Hypocrite!

The big news today is that Pat Robertson has endorsed Rudy Giuliani for President. (Well, I guess technically for the GOP nomination, but is there really any difference? I mean Hell would have to freeze over - to a depth of several kilometers - before Robertson would ever endorse a Democrat.) Now this is the thrice-married, twice-divorced, estranged-from-his-children, abortion-"rights"-defending, embryonic-stem-cell-research-supporting Rudy Giuliani. Hardly a model of upright Christian living and believing. Once again the Religious Right reveals what truly matters to them - Republicans running the nation. If the moral issues were really paramount Pat could have thrown his support to a Republican hopeful who shared the same convictions. But one of those candidates wouldn't stand a chance against the Democratic nominee.

I am beginning to think that the 700 Club types would support Beelzebub if he ran as a Republican. Clearly a Democrat is more to be feared than the Prince of darkness himself!

Anti-Catholic

Several days ago I quoted from a Southern Poverty Law Center report exposing the SSPX as a virulent antisemitic hate group. A very balanced site, it not only exposes (supposedly) Catholic hate mongers but anti-Catholic hate groups as well. Today I read there an interesting article that begins thusly:

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Clad in matching T-shirts with bejeweled cross logos, members of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries are once again saving souls on Hollywood Boulevard. Since the late 1960s, followers of notorious cult leader Tony Alamo have recruited and distributed literature on this star-studded sidewalk.

On this sunny summer afternoon, they're handing out heavily footnoted, paranoid screeds proclaiming the end of the world is nigh and branding the U.S. government an enemy agent of the "satanic" Catholic Church. Followers of Alamo (pronounced "ah-LAH-moe") tuck these same tracts — which Alamo claims have a circulation higher than "USA Today, The New York Times, L.A. Times and many other national publications combined" — under windshield wipers in parking lots around the country. Claiming "homosexuality is caused by demon possession" and "the Vatican, the one-world government and church are spiritually powered by that old serpent called the Devil," this white-hot propaganda comes straight from the mouth of a self-fashioned prophet and convicted tax cheat. Since his release from prison in 1998, Alamo has secluded himself within a guarded compound in a small town near Texarkana, Ark., as opposition from residents and ex-followers mounts.

Read the rest here.

BRRRRR!

Woke up this morning to COLD! Bone-chilling, single-digit COLD! Let's just say it wasn't a pleasant walk over to the church for Mass this morning. At least the sun is shining! I guess it is time to get ready for another winter. Tempus fugit. (Way too fast for me!)

Evil Cardinal!

The evil Cardinal Martino continues to enrage right-wingers with nonsense like this:

Christians are called to defend human rights, and particularly work for the abolition of the death penalty, says the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Cardinal Renato Martino affirmed this during a Friday meeting with the president of the International Federation of Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture, Sylvie Bukhari-de Pontual, a communiqué from the Vatican dicastery reported.

The cardinal said: "Christians are called to cooperate for the defense of human rights and for the abolition of the death penalty, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment against the human person in time of peace and in case of war."

"These practices are grave crimes against the human person, created in the image of God, and a scandal for the human family in the 21st century."

Zacchaeus

Zacchaeus climbed up the sycamore tree merely to see Jesus and watch as He passed by. But the Lord wasn't content to simply let him watch. Instead he called Zacchaeus down and engaged him. Because he heeded the Lord's call his life was forever changed. We too are called like Zacchaeus to let the Lord engage us and to "receive Him with joy." It may be tempting to just watch from a distance as the Lord pases by. To do no more than that, however, is to fail to truly live as a Christian. Faith consists not in watching the Lord walk by, through, and ultimately out of our lives, but instead requires that we be actively engaged with Him who calls down from our perch.

God concurs!

I am choosing to take two "coincidences" at Mass this morning as Divine approbation of yesterday's post.

First, the reading from Paul's Letter to the Romans contained wonderful affirmation of the irrevocable status of the Jews:

Brothers and sisters:
I ask, then, has God rejected his people?
Of course not!
For I too am a child of Israel, a descendant of Abraham,
of the tribe of Benjamin.
God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
Do you not know what the Scripture says about Elijah,
how he pleads with God against Israel? ...
In respect to the Gospel, they are enemies on your account;
but in respect to election,
they are beloved because of the patriarch.
For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.

Second, I had commissioned two extraordinary ministers to take communion to the sick. The instruction to the ministers ended with the following words: As Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion be, therefore, especially observant of the Lord’s command to love your neighbor. For when he said to them: “This is my commandment, that you should love one another as I have loved you.” Mere coincidence that I used that very command of Jesus to end yesterday's post? I think not!

SSPX

I must admit that, apart form their love of the Tridentine Mass, I really don't know much about the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX). Some time ago I encountered a person who got mixed up with the SSPX. I was shocked by the anti-semitic and racial filth he spouted, but I didn't know that, when it comes to this most prominent of Traditionalist groups, such hatred is par for the course.

Several days ago, on the website for the Southern Poverty Law Center I read an expose of the SSPX, that included the following delightful piece of information:

Also in 1989, one of Lefebvre's "bishops," Englishman Richard Williamson, gave a speech to a Canadian church in which he decried the alleged persecution of Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel by the Canadian government. Williams, then rector of SSPX's main North American seminary in Winona, Minn., told his audience: "There was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies." [Emphasis mine.] The Canadian government reacted by banning all SSPX publications.

Surely just what our Lord had in mind when he told us to "love one another as I have loved you!"