Iraq Cathedral Attack - Rosary

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord
and make Your perpetual light shine
upon them.
May the souls of the faithfully departed,
rest in peace.
Amen

"More Catholic Than the Pope"

Simon of the Real Catholic TV Blog has a terrific post today. I believe I agreed with everything he wrote.  You can read it here.

Turkey: bishop's murder was political, Church leaders fear

Photo of Archbishop Padovese courtesy of Aid to the Church in Need

...An Italian Catholic journalist, Father Filippo di Giacomo, has said that Bishop Padovese had been warned by Turkish security officials that his driver was involved with radical Islamic groups. The bishop, who was preparing to travel to Cyprus to join Pope Benedict there, cancelled his plans because he feared Altun might be involved in an attempt on the Pope's life, the Italian journalist wrote...

Catholic Culture Article here

Death of Bishop Luigi Padovese

Catholic Church in Maywood, CA Viciously Vandalized

H/T to Caput Mundi

Please pray!

How the Nazis engineered a paedophile priests scare

In 1937 propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels organized a campaign to discredit the Catholic Church after Pope Pius XI severely criticised the Nazi regime.

Click here to read the entire Mercatornet article

12 Things Every Catholic Should Know About the U.S. Scandals

1. The crisis seems to be nearing its conclusion. The vast majority of allegations are from the 1960-1985 period, and only six cases of clerical sex abuse in 2009 have been reported.

2. There was no global cover-up. “Nobody, nowhere, no time, no way, no how knew the extent, depth, or horror of this scourge, nor how to adequately address it,” wrote New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan. No one had the knowledge necessary to orchestrate anything on a global scale. The crisis arises from individual cases, distant from each other in time and place, which have hit the press simultaneously.

Read the rest over at the National Catholic Register

Article in Prava Re: Attacks on Catholic Church

Much of the news coming out, in the effort to disguise ideological propaganda, contains the fundamental error of mistaking the wood with the trees ... especially when the aim is to denigrate. That is, from an isolated case, preferably rough outlines, and generalized in order to induce the reader to think that the whole is of the same nature. This generalization obviously has ideological connotations and follows a political agenda that seeks to deconstruct traditional society and all its secular institutions and to impose a New World Order after the manner of the sinister interests of the international oligarchy, the same ones that handle the financial markets and through them, largely control the global economy. We refer to cases of pedophilia within the ranks of the Catholic Church recently publicized by international news agencies.

Indeed recent reports of pedophilia involving priests have the outlines of information that journalistic ethics require, regardless of their moral gravity. Such stories raise suspicion about their "goodness" even among non-Catholics like us. Although disagreeing with the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in some respects, but we recognize the importance of their role in our history to defend the ethical values that shape our Judeo-Christian culture and their social merit on behalf of those who have been victims of the usury and greed of the international oligarchy, which is after all more interested in destroying Catholicism and religion in general, as they constitute a serious obstacle to achieving its goal, which is to reduce mankind to the status of robotic slaves.

We emphasize, beforehand that it should not be confused with defending pedophilia, that by making the defense of the Catholic Church we are not justifying the actions of dishonorable men who have forgotten all of their most basic obligations as priests, respect for others, especially the weaker, as is the orphan child, lacking the affection of a true family...

Read the rest at Prava's To Confuse the Wood with the Trees ...

Thanks to Lois L. for sharing this article with me.

Letter from Zenit Editorial Director - Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church

Dear Reader,

For weeks ZENIT has been reporting intensely on the response of the Holy See and the Pope to the painful scandal of sexual abuse committed by priests in several countries. It is terribly tragic news, which saddens us profoundly as children of the Church. After this news blitz, some readers are weary and, I admit, so are we. It seems to have become the only topic out there.

However, we cannot allow these atrocious crimes to make us forget the hundreds of thousands of men and women, the countless priests, men and women religious -- the great majority -- who day by day give their lives to God and to neighbor in so many hospitals, schools, parishes and missions. Today many of them are associated with the scandals because of superficial reporting. But ZENIT will not abandon them. We will continue to report unwaveringly on the Church's attitude in response to the abuses, but we will not fail in our commitment to give a global and objective picture -- a picture concealed by some media in their reporting on the priesthood.

We believe that our mission at this precise moment is more necessary than ever. We believe it is ever more urgent for lay professionals to continue to give keys to information from an independent news agency, so that the truth is better understood, since only the truth will make us free.

We were profoundly inspired by the prayer Benedict XVI raised before the statue of the Immaculate Conception in the center of Rome on Dec. 8. The Pope prayed thus: "Every day, in fact, in the newspapers, on television and on the radio bad news is broadcast, repeated, amplified, so that we become used to the most terrible things and inured to them, and in a certain way poisoned, since the negative effect is never completely eliminated but accumulates day after day."

The Pope paid homage "to all those who in silence, not with words but with deeds, strive to practice this evangelical law of love that propels the world forward. There are so many of them even here in Rome and they rarely hit the headlines. They are men and women of all ages, who have realized that it is not worth condemning, complaining or accusing; that it is better to respond to evil by doing good. This changes things; or rather it changes people, and hence improves society."

ZENIT wants to continue to report on these men and women so that they will also make the news, but we will not be able to do so without your help.

Greetings from Rome!

Jesús Colina,
Editorial Director

Zenit

Pray for ALL of our priests!

Archbishop Fulton Sheen - The Church's Real Problem

We have been surfeited in America in the last few years with sociological, psychological, and theological surveys of what has happened to the church. But they are not of much avail because cultural reasons do not explain what has happened.

The church has undergone a great crisis and some degeneration in every country in the world: Africa is suffering; the church in Asia is suffering; Europe is suffering.

If there were only cultural reasons, the effect would not be so universal. It can only be, therefore, that there are some other causes besides the cultural and national at work.

One that is not to be neglected is the demonic.

Whenever there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, there is always a strong effort put forth by the diabolic.

For example, when Moses worked miracles, the magicians of the Pharaohs duplicated some of them. When the church received the Holy Spirit, there was the persecution of Stephen. With the Vatican Council, there has been an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and also an outpouring of the evil spirit. But our theologians have neglected the demonic.

God says, "I am who am". The devil said "I am who am not." The demonic is always most powerful when he is denied. It is almost impossible today to find a theologian writing about the demonic, unless it be to deny it.

That is not true of literature.

It is not true of psychiatry.

It is true only of theology.

Excerpt from Through the Year with Fulton Sheen, Compiled by Henry Dieterich

Left Wing of the Catholic Church Destroying the Faith Says Orthodox Rabbi

"I support this move" to reconcile the traditionalist faction in the Church, he said, "because I understand the big picture, which is that the Catholic Church has a problem. There is a strong left wing of the Church that is doing immeasurable harm to the faith."...Rabbi Yehuda Levin

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