A prominent Protestant minister gets things almost totally wrong about St. Peter, the papacy and the Catholic Church
It should be abundantly clear to all
that Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said,
“Thou art Peter (Rock) and upon this Rock
I will build my Church.”
On Sept. 25, 2013, protestant Rev. Bresciani wrote “Has the pope taken his first steps into Last Days apostasy?” for Renewamerica.com an online publication.
In the article, as you might well expect, Bresciani made lots of wrong statements about the Catholic Church in his attempt to shed speculation on the current pope and the end of the world. I don’t care about his personal opinions about the end of the world so I am not going to comment on those.
What I am going to do is tell the TRUTH where Bresciani told anti-Catholic lies. And I will do it using a PROTESTANT BIBLE, so the protestants can’t complain about the interpretation of a Catholic version of the Bible.
The story of the Reformation needs reforming
Protestant mythology achieved definitive form in a book that would shape the writing of Tudor history down to our own day. In 1679 Gilbert Burnet, a Scottish cleric, published the first volume of a massive History of the Reformation, an anti-Catholic narrative given scholarly credibility by the inclusion of dozens of documents gathered from public and private archives.
Burnet would be the chief propagandist for the “Glorious Revolution” which deposed James II and set the Protestant William of Orange on the throne. His history rammed home the message that Catholicism and Englishness were utterly incompatible: Catholicism was tyranny, Protestantism liberation. “They hate us,” he wrote, “because we dare to be freemen and Protestants.”
Media happily supporting idealized image of Catholic sisters that hasn’t existed for a generation
“This spin,” she said, “is omnipresent, always interesting, and often unintentionally comic. But however maliciously intended, I think it contains an element of nostalgia. It proves the irresistible attraction of goodness. Not even the liberal mainstream media can fail to see its beauty.”
Dressed in a flowing habit and devoting her life to educating children and building hospitals, or gliding serenely down spotless convent hallways and singing Gregorian chant in Latin: the classic image of the nun is less stereotype than it is archetype, a cultural icon of everything good and holy and true, and it is as much beloved by media as it is by Catholics.
Steichen told LSN that the only trouble with this picture is that the “good sisters” made in the image of this archetype are mostly an artifact of U.S. history and are now nearly extinct. LCWR represents about 80 percent of the 57,000 religious sisters in the U.S., with an average age of 74 and climbing. With the exception of a handful of young, deliberately faithful, countercultural, and largely recently-founded communities, the LCWR nuns and sisters have abandoned not only the habit that symbolized their devotion, but the faith that defined it, she said.
Confirmed: Obama is indeed a liar.
Cardinal Dolan describes the 45-minute meeting he had with Obama last November, at which he understood the president to say that the Catholic Church’s religious freedoms would be protected as the health-care law was implemented:
“I said, ‘I’ve heard you say, first of all, that you have immense regard for the work of the Catholic Church in the United States in health care, education and charity. . . . I have heard you say that you are not going to let the administration do anything to impede that work and . . . that you take the protection of the rights of conscience with the utmost seriousness. . . . Does that accurately sum up our conversation?’ [Mr. Obama] said, ‘You bet it does.’”
The archbishop asked for permission to relay the message to the other bishops. “You don’t have my permission, you’ve got my request,” the president replied.
Dolan describes himself as “chagrined” at Obama’s apparent change of heart when, at the end of January, he received a call from the Oval Office telling him that not only would the birth control mandate be enforced, but that the bishops had until August “to find out how you’re going to be able to comply.” Dolan says he told the president: “Well, sir, we don’t need the [extra time]. I can tell you now we’re unable to comply.”
Report: Catholic Campaign for Human Development continues to fund birth control, abortion efforts.
Ironically, this is exactly what CCHD stated it would be very careful not to do. Last year, it wrote that CCHD “will not fund groups that are members of coalitions which have as their organizational purpose or coalition agenda, positions or actions that contradict fundamental Catholic moral and social teaching.” [xxvii]
However, many of the above-mentioned organizations are members of exactly that sort of coalition – coalitions that are fundamentally working against Catholic moral and social teaching. Those aren’t the only ones, though.
The American Life League Report lists scores of additional CCHD-funded organizations that belong to coalitions with pro-abortion and/or homosexual “rights” agendas. This past year alone, after its “careful” vetting process, CCHD awarded over a million dollars to organizations working in consort with anti-Catholic coalitions.
Dangerous fictions that conservatives must oppose with the same boldness, vigor, and conviction with which the other side advances them.
Here are just a few of the radical, unproven, destructive lies that conservatives are either accepting as true or that conservatives consider less important than preserving reputations, friendships, positions, peace, unity, or comfort:
• Science has proven that homosexuality is 100% heritable.
• Homosexuality is ontologically analogous to race.
• Disapproval of homosexual practice constitutes hatred of persons.
• Disordered sexual desire is constitutive of identity.
• No one can experience an eradication or diminution of same-sex attraction.
• The presence of same-sex attraction renders volitional same-sex practice moral.
• The legalization of same-sex marriage will not affect either marriage or society.
• The redefinition of marriage is a civil right.
• The redefinition of marriage will not lead ineluctably to the legalization of plural marriages.
• Homosexual couples—who are by design sterile—have a right to acquire children.
• Homosexual couples have an inherent right to create deliberately motherless or fatherless children.
• Children don’t need or have a self-evident, inalienable right to be raised when possible by the biological parents who produced them.
• Either mothers or fathers are expendable.
• Widespread cultural affirmation of homosexuality will not further undermine First Amendment speech rights.
• Widespread cultural affirmation of homosexuality will not further undermine religious liberty (Even former Georgetown University law professor and current EEOC member, lesbian Chai Feldblum, affirms that the “rights” of homosexuals should and will trump religious liberty.)
• The legalization of same-sex marriage is not a central, “existential” political issue (Only the abortion holocaust is a more critical, existential issue than marriage and the natural family).
• The affirmation or embrace of homosexuality by teachers, legislators, and judges is irrelevant.
• One can be a Christian while embracing and affirming homosexual practice.
• Society has an obligation to provide to homosexual couples through civil unions the same benefits it provides married heterosexual couples.
• Homosexuals will be satisfied with civil unions.
All of these are dangerous fictions that conservatives must oppose with the same boldness, vigor, and conviction with which the other side advances them. We must do so without regard to personal comfort or our desire to “fit in” and be liked—which are manifestations of pride and cowardice. We must not exploit the rationalization that peace and unity demand our silence or acquiescence, for truth trumps even those. We must begin to treat conservative beliefs about homosexuality as if they are objective, immutable, transcendent truths—which, of course, they are.
Ten Reasons to Despise Planned Parenthood
10. A recent report reveals that Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s (PPFA) audits show the organization spent just $657.1 million between 2002 and 2008 from federal government grants and programs, but the abortion behemoth’s own annual reports show that it took in $2.3 billion from government grants and programs during the same time period.
9. PP’s repeated and consistent willingness to turn a blind eye to reports of statutory rape.
8. Consumer Reports ranked their condoms the worst, failing tests that measured strength and reliability (they burst when filled with air).
7. Several years ago, PPNYC put a public plea on their Web site—“Harry Potter: Prisoner of Hormones?”—lobbying J.K. Rowling to write sex education into the next novel in the bestselling series.
6. As the video below shows, PP provides medically inaccurate abortion counseling at a tax-funded clinics.
Anthropogenic Global Warming, Eugenics, Racism Provide False Justification for Denial of Human Rights
Policies based on “scientific fact” have a history of being more than just problematic, as with the veneer of absolute truth behind them they have oftentimes been downright irrational. This historic record should act as a guide to our current political occupation with anthropogenic global warming.
Arguably, scientific fact changes more rapidly than religious dogma. What was undeniable truth one day might be discovered to be quackery the next. The most glaring example of this in the 20th century is the science of eugenics.
The science of eugenics insisted that the human gene pool was being polluted by various undesirable races and threatened to lead to the degeneration of the human species into a collection of feeble minded individuals. So popular was this science that it spawned no less than three Global conferences with attendees included scientific and political heavyweights of the time.
When eugenics took the form of government policy, it did so in a frightening way. Take for example the case of the Racial Integrity Act (RIA). In the name of fighting off the inevitability of human degeneracy that would occur if people were left to breed uncontrolled, the state of Virginia passed the RIA in 1924. This law allowed the state powers that today would cause us to recoil in horror. These powers included forced sterilizations, and the banning of intermarriage between minorities and whites.
NYT Dowd’s Anti-Catholic Piece is Riddled With Errors, Deceptions
The New York Times’s Maureen Dowd spent some time in Catholic school as a youth, but judging from her latest rant/column, she didn’t learn too much about actual Catholicism.
Dowd’s anti-Catholic screed reveals that of someone who knows almost nothing about the Catholic faith. She also deceives her readers about a number of topics, including a 2004 letter issued by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI.
1. Dowd writes:
“In 2004, the cardinal who would become Pope Benedict XVI wrote a Vatican document urging women to be submissive partners, resisting any adversarial roles with men and cultivating ‘feminine values’ like ‘listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.’“
Ratzinger “urged women to be submissive partners”? Uh-uh. In fact, Ratzinger opines almost the direct opposite of what Dowd implies. Among Ratzinger’s passages:
“[T]he Church, enlightened by faith in Jesus Christ, speaks instead of active collaboration between the sexes precisely in the recognition of the difference between man and woman.”
“[W]omen should be present in the world of work and in the organization of society, and that women should have access to positions of responsibility which allow them to inspire the policies of nations and to promote innovative solutions to economic and social problems.”
And look at what Ratzinger wrote about the so-called “feminine values” of “listening, welcoming …(etc.)”:
“It is appropriate however to recall that the feminine values mentioned here are above all human values: the human condition of man and woman created in the image of God is one and indivisible.”
In other words, Dowd flat-out lies about Ratzinger’s letter. (By the way, the letter is called, “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World.” Interested readers should check it out.)
Associated Press: No doubt about it. ObamaCare does pay for abortion
As even the Associated Press admits, the government takeover of health care will,despite what the president has told you, involve the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortions.
The AP says flatly, “The proposed legislation would permit government-sponsored health plans, open to non-Medicaid patients, to cover abortions.”
So when the president or members of Congress say abortions aren’t covered in health care reform, they aren’t telling you the truth. And when the president’s spokesman says that federal law would prevent taxpayer funding of abortions in the health care plan, he’s not telling you the truth either.
The Hyde Amendment prevents Medicaid funds – and Medicaid funds only – from being used for abortions, but that restriction wouldn’t apply to the government takeover of health care.
In fact, under the Capps Amendment in the House bill, the public option would be required to offer abortion services, and every American would have to have access to at least one health care plan that included abortion.
Take Action
The full Senate will soon be debating its huge health care bill. Contact both of your senators today and tell them firmly but politely that they can’t “Hyde” any longer, that abortion is not health care, and that they must remove abortion from any health care reform bill they consider.
Obama uses shill “Catholic” groups to front for back door government funded abortions in health bill
During a Wednesday teleconference sponsored by the left-leaning religious organizations Catholics United, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Faith in Public Life, both White House Director of Domestic Policy Melody Barnes and President Obama denied that the health care bill would allow for federally funded abortions.
But according to Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, “public support for abortion is on decline, and the President knows that openly advancing an abortion mandate in health care reform is unpopular with the American people.”
“Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Obama’s statements conflict with the proposed legislation. Americans demand an explicit exclusion of abortion coverage, not more obfuscation and confusion from the President and his allies,” she added.
Note how presidential aid Melody Barnes deceptively speaks for the President “out of both sides of her mouth”:
One caller asked Barnes whether Catholics interested in seeing universal health care coverage had to be worried about abortion coverage.
“The president has said it’s longstanding policy federal funds won’t be used for abortion coverage,” Barnes said, adding that people “should be able to purchase coverage that reflects their values and basic needs.”
On July 17, 2007, Obama addressed a group of Planned Parenthood staff and supporters. Planned Parenthood is the largest purveyor of abortion in the world.
He said, “In my mind, reproductive care is essential care. It is basic care. And so it is at the center and at the heart of the [health care reform] plan that I am proposing.” He further stated, “We’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It’ll be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services.”
(Editor’s note: “Reproductive health care” is code for ABORTION.
As of today, the Hyde Amendment is still in effect, so Barnes is (technically) telling the truth.
Unfortunately, the Hyde Amendment applies ONLY to Medicare and would not limit abortion funding in any aspect of the NEW government-run health care system. If the new health bill becomes law, abortion will then indeed be paid for by federal money.
They don’t call Barack Obama “the ABORTION President” for nuthin!)
Did President Obama Intentionally Mislead the Holy Father?
In the late afternoon of July 10, President Obama met privately with Pope Benedict XVI for just over 30 minutes. According to official Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi, S.J., “The president explicitly expressed his commitment to reducing the numbers of abortions and to listen to the church’s concern on moral issues.”
On July 13 in a Senate committee hearing, Sen. Barbara Mikulski was forced to admit under persistent questioning by Sen. Orrin Hatch that the new health-care bill includes abortion coverage. Planned Parenthood’s Guttmacher Institute estimates government funding of abortion increases abortion by 20 to 35 percent.
There were 1,206,200 abortions in 2006, according to National Right Life (the last annual results available). The math is easy: If the heath-care package currently being pushed by Obama is passed, the result will be 240,000 to 420,000 more abortions in the first year alone.
Doug Lawrence's Catholic Site 