DE MATTEI ON THE FATHER BRUNO POGROM

How interesting, that when the truth begins to hurt a little, and comes perilously close to one's own malfeasance, the instruments of the law come out at once.

Roberto de Mattei:


'What is being prepared is an ecclesiastical regime based on the political use of the law'


True enough.  Here is the deMattei piece in full:

http://www.robertodemattei.it/2014/07/31/franciscans-of-the-immaculate-ideas-imposed-by-decree-yes-even-mercy-without-holiness-and-justice-becomes-injustice/

'THEY HAVE NO CHILDREN LEFT!" CHEER THE ISRAELIS

The remains of a Christian home in Gaza

The kindly occupiers of Palestine who were recently embarrassed by a photo showing them sitting on lawn chairs high on a hill, eating popcorn, while the Israeli military was killing civilians, are now exulting that the semitic Arab children of the Holy Land are being decimated.  How charming.  They make ISIS look like nature's noblemen.

http://rt.com/news/176372-israel-racist-chant-gaza/

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/merciless-israeli-mobs-are-hunting-palestinians

Here's a great one:  http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/07/28/cbs-host-palestinians-force-israel-to-kill-kids/

Here's another great one, from our valiant US Congress: http://news.antiwar.com/2014/07/28/senate-leader-israel-may-need-more-us-aid-for-war/

The Stupid Party chimes in: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/boehner-the-house-will-always-stand-with-israel/

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/29/373272/us-lawmakers-we-stand-with-israel/

Words of wisdom from Bible-thumping moron, Lindsey Graham (R-Tel Aviv) http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/07/graham-un-move-antisemitic-192908.html?hp=l2

http://bizarro-world.net/?p=130

Interesting article but inaccurate: this is NOT the first Christian killed:  http://news.yahoo.com/gazas-christians-bury-first-casualty-war-031707490.html

Finally, a bit of fresh air: http://rt.com/op-edge/176272-idf-gaza-military-campaign/

It occurred to us that perhaps the Catholic Keyboard Zionists might like to glance over the above links.

ROBERTO DE MATTEI ON "THE VIRTUAL COUNCIL"

Another brilliant insight by de Mattei, well worth your time:

http://www.robertodemattei.it/2014/07/28/the-reconciler/

From the piece:

"We are in a situation where the Church does not define nor anathematize , but leaves freedom of discussion open. In bookshops, in seminaries, in Catholic universities, the theses of the ultra-progressive writers are all the rage. They deny the actual existence of the concept of “orthodoxy” as we see in the latest number from the magazine Concilium".

DEBTOR'S PRISON RETURNS?

Really, nothing surprises me anymore about the collective insanity that has engulfed the political and law-enforcement class in the USA.  But just when I had decided that it doesn't get any more ridiculous, we now have the triumphant return of Debtor's Prison.

http://rt.com/usa/165456-jailed-truancy-fine-dead-cell/

When it comes to Money, the nation that was founded by Money and for Money will not brook any refusal to cough up cash to the State, immediately if not sooner.

I post these little ditties about life in America more in sorrow than in anger.

THE BURNING OF AN 1800 YEAR OLD CHURCH, BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE USA

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/07/20/ISIS-burns-1-800-year-old-church-in-Mosul.html

The foul ISIS, which would not have existed but for massive US support for the anti-Assad forces in Syria, are doing the dirty work that would have been done by the USA had their invasion of Syria not been stopped last year: the extermination of the Christian presence in Syria.

Qui bono?

I can think of only two nations who will benefit from this, and I am sick of writing about them and their crimes against not only Christianity but mankind.  They know who they are, and I suspect many others do, too.


UPDATE:

Now they've bombed the tomb of the prophet Jonas to rubble:

http://rt.com/news/175636-iraq-jonah-tomb-mosul/

ENCOUNTER WITH MUSLIMS

I had arrived in London in the Spring of 2008 and was in the process of spending the first day there applying my usual remedy for jet-lag.  Forcing ourselves to stay awake so that our body clocks would re-set my wife, daughter and myself did a little shopping in the Hyde Park area to keep our minds off our great desire to go to bed and sleep.

We took a little respite at the park watching the water birds provide endless entertainment when an awful dread came over me.  My wallet was missing, the wallet in which I had my British pounds, my travel documents, my credit cards and every other important piece of paper a sensible traveler should always have with him.  We had been shopping at various stores so it could have been left at one of them inadvertently or, a mounting fear building, could have been lost somewhere in the streets.  Devastated, I re-traced me steps as best as I remembered them, begging St Anthony for assistance all the while, and went back to every store we had been to while my wife and daughter stayed at the park awaiting my return.  When the last store clerk told me they had not seen any such wallet nor had anyone turned one in I stumbled back slowly, and I mean slowly, back to Hyde Park to relay the terrible news to my family.

My mind was a total chaos, every imaginable bad scenario racing through my tired brain until finally exhaustion made me stop at the stone gateway to the park where I put my head against the stones and prayed again.  I begged Saint Anthony to get me out of this catastrophe.

Near the park entrance was some sort of meeting place for Muslims and I had noticed them going in and out of the building or milling around chattering away in what I assumed to be some Arabic tongue.  They seemed affable with each other as the frequent laughter emanating from their groups attested.  But my mind was swirling with uncertainty and I could not pay attention to them or anyone else.  I raised my head from the stone wall, turned and started the slow walk back to the park bench where my wife and daughter were awaiting.

As I walked back a group of young Muslim men who had emerged from the meeting hall were passing me, and I heard one of them, a man in his late 30s, reciting a group of numbers in broken English.  Those numbers, as I listened in astonishment, were the numbers of my home telephone number.  I swung around to look at him.  He was holding my wallet open as he walked along with his group of friends, reading the identification information I had left inside the wallet with a concerned expression on his face.  I ran up to him and in an overjoyed voice told him that he has found my wallet!.  The man and his companions instantly rejoiced.  He put his arm around me and was trying to say in broken English that he was wondering how he might contact me in order to return the missing article.  I told him that Saint Anthony had heard my prayers and when I said that to him his eyes sparkled and a warm, wide grin appeared on his face, and the faces of the others.  They began saying, "St Anthony!  St Anthony!" with that same jubilation as before.  They must have understood.  When I made a quick sign of the cross they embraced me even more and I do believe if I had stayed with them any longer I would have been invited to their home for an evening meal.  I'm sorry now that I didn't invite them to join me in some refreshment; they would surely have accepted, so happy were they to be of help to me.

We parted company, happy with each other over the entire episode.  When I returned to my wife and daughter Saint Anthony, I hope, heard some more prayers, this time of Thanksgiving.  And we also prayed for these kindhearted young men that the grace of Faith would be given to them with great generosity by the One God Who created them.

St Francis and the Sultan, by Giotto

Reading this tragic yet heart-rending article over at Catholicism.org - about the Moslem professor who was killed by the US-funded ISIS fanatics merely for protecting the Christians in Mosul - is what brought back to my mind the encounter of which I write.

COWARDICE GETS A NEW LEASE ON LIFE

The Modernist Clan, somewhat suffering recently from the ever-apparent reappearance of reality, has been given a new lease on life by the current pontificate of Pope Francis.  The moribund and stale views of the ecclesiastical hippies has been given an injection of revitalizer by some of the words and actions of a Pope who one day can quietly observe something truthful and the next day proclaim some particularly ridiculous notion that the Church "has never been in greater health", etc.

(If this be health God spare the Church from sickness.)

Proclamations such as this are music to the ears of the Modernists who had been in an ascendant trajectory since the swinging '60s but who had experienced a slight dip about a decade ago.  No longer.  Their plane is soaring high in the sky again, and I use the word "high" deliberately.  Like the barfly who has been given one more for the road the pickled prelates of the Church of Happy are cheering on Pope Francis as he makes one weird or incomprehensible comment after another which for them means being given a green light to continue on with their own special form of episcopal cowardice.  For example, here are the bloviations of the giddy Bishop Robert Lynch of Florida who sat on his ample rump while Terri Schiavo was being deliberately starved to death:  Rod Pead, editor Christian Order reveals Lynch's exuberance:

"For the rest of my days on earth," gushes Bishop Lynch, referring to the America interview, "I will be grateful to Pope Francis for this exquisite and dead-on observation: 'I see clearly that the thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the Church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds, heal the wounds…. And you have to start from the ground up'."

Superficially this sounds fair enough. Yet the stated priority — "to warm the hearts of the faithful" — has already shifted and tailored "the ground" (the doctrinal foundation of faith) to accommodate perverse and naturalistic social gospel ends. "So what was left on the battlefield as the Pope might see it," concludes delighted Field Marshall Lynch, is "a church where parents are coming to accept and love their gay and lesbian children." (After all, who are the Vicar of Christ and his commanders to judge the life-and-soul-destroying behaviours/inclinations of their troops?).

Where does one begin in an attempt to assess such words?  Lynch is happy that the Church is a place where now the parents of those children who engage in unnatural vice can "accept" them as they are?  If, God forbid, one of our children should succumb to such unimaginable perversions we are, according to Lynch and the new Church he describes, to merely accept it?  If Bishop Lynch is inferring that with the new Pope in charge we no longer have to strive to keep our family and friends free from such evils then either Lynch, or the Holy Father, or both of them have either gone off their rockers or have just committed one of the most grievous offenses against faith and morals in the entire twenty-century history of the Roman Catholic Church. Let us think this through: Bishop Lynch is telling parents who have children engaging in mortal sin that all is well and that we should not get too uptight about it.

His will be one of the skulls paving the byways of Hell.

MARY, HELP OF CHRISTIANS, PRAY FOR THEM

The killing of innocent Christians, and innocent Muslims, continues.  Some in the world cheer, most remain silent.  We have provided a few links.

You be the judge.

http://original.antiwar.com/Ida_Audeh/2014/07/16/listening-to-israel/

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Jul-17/264236-israeli-tanks-shelling-gaza-rehab-hospital-director.ashx#axzz37qnqGsAJ

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/17/nbc-removes-ayman-mohyeldin-gaza-coverage-witnesses-israeli-beach-killing-four-boys/

http://news.yahoo.com/gaza-three-children-killed-playing-roof-203716384.html

https://twitter.com/hashtag/GazaUnderAttack?src=has

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/07/17/israel-kills-for-the-fun-of-it/

http://catholicism.org/the-suffering-in-gaza-is-a-shocking-scandal-say-bishops.html

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/10/the-true-gaza-backstory/

http://rt.com/news/172324-israel-watching-gaza-attacks/

Will the Holy Father say something, other than the usual platitudes about "calling for peace"?

Something tells us no, he won't.  Please God that we are wrong.

The Catholic Zionists, and there are, alas, many of them running blogs on the internet, will be among the enablers of this current horror, their minds formed by propaganda and an apparent inability to think through this story.  We pity them, and we hope that their eyes will one day be opened.

Since we can do nothing, especially we Americans whose tax dollars are mostly paying for this murder rampage, we turn to Our Lady, Help of Christians.  Please join us in asking Her to stop the Israeli slaughter of the innocents, a special brand of collective punishment that was used once before in history by their co-religionist, Herod the Great.

BETHLEHEM CHRISTIANS AND AGGRESSION

Gaza, 15 July 2014

The official narrative of events in the Holy Land usually goes something like this: the new homeland for the Jews is continually under fire from fanatical Arab terrorists and thus the so-called State of Israel must defend itself.

The Mad Hatter could not have explained it better.

But the actuality is somewhat different from the official line being given us by the usual suspects.  So, for a little truth, an example of noteworthy courage, and a saga of hope, we thought those readers interested in finding out what is really going on over there might find this report of value:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27883685

You wont find this on the websites of the jihad watchers whose simplistic view of events in Palestine are the result of years of absorbing propaganda rather than digging for the facts.  You will not find this in the US mainstream media because that media is owned by six giant corporations headed by the ethnic brothers of the oppressors of these Christians.  And you certainly wont find it coming from our government which is in thrall to the very same oppressors and corporate interests.

But we need stories of Christianity, courage and hope, especially now as the Israeli goliath continues to slaughter the innocents.

PARTICIPATION: THE DOGMA

Astute readers of Catholic blogs will most likely tire of yet another arrow shot at that sacred cow of contemporary Catholicism, namely: "participation".  But I will not aim the bow at these readers.  I aim it at those priests who celebrate the extremely ordinary form of the Mass and those priests who celebrate a form that truly is extraordinary yet feel compelled to hector us every Sunday to sing our lungs out, drown out the hushed responses of the altar boys by dialoguing the responses aloud and, like a certain French religious order which shall remain nameless, insist that Mass must be accompanied by wall-to-wall sound. 

I will let Evelyn Waugh put things right:
 .

“‘Participation’ in the Mass does not mean hearing our own voices. It means God hearing our voices. Only He knows who is ‘participating’ at Mass. I believe, to compare small things with great, that I ‘participate’ in a work of art when I study it and love it silently. No need to shout. …If the Germans want to be noisy, let them. But why should they disturb our devotions?’”


That was written in the late 1950s when the dreaded "reform" was on the noticeable horizon.  I would only add that it is now not only the Germans who are noisy. 

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH CATHOLICISM

With thanks to Etoday

The internet is awash with hotheads, the type of American who wants to think of himself as a citizen of the one indispensable nation on the earth and who will brook no criticism of any US foreign policy no matter which sock puppet occupies the white house.  Trying to square such an attitude with the practice of the Catholic Faith is impossible, yet many write their comments or create their blogs trying to pound that square peg into that round hole.  The results are as laughable as they are vicious.

Hell hath no fury than a super patriot politely informed, one reminded that perhaps there are other nations which have a different point of view than the US political establishment.  In a recent brief exchange of comments on one popular site concerning the fears of Ukrainian Catholics during this awful turmoil created by the big financial interests this writer attempted to point out as charitably as possible to one respondent (who wrote at least thirty or more responses to the article) that we should avoid taking a simplistic view of the events occurring over there, that we should seriously pray for the Ukranian people and that we should not automatically accept as Holy Writ every pronouncement that emerges from the mainstream media.  For that I was treated to a slew of thoughtful, well-written responses by him in which I was characterized as "ignorant", "amusing", "stupid" and even a Russian spy!  I was addressed as "comrade" by him, which shows you fairly clearly the intellectual level of the man as well as the political disease eating away at his reason.  He is also an enthusiast, in the worst sense of that word, and therefore reasoning with such a man becomes an exercise in futility.

But infantile rants like that are very, very common on the blog scene and it does not bode well for us.  If that is the kind of mind that is common coinage, and there is sufficient evidence to suggest that it is, then we are a nation adrift, and when the time inevitably comes that this US empire collapses of its own weight people like that will be totally unprepared for what will come.

The true view of how to be a Catholic and then a patriot was recently well expressed by Brother Andre Marie, MICM over at the St Benedict Center website:

http://catholicism.org/ad-rem-no-232.html

The goal of the Saint Benedict Center is the conversion of America to the Catholic Faith and while that goal may seem now to be wildly utopian it is one of those worth working for.  Brother Andre calls the reader's attention to the true meaning of patriotism in his interesting piece and it would do some well-intentioned folks a great deal of good to read and reflect upon his article.  Doing so might make some people avoid accusing others of being secret KGB agents, and it also might make people come to understand that the USA is not the greatest nation in the solar system.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/07/paul-gottfried/the-greatest-country-in-the-history-of-the-solar-system/

Pope Leo XIII showed, in Testem Benevolentiae, what happens to the American Catholic mind when it becomes too focused on "national greatness".

American exceptionalism, aka super patriotism, is not compatible with the Catholic Faith.

Or even with common sense.

PRE-CONCLAVE AGREEMENTS

Having just read a fascinating article by Sandro Magister I confess that I have never seriously considered the fact that at certain times in the Church's history agreements were decided upon in or just before Conclave to the effect that if a certain candidate was to be elected to the papacy he would be bound by these early agreements.  I marvel at my naivete.

To be sure some of these agreements, at least the ones that are known that Magister has written about are more or less innocent enough: if you elect my man then he will make sure your friend becomes Secretary of State, that sort of thing.  But when I write "innocent enough" I am not forgetting that this is something a bit sinister and, at least with regard to the matter of who becomes the Secretary of State - the acting Pope in many matters - it could turn out to be anything but innocent.

It is well to keep these things in mind especially if we are tempted to imagine that it is the Holy Ghost Himself who personally chooses the Pope without any human agency whatsoever.

What is extremely interesting, at least to this writer, is that the current Pontiff is, according to Magister, acting in certain matters as if he were bound to one of these pre-Conclave "agreements".  If nothing else the low calibre of many of the Cardinals voting should deeply concern anyone observing the actions of Francis.  When the likes of a Roger Mahony or a Donald Wuerl are working behind the scenes creating such agreements I think we can rightly say that there is more than a little cause for concern.  One particular remark by Francis when being asked about these matters is particularly interesting, and very much unsettling:

"My decisions are the fruit of the pre-conclave meetings. I have done nothing alone."

If a St Pius X were on the throne, or an Innocent III or a Gregory the Great my fears would be considerably alleviated for I would be confident that such strong personalities would not flinch from pursuing their own paths as God willed.  But with a weakling, or an equivocator or a mere company man at the helm we have no cause for such confidence.

Pope St Pius X was one Pope whose disdain for this practice was well known and who took some steps to put a stop to it.  Alas! like his ill-fated "Oath Against Modernism" these steps were soon ignored and almost totally forgotten.  Good man that he was he often failed to put real teeth into his pronouncements.  A cautionary tale to remind us that even great Saints sometimes fail in matters of supreme importance.

Be that as it may if some of the more dire remarks of the current Pope have been inspired even a little by any pre-election agreement then we may be at a new crossroads in the history of holy Church.  Commenter Joe Potillor, writing on Father Ray Blake's blog today made a devastating remark that, when I read it, was like a bolt out of the blue.

Potillor:
But I will say "who am I to judge" were 5 of the most damaging words ever said by Pope Francis.

No matter how many times I have read or heard references to those damaging words, no matter how many internet articles read about it, the words of Mr Potillor were like a slap across the face, awakening me to a harsh reality.  I don't say that the Pope uttered this disastrous statement due to any terms of an agreement. But I do say that views such as those were unquestionably known by the aforementioned Cardinals and others of their ilk, so that whatever agreement they may have created would hardly have contradicted the mindset of a person who would utter such a phrase while occupying such an Office as Pope Francis did.  I would like very much to think or hope that it was Cardinals like Rai, Burke and certain other fine men who were working on such agreements but considering the power of the Americans and the Germans and the French episcopates I very seriously doubt their input was sought.

The post-Conclave jubilation by creeps like Wuerl and Mahony, well known to watchful readers, does speak volumes.  Mahony is merely stupid so his joyful remarks were to be expected.  But Wuerl is cunning, and if he is as pleased about things as he seems to be we would do well to watch our backs.

"I follow what the Cardinals asked" may turn out to be words every bit as disastrous as those five other words uttered by the current Keeper of the Keys.

THE MEMO

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We strongly recommend that every single American read the following article, from the pen of Judge Napolitano:

http://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2014/07/02/independence-day-2014/

Reading this would be a more productive way to spend your July 4th holiday, rather than celebrating those "bombs bursting in air".

with thanks to erikrush.com

GEORGE ORWELL AT 111

June 25th is the birthday of a very interesting man.  It is the 111th birthday of Englishman George Orwell, the man who gave us a birds eye view of what will become of us if we continue to sit complacently by and accept despotism.

In America we are already well on our way toward the dystopian future that Orwell predicted.  In fact we are well past what even Orwell thought was monstrous.

What makes us so subservient to our own displacement and enslavement?  What makes us so willing to sit by and watch our degradation?  I have come to believe that it is our own personal concupiscence that distracts us, makes us in fact enjoy our "freedoms" (aka licence). Casting around for the culprits responsible I often find them by looking in the mirror.  Do we not spend more time watching the idiot box rather than spending it in the Confessional box?  Others distract themselves with the latest useless electronics gadgets, an eerie realization of the first few scenes in John Wyndham's science-fiction masterpiece, The Day of the Triffids.  Those who are unfamiliar with that work should read it - if nothing else just the first few chapters.  And while Wyndham's fantasy goes into a different direction than the direction aimed at by our present generation the end result is pretty much the same: enslavement and death.

Those of us who have family members hooked on, say, video games have an especially hard row to hoe.  Like drunkards, video gamers do not want to kick this useless and degrading habit.

Some distract themselves with pornography, another of those addictions which can enslave and also prove useful to the enslavers.  This vice has made many accept contraception (and its Catholic version), which led, of course, to the eventual acceptance of abortion and now to the acceptance of unnatural vice.  This flooding of the world with this stuff was not something that came about by chance; it was deliberately promoted.

But we sit by as Belloc says and "watch the barbarians".

Orwell saw it all, but in a somewhat different way.  I once discussed him with the late Malcom Muggeridge, who knew him well.  I forget the precise details of Muggeridge's evaluation of the man but I remember him saying that in a strange way Orwell foresaw the complete annihilation of rational thought.

The complete annihilation of rational thought...if that doesn't explain perfectly where we are just now I don't know what would.