Showing posts with label Satan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Satan. Show all posts

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Diary of a mad white president . . . or just another day in hell


Donald Trump is the devil. And the devil is lord in America.

Since its founding, the United States has been a country with a guardian angel sitting on one broad shoulder and a demon on the other. Sometimes, we listen to the angel.

Other times, we invade Mexico because we can . . . and to grab some land. We go to war in defense of slavery. We pal around with Mr. Jim Crow. We decide 58,000 dead American soldiers is an acceptable price for not losing face in Vietnam. The list goes on.

Tiny hands and all
Now, one could be excused for believing that Americans have decided to skip the middleman altogether and just install the devil as president. Donald Trump, to be fair, is not the devil. But he is a devil. The difference is only a matter of lowerarchy.

The devil presides over his people from an oval office in which there are no corners to hide. Like the real deal below, he wouldn't think of harming a hair on our chinny-chin-chin -- directly. That, he convinces us to do ourselves, to ourselves.

Our devil in Washington is not the persecutor we're all looking for -- or at least the one the alleged Christians among his minionish base have been expecting forever. Ol' Devil Trump is the subverter we never saw coming.


Check that. Trump is the subverter we damn well saw coming, but kept trying to pass off as something else entirely.

In our nation's capital and in Anytown, the subverter-in-chief bids his victims forward one by one to tell each how he must offer up his immortal soul this day. One of today's dead men walking was retired Gen. John F. Kelly, White House chief of staff and Gold Star father.


"General," sayeth our demonic majesty, "you gotta get me out of this." "This," as we all now know, is the matter of what the president said to the young widow of Army Sgt. La David T. Johnson. Johnson was one of four soldiers killed in an ambush while serving as advisers to troops fighting Islamic extremists in Niger.

Kelly's mission, should he choose to accept it -- and he did -- would be to somehow normalize the grossly ham-handed, insensitive thing Trump said to Myeshia Johnson about her KIA husband, whose name he couldn't be bothered to utter. Probably because he couldn't remember it.

Trump's idea of comforting the stricken is to tell an Army widow that her husband “knew what he signed up for . . . but when it happens it hurts anyway.”

Kelly's idea of selling that to the American people as perfectly normal is "Why, that's exactly what my buddy said to me when my boy got killed in Afghanistan!"


That's a paraphrase boiled down by me. Here is what he actually told the assembled White House press corps. In this extract, Kelly starts out by explaining Trump had a question for him:
And he said to me, what do I say?

I said to him, sir, there's nothing you can do to lighten the burden on these families. But let me tell you what I tell them. Let me tell you what my best friend, Joe Dunford, told me, because he was my casualty officer. He said, Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were, because we're at war.

And when he died — and the four cases we're talking about Niger, in my son's case, in Afghanistan — when he died, he was surrounded by the best men on this earth, his friends.

That's what the president tried to say to four families the other day.

I was stunned when I came to work yesterday morning and brokenhearted at what I saw a member of Congress doing, a member of Congress who listened in on a phone call from the president of the United States to a young wife, and in his way tried to express that opinion that he's a brave man, a fallen hero.

He knew what he was getting himself into, because he enlisted. There's no reason to enlist. He enlisted. And he was where he wanted to be, exactly where he wanted to be, with exactly the people he wanted to be with when his life was taken.

That was the message. That was the message that was transmitted.

It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation, absolutely stuns me. And I thought at least that was sacred. You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That's obviously not the case anymore, as we see from recent cases. Life, the dignity of life was sacred. That's gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well. Gold Star families, I think that left in the convention over the summer.

I just thought the selfless devotion that brings a man or woman to die on the battlefield, I just thought that that might be sacred.

And when I listened to this woman and what she was saying and what she was doing on TV, the only thing I could do to collect my thoughts was to go and walk among the finest men and women on this earth. And you can always find them, because they're in Arlington National Cemetery.
I DO NOT doubt that Kelly, the career military man, found comfort in his friend's words. I also do not doubt that Kelly's preferred script for these difficult conversations is entirely too complicated to be followed by "a fucking moron" with an emotional quotient measured in negative numbers.

So . . . here we are. Trump botched a script most people -- because common sense, sensitivity and basic human compassion -- would not follow when attempting to console a young war widow with two young children and a third on the way. Trump's words not only were heard by Mrs. Johnson, but by everyone in the funeral-home limousine as family and friends traveled to the airport to receive the body of Sgt. Johnson.

One of the family friends happened to be a member of Congress. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) had known the Johnson family for years. She also had been a mentor to Sgt. Johnson and his two brothers. She was his father's school principal years before.

And she was outraged by what she heard on speakerphone.

Too bad for her. The only unforgivable sin in the Church of Satan -- Trumpistan is to shine light on the sins of our father below.


When one disses the devil, the sulfurous one has any number of acolytes who will try to snuff out the light as they snuff out their own self-respect. In the case of Wilson, the Church of Satan lowerarchy -- at least in my viewing of what it's trying to pull off here -- went full-bore for racist stereotyping with no hesitation at all.  Let's review:
It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation, absolutely stuns me. And I thought at least that was sacred. You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That's obviously not the case anymore, as we see from recent cases. Life, the dignity of life was sacred. That's gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well. Gold Star families, I think that left in the convention over the summer.

I just thought the selfless devotion that brings a man or woman to die on the battlefield, I just thought that that might be sacred. 


IT TAKES little effort to read between those lines. After all, the Trumpian base isn't that bright, and its attention span isn't that long. That said, the multitude of Trump's minions are outdistancing the there-are-none-so-blind White House press (who maybe need to get out more) on this one.

Briefly, the White House is sending the nearly unmistakable message that Frederica Wilson is just another crazy, angry black woman who's simply out to stir up shit and lay waste to every social norm precious to proper white Americans.

We're to see the congresswoman as some sort of malevolent Madea, out to throw a potful of hot grits in the face of the Great White Dope Hope, then cold-cock him with the empty pot. Right before she tears up Arlington National Cemetery via unlawful use of a front-end loader.


That's the message our government wants to send to alt-white America, which is the only one that matters to the devil.

Not so long ago, which seems like a lifetime ago, presidents didn't talk like this. Presidents didn't send staffers out to pull stunts like this. Richard Nixon, for God's sake, would not have been so brazen or so emotionally stunted -- and that's saying something.


 That's obviously not the case anymore, as we see from recent cases.

Monday, November 14, 2011

This pretty much covers it


You says you don't learn anything from TV?

Why, just this past weekend on Saturday Night Live, we learned that even Satan has his limits.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Lead us not into temptation. . . .


If you want to stop abortion, mind the company you keep.

If you believe homicide in utero is an abomination, a deadly affront to the rights and dignity of the most powerless and vulnerable members of the human race, don't fall in goose-stepping formation behind a man who sees our society as a tug of war between producers and parasites.

Don't take seriously the "faith-based" entreaties of a popinjay provocateur who once proposed voluntary sterilization of welfare recipients to prevent "a small minority of people working to fund and finance everybody else who isn’t working or producing."

And if you value the dignity of human life, live in Louisiana and come upon a "pro-life" rally with state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, at its head touting his bill to outlaw abortion . . . quickly walk the other way. No,
run the other way.

MEANTIME, even though I'm safely in Nebraska, I really need to stop looking at the hometown rag, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, online:

Supporters of LaBruzzo’s bill moved to a terrace garden outside the House side of the State Capitol. Opponents of his measure, many wearing pink, followed.

LaBruzzo climbed atop a planter with Rebecca Kiessling, a lawyer he identified as the person who handled the rewriting of the legislation, to address the crowd of about 50 people.

“This is going on across the country,” said Kiessling, of suburban Detroit.

She is with Personhood USA, a Colorado-based group pushing anti-abortion legislation on the state level.

Kiessling said the U.S. Supreme Court likely will not soon overturn Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 decision that allows abortions. “Let’s recognize the unborn child as a person in a full legal sense,” she said.

LaBruzzo said he welcomed a predicted challenge in court if the legislation is approved by both chambers and signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Laura Mullen, of Baton Rouge, was one of several HB587 opponents who took LaBruzzo up on his offer to discuss the issues. When asked about medical implications of banning abortion, LaBruzzo interrupted questioner by saying he was directed by his religious beliefs.

“You’re not discussing it all,” shouted Brett Chance, of Baton Rouge, another opponent.

IF LOUISIANA pro-lifers are "directed" by their religious beliefs, as LaBruzzo claims he is, they have to understand there is a fundamental religious principle they can't escape. One the inheritor of David Duke's House seat can't rewrite like some legislative bill.

It's not complicated, and it goes like this: Satan can't destroy himself. You can't devote your political or philosophical life to evildoing and think you're going to do away with evil. You can't spend your legislative career denying the worth and dignity of "the least of these" -- pushing ill-conceived bill after ill-conceived bill designed to brand some human beings as parasites and deal with them accordingly -- then set your eugenicist self up as some grand defender of human life.

It's like entrusting Satan with the keys to the Kingdom; it would not end well.

Don't believe me, ask Jesus (Mark, Chapter 3):

22
The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebul," 10 and "By the prince of demons he drives out demons."
23
Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables, "How can Satan drive out Satan?
24
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
25
And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
26
And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him.
27
But no one can enter a strong man's house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house."
IF YOU'RE in Louisiana, and you're pro-life -- or even if you're a national pro-life figure and get a call from some piss-ant bayou pol you've likely never heard of before -- listen to me now. It's important.

John LaBruzzo is the devil. And if you hang out with him, Satan is going to plunder your house.


You have been warned.

Monday, February 07, 2011

Satan goes by 'Anonymous'

Click on E-mails to read.

Satan never sleeps.

That's because he's too busy leaving anonymous comments on blogs and websites.

If you're one of those people inclined to doubt the existence of hell and the devil , look at these comments I got today on what I thought was a fairly whimsical post on the Sex Pistols and the state of the Establishment, circa January 1978.



IT'S A HELL of a thing, no?

Obviously, "Anonymous" is one disturbed individual, and an angry one, too. Obviously, this is why I moderate comments to Revolution 21's Blog for the People. Obviously, these got deleted.

And -- obviously -- I'm now making an example of them . . . and the sick soul who has nothing better to say than this.

Where does such rage come from? How do you explain such an all-consuming, intense hatred of all humanity? And can anyone deny this poor soul exists in some very real, albeit private (for now), manifestation of hell?

Mental illness or some manner of deviant socialization can get you most of the way to an explanation, but not all the way to one. It doesn't -- at least not in my opinion -- get you all the way to that degree of nihilism, that level of hatred of the human race itself. Mental illness or sociological deficits can explain the brokenness, but neither can explain the phenomenon of evil.

What we have here is evil -- and all sociology or psychology can shed light upon are the fissures that allow evil to penetrate the soul and do what it will. This is what Satan looks like when he thinks the cameras aren't rolling; this is what he sounds like when he's at a loss for words.

I SUPPOSE my disturbed correspondent is some sort of punk who -- again, obviously -- takes issue with the aforementioned post. He, she or it is a cautionary tale of what can happen when one takes this punk thing entirely too seriously.

Especially that "I am an antichrist" part in the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." Not the Antichrist, mind you, but an antichrist.

The real Antichrist will be a much better writer with a much larger vocabulary.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Pope embraces the Holy DUH


Finally.

By the grace of God, the Catholic Church, led by the pope, eventually came around to embrace the obvious.

Slowly, yes. Painfully, yes. But around it does come, usually, to embrace the gospel truth.


TODAY, the news of this comes via The New York Times . . . which had its own role in forcing the issue:
In his most direct condemnation of the sexual abuse crisis that has swept the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday said that the “sins inside the church” posed the greatest threat to the church, adding that “forgiveness does not substitute justice.”

“Attacks on the pope and the church come not only from outside the church, but the suffering of the church comes from inside the church, from sin that exists inside the church,” Benedict told reporters aboard his plane en route to Portugal, speaking about the abuse crisis.

“This we have always known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way, that the greatest persecution of the church does not come from the enemies outside but is born from the sin in the church,” he added. “The church has a profound need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn on the one hand forgiveness but also the necessity of justice. And forgiveness does not substitute justice.”

In placing the blame for sex abuse directly on the church, Benedict appeared to distance himself from other church officials who in recent weeks have criticized the news media for reporting on the sex abuse crisis, which they called attacks on the church.

In recent months, the sex abuse crisis has revealed an ancient institution wrestling with modernity and has brought to light an internal culture clash between traditionalists who have valued protecting priests and bishops above all else, and others who seek more transparency.

The crisis has also raised questions about how Benedict handled sex abuse as prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and as bishop in Munich in 1980 when a pedophile priest was moved to his diocese for treatment.

A traditionalist but also a strong voice within the church calling for purification, Benedict met privately with victims of sex abuse on a brief trip to Malta last month, his third such meeting. In March, he issued a strong letter to Irish Catholics reeling from reports of systemic sex abuse in Catholic institutions. And last week the Vatican took control of the Legionaries of Christ, a powerful religious order whose founder was founded to have abused seminarians and fathered several children.

But the pope’s off-the-cuff remarks on Tuesday were his most direct since the crisis hit the church in Europe earlier this year.

On the plane, Benedict told reporters that the church had to relearn “conversion, prayer, penance.”

WELL, DUH. And amen.

Let the Vatican's deeds now match the Holy Father's words.

Friday, April 09, 2010

Tlhagale, the self-hating archbishop

I regret to report that there's a South African cleric who is a fifth-columnist within Catholicism -- a linchpin of the anti-Catholic "hate" campaign hell-bent on tarring the whole church with the unfortunate actions of a few.

EWTN News, no doubt, reported this awful slander under extreme duress:
The “scourge” of sexual abuse by clergy is a problem in Africa, Archbishop of Johannesburg Buti Tlhagale said recently at a Chrism Mass. Condemning priests for betraying the Gospel and Christ himself, he called on clergy to experience the redeeming power of Christ and to rebuild “the battered image of the Church.”

Archbishop Tlhagale’s comments came at the Holy Thursday Chrism Mass at the Cathedral of Christ the King.

He said reports of the “painful” clergy scandals in Ireland and Germany kept him from a positive frame of mind “for I know that the Church in Africa is inflicted by the same scourge.”

“In our times we have betrayed the very Gospel we preach. The Good News we claim to announce sounds so hollow, so devoid of any meaning when matched with our much publicized negative moral behavior. Many who looked up to priests as their model feel betrayed, ashamed and disappointed.”


(snip)

He claimed that the image of the Catholic Church is “virtually in ruins” because of badly behaving priests, whom he compared to “wolves wearing sheep’s skin.”

“We are slowly but surely bent on destroying the Church of God by undermining and tearing apart the faith of lay believers. Ironically, priests have become a stumbling block to the promotion of vocations.

“Bad news spreads like wild fire. I wish I could say that there are only a few bad apples. But the outrage around us suggests that there are more than just a few bad apples.”
WILL SOMEBODY kindly supply this uninformed archbishop with the official talking points and get him on message?

Repeat after us Tlhagale:
"It's just a few bad apples; we've got it under control. The press hates Catholics and wants to destroy the pope. It's not our fault, we swear to God."

Good God, they'll make anybody an archbishop down there. Sheesh.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Martyrdom by paper cuts?


Jesus had problems with his bishops long before His bumbling bench of disciples got a promotion and a pointy hat.

One of the first things they didn't "get," back in the 18th chapter of Luke, was the Boss' memo about how "everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted." Quickly after, still scratching their heads over that pronouncement,
no doubt, the clerics to be tried to shoo away children seeking the good rabbi.

Luke sets the scene in Judea on what had been a long, tiring day.

"People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them," the evangelist writes, "and when the disciples saw this, they rebuked them.

"Jesus, however, called the children to himself and said, 'Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.'"


ALMOST 2,000 years later, the successors to the disciples still don't "get" it. In fact, too many of them absolutely have perverted Jesus' unambiguous admonition.

In America and, as we now learn, all across the world, far too many Catholic priests -- these men who act
"in persona Christi," in the person of Christ, at the altar -- let the children come to them all right . . . and then molested and raped them. Then, in the name of not giving "scandal," bishops protected not the children but, instead, their violators.

If what Jesus said is really so, and the "the kingdom of God belongs to such as these" -- the children -- and the bureaucracy of the church has spent decades acting contrarily, what then is the kingdom to which it lays claim?

If the guardians of the Catholic faith obscure the kingdom of God behind a phalanx of bureaucrats and canon lawyers -- with secrecy their cry and Vatican letters their shield -- does that mean they've decided to deny Jesus in order to save His church? Has the magisterium suspended "whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it," kind of like Abraham Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War?

Do they consider that it is better for us that a few kids be thrown to the wolves instead of the hierarchy, so that the whole church may not perish?
Is that it? Why does that sound familiar?

UNBELIEVABLY, the Vatican seeks to portray itself as the victim in all this -- hounded by the "pagan" media much as Caligula and Nero tormented the early church.

I am not making this up. Unfortunately, neither is
The Associated Press:
The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope and the Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.

"The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.


(snip)

"There are those who fear the media campaign of anti-Catholic hatred can degenerate," Vatican Radio said.

It noted anti-Catholic graffiti on walls of a church outside Viterbo, a town near Rome, and reminded listeners that a bishop was attacked by a man during Easter Mass in Muenster, Germany. The bishop fought back with an incense bowl.

The radio likened the recent campaign to the persecution suffered by early Christian martyrs. "The crowds, incited by the slanders of the powerful, would lynch the Christians," the radio said.
NO, the "persecution" of the church by the press comes not because the pope "defends life and the family," but -- ironically -- because some elements of the church have been acting like (or covering up for those who've been acting like) Caligula. Or, at a minimum, a guest at one of the mad emperor's Roman orgies.

The thing about the press is this: If you're in public life and generally keep your nose (and other appendages) clean, reporters generally don't go around creating slanders out of thin air with which to persecute you. If you're getting bashed, oftentimes it's because you handed someone a baseball bat and dared them to use it.

The Vatican's problem -- more
our problem, actually -- is that its clerics and functionaries forget whom they serve. Sometimes, they're just serving themselves . . . perpetuating the bureaucracy and the institution with no regard for the first principles that gave life to the institution.

Other times, they're serving the pope -- sheltering a pope from scrutiny, accountability and, ultimately, reality. It's as if they have no faith that a church built upon the "rock"--
Cephas . . . Petrus . . . Peter . . . the clueless bumbler formerly known as Simon -- who denied Christ three times could survive a present-day pope being exposed as a fairly ordinary specimen of fallen humanity.

It's as if these slobbering toadies think only an übermensch with no need of Christ's saving grace could lead the church toward that Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

At no time in all of this has anyone at the Vatican given the impression of actually being, first and foremost, a servant of Jesus. Or of the billion Catholics today who, tragically, find themselves in the spiritual care of self-pitying political creatures such as these.

Miserere nobis.

Really, were the last words of our first pope -- the martyred Peter --
"Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"? Somehow, I think not.

IN MATTHEW 18, Jesus has a few things to say about children, the hierarchy of heaven and the fate of those who causes the "little ones" to fall:
Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
5
And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.
6
"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
7
Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come!
8
If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life maimed or crippled than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire.
9
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into fiery Gehenna.
10
"See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.
IN THE CONTEXT of this particular Catholic moment -- one that has been decades in the making -- no fair reading of Jesus' words from Matthew would point toward divine condemnation of how the press has covered the scandals.

But if anyone in Rome -- or among various
mau-mauers taking up space on the world's hapless bench of bishops -- finds Christ's words here somehow discomfiting . . . well, I don't think that would be an unreasonable reaction.

We live in a world that is sick unto death. We are beset by death-lovers and death-dealers. We are slaves to materialism. We live amid a culture where vulgarity has beauty in full retreat.

We need Jesus. We need His saving grace -- all of us, Catholics, Protestants, pagans . . whatever.

We need to see Jesus. We need to see Him in all things -- and especially in His church.

Somehow, those who administer Christ's church on His behalf have come between the Son of Man and those of us who stand at a distance, crying "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!"

We look for God, but do not see Him in Rome.

We look to the successors of the apostles but, at best, we catch only fleeting glimpses of pre-Pentecost imitators.

We listen for the Truth, but what we've been hearing of late -- from Rome -- sounds more like the Father of Lies to me.

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Where there's smoke. . . .


Sometimes, Satan catches a break.

Sometimes, he doesn't.

Now, if you're ensconced somewhere deep in the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church, there are procedures for deciding when the devil gets his due process. The procedures, it would seem, go something like this:

If you're in the media, and Vatican functionaries determine that your "biased reporting" is the handiwork of the Evil One, the church can move amazingly swiftly for a 2,000-year-old bureaucracy.

First, the Vatican newspaper launches a propaganda campaign against the printer's devil.

Then bishops get into the act, calling for the faithful to "besiege"
The New York Times and cancel their subscriptions to The Oregonian in Portland. In the case of the Times, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio said he would "suggest canceling our subscriptions . . . but we need to know what the enemy is saying."

And then, we have the Vatican's chief exorcist contending that the press isn't just "the enemy" but is taking its marching orders from The Enemy. Which, of course, has led to a persecution of the Catholic Church --
at least according to the papal preacher -- not unlike that of the Jews.

ON THE OTHER HAND, if you're a priest who's molested kids, and if a local Catholic Church canonical court has determined you possess "almost a satanic quality," it can take years . . . and years . . . and years for the Vatican to get alarmed enough to remove the "smoke of Satan" from the sanctuary.

One case in point comes from Tucson, and the findings of the Arizona Daily Star don't exactly heap discredit upon the much-disputed reporting of Laurie Goodstein at the Times:

The late Tucson Bishop Manuel D. Moreno, often characterized as a poor advocate for sexual abuse victims, struggled with both canon law and Vatican mandates in his efforts to defrock two local priests, documents obtained by the Arizona Daily Star show.

In one case, Moreno pleaded with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for help in removing the Rev. Michael Teta, who was convicted by the church in 1997 of five crimes including sexual solicitation in the confessional.

"I make this plea to you to assist me in every way you can to expedite this case, because the accused was a priest in whom I had great confidence at one time, but who, unfortunately, worked among our former seminarians, and, terrible to say, evidently corrupted many of them," Moreno wrote in an April 1997 letter to Ratzinger.

Ratzinger's office oversaw Teta's case because the crimes allegedly occurred in the confessional. His office did not handle the case of the other priest, Monsignor Robert C. Trupia, until 2001, when jurisdiction over such cases changed.

Teta's case, Moreno wrote, had already gone on for seven years. Teta was first suspended in 1990.

Teta and Trupia were defrocked in 2004. The diocese suspended Trupia in 1992 after a Tucson mother told the diocese her young son had been sexually abused by Trupia.

The diocese did not notify police about allegations against Trupia until 2000, when mandatory- reporting policies were adopted here.


(snip)

Tucson Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas said delays in cases here were not due to any Vatican office, including Ratzinger's.

"The frustration that you can sense in (Moreno's) letter, when put in the context of the delays experienced in our diocese, clearly refers to the challenges of getting the case resolved locally and did not refer to a frustration with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," Kicanas wrote in an e-mail response to Star questions.

The church's canonical court in 1997 found "there is almost a satanic quality in (Teta's) mode of acting toward young men and boys." The court found that Teta's "insidious 'rape' of so many young men in his capacity as a priest" warranted his immediate removal from the priesthood.

"What is wrong with this system in which it takes another seven years to defrock a priest that has been found guilty of 'satanic abuse?' " Tucson lawyer Lynne Cadigan said.

Kicanas said that from 1997 to 2003, a process of review and appeals by Teta's canonical lawyer took place. "Unavoidably, criminal cases in our civil system of justice and canonical trials in the church, because of the need to respect the right to due process, can take a long time," Kicanas wrote.
DESPITE THE OFFICIAL bleating of the Vatican, various bishops, "orthodox Catholic" church militants, exorcists, papal preachers and L'Osservatore Romano, where there's smoke, there just might be hellfire -- and it's not in the press room.

The "smoke of Satan" still hangs over the church after two-and-a-half decades of sordid revelation after sordid revelation and egregious cover-up after egregious cover-up.
The mystical Body of Christ has endured decade after decade of justice denied and responsibility evaded, and it's high time for the magisterium to account for its actions -- and its inaction.

Bishops the world over have some explaining to do. And that includes the Bishop of Rome.

They can do it now, or they can do it later . . . before a much higher court than that of public opinion.

Friday, April 02, 2010

We have met the Enemy. . . .


The church militants of Catholicism, marching to the orders of their indignant leaders, have been quick to consign "the enemies of the church" to the fiery depths.

In the face of a decades-long trail of pederast priests, enabling superiors and abused, broken children, we at long last give voice to our outrage . . . at the media. For "an attack on the papacy."

I don't think it's the media the church needs to be worrying about. Because, truly, we have met the Enemy . . . and he is in us.

A reading from the gospel of
Matthew, Chapter 25
:
31
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit
upon his glorious throne,
32
and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
33
He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34
Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
35
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,
36
naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.'
37
Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
38
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
39
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?'
40
And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'
41
Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42
For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
43
a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.'
44
Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?'
45
He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.'
46
And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
THIS IS, at its core, the grounds upon which the "satanic" press calls Catholic Church leadership to account.

And this, from the Daily Mail in London, is the reality these Catholics in high places (and low places, too) neglect as they hyperventilate over how terribly mean the press is being to the pope and the church:
An abuse hotline set up by the Catholic Church in Germany melted down on its first day of operation as more than 4,000 alleged victims of paedophile and violent priests called in to seek counselling and advice.

The numbers were far more than the handful of therapists assigned to deal with them could cope with.

In the end only 162 out of 4,459 callers were given advice before the system was shut down.

Andreas Zimmer, head of the project in the Bishopric of Trier, admitted that he wasn't prepared for "that kind of an onslaught."

The hotline is the Church's attempt to win back trust in the face of an escalating abuse scandal that threatens the papacy of German-born Pontiff Benedict XVI in Rome.

Earlier this week it was alleged that an ally of the Pope, Bishop Mixa, beat children - a charge he has subsequently denied.

Former girls and boys testified that he beat them with fists and a carpet beater which screaming; 'The devil is in you and I will drive him out!'

Also, the bishopric of Trier reported that 20 priests are suspected of having sexually abused children between the 1950s and 1990s.
IT'S ALL ABOUT "the least ones." Not the pope. Not the bishops.

It is these "least ones" the church so grievously failed all around the world. It is these "least ones" priests preyed upon -- molested -- and it is these "least ones" the hierarchy shoved aside, all in the name of protecting "the church" from "scandal."

And if those self-pitying forces in the church think the New York Times is picking on them, they haven't seen anything yet. Because you can't mau-mau the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

The devil made him say it


The man who preaches to the pope today compared a few critical news stories about the Catholic Church's problems with perversion to the persecution of the Jews.

Above is what the persecution of the Jews looked like.

But the pope's own priest, in the Vatican, on Good Friday, as the pope listened, said that stories about priests raping little boys, bishops covering it up and enabling the priests to rape again . . . and again . . . and again . . . and again . . . and whether the pope -- when he was an archbishop and a cardinal -- did enough to put a stop to it, that those articles are somehow so awful as to be compared to the Holocaust and other persecutions of the Hebrew race.

The mind struggles to comprehend such personal and institutional narcissism. The mouth fails to form the proper words to respond to such a notion -- a sick notion put forth on the most solemn day in Christendom.

In the Vatican.

As the pope listened --
and said nothing.

HERE IS A BIT of the story from The New York Times, which we all know has installed Satan in a corner office:
A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican’s counterattack.

The remarks, on the day Christians mark the crucifixion, underscored how much the Catholic Church has felt under attack from recent news reports and criticism over how it has handled charges of child molestation against priests in the past, and sought to focus attention on the church as the central victim.

In recent weeks, Vatican officials and many bishops have angrily denounced news reports that Benedict failed to act strongly enough against pedophile priests, once as archbishop of Munich and Friesing in 1980 and once as a leader of a powerful Vatican congregation in the 1990s.

Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.

Father Cantalamessa quoted from what he said was a letter from an unnamed Jewish friend. “I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole word,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”
I PAUSE HERE to give you a chance to catch your breath and collect your thoughts. It is not a good thing to take in this story all at once -- I made that mistake, and you don't want to repeat it.

While we're all catching our breath, let me just say that if there's a Catholic left in Europe
-- or, hell . . . anywhere -- after all this, it won't be for the Catholic hierarchy's lack of trying. The devil is somewhere, but I doubt it's at the Times.

That said, we now return to our regularly scheduled outrage:
Father Cantalamessa’s comments about the Jews came toward the end of a long talk about scripture, the nature of violence and the sacrifice of Jesus. He also spoke about violence against women, but gave only a slight mention of the children and adolescents who have been molested by priests. “I am not speaking here of violence against children, of which unfortunately also elements of the clergy are stained; of that there is sufficient talk outside of here,” he said.

Disclosures about hundreds of such cases have emerged in recent months in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and France, after a previous round of scandal in the United States earlier this decade.

A leading advocate for sex abuse victims in the United States, David Clohessy, called comparing criticism of the church to persecution of the Jews “breathtakingly callous and misguided.”

“Men who deliberately and consistently hide child sex crime are in no way victims,” he said. “And to conflate public scrutiny with horrific violence is about as wrong as wrong can be.”

The comments could cause a new twist in Vatican-Jewish relations, which have had ups and downs during Benedict’s papacy.

Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, who hosted Benedict at the Rome synagogue in January on a visit that helped calm waters after a year of tensions, laughed in seeming disbelief when asked about Father Cantalamessa’s remarks.

“With a minimum of irony, I will say that today is Good Friday, when they pray that the Lord illuminate our hearts so we recognize Jesus,” Rabbi Di Segni said, referring to a prayer in a traditional Catholic liturgy calling for the conversion of the Jews. “We also pray that the Lord illuminate theirs.”
I WISH to associate myself with the remarks of the good rabbi.

Amen.

The devil made them do it? All of them?


"Look, Fadda! I seen Laurie Goodstein from da Noo Yawk Times, and her head was spinnin' 'round like a top!"

"Aye, my son. That's because the devil has a hold on her filthy soul, the ink-stained wench! Now, you remember that if you tell your mother about our 'meetings,' you'll go straight to hell, right?"

"Yes, Fadda."

That's a cheap shot, you say? Well . . . yes. I agree with you. It's a bigoted, stereotypical and nasty cheap shot.

On Good Friday, no less.


BUT WHEN IT COMES to cheap shots -- and playing fast and loose with the truth (not to mention wild speculation about the workings of angels and demons) -- is that really any worse than this, uncritically reported by the Catholic News Service?
Noted Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, commented this week that the recent defamatory reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, especially by the New York Times, was “prompted by the devil.”

Speaking to News Mediaset in Italy, the 85-year-old exorcist noted that the devil is behind “the recent attacks on Pope Benedict XVI regarding some pedophilia cases.”

“There is no doubt about it. Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the devil wants to ‘grab hold’ of him.”

Father Amorth added that in instances of sexual abuse committed by some members of the clergy, the devil “uses” priests in order to cast blame upon the entire Church: “The devil wants the death of the Church because she is the mother of all the saints.”


I KNOW a little bit about this mindset; I've seen it close up, and I know how alluring it can be.

It's alluring because it allows you to evade responsibility for your own sins. You're good, and any bad thing that happens to you -- any bad thing you do to yourself or others -- well, it's just not your fault.
The devil made you do it.

It was a satanic attack. Yeah, that's the ticket. . . .

It's right out of an old Flip Wilson sketch featuring "Geraldine."

* I bought a hunk of junk car, then didn't have any maintenance done on it. And -- who'd a thunk it! -- it broke down when I was on my way to a job interview. I don't understand these constant attacks by Satan! He's trying to thwart me, and harm the Catholic Church!

* I love my wife, but these attacks by Satan are always forcing me to have sex with prostitutes! Now she's divorcing me, and my kids are going to grow up in a broken home!

Damn you, Satan!
Oh, wait. . . .

* I'm a Catholic priest, and Satan forced me to enter the priesthood even though I've always been attracted to boys much younger than myself. And now, the demons have made me volunteer to be the head of my parish's youth programs!

Satan is making me molest 12-year-olds against my will! The devil is trying to destroy the church! It's not my fault!

What will the prince of darkness do next? Make my bishop move me to another parish when I get caught?

Not only that . . . the devil is going to dictate a story about child molestation in the church to Laurie Goodstein!
The horror!

BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, none of us have free will. And none of us are capable of summoning the will -- none of us are capable of accessing the divine grace -- to look Lucifer in the eye and say "no."

Catholics have been saying the Prayer to St. Michael, begging protection against "the wickedness and snares of the devil," since 1886 out of sheer boredom, of course, being that resistance is futile when it comes to the Evil One. It -- obviously -- has been predestined that priests must submit to the devil's entreaties to screw little kids, and that their superiors must cover up that priests have screwed little kids.

This has been preordained so the devil can make priests screw more little kids, all so his malevolent majesty will have something juicy to make Laurie Goodstein of the New York (Satanic) Times write about.


In order to destroy the Catholic Church.

And perhaps a few immortal souls along the way . . .
but that's not important now.

Because it's all about us.

And don't think the devil doesn't know it.