Obama turning weird?

PeggyNoonan now finds Obama "weird".

He presumably wasn't weird when he gave a talk in a "greek temple" or said that now he would stop the seas from rising, or years ago when he voted against killing children already born?

The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide birth-control services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? "You're kidding me. That's not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it's not even constitutional!" Faced with the blowback, the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised, devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonest—not wrongheaded, dishonest—charges that those who defend the church's religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.

What a sour taste this all left. How shocking it was, including for those in the church who'd been in touch with the administration and were murmuring about having been misled.

Now Americans will be forced to pay for abortions

I've heard about this on blogs, but I have been waiting for someone to bring up the details.

LINK

this is exactly how the abortion premium mandate will work. Insurance plans that cover abortions may participate in state exchanges and receive federal subsidies. To maintain the illusion that this arrangement does not amount to taxpayer subsidization of abortion, the law’s authors devised a scheme in which individuals enrolled in these plans must pay a separate premium that solely pays for abortions (i.e., because the government subsidies cannot directly pay for abortions). The law does not provide a means for individuals to opt-out of paying the abortion premium, and it prohibits plans from advertising that an abortion premium is required under their plan. As demonstrated in the illustration above, it will not be easy - and will often be impossible - for individuals to choose a different plan once they learn about the premium upon enrollment.

The abortion premium mandate, particularly when paired with the forced purchase of insurance required by Obamacare’s individual mandate, directly violates the conscience and free exercise rights of millions of Americans by imposing an unconstitutional burden on them within the private insurance marketplace. Americans United for Life joined lead counsel, Bioethics Defense Fund and other pro-life organizations in submitting an amicuscuriae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the abortion premium mandate’s constitutionality.

Sex is for recreation

Via Father Z

podcast link or try the full story link with video:

Monica Crowley weighed in on Dolan’s statement, saying that he’s “absolutely right.” She thinks the Obama administration is using the contraception issue to attract women voters back to the Democratic Party due to the loss of the women vote for Democrats in 2008. Since ObamaCare was released two-years ago, Crowley thinks they timed it out perfectly for the next election.

Chris Hahn said, “In these tough economic times, Americans need a recreational activity they can afford and sex seems to be a good one between consenting adults.” He told Bill Hemmer that the Catholic Church needs to stop playing around with this issue that they created themselves....

Crowley says he was correct in the assertion, but also thinks that only stands until government gets involved in religious freedoms. Hahn fought back, saying, “This is blown out of proportion, and Catholics do not believe this. The bishops are way off base, and if they continue to go down this road, attendance at the Catholic Church will be lower than it’s even been now."

Book marked for later reading

Mom decides she doesn't want to be a parent.

This morning’s TODAY Show featured a segment on a woman who chose to leave her husband and two young sons (ages 3 and 5 at the time) while on an extended research trip to Japan because she realized she didn’t want to be a mom anymore leaves my chest tight and my gut aching. Photos show her boys as pre-school-age angels. I want to hug and kiss them as my own.

Now, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto’s memoir Hiroshima in the Morning has been named a finalist for a National Book Award. My initial reaction: Really? She’s being celebrated for this? I could weep.Reiko Rizzuto speaks of her struggles to stay true to herself and admits that she had never wanted children (which begs the question why she had two). “I didn’t want to be swallowed up,” she says on the TODAY Show interview.

Some ten years later, she lives down the street from her family, sharing custody with her ex-husband and co-parenting her now teenage sons. While the set-up of this story positions her as a terrible, selfish mother who abandons her children to a loving and caring father, it’s not clear if she remained involved in their lives then as she is now. If so, how is this so different for the kids as a common divorce? Yes, divorce is a break up of a marriage, and in this case she broke up with her family and relinquished primary custody, but were these children really any worse off living primarily (or entirely – it’s not clear) with their father?
Plus: 31 Reasons You Shouldn’t Feel Mom Guilt

If you no longer want to be a mom, and you have another parent able to take care of your children, could you ever be justified in walking away? Would we be having this discussion if she were a man who’d left his wife and children? Watch the segment and decide for yourself.

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Norwich University, a military school, holds it's first gay pride week

many alumni are expected to return to campus, said club president and Norwich senior Joshua Fontanez, 22, of Browns Mills, N.J.

"They are truly saying, 'We're proud to come back home. This is something we wish that happened when we were here,'" he said.

The gay pride week, kicking off Monday, will feature six days of events — one for each color of the LGBT flag — with lectures and presentations on topics as varied as workshops on bias, harassment and bullying, to HIV testing to the Condom Olympics.

uh, gay pride is not about being able to live with someone you love in a monogamous and responsible relationship, but about condoms and HIV testings?

There are videos about condom olympics, but here is a how to article:

Set up the first half of the program as a team sexual jeopardy. Ask questions about any and everything. Use any resources available to make up your questions. Instead of awarding points and finding a winner, give condoms for every correct answer. The second half of the program is a condom relay race. Events such as "putting a condom on a cucumber" points are awarded to whoever finishes the event first and correctly. Other events are a condom tug of war between the partners, who can blow the condom up the biggest, or whatever else . . .
ALSO, if you can get different kinds of condoms see which ones hold up the best when filled with marbles and such.

When you run out of condoms, you're done playing, so don't allow everyone to participate in every event.

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

furthur down, another variation included dental dams.

Instructions/Things Needed:

Condoms, dental dams (I found this for free at the local planned parenthood, oranges, measuring tape (condom stretch), judges, prizes, lubricant (we ended by having a group hand orgy), cucumbers, facts on STD's and safe sex (we gave a few facts between each event), we also demonstrated how to correctly put on a condom, glow in the dark condoms, pens and paper.

then there is the first annual Harvard sex week

Harvard’s first-ever Sex Week, which aims to promote thoughtful discourse on issues of sex and sexuality through education, conversation, and vagina-themed cupcakes, kicked off Sunday with a presentation by Megan Andelloux, a certified sexuality educator and sexologist.

The weeklong event, organized by the Sexual Health Education and Advocacy Throughout Harvard College, features speakers, seminars, and movies that explore topics such as love, sex, sexuality, gender, gender identity, and relationships...“Sex Week connects people while demonstrating and continually reflecting that people are different,” she said. “Sex Week builds community in this very strong way in which you are engaging with something that is personal in an http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifintellectual, deep, and rigorous way.”...
Throughout the week, a SHEATH table on the Science Center lawn will feature free safer sex supplies, educational materials, and activities. Representatives from partner organizations including peer-counseling groups will be on site to answer questions.

Catholic student group leaves Vanderbuilt Univ
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Is Vanderbilt University waging a war on religion?

Many of the university’s religious student groups think so. They have been told by the administration that they cannot have faith or belief-based requirements for leadership. That means an atheist could run for leadership of a Christian group, a Jew for leadership of a Muslim group, a Pagan for leadership of a Catholic group, and on and on.

It’s all written into Vanderbilt’s nondiscrimination or “all-comers” policy.

All student groups must register next month. As part of the registration, they must sign a statement of affirmation that they will abide by the nondiscrimination policy.

Vandy Catholic -- a student group with some 500 members -- has decided it cannot agree to the policy and will be leaving campus in the fall. PJ Jedlovec, the president of Vandy Catholic, says it was a difficult decision, one made after much prayer and discussion.

“We are first and foremost a Catholic organization," says Jedlovec. “We do, in fact, have qualifications – faith-based qualifications for leadership. We require that our leaders be practicing Catholics. And the university’s nondiscrimination policy -- they have made it clear that there is no room in it for an organization that has these faith-based qualifications.”

remember

Good news for Asian Catholics: The move to declare the late Vietnamese Cardinal Van Thuan as a saint is moving forward. Wikipedia bio here.

What I learned from his writings is that even if we are prevented by circumstances from doing our "good deeds", God can use us in other ways...

Another personal item: Italian Catholic group has declared March 24 the day to remember the missionaries who were martyred.
I wonder: Does this include semi agnostic docs working in Catholic hospitals who were murdered by PC insurgents armed by money from the World Council of Churches? Never mind. Just remember those who work in dangerous areas in your prayers.

Paranoia alert

via TeaAtTrianon:

was Downton Abby once an Abby? Yes.

Henry VIII did a "twofer" when he confiscated the monasteries: Got rid of the religious opposition and rewarded his cronies by giving them their land and houses.

yes, and Obama's war against the Catholics will also be a "twofer": eliminate those who opose his abortion agenda, and when Catholics refuse to comply, confiscate or bankrupt Catholic institutions, so that his cronies can buy them for peanuts.

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Pushing the PC sexual agenda had a minor setback last week...the tipping point was promoting the free sex agenda to minors got some folks mad.

But that one is only threatening the rights of parents: the real problem is the threat to sovereignty in the Rio agenda.
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related item:

Texas won't fund planned parenthood clinics because they do abortions, so the Obama administration has stopped all funding to the state to cover pap smears etc. for poor women.

LINK

h. The Texas Women’s Health Program has about 130,000 low-income participants, and federal money had covered 90 percent of its costs. But a new state law bans state financing for clinics affiliated with abortion providers. That made the Obama administration cut off support, saying federal law requires that women be able to choose any qualified clinic. Gov. Rick Perry has said Texas will continue the women’s program even without federal money.

first they mess with the Catholics, then they mess with Texas.

Who is the next enemy?

catholics vs Obama

Compare and contrast:

the link for the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/health/policy/obama-administration-says-birth-control-mandate-applies-to-religious-groups-that-insure-themselves.html

yes, the link says:obama-administration-says-birth-control-mandate-applies-to-religious-groups-that-insure-themselves

but the actual headline says:
U.S. Clarifies Policy on Birth Control for Religious Groups

the first paragraph says:

— The Obama administration took another step on Friday to enforce a federal mandate for health insurance coverage of contraceptives, announcing how the new requirement would apply to the many Roman Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies that insure themselves.

The extention includes student insurance (what, student's don't self insure? Are universities now required to insure their own students?)

ah, but the insurance companies will pay for it free, because of their loving hearts.

The new Obama policy leaves two big questions unanswered:

Who will provide the money to pay the claims for contraceptive drugs and devices? Who will pay the fees normally paid by the employer?

Secretary Sebelius said the money could come from pharmaceutical companies, which sometimes provide discounts to favored customers by paying rebates on drugs. These drug rebates could be used to help pay for contraceptive coverage if a religious organization objects to providing such coverage to employees, she said in a notice to be published next week in the Federal Register.

Alternatively, Ms. Sebelius said, the federal Office of Personnel Management could encourage or require one or more private insurers to provide contraceptive coverage for people in a religious organization’s health plan

.

and this loophole has been closed for faith based organizations:

On Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services went a step further and said it would propose a similar requirement for group health plans sponsored by religious organizations that insure themselves.

so no getting around it by having your group self insure. Indeed, I read somewhere that those of us who self insure have to pay for it too.

all of this will be ignored by the press or (like this) dumped on the public during a weekend when people don't tend to pay attention to the news.

Ms. Fluke welcomed the new rule on Friday, but said she was disappointed that, under the Obama administration policy, “religiously affiliated schools and employers may delay a year before offering contraceptive coverage.” Ms. Fluke said colleges should not “delay what is now inevitable” and should provide contraceptive coverage as soon as possible.

yes, poor Ms. Fluke's vacation in the Riviera with her millionaire boyfriend will be spoiled because she can't pay for birth control.

they also say 60 "law professors" supported her, but didn't mention that 277 people are listed on the Geo lawschool site.
wonder why so few signed this on a leftie school?

But where is the comment by the bishops?

nytimes

Destroying Catholicism

Geo Weigel reports:

In a deft response to the spin and distortion that have characterized this debate for two months, “United for Religious Freedom” usefully clarifies just what the argument is not:

This is not about access to contraception, which is ubiquitous and inexpensive. . . . This is not about the religious freedom of Catholics only, but also of those who recognize that their cherished beliefs may be next on the block. This is not about the bishops’ somehow ‘banning contraception,’ when the U.S. Supreme Court took that issue off the table two generations ago. Indeed, this is not about the Church wanting to force anybody to do anything; it is, instead, about the federal government forcing the Church . . . to act against Church teachings. This is not a matter of opposition to universal health care, which has been a concern of the Bishops’ Conference since 1919, virtually at its founding. This is not a fight we want or asked for, but one forced upon us by government on its own timing. Finally, this is not a Republican or Democratic, a conservative or liberal issue; it is an American issue.

The Administrative Committee’s statement then crisply defines what the HHS mandate involves.

It involves an “unwarranted” and “extremely narrow” definition of who is a “religious employer “ — a definition that “creates and enforces a new distinction” between Catholic houses of worship, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Church’s charitable activities and its educational efforts. According to the administration’s regulatory scheme, the latter will become “second class” citizens, in a dramatic break with both Catholic tradition and federal law.

I'd say the President made a political mistake, but given the pushing of Abortion and population control policies on the Philippines, and pushing radical"gay rights" on African countries (which is leaving a lot of Africans aghast), I'd say it's an agenda, and he says to hell with all those who oppose it.

For the child of an African and the son of an anthropologist, President Obama seems very dense in cross cultural understanding...

A minor adjustment would have allowed the bishops to applaud him, a slightly different way of promoting equal rights would let Africans and Asians to cooperate with him. But the way these things are pushed here (and in many African countries, if one believes their press) is a high handed way (with those being told what to do being made to understand their failure will have consequences).


and then there is this:the anchoress writes:

The Mandated $1 Abortion Contribution of Obamacare: Reality or not? If the MSM ignores it, does it cease to go into effect?

Forgiveness

a long essay on Rwanda and forgiveness

HERE.

“What has happened to my country since the killing ended? When we regained control, did we avenge ourselves against our oppressors? Did we retaliate against our neighbors? No, love enveloped the country. A love and forgiveness that, I like to think, only a heavenly Mother could instill in her children. All this happened without the intervention of the great superpowers and developed countries. The United Nations did nothing. They have been very vocal after the fact, but when men were killing their neighbors, they locked themselves in their camps.

“Our horror started through hate and indifference. It has ended with love and forgiveness. That is a miracle on a scale that is almost never seen. Yet many in the world are blind to such miracles. It was the hand of God, through the Blessed Mother’s intervention, that saved Rwanda — and that I believe with all my heart. Indifference has been erased in Rwanda. When it was all said and done, there could be no indifference. It was too personal. Just as our brutality was personal, our recovery was personal.

“Men asked for forgiveness face-to-face. We deal with our countrymen who committed the atrocities on a village level. If a man killed his neighbor, he goes to the family and asks for forgiveness. The village council will decide a penance; usually the man will work as a laborer for that family for a prescribed period of time. Once the penance is complete, the man is free. In this way, he can see the consequences of his crime by interacting with the family, and the family can see their former oppressor in a state of humility. That humility often softens their hearts and quenches any desire for vengeance. As simple as it sounds, it has worked. None but the worst are sentenced to jail and we have abandoned the death penalty. Forgiveness is granted and old wounds are being healed.

“I like to believe that Rwanda’s recovery has happened for some divine purpose. Perhaps we were being prepared for some great task. That was why the Blessed Mother of God visited our insignificant country. It was to tell us that our sacrifice would not be in vain. It would show the world the dangers of indifference, and our recovery would show the world the power of forgiveness compared to the destruction of revenge....

Lies and deceptions

Go read George Weigel's analysis on the lies and spin of the Obama adminstration that is trying to destroy the Catholic church in America.

key issue: The Catholic church has changed.

The administration announced the HHS mandate without any prior consultation with the bishops’ conference, seemingly confident that the conference would acquiesce. When that didn’t happen, the administration consulted Catholic collaborationists in order to come up with an “accommodation” it was confident that the bishops would buy. And when that bit of fakery was rejected by the bishops’ conference for the shell game it clearly was, the administration was caught off guard yet again. Thus the White House was left with a strange Catholic Lite coalition — small-circulation magazines like America and Commonweal, a trade association with a deeply vested interest in keeping HHS happy (the CHA), thoroughly implausible characters like Pepperdine’s Douglas Kmiec, and administration-friendly liberal Catholic journalists — as its allies in selling the spin that a) the HHS mandate had nothing to do with religious freedom, b) the mandate was all that stood between the Republic’s women and medieval sexual peonage, and c) the bishops were being sectarian and unreasonable.

What the administration seems to have missed is that, while the bishops’ conference was being generally supportive in 2009 of health-care reform aimed at universal care (as the bishops had been since 1919), another tide was rising among the Catholic bishops of the United States: a deep concern about the attenuation of Catholic identity over the past two generations. The leader in framing this issue was the immediate past conference president, Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., the archbishop of Chicago; his steady, scholarly insistence that the bishops reclaim responsibility for being the custodians of authentic and robust Catholic identity struck a chord with the generation of bishops whose model of leadership is Blessed John Paul II

logo

posted to put on another blog so ignore

Tolkien vs George Martin

From Hieropraxis:

Interesting, isn’t it? Tolkien saw violence and death first-hand, and chose not to revel in it. Most people in America have not experienced war or suffered brutality, yet grotesquely violent video games and blood-drenched, perverse-sex-saturated television shows are enormously popular.

This is what we get when Imagination gets disconnected from Reason. Tolkien is great in part because he was utterly grounded in the reality of sorrow and pain, joy and love, and thus his imaginative vision shows forth truth, while lesser writers end up writing ‘Morbid Fantasy’ that speaks no truth and offers no hope.

full essay here:

from my – subjective point of view – SoFiA is pretty desolating stuff. Martin’s world is basically cynical, bleak and depressing. He has been described as Tolkien for the jaded generation...

it is true that Martins female characters are much more realistic than anything in Tolkien…. and as a whole Martin’s characters are more morally complex. But maybe that is less about realism but more about the cynicism of our age. The sex scenes (missing from Tolkien) are almost all brutal and degrading in ASofaI. There is something of ’the teenage geek in a dark room on a diet of porn’ about the sex scenes. And HBO are rubbing their hands with glee. This isn’t a healthy portrayal of sexuality. The world isn’t like this…..

Is Martin a genius? Yes.

Are his books fantastic ? with reservations Yes.

Is he the American Tolkien – No. In many ways he gets close. It is clear that he admires him greatly, but there is nothing about the ‘order of grace’ in his books.

I haven't read the book, and I turned off the HBO version because of the excessive uglyness, meanness and violence. I say excessive because the graphic stuff was dwelled on so much that the story was ignored (in other words, the first half hour seemed more to be about special effects than story)....

the bad times are comin

via Father Z: a quote from Ratzinger's 1969 book:

The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.

She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members….

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain . . . But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

Biretta tip to Catholic Education Resource Center.

persecution watch

Instapundit links to an article on the Daily beast (to which I won't link because of their openly anti Christian editor) saying that the contraception rule was about money:

“Completely ignored is the more fundamental problem: this mandate is not only about the bedroom, it’s about the boardroom. You’ve heard of crony capitalism? Well this is America’s first example of crony contraceptives. Forget for a minute the religious question and look at who wins big here: Big Pharma. This mandate is not really about condoms or generic versions of ‘the pill,’ which are available free or cheap in lots of places. This is about brand-name birth control drugs and other devices that some consumers swear off because they are too expensive. The Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requires health-insurance companies provide contraceptive coverage for all ‘FDA approved contraceptive methods.’ It does not insist on generics. And it does not offer any cost containment. . . . It’s important to point out that among President Obama’s biggest financial backers are precisely the Big Pharma companies who benefit from the mandate.”

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Lots of stuff about a Rush Limbaugh boycott that is reaching people who have little or nothing to do with him.

Seems to me that those companies pressured by emails to boycott him will lose a lot more money from his listeners, but never mind. There is even a site suggesting that she sue him for libel.

Well, let me tell you how libel works. Here in the Philippines, you aren't allowed to "libel" politicians, so you can't post rumors or stories that say what everyone knows (e.g. who stole what). That meant that we couldn't go pickett the mayor who ordered the hit on his rivals, that killed our nephew who was a bystander, even though everyone in town knew the hit wasn't a "robbery" (which is what the embassy implied when they didn't get involved in pressuring the gov't for justice) and a lot of us knew that the indictment was delayed for years because of a payment to the ombudsman stolen from the city funding.

How strict is that law? Well, Bishop Cruz once criticized a big party held for the "first gentleman" of our previous lovely president Gloria. The waitresses were employees of businesses who "volunteered" their time. All were beautiful young women. When the Bishop pointed out that these companies volunteered only beautiful young women who dressed in skimpy clothing to work for free, he was implying corruption, a bribe by these companies to the government to get business or to pay back for favors.

So the waitresses sued the Bishop for libel: His essay implied we were immoral women and we are not. How dare he libel our good name.

So they took the bishop to court in Manila and after a lot of publicity and time off to attend court, he ended up paying a nominal fine.

That is the problem with such a case: Not the verdict, but that the threat of having to take off and go to court is worse than the the insult itself.

And here, it is an attempt to shut up the opposition, just like the Arroyo administration tried to silence the Bishop, who published numerous essays on his blog against the administration's corruption, but couldn't name names or details because of the libel law.

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another article on the Obama persecution of their opponants: The Tea Party is being asked illegal questions by the IRS. some examples from NatReview site:

These information demands follow tea-party requests for 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) status and include questions like the following:

Do you directly or indirectly communicate with members of legislative bodies? If so, provide copies of the written communications and contents of other forms of communications.

And

Please describe the associate group members and their role with your organization in further detail. (a) How does your organization solicit members? (b) What are the questions asked of potential members? (c) What are the selection criteria for approval? (d) Do you limit membership to other organizations exempt under 501(c)(4) of the Code? (e) Provide the name, employer identification number, and address of the organizations.

And

Do you have a close relationship with any candidate for public office or political party? If so describe fully the nature of that relationship

Hmm....I don't know much about the law (the NR suggests that the fishing expedition for more information about those they associate with is illegal) but it seems to me that a lot of political information could be gathered this way.

And what is to stop the IRS from sending a similar questionaire to religious groups or the Catholic church? and then maybe using the information to force the church to shut up or lose their tax exemption?

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which brings us to another article: FT requotes the recently deceased James Q Wilson who dared to point out that the emperor had no clothing when it comes to destroying traditional marriage.

He dares to say what is now called homophobic: That too many of these "marriage" are about having a tax exemption but staying free to be promiscuous.

But he brings up the deeper argument, that thousands of years of traditions have recognized marriage, and that it is not a mere government granted right. That "it's about equal rights" ignores the nuances of what marriage actually is about.

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And so the "contraception" part is only the first part of the debate: the aim is a full fledged war against the Catholic church.

In Ireland, we see how manipulating abuse problems was magnified to destroy the church, and the Pope has cautioned the bishops here that they are next in line because too many priests here have girlfriends, and this will be used to destroy the church to pass the "reproductive health" bill (which by the way also has a legal way to keep you quiet: if you criticize contraception, you could be fined 200 dollars. This is a month's salary for a nurse here).

which brings us to Father Rutler. Again, link from FT:

Pope Benedict XVI said last January: “…it is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres.”...
The man who saw no enemies might plead with good reason that the media have, to put it mildly, inadequately publicized these persecutions. That kind of plea, however, can no longer be sustained when elements of our own government have declared war on the Church, and persecution both subtle and blatant has gone domestic. Catholics have not been prepared to deal with this, and some have even been compliant. If we rely only on institutional bureaucracy to be our line of defense, we may find it to be a Maginot Line. The Allies were unprepared when Churchill spoke in 1938 because people wanted butter not guns, but found soon enough that butter was being rationed, and guns were pointing at them.

and the tipping point will be gay marriage, and once the churches are destroyed, there will be no voices to stop tax payers paying for abortion, or euthanasia...

The Mystic of the Mississippi prison

Story here.

the end of an age?

SenseOfEvents blog has a link with an analysis by David Stockman.

and Father Longenecker points out that when the "persecution" comes, the "average" Catholic and pants suited nuns will feel right at home.

yeah, sounds sort of like the prophecy in the Eclipse of the Sun...
if you don' have the book, you can read excerpts at google books

from Sancte pater