Friday, August 31, 2012

Update on Frank Ryan's Condition

As reported in our previous post, fireman Francis "Frank" Ryan, a 15-year veteran of the San Jose Fire Department, suffered a heart attack while battling yesterday's fire at St. Patrick's proto-cathedral in San Jose. NBC Bay Area has an update:

"A 15-year San Jose firefighting veteran remained in critical but stable condition Friday, as doctors placed the 44-year-old in a medically induced coma to allow him to rest.

The news came a day after Francis "Frank" Ryan suffered cardiac arrest in helping to battle a three-larm blaze that ripped through Saint Patrick Cathedral near downtown San Jose Thursday morning. On Friday, investigators still hadn't been able to determine what started the 11 a.m. fire.

Ryan was given immediate medical attention by his fellow firefighters. They said he had no pulse and was not breathing for a time, but his "brothers" brought him back to life before rushing him to the hospital.

The cardiac doctor who treated Ryan said his fellow firefighters definitely saved his life. He added that Ryan came to work with 'an angel on his shoulder.'"


Please join with us as we pray for Mr. Ryan's full recovery. Mary Help of Christians, pray for us!

One of the commentors over at California Catholic Daily, which also covered the story, wrote:

"According to my San Jose priest friends, that parish is San Jose’s largest parish and probably Northern California’s largest Catholic church with around 10,000 at Mass each weekend. I spoke with another priest friend, he of Vietnamese origin: he says that St. Patrick’s is considered the largest Vietnamese parish in the world."

Let us also pray for the parishioners of St. Patrick's, who have a large task ahead of them.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Fireman Suffers Heart Attack Battling Fire at San Jose Church


Blaze of undetermined origin at Proto-Cathedral of St. Patrick

Shortly after 11AM today, San Jose’s emergency response received a number of calls reporting smoke pouring out of San Jose’s St. Patrick’s Church. The church, located at 389 East Santa Clara Street, is the second-oldest church in the Diocese of San Jose, and it served as the diocese’s proto-cathedral from 1981-1990, as the cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph was being renovated.

The fire quickly went to three alarms and approximately 60 firefighters arrived to battle the blaze. The fire was reported extinguished at 12:05 AM, but at about the same time other firefighters discovered that, during the battle, of their own had collapsed.  Firefighters found Francis “Frank” Ryan, a 15-year veteran of the SJPD, in a state of cardiac arrest in front of the church. NBC Bay Area reported  “Ryan was given immediate medical attention by his fellow firefighters. They said he had no pulse and was not breathing for a time, but his ‘brothers’ brought him back to life before rushing him to the hospital.”

Mr. Ryan was taken to Regional Medical Center in San Jose, where he is reported to be in “critical but stable” condition. Reports are that his brother firefighters are at his side.


After the fire had been extinguished, Captain Mary Gutierrez, her voice choking with emotion, spoke with reporters "This firefighter, at great risk today, has a pretty serious injury. Our hearts are going out to him and his family… It's been an incredibly tough day for all of us. It's been a tough day for the city." Gutierrez also said that firefighters had faced "blackout conditions" inside the smoke-filled church. Eyewitnesses reported stained-glass windows cracking from the heat and plummeting to the street below. Smoke from the blaze was visible through San Jose.

St. Patrick’s today primarily serves Catholics of Vietnamese ethnicity. The pastor is Fr. Peter Loi Hunyh. The parish also has a school. School was in session during the fire, and the students were evacuated to nearby Horace Mann Elementary School. The school, which is separated from the church by a parking lot, was not harmed, and the students were allowed to return after the fire was extinguished.

Captain Gutierrez told reporters that the cause of the blaze had not yet been determined, but that it had started in front of the church. Fire investigators are currently examining the site.

We pray for the full recovery of Mr. Ryan, and for the safety of all our public servants.

A Hard Look at the President

A "deadly" article regarding Obama, by Alan Caruba: 

"I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group (George Soros anybody?) took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The "Audacity of Hope" followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author.

His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.

And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska . It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat. The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.

Now, 3 full years into his presidency, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.

Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain.

The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.

Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.

Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted "Allahu Akbar." The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.

He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America . He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.

The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.

Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life.

When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.

We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States . We the people are coming!

Mr. Obama, meet a baby you would have refused to protect

On Sunday, we linked to the audio of President Obama's comments on the "Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act." Obama was against it.

Here's the other side of the story--from an infant who survived abortion.


Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Archbishop "Calm, Apologetic"--Officer at Checkpoint

The San Francisco Chronicle has published more details of the Archbishop's DUI arrest, including this description from the officer at the scene:

"Oakland Diocese Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, 56, was headed along San Diego State University's southern edge when he encountered a sobriety checkpoint, said Officer Mark McCullough. Cordileone was amiable but appeared intoxicated and was arrested at 12:26 a.m., McCullough said....

The area where he was arrested has a large number of fraternity and sorority houses, and police routinely run checkpoints on weekends. McCullough said 10 others were arrested at the same checkpoint that night.

'He was very calm, somewhat apologetic at the time,' said the officer, who ran the checkpoint that morning. 'He said he'd been drinking. But he wasn't a stumbling, falling-down drunk.'

The archbishop-designee's driving record is clean except for one ticket he got on Dec. 23 for failure to stop at a stop sign, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles. If convicted of this latest offense, he could be sentenced to three years' probation, a fine of $1,800, two days in jail and sobriety counseling."

Monday, August 27, 2012

Statement From Archbishop-designate Cordileone


Here's his Excellency's statement about the events of Friday night/early Saturday morning in San Diego:
"While visiting in San Diego this past weekend, I had dinner at the home of some friends along with a priest friend visiting from outside the country and my mother, who lives near San  Diego State University. While driving my mother home, I passed through a DUI checkpoint the police had set up near the SDSU campus before I reached her home, and was found to be over the California legal blood alcohol level.
"I apologize for my error in judgment and feel shame for the disgrace I have brought upon the Church and myself. I will repay my debt to society and I ask forgiveness from my family and my friends and co-workers at the Diocese of Oakland and the Archdiocese of San Francisco.  I pray that God, in His inscrutable wisdom, will bring some good out of this."
It should come as no surprise to anyone that His Excellency is "manning up."

Shocking News

Our Archbishop-designate, Salvatore Cordileone was arrested for an investigation of driving under the influence early Saturday morning.

From the Associated Press:

"The Roman Catholic archbishop-elect of San Francisco was arrested for investigation of driving under the influence, San Diego police said Monday.


The Rev. Salvatore Cordileone, a vigorous supporter of California’s same-sex marriage ban, was taken into custody after being stopped early Saturday at a police checkpoint near the San Diego State University campus, said Detective Gary Hassen, a police spokesman. He declined to comment on whether Cordileone took a sobriety test or reveal his blood-alcohol content.

The stop was made at 12:26 a.m. on the outskirts of the campus, an area populated by college housing, modest restaurants and low-slung apartment buildings.
 
There was no record of Cordileone being in custody on Monday. The San Diego city attorney’s office, which prosecutes misdemeanor DUI offenses, said it had not received a report on the arrest."

We pray for, and stand with, our shepherd as he faces this investigation. We are sure he will perform the tasks God has set before him.

Friday, August 24, 2012

“It’s both right and smart for the Democratic Convention to behave as if children exist.”

So says Gloria Steinem, commenting on a rule at the upcoming Democratic National Convention that will bar children, including breastfeeding babies, from entering the event without being credentialed.

Kathleen Gilbert writes at LifeSiteNews: 

"Top feminist icon Gloria Steinem said that by not even offering child care at the event the Democratic Party will alienate female voters, and that the party should acknowledge that, where there are women, there are occasionally babies too."


The Religious Roots of "Progressive" Politicians

I'm happy to see that the work of my favorite philosopher, Eric Voegelin, is starting to make some inroads into popular culture. Yesterday, James Taranto, who writes the "Best of the Web" column for the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece called "Out of Mani, One" exploring the Manichean roots of "Progressive" politics, and their particular expression in Barack Obama. Mr. Taranto's very brief column was then linked to by the mighty Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.

Taranto does not mention Professor Voegelin, but links to the column that provoked his column, a piece by David Solway, called "The Ideology of the Left: Gnostics of Our Time," which specifically cites Voegelin's work. Taranto writes:

"Gnosticism is a utopian philosophy. Its essential premises are that the world, not man, is fallen and the route to salvation lies in knowledge (gnosis in Greek), not faith. As poet David Solway explains in a PJMedia.com essay: 'The world and all its customs, beliefs, norms, usages, and statutes was disavowed as a vast and perverse deception. The imperative was to restore a prior or potential, but shattered, harmony by whatever means necessary and thus to recreate the Creation.'

Solway argues that the psychology of contemporary left 'is intrinsically a Gnostic one':


'All of the Left's diverse manifestations, from radical communism to the more complaisant forms of soft-focus socialism, are actuated by the mystical lure of a harmonious society posited as the end-goal of History--a society in which the elements of conflict have been banished and sufficient wherewithal is assured for all its members. The Hegelian assumption--partially adopted by Marx--of the "end" toward which the forces of History are tending is the secular version of the Gnostic reverie of the benign blueprint that was somehow botched. The Leftist dream of ultimate "ends" mirrors the Gnostic illusion of first beginnings, of a pre-existent purpose. For this psychology, only the Ideal is Real, and the Real is recognized as something that is opposed to the actual, to what is presently the case.'

This makes sense of the disconnect between Obama's largely uplifting 2008 campaign and his unrelentingly vicious 2012 one. Then, he presented himself as 'the Ideal,' the bringer of 'hope and change' whose promise was 'fundamentally transforming the United States of America.'"


It does make sense. "Progressives" are gnostics who derive their motivation from opposition. The opposition is, obviously, to the existing reality. Obama's promise of  "fundamentally transforming the United States of America" is a Gnostic project.

Those concerned about the "separation of church and state" should be especially concerned about "Progressives" and Barack Obama. You can only separate two things if you have two things. Mitt Romney is a Mormon, a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints. His church is a definable body with definable doctrines. His church can be easily distinguished from the state. The same cannot be said of President Obama.

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

LifeSiteNews Reveals More Abortion Ties at Catholic Relief Services


They are rotten. Stiff them when their second collection comes around. There are plenty of anti-poverty groups whose employees don't assault pro-lifers. From today's LifeSiteNews:

"WASHINGTON, D.C., August 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As Catholic Relief Services responds to criticisms over its partnerships with pro-abortion anti-poverty groups, LifeSiteNews has discovered that the aid organization also has a history of hiring employees with strong ties to pro-abortion and pro-contraception organizations.

One CRS employee lists the pro-abortion Pro-Choice Resources and Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies as former employers on her LinkedIn resume, while another was hired by the Catholic aid organization directly from the pro-abortion Population Services International.


Former CRS employee Charisse Glassman was convicted of assault after driving her car into a crowd of March for Life participants.
Another former employee was convicted of assault last fall after ramming her car into a crowd at the DC March for Life in January 2011 as the pro-lifers traversed a crosswalk.

The latter employee, Charisse Espy Glassman, was a Democrat candidate for the DC school board as well as a legislative assistant with CRS-Haiti. Despite assault charges, she remained at CRS until August 4th, 2011. In a statement on Facebook responding to queries, CRS said they had “operated on the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty.” A victim of the assault, who suffered two herniated disks, reported that Glassman had seemed to laugh as she drove into the crowd."

Read the whole story.

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney

MUST SEE! "Restless Heart...The Confessions of Augustine"

Wow. Check out the trailer.




To learn more. or schedule a screening near you, go here:

http://restlessheartfilm.com/