Shadow Puppets

Blase Cupich Denies Allegations He Is Sane

From Eye of the Tiber, of course... 

Cardinal Blase Cupich responded to an anonymous letter earlier today accusing him of being sane.
“To say that I am sane is insane,” the American cardinal said. “Yes, I admit it. What sane person would say that protecting the environment is a more important issue than the allegations levelled at the Pope? Seriously, what else would I have had to say to convince you that I’m a complete crackpot? Would I have needed to say that those who are asking the Pope to speak about recent allegations that he knew about the McCarrick situation were only doing so because he is a Latino?”
Cupich went on to say that allegations of him not being a nutbag must be an inside joke by friends, saying that “this is the type of thing they would do.”
“Ah, they’re always breaking my balls, these guys. They know I’m a head case, most of you all know I’m one, but now people are asking my opinion as though I’m all of a sudden gonna say something coherent, but I’m not. I’m not going down the rabbit hole of sanity. Not at this age. I’m gonna stay focused on the environment—I’m gonna stay focused on the redwoods. My high school girlfriend was a redwood.”

The Trouble With Jesuits (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), Part 72

On Christmas Day, Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) repeated the old liberal canard that because Jesus was a refugee, attempts to secure the U.S. border and limit illegal immigration are anti-Christmas. While Jesus was a refugee, Christmas has nothing to do with immigration policy. Furthermore, the very baby-killing event Jesus was fleeing has a tragic echo in abortion clinics today.

"Joy to the World! Merry Christmas everyone - here’s to a holiday filled with happiness, family, and love for all people (Including refugee babies in mangers + their parents.)," socialist darling Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

 The self-declared democratic socialist went on to share an article from Jesuit activist Fr. James Martin arguing that Jesus was indeed a refugee. She claimed this argument was "for all the anti-immigrant pundits uncomfortable with and denying that Christ’s family were refugees, too."

Stop Quoting What He Said!

 From "First Things" an article by Charlotte Allen. Read the whole thing.

On November 15 the Italian Bishops’ Conference announced that it plans to change the wording of the Lord’s Prayer in the Mass liturgy. The bishops want the current Italian equivalent of “lead us not into temptation” to become “do not abandon us to temptation.”
The bishops have now petitioned the pope to approve this proposed alteration—a petition he is almost certain to grant. In a 2017 interview with an Italian Catholic television channel, the pontiff expressed his distress with the current Italian wording—non c’indurre in tentazione, a literal translation of the Latin ne nos inducas in tentationem that is part of the Lord’s Prayer in the Vulgate versions of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. (The Vulgate version is in turn a literal translation of words [the root verb is eisphero, “bring into”] that appear in the oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament—which means there’s a good chance the clause preserves the exact wording Jesus used when he proclaimed the prayer in his native Aramaic.) 

 It is always irritating when professional liturgists, theologians, and prelates deem ordinary Catholic laypeople mentally incapable of looking beyond the surface meaning of “lead us not into temptation” and understanding that the words might actually imply a subtle and nuanced understanding of God the Father’s providential concern for sinful humanity. It is especially irritating for English-speaking Catholics to face—possibly—the prospect of changing, on a whim of bishops or pressure from the pope, the deliberately archaic language of their own beloved Christian prayer that has included the words “lead into” as a translation of inducas since Anglo-Saxon times. Proposals to “modernize” the English Our Father have surfaced from time to time, but so far both clergy and faithful have rejected them.

Islamic Outreach, Part CVII

From an earlier post on this blog:

Pope Francis spoke to the diplomatic corps and amongst other things, said, "Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam."

MEANWHILE.....

Misrata, Libya, Dec 28, 2018 / 01:48 pm (CNA).- A mass grave of 34 Ethiopian Christians executed by the so-called Islamic State group in 2015 has reportedly been unearthed in Libya.
The bodies have been exhumed and will be eventually repatriated to Ethiopia, the Libyan interior ministry says.

Libyan government authorities found the mass grave Dec. 23 after obtaining information from arrested Islamic State members. The grave appears to be located on a farm near the coastal city of Sirte, 170 miles southeast of Misrata.

 According to the Libyan Express newspaper, a propaganda video posted to social media in April 2015 appeared to show the Islamic State members shooting and beheading the Ethiopian Christians, who were all wearing orange jumpsuits, on a beach. The Christians were in Libya to seek work as migrant workers, according to International Christian Concern.
The 2015 incident happened just months after Islamic State members executed a group of nearly two dozen Coptic Christians; a mass grave containing their bodies was found last October.

Celebrating Life, Funeral Style

The family went to the press, who didn't bother to even read the text of the sermon as far as I can tell.

A funeral should focus on the way an individual lived, rather than the way he died, Jeff and Linda Hullibarger said.
That’s why they’re upset at the way a local priest, the Rev. Don LaCuesta at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Temperance, Mich., handled the service for their 18-year-old son, Maison, who died on Dec. 4. The couple said the priest disregarded their requests for an uplifting homily and instead chose to sermonize on the morality of suicide.
“He basically called our son a sinner, instead of rejoicing in his life,” Ms. Hullibarger said.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...

“Pope Francis stresses the merciful God and the forgiving God,” said the Rev. Charles Rubey, founder and director of Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide. The organization is a ministry under Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago that supports those who have lost loved ones to suicide. “For a priest to even hint that the person might not be in heaven is grossly wrong.”

 Must have learned that from Bishop Cupich.

You can read the entire text of the homily here:

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2018/images/12/16/father.lacuesta.homily.maison.hullibarger.funeral.pdf

How Amazon Started

Looks Like I'll Never Make District Court

Washington D.C., Dec 21, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CAN).- A judicial nominee faced questions from Senators this month about whether membership in the Knights of Columbus might impede his ability to judge federal cases fairly. The Knights of Columbus say that no candidate for public office should have to defend his membership in a Catholic service organization.
Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) raised concerns about membership in the Knights of Columbus while the Senate Judiciary Committee reviewed the candidacy of Brian C. Buescher, an Omaha-based lawyer nominated by President Trump to sit on the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska.
Senators also asked whether belonging to the Catholic charitable organization could prevent judges from hearing cases “fairly and impartially.”

I'm in the last row of guys in tuxedos; center right. 4th degree ceremony...

Lisa Madigan Approved!

Cura te Ipsum

The daughter of the most corrupt politician in the most corrupt state in the country is after the Church....

A scathing report from Attorney General Lisa Madigan finds the number of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse against children in Illinois is much higher than previously acknowledged.
The report said accusations have been leveled against 690 priests, while Catholic officials have publicly identified only 185 clergy with credible allegations against them.
The determination is part of a preliminary report made public Wednesday by Madigan’s office, which has been investigating Catholic clergy sexual abuse of minors following revelations during the summer of widespread abuse and cover-ups by Catholic officials in Pennsylvania. The report was critical of the six Catholic dioceses that govern parishes across Illinois for their lack of transparency and flawed investigations.

A SCATHING report? I'm sure she will do something about it, right?


Madigan stressed the findings issued in the report are based on a preliminary investigation, and it was too soon to say what, if any, action should be brought by her office. She said she would like to see her successor, Democrat Kwame Raoul, continue the inquiry next year.

Finally...an Illinois Growth Industry That Has Nothing to do With Prisons!

 Thanks, Democrats!


Last year, 5,528 women traveled to Illinois from other states to terminate pregnancies, almost a thousand more than the 4,543 women who came from out of state in 2016. The total number of abortions statewide during the same period increased slightly, from 38,382 in 2016 to 39,329 in 2017, according to annual state reports. Of those, about 1,000 abortions each year were provided to women whose home states were marked “unknown.”

While the data doesn’t indicate the reason for out-of-state travel, Illinois is generally considered a reproductive rights haven amid the more restrictive Midwest, where women often face waiting periods, gestational limits, fewer clinics and other hurdles.
To Mary Kate Knorr, executive director of Illinois Right to Life, this status is a badge of dishonor.

“The increase in abortions performed on out-of-state women is indicative of how truly regressive we are when it comes to protecting pre-born children in our state,” she said. “Illinois is an outlier amongst our neighbors, whose legislatures have consulted science and found that discouraging abortions is in the best interest of their residents.”