Still Running Off at the Keyboard

FROM THE EMAILBOX

I won't have time to blog tomorrow, so I'm posting Fr. Euteneuer's E-letter today.

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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 03, Number 38 | Friday, October 03, 2008
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www.hli.org

This Will Kill Us

More is at stake than just the economy in this presidential election season. In fact, the manufactured economic woes of our country are in some ways a smokescreen to keep our minds off the weightier moral issues that are not being talked about to any significant degree or in any depth. There real issues upon which our future as a nation depends are the life issues! To that effect, euthanasia, euphemistically called "physician-assisted suicide," is on the ballot in Washington State, and if we don't support those who are valiantly fighting this pernicious movement, this new virus of the culture of death could kill us all.

Actually this is not an entirely new front in the culture wars: Oregon blazed the euthanasia trail in 1997 when their physician-assisted suicide law went into effect. Now, the Washington State Initiative 1000 (I-1000) is almost a carbon copy of the Oregon law and just as deadly. I would invite all our Spirit and Life® readers to support with prayer and donations the group called the "Washington Coalition Against Assisted Suicide" in their efforts to stop I-1000. (See sidebar for more information on how to help.)

Here are just a few of the salient facts about euthanasia for your consideration:

Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia flow from seriously flawed notions of human dignity:

* The euthanasia worldview is based on the "Quality of Life" ethic (where the value of life is dependent upon lifestyle considerations) as opposed to the "Sanctity of Life" ethic (where life is valued in itself).

* This worldview says that sickness and suffering are meaningless even though we have better medical technology and palliative (pain-control) care than ever before in the history of humanity; it doesn't acknowledge that human suffering always creates opportunities for generosity, heroism and even sanctification.

* Decisions to euthanize people are based primarily on utilitarian concerns rather than on human decency despite all the lip service to "compassion" and "mercy" that are used to promote it; talk of healthcare rationing is simply preparing the way for a great killing spree for the sick and elderly.

The connection between abortion and euthanasia is chilling:

* Euthanasia advocates distort language to make killing seem like a virtue: words like "autonomy" and "self-determination" mimic the "freedom of choice" rhetoric of abortion; in fact, the main euthanasia advocacy group in Washington State is actually called "Compassion and Choices."

* Medical professionals are transformed from healers into killers - suicide-assisting doctors essentially become the new abortionists of the sick and elderly.

* Requirements for safeguards, reporting, informed consent, etc. are talked about with such seriousness when they are trying to get laws passed and then are ignored when the laws go into effect; and there is never any real enforcement of the laws once they are on the books.

* The moral slippery slope gets steeper when you legalize killing; "death with dignity" and the "right to die" soon become the "duty to die" just as "a woman's right to choose" usually drives away any other options but abortion.

The true irony is that the baby-boomers will double the number of elderly by the year 2020, and they are the likely candidates for euthanasia. The generation that gave us abortion on demand is now in the crosshairs of a selfish generation of pagan activists who were spawned by "choice." We have a chance in both national and local elections to proclaim that we are a people of life in this election. Let us make sure our voices are heard!

Please join HLI in helping the good folks in Washington State defeat this euthanasia initiative: it could be a life-or-death fight for us all.

Sincerely Yours in Christ,

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

ACORN'S EXTENSIVE INVOLVEMENTS

"Writing the Wrongs", the blog of Prof. G.S. Don Morris', a resident of Israel, spells out the wrongs of "ACORN: A Clear and Present Danger":

For it is those on the far left who have done everything in their power to corrupt the election process. One of their chief means of doing so has been through the activities of a group known as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). With approximately 175,000 dues-paying members, they own TV stations, businesses and periodicals, and have offices stretching from Canada to Peru, with over 80 offices in the U.S.

To give you some idea how all-encompassing the group is, they have schools where the children of leftists are trained in class-consciousness; they run boot camps for training street activists; and, like Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, they extort money from banks and other businesses by threatening racial violence and trumped-up civil rights charges. One can almost imagine Marx, Lenin and Stalin, shaking their heads in admiration and hoisting their glasses in toast.

Apparently, the members of ACORN have gained control of the New York City government, resulting in a rollback of welfare reform; the appointment of a politicized Civilian Review Board, empowered to prosecute police officers and ban racial and ethnic profiling in the city that experienced 9/11 firsthand; raise corporate taxes; and is attempting to prevent any corporation from fleeing the city without obtaining an “exit visa.” Even before Berkeley got around to having its own foreign policy, New York’s City Council, by a 31-17 vote, passed a resolution condemning the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Sound like something to which you wish to contribute your Catholic Charities dollars? Doesn't to me!

A 6-STEP PROGRAM OF REFORM

The following are the six steps Washington Catholic is calling for to reform CCHD:

1. No grants are to be issued for 2008.

2. All monies collected will be placed in interest bearing accounts, such as CDs, Federal T-Bills, etc. These accounts must be safe and secure.

3. A complete revision of the grantee application process to ensure that only Catholic groups, in good standing w/ the Church, receive funds. Those in good standing are those that are pro-life, pro-family, pro-true marriage. No part of the organization must be pro-gay, pro-married priests, pro-abortion, etc.

4. Any Catholic group which has received funds and advocates a pro-abortion, anti-family, anti-true marriage, etc. position will be banned from receiving funds for a period of five (5) years.

5. All secular groups are banned from receiving funds.

6. ACORN and all her associates and subsidiaries will be banned forever from receiving funding from CCHD.

SHUT DOWN CCHD CAMPAIGN

Blogger Washington Catholic writes:

Time to shut down the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD)!

Over the last two weeks, the Catholic blogs have been lighting up the net with the stories about how the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) has funded ACORN to the tune of over $1,100,000.00 in 2007 and almost as much in 2006.

ACORN, as we all know by now, has been deeply invloved in voter fraud and supporting candidates and positions who are opposed the to Catholic Church. In fact, they even gave money to the darling of the Catholic left, Barack "The Messiah" Obama.

Yet, the CCHD has made no statement on this as of this writing.

Therefore, I am calling on all Catholic bloggers and those who are faithful to the Church, to begin a campaign to shut down the CCHD immediately.

Once it is shut down, CCHD needs to be completely reviewed and overhauled. Funds should be directed to CATHOLIC groups -- not groups with strong ties to pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-Catholic schools.

Personally, I am tired of my Church donations being given to secular groups. If I wanted to give money to secular groups, then I would do so directly.

Will you join me?

It has been a few years since I stopped contributing to Catholic Charities in my own diocese because of the CCHD connection. They work together. Both are part of the "Ministering Together Board". As of 8/14/2006 these were the members of the "Ministering Together Board":

Most Rev. Dale J. Melczek, Diocese of Gary, Indiana (Chair)
* Sr. Mary RochRocklage, RSM, Chair, Sponsors Council, Sisters of Mercy Health System (Secretary)
* Matthew Thibeau, (Treasurer)
* Michael J. James, PhD, Boston College
* Sr. Judith Ann Karam, CSA, President/CEO, CSA Health System
* Jean Beil, Senior Vice President, Catholic Charities USA
* Sr. Jeanne Bessette, OSF, Secretary, Leadership Conference of Women Religious
* Tim Collins, Interim Director, Catholic Campaign for Human Development
* Mary Jo Moran, Executive Director, National Association of Catholic Personnel Administrators
* Edward E. Dolejsi, Executive Director, California Catholic Conference
* Fr. Richard Vega, National Federation of Priests’Councils
* Rev. Eugene F. Lauer, Director, National Pastoral Life Center
* Sr. Theresa Stanley, CCVI, Senior Director, Sponsor Services, Catholic Health Association
* Sr. Dale McDonald, PBVM, Director, Public Policy, National Catholic Education Association
* Sr. KateriMitchell, Executive Director, TekakwithaNational Conference
* Terry B. Wilson, National Vice President, Society of St. VincentDePaul
* Most Reverend Joseph M. Sullivan, DD, Brooklyn, New York

For a rundown on the activities of ACORN, check out this Catholic News Agency article where you can read:

Obama was lead organizer of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago, Stephanie Block reports in a September 28 article in the Wanderer. During Obama’s leadership, the organization received from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development $40,000 in grant money in 1985 and a $33,000 grant in 1986.

Obama reportedly received training from organizations connected to Chicago-based community organizer Saul Alinsky. Obama was also mentored by an ex-Jesuit, Greg Galuzzo, who headed the Gamaliel Foundation under which the Developing Communities Project operated.

Another Obama mentor, Jerry Kellman, was himself trained by Alinsky.

Block, commenting to CNA in a Tuesday e-mail, explained Alinsky’s ideas are expounded in his two books Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals.

“The primary motivation of Alinskyian organizing is to garner power,” she told CNA. “Since Alinsky believes power comes in two forms - money and people - and that the rich (the Haves) are the ones with the money, the objective of Alinskyian organizations is to get ‘people power,’ through exploiting the self-interest of the poor (the Have-Nots).”

The Gamaliel Foundation itself receives about four to five percent of all CCHD grants each year, Block’s Wanderer article says, while the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation, a network of community organizations, itself receives about 16 percent of all annual CCHD grants.

After he attended Harvard law school, Obama returned to Chicago and taught Alinsky’s organizing methods to staff of the group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The future Democratic presidential nominee ran ACORN’s 1992 voter-registration drive and received its endorsement for his state senate run.

ACORN itself receives about five percent of CCHD grants....

Block, writing in the Wanderer, says millions of dollars have funded Alinksyite community organizing groups.

Though Catholics are told CCHD money goes to “help the poor,” Block charges that Alinskyian networks are political.

Block argues in her article that these networks “work closely with politicians - such as Obama - and other organizations that are fighting for abortion and homosexual ‘rights.’ ACORN's ‘People's Platform’ has nothing in common with Catholic social justice teaching and everything in common with socialism. Gamaliel and the Industrial Areas Foundation teach liberationism, a form of ‘Christianized’ socialism, among their members.”

She claims that Alinskyite organizations are ecumenical and include numerous Catholic parishes. (emphasis mine)

For more on the CCHD/abortion connection check out the articles linked at Free Republic.

The Chicago Tribune reports on ACORN's involvement with voter registration fraud:

Questions about possible cases of fraudulent voter registrations were being raised this week as officials in several states investigated hundreds of questionable or duplicate registration forms submitted by an advocacy group....

ACORN, which said it registered about 1.3 million voters nationwide this year, is facing similar allegations in several other states. The group has encountered complaints of fraud stemming from registration efforts in Wisconsin, North Carolina, New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio and Missouri....

An FBI spokeswoman said the agency has been in contact with election officials about potential voter fraud.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that tens of thousands of eligible voters have been removed from rolls or blocked from registering in at least six swing states. Election officials quickly defended their registration procedures and said they had done nothing wrong.

The paper based its findings on reviews of state records and Social Security data and said it had identified likely problems in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina.

Here in Ohio voter registration has been taking place at libraries. A friend of mine works in one of them. She told me people had been coming in requesting as many as 20 forms at a time. Sounds like an open door for fraud to me. Will our presidential election be fixed? With the help of Catholic Charities funds?

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

FARRAKHAN CALLS OBAMA "MESSIAH"

on this YouTube video Does the podium sign actualy say "In the Name of Allah"?

World Net Daily also has the story.

ARE CATHOLIC WRITERS BECOMING TRENDY ?

According to an article at Vindy.com they are. The three authors discussed are Anne Rice, once a vampire novelist, now a writer on Catholic themes; Joe Eszterhas, screenwriter of erotic films including "Basic Instinct"; and Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy.

NICHOLAS CAFARDI

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio (AP) — A Catholic law professor who served on a high-profile panel formed to address the church's clergy sexual scandal has resigned from the board of a conservative Catholic university after writing a column supporting Democrat Barack Obama and declaring the abortion battle lost.

Nicholas Cafardi, former dean of the Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh, voluntarily offered to resign from the board of trustees at Franciscan University of Steubenville, the school said in a statement.

On Sept. 29, Religion News Service published a column by Cafardi in which he described backing Obama in spite of the candidate's pro-abortion rights position.

"While I have never swayed in my conviction that abortion is an unspeakable evil, I believe that we have lost the abortion battle permanently," Cafardi wrote.

Read more...

INSINUATION OF EVIL

Matt Abbot's column today is about evil--the way it insinuates itself into our thinking with the help of our politicians. The column features quotes from Father James Farfaglia, Corpus Christi, and Father Richard Perozich, San Diego, talking about the way evil is taking away our freedom and negating the separation of church and state.

Abbott and both priests are sounding alarm bells about the coming election and the fear that pro-abortion Obama will be our next president. It's a sober and discouraging column because I believe it does reflect present realities, and I fear the wrath of God if this election goes the way it appears it will go.

As much as I resent what the bishops have done with sexual abusers, this call of theirs to vote pro-life is a call that can't be ignored if we want to remain religiously free.

May God have mercy on us!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON FINANCES

Peter Bruno offers another way of looking at the current money crunch.

TEACHING FAITH FROM A SECULAR PERSPECTIVE

Sandro Magister reports:

ROMA, October 8, 2008 – In his homily at the opening Mass for the synod of bishops dedicated to the Sacred Scriptures, Benedict XVI recalled that from the first proclamation of the Gospel, "Christian communities arose that at first were flourishing, but later disappeared and are now remembered only in the history books."

And he added:

"Could not the same thing happen in our time? Nations that once were rich in faith and vocations are now losing their identity, under the harmful and destructive influence of a certain modern culture."

It can be guessed that, among these nations that once were exuberantly Christian but are no longer so, Pope Joseph Ratzinger is thinking of Canada, and more precisely of Québec.

Benedict XVI entrusted to the archbishop of Québec, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the task of introducing and closing the work of the synod with two general addresses. And Cardinal Ouellet is one of the best-informed and most critical witnesses of the metamorphosis that over a few decades has turned the highly Catholic Québec back into missionary territory.

Québec is Canada's largest province by area, five times bigger than Italy, but with fewer than 8 million inhabitants. They speak French, and until the middle of the last century they preserved a strong Catholic character. The rivers and villages there bear the names of saints, there are many churches, and almost all of the schools and hospitals were the result of religious initiatives. Vocations also flourished.

But beginning in the 1960's, all of this collapsed. Without fanfare, a "quiet revolution" put Québec in the vanguard of secularization. Today less than 5 percent of Catholics go to Mass on Sundays. There are few religious marriages, most funerals are civil, and baptisms are increasingly rare.

And the laws ratify this state of affairs in the name of a secularist fundamentalism that has gone so far, this year, as to impose on all state and private schools in Québec – the first instance of its kind in the world – an obligatory course on "ethics and religious culture," with teachers who are forbidden to present themselves as believers and members of the community of faith. The course gives information on the major world religions and discusses controversial topics, like abortion and euthanasia, with the obligation of taking no position one way or another.

"It is the dictatorship of relativism applied beginning in elementary school," Cardinal Ouellet charges. But his is an isolated voice. 80 percent of families continue to ask for the teaching of the Catholic religion, but only one, Loyola High School in Montréal, has appealed to the supreme court against the obligatory course now imposed by law.

Georges Leroux, the philosopher at the University of Montréal who designed the new course, maintains that "the time has come to think about the transmission of religious culture no longer as faith, but as history, as the universal heritage of humanity."

Read the rest...

In the article Cardinal Ouellet says:

No European nation has ever adopted such a radical approach, which revolutionizes the convictions and religious freedom of the citizens. This leads to the profound dissatisfaction and sense of powerlessness that many families feel toward an omnipotent state that seems not to fear the influence of the Church, and that can therefore impose its law without any higher influence. The most scandalous fate is reserved for the private Catholic schools, which find themselves forced on account of government subsidies to marginalize their own confessional teaching in favor of the course imposed by the state everywhere and at all levels.

And

The reform imposed by the law subjects the religions to state control and interests, putting an end to the religious freedoms acquired for generations. This law does not serve the common good, and cannot be imposed without being perceived as a violation of religious freedom by the citizens. It would not be reasonable to retain it as it has been issued, because it would create a narrow secularist legalism that excludes religion from the public sphere.

So it would appear that one of the most Catholic places on the North American continent is leading the charge against the faith, and it's right next door to America. It began in the 1960s. With Vatican II? Or perhaps with Humanae Vitae?

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

LOSING THE BATTLE

Catholic news is discouraging this morning.

There is the Catholics for Obama article in the Chicago Tribune, a story about Doug Kmiec's abandonment of the Catholic beliefs about abortion and the priest who refused him communion.

There is the story in The Evening Bulletin out of Philadelphia of Benedict inviting a Jewish rabbi to address 253 bishops at the Synod that is studying Scripture, as though we now need Jewish input in order to understand our own holy book after 2000 years of keeping our own counsel. If we got it wrong for 2000 years, what on earth would lead us to think we have suddenly got it right?

There is Duquesne University School of Law Catholic sell-out dean Nick Cafardi who claims to be staunchly anti-abortion, but who is supporting Barak Obama because he believes "anti-abortion activists have lost the abortion battle--permanently."

There is the Kansas City star article about Steve Roling's Center for Spirit at Work, an ecumenical conglomeration of faiths trying to bring some sort of transcendent value back to the workplace. Perhaps a noble ideal, but what is going to be left of denominational faith in the midst of this syncretism?

There is the teacher at a Catholic high school who subscribed to two child porn websites being sent to jail for 10 years and demonstrating that the adolescents are not safe in Catholic high schools despite all of the rhetoric about keeping our children safe.

There is the Catholic News Agency story about CCHD funding Obama's Alinsky-style community organization.

There is the story of the revolt of Philippine Catholics over contraception, indicating once again that H.V. is the source of the present disintegration of the Catholic Church.

There is the wave-blessing ecumenical ceremony led by two Catholic priests who have declared St. Anthony the "patron saint of ecology".

There is another round in the battle to prevent Catholic adoption agencies giving kids to homosexuals.

There is the disagreement with the bishop reported in the Toledo Blade over yet another closed church.

All of this comes on top of yesterday's exhausting struggle with my grandson who had decided not to drink his bottles or sleep and to cry all day until his mother came to pick him up, at which point he fell asleep on her shoulder. Now that she is back to school full-time she has little time to spend with him, and his grandparents are trying to fill in, with mixed results. Child care, she informed me, costs $1,000 a month, money she doesn't have. There is no economic option for her to stay home with him. She will have to work in order to pay the bills, and the doctorate that she has worked so hard to get is not going to bring the high-paying job one would expect. Their lifestyle is anything but a lavish one.

And then there were the debates last night, centered on the financial crisis, and leaving me wondering whether we have a solid economic future in retirement or whether our retirement plans are a house of cards in the process of falling down around us, aided in failure by the astounding cost of treatment for cancer.

I'm scheduled for chemotherapy this morning--round 6 and last of the current regimen that will conclude next week. Then the PET scan and a determination of where I'm headed next in this battle to the death with a killer.

Today, at least, it looks like time to quit this blogging effort to call the Church to account, since the battle at this particular moment appears to be lost. I've been here before and risen above it. Tomorrow might look brighter, or it might not. Ultimately Scripture must be served, and the Book of Revelation paints a less than rosy picture which may be forming in present reality.

I believe Obama will win the election. I believe he will take us to a place where there is no quarter left to Catholic Christians practicing a traditional faith. I believe, this morning, that the Church in America is near to disintegrating into something unrecognizable by those of us who knew the Church prior to Vatican II. So I'm discouraged, as I suspect all pre-Vatican II Catholics are discouraged, by the state of affairs in a Church we once called home.

CATHOLIC LEFT AGAINST PALIN

Commenter Joe D'Hippolito has a commentary up at FrontPageMagazine.com that begins with the following.

In the avalanche of criticism directed at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee, perhaps the most absurd chunks come from a corner that ostensibly concerns itself with tolerance and justice in the name of Jesus Christ. From these progressives, one hears a unique take: Sarah Palin should not be elected president because her daughter is pregnant; worse yet, she committed “apostasy” when she was 12-years-old.

The Catholic Left – notably Michael Sean Winters and Garry Wills – is part of the campaign to destroy Palin. The Catholic Left wants to provide pseudo-theological cover for Catholic liberals who wish to vote for the Democratic ticket of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, since Obama supports legalized abortion and Biden, a Catholic, opposes the Magisterium’s teaching on abortion.

Winters, a writer and political blogger for the liberal Catholic magazine America, declares Palin to be an apostate. The Los Angeles Times reported on Aug. 30 that Palin was baptized into the Catholic Church as an infant in Idaho. Soon afterward, the Times reported, Palin’s family moved to Alaska and attended the Wasilla Assembly of God Church – a Pentecostal congregation in which Palin was baptized again at 12.

“One searches the Code of Canon Law in vain for the term ‘ex-Catholic,’” Winters wrote on America’s blog Sept. 4. “Similarly, the Catholic Church does not recognize the ritual the Times called ‘re-baptism.’ More importantly, it is difficult to see how submitting oneself to a ‘re-baptism’ would not be a renunciation of your prior baptism. And the technical term for renouncing one’s baptism is apostasy.”

Winters’ pomposity becomes more pronounced as his post continues: “The Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law … recognizes that in a situation like Palin’s, the severity of the crime could be mitigated by diminished personal freedom: Even a precocious teenager who commits an act of apostasy might be so strongly influenced by familial considerations that the perpetrator’s guilt is diminished.”

“Severity of the crime”? What crime? Since when is it a crime in the United States – which guarantees freedom of religious expression in the First Amendment of its Constitution – for children to attend their parents’ church? Since when are young children responsible for their parents’ decisions? Besides, what is it about Palin’s adolescent act of faith that gives Winters the right to label her “precocious?”

“No one is suggesting that Palin’s apostasy should prevent her from being elected to high office,” Winters continues. “But, while many Catholics may warm to Palin’s moral views, for example, her opposition to abortion, the cavalier way she evidently treats an act of severe sacramental and canonical significance should give pause to those who take their religion seriously. Palin could show her respect for the Catholic Church and its canons by requesting a formal separation from the Church from her local bishop. This might not be good politics but it would be good for her soul.”

Given that Palin’s family changed churches when she was an infant, it is highly doubtful that Palin ever perceived herself as a Catholic. Perhaps if Palin promoted herself as a Catholic or proclaimed that her opinions reflected Catholic thinking, then Winters might have a point. But as the next passage makes clear, Winters’ opinion about the state of Palin’s soul merely obscures his real concern: “[I]t is beyond hypocritical for certain conservative Catholics to denounce Joe Biden because he is Catholic and does not support making abortion illegal while applauding a self-described ‘hockey Mom’ who is skating close to apostasy.”

Go to the website to continue reading.

GOING HIS OWN WAY

A rather shocking and very powerful news story out of Fresno, California is making the rounds today: Father Geoffrey Farrow, a Catholic priest of over 20 years service to the Church, defies the instructions of the Bishops and urges his congregation to vote against Proposition 8, the initiative that would take the right to marry away from same-sex couples in the state.

In his homily, Farrow points out that "what most Catholics hear about being gay or lesbian in their parish Church is silence" and goes on to clearly defy the position of his elders, who are urging parishoners to vote for Proposition 8. "I know that thesewords will cost me dearly. But to not to speak them would rob gay and lesbian people not only of their civil rights, but of their human dignity as well."

But Farrow's defiance of the Church's stance was not his bravest move of the day. In an interview with the local ABC affiliate right before presiding over the mass, he came out as gay to the whole world...

Read the rest.

Looks like there isn't going to be much of an improvement in the state of the Church in America so long as there are homosexual priests ready to defy authority.

WHERE DO CCHD AND BARAK OBAMA CROSS PATHS ?

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development comes up with some questionable contributions. This one is sure questionable. It seems that CCHD has financed ACORN.

insidecatholic.com reports:

How Catholic Money Funded Obama's Community Organizing
Posted on October 06, 2008, 7:19 AM | Deal W. Hudson

One of the untold stories in the Obama campaign is how his background in community organizing has direct links to Catholic funding -- from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Catholic journalist Stephanie Block has been writing about the CCHD for many years, but it has been difficult to stimulate any serious concern about their funding the innocuous sounding activity of "community development." Innocuous or not, Obama's years as a community organizer were supported, in part, by Catholic money dispersed by the USCCB.

Barak Obama - was lead organizer in Chicago for the Developing Communities Project, it received a $40,000 Catholic Campaign for Human Development grant in 1985 and a $33,000 grant in 1986.

While he was in Chicago Obama was trained by the top Alinskyian organizers. One mentor was the ex-Jesuit, Greg Galuzzo, lead organizer for Gamaliel. The Developing Communities Project operated under the Gamaliel Foundation, a network of Alinskyian organizations that receive 4-5% of all Catholic Campaign for Human Development grants each year.

The Developing Communities Project, which hired Obama as lead organizer, was an offshoot of Jerry Kellman's Calumet Community Religious Conference. Kellman, another of Obama's mentors, was himself trained by Alinsky. The network of community organizations Alinsky founded, the Industrial Areas Foundation, receives about 16% of all Catholic Campaign for Human Development grants annually.

ACORN itself, very closely identified with Obama, recieves Catholic Campaign funding:

After Obama went to Harvard Law School, he returned to Chicago and taught Alinskyian organizing to ACORN staff. Although ACORN has a different structure than other Alinskyian networks, its tactical philosophy and world view are formed by men who were trained by Alinsky, in a sort of diabolical apostolic succession. Obama ran ACORN's 1992 voter-registration drive, Project Vote, and in return received ACORN's endorsement for Illinois senator. ACORN annually receives about 5% of Catholic Campaign for Human Development grants.

Some years ago I published an article in Crisis about CCHD, and spent some time studying their grants as pubished on the USCCB web site. There were long lists of $20,000 to $30,000 grants to groups and communities all over the United States, all under the rubric of "community organizing." It was clear to me that "organizing" meant training in politics, and I had no illusions about the kind of politics the recipients were being trained in.

Go to the website to read the rest.

Isn't CCHD part of the Catholic Charities appeal?

An Archdiocese of Wash DC Catholic blog is reporting it:

what we have found is that ACORN is one of the most corrupt organizations at the "community organizer" level. It has been involved in massive voter fraud in the last two elections, registering "Donald Duck" and "Mickey Mouse."

Now, where does the CCHD come in? Well, they give grants to ACORN? According to their 2007 Grantee List, they gave to apx. 35 ACORN Groups mostly for "Community Organizing: Economic Justice."

What the heck does that mean? Oh, you mean something like Barak Obama did?

Well, at an average of $25,000 to apx. 35 groups, that equals apx. $875,000 of nothing!

If you are going to help the poor, ACORN is not the way to do it!

This is one Second Sunday Collection that will not see my money!

Spero News is covering it as well. Stephanie Block writes:

Over at the Catholics for Obama blog, the headline screams, “Palin Continues to Smear Catholic Action.” This preposterous thesis has been crafted from her comments about Barak Obama’s past as a community organizer.

The blog contends, “Catholics across the country continue to be outraged by Republican politician Sarah Palin who repeated her smear against Catholic Action by mocking Barack Obama’s service as director of a community group sponsored by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (an arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops) and led by eight Catholic parishes on the South Side of Chicago.” Well!

That’s quite a leap. Ms. Palin said nothing whatsoever about Catholic Action. It was the Catholics for Obama blogger who drew the connection between community organizing, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). There’s no secret here. The CCHD gives between a third and a half of its grants to Alinskyian organizing networks.

Alinskyian what?

If you are saying “Alinskyian, what?” you need to know that there are over 200 organizations operating in cities around the United States, training social justice activists according to the theories of Saul Alinsky.

Over the past 30 years, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development has given millions of dollars from Catholic donations to these groups. That’s a lot of money going to train people in a very distinctive way of looking at the world and its problems.

Read on...

There is no question that Alinsky was a communist.

CatholicCitizens.org is covering it:

For nearly forty years, The Wanderer has followed the Catholic Campaign for Human Development's funding of radical, left-wing political organizations, many of them carrying the brand of Saul Alinsky. The Wanderer also covered the first Call to Action conference - the months of "hearings" leading up to it, its orchestrated structure and contrived demands - and our reporters commented on the Alinskyian nature of it, not merely in its tactics but in its outcomes. In hindsight, we can see that organized dissent in the Church was a product of organized parishes, filled with Alinskyian-trained laity.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development is responsible for that.

It is also responsible, in some part, for the fact that forty years later, we have a virulently pro-abortion, pro-homosexual presidential candidate whose principle political training has been in Alinskyian organizing. While he - Barak Obama - was lead organizer in Chicago for the Developing Communities Project, it received a $40,000 Catholic Campaign for Human Development grant in 1985 and a $33,000 grant in 1986.

The Baltimore CCHD website lists an ACORN contribution:

$15,000: BALTIMORE ACORN/HOUSING JUSTICE:
A 3rd year grant will aid efforts to pass a reform of rental codes and a continued campaign aimed at predatory lending and finance reform.
CONTACT: Valerie Coffin, 825 Park Ave, 21201 (410) 752-2228

ACORN News for December 9, 2003 lists CCHD representatives as speakers at an ACORN event:

On November 13, the Phoenix Living Wage
Campaign, of which ACORN is a leading member,
held a forum on working poverty attended by 130
community members. Over 60 ACORN members
participated in the event, which was moderated
by ACORN member Carmen Arias. Presenters from
Arizona State University, the Catholic Campaign
for Human Development, and local workers and
church leaders spoke at the event about the
challenges facing low-income workers and
families in Phoenix.

If ACORN has been involved in voter registration fraud in the past, should we assume they will not be involved in that in this campaign?

Here in Ohio a voter can register by picking up forms at the library. A relative who works in the library said some patrons were coming in and requesting as many as 20 forms at one time. Sort of makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Over and out to Sarah Palin.

Thanks to a reader for the heads up.

THE FRANCISCAN TAX-FREE HIGH RISE

I wonder what the other side to this story, linked at New Oxford Review, might be? From the viewpoint of Chicago News, it sounds rather dishonest and incriminating.

It seems some Franciscan nuns in league with Loyola University have erected a senior citizen high rise on property that is argued to be Church owned and thus tax exempt. Condominiums in the high rise were sold to the wealthy for $1.5 million each and included gourmet dining, concierge and housekeeping, valet parking, an aquatic center and day spa plus an art gallery. The sale included a promise of living property tax free apparently indefinitely.

Now the tax status of the property is being challenged.

LIBERTARIANS FOR OBAMA

The blog that goes by that name.

The Cato Institute for Obama.

"Why Libertarians Should Vote for Obama" at Marginal Revolution.

Libertarians for Obama, the organization.

"The Libertarian Case for Obama" at Reasononline.

Austrian Economists for Obama.

Libertarians for Obama at NRO.

Libertarians for Obama banner.

Does this mean that the Acton Institute it out of sync?

FROM THE EMAILBOX

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

Human Life International e-Newsletter
Volume 03, Number 37 | Friday, October 03, 2008

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www.hli.org

Update: Catch Fr. Tom on EWTN! Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer will be celebrating the EWTN televised Masses on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, October 4-6. Local times will apply.

The Rosary Batters the Gates of Hell

The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary was established by Pope Pius V on October 7th, 1572 to commemorate the great sea victory of the Christian forces over the Turks at Lepanto the previous year. It's ironic that the most inspiring devotional prayer to our sweet Lady is also, well, a weapon. A spiritual weapon to be sure, and always effective in our battle for minds, hearts and souls. While the Rosary defies strict classification by any one image, it is nonetheless a spiritual resource of immense power if only we will deepen our appreciation of it and use it for the work of the Kingdom.

Militant imagery to describe the Rosary is not just due to its deployment during the Battle of Lepanto but also to the example of some of the greatest saints who used it for spiritual warfare. St. Dominic, who is credited with inventing the devotion in the 12th century (actually it existed in some form much earlier and he popularized it), used the Rosary to combat a pernicious heresy of his day and bring people back to the Catholic Faith. St. Maximilian Kolbe led his companions in the Nazi starvation bunker by singing hymns and reciting the Rosary to keep them from losing hope in such cruel circumstances. Padre Pio, no stranger to spiritual warfare, always told the people, "The Rosary is the weapon!" That saint was known to pray as many as ninety Rosaries a day in a shortened form for which he received ecclesiastical permission. He knew what was needed to fight the devil!

Mary's Rosary is a powerful spiritual weapon for three main reasons: it is biblical, humble and repetitive. As St. Louis Marie de Montfort noted, the Rosary is not just a devotion to Mary - rather, it is a prayer through Mary directly to the Heart of Christ! That is the way Catholics pray it. Protestants, who reject Catholic prayers as being too Mary-centered, need to be shown that the Rosary consists of purely biblical prayers (the Our Father and the Hail Mary)! We also need to educate them that the goal of the prayer is meditation on the Mystery of Christ revealed to us in Scripture and Tradition. With the addition of the Luminous Mysteries by Pope John Paul II in 2002, the biblical reflection on the Life and Ministry of Christ is complete.

The Christian virtue of humility inevitably shatters the devil's pride, and to that end, the Rosary is not a glorious sacrament but a humble devotion. The Rosary can be prayed communally but it can never really be prayed ostentatiously. The meditation of the Rosary is not on one's self, it is on God. The Rosary teaches the most important lessons of faith with simple images, not esoteric learning. It also teaches the fundamental Christian virtues which St. John Vianney says are bound together by humility like the chain of a Rosary binds together all the beads! There is nothing about the Rosary which inspires arrogance, and that is why the devil hates it with a passion. He just can't break its humility.

Finally, its repetitive intercession gives the Rosary a transformative strength that can only be likened to the slow force of the ancient streams that cut the Grand Canyon out of solid rock over thousands of years. It is an unstoppable force of good if only the people who pray it will not cease to pray for their intentions! This prayer is meaningful, meditative and pregnant with Our Lady's presence which is always the most sure way to send any prayer to heaven. After all, She is the one who, we are told, will crush the head of the serpent; She reverses the ancient curse of Eve; She batters the gates of hell with a weapon in the form of a chain.

Pray the Rosary assiduously each day, and Mary will battle with you. Whatever gates of hell you are fighting...they shall not prevail!

Sincerely Yours in Christ,

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