Abortion

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Bob Butler
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Re: Abortion

Post by Bob Butler »

Tom Mazanec wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 7:44 am
This is how bad it has gotten:
WATCH: Jane Fonda Says People Should “Murder” Pro-Lifers
by Ben Warren
March 10th 2023, 1:32 pm
https://www.infowars.com/posts/watch-ja ... ro-lifers/
I agree that was too far. I also think if you expect the government to stop such efforts, defunding the DoJ and FBI wouldn't be bright.

I note that death threats have become pretty routine for lawmakers. Any time some disagree with a lawmakers opinion, they send a death threat. Going after activists and opinion shows I imagine is not unheard of. Has Fox got any since the Dominion deposition results came out? This one is just going after liberal folks, which I understand are the dominant but hardly exclusive direction.

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Re: Abortion

Post by Guest »

I hope the Vatican is turned into condos.
Ten terrible years of Pope Francis
The church has lost all its moral authority
Ten years ago today, on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 13, 2013, the 115 cardinal-electors of the Catholic Church walked up one after the other to a table in the Sistine Chapel to deposit folded ballot papers, only an inch wide, in a silver urn. Each bore the name of the cardinal they wanted to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, who had stunned them by his resignation just over a month earlier. It was an anonymous vote, of course, but just to make sure, the cardinals had been instructed to disguise their handwriting.

It was the fifth ballot since Tuesday night, and they knew it would be the last. After that first vote, there was a ripple of surprise when the bookies’ favourite, the scholarly but energetic Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, received 30 votes instead of the anticipated 40. The runner-up, with 26 votes, was the cardinal who came second to Joseph Ratzinger in 2005, Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires.

Most commentators had written off Bergoglio because he was 76. But, of all the candidates, he seemed the most determined to clear out the filth in the Vatican. The year before, Benedict XVI’s butler had leaked documents revealing the industrial-scale blackmailing of senior clerics with an appetite for gay sex parties and money-laundering. The old pope was not personally implicated, but he clearly didn’t have a clue what to do about it. When he announced that, at 85, he no longer had the strength to do the job, few cardinals doubted that the so-called “Vatileaks” were to blame. Likewise, no one doubted that Bergoglio — who had been a nightclub bouncer before becoming a Jesuit priest — was looking forward to knocking heads together.

On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the horse-trading began, carried out sotto voce during meal breaks and rest periods in the Domus Sancta Marthae, a cross between a five-star hotel and a prison where the cardinals are incarcerated between ballots. By the fourth ballot, the Argentinian Jesuit was unstoppable. The fifth ballot was merely an opportunity for as many cardinals as possible to vote for the winner.

When it was over, 90 out of 115 had backed Bergoglio. The white smoke billowed forth and the bells of St Peter’s rang out to confirm the election (a recent innovation, just in case the accident-prone Vatican sends out black smoke by mistake). The new pope, who had chosen the name Francis after the medieval saint who embraced extreme poverty, walked on to the balcony of St Peter’s minus the traditional gorgeously embroidered stole. His disarming manner sent the crowd into an ecstasy of cheering. The next morning, Francis turned up at the counter of the Domus to pay his bill in person. He rang his newsagent in Buenos Aires to tell him to stop delivering the papers. The media were charmed by these faux-humble stunts.

And so began one of the darkest decades in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church. The cardinals had been taken for a ride. They had elected a man about whom they knew little: a divisive and intellectually lazy clerical politician.

But that is not the worst of it. The truth — unforgivably obscured by a mainstream media that relies on papal allies for “commentary” on Vatican affairs — is that Francis himself, both before and after his election, has empowered and protected predatory clergy and their accomplices.

No one paid any attention at the time, but one of the cardinals who joined the “humble” new pope on the balcony 10 years ago was the late Godfried Danneels, former Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels. In 2010, shortly after the very liberal Danneels retired, Bishop Roger Vangheluwe of Bruges admitted to his former boss that he had been sexually abusing his own nephew. Cardinal Danneels met the victim and, unaware that he was being recorded, told him to shut up about the abuse until the revelation would cause less embarrassment. Police questioned Daneels about the attempted cover-up and raided his offices. The recording was made public and Danneels — who once nurtured ambitions to become pope — was torn to pieces by a Belgian media that had once admired him.

So what was he doing on the balcony with Francis? And why, in 2015, did the Pope invite Danneels, guilty of trying to cover up incestuous abuse of a minor, to a Vatican Synod on the family, of all subjects? I asked the late Cardinal George Pell, who at the time was in charge of reforming Vatican finances. “To thank him for the votes,” replied Pell. Danneels was a member of the so-called St Gallen Mafia of elderly liberal cardinals who lobbied for Bergoglio in 2005 and 20213. In Pell’s mind, at least, rehabilitation was his reward.

Consider, also, the case of Theodore McCarrick, the retired Archbishop of Washington, who twisted arms for Bergoglio. It was an open secret in Rome and the US Bishops’ Conference that “Uncle Ted” loved to seduce seminarians. When Benedict XVI discovered this, he banished him to a life of prayer and repentance. As soon as Francis was elected, McCarrick found himself back in favour, travelling around the world as the Pope’s unofficial emissary and fundraiser. Eventually the New York Times revealed that McCarrick was being accused of child abuse, at which point Francis had no choice but to strip him of his title of cardinal. But it should have happened years earlier given that, on becoming Pope, Francis was told that the Vatican had a thick file on McCarrick’s sexual activities.

One of Francis’s first acts as pope was to make his friend Fr Gustavo Zanchetta the Bishop of Orán in northern Argentina despite claims that he was corrupt. In 2017, aged only 53, Zanchetta resigned for “health reasons”. In fact, he had been reported by the Vatican nunciature in Buenos Aires for alleged abuse; in 2015, graphic gay sex images of himself and “young people” had been found on his phone and were reportedly shown to the Pope. (Zanchetta claimed they had been planted.) There were extensive allegations of misuse of funds that led to a raid on his former office by Orán police.

And what did Francis do after Zanchetta resigned? He created a special job for him in the Vatican “assessing” the assets of the Holy See. He would probably still have it if, in 2022, he hadn’t been sentenced to four and half years in jail in Argentina for the sexual assault of two seminarians while Bishop of Orán.

A pattern emerges. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio commissioned a report attempting to exonerate Fr Julio Grassi, who was jailed for molesting residents of his Happy Children homes for street children. As Pope, Francis denied on camera that he sponsored the £1 million secret document. Unfortunately, it bears his name. Fortunately for him, no major English-language media outlet has devoted significant resources to investigating his record of protecting abusers. An ordinary bishop who did these things would almost certainly be made to resign. But no one can be forced to resign the Holy See; indeed, any forced resignation of a pope is automatically invalid.

A succession of disgraceful episodes raise the question of whether Bergoglio should have been allowed to become a small-town priest, let alone spiritual leader of more than a billion people.

In 2018, the Vatican signed a deal with Beijing that handed President Xi Jinping the power to appoint official Catholic bishops. As a result, faithful Catholics are being herded into so-called “Masses” in which the worship of the Chinese Communist Party takes precedence over the worship of God. Lord Alton of Liverpool, the Catholic human rights campaigner, has described the pact on Twitter as “at best naïve and at worst a gross betrayal”. Cardinal Joseph Zen, former Bishop of Hong Kong, was so appalled that, in 2020, he travelled to Rome to appeal to the Pope to appoint a bishop in Hong Kong who would resist China’s illegal attempts to force its fake Catholicism on the province. The 88-year-old Zen asked for just half an hour with the Pope. Francis refused to see him. Moreover, he has never condemned his Chinese allies’ genocidal campaign against the Muslim Uyghurs, which includes forcing their women to have abortions.

In the United States, meanwhile, Francis seems to have a policy of insulting orthodox Catholics by only awarding cardinal’s hats to bishops with divisive liberal views. Last year, for instance, he made Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego a cardinal, yet again refusing to honour Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, a theologically conservative but politically neutral figure who had the temerity to draw attention to Joe Biden’s fanatical support for abortion on the day of his inauguration.

McElroy’s elevation to the college of cardinals was especially provocative. In 2018, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington was forced to resign when his clergy refused to believe his claim that he knew nothing about the sexual activities of his predecessor, Theodore McCarrick. Francis planned to replace Wuerl with McElroy, who was also a McCarrick protege — but such a move would have provoked open revolt in Washington. Hence the huge and unprecedented consolation prize of a red hat for the Bishop of San Diego, which has enabled McElroy to join Joseph Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, and Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, in the club of Francis-appointed cardinals who were once close to McCarrick.

Curiously, although McCarrick had once been a notoriously predatory Archbishop of Newark, his successor Cardinal Tobin said he didn’t believe any of the stories about him — until the truth emerged. Cardinal Farrell was McCarrick’s auxiliary in Washington, shared an apartment with him, but never suspected a thing. The future Cardinal McElroy, meanwhile, was informed by the late clerical abuse expert Richard Sipe in 2016 that McCarrick was a serial abuser. He took no action. And, to spell it out, these three cardinals — Farrell, Tobin and McElroy — are crucial allies of Francis “the Reformer”.

There is a chance, however, that Francis will regret the elevation of Bob McElroy. The Pope’s biggest headache at the moment is his pet project, absurdly entitled the Synod on Synodality, that Francis intended to push the Church surreptitiously in a liberal direction. What has happened instead is that the ultra-liberal German Church has gone full Protestant on Francis, using what it calls the “Synodal Way” to turn itself into a version of the Church of England. Last week, it voted to allow gay blessings in church.

Meanwhile, McElroy has taken a huge risk, calling for a “radical inclusion” of LGBT couples that would enable them to receive Holy Communion, a move that Francis does not support. This provoked Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, to accuse America’s most recent cardinal of heresy. Even the Pope’s most fervent supporters are worried. If the Catholic Church in the United States, Germany and other liberal European countries falls apart in the chaotic manner of the now-defunct Anglican Communion, then history will blame Pope Francis — not necessarily for sowing the seeds of secularisation, but for his theologically incoherent thrashing about in the throne of Peter.

And I haven’t even mentioned the Latin Mass. Francis’s suppression of this ancient liturgy is losing him friends even among liberal bishops, who now find themselves forced to themselves forced to carry out witch-hunts on behalf of the Pope’s thuggish liturgy chief, Arthur Roche, another wildly unsuitable recipient of a red hat.

Let me leave you with this disgusting paradox. Earlier this month, the Pope’s Jesuit friend Fr Mark Rupnik, a celebrity mosaic artist, was allowed to concelebrate Mass publicly. Meanwhile, claims that he grotesquely abused women have not been fully investigated because Francis refuses to lift the relevant statute of limitations.

At the same time, faithful priests have been expelled from churches where they offered the traditional Mass and now are forced to do so in church halls and basements. They represent the only community of Catholics that is growing in the 21st century, and the Pope is literally driving them underground.

Ten years after that catastrophic vote in the Sistine Chapel, we have reached a moment of extreme crisis in the life of the Church. Francis is tightening his control of the Vatican’s machinery, with no plans to retire. A new pope would have been nice – a couple of years ago. Now I think it’s too late. The church may never recover its moral authority.

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Bob Butler
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On the Church

Post by Bob Butler »

Guest wrote:
Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:12 am
I hope the Vatican is turned into condos.
Can the Church be regarded as an authoritarian institution? Are they responding to their elites rather than the people? Is there a way for them to restructure from a top down elite based structure to a bottom up people based? Is that sort of what they tried in the Protestant Reformation? Is there an alternative to creating another church? Will the elite feeling of privileged abuse prove invulnerable to popular moral outrage?

Not really my fight, but you have real concerns for good reason.

Does Rome need more condos?

Guest

Re: On the Church

Post by Guest »

Bob Butler wrote:
Fri Mar 17, 2023 10:42 pm
Does Rome need more condos?
Absolutely. That's prime real estate. And besides, the migrants have filled all the hotels, so there is a need for additional housing.

Guest

Re: Abortion

Post by Guest »

Good article above. I didn't know how toxic the situation really is in the Catholic church.

I think the Roman Catholic Church has just become another corrupt mega church. I know it can be difficult for some people to move on. My father did, the rest of his family did not. My father never talked about why he left the RC Church, and I was never curious enough to ask. Now I regret not asking.

I am grateful to God that I was never put into the Catholic machine as a young boy. I did occasionally (rarely, really) attended both Protestant and Catholic Sunday schools, but the choice of what I became was left up to me. My sister is an agnostic. I became Anglican.

The Anglican church has become so woke that I stopped attending in 2014. I have no plans to ever go back. The Church of England has become lost too. Being Protestant though means I won't be excommunicated for not attended and no one can order me around. I think Martin Luther is the truest mortal beacon that Christianity has ever had.

I am a sincere, but flawed Christian. I find forgiving those that have wronged me to be very difficult. God and Christianity will always be part of me, even if church attendance is not.

'Growing up Catholic' looks like attending a reform school with degenerate teachers. I'll pass.

JCP

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Re: Abortion

Post by Guest »

My father left the Catholic church too. I never asked why either. My father never uttered a word about it. I found out he was raised Catholic from my Protestant mother. Curious.

Maybe he felt the word "Catholic" was cursed?

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Bob Butler
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Catholic is universal?

Post by Bob Butler »

Guest wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2023 11:11 am
My father left the Catholic church too. I never asked why either. My father never uttered a word about it. I found out he was raised Catholic from my Protestant mother. Curious.

Maybe he felt the word "Catholic" was cursed?
Catholic originally came from the Greek, meaning universal. Ha. It is hardly that anymore, and never really was.

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Re: Abortion

Post by JessicaSlim »

Guest wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2023 11:11 am
My father left the Catholic church too. I never asked why either. My father never uttered a word about it. I found out he was raised Catholic from my Protestant mother. Curious.

Maybe he felt the word "Catholic" was cursed?
I can not say anything about your father left Catholic church. But the all I can say is that if anyone did this so he must felt something very reasonable about that to leaving the particular group.

Guest

Re: Abortion

Post by Guest »

Guest wrote:
Tue Dec 06, 2022 4:22 am
Higgenbotham wrote:
Sun Dec 04, 2022 4:34 pm
John wrote:
Sat Dec 03, 2022 1:29 pm
Saturday, December 03, 2022

This is something that I first posted in 2005:



I have to agree.



This question was considered in the play Man of La Mancha. In
this scene, the other Inquisition prisoners have put Miguel de
Cervantes on trial and are threatening to destroy the manuscript of
Don Quixote de la Mancha that Cervantes has written. In his
defense, Cervantes explains the madness of Don Quixote, who is
accused of not seeing "life as it is":



Play the following MP3 file for full effect:
http://www.reelclassics.com/Audio_Video ... adness.mp3

Generational theory presumably tells us about 'life as it is.' If
Cervantes is right, then perhaps those of us who study generational
theory are the ones who are mad. I'd be hard pressed to disagree.

John


John wrote:
Sat Apr 03, 2021 11:31 pm
I feel sorry for you guys. At my Methuselean age, I'm not going to be
around to see how this mess unravels (at least I hope I won't). But
most of you guys are going to be unlucky enough to see what happens.
I feel bad for you. As Higgie once described it, the living will envy
the dead.
I haven't yet found myself wishing I was never born, but believe that is coming. I'm sure you will be in my thoughts when it does.
In the spring of 2000, after escaping the siege of Grozny, and then Chechnya (a country whose independence was now gone), I found myself in Nazran, being aggressively pursued by the Russian army, GRU, and FSB. I will never forget standing on a slope at the edge of Nazran and looking at a large bird in the sky. How I wished I could be that bird. And I remember wishing that I had never been born. The feeling, that feeling, is horrible. Words cannot describe it. Wishing that you have never been born is an absolute nightmare, the blackest of all thoughts. I would rather die than feel that way again. To really wish that you had never been born is also a feeling you will never forget. And a feeling you never want to experience.
I'm an Infantry veteran and a Freemason and to me the message of this story is that while we are gods among men as a highly trained special forces element, when we leave the military we are nothing but undesirables no matter what we have sacrificed!! In the end we veterans die poor on the streets going insane from the horror's we have endured!!

Cool Breeze
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Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2020 10:19 pm

Re: Abortion

Post by Cool Breeze »

Bob Butler wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 3:04 pm
I agree that was too far. I also think if you expect the government to stop such efforts, defunding the DoJ and FBI wouldn't be bright.
Classic example of how bought and sold this bish is. One of his own actively calls for the murder of peaceful people, and he says "it's too far".

They downplay their own murderers then complain about others without any evidence that the others are even doing anything wrong. Amazing.

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