Still Running Off at the Keyboard

BISHOP LENNON

will appear in Tuesday's "Hand of God" PBS documentary about sexual abuse in the Church. A picture of Lennon from the video appears here.

The Toledo Blade is also reporting on the upcoming documentary. They give a teaser about Bishop Lennon's role in the film as he and the victim's brother who is filming the documentary meet outside the chancery:

In one of the most disturbing scenes, Joe Cultrera is confronted by a cleric while filming the exterior of the Boston archdiocese’s headquarters. The filmmaker explains that he is making a documentary about his brother who had been abused as a child by a local priest.

“Sir, if you think you’re going to make me feel bad about this, you’re not,” the priest tells him, then further insults the filmmaker by saying, “It’s all in your head, sir. You’re a sad little man.”

Later, Joe Cultrera learns that the cleric was Bishop Richard Lennon, who had been appointed to fill in after Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in disgrace. Bishop Lennon is now the bishop of Cleveland.

THE SMOKING GUN LETTER

is back in the news. First of all, here is
the letter itself.

Dom has given a synopsis of the development of thinking on this letter in a blog he has posted in response to a recent announcement that the Vatican can be sued. Links are over there.

Dom's argument rests on the long-standing seal of confession. Technically, that may be a valid legal argument regarding this particular document. I'll leave it for the lawyers to sort out. However, the argument does not address the bigger picture of a world-wide lock-step cover-up, and it is that evidence of unity that has not been explained. On cue the bishops around the world acted to hide the developing scandal of sexual abuse of the laity's children, and did nothing to stop it. Why?

I can understand that some bishops would act this way given the situation. But what I would expect is that the majority of bishops would act in communion with the beliefs of the faith. Yet that is not what happened. The cover-up by its very nature involved lying which is contrary to the Eighth Commandment. It violated the requirement to avoid the near occasion of sin as again and again sinful priests were put back into environments that would encourage repeats.

As Dom and other commenters have demonstrated in a previous blog, it prompted Cardinal Law to act contrary to his established pattern of response to the downtrodden and hurting. Law's response to the abused was out of character.

Why did the great majority of American bishops handle priestly sexual abuse in this manner? It speaks of collusion. It speaks of direction given and taken. It speaks of consensus. Why was there consensus? What was the source of that unity of approach to the scandal? If it were a bishop's conference, why are we reading stories of the same thing taking place in other countries? It must have a higher source.

Given this lock step on the part of the American bishops and even the bishops of the world, my attention is directed to the oversight of the world's bishops. That oversight can only come from the Vatican itself, and the Congregation that had oversight responsibility.

If this smoking gun letter can be demonstrated to be a red herring, the matter of that lock step is not mitigated by the demonstration. If not this letter then what document? If this letter cannot be demonstrated to prescribe a general atmosphere of cover-up where any scandal would result and not only where the seal of confession is concerned--and I believe that it can, in the absence of specific written direction to the contrary, be so demonstrated--then what edict? what document? what instruction is the source of the bishops action in unison on sexual abuse cover-up? There has to be one.

EMAIL FROM FR. EUTENEUER

Spirit & Life
"The words I spoke to you are spirit and life." (Jn 6:63)
Human Life International e-Newsletter
Volume 01, Number 50 | Friday, Jan. 12, 2007
................................................................................... www.hli.org
Pro Choice Violence and Big Pharmaceutical

Author's Note: This is the second of three articles highlighting the reality of violence committed - and defended - in the name of "choice." Last week we examined "Pro Choice Violence, Big Media and Big Abortion," and next week we will take a look at "Pro Choice Violence and American Culture."

WARNING: SOME OF THE MATERIAL IN THIS EMAIL IS OF A GRAPHIC NATURE.

In politically-correct circles nowadays, it is not kosher to suggest that grand conspiracies are causing our world's ills. However, the supreme authority of our Church in the person of Pope John Paul II and his encyclical letter, "The Gospel of Life" (1995), looked at the dreadful corruption of modern culture, aided and abetted by the "research" interests of the pharmaceutical industry, and labeled this disaster an international "conspiracy against life." Maybe our comfortable populace is not willing to face that, but pro-lifers and all men of good will should be worried about such powerful interests teaming up against life.

For example, in 1997 when Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics exposed the atrocious selling of baby parts from American abortion clinics, some of us were shocked, but the vested interests of politics and business conspired to make the issue go away from the public view, and according to Life Dynamics, the grisly business keeps on functioning in our country as we speak.

From an international perspective, the situation in Eastern Europe paints a vivid picture of a depraved new world. Eastern Europe is generally poor and the governments and police are easily corrupted by the hundreds of millions of dollars wielded by the "high-tech cannibals" - i.e., the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and organ transplant industries. These enterprises require huge and increasing amounts of human tissue and eggs for their research, their surgical procedures, and their cosmetics. Since there is a vast amount of quick money to be made, conscienceless individuals tend to flock to these industries to take advantage of the situation.

Last year, my colleague, Dr. Brian Clowes, wrote about the Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Barbados where rich American and English women travel to spend $25,000 for a "treatment" consisting of having liquified unborn babies' tissues injected into their bodies so that they can feel "refreshed" and have their libidos enhanced. [See Sidebar.] The report noted that the director of the institute was a Ukrainian "doctor" with some nebulous credentials emblazoned in bizarre diplomas hanging on the wall. Now we've found that the situation is even worse than we thought. Last month, the BBC revealed that maternity hospitals in Ukraine are taking newborn babies from their impoverished mothers and murdering them for their organs. A team of Council of Europe investigators found that the babies had been completely dismembered and mutilated - their internal organs had been ransacked, their brains had been removed, and even their arms and legs had been cut off and sucked dry of their marrow. And all of this was done without the benefit of anesthesia! Believe me, it's true, I've seen the footage of the poor victims of this evil.

But this is not all. Eastern and Southern Europe have become a biological circus of horrors. Romanian women are enticed into donating their eggs in exchange for a sum of money equal to a month's salary. They are then virtually enslaved, fed powerful drugs, and harvested repeatedly until they are paralyzed. In Athens too, police recently shut down an operation where blond-haired, blue-eyed women were paid to be inseminated by equally Aryan-type men. The women then gave their babies to rich Westerners, and received their reward - they were either forced into prostitution or murdered. Surely these atrocities come as no surprise to those of us who have been fighting the culture of death at close quarters. Our societies have been slipping down the moral slope one small step at a time until now, it seems, we have reached the bottom, and the evil seems to be spreading.

Conspiracy theorists are sometimes right, but in the face of this massive coordinated assault on life let's not lose hope! Our response to this or any evil is always the same: together with principled action, we pray and fast. The Lord said that these are the only things that drive out such deeply-rooted demons, and so we must call all men of good will to unite in offering our prayers and sacrifices for the protection of life from the evils that threaten it from all sides.

Sincerely Yours in Christ,


Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer
President, Human Life International

NOTICE ABOUT UPCOMING DOCUMENTARY FROM SNAP

that I received in email:

We want to be sure you know about (and might help spread the word about) the probing movie to be shown on PBS this Tuesday, January 16. We are grateful to the brave survivor and his family who exposed their pain and vulnerability and their courage, strength and compassion. We congratulate the producer/director and those that made this film possible. Please spread the word.

Time is short, but we're hoping you will consider sending this ASAP to:

a) the reporter at your local newspaper who covers television, and/or
b) any journalist who has covered clergy sex abuse, and/or
c) any reporters you know

We hope you'll consider letting your readers know about this important, award-winning documentary.

Thanks.

From today's Wall Street Journal A word about Frontline's "The Hand Of God" by filmmaker Joe Cultrera, airing Tuesday, 9-10:30 p.m. EST, on PBS (check local listings). This story about the filmmaker's brother, sexually molested by a priest in the 1960s, is that rare thing when it comes to works on this theme -- a film informed by passion without histrionics, and a sober and moving family saga.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116855662828574476. html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Barbara Dorris
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

I have attempted to access the WSJ article, but got a message that it is no longer available.

UNHOLY TRINITY

Since the news media is exposing the scandal of the Irish sheltering of Nazis, and of communist cooperation of Polish priests and bishops, I wonder if they will return to the scandal of the Church's Bosnian Nazi smuggling, UNHOLY TRINITY, once again.

The book was published in 1991, and the revised edition in 1998, and is billed as a "#1 international best-seller" on the cover. It tells the story of the Bosnian Franciscans and the Vatican's collaboration in running the Vatican Ratlines that spirited the Nazi leadership out of harm's way after the Second World War. There was a possible connection from behind the Iron Curtain as well if Mark Aarons and John Loftus have it right. In a church filled with scandal these days, this one is another ugly stain.

The details of this scheme are so interwoven and convoluted that I would have to read the book at least one more time to understand them. The authors leave no doubt that the Vatican and even Pius XII were part of the arrangements, and Franciscan Father Draganovic was the ringleader. Focused on the threat communism posed to the Church, leaders concluded the Nazis, who would know how to fight communism, would have to be sheltered; and sheltered they were, mostly in South America, with the help of the British.

This is the story that begins E. Michael Jones' unmasking of the scandal that is Medjugorje. Welcome to the New Springtime.

SHADES OF ALICE BAILEY IN A TOP SCIENTIST ?

Scientist James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and a Nobel Prize winner, says anti-Semitism is justified, in a recent magazine interview.

The ADL called Dr. Watson's remarks about Jews "disturbing" and is asking Watson to clarify them.

Watson, 78, who lives in Cold Harbor, N.Y., tells Esquire magazine in its January edition that anti-Semitism, in some circumstances, is justified.

In an interview profile for the magazine Watson asks rhetorically, "Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark?" He answered: "Yes, because some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified. If you can't be criticized, that's very dangerous. You lose the concept of a free society."

Apparently a firm believer in eugenics, Watson also feels "Ashkenazi Jews" - Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities in the area of Germany - have higher intelligence than other people.

Continue reading...

If he objects to political correctness, I sympathize. I agree that we should be able to criticize when we strongly object to what is being said or done, even if the person doing it happens to be Jewish. But couple his position on anti-Semitism with eugenics and the picture shifts to something ugly and straight out of the concentration camps--a whole different matter entirely.

PRAY FOR POLAND - PRAY FOR THE SURVIVAL OF THE CHURCH

KRAKOW, Poland, Jan. 9 — Poland was convulsed in finger-pointing and recrimination on Tuesday as more allegations of former secret-police collaborators among the Roman Catholic clergy members spilled onto the country’s front pages, sullying an institution that for decades was considered spotless in its fight against Communism.

And the stream of disclosures now promises to become a torrent: here in Krakow, the Rev. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski is preparing to publish a book that will identify 39 priests whose names he found in Krakow’s secret police files, three of whom are now bishops in the Polish church.

Perhaps the most explosive assertion by people in the church is that the taint of collaboration was known for decades but kept quiet out of respect for — or perhaps even at the behest of — the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005.

NEWS FROM PLANET ZIRCON

Bishop Justin Bianchini of Geraldton, Australia has provided Catholic News Service with his justification for the Catholic hospital practice of covering or removing the crucifix from hospital rooms at patient requests.

But why stop there, Bishop? Why keep the name Catholic when it seems that you believe it is not in your patient's best interests? Can anyone really believe that Jesus and the cross can be erased from the word Catholic? Why have any symbols around anywhere that hint that a God might be behind the efforts being expended on a patient's behalf? If you're ashamed of Jesus Christ, then complete the task for goodness sake!

The Bishop says, The fact that we are Catholic means we do respect people now, we are more open, not narrow-minded. "Now"? As opposed to not respecting people in the past when nuns gave their lives to tend to them? As opposed to being narrow-minded when we did not remove the crucifix back when we established Catholic hospitals since we wanted to bring the love of God to hurting people?

Apparently the bishop believes that it is better to let the patients think that all of the care and all of the love comes from man and is not the result of our belief. That is the message he is sending with this statement at any rate. Will he be promoting abortion next? It would be a logical development of this line of thinking.

If these people thought that being in a room with a crucifix would be stressful, why on earth would they check into a Catholic hospital? If the crucifix is so stressful, put an image of the Good Shepherd in the room instead, but for heaven sake stop banishing Jesus to please man!

EVOLVE and GATEWAY TO CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

Yet another creation of Barbara Marx Hubbard through the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, in partnership with the Association for Global New Thought, Humanity's Team, New Dimensions World Broadcasting Network, Peace X Peace, Prophets Conference, and Woman of Vision and Action.

New name. New foundation. New source of donations. New store to sell books and courses and products. New reason to jet around the world and be photographed with the stars. Same old list of names in the founders and directors slots, with a fresh bunch of groupies on the bandwagon to do the daily drudge. Is there a limit to the number of non-profits an American can found in a lifetime?

Are the groupies ever going to wake up and realize that all of the money and all of the verbiage and all of the jetting around to attend conferences where yet more talk is bringing no peace while the evening news is still telling us stories of dead young bodies arriving home in caskets? How long can someone be credible while failing at their appointed task?

1 Thessalonians 5 speaks of a time when peace is on everyone's tongue: But of the time and moments, brethren, you need not that we should write to you. For yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the Lord shall so come, as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, peace and security, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as the pains upon her that is with child, and they shall not escape.

Can the word "peace" be overused as the boy in the story who cried wolf, so that when the real possibility of peace appears no one will listen? Can we become jaded and bored with the word and with the concept because it has been over used and over promoted, and so we want to seek the opposite just because we are annoyed and contrary?

The promoters of the new consciousness gain a few more followers with each new spinning of the same old record. Inevitably, though, a reaction will set in when people seek something novel and different. Will that new direction be a return to authentic religion and a rejection of this substitute spirituality? One can only hope...

THE MYSTERY OF BENEDICT

Just when I think he is going to abandon the faith in favor of a generic and universal religion that prays in whatever temple happens to be at hand, he's quoted making a statement like the one in Alive, linked by NOR, and I want to go hug him:

Speaking without notes to the bishops of Switzerland, he recalled a remark by the German atheist philosopher Nietzsche, that human beings can celebrate only if God does not exist.

“That is absurd,” said Benedict. “It’s only if God exists and touches us that there can be true festive celebration. And we know that these feasts of faith open people’s hearts wide.”

He urged Catholics to keep their eyes on the greatness of their faith, and to highlight it to the world.

“The truly great thing in Christianity is our ability to come into contact with God,” he said. “What matters above all is to take care of our personal relationship with God, with that God who revealed himself to us in Christ.”

When he says things like that, I know that he really does get it. He gets what our Church here in America has worked overtime at trying to deny since Vatican II. It is possible to have a relationship with God, and once you know that, nothing else is quite as important. Once you have a relationship with God, you fight for the Church even when She is torn and soiled and disgraced as She is today. You hang on even when all the evidence around you is pushing you to leave, because apart from Orthodoxy there just isn't anywhere else to go.

Jesus Christ is the best friend any human ever knew, and the truest. The threat represented by those who would wipe Christ from the face of the earth seems greater with each passing season not because they grow in power and popularity, which they do, but because the longer I think about what they will take away, the more important it becomes, and thus I have a growing sense of the profound loss it will represent if they are successful.

HITLER'S HENCHMEN SHELTERED BY THE IRISH

will be outed on Irish TV tonight according to the story linked by NOR.

MERCIECAS ON THE WEB

Before leaving an investigation into the globalist activities of Charles Mercieca, I found it interesting to see what those who share the name were doing in the headlines.

Charles Mercieca keeps his private life and his public life separate. I was not able to learn much about his life prior to the formation of IAEWP or who his relatives might be today. In her report on "Travel for Peace with Focus on June 2005-2006" Alexander Mercieca indicates that Charles was born and raised in Malta, that he visited the nation twice to meet with friends and to attend a 300th centenary celebration.

There have been other Maltese Merciecas in the news recently. The resignation of Maltese Archbishop Joseph Mercieca, who turned 75 three years ago, was accepted last fall and his replacement was announced in December 2006 according to the Department of Information - Malta. There had been speculation of an "amalgamation" of the archdiocese of Malta with the diocese of Gozo, a small Maltese island, when the bishop of Gozo retired and was replaced approximately a year ago, though this has not happened.

Pope Benedict attended a Eucharistic Congress in Malta at which both Archbishop Mercieca and the Bishop of Gozo were in attendance. According to the article Archbishop Joseph Mercieca hails from St. George parish on Gozo. His brother Canon John Mercieca is a member of the Chapter of St. George's basilica, or was in June 2005.

Another Gozo Mercieca made the American headlines last fall. Father Anthony Mercieca had a relationship with Congressman Mark Foley that became news when Foley was discovered sending email to a young man, and subsequently resigned. MSNBC contacted Fr. Anthony Mercieca at his home in Gozo where he lives in retirement with his brother Father George Mercieca, another Gozo native. According to a woman who was born in the house next to the Merciecas' home and still lives there both brothers were raised in a deeply religious home where three of four brothers became priests. The article doesn't indicate if there is any relationship with Archbishop Mercieca, but if the reporter had known that there was, it seems likely that would have been included in the story.

A story from a Maltese reporter, archived at Bishop's Accountability, contains the following analysis of the Archdiocese of Malta:

Call him naïve, but coming from omertà-ridden Gozo, Fr Mercieca is really a blessing in disguise for all the Maltese victims of clergy abuse. As scores of journalists from the international media camp outside his house, his case is bound to mark a turning point in the way the Maltese and Gozitan curias treat cases of reported child abuse by their priests.

In all fairness, it is the first case to be faced by the new Bishop of Gozo, Mgr Mario Grech, and the first signs show he has nothing to do with his ageing Maltese counterpart Mgr Guzeppi Mercieca.

Mgr Grech immediately contacted the Archdiocese of Miami, which was responsible for Fr Mercieca at the time of the alleged abuse, in stark contrast with Archbishop of Malta who has steadfastly ignored warnings from foreign dioceses about priests who had child abuse records and were named and blamed in the foreign and national press.

Mgr Mercieca was in fact responsible for handpicking Fr Godwin Scerri, among others, who after learning of child abuse reports to Canadian police was rushed to Malta and posted as a spiritual director in a girl's secondary school in Malta. He was also serving at the St Joseph Home in Santa Venera, where a decade since his escape from Canada he then faced fresh charges of child abuse of children who lived at the home together with another two priests.

Mgr Mercieca and his medieval public relations machine have always been in denial when faced with child abuse allegations. They cite legalistic arguments, justifying their silence on the grounds that once a case is in court it is 'sub judice' – a favourite among criminal lawyers defending the indefensible. They insist on confidentiality simply to dismiss any sort of commitment in public, while dioceses abroad issue public apologies, urge other alleged victims to come forward with their cases and take immediate steps to defrock the alleged abusers even though legally they would still be innocent.

And they fork millions in compensation to the victims – something the Maltese church has never done and has refused to do ever since the first Maltese case of clergy paedophilia ever emerged.

The international spotlight on Gozo is surely adding to the heat in Mgr Grech's diocese, but so far he has acted promptly and appropriately, pledging full cooperation with the authorities so that justice is done – something Mgr Mercieca has always refused to do and opting instead to bury his internal inquiries and leave it up to the police to fish for clergy abusers.

It might prove interesting to watch developments.

Another Mercieca turned up, though not in headlines this time. John Joseph Mercieca heads up the Malta UFO Research center. He appears to focus primarily on reporting on activities in the UFO community. He reported on the Imperial College, London's Conference in 1996, which included speakers Richard Hoagland, Graham Hancock, and Robert Bauval. The Malta UFO Research website sells books by Hoagland, Bauval, and Hancock as well as Whitley Strieber, Zecharia Sitchin, and others on topics such as Atlantis and Ancient Mysteries, UFOs and Aliens, and ET Artefacts and Planetary Anomalies--some of the same topics covered by IAEWP's Public Relations Director Willard Van De Bogart in his Earth Portals website. I found no evidence whatsoever that Van De Bogart and John Joseph Mercieca have any contact with each other or even know of the existence of each other, however.

All of this may mean something or it may mean nothing at all. It may simply be coincidence. But it is a curious coincidence given that Barbara Fields Berstein, Executive Director of the Association of Global New Thought, was on the tentative IAEWP program of the First National/International Assembly in Atlanta, Georgia at Morehouse College, in the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel. Bernstein and Global New Thought were also instrumental in the Synthesis Dialogues that took place at the Papal Summer Residence with the help of Focolare. I reported on those dialogues in ten blog entries between April 25, 2006 and May 9, 2006. Put "Synthesis Dialogues" in the search window and search my blog to get the links. Titles of the entries are the following:

4/25/06 "Held at Castegandolfo????"
4/25/06 "Partnership for Synthesis Dialogues"
4/26/06 "AGNT - What Do They Believe?"
4/27/06 "Reaching Toward Synthesis"
4/28/06 "Synthesis Dialogues II"
4/28/06 "Gurdjieff Foundations and AGNT"
5/02/06 "Synthesis Dialogues I"
5/03/06 "Peer Perspectives and Synthesis Dialogues"
5/06/06 "John E. Mack and Synthesis Dialogues"
5/09/06 "Adoring Body Parts - Connecting the Dots"

We have been given ample evidence in the sexual abuse scandal that the Roman Catholic Church has engaged in cover-up. What else are they not telling us?

================================================

UPDATE

I have activated the links to previous blogs.

4/25/06 "Held at Castegandolfo????"
4/25/06 "Partnership for Synthesis Dialogues"
4/26/06 "AGNT - What Do They Believe?"
4/27/06 "Reaching Toward Synthesis"
4/28/06 "Synthesis Dialogues II"
4/28/06 "Gurdjieff Foundations and AGNT"
5/02/06 "Synthesis Dialogues I"
5/03/06 "Peer Perspectives and Synthesis Dialogues"
5/06/06 "John E. Mack and Synthesis Dialogues"
5/09/06 "Adoring Body Parts - Connecting the Dots"

STATE CHANCELLORS - IAEWP

Charles Mercieca has established chancellors and vice chancellors in many American states. The complete list of them can be found here. They are primarily college and university professors or lawyers. For the most part the names were unfamiliar to me. Saul Mendlovitz was the exception--he is a member of Lindisfarne Associates.

I've located a few of them online.

The University of New Mexico Public Affairs Department reported that Jennifer Moore, New Mexico chancellor and associate dean for Academic Affairs and professor of law at the University of New Mexico School of Law was inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr., Collegium of Scholars of Morehouse College on April 1, 2004, at the first National Assembly of the International Association of Educators for World Peace. I have not yet researched the connection between the two organizations, if there is one.

Would Jennifer Moore be any relation to Michael Moore? I wonder because Michael Moore's website is linked on one of Charles Mercieca's webpages.

------------------------

Momentum, a publication of Idaho State University, announced Dr. Beverly Klug's selection as chancellor for Idaho, and her responsibility for recruiting Idaho educators to join. Klug is Associate Professor of Education.

-------------------------

Nebraska chancellor Dr. Robert K. Hitchcock, Professor of Anthropology and Geography, Coordinator of African Studies, and Coordinator of Conflict and Conflict Resolution Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is also a member of the Kalahari Peoples Fund (Co-President and Board Member); Human Rights and Human Diversity Initiative Committee, Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln; Co-Founder Committee for Human Rights of the American Anthropological Association; and Member of the Board of Directors, the American Civil Liberties Union, Nebraska Chapter.

---------------------------

Kentucky chancellor Jeffrey B. Freyman, Professor of Political Science at Transylvania University, specializes in Globalization, Comparative Democratization, Comparative Political Economy, and Marxism.

---------------------------

Bill Wickersham, Missouri state chancellor, was a 1970 war protester.

----------------------------

Florida state chancellor Brian J. Foley is professor at Florida Costal School of Law. He presented a speech at the San Francisco Conference of the War Resisters League titled "Looting By Any Other Name: The Profit-Driven War" which can be read at the "Stop the Merchants of Death" website.

---------------------------

Anthony B. Pinn, co-vice-chancellor of Texas, is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has written a book about Voodoo.

------------------------------

Georgia state chancellor Dr. Lawrence Edward Carter, Sr., is Dean of the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel and tenured Professor of Religion, College Archivist, and Curator of Morehouse College. Given that Jennifer Moore, New Mexico chancellor, was inducated into the Collegium of Scholars of Morehouse College at one of the IAEWP events (see above), I'm inclined to believe there is some sort of working relationship between IAEWP and the school.

---------------------------

Last, but certainly most curious of all, is Anthony G. Payne.

Mercieca's website lists the Texas state chancellor as Professor John Mason Hart, University of Houston. However, Anthony G. Payne claims to be the Texas state chancellor. He makes some other claims that Susan E. Gallagher, Associate Professor, Political Science Dept., Library Fellow, University of Massachusetts Lowell Electronic Libraries, believes to be false. If you want a little amusement, check out Payne's "The Wizard" website and Gallagher's "Resume Deflation: An Exercise in Internet Investigation and Information Literacy."

The Akamai University website lists Payne among the faculty and cites his appointment as Texas state chancellor of the International Association of Educators for World Peace.

This Akamai website, too, lists Payne as Texas state chancellor. It also gives his education, indicating that he

...holds earned degrees in physical anthropology (S.B., M.A. with honors, Columbia Pacific University), and doctorates in nutritional medicine (N.M.D., Aksem Oriental Medical School) and pastoral psychology Ph.D., Romano Byzantine Catholic College).

Certainly a colorful person.

The Romano Byzantine Catholic College lists the International Association of Educators for World Peace as an accrediting body on its website. Faculty at the college are listed here. Anyone recognize any of the faculty? There must be more to this story.

THE WORLD COMMISSION ON GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND SPIRITUALITY

I've written about this commission before. Here. And here.

When I last fisked their website, it appeared that Dr. Leonard Swidler's Global Dialogue Institute was part of the picture. It still is, but Swidler strangely seems to have disappeared.

The Global Dialogue Institute was co-founded by Swidler and Dr.Ashok Gangadean, who is still very much a part of The World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality. Other members include

Dr. Ervin Laszlo, Co-Chair
Dr. Robert Muller, Co-Chair
Dr. Karan Singh, Co-Chair
Ms. Audrey Kitagawa, Co-Convenor
Dr. Ewert Cousins, Co-Convenor
Dr. Ashok Gangadean, Co-Convenor

The Dalai Lama
Abdurrahman Wahid
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Sayyed H. Nasr
Tu Weiming
Masao Abe
Hazel Henderson
Wangari Maathai
Robert Thurman
Sir Sigmund Sternberg
Rodrigo Carazo
Bro. Wanye Teasdale
Barbara Marx Hubbard
The Very Rev. James Parks Morton
Prof. Cornel West
Dr. Elizabet Sahtouris
Dr. Raine Eisler
Mary Evelyn Tucker
Jane Goodall
Jim Kenney
Jonathan Granoff
Angaangaq Lybert
Betty Williams

Strangely, Bro. Wayne Teasdale died October 20, 2004, yet he remains on the list of members.

In any case, it was through researching the entangling alliances of Dr. Charles Mercieca and Jacqueline Ripstein that I landed in the World Commission website.

Ms. Audrey Kitagawa, Co-Convenor of The World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality, is the Chairperson of the UN Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns (CSVGC), an organization with a Working Group titled Sacred Transcendental Arts, for which the contact persons are Jacqueline Ripstein, Dr. J. J. Hurtak, and Michael Johnson, the latter two being members of Ripstein's board which was online when I accessed it on 12/28/2006, but which now produces an error message when I try to access it.

Kitagawa is an interesting person. You can read about her at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin website. Title of the article is "A divorce attorney turns spiritual leader." It seems that she was not just "a" divorce attorney, but "Honololu's most famous divorce attorney." Now she has assumed the role of Divine Mother of the Light of Awareness International Spiritual Family.

In the orbit of Jacqueline Ripstein and thus of Charles Mercieca, both of whom are promoting various aspects of Our Blessed Mother, is a woman who has assumed the role of Divine Mother.

Something else interesting turned up. Another Co-Chair of The World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality, Dr. Karan Singh, is the Chairman of the Auroville Foundation, and did his doctorate on the "Political Thought of Sri Aurobindo." You can read about it at his own website.

For those of you who do not have unlimited time to research the new religious movements, Auroville is also the home of the Divine Mother, and they have a Matrimandir to prove it.

Ashok Gangadean, himself, founder of The World Commission on Global Consciousness & Spirituality is a member of the Club of Budapest Canada World Wisdom Alliance Speaker's list, as is Ervin Laszlo, founder of Club of Budapest, and member of Club of Rome.

Two questions occur, almost simultaneously...

1. Are all of these people really devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary and just don't know it?

2. Could the anti-Christ be a woman?

The World Commission on Global Consciousness & Spirituality has set out its "Global Blueprint for the ((World Commission))" at great length. The heart of Gongadean's presentation is the need for "awakening" in terms that bring G. I. Gurdjieff to mind. We must wake up to global consciousness. The statement is a masterpiece of global newspeak, nouns used as verbs, slash-marks and parenthesis used to designate the in-crowd and the great unwashed. Gongadean would like us to know that "egocentric minding" must cease and "global minding" must take its place. Thinking, in other words, is only permissible for those who think the right thoughts. All others are forbidden to think--or, ah, "mind" in the new global consciousness:

So a global consensus (diagnosis) is that ego minding is a primary cause of the spectrum of human pathologies. And the consensus prescription is that to change this mentality is the single most important factor in transforming the human condition.

One striking result of the general global law - we are as we mind - is tht egocentric or monocentric patterns of minding generate and create lifeworlds and living realities that produce human suffering and pathologies: egocentric minding generates egocentric realities.

There, you see, we create our own realities by thinking--or, ah, "minding" them--and some of the realities we create are pathological.

But humanity has hitherto lacked an adequate global grammar and a global lens to fully activate this integral/holistic/dialogic technology of mind; and since our living realities are co-created by our patterns of minding, the supreme technological advance in the human condition is this advance to the integral technology of minding.

And in case you had any doubt...

This ((...)) technology/notation (the notation, of course, is a symbolic encoding of the ((logistic process of integral-holistic-dialogic minding) enables us to ((think, see, say, express, experience, feel... )) at a deeper dimension of Reality than we could with the /ego lens/; so just to speak of the ((World Commission)) is already to situate this initiative in the ((higher order)) reality of the ((Logosphere)).

In other words, I read that to indicate that they believe they are the equivalent of God. This Blueprint is a blueprint of disaster for anyone who believes in a Transcendent God.

Once we make this crucial distinction between ((Spirituality)) and /egocentric religious life/ (or /ego spirituality/), and realize that ((global spirituality)) opens higher ((global civic space)) for the flourishing of our most cherished ((human values)), it becomes easier to ((see)) that this is the ((Secular Civic Space)) in which ((global democracy, global citizenship)) and the new emergent ((global cultures)) may flourish. It becomes clearer precisely why genuine ((Secular Space)) is not possible within the fragmenting and polarizing dynamics of /egocentric cultures/ which of course are always lodged in /ideology/ and /localized worldviews/. We must, for example, ask: to what extent is the current state of "American civic discourse" dominated by /egocentric politics/ and /ego democracy/= /egocracy/? Have we truly matured into a ((secular civic space))? A truly ((secular civic democracy)) can only arise through ((spiritual citizenship)). That would be the true ((American revolution)).

Remember as you read that, / = bad and (( ))= good.

While you are thinking about the ramifications of these statements, remember that Dr. Leonard Swidler--Roman Catholic, founder of Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church, defender of Hans Kung and the Grammick-Nugent team, helped to found The World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality.

You know that separation of church and state that is so essential to the American Constitution? Well, Gangadean has something to say about that as well:

The artificial separation of /religion/ vs. /politics/, or /church/ v /state/ (as important as that is for ego-cultural space), has not proven successful in accomplishing this genuine opening of higher ((ecumenical= secular)) ((civic space)) in which diverse worldviews, perspectives, ideologies, cultures, religions...may flourish in genuine ((critical self transformation)) and ((deep dialogue)). Thus, for example, if "America" is to be a truly "global", "pluralistic" multi-cultural" (sic), "multi-ethnic"...culture, we need to ask whether the current "civic space" is truly ((globalized)), truly ((secular)) and flowing in the dynamics of ((deep democracy)) and ((global citizenship)).

But not to worry, The World Commission has the solution already worked out:

It is therefore of the utmost importance in the rehabilitation and healing of our cultures that people become keenly aware of the role that /ego minding/ plays in causally generating the spectrum of our human pathologies. And one key task of the ((World Commission)) is to bring out this ((global truth)) by ((narrating)) and ((naming)) this dynamic. For ((right diagnosis)) is the key to ((genuine healing)). So it is in this ((context)) that we situate the ((mission)) of the ((World Commission)) as a ((Commission on Consciousness)).

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

PITY THE CHURCH IN POLAND

The Polish people who were emerging from the Communist era with the help of their Church have suffered a severe blow from an Archbishop who assumed the post on Friday and resigned at his installation Mass today. ABC News reports on the scene.

SO FATHER, IS HELL EMPTY ?

The Christmas Eve Mass was upsetting enough to have me considering if it was possible to still be Roman Catholic, given that I can't seem to find a place to practice the Roman Catholic faith. Today's homily nearly confirmed my suspicions that it probably is not.

It's not that I've changed.

On second thought, in a sense I have changed. I know what I didn't know 40 years ago. I know what Masonic doctrine looks like, and thus I know it when I hear it given from the pulpit. While I'm listening to it quietly in a Church where I'm attempting to worship Christ, those inconvenient Popes of old with their encyclicals condemning it, are circulating in my thoughts. Universalism is Masonic, not Roman Catholic, even when it's coming from the mouth of a Roman Catholic priest.

Again today we heard about the congressman who will take his oath of office on the Koran. We heard about the Baptism of Desire that has morphed into an explanation of why people in other faiths are also following Christ's path to heaven to the best of their ability. And out of that same mouth came a testimony that Christ is the only way to go. How do you have it both ways? Yet having it both ways seems to be what today constitutes Roman Catholicism.

Strangely the homily didn't make me angry. I seem to be beyond anger, like the living who contemplate the loved one in the casket and know that they can't possibly change the reality of death. I wasn't even upset on the way home when my husband decided the priest was mostly a Communist. Nor did I argue with him. Whatever the priest is, he doesn't seem to believe there is any particular value in being Roman Catholic. Maybe none of our leaders do anymore.

Zukkie sent me a link to a Frances D'Emilio AP article in which Benedict XVI tells everyone that

"The need emerged to elaborate a new world political and economic order, but at the same time and above all, a spiritual and cultural one--that is, renewed humanism," he said.

"At the start of the Third Millennium we find ourselves smack in the middle of this phase of human history, that has been for some time dubbed 'globalization."

The pope said that while politicians, scientists and researchers play important roles in the modern world, "today, more than ever, it is necessary to place at their side the leaders of the great non-Christian religious traditions" as well as Christian leaders.

I would like to ask Benedict who he says Christ is, because for the life of me I can no longer state the correct Roman Catholic answer to that question after this AP article and this morning's Mass. Whatever happened to "Dominus Iesus"? Or is it that Ratzinger believed it and now Benedict, and a lot of priests with him, believe something else?