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Monday, October 13, 2014

DEMOCRAT LEADERSHIP: Religious Convictions are NOT Welcome in the Public Marketplace

by Lawrence Fox
“Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb but he spoke like a dragon…He also forced everyone small and great, rich and poor, free and slave to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that NO ONE COULD BUY OR SELL unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast.” (Revelation 13: 11-17)

Mark of the Beast allows you to engage
in commerce
For centuries, some Protestants fantasied that the “Beast” of Revelation is the Bishop of Rome, and the Catholic Church is the “Whore of Babylon.”

It is poetic justice that among the leading candidates for the “Beast” and the “Whore” today is the U.S. Federal Government presently under the lawless leadership of the Democratic Party.

Democratic leaders mounted a tirade against the U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed the Christian company Hobby Lobby the religious freedom NOT to offer its employees abortion-causing drugs and devices. Democrats’ outrage rivals that of the hubris that created the Tower of Babel. “Let us make a name for ourselves before we are scattered abroad into all the lands.” (Genesis 11:4)

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY
 “If you want to enter in the public square of business, you must abandon your religious convictions,” U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, (D-NY) articulated the Democrat Party’s position with resounding emphasis and shocking clarity. Translated, “If you want to buy or sell or conduct commerce, you must be marked by the beast.” In other words, abandon all your religious convictions if you wish to make a living.  Former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said the same thing: Religious convictions are not welcome in the Public Square.


 “You’re born with a religion or you adopt a religion. You have to obey the precepts of that religion and the government gives you a wide penumbra – you don’t have to form a corporation,” Schumer added, “We wouldn’t tell the owners of Hobby Lobby to convert to a different religion or disobey their religion – but we don’t say that they have to open up a company and go sell toys or hobby kits.”

The senator’s remarks epitomize the complete re-writing of the First Amendment, which guarantees all Americans the right to religious liberty.  This is not surprising since the Democratic Party for the past century has copulated with post-modernist progressives, Marxists, Atheists, Anarchists, Historical Revisionists, Margaret Sanger psychopaths, and Gender Study Professors.


When the psychotic  “Unaffordable Care Act” passed, it created a conundrum for NARAL (The Nation Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) and Planned Parenthood. They were no longer paid for services directly by the consumer, but by an insurance company that would control their profits.  Democratic Leadership did not understand this, and they blamed Hobby Lobby, or those “horrible bosses with religious convictions.”

Make no mistake; this has nothing to do with the needs of women, but everything to do with the incestuous relationship between the Democratic Party, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood. The federal government gives money to NARAL and Planned Parenthood, which in turn donate it back to the Democratic Party at the expense of the beleaguered American Tax Payer.
The psychotic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, and one time Majority Speaker of the House giggled, “We have to pass the (Obama “Care”) bill before anyone can know what is in the bill.”

The 5-4 Supreme Court decision Burwell v Hobby Lobby was absolutely correct. Individuals do not lose their religious freedom when they open a family business. The Federal Government cannot arbitrarily re-define the scope of the First Amendment to mean, “The free exercise of religion shall be limited to a person’s private life.” That’s relativism on steroids.

It is self-evident that men are endowed by their Creator with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The self-evident right to pursue happiness engenders the right to private property and the right to conduct commerce to support oneself and one’s family. The man or woman of faith who choses to enter the market place with tangible hope and prosperity has a fundamental right to do so in the United States contrary to the defecation spewed by the socialist gang-banger in charge of the White House.

Americans, who don’t believe that, have lost their collective minds. The Subjective Will has replaced the Objective Good of the One and the Many. But the Democratic Party and the Mainstream Press continue to foam and froth over “woman’s access to contraception and abortion causing drugs.”

Abortion and Contraception are the
Sacred Cow of Progressivism
The Hobby Lobby “Boss” stated that he would participate in a MANDATED health care plan that paid for contraception, but not for abortion causing drugs. This is anathema to the Democratic Leadership, NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Abortion, including contraception, is the sacred cow of the Democrat Party.

The Democratic Party platform conveys in principle that a woman achieves equality with men when she is able to receive un-restricted access to drugs or procedures, which make her sterile either temporarily or permanently. Think about that for a moment. Women only achieve equality with men when actively making themselves sterile.

And we wonder why the moral compass in America has precipitously declined to the point where the Federal Government now tells the self-sterile woman and man, “Your marriage is no different under the eyes of the law than two men or two women sodomizing each other.”

While men have managed to convince women that they have ceased active dominion over them, they continue to hold passive dominion via chemical sterilization. But women don’t see this. They think men are supporting their “freedom.”

American women buy this lie every day thanks in part to the support of some Protestants who fantasied for centuries that the “Beast” of Revelation is the Bishop of Rome, while the Catholic Church is the “Whore of Babylon.”




Did you enjoy this piece. Check out Barack Obama: A Shameless Marxist Ideologue


Sunday, October 12, 2014

Raspberry Crazy Ants and The Synod On The Family

by Phoebe Wise

Author Phoebe Wise
Have you heard about the Raspberry Crazy Ants that are taking over south Texas? I recently visited Austin for the first time in almost 30 years, and my nephew told me about the latest entymological horror to invade my native state. They came from Brazil sometime before 2003, when they were first noticed by exterminator Tom Raspberry,who named them after himself. Some call them Tawny crazy ants, which better describes their color. The New York Times did a great article on them in 2013 which you can read here: There's a Reason They Call Them Crazy Ants

They are called crazy ants because they zip around in an insanely chaotic fashion. And they swarm together in huge clumps for no apparent reason; the scientists haven’t figured out why they do what they do. As one besieged homeowner in the Times article phrased it: "They're freakin crazy, man."

They don’t have painful bites, so why are they so horrifying?
Just your everyday heap of
dead crazy ants
Sheer numbers—they invade your home by the millions. Like most ants, they are attracted to power sources, and their writhing swarms can short circuit your television, your electrical box… the lights just flicker and go out. In Brazil they have been known to suffocate birds by blocking their nasal cavities. 
After stirring up all this senseless havoc, they suffer massive die-offs that leave piles of dead ants like tawny-colored snow drifts all around your home.


Upon hearing about this new menace, I immediately thought of the Synod on the Family, now going on in Rome. What’s that? you ask. Well, scores of Cardinals, Archbishops, and the Various and Sundry are gathered, even as I'm typing this, to sit around and ponder, um, something about the family—just what that may be, we’ll have to wait and see. 

Why should Raspberry Crazy Ants make me think of the Synod on the Family? Well, actually, what I really thought of was Vatican II. History has shown us that the most recent ecumenical council was more like the random kicking of an anthill than anything else.

Yes, I am aware that Vatican II gave us a five-foot shelf of books that was beautifully faithful to the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church. Too bad nobody read them. 


Instead, most of the guys in red and purple robes went back home and communicated some form of craziness to the troops that made Catholics start swarming around and shorting out all the power sources of our faith: beautiful music, awe-inspiring liturgy, noble art and architecture, devotion to Mary and the saints, belief in the Real Presence… 

Even more debilitating was the abandonment of the life-giving, salvation-bringing Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Because they were no longer hearing the truth taught in their churches and schools, Catholics fell away by the millions, given up to the lies put forth by the culture of death. They drifted around in the world like so many millions of dead husks—just like Raspberry Crazy Ants. (Now you see where I’m going with this analogy.) 
"Vatican II opened up the Church." Response: "And the people left!"

The deaths were physical as well as spiritual; millions of Catholic babies died from abortion and abortifacient contraceptives. Millions more were never conceived because married people had never taken to heart their nuptial promise: to be open to the gift of children that God would send them.

Worst of all, the Vatican II craziness attacked the most stupendous sources of power that this benighted planet has ever known: the sacraments. Baptism makes us adopted sons and daughters of God; confirmation fortifies us for our spiritual battle, confession restores us to grace when we have fallen, communion gives us God Himself as our food for the journey, marriage enables us to love and nurture new life, holy orders make the other sacraments possible, and the sacrament of the sick prepares us for death and the life of Heaven.

Unfortunately no one chooses to access these phenomenal power sources unless they have faith, and the Vatican II craziness confused, or killed the faith of millions. 


To return to my ant analogy, the light of faith flickered and went out. People stopped going to confession and communion, stopped getting married in the Church, no longer had their children baptized or confirmed. Few encouraged a son’s vocation to the priesthood, and for the dying, last rites were ignored, or worse, euthanasia was offered instead. For lack of the sacraments, many millions of people succumbed to spiritual and physical death.

So much death. “I had not thought death had undone so many.”

That's why the Raspberry Crazy Ants made me think of the false spirit of Vatican II. It’s why all this week and next, as long as the Red and Purple Robes are swarming at the Vatican, I will be praying this simple prayer:

“Dear Merciful Father, please don’t let the Synod on the Family be like, well, You know…"





Enjoy this piece? You might like to read also: THE REFINER'S FIRE: Synod 14

And Synod on the Family: Treachery in the Vatican?


Saturday, October 11, 2014

There Can Be No Mercy Without the Fullness of Truth

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea, 
Saints Peter & Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ Oct. 12, 2014
"In fact, there can be no mercy without the fullness of truth."
Fr John Paul Shea
at his ordination in 2013
In today’s Gospel passage for this 29th Sunday in Ordinary time we are given another parable (Matt 22:1-14.) that is one of the most strangest and shocking parables in the Gospel of Matthew. In this parable, as with other parables, our Lord is seeking to grab our attention. He wants to wake us up to the reality of what He is trying to say.
Royal Wedding Feast:
Many are called. Few are chosen. 
We hear of a king who gives a wedding feast for his son and who sends out his servants to invite the people. Now, in the time of Jesus, there was no greater honor then for a king to invite one to the wedding of his son. So, we can recognize right away the importance of this invitation.
We then hear of the different excuses of those who are invited. Some simply refuse to come. Others ignore the invitation and go away, “one to his farm, another to his business.” And the rest who are invited lay hold of his servants, mistreat them and kill them.
Now, as we examine these words, we can first recognize that the king represents God while the wedding is the reign of God’s feast for His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. It will take place at the end of time. 
Those invited to the wedding feast were God’s chosen people, the Israelites. The servants, who issued the invitation,  represent all the prophets and teachers of Israel sent by God over the centuries to invite this people to the feast of eternal salvation.
The prophets and teachers are ignored, rejected, and even murdered. So, we can see that the people have consistently refused this invitation. The final rejection to this invitation is the rejection of Our Lord Jesus Himself who was murdered on a cross. The anger of the king represents God’s anger against those who hear His invitation to salvation but still refuse to accept it.
Not the proper dress
for a wedding
Once the invitation is rejected, the king  tells his servants to go out into the streets and invite everyone into the wedding feast, the good and the bad alike. This is each and every one of us. Yet, there is a punch line in this scene: we hear that there is a guest at the wedding who is not wearing the proper dress. So he is thrown out into the outside darkness where there is wailing and grinding of teeth.
My brothers and sisters, today’s parable is all about accepting God’s invitation to eternal salvation and our proper response is to strive to change our lives! God invites every person to receive His salvation. He began with the Jews and He has extended His salvation to every single person. Yet, we continue to either reject God’s invitation of salvation or we accept his invitation but do not wear the proper dress. In other words, we accept His invitation but do not strive to change our lives.
As Catholics, each one of us is invited to the wedding feast of God. This invitation is the Mass.  Yet, how many of us Catholics ignore this great gift! How often are we too busy for God! Or how often do we come to Mass without acknowledging the great gift of the Eucharist? 
On the other hand, how often do we Catholics accept God’s invitation yet want to come into our Church and dictate how we should dress. In other words, we accept God’s invitation, but we want to be Christian on our terms. Instead of entering God’s Church as an invited guest, we seek to come into God’s Church by our own expectations and our own rules?
This sort of thinking does not come from God. It comes from the world. We do not choose Christ. Christ chooses us! He invites us to live by His commandments. He calls us to conform our lives to Him so that we can have eternal life!
Heaven is like a wedding feast. And our Church is a foretaste of this wedding feast. The reason why our Lord has come into our world is so that we can be united to God. It is like a marriage. We become united to Him so that we can share in His divine life! 
Therefore, if we want to be part of this eternal banquet, which begins here on earth, we must first accept this invitation. And in accepting this invitation, we need to put on the proper clothes! We must take off our old self and put on the new self. We must strive to live a life without sin!  
We hear much today with the papacy of Pope Francis of the need for our church to be a more merciful Church. This is a good because we always need to be merciful.  Yet, we are reminded that the path of mercy is always the path of truth. In fact, there can be no mercy without the fullness of truth.
Many Christians today simply want mercy without truth. They want to be Christian without the cross. They want the comfortable life without the struggle. But we know from the life of our Lord Himself that this is not the Christian life! The Christian life is not an easy life. This is why there are so very few authentic Christians in our society today! This is why our Lord has said that our Church is the narrow gate. This is why our Lord says in today’s parable that many are invited but few are chosen!
As the king in today’s parable called his servants to go into the main streets and gather people into the marriage feast, we too are to go out into the streets and proclaim the message of salvation to the entire world. In fact, in his message at World Youth Day in Brazil, Pope Francis used this exact phrase. He said, “I want the Church to go out into the streets, I want us to defend ourselves against all worldliness…”  
My brothers and sisters, we must proclaim the message of salvation! Yet, we are to go out into the streets not to bring the world into our Church but to bring the sacredness of our Church out into the world. We need to let the world understand why our church teaches against the issues of today that are ruining our culture such as same sex marriage and cohabitation. We need to let the world know of God’s mercy for those who seek forgiveness! We need to let the world know the message of conversion! 
God has given us our Church to be the message of salvation! Therefore, our emphasis must be on holiness. The Church is not a club. It is not a social gathering. It is not about how many people we can bring inside.
No! The Church is about accepting the invitation of our Lord to eternal salvation and striving to live a life of holiness. We can either accept this invitation or we can reject it.
We can enter our Church with a desire to change our lives, or we can be thrown out into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. The choice is ours. May each one of us strive to accept God’s invitation for eternal salvation,  and may we each respond to this invitation by striving to change our lives.

Did your enjoy this post? Fr. John Paul Shea has another one from Oct. 5, 2014

Monday, October 6, 2014

PRODUCE THE FRUIT OF ETERNAL LIFE! Know Your Catholic Faith



Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea, 
Saints Peter & Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ  Oct. 5, 2014 

In today’s readings for this 27th Sunday (Isaiah 5:1-7; Matt 21: 33-43), we are reminded of the importance of spiritual responsibility.

In today’s first reading we hear from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah relates a story of a vine grower who has a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He spades it, clears it of stones, plants the choices vines, and builds a watchtower so that the vineyard can be protected. 

Yet, when harvest comes, all the vine grower gets is sour grapes.

Now the vineyard that is spoken of in today’s first reading is God’s chosen people, the Israelites. God had chosen this people to be the first fruits of His salvation. Yet, they continued to defy God’s laws. 

So what does God do? God takes the responsibility away from them. He allows the vineyard to be broken into and trampled so that it would become a place of ruin. In fact, this prophecy of Isaiah literally came true when the Israelites were invaded first by the Assyrians and later the Babylonians, who desecrated the land and deported the people.

Now, in today’s Gospel we hear of a similar story. In fact this parable is rooted in the image that we heard from today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah. In today’s Gospel, Our Lord also speaks of a vine grower who plants a vineyard, puts a hedge around it to protect it, digs a wine press in it, builds a tower and then leases it to tenants while He goes on a journey until harvest.

When vintage time draws near, he sends his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce and discovers that the harvest is not what it should be.

My brothers and sisters, today’s readings for this 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time calls us to be responsible with the gift of faith that has been handed down to us! God called the Israelites out of slavery and gave them the law and the commandments so that they would be a people set apart. He called them to bear the fruits of holiness. He told them not to intermingle with the other nations because they would be influenced by their iniquity and their worship of false gods. 

And when the Israelites strayed away from God, God sent the Israelites his messengers, the prophets, to guide them back to the right path. But they ignored the prophets. So God allowed the nation of  Israel to be destroyed.

Yet, in His mercy, God did not give up on His chosen people!  He sent them His Son. But they did not listen to Him! In fact, they killed Him by hanging Him on a cross!

My brothers and sisters, Our Lord Jesus is the last in a long line of prophets sent by God, and He is calling us to bear fruit of holiness. He is calling us to be faithful tenants of our Church.

Notice in today’s Gospel that our Lord is addressing the chief priests and the elders of the people who were the religious leaders of the time. So our Lord is saying to them specifically that it was their responsibility to hand down the teachings of the faith given to them through the prophets. 

Today, the Catholic Church depends on the magisterium for handing down the faith. But it is not simply the Church's hierarchy whom Our Lord calls to be responsible for protecting our faith! 

He is calling every one of us to protect the vineyard until our Lord comes again! We are each responsible to learn our faith, to know our faith, and to teach our faith.

Yet, we are also reminded that we do not own our faith. We don’t own the Church! We don’t own the world. We do not even own our own bodies! We don’t own anything! We are simply tenants. Everything we have in this world has been loaned to us  to care for. Everything we have is a gift from God!

We cannot be workers of the vineyard unless we first recognize that we are not in charge of the vineyard. God is in charge! We don’t make up the rules, because God has already given us the rules! He has done this through the prophets, the commandments, the Gospel, and through the laws of human nature!

The Father prunes those He loves 
We -- the living Body of Christ, the Church  --  are God’s vineyard -- to be set apart. We are not the world’s vineyard. Like the Israelites who were not to conform to the gods of the nations around them, we too, as members of the Church, are not to conform to the false god’s of our culture! 

This is why our Lord called the Church the narrow gate. For the gate to perdition is wide! In fact, what the devil plans is for our Church is to let the world's values in so that our Church, the vineyard of salvation, will be stripped of its sanctity and holiness.

This is why it is important that we pray hard for this upcoming synod on marriage and the family that it will bear much good fruit!

Finally, we may notice that although the message of today’s first reading and today’s Gospel passage are similar, there is a critical difference in the ending. In the passage from Isaiah when God is disappointed with the sour grapes, He destroys the vineyard. The hedge is taken away and given to grazing. The wall is broken through and trampled, and it is made a place of ruin. In the message from today’s Gospel, however, it is not simply the vineyard, but the tenants who are destroyed.

My brothers and sisters, our Lord is coming again, and holiness is the fruit that he expects from each one of us. We have been called to work in His vineyard for the salvation of souls. Let us be responsible tenants of the vineyard of our Lord until He comes again. For the kingdom of God will not be given to irresponsible tenants. It will be given to those who strive to produce the fruit of eternal life.


Did you enjoy this post? Fr. John Paul Shea has a new one  There Can Be No Mercy Without the Fullness of Truth




Sunday, October 5, 2014

NEW RED SHIRT VIDEO: Developments in Speaking About Homosexuality



(Editor's note) The new wave of Catholic apologetics on the issue of same sex attraction will have to do with identity. That is, it will be possible to help people distinguish same sex attraction and same sex identity as two separate things. Then people will be free to choose an identity of personhood or relationship to God instead of concluding, "I'm gay" or "I'm straight." Such a chosen identity has consequences which can be negative. But many don't realize that even experiencing same sex attraction, they can choose to be a "person" or a "child of God."  Susan Fox

If you would like to explore this issue further, please read: 
The New Evangelists: Bringing Christ, A Light to All People Who Experience Same Sex Attraction

Also there are other videos on this blog from the Red Shirt: "GAY? The Catholic Church Loves You Too!! My Testimony
Three other Red Shirt videos are available at Jason Evert's  The Chastity Project under "Testimonies."





Friday, September 19, 2014

Thirty-first Wedding Festival with Flowers

I was sitting in Einstein Bagels one day when a middle-aged couple came in. She was using a walker, looked like she just had back surgery. Her husband followed her anxiously looking to catch her if she fell, and at a word from from her, he followed her to the ladies room, and held the door open. When they came out, I asked how long they had been married. It was only 12 years, but the husband said with joy, "I got the better deal." She disagreed, saying she was the lucky one. Marriage is like fine wine. It just gets better as it ages. 
by Susan Fox

Came home,
lemonless, bereft and without ginger.
I wanted to pout.
The poet was five pounds heavier;
Mattress didn’t fit. Time zoned out.
Now the diet.


We went to the grocery store.
You wanted to give me flowers,
but they were withered, wilted, washed
out and totally achromatic

Their survival was problematic

Darling -- already so many blossoms!
it was aromatic
like tea twined with cardamom  --
wholesome drink of the deity!

When I landed at the airport: Tulips.1



At home, cleanups galore.
Wild Daisies:2 dramatic wood floor burnished to a lustrous gold.
Immaculate laundry: the fresh scent of dignified white Magnolia.3
Lovely purple lilac:4 dishes clean, towels folded
Golden Chrysanthemum:5 bathrooms gleam
Golden Chrysanthemum
A dusty pink Camellia:6 shower curtains no longer green.
Dark mystery of the African Violet:7 
Weeds, once one hundred fold
now controlled.

Finally, on the rusty red pond of the Marriage Bed
floated one white lotus8 
pristine

New Birth

we convene.


White Lotus 
1Red tulip: perfect love
2Daisy: loyal love
3White Magnolia: nobility and perseverance.
4Purple lilac: first emotions of love
5Golden Chrysanthemum: optimism and joy
6Camellia: the petals reflect the spirit of a lady, and the holder of the petals (the calyx) represents the man entrusted by the lady as her protector
7African Violet: Romance

8White lotus: Purity, Rebirth