Per Christum

A group of six anti-war protesters interrupted an Easter Sunday Mass in Chicago yesterday morning. Stunning parishioners during Cardinal Francis George’s homily they went up and down the aisle of the auditorium at Holy Name Cathedral (undergoing repairs) shouting and squirting stage blood on the congregation. The six were arrested following an angry confrontation with parishioners in the entryway.

Chicago Tribune article.

Magdi Christian Allam stands in a long line of Christians whose witness to Christ was a matter of life and death. This testament was written by Dom Christian de Cherge, OCSO in Algiers, December 1, 1993 to be opened in the event of his death at the hands of Islamic extremists. The letter is a kind of apologia for the seven French Trappists of Tibhirine–Brothers Christian-Marie, Bruno, Célestin, Christophe, Luc, Michel, and Paul who chose to remain in Algeria despite increasing threats on their lives, the assassinations of several of their friends, and the urging of various government and Church authorities to abandon their home and their mission.

Taken hostage just before Palm Sunday, the seven, who have become known as the “martyrs of hope,” gave their final witness on May 24, 1996. The testament was read in public two days later on Pentecost Sunday, 1996.

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Barak Obama’s positions on everything from parental notification to sex shops near schools to sex ed in kindergarten to being the exact opposite of everything I stand for is discussed in this little known video from 8 months ago.

Some disclaimers. First, I am not pleased with the title of this video, but fortunately this vid. doesnt speak about it. Second, this vid. makes references to the “Magical Negro.” This made me a bit uncomfortable until I learned what that expression meant. Then it removed a scale or two from my eyes. The LA Times has an excellent editorial on it here.

The Magical Negro theory may explain the Obama as Messiah phenom which is also reaching new heights. In Obama’s words:

“…that a light will shine through that window,
a beam of light will come down upon you,
you will experience an epiphany
…and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls
and vote for Obama.”

—Barack Obama

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One of the oddest phenomena in the current era is that there may soon be more Evangelicals spurning birth control than Catholics. It is a topic that has been gaining steam for some years in Evangelical circles, though they would never admit something so bold as that maybe H.H. Paul VI was right in writing Humanae Vitae.

Evidence of this small but remarkable and growing trend can be found over at Lawn Gospel (a very fine Evangelical blog that shies from nothing) in a post called Birth Control: The Partly Natural Family, Children Aborted from the Mind.

Another blog worth checking out to see how Evangelicals think about things is Alas, A Blog. They have a post called: The Bible Says that God is the only Opener and Closer of the Womb.

While Evangelicals employ different kinds of arguments, happily a growing number are filling their quivers and coming often closer to a teaching of the Church than many Catholics. Remember the first step toward the Church for the Scott and Kimberly Hahn was acceptance of Humanae Vitae.

Hello my brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ!I would like to share this youtube video with you.

St. Ann instructing Mother Mary in the ways of the LORD.

In such stark contrast to some of the anti-life stories we hear all the time - some of which I have touched on here at PC… I wanted to share this after running across this story over at Creative Minority Report.

Edwarda O’Bara was a vivacious sixteen-year-old and a mild diabetic. During the early morning hours of January 3rd, 1970, Edwarda woke up shaking and in great pain because the oral form of insulin she had been taking wasn’t reaching her blood stream. Edwarda was rushed to the hospital emergency room and as she lay in her hospital bed sliding in and out of consciousness she turned to her mother Kaye and said, “Promise you won’t leave me, will you, Mommy?” Kaye looked at her frightened daughter and said, “Of course not, I would never leave you, darling, I promise. And a promise is a promise!” Those were the last words that were exchanged before Edwarda quietly slipped into a diabetic coma.For the past 36 years, Edwarda has lived her life in a coma, and Kaye has lived her promise of never leaving her daughter’s side. Kaye who is now over 78 years old has kept a vigil at Edwarda’s bedside, caring for her every two hours, twenty-four hours a day, for the past 36 years! She has maintained this grueling pace and during these 36 years has not slept for more than 90 minutes at a time. As a devoted mother, Kaye chose not to institutionalize Edwarda, but rather to care for her at home and assume the tremendous financial burden that accompanies personally caring for a comatose child.

For more information, Kaye’s website: http://www.edwardaobara.com/

Student who threw Qur’ans in toilet gets 300 hours of community service

NEW YORK (AP) — A former Pace University student who twice threw copies of the Koran into a toilet at the school after disputes with Muslims pleaded guilty Monday to disorderly conduct in connection with the incidents.

Stanislav Shmulevich, 24, pleaded guilty as part of a deal in which he must do 300 hours of community service. He has completed about 80 hours of the service at a hospital, his lawyer said.

Shmulevich, of Brooklyn, admitted he tossed the Muslim holy books into toilets at Pace on Oct. 13, 2006, and Nov. 21, 2006. A criminal complaint says the Koran that was recovered in the October incident “was covered in feces.”

In both cases, a teacher found the books in a men’s room on the second floor of the school’s main building in lower Manhattan.

Muslims consider the Koran a sacred writing that contains the direct word of God, and desecrating it is seen as an offense against God.

Detective Faisal Khan, who prepared the complaint, said Shmulevich told him “he committed the acts out of anger toward a group of Muslim students with whom he had a recent disagreement.”

Shmulevich, a business major and immigrant from the former Soviet Union, initially was charged with two counts of criminal mischief as a hate crime. The charge is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.

His lawyer, Glenn Morak, said he believed the disorderly conduct plea was an appropriate disposition.

“There was no hate crime here,” Morak said. “He accepts responsibility, and he is repentant.”

To be clear, I am not for destruction of property or such reckless and useless forms of disrespect. It is wrong to destroy other people’s property and terribly unconvincing way to prove your point… But to put it in perspective:

10 hours of community service for war protesters who occupy US Senator Olympia J Snowe’s Maine senate office (I would have thought that sort of invasion of the Federal Government would warrant a wee bit harsher sentence - maybe 20 hours at least…)

30 hours of community service for football coach that killed pheasant two students had released unto the field (I hope it did not go to waste - pheasant truly is delicious!)

100 hours of community service for politician who falsified election application failing to mention 1976 felony conviction

112 hours of community service for juror who backed out of jury duty

160 hours of community service for our buddy Snoop Dogg after a pleading guilty to felony weapons possession

200 hours of community service for teenage boy who struck his pregnant girlfriend twice with baseball bat to induce miscarriage

240 hours of community service for man who assaulted police officer

250 hours of community service for man found with marijuana and loaded gun

Yea, 300 hours for a student who tossed a book in the potty seems about fair!

300 man hours constitutes almost two “bank months” - 7.5 (40-hour) weeks to be precise…

If the gent is a college educated bi-lingual man working in the NYC area, I think it is a conservative (very conservative) estimate to value his hourly wage-earning potential at $15.00 an hour… That means the 7.5 work weeks of his life for throwing a book in the potty could reasonably be valued at $4,500…

How much would it have cost him to simply replace the Koran that was damaged? Actually, why wasn’t this a matter for a civil suit?

Where is the ACLU when you actually need them?

I am wondering what sort of community service activists who pelted the late Cardinal archbishop of New York with condoms in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral during Mass or assailant of an elderly pro-life activist who was allowed by police to leave scene.

H/T: Dhimmi Watch

US Catholic University Approves Gay Straight Partnership Club

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

PORTLAND, Oregon, February 20, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The University of Portland, a Catholic university run by the Holy Cross Fathers, has officially recognized the university’s first-ever sexuality club, the Gay Straight Partnership (GSP).

The GSP’s mission, according to the club’s constitution, is “to build a community that is open and welcoming to all students” and “to help all students grow in friendship, knowledge, faith and service.”

Although the university administration had turned down previous requests to form a homosexual student’s club (in 1994 and 1999), the school was listed in 2004 as a ‘gay friendly’ institution by homosexual activist website Catholiclesbians.org (see LifeSiteNews.com report: U.S. Homosexual Activist Website Provides List of ‘Gay Friendly’ Catholic Parishes).

The club’s initial advisers, social work professor Anissa Rogers and Kristina Houck, the Health Center’s substance abuse prevention coordinator, were replaced by Holy Cross Fr. John Donato and Stacey Noem, a campus minister.

Donato said that he was chosen to be the club’s new adviser not only because he can act as a liaison between the administration and the students, but also for his ability to “vocalize and facilitate the mission of the university.”

“The fact that I am a Holy Cross priest and the associate vice president for student life is a good way to make sure that this group stays focused for what we hope all student groups are involved in, but also this particular one which deals with the sacred area of human sexuality,” Donato said.

(READ ALL…)

There are really no two ways around it… Designating something as “gay” puts it in the sphere of association of a sex act. In the same fashion the University of Portland would likely not approve the “Playboy Swingers Club” or the “Porn Club” or the “Future Strippers of America” chapter… Well this one seems a no brainer. Any number of clubs that cater to interests students have beyond their sexual proclivites (within the confines of morality! The U of P “Reefer Club” doesn’t cut it!) are or can be available.

I would go one step further and suggest Portland probably has some gay bars and night clubs, so persons committed to being part of this community are probably not without recourse to social activities there. Quick Googling of “Portland OR Gay” confirms that.

Really though, the culture of the Catholic University should be one that is about promoting a vision of sexuality and family life that contravenes today’s social standards. This needn’t even be turned on its side and be made a “gay issue”… Frankly, given the “hook-up culture” that permeates the culture of 20somethings, there is no way to speak about it and re-affirm it enough.

Certainly setting up clubs based on orientations and preference for behaviors that go directly against it is not the way to promote how the Church deals with the “sacred area of human sexuality”.

H/T: from Retractiones by Irenaeus

And a mighty big profit it is! $60M+ last year… Not bad for a tax-payer subsidized non-profit. If I had to put out my own shingle again and start a new business, this tells me non-profit is the way to make serious profit.

From Sacramentum Vitae: Struggling with incoherence

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has called for “plural jurisdiction” in Britain, with Sharia law governing those Muslims who want it and British law everybody else. (What happens when a husband wants it and a wife doesn’t is an interesting question.) Of course the outraged reaction of most Britons, well expressed here, is justified. But the amusing thing is that Williams is exhibiting the same incoherence on this political point that he has cultivated in theology as he presides over the slow implosion of the Anglican Communion itself. In a show of apparent realism, he suggests that Sharia courts may “unavoidable” anyhow. Yet he backtracks when it’s pointed that Sharia law is incompatible with the notions of women’s rights and gender equality that he has so vigorously defended. As John O’Sullivan asks: “[I]s sharia unavoidable or not? If it is, then women’s rights will simply have to give way. But if women’s rights can be protected against it, then sharia isn’t unavoidable - and we need have none of it.” So, which is it? Williams doesn’t say.

Such incoherence is of a piece with the relative silence of Western feminists about the oppression of women in Islam. Leftists in general cannot decide whether the notions of human rights to which they appeal as though universal are nonetheless trumped by multiculturalism or not. If intolerance must be tolerated, even within our midst, when shown by people who are not otherwise “people like us,” then are there universal human rights other than the right to define oneself over against others? Why or why not?

Sperm cells created from female embryo

I am at a loss to give any reason why this sort of study would be done EXCEPT for the benefit of lesbians. I can’t really understand what other applications it would have.

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
- Irina Dunn

From the pages of the ByzCath Forum, Father Serge Keleher, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Priest offers:
Why should Kosovo remain part of Serbia? Well, perhaps to demonstrate the much-proclaimed alleged policy of the self-styled World Leaders that territorial change cannot be accomplished by terrorism? To demonstrate that “ethnic cleansing” is unacceptable even when Mohammedans do it? Or perhaps to take historical realities into account?

It is true that Serbia was responsible for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which was the spark that set off the terrible First World War and led to the horrors of the twentieth century. But there is plenty of blame to go around both for the outcome of WWI and for what followed.

It is also true that the relatively recent bombings of Serbia were by any definition a war crime. I remember when we were being assured that the “smart bombs” had absolute pin-point accuracy, which they proceded to demonstrate by bombing the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, of all things.

Does anyone seriously believe that the “independence” of Kosovo is going to have long-term peaceful results? Hitler famously asked “who remembers the Armenians?”. To this one might add “who realizes that the almost exclusively Mohammedan population of present-day Turkey is the direct result of ethno-religious cleansing? Has everyone forgotten Smyrna?”.

A strongly worded opinion to be sure! It is also one worth considering.

Stopping by the website http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html one is able to enter the address of any website and find out if the website is banned in China where the state still filters as best they can. Most of the blocked content is - by all accounts - blocked due to having “problematic words and phrases” I believe. As far as I can tell each and every web address isn’t tediously reviewed by some functionary serving in “People’s Revolutionary Interweb Council”…

That being the case, I am happy to report the content of PC makes it inaccessible in the People’s Republic of China. I wish the content of PC were available to the fine folks of the Middle Kingdom… All things considered though, I am honored.

I had hoped my blogging efforts, in addition to being recreational, would on occasion direct our 12 faithful readers to check out some other cool sites and resources and maybe learn about some of ASimpleSinner’s favorite saints and beati…

To be a danger to the Revolution, really, that is just the icing on the cake! We stand humbly along side some remarkably good company. Maybe I am just a huge reactionary nerd, but I have been bragging all day long that I am banned in China. Their loss!