made against the Catholics that they are bad citizens of the state because their heart is ultramontane; it clings “over the mountains” to the pope and his authority.

Ultramontane – this word describes perfectly the Catholic mentality: with a small part of one’s consciousness to be not German, not contemporary, not cosmopolitan. Despite all distrust, the commonwealth does not have to fare ill with such members – the result of the constant tension between the Pope and the Emperor in the Middle Ages was nothing less than the European idea of freedom.



Copyright by Martin Mosebach. The original of this essay appeared in Der Spiegel magazine. Any errors are mine as translator. Special thanks to Ulrike Hagg for providing the article.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

facing face to face

I really do agree this face to face idea is really keeping people away from confession

and this too


From Fr. Z with his comments in the red

Say the BLACK do the RED

This is in from the New York Times.

Securely in the "Brick by Brick" department, but there is an interesting dimension to this which you should not miss. There will always be a liberal loser in the mix.

February 21, 2009
On Religion
In One Church, Confession Makes a Comeback
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

STAMFORD, Conn. — The day after Msgr. Stephen DiGiovanni was installed in June 1998 as the pastor of St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church here, he walked through the quiet sanctuary, appreciating the English Gothic grandeur and tallying all the repairs it required.

One particular sight seized him. The confessional at the rear of the pews had been nailed shut. The confessional in the front, nearer the altar, was filled with air-conditioning equipment. And these conditions, Monsignor DiGiovanni realized, reflected theology as much as finance. [Theology, yes! This gets it exactly right! The writer has hit this … ehem… nail on the head.]

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s, the Catholic Church began offering confession in “reconciliation rooms,” [I know these awful rooms are prevalent, but NOTHING in the documents of the Church required that. As a matter of fact I believe there are still some conditions for the construction of confessionals including a fixed grate, no? Am I wrong?] rather than the traditional booths. Even before the setting changed, habits had. The norm for American Catholics was to make confession once a year, generally in the penitential period of Lent leading up to Easter. [I think a lot of Catholics went to confession pretty regularly and not just once a year. Didn’t they?]

Monsignor DiGiovanni, though, soon noticed that there were lines for the St. John’s reconciliation room the only time it was open each week, for two hours on Saturday afternoon. So within his first month as pastor, he pried open the door to the rear confessional, wiped off the dust of decades and arranged for replacing the lights, drapes and tiles. [Well done!]

Then, in the fall of 1998, Monsignor DiGiovanni rolled back the clock of Catholic practice, having St. John’s priests hear confession in the booths before virtually every Mass. [This is NOT rolling back the clock. What sort of view is behind this? Again, I think it is a interpretive principle of rupture.] By now, as another Lent commences next week with Ash Wednesday, upwards of 450 people engage in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, as confession is formally known, during 15 time slots spread over all seven days of the week. Confessions are heard in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.

“As humans, we’re always deciding that we are God and breaking his commandments,” said Monsignor DiGiovanni, 58, during an interview this week in his rectory. “But God is savvy enough to know that. And God wants us to come back to Him if there’s a contrite heart. Salvation is not just a one-time deal.” [Did you get that, you Born-Agains?]

His message has stirred scores of consciences at St. John’s. And while the frequency of confession, and the return to booths from the reconciliation room, puts the pastor and the parish on the conservative end of the Catholic spectrum, [having a sense of sin and going to confession, hearing confessions, makes you "conservative".] St. John’s is a standard diocesan church with a varied congregation — corporate executives, Haitian and Hispanic immigrants, Stamford’s longtime Irish and Italian middle class. [Right… it’s just a Catholic parish.]

Rosa Marchetti, an events planner for a family-owned chain of restaurants, had grown up dreading the rite of confession. The reconciliation room, while intended to allow priest and penitent to meet in a reassuring face-to-face manner something like analyst and analysand, filled her with anxiety and shame. Six years ago, Ms. Marchetti began attending St. John’s, and these days she makes a confession at least twice a month. Speaking to an unseen priest through a screen seems to her a comfort. [As it is for the vast majority of people.]

“I’d always feared that the priests would know it was me, and I never wanted to think I’d done something wrong,” she recalled of her earlier experiences. “But at St. John’s, it was explained to me that I go to the doctor for my physical well being and I have to go to confession for my spiritual well being.”

Even so, she recognizes how the practice sets her apart from a national popular culture of celebrity magazines, talk shows, Facebook pages and Twitters that is relentlessly confessional and rarely contrite. [nice phrase: "relentlessly confessional and rarely contrite".]

“You turn on Oprah and you have women crying to her, confessing what they’ve gone through,” Ms. Marchetti said. “Everyone is so quick to tell the world their problems, but they won’t tell a priest.” [And they risk their souls as a result.]

In the hope of reversing those engines, the Catholic diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., has mounted what it calls a “Lenten Confession Campaign.” The diocese’s 87 churches, which include St. John’s, will be offering confession for two hours every Tuesday night in addition to the usual Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning periods. [EXCELLENT]

To promote the campaign, the Knights of Columbus is paying for highway billboards, bus placards and radio and TV commercials — all using a slogan drawn from Corinthians, “Be Reconciled to God” — as well as the printing and distribution of 100,000 pamphlets about confession.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether the multimedia effort can change behavior on a grand scale. Monsignor DiGiovanni has changed it within his parish through a theological version of retail politics: reaching individuals and families through a decade of homilies, conversations and columns in the church bulletin.

The movement to revive confession, using the traditional booth, no less, has plenty of skeptics within American Catholicism.

[Now which progressivist aging-hippe will the writer drag in for counterpoint?]

“Confession as we once knew it is pretty much a dead letter in Catholicism today,” the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, wrote in an e-mail message. [Yah… you knew it had to be one of these defeatists.]

Father McBrien, whose support of female ordination and married priest puts him on the theological left wing of the Catholic Church, added in a subsequent e-mail message that “the practice at the Stamford parish is an anomaly, not a sign of anything else” and at best “part of a small minority” of churches. [What would you bet he is happy that it is an anomaly?]

Majority or minority, the congregants at St. John’s firmly believe they are onto something. John F. X. Leydon, Jr., a lawyer in Stamford, has increased his pace of confession from once a year to once a month. The eldest of his four children, Mary, will be making her first confession this spring.

“The explanation we’ve given as parents is that none of us is perfect,” said Mr. Leydon, speaking also for his wife, Stacey. “However, we have to aspire to be perfect. And that should be a lifelong pursuit.”

E-mail: gfreedman@nytimes.com

An interesting article.

In the balance, McBrien looks just as foolish as he always does.

hari kari computer

Apologies to my 2 fans, computer did the up chuck and die routine, just got up and running good tonight

The Egyptian

Thursday, February 12, 2009

America what have you done?

Read the red about Christian upbringing , Crap Happens

The Egyptian

Murphy's Law, the Peter Principle and Barack Obama

By Kyle-Anne Shiver
What happens when everything that can go wrong in a person's character formation does go wrong, and that person continues to be promoted to his level of incompetence?

President Barack Obama happens.

I'm well into my sixth decade of life and have yet to see a more perfect collision of Murphy's Law with the Peter Principle in a single individual.

Proper character development is the overriding aim of good parents in raising their children. Mature parents, especially those Judeo/Christian parents with faith, believe it sinful to raise a child without strong self-constraint, a well-formed conscience, ingrained humility and an ironclad respect for the rights of others. Children raised thusly become self-supporting adults, honest in their dealings with others and prone to be contributing members of the society at large.

The world is purely chock full of bad parents, however. Plum chock full.

Barack Obama was conceived out of wedlock to an eighteen year-old girl, who was herself the product of non-religious, rebellious parents, intent on unraveling the fabric of WASP America. Stanley Ann Dunham met Barack Obama Sr., an already-married African Muslim man, in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii in her very first year there. According to President Obama's memoir, his biological father married his mother about three months into the pregnancy, even though he already had a wife and children on his home continent. Hence, very shortly, the father abandoned the new mother and her child to seek his own fortune and yet another wife-to-be at Harvard.

Bigamists are not known for fidelity, are they?

The end result of this convoluted beginning of the man who would become President was that his maternal grandparents became his primary caregivers. With the very best of intentions, I'm sure, these white grandparents doted, scraped and groveled to make the little abandoned child's life as picture-perfect as it could possibly be under the awful circumstances of parental abandonment. This is a recipe for disaster in the area of character development.

Believing that the child, Barry, needed lots of attention and as few hard knocks as possible, these grandparents proceeded to spoil the ever-living daylights out of the precocious, charismatic, bi-racial child of their only daughter. Through his grandmother's connections, Barry got a scholarship to the elite Panahou Academy and became one of only five black children in the posh school, where teachers, too, bent over backwards not to offend, not to discipline. For added umph to this already-disastrous formula, Barry's grandfather made sure the child got lots of father-figure mentoring from a self-proclaimed pedophile and avowed communist, Frank Marshall Davis.

As a young teenager, surrounded by opportunities for drug abuse and tomfoolery, Barry bragged that he had a deal with his doting grandparents which entailed his being able to do whatever he wanted while they looked the other way and pretended not to notice.

After all, they surely reasoned, this pitiful little boy had enough pain in his life.

Paying consequences for delinquent behavior would have been entirely too much. Too much. Oh, just too much to bear.

As President Obama's school transcripts (all of them, from start to finish!) remain among his stack of unreleased documents, we have no way of knowing how our current President did in school. However, we do know that he was doing drugs, that he was not involved in any demanding athletic program and that he was not otherwise making a big name for himself on campus. We know also that Obama's first gig on the mainland was at Occidental College, which is a fine school I am sure, but far from Ivy League. I'm fairly certain that those grades at Panahou were nothing to brag about, and there is no evidence whatsoever that there was anything else to brag about either.

At Occidental, however, young Barry Obama discovered the one gift that would eventually make up for all other deficiencies: his oratorical talent. Coupled with natural charisma and an Eddie-Haskell styled ability to guile, Barry Obama had arrived.

This was the story hailed by Axelrod as bedrock, middle-class, Kansan upbringing.

And 52% of the American electorate bought it faster than you can say prime-Florida-swampland-with-a-view-sold-to-dumber-than-dumb-Yankees.

Barry Obama made his entrance into mainland politics by frequenting all the Occidental socialist clubs, rallies and protests, and the first time he took to a podium, his rhetorical talent unveiled itself. Then, it was off to Columbia and a shadow existence, which eventually culminated in President Barack Obama, the first African-American President and the first man to ever assume the highest office in the land without one whit of experience other than running for office and beguiling a public begging to be beguiled.

Along the always-sunny yellow brick road to the White House, Barry was hailed as brilliant-beyond-brilliant, the veritable savior of his people and in the words of his now Vice President, a "clean, articulate and bright" black man. Nowhere, at any time during Barack Obama's near-miraculous rise to power, did he come into contact with anyone that would have demanded a character test.

The characters in this President's closet are too strange for fiction -- Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, the New Party, Billy Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Louis Farrakhan, Mayor Daly, Rod Blagojevich, George Soros, assorted tax cheats and pay-to-play schemers of every variety. When any sentient person adds it up, he gets a man without principle, someone so enabled in his avoidance of reality about himself that one can only call it Murphy's Law applied to character development.

Every single thing that could go wrong has indeed gone wrong.

Enter a mainstream media so swept off its feet with tingles and its own utter lack of religiosity -- a group purely primed for false-savior seeking -- and what one could call the Murphy's Law of picking a President is perfectly, positively, poignantly complete.

From Stage right and Stage left, and from below and above, we see the Peter Principle in all its inglorious dimensions set to wreak havoc upon this entire Country.

In only three weeks' time, this President has signaled to every terrorist on the planet that we are a sorry, groveling, ashamed Nation ready to come to the diplomatic confessional. He is closing Gitmo within one year, has suspended trials there, and dismissed the charges against the U.S.S. Cole plotter. American penance is coming and it's coming fast and feebly on its knees.

President Obama has just put our money where his mouth is and is using $20.3 million to bring in Palestinian refugees from Gaza, the Hamas-controlled region where folks prefer bomb-making to bread-baking. Instead of helping Israel defeat them, this President brings them here.

As if we did not have enough home-grown terrorists.

The new politics of "hope & change" is looking like a Hollywood remake of "Larger-than-life Dopes and Same-ole-same-ole Corruptocrats" with tax cheats flanking the new Cabinet, an Attorney General who never saw a pardon he didn't like or a terrorist he couldn't love, a porn-protection guru as his Deputy, and a man without an ounce of intelligence knowledge or experience now the wartime head of the CIA. Add to this mess a Secretary of State whose husband owes far more than any other American alive to foreigners. The new Secretary of Education was in charge of Chicago schools, where more than 500 verified acts of child battering by teachers went unpunished and teacher unions trumped student rights. This Cabinet is shaping up to be worse than Bill Clinton's and Jimmy Carter's combined, while President Obama throws cocktail parties with $100/pound steak.

President Obama's definition of bipartisanship: "I won."

President Obama's definition of leadership: "Nancy can handle the details."

Our new President had the gall to pronounce the so-called economic stimulus bill absolutely free of "earmarks" and "make-do work," while spinning his prosaic campaign rhetoric before an international audience in a prime-time "press conference." This bill has close to a trillion-dollar price tag, but according to the Congressional Budget Office will do worse to our overall economy than no government action whatsoever. So, if this bill has no pork or earmarks in it, then it is pure socialist folderol run amok before it even gets implemented - in the face of the "worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

The Peter Principle has reached its pinnacle in President Barack Obama.

If one wants a hawks-eye view into the minds of Obama voters, all one need do is read this piece published by the New York Times last week, detailing the fantasies, dreams and drooling-envy delusions of his followers. Their celebrity is now their President.

The perfect collision of Murphy's Law with the Peter Principle has arrived to explode in our faces.

In the words of Britain's most eloquent commentator, "America, what have you done?"

A Rabbi Who Gets IT,

A Rabbi who gets "it" Vat II happy clappy crap is the problem and the SSPX is part of the solution, with Fr Zs commentary in red, from Romish Internet Graffiti ,via Fr Z at WDTPRS

Is Rabbi Levin Papabile?

By Hilary White, Rome correspondent
Wednesday February 11, 2009

ROME, February 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The dissident, leftist movement in the Catholic Church over the last forty years has severely undermined the teaching of the Catholic Church on the moral teachings on life and family, [fantastic!] a prominent US Orthodox rabbi told LifeSiteNews.com. Rabbi Yehuda Levin, the head of a group of 800 Orthodox rabbis in the US and Canada, also dismissed the accusations that the Holy See had not sufficiently distanced itself from the comments made by Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) on the Holocaust.

“I support this move” to reconcile the traditionalist faction in the Church, he said, “because I understand the big picture, which is that the Catholic Church has a problem. There is a strong left wing of the Church that is doing immeasurable harm to the faith.” [Peter was Jewish. Can Rabbi Levin be Pope after Pope Benedict? Maybe 20 years from now?]

Rabbi Levin said that he understands “perfectly” why the reconciliation is vital to the fight against abortion and the homosexualist movement. [The man-centered view of the left detaches morals from reality.]

“I understand that it is very important to fill the pews of the Catholic Church not with cultural Catholics and left-wingers who are helping to destroy the Catholic Church and corrupt the values of the Catholic Church.” This corruption, he said, “has a trickle-down effect to every single religious community in the world.” [What an admission!]

“What’s the Pope doing? He’s trying to bring the traditionalists back in because they have a lot of very important things to contribute the commonweal of Catholicism. [YES YES YES!]

“Now, if in the process, he inadvertently includes someone who is prominent in the traditionalist movement who happens to say very strange things about the Holocaust, is that a reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater and start to condemn Pope Benedict? Absolutely not.”

During a visit to Rome at the end of January, Rabbi Levin told LifeSiteNews.com that he believes the media furore over the lifting of the excommunications of the four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X is a red herring. He called “ridiculous” the accusations that in doing so Pope Benedict VXI or the Catholic Church are anti-Semitic and described as “very strong” the statements distancing the Holy See and the Pope from Williamson’s comments.

Rabbi Levin was in Rome holding meetings with high level Vatican officials to propose what he called a “new stream of thinking” for the Church’s inter-religious dialogue, one based on commonly held moral teachings, particularly on the right to life and the sanctity of natural marriage.

The most important issue,” he said, is the work the Church is doing “to save babies from abortion, and save children’s minds, and young people’s minds, helping them to know right and wrong on the life and family issues.”

“That’s where ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue has to go.”

Although numbers are difficult to determine, it is estimated that the Society of St. Pius X has over a million followers worldwide. The traditionalist movement in the Catholic Church is noted for doctrinal orthodoxy and enthusiasm not only for old-fashioned devotional practices, but for the Church’s moral teachings and opposition to post-modern secularist sexual mores. [And this is why progressivists will fight their reintegration in the mainstream Church.] Liberals in the Church, particularly in Europe, have bitterly opposed all overtures to the SSPX and other traditionalists, particularly the Pope’s recent permission to revive the traditional Latin Mass. [The TLM is the monster under their bed.]

The Vatican announced in early January that, as part of ongoing efforts to reconcile the breakaway group, the 1988 decree of excommunication against the Society had been rescinded. Later that month, a Swedish television station aired an interview, recorded in November 2008, in which Bishop Richard Williamson, one of the four leaders of the Society, said that he did not believe that six million Jews were killed in the Nazi death camps during World War II.

At that time, the media erupted with protests and accusations that the Catholic Church, and especially Pope Benedict XVI, are anti-Semitic.

Rabbi Levin particularly defended Pope Benedict, saying he is the genius behind the moves of the late Pope John Paul II to reconcile the Church with the Jewish community. [HO HO! The libs aren’t going to like that suggestion! They will attack the Rabbi especially on this point, suggesting that it was all JP II and had nothing to do with Card. Ratzinger… who is German, btw.]

“Anyone who understands and follows Vatican history knows that in the last three decades, one of the moral and intellectual underpinnings of the papacy of Pope John Paul II, was Cardinal Ratzinger.

“And therefore, a lot of the things that Pope John Paul did vis-à-vis the Holocaust, he [Benedict] might have done himself, whether it was visiting Auschwitz or visiting and speaking in the synagogues or asking forgiveness. A lot of this had direct input from Cardinal Ratzinger. Whoever doesn’t understand this doesn’t realise that this man, Pope Benedict XVI, has a decades-long track record of anti-Nazism and sympathy for the Jews.”

Source of orginal story: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09021112.html

Saint Fidel? The UN as Moloch,

Moloch reference see previous post

UN General Assembly President (and former priest): "Fidel Castro Is the Closest Thing We Have to a Saint"

Here is more proof that the UN is a joke.

A Cuban-American visits the Cuban Memorial, a symbolic cemetery, in Tamiami Park in Miami, Florida February 6, 2009. Cuban exiles placed more than 10,000 crosses in the park to honor loved ones who died fighting Fidel Castro's government or trying to cross into the United States. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

UN General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto praised Fidel Castro on World Day of Social Justice saying the Cuban tyrant is the closest thing we have to a saint.
Granma and The Real Cuba reported:

The Nicaraguan priest said that with respect to Fidel Castro, he is more than a hero, and is the closest thing we have to a saint in our anguished world, according to a report by the Prensa Latina agency.

During an event organized by the UN Social and Economic Council’s Commission for Social Development, D’Escoto emphasized that he is indebted to Fidel Castro, as is all of humanity, as a man who has devoted his life to tirelessly practicing and promoting solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the world.
Meanwhile... Babalu has more on the Democrat's bill to permit unrestricted travel to Cuba-- Something that hasn't been allowed in 46 years.

All Around Bad-Ass Of The Week

by Father Richard Perozich

see his entire letter here, it's kick ass good, (and there are quite a few asses that need kicking)

credit the Caveman for bringing this to my attention
“The cult of Moloch lives on today”
Escondido priest warns “evil has acceded to power” in Obama Administration

(Fr. Richard Perozich, pastor of St. Mary's Church in Escondido [California], published the following commentary in the Sunday, Feb. 1, parish bulletin.)

“100 DAYS OR END OF DAYS”

The "governator" Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in a 1999 movie called "End of Days" where the devil was to come to take over the world. In the story line the devil must mate with a certain mortal if he is to escape hell and begin his reign of dominance over human hearts and freedom, to oppress people with death, pride, avarice, greed, sloth, ire, gluttony and lust. Arnold plays a man wounded spiritually and emotionally who ultimately opposes the devil who is defeated and reconsigned to hell for another 1,000 years.
In real life, however, his legislation works for Satan.

The first 100 days of a new presidency is the time when legislation desired by the new leader is rammed through the congress without much discussion and over the objections of the minority party. It often is not good legislation, has been brewing in the hearts of special interest groups for years, who now have a vehicle to impose their will on the American people.

If the special interest groups have their way, it will spell the end of days for the American nation as we have known it since 1776. Abominations will be forced on us by the new government, such as which our founders never had intended, and certainly opposed to the Christian life: abortion on demand, homogenital sex, lust in all its forms, euthanasia, oppression of opportunity and entrepreneurs, silencing of faith and free speech among many.

In the old testament, God's chosen people abandoned Him and sacrificed their own innocent children to a demon god called Moloch in hopes of a good harvest to feed themselves. The cult of Moloch lives on today, but just not under the god's formal name, but in the name of abortion, or rightly put, murder of children in the womb to promote false promises, ruined lives, and degraded humanity.

Abortion is our god and Obama, Pelosi, Kennedy are his prophets. His sacrifice is the life of infants and the souls of mothers. His priests are doctors who perform abortions. His church is Planned Parenthood and FOCA, (freedom of choice act). His covenant promises rights and freedom for women. It delivers death of infants, permanent damage to the souls of women, of men, of politicians.

Homosexual lust is our god and Obama, Bishop Gene Robinson, and democratic politicians are his prophets. The sacrifice is personal integrity and corruption of the body and spirit. Its priests and priestesses are men who have sex with men (MSM) and women who have sex with women (WSW). Its church is the Human Rights Campaign and other activist organizations, Pride clubs and "gay" and "lesbian" centers. Its covenant offers false promises of equality with those who have normal sexual relations and inner peace. It delivers disease, prolonged adolescent immaturity, and oppression of the church and good people who live upright moral lives.

Money is our god, and the wealthy and the welfare are its prophets. Its sacrifice is hard earned savings and retirement. Its priests are those taking obscene profits by defrauding investors, and those who choose government money over honest work. Its church is a non vigilant Securities and Exchange Commission and congress. Its covenant promises self reliance and security in wealth. It delivers collapse of the economy, unfair distribution of wealth, and a drain on the tax system.

Socialism is our god, and Obama is his prophet. Its sacrifice is personal freedom. Its priests are politicians and communist ideological organizations. Its church are legislatures and executive branches in government. Its covenant promises fairness and sameness for all. It delivers power and wealth those who already possess it and takes away opportunity for those out of power and destroys of the economy and future for others.

Liberalism is our god and the Democratic party is his prophet. Its sacrifice is freedom, integrity, opportunity, and wholeness. Its priests are the fascist elites in government, education, and bureaucracies, who wish to control others' thoughts and actions. Its churches are political parties, universities, and corrupt professional organizations. Its covenant promises unbridled freedom for perversion of the natural law and oppression for all who disagree with it. It delivers the breakdown of society, constitutional government, and true freedom for morally minded people, especially faithful Christians.

For us Christians, these are abominations, and the people who promote them are truly overcome by evil. 2 Peter 2:19-20 "They promise them freedom, though they themselves are slaves of corruption, for a person is a slave of whatever overcomes him. For if they, having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of (our) Lord and savior Jesus Christ, again become entangled and overcome by them, their last condition is worse than their first."

This may not be the change you wanted when you voted for new government, but it is the change you voted for if you did not clearly listen to the evil promises of the new priests of the new churches and ignored the warnings about the new evils that this government clearly promised to impose on America.

The Father is our God, and Jesus Christ is His prophet. His sacrifice is the life of His Son Jesus celebrated at Mass. His priests are those ordained and faithful clergy who teach fully the Catholic faith from the Bible and magisterium, and who celebrate the sacraments of the church faithfully according to its tradition and rites. Its Church is the Holy Catholic Church in which salvation is found in Jesus, the only name in heaven or on earth by which man can be saved, through Jesus, the only mediator between God and man who saves us by grace through faith in Him and not in abortion, homosexual lust, money's greed, socialism, or liberalism. He delivers forgiveness of sin and eternal life.

Jesus came to save us from abortion, homosexual lust, socialism, liberalism, and greed of money. He begins by gathering us into His Holy Catholic Church in baptism, giving us faith in HIM rather than the perversions and evil legacies of the world and worldly people. He fills us with His Holy Spirit in confirmation to give us the gifts of HIS wisdom, knowledge, understanding, counsel, courage, piety, and fear of the Lord, so that we are formed to conquer the world. He nourishes us with His Body and Blood to fortify our Spirit to hear the counsel of the Holy Spirit to reject not only for ourselves the evil legacies, but to fight for others who are under evil's influence.

So we pray each day, and worship on Sunday. Renewed in Spirit, we begin the fight for the faith and the souls of all in our country and world. We march, telephone, fax, write, protest, inform all those in power of our beliefs and interests to show them we will resist their impositions, remove them from office and employment if they pervert our nation. We began with the passage of Proposition 8. We continue the fight there, which is far from over.

Please, take the time to sign your pledge card to urge all senators and congressmen to vote against the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) which would enshrine into law the killing of infants in the womb and make it a crime to oppose it, and use your money to promote it through taxes.

Jesus has called you out of the darkness of abortion, lust, greed, socialism, and liberalism into His marvelous light of freedom. Fight for that freedom now, so that you will not be oppressed like the Christians of the first centuries. Evil has acceded to power in this administration. We must pray as if it all depends on God, and work as if it all depends on us.
please drop Father an e-mail of support, here's his address - pastor@stmary.sdcoxmail.com

light to guide you

These are pictures I took at night, our church St John's in Maria Stein is light up at night and is visible from my house, this fuzzy pic was taken from 2 miles southeast, I don't know how to get a clear picture as it looks to the eye with a cheap digital camera (Kodak easy share)




this one from approximately 1 mile






and this one I took from across the street, I have been able to pick out the steeple from State Route 127 ( 4 or so miles)on a really clear night,


Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Anyone what to tell their Priest this ?

Thank Father Zuhlsdorf @ WDTPRS

Brace yourselves.

In the week’s ahead, as we move into Lent, enemies of the Pope will no doubt remember that he changed the Good Friday prayer for Jews in the 1962MR. Then the whole anti-Jewish thing will have another round in the news cycle.

But there is another yearly controversy we should get ready for.

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

The Church clearly … crystal clearly… states that in the optional Mandatum ceremony of the washing of feet on Holy Thursday, only men should be chosen. Let’s state that again: only men must have their feet washed in this optional ceremony on Holy Thursday.

Yet many priests and bishops – who like to have their own rules followed – simply blow that off and do what they want in this regard, to the consternation of many.

A reader sent me a copy of this interesting letter addressed to him from the under-secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, Fr. Anthony Ward.

The salient part:

According to the Missale Romanum (teria editio typica 2002), Feria V in Cena Domini, Ad Missam vespertinam, no. 11, the washing of feet is reserved to "chosen men" (viri selecti), that is male persons. This is also stated in the Caeremoniale Episcoporum (editio typica 1984, reimpressio 1995), no. 301. This Dicastery considers this legislation clear and wishes to add nothing further.

Should your problems persist, the Congregation would remind you that you write again to the Diocesan Bishop who is the moderator, promoter and guardian of the liturgical life of the diocese (cf. canon 835 §1). He would be the appropriate person to contact.

At this point, you will be saying "But Father! But Father!", with hands trembling in frustration. "What if the local bishop is the one who is violating this clear legislation? Would that Dicastery have anything further to say then?"

I don’t know. But the Congregation does have an address and a fax machine, were you to have printed evidence that there are plans to wash the feet of female persons… you know, non-males… the opposite of viri selecti.

"But Father! But…"

Yes… I know what you are about to ask.

Remember that the CDW’s document Redemptionis Sacramentum par. 184 reaffirms the right of every Catholic to have recourse directly to the Holy See. People may write directly to Rome to express concerns. Sure, it is best to work your way up the ladder, as it were, with respect and with charity… and concrete evidence.

But people can write to the Congregation at any time during the process. And that, in fact, seems to be necessary when there is little or no hope of local recourse.

Should people make a fuss over this?

That is up to you. I think that the Sacred Triduum is important. The rite of the Mandatum is important. Our right to have our rites celebrated correctly by our shepherds is important.

Make up your own mind.

Redemptionis Sacramentum includes this toward the end of the document (my emphases):

6. Complaints Regarding Abuses in Liturgical Matters

[183.] In an altogether particular manner, let everyone do all that is in their power to ensure that the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist will be protected from any and every irreverence or distortion and that all abuses be thoroughly corrected. This is a most serious duty incumbent upon each and every one, and all are bound to carry it out without any favouritism.

[184.] Any Catholic, whether Priest or Deacon or lay member of Christ’s faithful, has the right to lodge a complaint regarding a liturgical abuse to the diocesan Bishop or the competent Ordinary equivalent to him in law, or to the Apostolic See on account of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. It is fitting, however, insofar as possible, that the report or complaint be submitted first to the diocesan Bishop. This is naturally to be done in truth and charity.

CONCLUSION

[185.] “Against the seeds of discord which daily experience shows to be so deeply ingrained in human nature as a result of sin, there stands the creative power of the unity of Christ’s body. For it is precisely by building up the Church that the Eucharist establishes fellowship among men.” It is therefore the hope of this Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments that also, by the diligent application of those things that are recalled in this Instruction, human weakness may come to pose less of an obstacle to the action of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, and that with all distortion set aside and every reprobated practice removed, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “Woman of the Eucharist”, the saving presence of Christ in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood may shine brightly upon all people.

[186.] Let all Christ’s faithful participate in the Most Holy Eucharist as fully, consciously and actively as they can, honouring it lovingly by their devotion and the manner of their life. Let Bishops, Priests and Deacons, in the exercise of the sacred ministry, examine their consciences as regards the authenticity and fidelity of the actions they have performed in the name of Christ and the Church in the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy. Let each one of the sacred ministers ask himself, even with severity, whether he has respected the rights of the lay members of Christ’s faithful, who confidently entrust themselves and their children to him, relying on him to fulfill for the faithful those sacred functions that the Church intends to carry out in celebrating the sacred Liturgy at Christ’s command. For each one should always remember that he is a servant of the Sacred Liturgy.