~UPDATED on 8/28/2018 at 10:00 a.m.~

Warning: not for younger readers

As the Catholic Church is rocked by yet another sex scandal involving priests who abuse children and teens, the bizarre claim that these scandals have nothing to do with homosexuality continues to spread, primarily by those most personally invested in white-washing the pederastic deviance intrinsic to homosexuality.

The most recent scandal emerges from six dioceses in Pennsylvania where an investigation brought to light that over the past 75 years, 300 predatory priests sexually abused over 1,000 children and teens, the vast majority of whom were male.

Some of the victims “were made to masturbate their assailants, or were groped by them. Some were raped orally, some vaginally, some anally.” One 17-year-old was anally raped with such force his spine was injured, which led to his addiction to pain meds and death at age 46. (Not to worry, the Church paid for his funeral.) To compound the stomach-churning evil, church leaders concealed the abuse to “protect the abusers and their institution above all.”

This investigation followed a 2016 investigation that revealed 50 predatory priests in the Altoona-Johnstown, Pennsylvania diocese. In 2014, the Chicago Archdiocese released files on 63 predator priests who sexually abused 352 children and teens since 1950. A 2005 investigation of the Philadelphia Archdiocese revealed 60 predatory priests. And in 2002, the Boston Archdiocese revealed 150-200 perverse predatory priests. In all investigations, most of the victims were male.

In 2002, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York was hired by the “full body of Catholic bishops of the United States” to “conduct research, summarize the collected data, and issue a summary report” on clergy abuse in the Catholic Church. The report, titled “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010,” revealed that 81% of victims of Catholic priest abuse were male, and that 78% were pubescent or post-pubescent boys between the ages of 11-17 (51%  were between ages 11-14, 27% were between ages 15-17). The remaining 22% were between 1-10.

In the ever-shifting sands of social “science,” pedophilia is defined as sexual interest in prepubescent children. Therefore, adults who sexually molest pubescent children or post-pubescent teens are not deemed pedophiles. Adult males who are sexually interested in pubescent boys are called hebephiles, and adults who are sexually interested in post-pubescent boys are called ephebophiles. They’re still perverse, just less perverse than pedophiles. Formerly these forms of perversion were called pederasty. Priests who sexually abuse pubescent and post-pubescent male children and teens are homosexual. They are pederasts.

It is common to hear homo-activists and their collaborators make the strange claim that priests who are sexually interested in and sexually abuse pre-pubescent male children are most definitely not homosexual pedophiles. They will concede they are pedophiles, just not homosexual pedophiles. How can that be, you may be asking yourself. Here’s how homo-activists rationalize that claim:

• First, they assert that the “sexual orientations” are heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual.

• Second, they assert that “sexual orientation” refers only to adult-adult attraction (also known as “telieophilia”).

• Third, they argue that if a man is attracted to only prepubescent children—let’s say male children—then he has no “sexual orientation.” Abracadabra, adult men who are sexually attracted only to prepubescent male children are not homosexual because homosexual is a sexual orientation, which they don’t have.

Arguably the world’s preeminent scholar on the topic of the Bible and homosexuality, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, explains this tortured reasoning:

It is a semantic sleight of hand and pure sophistry to define a homosexual person solely as one who has a primary attraction to adult males (denoted in the scientific literature as “homosexual teleiophiles” or “androphiles”) and then to proclaim proudly that we have discovered that homosexual persons, so defined, do not do much molesting of children. If a pedophile is defined as a person who shows “little, if any, erotic interest in adults” and a “homosexual” as a person who shows little, if any, erotic interest in children, then, by definition, no homosexual can be a pedophile and few homosexuals will ever engage in a pedophilic act.

So you see, the priest in the Pennsylvania report who admitted molesting boys but denied the accusations of two girls because girls “don’t have a penis” couldn’t possibly be homosexual so long as the boys are 9 rather than 12.

Not everyone uses this doctrinaire theoretical framework. It’s easy to find “progressive” websites that refer to “heterosexual pedophiles.” And this article originally published by the Mayo Clinic refers to both heterosexual and homosexual pedophiles, providing disturbing information about both, but worse about homosexual pedophiles:

The percentage of homosexual pedophiles ranges from 9% to 40%, which is approximately 4 to 20 times higher than the rate of adult men attracted to other adult men (using a prevalence rate of adult homosexuality of 2%-4%). This finding does not imply that homosexuals are more likely to molest children, just that a larger percentage of pedophiles are homosexual or bisexual in orientation to children…. Heterosexual pedophiles, in self-report studies, have on average abused 5.2 children and committed an average of 34 sexual acts vs homosexual pedophiles who have on average abused 10.7 children and committed an average of 52 acts…. A study… of 377 nonincarcerated, non-incest-related pedophiles… who were surveyed using an anonymous self-report questionnaire, found that heterosexual pedophiles on average reported abusing 19.8 children and committing 23.2 acts, whereas homosexual pedophiles had abused 150.2 children and committed 281.7 acts.

The scope of the problem of homosexuality among priests is revealed not just in child abuse scandals. In his book The Changing Face of the Priesthood, published in 2000, Catholic priest Fr. Donald Cozzens estimated that 50% of priests and seminarians are same-sex attracted. In that same year, Jesuit priest Paul Shaughnessy wrote about the infiltration of the priesthood by homosexuals which had resulted in scores of priests’ deaths from AIDS between the mid-1980’s to 2000:

AIDS has quietly caused the deaths of hundreds of Roman Catholic priests in the United States…. The death rate of priests from AIDS is at least four times that of the general population…. [P]riests routinely gloat about the fact that gay bars in big cities have special “clergy nights,” that gay resorts have set-asides for priests, and that in certain places the diocesan apparatus is controlled entirely by gays. What is significant is that these are not claims made by their opponents, not accusations fired off by right-wing Catholics in a fit of paranoia; rather they are gays’ words about gays themselves.

In 2001, a website for homosexual priests and seminarians called St. Sebastian’s Angels was exposed:

Featured on St. Sebastian’s Angels were names, photos and email addresses of openly homosexual priests, a disturbing selection of pornographic images, and a forum for participants to discuss anything from their open rejection of Church teaching to their perverse activities and fantasies.

In 1996, shortly before he died, former archbishop of Chicago Joseph Cardinal Bernardin—long-rumored to be homosexual and accused of sexually molesting Steven Cook—asked the Windy City Gay Men’s Chorus to sing at his funeral.

In 2007, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia commissioned a homosexual artist to paint a huge “blasphemous homoerotic mural in his cathedral church” that depicts “semi-nude homosexuals, transsexuals [i.e., men with women’s breasts], prostitutes, and drug dealers, jumbled together in erotic interactions.” Paglia was appointed by Pope Francis “as president of the Pontifical Pope John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.” The mural remains even today despite controversy. 

In the summer of 2017, Vatican official Monsignor Luigi Capozzi’s “palatial” apartment was raided after complaints from neighbors. Inside the police found a homosexual orgy fueled by drugs and alcohol in progress.

In a stunning written statement, released on August 22, 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò reveals that Pope Francis lifted the canonical sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict on now-disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for his decades-long sexual abuse of both male children and seminarians. In his statement, Viganò also identifies Washington D.C. Cardinal Donald Wuerl and far-left Chicago Cardinal Blaise Cupich—a Francis appointee—as complicit in the cover up of McCarrick’s egregious sins.

Pope Francis ruffled the feathers of theologically orthodox Catholics again by his appointment of José Tolentino de Mendonça to be Vatican archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church. Concern over this appointment arises in part from Mendonça’s enthusiastic support for the heretical, feminist Benedictine nun Sr. Teresa Forcades who wants the church to change its position on homosexual activity (as well as abortion and female ordination). Not surprisingly, Forcades, who has “become one of the most influential left-wing public intellectuals in Europe,”  says, “I don’t believe every sentence in the Bible is the word of God.” 

Forcades praised Pope Francis’ efforts to change the attitude of the Church on homosexuality:

I think that Pope Francis attempted to make a step forward in this sense with the Synod on the Family; he did not succeed in doing it, but it is not the same atmosphere now as it was when there was not Pope Francis. For example, Sr. Jeannine Gramick, who worked in the United States for many years for acceptance not only for being homosexual but also for homosexual activity, for physical homosexual love, has said that from the time Pope Francis arrived she no longer faced the pressure she had endured previously to not do this type of apostolate.

This is the woman for whose book, Feminist Theology in History, Mendonça wrote an enthusiastic preface. And Mendonça is the priest Pope Francis wants in a Vatican leadership position. 

Some are astonished that the cover-up of sexual abuse committed by priests has continued even after the shocking Boston exposé. They ask, “Didn’t the Catholic Church learn anything from that scandal?” The real question should be, “Didn’t the Catholic Church learn anything from the first homosex scandal to hit the Catholic Church 400 years ago: the Piarist scandal?”

The 2004 book Fallen Order by British historian Karen Liebreich chronicles the sex abuse perpetrated and covered up in the Order of the Clerics Regular for the Pious Schools, also known as the Piarist Order, in 17^th Century Italy. The order was founded in 1597 by Jose de Calasanz and was “dedicated to educating poor children.” Two of the priests in charge of Pious schools were Fr. Stefano Cherubini and Fr. Melchiorre Alacchi, both of whom were pedophiles. When confronted by Calasanz, Cherubini, who came from a Vatican-connected family of attorneys, threatened to sue and besmirch the reputation of the Piarist Order and the Church all the way up to the pope, so Calasanz relented and promoted him. Some years later for reasons related to Vatican politics and unrelated to Cherubini’s pedophilia, the Vatican banned the Piarist Order. Twenty years later, the order rose from the ashes.

There is nothing new under the sun. Saint Peter Damian wrote this in in The Book of Gomorrah in 1051 AD:

[A] certain most abominable and exceedingly disgraceful vice has grown in our region, and unless it is quickly met with the hand of strict chastisement, it is certain that the sword of divine fury is looming to attack to the destruction of many…. The cancer of sodomitic impurity is thus creeping through the clerical order and indeed is raging like a cruel beast within the sheepfold of Christ.

In more prosaic language, Janet E. Smith, philosopher and professor of moral theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, echoed Damian’s sentiment from 850 years ago:

Many people think the sexual scandal in the Church is that bishops knew about McCarrick and did nothing about it…. The deeper problem is the presence of homosexual networks in the Church — likely in dioceses all over the world and certainly in the Curia…. Eradicating the homosexual networks from the Church would do a lot to purging the Church of immoral priests.

Pervasive cultural acceptance and affirmation of homosexuality puts boys at serious risk. In every society throughout history that has accepted homosexuality—from Celtic Ireland to ancient Greece and Rome to ancient and medieval Japan—the dominant form it has assumed has been pederastic. Adult men had sexual relationships with pubescent and post-pubescent boys. This is what we will see in America unless we can recover moral virtue and sexual sanity.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Homosexuality-in-the-Catholic-Church-2.mp3

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On July 27, 2017 a judge made the final decision in the case of Charlie Gard, ordering that the infant be moved to hospice for his last days on this earth. Charlie was one of 16 known children in the world to have mitochondrial depletion syndrome. This condition is a very rare terminal illness  which causes progressive muscle weakness and brain damage.

This decision followed the determination of the hospital that he would be better off dead. The European Court of Human Rights backed this decision. According to BBC News the court determined that further treatment would “continue to cause Charlie significant harm:”

European Court judges have now concluded it was most likely Charlie was “being exposed to continued pain, suffering and distress” and undergoing experimental treatment with “no prospects of success… would offer no benefit”.

They said the application presented by the parents was “inadmissible” and said the court’s decision was “final.”

The legal battle to protect the life of little Charlie Gard began on March 3, 2017 when a Justice from the Family Division of the High Court in London held a hearing to analyze Charlie’s case. On April 11, Justice Francis subsequently decided that the hospital could stop Charlie’s life support. On May 3, Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, appealed the decision of Justice Francis but the appeal was analyzed on May 23 and dismissed on May 25. On June 8, the parent’s appeal at the Supreme Court also failed. The family’s lawyers then appealed the case to the European Court of Human Rights on June 20. That Court refused to stop Charlie’s death at the hands of socialized medicine, despite the fact that Charlie’s parents had raised millions of dollars for experimental treatment in the United States. Multiple hospitals, including a Vatican hospital offered to take in Charlie but a High Court ruled against Charlie leaving the Great Ormond Street Hospital, instead saying he should be “allowed to die with dignity.”

“We are utterly heartbroken,” Charlie’s parents said in a June 29 Facebook post the day before Charlie was to die, “spending our last precious hours with our baby boy. We’re not allowed to choose if our son lives and we’re not allowed to choose when or where Charlie dies. We and most importantly Charlie have been massively let down throughout this whole process. Charlie will die tomorrow knowing that he was loved by thousands… thank you to everyone for all your support.”

According to CNN:

Under British law, parental responsibility includes the right to give consent for medical treatment, according to the British Medical Association.

However, parental rights are not absolute, and in cases in which doctors and parents disagree, the courts may exercise objective judgment in a child’s best interest.

Anytime government can usurp parental rights, it is a slippery slope, but this especially rings true when a life is at stake. Even though Charlie Gard’s case was certainly a life-threatening condition, his parents still had hope that the experimental treatment offered in the United States would have helped alleviate Charlie’s suffering and give Charlie a legitimate chance at life. Sadly, Charlie was not given that chance. According to WND, in response “a team of experts on parental rights, and related child rights, is asking President Trump to get the United States out of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child:”

The group’s letter to the White House said, “The Charlie Gard situation highlights the stark difference between our national values and those of internationalists who believe that government bureaucrats and the courts should decide how children should be raised, and even whether a life is worth living.”

The HSLDA notes that the Clinton administration signed the convention, but it never was ratified by the Senate.

HSLDA’s William Estrada explained, “When courts and medical authorities in England can overrule parents’ wishes and declare it is in the best interest of a child to let him die, it’s time to redouble efforts to protect parental rights here in America.”

The letter written to Trump by HSLDA rightfully states the belief “that life is precious and that parents, not the government, know best how to protect and care for their children.”

The United States has been the leader of the free world on the issue of human rights, and this must continue. With the case of Charlie Gard, critical time was wasted in legal battles when Charlie was left languishing to die in the Great Ormond Street Hospital If the United States ever ratifies the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, cases like Charlie’s would easily begin taking place in the United States.

“We just want some peace with our son – no hospital, no lawyers, no courts, no media, just quality time with Charlie –away from everything to say goodbye to him in the most loving way,” Yates expressed on Thursday, according to a CNN report posted by Fox 8. “Mummy and Daddy love you so much, Charlie, we always have and we always will and we are so sorry that we couldn’t save you. We had the chance, but we weren’t allowed to give you that chance. Sweet dreams, baby. Sleep tight, our beautiful little boy.”

Many individuals may directly associate the phrase “pro-life” with being pro-birth or opposed to abortion. While of course both of these statements are true, what many people perhaps fail to fully grasp is that being pro-birth is only a part of being pro-life. The truth is that pro-life is pro-woman, pro-adoption, pro-child, and pro-family. But proponents of the legal killing of an infant while it is in its mother’s womb always ignore the many facets of what it means to be pro life. Instead they try to paint those who are pro life as extremists who are against the empowerment of women and families.

The truth is that abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women and opposition to abortion has historically been a feminist issue. Many of the most capable and vigorous proponents of the pro-life message are strong women.

Miss North Dakota, Mary Christianson reminded us back in March that pro life is not anti-woman. “Not only do we support our women but we support our women who are unborn and can’t speak for themselves,” Christianson said. Pro-life is pro-woman, says Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life. “We know that a message many people hear in our country is that in order to be ‘pro-woman,’ you have to be pro-choice. I would offer that nothing could be further from the truth,” she told Cosmopolitan.com. “I see that as rhetoric and I see that as false. Life is empowering for women. A woman’s capacity to have children is an incredible thing, not something to be ashamed of. It doesn’t mean that I am defined by that, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend it’s not part of me. It’s an incredible gift.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, echoed this sentiment, writing in an op-ed for Newsbusters:

Clearly, the public visibility of strong women who oppose abortion on demand is causing a big change.

Protecting our unborn children from abortion is not an attack on women. Women know this because women are the ones who understand what it is to nurture, shelter and grow an infant in our own bodies.

Pro-life is also pro-adoption, as Vice President Mike Pence explained during the Vice Presidential debates. “If you’re going to be pro-life you should be pro-adoption,” he said, hinting that adoption needs to have a bigger part in the abortion debate. A woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy may feel tremendous pressure and may feel completely unequipped to handle the responsibilities of parenting a child. She may feel her only option is to abort her preborn child — but it isn’t. Adoption is a beautiful, lifesaving option, and mothers experiencing unplanned pregnancies have the right to information about how adoption works. Pro life individuals recognize the importance truly informing women of the healthy options that are available to them – instead of pushing abortion on women who already feel frightened and helpless.

Pro-life is also pro-child. Abortion is an atrocious embodiment of violence against the lives of the most innocent among us. “If we don’t treat the weakest members of society with the respect that we have for ourselves, how is that justice?” asks Lila Rose, President of Live Action. “How is that equality? How is that upholding human rights?”

Pro-life is pro-family. It has been said that the things most important in life are the things closest to home, and Confucius stated, “The strength of a nation derives in the integrity of the home.” Nothing hits closer to home than family, and individual lives are what constitutes a family. Pope Francis has famously said, “The right to life is the first among human rights.” By protecting the lives of the preborn, we protect the institution of the family, thereby promoting a healthy, nurturing society.

Every life has value because every person endowed by their Creator with life is created in the image of God. Being pro-life means that every life deserves to be respected regardless of circumstances because human life is created with an inherent sanctity and dignity. Being pro-life is more than just pro-birth; it’s pro-woman, pro-adoption, pro-child, and pro-family.

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Written by Rod Dreher

“In the absence of faith, we govern by tenderness.  And tenderness leads to the gas chamber,” said Flannery O’Connor. Her point was that sentimentality cannot restrain the darker forces in human nature. Which brings us to the Catholic bishops of eastern Canada.

They recently published a pastoral document indicating how, in their opinion, Catholics who commit suicide voluntarily, through doctor-assisted euthanasia (which is now legal there), should be treated by the Church. The full document is downloadable here. It is a masterpiece of Francis-speak. The document can be summed up like this: “Yes, euthanasia is strictly forbidden by the Catholic Church, but we know that some people are going to choose it anyway, so we intend to offer them all the sacraments to help them along the way, because who are we to judge?”

Here are some passages from the document. This is the opening paragraph:

In our Catholic tradition we often refer to the Church as our Mother. We perceive her as a mother who lovingly accompanies us throughout life, and who especially wishes to support and guide us when we are faced with difficult situations and decisions. It is from this perspective that we, the Bishops of the Atlantic Episcopal Assembly, wish to share with you this pastoral reflection on medical assistance in dying.

Come sit on Mama’s lap and let her tell you how she’s going to help you kill yourself. More:

Medical assistance in dying is a highly complex and intensely emotional issue which profoundly affects all of us. It makes us aware that some people have become convinced that, at a certain point, there is no longer any “value” in their lives, because their suffering has become unbearable or they cannot function as they once did or they feel a burden to their family and society. People with such a conviction or in such circumstances deserve our compassionate response and respect, for it is our belief that a person’s value arises from the inherent dignity we have as human beings and not from how well we function.

True enough — but watch those weasel words “highly complex and intensely emotional”. They are not meant to clarify but to obscure. More:

The example of Jesus shows us that pastoral care takes place in the midst of difficult situations, and that it involves listening closely to those who are suffering and accompanying them on the journey of their life situation.

Pope Francis also calls us to practice this “art of accompaniment”, removing our “sandals” before the sacred ground of the other (cf. Ex 3:5). The Holy Father writes that this accompaniment must be steady and reassuring, reflecting our closeness and our compassionate gaze which heals, liberates and encourages growth in the Christian life (Evangelii Gaudium – The Joy of the Gospel, no. 169). He says that to accompany requires prudence, understanding, patience and docility to the Spirit. He focuses on the need to practice the art of listening which requires the opening of one’s heart to a closeness which can lead to genuine spiritual encounter (Evangelii Gaudium – The Joy of the Gospel, no. 171). Pope Francis reminds us that the one who accompanies others must realize that each person’s situation before God and his/her life of grace are mysteries which no one can fully know from without. Consequently, we must not make judgements about people’s responsibility and culpability (Evangelii Gaudium – The Joy of the Gospel, no. 172).

See what they’re doing there? Invoking the compassion of Jesus and the counsel of humility and mercy of Pope Francis to lay the “who-am-I-to-judge” groundwork. But wait, doesn’t the Catholic Church teach that suicide is a grave moral wrong? The bishops knew you would say that:

Especially within the context of the Church’s teaching on suicide, this pastoral approach of accompaniment is extremely important in our contact with, and ministry to, those who are suffering intensely and who are considering asking for medical assistance in dying. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) teaches us that God is the sovereign Master of life. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of (CCC, no. 2280). The Catechism teaches that suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate one’s life (CCC, no. 2281). However, the Catechism also notes that “grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide” (CCC, no. 2282). Such circumstances can sometimes lead persons to so grave a feeling of desperation and hopelessness that they can no longer see the value in continuing to live, this desperation and hopelessness diminishing their responsibility for their actions. Only attentive pastoral accompaniment can bring us to an understanding of the circumstances that could lead a person to consider medical assistance in dying.

This is diabolical. They’re saying, “Yes, we know, the church says it’s wrong, but in certain instances, it can be right, because circumstances may “diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.” What this teaching of the Church intends to do is to encourage hope for the soul of the suicide, that God may not hold him responsible for the great sin he has committed — a sin from which there can be no repentance. It does not justify euthanasia. But, having made a hole big enough to pilot a supertanker through, the Canadian bishops deliver the real goods:

The Sacrament of Penance is for the forgiveness of past sins, not the ones that have yet to be committed, and yet the Catechism reminds us that by ways known to God alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance (CCC, no. 2283). The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is for strengthening and accompanying someone in a vulnerable and suffering state. It presupposes one’s desire to follow Christ even in his passion, suffering and death; it is an expression of trust and dependence on God in difficult circumstances (CCC, no. 1520-3). The reception of Holy Communion as one approaches the end of this life can assist a person in growing in their union with Christ. This last Communion, called Viaticum, has a particular significance and importance as the seed of eternal life and the power of resurrection (CCC, no. 1524). As for the Church’s funeral rites, there are a number of possibilities available. However, in discerning the type of celebration most pastorally appropriate to the particular situation, there should always be dialogue with the persons concerned which is caring, sensitive and open. The decree of promulgation of the Order of Funerals states that: “By means of the funeral rites it has been the practice of the Church, as a tender mother, not simply to commend the dead to God but also to raise high the hope of its children and give witness to its own faith in the future resurrection of the baptized with Christ” (Prot. No. 720/69).

As people of faith, and ministers of God’s grace, we are called to entrust everyone, whatever their decisions may be, to the mercy of God. To one and all we wish to say that the pastoral care of souls cannot be reduced to norms for the reception of the sacraments or the celebration of funeral rites. Persons, and their families, who may be considering euthanasia or assisted suicide and who request the ministry of the Church need to be accompanied with dialogue and compassionate prayerful support. The fruit of such a pastoral encounter will shed light on complex pastoral situations and will indicate the most appropriate action to be taken including whether or not the celebration of sacraments is proper.

There’s more in the bishops’ statement, but that’s the heart of it. Notice how they have proposed something monstrously anti-Christian by slathering it with buttercream icing of tender verbiage. From the pen of these bishops, Bergoglian “who am I to judge?” tenderness leads to the euthanist’s needle. That’s not Church as Mother; that’s Church as Mommie Dearest.

Fortunately, there is at least one morally sane Catholic bishop in Canada: the mighty Fred Henry, the Bishop of Calgary, who addresses the assisted suicide issuewith straightforward, muscular prose, and lays out Catholic moral teaching with great clarity. Excerpt:

For Catholics, in order to receive the sacraments, one must have the proper disposition. The deepest meaning of receiving sacraments is that man entrusts himself to God’s loving mercy. Consciously and freely choosing euthanasia or assisted suicide implies that one is not entrusting oneself to God’s mercy, but is rather controlling the conclusion of one’s own life. Such a position is incompatible with the surrender to God’s loving mercy and it denies, so to speak, the strength that is inherent in the sacraments. Through the sacraments one participates in the suffering, the death and the Resurrection of Jesus and in the unconditional “yes” He spoke to His Father.

From this perspective, it is impossible to comply with a request for the sacraments when someone has planned to end his life or to have it ended actively. Such a person does not have the proper disposition.

Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide are not a “solution” to suffering, but an elimination of the suffering human being. It is therefore the confirmation of despair, of the overwhelming feeling that all suffering can only end when the human person himself ceases to be. If the pastoral caregiver were to support the request for euthanasia, he would be capitulating to despair, which is contrary to the hope alive within him which he wants to proclaim. If the Church’s minister were out of a false of compassion accede to such a request it would constitute an enormous situation of scandal and denial of the truth, “You shall not kill.”

This article was originally posted at TheAmericanConservative.com

Written by Paul Kengor

Last week I looked at the history of the original socialists and at what Pope Francis aptly termed their “ideological colonization” of the family and marriage, work that started in the 19th century with the likes of Robert Owen, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Whether they know it or not, today’s nature-redefiners — who target the family or marriage or sexuality or gender — are standing on the shoulders of those 19th century ideologues, utopians who sought to replace the natural-traditional-Biblical family with their own conceptions. Socialism’s new strategies are certainly different from the old, but the rebellion against God and His absolutes remains the same.

In recent decades, eager socialists in the West have been ripping down the traditional family from Scandinavia to Ireland. The spectacle in Ireland was especially disturbing. It was one of the few places where marriage was redefined not by unhinged judges or a left-wing Parliament but by national referendum in a one-time Catholic country where the majority no longer cares about the 2,000-year Christian teaching on the sanctity of marriage. Ireland’s citizenry once led the way in sending priests and nuns to the English-speaking world. Today the Irish take the lead as angry scoffers at their ancestors’ faith.

Socialism’s Bait and Switch

The contemporary left’s effort to fundamentally transform the family has been relentless, opportunistic and multi-faceted. Even in countries like Italy and France, where the populace was not demanding same-sex marriage, socialist politicians are hell-bent on giving it to them anyway.

Under the leadership of socialist Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Italy just approved same-sex civil unions, which everyone in the country understands as the Italian left’s mere first step to securing same-sex marriage and adoption of children as well. Still, even there we can mainly blame the electorate. Italian citizens, after all, voted for the socialists. They did so not because they wanted the left’s wider cultural-social agenda. They voted for cradle-to-grave freebies and never-ending pensions from the nanny state, not for the redefinition of family and marriage.

But sadly, what they do not realize (or tolerate as a trade-off for socialism’s wondrous freebies) is that when you vote for the left for economic reasons you inevitably also get its cultural-social agenda — which undermines the natural-traditional-biblical family. If you are addicted to the welfare the socialist doctor provides, then you also accept his cultural brew. Such is the plight of the welfare junkie addicted to the state’s largesse.

Thus, Italians en masse remain sympathetic to Pope Francis and his appeals against same-sex marriage and the “demon” of gender ideology. Nonetheless, when you hold out your hands for “free” government goodies, among the candy in the socialist bag is family redefinition. You want the fat pension? Okay, fine, but you also must give a thumbs-up to gay unions.

Time to pay the socialist piper, kiddies.

Obama and the Democratic Socialists of America

As for America, our situation is not wildly different. We are getting an aggressive “LGBTQ” political-cultural agenda under Barack Obama’s expansive left-wing umbrella of “fundamental transformation.” That was not what the rank-and-file Obama voter was expecting in November 2008. Certainly, the record number of millions of African-Americans (historically the most religious voting demographic in the country) who enthusiastically voted for Obama did so for reasons that had nothing whatever to do with transgender bathroom edicts. But alas, the fundamental transformation they are getting is a White House literally illuminated in the rainbow colors of the gay-rights movement.

We should not delude ourselves that Barack Obama, the most far-left president we have ever had, is not a socialist of some sort. As Stanley Kurtz showed several years ago, we know that Obama was actually for a time in the 1990s a member of the socialist New Party. (For extended analysis, see my book on Obama’s long-time mentor, The Communist.) If Obama remains a socialist, he remains one from a cultural perspective as much as an economic one.

But moving away from Obama, look at the platforms of the dominant socialists in America today when it comes to family-sexuality issues.

The website of the influential Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is quite open about its social goals. Its “About DSA” section lists among its three planks the broad objective of seeking to “restructure gender and cultural relationships.” The DSA has been carrying the rainbow flag for quite some time. It passed a resolution at the annual convention in November 2011:

DSA calls for the legalization of same-sex marriages in all the States and Territories of the United States of America; the enactment of anti-discrimination laws in housing, jobs, education, and health care; and the repeal of state sodomy laws and anti-lesbian and gay restrictions.

That was merely point one in a very comprehensive seven-point statement on “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Rights” that also included (among other things) “making public schools safe and bias-free for LGBTQ students, defending their free speech in school and allowing students to start gay-straight alliance clubs” and advancing “the rights of LGBTQ people to parent.” Very tellingly, point four in the DSA statement insisted: “DSA advocates for local and federal non-discrimination laws and insists that religious beliefs cannot be used to justify bias.”

For the record, the objectives of the DSA statement are almost identical to those of Socialist Party USA, whose official platform includes a statement pledging, “We are committed to confronting the heterosexism that provides the fertile ground for homophobic violence, and support all efforts toward fostering understanding and cooperation among persons and groups of differing sexual orientations.”

And if you want to go further left still, John Bachtell, Communist Party USA chair, recently writing in People’s World (successor to the Daily Worker), called for a socialist-communist-progressive-liberal-Democrat coalition, coalescing around Bernie Sanders, to “fight uncompromisingly against racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia.”

Marx and Engels: Proud Papas

What would Marx and Engels have thought about their name and ideology being invoked in the modern left’s crusade against “transphobia?” Well, they would have been shocked speechless. But they surely would have appreciated how their left-wing descendants found such handy tools to undermine the traditional family. Today’s leftists may not succeed in a total “abolition of the family” (to borrow from the phrase in The Communist Manifesto), but they are certainly succeeding in fundamentally transforming the institution.

Once upon a time, when we worried about socialists undermining the family, our concern was the economic destitution wrought by the ideology and its counterfactual theories about property and wealth confiscation and redistribution. In the old days, socialists harmed the family by leaving a dad jobless or the household scratching for income in a decimated economy. Today, we need to widen our horizon of socialism’s destructive possibilities. Modern socialists are not thinking merely about managing the state’s economic means of production; they are seeking to completely manage and revamp society’s very understanding of the human family itself.

They are, in short, fundamental transformers not just economically but culturally. And they operate a giant wrecking ball that is wreaking havoc in millions of lives.

This article was originally posted at the Stream.org

While the legal case will continue to work its way through the courts, the bottom line is this: Kim Davis has won. The homofascists have lost.

Last Tuesday, Kentucky’s new governor, Matt Bevin, issued an executive order that eliminates the names of all county clerks from marriage licenses and protects the unalienable constitutional rights and religious freedoms of Kim Davis and all other clerks in Kentucky.

“This action is a fulfillment of a campaign promise by Gov. Bevin and is directly what our client Kim Davis has been requesting for months,” said Mat Staver, Davis’ attorney and founder of the Christian civil rights firm Liberty Counsel. “This promise will enable her and other clerks to do their jobs without compromising religious values and beliefs.”

The governor’s statement reads in part:

“To ensure that the sincerely held religious beliefs of all Kentuckians are honored, Executive Order 2015-048 directs the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives to issue a revised marriage license form to the offices of all Kentucky County Clerks. The name of the County Clerk is no longer required to appear on the form.”

While the First Amendment alone should be enough to ensure these safeguards, the unconstitutional actions of five “progressive” lawyers on the U.S. Supreme Court, who, back in June, presumed to capriciously redefine the immutable meaning of marriage, has created legal and moral chaos from coast-to-coast, making fixes such as that issued by Gov. Bevin necessary. Furthermore, these extremist lawyers’ subjective and unprecedented opinion will require additional fixes in all other states to reaffirm Christians’ objective and constitutionally guaranteed rights. Although the fight to repair the perversion of marriage committed by the high court will continue, this is an important step in the right direction.

You may recall that Davis was arbitrarily imprisoned for five days earlier this year by federal Judge David Bunning for exercising her religious liberties and refusing to violate her conscience by signing her name to, and, thereby, giving her official approval of, counterfeit “gay marriage” licenses. These licenses, of course, violate both natural law and the manifold biblical proscriptions against the sin of unnatural same-sex deviancy. Bunning’s tyrannical move backfired tremendously, earning Davis’ the support of tens-of-millions of Christians worldwide, as well as both a private audience with, and the express support of, Pope Francis.

“This is a wonderful Christmas gift for Kim Davis,” continued Staver. “This executive order is a clear, simple accommodation on behalf of Kim Davis and all Kentucky clerks. Kim can celebrate Christmas with her family knowing she does not have to choose between her public office and her deeply held religious convictions. What former Gov. Beshear could have done but refused to do, Gov. Bevin did with this executive order. We are pleased that Gov. Bevin kept his campaign promise to accommodate the religious rights of Kim Davis. We will notify the courts of the executive order, and this order proves our point that a reasonable accommodation should have been done to avoid Kim having to spend time in jail.”

“Bah humbug!” cried the ACLU.

“Governor Bevin’s executive action has added to the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over marriage licensing in Kentucky,” claimed ACLU of Kentucky Legal Director William Sharp.

“The requirement that the county clerk’s name appear on marriage licenses is prescribed by Kentucky law and is not subject to unilateral change by the governor,” he demanded, proving that the anti-Christian left’s goal was never about so-called “marriage equality” but, rather, was to force Christians to deny marriage reality and personally affirm, under penalty of law, mock “gay marriages.”

The ACLU will soon have little more to say on the subject as lawmakers are poised to further codify and build upon Bevin’s executive order. “Next month, the Kentucky legislature is expected to update the state’s marriage laws and will consider a provision exempting county clerks from having to issue them,” reports ABC News. “Davis said Kentucky’s marriage laws have been ‘completely eviscerated’ by the Supreme Court’s ruling and said she would be willing to come to the state Capitol to testify about any changes.”

Other state legislatures, as well as the U.S. Congress, must soon follow suit if any progress is to be made into the impasse between secularist change agents hostile to religious freedom, and the faithful Christians who enjoy it as a matter of law.

“In an interview with the Associated Press about her year at the center of one of the biggest social changes in decades, Davis described it as ‘a very emotional and a very real situation to all people.’ But she said simply telling others about her faith was not ‘going to make anybody believe anything.’ And so she put her faith in action by refusing to issue the licenses,” added ABC.

“‘No one would ever have remembered a county clerk that just said … ‘Even though I don’t agree with it, it’s OK. I’ll do it,’ Davis said. ‘If I could be remembered for one thing, it’s that I was not afraid to not compromise myself.’”

Kim Davis will certainly be remembered for her steadfast refusal to compromise herself. But she, along with Gov. Bevin, will also be remembered for helping, this Christmas season, to re-establish the gift of religious freedom for the people of Kentucky.

Even so, the war for our culture will continue into the New Year and well beyond.

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Big news this week as “progressives” worldwide learned, to their utter shock and mournful consternation, that the pope is Catholic. Rumors are they will next examine wild bears, the woods and certain mysteries therein.

On Wednesday the Vatican confirmed what a handful of us knew days before. Pope Francis secretly (and privately) met with Kim Davis at Washington’s Vatican Embassy to personally offer his broad support for her bold stand against that insidious and “intrinsically disordered” counterfeit called “gay marriage.”

Does Pope Francis really support Kim Davis?

While specifics of Davis’ legal case were not discussed during the private meeting, days later Pope Francis publicly affirmed Kim’s “human right” as a “conscientious objector” to refuse to sign her name to “gay marriage” licenses – even in her official capacity as an elected official. This human right, incidentally, is an unalienable right protected by the First Amendment. “Stay strong,” the pope told Kim after the two embraced during the tearful meeting. He thanked her for her courage and asked her to pray for him. She likewise asked him to pray for her. These facts are not in dispute.

On Friday the Vatican issued another statement to clarify what was, or, better still, was not, discussed during the meeting: “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” said Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi.

As Austin Ruse of Breitbart.com notes, “The Vatican spokesman chose his words carefully. By stating that the meeting should not be considered support for her position ‘in all of its particular and complex aspects,’ Lombardi is allowing the notion that the meeting can be understood as general support for Davis’ cause, but not necessarily papal support for every detailed aspect of the legal case.”

Indeed, neither Kim Davis nor anyone on her legal team ever suggested that the pope supports, or is even aware of, “her position in all of its particular and complex aspects.” Still, based upon his own words and the official position of the Catholic Church, we can know, for sure, of at least three “positions” on which the pope does support Kim Davis. They are: 1) Homosexual behavior is sin; 2) Marriage is exclusively between one man and one woman; and 3) No “human person,” whether a government official or not, should be forced to violate his or her conscience by affirming sin-based “gay marriage.”

Who asked for the meeting?

There has likewise been much speculation and liberal wishful thinking as to how this meeting came about, with some pundits desperately clinging to hopes that the pontiff was “actually swindled into meeting Kim Davis.”

Let’s end the speculation.

Vatican officials reached out, unsolicited, to Davis through her attorney, Mat Staver, and arranged the meeting out of the blue before Pope Francis even arrived in the U.S. for his whirlwind tour. The Davis team was led to believe that the request came from the pope himself. Not only did Pope Francis know who Kim Davis was when he told reporters on the plane ride home that conscientious objectors have a “human right” to decline participation in sodomy-based “marriage,” he had personally met Kim privately, and embraced her both physically and ideologically, before he did so.

The meeting was temporarily kept “secret” during the pope’s visit so as to avoid the predictable media circus that would, and later did, ensue. Both Davis’ representatives and the Vatican agreed that news of the meeting would be released upon the pope’s departure. He wasn’t “embarrassed” by the meeting, as some have suggested, but, rather, held it discreetly for logistical reasons alone.

What does the pope believe about homosexuality and “gay marriage”?

While protestant Christians obviously don’t agree with Pope Francis and the Catholic Church on everything, all faithful Christians, both protestant and Catholic alike, are nonetheless indebted to him for validating Kim’s courageous obedience to God. By extension, the pope has likewise validated every other Christian who refuses to be forced to participate in, or otherwise affirm, this sinful pagan rite. “Gay marriage” is an affront to Christ, the Church and God’s natural order. No faithful believer who wishes to remain in obedience to God can have anything to do with it.

But why? Why is “gay marriage” an affront to God? Why must Christians oppose it?

While the reasons are manifold, it seems most wish to avoid the primary issue surrounding any discussion on “same-sex marriage.” That is, the fundamental wrongness of homosexual behavior itself. If homosexual behavior is not wrong, as it goes, then what justification is there for refusing to redefine marriage around it?

But it is wrong. It’s always, and in every way, wrong.

So says the pope.

So says the Bible.

And, most importantly, so says the very Creator of marriage itself.

On the question of homosexual sin, the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a clear and biblically sound summation: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

And so Kim Davis refuses to approve them.

Despite progressives’ best efforts, there’s simply no way to get around words like, “intrinsically disordered” and “grave depravity.”

As for those who struggle with same-sex attraction and define their identity as “gay” or “lesbian” based upon these aberrant temptations and proclivities, the Catechism ads, “This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.”

“They” must be accepted. Their disordered and sinful behavior must not.

On progressives’ push for “gay marriage,” Pope Francis has said, “The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.”

“Gay marriage” is inherently sterile – a dead end.

“Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity,” the pope has added, further calling all attempts to impose “gay marriage” on society “ideological colonization which are out to destroy the family.”

“The complementarity of man and woman … is the root of marriage and family,” he observes.

Amen, pontiff sir. Amen.

On Sept. 24, after Kim Davis and Pope Francis met privately, I had the distinct privilege of joining Kim and her husband, Joe, for dinner. In addition to sharing the pope’s views on sexual morality, marriage and freedom of conscience, I saw firsthand that they likewise share the pope’s profound love and compassion for those afflicted by these “trials.”

Kim Davis is an accidental hero.

Pope Francis is to be commended for honoring her as such.

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Top Vatican adviser Jeffrey Sachs says that when Pope Francis visits the United States in September, he will directly challenge the “American idea” of God-given rights embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

Sachs, a special advisor to the United Nations and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a media superstar who can always be counted on to pontificate endlessly on such topics as income inequality and global health. This time, writing in a Catholic publication, he may have gone off his rocker, revealing the real global game plan.

The United States, Sachs writes in the Jesuit publication, America, is “a society in thrall” to the idea of unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the “urgent core of Francis’ message” will be to challenge this “American idea” by “proclaiming that the path to happiness lies not solely or mainly through the defense of rights but through the exercise of virtues, most notably justice and charity.”

In these extraordinary comments, which constitute a frontal assault on the American idea of freedom and national sovereignty, Sachs has made it clear that he hopes to enlist the Vatican in a global campaign to increase the power of global or foreign-dominated organizations and movements.

Sachs takes aim at the phrase, which comes from America’s founding document, the United States Declaration of Independence, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

These rights sound good, Sachs writes, but they’re not enough to guarantee the outcome the global elites have devised for us. Global government, he suggests, must make us live our lives according to international standards of development.

“In the United States,” Sachs writes, “we learn that the route to happiness lies in the rights of the individual. By throwing off the yoke of King George III, by unleashing the individual pursuit of happiness, early Americans believed they would achieve that happiness. Most important, they believed that they would find happiness as individuals, each endowed by the creator with individual rights.”

While he says there is some “grandeur in this idea,” such rights “are only part of the story, only one facet of our humanity.”

The Sachs view is that global organizations such as the U.N. must dictate the course of nations and individual rights must be sacrificed for the greater good. One aspect of this unfolding plan, as outlined in the Sachs book, The End of Poverty, involves extracting billions of dollars from the American people through global taxes.

“We will need, in the end, to put real resources in support of our hopes,” he wrote. “A global tax on carbon-emitting fossil fuels might be the way to begin. Even a very small tax, less than that which is needed to correct humanity’s climate-deforming overuse of fossil fuels, would finance a greatly enhanced supply of global public goods.” Sachs has estimated the price tag for the U.S. at $845 billion.

In preparation for this direct assault on our rights, the American nation-state, and our founding document, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon told a Catholic Caritas International conference in Rome on May 12 that climate change is “the defining challenge of our time,” and that the solution lies in recognizing that “ humankind is part of nature, not separate or above.”

The pope’s expected encyclical on climate change is supposed to help mobilize the governments of the world in this crusade.

But a prestigious group of scholars, churchmen, scientists, economists and policy experts has issued a detailed rebuttal, entitled, “An Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change,” pointing out that the Bible tells man to have dominion over the earth.

“Good climate policy must recognize human exceptionalism, the God-given call for human persons to ‘have dominion’ in the natural world (Genesis 1:28), and the need to protect the poor from harm, including actions that hinder their ascent out of poverty,” the letter to Pope Francis states.

Released by a group called the Cornwall Alliance, the letter urges the Vatican to consider the evidence that climate change is largely natural, that the human contribution is comparatively small and not dangerous, and that attempting to mitigate the human contribution by reducing CO2 emissions “would cause more harm than good, especially to the world’s poor.”

The Heartland Institute held a news conference on April 27 at the Hotel Columbus in Rome, to warn the Vatican against embracing the globalist agenda of the climate change movement. The group is hosting the 10th International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, D.C. on June 11-12.

However, it appears as if the Vatican has been captured by the globalist forces associated with Sachs and the United Nations.

Voice of the Family, a group representing pro-life and pro-family Catholic organizations from around the world, has taken issue not only with the Vatican’s involvement with Sachs but with Ban Ki Moon, describing the two as “noted advocates of abortion who operate at the highest levels of the United Nations.”Sachs has been described as “arguably the world’s foremost proponent of population control,” including abortion.

Voice of the Family charges that environmental issues such as climate change have become “an umbrella to cover a wide spectrum of attacks on human life and the family.”

Although Sachs likes to claim he was an adviser to Pope John Paul II, the noted anti-communist and pro-life pontiff, Sachs simply served as a member of a group of economists invited to confer with the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace in advance of the release of a papal document.

In fact, Pope John Paul II had worked closely with the Reagan administration in opposition to communism and the global population control movement. He once complained that a U.N. conference on population issues was designed to “destroy the family” and was the “snare of the devil.”

Pope Francis, however, seems to have embraced the very movements opposed by John Paul II.

Sachs, who has emerged as a very influential Vatican adviser, recently tweetedthat he was “thrilled” to be at the Vatican “discussing moral dimensions of climate change and sustainable development.” The occasion was a Vatican workshop on global warming on April 28, 2015, sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of the Roman Catholic Church. Sachs was a featured speaker.

The plan going forward involves the launching of what are called “Sustainable Development Goals,” as envisioned by a Sustainable Development Solutions Network run by none other than Jeffrey Sachs.

“The Network has proposed draft Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which contain provisions that are radically antagonistic to the right to life from conception to natural death, to the rights and dignity of the family and to the rights of parents as the primary educators of their children,” states the group Voice of the Family.

In July, a Financing for Development conference will be held, in order to develop various global tax proposals, followed by a conference in Paris in December to complete a new climate change agreement.

Before that December conference, however, Sachs says the pope will call on the world at the United Nations to join the crusade for a New World Order.

Sachs says, “Pope Francis will come to the United States and the United Nations in New York on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, and at the moment when the world’s 193 governments are resolved to take a step in solidarity toward a better world. On Sept. 25, Pope Francis will speak to the world leaders—most likely the largest number of assembled heads of state and government in history—as these leaders deliberate to adopt new Sustainable Development Goals for the coming generation. These goals will be a new worldwide commitment to build a world that aims to harmonize the pursuit of economic prosperity with the commitments to social inclusion and environmental sustainability.”

Rather than emphasize the absolute need for safeguarding individual rights in the face of government overreach and power, Sachs writes that the Gospel teachings of humility, love and justice, “like the teachings of Aristotle, Buddha and Confucius,” can take us on a “path to happiness through compassion” and “become our guideposts back to safety.”

Writing elsewhere in the new issue of America, Christiana Z. Peppard, an assistant professor of theology, science and ethics at Fordham University, writesabout the “planetary pope,” saying, “What is really at stake in the collective response to the pope’s encyclical is not, ultimately, whether our treasured notions of theology, science, reality or development can accommodate moral imperatives. The real question is whether we are brave enough and willing to try.”

The plan is quite simple: world government through global taxes, with a religious face to bring it about.

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media website.