Monthly Archives: February 2017

Something gave me “the willies” as I read her piece

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By Allan Gillis

So, I opened The Pilot’s e-mailed list of today’s offering of pap, chopped cuttlefish and what should otherwise be considered merely compost material for next year’s garden. I see that Kathy Mears has posted an announcement that she’s proud of the “partnerships” that she’s created as the  Superintendent of Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Boston.  She lists a few organizations and individuals that “collaborate” with “educators” (I HATE those two words!   When did “teachers” become “educators”?  I don’t get it – code word for liberal teacher I suspect).

One organization caught my eye.

She writes:

Many of our teachers have been able to participate in the “Facing History” program. The crux of Facing History is to work with teachers to guide their students through historical events and to think critically about them. As its website states, “By integrating the study of history, literature, and human behavior with ethical decision making and innovative teaching strategies, our program enables secondary school teachers to promote students’ historical understanding, critical thinking, and social-emotional learning. As students explore the complexities of history, and make connections to current events, they reflect on the choices they confront today and consider how they can make a difference.” Many of our schools use these methods to address antisemitism in our society and to make history more meaningful for students. Facing History partners with the archdiocese to offer the professional development that teachers need to fully and thoughtfully implement the program.[ sounds ominous!] They also assist our teachers in linking these historical events to Church teaching and doctrine, providing a Catholic approach to these important teaching moments.[ YEEEAAHH  RIGHT!!!]

So, my curiosity leads me further down the path of discovery…   she cites the website – so, I pop over there and see this:

“Facing History’s content and methods have been proven to significantly increase engagement, empathy, critical thinking skills, and civic responsibility among young people. Our approach is evidence-based: forty years of studies demonstrate how we impact students, teachers, and whole schools. With your help, we can reach even more young people, educators and schools across the globe.”

Now ask yourself a question.  “Do kids today in Catholic school seem any better catechized than the kids were… say forty years ago?

Maybe with a glimpse at a “learning capsule” under the selection of courses  “Justice and Human Rights” resources, we find…

After Stonewall

Since the riots of Stonewall in 1969, The LBQT community has worked hard, fought, and experienced tragic defeats and exciting victories.

or how about this?

Out of the Past

From the beginning of American history, homosexuality and love between people of the same sex have been part of the social and political landscape.

Catholic schools are infiltrated with teachers and administrators that hate the Church and despise Natural Law.  I know.  I have two grandchildren in a local Catholic school.  My school does well…but then again, my grandkids are in elementary school.  Perhaps too young (as of yet) to fill their little skulls with mush.

Is there a connection between the Halcyon Days of Vatican II and the complete destruction of moral values with the concomitant ascendancy of the Left politically and culturally? Is it a coincidence that churches have been shuttered and vocations have plummeted all while Catholic schools have been in bed with groups such as Facing History?

 

You are a shill Kathy Mears! a shill for the Leftist elites that run Boston College, that run the Archdiocese and that run the Chancery!  Shame, Shame on YOU Cardinal Sean!

Bold emphasis my own

What is the proper response to Islam?

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By Augustinus

Perhaps the defining, most pressing issue for the Catholic Church in the first half of this century will be, or IS how to think of, and respond to Islam. The Jewish response to Islam has largely been defensive, or outright war. Buddhist responses to Islam have been ad hoc depending on local traditions but they have not been non-violent. Buddhist monks regularly attack and burn down Islamic mosques in SouthAsian countries. Same with the Hindu reactions to Moslem attempts to eradicate their religious practices. Most religious people will violently resist their oppressors if the oppressors attempt to annihilate those religious practices as Islam regularly does where it gains the political upper hand.

Islam’s attacks on Christendom since Islam’s birth roughly 1500 years ago tell us everything we need to know about Islam’s intentions toward Christianity; its aim has always and always will be to annihilate Christianity. There is no use denying this fundamental fact or wishing it were otherwise. Its in the DNA of Islam to be at war with other religious traditions and this is as it should be. Unlike its effeminate counterparts in the mainline Christian traditions, Islam’s leaders, whether Sunni or Shia, actually believe they have the truth, the definitive revelation from God and that therefore other religions are false and falsehoods have no rights. Therefore Islam’s leaders are doing what their doctrines require them to do: give the rest of the world a choice: convert or die. Most of the time Islam promotes the death of other religions simply by restricting these religions freedom to operate and curtailing their ability to grow (see Zorastrianism as a case in point). The point here is that Christianity is doomed if Islam gains the political upper hand in any given country. It may take centuries but it will die out.

So how should the Christian church respond to Islam? Except for the brief interlude of the crusades, Christianity has always taken a defensive posture vis a vis Islam.  that defensive posture is no longer possible. We have to seize the initiative and confront Islam. Our political and military leaders oscillate back and forth between military confrontation and denial when it comes to Islam.  I recommend a steady, clear-headed compassionate response to the adherents of Islam: conversion to the true faith Catholicism. We need to evangelize them. It would be leaving people subjugated by Islam in the hands of a heresy were we to just ignore Islam or merely militarily confront it.

The neoliberal global elite thought they could convert the adherents of Islam to “democracy” and modernity but that project has failed. The great mission of the Church in the 21ist century is the conversion not of the modern barbarians (the left liberals who are self-destructing and dying out because they hate marriage and children) but the conversion of Islam.

Visit to a courageous priest

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By Augustinus

I made an appointment with one of the priests at my parish. This is the man who celebrates mass ad orientam while his fellow priests smirk in the background. Arriving at his office I quickly looked around and on a table at the back of the office were standing the rubric cards for the Latin mass. When I asked about these he told me that he has privately been practicing the extraordinary form so that he will be ready if ever conditions change at the parish. Conditions at the parish are as follows: THERE is a group of parishioners who want a regular Latin mass but the parish pastor; the head priest has vetoed this request on the grounds that TWO priests must be willing to serve the Latin mass if it is to be put on the regular schedule. There are three priests at the parish and only the priest I was visiting has pledged to learn the extraordinary rite so there is no Latin mass on the schedule at my parish–this despite the fact that there is a stable group of parishoners AND a priest wishing to have that mass.  This is how Pope Benedict’s motu proprio on the extraordinary form has been undermined.

 

Musings

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What truly IS Devotion?  How do I devote myself to a regimen of self-improvement as a Catholic gentleman?  Am I devoted?  If not, just exactly WHAT am I devoted to?   Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “what you think about all day is what you become”.  Frightening.   Very frightening indeed.

The egg-yolks of my two eggs this morning dripped and merged onto one piece of toast…    it was still egg-yolk.  God holds the elements and substance of this earth together in wonderful uniformity and diversity.  Anise seeds taste delightful – from tiny seed to tiny seed.  God is God.

The amazing healing of my nasty cut on my thumb from my Mandolin-Slicer –  self-inflicted on Saturday as I was famished and too-hurriedly slicing prosciutto and then the Parmigiano cheese and then the tip of my thumb!  Our bodies heal themselves –  truly amazing!

Why did the wrecking crew of the Sacred Liturgy back in the 70’s do away with the sumptuous word “Sabaoth” when they attacked the Sanctus?  Perhaps like the word “consubstantial” in the Credo – we’re all now too stupid to learn and handle these crucial words.  Those bastards!

Is snow white because it is void of color?  Or is it white?

Why do I feel such a heart-tug to tears when I hear little children praying and/or singing prominently at Holy Mass.  No guile.  No intellectual impediments.  No epistemological knots or quandaries.  Just simple and pure faith.  Makes me want to cry for simplicity and humility and mostly for love of God.

I’m willing to bet that God isn’t nearly as impressed with me as I am.

By Allan Gillis

That Man is You

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By Augustinus

I just attended my first meeting of “Than Man is You” program. It is a program for men to re-shoulder the leadership God placed on men’s shoulder’s at the dawn of creation. My local parish is hosting the program which typically apparently lasts 4 years. Check it out at http://www.paradisusdei.org

I have only attended one meeting so I cannot unequivocally recommend it to other parishes or other men but today’s meeting had a lot of good content on the ills of the current anticatholic culture and the difficulties staying true to the church when the church is under active assault from the culture.

I’m SHOCKED!

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…SHOCKED!

SNAP president resigns, following director, after lawsuit filed against group

February 06, 2017

The president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has resigned her post, just a week after a lawsuit was filed against the group by a former employee.

Barbara Blaine, a founder of SNAP, resigned effective Friday, February 3. Her departure follows just one month after the resignation of the group’s national director, David Clohessy.

In January, Gretchen Hammond, a former fundraiser for SNAP, filed suit against the group, saying that she had been fired after she raised objections to SNAP’s fundraising practices. The lawsuit charges that SNAP “callously disregards the real interests” of sex-abuse victims, while soliciting donations from lawyers who handle the victims’ complaints. The lawsuit alleges that 80% of SNAP’s revenues come from plaintiffs’ lawyers, in donations that Hammond describes as tantamount to “kickbacks.”

Brought to you by Allan Gillis from Catholic World News

Just so you don’t think I’m the only one…

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This from Rorate Caeli:

Unheard-of since the Papal States fell: Rome covered in posters critical of the Pope

Rome woke up this Saturday with something quite new, and very old, in its streets: posters throughout the City (in the style of the old “pasquinate“) critical of the Pope.
In English, from the Romanesco-inspired Italian:
Ah Francis, you have intervened in Congregations, removed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ignored Cardinals… but where is your mercy?
These were common at the time of the Papal States (before the fall of Porta Pia and the full unification of Italy in 1870): not for religious reasons, but rather for political complaints, since the Popes were also the secular rulers of the Pontifical territories.
Since then, these public criticisms of Pontiffs mostly disappeared in the City, considering the new Italian authorities were now those responsible for the secular government of the old papal territories, and that the Pope remained responsible only for religious matters. They still show up all the time against Italian politicians.
But when, by common Roman consent, the most tyrannical Pontiff since the Renaissance still has the gall of speaking under the name of mercy (!!!!), the humor of the Roman people does not remain silent when faced with this charade.
[Reported by ADN Kronos, via Marco Tosatti; second image by Mark Lambert]
Brought to you by Allan Gillis

Should there be separation of church and state?

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By Augustinus

Across most of history religion was integral to the polis; to what we call today “political affairs”. It is only in the protestant west during the last 2 or 3 hundred years that protestant intellectuals have advocated separation of church and “state”. During the founding of the USA there were huge debates about “disestablishment” or whether each state would choose its own “established” church/religion. Inspired by the atheism of the French revolution Jeffersonian radicals in the USA won the debate over religion in the public sphere and so “separation of church and state” became settled constitutional doctrine in the USA.

The separation doctrine has never really worked that well because human beings are largely religious creatures. They don’t like leaving their religion behind when they enter the public sphere. The history of political conflicts within the USA since the founding has largely been fueled by intrusions of religion into politics. there would have been no civil war and no abolition of slavery without the abolitionist religious fanatics to cite just one example.

The only reason why the separation has SEEMED to work well for the USA in the last 200 years is because the only religions the state has had to deal with are the emasculated form of Christianity (i.e. protestantism); and a protestantizing form of catholicism (the “Americanist” heresy gained allegiance from most of the catholic bishops throughout the 20th century. Americanism was given new life by Vatican II and by similar anti-catholic trends in Europe in the 20th century.

These two forms of Christianity do not threaten the state as they are inherently statist themselves. When a religion casts away its identity markers such as distinctive dress, distinctive liturgical ceremonies, public processions, a distinctive calendar of commemorative days, religiously homogenous ghettos, neighborhoods or communities and so on …in short when a religion forfeits culture to the state the state has won and the religion will accommodate to the state’s liturgical feasts, the states commemorative calendar, the state’s values etc.

The separation doctrine, however, is on its last legs. It cannot survive the 21st century. Unlike the emasculated forms of Christianity that have existed in America until now Islam cannot and will not be assimilated into the modern state. Similarly the the left wing of the Catholic church which is the main supporter of the Americanist heresy is on its way out seeing its last gasp in the papacy of Pope Francis. In Europe and in Russia orthodox brands of religion are on the rise. You do not need whole populations to adopt orthodoxy for the orthodox to win. You only need a dedicated few like St Francis of Assisi who along with St Dominic largely saved the church in the 12 century just as St Ignatius and the jesuits saved the church after the reformation nearly destroyed it in the 16th and 17th centuries and St Benedict did after the fall of Rome and the dawn of the dark ages. It is the saints who save the church but saints who are also leaders who can organize and inspire other men with zeal.