TWILIGHT ZONE
***Sr. Carol Keehan of CHS (Catholic Health Association) wasn’t the only Judas nun shilling for Obama’s pro-abortion, socialistic health care bill. Network the extremist nuns’ lobby group well known for dissent, penned a letter of betrayal to the Senate signed by 54 nuns (including one who signed twice) who said they represent tens of thousands of others. Their claim was disputed by USCCB spokesman Sr. Mary Ann Walsh who said, "Many of the endorsers signed on as individual teams - that's nunspeak for saying they represent only themselves, not their membership. It's a way of keeping all heck from breaking out in the convent where opposition to abortion is stronger than what Network says (or doesn't say, since it won't take a position and avoids the issue)." Les Femmes was not surprised to see one of our local liberal nuns on the list. Sr. Cecilia Dwyer, OSB, prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Virginia in Bristow signed the letter. Bristow is the crazy place where they are building a $568,800 “sacred space” including a labyrinth, 40 peace poles, two “prayer” silos (left over from the farm), and a meditation garden that looks like a mini Stonehenge. But in the spirit of anything goes, the nuns are also including stations of the cross and a shrine to Our Lady. [No doubt sister Cecilia went out and walked the labyrinth as she pondered her decision to betray the unborn and stopped for a moment of meditation at mini Stonehenge to commune with her karma.] Now the question is, will Bishop Loverde do anything to correct the Benedictines for defying the bishops and creating scandal? [One other question, why aren’t these champions of social justice not spending the half million dollars for the poor?] See the sisters’ vision here.
***Diocese Continues its Leftward Slant
The Arlington Catholic Herald continued to list left with Catholic News Service (CNS) coverage of the D.C. Immigration Rally in March. The gushing article from CNS included a quote from Cardinal Mahony endorsing the evil health care bill. “Now that a health care bill will help millions of uninsured people receive affordable medical care…it’s time for the government to address the millions of people who are living in the shadows because they lack legal immigration status.” The article was accompanied by a large picture of Fr. Jose Hoyos, director of the Spanish Apostolate who, along with Fathers Thomas Ferguson, Tuck Grinnell, Gerry Creedon, and Alexander Diaz attended the rally. How much did parishes spend on buses for this event? A friend at St. Anthony’s said they sent at least a dozen (and none to the March for Life). The parish also sported a large banner advertising the March reading “Support Immigration” -- not surprising since immigration “reform” is one of the main issues of VOICE (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement), the ACORN-type group founded by Fr. Tuck Grinnell that is affiliated with Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. According to the CNS article Bishop Loverde concelebrated the special Mass with Cardinal Mahony. President Obama sent a videotaped message of support. Apparently no one mentioned the drug wars and kidnappings involving illegals that plague legal residents on the Arizona and Texas borders or the unjust burden placed on citizens and legal immigrants of paying for all the services used by illegals.
***March for America or against America
If you want to know the real agenda behind an event look at its organizers. The so-called March for America was put together by the Center for Community Change, a leftwing group that organizes the organizers. They are pro-abortion, pro-homosexual activists. They even endorse polyamory, that is, consensual group sex. Bellarmine Veritas Ministry (BVM) documents this at their website.
So what does this have to do with their stand on immigration? BVM reports, “Our investigations into organizations such as Mobilize the Immigrant Vote and the Center for Community Change have revealed that at least part of their motive for pushing for immigration reform stems from a desire to build a radicalized progressive voting base. Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center For Community Change, stated this plainly at the ‘Progressives in the Age of Obama Forum’ on June 1st, 2009:
…[immigration reform] is also important from the perspective of building progressive power, because those twelve million undocumented immigrants, if we are successful in building a path to citizenship, will join in a larger progressive coalition on all the fights for economic and social justice that are ahead of us.
“Coupling this with uncovered evidence showing an attempt at indoctrinating immigrants into holding flawed positions on homosexuality and abortion by these organizations should give the [the bishops] good reason to reconsider any alliances, either they or their grantees hold, with such groups.”
Community organizers are all about power. Illegal immigrants are nothing but pawns in their power game. As for immigration “reform” it starts with securing the borders. And that’s not what any of these groups want.
***Jesus’ Crucifixion was “Senseless?” The May 13-19 issue of The Herald carried a Catholic News Service (CNS) article on the funeral of Yeardley Love, the UVA lacrosse player murdered in May, apparently by her boyfriend. The funeral was held at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore with Fr. Joseph Breighner officiating. According to CNS Fr. Breighner’s homily included this shocker (if CNS reported accurately). “Two thousand years ago, a young Jewish rabbi named Jesus died a senseless, violent death. All he did and preached was about love.” Ah yes, the portrait of Jesus as Pillsbury Doughboy with his soft mush-love. Where did this priest receive his theological training? Does he really believe that Jesus’ death on the cross was “senseless?” Why then did Jesus call Peter “Satan” for trying to dissuade him from it? And if the sacrifice on the cross is “senseless,” doesn’t it follow logically that its reenactment at the Mass must be senseless also? If Fr. Breighner had written this nonsense in a book, as others have before him, his writing could be condemned as heretical.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches the polar opposite of Fr. Breighner’s words. “The Paschal mystery of Christ’s cross and Resurrection stands at the center of the Good News that the apostles, and the Church following them, are to proclaim to the world. God’s saving plan was accomplished ‘once for all’ by the redemptive death of his Son Jesus Christ….Jesus’ violent death was not the result of chance in an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances, but is part of the mystery of God’s plan….The Scriptures had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of ‘the righteous one, my Servant’ as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free men from the slavery of sin.” (CCC 571, 599, 601) Yeardley Love’s death was indeed senseless. Jesus death made all the sense in and for the world.
***The Catholic Health Care Crisis: More and more stories are coming out that indicate Catholic Health Care is in moral meltdown. Sr. Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, betrayed both unborn babies and the elderly who will suffer most under Obama’s socialized and rationed health care, but she’s just the tip of the iceberg. Several recent stories about Catholic hospitals illustrate the problem. In February Bishop Robert Vasa of the Diocese of Baker, OR, ended the Church’s relationship with the largest hospital in the area, St. Charles Medical Center, which performs tubal ligations (no doubt vasectomies as well). The bishop said, “It is my responsibility to ensure the hospital is following Catholic principles both in name and in fact. It would be misleading for me to allow St. Charles Bend to be acknowledged as Catholic in name while I am certain that some important tenets of the Ethical and Religious Directives are no longer being observed.”
LifeSiteNews (LSN) reported in May that a Phoenix Catholic hospital approved the abortion of an 11-week- baby because the mother had a serious health condition. According to LSN “Bishop Thomas Olmstead said in a statement provided to the [Arizona] Republic that he was ‘gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese,’ and furthermore said he was appalled by the hospital’s twisted reasoning that justified the direct abortion by reducing the unborn child to a disease. ‘An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means,’ the prelate said. Olmsted made clear that McBride and all Catholics who had ‘formal cooperation’ in the woman’s abortion of her child, were automatically excommunicated from the Church. ‘The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty,’ Olmsted declared.”
The hospital continued to defend its decision following the bishop’s statement, but neonatologist, Dr. Paul Byrne, said he knows of no medical condition that would require an abortion to save the mother’s life. LSN reported that, “Byrne emphasized that the unborn child at 11 weeks gestation would have a negligible impact on the woman’s cardiovascular system. He said that pregnancy in the first and second trimesters would not expose a woman with even severe pulmonary hypertension – which puts stress on the heart and the lungs – to any serious danger.”
Violating Church doctrine at Catholic hospitals is becoming more common often with the aid of false shepherds. In 2003 the New York Catholic Conference which includes eight dioceses in the state approved so-called “emergency contraception” for Catholic hospitals to prescribe for rape victims . The term is a euphemism for the morning after pill (MAP) which is an abortifacient. The Connecticut and Wisconsin bishops followed suit in 2007 in the face of state laws mandating the availability of the drug after rape. The Connecticut bishops justified their decision claiming the mechanism of MAP is unknown, a ridiculous assertion since even MAP’s manufacturer admits its abortifacient nature. Msgr. William Smith, a Catholic moral theologian (now deceased) had this to say about abortifacient drugs. "It's wrong to say you can use anything that has abortifacient properties. Emergency contraception is double talk…. Catholic hospitals are not free to prescribe or provide anything with abortifacient properties without contradicting their witness."
***Semantics and the Death Dealers: Speaking of Msgr. Smith, he had an aphorism: Social engineering is always preceded by verbal engineering. The battle over early abortion proves he was right. In 1959 Dr. Bent Boving recommended that the word conception be defined as implantation rather than the traditional understanding of conception as the union of health care workers and the public. They include Archishops John Naumann of Kansas City, KS, and Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, MO. The two bishops issued a joint statement emphasizing the Catholic principle of subsidiarity and warning that the current plan “would diminish the protection of human life and dignity and shift our health care costs and delivery to a centralized government bureaucracy. Centralization carries the risk of a loss of personal responsibility, reduction in personalized care for the sick and an expanded bureaucracy that in the end leads to higher costs.” Well said! Thank you, Your Excellencies.
***Final word on Kennedy’s hypocrisy: Readers may remember that when Kerry left the Senate in 2004 to run for president, Massachusetts had a Republican governor. To prevent him from naming a Republican to finish out Kerry’s term, the legislature voted to require a special election within five months to fill the seat with no interim replacement. Now, however, with a Democratic governor, Kennedy asked that the legislature reverse itself by passing a new law to let the governor fill his seat immediately. Are we surprised? Just change the rules every election to favor liberals. For Kennedy it was pure, partisan, political game-playing to the end! Some things never change. [Hmmm….How do politics play at the pearly gates we wonder?]