Madagascar bishops slam CRS over contraception support August 2, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in Abortion, Basics, contraception, Dallas Diocese, disaster, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, sadness, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sickness, Society.comments closed
I wrote last week about reports from Madagascar that Catholic Relief Services (CRS) – the US bishop’s official overseas charity – was directly involved in the commission of grave moral evil, including the distribution of artificial contraception and abortifacient drugs. This week, the Population Research Institute has more information out, including statements from Madagascar bishops condemning CRS’s amoral activity in their country. These bishops also make plain that CRS is committing these amoral acts at the behest of the disastrously pro-contracept and pro-abort US Agency for International Development, which provides over 2/3 of CRS’ funding.
It certainly appears that CRS is yet another USCCB charity, like CCHD, that needs to be disbanded:
Even in my own diocese! Without my knowledge … they [CRS] were working on an artificial contraception project here … And, then, the Catholic people around here heard about it and said: “What’s that all about? That’s supposed to be ‘Catholic’??” So, there you have it: They [CRS] were following the instructions of USAID …
I’m not sure why, and I don’t want to exaggerate, but maybe 70% of its staff, or even more – is not Catholic; they’re not Catholic … I do understand that about CRS’s commitments to the U.S. Government … but, the question that remains is: Why are there so few Catholics on CRS’s staff … that I don’t understand so well … Archbishop Désiré Tsarahazana of Toamasina (Tamatave)
Well, one thing for sure, you can go into the most remote, middle-of-nowhere place now and you’ll find it well stocked with abortifacient products. And, you know, they [the community health workers under CRS] are giving the shots (depo provera) now!” Fr. Jean Jagu, Vicar at SMM Church in Brickaville
The problem here in Madagascar is that CRS is staffed by Protestants.” Fr. Jean Aimé, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Toamasina [IF they are even that.]
“You know, CRS works outside of the Church. It has the name ‘Catholic’ Relief Services but [laughing] doesn’t work, really, with Catholics. Even the personnel of CRS are nearly all Protestant.” Father Jean Noël , Head of Bureau de Coordination des Actions Sociales, archdiocese of Antananarivo
The archbishop recently told one parish not to bother applying to CRS for aid, because it wouldn’t work, and if it did, the reporting/accounting procedures would be impossible for the parish to fulfill. He directed the parish to BUCAS [Bureau de Coordination des Actions Sociales] instead.” Fr. Jean Noël Rakotondrazafy
The article goes on to say that the Madagascar bishops tried to voice their concerns to CRS, but that their concerns were ignored. CRS continues to claim that they are acting completely in accord with Catholic belief and practice, although it appears the bishops and clergy of Madagascar vehemently disagree.
Another note: this scandal with CRS is playing out almost identically to one several years ago involving the Canadian bishop’s “Development and Peace” agency, which was sort of like a cross between CRS and an overseas CCHD. Life Site News presented huge reams of data for years showing that D&P was complicit in funding and committing gravely immoral acts, and also included numerous statements from Central American bishops decrying these immoral activities. The Canadian bishops, finally, after years of fervent denials, did reform D&P, at least to some degree. The agency is no longer so blatantly pro-contracept and pro-abort. Nevertheless, through it all and even today, the Canadian bishop’s conference treated Life Site News as pariahs, and have engaged in some harsh tactics against them.
Those who upset established interests, especially liberal interests, tend to have a rough ride. Shooting the messenger is a popular sport.
IRS still persecuting pro-life groups August 2, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in Abortion, contraception, disaster, error, General Catholic, persecution, sadness, scandals, secularism, sickness, Society.comments closed
And this persecution has continued for months after the original on IRS politcally-motivated harassment broke. What I find particularly interesting in this latest revelation is that the IRS seems determined especially to deny pro-life groups tax-exempt status, and that they are even demanding pro-life groups provide “other viewpoints” in their works. One must thus assume the IRS is demanding pro-life groups provide some kind of pro-abort viewpoint in their work! If we remember that nothing is more sacrosanct to the democrat party than abortion, this special persecution makes sense. Historically, democrats have shown they are willing to compromise on virtually any matter before they will budge on abortion.
The report:
The Internal Revenue Service continues to target pro-life conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status despite pending investigations into the IRS targeting scandal, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller.
The IRS’ infamous Cincinnati office, which handles applications
from groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status, badgered pro-life groups for information on their protesting activities as recently as late June 2013, well after IRS investigations began on the floor of the House of Representatives and elsewhere.
“We’ve had three more groups come to us that have had problems with the IRS — some very recent, some current or still pending. One of them just got their determination letter,” Peter Breen, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, which represents pro-life groups targeted by the IRS, told The Daily Caller. “It’s continuing, and it needs to be addressed.”
Cherish Life Ministries in Virginia, the LIFE Group in Missouri, and the Emerald Coast Coalition for Life in Florida were all recently targeted by the IRS.
“This supplemental memorandum addresses three (3) new matters which provide further evidence of illegal, unconstitutional, viewpoint-based IRS harassment of pro-life organizations. These new cases also illustrate that harassment has been continuing through the present date,” reads an August 1 memo the Thomas More Society provided to the House Ways and Means Committee at the request of Republican Rep. Aaron Schock of Illinois.
Cherish Life Ministries and LIFE Group were both targeted by the same Cincinnati-based IRS agent, “Mrs. R. Medley,” and both received initial denials of their tax-exempt status with identical wording on April 8, 2013. Both groups were asked by the IRS whether they would “provide alternatives to the pro-life viewpoint,” according to the memo. [So, pro-life groups have to fatally undermine their own efforts by providing a pro-abort viewpoint in order to get tax-exempt status?]
Cherish Life Ministries finally received its tax exemption letter last Friday, on July 26, 2013. The letter was dated June 26, 2013. The group initially applied for tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status on March 14, 2012. [I would imagine there is a law requiring this notice of approval to be given within 30 days of the decision being made, and the IRS waited to the last possible second]
“After we got involved and laid out the governing law, we finally just got a letter for them last week. It was stamped a month earlier,” Breen said.
This country is beyond fried. This stuff makes Nixon look like a saint.
Can you imagine the outcry in the media, if this were a Republican president, and the IRS under his administration were targetting those left-wing Saul Alinsky-type community organizing groups? It’d be the greatest scandal in the history of ever. But since Obama is their ideological lord and savior, all we get is crickets.
Quick Post – the inherent futility of ecumenism with protestants August 2, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, Ecumenism, error, foolishness, General Catholic, pr stunts, scandals, secularism, Tradition.comments closed
Just a quick post, which may be dumb, but when I did the post immediately below regarding the Orthodox Church having increasing influence in Russia, their statements damning the direction of Western culture, etc., the through struck me that, for numerous reasons, the Church’s ecumenical efforts, to the extent they should exist at all, should really be focused on the Orthodox. I know there are hugely intractable problems there (dealing with the pride of many in the Orthodox hierarchy being chief among those), but on so many levels, helping to bring the Orthodox back into the fold would be just incredibly advantageous. The Orthodox are still, at least, a valid Church. They have valid Sacraments and valid apostolic succession (for the most part, I’m not entirely versed in all the details). But, more than anything, there is much more homogeneity in the beliefs and practices of the various Orthodox sects than there is in the protestant.
Which gets to my point – in engaging in ecumenism in protestants, progress in one area almost invariably causes regression with ecumenical efforts with either the Orthodox, or with other sects. When the “great success” of the very confusing, muddled, and antagonistic-to-Tradition statement on justification was hammered out with the Lutherans, that did not please the Orthodox at all, as this statement seemed to undermine to some extent the Catholic/Orthodox view of justification. When the Church seeks an agreement with the Anglicans on the Eucharist, any definition there is sure to offend evangelicals. A statement on predestination with Lutherans or others would antagonize Calvinists.
The point being, the thousands of protestant sects, which started proliferating within a few years of Luther’s initial revolt, all hold disparate, often antagonistic beliefs. Ecumenism with protestants, thus, is doomed before the Church even starts, because by pleasing one sect in arriving at some, often contrived, statement of “shared belief,” ecumenical efforts with other sects will be set back as much, if not more, than the perceived “gains” in unity made with the first. And, further, the Orthodox will be pretty much aggrieved by any statement hammered out with protestants, who they view as radically heretical.
As a former protestant, I recognize great wisdom and necessity in the Church’s traditional, but according to some modernists “outdated,” ecumenism of return. That means, the Church’s efforts at ecumenism shouldn’t be oriented towards seeing the protestant sects as something permanent whose beliefs must be somehow accomodated, but as temporary bodies of heretical individuals that need to submit to the Magisterial beliefs and the Pope. That was the “ecumenism” practiced by the Church for 1000 years or more. And I see little in the present-day ecumenical movement that isn’t either counterproductive, frequently indifferentist, or both.
There, so much for a short post!
I never thought I’d live to see the day….. August 2, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, awesomeness, Basics, Christendom, disaster, Ecumenism, error, General Catholic, history, persecution, secularism, sexual depravity, Society, true leadership.comments closed
…….that the President of Russia was positioning himself as the champion of Christendom! There are certainly reasons to question Vladimir Putin’s motivations here (for instance, geo-politics and support for Russia’s remaining client states, like Syria), and of course the Orthodox Church is not the One, True Church, but at the same time, I’ve got to say, I’m glad at least one world leader of note is willing to speak like this. It’s refreshing, to say the least. How different from our own political leaders! It is amazing, but perhaps inevitable, that US is now a state that actively persecutes Christians (but it did so, at least against Catholics, all along), while Russia, having come through the nightmare of ultimate liberalism in communism, is now finding its soul again (my comments):
Vladimir Putin has urged the world’s political leaders to stop the violent persecutions against Christians that have erupted in many Middle Eastern countries.
Speaking at a meeting with Orthodox Christian leaders in Moscow last week, the Russian President said he noted “with alarm” that “in many of the world’s regions, especially in the Middle East and in North Africa inter-confessional tensions are mounting, and the rights of religious minorities are infringed, including Christians and Orthodox Christians.”
Putin praised the growth of cooperation between the Orthodox Churches and the Russian state, saying, “We act as genuine partners and colleagues to solve the most pressing domestic and international tasks, to implement joint initiatives for the benefit of our country and people.” [Can you imagine Barack Obama saying such, at least with honesty? He says many incredible things, but almost all of them are either outright lies, or severe distortions of reality]
The Russian Federation recently passed legislation making it illegal to promote homosexuality as normal, a move that, while condemned by many European leaders, was strongly supported by the Orthodox Church. [Moldova and Lithuania (which is Catholic) have adopted similar legislation, and the Ukraine and Hungary and considering it. Again, the former communist states, having seen what misery unconstrained sexular paganism leads to, are now re-embracing Christianity. Even more importantly, that Christianity is guiding public policy. What a radical concept!]
Putin added Thursday that the Church was giving Russians a moral compass when so many were looking for help. “Today when people are once again searching for moral support, millions of our compatriots see it in religion,” he said. “They trust the wise, pastoral word of the Russian Orthodox Church.”
He added that it was the Church that was ultimately responsible for the development and rise of “culture and education” in Russia over the last 1,000 years. “The adoption of Christianity became a turning point in the fate of our fatherland, made it an inseparable part of the Christian civilization and helped it turn into one of the largest world powers,” Putin said.
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, said at the same meeting that the attempts to push Christians out of Syria would lead to a “civilization catastrophe.” Kirill and other Orthodox leaders have been critical of the lack of response to the crisis facing Christians in the Middle East by US and other Western leaders………
……..Metropolitan Hilarion, the Russian Orthodox Church’s chief ecumenical officer, said “secularization in disguise of democratization” is leading Western nations toward totalitarianism. [Boy, I think he got that right. But it is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black] He spoke of a “powerful energy today [that] strives to finally break with Christianity, which controlled its totalitarian impulses during 17 centuries.”…. [All of the most totalitarian states ever seen have been profoundly atheistic and hostile to Christianity]
…..He highlighted the attempt to create same-sex “marriage” in France, which he called an attempt to make “immorality normal,” saying, that the French government has “consciously and demonstratively ignored demands of people and used tear gas to disperse them.”……
……Patriarch Kirill said of the same-sex “marriage” fad sweeping the Western world, “This is a very dangerous apocalyptic symptom, and we must do everything so that sin is never validated by the laws of the state in the lands of Holy Rus, because this would mean that the people are starting on the path of self-destruction.” [Such clarity. That is exactly right. Perhaps the Russian Orthodox Church, having been brutally persecuted under 70 years of communist rule, learned a thing or two about cooperation with evil, about what leads to civilizational disaster.]
Today, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, blasted the Russian government for its law banning gay propaganda, calling it “hateful.”
Baird said that the Canadian delegation was among those governments that tried to dissuade the Russian leadership not to adopt the law that outlaws all attempts to normalize homosexuality or other forms of non-traditional sexuality, especially to children.
“This mean-spirited and hateful law will affect all Russians 365 days of the year, every year. It is an incitement to intolerance, which breeds hate. And intolerance and hate breed violence,” Baird told the Canadian Press today. [Ah, but what of the violence of the liberal democratic state? Abortion, euthanasia, total warfare – there ain’t no violence like liberal democratic violence!]
Our Lady at Fatima said that if Russia were not formally conserated to Her Immaculate Heart, the “errors” of Russia would spread around the world and cause massive calamity, even (or especially) in the Church. Many souls feel that consecration has never been properly done. But it looks for all the world that Russia did export her errors (after importing them from the West), and that those errors have overcome the historical Latin Christendom. And now the Greek/Eastern Christendom seems increasingly to reject some of those errors, at least officially.
What a strange system of trade – anti-Christian liberal views developed in the West to destroy the primacy of the Church in civil life are exported to the East and reach their ultimate realization (communism) there for the first time, and then that communism is re-exported back out to the West, which really begins to embrace that radical socialism/statism after it has collapsed in the former Soviet Union! It sure looks like Our Lady’s prohpecy has been fulfilled, does it not?
My favorite Fatima picture – we have one in our house!
Fantastic Eucharistic miracle last week in Guadalajara? August 2, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, Eucharist, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, Interior Life, sanctity, Victory.comments closed
I used to go to Guadalajara regularly on business. Over a period of a year and a half I went there at least 5 times. I liked Guadalajara, even though I was in pretty bad shape at least part of that time. On I think my last trip there, my wife called me frantically telling me she was in labor! By the time she called me it was too late to get back to Dallas. So, I left early the next morning. It turns out my wife did not have our daughter Elena for another two weeks.
But, enough of the personal matters, there is great excitement in Mexico right now over what appears to be a fantastic Eucharistic miracle. This event has occurred in Guadalajara in Jalisco state – the state in Mexico that has produced more Saints than any other country or state in the entire western hemisphere. I just learned about Saint Sabas Reyes Salazar last night! This miracle is heavily documented, with several videos showing the Host seeming to “leak” red liquid that looks like blood. While our faith in the Eucharist should never depend on such miracles, and getting too heavily focused on experiencing one personally can really distort one’s interior life, this could be – could be – an immense, moving sign of God’s reality to a cold, faithless world:
If you look closely at the monstrance, it even appears that some Blood – if it is that – has leaked out and is running down the front. The priest even wipes some away @ 1:20.
The story:
A Mexican priest is claiming that, after hearing the voice of God, the host which he had just consecrated began to bleed. The bloody host was available for adoration for some time, at which point the Archbishop ordered the Host to be reposed until further investigation…….
…..It was 12:00 on the date when the pastor was making his daily prayer before the Blessed Sacrament when suddenly saw a flash and heard a voice 
that instructed him:
“Chime the bells to summon everyone, pour out blessings to those who are present, and all day. Take your small tabernacle from private worship and bring it to the altar of the parish, place the largest monstrance next to it, and do not open the Tabernacle until three in the afternoon, no sooner, when I will perform a miracle in the Eucharist. The miracle to take place will be called the “Miracle of the Eucharist in the Incarnation of Love Joined With Our Mother and Queen,’ you will take the sign of which I speak, and you will display it.”
Afterward, “the voice” told him to tell “the apostles” (the priests) to help all souls in their conversion and fill them with blessings.
Father Lolo–as his parishioners know him–said he could not utter a word to that voice that spoke except, “My Lord, am thy servant, I will do thy will.”
His voice breaking with emotion that he could not conceal, the priest continued narrating what happened:
“I did as I was ordered, I asked them to open the doors of the church, it was about half past two, and I said to sound the bells as I was told. I took from my small private chapel this humble wooden tabernacle, I put it on the altar, also got the monstrance as I was ordered and at about three in the afternoon people were gathered in prayer to the Blessed Sacrament. When I asked if it was already three in the afternoon and everyone told me yes, I went to open the tabernacle, and the wafer consecrated through our Lord Jesus Christ was bathed in blood.”
The father explained that what Jesus wants is to worship his body and blood bound to His Blessed Mother and that every July 24 we will remember the Eucharistic Miracle of the Incarnation of Love Joined with Our Mother and Lady.
——————–End Quote————————–
The Archbishop has apparently ordered the Host removed from view and it is undergoing study. I guess we will know more later.
Will we have a new Eucharistic Feast one day?
I will let you know if I find any further information.
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