Tag Archive for: Catholic Church

Pro-life Hour met with counter-demonstration in Ottawa

Posted by Eeyore

This is a few moments from two intersections where a one hour pro-life expression took place. At one corner there was a counter-demonstration which seemed to attempt to profane the Catholic Church, suggesting that for them, it is more than a right-to-abort issue, and perhaps more of a complete rejection of Western values.

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Absolutely Not. Here’s Why.

My article in PJ Media on a much-misunderstood topic:

The Qur’an says that Christians and Muslims worship the same God (29:46), and so does the Catholic Church. The Irish Catholic newspaper recently considered this question and offered an argument from authority, which is the weakest of all arguments: Christians and Muslims worship the same God because the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council says so in the documents Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate. But a closer examination of the evidence shows this to be false.

Besides the obvious differences regarding the Trinity, the crucifixion, and the divinity of Christ, there are deeper differences that are often overlooked.

  1. Free will. There are numerous passages of the Qur’an, as well as indications from Islamic tradition, to the effect that not only can no one believe in Allah except by his will, so also no one can disbelieve in him except by his active will. “And to whoever God assigns no light, no light has he” (24:40).

The issue of free will versus predestination has, of course, vexed Christians of various sects for centuries, as different biblical passages are given different weight in various traditions. Calvinism, of course, in its pure form is notorious for its doctrine of double predestination, the idea that God has destined people for hell as well as for salvation. But this position is largely unique to them in the Christian tradition, which generally holds that God desires all men and women to be saved, and gives them the means to attain this salvation. The idea that God would create men for hell is in total conflict with the proposition that God “desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), and that he “takes no pleasure in the death of anyone” (Ezekiel 18:32).

The situation in Islam is, on first glance, even worse, with the Qur’an’s testimony on this, as on other matters, appearing to be hopelessly contradictory. The Qur’an, says the Qur’an, is “nothing but a reminder to all beings, for whoever of you who would go straight; but you will not do so unless Allah wills, the Lord of all Being” (81:27-29). Those who would “go straight” — follow Allah’s straight path — cannot do so “unless Allah wills.”

The Qur’an goes significantly further than that, into a more or less open determinism: “If Allah had willed, he would have made you one nation; but he leads astray those whom he wills, and guides those whom he wills; and you will surely be questioned about the things you have done” (16:93). Even though everything is in Allah’s hands, even the decision of the individual to obey him or not — for he leads astray those whom he wills, and guides to the truth whom he wills — human beings will still be held accountable for the things they have done.

Allah even sends people to hell based not on their deeds, but solely upon his fiat: “And if we had willed, We could have given every soul its guidance, but the word from me will come into effect: I will surely fill hell with jinn and people all together” (32:13).

The Qur’an repeats this idea many times: Those who have rejected Allah do so because he made it possible for them to do nothing else. And indeed, given the fact that in the Islamic scheme of creation and salvation, human beings are the slaves of Allah, not his children, the rejection of free will is not altogether surprising. Allah tells Muhammad that “some of them there are who listen to you, and we lay veils on their hearts so that they don’t understand it, and in their ears heaviness; and if they see any sign whatever, they do not believe in it, so that when they come to you they dispute with you, the unbelievers saying, ‘This is nothing but the fairy-tales of the ancient ones’” (6:25-6).

There is much, much more. Read the rest here.

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

The Abuse Summit: It’s Only the Beginning

Robert Royal: People are happy that McCarrick has finally been defrocked, but now we need to deal with other abusers and enablers. 

February is not high tourist season in Rome. Skies are gray and temperatures low. St. Peter’s Square is relatively empty. But journalists filled the nearby Press Office earlier this week – more, according to one veteran, than since the death of St. John Paul II –because of the summit on the sex abuse crisis, which begins this evening with meetings between abuse survivors and participants, and continues Thursday through Saturday with formal sessions, parts of which will be streamed on the Vatican website. A video of the opening press briefing with remarks by Cardinal Cupich, Archbishop Scicluna, and other key figures is available by clicking here.

To be frank, it’s hard to say why so many journalists are here since no one, including Church spokesmen, expects that anything very dramatic will happen over the next few days – at least not in the formal sessions. What happens outside and around them, however, may be a different matter.

When the summit was announced last September, partly because of papal missteps in handling abuse cases in Chile, it seemed that the Church was going to take some large steps forward. There have been many smaller steps for years in many places around the world, everything from easier reporting mechanisms to better human formation in seminaries to the unprecedented laicization last weekend of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Expectations ran high, not least because the Holy Father asked the American bishops, during their annual November meeting, not to vote on ways to hold bishops accountable – whether they are abusers themselves, like McCarrick, or covered up abuse by people under their authority. They were told to wait until a uniform approach could be developed in February when many of the presidents of bishops’ conferences and heads of religious orders would gather together in Rome.

But Vatican spokesmen have more recently been encouraging people to lower expectations; and the focus this week is quite different: “The Protection of Minors in the Church.” That, of course, is a worthy goal. In many parts of the Catholic world, rules are in place, but there hasn’t been serious follow through. If the next few days bring proven practices to new places, that will be all to the good.

But it’s also much less than we were hoping for. And in America, we’ve already come a long way towards responding to the part of the abuse crisis that involves priests. We have been expecting – and had been told – that the next phase would be figuring out how to hold bishops accountable. That’s been a continuing problem, not only in America, but in Chile, Honduras, Australia, Europe, the pope’s own Argentina, and the Vatican itself.

People are happy that McCarrick has been expelled from the priesthood, for example, but they want to know how it was possible for a man widely rumored to be an abuser to have moved up in the hierarchy and eventually become cardinal-archbishop of the capital of the most powerful nation on earth. Three popes and dozens of Vatican officials are now part of the story. Pope Francis has promised an investigation into the files. It’s almost a year later and we’ve heard nothing of that, not even whether there’s an active inquiry underway.


Pope Francis by Will Oliver/EPA-EFE

Meanwhile, a new book, which will be officially released Thursday, the first day of the summit here in Rome, claims that 80 percent of the upper echelons of the Vatican are gay. Some remain celibate, others act out in various ways, but they form what, in local parlance, is called “the Parish,” a network of people who either cover for one another or, given their own inclinations, look the other way.

Or at least that’s what Frederic Martel, the author, says. Martel is a gay activist in France and his motives in publishing this book at this particular moment are suspect – as are some of his wilder claims. But he seems to have conducted thousands of interviews with various figures from high-placed Cardinals to Swiss Guards, and quotes some by name.

The excerpts that have appeared so far raise as many questions as they answer. But the whole matter of the gay presence in the Church and its role as an enabler – which the summit organizers are avoiding, indeed are denying is a factor – will not go away.

Martel says (and there’s no reason to doubt it since there have been no denials forthcoming) that his access to the Vatican was facilitated by Msgr. Battista Ricca, who is Director of the Papal Residence (i.e., Casa Santa Marta) and an official with the Vatican Bank. Ricca was widely known to have had a boyfriend or two when he was a Vatican diplomat in Uruguay. And he was caught in an elevator with a boy prostitute.

It was in response to a reporter’s question about his past on the plane returning from World Youth Day in 2013 that Pope Francis famously remarked, ““If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

But it’s partly the pope’s judgment in such matters that has raised further questions. Not only the bishop he wrongly defended in Chile, but even recent appointments like that of Gustavo Zanchetta – a bishop accused of abusing seminarians in Argentina and a friend of the pope’s – to a specially created post at one of the Vatican financial institutions. He had to be removed while investigations are going on.

And then there’s the recent naming of Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell to the position of camerlengo, the official who declares the pope officially dead and then runs the Vatican, with limited powers, during the interregnum, the period between the death of one pope and the election of another.

Farrell lived for six years in the same residence with then-Cardinal McCarrick and claimed – to widespread skepticism – that he had no knowledge of, had never even heard rumors about, McCarrick’s outrages. It’s curious that the pope would pick a potentially questionable figure for such a sensitive post.

All of this suggests that what goes on in the synod hall this week is the merest beginning to what will continue to be a large and troubling process. More on all that in coming days.

COLUMN BY

Robert Royal

Robert Royal

Dr. Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press. The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is now available in paperback from Encounter Books.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column with images is republished with permission. © 2019 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 featured image is by Pixabay.

GAY IS ANTI-LIFE: They’ll even kill to commit sodomy.

TRANSCRIPT

Exactly 46 years ago today — to the day — the U.S. Supreme Court authorized the mass extinction of tens of millions of pre-born children — cloaking the genocide in a made up out of thin air, alleged right to privacy.

That right to privacy then went on to hatch even more destruction — against the family, natural law and so forth. One of the big issues it gave birth to was, again, a never before heard of right to sodomite marriage.

Well, those two issues linked arms and joined forces a few days ago in a “Catholic” setting as two homosexual men stood in front of a parish just before Sunday Mass with their little boy Cohen and presented a syrupy presentation about just how normal they are and how completely ordinary their situation is.

More to the point: They waxed on about how the parish was so welcoming and accepting and how wonderful all the people in it were. They were inspired to start going there regularly because on an earlier trip, they had seen a lesbian couple bringing up the gifts and being warmly accepted.

At the end of their seven-minute presentation — rife with heresy — they received a standing ovation from the warm, friendly, accepting parishioners who just ate it all up.

The normalization of not just homosexuality anymore in Catholic parishes, but now on top of it, the accompanying child abuse that occurs when a child is “born” of a sodomite pairing — yes, we said, “Born.” Because this child was not adopted. The little boy, Cohen, is a product of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and a woman whose womb the homosexuals rented because natural law prevents them from having sex, conceiving, bearing and giving birth.

So they used every technological ability at their disposal to simply skirt all Church teaching further and bring a new life into the world, willfully depriving that boy of his God-given right to a mommy.

And the pastor allowed this. And the crowd went wild. And the bishop, well, he did issue a statement expressing his displeasure and said he would be meeting to “discuss the situation” after he gets back from the March for Life events in D.C.

The diocese is the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the parish is St. Joan of Arc and the bishop is Archbishop Bernard Hebda.

The two clerical clowns who run the parish are the pastor, Fr. Jim DeBruycker, and the parochial vicar, Fr. James Cassidy — you wouldn’t even know they are priests.

These men allow this evil to take place — in fact, they encourage it. Every Sunday, whatever wild-eyed modernist who wants to ramble on about gay this or that, immigration, trans this or that, climate change is invited to get up and speak for a few minutes on just how Catholic their immorality is — how central to their faith.

For example, the gay lovers told the fawning audience — and at this point, that’s all this parish is: an audience — that it was good for Cohen to have to fathers.

They also simply passed right over the horror of IVF — again speaking of it in purely ordinary terms. And this is where the gay, anti-life crowd finds its footing.

Surely, these two sodomites posing as actual Catholics must know that the IVF method automatically results in the death of many other children as part of the process.

Various eggs (where did two men get female eggs?) are all fertilized, allowed to grow for a period and then the ones determined to be best suited to come to full term are then implanted — in this case in a rented womb.

The others — meaning the other humans — they are “discarded,” a short little euphemism for killed. If, as is pretty routine, more than one tiny human was implanted in the rent-a-womb surrogate, at some point, “selection” is made again and the “leftovers” are killed in utero.

This is malevolent. Are the two homo “dads” going to tell little Cohen that in order for him to come into existence, they had to kill off some brothers and sisters of him, because since all they can do is sodomize each other, they had to resort to science?

Are they going to tell him that they actively chose to deny him a mommy because, in the end, all they cared about was trying to make their sodomy look normal?

But perhaps most pressing: Is Archbishop Hebda going to move to laicize the clergy that promote this horror, and is he going to disband that parish — which doesn’t even call itself a parish — it’s a “community.”

Hebda did not necessarily cause this issue, at least not at this parish, but he is certainly responsible now for stopping it dead in its tracks.

If that parish is still around, if those priests are still around at the end of the month, that will tell you everything you need to know about Archbishop Hebda.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video with images is republished with permission.

VIDEO: The Ties That Divide

TRANSCRIPT

As we get into the new calendar year, all signs point to an explosive year for the Church, a great disruption, a great divide. The year was barely 48 hours old and the U.S. bishops had begun to meet on retreat about the scourge of sexual abuse among the clergy.

But even here, on this topic, there is a divide among so many of the bishops. A few well-balanced ones who don’t really have any connection to the errant theology and formation from the 1970s know and say that the problem is homosexuality.

But the vast majority of them, because they are slaves to that malformation of the 1970s, refuse to admit this reality even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

They are, frankly, a pitiful crew to behold. Even with the feds and state attorneys general raiding their chanceries looking for secret files covering up cases of sexual abuse of minors — 80 percent of whom were teenage boys — even still, they will not admit the reality.

And that’s because too many of the bishops themselves are gay. And let’s be very clear here: One gay bishop is too many. But in the USCCB, it would be the height of naivete to not understand that many of the men sitting in that room saying it’s not a gay problem are gay themselves, so of course they are going to say that.

Others who are not directly sexually attracted to other men are still complicit, because they refuse to either admit the horror of this sin, or, they turn a blind eye to it because they do not wish to face the wrath and rage of gay priests in their dioceses, like Abp. Allen Vigneron here in Detroit.

According to his own seminary faculty member, Mary Healy, who said publicly that he will not end the homosexual anti-Catholic group Dignity’s weekly Mass because he’s afraid to anger the gay priests here in Detroit.

He and others like him, however, never seem to be so concerned about angering traditional Catholics or people fighting for the Faith in their own lives. And all this with news now spreading that the much-anticipated $200 million fundraising campaign is going to be announced in the next week or two. It’s disgusting.

Here’s the gist of the problem on this question of “division.” It’s a smokescreen, the charge that someone is “divisive” or causes division. What a panty-waist accusation to hurl at someone. Seriously, from a bishop, “You are divisive”?

Do they not know how all the prophets and patriarchs, apostles, saints and martyrs spoke routinely? And, oh yeah, the Son of God. All these men were “divisive.” That’s the point.

But the limp-wristed, light in the loafers, emasculated theology of most of today’s bishops has as its greatest sin giving offense. Anything, and we mean anything else, is acceptable, worthy of a second, third or even fourth chance, but if you come off as socially impolite, you’re done.

The homosexual or homosexual-minded man should not be ordained in the first place, and all Hell breaks loose when they are consecrated to the office of bishop.

They sacrifice truth and its bold preaching to their own disgusting femininity and cowardice and lack of authentic masculinity and hide behind the skirts of calling people divisive.

Catholicism is all about division, bishops. Do you not understand that? What do you think Heaven and Hell is all about?

What do you think being in a state of grace versus a state of mortal sin is all about?

But see, the combination of their poisonous homosexuality and intellect-rotting malformation they got back in seminary in the 1970s has made them unable to see this truth.

They want the Church to be this big soft, squishy “all are welcome” cacophony of confusion so they hide in it and rationalize their psychological illness of sodomy.

If some of the collateral damage happens to be some teenage altar boys happen to get raped along the way, oh well.

If thousands and thousands of seminarians are driven from the seminary and lose their vocations, and even sometimes their faith, oh well.

And if some of these young men end up in lives of addiction and sexual exploitation and even kill themselves, oh well.

As long as we all get along and not say things that are divisive, that’s all that matters. The bishops themselves are the cause of the division in the Church, especially the homosexual bishops and their allied bishops who now exercise great control over vast portions of the Church.

They are a cancer in the episcopate, they are destroyers of souls, and without repentance, they will suffer outrageous tortures in Hell for eternity, which is why they spend so much time ignoring Hell or promoting the spiritually insane idea that we have a reasonable hope all men are saved.

That is homosexual-think, not sound theology, and bishops who say it, promote, defend it or let it slide need to be called out.

See, the Faith itself is always whole, always pure, always a unity. But too many of these men — many, perhaps most, but not all being homosexual — are the ones who have brought about the division and then stood on their sacred office and promoted it.

Then when faithful Catholics shine the light on the division they have caused, they accuse us of creating it. That’s exactly what you expect from the mind of someone who has given himself over to the demonic.

To reveal the already existing division in the Church caused by these bishops, to bring it to light, is the work of God. There exists today in the Church a great division, largely between a huge number of bishops and the faithful.

To be frank, we and they don’t believe the same faith, just like St. Peter and Judas did not believe the same thing about Our Lord. One said He was the Messiah, the Son of God, the other betrayed Him — not the same faith.

Father James Martin and I do not believe the same faith. Cardinal Blase Cupich and I do not believe the same faith. Cardinal Joseph Tobin and I do not believe the same faith. They obfuscate and deceive souls on the altar of sodomy and support of it. What they preach is not the authentic Catholic faith.

It is they and their ilk that divide; they divide souls, separate from the truth. In what manner could it be said we accept the same foundations of the faith? It can’t. Now, many of you watching this have the same reality, just because someone in your circle says they are Catholic doesn’t mean they are, and they should not be allowed to remain in that mindset.

They either need to understand that they are mistaken about Church teachings or, if they reject them, then leave the Church in practice, because they already have in soul. All of this has been brought you by the modernist heretics crowd, largely fueled by warped and sick homosexual bishops and those among them sympathetic to it.

Want to know where all the division is from, look there — not at faithful Catholics trying to expose it.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with video and images by Church Militant is republished with permission.

Pope Francis Knew About McCarrick, Covered for his Sexual Crimes

Former papal nuncio offers written testimony incriminating Holy Father, says pope must resign

VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) – In spite of knowing about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexual assaults, Pope Francis lifted sanctions from him that had been imposed by Pope Benedict.

LifeSiteNews is reporting that Abp. Carlo Maria Viganò, former papal nuncio to the United States, has written an 11-page statement testifying that Pope Francis was aware of McCarrick’s homosexual predation but “continued to cover him,” even making him “his trusted counselor” in naming bishops for appointment, including Cdl. Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey (McCarrick’s former diocese) and Cdl. Blase Cupich of Chicago, Illinois.

“In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, he [Pope Francis] must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them,” Viganò writes.

“The appointments of Blase Cupich to Chicago and Joseph W. Tobin to Newark were orchestrated by McCarrick, Maradiaga and Wuerl,” says the former papal nuncio, “united by a wicked pact of abuses by the first, and at least of cover-up of abuses by the other two.”

“Regarding Cupich, one cannot fail to note his ostentatious arrogance, and the insolence with which he denies the evidence that is now obvious to all,” he continued, “that 80% of the abuses found were committed against young adults by homosexuals who were in a relationship of authority over their victims.”

Cdl. Viganò on Wuerl: The Cardinal lies shamelessly and prevails upon his Chancellor, Monsignor Antonicelli, to lie as well.Tweet

Viganò also insists Washington, D.C. Cdl. Donald Wuerl was well aware of McCarrick’s sexual misconduct and “lies shamelessly”:

His recent statements that he knew nothing about it, even though at first he cunningly referred to compensation for the two victims, are absolutely laughable. The Cardinal lies shamelessly and prevails upon his Chancellor, Monsignor Antonicelli, to lie as well.

Viganò makes clear the pope was immediately notified in 2000 of McCarrick’s crimes as soon as the nunciature became aware.

“I will immediately say that the Apostolic Nuncios in the United States, Gabriel Montalvo and Pietro Sambi, both prematurely deceased, did not fail to inform the Holy See immediately, as soon as they learned of Archbishop McCarrick’s gravely immoral behavior with seminarians and priests,” he said.

He says Richard Sipe’s public letter to Pope Benedict in 2008 (published on Sipe’s website) “had had the desired result”:

Pope Benedict had imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis: the Cardinal was to leave the seminary where he was living, he was forbidden to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance.

When McCarrick was summoned to the nunciature and told the news of his sanctions, “a stormy conversation, lasting over an hour” ensued, and “the Nuncio’s voice could be heard all the way out in the corridor.”

A number of other cardinals and bishops are implicated in the cover-up, including Cdls. Pietro Parolin (current secretary of state), Angelo Sodano, Tarcisio Bertone, William Levada, Lorenzo Baldisseri and Francesco Coccopalmerio, among others.

Viganò accuses Coccopalmerio and Abp. Vincenzo Paglia of belonging to “the homosexual current in favor of subverting Catholic doctrine on homosexuality.” He also named Cdl. Edwin O’Brien as belonging “to the same current” — whom Church Militant has revealed was a homosexual ringleader in New York and deliberately underreported homosexual priestly abuse in the military.

Viganò accuses Coccopalmerio and Abp. Vincenzo Paglia of belonging to ‘the homosexual current in favor of subverting Catholic doctrine on homosexuality.’Tweet

Coccopalmerio came under scrutiny last year when his secretary, Msgr. Luigi Capozzi, was busted by Italian police during a drug-fueled gay orgy in the Vatican apartments. Coccopalmerio, head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and close adviser to the pope, had once recommended Capozzi for bishop.

Viganò also implicates Cdls. Kevin Farrell and Sean O’Malley, saying of Farrell, “Given his tenure in Washington, Dallas and now Rome, I think no one can honestly believe him.”

On Fr. Marciel Maciel’s homosexual predation, he says, “If he were to deny this, would anybody believe him given that he occupied positions of responsibility as a member of the Legionaries of Christ?”

Church Militant reported last month that a former Legionary priest, J. Paul Lennon, close friend of Farrell’s brother, Bp. Brian Farrell, when all were in the Legion of Christ, contradicted Farrell’s claims that he had only met Maciel “once or twice” during his years in the Legion. Farrell had in fact been a member of Maciel’s trusted inner circle and held a position of high rank in the Legion, necessitating multiple meetings with his founder.

On O’Malley’s denials of knowledge, Viganò wrote, “I would simply say that his latest statements on the McCarrick case are disconcerting, and have totally obscured his transparency and credibility.”

The former papal nuncio also calls out homosexualist Jesuit Fr. James Martin as “nothing but a sad recent example of that deviated wing of the Society of Jesus.”

Viganò ends with a plea to the bishops to purge the Church of the gay lobby.

The homosexual networks present in the Church must be eradicated, as Janet Smith, Professor of Moral Theology at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, recently wrote. “The problem of clergy abuse,” she wrote, “cannot be resolved simply by the resignation of some bishops, and even less so by bureaucratic directives. The deeper problem lies in homosexual networks within the clergy which must be eradicated.” These homosexual networks, which are now widespread in many dioceses, seminaries, religious orders, etc., act under the concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus tentacles, and strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations, and are strangling the entire Church.

I implore everyone, especially Bishops, to speak up in order to defeat this conspiracy of silence that is so widespread, and to report the cases of abuse they know about to the media and civil authorities.

Read the full letter here.

COLUMN BY 

Christine Niles, M.St. (Oxon.), J.D.

Christine was born in Saigon, Vietnam one year before it fell to the Communists, and has lived in France and the United States. She has degrees from Notre Dame Law School and Oxford University. She is head of the News Team and editor-in-chief of St. Michael’s Media Publishing.

VIDEO: New York Doubles — The Catholic Homosexual Mafia?

Michael Voris sits down with a high-ranking source in the archdiocese of New York to get exclusive behind-the-scenes information on what really goes on with Cdl. Timothy Dolan and the alleged homosexual mafia that reportedly runs the archdiocese.

TRANSCRIPT

A couple of weeks ago, Church Militant reached out to the archdiocese of New York to ask for a private one-on-one meeting with Cdl. Dolan.

Our continuing investigation of the Fr. Peter Miqueli sex and embezzlement case, along with the more important archdiocesan cover-up of the embezzlement, has led to a number of sources from inside the archdiocese that are now spilling the beans on what is an increasingly disturbing story.

So we contacted the archdiocese through spokesman Joe Zwilling and asked for a private meeting with His Eminence to reveal what we knew only to him with the hope of exacting some kind of promise that he would do something. Zwilling and archdiocesan attorneys replied and said there would be no meeting.

So, we are now bound to reveal the results of our ongoing investigation to this point.

The allegations from our on-camera source very close to the inner circle has been confirmed for us by a number of other New York archdiocesan personnel: that there is an unwritten code — known of by Cdl. Dolan — that priests under his care can lead a sexually active double life as long as they keep it hidden.

It would explain the reason why again Fr. Peter Miqueli’s case of embezzlement and lurid gay-for-pay sexual encounters were essentially ignored by the archdiocese despite numerous complaints from parishioners — which could result in criminal charges.

But even more alarming are the charges that Cdl. Dolan has done nothing to clean up the chancery after arriving in New York as archbishop back in 2009.

Insiders tell Church Militant it is common knowledge that senior archdiocesan clergy comprise a homosexual hotbed that existed long before Dolan arrive, stretching back to the days of Cdl. Egan and even earlier — all the way back to the 1980s, and these men’s association at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie, a Yonkers, New York neighborhood. Sources tell Church Militant these associations involved senior faculty and leadership at the seminary.

This flood of stories from diocese after diocese of sexual impropriety, financial misdealings, cover-ups by senior clergy, knowledge of all of it by the bishop — or in this case cardinal — these stories are ripping the heart out of the souls of faithful Catholics.

While the U.S. bishops sit around and try to develop new programs for evangelization and introduce watered-down catechetical programs like ALPHA, come up with ways to share Communion with non-Catholics and those in mortal sin, allow big-name clergy to keep spreading the lie that we have a reasonable hope that all men are saved, keep turning a blind eye to the significant problem of active homosexual clergy, continue to allow and even foster abuses at Mass — they will have nowhere except themselves to look when Our Blessed Lord asks them at the judgment throne why they let the Faith in America die on their watch.

Church Militant has been following this case very closely now for over three months, and every few days, another piece of inside information comes our way incriminating Cdl. Dolan and his senior clergy more and more.

We’ve spoken with various sources, as we said, many of them inside the chancery, to cobble together this emerging picture of damaging information. As we said, we reached out to the cardinal to let him know all that we knew — and our offer was rebuffed.

So, now we present, in full, the interview you have seen in brief cuts in this Vortex. Just click on the link.

Our informant has had to keep his identity hidden for fear of losing his job and livelihood. But we have independently confirmed with other sources all that he has told us in this interview.

Please spread the word about all this. Contact the New York archdiocese. Tell them that you demandaccountability. This kind of filth cannot be allowed to go on under the cover of the Church any longer.

If you don’t want to live according to the Church, then get out of the Church.

New York: Timothy Cardinal Dolan’s Homosexual Sex Scandal

Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the American Cardinal prelate of the Catholic Church, appointed by Pope Benedict XVI, who serves as the tenth and current Archbishop of New York is involved in a homosexual sex scandal.

homosexual priest boy friend

A scorned ex-girlfriend of Keith Crist (center) emailed details of his alleged kinky sex romps with the Rev. Peter Miqueli to Cardinal Dolan (left). Photo: David McGlynn; The Main Street Wire.

In a New York Post column titled “Emails to Dolan detail priest’s alleged ‘pee-drinking’ sex romps” Julia Marsh, Joe Tacopino and Laura Italiano report:

The scorned ex-girlfriend of an S&M “master” to a Catholic priest went right to the top and sent Timothy Cardinal Dolan ­e-mails that were hardly suitable for church — laying out details of the romps that were allegedly funded with cash skimmed from the poor box.

Tatyana Gudin shared with The Post her message to the cardinal that recounted how the Rev. Peter Miqueli allegedly wore a locked Lucite chastity belt along with a dog collar during pricey sessions with his bodybuilder lover.

She also claimed to the pope’s right-hand man in America that Miqueli had an interfaith fantasy of being humiliated in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in front of a “nice Jewish girl.”

Miqueli, meanwhile, remained a pastor of St. Frances de Chantal in the Throggs Neck neighborhood of The Bronx on Friday.

Read more.

In March of 2014 Cardinal Dolan was ‘fully supportive’ of teaching that homosexual activity is immoral.

However, Cardinal Dolan has been criticized for embracing the homosexual lifestyle and allowing a homosexual float in the March 2015 Saint Patrick’s Day parade in New York.

Kirsten Andersen from LifeSiteNews.com reported:

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan led Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Day parade on Tuesday as grand marshal, despite backlash from faithful Catholics unhappy with the organizers’ decision to allow an openly homosexual activist group to march in the event.

“I’m as radiant as the sun, so thanks be to God for the honor and the joy,” said Cardinal Dolan on Tuesday morning, as he led 250,000 marchers down Fifth Avenue – including a delegation from “Out @ NBC Universal,” a group of gay activists who work for NBC, the network that televises the parade.

Catholic commentator Michael Voris and his team from ChurchMilitant.TV were present at the parade and were able to question Dolan on his decision during a press scrum. “Your Eminence, do you have anything to say to the loyal Catholics who find what you’re doing here a great scandal to the faith?” Voris asked.

“No, come on in. We’d love to have you,” Dolan replied.

Read more.

Perhaps Cardinal Dolan should ponder upon Galatians 6:7:  Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

Cardinal Dolan appears to want a politically correct Catholic Church in New York, he is today reaping what he sowed.

UPDATE: The Vortex in a video titled “Did the New York archdiocese buy Fr. Miqueli’s silence?” reports:

The case involves what we have been reporting on the past few days: that a lawsuit has been filed against Cdl. Timothy Dolan, the archdiocese, and a homosexual priest and his gay-for-pay male prostitute. The priest and prostitute are accused of ripping off over a million dollars from two New Yotk parishes and using it on their homosexual fantasy sex life. The archdiocese and Cdl. Dolan are accused of being negligent and non-responsive in addressing the continued concerns of parishioners. And ChurchMilitant.com has learned of one possible reason for the lack of concern and desire to keep the story under wraps by the archdiocese.

Keep in mind that the archdiocese has known about this for a very long while, but it was only after massive press coverage, including a series of reports from ChurchMilitant.com, that the archdiocese finally sprung into public action. Father Miqueli is no longer the pastor. A resignation statement purported to have been written by him was read before every Mass over the weekend, with archdiocesan spokesman Joe Zwilling lurking around at the back of the church.

So the question: What would be the case now had the lawsuit by parishioners and subsequent media reports these past few days not happened? Answer: likely nothing. How can we say that?

To watch the video and read the full text click here.

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Interfaith Dialogue — A Bridge Too Far

In this new monograph, adapted from Annex 1 of his superb recent book, Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy Stephen Coughlin explains what’s really behind the so-called ‘interfaith dialogue movement’ and how the Muslim Brotherhood has co-opted the well-meaning but misguided intentions of the Catholic Church in particular. Mr. Coughlin’s expertise in the nexus between Islamic Law (shariah) and Islamic terrorism informs his exposure of the manipulative Brotherhood strategy to use the interfaith dialogue arena as an opportunity to edge Catholics toward a dislocation of faith so as to pave the way for the insinuation of shariah into American faith communities and society in general.

Author Stephen Coughlin introduces the problem in this brief video:

At a time when Vatican policy seems to many to have become unmoored from the traditional doctrinal teachings of the Church in ways advanced by the permissive environment of the interfaith dialogue movement, including tolerance of anti-Constitutional, anti-Western, shariah-based Islamic principles as well as those who promote them, this publication hits home hard. As Mr. Coughlin points out, it is intellectually impossible to adhere faithfully to Church doctrine and yet grant acceptance to principles that are fundamentally opposed to such precepts at the same time. Only a dislocation of Catholic faith could allow such moral equivalence. Ultimately, as he argues, the objective of Islamic supremacists is the prioritization of interfaith relationships over advocacy on behalf of fellow Christians being slaughtered elsewhere by the co-religionists of their Muslim interfaith partners—in other words, the neutralization of the Catholic faith community as a serious obstacle to the encroachment of shariah.

In praise of this new Center publication, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney said,

While the interfaith dialogue movement presents itself as a laudable effort to ‘bridge’ the distance between faiths, those more familiar with the doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood know that the actual agenda of too many such efforts is, in fact, modeled after the well-known dictum of Sayyid Qutb, who candidly reminded Muslims that such a ‘bridge’ is ‘only so that the people of Jahiliyyah [society of unbelievers] may come over to Islam.

The Center for Security Policy/Secure Freedom is proud to present this monograph as a superb addition to its Civilization Jihad Reader Series. “Bridge-Building” to Nowhere: The Catholic Church’s Case Study in Interfaith Delusion is available for purchase in kindle and paperback format on Amazon.com.

Click here to purchase this newly released monograph in Kindle format.

Click here to purchase this newly released monograph in paperback format.

 Click here for a full PDF of the monograph.

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY

The Center for Security Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security and then ensures that such issues are the subject of both focused, principled examination and effective action by recognized policy experts, appropriate officials, opinion leaders, and the general public. For more information visit www.SecureFreedom.org

Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has $100 Million Worth of Fossil Fuel Investments

The “Green” Pope Francis seems to be a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to the Catholic Church’s investment in fossil fuels. His push to impact climate change appears to apply to everyone but the Catholic Church.

Richard Valdmanis from Reuters reports:

[S]ome of the largest American Catholic organizations have millions of dollars invested in energy companies, from hydraulic fracturing firms to oil sands producers, according to their own disclosures, through many portfolios intended to fund church operations and pay clergy salaries.

This discrepancy between the church’s leadership and its financial activities in the United States has prompted at least one significant review of investments. The Archdiocese of Chicago, America’s third largest by Catholic population, told Reuters it will reexamine its more than $100 million worth of fossil fuel investments.

“We are beginning to evaluate the implications of the encyclical across multiple areas, including investments and also including areas such as energy usage and building materials,” Betsy Bohlen, chief operating officer for the Archdiocese, said in an email.

[ … ]

Dioceses covering Boston, Rockville Centre on Long Island, Baltimore, Toledo, and much of Minnesota have all reported millions of dollars in holdings in oil and gas stocks in recent years, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

The holdings tend to make up between 5 and 10 percent of the dioceses’ overall equities investments, similar to the 7.1 percent weighting of energy companies on the S&P 500 index, according to the documents.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ guidelines on ethical investing warn Catholics and Catholic institutions against investing in companies related to abortion, contraception, pornography, tobacco, and war, but do not suggest avoiding energy stocks.

Read more.

Will all Catholic churches, schools, hospitals and related organizations stop using fossil fuels to save the planet?

It would seem that Pope Francis has yet to walk the walk but he is good at talking the talk. To meet Pope Francis’ encyclical it would be necessary to, as Jesus did, shed all the trapping of fossil fuels.

I wonder if fossil fuels were used to cook the last supper?

Pope Francis said to back sainthood for anti-Semitic priest

Canonization in the Roman Catholic Church has already become a charade, with recently deceased popes whose records are likely to be viewed by history quite differently from how they are now rushed to sainthood the way Roman Emperors used to be deified right after their deaths (no matter what rogues they had been in life), but this is even worse: it’s a validation of anti-Semitism, and indirectly of the jihad against Israel, at a time when the Pope should be declaring his solidarity with Israel as the nation bearing the brunt of the jihad that has devastated Christian communities across the Middle East.

The Catholic Church formally rejected anti-Semitism in all its forms at the Second Vatican Council. Why is it going in the other direction now?

No doubt Francis believes that to speak frankly about the jihad against Christians and Jews would be to harm the “dialogue.”

The Catholic Church hierarchy is following a disastrous and ultimately un-Christian line of weakness, willful blindness and submission in the face of evil; many Christians will die as a result.

“Pope Francis said to back sainthood for anti-Semitic priest,” Jerusalem Post, June 5, 2015 (thanks to David):

Leon Dehon, whose beatification was delayed in 2005 following the death of Pope John Paul II, founded the Priests of the Sacred Heart order.

Pope Francis on Friday went on record as supporting the candidacy for sainthood of a French priest who is alleged to have espoused anti-Semitic views, the AFP news agency reported.

Leon Dehon, whose beatification was delayed in 2005 following the death of Pope John Paul II, founded the Priests of the Sacred Heart order.

According to AFP, although he had been declared venerable by John Paul II, his path to sainthood hit a snag when Pope Benedict XVI ordered a commission to probe Dehon’s alleged anti-Semitism.

Despite questions about Dehon’s past, Pope Francis on Friday was quoted by media outlets as saying that he wished for the beatification process to “end well” and that the late priest should be judged within the context of the times in which he lived.

Dehon is reported to have called the Talmud a “manual of the bandit, corruptor, social destroyer” and anti-Semitism as a “sign of hope.”

He also believed that Jews were “thirsty for gold” and that “lust for money is a racial instinct in them.”

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Needed: A New Church Policy Toward Islam by William Kilpatrick

The below article, by the ever-incisive William Kilpatrick, is written for a Roman Catholic audience, but the questions raised apply to all Christians. Secular leaders, too, can profit by his patient reasoning. 
Part One of a Three Part Series. 

Needed: A New Church Policy Toward Islam

By William Kilpatrick, Crisis Magazine

Part 1: The Dilemma

In a speech to Egypt’s top Islamic authorities, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for a “religious revolution.” Why? Because he believes that Islam has problems: “That corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries … is antagonizing the entire world.” He continued: “Is it possible that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants…?” He then warned the assembled imams not to “remain trapped within this mindset” but to “reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.”

However you interpret el-Sisi’s remarks, it’s clear that he believes the problems of Islam are not the fault of a tiny minority. He seems to think that a great many are to blame, and he particularly singles out Islamic religious leaders, whom he holds “responsible before Allah” on “Judgment Day.” And, most tellingly, he refuses to indulge in the this-has-nothing-to-do-with-Islam excuse favored by Western leaders. Rather, he states that “the entire umma [Islamic world]” is “a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world” because of “the thinking that we hold most sacred.”

By contrast, after his visit to Turkey, Pope Francis compared Islamic fundamentalists to Christian fundamentalists and said that “in all religions there are these little groups.” A little over a year ago in his apostolic exhortation, he joined the ranks of those who say that terror has nothing to do with Islam by observing that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

So the leader of the largest Muslim country in the Arab world thinks that the entire Islamic world is suffused with dangerous and destructive thinking, and the leader of the Catholic Church thinks terror is the work of a few misunderstanders of Islam.

Or does he?

It’s very likely that when world leaders say that terror has nothing to do with Islam, many of them do so for reasons of state. In other words, they are afraid that if they say anything else they will provoke more violence.

Is this the case with the Pope? My guess is probably not. The Pope does not seem the type to dissemble. He, along with many of the bishops, seems to genuinely believe that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked for nefarious purposes.

One of the unspoken hopes of Church and secular leaders is that by saying Islam is a religion of peace… eventually even the Islamists will believe it and begin to act peacefully.

Still, even if many prelates do entertain doubts about the peaceful nature of Islam, it can be argued that the present policy of saying positive things about Islam makes sense from a strategic point of view. A great many Christians live as minorities in Muslim lands, and the wrong word might put them in danger. After Pope Benedict’s Regensburg reference to the violent nature of Islam, Muslims took out their anger on Christians living in their midst. And things have worsened since then. Christians in Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan, and elsewhere already live at peril of their lives. Why make it any worse for them?

There’s another argument for this power-of-positive-thinking approach, although it’s an argument that’s best left unsaid. One of the unspoken hopes of Church and secular leaders is, undoubtedly, that such an approach will set in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy. Keep saying that Islam is a religion of peace and eventually even the Islamists will believe it and begin to act peacefully.

Of course, jihadists aren’t the main target of this strategy. Even if hardcore Islamists remain unmoved by this flattering of their faith, the tactic will—or so it is supposed—have the merit of reinforcing moderate Muslims in their moderation. If Catholic prelates were to start criticizing Islam itself instead of the terrorist “betrayers” of Islam, they would risk alienating peaceful Muslims. A hardline policy might even have the effect of pushing moderates into the radical camp. Better, from a strategic point of view, to stress our commonalities with Muslims. If they see us as a brother religion, they are more likely to protect the Christians in their midst.

Whether or not this is the reasoning at the Vatican, I don’t know. But such a strategy is not without merit. In Islam, blasphemy and slander are taken quite seriously and any criticism of Islam or its prophet can be construed as blasphemous. Slander is defined even more loosely. One of the most authoritative sharia law books defines it as “saying anything about a person that he would dislike.” That covers a lot of territory. So the argument that drawing attention to the violent side of Islam will only incite further violence is a compelling one.

On the other hand, there are good reasons for questioning the Church’s accommodative approach. The primary and most practical one is that it doesn’t seem to have worked. The let’s-be-friends approach has been in place even since Vatican II, but other than dialoguers congratulating themselves on the friendships they have made, it hasn’t yielded much in the way of results. Christians in Muslim lands are less safe than they have been for centuries. So, for that matter, are Muslims themselves.

What’s wrong with the diplomatic approach? Well, look at it first from the Islamic point of view. Islam is a religion that respects strength. It was spread mainly by the sword. To say that it is a peaceful religion might elicit reassuring responses from those Muslims who, like their Western counterparts, are constrained by diplomatic protocols, but from others it elicits scorn. The Ayatollah Khomeini put it this way: “Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those are witless.”

Muslims of Khomeini’s ilk don’t care whether or not others think of Islam as peaceful, they only care whether God is on their side. A weak response from the enemy, whether on the battlefield or from the pulpit proves that he is. Appeasement on the part of prelates reinforces the conviction held by many Muslims that Christianity is an inferior religion, not worthy of respect. By the same token, it reinforces the belief that Islam is the superior religion, deserving of special respect. “Allahu akbar” doesn’t mean “let’s dialogue”; it means “God is greater” and its specific meaning to Muslims is that their God is greater than your god. Duke University recently reversed its decision to allow the Muslim Student Association to chant the call to prayer from the massive chapel bell tower, but if the decision had held it would not have been seen as a sign of Duke’s commitment to cultural diversity but as a sign that it is on the road to submission. Duke was founded by Methodist Episcopalians and was originally called Trinity College. The Muslim call to prayer includes the words “Allahu akbar,” and the Allah they call upon is decidedly not a Trinity.

Islam, which considers itself to be the best religion on the planet, is also the touchiest religion on the planet. The way you show Islam respect is not by treating it as an equal but by treating it with deference. Not doing or saying anything to offend Muslims might seem like a wise strategy, but once you adopt it, you’re already on a slippery slope. Islam has an insatiable appetite for deference, and there is no end to the things that offend Muslims. The word “Islam,” after all, means submission, and that, ultimately, is how non-Muslims are expected to show respect. Catholics who are worried about offending Islam might note that in Saudi Arabia the mere presence of a Catholic church is considered offensive. Will the wearing of a cross by a Christian student at Duke someday be considered intolerably offensive to the Muslim students? How much of your weekly salary would you be willing to wager against that eventuality?

Muslims who are disaffected from Islam aren’t likely to convert to another religion which proudly proclaims its commonality with the faith they would love to leave.

Of course there are many Muslims who are tolerant and open-minded, but in much of the Muslim world they keep their open-mindedness to themselves. What about them? The Church’s current “diplomatic” policy runs the risk of increasing their sense of hopelessness. Islam is an oppressive religious and social system. Many Muslims feel trapped by it. President el-Sisi acknowledged as much when he urged Egypt’s imams not to “remain trapped within this mindset.” When Christian leaders won’t acknowledge the oppression, it reinforces the “trapped” Muslim’s belief that he has nowhere to turn. The problem is compounded when Church leaders insist on expressing their respect for Islam and their solidarity with Islamic religious leaders. Muslims who are disaffected from Islam aren’t likely to convert to another religion which proudly proclaims its commonality with the faith they would love to leave.

The current approach is unlikely to win over many Muslims. At the same time, it’s likely to alienate a lot of Christians. For one thing, it does a disservice to Christian victims of Islamic persecution. As I observed in a previous column:

Such an approach also tends to devalue the sacrifices of those Christians in Muslim lands who have had the courage to resist submission to Islam. It must be highly discouraging to be told that the religion in whose name your friends and relatives have been slaughtered is prized and esteemed by the Church.

That’s not to say that Church leaders shouldn’t exercise discretion in what they say. During World War II, Vatican officials understood that saying the wrong thing about the Nazis could result in retaliation against both Jews and Catholics. On the other hand, they did not go out of their way to express their esteem and respect for Nazis and thus risk demoralizing Christians who lived under Nazi control. In order to protect Christians and Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe and later in Communist-controlled Eastern Europe, the Vatican did exercise a degree of diplomatic caution. But that diplomacy was based on an accurate understanding of Nazi and Communist ideology. It’s not at all clear that today’s Church leaders possess a correspondingly clear-eyed understanding of Islamic theology/ideology. The current outreach to Islam seems to be based more on wishful thinking than on fact. And, as Pope Francis himself observed in Evangelii Gaudium, “Ideas disconnected from realities give rise to ineffectual forms of idealism” (232).

“Ideas disconnected from realities” is a good way to describe the Church’s Islam policy. That policy does not seem to have done much to prevent persecution of Christians in Muslim lands. How about Catholics who do not live in the danger zones? Catholics who live in the West and rely on the Church for their understanding of Islam can be forgiven if they still remain complacent about the Islamic threat. That’s because there is absolutely nothing in recent official Church statements that would lead them to think that there is anything to worry about. Lumen GentiumNostra AetateThe Catechism of the Catholic ChurchEvangelii Gaudium? All discuss Islam, but not in a way that would raise the slightest concern. The Catholic who wonders what to think about Islamic terrorism and then consults his Catechism only to find that “together with us they adore the one, merciful God” will likely conclude that terrorists are distorting and misinterpreting their religion. Confident that the Church has spoken definitively on the matter, he’ll roll over and go back to sleep.

It’s ironic that a Catholic can get a better grasp of the Islamic threat by listening to a short speech by Egyptian President el-Sisi than by listening to a hundred reassuring statements from Catholic bishops.

Conversely, Catholics who do not rely strictly on the Church for their assessment of Islam are in for a bout of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, they know what the Church says. On the other hand, they can read the news and note the obvious discrepancy. As time goes by and as car bombings and beheadings occur at more frequent intervals in the West, dissonance is likely to be replaced by disrespect. Church officials who keep repeating the one-sided narrative about “authentic” Islam will lose credibility. Catholics won’t necessarily lose their faith, but it will be sorely tested. At the least, they will stop trusting their bishops on this issue. The trouble with “ideas disconnected from realities” is that they eventually do bump up against realities, and when they do, the bearers of those ideas lose respect. A good case can be made that Catholic leaders should pursue a policy geared toward weakening Muslims’ faith in Islam (a proposition I will discuss in the next installment), but the current policy seems more likely to undermine the faith that Catholics have in their shepherds. It’s ironic that a Catholic can get a better grasp of the Islamic threat by listening to a short speech by President el-Sisi than by listening to a hundred reassuring statements from Catholic bishops.

Of course, it’s not enough to simply criticize the Church’s current policy without proposing a viable alternative option. That’s something I propose to do in my next column.

Editor’s note: In the image above, Pope Francis meets with the Grand Mufti of Istanbul Rahmi Yaran during his three day state visit to Turkey last November.

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Pope Francis: “The Enigma” – The Real Mystery of Faith

Hope all is well on this “Feast Day of the Blessed Trinity” as we all know that explaining the mystery of the “3 Persons in One” to any other Catholic is tough – let alone, trying to explain it to a non-believer…All the Homilies in our beloved churches tried to do that today on this special Feast Day as Father Mark Mlay at St. Peter Church did a nice job with his assignment. Even some of our most astute priests in our diocese have a tough time explaining this phenomena. Father Brian King does a very good job with it.

Let’s see, the Immaculate Conception is another tough one. The Resurrection…The Transfiguration…I can go on and on. Oh, and we also have the “4 Mysteries of the Holy Rosary” which adds that much more mystery to our beloved Catholic Faith…

But, the biggest mystery the majority of you who are reading this e-mail have come across the past “2 years, 2 months and 12 days” is the “Mystery of Pope Francis” – which I refer to as “The Enigma – The Real Mystery of Faith”…There is no better word or description that I can use to describe what our 266th pontiff has accomplished and laid out in his short pontificate thus far. Like the majority of you (some of whom have written Pope Francis off the day after he uttered those famous 5 words “Who am I to Judge”?) – I am confused, perplexed, frustrated, upset and bewildered by quite a few of the comments that our beloved pope has made and what direction he appears to be taking the 1.2 billion Catholics in this world in…The jury is still out and I do not like jury duty…

Friends: When Pope Francis was elected back in 2013, I was ecstatic! I shared my excitement with our own Bishop Barbarito, who also loves St. Francis of Assisi. The first South American pope ever! A pope that spoke my Spanish language. Just the mere fact that he took the name of my all-time favorite saint of the church – the first to ever bear the Stigmata…Simplicity and humility. I absolutely loved the pope’s initial approach, coming out of the gate. But, these past 16 months has been a lot more complicated and misleading and when you throw in the fiasco of Obama and Castro with Cuba in one of his more questionable moves, it does not sit well with many people – including the beloved Cuban exiles who live in this America. And, many of the upper hierarchy church leaders the pope has assigned over the past year, scare me to death…(Take a look at the first article below, which lists the more controversial figures the pope has asked to lead our church in 2015)…Beyond scary…All while we said our good-byes to the late Cardinal Francis George, as our beloved Cardinal Raymond Burke watches it all from a remote island called Malta…

Once again, I respect our pope, pray for our pope and listen to our pope (in English and Spanish) – but, I just don’t know where he is going with this misleading “progressive” agenda of his – and neither do many of the 70 million Catholics in this country…Let’s be honest, folks. I am not the only one…The majority of you echo my sentiments, but may prefer to keep them to yourselves or at least not put it out publicly because you may be afraid of being criticized or attacked…That is what I am called to do by the Holy Spirit. I am a Catholic activist. I act for a living. I also write for a living, then, put all my writing into action so I am not afraid to write what I feel when I know that I am telling the Truth about our Church…It is easier to walk the talk when you only write about the Truth…

Saint John Paul II, in his beyond-amazing 27 years as our Holy Father, taught me one thing for sure – “BE NOT AFRAID” – and I take my all-time favorite pope’s advice to heart in everything that I do. One cannot be an activist and an evangelist and make a difference in this world if he does not have the courage to put his life on the line for his faith every day of the year by walking that talk… And, if one can’t take the heat – stay away from the fires of hell…That’s my goal…

In that same P.B. Post interview over two years ago, I told the writer that “I think the pope is holding a “Global Open House” – inviting every single walk of life to the banquet table in the Vatican – atheists, liberals, abortionists, murderers, democrats, ruthless sinners and even our favorite – the homosexuals – as it appears that the pope has embraced them more than any other group, as of late. Then, when he has everybody’s undivided attention – he will sit them down and teach the entire world what the Catholic Church is all about”…That was my prediction about 26 months ago, and I am still holding my breath. I have terrific lung capacity – I happen to be a professional Harmonica player…

But, until Pope Francis boldly comes out and specifically tells the ever-anxious and confused 1.2 billion Catholics in the world that the immoral act of SODOMY is not part of Catholic Church teachings – that two men being married and having sex with each other – IS NOT PART OF WHAT THE CATECHISM TEACHES – then, those who don’t know better, will all simply continue to follow in the pope’s footsteps, take the 5th and continue to say “Who am I to Judge?” It’s the easy way out. It’s time the pope comes clean and tells the world that the Catholic Church and the Holy Bible deem homosexuality to be an abomination and it has never been part of the Catholic Church teachings – and never will be. Period! There is no re-defining here, folks. If the pope does not clear the air with this simple issue and tell the world in black and white what the Catholic Church teaches about the immoral and appalling act of Sodomy, then, we are all going to be in a world of hurt – and those 9 liberal attorneys in black robes who seem to rule the country, are salivating and licking their chops right about now, thinking that the Catholic Church is not even putting up a fight…Roll over, Catholic Church. USCCB and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, where are you??? Cardinal DiNardo, hello, is anybody home??? Don’t even bother with that other cardinal from New York…

Now is the time for the pope to make a bold statement loud and clear – before it is too late, when come, late June – the Supreme Court Injustices rule in favor of the Gays. Now is the time he has to not re-define marriage – but, re-define what he truly meant when he uttered those “famous five words” on that infamous plane ride back from World Youth Day in Rio. What good is it to have a Family Synod in September when the Rule of the Land has already been declared in late June and Gay Marriage is legal in all 50 states? (I pray that I am wrong). Why on earth is the USCCB holding our “4th Fortnight for Freedom” from June 21st-July 4th when the Justices will already have redefined the Sacrament of Matrimony? What the hell are we thinking, people? Why did we not hold this Fortnight months ago? Why would Pope Francis come to Philadelphia to discuss the importance of Traditional Family & Traditional Marriage with 200 bishops and cardinals while those liberal judges are voting on redefining marriage right now as we speak and coming out with an answer in June? Are you with me? Where’s the horse? Where’s the buggy? Am I the only one who is scratching his head? Folks, the horse has already been out of the barn – been to the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and heading to the Belmont Stakes next Saturday – and the Catholic Church is just sitting back and watching it all unfold. Are they taking bets? I thought we got rid of the ruthless Egyptian Pharoah centuries ago. Now the American Pharoah is here to haunt us and probably win the Triple Crown…I am NOT horsing around here and I pray that this does not go over some of your heads…

Wake up, Catholics!! Be Pro-Active – Pope Francis, cardinals and bishops! History has taught us that being re-active will get us nowhere…Ask the 57 million aborted babies in our country who wished to GOD that the Catholic Church would have been Pro-active & Pro-Life back in 1973…

The 5th Commandment took the 5th Amendment…

Once again, the last time I checked, Sodomy was NOT part of GOD’s Plan – it is unnatural and unGODly – and it is only the beautiful union of a Man and a Woman in the Blessed Sacrament of Holy Matrimony who can “Pro-create”. Two men or two women can only “Rec-create”! And, if Pope Francis does not come out now in June, while the Supreme Court is going through their liberal sessions and way before the Family Synod in “The City of Brotherly Love” in September and proclaim to the entire world – to the United States – to the Catholic Faithful – that Sodomy is a Mortal Sin, that Gay Marriage will NOT be accepted in the Holy Catholic Church – then, that entire 4-day conference becomes a total farce and Philadelphia can just simply change its jovial slogan to “The City of Homosexual Love”…

It’s that simple, folks. I, for one, am not enthusiastic at all about this already-rocky, Family Synod (which I have referred to as “Rocky VI”…Yes, it’s in Philadelphia) – because it will be obsolete when it takes place – 3 months behind the 8 ball. Maybe it’s because I know a little too much about what is taking place behind the scenes. Maybe it’s because I have read too many terrific articles and interviews from some of my Catholic heroes like Cardinal Burke, Cardinal Cordileone, the late Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop Paproki, Bishop Jenky – and my own spiritual director, Father James Molgano – to name a few who Tell the Truth and refuse to “water down our beloved Catholic Faith”. While so many other liberal cardinals and leaders of the Church have blasphemed and embarrassed the Catholic Church and are fighting the good, wholesome cardinals – I refuse to pay attention to MAN anymore when it comes to my Faith, my evangelization and my salvation. My faith and hope lie entirely in Jesus…

JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU!!!

The day that I put my faith & hope in the men who Pope Francis has selected to help run the Catholic Church is the day that I will make the same mistake that so many others have made – drink that “Church of Nice Kool-aid” – and totally forget about what Jesus commanded Peter to do upon that solid rock over 2,000 years ago. I come from the old school and that is the foundation on which I put my total faith into, but unfortunately, today, that rock is on quick sand, sinking fast, and until Pope Francis steps up and begins to make the Catholic Church teachings more clearer and has it in him to Tell the Absolute Black & White Truth about our beloved Faith – and not lead the Catholic Faithful into a confused state of nebulous opinions, thoughts and hypothesis – then, and only then – are we ever going to be on the same page and same book – the Holy Bible…

As a former NCAA Basketball Official (with the SEC, the Atlantic Ten, the OVC, etc.), my job as a referee was to “judge” every play that came my way. I could not afford to “take the 5th” and tell the ever-irate coaches “Who am I to Judge?”…Hell, that was my job! I had a split-second decision to make that call and millions of people watched it on ESPN. And, it is only appropriate that the game of college basketball has “3” referees in each game – similar to the Holy Trinity (which we are celebrating today). Like the Holy Trinity, all 3 referees are of equal significance, with none of us being more important the the other. We had to work “Two-gether” as a TEAM. Our job was to get the play right, be fair to both sides and maintain a level playing field. Tough to do with the speed the game is played at today and with the athletic ability these players have…and, with what is at stake in today’s collegiate game – MONEY, people’s jobs and livelihoods, recruiters, boosters, etc.

And, to this day the toughest call in the game of basketball is the “Block/Charge” call. I taught the hundreds of referees who came to my Annual Referee Camp to “referee the defense” – to make sure that the defensive player had established a “legal guarding position”. And, as many times as we saw that play over and over again – we still found it so difficult to get it right. Sure, the instant replays showed it in slow motion, but, the block/charge call cannot be reviewed in the instant replay. We did not have that luxury and we had to live and die with that gutsy call…

What I am getting at with all of this is that as an NCAA basketball referee, there is NO grey area when making a call – it is either black or white. True or False. Right or Wrong. NO COMPROMISING! It is either a Block or a Charge! You have to have the guts and integrity to make the right call – regardless of the outcome! We could not afford to call a “Blarge”! That is when one ref calls a Block and the other calls a Charge…Total chaos! What in GOD’s name do you do now? Confusing, perplexing, frustrating, bewildering…All hell would break loose and it threw everybody off – including the players, the coaches, the fans, the commentators… Mass confusion…

And, speaking of Mass Confusion (that is when the Catholic Faithful attend Mass and walk out all confused about the Homily) – now you know how the millions of Catholics in this world feel about some of the more radical comments that Pope Francis has made over the past two plus years and the direction he seems to be heading in. His comments on the homosexuals is difficult to decipher, hard to get a real feel for. Not sure where he truly stands with this issue – confusing the Catholic Faithful and all of his clergy even more – allowing each cardinal, bishop and priest to interpret it how he sees fit. Again, no definite interpretation here. This is what I refer to as that “Blarge” call I eluded to above. With this particular, sensitive issue, the pope is not providing the Catholic Faithful with a clear call – with a True or False explanation – with a concise, perfectly clear Black or White call. He has only provided us with very nebulous, confusing and misleading calls. No Block. No Charge. Just a “Blarge” – which, once again – leads to chaos, confusion, frustration and people losing faith and trust in our own Holy Father.

And, the more our beloved pope leaves the Catholic Faithful “guessing” and not coming with explicit and concise Truths & Facts about our beloved church teachings – the more Catholics will be leaving the church and trying to find the Truth elsewhere. And, with the elections of 2016 lurking around the corner and with the majority of the 70 million Catholics in this country still trying to figure out which church leader, cardinal or bishop is correct when it comes to Gay Marriage, the atrocity of abortion, the fate of divorced couples and other religious freedom issues – while the pope allows it all to get even cloudier and murkier – the Family Synod in Chilly Philly in September may just be the last straw that broke the camel’s back…And, is that a one hump-camel? Is it a two-hump camel? Is it a dromedary? Is it a Bactrian Camel? A Hybrid?

WHO AM I TO JUDGE? Let’s just try to get over this hump for right now…

Global Warming? The Pope is Wrong

I have devoted the better part of more than two and a half decades speaking out against the charlatans that have created and maintained the greatest hoax ever imposed on modern man. At the heart of this hoax has been the United Nations environmental program and at the heart of that program is an agenda to initiate a massive redistribution of wealth from industrialized, successful nations to those who have suffered, as often as not, from being ruled by despots of one description or another.

It is with profound sorrow and disappointment that I must now speak out against Pope Francis, the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, whom observers have noted has “a green agenda.” He has become an outspoken advocate on environmental issues, saying that taking action is “essential to faith” and calling the destruction of nature a modern sin.

Before proceeding, let me note that I am not Catholic. My thoughts regarding the Pope are rooted in my knowledge of the long record of lies, false predictions, and claims by various environmentalists over the years.

When the Vatican announced it would hold a conference on April 28 called “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development”, I wondered why the Vatican is not holding a conference to organize the protection of Christians—particularly in the Middle East—against the wholesale genocide that is occurring. The Pope is not alone in this. There appears to be little urgency in addressing a threat comparable to the Holocaust of the last century that consigned six million Jews to death for being Jews.

I frankly do not know what is meant by “the moral dimensions of climate change.” Climate change is something that was occurring long before there was a human population on planet Earth. It is the measurement of the previous global cycles through which the Earth has passed for billions of years. It is profoundly natural. Applying a moral dimension to it makes no sense whatever.

As for “sustainable development”, that is a term that environmentalists use to deny any development that benefits the human population.

Environmentalism is deeply opposed to the use of any energy resource, coal, oil, natural gas, as well as other elements of the Earth we use to enhance and improve our lives with habitat of every description from a hut to a skyscraper. Over the last five thousand years we have gone from being largely dependent on wood to the use of fossil fuel energy that keeps us safe against nature—blizzards, floods, hurricanes, forest fires, et cetera.

At the heart of environmentalism, however, is a deep disdain and antagonism to the human race. From its earliest advocates, one can find allusions to humanity as “a cancer” on the Earth. The Catholic Church has been an advocate for the human race, most notably opposing abortion that kills humans in the womb. Its charitable work is legendary.

To grasp how far the forthcoming conference is from the most basic beliefs of Catholicism, one need only take note of the persons scheduled to speak. They include the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, the leader of the institution in which the hoax of global warming was created and advanced. Another is Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, another voice for global warming, but neither is going to tell those attending the conference that there is no warming and that the Earth has been a natural cooling cycle for the past eighteen years, tied entirely to a comparable cycle of the Sun.

The Green’s response to the voices of those scientists who courageously spoke out to debunk their lies has been to denounce and try to silence them. There is no science to support the global warming hoax.

The one-day summit will include participants from major world religions. The Pope will issue an encyclical on the environment later this year.

Is there a religious or spiritual aspect to opposing the forthcoming conference and encyclical? One need look no further than Genesis. In a Wall Street Journal commentary, William McGurn drew the lesson that it offers “a reminder that God’s creation is meant to serve man—not man the environment.

Quoting Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” concluding that “the Earth is to be worked and that this work and the fruit it bears are also blessed.” The spiritual truth to be drawn from this is that man is the steward of the Earth. That does not mean its resources should be abandoned because of bogus claims that the Earth is doomed.

McGurn reminds us that “it is the have-nots who pay the highest price for the statist interventions so beloved the Church of St. Green.” There are more than a billion on Earth who do not have any access to electricity which, in addition to hydropower, is generated by coal, oil and natural gas. Lacking the means to deter the impact of insects and weeds on agriculture, much of the Earth’s annual crops are lost. Lacking access to the beneficial chemicals that protect humans from the diseases transmitted by insects, millions die needlessly.

The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank is leading the effort to alert people to the dangerous message of the Vatican conference because “many people of faith who are familiar with the science and economics of climate change are worried this event will become a platform for alarmism over a controversial scientific issue” noting that “there is no scientific ‘consensus’ on whether there is any need to reduce mankind’s use of fossil fuels.”

The conference agenda is “profoundly anti-poor and anti-life” says the Institute. Plainly said, the Vatican conference incomprehensively would advocate policies whose only result would be the reduction of human life in order to “sustain” the Earth.

“These unnecessary policies would cause the suffering and even death of billions of people. All people of faith should rise up in opposition to such policies.”

The Heartland Institute is sending a team of scientists and climate policy experts to Rome where they will be joined by Marc Morano of the think tank, CFACT. Says Morano, ‘Instead of entering into an invalid marriage with climate fear promoters—a marriage that is destined for an annulment—Pope Francis should administer last rites to the promotion of man-made climate fears and their so-called solutions. This unholy alliance must be prevented.”

© Alan Caruba, 2015

The Special Treatment Homosexuals Demand

There is one particular thing that illustrates better than anything else the unreasonableness — and some would say gall — of homosexuality activists. It’s not demanding that bakers, shirt printers and wedding planners be party to events and expression deeply contrary to their principles, as offensive as that is. What I speak of is something even more fundamental, something again brought to light by the recent Vatican synod on the family.

synod

2014 Synod, Rome.

As many know, the synod made news with an unwisely released and widely misrepresented mid-term report containing language that the secular media interpreted as signaling Church capitulation on the matter of homosexuality (an excellent article on this by Paul Bois is found here). And when it emerged that the language was the handiwork of just one or two individuals and was roundly rejected by the bishops, melancholia — and Machiavellianism — defined the media. “What a shame it is that the Church rejected the more welcoming tone,” we heard. “We thought tolerance and deference to the times were winning out, but then the voices of prejudice quashed progress.” They thought? Insofar as these leftists think at all, they do it all wrong.

The media’s notion that the Catholic Church isn’t “welcoming” to people with same-sex attraction (PSSA) is at best due to ignorance, at worst driven by insidious manipulation. Just consider the following passage — which expresses a long-held Church position — from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

What about that sounds “unwelcoming”? Let me add that for nigh on 20 years I’ve attended Mass every Sunday and on Holy Days in parishes all over my area and in other parts of the country, and I have never, ever heard a priest rail against homosexuality; in fact, lamentably, I can’t even remember a priest mentioning it during a sermon, let alone talking “about these issues all the time,” as one rather prominent Catholic put it last year. In other words, the notion that priests are smoking PSSA out of churches with fire-and-brimstone, acid-tongued preaching is a media assumption — and invention.

It’s also quite stupid. Does anyone think the Church turns away adulterers, fornicators, artificial-contraception users or self-gratifiers? So why would anyone think it’s at all different with PSSA? In accordance with Jesus’ saying that “the healthy are in no need of a physician,” that God rejoices more over one lost sheep found than 99 who were never lost, the Church’s business is attracting sinners. And, of course, since she teaches that we’re all sinners, she’d have to close her doors if her market were confined to angels.

The reality is that homosexuality activists and the media (redundant, I know) are guilty of projection. They’d have us believe that the Church and other traditionalists can’t stop talking about PSSA, when they’re the ones who cannot. Much like a man who rains down unprovoked blows upon another and then screams “Why are you so violent!?” when the victim merely raises his arms to block, they start a fight and then are shocked when others defend themselves; not only that, they then portray their offensive against tradition as defense and the defense of it as offensive.

But the Church exercises no double standard. Her teaching lists homosexual behavior as just one of many behaviors at variance with God’s plan for man’s sexuality. It’s homosexuality activists who have the double standard, and this brings us to what they really want. Since the Church has always welcomed PSSA, the issue is not one of accepting “homosexuals.”

The activists want the Church to accept homosexuality.

Perhaps this is stating the obvious for many, but framing this properly illustrates its absurdity. The activists want a special dispensation from Church sexual teaching — and, of course, this can be applied to all of traditionalist Christianity — for their particular behavior. But consider where this leaves us:

Is the Church supposed to say adultery is a sin, fornication is a sin, self-gratification is a sin, viewing pornography is a sin, but homosexuality is, what? A lifestyle choice, sort of like living on a houseboat?

This would be comical to anyone who didn’t fail at mastering childhood categorization problems (i.e., what things belong together?). It would be like saying that devil’s food cake didn’t belong with sugar cookies, petits fours, Napoleons and ladyfingers in the category of desserts because it’s the favorite of some corpulent, Jabba the Hut-looking slob who’ll feel better about himself if it’s classified as a vegetable.

So in essence, what homosexuality activists are asking is that the Church scrap all of its sexual teaching to accommodate their wishes. It doesn’t matter that the teaching is the product of ages of thought, scholarship, discernment and divine revelation; that it’s promulgated in numerous official documents such as Humanae Vitae; or that it’s considered infallible, as it reflects Truth. You want it gone? We’ll get right on that for ya’.

To echo Bois in the earlier referenced article, that’s not happening — end of story.

Insofar as some PSSA are sincere in their conflation of acceptance of their behavior with acceptance of themselves, the psychology is no mystery. They identify so closely with their sin that there is little, if any, separation between it and themselves on an emotional level; thus, they view any rejection of their sin as a rejection of themselves. This is why I’ve generally avoided using the term “homosexual” in this article: the word too often carries the implication that it defines the person who thus identifies himself. And this is why homosexuality activists can, in certain cases, quite sincerely equate their movement with that of black civil rights. They tend to see their sexual impulses as integral to who they are and “homosexual” as their master status in the same way many blacks believe their race defines them (not that we should be consumed with race, either).

Yet there is even more going on when the Church is labeled “unwelcoming.” Some in the media do truly conflate the sin with the sinner; others are simply so ignorant of Catholic teaching and realities on the ground that they actually believe the fire-and-brimstone stereotype. But then there are the vile propagandists. They know something, something Bois mentioned when writing, “[T]he Catholic Church has lost its prominence in the West due to cultural acceptance of homosexuality and [‘gay marriage’].” And, no, that’s not the only reason. But it is a big one.

Think about it: if you can successfully portray rejection of homosexual behavior as analogous to rejection based solely on skin color — if “homophobia”=“racism” — the Catholic Church=the KKK. Of course, I don’t believe this, but it is how people imbued with homosexuality doctrine will view it.

This explains not only the utility of misrepresenting the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, but also why this tactic is ideal not just for homosexuality activists but all anti-Christian agitators. The more you can cast the Church as a fire-and-brimstone rejecter of PSSA, the more you push it into the hate-group category in modernists’ minds (note that overseas “hate speech” laws often prohibit criticism of homosexuality). And since the Church cannot bend on definitive teaching, she can do nothing to extricate herself from this category. It’s brilliantly devious — some would say devilish.

The good news is that “a lie has speed, but Truth has endurance,” as the proverb goes. Leftists are fond of saying about the Church, and traditionalists in general, that they’re on the wrong side of history. But the Church has been around for 2000 years and has often found herself on the “wrong side of history” — until that history became history and we found out it wasn’t history at all but just current events. And the Church will be around long after the current current-event commissars, and their ideas, are dust.

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