Pray Like A Champion Today

Basilica Of The Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame

On Thursday Pope Francis met with a delegation from the University of Notre Dame on the occasion of the inauguration of the University’s Rome Center.

First let’s begin with the statement from the “good Pope”, you know the one. The Pope that Rolling Stone,  Time, and all those individuals that seek to justify their own conduct versus the teachings of the Church love,  yes that Pope.

Pope Francis spoke about the “outstanding contribution”,  Notre Dame has made to the Church in the United States “through its commitment to the religious education of the young and to serious scholarship inspired by confidence in the harmony of faith and reason in the pursuit of truth and virtue,” and thanked the University for its commitment “to supporting and strengthening Catholic elementary and secondary school education throughout the United States.”

The Pope also spoke about the vision of Notre Dame’s founder, Father Edward Sorin, a member of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, calling it “central to the University’s distinctive identity and its service to the Church and American society.”

Now let’s look at the second part of the of the Pope’s statement. Pope Francis has now become “bad Pope”, you know like John Paul II, or Benedict XVI. What a drag talking about conscience and responsibility. The Pope that Rolling Stone and Time do not want to think about.

Referring to the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, he spoke about “the missionary dimension of Christian discipleship,” which “ought to be reflected in a special way in Catholic universities.” “Essential in this regard,” he continued, “is the uncompromising witness of Catholic universities to the Church’s moral teaching, and the defense of her freedom, precisely in and through her institutions, to uphold that teaching as authoritatively proclaimed by the magisterium of her pastors.” Pope Francis said, “It is my hope that the University of Notre Dame will continue to offer unambiguous testimony to this aspect of its foundational Catholic identity, especially in the face of efforts, from whatever quarter, to dilute that indispensable witness.”

It was The Little Sisters of the Poor who refused to offer a pinch of incense to the Emperor and his health care mandate. Notre Dame should have refused  as well. Conscience and Soul is not something that belongs to the man who would be king.
 

  http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-to-notre-dame-be-uncompromising-witnesses

http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-to-notre-dame-delegation-full-text

Al Gore and Smaug

“Depressing the rate of child mortality, educating girls, empowering women and making fertility management ubiquitously available — so women can choose how many children and the spacing of children — is crucial to the future shape of human civilization,” Gore said on an international panel on global warming last week.

“Africa is projected to have more people than China and India by mid-century; more than China and India combined by end of the century, and this is one of the causal factors that must be addressed,” the failed presidential candidate added - From The Daily Caller.

Al Gore wants to bring Margaret Sanger to Africa. There are just too many black children coming into the world. Come to think of it there are probably too many Indians and Chinese as well. White kids must okay because he fathered four of them.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/27/al-gore-once-again-suggests-fertility-management-to-fight-global-warming/

Will No One Rid Me Of This Turbulent Priest?

"More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs the pastors . . . Just as the deleterious influences of astrologers, seers and other fakers are eliminated and suppressed by the State, so must the possibility of church influence also be totally removed . . . Not until this has happened, does the state leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until then are the people and Reich secure in their existence for all time." - Martin Bormann 1941.

Martin Bormann was the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and the private secretary to Adolf Hitler.  He issued the secret decree that I have quoted on June 6th, 1941. This secret decree was sent to all the Nazi regional party leaders of the Third Reich.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

If only Henry the Second of England could have waited for about 844 years the Department of Justice could have shown Henry how to go about getting rid of a priest that is troublesome to the state.  No bloodshed, a compliant media, and no need for penance.

St. Thomas Becket was the turbulent priest that Henry the Second was so upset with in the1100's.  He was the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Four knights believed that the question of King Henry II; "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" was a command and hacked Thomas Becket to death as he was on the way to vespers in Canterbury Cathedral.    

Henry the Eighth although reigning around 400 years after the murder of St. Thomas Becket in a strange sort of way tried to murder St. Thomas Becket a second time;

"In 1220, Becket's remains were relocated from this first tomb to a shrine, in the recently completed Trinity Chapel where it stood until it was destroyed in 1538, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, on orders from King Henry VIII. The king also destroyed Becket's bones and ordered that all mention of his name be obliterated. The pavement where the shrine stood is today marked by a lit candle." - from Wikipedia

The priest that the Department of Justice finds turbulent in 2014 is Father Ray Leonard.  The DOJ is trying a more indirect way to rid themselves of a turbulent priest.  A government agency that was selling guns to Mexican drug cartels would still find it problematic to have a priest hacked to death. Even MSNBC would have to cover that story.  The DOJ is using another another tactic from the Middle Ages.  They are trying to starve him out of the Kings Bay Submarine Base by withholding his pay.  Father Leonard is not a diocesan priest therefore he must rent a house and pay for his utilities and groceries.

"On October 4, 2013, during the Government shutdown, Father Leonard was ordered to stop performing all of his duties as the Base’s Catholic Chaplain, even on a voluntary basis. He was also told that he could be arrested if he violated that order."
Additionally, Father Leonard was locked out of his on-base office and the chapel. Father Leonard was denied access to the Holy Eucharist and other articles of his Catholic faith. The order caused the cancellation of daily and weekend mass, confession, marriage preparation classes and baptisms as well as prevented Father Leonard from providing the spiritual guidance he was called by his faith to provide.
The services of other Christian denominations at Kings Bay were allowed to continue throughout the shutdown. Only Catholics were left without services.
A day after the original federal lawsuit was filed, three attorneys from the Justice Department contacted Erin Mersino by phone and indicated that Father Leonard could resume all his religious duties and that the Chapel would be re-opened for all Catholic activities.  Those representations of the Justice Department attorneys were confirmed by orders to Father Leonard through the Navy chain of command.  However a week later, the retaliation against Father Leonard began." - Thomas More Law Center

The Navy tried to withhold two months of pay to Father Leonard. He was also told he must renew his contract with the government even though his present contract had not expired.

“The Petition Clause of the First Amendment protects individuals who challenge the unconstitutional actions of the government from retaliation.  The Archdiocese for the Military Services confirmed that no other military chaplain contracts were under review or subjected to the same scrutiny as Father Leonard’s.  Thus, due to the timing of the Navy’s actions and the information gleaned from the Archdiocese for the Military Services, all signs point to Father Leonard being singled out and subjected to unlawful retaliation for bringing the government’s practices to light.” - Thomas More Law Center

Father Leonard spent 10 years in China ministering to impoverished Tibetans. I believe his affidavit sums up this entire matter rather well.

“In China, I was disallowed from performing public religious services due to the lack of religious freedom in China. I never imagined that when I returned home to the United States, that I would be forbidden from practicing my religious beliefs as I am called to do, and would be forbidden from helping and serving my faith community.”


http://www.thomasmore.org/news/government-retaliates-against-navy-chaplain-who-sued-over-government-shutdown-catholic-mass

http://www.catholicvote.org/is-the-us-government-retaliating-against-the-furloughed-priest-who-filed-a-first-amendment-lawsuit/

http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/catholic-martyrs-of-the-holocaust

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Becket

Is A Cold Day In Hell Coming?

Looks like you won't need a coat after all

Update: 01/21/14

Catholics for Choice has now joined the discussion on the UN sexual abuse inquiry. Their agenda is to remove the Vatican from the UN. They have never demanded that a state run school system answer questions concerning a much higher rate of sexual abuse than found in the Catholic Church.  

Like every blogger let me begin with my disclaimer.

I have no problem with officials from the Vatican being called to testify to a UN panel, or to explain what policies the Vatican plans to implement to try and prevent, or report the sexual abuse of minors in Catholic institutions to law enforcement authorities.

There is no doubt that terrible crimes were committed by some priests and some of the laity in Catholic institutions. Those who committed the crimes should be punished, as well as those that are found to have obstructed justice in the investigation of those crimes.

I have no problem with the New York Times, the Associated Press, Reuters, or any other news organization reporting the story about the hearing, or inquiry concerning the Vatican and the UN on this matter.

Now that I have stated what I do not see as problems let me move on to the problems I do see.

The media needs to name all the organizations interested in the inquiry.

"Human rights organizations and groups representing victims of clerical abuse welcomed the hearing as the first occasion the Vatican has had to publicly defend its record". - NYT

Only two organizations are named; SNAP and The Center for Constitutional Rights. I prefer to know who all the players are on any issue. Organizations may have other motives in mind when they are criticizing the Vatican's response on the sexual abuse issue.

I do think that there is more than enough room for the representatives of other organizations and states to sit on the same side of the table as the Vatican.

I think the Swiss and French officials that have refused to extradite Roman Polanski to Los Angeles for the drugging, rape, and sodomy conviction of a 13 year old girl should take a turn at the table. I believe it will be a cold day in hell before that happens.

There is probably more room at the table. The UN should ask that the US Department of Education pull up a chair, as well as every Superintendent of Public Education for all 50 states to take their place at the table. In the US public school system a child is more than 100 times more likely to be molested by a teacher or school employee than they would be by a priest. Do I think they will be called to the table? I believe that will be a cold day in hell before that happens.

I won't be taking my coat out of the closet anytime soon.

 http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/thousands-defend-holy-sees-u.n.-status-against-attacks/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/world/europe/un-sex-abuse-panel-questions-vatican-officials.html?_r=0

http://ccrjustice.org/about-us/staff-board/pamela-spees

http://www.catholicleague.org/snap-exposed-unmasking-the-survivors-network-of-those-abused-by-priests/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski_sexual_abuse_case

http://www.themediareport.com/fast-facts/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/21/AR2007102100144_5.html

http://www.catholicleague.org/sex-abuse-scandal-rocks-public-schools/

"When savings rule, patients go underground to stay above ground" - Dr. Jane M. Orient

Dr. Jane M. Orient practices internal medicine in Tucson, Ariz., and is executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

Dr. Orient's article is a warning to all those that scoff at the notion of death panels in health care decisions. Before Obamacare the protocols for terminating certain patients by refusing care were already in place. Just as heresy builds upon heresy these protocols will be further refined and used to save money.


"In Texas, hospitals can refuse to perform “futile” care, even if it as simple as hydrating a patient. The hospital, or perhaps a court, determines when someone’s care becomes futile. Care that effectively prevents death, while failing to restore a patient to productive life, may be deemed futile. It does not, after all, help us achieve the goal of improving “population health.” In fact, it diminishes the overall health score." - Dr. Orient

So we have a subjective standard; "productive life", that will be decided by an individual, or group of individuals either in a courtroom or a hospital. As the costs mount for mandated government health care the new defense of mandated care will be how much more the health of Americans has improved. In an ironic way that will be true since the seriously ill who can no longer lead a "productive life" will be denied care. It is like legalizing bank robbery and then pointing out that individuals are no longer committing the crime of bank robbery.

"In California, it is actually against the law to do surgery on a dead patient, including a brain-dead patient, such as one who was recently referred to as “dead, dead, dead, dead.” A surgeon who did so could lose his hospital privileges, his medical license, and even his liberty. The exception, of course, is to harvest still-living organs for transplantation. Indeed, the organ shortage is the reason the concept of “brain death” was developed." - Dr. Orient

Read the Reuters article on Jahi McMath.

Was Jahi McMath the 13 year old girl from Oakland, California really brain dead?

"Besides the cost of care or the need to free up a bed, there may be other reasons why a hospital needs a patient to be dead. If a patient is in a coma after a surgical complication, a malpractice suit is likely. Tort reform may limit recovery for pain and suffering if the patient dies, but there are no limits on the cost of lifetime care." - Dr. Orient

So there is now a financial reason for the hospital to get Jahi out of the building and buried as soon as possible.

"A brain-dead patient is not in the same situation as the Terri Schiavo saga. Although in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, no one ever suggested that Schiavo was brain-dead. The controversy was over whether she had some awareness. If allowed, she could have lived for years longer with a feeding tube and nursing care." - Dr. Orient
"This is not true of a brain-dead patient. The hospital need not worry about having the patient on a ventilator for weeks or months. Two days is about the maximum. The patient rapidly loses the ability to regulate body temperature, blood pressure and other basic functions. The temperature may fluctuate wildly, and then the body soon assumes room temperature, where metabolic activity cannot occur.
If this does not happen, the patient is not brain-dead. The definitive test is an arteriogram or nuclear medicine scan that demonstrates absence of blood flow. This test is seldom done. Instead, doctors rely on absence of detectable neurologic functions, such as brainstem reflexes or brain waves. Cells that are not able to function in this way may yet be alive, able to maintain their structural integrity — and potentially recover." - Dr. Orient

Jahi has lived more than the two days that Dr. Orient cites as proof that a patient is not brain dead. Dr. Orient would certainly be the surgeon I would choose if I needed one.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/31/us-usa-braindead-california-idUSBRE9BT0PX20131231

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/9/orient-a-return-to-back-alley-medicine/

Oh! Hold High Those Standards

Faculty Senate confronts Santa Clara President over the removal of selective abortion from the University Health Plan.

"The faculty senate voted 215 to 89 in mid-December to approve a resolution declaring “invalid” the action taken by SCU’s president, Jesuit Father Michael Engh, to bar the university from paying for elective abortion in its health plans. A total of 627 faculty members at SCU were eligible to vote." - Peter Jesserer Smith, National Catholic Register

It would be interesting to know if the Faculty Senate vote was a secret ballot vote. According to the number of faculty members eligible to vote 323 faculty members chose not to vote on this issue. 215 votes out of 627 faculty members to declare invalid Father Michael Engh's resolution not to offer selective abortion in Santa Clara's health plan is not a majority of faculty members.

If the vote was a secret ballot vote then it does not speak well of Santa Clara that there are 323 disinterested faculty members that cannot commit themselves on an issue such as abortion. I'll call it the Pontius Pilate School of Ethics. Keep the basins and the hand towels at the ready.

If the vote was not a secret ballot perhaps the 304 faculty members that voted have tenure. Their jobs are secure and do not have to worry about retribution from their peers. Perhaps there are 323 faculty members that did not vote to protect their future tenure prospects. This does not speak well of the faculty.

Father Engh is finding out that the Gosnellians can never be appeased.



http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/abortion-standoff-between-santa-clara-university-president-and-faculty

I Could Care Less

I could care less about the Chris Christie bridge scandal. I don't care if 25 million people were stuck in a traffic jam over a thirty day period much less four days trying to get into New York City.

I live in the Western United States. I live in that part of the U.S. where the feds dictate where cattle can graze and where timber can be cut, and oil can be drilled.

I live in that part of the country where the weatherman in the national news feed stands in front of Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona on the weather map and tells me about how rough it is on the East Coast. I could care less.

I live in that part of the country where I wonder why a federal prosecutor can be found in less than 24 hours to investigate a bridge scandal and yet no federal prosecutor can be found to investigate the IRS for targeting conservative groups during the run-up to a presidential election.

I live in that part of the country that wonders why nuns who take a vow of poverty and care for the elderly are being targeted by a guy who was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, yet never wrote an article for the Harvard Law Review.

I live in that part of the country where the Department of Justice was selling guns to Mexican drug cartels.

I live in that part of the country that views the East Coast like Western Canada views Eastern Canada. The East lives off the West and then lectures us on lifestyle and belief.

You can keep NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC, and MSNBC. You have already ruined Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. Do us a favor just get a DVD that features the West Coast and just watch it at home.

Alcohol And A Keyboard Don't Mix

Alcohol and spray paint are not a good mix

I hope that Ms. Stiehm was intoxicated when she wrote this opinion piece for U.S. News and World Report. I would hate to think that she is just naturally bigoted.

I'll reserve my judgment on her editor's sobriety. Let me just say that any editor that would publish this piece that is no better than some rants I've read in the readers comments section of some news story that Yahoo has published is a very poor reflection on the journalistic standards of U.S. News and World Report.

Whoever spray painted the wall in the photo should submit their work to Ms. Stiehm's editor. That person is obviously well qualified to write for U.S. News and World Report.

"The Supreme Court is now best understood as the Extreme Court. One big reason why is that six out of nine Justices are Catholic. Let's be forthright about that. (The other three are Jewish.) Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama, is a Catholic who put her religion ahead of her jurisprudence. What a surprise, but that is no small thing." - Jamie Stiehm

Those pesky Catholics. The last person that had this much trouble with Jews and pesky Catholics that placed their religion above the demands of the state was Adolf Hitler.

"The seemingly innocent Little Sisters likely were likely not acting alone in their trouble-making. Their big brothers, the meddlesome American Roman Catholic Archbishops are bound to be involved. They seek and wield tremendous power and influence in the political sphere." - Jamie Stiehm

There is nothing worse than troublemaking nuns that take a vow of poverty and take care of the elderly poor. It is hard to believe that they don't want to pay for abortions, or subsidize fleet week.

You can read the rest for yourself.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/Jamie-Stiehm/2014/01/07/the-catholic-supreme-courts-war-on-women

Two Things I Thought I Would Never See

Jesuits coming in from the cold?

There are two things that I thought I would never see in my lifetime.

The first was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the second was any limit to the amount of disobedience that the Jesuits were willing to tolerate from its' members.

To paraphrase a quote from WWII;  Uncommon disobedience to the Pope and the Magisterium was becoming a common virtue among some Jesuits.

I have seen the Wall fall and perhaps I am seeing the end of an era of allowing willful disobedience to the Church from some Jesuits, time will tell.

There are many Jesuits that have fought the good fight and have labored under difficult circumstances and remained faithful to the Pope and the Church. I pray for their sake and the sake of the Church that this is the start of rebuilding an order that was a major factor in the strength of the Church.
  
http://ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/leaving-jesuits-after-32-years

Summertime And The Living Is Easy

It's summertime in the Antarctic and the living is easy unless you captain an icebreaker.

A group of scientists that were on a mission to measure the loss of ice due to the effects of global warming in the Antarctic end up with their research vessel trapped in the ice. I'm not sure where they planned on measuring the ice that has been lost but I'm sure that with global warming there are palm trees on some beach in Antarctica. Too much ice prevents researchers from measuring ice loss.

The U.S. Coast Guard heavy ice breaker Polar Star is on the way to rescue two vessels, one of them the research vessel, the other a Chinese icebreaker that attempted to recue the research vessel. Fossil fueled vessel rescues two more fossil fueled vessels that's one big carbon footprint.

For all of those of you in the U.S. that are going to experience a polar vortex think of those palm lined beaches in Antarctica and turn your thermostats down, remember you need to reduce your carbon footprint.

http://www.king5.com/news/local/Seattle-based-Coast-Guard-ice-breaker-to--238724411.html

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/12/30/stuck-in-our-own-experiment-leader-trapped-team-insists-polar-ice-is-melting/

http://news.msn.com/us/below-zero-temps-push-into-midwest-northeast

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/what-catastrophe_773268.html#

“your child belongs to us already…What are you?" - Adolf Hitler

"Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas.--Lord Acton.

There are two types of people who make a trip to the rubbish heap, or as it is named in America, "the dump". One person goes to dispose of items. Another person goes to retrieve items.

Hey Mom look at what I found! Can I keep him?

There is also a rubbish heap for ideas. There are individuals that dispose of ideas and there are individuals that retrieve ideas.

The German government believes that they have kept a treasure from The Thousand Year Reich from being tossed onto the rubbish heap of ideas, and so too does the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder.

"Hitler told parents that “your child belongs to us already…What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants however now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”

"We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children,” she says in a spot for the network’s “Lean Forward” campaign. “So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities." Melissa Harris Perry for the MSNBC Lean Forward Campaign

It would seem that Adolf Hitler, Melissa Harris Perry, and the U.S. Justice Department have found some common ground when it comes to the education of children and the belief that children are possessions of the state.

There was a brief filed in the Sixth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals on June 26, 2013 by the US Justice Department in the case of Uwe Andreas Josef Romeike, et al, v Eric H. Holder, Jr. Attorney General. In that brief the Department of Justice suggests that educating children at home is not a basic human right.

"On the contrary, in the case of a German homeschooling family seeking political asylum in the United States, the right to homeschooling can be denied in the interest of creating “an open pluralistic society.”  The Justice Department concluded that “Germany has no persecutory motive against religious minorities when enforcing the compulsory attendance statute,” rather,“teaching tolerance to children of all backgrounds helps to develop the ability to interact as a fully functioning citizen of Germany.”-from Catholic World Report, Anne Henderschott

Economic reasons are not the only reasons that individuals seek refuge in the United States. Socialists reduce man to his utilitarian value to the state so the measure of Germany's law against home schooling according to the U.S. Justice Department is that teaching tolerance to children helps to develop a fully functioning citizen of Germany. Why would the U.S. Courts be concerned with the development of fully functioning citizens of Germany? Who determines what a fully functioning citizen of Germany is, or for that matter a fully functioning citizen of any state is? It is the party in power. In Orwellian fashion to create an open and pluralistic society Germany, and by extension Eric Holder believe that children must be removed from their parents educational care and all children must be taught in a state approved school to ensure a diverse pluralistic state.

Those that home school their children and those that send their children to parochial schools in the United States should be concerned with this case against the Romeike family. At some point in the future the federal government could use the legal precedent from the Romeike case to end home schooling and to close parochial schools because they are not teaching tolerance and not producing fully functioning citizens of the United States. You might want to read the last two paragraphs before you answer the door in the new tolerant and pluralistic state.  

"On August 29, 2013, in a raid on another Christian homeschooling family’s residence near Darmstadt, Germany, a team of 20 police officers, social workers, and special agents forcibly removed all four of the children of Dirk and Petra Wunderlich. The children, ages 7 to 14, were removed from their parents’ home because the Wunderlichs continued to defy the German ban on homeschooling."

"Judge Koenig, a Darmstadt family court judge, signed the order on August 28, 2013, authorizing the immediate seizure of Dirk and Petra Wunderlich’s children. Citing the parents’ failure to cooperate with the authorities and send the children to school, the judge authorized “the use of force against the children” if necessary, reasoning that such force might be required because the children most likely had “adopted the parents’ opinions regarding homeschooling” and that “no cooperation could be expected” from either the parents or the children."-from Catholic World Report, Anne Henderschott

 http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/Germany/201308300.asp

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2579/homeschooling_under_fire_at_home_and_abroad.aspx