Blog to discuss the book "The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation" and current events that point to the events described therein.
Note: Contraception is the greatest evil of our time. It's acceptance by Catholics against Church teaching drives a wedge between the faithful and the clergy and causes the clergy to be in grave danger of apostasy. It naturally leads to all other evils of the flesh - abortion, adultery, pre- and extra- marital sex. And once the sex act is divorced from procreation, homosexuality and all other perversions quickly increase. This is nothing new. But it is on the rise and is insidious.
The Challenges Faced by Humanae Vitae Priests and the Resultant 'Clergy Problem'
5/18/2008 8:27:00 AM By John Mallon -Human Life International e-Newsletter When priests lose the nerve to preach over concern for money, are they following after Peter, or Judas?First of all, I want to thank all of you priests, deacons and seminarians who signed on to this mailing list. It is very encouraging to see the humility and willingness to gain knowledge that will help you in your service to God's people. If this seems a strange statement, let me tell you that in the first 48 hours that this site was up we received emails from about 130 priests demanding to be removed from the mailing list. Some were quite nasty. Some took offense that someone sent in their email as though it were a personal affront.
It is no secret that orthodox priests who think with the Church often receive cold shoulders and outright hostility from their brother priests. Those who don't go along with the "CYA club" or the clerical mafia and preach Christ instead of the status quo, thus rocking the boat, soon know they are persona non grata. All too often a faithful priest who makes a mistake is much more likely to be called on the carpet and chewed out much more severely by the bishop than a dissident cleric whose errors are deliberate and treated with kid gloves.
A priest friend of mine, ordained within the last 12 years or so, told me that during his first parish assignment he dutifully preached on contraception, but immediately afterwards was "spoken to" by the pastor. The pastor ordered him "not to do that again," and muttered, "just watch the collection receipts go down."
Huh?
If this is what we are about, then we are no better than a governmental bureaucracy that self-perpetuates after having lost its purpose for existing. I should add that the pastor was not a wild-eyed radical or dissenter, but one of the stalwarts of the diocese, the type to whom bishops like to send the newly ordained to learn the ropes. He was the type that another priest friend of mine referred to as "a company man." In frustration he cried out to me, "John, they're company men!" By the company, he was not referring to the Magisterium, but the local diocesan system. They knew how to play the game, advance their careers, manipulate or get around the bishop when necessary, and keep their own backsides covered.
The Gospel? What Gospel?
If they only knew the true danger their backsides were in.
Christ didn't land on the Cross by playing it safe with the high priests of His day. In view of the corrupt system outlined above, when people ask about the sex abuse crisis, "How could this have happened?" the only answer is, "How could it not have happened?" when whistle-blowers were punished and abusers honored or at least coddled. The only response is "Thank God it happened!" Not thank God children were abused, but thank God the corrupt system that allowed it to continue was blown sky high. It is only the beginning, but it may well be the deliverance so many of us have been praying for. Recalling the famous vision of Pope Leo XIII where he saw God grant Satan's request of 100 years to destroy the Church, and chose the 20th century, was it an accident that this particular stronghold collapsed two years into the 21st century? Judgment begins with the House of God (1 Peter 4:17). Thank God.
What does this all have to do with contraception? Contraception was the epicenter of the "sexual revolution." Contraception was also the epicenter of the movement for dissent against Church teaching, Humanae Vitae in particular, and the center of most of the fiercest battles in the Church today.
Contraception, abortion and homosexuality are the three legs of the stool upon which the Culture of Death sits. (We will have more on the contraception/homosexuality link in a future column.) Thank God for you priests in our midst who know the Gospel has always been preached at personal risk and that Humanae Vitae is part of that Gospel and an expression of God's love and protection for His people.
Note: As in Massachusetts, this ruling could not have come about without the decline and weakening of the Catholic Church and its influence on society for good. A formed conscience simply could not force itself against its own will to remove having a father and a mother from the rights of children. As well, to give rights to associations based on an unnatural and immoral act, sodomy, is sick and perverted. It's one thing to pass anti discrimination laws that protect people who indeed are born with physiological differences and quite another to favor people who have given in to their inclinations. California Court Strips Children of Right to Mother and Father
By Terence P. Jeffrey CNSNews.com Editor in Chief
May 16, 2008(CNSNews.com) - In Thursday's 4-3 decision legalizing same-sex marriage, the California Supreme Court stripped children of the right to be raised by a mother and a father.
Most of the media coverage of the California Supreme Court's decision has focused on the court's declaration that there is a right to same-sex marriage. The ruling invalidated California's Proposition 22, a state ballot initiative that passed with 61 percent of the vote in 2000, and which banned same-sex marriage in the state.
But the California Supreme Court decision goes beyond simply giving same-sex couples the right to call their unions a "marriage." It also strips children of the right not to be artificially conceived or adopted by people other than a mother and a father.
Indeed, the court does not recognize that children have any right whatsoever to a mother and a father.
In the decision, the California court sees children primarily through the eyes of same-sex couples who want to secure custody and control of children. The court makes emphatically clear that it deems this to be a right of same-sex couples that is equal to--and identical to--the right of married mothers and fathers to adopt or conceive and raise their own children.
In making this argument, the court addresses biological parenthood as an accident of nature that can be swept aside by the court in its pursuit of what the court understands to be justice. To explain this vision of justice--and where children fit into this vision--the court equates same-sex couples to infertile heterosexual married couples.
"A person who is physically incapable of bearing children still has the potential to become a parent and raise a child through adoption or through means of assisted reproduction, and the constitutional right to marry ensures the individual the opportunity to raise children in an officially recognized family with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life," the court said.
Two homosexual men joining together and contracting to have a child artificially conceived, gestated and handed over to their custody, it concludes, is a question of the "liberty and personal autonomy" of the homosexual men, but not of the child who would be so conceived and raised.
"Finally, of course, the ability to have children and raise them with a loved one who can share the joys and challenges of that endeavor is without doubt a most valuable component of one's liberty and personal autonomy," said the court.
"Although persons can have children and raise them outside of marriage," the court said, "the institution of civil marriage affords official governmental sanction and sanctuary to the family unit, granting a parent the ability to afford his or her children the substantial benefits that flow from a stable two-parent family environment, a ready and public means of establishing to others the legal basis of one's parental relationship to one's children and the additional security that comes from the knowledge that his or her parental relationship with a child will be afforded protection by the government against the adverse actions or claims of others."
In constructing its vision for a new type of "family," the court rhetorically worked its way around the biological certainty (in a pre-human-cloning world) that all children have a mother and father (whether they are ever afforded the right to know them or not), by adopting a parental lexicon that features not moms and dads but "opposite-sex couples" and "same-sex couples."
"Extending access to the designation of marriage to same sex couples will not deprive any opposite-sex couple or their children of any of the rights and benefits conferred by the marriage statutes, but simply will make the benefit of the marriage designation available to same-sex couples and their children," said the court.
"While retention of the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples is not needed to preserve the rights and benefits of opposite-sex couples," said the court, "the exclusion of same-sex couples from the designation of marriage works a real and appreciable harm upon same-sex couples and their children."
Time Magazine: "Want to wreck the environment? Have a baby." - Prince Philip Concurs
LONDON, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A feature in the current issue of Time Magazine asks a rhetorical question, "What's an an environmentally conscious parent to do?" Time's Pamela Paul gives the response most frequently pushed by radical environmentalists, saying the answer is 'don't have children'. In a television interview this week, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, concurs, saying the recent increase in global food prices is due to too many children. At the same time, the Italian Prime Minister is seeking ways to turn around his country's disastrously low birth rate that currently stands at well below replacement level.
"Want to wreck the environment?" the Time feature starts, "Have a baby."
"Each bundle of joy gobbles up more of the planet's food, clogs garbage dumps with diapers, churns through plastic toys and winds up a gas-guzzling, resource-consuming grown-up like the rest of us. Still, babies are awfully cute. Given that most people still intend to procreate, what's an environmentally conscious parent to do?"
The Duke of Edinburgh followed the same environmentalist playlist when he said this week that the only way to save the planet is for people to stop having babies. Prince Philip told a television interviewer this week that the solution to the burgeoning global food crisis is simply to have fewer mouths to feed. The prince, who has four children, said, "Food prices are going up. Everyone thinks it's to do with not enough food, but it's really that demand is too great - too many people."
In recent months, food prices have risen dramatically around the world and economists are struggling to identify the reason. Most have said it is the result of rising oil prices which have affected the cost fertilizers, food transport, and industrial agriculture. The prince admitted that implementation of a massive population control movement might be a problem for governments. "Basically, it's a little embarrassing for everybody. No one quite knows how to handle it. Nobody wants their family life to be interfered with by the government."
Indeed, the only governments to try a systematic programme of population control are known to be among the world's most oppressive regimes. The communist government of China has had its One Child policy in place since 1979 when it was put in place ostensibly to alleviate social and environmental problems. The result has been social unrest, arrests of pregnant women and forced abortions and state-sponsored infanticide. It has also caused a massive and likely incurable imbalance in the population's sex ratio in favour of boys and resulted in a dramatic aging of the population. The Chinese government, while maintaining the One Child policy, is now struggling to find answers to the problem of millions of elderly with few children grown to adulthood to care for them.
Ironically, Prince Philip's wish has already come true. Currently the British birth rate stands at approximately 1.66 births per woman, well below the 2.1 level at which a population is sustained naturally.
Meanwhile, the recently elected Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, is casting about for ways to stop the plummeting of the Italian birth rate. He told journalists today that he would try to remove "material reasons" that push women to seek abortions. In his inaugural speech before parliament, Berlusconi promised "new and important expenditures for demographic development". Italy is facing a demographic crisis. The country once noted for its fervent Catholicism and dedication to large families, is aging as the birth rate drops. Italy is now the "greyest" country in the European Union, with the highest "ageing index," according to the Italian National Statistics Institute (Istat). Istat estimates that the birth rate has climbed slightly from 1995 to 2005, from 1.19 births per woman to 1.32, but the government agency said this was almost entirely the result of immigration.
Government interference with family life has long been a major goal of the environmental movement's population control goals through enforced abortion, contraception and sterilization.
It is axiomatic among environmentalists that the human population would outstrip the world's food supply. Last year, Paul Watson, founder and president of the radical Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, denounced the "human virus" said that a "radical and invasive approach" was required. Watson who has called human beings the "AIDS of the Earth" said, "Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach."
In 2007, the UK's leading population control lobbyist group, the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), issued a warning of environmental disaster if British couples do not restrict themselves to a two-child maximum.
Texas Pastor Connected with Prominent Gay Porn Website By Michael BaggotMCKINNEY, TX,
May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Texas residents are alarmed that Bishop Kevin Farrell has appointed Fr. Arthur Mallinson, a priest associated with a prominent website for actively homosexual priests and religious, pastor of the newly renovated St. Michael's parish in McKinney, Texas.
Fr. Arthur Mallinson's picture has appeared on the St. Sebastian's Angels (SSA) website, a now defunct online network for actively homosexual priests and religious that featured pornographic images, sexually explicit comments, and derogatory remarks about Vatican churchmen, particularly against then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
In 1999, the reform organization Roman Catholic Faithful (RCF) exposed SSA and the fifty-three priests involved in the site. South African Bishop Reginald Cawcutt resigned after his activity on the site was revealed.
Barbara Kralis, concerned ex-parishioner of St. Michael, encouraged readers to take action in a Sunday column for CatholicCitizens.org.
"He is a priest who put his photo on a gay priest's website so that he could make contact with other like-minded priests," Kralis wrote of Fr. Mallinson. "If anyone on this email list has family who are in this diocese of Dallas, who are worried about them being exposed to the machinations of such a perverted priest, please consider writing a letter Dallas Bishop Kevin Farrell and express your concern regarding this priest"
When she spoke with LifeSiteNews.com, Kralis had a series of questions."Why would our bishop promote a priest like this, what good is this going to do the people? Why wouldn't he [Bishop Farrell] read all of the priests' files very carefully? Why would he [Fr. Mallinson] be moved to a big, glorious parish?"
A spokeswoman for Bishop Farrell told LifeSiteNews.com that Fr. Mallinson is not supportive of any of the crude images or words found on the SSA site. She noted that the SSA site was initially "not a site meant to provide an arena to find sexual partners." Instead, it was meant to give participants "prayer and spiritual support to maintain and live a celibate lifestyle."
According to the Bishop's spokeswoman, Fr. Mallinson ceased activity with SSA in 2001 when it became involved in immoral activity. "When it strayed from its original mission, he no longer wanted to be involved. He did not agree or condone comments about the Pope on the website. He ceased participation when pornography went on the website"
Stephen Brady, founder of RCF, told LifeSiteNews.com that his group first exposed SSA's lewd activities in September 1999, more than a year before Fr. Mallinson's departure from the group. "We never caught him sending pornography," Brady said of Fr. Mallinson. Nonetheless, Brady expressed concern that a priest would seek help to live celibacy from a pornographic site recounting male homosexual exploits.
"If he has to run to a website-that speaks volumes for flaws in his diocese."
To politely express concerns: Bishop Kevin Farrell Bishop of Diocese of Dallas PO Box 190507 Dallas, TX 75219 214-528-2240
Note: What a powerful and direct public repudiation of a public official. The archbishop is right , of course, and we should all pray that the governor amends her life and begins to understand how her actions scandalize the entire body of Christ. In the meantime, this statement serves as a wonderful model for other bishops facing the scandal of politicians in their jurisdictions who openly defy Church teaching and scandalize the faithful.
Governor's Veto Prompts Pastoral Action
On the day of my return (Monday, April 21) from the exhilarating experience of participating in Pope Benedict's pastoral visit to the United States, I learned that Governor Kathleen Sebelius had vetoed the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act (HS SB 389), which had been passed by significant majorities in both chambers of the Kansas Legislature. Last week, an attempt to override the governor's veto failed in the Senate by two votes.Governor Sebelius in her veto message claimed: "For years, the people of Kansas have asked their elected officials to move beyond legislative debates on issues like abortion." From her veto message, I received the impression the governor considered it a waste of the Legislature’s time to pass a statute that attempts to protect some women by making certain they have the opportunity to be well-informed: 1) about the development of their unborn child; and 2) about abortion alternatives available to them. Evidently, the governor does not approve of legislators devoting energy to protecting children and women by making it possible to enforce existing Kansas laws regulating late-term abortions.
The governor's veto message demonstrated a lack of respect to the members of the Kansas General Assembly who had carefully crafted and resoundingly passed the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, as well as to the many Kansans who find it more than an embarrassment, in no small part due to several previous vetoes by Governor Sebelius of earlier legislative efforts to regulate abortion clinics, that Kansas has become infamous for being the late-term abortion center for the Midwest.
What makes the governor's rhetoric and actions even more troubling has been her acceptance of campaign contributions from Wichita's Dr. George Tiller, perhaps the most notorious late-term abortionist in the nation. In addition to Dr. Tiller's direct donations to her campaign, the governor has benefited from the Political Action Committees funded by Dr. Tiller to support pro-abortion candidates in Kansas.
In her veto message, the governor took credit for lower abortion rates in Kansas, citing her support for "adoption incentives, extended health services for pregnant women, providing sex education and offering a variety of support services for families." Indeed, the governor and her administration should be commended for supporting adoption incentives and health services for pregnant women.
However, the governor overreaches by assuming credit for declining abortion rates in Kansas. Actually, lower abortion rates are part of a national trend. Our neighboring state of Missouri has actually had a steeper and longer decline in its abortion rate.
Governor Sebelius' inclusion of public school sex education programs as a factor in the abortion rate decline is absurd. Actually, valueless sex education programs in public schools have been around for years, coinciding with increased sexual activity among adolescents, as well as increases in teen pregnancy and abortion. On the other hand, the governor does not acknowledge the significant impact of mass media education programs, such as those sponsored by the Vitae Caring Foundation, or the remarkable practical assistance provided by Crisis Pregnancy Centers which are funded through the generosity of pro-life Kansans.
What makes the governor's actions and advocacy for legalized abortion, throughout her public career, even more painful for me is that she is Catholic. Sadly, Governor Sebelius is not unique in being a Catholic politician supporting legalized abortion.
Since becoming archbishop, I have met with Governor Sebelius several times over many months to discuss with her the grave spiritual and moral consequences of her public actions by which she has cooperated in the procurement of abortions performed in Kansas. My concern has been, as a pastor, both for the spiritual well-being of the governor but also for those who have been misled (scandalized) by her very public support for legalized abortion.
It has been my hope that through this dialogue the governor would come to understand her obligation: 1) to take the difficult political step, but necessary moral step, of repudiating her past actions in support of legalized abortion; and 2) in the future would use her exceptional leadership abilities to develop public policies extending the maximum legal protection possible to the unborn children of Kansas. Having made every effort to inform and to persuade Governor Sebelius and after consultation with Bishop Ron Gilmore (Dodge City), Bishop Paul Coakley (Salina) and Bishop Michael Jackels (Wichita), I wrote the governor last August requesting that she refrain from presenting herself for reception of the Eucharist until she had acknowledged the error of her past positions, made a worthy sacramental confession and taken the necessary steps for amendment of her life which would include a public repudiation of her previous efforts and actions in support of laws and policies sanctioning abortion.
Recently, it came to my attention that the governor had received holy Communion at one of our parishes. I have written to her again, asking her to respect my previous request and not require from me any additional pastoral actions.
The governor has spoken to me on more than one occasion about her obligation to uphold state and federal laws and court decisions. I have asked her to show a similar sense of obligation to honor divine law and the laws, teaching and legitimate authority within the church.
I have not made lightly this request of Governor Sebelius, but only after much prayer and reflection. The spiritually lethal message, communicated by our governor, as well as many other high profile Catholics in public life, has been in effect: "The church's teaching on abortion is optional!" I reissue my request of the faithful of the archdiocese to pray for Governor Sebelius. I hope that my request of the governor, not to present herself for holy Communion, will provoke her to reconsider the serious spiritual and moral consequences of her past and present actions. At the same time, I pray this pastoral action on my part will help alert other Catholics to the moral gravity of participating in and/or cooperating with the performance of abortions.
Note: I don't mean to be alarmist about the movement of large numbers of Muslims to the U.S. or event their attempts at political activism. What is more alarming is the drift away from the Catholic faith by Christians and the inactivity or even activism against Catholic faith and morals by nominal Catholics. 90% of Catholics in the U.S. practice birth control and 50% approve of abortion. Divorce rates are lower for "practicing" Catholics, but almost the same as the general population when all baptized Catholics are counted as Catholic. It will be in another generation when Muslims have assimilated to the degree that they also no longer adhere to their faith according to "The Enemy at Home" by Dinesh D'Souza. The question is whether or not Catholics we'll still be here. The best defense against having to adopt another culture's customs and values is to strengthen your own. To do so requires that you practice and value them. Has that train left the station for good in the west?
Amerabia: The Islamicization of the U.S. By: Center for Security Policy
Even Americans knowledgeable about Europe's growing accommodation to the totalitarian ideology, known alternatively as Islamism, jihadism or Islamofascism, tend smugly to believe the same thing can't happen here. Think again.
Every day, new evidence appears of similar acts of submission — the Islamists call it "dhimmitude" — on the part of the U.S. government, judges, the press and leading corporations.
Eurabia, meet the United States of Amerabia.
The Agenda, Loud and Clear
On May 4, an ominous alarm was sounded in a Pajamas Media column by Youssef Ibrahim, a former New York Times reporter. Ibrahim is an astute critic of the Islamists' steady, tireless and increasingly effective efforts to impose, on Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the repressive theo-political-legal agenda they call Shariah law.
He warned that "In the very real war on terror, a noisy squabble over 'fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here' clouds a simple truth: namely, that 'they' are here already. Indeed, Islamists are busy constructing a wing of jihad in America's backyard."
Among the most worrisome of the "they" now operating inside the United States are various front organizations systematically established by the Islamist organization known as the Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood. During last year's federal trial of the Holy Land Foundation on terrorism-financing charges, the government introduced into evidence the names of many scores of such Ikhwan fronts.
Identified also as unindicted co-conspirators were virtually every one of the most prominent Muslim-American organizations, including notably the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).
Prosecutors also presented what amounts to a Brotherhood mission statement. According to a memorandum produced by the group in 1991: "The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers."
To be clear, this is not the agenda of all Muslims, certainly not all American Muslims. Yet, we cannot safely ignore the fact that followers of the Muslim Brotherhood are among those who do have such an outcome as their goal — let alone allow our "hands" to contribute to its realization.
Writing about this Brotherhood manifesto in the Dallas Morning News last September, columnist Rod Dreher observed: "The entire 18-page platform outlines a plan for the long haul. It prescribes the Muslim Brotherhood's comprehensive plan to set down roots in civil society. It begins by both founding and taking control of American Muslim organizations, for the sake of unifying and educating the U.S. Muslim community — this to prepare it for the establishment of a global Islamic state governed by Shariah."
Inside the Gates
Unfortunately, in the past 17 years, the Ikhwan has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. Groups like CAIR, ISNA and MPAC not only made great strides in what Ibrahim calls "the common task [of] instill[ing] the notion among Arab-Americans or European immigrant communities of Muslim countries that they are not part of secular multicultural societies." Brotherhood fronts have also penetrated and exercised enormous influence over U.S. government agencies responsible for understanding and countering the Islamist threat.
Space limitations preclude more than a handful of examples: The FBI allows CAIR to provide "sensitivity training" for its agents. U.S. intelligence actively recruits at ISNA and other Ikhwan front conferences. One of ISNA's highly placed admirers, Pentagon deputy chief Gordon England's consigliere Hisham Islam, was allowed to purge the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Islamist expert, Steven Coughlin, for warning against such practices. Most recently, two key federal agencies, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, encouraged American officials to eschew, when describing our enemies, the use of such terms as jihadist, mujahedeen, Islamic terrorist, Islamist, holy warrior and Islamofascism. According to an Associated Press report, the government is supposed instead to "use the terms 'violent extremist' or 'terrorist.'
Both are widely understood terms that define our enemies appropriately and simultaneously deny them any level of legitimacy." (Evidently, President Bush has not gotten the word as he used what Andy McCarthy calls the "J-word" in his press conference last week.)
The Bottom Line
This astounding act of dhimmitude confirms Steve Coughlin's thesis: The enemy has so thoroughly gotten inside our decision-making as to preclude us from understanding his true nature and threat doctrine. By affording the Ikhwan such an opportunity, we have rendered this country, as a practical matter, incapable of countering our Islamist foes abroad — let alone here at home.
Fortunately, a courageous legislator, Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., has come forward to challenge the emerging Amerabia. She has unveiled a 10-point program that calls for, among other things: investigations of Ikhwan penetrations of our prison and military chaplain corps; an inquiry into the legitimacy of CAIR's tax-exempt status; corrective actions with respect to numerous ill-advised policies vis a vis Saudi Arabia; and addressing the seditious nature of Islamist threats to our government and people.
For her exemplary leadership and determination to resist national dhimmitude, this column recognizes Congresswoman Myrick with its coveted "Horatius (or, for the first time Horatia) at the Bridge" award, for her willingness, like the legendary Roman, to take on singlehandedly the enemy hordes and try to save her country.
We hope she will add to her list and secure the broadest possible support for her efforts.
