AnarchoCatholic: Musings of Ultramontane Liberals

Holy Father arrives in Mordor

Pope Benedict XVI arrived this afternoon in Washington D.C. and was greeted by many American officials of the Roman Curia as well as President Bush, the First Lady, and their daughter, Jenna. He was greeted with cheers and excitement. For his part, Benedict XVI seemed to happily efuse joy and excitement about sharing the hope of Jesus Christ with a very lost and spiritually depressed land overcome with materialism and the despair of modernity. Yet there is hope in this land that begins with Jesus and is witnessed through His Bride the Church.

HERE is a great place to follow the Holy Father's travels and events over the next few days during his visit. It also has links to EWTN and USCCB coverage. Pray for his safe travel and protection against material harm and spiritual evil.

SBW

Terrorizing the Innocent

An excellent article that you will not find anywhere else, except on New Oxford Review, that describes the consequences of the U.S. government adopting its scorched earth bombing campaign policy whereby it intentionally decided to start bombing German civilians because, "the end justified the means." Now the same reasoning holds true for other issues such as abortion, destructive human embryonic research, euthanizing the elderly, etc. A must read article that is difficult to find amidst the accolades that are continuously being showered on the "Greatest Generation."

http://www.newoxfordreview.org/article.jsp?did=1105-wall

Excerpts:

However, so far as I know, no one has considered the rejection, during World War II by the U.S. government and its military high command, of the Universal Moral Law in order to achieve certain pragmatic political goals (i.e., to win the war). Once this bill of goods (that you could ignore the Universal Moral Law to achieve your ends) was sold to the American people, it became increasingly easier for them to justify the acceptance of other manifestly evil policies.

Thus, we now have abortion, justified for all sorts of pragmatic reasons. The same is also true of homosexuality, promiscuity, divorce, drugs, etc. Once the principle is adopted that you can ignore the Universal Moral Law for pragmatic reasons, the door is wide open for all types of evils to enter. And, as we can see by simply reading the daily newspaper, from looking at the television, listening to the radio, this is exactly what has happened.

Update! Cardinal O'Brien takes the battle to YouTube

I invite our readers to view the good Cardinal's message HERE . Also HERE  is a rehashing of the story in the Daily Telegraph.

This whole story lends some creditability to the idea that the Church is not yet dead in Henry's realm. Perhaps indeed the U.K. Church will be a redeeming force as Europe slides more into neo-paganism and is eventually swallowed up by Islam.

SBW

Being that light shining in a dark cave

On Easter Sunday in Scotland, Cardinal Keith Patrick O'Brien gave a homily that may have an impact for years to come. Currently in the British Parliament there is a bill, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which would extend funding to various different procedures, some including creating animal/human chimeras as well as creating human embryos en masse to be experimented on and disposed of. However, the chief row was over the voting procedures in parliament. Because of party rules, British PM Gordon Brown mandated that all Labour members provide a full vote. Thus, Labour party members did not have an option to opt out, or "voice their conscience." That was of course until the brave Cardinal spoke.

It was singularly his Easter Sunday homily on the Resurrection  that created an uproar across the U.K. sufficient to get Mr. Brown to allow Labour members to vote their conscience. I encourage our readers to read his homily, which you can find HERE. What is further interesting is that the only other group to sign a joint statement was a group of Islamic medical and social organizations, who condemned the bill as being the "worst bill in the history of Britain." This is notable because my research has indicated that Islamic tradition generally does not recognize the personhood of embryos until 120 days. However, there are exceptions in some S'hia groups. The only other substantive opposition to the bill probably comes from disparate evangelical groups, given that Protestantism is virtually dead in the U.K., and soon to be elsewhere too.

Here is a LINK  to a subsequent speech given by the brave Cardinal.

Pray for the Cardinal to continue to be a strong and faithful shepherd of his flock and that he would continue to defend the Church's teachings. Thank our Lord that the Cardinal has responded in this moment of his calling. St. Thomas Becket pray for your native land.

SBW

BIO's (unsurprising) Conflict of Interest

I thought I would share this completely obvious conflict of interest with our readers. It is something that exists throughout the biotechnology sector, which has in many respects dedicated itself to perpetuating a fairy tale for the suffering among us, teasing them with claims of future "cures" akin to the miracles of Jesus. Meanwhile, the industry cashes in and is aggressively seeking the fatted calf in the form of federal purse strings. How little does America understand or see meaning in suffering.

Check this out, so to be a member of the official "bioethics committee" of BIO, the trade organization for the biotech industry, you must be a part of a member company. So basically, bioethics is not about ethics, it is about marketing and propagandizing the lie that an embryo is a "ball of cells" (as described in BIO's literature). This is exactly what Richard Doerflinger, the chairman of the pro-life office of USCCB said before Congress in a hearing on March 7, 2006. Many of those involved in this industry begin by breaking the commandment not to kill and end up breaking the commandment not to bear false witness.  (SBW) Here are his comments:

In any case, we should not be surprised when an ethic that dismisses "Thou shalt not kill" in the quest for cures applies the same calculus to "Thou shalt not bear false witness." If the embryo's "merely biological" life can be trampled to benefit more valuable lives, "merely factual" truth can be sacrificed for the higher truth of progress.

From BIO's website:

Eligibility for Participation: To become a member of the Bioethics Committee, one must be employed by a company or organization that is a member of BIO.

http://bio.org/bioethics/committee.asp

"Rosie the Riveter" was the first to burn her bra

In an essay I found below, the author makes the point that the beginning of the angry rancorous feminist movement that grew in the 60s and 70s and unfortunately is still badgering on today began as a result of the effect of war. It began as a result of the "good" war (WWII) at behest of the "Greatest Generation." Recall the cartoon propaganda produced by the US government of "Rosie the Riveter" who was keeping the war machine alive on the "homefront" while the "boys" were away at war. Well what happened when the "boys" came home? All of a sudden a conflict emerged between the sexes and a bitter sputtering animosity on the part of many [former] housewives. Hey they should be able to wear the pants too, after all! I think it's time to rethink both characterizations about whether any war can or should be considered "good" absolutely and whether a generation that produced the most selfish egotistical generation in history can really be called so "great." Satan is indeed so deceptive, he first leads men to believe war is necessary and good, and then he uses it to tear apart the family, the individual, society, etc. Thankfully, he shall never prevail against Christ's Church.

SBW

Here is the LINK

Excerpt:

Young feminists have been sold a bill of  goods about American feminism. The enormous changes in women over the past 40 years are constantly and falsely attributed to the organized women's movement of the late 1960s and '70s. But that movement was merely a symptom or corollary of a profound transformation in American society after World War II. My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969. 

Govt. must do the "greatest good for the greatest number"

Excerpt from testimony given before the U.S. Congress in March 2002 by former "superman" Hollywood actor, the late Christopher Reeve.

Today 100 million Americans suffer from serious or currently incurable diseases. 54 million Americans are disabled. Our government is supposed to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people; beyond that we have a moral responsibility to help others. Time is absolutely critical. If the government forces scientists to attempt to make adult stem cells behave like embryonic stem cells, they might waste 5 years or more and fail. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands will have died.

Note the extremely horrid irony behind this statement. If that in fact were true in an absolute sense, that the government is supposed to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people, then Mr. Reeve would have been sacked a long time ago. Think of how much money and resources he consumed with his expensive wheelchair, ventilator, staff to assist him, medications, electricity, labor, etc. Why, if Mr. Reeve could just be done away with, then that in fact would free up much more resources to do good to a greater number of people in a macro sense. No, Mr. Reeve does not really means what he says, he still presumes that human life deserves respect. Except of course the most innocent and weak of human life, the human embryo. It is perfectly just, in fact it is a moral imperative for Mr. Reeve to experiment and dispose like a predator on these little ones.

SBW