Report Claims "Community Organizer" Shills Are Busy in Catholic Parishes in OKC

The flyer is simple but informative. “Community Organizing at St. Charles.” Sounds innocuous enough. But upon closer inspection, it appears to be further attempts by ACORN-esque organizers to infiltrate well-meaning parishioners in the Catholic Church in the Oklahoma City area, among other places.

The flyer reads: “Come to a special training in community organizing for Catholic parishes, presented by Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee and hosted by Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish.”

Not much could be found about the Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee, other than a Grace Presbyterian Church flyer online that notes that “the OSC is a congregation-based community action group that equips churches to better meet the needs of their communities through training and support.”

It also said seven Catholic churches are part of 27 churches in Oklahoma City that are getting involved with this community-organizing activity.

The corrupt group ACORN, which had been active in Oklahoma City until late last summer, is believed to be connected to this action considering it's past links, as noted in this 2003 National Housing Institute article. Red Dirt Report was given an exclusive peek into a recently-abandoned ACORN office in south Oklahoma City last October. That report can be found here.

The event, scheduled August 8 from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. is not being held at St. Charles Borromeo, rather at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in their Connor Center at 32^nd and Western.

Among items on the “program” at this “community organizing” event, includes “interactive community organizing training based on the first five chapters of Nehemiah with attention to the concepts of subsidiarity and solidarity, by Kris Ausdenmoore, lead organizer, Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee.”

Ausdenmoore, it turns out, according to a 2008 article in the Sooner Catholic, was the lead organizer for the Oklahoma IAF. IAF stands for Industrial Areas Foundation. They are located throughout the United States and have chapters in Canada, England and Germany, according to www.industrialareasfoundation.org. And they deal with not only Christians but Muslims, Jews and others as well.

“The leaders and organizers of the Industrial Areas Foundation build organizations whose primary purpose is POWER – the ability to act – and whose chief product is social change. They continue to practice what the Founding Fathers preached; the ongoing attempt to make life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness everyday realities for more and more Americans.” . . . (continue reading)

Social Commentary Through Pie Charts & Venn Diagrams

And whoever created this next one calls it: "The Only Flowchart You'll Ever Need." You'd be amazed how many people follow this basic philosophy of life. Alright, you probably wouldn't be "amazed," because we all know at least three people who live according to this flowchart, but still . . .

Catholic congressman: I'd rather save my soul than vote for the health care bill

New Orleans, La., Aug 3, 2009 / 02:06 pm (CNA).- Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, (R-New Orleans), the first Vietnamese-American congressman and a Catholic, announced this past weekend that, because of the “stealth mandate” for abortion still present in the Health Care bill, he prefers to “save his soul” rather than vote in favor of it.

Cao, the only member of the Louisiana House delegation who had not weighed in on where he stands on the health reform bill, told the Times-Picayune on Saturday that he cannot support any bill that permits public money to be spent on abortion.

“At the end of the day if the health care reform bill does not have strong language prohibiting the use of federal funding for abortion, then the bill is really a no-go for me,” said Cao, who spent time in formation to be a Jesuit priest.

“Being a Jesuit, I very much adhere to the notion of social justice,” Cao said. “I do fully understand the need of providing everyone with access to health care, but to me personally, I cannot be privy to a law that will allow the potential of destroying thousands of innocent lives,” he explained to the Louisiana newspaper.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that Cao will be one of seven Republican members of Congress targeted with radio ads that will play on radio stations with largely African-American audiences, urging him to support Obama's health reform efforts.

“I know that voting against the health care bill will probably be the death of my political career,” Cao said, “but I have to live with myself, and I always reflect on the phrase of the New Testament, ‘How does it profit a man's life to gain the world but to lose his soul.’”

Cao is the first native of Vietnam to serve in Congress and the first Republican to serve in his district since 1890. He won in a district that usually votes overwhelmingly Democratic. . . . (continue reading)

The Epitome of a "Close Call"

What in the world are they constructing their buildings out of in Turkey?

Flashback: Brent Bozell's 1994 Comment About Mitt Romney

What Would God's Facebook Page Look Like?

Probably not like this, but I have to give an A for effort and creativity to the folks who come up with stuff like these fake Facebook pages:

Here's another:

Mashable.com blogger Pete Cashmore comments on these hijinks:

With over 250 million users, Facebook is a social networking behemoth. The site is host to thousands of celebrity fan pages and has been taking steps to make these more appealing to self-promoters. On Saturday Bill Gates revealed that he’s not a Facebook user, and many other famous names are notably absent from the site. Which leads us to wonder…what might those pages look like? Fortunately, some of the web’s most creative minds had the exact same thought, and below we bring you the very best fake Facebook pages. . . . (continue reading)

Building the Magic Kingdom: Time-Elapse Footage of Disneyland's Construction

"John sends us "Rare and unseen footage of Disneyland's construction narrated by Imagineers. Includes some amazing new footage of Walt Disney walking the site before construction even started and some never-before-seen timelapse footage of the park from groundbreaking until opening day. This film was on the way to deep storage and was found by a curious employee, otherwise there's a good chance we'd never get to see this."

"This is just fascinating -- a look into the raw bones beneath one of the most polished created environments we have. The narration, from Tony Baxter, Ed Hobleman, and Walter Magnuson, is great. And I'm in heaven over the glimpses of the original Tomorrowland, another top time-traveller destination for me once I develop my Tardis.

"Be sure to click through to see the whole thing; this is just part one of five . . . . "

The Myth of Overpopulation Debunked Quickly and Easily

The Population Research Institute has a timely message for our society: "The idea of a world with no room or food is terrifying, but all it takes is checking the facts see how silly the whole thing is. We hope this video will do that for people."

Be sure to see this LifeSite article for more information about this ad campaign.

Would You Like to Have Dinner With Archbishop Charles Chaput?

You can! Be sure to save the date: October 8, 2009.

You are cordially invited to a gala dinner along with special guest speakers George Weigel (author of The Courage to Be Catholic and Witness to Hope), Joseph Bottum (publisher and editor of First Things Magazine), Father John Corapi (via video), Carl Anderson (Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, via video), and hundreds of grateful Catholics who will come together to honor the faithful and courageous leadership of Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, author of the international best-selling book Render Unto Caesar.

Come and meet the Archbishop on October 8, 2009, as he is presented with the Envoy of the Year Award.

Please click here for more information in PDF format.

Date: October 8, 2009

Location: Hilton Charlotte Center City

222 East Third Street, Charlotte, NC 28202

(704) 377-1500 Fax: (704) 377-4143

www.envoyinstitute.net

For personalized service and to reserve your place at the table,
please call Mrs. Joan Bradley: 704-461-8009 or e-mail her at joanbradley@bac.edu

Tables are filling up quickly. Please reserve your spot as soon as possible.

If you are interested in sponsoring a table in your name or in the name of your organization, or if you would like to sponsor priests, religious, and college students who wish to attend this event,
please contact Mrs. Joan Bradley: 704-461-8009 or e-mail her at joanbradley@bac.edu. Thank you.

An Untraditional Wedding Procession

I have never seen or even heard of anything like this. Wow.

(Muchas gracias to Mr. H. for bringing this to my attention.)

Is Texas Heading Quietly Toward Secession?

It happened before, yes, but come on. Could it realistically happen again? Lots of folks would say no, it couldn't. But given all the weird stuff happening and all the unravelling going on in this country lately . . . a story like this takes on new and unsettling connotations.

Last time it happened was in 1861, and the burning issues of the day back then were states rights and slavery. Today, the new burning issues are, among other things, states rights, abortion, and "health care."

Yes, yes, I agree that it's far-fetched to imagine that, in this day and age, there could ever be a serious bid on the part of a state to break away from the U.S. And yet . . . I think that most of you would agree with me that there are plenty of really bad things going on these days that, 50, 30, or even just 10 years ago, would have seemed preposterously far-fetched. Am I wrong?

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggested Thursday that he would consider invoking states’ rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president’s healthcare plan, which he said would be "disastrous" for Texas.

Interviewed by conservative talk show host Mark Davis of Dallas’ WBAP/820 AM, Perry said his first hope is that Congress will defeat the plan, which both Perry and Davis described as "Obama Care." But should it pass, Perry predicted that Texas and a "number" of states might resist the federal health mandate.

"I think you’ll hear states and governors standing up and saying 'no’ to this type of encroachment on the states with their healthcare," Perry said. "So my hope is that we never have to have that stand-up. But I’m certainly willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats."

Perry, the state’s longest-serving governor, has made defiance of Washington a hallmark of his state administration as well as . . . (continue reading)

You never know who may be following this blog . . .

Click the pic . . .

Yes, Virginia. Saint Augustine Really Was Catholic.

Dave Armstrong has compiled a handy series of statements from the great bishop-apologist, Augustine of Hippo, detailing his teaching on the sacraments of the Catholic Church. It's a useful corrective against those, such as Calvinists, who attempt to portray St. Augustine as not having been Catholic, at least not in the "Roman Catholic" sense of the word.

This list is worth bookmarking, both for your own personal study of this patristic giant and for those times that may arise in which you need to debunk bogus claims about what St. Augustine really believed.

Oh, and you can find here and here a couple of related items that I posted here on this blog awhile back.

North Korea Publicly Executes Christian Woman for Distributing Bibles

North Korea publicly executed a Christian woman last month for distributing the Bible, which is banned in the communist nation, South Korean activists said Friday.

Ri Hyon Ok, 33, was also accused of spying for South Korea and the United States and organizing dissidents. She was executed in the northwestern city of Ryongchon near the border with China on June 16, according to a report from an alliance of several dozen anti-North Korea groups.

Ri's parents, husband and three children were sent to a political prison camp in the northeastern city of Hoeryong the following day, the report said, citing unidentified documents it says were obtained from North Korea. It showed a copy of Ri's North Korean government-issued photo ID.It is virtually impossible to verify such reports about secretive North Korea, where the government tightly controls the lives of its citizens and does not allow dissent.

On Thursday, an annual report from a state-run South Korean think tank on human rights in the North said that public executions, though dropping in number in recent years, were still carried out for crimes ranging from murder to circulating foreign movies.

North Korea claims to guarantee freedom of religion for its 24 million people but in reality severely restricts religious observances. The cult of personality surrounding national founder Kim Il Sung and his son, current leader Kim Jong Il, is a virtual state religion.

The government has authorized four state churches, one Catholic, two Protestant and one Russian Orthodox, but they cater to foreigners and ordinary North Koreans cannot attend. However, defectors and activists say more than 30,000 North Koreans are believed to practice Christianity secretly. . . . (continue reading)

Legionary Troop Movements in High Gear

In recent weeks, there has been a flurry of "troop movements" within the Legionaries of Christ, and it's not entirely clear to me yet what is behind it. To be sure, for a large, multi-national organization such as the Legion to have some level of constant movement of personnel is quite understandable and quite common to any group of this type, secular or religious.

But some of these recent LC perigrinations are unusual both in that they involve priests and lay people abruptly leaving the organization — a number of them high-profile folks (Fr. Thomas Berg, Tom Hoopes, Paul Bernetsky) — and others who are being transferred far afield at precisely the time of the apostolic visitaion, which is undertaking the Vatican investigation of the alleged problems within the order, in the wake of the recently disclosed Father Maciel scandals.

These new movements are in addition to the rumor that upwards of 25 Legionary priests (a dozen of whom are said to be Americans) are soon to depart en masse from the order to establish a new religious congregation. Keep in mind that that is merely a rumor. But given the recent high-level LC and RC defections, it is a plausible rumor.

Legionary-watcher "Cassandra" offers some intriguing tidbits about all this in a recent post. Some of these I've known about, others are new to me. But all of them, taken together, indicate a new pattern of LC personnel changes that is, at the very least, curious.

Father Antonio Rodriguez, for ages academic dean at the Legionary seminary in Cheshire, Connecticut, has removed to Switzerland. How will he now be able to testify to the apostolic visitation about the seminary?

Tom Hoopes, National Catholic Register editor, resigned this week. Together with Brendan McCaffery, Chief Operation Officer for Circle Media, let go last week, these represent decades and decades of experience at the highest level of Legionary operations in Connecticut. Will the visitation seek them out in Kansas or Les Avants-sur-Montreux or wherever or lose forever their testimony?]

[Updated] Life-after-rc the other day reported that there is evidence that the Legionaries have been moving members around possibly to make them less available for the apostolic visitation to interview.

History may be repeating itself: that’s certainly what the Legionaries did in the late summer of 1956 in the face of the first apostolic visitation. Legionary Brother José Domínguez, who had recently helped Father Maciel draft the fourth vow, was moved for the duration to Massa Lubrense on the southern extremity of the Bay of Naples. Brother Saúl Barrales spent nine months of 1957 in the Canary Islands. (See González “Testimonios y documentos inéditos” 278 and Berry and Renner “Vows of Silence” 182.)

In light of that, interesting:

Father Jonathan Morris, formerly vice rector of the Legionary seminary in Rome, is now on sabbatical for six months or more at Old St. Patrick’s in Manhattan. (exlcbloglinks to the Old St. Patrick’s bulletin with this information.)

Yesterday, July 16, the National Catholic Register’s accountant was let go. This may have been another cost-cutting move – in the downturn the Register became a bi-weekly -- though cost-cutting was not the purpose of the acquisition of Southern Catholic College announced yesterday as well.

Such movements would provoke an important procedural question for the apostolic visitation: will the visitators interview only Legionaries and employees currently in place or will they also seek out former Legionaries, those on sabbatical, and those no longer employed? It’s not as if Father Morris can hide in lower Manhattan, but how can Bishop Versaldi, whose responsibility includes Italy, interview him if he is not in Rome? How will Archbishop Chaput, whose responsibility includes the US, interview him if he is on sabbatical from a Legionary assignment? (continue reading)