05/13/15

The Catholic Church Has Gone Socialist

Since we published our article, “Catholic Church Captured by ‘Progressive Forces,’” it is starting to dawn on many in and out of the media that Pope Francis has come down on the side of the “progressive,” and even Marxist, forces in the world today.

Writing at the Blaze.com and commenting on the pope’s friendly meeting with Cuban dictator Raul Castro, Catholic writer Stephen Herreid of the Intercollegiate Review called the pope’s dealings with Castro and other Marxists “a new Catholic scandal” as significant and terrifying as the presence of pedophiles in the church. He wonders how conservative Catholics can continue to pay respect to a pope “intent on making friends with the enemies of religious liberty.”

Francis had a one-hour meeting with Raul Castro on May 10. The day before, Castro had greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Francis will visit Cuba in September prior to his tour of the United States.

The Associated Press reported that Castro commented, after meeting with the pope, that the pontiff “is a Jesuit, and I, in some way, am too.” Castro added, “I always studied at Jesuit schools.” He also promised, “When the pope goes to Cuba in September, I promise to go to all his Masses, and with satisfaction.”

The evidence is getting too big for the major media to ignore: the pope has made common cause with the forces of international Marxism, which are associated with atheism, the suppression of traditional Christianity and the persecution and murder of Christians.

Conservative Catholics and many others are terrified of what is to come. Some fear that the Roman Catholic Church has joined the campaign for a global socialist state that could turn into an anti-Christian tyranny.

Dr. Timothy Ball, author of The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, told me during a recent interview, “I think the Catholic Church is regretting making him the pope. They did it because the previous pope was starting to deal with the problems of pedophilia and corruption in the money in the church. So the powerful Cardinals pushed him [Benedict] aside. It wasn’t a health matter at all. He just realized he couldn’t beat them…He [Francis] is bringing in these socialist ideas. He’s already expressed some of them—about inequities of wealth, redistributing the wealth, which are themes you’ve heard from Obama.”

Benedict had also been a strong opponent of Liberation Theology.

As Herreid put it in his Blaze column, “In a matter of months, Pope Francis has announced a desire to ‘quickly’ beatify a deceased liberation theologist bishop, reconciled with a Sandinista activist priest who once called Ronald Reagan a ‘butcher’ and an ‘international outlaw,’ and even invited the founder of the liberation theology movement, Rev. Gustavo Gutierrez, to speak on the need for a ‘poor Church for the Poor’ at an official Vatican event this week.”

In fact, this is the latest example of Francis welcoming advocates of Liberation Theology—a doctrine manufactured by the old KGB to dupe Christians into supporting Marxism—directly into the Vatican.

Francis received Gutierrez, considered the father of Liberation Theology, in September 2013, but in a private audience without photos. Then, on November 22, 2014, at the end of an audience granted to the participants of the National Missionary Congress of Italy, Francis warmly greeted him personally. Gutierrez, a Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest, is being welcomed as an official guest at the Vatican to participate in this week’s Caritas Internationalis General Assembly, whose theme is, “One Human Family, Caring for Creation.”

Caritas is a global confederation of 164 Catholic organizations. Its U.S. affiliates are Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services.

Herreid comments, “Neither Pope St. John Paul II nor his trusted friend and successor Benedict XVI were taken in by liberation theology. John Paul fought Communism throughout his pontificate, and Benedict was equally forceful against liberation theology’s interpretation of the traditional ‘preferential option for the poor’ as a preferential option for violent state-mandated wealth-redistribution.”

The Francis-Marxist alliance seems to confirm the predictions of the late Vatican insider Malachi Martin, who wrote penetrating books about the Catholic Church entitled The Jesuits and The Keys of This Blood. He believed that Mikhail Gorbachev, who presided over the “restructuring” of the old Soviet Union, never gave up on Marxism-Leninism but adopted the viewpoint of the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci that a worldwide communist state could only be achieved gradually. It was to be a “revolution by infiltration.” He said, “Liberation Theology was a perfectly faithful exercise of Gramsci’s principles.”

Martin wrote that “The most powerful religious orders of the Roman Church—Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, Maryknollers—all committed themselves to Liberation Theology.”

In addition to Gutierrez, one of the speakers at this week’s Vatican conference is Jeffrey Sachs of the U.N.’s Millennium Project, an advocate of a global tax that could impose a cost of $845 billion from the U.S. alone. Sachs is speaking at a panel discussion on “Growing inequalities: a challenge for the one human family.”

Sachs previously appeared at a Vatican conference on “Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature: Our Responsibility,” which was held from May 2 – 6, 2014. It was held under the authority of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

A joint statement published after the close of that Vatican conference called for Sustainable Development Goals “to guide planetary-scale actions after 2015.”

It said, “To achieve these goals will require global cooperation, technological innovations that are within reach, and supportive economic and social policies at the national and regional levels, such as the taxation and regulation of environmental abuses, limits to the enormous power of transnational corporations and a fair redistribution of wealth. It has become abundantly clear that Humanity’s relationship with Nature needs to be undertaken by cooperative, collective action at all levels—local, regional, and global.”

This week’s Caritas conference includes consideration of a “strategic framework” for the years 2015 to 2019 that quoted Francis as calling on every Christian “to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor…”

In building “a civilization of love,” the document urges the “transforming [of] unjust systems and structures” and desires an outcome in which “Justice is attained with respect to climate change and the use of natural resources…”

Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, explained what all of this means in simple language. “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history,” she said. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change…It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.”

The pope’s left-wing supporters at the Catholic Climate Covenant are ecstatic over his upcoming encyclical on ecology and climate change and believe it can be the catalyst for this deliberate transformation. Dan Misleh of the Catholic Climate Covenant tells his supporters that his group is creating what he calls “an educational, inspirational video” on how to stop global warming and developing new programs to help Catholics “reduce their carbon footprint.”

Members of his climate coalition include:

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Migration and Refugee Services
Catholic Charities USA
Catholic Relief Services
Catholic Health Association of the United States
Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach
Conference of Major Superiors of Men
Carmelite NGO
Catholic Rural Life
Franciscan Action Network
National Council of Catholic Women
Leadership Conference of Women Religious
Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities
National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry
Sisters of Mercy of the Americas

02/13/15

Media’s Lack of Curiosity About Killer of Muslims in North Carolina

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Was the brutal murder of three Muslims in North Carolina this week a case of “random violence,” or were the three targeted because of their Muslim faith? And why, of all the murders committed across the country this week, did these three grab so much national media attention? The FBI has now joined the investigation.

Perhaps the lessons learned from Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January of 2011 could inform the answers to these questions, and serve as a reminder of the dangers of biased reporting on murder cases. But, unfortunately, the mainstream media continue to perpetuate a confusing double standard when it comes to reporting on the deaths of innocents.

Why, for example, did the deaths of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina gain traction at The Washington Post, Reuters, and many other media outlets which speculated that it was a possible hate crime, while this black teen murdering a white classmate and taking a selfie with the corpse didn’t receive anywhere near the same treatment? And what about the murders occurring in Chicago every day? Don’t those deserve headlines, and candlelight vigils too?

“However, I do think it’s fair to say that attributing political motives to individual killings is much more of a phenomenon on the left than on the right,” argues Mark Hemingway for The Weekly Standard in a column regarding the recent execution-style shootings of Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.

The alleged shooter, Craig Stephen Hicks, liked the “Huffington Post, Rachel Maddow, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Freedom from Religion Foundation, Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy,’ Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gay Marriage groups and similar progressive pages” on Facebook, notes Hemingway. Maddow didn’t mention any of that on her show when talking about the incident.

Hicks displayed a habit of posting snarky pictures with slogans like, “Democrats aren’t perfect but at least they haven’t been shoving poor Jesus up my c—ch and Ronald Reagan down my throat.” Another picture he promoted reads, “So Rick Santorum thinks that when people get educated they stop believing in God? Best advertisement for Atheism I’ve ever heard.”

And Hicks commented on Ground Zero: “Seems an overwhelming majority of Christians in this country feel that the Muslims are using the Ground Zero Mosque plans to’mark their conquest’ [sic] Bunch of hypocrites, everywhere I’ve been in this country there are churches marking the Christian conquest of this country from the Native Americans. Funny thing is the Christians did that while defying our Constitution, and got away with it!!”

“It was logical for some people to hear about the shootings and wonder if recent news involving the Islamic State—including the deaths of a Jordanian pilot and an American hostage—could lead to some sort of reprisal against Muslims, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” reported the Post regarding the three deaths on February 11.

In 2011 the SPLC’s Richard Cohen blamed the shooting of Rep. Giffords on Sarah Palin’s political rhetoric, citing the work of staffer Potok. The Discovery Channel plans to air a documentary, “Hate in America,” this month with the SPLC as a partner helping “examine the current realities of intolerance in America.”

The SPLC runs a hate crimes racket, and the media—desperate to promote headlines that fit their pre-existing left-wing narratives about race, inequality and religion—are quick to swallow their propaganda.

“I think it’s perfectly natural to guess that this is anti-Islamic,” Potok told the Post in the interview regarding the triple murder. “Not just because the three victims are Muslim, but because there has been so much terrible news in recent days about extremist Muslims.” Potok also appeared on MSNBC on the morning of February 13 with the news anchor Tamron Hall, and there was no mention of Hicks’ political leanings, which appear to be consistent with their own.

It is ironic that Hicks, himself, may have, at least in part, allowed the SPLC to fuel his own brand of hate—if it was hate, and not a longtime dispute over parking—that caused Hicks to allegedly kill three innocent people.

“We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was…But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers,” wrote Paul Krugman of The New York Times after the Loughner shooting.

“Keith Olbermann had a special edition of his ‘Countdown’ show on MSNBC the night of the shooting, in which he had a series of guests on who all speculated that Loughner was influenced by ‘right-wing extremists’ and that the Right was far more guilty of violent and hateful speech than the Left, creating a climate conducive for this sort of action,” I reported back in 2011.

Have the media learned from their past attempts to politicize violent shootings, or does the marked omission of similar rhetoric regarding the Hicks case simply indicate that the mainstream media hope that the progressive ideology of this alleged killer will not actually be used against them?

If Hicks was a champion of liberal causes such as gay rights and abortion, and one’s ideological background has any bearing on the decision to brutally murder someone, then why isn’t the media likewise exploring in depth Hicks’ motivations—his likes, dislikes, ideology, inspiration, etc.—as they did when they erroneously blamed the right for Loughner’s shooting of Giffords? Instead, the Post published a story on the “particular tensions between Islam and atheism” which allowed atheist groups to denounce and separate themselves from the killer. If Hicks had any deeper motivation rooted in progressivism, you wouldn’t find it there.

On February 11 The Washington Post authors quoted from the SPLC, then linked to Hicks’ Facebook page, and failed to inform their readers of Hicks’ admiration for this group.

And the motivation of the attack remains in dispute, despite the hate crime allegations. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime,” said the victims’ father Mohammed Abu-Salha. His evidence: “This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt.”

More recent news reporting by the Associated Press indicates that when Hicks “talked with them with his gun in his belt,” as the father described, it was likely during a dispute over a visitor’s parking space. According to the AP, a resident of that condo “said Hicks complained about once a month that the two men were parking in a visitor’s space as well as their assigned spot.”

It continued: “He would come over to the door, knock on the door and then have a gun on his hip saying ‘you guys need to not park here,’ said Ahmad, a graduate student in chemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill. ‘He did it again after they got married.’”

The victims in the most recent case appear to be the type of Muslims whom many in America would embrace as fellow patriots, rather than as radical fundamentalists who prompt what some term “Islamophobia.” The murdered couple was active in charity efforts. “Barakat had recently posted about providing free dental supplies and food to dozens of homeless people in Durham, something he had done twice in recent months, buying toothpaste, brushes, floss and mouthwash that he put into individual bags for each homeless person,” reported the Post. And his wife had traveled to the Turkish border last year, not to join the Islamic State but to “deliver dental supplies to a Turkish town…”

But then again, Barakat and his wife met while helping to run North Carolina State’s Muslim Student Association (MSA) chapter. Perhaps they weren’t aware of the origins of that organization. The MSA is a Muslim Brotherhood front group, and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is the group that spawned al Qaeda and Hamas. President Obama has embraced the MB at home and abroad, and this is a subject that the media should thoroughly explore, while there is still a chance to diminish their influence. Unfortunately, very few in our media are willing to investigate the MB—or even acknowledge their influence—instead they treat them like some benign, charitable group such as the Kiwanis International.

While it would be convenient for the media, and its allies on the left, to proffer evidence of a violent Muslim backlash when speaking about the culture of hate in a world full of news reports about Islamic State militants beheading their captives, or the Charlie Hebdo murders, not every murder’s newsworthiness should be coldly calculated based on the race, faith, or the known ideology of its participants—or perpetrators. There is an average of about 40 murders a day in this country, most of which we never hear about until the media find one that fits a narrative for them. Or at least they think it does. And then it takes on a life of its own.

12/30/14

Russian Nativity Play: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Stalin

The People’s Cube
Red Square

What happens to a Christmas play when Joseph Stalin is more known than the biblical Joseph.

First published in Front Page Magazine
by Oleg Atbashian

This “life imitates the People’s Cube” moment comes from St. Petersburg, Russia. What seems to be a spoof is a legitimate story via RIA Novosti, a Russian news agency. As a historical footnote, Nativity plays are a new concept in Russia, where Joseph Stalin is better known than the biblical Joseph, which occasionally causes Freudian slips like the one below.

A St. Petersburg student mistakenly showed up dressed as Joseph Stalin to the Christmas play where he was supposed to play the biblical character of Joseph.

“Yesterday, my 12-year-old son participated in a school play. He told us ahead of time that he got the role of Joseph Stalin who is talking to some woman. It wasn’t a big surprise to us, as he has played parts in school plays before, and once he was even a watermelon,” wrote the student’s father Fyodor Gavrichenko on his Facebook page.

Gavrichenko said the whole family worked on making the costume – especially the grandmother, who sewed trouser stripes to the pants, found some old army boots, made a generalissimo mustache and a red folder with a big star.

They didn’t realize the mistake until the last moment because the play was in German as part of the boy’s foreign language class, and no one understood what the son’s lines meant. Apparently, the boy hadn’t been paying attention in class either. Instead of bringing the costume to school before the play, he showed the teacher its picture on his cell phone. The teacher thought it was a joke and said that the costume “rocks.”

The family sensed trouble when they saw their son’s classmate dressed as Magi. “Who are you?” asked the Magi. “I’m Mary’s husband… Joseph Stalin,” said the boy. His confidence shaken, the classmate went to the teacher: “Our Joseph turns out to be Stalin… Is that a good thing?” “What?” asked the teacher, as he pulled the curtain revealing the Nativity scene with Joseph and Mary. It was too late to change.

The plot thickened before the drama began. According to the father, Stalin’s outfit was a smash. The boy’s lines were accompanied by fits of hysterical laughter through the tears from other parents, some of whom reportedly fell off their chairs.

Those who can read the original Facebook post in Russian will notice that the father knows as little about the Nativity story as his son, confusing characters and their roles in the story. This is rather a norm in Russia, where erstwhile official atheism is only now being replaced by the official Orthodox Church. This St. Petersburg family couldn’t tell the shepherds from angels even if their son’s play weren’t in German. But at least they’re trying.