Pope Minimizes Islamic Violence While Bad-Mouthing Catholicism

As he was on his way to Rome from Poland a few days ago, the pope attempted a white-wash of Islamic violence that was not only insipid on its face, but downright slanderous to the Catholic faith.  He said, "if I speak of Islamic violence I must also speak of Catholic violence".  Really?  When did Catholics, in pursuit of their creed, engage in barbarous acts such as:

• beheadings of babies
• wide-scale rape and murder of women
• shooting up night clubs
• murderous rampages along the lines of San Bernardino, Nice, etc
• bombings such as the Boston Marathon incident
• et cetera, et cetera

Have there ever been criminals who are Catholics?  Yes.  But no one pretends that these criminals committed their crimes in obedience to the Teachings of Jesus Christ.

The Muslims, however, do carry out their crimes in the name of their murderous creed.  The pope's denial of that plain fact is so insipid that the muslims themselves hold him and his prattlings in contempt.  I will say this for these muslims; at least they are honest about what their religion teaches.  They hold the pope in contempt for his obvious attempt to appease him.  Frankly I understand how they do so and indeed the pope's pandering does make him appear to be a simpering fool as his mealy-mouthed whitewash is unworthy of a Vicar of Christ.  When these thugs say that their violence is mandated by their koran, they are correct.

Both Cardinals Burke and Sarah spoke words of wisdom as I pointed out in my blog post regarding the pope's plane trip to Poland.

Is The Pope Hell-Bent On The Death Of Western Civilization?

I don't have to rehash the sad account of Father Jacques Hamel, the French priest who was murdered by Islamic terrorists.  He was beheaded while saying Mass in his parish Church.  I will point out that the French, over the past few years, have literally opened their borders indiscriminately to thousands of middle east "refugees", among them Islamic terrorists.

The pope commented on the murder as he was flying to Poland.  Yes, it is another plane interview with its own slew of inanities.  He correctly stated that it's a war, but then went on to opine that "all religions seek peace" and then started on a "war of interests, money" etc.  He is exactly incorrect when he said that the murder of Father Hamel had nothing to do with religion.  In fact, the two murderers were affiliated with the Islamic State and were engaged in Islamic rituals during the beheading.  In fact, terrorists consider beheading to be mandated by the quran.  Yet the pope tries to reduce the motivations for such barbarism to be "money and interests".  Consider how he reduces the motivations to materialistic advantage.  Is that not rather symptomatic of a progressive and even socialistic mindset?

Last week LifeSiteNews gave us a glimpse into a book written by Cardinal Burke.  He addresses a variety of topics in that book, including the encroachment of Islam.  He states - correctly so, I might add - that Islam is, because of its own creeds, inherently unable to coexist peacefully with other religions (think about that when you see those silly "coexist" bumper strips on cars).  He said that it's important to understand the differences between Islam and Christianity.  I might add that one key difference is, contrary to liberal pipe-dreams, Muslims worship a false idol, not the One True God.  He said that Islam, according to its own doctrine, must also become the state.  Look at Dearborn Michigan.  We need to wake up, both to Islam and the threats of unbridled and illegal immigration.

The LifeSiteNews piece also mentions the warnings of Cardinal Sarah uttered last year about the dangers of Islam.  In the wake of Father Hamel's murder, Cardinal Sarah issued another warning as he asked how many decapitations would it take for European leaders to realize the situation in which the West finds itself.

Other clergy are sounding the alarm as well.  Father George Rutler, a priest from the Hell's Kitchen area of New York City, wrote of the destructive influence of pacifism and called on the west to wake up.   Sadly some refuse to acknowledge the truth.  Following the progressive scripts to perfection, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville TX likened the deportation of illegal immigrants to abortion.  In other words, he reduced the victims of abortion to political props to justify his progressive proclivities.  Conveniently he forgets that several of the 9/11 terrorists waltzed across the border like so many others.  How many more of these do we now have in the U.S.?

When will our bishops and yes, pope, man up and face the fact that Islam is opposed to Christianity and stop coddling it?

Lynch, Other Weak Bishops Spout Liberal Talking Points In Wake Of Orlando Murders

Bishop Robert Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, FL once again showed himself to be a puppet of the progressives when he blamed the Orlando gay club massacre on - the Catholic Church!  Long-time readers of this blog may recall the many times that he's run afoul of the teachings of Jesus Christ.  He is most infamous for his conduct when Terri Schindler Schiavo was being systematically starved and dehydrated to death (that is, murdered) within the bounds of his diocese.

This Brietbart article links to Lynch's blog post in which he attempts to throw the Church under the bus, saying that the Church "breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people".  As the Brietbart article points out, Lynch made no attempt to explain how the Muslim jihadist could have been motivated by the Church in anything since he was a devout Muslim who wouldn't have dreamed of setting foot in a Catholic Church.

There might be a reason why Lynch is trying to discredit the Church's teachings regarding homosexuality.  Randy Engel pointed out that Lynch had to deal with his own scandal regarding homosexual dalliances fourteen years ago.  Given his own obvious proclivities, we can guess at the motivations behind his dissent from Church teaching about marriage.  Could it be that this massacre provided him an opportunity to try to discredit the Church?  That seems to be more his focus as opposed to the actual Orlando situation itself.

Recently Lynch retired from leadership of the St. Petersburg diocese.  Read here to see commentary from Bobby Schindler, the brother of Terri Schiavo whose murder was aided and abetted by Lynch.  Regrettably Lynch is not the only progressive prelate to start spouting the progressive talking points like a good little puppet.

In addition to praying for the salvation of all the souls who died in Orlando (for many of the victims as well as the murderer were engaging in mortal sins), we need to pray that these wolves in sheep's clothing find repentance and conversion themselves.

Another Progressive Spokesperson Suffers From Foot-In-Mouth Disease

I wonder if by now Father Rosica realizes that he charged headlong into a quicksand pond and is now reaping what he sowed.  At any rate, another progressive spokesperson has engaged her mouth

without putting her brain in gear.

I speak of Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the State Department.  Her ideas for dealing with Islamic terrorism seem to come from the script of the musical "Hair".  She seems to think that bad guys with weapons will not be stopped by intelligent and decisive use of force.  She said we can't kill every one of them, so we need to get jobs for them.  I wonder if she plans to visit their camps and insert daffodils into the barrels of their machine guns.  We certainly hope her plan can be implemented before all the illegals snatch up those coveted jobs.  It's a pity this genius wasn't born during the 1930s, for if we had just found jobs for all the Nazis (remember - the Great Depression was in full swing), why, World War 2 might have been avoided!  Here's some Fox News commentary on this matter.

But if Harf's ideas take hold, here's what implementation of them might look like (and yes, it is a spoof).

Some Catholics Confused Over The Charlie Hebdo Massacre

I'm sure by now we've all heard that in Paris last week, Islamic terrorists massacred a large part of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine for mocking the Islamic faith.  To be accurate, many of their cartoons are offensive, and yes, the Catholic faith has been the target of their work that is often pornographic.

What troubles me (besides the obvious vicious murders) is that some faithful Catholics are stating that they are ambivalent regarding the murders precisely because of Hebdo's Catholic-bashing.  Let me state that I believe two issues are being conflated, with gross disservice being done to truth.

The two issues being inappropriately intertwined are 1) the indecent output of the magazine and 2) the brutal murders of the magazine employees. Number 1 does not have anything to do with number 2, and certainly does not justify murder in the slightest. When we mention the two in the same breath, we can give the impression that we condone the murders out of "offended religious sensibilities" or at least we think the guilt of the murders is mitigated by "hurt religious sensibilities".

Some attitudes of faithful Catholics are evidenced in a post by A Blog For Dallas Area Catholics, with whom I usually agree.  Unfortunately he seems to put the Charlie Hebdo staff on the same moral par as their jihadists.  Later in the article "Tantem Bloggo" opines that "our modern culture likes to pretend that freedom of speech is a sacred right" and that "error has no rights".  Well, error may have no rights, but erroneous people do, and while "freedom of speech being a "sacred right" may well be debatable, I'd hope he can agree that freedom of speech is a civil right.  Else, how can he and I be confident that we can both write our blogs without governmental molestation?

I've seen other Catholic sites calling into question "unfettered" freedom of speech.  If I can find them again, I'll post links.  Anyway, if they call into question such speech, how do they suggest such speech be controlled?  Who would they suggest should do such controlling?  Do they understand precisely why such a cure might be far worse than the disease?

Pope Francis regrettably falls into that error.  On his way from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, the pope gave another in-flight interview.  I really dread these, and especially this one as it is a "double-header", but the the second part will be its own post.  I link to the NBC article that has the text and video of the interview.  He said "one cannot insult other people's faith" and that if a friend "utters a curse word against my mother, then a punch awaits him".  I find that crack from the Vicar of Christ utterly lamentable and disgraceful to Our Lord.

Of course the Vatican Press Office flew right into "damage control mode" (they get a lot of practice these days), saying the pope was "speaking in a friendly intimate manner among colleagues and friends".  Odd!  When I do that, we are not shoving microphones and cameras into each others' faces!  I could pick this thing apart in a million pieces but I'd veer too far from my main points.

Do we see here how the pope condones the murderous impulses, if not acts, of the jihadists?   The White House contradicted the pope here, saying "no act of public expression justifies violence".  Never in ten million years did I think there would come a day when I would have to side with the White House - particularly this White House - over the Vatican.  I suppose stranger things have happend, but as the saying goes, "the broken clock is correct at least twice a day".

The pope also stated that "every religion has its dignity".  Well, no.  Islam. because it is a murderous

ideology, has no dignity whatsoever.  What the Islamic terrorists did in Paris to the Charlie Hebdo staff is simply typical for them.  No amount of curtailment of free speech will prevent them from carrying out "jihad" or whatever they call their rampages.  To the right are more victims of Islamic violence - these from Nigeria.  Now did any of them engage in satiric speech against Islam and/or Christianity?  Maybe they did, maybe they didn't.  Either way, it doesn't matter - not for these Nigerian victims, not for the Charlie Hebdo victims.  My fellow Catholics - will you please stop conflating the two issues as outlined in the third paragraph in this post?  To continue in this confusion will only aid and abet the terrorists as they seek to silence and destroy us all.