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Spirit & Life®
"The words I spoke to you are spirit and life." (Jn 6:63)

Human Life International e-Newsletter

Volume 01, Number 83 | September 07, 2007
.................................................................................. www.hli.org

Fr. Tom Reports from Ireland

Greetings from the Emerald Isle! I am here in Ireland this week with Dr. Brian Clowes and his wife Kathy on a pro-life speaking tour of ten cities to conclude tomorrow in Dublin with a conference sponsored by HLI-Ireland. All the reports about the beauty of Ireland's "forty shades of green" are true but even more beautiful are the Irish people and culture. Although materialism and relativism have definitely invaded Ireland since it joined the EU, there is good reason to hope about Ireland's future: many good people are fighting to maintain Ireland's soul against a virtual onslaught of the culture of death.

First the bad news: Ireland had to endure a despicable pro-abortion test-case in 1992 when a pregnant teenager claimed that she was going to commit suicide if she could not get an abortion. Even though the Irish Constitution guarantees the right to life from the moment of conception, an abortion referendum in 1995 gave Irish women the "right to travel" to the UK to get abortions without penalty and the "right to information" about abortion, breaking a long-standing tradition of resistance to any cooperation in baby-killing. As a result, about 8,000 Irish babies are snuffed out every year in the abortion factories of England. Fanatical abortion promoters like the Family Planning Association (Planned Parenthood's affiliate in Ireland - of course) instantly streamlined the process of whisking Irish women off to England as quickly and efficiently as possible. Advertisements in women's magazines and abortion referral stickers inside women's bathrooms make sure that abortion is in the face of every young woman who could possibly become another source of profit.

If the Irish thought that their Solomon-like decision to split the baby in two would stave-off abortion in their land, they were sadly mistaken. Such compromises only embolden abortion promoters and weaken a nation's resolve to keep abortion out. Ireland has now begun to form an explicit abortion culture, and the arrogant abortion lobby is gaining momentum. Abortifacient contraception has been mainstreamed into Irish culture since the so-called Healthy Family Planning Bill in 1979, and as a predictable follow-up, a "Think Contraception" campaign has been perpetrated on the youth of Ireland by the very minister of Health and Children herself, Mary Harney. Notice how "healthy families" bills morph into "contraceptive thinking" programs for kids: give the abortionists an inch, and they take a mile. Harney is also one of the biggest advocates of the "morning after pill" for Irish children as young as 11 years old.

Now the good news: Ireland still has a strong pro-life culture and a fairly well-organized national pro-life movement that actively monitors the aggressions of the culture of death in this holy land, which is something that the US did not have before our Roe v. Wade watershed moment. There are also many movements of spirituality and evangelization in Ireland such as the Youth 2000 movement, which has had phenomenal success in getting young Irish men and women more committed to their faith. Brian Clowes and I have done nothing but encourage the Irish and let them know that we look to them for much inspiration and will do anything we can to help them keep abortion out. We tell them that now is the time for them to fight for the lives of their unborn children; not the "morning after" abortion is legalized. Abortion is much easier to keep out of a country than it is to get out once it comes in, and their pro-life fortress needs to be defended with fervor now before it's too late. I am happy to say that the Irish are responding with tremendous enthusiasm and openness to the message. Brian will give you a full update on Ireland in one of our upcoming Special Reports.

Let us keep holy Ireland, the land of saints and scholars, in our prayers. They are a pro-life culture that has not yet been destroyed - but - they have their work cut out for them. Since so many Americans have at least a "wee drop" of Irish blood, we all have a vested interest in helping our Irish brethren to prevent the shedding of Irish blood by an abortion industry that wants in the worst way to conquer one of the last bastions of pro-life hope in Europe.

Sincerely Yours in Christ,

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer,
President, Human Life International

PS - Please watch HLI's documentary on Ireland, called Dead in the Water, on EWTN on September 20th. You will love to see how HLI fought the abortion boat that came to Ireland in 2001.

PPS - Also, a warm word of thanks for all of those who so very generously contributed to our Mozambique appeal last week - may the Lord bless your generosity! Please keep praying to the Guardian Angel of that poor country to protect them from abortion.

'THE ARMOR OF THE LEGION OF CHRIST'

by Emilio Bartolomé, published in Atrio
August 21, 2007

That is the title and author of Matt Abbott's recent column. Bartolome has a degree in philosophy and is an ex-legionary.

Recently, Fr. Alvaro Corcuera, Director General of the Legion of Christ, has been discreetly visiting different legionary houses to explain to his religious the repeal — apparently ordered by higher authorities — of the secret vows, also known as the private vows.

There are two such vows. The first prevents a religious from criticizing any personal aspect of a superior, including his moral character. It also prevents him from listening to conversations in which a superior is being criticized. The second vow prevents religious from coveting positions in the congregation and consequently from actively seeking to obtain them.

Fr. [Marcial] Maciel, the founder, created this dual shield of protection so that his degenerate actions would not become known within the congregation. The first shield consists of the norm related to communication, which prohibits religious from speaking with persons outside of the congregation unless such conversations are related to one's official duties. The second shield consists of those vows which previously have been referred to as the secret vows and which were sworn to, not in the chapel, but in the sacristy. These vows have been very important to the congregation, even to the point that a single criticism of a superior was grounds for immediate expulsion from the congregation.

This development, coupled with a more flexible policy on family visits, indicates that something is stirring within this congregation. At the same time this news creates a mountain of uncertainties stemming from the stealth and secrecy with which the legion is treating it and from the gullible explanations which they provide. Not long ago a legionary with whom I was in contact told me the reason for the change in policy on family visits was because airline tickets were now cheaper.

Go over to the website and read the speculation about what may be happening within the Legion, including two constitutions, one for the pope and one for the members; and the speculation that Legionnaire ordinations might possibly be invalid.

OPUS ANGELORUM

A report at skeptictank.org, taken from German Scientology News, has the following to say of Opus Angelorum in 1999:

It's a different story with the so-called Engelwerk (Opus Angelorum), though. According to what Martin Huber knows, this group is on the advance in the district. He knows several people personally who have been affected. They are from the Burghausen areas, as well as from the western part of the district.

Huber did not reveal their identities for privacy reasons, but he knows that critics and apostates of sects are not exactly dealt with lightly. This is the one point in which Engelwerk does not differentiate itself from other sects. Huber says, "Whoever risks raising criticism is made out to be a trouble-maker and a social outcast." The sectarians do not think twice about using libel, Huber continued.

In contrast to Scientology, whose members admit they are Scientologists, Engelwerk is a secret society; little of its structure has surfaced. Huber stated, "The motto of the Engelwerk members is to be silent or lie." People who end up in the clutches of Engelwerk, according to Huber, "cut themselves off from the outside and live in a dream world" which puts criticism beyond their grasp. The JU brochures are meant to see that things do not get that far, nor with another psycho-cult: the Bruno Groening Friend's Circle.

There appears to be somewhat of a verification at Wikipedia. From the Wiki entry:

The Katholische Pfadfinderschaft Europas (KPE; roughly Catholic Guides and Scouts of Europe) is a German Catholic Scouting organization with 2,500 members.[1] It is part of the Union Internationale des Guides et Scouts d’Europe (UIGSE). ...

There is some controversy surrounding the KPE, both within the German Catholic Church and also in the German Scouting movement, centered upon the KPE's focus on proselytization, its connections to Catholic fundamentalist networks, and its tendency toward isolation from other groups. The KPE is considered by some to be a fundamentalist group. ...

Observers describe the KPE as loyal to the Pope, conservative, and traditional in its Scouting activities and in its spirituality. Great emphasis is placed on the regular confession (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, Sections 1423-1442) and the regular attendance of Mass (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1389) which is celebrated in some groups according to Tridentine Rite. ...

In 2003 the organization's paper "Pfadfinder Mariens" promoted a book of the far right politician Rolf Kosiek published by the extreme right Hohenrain-Verlag. Further on, Thomas Niggl OSB, member of the Work of the Holy Angels, advocated theses of the extreme right Deutsche Studiengemeinschaft. ...

After press reports on the possible entanglement of the KPE and the SJM in the St. Pölten pornography scandal the Conference of the German Bishops officially distanced itself from the KPE in summer 2004 by stating its non-adherence to the Bund der deutschen katholischen Jugend, the union of recognised Catholic youth organizations in Germany.[1]

Later in the same year some groups and most of the leaders of the Austrian sister organization KPE-Ö left the organization and accused the German KPE and Andreas Höhnisch of interfering in its internal affairs.[4] In response the supporters of German KPE stated that these groups were influenced by masonic ideas.[5] ...

Until 1992, the adherence to the Work of the Holy Angels was officially advocated by the KPE.[7] Today, still some members of the KPE hold contacts to the Work of the Holy Angels and the Society of St. Pius X.[9] In 2007, there is at least one German Scout group connected to the Society of St. Pius X with very close contacts to the KPE.[10] ...

The isolation of the KPE's members from other, possibly interfering, groups is mainly criticized by German Scouts. Until 2000, groups of the KPE participated in and even organized joint events.[11] Since then, the KPE retreated nearly totally from the German Scout movement...

There are, of course, two viewpoints to approach these statements. On the one hand, isolation and segregation are symptoms of destructive cultish behavior. On the other hand, those of us who would like to see the Church restored to Her former glory would welcome some isolation of our children until they are old enough to evaluate what is being presented to them. That, after all, is what Catholic schools are about. A critical question is whether a wedge is being driven between parents and children. The article does not address this.

There is another concern. We know, from Father Z's explanation that I blogged yesterday, that the history of Opus Angelorum prior to 1992 includes promotion of the names of angels and demons--a practice Father Z described as dangerous. If this practice was encouraged among scouts, there would be ample reason to worry. But there is no way to know whether it was or wasn't.

Some of you may remember the homosexual scandal at St. Polten that went around the web some time ago. The seminary was shut down after pictures of seminarians kissing each other were posted. Given the history of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in America which has included incidents of abuse of scouts, and given this alleged involvement of KPE with the St. Polten scandal, the implications are not good.

Adherence to traditional Catholic beliefs does not insure that activities of abuse will not take place. Neither does it insure that additional practices of an heretical nature will not be introduced at some level in an organization. If there is a secret inner core--and a reference to "masonic ideas" would indicate that there were levels of involvement that were not open to all--there is the possibility of activities a traditional Catholic would not approve.

I wonder if Benedict's trip to Austria, repeated so soon after his last trip to Austria, has anything to do with this?

FATHER Z ON OPUS ANGELORUM

Fr. J. T. Zuhlsdorf unpacks the Vatican document that addresses Opus Angelorum, but is only available in Latin. (Scroll down to November 28.)

Essentially, this document says that there is not to be diffused the idea that one can know the name of one's guardian angel that that one is not to invoke the (unknowable) names of angels in prayer.

I have not found online an English version of this yet and I do not have the time to translate it at the moment.

What the CDF is warning about is the great spiritual danger that can come to a person from trying to invoke angels by name. The naming of angels is something that should be avoided. Not all angels are the friends of God and man. They are mighty beings that transcend our human nature. Some of them are bent on our eternal damnation. They can apply an angelic intellect in tricking us into the loss of heaven. They do not sleep. These are demonic enemies of the soul. Demons do not relent, unless God and His angels, unless the Church God's priest intervene. The naming of fallen angels is part of the rite of exorcism. It is perilous indeed to anyone without the protection and power that comes from the sacrament of Holy Orders to name angels.

This is a foolish and sentimental practice for most people who are into this sort of thing. But it is not benign. While it is not dangerous in all situations, it is dangerous in some. We just cannot know whom or what we are invoking outside the names of the angels friendly to God whose names appear in Holy Writ: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael.

Fr. Z

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

A list of Gabriele Bitterlich's angels is available online here. (In order to access it you have to go through the link on this website.)

When you scroll down to the bottom of the angel list website it is dated January 24, 2007.

The demon list is also online, but I'm not going to link it. The demon list has a date of January 30, 2007

There is a link at the angel list website that will take you to Lesson 4 in a Kabbala Training Course.

SOUNDS LIKE CONSPIRACY THEORY, BUT THIS IS PBS

"PBS tells the truth about Bush & Company's LIES!"

Check out the main video at the website. It's about ten minutes long and describes the rabbit-in-the-hat trick the Bush administration used to solicit approval for the war with Iraq.

Just as the rumors fly about a public relations campaign for a war with Iran, we get a video from public radio that tells us we were lied to once, implying that we should be wary of being lied to again.

So, is this somehow part of an administration push to promote war with Iran? I have to wonder how spin could make this into a positive, but I would also have to wonder how PBS would pit itself against a sitting president. What's going on here?

AUSTRIA IS A TOUGH CROWD

Vienna (dpa) - Austria's church promoted the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Austria for months, hoping for a "fresh breeze" for the local church.

But what should be a home game for the German-born pope is being met with increasing indifference by Austria's Catholics, according to several polls published in the run-up to Benedict XVI arrival. According to one survey, 82 per cent said the pope's visit was of "little importance" to them. ...

In the traditionally strongly catholic country, the church, is losing members fast. A string of scandals over the past ten years drastically reduced the number of church members, 500,000 left the church between 1991 and 2006.

A cardinal being accused of abusing children, a sex scandal involving child porn at a seminary and the appointment of several controversial churchmen to high positions eroded faith and sped up the exodus from the church.

One survey indicated that while on paper 68 per cent of the population were catholic, only 15 per cent attended mass. Only 32 per cent said they had a good relationship with the church.

Read the entire article...

NEW AGE JUDAISM

With the words of Gilles Quispel still ringing in my head, yesterday I began reading PRACTICAL KABBALAH: A GUIDE TO JEWISH WISDOM FOR EVERYDAY LIFE by Rabbi Laibl Wolf. As blogged yesterday, Quispel said:

As Gershom Scholem demonstrated, there were even a number of strict Pharisees in Palestine who handed down esoteric traditions known to the Gnostics and which later gave rise to a truly Jewish form of Gnosis, the Kabbalah.

Until recently it seemed impossible to find convincing evidence to show that the classic Gnosis of antiquity developed or was able to develop out of Judaism.

According to his website, Rabbi Laibl Wolf is an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, a spiritual mentor and worldwide teacher of the mystical side of Judaism. Based in Melbourne, Australia, and founding lecturer in Jewish Mysticism and Spirituality at Melbourne University, Rabbi Wolf has lectured in over 350 cities across the globe.

His background includes training as a lawyer and an educational psychologist. The son of Polish Holocaust survivors, he is the Founder and Director of the Human Development Institute. His rabbinic ordination came from the Chief Rabbi of Israel, while his foremost mentor was the revered Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. While calling himself an Orthodox Hassidic Rabbi, he says that he is a master of, and draws his teachings from, the 4,000-year-old, esoteric and encrypted texts of the Kabbalah which provides a guide to the mysteries of cosmic and human consciousness and which is the source for much of the 'new age' wisdom that we are familiar with today.

Now for Rabbi Wolf's surprises...

* We will engage in simple imaging exercises and use as our guide the principles of Hassidic psychology as expressed through the school of Chabad Lubavitch Hassidism. (p. 2)

* While admitting that Moses de Lyon (Moses de Leon) published the major text of Kabbalah (p. 17), he refers to

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the scholar who compiled the Zohar, (the "Book of Splendor--the repository of the major Kabbalistic teachings [sic]) (p. 7)...

had already handwritten this work a thousand years earlier in ancient Israel. And he had written it on the basis of an oral tradition that went back another seventeen hundred years.

The Kabbalah of the Torah...is incredibly old and can be traced back to Abraham, who is credited with having composed Kabbalistic works. But even predating this, we know that Noah and Adam were fully conversant with its teachings. (pp. 17-18)

* While he doesn't cite his source, Rabbi Wolf tells us that Abraham was tall and gaunt and that he impressed those around him with his regal bearing and the clarity of his vision. (p. 18) He also says that Abraham was thrown into the fiery furnace by the Mesopotamian king and defied all the laws of nature by surviving the intense heat without a blemish. (p. 19) He says further that

When Abraham heeded G-d's order he was already fully proficient in what was to become known as Kabbalah. He had even authored a major Kabbalistic text--Sefer HaYetzira...He was an acclaimed astrologer and conversant in the magic and witchcraft of the East....[He] adopted the pathway of spiritual monotheism. This rebellious stance earned him his calling card--the Ivri, meaning the "other-sider," or the "outsider." The word Ivri became anglicized as "Hebrew." (p. 19-20)

* According to Rabbi Wolf, Abraham's plans for succeeding generations were pinned to Isaac, and so he cast out Hagar's sons, attempting in the process to teach them the nature of evil and the dark side of higher reality. These sons of Hagar who had been a poor influence on Isaac because of their entanglement with beliefs in the prevailing polytheistic and witchcraft cults, went to India, and that is the reason there are remarkable parallels between mystical Judaism and the Eastern pathways of Buddhism and Hinduism. (p. 20-21)

* He tells us that Brahman is merely a rearrangement of the basic letters of the father's name--ABRAHAM. (p. 22)

* Reincarnation is affirmed on p. 22:

Apart from terminological similarities, we can also discern conceptual parallels. For example, a concept like reincarnation, tulku in the East, is the Hebrew teaching of Gilgul HaNefesh, the cyclical reincarnation of the wandering of the soul. Karma, the "baggage" carried from the previous lifetime, reminds one of the Hebrew hashgacha pratit, the specific cause-and-effect relationship molded by past lives. (p. 22)

* We are told to empty our mind:

Emptying the mind, which is another Eastern meditational teaching, is akin to the Kabbalistic teaching that the world derives from a void, an emptiness known as halal...Emptying the mind creates the basis for the contemplative filling process, memalleh, known in Hasidic meditation as hitbonenut. (p. 24)

* We are told that Abraham was a kabbalist, and that he learned Kabbalah in the Academy of Shem and Eiver (Noah's son and great-grandson.) Isaac and Jacob were also tutored at this school. Jacob's son, Judah, opened a branch of this school in Egypt, and it functioned secretly throughout the four hundred years of exile and slavery in Egypt. (pp. 24-25)

* According to Rabbi Laibl Adam was an androgyn who was later divided into a masculine Adam and a feminine Eve, and that latent femininity resides in the male and latent masculinity resides in the female even now. This masculine-feminine duality encompasses all of creation. (p. 25-26)

* Adam, we are told, created the Hebrew alphabet, transposing the mystical pathways he saw into twenty-two distinct shapes. Each became a letter in the Hebrew alphabet and he understood the energies associated with each of these letters. (p. 27)

* Rabbi Wolf teaches us that directing our will and desire incorrectly creates an internal adversary--that is, trouble--within and without. Directing it correctly brings enlightenment and clarity of spirit. (p. 28) Seemingly this could be understood as evidence that Wolf believes we are responsible for our own adversity.

And that is only the first chapter!

Many of these concepts are basic to Gnosticism/New Age/Theosophy. Yet here we have an Orthodox Rabbi telling us that these are really Jewish concepts that derive from the Jewish Kabbalah. What then are we to make of Popes who seem to be encouraging us to see in the Jews our elder brothers in the faith, without providing a clarification? What are to make of the fact that a Vatican document condemning New Age is issued at the same time this approachment to Judaism is being encouraged? It does appear that in Rome the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. If the faithful are confused and taking up New Age, Rome bears significant responsibility for it.

RABBI WITH NON-TYPICAL OPINION

Spero News reports:

A rabbi from Monsey, New York, has lauded Pope Benedict XVI for reinstating the Latin Mass and affirming that only Catholic Church qualifies as the one, true Church.

In an article titled The Pope’s Got A Point and published in the July 18 issue of The Jewish Press, Rabbi Yerachmiel Seplowitz says he is “not at all put off by the fact that the leader of another religion sees that religion as primary.”

“I’ve always found it curious that people of different religions get together in a spirit of harmony to share their common faiths,” he writes. “By definition, these people should have strong opposition to the beliefs of their ‘colleagues’ at the table. The mode of prayer of one group should be an affront to the other group.

“What the pope is saying – and I agree 100 percent – is that there are irreconcilable differences, and we can’t pretend those differences don’t exist,” he states. “I can respect the pope for making an unambiguous statement of what he believes.”

ROMAN COLLAR AMNESIA

Off the Record at Catholic World News is having another go at Pilla et. al.:

Off The Record has often had occasion to notice the frequency and expedience of memory lapses by senior ecclesiastics faced with awkward questions -- especially under oath (go here, and here, and here, and here ...). Now it seems some persons in greater metropolitan Cleveland are making the same diagnosis in reference to the current diocesan kickback scam trial. From the Plain Dealer:

Some employees at Cathedral Square, headquarters of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, share a whispered acronym for a memory problem that strikes priests who are called to testify in court cases.

"We call it RCA, or Roman Collar Amnesia," employee Janice Hesselton testified during the federal kickback trial of a former diocesan accountant, Anton Zgoznik.

Defense attorneys in the case suspect the RCA affliction has spread all the way to the church's hierarchy. Bishop Anthony Pilla, now retired, and the Rev. John Wright, one of his former top assistants, could not recall significant details of financial transactions and business decisions when questioned at the trial last week in U.S. District Court.

"I've gotten the impression that people's memories are malleable over there" at the diocese, defense attorney Robert Rotatori said after the sixth day of testimony.

It's easy to be generous with someone else's money. These funds not only represent the excess of the wealthy, they represent the widow's mite. Widows might be better off keeping it for a worthy cause. The diocese apparently ain't it.

There is another gem of a line near the end:

Wright said Pilla approved a $60,000 loan to Wright's secretary, Maria "Mitzy" Milos. The loan was not documented on the church's ledgers, Rotatori said. When she failed to repay the loan, Wright paid off the $50,000 balance with a check from the church's Cemeteries Association.

Think about that as you write your check for the Sunday collection. And think about Bishop Pilla's RCA...a disease that is making the rounds of American chanceries. Should the bishops and their lackeys have so much power when their mental faculties are so limited? When the rest of us can't recall what we've done with $270,000, our children transport us to the nursing home and make sure someone is watching us 24/7! Perhaps the strain of bishoping is causing this epidemic of forgetfulness. I think it's time for a whole new American Catholic administration, starting with bishops young enough and honest enough to do the job right.

WAR WITH IRAN ?

Lee Penn just sent in a link to this story at the New Yorker website:

Test Marketing

If there were a threat level on the possibility of war with Iran, it might have just gone up to orange. Barnett Rubin, the highly respected Afghanistan expert at New York University, has written an account of a conversation with a friend who has connections to someone at a neoconservative institution in Washington. Rubin can’t confirm his friend’s story; neither can I. But it’s worth a heads-up:

They [the source’s institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this—they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”

True? I don’t know. Plausible? Absolutely. It follows the pattern of the P.R. campaign that started around this time in 2002 and led to the Iraq war. The President’s rhetoric on Iran has been nothing short of bellicose lately, warning of “the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.” And the Iranian government’s behavior—detaining British servicemen and arresting American passport holders, pushing ahead with uranium enrichment, and, by many reliable accounts, increasing its funding and training for anti-American militias in Iraq—seems intentionally provocative.

Read the rest over there.

"JEWISH AND GNOSTIC MAN"

That is the title of a short book--46 pages--which contains two lectures delivered at the Eranos Conference, Ascona, Switzerland, 1972/1973.

The two lectures are "The Birth of the Child: Some Gnostic and Jewish Aspects" by Gilles Quispel and "Three Types of Jewish Piety" by Gershom Scholem. I obtained the book through interlibrary loan because Scholem is the pre-eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism. Quispel was new to me. He died recently. Here is his obit. He is considered an expert on some of the Nag Hamadi codexes.

As it turns out, while Scholem's lecture was interesting, I found Quispel's lecture to be a repeated jaw-dropper. Quispel's subject is Jewish Christianity and its relationship to the Mandaeans, the Syrian Christians, the St. Thomas Christians, the Manicheans, and other groups considered heretical by Roman Catholicism. Some quotes:

In its present form, the Gospel according to Thomas, a collection of Logia also found at Nag Hammadi, seems to indicate that its redactor was a Gnostic, at least on the basis of present interpretations. The words attributed to Jesus in this Gospel reveal an independent tradition and were transmitted by Jewish Christian circles. Evidence to this effect is provided by the fact that the Lord's brother James, the Pope of Jewish Christianity, appears in this document as Jesus' legitimate heir and the ruler of the entire Church. Jewish Christianity was, however, a Jewish sect, which, it would seem, influenced Gnosticism in this respect. (p. 4)

It should be recalled that the Samaritans were a heterodox Jewish group, and the question concerning the relationship between Gnosis and Judaism cannot be answered as long as we identify present-day Rabbinical Judaism with the Judaism of those days. At that time, Palestine harboured not only Pharisees, but also Essenes, Baptists, Samaritans, Wisdom teachers, Jewish Christians, as well as a host of heretics of all kinds. As Gershom Scholem demonstrated, there were even a number of strict Pharisees in Palestine who handed down esoteric traditions known to the Gnostics and which later gave rise to a truly Jewish form of Gnosis, the Kabbalah.

Until recently it seemed impossible to find convincing evidence to show that the classis Gnosis of antiquity developed or was able to develop out of Judaism.

The Cologne Mani Codex seems to be of particular importance in this connection, because it shows how Gnosis evolved out of Judaism, or Jewish Christianity, as a result of a dialectical process. (p. 5)

...there was Aramaic Christianity, whose center was in Edessa and which lives on in the Thomas Christians of India and in other remnants of Nestorianism. This was a pluriform and colorful kind of Christianity, whose adepts could be found among the wandering and the poor (and as I pointed out earlier, it never was catholic). The reason was that it did not have its origins in Gentile Christianity, but in Palestinian Judaism. (p. 6)

From Jean Cardinal Danielou's contribution to The Crucible of Christianity, it becomes quite apparent that for a long time Christianity continued to exist as a Jewish sect, whose activities paralleled and even went counter to those of St. Paul. This sect was responsible for the beginnings of Christianity in Egypt, Carthage and Rome. There, it was soon replaced by Gentile Christianity, but outside the Roman Empire, i.e., in Babylonia and Mesopotamia this was not the case. I fail to understand how scholars can possibly deny the Jewish Christian elements in Aramaic Christianity, especially since Hieronymus reported that in Aleppo he had visited Jewish Christians in the fourth century. ...they had their own gospel, the Nazorean Gospel, and adhered to Jewish law. (p. 7)

Owing to the discovery of the Cologne Codex, we now know, however, that southern Babylonia had also been inhabited by Elkesaites, who had called themselves Baptists, because after the actual baptism, they practised certain additional ablutions for the purification and atonement of their sins.

Baptists (Sabians) were mentioned in the Koran in three places...as members of a recognized religion of the Book, which, according to Mohammed's precepts, was to be tolerated along with Judaism and Christianity It is too early to make any definitive statement in this matter, because the whole problem will have to be investigated by a scholar specialized in Islamic studies. But as a working hypothesis we are quite justified in assuming even now that these Sabians, the Baptists of the Koran, should be identified with the Jewish Christian Elkesaites. This would mean that Mohammed was acquainted both with the existence and the views of the Jewish Christians. The parallelism in concept regarding the true Prophet would thus have to be attributed to Jewish Christianity's historically verifiable influence on Mohammed. (p. 14)

The Jewish Christians were entirely convinced that the Holy Spirit was a feminine hypostasis. A fragment from the Jewish Christian Gospels reads as follows: "Even so did my Mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away onto the great mountain Tabor."...Every Jewish Christian should therefore be thought of as having been reborn by his mother the Holy Spirit after emerging from complete immersion in the baptismal bath. Here, we come to a very simple realization: just as birth requires a mother, so rebirth requires a spiritual mother. Originally, the Christian term "rebirth" must therefore have been associated with the concept of the spirit as a feminine hypostasis. (p. 23)

Mani was a Jewish Christian. For this reason, his basic experience, the encounter with the Self, should be explained against this background. In this case, it should, however, also be possible to understand the fundamental concepts of Manichaeism, the identity of the ego and the self, the empirical ego and the guardian angel, in terms of his Jewish Christian origins. We would thus have to interpret Manichaeism, a religion without sacraments, as a spiritualization of Jewish Christian baptism. (p. 16)

Finally, brief reference should be made to the bridal chamber. This custom seems to have been practiced by the Valentinians, as well as the Manichaeans, and we find mention of it in the recently discovered Gospel of Philip, written by a Valentinian in Antioch around 200 B.C. It is unlikely that the ceremony of the bridal chamber is of Gnostic origin, because it is also part of Syrian Church practices. It should probably be attributed to Jewish Christianity... (p. 25)

We should by no means draw the conclusion that the Jewish Christians were influenced by the Eleusinian mysteries. The symbolism developed spontaneously. The Pseudo-Clementines said that in the beginning the Spirit hovered over the waters, and inasmuch as everything was created out of water and Spirit, the Spirit or Mother also created man anew by hovering over the baptismal waters. The premise for this statement is, of course, that the Holy Spirit is feminine. (p. 25)

The Jewish Christians believed that Jesus became Christ at His baptism. A number of present-day occult sects continue to hold this view, but is is very ancient and originated with the Jewish Christians. Jesus was believed to have become the Messiah, because during His baptism the Holy Spirit descended upon Him. (p. 20)

The Holy Spirit descended to earth when Jesus became Christ at His baptism and this has been repeated in the lives of all initiates ever since. (p. 21)

I hardly know where to stop. The entire 26 pages of this lecture are simply incredible.

RABBI MOSES HESS - THE "RED RABBI"

Politics is not my forte, as I've said many times. I don't understand it, and I don't try to. Mostly it makes very limited sense to me. Having said that, I would like to turn to Israeli politics for a moment because of its potential to impact Catholicism.

The website to which I refer is that of writer Israel Shamir, which includes writings of like-minded authors. No doubt some of you readers can place Shamir into
a political group within the context of Israeli politics. I cannot. I take him at face value, believing that he is knowledgable and has something to say about the state of Israel, and that his viewpoint is worthy of consideration. At the website he says of himself that he is

a leading Russian Israeli writer, is a champion of the "One Man, One Vote, One State" solution seeking to unite Palestine & Israel in one democratic state. Shamir's work and that of his contributors speaks to the aspirations of both the Israelis and the Palestinians seeking an end to the bloodshed, true democracy and lasting peace.

Rabbi Moses Hess, a German, has been dubbed the "Red Rabbi". At the website of Shamir is an article titled "Zionism as Jewish National Socialism" by Lasse Wilhelmson. In this article Wilhelmson discusses Jewish apartheid, and claims Communist influence via Moses Hess, the so-called "Communist Rabbi." He writes:

Moses Hess - the Communist Rabbi

The fundamental ideology of Zionism however evolved much earlier with Moses Hess. He was one of Germany's earliest renowned Socialists. He was a Utopian, a Hegelian and a good friend of Karl Marx. Hess also wrote a contribution to The Communist Manifesto (1848) on the question of Religion as opium to the masses. He is considered by Zionists as the first Zionist. As he grew older he dissociated himself from Marx and "returned" to his People, that is to say Judaism. Marx shunned Hess' chauvinistic ideas. "Communist Rabbi Moses" as he was also called, wrote Zionism's Magnum Opus which Herzl later referred to as the book which says everything there is worth saying about Zionism. This book, "Rome and Jerusalem" was published by Hess in 1862. He was inspired, amongst others, by Spinoza. He defines the Jewish Nation by the following components:

# The Jewish race - superior and chosen
# Palestine - the homeland of the Jewish people
# The Jewish religion - the best guarantee for Jewish nationality.

At the website a quotation from the book by Shlomo Avineri titled THE MAKING OF MODERN ZIONISM: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (Basic Books, New York 1981). It reads as follows:

{p. 141} Many of the themes of this article, particularly that of money and the Jewish-Christian relationship, are taken directly from an article by Hess entitled 'On the Essence of Money'.2 Hess submitted this article for publication in the Deuch-Franzoche Jahrbucher, but the review collapsed before it could appear. Hess's influence here is important, as Marx's criticism of Bauer's second article contains his first tentative application to the field of economics of Feuerbach's idea of alienation. Hess had converted both Engels and Bakunin to communism, but his influence on Marx was a much slower process: in 1842-3, when Hess's proselytising was at its most active, Marx was no communist, and by the time Marx did become a communist, in Paris, Hess was only one among many new points of reference. Nevertheless, at this particular juncture, Marx seems to have leaned very heavily on Hess.

I find it a quite startling possibility that Communism was originally a Jewish concept!

DUAL COVENANT THEOLOGY

This editorial is taken from a 2002 issue of "Christian Order":

October 2002

TO DECEIVE THE ELECT!

THE EDITOR

On 12 August 2002 the American Bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs released a joint-document with their Jewish counterparts entitled "Reflections on Covenant and Mission." Among many other astonishing things, it declares that "campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church." Jewish participant Rabbi Gilbert Rosenthal confirmed that "neither group believes that we should missionize among the other in order to save souls via conversions." Cardinal Keeler, the U.S. Moderator for Catholic-Jewish relations, then contributed his own bravura impression of Judas, passing off this treachery as a "significant step forward in the dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Jewish Community in this country."

On 17 August EWTN's Fr. John Echert hit out at the document, fuming: "… parts of it strike me as contrary to divine revelation... It is an embarrassment, lacks any teaching authority, and serves to reveal the thinking of some people who hold powerful positions in the national conference. If a document such as this gains approval, as it currently stands, I will seriously consider the prospect that we are moving into the end times, namely, apostasy."

God bless Father Echert! Readers on this side of the Atlantic know exactly how he feels. The same thought arises every time Cardinal Murphy O'Connor and his British brothers and bureaucrats showcase their truly embarrassing, ignorant, erroneous and compromising Modernist beliefs on ecumenism and just about any other issue of note (CO passim). But it is not only the national episcopates and their delegates who are taking us ever closer to the theological brink. Increasingly, Rome is facilitating the wholesale confusion. After all, contrary to Church teaching as recently affirmed in Dominus Iesus, it is Cardinal Kasper, the Vatican's grand fromage on ecumenical affairs, who is openly promoting the scandalous view at the heart of the above Reflections: that the Jews are not in need of conversion to Christianity. Even Cardinal Ratzinger himself, a Kasper antagonist, has muddied the waters in that regard with baffling, equivocal utterances ["Some Thoughts on the Reception of Dominus Iesus," CO, Jan. 2001].

The plain truth is that outright public betrayals or serious undermining of Catholic teaching by our Shepherds have become so frequent in recent years that we cannot help but call to mind the Gospel passage underlying Fr. Echert's sentiments on the apostasy that ushers in the end times: "For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show signs and wonders insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect" [Matt 24:24]. This warning, in turn, recalls Sister Lucia's reference to the wholesale "diabolic disorientation" of the contemporary Catholic hierarchy. None of which is to say that apocalyptic end times are upon us or anywhere within sight. But such thoughts are very naturally to the fore in these murky days, and they immediately sprang to mind as I read about Rome's recent approval of the Neocatechumenal Way - perhaps the most frightening indicator of hierarchical deception thus far.

Go to the website to read the rest.