News From Around the World

Father Michael,

I would like to tell everyone that I recently suffered with intense sinus pain. I tried nasal spray and a strong pain reliever to get rid of the pain. But they did not work. The pain remained.

But when you, Father Michael, administered the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist to me in my home, the instant that the Sacred Host touched my tongue, all of my intense sinus pain immediately went away and it has not returned since!

I am publicly thanking the good Lord for this miracle!

Thank you Father Michael for bringing Holy Communion to me.

With deepest gratitude to God,

Sharon L.

Holy Eucharist Improves Physical,
Mental, & Emotional Health

A Special "Thank You" to Louise A. for this Submission!

Dear Father Michael,

As a single and widowed Mother, who is disabled, I had been under a lot stress which caused me to have a lot of chest pains and to feel extremely ill, overwhelmed, and exhausted most of the time.

I then decided to request frequent Holy Communion from you. After receiving Holy Communion from you, I noticed that a lot of very positive changes began to happen in my life.

For example, in a short period of time, all of my chest pain, anxieties, illnesses, fears, and nightmares left me.

I now have a total sense of peace and well-being, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

My overall health has improved, I am much happier, much more hopeful, and even have more energy.

I am now able to handle a tremendous amount of stress in my life because of my frequent Holy Communions.

In addition, God the Holy Ghost has been frequently enlightening me by giving me practical solutions to my daily problems, including unexpected emergencies.

Plus, the Holy Ghost is helping me to cope with all of my problems as a single and widowed Mother.

I have also seen a big improvement in my relationships with my children, grand-children, great-grand-children, as well as family members, and friends. The Holy Ghost has been guiding me on the correct words to use, and the communication techniques to use, in dealing with difficult people. As a result, these difficult people are becoming more calm and easier to deal with and work with.

As a "bonus", I have discovered that I now have the Spiritual strength, with the help of God's Graces. to resist all kinds of temptations, ever remaining calm under even the most trying of conditions.

As an "extra-special bonus", so to speak, our Eucharistic Lord has also protected me in various ways, and has just recently protected one of my Sons from several severe accidents. And has also given me many small miracles in my life, and three really big ones!

I am publicly thanking the Holy Ghost and the good Lord for the many Gifts They have given me as the result of my receiving the Holy Eucharist from you on a regular basis.

Louise A.

The End of One Mystery...
And the beginning of another

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

The End of One Mystery...
And the beginning of another
By
Robert Moynihan, reporting from Rome

Lacrimae rerum.
("The tears of things." Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 1, line 462)

The Briefcase Left Behind
(continued)

I began my conversation with the monsignor indicated to me by Cardinal Gagnon as he lay dying with the simple fact of Gagnon's passing in August of 2007.

We spoke in Italian. The conversation took place in the fall of 2007.

"I was sorry to hear of Cardinal Gagnon's passing," I said.

"Yes, so was I," the monsignor said. "He was a great servant of the Church. He suffered a great deal."

"I knew him," I said. "He was always helpful to me, especially when I was beginning."

"He was a kind man."

And then we began our usual conversation, on the state of the Church, the latest news in the Vatican, and so forth. Our conversation turned naturally to the publication on July 7, 2007, of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, which promoted wider use of the old rite of the Mass.

"I'm confused," I said.

"Why?" he said.

"The whole thing," I said.

"What happened at the Second Vatican Council, the Constitution on the Liturgy, the Commission established to revise the Mass, Monsignor Annibale Bugnini.

[Ordained in 1936 and named archbishop in 1972, he was secretary of the commission that worked on the reform of the Catholic liturgy that followed the Second Vatican Council.]

And now, 40 years later, we seem to be still in a state of confusion. It seems like all the things we held sacred — all the things we loved — have been trampled upon."

"You are too gloomy," he said, waving his hand dismissively.

"Yes, things have been trampled upon, but the essential remains. Don't lose heart."

"Does the essential remain?" I asked.

"Look around. We have some who don't care about any traditions at all, they look at the 'old Church' as narrow and guilt-ridden, and they will do anything not to go back. And we have many traditionalists who seem to focus solely on externals — it sometimes seems an idolatry of the ritual..."

"I don't see it that black-and-white," the monsignor said.

"You are leaving out all the individuals, all their acts of sacrifice, their good humor, their prayer. You have fallen into a trap. In the fight over truth, don't forget grace. Remember, there is God, the Holy Spirit, Mary..."

"But why do so many seem not to care?"

"Some are thoughtless. Some are persuaded the Church should be changed. Some just flow with the tide. Some are motivated by money. And then there are those who serve other masters. That was the case with Bugnini..."

I was startled. Not because of what he said, because it is an old allegation, but because of the way he said it, as if it was something settled, beyond discussion.

"Of course, I have heard that," I said, "but why do you say it so bluntly, as if it were certain? I thought it was just an allegation?"

Bugnini
"It is certain," he said. "At least, as certain as anything can be in this world. He went to a meeting in the Secretariat of State, with his briefcase. It was in 1975. Later that evening, when everyone had gone home, a monsignor found the briefcase Bugnini had left behind. The monsignor decided to open it to see who the owner was. And when he opened it, he found letters inside addressed to Bugnini, as to a brother, from the Grand Master of Italian Freemasonry..."
"But could those letters have been forgeries?" I asked. "Could someone have opened the briefcase, seen it was Bugnini's, and then slipped these false documents inside, to frame him?"
"Well, theoretically, I suppose, that is possible.
[Note to readers: Bugnini himself always said the allegations were false, that he was never a freemason, and that the charges were made against him by disgruntled conservatives who opposed the work he had done on the liturgy.]

But Paul VI, at least, didn't think so. When the evidence was brought to him, he came to the conclusion that Bugnini needed to be removed immediately from his post. Bugnini was made the papal nuncio in Iran. After more than 25 years as the head of the liturgical reform, he was abruptly fired and sent to a country where there are hardly any Catholics at all. It was a type of banishment.

"That is very sad," I said.

"No," he said, "it is very human... And today, 35 years later, it is in the past. It is something we can do nothing about."

"But if this is really true," I said, "then Paul VI may have approved of the new Mass under 'false pretences,' as it were. Wouldn't that raise questions about the entire liturgical reform? And why, then, did Paul VI not go back to the drawing board, if he believed what you say was true?"

(For more on the letters in the briefcase, see: http://www.traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_075_BugniniMason.htm)

The Monsignor Sums Up

"Look," the monsignor said, "no matter how many defeats the Church suffers, no matter how many betrayals, there is always hope..."

"But the losses are so great," I said, "it is as if the link between our time and the past has been severed..."

"No!" He looked fiercely at me. "You yourself are evidence that it has not been severed. And so am I. And I tell you, that even were you to fall, and betray the faith, and even were I to fall, and even if all around us were to fall, still, the Church will not be defeated. She will prevail. Non praevalebunt!"

And I looked at him and marveled at his faith.

And I still had not asked him about the Gagnon dossier...

Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado

The Roman Catholic Church
looks into cult allegations
and $1,000 hams

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

The Roman Catholic Church
looks into cult allegations
and $1,000 hams
By
Jason Berry — Special to Global Post
Published: July 19, 2009 20:54 ET
Updated: July 20, 2009 19:00 ET

Global Post Editor's note: A sweeping Vatican investigation of an international religious order — and the cult of personality built around its founder — has just begun in Rome. Five bishops are delving into the finances and internal dynamics of an organization suspected of influence peddling. Award-winning investigative reporter and author Jason Berry has tracked these events for years in a book he co-authored and a documentary he produced on events leading to the Pope's decision to investigate. In this exclusive report for GlobalPost, Berry breaks new ground on the Vatican investigation of the Legionaries of Christ, and the case against Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder.

ROME — Pope Benedict XVI recently appointed five bishops from as many countries to investigate the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order founded in 1941 by the late Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, a Mexican priest who is accused of sexually abusing young seminarians, and who left a grown daughter who was born out-of-wedlock.

Even after death, Maciel wields power through the influence he secured.

While the American Catholic Church has been publicly battered by two decades of priest sexual abuse scandals that erupted in the press and devastated church finances with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on compensating victims and legal fees, the Maciel scandal has gone largely unnoticed by most of the American press.

There’s a reason: For decades, the Legion shunned the media while Maciel cultivated relationships with some of the most powerful, conservative Catholics in the world. He also forced his priests and seminarians to take vows never to criticize him, or any superior. The legion built a network of prep schools and an astonishing database of donors. In Maciel's militant spirituality, Legionaries — and their wing of lay supporters, Regnum Christi — see themselves as saving the church from a corrupted world. Behind the silence he imposed, Maciel was corrupt — abusing seminarians and using money in ways that several past and present seminarians liken to bribery, in forging ties with church officials.

The silence Maciel imposed on his followers allowed Maciel to pursue a double life.

Maciel, who was born into a wealthy ranching family in Mexico, wooed cardinals and bishops with money, fine wines, $1,000 hams and even a new car — and in so doing secured support for his religious order inside the Roman Curia.

Now, as the investigating bishops, called “visitators” — from America, Italy, Mexico, Spain and Chile — begin travels for interviews in the order’s far-flung religious houses, two Vatican officials are in the Legion’s corner.

Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals and the former Secretary of State, and Franc Rode, the cardinal who oversees religious congregations, were both longtime allies of Maciel and strong supporters of the order today.

The issue facing Benedict has no precedent in modern church history: whether to dismantle a movement with a $650 million budget yet only about 700 priests and 2,500 seminarians, or to keep the brand name and try to reform an organization still run as a cult of personality to its founder. Excessive materialism and psychological coercion tactics continue Maciel’s legacy.

Two years ago Benedict abolished the “secret vows” by which each Legionary swore never to criticize Maciel or any superior, and to report any criticism to the leadership. The vows helped facilitate Maciel’s secret life of sexual plunder.

Sister Anastazja Pustelnik

Nun becomes top-selling
Polish cookbook writer

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

Nun becomes top-selling
Polish cookbook writer
By
VANESSA GERA (AP)

KRAKOW, Poland — Emerging from the quiet of her convent, Sister Anastazja Pustelnik was confronted by a jarring image — her smiling face on posters plastered around town to hawk the cookbooks that have made the 59-year-old nun one of Poland's best-selling authors.

It's fame Sister Anastazja never bargained for when she left the material world as a young woman, expecting to toil in obscurity for God. But her ability to create easy-to-follow recipes for delectable cakes and traditional home cooking has resulted in five cookbooks since 2001 that have sold a combined 1.1 million copies in this country of 38 million.

Today, her cookbooks are found in shops and online, their glossy covers showing Pustelnik with an apron over her black nun's habit and a mixing bowl or serving platter in hand, generating the unwelcome fame thrust upon her. "Once when I was walking through town and there were advertisements for one of my books, I felt like tearing them down," she confessed. "But I was afraid of paying a fine."

Sister Anastazja's success comes amid a broader trend of men and women of God earning renown and profit in Europe with cookbooks and TV shows. A Spanish television channel, for example, broadcasts "Bocaditos de Cielo" — Little Mouthfuls of Heaven — in which Sisters Liliana and Beatriz of the Franciscan Conceptionist Sisters Convent guide viewers through the culinary steps for making ancient sweet recipes while also offering insight into their cloistered life.

In Poland, a deeply Roman Catholic country with a strong bond to the late Polish pope, John Paul II, the appeal of Sister Anastazja also reflects how the Catholic church is still present in daily life even as economic growth and European Union membership push the country toward secularization. Priests and nuns are common characters in Polish television serials. And a nun is a much more likely kitchen guide to Polish village housewives than such cooking superstars as Britain's Nigella Lawson or the American Rachael Ray.

Despite worldly success, Sister Anastazja says all her efforts are in service to God. After morning prayers, she walks every day from her convent to the Jesuit center in downtown Krakow to cook lunch for 20 priests, giving them "strength when they go out into the world." At Easter she bakes each priest a lamb-shaped cake to take on visits to their families. One of her cakes, she said, came to her in a dream. The creation, dubbed "A Nun's Secret," layers cheesecake, pink fruity gelatin and yellow cake all beneath a shell of chocolate icing.

"It is only God who gives me the recipes. Who else?" Sister Anastazja, a member of the order Daughters of Divine Love, said in an interview with The Associated Press at the Jesuit center.

Sister Anastazja had been cooking for the Jesuits for years when they got the idea to put some of her best recipes together in a brochure, said Father Bogdan Calka, a director at the Catholic publishing house WAM. That evolved into her first book, "103 Cakes of Sister Anastazja," which was published in 2001 and became a surprise success. With 400,000 copies sold to date, it is her most popular book. Later books include recipes for Polish classics: hearty casseroles, a cabbage-and-sausage stew called bigos, and golabki, or stuffed cabbage rolls. Her latest book, published this year, brings together 123 salad recipes.

Calka said profits from the books go to "good causes," including Jesuit educational programs. He said negotiations are under way for translations to be published in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The publishers say Sister Anastazja's books owe their success to recipes that are easy to follow and don't intimidate new cooks. "It seems to me that every woman should like cooking," Sister Anastazja said, speaking in her ground-floor work space, an immaculate area containing a kitchen — with a crucifix on the wall — and a pantry whose shelves are stocked with beets and tomatoes she canned herself.

Most of her recipes are Polish classics, but a few international favorites are included, such as Greek moussaka, Hungarian lecso and Italian dishes like spaghetti carbonara. She said she began to embrace Italian dishes when some of the Jesuit priests requested them after returning from studies in Rome. Still, Sister Anastazja says cakes remain her favorite, noting that the cheesecakes her mother made with fresh cow's milk in the southern mountain village of Dylagowa fostered a "sweet tooth" in her childhood that has lasted all her life. "You can see that," she said, nodding down to her matronly figure.

Through the years, Sister Anastazja has included more of her own inventions, recipes that get tweaked and perfected with feedback from the Jesuits. Her dishes also have evolved to reflect a new abundance in Polish supermarkets compared to communist times, when even raisins and real chocolate could not be found, she said. In the past 20 years, exotic ingredients have slowly made their way to Krakow's shops: kiwi, California plums, mangoes.

"Her latest book would have never come out 10 years ago because there wouldn't have been any way to prepare such unusual salads," Calka said. The book offers up a ravioli salad with sun-dried tomatoes and other entrees that use capers, bamboo shoots and the leafy green known as rocket or arugula. "It's fantastic that everything is now available in shops."

Freemasonry:
“When man reaches new worlds,
Masonry will be there.”

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

The above was a quote from the December 1969 issue of the The New Age Magazine, the official magazine of the Supreme Council 33° A.&A. Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of the Southern Jurisdiction, Washington, D.C.

Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., 32°, visited the Scottish Rite headquarters at the House of the Temple in Washington, September 16, 1969, after the historic moon landing of Apollo 11, and brought back the Freemasonic flag that he took with him to the moon.

The Apollo program was rife with Masons; they were proud of being involved, and weren’t shy about advertising the fact.

In the November 1969 edition of The New Age Magazine, there is an extensive article by Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, 33°, the Manager of the Apollo Program Command and Service Modules; Deputy Manager, Gemini Program; Manager, Project Mercury.

On page 13, we read:

Note how many of the astronauts themselves Brother Masons are: Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr.; L. Gordon Cooper, Jr.; Donn F. Eisle; Walter M. Schirra; Thomas P. Stafford; Edgar D. Mitchell, and Paul J. Weitz.

Before his tragic death in a flash fire at Cape Kennedy on January 27, 1967, Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom was a Mason, too.

Astronaut Gordon Cooper, during his epochal Gemini V spaceflight in August of 1965, carried with him an official Thirty-third Degree Jewel and a Scottish Rite flag. Via the lunar plaque, the Masonic ensignia and flag, and the Masonic astronauts themselves – Masonry already is in the space age. Can we doubt Freemasonry and its spiritual relevance to the modern era when even its material representatives have today made historic inroads into the infinite expanses of outer space?

Back then, Freemasonry wasn’t shy about admitting that the “Craft” is essentially a spiritual endeavor, either. In fact, right 0before Kleinknecht writes some bios on the Masonic astronauts (as well as Mason James Edwin Webb, the NASA administrator from 1961-1968), he includes these words:

“The mission of the Craft has always been one of salvation, but until now its field of endeavor was the individual and the bringing of him to the light. Masonry cannot think in these terms now. All men everywhere must hear our message or all men everywhere will perish” (ibid., pp. 15-16; my emphasis).

Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, by the way, was/is the brother of C. Fred Kleinknecht, 33°, Sovereign Grand Commander, The Supreme Council, 33° (Mother Council of the World), Southern Jurisdiction, USA, Washington.

—

The Thirty-third Degree flag that Cooper brought with him can be seen below.

33rd Degree Flag carried by Cooper.

—

1979 10th Anniversary “Our Flags on the Moon” Medallion:

Note Masonic flag held in left hand and Masonic symbols on Medallion pictured on the right

CITGO is changing

A Special "Thank You" to W.R.for this Submission!

Verified with www.SNOPES:

IN ORLANDO LAST WEEK, AT A CITGO STATION REGULAR WAS PRICED AT $3.62 PER GALLON. THERE WERE NO CUSTOMERS. HOWEVER, ACROSS THE STREET WHERE I FUELED IT WAS SELLING FOR $3.65 PER GALLON AND ALL PUMPS THERE HAD CARS WAITING TO FUEL.

Have you noticed how the Citgo signs have disappeared in the past 7-8 months? Very clever move by Chavez. But guess what CITGO IS CHANGING ITS NAME TO? This is serious Americans...make sure you read.

NEWS FLASH:

Chavez is NOW getting a Russian Weapons Factory built by Putin. The RUSSIANS are building an AK-47 Kalashnikov Assault Rifle factory in Venezuela to give armament support to Communist Rebel groups throughout the Americas

Chavez NOW has IRANIANS operating his oil refineries in Venezuela for him. It is likely only a matter of time, if not already, before Chavez has Iranian built LONG RANGE missiles, with a variety of warhead types aimed at.... Guess Who?

CITGO is NOW in the process of changing its name to PETRO EXPRESS due to the loss of gasoline sales in the USA due to the recent publicity of ownership by Chavez of Venezuela .

Every dollar you spend with CITGO or PETRO EXPRESS gasoline will be used against you, your basic human rights, and your freedoms. He will star! t war s here in the Americas that wil l probably be the death of millions.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT because Chavez is starting to feel the loss of revenue from his holdings. HE OWNS CITGO. This is a very important move which everyone should be aware of.

ANNOUNCED JUST RECENTLY, CITGO, BEING AWARE THAT SALES ARE DOWN DUE TO U.S. CUSTOMERS NOT WANTING TO BUY FROM 'CITGO-CHAVEZ,' HAS STARTED TO CHANGE THE NAME OF SOME OF THEIR STORES TO: 'PETRO EXPRESS.'

DO NOT BUY FROM 'PETRO EXPRESS'!

'PETRO EXPRESS' IS ALSO 100% OWNED BY 'CHAVEZ.'

The “666” coin!!!

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

The “666” coin!!!
Medvedev sees single currency dream in G8 coin gift

L'AQUILA, Italy (AFP) — Even if Russia's call for a global currency failed to gain much traction at a G8 summit, President Dmitry Medvedev took home a coin meant to symbolize that the dream may one day come true. The Russian leader proudly displayed the coin, which bears the English words "United Future World Currency", to journalists after the summit wrapped up in the quake-hit Italian town of L'Aquila. Medvedev said that although the coin, which resembled a euro and featured the image of five leaves, was just a gift given to leaders it showed that people were beginning to think seriously about a new global currency.

World Political Authority

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict called on Tuesday for a "world political authority" to manage the global economy and for more government regulation of national economies to pull the world out of the current crisis and avoid a repeat. The pope made his call for a re-think of the way the world economy was run in a new encyclical which touched on a number of social issues but whose main connecting thread was how the current crisis has affected both rich and poor nations.

Parts of the encyclical, titled "Charity in Truth," seemed bound to upset free marketers because of its underlying rejection of unbridled capitalism and unregulated market forces, which he said had led to "thoroughly destructive" abuse of the system and "grave deviations and failures."

An encyclical is the highest form of papal writing and gives the clearest indication to the world's 1.1 billion Catholics -- and to non-Catholics -- of what the pope and the Vatican think about specific social and moral issues. The pope said every economic decision had a moral consequence and called for "forms of redistribution" of wealth overseen by governments to help those most affected by crises.

Benedict said "there is an urgent need of a true world political authority" whose task would be "to manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result."

Russians Order Flight Changes

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

Russians order Flight Changes, after Massive Magnetic Shift downs Airliners...

Reports circulating in the Kremlin today are saying that Russian Air Force Commanders have issued warnings to all of their aircraft to exercise “extreme caution” during flights “in and around” an area defined as Latitude 17 North [North Atlantic Ocean] Latitude 3 South [South Atlantic Ocean] to Latitude 8 North [Indian Ocean] Latitude 19 South [Indian Ocean] between the Longitudes of 46 West, 33 West, 46 East and 33 East, and which covers the greater part of the African Tectonic Plate.

The reason for this unprecedented warning, these reports state, are the rapid formations of “geomagnetic storms” emanating from the boundaries of the African Tectonic Plate that due to their intensity have caused the loss of two major passenger aircraft during the past month leaving nearly 300 men, women and children dead.

The first aircraft to be downed by this phenomenon was Air France passenger flight 447, and which these reports say that upon encountering one of these geomagnetic storms, on June 1st, near the western boundary of the African Tectonic Plate close to Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha Islands, was “completely annihilated” causing the deaths of 216 passengers and 12 crew members as their plane plunged in pieces into the Atlantic Ocean.
The second aircraft to be downed occurred on the eastern boundary of the African Tectonic Plate today when another of these geomagnetic storms slammed from the sky a Yemeni Airways flight to the Island Nation of Comoros in the Indian Ocean of which of the 153 passengers and crew aboard, only 1 “miracle child” has been rescued, so far.

Miraculous Apparition in the Sky

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

Miraculous Apparition in the Sky
Made Georgians run During MilitaryActions in South Ossetia
Moscow, July 1, Interfax

– Miraculous event happened in the battle field during the last military conflict in South Ossetia, co-chairman of the expert working group on miraculous signs at the Theological Commission of the Russian Church Academician Pavel Florensky said. “During the last events in South Ossetia, when the two armies stood off against each other ready to contact battle, Georgians threw back their heads, then turned around and ran from the field. They told that a woman silhouette appeared in the sky above the church,” Florensky said in his interview published by the Argumenty i Fakty weekly on Wednesday.

According to him, Russians thought it was the Mother of God while Georgians believed it was St. Nina - the heavenly protector of Georgia.

"Terrible Crime"

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

No room for pedophiles in priestly ministry, says Cardinal Hummes

(Maybe they should have added "anymore" to the title:)

Rome, Italy, Jun 29, 2009 / 12:55 pm (CNA).- The prefect for the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, said last week pedophilia is a “terrible crime” that affects only a small percentage of priests, adding that “there is no room in the priestly ministry for people who have committed these crimes.”

In an interview in Rome with the magazine “Vida Nueva,” the cardinal pointed out that the Church “cannot close her eyes” to these problems, but at the same time he emphasized, “There is no room in the priestly ministry for people who have committed these crimes.”

“The Church cannot accept cases of pedophilia. Those guilty must be punished both through civil and canon law,” he said, clarifying however that most of the clergy “have nothing to do with these problems.”

The Church “must react and not accept” that priests have this image, he continued, which is created “with a very strong, negative preconception that humiliates and wounds the vast majority of priests.”

In addition, Cardinal Hummes also addressed the question of celibacy, which a certain percentage of priests “do not respect.” He stressed that the majority of priests are “dignified and honorable men” who “fight for human dignity, human rights, social justice and solidarity with the poor.”

Communist Infiltration
Into the Catholic Church

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

Communist infiltration into the Catholic Church
June 21, 7:29 PM · Clare Kolewski
Detroit Traditionalist Catholic Examiner

“I would recognize such a letter to be valid because it would contain my secret appellation, that is “AA-1025,” “AA” meant “Anti-Apostle.” I was therefore led to think that the number 1025 was my service number. To my great surprise, I had guessed right. Therefore I cried out, ‘1,024 priests or seminarians have entered this career before me'’” (Marie Carré, AA-1025 The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle [Illinois: Tan Books, 1991], 14).

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was a powerful combatant against Communist infiltration of the Catholic Church. “Bishop Fulton Sheen, auxiliary bishop of New York while giving a discourse at Saint Suzanna of Rome revealed that in 1936 the American Communists recruited some agents for infiltrating the religious communities to destroy them from within. An Appeal was made for volunteers to become priests and study in the seminaries” (André Mignot, Les Fumees de Satan, p14).

In 1952, he made the acquaintance of (and converted) Bella Dodd, a teacher and activist for the Communist party. After her defection, she revealed that one of her jobs, as a Communist agent was to encourage young radicals to enter Catholic seminaries. She claims that before she had left the Party in the U.S., she had encouraged almost 1,000 young radicals to infiltrate the seminaries and religious orders:

"In the 1930's, we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within. The idea was for these men to be ordained, and then climb the ladder of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops” (http://www.vny.cuny.edu/gutter/panels/panel19.html).

Brother Joseph Natale, Founder of Most Holy Family Monastery, was present at one of Bella Dodd's lectures in the early 1950's.

He relates:

"I listened to that woman for four hours and she had my hair standing on end. Everything she said has been fulfilled to the letter. You would think she was the world's greatest prophet, but she was no prophet. She was merely exposing the step-by-step battle plan of Communist subversion of the Catholic Church."
"She explained that of all the world's religions, the Catholic Church was the only one feared by the Communists, for it was its only effective opponent. Back then, she said: “Right now they are in the highest places in the Church."
"They are working to bring about change in order that the Catholic Church would not be effective against Communism . . . that these changes would be so drastic that “you will not recognize the Catholic Church.”
The whole idea was to destroy, not the institution of the Church, but rather the Faith of the people, and even use the institution of the Church, if possible, to destroy the Faith through the promotion of a pseudo-religion — something that resembled Catholicism but was not the real thing."
"The whole idea was to destroy, not the institution of the Church, but rather the Faith of the people, and even use the institution of the Church, if possible, to destroy the Faith through the promotion of a pseudo-religion — something that resembled Catholicism but was not the real thing."
"This would be necessary in order to shame Church leaders into an “openness to the world”, and to a more flexible attitude toward all religions and philosophies. The Communists would then exploit this openness in order to undermine the Church."

Manning Johnson belonged to the Communist party in the 1940s and early 50s, during which time he authored the book Color, Communism and Common Sense. After leaving the Party, he testified in 1953 before the House un-American Activities Committee regarding the Communist Agenda and the Catholic Church:

"Once the tactic of infiltration of religious organizations was set by the Kremlin ... the Communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through infiltration of the (Catholic) Church by Communists operating within the Church itself. The Communist leadership in the United States realized that the infiltration tactic in this country would have to adapt itself to American conditions (Europe also had its cells) and the religious make-up peculiar to this country. In the earliest stages it was determined that with only small forces available to them, it would be necessary to concentrate Communist agents in the seminaries. The practical conclusion drawn by the Red leaders was that these institutions would make it possible for a small Communist minority to influence the ideology of future clergymen in the paths conducive to Communist purposes This policy of infiltrating seminaries was successful beyond even our communist expectations."

Admitted Communist Infiltrator - "Archbishop" Stanislaw Wielgus

Admitted Communist Infiltrator - "Archbishop" Stanislaw Wielgus

Communit Infiltrator, "Father" Mieczyslaw Malinski

In January of 2007, it was announced by the Polish Roman Catholic Episcopate that it would disclose documents connecting priests and bishops with Poland’s Communist regime. One of those to be investigated was archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, who admitted his connections with the Communist security police after twenty years of spying on fellow clerics and nonconformists. In 2005, Rev. Mieczyslaw Malinski, (a close associate of John Paul II [Yes, it is true that Pope JP-2, as he liked to call himself, has also been suspected of being a Communist infiltrator!]), was also discovered to have worked for the S.B. in the 1980s, along with several other priests.

One cannot help but wonder if the Catholic Church is still in a state of siege—and to what extent the Communist infiltration influenced the changes that evolved during the Second Vatican Council.

Vatican’s Celestial Eye,
Seeking Not Angels but Data

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

Vatican’s Celestial Eye, Seeking Not Angels but Data
By
GEORGE JOHNSON
Published: June 22, 2009

MOUNT GRAHAM, Ariz. — Fauré’s “Requiem” is playing in the background, followed by the Kronos Quartet. Every so often the music is interrupted by an electromechanical arpeggio — like a jazz riff on a clarinet — as the motors guiding the telescope spin up and down. A night of galaxy gazing is about to begin at the Vatican’s observatory on Mount Graham.

“Got it. O.K., it’s happy,” says Christopher J. Corbally, the Jesuit priest who is vice director of the Vatican Observatory Research Group, as he sits in the control room making adjustments. The idea is not to watch for omens or angels but to do workmanlike astronomy that fights the perception that science and Catholicism necessarily conflict.

Last year, in an opening address at a conference in Rome, called “Science 400 Years After Galileo Galilei,” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secretary of state of the Vatican, praised the church’s old antagonist as “a man of faith who saw nature as a book written by God.” In May, as part of the International Year of Astronomy, a Jesuit cultural center in Florence conducted “a historical, philosophical and theological re-examination” of the Galileo affair. But in the effort to rehabilitate the church’s image, nothing speaks louder than a paper by a Vatican astronomer in, say, The Astrophysical Journal or The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

On a clear spring night in Arizona, the focus is not on theology but on the long list of mundane tasks that bring a telescope to life. As it tracks the sky, the massive instrument glides on a ring of pressurized oil. Pumps must be activated, gauges checked, computers rebooted. The telescope’s electronic sensor, similar to the one in a digital camera, must be cooled with liquid nitrogen to keep the megapixels from fuzzing with quantum noise.

As Dr. Corbally rushes from station to station flicking switches and turning dials, he seems less like a priest or even an astronomer than a maintenance engineer. Finally when everything is ready, starlight scooped up by the six-foot mirror is chopped into electronic bits, which are reconstituted as light on his video screen.

“Much of observing these days is watching monitors and playing with computers,” Dr. Corbally says. “People say, ‘Oh, that must be so beautiful being out there looking at the sky.’ I tell them it’s great if you like watching TV.”

Dressed in blue jeans and a work shirt, he is not a man who wears his religion on his sleeve. No grace is offered before a quick casserole dinner in the observatory kitchen. In fact, the only sign that the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope is fundamentally different from the others on Mount Graham, the home of an international astronomical complex operated by the University of Arizona, is a dedication plaque outside the door.

“This new tower for studying the stars has been erected on this peaceful site,” it says in Latin. “May whoever searches here night and day the far reaches of space use it joyfully with the help of God.” At that point, religion leaves off and science begins.

The Roman Catholic Church’s interest in the stars began with purely practical concerns when in the 16th century Pope Gregory XIII called on astronomy to correct for the fact that the Julian calendar had fallen out of sync with the sky. In 1789, the Vatican opened an observatory in the Tower of the Winds, which it later relocated to a hill behind St. Peter’s Dome. In the 1930s, church astronomers moved to Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence. As Rome’s illumination, the electrical kind, spread to the countryside, the church began looking for a mountaintop in a dark corner of Arizona.

Building on Mount Graham was a struggle. Apaches said the observatory was an affront to the mountain spirits. Environmentalists said it was a menace to a subspecies of red squirrel. There were protests and threats of sabotage. It wasn’t until 1995, three years after the edict of Inquisition was lifted against Galileo, that the Vatican’s new telescope made its first scientific observations.

The target tonight is three spiral galaxies — Nos. 3165, 3166, 3169 in the New General Catalog — lying about 60 million light-years from Earth, a little south of the constellation Leo. Sitting at a desk near Dr. Corbally is Aileen O’Donoghue, an astronomer from St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., who is interested in how these gravitational masses tug at one another, creating the stellar equivalent of tides.

“Exposing, 30 minutes,” she says. As Celtic ballads play in the control room, data is sucked up by hard drives, and a column of numbers scrolls down her computer screen. Dr. O’Donoghue, who was raised Roman Catholic, is the author of “The Sky Is Not a Ceiling: An Astronomer’s Faith,” in which she describes how she lost and then rediscovered God “in the vastness, the weirdness, the abundance, the seeming nonsensicalness, and even the violence of this incredible universe.”

In person she’s not nearly so intense. While waiting for an image to gel, she steps out on a balcony for a look at the unprocessed sky. The Beehive Cluster, one of the first things Galileo saw with his telescope, is sparkling in the constellation Cancer. Next to it is Leo, where Dr. O’Donoghue is looking for the gravitational tides.

“It’s the real sky that matters,” she says. She describes how she makes her undergraduate students go outside and look at the Big Dipper at different times of the night. “They come back and say, ‘It moves!’ ” — words Galileo legendarily muttered after he was forced to recant. “You can tell students that the Earth rotates, but until they see that with their eyeballs, they’re not doing science,” she said. “You might as well be teaching theology and Scripture.”

Back inside the control room she explains how the gravitational tides she is studying might be stellar nurseries. As one galaxy brushes by another, clouds of gas are stirred so violently that they give birth to stars.

In the Vatican Observatory’s annual report, at the point where a corporation might describe its business strategy, is a section delineating the difference between creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) and creatio continua: “the fact that at every instant, the continued existence of the universe itself is deliberately willed by God, who in this way is continually causing the universe to remain created.”

Theologians call these “primary causes,” those that flow from the unmoved mover. Sitting atop this eternal platform is another layer, the “secondary causes,” which can be safely left to science.

Dr. Corbally and Dr. O’Donoghue continue working through the night, collecting data on secondary causes — galactic tides, stellar birth. Sleep will wait until morning, and thoughts about primary causes for another time.

New Evidence that Hitler
Plotted to Kill Pope Pius XII

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

The newspaper of the Italian bishops conference has published new evidence that Hitler's security forces had planned to either kidnap or kill Pope Pius XII. It has long been conjectured that Hitler had ordered the SS commander in Italy, General Karl Wolf, to seize the Vatican and take the Pope, Zenit reports.

New evidence published today by Avvenire now points to the role of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (the Third Reich's main security office) in devising a plot to take out the Pope. The newspaper cited the testimony of Niki Freytag Loringhoven, 72, the son of Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven, who during World War II was a colonel in the High Command of the German Armed Forces.

According to the son, days after Hitler's Italian ally, Benito Mussolini, had been arrested at the orders of King Victor Emmanuel III, Hitler ordered the Reichssicherheitshauptamt to devise a plot to punish the Italian people by kidnapping or murdering Pius XII and the king of Italy.

Hearing of the project, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German counterintelligence service, informed his Italian counterpart, General Cesare Amè, during a secret meeting in Venice from July 29-30, 1943. Also present at the meeting were colonels Erwin von Lahousen and Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven, who both worked in Section II of German counterintelligence, which dealt primarily with sabotage.

Canaris, Von Lahousen and Freytag von Loringhoven had all been part of the German resistance against the Nazis. Amè, upon returning to Rome, spread news of the plans against Hitler in order to block them, which proved successful. The plan was quickly dropped. According to Avvenire, this testimony coincides with the deposition given by Von Lahousen during the Nuremberg war crimes trials on February 1, 1946.

Godless Alternative

A Special "Thank You" to C.N.for this Submission!

Summertime camps boom: The "Godless alternative" for non-believers

Even atheists are joining the rush to take the American way and pack off the kids for fresh air holidays.
Jerome Taylor reports

Wednesday, 29 April 2009

Atheists have become the latest group to cash in on Britain's booming summer camp industry by creating the country's first-ever retreat for irreligious children. Billed as a "godless alternative" to traditional religious summer camps, the five-day retreat is being hosted by Camp Quest, an American organisation which uses the advertising slogan "Beyond Belief" and has a growing following in the States.

The existence of a humanist summer camp where religion is approached in a critical and rational manner adds to a growing pantheon of US-style holiday getaways in Britain ranging from evangelical Bible schools to fat camps for obese teenagers.

Camp Quest was founded in 1996 as an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, which insists on members signing a "Declaration of Religious Belief". In response Camp Quest set up an alternative summer camp for the children of "atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers and all those who embrace a naturalistic rather than supernatural world view".