Sunday, November 29, 2009

Europe Grows A Backbone (Finally)

Interesting vote projection out of Switzerland, here's some of it; (Emphasis and comments mine.)

Projection: Swiss vote to ban new minarets
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS (AP)

GENEVA — Swiss voters approved a move to ban the construction of minarets in a Sunday vote on a right-wing initiative that labeled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a widely respected polling institute showed.

The projections based on partial returns say Swiss swung from only 37 percent supporting the proposal a week ago to 59 percent in the actual voting.

Claude Longchamp, leader of the widely respected gfs.bern polling institute, said the projection contracted by state-owned DRS television forecasts approval of the initiative by more than half the country's 26 cantons, meaning it will become a constitutional amendment.

The nationalist Swiss People's Party describes minarets, the distinctive spires used in most countries for calls to prayer, as symbols of rising Muslim political and religious power that could eventually turn Switzerland into an Islamic nation.

"Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure — we don't have that in Switzerland, and we do not want to introduce it" said Ulrich Schlueer, co-president of the Initiative Committee to ban minarets.

The move by the People's Party, the country's largest party in terms of popular support and membership in parliament, is part of a broader European backlash against a growing Muslim population. It has stirred fears of violent reactions in Muslim countries and an economically disastrous boycott by wealthy Muslims who bank, shop and vacation in Switzerland. (Switerland did just fine for centuries without "wealthy moslems" to prop-up their economy. Can't they still?)

Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Zurich, said, "The initiators have achieved something everyone wanted to prevent, and that is to influence and change the relations to Muslims and their social integration in a negative way."
Hatipoglu said if in the long term the anti-Islam atmosphere continues, "Muslims indeed will not feel safe anymore." (Simply due to no more minarettes? Tough shit. Haul ass.)

The seven-member Cabinet that heads the Swiss government has spoken out strongly against the initiative, and local officials and rights defenders objected to campaign posters showing minarets rising like missiles from the Swiss flag next to a fully veiled woman. (Of course.)

When the vote becomes official, I'll post the results.
posted by Vir Speluncae Catholicus

So SAD: (Sorrowful And Destructive)

40 years of Missale Romanum and the new Roman Rite



Forty years ago today, the First Sunday of Advent, one of the weakest Popes in Church history, Paul VI, mandated the Novus Ordo Missae (New Order of Mass) in the Roman Rite. After almost 1,500 years of the Traditional Latin Mass, the same Mass that had conquered entire continents for Christ and had lifted thousands of men and women to the altar as saints, Pope Paul saddled us with this.

What was the reaction of the Roman Catholic world, who had never asked for a change in their Mass in the first place? Millions left the Church, vocations hit rock bottom, and belief in almost every Catholic doctrine, most especially the Eucharist, hit (and remains at) an all time low. Well done!

There are many (especially amongst my friends) who will defend the novelty of the New Mass to the day they die. I, on the other hand, look at the destruction it left in its wake, and wonder….how did we ever allow this to happen?

Martin Luther, wherever he may be, is still laughing.
_________________________________________________________________
40 years of Missale Romanum and the new Roman Rite - II: a Requiem, by Paul VI

On the First Sunday of Advent (November 30), 1969, the New Missal entered into force officially (it would take a few years before it was to be completely phased in worldwide).

In his words in the General Audience which immediately preceded that date, Pope Paul VI was clear:
We may notice that pious persons will be the ones most disturbed, because, having their respectable way of listening to Mass, they will feel distracted from their customary thoughts and forced to follow those of others.
...
Not Latin, but the spoken language, will be the main language of the Mass. To those who know the beauty, the power, the expressive sacrality of Latin, its replacement by the vulgar language is a great sacrifice: we lose the discourse of the Christian centuries, we become almost intruders and desecrators [intrusi e profani] in the literary space of sacred expression, and we will thus lose a great portion of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual fact that is the Gregorian Chant. We will thus have, indeed, reason for being sad, and almost for feeling lost: with what will we replace this angelic language? It is a sacrifice of inestimable price.
posted by PreVat2

Saturday, November 28, 2009

The Democratic "Change" they promised the American People?

What happened to Obama's pledge of "No more politics as usual" and complete disclosure, openness, and accountability? 2000 pages in a bill is openness?
Over 2000 pages in a bill, is called HIDING THE TRUTH!


A little more info on how Senators and Democraps vote, and why, with the phony "Change" slogan, that they had gotten the voters to fall for!

Smokes-for-votes?
Pay-To-Play?
Is this the CHANGE Americans voted for?
In a landmark vote to bring government-run health care legislation to debate, Senators Mary Landrieu (La.) and Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) sold out the people they were elected to represent in exchange for what?

Sen. Landrieu got park barrel spending – that’s right $100 million worth of it for Louisiana. What’s even worse is she was brazen enough to brag about what she got in exchange for voting against the people of Louisiana!

Sen. Lincoln represents a state where 54% of the people are opposed to the proposed health care legislation and still she voted with her liberal party leaders over the wishes of Arkansans.

What’s even more frightening is what they voted FOR: a requirement that EVERY American buy a government-designed insurance plan, even if it’s more expensive than what they are paying today.

In addition to losing your right to choose your plan, if you don’t do what the government says, a family of four will face a fine of up to $6,750!!

Sincerely,
American Future Fund Political Action

Friday, November 27, 2009

Don't just sit there, pick up your telephone, and call your Senators, and Representatives

The Liberals are the most danger to the American people, particularly since they have control of Both houses and the Presidency.
Nothing is sacred to them. they (as the Russians
did), are looking to destroy the Family, and take control of your children, just as the Nazi's did with their youth programs. We have always been a
unique country in this world, not a dictatorship,not communist, but free citizens of the worlds greatest nation. Obuma, and Pewlousy, and Dingy Harry, are looking to take that away from you, any way they can. The Democraps have to be taken out of power, and it is not too late yet.
The American "Silent Majority" must continue to speak out, and vote out the Liberals now, while we still have a free vote, although judging from the actions of ACORN, and their involvement with the elections, it is going to be harder and harder for us to acchieve that. This is not a game, this is your lives and the lives of your children, and you had better stand up and be counted while you can.
Telephone your Congressmen, and Senators, even if you believe they will not answer you or take heed of your voices, when you vote them out of office, believe me, ALL OF THE LIBERALS WILL HEAR YOUR VOICES! Speak up now, later you may not be able to.
JMHO
Itzik

First step in taking charge of your children, over your objections!

On the 20th Anniversary of the Child Rights Convention, US Pressured to Ratify
By Samantha Singson


(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Last week in New York, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) with the release of a special report on the impact of the treaty. While many used the anniversary to celebrate the CRC, some expressed concern about the growing pressure on the United States to ratify the treaty, saying that the treaty’s rights-based emphasis touted by UNICEF is fundamentally flawed.

UNICEF's special edition State of the World's Children entitled "Celebrating 20 Years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child" highlights developments made in the child rights arena. The UNICEF report described the CRC as "not only a historic document" but "a moral compass" that guides people all over the world. The report boasts that the CRC "has already altered the landscape of children's rights" but that it is still far from being realized.

The report uses anecdotal evidence from CRC proponents to detail the "success" of the convention in the last two decades. According to UNICEF, the CRC has resulted "in the increased usage of 'child rights' language in the vernacular of national and international legal documents, policies, programs and advocacy."

While the UNICEF report returns to a focus on child survival, the report builds on the "rights-based approach" first espoused in the 1990s. According to the UNICEF report, "Under the Convention, children are rights holders rather than objects of charity. Fulfilling these rights is no longer an option for States parties but an obligation that governments have pledged to meet."

Calls for United States (US) ratification from United Nations (UN) officials and international child rights advocacy groups have significantly increased over this anniversary year and especially since Barack Obama was elected President. The Obama administration has expressed its support of US ratification. During the US election campaign, candidate Obama expressed dismay that the United States was only one of two countries which are not party to the treaty. Earlier this year, US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice was reported as saying that the US was considering "when and how it might be possible to join" the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Conservative groups in the United States, however, point to concerns regarding the 'rights-based approach' and highlight problems with the CRC monitoring mechanism. They assert that children should not be totally autonomous rights bearers completely separate from their parents. Opponents are concerned that US ratification of the CRC will erode parental rights and sovereignty.

Critics point out that while the UNICEF report contains a lot of anecdotal evidence regarding the positive effects of the treaty, it is nearly silent on the work of the CRC committee, the body charged with monitoring state compliance with the treaty and consisting of 18 "experts" in child rights.

The report claims that the Convention "sets out common standards" yet leaves room for State parties of finding their "own way of implementing the treaty." Over the years, the CRC committee has chastised countries for allowing corporal punishment, mandated governments to increase state-sponsored day care, pushed recognition of a child's right to privacy "especially in the family," and pushed for adolescent family planning and reproductive health and sex education programs, despite possible parental objections.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Call Your Senator Today!

Dear CatholicVoteAction.org Member,

The stage has been set.

On Monday, the Senate will begin debate on their version of health care “reform.”

The Bishops Conference have called the Senate bill an “enormous disappointment” and “completely unacceptable,” and have urged every Catholic and conscientious citizen to speak out.

Call your Senator at 202-224-3121. Send them on Thanksgiving break with a message: “NO taxpayer funding for abortion!”

Second, consider chipping in $20 to help us with our campaign.
https://www.catholicvoteaction.org/donations.php

Here is what we are facing…

The Senate legislation provides federal funding (taxpayer dollars!) for insurance plans that cover abortion. The plan also includes a mandatory “abortion surcharge” that would force pro-life people like you and me to pay for other people’s abortions.

Moreover, if the current legislation is approved, the Catholic Church and other religious institutions could be forced to provide contraceptives and cover other morally unacceptable treatments for its employees.

The bill also does not provide any protections for the elderly and those with special needs.

Abortion, euthanasia, rationing, threats to conscience and privacy… what are we to do?

Behind the long list of moral problems with the current Senate legislation, a fundamental question remains -- is a massive government takeover of health care the right solution to begin with?

Our view is that an entirely new approach is needed. And one that involves the ‘S word’ – subsidiarity.

Subsidi – say what?

Subsidiarity. Archbishop Naumann and Bishop Finn explained it best in their joint pastoral letter:

“Subsidiarity is that principle by which we respect the inherent dignity and freedom of the individual by never doing for others what they can do for themselves and thus enabling individuals to have the most possible discretion in the affairs of their lives.”
Practically speaking, this means that any health care solution should not begin by asking how government (the largest and most centralized organization) can be the big solution provider.
Why not focus instead on solutions that respect the freedom and dignity of people, encourage competition, and enable consumers to help drive down costs? These are achievable goals. But they require a people-first mentality rather than a government-first mindset.

This is why we are now mobilizing the entire CatholicVoteAction network (nearly 500,000 people!) to stop this legislation.

There will be four weeks of intense debate on the Senate legislation with a possible final showdown right before Christmas.


The Time to Act
The issue of abortion funding, the ‘public option’ or the government insurance plan, rights of conscience, and other important issues will be debated. It is CRITICAL that every person who receives this email do something.

Call your Senator, write them a letter, pen an editorial, or visit their local office. Be respectful and courteous, but firmly tell them that you are opposed to any government funding of abortion, no compromises, period.

Second, urge them to rethink this plan altogether. Tell them there are better ways to truly reform health care. And in case they haven’t noticed the recent polls, a majority of Americans agree with us!

Finally, make sure to get your friends and family involved in this important fight. When you see them over Thanksgiving, ask them if they've ever heard of ‘subsidiarity.’ And tell them to call their Senator to oppose any government funding of abortion and any takeover of the healthcare industry.

Let’s work together to urge Congress to seek real reforms that will truly heal our health care ills.

Sincerely,

Brian Burch, President
CatholicVoteAction.org

Monday, November 23, 2009

Here is the Thanksgiving Proclamation by our First President

This is the text of George Washington's October 3, 1789 national Thanksgiving Proclamation; as printed in The Providence Gazette and Country Journal, on October 17, 1789.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.


Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."



Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.



And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.



Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.



G. Washington.


From: newsletter@wallbuilders.com

Happy Thanks Giving, Thank you Almighty God

The tradition of Thanksgiving as a time to focus on God and thank Him for His blessings dates back almost four centuries in America. Colonists held Thanksgiving services in Texas in 1541, in Florida in 1565, and in Virginia in 1607 and 1619, but it is from the Pilgrims that we derive the current tradition of a Thanksgiving that includes prayers to God, a meal with friends, and a time of athletic competition.

The Pilgrims arrived in America in December 1620 and experienced a harsh winter of extreme hunger and starvation in which half of them died. The following summer, the Pilgrims reaped a bountiful harvest. As Pilgrim Edward Winslow (who later became their governor) affirmed, "God be praised, we had a good increase of corn. . . . [and] by the goodness of God, we are far from want."

The grateful Pilgrims therefore declared a three-day feast in December 1621 to thank God and to celebrate with their friends. Ninety Wampanoag Indians joined the fifty Pilgrims for three days of food (which included shellfish, lobsters, turkey, corn bread, berries, deer, and other foods), of athletic games (the young Pilgrim and Wampanoag men engaged in races, wrestling matches, and other athletic events), and of prayer. This celebration – America's first Thanksgiving Festival – was the origin of the holiday that Americans now celebrate each November.The first national Thanksgiving was proclaimed in 1789 by President George Washington, but after Washington, national Thanksgiving proclamations were sporadic; most official Thanksgiving observances occurred at the state level. In fact, by 1815, state governments had issued no less than 1,400 official prayer proclamations, almost half of which were for days of thanksgiving and prayer.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey's Lady's Book (a popular lady's books containing poetry, art work, and articles by America's leading authors) began to lobby for a national Day of Thanksgiving. For nearly three decades, she contacted president after president unt il Abraham Lincoln responded in 1863 by setting aside the last Thursday of that November.

Over the next seventy-five years, presidents faithfully followed Lincoln's precedent, annually declaring a national Thanksgiving Day, but the date of the celebrations varied widely from proclamation to proclamation. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt celebrated Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November and maintained that date year by year throughout his presidency. In 1941, Congress permanently established the fourth Thursday in November as the national Thanksgiving holiday.

As you celebrate Thanksgiving this year, there are several ways in which you can enhance the celebration of America's oldest holiday:



Review the full HISTORY OF THANKSGIVING and share that history with others.


View ORIGINAL THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATIONS. We have posted a number of famous Thanksgiving Proclamations, including the first national Thanksgiving Proclamation by President George Washington in 1789, the 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln that started the modern Thanksgiving tradition, the 1933 Thanksgiving Proclamation of President Roosevelt that established the tradition, and a number of Thanksgiving Proclamations by Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration or Constitution.
Read a famous THANKSGIVING SERMON – the notable sermon preached by the Rev. Thomas Baldwin of Boston in response to President George Washington's 1795 Thanksgiving Proclamation.

Have a blessed and God-filled Thanksgiving!

David Barton






To sign up on the WallBuilders email list and receive future information about historical issues and Biblical values in the culture, visit http://www.wallbuilders.com/.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

THIS IS WORTH READING

by Pam Geller
I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied history all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes, these exist but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about 10 - 15 years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codified into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people whom we know could never pay back? Why? We learned recently that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September.
Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "We the People," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?
We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?). We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)
Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why

He did it with a compliant media - Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and .... change.

And the people surely got what they voted for.(Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and
called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

Don't forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe.
It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years - a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency - it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong, close my eyes, have another latte and ignore what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me; others laugh or think I am foolish, naive, or both.
Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe - and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. But, I do not think I am.

About the author via Google...

Pamela "Atlas" Geller began her publishing career at The New York Daily News and subsequently took over operation of The New York Observer as Associate Publisher. She left The Observer after the birth of her fourth child but remained involved in various projects including American Associates, Ben Gurion University and being Senior Vice-President Strategic Planning and Performance Evaluation at The Brandeis School.The Brandeis School.

After 9/11, Atlas had the veil of oblivion violently lifted from her consciousness and immersed herself in the education and understanding of geopolitics, Islam, terror, foreign affairs and imminent threats the mainstream media and the government wouldn't cover or discuss.

Her website, AtlasShrugged.com , winner of the "Best New Blog" 2005 Jewish and Israeli Blog Award and finalist in the 2005 Weblog Awards, is a counter-terrorism site fighting the great fight, changing the world one word at a time. Leading authorities are regularly interviewed. She routinely confers with leading scholars on the Middle East, Islam, Eurabia, China and Russia. The objective of her website is to cover related but little reported events of great import. She provides an unblinking, glaring examination of global affairs.

A Catholic Genius

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Few men in the English speaking world were as fascinating and as articulate as the late, great William F. Buckley. He was also a devout Roman Catholic who, until the day he died, detested the changes brought in by the Second Vatican Council.

Enjoy this quote from 1979, ten years after the great destruction began.

"As a Catholic, I have abandoned hope for the liturgy, which, in the typical American church, is as ugly and as maladroit as if it had been composed by Robert Ingersoll and H.L. Mencken for the purpose of driving people away.

Incidentally, the modern liturgists are doing a remarkably good job, attendance at Catholic Mass on Sunday having dropped sharply in the 10 years since a few well-meaning cretins got hold of the power to vernacularize the Mass, and the money to scour the earth in search of the most unmusical men and women to preside over the translation.

The next liturgical ceremony conducted primarily for my benefit, since I have no plans to be beatified or remarried, will be my own funeral; and it is a source of great consolation to me that, at my funeral, I shall be quite dead, and will not need to listen to the accepted replacement for the noble old Latin liturgy. Meanwhile, I am practicing Yoga, so that, at church on Sundays, I can develop the power to tune out everything I hear, while attempting, athwart the general calisthenics, to commune with my Maker, and ask Him first to forgive me my own sins, and implore him, second, not to forgive the people who ruined the Mass.."

--from "The Remnant" 1979

About time!

Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience

Drafted on October 20, 2009

Released on November 20, 2009


Preamble

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God's word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire's sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce's leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes - from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.


Declaration

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right - and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation - to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.


Life
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10

Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government. The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense. Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views. The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion. The President says that he wants to reduce the "need" for abortion - a commendable goal. But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors. The elimination of these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth. Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as "the culture of death." We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.

A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable. As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized. For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries. The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo-research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called "therapeutic cloning." This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues. At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and "voluntary" euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of life") were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of "liberty," "autonomy," and "choice."

We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion. We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children. Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and "ethnic cleansing," the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.


Marriage
The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24


This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:32-33


In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God’s creation. In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners with God Himself. Marriage then, is the first institution of human society - indeed it is the institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation. In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as "holy matrimony" to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by God, and blessed by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in the highest esteem.

Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society. Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits - the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live. Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves. Unfortunately, we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the marriage culture in our own country. Perhaps the most telling - and alarming - indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent. Today it is over 40 percent. Our society - and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the national average - is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair. Other indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly high rate of divorce.

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love. We must reform ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce. We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make.

The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law. Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life. In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of their parents’ marital love), we discover the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God's intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to "a more excellent way." As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.

We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage. Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being - the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual - on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.

We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights. They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being "married." It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it? On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand. Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential.

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality - a covenantal union of husband and wife - that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized. Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as "marriages" sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non-marital and immoral. Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends. Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture. But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.

And so it is out of love (not "animus") and prudent concern for the common good (not "prejudice"), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. How could we, as Christians, do otherwise? The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God's creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church. And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.


Religious Liberty
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. Matthew 22:21

The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: "Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God" (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4). Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God - a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason.

Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law - such persons claiming these "rights" are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of "same-sex marriage" in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital "civil unions" scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one's own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of.1 Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.

As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust - and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust - undermine the common good, rather than serve it.

Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King's willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's.



1Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Friday, November 20, 2009

Fighting the fight, where it needs to be fought

Dear Friend,



You may or may not have signed the UN Petition for the Unborn Child and the Family. I am being a pest and sending this to you again because if you haven’t helped this campaign, I am asking you to do so now. If you have helped this campaign by signing the petition, I am asking you to send an appeal to all your friends and family to help this campaign. If you have already done that, please do it again!



The only way these types of internet campaigns work is by millions of people working together and sending repeated calls for help!



We intend to deliver one million names to the UN in support of the unborn child. I run C-FAM. We have been doing UN pro-life work full time for 12 years. You can check us out at http://www.c-fam.org to see that we are legitimate. We are in a unique position to run this campaign and to deliver one million names to our friends at the UN and to the UN Secretary General.

Read the petition HERE in one of 18 languages and then sign it, if you have not already. And then, I implore you to send a notice about this campaign to all of your friends and family, to your whole address book! We have gathered 611,998 as of 1:32 pm November 15. We have gathered 126,404 new names in the last six weeks. We need to move faster than that!



Please go HERE. Read the petition, sign it if you have not already and send the petition with your note to all of your family and friends. Do it now. Do not wait!



Yours sincerely,



Austin Ruse

President

C-FAM

Pray the St Bridget prayers

One of 15 prayers I say every night, from the St Briget prayers:
O Jesus! True liberty of angels, paradise of delights, remember the horror and sadness which thou didst endure when thy enemies , like furious lions, surrounded thee and by thousands of insults, spits, blows, lacerations and other unheard-of-cruelties, tormented Thee at will. In consideration of these torments and insulting words, I beseech Thee , O my Savior, to deliver me from all my enemies, visible and invisible, and to bring me under Thy protection, to the perfection of eternal salvation. Amen

Are we surprised?

Council of Europe Debates "Gay" Adoption and Gender Re-Assignment
By Samantha Singson


(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Next week in Europe, a committee of human rights “experts” will discuss a draft recommendation on measures to “combat discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity to ensure respect for human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons and to promote tolerance towards them.”

Proponents claim there is a need for “specific action” because homosexuals are still subjected to “homophobia, transphobia and other forms of intolerance and discrimination.” For starters, the 47 member states of the Council of Europe (CoE) should ensure that homosexuals have the right to adopt, to access assisted reproductive treatment like in-vitro fertilization and gender reassignment surgery, as well as give full legal recognition of such gender reassignment.

The recommendation calls for states to monitor any “direct or indirect discrimination” on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity and to “ensure that legislative and other measures are adopted and effectively enforced.”

The recommendation lists documents from European and United Nations (UN) sources that it claims “recognize sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination” and takes note of last year’s controversial French-Dutch led statement on sexual orientation and gender identity which was signed by 66 nations in the General Assembly.

Critics point out that the UN statement cited by the recommendation is non-binding and was hotly contested when it was introduced at the UN General Assembly. In a clear showing that there is no international consensus on sexual orientation and gender identity, nearly sixty nations presented a counter-statement to the French-Dutch statement, and Russia, Belarus and the Holy See made separate statements also in opposition. The counter-statement condemned “all forms of stereotyping, exclusion, stigmatization, prejudice, intolerance and discrimination and violence directed against peoples, communities and individuals on any ground whatsoever, wherever they occur,” while defending the ability sovereign nations to enact laws that meet the “just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare.”

Conservative European insiders who are monitoring the draft recommendation told the Friday Fax that they were concerned that the draft recommendation shifts from the usual principle of "non-discrimination" to a new one of “non-distinction.” Where the principle of non-discrimination still allows discrimination in proportion to justified reasons, the principle of non-distinction makes no consideration of whether a differential treatment is fair or unfair, since it is the differential treatment itself which is prohibited.

Social conservatives are also concerned by another provision in the draft which states that “neither cultural, traditional, nor religious values, nor the rules of a "dominant culture" can be invoked to justify hate speech or any other form of discrimination, including on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.” They fear that this could inhibit the right of churches and other faith-based organizations to speak on the immorality of homosexual acts as they might be accused of inciting intolerance.

Following next week’s meeting of the steering committee on human rights, the draft recommendation will subsequently be discussed by the Committee of Ministers of the CoE. Larger in membership and older than the European Union, the CoE is considered the chief protector and promoter of human rights in Europe

Your U.N. at work, Funded by Obama

November 19, 2009

New UNFPA Report Goes Green to Promote "Reproductive Rights"
By Piero A. Tozzi, J.D.


(NEW YORK – C-FAM) The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its annual State of the World Population Report yesterday, linking efforts to promote "sustainable development" and affect "climate change" to its "reproductive rights" agenda. Critics see the report as a thinly-veiled attempt to harness popular environmental concerns in service of population control.

The report, "Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate," asserts that achieving "universal access to reproductive health" would both contribute to declines in fertility and "help reduce green-house gas emissions in the long run." It calls upon nations to "fully fund family planning services and contraceptive supplies."



Sounding alarmist, UNFPA claims that "The harsh realities of high per capita emissions among industrialized countries and swiftly rising ones among developing countries highlight the urgency of mobilizing all of humanity to stop collectively at the brink of this possible climate disaster zone." In a statement accompanying the report, UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Obaid avers that "rapid population growth and industrialization have led to a rapid rise in greenhouse gas emissions. We have now reached a point where humanity is approaching the brink of disaster."

Peter C. Smith of the International Right to Life Federation observes that agencies such as the UNFPA always need a "looming disaster" to secure their funding." Smith sees the "true looming disaster" as the "demographic implosion of the developed world" which is being exported to the developing world. The report touts declining birth rates in Japan and the European Union (EU) as positives and criticizes higher fertility in the United States (US).

In places, the report disavows overt population control arguments and acknowledges development specialists such as Bangladesh's Atiq Rahman, who attributes climate change to "consumption patterns" rather than "demographic considerations." Yet it also asserts that "Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendents. Hence, the emissions savings from intended or planned births multiply with time." 

Further, the report states that "fear of appearing supportive of population control has until recently held back any mention of 'population' in the climate debate. Nonetheless, some participants in the debate are tentatively suggesting the need at least consider the impacts of population growth." It points to an EU proposal "that population trends be among the factors that should be taken into consideration when setting greenhouse-gas mitigation targets."

Critics also point to the report's favorable citation of Obama administration's science czar, John Holdren, as signaling openness to coercive measures. In the 1970s, Holdren called for forced abortion and sterilization in his writings. 

 Concern over UNFPA's role in facilitating China's one-child policy, which is beset by allegations of forced and sex-selective abortion, contributed to a recommendation by the US State Department under then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to suspend funding of the agency. In March of this year, the Obama administration reversed the Bush administration policy and directed that $50 million be given to UNFPA, despite continued concerns over its China role.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Another attack on Christians, and Jews

November 18, 2009 HOLIDAY GIFTS BANNED IN SCHOOL GIFT SHOP Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest war on Christmas: The Byam Elementary School in Chelmsford, Massachusetts recently asked parents to donate holiday gifts to its holiday gift shop; the shopping days are December 1-4. Shopping guidelines informed that “Seasonal items such as snowmen, mittens, snowflakes are a big hit.” But it also had a list of “Items NOT Permitted.” The school was very specific about which items it considers taboo: “No Christmas, Chanukah or religious items,” and “No Santa, candy canes or stockings.” How snowmen made the cut but stockings did not was not explained. The school, of course, is observing Christmas by closing, yet it is not allowing Christmas gifts to be sold in its holiday gift shop, thus making it inexplicable why gifts celebrating the holiday being celebrated are banned. Some may see this as simply absurd. We don’t. We see it as pernicious: in the name of diversity and inclusion, the multicultural tyrants get to do what they have always wanted to do—censor Christmas. Parents upset by this authoritarian decision are meeting soon to overturn the ban. Give them support and let Dr. Jane Gilmore, the school’s principal, know how you feel. Contact her at:
gilmorej@chelmsford.k12.ma.us >



Dr. Gilmore

I am writing to you as a Catholic American who is wholly offended by the absurd and preposterous ban your school has placed on Christmas. What logic could you or your peers possibly be using? As I am sure you are well aware, this country was founded on religious freedom, that means freedom to witness and/or express your faith openly without bans or irresponsible rules prohibiting some religions why bending over backwards to honor others. This seems to me, to be nothing more than a pitiful and ignorant attempt to placate those who either do not believe in God at all or choose to worship Allah based on the teachings in the Quran over the Holy Bible meanwhile those same Islamics honor Jesus Christ and Moses. I have seen Muslims putting up Christmas trees , or Chanukah bushes. This country was founded predominantly by Christian men, built up by Christian and Judaic men and women...defended in countless wars by Christian and Judaic men and women. After hundreds of years of co-existance of these religions, and acceptance of each others ideas, why now have they become offensive? Is it because that .6% are now dictating to the rest of the United States of America what should or should not be? Are these religions really so offensive that they need to be obliterated in public schools altogether to pacify the select few? The public school system exists because of the tax payers, the parents whose children you are effectively discrediting for believing in Santa Claus and/or the birth of Christ, or the Jewish celebration of Lights?(chanukah) Why can’t they purchase or enjoy symbols of their faith? Who are you to make that decision, when these people pay your salary? Remember who it was that settled in Massachusetts,
whom the Pilgrims were, and who set up civilization. The agnostics, and atheist will always jump at a chance to put down GOD, or any happy celebration. At the same time space is provided for Muslims to celebrate their holidays, and yet they are only .6% of our country.
I thought that in our country Majority Rules. The Liberal thinking in this country, is not the Majority of the people in the USA, and though the people in charge of the schooling system appear to be Liberal, they are not the Majority in America, or Massachusetts. Has any vote been taken by the Majority of Massachusetts parents ? Why is it that our Minority is ruling, and the Majority of parents of children in this school are not heard? As an educator you should know full well that the words “separation of church and state” do not even appear in the First Amendment. What it does say is: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The First Amendment gives citizens the Freedom to Worship God without Government interference (Public schools being the “government interference” in this case). What you are doing, is basically violating the constitution, and our first Amendment rights.
The term "Separation of Church and State" can be traced back to a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802. In October 1801, the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut wrote to President Jefferson, and in their letter they voiced some concerns about Religious Freedom. So, in January, 1802 Jefferson wrote a letter to them in which he added the phrase "Separation of Church and State." In reading the full letter, it is quite clear that Jefferson was simply underscoring the First Amendment as a guardian of the peoples religious freedom from government interference.

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State." - Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson simply quotes the First Amendment using the metaphor, "wall", to separate the government from interfering with religious practice. It is interesting to note that the First Amendment puts restrictions only on the Government, not the people! Quite unfortunately, the Warren Court re-interpreted the First Amendment, thus putting the restrictions on the People! This is quite different from the wall Jefferson envisioned, protecting the people from government interference with Religious practice. The idiocy that continues in public schools based on this misinterpretation is rather incredible! People who claim to be educated and who, likewise, are entrusted to “educate” America’s youth are more often than not, the very individuals trampling on the most basic rights we hold dear. Is this what our children being taught?
Finally, statistics prove that about 78% of our country classify themselves as Christian, 4.7% Jewish, 1.6% Atheist, 0.6% Muslim, so how is it that the minority rule over the majority? I fear that if your school is permitted to perpetrate this ridiculous arbitrary rule, more will follow. This type of nonsense needs to be stopped before Americans lose their identity and America loses its heart and soul.

Contrary to what our inept president will have people believe, the United States of America IS still a predominantly Christian/Judaic nation.

I sincerely hope you will consider reversing this ludicrous decision.

Sincerely
Itzik Janowitz

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The real story of the Health (UN-Care) Bills

Major Issue: Healthcare and Reaction to It
By Helen Moore: Permission by Dr Alan Keys:



The healthcare proposals are receiving opposition not only from Republicans but from Democrats as well. This brings together a number of the things we’ve been talking about throughout our webinar sessions.

Let’s Put this Into the Context of the Overall Issues We’ve Talked About:

Our Constitutional Form of Government

This should always be our foremost concern toward things. It should be quite natural to ask what the impact of any new legislation or policy will be on the Constitutional form of government in the US.

Proponents are talking about the ability to provide healthcare for everyone but that’s not what we are talking about. Sit back and consider the two fundamental sides:

There are those who say here is healthcare that will take care of all our problems—cover everyone, meet all our needs and insist it is the only answer. This argument focuses on results and the discussion is engaged by the opposition.

The opposition says this is not true; this will not be the result of the proposals being put forward. Instead, these proposals for healthcare will obstruct liberty.

Look at this and ask if the discussion is based on the real premise which is: What is the aim of the proposal? Is it to produce good results, efficiency, etc.?

Obama says if we take our existing Healthcare System and put it entirely under the control of the federal government this will produce good Healthcare.

What is the evidence for this?

Such systems exist in Russia, Canada, the UK, in many countries. But do they work? Are they less costly? There is no evidence to suggest they work or are less costly. People who live under such systems, when they have the wherewithal to do so, come to America to get Healthcare.

They come here because they want to come to the place where the Healthcare is the best in the world.

So the current administration wants to take a system recognized by people who are living under centralized, government controlled Healthcare as the best and who want to come here to take advantage of our system, and change it to imitate the very systems they are coming to our country to avoid. Yet this administration wants to go down this road to government controlled Healthcare and expects that the results are going to be better here than they are in other countries who have already gone down this path.

Think about this: A simple logical deduction from what I’ve just said; from the real proof the world has had with this Healthcare experiment.

In these government controlled systems we see less experience, less research, people denied access to Healthcare, people kept waiting, unnecessary deaths, poor diagnoses, and poor treatment. I can tell you from personal experience in a relative’s family that when a person finally gets through this maze to treatment and the patient dies on the operating table, the family is told they waited too long to get treatment.

No, the truth is the patient was victimized by the system. The delays in these government controlled systems are fatal because one misdiagnosis follows another. The system manipulates patients until they die. This is the reality of socialized, government run Healthcare.

These are real facts and the real experiences of a socialistic Healthcare system.

If a government wanted good results for Healthcare, they would not start by imitating systems with a veneer of EQUALITY in which people are mistreated until they die.

If we want to effectively reform Healthcare, we need to look at what makes our system superior and emphasize those things. We want to get more of what is good into our system; not replace what is good in our system with a system that has proved over and over to be a failure.

Economist, Milton Friedman, wrote an article in which he looked at government controlled Healthcare. His conclusion was that if you analyze what has been pushing the cost higher in our system and creating less efficiency, you find it has been those things in which the US had already gone down the road of socialized medicine under the guise of Medicare and Medicaid.

The third party payer—the insurance companies in our system also had a key role in raising cost and lowering efficiency because they have interfered with the interface between patient and doctor in the delivery of Healthcare. By placing themselves between the consumer in a position in which the consumer can no longer police the connection between their treatment and their provider.

If you want the best results, you would eliminate those parts of our system which imitate government controlled systems and put consumers back in the driver’s seat.

When you see some insisting we should go down a path that puts Healthcare more and more in control of the government, you should conclude:

They do not care about the results.

What they are really after is control, not results

There will be certain factions that will control what many Americans depend on for life and death.

Put all of this in the context of what we’ve seen over the past several months. They are taking control over other aspects of our life. They are gathering the reins of power and control not just in areas that have to do with foreign policy, etc (which are the real job of the federal government) but rather they are taking control of our businesses, of our credit, etc.

If this is their aim, then it would seem we are moving down a road in which every time you want to make a move you will need to get permission from the government and those who control the government.

I wish I could tell you that all that I’m telling you is hypothetical but I cannot. It is exactly how the totalitarian regimes have worked. In such a regime to have livelihood, a family, a home you are at the mercy of the central government.

This means there is a group of favored people who run government and others who garner favor with those in government who will control each person at the most fundamental level.

WE ARE GOING BACK TO THE DARK AGES—TO AN OPPRESIVE FORM OF DICTATORSHIP BY AN ELITE OLIGARCHY.

As an American what is your responsibility to accept any of this?

Our people are bound to preserve liberty. How can people do this when everything they do is dependent on this same group of people in government who control every aspect of their life?

They are usurping our ability to govern ourselves. We will reach a point where there will be no real elections. They will try to keep the appearance of government of, by and for the people but you will not have the substance of such self-government. There will be no ability for the people to stand apart from those in power.

Once you have put life and death experiences in the hands of a governing body, how can the people govern themselves and have any personal control over their government and their lives?

Even Republicans these days accept the false premise that pure motives are operating. It is so obvious that what is being proposed will not produce good results, so what is the real motive? We are heading toward the end of self-government.

They base their analysis upon the premise or claim that the people want a better system, but when you begin to examine it, you begin to get wind of the ideology at work. Start to look at some of the specifics:

People are quietly trying to use the public money to fund Planned Parenthood—an organization that exists to kill babies.

To achieve efficiency they will look at people who are at the end of life and they want to counsel them to make decisions to shorten their own lives for the sake of efficiency—the sake of the dollar. They will provide them with counselors who will help them come to grips with the “noble reality” of truth for the greater good. A MENTALITY OF EUTHANSIA.

Trust me, this is not about cost-effectiveness. There is a cost involved in killing babies and to keep older people alive. The message is that people who are getting older have a REDUCED POTENTIAL. THEY WANT TO SPEND MONEY, THEY SAY, ON PEOPLE WHO HAVE A GREATER POTENTIALITY QUOTIENT.

Think about this idea—they are saying that some people and some stages of life have greater potentiality than others. Well, the most potential exists at the beginning of life. So you would think if they wanted good results, efficiency, they would spend money to preserve life at the very beginning.

But you find in their proposals statements that support spending money to kill those at the beginning of life—at the point at which the most potential exists.

It’s all lies! They are willing to kill at the beginning of life and at the end of life. The underlying notion that shows the real nature of their premise which says that a person’s real potential cannot be measured in time or by God.

Dr. Keyes is spending a lot of time thinking about this and taking kind of a personal survey. He asks people: What years of your life would you be willing to give up? And what about the time of the lives of your loved ones who are most frail? The lives of those we love and value cannot be quantified.

Take a typical adolescent. They are mostly thinking about themselves. Eventually they grow older and reach the most important time of their lives—the time they share with others, have children, have grand children—all of this in their older years. These are the years in which largely they give comfort, guidance, care and love.

Compare the adolescent and the older person and think of spending money to preserve life at the selfish stage and to preserve life at the stage where you give more of yourself to others. Can you place a value of one over the other?

Obama and his people are objectifying people and taking away all those things that cannot be measured in dollars. They will do a calculation that to them will validate their offences against human dignity. The people who make these decisions will look at people with no regard for human life.

When we get to the point where we realize what is going on, we will understand this is not just Healthcare. It will have become a transformation of hearts and consciences to accept the objectification of grandma and grandpa based on the dollars it might take to keep them healthy and alive. [My own addition: They will have made us into cold, calculating, obedient zombies.]

We are walking down a path that has repeatedly been perpetuated by totalitarian governments. THIS IS WHAT ALL OF THIS IS REALLY ABOUT.

And it is what the American principles guard against. We need to think very carefully before we willingly give up these principles and freedoms.

By seeing the intrinsic value of each and every human life, we restrain human power that looks to control every aspect of our lives.

The value of human life is approaching zero!

The moral consequences of taking 1 or 10 or 100 or 1 million lives is approaching zero.

If 1 life has no value, then 1 million lives have no value.

There is a question not only of the form of regime which is developing but also a question of the formation of conscience that is developing.

The Obama faction will destroy consciences.

If you think this through, you will find in it the most important health issue of all. Think of the kinds of slaughters and purges that have gone on throughout history. Think of Nazi Germany; think of modern day Rwanda. What is being proposed to us both in Healthcare and in what is happening to our form of government comes from the same type of mentality that produced the horrors of Nazi Germany and modern Rwanda to name just a few of the regimes of slaughter in history-- complete control of lives and complete disdain for the value of life.

My reply to a Liberal

PuffinLady wrote:
I just came back from Germany. Looked into their Health Care. And contrary to what you all believe - it really does work! Our current healthcare system is horrendous and something seriously needs to be done.
With the Obama healthcare bill slowing down, it will be seen that he has no allegiance to anyone, now that he is in. The government is now running a campaign against getting a mammography every year.There was not one onconolgist on that panel, so who are these people that think this way?
In addition, they are aginst the men getting a PSA testing every year. They have already admitted that they will be cutting back on the medicare proceedures they will cover, and the latest to oppose Obama-care is CHINA, who buys tons of U.S.
Bonds, and they are worried that the cost will put the U.S. at risk of defaulting on their debts.
All of the voters that voted for this Nutjob,
backed by the worse Congress we have ever had, will realize, that they had committed one of the worse errors in voting, they could ever have done.
This healthcare bill, was not necessary. Those that needed help could have gotten help from the government, the cost would have been 1/6th of what it is estimated to cost, and the majority of American people that have healtcare (86%) would agree with that. They claim that there is millions upon millions of of dollars lost in medicare claims, by fraudulent claims, well then, nail those that are doing this. Don't just say that it is happening, go after those that are doing it. What they are doing, is throwing everyone who lives in Long Island in jail,because there are some people on Long Island that are committing crimes, does that make sense?
Forget about party lines, we are talking about people that are making the laws, AND ARE NOT BOUND BY THE SAME LAWS THEY ARE MAKING! Why don't they be the first ones to step up to the plate and agree to take this same health care they are trying to hang around our necks? If the government needs so much money, why doesn't the government mandate a 10% pay reduction for everyone that works for the government? How about the parkways shutting off the lights during the day and conserve energy and money, before looking to increase the Taxes on home owners? How about giving a bonus for workers who work for the county, that come up with ideas of how to save money? How about the money the government gives out and is mandated by congress, to pander to certain congressman and Senators? You want to clean up the waste, and conserve money, start in your own house before looking to increase taxes on
the American people.
Just thinking out loud

Monday, November 16, 2009

Apostacy has taken over our Catholic Church

Apostasy, the destroyer that is inundating the Catholic Church today. Since 1960 when the VCII and their change of the Mass by their new interpretation of the mass, and the movement away from the accepted liturgy, and the Latin mass, have degraded our religion, to conform to other religions, mainly Protestant. To have a priest, dressed up like a clown, to have dancers prancing around the altar, has degraded the sacred mass into a carnival, and Circus. When the tail(the people) starts wagging the dog(the Vatican), as the Jews did when Moses went up to the mount to receive the 10 commandments, and made the idols such as the golden calf, you know that we are heading toward destruction, and Apostasy has taken hold.The mass is the eucharistic celebration and always includes the proclamation of the Word of God, thanksgiving to God for all he gives us, and above all for the gift of his Son Jesus, the consecration of bread and wine, the receiving of the Lords Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.
Jesus Christ is present under the species of bread and wine, and who is offered in the Eurcharistic sacrifice. It is a celebration to be to be taken seriously, and to pay homage to our Lord, through whom we have been saved from eternal death.
Each religion, government, and system that allows apostasy to creep in, has been destroyed, through-out the ages. The more we feel we have progressed in our understanding and intelligence,
the more apostasy increases. why change the liturgy that has served our church so well , so many many years? Look around in the church, there is no more reverence at the mass. Has the modernization improved the mass? Has it made people more reverent to the sacrifice of Jesus?
Has it gained more respect for Jesus? An emphatic
NO is the answer. Respect has gone out the window,
and been replaced by self satisfaction, self
indulgence, and the quest for bigger and more.
I believe the return to the old liturgy may heal our church, and bring back respect, reverency, and love for God, Father ,Son, and Holy Spirit, and love for Jesus and his sacrifce to save us all.
JMHO
Yours in Jesus,

Friday, November 13, 2009

Last Letter of Fatima

I would be remis if I did not post what I have read about the last letter of Fatima, which was told to SR Lucy, the last of the children of Fatima. She was pressed into revealing to the Bishop of Portugal that she needed direction from our Lady, before she committed the information to writing. Upon receiving this direction from Our Blessed Mother Mary, she informed the Arch-Bishop that the letter should not be revealed until 1960, or her death. The letter had been then sent to the Pope, and kept by the Pope in a wooden box marked "Secrect Paper of the Pope". Here is a small portion of the history of that letter, and what is known. Sr Lucy died, and 1960 has passed without the general information being revealed:

Cardinal Ratzinger

On November 11, 1984, Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave an interview in Jesus magazine, a publication of the Pauline Sisters. The interview is entitled “Here is Why the Faith is in Crisis,” and was published with the Cardinal's explicit permission. In this interview Cardinal Ratzinger admits that a crisis of faith is affecting the Church around the world. In this context, he reveals that he has read the Third Secret and that the Secret refers to “dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian and therefore (the life) of the world.”

The Cardinal thus confirms Father Alonso's thesis that the Secret pertains to widespread apostasy in the Church. Cardinal Ratzinger says in the same interview that the Secret also refers to “the importance of the Novissimi [the Last Times/the Last Things]” and that “If it is not published, at least for now, it is to avoid confusing religious prophecy with sensationalism ...” The Cardinal further reveals that “the things contained in this ‘Third Secret’ correspond to what has been announced in Scripture and has been said again and again in many other Marian apparitions, first of all that of Fatima ...”25

Bishop Amaral

In complete accord with Cardinal Ratzinger is Bishop Amaral—the third Bishop of Fatima. In a speech in Vienna, Austria on September 10, 1984, he said the following:

Its content concerns only our faith. To identify the [Third] Secret with catastrophic announcements or with a nuclear holocaust is to deform the meaning of the message. The loss of faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that faith is continually diminishing in Europe.26 [Emphasis added]

Cardinal Oddi

On March 17, 1990 Cardinal Oddi gave the following testimony to Italian journalist Lucio Brunelli in the journal Il Sabato:

It [the Third Secret] has nothing to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against apostasy in the Church.

Cardinal Ciappi

To these witnesses we must add the testimony of Cardinal Mario Luigi Ciappi, who was nothing less than Pope John Paul II's own personal papal theologian. In a personal communication to a Professor Baumgartner in Salzburg, Cardinal Ciappi revealed that:

In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.27

All of these testimonies are consistent with the repeated remarks of Sister Lucy herself—not only to Fr. Fuentes, as quoted above, but to many other reliable witnesses. Although bound to secrecy concerning the precise contents of the Third Secret, her remarks to reliable witnesses are full of references to churchmen “being fooled by false doctrine”; to a “diabolical disorientation” afflicting “so many persons who occupy places of responsibility” in the Church; to “priests and consecrated souls” who “are so deceived and misled” because “the devil has succeeded in infiltrating evil under cover of good … leading into error and deceiving souls having a heavy responsibility through the place which they occupy … They are blind men guiding other blind men,” and so on.28

Pius XII Confirms
the Secret's Prediction of Apostasy

But perhaps the most remarkable testimony of all on this score, although it is of indirect relevance, is that of Msgr. Eugenio Pacelli, before he became Pope Pius XII and while he was still serving as Vatican Secretary of State during the reign of Pope Pius XI. Speaking even before Sister Lucy had committed the Third Secret to paper, the future Pius XII made an astonishing prophecy about a coming upheaval in the Church:

I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. … I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past.

Pope Pius XII's biographer, Msgr. Roche, noted that at this moment in the conversation, according to a Count Galeazzi, “the gaze of the Pope, seen through the lenses of his glasses, became supernatural, and there emanated from his tall and slender body an irresistible mystical force.” Pius XII then said (in answer to an objection from a curial Cardinal):

A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, “Where have they taken Him?”29

It is quite remarkable that the future Pope would relate this apparently supernatural intuition of coming devastation in the Church specifically to “the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima” and “this persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church.” The prediction would be utterly senseless if it had been based on the first two parts of the Great Secret, which make no mention of such things as “the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul” or “innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past.” Nor is there any indication whatsoever in the first two parts that “In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them.”

How did the future Pope Pius XII know these things? If not by supernatural intuition, then by direct knowledge that some hitherto undisclosed portion of “the Blessed Virgin's messages to Sister Lucy of Fatima” revealed these future events in the Church.

In short, every single testimony pertaining to the contents of the Third Secret, from 1944 until at least 1984 (the date of the Ratzinger interview) confirms that it points to a catastrophic loss of faith and discipline in the Church, representing a breakthrough for the forces arrayed against Her for so long—the “innovators” that the future Pope Pius XII heard “all around me,” clamoring for the dismantling of the Sacred Chapel and changes in the liturgy and Catholic theology.