Miracles we haz them

5 ,,

,,,Bishop Sheen was a popular Catholic speaker who had his own TV show, which you can still find on you tube. A bit flamboyant for today's laid back media, but very informative and often very funny.  Lots of people in the USA think he was a saint, so most are happy that he might be declared one by the church.

Trivia fact about him:  Martin Sheen chose his name for his stage name. 

But coming back to the baby who lived: as a doc I see why this incident is called a miracle, but, is this a miracle? such things happen in medicine although very rare....

the medical explanation is that the hemoglobin in babies carries oxygen differently so prolonged lack of oxygen is not as dangerous as it is for adults, but betting a baby back after a one hour delay is unusual, and getting a child who recovered fully after this is sort of a miracle too, so I guess you could call it a miracle.

as a doc, I did have a similar case of full recovery of a baby.

when I worked in rural Africa 40 years ago. Premature babies usually didn't survive, and the only incubator was a wooden box with a glass lid, where we controlled the temperature with light bulbs and supplied oxygen via a tube.

One Christmas, we had a  three pound baby who was struggling to survive.,

When she started gasping, the nurse called me to help. 

We increased her oxygen and started to stimulate her, rubbing her to encourage her to breathe. But then suddenly she gasped and died: i.e. turned pale and went weak. So we started CPR. 

She did come back but her heartbeat kept going off and on and she was not breathing. Finally, after about a half hour, she again  turned pale and lacked a heartbeat, 

so since nothing was working I figured it was time  to do something illogical,  I instructed the nurse: Petronilla, baptize her. So she was baptized Mary,,, at which point she started breathing and moving a bit and within five minutes she was breathing on her own and looked normal.

A miracle from being hit with cold water on her head? I don't know. But she did recover and eventually went home.

Now there is another part to this story.

In Africa, unless both parents were baptized Catholic and married in the church, we did not baptize babies because their parents might not bring them up in the church. So the local priest, hearing what I had done, was very annoyed, especially since the father was the local shaman and not a Christian. ]

But as I  explained: well, we tried everything else so I figured it was time to ask for a miracle. 

 LOL

In medicine, we do see a lot of coincidences: people who should live but who die, but also those who we thought would die but survived...

when I was in medical school one teacher pointed this out, ,and said that was why few doctors were pious, but most did believe in a higher power and an ultimate reason for all the things we saw, both good and bad.

Family news

 We held Kuya's birthday party so we have been busy.

He is larger than the average Filipino, so I checked out the used clothing merchants a few times in the last two weeks. I ended up buyint 12 polo type shirts and figure half will fit him. The rest he will give to staff or to me since I wear large shirts as tunics or to sleep in.

Joy is busy teaching business to the farmers in her coop and working with the government outreach. Farmers tend to be poor and their kids are leaving the farm land for better jobs, so the government is trying to upgrade their ability to raise crops that make a profit, for example organic rice and vegetables, which Joy helps by doing the marketing for the coop.

Myself, I had been weak and home bound for six months then suddenly got my ability to walk etc improved last week. I even managed to shop at the mall and go to church, something I had not done for months.

we are in the cool season, and the heat will sart next month, and won't  get better til the monsoon hits in late May, when the crops will be planted.

Our crops from the winter season have almost been harvested, so Kuya has been improving the house to keep the staff busy and employed until it is time to work at the farm.

more conspiracy theories anyone?

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when Rogan calls something evil, one wonders where are all the clergy in this? 

Cardinal Vigano says it''s members include some in the Vatican. article from last year, before the files were released:

PBS assures us he abused girls but wasn't part of a sex abuse

ring. 

Prosecuation memos, case summaries and other documents made public in the department's latest release of Epstein-related records show that FSome allegations couldn't be verified, investigators wroteBI agents and federal prosecutors diligently pursued potential coconspirators. ...No videos or photos showed Epstein victims being sexually abused, none showed any males with any of the nude females, and none contained evidence implicating anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey wrote in an email for FBI officials last year

 one does wonder what would have been found if these files had been examined years ago.

One hopes no one starts a war to distract the public from this corruption.

Jimmy Lai

 Publisher Jimmy Lai, a voice for freedom in Hong Kong, has been sentenced to a long prison sentence by China.

Lai founded Apple Daily in 1995, a news publication which became particularly critical of Hong Kong’s government in the wake of a controversial 2019 bill to extradite locals to the mainland for trial in political cases. 

The bill caused widespread protests and demonstrations, and Lai was arrested in 2020.,,,

he wasn't the only one jailed:

Six former Apple Daily staffers, and two human rights activists were also sentenced on Monday. Lai’s codefendants received jail sentences between six and 10 years. The convicted journalists are publisher Cheung Kim-hung, associate publisher Chan Pui-man, editor-in-chief Ryan Law, executive editor-in-chief Lam Man-chung, executive editor-in-chief responsible for English news Fung Wai-kong and editorial writer Yeung Ching-kee. 

... After Lai’s sentence was announced on Monday, the UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said Lai was a victim of a “politically motivated prosecution,” while prime minister Keir Starmer has said he had raised Jimmy Lai’s case during his visit to China last month.

Jimmy Lai is a UK citizen,  

 Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), chairman for the House Select Committee on China, said in a statement that if President Xi Jinping “wants to improve his relationship with the United States, freeing Jimmy Lai is where he needs to start.”

 

Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign affairs spokesperson Anitta Hipper said that the EU “deplores” Lai’s sentencing and called for his “immediate and unconditional release.” 

 

Calling Amerlia: The church needs you

  one exiled bishop who is still in good standing has posted an essay  telling the bishops in the US to go back to being pastors 

(this is) A real emergency – measured not in feelings, but in facts. An emergency measured by silence where there must be answers. In tolerance where there must be correction. In shepherds who refuse to name wolves, while those who simply want to guard the flock are treated as a problem. 

 Let me be very clear: this is not about personalities.... When men who openly contradict Catholic teaching are tolerated, promoted, even celebrated – while those who hold fast to tradition are restricted, sidelined, or ignored – something is upside down.... This is not about one group. It is not about one society. It is not about one bishop, or one letter, or one unanswered request. It is about a pattern – a pattern where orthodoxy is treated as dangerous, tradition is treated as suspect, and fidelity is portrayed as rigidity while error is praised as pastoral sensitivity....

 

.... I am not calling for rebellion. I am calling for honesty. I am not calling for chaos. I am calling for courage. I am not calling anyone to abandon the Church. I am calling the Church to remember herself....

 

Pray for bishops who will speak even when it costs them everything. Pray for priests who will remain faithful even when abandoned. Pray for Rome – not that it will manage this crisis, but that it will answer it. And pray for yourself. Because the line is already there.

*Why was he exiled? I am not sure but maybe because when a sports team honored transvestites who ridicule Catholic nuns and Catholicism, he led a prayerful protest against this (even though it wasn't his dioceses). Can't have that can we. It goes against ecclesiastical protocol...

. The local bishop, who is a good bishop, complained about the episode but also complained about the protest where people prayed, making one wonder about the backstory, but never mind. And this news story did note that some bishops sent them "Nasty letters".

Yes, it is so bad that one longs for voices that are actually noticed instead of the McCarrick bishops and hertical priests who usually get all the headlines.

 EcclesIsSaved satire blog suggests what the church might need is it's own Amelia:

Here she is with a bishop who is now in charge of regulating Catholic dogma, and whose nickname is "kissy" because he is most famous for writing a soft porn book on the art of kissing.

Well, one hopes some youngster who knows how to make AI will take up this theme, and maybe this will get some notice from the blockheads who are busy pushing synodality, which resemble the Marxist inspired meeting tactic that I remember from the sixties,  that let activists take over the meeting and silence those who go against their agenda.

Sigh.

So what can one do if one is a retired little old lady who is pretty well confined to her home due to age?

 We have our rosaries and are praying.

making the church into an NGO (and making lots of money)

 LINK

article explains how the Bishops conference is making money from helping illegal immigration.

The USCCB acts as a Prime Contractor for the federal government. ...

for example 

 Take Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. In Fiscal Year 2024, they reported $101 million in revenue. A staggering $82 million—or 81%—came from government grants. The institution has a fiduciary interest in the continuation of the border crisis. If the flow of migrants stops, the contracts dry up. If the contracts dry up, the budget collapses.

Monetizing Debt: ...The system doesn’t just pay the Church to host them; it pays the Church to collect debt from them. Under the State Department’s refugee program, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) provides interest-free travel loans to refugees to fly them to the United States. Before they board the plane, refugees sign a “Promissory Note” agreeing to repay this debt. Here is the part they don’t tell you in the Sunday bulletin: The USCCB and its affiliates act as the debt collectors. ... The more debt they collect from the poor, the more revenue they keep for themselves.

  then they psychologically manipulate you with guilt to support this and look the other way at the corruption implicit in this policy.

The USCCB has mastered the art of weaponizing parish piety to protect its federal revenue stream. This is done through a sophisticated internal propaganda machine known as Justice for Immigrants. When you see a “National Migration Week” banner at your parish, or hear a homily about “welcoming the stranger” that sounds suspiciously like a World Economic Forum talking point, you are witnessing a downloaded “Action Kit.” These kits are explicit. The Missionaries of Hope Toolkit instructs parish leaders to “Bring elements of your community’s popular religion... to the forefront.” They cynically use beloved figures like Mother Cabrini as mascots. They weaponize Our Lady of Guadalupe to emotionally blackmail the faithful.

But this part is into conspiracy theory stuff, so I can't vouch if it is true. 

,,.. Even if you refuse to donate to the “Second Collection” for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD)—which was exposed for funding groups promoting abortion and LGBT ideology—you are still paying for it. Every parish pays a “Cathedraticum” or “Parish Assessment” tax to the diocese—usually 10-15% of the tithe. This money funds the “Social Justice Offices” that lobby for mass migration.....  ...

...Then came November 20, 2025. In a move that sent shockwaves through the Complex, the Department of Homeland Security finally pulled the plug. They issued a Notice of Suspension and Proposed Debarment to Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV)—the operation run by Sister Norma Pimentel. The letter was brutal. It didn’t cite theology; it cited fraud. DHS auditors found “sweeping inaccuracies” and “large gaps” in migrant records. They found over 248 instances of billing violations. This was the smoking gun. It proved that the “humanitarian” shield was masking a lack of accountability for hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

 

The End of Prophetic Distance Here is the hard truth that the USCCB doesn’t get. You cannot be a prophet and a contractor at the same time. A prophet stands outside the system, calling it to repentance. A contractor stands inside the system, cashing the check. By hip-joining itself to the federal migration apparatus, the American Church has traded its moral authority for bureaucratic relevance. It has become a logistics partner for a policy that—as the whistleblowers testified—often ends in the exploitation of the very children it claims to protect.

We are witnessing a profound identity crisis, where the Church is becoming indistinguishable from the government agencies it serves. 

Excuse me, but when I read about certain bishops condemning the government without putting things into context, I recognize those bishops are high on the gay friendly axis of McCarrick bishops.who protect their minions and don't recognize we layfolk see what they are doing.

any cynical Catholic knows this: We saw similar word games to protect priest predators in the past. My favorite: when our bishop claimed he had had no reports of pedophilia on his watch, yet one of my patients tearfully related how her husband helped pressure a family not to report their son's abuse by a local priest to the police. We also had editorials in the local Catholic paper praising the gay friendly priests as an exanple of tolerance and charity: These priests served in a local college town that later found a massive pedophilia scandal related to their football team outreach to poor children, 

The care of those fleeing to richer areas in times of war and mass migration is an old problem for the church: St Gregory the Great confronted it 1500 years ago.

actually I would allow those willing to work and check they are not being exploited: Ronald Reagan gave an amnesty to do this so Trump can do it too. 

But first there is a need to clear up the corruption and fake politicization using outside fund to train protests, where the naive are being used as propaganda as part of the Colour revolution against Trump. These tactics are well known but only work when ordinary people support them (they didn't work against Duterte even with the CIA Omidyar group funding news sites that were widely praised and quoted in the western media to blacken his name: But ordinary Pinoys knew the truth, and hey here they will only become paid protesters if they don't care or if they support the issue).

 Trump is trying to clear out criminals and the gangs and stop those with fake NGO and charity and clinics that are stealing money under the guise of helping others.

yes there are many good people out there, and most who do work for NGOs and churches are honest and hardworking.

but even Jesus knew about how the crooked can figure out sophisticated ways to steal money or divert money meant for charity and churches into their own pockets.

Sigh

 

catholic workd report discussion of the confusion of when the bishops release statements on political issues as if they were about the church's moral issues.

conspiracy theories? Or secret histories? oh my

What

and am I the only one who sees the fraud and corruption in institutions/NGOs supposed to be helping people the equivalent of the corrupt monasteries that were shut down not just by Protestant princes in Germany and England, but By one of the Catholic monarchs in Austria/Hungry empire?

as for invading churches: 

This reminds me of an incident in Africa, when one of our priests (a holy, humble priest but a bit of a nerd) had his mass interupted by a semi naked woman shouting and cursing and trying to hit people. He approached her and shouted for the demon to leave her, at which point she fainted, and when she came to, she was normal. Later he asked me if this might have been demon possession or a medical problem. Myself I thougt it sounded like hysteria reaction, which his order interrupted the fugue state and so she recovered, but hey it might have been a demon....So I wonder what would have happened if the minister had ordered Satan to leave when Don Lemon and his friends came into a church to terrorize the congregation. 

Probably nothing, since they were radicals following orders, not in a fugue state.

Well, anyway, it is not hysterical radicals that are the problem, but crazies with weapons, which alas happens too when crazy people pick up vibest and think acting out hatred by aggression against the one they hate is okay.

Oh well

but to change the subject: Here is what was going on under Biden when fundies and trad Catholics were made the enemy of the state: