11/20/16

Pope Francis: “…it is the communists who think like Christians”

By: Renee Nal | New Zeal

Pope Francis climbs the steps to the altar upon arriving to give the first mass of his visit to Cuba in Havana’s Revolution Square, Sept. 20.

Last week, Pope Francis told Italian journalist and co-founder of the newspaper La Repubblica Eugenio Scalfari that “…it is the communists who think like Christians.”

Here is the exchange:

Q: You told me some time ago that the precept, “Love your neighbour as thyself” had to change, given the dark times that we are going through, and become “more than thyself.” So you yearn for a society where equality dominates. This, as you know, is the programme of Marxist socialism and then of communism. Are you therefore thinking of a Marxist type of society?

A: “It it has been said many times and my response has always been that, if anything, it is the communists who think like Christians. Christ spoke of a society where the poor, the weak and the marginalized have the right to decide. Not demagogues, not Barabbas, but the people, the poor, whether they have faith in a transcendent God or not. It is they who must help to achieve equality and freedom”.

Pope Francis also used a familiar progressive expression surrounding immigrants. He said in part, “…we need to break down walls and build bridges…” The pontiff said in part:

We must break down the walls that divide us: we must try to increase well-being and make it more widespread, but to achieve this we need to break down walls and build bridges that allow us to reduce inequality and increase freedom and rights. More rights and greater freedom.”

Wall at Vatican City

As an aside, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg was quoted in April as saying, “Instead of building walls we can help build bridges.” Just one month later, Zuckerburg reportedly “…started buying parcels around his Palo Alto home to protect his privacy.”

06/24/16

Vatican ecumenism forsakes Egypt’s Christian minorities

By: Dr. Ashraf Ramelah | Voice of the Copts

Pope Francis, who is “building bridges to build peace” around the world, has naturally reached out to embrace Sunni Muslims. Last month, for the first time after years of Vatican silence, Pope Francis summoned to his private library in Rome grand imam Ahmed El-Tayeb of Cairo’s Al-Ahzar Mosque Institute. Absent a press release before this event, the Pope was quoted as saying, “this meeting is the message” – leading all to dwell on the meaning and purpose of their 25 minutes together. Christians, especially Egyptian Coptic Christians, have observed the Catholic pope give the “sign of peace” to the grand imam who has yet been unwilling to denounce ISIS. Unity existed between the two religious branches previous to former Pope Benedict XVI condemning Islam’s inclination to violence. This message of reconciliation comes during the Al-Sisi government which has stood opposed to the favored and protected status of an organization entwined with Al-Ahzar — the Muslim Brotherhood – and against the ascendency of this terror network and others beginning before his presidential campaign.

Two days before their historic meeting, headlines around the world reported the violent and humiliating act committed by a Muslim mob in Upper Egypt against a Christian woman in a Christian-majority village. Homes where razed and a grandmother was stripped naked, dragged from her house and beaten in the street. Egypt’s courts are not officially Sharia but street justice involving private matters is strictly Islamic doctrine (coercion of non-Muslims), and violence has no real consequences in the courts. No words came from either of the leaders in the “Jubilee of Mercy” meeting (its official title) to address this incident, which by the nature of this attack holds deeper, more serious implications in Egyptian culture. An elderly woman in Egypt is considered sacrosanct, and practically speaking, this means across sectarian lines she is universally respected for her tenderness and kindheartedness toward others. Even codified barbarity had had this limit before now.

Evidence of Al-Sisi’s attempt at reform of Islamic doctrine met by Al-Ahzar reluctance is seen recently in the Institute’s insignificant changes to public school textbooks and mosque preaching. Presently, President Al-Sisi is stifled in his efforts to expunge religious supremacy from Egypt without cooperation from Al-Ahzar and apparently even with its assistance. As these particulars are the cultural foundation used for oppressing Christians, it is now hopeful that Francis will focus on such issues. Although Francis has not been terribly outspoken on Coptic Church destruction, he has grieved with the Orthodox of Egypt and offered his prayers over the spilled blood of Christians in Libya recognizing the Coptic Christian martyrs.

Solidarity (a hug and kisses) shown in this re-connection of Cairo’s Sunni grand imam with the Catholic Pope followed by silence (no official statements) helps to bolster and propel the position of the Institute’s goals for Egypt, which are far from optimal in the cause for freedom of religion and speech and the subject of human rights. It is not likely that Francis will meet with President Al-Sisi, if he hasn’t first already done so, even though by contrast Al-Sisi projects real hope for Egypt’s future in his committed struggle for freedom and equality. This we see in regard to Egypt’s deep state (the tentacles of Al-Ahzar religious brainwashing), from which Al-Sisi seeks to disentangle and de-program out of the administrations of the state. He rose to office on that claim and until now has produced evidence of genuineness along with impossible odds. It is logical to assume by Francis’ exclusion of Al-Sisi and, for that matter, Coptic Pope Tawadros II, who represents 20 million Christians, that building bridges was not foremost on the mind of Pope Francis. The absence of these key figures in the room does in itself shed light onto the meaning of the meeting; in effect, by this oversight, Francis acknowledges only the deep state.

For Pope Francis, ecumenical zeal is more his quest than a real concern for solutions to the rise of jihad. However, the Vatican’s ecumenism comes at the expense of Egypt’s human rights. This encounter may symbolize for many an affirmation of peace attained through submission. After all, Francis now reached out to El-Tayeb in an apologetic mode for the public “insult” in denouncing Islam’s violence some years back. But Francis intends his appeasement to speak for the entire Christian world.

Last year, remarking upon the slaughter of 21 Coptic Christians by Sunni Muslim jihadists in Libya, Francis told leaders of the Church of Scotland that, “I ask that we encourage each other to go forward with this ecumenism which is giving us strength, the ecumenism of blood.” In that emotional moment Francis capitalized on martyrdom to bind together Christian protestant denominations under the Roman Catholic umbrella which in turn extends a hand to Islam. The pope’s ecumenical fanaticism is blurring the lines of theological differences for the sake of one spiritual conglomerate without much thought to religious minorities preferring to remain divided from certain doctrine and the indoctrinators linked to the throat-slashers of Libya.

In the end, we are left with questions and speculation of what to expect in the aftermath of this meeting. Will the world see less vengeful opposition to the Roman pope’s 12th century crusade? Will we see a new edict declaring that jihad is inappropriate for today’s civilized world or Al-Ahzar denounce ISIS? Will we see a public statement by the two heads condemning the use of religion to commit violence? And finally, might all this potential good we await be based on a designation called “heavenly,” which the pope may have bestowed upon the Sunni sect during this meeting? For many decades, Cairo’s Muslim authorities have sought this label to prove religious equality with the faiths of Christianity and Judaism and have looked to the Roman Catholic pope for this ultimate seal of approval.

04/18/16

Pope’s Marxist Bias in U.S. Campaign Signals New Global Order

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

The liberal media are so in love with Pope Francis that they can’t report the hard truth about his blatant interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and what it represents.

Not only was socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) invited to a conferenceof the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS) on Catholic social teaching and the world situation, he also met personally with Pope Francis.

A secular Jewish atheist, Sanders is not even a member of the Catholic Church. “I am not actively involved with organized religion,” Sanders has said. His brother Larry says, “He is quite substantially not religious.”

Instead, he is a socialist with strong ties, if not membership in, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the same group that backed Barack Obama’s run for president in 2008 and is the U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.

His involvement in the Vatican conference demonstrates how Pope Francis is moving the Roman Catholic Church into the global socialist camp.

Continue reading →

02/23/16

Justice Scalia Was More Catholic Than the Pope

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

On Saturday night, a lunatic by the name of Jason Brian Dalton went on a weekend killing spree in Michigan. The next day, contradicting the official Catholic Catechism, Pope Francis called for the worldwide abolition of the death penalty.

The pope doesn’t have to worry about Dalton getting the electric chair or a lethal injection. Michigan does not have the death penalty, which means Dalton, even if convicted of murder, will be entitled to a life at taxpayers’ expense—complete with three meals a day, free health care and cable TV.

On the same day that the pope spoke out against capital punishment, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a Catholic, was laid to rest. Scalia had said that judges who oppose capital punishment should resign. But that’s not a contradiction of church teaching. Article 2267 of the Catholic catechism, an authoritative compendium of church teaching, says the church “does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives” against criminals.

Scalia said the death penalty is not immoral and noted that support for it has been part of Christian and Catholic tradition in the old and new testaments.

Continue reading →

10/2/15

Media Come to Defense of Killer

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

You may have noticed the news that trust in the media remains at an all-time low. As if to drive that figure even lower, CNN was busy much of Tuesday afternoon trying to spare a killer from the death penalty on the false grounds that Catholicism forbids capital punishment.

No wonder our media are held in such disregard.

CNN’s Vatican senior correspondent John Allen said, “You know, the Catholic Church has a long history of opposing the death penalty.”

False. Section 2267 of the Catholic Catechism says, “The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.”

On a website called Crux, which covers “all things Catholic” and for which Allen serves as associate editor, we find an article noting, “The Church doesn’t teach that the death penalty is immoral, but says it should only be used in rare circumstances when the state has no other way to protect society from violent offenders.”

So why did Allen mislead his CNN audience?

Speaking to anchor Brooke Baldwin, CNN’s Allen went on, “It was as far back as 1969 that Pope Paul VI urged the abolition of the death penalty and every pope since has upheld the same tradition. I think the interesting thing, as you say, is that Pope Francis was just in the United States, got a rousing ovation from Congress, was widely hailed by political authorities up and down the country. This is sort of the first test, Brooke, as to whether those people who were cheering the pope’s presence are also going to be willing to act on his concrete agenda.”

The popes or the bishops and cardinals can have their own personal opinions, but the fact is that the teaching of the church does NOT forbid capital punishment. He knows this.

The Catholic Answers website notes that both the Old Testament (Genesis 9:6) and the New Testament (Romans 13:4) seemingly endorse the death penalty.

The Ellicott’s Bible commentary notes that the phrase “To bear the sword” from Romans seems to be a recognized Greek phrase to express the power of the magistrates. “It is clear from this passage that capital punishment is sanctioned by Scripture,” the commentary says.

So Allen had the facts wrong and wanted “those people who were cheering the pope’s presence” in the U.S. to accept his personal plea but disregard church teaching. This distortion is one reason why people don’t trust the media.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia notes that support for the death penalty has been part of Christian and Catholic tradition in the Old and New Testaments. What’s more, it was morally accepted when the U.S. Constitution was adopted. Scalia recently told a group of students, “If the death penalty did not violate the Eighth Amendment when the Eighth Amendment was adopted, it doesn’t violate it today.”

The Supreme Court has formally ruled that the death penalty is not a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. What’s more, in June, the Court in a 5-4 ruling upheld the use of a particular drug for lethal injection in executions.

In the case at issue on CNN and other media on Tuesday, a woman named Kelly Gissendaner was given the death penalty by lethal injection because she ordered the murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner, in 1997. Her lover, Gregory Bruce Owen, stabbed her husband to death.

The family of Douglas Gissendaner issued a statement, noting, “Kelly planned and executed Doug’s murder. She targeted him and his death was intentional. Kelly chose to have her day in court and after hearing the facts of this case, a jury of her peers sentenced her to death… As the murderer, she’s been given more rights and opportunity over the last 18 years than she ever afforded to Doug who, again, is the victim here. She had no mercy, gave him no rights, no choices, nor the opportunity to live his life. His life was not hers to take.”

Despite media opposition to the death penalty, the majority of Americans still support it. Pew found that 56% favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while 38% are opposed.

Pew did find declining support for the death penalty among Democrats, helping to explain why the Democrats masquerading as journalists in the media oppose it. Pew explained, “Much of the decline in support over the past two decades has come among Democrats. Currently, just 40% of Democrats favor the death penalty, while 56% are opposed. In 1996, Democrats favored capital punishment by a wide margin (71% to 25%).”

Among Republicans it found that 77% favor the death penalty. Among independents the figure was 57% supporting capital punishment.

In addition to their liberal opposition to the death penalty, the media perceived a sexist angle in this case, since Gissendaner “became Georgia’s first female prisoner to be executed in 70 years,” as CNN put it, or “the only woman on Georgia’s death row,” as noted by The Washington Post.

Prior to the pope’s U.S. visit, CNN’s John Allen had written that “Francis knows that the death penalty is controversial in the United States, and that a strong camp in the American Catholic Church passionately defends it. Looking ahead to his trip here in September, this could be one of those moments in which discretion seems the better part of valor. On the other hand, it’s also a chance for Francis to show that he’s serious about the death penalty by saying something he knows full well many Americans, including some members of his own flock, don’t want to hear.”

As noted, Francis did condemn the death penalty before Congress. However, as a result of Georgia carrying out the ultimate punishment in the Kelly Gissendaner case, it appears that the pope’s influence in this area has been shown to be non-existent. He had actually pleaded for Georgia authorities to spare her life in a last-minute letter.

The credibility of the pope is a problem, since his personal views are contrary to church teaching and Georgia authorities ignored him anyway. But John Allen’s misrepresentation of the facts hurt his own credibility and that of the media, whose trustworthiness can only continue to decline.

09/28/15

The Marxist Pope Comes to America

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Pope Francis came to America this past week with great fanfare. Thousands lined up for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see and get near him. I have written on this Pope previously and my firm belief is that he is a Marxist. With all that I have seen and documented, there is no doubt in my mind that this is the case. The Pope embodies all the sought for goals of the Left and he delivers them wrapped in religion and piety.

The Pope has blamed the evils of this world on capitalism and greed. He has used that as a political spring board to preach wealth redistribution and Liberation Theology. His doctrine is communist in many, many respects. Pope Francis is called The Great Reformer and the reason for that is his colossal move to reform the Catholic Church… to modernize it by welcoming in such platforms as homosexuality, abortion, transgenderism, climate change and the embrace of Islam.

Many people have wondered how this Pope came into power. He succeeded two very conservative Popes – John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Benedict left suddenly and retired. That was an exceedingly odd thing to do and whispers spread that there had been a coup within the Vatican. There was no evidence of this until now. The National Catholic Register ran an article a few days ago that mentioned a newly released authorized biography of retired Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels and it rocked the Catholic world.

From the National Catholic Register:

Further serious concerns are being raised about Cardinal Godfried Danneels, one of the papal delegates chosen to attend the upcoming Ordinary Synod on the Family, after the archbishop emeritus of Brussels confessed this week to being part of a radical “mafia” reformist group opposed to Benedict XVI. It was also revealed this week that he once wrote a letter to the Belgium government favoring same-sex “marriage” legislation because it ended discrimination against LGBT groups.

The cardinal is already known for having once advised the king of Belgium to sign an abortion law in 1990, for telling a victim of clerical sex abuse to keep quiet, and for refusing to forbid pornographic, “educational” materials being used in Belgian Catholic schools.

He also once said same-sex “marriage” was a “positive development,” although he has sought to distinguish such a union from the Church’s understanding of marriage.

According to a forthcoming authorized biography on the cardinal co-written by Jürgen Mettepenningen, a former spokesman for Cardinal Danneels’ successor, Archbishop Andre Joseph Leonard, and Karim Schelkens, a Church historian and theologian, the cardinal expressed satisfaction over the disappearance of “discrimination” against LGBT couples after legislation was passed approving same-sex “marriage” in 2003.

The authors of the biography, to be published Sept. 29, reveal that the cardinal wrote a letter on May 28, 2003, to then-Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who at that time was putting together his second government.

In the letter, the cardinal wrote favorably about “one of the last achievements of Verhofstadt’s first governments, the approval of a legal statute for a stable relationship between partners of the same sex.” Verhofstadt’s government introduced same sex-‘marriage’ into Belgium in 2003.

“He wanted to stop discrimination between married heterosexuals and homosexuals who had a long-term relationship,” write the two authors of the biography. “But there should be no confusion between the use of the term ‘marriage’.”

Asked about the letter, Verhofstadt said he did not recall it, but added: “I never had any problem with the cardinal. Our relationship was good.”

Under Verhofstadt’s leadership, from 1999 to 2007, the Belgian government not only introduced same sex “marriage”, but also laws on euthanasia, experiments on human embryos, and IVF.

Despite the poor record of the Belgian Church in resisting these laws, and the country being far smaller than many African countries that have one delegate representing them, Cardinal Danneels, 82, will be one of three Belgian prelates to attend the synod in October.

The Vatican listed him second in importance out of 45 delegates personally chosen by Pope Francis to participate in the upcoming meeting. He also took part in last year’s Extraordinary Synod as a papal delegate.

At the launch of the book in Brussels this week, the cardinal said he was part of a secret club of cardinals opposed to Pope Benedict XVI.

He called it a “mafia” club that bore the name of St. Gallen. The group wanted a drastic reform of the Church, to make it “much more modern”, and for Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to head it. The group, which also comprised Cardinal Walter Kasper and the late Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, has been documented in Austen Ivereigh’s biography of Pope Francis, The Great Reformer.

The Italian Vaticanist Marco Tosatti writes:

The election of Jorge Bergoglio was the result of secret meetings that cardinals and bishops, organized by Carlo Maria Martini, held for years in St. Gallen, Switzerland. This, according to Jürgen Mettepenningen et Karim Schelkens, authors of a newly published biography of the Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who calls the group of cardinals and bishops a “Mafia club”.

Danneels according to the authors, worked for years to prepare for the election of Pope Francis, which took place in 2013. Danneels, moreover, in a video recorded during the presentation of the book in Brussels, admits that he was part of a secret club of cardinals who opposed Joseph Ratzinger. Laughing, he calls it “a Mafia club that bore the name of St. Gallen”.

The group wanted a drastic reform of the Church, much more modern and current, with Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis, as its head. They got what they wanted. Besides Danneels and Martini, the group according to the book were part of the Dutch bishop Adriaan Van Luyn, the German cardinal Walter Kasper and Karl Lehman, the Italian Cardinal Achille Silvestrini and British Basil Hume, among others.

This comes directly from an advance copy of Cardinal Danneels’ official biography, approved by himself.

This is not conspiracy theory or tin foil hat hyperbole… this is what has happened within the confines of the Catholic Church and it explains a great deal. A liberal mafia staged a coup within the Vatican and ousted Benedict, supplanting Francis in his place. These men — Danneels, Van Luyn, Kasper, Lehman, and Hume — all preside over dying churches. And they killed the Benedict papacy. In their view, to save the church and revive it, they necessarily must embrace worldly ideals. The irony there is that the church will indeed die because of this and morph into a one world religion. This to Christians is an abomination.

Below is the first part of the Pope’s address to Congress. I urge you to read all of it and make up your own mind. I will tell you this, he is advocating the embracing of millions of illegal immigrants and taking in 100’s of thousands of Muslim refugees. If America continues to do this, we will destroy ourselves and fall just as Europe is doing. He also pushed climate change although only briefly. The following section, which was in the prepared remarks, was not included in the speech: “Here I think of the political history of the United States, where democracy is deeply rooted in the mind of the American people. All political activity must serve and promote the good of the human person and be based on respect for his or her dignity. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776). If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance.” Obviously, this was discarded because it would have engendered anger among Americans. But, consider that it was in the original speech and once again decide for yourself. My take is that this Pope is anti-capitalist and he’s a Liberation Theology Marxist.

From Time.com:

Pope Francis addressed a joint meeting of Congress in a historic speech Thursday morning.

Here’s a running transcript of his remarks.

I am most grateful for your invitation to address this Joint Session of Congress in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. I would like to think that the reason for this is that I too am a son of this great continent, from which we have all received so much and toward which we share a common responsibility.

Each son or daughter of a given country has a mission, a personal and social responsibility. Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. You are the face of its people, their representatives. You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people. To this you have been invited, called and convened by those who elected you.

Yours is a work which makes me reflect in two ways on the figure of Moses. On the one hand, the patriarch and lawgiver of the people of Israel symbolizes the need of peoples to keep alive their sense of unity by means of just legislation. On the other, the figure of Moses leads us directly to God and thus to the transcendent dignity of the human being. Moses provides us with a good synthesis of your work: you are asked to protect, by means of the law, the image and likeness fashioned by God on every human face.

Today I would like not only to address you, but through you the entire people of the United States. Here, together with their representatives, I would like to take this opportunity to dialogue with the many thousands of men and women who strive each day to do an honest day’s work, to bring home their daily bread, to save money and – one step at a time – to build a better life for their families. These are men and women who are not concerned simply with paying their taxes, but in their own quiet way sustain the life of society. They generate solidarity by their actions, and they create organizations which offer a helping hand to those most in need.

I would also like to enter into dialogue with the many elderly persons who are a storehouse of wisdom forged by experience, and who seek in many ways, especially through volunteer work, to share their stories and their insights. I know that many of them are retired, but still active; they keep working to build up this land. I also want to dialogue with all those young people who are working to realize their great and noble aspirations, who are not led astray by facile proposals, and who face difficult situations, often as a result of immaturity on the part of many adults. I wish to dialogue with all of you, and I would like to do so through the historical memory of your people.

My visit takes place at a time when men and women of good will are marking the anniversaries of several great Americans. The complexities of history and the reality of human weakness notwithstanding, these men and women, for all their many differences and limitations, were able by hard work and self- sacrifice – some at the cost of their lives – to build a better future. They shaped fundamental values which will endure forever in the spirit of the American people. A people with this spirit can live through many crises, tensions and conflicts, while always finding the resources to move forward, and to do so with dignity. These men and women offer us a way of seeing and interpreting reality. In honoring their memory, we are inspired, even amid conflicts, and in the here and now of each day, to draw upon our deepest cultural reserves.

I would like to mention four of these Americans: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.

This year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the guardian of liberty, who labored tirelessly that “this nation, under God, [might] have a new birth of freedom”. Building a future of freedom requires love of the common good and cooperation in a spirit of subsidiarity and solidarity.

Read the rest here…

It is worth noting that while the Pope honored Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., he honored two socialists/communists directly connected to the Catholic Church. Dorothy Day was a social and labor activist and Thomas Merton was a social justice advocate. I find his choices deeply concerning, but not surprising. In fact, I found none of his address unexpected, albeit disappointing. I would hope Americans view this Pope through not just a religious lens, but a political and constitutional lens as well. What he is advocating is a worldwide order. And since when is the difference between good and evil not stark? I have never heard a Pope declare that the difference between the two was not simplistic. In other words, grace and sin are comprised of shades of gray and I could not disagree more. He talks of fundamentalism or radicalism in all faiths, evidently absolving radical Islam for standing out in their butchery. This is not healing, it is the very poison of social justice and inclusiveness that is promoting the genocide of Christians across the globe. The Left has definitely found their Pope.

Pope Francis did not mention Jesus Christ once in his address to Congress. He did not open or close with a prayer either. He did however have John Boehner weeping behind him the whole time. Pathetic.

Then we move on to sheer propaganda. I find this deeply disturbing on a visceral level. Five year-old Sophie Cruz was lifted over the police barricades and ran to the Popemobile on Red Francis’ visit to Washington, DC. The propagandic event had been planned for a year. A similar one took place in Rome with a ten year-old boy. After Sophie hugged the Pope, she gave him a letter begging that he help her illegal parents stay in America. There’s no way you can tell me that both the Pope and Obama did not know of this scripted event. And thousands cheered. America is being played… she’s being strangled with faux faith and with her own Constitutional freedoms. I did not find this endearing or inspiring. What came to mind was child sacrifice and the propaganda of the Third Reich. Sorry, that’s just what it was. This is pure Marxism at play and this is the control of the masses. This is a push to pull at the hearts of Americans to accept an invading force, the erasure of her borders and the negating of her sovereignty. This was so staged, it defies belief. They are using a lovely child to promote a Marxist agenda. It’s despicable.

Of course, President Obama not only schmoozes with the Pope, he compares himself to the pontiff. They are ideological brethren Obama benefited early in his community organizing career from assistance from the Roman Catholic church. Obama has ties to the extreme-left Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) which has underwritten the rabble-rousing efforts of the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, Midwest Academy, Gamaliel Foundation, People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO), and Direct Action and Research Training Institute (DART).

Francis is heavily connected to the American Left. This summer community organizers from PICO and SEIU thugs flew to Rome to collaborate with Vatican officials in advance of the Pope’s visit, as reported by the National Catholic Reporter.

Church doctrine is right out the window. In fact, Pope Francis is rewriting church doctrine. If this is what is meant by ‘modernizing the church,’ I think I’ll pass. The LGBT crowd is in heaven today because the Pope had an openly gay CBS journalist serve as a reader at his Papal Mass. Irony alert… he read out of the book of Isaiah out of the Old Testament. I kid you not. Mo Rocca used to be part of Jon Stewart’s crew. I’m detecting a pattern here. I’m at a loss of words over this one. This is so offensive, I can’t fathom it. This is a betrayal of Christ’s teachings and I find myself simply getting angry over it. As one priest Tweeted, “Should someone who openly mocks Church teaching serve as lector for a Papal Mass?”

Mo Rocca, an American comedian, actor and journalist, well known for his role on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and now a commentator for CBS, admitted his homosexuality during a podcast interview in 2011. Some would argue that the Pope did not know who Rocca was. But Cardinal Timothy Dolan surely knew. Fr. Matthew Ernest, listed in the official program as the archdiocesan Director of Liturgy, must have been very aware as well who they had speaking. Catholics want to know why, out of all the Catholics in New York City, a famous, open homosexual was chosen. Church Militant put it best: “Whatever the truth of the matter may be, Rocca was not picked because he’s a Spanish-speaking Catholic born of Colombian and Italian descent. He was chosen because of his open homosexuality and his support of gay “marriage” by revolutionaries within the archdiocese trying to push change to Church teaching. And Cdl. Dolan, as head of the archdiocese, is responsible for giving final approval.” This is definitely not the Catholic Church that we all knew and revered. Not anymore.

The Marxist Pope came to America last week and preached everything that was anti-American and anti-freedom. He promoted many things that were anti-Christian. If he succeeds in leading the faithful down his path towards a one world religion and church, things will get apocalyptic in numerous ways. In the guise of peace, war is forged. The Pope consorts with communist dictators and tyrants, while innocent Christians perish across the globe. Boehner said of Ted Cruz, to beware of false prophets. That was ludicrous, dirty politics and slanderous. He should have been thinking that when he met with Red Francis instead.

09/28/15

Republicans Help MSNBC Create “Global Citizens”

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Stephen Colbert, Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), the Chair of the Democratic National Committee, were among those appearing at the Global Citizen Festival on September 26, broadcast by cable channel MSNBC.

Incredibly, despite the left-wing slant of the event, Republican Senators Thad Cochran (MS) and Bob Corker (TN) lent their names to the Honorary Congressional Host Committee for the gathering, while Republican Rep. Charlie Dent (PA) was listed as a participant.

Labeled as an effort to eradicate poverty by 2030, the movement to create “global citizens” is actually designed to make the U.N. into a world government to manage a transition to a new worldwide economic system. It’s being called “sustainable development” but amounts to a system of global socialism—redistributing wealth from the United States to the rest of the world.

By the standards of this group, ordinary American citizens are considered greedy consumers, who, according to socialist presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), have too many choices of deodorant and sneakers. He believes a central government should decide on what should be produced and for whom.

The Global Citizen Festival takes this theory of centralized planning to the international level.

In an Orwellian version of “Uncle Sam Wants You,” MSNBC had announced that “MSNBC wants YOU to become a Global Citizen.” Their live coverage of the event, which was held in New York City’s Central Park, was hosted by Alex Wagner, Willie Geist and Janet Mock, and included performances by Pearl Jam and Beyoncé.

Officially, the Global Citizen Festival was supposed to promote 17 Global Goals, also known as Sustainable Development Goals, including that of taking “climate action” to address “climate change.” This was not defined in specific terms, but in December the U.N. holds a climate conference intended to produce a new treaty, which Obama supporters say he plans to implement through executive action, bypassing Congress.

When Pope Francis spoke to the United Nations on Friday, member countries officially “adopted” these Global Goals, which are supposed to be implemented by 2030.

However, the U.S. Congress has not been consulted or asked for a vote on the global agenda, and Republican leaders have been silent about the United Nations attempting to implement on a global basis what Congress has not passed in the form of legislation.

Republican Congressional leaders, including House Speaker John Boehner, gave Pope Francis a chance to promote aspects of the global agenda when he spoke to the Congress on Thursday. In his address, the pope referred to his encyclical on climate change, “Laudato Si’,” and urged action “to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity.” He added, “I am convinced that we can make a difference and I have no doubt that the United States—and this Congress—have an important role to play.”

Yet Congress has not been called upon to accept, or reject, the “global goals” adopted by the Obama administration at the U.N.

Despite congressional silence, or acquiescence in the cases of Republican Senators Cochran and Corker and Rep. Dent, the U.N.’s goal of global socialism is out in the open, although few in the media even mention it. However, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, has said publicly that the plan is to begin “the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, [changing] the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” The period 2015 to 2030 is when this transition from oil and gas is supposed to occur. The plan is nothing less than the overthrow of the global capitalist system that is powered by the use of energy and resources for the benefit of humankind.

Veering off into another cause dear to the hearts of the far-left, among the individuals providing on-stage video messages and commitments, was Juan Manuel Santos, the President of Colombia who just signed a “peace deal” in Havana with the Colombian narco-terrorists known as the FARC, who have been waging war on his country for 40 years.

Santos was actually photographed making the deal while holding hands with Cuban President Raúl Castro and a top FARC commander.

Former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe called the deal a surrender to terrorism and says it gives Marxist guerrillas an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves and infiltrate the political system.

With “peace” breaking out all over without a peep from Republicans in Congress, those using Google Chrome as a search engine on September 25 found a notice on the bottom of the Internet page urging people to click on a link to learn more about the U.N.’s global goals to “end poverty, climate change, and injustice.” That link led to the U.N.’s “sustainable development goals.”

As the channel leading the effort, MSNBC declared that through its partnership with the Global Citizen Festival it was “committed to connecting our audience with the stories and values that bring purpose and action to our global community.” This clearly means more media manipulation and liberal bias, in order to make the U.N., a body always plagued by corruption, appear to be worthwhile.

In addition to MSNBC, other media properties sponsoring or broadcasting the event included NBC News and CNBC.

Additional corporate partners include The Huffington Post, Yahoo!, YouTube, and Wikipedia, which together have the ability to influence and propagandize the American people with pro-U.N. messages.

Not to be outdone, movie theaters around the country and the world promoted the so-called “Global Goals Campaign” through a 60-second ad narrated by Liam Neeson (as the voice of God), and featuring animated creatures (as U.N. officials) calling on the nations of the world to “defeat climate change.”

But that’s not all. “We’re working to get the Global Goals onto every website and billboard, broadcast on every TV station and radio station, in every cinema and classroom, pinned to every community noticeboard and sent to every mobile phone,” the movement announced.

So look for America’s young people to get indoctrinated about the “global goals,” perhaps through Common Core.

We are truly witnessing a massive international campaign, using most major organs of the media, to “fundamentally transform” the world.

But there’s more. While socialist Bernie Sanders has been quick to attack the “billionaire class” on the campaign trail, those behind this new global citizen movement being put at the service of the U.N. proudly insisted that a grand total of 137 billionaires had “pledged to use their money for good” in the future, undoubtedly by giving more money to far-left and pro-U.N. causes.

It was announced that something called the “Giving Pledge,” defined as “a campaign that encourages the wealthiest people in the world to give most of their wealth to philanthropic causes,” had “been signed by 137 billionaire or former billionaire individuals or couples.” It was originally announced in 2010 by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was among the “notable younger pledgers.”

Zuckerberg was also among the attendees at Friday night’s White House state dinner for Xi Jingping, the President of Communist China.

This crowd has apparently decided to ignore the lack of human freedom in China, and regards the communist regime as a trustworthy player to bring about a new global state.

09/27/15

Taking on The Pope

09/25/15

Is the Pope Committing a Sin of Omission?

By: Merrill McCarthy

Is the Pope Making Money Moving Bodies into America?

This week marks the historic visit of Pope Francis and his speech before a joint session of Congress. To showcase charity and humility, he is choosing to dine with the homeless rather than attending a luncheon with Congressional leaders, and is being ferried around in a tiny Fiat rather than a limousine.

The optics and the message are registering, but are they misleading?

The Pope’s message to Congress was clear. We are all refugees somewhere in our backgrounds and it important to do everything possible to make the refugee’s lives easier and we must welcome them to our midst. He has already gone on record in Europe announcing the Vatican will welcome two refugee families and he wants every diocese to follow suit.

But maybe the Pope should embrace transparency and divulge the obvious conflict of interest he has when asking for more help for refugees. The Catholic Church profits financially.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is one of the nine contractors that handle all the placements in the Refugee Resettlement (RR) program which has been underway for thirty five years in the U.S.A. On their website, you will find they take credit for handling the placement of 30% of the refugees that come here every year.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is well paid for their efforts. The USCCB is paid with tax dollars from U.S. citizens who are in the dark about how this program works. People are ill-informed about a program that has been going on since the 1980’s with little-to-no oversight from the elected officials in DC who rubber stamp and renew it on an annual basis. There are no public hearings and little publicity until people wake up one day to find their town has been flooded by refugees who are very dependent on the community for schools, public safety, medical care, translators and a myriad of other needs.

Refugee Resettlement in the U.S. Is a billion dollar a-year industry. The contractors are paid by the head to get refugees set up in a community. Once this brief orientation of just a few months is over, the refugees are on their own, but not really, because the orientation period has been used by the resettlement contractor to line up all available federal and state welfare programs to act as a safety net. It is so much of a safety net that it has had the effect of making people dependent on government handouts and many remain on welfare indefinitely.

Because the refugee problem is so lacking in transparency, the stakeholders, the U.S. taxpayers have not had an opportunity to make their voices heard. There has never been a public examination or debate about the most desirable strategies to deal with refugees. Many of the best solutions are being overlooked because people don’t even know enough to ask the right questions. Those who profit from the Refugee Resettlement program tend to be guarded and secretive. The resettlement industry spends time and effort to strategize how they will deal with “pockets of resistance” or in other words, the private citizens who have a group of strangers dumped on their doorstep and choose to resist. This is a global program with the UN in charge and calling the tune, and yet it affects every taxpayer for not only the original placements, but also the ongoing needs of a population of immigrants that rarely become totally self-sufficient and integrated within the community. There is a marked lack of assimilation and recent refugees do not even pay lip service to assimilation.

If the Pope would ever hope to have moral authority on the refugee question, he must divulge his clear conflict of interest as a paid contractor through the participation of the Conference of Catholic Bishops. This is not charity. It is big business with a big payday as evidenced by six figure salaries for the contractors and high priced lobbyists in Washington DC. The idea that the Pope would come to this country, always top-of-the-list in charitable donations, and lecture citizens who may have been negatively affected by a flood of both legal and illegal immigrants, is offensive in light of the Catholic Church’s obvious financial stake in keeping the RR program in place and growing.

What can you do? Go to Ann Corcoran’s excellent site, and learn all you can. Be sure to sign the petition that calls for local control for refugee resettlement linked to her site and share it with all your contacts. Talk to your elected officials at every level. Encourage them to get up to speed and start to exercise some local control. We cannot allow our lives to be impacted by officials at the UN rather than our elected officials. We should call a halt to RR until we can study the problem for the best solutions. If you just remember “local” rather than “global” as the guiding principle you will be on the right track. We do not want influence from the less-than-truthful globalists at the UN or the Vatican.

09/25/15

Pope Lays Out Global Marxist Agenda

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Socialist Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is ecstatic over the pope’s address to Congress. In a message to his supporters, titled, “Why we must listen to Pope Francis,” he was particularly pleased with the fact that in his address to Congress, “Pope Francis spoke of Dorothy Day, who was a tireless advocate for the impoverished and working people in America. I think it was extraordinary that he cited her as one of the most important people in recent American history.” Day was a Marxist apologist for socialism and communist regimes. We covered this territory in my column, “With Pope’s Help, U.N. Bypasses Congress on Global Socialism.”

With Republican congressional leaders under fire from conservatives for cowering in the face of a Democratic Party onslaught, all that they needed was to roll out the welcome mat for a Marxist pope who would put them further on the defensive. But that’s exactly what happened.

Phyllis Bennis of the Marxist Institute for Policy Studies was right: “Pope Francis’ address to Congress was almost certainly not what John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and other congressional leaders had in mind when they invited the pope to speak.” Speaking for many on the left, including the pro-abortion lobby,she said, “His clear call to end the death penalty was the only example he gave of protecting the sanctity of life: Even amid a raging congressional debate over Planned Parenthood, he never mentioned abortion.”

The list of left-wing causes in the pope’s address was extensive. Bennis noted “his calls to protect the rights of immigrants and refugees, end the death penalty, preserve the planet from the ravages of climate change, and defend the poor and dispossessed.” And then there was the attack on the policies of peace through strength, which keep us free. “Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly determined to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world,” the pope said. He then asked, “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?”

He should ask that of Vladimir Putin.

Most Americans understand the rationale for legal immigrants. But illegal aliens who commit crimes are something else. The pope seems not to recognize a difference.

The death penalty is a punishment reserved for heinous killers. But he doesn’t mention abortion, which has taken tens of millions of innocent lives. This seemed strange to conservative Catholics, who are starting to come to grips with the fact that this is a “progressive” pope, who is not hostile toward what anti-communist Pope John Paul II called the “culture of death” through population control and reduction.

Francis’s answer on the arms control issue was to challenge the United States alone and blame its spending on national defense on monetary motives. “Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood,” said the pope. “In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.”

That’s a slander of our brave fighting men and women, many of whom have given their lives or sacrificed their limbs to bring freedom to people around the word, especially Muslims in such places as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Against the global Jihad, what does the pope expect the U.S. to do? Disarm?

Praising “his uniquely progressive papal perspective,” far-left radio host Amy Goodman noted that “The pope has been frank in his criticism of much of the core of U.S. society: capitalism, consumerism, war and the failure to confront climate change.” This is a fraud, of course. They used to warn us against global cooling. It then became global warming and now climate change. The cause always changes until they find something to lure people into schemes for bigger government and higher taxes.

Recognizing the socialism of the pope, Al Jazeera posted an article, “Bernie Sanders, the pope and the moral imperative of systemic change,” by Gar Alperovitz, the co-chair with James Gustave Speth of The Next System Project. Speth, former administrator of the United Nations Development Program, put his name on its 1994 “Human Development Report,” which openly promoted global taxes for world government.

The “Next System” is another name for the replacement of global capitalism by global socialism.

Those endorsing this project, in addition to Alperovitz and Speth, include:

Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University
Gerald Hudson, Service Employees International Union
Annie Leonard, Greenpeace USA
Robert B. Reich, University of California at Berkeley
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Barbara Ehrenreich, Author
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Columbia University
Gerald Torres, Cornell University Law School
Larry Cohen, Communications Workers of America
Julie Matthaei, Cornerstone Cohousing
Leo Gerard, United Steelworkers
John James Conyers, Jr., 13th District, Michigan
Bill McKibben, 350.org
Saskia Sassen, Columbia University
Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York
Manuel Pastor, University of Southern California
Phillip Thompson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Oliver Stone, Academy Award-winning Filmmaker
Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK
Timothy E. Wirth, United Nations Foundation and Better World Fund
Sarita Gupta, Jobs With Justice
Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Van Jones, The Dream Corps & Rebuild The Dream
Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, California State University
Daniel Ellsberg, Author
Herman E. Daly, University of Maryland
Ralph Nader, Consumer Advocate, Author, Former Presidential Candidate
Ai-jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance
Anna Galland, MoveOn.org Civic Action
Danny Glover, Actor, Social Activist
Tom Morello, Musician, Activist
Jill Stein, 2012 Green Party Presidential Nominee
Nancy Fraser, New School for Social Research

“We have fundamental problems because of fundamental flaws in our economic and political system,” the New Project proclaims. “The crisis now unfolding in so many ways across our country amounts to a systemic crisis. Today’s political economic system is not programmed to secure the wellbeing of people, place and planet. Instead, its priorities are corporate profits, the growth of GDP, and the projection of national power.”

The group goes on, “Large-scale system change is needed but has until recently been constrained by a continuing lack of imagination concerning social, economic and political alternatives. There are alternatives that can lead to the systemic change we need.”

Yes there are. They are called socialism and communism. But they would rather call it “sustainable development,” in order to confuse people about how the American way of life is being targeted for extinction.