Seattle Archbishop Sartain: “The archdiocese supports their decision. The decision has been misunderstood and mischaracterized by some, and we now have an opportunity to help our students learn even more about Catholic teaching.”

“Leaders of Catholic schools are charged with the responsibility of both imparting and modeling” the Catholic church’s teaching, he said, adding that the decision by the board and administrators of Eastside, an independent Catholic school, asking Zmuda to resign “was made after a great deal of prayer and consultation.”

“In no way was their goal to be discriminatory to anyone but to be faithful to their mission as a Catholic school,” the archbishop said. “The archdiocese supports their decision. The decision has been misunderstood and mischaracterized by some, and we now have an opportunity to help our students learn even more about Catholic teaching.”

Link

Pope Francis’ ”Who am I to judge?” comment causing big problems for Seattle Archbishop

Supporters of ousted Eastside Catholic School vice principal Mark Zmuda took their case to Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain on Wednesday, submitting 21,000 signatures on a petition seeking a dialogue and calling for reinstatement of “Mr. Z.”

Eastside Catholic students were in school where they presented their own petition to Principal Mary E. Tracy. Zmuda was forced out in December after the school learned that he had married his male partner last summer.

Link

Editor’s note: We have no way of knowing how many of the 21,000 signatures on that petition are from Catholics – but from this we might infer that the level of Catholic faith formation in the Seattle area is downright pathetic.

Fox News writer who compared Pope Francis to Barack Obama fired from his gig at Catholic News Service

Tony Spence, editor in chief of the wire service, which operates under the aegis of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he had been “very pleased” with Shaw’s work, which included an analysis of the comics book industry. Spence said he knew that Shaw worked for Fox but it never caused a conflict — until this week. Spence wrote in an email:

“(W)hen he penned the recent piece on Pope Francis, comparing him to President Obama, and presenting it as an op/ed, he seriously compromised his credibility as an objective Catholic journalist for CNS. Had Adam merely reported on the pope’s apostolic exhortation, even citing unflattering sources, there would have been no problem. However, Adam’s caustic condemnation of the exhortation and of Francis himself, one of the key figures we cover daily with objectivity, fairness and certainly charity, left me little choice but to end his service with us.”

Link

Editor’s note: Today’s hopelessly “beige” Catholic News Service is vaguely reminiscent of the Soviet newspaper “Pravda” back in the Cold War days, where support for Soviet ideology and the party line was routinely substituted for truth, objectivity, fairness and charity.

CNS’s Tony Spence is a paid “spinmeister” for those who run the Catholic Church. Objective, fair and charitable, he and CNS is not! Spence – under orders from his bosses at the USCCB – is promoting Pope Francis – right or wrong – just like the main stream media has always shamelessly promoted Barack Obama.

Truth has nothing to do with it.

Once again, the Catholic Church promotes religious liberty for everyone EXCEPT conservative Catholics!

The wrong Obamacare worker gets the axe

An Obamacare phone operator who had a conversation with Fox News host Sean Hannity lost her job on Thursday.

On Monday, the “Hannity” host called up the Affordable Care Act phone number provided by the federal government. Eventually, he was connected with Erling Davis, a phone operator working for a private contract company .

Hannity quizzed Davis about technical issues facing the government healthcare website and engaged in some small talk during their 10-minute conversation.

However, on Thursday Davis revealed that she was fired by her employer over the conversation. For his part, Hannity told listeners of his radio show that he will compensate Davis for a year’s salary tax free and try to help her find a new job.

“They fired me from my job,” Davis told Hannity while being interviewed on his radio program.

A transcribed the exchange between Davis and Hannity reads as follows:

Editor’s note: They should put VP Joe Biden to work at the Obamacare call center. That would certainly provide some amusing conversation!

Interview with fired Radio Maria journalist who criticized Pope Francis’ ambiguous pronouncements, objective philosophical and doctrinal errors.

We speak to each other as fellow journalists: We discuss the classic case of a non-message.

Here are two baptized Catholics who have heard for months what the Pope says and for months experienced discomfort, while that’s obviously what they hear are very large steps away from what the doctrine says.

At the end, after all, it is their job to write and comment, write and comment on them. Thus, it provides not only a basic rule of information, but also the Church law.

The letter to Scalfari, the interview with Scalfari, the interview with the Civilta Cattolica , are only the most recent, glaring examples. They went around the world, they led to calls for revolution, they amazed thousands upon thousands of Catholics, and thus souls, and no one has something to say?

There’s much more

Editor’s note: The U.S. Secret Service trains its agents to identify counterfeit money by making absolutely certain that those agents are able to successfully identify, describe and enumerate all the various characteristics of genuine U.S. currency, because when you know the real thing, even the best of the counterfeits is relatively simple to identify.  

Similarly, a Catholic who knows God and thoroughly knows all the authentic teachings and precepts of the Catholic faith instantly “alerts” when anyone – even a pope – proposes something which fails to pass the “smell test”.

The modernists and liberals who have been running the Catholic Church for the last half century have done their best to dumb-down the Body of Christ through incomplete, incompetent, ineffective and otherwise, exquisitely poor catechesis, so it’s no wonder that so many of today’s Catholics seem to be thrilled with what Pope Francis has been saying and how he has been saying it.

Alessandro Gnocchi is nothing less than a modern day martyr (witness) and true defender of the Catholic faith. Where are all the others?   

Education scandal: Man who attended Catholic grade school, high school, three Catholic universities and was employed at two Catholic high schools gets things totally wrong. Loses job.

“I believe in Catholicism,” says Moroski. “But my conscience will not permit me to recant my statement. I put it up there because I really truly honestly believe it. I’m absolutely willing to lose my job over this. The only difficult thing for me now is the students.”

On January 27, Moroski published on his personal blog a post titled “Choose your battles”:

“I unabashedly believe that gay people should be allowed to marry. Ethically, morally and legally I believe this…

Link

Editor’s note: Even a fool, if he will hold his peace, shall be counted wise: and if he close his lips, a man of understanding.  (Proverbs 17:28)

Catechist sacked for teaching Catholic truth

But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no:
and that which is over and above these,
is of evil. (Matthew 5:37)

From California Catholic Daily

Last Wednesday, the day after the election, I spoke to the students about voting as Catholics first and shared the above non-negotiables with them.  A question came from a student asking “does this mean if you voted for Obama that you are not Catholic?”  I said that voting for a platform that supports intrinsic evil like that means you are not a “faithful Catholic.”

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Apt description of the clergy abuse crisis?: Not pedophiles, but swishing homosexuals in a target-rich environment.

But the left’s real target—its one obsession, the Moby Dick to its Ahab—is the Catholic Church. That is why the left so celebrated the shocking revelations about perverts in the collar, whom the media misrepresented as “pedophiles” instead of what they are: swishing homosexuals in a target-rich environment. It is the unspoken reason that Buchanan, who states Church teaching forthrightly and without apology, had to go.

The question, of course, is why the left is so obsessed with discrediting and ultimately destroying the Catholic Church. It isn’t because the hierarchy permitted the growth of a homosexual subculture in the priesthood and chanceries. Consider, for the left, what the Church represents. It is not the ineffable fountain Christendom and European civilization. Rather, it is the sewer pipe of white male oppression.

Europeans proselytized the Faith as missionaries, giving the world its artistic, musical, and literary treasures, not least the Mass. In planting the Church everywhere on the globe, those white missionaries “oppressed” the totem-worshiping “native peoples of color,” who in some cases were cannibals or willing participants in orgies of human sacrifice.

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Attention Macy’s shoppers: The “woman” in the changing room next to yours may actually be a man. And that’s OK with Macy’s!

Liberty Council reported on Monday,

“A young woman was fired from the Macy’s San Antonio Rivercenter department store in Texas for refusing to violate her religious beliefs by permitting a young man dressed as a woman [to enter]  the women’s dressing room.

Natalie Johnson claims she saw the young man walk out of the women’s fitting room and politely told him that he could not go back in because it was for women only. The cross-dressing young man claimed that he is a ‘female.’ Johnson said that he was wearing make-up and girl’s clothing, but clearly he was a male.

The cross-dresser was accompanied by five other individuals. The group argued with expletives that Macy’s is LGBT-friendly, to which Johnson replied that Macy’s is also non-discriminatory toward religion, and that it would go against her religious beliefs to lie that he was a woman or compromise with homosexuality. The group then demanded to speak with a manager.”

Link

Editor’s note: This incident seems to indicate that Macy’s changing rooms are no longer safe for normal, heterosexual people! Let’s see how Macy’s handles this, going forward.

This Week’s “Dispersing the Smoke of Satan”: Catholic priest/chaplain allegedly fired for reporting use of abortion drugs at Catholic hospital.

In 1972, Pope Paul VI observed,
“From some fissure,
the smoke of Satan
has entered the Temple of God.”

The purpose of this weekly column is to help wake
the bulk of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics
from their self-imposed slumber
and powerfully remind them of who they are,
and what they are called by God, to be.

This week’s story:

It is alleged that in April 2011, as a result of his earlier report to auditors for the Diocese of Peoria that abortion drugs were being used and prescribed by Provena Hospital, a Catholic hospital organization, Fr. John Ugobueze was subsequently fired from his position as Director of Pastoral Care at Provena Hospital and President of Pastoral Care for the Provena Health Care System (both in Danville, IL).

The facts of the matter, according to two emails in our possession:

Recently, a Catholic pharmacist at the hospital brought his concerns about the use of abortion causing drugs (methotrexate and cytotec) at the hospital, to the Catholic priest who is the Director of Pastoral Care at the hospital and who is also the one responsible to the Catholic Diocese of Peoria for ensuring that Catholic “Ethical and Religious Directives” are followed.

Fr. John Ugobueze, brought this information to the Monsignor in the Diocese that he reports to during an annual audit from the Diocesan Offices.

Following that, Fr. John was terminated by the hospital, under the guise of “HIPPA violation” because of the fact that the pharmacist used the computer in Father John’s office to show him the basis of his conscience concerns and printed this information on the attached computer.

After their discussion the patient records were then shredded. No patient confidentiality was violated at any time. But of course, it was never about HIPPA at all. That was just the reason given. What it really was is a case of clear religious persecution as the anti-catholic, ‘pro-Obama healthcare’ hospital administration was at risk of being “found out” and they could not risk that. So they terminate both the Catholic pharmacist and the priest who is the Director of Pastoral Care, under the disguise of “HIPPA violation”.

This is sort of like like saying that if a friend asks to borrow your car and then is accused of using it to rob a bank, that you should be arrested too, because he used your car.

The case was appealed by the priest to the Hospital Corporate Offices for the whole Provena system, and another non-catholic who heard the appeal and understood very little of what a priest does, denied the appeal and upheld the termination.

This is wrong and can not be swept under the rug. Both of these people were acting in accordance with their responsibilities to uphold the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Church.

*****

Fr. John Ugobueze, Director of Pastoral Care of Provena Hospital and President of the Pastoral Care of Provena Health Care System, has been terminated from his positions because of reporting the use of abortion drugs by the hospital to the auditors of the Diocese of Peoria.

The bishop of Peoria, Most Rev Jenky, does not want to involve the diocese in this matter nor does he want the diocese to be involved in a lawsuit if Fr. John goes this direction. Instead, has offered Fr. John a position at a hospital in the city of Peoria.

Why will the bishop not fight for Fr. John, who he himself placed in the hospital to make sure Catholic Moral Ethics are followed. Why won’t he defend him?  More than once have I seen bishops hide in corners when corruption is discovered.  I pray that this is not the case with Bishop Jenky, whom I have admired.

I have been fighting abortion issues for 22 years, especially with threats of abortion entering our military facilities.  I know you are a fighter against abortion and I walk with you.  But who is willing to help and defend Fr. John when his own bishop appears he will not? (The bishop is willing to give Fr. John a position at another hospital. This time in Peoria … not Danville.)

Fr. John has done nothing wrong.  In fact, he did everything correctly by gathering the evidence and reporting it to the diocese of Peoria, without breaking or violating HIPPA.

The CEO of the Provena Hospital is a Protestant, as are most of the administrative personnel. The sisters are few in number and have hired these Protestant administrators at Provena Hospital to operate and bring in the money.

The sisters have become clueless what is happening to their hospital.  They are old and do not involve themselves with the hospital itself anymore. At one time, the hospital administration was trying to remove the Blessed Sacrament/ Tabernacle out of the Catholic Chapel because it was not ecumenical.  What a joke! But I guess the joke is on the Catholics. And the bishop is not helping matters.

Fr. John is a fine priest.  He is also a friend.  I stand by my friends and especially priests who are being persecuted for the true faith.

Please consider helping Fr. John and his cause.  I myself am trying to do all I can to help him.

*****

Action needed:

Do you know any of the people involved in this case?

Do you have any first-hand knowledge of these events?

Do you know of any similar incidents?

Do you have any personal contacts at Provena Health Care System or at the Diocese of Peoria?

Are you an attorney (or do you know an attorney) who might be willing to help?

Do you have any practical ideas on how to help resolve this case?

*****

If we begin to step up in faith, God will certainly lead us forward. If not, this mess in which we we presently find ourselves will likely continue to worsen … and we will all deservedly
suffer the consequences!

This is a time for heroes, for straight talk, for prayer, and for inspired, creative thinking. This is a time for good people
of action (and substantial intestinal fortitude) to step up,
realize their true vocation, and become saints.

Any ideas or suggestions? Anything that’s working well
in your parish? How about things that are NOT working,
but should be? Let us know about it!

Click here to send in
your detailed comments and suggestions.
We’ll post them every Tuesday
in our new weekly column

“Dispersing the Smoke of Satan”

Your comments and suggestions are very welcome.

Thank you!

Because I Don’t Work For You: Notes from the East Coast Fraternity Exercises 2011

One young woman’s story moved me deeply because I found in her story traces of my own experiences.  Who among us has not faced an unfair boss or the struggle to be recognized in the work place?

This March, M. , a recently married middle school science teacher, let the principal at her school know she was pregnant, figuring the supervisor would have time to find a maternity-leave replacement for her when she gave birth in September.

Instead, she was fired.

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NPR should change its name to NPLR (National Public Leftist Radio)

Juan Williams put it simply: “I was fired for telling the truth.” That’s about as succinct a summary of the situation as you’re likely to find. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller terminated Williams’ contract because he veered off of the leftist reservation, and to make things even worse from Shiller’s point of view, he did it on Fox. If Williams is one of the tens of millions of Americans who gets nervous when he’s around people dressed in Muslim garb, NPR believes that he ought not mention it, or – as Schiller said – he should discuss his problems with “his psychiatrist or his publicist.” Schiller would eventually apologize for that demeaning insult, but it’s far too late for NPR to recover from this fiasco. Liberals, conservatives and even some Muslim groups expressed shock and disgust over this assault on free speech and open discussion.

Williams’ sin, according to NPR, was that expressing his personal feelings violated NPR’s code of conduct that forbids their on-air talent from taking a position on “controversial issues,” from participating “…in shows that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis” and from expressing opinions on other shows that “…they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist.” At least that’s the official version, as expressed in an internal memo that Schiller wrote explaining her decision. One suspects that the Council on American Islamic Relations had something to do with it as well. CAIR was outraged by Williams’ remarks. In a statement, CAIR said that “NPR should address the fact that one of its news analysts seems to believe that all airline passengers who are perceived to be Muslim can legitimately be viewed as security threats.”

Well, yeah. Political correctness may demand that we subject 80 year-old Swedish grandmothers to the same level of scrutiny at the airport that we do to young Muslim males, but we know – beyond doubt – which demographic represents a potential threat and which does not. Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, acknowledged this basic truth, pointing to the fact that most victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims and that even a Muslim woman wearing a burka is a potential threat. “We are victims of these guys. A number of suicide bombers who have attacked have killed people [while] wearing the burka,” Fatah said. “This is the truth, we should be speaking the truth rather than what people expect us to say.” Yet, NPR cut Juan Williams loose for expressing his personal opinion, and – worse – for expressing a personal opinion that is entirely reasonable and rests on a solid foundation of fact.

More

Legal fund calls on University of Illinois to reinstate Catholic professor

Champaign, Ill., Jul 12, 2010 / 06:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a letter sent Monday to the University of Illinois, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) called for the immediate reinstatement of Dr. Kenneth Howell, a professor who was fired for explaining in a class on Catholicism that the Church teaches homosexual behavior violates natural law. If the university does not reply to the letter by July 16, the legal fund said it will advise the professor to file a lawsuit.

In his Introduction to Catholicism class this past spring, a class that he had taught regularly at the university, Dr. Howell covered the topic of homosexuality, teaching the Catholic Church’s position on same-sex attractions and behavior. As part of this discussion, Dr. Howell sent an e-mail to his class contrasting how utilitarianism and natural law theory would each determine the morality of homosexual conduct.

A student complained that Dr. Howell’s words were “hate speech” in an e-mail to the head of the department, Dr. Robert McKim. Howell was called into McKim’s office at the end of the semester and told that he would no longer be allowed to teach for the University because his e-mail had “violate[d] university standards of inclusivity.”

Read more

Read the text of ADF’s letter to UIC

University of Illinois loves radical William Ayers, fires Catholic professor for teaching truth about homosexuality.

Read the article

Idiot teacher “comes out” as an atheist, wonders why she was fired from teaching job at Catholic school.

Nurre said she was called into the principal’s office just before winter break and asked about Atheist Nexus, a social network that bills itself as site for “nontheists.”

She said she registered on the site on her personal computer at home. She noted a New York Times‘ article reporting the government had spent $2.3 million on prayer research since 2000 and added the link.

“I never thought something like that would jeopardize my job,” she said Friday from Phoenix, Ariz., where she was applying for teaching jobs.

Nurre was suspended by Monsignor Kevin McCoy and later fired by the school board for violating a policy that prohibits employees from advocating “principles contrary” to the teachings of the church.

St. Edmonds took the “appropriate action,” Kristie Arlt, spokeswoman for the Sioux City Diocese, said of the math teacher.

“The main thing is that she stated she didn’t believe in God,” Arlt said. “It’s pretty hard to put that same teacher in front of students in a Catholic school system.”

Nurre said her views constantly evolve and that she is constantly trying to expand her knowledge, whether on religion, astrology, fitness or politics.

“I just like learning about it. I don’t see why that should cause someone to get fired,” she said.

Read more