Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Anti-Family, Anti-Catholic Activists hosted at Most Holy Redeemer

Today's California Catholic Daily reports on SF's Most Holy Redeemer Church's January 22 hosting of a town hall meeting for the LGBT political action group Equality California. The article is aptly titled "Is this a Catholic Church?"

Of all the anti-Catholic events hosted at MHR, and there have been many (drag show, obscene bingo, years of sado-masochistic gatherings, etc.) this is the most obscene and the most anti-Catholic. No group that MHR has hosted, not the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, or the S/m Golden Gate Guards or the Inter-Club Fund are worse than EQCA.

The meeting was sold as focusing on access to health care. But that took up only a small part of the meeting. The majority of the discussion covered Equality California's broadening political agenda. That political and legislative agenda is diametrically opposed to the Catholic Church, That agenda will also target individual Catholics and Christians who attempt to uphold the truth of the faith.

The transcripts of some of the items under discussion, taken from the California Catholic Daily article are reproduced below in red. The speaker is Executive Director Rick Zbur.

On EQCA's opposition to religious exemptions to laws that the Catholic Church and its members could not obey without violating their faith, the moderator asked: "Do you see some of these religious liberty laws they’ve tried to get started in other states over the last year or so? And they did have an effort in California that I don’t think went anywhere. Do you see this happening again in the legislative session, and if so will Equality California oppose that?"

“Well, we definitely would oppose it. You know, I haven’t heard very much about them doing that, I think they’re focus is on unraveling AB 1266, that’s what we we’re hearing their focus is, but in California I haven’t heard anything recently, but obviously we would oppose it. The thrust really though, I think is at the federal level with the version of ENDA that passed the Senate that included a broad religious exemption that we were very very uncomfortable about, and most of the LGBT organizations that weighed in expressed a lot of nervousness about the decision to pass it with that broad religious exemption, and so we’ve already spoken out against that. 
“I think the thing that makes me nervous is the fact that it passed with that version and we’ve got a lot of states now that I don’t think that the next phase of us earning civil rights protection is going to happen at the federal level with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress. It’s really going to happen, as it has in California, in the states that don’t have that. So I’m really nervous about this religious exemption being used to sort of weaken civil rights laws that pass in the states. So that’s, we’ll continue engaging on that where we see it.”

This means EQCA opposes an exemption for, say, a photographer or a baker who refuses to participate in a same-sex 'wedding.'  They will work to prevent a Catholic from being faithful to the Church. They are announcing this intention in what calls itself a Catholic Church.

Note that in his answer, Mr. Zbur brought up AB 1266. The California Catholic Bishops were very clear about that bill: "If signed into law by the governor, AB 1266 will require public schools to allow a child of any age 'to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.'"

What the bill means is that if a second grade girl (who is biologically a female) decides she wants to be a boy, she can use the boys’ bathroom if she chooses. She can insist on being called 'he' instead of 'she'. If a twelve year old boy (who is biologically a male) self-identifies as a girl, he—or 'she'—must be allowed to play on the girls’ softball team and share the locker room with the girls.

Explain that to your eight or ten year old, or your six year old."


The moderator followed up: "You just mentioned AB 1266, which is the law that went into effect last January, that provides that all students have access to the same facilities [bathrooms], including transgender students too, athletics and other things too. What do you see in different parts of the state around implementing that and how can Equality California help with that. You did mention earlier you were working on some school issues." Zbur responded:

“We’ve been partnering with other LGBT organizations, not us alone. The ACLU, one of our partners, has been really taking a lot of leadership on this. For example, I think it’s next week we are participating in a pretty big convening meeting in the Coachella Valley in which I think there is something like 8 or 9 smaller school districts that the ACLU and Equality California are helping provide some training for members of the school district and administrators and the school board on AB 1266 implementation. 
“What we’re finding is implementation is spotty, that a lot of districts really don’t want to do it, that AB 1266 is one of those laws that there is a fair amount of controversy on. We saw a member of the California Assembly who lost re-election in Orange County and one of the key issues that was raised in her political campaign was the fact that she voted for AB 1266. So I think our opponents know that is an area where the public, where there is a lack of full understanding among the public. And they’re using that as a bit of a wedge issue.
“So we think that we need to really engage in education ahead of a potential ballot measure that they may very well try to put back on the ballot in the 2016 election cycle. They did try to gather signatures for 2014 and just fell short in gathering enough signatures to get on the ballot but we’re hearing that they are going to try again and so that’s an issue that we’ll be working on with the Transgender Law Center & the ACLU & National Center for Lesbian Rights and all of our partners”

AB 1266 is a vastly unpopular law, certainly opposed by a majority of Californians. As Zbur admits even "a lot of (public school) districts really don't want to do it." And we repeat: it was publicly opposed by the California Catholic Bishops. But EQCA announces, in what calls itself a Catholic Church, that, working with the ACLU, will be forcing compliance with this idiotic and immoral law in direct opposition to the Catholic Church.

EQCA's actions corrupt the minds of California's children by teaching them that it is simply their decision which determines whether they are a boy or a girl. But AB 1266 is not the only attack EQCA is making on children, the family, and reason in the public schools.  The moderator asked Mr. Zbur what EQCA's priorities were for the coming year. Zbur listed three, one of which was:

“We are talking to the ACLU about co-sponsoring a bill that would update sex-education criteria that are imposed in the schools, and there are requirements now that sex education programs in a very general way address and educate kids about the diversity of what a family looks like and because the standards are so general most school districts don’t really do what was intended by the existing legislation. So that the curriculum is being updated, the ACLU really wants more standards than that, so we’re really going to be focused on that as well.”

So the propaganda that goes under the name of 'sex education' in the public schools does not go far enough in Mr. Zbur's (or the ACLU's) opinion. To 'educate kids about the diversity of what a family looks like' is simply propaganda against the family, what Pope Francis himself called on January 16 the 'new ideological colonization that tries to destroy the family.'

Once again, Zbur announces that he will attack the fundamental teaching of the Church (exemplified by Pope Francis words) on the reality of man and woman and the family. Once again he announces his attack on the faith, (and the Pope), in what calls itself a Catholic Church.

Mr. Zbur is also seeking clerical allies in castrating the Churches. (He has two--two priest were in attendance at the meeting, probably Frs. McClure and Link of MHR). He unveiled EQCA's 'Faith Initiative'--apparently made public for the first time, at Most Holy Redeemer.

The moderator asked: "I know that when we talked you had mentioned something about Equality California planning a faith initiative. What would that entail?"

Mr. Zbur: “So we’ll be announcing the details, but I’ll give you a little bit of a preview. We’ve been in discussions with a group of faith leaders throughout the state who’ve actually already been engaging in work to both educate and outreach to the faith communities about the LGBT community and to advance LGBT equality and acceptance in the faith community, talking with them about providing a home and support for that and part of their ministry. 
“The group of faith leaders are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, includes a large group or them, so for us it recognizes the fact that some of achieving our goal of full acceptance of LGBT people will require us I think to have more outreach and education within faith communities and so that’s a priority for us and we are hoping that this new initiative is completed, but we’re hoping soon to announce the details of the faith initiative that is sort of really aimed at more outreach in the faith communities in California. 
“I think that other than that what makes me really excited is that you look at where the opponents of full equality are coming from, they’re using faith based arguments and religious exemptions to try and carve away the legal rights that we have already earned here in California and in other parts of the country, so having a group of faith leaders who are standing with us in our fight for full equality and acceptance, I think will be something that’s going to be important for us all as we engage in the political advocacy that we need and in the public education to sort of protect the rights that we have already earned.”

Equality California is at war with the Catholic Church. Inexplicably, the Archdiocese of San Francisco provided them with a beachhead. That Most Holy Redeemer would provide aid and comfort to the enemies of the Church will surprise no one who has been paying attention. As far back as August 28, 2007, in the post 'MHR and how it got that way,'  I argued that, existentially, Most Holy Redeemer is not a Catholic Church, it is a gay spiritual institution. I wrote at that time:

"The moral credibility of the Catholic Church, then, will be determined (by the members of MHR) by the extent to which it supports, or fails to support, the community-forming experience of the gay community. If...the sexuality is experienced as more important than the doctrines of the Catholic Church, one would expect the doctrines of the Church to be discarded when they come into conflict with the community-forming experience. And this is exactly what happens...And this leads to the acceptance of blasphemy in an ostensibly Catholic Church. But such events will not be experienced by the parishioners as blasphemous, because they validate the community-forming experience...Indeed, at this point, what will be experienced by the parishioners as blasphemous is that which denies the value of the community-forming experience." Such as the teaching that marriage is only between one man and one woman.

I also wrote at that time that the fault does not lie with MHR but with the Archdiocese.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

AB Cordileone: The heart of a lion, the patience of a saint


Our great Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone joins his predecessor the great Archbishop (and 'pink brick' award winner) George Niederauer in trying to open the closed heart of his lost sheep, Nancy Pelosi.




LifeSiteNews reports:

San Fran. archbishop responds to Pelosi: ‘No Catholic can dissent in good conscience’ on abortion

SAN FRANCISCO, January 26, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi repeatedly refused to say last week whether an unborn child at 20 weeks is a “human being,” her archbishop in San Francisco has responded by insisting that “no Catholic can dissent in good conscience” on abortion. 
CNSNews posed the question to Pelosi on January 22 in light of debate in the House of Representatives on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks except in cases of rape, incest, and a threat to the life of the mother. 
After twice refusing to say whether an unborn child at 20 weeks is a “human being,” she stated: “As a mother of five, in six years, I have great standing on this issue, great understanding of it, more than my colleagues.” She added that she knows more about “having babies” than even the pope. 
"It is a scientific fact that human life begins at conception," he said. "This has been established in medical science for over 100 years. Catholic moral teaching acknowledges this scientific fact, and has always affirmed the grave moral evil of taking an innocent human life.” 
“This has been the consistent teaching of the Church from the very beginning, a teaching already discernible in the natural moral law, and so a teaching from which no Catholic can dissent in good conscience,” he added.
Pastors, he said, have an “obligation … to reach out to their people who have difficulty understanding and accepting such important teachings of the Church in order to extend to them true pastoral care and, where appropriate, to establish a regular dialogue.”
“This is something I have always striven to do in the various ministries I have exercised as a priest and bishop, including now as the Archbishop of San Francisco. I ask for people’s prayers for success as I continue to strive to do this,” he said.

God bless His Excellency and His Excellency Niederauer before him.  I point out that even Don Bosco, one of the most beloved and kindest of Saints, threw a couple of boys out of the Oratory because he feared they would become a bad influence on others.

It's about 8 year's now since our dear Fr. Malloy (who was also very kind and patient) told Pelosi not to receive communion:

From the Pastors Desk
Nancy, you are fooling yourself and I fear fooling many good Catholics. You are simply not in sync with the Catholic Church. Until you change your non-Catholic positions, you should stop calling yourself Catholic. Your record shows that you support embryonic stem cell research, Planned Parenthood, contraception, family planning funding, allowing minors to have an abortion without parental consent, and are against making it a crime to harm a fetus, etc. etc.
The fact that you favor married priests and women priests certainly would not classify you as conservative, but your answer to the question are you a conservative Catholic was:
“I think so. I was raised in a very strict upbringing in a Catholic home where we respected people, were observant, were practicing Catholics, and that the fundamental belief was that God gave us all a free will, and we were accountable for that, each of us. Each person had that accountability, so it wasn’t for us to make judgments about how people saw their responsibility and that it wasn’t for politicians to make decisions about how people led their personal lives; certainly, to a high moral standards, but when it got into decisions about privacy and all the rest, then that was something that individuals had to answer to God for, and not to politicians.”
That sounds fair and tolerant, but your record belies high moral standards.
The NARAL rates you 100% pro-abortion. Your statement: “To me it isn’t even a question. God has given us a free will. We’re all responsible for our actions. If you don’t want an abortion, you don’t believe in it, [then] don’t have one. But don’t tell somebody else what they can do in terms of honoring their responsibilities. My family is very pro-life. They’re not fanatics and they’re not activists. I think they’d like it if I were not so vocally pro-choice.”
Do we not elect politicians to make laws that help people honor their responsibilities, such as protecting life itself? Can politicians not tell someone else not to kill? If you can kill a baby in the womb, Nancy, why not outside of it? Oh wait, you are in favor of partial birth abortion, so-called because the baby sticks out of the “mother” about halfway, while the “doctor” sucks out the baby's brain. That seems comparable to the choice the Nazis made killing six million Jews.
Yes, Nancy, we (together with your pro-life family) would all like it if you were not so vocally pro-choice, i.e. pro-death. Until your choice is in line with Catholic doctrine, please, Nancy, do not receive the Eucharist when you attend Mass.
Rev. John Malloy, SDB

San Francisco, CA

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Kristor on counterfeit "gay marriage"

Kristor writes over at the Othosphere:

"...no one is ever really fooled by such linguistic or legal circumlocutions and euphemisms. Whatever it is that homosexuals will get when homosexual marriage becomes the law of the land – as seems likely to happen this summer, when the Supreme Court takes up the matter – it won’t be the true and honest social approval for their arrangements that is given to real marriage, and that they so want. None of the actual, ineluctable differences between heterosexuality and homosexuality will be changed by the legal fiction. Thus it won’t be homosexual relations that are ennobled by the new PC code; rather, the term 'marriage,' and all the social appurtenances thereto, will be debased, in exactly the way that currency is debased by artificial inflation."
It's the argument we have been making for years. It remains to be seen if counterfeit marriage becomes the law of the land, of course. If so, not only does the term marriage 'and all the social appurtenances thereto' become debased, the law itself becomes debased, just as the term 'American' is becoming debased.

Monday, January 19, 2015

L.A. Media Boycotts Large Pro-Life Event

OneLife LA not covered by local press

Pro-lifers are used to media blackouts of their events. The radical under reporting of Washington DC’s huge annual March for Life (which draws hundreds of thousands every year) or San Francisco’s Walk for Life west Coast which regularly draws over 50,000 people. But even by these shoddy standards the negligence of the mainstream media in refusing to cover the January 17 OneLife LA event in downtown Los Angeles sets a new low. As of noon on January 19, a Google news search for “OneLife LA” articles over the previous 24 hours returned exactly two responses: an article from Catholic News Agency, and an article in the Rock Hill Herald, a publication based in, Rock Hill, South Carolina, which was a reprint of the OneLife LA press release which followed the event. A similar search with the term “Archbishop Jose Gomez” (who presided over the event) over the same time frame only returned one response, the Catholic News Agency article.

Organizers estimated 15,000 pro-lifers in attendance, and photos of the event certainly shows thousands of people. The event also had a number of notable speakers including Hispanic movie star Eduardo Verastegui and TV actress Patricia Heaton, both of whom are pro-life. Their presence makes the lack of LA’s mainstream media coverage all the more striking, since movie/TV stars are generally catnip to the city’s celebrity-obsessed press.

Covered by media

Not covered by media

The bias is shown by comparing the response to a Los Angeles event selected at random: a December 5 protest against the killings by police of three men: Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Ezell Ford. The protest was covered by CBS Los Angeles, the local affiliate of CBS News. The CBS LA screenshot shows about 21 protesters in attendance. None appeared to be movie stars. The tiny protest was also covered by mynewsla.com, the L.A. Daily News, USA News and the Eagle Rock Patch (which all published the same story as mynewsla.com), and the Los Angeles gotnewswire.com, which picked up the CBS story. The Los Angeles City and Press website also linked to the CBS story. At this point I stopped searching for more coverage, as the point has been made. The mynewsla.com story opened with the sentence “Dozens of people protesting the deaths of unarmed black men…” which correlates pretty  accurately with the 21 or so protesters in the CBS screenshot—there must have been 3 more out of site somewhere, which brings the number  up to “dozens.”

A shorter version of this post appeared in today's California Catholic Daily.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Holy Father Condemns Gay 'Marriages' as effort to 'destroy the family'

Today the Supreme Court decided it will hear another same-sex "marriage" case. The news comes on the same day that Pope Francis has once again condemned "gay marriage."

Photo: Alan Holdren, Catholic News Agency
Catholic News Agency reports on the Holy Father's words in the Philippines:

"Remarking on Pope Francis' strong words against the threats which 'ideological colonization' poses to the family, the Vatican's spokesman told journalists Friday that same-sex marriage falls within this category.

In an  address to more than 1,000 Filipino families in Manila on Jan. 16, Pope Francis decried the 'new ideological colonization that tries to destroy the family.'

The Pope also warned against increasing efforts 'to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.'

The Holy Father made similar statements in defense of marriage earlier in the day, as he said Mass in Manila's cathedral: 'Proclaim the beauty and truth of the Christian message to a society which is tempted by confusing presentations of sexuality, marriage and the family.'


Later, Father Federico Lombardi, the head of the Vatican's press office elaborating on the Holy Father's words  "confirmed to  journalists that this 'colonization' of which Pope Francis spoke refers in part to gay marriage.

'I think that it is well-known that the perspective of the Church about the family is that the family is based on the union of the marriage of a man and a woman.'

For Catholics, the family is 'the union of the man and the woman, and the children that come from this union,' the spokesman added. 'If there are persons that desire to have community in other ways… this is not for us a family.'"


We pray our Supreme Court does not join those attempting to destroy the family.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Great News! Papal Nuncio to bring message from Pope Francis to Walk for Life West Coast!

Valerie Schmalz has the story in today's Catholic San Francisco:

Papal nuncio to bring message from Pope Francis to Walk for Life Jan. 24

January 14th, 2015
By Valerie Schmalz


The pope’s diplomatic representative to the U.S. will read a message of support from Pope Francis at the Walk for Life West Coast Jan. 24.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, apostolic nuncio to the United States, will attend the Walk for Life this year, according to the office of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone.

“What an honor! We are so excited—this is the next best thing to having the Holy Father himself with us!” said Eva Muntean, a co-founder of the walk. Archbishop Viganò, appointed on Oct. 19, 2011, the feast of the North American Martyrs, is the 14th papal representative to the United States. The diplomatic post was established in 1893.

Archbishop Viganò will read Pope Francis’ greeting, said Karen McLaughlin, executive assistant to Archbishop Cordileone.

Pope Francis also sent greetings to the Walk for Life in 2014. Archbishop Viganò first attended the walk in 2013 where he told participants: “You can’t imagine how happy I am to be here with you today. To see so many people love life … You are the best of the United States of America!” 

Read the whole thing.

For all information about the Walk, visit http://www.walkforlifewc.com/


Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Will latest Muslim atrocity force Europe to face reality?

Another Muslim atrocity in Europe. Will the Europeans wake up? The Europeans, if they will survive, if they want to survive, must lose their utopian universalist world view. That utopianism is a corruption of Christianity, as many writers have pointed out. To be fair to the average European, the poison (as in the U.S.) is mostly the work of elites who see themselves as internationalists. Many high ranking clergy have traded Christianity for this heresy, too. But the people are awakening: we see that with UKIP in Great Britain, with the National Front and the Manif demonstrations for the family and marriage in France, with Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, with the PEGIDA demonstrations in Germany.

The people in Europe, as in the United States want an end to the immigration policies that destroy their cultures and harm both the economic and family formation prospects of the poorest members of the host societies. May it happen before too much more blood is shed!

May today's victims rest in peace.


Monday, January 5, 2015

Walk for Life West Coast 2015 Promotional Video


Speaking of the Walk for Life West Coast, here is the 2015 Walk's introductory video:



Check it out and pass it on!

Walk for Life West Coast Speaker in Life News

Today's Life News has the amazing story of  Rebekah Buell, who will be one of the speakers at the January 22 Walk for Life West Coast:

After Taking the Abortion Pill “I Knew I Made a Mistake,” Her Baby Was Saved When This Happened
 
Twenty year old Rebekah Buell never imagined that she would be a pro-life speaker. At only
seventeen years old, she became pregnant with her first child, and despite all odds, finished high school, married the baby’s father, and started a promising college education.

However, a few months later, after her marriage became troubled and she and her husband separated, she also found out she was pregnant again. Feeling ashamed, alone, and afraid of losing all she had worked for, she went to an abortion clinic and took the first part of the RU486 abortion pill.

Buell explains, “I instantly knew this was a mistake. I found Culture of Life Family Services and called the hotline. The nurse, Debbie Bradel calmed me down and literally saved my baby’s life by finding me the wonderful doctor that reversed the abortion pill. I truly believe God knew I was going to take that pill so he set many barriers that allowed my baby to reach 8 weeks so he could survive the pill. When I told Planned Parenthood I was not returning for them to check to make sure the fetus was ‘removed’ and explained what I planned to do, they told me it was dangerous and would result in my baby being born deformed, but I didn’t listen...."


Read the rest at Life News. And don't miss the Walk on January 22, 2015. You can learn more about the Walk here.