Masonic Roots May Be Traced To Moses (Musa) 4,000 B.C. And Ancient Egypt

Amplify’d from www.finalcall.com

Masonic Roots May Be Traced To Moses (Musa) 4,000 B.C. And Ancient Egypt

By Mother Tynnetta Muhammad

THE CULTURALREVOLUTIONBEGINS | IN SEARCH OF THEMESSIAH

“And nothing prevents people from believing, when the guidance comes to them, except that they say: has Allah raised up a mortal to be a messenger? Say: Had there been in the earth angels walking about secure, We would have sent down to them from the heaven an angel as messenger.” –Holy Qur'an, Surah 17, verses 94-95

In my current research covering some of the deeper roots of modern Masonry with its use of symbolic language and signs, it appears that traces of its cryptic messages can be traced to the history of Moses, the Great Law Giver and Builder of modern Western civilization. It is the Jewish people in particular who emerge as the greatest benefactors of Moses' teachings causing them to excel over their other brethren of the Caucasian Race. To better understand this historic background, we must turn to Moses' work and mission which converges into two distinct assignments. On the one hand we must review the biblical account of Moses in Egypt and his freeing of a few hundred thousand Israelites,a sign of the Black Man's history in America today, and a little known history of Moses,as taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, which shows him as the great civilizer of the White Race in the caves and hillsides of Europe. In the Jewish Kabbalah system, the language used to conceal great truths centers around the use of letters, numbers and words with cryptic or hidden meanings behind the scriptural texts which is generally only known or interpreted by the Jewish Rabbis and other scholars.

Inset) Red fezzes bearing Arabic names are showcased on a wall inside the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia. In 1922, construction began on the Detroit Masonic Temple. It’s made of white limestone, houses over a thousand rooms and is the largest Masonic Temple in the world. Photo: Courtesy, 'The Million Man March Book'

This cryptic or symbolic language may have been taught to them by Moses who had a knowledge of the ancient Egyptian wisdom and was raised by Almighty God, Allah, to bring them into Rulership over others. Knowing that the White race would be given the dominion and the rule over others, the Jews emerged as an elite group in the mastery of this symbolic language and the skills of Tricknollogy. With these skills, they were able to master and rule over their White brethren and to exercise their dominion over the Indigenous populations of the earth. This secret history of the White race and the Jewish people was taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and revealed to the public for the first time upon the Coming of His Master Teacher, W. Fard Muhammad, the Great Mahdi. While studying some of the secret rituals that have passed into Masonry, the study of our Nation of Islam's Lessons demystifies the secrets of their successful rule. We read in our lessons how and why the White race was caste out of Arabia 6,000 years ago due to their mischief-making and causing trouble in the Holy Land as we read in the Book of Genesis about Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden. They were literally gathered together and exiled across the Arabian dessert into West Asia or Europe where they were left alone without a guide until the coming of Moses (Musa) 4,000 B.C. They were made to walk 2200 miles and were stripped of their garments except for a covering or apron to cover their private parts. Everything was taken from them except the language. It's interesting to note that the Hebrew language is composed of 22 letters, (2200 miles), witheach letter, as in the Greek language, representing a number which is associated with extensive inner meanings. By using this literary technology wisely, they can keep back the truth of its meaning from the masses of the people while they continue to rule while hiding the Truth, until today. While crossing the Arabian desert, soldiers were mounted on camels with scimitars or swords directing them on their way. We find this emblem of the sword being shown prominently among the Shriners and Masons who display it on top of their red fezzes and in their secret fraternities that can be traced back to their early history beginning 6,000 years ago. Upon entering the first three degrees of Masonry, their wearing of the apron, and their being stripped of all worldly goods and money are part of the formalities associated with their initiation replicating what happened to their forefathers for disobeying God's Divine Laws, whether they are aware of this secret Knowledge or not. When they arrived in Europe, they were abandoned and remained in a savage condition for 2,000 years until Almighty God, Allah, sent them Moses or Musa to civilize them. Moses taught them how to build a home for themselves, how to stand upright, and how to cook and season their meat rather than eating it raw. Moses also taught them how to master the Original Man and People for a certain period of time and helped them to prepare for a higher civilization in which they would dominate and subordinate all others? They were taught the careful use of language and symbols to hide the Truth while keeping the masses of the people ignorant, blind, deaf and dumb to its inner meaning. Returning to the masonic ritual, we were told by our 33rd degree masonic guide at the Masonic Temple in Detroit, Michigan, that when the 33rd degree is conferred, there is a place set for the President of the United States and other dignitaries to be in attendance. During the ceremony, a ring is bestowed on the finger of the 33rd degree candidate which is passed down from the previous wearer of which they are never the owners. We were also told that the highest Commanding Officer of the Marines must be a 33rd degree Mason. What does all of this secrecy mean being practiced in our midst? It means that the hiding of truth in symbolic language is known by the elite ruling class of this world and is hidden from the masses until a certain period of time, which is now, when all Secrets are being revealed. Almighty God, Allah, (the Son of Man) has appeared at the end of this World's Order of Satan that has ruled under Falsehood and Deception; and the Truth that has been Hidden has been Revealed among the People who sat in the Darkness of ignorance to bring about a Universal Change in World Civilization. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad's writing in Chapter 4 of “Our Saviour Has Arrived,” speaks on the consequences of, “The Hidden Truth,” in these words: “They are doing everything they possibly can to deceive the Black man and woman into thinking that they (white people) hold out greater and better promises for a future to the Black man and woman in America than Allah (God). This will deceive many of our people.” “Say: Allah suffices for a witness between me and you. Surely He is ever Aware of His servants, Seeing. And he whom Allah guides, he is on the right way; and he whom He leaves in error, for them thou wilt find no guardians besides Him. And We shall gather them together on the day of Resurrection on their faces, blind and dumb and deaf. Their abode is hell. Whenever it abates, We make them burn the more.” –Holy Qur'an, Surah 17, verses 96-97 To be continued. Read more at www.finalcall.com

 

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Amplify’d from www.hollandsentinel.com

LETTER — We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem

By John Thornton

Holland Township, MI — I was shocked, shocked, to read Ray Buursma’s opinion in the Dec. 15 Sentinel calling for higher taxes. Mr. Buursma did not make one statement  or comment regarding government’s irresponsible handling of the people’s tax revenues. The plain and simple fact is our government (federal, state and local) does not have a revenue problem but a spending (expense) problem.    I have always maintained the belief that we Americans are better stewards of our money than the government. What many of us have witnessed from what Mr. Buursma calls his “Republican and Democrat Friends” is that they always tend to move toward political expediency rather than basing their decisions upon right or wrong. Mr. Buursma suggests that all Americans should be required to “pay their fair share.” Later he references the confiscatory rates of foreign countries as a means to determine or persuade us Americans as to our “fair share.” Take a look at Greece, Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Did higher taxes keep them from financial chaos? No one seems to be immune from the economic downturn we’re all facing and confiscating people’s wealth for redistribution is not the answer to our national debt problems. Socialism is not the answer to our economic woes either. The answer can be found in: Lower taxes for individuals and businesses, job creation and employment growth, and reduced government spending. I do agree with Mr. Buursma in that all of us must bear the burden (fair share) for digging ourselves out of this avalanche of economic debt. The disagreement that I have is how we go about it. The “fair share” will be how we as a people cope with a reduction in governmental services and programs. I agree with Mr. Buursma on the danger our national debt, which is more than $13 trillion. With the Republican landslide in the federal elections in November, the people have spoken. It’s time we put the government on a “financial diet.” Less spending is the answer! John Thornton Holland Township Read more at www.hollandsentinel.com

 

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Internet Access is not a “Civil Right”

Amplify’d from www.gouverneurtimes.com

Internet Access is not a “Civil Right”

Written by Michelle Malkin

22 Dec 2010   -   When bureaucrats talk about increasing our "access" to x, y or z, what they're really talking about is increasing exponentially their control over our lives. As it is with the government health care takeover, so it is with the newly approved government plan to "increase" Internet "access." Call it Webcare.

By a vote of 3-2, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday adopted a controversial scheme to ensure "net neutrality" by turning unaccountable Democratic appointees into meddling online traffic cops. The panel will devise convoluted rules governing Internet service providers, bandwidth use, content, prices and even disclosure details on Internet speeds. The "neutrality" is brazenly undermined by preferential treatment toward wireless broadband networks. Moreover, the FCC's scheme is widely opposed by Congress — and has already been rejected once in the courts. Demonized industry critics have warned that the regulations will stifle innovation and result in less access, not more.

Sound familiar? The parallels with health care are striking. The architects of Obamacare promised to provide Americans more access to health insurance — and cast their agenda as a fundamental universal entitlement.

In fact, it was a pretext for creating a gargantuan federal bureaucracy with the power to tax, redistribute and regulate the private health insurance market to death — and replace it with a centrally planned government system overseen by politically driven code enforcers dictating everything from annual coverage limits to administrative expenditures to the makeup of the medical workforce. The costly, onerous and selectively applied law has resulted in less access, not more.

Undaunted promoters of Obama FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's "open Internet" plan to expand regulatory authority over the Internet have couched their online power grab in the rhetoric of civil rights. On Monday, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps proclaimed: "Universal access to broadband needs to be seen as a civil right ... (though) not many people have talked about it that way." Opposing the government Internet takeover blueprint, in other words, is tantamount to supporting segregation.

Cunning propaganda, that.

"Broadband is becoming a basic necessity," civil rights activist Benjamin Hooks added. And earlier this month, fellow FCC panelist Mignon Clyburn, daughter of Congressional Black Caucus leader and Number Three House Democrat James Clyburn of South Carolina, declared that free (read: taxpayer-subsidized) access to the Internet is not only a civil right for every "nappy-headed child" in America, but is essential to their self-esteem. Every minority child, she said, "deserves to be not only connected, but to be proud of who he or she is."

Calling them "nappy-headed" is a rather questionable way of boosting their pride, but never mind that.

Face it: A high-speed connection is no more an essential civil right than 3G cell phone service or a Netflix account. Increasing competition and restoring academic excellence in abysmal public schools is far more of an imperative to minority children than handing them iPads. Once again, Democrats are using children as human shields to provide useful cover for not so noble political goals.

The "net neutrality" mob — funded by billionaire George Soros and other left-wing think tanks and nonprofits — has openly advertised its radical, speech-squelching agenda in its crusade for "media justice." Social justice is the redistribution of wealth and economic "rights." Media justice is the redistribution of free speech and other First Amendment rights.

The meetings of the universal broadband set are littered with Marxist-tinged rants about "disenfranchisement" and "empowerment." They've targeted conservative opponents on talk radio, cable TV and the Internet as purveyors of "hate" who need to be managed or censored. Democratic FCC panelists have dutifully echoed their concerns about concentration of corporate media power.

As the Ford Foundation-funded Media Justice Fund, which lobbied for universal broadband, put it: This is a movement "grounded in the belief that social and economic justice will not be realized without the equitable redistribution and control of media and communication technologies."

For progressives who cloak their ambitions in the mantle of "fairness," it's all about control. It's always about control. Read more at www.gouverneurtimes.com

 

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Amplify’d from www.columbiatribune.com

UFO findings kept a secret

BY BILL WICKERSHAM

Grant Cameron, one of the foremost UFO scholars in the world, directs the online project known as “The President’s UFO Website” (www.presidentialUFO.com). The website has UFO-related studies and materials dated from every presidential administration starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Wickersham

Cameron’s article titled “President Carter, Daniel Sheehan, and Donald Menzel: The Congressional Research Service UFO Studies for President Jimmy Carter” describes the role played by Sheehan in examining the classified sections of the U.S. Air Force’s 1969 study of UFOs known as Project Blue Book, which was never released for public distribution. (To retrieve the full article, Google “The Marcia Smith Story — The President’s UFO Study.”)

Sheehan, with whom I have met and discussed his UFO work, is a Harvard Ph.D. and law graduate who served as general counsel to the U.S. Jesuit National Headquarters — National Office of Social Ministry in Washington, D.C. In 1976, he also served as a consultant to Marcia Smith, an analyst in science and technology with the Congressional Research Service. At the beginning of the Carter administration, Smith was asked by the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee to undertake two major investigations:

To determine whether extraterrestrial intelligence existed in our galaxy.

To determine what the relationship of UFO phenomena might be to extraterrestrial intelligence.

Sheehan’s primary role was to review the classified sections of Project Blue Book and provide his findings to Smith for inclusion in her report to the congressional committee. The secret Blue Book materials were kept in a vaulted room in the basement of the Library of Congress’s Madison Building in Washington, and Smith had received permission from Air Force officials to grant Sheehan access to the vault.

Sheehan was allowed entrance into the vault by two security officers and one plainclothes official. When he entered the vault, he found a large assortment of UFO materials, including a 35 mm film projector and numerous films of far distant shots of strange vehicles.

After examining several boxes of films, he discovered one canister that included very clear photographs of what appeared to be a crashed UFO sitting on the ground. “It had hit into this field and had dug up, kind of plowed this kind of trough through this field,” Sheehan said. “It was wedged into the side of the mud-like embankment kind of up at an angle. There were Air Force personnel. As I cranked the little handle and looked at additional photos, these Air Force people were taking pictures.

“In the photograph, they were taking photographs of this vehicle. One of the photos actually had the Air Force personnel with this big long tape measuring this thing. You could see that they had these parkas on, with little fur around their hoods. You could see that they had little name tags on their jacket. They were clearly U.S. Air Force personnel.”

After viewing the various classified materials, Sheehan shared his information with Smith. She, in turn, drafted two reports for the House Science and Technology Committee, one on the collected extraterrestrial intelligence information and the other on unidentified flying objects.

Sheehan said the first report concluded “there are from two to six highly intelligent, highly technologically developed civilizations in our own galaxy over and above our own.

“In the second report, they had drawings of different shapes of UFOs that have been sighted,” Sheehan said. “They didn’t cite any particular case, but they said that they believe there was a significant number of instances where the official U.S. Air Force investigations were unable to discount the possibility that one or more of these vehicles was actually from one of these extraterrestrial civilizations. They put this together and sent it over to the president. I ended up seeing a copy of it.”

To date, the United States has failed to fully acknowledge and disclose the classified findings of Project Blue Book.

In fact, a May 2010 Air Force statement said: “There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as unidentified represented technological development or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge.” That statement is contrary to the testimony of dozens of former U.S. military officers and government officials. And while the testimony of Sheehan does not prove the extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis, it indicates the Air Force failed to share the whole truth with the public when, over the years, it frequently said it “had nothing to hide.”

Cameron’s website contains several other very interesting UFO cover-up episodes, including one in the Clinton administration. It is a treasure trove for UFO historians and other analysts.

Bill Wickersham is an MU adjunct professor of peace studies and a member of Veterans for Peace. Read more at www.columbiatribune.com

 

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US embassy cables: Vatican archivist objects to media portrayal as 'the German Jesuit' | World news | guardian.co.uk

URL:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-docum...

Monday, 13 August 2001, 11:46

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 VATICAN 004258

SIPDIS

DEPT. FOR EUR/WE (MENNUTI), EUR/OHI

FROM EMBASSY VATICAN/MESSAGE NO. 134/01

EO 12958 DECL: 08/10/06

TAGS PREL, PHUM, KNAR, PHUM, KNAR, VT.PREL, VT.

SUBJECT: VATICAN ARCHIVES Q "THE REAL STORY"

CONFIDENTIAL

PAGE 02 VATICA 04258 01 OF 02 131205Z REF: STATE 137397

CLASSIFIED BY A/DCM GEORGE FROWICK, REASON E.O. 12958 (B,D).



1. (C) A/DCM AND POLITICAL ASSISTANT MET WITH JESUIT FATHER PETER GUMPEL AUGUST 10 AT HIS OFFICES IN THE JESUIT CURIA TO DISCUSS THE TECHNICAL ISSUES INVOLVED IN OPENING THE VATICAN ARCHIVES. (NOTE: THIS WAS A PREVIOUSLY ARRANGED MEETING, I.E. BEFORE WE RECEIVED REFTEL. WE NEVERTHELESS DELIVERED SUBSTANTIALLY THE SAME SET OF POINTS, FOCUSING ON THE USG'S INTEREST IN PROMOTING A POSITIVE, PRODUCTIVE DIALOGUE, AND QUICKLY, AS THE HOLOCAUST GENERATION IS PASSING. END NOTE.) GUMPEL IMMEDIATELY ADVISED THAT THE ISSUE OF ACCESS TO THE VATICAN ARCHIVES RELATED TO THE WORLD WAR II ERA WAS SIMPLY AN INTERNAL MATTER OF PROCEDURE AND NOT A POLITICAL ONE. XXXXXXXXXXXX HE ASSURED US THAT HE WAS A JUDGE FOR MATERIAL USED IN THE PROCESS TO DECLARE PIUS XII A SAINT AND NOT THE PROMOTER OF THE CAUSE FOR SAINTHOOD.



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THE "TECHNICAL" PROCESS CONFIDENTIAL



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2. (C) WHEN PRESSED, GUMPEL, WITH SCHOLARLY PRECISION, EXPLAINED THE TECHNICAL PROCEDURES FOR ACCESS TO THE VATICAN ARCHIVES. THE MOST RECENT MATERIAL RELEASED FOR SCHOLARLY SCRUTINY GOES BACK FIVE PONTIFICATES. MATERIAL RELATED TO THE REIGN OF BENEDICT XV">XV (1914-1922) HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED AND CATALOGUED AND IS AVAILABLE TO RESEARCHERS. CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING OF DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE PONTIFICATE OF PIUS XI">XI (1922-1939) WILL BE COMPLETED IN 2009 AT THE LATEST. GUMPEL SAID HE HOPES FOR AN EARLIER COMPLETION DATE. (NOTE. THE PIUS XI">XI DOCUMENTS WILL CONTAIN MATERIAL RELATED TO PIUS XII WHEN, AS CARDINAL EUGENIO PACELLI, HE WAS PIUS XI">XI'S SECRETARY OF STATE Q PM EQUIVALENT - FROM 1930 UNTIL 1939.



SIPDIS END NOTE). WORK TO CLASSIFY AND CATALOGUE MATERIAL RELATED TO POPE PIUS XII (1939-1958) WOULD NORMALLY COMMENCE IN 2009. GUMPEL POINTED OUT THAT FOUR JESUITS HAD BEEN GIVEN ACCESS TO THE LITERALLY MILLIONS OF DOCUMENTS AND HAD SPENT 17 YEARS (1964-1981) SORTING OUT ALL/ALL THE DIPLOMATIC MATERIAL RELATING TO PIUS XII'S ACTIVITY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR. THESE WERE THE PAPERS PUBLISHED IN THE 12 VOLUMES TO HAVE BEEN REVIEWED BY THE COMMISSION. (COMMENT: IT IS POST'S UNDERSTANDING THAT IT CURRENTLY IS LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO OPEN UP THE VATICAN ARCHIVES RELATED TO PIUS XII'S ACTIVITIES DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR. GUMPEL SAID IT CONSISTS OF SEVERAL HUNDRED BOXES (THROUGH WHICH THE JESUITS WENT PAPER-BY-PAPER EXTRACTING ALL DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTS FOR REVIEW) AND MILLIONS OF SHEETS OF PAPER. MANY OF THESE ARE PASTORAL DOCUMENTS (LETTERS TO PRIESTS, ETC) THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HOLOCAUST, BUT WHICH COULD PROVE EMBARRASSING TO LIVING PEOPLE. IT TOOK FOUR HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL



PAGE 04 VATICA 04258 01 OF 02 131205Z MOTIVATED, INTELLIGENT, MULTILINGUAL JESUITS 17 YEARS TO SORT THROUGH AND PUBLISH THE MATERIAL. END COMMENT.) THE VATICAN INSISTS THE OTHER DOCUMENTS WILL BE OPEN TO SCRUTINY ONCE THEY HAVE BEEN CLASSIFIED AND CATALOGUED AND NOT BEFORE. TWO ARCHIVISTS STAFF THE VATICAN ARCHIVE. GUMPEL ADMITTED THAT THIS WAS INADEQUATE AND THAT HE HAS REQUESTED AN INCREASE IN PERSONNEL PRECISELY TO SPEED US THE PROCESS. GUMPEL INFORMED US THAT THIS ARCHIVAL PROCEDURE HAD BEEN CLEARLY EXPLAINED TO THE SCHOLARS ON THE COMMISSION OVER THE COURSE OF MANY CONVERSATIONS.



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ACRIMONY FROM THE COMMISSION'S WORK



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3. (C) GUMPEL RECOUNTED AN OCTOBER 2000 MEETING HE HAD BEEN ASKED TO ATTEND WITH MEMBERS OF THE JEWISH-VATICAN COMMISSION STUDYING PIUS XII'S ROLE IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR. THE MEETING WAS TAPE-RECORDED WITH THE CONSENT OF ALL THOSE PRESENT. XXXXXXXXXXXX NONE OF THE COMMISSION MEMBERS HAD READ ALL THE PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS, AND MOST WERE NOT ABLE TO READ THE DOCUMENTS IN THE ORIGINAL ITALIAN AND HAD TO RELY ON TRANSLATED SUMMARIES. GUMPEL NOTED THAT FROM A SCHOLARLY PERSPECTIVE, THIS SITUATION WAS "LESS THAN IDEAL." THE COMMISSION'S REPORT, WHICH CONSISTED OF 46 COMPLEX QUESTIONS, GUMPEL HAD PREPARED TO ANSWER. HE WORKED



CONFIDENTIAL



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CONFIDENTIAL PTQ0646



PAGE 01 VATICA 04258 02 OF 02 131206Z ACTION EUR-00



INFO LOG-00 NP-00 AMAD-00 ACQ-00 CIAE-00 DODE-00 DS-00 VC-00 TEDE-00 INR-00 IO">IO">IO-00 VCE-00 NSAE-00 SNIS-00 NISC-00 DSCC-00 LBA-00 PRM-01 DRL-02 SAS-00 /003W ------------------115973 131213Z /38 R 131146Z AUG 01 FM AMEMBASSY VATICAN TO SECSTATE WASHDC 0000 INFO EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE



C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 02 OF 02 VATICAN 004258



SIPDIS



DEPT. FOR EUR/WE (MENNUTI), EUR/OHI



FROM EMBASSY VATICAN/MESSAGE NO. 134/01



E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/10/06 TAGS: PREL, PHUM, KNAR, VT. SUBJECT: VATICAN ARCHIVES Q "THE REAL STORY"



UP A SERIES OF HISTORICAL DOSSIERS, INCLUDING PRIMARY DOCUMENTS. XXXXXXXXXXXX THOSE SAME VATICAN OFFICIALS, HE SAID, EXPRESSED APPRECIATION FOR FR">FR. GUMPEL'S ACUTE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SITUATION AND HIS SCIENTIFIC PROFESSIONALISM. GUMPEL MADE IT CLEAR TO A/DCM THAT EVEN POPE JOHN PAUL II IS AWARE OF THE SITUATION.



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I AM A GERMAN, NOT A NAZI



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4. (C) XXXXXXXXXXXX GUMPEL ALSO EXPRESSED CONCERN ABOUT REFERENCES IN THE MEDIA AND IN OTHER COMMENTS TO HIM AS THE "GERMAN JESUIT." GUMPEL TOLD A/DCM THAT HIS FAMILY HAD BEEN VICTIMS OF NAZI PERSECUTION AND SEVERAL HAD BEEN KILLED BY THE NAZIS. HE HIMSELF HAD TO FLEE NAZI GERMANY AS A REFUGEE, FIRST TO FRANCE AND THEN LATER TO HOLLAND. HE RECALLED THAT AT ONE POINT A REPORTER HAD PLANNED TO PRINT AN ASSERTION THAT GUMPEL WAS A NAZI HIMSELF -- SOMETHING GUMPEL SAID WAS LIBELOUS, AND WHICH HE WAS MORE THAN WILLING TO GO TO COURT TO FIGHT.



5. (C) GUMPEL SAID HE WAS NOT SURPRISED WHEN THE JEWISH- VATICAN COMMISSION DECIDED TO SUSPEND ITS WORK. XXXXXXXXXXXX HE CLOSED BY SAYING THAT THE VATICAN WANTS TO LET PASS A PERIOD OF TIME BEFORE REOPENING THIS DISCUSSION. HE SAID THAT THE VATICAN AND HE HIMSELF WERE MORE THAN WILLING TO DISCUSS ANY ANOMALIES OR QUESTIONS RELATING TO THE 12-VOLUME HISTORY ALREADY PUBLISHED. THEY JUST DIDN'T THINK THAT THE JUST-DISBANDED COMMISSION CONSISTED OF THE RIGHT MIX OF PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO DO SO. MERANTE



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2001VATICA04258 - Classification: CONFIDENTIAL

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Radia Tapes & Wikileaks: Candid Cameras?

Amplify’d from www.southasiamail.com

Radia Tapes & Wikileaks: Candid Cameras?

Dr.James Kottoor If RTI (Right to Information act) is the supreme example of the declaration of an Indian citizen’s right to know on a personal level, Radia tapes and Wikileaks are instances par excellence of extracting that right – willy-nilly -- from governments, diplomats, business corporate and power brokers who fail in their corresponding duty to function transparently on national and international levels. In the process some of our supposedly independent extractors of news, apparently have become partisan fellow travellers or manufactures of tomorrow’s news. This last twist in the turn of events is the third dimension – shameful and disturbing -- of the still unfolding scenario. “Candid Camera” used to be the name of a regular TV programme in the US, though I have not seen one this time. In it people in various walks of life are caught off guard by hidden cameras – at home, on road or in office -- and their spontaneous, cute and shocking reactions are presented for entertainment, edification and instruction. It is also a test case to find out who is well-behaved both in private and in public and who puts on a mask where, when and why, and who can be entrusted with leadership posts for the common good. Radia tapes and Wikileaks have provided for the world at large a candid camera presentation on how some of our so-called towering personalities in government or diplomatic circle, as well as our industrial tycoons, and media celebrities behave. Some have been acting irresponsibly, crookedly or shamefully in private while putting on a gentlemanly brave face in public. In a democracy we the people, we the voting public, are to be the masters and government officials only public servants. “I am the first Servant...” That is how Nehru described himself in his midnight speech. Those in government are to be honest and upright public servants. Then, where is room for secrecy in government? Have servants any right to hide things from their masters? Secrecy is the mother of all corruption. Our country is drowning in it. Thieves do the looting under cover of darkness. Daylight of transparency is the sole bulwark against wrong doing by public servants. One may never do the morally and legally right thing to save his soul. But he surely will do it to save his face, if and when he is doubly made aware of being in the glare of public gaze. Privacy and Secrecy No one has made a hue and cry about the right to privacy and secrecy except the Tatas who pays 30 crores and Ambani an equal amount to Radia for her PRO service, according to reports. Have public figures any claim for privacy? This is a much discussed and settled issue for many, not for all. But it is generally agreed that the more one’s office demands to be in the public eye, the more such a person has to forego his privacy. One is reminded here of the hen which makes hell of a noise when it lays an egg but keeps dead silent when hatching. The Industrialist trumpeted that he was not a person to pay Rs.15 crore or so as bribe to a minister to start a new domestic flight. That filled me with admiration for him. The same industrialist now goes to court to cover up some of the unflattering leaks coming out through the Radia tape. If there are no skeletons in his cupboard why should he feel nervous about his “straight forward wheeling and dealing” in private? What Tata needs in his public corporate life rolling out crores in business transactions is not privacy but transparency. US and Wikileaks That brings us to a similar plight President Obama finds himself placed, in the case of Wikileaks. “Earlier this year, President Barack Obama was ‘troubled' by the cyber attacks on Google, which were said to originate in China, and wanted those responsible to face the consequences. The more freely information flows, the stronger society becomes, he had said during an earlier visit to China. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also strongly critical of Internet restrictions in China. Now the boot is on the other foot. Concern for free speech is nowhere in evidence as extra-legal methods are deployed to deny Americans their First Amendment rights.”(Hindu editorial: Digital McCarthyism, 5/12/10) Need more reactions? Someone suggested in New York Times that it is now China’s turn to do a tit-for-tat, that is, to declare Assange the winner of China’s Nobel Peace Prize for promoting openness, free speech and transparency in US and world over. Didn’t the US blame China for imprisoning for 11 years its free speech advocate and Nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobo? It is quite a different thing if Assange happens to be detained in UK or Sweden the model of modernity, with trumped up sex charges, involving misuse or non-use of condoms. True, some in US government like Senator Lieberman of Homeland Security and others went hysterical to call Assange a “traitor” to be prosecuted or incapacitated(meaning killed). But Obama so far has kept his cool. How can he, the custodian of free speech and expression do anything else without making himself a laughing stock? Besides Assange had received the leaks, according to reports from an American traitor in the Army and had even asked US government more than once through its embassy in UK if it had any suggestion to redact the stuff received and got no answer. Therefore Assange with foresight supplied the stuff to four prominent news organizations and websites: The Guardian(UK), El Pais (Spain), Der Spiegel(Germany) and Le Monde(France) -- the Guardian shared it with the NY Times -- to make it doubly sure that the leaks remain in public domain even if he is going to be incapacitated. Typical Reactions to Leaks Listen to some sample reactions to Wikileaks in US media: Is it right to prosecute people for believing, saying or writing what is true? First amendment gives freedom of speech and expression to all. To go against it would be a radical change in American policy. Secrecy in government would be disaster for freedom of speech and quality journalism. Besides US doesn’t have a punishable Government secret Act. Senator Lieberman wants to act against NY times. How will he stop papers like Guardian and Le monde? Secret-revealing is no Big Deal. What is to be done is to plug the leak, not muzzle the press. Is it a crime to expose truth? Honour Assange with an award “Medal of Freedom” or US citizenship. Pity, there was no Assange to reveal the ground realities during the Vietnam and Iraq wars at enormous cost to innocent lives. Those wars would never have happened had there been a Wikileaks. I fear more secrecy of governments than the bitter truths revealed by Wikileaks. Citizens of world have finally hit upon a tool to hold governments accountable. Lovers of freedom and transparency international unite, we have nothing to lose except our illusions and misplaced trust and admiration for governments and diplomats. Many are vociferous about Wikileaks, why are so few commenting on the bad behaviour -- double speak and double dealing – of US officials and diplomats abroad and at home? Internet as Whistleblower Time was when dictatorial regimes could block the free follow of refreshing information from outside world with their bamboo curtain or iron curtain and rule over people kept in ignorance with brute might. With the advent of internet, mobiles and taping to pry into private life, people are forced to come clean even in their private life. What is hacking and stealing? They are crimes only for those who hide or hoard. For the hungry man grabbing a morsel of food to quench his hunger is not stealing but taking what is his due. So it is with hacking. Extracting information which is one’s right to know is not hacking but investigative aggressive journalism. Assange’s Wikileaks is the emerging face of a heaven-sent whistleblower to suit our internet era. Any one pretending to stop the flow of heaps of classified secret information is like trying to stop with a finger the outbreak of waters from a dam of secrets breached at multiple locations. It is here that internet managers have become whistleblowers for the equitable distribution of information. Electronic media have now become the advanced face of an aggressive investigative journalism. It is in doing this job that some media personnel have fallen from grace to become accomplices or manufacturers of tomorrow’s news. Referring to it reads a headline in New York Times: Journalist in Headlines “Journalists in India Ends up in the Headlines,” by Lynsey Addario 3/12/10: “ALMOST any night of the week, Barkha Dutt can be found under the harsh glare of television lights, asking tough questions and demanding frank answers. But last Tuesday Ms. Dutt, the most famous face of India’s explosively growing 24-hour cable news business, found herself the subject of the kind of grilling she normally metes out. “Before a jury of four of her peers, she parried questions and struggled to control her anger. It was, perhaps, the toughest interview of her career. Caught on tape talking to a corporate lobbyist, she stood accused of cozying up to the powerful people she should have been covering and agreeing to pass messages to the governing Congress Party. “It is an error of judgment of enormous proportions,” thundered one of the panellists, the editor of Open Magazine, Manu Joseph. India’s vibrant and hyper-competitive news media have been celebrated as a great success story. They have played a vital role in exposing corruption; highlighting India’s growing inequality and rooting out abuses of power. “Ms. Dutt, as the 38-year-old star reporter and anchor of the biggest English-language cable news network, has become the most recognizable face of this media explosion. But the scandal threatens to undermine the reputation of members of the news media as guardians of the world’s largest democracy, and Ms. Dutt has found herself, fairly or not, at its centre.” A double edged tribute indeed to India’s free, frank and vibrant press. If Ms Burkha was picked up and highlighted in Times it was because she happened to be the most famous, not the infamous face of Indian Journalism. She was just one of the 30 or so media persons caught on the Radia tape. That included Vir Sangui whose counter point reportedly is read by lakhs, and was made to suspend his column after the tape revelations. That gives enough compelling reason to submit other media power brokers too to similar public grilling to get their version of the story, also to satisfy the legitimate complaint of Ms. Dutt: “At a moment when the public gets anxious about the state of the Indian media, I am suddenly made to answer for everybody else.” Rajdeep Sardesai, the TV journalist is quoted as saying: “The robust Indian tradition of adversarial journalism has been mortgaged at the altar of cozy networks.” Journalist’s Pastoral Profession According to Dipankar Gupta: “A journalist, like a soldier, judge or priest, belongs to a pastoral profession because he is supposed to put the collective, the flock, before private gain.“ The question is how many take it in that spirit. In that context it is worth recalling what Jesuit Fr. John Courtney Murray of Vatican Council fame said in 1963 to international journalists in Rome: "The Catholic press is not the organ of some class within the church. It does not exist to further certain interests of the church merely, especially if these interests be conceived in some narrow and rather sectarian sense. The Catholic press does not exist to glorify the clergy. The Catholic press does not exist in order to create a public image of the church that will be untrue to the reality of the pilgrim church, the wayfaring church, the church that trudges along the road of history and gets her feet dusty at times, the church that has hands by which she takes hold of dirty stuff of history... because history is rather dirty stuff... "If the church is going to guide the course of history as indeed she must, sometimes the hands of the church -- of churchmen, perhaps I should say -- get dirty. And therefore this public image of the church must be the true image, the image of the pilgrim church, the wayfaring church that we have discussed in this session of Vatican II. The Catholic press can be nothing but the vehicle of truth and of fact. Freedom therefore is the indispensable condition for the fulfilment of the social function of the Catholic press within the church and for the church. The freedom of the press to inform is nothing really but the other side of the rights of the people to be informed. And therefore, through these rights of the people to the freedom of the press knows only one limitation, and that is the people's need to know. And I think within the church, as within civil society, need of the people to know is in principle unlimited." The New Leader from Chennai published and discussed these principles in detail some 40 years ago as a prelude to what its readers were to expect from an open discussion of all relevant issue in the weekly. The message Fr. Murray conveys is relevant for all journalists, especially for those who happen to get caught in compromising situations. The writer now in Chicago can be reached at jameskottoor@gmail.com Read more at www.southasiamail.com

 

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May your Christmas be Catholic and gay

Amplify’d from onfaith.washingtonpost.com

May your Christmas be Catholic and gay

Stevens-Arroyo

The repeal of the Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) provision for the U.S. armed forces was welcomed by a majority of the American public, and in this season of family Christmas celebrations, the change in social attitudes towards gays and lesbians will pose some important choices for America's Catholics sitting around the holiday table.

If there are ten people in a home celebrating the birth of the Savior, chances are at least one gay or lesbian is participating in the festivities, since homosexuals account for about 10% of the population. In the past, families like mine excused homosexuality as long as it was hidden, our own form of DADT. Of course, there were always some who considered exclusion of gays and lesbians from the family home to be a virtuous practice of religion. Exclusion was not limited to sexual orientation. The coldness was often shown to divorced Catholics or those married outside the Church. It was not just Catholics either. The Broadway piece, "Fiddler on the Roof" renders a Jewish milkman dickering with God about when to bend and when not to break with tradition. Many of today's Muslims are undergoing similar conflicts with the old ways and the new demands.

But if families back then anguished over whether or not a ne'er do well nephew was invited to dinner because his relationship to his "girl-friend" was considered scandalous, the debate would have ended if the name of his partner was "Charles" and not "Charlene." Even so, Catholic teaching on homosexuality is not as far-right as for some Evangelical denominations. It is not the condition of "being gay" that is sinful in our faith: it is the practice of homosexual acts outside of marriage that is condemned (for heterosexuals too, but then they can marry in the Church). But while that distinction between "being" and "doing" separates Catholics from some, Church teaching does not allow us to join with other faiths that see no fault at all in homosexual activity. We Catholics view our ethics through the prism of the natural law. The Vatican has classified homosexuality as "objective disorder" on the natural law premise that sex is supposed to be used for procreation; when it is not, states the Vatican, the disorder is "objective." (This is shaky logic since obligatory celibacy would then also become an "objective disorder" since it does not allow sexuality to be used for procreation...but this is another long-debated issue in Catholic apologetics.)

Ironically, along with changing cultural views of homosexuality, science is now suggesting that there is a "gender orientation gene" that makes homosexuality the result of nature and not just a personal choice. Such an interpretation would reverse the theology of homosexuality today, much as Jesus reversed the belief that blindness was a punishment for sin (Jn. 9:1-3) Most of Catholic America will not be entering into theological arguments about homosexuality or divorce this Christmas as we sit alongside family members. We will soon be aware of which relatives are happy and which are depressed. I remember my joy upon seeing that a family member finally abandoned an unhappy marriage and found someone new. This feeling is based on love for the person rather than intellectual reasoning about Church law. Sometimes, I think, we should not pose as judges over other peoples' morality. Many Catholics accept divorced and remarried relatives at a Catholic Christmas celebration, because "...at least they are happy again." I can't understand how this compassion would not be extended to gays and lesbians who "come out." I see no virtue in using the Christmas dinner to denounce human happiness. I am not arguing for repeal of Catholic teaching: but only for remembering the Christmas message. If the Baby Jesus was honored with the presence of rough shepherds, pagan Magi, dumb oxen and foul-smelling asses, surely we ought not refuse to put up with our relatives for a few hours - even if they happen to belong to another political ideology, religious leaning or sexual orientation. Instead of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a Catholic Christmas rejoices to be loved by Love Himself. Read more at onfaith.washingtonpost.com

 

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What would Jesus do about sex trafficking? - Prostitution News | Prostitutes, Gigolos, Sex Work - Salon.com

URL:  http://www.salon.com/life/sex_work/?story=/mwt/feature/...

By Tracy Clark-Flory



Annie Lobert is spreading the word about the dark side of prostitution, as well as God's love for hookers



LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- She tosses her platinum blond hair over her shoulder and pulls down her shirt to expose the freckled flesh above her breasts. It's a move that would be sexy in most contexts, but certainly not this one: Annie Lobert, a former prostitute, is showing me how her breastbone bulges slightly on one side from a particularly bad beating from her pimp. "See that? That's from him standing on top of me with his Gore-Tex boots on," says the 43-year-old. "I was laying down and he marched on my chest." She presses on the bony protrusion, and it pops.



This is the first jarring stop on the tour of Lobert's battle wounds from more than a decade of hooking in Las Vegas, and it's this ugly side of the sex trade that she helps to expose in Investigation Discovery's reality TV series "Hookers: Saved on the Strip." The show, which wraps Wednesday at 10 p.m., follows Lobert as she reaches out to Sin City prostitutes and offers to help them escape abusive pimps, just like she did. There is just one catch: She offers harbor in a transitional home run by her organization, Hookers for Jesus, and the Church at South Las Vegas. It's a human rights mission, and a religious one, too.



Over lunch at a sushi restaurant, she continues mapping her scars. Pulling back her bangs, she reveals a thick white line along her hairline. "He did that to me, too," she tells me. "Another time, he took a hot fire poker and just -- boom, boom." She slams her fists on the table. "Girl, I could not walk. I have never seen anything so grotesque. My thigh was black." That's just the abuse that left physical scars -- he called her every name imaginable and shoved her face in dog shit. There were clients who beat and raped her at gunpoint, and friends, fellow working girls, who died. "Their bodies were chopped up," she says matter of factly between bites of sashimi. "They were strangled, shot in the head by tricks, or 'disappeared' by their pimps."



* Continue reading



The dissonance of eating raw fish while in the middle of the desert (or while talking about dismemberment) is nothing compared to the experience of going to Sunday services with Lobert -- the least of which is because I'm an atheist who has never attended church. The members of her congregation are no strangers to sex work or any of the other "un-Godly" things going on 20 miles away on the strip. After the preacher's raucous and very Vegas sermon -- during which he exclaims, "God loooves sex!" -- Lobert introduces me to a couple of churchgoers who used to turn tricks just like her. One friend -- let's call her Cameron, thanks to a resemblance to a certain blond actress -- managed to tear herself away from her pimp, and the sex trade, when he landed in jail (she was carrying his baby at the time).



Another woman, let's call her Julia, seems at first to have the sort of "happy hooker" story that we so often see in pop culture: She was swept off her feet by one of her clients, à la "Pretty Woman," she says. But then she introduces me to her newly adopted daughter: A shy 16-year-old with long brown hair who recently escaped life on the street, and whose 13-year-old sister is currently being exploited downtown by child sex traffickers; she hears from her occasionally but has no idea how to find her. Neither do the police, apparently.



It isn't an unusual story, but it's bracing to me, in particular because I am one of those young feminists who philosophically believes that prostitution should be legal. For the first time, though, I viscerally understand the anti-legalization stance. I can't say my position has changed, but seeing the scars and tears firsthand makes the issue appear infinitely more complex. Too often, I have focused on the best-case scenario: the "high-class" hooker who is a free agent. These women, and men, do exist, but they are not the majority. Of course I already knew this, but talking to a teenage girl whose kid sister is being sold for sex puts your political priorities in check.



When Lobert lived with her pimp, he would bring home underage girls. "I had 12-year-olds in my house," she says. Some of them barely spoke English and they all had fake IDs; whenever she found out their real age, she would try to run them off, sometimes even buying them a bus or a plane ticket out of town. Lobert drives me down a shadowy street right off the strip and points with one of her glittery pink acrylic nails. "That's where all the underage girls walk."



It isn't just the underage girls that are being forced into the trade, either. "These women leave and they die," she says. Lobert left her pimp several times, "but he always found me," she says. She was kidnapped, had her hair cut off (so that she couldn't make money for another pimp) and beaten close to death. Now she simply refers to most sex work as trafficking. "When it’s 'prostitution,' no one wants to talk to you, but it's the same thing. You’re being trafficked. You’re being enslaved. You might not see the chains, but they're there."



When it comes to sex workers who say they enjoy their work, Lobert is unyielding, even when pressed: "They're either in the honeymoon phase, or they're in total denial." She concedes that there are prostitutes without pimps, but claims that they're the exception to the rule. "Eventually, you run into a pimp, or you meet a girl in the business who will lure you home to their pimp, " Lobert says. "No matter whether he's a hardcore pimp that's beating you down or someone who is taking part of your money so you can make money, someone along the line is making money off of you." And when it comes to clients: "High-class, low-class, it doesn't matter. If a trick's gonna strangle you and kill you, he gon' take care of bidness," she says, revealing a sudden glimpse of the streetwise young woman she was on the strip.



This is where Lobert's religious message becomes secondary. She may broadly preach against prostitution as a "perversion" of sex's intended purpose as a "beautiful representation of a union between a man and a woman," as her husband, a Christian rock musician, passionately puts it -- but she's fundamentally speaking out against the coercion and exploitation that she experienced firsthand. "I just want justice, and this is what it looks like," she says, tapping my tape recorder. "It's bringing awareness."



* Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow @tracyclarkflory on Twitter. More: Tracy Clark-Flory

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Eye Witness to Miraculous events that Haunt Justice Scalia - “Repair the Injustice”

Signs and Lying Wonders!!!

Amplify’d from ministryvalues.com

Eye Witness to Miraculous events that Haunt Justice Scalia  - “Repair the Injustice”

I saw nearly two dozen statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary weep in my home, at the rectory, in church, and elsewhere in 1992.  The bishop and chancellor of the diocese of Arlington, John Keating and William Reinecke, saw their own statues tear before their eyes at the Chancery. The Blessed Mother wept on television. The Washington Post called the occurrences “unexplainable.”   Everybody close to the miraculous events of 1992 knows the truth. Yet for nearly twenty years the diocese of Arlington has stonewalled all inquiries into the matter. And now we know that the Chancellor of the diocese of Arlington, William Reinecke, who was undoubtedly instrumental in formulating the diocese‘s policy of silence toward the miraculous events—a position effectively ending the Catholic Church’s interest in them— was sadly a man with multiple accusations of pedophilia. Pope Benedict calls on bishops and cardinals to repair the injustice Pope Benedict XVI  last week told Vatican officials  that they must reflect on the church's culpability in its child sex-abuse scandal. From the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI, in his annual Christmas speech to Bishops and Cardinals, said "We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred." In his traditional, end-of-the-year speech Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 reached "an unimaginable dimension" that required the church to accept the "humiliation" as a call for renewal. "We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen," the Pope said. As a former member of the diocese of Arlington, I echo the Pope’s call to “ask ourselves what we can do to repair the injustice.” For nearly twenty years witnesses to the incredible display of the supernatural—witnesses to Our Lady’s tears ―have been denied a fair account of the events by the Catholic Church. The Bishop of Arlington Ignores God’s call First, let’s look at the bishop of the Arlington diocese, John R. Keating’s, response to something that would appear to be a dramatic communication directly from God. With Our Lady’s tears as a powerful supernatural reminder of the eternal God, the Bishop was offered an unparalleled opportunity to publicly deplore all manner of sins, from priestly misconduct to sexual promiscuity in society as a whole, to greed in the financial sector, to mothers terminating the lives of their unborn children, to selfish materialism, to indifference to the needs of our neighbors, and to the loss of faith in Jesus Christ himself. Yet, to many, close to the events, the Bishop dropped the ball. In 1991-92 in Lake Ridge, Virginia (in the diocese of Arlington) there was an incredible display of weeping statues, crucifixes and other images plus rosaries and statues changing color, a priest with stigmata wounds, some inexplicable healings, strange signs in the sky and the scent of roses where there was no reason for it.  Surely this was something the local bishop would understand must be acknowledged?  What else could it be but a communication from his “boss”( Our Lady appears at the will of the Father) unless it could all be explained by natural phenomena or there was some kind of massive fraud and trickery going on?  And if not from God, what kind of bishop would not understand the need to investigate and protect his flock from false beliefs?  Yet the bishop of Arlington, John R. Keating, ordered his priests and tried to tell everyone else not to even acknowledge the amazing signs of divine intervention.  The reason given was a hurried and trivial explanation that there was nothing to investigate since there was no message involved.  No message involved!?  The messages found in Our Lady’s tears in 1992 are unrivaled in their fervent and agonizing display of emotional pain.  If someone dear to you is sobbing without words, do you think there is nothing to inquire about?  Or to be concerned about?   But the Bishop and the Chancellor chose to ignore Our Lady’s tears.  They dismissed Our Lady’s cries despite a long history of  Church approved miracles -   Akita and Sicily come to mind -  similar in nature to the events taking place in Virginia. The bishop looked away and dismissed Our Lady’s tears seemingly only concerned with what the “world” might think of plastic statues weeping tears from heaven. In hindsight we can now see that the reputations of the institution took precedent above an extraordinary religious event.  Supreme Court Justice Scalia questions lack of an investigation Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is equally baffled and has been haunted by the miracles for nearly twenty years. Justice Scalia has publicly brought up the mysterious events numerous times. According the the diocese of Arlington Judge Scalia mentioned the events in a speech in 1996 and then again in an October 2010 speech to the St. Thomas More Society in Annapolis, MD.  Justice Scalia called it “irrational” to ignore miraculous signs like those that happened in and around Lake Ridge in 1991-92.  He noted the powerful draw that such signs have for the unbelieving and how an investigation by the diocese might have filled the pews with nonbelievers seeking to determine if their lack of faith was misplaced.  Scandal involving the Chancellor Some have speculated that Bishop Keating was perhaps unduly influenced by his Chancellor, Monsignor William Reinecke, who was later revealed to be an accused pedophile and who took his own life in August 1992.  But, no, I think not.  If Reinecke were the villain in this piece, Bishop Keating should have been shocked enough by his suicide to go on his knees to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Lake Ridge to beg forgiveness from the Virgin Mary for his callous disregard of her tears.  But nothing came out of the diocese except a stony silence and orders to the Arlington Catholic Herald to print no word and accept no advertising from anyone attempting to promote the weeping statues and other signs. Perhaps Bishop Keating received a curt summons to report home and explain himself because in 1998 he died in his sleep while on a visit to the Vatican in Rome. Bishop Loverde continues the stonewall Sadly, Keating’s successor, Bishop Paul S. Loverde, has been equally adamant about refusing to undo the error of his predecessor and open an investigation into what we might call “The Seton Miracles.”  No acknowledgment of what happened, no investigation, no prayerful reflection about them, just stony silence.  Although we are called to believe the powerful miracles of Jesus (and I totally do), apparently we can be more dismissive of miracles that happen closer to home and in our own time.  Isn’t this pretty much the position of the Sanhedrin at the time of Jesus? Pope John Paul II acknowledges weeping statues to be signs from God You might question with full indignation who am I to question a bishop?  Good point.  You don’t have to rely on anything I say.  But a very recent pope well on his way to canonization said explicitly that weeping statues belong to the order of signs.  “[Mary] is a mother crying when she sees her children threatened by a spiritual or physical evil.”  (Pope John Paul II at the dedication of the Shrine of Our Lady of Tears in Syracuse, Sicily, 1994).  This dedication commemorated weeping by a single bas-relief of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for a mere four days in 1953.  The weepings in 1991-92 were geometrically greater in scope.  Too bad the archbishop of Syracuse wasn’t in charge of the Arlington diocese.  You would never have had to read these words. Pope Benedict XVI asked of his Cardinals and Bishops "We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred." Why should the bishop of Arlington be able to ignore his responsibility to investigate signs from Mary when the Holy Father has said otherwise?  This is the question that every Christian believer, especially Catholics, should ask the bishop of Arlington.  He owes the faithful an answer. James L. Carney Author of The Seton Miracles, Weeping Statues and Other Wonders (editor's note: Mr Carney has given up all rights to his book and receives no compensation from its sales) Read more at ministryvalues.com

 

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Irish Church braces for new report on abuse in Cloyne diocese

Amplify’d from www.catholicculture.org

Irish Church braces for new report on abuse in Cloyne diocese

Ireland’s justice minister, Dermot Ahern, was due to receive a report today on sexual abuse by priests in the Cloyne diocese. The report, which could be made public early next year, is likely to re-ignite criticism of the Irish Catholic hierarchy. The Irish Church is still reeling from the effects of the “Murphy report,” released last November, detailing the failure of Church leaders to restrain abusive priests. But the Murphy report covered only the Dublin archdiocese. The Cloyne diocese is the subject of a separate investigation, which covers a more recent time period: from 1996 to 2009. In March, Bishop John Magee of Cloyne resigned his post, apparently at the request of the Holy See. Bishop Magee—who had served at the Vatican, as personal secretary to three Pontiffs—had been severely criticized for failing to enact new standards for reporting and disciplining priests accused of sexual abuse. The new report from the Murphy commission will examine the charges against priests in Cloyne during Bishop Magee’s tenure there. Upon receiving the commission’s report, the justice minister is expected to refer the document to prosecutors, who may weigh the possibility of criminal charges. The minister may then seek court permission to make the report public. The Cloyne diocese is currently under the supervision of an apostolic administrator, Archbishop Dermot Clifford of Cashel, who was given this temporary added assignment when Bishop Magee resigned. The Vatican has not yet appointed a permanent replacement. Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window. Justice Minister to receive Cloyne report (RTE) Ahern to receive 'damning' report on sex abuse (Irish Independent) Pope accepts resignation of Irish bishop, former papal secretary (CWN 3/24) Read more at www.catholicculture.org

 

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Prominent Jesuit Scholar Accused of Abuse

by: Kristina Chew



The sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church has reached a “degree we could not have imagined," according to a statement made by Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that was quoted the December 20th New York Times.



Indeed: Just recently, a prominent Jesuit scholar, Keith Pecklers, SJ,  was accused by 48-year-old Keith Brennan of sexual abuse, as reported in the December 12th Star-Ledger.



Pecklers is a professor of liturgy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and widely regarded as one of the foremost authorities on Catholic liturgy in the world. He is also a frequent commentator on Vatican Affairs for ABC News. Pecklers is a native of Jersey City and it was in St. Paul’s Church in the Greenville section of Jersey City that then-14-year-old Brennan was abused by him starting in 1976.



In a December 5th story, the Star-Ledger also reported about how John J. Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, shielded at least four priests who had been accused of sexual abuse against children and one adult:



In the four instances, the priests have either admitted improper sexual contact, pleaded guilty to crimes stemming from accusations of sexual misconduct or been permanently barred from ministry by the archdiocese after allegations of sexual misconduct.



In his Christmas message to the Vatican hierarchy, the Pope wrote that

“We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred.......We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen.”



In the past year, investigations in Ireland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States have found that clerics from parish priests to those at high levels like Fr. Pecklers, committed sexual abuse against children in many cases. And in many if not most cases, the church hierarchy covered up the abuse, sometimes moving priests with a history of sexually abusing children from parish to parish, and without informing parishioners of the priests' history.



In his Christmas letter, even though the Pope states that '“We are well aware of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and of our corresponding responsibility,”' he also says that the abuses should be viewed 'in the context of these times."'



But rather than blaming 'these times' for the catalogue of abuses committed around the world, should not the Pope be looking at the culture of the Roman Catholic Church, a culture that, indeed, shielded and continues to shield---to protect---clerics who committed terrible crimes? As a July 8 editorial from the National Catholic Reporter states, the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is 'as it has evolved in the past half millennium is deeply damaged from within.'



Earlier this year, the Vatican revised its law on sexual abuse, a step in the right direction----but a step that seems to be not only too little, but too, too late.



Source

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Some Burning Questions for the Pope

Sinead, Your being too kind!!!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Some Burning Questions for the Pope

URL:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sinead-oconnor/post_1465_...

Sinéad O'Connor

Singer/songwriter



This is an Open Letter to Pope Benedict on behalf of all victims of child sexual abuse by catholic priests; on behalf of all catholic people, and all honorable catholic clergy; on behalf of every media outlet under the sun; and on behalf of The Holy Spirit.



Sir,



Some burning questions arise from the following statement you made in your Christmas address to your cardinals on December 20th regarding how it came to pass that the house of The Holy Spirit became a haven for criminals of a sexual nature.



"In the 1970's pedophilia was theorized [by the church] as something fully in conformity with man and even with children."



Please deign to respond to this letter directly and personally and put aside all the pomp and titles and so-called 'proper channels' -- all of which belong not in the 21st century but the 12th and are unbecoming of Christ.



Exactly who held the theory that pedophilia was fully in conformity with man and with children?



Please give us their names.



Exactly when did they hold this theory?



Exactly when if ever did they cease holding the theory?.



Why was this information not given to victims?



Why was it never given to any commissions of inquiry or civil authorities?



Why in all the years since these scandals broke out was yesterday the first mention of this information?



It is highly disrespectful of the victims that you would throw this out as an aside remark and not present yourself for questioning on such a very serious piece of information which would be key in the potential recovery of the church.



The Holy Spirit requires you to familiarize yourself with honesty and respect if you retain any desire to salvage the remains of the church which has been ruined by its being allowed to live by its own laws and not God's



~ Sinéad

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