Red, White, and Blue in the Face!

A direct attack against the very “soul” of the Catholic Church in the United States has been mounted by the ACLU. On July 1, 2010 the ACLU sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid saying

We write to inform you about potential violations of the Emergency
Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), 42 U.S.C. § 1395dd,
and the Conditions of Participation of Medicare and Medicaid (COP), 42
C.F.R. § 482.13, by religious hospitals that refuse to provide emergency
reproductive health care.  Religiously affiliated hospitals are not exempt
from complying with these laws, and cannot invoke their religious status to
jeopardize the health and lives of pregnant women seeking medical care.  To
the contrary, the federal laws mentioned above protect patients’ right to
receive emergency reproductive health care.  The government
unquestionably has a significant interest in ensuring that these laws are
enforced in order to protect women’s lives and their health.  We therefore
ask you to not only investigate the matters discussed herein and take
appropriate action under the above-mentioned laws, but that you also clarify
in the appropriate CMS program manual, and issue a transmittal, that
denying emergency reproductive health care violates federal law. 

Religiously affiliated hospitals across the country inappropriately and
unlawfully deny pregnant women emergency medical care.
 

(Read the entire letter)

As I read the letter it became obvious that the only hospitals in America that the ACLU have a problem with are “Catholic-owned” hospitals. Now I will agree that anyone who reads the ACLU letter will be horrified at the examples given –  there are 3. Three patients out of millions that more than 500 Catholic hospitals around the country provide medical care to. The ACLU wants to shut down these hospitals or force them to perform abortions. My guess is the ACLU would much prefer the hospitals be closed –  another Catholic institution out of the way. This is extremely dangerous and is the direct result of Catholics in our Congress and Catholics in our population who do not believe that what the Church teaches is true and who refuse to stand up for their faith over the immediate rewards offered by the satanic forces who are at work in these matters.

What is in peril here is not simply the Catholic Hospital but in point of fact Freedom of Religion. Catholic hospitals are Catholic for a reason and one of those reasons has to do with the sanctity of all life and the belief that the killing of an unborn child is an intrinsic evil that cannot be condoned. The ends do not justify the means –  one may not commit an evil in order that a good may be the outcome. This is a religious belief the Church has taught consistently. If the ACLU has its way this is the death knell for freedom of religion in the United States, but more specifically the destruction of the Catholic Church as an authoritative moral voice in the public square.

Let me get something off my chest — I don’t believe for a moment that the ACLU has the best interests of our Republic in mind, never mind our Constitution.  I believe, in fact, that they are interested in just the opposite –  the tearing down of the Republic, the United States of America, and the literal shredding of our Constitution. As a part of that agenda the eradication of religious freedom seems to be high on their task list. My sense of the ACLU and its members is that they are virtually all part of or associated closely with the Progressive movement and the Progressive twin, the Socialist/Marxist/Communist whatever you wanna call ‘em folks. The ACLU a danger to America and to the Catholic Church. What the ACLU is doing is also what most, if not all, the Obama administration officials are looking to accomplish –  the transformation of our country into something you won’t recognize as America.

Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!

(H/T RealCatholicTv.com)

and are in such fear of losing their opportunity to “transform America” that the Democrat leadership in the House and Senate have managed to pull yet more legislative coup d’etats.

Campaign Finance Disclosure –  The Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, otherwise known as H.R. 5175 was passed late Thursday afternoon. What can I say about this one! The Progressives in the administration have been salivating at the prospect of putting a muzzle on their political opponents. The Supreme Court decision that corporations have a right to give money to election campaigns definitely put a burr under the progressive donkey’s saddle and had to be dealt with. In fear of losing their political majority and thus endangering the progressive agenda, Dems have voted to apply pressure on political opponents by requiring them to disclose all of their campaign contributors. In order to get the bill passed some conservative Dems had to be placated by amending the bill to eliminate disclosure requirements for organizations that have more than 1 million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations.

Then, while the rest of America slept (many of us fitfully)

Finance reform – the House and Senate Democrats worked through the night to reach agreement on Finance Reform legislation (loving called the Dodd-Frank bill). Given the progressive bent of Obama’s administration and it’s tight-fisted control over the Democratic members of our legislative branch this bodes no good for the United States.

In a quote reminiscent of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comments on the TARP bill, Rep. Chris Dodd said

“No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done.”

So now the Progressive movement in America has their finger firmly on the pulse of the economy and if this Progressive movement remains true to the Progressive principles we are in  for an economic gutting. As they ram “redistribution of wealth” down our throats Obama’s administration and his minions in the Democratic party are effectively putting a knife to our economic throat and saying “you’ll do it our way”. It’s difficult to believe but the Democratic Party has been completely and effectively hijacked by the Progressive minority (yes, I still believe that the majority of Dems are liberal but not progressive, they’ve just proven themselves to be primarily spineless).

Read more @ The Lonely Conservative

and may God bless each and every Mother who, by whatever means they have and with God’s grace, stick by their children and care for them as best they are able.

Here, in Central New York, this Mother’s Day morning it’s snowing. This is the 2^nd time in the 20 years I’ve lived here that I’ve seen snow on Mother’s Day!

defending child abusers?

Over the past week I’ve had two occasions where I was accused of defending child abusers when what I was doing was defending the Holy Father and the Church.

What did I say? I simply told the truth — the Church always has been, is, and always will be a target for anyone and everyone who wants to do what is right in their own eyes and not what the Church teaches is right. Freedom for them is freedom to do as they please not to do what is right. The awful fact is that many of those who rail against the Church and repeat false and scandalous charges are passing themselves off as Catholic.

Facts are facts and the facts are that despite the likelihood that Catholic priests are actually in the minority of abusers the media reports and the hue and cry make it appear as if Catholic priests are the ONLY abusers! I’m not going to rehash the stats — anyone with an internet connection can get all the stats they need — but I will say this. The fact is that the Church is an easy target and is being heavily targeted by forces that actually believe they can take her down and out. It ain’t gonna happen folks. Those who would have the Church in ruins (whether they pretend to be Catholic or not) are obviously not believers otherwise they’d know the simple truth.

What’s the simple truth? That the Church is the work of Jesus Christ who is its head and who has promised that His Church will prevail until the end of time. And so it will. Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Religious, lay, theologians, the good, the bad, the ugly, the saintly, the satanic will all pass away with time but the Church that Christ founded and to whom He willed His Body and Blood will outlast us all.

Shame on us who are so quick to believe the worst — at the first hint of reporting against Pope Benedict most of us never even read the story, just gasped at the headlines and immediately declared the Holy Father’s conviction a done deal. Shame on us for falling victim to and then joining in on the slander and calumny.

Shame on us. Pray, pray that we may not undergo the trial. Pray for the Holy Father for he *is* undergoing the trial.

Join the Knights of Columbus in a special novena for Pope Benedict XVI, beginning Divine Mercy Sunday, April 11, and concluding Monday, April 19, the fifth anniversary of the Holy Father’s election in 2005.

Novena for Pope Benedict XVI

4/9/10: Cardinal Newman Society also offering prayers – give a Spiritual Bouquet

It is Holy Week in the Christian calendar and it has become the custom among the mainstream media (at least in the USA) to trot out stories about fundamental beliefs of Christianity. Often these stories are thinly disquised attempts to cast doubt on the beliefs, others are much more blatant.

Today is Monday in Holy Week – we’re just getting started. In my car I sometimes tune to the local NPR radio station and did so today to hear that some brilliant scientists at a U.S. university have discovered that magnetic pulses can be used to make a test subject change their minds about a moral judgement. Evidently this goes to prove that moral judgements are simply brain exercises that can be broken down, fiddled with, and even changed if we like. The NPR host wisely intoned at stories end “ . . . it could be that we don’t have, or don’t need, a soul”. Pardon my quote – it may not be exact but you get the picture. Good luck with that one oh great and wise scientists. [Read/listen]

Just a couple hours later a network news program highlighted a National Geographic channel program airing tonight – “Touched by Jesus?”. This ought to be good – are Mary Magdalen & Jesus still a couple? Is the Shroud of Turin the real deal or just a fabric of our imagination? Aren’t all those fools claiming to have stigmata just faking or are they actually “replicating” Jesus’ wounds [note the word used – ‘replicate’ as though they could just call it up whenever they wished. In my experience reading the stories of those who bore the stigmata, most would have been happy had they never had them even once!].

Ah well, what will be truly interesting is seeing who they trot out as authoritative scholars and witnesses.

update: I won’t be watching – I don’t pay my cable provider enough money – it’s on the digital package and I’m not there. Too bad.

On second thought don’t tell her — let some stranger tell her. It’ll be even better if you let Planned Parenthood do it right?

Every parent should be outraged. Planned Parenthood, operating behind the mask of women’s health care, is boldly and unashamedly pushing sex at our children before they’ve had the chance to be children and they’re getting worse by the day. Oh yeah and you’re helping to pay for it with your tax dollars.

The Girl Scout Sex Guide

The blog has been down again for a few daywhile I moved from one hosting service (free but terrifically unreliable) to my totalchoicehosting.com site. This is actually on a subdomain of one of my other sites but that plus a little dns forwarding has allowed me to get the site up on a reliable hosting service. It will, hopefully, remain up now.

The measure of a man

American Thinker via The Lonely Conservative

Update: This post was prompted by my re-discovery of a website I find to be a remarkable treasure. What impressed me most were the photos of the faces of the Spanish clergy, religious, and lay people murdered in the Spanish Civil War. Here’s a link to Hagiography Circle; and this link directly to the page beginning the list of martyrs of the Spanish Civil War.

These days when one hears terms like “Terrible Triangle” thoughts immediately jump to latter day terrorism especially the Greater Middle East, southeast Asian island nations such as Malayasia, the Philippines etc. where such “triangles of terror” have probably been defined over time. The particular triangle I’m referring to though is one that Pope Pius XI tried to bring to the attention of the world but which, especially the West, seemed to remain silent on.

 ”Execution” of the Sacred Heart by leftist militiamen at Cerro de los Ángeles near Madrid, on 7 August 1936, was the most famous of the widespread desecration of images and Churches.[1] King Alfonso XII had consecrated the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the spot on May 30, 1919.[2] The photograph was taken by a Paramount newsreel representative and originally published in the London Daily Mail with a caption calling it part of the “Spanish Reds’ war on religion.”[3]