Killing grandmom and cripples

Disability group blog "Not Dead Yet" reports that the National Catholic Register has an article on how well funded activists are promoting killing grandmom and crips all over the US.

, Tucker gave a slide presentation on why people chose assisted suicide. The statistics showed that “91% of those surveyed gave ‘a loss of autonomy’” as their reason for asking for a lethal overdose, followed by “the patients’ inability to engage in life fully,” Keeler remembered.

She added: “Far down on the list was the issue of ‘unrelieved pain.’” In other words, Keeler noted, “pain was not the chief reason, or even the more prominent reason, that people asked for help in dying.” ....

Bob Liston is disabled and has problems with the idea that those advocating for assisted suicide are really doing so out of a true concern for the suffering.

Liston is an organizer for Not Dead Yet in Montana, a group officially opposed to assisted suicide and euthanasia, and works for Adapt, a national disability-rights organization. He told the Register, “I think that in Montana it is unnecessary for an assisted suicide law to be written because we already have laws on the books that allow a physician to provide palliative care up to and including efforts that might hasten death.” He added: “So, I have a really hard time seeing why we need to go beyond this.”

It is the faulty assumptions about those whose lives it will affect that he finds upsetting. “Compassion & Choices … seems to think that taking one’s own life is dignified, often using the example of [a disabled person’s need for assistance with personal care and hygiene] as a reason to not go on living.” But he adds that some disabled people need this kind of total assistance on a daily basis “and are grateful for it.”

Compassion & Choices “puts forth the argument that so few people in Oregon have chosen assisted suicide [because] the guidelines are so strict. Nothing could be further from the truth,” he insisted, adding: “We have no idea what is really going on in Oregon because recordkeeping is not required.”

Heh?

Father Z notes: A new film will be made about the priest who founded Opus Dei.
So what's the deal? Well, because the director is Roland Joffe...



From what I've seen about Opus Dei, it seems to be rule oriented, similar to the "life rules" that were common in pre Vatican II Catholicism (My prayer book for example had one).

Rules are good, but can become more important than God himself (Which is why Jesus so commonly mocked religious rules), and of course, they can lead to scruples about sin. On the other hand, they are good for people who need discipline in their lives.

The group is hated by post Vatican II catholics for it's rigidity, but also because they dare to believe the traditional dogmas of the church, and are powerful opponents of the "do it yourself" catholicism that has plagued and destroyed the faith of many Catholics in the west.

Here in the Philippines, the "rule oriented" (usually middle class folks) tend to go into protestant sects, who drive you nut pushing rules and bible quotes down your throat.

Our stepson is Protestant, and you can't have a birthday party or baptism without his inviting a preacher to give a 40 minute sermon. Yuck.

To paraphrase St Teresa of Avila: Prayer is prayer but parties are parties.

Sex ed and priest crisis

There is a lot of rumors about the popular Liberal (now retired) bishop Daneels in Belgium who was deep into the pedophile problem in that country.

Yet one "member of Parliament" in that country first started complaining about this 12 years ago, when she read the "sex education" book put out under the Cardinal.

From the Belgium Journal:

liberal Cardinal Danneels, who was very popular with the press in Belgium and abroad, was Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels and Primate of Belgium from 1979 until 2010. The sympathy for pedophile attitudes and arguments among the Belgian bishops during this period was no secret, especially since 1997 when the fierce controversy about the catechism textbook Roeach made the headlines. The editors of Roeach were Prof. JefBulckens of the Catholic University of Leuven and Prof. Frans Lefevre of the Seminary of Bruges. The textbook contained a drawing which showed a naked baby girl saying: “Stroking my pussy makes me feel groovy,” “I like to take my knickers off with friends,” “I want to be in the room when mum and dad have sex.” ...This “catechism textbook” was used in the catechism lessons in the catholic schools, until one day I discovered it among the schoolbooks of my eldest daughter, then 13 years old. On 3 September 1997 I wrote a letter to Cardinal Danneels, saying:

“When I see this drawing and its message, I get the distinct impression that this catechism textbook is designed intentionally to make 13 and 14 year olds believe that toddlers enjoy genital stimulation. In this way one breeds pedophiles that sincerely believe that children actually think that what they are doing to them is ‘groovy’, while the opposite is the case.”

I told Cardinal Danneels that, although I was a member of Parliament for the Flemish-secessionist party Vlaams Blok, I was addressing him as a Catholic parent “who wishes to remain faithful to the papal authority and also wishes to educate her children this way.” I insisted that he forbid the use of this book in the catechism lessons: “This is why I insist – yes, the days of meekly asking are over – that you forbid the use of this ‘catechism book’ in our children’s classrooms.”

Today this case, that dates from 12 years ago, assumes a new and ominous significance. Especially now that I know that Mgr Roger Vangheluwe, the pedophile child molesting Bishop of Bruges, was the supervising bishop of both institutions – the Catholic University of Leuven and the Seminary of Bruges – whence came the editors in chief of this perverted “catechism” textbook....

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so the Philippines has to beware of the agenda to corrupt our children behind the "sex education" curriculum in our schools.

The United Nations-backed programme, which is being piloted this month in primary and high schools, aims to promote safe sex, limit the spread of HIV-AIDS and prevent unwanted pregnancies.

and the UN is insisting that it implement the program because the Philippines signed the international treaty on children.

Things to pray for

CWR has details on how a priest predator managed to worm his way into the Vatican.

he had a secret life that they didn't know about
his victims didn't complain
when one case came to light, he was "promoted up" to get a second chance
And of course the bishops were the same ones who proclaimed against Humana vitae and discouraged lay folks in the prolife movement.

Often these "predators" are nice guys: Charismatic, hiding their sins and feeling no guilt AKA sociopaths.
It was a time when sexual sin was winked at, and some in the church were saying sex outside of marriage was okay, while some in the gay community said it was okay for older men to mentor children into sex.
And often the bureaucratic mindset saw the "good of the church" as their goal, not the caring for the flock.

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Over in my other blog, I had posted about the nonsense written by the "new atheists" who whine. Someone at First things said they needed to read Neitzche to see what they were actually saying, but I posted that Neitzche did a lot of his writings in the mania of early Syphillic paresis. There is also the question of how much of his writings were altered by his pro nazi sister...

On the other hand Insightscoop blog has a post about a new book about Socrates versus Hume, a real atheist who is honest, not whining like today's spoiled children atheists.

If we did not accept Hume's conclusion, we had to find either an ambiguously used term, or a false premise, expressed or implied, or a logical fallacy. It was not sufficient simply to say we disagreed with his conclusion; we had to refute his argument.

That is the process you are invited to participate in, with the aid of Socrates.

No one wants to be a skeptic; no one is happy as a skeptic, except the unpleasant type who just want to shock and upset people. Happy skeptics are dishonest; unhappy skeptics are honest. (The same is true of atheists. Only idiots, masochists, or immoralists want to be atheists. Contrast Sartre, the happy hypocritical atheist, with Camus, the unhappy, honest atheist.) Hume is an unhappy skeptic, an honest skeptic, and he demands and deserves to be taken very seriously and answered very carefully.

Quotes to ponder

PeterBerger article, via GetReligion Blog:

Secularist bias can produce blinders. Evangelical Protestantism is the most explosively growing religion worldwide. Media coverage is generally very poor, subsuming it under a vague category of “fundamentalism”, with peaceful missionaries being put in the same box with suicide bombers. Much academic treatment is equally prejudiced. The media coverage of the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic church very often has an undertone of gleeful Schadenfreude, with little skepticism about events going back thirty years, alleged by individuals with hard vested interests in their version of the events. Academics and journalists have every right to be secularists, but they should bracket their personal beliefs when they try to understand reality — as should “Godders” like me.
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David Warren's column:


Given the contrast between the modest demeanour of many young immigrant Muslim women, with their heads covered and their strollers full of babies -- and that of so many "native" young western women, childless but provocatively half-naked under the summer sun -- I have sometimes myself wondered which side I am on.

Any new Muslim reader should be told that I am among the West's more backward souls. The Roman Catholic religion to which I subscribe also requires modesty in female dress, though I've never heard a priest specify a dress code. It also requires chastity, and constant acknowledgement of God.

Had we world enough and time, I might try to range over the many centuries when the social customs of Europe were far closer to those of the Islamic heartland, than to what we see in Europe today -- right down to public recognition of the hours of prayer, and an awareness of the danger of heresy.

That Christians and Muslims have been at each other's throats, as often as not through the centuries, along the frontiers between their respective civilizations, will go without saying to anyone who has read some history. There were, and there remain, profound theological differences between them, and in consequence, profoundly different conceptions of social order. And yet on basic questions of moral deportment -- of what constitutes decent and honourable behaviour -- much less to choose.

The point here is that freedom has undergone redefinition, since the so-called "Enlightenment" in the West, and has been confused with licence in our post-modern era.
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NPR notices that 30 percent of Chinese call themselves "Religious".
Louisa Lim/NPR

Clergy from the government-sanctioned Catholic church hold a procession up to the Sheshan basilica, on the outskirts of Shanghai. Chinese Catholics, long divided between those who recognize the authority of the Vatican and those who belong to the government-sanctioned church, are beginning the slow process of reconciliation.

the article claims that most belong to Buddhism or traditional religion (2/3)...
But in other surveys, 30 percent of the total population claimed to be Buddhist/traditional, and ten percent Christian, so the NPR estimate might be low.
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prayer needed

Prayer needed story of the week:
This "DasSpiegel" article suggests war might be really brewing,
and it won't be Bush's fault.
more HERE.

Eucharistic miracles

I am skeptical about Eucharistic "miracles" but Cabinet of wonders webblog has a nice article on them.

the Eucharist is "magic", in a good way...Jesus is there, really there, and the symbolism has deep roots in the beliefs of paganism and in poetry.

A lot of the discussions of science versus religion is about scientism, where only the harshly logical that can be proven is real, and everything else: poetry, love, God, and even undiscovered phenomenum, are dismissed.

The really aggressive Darwinians, for example, dismiss God but often then go on to say "evolution did this" or "evolution did that" or "this changed because of Evolution", all of which is nonsense and goes directly against Darwin's theory, which is that nothing is directing the mutations.

and, of course, they, like Saruman, yearn to use things to get power over nature, not to use nature to make a simple life more human, like the elvish "magic" in Lord of the Rings.

Indeed, I love to go into the more recent discoveries of physics and astronomy, which also question everything we were taught as kids.

under the Vatican

link

the way of perfection

Teresa's way of perfection audiobook available at Librivox.

North Korean Christian missionary dies in jail

martyrs continue .

In this June 18, 2010 photo, Son Jung-hun, who defected from North Korea, holds a picture showing his brother Son Jong Nam in Pyongyang, North Korea, during an interview with The Associated Press at his home in Seoul, South Korea. Like most North Koreans, Son Jong Nam knew next to nothing about Christianity when he fled to neighboring China in 1998. Eleven years later, he died in a North Korean prison, reportedly tortured to death for trying to spread the Gospel in his native land. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

SEOUL, South Korea -- Like most North Koreans, Son Jong Nam knew next to nothing about Christianity when he fled to neighboring China in 1998.

Eleven years later, he died back in North Korea in prison, reportedly tortured to death for trying to spread the Gospel in his native land, armed with 20 bibles and 10 cassette tapes of hymns. He was 50.

His story, pieced together by his younger brother, a defector who lives in South Korea, sheds light on a little-discussed practice: the sending back of North Korean converts to evangelize in their home country - a risky move, but one of the few ways to penetrate a country that bars

NYTimes continues to attack the pope

how bad (i.e. inaccurate) is the attack?

So bad that the liberal National Catholic Reporter says they don't know what they are talking about.

The Times ignores that the bishops' hands were not tied (indeed, the subsidarity of Vatican II gave them more power in local things. True, laification was Vatican, but that didn't mean transferring a priest from parish to parish and ignoring the abuse).

Father Fessio put it thus:

Great theme: the bishops wanted to do more but were handcuffed by the Vatican's--and Ratzinger's--in action. That's a wonderful storyline which is a masterpiece of topsyturvydom.

One question can cut through it all: You are a bishop, say in 1980, and you find one of your priests has been abusing little boys. What do you do? Nothing whatever prevents you from removing that priest from ministry, disciplining him, and reporting him to civil authorities. All talk about "arcane canonical processes", "complicated and overlapping jurisdictions", is simply beside the point.

a fuller look into their bias and their biased sources is in Lawler's essay

Catholics know a lot of the bishops involved were "bureaucrats" who took legal advice and the advice of the psychological experts.

In those days, lawyers recommended holding tough, but psychologists recommended no jail time and only counseling for those who sexually exploited children. I know, because I treated women abused by fathers, stepfathers and mom's boyfriend, and remember reading in a major news magazine that "putting the father in jail would destroy the family" so he should only go to counseling, which would cure him.

I also lived in a remote Mountain states town at the time, but near an interstate, and we had to tell our boys to watch out for sexual predators coming up the interstate...because California was now treating them as "outpatients".

Finally, the dirty little secret is that many of these cases involving priests were homosexual relationships, not pedophilia. The boys were pubescent. And back in the 1970's, the idea was that sex was okay for 13 year olds. Some even advocated adult child sex as a benign way to introduce children to discover their sexuality.

Even today, only 2 percent of "rape" cases (i.e. date rape, statuatory rape) are prosecuted, and the court case often means a second emotionally traumatic situation for the girl or boy.

Few of the cases I examined were prosecuted, although I know of two cases of incest where we accepted a "plea bargain" of a lesser charge to spare the child the trauma of going to court.

Finally, a lot of what is ignored is that although most bishops were merely callus, some of them were gay and promoting the sexual revolution. I suspect that what is going on in Belgium will point right back to "popular" (i.e. very liberal) Cardinal Danieels, whose promotion of sex education that went against catholic teachings was a brewing scandal ignored by the media and alas the church.

Ah, but why was a lot of this ignored? The connection between sexual depravity, sexual license, and heresy was know, but when John Paul II took over, he recognized that he was being opposed by the Curia and many of these heretical bishops (question: Was JPI murdered over heresy or money scandal sin the curia?)

I once read that the real scandal about the Protestant revolution was that if the Pope had just been a bit less confrontational, maybe the split would not have occured.

I suspect if John Paul II had been confrontational, we would have had a schism in the church. He recognized this, and instead went about growing the grass roots revival.

Ratzinger is being opposed not because he refused to persecute sexual crimes (his office was to persecute doctrinal deviance, and it wasn't until he intervened and started to pressure the bishops in the 1990's that they started confronting their own sins).

Ratzinger, as John Allen of the NCReporter wrote was the solution not the problem.

But he is persecuted because he will not bow to the elite agenda of sexual licence, the destruction of marriage, abortion on demand, and euthanasia.

You know the NYTimes has gone too far

when the National Catholic Reporter criticizes their biased coverage trying to blame all the abuse ignored by the PC bishops on him.