VIDEO: Karen Bass, A Potential Biden VP Pick, Praised Scientology At Church Opening In 2010

/in , , , , , , /by

  • A top contender for Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick appeared at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a Scientology church in 2010, The Daily Caller News Foundation has found.
  • Rep. Karen Bass praised the Church of Scientology for its “commitment…to make a difference” at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a massive Scientology church in Los Angeles. 
  • The church has been at the center of numerous scandals in its 66-year history. Former Scientologists have accused it of operating as a cult, while others have detailed rampant sexual abuse and a culture of intimidation. 

California Rep. Karen Bass, who has emerged as a leading contender to be Joe Biden’s running mate, praised the Church of Scientology during a 2010 ribbon-cutting ceremony for one of the controversial group’s facilities in Los Angeles.

Bass, 66, served in the California General Assembly when she spoke at the event, held on April 24, 2010.

“This day and this new Church of Scientology is an exciting moment because I know your goal and your commitment is truly to make a difference,” Bass told the 6,000 attendees at the ceremony, which was led by Scientology president David Miscavige.

“The Church of Scientology I know has made a difference, because your creed is a universal creed and one that speaks to all people everywhere,” continued Bass, who went on to praise Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

“The words are exciting of your founder, L. Ron Hubbard, in The Creed of the Church of Scientology: that all people of whatever race, color or creed, are created with equal rights,” she said.

“It’s a remarkable credit to your church that this is part of your creed,” Bass said.

Other speakers at the event included Lee Baca, who served as sheriff of Los Angeles County through 2014. Baca pleaded guilty in 2016 to lying to the FBI about inmate abuse at county jails during his tenure. Paul Koretz, a Los Angeles city councilman also spoke at the event.

Bass has praised the church as a U.S. congresswoman as well. In November 2011, she submitted a letter read at the opening of a Scientology center in South Los Angeles. According to reports of the event, Bass praised the church for its “many humanitarian initiatives and social betterment programs for the benefit of South Los Angeles.”

While scrutiny of Scientology has increased in recent years, it was under consistent criticism at the time Bass praised the organization. Former Scientologists have said that church operates as a cult, and that members face pressure to disassociate themselves from non-Scientologists.

The church’s leadership has long been known for dealing aggressively with its critics.

One infamous Scientology document is a memo from 1966 in which L. Ron Hubbard suggested investigating critics or feeding blackmail material on them to the media.

“Start investigating them promptly for FELONIES or worse,” Hubbard wrote in the memo. He also suggested that the church respond to its attackers by “feeding lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence on the attackers to the press.”

WATCH:

The church and Miscavige have come under additional scrutiny in recent years amid allegations of rampant sexual abuse within the organization.

The church settled a lawsuit in July 2018 with a woman who claimed she was forced to have an abortion and prevented from leaving the church.

Last year, four women who accused actor and Scientologist Danny Masterson of raping them sued the church, its president, Miscavige, and Masterson. The Huffington Post reported that the women accused the church and Masterson of stalking them and invading their privacy in order to keep them from coming forward about the rape allegations.

Bass, who is the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, is considered one of three or four women on Biden’s list of potential vice presidential nominees.

According to CNN, her star has risen due to an intense lobbying campaign on her behalf by California Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Biden has committed to choosing a woman as his running mate. He has also faced growing pressure to choose a woman of color, due in large part to the protests that have erupted in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer in May.

Other leading contenders to be on the Biden ticket are California Sen. Kamala Harris and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice.

Bass’s office was reached for comment but did not immediately offer a response.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

COLUMN BY

CHUCK ROSS

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Karen Bass Addresses Pro-Scientology Remarks

Karen Bass Supports Joe Biden For President

Jim Jordan Grills Dr. Fauci On Whether Protests Should Be Banned

Marie Harf Claims Trump Wants Violence To Escalate So He Can ‘Make Campaign Ads Out Of It’

‘These Are All Signs Of Organized Activities’: Leading Security Expert Reacts To Portland Riots

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

2020 Catholic Voters Guide — Saving Civilization

/in , , , , , /by

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE CHURCH MILITANT 2020 CATHOLIC VOTERS GUIDE

Flannery O’Connor Was Not a Racist

/in , , , , /by

Lorraine C. Murray: One of our greatest Southern writers knew we can’t pass laws requiring people to love each other as Christ loves them.

Flannery O’Connor is the latest cultural figure to be canceled. The very title of Paul Elie’s recent article in The New Yorker, “How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?” assumes her guilt. Jumping upon the cancellation bandwagon, the Jesuit president of Loyola University Maryland has announced that her name will be removed from a dormitory.

But this is the woman who wrote a story poignantly revealing the suffering of black people in the South. This is the woman whose spiritual director was a Jesuit priest, James McCown, who was known as a strong proponent of integration. And this is also the woman who said, after an upsetting experience involving a bus driver’s cruel remark toward black passengers, “I became an integrationist.”

True, O’Connor sometimes used the “n” word in her letters and stories, as well as the term “white trash,” but this was not shocking for someone born in 1925 in Georgia.

Indeed, some of O’Connor’s best stories reveal the ugly underbelly of racism among white Southerners, while also showing how God’s grace can convert hearts. In “Revelation,” a poor white woman sitting in a doctor’s waiting room talks aloud of sending blacks back to Africa. Mrs. Turpin, who prides herself on being a landowner rather than “white trash,” shares her own racist thoughts until a quietly seething college girl hurls a book at Mrs. Turpin and whispers, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.”

This is the moment of grace for Mrs. Turpin, who later has a vision of people processing into heaven, blacks entering first and white landowners at the end.

Paul Elie cited an incident in 1959 where black author James Baldwin was traveling to Georgia and a New York friend suggested O’Connor should meet him. O’Connor set her friend straight about the manners of the Deep South: “In New York it would be nice to meet him; here it would not.” Such a meeting, she added, would cause “the greatest trouble and disturbance and disunion” in a Southern town.

Elie claims this refusal is proof of O’Connor’s racism: “O’Connor-lovers have been downplaying those remarks ever since. But they are not hot-mike moments or loose talk. They were written at the same desk where O’Connor wrote her fiction and are found in the same lode of correspondence that has brought about the rise in her stature.”

But William Sessions, a lifelong friend, said O’Connor expressed “considerable anguish” about being unable to receive Baldwin in her home, and that when O’Connor became close friends with a black woman during her graduate-school days in Iowa, her mother, Regina, protested that interracial contacts were dangerous. The young O’Connor had held her ground, saying her “friendships would not be fettered by racial considerations.” The thirty-two-year-old O’Connor was suffering from lupus and was extremely dependent on her mother – and thus more inclined to follow her rules.

Nelson has never seen a black man, and Mr. Head assures him he won’t like Atlanta because it’s “full of n*****s.” After they get lost, the grandfather decides to show how important he is to the boy by pretending to leave him behind. Nelson becomes so terrified that he plows into a crowd, knocking down an elderly woman. The police show up and want Mr. Head to assume responsibility for the boy’s behavior, but the old man does the unthinkable by denying the child is his kin.O’Connor’s 1955 short story “The Artificial Nigger” caused great controversy then and still does today, but it reveals her sympathy for the suffering of Southern blacks perhaps better than anything else she ever wrote. Backwoods Mr. Head wants to take Nelson, his 10-year-old grandson, to visit Atlanta, so the boy can witness the bleakness of the big city and be content to stay at home in their small town.

After this terrible moment of betrayal, the two come across the plaster figure of a black man. The statue is unsteady, cracked, chipped, and holds a brown watermelon. They can’t tell the age of the artificial man, since it looks “too miserable” to be young or old.

As they stand to gaze at it, they see it as “the monument to another’s victory” and feel it “dissolving their differences like an action of mercy.” The broken-down statue awakens in Mr. Head the first feelings of sympathy for what blacks have endured in the South. O’Connor later said nothing encapsulated the tragedy of the South so much as these statues.

In a letter, O’Connor described an experience that had brought her face to face with the real-life suffering endured by blacks. A personal revelation had taken place on a bus. The driver told the rear occupants, who were black, “All right, all you stove-pipe blonds, git on back there.” O’Connor’s reaction? “I became an integrationist.”

O’Connor favored slow, rather than dramatic, social changes, largely because of her concern about backlash from the KKK.  In tiny Milledgeville, Georgia, they burned crosses and threatened lives whenever there were sit-ins and frightened some black people into leaving town.

In 1963, O’Connor reported that some blacks in Milledgeville had petitioned the city council to integrate the schools, restaurants, and library. Unbeknownst to them, however, the library had been quietly integrated the year before. For O’Connor, that exemplified change coming about quietly, without publicity – and without trouble.

She believed the problems in the South wouldn’t be entirely solved by passing laws, but instead required a change in behavior and culture. The South had to evolve “a way of life in which the two races [could] live together with mutual forbearance.” This would require “considerable grace” and a code of manners based on mutual charity.

She would no doubt agree that we can legislate the ways people receive education, the places they can go, and the things they are allowed to do. But we can’t pass laws requiring people of different races to see each other as neighbors. We can’t require them to love each other as Christ loves them. This change of heart, above all else, requires God’s powerful intervention in the hearts of men.

As O’Connor remarked, the South “still believes that man has fallen and that he is only perfectible by God’s grace, not by his own unaided efforts.” In short, some people need to be clipped on the head by a book, like Mrs. Turpin was, before they see the light of truth.

Lorraine V. Murray

Lorraine Murray is the author of The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O’Connor’s Spiritual Journey. She is a columnist with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Georgia Bulletin. She lives in Decatur, Georgia.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

On the Uses and Misuses of Crowds

/in , , , , /by

Hadley Arkes: American mayors and governors lack the common sense to see when “peaceful protests” turn into seditious assaults on the rule of law.

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), a learned, buoyant man, sustained all his life by a network of family and friends, nevertheless took the grimmest view of that biped who conjugated verbs.  Left to themselves, human beings would produce the “the war of every man, against every man.”  For without the law, it was unsafe to assume that anyone else out there in the world was restrained by moral inhibitions.

But it does happen at times that the writers most critical of the human condition catch the edge of an unlovely truth.  Hobbes conceded that it would be legitimate for subjects or citizens to petition magistrates or judges, “yet if a thousand men come to present it, it is a tumultuous assembly, because there needs but one or two for that purpose. When an unusual number of men, assemble against a man they accuse; the assembly is an unlawful tumult.”  It had the makings, he said, of a “sedition.”

We have become quite accustomed over the years to marches on Washington, directed to various causes, drawing on the capital of the brave marches for Civil Rights in the South.  And the streets of Paris are filled often with massive crowds protesting everything from higher taxes to raises in the age of retirement.

We’ve assumed that this was all part of the “freedom of speech.” And yet Hobbes caught the sense of where a petition or protest turns into something else.  And there is a certain irony in the fact that his sense of things here was shared by the late Justice Hugo Black, who was near an “absolutist” in the protection of “speech” as any judge might be.  He was opposed even to the laws on libel.  But when it came to a massive crowd assembled outside a courthouse, Black drew the sharpest line.

In Cox v. Louisiana (1965) the Court found a technical ground for springing a group of civil rights demonstrators; but the judges were adamant in their opposition to demonstrations in front of courthouses.  “The ample evidence,” said Justice Black was “that this group planned the march on the courthouse and carried it out for the express purpose of influencing the courthouse officials in the performance of their official duties.”

Even for a group that elicited their sympathies, the justices saw in this move the dangers of “intimidation.”

But in that case, why is it any better to assemble a massive crowd outside a legislative chamber?   As James Madison asked in Federalist #10, “what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens?”

Does the demonstration in the street not carry the premise that the massiveness of the crowd offers evidence of popular support – and that widespread support confirms the justice of the cause?  And would that not simply be a way of concealing to ourselves that we have prettified a version of the Rule of the Strong, or Might Makes Right?

Major cities in the country have been thrown into turmoil over the last two months by mobs claiming the name of “protesters.”  But surely they are not protesting any decision taken in Minneapolis to prosecute Derek Chauvin and other officers for the killing of George Floyd.

As we know by now, the number of unarmed black people killed by the police – nine in 2019 – was but one-tenth of a percent of all African Americans killed in homicides in 2019, mostly at the hands of young black males.

And those deaths at the hands of black people, are dwarfed by the numbers of black abortions, exceeding live births at times, in New York and Chicago.  But these are not the Black Lives that count in the moral doctrine offered us now by Black Lives Matter.

And yet that is the incoherence, the lie, that some of our most prestigious colleges and churches are willing to broadcast to the world as their own as they hoist the banner of Black Lives Matter over their buildings and websites.

Clearly, the dynamic at work has moved beyond “protest” to pillage and destruction for their own sake.  The liberal line has been to support “protest” while decrying violence; but that line has disappeared.

One reporter on Fox News last week got things right by accident when he reported a “protestor” using a crow bar to break down a door in Seattle, and another one spraying graffiti on a building.   The bent towards violence has become absorbed now in the defining premise that these are “peaceful protests.”

In the past, local authorities were able to recognize the violent premises at work in certain crowds.  They would try at least to stop the Ku Klux Klan from carrying out a provocative march in Harlem, or some self-styled Nazis trying to march through a Jewish community in Skokie, Illinois.

With that common sense of the past, they would act now, mercifully, to bar any further demonstrations, any further inflaming of the community, until peace is restored.    But now the authorities in these cities seem to have lost their nerve.  Or they have lost entirely that common sense of the past, which gave mayors and governors the wit to see where a so-called “peaceful protest” has turned into nothing less than a “seditious” assault on the community and its laws.

Hadley Arkes

Hadley Arkes is the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence Emeritus at Amherst College and the Founder/Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding. His most recent book is Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law. Volume II of his audio lectures from The Modern Scholar, First Principles and Natural Law is now available for download.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

VIDEO: The Vortex — Failed Manhood

/in , , , , , /by

TRANSCRIPT

The prevailing problem in America today, as well as in the Church — the root cause — is failed manhood. The tentacles of this problem have reached into every aspect of life — economic, psychological, emotional, spiritual. No area of the human experience has been left un-devastated by it.

On the cultural level, failed manhood is manifested in numerous ways, from the so-called gay-rights movement to the gangs ruling the urban landscape. Each in their own ways, those two realities are living examples of what happens when manhood fails. In the area of urban gangs (and the attendant violence and killings), manhood is understood as the assertion of power and violence over the weaker.

That’s a misuse, an abuse, of the physical power of manhood. Unlike what the Marxist narrative has been drumming into people’s minds for decades, there is a difference between males and females. Males are generally physically stronger and more powerful than females. It’s just a biological fact. It doesn’t make men “better” than women or women “worse” than men, any more than the biological fact that women get pregnant makes them “better” than men.

Biological facts are simply that: facts. And the Marxists are not entitled to their own facts, despite their attempts to create them. But it is a failure of manhood for some men to see their physical power over those weaker than them as an instrument of domination. That’s fine in athletics; it’s sort of the point of sports. But on the street and in neighborhoods, the exercise of that mentality becomes criminal.

It’s failed manhood writ large. Switching over to the opposite end of the failed-manhood spectrum, the limp-wristed, highly feminized presentation of “manhood” portrayed in the gay movement represents another glaring example. On that end of things, authentic manhood is portrayed as something to be opposed and mocked. This is part of the reason behind so much embracing of the feminine by males who openly embrace their homosexuality.

In the gay community, it’s commonplace for men to call each other by women’s names, to speak with a valley-girl cadence, a feminine lisp, to have the physical humors and gestures of women, to associate with women — usually unattractive women that gays nickname “fag hags” — and, importantly, to not have friendships with heterosexual men, at least as a routine.

In short, gays “celebrate” their non-manliness. It comes out in fashions and even in the vocabulary of the gay community, which screams a hatred of manhood with terms like “queens” and “twinks” and “bottoms.” It is a complete and total rejection of all things “manly,” even right down to the manly world of athletics.

Authentic manhood is rejected because somewhere back up the line, they suffered abuse at the hands of another man or men. It could have been positive abuse perpetrated against them physically or psychologically. It could have been negative abuse in the form of deprivation of what they, by right, should have gotten from their father.

It could have been from peers or superiors: There are myriad avenues. But in the end, for gays or gangs, they are victims of failed manhood and have, in turn, come to embrace failed manhood as their own identity. But that identity has caused a rage within them because they know, instinctively, that this is not the way it’s supposed to be.

So a life of constant frustration is their lot unless they are spoken with and to honestly. In the Church, we see the exact same thing — example after example of failed manhood in the ranks of the ordained. In the clergy, there are many homosexual men — frustrated, effeminate, vindictive, lustful; but mostly insecure.

And they are insecure because they are not in possession of themselves. So wrecked are their psychologies that they blow in the breeze, chasing after approval wherever they can find it. Likewise, they are petrified of authentic manhood in actual men. The thought of a muscular Catholicism terrifies them because they are instantly out of their league.

They are incapable of presenting the Faith in a manly way because down deep, they know they aren’t manly. Authentic manhood is centered on the safety and protection of the weak, the defenseless, the innocent. And “safety” is the key. Our Blessed Lord — in whom authentic manhood has its origin — came to provide safety for the defenseless.

He came specifically as Savior — a Savior who would keep us safe, provide a safe harbor from the clutches of the Devil and damnation. Safety is the single desire of the human heart: To be safe means to be loved, understood, protected, enveloped, out of reach of all harm.

To deprive a person of safety destroys their soul, inflicts lasting pain, sets their life spinning out of control. Manhood is about sacrificing to provide that safety. Clerics who are examples of failed manhood are incapable of providing safety to anyone because they are so busy — unsuccessfully — chasing it for themselves.

The glaring lack of manhood in the clergy has become perpetual. Actual men are seldom allowed into seminaries, and if they get in, they are even more frequently not ordained. Their manliness is seen as a threat, as a constant reminder of what their superiors do not possess themselves.

The occasional ones who do slip through oftentimes have a hard go of it once they get into the system. They experience little fraternity with their brother priests who are in the feminized cliques. They are ostracized, given the less-desirable assignments and realize relatively quickly that they will be largely cut off.

The very men most capable of providing safety for the souls in their charge are the ones who will be most detested by the “queen crowd” that pretty much runs most dioceses in the United States.

It’s time for faithful Catholics — especially young men — to reclaim authentic manhood in the culture and most especially in the Church.

And, as a reminder, we will be discussing all of this at Church Militant’s upcoming men’s retreat — our sixth annual “Strength and Honor Retreat” being held here in Detroit in early August.

Please click on the link to register and for details.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WATCH: Antisemitic Black Attackers Shouting ‘You F*cking Jew’ Beat Jewish Man in Brooklyn, NY

/in , , , , , , /by

What if three white men screamed “you f**king n***’ and beat a black man to a pulp. The Democrat media complex would scream bloody murder and set fire to the country.

This is second such attack this week.

No mainstream media coverage.

This is not OK.

The silence is not OK.

The Democrats sanction of Black antisemitism is not OK. It’s demonic.’

WATCH: Anti-Semitic attackers beat Orthodox man in Brooklyn
By: World Israel News, July 25, 2020

Authorities announced on Thursday the details of a July 11 attack launched by three men on a 51-year-old Orthodox Jewish man in Brooklyn.

HAVE A TIP WE SHOULD KNOW? YOUR ANONYMITY IS NEVER COMPROMISED. EMAIL TIPS@THEGELLERREPORT.COM

RELATED ARTICLES:

All-Black Armed “Not F**king Around Coalition” Holds Rally in Memphis — Member Gets Shot When Other Members Start F**king Around

Judge denies Oregon’s request to stop arrests by federal officers during protests

American Jihadi Tweets Poll On Most ‘Satisfying’ Way To Destroy Lincoln Memorial – Explosives Or Sledgehammer?

Republican Introduces Resolution That Would Ban Groups With Ties To Slavery – Like The Democrats (VIDEO)

A&E’s Ratings Nose-Dive After Network Caves to Cancel Culture To Ax ‘Live PD’

Washington, D.C., mandates face masks for the public ($1,000 fines), but exempts all lawmakers and government employees

Prominent Black Trump Supporter Murdered in Milwaukee

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Catholic and “catholic”

/in , , , /by

Fr. Paul D. Scalia: The Church’s children should resemble her. We ought to strive to be catholic (universal) in our zeal, our mercy, and our embrace of Truth.

In today’s Gospel, our Lord likens the Kingdom of heaven to “a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.” (Mt 13:44-52) This net, which gathers not just one kind of fish but fish of every kind, serves as a good description of what we confess every Sunday: the Church is catholic.

Now, most people probably think of “Catholic” as the brand name of a particular Christian denomination. Yes, we speak colloquially of the Catholic Church as distinct from the Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist churches, etc. But that’s a fairly recent designation, only since the Reformation. Before the Church was “Catholic” she was already “catholic.” It’s a truth we find expressed in the Church’s earliest years. The word “catholic” means universal, embracing and bringing all things together into a unity (from the Greek kata holos, “according to the whole).

Now, the distinction and relation of “Catholic” and “catholic” is important: one cannot be Catholic without also being catholic. To be a member of the Church means to share in her catholicity. So, what does that entail?

First, the Church is catholic – universal – in the most obvious sense: for all people. “Here comes everybody” is James Joyce’s famous description of the Church. She welcomes all comers, embraces and incorporates all people – “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, all peoples, of every race, nation, and country throughout the world.” (Rev 7:9) She leaves no group or kind of people beyond her mission and solicitude.

Now, catholic in this sense does not mean everyone thrown together willy-nilly, as you might toss all your clothes into the closet. Rather, it means all people brought together as one, as a unified whole. In the United States, we are now witnessing what happens to a society when its various peoples have lost their principle of unity. The Church, however – and, in the end, only the Church – is truly universal because she both embraces all people and makes them one body in Christ.

The implications of this universality should be clear. It means, first, that we welcome all people into the Church. Anyone who repents and believes is welcome regardless of any accidental qualities.  Further, this catholicity requires that we actively seek to bring the Gospel to all peoples, and all peoples to the Church.

Second, the Church is catholic in the sense that she forgives all sins. This is a consequence of her being the continuing presence of Christ Himself in the world.  Our Lord has authorized her to act and speak in His Name. He entrusted to her ministers His own power to forgive, a power limited only by a person’s desire to be forgiven.

Through the ministry of the Church, any of our sins, from the most trivial to the most severe, can be forgiven when we repent and ask forgiveness. Which also means that we should desire the extension of that forgiveness and reconciliation. Indeed, we should participate in the Church’s ministry of reconciliation. As such, our own personal forgiveness should extend as far as the Church’s, from the most trivial slight to the gravest sin against us. As regards forgiveness we can never say, “thus far and no further.”

Throughout her history, from Tertullian to Calvin, the Church has seen plenty of rigorists who would like to shorten the reach of her mercy. Like the slaves in the parable of the wheat and tares (Mt 13:24-43), they want a Church of saints not sinners. In the current “cancel culture,” the mobs of secular rigorists give us a sense of just how brutal a society is that desires pure justice (or what passes for it) and no mercy.

Finally, the Church is catholic in the sense that she possesses all truth. Everything necessary for salvation is found within her doctrine. All religions possess some aspects of the truth. Only Christ’s Church possesses the fullness of the truth.

Notice that the net in the parable brings in “all kinds of fish,” both the desired and the undesired. Similarly, the Church holds both pleasing truths (human dignity, forgiveness, heaven) and hard truths (sin, judgment, hell). To be Catholic means to assent to all that the Church teaches – not just to the parts we like.

The Church’s history is littered with heresies, a word that indicates the choosing of one truth to the exclusion of others (Greek again haerisis, not kata holos). Those who do so cease to be catholic, because they are embracing not the fullness of the truth but only the parts they like. If we call ourselves catholic, we must show ourselves to be truly catholic, embracing all truths — not just the convenient ones.

Mother Church’s children should bear a resemblance to her. So it is that we ought to strive to be catholic in our zeal for souls, in the reach of our mercy, and in our embrace of the truth.

COLUMN BY

Fr. Paul D. Scalia

Fr. Paul Scalia is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington, Va, where he serves as Episcopal Vicar for Clergy. His new book is That Nothing May Be Lost: Reflections on Catholic Doctrine and Devotion.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

The Great Progressive Propaganda Machine

/in , , , , , /by

David Carlin: Leftist propaganda is so well-coordinated that some believe a command-and-control apparatus lies behind the whole system.

A stable society is made up of people who largely agree on certain “self-evident truths.”  Now, it may be that these common beliefs are not truly self-evident, the way for example the proposition “the whole is greater than any of its parts” is self-evident.  But they are felt to be self-evident.  Almost nobody doubts them.  And if you are one of those rare persons who do doubt them, people will think you’re at least very odd and perhaps even dangerous.  They may wish to punish you for your dissent.  They may even wish to put you to death.

For most of human history these taken-for-granted beliefs have been the result of a slow and largely spontaneous growth.  But in the twentieth century the Communist Party (CP) in the Soviet Union demonstrated that it was possible to manufacture a social consensus suddenly and intentionally.  (Something very similar happened in Nazi Germany).  In the USSR, all organs of propaganda – newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, movies, radio, TV, schools, colleges, universities, and more – were controlled by either by the CP or by the state, which was in turn totally controlled by the CP.  Only messages approved by the CP got access to the general public; all political dissent was effectively silenced.

Of course the official propaganda didn’t persuade everybody.  But in the absence of counter-propaganda it persuaded vast numbers of people.  As for the unpersuaded, they were usually prudent enough to shut their mouths.  And if they were so imprudent as not to, they were either shot or sent to the Gulag.

This exact thing cannot happen in the United States since we are not a one-party state and we value freedom of speech, thought, press, and religion.  Largely on account of our Protestant heritage, we value the right of private judgment; in other words, the right to dissent, to think for ourselves.

But if the Soviet (or Nazi) model cannot exist here, something very like it can – and does. Let me call it the Great Progressive Propaganda Machine (GPPM).  It is made up of a number of apparently independent elements: (1) the mainstream journalistic media, both print and electronic; (2) the entertainment industry: movies, TV, popular music; (3) our leading colleges, universities, and law schools; (4) most of our public schools; (5) liberal Protestant and Jewish denominations; (6) the Democratic Party.

The propaganda message put out by this GPPM is so well co-ordinated that some people believe there is a conspiratorial command-and-control apparatus lying behind the whole system.  I myself don’t believe this, but I’m not surprised that many do.  It certainly gives the appearance of being controlled from behind the scenes.

And what is the content of the propaganda that the GPPM disseminates among the American public, especially among the younger generations thereof?

  1. That, with the exception of adultery (or equivalent kinds of infidelity), there is nothing morally wrong with sexual relations between (or among) two (or more) consenting adults provided they take reasonable precautions against disease and unwanted pregnancy.
  2. As for adultery, it is not intrinsically wrong; it is wrong only insofar as it involves deception and promise-breaking. Provided it is done with the express or tacit consent of the cheated-upon spouse, it is quite unobjectionable.
  3. That abortion is morally unobjectionable, and often admirable.
  4. That homosexual conduct is natural for many persons – those who are “born that way.” Hence homosexual conduct is not only morally permissible for such persons, it is virtually obligatory; for it would be a perversion of nature for a person having a nature-given (or God-given) homosexual orientation to abstain from conduct consistent with this orientation.
  5. That same-sex marriage is a splendid thing, fully as splendid as opposite-sex marriage.
  6. That if you object to homosexuality or same-sex marriage you are a hater.
  7. And if you object, not because you personally feel hatred, but because your religion tells you to object, then you have a religion of hatred.
  8. That a trans man/boy is a man/boy, and a trans woman/girl is a woman/girl.
  9. That voluntary euthanasia is morally unobjectionable, often admirable.
  10. That involuntary euthanasia is morally unobjectionable in many instances.
  11. That all conduct is morally permissible that does no direct and evident harm to others.
  12. That the USA is – not just in the remote past but even today – a profoundly racist country; it is and always has been a “systemically” racist society.
  13. That if you disagree with proposition #12 you are yourself a racist.
  14. That the typical white police officer is strongly prejudiced against black males, especially young black males, and is psychologically prepared to harass such males and even to inflict bodily harm on them.
  15. That the typical Donald Trump supporter is at a minimum deplorable and at a maximum a barbarian or fascist.
  16. That Christianity – at least in its ancient forms, e.g., Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism – is an outdated and wicked religion (as implied by items #1 through #11 above).

How many Americans actually believe the items on this list of GPPM doctrines?  Well, most persons who earn their living within the GPPM are believers, or at least half-believers – though no doubt a few merely pretend to believe in order to keep their jobs.

Further, most young persons (ages 17-29) believe, especially young persons who aspire to being “cool.”  Many corporate executives, especially executives of really big corporations, either believe the items or have no objection to them; for if they were to object their businesses would be subject to public denunciation and perhaps even boycotts.  Better to “buy protection” by agreeing with the doctrines and contributing money to the cause.

As for the remainder of the American population – most of us are intimidated.  Like anti-Communists in Russia (and anti-Nazis in Germany), we have decided that discretion is the better part of valor.  We’ve decided to shut up and mind our own business.

But as millions learned under Communism and Nazism, cowardice – sooner or later – won’t protect you.

COLUMN BY

David Carlin

David Carlin is a retired professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

George Stephanopoulos’ Wife Says She Watched Porn With Their Teenage Children

/in , , , , /by

The left is deeply sick.

Self righteous and depraved. It’s a deadly combination.

George Stephanopoulos’ Wife Says She Watched Porn With Their Teenage Daughters

By: Ben Kew, Breitbart, July 22, 2020:

Actress Ali Wentworth, the wife of Good Morning America host and former Bill Clinton White House Communications Director George Stephanopoulos, claims she watched pornography with her teenage daughters in order to teach them about sex.

Wentworth said during an appearance on the Dissenters podcast that the purpose was to show her 15 and 17-year-old daughters that porn stars are actresses who are performing.

“In porn, women have been conditioned to look and act a certain way,” Wentworth explained. “They are performing and it’s dangerous to have boys see this as something women want. You can’t stop them, so I would watch it with them. I would look at the porn with them that one time, like, ‘They’re performing.’”

The 55-year-old added that she also goes through social media posts with her children to offer them another perspective.

“I have an issue with how we are raising this generation of children because we grew up without social media … for us, our children and us as parents are guinea pigs, you know what I mean?” she explained. “I say, ‘Do you see this girl? There is a hole she is trying to fill.’ I use humor to try to converse with them and say things like, ‘Did you drop out of school today. Did you get married today?’”

HAVE A TIP WE SHOULD KNOW? YOUR ANONYMITY IS NEVER COMPROMISED. EMAIL TIPS@THEGELLERREPORT.COM

RELATED ARTICLES:

St. Louis Files Charges Against Couple Defending Their Home From Violent Mob

Genocide in Africa: Muslims Slaughter 11 Christians in Attack in North-Central Nigeria

Prominent Minnesota State Senator Dr. Scott Jensen Under Investigation After Criticism of CDC Classification of Virus Deaths

WATCH President Trump’s Remarks On Operation Legend: Combating Violent Crime in American cities

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Church Attacks Explode With ‘an Unbridled, Roaring Fury’

/in , , , , , /by

One of the last times people saw flames in France’s Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul church was during the Allied bombing in 1944. What’s happening now isn’t World War III, but it certainly feels like it, as things get increasingly violent on every continent.

While believers around the world pray for an end to the chaos, arsonists, knife-wielders, and vandals are taking the battle to them.

After a string of attacks rocked U.S. churches last week, Americans gathered this Sunday with the hope that things might finally calm down. They didn’t. If anything, the insurgents expanded their campaign to the global scene.

Arson in Paris, excrement along church walls in southern France, statues defaced in Calgary, it all points to a dangerous turning point in this mob mentality.

“I don’t like to use the word too lightly,” Eric Metaxas said, “but there’s something satanic about it.”

Here at home, churches from Queens to Chattanooga fell victim to the forces of anarchism and anti-Americanism gripping this country since George Floyd’s death.

In New Haven, Connecticut, parishioners of St. Joseph’s Church woke up to satanic symbols sprayed across the doors. “It was certainly shocking and disturbing,” the Rev. John Paul Walker told reporters.

But even that was minor compared to what happened at Virginia’s Grace Covenant Church right outside of Washington, D.C., where a man walked into a Bible study Saturday and viciously stabbed the pastor leading it.

Miraculously, local Police Chief Ed Roessler was in the class and together with another churchgoer subdued the man—but not before being injured themselves. “We are grateful for the courage exhibited that prevented worse from happening,” Pastor Brett Fuller said in a statement.

It was the latest episode in what’s becoming a growing wave of domestic terrorism.

“There is something about it that is an unbridled, roaring fury,” Metaxas insisted, “and if you don’t treat it in the way that it needs to be treated, if you don’t deal with it with some force, really then you are allowing other people to be harmed.”

He ticked off examples throughout history of rebels wanting to overthrow authority and then turned their attention to the church—people in France, Russia, China. They all “found themselves swept up in a rage that had no bounds and that could never be satisfied.”

On “Washington Watch” with Sarah Perry, Metaxas cautioned that they don’t even know what they want. “If we give them anything, we’re fools. This is about revolution … Even if we [try], they’ll say, ‘It’s not good enough.’ They want to be victims. They want to destroy everything.” This is, quite frankly, “a rage against God and all authority. They want to burn down Western civilization.” Maybe some of them don’t realize that consciously, but many do.

You have to know that by promoting the truth and not giving a millimeter to these monsters … that’s the only way you can fight. And people need to find a voice of courage and not give in. Don’t get confused that this is about George Floyd, about racial justice. This is a Marxist, anti-American organization that is cynically using the incident of George Floyd and other things to promote things that are going to crush America.

What can we do about it? Pray, he urged.

I’m convinced that unless good people and people of faith especially stand up and boldly denounce what they see without fear of being called a racist or whatever the nom de guerre is today we will continue to see innocent people victimized in my own city of New York and in other cities and towns across the country. This is a deep spiritual ugliness that has hijacked what began as a legitimate grievance against an abuse of police power. It’s time we spoke up and prayed hard that God would restore order.

Originally published in Tony Perkins’ Washington Update, which is written with the aid of Family Research Council senior writers.

COMMENTARY BY

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council. Twitter: .

©All rights reserved.

Sarsour on Biden: “I want him to defeat Trump so we can mobilize our movements to hold him accountable”

/in , , , , , , /by

That’s a decidedly tepid endorsement. But it makes it clear that Sarsour and the Islamic and Leftist organizations in the U.S. that support the “Palestinian” jihad (and the jihad elsewhere) will be keeping President Biden on a tight leash. If he doesn’t jump to do their bidding, they’ll turn on him, not with the fury with which they hate and wish to destroy Trump, but certainly they will have no sense of loyalty or trust, and not let him make him one misstep. This means that Biden in the White House will essentially be their tool.

“‘Nation’s Largest’ Muslim PAC Embraces Biden, But Activist Sarsour’s Endorsement is Tepid,” by Patrick Goodenough, CNS News, July 21, 2020:

(CNSNews.com) – Thanking a Muslim American PAC for supporting his presidential bid, Joe Biden said Monday he wished U.S. schools taught more about Islam, and pledged to scrap, on his first day in office, what he called President Trump’s “vile Muslim ban.”

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee gave a virtual address to Emgage Action, three months after “the nation’s largest Muslim American political action committee” endorsed him, following the decision by its first choice candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, to end his campaign.

Some high-profile Sanders supporters in the Muslim community have not been enthusiastic about moving their support to Biden, as seen in a series of tweets later Monday by Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour, a controversial former co-leader of the Women’s March.

“I choose Biden,” Sarsour said. “But I choose him as my opponent in the White House. I want him to defeat Trump so we can mobilize our movements to hold him accountable and push him to do and be better. We can’t do that with Trump.”

Sarsour said most of “our people” backed Sanders in the primary “because he earned our votes & we need Biden to continue to do the same.”

She recalled that Sanders had addressed “the plight of the Palestinian people,” and had “vehemently criticized the Netanyahu Government, opposed the moving of the embassy [to Jerusalem], called for an end to occupation, a conditioning of military aid, etc.”

‘One of my avocations is theology’

Addressing the Emgage Action event earlier in the day, Biden began on a theological note.

“Look, one of the things that I think is important is I wish – I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith,” he said. “I wish we talked about all the great confessional faiths. It [Islam] is one of the great confessional faiths.”

“And what people don’t realize – as one of my avocations is theology – don’t realize is we all come from the same root here, in terms of our fundamental basic beliefs.”

He thanked the PAC for endorsing him, noted it has launched a campaign aimed at boosting the Muslim vote, and made his case for why Muslims should support him over Trump in November.

“Muslim communities were the first to feel Donald Trump’s assault on black and brown communities in this country with his vile Muslim ban,” he said, vowing to undo the move “on day one,” should he become president….

Biden, who spoke for a little over ten minutes, accused Trump of “fanning the flames of hate,” through his words, deeds, policies and appointments, and charged that there has been “an unconscionable rise in Islamicphobia [sic]” under his administration….

“I won’t fail to speak out against the abuses of human rights including targeting for violence and prosecution Muslim minorities around the world,” he said, citing Uighurs in China and Rohingya in Burma.

Biden said he would work with partners “to meet the moral demands of the humanitarian crises in Syria, Yemen, and Gaza,” and would “continue to champion the rights of Palestinians and Israelis to have a state of their own, as I have for decades.”…

Sarsour, an ardent BDS supporter, took part in Monday’s Emgage Action video event, where she spoke about the importance of holding a President Biden accountable after the election.

“When Joe Biden does the right thing, you better believe Linda Sarsour’s going to say, ‘You know what? Thank you so much President Joe Biden for doing the right thing.’ And when President Joe Biden doesn’t do the right thing our community needs to come together and hold him accountable.”…

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden quotes “Prophet Muhammad”: “Whomever among you sees a wrong, let him change it with his hand”

Biden wants schools to teach more about Islam, vows to stamp out “Islamicphobia”

What A Surprise! Qatar Funds Hezbollah

Pakistan: Muslims smash Buddha statue, Muslim cleric says “you will no more be a believer” if statue isn’t destroyed

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WATCH Joe Biden speaks to Million Muslim Votes Summit: “I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith.”

/in , , , , , , , /by

As if there wasn’t enough proselytizing, obfuscating and dissembling about Islam to American school children.

Can you imagine if any politician, let alone a Presidential candidate suggested with teach more Judaism or Christianity in the public schools. All hell would break loose.

“Hadith from the Prophet Muhammad instructs, ‘Whomever among you sees a wrong, let him change it with his hand. If he is not able, then with his tongue. If he is not able, then with his heart.’” Joe Biden

Biden wishes American schools ‘taught more’ about Islamic faith

by Naomi Lim, Political Reporter | Washington Examiner | July 20, 2020:

Joe Biden lamented the lack of Islamic education in American school curricula at a Muslim voter outreach forum.

“I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith. I wish we talked about all the great confessional faiths. It’s one of the great confessional faiths,” Biden said Monday.

Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee and two-term vice president, told Emgage Action’s Million Muslim Votes Summit that he would end President Trump’s “vile” travel ban targeting Muslim nations on the first day of his administration should he win the White House in 100 days on Nov. 3.

The 36-year Delaware senator added that he would work with Congress to pass anti-hate-crime legislation and reiterated his support of a two-state solution in the Middle East.

“I’ll continue to champion the rights of Palestinians and Israelis to have a state of their own — as I have for decades. Each of them, a state of their own,” he said.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

NEW YORK CITY: “IDOL” painted on 100-year-old statue of Virgin Mary

/in , , , , , /by

Leftists have been indulging in an orgy of destroying statues lately, but their favored graffiti for statues is “RACIST” and the like, not “IDOL.” A Leftist may have done this, or conceivably some fanatical Protestant, although that is extremely unlikely. But could it have anything to do with the introduction into Miami of a large population of people who believe that Christianity is a false, indeed idolatrous, religion, and that they are commanded to fight unbelievers so that Allah may punish them by the hands of the believers (cf. Qur’an 9:14-15)?

Could it have anything to do with the Qur’an’s suggestion that the destroyed remnants of ancient non-Muslim civilizations are a sign of Allah’s punishment of those who rejected his truth? “Many were the Ways of Life that have passed away before you: travel through the earth, and see what was the end of those who rejected Truth.” (Qur’an 3:137) The ruins of non-Muslim civilizations thus bear witness to the truth of Islam. What ensues from that idea? The creation of more ruins.

Watch the video. Is the perpetrator wearing a robe or thobe? Or is this the work of a Leftist who is unwittingly (or knowingly) advancing the same agenda as that of the Islamic State and the Taliban?

“Vandals Allegedly Target Statues of the Virgin Mary in Boston, Queens,” by Amy Furr, Breitbart, July 12, 2020 (thanks to the Geller Report):

Two statues of the Virgin Mary were reportedly vandalized over the weekend in Boston, Massachusetts, and Queens, New York.

At around 10:00 p.m. Saturday, officers responded to a call about a fire in the area of 284 Bowdoin Street in Dorchester, the Boston Police Department said in a Facebook post.

“On arrival at Saint Peter’s Parish Church, officers observed a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary which had been set on fire,” the department noted…

In a similar instance on Friday, the Diocese of Brooklyn said the New York City Police Department (NYPD) was investigating the vandalization of another statue of the Virgin Mary at the Cathedral Prep School and Seminary in Queens.

“Security footage shows an individual approaching the 100-year-old statue shortly after 3 a.m. Friday morning and daubing the word ‘IDOL’ down its length,” the Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported.

Friday, the Brooklyn Diocese Press Office tweeted video footage of the alleged incident:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Churches Across the Country Attacked

Iran Imprisons Christians, Then Showcases Book on U.S. ‘Islamophobia’

Islamic State to Indian TV channel: “We invite you to convert to Islam or get ready to say goodbye to the world”

Pakistan: Christians forced to remove cross from a church after threats from local Muslims

BBC urges mass migration, says First World countries should not try to increase fertility of native populations

A Rebuttal of Dr. Craig Considine’s Claim That Muhammad Was the First Anti-Racist

Hagia Sophia, Pope Francis, and UNESCO 

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Sexual Acts – Good and Bad – Are for Real

/in , , , /by

Thomas Weinandy OFM Cap.: On film, actors may pretend to kill or steal. Such scenes aren’t per se sinful. But nude sex scenes are real and, therefore, sinful.

I recently celebrated Mass on the feast of St. Maria Goretti, and decided to use the readings for the feast instead of the normal weekday.  The first reading was from 1 Corinthians 6.  There Paul speaks of sexual immorality.  Although I understood most of it quite well, there was one point I did not fully comprehend.  By choosing this reading, and giving a homily on it, I wanted to force myself to ponder it more deeply and so gain greater clarity.

Paul says that the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body, and so “whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”  Therefore, “avoid immorality.”  This I understood.  We are joined to Christ, and so any sexually immoral act is a sin against the relationship we have with him through the Spirit that dwells within us.  It is Paul’s next thought that has always caused me to pause.

“Every other sin a person commits is outside of the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body.”  Is not every sin a bodily action?  Even our evil thoughts are bodily actions.  We employ our brain, our imagination, our emotions.  What, then, does Paul mean when he states that all sins, except sexual sins, are outside the body?  Moreover, why are immoral sex acts, which are human bodily sins, any different from any other human bodily sinful acts?  I was befuddled.

How this next thought came to me, I do not know, but I thought of actors in movies.  They pretend to be all kinds of persons.  An actor pretends to be a murderer, but we know he did not really commit murder – it’s just a movie.  Another actor pretends to be a bank robber, but again, we know he really didn’t rob a bank.  All the sins that they “commit” are pretended sins.

Likewise, a man and woman in a movie can pretend to be husband and wife.  They may be portrayed as having children.  We know this is a fictional marriage and family.  If in the course of the movie, however, the pretended husband and wife begin to perform intimate sexual acts with one another, these are no longer pretended sexual acts (I am not referring specifically to pornography, but “ordinary” movies).  They are the real thing.

The actors are now enacting sexual acts that are reserved only for those who are properly married, and that are forbidden to those who are not married or even pretending to be married.  Unlike the pretended murderer and the pretended bank robber, who performed fictional sins, the pretended married couple are committing real sinful acts.  They are sinning against their own bodies for they are employing their own bodies to commit these human bodily sexual sins.

Similarly, one cannot pretend to be immodestly dressed.  One is either immodestly dressed or isn’t.  Nor can one pretend to be nude or pretend to perform seductive acts, since the nude portrayal is for the purpose of being seductive.  Such immodest dressing and seductive nudity are immoral sexual acts committed against one’s own body.  One is never pretending when one is behaving in a sexually immoral manner.

That one can pretend to commit other sins, but not pretend to commit a sexual sin illustrates, I think, the distinct singular difference of sexual sin.  Thus, it helps us grasp Paul’s teaching that every sin, except sexual sin, is committed outside the body.

The real murderer or bank robber is using his body not to sin against his own body, but to achieve another purpose outside his body.  Whereas in a sexual sin, one is using one’s body to enact a sin against one’s own body, against oneself; and in most cases, one is enacting a sin against another person’s body as well.

Our bodies are not “something” we inhabit and use.  We are not “spirits” dwelling in our bodies.  Rather, as human beings, our bodies constitute, along with our souls, who we are, our very mode of being.  This is why one can pretend to be a bank robber, but one can never in reality, or even in pretending, perform immoral sexual acts without sinning against oneself.  Thus, illicit sexual acts are, by their very nature, an inhumane exploitation, an abusive demeaning of ourselves as sexual human beings.

Although such is the case for every person who commits sexual immoral acts, it is especially grievous for those who are Christians.  Paul forcefully reminds his Corinthian readers: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?  You are not your own.”

For a Christian to sexually sin against his or her own body is to violate the Spirit-filled temple that he or she is.  Moreover, we are not our own, for we belong to God in Christ Jesus.  Thus, we can no longer think that we can use our bodies in any manner that we wish.  “For we have been purchased at a price,” and that price is Jesus’ salvific death whereby we are freed from immorality so as to live holy lives in the Spirit.  “Therefore, glorify God in your body.”

As sexual immoral acts are never pretended but always real, so glorifying God by our bodily actions are never pretended but are always real, virtuous bodily acts.  These holy acts are to our sanctification and to our own bodily glory, for these acts are done bodily.

What we find then in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians is not simply the singular evil of immoral sexual acts, but also an illustration of how those same acts achieve a singular beauty when enacted within the bond of a loving marriage.

In marriage, sexual acts are love-giving and life-giving, and so married couples, together, give glory to God.

COLUMN BY

Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.

Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, a prolific writer and one of the most prominent living theologians, serves as a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission. His newest book is Jesus Becoming Jesus: A Theological Interpretation of the Synoptic Gospels.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

FLORIDA: Statue of Jesus Beheaded at Miami Catholic Church

/in , , , , /by

Leftists have been indulging in an orgy of destroying statues lately, but their favored method of destruction is pulling them down, not beheading them. Still, a Leftist may have done this, but could it have anything to do with the introduction into Miami of a large population of people who believe that Christianity is a false religion and that they are commanded to fight unbelievers so that Allah may punish them by the hands of the believers (cf. Qur’an 9:14-15)?

Could it have anything to do with the Qur’an’s suggestion that the destroyed remnants of ancient non-Muslim civilizations are a sign of Allah’s punishment of those who rejected his truth? “Many were the Ways of Life that have passed away before you: travel through the earth, and see what was the end of those who rejected Truth.” (Qur’an 3:137) The ruins of non-Muslim civilizations thus bear witness to the truth of Islam. What ensues from that idea? The creation of more ruins.

Or is this the work of Leftists who are unwittingly (or knowingly) advancing the same agenda as that of the Islamic State and the Taliban?

“‘This is an attack on the church.’ Jesus statue beheaded at SW Miami-Dade Catholic church,” by Carli Teproff, Miami Herald, July 16, 2020:

A statue of Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd that has been in the courtyard of a Kendale Lakes Catholic church for decades has been beheaded and police are trying to figure out who is behind the act.

The statue, which sits behind the church at 14187 SW 72nd St., was desecrated sometime Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

“This is an attack on the church,” said Mary Ross Agosta, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami. “This is not only private property, it is sacred property.”

Ross Agosta said church personnel found the statue with its head on the ground just before 8 a.m.

“This is not something you can trip over and say, ‘Oh, sorry,’ ” she said. “Someone did this intentionally.”

The incident comes on the heels of an attack on an Orlando-area church over the weekend. Steven Shields, 23, was charged with arson after deputies say he plowed a minivan through the front door of Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Ocala and set it on fire….

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Building Power for Muslims in Politics’

Vatican top dog: Conversion of Hagia Sophia to a mosque “should not be put down to current Islamic aggression”

Maine: Muslim fires shots into police garage, assaults cop and FBI agent, damages police vehicle

RELATED VIDEO: Texas: Islamic scholar says Khomeini greater than Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, ‘Islam should dominate the world’

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.