Urgent Prayer Request

Normally I wouldn't come back from a lengthy hiatus with a prayer request, but here I must.

I have just learned that an international release of the blasphemous film "Corpus Christi" is in the works.

The film and play portray Our Lord as an open homosexual who engages in lewd conduct with the Apostles, among other blasphemies.

Please, in your charity pray for the producers of this film!

A New Threat to Free Speech

Fox News alerts us in this article to a new threat being posed by the Left against conservative free speech.

Conservative bloggers say they are being terrorized by a potentially deadly prank in which phony 911 calls bring armed cops to their doors in search of criminals, all in retaliation for their blog posts.

At least two conservative Internet pundits have reported being victims of "SWAT-ing." In at least one incident, the caller claimed to be the resident of the home and confessed to shooting his wife, according to a recording of the call posted online. 

"It's a phone call that could have gotten me killed," Patrick Frey, a deputy district attorney at Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, wrote of the July, 2011 incident on his blog, Patterico's Pontifications.

The most recent incident involved blogger Erick Erickson, who claimed on his Red State site that sheriff's deputies arrived at his Macon, Ga., home Sunday night as his family gathered for dinner. He said the episode was unnerving, particularly considering one deputy had his hand on his pistol. But Erickson admitted it could have been worse had he not warned officials - in light of Frey's experience - that he anticipated being a victim.

The Left is becoming more unhinged as time goes on.  With their favorite president under fire for his abysmal record and facing a election that he stands a good chance to lose thanks to the efforts of conservatives to oust him, the radicals are looking at a new tactic; intimidate the opposition into silence by using law enforcement against them.  


This is dangerous, and it's going to get someone killed.  I doubt the hardcore Left will care, but all concerned citizens should be worried about this latest assault against freedom of speech.  We must support a Congressional investigation into this, pronto!

LSN Weighs in On Threat of New French President

Life Site News is weighing in on the election results in France and the rise of François Hollande to the French presidency.  Hollande is as red a red socialist can get, and LSN lays out for us exactly why that is bad for France and especially for the Faith in France.

PARIS, France, May 18, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Dismantling of the family, attacks against parental rights and times of trouble for faith-based, mainly Catholic schools are looming large in French politics since France’s new socialist president, François Hollande, took over office from Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday morning at the Elysée, in Paris.
French President François Hollande
Government nominations, as well as Hollande’s inaugural speeches, are making it clear that ideological choices have been made and can be expected to be implemented in the near future. The discussion of a law instituting gay “marriage” has been announced for the Fall by the new Family minister – that is, if the French legislative elections in June vote in a socialist majority, which is considered likely.
Hollande’s first public act after the official investiture ceremonies at the Elysée Palace in Paris, on Tuesday, was to drive over to the nearby Tuileries gardens to pay tribute to the founder of the French state school system, Jules Ferry, whose monument was erected there in 1910 by the secularist “Ligue de l’enseignement” (League of Education).
The timing and the symbolism of this first presidential act was seen as a clear indicator that Hollande aims to intensify the role of the state in education and to step up control over what remains of the private school sector.
The new president’s speech front of former education ministers – exclusively of the socialist variety – teachers and dozens of children, used military phraseology to make his point. “School is the weapon of justice. It is the weapon of republican equality,” he said. A weapon to force “equality”, or to put it more clearly, egalitarianism.
School, as François Hollande sees it, is “the locus of equality.” “Equality of opportunity,” according to the new socialist president, means equality that “knows no other measure of distinction than personal merit and effort, since birth, fortune and chance establish hierarchies which schools have the mission, if not the duty, to correct, and even to destroy.”
Interesting omissions and changes to the written speech were made by François Hollande in his spoken delivery at this point. He left out the word “talents” as a legitimate measure of distinction and changed the phrase saying that the mission of schools regarding these hierarchies is “if not to abolish, at least to correct” them, choosing the much more aggressive formula quoted above.
This agenda, to be implemented in a country where large sections of the poorer suburbs of many major cities are mainly populated by ethnic minorities, many of them Muslim, has already shown its limits: the level of general culture of most school-leavers has gone steadily down over the past decades in a system where exactly the same curriculum is supposed to apply to all pupils up to age 14 or 15. In state schools leftist teachers’ organizations and progressive pedagogues have had the upper hand since 1968. François Hollande clearly intends to enhance their power and to dismantle the few concessions made to parental rights by the Sarkozy administration, which gave families a bit more freedom to choose a state school for their children and stepped up financial aids to private, state-funded schools.
Secularism is also a master word for schools according to Hollande. He sees schools as the “locus of emancipation”: emancipation from traditions and “dogma” in view of the “sovereign liberty of the spirit,” of reason left to itself. And also of reason destroyed: in state-funded French schools, be they public or private, whole reading methods and other pedagogical aberrations are effectively preventing a large percentage of French children from learning to read and think independently.
This is a far cry from the school of Jules Ferry, which formed minds and intelligences effectively, albeit in open conflict with religious beliefs.
Jules Ferry himself was remembered by François Hollande for two laws: the one which instituted cost-free primary schooling for all in 1881, and the law which in 1882 made schools secular and compulsory. At the time these laws were accompanied with persecution of faith-based schools and Catholic teaching congregations, many religious being expelled from the country or driven into exile.
Over the years, elements of freedom were returned to parents and nowadays 20% of pupils go to private, mostly Catholic schools where state curricula are obligatory, and teachers are formed and paid by the State. Only a fraction of schools are completely independent, receiving no direct public funds but entitled to issue tax refund forms for donations. These tax refunds are at risk of being suppressed under Hollande’s period of office.
The French Republic has long seen secularist state education as a means to counter the influence of families and faith. Hollande’s first speech on the matter, from which the words “parental rights” and “liberty” were totally absent, has made it clear that securalism is back with a vengeance.
As regards families, the naming of Mrs Dominique Bertinotti, a close friend of François Hollande’s ex-partner Ségolène Royal, as delegate minister to the Family, is seen as an insult to its defenders. Wednesday morning, hours before taking up her new office, she committed herself during an interview with the nationwide news radio “France-Info” to reduce tax relief associated with the number of children for richer families – less tax is owed when more persons form the “fiscal home” – in order to increase social aid to poorer families at the beginning of the school years. This would break with the French tradition of compensating a fraction of the extra charge children bring with them, whatever the social status of their family.
Bertinotti immediately promised to work on legalization of homosexual “marriage” and homosexual adoption and to “redefine” the meaning of the word family which should include, she says, not only the “classic” type but also “recomposed, single-parent and homoparental families,” so that they can obtain “exactly the same rights and be seen the same way by society, whatever their way of life.”
Mrs Bertinotti also intends to step up availability of public childcare systems, and to increase the number of 3, and even 2 year-olds in State schools.

Gay marriage, erosion of parental rights, use of schools as centers of socialist indoctrination and erosion of the  influence of the Church in France.  This guy is reminding me more and more of our own president and his relentless drive for socialism in our country.

Remember Catholics, elections matter!

Obama makes unnatural unions the forefront of his campaign; I comment

This one comes to us again yet again from Life Site News.

May 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After announcing his support for gay “marriage” earlier this month, President Obama appears to be putting the issue front and center in his campaign, reiterating his stance in a recently released campaign video, and in comments to the media and potential donors.

In an interview filmed Monday for ABC’s the View, Obama said that his current stance was influenced by gay family friends in “wonderful relationships” who told him he should support gay “marriage” and not just civil unions because “words matter.”

Obama added that the issue is “going to be a big contrast in the campaign,” since his opponent, Mitt Romney, is in favor of a constitutional amendment that would ban gay “marriage.”  His remarks echoed criticisms directed at the presumptive Republican nominee in a campaign video released last week which accused Romney of wanting to “take us back” rather than “move us forward.”

Obama is again proving himself to be a typical politician.  He can't run on his record, because by all objective standards it's abysmal; 8% unemployment, $15+ trillion dollars in debt, and an economy that's tanking, not to mention controversial laws like the NDAA 2012.  So, he's decided to use a hot-button issue that is guaranteed to energize his liberal base in order to win the election.  The sad thing is, it might work if we don't work hard enough to show what a terrible job he has done as president.

Pax Christi.

Rant About Ascension Thursday Sunday (Sorry Father Z)

It's been a common practice in some dioceses, certainly ones in the United States, to transfer the Feast of the Acension from Thursday, its proper place, to Sunday, what is supposed to be the Seventh Sunday of Easter.  I cannot stand this practice, which sadly occurs even in my own diocese!

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus ascended  into heaven forty days after His resurrection (Acts 1:9-11).  Guess what comes forty days after Easter Sunday... Thursday!  It's proper and in keeping with the rhythm of the Scriptures that the Feast be celebrated on Thursday!

I believe it's high time that we quit this foolish practice and got our calendar back into rhythm and harmony.

Jet Crashes in Virginia Beach; Prayers Urged

Local news outlets are reporting that a military jet has crashed in my city.  Both pilots are apparently OK, but people on the ground may have been hurt or, God forbid, killed.  Please pray.

Pray for Sean Stone

I have just received word that Sean Stone, son of director Oliver Stone, has converted to Islam.

"The conversion to is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism..."  He said to the Agence France-Presse.  Actually, Mr. Stone, you have.

There is no equivalence between Christianity and Islam, and Mohammed was not a prophet of God.  The Gospel is a message of God's love for all men, such a love that He was willing to give us His only Begotten Son, so that we may have everlasting life.  The message of Mohammed was of a god who despises all who do not believe in him and who salivates at the prospect of sending the "infidels" to hellfire.  Jesus Christ healed the sick, raised the dead, and was the Prince of Peace.  Mohammed led raids to capture booty and slaves, killed those who disbelieved that he was a "prophet", preached that Jews and others should be fought and killed until they either were enslaved or accepted Islam, and kept several wives and sex slaves, including a nine-year-old girl named Aisha.

Mr. Stone has made a grave error.  Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven.  Please, pray for him.  He needs it now.

Pax Christi.