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.
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.
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.
Note: Strange times we're in when the lay people of a country rebut the dissenting views of their own bishops' conference. With clear hindsight and heavy consciences, the Canadian people are waking up to the damage done by their bishops' divergence from Vatican teaching on human sexuality. Will the bishops heed their call?
Canadian Catholics Ask Bishops to Retract Winnipeg Statement - Recomit to Humanae Vitae By John-Henry Westen
OTTAWA, March 18, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As the 40th anniversary of the publication of Pope Paul VI's July 25, 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae approaches, a group of Catholics is challenging Canada's Catholic bishops to revisit their official position on the document as it pertains to contraception. The encyclical, which wrote of the Church's prohibition on contraception, predicting accurately that it would lead to treatment of women as objects of use, was at the time rejected by many within the Catholic Church.
In 1990 the Philippine Bishops issued an apology to the nation's Catholics for having failed to encourage their flock to adhere to Humanae Vitae. They wrote: "Afflicted with doubts about alternatives to contraceptive technology, we abandoned you to your confused and lonely consciences with a lame excuse: 'follow what your conscience tells you.' How little we realized that it was our consciences that needed to be formed first."
The Rosarium of the Blessed Virgin Mary has collected approximately 1000 signatures on a petition to formally ask the Canadian Catholic Bishops to retract the pastoral document written nearly 40 years ago on September 27, 1968 - the Winnipeg Statement.
The letter accompanying the petition challenges the bishops to reflect on their own role in the complete moral and social collapse that has befallen Canada. It states in part: "Once contraceptive sex was accepted in principle, it led the way to all of the other sexual abominations our country is currently experiencing, not the least of which is same-sex 'marriage' - which, at its core, is merely contraception in its final form. Contraception blurred the distinction between men and women by robbing women of their femininity and subverting their fertility. The psychological effects of this over 40 years came to fruition with the normalization of same-sex unions. A sterilized woman is, in one fundamental respect, another man."
The letter adds: "We can no longer sit idly by as a Church and pretend that our actions - or lack of them - in word or in deed have not contributed to this situation. For forty years we have walked the desert of this culture of death because for forty years, we have refused to submit to the entire truth of Humanae Vitae. As faithful Catholics, therefore, we are humbly asking the bishops of Canada to reflect on how their teaching (or lack thereof) regarding contraception these past 40 years has contributed to Canada's social and moral collapse. In particular, we are once again drawing your attention to the Winnipeg Statement, one of the most destructive documents ever to be released on the subject of contraception."
The controversial document in question, commonly referred to as the Winnipeg Statement, has been long considered a dissent against Rome's absolute prohibition on contraceptive acts. The most controversial section of the document states: "Counsellors may meet others who, accepting the teaching of the Holy Father, find that because of particular circumstances they are involved in what seems to them a clear conflict of duties, e.g., the reconciling of conjugal love and responsible parenthood with the education of children already born or with the health of the mother. In accord with the accepted principles of moral theology, if these persons have tried sincerely but without success to pursue a line of conduct in keeping with the given directives, they may be safely assured that, whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience."
John Pacheco, a director of The Rosarium and a Catholic political and social activist, remarked that the time has come for the Bishops to reconsider the Winnipeg Statement.
"We are approaching the 40 year anniversary of the legalization of both contraception and abortion in Canada in 2009," Pacheco told LifeSiteNews.com. "We can no longer fool ourselves into thinking that contraception has not played an enormous role in the break down of the family unit these past forty years. It's not a coincidence that once contraception was legalized with abortion in May 1969, the precipitous fall of the family followed thereafter. It's time for all Catholics to reflect on how the Church was right and the Culture was wrong. For lay Catholics, that means tossing the condoms and the pills and for the Canadian bishops it means repenting of a treacherous document."
In addition to calling for the retraction of the Winnipeg Statement, the group is asking the Bishops to strongly re-affirm Humanae Vitae, the papal encyclical prohibiting abortion and contraception, on the 40th anniversary of its publication on July 27. It is also encouraging the bishops to become more involved in active opposition to abortion.
"We will never defeat abortion in Canada until the question of contraception is addressed. And contraception in Canada will never be addressed sufficiently until the bishops acknowledge the great harm that the Winnipeg Statement has caused. It's time for all of us to repent and move on. Canada needs a new beginning. That starts with the retraction of the Winnipeg Statement", Pacheco said.
Note: The Vatican called attention to the sins of carelessness with the environment, promiscuity, hyper-wealth accumulation and here in this story we see a confluence of all of them in one place. Sin kills, and mortal sin kills the soul. We are in for a rough ride until we get our moral bearings once again. BIRTH CONTROL HORMONES ARE FOR THE BIRDS! by Judie Brown
When I saw the latest report on starlings and the dreadful damage that birth control hormones are doing to their ability to sing, I was amazed!
The thing that made me stop and take notice was not that additional research is showing that "gender-bender chemicals" are negatively affecting the environment, but rather that such scientific results do not get even a minimal amount of attention from the major media in America.
According to this most recent article, "scientists at Cardiff University have discovered that the brains of male starlings foraging for worms at a sewage treatment works in South-West England have been subtly changed by being contaminated by estrogen from the contraceptive pill and hormone replacement therapy."
The report says that female hormones pass into the sewage by way of female urine and remain unaffected by the sewage itself. However the hormones do cause the part of the brain that controls the starling's song to grow much bigger, causing them to sing at greater length and with more "virtuosity than usual."
At UCLA researchers have found the same effect on female finches so that they are singing like the males do, though in the past female finches never sang.
Some researchers are even describing the hormones that enter the environment as a type of "pollution" and are concerned about the long range effects they will have on the environment as we know it. For example, in Florida during the 1980s alligators were failing to reproduce because males had been negatively affected by the estrogen in the streams and rivers. And in Britain another study found that, "a third of male roaches in rivers and streams have been producing eggs which are normally produced by female sex organs."
Some research suggests that these negative effects are having a deleterious impact on men as well, predicting that the "average man will be unable to father children within decades."
The article does not represent some harebrained idea that was concocted in the back room of a pub! It is based on the scientific research of several environmental scientists from various parts of the world and their work should be taken seriously.
We already know that synthetic hormones can cause all sorts of problems for the women who ingest them. Add to that the problems that the residuals are causing for the environment and for the men in society and you have to wonder why there is not more effort to get the things off the market. Of course no sooner did I get that sentence onto my screen then the answer became obvious: money!
Pharmaceutical companies make billions on birth control chemicals and hormone replacement therapy, so why sound alarms when it is so easy to ignore these studies and keep the results from the public? While some would say that the health and wellbeing of the nation's human beings should be the number one priority of the government, the media and big business, it has become painfully clear over the years that this is simply not the case when dealing with matters of sexual relations that involve birth control and abortion.
When you read about the impact these hormones is having on humans, you really have to wonder what in the world is wrong with people who are in positions to warn the public of the impending disaster that human beings will face.
For instance: Communities exposed to high levels of these and other gender-bender chemicals, from the Great Lakes of North America to the Russian Arctic, have been found to give birth to twice as many girls as boys.
Gender-bender chemicals are not just for the birds! Apparently they are going to negatively affect every aspect of society as we know it... unless something is done to correct the problems that have caused the imbalances reported in this article.Don't hold your breath!
Michael Hichborn Director of Media Relations American Life League 1179 Courthouse Road Stafford, Virginia 22554 540.659.4171 (w) 540.226.9178 (c) mhichborn@all.org http://www.all.org/
Glosses over birth control disaster while reporting about "pharmaceuticals" in the environment.
Here are a few excerpts pulled from a long artcle:
A vast array of pharmaceuticals - including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones - have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.
To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.
And this:
Key findings
Here are some of the key test results obtained by the AP:
Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city’s watersheds.
Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.
Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.
A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water.
The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.
Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.
And:
The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city's water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.
Freaky fish mutations
Also, pharmaceuticals in waterways are damaging wildlife across the nation and around the globe, research shows. Notably, male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females. Pharmaceuticals also are affecting sentinel species at the foundation of the pyramid of life - such as earth worms in the wild and zooplankton in the laboratory, studies show.
Some scientists stress that the research is extremely limited, and there are too many unknowns. They say, though, that the documented health problems in wildlife are disconcerting.
"It brings a question to people's minds that if the fish were affected...might there be a potential problem for humans?" EPA research biologist Vickie Wilson told the AP. "It could be that the fish are just exquisitely sensitive because of their physiology or something. We haven’t gotten far enough along."
My note: More of these stories are popping up lately. It's really no surprise that the toxic soup we live in is responsible for adverse or unknown health effects. To believers, it's also no surprise that as we strive to rail against God's plan and violate our own nature with chemical birth control and abortion that we cause strange reactions. Those of us over the age of 40 remember when it was rare for a young person to exhibit homosexual tendencies. Now no one can argue that there is an explosion of homosexuality wherever you look. And seemingly its not all behavioral. Might there be an environmental link? The first story is about observations in the UK of changes in nature linked to the pill and the second story is about a scientific study that the pill in the environment caused the feminization of fish. Could this explain the shift in human behavior? Tampering with natural law is almost always risky. Unintended consequences are likely. And with powerful corporation standing to gain billions from trafficking the pill and using profits to corrupt governments, no one should be surprised how rare these articles are.
Singing starlings and why thousands of babies who should have been boys are being born as girls
By GEOFFREY LEAN
Next time you hear a starling sing, stop and listen hard. It may well be warning of a peril that endangers the whole world of nature - and the very future of the human race itself. For scientists have found that gender-bender chemicals - increasingly contaminating the environment, our food, our water and our bodies - are having a bizarre effect on common birds, causing the males to give voice to longer and more complex songs.
This is only the latest in a long series of increasingly urgent alarms being sounded by wildlife against an insidious but devastating danger that threatens our children.
But so far our leaders have steadfastly and scandalously turned a deaf ear to them - and, even more shamefully, ignored the first signs that the peril is already affecting birth patterns, causing thousands of babies who should have been boys to be born as girls instead.
Starlings and their diverse, complicated and mimicking - though not beautiful - songs have long fascinated humanity.
Mozart was entranced by a starling after it copied a tune that the great composer was whistling in a pet store.
Hormonal Contraceptives Pollute Drinking Water - Environmentalists Turn a Blind Eye
By Hilary White July 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - For some years now, reports have been growing from around the world that the massive amounts of synthetic birth control hormones being pumped into the water systems through sewage outflow is changing the sex of fish stocks.
Recently, scientists have also begun to warn of the possible carcinogenic effects of the build-up of estrogenic chemicals in drinking water. As early as 2002, the UK Environment Agency warned that fish stocks in British rivers were showing signs of gender ambiguity as a result of high levels of estrogen in the water. A survey of 1,500 fish at 50 river sites found more than a third of males also displayed female characteristics.
Research by Dr Jayne Brian and Professor John Sumpter at Brunel University's Institute for the Environment, showed estrogenic chemicals are affecting the reproduction and gender of aquatic life and warned of the affect on the reproductive ability of humans. The two researchers are calling for a reassessment of EU legislation regulating chemicals. "There is a cocktail of chemicals in our fresh water. We need to consider tougher safety margins to fully protect wildlife and humans."
Two years ago, University of Colorado scientists, sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, found that of 123 fish caught in Boulder Creek downstream from the Boulder sewage treatment plant, 101 were female, 12 were male, and 10 had both male and female characteristics. The strange case of the trans-gendered fish is "the first thing that I've seen as a scientist that really scared me," University of Colorado biologist John Woodling told the Denver Post at the time.
Note: Much of what the Church deems immoral comes from natural law. That is to say that nature itself reveals truths about God's creation. Deviation from the truth typically and necessarily brings evil upon man. "The wages of sin are death." And sin begets more sin.
In the article below, scientists are beginning to see what damage artificial contraception does to the natural order of things. I have always believed that the epidemic of infertility in humans is due to artificial birth control and abortion. As well, many social disorders of our day are likely linked in some way to mankind turning away from God's design for us.
Bud MacFarland, Sr. once said that the greatest evil of out time is the pill because it drives a wedge between the priest and women causing both to ignore grave sin.
Study Confirms Estrogen in Water from the Pill Devastating to Fish Populations By Hilary White ST. JOHN, New Brunswick, February 18, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A study by Dr. Karen Kidd, of the University of New Brunswick and the Canadian Rivers Institute, found that estrogen from birth control pills flooding into the water system through sewage adversely affects fish populations.
The researchers added estrogen to an experimental lake at a level commonly found in the treated wastewater from cities with about 200,000 people. The researchers discovered that one consequence is that exposed male fish become feminized, producing a protein normally found in females. Chronic exposure to estrogen led to the near extinction of the lake's fathead minnow population, as well as significant declines in larger fish, such as pearl dace and lake trout.
"We've known for some time that estrogen can adversely affect the reproductive health of fish, but ours was the first study to show the long-term impact on the sustainability of wild fish populations," explains Kidd. "What we demonstrated is that estrogen can wipe out entire populations of small fish - a key food source for larger fish whose survival could in turn be threatened over the longer term."
Kidd also noted that once the estrogen levels in the water were lowered, fish populations rebounded after three years. "Once you take the stressor out the system, we now have ample evidence that suggests affected fish populations will recover," she said.
Kidd is preparing a report for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) titled, "From Kitchen Sinks to Ocean Basins: Emerging Chemical Contaminants and Human Health".
In the 1980's and 90's, municipalities in Canada and elsewhere began stencilling pictures of fish next to storm drains to remind citizens that toxic chemicals - such as paint and motor oil - poured into the sewers would harm the environment and wildlife. In 1998, a trendy industrial designer in San Francisco won an award for creating storm drain grates shaped like fish.
Health authorities estimate that 100 million women worldwide take some form of hormonal contraceptives; but there is still little media attention given to the growing concerns of scientists about its environmental impact. However, studies are leaking out into the mainstream press more frequently as public interest in the environment grows.
The Pill, along with numerous other commonly used chemicals, end up in the water system as estrogen. At a conference on breast cancer in Toronto in 1998, author and cancer surgeon Dr. Susan Love said, "Pollutants are metabolized in our bodies as estrogen. And it is lifetime exposure to estrogen that has increased world cancer rates by 26% since 1980....We live in a toxic soup of chemicals". Studies are also showing significant evidence for a link between environmental estrogens and estrogen-like chemical pollutants and the earlier onset of puberty in girls.
The phenomenon of early-onset puberty in American girls is so pervasive, that the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society urged changing the definition of abnormal development. Ten years ago, breast development at age 8 was considered abnormally early, but a study in 1997 said that among 17,000 girls in North Carolina, almost half of blacks and 15 percent of whites had begun breast development by age 8. Studies from the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand have shown similar results.
The new definition for abnormally early breast development ought to be, the society says, 7 for white girls and 6 for black girls. Marcia Herman-Giddens, adjunct professor at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, said, "My fear is that medical groups could take the data and say 'This is normal. We don't have to worry about it.' My feeling is that it is not normal. It's a response to an abnormal environment."
Conclusive studies are difficult to conduct, however, because of the all-pervasive nature of the environmental contamination. With all the estrogen-like elements in the environment, Herman-Giddens said, "it's virtually impossible to study. There's no place to find an unexposed population."
Note: The advent of the "demographic winter" has multiple implications for the Church and points to many events described in teh Apocalypse. For one, priests come from families, most often stable ones with a married mother and father. For another, the scenes in the Apocalypse are described in terms of numbers of people in specific lands - Europe, Asia and Africa - that come into high potential as ratios change. And of course, the time of the second woe, fast approaching, is when the Church is in decline everywhere. That time can't be far off.
New documentary advocates strong families to avert "demographic winter"
Washington DC, Feb 13, 2008 / 01:25 am (CNA).- Filmmakers announced at a National Press Club press conference on Tuesday a "groundbreaking" documentary that addresses the problems of population decline and predicts a coming "demographic winter" that will result from weakened families.
Population decline is projected to seriously affect the sustainability of present societies by reducing the economic and tax bases of nations. The movie claims that as the number of elderly people swells there will be fewer and fewer young people to help care for them.
The documentary, titled "Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family," was written and directed by Rick Stout to examine developed countries that are below population replacement rates. The film brings together demographers, economists, sociologists, and civic and religious leaders to explore problems present generations will soon face due to shrinking and aging populations.
According to a press release for the film, the global birthrate has declined by 50 percent over the past half-century. Fifty nine nations, containing 44 percent of the world’s population, have birthrates below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman.
The filmmakers report that the European birthrate is 1.3 children per woman. This dearth of children is expected to cause Europe to have a shortfall of 20 million workers by 2030, while Russia could lose one-third of its population by 2050. The chilling effect this decline is projected to have on economics and culture has led some to dub the phenomenon a "demographic winter," a phrase from which the documentary takes its title.
"In nations with declining populations, who will operate the factories and farms? Who will guard the frontiers? With a graying population (a declining birthrate combined with growing longevity), who will support pension systems and otherwise care for the elderly?" asked the filmmakers in a press release.
Speakers at the press conference included Dr. Allan Carlson, the International Secretary of the World Council of Families; Maria Sophia Aguirre, a professor of economics at Catholic University; Patrick Fagan, a Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council; and Phillip Longman, author of "The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity And What To Do About It."
A three-minute trailer for the documentary is available at www.demographicwinter.com.
My take: The Bishop can gloss over the removal of the Priest all he wants. And to the Priest's credit, he won't criticize or even question the Bishop. But I will. Bishops like this one are responsible for the emptying of the pews and the seminaries. They have presided over an historical apostasy that has left the faithful in a state of grave and mortal sin by no longer teaching divine truth publicly. This Bishop would expel Christ himself for teaching divine truth. It is he who needs to be removed, if not by Apostolic authority, then by God Almighty Himself.
Homily on NFP provokes congregation member to stand up and shout at priest "When are you going to stop?"
By John Jalsevac ROCKFORD, Illinois, January 4, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - This past December 9, at St. James' parish in Rockford Illinois, a very normal Mass suddenly became a very unusual Mass when a parishioner stood up in the middle of the homily, interrupted the priest, shouting at him "When are you going to stop?", and then left, with her homosexual partner in tow. A few other parishioners also stood up and left the church. A few days later, the priest was dismissed from his duties at the parish by his bishop.
Catholics know that there are some things that you just don't hear preached from the pulpit any more. The most conspicuous of these unpreachables is sexual ethics, especially the idea that using contraception might be immoral, and contrary to a Culture of Life. Most priests know that these are unpopular subjects, and emphatically avoid them. But Fr. Tom Bartolomeo, who until several weeks ago was the associate pastor at St. James parish, is not your typical priest.
To begin with, Fr. Bartolomeo was ordained only just over a year ago. This, of course, is not exactly extraordinary in itself, except for the fact that he is now seventy years old. At an age when many other priests are retiring, therefore, he is only getting his feet wet.
Perhaps, says the elderly priest in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com, his newness to the ministry and late vocation explains his almost youth-like zeal for his priestly duties. "I'm going to die with my boots on," he says. "Who knows how many years I have left? That kind of puts pressure on me to preach the Gospel message. My days are numbered."
About a month ago, however, Fr. Bartolomeo's enthusiasm for the Gospel message brought an unexpected turn into his life, when he gave what he thought was a normal Advent homily. The homily was the second of a projected series of four homilies dealing with life and family issues, designed to coincide with the four Sundays of Advent - the season leading up to the birth of Jesus. This particular homily had to do with contraception and natural family planning.
The Catholic Church teaches that the use of contraception is intrinsically and gravely immoral. Church teaching does, however, allow married couples to use the natural rhythms of the female body to knowingly space children, if there is a sufficiently grave reason to do so. These fundamental moral teachings formed the basis of Fr. Bartolomeo's homily."New births, anniversaries and funerals, separations of any kind, a photograph from the past - give us pause and remind us whom we are bound to," he said in his homily, a copy of which he provided for LifeSiteNews. "Our human sexuality - father, mother, brother, sister - reveals our deepest relationships. We call God our father, and his Son our brother."
"Contraception, contra-conception, trivializes the sacred value of human sexuality - a danger humanity did not have to face a century ago before the advent of modern chemistry and technology, the pill (before or after) and a host of plastic devices."
"Contracept, take God's plan off the table, and you have mayhem," he said. "The most important thing in your lives, bearing children, is no longer discussed. It has been permanently removed from the conversation. Done deal. The pill, the IUD, the diaphragm, the sponge, the condom - who is making money here? - have shut down not only the body but the brain. And wives and husbands wonder why they grow apart? When a man and woman, a husband and wife, share daily this most wonderful mystery of their human sexuality they are bonding as nature and God intended."
In the middle of this homily however, say witnesses, one congregation member stood up and began to argue with the priest, yelling "When are you going to stop?" Gerald Weber, who has been a parishioner at St. James for 47 years, was at that Mass. "It was embarrassing, the noticeable argumentative tone with which she stopped him in his homily," he told LifeSiteNews. "Father treated her nicely for the way she was acting, but she continued yelling. She finally sat down, but then stood up again, and took her friend with her and made a show of leaving the church. With that there were some other people who objected to the subject matter."
As the western family commits demographic suicide with the assistance of impotent governments and institutions, Islam moves in
The latest news from Spain is that the government is demanding an apology from the country's Catholic leaders for supporting a pro-family rally, reportedly attended by as many as 2 million people. Spain is not unique in its hostility to Catholic values but it does have its own political history with the current socialist government on one side and the Church and opposition parties on the other.
Spain also boasts one of the lowest birthrates in Europe (and the world for that matter). At the current rate, Spain's native population will be reduced by half by the year 2050 by some estimates. As well, the marriage rate is decreasing as the people adopt the prevailing post-Christian cultural trends,anti-Christian and pro-homosexual. The socialist governments of European countries speed towards economic collapse as they continue to hand out lavish welfare payments and support government funded heath care while at the same time encouraging population deflating contraception and abortion policies.
As the populations age, the few younger people will either be forced to support them or flee to more inviting countries like the US. As the governments wake up to the demographic winter they've created, they will look for other sources of labor to back fill where their barrenness has left a huge void. That supply will be Islamic as the Islamic people continue to have higher birthrates.
The military invasions the Europeans defeated in the middle of the last millennium have already been replaced by a more invisible and slow one aided and abetted by morally and economically bankrupt socialist governments.
Throughout the western world, Islamic schools and institutions are popping up with funding from the Saudi government. Even Catholic institutions like Georgetown University have accepted millions of dollars in donations to set up benign sounding "Islamic studies" departments which are actually teaching and spreading Wahbbism, the same lethal strand of Islam practiced by the terrorists of 9-11.
In The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation, author Steven Paul describes how the Antichrist rises in power with the help of the Great Harlot. Harlotry is defined as apostasy from the Church of Jesus Christ. Are we witnessing the birth pangs of that right now? As Europe completely abandons Christianity, commits demographic suicide and partners with Islam, the kingdom of the beast slowly congeals. All it awaits is a head.
