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Compiled by Steve Jalsevac

RELIGION

EWTN'S “The World Over Live” Honored by Cable Industry
https://www.ewtn.com/news/blog.asp?blog_ID=2

Catholic Priests Try Disco Dancing at Mass.
https://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100012358/catholic-priests-get-down-the-kids-warning-for-strong-stomachs-only/

The State of Catholic Higher Education by Patrick J. Reilly   
The reality is that the crisis in Catholic higher education is far from over. Most Catholic colleges have secularized considerably over the past 40 years, such that anyone who attended these colleges in the 1960s or earlier would scarcely recognize them today. It is no surprise that more than half the colleges in The Newman Guide were established after 1970, most in reaction to the rapid decline of faithful Catholic education in this country.

The good news is that a nationwide renewal of Catholic higher education is underway, and scandals like the Notre Dame commencement honors have only helped mobilize support for significant reform. …most Catholic colleges have abandoned responsibility for students' moral, social, and spiritual development.
https://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7000&Itemid=48

More Questions About USCCB and Hate Speech – Deal W. Hudson
Why is the Office of Communications at the USCCB listed as a “principal partner” in the “So We Might See” coalition if the intent of the USCCB was to support only the petition of the National Hispanic Media Coalition? Or is the USCCB supporting the NHMC petition while the Department of Communications at the USCCB is supporting both the NHMC and the “So We Might See” coalition as a “principal partner”?
 
There is no reason why anyone who sees the name of the Office of Communications of the USCCB on a letter, a petition, or a web site would not assume it carries with it the approval of the entire USCCB.The Department of Communications at the USCCB can simply remove its name from the “So We Might See” web site if they want to dissociate themselves from the attack on Rush Limbaugh and the implied attack on other talk radio personalities.

It's also interesting that both Ms. Osman and Bishop Loverde, in much greater detail, indicate their concern about the potential impact of hate speech regulations on Catholic freedom of speech about Church teaching.  If these are primary concerns for petitioning the FCC, why didn't the USCCB take a position  on the hate crimes legislation passed by the Congress just a few weeks ago?
https://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_myblog&Itemid=127

Left-Wing Radicalism in the Church: CCHD and ACORN
CCHD is the grant-making arm of USCCB, which acts on behalf of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, a group widely assumed to be conservative defenders of traditional morality. However, CCHD and ACORN share a left-wing ideology that puts a premium on aggressive community organizing.

It is an error to think of CCHD as an ordinary charity. In fact, it is an extreme left-wing political organization whose ties stretch back to the “father” of community organizing himself, Saul Alinsky, and to Barack Obama in his community-organizing days in Chicago.

And unbeknownst to most Catholics, almost no CCHD grants actually provide direct relief to the poor. Since its creation in 1969, CCHD has given more than $280 million to fund what it calls over “7,800 low-income-led, community-based projects that strengthen families, create jobs, build affordable housing, fight crime, and improve schools and neighborhoods.”

CCHD says it educates Catholics “about the causes of poverty and seeks to build solidarity between impoverished and affluent persons.” Amazingly, Morin still defends the radicalism of the groups that CCHD funds. In the memo, he bragged that CCHD grants have helped to empower radical community-organizing groups to “work on job creation, crime prevention, housing, immigration, and other vital issues.”

Because CCHD and ACORN are cousins in a sense, their common bonds must have made it excruciating for CCHD to disown ACORN. Both groups were inspired by radical agitator Alinsky, the Marxist Machiavelli who dedicated his grassroots activism classic, Rules for Radicals, to Lucifer, whom he called “the first radical.”

While CCHD poses as a mainstream Christian charity trying to help the poor, it uses left-wing euphemisms in its mission statement. It seeks to address “the root causes of poverty in America through promotion and support of community-controlled, self-help organizations and through transformative education.”
https://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34070

When the Church Bankrolled ACORN – Brian Saint-Paul
https://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=When-the-Church-bankrolled-ACORN.html&Itemid=99999999

How Mormonism Built Glenn Beck
https://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/mediaculture/1885/how_mormonism_built_glenn_beck

Report: Global Muslim population hits 1.57 billion
https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hg1ZPw_iDZPtk40pc-eurHFUOlSQD9B6LBS80

UK: Christian Couple Charged With Criminal Offense After Offending Muslims During Discussion of Religion
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/09/uk-christian-couple-charged-with-criminal-offense-after-offending-muslims-during-discussion-of-relig.html

Objections to Muslim and Homosexual Practices to be Unlawful in Europe
https://www.hudsonny.org/2009/10/if-all-goes-as-planned.php

Atheist Clubs are Springing up in American High Schools, Warns Head of US Catholic Bishops
https://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100012851/atheist-clubs-are-springing-up-in-american-high-schools-warns-head-of-us-catholic-bishops/

While Europe Slept
Multiculturalism is then, in practice, a series of monoculturalisms that do not engage one another at all; rather, the cultural particulate most enamored of gaining and holding power has an enormous advantage: One day, it proclaims, we will bury you. A sign carried by radical Islamist protestors in London during the fracas over the Dutch cartoons proclaimed, “Europe is a cancer / Islam is the answer.” A perverted idea of Islam confronts a Europe that has lost a sense of who she is and what she represents.

Without God, without some transcendent principle, the wretched life is not worth living at all. And others have the power to decide whose life is wretched based on utilitarian criteria. The utilitarian ethic would annihilate the Christian ethic in the name of progress and decency and the ending of suffering.

Evil can take the form of refusing to be what one is. The retreat from defining Europe in relation to her Jewish and Christian heritage is the face of European nihilism. When a reaction comes, it is likely to be extreme and distorted because indifference prevailed too long.
https://www.hudsonreview.com/bawerWi06.pdf

HOMOSEXUALITY WITHIN CATHOLIC CHURCH

Rembert Weakland’s Oprah Ecclesiology
His autobiography exemplifies the narcissism and immaturity of much Church leadership in the years since Vatican Council II.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=138:rembert-weaklands-oprah-ecclesiology&catid=36:cwr2009&Itemid=68

The Fall of the Archbishop by Arturo Vasquez   
Archbishop Rembert Weakland was for dialogue on such issues as the female role in the leadership of the Church, social justice, and the democratization of Church power so that the laity would have “more of a voice.” He was, in a real sense, the official spokesman of the Catholic Left for more than two decades.

What really fascinated me was the question of how a man so well-formed by the best of what the traditional Church had to offer could so violently reject it in his mature years.  …in all that Archbishop Weakland writes, the supernatural is completely absent, and God seems to work as a mechanism reflecting what is popular with the masses or what is acceptable to the latest scholars that the archbishop finds fashionable.
https://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7007&Itemid=48

Influential Former US Bishops' Official Lauds Weakland's Memoir, Excuses Homosexual Encounter
https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=4184

'Civility' is also what former Milwaukee archbishop Rembert Weakland identifies as lacking in some parts of the pro-life movement.
https://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&id=83546262-3048-741E-8514982849230254

Archbishop Favalora of Miami MUST Resign
It is an open secret that the vast majority of the Archdiocese’s pastors are active homosexuals.
https://lexetlibertas.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/archbishop-favalora-of-miami-must-resign/

Can Clergy Sex Offenders be Helped?
Rev. Stephen J. Rossetti, the director of the best known of the clinics involved in the treatment of abusive Catholic clergy, has stated about the Church’s response to the clergy sexual abuse scandal: “The Church has crafted an institutional response that has tended to be legal and psychological. What has been sorely lacking is the pastoral dimension.”  More specifically, I would say that greater attention needs to be paid to the task of reparation for their sins with a view toward spiritual rehabilitation of these fallen clergy and religious.

When one examines the secular and Church treatment centers for sexually abusive clergy, one gets the impression that the philosophy of these treatment centers is to provide a comfortable environment for clergy abusers to recover from their sexual obsessions. Some even suggest that these treatment centers are pampering or coddling these sex offenders to some extent.

And if the priest or religious is a homosexual it is even more difficult. When it comes to recovery from lust, it is far more difficult for males to overcome the practice of homosexuality than it is for a man to overcome sins of impurity with a woman.

the Linicare study maintains about the single male homosexual that “radical asceticism may provide his only recourse to emotional wholeness.”

The reformed sex offender, therefore, must try to make spiritual reparation by doing penance. He must take the common sense steps to avoid movies, TV, videos, magazines, the Internet, etc., which can lead him into temptation. But in addition he must silence his appetites. He must take the extra steps—the spiritual steps—to deny himself and give up many legitimate pleasures (e.g., types of food and drink, amusements and other legitimate delights) to completely master himself and to control his desires. This is called asceticism.
https://hprweb.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=213:can-clergy-sex-offenders-be-helped&catid=34:current-issue

Sex Abuse Cover-up by L.A. Archdiocese is Alleged
The former vicar of clergy testifies under oath that Cardinal Roger Mahony ordered him in 2000 not to contact police about allegations of sexual abuse by a priest.
https://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mahony19-2009sep19,0,1706181.story

Homosexual activists design ‘Relational Mysteries’ for Rosary
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=17261