Interfaith Dialog - For What?

On May 17th per the Catholic Standard, the Embassy of Argentina hosted an "interfaith dialog of religious leaders".  Cardinal Gregory was there, along with Jews, Muslims and several pagan leaders.  The Hindu woman said "what pope Francis is trying to tell us is please come together, work together, be together", then "when people come together, we can do a lot of great things".

What "great things"?  Things that only have to do with temporal matters?  The Church was instituted to save souls by bringing them to obedience to the Faith through the Sacraments.  Read that article closely.  You'll see no hint of that.  What is not said is just as important as what is said.  The complete lack of focus on the conversion of these people reeks of religious indifferentism on the part of Catholic hierarchy.

They yammer about the "human disaster of bigotry..anti-semitism, islamophobia, bigotry".  That's nice, but what about bigotry against Christians, Catholics in particular?    The three previous posts in this blog give indications of how pervasive this is - or is this gathering considering us to be the proverbial n1qq@r$ of the new age?  Side note- I must engage in this misspelling to get past the electronic censors.  People are more upset with the description of reality than reality itself.

Anyway, the whole thing is a useless tome to the heresy of indifferentism.  Of course the non-Catholics don't know that, but our prelates, including Francis and Cardinal Gregory, do.  For that, and the souls being led astray and denied truth needed for their salvation, these feckless leaders will have much to answer.

Violence Against Pro-Life Witnesses At Baltimore City Planned Parenthood.

On Friday, May 26 2023 between 9am – 1pm, two pro-life activists were viciously assaulted in front of the Planned Parenthood in Baltimore, on Howard Street at Mulberry.

The two are Dick Schaefer and Mark Crosby. The apparent pro-abortion attacker spoke to Dick but was not threatening. After this brief conversation, Dick turned away to pick up some of his Blessing Bags, which he gives to abortion-minded women entering PP in an effort to persuade them not to abort their babies. Suddenly, Dick was violently attacked from behind, knocking him out, and knocking over a huge concrete planter. In an attempt to help Dick, Mark was also blind-sided.  He too was apparently knocked out. Dick was injured but apparently not so seriously that he could not drive home. Later he visited a local Urgent Care facility and is now at home.

Mark is currently in the University of MD shock trauma facility. He is on morphine. The plate bone in his upper right cheek is completely fractured. He is bleeding from some unidentified area behind his eye and the bone eye orbit is completely shattered and will have to be replaced with metal. He is on a drip antibiotic which he will probably be on for 6 days and the doctors are still conferring on how to treat his injuries. Apparently, the assailant asked one of the deathscorts to hold his drink (which she did) and then lunged at Dick who believes his back was turned at that time to the assailant. He picked up Dick and slammed him against the glass window knocking over the planter in the process and Dick landed on top of the overturned planter and hit the back of his head on something, either the pavement or window ledge. Mark who was in the street tried to go to Dick's aid and was hit in the face knocking him on the ground. The man then kicked him in the head. Both Dick and Mark were apparently momentarily unconscious. A client leaving Options@328 screamed as this took place and a nurse from there came to their aid.

The deathscorts, by their presence at the Planned Parenthood, inspire and embolden violent threats especially when the pro-life people are outnumbered by them.  We need more people to prevent these sorts of events. There is safety in numbers! Are the devil's minions going to be allowed to overwhelm and intimidate us?

From The N1qq@r$ Of The New Age Department - Violence Against Pro-Life People And Organizations

Given what has been happening to pro-lifers across the US, I've determined that the above phrase that I once derived is more than appropriate today.  It was certainly appropriate when I created it, but owing to some gut-reaction feedback from some friends, I ceased using it.  However, ugly realities demand language that reflects the stark truth of the matter.  We simply must thicken our skins, harden our noses, and stiffen our spines to deal honestly with an ever-growing danger that faces us, else that danger will swallow us and our loved ones without mercy.  Please forgive the intentional misspelling of the key word of the phrase; it's necessary to get it under the radar of the various censor-bots running amok out there.

In New York City, a feminazi art professor at Hunter College vandalized a display set up by pro-life students, then threatened some reporters with a machete.  Thankfully the school administration had the good sense to fire her, and hopefully she will soon be arrested.  Yes, yes, I realize she wasn't using one of those big bad guns, but machetes are still deadly weapons, last time I checked.

Please scroll to the bottom of that LifeNews post, for you'll see close to 300 other such incidents.  The FBI admits that 70% of abortion-related violence has been against pro-lifers.  That isn't even counting the ones perpetrated by the FBI itself, with the raid on Mark Houck, the arrests of the nine activists early last year, or those two gals sent to scare the mother of Elise Ketch last April.

Know who our enemies are, and don't be afraid to call them enemies.

FBI = Federalized Bullying and Intimidation - Marjorie Taylor Greene Files Articles Of Impeachment Against FBI Director

In early 2022, nine pro-life activists in various parts of the country were awakened in the wee hours of the morning to federalized storm troopers breaking down their doors to haul them away.  They were all released after a few hours.  This past September, they did the same thing to Mark Houck, storming all over his property, pointing guns at his children, and hauling him away for a few hours.

Comes now the news that on April 18th, two FBI agents named Ashley Roberts and Kathleen Brown visited the home of Tracy Ketch, mother of Elise Ketch, in Woodbridge VA.  Elise is affiliated with the anti-abortionist group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.  I suppose we can be grateful that they knocked on the door at 2:45 pm as opposed to bashing down the door in the wee hours of the morning, but I digress.  However, I must digress again to remind one and all that the FBI memo regarding the placement of informants inside traditional Catholic churches, namely SSPX chapels, to spy on those Catholics originated from the FBI's Richmond office.  But that's just a coincidence, I'm sure!

They showed their badges and then asked to speak with Elise.  Hold up a minute, here!  They're the FBI!  They had to know that Elise did not live there.  So why are they pretending that's a possibility?  Surely the FBI has resources to determine current residences of people.  Whom do they think they are kidding?  Anyway, their little "visit" was captured on a Ring recorder.  Here it is.

NEW: FBI agents Ashley Roberts and Kathleen Brown showed up at the childhood home of pro-life activist Elise Ketch. The agents asked to speak with Ketch, who is a member of @PAAUNOW.

Here's the Ring security camera footage, first obtained by @Dailysignal: pic.twitter.com/QoY2HL9ytA

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) May 17, 2023

Elise Ketch hypothesizes that the visit of these two FBI agents to her parents' home was a move to intimidate her by causing concern for her family's safety.  That certainly was the case when Houck was arrested.  But there might have been additional reasons - financial incentives.  Yesterday several FBI whistleblowers testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, headed by Rep Jim Jordan.  One America News Network elaborates on the testimony of one of them, namely how agents were offered incentives to go after pro-life activists.  So it sounds like that while the Richmond office rescinded that rather embarrassing memo that was leaked, they kept intact their policy of going after pro-lifers, Catholics and conservatives.  Please watch.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga), in response to these repeated abuses of the FBI, has introduced Articles of Impeachment against FBI Director Christopher Wray and US Attorney General Merrick Garland.  These moves are long overdue.

Open Letter To Sister Joan Chittister

Thanks to Canon 212, I became aware of an article in the Not-At-All Catholic Reporter written by Sister Joan Chittister a few days ago.  The topic of her screed meditation seems to be how icky guns are.  Notice how she rambles on and on about the horror of guns while saying nary a word about the individuals committing the violence.  There is a reason for that, which will become apparent.

Most of the article is, quite frankly, a mess that is both incoherent and disjointed.  However, she does let loose with a glimmer of honesty, most likely inadvertently.  I now quote from the article, "Women wonder how it is that we are being hounded for wanting to preserve the right to do medical abortions while we can arm and kill at will. And no one questions the difference."

I have quite a bit to say about that, but to avoid redundancy, you can read it in my open letter to Chittister that appears below..

Dear Sister Joan Chittister,

I read your article, "It's Not the Light We're Missing; It's the Focus" that appeared in the National Catholic Reporter.  From what I could gather from your poorly organized and discombobulated blather, you seem to blame inanimate objects for violent deaths as opposed to the criminals wielding them.  However, as I read further, a mindset that you evinced in that article is actually a leading cause for the violence that is indeed becoming all too common in society today.  It was made plain in this statement of yours: "Women wonder how it is that we are being hounded for wanting to preserve the right to do medical abortions while we can arm and kill at will. And no one questions the difference."

Let's wipe the lipstick off that pig, shall we?  The "right to do medical abortions" is simply free license to murder a helpless baby in his or her mother's womb.  This happens approximately 3,000 times every day in the United States alone.  The murders of these tiny children far eclipse the relatively few who are killed by gun violence. By the way, don't murders by knives or blunt objects even register a blip on your radar screen?  But I digress.

Sister, with this statement that you yourself uttered, there is no gainsaying that you support not the right, but the license to have unborn babies killed at will.  Therefore it is clear to all that you have no moral credibility whatsoever to lecture anyone about violence or any other topic for that matter.  No one who allows for violence against babies can, with a straight face, claim to be against any murderous violence.  Such a claim is contemptable on its face.

So carry on, if you feel you must.  But understand that your shadow is lengthening.  Soon will come the time when you must stand before Our Lord, whose Church you have so assiduously worked to deform and lead astray.  I pray that you and others of your ilk will find the grace of true repentance and make good confessions before it is too late.

To others reading this: if Chittister's email address is known to you, please forward this to her.  Thank you.

Catholic Standard Slobbers Over Another Celebrity

Harry Belafonte, a noted singer and actor, recently passed away.  The Standard wrote a glowing piece about him, probably not suspecting just how much they revealed.  His claim to fame, as far as they are concerned, is that he was a famous Catholic - or at least a baptized Catholic.

The Standard's headline called him a "singer-activist".  Well, he certainly was an activist.  He labored for racial equality, noble in and of itself.  However, he was a communist sympathizer, honoring the spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and being buddy-buddy with Cuban thug-dictator Fidel Castro.  He had the gall to compare Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as "house slaves", drawing well-deserved rebukes from the both of them.  In 2013 he was a grand marshal of New York City's pride parade and an honorary cochairman of the Women's March on Washington (i.e., a pro-abortion extravaganza) in 2017.

Probably the most damning "endorsement" is to be found in that Standard article.  Father Michael Pfleger of Chicago, yes him, called Belafonte "a hero and a friend who helped shape him".  Shaped him?  Shaped him into a possible murderous rabble-rouser who called for a gun shop owner to be snuffed?  I'm sad to say that I believe Pfleger's assessment.  Why in heaven's name would the Standard's editors think that Pfleger's praise of Belafonte should be a ringing endorsement of his character - unless of course many of the Standard's staff think the same way as does Pfleger?

Just remember - the Catholic Standard is the official news outlet for the Archdiocese of Washington!

Easter Song - Oldie But Goodie

Well, it's not that old, only 15 years.  But that means these little guys are now young men.  Still, I hope this warms your heart; nothing like children singing.

Faithful Catholics Publicly Pray The Rosary In Front Of Satanic Gathering

This past weekend members of a satanic temple held their first-ever convention at the Marriott Copley Place in Boston Massachusetts.  The organizers claim not to believe in Satan, but still they held satanic rituals.  A bit self-contradictory, wouldn't you say?  At any rate, you may be sure that there were blasphemies and sacrileges galore.  They boasted workshops on how to turn abortions into satanic rituals (that happens more often than we care to admit), "unbaptism ceremonies" and more.

While the Archdiocese of Boston at least acknowledged the problem and suggested Holy Hours and Eucharistic Adorations in its churches, they discouraged physical presence of Catholics - all not to draw attention to the event, you see?  Whom do they think they are kidding?  While they at least did something instead of look the other way and pretend there was no problem, still they displayed lack of spine.

Thankfully the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, with its TFP Student Action affiliate, were not wont to remain silent and absent in the face of evil.  They were out in force with members from all over the nation.  Over the years, I have had the honor of standing beside them as we protested and prayed against diverse manners of outrages and blasphemies against the Church.  Watch the clip below and understand that everyone must be ready to take a public stand and to not content ourselves with the relatively safe confines of our church halls.

Healing Masses? Caveat Emptor!

Please review carefully the flyer that was on a literature table in a Catholic church in Montgomery County. It was available for anyone to pick up.  In making it available to anybody walking by, the creators of this flyer were inviting the public to attend this event.  That is to say, it was a public event with no presumption to privacy whatsoever.  Thus, at Maryland law, it was fair game for recording.

I have heard of the concept of "healing Mass" before.  What strikes me is why a particular Mass would be classified as a "healing Mass".  That differentiation implies that there must also be those Masses that are not "healing Masses".  So, when we consider what the Church teaches about Holy Mass, this differentiation is, at best, peculiar.

Let's start our examination by what the Church has always taught about Holy Mass.  We'll keep this simple, for now.  The Baltimore Catechism is a good place to start.

Question 357 of the Baltimore Catechism is, "What is the Mass?  The Mass is the sacrifice of the New Law in which Christ, through the ministry of the priest, offers Himself to God in an unbloody manner under the appearances of bread and wine."

Now let's jump to Question 361.  "What are the purposes for which the Mass is offered?  The purposes for which the Mass is offered are: first, to adore God as our Creator and Lord, second, to thank Him for His many favors, third, to ask God to bestow His blessings on all men, fourth, to satisfy the justice of God for the sins committed against Him."

Of course one could say that petitions for healing do fit the third purpose for which Mass is offered, but the third purpose does not overshadow the other three purposes of Mass - at least not a rightly-ordered Mass.  However, on April 28, that overshadowing most certainly occurred, and I bear eye witness.  Father's homily (or at least what I could make out, given the less-than-ideal acoustics) focused almost exclusively on "healing".

Before I go more into the Mass and its issues, I'd like to touch upon an important element of authentic healing - that of the Sacrament of Confession.  Examine that flyer.  Do you see any hint of that Sacrament being mentioned just once?  Neither do I, nor did I hear anything Friday evening.  To be clear, I walked in just as Mass was about to get underway so I didn't hear anything that transpired before that.  However, since only two priests were present, that would not have been sufficient to hear confessions of any attendees in under an hour, nor did I see confession stations set up in the Church.

That dovetails into what Scripture gives for a reason for the healing component of Jesus' ministry on earth.   Let's look at Luke 5:16-25, where Jesus heals a paralytic.  When the paralytic's friends lower him through the roof in front of Jesus, Jesus says to the sick man, "thy sins are forgiven thee."  After He sees the scribes and Pharisees taking umbrage, He says to them, "...that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins..", then He heals the man.  Look at the underscored part.   That is a key reason why He heals: to demonstrate His authority to forgive sins.  

The Encounter School of Ministry's site claims that "the Gospel is not whole without signs, wonders and miracles."   But what does a sign do?  It points to another, usually greater, reality outside of itself.  Here's a simple example.  Say a starving person stumbles upon a sign that points to where that person may obtain food.  Does the starving person gape and marvel at the sign itself?  Of course not!  He/she leaves the sign and goes to where the sign indicated to obtain food.  Again, I saw no indication regarding the necessity of having sins forgiven, nor of the Sacrament of Confession.

Earlier in this post I alluded to issues with this healing Mass.  Most of the Mass was ok, for a Novus Ordo Mass.  However, it unraveled towards the end - and part of the problem is that the Mass was never properly concluded.  That is, I didn't hear the dismissal.  If in fact that happened and I just didn't hear it (which I doubt), please enlighten me.   Anyway, after the vessels were purified after Communion, the Blessed Sacrament was placed in the monstrance and it was processed up and down the aisles, with most people doing proper reverence.  Then it was placed on the altar and mayhem ensued as the "healing" got underway.

Here's how it went.  Father Escudero asked the congregation who was suffering from various ailments.  The first group he picked was those suffering from headaches and other head-related problems.  He asked those people to stand.  Then he asked those around these individuals to lay hands on them or extend their hands to them and led them in what he seemed to call prayer.  That is, he said prayers a few words at a time with others repeating.  This gesture on the part of laypeople serves to blur the lines between ordained clergy and lay folks, lines that are already becoming too blurred.

Some of the prayer was to God, but then some of it was directed at the ailments themselves, with such words as "headache, be gone" or "allergies, leave".  I've read the accounts of Our Lord healing people.  Not once did I read that He addressed the ailments.  He did address demons if they were the causes of the maladies, but never did He address the ailments or symptoms themselves.  I have never heard of that before.  It seems to have no Scriptural nor Traditional precedent.

Then he asked if any experienced healings.  Some said they did and they were called upon to tell the congregation all about it, after which the congregation broke out into applause. Recall that Cardinal Ratzinger decried applause during the liturgy.  "But Mass was over", you say?  Not so, for the dismissal was never properly given.  Mass was still in session, the Blessed Sacrament was exposed on the altar, and yet we had this kind of calling out and applause going on?  So much for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament on the altar!

There were several repetitions of this pattern, for back ailments, stomach issues, leg problems, etc.  Finally that ended and it was announced that people could go to various team members at stations on the perimeter of the church.  Again, I heard no mention of Confession, and I still don't know if Mass was ever properly concluded, as I departed at that point.

Healing Mass?  The purpose of this Mass deviated from that stated in Tradition and proper rubrics were disregarded.  I saw no mention of Confession, which would have made possible real healing where it counts - to remove any impediment to eternal salvation.  In fact, I heard very little of heaven and other eternal matters, for even with all the temporal healing possible, we will all die and face Our Lord.  

Now were those people really healed?  I don't know.  Either way, there's no justification for the insult done to Mass.