Has Pope Francis Forgotten The Ten Commandments?

 

With apologies to my Catholic readers, it appears to me that he has.

I've pretty much let much of the current Pontiff's remarks on income inequality pass because I'm familiar with Pope Francis' history dealing with real poverty in the slums of cities like Buenos Aires and Rosario in his native Argentina. But he appears now to have crossed the red line - literally.

The AP is reporting that the Pope is now calling for governments to redistribute wealth to the poor in a speech he made to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of major U.N. agencies when they met in Rome this week.

Pope Francis called for the UN to promote a "worldwide ethical mobilization" and said a more equal form of economic progress can be had through "the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state, as well as indispensable cooperation between the private sector and civil society."

'Legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state?' Wouldn't that be forced redistribution, using the police power of the state beyond what we'd consider normal taxation in order to seize assets legitimately earned by some people in order to gift them to whomever the state felt was 'more deserving'? And forced redistribution, of course, is simply another word for theft. As I recall, one of the Ten Commandments has something to say about that, not to mention another commandment that has something to say about coveting the possessions of others.

What the Pope is essentially doing here is mouthing a version of a familiar slogan used to deprive millions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Lenin's 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs'. And, of course, the almighty State decides who's who and which is which.

Aside from the severe damage to individual liberty (including religious freedom in those societies the Pope is urging us all to emulate) Pope Francis is badly wrong on a number of counts.

Capitalism, within a few necessary legal fetters has lifted more people out of poverty and raised the individual standard of living far more than any other economic system. Coming from South America as he does, Pope Francis ought to be able to look around and see for himself how badly the quasi-socialist economies in his own neighborhood handle the problem of poverty as opposed to America, Canada,Japan or Western Europe.

Part of the reason for this is that when government isn't 'legitimately redistributing' other people's money they do the only two things you can do with money. They either spend it on goods and services or they invest it,both of which create economic activity and prosperity in an ever widening ripple. Not only that, but as people develop an economic surplus, they may choose to 'invest' it (for religious and/or tax purposes) in giving to charity, with the Catholic Church being a prime beneficiary.

Yes, by voicing this recycled Marxist nonsense, the Pope is actually working to destroy the ability of the Catholic Church to help the very people he claims to be concerned about! Or does he anticipate that the Church will be one of the beneficiaries of this forced redistribution he's talking about?

Based on previous history, I'd say he's fooling himself badly.Socialist Big Government is not noted for its generosity to religion.

It's a pity that Pope Francis can't have a long conversation with Pope John Paul II at this point. That Pope, who experienced in his native Poland the natural result of what the current Pontiff is pushing could definitely provide Pope Francis with some enlightenment.

The UN Reveals Its Cowardice And Hypocrisy By Attacking The Catholic Church

 

A UN Human Right commission has attacked the Catholic Church and the Vatican concerning its canon law, policies and teachings.

The report, published today by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child harshly criticized the Church for its teachings on abortion, contraception and homosexuality as well as the Vatican's policies on dealing with pedophile priests in a report whose tone can only be defined as frenzied and aggressive.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is one of 10 U.N. bodies that monitor implementation of the core U.N. human rights treaties, and its 18 members include academics, sociologists and child development specialists from around the globe.

The treaty the committee is supposed to be monitoring is the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the key U.N. treaty on child protection, which the Holy See ratified in 1990. Apparently the committee simply decided to get into issues of abortion, contraception and homosexuality, none of which are covered by the treaty just because...or perhaps at the urging of various pro-abortion and pro Homosexual marriage activists.

The report blasted the Vatican and claims that it "systematically" adopted policies that allowed priests to molest children over decades, and it called on the Holy See to open its files on pedophiles and bishops who concealed the abuse.

"The committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by, and the impunity of, the perpetrators," the report said.

That would be news to the almost 400 priests that have been defrocked and tossed out of the Church, the ones who justifiably have done or are doing jail time and the Church officials who paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to the victims, leaving several dioceses in the US either bankrupt or teetering on the edge.

But wait, there's more. The committee calls on the Church to change its policies to allow abortion and contraception, make sex education, including access to information about contraception and abortion mandatory in Catholic schools and to accept gay marriage and same sex adoption.

Now, I am not a Catholic, and to be honest, I have my own issues with the Catholic Church as an institution based on its history, its policies toward the State of Israel and other topics we need not delve into here. But I don't have to be Catholic to recognize the abject cowardice and hypocrisy on display here.

While I might not agree totally with the Church's stance on abortion, it is the supreme irony to me that a committee charged with monitoring the rights of children would issue a report biased towards abrogating the one right that is the source of all the others - the right to life.

By demanding that the Catholic Church change its religious doctrines on homosexuality, contraception and abortion, the UN committee is essentially saying that the Catholic Church is to be singled out from all other religions as one that sanctions bigotry, intolerance and hatred.And here I thought Jews and Israel had that particular space reserved where the UN was concerned!

But let me see..is the Catholic Church the sole offender here? Or even the worst one?

Islam is absolutely rotten with anti-semitism and it is religiously sanctioned in the Qu'ran, and the Hadiths. Mohammed even told his followers that 'At the Last Hour' (the Muslim equivalent of the Jude-Christian Day of Judgement)that the rocks and trees were going to call out to Muslims to come and kill the Jews that were hiding behind them. The genocidal Hamas uses that particular religious exhortation today in the Martyr's Oath which every member swears.

Nor is this just scripture or ancient history. Sharia law as well as all 4 major Islamic fiqhs (schools of jurisprudence) essentially consider Jews and Christians non-people with their right to life dependent of the whim of Muslims who rule over them.Severe persecution of Christians by Muslims is a well-documented fact in our modern world, and the silence of the majority of Muslim clerics is deafening.

Homosexuals? Don't even ask. The Qu'ran mandates that they be killed 'with cruelty'. Let alone disrespected, they're routinely hanged in Iran and many other jurisdictions under Muslim rule.

And Islam does not permit either abortion or the use of contraception either, although sharia does allow wife beating, winks at honor killings and female genital mutilation, counts a woman's testimony as worth one quarter of a man's and requires two male Muslim eyewitnesses in order to prosecute a man for rape, no matter what other evidence there is.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

So why single out the Catholic Church? Could this be it?



Because of course, if anyone did call Islam out the way this UN committee just called out the Catholic Church...there could be unpleasant consequences:



The people on this committee, those whom aren't themselves Muslims or from Muslim countries are scared witless of Islam, and the Church is a far easier target. This way, they come across as properly doctrinaire, politically correct Lefties 'speaking truth to power' when all they really are is morally bankrupt cowards turning their backs on the very people this UN commission was designed to protect.

And while I'm at it, has this committee ever issued a scathing report like this on the practices of UN peacekeeping forces,particularly in Africa? Rapes, child molestation, forced prostitution in exchange for food and other humanitarian supplies and other abuses are serial in nature.

The UN's record is far worse the Catholic Church's when it comes to disciplining those under its banner and making restitution to its victims. Yet, aside from generic statements from the UN about looking into this sort of thing when it surfaces and occasionally sending the worst offenders back to their home countries, silence.

Of course, that says quite a bit in itself, doesn't it?

Vatican Court: No Communion For Nancy Pelosi

 

The Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura in Rome, the highest court at the Vatican has ruled that House minority leader Rep.Nancy Pelosi should not receive communion as a Catholic until she changes her advocacy of abortion on demand.

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal said that Pelosi should be denied communion because she is not in a state of grace.

The Cardinal cites Canon law 915 which states that Catholics who are continue to openly continue “in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”

Cardinal Burke said Mrs. Pelosi fits the definition.

“Certainly this is a case when Canon 915 must be applied,” he said, the Western Center for Journalism reported. “This is a person who obstinately, after repeated admonitions, persists in a grave sin — cooperating with the crime of procured abortion — and still professes to be a devout Catholic.”

“This is a prime example of what Blessed John Paul II referred to as the situation of Catholics who have divorced their faith from their public life and therefore are not serving their brothers and sisters in the way that they must — in safeguarding and promoting the life of the innocent and defenseless unborn, in safeguarding and promoting the integrity of marriage and the family,” he said.

In other words, Cardinal Burke is calling Rep. Nancy Pelosi a class A hypocrite.

I am not a Catholic, but I can't help but reflect on the justice of this. Not only is Nancy Pelosi an outspoken advocate of abortion on demand, but she also is a strong proponent of taking away the religious freedom of Catholics and Catholic institutions who do follow Church law in this matter by forcing them to subsidize abortions and abortificants under the diktats of ObamaCare. So not only is she involved in what the Catholic Church considers sin itself, but in attempting to force others into sin.

I'm not sure Rep. Pelosi even goes to confession and receives communion, but she has repeatedly referred to herself as a 'devout Catholic'. She's gotten away with that lie for years, unchallenged. This should destroy that, and I would hope that if it continues to persist,the Church would proceed to excommunication.

Egypt: Christian Schools, Churches Looted By Islamists, Nuns Abused As 'POWs'

While the Muslim Brotherhood fascists haven't performed so well against the Egyptian Army, they've done somewhat better when it comes to assaulting Egypt's Christians. Over 47 churches and monasteries have been burned and looted by the Islamists since Morsi was deposed, along with dozens of homes and businesses owned by Christians. The latest tactic of the Islamists is to mark the targets with red paint graffiti beforehand, so the mobs know where to go.

Pictured above is the Coptic Saint Virgin Mary Church in Al Nazla, which had just been rebuilt after 13 years of construction in a country where the government strictly curtails building permits for churches, in accordance with sharia law.

“First they stole the valuable things, and then they torched the place,” says Sami Awad, a church member who lives across the narrow dirt alley from the church. “Whatever they couldn't carry, they burned.”

The attackers left graffiti on the ruins of the church reading “The religion of God is Islam.”

The UK's Daily Mail reported on what happened to the latest victim in the Brotherhood's war against Christians, the Franciscan School in Cairo.

Sister Manal, the principal told the Daily Mail how she watched for six hours as a mob looted the building, knocked the cross off the gate and replaced it with the black banner of jihad.

The classrooms were then burned to the ground and the nuns, along with several Christian women who worked at the school were taken away to be paraded through the streets as 'prisoners of war' by the Brotherhood.

‘We are nuns. We rely on God and the angels to protect us,’ Sister Manal said. ‘At the end, they paraded us like prisoners of war and hurled abuse at us as they led us from one alley to another without telling us where they were taking us.’

The frightened women were groped, hit and insulted by the Islamist mob.

‘I am terrified and unable to focus,’ said Boulos Fahmy, the pastor of a Catholic church a short distance away from Manal’s school. ‘I am expecting an attack on my church any time now.’

And Bishop Ibram, head of the local Coptic church, said he had instructed Christians and clerics not to resist the mobs of Islamists to try and avoid any loss of life.

‘The looters were so diligent that they came back to one of the five churches they had already ransacked to see if they could get more,’ he said.

‘They were loading our chairs and our benches on trucks and when they had no space for more, they just destroyed them.’

In contrast to the Brotherhood regime that was recently ousted, the current Egyptian regime has said that attacks on Egypt's Christians will not be tolerated and has promised government aid in rebuilding the burned churches and religious facilities.

President Obama has made a huge point  of being a professed Christian. Have you ever heard him say a word about this? Has he ever once criticized the Muslim Brotherhood for attacking Christians and burning churches?

President Obama Insults Christian Parachial Schools

 

This is one of those stories that is huge overseas but is not being reported here at all.

Our president, true to form has gone road trip, ducking  out of Washington when there's real work to be done. He's left  things like the Amnesty bill to capable minions like Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. After hitting the European continent with Michelle and the entourage at the taxpayer's expense, he stopped in at the G8 summit in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

And made a speech at Belfast's Waterfront Hall, where he called Christian parochial schools 'segregated schools' and said:

“If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden—that too encourages division and discourages cooperation.”

Needless to say, Catholics and Protestants through out the UK are outraged.

First, the Buffoon-in-chief is obviously ignorant of the major role parochial schools and yes, religious figures played in bringing a degree of peace to Northern Ireland.

And second, riddle me this: most Muslim madrassahs openly teach Islamist superiority, hatred of unbelievers,the suppression of women and death for apostates and homosexuals (it's in the Qur'an). Islamic anti-semitism is so common in mosque sermons both in America and in every Muslim country the president has ever visited as to be a non-story.

Has our president even once referred to mosques or madrassahs as institutions that 'encourage division and discourage cooperation'? Not to mention the sort of rhetoric regularly issuing out of Reverend Wrights' church in Chicago that he was a member of for two decades?

It's bad enough he's attempting to violate the First Amendment rights of religious institutions here in America.Now he has to thoughtlessly insult them overseas.And selectively. He'd never say anything remotely critical of Muslim institutions at home or abroad.

In terms of academic achievement and producing moral and well educated citizens, America's Jewish and Christian parochial schools eclipse the much better funded public schools in America to an alarming degree, at far less cost per pupil.

It would be refreshing if just maybe, President Obama spent some serious time thinking about why parochial schools do such a stellar job instead of gratuitously insulting them.

But I wouldn't hold my breath.

My apologies to Catholics and Protestants in the UK. We unfortunately have a clueless president who doesn't know how to behave when he's in someone else's neighborhood.

Breaking: Cardinals Elect New Pope

Habemus Papum.

The Cardinals of the Catholic Church have elected the new Pope, Seventy-six-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, the first pope ever from South America, and probably the first non-European...although realistically, he's of Italian descent.

His election was somewhat of a surprise to outsiders, who expected that the Church might choose a younger man.

He will take the papal name of Francis.

Bergoglio, a Jesuit, is a member of the Church's conservative wing, but he is also known as a practical, Mr. Fixit type of administrator who did good work modernizing and revamping the Church's structure in Argentina.Apparently he finished second in the 2005 conclave that elected Pope Benedict.

Epect no changes on the church;s stance on abortion, same-sex marriage, and contraception. In 2010 he asserted that gay adoption is a form of discrimination against children, briniging him a public rebuke from Argentina's President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

He’s also known as down-to-earth, living in an apartment instead of the more lavish living quarters designated for a Cardinal,rejecting a chauffeured limousine and taking public transportation public transportation instead, something that will probably cease now that he's Pope. He also reportedly made a fetish of cooking his own meals.

One clue to how Pope Francis will conduct himself - In the past, Cardinal Bergoglio has been outspoken about his belief that there is an “unjust distribution of goods.”

In 2007, he said, “We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least. The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.”

You can probably expect him to be much more oriented towards growing the Church in Asia, Africa and Latin America than Benedict or his predecessors were.

There's no clue how he is going to handle the challenges to the Church from radical Islam, or whether he will re-establish the church's relationship with Jews, something damaged gravely by Benedict.

Also, I note that at 76, Pope Francis is only two years younger that Cardinal Ratzinger was when he became Pope Benedict. I have a suspicion that he may be something of an interim figure, a good administrator who will reform the Church's bureaucracy, be a good steward and be, possibly, a kingmaker for the next Pope.

We'll see.

Pope Benedict Steps Down

 
 

You gotta know when to fold - Kenny  Rogers

Pope Benedict XVI has decided to step down from the Papacy, the first pope to do so in almost 600 years.He will abdicate on February 28th.

The 85-year-old Pope's resignation letter said: "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.

"I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.

"However, in today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognise my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry entrusted to me."

He was only pope for eight years.

The official reason for Pope Benedict's departure is given as ill health, and at 85 there is probably an element of truth in that. But the former Cardinal Ratzinger is no fool, even at 85. And the real reason, the one that probably led to his fatigue and to this decision was his utter failure as pope.

He failed to re-establish the Church's position in Europe, the legacy of a previous Pope Benedict and the reason he took the name. After a brief show of strength against radical Islam and Islamism, he collapsed into dhimmitude and appeasement, leaving the Christians of the Middle East and particularly the Maronite Catholics at the Islamist's mercy. When Catholics and the Church needed a strong champion, they got instead a leader who was all too willing to be bullied.

As part of that, he abandoned the brave words he spoke at Auschwitz identifying the Church's fate with that of the Jewish people's. In fact, he appeared to go out of his way to put distance between them. He and Papal officials under his leadership were harshly critical of Israel, and the church outright refused to allow scholars access to its archives from the Holocaust era as it continued with proposed Beatification of WWII era Pope Pius XII, something that raised questions not only with Jews but with many Catholics.

To me, the ultimate symbol of Pope Benedict's tenure is the picture above, where a smiling pontiff cheerfully dons a PLO kefiya, the modern equivalent of a Nazi armband.

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the UN last year and erupted with an anti-semitic screed, the only European delegation not to walk out on him was the one from the Vatican.

He even attempted to reverse elements of Vatican II while  bringing back into the fold the anti-semites and Holocaust deniers of the Pius X society. as well as anti-Semitic Church figures like Poland's Cardinal Joseph Glemp or Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Meridiaga, the Archbishop of Honduras who, among other things blames "the Jews"for the Church's scandals involving priests and sexual abuse of young parishioners and calls for Jerusalem to be taken away from Israel as its capitol.

Pope Benedict even saw fit to visit Croatia in 2011 and praise  Cardinal Alojzije (Aloysius) Stepinac, a staunch supporter of the  pro Nazi Ustasha regime, who slaughtered thousands of Jews, Serbs and Roma during WWII with a cruelty and barbarity that even surprised their Nazi allies.

Pope Benedict failed to further solidify or expand the Church's foothold in Asia or its growing community of believers in Africa, nor did he do anything meaningful towards protecting African Catholics from predatory jihadis in countries like Nigeria or the Sudan. His bowing and scraping at the altar of Islam got neiother th eChurch nor its adherants any mercy or consideration.

And the shameful saga of the Church covering for priests guilty of sexually abusing minors and simply shifting them to unwary parishes also happened under his watch, a scandal that profoundly affected and outraged many deeply religious Catholics.

Pope Benedict was not an evil man. He was simply a weak reed incapable of providing the leadership the Church needed, and it's to his credit that he finally realized it.

Sorrowfully, he leaves the Church weaker and more divided than it was was he first assumed the Papacy. And in his retirement, he will no doubt have ample time to reflect on that.

Vale et bonam fortunam .. sed pergens cito

The conclave to choose a new Pope will take place 15 to 20 days after Pope Benedict officially retires. There is no clear frontrunner, and it will be interesting to see whom the Church chooses.Is there another John Paul II waiting somewhere in the wings?

President Obama Demands All Bow To His New Religion

The Founders of our beloved Republic were by and large religious men who acknowledged the role of divine providence in the miracle of their achieving independence in a free land of their own.

But they were also men who had come from a place racked with war and religious bigotry because of the institution of state religions, so they wisely included as one of our primary freedoms the edict that Congress would make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

The establishment and free exercise clauses, as they're known, were not intended to 'make a wall between church and state' as Thomas Jefferson's famous letter is frequently misinterpreted, but to keep America's governing classes from making laws elevating one religion over another and making it the official state religion, as the Church of England was.

President Obama's new Health and Human Services diktat requiring Catholic institutions to purchase healthcare for their employees that includes birth control, sterilization and abortion drugs and operations is a huge and egregious violation and dilution of these First Amendment rights. It is little different from requiring Muslim establishments to buy from companies producing pork products and alcohol.

It degrades freedom of practice to freedom to worship, and they are two very different things.

And once again, we see this president bypassing Congress and flouting the Constitution using the mechanisms of the executive order, the regulatory shibboleth and the appointed cabinet officer and czar.

When President Obama first came out with this policy,he expected it would simply be implemented without any fuss, which gives you a clue as to the personality of the man we allowed into the White House.

Another clue to who this president is and how he really views America and its people is that, after seeing the outcry from people of all faiths, he expected them to accept an 'accommodation' giving them the appearance of granting them back some of the rights they already own outright by lying to them that it will be the insurance companies who will be required to provide these products and services 'for free'.

President Obama continues to think that everyone is stupid except him. Catholic institutions will still be mandated to pay insurance premiums under ObamaCare no matter what. If insurance companies are forced to provide birth control, sterilization and abortions as a part of these policies it won't be 'for free' but will simply be rolled into the overall cost of the premiums - which these Catholic institutions will be paying anyway.

What the president is doing is demanding that both insurers and insured play a game of Let's Pretend that the cost of the policies is really higher than it is - because it includes these 'free' items. President Obama simply demands that people on both ends of this legally mandated transaction simply lie about it.

I admit to getting a small amount of malicious amusement out of this, because a lot of the Catholic hierarchy and many Catholics in America largely supported ObamaCare after getting assurances from this President that of course, he wouldn't expect them to have to fund things like abortions. They should have known that a president whose position on abortion has consistently been even more radical the NARAL's would lie to them with a smile. You have to wonder what former congressman Bart Stupak, a Catholic who provided the final votes on ObamaCare thinks of his decision now. He delivered the bloc of anti-abortion Democrats in exchange for a worthless executive order from Obama promising that no federal funds from ObamaCare would go to pay for funding abortions. Just as I wrote back then, the 'Executive order' might as well have been written in disappearing ink.


President Obama's cynical and deceitful 'accommodation' has just one purpose. It is yet another lie designed to give divide Catholics and to give permission to those Catholics who wanted to vote for President Obama anyway a little cover.

Thankfully, most of America's Catholic Bishops seem to understand what an assault this is on their faith and have rejected President Obama's cynical ploy.

It's up to their co-religionists and the Church to remind Catholics who once again take this president at his word of Bart Stupak and all the other untruths used to bring us to this point. If President Obama is re-elected, he will cheerfully trash this accommodation just as he's trashed the others.

The Democrats are composed of various self interest groups, many with interests and issues that are opposed to each other. But the one group no Democrat has ever gone against and survived for very long is the abortion lobby.

The simple reason for that is because abortion on demand is a sacrament for the Left and thus not just a part of President Obama's ideology. It's a vital part of a new secular religious doctrine, a state church, and thus establishment of religion as well as a trashing of free practice not just for Catholics but for all faiths, who will be subordinate to the new Leftist pantheism just as they always have been under all statist regimes. Make no mistake.. that is exactly what President Obama is putting in place, and neutering the First Amendment is an important and necessary step in that process.

This goes far beyond the question of abortion or birth control or the Catholic Church. It sets a precedent for gutting the entire First Amendment if it's successful.

It's the horrendous tip of a hidden iceberg designed to sink our freedoms.