Great movie on TV!

This Saturday, they are showing one of my favorite movies... on EWTN... if you do not get the station, you can watch it live at http://www.ewtn.com

The Way To Life

07/25 at 4:00 PM ET

God calls men to follow Him in mysterious ways. The story of a young man who travels the road of Saint James and his zeal to learn about religious life.

the young man meets a priest who changes his life!

I have watched this movie many times and always catch it again when it comes around - it's just a beautiful story of a young man and how God calls him.   I would really recommend it!

 

Priest Scandal - what is the truth here?

There are two sides of the story of the so priest scandal but we only hear one side. The media emphasizes the cases (most of which happened years ago) of priests, statistically less than 1 percent of Catholic priests have been accused of this) ignoring that as high as 50% of abortionists may have also abused those who trusted them as well as the 20% of public school teachers and countless coaches also accused. Govt statistics tell us that most se/xual abuse happens in the home (75% percent of it) by step fathers and uncles etc.

Se/xual molestation is a definite problem in our society and will continue to be a problem if we only address the 1% of those priests thusly accused, closing our eyes to the overwhelming majority of abuse which has nothing to do with priests. (I also was se/xually molested, 4 times. By my violin teacher when I was 12 years old, by a guy my mother matched me up with when I was 19 who only didn't ra/pe me by the Grace of God and my own quick thinking, by a sports coach when I was in my 30's and by a doctor I had met socially who examined my sore leg in the swimming pool and proceeded to "cop a feel"!)

That being said, when this all came up, being a Roman Catholic myself, I was curious to do some investigating to see how bad things were or were not.

I first started with the town I live in, one of the 10 largest cities in the USA.

In my area, there are 5 priests accused over the past 30 years (this was before another one recently got accused - he quit the priesthood and the Catholic church, and started his own congregation before they could prosecute him). Ok, 2 of them were defrocked, 1 of them had fled to Ireland, 1 of them was dead and 1 was currently in prison. The Bishop had acted quickly on all the cases.

Conclusion, it was not true in my diocese that anything had been "covered up". On the contrary.

But what about the priest in Boston who started the firestorm? Curious about this, I researched him on the S.N.A.P. website. They have all the PDFs of the case there and SNAP is a group of victims who are very antiCatholic. I thought it was a good place to start the research - certainly no one can accuse them of covering anything up or being biased in favor of the Catholic church.

Where I expected to find something awful, I was actually quite surprised at what I uncovered on the SNAP site!

The priest in Boston had had complaints against him for a handful of boys but when the Cardinal went to investigate, he found that the priest was well liked in his parish and that even the parents of the kids who had complained, did not uphold the testimonies of their own kids! The cardinal's hands were tied. The priest, of course, lied through his teeth but the sad thing was, the people of his parish UPHELD HIM.

Ironically, the way the cardinal ended up discovering the truth, was that he was doing a "one on one" with all priests and when he got to this priest and had lunch with him, he realized immediately, that the priest was likely guilty! The Cardinal went home from that luncheon and started proceedings to defrock the priest! It should be noted that when he fired that priest from his parish, the people of the parish staged a major demonstration against the Cardinal! None of this made the news of course. :(

Quite different from the way the media or movies like "Our Fathers" portray it, isn't it?

Bottom line, He who started our church, Jesus, was crucified as a common criminal and He was perfect. Certainly our priests and cardinals and even strong Christians cannot expect otherwise.

That is, if Jesus rode to Heaven on a cross, should we expect to ride there in a plush lined Cadillac? Can we expect to be "popular" in a society which was capable of crucifying God incarnate?

And - please understand - the media does (as Stephen King put it) go for the "gross-out" even if it means um...bending the truth. Media information should not what anyone should be making decisions based on - it should carry a disclaimer of "for entertainment only - any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental!"

Disillusioned with people

I find, in these tense days after the election, I am disillusioned with people in general. I don't MEAN to be - I just _am_.

Somehow the church was lame during the election and did NOT specify details on HOW to distinguish between non negotibles so no wonder many Catholics had a tough time.

For example, the Republican views on "immigration" which seem to be focused on poverty stricken Mexicans who have for decades, come here, worked for slave wages, enabling places like Walmart to offer things for cheap or farmers to farm without losing their shirts, are now, suddenly treated like criminals and un ceremoniously deported back to Mexico. When they have done nothing wrong, when they are PART of our economy and when, in many cases LIKE those who work for Walmart, they are paying income taxes (because it's automatically deducted from their paycheck but of course, they cannot be re-embursed at income tax time). The government knows that they are paying income taxes because there is a sizable amount of undocumented tax money which remains unclaimed. These are simple people, family people and church going and now being treated like criminals? Sounds like racism to me (because the Canadians are NOT being treated in such a shabby manner and we are NOT spending millions to build walls on the Canadian border) and racism is one of the five non negotibles that Catholics are asked to consider when voting. (Abortion is another).

I don't have a clue how "immigration" got started but it seems to be vaguely connected with 9/11 ...except the guys who "did" 9/11 were in the USA on green cards so would have NOT qualified as "undocumented" or "illegal". When I ask anyone about this, all I get is "well, drugs come in from Mexico". They come in from Canada also though and the simple people being treated like criminals are NOT the ones transporting the drugs. When I bring this up, no one has an answer. Which is one thing that totally disillusions me. WHY DOESN'T ANYONE EVEN ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS?

My Mexican neighbors are confused .... and if anyone bothered to learn Spanish (it's a beautiful language and knowing it enriches us!) so they could TALK to Mexicans, they would see for themselves. They are asking "what did we do? Why are my friends and family members being suddenly treated like criminals? Everyone is afraid now." How sad is this? In a country which boasts "give me your tired and your poor." Apparently that suddenly doesn't include Mexicans, I guess.

The Democrats have a much better stand on "immigration" with granting amnesty but a horrendous stand on abortion. The Republicans have a great stand on abortion but a horrendous stand on immigration. Where do you draw the line? I don't think it would have been "political" for the church to detail that to their people. I drew the line because abortion is killing 9 humans a minute and whereby "immigration" racism kills a few people, it isn't close to 9 humans a minute. The Mexican Americans voted Democratic because they are tired of living in fear. Can't really blame them.

Why do we have to make this choice? Why are ANY OF THE PARTIES REALLY MORAL in ALL their stands? (well I know the Democrats get millions of bucks from the abortion industry but why are the Republicans so blind about "immigration").

Then there was the story on "The Today Show" about the women priests. They interviewed a woman attorney who said how she had been a "good Catholic" for all these years (like she was doing THE CHURCH a favor) and tried to change the church's stand on ordination of women for all those years and finally got tired of it so she was "ordained" as a "priest" or priest-ESS or whatever she calls herself.

And now, she "celebrates Mass" and disrespects the Lord by not only dressing like a priest but by serving Communion to her followers (so she's misleading others). She doesn't give a hang that what she's telling them is Sacrament IS NOT or how she's misleading others down HER primrose path and denying THEM the REAL Body and Blood of Jesus. I mean if you think of it... HOW DARE SHE disrespect God like that? She reminds me of a passage in Timothy which talks about this very type of thing:

But understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days. People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, as they make a pretense of religion but deny its power.
(2 timothy 3:1 ff)

And what happened to HER CHANGING (instead of changing the church according to HER EGO). Just where did we forget that EGO means "EASING GOD OUT"?

Besides her misleading what looked like 100 or more people into coming to her blasphemous Mass, the "Today Show" LOVED it! Another chance to laugh at the Catholic church and how stupid we are for having only male priests. Nevermind that JESUS never ordained his Mother. Is this attorney so foolish as to think that IF Jesus wanted women priests, His Immaculately Conceived Mother would have been the first to be ordained?

To those idiots who want women priests and say the church is unfair, I ask them "Well, maybe you can answer this - God must also be unfair because you know He only allows WOMEN to be Mothers so why is that?"

Of course in our immoral depraved age, motherhood is not respected but actually, I consider it on an equal basis, RESPECT-WISE as being a priest because in being a mother you are allowed to partake in God's Creation of a new life and also, you have a special closeness to children AND Grandchildren which men do not have. God and His Church are NOT unfair. We each have our incredibly awesome things we can do. We women can be mothers and men can be priests. Why should men OR women have it all?

You see, if people bothered to PRAY or to just RESPECT GOD and His church, all of this would be a real no brainer and they wouldn't even waste time worrying about how women cannot be priests and men cannot be mothers.

(In a speech on youtube, Ms Via states that she was so religious from childhood and also aware of the "injustice toward women". Amazing how she forgets that the most highly thought of individual human in the Catholic church next to Jesus, is Jesus' Mother, A WOMAN. When I listened to this speech (all 58 minutes of it), it truly amazed me that she's a PhD and she knows so little. No wonder our son - also a PhD - reminds me that especially in the case of folks like her, PhD can mean "Piled higher and deeper" Rather interesting are what she calls "radicalizing events", those which led her out of "being a good Catholic" as she described herself to being ordained and having her own parish. One of which was when she went for her tenure at the Catholic University where she taught, she did not pass the test for "Catholicity" and was asked to leave. Wow, I wonder why? Because she doesn't know what the Catholic church teaches? And the second "Radicalizing event", she tells us, is that she was barred from teaching in a Catholic University by the Bishop when she signed an ad - from "Catholics for a free choice" which stated that abortion was a "moral choice" at times. (It should be noted the "Catholics for a free choice" are neither Catholic NOR into free choice because the only choice THEY believe in, is abortion and they are funded by the abortion industry also. The 129 member organization has a president who makes over 60,000 a year!) Needless to say, I definitely suspect Ms Via's elevator doesn't go to the top floor so to speak, but I think that the Bishops should warn people against individuals like this because they can be confusing if folks do not know any better! I could write a whole blog on HER. Maybe I will.... in the future. By the way, Jane Via, if you do read this, I, as a member of several "IQ" groups, would have to say that one would greatly suspect your brain is somewhat lacking since you have managed to do all this studying and have very little knowledge of Catholic doctrine OR Catholic History. Also be warned that you may be playing with your eternal salvation in order to massage your Ego here on earth. Is it really worth taking those type of risks, Jane? "He whose soul is flat, the sky will cave in on them by and by" Edna St Vincent Millay)

Which brings me to the third group I am disillusioned with and that is the person in the pew. Because the most awful pro abortion people (who are ALREADY WORKING TO UNDO 35 years of work on the part of the pro life movement as we speak) have been elected to office and you know, few seem to care. People are just going about their daily life, worrying about what they are going to buy for their next purchase or what they are going to wear to the next "occasion". While these evil people are opening the door for abortions to exponentially multiply.

Do they think abortions WON'T multiply? Look at Russia which encouraged abortion for many decades and now find themselves as a dying society. The average woman in Russia has had NINE abortions and now that the floodgates were opened a few decades ago, the government is actually trying to STOP the flow of baby killing but finding it very difficult to do.

But no one is even upset about it. The pro life movement has gone into immediate denial mode. "Donate more money" say the emails and letters "so we can continue our good fight" and "we have made a lot of progress and will continue to do so" despite the fact that every last bit of progress they have made is quickly being undone.

I have been told "don't be too hard on the prolife movement" and basically that I'm full of it when I'm understandably alarmed and dismayed.

I feel like I am standing alone. My constant prayer as the darkness is rapidly closing in, seems to be "Holy Spirit, please push the darkness away". I got that from Fr Spitzer on EWTN and it helps. So does the Rosary. But what is very upsetting is that so few seem to see the darkness.

For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths. 2 tim 4:3-4

As the saying goes: "you don't have to be a cannibal to be fed up with people".

Pope Benedict's visit misreported by the press as usual!

Today, Pope Benedict arrived in Washington and met our president on the White House lawn. He greeted the 13,000 people, some of whom had been lining up since 4 am in the morning, with a beautiful speech, spoken eloquently, emphasizing the dignity of humans of all ages (INCLUDING FETUSES OF COURSE), an idea which President Bush also mentioned in HIS speech. The Pope also stated that this country WAS founded on religious principles and that, as evidenced in HISTORY (something few Americans study!), government without morality and religious principles always has in the past, ended up in totalitarianism. Pointing out that it is wonderful that Americans have the right to worship in freedom (something which the small percentage of atheists are trying to take away from us - my comment - not his), he expressed his hope that the American people would live up to respecting the rights of "life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness" for all people. He concluded that freedom is a responsibility.

President Bush's speech was also beautiful and profound - that brought tears to my eyes as he spoke about the rights of ALL people from the womb to the elderly. He treated the Pope (who was celebrating his 81st birthday) with dignity but gave him a warm welcome. When Raymond Arroyo asked Bush what he saw when he looked into the eyes of the Pope (in an interview last week), Bush replied one word. "God. I see God", he said.

None of this was reported by the news media, obviously upset that the Catholic church would be portrayed in any type of positive light.

Instead, they concentrated on one sentence in a speech the Pope delivered, apparently before he arrived on American soil, about the Priest scandal. This one sentence became the headliner for most of the news - both on TV and on the internet:

In his most extensive comments about the crisis to date, the pope said that he was "deeply ashamed" and that the scandal had caused "great suffering" for the church and for "me personally." Speaking to reporters aboard his flight from Italy, Benedict also pledged greater efforts by the church to bar pedophiles from the priesthood.

Extensive comments? ONE SENTENCE? Since when is a sentence "extensive comments"?

From this the internet news launched into long articles about how much money the church has paid out to those who claim abuse from priests ad nausium.

The TV news searching long and hard, managed to find one priest, accused of touching boys, who was, according to them, not removed quickly enough from duties. They criticized the Pope hugging Cardinal George, that priest's Bishop. I guess they feel the Pope should have kicked him or something because he was "imperfect" in handling this situation (ignoring that the man traveling the country campaigning for his wife, our former president Clinton, used his powerful position as president to seduce a young woman, REPEATEDLY, in the Oval Office and then, perjured himself (i.e. LIED ABOUT IT) in front of the entire country. Can we say Hypocrasy?)

Finally, ABC news interviewed one tearful couple who looked in their 70's. They claimed some priest had been over to their home daily to "say his morning prayers" and had repeated raped their 5 year old daughter. She, according to the couple, had not told them about this until years later because she said she was "afraid" that her father would murder the priest (the father apparently had said if anyone ever hurt her, he would kill them).

Has anyone ever heard of manufactured memories? I for one, was not impressed by this case. Few people remember ANYTHING which happened at the age of 5 and had the child really suffered that type of trauma, she would have shown definite signs of abuse which would have been so obvious, shame on her parents for ignoring these signs. However, I think this "abuse" (like so many others) just happened in her head and NOT in reality.

The facts show that less than 1 percent of Catholic priests have been ACCUSED of abuse and of the small percentage, even less are convicted. Never-the-less, the constant battering by the news services has left many priests in great fear that anything they say or do, might be misinterpreted by say, a student who was given a non passing grade in school or angry for some other reason. And I speak this as having had a Jesuit for my spiritual advisor for several years. The wear and tear of this media blitz on our priests has been immeasurable but no one has even heard about this at all.

The media also showed film footage of people with signs from the anti Catholic group, SNAP. The signs read "Celibacy doesn't work".

Fact remains that 10 percent of Protestant ministers (who are allowed to be married) have been accused of sexual misconduct but according to government statistics, the most sexual abuse happens in families - 75 percent of childhood sexual abuse is committed by parents or step parents or close relatives.

But never shall the news moguls be confused with facts. The bottom line, seems to be "do anything which can neutralize the courageous Pope's visit and if we can mudsling at the Catholic church, well by all means, do it!"

Satan is alive and well in the news media which REALLY doesn't like the Catholic church because of the church's strong stand against abortion, an industry which in the 1980's had reached a profit of 500 million a year (according to Nathenson who was one of the co-founders of NARAL) and now, may well be profiting in the billions.

Hopefully Catholics will be smarter than that and discard the negative spin from the news media. Hopefully. Unfortunately for those who do not listen to EWTN and other Catholic media, outfits like ABC News are all they have to inform them of the news.

The group, SNAP, has told the media that the Pope's statement about the priest abuse was "not enough". Not surprising because in other interviews, the group (none of which are still Catholic by the way) has stated their bottom line is the demise of the Catholic church. Catholics should remember that "EX-Catholics are about as Catholic as Ex-husbands are married."

Finally for those who are abused, I don't have a lot of sympathy for their backlash movement against the church and the 99 percent of priests who are pure and obedient to their vows. I, as a victim of being sexually molested myself as a 12 year old by my music teacher, will admit that a sexual molestation like that can somewhat ruin a person's life in a way but also, a child when confronted by a stranger who does this, can take him/herself out of the relationship and should do so, after the first offense.

In other words, when my 50 year old, married violin teacher, the father of 2 kids himself, molested me in the car going home from a concert, I did not give up the violin... I only found another violin teacher.

All this is just a smoke screen so Americans do not really get the impact of the fact that abortion mills murder 5000 unborn babies each day. To the tune of a big profit. Let's hear the news bimbos talk about that one. Don't hold your breath! They only care about kids when they can use them to diss the church which stands up for morals which they would like to forget.

Priest dismissed because of pro life homily?

Lifesite news recently reported that a priest in the diocese of Rockford, was dismissed because of daring to preach on Natural Family Planning (NFP). That does sound concerning so I researched it a bit.

I couldn't get hold of anyone at the parish but I did read the homily available on the Lifesite website. Even from reading the homily, I got a very different point of view of what happened than was reported by Lifesite news.

First of all, it wasn't a homily, but rather a sermon having little to do with the readings (the homily is supposed to be a clarification of or based on the readings of the day).

Second, it was rather long and he rambled on and on. In places, the sermon could have been called a rant.

Third, he was inflammatory toward doctors, categorizing all of them (he did not qualify his statements to say "some" or even "many") as money greedy and incompetent. I understand his ire toward the medical profession but spinning negative stereotypes during a sermon in church is very inappropriate.

Fourth, he recommended (for some reason) two secular books on NFP which he admitted DID advocate contraception which is against church law - there is a Billings website, there is couples-to-couples league, EWTN and one-small-life and lots of CATHOLIC groups putting out NFP information so why would he recommend two secular books which advocate contraception? Most concerning about that is that NFP is NOT "Catholic contraception" and should NOT be thought of as such. It is making conception a decision between two married people and then, leaving the door open for God to override in case He sees fit. VERY different idea from contraception and important for Catholics to understand the difference.

Fifth, although Fr Tom's sermon mentioned that NFP was God's Plan, the sermon had nothing whatsoever to DO with the season of Advent or getting ready for the coming of Jesus and God has little mention in the sermon or rant.

It is not surprising that several parishioners left the church in frustration especially as this may not have been the first time Fr Tom gave a similar talk.

Can't blame them. As pro life as I am, I think I would rather hear a HOMILY on the readings, during the holy season of Advent (and I heard some excellent ones which helped me get ready for Christmas). Mentioning pro life is very appropriate but doing a teaching on the mechanics of NFP (including how one does it) during Advent when one is supposed to be talking about the readings seems very inappropriate even to some of us who are pro life folks.

My bets are, his dismissal from the parish is NOT because he was talking about NFP from the pulpit but rather has to do with many factors, some of which may be:

• That there may have been several complaints about his long Off Topic rants
• The fact that he admitted he was hospitalized recently for an unnamed illness but in a 70 year old, every illness is serious - his health may just not be holding up well under the stress of parish work
• That he seems to have no qualms about putting inflamatory statements into his sermons - those really don't do any good and can end up turning people away from the church
  

So now the diocese is likely finding him a position which will be easier on him energy-wise as well as discerning a place for him which will make the best use of his ardent pro life feelings and ability to teach NFP (maybe at this moment they are making a blog for him to write in!). :)

There are unfortunately, several pro life sources which have high visiblity, which do not check their information well and often write with a heavy bias.

Bad information from Catholics and/or pro lifers is as annoying as bad information from the press. In these days of spin we must question --- EVERYTHING....