since the Obama/Axelrod types are manipulating the media complaining that a tweet showing Trumpieboy as faithhealer to the world is blasphemy because he is posting a meme showing him as Jesus, well, you know. all the good Catholic reporters and followers on Twitter are busy echoing the same line...,
Blasphemy!
Why does this sound familiar?
it isn't as if it hasn't been done before: except not as a criticism but to praise their messiah:
"... a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama" - Barack Obama Lebanon, New Hampshire. January 7, 2008.
a typical example:
President Barack Obama pause as he speaks at the close of the Fiscal Responsibility Summit, Monday, Feb. 23, 2009, in the Old Executive Office. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Leo is only doing his job, saying peace peace peace!
who could be against world peace!
and the Catholic trad and others trying to curry favor are busy telling Catholics it is a sin to criticize the Pope.
Really? Tell Catherine of Sienna that.
.................................
Seriously: The Language guy who is from Venezuela and knows a little about South American left wing Catholics connects the dots.
In a second incident, also that year, Pegoraro appeared to support two members of the academy who publicly favored assisted suicide as a tactic to prevent the legalization of voluntary euthanasia in Italy.
“We are in a specific context, with a choice to be made between two options, neither of which — assisted suicide or euthanasia — represents the Catholic position,” Pegoraro told the French Catholic newspaper La Croix.
But stating that he believed some kind of law was a foregone conclusion, he said that of the two possibilities, “assisted suicide is the one that most restricts abuses because it would be accompanied by four strict conditions: the person asking for help must be conscious and able to express it freely, have an irreversible illness, experience unbearable suffering, and depend on life-sustaining treatment such as a respirator.”
That last part is a lie. Respirators are extraordinary treatment, and under Catholic moral laws since Pius XII time you can stop or refuse extraordinary treatment. But in today's bioethics, it means you can starve a person to death by calling feeding a medical treatment.
As for guidelines meaning safety, anyone familiar with the literature knows that is a lie.
This is not a complicated matter, and Europe and now the US is sliding into a Brave New World of eugenics and euthanasia. But the Pope's appointed expert isn't bothered by that. And of course, the Democratic party in the US is busy supporting politicians who will pass these laws. But don't condemn murdering grandmom (or your grandkid) because if you don't go along with the entire seamless garment political agenda of what is now the Democratic party, you aren't allowed to say you are Catholic.
one exiled bishopwho 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.
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?
I have mentioned Chinese aggression and shenanigans against the Philippines in past posts (building artificial islands, attacking Philippine fishermen and more recentl Coast Guard ships, even within the 200 mile economic zone, the Chinese casinos with many military age men working there, the Chinese mayor who pretended she was Filipino, and all those Chinese students who instead of studying at major universities just happen to be studying in a minor college in the north of Luzon, near to military bases that are protecting the strait between the Philippines and Taiwan).
May 24, 2025: In January Filipino security forces arrested about a dozen Chinese and Filipino citizens and charged them all with spying for China. Some of the accused had been caught while using drones, cameras and other electronic instruments to survey Filipino infrastructure and military installations. The alleged Chinese spies were particularly eager to study bases and areas that American forces would use when they regularly visited to train with their Filipino counterparts.
Read the whole thing for more details.
One problem is that there are thousands of Filipinos working in China; Most of them are in Macao or in Hong Kong, not the mainland, and most (including some of our relatives/friends) are caregivers, nurses, teachers, etc. So these people are open to being arrested or used for human hostages if war happens against Taiwan
Please also note what this article says about Chinese spies, and all the Chinese gangsters, many smuggling or in the drug trade:
The Chinese gangs conceal their illegal operations among the legitimate ones. The Philippines has long had a major corruption problem and the Chinese took advantage of that to pay off the right people in areas where they operated. Since none of the victims were Filipino, the Chinese operations were seen has beneficial to the Philippines and Filipinos. It required federal Filipino intervention.
These actions have been more frequent as allies of the Philippines complain that Chinese espionage operations are regularly traced back to the Philippines.
There have been several crackdowns, but the Chinese gangs were prepared for this and sacrificed some portions of their operations while the majority went silent and unseen.. The Chinese government assists the gangs as long as the gangsters provide support for Chinese espionage efforts. This is a problem that has defied numerous efforts to eliminate it. Now you know why...
I wonder if one of the reasons that the internationalist elites and CIA hated Duterte was because he was going after the drug gangs,
Coast guard ships are not usually heavily armed but the Chinese ships are increasingly being seen equipped with water cannons, extra searchlights and equipment for grappling with other ships. These tools are used to interfere with foreign fishing ships and transports that go to parts of the South China Sea that China has declared Chinese territory, even though other nations have a stronger legal claim.
Using water cannons, bright searchlights to blind the crews of other ships and aggressive maneuvering to include grappling with smaller foreign ships and forcibly moving them the foreign ships are persuaded to back off.
The Chinese coast guard vessels also use these tactics against foreign warships and if the foreigners shoot back the Chinese can declare themselves the victims of an unprovoked attack and call in more fire power.
,,,,,
in other words, they are practicing on how to block shipping through the area, which is a vital shipping route from the Indian Ocean to East Asian countries.
and of course control of this sea lane can let them block supplies going to Taiwan.
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in other news, China vs the Catholic church is heating up again.
China used bribes to crooked Cardinals in the Vatican to let them take over the underground Catholic church there.
But the agreement is up for renewal, and everyone is hoping that the new pope will refuse to extend the agreement, especially since of course China has been breaking the agreement.
Pope Leo will have to decide whether to continue renewing the accord. There have been some apparent violations on the Beijing side, with some unilateral appointments that occurred without papal consent.
The issue came to a head just before the conclave that elected Leo, when the Chinese church proceeded with the preliminary election of two bishops, a step that comes before official consecration.
...Relations had long been fraught over China’s insistence on its exclusive right to name bishops as a matter of national sovereignty, while the Vatican insisted on the pope’s exclusive right to name the successors of the original Apostles.
the argument about secular authorities appointing bishops essentially is about if the state controls the church, or is the church separate from the state. This argument goes back to the early church, and came to a head in the early middle ages: Wikipedia article
why is this important? Well, if you remember back to the days of the fall of communism, many of these revolutions were led by or inspired by the churches. Here in the Philippines, the People Power/EDSA revolution against Marcos I was led by our Cardinal.
So the church as an independent institution is dangerous to tyrants.
So maybe Pope Leo is sending a signal that he won't bot to tyrants?
Robert Royal, best known as a commenter in EWTN's Papal Posse, on the Catholic Thing discusses the idea that everything is falling apart, and the worry that many Catholic have right now that the anti Pope faction will take over the church at the next conclave and make the church into an NGO to serve the NWO/Reset of the puppet masters and destroy the holiness aspect of the church, morphing it into activism as the reason to be.
note: I am an ex missionary and support this activism, but it ignores that people serve God in the mundane duties of their daily lives and that all of us, even those who work in the trenches need the nourishment of God's grace.
By making the church into a mere NGO to do good stuff results in a church that starves the soul by removing the sacraments and idea of holiness that give us the strength to do this work in the face of seeing hardships and tragedies every day
It is like removing sex out of marriage: Yes, marriage needs work and cooperation, but without the spark of love, it is a barren thing without roots.
This futurechurch was (ironically) foretold in Brian Moore's TV film Catholics where the liberation theology priest has orders to shut down a small monastery celebrating the Latin mass.
Wikipedia summary. Hmm... sounds like what Francis was tiptoeing and letting his minions do but not quite destroying the church. But lots of believing Catholics worry that the next Pope will not be so timid...
But then Royal reminds us:
Because freedom with fidelity, justice tempered by mercy, and above all truth may seem to have perished under the cold snows of sin and evil, but they never die. They’re at worst in hibernation until circumstances and our efforts enable them to put forth green shoots and produce their proper fruits once again.
If we truly believe that the Lord of Creation is also the Lord of History – a sacred history that the world does not acknowledge but has, nevertheless changed everything – then the current crisis takes on a different appearance....*(it is) the spirit of hope we must maintain in the coming days – a supreme confidence in the seed beneath the snow – and let Divine Providence take care of the rest.
this reminded me of this scene that was not included in the final cut of the Hobbit: and ironically is not in Tolkien but is pure Peter Jackson: That the acorn carried by Bilbo is a sign of hope for the future.
but it is, of course, an example of Tolkien's theme of hope: not the hope of short term success, but the hope that in the long run good will prevail. As this Tolkienology essay insists:
Estel... is hope without evidence. It’s rooted not in optimism, but in trust—trust in the goodness that is deeper than the shadow.
Estel says, even if everything fails, I still believe there is meaning. I still choose to walk....
Estel does not mean “I know it will get better.”
It means: I will walk anyway.
Even here.
Even now.
Even in the ruins.
This is not about ignoring the darkness.
It’s about refusing to let it define you.
when the movie Gangs of New York came out, it was about the Irish trying to survive against prejudice in the slums of NYC.
The irony? A lot of the stars and the director (Martin Scorsese) were Italian, and they saw it as their story too, because a generation later it was the Italians facing poverty and prejudice.
Fast forward a generation: and the movie Cabrini tells the stories of those Italian immigrants via the bio of a nun, Mother Cabrini, who helped the Italians of the next generation of immigrants by building schools, hospitals and orphanages at a time when Italians were seen as different, and even the Catholic church was not especially welcoming these Italians, whose approach to church and religion was quite different.
That is the background of the recently released film Cabrini.
Like the previous film from Angel Studio Sound of Freedom, about a rogue US cop working with the Colombian police to stop child trafficking, this film shows people willing to face obstacles to help those who often languish in the shadows.
And unlike the usual religious themed pap one sees promoted with cardboard characters, this one breaks all the cliches of the left and right: because it is pro feminist, pro immigrant, and pro Christian.
Cabrini reminds one that the problems faced by immigrants is nothing new, and indeed a lot of what is being said about the Italians in the film is the exact same thing is being said right now about immigrants on right wing discussion boards. They are different, they dilute the race, they will never assimilate, they will never become true Americans because their culture/religion is different from the good folk of America.
So the film is countercultural, in a Catholic way.
And quite well done: the actress playing Mother Cabrini Cristiana Dell'Anna should win an award for her role.
But of course she won't: Because this will be ignored because the woke hate religion.
And I have already read bad reviews by religious reviewers saying it isn't religious enough, because the deep belief in God that inspires Mother Cabrini is not shoved into your face with pious platitudes.
Sigh
In many ways it is a Catholic film: Because when confronted with poverty, sickness, or the other miseries of life, the approach of Catholicism (and indeed that of mainstream Christianity) is to go out and help. For most of us this is done in the circle of one's family and neighbors (50 million caregivers can't be wrong) or if one is lucky enough to work in the helping professions (nurses, teachers, social workers) it is done by direct action.
Not as glamourous as protesting but hey, it is real and meaningful.
with the unregulated influx of immigrants and refugees all over the world, the problems Cabrini confronted are going on right now in many countries.
In some ways, the refugees will have it easier in the USA than in other countries because the Yanks have been there before.
I had to laugh at the end of the film when Cabrini reminds the mayor that maybe the powers that be might see her as a trouble maker, and the Italians as unwanted outsiders, but in the future that Italians could very well run the city as the Irish were doing at the time: and even reminding him those Italians she is helping are proud Americans and they vote
update: Hollywood vs history discusses the film and how close it is to reality (hint: some of the characters are fictional amalgams of several real people).
In a first-ever group meeting with Vatican-accredited reporters, on Jan. 22 Pope Francis praised them for avoiding "profane and political" molds in their work.
"I would like to add the delicacy that you so often have in speaking of scandals in the Church: there are some and many times I have seen in you a great delicacy, a respect, an almost, I say, 'abashed' silence: thank you for this attitude," said the pope in a Vatican transcript. ... Damian Thompson of The Spectator tweeted: "Incredible! Pope Francis lets the cat out of the bag, thanking Vatican correspondents for their 'silence' and therefore helping him conceal the scandals of his pontificate. Take a bow, guys!"
the bias of alas too many reporters is to push the PC type trying to "reform" (some would say deform) Catholicism, which means you ignore some very important stories. That article was about a FOF (Friend of Francis) who abused a lady, but it's not the only story.
And to make things worse, no one wants to see links between stories that suggest manipulation of opinion by ignoring the backstory.
take the blessing of couples (not individuals) that are in sexual relationships outside of marriage (divorced remarried couples, polygamous relationships, couples living together outside of marriage, and gay couples who want their marriages approved).
This is about destroying that inconvenient commandment that opposes sex outside of marriage. But in today's world, it is the LGBTETC dogma that the Pope is pushing of course, because that is one of the goals (along with abortion on demand) by the elites behind the NWO.
Of course, this is not admitted outright, but in document that mixes good and bad so the weak can pretend it doesn't push blessing sin and maybe have to face mean tweets by the layfolk.
No, blessing of same sex couples is not merely blessing people and you can tell this because of how it is being reported in the press: LINK
Dirty little secret: the Pope continues to destroy 2000 years of Catholic beliefs on many levels, not just in the sexual sphere but in the idea of the Eucharist as being Christ's body and blood and should not be taken by someone living in sin or by non believers, or the idea that thou shalt have no other gods before Me. (pachimama scandal comes to mind, not to mention allowing the Chinese communists to take over the church there).
Everyone knows this but they have to tapdance quietly around the truth.
which is why Pope and his minions continue to stonewall those who object, calling them narrow minded etc.
some bishops object, and this could cause problems if enough of them get a backbone and follow the Biblical rules, but most are keeping their heads down: and that, not a withdrawal of the document, is Francis' plan: Wait and gradually people will quiet down about it.
Not mentioned: they may just stop going to church or join other churches, because the religious version of Gresham's law is that bad theology pushes out believers, something we see in South America and in the Philippines where believers are flocking to evangelical churches that preach Jesus, not marxist revolutionary theory or global warming.
By firing Bishop Strickland, Francis shows that if you are a bishop who objects he will fire you.
But one of his enemies those dang lay people. And although we can be excommunicated, they can't fire us, and we can write nasty letters. (Catherine of Sienna comes to mind).
