Hate Crimes...

..that don't count.

// A mayor in Massachusetts is outraged that someone stole a baby Jesus statue from a church's Nativity scene and replaced it with a pig's head.

Haverhill Mayor James Fiorentini says the desecration has "all the elements of a hate crime."

The parish priest noticed the statue had been taken from the creche at Sacred Hearts Roman Catholic Church on Christmas morning.

Police say the pig's head left in its place appears to have been recently severed, and investigators are seeking help from butcher shops and pig farms. Police say the perpetrator could face animal cruelty charges.

Meanwhile, a neighbor replaced the baby Jesus with one from her own creche.

The baby Jesus figurine was also stolen from the Nativity scene on Greenfield Town Common, likely before dawn on Christmas Eve.//

Read this one after Christmas.

From Newsbusters last August.

Need an icebreaker? Try a Catholic joke – works every time (at least for those late night comedians). 

Adding to the barrage of late night Catholic “humor,” Comedian Seth Meyers joked that Catholics are “creepy perverts” after a reference to “Fifty Shades of Grey.” The jest aired during his “Late Night with Seth Meyers” on August 6. Video Below. 

“Listen to this,” Meyers began. “A Spanish hotel inspired by ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is having its opening delayed because officials are concerned that it's too close to a nearby Catholic Church.” He continued, "’We don't want to be next to all those creepy perverts,’ said the hotel.” 

The Party of the KKK is still Anti-Catholic.

Check out this cartoon from a political blog:

Here is the story:

There’s been a lot of Loony Tunes politics in the US midterms, and I’ll be documenting the madness live from Washington DC as of Monday. But I have to start by sharing this extraordinary cartoon from a race in Washington state. It was originally posted on a website opposing the candidacy of Mark Miloscia, a Republican seeking to serve in the local senate. Miloscia is a conservative, pro-life Catholic who has worked for the Church as a lobbyist (the horror!). He also hails from the Deep South (the monster!). The cartoon, a screenshot of which you can see above, lampoons his origins and beliefs with extreme prejudice. It accuses him of being in the employ of a foreign power, in similiar terms to those used to bash the supposed "dual loyalty" of the "Israel lobby".

The website is still up but the cartoon is now missing. We don’t know the authorship but the local press says that Miloscia’s opponent posted the following on her Facebook page: "There are lots of things in my opponent’s record that are fair game to take issue with. But I respect Mark Miloscia’s religion and I certainly don’t condone ANY of my supporters making attacks on that basis. I understand one of my supporters may have crossed the line of what is appropriate in that regard, and I’ve asked them to stop. This campaign should be about the issues, not personal attacks."

That statement implies that the author of the ad is indeed a supporter of the Democrat candidate and that the Democrat campaign is in contact with them. So, yeah, the ad is probably legit.

Ironically, Mark Miloscia converted from the Democrats to the Republicans precisely because he felt that socially conservative religious people were no longer welcome in the party of Obama. He wrote: "While Democrats promote diversity, they actually demand that faithful Catholic, Christian, and other religious believers must 'evolve' and change their faith and culture, in order to be allowed into today’s 'big tent'. In an honest moment, one Party activist told me that unless I changed, they wouldn’t vote for me '…for dog catcher, let alone State Auditor.'"

But this ad expresses more than just ideological inflexibility. It taps into an ancient tradition in Britain and America that sees Catholicism as a shady conspiracy against free-born Protestants – a kind of Bolshevism with rosary beads. And I've long suspected that many on the Left (and a few on the Right) have never shaken off the deep suspicion that Catholic social teaching is part of some grand plot to hand the country over to Rome. Today’s Democrats couch opposition to orthodox Catholicism as the defence of liberal principles. But a part of it is an old fashioned distaste for bells, smells, foreign bishops and the “ignorant masses” that seem to gravitate towards the Vatican.

Yep, the line is quite straight from Cromwell to Dawkins..

Roman Polanski - after receiving an award from Hollywood - could not be reached for comment.

Interesting demonstration of the fact that the Catholic-bashing justified by outrage at alleged cover-ups never was about concern for children.

//In America, the same TV networks over the last dozen years have filed hundreds of noise-making stories slamming decades-old allegations of child abuse in the Catholic Church – suddenly they can’t find this story with two hands. There’s been nothing on ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. A Nexis search can’t even find any transcripts mentioning the story on CNN or MSNBC, and just one on Fox News. USA Today hasn’t found it, and The Washington Post only placed a story online, not in the paper. 

Do they only care to report on England’s royal children? No one else’s matter? 

The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times discovered the story briefly on August 27, and NPR aired two reports, on August 26 and 27. The New York Times then put it on the front page on September 2. But none of these stories made any mention of Muslims or Islam. These child abusers were not clerics, but their religious heritage was as politically touchy as their ethnicity. 

Take the Catholic Church out of it.and child-sex scandals aren’t particularly scandalous in the eyes of the press.//

And:

//By comparison, in just over two months in 2010, the Times ran 64 news stories aggressively questioning Pope Benedict’s handling of sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, including in Ireland and California. Thirteen of those landed on the front page. 

Shocking stories of child sex abuse are apparently much more newsworthy when they can be used to punish and weaken organizations that secular progressives don’t like. //

The other guy's scandal is always more interesting.

So, not even a septic tank or a water tank...

.... but a shaft burial vault...which was common in many parts of Europe.

//Today the Irish Times has published a reader’s letter that has further undercut the story. Finbar McCormick, a professor of geography at Queen’s University Belfast, sharply admonished the media for describing the children’s last resting place as a septic tank. He added: “The structure as described is much more likely to be a shaft burial vault, a common method of burial used in the recent past and still used today in many part of Europe.

“In the 19th century, deep brick-lined shafts were constructed and covered with a large slab which often doubled as a flatly laid headstone. These were common in 19th-century urban cemeteries…..Such tombs are still used extensively in Mediterranean countries. I recently saw such structures being constructed in a churchyard in Croatia. The shaft was made of concrete blocks, plastered internally and roofed with large concrete slabs.//

When I heard the story, the first thing I did was research the Bon Secours sisters to see if they came from a part of the world where the burial custom might involve a vault.

Apparently, that suspicion was correct and the place was Europe.

But why let facts get in the way of a good moral panic?

Meet the next Secretary General of the United Nations.

Watch this farce:



More details from Mark Shea.

Looks like the idiots at the ITCCS mean business.

These were the same morons who "indicted" Pope Benedict in 2013, which gave all the leftists in the world a moment of joy as if the whole thing wasn't a total nutshow.

Of course, the real UN is not all that different.

PS -

Apparently, Kevin Annett is the ITCCS.  Someone has been doing yeoman's work keeping track of this crackpot's activities.

But, wait!  It gets worse -

“We have learned that Reverend Annett faces very real and dire dangers because of his exposure of Vatican child sacrifice rituals. Kevin is far too vulnerable and valuable to be traveling on his own right now, since he is pivotal to our case and to the work of the Court” said George Dufort for the Public Information Agency of the International Common Law Court of Justice (ICLCJ).

"Vatican child sacrifice rituals"?????

But, wait! It gets better!  This child sacrifice cult is a Jesuit child-sacrifice cult!

Recent evidence submitted by Kevin Annett to the proceedings against Pope Francis and others documents the murderous actions of a Jesuit-run child sacrificial cult known as the Ninth Circle. (see www.itccs.org, April 10, 2014). Members of the Ninth Circle are apparently targeting Rev. Annett for elimination.

The anti-Catholic New Left simply is the anti-Catholic Old Protestant.

What ought to be iconic is how this book treated the ITCCS as being something more than a single crackpot - which is why my one star review of it is in first place (and you should give my review a helpful vote to keep it there.) (At the time, I had no idea about exactly how much of a charade the ITCCS was, such is the power of a grand sounding title and a Belgium address.)


It also appears that Annett was kicked out ministry by his denomination for "conduct unbecoming," including failing to obtain ordered psychiatric counseling. It seems that his retaliatory m.o. was to make accusations of child abuse. Annett also made baseless claims linking his case with Amnesty International.

But wait!  It gets better.

There has never been a United Nations Tribunal to investigate alleged genocide by the United Church of Canada. The International Human Rights Association of American Minorities (IHRAAM) has not made a report to the UN about this matter. The Secretary General of Amnesty International has disavowed any involvement in the “case” of Mr. Annett.

The Circle of Justice has distanced itself from Mr. Annett in a public statement in which they say he has “spread unproven gossip,” “slandered and libeled trusted and dedicated First Nations activists,” and has “for purposes of self-promotion assigned to himself and used in print and word non-existent titles like ‘Advisor,’ ‘Chief Researcher,’ ‘Chief Expert Witness to the Vancouver Tribunal’ and others that were neither authorized nor voted on or ratified by the Circle of Justice.”

We know of no recognized First Nations group which still endorses the work or words of Mr. Annett.

I recognize that some of the articles and flyers that you might encounter include allegations that are horrific and distressing in nature. In some cases specific names of United Church clergy and lay leaders have been mentioned. I am confident of the integrity and the deeply faithful commitment of the individuals who have been named. I am continuing to work with the RCMP, national staff and our legal counsel to ensure that Conference is doing all that is possible to be transparent and accountable.

Apparently, Annett has taken the same tactics and gone after bigger game.

But, wait!  It gets better.

Here is the ITCCS' "Common Law Community Training Manual," by which the ITCCS is vying for "international terrorist" status. (If it was anything more than one or two crackpots.)

Annett is co-founder of ITCCS.

US out of UN; UN out of US.

If the best that the UN can do is declare opposition to abortion to be "torture," who needs it?

This is amusing leftwing zaniness until it informs policy.

Catholic Church is accused of torture before the UN.

//I’ve mentioned the hearings before the U.N. Committee on Torture that the Holy See will be testifying at this upcoming week. What I didn’t mention is the brief filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights arguing on the side of the Holy See being a potential violator of the Convention Against Torture. The Center for Reproductive Rights considers Catholic teaching on contraception and abortion to be akin to torture.

After quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the brief charges: “As the Holy See’s policy on abortion does not permit abortion in any circumstances, it prima facie fails to prevent torture and ill-treatment of women who seek abortion.”

The brief further charges:

Representatives of the Holy See and other church officials have attempted to shame women and guardians of minors who have sought abortions as well as the doctors who have performed them by publicly announcing their excommunications. These actions have both interfered with state efforts to prevent torture or ill-treatment of women and also contributed to torture or ill-treatment by creating severe mental suffering for women who are subjected to public and private derision.

Ludicrous, outrageous, maddening, heartbreaking.

For upholding the dignity of all human life and caring about mothers and their pain, the Holy See is being accused of torture.//

Here is the brief.

Those perfidious Jesuits!

Another columnist tips her hand that Obamacare is really about cracking down on the Catholic Church.

Her confusion, charitably assuming that’s what it is, stems from her inability to see what the justices evidently grasped: The form the Little Sisters were being asked to sign did not merely state that they were not covering contraceptives but required other people to do so. Greenhouse continues in this vein:

 On the facts of this case, the refusal to sign the form is so far-fetched that this concocted controversy can only be understood in the context of high-stakes politics. The dozens of pending challenges to the contraception mandate are not popping up randomly or by accident. This is a deadly serious and sophisticated campaign, a claim by religion for primacy in the public square. The Rehnquist court for years appeared receptive, but ultimately blinked. The church plays a long game.

Greenhouse’s evaluative terms — “far-fetched,” “concocted” — again reflect her inability to see (or unwillingness to state accurately) the facts of the case. I’m certainly prepared to believe that all nine justices could get something wrong (and that a majority of justices could get this very case wrong in the end). But it’s also possible that Greenhouse is way out in left field here. The last sentence of the passage — “the church,” indeed — may reveal more about Greenhouse’s view of the world than she realizes.

Forget Iran or Sudan or China....

....the big danger is the Vatican.

Despite having a membership that includes some of the worst human-rights abusers in the world (or because of it), the UN has spent the last few weeks grilling the Vatican for its track record on child abuse. While there are certainly grounds for lengthy and detailed criticism on that point, the UN hardly has its hands clean in that area — and it turned out to be an excuse for attacking Catholic doctrine on abortion and contraception anyway:

The arrogance, stupidity and indifference to the question of truth is blinding.

Well, hey!, if a totally forgettable feminist narcissist says so, consider it done!

Feminist Huffpo blogger has some suggestions for Pope Francis:

5. Leave behind the Virgin Birth. Good Catholic women have two choices: they can be virgins or mothers. Embodying both, the Virgin Mary is a sterling, unattainable emblem of womanhood. That idea -- of a mother unsoiled by sex -- is a terrible burden for Catholic women who can never measure up. But this myth survives, despite the Biblical references to Jesus' siblings (vehemently denied by church fathers who are loathe to admit that Mary ever had sex) and the widely held view that the virgin birth was incorporated into early Christianity to win over converts from the pagan/goddess religions who already accepted divine progeny springing from all manner of human/spirit couplings.//

Tolerance - The Moment between breathing out one orthodoxy and breathing in another.

Father Baron is not given to hyperbole.

Last week two outrageously anti-Catholic outbursts took place in the public forum. The first was an article in U.S. News and World Report by syndicated columnist Jamie Stiehm. Ms. Stiehm argued that the Supreme Court was dangerously packed with Catholics, who have, she averred, a terribly difficult time separating church from state and who just can’t refrain from imposing their views on others. Her meditations were prompted by Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s granting some legal breathing space to the Little Sisters of the Poor, who were objecting to the provisions of the HHS mandate. As even a moment’s thoughtful consideration would reveal, this decision hadn’t a thing to do with the intrusion of the “church” into the state, in fact just the contrary. Moreover, the appeal of American citizens (who happen to be Catholic nuns) and the decision of a justice of the Supreme Court in no way constitute an “imposition” on anyone. The very irrationality of Stiehm’s argument is precisely what has led many to conclude that her column was prompted by a visceral anti-Catholicism which stubbornly persists in our society.

The second eruption of anti-Catholicism was even more startling. In the course of a radio interview, Governor Andrew Cuomo blithely declared that anyone who is pro-life on the issue of abortion or who is opposed to gay marriage is “not welcome” in his state of New York. Mind you, the governor did not simply say that such people are wrong-headed or misguided; he didn’t say that they should be opposed politically or that good arguments against their position should be mounted; he said they should be actively excluded from civil society! As many commentators have already pointed out, Governor Cuomo was thereby excluding roughly half of the citizens of the United States and, presumably, his own father, Mario Cuomo, who once famously declared that he was personally opposed to abortion. Again, the very hysterical quality of this statement suggests that an irrational prejudice gave rise to it.

One does not have to search very far, of course, to find the source of this prejudice deep in the American national consciousness. Many of the Founding Fathers harbored suspicions of Catholicism that came from their intellectual formation in both Protestantism and Enlightenment rationalism. Read John Adams’s remarkable reaction to a Catholic Mass that he attended in Philadelphia to sense the texture of this prejudice. As the waves of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Southern Europe arrived on American soil in the 19th century, many figures in the political and cultural establishment feared that an influx of Catholics would compromise the integrity of American society. Accordingly, they organized political parties the platforms of which were specifically and virulently anti-Catholic. It is startling to realize that this political anti-Catholicism was not the exclusive preserve of yahoos and extremists. Prominent and mainstream figures such as Ulysses Grant and Woodrow Wilson were vehement in their opposition to the Catholic Church. Many have argued that the election of the Catholic John F. Kennedy to the presidency in 1960 signaled a sea-change in American attitudes toward the Church, but we have to be cautious, for Kennedy represented, more or less, a privatized Catholicism that posed no real threat to the societal status quo.

What is particularly troubling today is the manner in which this deep-seated anti-Catholicism is finding expression precisely through that most enduring and powerful of American institutions, namely the law. We are a famously litigious society: The law shapes our identity, protects our rights, and functions as a sanction against those things we find dangerous. Increasingly, Catholics are finding themselves on the wrong side of the law, especially in regard to issues of sexual freedom. The HHS mandate is predicated upon the assumption that access to contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs is a fundamental right, and therefore to stand against facilitating this access, as the Church must, puts Catholics athwart the law. The same is true in regard to gay marriage. To oppose this practice is not only unpopular or impolitic, but, increasingly, contrary to legal statute. Already, in the context of the military, chaplains are encouraged and in some cases explicitly forbidden to condemn gay marriage, as this would constitute a violation of human rights.

And this is why the remarks by Andrew Cuomo are especially chilling. That a governor of a major state — one of the chief executives in our country — could call for the exclusion of pro-lifers and those opposed to gay marriage suggests that the law could be used to harass, restrict, and, at the limit, attack Catholics. Further, the attitude demonstrated by the son of Mario Cuomo suggests that there is a short path indeed from the privatization of Catholic moral convictions to the active attempt to eliminate those convictions from the public arena. I would hope, of course, that it is obvious how this aggression against Catholics in the political sphere ought deeply to concern everyone in a supposedly open society. If the legal establishment can use the law to aggress Catholics, it can use it, another day, to aggress anyone else.

— Father Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the rector/president of Mundelein Seminary. He is the creator of the award-winning documentary series, Catholicism and Catholicism: The New Evangelization. 

No word on whether they think a similar discussion about whether African-Americans should be elected President.

Apparently, the liberal media believes that questioning whether Catholics should be put on the Supreme Court is within the bounds of "fair discussion."

The Anchoress offers the following thought experiment:

Let’s take a second look at what Stiehm wrote, insert words other than “Catholic” into her lines, and we can wonder whether Mr. Kelly would be quite so cavalier about printing the following:

Lesbians often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if “you” are female.

Jews in high places of power have the most trouble, I’ve noticed, practicing the separation of church and state. The pugnacious Jewish Justice. . .is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one.

The seemingly innocent Black Sisters likely were likely not acting alone in their trouble-making. Their big brothers, the meddlesome NAACP are bound to be involved. [Blacks] seek and wield tremendous power and influence in the political sphere.

In one stroke with ominous implications, there’s no such thing as Gay justice or mercy for women on the Supreme Court, not even from GLAAD.

The Dome of the Rock refuses to budge on women’s reproductive right. . .

I am going to make a good-faith assumption that Mr. Kelly did not attempt that little exercise before handing down the statement. Had he done so, I find it very difficult to believe that he (or op-ed page Managing Editor, Robert Schlesinger) would still think it fell “within the bounds of fair commentary.”

Here is the US News & World Report's editorial, complete with a fairly amazing headline:

 

EDITOR'S NOTE

Statement on Controversy About Catholics on the Supreme Court

By BRIAN KELLY

January 10, 2014 RSS Feed Print

• Comment (12)
• inShare

Perceived bias on the court is a legitimate issue that U.S. News & World Report has covered for many years, from many perspectives. Our Opinion section has published pieces on the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive coverage from all sides of the debate and, just this week, included pieces from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Archdiocese of New York and Concerned Women for America. We are committed to publishing a diversity of views on a variety of topics. Jamie Stiehm's piece is within the bounds of fair commentary. We have run letters rebutting the piece and will continue to feature a diversity of opinions on this topic and others.

Don't forget that the 9th Circuit has held it constitutionally permissible for San Francisco to declare Catholics to be a suspicious, subversive element.

Cheery thoughts to begin 2014 with.

Regarding the US News and World Report article, lawyer Marc Digiralomi writes:

//Here is a different uncomfortable reality that columns like this should compel us to face. The long history of American hatred of Catholics is alive, and well, and flourishing. It is kept in fine and proud form by people like this, and given space to breathe in all kinds of prominent venues. It will intensify in the months and years ahead. Dark times are coming.