China Builds Special Prison for Forced Abortion Opponent

Chinese officials are building a special prison to house forced abortion opponent Chen Guangcheng, who has been subjected to home detention and monitoring since his release from prison earlier this year.

Chen, who exposed a massive campaign of forced abortions and sterilizations in Linyi, China to the western world in an interview with the Washington Post, spent more than four years in prison for his “crime.” Family planning officials held a bogus trial on charges that Chen supposedly destroyed property in a local protest he never attended. During the trial, Chen’s attorneys were prevented from appearing.

Link

Huge study definitively links abortion with increased likelihood of mental health problems

Professor Coleman’s study was based on an analysis of 22 separate projects which together analysed the experiences of 877,000 women, of whom 163,831 had had an abortion. It said: ‘Results indicate quite consistently that abortion is associated with moderate to highly increased risks of psychological problems subsequent to the procedure.

‘Overall, the results revealed that women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81 per cent increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10 per cent of the incidence of mental health problems were shown to be directly attributable to abortion.’

Read more

My buddy Andy leaves a comment on Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s blog

Andy’s August 25th comment:

As a CCD instructor of 20+ years, a Columbus Knight, and a generally all around good guy, it is so frustrating, Your Excellency … so frustrating to be on the losing side … and I say this as a firm believer that the gates of hell will not prevail.

There’s about 70,000,000 Catholics in our country and we have to endure the most anti Catholic government in American history … and yes … I include the Know Nothings and the Nativist days of our history.

It’s so frustrating that in the days of leaders such as Spellman, Sheen and many others, too numerous to name, as well as Protestant leaders … to watch our American government become so anti Christian.

They would have never DARED to do the things they do today, what with homosexual marriages, the slaughter of the innocents in the evil sacrament of abortion, the challenges to everything Christian we hear about everyday, including public displays of Christmas, Crucifixes, the 10 Commandments and any public mention of our Lord and other attacks on our faith, had these leaders been around.

Our leaders have failed us miserably over the last 50-60 years. We have become a great fund raising institution, but have sold our souls for mammon.

Our leaders have sold out
our Lord Jesus Christ,
and His Church.

If not for immigration from south of the border we would be hanging by a thread. Our bishop’s conference is partly responsible for electing this anti Catholic government, for getting health care that includes infanticide, homosexual marriage, and now forced contraception, through the same health care program. Our bishops said nothing to defeat the party of death (as Cardinal Raymond Burke called it) and now we reap the whirlwind.

You, Archbishop have been chosen by the Holy Spirit Himself to turn this around and I see nothing but another politician who at times shines, but too many times falls into the trap of modernist, secularist thought.

I pray that you open your eyes wider, Your Excellency. As the leader of the USCCB you are in a unique position to turn this around. You will be persecuted, funds will disappear, some of your own flock will abandon you ,but you must persevere. You must speak louder and clearer, for all of us. You must enlist the very people who will stand shoulder to shoulder with you, like the Catholic League, Father Benedict Groeschel, Scott Hahn, Larry Douglas, Bob Stanley, and many many others, who stand up for our beloved Church, no matter what the elitists think.

We are many. We wait for a true leader who will intimidate government officials, as was done in the past, and not cower before them.

I pray for your courage and perseverance. We need you more than ever. Lead us!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AndyP/Doria2 Yonkers, NY HOSEA 4:6

Leave your own comment on Archbishop Dolan’s Blog

Other recent posts by Andy P/Doria2

Hero of flight 93 on 9-11 was devout Catholic, had a premonition

The widow of Flight 93 hero Thomas Burnett says her husband was a devout Catholic who had premonitions of the fate that met him and 44 others on the fateful day of September 11, 2001 — including a hunch his life would not be a long one and that his mission in life would somehow involve the White House.

It is now widely believed the hijacked plane, which crashed into a rural part of western Pennsylvania, was aimed at the White House, the CIA, or the U.S. Capitol before passengers led by Burnett overpowered the al Qaeda operatives.

Read more

A Most Mysterious Moment of Mercy

Read how God went to a lot of trouble to provide for one of his own.

Was the Holy Spirit’s guidance at Vatican II infallible … or not?

Father Z entertains the notion. Readers comment.

Visit the site

My generation did not evangelise enough, says Pope

Your generation couldn’t make up its mind about what it actually believed, so it introduced a dumbed-down liberal revolution into the church that still reverberates (negatively) to this day.

As a result, “CHANGE” came to the Catholic Church
about 45 years before it “came” to America.

“Yes we can” … build ugly churches, corrupt the seminaries, discredit the priesthood, tear out communion rails, banish tabernacles, sew confusion and dissent, “gut” the sacred liturgy and persecute the traditionally Catholic faithful.

Shame on you guys! – Doug Lawrence.

Link

Contemplating stained glass windows in church and Biblical descriptions of Heaven

…recall that traditional church architecture saw the church as an image of heaven. Hence it’s design was based on the descriptions of heaven found in the Scriptures. Now among other things, heaven is described in the Book of Revelation as having high walls with rows of jewels embedded in the foundations of those walls:

One of the seven angels…showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates….The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.... (Revelation 21:varia)

Thus, because heaven had great high walls, older churches almost always had a lot of verticality. The lower foundational walls gave way to the higher clerestory, and above the clerestory the vaults of the ceiling rise even higher. And in the lower sections of the walls, extending even as high as the clerestory, the jewel-like stained glass recalls the precious jeweled gemstones described in the lower walls of heaven, according to Revelation 21.

The compelling effect of a traditional church is to say to the believer, you are in heaven now.

Read more from Msgr. Charles Pope

Editor’s note: Like many of our modern day “Catholic” theologians, who think they are so much smarter than all those who came before them … but aren’t … many architects of modern day Catholic churches … and some of the bishops who ultimately approve their designs … aren’t very smart, either. And that’s a real shame!

Enjoy the exquisite glass in the Cathedral at Chartres, France

Agnostic Nobel laureate who is no friend of the Catholic Church is impressed by WYD 2011, in Madrid

According to Vargas Llosa, who was born in Peru but is now a Spanish citizen, World Youth Day was “a gigantic festival of teens, students and young professionals who came from every corner of the world to sing, dance, pray and proclaim their adherence to the Catholic Church and their ‘addiction’ to the Pope.”

“The small protests by secularists, anarchists, atheists and Catholics who dissent from the Pope caused some minor incidents, albeit some grotesque, such as the group of lunatics who were seen throwing condoms at a group of girls who … prayed the rosary with their eyes closed,” he recalled.

Read more

Kreeft: How to successfully discern God’s will for your life … and act accordingly.

Does God have one right choice for me in each decision I make?

When we pray for wisdom to discern God’s will when it comes to choosing a mate, a career, a job change, a move, a home, a school, a friend, a vacation, how to spend money, or any other choice, big or little, whenever there are two or more different paths opening up before us and we have to choose, does God always will one of those paths for us? If so, how do we discern it?

Many Christians who struggle with this question today are unaware that Christians of the past can help them from their own experience. Christian wisdom embodied in the lives and teachings of the saints tells us two things that are relevant to this question.

Read more

Interesting social justice quote from the Bible

In the words of Jesus Christ:

Mark 14:7
For the poor you have always with you: and whensoever you will, you may do them good: but me you have not always.

“The unborn child is a human being, not a blob of tissue, and abortion is an act of violence.”

A group that opposes abortion is visiting local colleges this week.

Demonstrators are using some shocking images to get their point across, and that’s caused one school to ban the group from campus.

Read more

Is VP Joe Biden really unaware that Communist China is one of the most vicious regimes on the planet?

Mr. Biden was on the Foreign Relations Committee for many years. Did he miss all of the hearings on this subject? The reports by Amnesty International? Did he miss the Washington Post story about the imprisonment of blind human-rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who served more than four years in ghastly conditions for protesting the brutality of the one-child policy? The Post story mentioned 10,000 forced sterilizations performed in Puning City. Chen revealed that in Linyi County, Shandong Province, alone, there were 130,000 forced abortions in 2005. Is the vice president truly unaware that children born in defiance of the one-child policy are not permitted to enroll in school or see a doctor?

But many, many Chinese babies don’t even get that far. They are ripped from their struggling mothers’ wombs by government goons. The London Sunday Times reported, for example, the trauma of Zhang Linla, the mother of a four-year-old daughter who became pregnant again without permission. “Six days before the due date, 10 strong strangers came to my house, forced me into a truck then took me to a family planning clinic, where the doctor gave me an injection [of a drug to induce labor]. The child began struggling in my womb and one of these scum even kicked me in the abdomen. Then the baby came out and they threw it into a rubbish bin. I could even see it was still moving.”

Read more

A great example of “circular reasoning” and Protestant denial, in the face of irrefutable Catholic truth.

You asserted the Bible was your ONLY divine authority. I asked you to show me where the Bible teaches that assertion. You didn’t give me one. Instead, you gave me a lot of verses extolling the greatness of Scripture. I already know it’s great. I use it all the time. Hence, if you’re not going to answer my specific request, there is no sense in continuing a discussion with someone who can’t prove from the Bible what she claims from the Bible.

Or perhaps you don’t understand the question (and it wouldn’t be the first time). I had a similar discussion with a Protestant a few years ago, and it took him about a month to understand what I was really asking him. Prior to that, he did the same thing you are doing now, that is, he would quote verses indicting the greatness of Scripture. Then one day it finally dawned on him. Unfortunately, he was not able to come up with a verse, and then the discussion stopped. That is where we are right now.

So, here goes. If you find a verse of Scripture that says the Bible is the ONLY divine authority, I will forsake Catholicism in a heartbeat, because you will have proved it to be a false religion. No kidding, Cheryl. Just one verse will do, and I will disown Catholicism faster than you can say “John Paul II.”

Until then, there is nothing else to talk about. You are the one who initiated this conversation, and you are the one who insisted that we deal with Scripture first. I obliged on both counts. But if you’re going to deal with Scripture, then deal with it. Stop putzing around with verses that don’t prove your point. I hope you understand.

Read the entire exchange

Columbus 1492 Cross Made Official Cuban National Monument

BARACOA, Cuba, AUG. 26, 2011 (Zenit.org).- At the end of a thanksgiving Mass on Aug. 15, the archbishop of Santiago, Cuba, raised high the Cross of Parra, planted by Christopher Columbus on Dec. 1, 1492, and with it he blessed some 2,000 faithful gathered in the square.

Minutes earlier, the crowd broke out in applause on learning that the National Cuban Commission of Monuments declared the Cross of Parra a national monument. This cross is kept in the parish church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Baracoa.

Historian Eusebio Leal made the announcement and described the Eucharist in Baracoa as “a celebration of concord, a beautiful celebration for and in our homeland, in the oldest of all the cities of Cuba.”

Link

Editor’s note: Our communist neighbor to the south raises up the holy cross while certain citizens of “one nation, under God” are doing everything they can to remove every trace of God from the public square. Strange days, indeed!

A small percentage of priests engage in sexually deviant behavior? Blanket coverage. An international army of young people marches through the hot sun and then sits patiently through a rainstorm to see the Pope? Ho-hum.

A million and a half young Catholics from all over the world come to celebrate their faith and to declare their solidarity with the Pope—and the networks obsess over a handful of protestors!

I know that controversy sells papers and pleases sponsors, but anyone who was on the ground for World Youth Day couldn’t help but conclude there was something more at work in the gross discrepancy between reality and reportage.

Read more

According to the Bible, precisely who and/or what is Antichrist?

by Doug Lawrence

All political correctness and false ecumenism aside, the Bible speaks rather clearly of those who might be called “Antichrist” … and it even goes so far as to define the precise meaning of the term:

1John 2:22
Who is a liar, but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son.

Conclusion: Anyone who claims there is no God, or that God did not send his son into the world to redeem mankind from Satan, sin, and death … is antichrist.

1John 4:3
And every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God. And this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh: and he is now already in the world.

Conclusion: Anyone who denies Jesus Christ … or his divinity … is antichrist.

2John 1:7
For many seducers are gone out into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a seducer and an antichrist.

Conclusion: Anyone who denies that Jesus Christ is both true God and true man … is antichrist.

1John 2:18
Little children, it is the last hour: and as you have heard that Antichrist cometh, even now there are become many Antichrists: whereby we know that it is the last hour.

Conclusion: Various types of Antichrist(s) will tend to proliferate in these, the last days.

St. Peter announced the beginning of “The Last Days” based on the events which took place in in Jerusalem on the first Christian Pentecost, as they had been earlier prophesied in the Old Testament Book of Joel. (See Acts 2:16 and Joel 2:29)

Similarly, the return of Jesus Christ is expected to be shortly preceded by the reign of a supernaturally powerful, world-wide power that engenders all of the above characteristics and more, which will constitute the final Antichrist of human history.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church prefers to describe this last Antichrist as more of a “system” (perhaps the New World Order?) than as one particular person … but opinions differ as to the validity of that point … since long experience has proved that no one but God really knows precisely who or what will actually come to pass, in those days.

Let us not forget that because the Catholic Church/Vatican is both a spiritual and a temporal divine institution, the Catechism is also in part, a political document.

From the Catechism: The Church’s ultimate trial

675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.⁵⁷⁴ The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth⁵⁷⁵ will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.⁵⁷⁶

676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism,⁵⁷⁷ especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.⁵⁷⁸

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.⁵⁷⁹ The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven.⁵⁸⁰ God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.⁵⁸¹

*****

From all of the above, it seems pretty clear that the term “antichrist” can quite easily (and correctly) be applied to atheists, agnostics, pagans, Muslims, Jews, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, Communists, a number of heretical Christian sects … as well as huge segments of today’s political, academic, and main-stream media establishments.

Maybe … as usual … the Catechism is right!

This Week’s Ask Alice: The third secret of Fatima.

Send A Question To Alice

She’ll answer your Catholic questions
right here, every Thursday.

Email responses will also be provided, as time permits.

*** Alice is out this week. Doug Lawrence is sitting in. ***

Norma Asks: What is the third secret of Fatima?

Doug Lawrence Answers: The 1917 public apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Fatima, Portugal, contained a number of prophetic messages for the people of the 20th century, dealing with certain urgent and critical matters of faith and morals, war and peace, repentance and conversion, the state of modern society, and the future of the church.

Among the the messages delivered by the Blessed Virgin Mary to the three young seers, were three “secrets”.

Two of the seers soon died, with only Sister Lucia Santos surviving. Sister Lucia wrote and delivered the messages (secrets) to the then-current pope.

Two of the secrets were soon revealed and widely disseminated. The third was deliberately withheld, for unspecified reasons, by several successive popes, even though, as Sister Lucia had maintained, the Blessed Virgin Mary intended the third secret to be revealed no later than the early 1960’s.

When the third secret was not revealed on time,
a number of  “conspiracy theories” soon arose,
some of which still exist, today.

In April of 2001 (about 40 years “late”) Pope John Paul II finally got around to making the third secret public, as well as offering his own opinion (as well as that of then Cardinal Ratzinger) on what the secret may have actually meant to the church.

By that time, many Catholics (particularly traditionalists) were thoroughly dissatisfied with how the matter had been handled. Some even had concerns about the authenticity of the documents.

This link will take you to the official Vatican document which details the third secret, and explains one possible meaning, according to Pope John Paul II and our present Pope Benedict XVI.

The Fatima Apparitions are probably the most significant events of their kind, in modern times. And while the church has officially approved the authenticity of the apparitions, Fatima remains classified as a “private revelation” … which no Catholic is required to accept, on faith … unless they choose to do so.

Whether or not you believe the “official version” of the third secret, as published by the Vatican, and whether or not you agree with the official Vatican “take” on it … is also totally up to you.

It’s not dogma.

Watch a video on the Fatima Apparitions and the message for our times

Click here to see all of Alice’s other columns

Newly ordained priest tells it like it is. Let’s hope he doesn’t get in trouble for it!

Noting that seven of the 10 priests ordained that day were born outside the U.S., Owen blamed the dearth of home-grown priests partly on our affluent society.

“We don’t need God anymore,” he lamented. “Because we have money and material possessions, we can get along fine — that is until someone has a serious tragedy and then it’s ‘God help me!'” By contrast, he pointed out, there are 1,400 students enrolled in the Catholic seminary in Kenya.

He put the responsibility for the lack of U.S. vocations squarely on the shoulders of many older priests.

“I blame the priests here in Chicago and in the U.S.,” he said. “They’re not attractive. They are not leading a lifestyle that is authentic. Why would anyone want to give their life to that?”

Because it was instituted by Christ himself, he believes the Roman Catholic Church is doesn’t need to change. He argued that some want to make the church more like American society, i.e. to make it more democratic, but the Church exists to transform society, not the other way around.

“That’s part of the problem,” he contends. “We want to be part of the culture. Yes, we can take some elements from the culture, but that’s not the way Christ set it up. The church is not a democracy.”

Because the Catholic Church is a divine creation he believes he can maintain very firm boundaries without a hint of judgmentalism. When asked if he would give communion to a gay man living openly in a committed relationship, his answer was no. Would he allow a Lutheran pastor to preach the homily in a “mixed marriage” wedding in his church? No. Would he give communion to a Protestant at Mass? No again. Nothing personal, that’s just the way it is.

Read more

Death of radical Obama-like ideologue reminds us: These guys will fight for their socialist heaven on earth, even to their last breath.

In Canada, the death of New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton yesterday has permeated the news. He was a strong, far-left, big government socialist.  He was the hero of the Canadian youth much like Obama once was.  His followers are as vocal and unrelenting as he was.  He never wasted an opportunity to extol social justice theories or attack conservatism.

Read more