Some Bad News Coming Soon

I'm sorry to tell you that some shocking, saddening news about a prominent figure in the Church will soon become publically known, perhaps as early as Monday or Tuesday.

Don't worry. This is not about the Holy Father or any previous pope, nor does it have to do with a lay person.

Let's start praying earnestly that God will bring some kind of good from this and, of course, offer prayers for those involved.

EWTN Picks Up the Ball NBC Dropped

 

PRESS RELEASE

For Information, Please Contact:

January 30, 2009

Michelle Johnson

Director of Communications

EWTN Global Catholic Network

5817 Old Leeds Road

Irondale, Alabama 35210-2198 USA

(205) 795-5769 – Office

(205) 441-6248 ­– Cell

(205) 795-5781 – Fax

mjohnson@ewtn.com

 

BREAKING NEWS:

EWTN Picks Up the Ball NBC Dropped in Refusing to

Air Pro-life Commercial During Super Bowl

 

Irondale, AL (EWTN) – See the pro-life commercial NBC refused to air during the Super Bowl on EWTN Global Catholic Network this Sunday Feb. 1, beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET and continuing through midnight ET.

The commercial, sponsored by Fidelis and catholicvote.com, centers around the theme: “Life: Imagine the Potential.” It will begin airing during “Faith Bowl II,” an annual Family Theatre made-for-television special, which analyzes the role that the Catholic/Christian Faith plays in professional and collegiate sports. This year, Major League Baseball’s Mark Loretta of the Los Angeles Dodgers will guest along with former professional soccer player Antonio Soave.

The commercials will continue throughout EWTN’s Sunday evening lineup, including the shows with popular series Hosts Father Benedict Groeschel and Father John Corapi, and will conclude at midnight ET.

EWTN also aired this powerful commercial several times during its extensive coverage of the March for Life, which is always Washington D.C.’s largest march of the year. This year, the event conservatively attracted 300,000 marchers (some estimates were as high as 400,000 marchers), even though the price of hotel rooms was sky high due to the Inauguration two days earlier.

The commercial can also be viewed on EWTN’s pro-life webpage, www.ewtn.com/prolife, after 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 30, and, of course, on www.catholicvote.com.

During this must-see commercial, the following words flash across the screen over a picture of an ultrasound: “This child’s future is a broken home; he will be abandoned by his father; his single mother will struggle to raise him; despite the hardships he will endure, this child will become the 1^st African-American president. Life, imagine the potential.”

EWTN Global Catholic Network, in its 28^th year, is available in over 148 million television households in more than 140 countries and territories. With its direct broadcast satellite television and radio services, AM & FM radio networks, worldwide short-wave radio station, Internet website www.ewtn.com and publishing arm, EWTN, is the largest religious media network in the world.

-end-

It Takes Money, Honey. But How Much?

Netanyahu Predicts Al Queda Will Try to Destroy Holy Sepulcher

Benjamin Netanyahu, the favorite to win the upcoming Israeli election, says al Qaeda terrorists will destroy Jesus Christ's burial site.

Netanyahu, who claims he had predicted an Islamic extremists attack on the World Trade Center six years before the actual attack, said terrorists will target Church of the Holy Sepulchre also known as the Church of the Resurrection - Christianity's holiest site.

The church located in Jerusalem (al-Quds) -- which Christians believe is the site of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus -- attracts tens of thousands of pilgrims every year and is considered a spiritual focal point.

"Radical Islam is willing and will want to attack the symbolic heart of the Christian religion," said the former Israeli prime minister.

"This will incur a chain reaction we can't even envision. We will witness an escalation of religious conflict above and beyond the regional conflict we have now," Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying . . . .  (read article)

Honestly, if I Weren't a Married Man . . .

http://www.carmelitemonks.org

In a solitary monastery under the Rocky Mountains in northern Wyoming, the Carmelite Monks of Wyoming seek to perpetuate the charism of the Blessed Virgin Mary, living the Marian life as prescribed by the primitive Carmelite Rule and the ancient monastic observance. This new monastery of contemplative monks lives a life of faithful orthodoxy to the Magisterium, where joy and peace abound in a manly, agrarian way of life.

The Carmelite Monks wear the Holy Habit faithfully, which includes the brown Carmelite scapular and white mantle of our Lady of Mount Carmel. These young Roman Catholic monks live a full, reverent, and traditional Carmelite liturgical life, with the Divine Office and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass being prayed in Latin with Gregorian Chant.

Desiring to become great saints, this community of strictly cloistered contemplative men has a vehement longing to live the entirety of the customs and charism established by Ss. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila in the Discalced Carmelite Reform, namely: strict monastic enclosure, two hours of contemplative prayer daily, study and spiritual reading, and manual labor.

The Carmelite monk may aspire to be a lay brother or a priest who celebrates the Sacraments, gives spiritual direction, and preaches retreats to the monastery retreatants. Once mature in the spiritual life, a Carmelite monk may aspire to become a solitary hermit in the mountains, alone with the Alone. With a burning love of God and a missionary zeal for souls, the Carmelite monk immolates his life in the vows of obedience, chastity and poverty for the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the entire world.

If You Are Contracepting, You Are Part of a Very Big Problem

Global aging, combined with plummeting birth rates, is a catastrophically dangerous menace that only a few people seem to be waking up to. You may not be familiar with terms like “global aging” and “demographic winter,” but you will be soon.

I've been giving public lectures on the problem of global aging for the past 7 years or so, and my audiences are always shocked and dumbfounded as I explain how the West's ever expanding population of old people (due, thank God, to the ever-improving capabilities of bio-medical science), while a good thing in itself, will soon become a prime target for the forced-euthanasia crowd as the decline in birth rates among women of child-bearing age throughout the West (as well as major non-Western countries like Japan and Russia) forces an ever-shrinking number of younger, working citizens to shoulder the economic burden of paying for the retirement benefits consumed by the ever-expanding population of retired, old folks.

This is a lethal combination that will, I am certain, begin playing itself out with horrifying new consequences within the next 10, 15, 20 years. Perhaps sooner. It's hard to predict. What we do know for sure, though, is that the West has been marinating for decades now in the bloody serum of legalized abortion, and it breathes the toxic atmosphere of ubiquitous pornography, insatiable consumerism, the mania for entertainment (much of it violent), and an all-pervasive contraceptive mentality. What would have been unthinkable to Americans a mere 50 years ago (gay marriage, a billion-dollar abortion industry, the rise of euthanasia, etc.) has become commonplace and increasingly  unremarkable in this generation.

Where are we headed?

American economist Peter G. Peterson, in his book Gray Dawn: How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform America and the World (Random House, 1999), predicts: “Global aging will become the transcendent political and economic issue of the twenty-first century. I will argue [in this book] that — like it or not, and there's every reason to believe we won't like it — renegotiating the established social contract in response to global aging will soon dominate and daunt the public policy agendas of all the developed countries” (p. 5).

What Peterson means by “renegotiate the established social contract” is: You retired people, as well as all you who expect to retire in the next decade or two, don't expect that you'll be taken care of by the rest of us the way you now are or expect to be taken care of. Safety nets like Social Security and Medicare may have to be drastically downsized or even, if the economy deteriorates badly enough, eliminated. In other words, we may not be able to continue paying for the "burdensome expenses" old people impose on an ever-shrinking younger workforce (Thanks, contracepting couples! Thanks, abortion industry!). And what happens then? 

I've been saying for years now what is being reported yet again in this article. What is now known as the “right to die movement” is steadily morphing into what will soon become the “obligation to die movement.” Watch and see. It's happening right now, before our eyes, though just imperceptibly enough not to raise any significant alarm. When it does finally come out into the open, many people will be so desensitized to this looming new evil that those promoting it will have little difficulty imposing it on our ever more effete population. 

The politics of “young versus old” is rising, slowly but surely, and we will live to see its pernicious effects. Soon enough we will begin to see how the demographic winter results in an intergenerational struggle. The younger people, who have lived their entire lives learning from the media and our culture as a whole that other people are only useful or valuable insofar as they do one or more of a few things: give sexual pleasure, provide entertainment, make money, or produce some kind of product or service.

30+ years of legalized abortion has hardened millions of younger Americans into seeing unborn children as “parasites” who should be eliminated because they are inconvenient and unwanted.  50 years of the mainstreaming of pornography (thanks, Heff!) have educated a wide swath of Americans to look at others as objects for pleasure. And the aggressive cult of scientism has successfully swayed many people to look at unpleasant realities such as aging, pain, and lonliness as intolerable conditions that must be eliminated at all costs. 

So, barring some miracle (and while I do believe in miracles, I also believe in Divine Justice), I predict that the next step in the morbid evolution of the West's enmeshment in the culture of death will entail such horrors as forced euthansia and cloning human beings for body parts. This will begin to take shape as soon as enough people who have no belief in God and no regard for the value of human life begin to realize what “demographic winter” means for them financially.

With that in mind, please consider the chilling points made in this LifeSite article:

Celebrated columnist and pro-family leader Don Feder gave a jaw-dropping presentation on the coming 'Demographic Winter' at the Rose Dinner which closes the official March for Life festivities every year. Speaking to hundreds of attendees, Feder suggested that the demographic problem of worldwide declining birthrates "could result in the greatest crisis humanity will confront in this century" as "all over the world, children are disappearing."
 
"In the Western world, birthrates are falling and populations are aging," said Feder. "The consequences for your children and grandchildren could well be catastrophic."
 
Feder noted, "In 30 years, worldwide, birth rates have fallen by more than 50%. In 1979, the average woman on this planet had 6 children. Today, the average is 2.9 children, and falling."  He explained the situation noting, "demographers tell us that with a birthrate of 1.3, everything else being equal, a nation will lose half of its population every 45 years."
 
Beyond an inability to pay for pensions, it is likely that euthanasia will be one looked-to solution to the aging crisis, he said.

"Demographic Winter is the terminal stage in the suicide of the West - the culmination of a century of evil ideas and poisonous policies,'" he said.  Among them he listed:
 
"Abortion - As I mentioned a moment ago, worldwide, we're killing 42 million people a year. It's as if an invading army killed every man woman and child in Italy - then repeated the process every year.
 
"Contraception - For the first time in history, just under half the world's population of childbearing age uses some form of birth control. Some of us remember when births weren't controlled and pregnancies weren't planned. With all the wailing about man-made Global Warming, carbon footprints and the ozone layer, wouldn't it be ironic if what did us in wasn't the SUV but the IUD? . . . (read article)

 

Babies Routinely Being Aborted for Not Being Perfect

The ethical storm over abortions has been renewed as it emerged that terminations are being carried out for minor, treatable birth defects. Late terminations have been performed in recent years because the babies had club feet, official figures show . . . 

Julia Millington, of the Alive and Kicking Campaign, said: ‘It is all about our perceptions of perfection. Increasingly things are moving along the lines where nothing is good enough. it seems we can no longer tolerate any imperfection. Babies are at the mercy of ultrasound scans and what they may disclose. . . (read article)

Cloning Christ?

Alright. I'll be the first to say that this strange story is about as strange as strange can get. But it is significant insofar as modern biomedical technology is very close to, if not already at, the point of actually doing what these researchers are proposing: using extant DNA latent in the blood of long-deceased persons (in this case, from nothing other than the Shroud of Turin), in an attempt to produce a human clone.

Bizarre? Yes. But, sadly, it's more than a mere theoretical curiosity to those involved in this project. Read what the Russian newspaper Pravda (Правда — which, ironically, means “the truth”) said a couple of years ago about this venture:

Researchers say they would like to clone Christ. But with this good intention they on the contrary may get an antichrist. Famous chemist Alan Adler who studied samples of the Shroud of Turin, the legendary burial cloth into which Jesus Christ was wrapped after crucifixion, made a sensational statement not long ago.

The researcher said there was blood on the Shroud and it was shed by a man who died a violent death.

The University of Texas Center for Advanced DNA Technologies, USA, analyzed the DNA of the bloodstains. Head of the Center Victor Tryon confirmed that was human genetic material. It was divided into several samples and sent to different laboratories for further analysis.

No results of the research have been published yet but there are certainly some. Dr. Leoncio A. Garza-Valdes, one of the few researchers allowed to touch the Shroud of Turin is working on his book that will have a shocking name, The DNA of God.

The very abbreviation DNA seemed to be rather common for majority of people a couple of years ago. But today it is a serious cause for anxiety. Indeed, DNA gives researchers an opportunity to produce clones, a copy of any creature whose DNA is available for experiments. Experiments of this type have been already made public: Dolly the sheep became an absolute cloned copy of a sheep whose genetic material, DNA, was available.

Soon, it became clear that cloning humans was also possible. Professor Richard Seed declared he would solve the human cloning problem by the end of the millennium. He said he was seeking a fitting candidate for cloning. Finally, researchers supposed that blood found on the shroud of Turin might be used as genetic material for cloning  . . . (continue reading)   

My “Debate” With Bishop Gumbleton on Gays in the Priesthood

A couple of years ago, I was asked to appear on a secular talk-radio show to discuss the issue of homosexuals in the priesthood with now-retired Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a perennial fixture within the “progressive” fringe of dissenting Catholics. He argued the case that homosexuals in the priesthood is no problem at all. I, as you might guess, said exactly the opposite. It was a brief discussion, only about 20 minutes (including a commercial break), but long enough to see two very different approaches to this important issue. What are your thoughts?

Listen to the show here:

Part one

Part two

P.S. Awhile ago, the late-great Father Neuhaus commented briefly here on this issue.

Islam's Long-Awaited “12th Imam” and What That Means for You

“It is said that in the 10th century, the 12th and last Imam of the Shiite branch of Islam disappeared. He is said to be hidden by God and will reappear at the end of history to lead an era of Islamic justice. Actions by, and rumors about, Iran's president have renewed interest in the 12th Imam.”  (Additional info)

25 Random Things About NekoGal

Okay, I admit that I don't share her love for cats. Not. At. All. But I'm definitely sympatico with her love for languages, especially Japanese (though she's a great deal more advanced in Nihongo than I am). When I first discovered her blog, I complimented her on the layout and design. Y'all say hi to NekoGal, our Catholic galpal in Singapore.

Margaret Sanger: Planned Parenthood's Racist Founder

About the 5-minute mark is where she talks about her eugenics solution to the “negro problem.” But watch the whole thing to get the full effect. Please share this far and wide, especially with young women, who are the vulnerable targets of the nefarious organization.

Could It Come to This?

(click headline to read and post comments)

Those of you who know me personally know that I'm not an apocalyptic type of guy. I don't put stock in conspiracy theories. I don't see black helicopters anywhere, and I don't follow the “prophecy” prognosticators.

I do, however, follow what's being discussed and forecast in the mainstream media, and even though many still blythely assume that, at least as far as the economy goes, things have gotten as bad as they're going to get and the economy will soon be on the upswing, I am not so sure. In fact, when I listen to people like economist Peter Schiff, I find myself growing pessemistic about the likelihood of a rebound anytime soon and how things could get much worse rather quickly.

So, when balanced, trusted sources who happen to be my friends and work in the purely secular financial world send me articles like this, and this, and this, and they tell me, as one recently did, “the scary thing is that nothing in the article is exaggerated or fabricated,” I take notice.

This is yet another reminder to me of why I am so grateful that, by God's grace, I am Catholic. We have the certitude of knowing that, come what may, Jesus Christ is with us and, as He said, “In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). But notice that the Lord's promise of having overcome the world includes the reminder that there will be tribulations we must pass through.

The articles I linked to above are brief but representative of many others out there, and they raise unsettling questions that require further elaboration and study.

I'd be curious to know what you think about them. Do you think these warnings are just baseless  fearmongering, or is there some truth to them? I'm not sure yet which way I would tilt on this question, but with everything wierd and unsettling that's been going on in the world lately, especially in the U.S., I'm definitely paying closer attention to things like this. What about you?

Greed

A New Reason for Hope and Change

Just ask my wife and children. They will tell you. I am a giver. Totally.

Judge Bork Predicts: A “Terrible Conflict” Will Endanger U.S. Catholics’ Religious Freedom

Former Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork has predicted that upcoming legal battles will have significant ramifications for religious freedom. He names as issues of major concern the continued freedom of Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform abortions and the likely “terrible conflict” resulting from the advancement of homosexual rights.

Speaking in an interview published Tuesday by Cybercast News Service, Judge Bork discussed the contentious nature of modern politics.

“Everything is up for debate these days. I can’t think of anything that isn’t,” he said.

“You are going to get Catholic hospitals that are going to be required as a matter of law to perform abortions,” he claimed.

“We are going to see in the near future a terrible conflict between claimed rights of homosexuals and religious freedom… You are going to get Catholic or other groups’ relief services that are going to be required to allow adoption of a child by homosexual couples.  We are going to have a real conflict that goes right to the heart of the society.”

Asked whether there was a freedom of conscience clause anywhere in the Constitution that might prohibit the U.S. government from compelling a religious hospital to perform abortions, he replied: “Well, the free exercise of religion clause might fulfill that role.”

He agreed with the CNS interviewer, Editor in Chief Terry Jeffrey, that such coercion forces someone to act against their religion and could be construed as a violation of the right to free exercise of religion.

However, Judge Bork was unsure about whether the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold such a right. He predicted the decision would rest with Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in some cases sides with liberals and at other times with “originalists,” those who profess to hold a more tradition-minded interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

“It depends upon Anthony Kennedy,” Judge Bork told CNS. “Now, it’s a funny situation in which the moral life of a nation is in effect decided by one judge, because you have four solid liberal votes, four solid originalist votes, and one vote you can’t predict too accurately in advance.”

Though Justice Kennedy is a Catholic, he sided with the majority who upheld the pro-abortion rights Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. . . . (read article)

(Courtesy of New Advent)

(More) Crazy Words From America Magazine

LarryD, over at his Acts of the Apostasy blog, comments wittily and effectively on the blather that, yet again, clutters the pages of America Magazine. He writes:

The more I read America, the National Catholic Weekly, the more I’m beginning to think that the inclusion of the word ‘Catholic’ is a typo. Seems that the editors have gotten together and scribbled some open letters and memos to the incoming President. Here are selections from their submissions, with my comments.

Pop some Tums before reading this collection of mostly inane comments from these Catholic pundits. But I suspect you'll enjoy reading, as I did, LarryD's ripostes.

As We Traipse Along the Edge of a Precipice . . .

. . . a gambol that may well plunge us headlong into the abyss, let’s stop for a few moments and ponder how the Lord would have us respond to the spiritus mundi we see steadily coiling around our civilization. 

My friend Michael O'Brien, whom I have admired for many years, composed some months ago a trenchant meditation on the situation we now find ourselves in. It's one we've known for some time would eventually be upon us. And now, it would appear that it’s here.

Consider this snippet from Michael’s sobering yet encouraging narrative. After you've read it, I’d recommend you take a moment to share it with your network of friends and family:

Our generation has chosen to resolve its dilemmas by saying that a certain sin which is killing us is not actually a sin. It has accepted the catastrophic lie that security lies in negating the fullness of our humanity. In such a dehumanized climate the heart and mind eventually begin to spring leaks and blow fuses. The soul cries out mutely with depressions, sicknesses, unacknowledged and unrepented guilt, fears and resentment of those who dare to contradict the fundamental compromise––the list goes on.

Above all, there a subconscious despair. It is precisely this despair which saps our life without our knowing it, bleeding away vital energies and driving us further and further into a complex of compromises. No restoration of the world will occur until this despair is recognized for what it is and replaced by hope. Little renewal of our Church in the West will come to pass until there is repentance, which is the foundation of hope. If we as a people and as individuals do not repent, then the Body of Christ in our part of the world will continue to deteriorate. However much we may deny the reality of our condition, if real medicine is not applied we may even come close to extinction. As St. James points out: “Sin, when it is full grown, brings death.” (James 1:15).

Genuine Christian hope is not a facile optimism nor is it a gloomy pessimism. It is a willingness to look into the face of a very difficult and confused state of affairs and find there the victory of good over evil. Yet we cannot truly understand the enormity of the victory if we blithely continue to think that all is well, or at least comfortably bad.

This is not the time to look back in anger but rather around in awareness and forward with hope. It is precisely at this moment in history, in the face of a growing culture of death, that Humanae Vitae’s prophetic dimension is being revealed as a message of hope. It bears repeating that hope is realism. It examines the damage done to our lives and to our community. It recognizes that a society which violates the conscience, directly or indirectly, is an anti-human one. . .  (Continue reading)

White House Web Site Becomes Pro-Abortion After Obama Inauguration

In less than five minutes after Barack Obama took over as the next president, the White House web site changed from pro-life to pro-abortion. The previous site, which touted the pro-life proclamation President Bush signed late last week, now includes Obama's agenda for women, which calls for promoting abortion.

Gone is any mention of the Sanctity of Human Life Day or the speeches or actions of President Bush's that promoted human life. Now, in the same color scheme and format as the Bush site, there is a celebration of Obama's agenda.

According to a web site search of WhiteHouse.gov, the only page on the official governmental site to mention abortion is a page detailing what Obama will do to promote the interests of women.

Though abortions cause women a myriad of medical and mental health problems, Obama states his clear intent, in a section entitled "reproductive choice," to make abortions even more available.

"President Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him. However, he has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women's rights under Roe v. Wade a priority in his Adminstration [sic]," the Obama White House site says.

"He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in that case," it adds.

The White House page also touts Obama's backing for the Prevention First Act.

Billed as a measure to provide more funding for family planning and contraception, pro-life advocates oppose it because it sends millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion business that does 25 percent of the abortions across the country.

The Obama White House site also promotes the new president's view that Americans should be forced to pay for embryonic stem cell research, which involves the destruction of human life and has never helped a single patient.

The web site comes across as a false claim that government has not supported stem cell research in general, even though President Bush spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting the use of adult stem cells — the only kind to help any patients. (Read more)