Category Archives: Religion

UPDATE III: Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel? (Opus Dei Smears)

Christianity, Conservatism, Democracy, Gender, Pop-Culture, Religion, Socialism

The following is from the current column, “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”, now on LRC.COM:

“NO TO A ‘SUPERPOWER POPE.’ Mercifully, the new pope is not the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Shortly after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 266th pope, Cardinal Dolan demonstrated why my prayers had been answered. The American had been bypassed.

Out of the papal conclave and into the limelight charged the vainglorious Dolan (who, it has to be said, harbored hopes of becoming pope). He then suctioned himself to the television cameras, American style. No other cardinal elector granted interviews on emerging from the Sistine Chapel; they were enjoined to secrecy.

Not the American cardinals. According to the Associated Press, these prolix self-promoters held daily press briefings near the Vatican to a room packed with reporters and television crews.

This was vulgarity, not transparency.

Not for nothing was the vow of silence once considered a test of character and spirituality in Christianity and in other faiths. This universal value has been inverted by American pop culture and pop religion. In the US, a deeply private person is considered defective; a blabbermouth who does and says anything on camera is canonized. …

… American public life is such that even our pick for pope (Dolan) struts his stuff like a “Jersey Shore” reality star.

MORE on why “THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS ON THE RACK,” in “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”, now on WND.

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UPDATE I: “The Pope and the Injustice of Social Justice” by Jack Kerwick:

…some initial reports of his views on “social justice” most definitely do not sound fine and good. …Whether used by so-called secular “progressives” or Catholic clerics, the call for social justice is the call for a larger, more powerful, more intrusive government. That is, it is the demand for a government that is capable of and willing to confiscate the legally owned resources of some citizens so as to “redistribute” them to others. When social justice is the order of the day, anything other than a robust, activist government is not an option.
It is crucial for everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, to grasp this: social justice and liberty are mutually antithetical.

UPDATE II (15/3): Father Bob Kind of Agrees.

UPDATE III (3/16): Via a LewRockwell reader of “Spared the Sins of a ‘Superpower Pope’” comes this link to a smear of Pope Ratzinger, for opposing the “Injustice of on Social Justice” (see Update I above, for Jack Kerwick’s critique).

The new pope Francis I, it would appear, champions the evils of social justice theory and liberation theology.

He and Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

What the Obamas imbibed from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ for the past 20 years was Black Liberation Theology. “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization,” reads a statement of “doxology” on the Church’s site. The church is proud of its separatist “Black Value System.”
Only just retired, Pastor Wright is as central to the Church as is Africa. His “Talking Points” are prominently plastered on Trinity United’s website. There, Wright states that this diverse “doxology” is of a piece with “Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology.” (Spot the blanked-out Americans.) A black person in America, moreover, is deemed outside his traditional homeland.

UPDATE II: ‘We Have a Pope’ (Thankful That He is Not The American)

America, Christianity, Natural Law, Religion

Such is the power and majesty of the Catholic Church that the excitement over the election of the new Vicar of Christ is sweeping the world.

All I can say, as an admirer of the Church, is this: I hope the new Pope is not The American (@ 11:08 am.)

More to come.

UPDATE I: Thankful That He is Not The American.

Argentine Italian Jorge Bergoglio, the new Pontiff, is Right on Church doctrine; Left on “social- justice” issues.

UPDATE II: Via Srdja Trifkovic:

Many of us non-RC traditionalist all over the world had awaited the news from Rome with some trepidation. In the end it turned out to be rather good. Pope Francis, the first non-European Bishop of Rome since Gregory III (d. 741), is universally described as “modest” and “moderate”—which is much preferred to the dreaded “bold” or “courageous,” in the sense that those words are used by the global media.
“He lives like a monk in a small apartment, travels by bus, and detests all vanity,” Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro told me when he heard the news. His Grace has visited Buenos Aires repeatedly in recent years as the Orthodox Diocesan Administrator, but he has not met Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who was mostly in Rome on those occasions. “I’ve heard from many local people, however, both lay and clergy, that he radiates a burning faith,” says the Metropolitan and adds that his simplicity and compassion for the poor go hand in hand with doctrinal firmness.

Worse Than Watergate?

Barack Obama, Crime, Democrats, Ethics, Government, Religion

As has transpired from the interview Fox News’ Sean Hannity conducted with Ed Klein, the author of “The Amateur: Barack Obama In The White House,” Reverend Jeremiah Wright had “told Klein that Erik Whitaker, a long time friend of Obama, sent an email to him asking him [Wright] not to preach until after the November [2008] elections, and that Whitaker, through another member of the Church, offered $150,000 in hush money. [To whom?] Klein told Sean about other bombshells including how Obama apparently begged Wright to attend a secret meeting with him and the lengths to go to trying to keep it a secret.”

The malfunctioning mass media has been less than diligent in exploring and verifying this story. There are no words to describe this dereliction of journalistic duty.

The appropriate parallel?

Dan Rather was right to expose President George W. Bush, who “thanks to his family’s high-level connections, was given preferable treatment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War and then ditched his duties entirely.”

The media burying the Klein story is akin to Rather failing to give us the goods on Bush, the no-goodnik. Or worse: imagine that Watergate had been covered-up or covered partially? (Once a writer for the far left HuffPo, Edward Klein’s last post there is dated October 12, 2010.)

The New York Times’ JANET MASLIN dismisses The Amateur, saying that “Mr. Klein has no capacity for explaining specifics.”

Certain evidence [or hearsay cited] was witnessed, says Maslin, by “a toy poodle, and Seamus, a chocolate lab and ‘a few old friends.’” This is a “skimpy, bitter book … more interested in combining anti-Obama bumper-sticker phrases with very energetic branding,” she claims.

I haven’t read the The Amateur. I’m put off by a Sean-Hannity approved author, who’s known for “a string of maudlin books” about the Kennedy family. But let’s see a discussion (and refutation, if need be) of the alleged bribe, especially, in mainstream.

Obama proxies attempting, allegedly, to buy the president’s one-time minister’s silence: Is this not worthy of an honest, media investigation?

Everybody Is Talking About Not Talking About You Know Who

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, Media, Religion, Republicans

The Stupid Party (Republicans) appears to have outsmarted the Evil Party (Democrats), for once.

Don’t you love how Democrats, especially, are talking non-stop about the imperative of all decent people in the nation not to talk about the unmentionable, ungodly Reverend Jeremiah Wright?

I love it. It’s out of a Kathy Griffin skit. (I once adored that woman, until she went and let her lefty self all hang out. She’s still wickedly un-PC.)

Over their mass-media megaphone, Democrats have ordered The Nation not to mention Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor. In the process, we get to talk non-stop about Obama and his pox of a pastor, a man who is as American as Idi Amin was, no matter how you slice it.