TWILIGHT ZONE

***A Walk Down Memory Lane with CTA Back in 1995 when Les Femmes was just a glint in God’s eye, the dissent group, Call to Action (CTA), began organizing in the Diocese of Arlington. At Blessed Sacrament in Alexandria, the heretics laid out brochures for Rent-a-Priest, ex-padres selling their services to witness invalid marriages, etc., and Promises, a group for women having affairs with active priests. When une femme went to the parish office to complain, the parish administrator, Fr. Steve Leva, shoved her against the wall in his office then fled from the scary woman and her friends. After Blessed Sacrament CTA moved on to Christ the Redeemer in Sterling welcomed by another dissenting pastor, Fr. Donald Howard. Pleas to the chancery were useless; Bishop Keating declined to take action. So orthodox Catholics, encouraged by several concerned priests, decided to defend the faith themselves. We were greeted warmly by CTA who had local cops on hand presumably to frighten the faithful into silence. However, when the meeting began so did questions about the heretics’ right to meet in the church. Who authorized it? Where was the pastor? Etc. The CTA leaders initiated arrests even though they weren’t from the parish. Even the police didn’t know who was in charge.

During the trial one of the most vocal CTA members talking to the press, was a faux nun, Bridget Mary Meehan, who described the defendants, all women, as “violent” because we disagreed with her. The police, on the other hand, called it a “heated argument.” But Bridget was never one to let facts get in the way of her drama. Why do we bringing this up, you ask? Because Bridget, the faux nun, who became a faux priest in 2006, just became a faux bishop courtesy of Womenpriests who “ordained” four imposter bishops on April 19 including herself. They are all excommunicated, of course. [But not in their own minds formed during the Age of Aquarius.]

***Bridget’s immersion in virtual reality began when she left religious life to join a pseudo order, the Sisters of Christian Community, a loosely-joined band of ex-nuns founded in 1970 with no structure, no vows, no community, just everyone doing her own thing. In a 1970 Time Magazine article, the “founder” Sr. Lillanna Kopp said, “We must be a pilgrim people on the road, unencumbered by luggage." [including doctrine, papal authority, connections to the Universal Church, and, apparently, brains.] Dissent ultimately led some of these silly women to where they are today: playing dress up in albs, chasubles, and stoles so they can be “Fr.” Barbie. [Hmm…what do you call a woman pretending to be a Father? Are they all ordained as monsignors to avoid the problem? Makes sense…nothing so mundane as humble Fr. Barbie for these chicks. Not to worry – they’ll all be bishops in a few years just like “Bishop” Bridget.]

***The fisherman’s wife becomes pope! Remember the fairy tale about the fisherman and his wife? One day he caught a magic fish who begged to be thrown back promising to give the man whatever he desired. The humble fisherman asked for nothing, but his nagging wife had other ideas. She kept sending him back to ask the fish for more until finally she demanded to be…POPE! [Bridget must have been the model for the fishwife.] Any minute we expect our old acquaintance, the faux nun now a faux bishop, to be seated on a faux papal throne under a crepe paper rainbow being crowned with a rhinestone tiara. [One question: Who will elect “Pope” Bridget since there are noCcardinals? And if the girls decide to make Cardinals who will ordain them? A sticky chicken and egg problem, eh? Well…at least they’ve got the chicks even if they are a bunch of old hens. Pray for Bridget and friends who are definitely going places some of which may offer a hot welcome. These poor delusional women need the fasting that drives out demons.]   

***CTA misled by men in Roman collars.  We mentioned Fr. Leva and Fr. Howard, but they are just two of the dissent-friendly priests who enabled CTA’s sad deviation from orthodoxy. Fr. Leva moved on to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Fr. Howard is still at Christ the Redeemer. St. Anthony’s in Falls Church was another popular CTA hangout, especially the Grinnell Lecture Series which often featured dissenters as guest lecturers. Sadly, priests who enable dissent draw their flocks to rejection of the truth. Bridget’s actions leading to her excommunication reflect not only her own evil choices, but the impact of enabling priests who stroked her heretical ego. Things might have been different had Bridget not been encouraged in her infidelity. Faithful, holy priests draw sinners away from the precipice both by their teaching and their sacrifice. Pray for false shepherds who lead their people down the road to destruction.

***St. Anthony’s continues to be a hotbed of liberalism, especially since Fr. Tuck Grinnell and friends founded VOICE (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement). Fr. Grinnell is now a leading community organizer for the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) following in the footsteps of Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, strange role models for a priest to imitate. [What ever happened to the Imitation of Christ?]  Basically, the purpose of VOICE is power. It organizes church communities to lobby government to fund just about everything. Specific issues mentioned on the St. Anthony Social Justice blog include immigration, housing, health care, dental care, English as a second language,  homelessness, and on and on financed by tax dollars. The blog features photos of marches and meetings, letters to politicians, and examples of putting pressure on government at every level. YouTube has videos about VOICE that feature democratic politicians like Senator Mark Warner and Fairfax County Board of Supervisor head, Sharon Bulova, promising to promote the VOICE agenda. According to parishioners at St. Anthony’s, organizations in the parish, including the Knights of Columbus, are strong-armed to send a quota of representatives to VOICE events.

***Whose watching your wallet? None of this is free, of course. The churches involved pay hefty dues to be IAF partners. Two separate sources from different parishes sent Les Femmes a list of churches involved including their IAF contributions. Keep in mind that the amounts listed are the minimum these parishes contributed since VOICE began planning: St. Joseph in Alexandria - $1,750, Our Lady Queen of Peace - $3,000, St. Charles - $5,000, Nativity of Our Lord - $2,000, Saint Mary of Sorrows - $2,500, St. Anthony - $5,000, St. John Neumann - $2,000, St. Thomas a Becket - $1,000, All Saints - $1,000, Sacred Heart in Manassas - $2,000, St. Francis of Assisi - $3,750. [Add it up; it’s a hunk of change!]  And that’s only a fraction of the churches pumping money into IAF. Add about 35 more protestant, Islamic, and Jewish groups, although the Catholic money is a significant percentage of the whole.

   The money goes to IAF to hire staff who train the local people to engage in community action. It also supports the broader IAF agenda. Now the question: when you drop your envelope in the collection basket do you expect it to be used to build a power base for leftwing politicians and socialistic programs? Christians have an obligation to feed the poor, clothe, the naked, instruct the ignorant, etc. It’s not primarily the role of government which does a poor job and spends an inordinate amount of taxpayers’ money to do it. One example: community organizers like IAF helped create the housing crisis by threatening and pressuring lenders to make affirmative action loans to people who couldn’t afford them. They are primarily power brokers.
 
***So what’s the underlying IAF agenda? Stephanie Block who writes extensively about IAF describes its hidden agenda. “To obtain a power-base that will support the organizer’s issues, the IAF must build a constituency that trusts it. Working through the churches, using sympathetic clergy, the IAF develops those relationships of trust within member congregations and dioceses….[to train] a small but committed and active group of people who will support the IAF agenda.” Their agenda is basically liberalism whether it’s promoting outcome based education (OBE), Hillary Clinton’s socialistic health-care plan, or endorsing immigration amnesty for illegals. It is all about creating the socialist Utopia here on earth. IAF invariably supports politicians who back abortion and homosexual “rights.” Nowhere in the “social justice” VOICE materials on St. Anthony’s blog is there one word about defending the weakest members of the human family, unborn children.  In fact, when VOICE held its initial public meetings, abortion was considered as an issue and the crowd booed – not surprising since abortion and homosexuality are issues promoted at a number of VOICE partner churches. Five Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregations belong to VOICE. The UU agenda includes working for same-sex marriage, increased access to abortion and contraception, fully-funded, comprehensive sex education for children, and open gays in the military. Their websites feature the rainbow flag indicating gay activism. One of the churches, Bull Run UU, sponsored a gay prom in April.

***Should Catholics join VOICE? NO! VOICE and the IAF are intrinsically socialistic. Socialism and Catholicism are polar opposites. So is unbridled capitalism. Socialism treats man as a functionary of the state; unbridled capitalism treats him as a functionary of the bosses. Both violate the social justice teachings of the Church. Centesimus Annus says, “The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modern times with ‘communism’ or ‘socialism.’ She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of ‘capitalism,’ individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor….Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.” In other words, neither the state nor the bosses own a man, and may not make him a wage slave either by confiscatory taxation or unfair pay.

***Pastors are called to be shepherds, not community organizers. What do real shepherds do when confronted by problems?  One, Fr. Jerome Magat, saw a need for health care for uninsured families in the Colonial Beach area. He didn’t run to Uncle Sam. Father started the Guadalupe Free Health Clinic for those making less than 200% of the federal poverty level. Look at the thousands of crisis pregnancy centers. many run by Catholics. A growing number are medical clinics that provide free or low cost pre-natal care or work with doctors who do, like Tepeyac Family Center in our diocese. Think of the tens of thousands of dollars contributed to IAF used instead as seed money to help low income families start small businesses: lawn-care, trash removal, housecleaning, handyman services, painting, use your imagination. Why not start co-ops and credit unions that offer an alternative to predatory lenders and make small loans available? Why is more government and higher taxes always the liberal’s answer?   Simple, the IAF is not really  about helping people, but about using people to gain power for the organizers. If the thousands of man hours VOICE spent building IAF power and lobbying government went instead into volunteering: teaching English or budgeting, offering free medical and legal services, training the poor in apprenticeship programs like plumbing, masonry, carpentry, etc. think of the impact. What the world needs is more St. John Boscos and St. Vincent de Pauls and fewer Saul Alinskys and power-brokering priests like Fr. Tuck Grinnell.

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